Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left This podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is keyboard is Steve Woor Karl, Steve,
Speaker 1: you started off as a drummer.
Speaker 2: Right, well, yeah, I'm not in a very serious sense.
Speaker 2: We all started off at drums just because that was
Speaker 2: always Drums were laying around, sticks were laying around, pads
Speaker 2: were laying around. So yeah, I spent some times at
Speaker 2: the drum at some time at the drums, but I
Speaker 2: would never there was never a time where I called
Speaker 2: myself a drummer.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back. Your father was a professional drummer.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. My old man was a was a bebop drummer.
Speaker 2: Was where his heart was for us, you know, especially
Speaker 2: for me. Before the Beatles, it was all Miles Davis quintets,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, a few big bands, some Coltrane.
Speaker 2: It was mostly jazz in our household. And my dad
Speaker 2: played at the with Hartford Symphony every weekend, so I
Speaker 2: was exposed to some classical music, you know, but it
Speaker 2: was mostly he was he was a jazzer.
Speaker 3: You know, and he was earning a living as a
Speaker 3: player when you lived in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: You know, he where he went to work every day
Speaker 2: was this drum shop where he taught every day. That
Speaker 2: was kind of his day. Gig was teaching at this
Speaker 2: drum shop where his teacher, that his teacher owned, and
Speaker 2: they you know, and his teacher helped him get gigs
Speaker 2: right away, you know, society stuff what they called casuals,
Speaker 2: you know, weddings whatever. But yeah, he always he only
Speaker 2: did music for a living his entire life.
Speaker 3: And did your mother work outside the home.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. She was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, usually the life of a drummer, the
Speaker 3: income is challenging. What was it like growing up?
Speaker 2: You know, it was one of those things in those days. Yes,
Speaker 2: it was very challenging. I was brought up in the
Speaker 2: I was born in the projects in Hartford, and but
Speaker 2: it wasn't you know, we were never hungry or anything
Speaker 2: like that. There's no you know, sob story there. I
Speaker 2: seem to have everything I needed and wanted. We had
Speaker 2: Christmases and you know, life was good.
Speaker 3: You know, how old were you when the family moved
Speaker 3: to California.
Speaker 2: I was just turning nine. We moved, we landed in
Speaker 2: Burbank in nineteen sixty six, and I in August of
Speaker 2: sixty six, and I turned nine in September, the beginning
Speaker 2: of the year.
Speaker 3: So did you want to come to California or do
Speaker 3: you not want to leave your friends behind?
Speaker 2: You know? It was we were very excited about it. Actually,
Speaker 2: my dad had come like a few months earlier. My
Speaker 2: dad had come to kind of check it out. He
Speaker 2: was wanting something different. He was kind of doing everything
Speaker 2: he could do in Hartford, and he was doing okay,
Speaker 2: you know, as far as a professional musician goes, he
Speaker 2: was doing all right. But he came out to California
Speaker 2: to see one of his childhood friends, Amo Richards, who
Speaker 2: was doing very well here in the studios, especially in
Speaker 2: the film studios. Some record stuff. But what did amol do?
Speaker 2: Amo was a percussionist in the studios, okay, doing records
Speaker 2: and mostly movies, mostly film stuff. And Amo was doing
Speaker 2: very well. He was working every day in the film
Speaker 2: studios and like I said, some records. And my dad
Speaker 2: followed him for a week. He just went to every
Speaker 2: gig he that Amo had, and Amo worked every day.
Speaker 2: My dad followed him around and saw what was expected
Speaker 2: that you you know, like say, you know, in the
Speaker 2: symphony he could play mallet parts, but he got to
Speaker 2: You could take those home and practice them. But in
Speaker 2: the studios you had maybe one pass through and then
Speaker 2: you had to nail those Tom and Jerry's xylophone parts.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they could be very difficult in the film studio
Speaker 2: and you had to nail it. You were there with
Speaker 2: an eightpiece orchestra. It was very different than like my
Speaker 2: studio career. You know, there are a lot of other
Speaker 2: people playing at the same time and you had to
Speaker 2: nail that stuff. It was very high pressure. But he
Speaker 2: felt he could do it, and he moved the family,
Speaker 2: the wife and four kids. We moved across the country
Speaker 2: to become you know, for him to become a a
Speaker 2: freelance studio musician. And he did really well, really right
Speaker 2: away he did well. So yeah, things took off for
Speaker 2: him pretty quick.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's talk about his upbringing. Where was he born.
Speaker 2: Hertford, Connecticut?
Speaker 3: And were his parents born in America or born in
Speaker 3: the so called Old Country?
Speaker 2: No, they were definitely Old Country. His father was Calabrese
Speaker 2: and his mother was from Napoli, Neapolitan, you know, they
Speaker 2: were both southern Italians. And his mother never learned English.
Speaker 2: I never heard her speak English, but his father was
Speaker 2: mostly a carpenter and also a drummer and a trumpet player.
Speaker 2: Would play a lot in these Italian marching bands, which
Speaker 2: were a big deal back in the day. And that's
Speaker 2: what my dad first did, was play play snare drum
Speaker 2: in these Italian marching bands in Hertford.
Speaker 3: And when you moved to California, were they still alive?
Speaker 2: Yes, very much so. They were alive for quite a while. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And did they follow you out here or did they
Speaker 3: stay in.
Speaker 2: Not at all. Not. They're all as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: all my cousins, everyone is still there in Connecticut. I'm
Speaker 2: going to see them in a couple months. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go visit. You know, they're all there. My mom's
Speaker 2: family was from Maine, and my dad's they're all in
Speaker 2: the general Hartford area and still are. Do you know
Speaker 2: how your parents met, Yes, I do know how my
Speaker 2: parents met. My dad. My mom was even though she
Speaker 2: was born in Maine, she was taking she was a floutist.
Speaker 2: She was taking flute at this music college in Hartford.
Speaker 2: And my dad, even though he didn't have a college
Speaker 2: education himself, he did some teaching at this Heart School,
Speaker 2: Heart School of Music in Hartford and he saw her
Speaker 2: in a practice room. He saw through the window, he
Speaker 2: saw in a practice room, and he called his best
Speaker 2: friend over and said, that's the woman I'm gonna marry
Speaker 2: before they even met.
Speaker 3: And okay, so you're nine years old. You moved to
Speaker 3: California to where in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Burbank, Burbank, California.
Speaker 3: And what was Burbank like then compared to now?
Speaker 2: You know, it's was pretty much the same. I got
Speaker 2: to tell you. You know, Burbank maybe you know it
Speaker 2: gets a bad rap and it's the valley and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, But for us, it was the Promised Land.
Speaker 2: It was this bedroom community for people who worked on film.
Speaker 2: And you know, this is nineteen sixty six. The Monkeys
Speaker 2: were filming their TV show down the street and they
Speaker 2: would go tooling around town and the Monkey Mobile. You know,
Speaker 2: I was nine, So there was this nine year you know,
Speaker 2: what we come to know now is this nine year
Speaker 2: awakening that kids go through where you your eyes are
Speaker 2: finally really wide open to life. And it was hitting me,
Speaker 2: hitting us all like a ton of bricks. We loved it.
Speaker 2: We loved it. It was very exciting. And like I said,
Speaker 2: my dad, right away was working, so he right away
Speaker 2: was you know, doing things like doing you know, Jerry Fielding.
Speaker 2: This composer was someone he worked for, and he was
Speaker 2: doing the main title to a sitcom like Hogan's Hero
Speaker 2: something we watched, so we would we'd hear, you know,
Speaker 2: we would hear my dad on TV. He worked with
Speaker 2: Lila Schiffrin, with someone he hooked up with very early,
Speaker 2: who loved the way my dad played. So my dad
Speaker 2: was on all these shows like Mission Impossible and Manics
Speaker 2: and stuff. When these these guys were still doing TV work.
Speaker 2: It was very very exciting, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there if we love kids in your family,
Speaker 3: two well known brothers. Who's the fourth.
Speaker 2: Kid, m my young my kid's sister, Jolene, And what's
Speaker 2: she up to. She's a designer. She decorates, Uh, she
Speaker 2: does interior design in houses. She she was very musical too.
Speaker 2: She just kind of us three boys kind of got
Speaker 2: all the got all the stole, all the stole, all
Speaker 2: the thunder you know what I mean, got all the attention.
Speaker 2: She was I was three years younger than Jeff. She
Speaker 2: was three years younger than me, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: we got a lot of the attention but Joline has
Speaker 2: always done She's always worked in uh, in the studios,
Speaker 2: in the film, film, film, and TV world, and now
Speaker 2: she mostly does design work in homes.
Speaker 3: Okay, when you moved to California, you're nine, your brothers
Speaker 3: are older. Is everybody already playing instruments?
Speaker 2: Yes, Jeff was already quite the drummer immediately, Mike was still.
Speaker 2: Mike was also a drummer. They had both as soon
Speaker 2: as the Beatles came out, they both they both took
Speaker 2: guitar lessons for a little while and Jeff let it
Speaker 2: go after a month and Mike stuck with it a
Speaker 2: little bit longer with guitar. And then right then Mike
Speaker 2: took up the bass in school. And that's when Mike
Speaker 2: started playing bass. Was right when we got there. Uh,
Speaker 2: he took up the bass, but he took it up.
Speaker 2: He was very quick with it. Mike was a Mike
Speaker 2: was a great drummer too. Mike had an incredible time,
Speaker 2: He had an incredible groove. But you know, Jeff was
Speaker 2: just Jeff stood out from a very young age just
Speaker 2: being something very special on drums. Everyone everyone knew that
Speaker 2: Jeff was least something special. Uh. Yeah, and I was
Speaker 2: already playing piano. By that point, I'd been playing piano.
Speaker 2: I'd been taking lessons since since I was four. But
Speaker 2: I was always a horrible student, you know. I was
Speaker 2: always just a terrible student. But luckily my dad would
Speaker 2: always my dad be it was a very good teacher
Speaker 2: of drums. You know. You always taught friends, and especially
Speaker 2: in the studio, Guys knew that my dad taught and
Speaker 2: was really good at teaching, and they would often ask
Speaker 2: him to teach their sons that were interested in taking drums,
Speaker 2: and if it was a keyboard player, he'd barter with them.
Speaker 2: He'd say, sure, I'll teach your kid if you'll teach
Speaker 2: my kid piano, and you know, and I just would
Speaker 2: always say yes. I never gave up. I got to
Speaker 2: work with an incredible some incredible piano teachers over the years.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, your two older brothers, did they take lessons.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Jeff took some lessons, but I would say from
Speaker 2: what I saw that I would say that ninety percent
Speaker 2: of Jeff's lessons were him playing along with records. There
Speaker 2: was always a drum set set up, and there was
Speaker 2: always a turntable and headphones right next to the drum.
Speaker 2: Set and Jeff would spend hours upon hours playing along
Speaker 2: to records.
Speaker 3: And did your brothers take piano at a young age two?
Speaker 2: No, not at all. I was the only one. I
Speaker 2: was the only one who took And.
Speaker 3: Do you know what the motivation was.
Speaker 2: For me?
Speaker 3: Well, you're four years old?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. I went with my dad. My dad
Speaker 2: took me. He again, he was teaching at this college.
Speaker 2: He was teaching drums at some college, and he would
Speaker 2: One time he took me and it was he was
Speaker 2: teaching a drum lesson as some guy, and it was
Speaker 2: this organ room at this college he was teaching at.
Speaker 2: It was this room that had, like, you know, they
Speaker 2: had to have at least ten different organs in there.
Speaker 2: And towards the end of the lesson, I saw my
Speaker 2: dad jump on an organ. I don't even know what
Speaker 2: it was, but it was a Hammond. It was something
Speaker 2: like the size of a B three or something, and
Speaker 2: he played. He wanted his student to play along with him,
Speaker 2: and he played this very simple see blues. He played
Speaker 2: this blues on the Hammond for his student to play
Speaker 2: along with him, to play, to play a jazz swing
Speaker 2: beat along with him. And I had never seen my
Speaker 2: father play a keyboard before then, but I heard him
Speaker 2: play this, and I was like, we had just gotten
Speaker 2: a piano. I had just started taking lessons with a
Speaker 2: friend of his. But I said to him, show me
Speaker 2: that blues. Show me I want to learn that. And
Speaker 2: he taught to me and I played it to death.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, you continue to take lessons, but you
Speaker 3: said you didn't practice.
Speaker 2: You know, I would practice. I would start off practicing,
Speaker 2: but as soon as it got really difficult, as soon
Speaker 2: as the teacher would say things like Okay, that's great,
Speaker 2: now learn it in all twelve keys, see you later,
Speaker 2: you know, or something like that, it just would be
Speaker 2: drudgery to me. You know, certain music that I unless
Speaker 2: it was something I really wanted to play, it was
Speaker 2: drudgery to me and my as bad as I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a good keyboard player, my you know, I
Speaker 2: think I had some undiagnosed attention deficit stuff going on.
Speaker 2: It was very hard for me to focus as a kid.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until I started fifth grade and I
Speaker 2: am in Studio City and there was another kid. I
Speaker 2: thought I was pretty good at fifth grade, you know,
Speaker 2: in fifth grade, but there was this other kid in
Speaker 2: fifth grade who was a true child prodigy, was amazing
Speaker 2: on piano, and we became fast friends. And he was
Speaker 2: playing classical pieces and that was the first time I,
Speaker 2: like was driven. I wanted to play those those pieces,
Speaker 2: so you know, I would get to the music. And
Speaker 2: it was the first time I felt driven. Even though
Speaker 2: it was hard, I wanted to. I had that in
Speaker 2: my head watching this other kid do it, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to know what it felt like to be able
Speaker 2: to rip off, you know, to whip off some of
Speaker 2: these pieces and stuff like that. And I was really
Speaker 2: driven to practice. Things went up and.
Speaker 3: Notch and you learned how to do that stuff absolutely.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Now there was this other kid in school, but if
Speaker 3: I was going to school with you, I'd say, oh, Steve,
Speaker 3: he's the guy who plays a piano. Or was really
Speaker 3: just something you're doing at home?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, No, I was very involved. You know, most
Speaker 2: of the public schools I know in California anyway, they're
Speaker 2: all through even elementary, junior high. In high school, there
Speaker 2: was never a piano chair in the orchestra. It was
Speaker 2: always we played percussion. I would play percussion in the orchestras,
Speaker 2: timpany xylophone, you know i'd be able to learn the parts,
Speaker 2: and I would that's what you played. There was no
Speaker 2: piano chair per se, you know, but I was always
Speaker 2: taking lessons and always plowing away and trying.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, you have two older brothers. I don't
Speaker 3: have older brothers or any brothers at all. To what
Speaker 3: degree was your career following in the steps of your
Speaker 3: brothers or was it independent and then you merged down
Speaker 3: the road?
