1
00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:12,480
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lefts That's Podcast.

2
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:16,599
Speaker 1: My guest today is Job Brusheky So Joe, how do

3
00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:17,800
Speaker 1: you know Brewce Springsteen.

4
00:00:19,079 --> 00:00:22,920
Speaker 2: Well, back in the day nineteen eighty we did a

5
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:25,120
Speaker 2: record called Have a Good Time to Get Out Alive

6
00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:30,080
Speaker 2: that Steve van Zant was participating in for a while.

7
00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:33,760
Speaker 2: He was doing some production work. Stephen was really good

8
00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:38,440
Speaker 2: friends with Steve Popovich, who was the president CEO of

9
00:00:38,680 --> 00:00:44,240
Speaker 2: Cleveland Entertainment Cleveland International. They had Meatloaf. We were rehearsing

10
00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:49,280
Speaker 2: in SR Studios in New York City to record the

11
00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:55,600
Speaker 2: album Media Sound and Steve pop Which brought Steve van

12
00:00:55,720 --> 00:01:01,000
Speaker 2: Zant to the rehearsals and eventually into studio and produced

13
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:06,560
Speaker 2: some tracks on that particular record. And after the initial

14
00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:10,800
Speaker 2: tracks were finished, we took a break and Mick Ronson

15
00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:14,760
Speaker 2: was also working on that record and went home to

16
00:01:14,800 --> 00:01:16,919
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh for a while, came back to New York City

17
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:21,360
Speaker 2: and Mick was working with Meatloaf to do the follow

18
00:01:21,440 --> 00:01:23,160
Speaker 2: up to Bat Out of Hell. And he invited me

19
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:26,360
Speaker 2: down to the power station one night and in the

20
00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:29,680
Speaker 2: next room one of the studios a I think the

21
00:01:30,400 --> 00:01:36,319
Speaker 2: Mick Ronson and Meeto for studio b Steve and Bruce

22
00:01:36,480 --> 00:01:39,280
Speaker 2: z Vansant and Bruce were working on the River and

23
00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:44,040
Speaker 2: just happened to run into him and were introduced, and

24
00:01:44,160 --> 00:01:49,840
Speaker 2: Bruce became a fan of that particular record, and we

25
00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:53,680
Speaker 2: hooked up one night in Big Man's Claire's Clements Club,

26
00:01:53,920 --> 00:01:56,840
Speaker 2: Red Bank, New Jersey, and hung out for most of

27
00:01:56,840 --> 00:02:00,720
Speaker 2: the evening and just hit it off, became friends, and

28
00:02:01,840 --> 00:02:06,120
Speaker 2: basically that's how we met. But we played New Jersey

29
00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:09,400
Speaker 2: a lot, and some of Bruce's crew and you know

30
00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:11,800
Speaker 2: people who work for him, It comes to his play

31
00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:12,400
Speaker 2: all the time.

32
00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,440
Speaker 1: So since you know him personally, what does the average

33
00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:18,760
Speaker 1: person or the media and not know about Bruce?

34
00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:20,440
Speaker 3: Uh?

35
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:25,840
Speaker 2: He's very kind, he's funny, he's hilarious. He could be

36
00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:28,920
Speaker 2: a stand up comic. If he decides this rock and

37
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:30,480
Speaker 2: roll thing's not going to work out.

38
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:34,960
Speaker 1: Okay, you end up writing songs with him? How does

39
00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:35,519
Speaker 1: that happen?

40
00:02:38,320 --> 00:02:42,840
Speaker 2: Well, the first record we did together was called American

41
00:02:42,919 --> 00:02:47,320
Speaker 2: Babylon and I had He invited me out to Los Angeles.

42
00:02:47,360 --> 00:02:50,440
Speaker 2: I played him a couple of songs he really liked.

43
00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:53,600
Speaker 2: At the end of the session, he asked me what

44
00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:56,080
Speaker 2: else I had I played him a few more songs.

45
00:02:56,120 --> 00:03:00,320
Speaker 2: They weren't very good. He said, you gotta write better

46
00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:03,000
Speaker 2: songs than that, and I agreed with him. I didn't

47
00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:06,040
Speaker 2: have a really good batch of songs at that particular moment.

48
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,920
Speaker 2: So when I came back to Pittsburgh, I had a

49
00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:15,600
Speaker 2: determination to write better, better, better music. And uh so

50
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:18,000
Speaker 2: I came up with a set of lyrics for a

51
00:03:18,080 --> 00:03:22,640
Speaker 2: song called Homestead, which is uh the uh, you know,

52
00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:27,720
Speaker 2: the quintin central Pittsburgh steel mill town that I had

53
00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:30,399
Speaker 2: known all the guys who worked in the union there

54
00:03:30,400 --> 00:03:33,600
Speaker 2: and we had helped set up food banks, et cetera

55
00:03:33,919 --> 00:03:37,960
Speaker 2: over the years. And so the next time Bruce and

56
00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:40,560
Speaker 2: I got together to finish those particular songs we were

57
00:03:40,600 --> 00:03:42,880
Speaker 2: working on in Los Angeles was in New York City,

58
00:03:43,440 --> 00:03:48,680
Speaker 2: and just on you know, on a whim or you know,

59
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:50,880
Speaker 2: built my courage and gave him a set of lyrics.

60
00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:55,240
Speaker 2: He liked it. So we wrote Homestead together. Then we

61
00:03:55,320 --> 00:04:00,800
Speaker 2: wrote Dark and Bloody Ground together. As for my je accident,

62
00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:05,600
Speaker 2: we started working a bit on you know, something that

63
00:04:05,640 --> 00:04:08,000
Speaker 2: we hoped that was going to be a Bruce Springsteen

64
00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:11,080
Speaker 2: project for a while, and did a bunch of other

65
00:04:11,120 --> 00:04:14,160
Speaker 2: co writes the ones that come out just recently.

66
00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:19,920
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're sitting in Pittsburgh and Bruce calls you

67
00:04:19,960 --> 00:04:22,600
Speaker 1: and says, come out to LA. I mean, tell me

68
00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:23,680
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that.

69
00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:25,360
Speaker 3: Uh.

70
00:04:25,440 --> 00:04:32,280
Speaker 2: Well, I was at the uh A trough in my career.

71
00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:37,000
Speaker 2: I wasn't doing that great and my wife Leanne mentioned

72
00:04:37,080 --> 00:04:39,120
Speaker 2: she said, you know, you're pretty good friends with Bruce.

73
00:04:39,160 --> 00:04:42,920
Speaker 2: Why don't you give him a call and ask him

74
00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:46,520
Speaker 2: if he'd consider playing on one of your records. So

75
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:52,640
Speaker 2: I was doing a weekday gig at a singles club,

76
00:04:53,480 --> 00:04:55,520
Speaker 2: which is something I rarely do, but I was doing

77
00:04:55,560 --> 00:04:59,200
Speaker 2: a single solo show acoustic.

78
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:00,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

79
00:05:00,279 --> 00:05:02,360
Speaker 2: It was one of those gays where nobody was particular

80
00:05:02,480 --> 00:05:05,160
Speaker 2: and interested in what I had to sing, you know.

81
00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:07,560
Speaker 1: And you know, so I'm up.

82
00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:13,880
Speaker 2: There playing away and re evaluating my career choices and

83
00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:17,520
Speaker 2: during the break my sonme and Brian Coleman. He comes

84
00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:19,320
Speaker 2: over and says, hey, you better call home right away.

85
00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:21,719
Speaker 2: In the end, just call it. So this is the

86
00:05:21,800 --> 00:05:25,760
Speaker 2: days before cell phones. So I went back into the

87
00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:29,880
Speaker 2: kitchen and you know, the kitchen help was banging pots

88
00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:31,880
Speaker 2: and pans. It was a restaurant and there was a

89
00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:33,520
Speaker 2: lot of noise. I asked him to keep it down

90
00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:36,440
Speaker 2: a bit, and I call it home. She said, Bruce

91
00:05:36,560 --> 00:05:38,960
Speaker 2: just called and he wants you to give him a bus.

92
00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:41,640
Speaker 2: I called. Bruce was out in Los Angeles in those days,

93
00:05:42,040 --> 00:05:43,880
Speaker 2: and he invited me out to work on a song.

94
00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:47,960
Speaker 2: So you know, I had to actually borrow money from

95
00:05:47,960 --> 00:05:50,640
Speaker 2: my mom and dad to get plane ticket and went

96
00:05:50,680 --> 00:05:54,040
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles and worked on chain smoking and never

97
00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:56,320
Speaker 2: be enough time to forget about you.

98
00:05:58,000 --> 00:05:59,800
Speaker 1: So you go to LA you stay at his house?

99
00:06:00,760 --> 00:06:01,440
Speaker 2: Yes, I did?

100
00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:03,040
Speaker 1: And how long did you stay?

101
00:06:04,839 --> 00:06:07,919
Speaker 2: The first time? Couple of days, three or four days? Maybe,

102
00:06:09,080 --> 00:06:11,520
Speaker 2: second time, same thing. And then and then I went

103
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:14,960
Speaker 2: to hung out with him in New Jersey for a while,

104
00:06:15,800 --> 00:06:17,800
Speaker 2: and then we just got you know, we just hit

105
00:06:17,839 --> 00:06:22,159
Speaker 2: it off. We had a nice easy wrapoor for writing

106
00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:30,320
Speaker 2: and just started working together a lot back in mid

107
00:06:30,320 --> 00:06:31,520
Speaker 2: to late nineties.

108
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:36,680
Speaker 1: Okay, if your wife hadn't pushed you, are you the

109
00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:38,919
Speaker 1: type of guy who would have reached out to the boss.

110
00:06:39,880 --> 00:06:44,080
Speaker 2: Probably not, No, No, I probably would not have.

111
00:06:45,440 --> 00:06:50,119
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're talking about the material you written being

112
00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:55,560
Speaker 1: on this extravaganza that Bruce recently released, right, So did

113
00:06:55,560 --> 00:06:58,400
Speaker 1: you think those songs would never see the light of day.

114
00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:01,920
Speaker 2: Well, it took a while. It took a while for

115
00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:06,000
Speaker 2: him to get here, I'll say that, but uh, you know,

116
00:07:06,160 --> 00:07:09,520
Speaker 2: I'm more than happy they're out now, more than happy

117
00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:12,280
Speaker 2: they're out period. But yeah, yeah, I am happy there

118
00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:17,520
Speaker 2: they're out. I think they're really good representative examples of

119
00:07:17,560 --> 00:07:18,920
Speaker 2: what we were doing in those days.

120
00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:22,480
Speaker 1: So you wrote a number of songs, I mean, Elton

121
00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:25,320
Speaker 1: John you know they call it two rooms. Bernie wrote

122
00:07:25,320 --> 00:07:29,360
Speaker 1: the lyrics and Elton wrote the melodies the changes. How

123
00:07:29,400 --> 00:07:31,080
Speaker 1: did you and Bruce do it? You talked to that

124
00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:33,520
Speaker 1: you gave him the lyrics for one time. Is that

125
00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:35,560
Speaker 1: how you normally did or you'd sit in the same room.

126
00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:36,680
Speaker 3: Uh?

127
00:07:38,680 --> 00:07:38,960
Speaker 1: Both.

128
00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:44,120
Speaker 2: Sometimes I gave him the lyrics, sometimes I sent them

129
00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:48,960
Speaker 2: the lyrics, and sometimes we wrote face to face. But basically,

130
00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:51,440
Speaker 2: you know, I did most of the lyrics that he

131
00:07:51,520 --> 00:07:56,120
Speaker 2: contributed some. He did almost all the music. I contributed

132
00:07:56,200 --> 00:07:58,040
Speaker 2: bits and pieces along the way.

133
00:07:58,920 --> 00:08:01,920
Speaker 1: So how do you feel, I mean, you emailed me

134
00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:04,680
Speaker 1: that you had some songs on the new project, But

135
00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:06,720
Speaker 1: how do you feel when people talk to you and

136
00:08:06,760 --> 00:08:08,600
Speaker 1: they just want to talk about Springsteen?

137
00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:12,800
Speaker 2: Well, you know that's part of you cast a large

138
00:08:12,800 --> 00:08:17,200
Speaker 2: shadow if you want to work with him, and you know,

139
00:08:17,280 --> 00:08:20,480
Speaker 2: so it was just part of the partner procedure. But

140
00:08:20,960 --> 00:08:24,280
Speaker 2: I'm confident enough in my own abilities that you know,

141
00:08:24,280 --> 00:08:25,640
Speaker 2: I'm not intimidated by it.

142
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:29,480
Speaker 1: Well, needless to say, although you had major label records

143
00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:35,200
Speaker 1: on MCA, you and the House Rockers did not reach ubiquity.

144
00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:39,000
Speaker 1: But no, we did not when you were working with Springsteen.

