1
00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:12,800
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Left That's podcast. My

2
00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:18,440
Speaker 1: guest today is a singer, a songwriter, a producer, a technologist. Yes,

3
00:00:18,600 --> 00:00:23,279
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to the one and only Richard Godderer. Richard, Well,

4
00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:26,000
Speaker 1: given what it took to get this started, I would

5
00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:30,120
Speaker 1: take technologist out of it. Although you did start the

6
00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:34,120
Speaker 1: orchard and we'll get there. Uh. So, how you're handling COVID, Richard,

7
00:00:35,360 --> 00:00:41,559
Speaker 1: pretty good? Uh, I'm recognizing birds. I have squirrels that

8
00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:47,080
Speaker 1: are personal friends. Now we left the city. We have

9
00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:50,199
Speaker 1: an apartment in New York and when the Orchard and

10
00:00:50,280 --> 00:00:55,520
Speaker 1: Sony closed, uh probably marched twelve. I came up to

11
00:00:55,600 --> 00:00:58,040
Speaker 1: the house, which is a bit outside of the city,

12
00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:01,200
Speaker 1: and uh we've been here of a sense, but I

13
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:06,520
Speaker 1: have gone back to the apartment a few times and uh,

14
00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:10,440
Speaker 1: you see it's it's kind of strange. But now it's

15
00:01:10,440 --> 00:01:13,760
Speaker 1: gotten pretty much back to normal. The Upper West Side

16
00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: is full of people. What's what's missing, though, is Midtown

17
00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:21,920
Speaker 1: that's quiet. You go down Fifth Avenue, will come up

18
00:01:21,959 --> 00:01:27,640
Speaker 1: Park of Madison and you really see, um see that

19
00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:32,000
Speaker 1: that it might be an issue for businesses, uh, for

20
00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:36,640
Speaker 1: rental of those big spaces, the office space is going forward.

21
00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:41,200
Speaker 1: It might be a problem. You know. Well, hey, you

22
00:01:41,240 --> 00:01:43,160
Speaker 1: know we're still recovering. It looks like it's going to

23
00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:45,360
Speaker 1: get words over the winter. But let's go with you.

24
00:01:45,680 --> 00:01:49,760
Speaker 1: How did you and your two partners? Right? I want candy? Uh,

25
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:53,200
Speaker 1: you want to hear that story. It's it's quite absolutely

26
00:01:53,320 --> 00:01:56,640
Speaker 1: it's quite a good story. Actually, well let's let's go

27
00:01:56,720 --> 00:02:04,040
Speaker 1: to this first before I want Candy. We put out, Um,

28
00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:09,840
Speaker 1: we put out a a single on the legendary Swan

29
00:02:10,040 --> 00:02:13,600
Speaker 1: Records Swanted licensed of course, great record. Okay, wait, we

30
00:02:13,720 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 1: just stop there for a second because I don't think

31
00:02:16,240 --> 00:02:19,000
Speaker 1: I know everything there. Swan of course put out she

32
00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:23,680
Speaker 1: loves You, the Beatles album She Loves You Freddie Cannon. Okay,

33
00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:28,040
Speaker 1: so what was Swan Records? Who owned that? Um? Two

34
00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:33,720
Speaker 1: guys that I think we're in partnership with, um, Dick Clark.

35
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:37,240
Speaker 1: Let's get it that way. We in those days you

36
00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:42,560
Speaker 1: could have partnerships in the media, um sort of um

37
00:02:42,800 --> 00:02:48,840
Speaker 1: and okay. So we had written songs that were uh

38
00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:52,200
Speaker 1: minor hits for Freddie Cannon. One called What's going to

39
00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:54,640
Speaker 1: Happen When Summer's Done. It was a follow up to

40
00:02:54,639 --> 00:02:58,520
Speaker 1: Passage Park. So we knew the people there, so we

41
00:02:58,600 --> 00:03:02,720
Speaker 1: had this track we had done with the Angels, and

42
00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:06,320
Speaker 1: they just didn't want to do it. But it was

43
00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:09,840
Speaker 1: a Scott track, a version of I think it was

44
00:03:09,919 --> 00:03:13,639
Speaker 1: a Joe Stafford song. A little love that slowly grows

45
00:03:13,639 --> 00:03:16,280
Speaker 1: and grows, not one that comes to that's all I

46
00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:19,600
Speaker 1: want from you. Well we did it. A little love,

47
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:22,760
Speaker 1: love that slowly it goes, It goes, you know, like

48
00:03:22,800 --> 00:03:27,320
Speaker 1: a stop. And in the middle Bob Feldman goes, Oh,

49
00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:30,760
Speaker 1: little louve that slowly grows, it grows, you know, with

50
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:34,240
Speaker 1: a fake British accent, just for a joke. We put

51
00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:39,440
Speaker 1: the record out nowhere, nowhere does it show any activity

52
00:03:40,480 --> 00:03:43,120
Speaker 1: until we get a phone call from a guy in

53
00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:46,839
Speaker 1: Virginia Beach, Virginia, a disc jockey, I still remember his name.

54
00:03:47,240 --> 00:03:51,240
Speaker 1: It was Gene Loving and he said, if you guys

55
00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:55,640
Speaker 1: could come down here and play a show at the Colosseum.

56
00:03:56,120 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 1: Of course we were like stoned out producers. We didn't

57
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:02,880
Speaker 1: know anything about that. Um I could make this record

58
00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:07,120
Speaker 1: number one. Well, when someone says number one, you jump.

59
00:04:08,360 --> 00:04:12,520
Speaker 1: Number ten, you don't jump. Number five, you crawl. Number

60
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:17,320
Speaker 1: one you jump. So we pack up a crew. We

61
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:22,760
Speaker 1: have adventures going down to Virginia Beach with triving with

62
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:30,680
Speaker 1: three cars and these banging African hair drums that I played. UM.

63
00:04:30,760 --> 00:04:34,320
Speaker 1: We pull into the radio station, say Jean, we're here.

64
00:04:35,279 --> 00:04:38,680
Speaker 1: He says, what do you mean you're here? Everybody's out

65
00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:43,240
Speaker 1: at the airport waiting for you to come in. We

66
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:48,120
Speaker 1: pulled them you were Australian because we couldn't pass for British.

67
00:04:48,640 --> 00:04:51,080
Speaker 1: And we go to the airport. We get on a

68
00:04:51,200 --> 00:04:56,040
Speaker 1: small two engine plane and the taxis down to the

69
00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:00,360
Speaker 1: UM airport entrance and there are kids with teddy bears

70
00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:05,400
Speaker 1: and jelly beans. Virginia Beach welcomes Australia, Strange loves. So

71
00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:09,719
Speaker 1: we get up on stage stone out of our minds,

72
00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:15,680
Speaker 1: banging the drums and the song we played was a

73
00:05:15,800 --> 00:05:20,680
Speaker 1: version of Bo Diddley Boom boom boom boom boom on

74
00:05:20,760 --> 00:05:26,039
Speaker 1: the drums. Um. People are screaming. You know, it was

75
00:05:26,120 --> 00:05:31,760
Speaker 1: just amazing. We get done, We drive back to UH.

76
00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:36,280
Speaker 1: We drive back to New York, but before we do, UH,

77
00:05:36,440 --> 00:05:41,200
Speaker 1: we stopped. UH. We go out that night with I

78
00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:46,600
Speaker 1: think it was the mayor or, the town counselor, and okay,

79
00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:51,080
Speaker 1: I guess this is all right for for your podcast.

80
00:05:51,200 --> 00:05:55,359
Speaker 1: It's it's not really racist. And we're sitting there and

81
00:05:55,480 --> 00:06:02,159
Speaker 1: it's a bottle club because you couldn't by liquor in

82
00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:06,120
Speaker 1: Virginia at that time, and it was little bottles and

83
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:09,440
Speaker 1: we're drinking and he said, as the house it all

84
00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:14,240
Speaker 1: being down in Australia, great, mate, write you all, write

85
00:06:14,279 --> 00:06:19,200
Speaker 1: you all, and going like for faith Australian accents, and

86
00:06:19,279 --> 00:06:22,400
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, I'm so glad you boys are here.

87
00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:26,039
Speaker 1: I get some of them New York Jews coming down

88
00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:31,600
Speaker 1: here and and we're going write you all. Mate. Australia

89
00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:34,840
Speaker 1: is the same, you know, and got at it there

90
00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:37,920
Speaker 1: as like as we could. Um go back to New

91
00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:42,000
Speaker 1: York and we meet I'm at heart again and I'm

92
00:06:42,080 --> 00:06:50,359
Speaker 1: it is um hanging out uh with um with some

93
00:06:50,880 --> 00:06:54,720
Speaker 1: girls of our age that we hung out with. So

94
00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:57,520
Speaker 1: he just says, your kids are great, you as are great.

95
00:06:57,880 --> 00:07:01,159
Speaker 1: You you should come and use my studio. So we

96
00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:04,480
Speaker 1: pack up we go to the Atlantic Studios because by

97
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:08,040
Speaker 1: this time the success of my boyfriend's back had changed

98
00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:12,640
Speaker 1: because now the Beatles, the Stones, the Kings though, they're

99
00:07:12,680 --> 00:07:17,200
Speaker 1: all coming in and as Australians we take our drums

100
00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:21,320
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic studios. Brue, Wait, does i'm it think

101
00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:25,720
Speaker 1: you're Australian? No, No, I don't know what he thought.

102
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,800
Speaker 1: I mean he could have thought anything, right, I mean

103
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:31,080
Speaker 1: I might I think thought whatever he wanted to think,

104
00:07:31,720 --> 00:07:35,640
Speaker 1: you know. So we go back there and we record

105
00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:41,040
Speaker 1: a great version of Bo Diddley, but not not taking up,

106
00:07:41,200 --> 00:07:44,560
Speaker 1: but it's our beat, the boom boom, because the strange

107
00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:48,880
Speaker 1: was beat was enormous and at that time you had

108
00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:53,240
Speaker 1: to cut an ascetate, and we cut the acetate at

109
00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:56,520
Speaker 1: his studios. He says, my god, Cherry Wex has got

110
00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:59,960
Speaker 1: to hear us, brings us in and we didn't really

111
00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,520
Speaker 1: ain't know Jerry Max. Nobody was legendary by that time,

112
00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:07,120
Speaker 1: you know, where the Memphis sessions and everything, and vowie,

113
00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:10,560
Speaker 1: Jerry's gonna listen to us and Ahmed and we're twenty

114
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:14,320
Speaker 1: by then, we were twenty four maybe, and it was

115
00:08:14,400 --> 00:08:18,840
Speaker 1: still kids and puts the thing on and the first

116
00:08:18,840 --> 00:08:21,480
Speaker 1: thing years bowed and Luba babe, and the next thing

117
00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:26,040
Speaker 1: to hear is Ahmed, get these fucking kids out of

118
00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:30,360
Speaker 1: here before I kill him. And we're shocked. We don't

119
00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:33,760
Speaker 1: know what to do, and we just leave. Am It

120
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:40,240
Speaker 1: comes running after us and says, uh no, no, he

121
00:08:40,360 --> 00:08:43,960
Speaker 1: gets funny sometimes like that. But you go and see

122
00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:48,240
Speaker 1: our friend Bert Burns, who we just started a label

123
00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:52,640
Speaker 1: with Bang B A n G which stood for Bert

124
00:08:53,160 --> 00:08:59,800
Speaker 1: ahmed Nessui Cherry and a publishing company was Web four uh,

125
00:09:00,120 --> 00:09:04,720
Speaker 1: meaning we've for them. Um, we go to see Bird,

126
00:09:04,920 --> 00:09:09,600
Speaker 1: Hey listen to it. He says, yeah, yeah, I know, Jerry.

127
00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:13,040
Speaker 1: He sees a couple of kids from Brooklyn and the Bronx,

128
00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:16,760
Speaker 1: and he's an R and B purist. He doesn't want

129
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:20,520
Speaker 1: to hear you doing that. But what we could do,

130
00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:24,880
Speaker 1: the beat that you created is so amazing. We could

131
00:09:24,920 --> 00:09:32,120
Speaker 1: structure a song around that beat. Hence we've started writing

132
00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:35,840
Speaker 1: the song. And he said, let's get a title. I

133
00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:40,360
Speaker 1: remember saying, well, what about that book that's been banned

134
00:09:40,640 --> 00:09:49,680
Speaker 1: at softcore porn candy written by Terry Southern. Well it

135
00:09:49,760 --> 00:09:53,720
Speaker 1: turned out to be perfect because the other book that

136
00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:57,280
Speaker 1: can that Terry Southern wrote that I know is famous

137
00:09:58,520 --> 00:10:03,520
Speaker 1: is Doctor Strange Love. Hence, there we were. We were

138
00:10:03,559 --> 00:10:07,120
Speaker 1: the Strange Loves went in did the song we wrote

139
00:10:07,160 --> 00:10:10,520
Speaker 1: together with Burt, the three of us and Bert, Bob Felman,

140
00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:15,080
Speaker 1: Jerry Golstein, myself, Bert Burns went to bell sound, made

141
00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:21,960
Speaker 1: this layer drum and and like self sync over and

142
00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:25,320
Speaker 1: over again. Our voices kept bouncing him to make a

143
00:10:25,400 --> 00:10:29,360
Speaker 1: big sound, and Bert came up with the guitar lick,

144
00:10:30,120 --> 00:10:36,680
Speaker 1: which is very much like a famous song called what

145
00:10:36,840 --> 00:10:44,960
Speaker 1: was it called? It was Anna by Sylvano mcganno. And

146
00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:47,440
Speaker 1: I remember the guitar player that played in his name

147
00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:51,560
Speaker 1: was Everett Boxdale. And we got done with the record

148
00:10:51,679 --> 00:10:54,200
Speaker 1: and you think you're done. It's a four track recording, right,

149
00:10:54,920 --> 00:11:00,839
Speaker 1: Well not with neurotic people like us. Because we were

150
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:05,319
Speaker 1: going to be superstar producers. We start mixing it over

151
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:08,720
Speaker 1: and over again. Four track It took us. We went

152
00:11:08,800 --> 00:11:13,880
Speaker 1: to uh what was the Columbia Record studios. We spent

153
00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:21,640
Speaker 1: four days mixing it, editing it, and then went real

154
00:11:21,760 --> 00:11:25,520
Speaker 1: to real machine to machine and added reverb on top

155
00:11:25,559 --> 00:11:29,240
Speaker 1: of it, and hence came the strange love sound. And

156
00:11:29,280 --> 00:11:32,160
Speaker 1: that's the story of I Want Candy. Um it's a

157
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:35,040
Speaker 1: long story, I know, but no, no, okay, So you

158
00:11:35,160 --> 00:11:37,640
Speaker 1: finished the record. Does everyone think it's going to be

159
00:11:37,679 --> 00:11:41,160
Speaker 1: a hit? Um? Yeah, I do, I think so. I

160
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:45,920
Speaker 1: think Burt loved it. UM put it out. I'm trying

161
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:50,959
Speaker 1: to think, yeah, um it came out pretty quickly after

162
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:53,320
Speaker 1: we finished it. In those days, you didn't have to

163
00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:55,600
Speaker 1: plan for much. As quick as you could press it,

164
00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:59,560
Speaker 1: you could get it out. UM. And I'm trying to

165
00:11:59,640 --> 00:12:04,040
Speaker 1: think where it started. UM. I know it was huge

166
00:12:04,120 --> 00:12:07,160
Speaker 1: number one in Chicago and probably now that got higher

167
00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:11,160
Speaker 1: than nine or so on the charts. But its impact

168
00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:15,199
Speaker 1: was great, UM, and it led us to go on tour. Okay,

169
00:12:15,240 --> 00:12:19,199
Speaker 1: before we get there, it was obviously come back two

170
00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:23,600
Speaker 1: decades later with bow wow Wow. My question is do

171
00:12:23,720 --> 00:12:28,040
Speaker 1: you get paid on I Want Candy? Oh? Yeah, we

172
00:12:28,360 --> 00:12:32,440
Speaker 1: we get paid very well and I Want Candy. Say,

173
00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:34,880
Speaker 1: but at this late date, do you still have an

174
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:40,240
Speaker 1: interest in that song? Oh? Yes? As writers? UM. The

175
00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:45,360
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I could UM, I could share with

176
00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:50,360
Speaker 1: listeners who are in the business. UH. Fifty six years

177
00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:57,880
Speaker 1: after the initial copyright signing with a publishing company, rights

178
00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:02,840
Speaker 1: revert back to the writers by copyright law. The writers

179
00:13:02,880 --> 00:13:06,720
Speaker 1: then have an opportunity to do what they want with it,

180
00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:12,640
Speaker 1: keep it, publish it themselves, resell it to the publishing

181
00:13:12,679 --> 00:13:18,720
Speaker 1: company that added UM, or sell it to other individuals.

182
00:13:18,760 --> 00:13:22,440
Speaker 1: Or are people out there buying copyrights and and writers

183
00:13:22,559 --> 00:13:26,240
Speaker 1: royalties UM and spending tremendous amounts of money for it.

184
00:13:27,240 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 1: We took advantage of that and re UM sold UM

185
00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:40,920
Speaker 1: both My Boyfriends Back and I Want Candy two, UM

186
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:46,720
Speaker 1: sony a TV Music again and they paid handsfully for

187
00:13:46,840 --> 00:13:51,839
Speaker 1: it without mentioning numbers. It was significant. You maintain your

188
00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:54,520
Speaker 1: writer's share? What you are you do? Yeah? We main

189
00:13:54,840 --> 00:13:59,760
Speaker 1: We maintained our writer's shist. Now, you could also sell

190
00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:05,040
Speaker 1: those writer chairs if one wanted to. I don't have to,

191
00:14:05,160 --> 00:14:08,200
Speaker 1: and I don't really want to at the moment, but

192
00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:12,360
Speaker 1: who knows what life where death brings us? Okay, very

193
00:14:12,480 --> 00:14:15,840
Speaker 1: very specifically, did you license to them or did you

194
00:14:15,920 --> 00:14:22,960
Speaker 1: literally sell the songs out right? No? You you resign

195
00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:29,480
Speaker 1: with them as the publishers UM. But they have to

196
00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:33,240
Speaker 1: pay for it at this point because they're there or

197
00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:37,920
Speaker 1: other successful songs. They people do the same thing with

198
00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:41,840
Speaker 1: UM and we maintain they they account to us for

199
00:14:41,920 --> 00:14:45,800
Speaker 1: writers royalties are writers share? So in a sense in

200
00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:53,880
Speaker 1: that instance, you're you're selling signing away UM of the

201
00:14:53,920 --> 00:14:58,440
Speaker 1: basic amount of money that comes in UM, and it

202
00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:01,800
Speaker 1: was it was worth it, know, But the Bow Wow

203
00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:12,240
Speaker 1: Row record and then what's his name, UM, Aaron Carter? Yeah? UM,

204
00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:16,640
Speaker 1: but the song itself. It's what's interesting about it is

205
00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:21,040
Speaker 1: when you see something that's fifty and sixty fifty years

206
00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:26,080
Speaker 1: old or almost sixty years um and you said cross generations,

207
00:15:26,680 --> 00:15:30,400
Speaker 1: and it's the same with my boyfriends back. It's almost

208
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:38,040
Speaker 1: not logical, but there's something that's eternal about about those

209
00:15:38,560 --> 00:15:42,560
Speaker 1: the simplicity of them. They be filled. Basically, you could

210
00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:47,680
Speaker 1: go to his cvs and there's pumpkins and dogs that

211
00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:52,160
Speaker 1: you could buy, and you press and it goes, I'm

212
00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:56,720
Speaker 1: a candy or or a rich or something like that.

213
00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:03,760
Speaker 1: You know, or you could you could buy on the internet. Uh,

214
00:16:04,200 --> 00:16:10,120
Speaker 1: the Hess truck that comes back every Christmas. Uh and

215
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:13,960
Speaker 1: goes the Hess trucks back and it's got the most

216
00:16:14,040 --> 00:16:19,000
Speaker 1: amazing thing. So commercials UTIs in movies. These are things

217
00:16:19,040 --> 00:16:23,600
Speaker 1: we never considered where we're kids writing these songs. Another

218
00:16:23,640 --> 00:16:25,840
Speaker 1: one I'd bring up as far as commercials, which is

219
00:16:25,920 --> 00:16:30,720
Speaker 1: interesting of course it to me, it's mind boggling. So

220
00:16:31,440 --> 00:16:38,200
Speaker 1: if you watch regular television, it's full of commercials for um,

221
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:42,040
Speaker 1: not narcotics, but drugs you could buy for diabetes, for this,

222
00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:48,920
Speaker 1: and on comes a commercial for a diabetes medication. We

223
00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:52,640
Speaker 1: got the beat, We got the beat, and I'm thinking,

224
00:16:53,040 --> 00:16:59,080
Speaker 1: what what a punk girl group that sank? We got

225
00:16:59,080 --> 00:17:02,400
Speaker 1: the beat? You know, it's not my song, it's it's

226
00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:07,520
Speaker 1: Charlotte's song. Uh. But when you hear that, it just

227
00:17:08,280 --> 00:17:13,679
Speaker 1: it just tells you that songs, that the song is

228
00:17:13,800 --> 00:17:17,520
Speaker 1: a thing that's most valuable about this business. Okay, So

229
00:17:17,560 --> 00:17:19,680
Speaker 1: where were you? Where are you? Were you born? Whould

230
00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:23,399
Speaker 1: you grow up? I grew up in the Bronx. And

231
00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:27,080
Speaker 1: what did your father mother do for a living? Oh?

232
00:17:27,119 --> 00:17:30,840
Speaker 1: My father and mother had various jobs. But the one

233
00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:33,320
Speaker 1: thing when I was going to junior high school they

234
00:17:33,359 --> 00:17:39,000
Speaker 1: had which was amazing. They had a bakery. They don't

235
00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:40,240
Speaker 1: know what they knew about it, but it was a

236
00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:43,720
Speaker 1: wholesale bakery where they've brought things in. But in the back,

237
00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:48,919
Speaker 1: in the back, they had three bakers, some old Russian

238
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:52,320
Speaker 1: German guy you know who take me in the back

239
00:17:52,400 --> 00:17:57,400
Speaker 1: and say it was my first experience as a very

240
00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:02,159
Speaker 1: young kid. Do you know girls are very cool? Did you?

