Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob West That's podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Donny Osben. Donnie,
Speaker 1: good to have you here. I'm nice to be with you. Bob. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have a new album entitled Start Again? Why record
Speaker 1: a new album now? Well? Why stop at sixty? I'm
Speaker 1: actually you know, there's that side of it. But the
Speaker 1: music business has changed dramatically since you had your first
Speaker 1: hits about fifty years ago. I was certainly conscious. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a big, you know, chuck of time. But we're
Speaker 1: all here where there were a limited number of labels.
Speaker 1: As you got on the radio, everybody knew you. Now
Speaker 1: you can be a very famous name, put out a
Speaker 1: new record and no one can be aware of it.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of the landscape. So did that affect
Speaker 1: your thinking? How did you decide to actually make the record?
Speaker 1: Before I answer that, I just have to go back
Speaker 1: and say I have that situation going on in my
Speaker 1: career right now as well, because I'm the the singing
Speaker 1: voice of Captain Schang in the Disney movie Mulan and
Speaker 1: it streams millions every month and a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know it's me and when I do my show
Speaker 1: in Vegas. That this happened just the other night. This
Speaker 1: this eighteen year old aspiring singer UM came to the show.
Speaker 1: She said, I heard that you were Captain Shang and Mulan,
Speaker 1: but I thought, you know, this isn't my kind of show.
Speaker 1: This is for the old old farts. You know, it's whatever,
Speaker 1: and and I'll watch Mulan and then I'll leave. And
Speaker 1: she said, I couldn't leave because not just the production,
Speaker 1: but the music. Um is stuff that I listened to,
Speaker 1: and it kind of answers your question why sixty albums.
Speaker 1: It's because I'm reinventing and a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know my voice as Captain Schang, and when they discover
Speaker 1: the new music, well this is and then they hear
Speaker 1: they go with a little girl and popular stuff that
Speaker 1: what is that? And then they start realizing, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: had a six decade career. Okay, So I know that
Speaker 1: you did the Voice of Mulam because I saw it
Speaker 1: on Spotify and I listened to it. There's the average
Speaker 1: we say the movies unbelievably successful. Do you find that
Speaker 1: people know that issue? Well, that's just the thing. It
Speaker 1: depends on the age. It depends on the demographic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it depends on if they're an avid Donny Osmond follower
Speaker 1: for years. Um, they know it because I've talked about
Speaker 1: it in my social and stuff like that. But by
Speaker 1: and large, every time, every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 1: come up with somebody and they'll say, you gotta be
Speaker 1: kidding me, you're Captain Shang. And I get a kick
Speaker 1: out of it actually, because it's the same feeling I
Speaker 1: got when I was the first mass singer on the
Speaker 1: show The Massing and I was the first one, and
Speaker 1: I walked out there Bob with this mask on, and
Speaker 1: it was such a cool feeling because there was no baggage,
Speaker 1: there was no expectations, there was no history. It was
Speaker 1: just my singing and my entertaining and and and what
Speaker 1: I did on stage. So it was a reset almost
Speaker 1: and I almost one t pain got it from me,
Speaker 1: but uh, it was. It's the same feeling. It's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: you are that person. I didn't know. How did you
Speaker 1: get the gig with Milan? Dina cats is the She's
Speaker 1: she books the talents, And Dina booked me on Dancing
Speaker 1: with the Stars, which I won on season nine and
Speaker 1: Dina called me up and said, you know you're you're
Speaker 1: my first call. Um, I'd like you to to be
Speaker 1: this the mass singer, the first mass singer. So I
Speaker 1: called my manager, Jim Moorey who I think you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I said, Jim, I need you to call your
Speaker 1: friends at Fox. I want you to find out if
Speaker 1: this show is real. He called me back the next
Speaker 1: day says, Donnie, this is really real. They got millions
Speaker 1: of dollars behind it. So I called Dina back and
Speaker 1: I said, Dina booked me because I got the joke. Bob.
Speaker 1: I knew if there was money behind this show, it's
Speaker 1: going to work. And um, I remember walking out. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, Bob, nobody in the audience, the panel
Speaker 1: didn't know who I was. The audience didn't know. There
Speaker 1: were only probably three people in the booth that knew
Speaker 1: who I was, President of Fox, the director, Dina, and
Speaker 1: maybe one more. So I walk out there and everybody's like,
Speaker 1: what is going on? We're watching a peacock walk on stage.
Speaker 1: And let me just backtrack a little bit. Before I
Speaker 1: walked on stage, the producers called me, Sadani, what song
Speaker 1: do you want to sing? And I said, well, it's
Speaker 1: got to be This is the greatest show. It's got
Speaker 1: to start with that. So they called me back the
Speaker 1: next day. So the publisher is not going to release it,
Speaker 1: and so why say, Well, they don't get the show.
Speaker 1: It's a stupid show with masks, and we gotta protect
Speaker 1: the music. And I said give me a day. So
Speaker 1: I found a minus track online and uh, I put
Speaker 1: my voice on it and sent it to the producers
Speaker 1: and I said, walk us over to the publisher and
Speaker 1: they said, well, they said no, but we'll do it.
Speaker 1: So they walk in. The publisher said, guys, look, I said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have the song, and he said, just listen
Speaker 1: to this, and they played my version and after it
Speaker 1: was over he said, who is that? He says, we
Speaker 1: can't tell you. All we can say he's going to
Speaker 1: be a peacock. He said, well, based upon what I heard,
Speaker 1: the song is yours. And I got it based on
Speaker 1: that just that because I love the fact they didn't
Speaker 1: know it was me. It was just gonna be a peacock. Okay.
Speaker 1: The Milan gig, how did you get that gig? Pam Coats,
Speaker 1: She calls me up and said, you know, we're doing
Speaker 1: this movie called Mulan and would like you to be
Speaker 1: the singing voice of Shang. And I said, I'd loved it,
Speaker 1: but I'm doing a musical in in Chicago right now.
Speaker 1: She said, what are your days off? I said, Sunday, Monday.
Speaker 1: Can you fly into l A on Sunday, recorded Monday,
Speaker 1: get back for your show on Tuesday. I said, I'd
Speaker 1: love to be part of a Disney film. Little did
Speaker 1: I know it become a classic. And they showed me
Speaker 1: a couple of pencil drawings of Shang and one sequence
Speaker 1: where he gets hit in the stomach and said, pretend
Speaker 1: you're getting hit in the stomach, and I said, let's
Speaker 1: get down to business. And I just threw myself into it,
Speaker 1: and little did I know would become one of the
Speaker 1: most popular songs I've ever recorded, and it was so
Speaker 1: cool to be part of it. So it was Pam Coats.
Speaker 1: Did you know Pam previously? I didn't Pam, and I
Speaker 1: don't think ever cross paths. It was just a wild
Speaker 1: her idea of hers. You know, I love his voice.
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess she was a fan back in
Speaker 1: the Puppy Love days, and I guess they did some
Speaker 1: comparisons to Beati Wong who was the speaking voice, and
Speaker 1: there was some you know, comparisons, and she took a
Speaker 1: chance on me. I threw myself into the part and
Speaker 1: got it. Okay, you're telling the story of the Masked
Speaker 1: Singer where you're aggressive. Aggressive's got a bad kind. Let's
Speaker 1: say proactive? Okay? Uh? Is that the history of your career?
Speaker 1: Are you making things happen? Are you waiting for the
Speaker 1: phone to ring? Are you waiting for the phone to
Speaker 1: ring and then becoming very active? How does it go down?
Speaker 1: This is why I love talking to you because even
Speaker 1: Jim told me, he says he's going to ask you
Speaker 1: questions you've never been asked. I love that question. And
Speaker 1: the it's yes and no. It depends on my age.
Speaker 1: The phone stopped ringing after the Donnie and Marie show ended,
Speaker 1: which we're putting out of right, and my my I
Speaker 1: had no career. I couldn't even get arrested. I couldn't
Speaker 1: get a record deal, nothing. So the answer to your
Speaker 1: the quick answer is yeah, you've got to be extremely
Speaker 1: proactive if you want to a long career, particularly when
Speaker 1: you start out as a teeny popper and you've got
Speaker 1: this really squeaky clean image from Puppy Love and Gay
Speaker 1: Little Girl, not stuff which I I'm not putting down anymore.
Speaker 1: It is great for the time, Bob. In fact, in
Speaker 1: my Vegas show here I treat Puppy Love with respect
Speaker 1: and I sing it right with a beautiful arrangement a
Speaker 1: little bit. Do you also sing One Bad Apple? I
Speaker 1: do One Bad Apple in its original form with the
Speaker 1: costumes and my four other male dancers, and we recreate, uh,
Speaker 1: one bad Apple. But at the end of this not
Speaker 1: the end, We're going to go into this cool groove
Speaker 1: and I sell say to the audience, you know, I
Speaker 1: can't hit the high notes anymore. But I got on
Speaker 1: my TikTok account and I asked, is there anybody out
Speaker 1: there that could sing it for me? And I got
Speaker 1: flooded with all of these videos of kids singing my part.
Speaker 1: Learned the choreography as well, and we play that at
Speaker 1: the end of One Bad Apple. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a cool little thing. No, that's cool. But I have
Speaker 1: to ask, were you TikTok savvy or your kid or
Speaker 1: somebody you know in passing? How you know how Internet savvy?
Speaker 1: How social media savvy? Are you personally. Well, you're talking
Speaker 1: to someone who's who's been an engineer all his life.
Speaker 1: I engineer all my stuff. I noticed that in the
Speaker 1: credit to you. I almost gonna get to that, but
Speaker 1: keep going. But I um that that's my hobby, if
Speaker 1: you will. I've built a lot of things. The computer
Speaker 1: system that I've kind of designed the whole thing. I've
Speaker 1: got some great people that work with me, but I
Speaker 1: designed the whole computer system that runs this show. Uh
Speaker 1: so uh. To answer your social media question right from
Speaker 1: the get go, can you imagine, Bob, what I could
Speaker 1: have done with TikTok and and Instagram during the Puppy
Speaker 1: Love days, I mean, can you imagine? Yes? So, No,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm extremely social media savvy. So you're saying posting
Speaker 1: on social media you personally are doing it or somebody
Speaker 1: on your team, No, I do it. I do it.
Speaker 1: I have somebody that helps me figure out and say
Speaker 1: this is when you should post it, this is the
Speaker 1: time that works, this is the content, this is what
Speaker 1: is current right now, this is what is people are
Speaker 1: are trending with. Because my life is so busy, I
Speaker 1: need I need feedback, I need information, And I mean
Speaker 1: that's what I do uh. And then these people say
Speaker 1: you gotta do this, you gotta do that, and this
Speaker 1: is what we recommend. Yeah, yea, yea, And then I'll
Speaker 1: go produce it and edit it myself and post it
Speaker 1: because I like to be involved in every single bit
Speaker 1: of what I do. Because there was a day, Bob,
Speaker 1: there was a day when I wasn't in control, and
Speaker 1: I vowed that someday, when I grew up, I would
Speaker 1: take the reins. Because I look back at some of
Speaker 1: the songs that I recorded, and again, I've got to
Speaker 1: be careful here, Bob, that I don't put my earlier
Speaker 1: career down. But let's face it, there were some songs
Speaker 1: that I came out with it were just so sugary
Speaker 1: sweet that it left me with this really interesting image
Speaker 1: that I've spent a lifetime reinventing myself. It was fine
Speaker 1: for the time, but there were songs that were thrown
Speaker 1: at me, Bob. If you and believe this thrown at
Speaker 1: me five minutes before I recorded it. They became gold records.
Speaker 1: But it's like, and here's the juxtaposition I was in
Speaker 1: as a as a young teenager, I would be in
Speaker 1: and this was in at MGM studios on Fairfax. They're
Speaker 1: right there Fairfax in Beverly. Um, I was in mtwo,
Speaker 1: studio M two. They built us a studio M three,
Speaker 1: So I was in M two recording this bubblegum music,
Speaker 1: and then I would go to M three with my
Speaker 1: brothers and record this rock and roll music because that
Speaker 1: was a whole other direction that we were taking. But
Speaker 1: my bubblegum music was overshadowing any rock and roll that
Speaker 1: we were doing, which is kind of a catch twenty
Speaker 1: two because if it's selling, if it's working, you keep
Speaker 1: feeding that, right, But it overshadowed everything that we were
Speaker 1: doing as a band in a rock and roll sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: to what degree was Mike Curb the Leave, the Guy
Speaker 1: Ran the Lebel, hands on, hands on all my early hits,
Speaker 1: Puppy Love Away, Little Girl, Um, you name all those albums.
Speaker 1: He was the one that that really selected a lot
Speaker 1: of those songs. And I have him to thank for
Speaker 1: all that he's done. And there were songs that he
Speaker 1: threw up me I really didn't like, but you know,
Speaker 1: we were trying to fill up an album. In seventy two,
Speaker 1: I had released four albums in one year, two with
Speaker 1: my brothers and two. As a solo artist, you're in
Speaker 1: the studio constantly, let alone out on tour. I didn't
Speaker 1: have time to even think. So Mike would would give
Speaker 1: me songs to record that he thought would play into this,
Speaker 1: this whole Donny Osmond image that was the little pre
Speaker 1: pubescent teenager girls were buying into. And I was safe
Speaker 1: because the parents said, he's safe, let's buy it. So
Speaker 1: that was the mentality of my curb at the time. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's look, so you're working in Vegas now and
Speaker 1: hair and Harrows. What what kind of deal do you
Speaker 1: have there with heros? Now, it's a long term deal,
Speaker 1: but there's options obviously on both sides. But I mean
Speaker 1: it could go on and on. I mean, the Donny
Speaker 1: and Marie thing was supposed to be six weeks and
Speaker 1: it ended up being eleven years. So why did the
Speaker 1: Donny Marie thing end? It was time Marie and I
Speaker 1: felt that Marie, I think, wanted to go a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. She wanted to go to twelve years and
Speaker 1: maybe break a record or something. And I thought, I
Speaker 1: think I'm done, and she said, yeah, I think we're done.