145
00:08:39,520 --> 00:08:41,679
Speaker 1: Did you feel this was my break? This is going

146
00:08:41,760 --> 00:08:42,160
Speaker 1: to happen?

147
00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:45,439
Speaker 2: Well, you know every record I do, I feel this

148
00:08:45,480 --> 00:08:47,880
Speaker 2: is my break. This is going to happen. Of course,

149
00:08:47,880 --> 00:08:50,800
Speaker 2: if Bruce said a little bit more exposure, maybe more

150
00:08:50,840 --> 00:08:53,280
Speaker 2: people want to hear what he's up to, what you know,

151
00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:58,880
Speaker 2: why he picked me to work with So you know, yeah,

152
00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:02,160
Speaker 2: I'm always hoping to for that one song that you know,

153
00:09:02,240 --> 00:09:04,559
Speaker 2: Chris Fiel Easy Street like everybody else.

154
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:08,000
Speaker 1: Okay, he has played live with you a number of

155
00:09:08,040 --> 00:09:09,960
Speaker 1: times too.

156
00:09:09,840 --> 00:09:12,560
Speaker 2: Yes, over fifty times we're played together.

157
00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:14,640
Speaker 1: And what is that like?

158
00:09:15,800 --> 00:09:18,760
Speaker 2: Well, it's like, you know, you got a baseball team

159
00:09:18,800 --> 00:09:21,079
Speaker 2: and you got Mickey Manno playing a center field, or

160
00:09:21,080 --> 00:09:23,680
Speaker 2: Willie Mays, or you got a football team you got

161
00:09:23,760 --> 00:09:27,679
Speaker 2: Joe Montana sitting in a quarterback. So you know, he's

162
00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:32,160
Speaker 2: a great musician and it automatically elevates what you're doing.

163
00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:35,800
Speaker 1: You talked about your wife saying to call the boss.

164
00:09:35,840 --> 00:09:37,280
Speaker 1: How many times have you been married?

165
00:09:38,840 --> 00:09:39,200
Speaker 2: Twice?

166
00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:42,320
Speaker 1: And how long each time?

167
00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:46,160
Speaker 2: The first time was about five years and we're over

168
00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:47,160
Speaker 2: thirty on this one.

169
00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:52,480
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree did being a musician affect your

170
00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:57,079
Speaker 1: first relationship and how is being a musician affected your

171
00:09:57,160 --> 00:09:58,680
Speaker 1: second marriage?

172
00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:03,920
Speaker 2: Well, the first my first wife was very wonderful girl,

173
00:10:04,120 --> 00:10:10,600
Speaker 2: very smart, very intelligent, just just wasn't into the music thing.

174
00:10:10,679 --> 00:10:15,040
Speaker 2: So that was a factor and a splitting And my

175
00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:18,200
Speaker 2: current wife is you know, she's been there through thick

176
00:10:18,200 --> 00:10:22,120
Speaker 2: and thin thirty years on in and as you know,

177
00:10:22,160 --> 00:10:24,800
Speaker 2: if I'm talking to multiple musicians, you know it's not

178
00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:25,880
Speaker 2: an easy thing to do.

179
00:10:27,080 --> 00:10:29,599
Speaker 1: So how did you meet your president mine?

180
00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:33,120
Speaker 2: I met her at a job. I was playing guitar

181
00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:35,880
Speaker 2: and she grew up said hello, and she's one of

182
00:10:35,920 --> 00:10:36,560
Speaker 2: those things.

183
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:41,560
Speaker 1: You know. Here we go, and do you have kids?

184
00:10:42,480 --> 00:10:47,000
Speaker 2: I have two children. I have a daughter, Desiree and

185
00:10:47,040 --> 00:10:51,319
Speaker 2: my son Johnny, who's current band member and producer of

186
00:10:51,360 --> 00:10:53,239
Speaker 2: my last several records.

187
00:10:54,360 --> 00:10:55,720
Speaker 1: And what is your daughter up to?

188
00:10:57,080 --> 00:10:59,480
Speaker 2: She works for P and C Bank, she's in the

189
00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:00,319
Speaker 2: corporate world.

190
00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:06,440
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did you decide to become a musician.

191
00:11:09,760 --> 00:11:14,240
Speaker 2: Well, pretty much, my family was musical. My father was

192
00:11:14,280 --> 00:11:19,040
Speaker 2: a musician. We were coal miners. Both sides of my

193
00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:24,120
Speaker 2: family were coal miners. Yeah, but dad's family especially was

194
00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:29,599
Speaker 2: very poor and music was just his passion and he

195
00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:33,320
Speaker 2: played could play just about any instrument you put in

196
00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:37,440
Speaker 2: front of him, and he was pretty serious at it.

197
00:11:37,679 --> 00:11:40,880
Speaker 2: Before World War Two he had a band called the

198
00:11:40,920 --> 00:11:46,120
Speaker 2: Happy Serenaders, who you know, would play on AM radio

199
00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:50,120
Speaker 2: live in those days as they did all around one microphone.

200
00:11:50,679 --> 00:11:53,080
Speaker 2: So I grew up in a house full of music,

201
00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:59,280
Speaker 2: everything from old time country, western to swing to polka's

202
00:11:59,320 --> 00:12:06,080
Speaker 2: to ethnic music. My mother was in a Tamba rits

203
00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:09,960
Speaker 2: in groups, which is an ethnic group here in Pittsburgh.

204
00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:13,200
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, tell me what was the name of what

205
00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:14,000
Speaker 1: what kind of music?

206
00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:17,400
Speaker 2: It was called the Tamba Ritson's. Uh, there's a huge

207
00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:22,320
Speaker 2: Tamba Ritson's organization that plays out at Duquine University. But

208
00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:32,800
Speaker 2: this was local, local ethnic music. Played a Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian,

209
00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:40,720
Speaker 2: Slovenian folk songs and dances. So she did that and

210
00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:42,880
Speaker 2: she also had a beautiful voice as she sang.

211
00:12:43,080 --> 00:12:43,200
Speaker 1: Uh.

212
00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:45,839
Speaker 2: You know that she sang the standards of the day

213
00:12:45,880 --> 00:12:48,640
Speaker 2: around the house all the time. So there was music

214
00:12:48,679 --> 00:12:51,679
Speaker 2: going all the time. That that was, you know, their

215
00:12:51,760 --> 00:12:55,920
Speaker 2: form of entertainment. Uh. I can remember my mother washing

216
00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:58,760
Speaker 2: clothes and my dad sitting on a sellar steps playing

217
00:12:58,760 --> 00:13:01,720
Speaker 2: guitar and my mother sang on it. And then I

218
00:13:01,760 --> 00:13:04,880
Speaker 2: had an uncle who was, you know, more of a

219
00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:08,120
Speaker 2: Fonsie type with the slick back hair, and you know,

220
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,600
Speaker 2: he was into uh rock and roll, and at a

221
00:13:11,679 --> 00:13:16,440
Speaker 2: very young age, I can remember him combing his hair

222
00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:20,760
Speaker 2: in the mirror and uh he had a little record player.

223
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:23,320
Speaker 2: You know, it looked like a little little box with

224
00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:27,480
Speaker 2: a spindle, played forty fives and to this thing, I

225
00:13:27,520 --> 00:13:31,040
Speaker 2: could still remember the songs Speed Up by the Cadillact,

226
00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:38,040
Speaker 2: the Great Pretenders, uh Platters right, Great Balls of Fire,

227
00:13:38,120 --> 00:13:43,080
Speaker 2: Jerry y Lewis who wears short shorts to Royal Teams,

228
00:13:44,280 --> 00:13:48,040
Speaker 2: Great Balls of Fire, Elvis. And they played an old

229
00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:50,559
Speaker 2: stack of records. But he combed his hair and then

230
00:13:50,960 --> 00:13:54,000
Speaker 2: he missed his hair up, pull the records back up

231
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:56,000
Speaker 2: and start all over again. So it was it was

232
00:13:56,040 --> 00:13:59,800
Speaker 2: a Saturday ritual and uh, you know, once I heard that,

233
00:14:00,679 --> 00:14:04,120
Speaker 2: you know, it just became part and parcel of you know,

234
00:14:04,320 --> 00:14:07,680
Speaker 2: just who I was. And then of course like the

235
00:14:07,760 --> 00:14:11,160
Speaker 2: big bang for for my generations, the Beatles on Sullivan Show,

236
00:14:11,920 --> 00:14:14,440
Speaker 2: and so they said, oh man, these guys, you know,

237
00:14:14,559 --> 00:14:15,920
Speaker 2: I want to be a part of that.

238
00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:20,200
Speaker 1: Before we get to the Beatles. How many generations were

239
00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:22,120
Speaker 1: your parents' families in America?

240
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:27,720
Speaker 3: Uh, well, my grandparents came over, so my parents were

241
00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:31,960
Speaker 3: born here, but one set of parents, grandparents came over

242
00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:36,680
Speaker 3: from Ukrainia i was part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire

243
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:39,760
Speaker 3: at the time, and the other set of grandparents came

244
00:14:39,800 --> 00:14:40,440
Speaker 3: over from.

245
00:14:40,240 --> 00:14:43,920
Speaker 2: Serbia, which was also part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire at

246
00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:44,280
Speaker 2: the time.

247
00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:46,920
Speaker 1: So how did they end up in Pittsburgh and how

248
00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:48,760
Speaker 1: did they become coal miners?

249
00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:53,920
Speaker 2: Well, they're a I believe probably imported from their villages

250
00:14:54,040 --> 00:14:58,600
Speaker 2: to come work to coal mines. And so, you know,

251
00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:01,360
Speaker 2: I grew up western prences of any one little coal

252
00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:04,800
Speaker 2: patch we used to call it after another. So they were.

253
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:06,640
Speaker 3: There.

254
00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:12,080
Speaker 2: They were, you know, all coal miners. My grandfather. By

255
00:15:12,120 --> 00:15:17,120
Speaker 2: the time I was born, the still steel mills were

256
00:15:17,160 --> 00:15:19,760
Speaker 2: going strong, but the coal miners coal mining in this

257
00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:26,200
Speaker 2: area where I grew up, it was primarily all mine out. Uh.

258
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:28,720
Speaker 2: My grandfather I just to remember him coming home from

259
00:15:28,760 --> 00:15:30,000
Speaker 2: from working the coal mines.

260
00:15:30,680 --> 00:15:30,800
Speaker 3: Uh.

261
00:15:30,920 --> 00:15:34,080
Speaker 2: My dad and all his brothers were coal miners, and

262
00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:37,480
Speaker 2: all my uncles were coal miners. So I was basically

263
00:15:37,560 --> 00:15:40,320
Speaker 2: the first generation out of the coal mine for both

264
00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:41,240
Speaker 2: sides of the family.

265
00:15:49,080 --> 00:15:52,200
Speaker 1: So you know, you hear you know, black lung and

266
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:55,600
Speaker 1: all the negative effects of being in coal mines. Was

267
00:15:55,640 --> 00:15:56,680
Speaker 1: that in your family too?

268
00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:02,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, my father had black mom and uh, you know,

269
00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:05,760
Speaker 2: it was not something that he aspired to do. Uh.

270
00:16:05,800 --> 00:16:08,720
Speaker 2: He he started working at Koleman when he's twelve years

271
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:18,200
Speaker 2: old and uh got paid by the ton, so uh, yeah,

272
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,840
Speaker 2: he was he was not a fan of that particular

273
00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:23,560
Speaker 2: line of work, to say the least.

274
00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:26,400
Speaker 1: At what age did he die after?

275
00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:30,400
Speaker 2: After World War Two he became a Uh he tinkered

276
00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:32,400
Speaker 2: around with electronics for a while and then he settled

277
00:16:32,400 --> 00:16:37,080
Speaker 2: on fixing cars. He was a musician for a while, uh,

278
00:16:37,160 --> 00:16:41,200
Speaker 2: you know, a part time musician, and and you know

279
00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:44,600
Speaker 2: he played in uh one of the big joys of

280
00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:45,120
Speaker 2: his life.

281
00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:45,720
Speaker 3: Uh.

282
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,200
Speaker 2: He was combat veteran World War two. But after World

283
00:16:49,200 --> 00:16:51,400
Speaker 2: War Two he was stationed in Paris, and he played

284
00:16:51,400 --> 00:16:53,880
Speaker 2: in a swing band in Paris for a couple of

285
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:57,520
Speaker 2: months after the war ended. And uh, that seemed to

286
00:16:57,560 --> 00:17:01,280
Speaker 2: be like his you know, uh, most funny ever had

287
00:17:01,320 --> 00:17:02,120
Speaker 2: according to him.

288
00:17:03,680 --> 00:17:05,840
Speaker 1: Okay, but we think of coal miners dying young. Did

289
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:06,760
Speaker 1: your father die on.

