Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Left That's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is a singer, a songwriter, a producer, a technologist. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to the one and only Richard Godderer. Richard, Well,
Speaker 1: given what it took to get this started, I would
Speaker 1: take technologist out of it. Although you did start the
Speaker 1: orchard and we'll get there. Uh. So, how you're handling COVID, Richard,
Speaker 1: pretty good? Uh, I'm recognizing birds. I have squirrels that
Speaker 1: are personal friends. Now we left the city. We have
Speaker 1: an apartment in New York and when the Orchard and
Speaker 1: Sony closed, uh probably marched twelve. I came up to
Speaker 1: the house, which is a bit outside of the city,
Speaker 1: and uh we've been here of a sense, but I
Speaker 1: have gone back to the apartment a few times and uh,
Speaker 1: you see it's it's kind of strange. But now it's
Speaker 1: gotten pretty much back to normal. The Upper West Side
Speaker 1: is full of people. What's what's missing, though, is Midtown
Speaker 1: that's quiet. You go down Fifth Avenue, will come up
Speaker 1: Park of Madison and you really see, um see that
Speaker 1: that it might be an issue for businesses, uh, for
Speaker 1: rental of those big spaces, the office space is going forward.
Speaker 1: It might be a problem. You know. Well, hey, you
Speaker 1: know we're still recovering. It looks like it's going to
Speaker 1: get words over the winter. But let's go with you.
Speaker 1: How did you and your two partners? Right? I want candy? Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to hear that story. It's it's quite absolutely
Speaker 1: it's quite a good story. Actually, well let's let's go
Speaker 1: to this first before I want Candy. We put out, Um,
Speaker 1: we put out a a single on the legendary Swan
Speaker 1: Records Swanted licensed of course, great record. Okay, wait, we
Speaker 1: just stop there for a second because I don't think
Speaker 1: I know everything there. Swan of course put out she
Speaker 1: loves You, the Beatles album She Loves You Freddie Cannon. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what was Swan Records? Who owned that? Um? Two
Speaker 1: guys that I think we're in partnership with, um, Dick Clark.
Speaker 1: Let's get it that way. We in those days you
Speaker 1: could have partnerships in the media, um sort of um
Speaker 1: and okay. So we had written songs that were uh
Speaker 1: minor hits for Freddie Cannon. One called What's going to
Speaker 1: Happen When Summer's Done. It was a follow up to
Speaker 1: Passage Park. So we knew the people there, so we
Speaker 1: had this track we had done with the Angels, and
Speaker 1: they just didn't want to do it. But it was
Speaker 1: a Scott track, a version of I think it was
Speaker 1: a Joe Stafford song. A little love that slowly grows
Speaker 1: and grows, not one that comes to that's all I
Speaker 1: want from you. Well we did it. A little love,
Speaker 1: love that slowly it goes, It goes, you know, like
Speaker 1: a stop. And in the middle Bob Feldman goes, Oh,
Speaker 1: little louve that slowly grows, it grows, you know, with
Speaker 1: a fake British accent, just for a joke. We put
Speaker 1: the record out nowhere, nowhere does it show any activity
Speaker 1: until we get a phone call from a guy in
Speaker 1: Virginia Beach, Virginia, a disc jockey, I still remember his name.
Speaker 1: It was Gene Loving and he said, if you guys
Speaker 1: could come down here and play a show at the Colosseum.
Speaker 1: Of course we were like stoned out producers. We didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about that. Um I could make this record
Speaker 1: number one. Well, when someone says number one, you jump.
Speaker 1: Number ten, you don't jump. Number five, you crawl. Number
Speaker 1: one you jump. So we pack up a crew. We
Speaker 1: have adventures going down to Virginia Beach with triving with
Speaker 1: three cars and these banging African hair drums that I played. UM.
Speaker 1: We pull into the radio station, say Jean, we're here.
Speaker 1: He says, what do you mean you're here? Everybody's out
Speaker 1: at the airport waiting for you to come in. We
Speaker 1: pulled them you were Australian because we couldn't pass for British.
Speaker 1: And we go to the airport. We get on a
Speaker 1: small two engine plane and the taxis down to the
Speaker 1: UM airport entrance and there are kids with teddy bears
Speaker 1: and jelly beans. Virginia Beach welcomes Australia, Strange loves. So
Speaker 1: we get up on stage stone out of our minds,
Speaker 1: banging the drums and the song we played was a
Speaker 1: version of Bo Diddley Boom boom boom boom boom on
Speaker 1: the drums. Um. People are screaming. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just amazing. We get done, We drive back to UH.
Speaker 1: We drive back to New York, but before we do, UH,
Speaker 1: we stopped. UH. We go out that night with I
Speaker 1: think it was the mayor or, the town counselor, and okay,
Speaker 1: I guess this is all right for for your podcast.
Speaker 1: It's it's not really racist. And we're sitting there and
Speaker 1: it's a bottle club because you couldn't by liquor in
Speaker 1: Virginia at that time, and it was little bottles and
Speaker 1: we're drinking and he said, as the house it all
Speaker 1: being down in Australia, great, mate, write you all, write
Speaker 1: you all, and going like for faith Australian accents, and
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, I'm so glad you boys are here.
Speaker 1: I get some of them New York Jews coming down
Speaker 1: here and and we're going write you all. Mate. Australia
Speaker 1: is the same, you know, and got at it there
Speaker 1: as like as we could. Um go back to New
Speaker 1: York and we meet I'm at heart again and I'm
Speaker 1: it is um hanging out uh with um with some
Speaker 1: girls of our age that we hung out with. So
Speaker 1: he just says, your kids are great, you as are great.
Speaker 1: You you should come and use my studio. So we
Speaker 1: pack up we go to the Atlantic Studios because by
Speaker 1: this time the success of my boyfriend's back had changed
Speaker 1: because now the Beatles, the Stones, the Kings though, they're
Speaker 1: all coming in and as Australians we take our drums
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic studios. Brue, Wait, does i'm it think
Speaker 1: you're Australian? No, No, I don't know what he thought.
Speaker 1: I mean he could have thought anything, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I might I think thought whatever he wanted to think,
Speaker 1: you know. So we go back there and we record
Speaker 1: a great version of Bo Diddley, but not not taking up,
Speaker 1: but it's our beat, the boom boom, because the strange
Speaker 1: was beat was enormous and at that time you had
Speaker 1: to cut an ascetate, and we cut the acetate at
Speaker 1: his studios. He says, my god, Cherry Wex has got
Speaker 1: to hear us, brings us in and we didn't really
Speaker 1: ain't know Jerry Max. Nobody was legendary by that time,
Speaker 1: you know, where the Memphis sessions and everything, and vowie,
Speaker 1: Jerry's gonna listen to us and Ahmed and we're twenty
Speaker 1: by then, we were twenty four maybe, and it was
Speaker 1: still kids and puts the thing on and the first
Speaker 1: thing years bowed and Luba babe, and the next thing
Speaker 1: to hear is Ahmed, get these fucking kids out of
Speaker 1: here before I kill him. And we're shocked. We don't
Speaker 1: know what to do, and we just leave. Am It
Speaker 1: comes running after us and says, uh no, no, he
Speaker 1: gets funny sometimes like that. But you go and see
Speaker 1: our friend Bert Burns, who we just started a label
Speaker 1: with Bang B A n G which stood for Bert
Speaker 1: ahmed Nessui Cherry and a publishing company was Web four uh,
Speaker 1: meaning we've for them. Um, we go to see Bird,
Speaker 1: Hey listen to it. He says, yeah, yeah, I know, Jerry.
Speaker 1: He sees a couple of kids from Brooklyn and the Bronx,
Speaker 1: and he's an R and B purist. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to hear you doing that. But what we could do,
Speaker 1: the beat that you created is so amazing. We could
Speaker 1: structure a song around that beat. Hence we've started writing
Speaker 1: the song. And he said, let's get a title. I
Speaker 1: remember saying, well, what about that book that's been banned
Speaker 1: at softcore porn candy written by Terry Southern. Well it
Speaker 1: turned out to be perfect because the other book that
Speaker 1: can that Terry Southern wrote that I know is famous
Speaker 1: is Doctor Strange Love. Hence, there we were. We were
Speaker 1: the Strange Loves went in did the song we wrote
Speaker 1: together with Burt, the three of us and Bert, Bob Felman,
Speaker 1: Jerry Golstein, myself, Bert Burns went to bell sound, made
Speaker 1: this layer drum and and like self sync over and
Speaker 1: over again. Our voices kept bouncing him to make a
Speaker 1: big sound, and Bert came up with the guitar lick,
Speaker 1: which is very much like a famous song called what
Speaker 1: was it called? It was Anna by Sylvano mcganno. And
Speaker 1: I remember the guitar player that played in his name
Speaker 1: was Everett Boxdale. And we got done with the record
Speaker 1: and you think you're done. It's a four track recording, right,
Speaker 1: Well not with neurotic people like us. Because we were
Speaker 1: going to be superstar producers. We start mixing it over
Speaker 1: and over again. Four track It took us. We went
Speaker 1: to uh what was the Columbia Record studios. We spent
Speaker 1: four days mixing it, editing it, and then went real
Speaker 1: to real machine to machine and added reverb on top
Speaker 1: of it, and hence came the strange love sound. And
Speaker 1: that's the story of I Want Candy. Um it's a
Speaker 1: long story, I know, but no, no, okay, So you
Speaker 1: finished the record. Does everyone think it's going to be
Speaker 1: a hit? Um? Yeah, I do, I think so. I
Speaker 1: think Burt loved it. UM put it out. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think, yeah, um it came out pretty quickly after
Speaker 1: we finished it. In those days, you didn't have to
Speaker 1: plan for much. As quick as you could press it,
Speaker 1: you could get it out. UM. And I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think where it started. UM. I know it was huge
Speaker 1: number one in Chicago and probably now that got higher
Speaker 1: than nine or so on the charts. But its impact
Speaker 1: was great, UM, and it led us to go on tour. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get there, it was obviously come back two
Speaker 1: decades later with bow wow Wow. My question is do
Speaker 1: you get paid on I Want Candy? Oh? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we get paid very well and I Want Candy. Say,
Speaker 1: but at this late date, do you still have an
Speaker 1: interest in that song? Oh? Yes? As writers? UM. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I could UM, I could share with
Speaker 1: listeners who are in the business. UH. Fifty six years
Speaker 1: after the initial copyright signing with a publishing company, rights
Speaker 1: revert back to the writers by copyright law. The writers
Speaker 1: then have an opportunity to do what they want with it,
Speaker 1: keep it, publish it themselves, resell it to the publishing
Speaker 1: company that added UM, or sell it to other individuals.
Speaker 1: Or are people out there buying copyrights and and writers
Speaker 1: royalties UM and spending tremendous amounts of money for it.
Speaker 1: We took advantage of that and re UM sold UM
Speaker 1: both My Boyfriends Back and I Want Candy two, UM
Speaker 1: sony a TV Music again and they paid handsfully for
Speaker 1: it without mentioning numbers. It was significant. You maintain your
Speaker 1: writer's share? What you are you do? Yeah? We main
Speaker 1: We maintained our writer's shist. Now, you could also sell
Speaker 1: those writer chairs if one wanted to. I don't have to,
Speaker 1: and I don't really want to at the moment, but
Speaker 1: who knows what life where death brings us? Okay, very
Speaker 1: very specifically, did you license to them or did you
Speaker 1: literally sell the songs out right? No? You you resign
Speaker 1: with them as the publishers UM. But they have to
Speaker 1: pay for it at this point because they're there or
Speaker 1: other successful songs. They people do the same thing with
Speaker 1: UM and we maintain they they account to us for
Speaker 1: writers royalties are writers share? So in a sense in
Speaker 1: that instance, you're you're selling signing away UM of the
Speaker 1: basic amount of money that comes in UM, and it
Speaker 1: was it was worth it, know, But the Bow Wow
Speaker 1: Row record and then what's his name, UM, Aaron Carter? Yeah? UM,
Speaker 1: but the song itself. It's what's interesting about it is
Speaker 1: when you see something that's fifty and sixty fifty years
Speaker 1: old or almost sixty years um and you said cross generations,
Speaker 1: and it's the same with my boyfriends back. It's almost
Speaker 1: not logical, but there's something that's eternal about about those
Speaker 1: the simplicity of them. They be filled. Basically, you could
Speaker 1: go to his cvs and there's pumpkins and dogs that
Speaker 1: you could buy, and you press and it goes, I'm
Speaker 1: a candy or or a rich or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, or you could you could buy on the internet. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Hess truck that comes back every Christmas. Uh and
Speaker 1: goes the Hess trucks back and it's got the most
Speaker 1: amazing thing. So commercials UTIs in movies. These are things
Speaker 1: we never considered where we're kids writing these songs. Another
Speaker 1: one I'd bring up as far as commercials, which is
Speaker 1: interesting of course it to me, it's mind boggling. So
Speaker 1: if you watch regular television, it's full of commercials for um,
Speaker 1: not narcotics, but drugs you could buy for diabetes, for this,
Speaker 1: and on comes a commercial for a diabetes medication. We
Speaker 1: got the beat, We got the beat, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: what what a punk girl group that sank? We got
Speaker 1: the beat? You know, it's not my song, it's it's
Speaker 1: Charlotte's song. Uh. But when you hear that, it just
Speaker 1: it just tells you that songs, that the song is
Speaker 1: a thing that's most valuable about this business. Okay, So
Speaker 1: where were you? Where are you? Were you born? Whould
Speaker 1: you grow up? I grew up in the Bronx. And
Speaker 1: what did your father mother do for a living? Oh?
