WEBVTT - Steve Porcaro 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.480 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left This podcast. 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.599 My guest today is keyboard is Steve Woor Karl, Steve, 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:19.800 you started off as a drummer. 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:26.320 Right, well, yeah, I'm not in a very serious sense. 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:28.440 We all started off at drums just because that was 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.960 always Drums were laying around, sticks were laying around, pads 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.479 were laying around. So yeah, I spent some times at 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:38.440 the drum at some time at the drums, but I 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.440 would never there was never a time where I called 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:42.320 myself a drummer. 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.519 Okay, let's go back. Your father was a professional drummer. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:47.440 Tell me about that. 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:53.840 Absolutely. Yeah. My old man was a was a bebop drummer. 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:58.440 Was where his heart was for us, you know, especially 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:03.600 for me. Before the Beatles, it was all Miles Davis quintets, 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:09.920 you know, and you know, a few big bands, some Coltrane. 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:14.880 It was mostly jazz in our household. And my dad 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:19.000 played at the with Hartford Symphony every weekend, so I 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.040 was exposed to some classical music, you know, but it 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.280 was mostly he was he was a jazzer. 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.960 You know, and he was earning a living as a 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:32.760 player when you lived in Connecticut. 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.520 You know, he where he went to work every day 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:37.039 was this drum shop where he taught every day. That 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.679 was kind of his day. Gig was teaching at this 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:45.600 drum shop where his teacher, that his teacher owned, and 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.120 they you know, and his teacher helped him get gigs 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.400 right away, you know, society stuff what they called casuals, 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:56.000 you know, weddings whatever. But yeah, he always he only 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:58.520 did music for a living his entire life. 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.160 And did your mother work outside the home. 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:06.160 No, not at all. She was a stay at home mom. 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:08.960 Well, you know, usually the life of a drummer, the 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.440 income is challenging. What was it like growing up? 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.040 You know, it was one of those things in those days. Yes, 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.320 it was very challenging. I was brought up in the 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:22.160 I was born in the projects in Hartford, and but 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:26.560 it wasn't you know, we were never hungry or anything 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:31.520 like that. There's no you know, sob story there. I 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.680 seem to have everything I needed and wanted. We had 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:40.320 Christmases and you know, life was good. 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:43.480 You know, how old were you when the family moved 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:44.239 to California. 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.400 I was just turning nine. We moved, we landed in 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:53.880 Burbank in nineteen sixty six, and I in August of 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.320 sixty six, and I turned nine in September, the beginning 0:02:58.320 --> 0:02:58.760 of the year. 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.160 So did you want to come to California or do 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:03.920 you not want to leave your friends behind? 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.720 You know? It was we were very excited about it. Actually, 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:15.320 my dad had come like a few months earlier. My 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.520 dad had come to kind of check it out. He 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.119 was wanting something different. He was kind of doing everything 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.360 he could do in Hartford, and he was doing okay, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.640 you know, as far as a professional musician goes, he 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.200 was doing all right. But he came out to California 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.400 to see one of his childhood friends, Amo Richards, who 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.600 was doing very well here in the studios, especially in 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:44.240 the film studios. Some record stuff. But what did amol do? 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.520 Amo was a percussionist in the studios, okay, doing records 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:53.000 and mostly movies, mostly film stuff. And Amo was doing 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.400 very well. He was working every day in the film 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.880 studios and like I said, some records. And my dad 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.960 followed him for a week. He just went to every 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.960 gig he that Amo had, and Amo worked every day. 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.400 My dad followed him around and saw what was expected 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.280 that you you know, like say, you know, in the 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.080 symphony he could play mallet parts, but he got to 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.520 You could take those home and practice them. But in 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.400 the studios you had maybe one pass through and then 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:28.839 you had to nail those Tom and Jerry's xylophone parts. 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.719 Sometimes they could be very difficult in the film studio 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.320 and you had to nail it. You were there with 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:40.240 an eightpiece orchestra. It was very different than like my 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.960 studio career. You know, there are a lot of other 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.160 people playing at the same time and you had to 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:49.880 nail that stuff. It was very high pressure. But he 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:53.320 felt he could do it, and he moved the family, 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.720 the wife and four kids. We moved across the country 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.040 to become you know, for him to become a a 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.760 freelance studio musician. And he did really well, really right 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:09.080 away he did well. So yeah, things took off for 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:09.919 him pretty quick. 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:13.920 Okay, let's talk about his upbringing. Where was he born. 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:16.240 Hertford, Connecticut? 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.680 And were his parents born in America or born in 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.359 the so called Old Country? 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.880 No, they were definitely Old Country. His father was Calabrese 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:31.560 and his mother was from Napoli, Neapolitan, you know, they 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:36.880 were both southern Italians. And his mother never learned English. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.280 I never heard her speak English, but his father was 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.880 mostly a carpenter and also a drummer and a trumpet player. 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.680 Would play a lot in these Italian marching bands, which 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.200 were a big deal back in the day. And that's 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.839 what my dad first did, was play play snare drum 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.000 in these Italian marching bands in Hertford. 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.239 And when you moved to California, were they still alive? 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.400 Yes, very much so. They were alive for quite a while. Yeah. 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.320 And did they follow you out here or did they 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:09.760 stay in. 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.560 Not at all. Not. They're all as a matter of fact, 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.680 all my cousins, everyone is still there in Connecticut. I'm 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.640 going to see them in a couple months. I'm going 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.599 to go visit. You know, they're all there. My mom's 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.520 family was from Maine, and my dad's they're all in 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.719 the general Hartford area and still are. Do you know 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:33.479 how your parents met, Yes, I do know how my 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:36.760 parents met. My dad. My mom was even though she 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:41.520 was born in Maine, she was taking she was a floutist. 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.039 She was taking flute at this music college in Hartford. 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:49.120 And my dad, even though he didn't have a college 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.760 education himself, he did some teaching at this Heart School, 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:58.760 Heart School of Music in Hartford and he saw her 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.480 in a practice room. He saw through the window, he 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.440 saw in a practice room, and he called his best 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:10.080 friend over and said, that's the woman I'm gonna marry 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:11.360 before they even met. 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:16.320 And okay, so you're nine years old. You moved to 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:20.880 California to where in Los Angeles. 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:21.960 Burbank, Burbank, California. 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:27.520 And what was Burbank like then compared to now? 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:31.880 You know, it's was pretty much the same. I got 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:33.960 to tell you. You know, Burbank maybe you know it 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.080 gets a bad rap and it's the valley and all 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.320 that stuff, But for us, it was the Promised Land. 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.520 It was this bedroom community for people who worked on film. 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:49.920 And you know, this is nineteen sixty six. The Monkeys 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:55.240 were filming their TV show down the street and they 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.400 would go tooling around town and the Monkey Mobile. You know, 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.560 I was nine, So there was this nine year you know, 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.640 what we come to know now is this nine year 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.360 awakening that kids go through where you your eyes are 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:13.840 finally really wide open to life. And it was hitting me, 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.600 hitting us all like a ton of bricks. We loved it. 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.840 We loved it. It was very exciting. And like I said, 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.480 my dad, right away was working, so he right away 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:29.160 was you know, doing things like doing you know, Jerry Fielding. 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.560 This composer was someone he worked for, and he was 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:37.680 doing the main title to a sitcom like Hogan's Hero 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:41.320 something we watched, so we would we'd hear, you know, 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:43.720 we would hear my dad on TV. He worked with 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.160 Lila Schiffrin, with someone he hooked up with very early, 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.680 who loved the way my dad played. So my dad 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.560 was on all these shows like Mission Impossible and Manics 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.920 and stuff. When these these guys were still doing TV work. 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:00.520 It was very very exciting, you know. 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.880 Okay, so there if we love kids in your family, 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:06.720 two well known brothers. Who's the fourth. 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:14.720 Kid, m my young my kid's sister, Jolene, And what's 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:19.280 she up to. She's a designer. She decorates, Uh, she 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:24.240 does interior design in houses. She she was very musical too. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.240 She just kind of us three boys kind of got 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.600 all the got all the stole, all the stole, all 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:32.840 the thunder you know what I mean, got all the attention. 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.200 She was I was three years younger than Jeff. She 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:41.320 was three years younger than me, and uh, you know, 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.440 we got a lot of the attention but Joline has 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:48.119 always done She's always worked in uh, in the studios, 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:51.600 in the film, film, film, and TV world, and now 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.280 she mostly does design work in homes. 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.600 Okay, when you moved to California, you're nine, your brothers 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.719 are older. Is everybody already playing instruments? 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:10.280 Yes, Jeff was already quite the drummer immediately, Mike was still. 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:12.800 Mike was also a drummer. They had both as soon 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.959 as the Beatles came out, they both they both took 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.960 guitar lessons for a little while and Jeff let it 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:23.800 go after a month and Mike stuck with it a 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:28.400 little bit longer with guitar. And then right then Mike 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:34.480 took up the bass in school. And that's when Mike 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.520 started playing bass. Was right when we got there. Uh, 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:39.240 he took up the bass, but he took it up. 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.920 He was very quick with it. Mike was a Mike 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.839 was a great drummer too. Mike had an incredible time, 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:50.520 He had an incredible groove. But you know, Jeff was 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.800 just Jeff stood out from a very young age just 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:59.400 being something very special on drums. Everyone everyone knew that 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:03.400 Jeff was least something special. Uh. Yeah, and I was 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.720 already playing piano. By that point, I'd been playing piano. 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:10.320 I'd been taking lessons since since I was four. But 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.000 I was always a horrible student, you know. I was 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.319 always just a terrible student. But luckily my dad would 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.880 always my dad be it was a very good teacher 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.960 of drums. You know. You always taught friends, and especially 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.560 in the studio, Guys knew that my dad taught and 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.200 was really good at teaching, and they would often ask 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.360 him to teach their sons that were interested in taking drums, 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.800 and if it was a keyboard player, he'd barter with them. 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.240 He'd say, sure, I'll teach your kid if you'll teach 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.720 my kid piano, and you know, and I just would 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.720 always say yes. I never gave up. I got to 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:56.240 work with an incredible some incredible piano teachers over the years. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:01.280 You know, Okay, your two older brothers, did they take lessons. 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:08.320 Absolutely, Jeff took some lessons, but I would say from 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.720 what I saw that I would say that ninety percent 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:17.839 of Jeff's lessons were him playing along with records. There 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.200 was always a drum set set up, and there was 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.880 always a turntable and headphones right next to the drum. 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:28.920 Set and Jeff would spend hours upon hours playing along 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:29.640 to records. 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.840 And did your brothers take piano at a young age two? 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.640 No, not at all. I was the only one. I 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:38.800 was the only one who took And. 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:40.400 Do you know what the motivation was. 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:42.480 For me? 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:44.600 Well, you're four years old? 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.280 Yeah, you know. I went with my dad. My dad 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.080 took me. He again, he was teaching at this college. 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.440 He was teaching drums at some college, and he would 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:57.680 One time he took me and it was he was 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.080 teaching a drum lesson as some guy, and it was 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.600 this organ room at this college he was teaching at. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:06.800 It was this room that had, like, you know, they 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.520 had to have at least ten different organs in there. 