Speaker 2: You know, it was a lot of both. Jeff, especially
Speaker 2: because at such an early age. I mean, of course
Speaker 2: he was playing in his bands in high school and
Speaker 2: I went to every gig, but he got a professional
Speaker 2: gig at seventeen. He didn't finish high school like myself,
Speaker 2: I didn't finish high school either. Because he got a
Speaker 2: job touring with Sonny and Chare. You know, he'd been
Speaker 2: doing a couple little sessions, local stuff, small time stuff
Speaker 2: around the valley. And David Hungate, who was playing with
Speaker 2: Sonny and Share at the time, and this is kind
Speaker 2: of right before they were really peaking in the mid
Speaker 2: seventies early seventies there, David Hungate was did a session
Speaker 2: with Jeff and heard him play and recommended him to
Speaker 2: Sonny and Share, and Jeff left high school a semester
Speaker 2: earlier to tour with them, and then right from that
Speaker 2: it was just his His career trajectory was was astonishing
Speaker 2: how fast he started doing sessions, really good sessions all
Speaker 2: of a sudden. You know, our favorite band Steely Dan,
Speaker 2: Jeff's doing like a whole album with him. So Jeff
Speaker 2: was always this shining, shining example to us that it
Speaker 2: could happen. We could. It was possible, you know, it
Speaker 2: was right there, It was possible if we worked hard enough.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, that was Jeff. Jeff is older than you,
Speaker 3: He's basically okay, so when you were now in high school,
Speaker 3: are you playing in bands?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely? And then Rape Mike was just two years
Speaker 2: younger than Jeff, and Mike was also playing in bands
Speaker 2: and in Jeff's bands in high school, and he right away,
Speaker 2: as soon as he graduated, he started touring with bands
Speaker 2: Michael Franks, and then Mike was with Seals and Crofts
Speaker 2: for a lot of years right out of high school
Speaker 2: and doing sessions and playing the Baked Potato. His career
Speaker 2: took off immediately.
Speaker 3: Also, you know, okay, you're younger than Jeff by three years,
Speaker 3: what kind of band are you playing in in high school?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the very first stuff that Jeff did,
Speaker 2: like in junior high was absolutely like soul, these kind
Speaker 2: of funk bands, playing Sam and Dave covers, playing covers
Speaker 2: like that in high school him and when he met
Speaker 2: David Page, his partner in Toto, they right away there.
Speaker 2: They loved Joe Cocker had a band, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
Speaker 2: There was a record, there was a movie. They had
Speaker 2: double drums, Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, and these guys
Speaker 2: happened to be Jeff's hero. Well, their high school band
Speaker 2: pretty much did that whole Joe Cockers set. They had horns,
Speaker 2: they had all these background singers. You know, Leon Russell
Speaker 2: was a big hero of ours as far as being
Speaker 2: a studio musician, And they kind of copied that band
Speaker 2: through through high school. And then when I got into
Speaker 2: high school, I took those same charts and I did
Speaker 2: that same set. At first, I was kind of copying that,
Speaker 2: but then I later in high school, I got rid
Speaker 2: of the horns and I wanted to do more of
Speaker 2: a rock and roll thing, and that's when I hooked
Speaker 2: up with my So when I met Steve Lucather and
Speaker 2: Mike Landau and Carlos Vega and John Pierce and these
Speaker 2: guys that all went on to have great careers. We
Speaker 2: had a band in high school and did lots of
Speaker 2: proms and all started taking our new very seriously. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Okay, so you are the connection to Lucerther, not
Speaker 3: your brothers. Yes, okay, so you meet Lucather, you meet Landau,
Speaker 3: you're playing this is all great. Your brother both brothers
Speaker 3: are Ultimately they've made this a career. Is that in
Speaker 3: the back of your mind to say this is what
Speaker 3: I want to do or you say this is what
Speaker 3: I'm doing now.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely what we wanted to do, and it's what
Speaker 2: we saw was so possible because it was right there
Speaker 2: and it kind of inspired all of us. It inspired
Speaker 2: all of us in our band that it was you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just some pipe dream. Jeff and Mike were
Speaker 2: doing it, you know, you know, and it certainly helped me.
Speaker 2: I went through a very difficult period where I you know,
Speaker 2: as I'm in eleventh grade and twelfth grade in school,
Speaker 2: I'm looking I see that my brother's careers took off
Speaker 2: freight away. But as far as being the piano player
Speaker 2: on a session, being a keyboard player on a session.
Speaker 2: I saw the competition. It was Michael o'mardian and David
Speaker 2: Page and David Foster and these guys that were I
Speaker 2: was nowhere near their ability as far as just basic keyboards,
Speaker 2: which is part of the reason. I mean, I was
Speaker 2: always interested in any way, but I early on I
Speaker 2: dove way into synthesizers. I saw especially this is before MIDI,
Speaker 2: and I just saw this chasm where the guys who
Speaker 2: knew a lot about synthesizers were these nerds, you know,
Speaker 2: with pocket protectors on, and the real the great players
Speaker 2: didn't want to have anything to do with interfacing, you know,
Speaker 2: a synthesizer, what it took to play a mogue from
Speaker 2: an art and vice versa, and the little black boxes
Speaker 2: and that took and I dove way into that stuff,
Speaker 2: and at a very early age start getting hired to
Speaker 2: be a synthesizer programmer.
Speaker 3: Wait a little bit slower. There's the full mug, then
Speaker 3: there's the mini mug. There's the R twenty five hundred
Speaker 3: than the twenty six hundred, which is more for a
Speaker 3: consumer everyday thing. Where do you get in on this.
Speaker 3: It really sort of happened to the change of the
Speaker 3: decades sixties to the seventies. And also this stuff was
Speaker 3: not cheap. So nope, how did you literally get vaulved Sure?
Speaker 3: I had this friend in high school. His name was
Speaker 3: Jay Chernick, and he owned We were all way into
Speaker 3: Prague Rock. We were all into Emerson, Lincoln Palmer and Yes,
Speaker 3: and these these these.
Speaker 2: Guys were our heroes. Not so much my brothers, but
Speaker 2: I mean they hit me to that stuff. Jeff hit
Speaker 2: me to King Crimson and emersoniank and paulm Or. But
Speaker 2: he didn't stay in that camp very long. But I
Speaker 2: had this friend who owned a Mini Mogue. He owned
Speaker 2: an Oberheim Sequencer and an Oberheim Expander module. And I
Speaker 2: would hang out with this guy every day, and he
Speaker 2: was teaching me. He was showing me stuff on this
Speaker 2: Mini Mogue, and he had this stuff interfaced. He had
Speaker 2: these little black boxes. He had hired someone so that
Speaker 2: this Mogue could talk to this Oberheim, which wasn't easy
Speaker 2: to do in those days. Anyway, I'm still in high school.
Speaker 2: All I wanted to do was be on the road
Speaker 2: and following my brother's footsteps. And I auditioned it started
Speaker 2: becoming At that point, it was like a new thing
Speaker 2: where groups on the road were hiring a second keyboard
Speaker 2: player to cover the string arrangements, to play in art
Speaker 2: a string ensemble, to cover you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: to cover overdubs live, and all of a sudden kind
Speaker 2: of became this new chair with touring bands. And I
Speaker 2: remember I auditioned for Mac Davis and didn't get it.
Speaker 2: He just said, you're too young. I'm still in high school.
Speaker 2: I auditioned for Tim Buckley and he was looking for
Speaker 2: a guy who was more of a jazz pianist. He
Speaker 2: was looking for a jazzer. I didn't get that. And
Speaker 2: then David Foster, whoy had just started programming for, had
Speaker 2: just finished working with Gary Wright and recording the dream
Speaker 2: Weaver album, and Gary had asked him. Gary was putting
Speaker 2: together an all keyboard band, and did David noah of
Speaker 2: any young keyboard players who would tour for cheap who
Speaker 2: knew how to play synthesizer. And he gave Gary my
Speaker 2: number and I played mo base for Gary Wright for
Speaker 2: I got the gig, and I left high school a
Speaker 2: semester early because I got the gig playing with Gary Wright.
Speaker 2: You know and I rate then I didn't even own
Speaker 2: a synthesizer then. As a matter of fact, on my audition,
Speaker 2: I had borrowed my friend's mini Mogue and he had
Speaker 2: marked for me with grease pencil, like cool base settings.
Speaker 2: You know, that's how little I knew about it. He
Speaker 2: marked some cool base settings. I got the gig and
Speaker 2: my brother Mike loaned me the money. I Jay Tchernick,
Speaker 2: my friend had decided he wanted to sell all his
Speaker 2: synthesizer equipment and buy a grand piano. He wanted to
Speaker 2: start taking his his piano lessons seriously, and I bought
Speaker 2: that very rig My brother Mike loaned me the money,
Speaker 2: and that was the mog base I had that I
Speaker 2: took on tour with me with Gary Wright.
Speaker 3: How much money did you need?
Speaker 2: It was two thousand dollars for the whole thing, which
Speaker 2: was a good minimugs listed They listed for fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: dollars then, and then the other stuff was well over
Speaker 2: another thousand dollars. And it was a It was a
Speaker 2: beautiful minimug which I have to this day. I still
Speaker 2: have it. It it it crashed into a million pieces.
Speaker 2: One time we were opening for Jethro Tull, and when
Speaker 2: they took our equipment off the stage, it came crashing
Speaker 2: down to the floor in a million pieces. But I
Speaker 2: had the guts put in another, put in another enclosure,
Speaker 2: and so funny because I just had some work on
Speaker 2: it and I just got it back, so I had
Speaker 2: to show it to you. This was the very first
Speaker 2: minimo guy ever owned. You know that, My brother Mike
Speaker 2: helped me, helped me pay for for Gary Wright.
Speaker 3: Okay, if you were on the road with jeth Rode
Speaker 3: Tall and the Mini moge broke, what'd you do with
Speaker 3: the next show?
Speaker 2: Gary had this? We were opening for Jethro Toll. Gary
Speaker 2: was opening for Jethro Toll. We did a full month
Speaker 2: with him, and I loved it. I didn't miss one
Speaker 2: Jethro Tol show. I was, I was. I didn't miss
Speaker 2: one show. Gary had this amazing tech, this kid named
Speaker 2: Alan who is amazing, and Gary already had a mini
Speaker 2: Mogue had a keyboard. This this tech had put his
Speaker 2: keyboard in a separate enclosure, so it wasn't a key tar.
Speaker 2: There was no quitar neck on it, but it just
Speaker 2: he had this this minimog around his neck and he
Speaker 2: would come out in front and Gary would play you know,
Speaker 2: minimog solos and Mini Mogue parts. So Alan did the
Speaker 2: same thing for me. He just built this. Uh he
Speaker 2: put it in a in a you know, right away,
Speaker 2: put it in a box and had these connectors where
Speaker 2: my keyboard was separate, and I started wearing the keyboard
Speaker 2: around my neck with Gary also, you know, playing the
Speaker 2: bass parts.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back before you own the Mini Mode.
Speaker 3: You're working with Foster, You're programming. What exactly are you doing?
Speaker 3: You know, programming today is a whole thing programming drugs.
Speaker 3: But in drum excuse me, in the seventies, programming SyncE
Speaker 3: like for what were you actually doing?
Speaker 2: You know, it was it was simply often like say
Speaker 2: with a Mini Mogue, it was like they typically would
Speaker 2: want a cool bass sound, a cool Mogue bass sound,
Speaker 2: and some of these guys like Foster or David Page
Speaker 2: in particular David Page was able to get up great
Speaker 2: sounds sometimes on a Mini Mog, but especially when you
Speaker 2: were working Foster was his career was taking off, and
Speaker 2: he's working with Alice Cooper and he's every day it
Speaker 2: was someone else, and one day it was Michael Jackson
Speaker 2: and Quincy Jones. And when you were in the studio
Speaker 2: with those guys, you didn't I want to be guessing.
Speaker 2: You know. Sometimes these guys would get lucky with since UH,
Speaker 2: but they didn't want to be guessing, so they would
Speaker 2: bring me along to make sure that when it was
Speaker 2: time to get a mog bass sound, I could really
Speaker 2: dial it in and UH. And I also had a
Speaker 2: twenty six hundred by that point. Yeah, and I got
Speaker 2: a CSAD very early on UH and mastered it. You
Speaker 2: know what I mean. I really had it down, and
Speaker 2: you know, and I was very Uh. I was very musical.
Speaker 2: I wasn't just a synth NERD. I was very musical,
Speaker 2: and and I wasn't trying to I worked really well
Speaker 2: in the studio with these guys. I wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: show them up in front of the producer or the artist.
Speaker 2: I loved when these guys would do the playing and
Speaker 2: I just would tweet the sound while they were playing.
Speaker 2: They loved that I would dial it in. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was a great team player and I made I
Speaker 2: just made myself real handy to be around in the studio.
Speaker 3: You're seventeen years old, You're on the road with Gary Wright.
Speaker 2: What is that like? You know, it was incredible, especially
Speaker 2: being with Gary Wright where I mean, I had no idea.
Speaker 2: He had this big time manager, de Anthony. He had
Speaker 2: these incredible agents. So right away, not only was I
Speaker 2: on the road, but we're doing these great gigs. We're
Speaker 2: opening for Peter Frampton all the time, We're opening for
Speaker 2: Jethro Tull, where we're doing stadium gigs. You know, We're
Speaker 2: on these amazing gigs. I mean, I was getting two
Speaker 2: hundred bucks a week, you know. But what they didn't
Speaker 2: know is that I would have paid them two hundred
Speaker 2: bucks a week for I was living my Beatles wet dream.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, you know what I'm saying. I
Speaker 2: was playing in front of big crowds, which was all
Speaker 2: I wanted to do at that point in my life.
Speaker 3: You know, how about drinking, drugging and women.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't as far as women goes, I
Speaker 2: didn't have. I was seventeen. I didn't have much game.
Speaker 2: To be quite honest with you, I'm sixty seven. I
Speaker 2: still don't have much game. But you know, the drugs
Speaker 2: part was just then. We were just celebrating life. We
Speaker 2: were smoking a bunch of weed. And you know, these
Speaker 2: were the days in nineteen seventy five. You know, you
Speaker 2: know cocaine was not addictive. That was the good news
Speaker 2: about it was it wasn't you know, you didn't get
Speaker 2: addicted to it, you know what I mean, no one,
Speaker 2: No one had that much money then to you know,
Speaker 2: you were just doing these little, tiny amounts and it
Speaker 2: was a party. Now, you know, part of my story
Speaker 2: in my life is that. Believe me. I I I
Speaker 2: definitely much later on than we're talking about. My fun
Speaker 2: button got stuck and I stayed at the party way
Speaker 2: too long. I think, looking back now, I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, because I was never much into alcohol. If
Speaker 2: I drank, I couldn't do I couldn't you know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't work. And for me, the drugs were very connected
Speaker 2: with work, with learning synthesizers. I think it was kind
Speaker 2: of acting as my riddling, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: More than I was never a big partier, if you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. I uh, you know, I used
Speaker 2: it because I was having so much fun. I once
Speaker 2: I got a bunch of synthesizers and I was always
Speaker 2: thinking putting two and two together. I had taken you know,
Speaker 2: I had taken arranging lessons, so I had knew how
Speaker 2: to block harmonize for saxophones, like for a big band.
Speaker 2: And then I get this sequencer that's an eight channel sequencer.
Speaker 2: And the only guys were using that we're doing you know,
Speaker 2: we're doing you know what? They wound up calling krout
Speaker 2: rock and stuff. It was this very electronic YadA YadA
Speaker 2: YadA stuff. And I was thinking, you know, I could
Speaker 2: take you know what I mean, I could have five
Speaker 2: flutes playing in block harmony, doing sixteenth notes through chord changes.