241
00:18:02,640 --> 00:18:05,000
Speaker 1: If you want to, if you want to see what

242
00:18:05,119 --> 00:18:09,200
Speaker 1: it feels like, riget press on the dough here, it's

243
00:18:09,320 --> 00:18:13,320
Speaker 1: just like the beautiful girl's breast. So are you talking?

244
00:18:13,800 --> 00:18:17,320
Speaker 1: This is free bam mitzvah, Right, you're talking like ten

245
00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:23,199
Speaker 1: years old, right, And I, oh wow, and so so

246
00:18:23,359 --> 00:18:29,320
Speaker 1: I remember this ship. It's really stupid. But these things,

247
00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:33,280
Speaker 1: these things lead to other things. And I would be

248
00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:36,400
Speaker 1: serious now it's not that it leads to the experience

249
00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:40,280
Speaker 1: of the breast, but but things that people tell you

250
00:18:41,400 --> 00:18:47,000
Speaker 1: um lead to other things that you don't think you're

251
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:50,240
Speaker 1: gonna pay dividends. It's like when when we were doing

252
00:18:50,280 --> 00:18:53,600
Speaker 1: I Want Candy and other things. I was in the studio.

253
00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:56,320
Speaker 1: I get kind of weird in those days in the

254
00:18:56,400 --> 00:18:59,520
Speaker 1: studio and the drama. Herbie Lavell was his name, a

255
00:18:59,560 --> 00:19:02,840
Speaker 1: brilliant drummer who worked with us all the time, comes

256
00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:07,200
Speaker 1: over and said, Richard, uh, you don't look so good.

257
00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:12,679
Speaker 1: Are you having fun? And I said, yeah, sure, and

258
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 1: he said I don't think so. He said, but let

259
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:18,280
Speaker 1: me tell you something. This is about fun. If you're

260
00:19:18,280 --> 00:19:22,480
Speaker 1: not enjoying it, get out and do something else, you know.

261
00:19:22,920 --> 00:19:25,760
Speaker 1: I never forgot that, you know, And and it made

262
00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:27,760
Speaker 1: me think of something else. I mean, you want to

263
00:19:27,760 --> 00:19:30,560
Speaker 1: go in that line? Another thing I never forgot. Two

264
00:19:30,600 --> 00:19:35,280
Speaker 1: things Alan Freed. Alan Freed is where I first heard

265
00:19:35,359 --> 00:19:39,280
Speaker 1: rock and roll kid Transistor Radio, the same kid that

266
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:44,240
Speaker 1: was touching the dough and uh, doing this stuff, and

267
00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:47,960
Speaker 1: two things I remember that kept me into business. He

268
00:19:48,119 --> 00:19:53,200
Speaker 1: played a ricket called Hearts made of Stone. Hearts made

269
00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:58,760
Speaker 1: of stone, You don't have a brave drake, And then

270
00:19:58,760 --> 00:20:02,320
Speaker 1: I said no, no, no no no no no no

271
00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:06,920
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no. Everybody knows.

272
00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:10,359
Speaker 1: And then he takes the record off and says, the

273
00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:12,600
Speaker 1: first ten people took call up and tell me how

274
00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:17,240
Speaker 1: many times they said no. So I never forgot that.

275
00:20:18,480 --> 00:20:21,480
Speaker 1: And the other thing about Alan Freed. He plays his

276
00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:25,960
Speaker 1: record that was great, and then he goes, kids, that

277
00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:30,720
Speaker 1: sounds great, right, waits a second and then goes, it

278
00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:33,840
Speaker 1: will never be a hit. It doesn't have a sacks break.

279
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:39,119
Speaker 1: I remember that you could. So what I remembered is okay,

280
00:20:39,240 --> 00:20:41,960
Speaker 1: maybe not a sacks break, maybe not a guitar break,

281
00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:47,080
Speaker 1: maybe a rap maybe something else. He meant it wasn't finished.

282
00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:50,560
Speaker 1: And the last thing, that's the most touching thing. And

283
00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:54,719
Speaker 1: it's strange because I talked to Paul Simon once about

284
00:20:54,760 --> 00:21:00,679
Speaker 1: it and he wrote a song about it. Um and um.

285
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:04,119
Speaker 1: He had the same experience. Uh, you're listening to radio

286
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 1: transistor radio and your pill you're in junior high school

287
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 1: or freshman high school, so you're anywhere between thirteen and fifteen,

288
00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:19,920
Speaker 1: right and on the radio comes. I looked at the clock,

289
00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:23,879
Speaker 1: at the face on the wall, and and maybe it

290
00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:27,199
Speaker 1: was that could have been pledging by love. And the

291
00:21:27,320 --> 00:21:31,679
Speaker 1: whole thing goes and all of a sudden, he said, kids,

292
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,760
Speaker 1: we're gonna have three minutes of silence. The radio is

293
00:21:35,800 --> 00:21:42,720
Speaker 1: gonna go dead. Johnny As is dead. And you're just

294
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:47,840
Speaker 1: fucking shocked. You're shocked, you're mesmerized. You're just sitting there.

295
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:55,320
Speaker 1: And the next thing you hear is whoever my dollar? Hello?

296
00:21:55,520 --> 00:22:01,439
Speaker 1: It YouTube. You hear his voice, and that made me

297
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:04,919
Speaker 1: stay in the business. That may get into the business,

298
00:22:04,960 --> 00:22:08,320
Speaker 1: but made me stay. I remember it. I remember it

299
00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 1: when I get down and when I think, you know,

300
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,719
Speaker 1: I can't do that. You know what I remember is

301
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:20,200
Speaker 1: that that these are things you you that have impact

302
00:22:20,359 --> 00:22:23,960
Speaker 1: and effect the other things you do. And that's what

303
00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: makes the music come to life, or that's what made

304
00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:33,240
Speaker 1: music come to life for me. Remembering all this stuff. Uh,

305
00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,359
Speaker 1: it's just the little things people tell you, not the

306
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 1: big moments, the little things. Okay, you're going to school,

307
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 1: good student, life of the party, isolated, What kind of

308
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:49,600
Speaker 1: kid were you? Um, yeah, I was. I used to

309
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: have a band recalled ourselves as Sultan's a Swing after

310
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:58,200
Speaker 1: the Benny Goodman, and we would play mostly at the

311
00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:01,600
Speaker 1: y m h A. But what made our band great

312
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:07,440
Speaker 1: was now, remember this is nineteen fifty something. We had

313
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: a saxophone. I played the piano, but eventually got vibes

314
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:14,679
Speaker 1: because I wanted to stand in the front, So I

315
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: played the keyboards. And we had a drummer, a trumpet player,

316
00:23:19,800 --> 00:23:24,679
Speaker 1: and a guitar player. This is when rockabilly would just

317
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:27,680
Speaker 1: come in. You know, rockabilly was in, but in New

318
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:31,119
Speaker 1: York it wasn't guitar driven. So we had a guitar

319
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:36,440
Speaker 1: player and we would play and uh, I played high

320
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:40,440
Speaker 1: school dances. We'd played the Catskill Mountains, you know that

321
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Uh, cocka lanes, bungalow colonies. Let's go

322
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 1: back before that. Was there music in the house. Yes,

323
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:56,159
Speaker 1: I was trained as a classical piano player. My mother insisted,

324
00:23:56,280 --> 00:24:01,960
Speaker 1: like old Jewish mothers, you get a lessons, absolutely, get up,

325
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: you get a profession, and you're five years old. You

326
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: played a piano. Absolutely yeah. But they got an old

327
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 1: Russian teacher and i'd be playing God forbid I hit

328
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:16,880
Speaker 1: a wrong note. I don't know about you. She had

329
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:22,439
Speaker 1: a ruler every time I hit ayno duck smack. So

330
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:27,399
Speaker 1: I gave up. I sort of gave up a classgow.

331
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 1: I started listening to if all things, if you could

332
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: believe it, Glenn Miller, Um, uh, Benny Goodman when he

333
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:41,959
Speaker 1: had what's his name Lionel not Lionel Hampton, and uh

334
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:47,879
Speaker 1: Teddy got his name now, um the piano playing, and

335
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: I think, I'm not sure. I think Big Joe, Big

336
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: Joe Burner. But one of them used to sing some

337
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: real serious blues and I got into the blues and

338
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 1: they did some sort of Saint His blues, and I

339
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: learned to play boogie piano and play that stuff. And

340
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: that led me to um to, to thinking I could

341
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:14,239
Speaker 1: do this and understanding the concept of the blues and

342
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:20,360
Speaker 1: writing songs. So when Elvis Presley happened, I liked him.

343
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: But the one I really liked was Jerry Lee Jerry

344
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:28,439
Speaker 1: Lee Lewis. So as a kid, I'm popping away and

345
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 1: I decide, after great bowls of Fire, I could write

346
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: songs like that. So I write this song called I'm

347
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: on Fire and it was a cool song. Help I'll

348
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,920
Speaker 1: help Mr Fireman please. I'm a burning from my head

349
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: to my knees. I'm a flame with such a burning desire.

350
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 1: Of course, had no idea what desire was. I'm like

351
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: a flaming cup. I'm gonna burning up. Yeah, I'm on fire. Okay,

352
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 1: I write the song of sixty fifteen and forget about it. Bob,

353
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: Jerry and I we shared everything, so we threw our

354
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:12,479
Speaker 1: songs together. And after my boyfriend's back, which was on

355
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:18,479
Speaker 1: Smash um uh, we get invited to a conference because

356
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 1: people wanted to meet us because Smash was the label.

357
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:25,640
Speaker 1: Get there, they say, you know you got any songs

358
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: for Jerry Lewis he We just signed him as and

359
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: he's making he's going country, but we want to do

360
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 1: his last rock and roll out a few songs. Sure,

361
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: he was there. I played him myself. I played him

362
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:50,439
Speaker 1: by the piano. I'm on fire. He does it, it

363
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: comes out. It's one of the main songs in the movie. Uh,

364
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Rik Boles of fire. Uh, and he became.

365
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: I's a hit of course in England and a minor

366
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: hit here. Okay, but you're in you're in school. Are

367
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: you a popular kid, or you're a good student. I

368
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 1: was an average student. Um, but I had no choice.

369
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:18,640
Speaker 1: I couldn't start in the music business. Yet I had

370
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:23,679
Speaker 1: to go to college. So I was able to pass

371
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: through whatever it is uh s A T S. And

372
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,960
Speaker 1: I was accepted to a school called a Delphi. It's

373
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: a garden city, Long Island. And but I go there

374
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:39,119
Speaker 1: and I'm done with all this rock and roll garbage.

375
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: I've listening to jazz. I'm going to be an educated guy,

376
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:48,920
Speaker 1: and uh this stuff is it is for kids. M

377
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 1: uh So again, I'm still an average student. Um, but

378
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:58,240
Speaker 1: I did all right in university in some class. So

379
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: you graduate. I graduate from high school, UM named William

380
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: Howard Taft and that was in the Bronx. Okay, but

381
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: then you go to a Delphi. Did you graduate from

382
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:16,160
Speaker 1: a Delphi? I did graduate from a DOLPHI and I

383
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: went on to Brooklyn Law School because golf a bit,

384
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: I would never profession um. But the problem was that

385
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 1: I still wanted to write songs. So on the way

386
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: coming down on the D train from the Bronx, there

387
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: were stops at Seventh Avenue fifty second Street, and you

388
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: could get off where you could keep going and circle

389
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: around to Brooklyn and get out and go to the school. Well,

390
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: I started going to Brooklyn Law School, and I went

391
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: for about a year, but only half of the time

392
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,040
Speaker 1: did I attend classes because I would get off the

393
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: train at seventh Avenue, which was fifty Street, fifty one Street,

394
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: N Street, the Brill Building six fifty Broadway. UM the

395
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: place where young songwriter. Young songwriters were gathering with old songwriters.

396
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 1: But just like today, the independent record companies, publishing companies,

397
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: we're looking for young people between eighteen and twenty two,

398
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty two, that's where Carol King, Jerry Goffrid

399
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: A Barry Man, Cynthia uh, Howie Greenfield, Neil Sadaka. If

400
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: all these names mean anything to anybody anymore, I know,

401
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying you'd be surprised. Who doesn't you know? Uh?

402
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 1: How about the name Fleet with Mac all of a

403
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: sudden come on right? Or the Beatles for that matter.

404
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: So so started there and started writing songs with the

405
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: two guys, Bob and Jerry. How did you meet Bob? Yeah,

406
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: I was sitting outside of a publisher's office trying to

407
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: see this particular publisher. His name was not Jackie Gail

408
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: or something Gail. It was not King Cole's publishing company.

409
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 1: And they were waiting there too, and we were kept

410
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: reading an inordinate amount of time. UH So we said,

411
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: what do you do? What do you do? Oh? I

412
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: write songs. I write songs. Hey, you want to try

413
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: to write something together? Being that started a lifelong partnership.

414
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 1: While we do not work together any longer and haven't

415
00:30:56,400 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: for um nearly fifty years. The two companies we started

416
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: uh F G G Productions, which produced the McCoy's I

417
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: Want Candy, My Boyfriend's Back, and lots of other things,

418
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 1: and a publishing company that has the songs that we

419
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: didn't give to other publishers like this all the Strangelove's

420
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: album which has Nighttime and the song that is so

421
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 1: important to us because it was recorded by David Bowie, Sorrow,

422
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: and and many other songs. Still exists. UH still collects

423
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 1: revenue which we share, and our partnership is still a

424
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 1: three way partnership. Uh and this is fifty years on,

425
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: even though we don't do other things together. Okay, was

426
00:31:55,920 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: the first success My Boyfriends Back? The first big success

427
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: is My Boyfriend's Back, The first record that got on

428
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 1: the radio and the charts was We wrote for a

429
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 1: small um publishing record company called bell Tone. On bell

430
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,479
Speaker 1: Tone was an artist that had a number one record

431
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: called Bobby Lewis I'm tosson and turn and well in

432
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 1: our wisdom and then our brilliance. A year later we

433
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: wrote for him My Baby's Got Me toss In and

434
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: turn In again back in the summer of the sixty one.

435
00:32:45,400 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 1: Got on the charts, well maybe number eighty at most,

436
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: but that was our experience on the charts, and then

437
00:32:56,280 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: we started writing better and better in songs. There's a

438
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: doop song called what Time is It? By the Ji

439
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: five That's a classic song. Uh, that's something I would

440
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: recommend to people anytime. And then eventually we left that

441
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: arrangement we had. We were picked up by a guy

442
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: named Wes Farrell who worked for a company named Roosevelt Music,

443
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: and we were given a little room in a piano

444
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: and we sat there and wrote songs and he would

445
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:32,640
Speaker 1: take them to people. That's how I met Dion. We

446
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: wrote songs for Freddie Cannon. We wrote songs for Bobby V.

447
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: Bobby V was a wonderful singer um uh, a huge

448
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: star teen idol in a certain and probably UH late

449
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: fifties or early sixties, UM and UH. It led to

450
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: other things and one other song that we wrote that

451
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: was recorded by the legendary Jerry Butler UH called given

452
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 1: Up on Love, which I forget about but when I

453
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: go to London, if I would go to Liverpool, if

454
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: I would go to Liverpool or Manchester, it's legendary, along

455
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: with a song called the Drifter by Ray Pollard Northern Soul.

456
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: We have a tendency to forget our heritage in this country.

457
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: Thank god, it's kept alive by places like that. What

458
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 1: we look at soul music today is vastly different UM

459
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:44,479
Speaker 1: than what was intended at soul music. And it's kept

460
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: alive in UM in London, so so that part of

461
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: it's great. And then eventually we hooked up with someone

462
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: else who got us signed to April Blackwood. April Blackwood

463
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 1: eventually became um UH owned by Sony Columbia Sony CBS,

464
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: which eventually sold to Sony to Sony, and we wrote

465
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 1: My Boyfriend's Back for them, and the contract for that

466
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: was on one they didn't even know. The people didn't

467
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 1: even know what it was going to become. Because there

468
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 1: were two other songs on the same contract. Right, I forgot.

469
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: But so anyway, the story about Boyfriend's Back is, we

470
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,839
Speaker 1: do it with these girls that we knew. We had

471
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: written a song for them before, but we knew them

472
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 1: and we really want to get deeply into production. Um.

473
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: And we wrote My Boyfriend's Back, showed it to the

474
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: publisher and he said, this is perfect for the Charrell's

475
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:50,880
Speaker 1: Well he said, no, no, it's going to be for

476
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: the Angels and we're going to produce it. Oh no,

477
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:57,760
Speaker 1: we lost our job, our office, everything because we wouldn't

478
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:00,759
Speaker 1: we wouldn't show it to the sharelle as we went out.

479
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: We ran out and did the record ourselves. Um, but

480
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: if you listen to it, he thought it would go

481
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:14,240
Speaker 1: after Well. I met him on a Sunday, do ruh day,

482
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: Run day, Run day, my Boyfriend's Back, and you're gonna

483
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: be in trouble. Hey la, hey la, call a response.

484
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: R and B Church stuff that we knew nothing about

485
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,840
Speaker 1: Jewish kids from the Bronx. But I guess the soul

486
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:33,799
Speaker 1: crushed over somewhere and we understood it. And we we

487
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: went out and with our own money produced My Boyfriend's

488
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 1: Back and then how did you get the label for it? Ah? Oh,

489
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: this is big facts you're drawing out of me. Um,

490
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: what we got. The way we got the label is

491
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: we had an office and we were becoming known as

492
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: writers and people hanging around the scene, and um, they

493
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,240
Speaker 1: would stop been to a little office that we rented.

494
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 1: We had a tiny office in six fifty Broadway, and

495
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: this guy came in. His name was Doug Moody and

496
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:15,239
Speaker 1: he was a promotion man from Mercury Records. Mercury of

497
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: sub label was Smash, the label that had a number

498
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 1: of hits beside that, beside this, and he he has

499
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's back. He says, what do you got kids

500
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: that kind of thing? What do you got? Oh, we

501
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,760
Speaker 1: got this. We played for him. He says, don't show

502
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: this to anybody else. He says, I we'll take this

503
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,759
Speaker 1: record to Chicago with me. I'll be back here in

504
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: one week. If I can't offer you a deal, you

505
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 1: could do anything you want. Okay. So we wait a week.

506
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: He comes back and says, we wanted what do you

507
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 1: want for it? We set something that was an exorbitant

508
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: price for the time, ten thousand dollars. You know, nobody

509
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 1: what ten tho dollars, you know, don't give you the

510
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: give you the ten tho dollars, pay you a reasonably

511
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: high royalty, and we license it to Smash comes out.

512
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: I think four weeks later it's number one. It's just

513
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: it was just one of those miraculous things. It was

514
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:27,279
Speaker 1: a it was a really special record for its time.

515
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 1: It's still a special record. It's it's but but it's

516
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: it's amazing that it it crossed generations. Absolutely, it's still

517
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 1: it's still magical. Yeah. So after that we become producers

518
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: and we we get going and we UM. We start

519
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: producing a lot of girl groups. UM. We produced a

520
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: number of things. We used to work at really special studios.

521
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: We had our musician crew, we used UM and I'm

522
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: trying to think what else sold. We had deals people

523
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: were paying us to make records and stuff, but that

524
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough for us. We start our own label.

525
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: So we start our label and it's called Stork Records

526
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: S T O r K. And we were being clever.

527
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:33,720
Speaker 1: Stalk delivers the hits underneath every male group. The label

528
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 1: was blue. Female group the label was Okay Pink. So

529
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 1: we put this record out and I'll just tell you that.

530
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: It's another thing I learned that I carry with me

531
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:53,359
Speaker 1: as a message. We we get um, we get on

532
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 1: radio stations that that you never thought you get on

533
00:39:57,160 --> 00:39:59,840
Speaker 1: throughout the Northeast, which is where you used to break

534
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: the kind of music pop music, Hertford, New Haven, Albany,

535
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:08,359
Speaker 1: Schenected he Rochester. Um, and if you were big enough

536
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: to Buffalo. We eventually got friends in Buffalo, which I'll

537
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: lead to another story. And we get a phone call. Hey,

538
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: get over here. This is Moish moist, Morris Levy. I

539
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:31,800
Speaker 1: want to see you. I want that record, okay, And

540
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: go over there, and there's a guy sitting outside, you know,

541
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: dressed and dark like this goes like that. Come in.

542
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: We go in and and I never forgot this either.

543
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: And he said, um, I want that record make a

544
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: big hit. What do you want for it? They said,

545
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: you know, ten percent and ten dollars? He says, hey,

546
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: that's too much money, you know, But I'll tell you what.

547
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:10,279
Speaker 1: I'll give you a deal. I'll sign a contract with

548
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: you for ten percent and ten thousand dollars. But you

549
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get six and

550
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. Shake my hand and you got a deal.

551
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: And he opens his pocket like that and lays a

552
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:33,320
Speaker 1: water cash on the table. He says, don't be a schmuck.

553
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:40,839
Speaker 1: Take the money. No way. We didn't want that. We

554
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: we said thank you very much, Marris, no insult. But

555
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 1: we got other office sort of money. He says, you

556
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:51,640
Speaker 1: had my word, you would have gotten it. Now. I

557
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:54,520
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true or not, but what I

558
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:58,879
Speaker 1: carried with me is when you negotiate something, you talk

559
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: about it before end, and you agree on what it is.

560
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: And if you can't honorably agree, what you sign is

561
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: only gonna be fucking Donald trump land, you know, So

562
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:14,879
Speaker 1: if you can't tell the truth to begin with, So

563
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: he would have given us because honor well, I I

564
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 1: suspect honnor was more important to him than the written word.

565
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, So tell me about Burt Burns. Bert Burns, um, oh, saint,

566
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:36,240
Speaker 1: I don't get us to another hit record. Bert Burns

567
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: was a great character. He's a great songwriter. He came

568
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 1: he came from the Bronx as well. He had a deep,

569
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 1: deep love of Latin music, so he had a feel

570
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 1: for it. So that's why when you hear twist and

571
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:55,839
Speaker 1: shout or hang on Sloopy. It's that Guahira tree thing.