Speaker 1: My father and mother had various jobs. But the one
Speaker 1: thing when I was going to junior high school they
Speaker 1: had which was amazing. They had a bakery. They don't
Speaker 1: know what they knew about it, but it was a
Speaker 1: wholesale bakery where they've brought things in. But in the back,
Speaker 1: in the back, they had three bakers, some old Russian
Speaker 1: German guy you know who take me in the back
Speaker 1: and say it was my first experience as a very
Speaker 1: young kid. Do you know girls are very cool? Did you?
Speaker 1: If you want to, if you want to see what
Speaker 1: it feels like, riget press on the dough here, it's
Speaker 1: just like the beautiful girl's breast. So are you talking?
Speaker 1: This is free bam mitzvah, Right, you're talking like ten
Speaker 1: years old, right, And I, oh wow, and so so
Speaker 1: I remember this ship. It's really stupid. But these things,
Speaker 1: these things lead to other things. And I would be
Speaker 1: serious now it's not that it leads to the experience
Speaker 1: of the breast, but but things that people tell you
Speaker 1: um lead to other things that you don't think you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay dividends. It's like when when we were doing
Speaker 1: I Want Candy and other things. I was in the studio.
Speaker 1: I get kind of weird in those days in the
Speaker 1: studio and the drama. Herbie Lavell was his name, a
Speaker 1: brilliant drummer who worked with us all the time, comes
Speaker 1: over and said, Richard, uh, you don't look so good.
Speaker 1: Are you having fun? And I said, yeah, sure, and
Speaker 1: he said I don't think so. He said, but let
Speaker 1: me tell you something. This is about fun. If you're
Speaker 1: not enjoying it, get out and do something else, you know.
Speaker 1: I never forgot that, you know, And and it made
Speaker 1: me think of something else. I mean, you want to
Speaker 1: go in that line? Another thing I never forgot. Two
Speaker 1: things Alan Freed. Alan Freed is where I first heard
Speaker 1: rock and roll kid Transistor Radio, the same kid that
Speaker 1: was touching the dough and uh, doing this stuff, and
Speaker 1: two things I remember that kept me into business. He
Speaker 1: played a ricket called Hearts made of Stone. Hearts made
Speaker 1: of stone, You don't have a brave drake, And then
Speaker 1: I said no, no, no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no. Everybody knows.
Speaker 1: And then he takes the record off and says, the
Speaker 1: first ten people took call up and tell me how
Speaker 1: many times they said no. So I never forgot that.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about Alan Freed. He plays his
Speaker 1: record that was great, and then he goes, kids, that
Speaker 1: sounds great, right, waits a second and then goes, it
Speaker 1: will never be a hit. It doesn't have a sacks break.
Speaker 1: I remember that you could. So what I remembered is okay,
Speaker 1: maybe not a sacks break, maybe not a guitar break,
Speaker 1: maybe a rap maybe something else. He meant it wasn't finished.
Speaker 1: And the last thing, that's the most touching thing. And
Speaker 1: it's strange because I talked to Paul Simon once about
Speaker 1: it and he wrote a song about it. Um and um.
Speaker 1: He had the same experience. Uh, you're listening to radio
Speaker 1: transistor radio and your pill you're in junior high school
Speaker 1: or freshman high school, so you're anywhere between thirteen and fifteen,
Speaker 1: right and on the radio comes. I looked at the clock,
Speaker 1: at the face on the wall, and and maybe it
Speaker 1: was that could have been pledging by love. And the
Speaker 1: whole thing goes and all of a sudden, he said, kids,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have three minutes of silence. The radio is
Speaker 1: gonna go dead. Johnny As is dead. And you're just
Speaker 1: fucking shocked. You're shocked, you're mesmerized. You're just sitting there.
Speaker 1: And the next thing you hear is whoever my dollar? Hello?
Speaker 1: It YouTube. You hear his voice, and that made me
Speaker 1: stay in the business. That may get into the business,
Speaker 1: but made me stay. I remember it. I remember it
Speaker 1: when I get down and when I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. You know what I remember is
Speaker 1: that that these are things you you that have impact
Speaker 1: and effect the other things you do. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes the music come to life, or that's what made
Speaker 1: music come to life for me. Remembering all this stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just the little things people tell you, not the
Speaker 1: big moments, the little things. Okay, you're going to school,
Speaker 1: good student, life of the party, isolated, What kind of
Speaker 1: kid were you? Um, yeah, I was. I used to
Speaker 1: have a band recalled ourselves as Sultan's a Swing after
Speaker 1: the Benny Goodman, and we would play mostly at the
Speaker 1: y m h A. But what made our band great
Speaker 1: was now, remember this is nineteen fifty something. We had
Speaker 1: a saxophone. I played the piano, but eventually got vibes
Speaker 1: because I wanted to stand in the front, So I
Speaker 1: played the keyboards. And we had a drummer, a trumpet player,
Speaker 1: and a guitar player. This is when rockabilly would just
Speaker 1: come in. You know, rockabilly was in, but in New
Speaker 1: York it wasn't guitar driven. So we had a guitar
Speaker 1: player and we would play and uh, I played high
Speaker 1: school dances. We'd played the Catskill Mountains, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Uh, cocka lanes, bungalow colonies. Let's go
Speaker 1: back before that. Was there music in the house. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was trained as a classical piano player. My mother insisted,
Speaker 1: like old Jewish mothers, you get a lessons, absolutely, get up,
Speaker 1: you get a profession, and you're five years old. You
Speaker 1: played a piano. Absolutely yeah. But they got an old
Speaker 1: Russian teacher and i'd be playing God forbid I hit
Speaker 1: a wrong note. I don't know about you. She had
Speaker 1: a ruler every time I hit ayno duck smack. So
Speaker 1: I gave up. I sort of gave up a classgow.
Speaker 1: I started listening to if all things, if you could
Speaker 1: believe it, Glenn Miller, Um, uh, Benny Goodman when he
Speaker 1: had what's his name Lionel not Lionel Hampton, and uh
Speaker 1: Teddy got his name now, um the piano playing, and
Speaker 1: I think, I'm not sure. I think Big Joe, Big
Speaker 1: Joe Burner. But one of them used to sing some
Speaker 1: real serious blues and I got into the blues and
Speaker 1: they did some sort of Saint His blues, and I
Speaker 1: learned to play boogie piano and play that stuff. And
Speaker 1: that led me to um to, to thinking I could
Speaker 1: do this and understanding the concept of the blues and
Speaker 1: writing songs. So when Elvis Presley happened, I liked him.
Speaker 1: But the one I really liked was Jerry Lee Jerry
Speaker 1: Lee Lewis. So as a kid, I'm popping away and
Speaker 1: I decide, after great bowls of Fire, I could write
Speaker 1: songs like that. So I write this song called I'm
Speaker 1: on Fire and it was a cool song. Help I'll
Speaker 1: help Mr Fireman please. I'm a burning from my head
Speaker 1: to my knees. I'm a flame with such a burning desire.
Speaker 1: Of course, had no idea what desire was. I'm like
Speaker 1: a flaming cup. I'm gonna burning up. Yeah, I'm on fire. Okay,
Speaker 1: I write the song of sixty fifteen and forget about it. Bob,
Speaker 1: Jerry and I we shared everything, so we threw our
Speaker 1: songs together. And after my boyfriend's back, which was on
Speaker 1: Smash um uh, we get invited to a conference because
Speaker 1: people wanted to meet us because Smash was the label.
Speaker 1: Get there, they say, you know you got any songs
Speaker 1: for Jerry Lewis he We just signed him as and
Speaker 1: he's making he's going country, but we want to do
Speaker 1: his last rock and roll out a few songs. Sure,
Speaker 1: he was there. I played him myself. I played him
Speaker 1: by the piano. I'm on fire. He does it, it
Speaker 1: comes out. It's one of the main songs in the movie. Uh,
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Rik Boles of fire. Uh, and he became.
Speaker 1: I's a hit of course in England and a minor
Speaker 1: hit here. Okay, but you're in you're in school. Are
Speaker 1: you a popular kid, or you're a good student. I
Speaker 1: was an average student. Um, but I had no choice.
Speaker 1: I couldn't start in the music business. Yet I had
Speaker 1: to go to college. So I was able to pass
Speaker 1: through whatever it is uh s A T S. And
Speaker 1: I was accepted to a school called a Delphi. It's
Speaker 1: a garden city, Long Island. And but I go there
Speaker 1: and I'm done with all this rock and roll garbage.
Speaker 1: I've listening to jazz. I'm going to be an educated guy,
Speaker 1: and uh this stuff is it is for kids. M
Speaker 1: uh So again, I'm still an average student. Um, but
Speaker 1: I did all right in university in some class. So
Speaker 1: you graduate. I graduate from high school, UM named William
Speaker 1: Howard Taft and that was in the Bronx. Okay, but
Speaker 1: then you go to a Delphi. Did you graduate from
Speaker 1: a Delphi? I did graduate from a DOLPHI and I
Speaker 1: went on to Brooklyn Law School because golf a bit,
Speaker 1: I would never profession um. But the problem was that
Speaker 1: I still wanted to write songs. So on the way
Speaker 1: coming down on the D train from the Bronx, there
Speaker 1: were stops at Seventh Avenue fifty second Street, and you
Speaker 1: could get off where you could keep going and circle
Speaker 1: around to Brooklyn and get out and go to the school. Well,
Speaker 1: I started going to Brooklyn Law School, and I went
Speaker 1: for about a year, but only half of the time
Speaker 1: did I attend classes because I would get off the
Speaker 1: train at seventh Avenue, which was fifty Street, fifty one Street,
Speaker 1: N Street, the Brill Building six fifty Broadway. UM the
Speaker 1: place where young songwriter. Young songwriters were gathering with old songwriters.
Speaker 1: But just like today, the independent record companies, publishing companies,
Speaker 1: we're looking for young people between eighteen and twenty two,
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty two, that's where Carol King, Jerry Goffrid
Speaker 1: A Barry Man, Cynthia uh, Howie Greenfield, Neil Sadaka. If
Speaker 1: all these names mean anything to anybody anymore, I know,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying you'd be surprised. Who doesn't you know? Uh?
Speaker 1: How about the name Fleet with Mac all of a
Speaker 1: sudden come on right? Or the Beatles for that matter.
Speaker 1: So so started there and started writing songs with the
Speaker 1: two guys, Bob and Jerry. How did you meet Bob? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was sitting outside of a publisher's office trying to
Speaker 1: see this particular publisher. His name was not Jackie Gail
Speaker 1: or something Gail. It was not King Cole's publishing company.
Speaker 1: And they were waiting there too, and we were kept
Speaker 1: reading an inordinate amount of time. UH So we said,
Speaker 1: what do you do? What do you do? Oh? I
Speaker 1: write songs. I write songs. Hey, you want to try
Speaker 1: to write something together? Being that started a lifelong partnership.
Speaker 1: While we do not work together any longer and haven't
Speaker 1: for um nearly fifty years. The two companies we started
Speaker 1: uh F G G Productions, which produced the McCoy's I
Speaker 1: Want Candy, My Boyfriend's Back, and lots of other things,
Speaker 1: and a publishing company that has the songs that we
Speaker 1: didn't give to other publishers like this all the Strangelove's
Speaker 1: album which has Nighttime and the song that is so
Speaker 1: important to us because it was recorded by David Bowie, Sorrow,
Speaker 1: and and many other songs. Still exists. UH still collects
Speaker 1: revenue which we share, and our partnership is still a
Speaker 1: three way partnership. Uh and this is fifty years on,
Speaker 1: even though we don't do other things together. Okay, was
Speaker 1: the first success My Boyfriends Back? The first big success
Speaker 1: is My Boyfriend's Back, The first record that got on
Speaker 1: the radio and the charts was We wrote for a
Speaker 1: small um publishing record company called bell Tone. On bell
Speaker 1: Tone was an artist that had a number one record
Speaker 1: called Bobby Lewis I'm tosson and turn and well in
Speaker 1: our wisdom and then our brilliance. A year later we
Speaker 1: wrote for him My Baby's Got Me toss In and
Speaker 1: turn In again back in the summer of the sixty one.
Speaker 1: Got on the charts, well maybe number eighty at most,
Speaker 1: but that was our experience on the charts, and then
Speaker 1: we started writing better and better in songs. There's a
Speaker 1: doop song called what Time is It? By the Ji
Speaker 1: five That's a classic song. Uh, that's something I would
Speaker 1: recommend to people anytime. And then eventually we left that
Speaker 1: arrangement we had. We were picked up by a guy
Speaker 1: named Wes Farrell who worked for a company named Roosevelt Music,
Speaker 1: and we were given a little room in a piano
Speaker 1: and we sat there and wrote songs and he would
Speaker 1: take them to people. That's how I met Dion. We
Speaker 1: wrote songs for Freddie Cannon. We wrote songs for Bobby V.
Speaker 1: Bobby V was a wonderful singer um uh, a huge
Speaker 1: star teen idol in a certain and probably UH late
Speaker 1: fifties or early sixties, UM and UH. It led to
Speaker 1: other things and one other song that we wrote that
Speaker 1: was recorded by the legendary Jerry Butler UH called given
Speaker 1: Up on Love, which I forget about but when I
Speaker 1: go to London, if I would go to Liverpool, if
Speaker 1: I would go to Liverpool or Manchester, it's legendary, along
Speaker 1: with a song called the Drifter by Ray Pollard Northern Soul.
Speaker 1: We have a tendency to forget our heritage in this country.
Speaker 1: Thank god, it's kept alive by places like that. What
Speaker 1: we look at soul music today is vastly different UM
Speaker 1: than what was intended at soul music. And it's kept
Speaker 1: alive in UM in London, so so that part of
Speaker 1: it's great. And then eventually we hooked up with someone
Speaker 1: else who got us signed to April Blackwood. April Blackwood
Speaker 1: eventually became um UH owned by Sony Columbia Sony CBS,
Speaker 1: which eventually sold to Sony to Sony, and we wrote
Speaker 1: My Boyfriend's Back for them, and the contract for that
Speaker 1: was on one they didn't even know. The people didn't
Speaker 1: even know what it was going to become. Because there
Speaker 1: were two other songs on the same contract. Right, I forgot.