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:14.800 And towards the end of the lesson, I saw my 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.400 dad jump on an organ. I don't even know what 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:19.800 it was, but it was a Hammond. It was something 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.679 like the size of a B three or something, and 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.839 he played. He wanted his student to play along with him, 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:30.000 and he played this very simple see blues. He played 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:34.600 this blues on the Hammond for his student to play 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.800 along with him, to play, to play a jazz swing 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.160 beat along with him. And I had never seen my 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:47.000 father play a keyboard before then, but I heard him 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.040 play this, and I was like, we had just gotten 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.640 a piano. I had just started taking lessons with a 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.040 friend of his. But I said to him, show me 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:59.600 that blues. Show me I want to learn that. And 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.880 he taught to me and I played it to death. 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:07.560 You know, Okay, you continue to take lessons, but you 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.520 said you didn't practice. 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.319 You know, I would practice. I would start off practicing, 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.480 but as soon as it got really difficult, as soon 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.240 as the teacher would say things like Okay, that's great, 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:23.560 now learn it in all twelve keys, see you later, 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.760 you know, or something like that, it just would be 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:32.760 drudgery to me. You know, certain music that I unless 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.480 it was something I really wanted to play, it was 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:38.720 drudgery to me and my as bad as I wanted 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.240 to be a good keyboard player, my you know, I 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.440 think I had some undiagnosed attention deficit stuff going on. 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.280 It was very hard for me to focus as a kid. 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:55.840 And it wasn't until I started fifth grade and I 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.440 am in Studio City and there was another kid. I 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.400 thought I was pretty good at fifth grade, you know, 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.560 in fifth grade, but there was this other kid in 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:09.440 fifth grade who was a true child prodigy, was amazing 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:15.120 on piano, and we became fast friends. And he was 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:18.080 playing classical pieces and that was the first time I, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.680 like was driven. I wanted to play those those pieces, 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:23.920 so you know, I would get to the music. And 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.440 it was the first time I felt driven. Even though 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.480 it was hard, I wanted to. I had that in 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:31.840 my head watching this other kid do it, and I 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.720 wanted to know what it felt like to be able 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.480 to rip off, you know, to whip off some of 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:41.800 these pieces and stuff like that. And I was really 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.480 driven to practice. Things went up and. 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.160 Notch and you learned how to do that stuff absolutely. 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:49.560 Absolutely. 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:51.680 Now there was this other kid in school, but if 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.280 I was going to school with you, I'd say, oh, Steve, 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:56.840 he's the guy who plays a piano. Or was really 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:58.160 just something you're doing at home? 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.160 Oh? Yeah, No, I was very involved. You know, most 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:08.320 of the public schools I know in California anyway, they're 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:12.600 all through even elementary, junior high. In high school, there 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.520 was never a piano chair in the orchestra. It was 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:20.160 always we played percussion. I would play percussion in the orchestras, 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:24.040 timpany xylophone, you know i'd be able to learn the parts, 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:26.800 and I would that's what you played. There was no 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:32.560 piano chair per se, you know, but I was always 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.760 taking lessons and always plowing away and trying. 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:47.120 You know, Okay, you have two older brothers. I don't 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:51.080 have older brothers or any brothers at all. To what 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:56.880 degree was your career following in the steps of your 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.880 brothers or was it independent and then you merged down 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:01.320 the road? 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.440 You know, it was a lot of both. Jeff, especially 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.800 because at such an early age. I mean, of course 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:13.800 he was playing in his bands in high school and 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:18.000 I went to every gig, but he got a professional 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.480 gig at seventeen. He didn't finish high school like myself, 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.080 I didn't finish high school either. Because he got a 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.160 job touring with Sonny and Chare. You know, he'd been 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:31.920 doing a couple little sessions, local stuff, small time stuff 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:39.399 around the valley. And David Hungate, who was playing with 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.360 Sonny and Share at the time, and this is kind 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:48.160 of right before they were really peaking in the mid 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:54.919 seventies early seventies there, David Hungate was did a session 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.919 with Jeff and heard him play and recommended him to 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:02.240 Sonny and Share, and Jeff left high school a semester 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.280 earlier to tour with them, and then right from that 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:12.400 it was just his His career trajectory was was astonishing 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:17.040 how fast he started doing sessions, really good sessions all 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.040 of a sudden. You know, our favorite band Steely Dan, 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.879 Jeff's doing like a whole album with him. So Jeff 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:29.840 was always this shining, shining example to us that it 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.840 could happen. We could. It was possible, you know, it 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.000 was right there, It was possible if we worked hard enough. 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.240 You know, Okay, that was Jeff. Jeff is older than you, 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:49.200 He's basically okay, so when you were now in high school, 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:50.680 are you playing in bands? 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.640 Absolutely? Absolutely? And then Rape Mike was just two years 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.280 younger than Jeff, and Mike was also playing in bands 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.359 and in Jeff's bands in high school, and he right away, 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.000 as soon as he graduated, he started touring with bands 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.880 Michael Franks, and then Mike was with Seals and Crofts 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.320 for a lot of years right out of high school 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:17.399 and doing sessions and playing the Baked Potato. His career 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:18.800 took off immediately. 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:24.160 Also, you know, okay, you're younger than Jeff by three years, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:28.639 what kind of band are you playing in in high school? 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:35.120 Well, you know, the very first stuff that Jeff did, 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.880 like in junior high was absolutely like soul, these kind 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.720 of funk bands, playing Sam and Dave covers, playing covers 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.400 like that in high school him and when he met 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:53.760 David Page, his partner in Toto, they right away there. 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.600 They loved Joe Cocker had a band, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.640 There was a record, there was a movie. They had 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:05.760 double drums, Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, and these guys 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.680 happened to be Jeff's hero. Well, their high school band 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:13.720 pretty much did that whole Joe Cockers set. They had horns, 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:18.160 they had all these background singers. You know, Leon Russell 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:20.240 was a big hero of ours as far as being 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:25.600 a studio musician, And they kind of copied that band 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.360 through through high school. And then when I got into 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.080 high school, I took those same charts and I did 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.800 that same set. At first, I was kind of copying that, 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:41.159 but then I later in high school, I got rid 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:42.960 of the horns and I wanted to do more of 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.639 a rock and roll thing, and that's when I hooked 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.080 up with my So when I met Steve Lucather and 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:52.880 Mike Landau and Carlos Vega and John Pierce and these 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:54.800 guys that all went on to have great careers. We 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.639 had a band in high school and did lots of 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.560 proms and all started taking our new very seriously. All 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:02.440 of a sudden, you. 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:07.000 Know, Okay, so you are the connection to Lucerther, not 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:15.520 your brothers. Yes, okay, so you meet Lucather, you meet Landau, 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:22.040 you're playing this is all great. Your brother both brothers 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.520 are Ultimately they've made this a career. Is that in 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.479 the back of your mind to say this is what 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:28.919 I want to do or you say this is what 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:29.720 I'm doing now. 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:33.760 It's absolutely what we wanted to do, and it's what 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.120 we saw was so possible because it was right there 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:39.360 and it kind of inspired all of us. It inspired 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:42.000 all of us in our band that it was you know, 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.600 it wasn't just some pipe dream. Jeff and Mike were 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:49.639 doing it, you know, you know, and it certainly helped me. 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:54.240 I went through a very difficult period where I you know, 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:56.960 as I'm in eleventh grade and twelfth grade in school, 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:00.000 I'm looking I see that my brother's careers took off 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.800 freight away. But as far as being the piano player 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.680 on a session, being a keyboard player on a session. 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:12.240 I saw the competition. It was Michael o'mardian and David 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:16.199 Page and David Foster and these guys that were I 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:21.639 was nowhere near their ability as far as just basic keyboards, 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.439 which is part of the reason. I mean, I was 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:28.639 always interested in any way, but I early on I 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:34.639 dove way into synthesizers. I saw especially this is before MIDI, 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.280 and I just saw this chasm where the guys who 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.480 knew a lot about synthesizers were these nerds, you know, 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.800 with pocket protectors on, and the real the great players 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:51.160 didn't want to have anything to do with interfacing, you know, 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:55.560 a synthesizer, what it took to play a mogue from 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.760 an art and vice versa, and the little black boxes 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:03.600 and that took and I dove way into that stuff, 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:08.359 and at a very early age start getting hired to 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:10.879 be a synthesizer programmer. 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.680 Wait a little bit slower. There's the full mug, then 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:17.520 there's the mini mug. There's the R twenty five hundred 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.640 than the twenty six hundred, which is more for a 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:24.480 consumer everyday thing. Where do you get in on this. 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:26.879 It really sort of happened to the change of the 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:30.280 decades sixties to the seventies. And also this stuff was 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:36.560 not cheap. So nope, how did you literally get vaulved Sure? 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:39.480 I had this friend in high school. His name was 0:23:39.560 --> 0:23:43.080 Jay Chernick, and he owned We were all way into 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:46.440 Prague Rock. We were all into Emerson, Lincoln Palmer and Yes, 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:50.400 and these these these. 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:54.359 Guys were our heroes. Not so much my brothers, but 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:57.280 I mean they hit me to that stuff. Jeff hit 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:00.280 me to King Crimson and emersoniank and paulm Or. But 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.600 he didn't stay in that camp very long. But I 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.560 had this friend who owned a Mini Mogue. He owned 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:12.720 an Oberheim Sequencer and an Oberheim Expander module. And I 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.480 would hang out with this guy every day, and he 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:21.080 was teaching me. He was showing me stuff on this 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:24.800 Mini Mogue, and he had this stuff interfaced. He had 0:24:24.800 --> 0:24:28.280 these little black boxes. He had hired someone so that 0:24:29.960 --> 0:24:33.359 this Mogue could talk to this Oberheim, which wasn't easy 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.800 to do in those days. Anyway, I'm still in high school. 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:40.600 All I wanted to do was be on the road 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:48.439 and following my brother's footsteps. And I auditioned it started 0:24:48.480 --> 0:24:50.880 becoming At that point, it was like a new thing 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:54.760 where groups on the road were hiring a second keyboard 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:59.960 player to cover the string arrangements, to play in art 0:25:01.320 --> 0:25:03.640 a string ensemble, to cover you know what I mean, 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:06.320 to cover overdubs live, and all of a sudden kind 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:10.440 of became this new chair with touring bands. And I 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:14.280 remember I auditioned for Mac Davis and didn't get it. 0:25:14.440 --> 0:25:18.399 He just said, you're too young. I'm still in high school. 0:25:19.119 --> 0:25:23.199 I auditioned for Tim Buckley and he was looking for 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:25.520 a guy who was more of a jazz pianist. He 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:29.800 was looking for a jazzer. I didn't get that. And 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:34.520 then David Foster, whoy had just started programming for, had 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:37.560 just finished working with Gary Wright and recording the dream 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:43.280 Weaver album, and Gary had asked him. Gary was putting 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:47.639 together an all keyboard band, and did David noah of 0:25:47.760 --> 0:25:52.199 any young keyboard players who would tour for cheap who 0:25:52.280 --> 0:25:57.320 knew how to play synthesizer. And he gave Gary my 0:25:57.480 --> 0:26:02.600 number and I played mo base for Gary Wright for 0:26:02.840 --> 0:26:05.320 I got the gig, and I left high school a 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:08.440 semester early because I got the gig playing with Gary Wright. 0:26:08.960 --> 0:26:11.400 You know and I rate then I didn't even own 0:26:11.480 --> 0:26:14.120 a synthesizer then. As a matter of fact, on my audition, 0:26:14.720 --> 0:26:17.640 I had borrowed my friend's mini Mogue and he had 0:26:17.680 --> 0:26:20.880 marked for me with grease pencil, like cool base settings. 0:26:21.960 --> 0:26:24.520 You know, that's how little I knew about it. He 0:26:24.560 --> 0:26:29.320 marked some cool base settings. I got the gig and 0:26:29.720 --> 0:26:34.000 my brother Mike loaned me the money. I Jay Tchernick, 0:26:34.119 --> 0:26:36.720 my friend had decided he wanted to sell all his 0:26:36.840 --> 0:26:40.639 synthesizer equipment and buy a grand piano. He wanted to 0:26:40.640 --> 0:26:47.159 start taking his his piano lessons seriously, and I bought 0:26:47.359 --> 0:26:49.919 that very rig My brother Mike loaned me the money, 0:26:50.000 --> 0:26:52.199 and that was the mog base I had that I 0:26:52.240 --> 0:26:53.880 took on tour with me with Gary Wright. 