572
00:42:56,200 --> 00:43:00,879
Speaker 1: Don't don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't doom doom,

573
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 1: doom doom, don't do don't, don't, don't don't do you know?

574
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: And and and he put that. They say he was

575
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:10,880
Speaker 1: in Cuba, that he helped run guns to Castro. I

576
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,240
Speaker 1: don't know those legends. I have no idea. But he

577
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: he wrote great, great R and B songs, he had

578
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:22,600
Speaker 1: a feeling in wrote for Solomon Berg, Wilson Pikett, and

579
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: of course the original recording of um Um Piece of

580
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:34,399
Speaker 1: My Heart, Um, great Van Morris and stuff. And we

581
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: had done I Want Candy with him. So now we

582
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,800
Speaker 1: go back to the strange loves who go out on tour.

583
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:47,320
Speaker 1: But tour was a tour manager that drove our car.

584
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 1: I Hank Banking drums and the three of us and

585
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 1: whatever band was there. We would say, well, you know, Hank,

586
00:43:56,640 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 1: you know, you know, um, I want candy. We could

587
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: do time as on my side, and we could do

588
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: uh this other song that we learned from the Vibrations,

589
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 1: hang on Sloopy. Well, it turned out Bert and West

590
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:16,760
Speaker 1: Farrell wrote, hang on Sloopy. Uh. So we're going across

591
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 1: the country and we were terrible, absolutely stoned all the time,

592
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:24,840
Speaker 1: just having a great time doing three songs. And we

593
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 1: get the Dick Clock Show in Tulsa. It's in the

594
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 1: auditorium and the Dave Clock five is the headline act.

595
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:38,359
Speaker 1: And they were to me, they were to me they

596
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:41,360
Speaker 1: were my beatles. I liked them better for my taste

597
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,760
Speaker 1: at them at that moment. Get off the stage after

598
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 1: we played it, and he said, oh, you know, maybe

599
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: we've been running the table and we could go back.

600
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:53,960
Speaker 1: I think it would be great for Dave Clock to

601
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 1: record that song as our next single. Well, we don't

602
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: know what to do because we are ready recorded the

603
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 1: track for the Strange Loves album that hadn't been released yet.

604
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: We're driving back and our next show is like Blumbus.

605
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:15,600
Speaker 1: We check into hotel as a Strange Loves and we

606
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: go to the show. There's a band playing of kids.

607
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: The drummer wasn't big enough to sit and play the drums.

608
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:29,360
Speaker 1: He was sure it was. He had to stand and play.

609
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 1: The guitar player was brilliant, and and they played our songs.

610
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:40,839
Speaker 1: People who were screaming, we lock Rick where you want Rick?

611
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: And I thought they recognized me, but of course they

612
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: recognized me. They were talking about Rick Zinga, who became

613
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: Rick Derringer. So as producers, we say, you want to

614
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: make a record kids, and and we go to see

615
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 1: their parents. We have inner at the house. They follow

616
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: us with their parents to New York. They sign a

617
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 1: production deal with f GG Productions, uh and U or

618
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,800
Speaker 1: band Records, I remember, and um. We take him in

619
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: the studio and they sing over the track that we

620
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: have already recorded, which has all the strange laws doubled

621
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: and tripled drums on them. But the guitar solo was

622
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: Rick and I said, Rick, wait, just say before you

623
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: play it, let's give it to him right now. Well

624
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,480
Speaker 1: you know where that comes from, Bob Louie Louis. That's

625
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:43,440
Speaker 1: what he says right before the guitar solo, which is

626
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,760
Speaker 1: another three chord song. So I thought, oh, that'll be cool.

627
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 1: And he plays this great guitar solo and hang us

628
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 1: Sloopy comes out? Does it come out yet? We finish it,

629
00:46:54,560 --> 00:47:00,879
Speaker 1: we master it, we get it perfect. Where's Burke Burns? Oh?

630
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 1: He went on holiday. He's at grossing gous. We go

631
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: drive up to the cat Skills to grossing, goes find

632
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: out where he is. He's in the dining room eating.

633
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: We get the people at the desk to give us

634
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: a broken turntable. We go in and drag him out

635
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: of the dressing room, take him to a room with

636
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: the turntable and play Hang On Sloopy. It's the first

637
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: time he heard the McCoy's version. He goes and nuts

638
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:38,280
Speaker 1: wants to put it out right away. We we agree,

639
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 1: and it's because we've been friends with Bank Records, practically

640
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: founded with him when I want candy and it comes out.

641
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: But there's competition. The competition is there's a record, a

642
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 1: Canadian record by a band called Little Caesar and the

643
00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:02,359
Speaker 1: Consoles that comes out. It's on the charts, but we're

644
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,840
Speaker 1: gonna beat it. What are we going to do? So

645
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: they hire Independent Promotion and that's how I met s

646
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 1: war Stein. Okay, what was Seymour's role on the Hang

647
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: On Slooping? Independent Promotion? Well, I didn't know that. That's

648
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: just that's a factory. Though Seymour was a promotion person.

649
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 1: He came from Billboard and new The tricks of the

650
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:37,319
Speaker 1: charts is to put it gently. Um he understood it,

651
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 1: and um he was able to have some influence and

652
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: eventually um the bank record past um the Little Caesar

653
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 1: and the Consoles. It actually was a better record, but

654
00:48:55,840 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: it did take some um friendly persuasion. Um. Okay, okay,

655
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 1: so you have two more hits with the Strange Loves? Okay,

656
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:09,840
Speaker 1: I want canned? Uh nighttime and Carolyn, how do you

657
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: how does the Strange Loves end? Well? Uh, the Strange

658
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 1: Loves ended when the three of us split up as

659
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:25,359
Speaker 1: a team. Um. Well what was the causation of that? Uh?

660
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: I just think it was time to move on? You

661
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 1: know I had met Seymour. We have been talking about

662
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 1: going into a production company together Jerry. Jerry wanted to

663
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:43,879
Speaker 1: move to California. UM. I think uh that it's sort

664
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: of it's a good question of of why it ended.

665
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: The interesting think about the Strange those days. I never

666
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: wanted to be a performer. Uh. We were invited to

667
00:49:55,719 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 1: play the apollo. Um I I didn't want to do it.

668
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:06,120
Speaker 1: We were invited by Eddie Barkley through ahm it because

669
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:11,760
Speaker 1: remember Atlantic, i'med Bert, I'm at Jesuit Jerry were banging.

670
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: So they were involved in it. So we were invited

671
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: to play the Olympia in Paris, which I mean, if

672
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:24,359
Speaker 1: it came to me today, I would have done it,

673
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: But then I I didn't want to. And you got

674
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: to remember that's me singing nighttime. That's literally me doing

675
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: my best Mick Jagger, you know, And I think that's

676
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 1: what drew it to an end. We didn't perform, we

677
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: stopped writing together, and it might have been time to

678
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 1: move on, you know. Okay, So you start a company

679
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: with uh Seymour. It's sire because it's ther two names,

680
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: and what is the mission at that point? Oh, it's

681
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: production company. It wasn't a record label yet. There was

682
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: a production company, and we got a deal, um uh

683
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: to produce records for Epic Records, Slash Date Records and

684
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: Um I was into R and B at the time.

685
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,680
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to do. So we made some

686
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:26,840
Speaker 1: really we did a deep Clock record. We did a

687
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: record by an artist called Guitark Prussia. UM it's a

688
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: version of a great I'm sure if it's Allen Wolf

689
00:51:35,719 --> 00:51:39,759
Speaker 1: or uh somebody a little Jimmy, but it's called going

690
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:44,040
Speaker 1: Down Slow. And we did a bunch of R and

691
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: B stuff. They came out. They were really pretty good,

692
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really getting anywhere. And Seymour, through past relationships,

693
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: had a had a relationship with a wreck job but

694
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 1: one stop distributor uh in upstate um, Massachusetts, uh uh

695
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:11,520
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and he was interested to going into the

696
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:14,879
Speaker 1: business and putting up a little money. And he got

697
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:17,600
Speaker 1: us a deal with London Records and formed a record

698
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 1: company which we called Sire. So. The mission it Sire

699
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:27,279
Speaker 1: initially was we didn't have a lot of money, so

700
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: maybe we could mirror uh early a lecturer of Van

701
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: God you do low cost of folk uh, you know,

702
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 1: records that can be done acoustically do not cost a

703
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:50,280
Speaker 1: lot of money and um. So so we started doing

704
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: that and we put out a few records. And one

705
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 1: record we put out uh was by an artist named

706
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:05,880
Speaker 1: she was a television personality, Broadway audit celebrity, Phyllis Newman.

707
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: Phillis Newman was married to a man named Adolph Greene

708
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 1: who was an amazing legendary Broadway um um a songwriter.

709
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: And we we did the record because Danny's wife, it

710
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:27,600
Speaker 1: was his money, uh, loved Phillis Newman. She said, why

711
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:30,360
Speaker 1: don't you make a record with her. So I tried

712
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 1: to make this pop rock record with her. It was

713
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: a really cool record, and I wrote a song called

714
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 1: World of Music, which is uh, is really a good song.

715
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: So so we we put it out. Nothing happens with it,

716
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,279
Speaker 1: and Danny sort of fizzles and says, you know, kids,

717
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:52,080
Speaker 1: you take the label yourself. I'm going to go back

718
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: to what I was doing. They do that, and we

719
00:53:54,840 --> 00:54:00,440
Speaker 1: need content. Well, here's where we get into things that

720
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:04,880
Speaker 1: get really interesting. Remember as a producer, I learned to

721
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:10,520
Speaker 1: make records on mono machines, two track machines. Everything was

722
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 1: done on four track. Then it became twelve eight track,

723
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: twelve track six and you have to adjust. Technology dictates

724
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:25,800
Speaker 1: the changes. Technology was rearing its head right at that moment. Again,

725
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:34,239
Speaker 1: we were experiencing in America, UM a shift from a

726
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:38,440
Speaker 1: M to F M. So I would call that technology.

727
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 1: That's a wind change for the business. UM. Sire decided, well,

728
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:52,640
Speaker 1: albums not singles, albums um. So we started traveling to Europe.

729
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 1: And when we go to Europe, we go to the

730
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: UK labels export divisions. Now they were making albums in

731
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 1: the UK, but there are American counterparts, meaning Capitol Records

732
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 1: would only put out the records that already were hits.

733
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,320
Speaker 1: That's why they didn't put the Beatles out right away.

734
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 1: I mean it took three records with other companies for

735
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:25,200
Speaker 1: them to catch onto the Beatles. Well, we went over

736
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: there and said to these export division people, well, we're

737
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:33,640
Speaker 1: Sire Records. We have a label. Uh, you know Seymour

738
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: because of his relationship, but so and so and you

739
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:39,440
Speaker 1: know me because of the hits. I won't carey and

740
00:55:39,480 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's back, and we'll put out your records on

741
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:47,280
Speaker 1: a label and we could license it from them for nothing,

742
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:52,799
Speaker 1: for zero. But a fun thing is that in order

743
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: to endear ourselves, because as when you come to visit

744
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: somebody's home, you bring a gift. Um I had in

745
00:56:03,040 --> 00:56:06,759
Speaker 1: the past with F G G. With our records, when

746
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear what the master sounded like, we

747
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: would pack them in a box that contained a New

748
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: York Jewish cheesecake and send it to w K BW

749
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: and Buffalo, which was a fifty thoud watch station. Now,

750
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 1: they wouldn't guarantee to play our record forever, but they

751
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: would say, guys, we're going to play your ascetate at

752
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,800
Speaker 1: five o'clock on such and such a day. It was

753
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:39,399
Speaker 1: just a matter of you're in what it would sound

754
00:56:39,400 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: like on a radio? Okay? So I translated that and

755
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:46,280
Speaker 1: I set to Seymore. Why don't we just bring cheesecake

756
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:50,800
Speaker 1: when we go over? So we would bring a dozen

757
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 1: New York Jewish cheesecakes and dry ice, and we get

758
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:57,919
Speaker 1: on a plane and we go over to England teas

759
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:04,360
Speaker 1: export divisions and we would give them, uh, cheesecakes. Every

760
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 1: time we came back, they would say, hey, do you

761
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,319
Speaker 1: bring the cheesecake? Oh? We say sure, what do you

762
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: got for us? And we would pick up really great

763
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,280
Speaker 1: bits of music. That's how we got the Climax Blues Band.

764
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 1: We got a group called Barkley James Harvest. We got like,

765
00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:24,280
Speaker 1: oh my god, tons of things. We even had a

766
00:57:24,360 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: Cliff Richard record. We had these records that came over

767
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 1: that we brought over. And because we had albums as

768
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: an independent label, most smaller independence didn't have album content.

769
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: So entire entire sides of Climax Blues Band, Barkley James Harves,

770
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:48,920
Speaker 1: and our first big hit record, a group called Focus.

771
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 1: They had a number one number one song all around

772
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:56,960
Speaker 1: the world called Hocus Pocus. Are you familiar with that?

773
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: Of course they're the instrumental everybody knows Hocus Focus well no,

774
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: not everybody but but and the guy yodels in it.

775
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: So that was our first huge record, but that didn't

776
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 1: happen on London. We weren't selling enough records and London

777
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: dropped us and we got picked up by Tony Martell

778
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:29,960
Speaker 1: and uh and it was Paramount at the time, and

779
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: and we moved over there. So the label grew and

780
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 1: we started having, you know, a big presence on FM

781
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:45,440
Speaker 1: radio and an alternative label, and we we continued, we

782
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: we became friendly. The reason the reason we had Hocus Buccus.

783
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: We we got the first album from a Dutch uh event.

784
00:58:55,800 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: We went to UM and the first album didn't sell

785
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 1: very much and that was throughout London distribution. When we

786
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 1: moved over to Famous Music, which was Paramount, we um

787
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:19,400
Speaker 1: uh we uh that's crazy um. We we started getting

788
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: much more attention and we got a much better deal there,

789
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: so we were able to begin putting out must have

790
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:33,640
Speaker 1: been tapes and cassettes. Um. But it was even early

791
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: days then things were things were changing. And the thing

792
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:41,440
Speaker 1: that I remember is they were charging the same packaging

793
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:44,800
Speaker 1: deduction for things they didn't have to package. That was

794
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:49,240
Speaker 1: a big record business thing. Um. But we were rolling.

795
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:53,160
Speaker 1: We're putting out tons of material stuff. We were licensing

796
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:59,760
Speaker 1: for nothing from overseas UM and um. And then we

797
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 1: were um. We had Hocus Focus, We had the second

798
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:09,800
Speaker 1: album which was Focused Focused three UM, and we had

799
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:13,880
Speaker 1: um uh, Let's see what else do we We had

800
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: a number of really great things, but none of them

801
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:19,160
Speaker 1: sold as much as that. And each of the boys,

802
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:23,320
Speaker 1: Jan Ackerman and tyslin Lear had solo albums out. So

803
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: at one time we had five albums on the cash

804
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 1: Box chart because that was cash Fox was and Billboard,

805
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:35,240
Speaker 1: UM and Record World um uh at the same time.

806
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 1: So we were rolling. But let me backtrack for one second.

807
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: When we put out the first Focus album that didn't

808
01:00:44,720 --> 01:00:51,000
Speaker 1: sell through our London Records version of Sire, Seymour was

809
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:54,919
Speaker 1: in England and he was I don't know. He went

810
01:00:55,000 --> 01:01:00,120
Speaker 1: to he went to to the deck of studios and

811
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: and met a guy named Mike Vernon. Mike Vernon was

812
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: a talented producer who um produced ten years after Savoy Brown,

813
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: and he was producing an album with a blues artist

814
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 1: called Champion Jack Dupree and Champion Jack refused to continue

815
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:29,920
Speaker 1: singing unless he was given some renumeration in the moment,

816
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 1: and Michael had no money, but see what helped him out,

817
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:41,080
Speaker 1: and so so Champion Jack recorded and we met Michael

818
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 1: that way. We asked, Michael, you know what is this

819
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: You're recording Champion Jack? He said, well, that's not for Decca.

820
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:52,520
Speaker 1: My brother and I have a little blues label where

821
01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 1: we're preserving the legend of the blues by recording old

822
01:01:57,440 --> 01:02:04,280
Speaker 1: blues artists. We're finding them very is I mean legendary people, um,

823
01:02:04,520 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: Jack Dupree and stuff. So what's your label called Blue

824
01:02:08,600 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: Horizon um and Um. We said, oh, you know, we

825
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:16,840
Speaker 1: have an independent label too, and he says, you know,

826
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't know how to do this. We

827
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. Were you guys come

828
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:25,000
Speaker 1: in and help. So we came up with a chunk

829
01:02:25,040 --> 01:02:28,960
Speaker 1: of money, which in terms of their life at the

830
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:33,960
Speaker 1: moment was substantial but really wasn't stantial, and we bought

831
01:02:33,960 --> 01:02:37,040
Speaker 1: half of Blue Horizon. So now we have Sire Records

832
01:02:37,080 --> 01:02:42,240
Speaker 1: and half of Blue Horizon, and we're trying to get

833
01:02:43,080 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 1: uh American Epic, which was Columbia Sony at the time

834
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:52,880
Speaker 1: it wasn't Sony. Then Columbia UH two put out these

835
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:57,920
Speaker 1: old blues records, but they're not and all of a

836
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: sudden they say, oh, you know, maybe we'll do some

837
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:08,120
Speaker 1: white British flues artists, the original Fleet with Mac, Peter

838
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:13,840
Speaker 1: Green's Sleep with Mac, and Out of Nowhere Albatross, which

839
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: goes number one all over Europe. Well, naturally to want

840
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: to put out in the United States Chicken Shack, who's

841
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:28,720
Speaker 1: the lead singer of Chicken Chack, Christine McVeigh perfect, perfect, Perfect,

842
01:03:29,240 --> 01:03:34,520
Speaker 1: Christine Perfect. So so they put out that becomes a hit.

843
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:41,080
Speaker 1: Duster bro Duster Duster, Bennett Um and a lot of

844
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:46,400
Speaker 1: white British blues artists, so it becomes a significant label

845
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:53,760
Speaker 1: within the British blues scene. UM richest brother. One day

846
01:03:53,880 --> 01:04:03,400
Speaker 1: UH had an arrangement with the manager of Fleetwood Mac,

847
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: but he wasn't an honorable man like Maurice Levy. Richard

848
01:04:10,520 --> 01:04:15,160
Speaker 1: inadvertently forgot to pick up the option. Fleetwood Mac was gone.

849
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:25,640
Speaker 1: They left eventually. Um eventually Chicken Shack stopped selling as well.

850
01:04:26,280 --> 01:04:30,000
Speaker 1: Of course, they had that number one British record, a

851
01:04:30,120 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 1: version of I'd Rather Go Blind with Christine singing um

852
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:41,760
Speaker 1: and she eventually with Mick joined a reformed Fleetwood Mac

853
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:46,680
Speaker 1: because the Fleetwood pot was Mick Fleetwood, you know, and

854
01:04:46,720 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: the Mac was John MCVIEE. Okay, how does it end

855
01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:56,840
Speaker 1: with you? And see more than how do you want

856
01:04:56,840 --> 01:05:02,240
Speaker 1: to walk? From Sire? Yeah? We start, we God, it

857
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 1: was like it went as far as ninety six. Um.

858
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:13,080
Speaker 1: I I think the way it ended was we just started.

859
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:16,919
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get more into producing and trying

860
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:20,800
Speaker 1: to find things in a different way. And the story

861
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 1: goes that we both were got married during the term

862
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:30,720
Speaker 1: and the two women really were not getting getting along

863
01:05:30,760 --> 01:05:34,360
Speaker 1: at all, and I think Sea Boy's wife was a

864
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:39,400
Speaker 1: little bit more aggressive about it, and you know, these

865
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:47,760
Speaker 1: things happen and and no hard feelings. Um, we separated,

866
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: and uh, I wasn't sure what I was gonna do,

867
01:05:52,320 --> 01:05:55,360
Speaker 1: just hanging around see what. By the way, while we

868
01:05:55,360 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: were there, we had signed the Ramones and he didn't

869
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:03,800
Speaker 1: cover it in the podcast, I'm sure, but I'll bring

870
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:10,240
Speaker 1: it up. Miles Copeland. Miles Copeland managed renaissance that we

871
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 1: had on Sire that managed Buck Climax blues band right

872
01:06:18,680 --> 01:06:22,000
Speaker 1: and someone else, and um, the ones that had the

873
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:27,280
Speaker 1: twin guitar leads. Um. Oh god, they were great. They

874
01:06:27,320 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 1: were hugef M band and they played harmonic twin guitar leads,

875
01:06:32,080 --> 01:06:37,000
Speaker 1: harmonic leads. Uh, wishbone ash right of course. So we

876
01:06:37,160 --> 01:06:41,520
Speaker 1: haven't dinner together one night, all of us, and he said,

877
01:06:41,560 --> 01:06:45,960
Speaker 1: I'm taking all my bands off of your label if

878
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:50,760
Speaker 1: you continue with this punk shit. It's embarrassing. Wow. Though

879
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 1: he didn't tell that story, No, he wouldn't tell it.

880
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:56,160
Speaker 1: He probably didn't tell the fact that did he tell

881
01:06:56,160 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: the story about the go goes where he Uh? When

882
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:02,640
Speaker 1: I delivered the record to him, he threatened to kill me. Uh,

883
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:04,760
Speaker 1: you know, because he says he's a black belt I

884
01:07:04,800 --> 01:07:07,959
Speaker 1: mean literally, not literally. Uh. And I had to pay

885
01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 1: for the completion of the record myself. He did tell

886
01:07:11,000 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: you tell me that. He said, I ruined the punk

887
01:07:14,320 --> 01:07:17,080
Speaker 1: I ruined a great punk band. So it shows you.

888
01:07:17,320 --> 01:07:19,560
Speaker 1: So okay, So the ramones. So go back to the

889
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:24,240
Speaker 1: sire um. So he started to ramon. So afterwards I

890
01:07:25,120 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 1: come back. I'm I'm living in luxury in my apartment.