Speaker 2: I know how to do that. I don't see anyone
Speaker 2: else doing stuff like that. I was so excited about
Speaker 2: marrying the technology with with what I knew musically, it
Speaker 2: was hard for me to go to sleep at night.
Speaker 2: I was so excited about it.
Speaker 3: You know, some people go out on the road to
Speaker 3: supporting musicians. They don't even talk to the liner person
Speaker 3: they're working for once they're off stage. What was your
Speaker 3: relationship like with Gary Wright?
Speaker 2: Gary was a total sweetheart. Gary was the best Gary
Speaker 2: was you know, look, he was just an opening act then,
Speaker 2: but even when he when things took off, Gary was great.
Speaker 2: He took me under his wing. He took us out
Speaker 2: to dinner all the time. He was fantastic, He was funny,
Speaker 2: he was he was an absolute sweetheart. We just lost
Speaker 2: him somewhat recently, you know, a year or two ago,
Speaker 2: and I've I've always, I've always been so grateful that
Speaker 2: I had that Gary gave me the opportunities he gave me.
Speaker 2: He didn't he just like I said, after those first
Speaker 2: two auditions, I I went into audition and the drummer
Speaker 2: Art would was setting up and we were just jamming,
Speaker 2: you know, we were jamming on an E on E
Speaker 2: doing just kind of doing a funk groove. And after
Speaker 2: ten minutes, he goes, you got the gig, and you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? And I had a ball, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Okay, going back, if some young musician came to you
Speaker 3: today and said I have an opportunity to go on
Speaker 3: the road and I have to drop out of high
Speaker 3: school to do it, what would you say.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, you know, it's a really it's a really
Speaker 2: good question. You know, you know the only way I
Speaker 2: can answer it is by telling you believe me with
Speaker 2: my situation. Let's just say, and I would tell them
Speaker 2: this at the time when we're talking about nineteen seventy five. Now,
Speaker 2: my father did film scores every day. And the composers,
Speaker 2: the Lilo Schiffrin's, the John Williams, the you know, the
Speaker 2: everyone you can mention, the Bernard Herrmann's, the film scorers.
Speaker 2: These guys were these maestros. They were these guys that
Speaker 2: were on such a pedestal. I never thought I could
Speaker 2: ever be considered to do that kind of gig. Okay,
Speaker 2: flash to many years later, and guys like Danny Elfman,
Speaker 2: Hans Zimmer, these guys, All of a sudden, it's like,
Speaker 2: it's completely possible. I had no idea of some of
Speaker 2: the opportunities I would have later in life. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a rock star and I wanted
Speaker 2: to experience that being in front of people right then.
Speaker 2: But I might, I might say, you might want to
Speaker 2: think about the future and what you want to what
Speaker 2: tools you want to be able to have, and do
Speaker 2: you want to work in film, and do you want
Speaker 2: to go to a four year college and have learn
Speaker 2: about orchestration and composition and counterpoint and theory and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. Now, at the same time, what I did
Speaker 2: was was I realized early on that I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to compete with these usual keyboard players. That I had
Speaker 2: to make this. I had to find this niche, niche,
Speaker 2: this unique. I had to separate myself from everyone else
Speaker 2: in some way. And that's been my motto my whole
Speaker 2: life is to be different, is to find my own thing,
Speaker 2: my own style, which now happens. Part of it was
Speaker 2: the fact that I went on the road early, that
Speaker 2: I got into synthesizers, when I got into them, that
Speaker 2: I've had all these different piano teachers. I didn't just
Speaker 2: have one. I had ten different piano teachers. And if
Speaker 2: I told you who some of them were, You'd think
Speaker 2: I'd play like Lenny Tristano or something. You think I'd
Speaker 2: be some great keyboard player. It's like I never with
Speaker 2: my short attention span, I never stuck with it. But
Speaker 2: you know what that has contributed to making me who
Speaker 2: I am, which is unique and different, you know from
Speaker 2: all the other guys that do what I do. So
Speaker 2: what would I tell them to answer your question? I
Speaker 2: just would would want them to think about that. Maybe
Speaker 2: there's some things down the line, you know. You know,
Speaker 2: because I saw sure at seventeen, I right away I
Speaker 2: was in front of these crowds. I'm getting adulation, I'm
Speaker 2: getting gold records, I'm getting this success. But I saw
Speaker 2: how some of my friends who you know what, they
Speaker 2: just kind of kept their nose to the grindstone. And
Speaker 2: then maybe they went to school. But later they when
Speaker 2: they started their careers, they had a lot more depth
Speaker 2: than I did. They were able to do film scores
Speaker 2: and stuff on a level that I was never able to.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, I did some films scoring, but you
Speaker 2: know what, to be real honest with you, I wasn't
Speaker 2: that good at it. I was okay, I was able
Speaker 2: to get through it, but I wasn't I didn't have
Speaker 2: the musical chops, to be honest with you, that my
Speaker 2: friends like James Howard and other people you know, or
Speaker 2: just the innate talent. You know, a guy like Danny Elfman,
Speaker 2: he writes, when he writes music, he's writing it all
Speaker 2: in trouble cleft and using octave signs. But you know what,
Speaker 2: how can you argue with his results? You know, Hans
Speaker 2: Zimmer when he walks into an orchestral session, he doesn't know.
Speaker 2: You know, James Howard could sit there and look at
Speaker 2: a tenor cleft part and he could whistle the part
Speaker 2: to the bassoon player. Okay, James has that kind of
Speaker 2: talent and perfect pitch, and he can look at a
Speaker 2: score and do that. Hans wouldn't know an alto kleff
Speaker 2: from a tenor cleft, and he doesn't care. He's got
Speaker 2: his orchestras that do that. Hans is being Hans, and
Speaker 2: he knows what he wants and he knows what he
Speaker 2: wants to hear. And I think his work is amazing.
Speaker 2: You know, I think his work is amazing. You know,
Speaker 2: people can judge it all they want. People made fun
Speaker 2: of Danny Elfman at one point when he was starting off,
Speaker 2: you know, people look down their nose at him. But
Speaker 2: you know what, Danny has written some incredibly beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: You know, let's go to your film TV career. Sure
Speaker 3: you said you weren't that good at it, but like
Speaker 3: you were a composer for Justified.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was my last TV show I did. And
Speaker 2: and you know when I did a show like that,
Speaker 2: it owned me. It owned me. I it would take
Speaker 2: me working day and night and weekends when I did
Speaker 2: film stuff. Some of my friends, you know, would get
Speaker 2: these TV shows where they they'd have two minutes of
Speaker 2: music a week, and it would be a little piano
Speaker 2: tinkling with some string pads behind him, and that was
Speaker 2: it every week. And they did shows like that for
Speaker 2: fourteen years. They'd get this great paycheck and they could
Speaker 2: work on their songs in the evening and they could
Speaker 2: work on another project over here. Every gig I ever
Speaker 2: got was like there would be multiple chase scenes that
Speaker 2: would last three to five minutes, and it was like
Speaker 2: it was hard work, you know, And the way I
Speaker 2: did it, it was hard, hard work. And to be
Speaker 2: honest with you, I really wasn't. I really didn't have
Speaker 2: those chops. It would take me. Those kind of shows
Speaker 2: would own me my. You know. What I appreciated about
Speaker 2: it was that it taught me to grow up. It
Speaker 2: taught me about finishing. It taught me about, you know,
Speaker 2: having a deadline. You know. I was in a band
Speaker 2: where if I showed up, if it was time for
Speaker 2: us for Toto to start making a record, and I
Speaker 2: didn't have any songs, no, but I didn't get in trouble.
Speaker 2: There was four other, five other writers with lots of
Speaker 2: songs to play. You know, nobody was like saying, hey,
Speaker 2: come on man, where's your stuff? You know. And by
Speaker 2: the way, they were great in that they would anything
Speaker 2: I did, play, anything I did come up with. They
Speaker 2: were very happy to cut it for me, you know,
Speaker 2: and we would cut it. We'd be at Sunset Sound
Speaker 2: and we went to London to do our strings, and
Speaker 2: you know, I had these great opportunities, but I was
Speaker 2: so my gig. My job in the band was being
Speaker 2: the synth guy. David was the keyboard player, so to speak,
Speaker 2: and my job was doing the synth stuff. And I
Speaker 2: wanted the synth stuff to be the best synth stuff.
Speaker 2: There was a planet Earth, you know, if that was
Speaker 2: going to be my job. So I was. My nose
Speaker 2: was in a man annual, a whole lot I was.
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't an electronics guy. I didn't take
Speaker 2: electronics and high school for an elective. I took print
Speaker 2: shop for some reason. I wanted to make rubber stamps,
Speaker 2: you know, that sounded fun to me. I knew nothing
Speaker 2: about electronics. I just would make friends with Roger Lynz
Speaker 2: and Ralph Dyke's and the guys who really knew their stuff.
Speaker 2: These guys became my friends because we were It was
Speaker 2: mutually beneficial. We would help each other out. You know,
Speaker 2: I was always never had a shortage of ideas.
Speaker 3: Was there any issue of imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: Absolutely sure, absolutely, But you know what I don't have
Speaker 2: you know what I mean that slowly started going away.
Speaker 2: I would, you know, quite honestly, even when my career
Speaker 2: was pea, when Toto was doing their best work with
Speaker 2: Toto four, and I had a song on the Thriller album,
Speaker 2: and I had all the work I would ever want,
Speaker 2: I would still every single weekend I would go to
Speaker 2: the Baked Potato. I'd hear either one of my brothers
Speaker 2: or Luke or one of my friends or Landauers. I'd
Speaker 2: hear one of these guys play with a band there,
Speaker 2: and I'd walk out of there feeling like a piece
Speaker 2: of shit because of what I didn't have together. Because
Speaker 2: I wanted to be able to play jazz. I wanted
Speaker 2: to be able to blow through changes, and I couldn't,
Speaker 2: and I was totally afraid of being found out. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, here I had this great career, I'm making money,
Speaker 2: I have all the success, and yet even at like
Speaker 2: such a basic level for me, I you know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't I couldn't improvise on a blues without playing the
Speaker 2: same three licks over and over again or something. You know.
Speaker 2: So there was definitely imposter syndrome.
Speaker 3: When Dream Weaver becomes very successful in the summer seventy five,
Speaker 3: it's the heyday of music on television in Concert Midnight Special,
Speaker 3: there's some video of Gary Wright and his band on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Are you in those videos?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely? And I'm kicking ass in those videos. You know,
Speaker 2: when it comes to playing a bass part, I'm Dreamwaiver.
Speaker 2: I'm your guy. You know I could even play. There's
Speaker 2: video of me playing a clavinet part with my left
Speaker 2: hand while I'm playing the bass part with my right hand.
Speaker 2: You know that kind of stuff. No problem.
Speaker 3: Okay. So Gary has this great run dream Weaver Love
Speaker 3: is Alive. That is actually the peak of his solo career.
Speaker 3: How long are you on the road with him? And
Speaker 3: what happens? Does he say we're going to go back
Speaker 3: out or we did a tour and that's it, or
Speaker 3: you say I did a tour, I want to do
Speaker 3: something else. What goes on there?
Speaker 2: Just Gary? Did you know when he started off? This
Speaker 2: was before this is just as the album was being released.
Speaker 2: Like I said, we're playing all these great gigs. I'm
Speaker 2: living the dream. Dream Weaver becomes a big hit record,
Speaker 2: and just as we kind of finished, like a year
Speaker 2: of touring, dream Weaver comes out, it hits big, and
Speaker 2: they want us right back on the road again, you know,
Speaker 2: before Gary makes another record. They wanted us on the
Speaker 2: road to keep promoting it, to keep plugging it away,
Speaker 2: plugging away at it, at promoting it Warner he was
Speaker 2: on Warner Brothers, and so we were right back on
Speaker 2: the road. At a certain point, I was asking for
Speaker 2: a raise. Gary didn't, you know, as great as things were,
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't want to give me the rays
Speaker 2: I wanted. And I was okay with it. It's not
Speaker 2: like I was angry or going to quit. But you know,
Speaker 2: the day I asked for a raise and was told no,
Speaker 2: I went back out. We're in Florida somewhere at a
Speaker 2: hotel and I went back out on the beach and
Speaker 2: I wasn't even mad. I just was it was like whatever.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like I was going to quit the gig.
Speaker 2: And I get paged to the front desk at the
Speaker 2: hotel and I had no you know, I was worried
Speaker 2: maybe something happened to a family member or something, and
Speaker 2: it happens to be Boss Skags. You know. While I
Speaker 2: was on the road with Gary, David Page, my brother, Jeff,
Speaker 2: David Hungy, these guys happened to be working in the
Speaker 2: studio with Boss making this album called Silk Degrees, you know,
Speaker 2: and they were gearing up for the road and we're
Speaker 2: looking for a synth guy to cover the string parts
Speaker 2: and cover the some of the synth parts, and would
Speaker 2: I be interesting sitting going on the road. And their
Speaker 2: first offer was much more than I was making with Gary.
Speaker 2: So I did the Silk Degrease tour with Boss.
Speaker 3: Well, a little bit slower. You get paiged, how do
Speaker 3: you tell Gary and what do you and how much
Speaker 3: time do you give him?
Speaker 2: Oh, I got off the phone with Boss. He offers
Speaker 2: me much more money than I'm making with Gary. I
Speaker 2: had just asked Gary to give me a raise and
Speaker 2: he said no, you know, And there really wasn't hard feelings.
Speaker 2: I remember at the time. I really there really weren't
Speaker 2: hard feelings. But I got offered. I got a much
Speaker 2: better offer. I hung up. I asked the guy at
Speaker 2: the front desk, I'd like to leave a message for
Speaker 2: Gary Wright and room whatever, and I said, this is
Speaker 2: my two weeks.
Speaker 3: Notice, you know, then how did Gary handle that?
Speaker 2: You know, he handled it fine. And you know what
Speaker 2: he went on. He had hired a he woud to
Speaker 2: hiring another couple of guys. And just so that you know,
Speaker 2: the way you know there was no hard feelings is
Speaker 2: that I did this whole big tour with Boz and
Speaker 2: then you know what, Gary had a big tour coming
Speaker 2: up of just stadiums. He had a ten city stadium tour.
Speaker 2: General Giant was the opening act, and then Gary Wright
Speaker 2: and then Peter Frampton and then yes, you know, and
Speaker 2: we were doing these stadium He had ten stadium gigs
Speaker 2: lined up and he called me and asked me to
Speaker 2: come back and do them with them, and I said, absolutely,
Speaker 2: you know, and they were some of the funnest gigs
Speaker 2: I ever did in my life. Some of those are
Speaker 2: on there are available on YouTube too. You know, some
Speaker 2: of these stadium gigs we did. I mean, you could
Speaker 2: see we were playing during the day, but you could see, yes,
Speaker 2: as they still had like the Roger Dean stage from
Speaker 2: Tales of Topographic Oceans in those days and stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: the the yes, the stage set was all, you know,
Speaker 2: you could see it in the background. But we had
Speaker 2: a ball and I loved it and I loved it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So what was the experience being on the road
Speaker 3: with bos gags?
Speaker 2: Fantastic BOZ was I really lucked out? I really lucked out? Again.
