WEBVTT - Bobby Colomby & John Scheinfeld 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.639 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex Podcast. 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.560 My guest today are musician Bobby Calumni and filmmaker John Shinfield, 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.799 and they're here to talk about the new movie What 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:26.840 the hell happened to Blood Sweat and Tears? Why this movie? Why? Now? 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:33.200 It's all Bobby's fault, Bob we It was literally about 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:37.080 two months before COVID hit and Bobby called up and said, 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:38.199 I want to take you to lunch. I want to 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:41.559 tell you a story. And we went to lunch. We're 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.120 just talking a bit about the band. I've been a 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.440 fan of Blood Sweat and Tears since my high school days. 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:49.880 You know, your column you sort of had people talking 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.360 about the Al Cooper Lovers and the David Clayton Thomas Lovers. 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:55.680 I actually loved both of them. They're great albums, so 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.040 I'm fine with both. But we were talking about it 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.040 and I said to Bobby, what of hell happened to 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:02.920 Blood Sweat and Tears? Because here we were in nineteen 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.120 seventy one of the hottest bands going, and then suddenly 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.280 they weren't and what happened? And he said, that's the 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.840 story I'm going to tell you. And the more I 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.319 heard about this, Bob, the more I wanted to do 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.560 some due diligence and see what else was out there. 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:19.920 And not a lot of people knew this story, and 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:21.880 that's always a great thing for a filmmaker when it 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.559 hasn't been covered too much. And I just I saw 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:27.600 there were certainly some parallels to what's going on in 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:31.080 the world today. But I'm a story guy, and it 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.160 was a great story and there's always room for that 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:36.520 when you're making the film. Okay, Bobby, since it was 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:43.600 your idea, why now, well, you know, for all of us, 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.840 life goes on, and that was just a brief chapter. 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.240 It was ten years, but it was a chapter in 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:54.480 my life. And we did that tour. We it was, 0:01:55.160 --> 0:02:00.160 you know, an insane situation. We saw things we didn't 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:05.040 anticipate we were, which we'll get to I'm sure kind 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:10.639 of kind of blackmailed into having to do it. And 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:17.560 like in retrospect, now happened because another friend of mine, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.480 Rupert Perry, and I had dinner and we're just talking 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.680 about something and they used to play drums and he's 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.120 a wonderful guy and he just said kind of the 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.640 same sort of thing. What happened and I started to 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.200 tell the story, said, oh my god, where's that film? 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:33.919 Because we were talking about a film that was shot. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.400 Let's go back to those who uninformed. You did this 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.440 under the aegis of the government. In nineteen seventy you 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:44.600 went on a tour of Eastern Europe three countries, Poland, 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:50.560 Romania and Yugoslavia and film was shot, but it was 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.880 for a documentary which was never released. So you're talking 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:58.080 about that film, yes, absolutely, And it was not really 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.640 to be made as a document entry. It was just 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.840 like a music film that this independent film company tried 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.480 to shoot so that they could sell it. But part 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:10.519 I was the band leader at that point, and I 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.520 had said to them, listen, you can come on this tour, 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.040 but if I don't like this thing, it ain't going anywhere. 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.760 And they went, no problem, you're gonna love it, and 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:23.760 they shot the film, but then it disappeared and there 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.720 was some vague version of it from a camcorda to 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:33.120 a monitor on a television, and I'd seen it way 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:36.760 back then, and it just it didn't really depict what 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.080 I was hoping would be a great like a music 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:46.280 film about the band, and it turned into something completely different, 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.840 and at the time it was so convoluted. I just said, 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.160 you know what, this is not for us, but thank you. Anyway, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:58.320 John has another take on this. Yeah, Bob, we found 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:04.440 a lot of internal State Department communications memos, telegrams, telexes, 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:06.600 so there's a lot going on behind the scenes that 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:11.960 Bobby didn't know about. And when the deal was made 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:15.560 for the band to go on this tour, the State 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.400 Department received a certain amount of control over this film 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.680 that was being shot. Bobby thinks he had control, but 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.200 the truth is the State Department had the control. And 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:31.039 we saw in memos all the way through the tour 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.280 itself that the people on the ground from the State 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:38.560 Department were very concerned about things that the cameras had 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:42.920 captured that they might somehow affect the relationships that they 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.919 were trying to develop with those three governments. So that 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.400 was a concern almost all the way through. They did 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.719 see a two and a half hour cut of the 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.760 documentary and they had problems with it, and they said, 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.680 but we've given notes and we're hoping to fix this. 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.840 And then the next thing we see is that that 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.520 two hour version that was meant for theaters in the 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:12.680 US and internationally disappeared, and somehow a sixty minute version 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.800 was made with some notion of selling it to television, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:21.520 and that never happened either, and then the company that 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.719 made that funded the documentary went belly up at the 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.600 end of nineteen seventy. The post production house where all 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.160 the editing was happening went belly up in nineteen seventy one. 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:37.240 So essentially we're fifty two years on and nobody knows 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.440 knew where this film was. Okay, a couple of questions before, Yeah, 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.680 who paid for the film and how much did it cost? 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.400 Fifty years ago? Yeah, it was a company called National 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:55.240 General Productions. They had done some films. They had some 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.599 sort of deal with Warner Brothers to make features. One 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:03.000 of their top features was Chero, not the Entertainer, but 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:09.440 the the Elvis Presley movie, and the whole thing seems 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:13.160 to have cost somewhere under seventy five thousand dollars. They 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.120 sent a whole crew over. They shot sixty five hours 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.839 of material. The band brought along a portable a track, 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.279 not the kind people used to have in their cars, 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.279 but a portable studio thing, and they recorded all the 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:31.400 concerts and in the fifty years since these had all disappeared. Okay, 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.640 just before you get into finding them, you're talking about 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:37.800 the State Department documents. How did you get those? Hey, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.880 I'm sorry to interrupt everyone. For just for anyone who's listening, 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:48.880 the story begins with our singers. Canadian not as a 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.920 band unified concept, but we all, everyone in the band 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:56.640 hated the war in Vietnam, couldn't stand what was going 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.800 on with Nixon. And this is not something we planned individually. 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:05.200 And as the band got bigger and bigger, we would 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:07.400 have Mike's under our chins every once in a while 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.720 and someone would say, how do you feel so David? 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:14.240 Being a Canadian, as all of us felt, this war 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.840 in Vietnam is horrible, we shouldn't be in it, and 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.600 Nixon's dodgy. I mean, we all had that opinion. But somewhere, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.000 somehow someone got wind of this, and I can't If 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.240 you're into conspiracy, you can come up with ten thousand 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.000 ways of looking at this. My feeling was that some 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:37.080 extreme right wing congressman said, who is this Canadian thing? 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.200 He is? They investigate and find out he had a 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:44.040 jail record in Canada, then they pull his green card. 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.200 We have gigantic hit records, singles, everything going, and we 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:50.840 can no longer play in the United States. Lo and 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.600 behold State Department, either through our manager, he contacted them 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.200 or they contacted him. John probably knows more about this 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.840 than I do, but at that point we had to 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.880 do something to get his green card back. So a 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:08.680 quid pro quo, we'll get you the green card, but 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:10.800 you got to go to Eastern Europe and play behind 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.280 the Iron curtain. So that's kind of I'm glad you 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:19.800 added that in Yeah, but another set of film, the 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:25.320 manager is a new manager and he's not described positively. 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:28.600 How would you find that guy? And was he good, 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.440 bad or otherwise? He was, Okay, that's a great question. Actually, 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:37.120 because our attorney at the time was someone who lived 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:38.960 out here. We were all in the East Coast in 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.760 New York and this attorney, Lee Colton, super nice man. 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.040 We're looking for a new manager. And he said, there's 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:51.240 a guy. He's just smart, knows the business. His brother 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.000 works for the Beach. But I don't know all this detail, 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:58.040 but he said he's so, he's so clever, he'd be great. 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:00.080 And I said, okay, can I talk to him? Well, 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.680 he's just getting out of jail. I thought, you can't 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:08.000 beat that punchline. I said, okay, okay, there's gonna be 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.720 something coming. He said, no, he's getting out of jail. 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.439 He's in Geno prison. Well, I said, okay. Well, as 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:16.920 you see in the movie, my comment was sounds like 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.040 he'd be perfect for us. And he was clever as 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:25.240 can be. He got endorsements with Pioneer Electronics. He was 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.400 he really was something else, I mean, and and he 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:33.480 was wonderful. But I had a feeling because he had 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:35.800 had written bad checks before and he had been in 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.200 trouble before that there was a high likelihood that he 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.000 would try something with us. So I just told our 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:47.079 account and just be really careful. This guy, I like him. 