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing. We did, because it's almost
Speaker 1: like we knew the COVID thing was coming, because as
Speaker 1: soon as we stopped COVID hit, we would have stopped anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're that was it the Flamingo, right, and now
Speaker 1: you're at Heros. Why one casino is opposed to another.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to try to look like I was
Speaker 1: recreating um, the Donny and Marie success UM. I wanted
Speaker 1: something different because when you reinvent yourself, I don't like
Speaker 1: to rest on my laurels. So I didn't want people
Speaker 1: to think we're coming back and oh, where's Marie because
Speaker 1: this show has nothing to do with what we did
Speaker 1: as Donnie and Marie. Donnie Marie is just one part
Speaker 1: of my career, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was
Speaker 1: eleven great years working with my sister. But now we've
Speaker 1: gone on. She's doing her thing. I'm doing my thing.
Speaker 1: But when I designed this show, I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be all inclusive, Bob. I wanted it to be everything
Speaker 1: right from the beginning to what I'm doing now. And
Speaker 1: I had this idea. Raj Kapoor. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that name means anything to you. He's he's like the
Speaker 1: go to guy. He directs and produces the Grammys and
Speaker 1: the the Oscars that I mean, he's just the most
Speaker 1: creative man you can imagine. I called him up and
Speaker 1: I said, Raj, we're trying to fit six decades in
Speaker 1: the ninety minutes. What do you think of this idea?
Speaker 1: It's a little crazy. What if I did a rap?
Speaker 1: And he said, excuse me? I said, I did a
Speaker 1: rap about my entire life. He said, it's brilliant. It's
Speaker 1: like Hamilton's. I said, exactly, And and I start out,
Speaker 1: you know it. I'll begin back in Utah I was
Speaker 1: four years old, started singing with my brothers in The
Speaker 1: sound was like gold. So my folks took a leap
Speaker 1: and said, what the hey, we gotta get these monsters
Speaker 1: out to California. And it gets faster and faster and faster.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be almost a ten minute rap.
Speaker 1: And by the time it's over, it's everybody's like, you've
Speaker 1: got to be kidding me. You did all that stuff?
Speaker 1: And he he said, this is gonna work. And Keith
Speaker 1: Harris and my music director, he's he's an alien. He's
Speaker 1: just so talented. He was the main man that put
Speaker 1: all this stuff together for me. I supplied all the
Speaker 1: product of the the clips and things like that, and
Speaker 1: it's like one of the highlights of the show. It's
Speaker 1: gone viral and my social people have videoed it, and
Speaker 1: when I start to introduce it, I can hear the
Speaker 1: audience say, here it comes, here, it comes, here, it comes,
Speaker 1: we go into it. Okay, So obviously you wrote that,
Speaker 1: and on the new album you co wrote every track.
Speaker 1: When did you start to write and what was your incentive.
Speaker 1: I started writing when I was a teenager. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't um, it wasn't the well, actually there were some
Speaker 1: good songs. I'm Sorry and I'm Flying into the Wind,
Speaker 1: and those were actually pretty good songs. I wrote that
Speaker 1: when I was around eighteen or something like that. But
Speaker 1: if this goes back to where we're talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: Bob about taking the reins, and I thought, if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be known as an artist, I can't be singing
Speaker 1: covers because that was the basis of all my success
Speaker 1: in the seventies and Puppy Love Too Young, all those
Speaker 1: songs were covers. If I've if I'm gonna gain some respect,
Speaker 1: I've got to write my music and over the years,
Speaker 1: I would hone in my efforts and my talents a
Speaker 1: little bit more work on the lyrics. I started this
Speaker 1: album about three years ago, and I surrounded myself with
Speaker 1: some really really good people and uh, but you know
Speaker 1: they can't write it for you. You've got to come
Speaker 1: up with the concept. And so that's how it all began.
Speaker 1: I I would come up with the concept and come
Speaker 1: up with the groove. I wrote this song that we
Speaker 1: closed the show, Let's All Dance with Rant Stopson and
Speaker 1: aunt Clemens. I mean they're the furthest people you think
Speaker 1: Donnie As will be working with it. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's the Bruno mars Camp of the world, that type
Speaker 1: of stuff. And when I called him up, he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this might be interesting. Um, and so we started and
Speaker 1: I'm not dance too and whatever, dot Dom rev up.
Speaker 1: I just started coming up with sounds. Peter Gabriel taught
Speaker 1: me that. At the beginning of Sledgehammer, he said them
Speaker 1: a little bad at you. And when he was involved
Speaker 1: in one of my albums as an executive producer, and
Speaker 1: I said, Peter, what do you singing at the beginning
Speaker 1: sledge Hammer? And he said, nothing, it sounds. He said
Speaker 1: that's the where I write whatever it sounds good. So
Speaker 1: when Aunt Clemmens came aboard on let's all dance, he said,
Speaker 1: he's singing this one like love it write up an it?
Speaker 1: Then does hound that sound up? Somebody that about to do?
Speaker 1: And I wrote all those sounds down. I said, left
Speaker 1: left foot, rad foot, magical dance and shoes, let's yop.
Speaker 1: And then I came up, let's saw bat it do?
Speaker 1: And it wants to do? And all came from sounds
Speaker 1: and that Peter Gabriel taught me how to do. And
Speaker 1: so that's one way to write. That's the way I
Speaker 1: wrote Let's all Dance with with Aunt Clemmens, and and
Speaker 1: Rad stops it. But when it came to a song
Speaker 1: like the Way You Are, which I wrote with Amy,
Speaker 1: watch Amy wrote picking out loud with that Charon and
Speaker 1: she said. I met her just before COVID started and
Speaker 1: she said, Donny, I want to write a song with you.
Speaker 1: And I said, Amy, let me come up with the concept.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to write this. It's got to
Speaker 1: come from me. It took me six months and one
Speaker 1: day I was getting ready and my wife is getting
Speaker 1: ready on her side of the bathroom, and I ware
Speaker 1: you know the way you do just make it sounds,
Speaker 1: the way you follow that doll that gotten bum and
Speaker 1: it's you know what the concept is, the way you are.
Speaker 1: It's good enough for me. I picked up the point
Speaker 1: that Amy. I got it the way you are, the
Speaker 1: way you and I produced that four different ways until
Speaker 1: I finally got it the way I liked. But it
Speaker 1: all begin with that lyric, the way you are. So
Speaker 1: it all depends on where you're headed with the song
Speaker 1: because it's all different the way you write. Okay, you
Speaker 1: talk about people a little lot of your genre with
Speaker 1: a lot of success. How do you actually hook up
Speaker 1: with them? You call them directly, You get phone number
Speaker 1: and say this is Donny Osman, or you have your
Speaker 1: so called I'm doing my air quotes now, people contact them.
Speaker 1: You know, I do it myself. I gotta do it myself, Bob,
Speaker 1: because I don't know. I'm a little different in that respect.
Speaker 1: I don't play the star role. I don't do that
Speaker 1: because I get down in the gutter with everybody else.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, you just talk to anybody
Speaker 1: I've written with and they say you actually do this.
Speaker 1: There's uh, there's a song on the album called Don't Stop.
Speaker 1: And I'm in the booth with Rants and Blush and
Speaker 1: and Seth Reager on guitar, and we're coming up with it. Dude,
Speaker 1: it's such a great, good groove and it's we're just
Speaker 1: feeling it. And all of a sudden, I said, stop, stop, stop, stop, Rants,
Speaker 1: this this song has got a problem. It needs a bridge.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, there's a piano out in the studio.
Speaker 1: Go right one. It's okay. So I go out there
Speaker 1: by myself and I sit down at the piano and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking what would Stevie do? Because I'm such a
Speaker 1: Stevie fan, And I start playing these courts, don't forget
Speaker 1: who you are, read your mood. And I start playing
Speaker 1: these chords and Rants comes out and says, what is that.
Speaker 1: I said, it's our bridge, and he said, come on in,
Speaker 1: and I play it on the on the Roads, in
Speaker 1: the in the in the in the control room, and
Speaker 1: it just happened like that, Dad, If Dad, if you
Speaker 1: reach your movie. It's one of my favorite tracks. It's
Speaker 1: a second track on the album. Now you mentioned the Roads,
Speaker 1: and in the credits you have percussion credits, guitar credits,
Speaker 1: What instruments do you play and how proficient are you? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a keyboardist. That's what I do. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: tried a lot of instruments. I'm so uncoordinated when it
Speaker 1: comes to drums. I've tried guitar, but I'm a keyboard guy,
Speaker 1: so I'll get into programming. Um, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: ways you can write a song. Uh. Splice dot com
Speaker 1: is someplace where you can find some really cool grooves,
Speaker 1: and then you split strip him apart and find sounds,
Speaker 1: and then you strip those apart and create new sounds,
Speaker 1: something that hasn't been heard before, and then you just
Speaker 1: keep experimenting. Uh. In my booth here, I just spend
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours creating sounds, creating ideas. I
Speaker 1: wrote maybe over forty songs for this album and narrated
Speaker 1: down to these twelve. But I'll do something with those
Speaker 1: songs someday. But it's all about creating something that's different.
Speaker 1: And that's what goes back to your first question, why
Speaker 1: do a sixty fifth album? Because I love music. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what I do. I like to create. I
Speaker 1: like to be an artist. I want to did you
Speaker 1: pay for the recording? Of the album. Did you have
Speaker 1: a record deal in place? No, I paid for it,
Speaker 1: and then uh n n b MG came in and
Speaker 1: heard it and said, oh my goodness. I met with
Speaker 1: Thomas and and he said this could be your new home.
Speaker 1: I said I'd love it. And then over time it
Speaker 1: just got get We got closer and closer and close.
Speaker 1: He said, we gotta do this deal. We have to
Speaker 1: do this deal because the music is too good, not
Speaker 1: too so. Okay, obvious question. How did you meet and
Speaker 1: hang with Peter Gabriel. It was a kind of a
Speaker 1: fluke thing. It was Eunice seph concert in New York,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're both doing it. It was for a
Speaker 1: charitable thing and I did my number and then Peter
Speaker 1: did his number, and I just want to meet him because, um,
Speaker 1: I like Shocked the Monkey and all that stuff. I
Speaker 1: love those songs. I just wanted to meet it. And
Speaker 1: and this is classic you know Peter. I do not
Speaker 1: know him personally, know this is classic Peter. He has
Speaker 1: a way of just looking through you, into your eyes,
Speaker 1: into your soul. And he asked me a question, what
Speaker 1: are you doing with your music? Because I really like
Speaker 1: your voice. I can't say I bought any of your records,
Speaker 1: but I think you've got a great voice. And I
Speaker 1: told him the challenges of being Donnie Osman and I
Speaker 1: can get a record deal and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'll tell you what. Why don't you
Speaker 1: come over to my studio is when he has studio
Speaker 1: called Ashcombe House before he built his big place in
Speaker 1: what's called Box and Ashcombe House is a barn. That's
Speaker 1: where he did Shock the Monkey and sledge hammer and
Speaker 1: all those things. And I was the last artist to
Speaker 1: perform there before he moved it over a little bit
Speaker 1: of trivia, but he said, tell you what, Donnie, I
Speaker 1: want you to come over to England and start cutting music.
Speaker 1: Just have a producer Georgia Cockney is his name, and
Speaker 1: just start cutting music. And I want to hear what
Speaker 1: you're doing because I love your voice and I think
Speaker 1: you could reinvent yourself. Bob. It was a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air to hear that, because I was fighting like
Speaker 1: crazy just to be heard. I was singing demos for people,
Speaker 1: for Pete's sakes. So we went over there and and
Speaker 1: we released a few singles. But it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: met Carl sturk And and and Evan Rodgers and start recording
Speaker 1: in in uh New Jersey at a place called the Loft.
Speaker 1: I can't believe. I remember that they're the ones that
Speaker 1: that pretty much found Rihanna and made her who she
Speaker 1: is today. But they're the ones that wrote Soldier of
Speaker 1: Love and produced it for me. So coupled with Peter
Speaker 1: Gabriel giving me some interesting credibility, people say, well, if
Speaker 1: Peter likes it, maybe I should listen. But nothing happened.
Speaker 1: I released four singles over in the UK on Virgin
Speaker 1: They sign me as a favor to Peter, and I
Speaker 1: think Soldier got up to like thirty one and and
Speaker 1: then dropped off, and the other songs didn't do much.
Speaker 1: So I went home really discouraged Bob, this is Christmas.
Speaker 1: And there was a guy in the name of Loose Simon.
Speaker 1: He was a programmed director and I got the record
Speaker 1: in his hands and he said, this is a hit record,
Speaker 1: but there's one problem. It's you. And then I went
Speaker 1: back to I think three before Michael released Thriller, and
Speaker 1: he said the same thing. Because I said, Mike, how
Speaker 1: do I get back on the charge, He said, your
Speaker 1: name is poison. I said, crap, I mean, can't people
Speaker 1: just listen to the music without getting my name in
Speaker 1: the way, And everybody said, no, you have an image problem.