0:26:54.040 --> 0:26:55.879 How much money did you need? 0:26:57.280 --> 0:27:00.200 It was two thousand dollars for the whole thing, which 0:27:00.240 --> 0:27:03.679 was a good minimugs listed They listed for fifteen hundred 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:07.960 dollars then, and then the other stuff was well over 0:27:08.040 --> 0:27:11.199 another thousand dollars. And it was a It was a 0:27:11.240 --> 0:27:14.919 beautiful minimug which I have to this day. I still 0:27:14.960 --> 0:27:19.480 have it. It it it crashed into a million pieces. 0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:22.320 One time we were opening for Jethro Tull, and when 0:27:22.320 --> 0:27:26.240 they took our equipment off the stage, it came crashing 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:29.520 down to the floor in a million pieces. But I 0:27:30.400 --> 0:27:34.639 had the guts put in another, put in another enclosure, 0:27:35.240 --> 0:27:40.359 and so funny because I just had some work on 0:27:40.400 --> 0:27:42.280 it and I just got it back, so I had 0:27:42.280 --> 0:27:44.439 to show it to you. This was the very first 0:27:44.640 --> 0:27:47.920 minimo guy ever owned. You know that, My brother Mike 0:27:48.280 --> 0:27:50.960 helped me, helped me pay for for Gary Wright. 0:27:51.160 --> 0:27:53.760 Okay, if you were on the road with jeth Rode 0:27:53.800 --> 0:27:57.399 Tall and the Mini moge broke, what'd you do with 0:27:57.480 --> 0:27:58.080 the next show? 0:28:00.000 --> 0:28:02.919 Gary had this? We were opening for Jethro Toll. Gary 0:28:03.000 --> 0:28:05.399 was opening for Jethro Toll. We did a full month 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:09.320 with him, and I loved it. I didn't miss one 0:28:09.400 --> 0:28:14.160 Jethro Tol show. I was, I was. I didn't miss 0:28:14.200 --> 0:28:18.720 one show. Gary had this amazing tech, this kid named 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:24.520 Alan who is amazing, and Gary already had a mini 0:28:24.600 --> 0:28:27.520 Mogue had a keyboard. This this tech had put his 0:28:27.600 --> 0:28:31.840 keyboard in a separate enclosure, so it wasn't a key tar. 0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:34.600 There was no quitar neck on it, but it just 0:28:34.680 --> 0:28:37.840 he had this this minimog around his neck and he 0:28:37.840 --> 0:28:40.240 would come out in front and Gary would play you know, 0:28:40.320 --> 0:28:44.440 minimog solos and Mini Mogue parts. So Alan did the 0:28:44.480 --> 0:28:48.720 same thing for me. He just built this. Uh he 0:28:48.800 --> 0:28:51.800 put it in a in a you know, right away, 0:28:51.840 --> 0:28:54.200 put it in a box and had these connectors where 0:28:54.200 --> 0:28:57.080 my keyboard was separate, and I started wearing the keyboard 0:28:57.120 --> 0:29:00.400 around my neck with Gary also, you know, playing the 0:29:00.400 --> 0:29:01.040 bass parts. 0:29:01.120 --> 0:29:05.040 Okay, let's go back before you own the Mini Mode. 0:29:05.080 --> 0:29:10.160 You're working with Foster, You're programming. What exactly are you doing? 0:29:10.480 --> 0:29:13.560 You know, programming today is a whole thing programming drugs. 0:29:13.560 --> 0:29:18.440 But in drum excuse me, in the seventies, programming SyncE 0:29:19.160 --> 0:29:21.000 like for what were you actually doing? 0:29:22.400 --> 0:29:25.160 You know, it was it was simply often like say 0:29:25.200 --> 0:29:28.480 with a Mini Mogue, it was like they typically would 0:29:28.520 --> 0:29:31.600 want a cool bass sound, a cool Mogue bass sound, 0:29:32.480 --> 0:29:35.320 and some of these guys like Foster or David Page 0:29:35.880 --> 0:29:39.360 in particular David Page was able to get up great 0:29:39.440 --> 0:29:43.800 sounds sometimes on a Mini Mog, but especially when you 0:29:43.840 --> 0:29:46.880 were working Foster was his career was taking off, and 0:29:46.920 --> 0:29:49.959 he's working with Alice Cooper and he's every day it 0:29:50.040 --> 0:29:54.440 was someone else, and one day it was Michael Jackson 0:29:54.480 --> 0:29:58.600 and Quincy Jones. And when you were in the studio 0:29:58.640 --> 0:30:01.200 with those guys, you didn't I want to be guessing. 0:30:02.000 --> 0:30:05.400 You know. Sometimes these guys would get lucky with since UH, 0:30:05.520 --> 0:30:07.360 but they didn't want to be guessing, so they would 0:30:07.400 --> 0:30:11.600 bring me along to make sure that when it was 0:30:11.600 --> 0:30:13.760 time to get a mog bass sound, I could really 0:30:13.840 --> 0:30:16.520 dial it in and UH. And I also had a 0:30:16.520 --> 0:30:21.400 twenty six hundred by that point. Yeah, and I got 0:30:21.400 --> 0:30:25.440 a CSAD very early on UH and mastered it. You 0:30:25.480 --> 0:30:28.280 know what I mean. I really had it down, and 0:30:29.360 --> 0:30:32.680 you know, and I was very Uh. I was very musical. 0:30:32.920 --> 0:30:37.080 I wasn't just a synth NERD. I was very musical, 0:30:37.320 --> 0:30:42.360 and and I wasn't trying to I worked really well 0:30:42.360 --> 0:30:44.720 in the studio with these guys. I wasn't trying to 0:30:45.400 --> 0:30:48.000 show them up in front of the producer or the artist. 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:52.239 I loved when these guys would do the playing and 0:30:52.320 --> 0:30:55.080 I just would tweet the sound while they were playing. 0:30:55.680 --> 0:31:00.320 They loved that I would dial it in. And you know, 0:31:00.840 --> 0:31:04.000 I was a great team player and I made I 0:31:04.080 --> 0:31:13.000 just made myself real handy to be around in the studio. 0:31:14.960 --> 0:31:18.880 You're seventeen years old, You're on the road with Gary Wright. 0:31:19.240 --> 0:31:24.960 What is that like? You know, it was incredible, especially 0:31:25.000 --> 0:31:27.720 being with Gary Wright where I mean, I had no idea. 0:31:28.400 --> 0:31:32.520 He had this big time manager, de Anthony. He had 0:31:32.560 --> 0:31:36.640 these incredible agents. So right away, not only was I 0:31:36.760 --> 0:31:39.960 on the road, but we're doing these great gigs. We're 0:31:40.000 --> 0:31:42.920 opening for Peter Frampton all the time, We're opening for 0:31:43.040 --> 0:31:48.760 Jethro Tull, where we're doing stadium gigs. You know, We're 0:31:48.760 --> 0:31:52.880 on these amazing gigs. I mean, I was getting two 0:31:53.000 --> 0:31:57.400 hundred bucks a week, you know. But what they didn't 0:31:57.400 --> 0:31:59.040 know is that I would have paid them two hundred 0:31:59.040 --> 0:32:04.440 bucks a week for I was living my Beatles wet dream. 0:32:04.480 --> 0:32:06.200 To be honest with you, you know what I'm saying. I 0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:09.280 was playing in front of big crowds, which was all 0:32:09.360 --> 0:32:11.120 I wanted to do at that point in my life. 0:32:11.360 --> 0:32:14.920 You know, how about drinking, drugging and women. 0:32:17.360 --> 0:32:20.680 You know, I didn't as far as women goes, I 0:32:20.680 --> 0:32:24.240 didn't have. I was seventeen. I didn't have much game. 0:32:25.680 --> 0:32:28.280 To be quite honest with you, I'm sixty seven. I 0:32:28.280 --> 0:32:32.720 still don't have much game. But you know, the drugs 0:32:32.800 --> 0:32:36.600 part was just then. We were just celebrating life. We 0:32:36.680 --> 0:32:41.360 were smoking a bunch of weed. And you know, these 0:32:41.360 --> 0:32:44.520 were the days in nineteen seventy five. You know, you 0:32:44.560 --> 0:32:47.560 know cocaine was not addictive. That was the good news 0:32:47.560 --> 0:32:49.959 about it was it wasn't you know, you didn't get 0:32:49.960 --> 0:32:52.200 addicted to it, you know what I mean, no one, 0:32:53.080 --> 0:32:55.720 No one had that much money then to you know, 0:32:55.760 --> 0:33:00.360 you were just doing these little, tiny amounts and it 0:33:00.400 --> 0:33:02.840 was a party. Now, you know, part of my story 0:33:02.880 --> 0:33:06.160 in my life is that. Believe me. I I I 0:33:06.240 --> 0:33:10.200 definitely much later on than we're talking about. My fun 0:33:10.240 --> 0:33:14.560 button got stuck and I stayed at the party way 0:33:14.600 --> 0:33:21.720 too long. I think, looking back now, I think that, 0:33:22.920 --> 0:33:25.960 you know, because I was never much into alcohol. If 0:33:26.040 --> 0:33:30.400 I drank, I couldn't do I couldn't you know, I 0:33:30.440 --> 0:33:34.640 couldn't work. And for me, the drugs were very connected 0:33:34.680 --> 0:33:38.720 with work, with learning synthesizers. I think it was kind 0:33:38.760 --> 0:33:41.400 of acting as my riddling, to be honest with you, 0:33:41.720 --> 0:33:45.600 More than I was never a big partier, if you 0:33:45.600 --> 0:33:49.480 know what I mean. I uh, you know, I used 0:33:49.520 --> 0:33:52.960 it because I was having so much fun. I once 0:33:53.040 --> 0:33:57.640 I got a bunch of synthesizers and I was always 0:33:57.680 --> 0:34:02.000 thinking putting two and two together. I had taken you know, 0:34:02.040 --> 0:34:04.960 I had taken arranging lessons, so I had knew how 0:34:04.960 --> 0:34:08.520 to block harmonize for saxophones, like for a big band. 0:34:08.840 --> 0:34:13.719 And then I get this sequencer that's an eight channel sequencer. 0:34:13.840 --> 0:34:17.279 And the only guys were using that we're doing you know, 0:34:17.880 --> 0:34:21.360 we're doing you know what? They wound up calling krout 0:34:21.440 --> 0:34:25.680 rock and stuff. It was this very electronic YadA YadA 0:34:25.760 --> 0:34:30.040 YadA stuff. And I was thinking, you know, I could 0:34:30.080 --> 0:34:32.719 take you know what I mean, I could have five 0:34:32.800 --> 0:34:36.800 flutes playing in block harmony, doing sixteenth notes through chord changes. 0:34:38.040 --> 0:34:40.000 I know how to do that. I don't see anyone 0:34:40.000 --> 0:34:44.040 else doing stuff like that. I was so excited about 0:34:44.200 --> 0:34:48.960 marrying the technology with with what I knew musically, it 0:34:49.000 --> 0:34:52.000 was hard for me to go to sleep at night. 0:34:52.120 --> 0:34:53.480 I was so excited about it. 0:34:53.920 --> 0:34:55.960 You know, some people go out on the road to 0:34:56.000 --> 0:35:01.200 supporting musicians. They don't even talk to the liner person 0:35:01.239 --> 0:35:03.799 they're working for once they're off stage. What was your 0:35:03.840 --> 0:35:05.479 relationship like with Gary Wright? 0:35:06.920 --> 0:35:10.720 Gary was a total sweetheart. Gary was the best Gary 0:35:10.960 --> 0:35:13.799 was you know, look, he was just an opening act then, 0:35:13.840 --> 0:35:18.160 but even when he when things took off, Gary was great. 0:35:18.320 --> 0:35:20.839 He took me under his wing. He took us out 0:35:20.840 --> 0:35:25.800 to dinner all the time. He was fantastic, He was funny, 0:35:26.280 --> 0:35:30.319 he was he was an absolute sweetheart. We just lost 0:35:30.400 --> 0:35:33.600 him somewhat recently, you know, a year or two ago, 0:35:33.960 --> 0:35:38.840 and I've I've always, I've always been so grateful that 0:35:38.920 --> 0:35:42.080 I had that Gary gave me the opportunities he gave me. 0:35:42.360 --> 0:35:46.439 He didn't he just like I said, after those first 0:35:46.480 --> 0:35:51.120 two auditions, I I went into audition and the drummer 0:35:51.239 --> 0:35:54.120 Art would was setting up and we were just jamming, 0:35:54.600 --> 0:35:57.880 you know, we were jamming on an E on E 0:35:58.239 --> 0:36:00.560 doing just kind of doing a funk groove. And after 0:36:01.360 --> 0:36:06.120 ten minutes, he goes, you got the gig, and you 0:36:06.120 --> 0:36:08.120 know what I mean? And I had a ball, you 0:36:08.160 --> 0:36:08.680 know what I mean. 0:36:09.480 --> 0:36:13.319 Okay, going back, if some young musician came to you 0:36:13.360 --> 0:36:16.440 today and said I have an opportunity to go on 0:36:16.480 --> 0:36:20.120 the road and I have to drop out of high 0:36:20.160 --> 0:36:22.120 school to do it, what would you say. 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:25.799 Oh boy, you know, it's a really it's a really 0:36:25.840 --> 0:36:33.440 good question. You know, you know the only way I 0:36:33.480 --> 0:36:38.200 can answer it is by telling you believe me with 0:36:38.400 --> 0:36:42.960 my situation. Let's just say, and I would tell them 0:36:43.000 --> 0:36:47.760 this at the time when we're talking about nineteen seventy five. Now, 0:36:48.400 --> 0:36:53.520 my father did film scores every day. And the composers, 0:36:53.880 --> 0:36:59.440 the Lilo Schiffrin's, the John Williams, the you know, the 0:36:59.760 --> 0:37:04.400 everyone you can mention, the Bernard Herrmann's, the film scorers. 0:37:04.480 --> 0:37:07.600 These guys were these maestros. They were these guys that 0:37:07.640 --> 0:37:12.640 were on such a pedestal. I never thought I could 0:37:12.719 --> 0:37:16.520 ever be considered to do that kind of gig. Okay, 0:37:17.400 --> 0:37:21.440 flash to many years later, and guys like Danny Elfman, 0:37:21.520 --> 0:37:23.680 Hans Zimmer, these guys, All of a sudden, it's like, 0:37:24.920 --> 0:37:29.400 it's completely possible. I had no idea of some of 0:37:29.400 --> 0:37:34.000 the opportunities I would have later in life. You know, Yeah, 0:37:34.040 --> 0:37:35.719 I wanted to be a rock star and I wanted 0:37:35.719 --> 0:37:39.000 to experience that being in front of people right then. 0:37:39.120 --> 0:37:41.640 But I might, I might say, you might want to 0:37:41.680 --> 0:37:44.600 think about the future and what you want to what 0:37:44.760 --> 0:37:47.000 tools you want to be able to have, and do 0:37:47.080 --> 0:37:49.719 you want to work in film, and do you want 0:37:49.760 --> 0:37:53.200 to go to a four year college and have learn 0:37:53.280 --> 0:37:58.640 about orchestration and composition and counterpoint and theory and all 0:37:58.680 --> 0:38:05.319 this stuff. Now, at the same time, what I did 0:38:05.560 --> 0:38:11.759 was was I realized early on that I wasn't going 0:38:11.840 --> 0:38:14.919 to compete with these usual keyboard players. That I had 0:38:14.960 --> 0:38:18.640 to make this. I had to find this niche, niche, 0:38:18.719 --> 0:38:22.439 this unique. I had to separate myself from everyone else 0:38:22.520 --> 0:38:27.880 in some way. And that's been my motto my whole 0:38:27.920 --> 0:38:31.799 life is to be different, is to find my own thing, 0:38:32.320 --> 0:38:37.640 my own style, which now happens. Part of it was 0:38:37.680 --> 0:38:39.400 the fact that I went on the road early, that 0:38:39.440 --> 0:38:42.440 I got into synthesizers, when I got into them, that 0:38:43.120 --> 0:38:46.560 I've had all these different piano teachers. I didn't just 0:38:46.640 --> 0:38:51.319 have one. I had ten different piano teachers. And if 0:38:51.320 --> 0:38:53.120 I told you who some of them were, You'd think 0:38:53.160 --> 0:38:55.960 I'd play like Lenny Tristano or something. You think I'd 0:38:55.960 --> 0:38:59.799 be some great keyboard player. It's like I never with 0:38:59.840 --> 0:39:03.520 my short attention span, I never stuck with it. But 0:39:03.640 --> 0:39:07.439 you know what that has contributed to making me who 0:39:07.480 --> 0:39:11.720 I am, which is unique and different, you know from 0:39:12.160 --> 0:39:17.080 all the other guys that do what I do. So 0:39:17.160 --> 0:39:21.319 what would I tell them to answer your question? I 0:39:21.400 --> 0:39:24.439 just would would want them to think about that. Maybe 0:39:24.520 --> 0:39:28.440 there's some things down the line, you know. You know, 0:39:28.480 --> 0:39:31.319 because I saw sure at seventeen, I right away I 0:39:31.360 --> 0:39:35.080 was in front of these crowds. I'm getting adulation, I'm 0:39:35.080 --> 0:39:38.879 getting gold records, I'm getting this success. But I saw 0:39:38.920 --> 0:39:41.719 how some of my friends who you know what, they 0:39:41.840 --> 0:39:44.279 just kind of kept their nose to the grindstone. And 0:39:44.280 --> 0:39:48.440 then maybe they went to school. But later they when 0:39:48.480 --> 0:39:51.280 they started their careers, they had a lot more depth 0:39:51.280 --> 0:39:54.120 than I did. They were able to do film scores 0:39:54.160 --> 0:39:57.640 and stuff on a level that I was never able to. 0:39:58.120 --> 0:40:00.600 You know, yes, I did some films scoring, but you 0:40:00.640 --> 0:40:03.360 know what, to be real honest with you, I wasn't 0:40:03.360 --> 0:40:07.240 that good at it. I was okay, I was able 0:40:07.280 --> 0:40:10.839 to get through it, but I wasn't I didn't have 0:40:10.920 --> 0:40:15.480 the musical chops, to be honest with you, that my 0:40:15.640 --> 0:40:19.799 friends like James Howard and other people you know, or 0:40:19.920 --> 0:40:23.600 just the innate talent. You know, a guy like Danny Elfman, 0:40:23.680 --> 0:40:26.480 he writes, when he writes music, he's writing it all 0:40:26.480 --> 0:40:30.040 in trouble cleft and using octave signs. But you know what, 0:40:30.800 --> 0:40:36.440 how can you argue with his results? You know, Hans 0:40:36.480 --> 0:40:39.520 Zimmer when he walks into an orchestral session, he doesn't know. 0:40:40.280 --> 0:40:42.560 You know, James Howard could sit there and look at 0:40:42.560 --> 0:40:45.360 a tenor cleft part and he could whistle the part 0:40:45.719 --> 0:40:49.640 to the bassoon player. Okay, James has that kind of 0:40:49.680 --> 0:40:52.400 talent and perfect pitch, and he can look at a 0:40:52.400 --> 0:40:56.080 score and do that. Hans wouldn't know an alto kleff 0:40:56.080 --> 0:40:59.319 from a tenor cleft, and he doesn't care. He's got 0:40:59.320 --> 0:41:03.759 his orchestras that do that. Hans is being Hans, and 0:41:03.800 --> 0:41:05.719 he knows what he wants and he knows what he 0:41:05.760 --> 0:41:09.120 wants to hear. And I think his work is amazing. 0:41:09.680 --> 0:41:12.640 You know, I think his work is amazing. You know, 0:41:12.800 --> 0:41:16.960 people can judge it all they want. People made fun 0:41:17.040 --> 0:41:19.720 of Danny Elfman at one point when he was starting off, 0:41:20.080 --> 0:41:22.080 you know, people look down their nose at him. But 0:41:22.160 --> 0:41:26.560 you know what, Danny has written some incredibly beautiful stuff. 0:41:26.640 --> 0:41:27.040 I think. 0:41:27.760 --> 0:41:31.520 You know, let's go to your film TV career. Sure 0:41:31.760 --> 0:41:34.080 you said you weren't that good at it, but like 0:41:34.200 --> 0:41:36.360 you were a composer for Justified. 0:41:37.040 --> 0:41:41.080 Yes, that was my last TV show I did. And 0:41:41.080 --> 0:41:42.960 and you know when I did a show like that, 0:41:44.360 --> 0:41:48.719 it owned me. It owned me. I it would take 0:41:48.760 --> 0:41:53.120 me working day and night and weekends when I did 0:41:53.160 --> 0:41:56.520 film stuff. Some of my friends, you know, would get 0:41:56.560 --> 0:41:59.640 these TV shows where they they'd have two minutes of 0:41:59.719 --> 0:42:02.040 music a week, and it would be a little piano 0:42:02.120 --> 0:42:04.880 tinkling with some string pads behind him, and that was 0:42:04.920 --> 0:42:08.680 it every week. And they did shows like that for 0:42:08.719 --> 0:42:12.480 fourteen years. They'd get this great paycheck and they could 0:42:12.840 --> 0:42:15.000 work on their songs in the evening and they could 0:42:15.040 --> 0:42:18.839 work on another project over here. Every gig I ever 0:42:18.920 --> 0:42:22.359 got was like there would be multiple chase scenes that 0:42:22.400 --> 0:42:25.600 would last three to five minutes, and it was like 0:42:25.880 --> 0:42:29.200 it was hard work, you know, And the way I 0:42:29.320 --> 0:42:35.200 did it, it was hard, hard work. And to be 0:42:35.280 --> 0:42:39.160 honest with you, I really wasn't. I really didn't have 0:42:39.239 --> 0:42:43.280 those chops. It would take me. Those kind of shows 0:42:43.320 --> 0:42:48.920 would own me my. You know. What I appreciated about 0:42:48.920 --> 0:42:50.799 it was that it taught me to grow up. It 0:42:50.880 --> 0:42:55.680 taught me about finishing. It taught me about, you know, 0:42:56.200 --> 0:42:58.800 having a deadline. You know. I was in a band 0:42:58.880 --> 0:43:01.880 where if I showed up, if it was time for 0:43:02.000 --> 0:43:04.000 us for Toto to start making a record, and I 0:43:04.400 --> 0:43:07.720 didn't have any songs, no, but I didn't get in trouble. 0:43:07.800 --> 0:43:11.600 There was four other, five other writers with lots of 0:43:11.640 --> 0:43:15.719 songs to play. You know, nobody was like saying, hey, 0:43:15.719 --> 0:43:19.359 come on man, where's your stuff? You know. And by 0:43:19.400 --> 0:43:22.080 the way, they were great in that they would anything 0:43:22.160 --> 0:43:25.080 I did, play, anything I did come up with. They 0:43:25.080 --> 0:43:27.239 were very happy to cut it for me, you know, 0:43:27.800 --> 0:43:30.040 and we would cut it. We'd be at Sunset Sound 0:43:30.120 --> 0:43:33.040 and we went to London to do our strings, and 0:43:33.520 --> 0:43:35.719 you know, I had these great opportunities, but I was 0:43:35.800 --> 0:43:41.080 so my gig. My job in the band was being 0:43:41.160 --> 0:43:45.720 the synth guy. David was the keyboard player, so to speak, 0:43:47.160 --> 0:43:49.520 and my job was doing the synth stuff. And I 0:43:49.680 --> 0:43:52.760 wanted the synth stuff to be the best synth stuff. 0:43:53.320 --> 0:43:56.319 There was a planet Earth, you know, if that was 0:43:56.360 --> 0:43:59.320 going to be my job. So I was. My nose 0:43:59.440 --> 0:44:01.840 was in a man annual, a whole lot I was. 0:44:03.920 --> 0:44:07.319 You know, I wasn't an electronics guy. I didn't take 0:44:07.360 --> 0:44:11.720 electronics and high school for an elective. I took print 0:44:11.719 --> 0:44:16.760 shop for some reason. I wanted to make rubber stamps, 0:44:17.200 --> 0:44:20.560 you know, that sounded fun to me. I knew nothing 0:44:20.600 --> 0:44:24.600 about electronics. I just would make friends with Roger Lynz 0:44:25.080 --> 0:44:28.440 and Ralph Dyke's and the guys who really knew their stuff. 0:44:28.920 --> 0:44:34.040 These guys became my friends because we were It was 0:44:34.160 --> 0:44:37.600 mutually beneficial. We would help each other out. You know, 0:44:37.920 --> 0:44:41.080 I was always never had a shortage of ideas. 0:44:41.600 --> 0:44:43.680 Was there any issue of imposter syndrome? 