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.680 I hope everything works out, but be careful. And sure 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:51.559 enough he caught him doing something and that was the 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:53.520 end of it. But he lasted with us for a while. 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:55.439 But he was terrific. Actually, he was a great man. 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.880 And what he did was he was being proactive as 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:00.959 a manager as he would be. And he said, we 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.680 got this problem here with our singer. I've got to 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.600 do something. To go back to your question, is we'll 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:12.360 take us here usually what the State Department does is 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.160 they hand over their files to the National Archive, and 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.360 they had been there for a while, and somewhere in 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:21.959 the eighties there was just too much and they were 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:26.080 going to toss a bunch of it. And William Fulbright, 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:30.920 who was a congressman from Arkansas, had a real interest 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:34.400 in the Cultural Exchange Program, which was the department that 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.080 sponsored the Blood Switt and Tears tour, and he said, 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.000 I'll take those files. So all of the files from 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.760 the Cultural Presentations program ended up at the University of Arkansas. 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.960 Very few people know they're there. One of our researchers 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.600 just sort of bumped into it quite by accident, but 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.480 they're all there. And we got access to all the 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.360 documents pertaining to the Blood Switt and Tears tour, which 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.120 no one had seen in forty or fifty years. And 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:06.080 what we learned is that there was communication between Larry Goldblatt, 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:10.880 the manager, and the State Department. What's not clear, and 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.160 we don't have any documents to tell us this we 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:19.440 surmise based on circumstantial evidence, but that Larry was somehow 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.880 proactive and got to somebody at the State Department and 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.320 they had a conversation, and there was this notion that 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.760 this would be a win win for both sides. The 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.440 band takes care of their immigration problem for the lead singer, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.080 no more problems there, and with the State Department and 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:38.200 the Nixon administration gets is the hottest, one of the 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.559 hottest bands going on a tour for them, sponsored by 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.600 the State Department, to try to reach out to these 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.920 three governments that the State Department had identified as being 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:55.840 possible partners, so that they could maybe break that The 0:11:56.000 --> 0:12:00.000 leaders were independent enough of the Russians that they felt 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.000 that we could establish a relationship with them and therefore 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:05.400 perhaps pull them a little bit out of the Russian orbit. 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:07.960 And that was the notion of the State Department, So 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.120 it was kind of a win win for both. What 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.040 we don't exactly know Bobby touched on this before is 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:16.600 did Larry suggest the quit proco or did the State 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:20.200 Department suggest the quit proco. We don't really know that. 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.760 What we do know from the internal documents is that 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.200 as early as November of sixty nine this deal had 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:32.040 been arranged and then they announced it in January of seventy. Okay, 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:34.400 let's start with the making of the film. Then we'll 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.080 go to the content of the film. So you go 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:42.320 for this meeting with Bobby. Bobby tells you this crazy story. 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.200 Then what happens. The first thing when I'm deciding if 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.360 I want to do a documentary or not, is, Hey, 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.160 what's the story? Is the story compelling enough, strong enough 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.440 that it can be a feature documentary as opposed to 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.640 just an hour on Discovery or the History Channel. This 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.720 story was so compelling and like the best of a 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.720 spy novel, so I thought, yeah, this is just great. 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:07.400 But the second question, Bob, is is there enough in 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:09.840 the way of audio visual assets that we can tell 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:15.000 this story properly? What's out there? Bobby mentions this sixty 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.040 five hours, and my ears like go up, and it's like, 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:21.320 whoa excuse me? We gotta fight. So I put my 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:24.960 researchers on this, and I think, had we not found 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.040 this sixty minute version, we would probably not be here 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:30.959 talking today. We would not have been able to make 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.280 the film. But we did find it, and that's the 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.720 foundation of the film itself, all of this film that 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.760 was shot on the tour. Okay, did you guys have 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:41.920 a pre existing relationship or did Bobby someone say you 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.560 got to talk to this guy. We're both married. First 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.920 of all, let me make that clear. No, No, we 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.440 have a friend, a mutual friend, that invited me to 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:57.840 a screening of a terrific I think early stages of 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.360 a documentary that John had done is called Chasing Train 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.080 about John Coltrane. And I'm a big jazz fan, and 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.360 I grew up in a family of jazz fans and 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.920 managers and friends of you know, I was lucky enough 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:16.320 to I have two older brothers, much older than me. 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.600 They both have passed, but the oldest was a trumpet 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.680 player who's very close with Miles Davis. They were, you know, 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.640 good friends. My other brother managed Monk Velonious Monk for 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:29.480 fourteen years. So as a little kid, I had Bach 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.840 and Beethoven in my living room basically. So that's the 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.280 movie I grew up, I should that's the music that 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.760 I grew up hearing. So when I heard about this 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.840 film about Train, about John Coltrane, I thought, there's nothing 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:48.440 on Coltrane. I haven't seen anything on John Coltrane. He was, 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.880 you know, not a big interview and he was not 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:54.280 someone that was seen all the time. And I'm and 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:59.000 I was, actually I was astonished when I saw this 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.280 because it was so well well done and there wasn't 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.160 that much to go with, and John pulled it off. 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:10.200 So so we had met around that time, and then 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:12.800 we emailed once in a while, but we weren't close 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:15.360 friends or anything. And then when he called me to 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.240 have this lunch, that was really the first time we 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.360 had a super in depth conversation. And now we talked 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.360 like three or four times a day. So, okay, John, 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.160 you talked about all these assets, you were excited about 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:31.600 the project. Yeah. How many times do people pitch you? 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.760 How often and you can only come up to bat 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.280 a certain number of times? Yeah, that's a really good question. 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.120 It's a couple of things. I do get pitched quite 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.480 a bit. This person, that person. You know, I've done 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:49.120 a lot of music things, so I do get pitched 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:53.800 those a lot. But for me, it's always do I 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:55.320 have a passion for the artist to I have a 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.240 passion for their work? Is this someone I would want 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:00.360 to spend you know, a year, year and a half with, 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:02.960 because that's what the amount of time it takes to 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.240 make a documentary, So I can get past that, then 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:08.560 it's okay. If I love that artist, I love, here's 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:10.680 a great story, then do we have the stuff to 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.440 tell it? And then we're sort of often running. But 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.200 I've been really, you know, blessed of I've been working 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.800 really regularly for a long long time. Do you only 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:21.800 make one movie at one time, or do you have 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.880 simultaneous productions simultaneous I will stagger them a bit, so 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:29.520 they're not exactly on the same schedule. So at the moment, 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.720 for example, we've finished this one and we're promoting it 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.160 now for theatrical I just finished a fine cut for 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.720 a new one that we delivered to the streaming service 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.320 last week, and I'm in production on another one now, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.320 with another one kind of coming behind it. So I think, 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:47.800 you know, Bob, it's the freelancers nightmare that you know, 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.080 if you don't take a job somehow, you're never going 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.960 to work again. But as I say, I'm really lucky. 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:58.120 These things do present themselves, and so I usually have two, 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.640 occasionally three that are going at the same time. Okay, 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.680 what was the budget for this film and where did 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.560 the money come from? I can't really say what the 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.200 budget is. It's a very healthy budget for a documentary. 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.000 We got it from an independent source. You know, it's 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.000 interesting doing documentaries. You can do it one of several ways. 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.280 You can kind of be Willie Lohman and you're out there, 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:22.000 you know, carting your ideas around in your briefcase, trying 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.200 to sell them to a streaming service or a network 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.040 or a studio, and that sometimes is the best way 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:29.679 to go. But other times you go out and you 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:32.600 try to find independent financing so that I can make 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.000 the film I want to make without any interference from 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.360 a networker a studio, and then armed with a finished product, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.399 we can say, look here it is. You don't have 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:42.439 to guess what it is now you can look at it. 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.800 And in this case, we had independent financing that actually 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:47.959 came through Bobby, So why don't you tell him about that? 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:53.879 So this is wild. If you've seen the Michael Jordan piece, 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.040 a lot of people comment that he paid for it, 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.160 so obviously there's going to be nothing negative in there. 