891
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:34,240
Speaker 1: I'm having a nice time doing nothing, wondering do I

892
01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:36,080
Speaker 1: need this ship again? Why don't I just go back

893
01:07:36,120 --> 01:07:39,960
Speaker 1: and finished law school. You know, Um, by this time,

894
01:07:40,120 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: I think it would have been almost time when Zoe,

895
01:07:45,200 --> 01:07:48,840
Speaker 1: my daughter was born, in nineteen seventy seven. No, so

896
01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:57,080
Speaker 1: this was seventy s So, Um what happens is um,

897
01:07:57,480 --> 01:08:01,240
Speaker 1: Craig Leon who worked for me at sire I think

898
01:08:01,400 --> 01:08:06,760
Speaker 1: left as well. And he was talking to someone I

899
01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 1: admit um when we were interested in New York dolls.

900
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:17,960
Speaker 1: His name was Marty Thou. Marty Thou was interesting guy. Um,

901
01:08:18,080 --> 01:08:21,040
Speaker 1: and he came up and said, you know you're sitting

902
01:08:21,160 --> 01:08:24,880
Speaker 1: up here, You're not doing anything. Why don't you come down.

903
01:08:25,280 --> 01:08:30,679
Speaker 1: I'm telling you something's happening to display cb GPS. So um,

904
01:08:30,880 --> 01:08:33,719
Speaker 1: all right, you know it's lower reside. But of course

905
01:08:34,680 --> 01:08:36,880
Speaker 1: I remember that when I was a kid, if you

906
01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:39,920
Speaker 1: came and went to New York City, my mother would

907
01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:43,240
Speaker 1: yell because if they go down to the lower resite

908
01:08:43,240 --> 01:08:46,280
Speaker 1: to what your treat to buy bogging suits, of course

909
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 1: roll up the windows. So I went down there, you know,

910
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:57,320
Speaker 1: and and I'm go in and it it's amazing. I mean,

911
01:08:58,680 --> 01:09:06,360
Speaker 1: just you see this scene of disassociated people that are

912
01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:13,759
Speaker 1: brought together by by this uh funky environment and doing

913
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: music that is a reaction too extreme contemporary not even

914
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:29,719
Speaker 1: pop but disco and jam music and um, I wouldn't

915
01:09:29,720 --> 01:09:35,240
Speaker 1: say metal, but but doing it in a refreshingly almost

916
01:09:35,280 --> 01:09:40,040
Speaker 1: amateurish way. Uh. And that's not a derogatory term. I

917
01:09:40,160 --> 01:09:44,240
Speaker 1: mean it in this assarians um strong way. And Patty

918
01:09:44,320 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 1: Smith played there, um Um Television came out of there,

919
01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 1: and they got signed because they were buzzing. Big Waters,

920
01:09:56,520 --> 01:10:00,120
Speaker 1: which was a creative company, UH signed them. And and

921
01:10:00,320 --> 01:10:02,800
Speaker 1: so I go down there, and I'm hanging out, and

922
01:10:02,920 --> 01:10:06,439
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, what I'm gonna do because I'm this

923
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:11,639
Speaker 1: producer by now, I'm practically a veteran, but I'm I'm

924
01:10:11,760 --> 01:10:16,640
Speaker 1: thirty five years old. I'm a veteran, you know, I'm

925
01:10:16,680 --> 01:10:19,320
Speaker 1: so what I'm gonna do is put together a composite

926
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:23,760
Speaker 1: album of all the bands there. I'm gonna add my

927
01:10:23,840 --> 01:10:28,479
Speaker 1: production skills to it and make them and then put

928
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:32,200
Speaker 1: the album out and then get individual production deals for

929
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:37,400
Speaker 1: all of them. Nice idea. Start talking to him, So

930
01:10:37,439 --> 01:10:41,040
Speaker 1: I'm talking to your talking heads. I'm not interested in that,

931
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,360
Speaker 1: and they weren't yet. And this is the time of

932
01:10:43,880 --> 01:10:47,479
Speaker 1: um Uh Psycho Killer, which to me I love more

933
01:10:47,520 --> 01:10:51,439
Speaker 1: than anything. I always love Psycho Killer. Um. But they

934
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:54,040
Speaker 1: did say something. They said, you know who would be

935
01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:57,479
Speaker 1: good for your album? She had this great little voice.

936
01:10:57,840 --> 01:11:02,840
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear blunding? I said, right, yeah, but

937
01:11:02,960 --> 01:11:05,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go talk to them sometime too. They left.

938
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:08,439
Speaker 1: I talked to a bunch of other people. No one

939
01:11:08,520 --> 01:11:13,400
Speaker 1: really wanted to be on the album. UM. So I

940
01:11:13,560 --> 01:11:17,280
Speaker 1: go down one night and Hilly comes over to me.

941
01:11:17,520 --> 01:11:21,719
Speaker 1: Hilly Crystal, the guy who owns the place, and he says,

942
01:11:22,320 --> 01:11:24,920
Speaker 1: there's someone here who wants to meet you. I think

943
01:11:24,960 --> 01:11:27,519
Speaker 1: this band wants to be on this album you're talking about.

944
01:11:28,160 --> 01:11:32,559
Speaker 1: So he introduces me to Debbie and she's standing there

945
01:11:32,600 --> 01:11:35,400
Speaker 1: and she starts talking to me, says, we'd really like

946
01:11:35,600 --> 01:11:39,320
Speaker 1: to be part of this. I said, well, you know, Debbie,

947
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:43,240
Speaker 1: I don't really take anybody. I gotta hear you play

948
01:11:43,520 --> 01:11:46,840
Speaker 1: in an environment that I can not here, but an

949
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:49,960
Speaker 1: environment that I can relate to. So I set up

950
01:11:50,320 --> 01:11:54,120
Speaker 1: studio rehearsal studio, which I would always do because any

951
01:11:54,120 --> 01:11:57,120
Speaker 1: band I produced, I would never do it until they

952
01:11:57,160 --> 01:11:59,400
Speaker 1: played for me in front of me so I could

953
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:04,120
Speaker 1: or what it was I could contribute or not contribute. Um.

954
01:12:04,280 --> 01:12:09,320
Speaker 1: They walked in, they started playing. I smiled from the

955
01:12:09,400 --> 01:12:14,679
Speaker 1: first minute for the next hour. Uh. Every song was great,

956
01:12:15,560 --> 01:12:21,080
Speaker 1: their intensity, their ability uh to execute what they wanted

957
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 1: to execute wasn't there yet in many cases, but what

958
01:12:25,439 --> 01:12:29,479
Speaker 1: they wanted to execute was and it was apparent they

959
01:12:29,520 --> 01:12:32,960
Speaker 1: could do it, you know. Uh, but no one else

960
01:12:33,040 --> 01:12:36,799
Speaker 1: was really looking at them because they thought these people

961
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:40,080
Speaker 1: care well gets you know. I thought they were great

962
01:12:40,400 --> 01:12:45,639
Speaker 1: and her voice was sensational. So I agreed to do it,

963
01:12:46,200 --> 01:12:49,280
Speaker 1: not just do it, but signed her to Instant Records

964
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:52,680
Speaker 1: and we went ahead and who the albums came out

965
01:12:52,680 --> 01:12:55,680
Speaker 1: on Private Stock. What was Instant Records. Instant Records is

966
01:12:55,720 --> 01:13:00,280
Speaker 1: my production company called Instant Records Original O Maudi and uh,

967
01:13:00,320 --> 01:13:02,360
Speaker 1: and it still exists today. I'll tell you about it.

968
01:13:02,840 --> 01:13:05,640
Speaker 1: I put records out through the Orchard on Instant but

969
01:13:05,800 --> 01:13:09,920
Speaker 1: as a record label, so Instant Records is. It was

970
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:15,240
Speaker 1: a production company, and um, I did fifty fifty deals

971
01:13:15,280 --> 01:13:17,840
Speaker 1: the way things should be done today, you know, not

972
01:13:17,960 --> 01:13:20,920
Speaker 1: royalty deals with the production and I didn't make any

973
01:13:20,920 --> 01:13:25,160
Speaker 1: money unless the artists made money, which I thought was fair. Um.

974
01:13:25,320 --> 01:13:28,720
Speaker 1: But I then needed to license it to a record company,

975
01:13:28,840 --> 01:13:32,720
Speaker 1: and Marty knew a promotion man at Private Stock, and

976
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:34,760
Speaker 1: for a while Marty and I were partners in it,

977
01:13:34,800 --> 01:13:40,160
Speaker 1: and then I eventually brought them out. Um but um,

978
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:44,760
Speaker 1: when I brought them to Private Stock, it was not

979
01:13:44,880 --> 01:13:49,519
Speaker 1: an album yet. It was a single and the first

980
01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:53,400
Speaker 1: single was sex Offender, but they wouldn't put it out

981
01:13:53,439 --> 01:13:57,280
Speaker 1: because radio could not play anything with the words sex

982
01:13:57,320 --> 01:14:00,960
Speaker 1: in it. Look at the world today and ask what

983
01:14:00,960 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: what's going on? You know what I mean, it's we're

984
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 1: totally different. So so we put out So we changed

985
01:14:08,400 --> 01:14:14,000
Speaker 1: it to x Offender, which I think is a better title. Anyway,

986
01:14:14,320 --> 01:14:17,120
Speaker 1: I think I came up with it, didn't come up

987
01:14:17,160 --> 01:14:21,439
Speaker 1: with it, So so he put that out and it

988
01:14:21,520 --> 01:14:26,400
Speaker 1: doesn't get anywhere here, but it starts attracting attention in

989
01:14:26,439 --> 01:14:30,360
Speaker 1: the UK because punk was beginning to take off. It

990
01:14:30,479 --> 01:14:33,439
Speaker 1: Just to be technical for a second, did Private Stock

991
01:14:33,520 --> 01:14:35,240
Speaker 1: release it in the UK? Or who released it in

992
01:14:35,280 --> 01:14:39,720
Speaker 1: the UK? Yeah? It was released on private Stock. It

993
01:14:39,800 --> 01:14:43,840
Speaker 1: was released on Private Stock. I was de facto managing them,

994
01:14:44,000 --> 01:14:45,679
Speaker 1: but I wanted to get rid of it and find

995
01:14:45,680 --> 01:14:50,200
Speaker 1: a manager for them. Um Uh, it was Private Stock

996
01:14:50,400 --> 01:14:54,639
Speaker 1: was distributed by E M I in in the UK. Then,

997
01:14:55,320 --> 01:14:58,800
Speaker 1: so it started getting a little buzz and I think

998
01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:01,840
Speaker 1: they even might have gone over there and done some

999
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:05,200
Speaker 1: sort of touring because punk was starting to get a

1000
01:15:05,240 --> 01:15:11,080
Speaker 1: buzz um. And when we came back, they we we

1001
01:15:11,120 --> 01:15:15,400
Speaker 1: started talking about the possibility of doing more more songs

1002
01:15:15,720 --> 01:15:19,360
Speaker 1: and doing an album, and I had to talk to

1003
01:15:19,439 --> 01:15:22,800
Speaker 1: the person who was in charge of the company. His

1004
01:15:22,920 --> 01:15:26,519
Speaker 1: name was Larry U. Tall. He was a very well

1005
01:15:26,600 --> 01:15:32,280
Speaker 1: known old school record guy. He uh Amy Bell. He

1006
01:15:32,280 --> 01:15:34,880
Speaker 1: he had been involved in lots of hits in it

1007
01:15:35,080 --> 01:15:38,920
Speaker 1: in the old sense, and he had this label and

1008
01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:42,599
Speaker 1: on it among other people, he had huge hit with

1009
01:15:42,640 --> 01:15:47,880
Speaker 1: Frankie Valley. So he says, okay, Richard, if you could

1010
01:15:47,920 --> 01:15:52,800
Speaker 1: do the record cheap, everything I did was cheap. That

1011
01:15:52,800 --> 01:15:57,320
Speaker 1: that's the first rule. Don't waste money, do it within

1012
01:15:58,439 --> 01:16:02,240
Speaker 1: a structure, and try to be reasonable about it. You

1013
01:16:02,360 --> 01:16:06,559
Speaker 1: don't buy your way to success. Let success um come

1014
01:16:06,640 --> 01:16:13,599
Speaker 1: from come from creating and um. So so I set

1015
01:16:13,640 --> 01:16:17,280
Speaker 1: up a showcase for him and he brings with him

1016
01:16:17,320 --> 01:16:22,400
Speaker 1: to cb GBS Frankie Valley and we're sitting there Frankie

1017
01:16:23,080 --> 01:16:26,400
Speaker 1: and Larry doesn't know what he's gonna say, and Frankie

1018
01:16:26,479 --> 01:16:29,920
Speaker 1: leans over and he says, hey, this is great, Larry,

1019
01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:37,640
Speaker 1: you should do this, and and he says okay, and

1020
01:16:37,720 --> 01:16:41,519
Speaker 1: I think he gave me a fifteen thousand dollar dollar

1021
01:16:41,520 --> 01:16:46,720
Speaker 1: budgets some something ridiculously inexpensive, and we recorded where I

1022
01:16:46,800 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 1: like to I'd like to record at that time. It

1023
01:16:51,080 --> 01:16:57,519
Speaker 1: was a studio above Radio City Music Hall. It was

1024
01:16:57,720 --> 01:17:02,719
Speaker 1: built its true. You took the elevator as you came

1025
01:17:02,720 --> 01:17:05,280
Speaker 1: in the stage door entrance, and you would go with

1026
01:17:05,360 --> 01:17:08,800
Speaker 1: half naked rockets and the studio was on like the

1027
01:17:08,880 --> 01:17:12,120
Speaker 1: eighth floor, and they would be standing there at your

1028
01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:16,120
Speaker 1: talking to him and stuff. And it was built as

1029
01:17:16,160 --> 01:17:20,880
Speaker 1: a room for Tuscanedy. When NBC wanted to bring him

1030
01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:25,840
Speaker 1: over to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. He said, not

1031
01:17:26,080 --> 01:17:29,160
Speaker 1: unless you get me a space that I could rehearse

1032
01:17:29,760 --> 01:17:34,400
Speaker 1: full volume. So there we were, this monstrous room with

1033
01:17:34,479 --> 01:17:39,080
Speaker 1: a great drum sound, a small studio with a twelve

1034
01:17:39,640 --> 01:17:44,200
Speaker 1: recording board and twelve track machine, eight and twelve track machine.

1035
01:17:44,680 --> 01:17:46,759
Speaker 1: I'd have to look up what it's called. I forgot

1036
01:17:46,760 --> 01:17:51,280
Speaker 1: for the moment. A great engineer UH named Rob Stoner,

1037
01:17:51,640 --> 01:17:54,599
Speaker 1: and it was a Rob Stoner. It was Rob Freeman.

1038
01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:58,200
Speaker 1: Rob Stoner was a bass flare I used later who

1039
01:17:58,240 --> 01:18:02,120
Speaker 1: played with Dylan and and played with me for Robert

1040
01:18:02,160 --> 01:18:07,200
Speaker 1: Gordon Um and Um. We recorded the album there and

1041
01:18:07,320 --> 01:18:11,120
Speaker 1: on the album there was a couple of other songs,

1042
01:18:11,360 --> 01:18:13,960
Speaker 1: and I got Ellie Greenwich to sing out a few

1043
01:18:14,040 --> 01:18:18,639
Speaker 1: songs with her. And there was one song that came out.

1044
01:18:19,720 --> 01:18:23,000
Speaker 1: When the album came out. The first album, it got

1045
01:18:23,280 --> 01:18:26,680
Speaker 1: good press, didn't sell here, but in the UK it

1046
01:18:26,800 --> 01:18:31,280
Speaker 1: started really to buzz up. But in Australia there was

1047
01:18:31,360 --> 01:18:36,040
Speaker 1: one song. It was called It's called in the Flesh,

1048
01:18:36,160 --> 01:18:39,720
Speaker 1: and it's a ballad and she's Debbie's walking around the

1049
01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:43,640
Speaker 1: Lower east Side and she meets you and boy, I

1050
01:18:43,760 --> 01:18:46,360
Speaker 1: like you. I can't wait to see you in the flesh.

1051
01:18:46,760 --> 01:18:50,439
Speaker 1: H boom. It gets up within the top five in

1052
01:18:50,479 --> 01:18:53,760
Speaker 1: Australia and all of a sudden, while it didn't sell

1053
01:18:53,880 --> 01:18:57,040
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the world, you look at that and say,

1054
01:18:57,040 --> 01:19:03,000
Speaker 1: wait a minute, something's happening, okay, And and from there

1055
01:19:03,120 --> 01:19:06,759
Speaker 1: they start getting there I go again. Yeah, starts getting

1056
01:19:06,760 --> 01:19:13,120
Speaker 1: more and more attention, right, um and um. The album

1057
01:19:13,200 --> 01:19:17,360
Speaker 1: comes out, does well and they asked for a second album,

1058
01:19:17,439 --> 01:19:22,040
Speaker 1: and the second album we do, and we do with

1059
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 1: a cover on it that Debbie wanted to do, and

1060
01:19:25,880 --> 01:19:29,200
Speaker 1: the song was the old Randy and Rainbows hit De

1061
01:19:29,360 --> 01:19:34,320
Speaker 1: Nise oh, Danny Scooby doo, I'm in love with you,

1062
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:38,840
Speaker 1: But she does it, changes it to Danny. She changed

1063
01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:42,520
Speaker 1: it d E N I A s and she sings

1064
01:19:43,040 --> 01:19:46,960
Speaker 1: the song you know uh, and then in the middle

1065
01:19:48,360 --> 01:19:53,760
Speaker 1: does a singing version of a French verse, singing it

1066
01:19:53,920 --> 01:19:57,680
Speaker 1: in French, but it's phonetic French and Debbie speak. I

1067
01:19:57,760 --> 01:20:03,360
Speaker 1: thought it was amazing. It's the record. It was fantastic, Okay.

1068
01:20:03,680 --> 01:20:06,760
Speaker 1: Right at that point, I had hooked him up with

1069
01:20:06,800 --> 01:20:13,240
Speaker 1: somebody that then became their manager. He wanted to get

1070
01:20:13,280 --> 01:20:17,120
Speaker 1: him off private stock. Is this shop? Is this shep

1071
01:20:17,280 --> 01:20:19,840
Speaker 1: or somebody before she Shep? Is a great story, but

1072
01:20:19,920 --> 01:20:24,920
Speaker 1: that comes a little later. His name was Peter Um God,

1073
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:28,200
Speaker 1: I can't I remember his last name. It'll come to me,

1074
01:20:28,240 --> 01:20:31,320
Speaker 1: but I forgot it. But took them and he did.

1075
01:20:32,120 --> 01:20:34,920
Speaker 1: He was a different kind of character, but he took

1076
01:20:34,960 --> 01:20:38,840
Speaker 1: them around the world at the at the appropriate time,

1077
01:20:39,080 --> 01:20:43,240
Speaker 1: I mean to East Asia, took them to places. Um

1078
01:20:43,280 --> 01:20:46,000
Speaker 1: you know. They didn't like him in the end, but

1079
01:20:46,200 --> 01:20:49,160
Speaker 1: he did some good for them and then some bad.

1080
01:20:49,560 --> 01:20:54,840
Speaker 1: But the point is he wanted a matter of my contract.

1081
01:20:54,880 --> 01:20:59,960
Speaker 1: He wanted a matter so he got Chris Less two

1082
01:21:00,120 --> 01:21:03,479
Speaker 1: pay with at that time was quite a bit of

1083
01:21:03,680 --> 01:21:07,000
Speaker 1: money to buy a band that hadn't sold yet. But

1084
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,960
Speaker 1: they saw the potential and they paid an enormous amount

1085
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:12,960
Speaker 1: of money to private stock, and they got this record,

1086
01:21:13,360 --> 01:21:17,240
Speaker 1: and they paid decent amount of money to me, and

1087
01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:20,200
Speaker 1: they still continue to pay me for the production and

1088
01:21:20,280 --> 01:21:26,080
Speaker 1: publishing share on those records. So I have no regrets,

1089
01:21:26,080 --> 01:21:29,080
Speaker 1: and I'm happy that Blondie went on to two great things.

1090
01:21:29,360 --> 01:21:35,880
Speaker 1: And they got um the commander Mike Chapman to say

1091
01:21:35,960 --> 01:21:38,840
Speaker 1: command because apparently used to wear a commanders that. You're right,

1092
01:21:38,880 --> 01:21:42,520
Speaker 1: that's what they called them. Um. And he did wonderful

1093
01:21:42,600 --> 01:21:45,840
Speaker 1: things and and that's great and I wish them am.

1094
01:21:45,880 --> 01:21:51,760
Speaker 1: They're always the best. Um. But when Terry Ellis, who

1095
01:21:51,800 --> 01:21:57,360
Speaker 1: was a Francophile, got the got the track, he called

1096
01:21:57,360 --> 01:22:01,000
Speaker 1: me up. He says, Richard, this will never work. This

1097
01:22:01,160 --> 01:22:05,960
Speaker 1: isn't French. People laugh at us, I said Terry. I

1098
01:22:06,000 --> 01:22:09,040
Speaker 1: hope he doesn't feel. I'm not taking anything bad about Terry.

1099
01:22:09,160 --> 01:22:11,479
Speaker 1: I love him. He's he was a great guy. And

1100
01:22:11,560 --> 01:22:16,560
Speaker 1: Chris right also great guys, um and great record people. Um.

1101
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:20,639
Speaker 1: Now I sound like Donald Trump may get excuses for people,

1102
01:22:21,880 --> 01:22:26,479
Speaker 1: but um um, so he said, I don't care what

1103
01:22:26,560 --> 01:22:28,400
Speaker 1: it costs. Let me give you. I said, well, it's

1104
01:22:28,439 --> 01:22:30,360
Speaker 1: got a cost like three to five thousand dollars. I

1105
01:22:30,360 --> 01:22:32,760
Speaker 1: gotta remix it put a voice, and he says, I

1106
01:22:32,760 --> 01:22:36,000
Speaker 1: don't care, you do it. I I want this done right.