290
00:17:07,520 --> 00:17:10,000
Speaker 2: No, he did not. He was fortunately lived to be

291
00:17:10,080 --> 00:17:10,680
Speaker 2: eighty nine.

292
00:17:11,560 --> 00:17:13,560
Speaker 1: Wow, my father died at seventeen and he was never

293
00:17:13,640 --> 00:17:15,120
Speaker 1: underground until he died. Yeah.

294
00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:18,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fortunate. I have. You know, all my family

295
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:22,560
Speaker 2: at pretty extended, extended runs, and they were all coal miners,

296
00:17:22,640 --> 00:17:24,920
Speaker 2: So yeah, I got longevity on my side.

297
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:27,679
Speaker 1: Okay, how many kids in your family?

298
00:17:28,560 --> 00:17:28,840
Speaker 2: Two?

299
00:17:29,600 --> 00:17:35,480
Speaker 1: You the older, the younger. I'm the oldest, and your sibling. Boy, girl,

300
00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:37,120
Speaker 1: I have a.

301
00:17:37,119 --> 00:17:40,720
Speaker 2: Brother who's a retired school teacher.

302
00:17:42,080 --> 00:17:44,600
Speaker 1: Okay, And how did your parents meet?

303
00:17:45,119 --> 00:17:48,520
Speaker 2: They met World War Two. My dad was home on leave.

304
00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:51,359
Speaker 2: I was a song called nineteen forty five on a

305
00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:56,239
Speaker 2: coming home record. I have a special ed degree. I

306
00:17:56,280 --> 00:17:59,440
Speaker 2: was teaching a special ed at the time. In nineteen

307
00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:04,639
Speaker 2: ninety five, I guess ninety five, fifty years since the

308
00:18:04,760 --> 00:18:10,440
Speaker 2: end of World War Two. I decided that I was

309
00:18:10,480 --> 00:18:15,720
Speaker 2: gonna call my parents and interview them and get the

310
00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:18,760
Speaker 2: details on how they met, so I would say we'd

311
00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:22,120
Speaker 2: be able to pass that information that their story done

312
00:18:22,160 --> 00:18:25,480
Speaker 2: to my children. And so I interviewed them, and of

313
00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:27,320
Speaker 2: course my dad, you know, he was one of the

314
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:29,600
Speaker 2: generations hard to get anything out of him. He didn't

315
00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:33,200
Speaker 2: talk too much about in the past. But my mother

316
00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:36,080
Speaker 2: gave me the story they met when my dad was

317
00:18:36,119 --> 00:18:40,400
Speaker 2: home on furlough before he shipped overseas for World War Two.

318
00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:43,760
Speaker 2: So I wrote a song called nineteen forty five, which Bruce,

319
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:48,920
Speaker 2: you know, Bruce and I collaborated on. It's the truest

320
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:51,720
Speaker 2: story I've ever written. It's about my mom and dad

321
00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:57,639
Speaker 2: meeting during the world World War two, and you know

322
00:18:57,680 --> 00:19:03,800
Speaker 2: how my thoughts of reuniting with her kept my dad

323
00:19:03,840 --> 00:19:06,400
Speaker 2: alive when he was fighting.

324
00:19:07,359 --> 00:19:12,760
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a child of the fifties. What was your skies? Yeah,

325
00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. Well, I mean, you know you're coming

326
00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:17,960
Speaker 1: of age. You're born in nineteen forty eight, so that

327
00:19:18,119 --> 00:19:21,600
Speaker 1: you see what was your experience rock and roll? Depending

328
00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:23,919
Speaker 1: on who we just you know, it is either fifty one,

329
00:19:24,080 --> 00:19:26,480
Speaker 1: fifty three de bandon who we decided it was Rocket

330
00:19:26,480 --> 00:19:30,040
Speaker 1: eighty eight, rock around the clock, whatever. But you know

331
00:19:30,119 --> 00:19:34,360
Speaker 1: that era. His scene is, you know, mostly people being oblivious,

332
00:19:34,440 --> 00:19:38,439
Speaker 1: having fun even though there was racism everywhere. What was

333
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:42,040
Speaker 1: your growing up like before the sixties and all the

334
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:43,960
Speaker 1: youth changes.

335
00:19:45,840 --> 00:19:51,040
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I guess pretty pretty fifties sixty is

336
00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:54,640
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't you know, music was a big

337
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:58,480
Speaker 2: important part. Listen to music all the time. I was

338
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:01,399
Speaker 2: in love with rock and roll and always listened to it.

339
00:20:02,240 --> 00:20:04,359
Speaker 2: You know, it was into Chuck Berry and Boat Diddley

340
00:20:04,359 --> 00:20:10,040
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. And uh there AM radio was

341
00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:12,879
Speaker 2: king here in Pittsburgh, and you would hear all the

342
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:15,880
Speaker 2: top forty stuff on AM radio, but there was always

343
00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:22,600
Speaker 2: outlying stations that had these really unique disc jockeys, and

344
00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:27,439
Speaker 2: starting Friday night about six six or seven o'clock in

345
00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:31,439
Speaker 2: the evening, they would start trying to obscure each other. So,

346
00:20:31,920 --> 00:20:35,280
Speaker 2: you know, I grew up listening to the Stones and uh,

347
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:39,119
Speaker 2: you know in the sixties of Stones, the Beatles, you know,

348
00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:42,320
Speaker 2: Motown and all that stuff. But I also was hearing

349
00:20:42,359 --> 00:20:48,480
Speaker 2: all these really obscure rhythm and blues rock and roll artists,

350
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:51,200
Speaker 2: uh that were really big here in Pittsburgh. They were

351
00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:55,240
Speaker 2: called the Pittsburgh Sound. So I listened to everything I could,

352
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:59,760
Speaker 2: and you know, went to school dances. Uh, you know,

353
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:06,000
Speaker 2: not much of a socialite, pretty much introverted and lost

354
00:21:06,080 --> 00:21:09,600
Speaker 2: in the wilderness until I got a guitar, and then

355
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:14,399
Speaker 2: I started realizing, I think I really like to do

356
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 2: this for the rest of my life.

357
00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:17,399
Speaker 1: When did you get a guitar?

358
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 2: I got a guitar, probably a couple weeks after I

359
00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:25,159
Speaker 2: saw the Beatles on it at Sullivan Electric Guitar, but

360
00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:28,399
Speaker 2: we did have an acoustic guitar at home that I

361
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:29,280
Speaker 2: banged around on.

362
00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:33,240
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me the experience of watching the Beatles

363
00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:36,240
Speaker 1: before you saw them. Did you like them? They were

364
00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:38,120
Speaker 1: on three Sundays on Ed Sullivan.

365
00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:43,200
Speaker 2: Tell me, well, somehow I was able. Jack Parr had

366
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:47,280
Speaker 2: the original Tonight Show and my dad and I watched

367
00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:51,720
Speaker 2: the Beatles during a promotional clip of it She Loves You.

368
00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 1: I saw that too. No one seems to remember November.

369
00:21:54,960 --> 00:22:02,560
Speaker 2: Sember vividly, and I thought, wow, it's really great. And then, somehow, miraculously,

370
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:07,840
Speaker 2: again before they were actually on TV, I found a

371
00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 2: copy of their album and uh, you know, they used

372
00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:14,040
Speaker 2: to sell where I had to buy records when I

373
00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:19,200
Speaker 2: was growing up. I was you know, basically country suburbs.

374
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 2: There was no record stores, but like at a five

375
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 2: and ten they used to call them five and ten

376
00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:32,160
Speaker 2: set store of wool Worse, and they all had areas

377
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:35,960
Speaker 2: where you could buy records and listen to records. And

378
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 2: I found a copy of Meet the Beatles there before

379
00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 2: they were on the Sullivan Show, so I was actually

380
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 2: able to hear their music before most people did, because

381
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:48,680
Speaker 2: I just lucked upon this record. I don't know how

382
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:50,880
Speaker 2: to this day they had it there, but they did,

383
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 2: and you know of course that you know, it was thrilling.

384
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:59,640
Speaker 2: It was like, wow, man, I want to be part

385
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:02,439
Speaker 2: of that. Yeah, And the part of it was, you know,

386
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,120
Speaker 2: you saw guys that were close to your age actually

387
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:10,160
Speaker 2: playing guitar and singing. Most of the bands around town

388
00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 2: where I grew up there were rock bands, but they

389
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:18,240
Speaker 2: were mostly instrumental bands, surf bands, the guitars, very few

390
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:22,000
Speaker 2: vocal stuff. But you know, the Beatles were all self contained.

391
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:25,240
Speaker 2: And then and then find out they're writing their own songs,

392
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 2: as wow, you know, man, what is this? And they

393
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 2: looked like aliens, so that made their appeal stronger. But uh,

394
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 2: and then what's still the deal for me was the Stones.

395
00:23:38,280 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 2: You know, because the Beatles were too perfect, too many chords.

396
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 2: They sang two pretty but the Stones stones. When I

397
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 2: heard the Stones, it's more like the music I've been

398
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 2: listening to. I think I could whack whack out a

399
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 2: couple of these songs. You know.

400
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: So okay, So how do you get the electric guitar?

401
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:00,640
Speaker 1: You beg your appearance? How to go down?

402
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 2: I bought it myself. I always worked part time jobs,

403
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 2: everything from being a paper boy to working in a

404
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 2: to be in a caddie to working in a lumberyard.

405
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:16,919
Speaker 2: And uh, I bought a guitar at Sears roebucks. I

406
00:24:16,920 --> 00:24:22,399
Speaker 2: think it was sixty some bucks, and uh there was

407
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:26,760
Speaker 2: an amplifier built in the case, and that was it.

408
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:31,680
Speaker 1: Okay, those were looked down upon the time, but then

409
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 1: it flipped and everybody was into those silver tone guitars. Yeah,

410
00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:36,879
Speaker 1: do you still have it?

411
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 2: No? I wish I did, And I wish I had

412
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 2: a silvertone amp that I eventually bought too. But you know,

413
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 2: in those days, we traded traded guitars and amps like

414
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,360
Speaker 2: we traded baseball cards. I wish I had my baseball

415
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 2: cards too. That let go. But you know, so, uh yeah,

416
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 2: but they're great, you know, a great sound and little

417
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 2: little things that there were four and everybody had one. Everybody,

418
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 2: just about everybody I knew went out and bought a guitar.

419
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 2: A lot of us kept it up a lot, a lot. Yeah,

420
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 2: I went into mom's cupboard somewhere under the bed.

421
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 1: Okay, you go to Stiers, you buy the guitar. How

422
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: do you learn how to play it? Uh?

423
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:24,120
Speaker 2: Well, my neighbor was a little bit younger than maybe.

424
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 2: He had been taking guitar lesson since he was six

425
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 2: seven years old, so he was quite proficient when the

426
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:33,919
Speaker 2: bells already hit. He taught me a bunch of stuff.

427
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 2: And my dad could play guitar, so he taught me

428
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,879
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff. And then, uh, there was a

429
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 2: bunch of teen nightclubs that go on a weekend. You

430
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:46,200
Speaker 2: hear all. I saw obscure Pittsburgh Music, and you got

431
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 2: to see like Mitch Ryner and Detroit Wills and Bo

432
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:54,360
Speaker 2: Diddley and Sam de Sham and the Pharaohs and Wilson Pickett.

433
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,159
Speaker 2: You know, so all those guys, h Junior Walker and

434
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 2: the All Stars, and I make my way down front

435
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 2: and just watch what they're playing. And plus there are

436
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 2: all the local bands too. A local band, uh eventually

437
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 2: became a Tommy James band. It became to Shawn Delsa

438
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 2: from my home area.

439
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:17,919
Speaker 1: So when did you start forming bands? When did you

440
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 1: start playing outside the house.

441
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:24,439
Speaker 2: Uh, well, we tried right away. Uh. You know, it

442
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 2: probably took us a couple months to learn enough chords,

443
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,399
Speaker 2: but uh, you know, as fast as I could. And

444
00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:34,120
Speaker 2: in high school, Uh, you know, I played dances. Uh.

445
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:37,640
Speaker 2: We had I thing here in Pittsburgh called Swans's which

446
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 2: is a dance at a swimming pool. I played those.

447
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,240
Speaker 1: Uh wait, wait, tell me more about that. I've never

448
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: heard of that.

449
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 2: Well, they have a swimming pool and in the evening

450
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,640
Speaker 2: on a Friday night or or maybe a weeknight during

451
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 2: the well obviously in the summer, kids weren't in school

452
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 2: that you know that they have a band playing, uh

453
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 2: you know, somewhere in the refreshment area, and the kids

454
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:04,199
Speaker 2: would swim and get out of swimming pool, dance and

455
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 2: even played a couple of bars. Back in the day

456
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 2: when I was growing up, down and Go Go dancers,

457
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:13,359
Speaker 2: you know, the whole nine yards.