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones signed me to Quest and Ed Epstein, the
Speaker 1: president of the of the label, got a call from
Speaker 1: one of his radio promotion guys out in the field
Speaker 1: because Quincy was going to produce me as a no
Speaker 1: name right as a as a mystery art. Well, they
Speaker 1: all got cold feet because this radio promotion guy out
Speaker 1: in the field said, we don't know how to promote
Speaker 1: promote Donnie Osman. He'll never get played, kicked me off
Speaker 1: the label before we even got started. Um So Peter said,
Speaker 1: let's just get started, and one thing led to another,
Speaker 1: got this record in loose Simon's hands. He calls his
Speaker 1: friends all over the country, said, I got the ultimate
Speaker 1: promotional campaign for you. It's a hit record and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be called the Mystery Artist, and then he'll come
Speaker 1: in and reveal who he is. I went to w
Speaker 1: p LJ in New York and number one station, number
Speaker 1: one market, p one station. They did the promotion and
Speaker 1: my manager calls me. He said, Donnie, I got good
Speaker 1: news and I got bad news. The good news is
Speaker 1: you have a hit record. The bad news is nobody
Speaker 1: knows it's you, and P LJ wants to fly in
Speaker 1: and reveal who this mystery artist is. Bomb. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it because I didn't want to kill
Speaker 1: the request, so I flew in anyway. They snuck me
Speaker 1: into the building. It was dried time Friday morning. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget it, and they do the big drum road
Speaker 1: mystery artist, who are you? And with a little trepidation,
Speaker 1: I said, I'm Donny Osmond Bob. The phone lines lit
Speaker 1: up and it was just the opposite of what I
Speaker 1: thought would happen. Everybody came out of the closet, as
Speaker 1: it were, and said, I've been a fan of yours
Speaker 1: all the time. He said, yeah, right, where were you
Speaker 1: in the Lene years? And then it just one after another,
Speaker 1: one station after another, all across the country. I did
Speaker 1: the same thing, revealing a mystery artist and soldier of
Speaker 1: love put me back on the charts. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to today for a second. You have a deal
Speaker 1: with heroes. How many uh seats in that venue? It's
Speaker 1: uh six and a half six times six fifty or
Speaker 1: something like that. To what degree do you feel a
Speaker 1: responsibility to fill the seats total total, because how do
Speaker 1: you act on that. Well, you're talking to a guy
Speaker 1: here that comes from the old school. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get out there and I promote. You can't expect, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need a lot of people. Get out there. It's
Speaker 1: the machine. You know this, You've been around the block
Speaker 1: a lot. It's the machine that you've got to get working.
Speaker 1: But the machine will quit if that machine realizes, well,
Speaker 1: the artist could care less. So I get out there.
Speaker 1: I promote like crazy. I'm I'm traveling, I'm doing interviews,
Speaker 1: I'm doing all kinds of stuff. I balanced my life
Speaker 1: obviously because I've seen so many artists lose it because
Speaker 1: I don't balance. But if you're going to be an
Speaker 1: artist in this business, particularly one that wants a long career,
Speaker 1: you've got to reinvent yourself, like I'm saying earlier, And
Speaker 1: with reinvention comes hard work. I mean, I get this
Speaker 1: question all the time, Donny, what do I do? I
Speaker 1: want to be in the business and I want to
Speaker 1: be an artist. It was a four letter word, buddy,
Speaker 1: It's called work. And you gotta do the old fashioned
Speaker 1: way by promotion. Yes, you social media. You get all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but get out there on the road and
Speaker 1: play every single gig you can possibly play. That will
Speaker 1: give you experience, but it will also get your name
Speaker 1: out there. And then once you hit then the work
Speaker 1: really begins and it gets harder and harder because now
Speaker 1: you have to prove yourself every time. And that's why
Speaker 1: I did a sixty album. And going back to that
Speaker 1: original question, Okay, so you have the six hundred fifty
Speaker 1: seats to sell to the degree you know your perception.
Speaker 1: How many people are buying Donny Osmond tickets and then
Speaker 1: flying to Vegas to see you? How many people are
Speaker 1: in Vegas? Ay, I want to see a show. I
Speaker 1: can get tickets to Donny os Uh, good question, I think. Uh.
Speaker 1: Initially it's a large percentage, But lately we've been getting
Speaker 1: getting a lot of walk up and the ticket sells.
Speaker 1: President of Entertainment of Caesar's called me and said, Donny,
Speaker 1: it looks like we're on the trajectory for another huge
Speaker 1: hit because the advanced sales are great. And I saw
Speaker 1: this with the Donnie and Mari show. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: all a bell curve. Everything's a bell curve. So you
Speaker 1: get that initial inertia. I guess I'll call it an
Speaker 1: initial wave. And then, as with anything, the hype is
Speaker 1: over and now again the work begins. But I have
Speaker 1: so much faith in this show that the word of
Speaker 1: mouth has become not is because, but has become and
Speaker 1: it's becoming stronger, that it's an amazing show. It's not
Speaker 1: just for grandma and grandpa. Like this little eighteen year
Speaker 1: old girl I told you about a little while ago,
Speaker 1: she said, I had no idea this is the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff I listen because I'm a Charlie Pooth fan.
Speaker 1: I love that kind of music. And she she even
Speaker 1: mentioned Charlie poos some of this stuff sounds like Charlie Pooth.
Speaker 1: And I said, you couldn't have said anything better. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: to what degree if you changed the show now that
Speaker 1: it's playing in front of an audience zero, not at all,
Speaker 1: no feedback, nothing, whatever. This is the show zero. And
Speaker 1: you do one or two shows a night, one five ships,
Speaker 1: five shows a week, and it's literally time, it's vague,
Speaker 1: it's literally timed down. In the minute ninety minutes show,
Speaker 1: I averaged around something like that. All depends on on
Speaker 1: a segment that I call the request segment where anybody
Speaker 1: in the audience did I mentioned this to you that
Speaker 1: I put all of my albums on the on the
Speaker 1: wall behind me, and anybody in the audience can pick
Speaker 1: any album, any song from any album, and we do
Speaker 1: it well. You obviously have a prompter. No, no prompter.
Speaker 1: You can remember sixty albums worth the lyrics. It's the band.
Speaker 1: They have music that pops up, but they've like last night,
Speaker 1: we played songs that they haven't they've never played before,
Speaker 1: and they've got three seconds or so to scan. And
Speaker 1: that was part of the audition process. Can you read?
Speaker 1: There were so many great musicians I wanted to hire,
Speaker 1: and we went for the process of audition, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't hire them because of that one factor. They couldn't
Speaker 1: site read and um. But these four musicians, five musicians,
Speaker 1: I said, we have a six saxophonist monster and they
Speaker 1: all sit read. So when that cheap music pops up, um,
Speaker 1: they play it. Last night I forgot the words at
Speaker 1: this point, so I can't remember which one it was.
Speaker 1: But the show changes every night and people think they're
Speaker 1: looking around. They even told me it's the ground. Where
Speaker 1: is the prompter? There's no prompter and I'm ready to
Speaker 1: do any song I've ever recorded. Okay, so you have
Speaker 1: a consistent does your number per week change on the
Speaker 1: attendance or is it a firm number? Which number you're
Speaker 1: talking pay? It's uh, it's guarantee with percentage. So it
Speaker 1: behooves me to get out and promote, because the better
Speaker 1: the room does, the better everyone does, including myself. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you're obviously successful. Otherwise they would have canceled you over
Speaker 1: all these years. What do you do with the money? Well,
Speaker 1: it's um, see, I love talking to you. Nobody asks
Speaker 1: those questions. Um, I'm very protective of the money. There's
Speaker 1: a portion of it I invest back into myself. Um.
Speaker 1: And the recent I am very responsible with my money
Speaker 1: is because I lost it. I almost had to take
Speaker 1: out bankruptcy when the Donny Mishow ended in our Our
Speaker 1: attorneys said, guys, you don't have anything. And I remember
Speaker 1: sitting in that conference room thinking, you've gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 1: After you know, sixty uh, sixty million dollars we hadn't
Speaker 1: been This is in the early seventies, right or in
Speaker 1: the late seventies. Sixty million. Imagine the value of that now.
Speaker 1: And UH said, it was just floundered, bad decisions by
Speaker 1: your advisors, and we have to start selling your assets.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, you gotta hitting me. One of the
Speaker 1: most successful boy bands in the early seventies are bankrupt.
Speaker 1: And they said, yeah, So I hit the road and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, that's that's the fire behind underneath me.
Speaker 1: Bob said, Okay, I can't go back and do what
Speaker 1: I've done because it's over. I can't go back and
Speaker 1: do the Puppy Loves and even the one Bad Apples stuff.
Speaker 1: I've got to reinvent myself. I've moved to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: moved to Irvine. I set up a little studio and
Speaker 1: I started. That was really good time. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: you've got to be an artist. You gotta start writing.
Speaker 1: And I listened to some stuff I wrote. It's pretty bad,
Speaker 1: but some of it's kind of clever. But I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta surround yourself with great people. But now I've
Speaker 1: got all this baggage, and I hired a great PR firm.
Speaker 1: Actually it was Michael Jackson's PR firm at the time
Speaker 1: as well. They came up with this idea of Bob
Speaker 1: where I was gonna get busted for drugs coming in
Speaker 1: from an international like I said, dude, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: so have so much street cred and and it's the
Speaker 1: Donny Osman. You will be in every paper and every
Speaker 1: magazine all of the world, and then people will accept you.
Speaker 1: And I thought, and I'm the kind of person who says, okay,
Speaker 1: I will listen to an idea, assimilated, and then let
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about or what I think about.
Speaker 1: So I went home that day thinking he's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I will be on every cover in every magazine and
Speaker 1: newspaper in the world. But then what then? And I
Speaker 1: started thinking, I'm trying to do a trick here. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do a marketing ploy to become popular again.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, I'm going to do it with
Speaker 1: my music. I did it the hard way. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it with my music because I
Speaker 1: want to be respected as a musician, not a clever
Speaker 1: marketing person. Because that would have lasted five minutes and
Speaker 1: then people would have chewed me up and spit me out,
Speaker 1: and I would have lived with that for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. But then you know, there are are
Speaker 1: people should I say names. Okay. Simon Leban told me
Speaker 1: one time. He said, Donny, I would love for you
Speaker 1: to come out on the road with us and tour
Speaker 1: with us. I said, are you serious? Um? He said,
Speaker 1: I would love for you to come out and shock
Speaker 1: everybody and we all do Crazy Horses together. And I
Speaker 1: thought that would be a hilarious that would be so
Speaker 1: much fun. But but it's a trick. It's it's a
Speaker 1: one off thing. It's like whatever. Um. Ozzy Osborne told me.
Speaker 1: He said, one of my most favorite rock and roll
Speaker 1: songs is Crazy Horses. Now this is just blowing me
Speaker 1: away because these guys respected in the rock and roll
Speaker 1: industry are saying, we like your talent, but we don't
Speaker 1: want your name. Save. Happened with Phil Collin from Deaf Leopard.
Speaker 1: I did an album This is when I moved down
Speaker 1: to Irvine in the late eighties. Um nose, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was late eighties or something like that, and Phil did.
Speaker 1: I called him up. I said, Phil, I need a
Speaker 1: guitar solo and I think you're one of the greatest
Speaker 1: guitar players. He said, dude, I would love it. Tell
Speaker 1: me when I'm there, he comes in, we record this
Speaker 1: this solo and he just rips it apart. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting ready to release the album and I
Speaker 1: get a call from him. He said, Donny, I gets
Speaker 1: some bad news for you. He said what he said,
Speaker 1: I can't be on your album. I said why? He said,
Speaker 1: management in the band they don't want didn't want death
Speaker 1: Leopard associated with Donnie Osmin. I said, I get it.
Speaker 1: I understand. I've been through it all my life. I
Speaker 1: got I can't lose this solo. He said, no, you
Speaker 1: use my alias. So Phil collind had to use as
Speaker 1: alias because Donny Osman's name was just too uncool. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to the money. So are you hands on
Speaker 1: with the money? And are is it in cashes and stocks?
Speaker 1: Is in real estates as restaurants or do you have
Speaker 1: somebody you trust that deals with it? What's going on there?
Speaker 1: I deal with a team of people. I have one person,
Speaker 1: Shane Edwards is his name, who watches my money. I
Speaker 1: do everything in a triangle. Okay, that's the way I
Speaker 1: make decisions. I'm at the top. My business managers here,
Speaker 1: and my professional manager, Jim Moorey is right here. And
Speaker 1: NASA has the same principle when they launch a rocket.
Speaker 1: It's three computers, if three people. If three computers have
Speaker 1: a green light, then everything is to go because the
Speaker 1: chances of a problem statistically go way down when you've
Speaker 1: got three people looking at it or three computers. Not
Speaker 1: too because it's you know, it's so um Shane watches
Speaker 1: my money, and I watched him like a hawk. Jim
Speaker 1: watches my career. I watched him like a hawk. And
Speaker 1: when I come up with an idea and I green lighted,
Speaker 1: they make sure it's not an emotional thing. They look
Speaker 1: at the market, and they look at the money, they
Speaker 1: look at the potential. If I get three green lights,
Speaker 1: I moved forward. And so I'm very hands on with
Speaker 1: every single thing, including the money. In fact, I have
Speaker 1: access to my quick books from my computer and anywhere
Speaker 1: I were, anywhere I'm at, I can see my my
Speaker 1: income and my outcome, my my assets, my liabilities, and
Speaker 1: I just make sure. I remember when I was doing
Speaker 1: Joseph an amazing technical of the Dream Code, UM, I
Speaker 1: was in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I was gonna be
Speaker 1: there for about three weeks, and my family had moved
Speaker 1: to Chicago to wait for me to arrive there, but
Speaker 1: I had a three week gig up there in Edmonton.
Speaker 1: I called my accountant and I said, guess what, I
Speaker 1: got some news for you. You're fired. She said what
Speaker 1: I said, You're fired? She said why because I don't
Speaker 1: even know what at ten forty is and you're my accountant,
Speaker 1: you're my business manager. I want you to pack up
Speaker 1: every single file that you have on me and send
Speaker 1: it to me, ups it to me up here to Canada. Bob.
Speaker 1: I got, I think forty file boxes, and I for
Speaker 1: those three weeks, I went through every single file, and
Speaker 1: I would read books, I'd read articles, and I learned
Speaker 1: what a ten and forty was and at a W
Speaker 1: two and all this atten and I threw away probably
Speaker 1: three quarters that stuff that had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: my life anymore. And then I went to Chicago and
Speaker 1: I hired this Arlen Simon, great guy. He taught me
Speaker 1: the ropes of finance, and we started building up the cash,
Speaker 1: started building up my bank account and to the point
Speaker 1: where I really don't have to worry much anymore. So
Speaker 1: when I do make a decision and I get three
Speaker 1: green lights, I'll throw the money at it. Because I
Speaker 1: believe in myself. I believe in what I do, and
Speaker 1: that's why I spent a lot of money on this
Speaker 1: show because I know, Bob, I'm sure that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make the money back, plus because it's a great show.