1107
01:22:37,160 --> 01:22:40,200
Speaker 1: I went back into the studio, she got a French

1108
01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:44,599
Speaker 1: tutor went in, saying the middle section only in French again.

1109
01:22:45,439 --> 01:22:50,360
Speaker 1: But I had done that mix by hand. I raised

1110
01:22:50,439 --> 01:22:54,519
Speaker 1: reverbs and twiddled things as it was going, and I

1111
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:59,200
Speaker 1: couldn't get it again. And total recall didn't really work

1112
01:22:59,360 --> 01:23:04,599
Speaker 1: because these were finger raises, you know, and it wasn't

1113
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:07,240
Speaker 1: just that it just didn't feel or sound the same.

1114
01:23:08,000 --> 01:23:11,200
Speaker 1: So he finally said, okay, I get it. Let's just

1115
01:23:11,240 --> 01:23:13,040
Speaker 1: put it out and see what happens. And it goes

1116
01:23:13,080 --> 01:23:16,599
Speaker 1: to number one across Europe. And then there was another one,

1117
01:23:16,600 --> 01:23:20,679
Speaker 1: Always Touched by Your Presence Here that goes again top five,

1118
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:24,840
Speaker 1: and Blondie explodes all across Europe, around the rest of

1119
01:23:24,840 --> 01:23:28,280
Speaker 1: the world and in Europe, but not in the United States,

1120
01:23:28,640 --> 01:23:31,360
Speaker 1: and starts selling in the United States. And it's not

1121
01:23:31,479 --> 01:23:36,639
Speaker 1: until the next album and Heart of Glass that really

1122
01:23:37,000 --> 01:23:42,160
Speaker 1: um really blows it up, and then they get they

1123
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:47,439
Speaker 1: get everywhere. Okay, become a monstrous success. Well they leave

1124
01:23:47,520 --> 01:23:55,520
Speaker 1: that manager and need another manager. So where do they go? Um?

1125
01:23:55,840 --> 01:23:58,160
Speaker 1: They were. One of the people that followed them all

1126
01:23:58,200 --> 01:24:00,880
Speaker 1: the time was a guy named Toby name us who

1127
01:24:00,960 --> 01:24:03,760
Speaker 1: has known h well all the time. You know, I'm okay.

1128
01:24:04,080 --> 01:24:10,080
Speaker 1: He was working at a live management and UM Chef

1129
01:24:10,080 --> 01:24:15,639
Speaker 1: Gordon was managing of course, uh many people, Alice of course,

1130
01:24:16,280 --> 01:24:20,559
Speaker 1: um the woman who just passed UM well, a number

1131
01:24:20,560 --> 01:24:24,160
Speaker 1: of people, the Luther of course, uh the and and

1132
01:24:24,320 --> 01:24:28,479
Speaker 1: Teddy Pendergrass um, amongst a lot of other people that

1133
01:24:28,560 --> 01:24:34,880
Speaker 1: he was involved with. And they go there and I

1134
01:24:34,920 --> 01:24:39,120
Speaker 1: don't think they He was a guy who really um

1135
01:24:40,280 --> 01:24:46,840
Speaker 1: um worked. It was a smart negotiating manager, but it

1136
01:24:46,920 --> 01:24:50,800
Speaker 1: was live acts that was his thing, and they didn't

1137
01:24:50,840 --> 01:24:52,919
Speaker 1: really want to do that. They were to make records,

1138
01:24:53,320 --> 01:24:58,120
Speaker 1: hang out, get stone, you know, you know, be cool. Uh.

1139
01:24:58,439 --> 01:25:00,719
Speaker 1: Being on the road is not easy, and it isn't

1140
01:25:01,400 --> 01:25:06,759
Speaker 1: so so they're there and one day I'm making a record.

1141
01:25:06,880 --> 01:25:09,400
Speaker 1: And it's a good story because one day I'm making

1142
01:25:09,439 --> 01:25:16,000
Speaker 1: a record UM in California and it was with Gina Shock.

1143
01:25:16,120 --> 01:25:19,679
Speaker 1: I did an album of the drummer of the Go Goes.

1144
01:25:20,000 --> 01:25:26,080
Speaker 1: So that was must have been by then. Uh, and

1145
01:25:26,120 --> 01:25:32,840
Speaker 1: I'm in California and the engineers um wife calls Jeffrey

1146
01:25:32,960 --> 01:25:37,479
Speaker 1: and says, oh, you know, um, my friend asked something

1147
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:42,160
Speaker 1: that that Richard might want to do, you know. And

1148
01:25:43,320 --> 01:25:49,720
Speaker 1: it's a vague story, but um it was chef's personal assistant. Uh.

1149
01:25:49,920 --> 01:25:56,000
Speaker 1: Her name was Anita, and she um, she told uh

1150
01:25:56,080 --> 01:25:59,479
Speaker 1: the engineer's wife to tell me that she has uh

1151
01:26:00,200 --> 01:26:04,320
Speaker 1: these gold records for the first two albums that keep

1152
01:26:04,400 --> 01:26:08,320
Speaker 1: getting shipped there. They're cluttering her office. I might want

1153
01:26:08,360 --> 01:26:11,120
Speaker 1: him before she throws them away because they're really not

1154
01:26:11,280 --> 01:26:15,599
Speaker 1: blundy things, or gives them away. So yeah, I said sure.

1155
01:26:16,200 --> 01:26:18,160
Speaker 1: So I don't know what they were trying to do,

1156
01:26:18,320 --> 01:26:24,040
Speaker 1: but she said, um, um okay, Well I was having

1157
01:26:25,320 --> 01:26:28,439
Speaker 1: dinner with Anita, uh that night. Why don't you and

1158
01:26:28,840 --> 01:26:33,600
Speaker 1: Richard come after work after the studio. Go there and

1159
01:26:33,680 --> 01:26:40,439
Speaker 1: there's Anita mm hmm looks looks nice. We start eating, talking,

1160
01:26:41,680 --> 01:26:49,400
Speaker 1: drinking wine. Kannak Uh wind up going on top of

1161
01:26:49,520 --> 01:26:55,520
Speaker 1: mulholland uh kissing in the car. A police car comes

1162
01:26:56,320 --> 01:27:01,320
Speaker 1: comes behind us with a siren says, take your business else,

1163
01:27:01,280 --> 01:27:05,559
Speaker 1: square buddy, I said, well, I got a bottle I've

1164
01:27:05,600 --> 01:27:08,280
Speaker 1: such a corny fuck. I got a bottle of champagne

1165
01:27:08,280 --> 01:27:12,040
Speaker 1: in my room. We go back to my room. We've

1166
01:27:12,040 --> 01:27:18,680
Speaker 1: been together ever since thirty years. If it wasn't for Blundy,

1167
01:27:18,920 --> 01:27:22,559
Speaker 1: I never would have met the best women I know,

1168
01:27:23,240 --> 01:27:27,800
Speaker 1: someone I love and uh and I hope I'm with

1169
01:27:27,920 --> 01:27:30,320
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. You know, Okay, what

1170
01:27:30,320 --> 01:27:35,960
Speaker 1: what happened with the first marriage? Oh Uh that was

1171
01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:39,040
Speaker 1: the difficult marriage from beginning to end. The best thing

1172
01:27:39,080 --> 01:27:44,040
Speaker 1: that came out of it, um um was that uh

1173
01:27:44,280 --> 01:27:51,679
Speaker 1: my daughters, Zoe, our daughter Zoe was born in nine seven. Um.

1174
01:27:51,720 --> 01:27:56,200
Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to think. I think when you

1175
01:27:56,240 --> 01:27:59,960
Speaker 1: went in labor when Zoe was born, I was into

1176
01:28:00,000 --> 01:28:05,040
Speaker 1: studio with Robert Gordon. It was called Plaza Sound. That

1177
01:28:05,160 --> 01:28:09,120
Speaker 1: was the studio, and Uh, I rushed out. I had

1178
01:28:09,160 --> 01:28:11,760
Speaker 1: to get out and uh and get to the uh

1179
01:28:12,280 --> 01:28:14,439
Speaker 1: at the studio, not at the first marriage. You know,

1180
01:28:14,560 --> 01:28:19,439
Speaker 1: like and some of us aren't ready, whether it's me

1181
01:28:19,800 --> 01:28:23,559
Speaker 1: or the other person, or we could blame anybody or anything.

1182
01:28:24,080 --> 01:28:28,840
Speaker 1: But sometimes things don't work and so have that ended.

1183
01:28:28,880 --> 01:28:32,519
Speaker 1: Before you met Anita, it was in the process of ending.

1184
01:28:33,040 --> 01:28:38,120
Speaker 1: We were separated and going through what was a difficult

1185
01:28:38,120 --> 01:28:43,639
Speaker 1: divorce because it involved property and money and that's always

1186
01:28:44,120 --> 01:28:48,200
Speaker 1: that's always difficult and uh um. But it was made

1187
01:28:48,320 --> 01:28:55,480
Speaker 1: up by um, um, by the fact that I met Anita. UM.

1188
01:28:55,560 --> 01:28:58,559
Speaker 1: And I could say that I've made money from BLONDI.

1189
01:28:58,680 --> 01:29:02,960
Speaker 1: Over the years, I've gotten credit for being somebody who

1190
01:29:03,000 --> 01:29:06,280
Speaker 1: discovered Blundie. But in the end, the real boggin and

1191
01:29:06,320 --> 01:29:12,639
Speaker 1: the whole deal. Anita, Okay, I'll give you. I don't

1192
01:29:12,680 --> 01:29:17,040
Speaker 1: have any way stories. So Anita and I she she's

1193
01:29:17,080 --> 01:29:22,160
Speaker 1: already overworked the chaps. And I have this huge apartment

1194
01:29:22,160 --> 01:29:24,960
Speaker 1: in New York, and I'm moving to l A. And

1195
01:29:25,000 --> 01:29:30,360
Speaker 1: we're doing bike coastal every two weeks and um, and

1196
01:29:30,600 --> 01:29:33,599
Speaker 1: we decide that Anita will move to New York and

1197
01:29:33,680 --> 01:29:39,400
Speaker 1: we'll live together. Um and and we do. And by

1198
01:29:39,479 --> 01:29:46,040
Speaker 1: then it's like nineteen eighties six or eighty seven. Yeah,

1199
01:29:46,120 --> 01:29:52,440
Speaker 1: it's eighty seven right this night seven and and um,

1200
01:29:54,840 --> 01:29:59,000
Speaker 1: which we start going to events together. And I'm thinking,

1201
01:29:59,160 --> 01:30:05,040
Speaker 1: you know, I I was raised where you grow out

1202
01:30:05,040 --> 01:30:08,479
Speaker 1: of the home where people are married. I'm not saying

1203
01:30:08,560 --> 01:30:12,240
Speaker 1: that that not just living together and sharing life is

1204
01:30:12,280 --> 01:30:15,800
Speaker 1: not it's not the way to go. But that was

1205
01:30:15,840 --> 01:30:19,800
Speaker 1: an old old timer in that regard, I guess, and

1206
01:30:19,960 --> 01:30:22,639
Speaker 1: it was fine, We're doing good. But I thought about it.

1207
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:27,160
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about it. So we want dinner. I

1208
01:30:27,160 --> 01:30:32,040
Speaker 1: think it was the Rocketbroll Hall of Fame when they're

1209
01:30:32,040 --> 01:30:38,600
Speaker 1: at the World off right where where um uh and

1210
01:30:39,080 --> 01:30:41,960
Speaker 1: so again, music play such a vital part in my life.

1211
01:30:42,360 --> 01:30:45,360
Speaker 1: We're at the we're at the World off the Rocketbroll

1212
01:30:45,400 --> 01:30:48,800
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, and we're sitting around the table and

1213
01:30:48,920 --> 01:30:51,160
Speaker 1: we're drinking wine and we get done with the white

1214
01:30:51,160 --> 01:30:55,240
Speaker 1: wine that serving the next food, and Anita says, could

1215
01:30:55,280 --> 01:30:57,519
Speaker 1: you give me another glass of white wine? I said, sure,

1216
01:30:57,720 --> 01:30:59,600
Speaker 1: I ton a way to Could you bring me a

1217
01:30:59,680 --> 01:31:04,400
Speaker 1: glass some white wine? Uh? And uh, I'll have the red.

1218
01:31:04,520 --> 01:31:09,360
Speaker 1: And he says, Mr, they're onto the red. So I said, really,

1219
01:31:10,360 --> 01:31:13,360
Speaker 1: you're onto the red. Bring her a glass of white wine.

1220
01:31:14,080 --> 01:31:17,280
Speaker 1: He says, I can't. I can only bring a bottle.

1221
01:31:17,960 --> 01:31:20,719
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, bring her a bottle. So I says,

1222
01:31:20,800 --> 01:31:23,960
Speaker 1: missus is the voldolf. That's a hundred and twenty dollars

1223
01:31:24,160 --> 01:31:27,200
Speaker 1: in years, a lot of ready. It's a bringer a

1224
01:31:27,240 --> 01:31:30,760
Speaker 1: bottle of white wine. So he says, Mr, it's not

1225
01:31:30,880 --> 01:31:34,360
Speaker 1: in my business. Is that your girlfriend or your wife.

1226
01:31:35,120 --> 01:31:38,720
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, it's my girlfriend. He says, I

1227
01:31:38,840 --> 01:31:44,240
Speaker 1: know it. No, and they schmuck enough a bottle of

1228
01:31:44,240 --> 01:31:47,880
Speaker 1: wine for his wife. So so I looked at a

1229
01:31:47,960 --> 01:31:52,519
Speaker 1: deader and I said, how about it, let's get married.

1230
01:31:54,360 --> 01:31:58,639
Speaker 1: Crazy story, let's shift gears. Tell me about the Marshall

1231
01:31:58,640 --> 01:32:03,320
Speaker 1: Crunshaw record. Oh a great record. No, that's the best

1232
01:32:03,360 --> 01:32:08,599
Speaker 1: record he ever did. Phenomenal. Yes, Um, a great record

1233
01:32:08,640 --> 01:32:14,519
Speaker 1: because he was a great songwriter. UH understood the type

1234
01:32:14,520 --> 01:32:18,799
Speaker 1: of music he was doing. And so I get called

1235
01:32:19,760 --> 01:32:22,960
Speaker 1: to do the record. I think he heard. He was

1236
01:32:23,280 --> 01:32:26,360
Speaker 1: into it because he heard maybe the first Robert Gordon record.

1237
01:32:26,800 --> 01:32:32,000
Speaker 1: You know, I had Robert and Link ray so and

1238
01:32:32,120 --> 01:32:35,000
Speaker 1: he had his brother was a drummer and there was

1239
01:32:35,080 --> 01:32:42,640
Speaker 1: a bass player. Was it Mark? Yeah? And um no

1240
01:32:42,760 --> 01:32:46,080
Speaker 1: it wasn't Marcked. That's another thing. But anyway, Um, I

1241
01:32:46,120 --> 01:32:48,960
Speaker 1: got called by Waters to do the record, and they

1242
01:32:49,040 --> 01:32:53,719
Speaker 1: just loved his demos, which are absolutely great. We went

1243
01:32:53,880 --> 01:32:56,640
Speaker 1: in and I know Marshall. I'm not saying this in

1244
01:32:56,680 --> 01:33:01,000
Speaker 1: any derogatory sense, but we did the record twice because

1245
01:33:01,160 --> 01:33:04,559
Speaker 1: Marsha wanted to do it exactly like his demos, and

1246
01:33:04,640 --> 01:33:08,760
Speaker 1: I just went along with it. And and I just

1247
01:33:08,840 --> 01:33:12,479
Speaker 1: knew it didn't feel right, but I went along with it,

1248
01:33:12,720 --> 01:33:14,960
Speaker 1: and then we listened to it back and I remember

1249
01:33:15,280 --> 01:33:18,200
Speaker 1: Marsha and I sitting there together. It was at the

1250
01:33:18,280 --> 01:33:21,360
Speaker 1: record plant at that time, and I was sitting there

1251
01:33:21,400 --> 01:33:25,360
Speaker 1: with him and just looked over to him and he said, uh,

1252
01:33:25,720 --> 01:33:30,080
Speaker 1: not so good. Not so good, you know, because I

1253
01:33:30,160 --> 01:33:34,120
Speaker 1: was responsible to water is also, you know, And that's

1254
01:33:34,120 --> 01:33:37,000
Speaker 1: the thing. When you produce records for record companies. You're

1255
01:33:37,000 --> 01:33:40,639
Speaker 1: responsible to them because they're paying for it, but you're

1256
01:33:40,680 --> 01:33:44,720
Speaker 1: also responsible to the artist, and you always have to

1257
01:33:44,760 --> 01:33:48,080
Speaker 1: pay that respect and responsibility to the artist. That's who

1258
01:33:48,080 --> 01:33:52,200
Speaker 1: in the end you work for. Um. He said, what

1259
01:33:52,280 --> 01:33:57,080
Speaker 1: could I do? I said, well, it's not hard. We're

1260
01:33:57,160 --> 01:33:59,920
Speaker 1: like halfway there. You want to go for it again?

1261
01:34:00,720 --> 01:34:03,720
Speaker 1: And he said sure, And we went back and we

1262
01:34:03,760 --> 01:34:08,040
Speaker 1: took a lot of what was his concepts, but but

1263
01:34:08,240 --> 01:34:12,320
Speaker 1: brought them less from let's create it as if it

1264
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:16,000
Speaker 1: was done in nineteen fifty, but let's create it as

1265
01:34:16,040 --> 01:34:20,200
Speaker 1: if it's done in which is slightly more modern, but

1266
01:34:20,280 --> 01:34:23,439
Speaker 1: not as modern as two thousand twenty one, you know.

1267
01:34:24,040 --> 01:34:28,160
Speaker 1: So so the record came out and I forget which

1268
01:34:28,160 --> 01:34:30,760
Speaker 1: one was the first single, but it got into the

1269
01:34:30,800 --> 01:34:34,639
Speaker 1: top forty but didn't really break through. Everybody loved the record.

1270
01:34:35,320 --> 01:34:36,960
Speaker 1: So I went out to Want as a head of

1271
01:34:36,960 --> 01:34:40,800
Speaker 1: promotion and I said, what's up here? You know, it's

1272
01:34:40,840 --> 01:34:44,240
Speaker 1: just crossing this barrier. And he said the other thing.

1273
01:34:44,280 --> 01:34:47,880
Speaker 1: I never forget that you never believe from anybody in

1274
01:34:47,880 --> 01:34:50,799
Speaker 1: the record business when they tell it to you, Richard,

1275
01:34:51,439 --> 01:34:53,920
Speaker 1: this is great. We're gonna get it the next time.

1276
01:34:54,479 --> 01:34:57,679
Speaker 1: There is no next time. If you got it going

1277
01:34:58,240 --> 01:35:02,240
Speaker 1: get it, going at it the next time. The record

1278
01:35:02,640 --> 01:35:09,320
Speaker 1: is appreciated across um the board of people that really

1279
01:35:09,439 --> 01:35:13,280
Speaker 1: loved that kind of music and love music, and it's

1280
01:35:13,320 --> 01:35:19,559
Speaker 1: a great it's a great record, but um it reached

1281
01:35:19,640 --> 01:35:25,080
Speaker 1: only a limited um um a limited audience. But you

1282
01:35:25,080 --> 01:35:27,600
Speaker 1: could go across the world and talk to people and

1283
01:35:27,640 --> 01:35:31,000
Speaker 1: they'll ask me about that. The other record they asked

1284
01:35:31,000 --> 01:35:38,840
Speaker 1: me about is U is um um blank Generation, which

1285
01:35:38,880 --> 01:35:42,160
Speaker 1: is kind of really crazy. Tell us about that, Well,

1286
01:35:42,200 --> 01:35:49,280
Speaker 1: that's Richard Hell. The Voidoids were um uh, Mark Bell

1287
01:35:49,400 --> 01:35:56,800
Speaker 1: who became Macky Ramon, Ivan Krowll, and Bob he was brilliant,

1288
01:35:56,920 --> 01:36:03,200
Speaker 1: Bob crying, brilliant, uh A Raddick sort of just played

1289
01:36:03,840 --> 01:36:11,960
Speaker 1: strange things. And the record was blank Generation, not my generation,

1290
01:36:12,120 --> 01:36:16,080
Speaker 1: No blank generation. Okay, I thought you said, my generation

1291
01:36:16,160 --> 01:36:22,520
Speaker 1: is the houthong no blank generation, which was the definition

1292
01:36:22,680 --> 01:36:27,880
Speaker 1: perhaps of that generation. Right absolutely. I thought it was

1293
01:36:27,960 --> 01:36:31,360
Speaker 1: going to be the anthem for the generation. So we

1294
01:36:31,479 --> 01:36:37,000
Speaker 1: go in to record it and Richard it's a poet,

1295
01:36:37,400 --> 01:36:42,120
Speaker 1: a writer and has a unique voice in style. He

1296
01:36:42,280 --> 01:36:45,880
Speaker 1: was the bass player and he played a little Mustang bass.

1297
01:36:46,680 --> 01:36:51,400
Speaker 1: He tried to intentionally um garble the words to be cool,

1298
01:36:52,240 --> 01:36:55,240
Speaker 1: but he was a true punk at that moment. He

1299
01:36:55,439 --> 01:36:58,840
Speaker 1: was the one that tore his T shirts that said

1300
01:36:58,920 --> 01:37:03,439
Speaker 1: you make me that uh more safety pins that Malcolm

1301
01:37:03,520 --> 01:37:07,840
Speaker 1: McLaren when he put together the Sex Pistols modeled things

1302
01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:13,200
Speaker 1: after um and I saw Richard at CBGB's and he

1303
01:37:13,360 --> 01:37:17,080
Speaker 1: was the other one in addition to Blundie and Robert

1304
01:37:17,120 --> 01:37:21,080
Speaker 1: Gordon that I signed to Instant and we made the

1305
01:37:21,120 --> 01:37:26,840
Speaker 1: one album and that one I put together um UH

1306
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:31,160
Speaker 1: and put out through Sire, through Seymour and Sire because

1307
01:37:31,479 --> 01:37:35,360
Speaker 1: he was doing punk uh. Other record companies I was

1308
01:37:35,400 --> 01:37:38,519
Speaker 1: trying to deal with were not yet interested in punk music.