458
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: Okay, you graduate from high school, then what.

459
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 2: Then I went to college. It's not something I had

460
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:25,399
Speaker 2: a burning desire to do. But I promised my father

461
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: since he had did not receive an education because he

462
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 2: had to drop by of school when he was twelve

463
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 2: years old, then went to sixth grade. But I promised

464
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 2: him I would go to college and went to college

465
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 2: at a okay California State College at his California, Pennsylvania,

466
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:50,840
Speaker 2: which is a little mill town we called Harvard on

467
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 2: Demon and you know, it was like just you know,

468
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 2: I thought I was going to be going where everybody

469
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 2: had long hair and beatles songs, and it was it

470
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 2: was like a throwback to the fifties and it was

471
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,479
Speaker 2: time work in a bad way. And so I was

472
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 2: not able to have a guitar in my dorm room

473
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 2: for a couple of years. So it was for boating,

474
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 2: no guitarist, no music, no fun. And after I moved

475
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 2: out of the dorm one summer, I went to spent

476
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 2: summer Atlantic City and bought my first telecaster to lay

477
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:33,560
Speaker 2: away at a pawn shop and swear to myself I

478
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 2: was never going to quit playing. So I've been playing

479
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 2: NonStop since nineteen sixty eight. I'd you end up in

480
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 2: Atlantic City. I just went there to work for the summer.

481
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 2: What did you do any city racetrack? I was mostly

482
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 2: a bus boy. I didn't like being a waiter. I

483
00:28:55,040 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 2: preferred not to have to socialize with the with the

484
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 2: people who were ordering food or bartender. So I just

485
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 2: cleaned up and uh we found a niche at the

486
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 2: Atlantic City Racetrack, which served us well the following year

487
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 2: because they had the Atlantic City Polk Festival there. Pretty

488
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 2: much to run out of Atlantic City Racetrack because everybody

489
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 2: knew us, and you know, just went back to school,

490
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 2: formed the band and went at it. Try to try

491
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 2: to just playing as much as I could.

492
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: So you're in college, is this being playing gigs?

493
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 2: Yeah? I played bars. I played a lot of frat parties.

494
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 2: There were a lot of places to play in those days.

495
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 2: Live music was still a huge, huge thing. You could

496
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 2: play pretty much as much as you wanted to, and

497
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 2: h you know, the pay was you know, to hundred

498
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 2: bucks was like tops. If you got two hundred bucks,

499
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: you were really doing something if you walked out. I

500
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 2: was played in small bands, trios or quartets, but my

501
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 2: college band was a trio. So you know, if we

502
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 2: could make one hundred and fifty bucks, I was fifty

503
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 2: bucks each you live there for a couple of weeks

504
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 2: of fifty bucks on those days in a college town.

505
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: Okay, if your band is a trio in nineteen sixty eight,

506
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: what are you playing? Cream songs? What are you playing?

507
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we did some originals.

508
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: I did have.

509
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,480
Speaker 2: An audition with RCA Records.

510
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're going to California State College.

511
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: How do you get an audition for OURCA Records.

512
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 2: We had a friend who was a musician, and he

513
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 2: told there was a guy from Pittsburgh who worked with

514
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 2: RCA named Tom Causey, and he told him about us.

515
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 2: We're one of the few bands that were playing originals

516
00:30:55,120 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 2: plus the usual Beatles, Stones, Creamimi Hendricks, you know blues

517
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 2: stuff that everybody else is playing, long extended jams, you know,

518
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 2: really long hair, which is a bit dangerous in that area.

519
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:16,040
Speaker 2: And anyways, we we did have an audition. I just

520
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 2: ran into the audition, ran in, just discovered the audition

521
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 2: tape for the studio. I work out all the time.

522
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 2: Uh the Tom had uh delivered to the studio having

523
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 2: transfer into the digital but uh, for one reason or another,

524
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 2: we never did. The guy showed up late. My band disappeared.

525
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 2: I gave him, uh the demo tape, never heard from

526
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 2: him again.

527
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:44,880
Speaker 1: Well, since you listened to the demo tape today, what'd

528
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: you think?

529
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 2: You know what? I haven't been able to listen to

530
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 2: it yet because it was all real, the real stuff.

531
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 2: But uh, I gotta still track it down. I keep

532
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 2: bugging them for it. As I recall, it wasn't too bad.

533
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 2: There was a couple of good songs, but yeah, you know,

534
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:05,240
Speaker 2: it was definitely a sixty sounded thing, a lot of

535
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 2: heavy guitar.

536
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: How do you start writing songs?

537
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 2: Well, I originally started writing songs probably that was it

538
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 2: wasn't good enough to copy. I was never never my

539
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 2: forte sitting down and copying somebody else's stuff. No perfect

540
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,040
Speaker 2: like a lot of my friends could do. So, uh I,

541
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 2: plus the Beatles and the Stones and everybody else is writing.

542
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 2: You know, everybody's playing originals. So you know that's what

543
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 2: you inspired to do. You put you wrote originals?

544
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: So you graduate from college? Then on.

545
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 3: And then I.

546
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 2: Didn't do anything spectacular for a while. I worked in

547
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:58,760
Speaker 2: a mental institution, uh I noticed is not politically correct,

548
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 2: but they call it a mental institution for the mentally

549
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 2: retarded at that time. I was the first wave into

550
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 2: the mental institutions when they opened them up to public

551
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 2: schools and I had a class there. The kids rolled

552
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 2: in cloth diaperson when I got there, Lena on the floor.

553
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 2: Nobody was torely trained, nobody could eat themselves, nobody could walk.

554
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,000
Speaker 2: And we sort of stayed there for a couple of

555
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 2: years and more young kids come in. I was very

556
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 2: young at the time, in my early twenties. We transformed

557
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 2: the place, changed these kids' lives, and I was young

558
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 2: and single. I was saving up all my money and

559
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 2: got a band together in Pittsburgh, was rented a house,

560
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 2: bought a PA and we started recording demos in my

561
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:53,240
Speaker 2: basement and rehearsing every night with the idea that we

562
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 2: were going to make a record one day. My partner

563
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 2: for many years is our Deani and I started to band.

564
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 2: We called ourselves the brick Ally Band. At the time.

565
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. What was your calling that you

566
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,800
Speaker 1: wanted to work with a mentally challenged as they say.

567
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 2: To that, Uh, well, my calling was uh kel State.

568
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 2: Kel U was a teacher's college at that time, and

569
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 2: I was to stay in school. I had to transfer

570
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:36,839
Speaker 2: out as liberal arts into to UH education and UH

571
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 2: why did you have to do that to stay in school? Well,

572
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 2: because it was the height of the Vietnam War and

573
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 2: they were canceling all liberal arts deferments. And I promised

574
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 2: my father I was going to graduate from college no

575
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 2: matter what. I was there for a couple of years,

576
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 2: doing really well, and then I UH to finish school,

577
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 2: I had to transfer out of what I was doing.

578
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,520
Speaker 2: So UH me and a couple other my buddies, we

579
00:35:03,640 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 2: were at a loss for words. We didn't know what

580
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:08,800
Speaker 2: we were going to do. And uh kel you was

581
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 2: a very tiny school at the time, and uh during

582
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 2: the registration drive were we found out our the pharmacy

583
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 2: had be canceled, and couldn't decide what we were going

584
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 2: to do with our lives, and and made the decision

585
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,479
Speaker 2: on the line. The special ed was the shortest line,

586
00:35:30,239 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 2: so we went over there to register, just to get

587
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 2: it done and over with it.

588
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: And then I grew up.

589
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 2: My best friend had had two uh disabled brother and sister,

590
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:44,759
Speaker 2: and I had an uncle who was several policies, so

591
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 2: I had I had a a feeling, ah that I

592
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 2: might be able to help some of these kids and uh,

593
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 2: you know, I once I went into the to the

594
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 2: Western Center, which was the institution I worked at, after

595
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 2: the shock of being there and seeing the conditions, I

596
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 2: really really loved working with those kids, so that it

597
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 2: was probably the best job ever had. Yeah, so how

598
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 2: did you end up avoiding the draft? I've finished out.

599
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 2: I ended up getting a federal scholarship to study special education,

600
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 2: and then my number I was one fifty. I was

601
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 2: gonna get drafted anyways. Then I got a federal scholarship.

602
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 2: My last year teaching under federal you know, everything paid

603
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 2: full both as a special ed was a new field

604
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 2: at that time, and they needed people to go and

605
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 2: work and work with these kids. And the next year,

606
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,800
Speaker 2: you know, the country decided that the whole Vietnam experience

607
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 2: wasn't that a great idea, and the draft went down significantly.

608
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 2: So I went back into the draft pool, but my

609
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: number wasn't high enough to be drafted.

610
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have this brick Alley band. What is

611
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:19,919
Speaker 1: the status of that band?

612
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 2: Well, the status of that band was we were playing

613
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 2: clubs after well, we were rehearsing and writing religiously that

614
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 2: for about a year and we just finally decided, you know,

615
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 2: we better go get some gigs because otherwise we're never

616
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 2: going to get out of the basement. And we try

617
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 2: to learn some covers top forty stuff just to work,

618
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,399
Speaker 2: because in those days Pittsburgh was pretty much the top

619
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:59,800
Speaker 2: forty song type of club scene. You played ten o'clock,

620
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 2: went to ten forty, he took twenty minutes off eleven

621
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 2: eleven forty. There were strict rules about what you could

622
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 2: do and not do, and we were terrible, terrible Top forty.

623
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,479
Speaker 2: We sucked. I mean, I couldn't stand this. We didn't

624
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 2: We weren't very good at it. Our hearts wasn't in it.

625
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 2: And we found a guy who was named Marty Pizzano

626
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:29,359
Speaker 2: at a club on West Liberty Avenue and we uh

627
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 2: talked to him in and letting us play there, and

628
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 2: I guess she wasn't doing too well, so we said, hey,

629
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 2: you know, can we have a night and we'll just

630
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 2: take the door, let us do anything we want to do,

631
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 2: and he said yeah, And within a short time we

632
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:49,919
Speaker 2: built up a big following there and at the same

633
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:55,239
Speaker 2: time Cleveland Entertainment Steve Popovic got one of my demos and.

634
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: A little bit slower Okay, you're a bad top forty band, right,

635
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: what is building the following.

636
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 2: Uh, Well, we went in and just played whatever we

637
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:13,399
Speaker 2: wanted to play, and we have been rehearsing for a year,

638
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 2: so we're a really good band and we play one

639
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 2: set of original material. We were determined to make a record,

640
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 2: so the music that we were playing in those days.

641
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 2: Eventually it became our first record, Love So Tough, on

642
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 2: Cleveland International. So at the same time that we were

643
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 2: playing I was we were making demo tapes and sending

644
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 2: them out and Steve Popovich.

645
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: Before we get to pop there's a different era. Everybody

646
00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:46,040
Speaker 1: doesn't have a laptop. You go into the studio to

647
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 1: make these demos.

648
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, there was no home recording, you know.

649
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 2: And so who's paying for that? Well, I was because

650
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 2: I was teaching. I had any money. I would say,

651
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 2: my rock and roll career was financed by special ed.

652
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:05,879
Speaker 1: And then if you're not doing any gigs, it's hard

653
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: to keep a band together. So how'd you keep the

654
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 1: band together?

655
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 2: Well, after the first year, we decided we were going

656
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 2: out and play play some gigs, and we caught on

657
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:19,720
Speaker 2: this club called the Gazebo, and we started working almost

658
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 2: immediately after people. I don't know. It was just like

659
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:25,800
Speaker 2: one of the seismic things that happens in music in

660
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 2: a particular down. People just got got tuned into what

661
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 2: we were doing.

662
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: Okay, how many demos had you sent out before Steve reacted?

663
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: Only two? You remember what happened with those two?

664
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, the second one we got a record doing.

665
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:50,839
Speaker 2: The first one wasn't very good. I got a couple

666
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 2: of rejection records. And Steve, you're familiar with Steve Pofferman.

667
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:56,399
Speaker 1: I knew Steve well.