Speaker 1: You're investing in yourself. But just like any any any
Speaker 1: educated investor, they usually balance it out with other things.
Speaker 1: As you're in cash, as it is, stock is in
Speaker 1: real estate. I try to stay away from real estate
Speaker 1: because it's volatile. I do have a lot of equities,
Speaker 1: and even though it's scary, you don't day trade, you
Speaker 1: don't do you don't watch the market like Alco Hawk,
Speaker 1: because I don't know what I'm doing in it. Um.
Speaker 1: But to sticklely, Bob, if you look at history, even
Speaker 1: after the depression, it always climbs, it always comes back,
Speaker 1: and it's if if you want to play the market,
Speaker 1: I mean there's people who do that. I don't date trade.
Speaker 1: It's tempting, but it's scary and you can lose your
Speaker 1: shirt and I lost it once. I ain't losing it again. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you have your kids. Now, you had your kids
Speaker 1: relatively young, and they have kids. To what degree do
Speaker 1: you support them and give them money? I've I've decided
Speaker 1: along with my wife that um, we want to take
Speaker 1: the sting out of life for my kids. I don't
Speaker 1: flaunt them, I don't. I don't throw money at him,
Speaker 1: but I give them just enough to help them with
Speaker 1: their mortgages and food on the table. I told them
Speaker 1: I'll pay for all my grandkids education because you don't
Speaker 1: want to take the motivation out of a parent, um,
Speaker 1: but just enough to where they can enjoy life. And
Speaker 1: for Debbie and myself, it's important that all of our
Speaker 1: children are equal and nobody yet some may have a
Speaker 1: better job or whatever. This so maybe out of work
Speaker 1: will help them because that's what parents do. But if
Speaker 1: you help too much, then the others say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what are you doing that? What about me? So it's
Speaker 1: always balanced out from what's what I call a capital account,
Speaker 1: so they know, at the end of our lives, everybody's
Speaker 1: equal and you're gonna leave your money equally to them. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to avoid a state tax, so so you're
Speaker 1: giving you to him along the way. Well, there's there's investments, obviously,
Speaker 1: and there's there's distributions that you can take advantage of,
Speaker 1: um that the I R S allows and I'm taking
Speaker 1: as much as I possibly can, because you don't want
Speaker 1: to have an enormous bank account that that the government's
Speaker 1: going to grab at the end of your life. They
Speaker 1: might as well use it now to help them out
Speaker 1: in investments. Again, I don't flaunt them, flaunt my money
Speaker 1: with them. With him, I don't overdo it, but just
Speaker 1: enough to hopefully drain our account when our lives are over,
Speaker 1: which I'm thinking. You know, I'm gonna go to a
Speaker 1: hundred and six. I don't know about you, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna make it that far. So how
Speaker 1: did you meet Debbie? She was dating my brother. My
Speaker 1: brother j dated her and U jo a little but
Speaker 1: set the scene a little bit more. What's the age difference?
Speaker 1: And we're we're we're we're You and your brother and
Speaker 1: Debbie living when all this happened. We're in Provo, Utah.
Speaker 1: We've moved there in seventy four, and my brother heard
Speaker 1: about her sister, Pam Glenn, and because she was miss
Speaker 1: Provo for his so she dated him. He dated her, uh,
Speaker 1: and then Jay, I mean he just played the market. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he met little Debbie Glenn, who was a
Speaker 1: cheerleader at Provo High and I was in love with
Speaker 1: this girl named Tammy, And uh so they we're where's
Speaker 1: Tammy from? Okay, Tammy's from Fro. She was a cheerleader
Speaker 1: as well. And so you're famous. Not that she doesn't
Speaker 1: have assets. How do you meet Tammy? She was a cheerleader.
Speaker 1: I just you know, I walked up on Donny Osmond.
Speaker 1: I'd love to take you on a date. Were you
Speaker 1: going to that high school? No? No, I never really
Speaker 1: went to school. I was always correspondence. It was I
Speaker 1: went to Okay, we'll get to that a second. So
Speaker 1: go back to Debbie. Okay, So Debbie was we went
Speaker 1: to this to an Elton John concert up at the
Speaker 1: Salt Palace. Insult. You know you're good with your memory.
Speaker 1: You know what year? It is? Seventy six, seventy end possibly.
Speaker 1: So we go up to Salt Palace and I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there with Tammy, who I really really liked, and Jay
Speaker 1: was had Debbie next to him, and I definitely remember
Speaker 1: this Bob he sat down to sing it's a little
Speaker 1: bit funny. I just feeling inside to look over to
Speaker 1: Debbie and I think to myself, I'm gonna marry that girl.
Speaker 1: Some day I think, where did I come up with that?
Speaker 1: And about a month later we'd switch. I took out
Speaker 1: Debbie and Jay took out Tammy. He didn't marry Tammy.
Speaker 1: That would have been ironic, but it's started. The romance
Speaker 1: started there. But I had to keep it secret because
Speaker 1: if the fan magazines found out I was dating somebody, seriously,
Speaker 1: I would have been ostracized, which I was after I
Speaker 1: got married, and so was she by by a lot
Speaker 1: of the fans. But um, that's how it all happened.
Speaker 1: And I just fell in love with this girl. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're a musician, you know, certainly in these this era
Speaker 1: of the rock stars, one of the reasons they did
Speaker 1: it was to meet women. And they were traveling all
Speaker 1: over the country in the pre cell phone camera days. Whatever. Yep,
Speaker 1: you know you're meeting a million girls. Nope, no, why
Speaker 1: not after a concert? I guess I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: this story because this is what really led me to
Speaker 1: I want to get married. Um. Being um a member
Speaker 1: of the Church of Jesus Christ Larity Saints, the moral
Speaker 1: code is high. Okay. I lived in Utah for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, so you know, all about it. Where
Speaker 1: it stal City? Yeah, okay, one one year down in Sandy,
Speaker 1: one year in the avenues, Oh okay. So we would
Speaker 1: finish this these concerts, girls screaming my names. They're screaming
Speaker 1: my name, and um, I couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I'm a normal guy, hormonal tsia.
Speaker 1: But we would go back to the hotel and go
Speaker 1: from mass hysteria to silence, and um, Gerald sciences silence.
Speaker 1: There was one concert, um, actually there's several, but this
Speaker 1: one in particular. It was in Hawaii. We had performed
Speaker 1: at this huge arena packed and girls screaming my name
Speaker 1: like crazy. After the show, we go to we had
Speaker 1: an apartment there. So I go back to the apartment
Speaker 1: and I go to the corner of this room and
Speaker 1: I roll up into a ball and I just started
Speaker 1: crying profusely. My brother Jay walks in. He said, Donny,
Speaker 1: it wasn't matter. And I looked up at him and said,
Speaker 1: I'm lonely. He said, what thousands of girls just screaming
Speaker 1: your name and you're lonely. I said, I'm lonely. And
Speaker 1: then I met this debby Glen, and before she was
Speaker 1: my lover She was my best friend and I needed
Speaker 1: that in my personal life. Several songs on this album
Speaker 1: are about her. Beacon Girl is about her, The Way
Speaker 1: You Are is about her. She literally saved my life because,
Speaker 1: as Justin Bieber released Lonely, UM, I said, when I
Speaker 1: saw that video and heard the song, I thought, if
Speaker 1: anybody knows what that's like, it's me because I went
Speaker 1: through the same teeny boper thing that he did, and
Speaker 1: it inspired the song on my album called Life After Loneliness.
Speaker 1: And but that that's what begin the process of saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, Donnie, take care of yourself. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you're together with Debbie almost fifty years. You're on the road,
Speaker 1: which makes things more difficult. How do you keep the
Speaker 1: marriage together? I realized what I'd lose. I realized that
Speaker 1: I would lose respect for my children, my grandchildren, and
Speaker 1: I have a conviction of my beliefs. Um, not everybody
Speaker 1: believes the same way, and I certainly don't hold that
Speaker 1: them into contempt or anything is live and let live.
Speaker 1: But I would rather keep my marriage. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: want used were pure. I would keep my marriage pure.
Speaker 1: I would rather uh be have Debbie be the only
Speaker 1: one that i've I've I've had a relationship with and uh,
Speaker 1: but that's not the same as as as everyone. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's been wonderful marriages without judging that whether people are
Speaker 1: lds or something else. It takes two. You can believe
Speaker 1: in this all day long. You have siblings, at least
Speaker 1: one sibling I'm aware of, got divorced couple. Actually, so
Speaker 1: how does she feel she's raising the kids, you're out
Speaker 1: on the road, etcetera, etcetera. There must be some arguments, uh,
Speaker 1: you you think, And yeah, we've had some I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say arguments, but very serious discussions. And comes down to
Speaker 1: one little word, and it may sound trite, and that
Speaker 1: word is trust. You know, she trust me, I trust her.
Speaker 1: And and in this world with social media the way
Speaker 1: it is, Bob, if I did something, it certainly would
Speaker 1: be out there. Okay, but let's move on beyond that,
Speaker 1: because there are plenty of people who are faithful in
Speaker 1: the relationships. And anyway, I mean, do you ever sit
Speaker 1: at home or sit on the road whatever I say.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta do something for Debbie because I'm
Speaker 1: out here alone. She's alone. How often do you communicate
Speaker 1: every day? Every single day via phone, via email, text. Well,
Speaker 1: now you know FaceTime, you know duo. Since I'm an
Speaker 1: Android user, it's duo. Um. Why why are you an
Speaker 1: Android user? I just think it's a better operating system.
Speaker 1: I think I can do more with it. Well, certainly
Speaker 1: it's more flexible. But you have issues of less security.
Speaker 1: Shall we say? I'm pretty I've got security. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: very secure in what I do, uh and where I
Speaker 1: put things? Which phone do you have? I've got the
Speaker 1: Note twenty okay, and you have the latest osh you okay, okay,
Speaker 1: good to know. So what's your computer? What do you
Speaker 1: use for a computers? Apple? I'm an Apple guy. I'm
Speaker 1: that guy. So I do cross platforms and it sometimes
Speaker 1: it's difficult because Apple is so proprietary, uh and they
Speaker 1: make the sinking so simple. But I love the challenge
Speaker 1: of of the you know, the the abilities of what
Speaker 1: I can do with this thing, um, and the ease
Speaker 1: of Apple because that's where you know, I use Cube
Speaker 1: as as my dog and it's it's it's it's so
Speaker 1: user friendly when it comes to writing music and things
Speaker 1: like that and editing. Um. Although you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people love the PC, but I am a Mac guy.
Speaker 1: Tell me one thing you can do on your Android
Speaker 1: phone you cannot do on an iPhone. Probably nothing. I
Speaker 1: can't think of anything right now. There's some apps that
Speaker 1: I absolutely love that don't come on OS x or
Speaker 1: iOS iOS um. Probably nothing. I just I like the
Speaker 1: flexibility of being able to drill down to the OS
Speaker 1: and make some changes and and and customize what I want.
Speaker 1: I've always been that way. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning. So you grow up in Ogden. Certainly, No,
Speaker 1: not really, Well, I love you. Then let's just drill
Speaker 1: down a little bit deeper. You were born where Ogden?
Speaker 1: You were born in Ogden. Now, ultimately the family moves
Speaker 1: to Provo, which is certainly more of an LDS hub.
Speaker 1: But you you were born. What are your first memories? Well,
Speaker 1: my first memories, Um, we're kind of like like my
Speaker 1: last memories of Ogden because I moved when I was three,
Speaker 1: and I grew up in San San Fernando Valley in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area. That's home, Um, some of valley, dude,
Speaker 1: I guess, But I really grew up on the road.
Speaker 1: I grew up out of a suitcase. Okay, Well, the
Speaker 1: way you moved to the San Fernando Valley. What point
Speaker 1: do they put you to work? So I started working
Speaker 1: UH singing when I was four, and finally went professional
Speaker 1: at five and a debut at five, and I became
Speaker 1: a full fledged member of the band when I was seven. Um,
Speaker 1: and then I had my first recording experience one number
Speaker 1: one UH and solo art and solo career at twelve,
Speaker 1: and then the TV things started at sixteen. Okay, but
Speaker 1: let's go back when you're living in the San Fernando Valley.
Speaker 1: Do you ever tell your father I don't want to
Speaker 1: do this. I want to watch television. I want to
Speaker 1: play baseball. Well, put yourself in his situation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the short answer is yeah, I didn't. Nine, I wrote
Speaker 1: a letter back to my mom. I was in Sweden
Speaker 1: and touring, and I said, I don't really want to
Speaker 1: I want to come home. Well what is my father
Speaker 1: supposed to do? Stop the tour? Um? No, So you
Speaker 1: do your job, You get out there and you sing.
Speaker 1: We do three shows a day, and we set up
Speaker 1: sounding lights and we did every show is in a
Speaker 1: different town. I'm so glad I went through that, Bob,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I hated it as a little kid. I
Speaker 1: wanted to go play at home with my toys. But
Speaker 1: I liked the training. I like the discipline that I
Speaker 1: was taught by my dad. I liked the the work.
Speaker 1: I liked the harmonies that we were doing on stage now.
Speaker 1: And now keep in mind, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of It's four. I'm hearing barbershop harmonies constantly. So
Speaker 1: that's my foundation was harmony. And then when I joined,
Speaker 1: we went to five part harmony, modern harmony with the
Speaker 1: lines and the sixes and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: in the cord. And so now my my training, my
Speaker 1: ear had already been trained at such a young age
Speaker 1: in barbershop, but now I'm doing modern harmonies. So when
Speaker 1: I record, I listened to, um, Jacob Collier. Do you
Speaker 1: know that the artist, Jacob Collier. I know Jacob. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I love that guy because of what he does
Speaker 1: with harmonies and with pitch and with he's he's a genius.