Speaker 1: But so anyway, the story about Boyfriend's Back is, we
Speaker 1: do it with these girls that we knew. We had
Speaker 1: written a song for them before, but we knew them
Speaker 1: and we really want to get deeply into production. Um.
Speaker 1: And we wrote My Boyfriend's Back, showed it to the
Speaker 1: publisher and he said, this is perfect for the Charrell's
Speaker 1: Well he said, no, no, it's going to be for
Speaker 1: the Angels and we're going to produce it. Oh no,
Speaker 1: we lost our job, our office, everything because we wouldn't
Speaker 1: we wouldn't show it to the sharelle as we went out.
Speaker 1: We ran out and did the record ourselves. Um, but
Speaker 1: if you listen to it, he thought it would go
Speaker 1: after Well. I met him on a Sunday, do ruh day,
Speaker 1: Run day, Run day, my Boyfriend's Back, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: be in trouble. Hey la, hey la, call a response.
Speaker 1: R and B Church stuff that we knew nothing about
Speaker 1: Jewish kids from the Bronx. But I guess the soul
Speaker 1: crushed over somewhere and we understood it. And we we
Speaker 1: went out and with our own money produced My Boyfriend's
Speaker 1: Back and then how did you get the label for it? Ah? Oh,
Speaker 1: this is big facts you're drawing out of me. Um,
Speaker 1: what we got. The way we got the label is
Speaker 1: we had an office and we were becoming known as
Speaker 1: writers and people hanging around the scene, and um, they
Speaker 1: would stop been to a little office that we rented.
Speaker 1: We had a tiny office in six fifty Broadway, and
Speaker 1: this guy came in. His name was Doug Moody and
Speaker 1: he was a promotion man from Mercury Records. Mercury of
Speaker 1: sub label was Smash, the label that had a number
Speaker 1: of hits beside that, beside this, and he he has
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's back. He says, what do you got kids
Speaker 1: that kind of thing? What do you got? Oh, we
Speaker 1: got this. We played for him. He says, don't show
Speaker 1: this to anybody else. He says, I we'll take this
Speaker 1: record to Chicago with me. I'll be back here in
Speaker 1: one week. If I can't offer you a deal, you
Speaker 1: could do anything you want. Okay. So we wait a week.
Speaker 1: He comes back and says, we wanted what do you
Speaker 1: want for it? We set something that was an exorbitant
Speaker 1: price for the time, ten thousand dollars. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: what ten tho dollars, you know, don't give you the
Speaker 1: give you the ten tho dollars, pay you a reasonably
Speaker 1: high royalty, and we license it to Smash comes out.
Speaker 1: I think four weeks later it's number one. It's just
Speaker 1: it was just one of those miraculous things. It was
Speaker 1: a it was a really special record for its time.
Speaker 1: It's still a special record. It's it's but but it's
Speaker 1: it's amazing that it it crossed generations. Absolutely, it's still
Speaker 1: it's still magical. Yeah. So after that we become producers
Speaker 1: and we we get going and we UM. We start
Speaker 1: producing a lot of girl groups. UM. We produced a
Speaker 1: number of things. We used to work at really special studios.
Speaker 1: We had our musician crew, we used UM and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think what else sold. We had deals people
Speaker 1: were paying us to make records and stuff, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough for us. We start our own label.
Speaker 1: So we start our label and it's called Stork Records
Speaker 1: S T O r K. And we were being clever.
Speaker 1: Stalk delivers the hits underneath every male group. The label
Speaker 1: was blue. Female group the label was Okay Pink. So
Speaker 1: we put this record out and I'll just tell you that.
Speaker 1: It's another thing I learned that I carry with me
Speaker 1: as a message. We we get um, we get on
Speaker 1: radio stations that that you never thought you get on
Speaker 1: throughout the Northeast, which is where you used to break
Speaker 1: the kind of music pop music, Hertford, New Haven, Albany,
Speaker 1: Schenected he Rochester. Um, and if you were big enough
Speaker 1: to Buffalo. We eventually got friends in Buffalo, which I'll
Speaker 1: lead to another story. And we get a phone call. Hey,
Speaker 1: get over here. This is Moish moist, Morris Levy. I
Speaker 1: want to see you. I want that record, okay, And
Speaker 1: go over there, and there's a guy sitting outside, you know,
Speaker 1: dressed and dark like this goes like that. Come in.
Speaker 1: We go in and and I never forgot this either.
Speaker 1: And he said, um, I want that record make a
Speaker 1: big hit. What do you want for it? They said,
Speaker 1: you know, ten percent and ten dollars? He says, hey,
Speaker 1: that's too much money, you know, But I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a deal. I'll sign a contract with
Speaker 1: you for ten percent and ten thousand dollars. But you
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get six and
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. Shake my hand and you got a deal.
Speaker 1: And he opens his pocket like that and lays a
Speaker 1: water cash on the table. He says, don't be a schmuck.
Speaker 1: Take the money. No way. We didn't want that. We
Speaker 1: we said thank you very much, Marris, no insult. But
Speaker 1: we got other office sort of money. He says, you
Speaker 1: had my word, you would have gotten it. Now. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true or not, but what I
Speaker 1: carried with me is when you negotiate something, you talk
Speaker 1: about it before end, and you agree on what it is.
Speaker 1: And if you can't honorably agree, what you sign is
Speaker 1: only gonna be fucking Donald trump land, you know, So
Speaker 1: if you can't tell the truth to begin with, So
Speaker 1: he would have given us because honor well, I I
Speaker 1: suspect honnor was more important to him than the written word.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, So tell me about Burt Burns. Bert Burns, um, oh, saint,
Speaker 1: I don't get us to another hit record. Bert Burns
Speaker 1: was a great character. He's a great songwriter. He came
Speaker 1: he came from the Bronx as well. He had a deep,
Speaker 1: deep love of Latin music, so he had a feel
Speaker 1: for it. So that's why when you hear twist and
Speaker 1: shout or hang on Sloopy. It's that Guahira tree thing.
Speaker 1: Don't don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't doom doom,
Speaker 1: doom doom, don't do don't, don't, don't don't do you know?
Speaker 1: And and and he put that. They say he was
Speaker 1: in Cuba, that he helped run guns to Castro. I
Speaker 1: don't know those legends. I have no idea. But he
Speaker 1: he wrote great, great R and B songs, he had
Speaker 1: a feeling in wrote for Solomon Berg, Wilson Pikett, and
Speaker 1: of course the original recording of um Um Piece of
Speaker 1: My Heart, Um, great Van Morris and stuff. And we
Speaker 1: had done I Want Candy with him. So now we
Speaker 1: go back to the strange loves who go out on tour.
Speaker 1: But tour was a tour manager that drove our car.
Speaker 1: I Hank Banking drums and the three of us and
Speaker 1: whatever band was there. We would say, well, you know, Hank,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, um, I want candy. We could
Speaker 1: do time as on my side, and we could do
Speaker 1: uh this other song that we learned from the Vibrations,
Speaker 1: hang on Sloopy. Well, it turned out Bert and West
Speaker 1: Farrell wrote, hang on Sloopy. Uh. So we're going across
Speaker 1: the country and we were terrible, absolutely stoned all the time,
Speaker 1: just having a great time doing three songs. And we
Speaker 1: get the Dick Clock Show in Tulsa. It's in the
Speaker 1: auditorium and the Dave Clock five is the headline act.
Speaker 1: And they were to me, they were to me they
Speaker 1: were my beatles. I liked them better for my taste
Speaker 1: at them at that moment. Get off the stage after
Speaker 1: we played it, and he said, oh, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we've been running the table and we could go back.
Speaker 1: I think it would be great for Dave Clock to
Speaker 1: record that song as our next single. Well, we don't
Speaker 1: know what to do because we are ready recorded the
Speaker 1: track for the Strange Loves album that hadn't been released yet.
Speaker 1: We're driving back and our next show is like Blumbus.
Speaker 1: We check into hotel as a Strange Loves and we
Speaker 1: go to the show. There's a band playing of kids.
Speaker 1: The drummer wasn't big enough to sit and play the drums.
Speaker 1: He was sure it was. He had to stand and play.
Speaker 1: The guitar player was brilliant, and and they played our songs.
Speaker 1: People who were screaming, we lock Rick where you want Rick?
Speaker 1: And I thought they recognized me, but of course they
Speaker 1: recognized me. They were talking about Rick Zinga, who became
Speaker 1: Rick Derringer. So as producers, we say, you want to
Speaker 1: make a record kids, and and we go to see
Speaker 1: their parents. We have inner at the house. They follow
Speaker 1: us with their parents to New York. They sign a
Speaker 1: production deal with f GG Productions, uh and U or
Speaker 1: band Records, I remember, and um. We take him in
Speaker 1: the studio and they sing over the track that we
Speaker 1: have already recorded, which has all the strange laws doubled
Speaker 1: and tripled drums on them. But the guitar solo was
Speaker 1: Rick and I said, Rick, wait, just say before you
Speaker 1: play it, let's give it to him right now. Well
Speaker 1: you know where that comes from, Bob Louie Louis. That's
Speaker 1: what he says right before the guitar solo, which is
Speaker 1: another three chord song. So I thought, oh, that'll be cool.
Speaker 1: And he plays this great guitar solo and hang us
Speaker 1: Sloopy comes out? Does it come out yet? We finish it,
Speaker 1: we master it, we get it perfect. Where's Burke Burns? Oh?
Speaker 1: He went on holiday. He's at grossing gous. We go
Speaker 1: drive up to the cat Skills to grossing, goes find
Speaker 1: out where he is. He's in the dining room eating.
Speaker 1: We get the people at the desk to give us
Speaker 1: a broken turntable. We go in and drag him out
Speaker 1: of the dressing room, take him to a room with
Speaker 1: the turntable and play Hang On Sloopy. It's the first
Speaker 1: time he heard the McCoy's version. He goes and nuts
Speaker 1: wants to put it out right away. We we agree,
Speaker 1: and it's because we've been friends with Bank Records, practically
Speaker 1: founded with him when I want candy and it comes out.
Speaker 1: But there's competition. The competition is there's a record, a
Speaker 1: Canadian record by a band called Little Caesar and the
Speaker 1: Consoles that comes out. It's on the charts, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna beat it. What are we going to do? So
Speaker 1: they hire Independent Promotion and that's how I met s
Speaker 1: war Stein. Okay, what was Seymour's role on the Hang
Speaker 1: On Slooping? Independent Promotion? Well, I didn't know that. That's
Speaker 1: just that's a factory. Though Seymour was a promotion person.
Speaker 1: He came from Billboard and new The tricks of the
Speaker 1: charts is to put it gently. Um he understood it,
Speaker 1: and um he was able to have some influence and
Speaker 1: eventually um the bank record past um the Little Caesar
Speaker 1: and the Consoles. It actually was a better record, but
Speaker 1: it did take some um friendly persuasion. Um. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so you have two more hits with the Strange Loves? Okay,
Speaker 1: I want canned? Uh nighttime and Carolyn, how do you
Speaker 1: how does the Strange Loves end? Well? Uh, the Strange
Speaker 1: Loves ended when the three of us split up as
Speaker 1: a team. Um. Well what was the causation of that? Uh?
Speaker 1: I just think it was time to move on? You
Speaker 1: know I had met Seymour. We have been talking about
Speaker 1: going into a production company together Jerry. Jerry wanted to
Speaker 1: move to California. UM. I think uh that it's sort
Speaker 1: of it's a good question of of why it ended.
Speaker 1: The interesting think about the Strange those days. I never
Speaker 1: wanted to be a performer. Uh. We were invited to
Speaker 1: play the apollo. Um I I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: We were invited by Eddie Barkley through ahm it because
Speaker 1: remember Atlantic, i'med Bert, I'm at Jesuit Jerry were banging.
Speaker 1: So they were involved in it. So we were invited
Speaker 1: to play the Olympia in Paris, which I mean, if
Speaker 1: it came to me today, I would have done it,
Speaker 1: But then I I didn't want to. And you got
Speaker 1: to remember that's me singing nighttime. That's literally me doing
Speaker 1: my best Mick Jagger, you know, And I think that's
Speaker 1: what drew it to an end. We didn't perform, we
Speaker 1: stopped writing together, and it might have been time to
Speaker 1: move on, you know. Okay, So you start a company
Speaker 1: with uh Seymour. It's sire because it's ther two names,
Speaker 1: and what is the mission at that point? Oh, it's
Speaker 1: production company. It wasn't a record label yet. There was
Speaker 1: a production company, and we got a deal, um uh
Speaker 1: to produce records for Epic Records, Slash Date Records and
Speaker 1: Um I was into R and B at the time.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to do. So we made some
Speaker 1: really we did a deep Clock record. We did a
Speaker 1: record by an artist called Guitark Prussia. UM it's a
Speaker 1: version of a great I'm sure if it's Allen Wolf
Speaker 1: or uh somebody a little Jimmy, but it's called going
Speaker 1: Down Slow. And we did a bunch of R and
Speaker 1: B stuff. They came out. They were really pretty good,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really getting anywhere. And Seymour, through past relationships,
Speaker 1: had a had a relationship with a wreck job but
Speaker 1: one stop distributor uh in upstate um, Massachusetts, uh uh
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and he was interested to going into the
Speaker 1: business and putting up a little money. And he got
Speaker 1: us a deal with London Records and formed a record
Speaker 1: company which we called Sire. So. The mission it Sire
Speaker 1: initially was we didn't have a lot of money, so
Speaker 1: maybe we could mirror uh early a lecturer of Van
Speaker 1: God you do low cost of folk uh, you know,
Speaker 1: records that can be done acoustically do not cost a
Speaker 1: lot of money and um. So so we started doing
Speaker 1: that and we put out a few records. And one
Speaker 1: record we put out uh was by an artist named
Speaker 1: she was a television personality, Broadway audit celebrity, Phyllis Newman.