668
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 2: Steve was originally from western Pennsylvania. And uh, you know

669
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 2: Popovich a Serbian name. I had Papovich relatives. You know,

670
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 2: there was just a connection to what we were doing

671
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 2: and and and you know his his personal life, and uh,

672
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 2: I guess you heard something that he related to and

673
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 2: he invited us. We were playing at this point, after

674
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 2: a year in my basement, we were out playing pretty

675
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 2: pretty regularly. We're starting to become more and more popular

676
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 2: around town. We had found this after the gazebo. He

677
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 2: sold the gazebo, Marty was sold the gazebo. We found

678
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 2: a herm turf in the College section of Pittsburgh. Oakland

679
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:48,400
Speaker 2: called the Decade, and we were immediate success at the

680
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 2: Decade and we played. We had a Thursday night residency

681
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 2: for a long time and a lot of a lot

682
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: of weeks we played Thursday and Saturday. So Uh. At

683
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: the same time, we were making demo tapes. And one

684
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 2: of the tapes, UH, Steve put out say Goodbye to

685
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 2: Hollywood in full page Addam Billboard Magazine, Ronnie Spector Billy

686
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 2: Joel song produced by Steve van Zant, recorded by the

687
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 2: street band Cleveland Popovich. It just seemed like a you know,

688
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 2: uh a place I should send the song stick and UH,

689
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 2: so I headed out the door one one Friday, I

690
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 2: believe we had a out of town gig. And I

691
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 2: got a phone call and Steve and he liked the

692
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 2: demo tape.

693
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 1: I sent him.

694
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 2: Advised us up to Cleveland on the following Sunday. He

695
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,880
Speaker 2: said he's having a little get together, a little uh picnic.

696
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 2: So we make our way up to Cleveland, me and

697
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 2: a couple of guys in the band, and UH find

698
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 2: our way to Steve's house and Water's house outday out

699
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 2: the suburbs. Uh Cleveland. Knock on the door, door opens

700
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:11,320
Speaker 2: and there's Ronnie Spector in a fluorescent purple bikini almost

701
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 2: fell over right right there on the spot, and it's

702
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 2: very friendly invites us in. Uh ron back, she said,

703
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 2: go on back, Steve will be here pretty soon and

704
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 2: then we're gonna have a little picnic. So go around back.

705
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 2: And a little while later, a big tour bus pulls

706
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 2: up and I jumped Steve Popovich, Marty Mooney, uh By,

707
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:39,400
Speaker 2: Jukes Side, Johnny and the Juice Southside went there. But

708
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:42,320
Speaker 2: the Jukes were there and bos skags. We had the

709
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:44,879
Speaker 2: number one country song in the country at the time,

710
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 2: the Silk Degrees number one record. So in the middle

711
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:50,920
Speaker 2: of this party, we're sitting there, you know, being total

712
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:55,399
Speaker 2: totally uncomfortable because you know, we're such outsiders and we're

713
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 2: all with all these heavy hitters, and uh Steve throws

714
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 2: on demo tape and you know, of course we're cringing,

715
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 2: and Boss Guys walks over and says he really liked

716
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 2: it and shakes my hand and said, you know, yeah,

717
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 2: hook up with Steve. He's still do good bye you.

718
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 2: So yeah, a little while later, we had a private

719
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 2: meeting with Steve, and you know, I always say to

720
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 2: people that he sent us back to Pittsburgh with a

721
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 2: pocket full of hope. He decided he was going to

722
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 2: finance our demo sessions and we went back to a

723
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:39,280
Speaker 2: couple more demo sessions, signed us to Cleveland Entertainment, Cleveland

724
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 2: National Management, and a production company, and then eventually signed

725
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 2: signed the band. UH placed the band on mc A.

726
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,839
Speaker 1: Okay, so now it's time to make a record, right

727
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: so you know.

728
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 2: We play Thursday night. Well, Steve and Marty Mooney were

729
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 2: the de facto producers of the first record, and there

730
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 2: was a club in Cleveland, the Agora Club, very popular club,

731
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:12,320
Speaker 2: and above the club they had a recording studio called Agency.

732
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 2: So a lot of knights would play Thursday night, get

733
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 2: up Friday, drive to Cleveland, record Friday, sometimes take Friday

734
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 2: night off, sometimes drive back and play Friday night. But

735
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 2: we recorded basically our stage show at the Agency without

736
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 2: you know, no more than one day at a time.

737
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 2: We never did two days in a row. We never

738
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 2: stayed overnight. We drove up, played come back. A couple

739
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:44,280
Speaker 2: of weeks later we would go record a couple more songs,

740
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 2: and Steve Popovich placed us on MCA Records, and right

741
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 2: when the record was getting ready, to come out. They

742
00:45:56,600 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 2: decided to remix it and do some over So I

743
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 2: went to New Jersey, to the House of Music in

744
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 2: New Jersey and did some overdubs and some lead guitar,

745
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 2: and then eventually the record came out in May of

746
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:22,919
Speaker 2: seventy nine, and it was very, very critically acclaimed. People

747
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 2: loved it. And by that time I decided I was,

748
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 2: you know, I was going to through my hat and

749
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 2: a ring and go full time musicians. So, you know,

750
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 2: just felt like I was never going to get that chance,

751
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 2: probably never going to get that chance again. So I

752
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:39,280
Speaker 2: took it and went played.

753
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of questions, So you stop working in

754
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: special education? Right? How did the name of the band change? Oh?

755
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 2: Well, Uh, brick Ellie was a name of an infamous

756
00:46:55,440 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 2: red light district here in a section of Pittsburgh called

757
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 2: McKey Sport. And uh he Steve hated the name, and

758
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 2: my mother hated the name too, by the way, but

759
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 2: that's a whole different story. But uh, he hated the name,

760
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 2: and uh he want us to change it. Uh, So

761
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 2: we came up with Houserockers, and uh, not too long ago,

762
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:30,920
Speaker 2: I discovered that Steve Poffovich with Steve van Zandt decided

763
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 2: to christen us ourn City House Rockers because they were

764
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:38,239
Speaker 2: really into the regional thing at the time and wanted

765
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 2: us to be a regional band be accepted in our

766
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:46,239
Speaker 2: own part of the world. So he dubbed us the

767
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 2: Honest City Houserockers.

768
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 1: And you know, we.

769
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 2: Probably whined and cried about a little bit, but not

770
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 2: too much because we were just happy to have a

771
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 2: record coming out.

772
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: So the record comes out, gets positive reviews, but it

773
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:11,479
Speaker 1: doesn't sell.

774
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 2: It didn't sell too much.

775
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 1: Now I did that.

776
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:19,319
Speaker 2: They made the sixty seventy thousand copies at the time,

777
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 2: which are still pretty good. We got read up and

778
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone. I think it's surprised a hell lot everybody

779
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 2: how well it did. Actually, And in those days, you know,

780
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 2: you had to come up with a follow up really quickly.

781
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 2: So we were back in this We put that out

782
00:48:37,719 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 2: in seventy nine. We were back in the studio in

783
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:44,120
Speaker 2: February of nineteen eighty to record the follow up come.

784
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: Out in May. Did you have all of those songs ready?

785
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we had a lot of them ready. You know,

786
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 2: that's all I was doing, right, So I was playing

787
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 2: they're not playing We had the misfortune of trying to

788
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 2: monitor tour during the first real gas shortage. When you

789
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:12,640
Speaker 2: get gased, like if you had an odd number, even number,

790
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 2: determined whether you had enough gas to go anywhere. So

791
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 2: it's very, very difficult to tour. And I had it

792
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,600
Speaker 2: turned out to be a cancer scare. They found a

793
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 2: tumor in my throat and I had at an emergency

794
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 2: operation which turned out to be benign, thank god, so

795
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,439
Speaker 2: that not be off for a while. So our first

796
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:40,919
Speaker 2: record we did not tour much. We played probably from

797
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 2: May to October a lot, and then then I had

798
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:51,279
Speaker 2: to take a couple of months off and used it

799
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,360
Speaker 2: to write a lot and then we're back in the

800
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 2: studio in February.

801
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, when you're back in the studio, is it

802
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 1: still one day on the weekends or is it more

803
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,200
Speaker 1: conventional where you're there for a few weeks.

804
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 2: Now, we were, we were living the high life. Then

805
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 2: it was New York City s I R Studios actually

806
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:21,919
Speaker 2: rehearsing and uh Steve and his partner Marty Moody. Steve

807
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:26,799
Speaker 2: Poppas and Marty Mudy were really loved music, really really

808
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 2: good music guys, but they could not put their ideas

809
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:37,319
Speaker 2: across they weren't musically adept enough to describe what they

810
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:41,879
Speaker 2: wanted us to do. That I guess it made any sense.

811
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:47,720
Speaker 2: So one day, the first day in the studio, Steve

812
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 2: Puppovitch shows up with Nick Ronson. Uh, it's because he

813
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 2: had signed Ian Hunter and Hunter Ronson band at the

814
00:50:56,719 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 2: moment that uh the record that Ian did Cleveland Rocks

815
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:08,200
Speaker 2: along with a schizophrenic And so mc ronson came in

816
00:51:08,280 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 2: and start working with us, and then one day we

817
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 2: had about a week or ten days of rehearse person

818
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 2: at si R eight ten hours a day. Would usually

819
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:25,919
Speaker 2: rehearse in the morning by ourselves, then McK ronson would

820
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 2: come in and work with us in the afternoon, and

821
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 2: one morning Steve Papa shows up with Steve van ZANDT.

822
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:34,200
Speaker 2: So Steve van Zant would start working with us in

823
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 2: the morning, and then mc ronson would come in in

824
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 2: the afternoon. And then we went in the studio and

825
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 2: sometimes Steve was there, sometimes Mick was there. Sometimes we're

826
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 2: both there. And then Steve left to work on the River.

827
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 2: I told he was working with the River was with

828
00:51:55,719 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 2: Bruce and Ian Hunter started showing up. Mick Ronson, so

829
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:07,920
Speaker 2: There was a whole cast of characters contributing to that

830
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:09,960
Speaker 2: record have a Good Time to Get Out of Lives

831
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 2: And Mick Ronson was responsible for so many arrangements. Steve

832
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 2: an Zant was responsible for some of the arrangements, Ian

833
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:22,440
Speaker 2: Hunter was responsible for some of them, and and some

834
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:25,799
Speaker 2: of them were the band We were just transferred from

835
00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:27,359
Speaker 2: what we were doing at home.

836
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 1: Okay, So what was the special sauce of each of

837
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 1: these individuals?

838
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:37,759
Speaker 2: Well, uh, first of all, uh, you know, they were

839
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 2: the first rock stars we ever met. Uh, you know,

840
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:45,400
Speaker 2: we knew nothing about the music business. Uh and we

841
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 2: we didn't even know anybody who worked in a record store.

842
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 2: So they were pretty phenomenal. I mean we were raw

843
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:59,279
Speaker 2: as raw could be, and each of them had you know,

844
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:04,320
Speaker 2: they were all really good musicians obviously, and you know

845
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 2: they were able to take a song and like rock

846
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:15,720
Speaker 2: Ola that closed the record. We went intoto that session

847
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 2: with it being the fastest song on our in our

848
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 2: repertoire that we were presenting everybody and just couldn't make

849
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 2: it work. And Mick Ronson, who was a very good pianist,

850
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:33,880
Speaker 2: whatever and start playing the song as a ballad and

851
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 2: completely transformed the song, and oh man, you know, how

852
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:40,200
Speaker 2: do they do that? You know, it just gave us

853
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 2: a whole different perspective of how songs were written. And

854
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 2: Steve van Zander did the same thing with the song

855
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 2: that Ronson worked on. It was very slow called old

856
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 2: Man's Bar and van Zane heard it and he changed

857
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:57,440
Speaker 2: it into Junior's Bar, which was one of our more

858
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 2: popular songs to get played on the underground. And just

859
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 2: watching this guy's work and how they arranged the the

860
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:12,840
Speaker 2: instruments and uh, you know, what not to play just

861
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 2: as important as what to play. Give us some spaces

862
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 2: and stuff, so you know. And then Ian come in

863
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 2: and you know, he did the same thing. He just

864
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 2: he took took one song and had nothing to do

865
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:30,360
Speaker 2: with the way he eventually, uh guided us through a

866
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 2: song called Hypnotized, and it was just a germ of

867
00:54:33,239 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 2: an idea and watch these guys just create something on

868
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 2: the spot like that was. It was very very inspirational

869
00:54:39,680 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 2: and educational.

870
00:54:42,160 --> 00:54:44,279
Speaker 1: So tell me about the title track, have a good

871
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:45,359
Speaker 1: Time to get out a Lot.

872
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:50,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's one we pretty much uh brought in

873
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:56,200
Speaker 2: from Pittsburgh. Well we're playing the bars in Pittsburgh in

874
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:58,360
Speaker 2: those days, it was a pretty rough time. You know,

875
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 2: it's still it was still a lot of still workers,

876
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:07,600
Speaker 2: really tough. You know, the steelers were tough, the bars

877
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 2: were tough, and some of the guys, Uh, we were

878
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:14,320
Speaker 2: drawing these really big crowds, and night after night it

879
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:18,880
Speaker 2: would break out in fights. And uh, during one of

880
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:23,320
Speaker 2: the uh riots when we were playing, you know, I

881
00:55:23,640 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 2: stopped singing and trying to calm everybody down, and just

882
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:29,680
Speaker 2: a phrase just come out of my mouth. Hey guys,

883
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 2: you know, I have a good time to get out

884
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,160
Speaker 2: of here alive, you know. And for some reason I

885
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:36,600
Speaker 2: got home that night and uh, I saw I'm basically

886
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:40,360
Speaker 2: just reade itself. Yeah, just one of those gifts that

887
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:41,759
Speaker 2: come to you occasionally.