Speaker 2: These gigs were so easy for me because I wasn't
Speaker 2: in the piano player chair that's the hot seat, you know,
Speaker 2: the guy who had to play those meat and potatoes parts.
Speaker 2: I was playing synth parts. I was programming mini mogues
Speaker 2: and playing string ensemble stuff. It was a cinch and
Speaker 2: it was fun and and Boss took amazing care of
Speaker 2: his musicians. He paid everybody really well. We stayed in
Speaker 2: great hotels. It was just my brother Jeff was in
Speaker 2: the band David Page, that's when we started working. At
Speaker 2: first it was David Page. Nine later another great keyboard player,
Speaker 2: Jay Winding, wound up doing the piano chair. Lucather came
Speaker 2: in later on. Lucather did one of the later tours
Speaker 2: with Boss. So yeah, I mean that's kind of this
Speaker 2: was kind of the beginning of Toto, you know. You know,
Speaker 2: my brother Mike wound up playing I think Hungy did
Speaker 2: some gigs at first, but you know, Columbia Toto's record
Speaker 2: company pretty much saw it. Was like David Page co
Speaker 2: wrote all the songs on Silk Degrees. You know, we're
Speaker 2: playing live. Boss's that Silk Degrees album was a huge success.
Speaker 2: So all the record company people are all hanging out
Speaker 2: backstage and at the big gigs and stuff, and here's
Speaker 2: this band. Here's Jeff Pacaro on drums. Here's you know,
Speaker 2: David Page on piano, the guy who wrote co wrote
Speaker 2: all those songs on Silk Degrees. Here I am on synse.
Speaker 2: There's Lucather on guitar. It pretty much was they a
Speaker 2: saw Toto. You know, they saw this backing band. And
Speaker 2: I think it's part of the reason why Toto never
Speaker 2: had to do like a showcase or or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Our record deal was pretty much handed to us on
Speaker 2: a platter, you know, Columbia Records.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're on the road with bass. That tour finishes,
Speaker 3: then what then?
Speaker 2: Much to my surprise, I was I was afraid that
Speaker 2: David and Jeff. I had always wished for them to
Speaker 2: start a band, but at that point I David was
Speaker 2: so busy, was getting hired to produce and write and
Speaker 2: sessions and Jeff's. Jeff's career was in full you know,
Speaker 2: full bloom. Lucather and I were just starting out then.
Speaker 2: This is seventy six, seventy seven. Our careers are just
Speaker 2: kind of starting out. We're doing pretty good. I'm doing
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff with Foster by then, and he's
Speaker 2: hiring me whenever he's doing synthesizers. He's got me there
Speaker 2: with him. But I'm thinking, you know what, it's these
Speaker 2: guys are never gonna want to do a band. Why
Speaker 2: would they turn down all this work to stop and
Speaker 2: rehearse and and build up a band thing? But sure enough,
Speaker 2: that's exactly what they did. They decided. You know, I
Speaker 2: think Silk Degrees was a huge encouragement to them that
Speaker 2: they could maybe do it themselves, be the artist. There
Speaker 2: just was this lead singer thing was the one thing
Speaker 2: that wasn't part of our inner circle, you know.
Speaker 3: Luca thir tells me that some of the old cats said, hey,
Speaker 3: you're really happening now, but it ends for everybody. You
Speaker 3: got to find your own thing. Did that ever play
Speaker 3: to you or did you just basically get a call
Speaker 3: one day, Hey, we're going to form a band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was basically that. I mean, we all were
Speaker 2: thrilled to get that call. I was in there very
Speaker 2: early on. David knew he wanted you know, they saw
Speaker 2: me with how I was with Gary Wright, how I
Speaker 2: handled since with Gary Wright. They saw me. David and
Speaker 2: I worked together with Boz. David saw that I was
Speaker 2: very handy to be around, not only in the studio,
Speaker 2: but that live I could you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: synthesizers were becoming very popular, and that I could cover
Speaker 2: a lot of overdubs. So I was kind of in
Speaker 2: there real early on. Luke, they kind of yanked his chain.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of guitar players. David had grown
Speaker 2: up with some. There were a lot of friends that
Speaker 2: were great guitar players. You know. Luka Thurb didn't know
Speaker 2: for a while, but because David was doing these demo,
Speaker 2: He was doing these demos just with just with my
Speaker 2: brother Jeff, the two of them in the studio and
Speaker 2: Patriot played mog bass and he would sing, was singing everything,
Speaker 2: and the two of them kind of were building up
Speaker 2: this batch of songs that were amazing, you know, that
Speaker 2: were amazing. But when it got time to put it
Speaker 2: all together, you know, he made the choice to use
Speaker 2: hung Gate because they were really such this. You know,
Speaker 2: my brother Mike was in the bands in high school
Speaker 2: and Mike had played with bass, and Mike was was
Speaker 2: would have been an obvious choice. But hung Gate, my
Speaker 2: brother Jeff and Page were this core rhythm section thing
Speaker 2: that had been doing a lot of sessions together, a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff, stills and Crofts, all the boss Gag,
Speaker 2: silk degree stuff. Hung Gate was an incredibly musical bass
Speaker 2: player and I was in there right away and it
Speaker 2: was like yes, and you know, to your question, we
Speaker 2: all still were doing sessions. We all still when there
Speaker 2: was time, we would do sessions. You know, we'd get
Speaker 2: home from the road. And we were very lucky that way,
Speaker 2: because a lot of guys once they commit to a band,
Speaker 2: and a lot of times when you leave town and
Speaker 2: the producer has to hire someone else, a lot of
Speaker 2: times those guys get your gig. You know, they'll hire
Speaker 2: a replacement for you, and that guy will will get
Speaker 2: your job. But we all were pretty lucky that way
Speaker 2: and would still get called back, you know, when we
Speaker 2: were home and when we were available.
Speaker 3: Before it's a band, do you have enough studio work
Speaker 3: to make it work? For you or you thinking I
Speaker 3: want another road gig or I need more studio work.
Speaker 3: What's going on for you?
Speaker 2: No, my career was just kind of doing this with
Speaker 2: studio work. I was getting quite a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I was getting better and better. It was just growing,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, I mean I'm living. I was a
Speaker 2: single guy living in a small apartment. I got married
Speaker 2: soon after that, very young, at twenty years old. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, no, my session career was just kind of
Speaker 2: getting better and better. More guys were discovering me. Quincy
Speaker 2: Jones would start hiring me without David with or without
Speaker 2: David Foster. You know, David would hire me for everything
Speaker 2: he was doing that used keyboards, that used since he
Speaker 2: wanted me there all the time. And his career was
Speaker 2: taking off big time with Chicago, and you know, it
Speaker 2: was one thing after another with him. It just kept
Speaker 2: getting better and better. In the tubes and Alice Cooper
Speaker 2: and Hall and Oates we did two albums, and you know,
Speaker 2: and Bill Shnae started hiring me, and you know, guys
Speaker 2: started seeing that I was real handy to be around
Speaker 2: in the studio, you know, either by myself or with
Speaker 2: other keyboard players. I was very much a team player.
Speaker 2: I played well with others and we got a lot done.
Speaker 3: Tell me about getting married at twenty.
Speaker 2: What would you like to know?
Speaker 3: Okay, you meet a woman, how long after you meet
Speaker 3: her do you get married? And what's the incentive to
Speaker 3: get married? You know, you're in this unique world where
Speaker 3: you're working, you know, morning, noon, and night in the studio,
Speaker 3: we're off on the road. Is it security or is
Speaker 3: it just this? Is you think you're in love? That's
Speaker 3: very young by most people's standards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I had a child then too. I didn't
Speaker 2: think I was in love. I was in love.
Speaker 3: So you got married because a child was on the way,
Speaker 3: I was in love. How long did that marriage last?
Speaker 2: That marriage lasted three years or so, three and a
Speaker 2: half years.
Speaker 3: So why did it end?
Speaker 2: You know? I why did it end? Because my career
Speaker 2: became all consuming to me. It became all consuming to me,
Speaker 2: and I saw these opportunities that I had to take
Speaker 2: advantage of, you know, and it was tough. It was
Speaker 2: tough to be working twenty four to seven like that
Speaker 2: and be it still be a human being and be
Speaker 2: a partner in a marriage.
Speaker 3: You know, So how many times you've been married twice,
Speaker 3: And are you married now? No? So, how old were
Speaker 3: you when you got married the second time?
Speaker 2: Much older I was. I would say I was something
Speaker 2: like thirty eight or something the next time I got married.
Speaker 3: So once bitten twice, shy. How hard is it to
Speaker 3: convince yourself to do it a second time again?
Speaker 2: I was in love? You know? What can I say?
Speaker 3: And why did that relationship end?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: It's kind of complicated. You know. I don't want to
Speaker 2: pull anyone else's covers.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a word note, No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Okay. Let's go back to Tote so Page and your
Speaker 3: brother working up this material and they pull you in.
Speaker 3: How do you ultimately decide that you need a singer
Speaker 3: and get a singer?
Speaker 2: Well, they knew right away. I mean David, David wanted
Speaker 2: to be you know, David, I think wanted to I
Speaker 2: think in some ways he wanted to be Elton John
Speaker 2: and you know, and writing all the songs to have
Speaker 2: a thing, and he did great, and he sang all
Speaker 2: the demos and these were amazing songs. And David did
Speaker 2: a great job. But he knew he wanted a real
Speaker 2: tenor in the band. He wanted someone with a high
Speaker 2: voice in the band, you know, especially in a rock
Speaker 2: and roll band, you wanted somebody that could cut, somebody
Speaker 2: that was a real singer, singer, and they had done some.
Speaker 2: They were good friends with a guy named Joe Shermy
Speaker 2: who was the bass player in Three Dog Knight, and
Speaker 2: he had a band called ss Fools after Three Dog Night,
Speaker 2: and there was a singer in SS Fools named Bobby Kimball.
Speaker 2: And that's how David and Jeff met Bobby, who wound
Speaker 2: up being Toto's lead singer.
Speaker 3: Okay, Bobby is in the band, then he isn't in
Speaker 3: the band. Ultimately what went on that he was no
Speaker 3: longer in the band?
Speaker 2: You know, it was the usual stuff in the early eighties,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, you know, quite honestly. I mean,
Speaker 2: we were all we were all at the party, so
Speaker 2: to speak. But when you're the lead singer of the band,
Speaker 2: there's a time when you can pull that off those
Speaker 2: late nights and heavy drinking and whatever and still do
Speaker 2: your gig. But after a while it takes its toll.
Speaker 2: And you know what I mean, I can say that
Speaker 2: Bobby wasn't wasn't doing anything the rest of us weren't doing,
Speaker 2: but he was the lead singer, and it just would
Speaker 2: become a parent when he couldn't perform, when he couldn't
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? We were all very good
Speaker 2: at doing what we did. Regardless of how much partying
Speaker 2: was going on or not. We could still deliver in
Speaker 2: a very big way. We still were highly functioning. You know,
Speaker 2: we were all highly functioning. But you know, when you've
Speaker 2: got a stage and everyone on stage has strep throat,
Speaker 2: it's going to be You're going to notice the singer
Speaker 2: has strep throat. You're not going to notice the second
Speaker 2: keyboard player also strep throat, or the drummer has strep throat,
Speaker 2: or the bass player has stripped you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Okay, at this late day, looking back, there are a
Speaker 3: number of bands that changed lead singers and survived Van
Speaker 3: Halen Genesis. Okay, but usually then and still now, it's
Speaker 3: a kiss of death. So how much did you wring
Speaker 3: your hands and how much warning did you give Bobby
Speaker 3: to say, hey, this is going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: You know, look at look what you just mentioned. I
Speaker 2: can't think of I almost can't think of one band.
Speaker 2: Who do you want to talk about Journey Foreigner. Who
Speaker 2: else is there? I mean, we could go van Halet,
Speaker 2: we could go on and on, and every one of
Speaker 2: them had lead singer nightmares, every one of them. Now
Speaker 2: to empathize with the lead singers, by the way, you
Speaker 2: know when you're doing a rock and roll band. When
Speaker 2: you're doing rock and roll, there was always this thing, right,
Speaker 2: it's a producer's job to find where is the where
Speaker 2: do they sound the best? What's the best key to
Speaker 2: do this song in? This is what you learn from
Speaker 2: a David Foster and a Quincy Jones. You want that
Speaker 2: lead singer when it hits the chorus. You want that
Speaker 2: vocal and a range where your singer sounds the best,
Speaker 2: where there's the best wood, where there's the right amount
Speaker 2: of straining as opposed to how comfortable they're able to
Speaker 2: sing it. Right, you're making a record. You're not worried
Speaker 2: about anything else but making the best record you can make,
Speaker 2: and you want that in the perfect key for your singer.
Speaker 2: Now ten years later, okay, is that still the and
Speaker 2: a singer's got to go out on the road and
Speaker 2: sing those songs one after another. Sometimes it's like like
Speaker 2: I said, it's easy for the drummer to play in
Speaker 2: that same key, It's easy for the keyboard player to
Speaker 2: play in that same key. Who's it the hardest on
Speaker 2: the lead singer? Okay? And sometimes those guys can't hit
Speaker 2: those notes anymore. You know, they weren't hitting them comfortably.
Speaker 2: This wasn't Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. These are This
Speaker 2: was rock and roll. You know, I really empathized with
Speaker 2: these singers, you know, Steve Perry, Lou Graham. Look at
Speaker 2: all these guys struggled with being able to deliver at
Speaker 2: the level that you know their bandmates insisted on them delivering.
Speaker 3: Okay, how much warning do you give Kimball and what
Speaker 3: does he say when the acts comes down?
Speaker 2: You know, it was very simple. You know, Toto had
Speaker 2: this huge success with Total four. It was heartbreaking. We
Speaker 2: had found our chemistry, We had found we had found
Speaker 2: what clicks, what works for us. The mixer had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the rest of the album. He was
Speaker 2: hearing everything fresh with fresh ears. He had none of
Speaker 2: the band politics in his head when he was mixing
Speaker 2: the album. They had let me do my synthesizers by
Speaker 2: myself in a studio. I'd learned to record. During the
Speaker 2: course of the third album, I had learned to record,
Speaker 2: to learn just basic gain structure and how to record
Speaker 2: my stuff so that the band didn't need to be
Speaker 2: sitting there for hours while I was experimenting, and I
Speaker 2: could record after experimenting for a couple of days, when
Speaker 2: I got some magical thing up, which again in those days,
Speaker 2: a lot of these things didn't have presets. I was
Speaker 2: using modular synthesizers. You talk about the difference between a
Speaker 2: twenty five hundred and a mog modular as opposed to
Speaker 2: a mini mogue. To recreate these things was very difficult.
Speaker 2: Once it all got up and working, I learned how
Speaker 2: to record and it got to be used on the record.