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:03.159 So I asked John, what do you think this is 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.359 going to cost? And he told me, And I'm not 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:07.520 a rich guy, but I said I could figure out 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:09.600 a way, and he said, and then we both kind 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.639 of simultaneously said, you know what if I come up 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.439 with the money. It's not you know, like yeah, like 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:18.520 if I have pimples, show them. I mean, that's just 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:20.879 that's just the way it is. So I'm, you know, 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:25.919 obviously fine with that. Maybe a week later. I'm a 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.240 very lucky person. I have to admit this. And I 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:33.040 have crazy coincidences throughout my life. I get a phone call. 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.320 My office calls and says, listen, there's a guy that 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:39.879 owns a drum shop in Seattle and he needs to 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:41.680 speak to you, but I don't want to give him 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.040 your number. And this came from a club owner in 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.080 Seattle who's a friend. So I said, that's okay, just 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:48.719 you know, let me have his number and I'll call him. 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:50.720 It's cool. So I called the guy up. I said, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:52.760 how you doing this? Bobby Columby said, oh man, thanks 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.920 for colin um Listen, I've got a guy that's just 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.120 a big fan of yours and he wants to buy 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:04.040 memory of yeah, anything you want, you know, like he's 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:06.520 into it. And I said, well, I'll talk to him. 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.199 Just get him on the line. Here's a number you 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:10.080 can call. When you get him on the line, we'll 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:14.720 all talk. Calls Bobby, I want to introduce you to 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:20.600 James Bryant, and I hear, oh my god, it's Bobby Columbia. 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.119 I can't believe it. And I go, oh my god, 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.960 it's James Bryan. Oh my god. And we start laughing. 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:29.879 And he said, listen, I'm such a fan of the 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:31.960 band and I loved the drums and blah blah, and 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:36.520 he goes on and I said, James, I need your address. 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:38.480 He said, what do you mean. I said, just give 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.600 me your address. He said, well, I don't understand. I 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:47.440 want to buy some memorabili. I said, I heard you, James. James, 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:48.639 let me ask you a question. What do you do. 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.920 I'm a lawyer. I said, okay, give me a address. No, no, 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:54.600 I want to buy. I said, James, you're not a 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.639 good Negotia give me your goddamn address. He says okay, 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:00.600 and I get it. And he said I want to buy. 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:03.159 I said, I'm not. I don't sell stuff. That's not 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:07.240 what I'm interested in doing. I'll send you something. So, James, 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:08.560 what do you do? He said, Well, I used to 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:12.960 be a sports agent. Well who did you represent? Well, 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:15.120 Nick van Exel, but you never heard of him. I said, 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.320 I was at the NCAA quarterfinals when he scored thirty 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.320 two points for Cincinnati in the first half, and I'm 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.160 like rattling off, I'm a basketball freak. He goes, Oh 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.440 my god. He gets more into it. He goes, oh, 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.320 this is great. And here's the punchline. So James, what 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.960 do you do now? I finance films, And of course 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:38.199 I go, I'm gonna give you a phone number. I 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.199 have a feeling. But there's one caveat this is what 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.639 you can't get in the way. I said. Creative people 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:47.160 need to be left alone so they can see their 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.480 vision through. So whatever you're gonna do, I'm going to 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.119 introduce you to someone. I think this is right up 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.640 your alley. And I don't know how long it took 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.000 to be financed, but I'm gonna I'm gonna guess five 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:01.480 minutes or something. John. You know, Bob, it was the 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:05.480 as an independent. Actually, what I should say is when 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:07.959 you go to film school, they don't tell you that 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:09.879 the hardest part of your job is going to be 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.399 getting money. I call it the kneepad tour, where you 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:16.120 get down on your knees and you have to beg 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:20.000 somebody to give you money for your your projects. But 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.440 This was one of the easiest I've ever had. He 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.399 loved the band. When I told him the story and 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.639 I told him my vision for the film, he just said, Uh, 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:31.880 let's go. That's great. The lawyers talked about ten days 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.040 later we were done and off and running. Did he 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.359 personally finance it or does he have a syndicate? No, 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.679 he personally financed it. Okay, let's go back to your 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.359 earlier thing. The inspiration for actually push the button? You 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:51.280 want his phone number? Is that where you're going? Not 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:56.040 today anyway. But you said that you saw a sixty 0:21:56.119 --> 0:22:01.240 minute production. The question is did you ever find the footage? No, 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:04.080 we never found the raw footage, and we suggest in 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.680 the film why that is what we did find that 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.800 We cast a very wide net. We talked to people 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.480 that were involved with that documentary. There weren't many left, 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:19.240 but I thought, you know, those two companies going bankrupt, 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.760 that maybe the footage was just left in storage somewhere 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:28.840 here in LA So we looked at every independent storage facility. 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:32.560 We looked at Technicolor, we looked at Deluxe, we looked 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:35.640 at all of these places. We looked at labs and 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.400 storage facilities in New York. We looked at government facilities 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:44.600 in Washington, DC and Virginia. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. So 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:46.040 I was I was beginning to think, you know, we 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.560 weren't going to be able to make this film. And 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.200 then one day I got a call from a woman 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.679 that ran a vault that we had approached, and she 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:57.639 said her database had nothing. So we just sort of 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:03.199 went on to the next one and and I and 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:05.159 she called me, she said, you know something, this was 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.480 COVID time. She was home, stuck at home. She had 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:12.240 a loose leaf notebook that she had found with old 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.000 stuff in the vault and with loose leaf pages, and 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:17.760 she went through and she found some vague reference to 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:20.760 something about blood, sweat and tears. So she next time 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.760 she was in the vault, she went to look at 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:26.200 it and it was in a far corner of the vault, 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.840 and everything in this corner there was a sign there 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.479 marked for destruction. So, Bob, did we get there at 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.199 the right time or not. Anyway, what she found was 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:39.280 two pristine prints of this sixty minute version that never 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:42.879 got broadcast, and we got them, looked at them and 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:45.760 it was like, wow, now we can make this movie. 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:49.480 Because it was a great cross section of this tour. 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.440 So we did a new HD transfer of this material 0:23:53.440 --> 0:24:02.720 and we were off and running. Okay, Bobby, let's talk 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:05.000 a little bit about you and blood, sweat and tears. 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:12.000 You grow up? Where and how do you start playing drums? Okay? Um, Okay. 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:14.560 If this gets boring, just wave your arms and I'll 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:20.080 just say I would. Okay, Okay. So I grew up, 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:22.040 as I told you, in a family of two much 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:25.720 older brothers, and they're listening to jazz morning, noon and night. 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:28.879 That's the That's the only music I heard except for 0:24:28.920 --> 0:24:32.280 procaffee if who I loved and some classical stuff didn't. 0:24:32.440 --> 0:24:35.600 Did never listen to pop music. I always thought when 0:24:35.640 --> 0:24:37.200 I would hear it, I would just laugh and say, 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:40.280 how could anyone listen to this? Because in those days 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:43.399 was dan at that, dan At that, dann than yan 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:46.920 At that that that that, that was it. And as 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:51.119 as as a kid watching everything going on, because I 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:54.960 was much younger, we had a little piano in our 0:24:55.000 --> 0:24:58.919 living room and when they would play music, there'd be 0:24:58.920 --> 0:25:02.240 an album jacket on the piano and a pair of brushes. 0:25:03.560 --> 0:25:06.920 And when someone was playing the piano or doing anything, 0:25:07.040 --> 0:25:09.399 another person who was in the room would start to 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:12.880 play time and I would watch that and it just 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:16.320 was fascinated. And then I heard one This is a 0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:20.760 little bit inside baseball, but I was I heard one 0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:26.240 piece of music. Tad Dameron, an arranger, wonderful arranger, had 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:29.600 a song called Philly j J. And it was a 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:34.640 piece featuring the trumpet player the greatest, Clifford Brown. Was unbelievable. 0:25:35.520 --> 0:25:39.080 And it was just one piece of musical called Philly JJ. 0:25:39.520 --> 0:25:43.760 And I was eleven, maybe I was fixated on it. 0:25:44.440 --> 0:25:47.040 And I heard this drumming because it featured a guy 0:25:47.119 --> 0:25:51.679 named Philly Joe Jones, and I was fixated. And I 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:55.639 put together, I don't know a lamp, and that was 0:25:55.680 --> 0:25:59.720 my symbol, a marching snare I bought at an Army 0:25:59.800 --> 0:26:01.879 Navy store with a jacket over it. I lived in 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:07.879 an apartment in Manhattan, up way uptown and disturbing everybody. 0:26:07.880 --> 0:26:11.120 I'm banging on stuff. There was a game, a game 0:26:11.160 --> 0:26:15.160 with like a backcam and birdie and these two little 0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:17.919 round things that you would bang back and forth. And 0:26:18.000 --> 0:26:22.080 I hooked them up to a standing ashtray and that 0:26:22.160 --> 0:26:25.040 was my drum set. And I'm trying to play this 0:26:25.080 --> 0:26:28.240 piece of music. What I didn't know, and I know. 0:26:28.359 --> 0:26:30.720 I knew later on it's maybe the hardest thing you 0:26:30.760 --> 0:26:34.280 can play on that instrument. It's unbelievably difficult. But no 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:36.520 one said you can't do this. I had no idea 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:39.960 what I was doing. I was playing ass backwards in 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:43.080 my hands were like weird, and I was banging on 0:26:43.440 --> 0:26:47.080 the side and I just kept doing it hours and hours. 0:26:47.160 --> 0:26:50.320 And one day one of my brothers, I think, Jules, 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:54.159 the older one, you know, here's me, and then he 0:26:54.160 --> 0:26:56.280 invites a friend. He said, you gotta hear this, and 0:26:56.400 --> 0:26:59.479 this little eleven year olds banging away, but he's trying 0:26:59.480 --> 0:27:02.320 to play like Philly Joe Jones and this piece was difficult. 0:27:02.960 --> 0:27:05.080 And that was my drum lesson. And then I started 0:27:05.119 --> 0:27:09.680 playing along with everything. And on January the twentieth, nineteen sixty, 0:27:09.800 --> 0:27:12.960 my brother and I remember, I was on the toilet. 