Speaker 1: Phillis Newman was married to a man named Adolph Greene
Speaker 1: who was an amazing legendary Broadway um um a songwriter.
Speaker 1: And we we did the record because Danny's wife, it
Speaker 1: was his money, uh, loved Phillis Newman. She said, why
Speaker 1: don't you make a record with her. So I tried
Speaker 1: to make this pop rock record with her. It was
Speaker 1: a really cool record, and I wrote a song called
Speaker 1: World of Music, which is uh, is really a good song.
Speaker 1: So so we we put it out. Nothing happens with it,
Speaker 1: and Danny sort of fizzles and says, you know, kids,
Speaker 1: you take the label yourself. I'm going to go back
Speaker 1: to what I was doing. They do that, and we
Speaker 1: need content. Well, here's where we get into things that
Speaker 1: get really interesting. Remember as a producer, I learned to
Speaker 1: make records on mono machines, two track machines. Everything was
Speaker 1: done on four track. Then it became twelve eight track,
Speaker 1: twelve track six and you have to adjust. Technology dictates
Speaker 1: the changes. Technology was rearing its head right at that moment. Again,
Speaker 1: we were experiencing in America, UM a shift from a
Speaker 1: M to F M. So I would call that technology.
Speaker 1: That's a wind change for the business. UM. Sire decided, well,
Speaker 1: albums not singles, albums um. So we started traveling to Europe.
Speaker 1: And when we go to Europe, we go to the
Speaker 1: UK labels export divisions. Now they were making albums in
Speaker 1: the UK, but there are American counterparts, meaning Capitol Records
Speaker 1: would only put out the records that already were hits.
Speaker 1: That's why they didn't put the Beatles out right away.
Speaker 1: I mean it took three records with other companies for
Speaker 1: them to catch onto the Beatles. Well, we went over
Speaker 1: there and said to these export division people, well, we're
Speaker 1: Sire Records. We have a label. Uh, you know Seymour
Speaker 1: because of his relationship, but so and so and you
Speaker 1: know me because of the hits. I won't carey and
Speaker 1: my boyfriend's back, and we'll put out your records on
Speaker 1: a label and we could license it from them for nothing,
Speaker 1: for zero. But a fun thing is that in order
Speaker 1: to endear ourselves, because as when you come to visit
Speaker 1: somebody's home, you bring a gift. Um I had in
Speaker 1: the past with F G G. With our records, when
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear what the master sounded like, we
Speaker 1: would pack them in a box that contained a New
Speaker 1: York Jewish cheesecake and send it to w K BW
Speaker 1: and Buffalo, which was a fifty thoud watch station. Now,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't guarantee to play our record forever, but they
Speaker 1: would say, guys, we're going to play your ascetate at
Speaker 1: five o'clock on such and such a day. It was
Speaker 1: just a matter of you're in what it would sound
Speaker 1: like on a radio? Okay? So I translated that and
Speaker 1: I set to Seymore. Why don't we just bring cheesecake
Speaker 1: when we go over? So we would bring a dozen
Speaker 1: New York Jewish cheesecakes and dry ice, and we get
Speaker 1: on a plane and we go over to England teas
Speaker 1: export divisions and we would give them, uh, cheesecakes. Every
Speaker 1: time we came back, they would say, hey, do you
Speaker 1: bring the cheesecake? Oh? We say sure, what do you
Speaker 1: got for us? And we would pick up really great
Speaker 1: bits of music. That's how we got the Climax Blues Band.
Speaker 1: We got a group called Barkley James Harvest. We got like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, tons of things. We even had a
Speaker 1: Cliff Richard record. We had these records that came over
Speaker 1: that we brought over. And because we had albums as
Speaker 1: an independent label, most smaller independence didn't have album content.
Speaker 1: So entire entire sides of Climax Blues Band, Barkley James Harves,
Speaker 1: and our first big hit record, a group called Focus.
Speaker 1: They had a number one number one song all around
Speaker 1: the world called Hocus Pocus. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 1: Of course they're the instrumental everybody knows Hocus Focus well no,
Speaker 1: not everybody but but and the guy yodels in it.
Speaker 1: So that was our first huge record, but that didn't
Speaker 1: happen on London. We weren't selling enough records and London
Speaker 1: dropped us and we got picked up by Tony Martell
Speaker 1: and uh and it was Paramount at the time, and
Speaker 1: and we moved over there. So the label grew and
Speaker 1: we started having, you know, a big presence on FM
Speaker 1: radio and an alternative label, and we we continued, we
Speaker 1: we became friendly. The reason the reason we had Hocus Buccus.
Speaker 1: We we got the first album from a Dutch uh event.
Speaker 1: We went to UM and the first album didn't sell
Speaker 1: very much and that was throughout London distribution. When we
Speaker 1: moved over to Famous Music, which was Paramount, we um
Speaker 1: uh we uh that's crazy um. We we started getting
Speaker 1: much more attention and we got a much better deal there,
Speaker 1: so we were able to begin putting out must have
Speaker 1: been tapes and cassettes. Um. But it was even early
Speaker 1: days then things were things were changing. And the thing
Speaker 1: that I remember is they were charging the same packaging
Speaker 1: deduction for things they didn't have to package. That was
Speaker 1: a big record business thing. Um. But we were rolling.
Speaker 1: We're putting out tons of material stuff. We were licensing
Speaker 1: for nothing from overseas UM and um. And then we
Speaker 1: were um. We had Hocus Focus, We had the second
Speaker 1: album which was Focused Focused three UM, and we had
Speaker 1: um uh, Let's see what else do we We had
Speaker 1: a number of really great things, but none of them
Speaker 1: sold as much as that. And each of the boys,
Speaker 1: Jan Ackerman and tyslin Lear had solo albums out. So
Speaker 1: at one time we had five albums on the cash
Speaker 1: Box chart because that was cash Fox was and Billboard,
Speaker 1: UM and Record World um uh at the same time.
Speaker 1: So we were rolling. But let me backtrack for one second.
Speaker 1: When we put out the first Focus album that didn't
Speaker 1: sell through our London Records version of Sire, Seymour was
Speaker 1: in England and he was I don't know. He went
Speaker 1: to he went to to the deck of studios and
Speaker 1: and met a guy named Mike Vernon. Mike Vernon was
Speaker 1: a talented producer who um produced ten years after Savoy Brown,
Speaker 1: and he was producing an album with a blues artist
Speaker 1: called Champion Jack Dupree and Champion Jack refused to continue
Speaker 1: singing unless he was given some renumeration in the moment,
Speaker 1: and Michael had no money, but see what helped him out,
Speaker 1: and so so Champion Jack recorded and we met Michael
Speaker 1: that way. We asked, Michael, you know what is this
Speaker 1: You're recording Champion Jack? He said, well, that's not for Decca.
Speaker 1: My brother and I have a little blues label where
Speaker 1: we're preserving the legend of the blues by recording old
Speaker 1: blues artists. We're finding them very is I mean legendary people, um,
Speaker 1: Jack Dupree and stuff. So what's your label called Blue
Speaker 1: Horizon um and Um. We said, oh, you know, we
Speaker 1: have an independent label too, and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't know how to do this. We
Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. Were you guys come
Speaker 1: in and help. So we came up with a chunk
Speaker 1: of money, which in terms of their life at the
Speaker 1: moment was substantial but really wasn't stantial, and we bought
Speaker 1: half of Blue Horizon. So now we have Sire Records
Speaker 1: and half of Blue Horizon, and we're trying to get
Speaker 1: uh American Epic, which was Columbia Sony at the time
Speaker 1: it wasn't Sony. Then Columbia UH two put out these
Speaker 1: old blues records, but they're not and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they say, oh, you know, maybe we'll do some
Speaker 1: white British flues artists, the original Fleet with Mac, Peter
Speaker 1: Green's Sleep with Mac, and Out of Nowhere Albatross, which
Speaker 1: goes number one all over Europe. Well, naturally to want
Speaker 1: to put out in the United States Chicken Shack, who's
Speaker 1: the lead singer of Chicken Chack, Christine McVeigh perfect, perfect, Perfect,
Speaker 1: Christine Perfect. So so they put out that becomes a hit.
Speaker 1: Duster bro Duster Duster, Bennett Um and a lot of
Speaker 1: white British blues artists, so it becomes a significant label
Speaker 1: within the British blues scene. UM richest brother. One day
Speaker 1: UH had an arrangement with the manager of Fleetwood Mac,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't an honorable man like Maurice Levy. Richard
Speaker 1: inadvertently forgot to pick up the option. Fleetwood Mac was gone.
Speaker 1: They left eventually. Um eventually Chicken Shack stopped selling as well.
Speaker 1: Of course, they had that number one British record, a
Speaker 1: version of I'd Rather Go Blind with Christine singing um
Speaker 1: and she eventually with Mick joined a reformed Fleetwood Mac
Speaker 1: because the Fleetwood pot was Mick Fleetwood, you know, and
Speaker 1: the Mac was John MCVIEE. Okay, how does it end
Speaker 1: with you? And see more than how do you want
Speaker 1: to walk? From Sire? Yeah? We start, we God, it
Speaker 1: was like it went as far as ninety six. Um.
Speaker 1: I I think the way it ended was we just started.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get more into producing and trying
Speaker 1: to find things in a different way. And the story
Speaker 1: goes that we both were got married during the term
Speaker 1: and the two women really were not getting getting along
Speaker 1: at all, and I think Sea Boy's wife was a
Speaker 1: little bit more aggressive about it, and you know, these
Speaker 1: things happen and and no hard feelings. Um, we separated,
Speaker 1: and uh, I wasn't sure what I was gonna do,
Speaker 1: just hanging around see what. By the way, while we
Speaker 1: were there, we had signed the Ramones and he didn't
Speaker 1: cover it in the podcast, I'm sure, but I'll bring
Speaker 1: it up. Miles Copeland. Miles Copeland managed renaissance that we
Speaker 1: had on Sire that managed Buck Climax blues band right
Speaker 1: and someone else, and um, the ones that had the
Speaker 1: twin guitar leads. Um. Oh god, they were great. They
Speaker 1: were hugef M band and they played harmonic twin guitar leads,
Speaker 1: harmonic leads. Uh, wishbone ash right of course. So we
Speaker 1: haven't dinner together one night, all of us, and he said,
Speaker 1: I'm taking all my bands off of your label if
Speaker 1: you continue with this punk shit. It's embarrassing. Wow. Though
Speaker 1: he didn't tell that story, No, he wouldn't tell it.
Speaker 1: He probably didn't tell the fact that did he tell
Speaker 1: the story about the go goes where he Uh? When
Speaker 1: I delivered the record to him, he threatened to kill me. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because he says he's a black belt I
Speaker 1: mean literally, not literally. Uh. And I had to pay
Speaker 1: for the completion of the record myself. He did tell
Speaker 1: you tell me that. He said, I ruined the punk
Speaker 1: I ruined a great punk band. So it shows you.
Speaker 1: So okay, So the ramones. So go back to the
Speaker 1: sire um. So he started to ramon. So afterwards I
Speaker 1: come back. I'm I'm living in luxury in my apartment.
Speaker 1: I'm having a nice time doing nothing, wondering do I
Speaker 1: need this ship again? Why don't I just go back
Speaker 1: and finished law school. You know, Um, by this time,
Speaker 1: I think it would have been almost time when Zoe,
Speaker 1: my daughter was born, in nineteen seventy seven. No, so
Speaker 1: this was seventy s So, Um what happens is um,
Speaker 1: Craig Leon who worked for me at sire I think
Speaker 1: left as well. And he was talking to someone I
Speaker 1: admit um when we were interested in New York dolls.
Speaker 1: His name was Marty Thou. Marty Thou was interesting guy. Um,
Speaker 1: and he came up and said, you know you're sitting
Speaker 1: up here, You're not doing anything. Why don't you come down.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you something's happening to display cb GPS. So um,
Speaker 1: all right, you know it's lower reside. But of course
Speaker 1: I remember that when I was a kid, if you
Speaker 1: came and went to New York City, my mother would
Speaker 1: yell because if they go down to the lower resite
Speaker 1: to what your treat to buy bogging suits, of course
Speaker 1: roll up the windows. So I went down there, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I'm go in and it it's amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: just you see this scene of disassociated people that are
Speaker 1: brought together by by this uh funky environment and doing
Speaker 1: music that is a reaction too extreme contemporary not even
Speaker 1: pop but disco and jam music and um, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say metal, but but doing it in a refreshingly almost
Speaker 1: amateurish way. Uh. And that's not a derogatory term. I
Speaker 1: mean it in this assarians um strong way. And Patty
Speaker 1: Smith played there, um Um Television came out of there,
Speaker 1: and they got signed because they were buzzing. Big Waters,
Speaker 1: which was a creative company, UH signed them. And and
Speaker 1: so I go down there, and I'm hanging out, and
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, what I'm gonna do because I'm this
Speaker 1: producer by now, I'm practically a veteran, but I'm I'm
Speaker 1: thirty five years old. I'm a veteran, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: so what I'm gonna do is put together a composite
Speaker 1: album of all the bands there. I'm gonna add my
Speaker 1: production skills to it and make them and then put
Speaker 1: the album out and then get individual production deals for
Speaker 1: all of them. Nice idea. Start talking to him, So
Speaker 1: I'm talking to your talking heads. I'm not interested in that,
Speaker 1: and they weren't yet. And this is the time of
Speaker 1: um Uh Psycho Killer, which to me I love more
Speaker 1: than anything. I always love Psycho Killer. Um. But they
Speaker 1: did say something. They said, you know who would be
Speaker 1: good for your album? She had this great little voice.
