Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Stats Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is drummer extraordinaire Steve Farone or Feroni Steve?
Speaker 1: Which one is it?
Speaker 2: Well when people, when people read it, they say Farone, right,
Speaker 2: But if I if they asked me my name and
Speaker 2: I say Faron, they go what, So I say Feroni.
Speaker 2: It's actually Italian Ferone. So I answer to anything. As
Speaker 2: long as it's close one of those in there, it's
Speaker 2: still good for me. But Fi, my mom used to
Speaker 2: say for him.
Speaker 1: I always heard it was Feroni, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: whether that was just amongst players. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: sort of a nickname. And I know I you pronounce it,
Speaker 1: but the e I think I have it now. So
Speaker 1: in any event, in preparation.
Speaker 2: Do you know, there's a very I got a very
Speaker 2: interesting story about that. Actually. Yeah, when when I was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen fifty, right, my father was African and
Speaker 2: my mother was English, so you can imagine it was
Speaker 2: it was a little bit sort of scandalous. He was
Speaker 2: considered scandalous back then, and uh, and so I was.
Speaker 2: I was born in my in my home, in my house,
Speaker 2: and we had a midwife. Yeah, so when I when
Speaker 2: I came out, I didn't have color that I have now.
Speaker 2: I came out and I was very very old. I
Speaker 2: looked kind of swore. Actually, they thought I looked Italian,
Speaker 2: so so they took that because my mum wasn't married
Speaker 2: to my dad. There was another thing that was like
Speaker 2: a scandal as well. Back then they this woman had
Speaker 2: been to see some movie and there was somebody in
Speaker 2: there called Feroni, and they so she decided we call
Speaker 2: him Feroni. So they actually wrote on the birth certificate
Speaker 2: f E r O n I. Then a few days later,
Speaker 2: when I took to color, they felt stupid, so they
Speaker 2: just took an ink pen and they altered my certificate
Speaker 2: with an ink pen to f E r O n
Speaker 2: E and pronounced it fern because they thought it was
Speaker 2: a bit crazy having the black man money around with
Speaker 2: an Italian name. But everybody called me Feroni anyways at school,
Speaker 2: Oh a Fona, go get Feroni, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your parents weren't married. What were the last
Speaker 1: names of your father and your mother?
Speaker 2: Well, I came My mother's name was Banks, a maiden
Speaker 2: name was Banks, and my father's my father's name. I
Speaker 2: came to find out that. I didn't find this out
Speaker 2: until I was about forty seven years old that it
Speaker 2: was was Nicholson. No relation to Jack Nicholson, but Nicholson.
Speaker 1: So you're going to school, you're like the beginning of
Speaker 1: the line. You're the first farone Feroni.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, correct, Yeah, yeah, for on the number
Speaker 2: one and the last. Actually I mean, I mean yeah,
Speaker 2: I got nine grandchildren and the only one that carries
Speaker 2: the Feroni name is the goal.
Speaker 1: Wow, you have nine grandchildren. How many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: Four?
Speaker 1: Four kids?
Speaker 2: Yeah, two boys, two girls.
Speaker 1: And how many times you've been married.
Speaker 2: I've been married four times, but my but I only
Speaker 2: had children with one of my ex wives. It's complicated,
Speaker 2: not that complicated because many people it's multiple ex wives.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you married now?
Speaker 2: No, I'm engaged. Actually I stopped I stopped getting married
Speaker 2: when I stopped drinking. And then and then and then
Speaker 2: I had a friend for twenty years. In twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: it turned romantic and uh and uh.
Speaker 1: So this will be number five, right, Yes, tell me
Speaker 1: about stopping drinking.
Speaker 2: Well, uh, you know, basically, it stopped. It just stopped
Speaker 2: working for me. Really, I mean, I had I had
Speaker 2: a lot of I had a lot of problems I had.
Speaker 2: I looked at these children actually were the were the problem?
Speaker 2: I mean I had. I had two children. I had
Speaker 2: two children with with with my wife, and then another
Speaker 2: child showed up with and this was a nine year
Speaker 2: old that was actually in between the two children that
Speaker 2: I had with my wife and sewed up with a
Speaker 2: with a with a with a uh a lawsuit and
Speaker 2: uh and and and basically, you know, because I worked
Speaker 2: with Eric Clapton and and you know, average white band
Speaker 2: and and a lot of high profile durand Duran and
Speaker 2: u uh uh uh and Tom Petty, they thought that
Speaker 2: I had their money. You know, I'm just a really
Speaker 2: well I'm a well paid side man, but I don't
Speaker 2: make I don't make that kind of money. So they
Speaker 2: actually came after me with that. And and the way
Speaker 2: that I would hide out from that stuff was I
Speaker 2: just get drunk and go out and get get and
Speaker 2: hang out in the clubs and don't forget about it,
Speaker 2: you know, and and uh and then after a while
Speaker 2: they just stopped working. So I decided I was out
Speaker 2: here in Los Angeles and I did a late show
Speaker 2: with Brian Ferry, like a late late show, and I
Speaker 2: was over at nathan East house and I was in
Speaker 2: his kitchen and he was cleaning the kitchen and I
Speaker 2: was doing drugs and swinging Bokra out of a bottle
Speaker 2: and I just said to Nathan, I said, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna stop. I'm going to stop doing this now.
Speaker 2: And Nathan said, great, that's fantastic. Swear off of swear
Speaker 2: off now, swear off now. And I'm like, wait, slow down, cowboy,
Speaker 2: I'm going to finish this first. And uh. And That's
Speaker 2: what I did, and then uh. And then I got
Speaker 2: on a plane the next day and I went went
Speaker 2: back to New York. And a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 2: I started to go mad. That was basically it. And
Speaker 2: I was in withdrawal. I was in detox, and I
Speaker 2: had no idea what was going on. Uh, And all
Speaker 2: I knew was that it was it was just craziness.
Speaker 2: It was just I was I was just going I
Speaker 2: couldn't all I can think, this should not be happening
Speaker 2: to me. I shouldn't be having these nightmares. And you know,
Speaker 2: I guess kind of like uh, I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: I'd have these vivid dreams of a drink, either drinking
Speaker 2: or using dreams and and and it's actually just I
Speaker 2: couldn't when I woke up coming in swept, my heart pounding, terrified,
Speaker 2: thinking have I done this or I did I do it?
Speaker 2: Or what?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Uh, I couldn't tell if it was real or not.
Speaker 2: And it was just Man. All I could think I
Speaker 2: was I'm not that bad. This shouldn't be happening to me.
Speaker 2: And that was it.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of questions. The person who was suing you,
Speaker 1: did it turn out that they were your biological kid? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yes, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: as a matter of fact, when well, first time, the
Speaker 3: first time that I met met her Whitney, her name
Speaker 3: is Whitney, and uh and the first time that I
Speaker 3: met her, was was down getting the blood test and
Speaker 3: uh and and.
Speaker 2: This little kid walked up to me. And I looked
Speaker 2: at this kid, and it's like, oh, ship, that's one
Speaker 2: of mine. And the woman and the woman who actually
Speaker 2: did the blood test, she said to me, she said,
Speaker 2: you know, there's really no need for me to do this,
Speaker 2: to do this test. Your two peas in a pod,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Hey, you stop drinking and drugging totally by yourself.
Speaker 1: Oruld you go to the program or any of that.
Speaker 2: Well I did. I did about six weeks on my own.
Speaker 2: Uh and and uh, like I say, I was just going,
Speaker 2: I was going. I was Actually I was in a
Speaker 2: losing I was in a losing battle. I was. It was.
Speaker 2: It was kicking my butt, it was gonna, it was
Speaker 2: beating me. I knew what would stop it. I knew
Speaker 2: what would stop all this stuff, which would just have
Speaker 2: a drink or go go go, just go out and
Speaker 2: get get smashed. And you know, but I didn't want
Speaker 2: to do it. I didn't want to. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to do that. And a really good friend of mine
Speaker 2: I used to used to be in cahoots with with
Speaker 2: with this stuff. It actually stopped, uh four years before
Speaker 2: he stopped. He stopped drinking and using it. And he
Speaker 2: just told me, said, I don't do that anymore. And
Speaker 2: he and he and he come to New York and
Speaker 2: he visited me and we go out to the clubs
Speaker 2: and we'd out and he was his name was Stephen Bruton.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, you know Stephen interactive just a little bit.
Speaker 1: I certainly know.
Speaker 2: Well, Steve Stephen. He was what they called us the
Speaker 2: Steve brothers, and well, you know what he looked like. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we said that we were the Steve twins like the
Speaker 2: Schwarzenegger movie. Yeah, exactly exactly and uh and uh and
Speaker 2: Stephen would just you know, he just got me up
Speaker 2: with that drawl of his that say that texted, ah,
Speaker 2: my brother, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And he called me up when I was just in
Speaker 2: the middle of this mess, sitting there like getting punched in,
Speaker 2: just looking like I've been you know, a few rounds
Speaker 2: with Muhammad Ali, just just as like stunned that's had
Speaker 2: that sort of stunned uh look on my face, just
Speaker 2: punched out, you know, just just been destroyed really and uh.
Speaker 2: And I told him I giving up everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he said, what do you mean You're giving up everything?
Speaker 2: I said, no more boots, no more drugs. Yeah, how's
Speaker 2: it going? Totally the whole story? What's going on? And
Speaker 2: and that was the first time that he actually he
Speaker 2: actually mentioned a A to me. You know, he said,
Speaker 2: you he said, you have you try going to And
Speaker 2: my knee jerk reaction, as bad as everything was, was,
Speaker 2: I don't want to go down there. I'm not that bad.
Speaker 2: So he said, just stay where you are, and he
Speaker 2: got on. He got he got on a plane in
Speaker 2: Austin and he flew to New York. And he arrived
Speaker 2: that evening in New York, and he came to my
Speaker 2: house and hung out with me at my house, and
Speaker 2: all he said was me, I find a meeting for
Speaker 2: us tomorrow. And I thought, well, you know, he's come
Speaker 2: all this way. You know, I'm a nice guy. I'll
Speaker 2: go with him my humor room. And and he took
Speaker 2: me to this place that's called Midnight Madness down on
Speaker 2: Houston Street. He found that meeting when they're twelve thirty pm.
Speaker 2: And walked into that meeting and there was a guy
Speaker 2: doing you know what you see guys doing in AA,
Speaker 2: sitting up there telling the story. He was a marine.
Speaker 2: And I felt better than I'd felt in the three
Speaker 2: the three previous weeks. I was just sitting in that
Speaker 2: room with those people, and and that was what kept
Speaker 2: me going back in the beginning, because I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to do I didn't want to do
Speaker 2: any of that stuff, get a sponsored, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: the steps were, read that book. I didn't want to
Speaker 2: do any of that. They gave me a copy of
Speaker 2: Living Sober that was and I've read that. I read
Speaker 2: that bit and that that was pretty that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: But I like to go and listen to people talk
Speaker 2: about the war stories. So I go into the meetings
Speaker 2: that I sit there and they tell all these stories
Speaker 2: about what they did and they'd laugh and I think
Speaker 2: it's funny. And then somebody would get up and start
Speaker 2: talking about recovery, and I think, boring you. They said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to do you a story, give me, give
Speaker 2: me a war story, because now it is that you know,
Speaker 2: that was thirty years ago and uh, and now now
Speaker 2: I like to hear the recovery more than I do
Speaker 2: about the drinking. We will know about that and the drugging.
Speaker 1: I stopped drinking before that, and that was before it
Speaker 1: was cool to have like a perier or something. That
Speaker 1: was when you still went to the bar and people say, hey,
Speaker 1: come on, come on, have a drink. So, being sober,
Speaker 1: after experiencing all this other stuff, how hard was it
Speaker 1: to live your life?
Speaker 2: Well, I used to live in the China Club in
Speaker 2: New York. Right, guess what all the bombing They were
Speaker 2: all aa oh, they said what. There was one that wasn't,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't. He wasn't anywhere near being an alcoholic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: name as Jack. He passed away a few years ago.
Speaker 2: But the other guys, the other guys, they they're sober,
Speaker 2: still sober today. So I didn't really have that much
Speaker 2: much of a problem. And my friends, my friends were
Speaker 2: pretty encouraging and uh and uh and uh uh. I
Speaker 2: mean that I never told them to stop, to stop
Speaker 2: drinking and you know, doing, but they were always really
Speaker 2: nice around me. There was the odd one or two
Speaker 2: of course that tried that I'll come on have a drink,
Speaker 2: and they became they became an acquaintance, like really quickly,
Speaker 2: they got dropped in the on the on the on
Speaker 2: the other side of stuff. For me, I didn't, I've
Speaker 2: got no time for that. Yeah. So but but most
Speaker 2: of them, i'd say, the majority of my friends, even
Speaker 2: though even though that they they still they still drink.
Speaker 2: And they, I mean they've got families and stuff that
Speaker 2: they you know, they've got children and now you know,
Speaker 2: one of them, a couple of girls had just qualified,
Speaker 2: just graduating from college. And yeah, you know, he still
Speaker 2: has a drink every once in a while. But he's
Speaker 2: not nowhere near the crazy man that he was when
Speaker 2: he hung out with me. But I don't you know,
Speaker 2: I say that, but I don't know. If I was
Speaker 2: maybe the crazy one'd maybe he didn't do quite as much. Well,
Speaker 2: I know he didn't do it quite as much as
Speaker 2: I did, because you would always say, you know, guy,
Speaker 2: you guys need to slow down a little bit. He
Speaker 2: would do all that sort of you'd say that to us, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you need to go you need to show show some restraint.
Speaker 2: And I was like, what's that.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. Yeah, So you're growing
Speaker 1: up in the fifties, you're half black, you're half white,
Speaker 1: your parents aren't married to what degree? Is that a
Speaker 1: stigma or everybody just treats you normally?
Speaker 2: But everybody treated me normally. I didn't have I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I mean, you know, my mom lied to me,
Speaker 2: my grandmother. I live. I live with my mother, my
Speaker 2: grandmother and my grandfather. Uh. I mean they lied to me.
Speaker 2: They said, they said, you know that my dad was away,
Speaker 2: and and they give sometimes every once in a while
Speaker 2: they give me a present to say it was for
Speaker 2: my dad. Huh and uh and and and I just, uh,
Speaker 2: I didn't think there was anything unusual. My mom went
Speaker 2: out to work. She was more the father figure than
Speaker 2: than than you know, she's a father figure than I
Speaker 2: had that I had, not my grandfather. But my grandfather
Speaker 2: was a miserable, untreated alcoholic. He didn't know he was
Speaker 2: a milkman. He actually my grandfather used to work at
Speaker 2: the brig was a brewery right down the street from
Speaker 2: where I lived, called Tamplin's Brewery, and he used to
Speaker 2: work in there and get free beer and come home drunk.
Speaker 2: One day, he came home drunk and he raised his
Speaker 2: hand to my grandmother, and my grandmother sent my mother
Speaker 2: up the street to go and get my uncle Ted.
Speaker 2: Uncle Ted was uncle Ted Harmon. She's a champion boxer,
Speaker 2: and and Ted came down and gave me a boxing lesson.
Speaker 2: And so he gave him such an ass whipping that
Speaker 2: he became a milkman. It started delivery milk.
Speaker 1: That is really funny. Okay, So you're in Brighton, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, what do we know? Because I'm an American,
Speaker 1: we hear about the mods and rockers and all that
Speaker 1: stuff happening in Brighton in the sixties. Exact they were
Speaker 1: exposed to.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was there. I was in the midst
Speaker 2: of that. I was in the middle of that, as
Speaker 2: a matter of fact. But I was playing in a
Speaker 2: band and The Who used to play this little club,
Speaker 2: and I think it was called the Florida Rooms, and
Speaker 2: it was down in the aquarium where the aquarium is
Speaker 2: in Brighton, as a matter of fact, where you go
Speaker 2: to buy your ticket and to get into the aquarium.
Speaker 2: If you look to the right, this is a little
Speaker 2: stage and that was that was the club. It was
Speaker 2: tiny that it used to be packed with mods. When
Speaker 2: The Who used to play in there, it was fantastic
Speaker 2: and my and used to open for him.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're growing up in Brighton. Okay, you're a
Speaker 1: little younger than you know the first generation of rock stars.
Speaker 1: So by time you're growing up, is England still in
Speaker 1: black and white? Or is it really kind of like
Speaker 1: America a few thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's I started when I was twelve.
Speaker 2: I tap danced. I used to tap dance. My parents noticed,
Speaker 2: my mom and my grandma, they noticed that I had
Speaker 2: that'd sit in the high chair and we listened to
Speaker 2: the radio and I banged my spoon in time with
Speaker 2: the music, and they said, you know, he's playing in
Speaker 2: time with that stuff. So so they said, we've got
Speaker 2: to do something with that. My grandmother was a huge
Speaker 2: Fred Astaire and Jim Kelly fan, and get him go
Speaker 2: tap dancing. So pretty much as soon as I could walk,
Speaker 2: they took me to tap dancing school. Uh. And so
Speaker 2: I did that and I was really good at it.
Speaker 2: I'm twelve years old, and they and as soon as
Speaker 2: I was twelve years old, you could actually perform in
Speaker 2: the theater. And there was a summer show and they
Speaker 2: had they had auditions for a children's chorus. So I
Speaker 2: go into this. I go into this children's children's chorus.