0:44:44.719 --> 0:44:50.680 Absolutely sure, absolutely, But you know what I don't have 0:44:50.880 --> 0:44:53.480 you know what I mean that slowly started going away. 0:44:53.800 --> 0:44:59.320 I would, you know, quite honestly, even when my career 0:44:59.520 --> 0:45:02.799 was pea, when Toto was doing their best work with 0:45:02.920 --> 0:45:06.600 Toto four, and I had a song on the Thriller album, 0:45:07.400 --> 0:45:10.120 and I had all the work I would ever want, 0:45:10.239 --> 0:45:13.360 I would still every single weekend I would go to 0:45:13.400 --> 0:45:16.920 the Baked Potato. I'd hear either one of my brothers 0:45:17.000 --> 0:45:20.080 or Luke or one of my friends or Landauers. I'd 0:45:20.160 --> 0:45:23.000 hear one of these guys play with a band there, 0:45:23.400 --> 0:45:25.680 and I'd walk out of there feeling like a piece 0:45:25.680 --> 0:45:29.080 of shit because of what I didn't have together. Because 0:45:29.200 --> 0:45:31.279 I wanted to be able to play jazz. I wanted 0:45:31.280 --> 0:45:35.280 to be able to blow through changes, and I couldn't, 0:45:35.440 --> 0:45:38.640 and I was totally afraid of being found out. You know. 0:45:39.560 --> 0:45:44.240 You know, here I had this great career, I'm making money, 0:45:44.320 --> 0:45:48.560 I have all the success, and yet even at like 0:45:48.640 --> 0:45:53.480 such a basic level for me, I you know, I 0:45:53.520 --> 0:45:56.680 couldn't I couldn't improvise on a blues without playing the 0:45:56.719 --> 0:46:01.120 same three licks over and over again or something. You know. 0:46:02.200 --> 0:46:04.720 So there was definitely imposter syndrome. 0:46:05.360 --> 0:46:09.040 When Dream Weaver becomes very successful in the summer seventy five, 0:46:09.120 --> 0:46:14.360 it's the heyday of music on television in Concert Midnight Special, 0:46:14.719 --> 0:46:19.200 there's some video of Gary Wright and his band on YouTube. 0:46:19.280 --> 0:46:20.680 Are you in those videos? 0:46:20.880 --> 0:46:26.759 Absolutely? Absolutely? And I'm kicking ass in those videos. You know, 0:46:26.880 --> 0:46:29.239 when it comes to playing a bass part, I'm Dreamwaiver. 0:46:29.960 --> 0:46:34.279 I'm your guy. You know I could even play. There's 0:46:34.400 --> 0:46:36.680 video of me playing a clavinet part with my left 0:46:36.680 --> 0:46:39.960 hand while I'm playing the bass part with my right hand. 0:46:40.480 --> 0:46:50.960 You know that kind of stuff. No problem. 0:46:51.040 --> 0:46:55.080 Okay. So Gary has this great run dream Weaver Love 0:46:55.200 --> 0:46:59.000 is Alive. That is actually the peak of his solo career. 0:46:59.480 --> 0:47:02.000 How long are you on the road with him? And 0:47:02.080 --> 0:47:04.239 what happens? Does he say we're going to go back 0:47:04.280 --> 0:47:07.040 out or we did a tour and that's it, or 0:47:07.200 --> 0:47:08.560 you say I did a tour, I want to do 0:47:08.600 --> 0:47:10.000 something else. What goes on there? 0:47:11.280 --> 0:47:13.920 Just Gary? Did you know when he started off? This 0:47:14.080 --> 0:47:16.800 was before this is just as the album was being released. 0:47:17.960 --> 0:47:20.279 Like I said, we're playing all these great gigs. I'm 0:47:20.320 --> 0:47:23.960 living the dream. Dream Weaver becomes a big hit record, 0:47:25.000 --> 0:47:27.799 and just as we kind of finished, like a year 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:32.640 of touring, dream Weaver comes out, it hits big, and 0:47:32.640 --> 0:47:35.160 they want us right back on the road again, you know, 0:47:35.239 --> 0:47:37.279 before Gary makes another record. They wanted us on the 0:47:37.360 --> 0:47:40.560 road to keep promoting it, to keep plugging it away, 0:47:41.120 --> 0:47:43.800 plugging away at it, at promoting it Warner he was 0:47:43.840 --> 0:47:47.239 on Warner Brothers, and so we were right back on 0:47:47.280 --> 0:47:49.960 the road. At a certain point, I was asking for 0:47:50.040 --> 0:47:54.680 a raise. Gary didn't, you know, as great as things were, 0:47:55.440 --> 0:47:57.680 you know, he didn't want to give me the rays 0:47:57.719 --> 0:48:00.319 I wanted. And I was okay with it. It's not 0:48:00.360 --> 0:48:05.600 like I was angry or going to quit. But you know, 0:48:05.719 --> 0:48:08.120 the day I asked for a raise and was told no, 0:48:08.640 --> 0:48:11.560 I went back out. We're in Florida somewhere at a 0:48:11.600 --> 0:48:14.600 hotel and I went back out on the beach and 0:48:14.680 --> 0:48:18.440 I wasn't even mad. I just was it was like whatever. 0:48:18.520 --> 0:48:20.160 It wasn't like I was going to quit the gig. 0:48:20.719 --> 0:48:25.360 And I get paged to the front desk at the 0:48:25.360 --> 0:48:28.200 hotel and I had no you know, I was worried 0:48:28.239 --> 0:48:31.759 maybe something happened to a family member or something, and 0:48:31.800 --> 0:48:36.000 it happens to be Boss Skags. You know. While I 0:48:36.080 --> 0:48:39.240 was on the road with Gary, David Page, my brother, Jeff, 0:48:39.320 --> 0:48:41.480 David Hungy, these guys happened to be working in the 0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:45.520 studio with Boss making this album called Silk Degrees, you know, 0:48:47.400 --> 0:48:51.000 and they were gearing up for the road and we're 0:48:51.040 --> 0:48:56.040 looking for a synth guy to cover the string parts 0:48:56.239 --> 0:48:59.439 and cover the some of the synth parts, and would 0:48:59.480 --> 0:49:04.160 I be interesting sitting going on the road. And their 0:49:04.280 --> 0:49:07.560 first offer was much more than I was making with Gary. 0:49:07.680 --> 0:49:11.360 So I did the Silk Degrease tour with Boss. 0:49:11.719 --> 0:49:15.360 Well, a little bit slower. You get paiged, how do 0:49:15.400 --> 0:49:17.640 you tell Gary and what do you and how much 0:49:17.680 --> 0:49:18.520 time do you give him? 0:49:19.239 --> 0:49:22.840 Oh, I got off the phone with Boss. He offers 0:49:22.920 --> 0:49:25.880 me much more money than I'm making with Gary. I 0:49:25.920 --> 0:49:27.880 had just asked Gary to give me a raise and 0:49:27.920 --> 0:49:31.920 he said no, you know, And there really wasn't hard feelings. 0:49:32.080 --> 0:49:37.640 I remember at the time. I really there really weren't 0:49:37.640 --> 0:49:40.359 hard feelings. But I got offered. I got a much 0:49:40.400 --> 0:49:44.040 better offer. I hung up. I asked the guy at 0:49:44.040 --> 0:49:46.719 the front desk, I'd like to leave a message for 0:49:46.840 --> 0:49:50.440 Gary Wright and room whatever, and I said, this is 0:49:50.480 --> 0:49:51.160 my two weeks. 0:49:51.160 --> 0:49:55.680 Notice, you know, then how did Gary handle that? 0:49:56.080 --> 0:49:58.080 You know, he handled it fine. And you know what 0:49:58.280 --> 0:50:00.120 he went on. He had hired a he woud to 0:50:00.280 --> 0:50:04.000 hiring another couple of guys. And just so that you know, 0:50:04.040 --> 0:50:06.239 the way you know there was no hard feelings is 0:50:06.239 --> 0:50:09.080 that I did this whole big tour with Boz and 0:50:09.120 --> 0:50:12.000 then you know what, Gary had a big tour coming 0:50:12.080 --> 0:50:16.399 up of just stadiums. He had a ten city stadium tour. 0:50:17.000 --> 0:50:20.480 General Giant was the opening act, and then Gary Wright 0:50:21.560 --> 0:50:26.440 and then Peter Frampton and then yes, you know, and 0:50:26.480 --> 0:50:29.680 we were doing these stadium He had ten stadium gigs 0:50:29.680 --> 0:50:31.960 lined up and he called me and asked me to 0:50:32.000 --> 0:50:35.440 come back and do them with them, and I said, absolutely, 0:50:35.840 --> 0:50:38.960 you know, and they were some of the funnest gigs 0:50:39.040 --> 0:50:40.560 I ever did in my life. Some of those are 0:50:40.560 --> 0:50:45.239 on there are available on YouTube too. You know, some 0:50:45.280 --> 0:50:47.600 of these stadium gigs we did. I mean, you could 0:50:47.640 --> 0:50:50.279 see we were playing during the day, but you could see, yes, 0:50:50.400 --> 0:50:54.560 as they still had like the Roger Dean stage from 0:50:54.800 --> 0:50:57.799 Tales of Topographic Oceans in those days and stuff, you know, 0:50:57.840 --> 0:51:01.040 the the yes, the stage set was all, you know, 0:51:01.080 --> 0:51:03.880 you could see it in the background. But we had 0:51:03.920 --> 0:51:07.360 a ball and I loved it and I loved it. 0:51:07.560 --> 0:51:11.399 Okay, So what was the experience being on the road 0:51:11.400 --> 0:51:13.200 with bos gags? 0:51:13.239 --> 0:51:19.600 Fantastic BOZ was I really lucked out? I really lucked out? Again. 0:51:19.640 --> 0:51:23.239 These gigs were so easy for me because I wasn't 0:51:23.280 --> 0:51:27.319 in the piano player chair that's the hot seat, you know, 0:51:27.360 --> 0:51:30.040 the guy who had to play those meat and potatoes parts. 0:51:30.280 --> 0:51:33.960 I was playing synth parts. I was programming mini mogues 0:51:34.520 --> 0:51:39.160 and playing string ensemble stuff. It was a cinch and 0:51:39.200 --> 0:51:43.440 it was fun and and Boss took amazing care of 0:51:43.480 --> 0:51:47.080 his musicians. He paid everybody really well. We stayed in 0:51:47.160 --> 0:51:50.279 great hotels. It was just my brother Jeff was in 0:51:50.360 --> 0:51:54.920 the band David Page, that's when we started working. At 0:51:54.920 --> 0:51:58.560 first it was David Page. Nine later another great keyboard player, 0:51:58.640 --> 0:52:03.719 Jay Winding, wound up doing the piano chair. Lucather came 0:52:03.719 --> 0:52:07.040 in later on. Lucather did one of the later tours 0:52:07.200 --> 0:52:12.160 with Boss. So yeah, I mean that's kind of this 0:52:12.400 --> 0:52:17.120 was kind of the beginning of Toto, you know. You know, 0:52:17.200 --> 0:52:21.160 my brother Mike wound up playing I think Hungy did 0:52:21.200 --> 0:52:26.040 some gigs at first, but you know, Columbia Toto's record 0:52:26.120 --> 0:52:29.759 company pretty much saw it. Was like David Page co 0:52:29.840 --> 0:52:33.919 wrote all the songs on Silk Degrees. You know, we're 0:52:33.960 --> 0:52:37.920 playing live. Boss's that Silk Degrees album was a huge success. 0:52:38.280 --> 0:52:41.040 So all the record company people are all hanging out 0:52:41.840 --> 0:52:45.720 backstage and at the big gigs and stuff, and here's 0:52:45.760 --> 0:52:49.239 this band. Here's Jeff Pacaro on drums. Here's you know, 0:52:49.760 --> 0:52:53.200 David Page on piano, the guy who wrote co wrote 0:52:53.200 --> 0:52:56.000 all those songs on Silk Degrees. Here I am on synse. 0:52:56.080 --> 0:53:00.279 There's Lucather on guitar. It pretty much was they a 0:53:00.280 --> 0:53:05.480 saw Toto. You know, they saw this backing band. And 0:53:06.480 --> 0:53:08.319 I think it's part of the reason why Toto never 0:53:08.360 --> 0:53:12.600 had to do like a showcase or or anything like that. 0:53:12.680 --> 0:53:15.759 Our record deal was pretty much handed to us on 0:53:15.800 --> 0:53:18.680 a platter, you know, Columbia Records. 0:53:18.920 --> 0:53:24.279 Okay, you're on the road with bass. That tour finishes, 0:53:24.680 --> 0:53:27.280 then what then? 0:53:27.840 --> 0:53:31.920 Much to my surprise, I was I was afraid that 0:53:32.200 --> 0:53:34.640 David and Jeff. I had always wished for them to 0:53:34.800 --> 0:53:38.560 start a band, but at that point I David was 0:53:38.640 --> 0:53:42.440 so busy, was getting hired to produce and write and 0:53:42.560 --> 0:53:46.880 sessions and Jeff's. Jeff's career was in full you know, 0:53:47.000 --> 0:53:50.200 full bloom. Lucather and I were just starting out then. 0:53:50.320 --> 0:53:54.759 This is seventy six, seventy seven. Our careers are just 0:53:54.880 --> 0:53:57.520 kind of starting out. We're doing pretty good. I'm doing 0:53:57.600 --> 0:54:00.439 all kinds of stuff with Foster by then, and he's 0:54:00.520 --> 0:54:04.520 hiring me whenever he's doing synthesizers. He's got me there 0:54:04.520 --> 0:54:09.480 with him. But I'm thinking, you know what, it's these 0:54:09.480 --> 0:54:11.439 guys are never gonna want to do a band. Why 0:54:11.440 --> 0:54:13.960 would they turn down all this work to stop and 0:54:14.000 --> 0:54:18.759 rehearse and and build up a band thing? But sure enough, 0:54:18.760 --> 0:54:22.279 that's exactly what they did. They decided. You know, I 0:54:22.320 --> 0:54:27.719 think Silk Degrees was a huge encouragement to them that 0:54:28.160 --> 0:54:31.560 they could maybe do it themselves, be the artist. There 0:54:31.680 --> 0:54:34.319 just was this lead singer thing was the one thing 0:54:34.360 --> 0:54:38.200 that wasn't part of our inner circle, you know. 0:54:39.080 --> 0:54:45.319 Luca thir tells me that some of the old cats said, hey, 0:54:45.480 --> 0:54:49.799 you're really happening now, but it ends for everybody. You 0:54:49.920 --> 0:54:54.280 got to find your own thing. Did that ever play 0:54:54.280 --> 0:54:57.200 to you or did you just basically get a call 0:54:57.239 --> 0:54:58.920 one day, Hey, we're going to form a band. 0:55:00.080 --> 0:55:02.239 Yeah, it was basically that. I mean, we all were 0:55:02.360 --> 0:55:04.919 thrilled to get that call. I was in there very 0:55:04.920 --> 0:55:08.359 early on. David knew he wanted you know, they saw 0:55:08.440 --> 0:55:10.560 me with how I was with Gary Wright, how I 0:55:10.640 --> 0:55:14.000 handled since with Gary Wright. They saw me. David and 0:55:14.040 --> 0:55:17.680 I worked together with Boz. David saw that I was 0:55:18.040 --> 0:55:20.600 very handy to be around, not only in the studio, 0:55:20.719 --> 0:55:23.799 but that live I could you know what I mean, 0:55:23.920 --> 0:55:27.479 synthesizers were becoming very popular, and that I could cover 0:55:27.560 --> 0:55:29.920 a lot of overdubs. So I was kind of in 0:55:29.960 --> 0:55:33.960 there real early on. Luke, they kind of yanked his chain. 0:55:34.040 --> 0:55:36.600 There was a lot of guitar players. David had grown 0:55:36.680 --> 0:55:38.840 up with some. There were a lot of friends that 0:55:38.880 --> 0:55:43.759 were great guitar players. You know. Luka Thurb didn't know 0:55:44.000 --> 0:55:47.760 for a while, but because David was doing these demo, 0:55:47.840 --> 0:55:50.319 He was doing these demos just with just with my 0:55:50.400 --> 0:55:53.359 brother Jeff, the two of them in the studio and 0:55:53.440 --> 0:55:57.160 Patriot played mog bass and he would sing, was singing everything, 0:55:57.800 --> 0:55:59.680 and the two of them kind of were building up 0:55:59.680 --> 0:56:04.560 this batch of songs that were amazing, you know, that 0:56:04.600 --> 0:56:08.239 were amazing. But when it got time to put it 0:56:08.280 --> 0:56:11.239 all together, you know, he made the choice to use 0:56:11.320 --> 0:56:14.600 hung Gate because they were really such this. You know, 0:56:14.719 --> 0:56:16.800 my brother Mike was in the bands in high school 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:21.040 and Mike had played with bass, and Mike was was 0:56:21.120 --> 0:56:24.440 would have been an obvious choice. But hung Gate, my 0:56:24.560 --> 0:56:29.239 brother Jeff and Page were this core rhythm section thing 0:56:29.320 --> 0:56:32.400 that had been doing a lot of sessions together, a 0:56:32.440 --> 0:56:35.640 lot of stuff, stills and Crofts, all the boss Gag, 0:56:36.239 --> 0:56:41.320 silk degree stuff. Hung Gate was an incredibly musical bass 0:56:41.360 --> 0:56:45.840 player and I was in there right away and it 0:56:45.960 --> 0:56:49.080 was like yes, and you know, to your question, we 0:56:49.200 --> 0:56:51.839 all still were doing sessions. We all still when there 0:56:51.880 --> 0:56:54.960 was time, we would do sessions. You know, we'd get 0:56:55.000 --> 0:56:57.239 home from the road. And we were very lucky that way, 0:56:57.320 --> 0:57:00.000 because a lot of guys once they commit to a band, 0:57:00.040 --> 0:57:03.279 and a lot of times when you leave town and 0:57:03.360 --> 0:57:06.239 the producer has to hire someone else, a lot of 0:57:06.280 --> 0:57:10.719 times those guys get your gig. You know, they'll hire 0:57:10.760 --> 0:57:13.719 a replacement for you, and that guy will will get 0:57:13.760 --> 0:57:17.880 your job. But we all were pretty lucky that way 0:57:17.920 --> 0:57:20.560 and would still get called back, you know, when we 0:57:20.560 --> 0:57:23.160 were home and when we were available. 0:57:23.760 --> 0:57:28.280 Before it's a band, do you have enough studio work 0:57:28.320 --> 0:57:31.760 to make it work? For you or you thinking I 0:57:31.840 --> 0:57:35.080 want another road gig or I need more studio work. 0:57:35.360 --> 0:57:36.960 What's going on for you? 0:57:37.000 --> 0:57:39.600 No, my career was just kind of doing this with 0:57:39.680 --> 0:57:42.560 studio work. I was getting quite a lot of things. 0:57:42.800 --> 0:57:45.760 I was getting better and better. It was just growing, 0:57:46.120 --> 0:57:50.440 you know. Yeah, I mean I'm living. I was a 0:57:50.480 --> 0:57:55.160 single guy living in a small apartment. I got married 0:57:55.200 --> 0:58:00.600 soon after that, very young, at twenty years old. But 0:58:00.600 --> 0:58:04.520 but yeah, no, my session career was just kind of 0:58:04.520 --> 0:58:08.320 getting better and better. More guys were discovering me. Quincy 0:58:08.440 --> 0:58:11.200 Jones would start hiring me without David with or without 0:58:11.280 --> 0:58:16.200 David Foster. You know, David would hire me for everything 0:58:16.240 --> 0:58:19.880 he was doing that used keyboards, that used since he 0:58:19.960 --> 0:58:22.960 wanted me there all the time. And his career was 0:58:23.000 --> 0:58:26.400 taking off big time with Chicago, and you know, it 0:58:26.480 --> 0:58:29.960 was one thing after another with him. It just kept 0:58:30.040 --> 0:58:33.360 getting better and better. In the tubes and Alice Cooper 0:58:33.520 --> 0:58:36.720 and Hall and Oates we did two albums, and you know, 0:58:36.720 --> 0:58:41.400 and Bill Shnae started hiring me, and you know, guys 0:58:41.400 --> 0:58:43.920 started seeing that I was real handy to be around 0:58:43.920 --> 0:58:47.080 in the studio, you know, either by myself or with 0:58:47.120 --> 0:58:49.960 other keyboard players. I was very much a team player. 0:58:50.440 --> 0:58:54.000 I played well with others and we got a lot done. 0:58:54.960 --> 0:58:57.120 Tell me about getting married at twenty. 0:58:58.920 --> 0:58:59.760 What would you like to know? 0:59:01.640 --> 0:59:06.120 Okay, you meet a woman, how long after you meet 0:59:06.120 --> 0:59:09.120 her do you get married? And what's the incentive to 0:59:09.160 --> 0:59:13.120 get married? You know, you're in this unique world where 0:59:13.120 --> 0:59:15.560 you're working, you know, morning, noon, and night in the studio, 0:59:15.600 --> 0:59:19.400 we're off on the road. Is it security or is 0:59:19.480 --> 0:59:22.760 it just this? Is you think you're in love? That's 0:59:22.920 --> 0:59:25.240 very young by most people's standards. 0:59:25.640 --> 0:59:28.920 Yeah, and I had a child then too. I didn't 0:59:28.960 --> 0:59:30.680 think I was in love. I was in love. 0:59:33.720 --> 0:59:36.840 So you got married because a child was on the way, 0:59:37.960 --> 0:59:42.680 I was in love. How long did that marriage last? 0:59:45.040 --> 0:59:49.560 That marriage lasted three years or so, three and a 0:59:49.600 --> 0:59:50.280 half years. 0:59:50.520 --> 0:59:52.000 So why did it end? 0:59:53.960 --> 0:59:59.560 You know? I why did it end? Because my career 1:00:00.160 --> 1:00:05.480 became all consuming to me. It became all consuming to me, 1:00:06.280 --> 1:00:10.480 and I saw these opportunities that I had to take 1:00:10.520 --> 1:00:17.920 advantage of, you know, and it was tough. It was 1:00:17.960 --> 1:00:20.640 tough to be working twenty four to seven like that 1:00:21.080 --> 1:00:24.240 and be it still be a human being and be 1:00:25.280 --> 1:00:26.480 a partner in a marriage. 1:00:26.840 --> 1:00:31.920 You know, So how many times you've been married twice, 1:00:32.600 --> 1:00:37.360 And are you married now? No? So, how old were 1:00:37.360 --> 1:00:38.959 you when you got married the second time? 1:00:39.960 --> 1:00:46.840 Much older I was. I would say I was something 1:00:46.880 --> 1:00:49.640 like thirty eight or something the next time I got married. 1:00:50.560 --> 1:00:54.040 So once bitten twice, shy. How hard is it to 1:00:54.080 --> 1:00:57.800 convince yourself to do it a second time again? 1:00:57.960 --> 1:01:03.400 I was in love? You know? What can I say? 1:01:04.640 --> 1:01:06.360 And why did that relationship end? 1:01:08.160 --> 1:01:08.280 Uh? 1:01:08.840 --> 1:01:12.600 It's kind of complicated. You know. I don't want to 1:01:12.600 --> 1:01:14.440 pull anyone else's covers. 1:01:14.760 --> 1:01:15.680 Okay, but it wasn't. 1:01:15.720 --> 1:01:18.240 It wasn't a word note, No, it wasn't. 1:01:18.480 --> 1:01:22.680 Okay. Let's go back to Tote so Page and your 1:01:22.680 --> 1:01:27.480 brother working up this material and they pull you in. 1:01:28.280 --> 1:01:31.640 How do you ultimately decide that you need a singer 1:01:31.760 --> 1:01:32.760 and get a singer? 1:01:33.760 --> 1:01:36.800 Well, they knew right away. I mean David, David wanted 1:01:36.840 --> 1:01:39.720 to be you know, David, I think wanted to I 1:01:39.720 --> 1:01:41.600 think in some ways he wanted to be Elton John 1:01:41.840 --> 1:01:45.880 and you know, and writing all the songs to have 1:01:45.960 --> 1:01:48.040 a thing, and he did great, and he sang all 1:01:48.080 --> 1:01:51.560 the demos and these were amazing songs. And David did 1:01:51.560 --> 1:01:55.120 a great job. But he knew he wanted a real 1:01:55.280 --> 1:01:58.120 tenor in the band. He wanted someone with a high 1:01:58.160 --> 1:02:03.120 voice in the band, you know, especially in a rock 1:02:03.160 --> 1:02:06.120 and roll band, you wanted somebody that could cut, somebody 1:02:06.160 --> 1:02:10.120 that was a real singer, singer, and they had done some. 1:02:10.440 --> 1:02:12.440 They were good friends with a guy named Joe Shermy 1:02:12.680 --> 1:02:15.600 who was the bass player in Three Dog Knight, and 1:02:15.680 --> 1:02:19.120 he had a band called ss Fools after Three Dog Night, 1:02:19.480 --> 1:02:22.280 and there was a singer in SS Fools named Bobby Kimball. 1:02:23.480 --> 1:02:28.080 And that's how David and Jeff met Bobby, who wound 1:02:28.160 --> 1:02:29.600 up being Toto's lead singer. 