Speaker 2: We had figured it out. But then we had been
Speaker 2: working so hard up to that point. You have to understand,
Speaker 2: we'd been just constantly in the studio or on the
Speaker 2: road up to that point. By the time we did
Speaker 2: Total four and it was hugely successful and we toured
Speaker 2: behind it, everybody was exhausted and kind of needed a break,
Speaker 2: and you know what, it was the wrong time to
Speaker 2: take a break, you know, the old strike while the
Speaker 2: iron is hot. You know, couldn't have been more apropos,
Speaker 2: and we wound up doing a film score so that
Speaker 2: we could stay home. My brother Jeff got married and
Speaker 2: started a family. He wanted to be home. And then
Speaker 2: when we finally got around to making a follow up
Speaker 2: to Total four, you know, a lot of the bad habits,
Speaker 2: let's say, that had been developing, had gotten to a
Speaker 2: point where people just couldn't perform at the level they
Speaker 2: wanted to that we needed them to, and we wound
Speaker 2: up having to switch lead singers, which was we hated doing.
Speaker 2: We hated doing that, you know, it was really it
Speaker 2: was really traumatic for the band. And in that time
Speaker 2: period when I say, strike while the iron is hot,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, soon after the nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: eighty three Grammys whenever, it was all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: that style of music that polished kind of what our
Speaker 2: detractors called corporate rock, you know, suddenly became very unpopular.
Speaker 2: You know, bands like Nirvana were kind of all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you know, real popular. The whole Seattle thing
Speaker 2: was starting to happen, that whole style of music, you know,
Speaker 2: with these synthesizer extravaganzas, you know what I mean, We're
Speaker 2: becoming very unpopular, you know, and the record company kind
Speaker 2: of let us know. They weren't. They weren't as thrilled
Speaker 2: as they were. I mean, if we had delivered another
Speaker 2: enough other hits, they'd be okay. But you know what,
Speaker 2: it just the music world was changing and we were changing.
Speaker 2: And that's the best way I can think of of
Speaker 2: putting it.
Speaker 3: Let's go back to the first album. Sure, first album.
Speaker 3: You know, you guys had a lot of experience. But
Speaker 3: did you go in there and knock it right out?
Speaker 3: Or was the type of thing where you had so
Speaker 3: much experience and you had enough money to meticulously get
Speaker 3: it how you want? What was the experience recording the
Speaker 3: first album?
Speaker 2: We knocked it right out. You know, we had all
Speaker 2: these great demos, We had all these songs ready to go.
Speaker 2: The record company loved the demos that we had, and
Speaker 2: we went in there like the pros we were and
Speaker 2: knocked it out and had a ball doing it. And
Speaker 2: the record company would come and listen and they were
Speaker 2: loving it. And the first single out of the gate
Speaker 2: pulled the line hit record, you know, boom.
Speaker 3: So once should think it's one thing to play on
Speaker 3: somebody else's hit records. It's quite another to have your
Speaker 3: own hit record.
Speaker 2: It sure is, and we've seen plenty. There had been
Speaker 2: plenty of studio musician bands and I'm not gonna name
Speaker 2: any names, but there were several bands where a lot
Speaker 2: of very very successful studio musicians put bands together, and
Speaker 2: like you said, you know, it was very different to
Speaker 2: just to do that and to actually have it be
Speaker 2: successful and have it clicked, and have the stars align,
Speaker 2: and have the record company back you up and have
Speaker 2: great management at the time that knew how to work
Speaker 2: the record company and have the right representation, and you know,
Speaker 2: the stars aligned, you know for us.
Speaker 3: Okay, now it comes times to make a second record.
Speaker 3: A lot of acts, you know, have the second record
Speaker 3: blues a million reasons because of success on the first one,
Speaker 3: or they took years to write all the material that's
Speaker 3: on the first album. What was the experience with Toto
Speaker 3: on the second album?
Speaker 2: You know, there was a little bit of that there.
Speaker 2: Believe me, I've always been well aware of that. Everyone
Speaker 2: has to read. You know. Again, you kind of hinted
Speaker 2: at it. But the truth is, every band's first album
Speaker 2: is the best stuff they've done their entire life. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe something was written two weeks ago. But I guarantee
Speaker 2: you there's some song on there that was written when
Speaker 2: they were in high school or something. You know, this
Speaker 2: is the culmination of the best stuff this band has
Speaker 2: done their entire life. This is for every single band
Speaker 2: out there. Okay. Then you go on the road, maybe
Speaker 2: you get divorced, you know whatever. You know, you go
Speaker 2: on the road and within a year you got a
Speaker 2: record company going. You got two months, you got you know,
Speaker 2: maybe three months do it again. You know, it really
Speaker 2: separates the men from the boys. You know, it really
Speaker 2: separates the men from the boys. Every single band you
Speaker 2: can name, their first album was the best shit they
Speaker 2: did their entire life. Okay. And then in those days,
Speaker 2: it was every year we had to do a new album.
Speaker 2: It was every year. Okay. And this is after you've toured.
Speaker 2: Have you spent any time with your family at all.
Speaker 2: They don't care. Give us another We need another one,
Speaker 2: you know, we want another one. Now. We did real good.
Speaker 2: That first album was you did great, Give us another one,
Speaker 2: So sophomore jinks. It's like, to me, it's so obvious. Uh.
Speaker 2: And and that was we still had we had a
Speaker 2: lot of power. You know. It's not like we were
Speaker 2: running out of songs. David Page was still, you know,
Speaker 2: reaching his peak as a songwriter. We all were. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of writers in the band. You know,
Speaker 2: did we get a little cocky after that first album
Speaker 2: did did so good out of the gate? You know
Speaker 2: what I mean? Sure? Sure, Hydro was we were kinda
Speaker 2: there was some aspect about it that, believe me, we
Speaker 2: were going for it. We were. We did get a
Speaker 2: little cocky for sure and kind of thought, wow, we
Speaker 2: can do this. They're they're they're buying it. We looked
Speaker 2: at each other and was like, you know, uh uh,
Speaker 2: there was some definitely self indulgent there. I can speak
Speaker 2: for my song that was on Hydra, the song called
Speaker 2: Secret Love was the weirdest two and a half minutes
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, you'll hear on a major
Speaker 2: label release. I had called in this at Sunset Sound.
Speaker 2: I woke up one morning. I called this place called
Speaker 2: Kasimov Blutener in Larchmont in California, and I rented a harpsichord,
Speaker 2: a clavichord, a Mozart piano. I rented all these these
Speaker 2: vintage keyboards, acoustic keyboards, and had this idea for this
Speaker 2: very strange song and the guys let me do it.
Speaker 2: They let me do it. It's on the album. It's called
Speaker 2: Secret Love. You know, Bobby Kimball did a vocal on it.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe what he came up with. It's a
Speaker 2: very weird song. We were going for it. We were
Speaker 2: going for it, and we were a little cocky for sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, Hold the line was ubiquitous on the radio, to
Speaker 3: the point where there was even some backlash. The first
Speaker 3: Toto album I bought was the second one, because I
Speaker 3: heard ninety nine on an airplane radio when that used
Speaker 3: to be a thing. I thought that Hydra was really
Speaker 3: pretty good. Yeah, it was nowhere near as successful commercially
Speaker 3: as the first. So when it's all played out, what
Speaker 3: do you guys think? Do you think, Well, maybe we
Speaker 3: didn't do the best work, or the audience didn't get it,
Speaker 3: or what was the review from the inside?
Speaker 2: We love, we loved, we loved Hydra. We loved it.
Speaker 2: Did we get did we get a little cocky? Sure? Now,
Speaker 2: I don't think being cocky is necessarily a bad thing
Speaker 2: unless you get way, way, way too cocky. And you know,
Speaker 2: were there any hole of the lines on it? No?
Speaker 2: But there sure was a song called ninety nine and stuff.
Speaker 2: There's still was stuff that people could relate to and
Speaker 2: was still great songwriting and great production, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's still there was still a lot of very strong
Speaker 2: stuff on there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Okay, on that album, the first album credit for producer
Speaker 3: is the band second one you get Tom Knox, Reggie Fisher.
Speaker 3: Is that just slicing up the credit for money or
Speaker 3: why were other people involved in What did they do well?
Speaker 2: I I you know, Tom Knox was our longtime engineer.
Speaker 2: Tom Knox did the did the demos when the guys
Speaker 2: did the demos. He engineered and mixed all of the
Speaker 2: first album. Reggie Fisher, the only thing Reggie Fisher did
Speaker 2: was he did my synthesizer stuff. You know. That's the
Speaker 2: only thing Reggie Fisher did on Hydro was my synthesizer stuff,
Speaker 2: which by then I had gotten this modular synthesizer and
Speaker 2: I it lived at Reggie's house. Reggie had a home
Speaker 2: studio and that's where I was living at the time,
Speaker 2: and you know what I mean, just tweaking it and
Speaker 2: working on this song secret Love. Yeah, I kind of
Speaker 2: saw where they got. I don't know if they got
Speaker 2: production credit. I don't think they ever officially got production credit,
Speaker 2: regardless of what it might say on the record. We
Speaker 2: were the producers. Again, Toto was always the producer, except
Speaker 2: on the third album it was I believe it was
Speaker 2: co produced by Jeff Workman, who was our engineer and
Speaker 2: mixer on the third album.
Speaker 3: Okay, so why did you bring in Workmen?
Speaker 2: You know, lou especially Luke, wanted us. We were kind
Speaker 2: of whereas Toto did a lot of If you listen
Speaker 2: to everything on the first album and on Hydra, there
Speaker 2: was plenty of rock and roll. We thought we were
Speaker 2: very kind of all over the map, doing all kinds
Speaker 2: of different stuff. The things that were getting attention were
Speaker 2: the things like ninety nine, like the R and B
Speaker 2: stuff like Georgie Porgy. Some of the softer stuff was
Speaker 2: getting a little bit too much attention, especially for Luke,
Speaker 2: who was a raal rock and roller, and we wanted
Speaker 2: to bring in a more rock and roll guy, a
Speaker 2: guy who would turn the guitars up louder, a guy
Speaker 2: with some rock and roll experience. You know.
Speaker 3: Okay, that album is a stiff, So what do you
Speaker 3: think about that?
Speaker 2: It was a stiff? There's still some stuff on there
Speaker 2: that that I'm proud of. Jeff Workman and I did
Speaker 2: not get along at all during the making of the record.
Speaker 2: You know, we didn't get along at all. He was
Speaker 2: used to working with, you know, rock and roll bands,
Speaker 2: Like who did he work with was guns and not
Speaker 2: Guns n' Roses, but worked with Queen.
Speaker 3: He worked with a million bands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he worked with a million bands. And you know what,
Speaker 2: I think he was used to being the if there
Speaker 2: was a second keyboard player, if there was a guy
Speaker 2: who did a little bit of sense stuff, he he
Speaker 2: did that. He was the guy who did that on
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff he did. I, you know,
Speaker 2: that was my job, and him and I bumped head's
Speaker 2: big time during the making of that record. Now, the
Speaker 2: only reason I even mentioned that is because after that record,
Speaker 2: I while we were making that record, while the guys
Speaker 2: were in the studio with Workmen, I was working away
Speaker 2: at David Page's house with all my synthesizers, with all
Speaker 2: this modular gear, and I had an eight track. I
Speaker 2: had an eight track tape machine, and I transferred the
Speaker 2: rough rhythm tracks to two of the tracks of the
Speaker 2: eight track, and I was going to experiment I was
Speaker 2: going to figure out what I would do when it
Speaker 2: was time to record the synthesizers for that album. You know,
Speaker 2: because when I would record, you know, i'd have the
Speaker 2: whole band would be there. You know, those guys were
Speaker 2: so good, they were so fat, they were so good
Speaker 2: at what they did. And whereas I could do things fast,
Speaker 2: I got hired because I could. You know, Quincy Jones,
Speaker 2: David Foster would hire me because I could do the
Speaker 2: synth over dubs on three songs and in three hours.
Speaker 2: I could be that guy. But I wanted what I
Speaker 2: did in Toto to be special. This was my band.
Speaker 2: Whereas what when Luke played a guitar solo, whether regardless
Speaker 2: of whether it was for his own album, a Toto album,
Speaker 2: a Quincy Jones album, a Michael Jackson, he played the same, great,
Speaker 2: amazing guitar solo. You know, My brother Jeff played the
Speaker 2: you know, I mean Jeff, I have to say stretched
Speaker 2: with Africa and with some other things because it was Toto,
Speaker 2: he would indulge a little bit. But anyway, the point
Speaker 2: being that these guys were real fast, and I was
Speaker 2: always thinking like an arranger, and I wanted the respect
Speaker 2: that an arranger got I wanted to take home. I
Speaker 2: wanted to write out my parts. I wanted to try
Speaker 2: different voices. I didn't want to just improvise a string
Speaker 2: arrangement like I was called upon to do a whole bunch. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I could do that, but you know what, arrangers got
Speaker 2: to try different voicings. They try it, they check it out,
Speaker 2: they try a different voicing. Ooh, this is better. They
Speaker 2: got to work on things by themselves. I wanted to
Speaker 2: look at my synthesizers like that. Anyway, back to the story.
Speaker 2: On this eight track, I was going to experiment, and
Speaker 2: then once I knew what I was going to do,
Speaker 2: that's what I would do when I got time to overdub.
Speaker 2: But the reality was on this eight track, I was,
Speaker 2: you know, I was capturing magic. I was doing stuff
Speaker 2: with a modular synthesizer that I'd never be able to recreate,
Speaker 2: you know, and I was bouncing things down. I was. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I wound up when I got time to do the synthesizers.
Speaker 2: Nobody even heard that stuff, and it was so some
Speaker 2: of the best work I'd ever done, and no one
Speaker 2: to this day has even heard that stuff. I wound
Speaker 2: up just doing synth stuff very I was very frustrated,
Speaker 2: but just wound up doing what I always did in
Speaker 2: the studio with all the guys there with their arms
Speaker 2: folded behind me, going hurry up, and doing what I
Speaker 2: typically did on a Toto album. Now, the good part
Speaker 2: of the story is that for the next album, the
Speaker 2: guys told me they were gonna make me a tape.
Speaker 2: You know. The only reason that stuff, by the way,
Speaker 2: couldn't be used was because it was on eight track.
Speaker 2: It wasn't on the right format. By then, we had
Speaker 2: Sympty and you could sync up another piece of tape.
Speaker 2: You could add tracks, you know. But the only reason
Speaker 2: why that couldn't be used was because I'd recorded it
Speaker 2: myself and it was on this eight track. It was
Speaker 2: on this half inch tape. So for the next album,
Speaker 2: Total four, the guy said they would make me, I know,
Speaker 2: this is an acceptable language anymore, but they'd make me
Speaker 2: a slave tape. They'd make me a tape where I
Speaker 2: could work out my ideas. But they said, but we
Speaker 2: can't keep anything you do. You're not an engineer, you know.
Speaker 2: We always hired the best engineers, and engineers are definitely
Speaker 2: put on a pedestal with us. So the thing about
Speaker 2: Jeff Workman, the guy who I bumped heads with so
Speaker 2: much on that third album, he started hanging out. He
Speaker 2: started hanging out at David's house a lot. Him and
Speaker 2: David became close friends, and he lived very close by.
Speaker 2: And I started asking him all these real stupid questions.
Speaker 2: I said, Jeff, if I was to record myself, why
Speaker 2: couldn't they use what I recorded? And he went on
Speaker 2: to teach me all about gain structure. How do I
Speaker 2: know I'm getting the right level into a harmonizer? Where
Speaker 2: do I turn up? Do I turn it up there?