Speaker 2: I get I get to get the part in that
Speaker 2: I get to play in this in this summer show
Speaker 2: with this guy Max Bygraves, who's an enormous star in England.
Speaker 2: And uh and and uh and I'm out there on
Speaker 2: the stage with the kids chorus. We're doing the twist
Speaker 2: and see, let's twist again like we did last summer.
Speaker 2: And I looked down and looked down into the orchestra
Speaker 2: pit and I see the drummer and he's going, hell,
Speaker 2: why is this usually his hands. How's he doing that
Speaker 2: with his hands? And and uh. And then I'd go
Speaker 2: upstairs the dressing room and I'd practice, get those motor
Speaker 2: skills together, and then i'd go down on the stage.
Speaker 2: Next night, I'd be down there and be looking down
Speaker 2: there in that pit. What's he doing with his feet?
Speaker 2: And so I learned how to how to do the stuff.
Speaker 2: And I just learned how to do that with their
Speaker 2: knife and fork and stuff. And then then Take five
Speaker 2: came out and I heard Take five, and oh, let
Speaker 2: me see, how can I learned how to do that?
Speaker 2: And and I had pretty much and good ideas about songs.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd listen the Beatles were coming out, and
Speaker 2: I'd listen to listen to their songs, and I knew
Speaker 2: new sort of song construction from all the tap dancing.
Speaker 2: So one Saturday morning I go where the little kids
Speaker 2: go to the the the ballroom and in the day
Speaker 2: the in Saturday mornings that have a place where parents
Speaker 2: could drop their kids off, go do their shopping and
Speaker 2: then come back and pick them up. And we'd sort
Speaker 2: of act like we were big grown ups in this
Speaker 2: little dance all and that night Manfred Man were going
Speaker 2: to be playing for the grown ups in the club,
Speaker 2: and uh, and they did a sound check and they
Speaker 2: played for us little kids, and and you know, being
Speaker 2: a dancer, I go, I got to go out and
Speaker 2: dance with the girls, and they say, oh, thank you
Speaker 2: very much, and then they just walk off.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Now I'm twelve years old and my hormone is the guy.
Speaker 2: Now I want to be James Bond. I want him
Speaker 2: to at least adore me a little bit. You know, nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing a good dancer. But that was it barely talk
Speaker 2: to me. All my friends who are all just in
Speaker 2: the same trouble. Manfred Man comes down. They play. They
Speaker 2: played three notes and every little girl in the place
Speaker 2: is screaming and going crazy over manfred Man. And they
Speaker 2: said to my friends, that's it, no more dancing. So
Speaker 2: one of the guys he had a real guitar. He
Speaker 2: stayed on the garage and so he had money, so
Speaker 2: he got him in like a real guitar and he
Speaker 2: made it, made it go a record player and sort
Speaker 2: of Jerry did up to so it had he could
Speaker 2: plug into it. And they have a little amplifier. I
Speaker 2: had a toy drum kit and we go and we
Speaker 2: play We play sauce standing there. We had the other guy.
Speaker 2: He had a te chest with you know, like the
Speaker 2: skiffle thing with the broomstick and sticking out of it
Speaker 2: them piece of string and boom boom boom boom boom,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh and uh we play sauce standing there.
Speaker 2: That was about the only song that he knew. But
Speaker 2: he he used to hang out in the in the
Speaker 2: music stores. Because he had a real instrument, he was
Speaker 2: allowed to hang out in the music stores. And the
Speaker 2: older kids that had bands used to go in there,
Speaker 2: and nobody had telephones back then. Everybody you put you
Speaker 2: put a notice in the paper, or you put if
Speaker 2: you wanted a musician and you wanted to find another musician,
Speaker 2: you got to a music store and you put up
Speaker 2: a notice drummer wanted, a guitarist, wanted bass player, wanted
Speaker 2: you know, or you put in an add in the
Speaker 2: New Musical Express or a melody maker or something like that,
Speaker 2: you know. And these guys were in there and they
Speaker 2: were putting up an ad and they were talking to
Speaker 2: the owner. He said that their drummer, they had a
Speaker 2: gig at a youth club and their drummer had to
Speaker 2: have his appendix out, and so he couldn't do this
Speaker 2: gig and they needed a drummer to sit in. So
Speaker 2: my friend took his life into his hands and said
Speaker 2: to these eighteen year olds, hey, I know a drummer.
Speaker 2: And they're like, who's that. You know? Really he's good
Speaker 2: and they were a blues ban too, and he said,
Speaker 2: he said, he's good. And he's black guy too, you know,
Speaker 2: So that that was my first reference. So they said, well,
Speaker 2: tell him to come to this address. They gave him address,
Speaker 2: and tell him to come here and see it in
Speaker 2: like six o'clock and we'll try him out. So this
Speaker 2: gig came around to my house and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: there's the big kids and they got a band. And
Speaker 2: I told him that you play for him, you know,
Speaker 2: and I was, well, said the drummers. Did they want
Speaker 2: you to just play gig? So I said, well, okay,
Speaker 2: So he gave me the address and I went over.
Speaker 2: There's over on mon Peleia Road somewhere, and remember them
Speaker 2: went to this place and I went in there and
Speaker 2: they had a drum kit set up and they said, okay,
Speaker 2: sit down and they started to play the blues and
Speaker 2: I started to play with him, and I jammed with him.
Speaker 2: They said, well, okay, you can do the gig. I
Speaker 2: did gig, and then they fired the drummer.
Speaker 1: Now, so.
Speaker 2: It was my It was my gig. So now I'm
Speaker 2: wandering around a twelve year old terrified that I've stolen
Speaker 2: the gig of some eighteen year old drummer who if
Speaker 2: he comes face to face with me, it was my
Speaker 2: butt and now. And the other thing was I wasn't
Speaker 2: too difficult to find, you know, the only black kid
Speaker 2: for like fifty miles in any direction. So it was
Speaker 2: a pretty scary time. But they used to take me
Speaker 2: down to see all the blues tours that used to
Speaker 2: come in. The Chicago blues guys used to come to
Speaker 2: Sonny Terry Brownie McGee, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Waters, all
Speaker 2: those guys used to come through Bill dog It. They'd
Speaker 2: come and they play at the Dome, and they would
Speaker 2: take me down and see these people play, and I
Speaker 2: just loved it. It was kind of just knew that
Speaker 2: that was what I wanted to do when I left Scores.
Speaker 2: I wanted to play the drums.
Speaker 1: Okay, you went to the gig as a twelve year old,
Speaker 1: you played their drum set. When did you get a
Speaker 1: drum set?
Speaker 2: Wow? You know I had I had this sort of
Speaker 2: makeup drum kit. It was it was like the bass
Speaker 2: drum was as big as I was. It was like
Speaker 2: a big, huge march in basic bed. I actually have
Speaker 2: a photograph. I have a photograph of my first gig.
Speaker 2: And I wore a little bow tie. My mom made
Speaker 2: me dress up and put a bow's eye on, you know,
Speaker 2: it look smart and uh. And I had this, and
Speaker 2: I had this, I had this. They had a snare drum,
Speaker 2: a skinny snare drum, and I liked the skinny snadrow.
Speaker 2: And my grandma bought me a big thit snare drum.
Speaker 2: So I took I took the snares off and I
Speaker 2: used it as a tom tom and they put it
Speaker 2: on the sand and they use it as a tom tom.
Speaker 2: And I had really you know, crappy symbols. When I
Speaker 2: found out how much you know, good cymbals cost, it
Speaker 2: was like helmu. You know, back then it was probably
Speaker 2: like twenty pounds. Yeah they were free, but it might
Speaker 2: as well have been like, you know, two thousand pounds
Speaker 2: for me, But it was. It was just a lot
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have the gig with the band, they
Speaker 1: kick out the other guy, they put you in. Then
Speaker 1: what happened?
Speaker 2: And then they got me They got me a drum kit.
Speaker 2: They got me a they got me a a an
Speaker 2: Olympic drum kit which was an entry level. Well no,
Speaker 2: the entry level was a gigster. Premiere that they had
Speaker 2: three a gigster which was really crap awful, and then
Speaker 2: they had the intermediate which was so so if you
Speaker 2: found a decent one, it was okay Olympic and then
Speaker 2: Premiere was was the big one, which is what Keith
Speaker 2: Moon started playing after they stole his love wig, and
Speaker 2: and and and so I had this a little Olympic
Speaker 2: kit that really worked out all right for me. But
Speaker 2: the great thing was was that when when I used
Speaker 2: to go and open in this little club for like
Speaker 2: for the likes of the Who, that they'd let me
Speaker 2: use their drum kit. Wow, so I you know them
Speaker 2: was like the Hollies and all these bands used to
Speaker 2: get all the Mersey bands and the London bands used
Speaker 2: to come down there and they didn't want to have
Speaker 2: to take off because it was a tiny stage. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to have to take their drum kit off
Speaker 2: and to put mine up there, you know, and there
Speaker 2: was no room otherwise up there to do it for anything,
Speaker 2: you know, So so they'd say, well, just use your
Speaker 2: own snare drum and put your own bass drum pedal
Speaker 2: on there, and then you can play. And I'd sit
Speaker 2: there and I'd play all these. I wouldn't move anything.
Speaker 2: I just I wouldn't dare move anything. And I just
Speaker 2: sit there and I played these. I played these, you know,
Speaker 2: these eyes came down. I had like love with kids
Speaker 2: and tricks and kits and Rogers kits. I never saw
Speaker 2: a gretch, but I heard about them as I got there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're in America. We're the lead like about
Speaker 1: year and a half. The Beatles don't hit here until
Speaker 1: the beginning of sixty four. Were is it hits in England?
Speaker 1: Sixty two sixty three? It's a menia in America?
Speaker 2: Yes, What was it like in the UK? It was
Speaker 2: the same, you know, it was. It was just a
Speaker 2: great But okay, so the Beatles were the principals, Beatles
Speaker 2: and the Stones And actually I was more of a
Speaker 2: Stones Stones fan because of the blues connection that I
Speaker 2: had with the band. There was the Beatles and the Stones, right,
Speaker 2: and then there was all these other bands that were
Speaker 2: you know, like the Mersey, the Mersey Sounds, you know
Speaker 2: that the Liverpool sort of became like a fashion a center.
Speaker 2: So and then you had the London bands that that
Speaker 2: were that was sort of modeled themselves sort of the
Speaker 2: Who sort of stuff or blues bands, and and so
Speaker 2: there was there was a lot of bands. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just the Beatles, but the Beatles were the were the
Speaker 2: were the the superstars because you know, all the girls
Speaker 2: used to chase them about all over the place and
Speaker 2: scream at them all the time and make a lot
Speaker 2: of noise and and and they made they make you know,
Speaker 2: it's funny. I'd listened to the Beatle. When I first
Speaker 2: heard Hey Jude, I was like, what the hell are
Speaker 2: they doing? You know, I didn't get it. I thought
Speaker 2: that they you know, they sort of messed up. They
Speaker 2: they sort of left the you know, where's the pop song?
Speaker 2: I don't This is a weird song, you know. But
Speaker 2: then it sort of morphed into becoming Hey Jude for me,
Speaker 2: you know, and and oh really, you know, and then
Speaker 2: I started to get into like Sergeant Pepper and their stuff,
Speaker 2: and and and and that was a whole that was
Speaker 2: a whole different experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: A few questions combined her. How long do you stay
Speaker 1: in school? When do you decide? When do you decide
Speaker 1: you want to become a professional musician? And what path
Speaker 1: does that do?
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you. This afternoon,
Speaker 2: I was out there at this college. I'm doing this,
Speaker 2: doing this orchestral thing. And I walked into this class
Speaker 2: and there was a couple of guys in there and
Speaker 2: I said, is this the green room? And they said, oh, no,
Speaker 2: this is a classroom. We're changing that. We're changing the carpet.
Speaker 2: And I looked and I said, you know, I hated school.
Speaker 2: I hated school and I still do. They started to
Speaker 2: ask me when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do? Is the school leaving
Speaker 2: age was fifteen? And I said, I want to be
Speaker 2: a drummer. And they said, well, you can't do that,
Speaker 2: and I said why not? I said because it's not
Speaker 2: a real job. I said, ringo star does it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And they said yeah, but you ain't Ringo star And
Speaker 2: I said no, but I can hang with Ringo. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was really cocky, cocky little kid. You know, it's
Speaker 2: pretty pretty sure of myself. And and and so I rebelled.
Speaker 2: I just stopped studying all together. I did nothing I
Speaker 2: used to I used to play football. I used to
Speaker 2: box at the school. Uh, I was in the A
Speaker 2: stream and I sort of hovered in the middle of
Speaker 2: the A stream. I went out of that. I just stopped.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wasn't doing any of that. And all
Speaker 2: I did was go play with my band. I go
Speaker 2: and play youth clubs with my band and come in
Speaker 2: all bleary eyed the next morning. And uh and uh
Speaker 2: and they called me. They you know, they mocked me.
Speaker 2: They called me Ringo at school?
Speaker 1: Was he?
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, okay, I even went I
Speaker 2: even went to this to this teacher because I knew
Speaker 2: that I wanted to travel, and they had a French class.
Speaker 2: And I said to him, his name was Savell, And
Speaker 2: they said, mister Savelle, what would it take? How could
Speaker 2: I get into your class? I want to learn how
Speaker 2: to speak French because I knew I wanted to travel,
Speaker 2: and I thought I'd better get a second language. And
Speaker 2: he looked at me and he said, I don't want
Speaker 2: you in my class, and I said, okay, fine, and
Speaker 2: then I went off and I taught myself French.
Speaker 1: Okay. So in this in this period, yeah, you stop
Speaker 1: going to school of fifteen, I assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, as I could get out of the way.
Speaker 1: And are you continuing to live with your grandparents? Are
Speaker 1: you making a living drumming or do you have a
Speaker 1: street job.
Speaker 2: In addition, I have a I had had. I had
Speaker 2: a numerous ever worked in a car washer a bit.
Speaker 2: I worked in a building site. I was a paint sprayer.
Speaker 2: I did all kinds of I did all kinds of jobs,
Speaker 2: you know, anything anything to pay. I mean I had
Speaker 2: a good job on the building site. You know that
Speaker 2: the owner of the of the company, you really liked me,
Speaker 2: and you wanted to put me through school to make me,
Speaker 2: make me become a site agent.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make music, That's all I wanted
Speaker 2: to do. And the paint sprayer guy, he you know,
Speaker 2: he'd been in he been in the says in the war,
Speaker 2: and he actually he actually I said, when I got
Speaker 2: the opportunity to go up to London, I said, I
Speaker 2: got this opportunity to go up to London, go and
Speaker 2: play some music. And he said, take it, he said,
Speaker 2: you know, he said, you can always come back here
Speaker 2: and work if you need to. You know, I'll always
Speaker 2: give you a job, he said, But these opportunities to
Speaker 2: do something that you love only coming around once in
Speaker 2: a while, So just go up there and take the
Speaker 2: opportunity and do what you can with it. And I
Speaker 2: went up there, and I did the starving musician thing,
Speaker 2: you know, just.
Speaker 1: Before we get there. You know, the train from London
Speaker 1: to Brighton is not that long, no, and it's not
Speaker 1: that different from where I grew up in these you
Speaker 1: take the train into New York City. You're living in
Speaker 1: Brighton before you moved to London. How often would you
Speaker 1: go to London?
Speaker 2: I went a couple of times with my parents.
Speaker 1: That was it. That was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So what was the invitation, What was the
Speaker 2: opportunity that got you to London? Well, there was a
Speaker 2: there was a answered an ad in the back of
Speaker 2: the New Musical Express for a drummer and and there
Speaker 2: was a guy who lived in North London, and he
Speaker 2: said that he was managing this band, and would I
Speaker 2: go out? Would I go up there and and and
Speaker 2: try playing with him. So I went up. I just
Speaker 2: went up to London and I started playing with these guys,
Speaker 2: a guy named Calvin Bullen and Hugh Bullen and some
Speaker 2: other guy that was a singer and Hugh. Hugh died
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago. Calvin, I'm still in touch
Speaker 2: with his guitarists and and anyways, uh uh. We we
Speaker 2: lived in the guy got us a one room. There
Speaker 2: was like this room in the basement, I guess what
Speaker 2: they call a garden and room, and and we we
Speaker 2: robbed it. Used to have to rob the gas meters
Speaker 2: so that we could get hot water.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was pretty It was really bad, you know. And
Speaker 2: we go and we rehearse in not not In hill
Speaker 2: in Notton hill Gate. We go down there and rehearse,
Speaker 2: and you know, go up to clubs and tell them
Speaker 2: that we were poor musicians. Would they let us in?
Speaker 2: And the dormant would let let musicians in sometimes and
Speaker 2: go and play, you know. And I remember one Christmas,
Speaker 2: I had to get a job delivering delivering mail as
Speaker 2: like a Christmas mailman, so that I had a bit
Speaker 2: of money, you know, to live. We rely on We
Speaker 2: rely on on girls that we met in clubs that
Speaker 2: would feed us, you know, and there was we met
Speaker 2: West Indian, a couple of West Indian girls, and and
Speaker 2: they gave me. They gave me, They took me the
Speaker 2: house and they cook cook curry goat and rice and peace.