1:02:30.400 --> 1:02:35.400 Okay, Bobby is in the band, then he isn't in 1:02:35.440 --> 1:02:39.880 the band. Ultimately what went on that he was no 1:02:39.960 --> 1:02:40.840 longer in the band? 1:02:41.800 --> 1:02:45.880 You know, it was the usual stuff in the early eighties, 1:02:45.960 --> 1:02:52.880 to be honest with you, you know, quite honestly. I mean, 1:02:52.920 --> 1:02:56.320 we were all we were all at the party, so 1:02:56.400 --> 1:02:59.400 to speak. But when you're the lead singer of the band, 1:03:00.080 --> 1:03:02.680 there's a time when you can pull that off those 1:03:02.760 --> 1:03:06.840 late nights and heavy drinking and whatever and still do 1:03:06.960 --> 1:03:10.560 your gig. But after a while it takes its toll. 1:03:11.080 --> 1:03:13.760 And you know what I mean, I can say that 1:03:13.880 --> 1:03:18.080 Bobby wasn't wasn't doing anything the rest of us weren't doing, 1:03:19.120 --> 1:03:22.479 but he was the lead singer, and it just would 1:03:22.480 --> 1:03:26.480 become a parent when he couldn't perform, when he couldn't 1:03:26.600 --> 1:03:28.680 you know what I mean? We were all very good 1:03:28.720 --> 1:03:34.720 at doing what we did. Regardless of how much partying 1:03:34.800 --> 1:03:37.640 was going on or not. We could still deliver in 1:03:37.680 --> 1:03:42.760 a very big way. We still were highly functioning. You know, 1:03:44.000 --> 1:03:49.000 we were all highly functioning. But you know, when you've 1:03:49.120 --> 1:03:51.720 got a stage and everyone on stage has strep throat, 1:03:51.840 --> 1:03:53.640 it's going to be You're going to notice the singer 1:03:54.360 --> 1:03:58.840 has strep throat. You're not going to notice the second 1:03:58.920 --> 1:04:02.440 keyboard player also strep throat, or the drummer has strep throat, 1:04:02.680 --> 1:04:04.600 or the bass player has stripped you know what I mean. 1:04:05.720 --> 1:04:09.160 Okay, at this late day, looking back, there are a 1:04:09.280 --> 1:04:13.439 number of bands that changed lead singers and survived Van 1:04:13.560 --> 1:04:18.840 Halen Genesis. Okay, but usually then and still now, it's 1:04:18.840 --> 1:04:21.560 a kiss of death. So how much did you wring 1:04:21.640 --> 1:04:24.320 your hands and how much warning did you give Bobby 1:04:24.400 --> 1:04:26.080 to say, hey, this is going in the wrong direction. 1:04:27.760 --> 1:04:31.240 You know, look at look what you just mentioned. I 1:04:31.400 --> 1:04:35.760 can't think of I almost can't think of one band. 1:04:37.640 --> 1:04:41.600 Who do you want to talk about Journey Foreigner. Who 1:04:41.640 --> 1:04:44.520 else is there? I mean, we could go van Halet, 1:04:44.520 --> 1:04:48.440 we could go on and on, and every one of 1:04:48.480 --> 1:04:54.320 them had lead singer nightmares, every one of them. Now 1:04:54.840 --> 1:04:58.560 to empathize with the lead singers, by the way, you 1:04:58.560 --> 1:05:00.480 know when you're doing a rock and roll band. When 1:05:00.480 --> 1:05:03.560 you're doing rock and roll, there was always this thing, right, 1:05:03.680 --> 1:05:07.240 it's a producer's job to find where is the where 1:05:07.280 --> 1:05:09.960 do they sound the best? What's the best key to 1:05:10.040 --> 1:05:12.200 do this song in? This is what you learn from 1:05:12.200 --> 1:05:15.160 a David Foster and a Quincy Jones. You want that 1:05:15.280 --> 1:05:17.840 lead singer when it hits the chorus. You want that 1:05:18.000 --> 1:05:21.600 vocal and a range where your singer sounds the best, 1:05:21.920 --> 1:05:25.360 where there's the best wood, where there's the right amount 1:05:25.400 --> 1:05:29.800 of straining as opposed to how comfortable they're able to 1:05:29.840 --> 1:05:33.240 sing it. Right, you're making a record. You're not worried 1:05:33.240 --> 1:05:37.040 about anything else but making the best record you can make, 1:05:37.760 --> 1:05:40.360 and you want that in the perfect key for your singer. 1:05:41.200 --> 1:05:47.040 Now ten years later, okay, is that still the and 1:05:47.080 --> 1:05:49.600 a singer's got to go out on the road and 1:05:49.720 --> 1:05:54.800 sing those songs one after another. Sometimes it's like like 1:05:54.840 --> 1:05:57.360 I said, it's easy for the drummer to play in 1:05:57.400 --> 1:06:01.280 that same key, It's easy for the keyboard player to 1:06:01.360 --> 1:06:04.360 play in that same key. Who's it the hardest on 1:06:05.560 --> 1:06:09.080 the lead singer? Okay? And sometimes those guys can't hit 1:06:09.160 --> 1:06:13.520 those notes anymore. You know, they weren't hitting them comfortably. 1:06:14.040 --> 1:06:17.720 This wasn't Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. These are This 1:06:17.920 --> 1:06:26.320 was rock and roll. You know, I really empathized with 1:06:26.360 --> 1:06:31.920 these singers, you know, Steve Perry, Lou Graham. Look at 1:06:31.960 --> 1:06:36.480 all these guys struggled with being able to deliver at 1:06:36.480 --> 1:06:41.440 the level that you know their bandmates insisted on them delivering. 1:06:41.880 --> 1:06:44.440 Okay, how much warning do you give Kimball and what 1:06:44.480 --> 1:06:47.080 does he say when the acts comes down? 1:06:47.280 --> 1:06:49.600 You know, it was very simple. You know, Toto had 1:06:49.600 --> 1:06:53.360 this huge success with Total four. It was heartbreaking. We 1:06:53.480 --> 1:06:59.000 had found our chemistry, We had found we had found 1:06:59.160 --> 1:07:03.920 what clicks, what works for us. The mixer had nothing 1:07:03.960 --> 1:07:05.920 to do with the rest of the album. He was 1:07:05.960 --> 1:07:09.960 hearing everything fresh with fresh ears. He had none of 1:07:10.000 --> 1:07:13.880 the band politics in his head when he was mixing 1:07:13.920 --> 1:07:18.840 the album. They had let me do my synthesizers by 1:07:18.920 --> 1:07:22.680 myself in a studio. I'd learned to record. During the 1:07:22.920 --> 1:07:25.280 course of the third album, I had learned to record, 1:07:25.800 --> 1:07:29.120 to learn just basic gain structure and how to record 1:07:29.200 --> 1:07:31.680 my stuff so that the band didn't need to be 1:07:31.760 --> 1:07:35.240 sitting there for hours while I was experimenting, and I 1:07:35.280 --> 1:07:39.480 could record after experimenting for a couple of days, when 1:07:39.520 --> 1:07:42.960 I got some magical thing up, which again in those days, 1:07:43.040 --> 1:07:45.440 a lot of these things didn't have presets. I was 1:07:45.520 --> 1:07:49.200 using modular synthesizers. You talk about the difference between a 1:07:49.240 --> 1:07:53.240 twenty five hundred and a mog modular as opposed to 1:07:53.240 --> 1:07:58.400 a mini mogue. To recreate these things was very difficult. 1:07:58.520 --> 1:08:00.640 Once it all got up and working, I learned how 1:08:00.680 --> 1:08:04.000 to record and it got to be used on the record. 1:08:06.960 --> 1:08:10.480 We had figured it out. But then we had been 1:08:10.520 --> 1:08:14.560 working so hard up to that point. You have to understand, 1:08:14.600 --> 1:08:18.280 we'd been just constantly in the studio or on the 1:08:18.360 --> 1:08:22.160 road up to that point. By the time we did 1:08:22.240 --> 1:08:26.080 Total four and it was hugely successful and we toured 1:08:26.160 --> 1:08:30.559 behind it, everybody was exhausted and kind of needed a break, 1:08:30.720 --> 1:08:34.160 and you know what, it was the wrong time to 1:08:34.240 --> 1:08:36.880 take a break, you know, the old strike while the 1:08:36.920 --> 1:08:39.920 iron is hot. You know, couldn't have been more apropos, 1:08:40.040 --> 1:08:43.360 and we wound up doing a film score so that 1:08:43.400 --> 1:08:47.280 we could stay home. My brother Jeff got married and 1:08:47.320 --> 1:08:52.439 started a family. He wanted to be home. And then 1:08:52.600 --> 1:08:57.000 when we finally got around to making a follow up 1:08:57.000 --> 1:09:02.400 to Total four, you know, a lot of the bad habits, 1:09:02.479 --> 1:09:05.040 let's say, that had been developing, had gotten to a 1:09:05.080 --> 1:09:10.200 point where people just couldn't perform at the level they 1:09:10.200 --> 1:09:15.320 wanted to that we needed them to, and we wound 1:09:15.439 --> 1:09:20.120 up having to switch lead singers, which was we hated doing. 1:09:20.720 --> 1:09:26.240 We hated doing that, you know, it was really it 1:09:26.280 --> 1:09:30.639 was really traumatic for the band. And in that time 1:09:30.720 --> 1:09:33.080 period when I say, strike while the iron is hot, 1:09:33.520 --> 1:09:36.519 all of a sudden, soon after the nineteen eighty two, 1:09:36.560 --> 1:09:39.479 eighty three Grammys whenever, it was all of a sudden, 1:09:39.520 --> 1:09:45.000 that style of music that polished kind of what our 1:09:45.000 --> 1:09:50.160 detractors called corporate rock, you know, suddenly became very unpopular. 1:09:51.680 --> 1:09:54.800 You know, bands like Nirvana were kind of all of 1:09:54.840 --> 1:09:58.479 a sudden, you know, real popular. The whole Seattle thing 1:09:58.600 --> 1:10:04.519 was starting to happen, that whole style of music, you know, 1:10:04.960 --> 1:10:11.160 with these synthesizer extravaganzas, you know what I mean, We're 1:10:11.240 --> 1:10:16.679 becoming very unpopular, you know, and the record company kind 1:10:16.680 --> 1:10:20.400 of let us know. They weren't. They weren't as thrilled 1:10:20.479 --> 1:10:22.559 as they were. I mean, if we had delivered another 1:10:22.880 --> 1:10:25.200 enough other hits, they'd be okay. But you know what, 1:10:25.360 --> 1:10:30.679 it just the music world was changing and we were changing. 1:10:31.240 --> 1:10:34.519 And that's the best way I can think of of 1:10:34.640 --> 1:10:35.040 putting it. 1:10:41.640 --> 1:10:44.919 Let's go back to the first album. Sure, first album. 1:10:44.960 --> 1:10:47.439 You know, you guys had a lot of experience. But 1:10:47.600 --> 1:10:51.160 did you go in there and knock it right out? 1:10:51.320 --> 1:10:52.840 Or was the type of thing where you had so 1:10:52.960 --> 1:10:57.679 much experience and you had enough money to meticulously get 1:10:57.720 --> 1:10:59.880 it how you want? What was the experience recording the 1:11:00.040 --> 1:11:00.719 first album? 1:11:01.320 --> 1:11:03.680 We knocked it right out. You know, we had all 1:11:03.720 --> 1:11:07.320 these great demos, We had all these songs ready to go. 1:11:07.479 --> 1:11:10.800 The record company loved the demos that we had, and 1:11:11.400 --> 1:11:13.720 we went in there like the pros we were and 1:11:13.840 --> 1:11:18.160 knocked it out and had a ball doing it. And 1:11:18.200 --> 1:11:20.479 the record company would come and listen and they were 1:11:20.560 --> 1:11:24.280 loving it. And the first single out of the gate 1:11:24.400 --> 1:11:28.240 pulled the line hit record, you know, boom. 1:11:30.000 --> 1:11:32.080 So once should think it's one thing to play on 1:11:32.120 --> 1:11:35.240 somebody else's hit records. It's quite another to have your 1:11:35.280 --> 1:11:36.240 own hit record. 1:11:36.840 --> 1:11:39.160 It sure is, and we've seen plenty. There had been 1:11:39.200 --> 1:11:42.960 plenty of studio musician bands and I'm not gonna name 1:11:43.000 --> 1:11:45.679 any names, but there were several bands where a lot 1:11:45.760 --> 1:11:50.519 of very very successful studio musicians put bands together, and 1:11:51.840 --> 1:11:54.800 like you said, you know, it was very different to 1:11:56.439 --> 1:11:58.479 just to do that and to actually have it be 1:11:58.600 --> 1:12:01.679 successful and have it clicked, and have the stars align, 1:12:02.200 --> 1:12:04.439 and have the record company back you up and have 1:12:04.520 --> 1:12:07.360 great management at the time that knew how to work 1:12:07.400 --> 1:12:11.320 the record company and have the right representation, and you know, 1:12:11.360 --> 1:12:14.360 the stars aligned, you know for us. 1:12:14.960 --> 1:12:18.679 Okay, now it comes times to make a second record. 1:12:19.200 --> 1:12:21.599 A lot of acts, you know, have the second record 1:12:21.640 --> 1:12:24.880 blues a million reasons because of success on the first one, 1:12:25.040 --> 1:12:27.679 or they took years to write all the material that's 1:12:27.680 --> 1:12:30.759 on the first album. What was the experience with Toto 1:12:30.840 --> 1:12:31.839 on the second album? 1:12:32.280 --> 1:12:34.360 You know, there was a little bit of that there. 1:12:34.479 --> 1:12:38.320 Believe me, I've always been well aware of that. Everyone 1:12:38.400 --> 1:12:42.479 has to read. You know. Again, you kind of hinted 1:12:42.479 --> 1:12:46.479 at it. But the truth is, every band's first album 1:12:46.840 --> 1:12:51.639 is the best stuff they've done their entire life. Okay, 1:12:52.600 --> 1:12:55.400 maybe something was written two weeks ago. But I guarantee 1:12:55.400 --> 1:12:57.840 you there's some song on there that was written when 1:12:57.840 --> 1:13:01.240 they were in high school or something. You know, this 1:13:01.280 --> 1:13:05.360 is the culmination of the best stuff this band has 1:13:05.439 --> 1:13:08.799 done their entire life. This is for every single band 1:13:09.200 --> 1:13:13.280 out there. Okay. Then you go on the road, maybe 1:13:13.320 --> 1:13:16.519 you get divorced, you know whatever. You know, you go 1:13:16.560 --> 1:13:18.920 on the road and within a year you got a 1:13:18.920 --> 1:13:22.280 record company going. You got two months, you got you know, 1:13:22.360 --> 1:13:29.000 maybe three months do it again. You know, it really 1:13:29.080 --> 1:13:32.320 separates the men from the boys. You know, it really 1:13:32.360 --> 1:13:36.200 separates the men from the boys. Every single band you 1:13:36.240 --> 1:13:39.000 can name, their first album was the best shit they 1:13:39.040 --> 1:13:43.479 did their entire life. Okay. And then in those days, 1:13:43.560 --> 1:13:46.479 it was every year we had to do a new album. 1:13:47.280 --> 1:13:50.960 It was every year. Okay. And this is after you've toured. 1:13:51.960 --> 1:13:53.800 Have you spent any time with your family at all. 1:13:53.880 --> 1:13:57.240 They don't care. Give us another We need another one, 1:13:57.280 --> 1:14:00.760 you know, we want another one. Now. We did real good. 1:14:00.800 --> 1:14:03.479 That first album was you did great, Give us another one, 1:14:03.600 --> 1:14:08.760 So sophomore jinks. It's like, to me, it's so obvious. Uh. 1:14:08.840 --> 1:14:11.960 And and that was we still had we had a 1:14:11.960 --> 1:14:13.720 lot of power. You know. It's not like we were 1:14:13.800 --> 1:14:17.120 running out of songs. David Page was still, you know, 1:14:17.200 --> 1:14:20.680 reaching his peak as a songwriter. We all were. There 1:14:20.680 --> 1:14:23.920 were a lot of writers in the band. You know, 1:14:24.000 --> 1:14:26.759 did we get a little cocky after that first album 1:14:26.880 --> 1:14:29.280 did did so good out of the gate? You know 1:14:29.320 --> 1:14:33.800 what I mean? Sure? Sure, Hydro was we were kinda 1:14:34.640 --> 1:14:37.240 there was some aspect about it that, believe me, we 1:14:37.240 --> 1:14:40.200 were going for it. We were. We did get a 1:14:40.240 --> 1:14:44.880 little cocky for sure and kind of thought, wow, we 1:14:45.000 --> 1:14:48.040 can do this. They're they're they're buying it. We looked 1:14:48.040 --> 1:14:51.680 at each other and was like, you know, uh uh, 1:14:51.800 --> 1:14:55.920 there was some definitely self indulgent there. I can speak 1:14:55.960 --> 1:14:58.720 for my song that was on Hydra, the song called 1:14:58.760 --> 1:15:02.599 Secret Love was the weirdest two and a half minutes 1:15:03.600 --> 1:15:05.280 you know what I mean, you'll hear on a major 1:15:05.360 --> 1:15:11.559 label release. I had called in this at Sunset Sound. 1:15:11.600 --> 1:15:14.760 I woke up one morning. I called this place called 1:15:14.840 --> 1:15:19.480 Kasimov Blutener in Larchmont in California, and I rented a harpsichord, 1:15:19.880 --> 1:15:24.719 a clavichord, a Mozart piano. I rented all these these 1:15:24.960 --> 1:15:31.160 vintage keyboards, acoustic keyboards, and had this idea for this 1:15:31.479 --> 1:15:35.400 very strange song and the guys let me do it. 1:15:35.880 --> 1:15:39.360 They let me do it. It's on the album. It's called 1:15:39.400 --> 1:15:42.400 Secret Love. You know, Bobby Kimball did a vocal on it. 1:15:42.479 --> 1:15:46.880 I couldn't believe what he came up with. It's a 1:15:47.040 --> 1:15:50.519 very weird song. We were going for it. We were 1:15:50.520 --> 1:15:54.240 going for it, and we were a little cocky for sure. 1:15:55.320 --> 1:16:00.240 Okay, Hold the line was ubiquitous on the radio, to 1:16:00.280 --> 1:16:04.840 the point where there was even some backlash. The first 1:16:04.920 --> 1:16:07.519 Toto album I bought was the second one, because I 1:16:07.600 --> 1:16:11.720 heard ninety nine on an airplane radio when that used 1:16:11.720 --> 1:16:16.080 to be a thing. I thought that Hydra was really 1:16:16.160 --> 1:16:21.120 pretty good. Yeah, it was nowhere near as successful commercially 1:16:21.120 --> 1:16:24.680 as the first. So when it's all played out, what 1:16:24.720 --> 1:16:26.960 do you guys think? Do you think, Well, maybe we 1:16:27.040 --> 1:16:29.760 didn't do the best work, or the audience didn't get it, 1:16:29.880 --> 1:16:32.880 or what was the review from the inside? 1:16:32.640 --> 1:16:36.400 We love, we loved, we loved Hydra. We loved it. 1:16:38.080 --> 1:16:41.120 Did we get did we get a little cocky? Sure? Now, 1:16:41.160 --> 1:16:44.000 I don't think being cocky is necessarily a bad thing 1:16:44.280 --> 1:16:49.559 unless you get way, way, way too cocky. And you know, 1:16:51.320 --> 1:16:53.400 were there any hole of the lines on it? No? 1:16:53.479 --> 1:16:56.000 But there sure was a song called ninety nine and stuff. 1:16:56.000 --> 1:16:58.960 There's still was stuff that people could relate to and 1:16:59.080 --> 1:17:04.320 was still great songwriting and great production, and you know, 1:17:04.360 --> 1:17:06.519 it's still there was still a lot of very strong 1:17:06.560 --> 1:17:08.200 stuff on there, you know what I mean. 1:17:10.240 --> 1:17:14.080 Okay, on that album, the first album credit for producer 1:17:14.160 --> 1:17:18.080 is the band second one you get Tom Knox, Reggie Fisher. 1:17:18.560 --> 1:17:22.120 Is that just slicing up the credit for money or 1:17:22.280 --> 1:17:25.040 why were other people involved in What did they do well? 1:17:25.160 --> 1:17:28.519 I I you know, Tom Knox was our longtime engineer. 1:17:28.600 --> 1:17:31.040 Tom Knox did the did the demos when the guys 1:17:31.040 --> 1:17:33.920 did the demos. He engineered and mixed all of the 1:17:33.960 --> 1:17:38.120 first album. Reggie Fisher, the only thing Reggie Fisher did 1:17:38.240 --> 1:17:41.720 was he did my synthesizer stuff. You know. That's the 1:17:41.760 --> 1:17:45.160 only thing Reggie Fisher did on Hydro was my synthesizer stuff, 1:17:45.200 --> 1:17:48.880 which by then I had gotten this modular synthesizer and 1:17:48.960 --> 1:17:52.599 I it lived at Reggie's house. Reggie had a home 1:17:52.680 --> 1:17:55.400 studio and that's where I was living at the time, 1:17:56.120 --> 1:17:59.400 and you know what I mean, just tweaking it and 1:17:59.439 --> 1:18:03.360 working on this song secret Love. Yeah, I kind of 1:18:03.400 --> 1:18:06.599 saw where they got. I don't know if they got 1:18:06.600 --> 1:18:10.439 production credit. I don't think they ever officially got production credit, 1:18:10.560 --> 1:18:13.080 regardless of what it might say on the record. We 1:18:13.080 --> 1:18:17.120 were the producers. Again, Toto was always the producer, except 1:18:17.200 --> 1:18:19.720 on the third album it was I believe it was 1:18:19.800 --> 1:18:23.080 co produced by Jeff Workman, who was our engineer and 1:18:23.120 --> 1:18:24.240 mixer on the third album. 1:18:24.360 --> 1:18:26.479 Okay, so why did you bring in Workmen? 1:18:28.040 --> 1:18:33.080 You know, lou especially Luke, wanted us. We were kind 1:18:33.080 --> 1:18:36.559 of whereas Toto did a lot of If you listen 1:18:37.160 --> 1:18:40.800 to everything on the first album and on Hydra, there 1:18:40.840 --> 1:18:43.080 was plenty of rock and roll. We thought we were 1:18:43.240 --> 1:18:46.639 very kind of all over the map, doing all kinds 1:18:46.640 --> 1:18:49.559 of different stuff. The things that were getting attention were 1:18:49.560 --> 1:18:53.000 the things like ninety nine, like the R and B 1:18:53.160 --> 1:18:57.600 stuff like Georgie Porgy. Some of the softer stuff was 1:18:57.640 --> 1:19:00.920 getting a little bit too much attention, especially for Luke, 1:19:00.920 --> 1:19:03.479 who was a raal rock and roller, and we wanted 1:19:03.520 --> 1:19:05.600 to bring in a more rock and roll guy, a 1:19:05.640 --> 1:19:10.000 guy who would turn the guitars up louder, a guy 1:19:10.040 --> 1:19:12.920 with some rock and roll experience. You know. 1:19:14.600 --> 1:19:17.680 Okay, that album is a stiff, So what do you 1:19:17.720 --> 1:19:18.479 think about that? 1:19:21.320 --> 1:19:23.559 It was a stiff? There's still some stuff on there 1:19:23.600 --> 1:19:28.120 that that I'm proud of. Jeff Workman and I did 1:19:28.160 --> 1:19:32.200 not get along at all during the making of the record. 1:19:32.960 --> 1:19:36.680 You know, we didn't get along at all. He was 1:19:36.800 --> 1:19:39.760 used to working with, you know, rock and roll bands, 1:19:39.800 --> 1:19:44.439 Like who did he work with was guns and not 1:19:44.479 --> 1:19:47.839 Guns n' Roses, but worked with Queen. 1:19:47.960 --> 1:19:49.519 He worked with a million bands. 1:19:49.840 --> 1:19:51.720 Yeah, he worked with a million bands. And you know what, 1:19:51.800 --> 1:19:54.680 I think he was used to being the if there 1:19:54.800 --> 1:19:57.360 was a second keyboard player, if there was a guy 1:19:57.360 --> 1:20:00.040 who did a little bit of sense stuff, he he 1:20:00.120 --> 1:20:02.840 did that. He was the guy who did that on 1:20:02.880 --> 1:20:07.080 a lot of the stuff he did. I, you know, 1:20:07.160 --> 1:20:10.080 that was my job, and him and I bumped head's 1:20:10.320 --> 1:20:13.439 big time during the making of that record. Now, the 1:20:13.479 --> 1:20:17.639 only reason I even mentioned that is because after that record, 1:20:19.360 --> 1:20:22.280 I while we were making that record, while the guys 1:20:22.280 --> 1:20:25.400 were in the studio with Workmen, I was working away 1:20:25.439 --> 1:20:30.000 at David Page's house with all my synthesizers, with all 1:20:30.040 --> 1:20:33.640 this modular gear, and I had an eight track. I 1:20:33.680 --> 1:20:37.760 had an eight track tape machine, and I transferred the 1:20:37.880 --> 1:20:40.120 rough rhythm tracks to two of the tracks of the 1:20:40.200 --> 1:20:44.400 eight track, and I was going to experiment I was 1:20:44.439 --> 1:20:47.400 going to figure out what I would do when it 1:20:47.439 --> 1:20:53.200 was time to record the synthesizers for that album. You know, 1:20:53.400 --> 1:20:55.600 because when I would record, you know, i'd have the 1:20:55.640 --> 1:20:58.360 whole band would be there. You know, those guys were 1:20:58.439 --> 1:21:01.400 so good, they were so fat, they were so good 1:21:01.400 --> 1:21:06.559 at what they did. And whereas I could do things fast, 1:21:06.640 --> 1:21:09.320 I got hired because I could. You know, Quincy Jones, 1:21:09.360 --> 1:21:11.559 David Foster would hire me because I could do the 1:21:11.560 --> 1:21:14.200 synth over dubs on three songs and in three hours. 