Speaker 1: And so I try to with my foundation do the
Speaker 1: same thing with my voice and try not to use
Speaker 1: auto tune too much, but just the real thing, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's what was really going on in my mind
Speaker 1: when I moved to San Fernando Valley was all these harmonies,
Speaker 1: and then Andy Williams were on The Andy Williamshow and
Speaker 1: he would challenge us to do all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: and Earl Brown but was Orge Wild who did all
Speaker 1: of our arrangements at that point in time, and he
Speaker 1: would stretch us. And I remember sitting down at this piano. Um,
Speaker 1: we had this piano. I hated the hours in front
Speaker 1: of it. It was the same piano that Sonny, thank
Speaker 1: you Father, Love that you give to me was written
Speaker 1: on this piano. And we would spend countless hours plunking
Speaker 1: our parts out. But when it all came together, it
Speaker 1: was euphoric because pre auto tune, all of our ears,
Speaker 1: all five of us, we would balance, we would listen
Speaker 1: to our pitch and all this stuff, and we would
Speaker 1: do harmonies that were just so complex. And I loved
Speaker 1: every bit of it because that's where my training was,
Speaker 1: that that was my foundation. I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is answering your question, but there's ale. So you say
Speaker 1: that you were not h you know, involved with girls
Speaker 1: when you were on the road, What perks did you
Speaker 1: get for being famous? I mean, this is a day
Speaker 1: of three network TVs channels, and you know, every kid
Speaker 1: wanted to be famous. You were, So what were the
Speaker 1: benefits of that they opened Disneyland early? I mean, what
Speaker 1: what was you get? All those perks? But what better perk? Um?
Speaker 1: And I know this may sound a little interesting to
Speaker 1: your listeners because they're you know, hardcore rock and rollers
Speaker 1: or you know what musos, and that's the last thing
Speaker 1: they think of when they think of Donny Osmond. But
Speaker 1: what better perk than to get on stage and to
Speaker 1: do your music? You know, as teeny bopper as it
Speaker 1: was my stuff, but although also the rock and roll
Speaker 1: stuff I was doing my brothers. What better perk do
Speaker 1: you want than an audience just screaming and yelling your
Speaker 1: name and being able to create music. That's what I
Speaker 1: was doing as a musician. I was honing all those
Speaker 1: skills um. And I know again that might sound you know,
Speaker 1: odd to someone who does really understand the deep cauldrons
Speaker 1: of my life, But those were my perks, my music.
Speaker 1: I would I would, I would listen, let's just put
Speaker 1: a wall between that. Obviously very into that you're not
Speaker 1: on stage, you mean, you meet the president? What are
Speaker 1: some cool things you got to do because you were famous? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You get to meet the president, you get to do
Speaker 1: all kinds of I gotta listen to this story. This
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. So this I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is considered a perk, but in in a in
Speaker 1: a roundabout kind of way, it is. I got a letter,
Speaker 1: Bob from a fan in Sweden, and I'm in Utah
Speaker 1: and the person in charge of our fan club hands
Speaker 1: me this letter. All it says on there it's Donnie Osmond.
Speaker 1: There's no address. She allegedly put it in the mailbox,
Speaker 1: no stamp, and in the post the postman picks it
Speaker 1: up and says, Donny Osbo I get They send it
Speaker 1: to the United States. It gets to the shore. Oh,
Speaker 1: Donny Osmond, send it to you. Though we get a
Speaker 1: lot of these, I guess you. Oh, I know exactly
Speaker 1: where this goes. It gets to my fan club. They
Speaker 1: see it. It's you know, stamped or not stamped, but
Speaker 1: it's it's um what do they call that? When they
Speaker 1: run it through the male thing and it's um canceled
Speaker 1: They canceled. It's canceled. So it's canceled with no stamp
Speaker 1: and it says Donny Osmond on it from Sweden. All
Speaker 1: the way to you tak with no address, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Was there ever a period of time where you felt
Speaker 1: you couldn't go out, you couldn't go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store or shopping in the department store because either people
Speaker 1: would mob you or you felt that people were looking
Speaker 1: at you. That only got to me later on in
Speaker 1: my life, because when the name Donnie Osmond became a joke,
Speaker 1: then I wanted to hide myself and because I said
Speaker 1: to myself, they're talking about me, you know, in a
Speaker 1: derogatory sense. Prior to that, it was like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a monkey in occasion, I'm loved being a being a
Speaker 1: monkey right now because of all the perks you know
Speaker 1: that you mentioned Disneyland stuff like that, and Donny Osma,
Speaker 1: oh free mill, let me buy a free mill. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of perch you get when you have
Speaker 1: that kind of career. But my dad was really I
Speaker 1: don't know how he did it. Yeah, in a way,
Speaker 1: I do know how he did it because he never
Speaker 1: let us live a an opulent life. He never let
Speaker 1: us get caught up in the celebritism um. In fact,
Speaker 1: when we we moved to Westwood and come on, we
Speaker 1: could have afforded a huge mansion. Right. He bought this
Speaker 1: apartment complex and he'd cut holes in the walls to
Speaker 1: the next complex or to the next apartment, and made
Speaker 1: a huge house out of it because he cut these
Speaker 1: holes in the walls and it was like a twelve
Speaker 1: plex or something like that. And then his thinking was,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep a very nice um. Oh, what's
Speaker 1: a good word, um unopulent? I can't think of think
Speaker 1: of the word um unostentatious place to live. And when
Speaker 1: we're done, when we move out, you know, put the
Speaker 1: walls back together, and we sell it as a twelve
Speaker 1: back plex. It was a great business, um way to
Speaker 1: do it. But we never drove fancy cars. Do you
Speaker 1: know what my first car was? It was a Chevy Chevette.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, that was my first car. And you
Speaker 1: know why I got it. I did a commercial. It
Speaker 1: was it was called a n Acadian. It was a
Speaker 1: Canadian commercial and they said, we'll give you two cars,
Speaker 1: one for Marie and one for yourself. I said, you
Speaker 1: gotta be kidding me. I'm gonna get a Chevette. I
Speaker 1: could have warded a Lambert game. Okay, your father was
Speaker 1: the manager entertainment is littered with parents who were managers.
Speaker 1: There's some good stories, but a lot of bad stories. Okay,
Speaker 1: where you know, whether it be Joe Jackson or Murray Wilson,
Speaker 1: where they're you know, they're controlling the money, they're the
Speaker 1: money whatever. So what we're what was it like having
Speaker 1: your father be a manager? And with hindsight were the
Speaker 1: things he did that you wish he didn't? Well, he
Speaker 1: was kind of a pseudo manager. Jim Moorey and Ed Leffler.
Speaker 1: Did you ever know Ed Leffler and Great Kats? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: used to be an agent and then became the manager.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So they were the managers at the beginning
Speaker 1: stages of One Bad Apple and all that kind of stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, um, it was like, you know, hand
Speaker 1: the mouth, It was really trying hard to make it
Speaker 1: get a career going. So my dad very wise, he
Speaker 1: in a managerial kind of way. He surrounded us with
Speaker 1: very talented people. That's where I learned that philosophy, and
Speaker 1: I think he knew where his limitations were. That's when
Speaker 1: he brought in Ed Lethler and Ray Cats and Jim
Speaker 1: Morey And I don't know why we parted ways a
Speaker 1: few years after that, but I'm back with Jim after
Speaker 1: all those years. You have to have good representation because
Speaker 1: there's only so much an artist can do because you've
Speaker 1: got to have people out there all the time work
Speaker 1: in it, and I work with them. But I can't
Speaker 1: look at my dad and say he made erroneous mistakes
Speaker 1: other than the fact he let other people start controlling
Speaker 1: the money, and that was the biggest mistake, which he
Speaker 1: didn't really want to do. He was kicking and screaming
Speaker 1: to let that happen. But thank goodness, he had a
Speaker 1: you know, a business sense about him because he bought
Speaker 1: shopping centers and almond ranches and all these other things
Speaker 1: that we had to start selling off when we started
Speaker 1: going bankrupt because he said, I'm not going to take
Speaker 1: out bankruptcy because I don't want to screw an anybody.
Speaker 1: I want all of our debtors to be paid off.
Speaker 1: And we ended up with nothing thanks to the business
Speaker 1: acumen of my dad. Okay, tell me about the education component.
Speaker 1: So I never really had time to go to school
Speaker 1: because I was always working at the age of five,
Speaker 1: so I went and got my primary education UM in
Speaker 1: Baltimore at Calvert School. I've never been to my school.
Speaker 1: It was all through the mail. And then my high
Speaker 1: school was at a place called American School in Chicago,
Speaker 1: which I've never been at either. So, um, that's how
Speaker 1: I got my education. I went to public school for
Speaker 1: two weeks of the second grade, a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: of the sixth grade, and one semester of college. And
Speaker 1: that's all I've done. Okay, So tell me the experience
Speaker 1: of doing the correspondence. I mean, did you have a
Speaker 1: tutor there? Your mother say you got to spend X
Speaker 1: number of hours a day? How does it work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I kind of cheated my way. I'll be completely honest.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull any punches with you, Bob. There are
Speaker 1: holes in my education that I wish weren't there because
Speaker 1: I just didn't focus. I loved electronics, I love math,
Speaker 1: hated history all this kind of stuff, and so English.
Speaker 1: I didn't like English. And that's why sometimes I'm a
Speaker 1: little timid when it comes to speaking because I can't
Speaker 1: find the words. Um, So I wish I wish those
Speaker 1: holes weren't there. And I've really tried hard later on
Speaker 1: in my life to figure out how to fill those holes.
Speaker 1: But that's where I got my love of electronics and
Speaker 1: and math and things like that, which has helped me
Speaker 1: in from the technical point of view or technical sense
Speaker 1: of my recording, because I love computer technology. If I
Speaker 1: were to sing, I probably worked for Apple or something
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, you grew up in a large family,
Speaker 1: one story, real fast. Okay, this is kind of a
Speaker 1: funny story. So back in the day when when Disney
Speaker 1: Walt Disney would launch a ride, uh there was no
Speaker 1: social media, you know, they only three networks, so they
Speaker 1: would produce a television show, Disney After Dark or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. And uh so when they launched The
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion, they got the Osman Brothers with Kurt Russell
Speaker 1: and we produced a television special. I was ten, maybe
Speaker 1: something like that, so obviously still in school. I had
Speaker 1: to have a welfare worker slash teacher, and they had
Speaker 1: to find us school, and they had to find a
Speaker 1: place for me to have school. There was a room
Speaker 1: in the Haunted Mansion. It wasn't being used, but I
Speaker 1: think the second floor or something like that they made
Speaker 1: a little schoolroom. I think I'm the only person ever
Speaker 1: in existence to be able to say the Haunted mansion
Speaker 1: was my school house. Right go to school in the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion. So there's nine kids. What about civiling, ribrry,
Speaker 1: side nightbrar, Sibling rivalry, it was there. Obviously it was there.
Speaker 1: But again pointing to my dad, we had this philosophy
Speaker 1: that there was a boss and when it came to
Speaker 1: the band, Alan was the boss if father wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and Allen was a great boss. I mean, um, but
Speaker 1: there were times where you couldn't really voice your opinion
Speaker 1: because we had so much to get done, especially when
Speaker 1: you're on the road where on stage and something happens,
Speaker 1: we all look at Alan, he makes a decision, Boom,
Speaker 1: we we executed. That gets difficult when you grow up
Speaker 1: a little bit more and you want to have a
Speaker 1: voice and you can't. That's when I started pulling away
Speaker 1: from the band and starting my own career in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties. It was difficult. It's very difficult. Um, But
Speaker 1: that was the philosophy and it kind of curtailed. I
Speaker 1: guess it the best word to use any sibling rivalry
Speaker 1: arguments because it's like, this is the way we're gonna
Speaker 1: do it, and boom was snapped in. It was almost
Speaker 1: like we were soldiers in a way. And some people
Speaker 1: will say, oh, that's sad, you didn't live a childhood
Speaker 1: you were a soldier. I looked a different kind of childhood.
Speaker 1: It was. Yes, it was very strict, and but look
Speaker 1: what we did, Look what we're able to accomplish. And
Speaker 1: it was that that regiment of respecting authority and whoever
Speaker 1: is in charge, listen, like for on this show, in
Speaker 1: the Vegas Show, I put the show together. But when Raj,
Speaker 1: who I hired to be my director, even Jim Morey
Speaker 1: told me this, if Raj says something, listened to him,
Speaker 1: can it took me right back to the days. I
Speaker 1: will listen to you. I will assimilate it because I'm
Speaker 1: smart enough to know that all of my ideas aren't
Speaker 1: the best ideas. So I have this ability to listen
Speaker 1: and then assimilate and then execute. But when you hire
Speaker 1: somebody to do a job, listen to him. Otherwise don't
Speaker 1: hire him. Okay, you've had a lot of experience in
Speaker 1: fifty years. Tell me what makes a good manager. Tell
Speaker 1: me about some bad managerial experiences you've had. Okay, I
Speaker 1: love Jim Moray because he listens to me, and because
Speaker 1: he listens to me. I mean, he'll present opportunities to
Speaker 1: me and he lets me make the decision. And if
Speaker 1: I don't make the right decision, he'll let me know it.
Speaker 1: But he but I'll say, Jim, I just don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, and he respects that decision. Some managers
Speaker 1: they don't listen to the artists. They just say, look,
Speaker 1: you gotta do this, and you gotta do that, you
Speaker 1: gotta do this, you gotta do that, and they'll work
Speaker 1: you to death. You know what, Jim tells me, do
Speaker 1: what you want to do. Do it feels right. And
Speaker 1: you know who else told me that. We go back
Speaker 1: to that car ride with Michael Jackson and when I said, Michael,
Speaker 1: what kind of what kind of material? What kind of
Speaker 1: songs should I sing to get back on the charts?