Speaker 2: When do I turn things up? He taught me all
Speaker 2: this basic gain structure, basic, all about zero vu. He
Speaker 2: was the most generous, sweetest guy all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: who taught me how to record, and they wound up
Speaker 2: using I did ninety five percent of the synthesizers on
Speaker 2: Total four I recorded, and they used every bit of it.
Speaker 2: You know, they used all of it because of what
Speaker 2: Jeff Workman taught me.
Speaker 3: Okay, just to be clear, from statistically and from the outside,
Speaker 3: the third album was going in the wrong direction. Did
Speaker 3: you feel that in the band? Did you feel pressure
Speaker 3: or did you not?
Speaker 2: We definitely felt pressure. We definitely felt pressure from the
Speaker 2: record company. They were not happy. There was no obvious singles.
Speaker 2: It was tougher, it had more of a rock and
Speaker 2: roll thing to it. I you know, there's personal I
Speaker 2: have some personal feelings about the way the priorities, the
Speaker 2: band's priorities, which were typical in those days where you know,
Speaker 2: where bands would spend three days on a bass drum sound,
Speaker 2: but then they'd have to mix it. They'd have to
Speaker 2: mix this song like you know what I mean, and
Speaker 2: in less than a day with a mixer that had
Speaker 2: been up for three days or something like that. Just
Speaker 2: the priorities always seemed off to me, But it was
Speaker 2: just the way it was. Bottom line is, if the
Speaker 2: songs were right, it wouldn't have mattered, right, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, If the songs were where the shit,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, it would have cut through
Speaker 2: all those details. Yeah, it just again you got to
Speaker 2: remember we're doing this. This is every year, We're going
Speaker 2: to Europe and Japan and the United States and trying
Speaker 2: to keep our home lives together, and and you know,
Speaker 2: having to do this being pointed at, going do it again,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, get in there again. It
Speaker 2: was a hard life. You know, it's not easy where
Speaker 2: we weren't a band that was just kind of a
Speaker 2: roots thing where someone wrote a song and had their
Speaker 2: journal and had great lyrics and we would bang it
Speaker 2: out on our instruments, and you know, that was it
Speaker 2: we were. We loved we loved being in the studio.
Speaker 2: We loved production. I loved tweaking synthesizers and they're being
Speaker 2: arrangement and string arrangements and you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: We loved we loved that stuff. You know.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're making the fourth record. To what degree
Speaker 3: do you feel you're on the right track when you're
Speaker 3: making it.
Speaker 2: Right out of the gate. We knew we were under pressure.
Speaker 2: We knew the record company was kind of going, come on, guys.
Speaker 2: You know, we were so good out of the gate,
Speaker 2: you know, and then the hydra comes and yeah, there's
Speaker 2: ninety nine, but it's now we're near the level that
Speaker 2: the first album is on. And then the third album
Speaker 2: is even worse, where all of a sudden feeling big
Speaker 2: pressure from the record company and David Page, god bless him,
Speaker 2: the first thing he writes for the new album is
Speaker 2: this song Rosanna. The first thing he writes is him
Speaker 2: trying his best to write the best possible song that
Speaker 2: exploits the talents of the band while still being commercial,
Speaker 2: while still being a hit record. And that's the first
Speaker 2: thing he writes. That's the first thing we record, you know,
Speaker 2: and we all believed in it and thought it was hip.
Speaker 2: And you know what I mean, there's this amazing drum
Speaker 2: beat that starts it off. It was totally Toto. The
Speaker 2: horn arrangement, two lead vocals, it changes keys, but yet
Speaker 2: it's got a payoff, It's got a really strong chorus.
Speaker 2: It was it was, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 2: got to spend you know what I mean, you would
Speaker 2: have You wouldn't believe how long I spent on that
Speaker 2: synthesizer solo on Rosanna, you know. So to me, that's
Speaker 2: something I'm so proud of because I got I was
Speaker 2: very indulgent. That was a perfect case of something I
Speaker 2: could have never done in the studio with the clock
Speaker 2: ticking and five producers waiting for me to blow a solo.
Speaker 2: I wasn't that guy. But I arranged this thing. I
Speaker 2: did these experiments, I did all kinds of stuff and
Speaker 2: delivered this solo on two tracks as all the mixer
Speaker 2: had since solo left and since solo right, you know.
Speaker 2: And he didn't ask who recorded it or how it
Speaker 2: was recorded. All z he knew was that he loved
Speaker 2: it and cranked it up, you know. And and it
Speaker 2: ends with paid doing this New Orleans third line stuff.
Speaker 2: It was very, very Toto and it was our first
Speaker 2: single and it did great right out of the gate.
Speaker 3: Okay, just to be clear, Rosanna was the first song written,
Speaker 3: first song recorded. But when you went in the studio,
Speaker 3: did you have all the songs.
Speaker 2: They were? You know, there was a batch, definitely. Page
Speaker 2: always had a batch of songs ready to go. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of it came together. A lot of the
Speaker 2: writing would come together right there in the studio. David
Speaker 2: wasn't afraid to have a verse and a chorus and
Speaker 2: an idea for a bridge, and he would sit there
Speaker 2: with my brother Jeff. You know, he would sit there
Speaker 2: across from Jeff and they would kind of arrange it
Speaker 2: together what they were going to cut that day. And
Speaker 2: believe me, a lot of the finishing touches of the
Speaker 2: song would come together right then, of the track would
Speaker 2: come together right then, and then it'd be like, all right,
Speaker 2: are we ready, let's cut this, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Okay, revisiting an overhashed subject. How did you know Roseanne?
Speaker 3: Our kid?
Speaker 2: I knew Rosanna. I met her at you know, a
Speaker 2: very close friend of the band, James Newton Howard. It
Speaker 2: was at the reception to he had gotten married and
Speaker 2: we're at the reception that was at his house, and
Speaker 2: I met Rosanna that night. I met Rosanna at the
Speaker 2: reception and we had become an item. And she started
Speaker 2: coming to the studio and everybody was. You know, Rosanna
Speaker 2: has been amused for a lot of people. You know,
Speaker 2: she's always been a lover of music. She's always been
Speaker 2: incredibly supportive. And you know, David didn't have a title
Speaker 2: for a song yet, and I brought her over to
Speaker 2: David's house while he was working, while he was putting
Speaker 2: together Rosanna, and I think he and I think he
Speaker 2: might have been a little bit smitten with her himself,
Speaker 2: which I wouldn't blame him. She was, she was, she was,
Speaker 2: she wasn't is really something And you know, what can I.
Speaker 3: Say, Okay, when the record comes out, are you still
Speaker 3: an item? Whether you are or not, how does it
Speaker 3: affect your relationship with her? And how does she handle it?
Speaker 3: Because the news right away. Whatever, the real story is
Speaker 3: news right away, and all the media is that it's
Speaker 3: based on Roseanna Arcat.
Speaker 2: Sure. No. And she was on the road. She went
Speaker 2: on the road with us. She did a world tour
Speaker 2: with us. And this is when her career was you know,
Speaker 2: she was getting we lived together at this point, and
Speaker 2: she was getting scripts from huge movies every day. I
Speaker 2: can't believe. And I'm not the only one she did
Speaker 2: this with. And she just she wanted to come on
Speaker 2: the road with us. She loved music. She did a
Speaker 2: whole world tour with us. You know, we were still
Speaker 2: very much an item. Yeah, it was, and people were
Speaker 2: assuming that it was written by me. It was not.
Speaker 2: It was all that was all David Page. I believe me.
Speaker 2: I worked my ass off on that song, you know,
Speaker 2: on that SyncE solo and all those keyboard parts and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. We were all very proud of that
Speaker 2: song and thought it was a great representation of who
Speaker 2: we were as a band and what we were about.
Speaker 2: And and I think she loved it for she even
Speaker 2: she even they did some some of the promotion for
Speaker 2: the single she was involved with. Now after that, you know,
Speaker 2: years after that, right, it becomes this thing where like
Speaker 2: every talk show she does, right, you know, with the
Speaker 2: the questions they ask, right, of course, they bring that up.
Speaker 2: And I think she I wouldn't blame and I didn't
Speaker 2: blame her a bit for getting very very tired of
Speaker 2: getting that question, you know what I mean. I mean,
Speaker 2: from Letterman, from you know, you name it. They would
Speaker 2: bring that up while she was out promoting a movie
Speaker 2: or promoting this or that. Right, these these people, you know,
Speaker 2: would would I think it was kind of lazy on
Speaker 2: a lot of their parts. You know, I understand some
Speaker 2: of it, right, they want to have something else to
Speaker 2: talk about, but they would bring that up for like
Speaker 2: the next ten years, this poor girl. Every time she
Speaker 2: did a talk show, they'd bring up Rosanna, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. And at some point, you know, Rosanna
Speaker 2: was always into Prague stuff, and she wound up being
Speaker 2: with Peter Gabriel, and you know, she started disparaging the song.
Speaker 2: You know, even I think just to I thought it
Speaker 2: was to discourage people from bringing it up. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't take it as I didn't take it very personal.
Speaker 2: You know, I kind of understood she just got kind
Speaker 2: of tired of being asked that that lame question.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, Total four is a monster with varying
Speaker 3: hit tracks. What's the experience on the inside it.
Speaker 2: We were feeling very good. We delivered. We delivered. You know,
Speaker 2: we were under pressure. We were under pressure, and we delivered.
Speaker 2: We went to some known things. Al Schmidt, a guy
Speaker 2: who worked with our fathers, you know, a great engineer,
Speaker 2: cut the basic tracks. There was nothing fancy. We weren't
Speaker 2: using the flavor of the month in any way. Even
Speaker 2: though Greg Ladani was this hot young man mixer, his
Speaker 2: career was really on the uprise. And and Greg mixed
Speaker 2: the whole album, and like I said, I loved it
Speaker 2: because before the mixer, whoever recorded our album would be
Speaker 2: there the whole time. And of course there's there's pecking
Speaker 2: orders in bands, understandably, you know, David Page and Jeff,
Speaker 2: my brother Jeff, had a lot more clout than I
Speaker 2: did as far as you know what I mean, band's
Speaker 2: pecking orders. I'm sure John Lennon and Paul McCartney had
Speaker 2: a more clout than what Ringo's opinion was in certain
Speaker 2: situations as far as the producers and engineers went that
Speaker 2: were around him. It's understandable, but and so certain band.
Speaker 2: You know, prejudices and habits and people's opinions get in
Speaker 2: these guys' heads. And what I loved was, like I
Speaker 2: said before, Greg Ladani was just this fresh, you know,
Speaker 2: he had fresh ears. He didn't he didn't know any
Speaker 2: of the banded politics. You know. I actually remember David
Speaker 2: after we heard we heard a mix of Rosanna, and
Speaker 2: we're all we were all kind of blown away with
Speaker 2: how it had come out. You know, no one had
Speaker 2: heard the whole since solo put together in the song
Speaker 2: itself next to Luke's guitar solo, and it all came
Speaker 2: together and I'll never forget. After we heard it mixed,
Speaker 2: we walked out of the room and David Pate said
Speaker 2: to me, He goes, I'll never forget this. He says,
Speaker 2: you know, Ladanie didn't know that you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: turn up the sense that loud was. This was the
Speaker 2: first thing he said to me, and we were just
Speaker 2: where we were cracking up. You know, Like I said,
Speaker 2: he didn't have those banded politics in his ears. He
Speaker 2: just did it the way he heard it, mixed it
Speaker 2: the way he heard it. That's the way he did
Speaker 2: the whole album and it was very successful. So you asked,
Speaker 2: what was it like in the band. We were feeling
Speaker 2: pretty good about ourselves. We delivered. We delivered in a
Speaker 2: big way. We were up against the wall, and you
Speaker 2: know what, we rose to the occasion.
Speaker 3: Okay, Toto is a band that has gotten a lot
Speaker 3: of shit, a lot of backlash from day one, day
Speaker 3: one at studio musicians, I certainly know Lukethur has a
Speaker 3: thin skin on this topic. Or whoever, everybody's got a
Speaker 3: different identity. To what degree were you bothered or bothered
Speaker 3: by that?
Speaker 2: I understood it from day one, and I never could
Speaker 2: understand why the other guys couldn't understand it. Okay, the
Speaker 2: people that are writing about us are journalists, which means
Speaker 2: they're probably they were English majors in school. Okay, words
Speaker 2: are very very important to them. Okay, all right, they
Speaker 2: care about words. We were all musos. Okay. We were
Speaker 2: all about the pocket and the drum and the feel
Speaker 2: and this and look at that, those great chord changes
Speaker 2: and that melody, What a great melody, and all these
Speaker 2: things that these writers that's way down on the list.
Speaker 2: What's the first thing they're looking at? The words? It's
Speaker 2: rolling stone magazine. Bob Dylan is at the peak. He's
Speaker 2: the best. Okay, listen to his words. He's the poet
Speaker 2: of the generation. All right, words are all important. And
Speaker 2: you know what, where Toto, I can't completely throw us
Speaker 2: under the bus. There were times where guys would make
Speaker 2: an effort. There was no one in the band. We
Speaker 2: didn't grow up with that guy who was the lead singer,
Speaker 2: who kept a journal, who kept who was the poet
Speaker 2: of the band. That wasn't part of the equation with Toto.
Speaker 2: We were all musicians. It was all about the playing
Speaker 2: all those things I told you, and quite frankly, often lyrics,
Speaker 2: not on every song, but a lot of times. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'd spend three days on the drum sound, but you
Speaker 2: know what, the lyrics would get written the night before
Speaker 2: the vocal. The lead vocal had to get done. Okay.
Speaker 2: I wish I could tell you, you know, we spent
Speaker 2: two weeks on those lyrics. Hell no, okay. And when
Speaker 2: you're talking about this is when that distinction between records
Speaker 2: and songs comes in. Okay, Because on records, which is
Speaker 2: kind of more what we were about. I think if
Speaker 2: you had to make that distinction, we were guys who
Speaker 2: made records. Okay, lyrics sometimes, okay, Louie Louis whatever. There's
Speaker 2: all these records you can name that. You know what.
Speaker 2: The words weren't that important. It was about the production,
Speaker 2: It was about the feeling, it was about the dance ability,
Speaker 2: it was about this cool sound, it was about the
Speaker 2: horn arrangement. Words weren't number one, you know, the way
Speaker 2: they were when you're talking about Bob Dylan, you know
Speaker 2: when you're talking about Van Morrison. You know, now, we
Speaker 2: loved great lyrics. We loved Joni Mitchell, we loved Steely
Speaker 2: Dan or the Eagles. We loved great lyrics.
Speaker 3: It just.
Speaker 2: It wasn't our priority, quite frankly. And how can you
Speaker 2: be surprised when these writers, these English majors, they would
Speaker 2: know a deep pocket if it hit him in the
Speaker 2: back of the head. Maybe, but you know what, they're
Speaker 2: going to read your lyrics and if you're rhyming Moon
Speaker 2: with June, they're going to say this sucks. This is
Speaker 2: I would get a D on this if I handed
Speaker 2: this poem in in English class at my college. You know,
Speaker 2: it was bad poetry to them, and the guys would
Speaker 2: be It would be funny because I would see they'd
Speaker 2: be so shocked and hurt, and believe me bad when
Speaker 2: you work so hard on something and you spend all
Speaker 2: this time away from your family and you put your
Speaker 2: heart and soul in something, to hear somebody just completely
Speaker 2: say it's shit. It hurts, absolutely, absolutely it hurts. But
Speaker 2: you know Elton John got to start off with those
Speaker 2: incredible Bernie top and lyrics. He'd start off with that.