888
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 1: And what about Pumping Iron?

889
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 2: Pumping Iron was the same thing. It was just about

890
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 2: the local guys that we were hanging out with. And uh,

891
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,920
Speaker 2: you know, those those were two that pretty much stayed

892
00:55:55,960 --> 00:56:02,239
Speaker 2: the same from the demo sessions. Uh. We did a

893
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 2: two CD release of that on Cleveland not too long ago,

894
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:09,840
Speaker 2: and we put all the demos of those songs on it.

895
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,600
Speaker 2: So I don't know if we put the demo Pump Now,

896
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:15,800
Speaker 2: but Pump Now didn't change much there's pretty much what

897
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 2: we were doing.

898
00:56:17,520 --> 00:56:19,399
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the demos. A lot of people

899
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:23,719
Speaker 1: can't find the tracks from hit records. Are you a

900
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:25,800
Speaker 1: pack rat and you kept all this stuff or you

901
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: have to look for it? I kept.

902
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 2: I kept everything that I could get my hands on

903
00:56:31,719 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 2: it through the years. You know, when we were doing

904
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:38,840
Speaker 2: Have a Good Time to Get Out Alive. It was

905
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:44,239
Speaker 2: forty years, and we transferred a lot of stuff from

906
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 2: cassettes because that was like the main thing I would

907
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:50,399
Speaker 2: come home from the studio with. I had a good

908
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:53,359
Speaker 2: cassette player, and I didn't want to reel the real

909
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:57,240
Speaker 2: I didn't have one, so I'd come home with cassettes.

910
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:02,080
Speaker 2: But I did keep old, real copies of most everything

911
00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 2: I did so so I was able to be forcing

912
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 2: enough to keep keep keep just about everything I've ever recorded.

913
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:15,439
Speaker 1: Okay, the album comes out gets a lot of ink,

914
00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: a lot of positive reviews. What was it like from

915
00:57:17,760 --> 00:57:18,520
Speaker 1: your side of the.

916
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 2: Fence, Well, it was one of those things were all

917
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 2: of a sudden we were legit. You know, we were

918
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 2: being talked about in the same breath as the Clash

919
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:34,960
Speaker 2: and Leonard Skinner and Bruce and Jay Giles and you know,

920
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 2: all the guys that you know, we were big fans of,

921
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 2: so it was it was a bit transformational and uh

922
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 2: to realize that, you know, we're connecting in that fashion

923
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 2: with a lot of people is very gratifying.

924
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:58,120
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's the process of that album coming out,

925
00:57:58,320 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: going on the road, and then going back in the studio.

926
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:08,200
Speaker 2: Well, we played for as long as we could, and again,

927
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 2: you know, we're doing an album a year. So it

928
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 2: came around to the spring and Steve Popovich was very,

929
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 2: very instrumental in our career and uh, you know, I

930
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 2: don't want to second guests or think what those guys

931
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 2: were doing, but they became, to my knowledge, they became

932
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:35,439
Speaker 2: embroiled trying to do a follow up about a bad

933
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:38,840
Speaker 2: out of Hell. It was a very very painful process

934
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:42,000
Speaker 2: for him. There was a lot of infighting and we

935
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:47,360
Speaker 2: were sort of left by the wayside, and we decided

936
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:50,440
Speaker 2: to go on our own and and just record the

937
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:55,959
Speaker 2: record because nobody was responding to us. So Denny rosen

938
00:58:56,080 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 2: Krantz was our connection in Los Angeles, and he flew

939
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:05,920
Speaker 2: me out to l A and uh, he suggested we

940
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 2: use Steve Cropper, and uh, you know, I took him

941
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:13,080
Speaker 2: up on it immediately because you know, a chance to

942
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 2: work with all time greats, how could you pass that up?

943
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:22,480
Speaker 2: So we went back to Pittsburgh, wrote some songs Steve.

944
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:26,200
Speaker 2: Steve came in and sat with us for a week,

945
00:59:26,280 --> 00:59:30,360
Speaker 2: ten days rehearsed, and every day went a couple of gigs. Uh,

946
00:59:30,520 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 2: you know, just a real Trooper, and went out to

947
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and recorded Blood on the Bricks, our follow

948
00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 2: up at Cherokee Studios. By the way, on nov Our

949
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:49,960
Speaker 2: Records just did a two CD release re release of

950
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 2: Blood on the Bricks, completely remastered in a CD of

951
00:59:55,920 --> 01:00:01,040
Speaker 2: demos and live songs included in it, which really really

952
01:00:02,600 --> 01:00:11,080
Speaker 2: great sounding compilation. And you know that really put a

953
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:12,560
Speaker 2: new shine on some of the songs.

954
01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:16,600
Speaker 1: So what did Cropper bring to the studio?

955
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 2: Well, Cropper. You know, when Steve my first thought that

956
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 2: I was playing with Steve Cropper, of course I was

957
01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:26,480
Speaker 2: thrilled beyond belief. But when he actually showed up the rehearsals,

958
01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 2: I sat down room. I was so nervous, my hands

959
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 2: were shaken. I barely play guitar. But Steve just you know,

960
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 2: he had a sense of rhythm and timing that was

961
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 2: just impeccable and uh uh arrange arranging, you know, he

962
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 2: he he he. He deferred to us if I was

963
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:54,800
Speaker 2: really adamant about doing something a particular song went to

964
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:58,480
Speaker 2: keep in. But you know, I just think, you know, uh,

965
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:01,920
Speaker 2: he brought out the best in the band because we

966
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:06,160
Speaker 2: were all so in all of them that we picked

967
01:01:06,240 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 2: up everybody picked up their game as far as musically,

968
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 2: just trying to show Steve we were worthy of playing

969
01:01:14,200 --> 01:01:14,520
Speaker 2: with them.

970
01:01:16,040 --> 01:01:20,360
Speaker 1: Okay, what was the consequence of that album coming.

971
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 2: Out, Well, we had a remember Solid Gold. We were

972
01:01:24,960 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 2: pick hitter a week on Solid Gold with Marilyn McCoo

973
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:37,720
Speaker 2: and Andy Gibb were the the co host. We recorded

974
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 2: the Solid Gold the night the Dodgers won the World

975
01:01:41,280 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 2: Series I think in nineteen eighty It was nineteen eighty

976
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:47,880
Speaker 2: one in La We were there that night and we

977
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 2: were afraid that we weren't going to be able to

978
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 2: get to the airport because the whole city would be

979
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:56,240
Speaker 2: going crazy. I Meanwhile, it barely made a blip on

980
01:01:56,320 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 2: the map because when the Parts won the World Series

981
01:01:58,480 --> 01:02:03,560
Speaker 2: in seventy nine just destroyed the city. The fans.

982
01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:08,760
Speaker 1: Okay, the album comes out, it doesn't quite make the

983
01:02:08,880 --> 01:02:10,480
Speaker 1: mark of the previous record.

984
01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 2: No, well again, Steve, Steve Puffett, we had no management,

985
01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 2: were rutterless, and it was very disheartening. And you know,

986
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 2: in retrospect, you know, maybe we shouldn't have made that record,

987
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:30,800
Speaker 2: Maybe should have waited till we had our our act

988
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 2: a little bit together, more together. But you know, we

989
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 2: were young, and you know, we wanted to go. We

990
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:40,920
Speaker 2: want to keep going. We didn't want to just sit

991
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 2: around and do nothing.

992
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:48,120
Speaker 1: And then you make one more record for MCA.

993
01:02:48,720 --> 01:02:51,960
Speaker 2: Right cracking under pressure. I think they dropped us like

994
01:02:52,080 --> 01:02:54,520
Speaker 2: three days after the record come on, and it wasn't

995
01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:57,400
Speaker 2: a record we wanted to make anyway. So it's one

996
01:02:57,440 --> 01:02:59,439
Speaker 2: of those things less said about it the better.

997
01:03:00,080 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: What do you mean you didn't want to make it?

998
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 2: Well, it's you know, we were using it was very

999
01:03:05,800 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 2: eighty sounding. In retrospect, we should you know, we should have,

1000
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 2: and we were getting pressure from the record company to

1001
01:03:15,120 --> 01:03:18,000
Speaker 2: sound a certain way and you know, try to come

1002
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:22,240
Speaker 2: up with a hit song and et cetera, et cetera,

1003
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:27,200
Speaker 2: and you know we should have probably just again not

1004
01:03:27,280 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 2: it recorded that particular record, but we were impatient.

1005
01:03:32,360 --> 01:03:34,800
Speaker 1: Okay, but you know, the big gets dropped and then

1006
01:03:34,840 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: the band breaks up.

1007
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 2: Right, the band breaks up then, So what was that

1008
01:03:39,760 --> 01:03:43,960
Speaker 2: like for you? Well, everybody, it was very, very frustrating.

1009
01:03:44,560 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 3: And then.

1010
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:50,480
Speaker 2: Art and I, you know, and jeff O Simmons is

1011
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:53,360
Speaker 2: still playing with me. We put a band together and

1012
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,320
Speaker 2: decided I wasn't going to go by Krisheky because I

1013
01:03:58,440 --> 01:04:03,600
Speaker 2: was tired of people butchering. I went by my childhood

1014
01:04:03,680 --> 01:04:06,560
Speaker 2: nicknamed Joey G. So we went back to Joey G

1015
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 2: in a Brooke Alley band. We had a local hit

1016
01:04:08,560 --> 01:04:12,200
Speaker 2: here in Pittsburgh, the very eighties sounded thing again, and

1017
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:20,880
Speaker 2: and then that sort of ran its course and I

1018
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:25,000
Speaker 2: was able to get back to the basics and got

1019
01:04:25,080 --> 01:04:30,080
Speaker 2: a record do with Brounder, and I decided from now

1020
01:04:30,160 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 2: on I was going to be uh put my name

1021
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:37,959
Speaker 2: out front, uh just in case, you know, started losing

1022
01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:41,280
Speaker 2: band members again, because when I went from Iron City

1023
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:44,680
Speaker 2: House Rockers to joe Brishecky, a lot of people did

1024
01:04:44,800 --> 01:04:47,160
Speaker 2: not recognize my name. I mean a lot of people

1025
01:04:47,200 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 2: knew who the Iron City House Rockers were, but people,

1026
01:04:51,720 --> 01:04:55,400
Speaker 2: unless they were fans in the band, didn't realize, you know,

1027
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 2: it was me.

1028
01:05:04,040 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 1: Okay, but you've been to the mountaintop and now you're

1029
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:08,920
Speaker 1: back in the Valley.

1030
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 2: I've been to the mountaintop, oh Man, Big Valley, Big Valley.

1031
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:20,240
Speaker 2: But you know, we were played locally. Yeah, we're from Boston,

1032
01:05:20,400 --> 01:05:24,840
Speaker 2: d C. New York City at Cleveland, so we had

1033
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:27,480
Speaker 2: a you know, four or five state area that we

1034
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 2: played in pretty regularly.

1035
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:32,320
Speaker 1: But it's not like today today. You know, it's hard

1036
01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:36,600
Speaker 1: to have a hit that everybody knows. Everybody's regional. Back then,

1037
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 1: it was about being on MTV, being on the radio,

1038
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:41,440
Speaker 1: and if you didn't have a major label, that couldn't

1039
01:05:41,440 --> 01:05:43,200
Speaker 1: even happen relevant what you recorded.

1040
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you know, we were playing because we love

1041
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:50,040
Speaker 2: to play basically.

1042
01:05:50,600 --> 01:05:54,600
Speaker 1: Well, how disillusioning was it that you came so close

1043
01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: but it didn't happen for you.

1044
01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 2: I was bitter for a while, for a long time,

1045
01:06:02,920 --> 01:06:07,880
Speaker 2: maybe a good five six seven years, especially because during

1046
01:06:07,920 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 2: the Blood of brick Are we had a uh, we

1047
01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:16,120
Speaker 2: were having conversations with Freddie demand. You know, Freddie is

1048
01:06:16,200 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 2: sure with ultimately work with Madonna. Yeah, yeah, he wanted

1049
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 2: to sign us he could, and we had a hard

1050
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:28,680
Speaker 2: time getting free of our old contracts, and you know,

1051
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 2: he went on signed Madonna and we got one way

1052
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:33,760
Speaker 2: ticket to the Lucaville.

1053
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:38,600
Speaker 1: So well, how did you ultimately make peace that it

1054
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:39,920
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna happen for you?