Speaker 1: Did you ever hear blunding? I said, right, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go talk to them sometime too. They left.
Speaker 1: I talked to a bunch of other people. No one
Speaker 1: really wanted to be on the album. UM. So I
Speaker 1: go down one night and Hilly comes over to me.
Speaker 1: Hilly Crystal, the guy who owns the place, and he says,
Speaker 1: there's someone here who wants to meet you. I think
Speaker 1: this band wants to be on this album you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So he introduces me to Debbie and she's standing there
Speaker 1: and she starts talking to me, says, we'd really like
Speaker 1: to be part of this. I said, well, you know, Debbie,
Speaker 1: I don't really take anybody. I gotta hear you play
Speaker 1: in an environment that I can not here, but an
Speaker 1: environment that I can relate to. So I set up
Speaker 1: studio rehearsal studio, which I would always do because any
Speaker 1: band I produced, I would never do it until they
Speaker 1: played for me in front of me so I could
Speaker 1: or what it was I could contribute or not contribute. Um.
Speaker 1: They walked in, they started playing. I smiled from the
Speaker 1: first minute for the next hour. Uh. Every song was great,
Speaker 1: their intensity, their ability uh to execute what they wanted
Speaker 1: to execute wasn't there yet in many cases, but what
Speaker 1: they wanted to execute was and it was apparent they
Speaker 1: could do it, you know. Uh, but no one else
Speaker 1: was really looking at them because they thought these people
Speaker 1: care well gets you know. I thought they were great
Speaker 1: and her voice was sensational. So I agreed to do it,
Speaker 1: not just do it, but signed her to Instant Records
Speaker 1: and we went ahead and who the albums came out
Speaker 1: on Private Stock. What was Instant Records. Instant Records is
Speaker 1: my production company called Instant Records Original O Maudi and uh,
Speaker 1: and it still exists today. I'll tell you about it.
Speaker 1: I put records out through the Orchard on Instant but
Speaker 1: as a record label, so Instant Records is. It was
Speaker 1: a production company, and um, I did fifty fifty deals
Speaker 1: the way things should be done today, you know, not
Speaker 1: royalty deals with the production and I didn't make any
Speaker 1: money unless the artists made money, which I thought was fair. Um.
Speaker 1: But I then needed to license it to a record company,
Speaker 1: and Marty knew a promotion man at Private Stock, and
Speaker 1: for a while Marty and I were partners in it,
Speaker 1: and then I eventually brought them out. Um but um,
Speaker 1: when I brought them to Private Stock, it was not
Speaker 1: an album yet. It was a single and the first
Speaker 1: single was sex Offender, but they wouldn't put it out
Speaker 1: because radio could not play anything with the words sex
Speaker 1: in it. Look at the world today and ask what
Speaker 1: what's going on? You know what I mean, it's we're
Speaker 1: totally different. So so we put out So we changed
Speaker 1: it to x Offender, which I think is a better title. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think I came up with it, didn't come up
Speaker 1: with it, So so he put that out and it
Speaker 1: doesn't get anywhere here, but it starts attracting attention in
Speaker 1: the UK because punk was beginning to take off. It
Speaker 1: Just to be technical for a second, did Private Stock
Speaker 1: release it in the UK? Or who released it in
Speaker 1: the UK? Yeah? It was released on private Stock. It
Speaker 1: was released on Private Stock. I was de facto managing them,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to get rid of it and find
Speaker 1: a manager for them. Um Uh, it was Private Stock
Speaker 1: was distributed by E M I in in the UK. Then,
Speaker 1: so it started getting a little buzz and I think
Speaker 1: they even might have gone over there and done some
Speaker 1: sort of touring because punk was starting to get a
Speaker 1: buzz um. And when we came back, they we we
Speaker 1: started talking about the possibility of doing more more songs
Speaker 1: and doing an album, and I had to talk to
Speaker 1: the person who was in charge of the company. His
Speaker 1: name was Larry U. Tall. He was a very well
Speaker 1: known old school record guy. He uh Amy Bell. He
Speaker 1: he had been involved in lots of hits in it
Speaker 1: in the old sense, and he had this label and
Speaker 1: on it among other people, he had huge hit with
Speaker 1: Frankie Valley. So he says, okay, Richard, if you could
Speaker 1: do the record cheap, everything I did was cheap. That
Speaker 1: that's the first rule. Don't waste money, do it within
Speaker 1: a structure, and try to be reasonable about it. You
Speaker 1: don't buy your way to success. Let success um come
Speaker 1: from come from creating and um. So so I set
Speaker 1: up a showcase for him and he brings with him
Speaker 1: to cb GBS Frankie Valley and we're sitting there Frankie
Speaker 1: and Larry doesn't know what he's gonna say, and Frankie
Speaker 1: leans over and he says, hey, this is great, Larry,
Speaker 1: you should do this, and and he says okay, and
Speaker 1: I think he gave me a fifteen thousand dollar dollar
Speaker 1: budgets some something ridiculously inexpensive, and we recorded where I
Speaker 1: like to I'd like to record at that time. It
Speaker 1: was a studio above Radio City Music Hall. It was
Speaker 1: built its true. You took the elevator as you came
Speaker 1: in the stage door entrance, and you would go with
Speaker 1: half naked rockets and the studio was on like the
Speaker 1: eighth floor, and they would be standing there at your
Speaker 1: talking to him and stuff. And it was built as
Speaker 1: a room for Tuscanedy. When NBC wanted to bring him
Speaker 1: over to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. He said, not
Speaker 1: unless you get me a space that I could rehearse
Speaker 1: full volume. So there we were, this monstrous room with
Speaker 1: a great drum sound, a small studio with a twelve
Speaker 1: recording board and twelve track machine, eight and twelve track machine.
Speaker 1: I'd have to look up what it's called. I forgot
Speaker 1: for the moment. A great engineer UH named Rob Stoner,
Speaker 1: and it was a Rob Stoner. It was Rob Freeman.
Speaker 1: Rob Stoner was a bass flare I used later who
Speaker 1: played with Dylan and and played with me for Robert
Speaker 1: Gordon Um and Um. We recorded the album there and
Speaker 1: on the album there was a couple of other songs,
Speaker 1: and I got Ellie Greenwich to sing out a few
Speaker 1: songs with her. And there was one song that came out.
Speaker 1: When the album came out. The first album, it got
Speaker 1: good press, didn't sell here, but in the UK it
Speaker 1: started really to buzz up. But in Australia there was
Speaker 1: one song. It was called It's called in the Flesh,
Speaker 1: and it's a ballad and she's Debbie's walking around the
Speaker 1: Lower east Side and she meets you and boy, I
Speaker 1: like you. I can't wait to see you in the flesh.
Speaker 1: H boom. It gets up within the top five in
Speaker 1: Australia and all of a sudden, while it didn't sell
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the world, you look at that and say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, something's happening, okay, And and from there
Speaker 1: they start getting there I go again. Yeah, starts getting
Speaker 1: more and more attention, right, um and um. The album
Speaker 1: comes out, does well and they asked for a second album,
Speaker 1: and the second album we do, and we do with
Speaker 1: a cover on it that Debbie wanted to do, and
Speaker 1: the song was the old Randy and Rainbows hit De
Speaker 1: Nise oh, Danny Scooby doo, I'm in love with you,
Speaker 1: But she does it, changes it to Danny. She changed
Speaker 1: it d E N I A s and she sings
Speaker 1: the song you know uh, and then in the middle
Speaker 1: does a singing version of a French verse, singing it
Speaker 1: in French, but it's phonetic French and Debbie speak. I
Speaker 1: thought it was amazing. It's the record. It was fantastic, Okay.
Speaker 1: Right at that point, I had hooked him up with
Speaker 1: somebody that then became their manager. He wanted to get
Speaker 1: him off private stock. Is this shop? Is this shep
Speaker 1: or somebody before she Shep? Is a great story, but
Speaker 1: that comes a little later. His name was Peter Um God,
Speaker 1: I can't I remember his last name. It'll come to me,
Speaker 1: but I forgot it. But took them and he did.
Speaker 1: He was a different kind of character, but he took
Speaker 1: them around the world at the at the appropriate time,
Speaker 1: I mean to East Asia, took them to places. Um
Speaker 1: you know. They didn't like him in the end, but
Speaker 1: he did some good for them and then some bad.
Speaker 1: But the point is he wanted a matter of my contract.
Speaker 1: He wanted a matter so he got Chris Less two
Speaker 1: pay with at that time was quite a bit of
Speaker 1: money to buy a band that hadn't sold yet. But
Speaker 1: they saw the potential and they paid an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of money to private stock, and they got this record,
Speaker 1: and they paid decent amount of money to me, and
Speaker 1: they still continue to pay me for the production and
Speaker 1: publishing share on those records. So I have no regrets,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy that Blondie went on to two great things.
Speaker 1: And they got um the commander Mike Chapman to say
Speaker 1: command because apparently used to wear a commanders that. You're right,
Speaker 1: that's what they called them. Um. And he did wonderful
Speaker 1: things and and that's great and I wish them am.
Speaker 1: They're always the best. Um. But when Terry Ellis, who
Speaker 1: was a Francophile, got the got the track, he called
Speaker 1: me up. He says, Richard, this will never work. This
Speaker 1: isn't French. People laugh at us, I said Terry. I
Speaker 1: hope he doesn't feel. I'm not taking anything bad about Terry.
Speaker 1: I love him. He's he was a great guy. And
Speaker 1: Chris right also great guys, um and great record people. Um.
Speaker 1: Now I sound like Donald Trump may get excuses for people,
Speaker 1: but um um, so he said, I don't care what
Speaker 1: it costs. Let me give you. I said, well, it's
Speaker 1: got a cost like three to five thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: gotta remix it put a voice, and he says, I
Speaker 1: don't care, you do it. I I want this done right.
Speaker 1: I went back into the studio, she got a French
Speaker 1: tutor went in, saying the middle section only in French again.
Speaker 1: But I had done that mix by hand. I raised
Speaker 1: reverbs and twiddled things as it was going, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't get it again. And total recall didn't really work
Speaker 1: because these were finger raises, you know, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: just that it just didn't feel or sound the same.
Speaker 1: So he finally said, okay, I get it. Let's just
Speaker 1: put it out and see what happens. And it goes
Speaker 1: to number one across Europe. And then there was another one,
Speaker 1: Always Touched by Your Presence Here that goes again top five,
Speaker 1: and Blondie explodes all across Europe, around the rest of
Speaker 1: the world and in Europe, but not in the United States,
Speaker 1: and starts selling in the United States. And it's not
Speaker 1: until the next album and Heart of Glass that really
Speaker 1: um really blows it up, and then they get they
Speaker 1: get everywhere. Okay, become a monstrous success. Well they leave
Speaker 1: that manager and need another manager. So where do they go? Um?
Speaker 1: They were. One of the people that followed them all
Speaker 1: the time was a guy named Toby name us who
Speaker 1: has known h well all the time. You know, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: He was working at a live management and UM Chef
Speaker 1: Gordon was managing of course, uh many people, Alice of course,
Speaker 1: um the woman who just passed UM well, a number
Speaker 1: of people, the Luther of course, uh the and and
Speaker 1: Teddy Pendergrass um, amongst a lot of other people that
Speaker 1: he was involved with. And they go there and I
Speaker 1: don't think they He was a guy who really um
Speaker 1: um worked. It was a smart negotiating manager, but it
Speaker 1: was live acts that was his thing, and they didn't
Speaker 1: really want to do that. They were to make records,
Speaker 1: hang out, get stone, you know, you know, be cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: Being on the road is not easy, and it isn't
Speaker 1: so so they're there and one day I'm making a record.
Speaker 1: And it's a good story because one day I'm making
Speaker 1: a record UM in California and it was with Gina Shock.
Speaker 1: I did an album of the drummer of the Go Goes.
Speaker 1: So that was must have been by then. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm in California and the engineers um wife calls Jeffrey
Speaker 1: and says, oh, you know, um, my friend asked something
Speaker 1: that that Richard might want to do, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's a vague story, but um it was chef's personal assistant. Uh.
Speaker 1: Her name was Anita, and she um, she told uh
Speaker 1: the engineer's wife to tell me that she has uh
Speaker 1: these gold records for the first two albums that keep
Speaker 1: getting shipped there. They're cluttering her office. I might want
Speaker 1: him before she throws them away because they're really not
Speaker 1: blundy things, or gives them away. So yeah, I said sure.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what they were trying to do,
Speaker 1: but she said, um, um okay, Well I was having
Speaker 1: dinner with Anita, uh that night. Why don't you and
Speaker 1: Richard come after work after the studio. Go there and
Speaker 1: there's Anita mm hmm looks looks nice. We start eating, talking,
Speaker 1: drinking wine. Kannak Uh wind up going on top of
Speaker 1: mulholland uh kissing in the car. A police car comes
Speaker 1: comes behind us with a siren says, take your business else,
Speaker 1: square buddy, I said, well, I got a bottle I've
Speaker 1: such a corny fuck. I got a bottle of champagne
Speaker 1: in my room. We go back to my room. We've
Speaker 1: been together ever since thirty years. If it wasn't for Blundy,
Speaker 1: I never would have met the best women I know,
Speaker 1: someone I love and uh and I hope I'm with
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. You know, Okay, what
Speaker 1: what happened with the first marriage? Oh Uh that was
Speaker 1: the difficult marriage from beginning to end. The best thing
Speaker 1: that came out of it, um um was that uh
Speaker 1: my daughters, Zoe, our daughter Zoe was born in nine seven. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to think. I think when you
Speaker 1: went in labor when Zoe was born, I was into
Speaker 1: studio with Robert Gordon. It was called Plaza Sound. That
Speaker 1: was the studio, and Uh, I rushed out. I had
Speaker 1: to get out and uh and get to the uh
Speaker 1: at the studio, not at the first marriage. You know,
Speaker 1: like and some of us aren't ready, whether it's me
Speaker 1: or the other person, or we could blame anybody or anything.