0:27:13.240 --> 0:27:15.080 He says, I got a drum set for you, and 0:27:15.119 --> 0:27:17.480 I ran out of the toilet with my underwear on 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:21.479 my angles like a Seinfeld episode, and went flying and 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:25.639 there's Max Roach's old drum set, eighteen inch bass drum, 0:27:25.720 --> 0:27:29.720 handmade first one Sparkle Silva gretch set and that was it. 0:27:29.840 --> 0:27:33.119 And that was my first that was a drum set. 0:27:33.160 --> 0:27:37.400 I didn't have symbols yet, but that's how I started playing. Okay, 0:27:37.440 --> 0:27:40.359 to have such a creative family. What'd your parents do 0:27:40.520 --> 0:27:42.680 for a living? What was their story? Well, I love 0:27:42.720 --> 0:27:47.200 this guy. It's the greatest questions. My father was born 0:27:47.240 --> 0:27:52.680 in eighteen eighty nine. My grandfather paternal was born ten 0:27:52.760 --> 0:27:57.080 years before the assassination of Lincoln. So and my mother 0:27:57.320 --> 0:28:00.480 played piano. And my father, whose name I guess there 0:28:00.520 --> 0:28:03.760 was Fred golub And because I saw like a thing 0:28:03.800 --> 0:28:07.399 of his like a cpia. He's an opera singer. He 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:11.920 sang with Caruso So when I was growing up, Well, 0:28:12.240 --> 0:28:14.639 he died when I was three, But we had this 0:28:15.119 --> 0:28:18.760 a recording device. It looked like a big suitcase with 0:28:18.840 --> 0:28:21.480 one mic, and they would make discs on it and 0:28:21.560 --> 0:28:26.600 my mom would pay piano and my father would sing. Okay, 0:28:26.720 --> 0:28:33.080 you are playing drums basically jazz oriented. Two questions for 0:28:33.240 --> 0:28:36.840 most people. Was a huge turning point when the Beatles 0:28:36.920 --> 0:28:40.200 came on the scene and beginning A sixty four, So 0:28:40.800 --> 0:28:43.160 you were a jazz er? Was that a turning point 0:28:43.160 --> 0:28:47.080 for you and a lot of people who were fans 0:28:47.120 --> 0:28:50.160 of the Beatles in British invasion that caused them to 0:28:50.280 --> 0:28:53.680 play in bands. So after you got this drum set, 0:28:53.880 --> 0:28:56.400 were you just playing alone? Were you playing in groups? 0:28:56.440 --> 0:28:59.080 What kind of music? I love them? Okay, here we go. 0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:02.320 Here's the here's the answer. This is a little bit. 0:29:02.560 --> 0:29:06.040 If anyone's eating, stop eating for a second. So I 0:29:06.080 --> 0:29:09.080 got a call from some guy that's going to the 0:29:09.160 --> 0:29:14.160 high School for Music and Art. I'm I guess I'm 0:29:14.160 --> 0:29:17.240 fifteen at this point. I don't have symbols yet. I 0:29:17.360 --> 0:29:19.560 just have this like basic drum. I don't know how 0:29:19.600 --> 0:29:23.000 to use my feet yet we're playing drums. I got 0:29:23.080 --> 0:29:25.600 a call from this guy Fred, Hey, Bob, and you 0:29:25.640 --> 0:29:27.800 got your drums? I said, yeah, I just got a 0:29:27.840 --> 0:29:30.320 drum set. Good. We have a gig. So what we 0:29:30.440 --> 0:29:34.720 have a job NYU Fraternity Alpha something something at the 0:29:34.760 --> 0:29:38.120 Broadway Central Hotel and let's go. And we had a gig. 0:29:38.800 --> 0:29:41.240 I never thought even to get paid for doing this. 0:29:41.360 --> 0:29:44.200 I thought I'd have to pay. I said, sure, fifteen 0:29:44.280 --> 0:29:46.760 years old, I get all dressed up, I get my 0:29:46.800 --> 0:29:50.120 little drum set down to this place. I borrowed twenty 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:52.280 bucks from my friend Harold's I could buy a symbol, 0:29:53.280 --> 0:29:56.120 and now I have a symbol. No high hat yet. No, 0:29:56.320 --> 0:29:58.080 I don't know how to use a bass drum pedal yet, 0:29:58.120 --> 0:30:01.160 but I got this drum set. It's a big band 0:30:02.000 --> 0:30:05.880 and they're playing things like Daddy Day. And I'd heard 0:30:05.960 --> 0:30:09.240 so much music as a kid. I knew almost everything 0:30:09.360 --> 0:30:12.680 that was out there, so I stopped playing along. Fred's 0:30:12.680 --> 0:30:16.480 the bass player. He's standing over me, smiling, and I'm 0:30:16.480 --> 0:30:21.080 playing Daddy Yadia and just smiling, and then he vomits 0:30:21.080 --> 0:30:24.720 on my shoulder, so I so I look up and 0:30:24.720 --> 0:30:27.800 he's but he's not vomiting in a in a position 0:30:27.880 --> 0:30:30.880 to vie. He's smiling and vomiting. And I look up 0:30:30.920 --> 0:30:33.320 and I feel this and I go, Fred, stop, stop, 0:30:33.920 --> 0:30:36.960 and he's just drunk. And that's my first gig. And 0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:39.240 I'm figuring, if there is a god, he's telling me, 0:30:39.360 --> 0:30:42.680 do not do this for a living. Whatever, Well, how 0:30:42.680 --> 0:30:45.480 ever your life turns out, don't do this for a living. 0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:49.240 So that was my first gig. And then I eventually 0:30:49.320 --> 0:30:53.000 learned how to use my feet and I act. And 0:30:53.080 --> 0:30:56.040 I can't get into this, but this is the wildest 0:30:56.040 --> 0:30:58.520 part of this, which is going to pull us so 0:30:58.560 --> 0:31:04.880 far away from this conversation. I had inadvertently met someone who. 0:31:06.160 --> 0:31:09.320 I was in a hotel room. He was talking about 0:31:09.640 --> 0:31:13.520 doing a US version of The Beatles, and he plays 0:31:13.600 --> 0:31:17.120 me an ascetate, What do you think of this? I said, 0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:22.320 it's it's amazing, actually, and I was shocked at how 0:31:22.320 --> 0:31:24.120 good it was. Soa who is it? He goes, Oh, 0:31:24.160 --> 0:31:26.800 it's the boys the Beatles, I said, he said, I 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:28.880 think he said something like I don't think we're gonna 0:31:28.880 --> 0:31:33.080 put this out, You're crazy. It was Brian Epstein and 0:31:33.160 --> 0:31:35.240 he's playing me an ascetate of a day in the 0:31:35.280 --> 0:31:38.480 life a year before it comes out. I don't tell you. 0:31:38.520 --> 0:31:41.360 My friends, yeah I heard this beetle thing and they're going, yeah, 0:31:41.400 --> 0:31:44.120 he's not full of shit? Oh really? And I'm saying 0:31:44.200 --> 0:31:46.240 no in the middle of goes, wake up, got out 0:31:46.240 --> 0:31:48.480 of bed, get a comb because something like that, and 0:31:48.520 --> 0:31:53.200 they all thing, I'm nuts until it comes out. Okay, 0:31:55.280 --> 0:31:58.360 have that one giga where the guy vomits on you? 0:31:59.120 --> 0:32:03.440 Now do you continue to play with bands? And what 0:32:03.520 --> 0:32:05.920 happens when the Beatles do a rock Okay? So I 0:32:06.000 --> 0:32:08.080 have your own career, all right? So I have two 0:32:08.520 --> 0:32:13.240 completely different sets of friends. Are these one of these 0:32:13.320 --> 0:32:17.120 young jazz musicians and older jazz musicians, and I become 0:32:17.520 --> 0:32:20.200 competent enough where I can play with these people, play 0:32:20.280 --> 0:32:23.320 jazz gigs not a lot, and we have jam sessions 0:32:23.320 --> 0:32:26.160 obviously in New York, roll over the place. The other 0:32:26.200 --> 0:32:29.720 thing was I like these pop, like these rock kids 0:32:29.920 --> 0:32:33.200 that I knew, and they would play at temple dances 0:32:33.240 --> 0:32:37.640 and schools and on weekends and they worked. But that 0:32:37.760 --> 0:32:40.600 was I was in college, so I would I would 0:32:40.640 --> 0:32:43.520 do the weekend gigs and I would hear all these 0:32:43.560 --> 0:32:46.840 you know songs, and they were Beatle fanatics, so I 0:32:46.840 --> 0:32:50.080 would hear all the Beatles songs that way, and we 0:32:50.240 --> 0:32:53.080 do you know, rock stuff. And then I had another 0:32:53.120 --> 0:32:56.840 friend who lived in my building who played Oregon, a 0:32:56.840 --> 0:33:00.000 guy named Mike Matthews. And he forms a little band 0:33:00.000 --> 0:33:02.920 and we go away in the summer and it's a 0:33:02.960 --> 0:33:06.200 blues band and we're just playing before I had heard 0:33:06.240 --> 0:33:10.200 anything about any blues bands other than authentic blues bands. 0:33:10.560 --> 0:33:13.480 And we're out in the Hampton's playing and so I I, 0:33:13.720 --> 0:33:15.800 you know, like I had a nice mix of music, 0:33:15.880 --> 0:33:18.240 but I had two sets, you know, they were very 0:33:18.360 --> 0:33:21.960 very separate sets of friends. So where did you go 0:33:22.000 --> 0:33:25.720 to college? And did you finish City College finished? And 0:33:25.760 --> 0:33:29.160 then I went to the same school in graduate school 0:33:29.360 --> 0:33:33.320 for a degree in psychology. Did you finish that? No? 0:33:33.480 --> 0:33:38.760 One day, I'm in advanced interviewing techniques as a woman, 0:33:38.840 --> 0:33:40.800 and I had to go to night school because I 0:33:40.880 --> 0:33:44.040 was playing already with people, so I had to sleep. 0:33:44.760 --> 0:33:50.040 So I'm watching this and I'm imagining myself at five 0:33:50.160 --> 0:33:55.520 years old, realizing that other than like the Lowden code 0:33:55.520 --> 0:33:58.240 and the hat with the ear flaps, I was doing 0:33:58.240 --> 0:33:59.920 exactly the same thing. I was going to school and 0:34:00.040 --> 0:34:02.520 September and I was off in June. But I was 0:34:02.520 --> 0:34:06.440 already twenty two, and I just panicked. I said, I 0:34:07.840 --> 0:34:11.640 got up, left my books and just started hanging out 0:34:11.680 --> 0:34:15.160 with my friends in the West Village. Okay, let's switch 0:34:15.200 --> 0:34:17.839 to you, John, How do you end up becoming a filmmaker? 0:34:19.560 --> 0:34:21.759 You know, I blamed Bobby for this film. I blame 0:34:21.840 --> 0:34:25.640 my parents for my career. They and I grew up 0:34:25.640 --> 0:34:29.880 in the Midwest. Born in Chicago, raised in Milwaukee, very 0:34:29.960 --> 0:34:32.960 far away from Hollywood. My parents took me to a 0:34:33.040 --> 0:34:37.120 revival of Lawrence of Arabia. It's the first movie I 0:34:37.160 --> 0:34:39.920 ever saw. And I'm sitting in the Fox Bay Theater 0:34:40.080 --> 0:34:43.600 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, looking up at the screen and just 0:34:43.680 --> 0:34:47.839 with my mouth open, I couldn't believe this whole experience, 0:34:47.880 --> 0:34:50.880 the writing, the directing, the production, everything about it was 0:34:50.920 --> 0:34:53.840 fantastic and is about eleven at the time, and I 0:34:53.920 --> 0:34:56.200 remember saying to my parents, that's what I wanted to do, 0:34:57.000 --> 0:34:59.239 and as I yeah, yeah, sure, because when you're in Milwaukee, 0:34:59.560 --> 0:35:03.120 you know, Hollywood is very far away, and we don't 0:35:03.120 --> 0:35:06.239 make it there very often. In fact, if I had 0:35:06.280 --> 0:35:10.160 a dollar, Bob, for every person that said, you know, 0:35:12.000 --> 0:35:14.239 a lot of people want to get the competition is fierce, 0:35:14.320 --> 0:35:16.080 You're never gonna make it. If I had a dollar 0:35:16.160 --> 0:35:17.920 for everybody who said that to me, I would not 0:35:17.960 --> 0:35:19.640 have had to come out here. I would have been 0:35:19.680 --> 0:35:24.560 so rich. But so anyway, I went to undergraduated Oberlin, 0:35:24.600 --> 0:35:28.000 and I went to film school at Northwestern and then 0:35:28.040 --> 0:35:30.239 I decided it was time to come out here. And 0:35:30.360 --> 0:35:32.640 I didn't know it well put, you know, because the 0:35:32.680 --> 0:35:35.720 movies went through great transition. What games are we talking about? 0:35:35.960 --> 0:35:40.439 This would be late sixties, Okay, so this is when 0:35:41.200 --> 0:35:44.400 the tours start to appear. On the scene where you 0:35:44.560 --> 0:35:46.960 inspired by that, you know, you talk about Lawrence the 0:35:47.000 --> 0:35:50.840 rebew But what other films are your inspirations to continue 0:35:50.880 --> 0:35:56.000 down this path. I was not into super popular films. 0:35:56.320 --> 0:35:59.799 Another early film I saw was an Elvis film, which 0:35:59.880 --> 0:36:02.279 was just dreadful, and I just remember, oh God, I 0:36:02.320 --> 0:36:05.600 don't think I want to do that. But I was 0:36:05.640 --> 0:36:09.040 really very much influenced by the classics. Love Casablanca, Loved 0:36:09.600 --> 0:36:11.799 Maltese Falcon, Love Gone with the Wind, all of that 0:36:11.840 --> 0:36:14.920 sort of stuff. Great storytelling, and I think that's really 0:36:14.960 --> 0:36:17.600 what got me into this business, was I wanted to 0:36:17.640 --> 0:36:20.399 be a storyteller. And on top of the movies, I'm 0:36:20.400 --> 0:36:23.040 going to throw one other thing at you. When I 0:36:23.120 --> 0:36:28.359 was about ten, I had bought a Superman comic book, 0:36:28.400 --> 0:36:31.000 and at the back of the comic book, for a dollar, 0:36:31.400 --> 0:36:34.200 if you send it into this place, they would send 0:36:34.239 --> 0:36:38.240 you a real to real tape of radio drama shows 0:36:38.760 --> 0:36:41.680 the Lone Ranger on one side and the Shadow on 0:36:41.719 --> 0:36:44.400 the other side, And so I sent that in. I 0:36:44.719 --> 0:36:46.359 had no idea what a radio show was other than 0:36:46.400 --> 0:36:49.800 my local DJ, and I got this thing. I just 0:36:50.280 --> 0:36:53.360 was captivated. It was telling a story with actors and 0:36:53.440 --> 0:36:56.600 sound effects and music, and all of this just blew 0:36:56.640 --> 0:36:59.399 me away. And so I started collecting tapes of old 0:36:59.480 --> 0:37:02.839 radio shows. Drama, comedy, Jack Benny, you name it, and 0:37:02.960 --> 0:37:04.799 all of this kind of went into my head. But 0:37:05.000 --> 0:37:08.840 mostly it was all about telling stories, and that's what 0:37:08.960 --> 0:37:12.480 interested me more than the filmmakers themselves. So I went 0:37:12.520 --> 0:37:16.680 to filmmaking school at Northwestern and I still remember this 0:37:16.719 --> 0:37:19.839 to this day. First day, first class, we looked at 0:37:19.840 --> 0:37:23.640 Busby Berkeley's forty second Street. We're watching the film and 0:37:24.400 --> 0:37:26.880 it's over and we start to talk about it, and 0:37:26.880 --> 0:37:28.640 there's I could still see him to this day. There's 0:37:28.680 --> 0:37:30.240 this red headed kid in the back of the class 0:37:30.239 --> 0:37:33.120 who said, you know, on one level, Ruby Keeler's tap 0:37:33.200 --> 0:37:36.560 dancing was interesting, but you know, on a deeper, more 0:37:36.680 --> 0:37:42.160 metaphorical level, she is a representative of a depressed era America, 0:37:42.320 --> 0:37:45.600 pounding out, tapping out, if you will, their frustrations with 0:37:45.640 --> 0:37:48.600 an economic And I'm looking around at him and I 0:37:48.640 --> 0:37:53.680 wanted to say, she's tap dancing and she's not that great, 0:37:54.360 --> 0:37:59.040 And the teacher says, very good, excellent, anybody else and 0:37:59.120 --> 0:38:01.759 we got into this whole sort of intellectual conversation that 0:38:01.840 --> 0:38:04.880 I sort of decided this was not for me. I 0:38:04.960 --> 0:38:07.319 wanted to make movies. I wanted to tell stories. It 0:38:07.400 --> 0:38:10.440 wasn't about analyzing things. So I sort of went off 0:38:10.480 --> 0:38:12.280 on my own, and I think that kind of explains 0:38:12.320 --> 0:38:14.799 a lot about me. I'm a very independent soul and 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:18.160 have kind of carved out my own little niche here. 0:38:18.200 --> 0:38:21.160 But what I did was, when I was finally ready 0:38:21.160 --> 0:38:24.959 to come out to California after graduate school, I didn't 0:38:25.000 --> 0:38:29.520 know a soul, so I put together a very flamboyant resume, 0:38:32.640 --> 0:38:34.799 and no one had ever seen anything like. In fact, 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:36.160 I got written up in a book on how to 0:38:36.160 --> 0:38:39.239 get a job in Hollywood, and I sent it out 0:38:39.280 --> 0:38:43.759 to fifty studios, networks producers, and I said, I'm coming 0:38:43.760 --> 0:38:45.960 to California two months. We'd love to have an opportunity 0:38:46.000 --> 0:38:48.360 to interview with you. And out of the fifty, I 0:38:48.400 --> 0:38:52.040 got twenty responses, which is great. Twelve said now, sorry, 0:38:52.040 --> 0:38:54.920 you're not interested, but eight said come and see us. 0:38:55.880 --> 0:38:58.400 They were really struggle by stop stop. Yeah, what was 0:38:58.480 --> 0:39:06.040 so magical about this? Because amazing statistics. Um this was 0:39:06.080 --> 0:39:09.480 in pre computer days. I put together what looked like 0:39:09.520 --> 0:39:13.279 a reprint of a People magazine article. It was me 0:39:13.400 --> 0:39:16.280 on the cover. You know, I stole the typeface People, 0:39:16.360 --> 0:39:20.400 and it was direct from the Midwest, John Scheinfeld. And 0:39:20.440 --> 0:39:22.680 you opened it up and in the in the breezy, 0:39:22.760 --> 0:39:26.640 gossipy style of People magazine. It was my life story 0:39:26.680 --> 0:39:28.840 to that point. And if they didn't read it, and 0:39:28.880 --> 0:39:30.800 I wasn't sure that they were going to, I peppered 0:39:30.800 --> 0:39:33.760 it with pictures from my life with one line caption 0:39:33.880 --> 0:39:37.600 so they could still get the whole story. And um, 0:39:38.000 --> 0:39:40.600 so it wasn't the resume format we all learned in 0:39:40.640 --> 0:39:44.759 school of how to get a job. And so my 0:39:44.880 --> 0:39:48.239 first interview was a paramout. I got out here on 0:39:48.239 --> 0:39:51.520 a Sunday and on Tuesday, I had an interview at Paramount. 