Speaker 2: As somebody who's used to diet of fish and chips
Speaker 2: and roast potatoes and roast beef, curry goat and rice
Speaker 2: and peace wasn't very appetizing, but I was hungry, so
Speaker 2: I learned to eat it. Now I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and uh, and that's it was.
Speaker 1: It was a rough time. Well, okay, what's the journey
Speaker 1: from there to a big break for you?
Speaker 2: Well, I just played with a lot of different bands.
Speaker 2: Got with the band that went to went to Italy
Speaker 2: for a week and and we got into a car
Speaker 2: crash in a blizzard in Belgium, put all the equipment
Speaker 2: on the train and went down went down to Italy
Speaker 2: to play in this club called the Titan Club. And
Speaker 2: we got there and we set up and we started playing,
Speaker 2: and this American guy named Ronnie Jones, who was a
Speaker 2: singer in Italy, asked me to stay. And you know,
Speaker 2: we got down to Rome. It was sixty degrees, which
Speaker 2: for me was boiling hot, and I loved it in January,
Speaker 2: so I'm not leaving here. I'm going to stay right here.
Speaker 2: And I stayed there and I worked with RUnni. I
Speaker 2: stayed there for I went for two weeks and I
Speaker 2: stayed there for three years in Italy and just work
Speaker 2: with different bands. And that's where I met Robbie McIntosh
Speaker 2: from Average White Band and Alex lidget Wood. You used
Speaker 2: to sing with Santana, and I followed Robbie into another
Speaker 2: band after.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but well that's a little fast for me.
Speaker 1: So you're in Italy that is not the epicenter of
Speaker 1: the music world.
Speaker 2: No, but there's music there. No, No, come.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what's going on in your mind? Are you
Speaker 1: saying I like the weather I'm playing, or you're saying shit?
Speaker 1: Am I ever going to break through here? Do I
Speaker 1: have to go back to London? No?
Speaker 2: I didn't even even thinking about that. I was just
Speaker 2: thinking about that. You know, I was meeting lots of gals,
Speaker 2: Italian girls and Italian girl that that's nothing to Tonian.
Speaker 2: I was up at I was making music, I was
Speaker 2: earning a living. I was I didn't have any responsibility
Speaker 2: to go home and be with my parents or anything.
Speaker 2: I was having a ball and I was playing playing
Speaker 2: music with these great musicians. You were teaching me stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay this late date. You know, like Kenny Aronoff, you
Speaker 1: went to ah the school and he can write music,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You where are you on that spectrum?
Speaker 2: I started that at twenty one with this with this
Speaker 2: French band, and they were going to go and they
Speaker 2: were they were they were real musicians. They knew how
Speaker 2: to read music, they knew how to do all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I knew and all I knew was was that
Speaker 2: if I wanted to be a professional, I'd have to
Speaker 2: learn to do what they did. And they all went
Speaker 2: to this music school in Nice and Andy. They approached
Speaker 2: me they I was playing with them in Italy and
Speaker 2: they said, listen, we've been off of the residency in
Speaker 2: a casino in Nice. Would you come and do you
Speaker 2: want to come and stay there for a year with
Speaker 2: us to get your work permits and everything. It be
Speaker 2: on the up and up and you'll make earn money.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, I was. I was kind of
Speaker 2: in that space where I was like, Okay, I'm twenty
Speaker 2: going to be twenty one, I got to do something.
Speaker 2: I'm either going to go back to England and go
Speaker 2: back to school. And I met some of my Americans
Speaker 2: that messed around with computers and that kind of interested me.
Speaker 2: But I knew what it would take to be a musician,
Speaker 2: and either one involved school, the nemesis of school. And
Speaker 2: so they offered me this gig and I said, well,
Speaker 2: can you get me into that music school that you
Speaker 2: go to, and they said, we should be able to.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't be a problem with that. So I went there
Speaker 2: and I started to work with them in this casino
Speaker 2: and the percussion teacher from the Conservatory of Nice came
Speaker 2: and saw me play and he said, he said, oh,
Speaker 2: you said, I just turned twenty one. I was twenty
Speaker 2: one when I came here to Denis the day I
Speaker 2: went to Nie, it was on my twenty first birthday,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, you're too old to get into
Speaker 2: the music class, tool to get in the percussion class.
Speaker 2: The eldest that they would take somebody for the percussion
Speaker 2: class as fifteen. I said, what can I do? They said, well,
Speaker 2: we're going to make you a teacher. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what do you talk? Are you how can you make
Speaker 2: me a teacher? He said, well, you play modern drums.
Speaker 2: And the only thing that we teach in this conservatory
Speaker 2: is classical music. To teach classical drums, we don't treat
Speaker 2: They don't teach meat and potatoes drums. And we got
Speaker 2: a lot of young kids, and they want to learn
Speaker 2: to play like Bernard Perty. They want to learn to
Speaker 2: play like Billy Cobbram, they want to play like Ringo Star,
Speaker 2: they want to play like Charlie Watts, they want to
Speaker 2: play like John Bonham. And you know how to do that,
Speaker 2: you know. So they said, you teach them to do that,
Speaker 2: and you're in the school and we'll get you into
Speaker 2: the soul fish classes. So I said, okay. And my
Speaker 2: first thing was the first thing to do was that
Speaker 2: school was to put on a concert with these kids
Speaker 2: and play some jazz with these kids, and for a
Speaker 2: radio show to publicize the school. And they did that,
Speaker 2: and then I started teaching these kids, and they used
Speaker 2: to pay me private lessons and everything to teach them
Speaker 2: how to play modern drums. And then I go sitting
Speaker 2: in the selfish class. Selfish classes meant, this is a
Speaker 2: great thing. I'd have to write out stuff for them
Speaker 2: for them to practice. It was simple, very simple stuff
Speaker 2: like straight up, straight down, drop a beat here, and
Speaker 2: I'd write this stuff out. And these kids have been learning.
Speaker 2: They knew how to read music since they could walk.
Speaker 2: So they would look at me and they say, no,
Speaker 2: mister FERRONI, that's not how you write that. You write
Speaker 2: it this way. So they would teach. They were teaching me.
Speaker 2: They were teaching me how to write stuff out. It
Speaker 2: was the best deal. And I was making money in
Speaker 2: the casino. It was just the best I had, the greater.
Speaker 2: The three years of that, I did, okay.
Speaker 1: So what happened after three years of that?
Speaker 2: After three years of that, I got the phone rang
Speaker 2: in the casino and they said, there's a phone call
Speaker 2: for you from England. And I thought it might be
Speaker 2: my mother. I thought it might be something wrong going
Speaker 2: on at home. And I picked up the phone and
Speaker 2: it was Brian Auger and he said, do you want
Speaker 2: to come to a marror work with me? And I
Speaker 2: was ready and I said yes, I want to go.
Speaker 2: And he said you got two days to get to England.
Speaker 2: So I sold all my stuff, got on a plane
Speaker 2: and flew to England.
Speaker 1: And how did Brian Orgar know you or you know him.
Speaker 2: Robbie McIntosh and he he come.
Speaker 1: He'd been in.
Speaker 2: When I was in Italy working Robbie who used to
Speaker 2: play with the Piranhas. We all went to see Robbie
Speaker 2: play with Brian Orga and I sat in with him.
Speaker 2: They let me sit in. They asked me to sit in,
Speaker 2: so I went and sat in and play some music
Speaker 2: with him, and he remembered me. So when Robbie left,
Speaker 2: he said, I need to get another drum. And Robbie said,
Speaker 2: once you called Steve. Remember that guy Steve? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yew did I get old of him? And he
Speaker 2: tracked me down in the in the casino. And that
Speaker 2: was when I made my first trip to the United States.
Speaker 1: Okay, two days you're in England. You fly to America.
Speaker 1: Good experience or bad experience with Brian Auger.
Speaker 2: Awesome experience, awesome and and and I remember like we're
Speaker 2: driving driving up we get you know, I arrived with
Speaker 2: the cart with my drum kit on it, you know,
Speaker 2: And and the guy said, what are you doing here,
Speaker 2: I'm on vacation. I'm on vacation And he said no,
Speaker 2: I said, you're a musician. I said, yes, yes, I
Speaker 2: come here. I want to play music with people. And
Speaker 2: he said, ah, he said, you got any drugs? And
Speaker 2: I said no, so, no, so I don't have no drugs.
Speaker 2: And he said, see that door there, that door was
Speaker 2: New York City. There's all the drugs that you want
Speaker 2: in there. Boom stamped my passport and then I went
Speaker 2: that was it. And then riding up looking at those
Speaker 2: skyscrapers on Sixth Avenue, he was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: And the smell, just the smell of the city was
Speaker 2: like amazing. And opposite the hotel where we were at
Speaker 2: was a New York Jazz Museum and you go over
Speaker 2: there and people were just sitting in there playing jazz
Speaker 2: in their little concert people sitting on the floor listening
Speaker 2: to people played that girl. That was heaven for me. Heaven.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were in New York and how long were
Speaker 1: you in the US.
Speaker 2: For that trip? I think we were here. I think
Speaker 2: we were here maybe two or three weeks because we played.
Speaker 2: We played in New York in a club in New York.
Speaker 2: It was up in mid to up up on the
Speaker 2: Upper East Side. And then we went to Boston and
Speaker 2: we played in this club called Paul's Mare. Did you ever? Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: And we played in Paul's More and then and then
Speaker 2: we drove from Boston. We drove three or four days
Speaker 2: across the country to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: You drove.
Speaker 2: In a couple of station well, and the first part
Speaker 2: of it was really boring, right, But then we got
Speaker 2: to the Rocky Mountains and I remember coming round on
Speaker 2: this road going up the Rocky Mountains and there was
Speaker 2: a huge moose standing by the side of the road
Speaker 2: and that was the first toy o. Oh, this is
Speaker 2: We're getting into the West. Now, this is great. And
Speaker 2: then driving through the desert and being terrified that we
Speaker 2: were going to run out of gas. And I remember
Speaker 2: stopping at a gas station and there was near Vegas,
Speaker 2: and there was a slot machine. I put a quarter
Speaker 2: or something in the slot machine and I won two
Speaker 2: silver dollar pieces and I've still got them. Wow. Yeah
Speaker 2: and uh and and then finally getting to Los Angeles
Speaker 2: and playing at the Whiskey of Go Go. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was it was everything that I wanted, everything everything
Speaker 2: that was it was. It was fun, it was music,
Speaker 2: it was I was just playing great music with a
Speaker 2: great player, Brian Olver, And he's still still my friend,
Speaker 2: still a great player. Yeah, here's the eighty something now
Speaker 2: and he's just as in Uday say to Brian, Hey, Brian,
Speaker 2: you want to play, but I'm there. He's there immediately
Speaker 2: there you know, and and it was an amazing, amazing experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you go back to England, then what do
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 2: I started playing with with the with some local guys
Speaker 2: in in England, the studio studio musicians. They had a
Speaker 2: band called Gonzales. Uh and and I started to do
Speaker 2: record dates and people started to ask me to play
Speaker 2: on on records. Gonzales. Gonzales was a band that if
Speaker 2: if you if you were a musician and they and
Speaker 2: they knew you and they knew you could play. It
Speaker 2: was sort of run by a guy named Mickey's. He
Speaker 2: was a saxophone saxophone player. Uh So, what would happen
Speaker 2: was you get asked to go and play that seat
Speaker 2: was then yours until you had a conflict, you had
Speaker 2: a gig that you couldn't be there and play with
Speaker 2: the band. Then somebody else, somebody like Richard Bailey would
Speaker 2: come in and be would be would be the drummer
Speaker 2: and it was his gig until he couldn't do it,
Speaker 2: and then somebody else would come in or if you
Speaker 2: were available, and they just called around and find out
Speaker 2: who was there. And that was we actually opened for
Speaker 2: Average White Band at the Townhouse one one Easter Easter
Speaker 2: Bank Holiday, and and I was hanging out with Robbie.
Speaker 2: Robbie and Hamish and Alan and those guys, all of
Speaker 2: them were hanging out with everybody. I was hanging out
Speaker 2: with everybody there. And that was a great gig at
Speaker 2: the Roundhouse. So so you know I started. I got
Speaker 2: this guy Mike Vernon, yeah, a producer. He called me
Speaker 2: up and well, actually he came to see the band
Speaker 2: play at Ronnie Scott's and he said, I'm doing this
Speaker 2: album with freddie King, and I want you guys to
Speaker 2: play on this album with Freddy King, an album called Burglar.
Speaker 2: And so that was my first full album, like first
Speaker 2: first real studio musician gig was was that freddie King album?
Speaker 2: Pretty good start?
Speaker 1: Okay, freddy King a lot of Americans, no One from
Speaker 1: the Grand Funk Railroad song We're an American band, and
Speaker 1: he never had a hit on the rock charts, and
Speaker 1: now his reputation keeps going up and up. So what
Speaker 1: was it like working with Freddy King?
Speaker 2: It was amazing. He was He was quite a character.
Speaker 2: You know. He'd wear these jumpsuits, his big white jumpsuits
Speaker 2: and he had a huge belt buckle with FK on it,
Speaker 2: you know, and the studs all around it. Sort of
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley out sort of guy. And he was loud
Speaker 2: and he drank gin. He liked to drink gin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they were what they were doing with this album
Speaker 2: was they were trying to bring him a little bit
Speaker 2: more into the R and B area, to make him
Speaker 2: a bit more popular with this with this record. So
Speaker 2: that's why they had us play on it. But he
Speaker 2: insisted on playing straight, straight blues every single day, and
Speaker 2: he would wander down to the studio usually with a
Speaker 2: buttle of gin and he's hand and it's like it's
Speaker 2: time to play and we just sit down and play
Speaker 2: a blues. But he's a what a player. God, he
Speaker 2: is just a great player. What a character. Excellent.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you know where you're hanging in London, you
Speaker 1: know everybody, you're doing some sessions, you're working with Freddie King. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the next step for you after that?
Speaker 2: Well, Mike Vernon said, do you want to, uh, come
Speaker 2: out and I'm doing a record with this span Bloodstone.
Speaker 2: They're doing a movie. Would you come out to Los
Speaker 2: Angeles and and and and work with me with them? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 2: So I came out to Los Angeles and ended up
Speaker 2: recording with with with Bloodstone working on their movie. And
Speaker 2: it was at that point that right then that Robbie died.
Speaker 2: Was Robbie came in. They were playing The Average White
Speaker 2: Band were playing in at the Troubadoor, and I spoke
Speaker 2: to Robbie and he said, once you come down on
Speaker 2: Sunday night. We hung out a little bit and he said,
Speaker 2: once you come down on Sunday night, it's going to
Speaker 2: be a big party. It's going to be a last night.
Speaker 2: And I said, I got to work on this movie.
Speaker 2: If I get through, I'll come down. And as luck
Speaker 2: would have it, I couldn't go. So next day my
Speaker 2: drum tech guy named Terry Merchant called me up and
Speaker 2: said Robbie's dead. And I said, what, they're drunk and
Speaker 2: he said, no, man, Robbie's dead, and and that was shocking,
Speaker 2: shocking to me. Robbie always said I'm going to dive
Speaker 2: before I'm twenty five. I never thought that was going
Speaker 2: to happen to him. I thought he was indestructible. Robbie
Speaker 2: could drink, God, he could drink. He could drink like
Speaker 2: a butler of Voca, and then switched to Scotch and
Speaker 2: he'd never get sick. He'd just pass out, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what happened. Somebody gave him this.
Speaker 2: They said it was cocaine and it was heroin. It
Speaker 2: was cut, was strickening, and it stayed in his system
Speaker 2: and he killed him. Yeah, did that stop me? No?
Speaker 1: But well, I mean that's when I first became aware
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, they came to La. I was in
Speaker 1: La and the album had just come out. So how
Speaker 1: do you become a member of the band so fast?
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't very fun. I mean, you know, I was.
Speaker 2: I went down when I after Robbie had died. I
Speaker 2: went to the hotel they were staying down here on
Speaker 2: just off a venture of Boulevard, in this hotel, just
Speaker 2: off a venture or and doing what scotsman do when
Speaker 2: they were having awake drinking and I was down there
Speaker 2: with what are you guys going to do?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And nobody really knew. Everybody was just a mess.
Speaker 2: And then I would say, I said, look, you know, Robbie,
Speaker 2: Robbie wouldn't want you guys to stop right now. They
Speaker 2: were just starting to get airplay with it, pick up
Speaker 2: the pieces were just starting. I said that that's like,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's not what he would want. I said,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what if I can help you out,
Speaker 2: if I got time, I'll help you out and I'll
Speaker 2: come and play with you. And then Stick Super offered
Speaker 2: the same thing from from the Crusaders.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, the same same deal. So if
Speaker 2: I couldn't do it, Sticks would do it. So they
Speaker 2: were going out and doing like the odd weekend here
Speaker 2: and there.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: When I started playing with them, they were they were
Speaker 2: opening opening for Billy Cobham and that's when I first
Speaker 2: met Mike and Randy Brecker who was playing with them,
Speaker 2: and uh and and uh uh uh pick up the pieces.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden was like boom bang number one
Speaker 2: and then Billy Cobbin was opening for us. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I was under contracted, Bloodstone. I was contracted. I mean
Speaker 2: I signed a contract and they you know, they gave
Speaker 2: me a car and and they gave me you know,
Speaker 2: paid me money every week and just to work with
Speaker 2: this band. We did a gig down at the old
Speaker 2: Long Beach Arena and we're down there and we played
Speaker 2: this gig.