Speaker 1: But sometimes things don't work and so have that ended.
Speaker 1: Before you met Anita, it was in the process of ending.
Speaker 1: We were separated and going through what was a difficult
Speaker 1: divorce because it involved property and money and that's always
Speaker 1: that's always difficult and uh um. But it was made
Speaker 1: up by um, um, by the fact that I met Anita. UM.
Speaker 1: And I could say that I've made money from BLONDI.
Speaker 1: Over the years, I've gotten credit for being somebody who
Speaker 1: discovered Blundie. But in the end, the real boggin and
Speaker 1: the whole deal. Anita, Okay, I'll give you. I don't
Speaker 1: have any way stories. So Anita and I she she's
Speaker 1: already overworked the chaps. And I have this huge apartment
Speaker 1: in New York, and I'm moving to l A. And
Speaker 1: we're doing bike coastal every two weeks and um, and
Speaker 1: we decide that Anita will move to New York and
Speaker 1: we'll live together. Um and and we do. And by
Speaker 1: then it's like nineteen eighties six or eighty seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's eighty seven right this night seven and and um,
Speaker 1: which we start going to events together. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, I I was raised where you grow out
Speaker 1: of the home where people are married. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that that not just living together and sharing life is
Speaker 1: not it's not the way to go. But that was
Speaker 1: an old old timer in that regard, I guess, and
Speaker 1: it was fine, We're doing good. But I thought about it.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about it. So we want dinner. I
Speaker 1: think it was the Rocketbroll Hall of Fame when they're
Speaker 1: at the World off right where where um uh and
Speaker 1: so again, music play such a vital part in my life.
Speaker 1: We're at the we're at the World off the Rocketbroll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, and we're sitting around the table and
Speaker 1: we're drinking wine and we get done with the white
Speaker 1: wine that serving the next food, and Anita says, could
Speaker 1: you give me another glass of white wine? I said, sure,
Speaker 1: I ton a way to Could you bring me a
Speaker 1: glass some white wine? Uh? And uh, I'll have the red.
Speaker 1: And he says, Mr, they're onto the red. So I said, really,
Speaker 1: you're onto the red. Bring her a glass of white wine.
Speaker 1: He says, I can't. I can only bring a bottle.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, bring her a bottle. So I says,
Speaker 1: missus is the voldolf. That's a hundred and twenty dollars
Speaker 1: in years, a lot of ready. It's a bringer a
Speaker 1: bottle of white wine. So he says, Mr, it's not
Speaker 1: in my business. Is that your girlfriend or your wife.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, it's my girlfriend. He says, I
Speaker 1: know it. No, and they schmuck enough a bottle of
Speaker 1: wine for his wife. So so I looked at a
Speaker 1: deader and I said, how about it, let's get married.
Speaker 1: Crazy story, let's shift gears. Tell me about the Marshall
Speaker 1: Crunshaw record. Oh a great record. No, that's the best
Speaker 1: record he ever did. Phenomenal. Yes, Um, a great record
Speaker 1: because he was a great songwriter. UH understood the type
Speaker 1: of music he was doing. And so I get called
Speaker 1: to do the record. I think he heard. He was
Speaker 1: into it because he heard maybe the first Robert Gordon record.
Speaker 1: You know, I had Robert and Link ray so and
Speaker 1: he had his brother was a drummer and there was
Speaker 1: a bass player. Was it Mark? Yeah? And um no
Speaker 1: it wasn't Marcked. That's another thing. But anyway, Um, I
Speaker 1: got called by Waters to do the record, and they
Speaker 1: just loved his demos, which are absolutely great. We went
Speaker 1: in and I know Marshall. I'm not saying this in
Speaker 1: any derogatory sense, but we did the record twice because
Speaker 1: Marsha wanted to do it exactly like his demos, and
Speaker 1: I just went along with it. And and I just
Speaker 1: knew it didn't feel right, but I went along with it,
Speaker 1: and then we listened to it back and I remember
Speaker 1: Marsha and I sitting there together. It was at the
Speaker 1: record plant at that time, and I was sitting there
Speaker 1: with him and just looked over to him and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: not so good. Not so good, you know, because I
Speaker 1: was responsible to water is also, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: the thing. When you produce records for record companies. You're
Speaker 1: responsible to them because they're paying for it, but you're
Speaker 1: also responsible to the artist, and you always have to
Speaker 1: pay that respect and responsibility to the artist. That's who
Speaker 1: in the end you work for. Um. He said, what
Speaker 1: could I do? I said, well, it's not hard. We're
Speaker 1: like halfway there. You want to go for it again?
Speaker 1: And he said sure, And we went back and we
Speaker 1: took a lot of what was his concepts, but but
Speaker 1: brought them less from let's create it as if it
Speaker 1: was done in nineteen fifty, but let's create it as
Speaker 1: if it's done in which is slightly more modern, but
Speaker 1: not as modern as two thousand twenty one, you know.
Speaker 1: So so the record came out and I forget which
Speaker 1: one was the first single, but it got into the
Speaker 1: top forty but didn't really break through. Everybody loved the record.
Speaker 1: So I went out to Want as a head of
Speaker 1: promotion and I said, what's up here? You know, it's
Speaker 1: just crossing this barrier. And he said the other thing.
Speaker 1: I never forget that you never believe from anybody in
Speaker 1: the record business when they tell it to you, Richard,
Speaker 1: this is great. We're gonna get it the next time.
Speaker 1: There is no next time. If you got it going
Speaker 1: get it, going at it the next time. The record
Speaker 1: is appreciated across um the board of people that really
Speaker 1: loved that kind of music and love music, and it's
Speaker 1: a great it's a great record, but um it reached
Speaker 1: only a limited um um a limited audience. But you
Speaker 1: could go across the world and talk to people and
Speaker 1: they'll ask me about that. The other record they asked
Speaker 1: me about is U is um um blank Generation, which
Speaker 1: is kind of really crazy. Tell us about that, Well,
Speaker 1: that's Richard Hell. The Voidoids were um uh, Mark Bell
Speaker 1: who became Macky Ramon, Ivan Krowll, and Bob he was brilliant,
Speaker 1: Bob crying, brilliant, uh A Raddick sort of just played
Speaker 1: strange things. And the record was blank Generation, not my generation,
Speaker 1: No blank generation. Okay, I thought you said, my generation
Speaker 1: is the houthong no blank generation, which was the definition
Speaker 1: perhaps of that generation. Right absolutely. I thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be the anthem for the generation. So we
Speaker 1: go in to record it and Richard it's a poet,
Speaker 1: a writer and has a unique voice in style. He
Speaker 1: was the bass player and he played a little Mustang bass.
Speaker 1: He tried to intentionally um garble the words to be cool,
Speaker 1: but he was a true punk at that moment. He
Speaker 1: was the one that tore his T shirts that said
Speaker 1: you make me that uh more safety pins that Malcolm
Speaker 1: McLaren when he put together the Sex Pistols modeled things
Speaker 1: after um and I saw Richard at CBGB's and he
Speaker 1: was the other one in addition to Blundie and Robert
Speaker 1: Gordon that I signed to Instant and we made the
Speaker 1: one album and that one I put together um UH
Speaker 1: and put out through Sire, through Seymour and Sire because
Speaker 1: he was doing punk uh. Other record companies I was
Speaker 1: trying to deal with were not yet interested in punk music.
Speaker 1: So we put that out. Nothing big happen for it,
Speaker 1: but it's legendary within the guitar players circle, and I
Speaker 1: once did something to talk where I met a band
Speaker 1: in Finland. They didn't care about me. They just wanted
Speaker 1: me to sign in their vinyl copy of Blank Generation.
Speaker 1: And last year I get a call from UM some
Speaker 1: people we distribute through the Orchard and they come to visit.
Speaker 1: It's Third Man Records. Third Man, of course, is the
Speaker 1: label that's owned Red Label Record store, UM Mastering Facility
Speaker 1: studio owned by Jack White. So this is now. The
Speaker 1: original version of Blank Generation was done at Electric Lady Land.
Speaker 1: The second version that came out, the original version ever
Speaker 1: came out. Second version was done at Plaza Sound because
Speaker 1: that's where I like to sound better. Okay, the people
Speaker 1: from Jack White's label come in and they introduced them
Speaker 1: to me because I'm the founder of the Orchard, and
Speaker 1: everybody wants to meet the founder. I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: the mascott and to put it nicely and um um.
Speaker 1: They started talking to me and they said, oh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: we're going to do something with this so on Blank Generation.
Speaker 1: I said, really, you know that I produced that with
Speaker 1: with Richard Uh. And they said, did you do that
Speaker 1: an Electric Lady And I said yeah. The original version
Speaker 1: that was never released, as he on the part of
Speaker 1: the album was done an Electric Lady and um um,
Speaker 1: I just went on and did it elsewhere again. They said, Wow,
Speaker 1: we were invited by Spotify to do a special show
Speaker 1: of that they're putting together that will come from Electric
Speaker 1: Lady and it will be about songs that were recorded
Speaker 1: at Electric Lady Land over the years, and the artist
Speaker 1: is to pick the song and Jack pick Blank Generation.
Speaker 1: Would you like to come down beat him and uh
Speaker 1: and see it? So I did. I came down and
Speaker 1: met him, and Jack did a version of Blank Generation,
Speaker 1: which didn't come out through Spotify. He put it out
Speaker 1: on his own YouTube channel. But of all the things
Speaker 1: he could have chosen, including Jimmy Hendrix, which I guess
Speaker 1: there's a lot to try to duplicate, he chose Blank Generation, Uh,
Speaker 1: which is really an amazing tribute to the song, not
Speaker 1: to me, but the song. And then if anybody ever
Speaker 1: saw him, I guess three weeks ago from the time
Speaker 1: you and I are talking, if you've seen him when
Speaker 1: he channeled Eddie Van Halen on Saturday Night Live, you
Speaker 1: know rock and roll is I mean, that was beyond real.
Speaker 1: It's in fact, it was real, and uh, it's something
Speaker 1: that's really lost today. And and uh, it's great that
Speaker 1: he um he continues to do things like that and
Speaker 1: believes in it. And it's great that we do Orchard
Speaker 1: are involved with people like him. Okay, so tell us
Speaker 1: about the Go Goes. The Go Goes. The Go Goes is.
Speaker 1: Miles Copeland calls me and by now he's talking to
Speaker 1: me and and says, you know, I got this band
Speaker 1: I'd like you to do. Um. There was another one
Speaker 1: he wanted me do I turn down for some obscure reason,
Speaker 1: Squeeze turned it down. I didn't do I should have
Speaker 1: done it because they were great and this all oriented.
Speaker 1: I would have loved him. But the Go Goes UM.
Speaker 1: So he tells me who they are and I said
Speaker 1: Moles and Blondie of uh, which is probably why they're interested.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend's back other girl groups. You know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: I'd rather move on and do some other things. So
Speaker 1: he says not, he's a really great and I said no.
Speaker 1: So he he's their manager. A woman named ginger Kenzoneri,
Speaker 1: who is um literally their biggest proponent at the time,
Speaker 1: calls me and says, listen, Richard, we really would love
Speaker 1: you to be involved in this. I just know you'd
Speaker 1: be right. Um um. So she said, they're playing at
Speaker 1: Lobe Student Center. For some reason, they got a gig
Speaker 1: at Lobe Student Center. Um. Maybe because within the college
Speaker 1: radio circuit um we got the beat and the stiff
Speaker 1: recordings were being played because they were played on k rock,
Speaker 1: you know out in l A um A k k
Speaker 1: R K far s. Yeah. And so he said, could
Speaker 1: you please just come, you have to do anything, just
Speaker 1: stand in the audience. Saw them play live, and it
Speaker 1: was like that experience of seeing Blondie. Uh. Belinda was
Speaker 1: a great performer. Jane and the other girls danced around.
Speaker 1: Gina was a brilliant drummer. Um. Just Cathy could play
Speaker 1: the bass, you know. And they sang and the songs
Speaker 1: were great. And again that's what you do things for.
Speaker 1: You do them for the songs, or at least I do,
Speaker 1: not just the image. And their image was great. So
Speaker 1: I decided to go ahead and do it. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I went and met the girls. I said, if if
Speaker 1: they get along with me, that's great, I said, but
Speaker 1: you know, I work in New York and they were
Speaker 1: happy to get out of l A. You come to
Speaker 1: New York and get put up in hotel rooms and
Speaker 1: party and do what hell they did after the studio,
Speaker 1: And again my budgets next to nothing. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what it was. It could have been fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: dollars that include hotel and everything. So he expected me
Speaker 1: to get a cheap punk record done. And I started
Speaker 1: doing it that way. But with the go goes, what
Speaker 1: I did was and I started doing it with everybody.
Speaker 1: For a while, I would hire a even though Gina
Speaker 1: was a great drummer, I'd hire a drum tuner, and
Speaker 1: after every few songs, I'd changed the skins so the
Speaker 1: drums would sound a certain way. Um, and I got
Speaker 1: the same guy. His name was Already Smith, and he
Speaker 1: rented vintage amplifiers and guitars, and I wouldn't let them
Speaker 1: play their own guitars. So every the sound of the
Speaker 1: instruments become layered differently as you change the text, the
Speaker 1: sound of the sound because differently as change the instruments
Speaker 1: and the textures change. So we had all of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I started hearing that as I rehearse it, focus
Speaker 1: on different parts, that the song sound even better and
Speaker 1: more commercial. And I start thinking, what a minute, I'm
Speaker 1: not just gonna pull the plug now. I called and
Speaker 1: asked for more money. They said no, So I said,
Speaker 1: fuck it, I'll just I'll just it's not going to
Speaker 1: break me to pay another uh seven. It only was
Speaker 1: like about bucks in the end, but that's the equivalent
Speaker 1: of maybe, um fifty dollars today, you know. So I finished.