0:39:51.640 --> 0:39:53.960 Just be specific, because you have some great memory. What 0:39:54.120 --> 0:40:00.480 years This was nineteen eighty one, okay, and U Gary 0:40:00.520 --> 0:40:04.080 Nardino was the president of Paramount Television at the time. 0:40:04.520 --> 0:40:06.640 He had seen this resume wanted to meet me. So 0:40:06.680 --> 0:40:10.120 I went in, had a meeting that was on Tuesday. 0:40:10.719 --> 0:40:12.919 By Friday, they offered me a job. I didn't even 0:40:12.920 --> 0:40:14.960 have to go to any of these other interviews. Was like, 0:40:15.000 --> 0:40:18.560 Paramount was like right there. So they paid for me 0:40:18.600 --> 0:40:21.880 and my wife newlyweds to come out at the time, 0:40:22.560 --> 0:40:28.040 and I started as a TV development executive And well wait, wait, 0:40:28.120 --> 0:40:30.960 slow down a little bit. Yeah, what did your parents 0:40:31.000 --> 0:40:33.279 do for a living. Oh nice of you to ask. 0:40:33.800 --> 0:40:37.840 My father was a businessman, worked for He ran the 0:40:37.880 --> 0:40:41.520 international part of a business called Manpower. It was a 0:40:41.680 --> 0:40:45.440 temporary help service and he ran all the foreign offices. 0:40:45.920 --> 0:40:48.279 The headquarters was in Milwaukee, which is why we're there. 0:40:48.520 --> 0:40:52.799 My mom was a housewife, but actually she's the one 0:40:52.800 --> 0:40:56.799 who's responsible for me loving music as much as I do. 0:40:56.880 --> 0:40:59.239 She always had music playing around the house, and not 0:40:59.360 --> 0:41:02.200 just Frank's, not her Nat King Cole, which was her generation, 0:41:02.719 --> 0:41:05.919 but she loved a lot of the contemporary artists, and 0:41:07.680 --> 0:41:11.320 she'd loved, for example, Herb Albert, she loved Sergio Mendez. 0:41:11.320 --> 0:41:13.480 So I ended up making films about which was just 0:41:13.560 --> 0:41:17.759 great but had nothing to do with show business. And 0:41:17.800 --> 0:41:20.799 I think, I think Bob Bay they didn't. I think 0:41:20.800 --> 0:41:23.680 they ever quite understood what I did. I did a 0:41:23.760 --> 0:41:27.680 project in the early two thousands. I was working with 0:41:27.760 --> 0:41:32.520 the Frank Sinatra family and my dad, I think he 0:41:32.560 --> 0:41:34.120 really wanted to be a good dad. One day and 0:41:34.120 --> 0:41:36.600 he said, so, how did you spend your day to day? 0:41:37.080 --> 0:41:38.759 I'm trying to understand what it is you do. Tell 0:41:38.800 --> 0:41:41.719 me what you did today? And I said, well, I 0:41:42.360 --> 0:41:45.480 looked at five hours of Frank Sinatra TV shows from 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:49.120 the nineteen fifties and there's this dead silence on the 0:41:49.160 --> 0:41:51.640 other end of the phone, and my dad finally says, 0:41:52.560 --> 0:41:56.480 and they pay you for this. It's like you know anyway. 0:41:57.200 --> 0:41:59.279 So they were very but they were really supportive. It's like, 0:41:59.320 --> 0:42:00.879 whatever you want to do, it will support you whatever 0:42:00.920 --> 0:42:02.400 you want to do. And so I had that luxury 0:42:02.600 --> 0:42:05.560 growing up, and I think again it contributed to to 0:42:05.680 --> 0:42:07.880 my being very independent. I want to do what I 0:42:07.920 --> 0:42:10.760 want to do and things that will make me proud. Okay, 0:42:10.800 --> 0:42:13.880 you're a nice Jewish boy. Your parents usually want you 0:42:13.920 --> 0:42:17.359 to be a doctor or lawyer. Were they supportive? I mean, 0:42:17.880 --> 0:42:20.360 did ay? Did they pay for your education? And b 0:42:20.560 --> 0:42:22.640 when it ended all of a sudden, you're married, you 0:42:22.640 --> 0:42:26.520 have expenses and what was going on there economically? Yes, 0:42:26.560 --> 0:42:30.080 they paid for graduate school, they paid for college and 0:42:30.600 --> 0:42:33.440 it was gout in the world and make us proud. 0:42:34.160 --> 0:42:36.719 And as I said, they never quite understood how show 0:42:36.760 --> 0:42:39.560 business worked because that wasn't their frame of reference. But 0:42:39.840 --> 0:42:43.520 they couldn't have been more supportive through throughout my dad's 0:42:43.520 --> 0:42:45.600 past now and my mom too, but they couldn't have 0:42:45.600 --> 0:42:48.799 been more supportive up to the day they died. Well, 0:42:48.840 --> 0:42:51.120 what about getting married and are you still married to 0:42:51.160 --> 0:42:54.839 that same person? You immediately, you know, put an economic 0:42:55.480 --> 0:42:59.520 stone on your career. No, we are no longer married. 0:42:59.560 --> 0:43:02.160 We were married. We were married for fourteen years. Lovely 0:43:02.160 --> 0:43:04.640 women were still friends today, but we just got married 0:43:04.680 --> 0:43:07.719 way too young and went off in different directions and 0:43:07.800 --> 0:43:12.840 had different interests. She's terrific, But yeah, you sort of 0:43:12.880 --> 0:43:15.640 put that on. But you know, it's just I think 0:43:15.680 --> 0:43:18.520 if you it's really interesting. People talk to me a 0:43:18.560 --> 0:43:24.040 lot about jobs, and they're kind of what if I 0:43:24.080 --> 0:43:25.239 go here, What if I go here? What if I 0:43:25.280 --> 0:43:28.360 go here? I was always I want to go there. 0:43:28.600 --> 0:43:30.279 I want to be over there. I want to be 0:43:30.320 --> 0:43:32.239 making my own things. That's what I want to do. 0:43:32.600 --> 0:43:35.799 And so I was always very directed towards getting there. 0:43:36.360 --> 0:43:39.160 And it didn't sort of matter what the economic things were. 0:43:39.239 --> 0:43:40.759 It was just I always sort of found a way 0:43:40.760 --> 0:43:43.600 to do it. And you know, I was at Paramount, 0:43:43.600 --> 0:43:46.160 that was my first job, and so I had a 0:43:46.200 --> 0:43:50.120 decent salary. And then I got hired away by MTM 0:43:50.120 --> 0:43:52.680 Mary Chila Moore Productions, and then I got hired away 0:43:52.719 --> 0:43:55.560 by Embassy, which was Norman Lear's company. So I had 0:43:55.640 --> 0:43:58.560 really good pedigree where I learned from the best people 0:43:58.600 --> 0:44:01.799 of how to do quality work. And to this day 0:44:01.920 --> 0:44:05.560 I remember lessons that I got. Stephen Botchko from Hill 0:44:05.560 --> 0:44:08.200 Street Blues was a guy that I learned from and 0:44:08.520 --> 0:44:14.359 he was very arrogant guy, very difficult guy. I liked 0:44:14.440 --> 0:44:16.719 him a lot. And he said to me, you know, 0:44:17.680 --> 0:44:20.319 I will take an idea from the Xerox kid if 0:44:20.320 --> 0:44:23.240 it makes the show better. And that was a big lesson, 0:44:23.280 --> 0:44:24.880 you know, as opposed to no, no, it has to 0:44:24.880 --> 0:44:27.160 be me. I have to have all the idea. I know. 0:44:27.320 --> 0:44:29.200 That's not how I am. It's just like, whatever's going 0:44:29.239 --> 0:44:31.040 to make the film better, that's what you got to do. 0:44:31.480 --> 0:44:33.879 So it's always been a series of steps of sort 0:44:33.920 --> 0:44:36.439 of getting to where I wanted to be. I thought 0:44:36.440 --> 0:44:38.480 it was going to be scripted things, whether it was 0:44:38.520 --> 0:44:43.000 television or film, and then I discovered documentaries and I 0:44:43.160 --> 0:44:46.040 loved the form, and so the scripted stuff sort of 0:44:46.040 --> 0:44:48.320 faded off to the side, and for the last twenty 0:44:48.320 --> 0:44:53.040 three years I've been doing documentaries and loving it. So 0:44:53.600 --> 0:44:56.279 what was the job that you had was an embassy 0:44:56.360 --> 0:44:59.200 where you segued into documentaries? What was the what were 0:44:59.200 --> 0:45:02.160 you doing just before where you made that switch. Yeah, 0:45:02.160 --> 0:45:06.239 well I am. I had been at Embassy, but then 0:45:08.160 --> 0:45:10.360 I went off. I didn't see much future for a 0:45:10.440 --> 0:45:14.279 producer that didn't write, so I took about two years 0:45:14.320 --> 0:45:16.240 off and I wrote and I wrote, and I wrote 0:45:17.040 --> 0:45:19.640 episodes of TV shows Bob, I would be embarrassed to 0:45:19.680 --> 0:45:22.520 tell you that I wrote for. And then I got 0:45:22.560 --> 0:45:26.560 some jobs writing episodes for some of those shows. And 0:45:26.600 --> 0:45:32.880 then Bob Greenblatt was at Fox at the time, and 0:45:32.960 --> 0:45:37.000 he read a spec script of mine and he said, 0:45:38.000 --> 0:45:39.920 I want you to come out. He said, you have 0:45:39.960 --> 0:45:41.719 an original voice. I want you to come in and 0:45:41.920 --> 0:45:44.600 let's talk about doing something. So he made me into 0:45:44.600 --> 0:45:46.719 a pilot writer. And I was writing drama shows for 0:45:46.719 --> 0:45:50.719 about six years, not one of which got made. I 0:45:50.800 --> 0:45:52.520 came closer a couple of times, but I did like 0:45:52.560 --> 0:45:55.240 two or three a year for the various networks drama 0:45:55.280 --> 0:45:57.839 shows with a sense of humor. But I didn't see 0:45:57.920 --> 0:46:01.719 much future for this either. You know, you write him 0:46:01.719 --> 0:46:03.760 for a while, you're on the A list, and then somehow, 0:46:03.800 --> 0:46:06.080 if you don't get him made, you're you're you're going 0:46:06.120 --> 0:46:07.879 to get off that list. And I saw that coming 0:46:07.920 --> 0:46:11.239 in around the same time I got to know of 0:46:11.680 --> 0:46:14.719 grout Show, Marx's grandson, and he said, you know, you 0:46:14.719 --> 0:46:17.040 should do a documentary about the Marx brothers. Nobody's done 0:46:17.040 --> 0:46:19.480 a really great documentary about the Marx Brothers. It was like, 0:46:19.600 --> 0:46:21.480 what do I know about making documentaries. I'm in the 0:46:21.520 --> 0:46:24.480 scripted world. He's yeah, but you're a storyteller. So he 0:46:24.520 --> 0:46:28.320 gave me the rights to do this, and I teamed 0:46:28.400 --> 0:46:30.319 up with a guy that actually had done a little 0:46:30.320 --> 0:46:33.840 bit of documentary work, guy named David Leaf. And David 0:46:33.840 --> 0:46:37.480 and I did this documentary together called The Unknown Marx Brothers. 0:46:37.960 --> 0:46:40.799 Got a lot of attention for it, and from that 0:46:41.040 --> 0:46:43.400 it was sort of off to do other things. And 0:46:43.440 --> 0:46:52.920 I just love the form. Okay, Bobby, how do you 0:46:53.000 --> 0:46:58.560 end up in Blood, Sweat and Tears? Understand, I'm in 0:46:58.600 --> 0:47:04.480 graduate school, just walked out hanging around in the West Village. 0:47:07.440 --> 0:47:13.640 Being a jazz drummer. You jazz generally, you should have 0:47:13.680 --> 0:47:16.120 a certain amount of technique, and you know, like like 0:47:16.200 --> 0:47:20.520 Shakespeare understood English pretty well so he could express himself. 0:47:20.920 --> 0:47:23.920 It's very hard to play jazz without having chops, having 0:47:24.000 --> 0:47:28.200 some sort of technique. Pop music rock and roll at 0:47:28.239 --> 0:47:31.399 that time, in particular, you didn't need all of that 0:47:32.560 --> 0:47:37.160 great technique. So I started hanging around in the village. 0:47:37.200 --> 0:47:40.279 I think it's fascinating. I become friends with a guy 0:47:40.360 --> 0:47:43.560 whose band is about to break up named Steve Katz, 0:47:44.200 --> 0:47:46.600 and he's in a band that's called the Blues Project, 0:47:47.320 --> 0:47:53.920 and that band was breaking up, so he and I 0:47:53.960 --> 0:47:58.200 were extremely close friends. And it's gonna sound awful. They 0:47:58.239 --> 0:48:00.960 were girls in the Westville hit a lot of girls, 0:48:01.560 --> 0:48:03.560 and that was true because you know, I went to 0:48:03.600 --> 0:48:06.680 Stuveston High School. Its all boys school, so as soon 0:48:06.719 --> 0:48:09.799 as I got to co ed situations, it's pretty good. 0:48:09.840 --> 0:48:13.640 And then I'm in the West Village, where you know, 0:48:13.920 --> 0:48:17.000 it was great, and there's a lot of folk music. 0:48:17.800 --> 0:48:21.000 Bob Dylan was hanging around, Dave Van Ronk was hanging around, 0:48:21.840 --> 0:48:27.600 and there weren't a lot of drummers that could play well. 0:48:28.120 --> 0:48:32.279 I would say, enough to be versatile. So I would 0:48:32.320 --> 0:48:36.120 play with Tiny tim one night, or play with all 0:48:36.120 --> 0:48:39.080 these different people. I mean, not even for money, just 0:48:39.320 --> 0:48:42.200 for fun, for hanging out. And there was one okay, wait, wait, 0:48:42.239 --> 0:48:45.400 just stop one. Can you drop out of graduate school? 0:48:46.600 --> 0:48:48.840 Do you then say to yourself, I'm gonna make it 0:48:48.880 --> 0:48:52.359 as a musician. Never. I never had that in my 0:48:52.600 --> 0:48:57.880 understand Fred vomited, so that lingered long enough to go 0:48:58.040 --> 0:49:00.759 I ain't doing this for a living, but I could play. 0:49:01.120 --> 0:49:04.799 So I'm hanging out with Steve. His band's breaking up. 0:49:05.640 --> 0:49:08.000 I'm thinking, I say to Steve, you know what, let's 0:49:08.280 --> 0:49:10.120 you know, let's put something together. It would be fun. 0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:14.959 Cut to I meet Al Cooper. Al Cooper's down there. 0:49:15.640 --> 0:49:19.200 He hears me play. I don't remember the exact circumstances, 0:49:19.200 --> 0:49:22.080 but he hears me play and then says, would you 0:49:22.120 --> 0:49:25.960 do me a favor? I'm leaving the United States. I 0:49:26.000 --> 0:49:28.320 want to go to England and be a record producer. 0:49:29.040 --> 0:49:31.200 I don't have money, so I want to do a 0:49:31.239 --> 0:49:33.960 fundraiser at the Cafe Go Go, which was on Blika 0:49:34.080 --> 0:49:38.440 Street where we didn't hang out anywhere but that, and 0:49:38.480 --> 0:49:42.200 across the street where you know, there was what was 0:49:42.239 --> 0:49:45.719 it called the Bitter End the ten Angel and the 0:49:45.880 --> 0:49:48.279 dugout was underneath, and that was it. That was like, 0:49:48.360 --> 0:49:52.560 that's the one the area on Blika Street. But you know, 0:49:52.600 --> 0:49:55.120 Alt said would you help? I said, sure, you know, sure? 0:49:55.239 --> 0:49:59.200 Should I not? Al was a force of nature. I'm 0:50:00.120 --> 0:50:02.160 a guy that just walked out of graduate school. Know 0:50:02.400 --> 0:50:07.279 nothing about the music business at all. I'm just you know, 0:50:07.400 --> 0:50:11.920 playing drums and hanging out. And so al found a 0:50:11.960 --> 0:50:15.799 bass player I think in California named Jim Fielder, and 0:50:15.880 --> 0:50:19.800 he said, you know, I got a bass player, okay, 0:50:19.800 --> 0:50:22.000 Seth Stewart hurt. I said, you know what, because I 0:50:22.120 --> 0:50:24.719 knew that he had left the Blues Project and he 0:50:24.880 --> 0:50:27.799 and Steve did not like each other at all. And 0:50:27.840 --> 0:50:30.160 I said to Alice said, you know, you only live once, 0:50:31.000 --> 0:50:34.000 and you know it'd be fun to have Steve on 0:50:34.040 --> 0:50:36.440 the gig because Steve wasn't doing anything. And he said, oh, 0:50:36.480 --> 0:50:38.040 he's not gonna do it. He hates me. I said, 0:50:38.480 --> 0:50:40.640 you know, let me talk to him. And I spoke 0:50:40.680 --> 0:50:42.440 to Steve and Steve said, well he won't let me. 0:50:42.440 --> 0:50:45.440 I said, no, it'll be fine. You know you can 0:50:45.480 --> 0:50:50.319 do it. So so we play as a quartet in 0:50:51.239 --> 0:50:53.359 at the CAFEO Go Go, and I think we did 0:50:53.400 --> 0:50:56.919 three nights and I even somehow in my brain think 0:50:56.960 --> 0:51:00.480 Paul Simon and Judy Collins played also us. But we 0:51:00.520 --> 0:51:03.080 didn't sell out. I mean it was no one, you know, like, 0:51:03.120 --> 0:51:06.160 it wasn't very crowded. But al had all these songs 0:51:06.200 --> 0:51:11.799 that I really liked. So that was that I end 0:51:11.920 --> 0:51:16.000 up at this moment, I'm playing with Odetta and she's 0:51:16.000 --> 0:51:19.160 playing in Washington, d C. So I get an idea. 0:51:19.200 --> 0:51:22.000 I said, hey, Steve, since we're, you know, gonna put 0:51:22.000 --> 0:51:23.839 something together, why don't you ask Al if we can 0:51:23.960 --> 0:51:27.080 use some of the songs because I can't quit or 0:51:27.120 --> 0:51:30.719 I love I love Emmano was a great tune, and 0:51:30.800 --> 0:51:33.439 these are things that we played with him there, I said, 0:51:33.480 --> 0:51:37.160 And I like this other one called my Day's a 0:51:37.239 --> 0:51:39.480 Numbered I think it was called. I asked him, like, 0:51:39.520 --> 0:51:41.439 if we can use a song? And I will never 0:51:41.480 --> 0:51:45.400 forget this moment. Odette is knocking on my door for something. 