Speaker 1: And uh we finished.
Speaker 2: To give us a great gig. Everybody every started. Everybody
Speaker 2: started off a little bit skeptical. I was this band,
Speaker 2: you know, and then when they realized that we were authentic,
Speaker 2: and then they all started dancing and the place just
Speaker 2: went wild and it was really great. And they came
Speaker 2: off the stage and this little guy with a goate,
Speaker 2: very dapper, like a sports jacket, I think like a
Speaker 2: shirt and instead of like they speaking a little bit
Speaker 2: like this. Ah. He came walking up to and he said, ah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you gotta giant in the band. You gotta be in
Speaker 2: the band. And I said, I'd love to, but I can't.
Speaker 2: I'm in a contract to this other band. And he said,
Speaker 2: you're out of that contract and you're in this band.
Speaker 2: And then he turned around and whooked a white and
Speaker 2: Bruce McCaskill, the manager of the Bad Spanager, was there.
Speaker 2: I said, who is that and he said, oh, that's
Speaker 2: aw'm I herd again.
Speaker 5: Heard that coming, and I was that was it. I
Speaker 5: was out of the out of that contract, and I
Speaker 5: was in Average White Band. It was that that's simple,
Speaker 5: Average White Band. They have that huge album, you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: so many great tracks. I love the cover of Work
Speaker 5: to Do.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, okay, they do that.
Speaker 1: They do the Cut the Cake album.
Speaker 2: That's what I did.
Speaker 1: That was my first So, although not quite as commercially
Speaker 1: successful as the previous album, where does this leave you,
Speaker 1: because you've been doing a million different things at this point,
Speaker 1: do you say, I'm just a member of the average
Speaker 1: White being. This is all I do with us?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's kind of what I was doing, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean I was I did Average White Band and
Speaker 2: that was it. And and uh and we recorded Cut
Speaker 2: the Cake. And while I was in you know, if
Speaker 2: if if if I played something and a Reef said, uh,
Speaker 2: so I first met a Reef Mardin, he said, I
Speaker 2: really like that. That's I like that pattern that you're
Speaker 2: playing there. Just keep playing that pattern that that's that's
Speaker 2: the groove that I want, so that I can remember it.
Speaker 2: So everybody was talking while they were called it. I'd
Speaker 2: write it down. I write write out what the pattern was,
Speaker 2: so I wouldn't forget it. Yeah, because I could do
Speaker 2: that forget get stuff and uh and uh. At the
Speaker 2: end of cut the cake, a ref said to me,
Speaker 2: he said, listen, I noticed you read music and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: a little bit. He said, he said, uh, would you
Speaker 2: would you? Would you like to do some sessions for me?
Speaker 2: Would you do some sessions for me? So I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd love to, you know, so he bought me. I
Speaker 2: think the first session that I ever did and was
Speaker 2: was a bet Middler song, like a bet middle of
Speaker 2: sort of dance song that I did. That was the
Speaker 2: first session that I did from And then he started
Speaker 2: to use me on Sha Ka Khan and all the
Speaker 2: Shaka Khan stuff started to happen. And then other producer
Speaker 2: Zarif was such a hot shot producer. Other producers in
Speaker 2: town suddenly started hearing, Hey, you know the guy who's
Speaker 2: playing with the average white man, he's doing sessions. And
Speaker 2: so I started to get these calls and I went
Speaker 2: to what I what I call the the the the
Speaker 2: school of Local eight o two in New York with
Speaker 2: all those wonderful studio musicians, all those guys that that
Speaker 2: that became my friends that still today my friends. And
Speaker 2: they taught me. They taught me everything. They taught me
Speaker 2: what worked, what didn't work, and and and they they
Speaker 2: even let me try stuff out. And uh ref Mardin,
Speaker 2: I owe so much to a Reef Mardin. A Treasury's
Speaker 2: memory is just a wonderful, wonderful man.
Speaker 1: So what was his magic? What is it that he did?
Speaker 4: He he he.
Speaker 2: He, Okay, you could sit and you could play. You
Speaker 2: could run down. You're running down a song and you're
Speaker 2: sitting down and you're playing a song and you're trying
Speaker 2: to find a part, and you're trying to get this thing,
Speaker 2: and you'll play, you'll play. And then he would come
Speaker 2: in and he'd say to me, says, Steve, come here
Speaker 2: a second, and he take me in into the into
Speaker 2: the into the into the control room, and he would
Speaker 2: have the engineer. He'd say, just play from number five
Speaker 2: twenty right, and so he he's u and then he
Speaker 2: get to this area and he say, hear that that's
Speaker 2: what I want. I want that all the way through,
Speaker 2: you know, and I get it, I get I get
Speaker 2: what he was talking about. You that that's that's the
Speaker 2: groove he was looking for. And so sometimes it was
Speaker 2: it was difficult to grab that and sort of hang
Speaker 2: onto it schoolboy crush on.
Speaker 1: On.
Speaker 2: I mean, I came that. I got credit, rid a
Speaker 2: credit because that was that was my group, you know,
Speaker 2: that was that was my thing that made that come together.
Speaker 2: And we must have done like twenty six takes of
Speaker 2: that dang thing that one day, I mean, and it
Speaker 2: just did not hang together. And the reef said, okay,
Speaker 2: everybody go home, come back tomorrow and we cut it
Speaker 2: first thing in fresh and it'll be okay. So we
Speaker 2: all go out go do what we go to do
Speaker 2: that evening' get a get up. The next day, go
Speaker 2: to the studio. We walk in and said, well, let's
Speaker 2: let's run it down. Just make sure we got the form.
Speaker 2: And we ran the song down. Okay, let's go for
Speaker 2: a take. We do a take. We go in and
Speaker 2: we sit there and we listen and it didn't hang
Speaker 2: together again. It was like god, no, here we go again.
Speaker 2: And the engineer, Jean Paul, who was Les Paul's son,
Speaker 2: is less Paul so much to say. Jean Paul turns
Speaker 2: around and said, you want to listen to the run through?
Speaker 2: You'd hit that button and boom there it was. It's uh,
Speaker 2: you know, a reef had a really great sense of
Speaker 2: of of of.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know it's only like with Shaka, come uh. We'd
Speaker 2: have a song. Shaka always showed up late, always late, right,
Speaker 2: So so so we're in there and working the work
Speaker 2: in the rhythm section, you know, all this like Richard T. Cornell,
Speaker 2: the Prix were all these great players, and we were
Speaker 2: sitting in there and we learn our part and we
Speaker 2: let we get this whole thing. We get okay, this
Speaker 2: is how the song's going to go right perfect, and
Speaker 2: then Shaker would show up about two o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: She walk in that vocal booth and she'd open her
Speaker 2: mouth and everything would change. Everybody would just adjust to
Speaker 2: for this, for this vocal for this vocalist, you know.
Speaker 2: And a Reef was big enough to say that's great. No,
Speaker 2: that's not what I taught you. That is great. That
Speaker 2: stuff is great, and and he just knew his stuff
Speaker 2: if right right, string arrangements that were just there was
Speaker 2: there was so cool with you know, with lots of
Speaker 2: stuff going on, but the never get in the way
Speaker 2: of anything. What I found about a Reef was when
Speaker 2: we recorded average White Man, we we could we could,
Speaker 2: we could he could add horns. I mean we had
Speaker 2: Brecker Brothers would come in and and and and and
Speaker 2: we'd have like a horn section on certain stores, the
Speaker 2: Brecker Brothers coming. We we we'd add string sections, uh
Speaker 2: a reef of right string arrangements. We'd have all this stuff,
Speaker 2: but percussions. Ray Bredo would come and play with us,
Speaker 2: you know, all these people would come and would come
Speaker 2: and play with it, and we'd make this album. We'd
Speaker 2: make this thing. But we could always go out a
Speaker 2: six people and play that album. And that wasn't the
Speaker 2: case with other with other producers. We'd have to augment
Speaker 2: the band with like and that. Later on we started
Speaker 2: having these other other producers that were coming, and they're
Speaker 2: great producers, but just not I don't know if they
Speaker 2: knew how to produce a band, you know, because we'd
Speaker 2: have all this with a reef, we'd have all this
Speaker 2: other stuff on there. But we could still go out
Speaker 2: with six people and just play this, play these songs.
Speaker 2: With these other people, we'd have to have the background
Speaker 2: vocalists and add another piano player. And and and I
Speaker 2: was sitting out there playing it was like where did
Speaker 2: my band? Where'd my band go?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And with some other band, Now that's not average white band,
Speaker 2: this is this is some other band. And that was
Speaker 2: kind of like when things started to go downhill when
Speaker 2: we when we when we left the Atlantic and went
Speaker 2: to Arista. Okay, let's stop there for a second. You
Speaker 2: said you learned something. You learn a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: from all the studio musicians in New York. Tell me
Speaker 2: a couple of things you learned. Well, I think the
Speaker 2: most important thing was not to be afraid to ask
Speaker 2: about something if you saw something that you didn't understand,
Speaker 2: to ask. Asked that. I remember I was doing a
Speaker 2: session one day with Marcus Miller and and and and
Speaker 2: there was this thing that was on that was on
Speaker 2: the on the chart that they that they give me
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what it was, you know, and Marcus,
Speaker 2: what's that like? You know barfi what is that thing
Speaker 2: at bar fifty seven? And he said, oh, that's oh okay,
Speaker 2: got it, know what it was? And Marcus said, turn
Speaker 2: around and said thank you. I said what he said,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you for not messing it up and
Speaker 2: blaming somebody else. He said, it's always great to ask stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, ask about stuff. And yeah, he was wonderful.
Speaker 2: And so I mean I got to play stuff that
Speaker 2: was that for me was really difficult. When I played
Speaker 2: with the band. I played with this band with Anthony
Speaker 2: Anthony Jackson, Uh what was what I forget what they
Speaker 2: called the Dang brand now, but it was Michelle Camello
Speaker 2: was was in the band. Gordon Gordon gott Lee was
Speaker 2: who was a New York Philharmonic percussionist was in the band.
Speaker 2: Peter Gordon was played french horn in the band. Uh
Speaker 2: and and and when Anthony couldn't do it, will Lee
Speaker 2: would do it. But the music was just really difficult
Speaker 2: stuff and they they would teach me how to do it,
Speaker 2: how to play it, and I'd have to figure out
Speaker 2: ways to play things that was kind of out of
Speaker 2: my out of my out of my domain, you know, Uh,
Speaker 2: these mixed measures and stuff that they were playing, and
Speaker 2: I had to figure out how to play my simple
Speaker 2: stuff through there to make that, make it speak properly.
Speaker 1: So if they didn't call you, who did they call?
Speaker 1: And how competitive was it?
Speaker 2: I never felt and he and he sort of competition
Speaker 2: at all. I mean, there was there was the cats,
Speaker 2: and there was there was those people that were the cats,
Speaker 2: and there was those that weren't, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I go and see like Steve Gadd play with stuff
Speaker 2: all the time up at Michael's. Chris Barker was a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine and Steve and Omaha Kim was
Speaker 2: was a friend Lenny White. I used to see him around.
Speaker 2: We'd run into people in the studios.
Speaker 1: There was.
Speaker 2: There was just lots of lots of I mean, I
Speaker 2: mean I used to come out. I used to come
Speaker 2: out here and out to California and hang out with
Speaker 2: Jeffercaro who's a friend of mine. So there was enough
Speaker 2: with his brother this afternoon. We just was just just
Speaker 2: playing with his brother this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Okay, So tell me about going to rist and how
Speaker 1: that kills the band.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Clive had ideas about what he wanted
Speaker 2: the band to be, and he sent us these songs
Speaker 2: that frankly there they were just awful. They were like
Speaker 2: songs that Barry Man and I didn't want to put
Speaker 2: on his record. I think Clive I had this vision
Speaker 2: of making average white Man into the next air supply,
Speaker 2: and for me, there already was an air supply and
Speaker 2: we didn't want to be that anyways, And and it
Speaker 2: just sort of got there. We started making records that
Speaker 2: I still I still listen. I tried to like him.
Speaker 2: I just don't like them. Cupan's in fashion was just awful.
Speaker 2: H and uh we started to do that, and then
Speaker 2: it's just sort of like, man, you know, this is
Speaker 2: like they're dying. I'm going to leave before I don't
Speaker 2: want to see it dead. I'm just gonna leave. Mhm.
Speaker 2: And you left it and did you have enough studio
Speaker 2: work or what were you thinking? When that's what I went,
Speaker 2: That's what I went to do. I just went back
Speaker 2: to doing studio work. I just did a lot of that.
Speaker 1: And when did you start going out on the road again.
Speaker 2: I did a little bit here and there, I mean
Speaker 2: a little bit with a little bit with with with
Speaker 2: the Chaka Kahan. Not much, just very very I spent
Speaker 2: all my time in town. I would travel a lot.
Speaker 2: I traveled a lot. I started to travel a lot
Speaker 2: to England and uh and uh Los Angeles. Did a
Speaker 2: lot of work in Los Angeles, and and then I
Speaker 2: got I got this. I was in London and and
Speaker 2: I went to Bob Goldoff's I was playing with Deran
Speaker 2: Duran and and I went to Bob Goldofs Knighthood party
Speaker 2: at the hard Rock cafe and and I was sitting
Speaker 2: there and Phil Collins walked up, tap me on the
Speaker 2: shoulder and said hey Phil. He said, have you ever
Speaker 2: met Eric Clapton? And I said, well, I met him.
Speaker 2: I met him once. He showed up once at a
Speaker 2: an average white band show and I just meant just
Speaker 2: to say hello, meet meeting, you know. He said, uh,
Speaker 2: he said, well, come over, come with me. Come and
Speaker 2: come on, I'm sitting over there with you. Come over
Speaker 2: and come over and meet him. So I go over
Speaker 2: and I sit at the table at Clapton's there as
Speaker 2: someone else is there to and I'm sitting there. We're
Speaker 2: just talking, make small talking there for a little bit
Speaker 2: and I say, okay, well then I go back hang
Speaker 2: out with my bunch and my my crowd over there.
Speaker 2: Nice to met you. And then a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 2: I got a phone call. You want to go play
Speaker 2: with Eric Clapton. Yeah, yeah, I'd like that. And it's
Speaker 2: a way. He's just playing a couple of gigs. You know,
Speaker 2: he's playing a little club up in Boston, and he's
Speaker 2: going to play another club in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in the band. Well, Greg Felin Gains and Nathan East.
Speaker 2: Oh perfect. I had done dates of them out here
Speaker 2: and get I knew them doing record dates to reproduce
Speaker 2: them for record days. Great players, and and so I
Speaker 2: went and did did those those gigs. When I did
Speaker 2: those gigs room and that, they said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: what do you want? What do you want to go
Speaker 2: and do it? Eric Clapton at that point, I hadn't
Speaker 2: done a lot of you sort of like, oh, he'd
Speaker 2: been off Maradar for a long time. Yeah, a little
Speaker 2: bit of money enough to sort of cover cover the week,
Speaker 2: you know, just have some fun. I was just looking
Speaker 2: forward to play with Eric Clapton, you know. And and
Speaker 2: and then I I I get back, had a great
Speaker 2: time playing with him, and did the rehearsal. I think
Speaker 2: I think Eric actually got drunk in the rehearsals, had
Speaker 2: to go in the hospital for a couple of days
Speaker 2: and just sort of left us to rehearse on our own,
Speaker 2: and then sort of came back out and joined the
Speaker 2: band a couple of days rehearsal, and then we went
Speaker 2: and played these two gigs, you know, and we had
Speaker 2: a great time playing those gigs. And uh, and then
Speaker 2: I got this check in the mail. For like three
Speaker 2: times four times as much money as I'd ask for,
Speaker 2: you know, and I couldn't. I said, I think I
Speaker 2: think he made a mistake. And they said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's a miss clubs and wants you to have that.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I really enjoyed playing with you. Well,
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it too. And then I started to
Speaker 2: get these calls it comes to England. So I got
Speaker 2: to England and work and we started to do these
Speaker 2: runs with the Royal Albert Hall, you know, started with
Speaker 2: three days, and then seven days, and then a week,
Speaker 2: two weeks, and they think, you know, twenty four nights
Speaker 2: and working up to twenty four nights. And then record
Speaker 2: companies started to learn that we were there and they
Speaker 2: would say call us up and ask us if we
Speaker 2: could go do session on our day off. And it
Speaker 2: was the boom years, you know, and I was doing
Speaker 2: this Saturday night live as well at that point.
Speaker 1: Okay, well just let's slow down, get a couple of
Speaker 1: things here. You're playing with Clapton. Clapton's had many different
Speaker 1: periods of his career, different music, up and down. It
Speaker 1: was probably the first guitar hero and rock, but his
Speaker 1: audience is so primed for Clapton, you're on stage, Does
Speaker 1: it make any difference? Does the audience know whether you're
Speaker 1: on or your offer? It's just Eric clapped in their satisfied.
Speaker 2: My job with Eric Clapton. Eric told me was I
Speaker 2: got to be up there be Eric Clapton every day,
Speaker 2: make me play Wow, that was it. So I just
Speaker 2: I sit there and and sometimes you have difficulty, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not easy to be out there to play a
Speaker 2: great solo every time. You have to be inspired. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes you're the person that he's the person that inspires,
Speaker 2: and other times he needs a little kick in the
Speaker 2: ass to do that.