1309
01:37:39,120 --> 01:37:44,040
Speaker 1: So we put that out. Nothing big happen for it,

1310
01:37:44,520 --> 01:37:50,880
Speaker 1: but it's legendary within the guitar players circle, and I

1311
01:37:50,960 --> 01:37:53,679
Speaker 1: once did something to talk where I met a band

1312
01:37:54,240 --> 01:37:59,400
Speaker 1: in Finland. They didn't care about me. They just wanted

1313
01:37:59,400 --> 01:38:03,440
Speaker 1: me to sign in their vinyl copy of Blank Generation.

1314
01:38:04,760 --> 01:38:11,320
Speaker 1: And last year I get a call from UM some

1315
01:38:11,400 --> 01:38:16,679
Speaker 1: people we distribute through the Orchard and they come to visit.

1316
01:38:17,439 --> 01:38:21,600
Speaker 1: It's Third Man Records. Third Man, of course, is the

1317
01:38:21,760 --> 01:38:27,320
Speaker 1: label that's owned Red Label Record store, UM Mastering Facility

1318
01:38:28,320 --> 01:38:34,720
Speaker 1: studio owned by Jack White. So this is now. The

1319
01:38:34,760 --> 01:38:41,360
Speaker 1: original version of Blank Generation was done at Electric Lady Land.

1320
01:38:42,120 --> 01:38:45,479
Speaker 1: The second version that came out, the original version ever

1321
01:38:45,560 --> 01:38:49,519
Speaker 1: came out. Second version was done at Plaza Sound because

1322
01:38:49,520 --> 01:38:52,840
Speaker 1: that's where I like to sound better. Okay, the people

1323
01:38:52,920 --> 01:38:56,320
Speaker 1: from Jack White's label come in and they introduced them

1324
01:38:56,320 --> 01:38:58,760
Speaker 1: to me because I'm the founder of the Orchard, and

1325
01:38:59,120 --> 01:39:02,639
Speaker 1: everybody wants to meet the founder. I you know, I'm

1326
01:39:02,680 --> 01:39:09,720
Speaker 1: the mascott and to put it nicely and um um.

1327
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:15,960
Speaker 1: They started talking to me and they said, oh you know, uh,

1328
01:39:16,840 --> 01:39:19,480
Speaker 1: we're going to do something with this so on Blank Generation.

1329
01:39:19,680 --> 01:39:23,040
Speaker 1: I said, really, you know that I produced that with

1330
01:39:24,360 --> 01:39:28,080
Speaker 1: with Richard Uh. And they said, did you do that

1331
01:39:28,120 --> 01:39:31,599
Speaker 1: an Electric Lady And I said yeah. The original version

1332
01:39:31,680 --> 01:39:34,920
Speaker 1: that was never released, as he on the part of

1333
01:39:34,960 --> 01:39:41,960
Speaker 1: the album was done an Electric Lady and um um,

1334
01:39:42,080 --> 01:39:45,400
Speaker 1: I just went on and did it elsewhere again. They said, Wow,

1335
01:39:46,880 --> 01:39:52,719
Speaker 1: we were invited by Spotify to do a special show

1336
01:39:53,720 --> 01:39:59,480
Speaker 1: of that they're putting together that will come from Electric

1337
01:39:59,600 --> 01:40:04,760
Speaker 1: Lady and it will be about songs that were recorded

1338
01:40:04,800 --> 01:40:08,719
Speaker 1: at Electric Lady Land over the years, and the artist

1339
01:40:08,840 --> 01:40:12,760
Speaker 1: is to pick the song and Jack pick Blank Generation.

1340
01:40:14,000 --> 01:40:16,439
Speaker 1: Would you like to come down beat him and uh

1341
01:40:16,479 --> 01:40:18,360
Speaker 1: and see it? So I did. I came down and

1342
01:40:18,400 --> 01:40:22,560
Speaker 1: met him, and Jack did a version of Blank Generation,

1343
01:40:23,200 --> 01:40:25,400
Speaker 1: which didn't come out through Spotify. He put it out

1344
01:40:25,439 --> 01:40:30,320
Speaker 1: on his own YouTube channel. But of all the things

1345
01:40:30,320 --> 01:40:34,439
Speaker 1: he could have chosen, including Jimmy Hendrix, which I guess

1346
01:40:34,439 --> 01:40:40,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot to try to duplicate, he chose Blank Generation, Uh,

1347
01:40:40,120 --> 01:40:43,920
Speaker 1: which is really an amazing tribute to the song, not

1348
01:40:44,040 --> 01:40:47,479
Speaker 1: to me, but the song. And then if anybody ever

1349
01:40:47,600 --> 01:40:52,000
Speaker 1: saw him, I guess three weeks ago from the time

1350
01:40:52,080 --> 01:40:55,160
Speaker 1: you and I are talking, if you've seen him when

1351
01:40:55,240 --> 01:40:59,519
Speaker 1: he channeled Eddie Van Halen on Saturday Night Live, you

1352
01:40:59,600 --> 01:41:03,960
Speaker 1: know rock and roll is I mean, that was beyond real.

1353
01:41:04,880 --> 01:41:09,040
Speaker 1: It's in fact, it was real, and uh, it's something

1354
01:41:09,080 --> 01:41:13,240
Speaker 1: that's really lost today. And and uh, it's great that

1355
01:41:13,360 --> 01:41:16,599
Speaker 1: he um he continues to do things like that and

1356
01:41:16,640 --> 01:41:19,400
Speaker 1: believes in it. And it's great that we do Orchard

1357
01:41:19,400 --> 01:41:22,280
Speaker 1: are involved with people like him. Okay, so tell us

1358
01:41:22,280 --> 01:41:28,080
Speaker 1: about the Go Goes. The Go Goes. The Go Goes is.

1359
01:41:28,720 --> 01:41:32,640
Speaker 1: Miles Copeland calls me and by now he's talking to

1360
01:41:32,680 --> 01:41:36,519
Speaker 1: me and and says, you know, I got this band

1361
01:41:36,560 --> 01:41:39,920
Speaker 1: I'd like you to do. Um. There was another one

1362
01:41:39,920 --> 01:41:42,920
Speaker 1: he wanted me do I turn down for some obscure reason,

1363
01:41:43,040 --> 01:41:47,240
Speaker 1: Squeeze turned it down. I didn't do I should have

1364
01:41:47,280 --> 01:41:50,200
Speaker 1: done it because they were great and this all oriented.

1365
01:41:50,280 --> 01:41:54,639
Speaker 1: I would have loved him. But the Go Goes UM.

1366
01:41:54,640 --> 01:41:57,439
Speaker 1: So he tells me who they are and I said

1367
01:41:58,120 --> 01:42:05,599
Speaker 1: Moles and Blondie of uh, which is probably why they're interested.

1368
01:42:06,120 --> 01:42:10,720
Speaker 1: My boyfriend's back other girl groups. You know, I'd rather

1369
01:42:11,400 --> 01:42:14,200
Speaker 1: I'd rather move on and do some other things. So

1370
01:42:14,320 --> 01:42:17,400
Speaker 1: he says not, he's a really great and I said no.

1371
01:42:18,160 --> 01:42:23,840
Speaker 1: So he he's their manager. A woman named ginger Kenzoneri,

1372
01:42:24,200 --> 01:42:29,519
Speaker 1: who is um literally their biggest proponent at the time,

1373
01:42:29,600 --> 01:42:33,400
Speaker 1: calls me and says, listen, Richard, we really would love

1374
01:42:33,439 --> 01:42:35,599
Speaker 1: you to be involved in this. I just know you'd

1375
01:42:35,600 --> 01:42:40,800
Speaker 1: be right. Um um. So she said, they're playing at

1376
01:42:40,840 --> 01:42:44,080
Speaker 1: Lobe Student Center. For some reason, they got a gig

1377
01:42:44,120 --> 01:42:51,680
Speaker 1: at Lobe Student Center. Um. Maybe because within the college

1378
01:42:52,160 --> 01:42:56,160
Speaker 1: radio circuit um we got the beat and the stiff

1379
01:42:56,240 --> 01:42:59,880
Speaker 1: recordings were being played because they were played on k rock,

1380
01:43:00,360 --> 01:43:03,920
Speaker 1: you know out in l A um A k k

1381
01:43:04,120 --> 01:43:09,200
Speaker 1: R K far s. Yeah. And so he said, could

1382
01:43:09,200 --> 01:43:11,720
Speaker 1: you please just come, you have to do anything, just

1383
01:43:11,800 --> 01:43:15,240
Speaker 1: stand in the audience. Saw them play live, and it

1384
01:43:15,320 --> 01:43:18,840
Speaker 1: was like that experience of seeing Blondie. Uh. Belinda was

1385
01:43:18,880 --> 01:43:22,679
Speaker 1: a great performer. Jane and the other girls danced around.

1386
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:28,200
Speaker 1: Gina was a brilliant drummer. Um. Just Cathy could play

1387
01:43:28,240 --> 01:43:32,120
Speaker 1: the bass, you know. And they sang and the songs

1388
01:43:32,640 --> 01:43:36,880
Speaker 1: were great. And again that's what you do things for.

1389
01:43:37,360 --> 01:43:40,040
Speaker 1: You do them for the songs, or at least I do,

1390
01:43:40,520 --> 01:43:43,000
Speaker 1: not just the image. And their image was great. So

1391
01:43:43,120 --> 01:43:45,880
Speaker 1: I decided to go ahead and do it. I said, yes,

1392
01:43:46,479 --> 01:43:48,439
Speaker 1: I went and met the girls. I said, if if

1393
01:43:48,439 --> 01:43:50,920
Speaker 1: they get along with me, that's great, I said, but

1394
01:43:51,040 --> 01:43:54,160
Speaker 1: you know, I work in New York and they were

1395
01:43:54,160 --> 01:43:55,760
Speaker 1: happy to get out of l A. You come to

1396
01:43:55,800 --> 01:43:58,640
Speaker 1: New York and get put up in hotel rooms and

1397
01:43:58,720 --> 01:44:01,679
Speaker 1: party and do what hell they did after the studio,

1398
01:44:02,439 --> 01:44:06,320
Speaker 1: And again my budgets next to nothing. I don't even

1399
01:44:06,360 --> 01:44:10,200
Speaker 1: know what it was. It could have been fifteen twenty

1400
01:44:10,680 --> 01:44:14,360
Speaker 1: dollars that include hotel and everything. So he expected me

1401
01:44:14,400 --> 01:44:18,599
Speaker 1: to get a cheap punk record done. And I started

1402
01:44:18,640 --> 01:44:21,040
Speaker 1: doing it that way. But with the go goes, what

1403
01:44:21,120 --> 01:44:24,000
Speaker 1: I did was and I started doing it with everybody.

1404
01:44:24,040 --> 01:44:27,599
Speaker 1: For a while, I would hire a even though Gina

1405
01:44:27,680 --> 01:44:30,680
Speaker 1: was a great drummer, I'd hire a drum tuner, and

1406
01:44:30,760 --> 01:44:35,640
Speaker 1: after every few songs, I'd changed the skins so the

1407
01:44:35,720 --> 01:44:39,559
Speaker 1: drums would sound a certain way. Um, and I got

1408
01:44:39,560 --> 01:44:43,880
Speaker 1: the same guy. His name was Already Smith, and he

1409
01:44:44,000 --> 01:44:48,240
Speaker 1: rented vintage amplifiers and guitars, and I wouldn't let them

1410
01:44:48,240 --> 01:44:53,240
Speaker 1: play their own guitars. So every the sound of the

1411
01:44:53,280 --> 01:44:57,840
Speaker 1: instruments become layered differently as you change the text, the

1412
01:44:57,880 --> 01:45:01,360
Speaker 1: sound of the sound because differently as change the instruments

1413
01:45:01,680 --> 01:45:06,760
Speaker 1: and the textures change. So we had all of that. Uh.

1414
01:45:07,120 --> 01:45:12,160
Speaker 1: And I started hearing that as I rehearse it, focus

1415
01:45:12,240 --> 01:45:16,519
Speaker 1: on different parts, that the song sound even better and

1416
01:45:16,600 --> 01:45:21,960
Speaker 1: more commercial. And I start thinking, what a minute, I'm

1417
01:45:22,000 --> 01:45:25,360
Speaker 1: not just gonna pull the plug now. I called and

1418
01:45:25,439 --> 01:45:28,360
Speaker 1: asked for more money. They said no, So I said,

1419
01:45:28,439 --> 01:45:32,160
Speaker 1: fuck it, I'll just I'll just it's not going to

1420
01:45:32,280 --> 01:45:35,880
Speaker 1: break me to pay another uh seven. It only was

1421
01:45:35,920 --> 01:45:39,800
Speaker 1: like about bucks in the end, but that's the equivalent

1422
01:45:39,880 --> 01:45:46,920
Speaker 1: of maybe, um fifty dollars today, you know. So I finished.

1423
01:45:47,200 --> 01:45:50,960
Speaker 1: I paid the studio bills and everything at the end.

1424
01:45:51,920 --> 01:45:55,960
Speaker 1: Um the girls. What I learned from the girls was

1425
01:45:56,439 --> 01:46:00,280
Speaker 1: it was amazing. I mean again, I'm a provincial guy

1426
01:46:00,880 --> 01:46:05,719
Speaker 1: coming from UH family like I am in the Bronx.

1427
01:46:06,160 --> 01:46:08,759
Speaker 1: I think guys are the ones that go out looking

1428
01:46:08,800 --> 01:46:13,559
Speaker 1: for booty. No girls go out looking for booty. And

1429
01:46:14,040 --> 01:46:16,080
Speaker 1: I mean I came in one day and it's like

1430
01:46:16,360 --> 01:46:20,160
Speaker 1: pornography on the control room board. And they're funny. I

1431
01:46:20,200 --> 01:46:23,240
Speaker 1: mean not not in a scene way, but in a

1432
01:46:23,720 --> 01:46:26,479
Speaker 1: at all. This is who we are, and it was

1433
01:46:26,520 --> 01:46:28,920
Speaker 1: who they were and they and they were great girls,

1434
01:46:28,960 --> 01:46:32,479
Speaker 1: all of them. So so I learned other things from

1435
01:46:32,520 --> 01:46:35,200
Speaker 1: them and uh and I try to learn from everybody

1436
01:46:35,200 --> 01:46:42,160
Speaker 1: I work with. UM and UM I UM. They wanted

1437
01:46:42,200 --> 01:46:44,439
Speaker 1: to go back to l A by now. Oh and

1438
01:46:44,439 --> 01:46:46,439
Speaker 1: when it go it came to doing we got the

1439
01:46:46,479 --> 01:46:51,880
Speaker 1: Beat because I loved all lips the sealed. I thought

1440
01:46:51,920 --> 01:46:57,320
Speaker 1: that was number one, absolutely well one thing. If someone

1441
01:46:57,360 --> 01:46:59,720
Speaker 1: out there who listens to this wants to pay a

1442
01:46:59,800 --> 01:47:04,360
Speaker 1: ten menin they let. One of the reasons they left

1443
01:47:04,920 --> 01:47:09,759
Speaker 1: was I decided in the middle where Jane goes, hush

1444
01:47:09,800 --> 01:47:13,880
Speaker 1: my dolly, don't you cry right, that it needed a

1445
01:47:13,960 --> 01:47:19,719
Speaker 1: tambourine that crossed the speakers and went hush y dog.

1446
01:47:23,840 --> 01:47:29,200
Speaker 1: But it had to go. I spent two to three

1447
01:47:29,240 --> 01:47:34,160
Speaker 1: hours a studio time sitting with a sambourine and going

1448
01:47:36,920 --> 01:47:38,800
Speaker 1: and as it crossed the speakers, So it had to

1449
01:47:38,840 --> 01:47:43,160
Speaker 1: have an exact certain length. And I only wanted it

1450
01:47:43,360 --> 01:47:47,200
Speaker 1: played so that you felt the organic value of it.

1451
01:47:47,720 --> 01:47:50,679
Speaker 1: So I could have been as crazy as my chapman

1452
01:47:50,720 --> 01:47:55,479
Speaker 1: in those ways, but in a good way crazy. So

1453
01:47:55,600 --> 01:47:57,880
Speaker 1: when I came back to them after that, I said, Okay,

1454
01:47:57,920 --> 01:48:02,200
Speaker 1: that's done. Now that's great. Now we gotta we gotta

1455
01:48:02,320 --> 01:48:06,720
Speaker 1: do we got to beat. What do you mean we

1456
01:48:06,840 --> 01:48:09,479
Speaker 1: got to beat? We can't do. We got the beat,

1457
01:48:10,439 --> 01:48:14,360
Speaker 1: it's already done. I said, well, really, how much did

1458
01:48:14,439 --> 01:48:16,720
Speaker 1: it sell? And I looked up and he said it said,

1459
01:48:16,720 --> 01:48:19,880
Speaker 1: it's all about forty thousand, which was amazing. In l A,

1460
01:48:20,439 --> 01:48:23,719
Speaker 1: there was a punk classic. I said, yeah, but there's

1461
01:48:23,760 --> 01:48:30,280
Speaker 1: forty million people. There's forty million people, you know, Um,

1462
01:48:30,439 --> 01:48:33,360
Speaker 1: we could reach all of them. So I had to

1463
01:48:33,439 --> 01:48:35,240
Speaker 1: talk of it to do. And we got the beat

1464
01:48:36,040 --> 01:48:41,920
Speaker 1: and then we I put Gina in in the um

1465
01:48:42,439 --> 01:48:47,599
Speaker 1: tape room, which had volumeous echo, and we doubled the drums.

1466
01:48:47,800 --> 01:48:49,960
Speaker 1: You know, I said, well, first of all, slowed the

1467
01:48:50,040 --> 01:48:53,519
Speaker 1: damn thing down because that's the wrong kind of beat.

1468
01:48:53,840 --> 01:48:57,840
Speaker 1: So I got it slower, doubled up the drums, and

1469
01:48:58,720 --> 01:49:01,519
Speaker 1: I thought I had an amazing record, but thought all

1470
01:49:01,600 --> 01:49:03,600
Speaker 1: if the sealed was going to blow everybody out of

1471
01:49:03,640 --> 01:49:10,599
Speaker 1: the water. So goes they go home. I stay with

1472
01:49:10,800 --> 01:49:17,799
Speaker 1: Rob and remix the record, and to me, I wanted

1473
01:49:17,840 --> 01:49:20,960
Speaker 1: it clean and sort of pop, but I thought it

1474
01:49:21,080 --> 01:49:26,720
Speaker 1: still had that edge. But it was right, you want

1475
01:49:26,760 --> 01:49:29,040
Speaker 1: to put it that way. It was it was something

1476
01:49:29,080 --> 01:49:32,640
Speaker 1: that was made to sound good on the radio. Okay,

1477
01:49:32,720 --> 01:49:35,160
Speaker 1: if you had a stereo, might sound good, might not

1478
01:49:35,240 --> 01:49:37,640
Speaker 1: sound good, but it would sound good anyway. But it

1479
01:49:37,680 --> 01:49:40,200
Speaker 1: was made to sound for the radio. Sent it out

1480
01:49:40,240 --> 01:49:43,640
Speaker 1: to them, I got like, oh my god, you know

1481
01:49:44,080 --> 01:49:48,400
Speaker 1: you're not getting your extra money back. If I were there,

1482
01:49:48,439 --> 01:49:52,759
Speaker 1: i'd kill you, but not literally kill me, but like anger.

1483
01:49:53,080 --> 01:49:56,120
Speaker 1: For six months, they didn't talk to me. Uh, and

1484
01:49:56,160 --> 01:49:58,439
Speaker 1: they tell this story. It's not like I don't hold

1485
01:49:58,439 --> 01:50:00,599
Speaker 1: it against him. And then I went out there when

1486
01:50:00,640 --> 01:50:03,120
Speaker 1: we had a party at the Zoo Trump Studios to

1487
01:50:03,160 --> 01:50:07,840
Speaker 1: celebrate number one album, and then everybody said, well, you know,

1488
01:50:08,160 --> 01:50:12,760
Speaker 1: it's not that bad, but next time, we want like

1489
01:50:12,840 --> 01:50:20,960
Speaker 1: a heavy record. Okay, um, heavy record, M you know,

1490
01:50:21,200 --> 01:50:27,160
Speaker 1: we'll try. But they weren't a heavy group, and for

1491
01:50:27,200 --> 01:50:31,680
Speaker 1: a while they denied the the commercial part of themselves.

1492
01:50:32,120 --> 01:50:34,759
Speaker 1: But it's um, it's too bad. But they were terrific.

1493
01:50:35,560 --> 01:50:40,479
Speaker 1: They all the great people. Um and um, the music

1494
01:50:40,640 --> 01:50:43,280
Speaker 1: was fantastic. Let's just focus on our lips are sealed

1495
01:50:43,479 --> 01:50:47,040
Speaker 1: in that particular case. How much was the raw song

1496
01:50:47,160 --> 01:50:49,519
Speaker 1: and you couldn't fuck it up? And how much was

1497
01:50:49,560 --> 01:50:51,920
Speaker 1: the recording and production of the song that made it

1498
01:50:51,960 --> 01:50:55,560
Speaker 1: a hit. Well, remember they're playing all their own instruments,

1499
01:50:56,120 --> 01:51:02,360
Speaker 1: so there's no ringers except me hitting the tambourine. Right. Um,

1500
01:51:02,400 --> 01:51:05,559
Speaker 1: the song was great, their approach to it was great,

1501
01:51:06,479 --> 01:51:10,479
Speaker 1: and I realized how great it was once we you know,

1502
01:51:10,600 --> 01:51:13,720
Speaker 1: you would go into a rehearsal setting. You wouldn't go

1503
01:51:13,760 --> 01:51:16,559
Speaker 1: into the studio and just do it. So as I

1504
01:51:16,640 --> 01:51:23,520
Speaker 1: worked with them and made sure that each instrument did exactly,

1505
01:51:24,360 --> 01:51:27,920
Speaker 1: you know, what they were supposed to do, it took shape.