Speaker 1: Do you know what? He said? What do you want
Speaker 1: to do? What do you want to do? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: how well did you know Michael Jackson and other celebrities? Um?
Speaker 1: I knew Mike pretty well. Um. And that started when
Speaker 1: we were thirteen, because we're about the same age and
Speaker 1: Mike six months older than me. And it all started
Speaker 1: at the Ciene Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. We were
Speaker 1: playing a show there as daytime show, and the Jacksons
Speaker 1: were performing the following night or following day, and I
Speaker 1: wanted so badly to stay and watch the show, because
Speaker 1: you know, they were watching our show, and obviously I
Speaker 1: wanted to watch Mike, but we had to leave and
Speaker 1: do another gig in another town. But they came to
Speaker 1: our hotel room, and my memories of that are so
Speaker 1: interesting because Tito and Wayne and and Jermaine and Merrill
Speaker 1: and Jackie and Alan and Marlon and j they were
Speaker 1: all talking, and and Joe and Catherine, We're talking to
Speaker 1: my mom and dad. Do you know what Mike and
Speaker 1: I were doing. We were over in the corner playing
Speaker 1: with toys. And from looking back after all these years,
Speaker 1: it's such a weird thing because just these two little
Speaker 1: teenagers wanted to be kids. We were having number one records,
Speaker 1: We just wanted to be kids. And so that relationship
Speaker 1: grew from there, and I remember going over his home
Speaker 1: at Havenhurst when he lived out in Encino, Um. We
Speaker 1: we would laugh our heads off at the comparison of
Speaker 1: each family, and he loved to show me all of
Speaker 1: his gold records and stuff like that, and that was fine.
Speaker 1: That's fine, Mike, but we would talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the nine children. They had nine children, We had nine children.
Speaker 1: Our mother's birthdays are on the same day, and it's
Speaker 1: just a similar similar experiences. But Joe told us something
Speaker 1: that was kind of interesting. Told my dad no, because
Speaker 1: we were always blamed copying the Jackson five because they
Speaker 1: came out first with I Want You Back. I think
Speaker 1: it was the first one, right mistake, and then we
Speaker 1: came up with one that apple. Um. So they said
Speaker 1: the Osman's are trying to be be the white Jackson's,
Speaker 1: and and that started that that that rivalry between the
Speaker 1: Jackson's and the Osmonds and Mike and I just had
Speaker 1: the time of our life about you know, the comparisons
Speaker 1: because we were friends, um, and we were going to
Speaker 1: do a duet together. This is you know, years and
Speaker 1: years later after things really started becoming a mess for Mike.
Speaker 1: So I went and we were gonna do I Wish
Speaker 1: those days good come back. And it was a perfect song.
Speaker 1: He was gonna start looking back on where was a
Speaker 1: little nappy headed boy. Lyrically it was perfect. I went
Speaker 1: over to Stevie's um studio and I played him the
Speaker 1: track and so I got Stevie's bussings. She said, it's
Speaker 1: going to be amazing. So I went over to Neverland.
Speaker 1: I played it for Mike and he said, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be fun. This is gonna be great. We
Speaker 1: set a date for our vocals three weeks from that time.
Speaker 1: He calls me the following week he said, Donnie, can
Speaker 1: we postpone it a little bit. I'm just getting hounded
Speaker 1: by the press and things are crazy right now. I said, Mike,
Speaker 1: you postpone it however long you want, because when it's right,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. And it never happened. So the relationship
Speaker 1: over the years kind of got a little strange as
Speaker 1: he started making some weird decisions. I remember getting a
Speaker 1: call from him, Bob. I was on the road and
Speaker 1: my phone rings. I pick it up and he says hello.
Speaker 1: I said, hello, Donnie. Who's it? Mike? Hi Donnie. And
Speaker 1: we had this conversation and I said, where are you?
Speaker 1: I can't tell you. I said, Mike, come on, you're
Speaker 1: talking to me. Where Where are you? Where are you?
Speaker 1: He said, I'm in Phoenix. I rented a tour bus
Speaker 1: and I put my kids in it, and I just
Speaker 1: had to get out of l A and just escape.
Speaker 1: I just need to get away. I said, Mike, you're
Speaker 1: a nine hour drive from my home. I'm done this Saturday.
Speaker 1: I will be home. You get a net bus and
Speaker 1: you drive up to Utah. No one, I'll know you're there.
Speaker 1: Your kids can go swimming with my kids. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a weekend of normalcy. And he said,
Speaker 1: I really need that right now. He never took me
Speaker 1: up on it was the last time I spoke with him.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he never grew up? And when
Speaker 1: in his direction where you're so grounded and an adult,
Speaker 1: that's a million dollar questions. We could pontificate on that
Speaker 1: all you want, and you know, blame Joe or whatever,
Speaker 1: but um, you really want me to go there. Sure,
Speaker 1: he made a big mistake when you're that popular, and
Speaker 1: he was a genius. I you got to give him that,
Speaker 1: whether you really liked his music or not. But it
Speaker 1: was fantastic. He was a genius and yes, Quincy added
Speaker 1: so much to that. That was an amazing team. But
Speaker 1: he started surrounding himself with yes people. I saw it happening,
Speaker 1: and there was a saying that started going around his circles.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to him, the air is rare up there when
Speaker 1: you start breathing your own oxygen, and that can be very,
Speaker 1: very dangerous. When you know you're good and everybody's telling
Speaker 1: you you're good, it just gets dangerous. It's tip Coin
Speaker 1: a phrase of his dangerous, And I think that's maybe
Speaker 1: one factor I heard for him. Because he and I
Speaker 1: had such a great relationship. I knew him in a
Speaker 1: in a way that nobody else the world didn't know
Speaker 1: the world knew him wacko jacko, and I knew him
Speaker 1: as that thirteen year old kid that we met in
Speaker 1: Toronto at Cene, and I hold on to that and
Speaker 1: nothing else. Okay, you're over sixty. You have brothers in
Speaker 1: their seventies. Uh, you have a couple of younger siblings.
Speaker 1: Obviously the heyday of the group was, you know, the
Speaker 1: late sixties, early bid seventies. To what degree do you
Speaker 1: feel responsible for the family. You didn't want to ask
Speaker 1: me that, Yeah, you really wanted to get me in trouble. No,
Speaker 1: I mean not that my goal is not to get
Speaker 1: you in trouble. But you know, when one sibling, this
Speaker 1: is more complicated than any situation you normally come across
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of groups, a lot of families,
Speaker 1: kids grow up equal and then one becomes to make
Speaker 1: us successful. You're all successful together, so you have the
Speaker 1: exact same roots and then you have gone on to
Speaker 1: have a career in show business. Not everybody in the
Speaker 1: family has been able to do that. As you say,
Speaker 1: you've been in hard times. You know, comes down to
Speaker 1: money and opportunities. It's it's complicated in absolutely every family. Um,
Speaker 1: this is not an easy answer. I'm going to start
Speaker 1: by saying this, it's really hard to answer this, Bob,
Speaker 1: because um, as I mentioned earlier, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to repeat myself, but I have to a little bit.
Speaker 1: I had two careers going on at the same time.
Speaker 1: This prior to the Donni and Re career, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, three careers. But the Tea Popper career that
Speaker 1: I had kind of ruined my rock and roll career.
Speaker 1: And because it ruined my rock and roll career, my
Speaker 1: brothers were part of that rock and roll career. Case
Speaker 1: in point um, we did an album called The Plan
Speaker 1: and for for those who really drilled down into the
Speaker 1: depths of my career. For the Osman's careers, the Plan
Speaker 1: was way ahead of its time, and um, so my
Speaker 1: brother Alan White labeled it did pretty much what I
Speaker 1: did was with Soldier of Love. White labeled it and
Speaker 1: took it to I think it was Kalos there in
Speaker 1: l A and the program director and music director met
Speaker 1: with my brother Alan from a new band they played.
Speaker 1: He played the album to him, said, dude, this sounds
Speaker 1: like led Zeppelin influences and the Who and and uh
Speaker 1: all these these bands, the Stones. What's the name of
Speaker 1: the band? He said, it's the Osmand's. Do you know what?
Speaker 1: They said? I'm sorry, we can't play it. Do you
Speaker 1: know why? Because of me? And this is kind of
Speaker 1: like a round about, convoluted way to answer your question.
Speaker 1: Because of me? Because I was enjoying such success in
Speaker 1: the other career and so that really hurts. And so
Speaker 1: to answer this question of yours, Um, it's very difficult
Speaker 1: because of what our careers could have been like. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to put down my teeny bopper career
Speaker 1: because it was amazing. But the two couldn't exist in
Speaker 1: the same world. It's impossible. I found that out. I
Speaker 1: know that the hard way, and my brothers found that
Speaker 1: out as well. But then an interesting dynamic took place
Speaker 1: as all that was taking place, an opportunity from Freddy Silverman,
Speaker 1: president of ABC, offer the Donnie and Mury Show. And
Speaker 1: I immediately realized, there goes my record career, because if
Speaker 1: people can watch me every week on television, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna buy my records. And sure enough, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: For an interesting thing took place with my brothers. The
Speaker 1: show was so successful, I mean we were getting thirty
Speaker 1: thirty two shares. It was crazy. Um my brothers jumped
Speaker 1: in and they were behind the scenes because let's sell.
Speaker 1: It's all for one, one for all kind of a situation,
Speaker 1: and we all made this show very, very successful. But
Speaker 1: the the second part of this story I want to
Speaker 1: tell you was we were in Las Vegas. I want
Speaker 1: to say the years four maybe and um, the brothers,
Speaker 1: Marie and Jimmy. So it's the Austin Brothers with Donnie,
Speaker 1: Marie and Jimmy on the billboard. Bob. I was in
Speaker 1: every single song, in every segment. I don't hold anyone
Speaker 1: can in contempt. I don't hold my brothers. I don't
Speaker 1: have ill feelings towards anyone who made me do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm just telling you the truth. I'm just being
Speaker 1: honest with you because you can spot a liar a
Speaker 1: million miles away. You haven't done you know, you haven't
Speaker 1: been You've been around the block. And if I went down,
Speaker 1: that was a problem. We couldn't cut anything, and it
Speaker 1: really took its toll on me, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: I can't get out because everything is being dependent upon
Speaker 1: you know, make sure you're there, make sure. I had
Speaker 1: to stay healthy. I had to stay strong and um
Speaker 1: and I hope that if my brothers are here hearing this,
Speaker 1: they don't hold me in contempt. Are saying this, but
Speaker 1: it's the truth. I mean, let's let's just be honest.
Speaker 1: I was a part of all three careers and I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kept me busy, but it was it
Speaker 1: kept me dependent as well as it as it as
Speaker 1: it no dependent. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Do you feel
Speaker 1: any resentment? Well, how can I say that? Because if
Speaker 1: I if I blatantly made mistakes and said I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this and I don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm Donny Osmond. You know I've got my career.
Speaker 1: If I had said all that, yeah, then I I
Speaker 1: would hold resentment because they made me do these other things,
Speaker 1: so I can't say that I got resentment because I
Speaker 1: learned from it. Yeah, it was very difficult going through
Speaker 1: that lonely tunnel, as I referred to earlier, But I
Speaker 1: learned so much from the business and how to how
Speaker 1: to evolve a career and how to write music because
Speaker 1: I was down at rock bottom. You talk about motivation, Bob,
Speaker 1: you gotta pull yourself out from rock bottom, below rock
Speaker 1: bottom because you have to pull yourself up. Now you're
Speaker 1: at ground zero. Okay, but did your brothers resent you
Speaker 1: that you ultimately pulled away and found future success. I
Speaker 1: don't think so, because they started their own country career.
Speaker 1: They had, you know, some marginal hits with that, but
Speaker 1: some talented guys. And I'm not just saying that because
Speaker 1: you know, to play Kate, they're very, very talented. Alan
Speaker 1: wrote the plan. Merrill had one of the greatest rock
Speaker 1: and roll voices of all time. Wayne played the down down,
Speaker 1: all the guitar stuff on Crazy Horses. Jay an amazing drummer. Um.
Speaker 1: So they went on and started doing some other things.
Speaker 1: We went on to do her career and this is interesting.
Speaker 1: After the Donnie and Marie Show ended, Uh, Marie went
Speaker 1: on to have hits, you know, country hits and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Donny Osmond, let's put out the pasture. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: everybody else is now doing their own thing. Everything's split.
Speaker 1: You're on your own now. I had to figure out
Speaker 1: what I was going to do on how I was
Speaker 1: going to reinvent myself. That's when I moved to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and said, okay, I gotta I gotta start again. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when the TV show was happening, the family built
Speaker 1: a studio in are Um. Yeah, the conventional wisdom was
Speaker 1: ultimately that was a cause it was expensive and you
Speaker 1: lost money. So what really happened there? And then after
Speaker 1: the show was over, what happened to the space? Well,
Speaker 1: it's now a worldwide, famous agree place for stars, it's true,
Speaker 1: and stars from all over the world. And I obviously
Speaker 1: don't have I'm not privy to that information because it's
Speaker 1: hip hop. But um, the guy who owns it, it's
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine. He said, I wish I
Speaker 1: could tell you who's in there in your studio. I
Speaker 1: wish he would be shocked. So it went from this
Speaker 1: amazing state of the art facility and then it went
Speaker 1: through these dark years because this is the mistake that
Speaker 1: was made in my life. The wrong people were hired
Speaker 1: to make these decisions, who had no idea what they
Speaker 1: were doing show business, but they were spending money. They
Speaker 1: had a commercial division, a movie division, of filling, you know,
Speaker 1: an airline division, all kinds of stuff that we had
Speaker 1: no knowledge in. You said something earlier, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about money. That's so true. Invest in yourself, because that's
Speaker 1: what you know. And they were investing our money in things,
Speaker 1: so we had no business being in and that's when
Speaker 1: it all crumbled and we lost the studio, and and
Speaker 1: the rest is history. And how often do you speak
Speaker 1: with the other members of your family these days? All
Speaker 1: the time? I just got a text for Marie um
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, and Jimmy was over at
Speaker 1: the house. Uh last night, Alan, I talked with him
Speaker 1: all the time. We have a family thread and uh
Speaker 1: so all the time. It's it's kind of nice when
Speaker 1: not business partners anymore and it's just family stuff. Doubt
Speaker 1: does anybody in the family say, Hey, my grandkid wants
Speaker 1: to be in the business, can you hire them on
Speaker 1: your show? I think they know better than that. First
Speaker 1: of all, there's no room in the show. But nobody
Speaker 1: has ever said that to me. How about even behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, you know, working with the crew. Oh, there
Speaker 1: are several nephews and nieces that have come to me
Speaker 1: and they say, what do I love the music business?