Speaker 1: You know. And and.
Speaker 2: It was just a question of knowing when he was
Speaker 2: just trying to figure out some way to get in it,
Speaker 2: or to give him like a big opening, something to
Speaker 2: do like really big, or even just like break it
Speaker 2: down so that he got really loud and found himself
Speaker 2: out there on his own. And I had no other
Speaker 2: choice but to play, you know. It was it was
Speaker 2: a great band of doing that. It was was. It
Speaker 2: was really a great band for playing that rock with Eric.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Duran Duran. Duran Duran had
Speaker 1: all their hits in the mid eighties. They were incredibly
Speaker 1: cold and I remember K Rock Acoustic Christmas in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. They were the headliner. The album hadn't come
Speaker 1: out yet and they played Ordinary World and what the
Speaker 1: the other big hit off that album which you were
Speaker 1: involved with, So tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean I did. Notorious was the first
Speaker 2: the first album that was when they first started to
Speaker 2: get back together, and Notorious sort of was sort of
Speaker 2: an icebreaker for them, you know, getting doing this stuff.
Speaker 2: And that was sort of like there was that one
Speaker 2: year where it was Eric Clapton and Duran Duran and
Speaker 2: I got to stay home for like three weeks out
Speaker 2: of the whole year. Yeah, and uh and uh and
Speaker 2: I was just loving playing with Clapton's and and and
Speaker 2: I just sort of, I mean, it wasn't even like
Speaker 2: I'm not going to play with anymore. It was just
Speaker 2: all I went off and I was just I spent
Speaker 2: more time playing with Eric and that and that was
Speaker 2: that was more more of my gig. But uh, so'm
Speaker 2: I'm in London and uh to do George Harrison and
Speaker 2: George just hired Eric's band and uh uh to go
Speaker 2: and do this concert tour in Japan, and uh and
Speaker 2: and I get there and and because I'd stayed at
Speaker 2: the Royal Albert Hall, I mean I used to. I
Speaker 2: rented an apartment on Sloan Street and I would just
Speaker 2: walk up the streets sometimes. And they get on the
Speaker 2: bus and ride with the fans up to were you
Speaker 2: going to play the night Steve? And I haven't seen
Speaker 2: the set list yet, know, And uh, I ride with
Speaker 2: the fans on the bus up there. And so I
Speaker 2: had this apartment on Sloan Street. I used to stay
Speaker 2: in there like that. Side I go in there with
Speaker 2: with George. I had rendered a car and I would
Speaker 2: have to drive out to Bray and rehearsal George. But uh,
Speaker 2: so day one I'm there and then take a ride
Speaker 2: down the King's Road. Just have a look around the
Speaker 2: King's Road, see what's going on. I drive down to
Speaker 2: the kings Old and I'm driving along in traffic in
Speaker 2: the King's Wold very slowly, you know, And I look
Speaker 2: on the on the sidewalk and I see this guy
Speaker 2: walking and I say, dang, they looks like Warren Cook Carrillo,
Speaker 2: you know. But he's got all these muscles, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like muscle bound. It's like a body build a
Speaker 2: sort of guy. And I said, but the last time
Speaker 2: I saw war and he's like skinny mister skinny guitarists,
Speaker 2: you know, missing person's little skinny, skinny skinny guy. And
Speaker 2: uh and I look and hey, we Warren and it's
Speaker 2: and it's it's Steve. You're in town. Yeah, yeah, he said,
Speaker 2: I need you to do a session for me. And
Speaker 2: this is I'm still driving along now very so, and
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know what my schedule is. I'm
Speaker 2: doing this thing with George Harrison. And he puts his
Speaker 2: hand in his bag and he pulls out this cassette,
Speaker 2: throws the cassette in through the car. Win call me.
Speaker 2: We set it up when you get time. And I
Speaker 2: drive off and I take this cassette and I put
Speaker 2: it in the cassette player and listen to it. Ordinary World,
Speaker 2: a demo of ordinary World. So I get back to
Speaker 2: the hotel, I call up Warren and I say, listen,
Speaker 2: you don't need me on this song. You know, this
Speaker 2: is a hit song like this, just like this is
Speaker 2: got a little drum machine on there that they did
Speaker 2: the thing too. I said, you don't he said, no,
Speaker 2: we really want you to play on it. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I said, this is this is a great song. This
Speaker 2: is a hit song. Ifever I heard it. What a
Speaker 2: great song that is. I watched last night. I went,
Speaker 2: I went onto YouTube and I watched the I watched
Speaker 2: the band, watched them. They had like a new one
Speaker 2: of their late latest concerts, Taylor playing. I watched them
Speaker 2: play Ordinary World. This is just a beautiful What a song,
Speaker 2: What a great song.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've worked with all these legendary guitarists. Is there
Speaker 1: one that you prefer to play with more you were
Speaker 1: more amazed by? Or are they all unique? What's your think?
Speaker 2: I'm a you know, Mike Campbell never ceases to amaze me.
Speaker 2: Is that the most underestimated guitarist?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Anybody to talk about Mike Campbell? They are people that
Speaker 2: talk about Mike Campbell are great, great, what a great guitarist,
Speaker 2: But they I don't know. Maybe he's not as flashy
Speaker 2: as like some of these other guitarists are, but he
Speaker 2: just has a way of being as some of those
Speaker 2: solos that he plays, I mean, that's just no composingness.
Speaker 2: So that's what he plays. That's how he plays, Yeah,
Speaker 2: when he sits back in the band, the tones that
Speaker 2: he comes up with to fit in with the band,
Speaker 2: that sounds that he comes up with. He's just a phenomenal,
Speaker 2: phenomenal player. I love playing with Mike Campbell. That's that's
Speaker 2: for sure. But how do you how do you how
Speaker 2: do you compare Eric clapped better? How do you put
Speaker 2: them on a scale? Eric? You know George Benson. I
Speaker 2: played with George Benson. He's a pretty badass guitarist. George Benson,
Speaker 2: you know, but he doesn't know. He doesn't know, he
Speaker 2: doesn't know how to reader. Note George, you got no idea,
Speaker 2: and then you get guys like OSNOI. He's just phenomenal.
Speaker 2: That I mean, just crazy is the stuff he comes
Speaker 2: up with, and and and his stuff. He first time
Speaker 2: he called me and asked me to play with him,
Speaker 2: I said, he said, will you play with me? I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this gig out in Los Angeles?
Speaker 1: And I said no.
Speaker 2: He said why not? I said, because your stuff is
Speaker 2: too hard. It is not hard, it's in four fourth.
Speaker 2: I said, what planet are you from? Your stuff? Your
Speaker 2: stuff is so difficult, you know, and it isn't FO
Speaker 2: four But it's like where he puts the accent away
Speaker 2: with me, and it is pretty once, you know, once
Speaker 2: you find it, it's not that different. But I mean
Speaker 2: he has some stuff. I still can't even figure out
Speaker 2: how he gets that phenomenal guitarist Humor Kraken. What can
Speaker 2: I say? No more? You know? Uh uh oh god,
Speaker 2: uh uh He's what I thinking of. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: just so many guys, all these guys in New York,
Speaker 2: the studio guys, Michael Thompson out here, Yeah, David Williams
Speaker 2: from from from I was sitting listening to students your
Speaker 2: your show that your podcasting you did with Steve Lucath,
Speaker 2: and he was mentioning all these guys, Paul Jackson Jr.
Speaker 2: All these players, you know guys. A lot of people
Speaker 2: say they, who the hell is that? Well, you don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, how come you don't know who David Williams is?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know if you go bug a Darren
Speaker 2: do bugger dar David Williams, you know, and that just
Speaker 2: didn't happen. That was David Williams playing that did that?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Lucas, I mean, all these guys, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know I can't really.
Speaker 1: Okay, wells which gif? How'd you end up in the
Speaker 1: s n L band?
Speaker 2: Uh? I gotta, I gotta call I just I think
Speaker 2: I got a call. I just got a call. I
Speaker 2: got a call from who. I forget Who the musical
Speaker 2: director was at that point was g Smith g g
Speaker 2: g was was was the was the musical director of
Speaker 2: the band. But but the but uh uh was it?
Speaker 1: How was not?
Speaker 2: How? No, it wasn't how. I forget the guy the
Speaker 2: original guy. He does a lot of movie stuff. He
Speaker 2: was he was the guy that sort of would pick
Speaker 2: out the band. Uh And and he asked me to
Speaker 2: come and during the new season when Lawn Michael Lawn
Speaker 2: Michaels came back, they asked me to do the Saturday
Speaker 2: Unite Light Band And that was that was a thrilled too.
Speaker 2: That's really well, Leon Pandalvis.
Speaker 1: And who what was it like?
Speaker 2: It was fun As a matter of fact, some of
Speaker 2: the jokes that went on in the band were actually
Speaker 2: funny as in the show until until Lovetz came up
Speaker 2: with the liar. It was kind of we sat up
Speaker 2: there and we've grown at some of these jokes. That
Speaker 2: is awful. And then and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: John Lovitz came along and started doing that liar thing
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, my wife Merk Morgan Fairchild, and it
Speaker 2: was like, oh, this is good, this is really good. Okay.
Speaker 1: Traditionally the drummer is the business guy, is that you
Speaker 1: or not?
Speaker 2: Well, well, you mean doing the business of the band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and making sure it goes forward and getting the
Speaker 1: gigs and being on top of it and being the
Speaker 1: driving force.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, I'm pretty I'm pretty lazy. I
Speaker 2: don't want to have any any kind of responsibility like that.
Speaker 2: I would say the best I'm a good, a good,
Speaker 2: a good sergeant arms uh to have around, uh, to
Speaker 2: hang out and and keep the camera to you of
Speaker 2: the band around. I mean, Jesus, like, you know, there's
Speaker 2: all these people out there writing books at the moment,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and you know, Tessa and Iles
Speaker 2: from from Merrick's Band wrote a book. Uh, Phil Palmer
Speaker 2: wrote a book from Merrick's Band, And and I feature
Speaker 2: heavily in all of these books. And there's yeah, jan
Speaker 2: gay Marvin Gaye widow, she she she wrote a book.
Speaker 2: And I mean that Rick James wrote a book. And
Speaker 2: I mean and I mean that book. I was like, jeez,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to write my own book. A lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of the a lot of these they
Speaker 2: call me up and they say, well, you know, we've
Speaker 2: written some stuff about you in in the book of
Speaker 2: some of some of the adventures that we've had with you,
Speaker 2: and do you want to read it and see if
Speaker 2: you want to take anything out and that? And you know,
Speaker 2: my life's pretty much I'd say, pretty much my life's
Speaker 2: and open book. Really. I mean, I know they love
Speaker 2: me and I love them, and they would never intentionally
Speaker 2: write anything that was that was going to be considered harmful.
Speaker 2: So just just put it out. I trust him, and
Speaker 2: then when I have got around of reading it, it's
Speaker 2: all as awful as it is sometimes. When I got
Speaker 2: arrested once for trunk driving and ended dub calling Roger
Speaker 2: Forrester's phone of Eric Clapton's manager calling call in the
Speaker 2: office and see I got the phone. Nobody answered the
Speaker 2: phone answering machine, So nobody knows the trouble Tess and ours.
Speaker 2: But Tess and Arles put that in the know. You
Speaker 2: just just wait until I write my book. I got
Speaker 2: some stuff on YouTube, but no, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Well that's a you know, the promoter in Montreal tells
Speaker 1: a great story how the who got busted and he
Speaker 1: went to the mof you to get the money to
Speaker 1: the cash to nail him out, and he went in
Speaker 1: there all in jail and they started singing, don't fence
Speaker 1: me in? So how did you end up in Petty's band?
Speaker 2: Well? That was you know that when when after we
Speaker 2: finished the tour with George in in Japan, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: came back and and George caught me up and said, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this other gig. When one other gig
Speaker 2: and the one more gig at the Royal Albert Hole,
Speaker 2: you know, you said, can you come and do it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love to sell problems. It was a couple of problems.
Speaker 2: He said, Eric, Eric, Eric's not going to do it.
Speaker 2: So I'm getting Mike Campbell to come and do it.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, who Mike Mike Campbell plays with Tom Petty?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I don't really know too much about it
Speaker 2: better other than I'd seen few videos on on an MTV,
Speaker 2: you know, And and he said, he said, he said,
Speaker 2: he said, who could I get to play play bass?
Speaker 1: Who? You know?
Speaker 2: Because Nathan can't do it. He's going out. He's going out.
Speaker 2: I think he's doing something with Phil Collins. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: that's simple. Will Lee call Will Lee because Will Lee's
Speaker 2: a huge Beatles fan, you know, and uh and equaled
Speaker 2: Will and Will came over and did that. Anyways, were there?
Speaker 2: I get. So we did the gig and and and
Speaker 2: we did the rehearsals and everything, and I noticed that
Speaker 2: this guy, Mike Campbell, he just had this way of
Speaker 2: fitting in that was you know. And then he would
Speaker 2: play some really great stuff. And when George went to
Speaker 2: a solo, he would just step up and play something incredible, right,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, who the hell is this Mike Campbell guy?
Speaker 2: And Will Lisa and he plays with Tom Petty. Don't
Speaker 2: really that for me? So I used I took the
Speaker 2: habit of walking up looking at Mike and going fucking
Speaker 2: Mike Campbell, looking right there, fucking Mike Campbell and uh.
Speaker 2: And then we went out and had dinner. A couple
Speaker 2: of times we went out and then sort of end
Speaker 2: up sitting around around Mike and we ended up doing
Speaker 2: some talking and it's very nice. Didn't didn't exchange numbers
Speaker 2: or anything that was it finished. No, after he went
Speaker 2: back to America and we did that gig in it
Speaker 2: and it was it was maybe a month or so
Speaker 2: month or two later that I got this phone call
Speaker 2: from from my answering service radio registry. Wouldn't I used
Speaker 2: to everybody had a radio Radio Registry telephone number. Now
Speaker 2: you call in and they'd book you for stuff. And
Speaker 2: they call me out and say, Steve, you're you know,
Speaker 2: you're open next week and you go to Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: And they said, yeah, what for? They said, Oh, it's
Speaker 2: top secret, geek, top secret. Can't tell you who it is?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Who's the booker? So they put me to into the
Speaker 2: booker and and I say, who's this kid? Who's this
Speaker 2: gid for? Sorry, Steve, we can't tell you. It's top secret? Okay,
Speaker 2: triple scale, mister mercenary, no problem, Okay, all right then?
Speaker 2: Yeah fine, So they flying me out and they put
Speaker 2: me in the Sportsman's Lodge, right, which was I never
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd seen it, but I never really taken
Speaker 2: that much notice of it though. Sports I mean I
Speaker 2: was staying at four Seasons or something like that, the
Speaker 2: High High House. I stayed at the High House. I
Speaker 2: never stayed in the valley, and so I check in
Speaker 2: their first thing that happens. I'm going there, I check in.
Speaker 2: I just walk in there and I signing. The thing
Speaker 2: is this sort of half talk to the person behind her,
Speaker 2: and they look up at the person behind the desk,
Speaker 2: and it was Fluff. The girl used to be the
Speaker 2: cash here at the at the at the Roxy. Fluff, Steve,
Speaker 2: what do you do? This is gonna gonna gig out
Speaker 2: here in some secret gig. So she puts me in
Speaker 2: a suite, and and and and and and and then
Speaker 2: I found out that they had the i'd say, the
Speaker 2: second best swimming pool in the hotel in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Over there, it's a great swimming pool. And uh, and
Speaker 2: so I the next day, I have to go out
Speaker 2: to Sound City and get a rental car and drive
Speaker 2: out there. And as I'm as I'm arriving, Kenny Arnos
Speaker 2: drum kit in his flight cases. Kennyanos names on it
Speaker 2: coming out. She is still not unusual, you know. Uh
Speaker 2: and uh. I mean, because sometimes people hire you to
Speaker 2: play on certain songs on a record. I want this
Speaker 2: guy to play on that song. He's really good at
Speaker 2: playing that kind of style. Something so I didn't didn't
Speaker 2: really didn't think too much of it. And I walked
Speaker 2: inside and Russ was setting up my drums in the
Speaker 2: studio and they said to me, I just just go
Speaker 2: through into the control room. And I walk in the
Speaker 2: control room and there was Tom Petty and Mike Campbell
Speaker 2: and then like fucking Mike Camera and Tum Petty and
Speaker 2: then just the three of us went and we went
Speaker 2: and and uh sat down started to play you don't
Speaker 2: know how it feels?
Speaker 1: And that was that.
Speaker 2: And we we went into into the control room and
Speaker 2: I was standing behind the board and they were standing
Speaker 2: in the front with the engineer listening, listening to the
Speaker 2: listening to the take that we did, and and Tom
Speaker 2: turned around the mic and he said, well, what difference
Speaker 2: of drummer make sir? Now I'm like, what the hell
Speaker 2: does that mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean it could mean anything, right, right, Like, well,
Speaker 2: this this guy, yeah, I mean, this guy's useless. Get
Speaker 2: rid of it. What do you bring him out here for?