Speaker 2: The song wouldn't even start being written without those that
Speaker 2: amazing poetry in front of them. You know, leave on,
Speaker 2: burn down the mission name any Elton tune and the
Speaker 2: lyrics are amazing, you know what I mean? You know
Speaker 2: the Eagles, it would be maybe be after the fact,
Speaker 2: but believe me, they held such high importance, more so
Speaker 2: than than their priorities were very different than a band Toto.
Speaker 2: You know, they would never let moon in June or
Speaker 2: saying uh right there from the start, you know, rhyme
Speaker 2: it with the word heart like we did I think
Speaker 2: three times in our lyrics or something. They would there'd
Speaker 2: be someone in that band going no way. They would
Speaker 2: work harder. They'd bring in a J. D. Souther to
Speaker 2: help them elevate the lyrics. You know, we were being
Speaker 2: the best version of ourselves that we could be. And
Speaker 2: I think all of us wish the lyrics were better sometimes.
Speaker 2: And I know, guys, you know, Lucather brought in Randy
Speaker 2: Goodrum to do one of his second big ballad on
Speaker 2: the first album. Luke wrote the lyrics himself to his
Speaker 2: big ballad that you know, but on the on uh
Speaker 2: or I mean on the fourth album. But then later
Speaker 2: on Luke had another big song and brought in Randy Goodrum,
Speaker 2: who wrote incredible lyrics. We would you know, we we
Speaker 2: cared David on the song Africa. That was David really
Speaker 2: trying to really put some effort into his lyric writing.
Speaker 2: You know, we gave him a rational shit at the time.
Speaker 2: We were like, what is this about the Serengetti the
Speaker 2: but what are you writing about? You know, we gave
Speaker 2: him tons of crap about it, you know, while we
Speaker 2: were working on the tape loops and this and you know,
Speaker 2: all this me tweaking the Columbus sounds. You know, that's
Speaker 2: what we spent time doing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But to me, it was obvious why the critics didn't
Speaker 2: like us, and I could never understand why why Luke
Speaker 2: in particular, would get so upset. You know, yeah, it hurts,
Speaker 2: But he's an English major. His priorities are very different.
Speaker 2: They don't care about the tone on your guitar that
Speaker 2: you spent hours and hours on, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: that you spent all this time. They don't care about that.
Speaker 2: They would have rather you spent a few more hours
Speaker 2: on the lyrics and making better you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the band has this incredible success both on
Speaker 3: records and live. Certainly at this late date people know
Speaker 3: the money is mostly in publishing and at least long
Speaker 3: term money. You had some songs on some records. First
Speaker 3: question is, ay, were you ripped off? Sometimes the band
Speaker 3: is so busy working they have no idea where the
Speaker 3: money is going. Second, did you get the money and
Speaker 3: how did you use it? In third, are you still
Speaker 3: getting money from Toto?
Speaker 2: Yes? Look at that's what happens with a lot of bands.
Speaker 2: With every band, guys aren't thinking about that at the time, right,
Speaker 2: They're just going in. They're in a band. They're thrilled
Speaker 2: to be in a band. But the human nature aspect
Speaker 2: kicks in when all of a sudden it hits you
Speaker 2: that the guy who's written all the songs. He's shown
Speaker 2: up in a rolls Royce and he's three hours late
Speaker 2: to the session that you're all paying for. And you know,
Speaker 2: has this happened with every band? Sure? I've seen bands
Speaker 2: that you know what, to fight that the guys who
Speaker 2: write all the songs. They'll say, you know what, let's
Speaker 2: make them all band written songs. This band is so
Speaker 2: important to us, and the chemistry we have is so special,
Speaker 2: Let's make them all band written songs. I've seen guys
Speaker 2: do that, and then later on resenting it kicks in
Speaker 2: and it comes out in some weird, ugly way. You know.
Speaker 2: I won't mention any names, but it's did we get
Speaker 2: ripped off? Absolutely? Walter Yetnikoff, the guy who was the
Speaker 2: record company president at the time. He says in his
Speaker 2: book Howling at the Moon. He says, at the end
Speaker 2: he was a record company president that Bruce Springsteen would
Speaker 2: fly in to play him his new single, and he
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you one Bruce Springsteen song from the other.
Speaker 2: He came up through the lawyer ranks, and all he
Speaker 2: knows is that he screwed every band he signed. He
Speaker 2: got the better. He outlawyered every band that he signed
Speaker 2: of which we were one of. So did we get screwed? Absolutely?
Speaker 2: And then when you try to just look at the
Speaker 2: record business, the whole history of the record business is
Speaker 2: so is so ugly. And then you you try to
Speaker 2: audit these companies, you know they'll have your money sitting
Speaker 2: in some especially in foreign territories. You know you've made
Speaker 2: all this money, it's sitting in some bank accounts somewhere.
Speaker 2: And then you have to audit your record company, and
Speaker 2: then another lawyer gets a third of what you get
Speaker 2: from the audit. It's it's it's horrible, but but you
Speaker 2: know what, we made a living. We made a good living.
Speaker 2: Do I still get money? Yes? Yes. Just being a
Speaker 2: member of Toto has been very very good to me
Speaker 2: has been very very good to me.
Speaker 3: Assuming you didn't have any savings, Could you live off
Speaker 3: the income from Toto?
Speaker 2: Not that alone? Now it depends when you say live.
Speaker 2: I'm used to I'm used to living here in California,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I'm used to going out
Speaker 2: to dinner, to nice restaurants. I'm not a car guy,
Speaker 2: but some people are. I don't know. Some people have
Speaker 2: lived on a lot less. I'll tell you that you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, They sure wouldn't live here, they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have these gas prices. They'd go somewhere else where
Speaker 2: they could, you know what I mean, where they could
Speaker 2: get better bang for their buck than southern California. Certainly,
Speaker 2: how do you.
Speaker 3: End up leaving Toto?
Speaker 2: How did I end up? You know? It was after
Speaker 2: you know, I love this question because even though, especially
Speaker 2: with my brother Jeff and the band, you know, totod
Speaker 2: believe me, there was some headbutting. You know, for the
Speaker 2: most part, we all got along great, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, We really for the most part, it was
Speaker 2: like a hell of a lot better than a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff you hear about. You know, we really got
Speaker 2: along great. For the most part. We were mostly always
Speaker 2: on the same page. I I after the sixth album again,
Speaker 2: ever since Total four, like I told you, the whole
Speaker 2: thing of music had been changing, you know, this corporate
Speaker 2: rock things, these very heavily overarranged pop things with the
Speaker 2: band and synthesizers were becoming less and less popular and
Speaker 2: less and less common. The whole consensus with people were
Speaker 2: getting a lot more stripped down. It became a lot
Speaker 2: more about the lyrics and about rock and roll. I
Speaker 2: saw that in England. I loved bands like Yes and
Speaker 2: Emersonich and Palmer. But I totally got it in seventy
Speaker 2: five seventy six, where the you know, people were going
Speaker 2: to a rock concert and all of a sudden you're
Speaker 2: made to feel like you had to go to a
Speaker 2: music conservatory to play rock and roll, and how they said,
Speaker 2: fuck that, pick up a guitar, learn three records and
Speaker 2: if you have something to say, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: screw that. You know, the whole backlash to all of that.
Speaker 2: After we did our sixth album, we toured I remember
Speaker 2: this very well, and the guys were talking about our
Speaker 2: next album. Joseph Williams was the lead singer in the
Speaker 2: band now and they were just talking about how we
Speaker 2: needed to do even less. We needed to really thin
Speaker 2: out the arrangements. We really needed to do less as
Speaker 2: far as arrangement went, as far as since went. They
Speaker 2: were kind of describing what it was I did in
Speaker 2: the band, you know, for me, what my purpose in
Speaker 2: the band was, you know, I mean, they'd always love
Speaker 2: having me around to recreate the songs live, to do
Speaker 2: the Rosanna solo, and to do Africa, and to do
Speaker 2: you know whatever else, but you know, I was just
Speaker 2: kind of feeling you know what, And so I on
Speaker 2: the way home were we had finished our last gig
Speaker 2: of the last tour in Japan, and we were on
Speaker 2: the way home, and I told the guys there was
Speaker 2: no big, ugly fight. I'm so happy to say this.
Speaker 2: There was no ugly scene and fuck you fest or
Speaker 2: something like that. I you know what I mean. I
Speaker 2: just we'd been talking about the next album that we
Speaker 2: were going to go into the studio soon, and they
Speaker 2: were talking about conceptually how they wanted to simplify and
Speaker 2: get much more basic. And I told the guys, I said,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm not gonna I think I'm going
Speaker 2: to back out of the band at this point. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to bail on you guys. I will still
Speaker 2: because David was When I said that, David Page was like,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, he was so used to
Speaker 2: me being around and assisting him in the studio and
Speaker 2: being that guy with the synthesizers and putting those sounds under.
Speaker 2: I says, I'll still come into the studio when you
Speaker 2: guys go, but I'll be like it used to be.
Speaker 2: I'll program for David whatever he needs me to do,
Speaker 2: I'll do. But I won't feel like I have to
Speaker 2: leave my mark, you know, you know, I won't feel
Speaker 2: like I have to leave my mark. I'll just help David.
Speaker 2: And I wound up doing another two world tours after
Speaker 2: that because I didn't want to leave them in the lurch.
Speaker 2: I wanted to help them still be able to do
Speaker 2: Rosanna and these other songs and pull them off live.
Speaker 2: So I did another two world tours with them. After
Speaker 2: I had quit, I just was no longer a band member.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to do the interviews, you know, after soundcheck,
Speaker 2: I could go relax in my hotel room. And you know,
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I thought, I saw I had
Speaker 2: such success just writing this song on my own, called
Speaker 2: Human Nature, you know what I mean, just doing wasn't
Speaker 2: writing it for anybody, but it got the atmosphere of it,
Speaker 2: caught Quincy's attention and stuff, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna start focusing more on on doing that stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe maybe paying a little bit more attention
Speaker 2: to my writing.
Speaker 3: Okay, how did Q ultimately get Human Nature?
Speaker 2: You know, I'd already been in the studio working on
Speaker 2: doing synthesizer overdubs on the Thriller album. On various songs,
Speaker 2: Q had asked David Page, you know, they were looking
Speaker 2: for an up tempo rock and roll song for the album.
Speaker 2: I remember very clearly he wanted something very simple. He
Speaker 2: wanted a simple rock and roll song like My Sharona,
Speaker 2: like the next My Sharona. He wanted something very very
Speaker 2: simple for Michael. That's what he was putting out to
Speaker 2: all his professional writers, of which I was not one of.
Speaker 2: I wasn't considered, you know. I was a synth guy
Speaker 2: in Toto, and I programmed for David Foster and David Page,
Speaker 2: but you didn't look at me as a writer at all.
Speaker 2: And so David Page was furiously working away writing these
Speaker 2: trying to trying to write stuff for Quincy for Michael's album.
Speaker 2: And I lived with David at the time, and I
Speaker 2: was kind of the I was the default studio engineer,
Speaker 2: you know. I was always helping David out, you know,
Speaker 2: for him letting me have the run of the place.
Speaker 2: I would do whatever he needed me to do in
Speaker 2: the studio. And I had been working on this song
Speaker 2: while on the road with Toto. I'd been finishing I'd
Speaker 2: had a rough version of the song i'd been working
Speaker 2: on called Human Nature, where just I was singing it.
Speaker 2: The lyrics weren't done. It was very rough, but the
Speaker 2: whole song was basically there, and I had recorded it.
Speaker 2: I threw it on cassette, and David called down to me.
Speaker 2: And the night before he had been trying I had
Speaker 2: helped him record a couple of grooves that were stuff
Speaker 2: he was gonna was to target Michael and to give
Speaker 2: Quincy what he was asking for. And he called down
Speaker 2: to me and said that Quincy's assistant was on the way.
Speaker 2: Would I throw those two things on cassette for him?
Speaker 2: Lo and Behold, we were fresh out of cassettes. I
Speaker 2: had just used the last cassette. We had these custom
Speaker 2: cassettes made that could maybe hold three songs. They were
Speaker 2: kind of short, they just were like fifteen minutes long,
Speaker 2: and we were fresh out of cassettes. So what I
Speaker 2: did was I just I flipped the tape over, I
Speaker 2: rewound it, I relabeled it, and I recorded David songs
Speaker 2: on the on the A side of the cassette. And
Speaker 2: then Quincy's story is that he was in his office
Speaker 2: he listened to what David had done he listened to
Speaker 2: the cassette and what happened was auto reverse kicked in.
Speaker 2: Now you remember auto reverse, don't you, Bob? Of course, okay,
Speaker 2: auto reverse kicked in. He calls David Page to the
Speaker 2: next day and David said it took him twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: David didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
Speaker 2: He's describing this song. He's all excited about this song
Speaker 2: David had sent him. And David finally said, you know,
Speaker 2: I think you're talking about one of Steve's songs, you know,
Speaker 2: which is what it was. Yeah, the lyrics weren't done.
Speaker 2: I had the chorus, The chorus lyrics were intact. He
Speaker 2: loved my title. He loved the atmosphere is what he loved.
Speaker 2: And it was a complete total fluke.
Speaker 3: I know people who've written hit songs and they live
Speaker 3: off that one song their whole life. Needless to say,
Speaker 3: you wrote a song that was a hit. It was
Speaker 3: on one of the most successful albums of all time
Speaker 3: by a legendary artist. A did you own it all?
Speaker 3: And B is it still a cash register? Cash machine?
Speaker 2: I owned? A? Quincy asked. At one point we were
Speaker 2: on the road. He esked. He told me that I
Speaker 2: needed to finish the lyrics. They were definitely doing the song,
Speaker 2: we had cut it. I sent him my verse lyrics,
Speaker 2: which he was underwhelmed with. Loved my chorus and everything,
Speaker 2: but was very underwhelmed with my verse lyrics completely understandably
Speaker 2: asked me would I mind if he brought in a lyricist,
Speaker 2: and I, to my credit, I was like absolutely. You know,
Speaker 2: I had zero ego as far as as far as
Speaker 2: being a lyricist went. You know, sometimes I got lucky,
Speaker 2: but you know, I said absolutely. He brought in John Bettis,
Speaker 2: who just nailed it, wrote this, wrote these three amazing
Speaker 2: verses that gave the song a narrative and made this
Speaker 2: song really solid. But I hung on to two thirds
Speaker 2: of it and I had my own publishing and it's
Speaker 2: done very well to me over the years.
Speaker 3: Okay, tell me about working on Henley's Boys of Summer.
Speaker 2: Sure that one was easy. The real interesting one is
Speaker 2: is is dirty Laundry? Wait?
Speaker 3: Wait? Start with? Dirty Laundry was on the first album.