1:21:14.720 --> 1:21:18.800 I could be that guy. But I wanted what I 1:21:18.840 --> 1:21:21.759 did in Toto to be special. This was my band. 1:21:22.800 --> 1:21:26.600 Whereas what when Luke played a guitar solo, whether regardless 1:21:26.600 --> 1:21:29.719 of whether it was for his own album, a Toto album, 1:21:30.120 --> 1:21:34.439 a Quincy Jones album, a Michael Jackson, he played the same, great, 1:21:34.520 --> 1:21:37.640 amazing guitar solo. You know, My brother Jeff played the 1:21:38.000 --> 1:21:40.280 you know, I mean Jeff, I have to say stretched 1:21:40.280 --> 1:21:43.639 with Africa and with some other things because it was Toto, 1:21:44.120 --> 1:21:47.240 he would indulge a little bit. But anyway, the point 1:21:47.280 --> 1:21:49.960 being that these guys were real fast, and I was 1:21:50.000 --> 1:21:53.920 always thinking like an arranger, and I wanted the respect 1:21:54.000 --> 1:21:56.720 that an arranger got I wanted to take home. I 1:21:56.720 --> 1:21:59.280 wanted to write out my parts. I wanted to try 1:21:59.320 --> 1:22:03.040 different voices. I didn't want to just improvise a string 1:22:03.160 --> 1:22:07.040 arrangement like I was called upon to do a whole bunch. Yeah. 1:22:07.080 --> 1:22:11.720 I could do that, but you know what, arrangers got 1:22:11.760 --> 1:22:14.720 to try different voicings. They try it, they check it out, 1:22:14.800 --> 1:22:17.280 they try a different voicing. Ooh, this is better. They 1:22:17.960 --> 1:22:21.120 got to work on things by themselves. I wanted to 1:22:21.600 --> 1:22:26.679 look at my synthesizers like that. Anyway, back to the story. 1:22:26.920 --> 1:22:30.040 On this eight track, I was going to experiment, and 1:22:30.080 --> 1:22:31.960 then once I knew what I was going to do, 1:22:32.120 --> 1:22:34.520 that's what I would do when I got time to overdub. 1:22:34.880 --> 1:22:39.080 But the reality was on this eight track, I was, 1:22:39.320 --> 1:22:42.840 you know, I was capturing magic. I was doing stuff 1:22:42.840 --> 1:22:46.760 with a modular synthesizer that I'd never be able to recreate, 1:22:47.600 --> 1:22:53.080 you know, and I was bouncing things down. I was. Anyway, 1:22:53.240 --> 1:22:56.480 I wound up when I got time to do the synthesizers. 1:22:56.720 --> 1:23:00.040 Nobody even heard that stuff, and it was so some 1:23:00.120 --> 1:23:03.240 of the best work I'd ever done, and no one 1:23:03.360 --> 1:23:07.519 to this day has even heard that stuff. I wound 1:23:07.640 --> 1:23:10.760 up just doing synth stuff very I was very frustrated, 1:23:10.760 --> 1:23:13.439 but just wound up doing what I always did in 1:23:13.479 --> 1:23:17.040 the studio with all the guys there with their arms 1:23:17.040 --> 1:23:21.880 folded behind me, going hurry up, and doing what I 1:23:21.960 --> 1:23:24.960 typically did on a Toto album. Now, the good part 1:23:25.000 --> 1:23:29.519 of the story is that for the next album, the 1:23:29.560 --> 1:23:32.320 guys told me they were gonna make me a tape. 1:23:32.760 --> 1:23:35.120 You know. The only reason that stuff, by the way, 1:23:35.200 --> 1:23:37.479 couldn't be used was because it was on eight track. 1:23:38.240 --> 1:23:40.920 It wasn't on the right format. By then, we had 1:23:40.960 --> 1:23:44.280 Sympty and you could sync up another piece of tape. 1:23:44.439 --> 1:23:48.240 You could add tracks, you know. But the only reason 1:23:48.320 --> 1:23:50.840 why that couldn't be used was because I'd recorded it 1:23:50.880 --> 1:23:53.479 myself and it was on this eight track. It was 1:23:53.520 --> 1:23:56.679 on this half inch tape. So for the next album, 1:23:56.920 --> 1:24:02.760 Total four, the guy said they would make me, I know, 1:24:02.840 --> 1:24:06.680 this is an acceptable language anymore, but they'd make me 1:24:06.720 --> 1:24:08.519 a slave tape. They'd make me a tape where I 1:24:08.520 --> 1:24:11.880 could work out my ideas. But they said, but we 1:24:12.000 --> 1:24:15.360 can't keep anything you do. You're not an engineer, you know. 1:24:15.600 --> 1:24:19.599 We always hired the best engineers, and engineers are definitely 1:24:19.600 --> 1:24:23.559 put on a pedestal with us. So the thing about 1:24:23.640 --> 1:24:26.479 Jeff Workman, the guy who I bumped heads with so 1:24:26.600 --> 1:24:30.600 much on that third album, he started hanging out. He 1:24:30.680 --> 1:24:33.080 started hanging out at David's house a lot. Him and 1:24:33.160 --> 1:24:38.040 David became close friends, and he lived very close by. 1:24:38.880 --> 1:24:43.320 And I started asking him all these real stupid questions. 1:24:43.800 --> 1:24:48.679 I said, Jeff, if I was to record myself, why 1:24:48.720 --> 1:24:54.280 couldn't they use what I recorded? And he went on 1:24:54.840 --> 1:24:59.559 to teach me all about gain structure. How do I 1:24:59.640 --> 1:25:03.400 know I'm getting the right level into a harmonizer? Where 1:25:03.400 --> 1:25:05.160 do I turn up? Do I turn it up there? 1:25:05.280 --> 1:25:08.439 When do I turn things up? He taught me all 1:25:08.479 --> 1:25:14.439 this basic gain structure, basic, all about zero vu. He 1:25:14.680 --> 1:25:18.639 was the most generous, sweetest guy all of a sudden, 1:25:19.160 --> 1:25:24.000 who taught me how to record, and they wound up 1:25:24.080 --> 1:25:27.800 using I did ninety five percent of the synthesizers on 1:25:27.840 --> 1:25:31.920 Total four I recorded, and they used every bit of it. 1:25:33.000 --> 1:25:35.880 You know, they used all of it because of what 1:25:36.040 --> 1:25:37.120 Jeff Workman taught me. 1:25:38.200 --> 1:25:44.240 Okay, just to be clear, from statistically and from the outside, 1:25:44.880 --> 1:25:48.679 the third album was going in the wrong direction. Did 1:25:48.720 --> 1:25:51.839 you feel that in the band? Did you feel pressure 1:25:52.479 --> 1:25:53.120 or did you not? 1:25:55.080 --> 1:25:57.479 We definitely felt pressure. We definitely felt pressure from the 1:25:57.520 --> 1:26:02.959 record company. They were not happy. There was no obvious singles. 1:26:04.040 --> 1:26:06.160 It was tougher, it had more of a rock and 1:26:06.240 --> 1:26:11.240 roll thing to it. I you know, there's personal I 1:26:11.360 --> 1:26:18.320 have some personal feelings about the way the priorities, the 1:26:18.360 --> 1:26:22.040 band's priorities, which were typical in those days where you know, 1:26:22.080 --> 1:26:24.920 where bands would spend three days on a bass drum sound, 1:26:25.560 --> 1:26:28.240 but then they'd have to mix it. They'd have to 1:26:28.280 --> 1:26:31.920 mix this song like you know what I mean, and 1:26:32.000 --> 1:26:34.439 in less than a day with a mixer that had 1:26:34.439 --> 1:26:36.519 been up for three days or something like that. Just 1:26:37.840 --> 1:26:41.680 the priorities always seemed off to me, But it was 1:26:41.800 --> 1:26:45.479 just the way it was. Bottom line is, if the 1:26:45.560 --> 1:26:48.040 songs were right, it wouldn't have mattered, right, you know 1:26:48.120 --> 1:26:51.400 what I mean, If the songs were where the shit, 1:26:52.040 --> 1:26:53.559 you know what I mean, it would have cut through 1:26:53.600 --> 1:26:59.080 all those details. Yeah, it just again you got to 1:26:59.120 --> 1:27:02.080 remember we're doing this. This is every year, We're going 1:27:02.120 --> 1:27:05.479 to Europe and Japan and the United States and trying 1:27:05.479 --> 1:27:10.160 to keep our home lives together, and and you know, 1:27:10.200 --> 1:27:13.160 having to do this being pointed at, going do it again, 1:27:13.320 --> 1:27:14.920 you know what I mean, get in there again. It 1:27:15.439 --> 1:27:20.320 was a hard life. You know, it's not easy where 1:27:20.360 --> 1:27:22.120 we weren't a band that was just kind of a 1:27:22.200 --> 1:27:25.960 roots thing where someone wrote a song and had their 1:27:26.040 --> 1:27:29.280 journal and had great lyrics and we would bang it 1:27:29.320 --> 1:27:33.200 out on our instruments, and you know, that was it 1:27:33.320 --> 1:27:35.879 we were. We loved we loved being in the studio. 1:27:35.920 --> 1:27:40.840 We loved production. I loved tweaking synthesizers and they're being 1:27:40.960 --> 1:27:44.479 arrangement and string arrangements and you know what I mean. 1:27:44.640 --> 1:27:47.160 We loved we loved that stuff. You know. 1:27:48.280 --> 1:27:52.600 Okay, so you're making the fourth record. To what degree 1:27:53.360 --> 1:27:55.519 do you feel you're on the right track when you're 1:27:55.520 --> 1:27:56.200 making it. 1:27:56.640 --> 1:28:00.000 Right out of the gate. We knew we were under pressure. 1:27:59.840 --> 1:28:02.519 We knew the record company was kind of going, come on, guys. 1:28:02.760 --> 1:28:06.200 You know, we were so good out of the gate, 1:28:06.960 --> 1:28:09.240 you know, and then the hydra comes and yeah, there's 1:28:09.320 --> 1:28:12.840 ninety nine, but it's now we're near the level that 1:28:12.920 --> 1:28:15.320 the first album is on. And then the third album 1:28:15.439 --> 1:28:18.960 is even worse, where all of a sudden feeling big 1:28:19.000 --> 1:28:24.160 pressure from the record company and David Page, god bless him, 1:28:24.200 --> 1:28:27.040 the first thing he writes for the new album is 1:28:27.080 --> 1:28:32.880 this song Rosanna. The first thing he writes is him 1:28:33.320 --> 1:28:37.600 trying his best to write the best possible song that 1:28:37.760 --> 1:28:41.360 exploits the talents of the band while still being commercial, 1:28:41.880 --> 1:28:44.960 while still being a hit record. And that's the first 1:28:44.960 --> 1:28:49.200 thing he writes. That's the first thing we record, you know, 1:28:49.280 --> 1:28:51.840 and we all believed in it and thought it was hip. 1:28:52.400 --> 1:28:54.599 And you know what I mean, there's this amazing drum 1:28:54.640 --> 1:28:58.519 beat that starts it off. It was totally Toto. The 1:28:58.600 --> 1:29:04.400 horn arrangement, two lead vocals, it changes keys, but yet 1:29:04.400 --> 1:29:07.200 it's got a payoff, It's got a really strong chorus. 1:29:08.200 --> 1:29:10.439 It was it was, you know what I mean. I 1:29:10.600 --> 1:29:13.120 got to spend you know what I mean, you would 1:29:13.120 --> 1:29:15.000 have You wouldn't believe how long I spent on that 1:29:15.040 --> 1:29:19.719 synthesizer solo on Rosanna, you know. So to me, that's 1:29:19.720 --> 1:29:22.280 something I'm so proud of because I got I was 1:29:22.600 --> 1:29:25.960 very indulgent. That was a perfect case of something I 1:29:26.000 --> 1:29:28.840 could have never done in the studio with the clock 1:29:28.920 --> 1:29:33.599 ticking and five producers waiting for me to blow a solo. 1:29:34.040 --> 1:29:37.680 I wasn't that guy. But I arranged this thing. I 1:29:37.760 --> 1:29:41.599 did these experiments, I did all kinds of stuff and 1:29:41.680 --> 1:29:45.040 delivered this solo on two tracks as all the mixer 1:29:45.120 --> 1:29:48.600 had since solo left and since solo right, you know. 1:29:49.000 --> 1:29:52.160 And he didn't ask who recorded it or how it 1:29:52.280 --> 1:29:55.320 was recorded. All z he knew was that he loved 1:29:55.360 --> 1:29:59.120 it and cranked it up, you know. And and it 1:29:59.280 --> 1:30:03.679 ends with paid doing this New Orleans third line stuff. 1:30:03.720 --> 1:30:09.240 It was very, very Toto and it was our first 1:30:09.280 --> 1:30:11.760 single and it did great right out of the gate. 1:30:12.800 --> 1:30:16.080 Okay, just to be clear, Rosanna was the first song written, 1:30:16.720 --> 1:30:19.959 first song recorded. But when you went in the studio, 1:30:20.080 --> 1:30:22.400 did you have all the songs. 1:30:23.240 --> 1:30:25.639 They were? You know, there was a batch, definitely. Page 1:30:25.680 --> 1:30:30.400 always had a batch of songs ready to go. You know, 1:30:30.439 --> 1:30:32.680 a lot of it came together. A lot of the 1:30:32.720 --> 1:30:35.719 writing would come together right there in the studio. David 1:30:35.840 --> 1:30:39.040 wasn't afraid to have a verse and a chorus and 1:30:39.120 --> 1:30:41.080 an idea for a bridge, and he would sit there 1:30:41.080 --> 1:30:44.080 with my brother Jeff. You know, he would sit there 1:30:44.200 --> 1:30:47.640 across from Jeff and they would kind of arrange it 1:30:47.760 --> 1:30:50.160 together what they were going to cut that day. And 1:30:50.240 --> 1:30:52.640 believe me, a lot of the finishing touches of the 1:30:52.720 --> 1:30:56.840 song would come together right then, of the track would 1:30:56.880 --> 1:30:59.320 come together right then, and then it'd be like, all right, 1:30:59.400 --> 1:31:01.479 are we ready, let's cut this, you. 1:31:01.439 --> 1:31:08.040 Know, Okay, revisiting an overhashed subject. How did you know Roseanne? 1:31:08.080 --> 1:31:08.519 Our kid? 1:31:10.640 --> 1:31:13.479 I knew Rosanna. I met her at you know, a 1:31:13.600 --> 1:31:18.720 very close friend of the band, James Newton Howard. It 1:31:18.840 --> 1:31:23.200 was at the reception to he had gotten married and 1:31:23.240 --> 1:31:25.840 we're at the reception that was at his house, and 1:31:25.880 --> 1:31:28.880 I met Rosanna that night. I met Rosanna at the 1:31:28.920 --> 1:31:33.519 reception and we had become an item. And she started 1:31:33.560 --> 1:31:37.080 coming to the studio and everybody was. You know, Rosanna 1:31:37.120 --> 1:31:40.920 has been amused for a lot of people. You know, 1:31:41.520 --> 1:31:44.040 she's always been a lover of music. She's always been 1:31:44.080 --> 1:31:51.000 incredibly supportive. And you know, David didn't have a title 1:31:51.040 --> 1:31:53.920 for a song yet, and I brought her over to 1:31:54.360 --> 1:31:58.000 David's house while he was working, while he was putting 1:31:58.000 --> 1:32:01.160 together Rosanna, and I think he and I think he 1:32:01.240 --> 1:32:03.479 might have been a little bit smitten with her himself, 1:32:03.520 --> 1:32:07.640 which I wouldn't blame him. She was, she was, she was, 1:32:08.479 --> 1:32:16.360 she wasn't is really something And you know, what can I. 1:32:16.320 --> 1:32:19.679 Say, Okay, when the record comes out, are you still 1:32:19.680 --> 1:32:23.200 an item? Whether you are or not, how does it 1:32:23.240 --> 1:32:26.080 affect your relationship with her? And how does she handle it? 1:32:26.400 --> 1:32:28.960 Because the news right away. Whatever, the real story is 1:32:29.200 --> 1:32:32.080 news right away, and all the media is that it's 1:32:32.120 --> 1:32:33.720 based on Roseanna Arcat. 1:32:35.000 --> 1:32:37.000 Sure. No. And she was on the road. She went 1:32:37.000 --> 1:32:39.400 on the road with us. She did a world tour 1:32:39.439 --> 1:32:43.200 with us. And this is when her career was you know, 1:32:43.240 --> 1:32:45.360 she was getting we lived together at this point, and 1:32:45.400 --> 1:32:50.720 she was getting scripts from huge movies every day. I 1:32:51.160 --> 1:32:56.200 can't believe. And I'm not the only one she did 1:32:56.240 --> 1:32:58.320 this with. And she just she wanted to come on 1:32:58.360 --> 1:33:01.080 the road with us. She loved music. She did a 1:33:01.120 --> 1:33:05.559 whole world tour with us. You know, we were still 1:33:05.680 --> 1:33:10.960 very much an item. Yeah, it was, and people were 1:33:11.000 --> 1:33:14.000 assuming that it was written by me. It was not. 1:33:14.320 --> 1:33:17.720 It was all that was all David Page. I believe me. 1:33:17.800 --> 1:33:20.600 I worked my ass off on that song, you know, 1:33:20.640 --> 1:33:23.320 on that SyncE solo and all those keyboard parts and 1:33:23.360 --> 1:33:26.559 stuff like that. We were all very proud of that 1:33:26.680 --> 1:33:30.559 song and thought it was a great representation of who 1:33:30.560 --> 1:33:33.640 we were as a band and what we were about. 1:33:33.720 --> 1:33:36.479 And and I think she loved it for she even 1:33:36.880 --> 1:33:40.400 she even they did some some of the promotion for 1:33:40.479 --> 1:33:45.280 the single she was involved with. Now after that, you know, 1:33:45.479 --> 1:33:48.400 years after that, right, it becomes this thing where like 1:33:48.560 --> 1:33:54.639 every talk show she does, right, you know, with the 1:33:54.640 --> 1:33:58.160 the questions they ask, right, of course, they bring that up. 1:33:58.320 --> 1:34:01.479 And I think she I wouldn't blame and I didn't 1:34:01.479 --> 1:34:04.280 blame her a bit for getting very very tired of 1:34:04.320 --> 1:34:07.200 getting that question, you know what I mean. I mean, 1:34:07.240 --> 1:34:09.920 from Letterman, from you know, you name it. They would 1:34:09.920 --> 1:34:13.479 bring that up while she was out promoting a movie 1:34:13.560 --> 1:34:17.800 or promoting this or that. Right, these these people, you know, 1:34:18.120 --> 1:34:21.400 would would I think it was kind of lazy on 1:34:21.479 --> 1:34:23.960 a lot of their parts. You know, I understand some 1:34:24.080 --> 1:34:25.800 of it, right, they want to have something else to 1:34:25.840 --> 1:34:28.320 talk about, but they would bring that up for like 1:34:28.360 --> 1:34:31.600 the next ten years, this poor girl. Every time she 1:34:31.720 --> 1:34:34.640 did a talk show, they'd bring up Rosanna, you know 1:34:34.640 --> 1:34:39.200 what I mean. And at some point, you know, Rosanna 1:34:39.320 --> 1:34:41.920 was always into Prague stuff, and she wound up being 1:34:41.920 --> 1:34:48.360 with Peter Gabriel, and you know, she started disparaging the song. 1:34:49.240 --> 1:34:53.680 You know, even I think just to I thought it 1:34:53.720 --> 1:34:57.120 was to discourage people from bringing it up. You know, 1:34:57.160 --> 1:34:59.960 I didn't take it as I didn't take it very personal. 1:35:00.400 --> 1:35:02.479 You know, I kind of understood she just got kind 1:35:02.479 --> 1:35:05.719 of tired of being asked that that lame question. 1:35:06.080 --> 1:35:20.439 You know, Okay, Total four is a monster with varying 1:35:20.600 --> 1:35:27.120 hit tracks. What's the experience on the inside it. 1:35:29.720 --> 1:35:34.519 We were feeling very good. We delivered. We delivered. You know, 1:35:34.920 --> 1:35:39.040 we were under pressure. We were under pressure, and we delivered. 1:35:39.640 --> 1:35:44.200 We went to some known things. Al Schmidt, a guy 1:35:44.240 --> 1:35:49.160 who worked with our fathers, you know, a great engineer, 1:35:49.240 --> 1:35:53.800 cut the basic tracks. There was nothing fancy. We weren't 1:35:53.880 --> 1:35:57.240 using the flavor of the month in any way. Even 1:35:57.280 --> 1:36:01.000 though Greg Ladani was this hot young man mixer, his 1:36:01.120 --> 1:36:05.120 career was really on the uprise. And and Greg mixed 1:36:05.160 --> 1:36:08.880 the whole album, and like I said, I loved it 1:36:08.960 --> 1:36:13.080 because before the mixer, whoever recorded our album would be 1:36:13.240 --> 1:36:17.200 there the whole time. And of course there's there's pecking 1:36:17.320 --> 1:36:21.679 orders in bands, understandably, you know, David Page and Jeff, 1:36:21.760 --> 1:36:24.720 my brother Jeff, had a lot more clout than I 1:36:24.800 --> 1:36:28.880 did as far as you know what I mean, band's 1:36:28.920 --> 1:36:32.680 pecking orders. I'm sure John Lennon and Paul McCartney had 1:36:32.680 --> 1:36:37.120 a more clout than what Ringo's opinion was in certain 1:36:37.200 --> 1:36:40.960 situations as far as the producers and engineers went that 1:36:41.080 --> 1:36:47.320 were around him. It's understandable, but and so certain band. 1:36:49.240 --> 1:36:55.439 You know, prejudices and habits and people's opinions get in 1:36:56.200 --> 1:36:58.439 these guys' heads. And what I loved was, like I 1:36:58.479 --> 1:37:01.960 said before, Greg Ladani was just this fresh, you know, 1:37:02.000 --> 1:37:05.519 he had fresh ears. He didn't he didn't know any 1:37:05.520 --> 1:37:10.120 of the banded politics. You know. I actually remember David 1:37:10.160 --> 1:37:12.280 after we heard we heard a mix of Rosanna, and 1:37:12.320 --> 1:37:15.000 we're all we were all kind of blown away with 1:37:15.080 --> 1:37:17.240 how it had come out. You know, no one had 1:37:17.280 --> 1:37:20.840 heard the whole since solo put together in the song 1:37:20.960 --> 1:37:24.639 itself next to Luke's guitar solo, and it all came 1:37:24.680 --> 1:37:28.240 together and I'll never forget. After we heard it mixed, 1:37:30.040 --> 1:37:32.920 we walked out of the room and David Pate said 1:37:32.960 --> 1:37:35.439 to me, He goes, I'll never forget this. He says, 1:37:35.479 --> 1:37:37.600 you know, Ladanie didn't know that you're not supposed to 1:37:37.640 --> 1:37:43.559 turn up the sense that loud was. This was the 1:37:43.600 --> 1:37:45.160 first thing he said to me, and we were just 1:37:45.200 --> 1:37:48.960 where we were cracking up. You know, Like I said, 1:37:49.040 --> 1:37:51.640 he didn't have those banded politics in his ears. He 1:37:51.880 --> 1:37:55.120 just did it the way he heard it, mixed it 1:37:55.200 --> 1:37:57.000 the way he heard it. That's the way he did 1:37:57.000 --> 1:38:01.360 the whole album and it was very successful. So you asked, 1:38:01.360 --> 1:38:03.200 what was it like in the band. We were feeling 1:38:03.240 --> 1:38:06.640 pretty good about ourselves. We delivered. We delivered in a 1:38:06.640 --> 1:38:08.760 big way. We were up against the wall, and you 1:38:08.840 --> 1:38:11.280 know what, we rose to the occasion. 