Speaker 2: And then Mike Tom looked to look right at me
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, don't worry. You won. And that
Speaker 2: was it the start start of Wildflowers actually start twenty
Speaker 2: five years I didn't know. It started twenty five years
Speaker 2: and and when I finished, I did two. The first
Speaker 2: time I was out there, I was I was drinking.
Speaker 2: And the second time I came back out to do
Speaker 2: the second half of Wildflowers, I'd stopped. And there was
Speaker 2: only one person that noticed that I'd stopped. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: and that him You'll have to find out yourself, because
Speaker 2: I don't. But he said to me, have you stopped drinking?
Speaker 2: I think we only went out to dinner once. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so yeah. So so it was uh and so
Speaker 2: and and and uh and then and then the next
Speaker 2: thing was like, you know, I mean, I just went
Speaker 2: back and started doing my stuff. I was working did
Speaker 2: some stuff with Brian Ferry. But I really loved the
Speaker 2: way that the Heartbreakers worked in the studio. I really
Speaker 2: loved the way that they went after a take, and
Speaker 2: they went after and then and they had these great
Speaker 2: songs too. I mean, Tom was just such a great songwriter.
Speaker 2: You know, we had such good stuff to work with,
Speaker 2: and and and the other thing. The thing that really
Speaker 2: impressed me was Wildflowers was so much different than the
Speaker 2: other stuff that Tom had done before. It was it
Speaker 2: was like, I mean, even sometimes we'd play a song
Speaker 2: and I say, oh, here we go. Now this is
Speaker 2: this is sounding more like this is more like Tom
Speaker 2: Petty a Tom Petty song. And he played we play
Speaker 2: about three times and then Tom would say, you know what,
Speaker 2: we've been there before. Next we'll move on and do
Speaker 2: something else. And he would just and I'm like, what
Speaker 2: are you doing? And some of that stuff got on
Speaker 2: to Wildflowers and all the rest, and he found it
Speaker 2: like later on there in twenty seventeen, I guess he
Speaker 2: started going through going through that that stuff to do
Speaker 2: that album with Wildflowers and all the outtakes. And he
Speaker 2: said to me when they said you know, he said,
Speaker 2: I was. I was listening to these songs. There's a
Speaker 2: couple of songs that didn't get on the record. They
Speaker 2: sound like real songs that they're really good. They they're
Speaker 2: pretty much ringing. I don't know how they didn't make
Speaker 2: it onto Wildflowers. And I said, well, you didn't want
Speaker 2: them on there. You said that you've already been there.
Speaker 2: Who visited that place before? You remember you saying that
Speaker 2: about a couple of the songs.
Speaker 1: How do you end up in the band you're working
Speaker 1: on the solo record?
Speaker 2: Yeah, then they well, so they finished their they finished,
Speaker 2: they finished their record, and and.
Speaker 5: And uh.
Speaker 2: I was working with Brian Ferry. Brian had a way
Speaker 2: of working. He had these guys that weren't musicians that
Speaker 2: were sort of advisors, right, and and so they'd walk
Speaker 2: into the dressing room and Brian would feel there was
Speaker 2: something wrong with a song. So he would say what
Speaker 2: was what was wrong with that? Love is a drug?
Speaker 2: And they say, oh, it's too fast, Oh too slow? No, no,
Speaker 2: it's too fast or it's too slow. He said, we'll
Speaker 2: go and talk to God, talk Frony about that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And so these guys would walk up to me and
Speaker 2: they would say, Steve, Brian feels love the drug is
Speaker 2: too fast or it's too slow, one or the other.
Speaker 2: And I say yeah. They said, well, yeah, could you
Speaker 2: do something about that? And I said, well, I'd love to,
Speaker 2: but I don't start it. The bass player starts it,
Speaker 2: you're talking to the wrong person. I just played whatever is.
Speaker 2: But whatever temper starts whatever it does, and it always
Speaker 2: feels all right to me. So I'll tell you what,
Speaker 2: why don't you just fuck off? So they kind of
Speaker 2: got used to this thing where they come up to
Speaker 2: tell me something and I'd sit there and I listened
Speaker 2: to what they had to say, and I'd say, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm going to tell you, right the fuck off?
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, that's about it, and they would leave.
Speaker 2: So I really wasn't that that that. I always felt
Speaker 2: that it would have been nice if Brian had come
Speaker 2: in and as a band, talked about the stuff as
Speaker 2: a band, and then then sending these guys who really
Speaker 2: didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so as manager asked me, you know, he said, would
Speaker 2: you go out on the road with us like next
Speaker 2: year and do some stuff next year? And I said, no, no,
Speaker 2: I'm actually I'm kind of busy. I didn't really just
Speaker 2: didn't really want to do it, you know. And and
Speaker 2: uh and uh and and I called my girlfriend and
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, they asked me to do
Speaker 2: next year and I didn't. I didn't really want to
Speaker 2: do it, so I said, and she said, what, well,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? You know, it's a gig.
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, but this is not really a gig
Speaker 2: for me, you know, I'm something I happened. I just
Speaker 2: make you go back making records whatever, I do something
Speaker 2: and uh, and she said, well, what would you like
Speaker 2: to do? I said, in truth, what I'd really love
Speaker 2: to do. I love doing that record with the Heartbreakers,
Speaker 2: you know. But I said, but that ain't going to happen.
Speaker 2: That's standing in She's gig. Yeah, I said, that's not
Speaker 2: gonna that's not going to happen. But something to show up,
Speaker 2: I said, I had so much fun playing with those guys.
Speaker 2: It was really terrific. H So that was the end
Speaker 2: of that, pretty much the end of that conversation. The
Speaker 2: next day, phone rings. She calls me up. She said
Speaker 2: Tom just called her. Who wants you to call him?
Speaker 2: And they said what? She said, Tom? She said, I
Speaker 2: think he wants you to do a tour with him.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, I said, I don't let me
Speaker 2: make a call, So I called Tom. I called Tom
Speaker 2: up and Tom. Tom said to me, he said the listen.
Speaker 2: He said, what are you doing next year? He said,
Speaker 2: would you like to come out play with the Heartbreakers?
Speaker 2: I said, well, I'd love to. I said, well, first,
Speaker 2: let me just tell you. I'm really flattered that you're
Speaker 2: asking me to do this, you know, I said, And
Speaker 2: and I'd really like to do it. However, I've been
Speaker 2: in bands and I know that they're like they're families,
Speaker 2: and they're usually dysfunctional families. Have you spoken with Stan
Speaker 2: yet about this? And he said, well, no, I actually
Speaker 2: I haven't. I said we have. He said, we have
Speaker 2: some issues between us and they're not getting to go.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, I'll tell you what I said.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it like this, right. I'm really flattered that
Speaker 2: you ask me, why don't you talk to stand and
Speaker 2: if things, if things work out, if you can work
Speaker 2: things out with them, that's great. And if you can't,
Speaker 2: if things, if things don't work out, come back to me.
Speaker 2: And i'd and I'd love to and I'd love to
Speaker 2: do to do it. And he said, oh, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2: I hung out the phone. An hour later my phone rang.
Speaker 2: It was tell me, said you're working next year.
Speaker 1: That was it?
Speaker 2: Now I was in the band.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you're in a band that's been in existence
Speaker 1: for the better part of twenty years and they play
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. How do you catch up with
Speaker 1: that stuff? Do you listen to the records or you
Speaker 1: can just tune into anything the rehearsal? How do you
Speaker 1: end up fitting in? Because in the Wildflower's album, they're
Speaker 1: creating that stuff from scratch.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, okay, those difficult things for me to learn
Speaker 2: was the stuff was the stuff their songs there, there, there,
Speaker 2: there there song. I mean, I knew I won't back down.
Speaker 2: I'd heard that, I knew a great wide open I'd
Speaker 2: seen the video right, all the stuff that was on MTV.
Speaker 2: I knew all those songs. I knew those songs. I
Speaker 2: thought it was a terrific song. But there was other
Speaker 2: songs like the deeper. Well I considered deep, deeper tracks,
Speaker 2: and I'll give you the example of what I considered
Speaker 2: the deeper second of it. Well I did. That was
Speaker 2: the most difficult thing what I came to find out
Speaker 2: about the Heartbreakers. They're living in Gainesville, Mike and Tom
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty, same as me, same year as me. They're
Speaker 2: growing up. I'm growing up in England. We're listening to
Speaker 2: the same stuff. They're listening to the English stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: listening to the American stuff. Elvis. You know all these
Speaker 2: blues guys that used to come through that my, my, my, my,
Speaker 2: my teenagers guys took me to when I was twelve.
Speaker 2: We're all listening to the same stuff, except Tom's living
Speaker 2: in the same town as Bo Diddley, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: I had to go. I have to go and see
Speaker 2: him play at the dome, you know. But we're listening
Speaker 2: to we know the same songs. We knew the same songs.
Speaker 2: So when when they would they would say, well, let's
Speaker 2: let's play that, I'd know it, you know, I just
Speaker 2: know it. But I didn't wasn't familiar with a lot
Speaker 2: of heartbreak and stuff. So to go out and do
Speaker 2: the Wildflowers to it. I had a list of songs
Speaker 2: that they were going to do, So I the wildflower
Speaker 2: stuff I recorded that. I pretty much knew that, But
Speaker 2: the other songs I had to sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: learn them and figure out what what standard played or
Speaker 2: whoever it was that played drums on the seat, what
Speaker 2: what was like the the stuff that was ultra necessary,
Speaker 2: like certain fields that people need to hear, certain feel
Speaker 2: that people need, and other ones I could just take
Speaker 2: complete advantage of and do whatever I want, like don't
Speaker 2: come come around here no more. I could just make
Speaker 2: up my own stuff, you know, and and uh and
Speaker 2: and so that that was. That was well, we were
Speaker 2: So we're out on the road and we get to
Speaker 2: Chicago and We're playing that big stadium where the Bulls
Speaker 2: play right packed to pack to the scene, people going crazy.
Speaker 2: We finished the show, we come off stage. We're bout
Speaker 2: there having a couple of drinks while the crowd's just
Speaker 2: still going wild, getting ready to go and do the encore.
Speaker 2: And Tom looks at me and says, do you know
Speaker 2: breakdown And I said no, it wasn't. It wasn't on
Speaker 2: the list. He said, Okay, boom, check them scat, boom,
Speaker 2: check them scat. Do that they're going crazy. Follow me,
Speaker 2: and we walked out on the stage. We will down
Speaker 2: on the stage and that's what we did. Wow, And
Speaker 2: that was that was my rehearsal. That was my rehearsal
Speaker 2: in front of like twenty five thirty thou people.
Speaker 1: Okay, when Tom Pitty and the Heartbreakers was like twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen somewhere around there, you played like a week at
Speaker 1: the Fund. Then there was different stuff all night. Did
Speaker 1: you guys rehearse for that?
Speaker 2: Were we rehearsed, uh for the funder the funder here, Yeah, somewhat.
Speaker 2: There was a couple of things that we that we
Speaker 2: that we that we rehearsed. One of the things we
Speaker 2: kind of went over was that Mystic Eyes. We kind
Speaker 2: of jammed that a little bit of the rehearsal. Some
Speaker 2: of the things that we just jam. I just think
Speaker 2: that we were playing for fun. And then he would
Speaker 2: just say, Okay, well we know that that's good. We
Speaker 2: don't know Tom's even done. We don't want to over rehearse,
Speaker 2: you know. And Tom was a very very good leader.
Speaker 2: You keep your eye on him. He tell you where
Speaker 2: you want the song, where we want the song to go,
Speaker 2: you know. And uh. And so some of the things,
Speaker 2: some of the things that rehearsed, and some of them
Speaker 2: I don't even remember rehearsing. Sometimes it was kind of
Speaker 2: like the the film or show where we we'd rehearse
Speaker 2: something in the afternoon and then play it that night,
Speaker 2: and and and and and then not play it again.
Speaker 2: So some of them, some of those songs, like like
Speaker 2: from like from the film or Exile on Main Street,
Speaker 2: I don't I listened to that. I mean, I'm completely
Speaker 2: surprised because we must have rehearsed it, learned it that afternoon,
Speaker 2: played it that night, and then never played it again.
Speaker 1: Okay, I saw you know Petty many times, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the band. Were there good nights and bad nights.
Speaker 1: What was the band like? Were they always good? It was? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think you know, I don't remember a bad night
Speaker 2: with Harb. I mean there were some nights that were
Speaker 2: that were just there was other nights that were magic,
Speaker 2: of course, like every band has that, but I can't
Speaker 2: say it was just okay. The band was great every night.
Speaker 2: It was a great band. And I think that the
Speaker 2: reason that the band was a great band was because
Speaker 2: Tom used to rest the band. He didn't he didn't
Speaker 2: work the band into the ground. He would he would.
Speaker 2: We worked a couple of nights and then a night off.
Speaker 2: We always traveled. We had our private jets, so we
Speaker 2: would stay like in Chicago, fly out, do a gig,
Speaker 2: and fly back, and some nights were we'd play one
Speaker 2: night and then we'd have two nights off. So so
Speaker 2: we were every time that we that we went to
Speaker 2: walk on stage, we were eager to play. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: we were fresh. We were rested, and uh and I
Speaker 2: think that's what I mean. I know I played with
Speaker 2: excuse me, I played with some people that just want
Speaker 2: to play, like, you know, five or six shows in
Speaker 2: a row and it's you get down. I get to
Speaker 2: the fourth show, and it's like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be there. I just want to know. I want to
Speaker 2: lie off and I need to rest because I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't when I when I play, I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't cruise. You know, Uh, I burn energy. I like
Speaker 2: to put everything, everything physically, everything physically that I have
Speaker 2: into playing the playing the drums might not look like it,
Speaker 2: but there's there's a lot of work going on back there.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of drumsts getting worn to
Speaker 2: pieces up there. I don't break them that much, but
Speaker 2: I'll wear them out.
Speaker 1: Okay, needless to say at this point in his career.
Speaker 1: At that point in his career, Tom was going on tour,
Speaker 1: not every year, and he wasn't working six months eight
Speaker 1: months in a row. What were you doing with the downtime?
Speaker 2: Well we we uh that that that but that that
Speaker 2: was the way that it was all the time. You know,
Speaker 2: Tom will go Tom we go out on the road
Speaker 2: and he and he'd finish the tour. What we do
Speaker 2: maybe three or four months that just and and every
Speaker 2: three weeks we go home for a week to ten days. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And and then because he liked the band, wanted to
Speaker 2: be out there. Didn't want to have to kick the
Speaker 2: band out there when he would have a band wanting
Speaker 2: to go home. He wanted him to want to be
Speaker 2: out there. So we would all, you know, we actually
Speaker 2: get to the end and say keep going for another
Speaker 2: week or something, and and then we'd just go about
Speaker 2: our stuff and then we'd look forward to getting back
Speaker 2: out on the road.
Speaker 1: Uh uh.
Speaker 2: He was a very wise man when it came to that.
Speaker 2: You know, he he he watched his ticket prices so
Speaker 2: that people could get in, you know, his fans could
Speaker 2: get in. And uh, he was he was really concerned
Speaker 2: with with all that.
Speaker 1: Did it take up all your time? If there's twelve
Speaker 1: months in a year, were there time we could do
Speaker 1: your own things?
Speaker 4: Or yeah?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: I did my own things. I mean playing playing with
Speaker 2: Tom Petty allowed me to build the studio, so so.
Speaker 1: Uh I did. I did.
Speaker 2: I did my own stuff. Once I called up Mike
Speaker 2: Campbell and I said, I said, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: He said nothing, Just I said I know. I said, look,
Speaker 2: I know you got some songs, right. I said, why
Speaker 2: don't you call Ron Blair and that Ron come over
Speaker 2: and we we'll sit there and and we we we'll
Speaker 2: play some songs down. He said, you do that. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's I just want to play. And he said okay.
Speaker 2: So I go over to go over to Mike's house
Speaker 2: and the Dirty Knobs started and we started, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, We started playing with Ron and and and
Speaker 2: then they got Jason Sana. Mike found Jason Say and
Speaker 2: got him to come and play with the band, be
Speaker 2: second guitar. And we we would we would cut a song.
Speaker 2: If we'd learn the song, we play it once and
Speaker 2: then move on to the next song. Wouldn't even listen
Speaker 2: to it. And then and I got these the tapes
Speaker 2: that said it's really great, it's really exciting, you know,
Speaker 2: and and Mike was loving it. And then he took it,
Speaker 2: took it to Tom to listen to and Tom Tom said,
Speaker 2: this is awful. It's horrible. What are you doing this for?
Speaker 2: You don't need to do this. Yeah, And Mike was like, listen,
Speaker 2: you don't like I like, the songs are awful, horrible stuff. Mike.
Speaker 2: Tom was in the defense boat. I don't want to
Speaker 2: lose Mike Campbell.
Speaker 1: Right right right, right right right.