0:51:46.440 --> 0:51:50.200 I'm on the phone. Steve calls and he goes, oh, 0:51:50.239 --> 0:51:52.919 I spoke to Al, and so like hush tones because 0:51:52.920 --> 0:51:54.560 I don't want to yell. So she knows him in 0:51:54.600 --> 0:51:56.359 the room. Because I want to have the conversation, I said, 0:51:56.560 --> 0:51:59.840 so what happened? He said, oh, yeah, we can absolutely 0:52:00.160 --> 0:52:03.920 the songs. Oh, and he wants to he wants to 0:52:03.960 --> 0:52:06.480 be in the band. In fact, he wants to be 0:52:06.560 --> 0:52:08.600 the singer. And went, well when no, wait, wait wait, 0:52:08.640 --> 0:52:12.200 and like I'm thinking, what's going on? And he's got 0:52:12.200 --> 0:52:15.000 a name blood Sweat. I'm writing down blood Sweats. What 0:52:15.120 --> 0:52:18.200 kind of name is for a band? And we've got 0:52:18.280 --> 0:52:22.799 a gig. I said, you gotta be kidding. Al, apparently, 0:52:23.080 --> 0:52:28.440 who is amazing at this. He's he's he's ubiquitous. Was 0:52:28.480 --> 0:52:31.439 talking to a promoter at the Village Theater, which soon 0:52:31.480 --> 0:52:35.680 became the film or East, and that person said, Al, 0:52:35.680 --> 0:52:37.359 do you have a band? I need an opening act 0:52:37.400 --> 0:52:40.360 for the James Cotton Band, like a blues band. I 0:52:40.400 --> 0:52:44.279 got a band and that was it, and I go, man, 0:52:44.320 --> 0:52:48.239 this is unbelievable what I don't And I'm now I'm 0:52:48.360 --> 0:52:51.440 I'm realizing that whatever I had planned to put together 0:52:52.080 --> 0:52:57.520 was off and running. And Al's already talking to labels. 0:52:57.840 --> 0:53:00.560 He's a mile ahead of us. And I'll never forget. 0:53:01.080 --> 0:53:04.880 So we have this gig at the Village Theater and 0:53:05.440 --> 0:53:08.359 I woke in for a sound check and there's a 0:53:08.480 --> 0:53:12.239 riser in the middle of the stage as an organ 0:53:12.360 --> 0:53:15.520 way up on this riser, we're all on the ground 0:53:16.320 --> 0:53:20.279 and I'm looking up and I had suggested because because 0:53:20.280 --> 0:53:22.759 we're talking about adding horns, I said, yeah, yeah, And 0:53:22.920 --> 0:53:25.880 because I have all these jazz playing really good players, 0:53:26.239 --> 0:53:28.520 I said, yeah, that's what I want to do Fred 0:53:28.600 --> 0:53:31.239 Lipsia says a guy. He's great. There's a guy named 0:53:31.239 --> 0:53:35.040 Paul Fleischer that I called first unavailable. Fred said, yeah, 0:53:35.040 --> 0:53:38.640 I give it a shot. So Fred comes and we're playing, 0:53:38.760 --> 0:53:40.960 but we're on the ground and I was way up 0:53:40.960 --> 0:53:43.439 in the air and I'm looking up. I said, oh, 0:53:43.440 --> 0:53:46.160 why are you up there? Oh oh, it's much better 0:53:46.200 --> 0:53:49.560 for the sound. I went, oh, okay, I have no clue. 0:53:50.120 --> 0:53:52.040 And we're playing the gig and all of a sudden, 0:53:52.080 --> 0:53:55.439 Al with his hand shuts the band down, like stop playing, 0:53:55.520 --> 0:53:58.480 and he just starts to play. He puts the heel 0:53:58.560 --> 0:54:01.720 of his left hand on the lowest notes of the organ. Organs. 0:54:02.480 --> 0:54:05.520 Organs have all plastic keys, so it's not like a piano, 0:54:05.600 --> 0:54:07.839 so you can roll your hands around an organ without 0:54:07.840 --> 0:54:11.520 getting hurt. So he puts the heel of his left 0:54:11.520 --> 0:54:14.120 hand on the lowest part and he starts to work 0:54:14.160 --> 0:54:16.400 his way up to the middle of the keyboard, and 0:54:16.400 --> 0:54:18.920 then his right hand takes over. He turns on the 0:54:19.000 --> 0:54:22.200 leslie speakers, so it's going whooo like this, and he 0:54:22.239 --> 0:54:24.399 goes to the highest note on the organ and he's 0:54:24.440 --> 0:54:27.640 just sliding his hands up. HiT's the highest note and 0:54:27.719 --> 0:54:31.560 starts writhing in pain, as if it's harder to play 0:54:31.600 --> 0:54:34.480 that note than any other note. And he's holding down 0:54:34.520 --> 0:54:36.640 the note and writhing, and I'm looking up and the 0:54:36.680 --> 0:54:41.120 audience is going nuts, and I'm thinking he's got them 0:54:41.120 --> 0:54:44.799 completely fooled. They think, oh my god, this spot, this 0:54:45.040 --> 0:54:47.880 rock and roll shit is unbelievable, This is crap. And 0:54:47.920 --> 0:54:51.400 I'm thinking this is so insane. The end of the gig, 0:54:52.000 --> 0:54:54.440 half an hour, they pay me two hundred and forty 0:54:54.440 --> 0:54:58.719 two dollars. I'm thinking, now, as an industrial psychologist, I'm 0:54:58.760 --> 0:55:02.120 gonna make about fifteen grand the year. I just made 0:55:02.120 --> 0:55:04.279 two hundred and forty two bucks his name. But this 0:55:04.360 --> 0:55:07.960 is a good thing. And Al is off. He's now 0:55:08.400 --> 0:55:12.520 conjuring up stuff. His publisher becomes a manager, and I'm 0:55:12.560 --> 0:55:15.440 a passenger. I'm just going, what the hell is going on? 0:55:15.960 --> 0:55:18.520 And he's going to labels And now he's got a 0:55:18.640 --> 0:55:23.439 guy to come down and hear us audition or play 0:55:23.480 --> 0:55:27.399 a gig at the ogogo and we had a record 0:55:27.400 --> 0:55:32.880 deal on Columbia Records. It's unbelievable. Okay, jumping to the 0:55:33.000 --> 0:55:37.040 second al, but that's a big gem, bro, Believe me, 0:55:37.080 --> 0:55:38.680 it is. But I could go on for an hour 0:55:38.760 --> 0:55:41.000 or what you just told me. I feel bad because 0:55:41.040 --> 0:55:43.040 I want to hear some of that more than some 0:55:43.080 --> 0:55:46.480 of the stuff. I know. Al's version of leaving the band, 0:55:46.960 --> 0:55:50.000 there's a version in the movie. Is that how you remember? 0:55:50.200 --> 0:55:54.879 Here's exactly what happened. I call him meeting. I'm at 0:55:54.920 --> 0:55:58.799 this point savvy enough, having been in the band, now 0:55:59.080 --> 0:56:02.279 a band, and signed to a label for a year 0:56:02.280 --> 0:56:06.120 and change, and the and the album tanks. It doesn't 0:56:06.120 --> 0:56:08.360 sell in anything for like forty thousand records or something. 0:56:08.680 --> 0:56:12.160 And in those days, like Columbia Records could could easily 0:56:12.640 --> 0:56:16.160 drop one hundred grande excuse me, like about one hundred 0:56:16.200 --> 0:56:21.040 thousand records. But this thing really tanked, and it didn't 0:56:21.040 --> 0:56:22.480 look like there was going to be a lot of success. 0:56:22.560 --> 0:56:27.239 And in my view, I thought with his voice, we 0:56:27.320 --> 0:56:29.719 wouldn't get on the radio. I don't I didn't think 0:56:29.719 --> 0:56:32.840 we would. I mean, I loved them in the band, 0:56:32.840 --> 0:56:35.920 but just his singing was a little less than what 0:56:36.120 --> 0:56:41.759 radio would allow. I thought. Al. I read somewhere that 0:56:41.880 --> 0:56:45.399 he said he was calling a meeting to actually get 0:56:45.480 --> 0:56:49.680 rid of Steve, to fire Steve. I'm calling a meeting 0:56:49.719 --> 0:56:52.440 because I want to suggest we need a new lead singer, 0:56:53.360 --> 0:56:55.600 you know, just he I never want to kick him 0:56:55.640 --> 0:56:57.680 out of the band, but I knew we needed a 0:56:57.760 --> 0:57:02.040 lead singer. So we called a band meeting and we 0:57:02.120 --> 0:57:04.919 got to the thing or I said, al, I really 0:57:04.920 --> 0:57:06.520 think we have to have a lead singer. I mean, 0:57:06.520 --> 0:57:09.040 if this thing is gonna last, And he said, I'm 0:57:09.080 --> 0:57:12.920 the singer or I'm walking. And I said, well, let's vote, 0:57:13.000 --> 0:57:16.360 and he was voted down and he left, and that's 0:57:16.400 --> 0:57:21.440 what happened. Okay. He also says that the band reacted 0:57:21.640 --> 0:57:26.240 negatively to the song The Moderate Adventures of Plato Diogenes 0:57:26.280 --> 0:57:30.640 in Freud about his therapy. Any truth to that, I 0:57:30.640 --> 0:57:33.640 don't know if the band did. I hated the idea 0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:36.960 that we have a band of eight musicians and he 0:57:37.040 --> 0:57:39.880 does a song about himself with a string court that 0:57:39.880 --> 0:57:42.640 we're not even playing on it. He just he does 0:57:42.640 --> 0:57:45.560 a song without us, and I thought, well, that's really 0:57:45.600 --> 0:57:47.360 what he wants to do. He wants to be a 0:57:47.360 --> 0:57:49.960 solo artist, then he should just be a solo artist, 0:57:50.440 --> 0:57:53.000 because you don't have a band like with Randy Brecker 0:57:53.080 --> 0:57:56.080 in it. And he placed four bars on the entire album. 0:57:56.200 --> 0:58:01.080 You gotta be kidding, Okay, so I'm watching the movie, 0:58:01.120 --> 0:58:04.720 and the movie is primarily about this nineteen seventy Eastern 0:58:04.760 --> 0:58:10.240 European tour, and I figured that Al would not be mentioned, 0:58:10.640 --> 0:58:14.920 and I was very surprised what he was somewhat favorably. 0:58:15.480 --> 0:58:18.400 So how did that end up in the movie. It 0:58:18.480 --> 0:58:22.720 almost didn't. Honestly, John wanted it, and he said, I 0:58:22.800 --> 0:58:25.200 think we need the history of the band. And I 0:58:25.280 --> 0:58:28.640 was saying, John, text, context, context, and I said, John, 0:58:29.560 --> 0:58:31.720 in my humble opinion, it has nothing to do with 0:58:31.760 --> 0:58:35.560 that band. That's a different iteration. That's another band, completely 0:58:35.600 --> 0:58:40.560 different band, even in concept. So this thing we're doing 0:58:40.760 --> 0:58:43.840 is about this band. And he said, Noah, I really 0:58:43.840 --> 0:58:45.680 think we should put it in. And I said, yep, 0:58:45.720 --> 0:58:48.920 but you're putting an in kind of late and should start. 0:58:49.080 --> 0:58:52.200 John knows his business. I don't know that business. And 0:58:52.280 --> 0:58:54.040 he just said, no, you know, I want to leave 0:58:54.040 --> 0:58:56.400 it in. I said, all right, So that's why we did. 0:58:56.400 --> 0:58:58.400 It was important to know where they came from and 0:58:58.440 --> 0:59:01.160 how David came to be in the band. So it's 0:59:01.200 --> 0:59:04.320 not a significant part of the film, but it is 0:59:04.400 --> 0:59:07.200 something I thought people needed to know. And I'm an 0:59:07.240 --> 0:59:09.920 Al Cooper fan. I have some of his solo records, 0:59:09.920 --> 0:59:12.120 and I love that first album, and so I thought, 0:59:12.400 --> 0:59:15.080 let's give him his due. And we actually found a 0:59:15.200 --> 0:59:17.800 rare piece of audio from back in the day where 0:59:17.800 --> 0:59:20.520 he's talking about the band, and that's in there. And 0:59:20.800 --> 0:59:24.720 I don't know that many people have heard that. Okay, 0:59:24.760 --> 0:59:27.880 professionals know that sometimes you have to leave the best 0:59:27.960 --> 0:59:32.040 stuff out because it doesn't serve the story. What was 0:59:32.200 --> 0:59:36.200 left out of this film? That's really great? Well, a 0:59:36.320 --> 0:59:40.880 great question. That's a great question, Bob. Let me think 0:59:40.920 --> 0:59:44.760 about this just for a second. I don't know that 0:59:44.800 --> 0:59:49.080 we left out anything that was really great. We did 0:59:49.160 --> 0:59:56.720 have a lovely emotional moment where this manager, Larry Goldblatt, 0:59:57.920 --> 1:00:01.160 is going to marry his assistant and they're going to 1:00:01.240 --> 1:00:09.800 get married in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and the US ambassador to 1:00:09.920 --> 1:00:12.880 Yugoslavia arranges the whole thing with the government so they 1:00:12.880 --> 1:00:16.640 can get married in this church in Belgrade, and he 1:00:16.680 --> 1:00:20.760 gives away Tina. It's Tina Cunningham who you see in 1:00:20.800 --> 1:00:23.200 the film. She talks a lot about being there on 1:00:23.240 --> 1:00:27.160 the tour. He gives her away. David Clayton Thomas is 1:00:27.400 --> 1:00:30.440 Larry's best man, and they get married in this church 1:00:31.600 --> 1:00:34.720 and the documentary film crew shoots the whole thing and 1:00:35.280 --> 1:00:41.600 outside it's a lovely, sweet little moment. And they had 1:00:41.640 --> 1:00:44.560 given the documentary film crew had given the film to 1:00:44.720 --> 1:00:48.560 Tina and it was sitting in her attic for a 1:00:48.600 --> 1:00:51.160 long time. She found it, send it to us. We 1:00:51.240 --> 1:00:53.680 had a new transfer made and it was in for 1:00:53.720 --> 1:00:57.160 the longest time because it was just sort of nice. 1:00:57.200 --> 1:01:00.160 It wasn't about politics, it wasn't about the music. It's 1:01:00.200 --> 1:01:02.600 just a sweet moment about two people that that we're 1:01:02.600 --> 1:01:07.760 getting to know as participants in the story, and it's just, 1:01:07.880 --> 1:01:10.320 you know, Bobby got to the point where and we 1:01:10.320 --> 1:01:13.800 were sorry, we were a little long, and you just 1:01:13.840 --> 1:01:18.200 have to cut certain things. So we did cut that one. Um, Bobby, 1:01:18.240 --> 1:01:20.560 I don't know do we cut anything else that we 1:01:20.600 --> 1:01:23.320 would say is important. I can say that when I 1:01:23.360 --> 1:01:26.840 saw that very early version and saw that, here's what 1:01:26.960 --> 1:01:30.520 came to mind. Number one, that's Larry Gold that's scamming 1:01:30.560 --> 1:01:33.800 the government into paying for his wedding and shooting it 1:01:33.960 --> 1:01:36.200 and putting the hole that I said, oh, that's perfect. 1:01:36.680 --> 1:01:39.400 And then and then I you know, you know, John said, 1:01:39.440 --> 1:01:41.920 what the hell happened about web tears? And I'm thinking 1:01:41.960 --> 1:01:44.400 why the hell are we watching this guy get married? 1:01:44.880 --> 1:01:46.840 It was just it didn't make sense. But I can't 1:01:46.840 --> 1:01:50.000 think of anything significant that you had in there, because 1:01:50.240 --> 1:01:54.640 but you know, John's a storyteller, so he I started 1:01:54.640 --> 1:01:57.280 to talk for you. But he sees the movie a 1:01:57.320 --> 1:02:01.640 certain way and realizes, here's hear us some bridges I need, 1:02:02.640 --> 1:02:10.400 and significantly he finds Don Cameron. Yeah, the director of 1:02:10.400 --> 1:02:13.640 the documentary That Never Happened was a guy named Don Cambern. 1:02:15.640 --> 1:02:17.600 Your listeners may or may not know that name, but 1:02:17.640 --> 1:02:21.120 they should. He was famous as an editor. He did 1:02:21.160 --> 1:02:26.400 five easy Pieces, He did one of the Romancing the Stone, 1:02:26.520 --> 1:02:30.040 he did one of the Ghostbusters movies, he did Drive. 1:02:30.120 --> 1:02:31.600 He said, he did a lot of those sort of 1:02:31.600 --> 1:02:34.720 early movies, and this was going to be his first 1:02:34.720 --> 1:02:38.480 directing job. And I saw his name, and we couldn't 1:02:38.520 --> 1:02:41.600 find him for the longest time, and we finally tracked 1:02:41.640 --> 1:02:45.120 him down to an independent living facility in Burbank. He's 1:02:45.200 --> 1:02:49.360 ninety years old and he was living there, and because 1:02:49.360 --> 1:02:51.400 it was COVID time, we couldn't get him out to 1:02:51.440 --> 1:02:53.680 do an interview. They weren't letting people out or in. 1:02:54.440 --> 1:02:56.480 And finally there was a week where they were going 1:02:56.520 --> 1:02:58.160 to let him out, and we had him come to 1:02:58.200 --> 1:03:00.360 our place and we shot an interview and then you 1:03:00.360 --> 1:03:03.240 see him in the film. He's wonderful. It's just the 1:03:03.280 --> 1:03:06.680 way he describes him things and the way he expresses himself. 1:03:06.680 --> 1:03:09.960 It's just fantastic. So that wasn't in the first cut 1:03:10.000 --> 1:03:13.080 Bobby saw, and because Don was so great, we added 1:03:13.120 --> 1:03:15.520 some more elements to that part of the story of 1:03:15.520 --> 1:03:19.400 the making of the documentary that never happened. But I 1:03:19.440 --> 1:03:22.240 would say, Bob, rather than things we had to leave 1:03:22.240 --> 1:03:24.880 on the cutting room floor, I would rather mention a 1:03:24.920 --> 1:03:28.640 couple of things that if we hadn't found film, we 1:03:28.680 --> 1:03:31.160 wouldn't have been able to illustrate half as well as 1:03:31.160 --> 1:03:36.480 we did. So you remember that Bloodswitt and Tears was 1:03:36.520 --> 1:03:39.959 one of the headliners at Woodstock, but nobody knows because 1:03:40.000 --> 1:03:42.520 they weren't in the movie and they weren't on the soundtrack. 1:03:42.920 --> 1:03:45.960 And we explain why that is in the film, but 1:03:46.600 --> 1:03:49.720 what and Bobby said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no film, 1:03:50.600 --> 1:03:53.840 and I said, I can't believe. Anyway, we tracked down 1:03:54.440 --> 1:03:58.000 in a corner of Warner Brothers. It turns out they 1:03:58.040 --> 1:04:01.120 didn't turn off the film cameras on Blood Sweat and 1:04:01.120 --> 1:04:03.840 Tears until after the fifth song. So there are five 1:04:03.920 --> 1:04:07.400 songs that were captured by Blood Sweat and Tears, and 1:04:08.320 --> 1:04:10.120 so we work out to deal with Warner Brothers. It 1:04:10.120 --> 1:04:12.840 took months, but we work out to deal with Warner Brothers. 1:04:12.880 --> 1:04:14.959 And I want to use a song that we don't 1:04:15.000 --> 1:04:17.640 have Blood Sweat and Tears performing anywhere else, and that's 1:04:17.720 --> 1:04:20.120 More and More, which was a great rendition of a 1:04:20.160 --> 1:04:24.280 motown song, And so we get my favorite song on 1:04:24.320 --> 1:04:28.120 that second is right. It's just a killer song. It 1:04:28.240 --> 1:04:32.720 just gets you. So we see they make a new 1:04:32.880 --> 1:04:35.960 HD transfer for us, and we're looking at this film 1:04:36.000 --> 1:04:38.440 that no one's ever seen because it was just cut up, 1:04:38.480 --> 1:04:40.520 you know, they no one knew it was there anyway. 