1:38:12.400 --> 1:38:16.360 Okay, Toto is a band that has gotten a lot 1:38:16.400 --> 1:38:19.200 of shit, a lot of backlash from day one, day 1:38:19.200 --> 1:38:24.680 one at studio musicians, I certainly know Lukethur has a 1:38:24.720 --> 1:38:28.240 thin skin on this topic. Or whoever, everybody's got a 1:38:28.240 --> 1:38:32.840 different identity. To what degree were you bothered or bothered 1:38:32.920 --> 1:38:33.360 by that? 1:38:34.640 --> 1:38:38.120 I understood it from day one, and I never could 1:38:38.280 --> 1:38:41.680 understand why the other guys couldn't understand it. Okay, the 1:38:41.840 --> 1:38:47.920 people that are writing about us are journalists, which means 1:38:47.920 --> 1:38:53.040 they're probably they were English majors in school. Okay, words 1:38:53.800 --> 1:39:00.320 are very very important to them. Okay, all right, they 1:39:00.400 --> 1:39:05.200 care about words. We were all musos. Okay. We were 1:39:05.280 --> 1:39:08.599 all about the pocket and the drum and the feel 1:39:08.760 --> 1:39:12.080 and this and look at that, those great chord changes 1:39:12.280 --> 1:39:17.000 and that melody, What a great melody, and all these 1:39:17.120 --> 1:39:21.439 things that these writers that's way down on the list. 1:39:21.960 --> 1:39:27.760 What's the first thing they're looking at? The words? It's 1:39:27.920 --> 1:39:34.360 rolling stone magazine. Bob Dylan is at the peak. He's 1:39:34.439 --> 1:39:39.559 the best. Okay, listen to his words. He's the poet 1:39:39.600 --> 1:39:44.760 of the generation. All right, words are all important. And 1:39:44.800 --> 1:39:48.519 you know what, where Toto, I can't completely throw us 1:39:48.600 --> 1:39:51.240 under the bus. There were times where guys would make 1:39:51.240 --> 1:39:54.600 an effort. There was no one in the band. We 1:39:54.640 --> 1:39:57.479 didn't grow up with that guy who was the lead singer, 1:39:57.680 --> 1:40:01.559 who kept a journal, who kept who was the poet 1:40:01.600 --> 1:40:05.240 of the band. That wasn't part of the equation with Toto. 1:40:05.840 --> 1:40:09.200 We were all musicians. It was all about the playing 1:40:09.920 --> 1:40:15.600 all those things I told you, and quite frankly, often lyrics, 1:40:15.640 --> 1:40:19.559 not on every song, but a lot of times. Yeah, 1:40:19.600 --> 1:40:22.559 we'd spend three days on the drum sound, but you 1:40:22.640 --> 1:40:26.240 know what, the lyrics would get written the night before 1:40:26.920 --> 1:40:30.559 the vocal. The lead vocal had to get done. Okay. 1:40:31.479 --> 1:40:33.200 I wish I could tell you, you know, we spent 1:40:33.400 --> 1:40:38.519 two weeks on those lyrics. Hell no, okay. And when 1:40:38.520 --> 1:40:42.440 you're talking about this is when that distinction between records 1:40:42.680 --> 1:40:47.920 and songs comes in. Okay, Because on records, which is 1:40:48.000 --> 1:40:51.040 kind of more what we were about. I think if 1:40:51.040 --> 1:40:53.679 you had to make that distinction, we were guys who 1:40:53.720 --> 1:41:00.559 made records. Okay, lyrics sometimes, okay, Louie Louis whatever. There's 1:41:00.600 --> 1:41:02.800 all these records you can name that. You know what. 1:41:04.080 --> 1:41:06.519 The words weren't that important. It was about the production, 1:41:06.680 --> 1:41:09.360 It was about the feeling, it was about the dance ability, 1:41:09.800 --> 1:41:12.280 it was about this cool sound, it was about the 1:41:13.120 --> 1:41:17.280 horn arrangement. Words weren't number one, you know, the way 1:41:17.320 --> 1:41:20.880 they were when you're talking about Bob Dylan, you know 1:41:21.080 --> 1:41:24.599 when you're talking about Van Morrison. You know, now, we 1:41:24.720 --> 1:41:28.000 loved great lyrics. We loved Joni Mitchell, we loved Steely 1:41:28.160 --> 1:41:31.839 Dan or the Eagles. We loved great lyrics. 1:41:32.040 --> 1:41:32.479 It just. 1:41:33.960 --> 1:41:39.760 It wasn't our priority, quite frankly. And how can you 1:41:39.800 --> 1:41:44.639 be surprised when these writers, these English majors, they would 1:41:44.800 --> 1:41:46.439 know a deep pocket if it hit him in the 1:41:46.479 --> 1:41:49.679 back of the head. Maybe, but you know what, they're 1:41:49.680 --> 1:41:51.920 going to read your lyrics and if you're rhyming Moon 1:41:52.000 --> 1:41:55.040 with June, they're going to say this sucks. This is 1:41:55.080 --> 1:41:56.960 I would get a D on this if I handed 1:41:57.000 --> 1:42:01.280 this poem in in English class at my college. You know, 1:42:02.320 --> 1:42:05.760 it was bad poetry to them, and the guys would 1:42:05.800 --> 1:42:08.479 be It would be funny because I would see they'd 1:42:08.520 --> 1:42:13.160 be so shocked and hurt, and believe me bad when 1:42:13.160 --> 1:42:15.519 you work so hard on something and you spend all 1:42:15.520 --> 1:42:17.960 this time away from your family and you put your 1:42:18.000 --> 1:42:21.640 heart and soul in something, to hear somebody just completely 1:42:21.640 --> 1:42:29.400 say it's shit. It hurts, absolutely, absolutely it hurts. But 1:42:31.360 --> 1:42:33.800 you know Elton John got to start off with those 1:42:33.840 --> 1:42:37.400 incredible Bernie top and lyrics. He'd start off with that. 1:42:38.520 --> 1:42:41.720 The song wouldn't even start being written without those that 1:42:41.880 --> 1:42:47.519 amazing poetry in front of them. You know, leave on, 1:42:48.240 --> 1:42:52.880 burn down the mission name any Elton tune and the 1:42:53.000 --> 1:42:56.880 lyrics are amazing, you know what I mean? You know 1:42:57.080 --> 1:42:59.320 the Eagles, it would be maybe be after the fact, 1:42:59.400 --> 1:43:03.160 but believe me, they held such high importance, more so 1:43:03.520 --> 1:43:08.240 than than their priorities were very different than a band Toto. 1:43:08.400 --> 1:43:12.240 You know, they would never let moon in June or 1:43:12.280 --> 1:43:14.960 saying uh right there from the start, you know, rhyme 1:43:15.040 --> 1:43:17.200 it with the word heart like we did I think 1:43:17.280 --> 1:43:20.439 three times in our lyrics or something. They would there'd 1:43:20.439 --> 1:43:24.200 be someone in that band going no way. They would 1:43:24.200 --> 1:43:26.640 work harder. They'd bring in a J. D. Souther to 1:43:26.680 --> 1:43:31.439 help them elevate the lyrics. You know, we were being 1:43:31.479 --> 1:43:34.519 the best version of ourselves that we could be. And 1:43:36.960 --> 1:43:39.559 I think all of us wish the lyrics were better sometimes. 1:43:39.560 --> 1:43:42.679 And I know, guys, you know, Lucather brought in Randy 1:43:42.720 --> 1:43:49.720 Goodrum to do one of his second big ballad on 1:43:49.760 --> 1:43:52.320 the first album. Luke wrote the lyrics himself to his 1:43:52.360 --> 1:43:54.920 big ballad that you know, but on the on uh 1:43:55.080 --> 1:43:58.280 or I mean on the fourth album. But then later 1:43:58.320 --> 1:44:01.120 on Luke had another big song and brought in Randy Goodrum, 1:44:01.160 --> 1:44:04.639 who wrote incredible lyrics. We would you know, we we 1:44:04.760 --> 1:44:08.519 cared David on the song Africa. That was David really 1:44:08.640 --> 1:44:13.719 trying to really put some effort into his lyric writing. 1:44:14.040 --> 1:44:18.320 You know, we gave him a rational shit at the time. 1:44:18.360 --> 1:44:21.040 We were like, what is this about the Serengetti the 1:44:21.200 --> 1:44:24.840 but what are you writing about? You know, we gave 1:44:24.880 --> 1:44:27.120 him tons of crap about it, you know, while we 1:44:27.120 --> 1:44:30.479 were working on the tape loops and this and you know, 1:44:30.560 --> 1:44:34.400 all this me tweaking the Columbus sounds. You know, that's 1:44:34.479 --> 1:44:36.720 what we spent time doing, you know what I mean. 1:44:36.840 --> 1:44:40.800 But to me, it was obvious why the critics didn't 1:44:40.880 --> 1:44:44.439 like us, and I could never understand why why Luke 1:44:44.479 --> 1:44:48.040 in particular, would get so upset. You know, yeah, it hurts, 1:44:48.080 --> 1:44:52.519 But he's an English major. His priorities are very different. 1:44:52.640 --> 1:44:55.240 They don't care about the tone on your guitar that 1:44:55.320 --> 1:44:58.679 you spent hours and hours on, you know what I mean, 1:44:58.840 --> 1:45:01.360 that you spent all this time. They don't care about that. 1:45:01.840 --> 1:45:04.200 They would have rather you spent a few more hours 1:45:04.200 --> 1:45:07.559 on the lyrics and making better you know what I mean. 1:45:08.840 --> 1:45:13.400 Okay, So the band has this incredible success both on 1:45:13.640 --> 1:45:18.519 records and live. Certainly at this late date people know 1:45:18.600 --> 1:45:21.280 the money is mostly in publishing and at least long 1:45:21.360 --> 1:45:25.439 term money. You had some songs on some records. First 1:45:25.520 --> 1:45:30.000 question is, ay, were you ripped off? Sometimes the band 1:45:30.040 --> 1:45:32.880 is so busy working they have no idea where the 1:45:32.960 --> 1:45:36.880 money is going. Second, did you get the money and 1:45:37.000 --> 1:45:39.719 how did you use it? In third, are you still 1:45:39.760 --> 1:45:40.920 getting money from Toto? 1:45:44.160 --> 1:45:49.120 Yes? Look at that's what happens with a lot of bands. 1:45:49.240 --> 1:45:53.720 With every band, guys aren't thinking about that at the time, right, 1:45:53.760 --> 1:45:55.880 They're just going in. They're in a band. They're thrilled 1:45:55.880 --> 1:46:00.719 to be in a band. But the human nature aspect 1:46:00.760 --> 1:46:03.280 kicks in when all of a sudden it hits you 1:46:03.320 --> 1:46:05.519 that the guy who's written all the songs. He's shown 1:46:05.600 --> 1:46:09.080 up in a rolls Royce and he's three hours late 1:46:09.120 --> 1:46:13.120 to the session that you're all paying for. And you know, 1:46:14.280 --> 1:46:17.799 has this happened with every band? Sure? I've seen bands 1:46:17.800 --> 1:46:21.120 that you know what, to fight that the guys who 1:46:21.200 --> 1:46:23.280 write all the songs. They'll say, you know what, let's 1:46:23.280 --> 1:46:26.280 make them all band written songs. This band is so 1:46:26.400 --> 1:46:29.919 important to us, and the chemistry we have is so special, 1:46:31.200 --> 1:46:34.080 Let's make them all band written songs. I've seen guys 1:46:34.120 --> 1:46:37.559 do that, and then later on resenting it kicks in 1:46:39.280 --> 1:46:42.080 and it comes out in some weird, ugly way. You know. 1:46:42.439 --> 1:46:47.720 I won't mention any names, but it's did we get 1:46:47.760 --> 1:46:51.720 ripped off? Absolutely? Walter Yetnikoff, the guy who was the 1:46:51.760 --> 1:46:54.479 record company president at the time. He says in his 1:46:54.479 --> 1:46:57.240 book Howling at the Moon. He says, at the end 1:46:57.720 --> 1:47:01.960 he was a record company president that Bruce Springsteen would 1:47:02.000 --> 1:47:03.880 fly in to play him his new single, and he 1:47:03.920 --> 1:47:06.599 couldn't tell you one Bruce Springsteen song from the other. 1:47:07.040 --> 1:47:10.040 He came up through the lawyer ranks, and all he 1:47:10.320 --> 1:47:14.040 knows is that he screwed every band he signed. He 1:47:14.120 --> 1:47:17.519 got the better. He outlawyered every band that he signed 1:47:17.880 --> 1:47:23.080 of which we were one of. So did we get screwed? Absolutely? 1:47:23.520 --> 1:47:26.280 And then when you try to just look at the 1:47:26.720 --> 1:47:29.880 record business, the whole history of the record business is 1:47:29.920 --> 1:47:33.600 so is so ugly. And then you you try to 1:47:33.640 --> 1:47:36.879 audit these companies, you know they'll have your money sitting 1:47:36.920 --> 1:47:40.840 in some especially in foreign territories. You know you've made 1:47:40.840 --> 1:47:44.200 all this money, it's sitting in some bank accounts somewhere. 1:47:44.320 --> 1:47:47.800 And then you have to audit your record company, and 1:47:47.840 --> 1:47:51.200 then another lawyer gets a third of what you get 1:47:51.200 --> 1:47:56.439 from the audit. It's it's it's horrible, but but you 1:47:56.520 --> 1:48:01.000 know what, we made a living. We made a good living. 1:48:03.040 --> 1:48:07.640 Do I still get money? Yes? Yes. Just being a 1:48:07.680 --> 1:48:10.640 member of Toto has been very very good to me 1:48:11.439 --> 1:48:12.680 has been very very good to me. 1:48:12.880 --> 1:48:16.080 Assuming you didn't have any savings, Could you live off 1:48:16.120 --> 1:48:17.320 the income from Toto? 1:48:18.200 --> 1:48:21.639 Not that alone? Now it depends when you say live. 1:48:21.800 --> 1:48:26.560 I'm used to I'm used to living here in California, 1:48:27.840 --> 1:48:29.599 you know what I mean. I'm used to going out 1:48:29.640 --> 1:48:32.479 to dinner, to nice restaurants. I'm not a car guy, 1:48:32.560 --> 1:48:37.360 but some people are. I don't know. Some people have 1:48:37.520 --> 1:48:40.080 lived on a lot less. I'll tell you that you 1:48:40.120 --> 1:48:42.840 know what I mean, They sure wouldn't live here, they 1:48:42.880 --> 1:48:46.800 wouldn't have these gas prices. They'd go somewhere else where 1:48:46.840 --> 1:48:49.120 they could, you know what I mean, where they could 1:48:49.160 --> 1:48:53.080 get better bang for their buck than southern California. Certainly, 1:48:53.680 --> 1:48:54.080 how do you. 1:48:54.080 --> 1:48:55.280 End up leaving Toto? 1:48:56.439 --> 1:48:58.479 How did I end up? You know? It was after 1:48:59.600 --> 1:49:03.599 you know, I love this question because even though, especially 1:49:03.640 --> 1:49:07.120 with my brother Jeff and the band, you know, totod 1:49:07.120 --> 1:49:10.760 believe me, there was some headbutting. You know, for the 1:49:10.760 --> 1:49:13.000 most part, we all got along great, you know what 1:49:13.000 --> 1:49:16.040 I mean, We really for the most part, it was 1:49:16.080 --> 1:49:18.120 like a hell of a lot better than a lot 1:49:18.160 --> 1:49:20.240 of stuff you hear about. You know, we really got 1:49:20.280 --> 1:49:23.280 along great. For the most part. We were mostly always 1:49:23.320 --> 1:49:30.360 on the same page. I I after the sixth album again, 1:49:31.280 --> 1:49:33.880 ever since Total four, like I told you, the whole 1:49:33.920 --> 1:49:37.839 thing of music had been changing, you know, this corporate 1:49:38.000 --> 1:49:44.599 rock things, these very heavily overarranged pop things with the 1:49:44.640 --> 1:49:48.160 band and synthesizers were becoming less and less popular and 1:49:48.240 --> 1:49:51.599 less and less common. The whole consensus with people were 1:49:51.600 --> 1:49:54.760 getting a lot more stripped down. It became a lot 1:49:54.800 --> 1:50:00.240 more about the lyrics and about rock and roll. I 1:50:00.240 --> 1:50:02.800 saw that in England. I loved bands like Yes and 1:50:02.880 --> 1:50:06.559 Emersonich and Palmer. But I totally got it in seventy 1:50:06.600 --> 1:50:09.160 five seventy six, where the you know, people were going 1:50:09.200 --> 1:50:11.479 to a rock concert and all of a sudden you're 1:50:11.479 --> 1:50:12.680 made to feel like you had to go to a 1:50:12.800 --> 1:50:16.559 music conservatory to play rock and roll, and how they said, 1:50:16.600 --> 1:50:20.760 fuck that, pick up a guitar, learn three records and 1:50:20.800 --> 1:50:23.000 if you have something to say, you know what I mean, 1:50:24.040 --> 1:50:27.479 screw that. You know, the whole backlash to all of that. 1:50:29.520 --> 1:50:32.920 After we did our sixth album, we toured I remember 1:50:32.920 --> 1:50:36.720 this very well, and the guys were talking about our 1:50:36.800 --> 1:50:40.640 next album. Joseph Williams was the lead singer in the 1:50:40.680 --> 1:50:44.599 band now and they were just talking about how we 1:50:44.720 --> 1:50:47.599 needed to do even less. We needed to really thin 1:50:47.680 --> 1:50:50.960 out the arrangements. We really needed to do less as 1:50:51.000 --> 1:50:54.160 far as arrangement went, as far as since went. They 1:50:54.160 --> 1:50:57.280 were kind of describing what it was I did in 1:50:57.320 --> 1:51:02.800 the band, you know, for me, what my purpose in 1:51:02.880 --> 1:51:06.200 the band was, you know, I mean, they'd always love 1:51:06.280 --> 1:51:09.760 having me around to recreate the songs live, to do 1:51:09.840 --> 1:51:12.559 the Rosanna solo, and to do Africa, and to do 1:51:12.720 --> 1:51:16.439 you know whatever else, but you know, I was just 1:51:16.560 --> 1:51:19.600 kind of feeling you know what, And so I on 1:51:19.640 --> 1:51:23.000 the way home were we had finished our last gig 1:51:23.320 --> 1:51:27.000 of the last tour in Japan, and we were on 1:51:27.040 --> 1:51:29.800 the way home, and I told the guys there was 1:51:29.880 --> 1:51:33.320 no big, ugly fight. I'm so happy to say this. 1:51:33.479 --> 1:51:38.400 There was no ugly scene and fuck you fest or 1:51:38.400 --> 1:51:40.360 something like that. I you know what I mean. I 1:51:40.560 --> 1:51:43.439 just we'd been talking about the next album that we 1:51:43.439 --> 1:51:46.040 were going to go into the studio soon, and they 1:51:46.040 --> 1:51:49.439 were talking about conceptually how they wanted to simplify and 1:51:49.520 --> 1:51:53.519 get much more basic. And I told the guys, I said, 1:51:53.520 --> 1:51:56.280 you know what, I'm not gonna I think I'm going 1:51:56.360 --> 1:51:58.439 to back out of the band at this point. I'm 1:51:58.439 --> 1:52:00.679 not going to bail on you guys. I will still 1:52:01.360 --> 1:52:04.000 because David was When I said that, David Page was like, 1:52:04.200 --> 1:52:07.160 you know what I mean, he was so used to 1:52:07.200 --> 1:52:10.880 me being around and assisting him in the studio and 1:52:10.920 --> 1:52:15.679 being that guy with the synthesizers and putting those sounds under. 1:52:15.800 --> 1:52:18.720 I says, I'll still come into the studio when you 1:52:18.760 --> 1:52:21.360 guys go, but I'll be like it used to be. 1:52:21.680 --> 1:52:24.280 I'll program for David whatever he needs me to do, 1:52:24.360 --> 1:52:26.920 I'll do. But I won't feel like I have to 1:52:27.000 --> 1:52:30.559 leave my mark, you know, you know, I won't feel 1:52:30.560 --> 1:52:32.719 like I have to leave my mark. I'll just help David. 1:52:33.000 --> 1:52:36.840 And I wound up doing another two world tours after 1:52:36.880 --> 1:52:39.479 that because I didn't want to leave them in the lurch. 1:52:40.000 --> 1:52:42.680 I wanted to help them still be able to do 1:52:42.840 --> 1:52:45.840 Rosanna and these other songs and pull them off live. 1:52:47.439 --> 1:52:50.799 So I did another two world tours with them. After 1:52:50.880 --> 1:52:54.280 I had quit, I just was no longer a band member. 1:52:54.360 --> 1:52:58.120 I didn't have to do the interviews, you know, after soundcheck, 1:52:58.160 --> 1:53:03.080 I could go relax in my hotel room. And you know, 1:53:03.240 --> 1:53:06.320 I thought, you know, I thought, I saw I had 1:53:06.320 --> 1:53:09.160 such success just writing this song on my own, called 1:53:09.240 --> 1:53:11.599 Human Nature, you know what I mean, just doing wasn't 1:53:11.600 --> 1:53:15.920 writing it for anybody, but it got the atmosphere of it, 1:53:16.000 --> 1:53:18.320 caught Quincy's attention and stuff, and I thought, you know, 1:53:18.439 --> 1:53:21.799 I'm gonna start focusing more on on doing that stuff, 1:53:23.160 --> 1:53:25.599 you know, maybe maybe paying a little bit more attention 1:53:25.640 --> 1:53:26.240 to my writing. 1:53:27.680 --> 1:53:30.920 Okay, how did Q ultimately get Human Nature? 1:53:32.000 --> 1:53:34.800 You know, I'd already been in the studio working on 1:53:34.960 --> 1:53:38.920 doing synthesizer overdubs on the Thriller album. On various songs, 1:53:40.240 --> 1:53:43.840 Q had asked David Page, you know, they were looking 1:53:43.920 --> 1:53:47.040 for an up tempo rock and roll song for the album. 1:53:47.640 --> 1:53:51.320 I remember very clearly he wanted something very simple. He 1:53:51.360 --> 1:53:55.520 wanted a simple rock and roll song like My Sharona, 1:53:56.680 --> 1:54:00.240 like the next My Sharona. He wanted something very very 1:54:00.280 --> 1:54:02.960 simple for Michael. That's what he was putting out to 1:54:03.040 --> 1:54:06.680 all his professional writers, of which I was not one of. 1:54:06.760 --> 1:54:09.800 I wasn't considered, you know. I was a synth guy 1:54:09.840 --> 1:54:13.799 in Toto, and I programmed for David Foster and David Page, 1:54:13.800 --> 1:54:16.479 but you didn't look at me as a writer at all. 1:54:18.120 --> 1:54:21.799 And so David Page was furiously working away writing these 1:54:21.920 --> 1:54:26.840 trying to trying to write stuff for Quincy for Michael's album. 1:54:26.960 --> 1:54:29.720 And I lived with David at the time, and I 1:54:29.880 --> 1:54:35.760 was kind of the I was the default studio engineer, 1:54:37.680 --> 1:54:39.840 you know. I was always helping David out, you know, 1:54:39.920 --> 1:54:41.760 for him letting me have the run of the place. 1:54:42.240 --> 1:54:44.480 I would do whatever he needed me to do in 1:54:44.520 --> 1:54:48.880 the studio. And I had been working on this song 1:54:49.160 --> 1:54:52.000 while on the road with Toto. I'd been finishing I'd 1:54:52.000 --> 1:54:54.600 had a rough version of the song i'd been working 1:54:54.600 --> 1:54:57.360 on called Human Nature, where just I was singing it. 1:54:57.440 --> 1:55:01.120 The lyrics weren't done. It was very rough, but the 1:55:01.200 --> 1:55:05.560 whole song was basically there, and I had recorded it. 1:55:05.720 --> 1:55:09.120 I threw it on cassette, and David called down to me. 1:55:10.320 --> 1:55:13.520 And the night before he had been trying I had 1:55:13.520 --> 1:55:16.840 helped him record a couple of grooves that were stuff 1:55:16.880 --> 1:55:21.080 he was gonna was to target Michael and to give 1:55:21.120 --> 1:55:23.440 Quincy what he was asking for. And he called down 1:55:23.520 --> 1:55:27.440 to me and said that Quincy's assistant was on the way. 1:55:27.520 --> 1:55:29.880 Would I throw those two things on cassette for him? 1:55:31.640 --> 1:55:34.920 Lo and Behold, we were fresh out of cassettes. I 1:55:35.000 --> 1:55:38.360 had just used the last cassette. We had these custom 1:55:38.440 --> 1:55:41.240 cassettes made that could maybe hold three songs. They were 1:55:41.320 --> 1:55:44.200 kind of short, they just were like fifteen minutes long, 1:55:46.200 --> 1:55:48.800 and we were fresh out of cassettes. So what I 1:55:48.800 --> 1:55:51.440 did was I just I flipped the tape over, I 1:55:51.560 --> 1:55:56.920 rewound it, I relabeled it, and I recorded David songs 1:55:57.000 --> 1:56:00.640 on the on the A side of the cassette. And 1:56:00.680 --> 1:56:05.800 then Quincy's story is that he was in his office 1:56:05.960 --> 1:56:08.120 he listened to what David had done he listened to 1:56:08.120 --> 1:56:12.920 the cassette and what happened was auto reverse kicked in. 1:56:13.640 --> 1:56:18.360 Now you remember auto reverse, don't you, Bob? Of course, okay, 1:56:20.280 --> 1:56:23.240 auto reverse kicked in. He calls David Page to the 1:56:23.280 --> 1:56:27.240 next day and David said it took him twenty minutes. 1:56:27.640 --> 1:56:29.600 David didn't know what the hell he was talking about. 1:56:29.600 --> 1:56:33.120 He's describing this song. He's all excited about this song 1:56:33.240 --> 1:56:36.680 David had sent him. And David finally said, you know, 1:56:36.720 --> 1:56:41.000 I think you're talking about one of Steve's songs, you know, 1:56:42.600 --> 1:56:44.760 which is what it was. Yeah, the lyrics weren't done. 1:56:44.760 --> 1:56:47.800 I had the chorus, The chorus lyrics were intact. He 1:56:47.920 --> 1:56:53.080 loved my title. He loved the atmosphere is what he loved. 1:56:54.560 --> 1:56:58.200 And it was a complete total fluke. 1:57:00.080 --> 1:57:05.080 I know people who've written hit songs and they live 1:57:05.160 --> 1:57:10.320 off that one song their whole life. Needless to say, 1:57:10.840 --> 1:57:13.960 you wrote a song that was a hit. It was 1:57:14.040 --> 1:57:16.760 on one of the most successful albums of all time 1:57:16.800 --> 1:57:20.480 by a legendary artist. A did you own it all? 1:57:20.920 --> 1:57:25.080 And B is it still a cash register? Cash machine? 