1506
01:51:28,160 --> 01:51:31,320
Speaker 1: But it couldn't take shape. You can't make an arrangement

1507
01:51:32,400 --> 01:51:36,840
Speaker 1: and a great recording of a crappy song. So the

1508
01:51:36,880 --> 01:51:40,599
Speaker 1: song had to be great. And Cathy says something, uh,

1509
01:51:40,680 --> 01:51:43,400
Speaker 1: it's either in a book or in something else, because

1510
01:51:43,720 --> 01:51:45,360
Speaker 1: she said, well, what should I do in the base?

1511
01:51:46,040 --> 01:51:49,439
Speaker 1: I said, listen, don't screw around, just follow the bass drump.

1512
01:51:49,880 --> 01:51:52,720
Speaker 1: Whatever the bass drum does, you do. Then you've got

1513
01:51:52,800 --> 01:51:55,320
Speaker 1: a heavy bottom, so then there's a lot of space.

1514
01:51:55,840 --> 01:52:00,360
Speaker 1: So then the guitargoes check, check, just one little thing.

1515
01:52:00,880 --> 01:52:05,519
Speaker 1: And then Charlotte, who had a good sense of a

1516
01:52:05,600 --> 01:52:09,080
Speaker 1: lead quality, could play a picking thing. So when you

1517
01:52:09,120 --> 01:52:14,559
Speaker 1: put all that together, it just has this rolling beat

1518
01:52:15,520 --> 01:52:18,479
Speaker 1: and then the I wouldn't even say the mellow knits,

1519
01:52:18,560 --> 01:52:23,920
Speaker 1: but the melodious tone of Belinda's voice just floats over it.

1520
01:52:24,360 --> 01:52:30,080
Speaker 1: And what you have is um is something unique. Okay,

1521
01:52:30,120 --> 01:52:36,439
Speaker 1: so we get that and and this I heard that,

1522
01:52:36,800 --> 01:52:39,760
Speaker 1: and I'll give him all the credit. When it came

1523
01:52:39,800 --> 01:52:43,320
Speaker 1: to promoting it. I R S had was an independent

1524
01:52:43,400 --> 01:52:51,360
Speaker 1: label and had a limited uh, a limited budget um

1525
01:52:52,479 --> 01:52:55,160
Speaker 1: to do things, but they could do it in an

1526
01:52:55,160 --> 01:53:01,360
Speaker 1: independent way. So they sent out the promotion man um,

1527
01:53:01,439 --> 01:53:07,000
Speaker 1: Michael Plan, Michael Plan, yep. And he went to Jersey

1528
01:53:07,160 --> 01:53:11,320
Speaker 1: to see a man named cal Rudman who listened to

1529
01:53:11,360 --> 01:53:13,720
Speaker 1: it and said, this could be a hit, but you

1530
01:53:13,800 --> 01:53:18,240
Speaker 1: know what it takes, and what it would have taken

1531
01:53:18,320 --> 01:53:23,519
Speaker 1: might have been seventy dollars or fifty dollars. And Michael

1532
01:53:25,360 --> 01:53:30,320
Speaker 1: had no way of going back and asking for that. Um.

1533
01:53:30,320 --> 01:53:33,400
Speaker 1: He went on the road and drove through what I

1534
01:53:33,479 --> 01:53:39,080
Speaker 1: told you about earlier in our conversation. The Northeast walked

1535
01:53:39,120 --> 01:53:44,960
Speaker 1: into the stations himself old school and said, you gotta

1536
01:53:45,000 --> 01:53:48,320
Speaker 1: play this record. You gotta listen and say whatever he did,

1537
01:53:48,880 --> 01:53:52,280
Speaker 1: he got them to play it, and it started to break.

1538
01:53:52,800 --> 01:53:56,920
Speaker 1: And in those days you could break things regionally, and

1539
01:53:57,000 --> 01:54:01,719
Speaker 1: from that region, next region, next region, next region. Bang,

1540
01:54:01,880 --> 01:54:08,719
Speaker 1: it explodes and and then the album begins to have value.

1541
01:54:09,560 --> 01:54:14,640
Speaker 1: And then we got the beat, and then you have what,

1542
01:54:15,400 --> 01:54:18,840
Speaker 1: on the face of it is a major artist. Okay,

1543
01:54:18,880 --> 01:54:23,920
Speaker 1: So tell us about the creation of the orchard, the

1544
01:54:24,040 --> 01:54:27,960
Speaker 1: creation of the orchard. Well, I won't even tell you

1545
01:54:27,960 --> 01:54:30,559
Speaker 1: what the orchard is now because it's mind boggling, but

1546
01:54:30,680 --> 01:54:33,960
Speaker 1: we could get to that. The creation of the orchard

1547
01:54:34,040 --> 01:54:36,120
Speaker 1: is a great story because to me, when I talked

1548
01:54:36,160 --> 01:54:39,520
Speaker 1: to people about it, remember we started talking about my

1549
01:54:39,600 --> 01:54:44,240
Speaker 1: boyfriend's back. My boyfriend's back. I'm on fire going to

1550
01:54:44,320 --> 01:54:49,560
Speaker 1: the Brill Building. To me, it's one straight progression, you know,

1551
01:54:50,560 --> 01:54:55,080
Speaker 1: I started in this game. It's a it doesn't sound

1552
01:54:55,120 --> 01:54:57,360
Speaker 1: like a blur, but it is a blur. It goes

1553
01:54:57,560 --> 01:55:04,920
Speaker 1: room and one day I find myself. I could get

1554
01:55:04,960 --> 01:55:09,160
Speaker 1: a few production gigs. I could stop doing what I'm doing,

1555
01:55:10,120 --> 01:55:15,280
Speaker 1: but life charges me the way I live, so I

1556
01:55:15,360 --> 01:55:16,880
Speaker 1: have to afford to live in it. So I have

1557
01:55:16,960 --> 01:55:20,000
Speaker 1: to continue and do some stuff. And someone tells me

1558
01:55:20,680 --> 01:55:27,640
Speaker 1: a friend at e m I um Um Records as

1559
01:55:27,680 --> 01:55:31,560
Speaker 1: A as a secretary who said, Richard, I know you

1560
01:55:31,720 --> 01:55:35,080
Speaker 1: like this kind of rock music. You know I saw

1561
01:55:35,120 --> 01:55:38,760
Speaker 1: this girl. The manager is really cool and this girl

1562
01:55:39,080 --> 01:55:42,000
Speaker 1: is is wild on stage. You should go and see her.

1563
01:55:42,600 --> 01:55:44,920
Speaker 1: So I call the manager. I arranged to go to

1564
01:55:44,960 --> 01:55:48,120
Speaker 1: see them. The name of the group is Scrub and

1565
01:55:48,240 --> 01:55:52,080
Speaker 1: I meet the manager and I go down to where

1566
01:55:52,160 --> 01:55:56,200
Speaker 1: is Pseudo offices and I don't know what second, I

1567
01:55:56,280 --> 01:55:58,839
Speaker 1: forget what section of town. It was in the twenties,

1568
01:55:59,240 --> 01:56:05,360
Speaker 1: and um, his name is Scott Cohen. And they said, okay,

1569
01:56:05,400 --> 01:56:07,400
Speaker 1: I think I could get a deal for them. Let's

1570
01:56:07,400 --> 01:56:10,320
Speaker 1: do some rehearsing, we'll do some recording. We record them,

1571
01:56:10,360 --> 01:56:13,320
Speaker 1: we try to get a deal, doesn't work out, but

1572
01:56:13,440 --> 01:56:16,760
Speaker 1: we start talking and we become friends. We form a

1573
01:56:16,920 --> 01:56:23,160
Speaker 1: label to put out music. It's called Soul three, but

1574
01:56:23,280 --> 01:56:28,320
Speaker 1: not Soulful, but Soul three, Third Planet from the Sun, okay,

1575
01:56:28,480 --> 01:56:35,040
Speaker 1: soul free. We started putting out uh singles albums, and

1576
01:56:35,640 --> 01:56:39,160
Speaker 1: we have a small office and it's on the lowery

1577
01:56:39,520 --> 01:56:46,400
Speaker 1: side on Orchard Street, UM, and it's a storefront. And

1578
01:56:46,840 --> 01:56:51,200
Speaker 1: what happens is we we engage a bunch of interns

1579
01:56:51,200 --> 01:56:55,280
Speaker 1: because we have no money, but we did have enough

1580
01:56:55,320 --> 01:56:59,720
Speaker 1: for a couple of full computers. And they're going on

1581
01:57:00,040 --> 01:57:10,480
Speaker 1: line to UH, I don't what we're um, it's not

1582
01:57:10,560 --> 01:57:14,560
Speaker 1: even broadband then, and they're going online and they're searching

1583
01:57:15,360 --> 01:57:18,960
Speaker 1: and they find there are people like we have a group,

1584
01:57:19,240 --> 01:57:25,840
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, you like heavy metal, you'll like this, Okay,

1585
01:57:26,040 --> 01:57:29,000
Speaker 1: and then we pick up some people, but we see

1586
01:57:29,120 --> 01:57:36,080
Speaker 1: there are two record stores, c D Now and Music Boulevard. Now,

1587
01:57:36,240 --> 01:57:38,440
Speaker 1: most people don't know this part of the Archer story

1588
01:57:38,440 --> 01:57:41,720
Speaker 1: because everybody thinks just this is how you do it overnight.

1589
01:57:43,960 --> 01:57:50,000
Speaker 1: So I contact them and I said, we'd like you

1590
01:57:50,040 --> 01:57:55,360
Speaker 1: to carry Soul Freeze label because we need more exposure.

1591
01:57:55,800 --> 01:58:00,080
Speaker 1: And we figured this is when you could essentially the

1592
01:58:00,280 --> 01:58:05,480
Speaker 1: order online. But you're ordering mail order. The only technology

1593
01:58:05,600 --> 01:58:08,520
Speaker 1: is you're doing it through a computer, okay, and then

1594
01:58:08,520 --> 01:58:11,440
Speaker 1: the physical product comes to you. And they're telling me, well,

1595
01:58:11,440 --> 01:58:13,680
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we can't do that. So I said, well,

1596
01:58:13,720 --> 01:58:17,800
Speaker 1: that's not a good answer. Why can't you do it?

1597
01:58:18,200 --> 01:58:21,240
Speaker 1: And they told me they can't do it because they

1598
01:58:21,280 --> 01:58:27,160
Speaker 1: were quote virtual fronts. They the backhand when they said

1599
01:58:27,200 --> 01:58:31,120
Speaker 1: they had two fifty thousand titles, they didn't have during

1600
01:58:31,160 --> 01:58:36,080
Speaker 1: the fifty titles. The titles lived at a place in Sacramento,

1601
01:58:36,160 --> 01:58:42,120
Speaker 1: California called Valley Media. Valley was the largest one stop

1602
01:58:43,000 --> 01:58:48,879
Speaker 1: uh supplier of music in the country, Barney Barney Cohen.

1603
01:58:49,560 --> 01:58:53,360
Speaker 1: They went public valued at a billion dollars and then

1604
01:58:53,520 --> 01:58:59,360
Speaker 1: went bankrupt the following year. Okay, I mean okay, so

1605
01:59:00,720 --> 01:59:04,040
Speaker 1: Scott and I, who by now are experienced in this crap,

1606
01:59:04,640 --> 01:59:11,280
Speaker 1: are our good friends and partners, and we had started

1607
01:59:11,280 --> 01:59:15,040
Speaker 1: a company. We came up with the idea of a

1608
01:59:15,040 --> 01:59:20,560
Speaker 1: company called The Orchard that could distribute independent music that's

1609
01:59:20,600 --> 01:59:26,879
Speaker 1: not available through those two stores because they don't exist

1610
01:59:27,320 --> 01:59:31,920
Speaker 1: at Valley. So we call up, we get somebody to

1611
01:59:31,960 --> 01:59:34,840
Speaker 1: get us an appointment, and we go out to make

1612
01:59:34,880 --> 01:59:41,920
Speaker 1: our pitch to Valley. Why we at the Orchard should

1613
01:59:41,960 --> 01:59:46,960
Speaker 1: be there's a flier of independent content. So go out there.

1614
01:59:47,400 --> 01:59:50,080
Speaker 1: At this point, we don't have one independent art, we

1615
01:59:50,120 --> 01:59:53,680
Speaker 1: have nothing signed. We have the name the Orchard. We

1616
01:59:53,760 --> 01:59:57,040
Speaker 1: know what we're gonna do. Go to Valley. I sit there,

1617
01:59:57,040 --> 02:00:00,360
Speaker 1: I go through the whole thing about future, this is

1618
02:00:00,400 --> 02:00:03,880
Speaker 1: gonna look everything. We get a tour of their of

1619
02:00:03,960 --> 02:00:09,760
Speaker 1: their warehouse and everything. They look. They looked totally disinterested,

1620
02:00:10,040 --> 02:00:12,760
Speaker 1: and then they started talking to me about what you

1621
02:00:12,920 --> 02:00:17,440
Speaker 1: just did. Blundie. The go goes my boyfriend's back. I

1622
02:00:17,640 --> 02:00:23,240
Speaker 1: tell them stories and they look over and say, Richard,

1623
02:00:23,280 --> 02:00:25,440
Speaker 1: you're one of us. We're going to do this with you.

1624
02:00:26,840 --> 02:00:29,640
Speaker 1: But the tick is you've got to take our adsignment product.

1625
02:00:30,840 --> 02:00:33,440
Speaker 1: By then I knew what that meant, and I said,

1626
02:00:33,520 --> 02:00:35,760
Speaker 1: you mean all the people that bug the hell out

1627
02:00:35,760 --> 02:00:39,640
Speaker 1: of you. But don't sell anything. I tell you what

1628
02:00:40,320 --> 02:00:44,880
Speaker 1: we'll do that provided you make us your exclusive distributor

1629
02:00:45,200 --> 02:00:49,080
Speaker 1: of independent music. I thought about it for a minute

1630
02:00:49,120 --> 02:00:53,680
Speaker 1: or two, and they said, yes, We get on the plane,

1631
02:00:53,760 --> 02:00:57,360
Speaker 1: go back to New York, go to the basement of

1632
02:00:57,440 --> 02:01:05,200
Speaker 1: our tenement storefronts and start building a small replica of

1633
02:01:05,400 --> 02:01:11,600
Speaker 1: values of of what we thought was valleys um warehouse,

1634
02:01:12,680 --> 02:01:17,280
Speaker 1: because we were going to begin receiving a flood of

1635
02:01:17,440 --> 02:01:22,240
Speaker 1: c d s right So they start coming in and

1636
02:01:22,360 --> 02:01:27,560
Speaker 1: we start taking orders and start delivering them too, back

1637
02:01:27,600 --> 02:01:31,240
Speaker 1: out to Valley, who then delivers them when an order

1638
02:01:31,280 --> 02:01:34,800
Speaker 1: comes in on the Internet, through any the two of

1639
02:01:34,840 --> 02:01:40,360
Speaker 1: their sites and eventually Amazon UM. When we developed a

1640
02:01:40,440 --> 02:01:44,240
Speaker 1: contract for the Independence to sign with us, since we

1641
02:01:44,240 --> 02:01:48,440
Speaker 1: were the way in, we added a clause that was

1642
02:01:48,960 --> 02:01:51,440
Speaker 1: in fairness. It was a clause that we'd be happy

1643
02:01:51,480 --> 02:01:55,520
Speaker 1: to explain that you also grant us the right to

1644
02:01:55,600 --> 02:02:01,320
Speaker 1: store and deliver your music digitally. People. Some people asked

1645
02:02:01,320 --> 02:02:04,080
Speaker 1: what that was, and we explained it to them that

1646
02:02:04,320 --> 02:02:07,680
Speaker 1: there was this vague notion that was going to happen.

1647
02:02:08,480 --> 02:02:13,160
Speaker 1: Uh and the others. UM said sure, if you, however,

1648
02:02:13,200 --> 02:02:16,120
Speaker 1: you distribute it as long as I'm music reaches people,

1649
02:02:16,600 --> 02:02:19,320
Speaker 1: and that was the goal of what we established at

1650
02:02:19,360 --> 02:02:24,440
Speaker 1: the Orchard, and everybody signed it. Very few places there

1651
02:02:24,480 --> 02:02:29,720
Speaker 1: was no broadband at the time. Broadband happened UH, people

1652
02:02:29,760 --> 02:02:37,160
Speaker 1: go download things. Along comes Apple Music iTunes. UM. The

1653
02:02:37,280 --> 02:02:41,160
Speaker 1: Orchard exists with about a hundred and fifty thousand titles

1654
02:02:41,200 --> 02:02:47,240
Speaker 1: by then, so we become a large supplier to UM

1655
02:02:47,440 --> 02:02:52,200
Speaker 1: two iTunes UH and then other places come along and

1656
02:02:52,280 --> 02:02:55,800
Speaker 1: at that time we take in investment. The investors did

1657
02:02:55,840 --> 02:03:00,919
Speaker 1: a good job in funding the expansion from independent artists

1658
02:03:00,960 --> 02:03:05,400
Speaker 1: only two independent labels, and Scott and I prior to

1659
02:03:05,480 --> 02:03:10,080
Speaker 1: that would take trips around the world everywhere on my

1660
02:03:10,200 --> 02:03:13,720
Speaker 1: own money. That that really almost bankrupted me. But I

1661
02:03:13,800 --> 02:03:18,280
Speaker 1: believed in it UM and we would go to conferences.

1662
02:03:19,000 --> 02:03:24,400
Speaker 1: We would meet people like yourself, Jim Griffin. Um. You know,

1663
02:03:24,520 --> 02:03:28,720
Speaker 1: I saw people speak and thought she I could do that,

1664
02:03:29,440 --> 02:03:31,960
Speaker 1: you know, and not in a bad way, but to

1665
02:03:32,000 --> 02:03:37,120
Speaker 1: say there's something happening here that really isn't very clear

1666
02:03:37,480 --> 02:03:41,080
Speaker 1: yet as a as a song says, but it's out there,

1667
02:03:41,520 --> 02:03:43,360
Speaker 1: and we got to be at the forefront of it,

1668
02:03:44,000 --> 02:03:46,960
Speaker 1: and we kept taking in more and more. We would

1669
02:03:47,240 --> 02:03:50,920
Speaker 1: go to talks and give lectures about the demise of

1670
02:03:50,960 --> 02:03:55,600
Speaker 1: the c D, the demise of Final and UM. We

1671
02:03:55,640 --> 02:03:59,640
Speaker 1: would literally get booed, get things thrown at us, you know,

1672
02:03:59,760 --> 02:04:04,200
Speaker 1: I mean we were we were like really outliers. But

1673
02:04:04,640 --> 02:04:09,680
Speaker 1: as it continued to grow, I learned what being a

1674
02:04:09,840 --> 02:04:14,280
Speaker 1: CEO meant, which eventually I had to give up because

1675
02:04:14,280 --> 02:04:18,880
Speaker 1: the investors put in their own CEO who was quite competent.

1676
02:04:19,520 --> 02:04:23,520
Speaker 1: He was great. Uh he's now the head of UM

1677
02:04:24,280 --> 02:04:30,520
Speaker 1: UM of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Greg shoal Um. The

1678
02:04:30,640 --> 02:04:35,880
Speaker 1: investors UM also encouraged us in every way to continue

1679
02:04:35,920 --> 02:04:40,280
Speaker 1: to grow and bring in more and more content UM

1680
02:04:40,600 --> 02:04:46,520
Speaker 1: going on. UM and UM the orchard continued as we

1681
02:04:46,600 --> 02:04:51,880
Speaker 1: brought in more and more labels of substance to UM

1682
02:04:51,960 --> 02:04:58,000
Speaker 1: increase its revenue, begin to supply not only download sites UH,

1683
02:04:58,040 --> 02:05:04,320
Speaker 1: but digital streaming s UM, and begin to supply everywhere

1684
02:05:04,720 --> 02:05:08,880
Speaker 1: music is available in any form as long as the

1685
02:05:09,040 --> 02:05:14,880
Speaker 1: people were legitimate and we're paying the artist. UM. It's

1686
02:05:14,880 --> 02:05:18,440
Speaker 1: always important that the most important is that the independent

1687
02:05:18,600 --> 02:05:23,080
Speaker 1: artists be served. So then we keep expanding in other

1688
02:05:23,200 --> 02:05:28,360
Speaker 1: areas to where we're now in I imagine fifty different

1689
02:05:28,840 --> 02:05:36,400
Speaker 1: um UM countries, UM even even Nigeria, South Africa um.

1690
02:05:36,480 --> 02:05:40,480
Speaker 1: We used to be a mkimo fossil um um um

1691
02:05:41,200 --> 02:05:46,600
Speaker 1: and go all across Asia um and music of in

1692
02:05:46,760 --> 02:05:57,840
Speaker 1: every language um irregardless of its commerciality. So um. When

1693
02:05:57,840 --> 02:06:00,840
Speaker 1: we started taking music in from India, we'd find it

1694
02:06:00,840 --> 02:06:03,360
Speaker 1: it's sell in another part of the world. Is someone

1695
02:06:03,480 --> 02:06:06,760
Speaker 1: saying in a different language. It didn't matter to me.

1696
02:06:07,320 --> 02:06:12,480
Speaker 1: The idea was music from every every bit of music

1697
02:06:12,640 --> 02:06:20,520
Speaker 1: from anywhere can sell somewhere to someone anywhere. And it's

1698
02:06:20,520 --> 02:06:22,800
Speaker 1: not even a matter of selling, it's a matter of

1699
02:06:22,880 --> 02:06:27,520
Speaker 1: exchanging the culture. You know. I used to give talks

1700
02:06:27,520 --> 02:06:32,839
Speaker 1: and say there are three things you know, uh, music, foods,

1701
02:06:32,960 --> 02:06:37,400
Speaker 1: sex and religion. We're all happy to take sex. Religion

1702
02:06:37,480 --> 02:06:42,640
Speaker 1: I could take or do without. Um. Food we share

1703
02:06:42,720 --> 02:06:47,560
Speaker 1: food as a cultural thing. Music and they are It's

1704
02:06:47,560 --> 02:06:51,720
Speaker 1: a universal language if we if we appreciate that part

1705
02:06:51,760 --> 02:06:55,879
Speaker 1: of each other, we don't have to worry about knocking

1706
02:06:55,920 --> 02:06:59,640
Speaker 1: down buildings or blowing peach up or or you understand

1707
02:06:59,680 --> 02:07:04,160
Speaker 1: people and music is what breaks down a barrier and

1708
02:07:04,200 --> 02:07:08,760
Speaker 1: then out of nowhere along comes well done, very well.