1:04:40.600 --> 1:04:42.640 So we were able to tell the Woodstock story with 1:04:42.720 --> 1:04:44.560 a piece of film that no one has ever seen. 1:04:44.920 --> 1:04:47.320 That's what I really liked. I like that we had 1:04:47.360 --> 1:04:50.360 at least the hour that we had here. And now 1:04:50.360 --> 1:04:53.919 I'm going to tell you another story. In the one 1:04:53.960 --> 1:04:58.320 hour version, we're a number of performance sequences with the band, 1:04:59.200 --> 1:05:01.840 but they were it was all shot on sixteen and 1:05:01.880 --> 1:05:04.520 when they finished this thing, it was the optical track 1:05:04.600 --> 1:05:06.960 on the side of the film that compresses the sound 1:05:07.000 --> 1:05:09.920 and it's mono. I can live with this if we 1:05:10.000 --> 1:05:14.600 have to, but as Bobby knows, I am never satisfied. 1:05:14.800 --> 1:05:18.560 And so we got to. But nobody knew where these 1:05:18.680 --> 1:05:21.640 eight track tapes were. Band didn't have him, never knew 1:05:21.640 --> 1:05:24.080 about him. I thought, well, maybe they ended up at 1:05:24.120 --> 1:05:26.600 Columbia Records because they were the label. They had nothing 1:05:26.640 --> 1:05:29.080 to do with this documentary that never happened, so they 1:05:29.080 --> 1:05:31.800 didn't have them. And we're just going around and around 1:05:31.800 --> 1:05:35.040 all these same storage units. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And 1:05:35.080 --> 1:05:41.160 then Kathleen, my wonderful researcher, ends up talking to the 1:05:41.280 --> 1:05:45.240 family of the associate producer of this documentary that never happened. 1:05:45.240 --> 1:05:49.200 He was on the tour with him and he had 1:05:49.240 --> 1:05:51.600 died in twenty eighteen, so we didn't get him and 1:05:51.680 --> 1:05:54.919 to learn the story behind it. But when he died, 1:05:54.960 --> 1:05:57.720 his family gave the contents of his storage unit to 1:05:57.840 --> 1:06:01.520 the Academy Emotion Picture Arts and sign it's his library, 1:06:01.720 --> 1:06:03.760 and they were just sitting there like on a shelf. 1:06:03.800 --> 1:06:07.480 Nobody even bothered to inventory this thing. So Kathleen, because 1:06:07.520 --> 1:06:12.640 she is very sweet and extremely persistent, gets this wonderful 1:06:12.760 --> 1:06:16.480 archivist to finally do an inventory, and what do you know? 1:06:16.920 --> 1:06:22.160 There's five eight track tapes there, three, seven, eight, nine, 1:06:22.320 --> 1:06:26.200 and eighteen. We know there were eighteen at one time. 1:06:26.440 --> 1:06:28.920 What happened to the others. We don't know why he 1:06:29.040 --> 1:06:33.160 saved these five. We don't know, but there they are, pristine, 1:06:33.200 --> 1:06:36.120 never been played since they were recorded in nineteen seventy. 1:06:36.480 --> 1:06:39.120 So I call up Bobby. He can't believe it. He 1:06:39.240 --> 1:06:43.200 pulls in this fantastic engineer, Alan Sides. Tell him what 1:06:43.240 --> 1:06:46.880 we did at Capitol Records. I said, okay. He said, 1:06:47.000 --> 1:06:50.640 I want these to sound great. You know, you mix them. 1:06:50.920 --> 1:06:53.480 So we have to make these eight tracks into stereo. 1:06:54.280 --> 1:06:57.520 So we have to mix them. And Alan's brilliant, and 1:06:57.640 --> 1:07:01.280 I love gadgets and I love ducing, and you know, 1:07:01.320 --> 1:07:04.640 that's my favorite part of it, anything is recording. So 1:07:05.040 --> 1:07:07.760 I'm in the studio with Alan and we're mixing these 1:07:07.800 --> 1:07:14.520 things down. And this is humble bragging. I was never 1:07:14.560 --> 1:07:17.400 a fan of my drumming. I just because I heard 1:07:17.400 --> 1:07:20.800 Tony Williams and Philly Joe and I heard these unbelievably 1:07:20.840 --> 1:07:24.640 great drummers that you know. I was with a band 1:07:24.680 --> 1:07:27.640 that was successful, and at that point I was the 1:07:27.680 --> 1:07:31.680 band leader and I was playing all over the record, 1:07:32.080 --> 1:07:34.840 but I didn't love my playing. So I'm sitting in 1:07:34.880 --> 1:07:39.920 the room and I'm I'm mixing with Alan, and all 1:07:39.920 --> 1:07:44.080 of a sudden, I'm thrown back in time fifty years 1:07:44.680 --> 1:07:46.840 and it's like I'm a surgeon in the middle of 1:07:46.880 --> 1:07:49.680 an operation and a doctor next to me taps me 1:07:49.720 --> 1:07:51.440 on the shoulder and says, by the way, do you 1:07:51.520 --> 1:07:55.400 know who you're operating on. That's you fifty years ago. 1:07:56.120 --> 1:07:59.160 And that was like an out of body experience. I 1:07:59.200 --> 1:08:02.840 started realizing it, and we're mixing away and I for 1:08:02.880 --> 1:08:05.560 the first time in my life, I said I would 1:08:05.600 --> 1:08:08.800 go to hear that drummer. He was good, that could play. 1:08:08.840 --> 1:08:11.040 He's good. It was the first time. And I was 1:08:11.120 --> 1:08:14.240 walking around on air and John was there and I said, 1:08:14.560 --> 1:08:16.640 I was good, I could play. He was like a 1:08:16.680 --> 1:08:19.519 little kid. It was really funny. But I think what 1:08:19.680 --> 1:08:22.320 the most interesting thing for me was how good this 1:08:22.360 --> 1:08:26.400 band was live. They were just great. And the way 1:08:26.439 --> 1:08:29.640 that Bobby and Allan mixed these and that's why I 1:08:29.640 --> 1:08:31.400 hope your listeners are going to go see us on 1:08:31.439 --> 1:08:35.080 a big screen with a great sound exploding out of 1:08:35.080 --> 1:08:37.680 the speakers. They mixed it in a way that you 1:08:37.760 --> 1:08:40.799 just feel like this was recorded yesterday and the band 1:08:40.920 --> 1:08:45.440 is just killing it and they're they're fantastic. So across 1:08:45.479 --> 1:08:48.960 these five tapes were all but one song that they 1:08:49.040 --> 1:08:51.400 had performed on the tour. We couldn't find one of them, 1:08:51.439 --> 1:08:53.479 so that is in mono in the film, but the 1:08:53.560 --> 1:08:56.839 rest are great, and it just brought those sequences alive. 1:08:57.320 --> 1:08:59.800 The other thing that was interesting, there's a little bit 1:08:59.800 --> 1:09:03.000 of a Raschiman thing here, Bob, where not all the 1:09:03.000 --> 1:09:06.080 band members saw everything because they weren't there. Some were there, 1:09:06.200 --> 1:09:10.360 some weren't. Only one guy knew about the story of 1:09:10.479 --> 1:09:14.400 having to smuggle the film out of Romania. Only one guy, Bobby, 1:09:14.520 --> 1:09:16.400 didn't know that story. None of the other guys knew 1:09:16.439 --> 1:09:18.519 the story. And I'm sitting there hearing it from this 1:09:18.560 --> 1:09:21.839 guy because it hadn't shown up in any of the research. 1:09:21.880 --> 1:09:24.320 It's like, what's going on here? And I thought, this 1:09:24.439 --> 1:09:27.040 is like the stuff of a great spy movie or 1:09:27.080 --> 1:09:29.800 a great espionage novel, you know how they had to 1:09:29.840 --> 1:09:32.080 deal with the secret police of Romania and get this 1:09:32.160 --> 1:09:36.559 stuff out. And so that's another thing that until somebody 1:09:36.600 --> 1:09:38.800 told me the story, I wouldn't have known to put 1:09:38.840 --> 1:09:40.479 it in there, and it ended up being kind of 1:09:40.479 --> 1:09:50.439 a really cool sequence of the film. Okay, the film 1:09:50.479 --> 1:09:55.520 really captures the era so in terms of the overall 1:09:55.560 --> 1:09:57.880 because the movie's about blood, sweat and tears, but you 1:09:57.920 --> 1:10:00.920 really get a vibe for the lead sixties. So when 1:10:00.960 --> 1:10:04.960 you're constructing the film, to what degree do you decide 1:10:05.680 --> 1:10:08.439 what the emphasis on? Did your conscially you want to 1:10:08.479 --> 1:10:11.200 set the time, in the tone, what was going on? 1:10:11.880 --> 1:10:14.759 This is really fascinating. Bobby and I've been doing interviews 1:10:14.800 --> 1:10:17.400 for a couple of days now. These are like We've 1:10:17.400 --> 1:10:20.120 never been asked these questions before. This is like fantastic. 1:10:20.160 --> 1:10:23.880 I'm having a time in my life here. When I'm 1:10:23.880 --> 1:10:26.040 making a documentary, I view it very much as a 1:10:26.160 --> 1:10:30.200 jigsaw puzzle. We all got him when we were kids 1:10:30.320 --> 1:10:33.640 for birthday holiday, and you open up the box and 1:10:33.640 --> 1:10:35.719 you dump out and there's a thousand pieces and eventually 1:10:35.720 --> 1:10:38.080 you fit it together and they make a pretty picture, 1:10:38.800 --> 1:10:43.240 but they only fit together one way. Those pieces what 1:10:43.280 --> 1:10:45.599 we do as documentary filmmakers. You can fit him together 1:10:45.640 --> 1:10:47.880 ten ways, twenty ways, fifty ways, one hundred ways, and 1:10:47.920 --> 1:10:50.559 it's how you fit those pieces together that makes your 1:10:50.600 --> 1:10:53.519 film good, bad, or ugly, and so when Bobby says, 1:10:53.520 --> 1:10:55.240 I kind of see the whole thing in my head, 1:10:55.320 --> 1:10:57.760 he's right, I kind of see how we want to 1:10:57.760 --> 1:11:00.519 fit all these pieces together in a way that one 1:11:00.600 --> 1:11:02.720 scene leads you to the next, to the next. It 1:11:02.760 --> 1:11:05.880 isn't just in nineteen sixty eight. This happened. In nineteen 1:11:05.960 --> 1:11:10.360 sixty nine. That happened. So what I wanted to do was, 1:11:10.479 --> 1:11:11.800 first of all, we didn't want this to be a 1:11:11.880 --> 1:11:14.400 music doc. We I really wanted this to be a thriller, 1:11:14.640 --> 1:11:17.439 political thriller, and that's how we always felt about it. 1:11:18.240 --> 1:11:22.280 And so really early on, right in the first two 1:11:22.280 --> 1:11:25.160 and a half minutes of the opening, we're already introducing 1:11:25.200 --> 1:11:29.960 Cold War and footage of tanks and marching soldiers and 1:11:30.000 --> 1:11:32.680 all of this. And then very soon after we come 1:11:32.680 --> 1:11:35.080 back after the main title, I wanted to set the 1:11:35.080 --> 1:11:38.280 context of the times, So we talk about Vietnam and 1:11:38.360 --> 1:11:41.360 what that was doing to rip the country apart. We 1:11:41.439 --> 1:11:45.599 talk about Nixon and the White House, We talk about 1:11:46.520 --> 1:11:49.320 marching in the streets for civil rights and all these 1:11:49.400 --> 1:11:51.400 kind of things that were the mid to late sixties. 1:11:51.560 --> 1:11:55.000 Because I felt it was really important to understand what 1:11:55.040 --> 1:11:57.320 blood sweat and tears was going to run into at 1:11:57.400 --> 1:12:00.000 the end of this tour, we had to understand where 1:12:00.080 --> 1:12:03.720 the country was. So context became very very important, and 1:12:03.760 --> 1:12:06.120 that's why some of those pieces became part of the 1:12:06.640 --> 1:12:11.640 overall jigsaw. And and then we needed to know what 1:12:11.680 --> 1:12:14.519 they were going into in these countries. So if you notice, 1:12:14.560 --> 1:12:17.720 we found some really rare film of Nixon going to 1:12:18.040 --> 1:12:23.200 Romania and holding hands, if you will, with Cecheski, the dictator, 1:12:23.840 --> 1:12:26.439 and we had to set that up because ultimately that's 1:12:26.479 --> 1:12:31.360 what was so important was Nixon wanted to have detont 1:12:31.439 --> 1:12:33.439 with Romania to sort of split them off from the 1:12:33.479 --> 1:12:36.960 Russian orbit, and he didn't want anything that was to 1:12:37.000 --> 1:12:39.280 get in the way. And when we started to look 1:12:39.280 --> 1:12:42.479 at these internal memos from the State Department, you saw 1:12:42.520 --> 1:12:45.000 that they were all concerned about this, Oh, we don't 1:12:45.160 --> 1:12:47.800 offend the Romanians. We don't know of the Yugoslavs and 1:12:47.800 --> 1:12:51.360 the Poles, and so everybody had an agenda here. But 1:12:51.439 --> 1:12:53.360 to understand the agenda, we had to know where the 1:12:53.360 --> 1:12:58.240 country was and what was happening. Okay, Bobby emphasized in 1:12:58.240 --> 1:13:01.240 the film, is that everybody was eager to do this. 1:13:02.000 --> 1:13:05.679 Certain members of the band were anti war, anti Nixon. 1:13:06.280 --> 1:13:08.880 What do you remember about all We were all anti 1:13:08.960 --> 1:13:13.599 war and all anti Nixon individually, not as a group. 1:13:13.600 --> 1:13:16.680 We never made group statements. We all felt the same 1:13:17.960 --> 1:13:20.920 at that point. I mean, the country was as polarized 1:13:21.000 --> 1:13:24.160 as it is today, but it was age. It was 1:13:24.320 --> 1:13:27.639 up and down, so like over thirty was one way 1:13:27.680 --> 1:13:31.440 and under thirty was another, and we were under thirty. 1:13:31.520 --> 1:13:35.720 So you know, we all felt badly about Nixon, and 1:13:35.760 --> 1:13:37.680 we all felt badly about the war. It was just 1:13:37.960 --> 1:13:44.000 that's what we felt. So going there, we understood that 1:13:44.200 --> 1:13:48.920 we couldn't tell anybody the fact that we're going, and 1:13:48.960 --> 1:13:51.519 the State Department wanted to make sure that it was 1:13:51.560 --> 1:13:55.600 a State Department sponsors sure tour. I mean they it was, 1:13:56.000 --> 1:14:00.559 you know, advertised that way. We knew it, said Davis 1:14:00.640 --> 1:14:03.760 hugging Nixon. We knew that was not going to work 1:14:03.800 --> 1:14:07.240 for us. Steve in particular, didn't even want to go. 1:14:07.720 --> 1:14:10.599 He just said, you know, this is crazy. I don't 1:14:10.640 --> 1:14:12.439 I don't want to have anything to do with the 1:14:12.439 --> 1:14:18.439 State Department. Ironically, what I ascertained from going to DC 1:14:19.120 --> 1:14:22.840 and meeting some of these people, the State Department as 1:14:22.880 --> 1:14:27.120 a unit was pretty much not into Nixon. They were 1:14:27.520 --> 1:14:29.479 on the other side of this thing. It was just 1:14:29.520 --> 1:14:32.080 a you know, it was the State Department, but they 1:14:32.080 --> 1:14:35.519 weren't big fans of Nixon, so I didn't feel as 1:14:35.560 --> 1:14:37.800 badly about it. Plus we had to get the green 1:14:37.840 --> 1:14:44.479 card for David had to and look, we really and 1:14:44.640 --> 1:14:48.240 David says this, you know throughout the film, we're just 1:14:48.520 --> 1:14:53.720 musicians and that's really what we were. We were not politicians. 1:14:53.760 --> 1:14:56.320 We didn't you know, that wasn't a marketing stick for 1:14:56.400 --> 1:14:58.880 us to say, hey, we're anti war, so follow us. 1:14:59.439 --> 1:15:04.200 We just played. And for me individually, I just I 1:15:04.280 --> 1:15:06.600 was so proud of the band because we had, you know, 1:15:06.760 --> 1:15:10.400 a couple of great musicians and for people to hear 1:15:10.760 --> 1:15:15.760 this level of musicianship to me and playing jazz solos, 1:15:16.200 --> 1:15:19.600 legitimate jazz solos was great on a pop record. The 1:15:19.600 --> 1:15:23.439 fact that it got successful was shocking to me. And 1:15:24.000 --> 1:15:26.719 I was thrilled to death by the way, but shocking. 