Speaker 1: I paid the studio bills and everything at the end.
Speaker 1: Um the girls. What I learned from the girls was
Speaker 1: it was amazing. I mean again, I'm a provincial guy
Speaker 1: coming from UH family like I am in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: I think guys are the ones that go out looking
Speaker 1: for booty. No girls go out looking for booty. And
Speaker 1: I mean I came in one day and it's like
Speaker 1: pornography on the control room board. And they're funny. I
Speaker 1: mean not not in a scene way, but in a
Speaker 1: at all. This is who we are, and it was
Speaker 1: who they were and they and they were great girls,
Speaker 1: all of them. So so I learned other things from
Speaker 1: them and uh and I try to learn from everybody
Speaker 1: I work with. UM and UM I UM. They wanted
Speaker 1: to go back to l A by now. Oh and
Speaker 1: when it go it came to doing we got the
Speaker 1: Beat because I loved all lips the sealed. I thought
Speaker 1: that was number one, absolutely well one thing. If someone
Speaker 1: out there who listens to this wants to pay a
Speaker 1: ten menin they let. One of the reasons they left
Speaker 1: was I decided in the middle where Jane goes, hush
Speaker 1: my dolly, don't you cry right, that it needed a
Speaker 1: tambourine that crossed the speakers and went hush y dog.
Speaker 1: But it had to go. I spent two to three
Speaker 1: hours a studio time sitting with a sambourine and going
Speaker 1: and as it crossed the speakers, So it had to
Speaker 1: have an exact certain length. And I only wanted it
Speaker 1: played so that you felt the organic value of it.
Speaker 1: So I could have been as crazy as my chapman
Speaker 1: in those ways, but in a good way crazy. So
Speaker 1: when I came back to them after that, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's done. Now that's great. Now we gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: do we got to beat. What do you mean we
Speaker 1: got to beat? We can't do. We got the beat,
Speaker 1: it's already done. I said, well, really, how much did
Speaker 1: it sell? And I looked up and he said it said,
Speaker 1: it's all about forty thousand, which was amazing. In l A,
Speaker 1: there was a punk classic. I said, yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: forty million people. There's forty million people, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: we could reach all of them. So I had to
Speaker 1: talk of it to do. And we got the beat
Speaker 1: and then we I put Gina in in the um
Speaker 1: tape room, which had volumeous echo, and we doubled the drums.
Speaker 1: You know, I said, well, first of all, slowed the
Speaker 1: damn thing down because that's the wrong kind of beat.
Speaker 1: So I got it slower, doubled up the drums, and
Speaker 1: I thought I had an amazing record, but thought all
Speaker 1: if the sealed was going to blow everybody out of
Speaker 1: the water. So goes they go home. I stay with
Speaker 1: Rob and remix the record, and to me, I wanted
Speaker 1: it clean and sort of pop, but I thought it
Speaker 1: still had that edge. But it was right, you want
Speaker 1: to put it that way. It was it was something
Speaker 1: that was made to sound good on the radio. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you had a stereo, might sound good, might not
Speaker 1: sound good, but it would sound good anyway. But it
Speaker 1: was made to sound for the radio. Sent it out
Speaker 1: to them, I got like, oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: you're not getting your extra money back. If I were there,
Speaker 1: i'd kill you, but not literally kill me, but like anger.
Speaker 1: For six months, they didn't talk to me. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they tell this story. It's not like I don't hold
Speaker 1: it against him. And then I went out there when
Speaker 1: we had a party at the Zoo Trump Studios to
Speaker 1: celebrate number one album, and then everybody said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad, but next time, we want like
Speaker 1: a heavy record. Okay, um, heavy record, M you know,
Speaker 1: we'll try. But they weren't a heavy group, and for
Speaker 1: a while they denied the the commercial part of themselves.
Speaker 1: But it's um, it's too bad. But they were terrific.
Speaker 1: They all the great people. Um and um, the music
Speaker 1: was fantastic. Let's just focus on our lips are sealed
Speaker 1: in that particular case. How much was the raw song
Speaker 1: and you couldn't fuck it up? And how much was
Speaker 1: the recording and production of the song that made it
Speaker 1: a hit. Well, remember they're playing all their own instruments,
Speaker 1: so there's no ringers except me hitting the tambourine. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: the song was great, their approach to it was great,
Speaker 1: and I realized how great it was once we you know,
Speaker 1: you would go into a rehearsal setting. You wouldn't go
Speaker 1: into the studio and just do it. So as I
Speaker 1: worked with them and made sure that each instrument did exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, what they were supposed to do, it took shape.
Speaker 1: But it couldn't take shape. You can't make an arrangement
Speaker 1: and a great recording of a crappy song. So the
Speaker 1: song had to be great. And Cathy says something, uh,
Speaker 1: it's either in a book or in something else, because
Speaker 1: she said, well, what should I do in the base?
Speaker 1: I said, listen, don't screw around, just follow the bass drump.
Speaker 1: Whatever the bass drum does, you do. Then you've got
Speaker 1: a heavy bottom, so then there's a lot of space.
Speaker 1: So then the guitargoes check, check, just one little thing.
Speaker 1: And then Charlotte, who had a good sense of a
Speaker 1: lead quality, could play a picking thing. So when you
Speaker 1: put all that together, it just has this rolling beat
Speaker 1: and then the I wouldn't even say the mellow knits,
Speaker 1: but the melodious tone of Belinda's voice just floats over it.
Speaker 1: And what you have is um is something unique. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we get that and and this I heard that,
Speaker 1: and I'll give him all the credit. When it came
Speaker 1: to promoting it. I R S had was an independent
Speaker 1: label and had a limited uh, a limited budget um
Speaker 1: to do things, but they could do it in an
Speaker 1: independent way. So they sent out the promotion man um,
Speaker 1: Michael Plan, Michael Plan, yep. And he went to Jersey
Speaker 1: to see a man named cal Rudman who listened to
Speaker 1: it and said, this could be a hit, but you
Speaker 1: know what it takes, and what it would have taken
Speaker 1: might have been seventy dollars or fifty dollars. And Michael
Speaker 1: had no way of going back and asking for that. Um.
Speaker 1: He went on the road and drove through what I
Speaker 1: told you about earlier in our conversation. The Northeast walked
Speaker 1: into the stations himself old school and said, you gotta
Speaker 1: play this record. You gotta listen and say whatever he did,
Speaker 1: he got them to play it, and it started to break.
Speaker 1: And in those days you could break things regionally, and
Speaker 1: from that region, next region, next region, next region. Bang,
Speaker 1: it explodes and and then the album begins to have value.
Speaker 1: And then we got the beat, and then you have what,
Speaker 1: on the face of it is a major artist. Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell us about the creation of the orchard, the
Speaker 1: creation of the orchard. Well, I won't even tell you
Speaker 1: what the orchard is now because it's mind boggling, but
Speaker 1: we could get to that. The creation of the orchard
Speaker 1: is a great story because to me, when I talked
Speaker 1: to people about it, remember we started talking about my
Speaker 1: boyfriend's back. My boyfriend's back. I'm on fire going to
Speaker 1: the Brill Building. To me, it's one straight progression, you know,
Speaker 1: I started in this game. It's a it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a blur, but it is a blur. It goes
Speaker 1: room and one day I find myself. I could get
Speaker 1: a few production gigs. I could stop doing what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: but life charges me the way I live, so I
Speaker 1: have to afford to live in it. So I have
Speaker 1: to continue and do some stuff. And someone tells me
Speaker 1: a friend at e m I um Um Records as
Speaker 1: A as a secretary who said, Richard, I know you
Speaker 1: like this kind of rock music. You know I saw
Speaker 1: this girl. The manager is really cool and this girl
Speaker 1: is is wild on stage. You should go and see her.
Speaker 1: So I call the manager. I arranged to go to
Speaker 1: see them. The name of the group is Scrub and
Speaker 1: I meet the manager and I go down to where
Speaker 1: is Pseudo offices and I don't know what second, I
Speaker 1: forget what section of town. It was in the twenties,
Speaker 1: and um, his name is Scott Cohen. And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: I think I could get a deal for them. Let's
Speaker 1: do some rehearsing, we'll do some recording. We record them,
Speaker 1: we try to get a deal, doesn't work out, but
Speaker 1: we start talking and we become friends. We form a
Speaker 1: label to put out music. It's called Soul three, but
Speaker 1: not Soulful, but Soul three, Third Planet from the Sun, okay,
Speaker 1: soul free. We started putting out uh singles albums, and
Speaker 1: we have a small office and it's on the lowery
Speaker 1: side on Orchard Street, UM, and it's a storefront. And
Speaker 1: what happens is we we engage a bunch of interns
Speaker 1: because we have no money, but we did have enough
Speaker 1: for a couple of full computers. And they're going on
Speaker 1: line to UH, I don't what we're um, it's not
Speaker 1: even broadband then, and they're going online and they're searching
Speaker 1: and they find there are people like we have a group,
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, you like heavy metal, you'll like this, Okay,
Speaker 1: and then we pick up some people, but we see
Speaker 1: there are two record stores, c D Now and Music Boulevard. Now,
Speaker 1: most people don't know this part of the Archer story
Speaker 1: because everybody thinks just this is how you do it overnight.
Speaker 1: So I contact them and I said, we'd like you
Speaker 1: to carry Soul Freeze label because we need more exposure.
Speaker 1: And we figured this is when you could essentially the
Speaker 1: order online. But you're ordering mail order. The only technology
Speaker 1: is you're doing it through a computer, okay, and then
Speaker 1: the physical product comes to you. And they're telling me, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we can't do that. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: that's not a good answer. Why can't you do it?
Speaker 1: And they told me they can't do it because they
Speaker 1: were quote virtual fronts. They the backhand when they said
Speaker 1: they had two fifty thousand titles, they didn't have during
Speaker 1: the fifty titles. The titles lived at a place in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: California called Valley Media. Valley was the largest one stop
Speaker 1: uh supplier of music in the country, Barney Barney Cohen.
Speaker 1: They went public valued at a billion dollars and then
Speaker 1: went bankrupt the following year. Okay, I mean okay, so
Speaker 1: Scott and I, who by now are experienced in this crap,
Speaker 1: are our good friends and partners, and we had started
Speaker 1: a company. We came up with the idea of a
Speaker 1: company called The Orchard that could distribute independent music that's
Speaker 1: not available through those two stores because they don't exist
Speaker 1: at Valley. So we call up, we get somebody to
Speaker 1: get us an appointment, and we go out to make
Speaker 1: our pitch to Valley. Why we at the Orchard should
Speaker 1: be there's a flier of independent content. So go out there.
Speaker 1: At this point, we don't have one independent art, we
Speaker 1: have nothing signed. We have the name the Orchard. We
Speaker 1: know what we're gonna do. Go to Valley. I sit there,
Speaker 1: I go through the whole thing about future, this is
Speaker 1: gonna look everything. We get a tour of their of
Speaker 1: their warehouse and everything. They look. They looked totally disinterested,
Speaker 1: and then they started talking to me about what you
Speaker 1: just did. Blundie. The go goes my boyfriend's back. I
Speaker 1: tell them stories and they look over and say, Richard,
Speaker 1: you're one of us. We're going to do this with you.
Speaker 1: But the tick is you've got to take our adsignment product.
Speaker 1: By then I knew what that meant, and I said,
Speaker 1: you mean all the people that bug the hell out
Speaker 1: of you. But don't sell anything. I tell you what
Speaker 1: we'll do that provided you make us your exclusive distributor
Speaker 1: of independent music. I thought about it for a minute
Speaker 1: or two, and they said, yes, We get on the plane,
Speaker 1: go back to New York, go to the basement of
Speaker 1: our tenement storefronts and start building a small replica of
Speaker 1: values of of what we thought was valleys um warehouse,
Speaker 1: because we were going to begin receiving a flood of
Speaker 1: c d s right So they start coming in and
Speaker 1: we start taking orders and start delivering them too, back
Speaker 1: out to Valley, who then delivers them when an order
Speaker 1: comes in on the Internet, through any the two of
Speaker 1: their sites and eventually Amazon UM. When we developed a
Speaker 1: contract for the Independence to sign with us, since we
Speaker 1: were the way in, we added a clause that was
Speaker 1: in fairness. It was a clause that we'd be happy
Speaker 1: to explain that you also grant us the right to
Speaker 1: store and deliver your music digitally. People. Some people asked
Speaker 1: what that was, and we explained it to them that
Speaker 1: there was this vague notion that was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Uh and the others. UM said sure, if you, however,
Speaker 1: you distribute it as long as I'm music reaches people,
Speaker 1: and that was the goal of what we established at
Speaker 1: the Orchard, and everybody signed it. Very few places there
Speaker 1: was no broadband at the time. Broadband happened UH, people
Speaker 1: go download things. Along comes Apple Music iTunes. UM. The
Speaker 1: Orchard exists with about a hundred and fifty thousand titles
Speaker 1: by then, so we become a large supplier to UM
Speaker 1: two iTunes UH and then other places come along and
Speaker 1: at that time we take in investment. The investors did
Speaker 1: a good job in funding the expansion from independent artists
Speaker 1: only two independent labels, and Scott and I prior to
Speaker 1: that would take trips around the world everywhere on my
Speaker 1: own money. That that really almost bankrupted me. But I
Speaker 1: believed in it UM and we would go to conferences.