1709
02:07:08,880 --> 02:07:12,920
Speaker 1: Mind you a group of young kids who are very

1710
02:07:13,000 --> 02:07:19,400
Speaker 1: great looking, dance sing in South Korean and you could

1711
02:07:19,440 --> 02:07:22,200
Speaker 1: be a French kid, a Dutch kid, a German kid,

1712
02:07:22,480 --> 02:07:27,640
Speaker 1: and you are learning the Korean language phonetically man. That

1713
02:07:27,680 --> 02:07:31,640
Speaker 1: speaks to everything I have a dreamed of for the Orchard,

1714
02:07:31,920 --> 02:07:36,680
Speaker 1: and it's a And as miracles go, we also uh

1715
02:07:36,760 --> 02:07:41,640
Speaker 1: participants in distributing them, and we work with them and

1716
02:07:41,840 --> 02:07:43,960
Speaker 1: not we don't do anything with the music, of course.

1717
02:07:44,080 --> 02:07:48,320
Speaker 1: But okay, while you were building this business, the history

1718
02:07:48,320 --> 02:07:51,920
Speaker 1: of the Internet is companies who were too early or

1719
02:07:51,960 --> 02:07:54,880
Speaker 1: too late or killed by other companies. So while you

1720
02:07:54,920 --> 02:07:58,280
Speaker 1: were building, did you have did you have competition you

1721
02:07:58,320 --> 02:08:01,560
Speaker 1: were dealing with. Yeah, we had a bit of competition.

1722
02:08:01,760 --> 02:08:05,720
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about the Orchard is, I'll go

1723
02:08:05,840 --> 02:08:10,120
Speaker 1: back to everything we've said in this whole conversation is

1724
02:08:10,720 --> 02:08:13,440
Speaker 1: if you imagine a company like the Orchard, it stands

1725
02:08:13,880 --> 02:08:17,360
Speaker 1: one ft in the past, one ft in the present.

1726
02:08:17,480 --> 02:08:21,480
Speaker 1: We have to live and stretching far into the future.

1727
02:08:22,360 --> 02:08:26,360
Speaker 1: So the fact that we provided a service that was

1728
02:08:26,440 --> 02:08:31,280
Speaker 1: functional in the present while we developed the future, much

1729
02:08:31,360 --> 02:08:36,040
Speaker 1: like Apple by the way, Okay, other companies that didn't

1730
02:08:36,080 --> 02:08:39,280
Speaker 1: do that would fall by the wayside. You you have

1731
02:08:39,360 --> 02:08:42,560
Speaker 1: to be prepared for the future when it comes. So

1732
02:08:42,960 --> 02:08:46,640
Speaker 1: if you're not existing in a realistic way in the present.

1733
02:08:48,680 --> 02:08:51,040
Speaker 1: And also you've got to be lucky. Let's let's not

1734
02:08:51,240 --> 02:08:55,200
Speaker 1: minimize things. Yeah, there were there were other companies, but

1735
02:08:55,320 --> 02:08:59,800
Speaker 1: the other companies basically glommed onto what it was that

1736
02:09:00,040 --> 02:09:04,000
Speaker 1: you were doing. But fortunately for us at the moment,

1737
02:09:04,640 --> 02:09:09,000
Speaker 1: the big companies didn't, so there was room where you

1738
02:09:09,040 --> 02:09:15,960
Speaker 1: could do this. Sony they got involved later on in it, okay,

1739
02:09:16,000 --> 02:09:19,840
Speaker 1: but but most big companies were happy to let us

1740
02:09:19,920 --> 02:09:25,720
Speaker 1: exist because they didn't want to make waves, um with

1741
02:09:26,160 --> 02:09:30,240
Speaker 1: the retailers, because if you start dealing in digital at

1742
02:09:30,240 --> 02:09:33,560
Speaker 1: the same time where the messages we're going to get

1743
02:09:33,640 --> 02:09:37,240
Speaker 1: rid of what you're doing, it hurts the business as

1744
02:09:37,280 --> 02:09:41,400
Speaker 1: it is. You know. That's why when like MP three

1745
02:09:41,440 --> 02:09:45,240
Speaker 1: dot com came along, you know, the industry you've talked

1746
02:09:45,240 --> 02:09:48,360
Speaker 1: about it could have embraced this stuff a lot earlier.

1747
02:09:48,640 --> 02:09:55,840
Speaker 1: Even Spotify wasn't embraced immediately. Um Apple was embraced immediately

1748
02:09:55,880 --> 02:10:00,640
Speaker 1: as a download place because essentially they would aint too people,

1749
02:10:00,720 --> 02:10:03,360
Speaker 1: We've got a billion dollars in the bank, and we're

1750
02:10:03,400 --> 02:10:06,920
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna sell these downloads of your music for

1751
02:10:07,000 --> 02:10:10,680
Speaker 1: exactly the same price that you're selling it in these

1752
02:10:10,680 --> 02:10:17,960
Speaker 1: record stores. So made sense. Okay, So but ultimately the orchard,

1753
02:10:18,480 --> 02:10:23,200
Speaker 1: you and your investors sold the orchard. Yes, tell us

1754
02:10:23,200 --> 02:10:30,240
Speaker 1: about that. UM again, why I can't remember. I didn't

1755
02:10:30,240 --> 02:10:32,320
Speaker 1: even want to bother look it up. But why I

1756
02:10:32,360 --> 02:10:38,120
Speaker 1: can't remember the company that UM Sony had bought. But

1757
02:10:38,480 --> 02:10:41,960
Speaker 1: the investors made a deal with Sony where they rolled

1758
02:10:42,600 --> 02:10:48,920
Speaker 1: that other company into they were doing very well, UM,

1759
02:10:49,000 --> 02:10:51,440
Speaker 1: he'll come to me in a minute, and rolled it in.

1760
02:10:51,480 --> 02:10:55,840
Speaker 1: So it increased our our revenue and our market share,

1761
02:10:56,480 --> 02:11:02,360
Speaker 1: uh greatly, UM in the independent sector. And UM and

1762
02:11:02,480 --> 02:11:05,400
Speaker 1: a change for that. Uh. They took a seat on

1763
02:11:05,400 --> 02:11:10,680
Speaker 1: the board and they UM a position in the company

1764
02:11:11,120 --> 02:11:14,120
Speaker 1: and with an option at a certain point in a

1765
02:11:14,160 --> 02:11:17,160
Speaker 1: certain multiple I imagine, to buy the rest of it.

1766
02:11:17,680 --> 02:11:25,400
Speaker 1: And UM that point was reached and UH the investors

1767
02:11:25,400 --> 02:11:30,120
Speaker 1: took advantage of it and sold the remaining shares to

1768
02:11:30,840 --> 02:11:35,400
Speaker 1: UM Sony, which was on the board for three to

1769
02:11:35,520 --> 02:11:41,920
Speaker 1: five years anyway, UM uh prior to that, and on

1770
02:11:41,960 --> 02:11:46,560
Speaker 1: the face of it, as an independent company that really

1771
02:11:46,640 --> 02:11:50,760
Speaker 1: feels or as an individual that really feels independent, you

1772
02:11:50,880 --> 02:11:55,000
Speaker 1: begin to think, WHOA, that's the kind of place that

1773
02:11:55,120 --> 02:11:59,200
Speaker 1: I was totally against. You know what's going on here?

1774
02:12:00,720 --> 02:12:04,120
Speaker 1: But and I made that point when I when I

1775
02:12:04,160 --> 02:12:08,000
Speaker 1: did give a talk or welcoming talk to the Impalla

1776
02:12:08,560 --> 02:12:11,800
Speaker 1: was the other yeah, Impalla. So when I gave it,

1777
02:12:11,880 --> 02:12:15,040
Speaker 1: when I gave a talk to them, a welcoming talk,

1778
02:12:15,560 --> 02:12:20,000
Speaker 1: that they're now yet because they were merged into the Orchard,

1779
02:12:20,360 --> 02:12:25,040
Speaker 1: not the other way around. UM. But then I began

1780
02:12:25,120 --> 02:12:29,440
Speaker 1: to realize and to see what a great company Sony

1781
02:12:29,520 --> 02:12:32,080
Speaker 1: really is. And I'm not going to extoll the virtues

1782
02:12:32,520 --> 02:12:35,400
Speaker 1: um because I have to. I don't. I don't really

1783
02:12:35,440 --> 02:12:39,360
Speaker 1: carry the way. It's that they understood what the Orchard

1784
02:12:39,480 --> 02:12:46,880
Speaker 1: was about. They understood, UM, that that indispendent spirit was important.

1785
02:12:47,720 --> 02:12:52,680
Speaker 1: And while you have to adhere to things that are corporate,

1786
02:12:53,080 --> 02:12:56,920
Speaker 1: at the same time, what they did was allowed the

1787
02:12:56,960 --> 02:13:01,360
Speaker 1: company to function the way it always funct and they

1788
02:13:01,400 --> 02:13:07,000
Speaker 1: allowed the CEO to continue to remain the CEO, and

1789
02:13:07,080 --> 02:13:11,800
Speaker 1: the CEO they brod. I'll tell you their names. Brad Nathan,

1790
02:13:12,000 --> 02:13:16,040
Speaker 1: who grew up inside of the Orchard and has been

1791
02:13:16,080 --> 02:13:21,200
Speaker 1: there fifteen seventeen years and learned from the bottom up

1792
02:13:21,280 --> 02:13:25,720
Speaker 1: and is a great CEO. And Colleen Tys, who's the

1793
02:13:25,800 --> 02:13:33,400
Speaker 1: CEO chief operating officer, who Brad identified and found working elsewhere.

1794
02:13:33,440 --> 02:13:36,120
Speaker 1: I think she was working out of a d A

1795
02:13:36,280 --> 02:13:40,280
Speaker 1: and uh in in London. UH. And she worked for

1796
02:13:40,360 --> 02:13:45,240
Speaker 1: us in London and then moved back here. She is American. UM.

1797
02:13:45,400 --> 02:13:49,720
Speaker 1: These are two great people who understand how to work

1798
02:13:49,720 --> 02:13:53,920
Speaker 1: within a corporate setting but also appreciate and understand the

1799
02:13:54,040 --> 02:13:59,000
Speaker 1: value of independence and and and that's a great thing.

1800
02:13:59,280 --> 02:14:03,440
Speaker 1: And it led to the setting up of our um

1801
02:14:03,640 --> 02:14:08,480
Speaker 1: of read, which was Sony Read, which was their quote

1802
02:14:08,520 --> 02:14:13,680
Speaker 1: independent distribution ARM rolled right into the orchard. They could

1803
02:14:13,680 --> 02:14:17,520
Speaker 1: have done the other thing, but they realized the orchard

1804
02:14:17,640 --> 02:14:23,320
Speaker 1: is significant. Do the orchard means something? And and without

1805
02:14:23,800 --> 02:14:27,560
Speaker 1: flowing up, how important to you what it is? UM?

1806
02:14:27,600 --> 02:14:32,800
Speaker 1: Studying an autist services division where we now take individual

1807
02:14:33,080 --> 02:14:38,400
Speaker 1: artists and are able to give them the opportunity to

1808
02:14:38,680 --> 02:14:42,440
Speaker 1: for them to develop themselves within it, performing back end

1809
02:14:42,880 --> 02:14:47,600
Speaker 1: services on their behalf. UH. Where we're able now because

1810
02:14:47,680 --> 02:14:51,960
Speaker 1: of the relationship of Sony and the understanding of these

1811
02:14:52,000 --> 02:14:56,440
Speaker 1: people to take people like BTS and expand help them

1812
02:14:56,760 --> 02:15:02,600
Speaker 1: expand further to to could within the Latin world where

1813
02:15:02,600 --> 02:15:09,880
Speaker 1: we're we're placed with doing some work part of Daddy

1814
02:15:09,920 --> 02:15:17,800
Speaker 1: Yankees work Ozuma um bad Bunny UM people that reach

1815
02:15:18,400 --> 02:15:22,240
Speaker 1: millions in tens of millions of people that we can

1816
02:15:22,280 --> 02:15:26,080
Speaker 1: now be involved in, while at the same time not

1817
02:15:26,280 --> 02:15:32,320
Speaker 1: ignoring the lowest level of the independent artists, because our

1818
02:15:32,320 --> 02:15:38,640
Speaker 1: technology department continues to develop ways that these artists and

1819
02:15:38,800 --> 02:15:44,800
Speaker 1: labels can work and get information on a daily basis

1820
02:15:45,600 --> 02:15:50,960
Speaker 1: without having to be dependent necessarily on anyone else. So,

1821
02:15:51,440 --> 02:15:55,720
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, I'm proud of everything

1822
02:15:55,760 --> 02:16:00,080
Speaker 1: the orchard has become. And it's like some people, I

1823
02:16:00,080 --> 02:16:02,800
Speaker 1: I now worked there. I still have a couple more

1824
02:16:02,880 --> 02:16:05,280
Speaker 1: years to go there and maybe the rest of my

1825
02:16:05,880 --> 02:16:08,160
Speaker 1: uh time in this business. And I have my own

1826
02:16:08,200 --> 02:16:13,320
Speaker 1: instant records that I distribute through there. Okay, But to me,

1827
02:16:14,240 --> 02:16:21,000
Speaker 1: it's one run from my boyfriend's back. All the years,

1828
02:16:21,040 --> 02:16:23,640
Speaker 1: all the groups. We didn't even cover all of them,

1829
02:16:23,720 --> 02:16:30,720
Speaker 1: the banging of the tambourine, the discovery of the internet. Uh, technology, Uh,

1830
02:16:30,760 --> 02:16:34,520
Speaker 1: where's it going? What's the future? Should I download music?

1831
02:16:34,560 --> 02:16:37,280
Speaker 1: Do I need to own anything? The truth is we

1832
02:16:37,320 --> 02:16:41,320
Speaker 1: don't need to own anything. Priests, God should provide food

1833
02:16:41,360 --> 02:16:45,560
Speaker 1: for everyone. It's your pride, housing for everyone. Okay, the

1834
02:16:45,600 --> 02:16:48,640
Speaker 1: rest of it. If you get rich, you deserve it,

1835
02:16:48,680 --> 02:16:51,760
Speaker 1: if you work hard for it. But that's not. That's

1836
02:16:51,800 --> 02:16:55,120
Speaker 1: not the goal. That's not what that's not what the

1837
02:16:55,240 --> 02:16:59,920
Speaker 1: heir should bring us. You know, we we we make music,

1838
02:17:00,200 --> 02:17:03,959
Speaker 1: we give people something, you know, we've given something to remember.

1839
02:17:04,520 --> 02:17:07,080
Speaker 1: And that's what I believe do what it stands for.

1840
02:17:07,360 --> 02:17:09,959
Speaker 1: And I'll say one last thing about Sony. They might

1841
02:17:09,959 --> 02:17:13,200
Speaker 1: not want to hear it, but just think they think

1842
02:17:13,240 --> 02:17:16,760
Speaker 1: about ask somebody about how did you develop a company

1843
02:17:16,800 --> 02:17:22,400
Speaker 1: like that in nine Where did it come from? What

1844
02:17:22,600 --> 02:17:25,440
Speaker 1: made you people so great? You know? And when you

1845
02:17:25,520 --> 02:17:30,120
Speaker 1: got that answer, I have to ask. The history of

1846
02:17:30,120 --> 02:17:32,640
Speaker 1: the last twenty years is littered with people who are

1847
02:17:32,680 --> 02:17:36,959
Speaker 1: successful in the traditional record business and then had these

1848
02:17:37,080 --> 02:17:40,840
Speaker 1: huge windfalls in tech that far outstripped the income from

1849
02:17:40,879 --> 02:17:45,200
Speaker 1: their other endeavors. In your particular case, I know that

1850
02:17:45,240 --> 02:17:48,440
Speaker 1: Scott is completely out. In your particular case, did you

1851
02:17:48,560 --> 02:17:53,440
Speaker 1: do well in the ultimate sale of the Orchard? I

1852
02:17:53,480 --> 02:17:58,920
Speaker 1: did well. I didn't do boom, but I did well.

1853
02:17:59,720 --> 02:18:04,320
Speaker 1: Uh uh. I'm proud to continue to be part of it.

1854
02:18:05,040 --> 02:18:08,600
Speaker 1: And what exactly what exactly is your role today? My

1855
02:18:08,760 --> 02:18:11,680
Speaker 1: role is I would say one of them is talking

1856
02:18:11,720 --> 02:18:16,560
Speaker 1: to people like you. But I would say goodwill, I

1857
02:18:16,600 --> 02:18:20,120
Speaker 1: would say I have a title that's a chief creative officer.

1858
02:18:20,160 --> 02:18:23,880
Speaker 1: But I have to create the things that I want

1859
02:18:23,920 --> 02:18:30,000
Speaker 1: them to be creative for. Uh. I we we built

1860
02:18:30,000 --> 02:18:34,640
Speaker 1: a studio. We actually have a recording studio that I built.

1861
02:18:35,040 --> 02:18:39,480
Speaker 1: I I'm the person who's in charge of it. It's

1862
02:18:40,000 --> 02:18:44,880
Speaker 1: it's managed by our chief engineer, Alonzo August, who has

1863
02:18:44,920 --> 02:18:48,960
Speaker 1: now become a good friend. We're we're able to demonstrate

1864
02:18:49,000 --> 02:18:52,160
Speaker 1: to people. And I guess that's why that's why I'm

1865
02:18:52,200 --> 02:18:56,920
Speaker 1: still here, is that where through me, we're able to

1866
02:18:56,959 --> 02:19:01,640
Speaker 1: demonstrate to people that music is really a source of

1867
02:19:01,879 --> 02:19:05,200
Speaker 1: what we stand for. Um. We used to be in

1868
02:19:05,240 --> 02:19:09,560
Speaker 1: the film business. We're not, I would say media music.

1869
02:19:09,680 --> 02:19:12,760
Speaker 1: We now entered a publishing arrangement with Sony a TV,

1870
02:19:13,440 --> 02:19:17,800
Speaker 1: but it's all music. Our offices are our own offices,

1871
02:19:17,840 --> 02:19:22,640
Speaker 1: their Orchard offices, not Sony offices. That we we believe

1872
02:19:22,680 --> 02:19:29,800
Speaker 1: in this, we do it differently. We we they independent

1873
02:19:29,920 --> 02:19:33,520
Speaker 1: music and I've never been anything but independent. The first

1874
02:19:33,560 --> 02:19:37,000
Speaker 1: time I got a salary was when somebody bought the Orchard,

1875
02:19:37,200 --> 02:19:41,240
Speaker 1: and I get a salary now. But I still to

1876
02:19:41,920 --> 02:19:46,840
Speaker 1: imagine imagine living your entire life without getting a salary,

1877
02:19:47,000 --> 02:19:50,920
Speaker 1: but not being poor, you know. Wow? And I'm proud

1878
02:19:51,000 --> 02:19:53,680
Speaker 1: to get my salary now. It's one of the bonuses

1879
02:19:53,920 --> 02:19:56,920
Speaker 1: that I got from the sale. Yes, that's true. And

1880
02:19:56,959 --> 02:20:01,320
Speaker 1: Scott now works for a competitor and he's trying to

1881
02:20:01,360 --> 02:20:06,040
Speaker 1: bring them into the future. General good luck bring him

1882
02:20:06,080 --> 02:20:09,520
Speaker 1: into the future. Well, Richard, you certainly brought us from

1883
02:20:09,520 --> 02:20:11,360
Speaker 1: the past to today. I only wish I could have

1884
02:20:11,440 --> 02:20:14,680
Speaker 1: gone deeper on some of these things. Uh, we certainly

1885
02:20:14,760 --> 02:20:17,800
Speaker 1: run along, but I certainly know that people are interested.

1886
02:20:18,480 --> 02:20:21,000
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for relating your history and your insight.

1887
02:20:21,120 --> 02:20:23,920
Speaker 1: Really great. Well, Bob, I'll talk to you any time

1888
02:20:23,959 --> 02:20:26,760
Speaker 1: to bring it back, bring you back to it, or

1889
02:20:26,840 --> 02:20:30,120
Speaker 1: you can call me back. And when I do interviews

1890
02:20:30,120 --> 02:20:33,520
Speaker 1: and say things, just like when I do a printed interview,

1891
02:20:34,000 --> 02:20:38,200
Speaker 1: I actually just speak as as as you do. I

1892
02:20:38,360 --> 02:20:42,959
Speaker 1: do not uh edit my words, you know when I'm

1893
02:20:42,959 --> 02:20:45,400
Speaker 1: saying myself. So I don't know if I said anything

1894
02:20:45,440 --> 02:20:49,160
Speaker 1: that might be offensive or it might be misleading, but

1895
02:20:49,320 --> 02:20:53,280
Speaker 1: there's no intention. It's always like to just try to

1896
02:20:53,320 --> 02:20:58,560
Speaker 1: tell the truth and make people understand that. Uh, this

1897
02:20:58,800 --> 02:21:03,680
Speaker 1: business that we're in is business, but it's music and

1898
02:21:03,760 --> 02:21:08,840
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's just wonderful that I could be

1899
02:21:10,160 --> 02:21:14,080
Speaker 1: who I am now. At this age and gone through

1900
02:21:14,120 --> 02:21:18,400
Speaker 1: that whole journey and and just look back on and

1901
02:21:18,400 --> 02:21:24,199
Speaker 1: then say wow and definitely wow. Thanks so much, Richard.

1902
02:21:24,320 --> 02:21:26,520
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left sex