1:57:26.280 --> 1:57:29.720 I owned? A? Quincy asked. At one point we were 1:57:29.720 --> 1:57:31.440 on the road. He esked. He told me that I 1:57:31.480 --> 1:57:34.080 needed to finish the lyrics. They were definitely doing the song, 1:57:34.520 --> 1:57:37.400 we had cut it. I sent him my verse lyrics, 1:57:38.000 --> 1:57:42.800 which he was underwhelmed with. Loved my chorus and everything, 1:57:42.880 --> 1:57:46.440 but was very underwhelmed with my verse lyrics completely understandably 1:57:46.920 --> 1:57:49.640 asked me would I mind if he brought in a lyricist, 1:57:50.440 --> 1:57:54.000 and I, to my credit, I was like absolutely. You know, 1:57:54.040 --> 1:57:57.560 I had zero ego as far as as far as 1:57:57.640 --> 1:58:01.160 being a lyricist went. You know, sometimes I got lucky, 1:58:01.240 --> 1:58:05.560 but you know, I said absolutely. He brought in John Bettis, 1:58:05.680 --> 1:58:11.720 who just nailed it, wrote this, wrote these three amazing 1:58:11.840 --> 1:58:16.800 verses that gave the song a narrative and made this 1:58:16.920 --> 1:58:20.960 song really solid. But I hung on to two thirds 1:58:20.960 --> 1:58:25.080 of it and I had my own publishing and it's 1:58:25.200 --> 1:58:28.040 done very well to me over the years. 1:58:28.560 --> 1:58:32.200 Okay, tell me about working on Henley's Boys of Summer. 1:58:34.040 --> 1:58:36.680 Sure that one was easy. The real interesting one is 1:58:36.680 --> 1:58:39.120 is is dirty Laundry? Wait? 1:58:39.120 --> 1:58:42.200 Wait? Start with? Dirty Laundry was on the first album. 1:58:42.440 --> 1:58:45.400 Sure, you know, I got to make sure I mentioned 1:58:45.480 --> 1:58:48.320 Danny Cooch, who was a co producer and wrote the 1:58:48.360 --> 1:58:51.720 song with Don Hanley. I forgot to mention Cooch once 1:58:52.280 --> 1:58:55.760 and much to my chagrin, I got a call at 1:58:55.800 --> 1:58:58.560 one o'clock in the morning. Once I'm at David Page's 1:58:58.600 --> 1:59:01.400 house working like I I typically was at that hour, 1:59:01.760 --> 1:59:03.480 I got to call at one o'clock in the morning 1:59:03.480 --> 1:59:05.920 for my brother Jeff. He had been at the studio 1:59:05.960 --> 1:59:08.839 all day, Record One, which was right down the street, 1:59:08.960 --> 1:59:13.960 which was five minutes away from David Page's house. They'd 1:59:13.960 --> 1:59:16.440 been working all day on this trying to get this track, 1:59:16.560 --> 1:59:19.560 and they were having trouble. Would I come down and 1:59:19.640 --> 1:59:22.080 see if I could help out? And I really had 1:59:22.120 --> 1:59:23.800 no idea what they were doing. I said, if they're 1:59:23.800 --> 1:59:27.640 willing to experiment. I didn't know who's this for. He goes, 1:59:27.680 --> 1:59:30.880 it's the drummer from the Eagles, and I remember thinking, 1:59:31.040 --> 1:59:33.240 you know, I mean, I love the Eagle, knew the Eagles, 1:59:33.280 --> 1:59:36.320 loved the Eagles. I didn't know who was who. I 1:59:36.360 --> 1:59:39.440 didn't know who's saying what? You know what I mean? 1:59:39.520 --> 1:59:41.720 I remember thinking, Wow, the Eagles are that big that 1:59:41.800 --> 1:59:46.240 even the drummer has a solo album. You know. I 1:59:46.280 --> 1:59:50.040 hadn't heard. I didn't know that Don Henley was that 1:59:50.240 --> 1:59:55.040 voice that I just loved from the Eagles. I had 1:59:55.040 --> 1:59:58.240 no idea so I went down there and I just 1:59:58.240 --> 2:00:00.960 brought a small piece of modular Again. I've actually got 2:00:01.000 --> 2:00:04.920 the thing I brought down right over here. Anyway, it 2:00:05.120 --> 2:00:08.680 was why I one of the reasons I loved it 2:00:08.720 --> 2:00:11.760 so much is because my brother was there, My brother Jeff, 2:00:11.880 --> 2:00:18.480 who had my brother Jeff was there, and Jeff had 2:00:18.480 --> 2:00:20.720 seen me. Jeff would get very frustrated with me with 2:00:20.840 --> 2:00:24.000 how much I had gotten into the technology and was, 2:00:24.320 --> 2:00:26.800 you know, had my nose in these manuals all the time, 2:00:27.280 --> 2:00:30.760 and how deep into synthesizers I was getting because in 2:00:30.800 --> 2:00:33.960 Toto he pretty much they pretty much hated that stuff. 2:00:34.000 --> 2:00:37.040 They never played to click tracks. They didn't like you 2:00:37.120 --> 2:00:39.080 know what I mean. They were all such great players, 2:00:39.080 --> 2:00:41.880 they didn't want to know about sequences and all this 2:00:42.000 --> 2:00:44.960 kind of stuff. Anyway, I walk in there, I assessed 2:00:45.000 --> 2:00:47.880 the situation that they wanted to use this real far 2:00:47.960 --> 2:00:51.440 Fista organ that Danny Cooch had there, and they but 2:00:51.520 --> 2:00:55.040 they wanted it perfect, and luckily they had recorded it 2:00:55.080 --> 2:00:59.720 with a drum machine. Luckily, Greg Ladani the engineer, had 2:00:59.720 --> 2:01:02.880 recorded a sink tone, and I was able to in 2:01:02.960 --> 2:01:09.840 this very in a very fast way, sync up the 2:01:09.920 --> 2:01:12.560 drum machine again and have it trigger a gate that 2:01:12.680 --> 2:01:16.520 just triggered this this far Fisa organ part so that 2:01:16.560 --> 2:01:19.600 it was perfect, that it played along with the track 2:01:19.640 --> 2:01:23.560 and was perfect, and everything just clicked. So I loved it. 2:01:23.920 --> 2:01:26.120 I love the fact that my brother Jeff saw how 2:01:26.240 --> 2:01:31.000 handy this knowledge that was very hard earned, how it 2:01:31.040 --> 2:01:33.120 came into you know what I mean, how useful it 2:01:33.440 --> 2:01:38.160 could be in the studio. You know. Anyway, it went great. 2:01:38.840 --> 2:01:41.880 They loved me. They thought I was brilliant that I 2:01:42.400 --> 2:01:45.080 this thing just came together like that, and they started 2:01:45.120 --> 2:01:50.800 using me all the time. This is now jump to 2:01:50.840 --> 2:01:53.800 the second the next album they had recorded, already recorded 2:01:53.800 --> 2:01:59.760 this song boys this summer, and it was done, and 2:02:00.440 --> 2:02:06.280 Don had decided, to the point I had before about singers, 2:02:06.680 --> 2:02:12.080 about singing, Don Henley decided that you know what, he 2:02:12.240 --> 2:02:18.520 wanted it up one half step. Song was completely done, 2:02:18.760 --> 2:02:23.760 completely recorded, but Don decided that the chorus of the song, 2:02:24.680 --> 2:02:26.760 if he sang it up one half step, it made 2:02:26.800 --> 2:02:31.880 a difference to what his voice sounded like, and that 2:02:31.960 --> 2:02:34.840 his voice sounded better when it was up a half step. 2:02:35.200 --> 2:02:39.360 Now they called me with the intention of thinking that 2:02:39.480 --> 2:02:46.360 I had some magic box that could transpose the whole track. Okay, 2:02:47.240 --> 2:02:51.960 I didn't you know there was You know, later on, 2:02:52.240 --> 2:02:55.120 we now have things that can do miracles like that 2:02:55.360 --> 2:02:59.760 pretty darn good these days, but back then there was no. 2:02:59.800 --> 2:03:03.720 So what I did while most of the guys were 2:03:03.720 --> 2:03:06.040 out of the room is The co writer on the 2:03:06.080 --> 2:03:09.880 song was Mike Campbell, the guitar player from Tom Petty's band. 2:03:10.280 --> 2:03:12.040 They had done it with a drum machine. They still 2:03:12.040 --> 2:03:14.760 had the drum machine there and up, and we just 2:03:15.080 --> 2:03:19.080 re recorded the basic track. I re recorded it, I 2:03:19.120 --> 2:03:22.280 played it on synth, I played the figure on synth. 2:03:22.800 --> 2:03:26.000 Mike Campbell was there, replayed his guitar part in the 2:03:26.040 --> 2:03:29.800 new key. It was with the drum machine, and they 2:03:29.840 --> 2:03:32.400 did all the rest of the track in the new key, 2:03:33.160 --> 2:03:34.920 and it wound up being a very big record. 2:03:36.400 --> 2:03:41.280 Wow, uh, switching gears. Tell me about the passing of 2:03:41.320 --> 2:03:43.040 your brothers. 2:03:44.640 --> 2:03:49.240 The passing of my brothers was always an absolute heartbreak. 2:03:51.880 --> 2:03:56.800 Jeff was this sudden shocking thing. I was sure when 2:03:56.840 --> 2:03:58.480 I got the phone call and I was on my 2:03:58.520 --> 2:04:00.920 way to the hospital that it was just going to 2:04:00.960 --> 2:04:05.760 be his warning, his red flag to stop smoking cigarettes. 2:04:05.840 --> 2:04:09.320 And he was only thirty eight years old. Jeff was 2:04:09.320 --> 2:04:13.680 in relatively good shape. He'd always had trouble with his 2:04:13.920 --> 2:04:17.920 arms after shows. There was a circulation thing with his arms. 2:04:20.240 --> 2:04:23.520 You know, Jeff was the one who Jeff took better 2:04:23.560 --> 2:04:26.320 care of himself than anyone in the band as far 2:04:26.360 --> 2:04:31.160 as far as habits went and staying at the party. 2:04:31.360 --> 2:04:35.040 Jeff was married and had just had his third kid, 2:04:35.760 --> 2:04:41.000 and his kids and his wife were very, very important 2:04:41.040 --> 2:04:43.920 to him. Jeff always went. You know, Jeff at this 2:04:44.080 --> 2:04:47.720 point was always going home at a decent hour and 2:04:47.840 --> 2:04:54.080 taking care of himself. And it was completely shocking, you know, 2:04:55.000 --> 2:04:59.720 it was completely shocking and heartbreaking. And I still think 2:04:59.720 --> 2:05:02.760 about every day. I still all his friends people. It's 2:05:02.800 --> 2:05:07.000 been thirty two years. It's been thirty two years, and 2:05:07.080 --> 2:05:11.040 I still think about it all the time, and you know, 2:05:11.360 --> 2:05:14.040 I can't help but think about all the stuff we 2:05:14.040 --> 2:05:16.400 could have done by this point too. Like I said, 2:05:16.440 --> 2:05:17.960 you know, when Jeff and I lived together at home, 2:05:18.000 --> 2:05:21.040 we were at each other's throats. My brother Mike was 2:05:21.080 --> 2:05:23.840 the typical middle brother that kept peace with both of us, 2:05:23.840 --> 2:05:25.840 but Jeff and I were at each other's throats. The 2:05:25.960 --> 2:05:30.000 second he moved out of the house at seventeen, he 2:05:30.480 --> 2:05:34.320 became suddenly he was the coolest older brother ever, and 2:05:34.400 --> 2:05:37.800 I was always invited to his apartment. I could always 2:05:37.800 --> 2:05:40.800 bring friends over when he was on the road, I 2:05:40.800 --> 2:05:44.960 could use his apartment. He was the coolest, most supportive 2:05:45.240 --> 2:05:48.600 older brother anyone could wish for. Then we're in a 2:05:48.640 --> 2:05:54.560 band together and we're back in those tight quarters and 2:05:54.680 --> 2:05:59.120 especially me being this synth guy and him being Jeff Piccaro, 2:05:59.360 --> 2:06:04.000 mister gru mister pocket, which I totally appreciated it. But 2:06:06.080 --> 2:06:08.680 the technology, you know what I mean, I was way 2:06:08.720 --> 2:06:12.440 into it, and it was never it was never ever 2:06:12.560 --> 2:06:16.640 to replace anybody, you know, drum machines to us. I 2:06:16.760 --> 2:06:19.280 was there when Roger was developing it. Roger had worked 2:06:19.320 --> 2:06:23.440 for Leon Russell. It was all about just aiding in songwriting. 2:06:24.080 --> 2:06:28.240 It was never no one ever discussed replacing drummers. You know, 2:06:28.360 --> 2:06:31.400 Leon used Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and it was 2:06:31.440 --> 2:06:34.960 all about you know, that was it was just like 2:06:35.000 --> 2:06:39.560 an improvement on a Roland rhythm ace, you know what 2:06:39.640 --> 2:06:43.720 I mean, which uh you know, ironically enough, a t 2:06:43.960 --> 2:06:46.480 R eight to OHO eight basedrum wound up replacing a 2:06:46.480 --> 2:06:49.200 hell of a lot more drummers than any Lynn drum 2:06:49.200 --> 2:06:53.240 machine or Oberheim drum machine or any other drum machine 2:06:53.240 --> 2:06:56.840 that had samples in it, right, you know what I mean? 2:06:56.920 --> 2:07:00.680 All of a sudden, this thing, you know, uh was 2:07:00.760 --> 2:07:03.200 much more popular than any of those drum machines. But 2:07:03.640 --> 2:07:06.160 you know, there was always all this discussion and debate, 2:07:06.280 --> 2:07:10.240 and of course people started using it on records, you 2:07:10.280 --> 2:07:13.800 know what I mean, and it was very upsetting to 2:07:13.920 --> 2:07:16.520 some drummers and stuff, and they felt like they were 2:07:16.520 --> 2:07:20.280 getting replaced. I always I never saw it that way. 2:07:20.520 --> 2:07:25.000 I saw it as who better to know what to 2:07:25.040 --> 2:07:27.640 do with a drum machine than a drummer? Who better 2:07:27.720 --> 2:07:29.440 to know what to do if they had a third 2:07:29.560 --> 2:07:36.400 arm than a drummer. You know, that was always my 2:07:36.920 --> 2:07:39.720 thing with it. It was never I had. Jeff Pacaro 2:07:39.880 --> 2:07:44.240 was my brother, and so whereas in Toto we bumped heads. 2:07:44.320 --> 2:07:46.720 As soon as I left Toto, and so that was 2:07:46.760 --> 2:07:49.040 like a good five years or so before he died. 2:07:49.560 --> 2:07:53.120 Jeff would come over any time I asked him to 2:07:53.120 --> 2:07:56.200 to play on my demos, and no matter what, whether 2:07:56.240 --> 2:07:59.600 it was to play drums or to play on some pads, 2:07:59.840 --> 2:08:03.640 or to play to program a drum machine, Jeff was 2:08:03.680 --> 2:08:06.560 willing to do anything for me. And I love that. 2:08:06.680 --> 2:08:09.840 Those last five years we were back to being he 2:08:10.000 --> 2:08:13.040 was back to being the coolest older brother anyone could 2:08:13.040 --> 2:08:16.920 ever wish for. My brother Mike was a whole nother 2:08:17.000 --> 2:08:21.960 situation that was really heartbreaking, being that it was the 2:08:22.000 --> 2:08:27.839 polar opposite of Jeff. Jeff was this single shocking event. 2:08:29.000 --> 2:08:35.440 Mike was this seven year long nightmare that his family 2:08:35.480 --> 2:08:38.160 had had to witness and deal with all of us. 2:08:39.480 --> 2:08:44.280 And you know, als could happen anywhere. First it happened 2:08:44.320 --> 2:08:47.640 to one of the It's such a cruel disease, and 2:08:47.760 --> 2:08:50.720 especially for Mike. One of the cruelest things was that 2:08:50.800 --> 2:08:53.919 it started in his hands. It could have started anywhere. 2:08:54.360 --> 2:08:57.040 Some people it starts in their feet. He could have 2:08:57.160 --> 2:09:01.480 done several tours if it had started in his legs 2:09:01.560 --> 2:09:03.800 or whatever, if his hands and arms were okay. But 2:09:03.880 --> 2:09:08.200 it started in his hands, in his arms, and he 2:09:08.320 --> 2:09:12.040 right away wasn't able to play. He had to stop working, 2:09:12.200 --> 2:09:17.920 and it was completely heartbreaking. I was lucky in that 2:09:18.000 --> 2:09:21.680 I lived very close to Mike. I lived lived literally 2:09:21.760 --> 2:09:23.880 two minutes away, and I was able to spend a 2:09:23.920 --> 2:09:30.160 lot of time with him, But completely heartbreaking, especially for 2:09:30.240 --> 2:09:36.760 his three children and his wife and of course my parents. 2:09:37.720 --> 2:09:40.520 What was ultimately what killed Jeff. 2:09:41.920 --> 2:09:44.360 You know, it was probably a combination of things. He 2:09:44.440 --> 2:09:47.600 had been you know, he had been using some pesticides outside, 2:09:47.640 --> 2:09:50.760 but he had been a life long smoker. You know, 2:09:51.080 --> 2:09:54.840 he'd been a life long smoker Marlborough Reds. You know, 2:09:55.040 --> 2:09:57.760 he had never stopped, you know, And yes, there was 2:09:57.920 --> 2:10:03.720 history of drug use, like all of us, but it 2:10:03.840 --> 2:10:07.600 still was this completely freak thing for a guy at 2:10:07.640 --> 2:10:11.040 thirty eight years old. Jeff used less drugs than any 2:10:11.120 --> 2:10:14.080 of us did than any of us did. 2:10:14.720 --> 2:10:16.960 Did he have a hard d fact or something or not? 2:10:17.280 --> 2:10:20.240 There was some Yeah, there was some damage there. There 2:10:20.320 --> 2:10:24.240 was some muscular damage. There was you know, the autopsy 2:10:24.600 --> 2:10:27.360 reports were very was very complicated. 2:10:27.440 --> 2:10:33.160 And you know, okay, so what's keep you busy? 2:10:33.200 --> 2:10:37.080 Now? What keeps being busy? Now? I am the most 2:10:37.280 --> 2:10:42.400 blessed old dude, you know, as far as you know, 2:10:42.600 --> 2:10:46.120 I've been very, very lucky my whole life. I haven't 2:10:46.160 --> 2:10:49.000 had to do anything but make music for a living, 2:10:49.200 --> 2:10:55.640 and I've been blessed with many different gigs in the 2:10:55.720 --> 2:11:00.000 music world. And after I left Toto, you know, songwriter, 2:11:00.000 --> 2:11:03.280 I wanted to be a professional songwriter. But you know what, 2:11:04.760 --> 2:11:09.000 without a deadline, I found I was useless. You know 2:11:09.000 --> 2:11:11.760 what I mean. I mean, without deadline's Total was useless. 2:11:11.880 --> 2:11:13.880 We would have never We'd still be working on the 2:11:13.920 --> 2:11:17.360 fourth album if there wasn't a deadline there. If someone 2:11:17.360 --> 2:11:20.160 didn't come and say, you know what, they're showing up 2:11:20.160 --> 2:11:22.800 in an hour to take the tapes. You know what 2:11:22.800 --> 2:11:26.000 I mean, you better put this down, we would have 2:11:26.080 --> 2:11:28.879 kept going. You know. We loved being in the studio. 2:11:30.200 --> 2:11:37.120 I loved my job so much so I uh, after 2:11:37.160 --> 2:11:39.240 I left the band for a while, my old friend 2:11:39.320 --> 2:11:43.040 James Howard, who I mentioned before, James Newton Howard, he 2:11:43.080 --> 2:11:46.360 had gotten into film scoring and he had a very 2:11:46.400 --> 2:11:51.200 successful career. His career took off. That was James's thing. 2:11:51.280 --> 2:11:53.400 He had arranged for us. He did a lot of 2:11:53.480 --> 2:11:59.440 arrangements for us on Total four in the following album. 2:11:59.560 --> 2:12:03.000 But got into film scoring and was doing very very well. 2:12:03.440 --> 2:12:05.520 And we lived very close to each other, and I 2:12:05.520 --> 2:12:07.920 would help him. I would do some synthesizer stuff for 2:12:08.000 --> 2:12:11.000 him on occasion, and at one point he asked me, 2:12:11.080 --> 2:12:13.120 he said, do you want to try doing this? He'd 2:12:13.160 --> 2:12:16.000 been helping some of his other friends who were into 2:12:16.000 --> 2:12:19.960 film scoring. He had helped them by getting them jobs 2:12:20.000 --> 2:12:22.240 where he would write the theme to a TV show 2:12:22.640 --> 2:12:24.960 like Er, and then in one of his high school 2:12:25.000 --> 2:12:28.880 friend Marty Davitsch would scored all the episodes for fourteen years. 2:12:28.960 --> 2:12:31.840 You know, James was helping his friends out like that. 2:12:32.360 --> 2:12:35.200 He was doing very very well, and he helped me 2:12:35.240 --> 2:12:38.080 out that way. He did that a few times. He 2:12:38.080 --> 2:12:40.440 helped get me some gigs. He got me in there, 2:12:40.480 --> 2:12:44.920 I mean right away right away. But the reality was 2:12:45.000 --> 2:12:47.800 again I whereas I could do it, and there were 2:12:47.840 --> 2:12:51.200 certain aspects of it that I did well at. I 2:12:51.880 --> 2:12:57.320 wasn't great at it. I didn't It wasn't really my lane. 2:12:57.360 --> 2:12:59.560 At the end of the day, I was making a living. 2:12:59.640 --> 2:13:02.560 I would occasionally get a show, but a lot of times, 2:13:02.600 --> 2:13:05.760 you know, you'd run that gauntlet of getting a TV 2:13:05.880 --> 2:13:09.840 show and auditioning and submitting, and sometimes you'd get the 2:13:09.840 --> 2:13:12.080 TV show and then it would last for two episodes 2:13:12.200 --> 2:13:14.960 and it'd be gone and you'd have to start over. 2:13:15.960 --> 2:13:19.960 James helped me start scoring, and it was very up 2:13:20.000 --> 2:13:23.000 and down for me, and then total came back into 2:13:23.040 --> 2:13:26.560 my life. Luke asked me if I wanted to, if 2:13:26.600 --> 2:13:28.520 I wanted to go on the road with them and 2:13:28.560 --> 2:13:31.480 do one summer to benefit my brother Mike and That 2:13:31.560 --> 2:13:35.320 turned into nine years of touring with the band again, 2:13:35.440 --> 2:13:38.720 which I had a blast with. But when I got home, 2:13:38.880 --> 2:13:41.000 I knew I was done touring. I knew I wanted 2:13:41.040 --> 2:13:45.680 to stay home, and I, you know, I figured I 2:13:45.720 --> 2:13:47.240 was going to have to try to get another film 2:13:47.240 --> 2:13:51.040 gig or something, and it turns out I didn't. I'm 2:13:51.080 --> 2:13:55.880 able to. I've been able to live off of my royalties. 2:13:55.920 --> 2:13:59.480 And then I just made a deal with Primary Wave 2:13:59.520 --> 2:14:03.000 and the Jack Sexton State and now all I do 2:14:03.360 --> 2:14:07.480 every day, all day is work on my songs, and 2:14:07.560 --> 2:14:12.320 I'm in heaven and I'm film scoring. Taught me I 2:14:12.360 --> 2:14:16.360 developed this finishing muscle. I kind of grew up. And 2:14:17.240 --> 2:14:20.120 I'm sitting on like two solo albums worth of stuff 2:14:20.160 --> 2:14:24.680 now and all I do all day is write songs 2:14:24.720 --> 2:14:28.240 and finish them. And I'm in my lane, you know. 2:14:28.480 --> 2:14:30.320 And when I go to the Baked Potato Now and 2:14:30.360 --> 2:14:33.920 hear my friends play, I don't feel like a piece 2:14:33.960 --> 2:14:37.560 of crap when I leave, I'm very proud of them. 2:14:37.960 --> 2:14:41.760 And I know that now from here on out, I 2:14:41.800 --> 2:14:45.160 get to do what I do best, which is to 2:14:45.240 --> 2:14:48.480 write the kind of songs I write, and I get 2:14:48.480 --> 2:14:50.840 to finish them and I'm going to be able to 2:14:50.880 --> 2:14:52.440 do this for the rest of my life. 2:14:52.880 --> 2:14:56.280 Just to be clear before we go, you sold all 2:14:56.360 --> 2:15:03.440 your songwriting royalties to Primaryry Wave in the Jacksons eight percent, 2:15:04.480 --> 2:15:06.440 And what was the decision involved in that. 2:15:07.720 --> 2:15:10.600 It was a huge decision. It was to just kind 2:15:10.640 --> 2:15:15.600 of to be able to just do what I love 2:15:15.680 --> 2:15:18.840 to do, to not have to tour ever again, to 2:15:19.000 --> 2:15:22.520 not do TV shows which own me, to just be 2:15:22.600 --> 2:15:27.240 able to do what I love doing. And this affords 2:15:27.320 --> 2:15:27.600 me that. 2:15:29.400 --> 2:15:33.080 Okay, Steve's been great talking to you. Tell quite a story. 2:15:33.320 --> 2:15:36.000 You're quite alive. You know, usually we hear from the 2:15:36.080 --> 2:15:38.400 lead singer, the lead guitars. We don't know the person 2:15:38.440 --> 2:15:40.720 I've seen you on stage, but I've never known what 2:15:40.760 --> 2:15:43.240 you were like. You're a great guy. I want to 2:15:43.240 --> 2:15:46.120 thank you for taking this time to talk to my audience. 2:15:46.920 --> 2:15:50.120 Great great, great meeting you, great talking to you. 2:15:50.200 --> 2:15:54.320 Okay, you bet till next time. This is Bob left 2:15:54.360 --> 2:15:54.680 six 2:16:16.320 --> 2:16:16.440 Sh