1055
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:45,240
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I got married, remarried, start having children

1056
01:06:45,320 --> 01:06:49,320
Speaker 2: and realized that, you know, music is just part of

1057
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:53,200
Speaker 2: my life. It wasn't my whole life. And uh, you know,

1058
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 2: realize if you have kids, you got to take care

1059
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 2: of him. They were more important than having a hit record.

1060
01:06:59,120 --> 01:07:02,520
Speaker 1: So when did you start working a day job? Again? Uh?

1061
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:09,160
Speaker 2: Did rod eighty eight?

1062
01:07:09,880 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 1: And how did that come together?

1063
01:07:12,440 --> 01:07:14,760
Speaker 2: Well? I had a teaching degree, so I went down

1064
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:21,919
Speaker 2: in communities uh uh community uh center in McKees Rocks,

1065
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and started teaching uh people to get their g

1066
01:07:25,880 --> 01:07:29,360
Speaker 2: e eds General Equivalency diploma.

1067
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:30,120
Speaker 3: Uh.

1068
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 2: And it was very successful at it got hundreds of

1069
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:38,240
Speaker 2: people their their high school diplomas and also did a

1070
01:07:38,280 --> 01:07:45,040
Speaker 2: little bit English as the second language. And but yeah,

1071
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:50,360
Speaker 2: and then uh, you know, Johnny came along, and then I,

1072
01:07:51,120 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 2: you know, I was having the kids were having some

1073
01:07:54,880 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 2: health problems. I had no health insurance, so I had

1074
01:07:57,280 --> 01:08:01,640
Speaker 2: to get a job of some health chores. So I

1075
01:08:01,720 --> 01:08:04,919
Speaker 2: went into uh the special ed thing again.

1076
01:08:06,520 --> 01:08:13,000
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean is it tough emotionally or because you

1077
01:08:13,080 --> 01:08:16,360
Speaker 1: have a family. You say this is superior or do

1078
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:19,760
Speaker 1: you feel like, as you say, bitter, how do you know,

1079
01:08:19,960 --> 01:08:21,880
Speaker 1: as I say, it's got to be really tough. You

1080
01:08:21,960 --> 01:08:23,920
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are musicians. You had a

1081
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 1: number of major label loubums. We're hanging with rock stars.

1082
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:31,280
Speaker 1: Now you're back in Pittsburgh, right, Well, I just live

1083
01:08:31,360 --> 01:08:35,080
Speaker 1: with it. You know where it went.

1084
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:37,640
Speaker 2: You know, we had our shot, we didn't quite make it,

1085
01:08:37,800 --> 01:08:41,640
Speaker 2: and you know I wanted to keep playing music. I

1086
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:42,720
Speaker 2: just found a way to do it.

1087
01:08:43,240 --> 01:08:43,599
Speaker 1: I mean.

1088
01:08:45,160 --> 01:08:48,719
Speaker 2: When I uh, you know, we did a couple of records,

1089
01:08:48,960 --> 01:08:55,519
Speaker 2: and we were going nowhere fast, and I was start

1090
01:08:55,600 --> 01:08:58,439
Speaker 2: teaching special at again, and I was working with again.

1091
01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:01,799
Speaker 2: This is a misnomber of kids who were called socially

1092
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:06,679
Speaker 2: and emotionally mal adjusted, were violent, A lot of violent kids.

1093
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:13,719
Speaker 2: License to restrain. We're working there and still teaching ged

1094
01:09:13,880 --> 01:09:16,840
Speaker 2: at night. So I taught. I worked all day, taught

1095
01:09:16,920 --> 01:09:20,439
Speaker 2: G G D night, had a steady Wednesday night gig,

1096
01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:23,520
Speaker 2: and then we tried to playing most Fridays and Saturdays

1097
01:09:24,280 --> 01:09:27,920
Speaker 2: and some I still did a record called end of

1098
01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:31,120
Speaker 2: the Century of course man slightly out of time or

1099
01:09:31,240 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 2: end of the century. It was nineteen ninety two, and anyway,

1100
01:09:38,479 --> 01:09:40,600
Speaker 2: it was about it. I was about the end of

1101
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:46,040
Speaker 2: my rope. And that's when my wife suggested that I

1102
01:09:46,160 --> 01:09:50,120
Speaker 2: give Bruce a call and turned into American Babylon Project,

1103
01:09:50,200 --> 01:09:52,040
Speaker 2: which gave me a new lease in life.

1104
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:56,120
Speaker 1: Do you ever make any money as a house rocker?

1105
01:09:57,160 --> 01:10:04,439
Speaker 2: Uh? No, occasionally occasionally nice payday here and there, But yeah,

1106
01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 2: I worked at Bay Gig til I was seventy five

1107
01:10:06,479 --> 01:10:06,880
Speaker 2: years old.

1108
01:10:06,960 --> 01:10:13,320
Speaker 1: So much kind So at this point any royalties, Uh.

1109
01:10:15,280 --> 01:10:18,520
Speaker 2: I don't know. Wait waiting for that big boat to arrive.

1110
01:10:18,479 --> 01:10:22,559
Speaker 1: You know, so obviously the kids are out of the house.

1111
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:24,479
Speaker 1: What kept you working until seventy five?

1112
01:10:27,560 --> 01:10:31,120
Speaker 2: I like put food on the table. I got to

1113
01:10:31,120 --> 01:10:33,680
Speaker 2: the point where I had a serious back injury. It

1114
01:10:33,760 --> 01:10:40,720
Speaker 2: made it tough to to travel, and you know, just

1115
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:44,400
Speaker 2: get used to a certain level of income. And you know,

1116
01:10:44,560 --> 01:10:49,200
Speaker 2: in a way it was very free because for some reason,

1117
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:53,040
Speaker 2: you know, all these years of teaching, I was still

1118
01:10:53,080 --> 01:10:57,200
Speaker 2: able to write all these records. And my first year

1119
01:10:57,240 --> 01:11:04,479
Speaker 2: I had off as a retiree, I didn't write a

1120
01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:08,479
Speaker 2: song the whole year. You know, I just found a

1121
01:11:08,520 --> 01:11:10,479
Speaker 2: way to do it, maybe because I don't want to

1122
01:11:10,520 --> 01:11:15,759
Speaker 2: give up and you know, I always love playing music,

1123
01:11:15,880 --> 01:11:22,400
Speaker 2: and even in uh the worst of times, you know,

1124
01:11:22,640 --> 01:11:24,439
Speaker 2: it was it was something I always wanted to do.

1125
01:11:24,920 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 2: And my son started playing with me, and uh, I

1126
01:11:28,280 --> 01:11:31,360
Speaker 2: can remember one gig and I'm thinking, what am I?

1127
01:11:31,680 --> 01:11:34,519
Speaker 2: You know, I'm getting old. I'm up there killing myself

1128
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,120
Speaker 2: as people even care what I'm doing. And I look

1129
01:11:37,200 --> 01:11:40,280
Speaker 2: over and he's to my right and he's just bashing

1130
01:11:40,320 --> 01:11:42,280
Speaker 2: away on a guitar and he's having the time of

1131
01:11:42,400 --> 01:11:45,960
Speaker 2: his life. And I think, yeah, you know, that's why

1132
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:49,080
Speaker 2: I started doing this. So I always try to keep

1133
01:11:49,120 --> 01:11:49,639
Speaker 2: that in mind.

1134
01:11:51,160 --> 01:11:53,320
Speaker 1: So how do you finally decide to stop teaching?

1135
01:11:54,600 --> 01:11:58,920
Speaker 2: Well, I got offer for a buyot for health insurance, uh,

1136
01:11:59,760 --> 01:12:01,800
Speaker 2: you know, and I was getting up there in age

1137
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:05,840
Speaker 2: so and I never had easy jobs. I had always

1138
01:12:06,479 --> 01:12:10,240
Speaker 2: worked in rough neighborhoods with really tough kids, so it

1139
01:12:10,360 --> 01:12:11,880
Speaker 2: was the easiest thing in the world to do.

1140
01:12:12,320 --> 01:12:16,360
Speaker 1: So if these kids are prone to being violent, how

1141
01:12:16,400 --> 01:12:17,840
Speaker 1: do you manage them? What do you how do you

1142
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:19,120
Speaker 1: teach them? What's the key?

1143
01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:24,800
Speaker 2: Well, you have to be consistent, uh, you know, you

1144
01:12:24,920 --> 01:12:28,600
Speaker 2: have to set expectations and try to get them to

1145
01:12:28,680 --> 01:12:30,400
Speaker 2: live up to it. And you've got to show you

1146
01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:35,000
Speaker 2: care about them, and and uh, the ones that buy

1147
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:37,760
Speaker 2: into that you have some results. And some of the

1148
01:12:37,840 --> 01:12:41,400
Speaker 2: kids are so damaged by the time you get them.

1149
01:12:41,600 --> 01:12:44,800
Speaker 2: You know that you just hope that they have some

1150
01:12:45,040 --> 01:12:48,840
Speaker 2: kind of decent life ahead of them. But yeah, you know,

1151
01:12:48,880 --> 01:12:51,880
Speaker 2: I run into kids all the time, now, you know

1152
01:12:52,120 --> 01:12:55,479
Speaker 2: that I tip back in the day, I just got

1153
01:12:55,600 --> 01:13:01,080
Speaker 2: an email from from somebody on LinkedIn, so vice president

1154
01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:03,720
Speaker 2: of the company, and he said, you know, thank you,

1155
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:07,000
Speaker 2: mister chief for helping me out. You know, I had

1156
01:13:07,040 --> 01:13:11,080
Speaker 2: a bunch of kids that I was really really close to,

1157
01:13:11,920 --> 01:13:17,080
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm still contact with them. They still hey,

1158
01:13:17,200 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 2: mister G. You know, we love you, mister G. And

1159
01:13:20,800 --> 01:13:22,880
Speaker 2: one guy said I was the father he never had.

1160
01:13:22,960 --> 01:13:25,760
Speaker 2: So yeah, so I mean it's worth it, you know,

1161
01:13:25,920 --> 01:13:29,400
Speaker 2: less time in purgatory for me in some work, guys.

1162
01:13:29,640 --> 01:13:35,439
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, So how rewarding is that work compared

1163
01:13:35,520 --> 01:13:40,160
Speaker 1: to being on stage and having an audience response.

1164
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:48,240
Speaker 2: Well, they're both rewarding in different ways. Having the audience

1165
01:13:48,280 --> 01:13:50,880
Speaker 2: response immediate, it's right there, boom boom boom. You know,

1166
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:52,679
Speaker 2: some of these kids, you work with them for years

1167
01:13:53,040 --> 01:13:57,479
Speaker 2: before you see any kind of progress, and you know,

1168
01:13:57,560 --> 01:14:00,240
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's really you can't compare you of them.

1169
01:14:00,240 --> 01:14:04,639
Speaker 2: They're they're too far apart. There's too they're so completely opposite.

1170
01:14:04,680 --> 01:14:08,120
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, as an artist and a musician, uh,

1171
01:14:09,000 --> 01:14:12,200
Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of like a you know, I

1172
01:14:12,240 --> 01:14:15,160
Speaker 2: don't give a ship, you know, when when you're gonna play,

1173
01:14:15,439 --> 01:14:17,479
Speaker 2: when I get there, when I feel like it, you know,

1174
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:19,320
Speaker 2: what are you gonna do? I don't know. Let's make

1175
01:14:19,360 --> 01:14:21,880
Speaker 2: it up as we go along. But as a special

1176
01:14:22,040 --> 01:14:24,720
Speaker 2: ed teacher, with the kind of kids I worked with,

1177
01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:27,599
Speaker 2: you had to be very structured. You know, you had

1178
01:14:27,640 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 2: to be on the ball.

1179
01:14:29,160 --> 01:14:29,360
Speaker 1: Ah.

1180
01:14:31,560 --> 01:14:33,880
Speaker 2: You know, I used music a lot. I did a

1181
01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:36,240
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of music with some of the kids.

1182
01:14:37,680 --> 01:14:40,760
Speaker 2: You know, we did some great, great shows when I

1183
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:43,519
Speaker 2: started working at a high school with some of the

1184
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:48,040
Speaker 2: kids that I worked with, we did a motown review

1185
01:14:48,160 --> 01:14:52,640
Speaker 2: one time. It's terrific, and uh, you know, it's just

1186
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:57,920
Speaker 2: two completely different parts of the brain at work. And

1187
01:14:58,040 --> 01:15:04,000
Speaker 2: I'm really right side. And for me to be organized

1188
01:15:04,200 --> 01:15:09,519
Speaker 2: and a teacher requires way way more effort than we

1189
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:10,799
Speaker 2: get out and playing guitar.