Speaker 2: So he turns out the turns around to Mike and
Speaker 2: he says, he said, it's ship And while we're at it,
Speaker 2: you know what, because by then, how he had died
Speaker 2: and Ron was back in the band. He said, And
Speaker 2: by the way, in case you didn't know this, that's
Speaker 2: my band that you're using.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Mike was so upset, he was so upset, he called
Speaker 2: me up you Steve. Tom just doesn't like it. Just
Speaker 2: he just my brother wants Eve and listen to the
Speaker 2: stuff that I'm doing with you know, And and I
Speaker 2: can't have you in the band anymore. He said, he'd
Speaker 2: fired you and run and just so so Mike had
Speaker 2: to go out and find another band. A few months later,
Speaker 2: he'd left, he'd left the house so upset that he'd
Speaker 2: left the c D. Tom had one of those hundred
Speaker 2: CD players right he'd left. He just left the house
Speaker 2: completely distraught. Tom's walking around in his house and he's
Speaker 2: got the thing on, like, you know, just automatic, just
Speaker 2: play something here there. This thing is whizzing around and
Speaker 2: playing all these different songs. And he hears this song
Speaker 2: and he says, that's a that's a pretty good song.
Speaker 2: Who the hell's that? Just can't stop the sun, can't
Speaker 2: stop the sun from from shining and and so he
Speaker 2: called up Mike and he's like, I want that SOUD
Speaker 2: And he said, who else is on there? The other
Speaker 2: nub guys that take that guy off? And I'm going
Speaker 2: to put the put the guitar on there. And he
Speaker 2: changed the guitar and uh, and then he put it
Speaker 2: on the last DJ. Wow.
Speaker 1: So you know, everyone knew that Tom was hurting. But
Speaker 1: you go on on a run, it's incredible. You finish
Speaker 1: up at the Hollywood Bowl. Yeah, and then the next day, okay,
Speaker 1: what they say, you know, disgusted some with Tony, but
Speaker 1: who knows what the truth is. You know that ultimately
Speaker 1: fentanyl was the cause of death, and fentanil. Although there's
Speaker 1: legal fent nail, there are other drugs. It's a big
Speaker 1: issue now lace was fentanyl?
Speaker 4: Was this?
Speaker 1: Did you know during the tour he was taking drugs
Speaker 1: that were not like pharmaceutical drugs.
Speaker 2: I No, he wasn't taking I don't personally. I don't
Speaker 2: think Tom was taking drugs that were known that were
Speaker 2: non pharmaceutical. I think what he was taking on the
Speaker 2: tour was was was prescribed. He wasn't dirty.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look I think i'd seen Tom uh when he
Speaker 2: went to a period, a drug period. It wasn't pretty,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh and and and he kicked that,
Speaker 2: he stopped it and uh and uh and and uh
Speaker 2: and he cleaned up Tom uh the last the last years,
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, basically he would drink Coca
Speaker 2: cola and he didn't even seem to smoke as much,
Speaker 2: but that is what he had a certain points that
Speaker 2: I'd say, you have a joint once in a while,
Speaker 2: just seemed not really within the problems as normally, you know.
Speaker 2: And he had a lot of pain with that hip hop.
Speaker 2: Is because I used to help him up onto the stage.
Speaker 2: And I think he I've said, I've said stuff before
Speaker 2: that got me in trouble with with with with people.
Speaker 2: But I think that well, I know that he had
Speaker 2: said stuff about it to other people that he would
Speaker 2: take he would take some moxie cotton that would get
Speaker 2: him through the show. And but I think that that's
Speaker 2: the only thing other than that I never saw, I
Speaker 2: never saw any indication that Tom was using anything to
Speaker 2: get high. He was using it for what it was for,
Speaker 2: and that was so he could get through that show.
Speaker 2: And then it gets you know, I wish, I wish
Speaker 2: like I think a lot of other people had that
Speaker 2: he had stopped the tour and uh and and got
Speaker 2: that hip fix and then you know, resumed later on.
Speaker 2: But you know, he was very loyal. He was He's
Speaker 2: very loyal to everybody. He was loyal to us. He
Speaker 2: was loyal to the crew. You would think a lot
Speaker 2: about them, you know. Uh. I think that when at
Speaker 2: the point when he's hit broke. Uh, that's that's when
Speaker 2: the illegal the illegal drug came into it. That he
Speaker 2: was in so much pain when that happened. But uh, uh,
Speaker 2: I would, I would, I would state anything on it
Speaker 2: that while we were out on the road, he wasn't
Speaker 2: recreationally using anything to do anything. And I'm sure I'm
Speaker 2: pretty much sure that fent mold didn't come into it.
Speaker 2: It was just something that would get him through the show, Okay,
Speaker 2: either either an orco or or like I had for
Speaker 2: my knee I needed to. I'd have Norco every every
Speaker 2: six hours for my knee when I when I did
Speaker 2: my knee replacement, and then i'd have oxy cotton for
Speaker 2: for for a bridge and uh and I gave it
Speaker 2: to Julia and she come in say what's your what's
Speaker 2: your pain level? On and I'd say it really hurts,
Speaker 2: and she give me something. Well, I'd say, it's not
Speaker 2: too bad, and then she give me something. I had
Speaker 2: no idea at the end. One day I turned around
Speaker 2: her and I said, have I had any painkillers today?
Speaker 2: She said, you haven't had any painkillers for three days. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think, having been around enough, I've been around
Speaker 2: this stuff, I can say that. I would say that
Speaker 2: my guess was pretty educated that when we were out
Speaker 2: on the road, Tom was using drugs. He was in
Speaker 2: enough pain that he needed something for sure, Because, like
Speaker 2: I say, i'd have to. He put his arm around
Speaker 2: me and we'd walk up those stairs to that stage.
Speaker 2: And sometimes we'd stop halfway up and I'd say how
Speaker 2: are you doing? And he say, just get me up
Speaker 2: there and I'll get through this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Some nights when we came off for the when we
Speaker 2: came off of the on core, he'd need me to
Speaker 2: help him back up to the OnCore. Other nights it
Speaker 2: was working just fine, the stuff, and he'd walk up
Speaker 2: the stairs on his arm without any help. But that
Speaker 2: was few and far between. Most times he'd need my
Speaker 2: help to get up there. And uh, and so, uh,
Speaker 2: I think you can tell, well, I think I can tell.
Speaker 2: I have enough experience with that stuff now that I
Speaker 2: can tell if somebody's using something recreationally or if somebody's
Speaker 2: using something that they shouldn't. And uh, and he was
Speaker 2: definitely within the realms of prescription what I could from
Speaker 2: what I could see.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you find out? And then it was
Speaker 1: a loss for all of us, in a shock for
Speaker 1: all of us. But then as time goes by, how
Speaker 1: long did it take you to put the pieces back
Speaker 1: together yourself? You know?
Speaker 2: I remember it was. It was such a shock when
Speaker 2: when and when I found out about Tom I was
Speaker 2: I was in San Francisco, and I did I'd done
Speaker 2: a gig up in San Francisco, and and I had
Speaker 2: a really early flight back to Los Angeles, like six
Speaker 2: am flight the next day. So I went to bed
Speaker 2: about nine o'clock at night. I woke up about one
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning, and uh and uh and and
Speaker 2: I turned on the TV just to have something to
Speaker 2: look at to go back to sleep, and and uh
Speaker 2: and and and the the news was full of the
Speaker 2: shooting in Las Vegas, the people getting shot in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: And I was sitting there and I was listening to
Speaker 2: the sound of those machine guns and I couldn't I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe that that was that was going on.
Speaker 1: I was just it.
Speaker 2: It must be like shooting into soup, those guns, you know,
Speaker 2: just all those people and just firing into those people.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't believe it. And my phone was on
Speaker 2: the other side of the room, plugged in and uh
Speaker 2: and and it started to ring and I thought, Ah,
Speaker 2: it's just somebody from England calling. They've seen this thing.
Speaker 2: And I wondered, some somebody panicking. Oh, Steve, and Steve's there.
Speaker 2: Let me find it out. No, just let it, let
Speaker 2: it ring. And I was watching this thing and the
Speaker 2: phone stopped and they started ringing again, and I thought,
Speaker 2: who the hell is that? And I go over and
Speaker 2: I look and it's Benmont. And I answered the phone
Speaker 2: and say, hey, but how you doing? And he said
Speaker 2: and he and he talked about somebody somebody being gone,
Speaker 2: you know, uh and and he said and he was
Speaker 2: he was like crying and shaking and and and and
Speaker 2: ben Mont's wife was pregnant at that time. And I thought,
Speaker 2: this is how far away it was for me that
Speaker 2: it was Tom. I said, I say, I say. I
Speaker 2: said to Ben Ah, muh, your wife state and he said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: she's fine. Tom. Tom's gone, you know. Uh and uh
Speaker 2: and that's when the nightmare started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, well it's a whirlwind week and then it's
Speaker 1: ere quotes returned to normal. How did you ultimately adjust
Speaker 1: and move forward?
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think any of us did.
Speaker 2: I don't think any of us. I still think that
Speaker 2: we the Heartbreakers really has a special bond with this
Speaker 2: crew everybody. I don't think. I still think that any
Speaker 2: given time, Uh, it can it can overwhelm us. The
Speaker 2: loss of Tom. Uh uh huh uh. The day the
Speaker 2: next day, I got up and I flew until six
Speaker 2: o'clock flight, and I flew and I went straight to
Speaker 2: Tom's bedside. The whole band was there. Everybody was there,
Speaker 2: and we we we spent all day waiting for Tony
Speaker 2: to show up, waiting for Tom's brother to show up,
Speaker 2: and and finally we were all in the room when
Speaker 2: he died. And I never forget the sound and what that,
Speaker 2: what that room was like. I never forget that, and
Speaker 2: and uh and then we all just sort of went
Speaker 2: out of ways. You know. Some some months after yeah,
Speaker 2: and Mike was really every everybody was grieving in their
Speaker 2: own way. Everybody was going through their stuff. And I
Speaker 2: remember going to to the funeral memorial service and and uh,
Speaker 2: uh I I got, I got, I got put into
Speaker 2: the rock will fame in Brighton, in my hometown, and
Speaker 2: uh and Julia uh decided to do something for me.
Speaker 2: She got in touch with a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 2: Nathan Easton, Eric Clapton, and and I mean just all
Speaker 2: these musicians, you know, all these musicians that I know
Speaker 2: and I love all made a little film and she
Speaker 2: edited the whole thing together. You know, congratulations Steve are
Speaker 2: getting into the rock, Will you deserve it? That sort
Speaker 2: of stuff, and and and and and she tried to
Speaker 2: show me this film. She tried to show me this
Speaker 2: film through about a week. And I'm getting ready to
Speaker 2: go get We're getting ready to go to England, and
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I haven't got time, I haven't got time.
Speaker 2: Take a minute, look at it. I haven't got time
Speaker 2: to do it. Now, I've got to do this. I've
Speaker 2: got to do that. I've got to get this. And
Speaker 2: finally we get to the airport and we're sitting there
Speaker 2: waiting for the plane and she pulls out a computer
Speaker 2: and she right, now you've got time, and you never
Speaker 2: look at this film, and I see all these people
Speaker 2: go through the whole thing with all these people, all
Speaker 2: these people saying, you know what a great guy I am,
Speaker 2: you know, And the very last thing that she put
Speaker 2: on that reel and sorry, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah yeah, the very last thing she put on
Speaker 4: the reel was Tom Petty introducing me at the Hollywood bot.
Speaker 2: H And I did what I just did. Then see
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. He was a wonderful, wonderful man
Speaker 2: and great songwriter, great great a great human being. Yeah,
Speaker 2: miss him and we're still missing.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 2: Thanks. That feels good to do that, to know that
Speaker 2: I could have that kind of capacity of love for
Speaker 2: another human being. And five years later I just started
Speaker 2: talking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Okay. The past five years have been crazy
Speaker 1: for all of us with COVID, etcetera. Although everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of in gear. Now you talked about this school thing
Speaker 1: you're doing. What's been keeping you busy?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: Well, I was in in New York when when COVID hit,
Speaker 2: I was doing the Seth Meyers Show. I was the
Speaker 2: guest drummer on the Seth Meyers show, and the last
Speaker 2: day they canceled it, they pulled them plug. And the
Speaker 2: next morning I got up and walked to an AA
Speaker 2: meeting across Times Square at seven o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: and there was only three people in Times Square, and
Speaker 2: I was one of them. And I said, this is
Speaker 2: gonna be something else. And so I got back here
Speaker 2: and I called the guy that puts all my stuff
Speaker 2: together in here, and I said to him, how can
Speaker 2: I what would it take to make my studio so
Speaker 2: that somebody can engineer me remotely? And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: eight to ten thousand dollars, And then he came back
Speaker 2: and just to put all the new stuff in. And
Speaker 2: then my good friend Eric tongran Et, as he's known,
Speaker 2: he's a great engineer. He lives down in Long Beach.
Speaker 2: He came up here and he set everything up, gave
Speaker 2: me a quick crash course in how to how to
Speaker 2: adjust levels and and to get to do stuff. And
Speaker 2: then we we do zoom and uh and and I've
Speaker 2: learned how to make make little adjustments and stuff. I
Speaker 2: started to do my own radio show here and and
Speaker 2: we kind of worked through the We just worked through
Speaker 2: the through the through the lockdown every every every once
Speaker 2: in a while, a couple of guys would come over
Speaker 2: and we'd cut something live and put put a little
Speaker 2: band together with some friends that I knew were prudent,
Speaker 2: and we'd all stay. It's not very big room, but
Speaker 2: there's enough to keep six feet between everybody, and we
Speaker 2: wore masks and we we'd make some music and do
Speaker 2: a little recording, and we did. I'm glad, I'm glad
Speaker 2: we're all back back together now. I did just did
Speaker 2: a couple of days, did a date in a couple
Speaker 2: of dates in the in in Nashville, and we're all
Speaker 2: in the same room, a bunch of guys playing again
Speaker 2: instead of just being me overdubbing something.
Speaker 1: This one, Okay, I see behind you a Gretch kit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a nineteen How many sets of drums do you have?
Speaker 2: Oh? I quite a few. I don't know. I got
Speaker 2: mainly I got maybe like five or six gret drums sets.
Speaker 2: And this one is a it's a nineteen nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: Gretch broadcaster. It's the same age as I am, except
Speaker 2: it's in a bit better condition.
Speaker 1: So let's assume you get called to go to Nashville
Speaker 1: you got a set of drums in Nashville, yep. So
Speaker 1: if I call you Nashville, New York, London, there's a
Speaker 1: set of drums in all those places.
Speaker 2: Well, I have.
Speaker 1: In New York.
Speaker 2: I have a friend that lived out here for a while,
Speaker 2: Dan Stay because and he was my drum tech and
Speaker 2: he well he will he lived out He actually lived
Speaker 2: here in my house. Is he had a roommate. He's
Speaker 2: a young guy, you know, And and he had a
Speaker 2: roommate that he was living with. And he came home
Speaker 2: one day and his friend that hadn't been feeling very
Speaker 2: well found his friend dropped dead. He had an undiagnosed
Speaker 2: heart heart problem and uh, and he found his friend there.
Speaker 2: So I said, well, he couldn't keep the apartment, so
Speaker 2: I said, we'll move in with with with me and Julius.
Speaker 2: He moved him with me and Julia and was my
Speaker 2: drum taken and uh and and he wanted to get
Speaker 2: himself a set of great drums. So I helped him
Speaker 2: get a set of dreat drums and broadcast as the
Speaker 2: reissues and he loves them. And then he moved back
Speaker 2: home to New Jersey. And so whenever I go on
Speaker 2: the around New York area. I called him up and
Speaker 2: he brings his kit in and uh and and I
Speaker 2: play that one. So that's pretty cool. Why gretch best
Speaker 2: sounding drums and on it? Because they just got away
Speaker 2: of you know, they have they have a motto, the
Speaker 2: the great greats, that great, great sound. They have a
Speaker 2: tone that I don't I don't think any other drum
Speaker 2: kits that ever actually managed that. People aspire, they say,
Speaker 2: people will come up to you from other companies and
Speaker 2: they say, we make drums that sound like great drums,
Speaker 2: And I say, but I play great drums. When when
Speaker 2: when I was a kid started playing, I asked around, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what's the best drum kit?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean it's like if you if you, if you,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna, if you're going to play cricket or
Speaker 2: you know, play baseball, you say, what's the best back right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What's what's the best what's the best glove? Yeah, because
Speaker 2: there are degrees of good in everything, and everyone would
Speaker 2: say great drums And I never saw I never The
Speaker 2: only person I saw playing great drums was Charlie Watts,
Speaker 2: and he has a great sound.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Everybody else was like lovewig or tricks and there were
Speaker 2: people playing trickson when I was growing up singer, and
Speaker 2: then they make good drums too, that they all make
Speaker 2: good drums. But this everybody said there was something special
Speaker 2: when I started with average white Man and I could
Speaker 2: finally get my own afford to buy my own drum kit.
Speaker 2: And that's what I bought, was a great drum kit.
Speaker 1: Now with guitars, even though they look the same, everyone
Speaker 1: is different. Yeah, when it comes to drums, is everyone different.
Speaker 1: You have to play them.
Speaker 2: Every one of those drums back there, every one of
Speaker 2: those snare.
Speaker 1: So people can't see we're audio only. I can see
Speaker 1: about twenty snares there they go, keep going up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they all have different characters. Uh, you know
Speaker 2: something like this.
Speaker 1: This week.