Speaker 1: We would meet people like yourself, Jim Griffin. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I saw people speak and thought she I could do that,
Speaker 1: you know, and not in a bad way, but to
Speaker 1: say there's something happening here that really isn't very clear
Speaker 1: yet as a as a song says, but it's out there,
Speaker 1: and we got to be at the forefront of it,
Speaker 1: and we kept taking in more and more. We would
Speaker 1: go to talks and give lectures about the demise of
Speaker 1: the c D, the demise of Final and UM. We
Speaker 1: would literally get booed, get things thrown at us, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean we were we were like really outliers. But
Speaker 1: as it continued to grow, I learned what being a
Speaker 1: CEO meant, which eventually I had to give up because
Speaker 1: the investors put in their own CEO who was quite competent.
Speaker 1: He was great. Uh he's now the head of UM
Speaker 1: UM of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Greg shoal Um. The
Speaker 1: investors UM also encouraged us in every way to continue
Speaker 1: to grow and bring in more and more content UM
Speaker 1: going on. UM and UM the orchard continued as we
Speaker 1: brought in more and more labels of substance to UM
Speaker 1: increase its revenue, begin to supply not only download sites UH,
Speaker 1: but digital streaming s UM, and begin to supply everywhere
Speaker 1: music is available in any form as long as the
Speaker 1: people were legitimate and we're paying the artist. UM. It's
Speaker 1: always important that the most important is that the independent
Speaker 1: artists be served. So then we keep expanding in other
Speaker 1: areas to where we're now in I imagine fifty different
Speaker 1: um UM countries, UM even even Nigeria, South Africa um.
Speaker 1: We used to be a mkimo fossil um um um
Speaker 1: and go all across Asia um and music of in
Speaker 1: every language um irregardless of its commerciality. So um. When
Speaker 1: we started taking music in from India, we'd find it
Speaker 1: it's sell in another part of the world. Is someone
Speaker 1: saying in a different language. It didn't matter to me.
Speaker 1: The idea was music from every every bit of music
Speaker 1: from anywhere can sell somewhere to someone anywhere. And it's
Speaker 1: not even a matter of selling, it's a matter of
Speaker 1: exchanging the culture. You know. I used to give talks
Speaker 1: and say there are three things you know, uh, music, foods,
Speaker 1: sex and religion. We're all happy to take sex. Religion
Speaker 1: I could take or do without. Um. Food we share
Speaker 1: food as a cultural thing. Music and they are It's
Speaker 1: a universal language if we if we appreciate that part
Speaker 1: of each other, we don't have to worry about knocking
Speaker 1: down buildings or blowing peach up or or you understand
Speaker 1: people and music is what breaks down a barrier and
Speaker 1: then out of nowhere along comes well done, very well.
Speaker 1: Mind you a group of young kids who are very
Speaker 1: great looking, dance sing in South Korean and you could
Speaker 1: be a French kid, a Dutch kid, a German kid,
Speaker 1: and you are learning the Korean language phonetically man. That
Speaker 1: speaks to everything I have a dreamed of for the Orchard,
Speaker 1: and it's a And as miracles go, we also uh
Speaker 1: participants in distributing them, and we work with them and
Speaker 1: not we don't do anything with the music, of course.
Speaker 1: But okay, while you were building this business, the history
Speaker 1: of the Internet is companies who were too early or
Speaker 1: too late or killed by other companies. So while you
Speaker 1: were building, did you have did you have competition you
Speaker 1: were dealing with. Yeah, we had a bit of competition.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about the Orchard is, I'll go
Speaker 1: back to everything we've said in this whole conversation is
Speaker 1: if you imagine a company like the Orchard, it stands
Speaker 1: one ft in the past, one ft in the present.
Speaker 1: We have to live and stretching far into the future.
Speaker 1: So the fact that we provided a service that was
Speaker 1: functional in the present while we developed the future, much
Speaker 1: like Apple by the way, Okay, other companies that didn't
Speaker 1: do that would fall by the wayside. You you have
Speaker 1: to be prepared for the future when it comes. So
Speaker 1: if you're not existing in a realistic way in the present.
Speaker 1: And also you've got to be lucky. Let's let's not
Speaker 1: minimize things. Yeah, there were there were other companies, but
Speaker 1: the other companies basically glommed onto what it was that
Speaker 1: you were doing. But fortunately for us at the moment,
Speaker 1: the big companies didn't, so there was room where you
Speaker 1: could do this. Sony they got involved later on in it, okay,
Speaker 1: but but most big companies were happy to let us
Speaker 1: exist because they didn't want to make waves, um with
Speaker 1: the retailers, because if you start dealing in digital at
Speaker 1: the same time where the messages we're going to get
Speaker 1: rid of what you're doing, it hurts the business as
Speaker 1: it is. You know. That's why when like MP three
Speaker 1: dot com came along, you know, the industry you've talked
Speaker 1: about it could have embraced this stuff a lot earlier.
Speaker 1: Even Spotify wasn't embraced immediately. Um Apple was embraced immediately
Speaker 1: as a download place because essentially they would aint too people,
Speaker 1: We've got a billion dollars in the bank, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna sell these downloads of your music for
Speaker 1: exactly the same price that you're selling it in these
Speaker 1: record stores. So made sense. Okay, So but ultimately the orchard,
Speaker 1: you and your investors sold the orchard. Yes, tell us
Speaker 1: about that. UM again, why I can't remember. I didn't
Speaker 1: even want to bother look it up. But why I
Speaker 1: can't remember the company that UM Sony had bought. But
Speaker 1: the investors made a deal with Sony where they rolled
Speaker 1: that other company into they were doing very well, UM,
Speaker 1: he'll come to me in a minute, and rolled it in.
Speaker 1: So it increased our our revenue and our market share,
Speaker 1: uh greatly, UM in the independent sector. And UM and
Speaker 1: a change for that. Uh. They took a seat on
Speaker 1: the board and they UM a position in the company
Speaker 1: and with an option at a certain point in a
Speaker 1: certain multiple I imagine, to buy the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And UM that point was reached and UH the investors
Speaker 1: took advantage of it and sold the remaining shares to
Speaker 1: UM Sony, which was on the board for three to
Speaker 1: five years anyway, UM uh prior to that, and on
Speaker 1: the face of it, as an independent company that really
Speaker 1: feels or as an individual that really feels independent, you
Speaker 1: begin to think, WHOA, that's the kind of place that
Speaker 1: I was totally against. You know what's going on here?
Speaker 1: But and I made that point when I when I
Speaker 1: did give a talk or welcoming talk to the Impalla
Speaker 1: was the other yeah, Impalla. So when I gave it,
Speaker 1: when I gave a talk to them, a welcoming talk,
Speaker 1: that they're now yet because they were merged into the Orchard,
Speaker 1: not the other way around. UM. But then I began
Speaker 1: to realize and to see what a great company Sony
Speaker 1: really is. And I'm not going to extoll the virtues
Speaker 1: um because I have to. I don't. I don't really
Speaker 1: carry the way. It's that they understood what the Orchard
Speaker 1: was about. They understood, UM, that that indispendent spirit was important.
Speaker 1: And while you have to adhere to things that are corporate,
Speaker 1: at the same time, what they did was allowed the
Speaker 1: company to function the way it always funct and they
Speaker 1: allowed the CEO to continue to remain the CEO, and
Speaker 1: the CEO they brod. I'll tell you their names. Brad Nathan,
Speaker 1: who grew up inside of the Orchard and has been
Speaker 1: there fifteen seventeen years and learned from the bottom up
Speaker 1: and is a great CEO. And Colleen Tys, who's the
Speaker 1: CEO chief operating officer, who Brad identified and found working elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I think she was working out of a d A
Speaker 1: and uh in in London. UH. And she worked for
Speaker 1: us in London and then moved back here. She is American. UM.
Speaker 1: These are two great people who understand how to work
Speaker 1: within a corporate setting but also appreciate and understand the
Speaker 1: value of independence and and and that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: And it led to the setting up of our um
Speaker 1: of read, which was Sony Read, which was their quote
Speaker 1: independent distribution ARM rolled right into the orchard. They could
Speaker 1: have done the other thing, but they realized the orchard
Speaker 1: is significant. Do the orchard means something? And and without
Speaker 1: flowing up, how important to you what it is? UM?
Speaker 1: Studying an autist services division where we now take individual
Speaker 1: artists and are able to give them the opportunity to
Speaker 1: for them to develop themselves within it, performing back end
Speaker 1: services on their behalf. UH. Where we're able now because
Speaker 1: of the relationship of Sony and the understanding of these
Speaker 1: people to take people like BTS and expand help them
Speaker 1: expand further to to could within the Latin world where
Speaker 1: we're we're placed with doing some work part of Daddy
Speaker 1: Yankees work Ozuma um bad Bunny UM people that reach
Speaker 1: millions in tens of millions of people that we can
Speaker 1: now be involved in, while at the same time not
Speaker 1: ignoring the lowest level of the independent artists, because our
Speaker 1: technology department continues to develop ways that these artists and
Speaker 1: labels can work and get information on a daily basis
Speaker 1: without having to be dependent necessarily on anyone else. So,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, I'm proud of everything
Speaker 1: the orchard has become. And it's like some people, I
Speaker 1: I now worked there. I still have a couple more
Speaker 1: years to go there and maybe the rest of my
Speaker 1: uh time in this business. And I have my own
Speaker 1: instant records that I distribute through there. Okay, But to me,
Speaker 1: it's one run from my boyfriend's back. All the years,
Speaker 1: all the groups. We didn't even cover all of them,
Speaker 1: the banging of the tambourine, the discovery of the internet. Uh, technology, Uh,
Speaker 1: where's it going? What's the future? Should I download music?
Speaker 1: Do I need to own anything? The truth is we
Speaker 1: don't need to own anything. Priests, God should provide food
Speaker 1: for everyone. It's your pride, housing for everyone. Okay, the
Speaker 1: rest of it. If you get rich, you deserve it,
Speaker 1: if you work hard for it. But that's not. That's
Speaker 1: not the goal. That's not what that's not what the
Speaker 1: heir should bring us. You know, we we we make music,
Speaker 1: we give people something, you know, we've given something to remember.
Speaker 1: And that's what I believe do what it stands for.
Speaker 1: And I'll say one last thing about Sony. They might
Speaker 1: not want to hear it, but just think they think
Speaker 1: about ask somebody about how did you develop a company
Speaker 1: like that in nine Where did it come from? What
Speaker 1: made you people so great? You know? And when you
Speaker 1: got that answer, I have to ask. The history of
Speaker 1: the last twenty years is littered with people who are
Speaker 1: successful in the traditional record business and then had these
Speaker 1: huge windfalls in tech that far outstripped the income from
Speaker 1: their other endeavors. In your particular case, I know that
Speaker 1: Scott is completely out. In your particular case, did you
Speaker 1: do well in the ultimate sale of the Orchard? I
Speaker 1: did well. I didn't do boom, but I did well.
Speaker 1: Uh uh. I'm proud to continue to be part of it.
Speaker 1: And what exactly what exactly is your role today? My
Speaker 1: role is I would say one of them is talking
Speaker 1: to people like you. But I would say goodwill, I
Speaker 1: would say I have a title that's a chief creative officer.
Speaker 1: But I have to create the things that I want
Speaker 1: them to be creative for. Uh. I we we built
Speaker 1: a studio. We actually have a recording studio that I built.
Speaker 1: I I'm the person who's in charge of it. It's
Speaker 1: it's managed by our chief engineer, Alonzo August, who has
Speaker 1: now become a good friend. We're we're able to demonstrate
Speaker 1: to people. And I guess that's why that's why I'm
Speaker 1: still here, is that where through me, we're able to
Speaker 1: demonstrate to people that music is really a source of
Speaker 1: what we stand for. Um. We used to be in
Speaker 1: the film business. We're not, I would say media music.
Speaker 1: We now entered a publishing arrangement with Sony a TV,
Speaker 1: but it's all music. Our offices are our own offices,
Speaker 1: their Orchard offices, not Sony offices. That we we believe
Speaker 1: in this, we do it differently. We we they independent
Speaker 1: music and I've never been anything but independent. The first
Speaker 1: time I got a salary was when somebody bought the Orchard,
Speaker 1: and I get a salary now. But I still to
Speaker 1: imagine imagine living your entire life without getting a salary,
Speaker 1: but not being poor, you know. Wow? And I'm proud
Speaker 1: to get my salary now. It's one of the bonuses
Speaker 1: that I got from the sale. Yes, that's true. And
Speaker 1: Scott now works for a competitor and he's trying to
Speaker 1: bring them into the future. General good luck bring him
Speaker 1: into the future. Well, Richard, you certainly brought us from
Speaker 1: the past to today. I only wish I could have
Speaker 1: gone deeper on some of these things. Uh, we certainly
Speaker 1: run along, but I certainly know that people are interested.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for relating your history and your insight.
Speaker 1: Really great. Well, Bob, I'll talk to you any time
Speaker 1: to bring it back, bring you back to it, or
Speaker 1: you can call me back. And when I do interviews
Speaker 1: and say things, just like when I do a printed interview,
Speaker 1: I actually just speak as as as you do. I
Speaker 1: do not uh edit my words, you know when I'm
Speaker 1: saying myself. So I don't know if I said anything
Speaker 1: that might be offensive or it might be misleading, but
Speaker 1: there's no intention. It's always like to just try to
Speaker 1: tell the truth and make people understand that. Uh, this
Speaker 1: business that we're in is business, but it's music and
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's just wonderful that I could be
Speaker 1: who I am now. At this age and gone through
Speaker 1: that whole journey and and just look back on and
Speaker 1: then say wow and definitely wow. Thanks so much, Richard.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left sex