Speaker 1: And I'll sit and spend hours with them and just
Speaker 1: give him a piece of my mind. And you know
Speaker 1: from my experience. Um, but it all gets back to
Speaker 1: the island. Yeah, it all gets back to you. You know.
Speaker 1: I can give you as much advice as anybody can
Speaker 1: give you, as much advice as you want, but you
Speaker 1: gotta do it. That's what I learned when I had
Speaker 1: to reinvent myself. I can't rest on anybody anymore. It's you,
Speaker 1: especially nowadays. Okay, so what's the next step? Have a
Speaker 1: have a residency till the end of time? Tire another
Speaker 1: mountain to climb. Well, I just started the residency here,
Speaker 1: so this is this is where my focus is right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well you're not that old though. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: do the residency for ten years, you'd still be in
Speaker 1: your you know, seventies. Yeah exactly, And I might do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see what happens. But I'm an artist.
Speaker 1: I've already started plans and ideas and concepts on my
Speaker 1: sixty six the album, so I'm constantly writing. I got
Speaker 1: so many ideas in this little thing that I will
Speaker 1: act upon when things settled down a little bit. I
Speaker 1: just committed to well, first of all, I'm promoting, you know,
Speaker 1: my sixty fifth album that so those two projects are
Speaker 1: primary for me. But I'm in the process right now
Speaker 1: of learning a new show. I committed to do what
Speaker 1: is touted to be, um, the biggest show in England
Speaker 1: for the month of December. Um. I'm sure you're familiar
Speaker 1: with with panto, pant pantomime. It's it's a British cultural
Speaker 1: thing and it's starting to make its way here in
Speaker 1: the United States. So um. Michael Harrison called me, he's
Speaker 1: the producer. He said, would you be interested in playing this?
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, Michael, it's Christmas. I want to
Speaker 1: be home with my wife and kids and grandkids, and
Speaker 1: so I I talked it over with my wife. She said,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's go over there and just have
Speaker 1: Christmas in London. Some of the kids are coming over,
Speaker 1: some of the grandkids are coming over, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a blast, huge show. I'm the m C I'm
Speaker 1: the Wizard, and uh it's they said. Michael said, it's
Speaker 1: going to be the biggest Panto show they've ever done,
Speaker 1: because last year they started it, they did six shows
Speaker 1: and they had to cancel it because of COVID. And
Speaker 1: he said, we're taking that show and we're gonna multiply
Speaker 1: it by ten. It's gonna be the biggest Panto show
Speaker 1: we've ever done. So if someone asks you to do something,
Speaker 1: what touches your buttons? What makes you say no, how
Speaker 1: important our money, how important schedule, etcetera challenge? That's the
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to my mind. It doesn't challenge
Speaker 1: me as an artist. So panto is going to challenge
Speaker 1: me because I'm playing this character and I've got to
Speaker 1: play this role. I really loved theater when I did Joseph.
Speaker 1: And you do the same thing when you record music,
Speaker 1: you throw I close my eyes, I go into another
Speaker 1: world as an artist, and I say, I know this
Speaker 1: may sound silly to some people, but musicians understand this.
Speaker 1: Will it challenge me as an artist? Will people walk
Speaker 1: away and say I had no idea he could do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I I thrive on that. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like have I had to because after a teeny bop
Speaker 1: of career, you want to surprise people all the times.
Speaker 1: When people expect the right turn, you go left. And
Speaker 1: I eat that up as an artist when I reinvent
Speaker 1: myself and and do something totally different. Um, some people
Speaker 1: find it kind of interesting that I did. I'm on
Speaker 1: Chicago seventeen and David Foster called me up and he said,
Speaker 1: not that Chicago really bought your albums like I said
Speaker 1: with Peter Gabel, but we want your sound. And he
Speaker 1: was pretty soon the two at the time and Build
Speaker 1: Build Champlain wrote the Weekend stop the hurting for a while.
Speaker 1: So he said, I want your sound. I want that
Speaker 1: Osmond sound. So I said, I'm there. And the fact
Speaker 1: that I would do an album like that, it's surprises.
Speaker 1: People said, you were in Chicago seventeen when Dweeesel Zappa
Speaker 1: called me and said, would you be willing to do
Speaker 1: Staying Alive with all these amazing guitar players? And yes,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a tongue in cheek kind of
Speaker 1: a thing, uh saying staying Alive and I'm I'm singing
Speaker 1: about you know, staying alive as an artist. But it
Speaker 1: turned people's heads. Peter Gabriel, I mean it turned your
Speaker 1: head when Peter Gabriel was involved in Donny Osmond's career.
Speaker 1: I love that because it's like I gotta hear this.
Speaker 1: It's that's just different. I love that. Okay. Know they
Speaker 1: say they're not going to use the netword Mormons anymore.
Speaker 1: Church of the Latter Day Saints real reality television has
Speaker 1: become very big over the last twenty years. What they
Speaker 1: noticed is a lot of the winners were LDS people,
Speaker 1: And they said, because they knew how to get along
Speaker 1: in large families. To what degree is your religious background
Speaker 1: benefited your career? Well, let me clark correct you on
Speaker 1: one other thing. Yeah, people say l d S two,
Speaker 1: but it's the Church of Jesus Christ Letter Saints, the
Speaker 1: longest name I know. I know you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: use ld S either, not thinking what could I say?
Speaker 1: You can use it if you want, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're getting away from Mormons because
Speaker 1: it sounds like a cult. And and that was the
Speaker 1: whole purpose behind President Nelson, our prophet. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not a cult. You know, we're Christians, but it's
Speaker 1: not in your name, it's not in the church's name.
Speaker 1: It's Mormon. In fact, I've read an interesting article. I
Speaker 1: think it was over in Russia. They said, no Mormon church,
Speaker 1: we don't we won't allow you here because that's a cult.
Speaker 1: And then they found out what we were really where
Speaker 1: as the Church of Jesus Christ. I said, oh, you
Speaker 1: mean you're Christians? Okay, come on it. So you question
Speaker 1: how how big of a role has it played? What
Speaker 1: restate the question? Yes, I mean to what degree are
Speaker 1: the values in the environment responsible for your success, your career,
Speaker 1: your ability to fly straight, get along with people. I
Speaker 1: don't think it. Obviously it plays a role because it's
Speaker 1: my life, but I don't think it has dictated my career.
Speaker 1: It has to a certain extent because I won't sing,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly um explicit sexual lyrics or things like that.
Speaker 1: But so I guess in a small way it has.
Speaker 1: But I don't let my personal beliefs dictate my career.
Speaker 1: You might think, well, there's a there's a wrong rub there,
Speaker 1: because it should know. No, you talked to a lot
Speaker 1: of rock and rollers. I find it quite interesting that
Speaker 1: when um seventy two. I want to say we were
Speaker 1: playing Earl's Court in London and the band that was
Speaker 1: playing the night before was led Zeppelin, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to go see it. So we were were in the
Speaker 1: audience and this guy comes up and says, they want
Speaker 1: to meet you. Said, that's what said the guys. Let's
Speaker 1: let Zeppelin the band. They want to meet you. So
Speaker 1: we said sure, it's fifteen minutes before the show starts.
Speaker 1: So we get up and we walked backstage. Guess what
Speaker 1: was going on backstage? Sexual activities? Absolutely not. They were
Speaker 1: playing frisbees with their kids. Now, obviously the sexual activities
Speaker 1: and then the Jack Daniels and all that stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously that gets sex rock and roll and you know,
Speaker 1: all the drugs whatever. But they were playing frisbee with
Speaker 1: their kids, and and I thought, now, this is just
Speaker 1: not what I thought it would be back here. Um.
Speaker 1: But what's really interesting, Bob, is that sometimes a hardcore
Speaker 1: image UM plays into as an advantage to a rock
Speaker 1: and roller, when sometimes you know, they're good, solid people
Speaker 1: and they use it as as a promotional tool because
Speaker 1: it's cool, you know. And I thought, what a juxtaposition
Speaker 1: that was to see that so, um, it's my way
Speaker 1: of life, uh, to be a member of the church.
Speaker 1: And I don't shove it down people's throats. I'm not
Speaker 1: a zeal it. Uh. It's great for me. It's kept
Speaker 1: me safe. But you know, everybody's different, and I acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: Have you read have you seen Book of Mormon? And
Speaker 1: have you read the John krak Our book. I haven't
Speaker 1: read the John krack Uh, John crack crack Hour. I
Speaker 1: haven't read that book, and I haven't seen the musical,
Speaker 1: but I understand there's a reference to me in there.
Speaker 1: They say something and a smile like Donny Osmond in
Speaker 1: a very condescending way. I think that's funny. But no,
Speaker 1: I have not. I have not seen them. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a story in the Wall Street Journal that actually, uh,
Speaker 1: members of your church embraced the show completely. Hey, they
Speaker 1: bought ads in the play bill. They have missionaries standing
Speaker 1: out by the theater. Explain that to me, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, now you heard their story. Here's the real story.
Speaker 1: Because it's from what I understand, and I've listened to
Speaker 1: the music and it's it's it's uh pretty derogatory, but
Speaker 1: it's an all done tongue in cheeks the South Park guys,
Speaker 1: you know, And if you could accept it for what
Speaker 1: it is, it's fine. Uh I don't take it. I
Speaker 1: don't take offense to it. I take my religion seriously.
Speaker 1: But I can laugh at myself just as much as anybody.
Speaker 1: I thought it was so funny. During the two thousand
Speaker 1: two Olympics, Marie and I actually were in the opening ceremonies.
Speaker 1: There was a sign it was so funny and derogatory
Speaker 1: is all get out. And it was on right off
Speaker 1: of if you know where that is. It was an
Speaker 1: average advertisement for beer. I think it was course and
Speaker 1: there was a can on the left hand side and
Speaker 1: a six pack on the right hand side, and it
Speaker 1: said buy one for yourself and get a six pack
Speaker 1: for the wives. That that's funny advertising. But little does
Speaker 1: the world. No, we don't practice polegamy, but that's the perception,
Speaker 1: right And uh So I thought, if if people can't
Speaker 1: laugh at that, you're taking life too seriously. Okay, Utah
Speaker 1: is seen as a red state. Where are you on
Speaker 1: the political spectrum? I'm not going there. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to press you, but tell me you're thinking why
Speaker 1: you don't want to go there because it's a no
Speaker 1: win situation. I've seen I see what they did do, uh,
Speaker 1: CARDI b I see all these other people who have
Speaker 1: you know, made statements. Look what they did to the
Speaker 1: Faith Hill, you know, just innocent statements. Innocent And in
Speaker 1: this world of social media, everyone's a critic. And I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna go there because I'm an entertainer. I just
Speaker 1: want to entertain. Uh. I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a problem when celebrities get on a platform, a political platform. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're all citizens, Yes we have opinions, and they have
Speaker 1: every right as anybody else a politician, to say what
Speaker 1: they want to say, what they're thinking. I do my
Speaker 1: I do my I let my opinions know with my votes.
Speaker 1: And I mean that could go down a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: just that conversation, let alone, whether I'm red or blue.
Speaker 1: And so I'm not going to go there because I'm
Speaker 1: a singer. I'm a politician. I'm not a politician. Okay,
Speaker 1: who do you talk to about other than your wife?
Speaker 1: You have close friends? I well, it depends on who
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about. Give me an example. Well,
Speaker 1: some people like Jerry Seinfeld legendarily talks to a comedian
Speaker 1: friend every day, and then there are other people talked
Speaker 1: friends once a week, and then there are people you
Speaker 1: see live. But you know, if something, if you have
Speaker 1: more questions than answers, she had an interesting day. Is
Speaker 1: there's somebody you pick up the phone and talked to
Speaker 1: to the agree it. You know, we're living in a
Speaker 1: world where it's more communication in terms of text. But
Speaker 1: do you have a friend like that? I do. His
Speaker 1: name is sick Nick and who is that? His name
Speaker 1: is Nick, and I call him sick Nick. Okay, is
Speaker 1: he in the business? How do you know him? He is? UM?
Speaker 1: He interned uh during the Donnie maritsho and plays guitar musician.
Speaker 1: He wanted to learn his way around the studio. I
Speaker 1: took him under my wing and I taught him everything
Speaker 1: I know about the studio and recording and writing and UH,
Speaker 1: prolific guy. I'm just very very talented. Lived in um
Speaker 1: Over and I ran for a while. His dad was
Speaker 1: a member the FBI. I'm if I'm not mistaken, and
Speaker 1: our secret service. And so he's been around the world,
Speaker 1: very well educated. UM. And so when I want to
Speaker 1: talk about deep things, UM, I'll call sick Nick. UM.
Speaker 1: There's there's uh in our ward where I go to church.
Speaker 1: I uh there, there's several people that I will call
Speaker 1: and uh and talk. But I would rather have a
Speaker 1: wonderful conversation with my wife. And because if I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend time talking with somebody, and time is a
Speaker 1: very very precious commodity in my life, I'll spend it
Speaker 1: with the one I absolutely love and a door and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to my children. My two of my sons
Speaker 1: were here last week. One is a great photographer. He's
Speaker 1: a great advertising UM executive. UM shot the show and
Speaker 1: we just spent hours talking. And I love talking to
Speaker 1: my kids, love talking to my grandkids. I'll get them.