1190
01:15:12,479 --> 01:15:16,600
Speaker 1: Okay, you've done a certain amount of charity work. Parkinson's

1191
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:19,720
Speaker 1: tree of life. What's the motivation and how much of that.

1192
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:28,200
Speaker 2: Do you do? Well? We've literally done hundreds of charity

1193
01:15:28,240 --> 01:15:32,280
Speaker 2: gigs over the years, and my parents always, you know,

1194
01:15:33,560 --> 01:15:37,160
Speaker 2: taught me to give to others less fortunate than yourself.

1195
01:15:37,240 --> 01:15:42,439
Speaker 2: And you know, the House Rockers, we always felt we're

1196
01:15:42,520 --> 01:15:46,280
Speaker 2: part of the community here in Pittsburgh. Whether everybody thinks

1197
01:15:46,320 --> 01:15:49,439
Speaker 2: that or not, we do. And as part of being

1198
01:15:49,520 --> 01:15:52,960
Speaker 2: good citizens, to give back to the community and personally,

1199
01:15:54,200 --> 01:15:57,400
Speaker 2: you know, to help others less fortunate than yourself, I

1200
01:15:57,479 --> 01:16:00,559
Speaker 2: think is something everybody should do. I mean, that's sort

1201
01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:03,519
Speaker 2: of a no brainer, right, everybody should do that. Why

1202
01:16:03,560 --> 01:16:06,120
Speaker 2: wouldn't you if you could, why wouldn't you help you

1203
01:16:06,200 --> 01:16:06,720
Speaker 2: fellow man?

1204
01:16:08,720 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 1: So if you leave the house and you go around,

1205
01:16:12,160 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 1: to what degree are you recognize in the Pittsburgh area, Uh.

1206
01:16:17,400 --> 01:16:20,800
Speaker 2: Various degrees. All depends the age group. Not so much

1207
01:16:20,880 --> 01:16:24,479
Speaker 2: with the youngsters, you know, probably under forties, under thirties.

1208
01:16:24,960 --> 01:16:28,200
Speaker 2: But you know, I mean everybody. You know, I go

1209
01:16:28,360 --> 01:16:30,360
Speaker 2: to the grocery store, people knows me. I go to

1210
01:16:30,400 --> 01:16:37,639
Speaker 2: the post office, you know, gas station, the mechanics pretty

1211
01:16:37,720 --> 01:16:41,479
Speaker 2: much buddies with with all of them. You know, Pittsburgh

1212
01:16:41,560 --> 01:16:45,000
Speaker 2: is a small city, but a big town. And uh,

1213
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:49,120
Speaker 2: you know, there's always a small degree of separation. You

1214
01:16:49,200 --> 01:16:52,280
Speaker 2: know if you go to another town. You know, my

1215
01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:56,479
Speaker 2: son is over in Rome, and you know he runs

1216
01:16:56,520 --> 01:17:02,360
Speaker 2: into a musicians parents Rome. Hey, I shouldad doing, you know.

1217
01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:10,280
Speaker 2: And so you know it's Pittsburgh. Everybody is connected pretty closely,

1218
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:13,560
Speaker 2: especially the musical community.

1219
01:17:14,000 --> 01:17:18,520
Speaker 1: So what is it about Pittsburgh. Certainly in the sixties,

1220
01:17:19,680 --> 01:17:22,280
Speaker 1: you know, you had the Pirates, you had Bill Masarowski.

1221
01:17:23,240 --> 01:17:25,400
Speaker 1: Then at the end of the decade the seventies, the

1222
01:17:25,479 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: steel mills closed. Now Pittsburgh is very hip again. I

1223
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:33,920
Speaker 1: mean it used to be that Pittsburgh might as well

1224
01:17:33,960 --> 01:17:35,000
Speaker 1: have been Iowa City.

1225
01:17:35,200 --> 01:17:35,320
Speaker 2: Right.

1226
01:17:35,640 --> 01:17:38,120
Speaker 1: What is Pittsburgh like and how has it changed over

1227
01:17:38,200 --> 01:17:40,240
Speaker 1: your lifetime? Uh?

1228
01:17:40,600 --> 01:17:42,400
Speaker 2: Well, it used to be a lot tougher.

1229
01:17:42,920 --> 01:17:43,080
Speaker 1: You know.

1230
01:17:43,360 --> 01:17:46,400
Speaker 2: It was you know, a shot and a beer steel mill.

1231
01:17:46,720 --> 01:17:50,719
Speaker 2: You know, still those twenty four hours a day, terribly

1232
01:17:50,840 --> 01:17:57,160
Speaker 2: smelling dirty, and it has progressed into it and then it,

1233
01:17:57,479 --> 01:17:59,679
Speaker 2: you know, the hard time set and it had lost

1234
01:17:59,720 --> 01:18:02,479
Speaker 2: the world a lot of people. You know, we during

1235
01:18:02,479 --> 01:18:05,800
Speaker 2: the Iron City Houserocker era, we lost a third of

1236
01:18:05,880 --> 01:18:08,960
Speaker 2: our population here in Pittsburgh and a lot of our

1237
01:18:09,080 --> 01:18:14,200
Speaker 2: fans had to move out to uh find employment elsewhere.

1238
01:18:16,960 --> 01:18:19,280
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is about Pittsburgh. It's it's uh,

1239
01:18:19,880 --> 01:18:28,760
Speaker 2: it's it's community, neighborhood, family oriented people here, you know,

1240
01:18:29,120 --> 01:18:34,040
Speaker 2: pretty always sort of friendly once you get to know everybody.

1241
01:18:34,080 --> 01:18:39,439
Speaker 2: Everybody's kind of friendly and very few errors about. You know,

1242
01:18:40,680 --> 01:18:46,160
Speaker 2: nobody has a feeling of superorit superior superiority, being from

1243
01:18:46,320 --> 01:18:50,600
Speaker 2: uh you know, Lawrenceville Homestead, and.

1244
01:18:52,439 --> 01:18:53,360
Speaker 1: You know it was a lot of.

1245
01:18:55,280 --> 01:18:59,640
Speaker 2: Immigrant roots and people bomb together. Uh.

1246
01:19:00,040 --> 01:19:02,040
Speaker 1: You know, the town I grew up in.

1247
01:19:02,200 --> 01:19:06,840
Speaker 2: Was a small still uh, the coal mining town, and uh,

1248
01:19:07,439 --> 01:19:10,560
Speaker 2: there was nobody there but Serbians and Italians and the

1249
01:19:10,640 --> 01:19:14,200
Speaker 2: mixed marriage was a servant Italian and you know my

1250
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:18,719
Speaker 2: grandmother could a Serbian man, could she cook good Italian food?

1251
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:23,280
Speaker 2: Just because she was friends with everybody, and uh, you know,

1252
01:19:23,320 --> 01:19:25,439
Speaker 2: it was a rough time, but everybody sort of had

1253
01:19:25,520 --> 01:19:33,080
Speaker 2: your back. And uh, I think the Steelers when Pittsburgh

1254
01:19:33,200 --> 01:19:36,400
Speaker 2: was coming out at the uh the steelmalls collapsed and

1255
01:19:36,720 --> 01:19:41,880
Speaker 2: the Steelers and the Pirates sort of epitomized that. That's

1256
01:19:41,920 --> 01:19:46,120
Speaker 2: why the town became sports crazy, because it gave the

1257
01:19:46,240 --> 01:19:51,320
Speaker 2: town and identity. Hey, you know, we're tough, we're gonna

1258
01:19:52,080 --> 01:19:54,400
Speaker 2: we're gonna persevere, and we're gonna come out on top.

1259
01:19:54,760 --> 01:19:58,360
Speaker 2: That was always sort of the you know, people were

1260
01:19:58,400 --> 01:19:59,559
Speaker 2: not afraid of hard work here.

1261
01:20:01,040 --> 01:20:03,280
Speaker 1: So what's the status of your music career today and

1262
01:20:03,400 --> 01:20:04,719
Speaker 1: what were you playing writing?

1263
01:20:05,640 --> 01:20:11,719
Speaker 2: Well, my status is we signed to Omnivore Records. Last

1264
01:20:11,800 --> 01:20:16,280
Speaker 2: year we put out house rocker at Joe Grasheki Anthology,

1265
01:20:16,439 --> 01:20:21,160
Speaker 2: which was thirty six remastered tracks with a booklet and

1266
01:20:21,240 --> 01:20:26,799
Speaker 2: all the recording information. Extremely proud of that particular project.

1267
01:20:26,880 --> 01:20:28,720
Speaker 2: If I was going to say, hey, what were you

1268
01:20:28,800 --> 01:20:32,160
Speaker 2: doing for the last forty years, well here, yeah, listen

1269
01:20:32,240 --> 01:20:36,519
Speaker 2: to this. I'll tell you very very pleased with the

1270
01:20:36,600 --> 01:20:41,880
Speaker 2: results and sounds terrific. The music sounds, for the most part,

1271
01:20:42,760 --> 01:20:45,519
Speaker 2: sounds very current, like it could have been recorded and

1272
01:20:45,640 --> 01:20:49,200
Speaker 2: played that day or even written today. Then we put

1273
01:20:49,240 --> 01:20:55,040
Speaker 2: out a record called Cannot Run a Memory, which I

1274
01:20:55,080 --> 01:20:57,439
Speaker 2: think is one of my finest records we've ever done

1275
01:20:58,080 --> 01:21:00,920
Speaker 2: with a new band that we have Arnie Grosheky on

1276
01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:10,320
Speaker 2: guitar and helped produce it, Danny Gackner on guitar, Jeff

1277
01:21:10,360 --> 01:21:15,360
Speaker 2: Garrison on bass, and Jeff Jeffrey Jeffers Simon is on drums.

1278
01:21:15,400 --> 01:21:19,080
Speaker 2: He's been with me since nineteen eighty four. And Rick

1279
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:27,120
Speaker 2: Wakowski is our producer all around jack altrades everything from

1280
01:21:27,200 --> 01:21:31,680
Speaker 2: vocals to keyboards and guitarist percussion. I still have the

1281
01:21:31,760 --> 01:21:34,960
Speaker 2: same road crew I've had for thirty years or more,

1282
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:38,640
Speaker 2: Bryan Coleman, Rick U Black or a couple of new

1283
01:21:38,720 --> 01:21:45,080
Speaker 2: guys Mikey O'Toole and mikey Rita. Very fortunate have very

1284
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:53,960
Speaker 2: loyal carrying band members. Blooding the Bricks came out, the

1285
01:21:54,040 --> 01:21:59,600
Speaker 2: Steve Cropper double CD we just put out, and a

1286
01:21:59,680 --> 01:22:02,080
Speaker 2: couple weeks we're going to release a new single called

1287
01:22:02,439 --> 01:22:06,360
Speaker 2: Living in a Blues Song, which is a statement on

1288
01:22:06,479 --> 01:22:11,320
Speaker 2: gun violence. Ah, we're getting ready to drop that, hopefully

1289
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 2: beyond two or three weeks. And we're working on a

1290
01:22:15,080 --> 01:22:18,719
Speaker 2: new record. So we're still going full speed ahead.

1291
01:22:19,640 --> 01:22:22,200
Speaker 1: And to what degree do you still have the dream

1292
01:22:23,000 --> 01:22:25,360
Speaker 1: or hopes? Are you're just saying this is what I do?

1293
01:22:26,600 --> 01:22:29,479
Speaker 2: Well, you know, this is it is what I do?

1294
01:22:29,600 --> 01:22:32,800
Speaker 2: You know? And like you say, people ask when I

1295
01:22:32,840 --> 01:22:35,519
Speaker 2: am not I can say well, I'm a musician before

1296
01:22:35,560 --> 01:22:37,519
Speaker 2: I say well, I'm a musician and a school teacher.

1297
01:22:37,640 --> 01:22:40,400
Speaker 2: Now I'm back to being a musician. And you know,

1298
01:22:40,680 --> 01:22:42,680
Speaker 2: I'm always thinking the next one I write is going

1299
01:22:42,760 --> 01:22:45,040
Speaker 2: to be the one that's gonna you know, put me

1300
01:22:45,160 --> 01:22:49,439
Speaker 2: on Easy Street, We'll buy the new Lexus. So you know,

1301
01:22:49,520 --> 01:22:52,240
Speaker 2: there's always that hope that so I'm always shooting for it.

1302
01:22:52,360 --> 01:22:54,679
Speaker 2: You know, I want that one big song, Bob.

1303
01:22:55,000 --> 01:22:58,519
Speaker 1: You know, well I hope you get it. Joe. I

1304
01:22:58,640 --> 01:23:01,080
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for we're telling your

1305
01:23:01,160 --> 01:23:02,360
Speaker 1: story to my audience.

1306
01:23:03,320 --> 01:23:05,439
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me. It was great fun.

1307
01:23:06,360 --> 01:23:09,000
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sid