Speaker 2: I was in Nashville. I have a signature model that
Speaker 2: they don't make anymore because they said it was too expensive,
Speaker 2: so they stopped making it. But but uh I have
Speaker 2: I had the Singing Great chickenature model and and it's
Speaker 2: very versatile. But uh, what I had to do was
Speaker 2: when when I listened to a song, it depends on
Speaker 2: how how how I want this imagine the song sounding
Speaker 2: each one of these drums there was a different sound
Speaker 2: there was different quality and some I just drag one
Speaker 2: out and put let me put this up in see
Speaker 2: what this does to this song. Yeah, like you'll see
Speaker 2: you know, people with guitars. The player of the other day,
Speaker 2: Mike was playing, uh and his band and Chris and
Speaker 2: the other guitarist in the band in the in the
Speaker 2: dirty knobs he was playing. He said to Mike was like, no,
Speaker 2: he said, here, take use my rickenbacker and he and
Speaker 2: he gave me a rickenbacker and which is still a
Speaker 2: piece of wood with the same six strings, but it
Speaker 2: has a tone that suddenly made everything pop to life.
Speaker 2: Well that's what what drums do. Yeah, And who are
Speaker 2: your drum heroes? Well, uh, okay, let's start with We'll
Speaker 2: start with with with Bernard Purdy. Was the first guy
Speaker 2: that that I heard play syncopation like that was just amazing,
Speaker 2: amazing drummer. I love Bernard. I saw him. Uh. I
Speaker 2: saw him a few weeks ago, and I think NAM Show.
Speaker 2: I saw him down in the Nam Show. I hadn't
Speaker 2: seen him for a while. Uh. And and I really like.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: I like the older guys Elvin Jones, Max Roach uh
Speaker 2: uh uh uh, Blakey uh uh uh a another guy
Speaker 2: at sam Woodard. He used to play with the bassie Sorry,
Speaker 2: Duke Ellington. Just an amazing swing swing drummer. There was
Speaker 2: a uh, what's that guy's name? Michael Michael the Silver
Speaker 2: was the drummer that really impressed me when I was little.
Speaker 2: We played with Sammy Davis Jr. And UH and he
Speaker 2: would Sammy Davis Junior would sing like day in day
Speaker 2: out with just Michael Silver playing some songs with some
Speaker 2: some toms, with some mallets and google and uh and
Speaker 2: Sammy Davis Junior would would sing day in day out.
Speaker 2: That was very impressive for me. Very melodic player. But
Speaker 2: my favorite favorite favorite player of all has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the way that I play. And Uh and
Speaker 2: uh as a gentleman by the name of Jack de
Speaker 2: Johnnett right, just an incredible player. And the thing that
Speaker 2: I love about him is that he's so musical. The
Speaker 2: way that he listens, the way that he listens and
Speaker 2: and and and and accents draws your attention to other
Speaker 2: players in the in the other people as they're playing
Speaker 2: things that they're playing. I first became aware of him
Speaker 2: playing with the Charles Lloyd Quartet on an album I
Speaker 2: think it was called Live at the Live in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, which was recorded at the height of the
Speaker 2: Cold War. It's like, I got to say that, how
Speaker 2: the hell did you do that? You said, well, it
Speaker 2: was a state department thing and that Russian American were
Speaker 2: fighting and every time they went to walk on stage,
Speaker 2: some international incident would happen, and in the Russians saying yet, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can't go on. Finally they got the idea that
Speaker 2: you know that had to wait to get. As soon
Speaker 2: as they got the all clear, they ran on stage
Speaker 2: and started playing. Before before that they could, you know,
Speaker 2: they get something else could happen that they get stopped
Speaker 2: playing for and that the excitement on that record is
Speaker 2: just amazing to hear guys play modern jazz like that
Speaker 2: for a bunch of Russians who really had no idea
Speaker 2: at all what that was. Uh, And it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: And we were talking on the phone, you were talking
Speaker 1: about practicing to what degree do you practice? And do
Speaker 1: you play every day or if you're out of town
Speaker 1: you might not play for a month, but your situation, No.
Speaker 2: I'm not a woodshed person. The only thing I like
Speaker 2: to do what I what I consider I like to
Speaker 2: sit down and play with people. That's why I got
Speaker 2: like piano here, I got guitars. I got guitars and
Speaker 2: basses on the walls. So when my friends come over,
Speaker 2: but let's jam a little bit, you know, and we
Speaker 2: just come in the studio, we start messing around and
Speaker 2: start jamming. And that's the best. That's the best practice
Speaker 2: that I can do. But I'm not one to sit
Speaker 2: and practice rudiments or try to find stuff. I like
Speaker 2: to be challenged. When Osnoy asked me to play with him,
Speaker 2: he sent me this stuff, and the charts that he
Speaker 2: sent me didn't make any sense to what I was
Speaker 2: listening to, if you know what I'm talking about. It
Speaker 2: was so I said, well, you know what, how would
Speaker 2: that tear up the chart? I'm going to learn it?
Speaker 2: And I and I had to come in here and
Speaker 2: uh and wood shed the piece by piece to some
Speaker 2: and then tie it together. And then I had him
Speaker 2: come in a few days early and make sure that
Speaker 2: I had that I've done it properly to check my homework.
Speaker 2: But he's, yeah, it was it was, I know it now.
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 1: The stuff that I learned with okay, So in a
Speaker 1: perfect world, and we don't live in a perfect world.
Speaker 1: If you could play as we disagree, I disagree. Well
Speaker 1: stop there is that a joke? Or do you have
Speaker 1: a philosophy on this?
Speaker 2: I have a philosophy on that.
Speaker 1: We'll lay the philosophy on me.
Speaker 2: I just think that nothing would be as it is
Speaker 2: as things weren't as they were. That's all. We live
Speaker 2: in a perfect world. Everything's perfect, we just don't see
Speaker 2: it yet. That's all.
Speaker 1: Well, that begs the question. Do you ever get down
Speaker 1: and frustrated yourself? Oh?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I just I just remodeled my house.
Speaker 1: You ever done a after me.
Speaker 2: A nightmare? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Nobody works in a contractor.
Speaker 2: And you know, and and and the other thing too
Speaker 2: is that you know, I mean Julia came came here
Speaker 2: to live with me in twenty seventeen and we went
Speaker 2: through COVID together. Yeah. So so yeah, we had three
Speaker 2: years of three years of bliss and then we had
Speaker 2: to we had to figure out where she's here all
Speaker 2: the time now. Yeah, so so so that was that
Speaker 2: was something too. We came to that. That was that
Speaker 2: was pretty good. But uh, I mean I've been when
Speaker 2: I looked when I came in, when I got sober.
Speaker 2: But when I got sober, my life was just a mess.
Speaker 2: I thought it was over and never no way out
Speaker 2: of this and never they never go never going to
Speaker 2: let me go there. I'm never going to own a
Speaker 2: house again. I'm never going to do this again, never
Speaker 2: going to be able to do that again, never going
Speaker 2: to be and and and and I got a sponsor,
Speaker 2: a guy named Bill Summers passed away last year October
Speaker 2: the nineteenth and and uh the best part of of
Speaker 2: twenty five years he was. He was my sponsor. And
Speaker 2: uh and uh and he told me, you know what,
Speaker 2: one day, all this is going to be over. You
Speaker 2: just ain't seeing it yet. It will be over if
Speaker 2: you stay sober. And so that's what I did. And
Speaker 2: uh and uh and now I look back and and
Speaker 2: and you know, the persons that were that were my
Speaker 2: biggest what I considered my biggest tormentors. If they hadn't
Speaker 2: have stayed with it and can continued to torment me,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have found it necessary to stay sober. If
Speaker 2: they just if they have eased up after a year,
Speaker 2: I just said, well that's that I can go back
Speaker 2: to I can go back to to drinking. Now everything's
Speaker 2: everything's good. Yeah, and and yes, sometimes I got some
Speaker 2: friends that are going through some stuff that that's seemingly overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Yeah at the moment, but I can talk from experience
Speaker 2: that I've been there. And uh and uh, you know what.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I found this. There's a little booklet that I
Speaker 2: found that I haven't got one out here, but I
Speaker 2: got it on YouTube. If I need to listen to it. Uh,
Speaker 2: a little booklet called the Golden Key. We've telling it
Speaker 2: just stops thinking about the problems, start thinking about God
Speaker 2: and it will heal itself. And and and it got
Speaker 2: me to to my problems. It really did get me
Speaker 2: through them. And it does work if if you work it. Yep.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, I hear people say that you know
Speaker 2: a lot in a perfect world, and it's like things
Speaker 2: are perfect, you're just not seeing you're going to grow.
Speaker 2: You're going to grow from from whatever problems that you're
Speaker 2: going to I mean, would it be desirable not to
Speaker 2: have to go through those problems? Yes, But what would
Speaker 2: you do if you if you, if you, if you
Speaker 2: didn't have any problems, Ah, life would have carried on
Speaker 2: being one big party for me, and probably I probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't be here now, okay, it is the perfect one.
Speaker 1: Let me reframe the question. If you could play any
Speaker 1: kind of music you wanted, what would that be.
Speaker 2: Good? Good music? Uh? You know, I just got back
Speaker 2: from Nashville doing some recording with the guy named Ira Dean,
Speaker 2: who introduced me to some players that were down there. Uh,
Speaker 2: guys like like a Pork, the bass player named Pork
Speaker 2: and and and a keyboard player named Moose uh who
Speaker 2: just like incredible musicians that I'd never heard of before,
Speaker 2: I never met them before. Yeah. Uh uh, That's what
Speaker 2: I love to do, is to play with with with
Speaker 2: great players. There's there's nothing like it. And this thing
Speaker 2: that I'm doing with this uh, this orchestral thing that
Speaker 2: I'm doing with all these I've seen these players, these
Speaker 2: orchestral players, I've been down I've been down to Disney
Speaker 2: and I've and I've seen them. I've seen them play
Speaker 2: play stuff that I wouldn't even attempt to attempt to play,
Speaker 2: some Beethoven stuff. That's just it's so difficult, such such
Speaker 2: hard music to play, you know, And they're going to
Speaker 2: be over there playing some Chicago, Chicago songs and that
Speaker 2: have been orchestrated these you know. Uh, and and and
Speaker 2: and and a lot of times I've sat there and played.
Speaker 2: I've done that stuff before all over the country with
Speaker 2: Jason and Jason Cheffin and uh, you know, some trumpet
Speaker 2: players they come up, especially trumpet players, they come up
Speaker 2: and say, man, it's really great to play with you
Speaker 2: and really know where I am with this backbeat yours.
Speaker 2: It's really it's really nice to have that, you know.
Speaker 2: So they like, these are the guys that can play anything,
Speaker 2: you know, but they like they find a good, good musician,
Speaker 2: a guy does what he does well, and they dig playing,
Speaker 2: they dig playing that stuff. It's just it's just wonderful
Speaker 2: to be able to play with all these players.
Speaker 1: And it's been great to talk to you, Steve. I
Speaker 1: could go on for days. We just hit the highlights,
Speaker 1: so many stories in between, but I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: go now. Thanks so much for making the time and
Speaker 1: making this.
Speaker 2: And thank you for taking your time from writing all
Speaker 2: the writing stuff that you write. You know, I read
Speaker 2: that stuff. That's good good.
Speaker 1: It's like in the it's like being in the eye
Speaker 1: of the hurricane. You know, I'll go somewhere, so know,
Speaker 1: I was just talking about you with this pretty much
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just wrote and said it out there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird, you know.
Speaker 2: I really I really enjoy like sometimes, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I I do my research and I hear you talk
Speaker 2: about a musicians that and and and and and and
Speaker 2: and and I researched for my show. I said, let
Speaker 2: me have a listen to this person, you know, and
Speaker 2: and and then usually when I'm reading about them on Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: they say that they play with somebody else and I
Speaker 2: never heard of them. Who's that? And I start to
Speaker 2: feel my way around and I find find something that's
Speaker 2: that for me is obscure, but from other people say, oh,
Speaker 2: we knew about that all the time, and uh so
Speaker 2: it's uh it really helps me, uh to read, to
Speaker 2: put my put my show together, gives me stuff to
Speaker 2: listen to with something fresh, and it's funny our popular
Speaker 2: my radio show has become. I was walking to an
Speaker 2: April the other day and they said, oh, you're that drummer, right,
Speaker 2: the one with the radio show new Guy. You're the
Speaker 2: new guy I used to.
Speaker 1: Be on KLSX on Sunday nights and it's radio, you
Speaker 1: don't know anything. And I was backstage at the old
Speaker 1: Universal the Amphitheater and John Boyle. In the record, Bruster says,
Speaker 1: you want to talk to Timothy Beachman. They said, I
Speaker 1: don't like to be introduced to people who don't know
Speaker 1: who I am. It's like a waste of time. I
Speaker 1: don't want to waste their time. And then Timothy comes
Speaker 1: up independently, like fifteen minutes later, and the goes, good
Speaker 1: to put a face with a voice, and I say,
Speaker 1: I literally had no idea, what are you talking about.
Speaker 1: We've never met before. Bla blah, goes, oh, I listen,
Speaker 1: I'm careless X every Sunday night. It's like you don't
Speaker 1: even know you put it out there, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: tell you.
Speaker 2: You know. I was in New York, working in New
Speaker 2: York and there was a jingle guy and he he
Speaker 2: said to me, I think it was Bernie Draken. He
Speaker 2: said to me, you know, Steve, He said you should
Speaker 2: check out the Reverend Milton Brunson. He says, a great
Speaker 2: choir and they have great voices, right, And he said
Speaker 2: it's really well recorded. So so I go out and
Speaker 2: I find this, this this record, Reverend Milton Brunson, incredible stuff.
Speaker 2: Start reading the names on the back the the the
Speaker 2: orchestra leader, musical director guy named Percy Beady, and he
Speaker 2: sings a song on there. And he's got a great
Speaker 2: voice too, you know. So I start buying stuff music
Speaker 2: when they when they have and and and I find
Speaker 2: out that there are church in Chicago. So I'm in
Speaker 2: Chicago with the Heartbreakers, and first time I've ever had
Speaker 2: a Sunday off in Chicago, staying at the Four Seasons.
Speaker 2: I called downstairs to the concierge desk and I say, listen,
Speaker 2: do you know where this re? Milton Bronson's churches? And
Speaker 2: hold on, We'll get back to you. So they come
Speaker 2: back and they say, we don't know anything about that.
Speaker 2: And I said, look, look, look, I know this is
Speaker 2: the Poor Seasons, but I know you've got a black
Speaker 2: person works in. I know you've got to have a
Speaker 2: black person working the here somewhere. Ask them. So they said, okay,
Speaker 2: So they hang out the phone. They come back. We
Speaker 2: got the address. So it's on the and the outside
Speaker 2: of outside of the loop, you know, outside they want to.
Speaker 2: I go out there and I'm sitting there and I'm
Speaker 2: watching the choir and they're just rocking the joint right
Speaker 2: and there's this woman, an old woman, sitting in front
Speaker 2: of me, and she is like alumni of the choir.
Speaker 2: So they say, please come up and sing. So she
Speaker 2: gets up and she goes up there and she sings
Speaker 2: this song. She sings her ass off and she comes back.
Speaker 2: Everybody's clapping her. She comes back and she sits down
Speaker 2: in front of me. And after the service has finished,
Speaker 2: I say, do I say that was?
Speaker 1: That was?
Speaker 2: That was really wonderful? I said, it says, excuse me,
Speaker 2: I said, it's Percy Bady up there. She said, yes,
Speaker 2: that's him at the organ right. So I walk up
Speaker 2: and he said getting these music together on top of
Speaker 2: the organ. And I say I walk up and say.
Speaker 2: He looks up and he looks at me, and he
Speaker 2: goes Steve Feroni and I say, Percy Bady, And how
Speaker 2: do you know who I am? I said, I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm here. You never know, right, No, that's
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: What I tell my girlfriend is you never know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen when you walk out the front door.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like if you stay at home, I mean now,
Speaker 1: in the internet area, you can hear from people, but
Speaker 1: once you get out there, anything can happen. That's one
Speaker 1: of the great things about life. M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, Steve,
Speaker 1: I think we've covered it in any events.
Speaker 2: Have been enjoyable meeting you start face to face.
Speaker 1: And absolutely ditto.
Speaker 2: Let me know if you ever want to come and
Speaker 2: see the Dirty Knobes or if you want to come
Speaker 2: and see this symphonic thing.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but let me be clear. I talked to
Speaker 1: Mike my end to uh, you know, you don't go
Speaker 1: on the road with them.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I've been doing it. They asked me. They
Speaker 2: asked me to go out, uh and play with him
Speaker 2: on the on the last two. So I did the
Speaker 2: I did the West Coast and and Mike said, well,
Speaker 2: you want to be in the.
Speaker 5: Band now, but let's be clear, if fire me and
Speaker 5: you get me back now, they're not staying at the
Speaker 5: four seasons.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, So what's it like starting all over?
Speaker 2: Oh it's fun, man, I'm telling you, it's great. It's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's like it's the Heartbreakers. It's playing with
Speaker 2: the Heartbreaker. I'm playing with Mike. Yet we understand each other. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I give him credit. You know, he'll go out and
Speaker 2: do that stuff that he did. Yeah, Cole Sung, I
Speaker 2: don't even know. It's like, what's ups that? Three?
Speaker 1: Four?
Speaker 2: Uh okay, it turns out pretty good.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. People can't see you got a smile on
Speaker 1: your face. That's the most important thing in any event.
Speaker 1: We're gonna wrap it up until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob left. Six