Speaker 1: You know. I planted a tree of a fruit tree
Speaker 1: for every one of my grandkids. So when they come over,
Speaker 1: they say, oh my god, go see my tree. And
Speaker 1: it's such a bonding moment. Just as you say, you say,
Speaker 1: come over, where is this location? You can? Okay, So
Speaker 1: other than your own music, two albums on a on
Speaker 1: a desert aisle, what do you bring so kind? So
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel, right, I love that album. UM, I would
Speaker 1: probably pick um maybe obviously a Stevie song. They have
Speaker 1: songs in the Key of Life. Okay, those two I
Speaker 1: probably are my go to Okay, you have a double
Speaker 1: album there to uh give you more music to two
Speaker 1: peaks of your career that you're most proud of, two
Speaker 1: peaks of my career. Soldier of Love was my major comeback.
Speaker 1: Just so you know, it's not on Spotify. I don't
Speaker 1: know who owns these. That came out on Capitol. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's not on the surface. There's a live version,
Speaker 1: but the original studio version not there. It's on YouTube
Speaker 1: but not Spotify. I didn't check the other surfaces. Bob,
Speaker 1: you're good. You know what you're doing. That's my fault.
Speaker 1: I owned the masters of that and I just have
Speaker 1: to get through it. Well, that's like one of your
Speaker 1: biggest records. It was, yeah, and so I will you
Speaker 1: just lit a fire underneath me. I'll probably get it
Speaker 1: up soon. So a Soldier of Love and then the
Speaker 1: other I'd probably say, See, this is tough because I
Speaker 1: want to stay dancing with the stars. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say Joe's iph an amazing technical the Dreamcoat because that
Speaker 1: was what I did right after Soldier. I spent ten
Speaker 1: years to get back on the charts. I released Soldier
Speaker 1: of Love Sacred Emotion, and then I put it all
Speaker 1: on hold, and people said, Donny, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: You spent all this time to get back on the charts,
Speaker 1: and now you're gonna go do theater. I said, I
Speaker 1: have to because ten years ago I failed miserably on Broadway.
Speaker 1: I opened and closed the same night, and I said,
Speaker 1: it's a six month run and I'll get back to recording.
Speaker 1: That six months turned into six years. And um, so
Speaker 1: I guess I point to that one. But then again,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like trying to pick a favorite child.
Speaker 1: You can't do it. I mean, there's so many things.
Speaker 1: One bad Apple, the Andy Williams Show, Uh, the Peacock
Speaker 1: on the Mass, singer winning, Dancing with the Stars. Um,
Speaker 1: there's so many things that I can point to, but
Speaker 1: I will. I'll if you want to, I'll go Soldier
Speaker 1: of Love and Joseph. Okay, you're a very friendly, charismatic guy.
Speaker 1: Do you know this is business? Let's be frank, But
Speaker 1: in your everyday life, are you trying to make everybody
Speaker 1: like you? Or you fine? Or if you fine, if
Speaker 1: people don't like you, not fine? Because I believe me
Speaker 1: when you grow up with the name Donny Osmond. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that don't like you because
Speaker 1: you're a joke. Um, so I guess you know, if
Speaker 1: you're my psychiatrist right now and I'm sitting on the couch,
Speaker 1: I probably would maybe say to you, Yeah, maybe I
Speaker 1: I want people to like me, and maybe that's what
Speaker 1: motivates me. And then I have to say to myself,
Speaker 1: is there anything wrong with that? Is there really anything
Speaker 1: wrong with that? Yeah? There it is if you have
Speaker 1: a fake personality and you're just putting on a show
Speaker 1: for people. But then then you have to look at
Speaker 1: yourself in the mirror say are you really real? I
Speaker 1: wrote a song that's that that that spoke of that
Speaker 1: are you Really Real? And it's called Faces in the Mirror,
Speaker 1: Faces in the Live, very much like a Prince kind
Speaker 1: of pump pump, very funky thing. It was gonna be
Speaker 1: a single on Capitol and then the President switched and whatever.
Speaker 1: It got lost in the shovel. But I wrote that
Speaker 1: song saying, basically like a ventriloquist, who are you doing now?
Speaker 1: What hap do you have on? Now? Are you the
Speaker 1: puppy lover? Are you the soldier of lover, Are you
Speaker 1: the Joseph? Are they dancing with the stars? Are you
Speaker 1: there a little kid on Andy Williams? Are you this
Speaker 1: guy trying to be somebody? Or not? Who are you
Speaker 1: trying to be? And with that song it was it
Speaker 1: was almost a euphoric eye opening awakening, like just be yourself.
Speaker 1: So when you say I'm charismatic and very friendly, am
Speaker 1: I putting on a show? No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, because just walk around Ask anybody
Speaker 1: that I work with, you know they absolutely. I had
Speaker 1: this conversation with my dancers last night before the show started.
Speaker 1: They walk up and say, I love coming to work.
Speaker 1: I said, why because you make it fun. And my
Speaker 1: band I've got. It's rumored right now that I have
Speaker 1: the best banded Las Vegas, and I have to agree.
Speaker 1: They are amazing. And they all tell me the same thing, Donny,
Speaker 1: we love coming to work because you just make it fun.
Speaker 1: There's a moment in the show where I just improv
Speaker 1: with the band and I just let them go and
Speaker 1: I started to start scatting and Earl Campbell on drums
Speaker 1: and I just do these things. I just try this group,
Speaker 1: try that group, try this group. We tried one the
Speaker 1: other night, went to a jazz field. Didn't quite work,
Speaker 1: but we still had fun. And I think the audience
Speaker 1: enjoys it because they see these four musicians up there
Speaker 1: with me, scatting and just trying stuff, experimenting, whether it
Speaker 1: be for thirty seconds or a minute, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And then we go into the show a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I make it fun now, and I have to I
Speaker 1: have to ask you, Bob, Well, well, I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you this question, then you can well go ask me.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, I'm gonna ask you. Are you talking to
Speaker 1: a fake person? Are you? Are you? Because you do
Speaker 1: this all the time. Okay, you do this constantly. You've
Speaker 1: interviewed the best of the best. Do you see a facade?
Speaker 1: I will be honest you please, I want you to
Speaker 1: be completely, whether it hurt whatever. No, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I have a percent nailed. That's why I'm asking
Speaker 1: these questions. First and foremost. You're a pro. Most people
Speaker 1: are not. You understand what's going on. You understand the situation.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times because they're even people are
Speaker 1: very famous or not pros in this area, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of stunned. You know, they don't know how to
Speaker 1: do it, and you know how to sell whatever, and
Speaker 1: then it to be. I've been talking to you for
Speaker 1: a better part of two hours. I was stunned at
Speaker 1: the charisma. So as I say, I lived in Utah,
Speaker 1: I know some of the background, not recently, but I've
Speaker 1: been to Utah recently. It's really changed a lot over
Speaker 1: the last decades, and I'm trying to figure out. And
Speaker 1: then as you as you were talking right then, I said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is really who the guy is, and maybe
Speaker 1: the joke is on the rest of us. You know,
Speaker 1: you grew up in this environment, etcetera. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I also know that you're so good at what
Speaker 1: you do. Most people, most people are pros. You're getting
Speaker 1: trying to get them off their spiel. A lot of times.
Speaker 1: They've talked to so many interviewers. They know the subject,
Speaker 1: they know the length to answer, etcetera, etcetera. So you're
Speaker 1: trying to get them to be real. I know I
Speaker 1: was talking to you know, one person who did stick
Speaker 1: didn't get real to like two thirds the way through.
Speaker 1: You have been consistent, and as I say, I would
Speaker 1: have to hang with you personally more to give a
Speaker 1: definitive reading. Maybe we should let's go out to dinner
Speaker 1: one of these days. Okay, I definitely what I mean,
Speaker 1: you picked the restaurant, I'll be there. Okay. Well, you
Speaker 1: know you're in Utah, so when you're in when you're
Speaker 1: in Vegas a lot? Okay. Do you own a home
Speaker 1: in Vegas? No? No? Not okay? Final question? Was it
Speaker 1: ever done? Or is it always Donnie? I did an
Speaker 1: album with Holland. Does your hollow you remember that? That?
Speaker 1: Of course? Um? Oh, what's his name? It was one?
Speaker 1: It was Holland's first name. Anybody did an album with him?
Speaker 1: And uh, the year would have been nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: ish um, and it was called Donald Clark Osmond because
Speaker 1: I was going to change my yeah whatever. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you can't do it that way.
Speaker 1: It was never done. It's always gonna be Donnie. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like saying, uh, change your name to Steve Wonder.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work. Okay, So back stage someone says,
Speaker 1: you know, they never say don what about this? They
Speaker 1: always say Donny. It's always Donnie. Yeah. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because when you say are you really being really? Are
Speaker 1: you being fake? If somebody calls me don I know
Speaker 1: they're trying to be cool, you know. But what's really
Speaker 1: what's really fascinating is that in the last i'd say
Speaker 1: ten years, maybe a little more, I don't hear the
Speaker 1: sarcastic Donnie or the you know, putting on a facade.
Speaker 1: Hey don how are you doing? You know? Police, don't
Speaker 1: take this as a as a kind of like a
Speaker 1: self aggrandizing statement. That's gonna sound like that. Say it anyway,
Speaker 1: Donnie is cool again. It's a similar path to Tom
Speaker 1: Jones when he came out with Kiss. You know, that
Speaker 1: just turned everything around because the association with Prince and
Speaker 1: you don't have the big followed and the way he
Speaker 1: sang it, I mean, he became cool again, and I
Speaker 1: certainly think Soldier of Love played that role. The other
Speaker 1: thing is we get older and there's so many people
Speaker 1: who got you know, we're castigated back then and people realized,
Speaker 1: like the carpenters. People hated the carpenters, and now decades
Speaker 1: later say oh, there's nothing better than the carpenters. So
Speaker 1: in the funny, it's our business is replete with stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, Richard genius to think what he
Speaker 1: was doing back in those days, without auto tune, without
Speaker 1: you know, digital, all that kind of stuff. By the way,
Speaker 1: he was singing those armies and I knew Karen very well,
Speaker 1: amazing voice. But you couldn't say I like the Carpenters,
Speaker 1: I like bread, I like you know, if a picture
Speaker 1: paints a thousand words, Oh my goodness, what a beautiful song.
Speaker 1: But Making with You, which was their breakthrough, real breakthrough track,
Speaker 1: just to put it all together, beautiful. But you know,
Speaker 1: you just couldn't say I like bread, because boy, then
Speaker 1: you were pigeonholed, and if anybody knows about pigeonholes, you're
Speaker 1: looking at him. Well. The other thing is, I'll be
Speaker 1: very specific, talk a little out of school. I went
Speaker 1: to see Neil Diamond. He was phenomenal, phenomenal, played for
Speaker 1: a long time, no sense of humor about himself. Oh really,
Speaker 1: you know, no, he's sick now whatever, But I bring
Speaker 1: that up, and you know, we're living in the real worlds.
Speaker 1: I'll tell a real story. The other thing about you,
Speaker 1: you've had a sense of humor, You've poked fun at yourself,
Speaker 1: and people like that, especially in an era will we're
Speaker 1: all the same online, nobody is really above anymore, and
Speaker 1: I think that pays dividends. Listen, it's still working for
Speaker 1: you because you're working and a lot of people can't work.
Speaker 1: I will say one final thing. I'll let you go.
Speaker 1: I listen to your record. What do you think the
Speaker 1: it's certainly good start again as it hits all thank you? No, really,
Speaker 1: I'm being clear. You know, maybe someone else has to
Speaker 1: see it. I don't know. You know, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But it's a hit song, all right. When I I've
Speaker 1: just got to do this for the last few minutes
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about here. The album is going
Speaker 1: to be called Who because I thought, what a cool title,
Speaker 1: because I like so who. It played into the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But then I started listening to Start Again a little
Speaker 1: bit more and reproduced it, and I read the lyrics,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I gotta tell you, after what we've
Speaker 1: gone through with COVID and everything, we're all starting again.
Speaker 1: What an amazing message right now for us. I mean,
Speaker 1: just if you, if you will, please let me just
Speaker 1: read the first verse. You know, life's not always simple.
Speaker 1: You stumble and fall, and things don't always work out,
Speaker 1: and you feel small and when the night goes on forever,
Speaker 1: and you're looking for a ray of hope when there
Speaker 1: seems to be no answer. Believe me, I know it's
Speaker 1: never too late to start again. It's never too late
Speaker 1: to find your way. So keep your head up and
Speaker 1: keep your hearts strong, and remember you're not on your own,
Speaker 1: because it's never too late to start again. Well about
Speaker 1: a bing. But the other thing is, if you've lived
Speaker 1: long enough, those message really rings true. Life does. Life
Speaker 1: does not work out the way you planned it whatsoever,
Speaker 1: no matter how are you trying right? And but it's
Speaker 1: not only the lyrics. The changes are good. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: thank you. That's okay, Donny. I think we've come to
Speaker 1: the end of the feeling we've known. I have thoroughly
Speaker 1: enjoyed this, buddy, I did too, As I say, you
Speaker 1: know you ask me about you. I'll been trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the whole time who you are, and I
Speaker 1: love to hearing all the stories. You've done a lot
Speaker 1: in your career. But that's as far as we're gonna
Speaker 1: go today. And we're gonna have that dinner one of
Speaker 1: these days, absolutely, And I'd like to see the show.
Speaker 1: I don't get the Vegas that much. But I would
Speaker 1: like to see the show. Please let me know. Be
Speaker 1: my guest. Okay, i'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna check
Speaker 1: out that rap to the rep. You know, everything's easy
Speaker 1: now you go online. Drake. Okay, I'm not Drake, but
Speaker 1: I do rap for ten minutes. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's funny that it would be, you know, the story
Speaker 1: of your life, Allah, Hamilton's, etcetera, and any of that. Donny,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. Thank you, buddy. Until
Speaker 1: next time, This is Bob left Sets