Speaker 2: Sure, you know, I got to make sure I mentioned
Speaker 2: Danny Cooch, who was a co producer and wrote the
Speaker 2: song with Don Hanley. I forgot to mention Cooch once
Speaker 2: and much to my chagrin, I got a call at
Speaker 2: one o'clock in the morning. Once I'm at David Page's
Speaker 2: house working like I I typically was at that hour,
Speaker 2: I got to call at one o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: for my brother Jeff. He had been at the studio
Speaker 2: all day, Record One, which was right down the street,
Speaker 2: which was five minutes away from David Page's house. They'd
Speaker 2: been working all day on this trying to get this track,
Speaker 2: and they were having trouble. Would I come down and
Speaker 2: see if I could help out? And I really had
Speaker 2: no idea what they were doing. I said, if they're
Speaker 2: willing to experiment. I didn't know who's this for. He goes,
Speaker 2: it's the drummer from the Eagles, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I love the Eagle, knew the Eagles,
Speaker 2: loved the Eagles. I didn't know who was who. I
Speaker 2: didn't know who's saying what? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, Wow, the Eagles are that big that
Speaker 2: even the drummer has a solo album. You know. I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard. I didn't know that Don Henley was that
Speaker 2: voice that I just loved from the Eagles. I had
Speaker 2: no idea so I went down there and I just
Speaker 2: brought a small piece of modular Again. I've actually got
Speaker 2: the thing I brought down right over here. Anyway, it
Speaker 2: was why I one of the reasons I loved it
Speaker 2: so much is because my brother was there, My brother Jeff,
Speaker 2: who had my brother Jeff was there, and Jeff had
Speaker 2: seen me. Jeff would get very frustrated with me with
Speaker 2: how much I had gotten into the technology and was,
Speaker 2: you know, had my nose in these manuals all the time,
Speaker 2: and how deep into synthesizers I was getting because in
Speaker 2: Toto he pretty much they pretty much hated that stuff.
Speaker 2: They never played to click tracks. They didn't like you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. They were all such great players,
Speaker 2: they didn't want to know about sequences and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Anyway, I walk in there, I assessed
Speaker 2: the situation that they wanted to use this real far
Speaker 2: Fista organ that Danny Cooch had there, and they but
Speaker 2: they wanted it perfect, and luckily they had recorded it
Speaker 2: with a drum machine. Luckily, Greg Ladani the engineer, had
Speaker 2: recorded a sink tone, and I was able to in
Speaker 2: this very in a very fast way, sync up the
Speaker 2: drum machine again and have it trigger a gate that
Speaker 2: just triggered this this far Fisa organ part so that
Speaker 2: it was perfect, that it played along with the track
Speaker 2: and was perfect, and everything just clicked. So I loved it.
Speaker 2: I love the fact that my brother Jeff saw how
Speaker 2: handy this knowledge that was very hard earned, how it
Speaker 2: came into you know what I mean, how useful it
Speaker 2: could be in the studio. You know. Anyway, it went great.
Speaker 2: They loved me. They thought I was brilliant that I
Speaker 2: this thing just came together like that, and they started
Speaker 2: using me all the time. This is now jump to
Speaker 2: the second the next album they had recorded, already recorded
Speaker 2: this song boys this summer, and it was done, and
Speaker 2: Don had decided, to the point I had before about singers,
Speaker 2: about singing, Don Henley decided that you know what, he
Speaker 2: wanted it up one half step. Song was completely done,
Speaker 2: completely recorded, but Don decided that the chorus of the song,
Speaker 2: if he sang it up one half step, it made
Speaker 2: a difference to what his voice sounded like, and that
Speaker 2: his voice sounded better when it was up a half step.
Speaker 2: Now they called me with the intention of thinking that
Speaker 2: I had some magic box that could transpose the whole track. Okay,
Speaker 2: I didn't you know there was You know, later on,
Speaker 2: we now have things that can do miracles like that
Speaker 2: pretty darn good these days, but back then there was no.
Speaker 2: So what I did while most of the guys were
Speaker 2: out of the room is The co writer on the
Speaker 2: song was Mike Campbell, the guitar player from Tom Petty's band.
Speaker 2: They had done it with a drum machine. They still
Speaker 2: had the drum machine there and up, and we just
Speaker 2: re recorded the basic track. I re recorded it, I
Speaker 2: played it on synth, I played the figure on synth.
Speaker 2: Mike Campbell was there, replayed his guitar part in the
Speaker 2: new key. It was with the drum machine, and they
Speaker 2: did all the rest of the track in the new key,
Speaker 2: and it wound up being a very big record.
Speaker 3: Wow, uh, switching gears. Tell me about the passing of
Speaker 3: your brothers.
Speaker 2: The passing of my brothers was always an absolute heartbreak.
Speaker 2: Jeff was this sudden shocking thing. I was sure when
Speaker 2: I got the phone call and I was on my
Speaker 2: way to the hospital that it was just going to
Speaker 2: be his warning, his red flag to stop smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 2: And he was only thirty eight years old. Jeff was
Speaker 2: in relatively good shape. He'd always had trouble with his
Speaker 2: arms after shows. There was a circulation thing with his arms.
Speaker 2: You know, Jeff was the one who Jeff took better
Speaker 2: care of himself than anyone in the band as far
Speaker 2: as far as habits went and staying at the party.
Speaker 2: Jeff was married and had just had his third kid,
Speaker 2: and his kids and his wife were very, very important
Speaker 2: to him. Jeff always went. You know, Jeff at this
Speaker 2: point was always going home at a decent hour and
Speaker 2: taking care of himself. And it was completely shocking, you know,
Speaker 2: it was completely shocking and heartbreaking. And I still think
Speaker 2: about every day. I still all his friends people. It's
Speaker 2: been thirty two years. It's been thirty two years, and
Speaker 2: I still think about it all the time, and you know,
Speaker 2: I can't help but think about all the stuff we
Speaker 2: could have done by this point too. Like I said,
Speaker 2: you know, when Jeff and I lived together at home,
Speaker 2: we were at each other's throats. My brother Mike was
Speaker 2: the typical middle brother that kept peace with both of us,
Speaker 2: but Jeff and I were at each other's throats. The
Speaker 2: second he moved out of the house at seventeen, he
Speaker 2: became suddenly he was the coolest older brother ever, and
Speaker 2: I was always invited to his apartment. I could always
Speaker 2: bring friends over when he was on the road, I
Speaker 2: could use his apartment. He was the coolest, most supportive
Speaker 2: older brother anyone could wish for. Then we're in a
Speaker 2: band together and we're back in those tight quarters and
Speaker 2: especially me being this synth guy and him being Jeff Piccaro,
Speaker 2: mister gru mister pocket, which I totally appreciated it. But
Speaker 2: the technology, you know what I mean, I was way
Speaker 2: into it, and it was never it was never ever
Speaker 2: to replace anybody, you know, drum machines to us. I
Speaker 2: was there when Roger was developing it. Roger had worked
Speaker 2: for Leon Russell. It was all about just aiding in songwriting.
Speaker 2: It was never no one ever discussed replacing drummers. You know,
Speaker 2: Leon used Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and it was
Speaker 2: all about you know, that was it was just like
Speaker 2: an improvement on a Roland rhythm ace, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, which uh you know, ironically enough, a t
Speaker 2: R eight to OHO eight basedrum wound up replacing a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot more drummers than any Lynn drum
Speaker 2: machine or Oberheim drum machine or any other drum machine
Speaker 2: that had samples in it, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, this thing, you know, uh was
Speaker 2: much more popular than any of those drum machines. But
Speaker 2: you know, there was always all this discussion and debate,
Speaker 2: and of course people started using it on records, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, and it was very upsetting to
Speaker 2: some drummers and stuff, and they felt like they were
Speaker 2: getting replaced. I always I never saw it that way.
Speaker 2: I saw it as who better to know what to
Speaker 2: do with a drum machine than a drummer? Who better
Speaker 2: to know what to do if they had a third
Speaker 2: arm than a drummer. You know, that was always my
Speaker 2: thing with it. It was never I had. Jeff Pacaro
Speaker 2: was my brother, and so whereas in Toto we bumped heads.
Speaker 2: As soon as I left Toto, and so that was
Speaker 2: like a good five years or so before he died.
Speaker 2: Jeff would come over any time I asked him to
Speaker 2: to play on my demos, and no matter what, whether
Speaker 2: it was to play drums or to play on some pads,
Speaker 2: or to play to program a drum machine, Jeff was
Speaker 2: willing to do anything for me. And I love that.
Speaker 2: Those last five years we were back to being he
Speaker 2: was back to being the coolest older brother anyone could
Speaker 2: ever wish for. My brother Mike was a whole nother
Speaker 2: situation that was really heartbreaking, being that it was the
Speaker 2: polar opposite of Jeff. Jeff was this single shocking event.
Speaker 2: Mike was this seven year long nightmare that his family
Speaker 2: had had to witness and deal with all of us.
Speaker 2: And you know, als could happen anywhere. First it happened
Speaker 2: to one of the It's such a cruel disease, and
Speaker 2: especially for Mike. One of the cruelest things was that
Speaker 2: it started in his hands. It could have started anywhere.
Speaker 2: Some people it starts in their feet. He could have
Speaker 2: done several tours if it had started in his legs
Speaker 2: or whatever, if his hands and arms were okay. But
Speaker 2: it started in his hands, in his arms, and he
Speaker 2: right away wasn't able to play. He had to stop working,
Speaker 2: and it was completely heartbreaking. I was lucky in that
Speaker 2: I lived very close to Mike. I lived lived literally
Speaker 2: two minutes away, and I was able to spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time with him, But completely heartbreaking, especially for
Speaker 2: his three children and his wife and of course my parents.
Speaker 3: What was ultimately what killed Jeff.
Speaker 2: You know, it was probably a combination of things. He
Speaker 2: had been you know, he had been using some pesticides outside,
Speaker 2: but he had been a life long smoker. You know,
Speaker 2: he'd been a life long smoker Marlborough Reds. You know,
Speaker 2: he had never stopped, you know, And yes, there was
Speaker 2: history of drug use, like all of us, but it
Speaker 2: still was this completely freak thing for a guy at
Speaker 2: thirty eight years old. Jeff used less drugs than any
Speaker 2: of us did than any of us did.
Speaker 3: Did he have a hard d fact or something or not?
Speaker 2: There was some Yeah, there was some damage there. There
Speaker 2: was some muscular damage. There was you know, the autopsy
Speaker 2: reports were very was very complicated.
Speaker 3: And you know, okay, so what's keep you busy?
Speaker 2: Now? What keeps being busy? Now? I am the most
Speaker 2: blessed old dude, you know, as far as you know,
Speaker 2: I've been very, very lucky my whole life. I haven't
Speaker 2: had to do anything but make music for a living,
Speaker 2: and I've been blessed with many different gigs in the
Speaker 2: music world. And after I left Toto, you know, songwriter,
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a professional songwriter. But you know what,
Speaker 2: without a deadline, I found I was useless. You know
Speaker 2: what I mean. I mean, without deadline's Total was useless.
Speaker 2: We would have never We'd still be working on the
Speaker 2: fourth album if there wasn't a deadline there. If someone
Speaker 2: didn't come and say, you know what, they're showing up
Speaker 2: in an hour to take the tapes. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean, you better put this down, we would have
Speaker 2: kept going. You know. We loved being in the studio.
Speaker 2: I loved my job so much so I uh, after
Speaker 2: I left the band for a while, my old friend
Speaker 2: James Howard, who I mentioned before, James Newton Howard, he
Speaker 2: had gotten into film scoring and he had a very
Speaker 2: successful career. His career took off. That was James's thing.
Speaker 2: He had arranged for us. He did a lot of
Speaker 2: arrangements for us on Total four in the following album.
Speaker 2: But got into film scoring and was doing very very well.
Speaker 2: And we lived very close to each other, and I
Speaker 2: would help him. I would do some synthesizer stuff for
Speaker 2: him on occasion, and at one point he asked me,
Speaker 2: he said, do you want to try doing this? He'd
Speaker 2: been helping some of his other friends who were into
Speaker 2: film scoring. He had helped them by getting them jobs
Speaker 2: where he would write the theme to a TV show
Speaker 2: like Er, and then in one of his high school
Speaker 2: friend Marty Davitsch would scored all the episodes for fourteen years.
Speaker 2: You know, James was helping his friends out like that.
Speaker 2: He was doing very very well, and he helped me
Speaker 2: out that way. He did that a few times. He
Speaker 2: helped get me some gigs. He got me in there,
Speaker 2: I mean right away right away. But the reality was
Speaker 2: again I whereas I could do it, and there were
Speaker 2: certain aspects of it that I did well at. I
Speaker 2: wasn't great at it. I didn't It wasn't really my lane.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, I was making a living.
Speaker 2: I would occasionally get a show, but a lot of times,
Speaker 2: you know, you'd run that gauntlet of getting a TV
Speaker 2: show and auditioning and submitting, and sometimes you'd get the
Speaker 2: TV show and then it would last for two episodes
Speaker 2: and it'd be gone and you'd have to start over.
Speaker 2: James helped me start scoring, and it was very up
Speaker 2: and down for me, and then total came back into
Speaker 2: my life. Luke asked me if I wanted to, if
Speaker 2: I wanted to go on the road with them and
Speaker 2: do one summer to benefit my brother Mike and That
Speaker 2: turned into nine years of touring with the band again,
Speaker 2: which I had a blast with. But when I got home,
Speaker 2: I knew I was done touring. I knew I wanted
Speaker 2: to stay home, and I, you know, I figured I
Speaker 2: was going to have to try to get another film
Speaker 2: gig or something, and it turns out I didn't. I'm
Speaker 2: able to. I've been able to live off of my royalties.
Speaker 2: And then I just made a deal with Primary Wave
Speaker 2: and the Jack Sexton State and now all I do
Speaker 2: every day, all day is work on my songs, and
Speaker 2: I'm in heaven and I'm film scoring. Taught me I
Speaker 2: developed this finishing muscle. I kind of grew up. And
Speaker 2: I'm sitting on like two solo albums worth of stuff
Speaker 2: now and all I do all day is write songs
Speaker 2: and finish them. And I'm in my lane, you know.
Speaker 2: And when I go to the Baked Potato Now and
Speaker 2: hear my friends play, I don't feel like a piece
Speaker 2: of crap when I leave, I'm very proud of them.
Speaker 2: And I know that now from here on out, I
Speaker 2: get to do what I do best, which is to
Speaker 2: write the kind of songs I write, and I get
Speaker 2: to finish them and I'm going to be able to
Speaker 2: do this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: Just to be clear before we go, you sold all
Speaker 3: your songwriting royalties to Primaryry Wave in the Jacksons eight percent,
Speaker 3: And what was the decision involved in that.
Speaker 2: It was a huge decision. It was to just kind
Speaker 2: of to be able to just do what I love
Speaker 2: to do, to not have to tour ever again, to
Speaker 2: not do TV shows which own me, to just be
Speaker 2: able to do what I love doing. And this affords
Speaker 2: me that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Steve's been great talking to you. Tell quite a story.
Speaker 3: You're quite alive. You know, usually we hear from the
Speaker 3: lead singer, the lead guitars. We don't know the person
Speaker 3: I've seen you on stage, but I've never known what
Speaker 3: you were like. You're a great guy. I want to
Speaker 3: thank you for taking this time to talk to my audience.
Speaker 2: Great great, great meeting you, great talking to you.
Speaker 3: Okay, you bet till next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 3: six
Speaker 2: Sh