1:15:27.960 --> 1:15:30.200 One of the highlights of the film is what goes 1:15:30.280 --> 1:15:34.760 on in Romania? Can you tell us what happened and 1:15:34.840 --> 1:15:37.519 how you ultimately put it together in a satisfying way 1:15:37.520 --> 1:15:41.599 in the film? Sure, again, Bob, Had we not found 1:15:42.400 --> 1:15:44.719 that sixteen minute version, we would have not been able 1:15:44.760 --> 1:15:46.200 to tell that part of the story, but there was 1:15:46.320 --> 1:15:49.920 wonderful footage of what happened in Romania. So they were 1:15:49.960 --> 1:15:53.880 scheduled for two concerts in Bucharest, which is the capitol, 1:15:54.400 --> 1:15:58.599 and the first night it's totally packed with young people 1:15:59.160 --> 1:16:04.360 who go biser at the sounds and the energy of 1:16:04.400 --> 1:16:08.400 this American rock and roll, and they're up on their 1:16:08.439 --> 1:16:11.200 feet and they're cheering, and they're yelling and they're screaming, 1:16:11.240 --> 1:16:13.000 and there's some of them are trying to get to 1:16:13.040 --> 1:16:18.000 the stage, and the government doesn't know how to handle this. 1:16:18.400 --> 1:16:21.559 You know when when when we talk about repressive regimes 1:16:21.640 --> 1:16:24.920 or authoritarian regimes, it's all about control. We got to 1:16:24.920 --> 1:16:27.200 control these people. These kids were out of control. They 1:16:27.200 --> 1:16:29.840 were so excited by this music and what it represented 1:16:29.920 --> 1:16:33.439 to them. And so part of what we wanted to 1:16:33.479 --> 1:16:36.519 do was see if we couldn't track down some people 1:16:36.600 --> 1:16:38.640 that were actually in the crowd that night and then 1:16:38.680 --> 1:16:43.640 the second night in Bucharest. So we hired researchers in 1:16:42.840 --> 1:16:47.759 the Croatia Romanian Poland, and they through the social media, 1:16:47.840 --> 1:16:51.960 God blessed social media, they found of six people that 1:16:52.000 --> 1:16:54.519 were in these concerts, and so it wasn't me as 1:16:54.560 --> 1:16:57.559 the filmmaker trying to suggest how they felt about it. 1:16:57.560 --> 1:16:59.840 It was these people actually telling you from the heart 1:17:00.640 --> 1:17:03.320 what this meant to people that were living under communism, 1:17:03.439 --> 1:17:06.280 who had no freedom, who had no freedom of choice, 1:17:06.280 --> 1:17:09.760 who were listening to music that was basically banned up 1:17:09.840 --> 1:17:12.280 until this time, and here it is, they can do it. 1:17:13.400 --> 1:17:16.080 And so we really wanted to capture this, so we 1:17:16.120 --> 1:17:19.759 set all of this up in the film getting to Romania, 1:17:19.840 --> 1:17:21.639 and then we have this one night and it's going 1:17:21.720 --> 1:17:27.400 so great and the government freaks out and there's a 1:17:27.400 --> 1:17:33.480 meeting the next morning where they present points of demands 1:17:33.680 --> 1:17:36.920 to Larry Goldblad about this is what you have to 1:17:36.920 --> 1:17:39.120 do if you're going to do your second concert, and 1:17:39.200 --> 1:17:41.840 it was just ridiculous. It was, you know, keep your 1:17:41.840 --> 1:17:44.920 shirts buttoned, don't show too much chest, don't let the 1:17:45.160 --> 1:17:47.320 roadies come out with their long hair because that's going 1:17:47.320 --> 1:17:50.760 to get people excited. And especially for Bobby's point of view, 1:17:50.760 --> 1:17:54.200 it's like more jazz less rock because that'll keep the 1:17:54.240 --> 1:17:59.160 crowd quiet. And we had this footage of the band 1:17:59.520 --> 1:18:03.799 in a hotel tell room discussing and arguing about where 1:18:03.800 --> 1:18:06.439 they going to meet these demands. Of the Romanian government 1:18:06.640 --> 1:18:09.880 or not. And how many times, Bob can you can 1:18:09.920 --> 1:18:12.320 we think of a situation where a rock band, a 1:18:12.479 --> 1:18:14.840 rock band is being told what to do by the 1:18:15.240 --> 1:18:18.559 highest levels of a foreign government. And so these guys, 1:18:18.960 --> 1:18:23.479 you know, in the best thrillers, whether it's Hitchcock or 1:18:23.479 --> 1:18:28.120 anybody else, it's usually some kind of innocent party gets 1:18:28.240 --> 1:18:31.519 drawn into the intrigue. And that's what happened to these guys. 1:18:31.520 --> 1:18:34.080 These are just innocent musicians, and now they're drawn into 1:18:34.120 --> 1:18:38.160 all of this stuff that's going on. And so what 1:18:38.200 --> 1:18:40.439 we had to do then was we had to figure out, 1:18:40.479 --> 1:18:42.479 all right, how do we tell the story of the 1:18:42.520 --> 1:18:46.080 second night, because part of what they demanded was that 1:18:46.160 --> 1:18:49.680 you cannot have the cameras going the second night. And 1:18:49.800 --> 1:18:53.240 what we learned was that Don cambern our fabulous director, 1:18:53.600 --> 1:18:55.439 had told all of his crew guys, all right, you 1:18:55.479 --> 1:18:57.719 can't use the movie cameras, but use your still cameras. 1:18:57.880 --> 1:18:59.760 We had a ton of still film, so we could 1:18:59.800 --> 1:19:02.160 tell the story of what happened the second night. But 1:19:02.240 --> 1:19:05.120 what happened was they were so excited again maybe even 1:19:05.200 --> 1:19:09.599 more so, that the government brought out the dogs and 1:19:09.640 --> 1:19:12.479 they brought out the soldiers to try to control everybody. 1:19:12.520 --> 1:19:14.680 That only made things worse. There were fires up in 1:19:14.720 --> 1:19:16.640 the balcony and all that kind of stuff, and then 1:19:16.680 --> 1:19:19.960 they were beating kids up, and it was just it 1:19:20.120 --> 1:19:23.639 was a look at that part of the world that 1:19:23.680 --> 1:19:27.040 maybe most Americans hadn't really thought about, And Bobby and 1:19:27.080 --> 1:19:29.200 the guys I know hadn't really thought about it till 1:19:29.240 --> 1:19:32.720 they experienced it. So what I wanted was a very 1:19:32.920 --> 1:19:37.240 visceral experience. So there are moments where we don't have 1:19:37.280 --> 1:19:39.879 anybody actually telling the story, we just let the footage 1:19:39.920 --> 1:19:42.280 speak for itself. And then other times we have people 1:19:42.320 --> 1:19:45.040 telling the story in a very emotional way. And that's 1:19:45.080 --> 1:19:49.720 what I felt was important here in this particular sequence. Okay, Bobby, 1:19:50.280 --> 1:19:54.400 you know, and most people don't know the adrenaline, the 1:19:54.520 --> 1:19:58.760 power of the feeling of being on stage. You know, 1:19:59.400 --> 1:20:01.679 we live in in an era of deep fakes, etc. 1:20:02.120 --> 1:20:05.639 You can tell the story anyway. Did you really feel 1:20:05.680 --> 1:20:11.920 a difference in Romania. Well, we hit the stage. We're excited. 1:20:12.320 --> 1:20:16.880 We always loved to perform, you know, we enjoyed the 1:20:17.000 --> 1:20:18.920 real you know, I mean, you played better when there's 1:20:19.560 --> 1:20:24.080 an audience's reacting to you. We hit the stage. I 1:20:24.120 --> 1:20:26.559 don't think one person in that audience knew the name 1:20:26.560 --> 1:20:30.799 of the band. They just knew USA. And I felt 1:20:30.840 --> 1:20:34.920 like I was playing and there were bars between us 1:20:35.320 --> 1:20:38.679 and the audience, and once we started playing, the bars 1:20:38.760 --> 1:20:44.400 dissolved and these people, we could feel this unbelievable energy. 1:20:44.439 --> 1:20:48.920 They're chanting USA, they're screen and they are moving to 1:20:49.000 --> 1:20:52.840 the music. And as you can imagine, and you're very right, 1:20:52.920 --> 1:20:56.360 your adrenaline when you're especially when you're playing drums, when 1:20:56.360 --> 1:21:00.839 you're on stage, they're they're feeding you and you're getting 1:21:00.880 --> 1:21:04.360 more excited. The irony is when we had that meeting 1:21:04.400 --> 1:21:09.599 that John just described, they did say more jazz, less 1:21:09.680 --> 1:21:11.160 rock and roll, and I said, what do you have 1:21:11.200 --> 1:21:15.639 a jazz meter? How would you? And truthfully I never 1:21:15.680 --> 1:21:20.559 played backbeats, you know all that loudly. The second night 1:21:20.560 --> 1:21:22.600 when they said play more jazz, I played rock and 1:21:22.680 --> 1:21:25.559 roll through everything a guy could be playing a jazz 1:21:25.560 --> 1:21:29.240 So I'm like, bump, bump, back back, I'm banging away 1:21:29.360 --> 1:21:33.880 because how dare you tell us what to play? And 1:21:33.960 --> 1:21:37.599 we rock, We rock and rolled more the second night 1:21:37.640 --> 1:21:40.960 and the audience went berserk. They told David, don't throw 1:21:42.680 --> 1:21:45.280 like your instruments off the stage. We're going, what instrument? 1:21:45.280 --> 1:21:48.639 What are you talking about? David just dropped a gong 1:21:48.840 --> 1:21:52.000 that was part of the show. He threw the thing. 1:21:52.040 --> 1:21:55.680 On the second night. It was like, we did exactly 1:21:55.720 --> 1:21:57.920 the opposite of, you know, what they told us to do, 1:21:58.240 --> 1:22:03.760 and the audience was amazing and we, you know, afterwards finished. 1:22:05.360 --> 1:22:08.600 They kept cheering and cheering and cheering, and we're backstage 1:22:08.600 --> 1:22:12.479 and it's it's in the film. I'm like, we're going, okay, 1:22:12.560 --> 1:22:14.479 so okay, so we have to do something else. What 1:22:14.520 --> 1:22:16.479 are we going to do? And we have to fit, 1:22:16.600 --> 1:22:19.080 you know, I figure out what songs should we play next? 1:22:20.600 --> 1:22:25.400 And David's freaking out because our singer, David, because he's 1:22:25.439 --> 1:22:28.400 watching kids get beaten out, he's seeing the police come 1:22:28.439 --> 1:22:31.720 in with dogs, and he said, meant, all we want 1:22:31.720 --> 1:22:34.000 to do is but we have to play for these kids. 1:22:34.040 --> 1:22:36.120 I said, let's go, let's go, let's play. And we 1:22:36.200 --> 1:22:40.800 went out and did another song, and the cops and 1:22:40.840 --> 1:22:45.920 the police and the soldiers rather and the dogs. It 1:22:46.000 --> 1:22:50.280 just got worse. It just got worse. Okay. Um. A 1:22:50.320 --> 1:22:53.559 couple of questions, how long was this from the time 1:22:53.600 --> 1:22:56.080 you left New York? Do you return to the stage. 1:22:56.720 --> 1:23:00.559 And I know somebody who was a photographer for Led Zeppelin, 1:23:01.200 --> 1:23:03.479 and this was of course in the film era, and 1:23:03.560 --> 1:23:05.920 he says, I've been around the world and see nothing. 1:23:06.640 --> 1:23:11.679 So to what degree did you partake and actually see 1:23:11.720 --> 1:23:15.280 what was going on in these communist countries? We all did. 1:23:15.479 --> 1:23:18.280 We all went out. We all. I mean, this is 1:23:18.360 --> 1:23:22.160 not a drugged out, drunk band. We were not a 1:23:22.200 --> 1:23:26.080 typical rock and roll band like that. And even when 1:23:26.120 --> 1:23:29.479 I toured here, I would go to stores, you know, 1:23:29.479 --> 1:23:34.439 in the daytime. I'd go into towns early. As you said, 1:23:34.479 --> 1:23:37.639 there's adrenaline even when you're playing, and certainly it doesn't 1:23:37.680 --> 1:23:40.519 go away the second you're off stage, so you have 1:23:40.600 --> 1:23:45.559 to really try and go to sleep. Find something super 1:23:45.640 --> 1:23:49.479 boring like in England was fantastic because they had international darts, 1:23:50.040 --> 1:23:53.200 they had darts on television. I said, oh, this is perfect. 1:23:53.280 --> 1:23:56.400 I can sleep through this. But that was our first 1:23:56.400 --> 1:23:59.960 European tour. So we left and I think we would 1:24:00.040 --> 1:24:03.120 on for two weeks or three weeks, three weeks three 1:24:03.920 --> 1:24:08.840 and we did Eastern Europe and Western Europe. But you know, 1:24:08.920 --> 1:24:14.679 we left not feeling that our country was in great shape. 1:24:15.080 --> 1:24:19.120 We felt it was racism. We saw I'm repeating myself, 1:24:19.160 --> 1:24:22.639 but we saw what's going on Vietnam. We saw Nixon. 1:24:23.479 --> 1:24:27.719 But we came back and we right off the plane 1:24:27.760 --> 1:24:30.800 and there's a press conference. No one tells us. So 1:24:30.920 --> 1:24:35.320 three of us are sitting there, and you could tell 1:24:35.479 --> 1:24:39.320 from the questions they hated us, like we did something wrong, 1:24:40.040 --> 1:24:44.479 and they were you know, questions, and the attitude of 1:24:44.520 --> 1:24:48.160 the questions was awful. And we knew that, oh, something's 1:24:48.200 --> 1:24:53.160 wrong here. And what we all everyone in the band 1:24:53.439 --> 1:24:56.960 saw the same thing. As bad as things were here. 1:24:57.240 --> 1:25:02.200 Certainly we had problems. Comunism is the last thing you 1:25:02.200 --> 1:25:05.360 want in this country, and we said it. We came 1:25:05.400 --> 1:25:09.120 back and we just said no matter, Yes we're screwed, 1:25:09.240 --> 1:25:12.240 Yes we have problems, but that you don't want in 1:25:12.280 --> 1:25:15.719 this country ever, because we saw it right in front 1:25:15.720 --> 1:25:18.600 of our faces. I mean, we experienced it. It was horrifying, 1:25:19.000 --> 1:25:24.960 absolutely horrifying, Okay, John, The tone changes during that press conference. 1:25:25.400 --> 1:25:31.479 In addition, you contrast reviews and then you find the 1:25:31.520 --> 1:25:35.120 people who write them who basically say we tracked what 1:25:35.160 --> 1:25:38.120 they said. Tell us how all that came together. Sure, 1:25:40.840 --> 1:25:45.679 the band members and Tina, who was Larry Goblatt's ex wife, 1:25:46.960 --> 1:25:50.439 all had photographs, and I was lucky enough to go 1:25:50.479 --> 1:25:53.000 out to all their houses and went through all the photos, 1:25:53.200 --> 1:25:55.719 and there was stuff there that that was just perfect 1:25:55.720 --> 1:25:59.360 for helping us tell the story. Tina had about seven 1:25:59.479 --> 1:26:02.640 or eight photos of the press conference. Nobody else had that, 1:26:03.120 --> 1:26:06.120 so we're able to do that. But then Bobby talks 1:26:06.160 --> 1:26:08.120 about the press conference. But how are we going to 1:26:08.240 --> 1:26:12.320 illustrate this? So I would go over to Bobby's house 1:26:12.320 --> 1:26:16.519 and we're down in his man cave downstairs, and he's 1:26:16.520 --> 1:26:21.439 got all these ten or twelve inch tapes up on 1:26:21.479 --> 1:26:23.599 a shelf so high. I had to go get a ladder. 1:26:23.840 --> 1:26:25.880 It's like, what are those? He says, I don't know 1:26:25.920 --> 1:26:28.240 what they are. It's like, well, I gotta get up there, 1:26:28.640 --> 1:26:31.120 so he lets me get it ladder. I go up 1:26:31.160 --> 1:26:32.880 on these shelves and I'm kind of going through and 1:26:32.920 --> 1:26:35.960 a lot of them are bands he produced or sessions 1:26:36.000 --> 1:26:37.960 that he did with somebody or another, having nothing whatsoever 1:26:38.000 --> 1:26:40.120 to do with Beverly Hills. But then I must have 1:26:40.160 --> 1:26:43.560 said something like oh shit, and Bobby says, what is it? 1:26:43.680 --> 1:26:46.400 And I said, look at this. There was this tape 1:26:46.439 --> 1:26:50.120 that said National General Productions on it. So I knew 1:26:50.120 --> 1:26:52.240 it had to have something to do with this film, 1:26:53.000 --> 1:26:55.559 So I said, can I take this? And he says, yeah, sure, 1:26:55.600 --> 1:26:57.479 please take it. So we take it off to a 1:26:57.520 --> 1:26:59.639 studio and we put it on and what is it, Bob? 1:27:00.040 --> 1:27:04.160 It is the sound from the press conference they've given 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:06.000 Bobby a copy of years ago. He didn't know what 1:27:06.120 --> 1:27:08.599 was on it. He had never heard it. And so 1:27:09.240 --> 1:27:11.280 now I have photos, now I have the sound, and 1:27:11.320 --> 1:27:15.599 we could illustrate this. But then what I had done 1:27:15.680 --> 1:27:19.720 was the first article that really slammed them in the counterculture. 1:27:19.760 --> 1:27:23.240 Of note was a Rolling Stone article written by David Felton, 1:27:23.320 --> 1:27:26.600 who was an award winning writer for Rolling Stone. He 1:27:26.680 --> 1:27:29.960 did the Charles Manson article that won a Pulitzer Prize, 1:27:30.960 --> 1:27:33.719 and so he's assigned to this and he doesn't like Blood, 1:27:33.720 --> 1:27:35.519 Switt and Tears. He doesn't think they're part of the 1:27:35.520 --> 1:27:38.719 counter culture. He doesn't think they're very interesting. And so 1:27:39.080 --> 1:27:41.160 he was at this press conference because he was running 1:27:41.160 --> 1:27:44.599 the Rolling Stone office in LA at the time, and 1:27:44.720 --> 1:27:48.200 he's just determined to go after them. So he takes 1:27:48.280 --> 1:27:51.840 every opportunity he has to write this very smug, snarky 1:27:52.080 --> 1:27:56.160 article about this band, and unfortunately it had a real impact, 1:27:56.160 --> 1:27:59.800 because Rolling Stone had some real influence at that time, 1:28:00.200 --> 1:28:04.120 and he just trashes them. So I thought, well, it 1:28:04.120 --> 1:28:06.240 would be interesting to have if we could find him, 1:28:06.680 --> 1:28:09.040 be interesting to have him talk about the article. I 1:28:09.080 --> 1:28:10.600 didn't know what he was going to say to me, 1:28:11.400 --> 1:28:14.120 but we get him, We get him for an interview, 1:28:14.720 --> 1:28:18.800 and he comes down and he was an alcohol He 1:28:18.840 --> 1:28:22.559 was an alcoholic. He's been sober for twenty five years. 1:28:23.000 --> 1:28:25.439 And he looks back at what he did in those 1:28:25.560 --> 1:28:28.960 days and he says, you know, that sounds like me. 1:28:29.000 --> 1:28:31.519 It was too smarmy, he said, But looking back at 1:28:31.560 --> 1:28:34.800 it now, I was wrong. And I thought, wow, what 1:28:34.960 --> 1:28:36.760 kind of you know, journalists will kind of do that 1:28:36.760 --> 1:28:38.200 look back and say, you know something, I really made 1:28:38.240 --> 1:28:40.519 a mistake back then. And I just thought that was 1:28:40.520 --> 1:28:43.280 a wonderful moment in the film to sort of say, 1:28:43.360 --> 1:28:46.440 in a way, he's standing in for all the counterculture 1:28:46.800 --> 1:28:50.560 and all the mainstream articles that called them the fascist 1:28:50.640 --> 1:28:53.160 rock band and all other things, to say, you know, 1:28:53.200 --> 1:28:55.559 some we were caught up in the moment. They didn't 1:28:55.560 --> 1:28:57.840 seem to be super hip, so we were going to 1:28:57.920 --> 1:28:59.800 go after him. But now, you know, looking back, I 1:29:00.040 --> 1:29:02.439 think that was a mistake. And I think that sort 1:29:02.439 --> 1:29:04.760 of again sets a tone for an attitude. What I'm 1:29:04.800 --> 1:29:07.800 trying to do is put the audience back in this 1:29:07.840 --> 1:29:10.160 time to help them understand what was going on and 1:29:10.200 --> 1:29:13.719 how people were responding to them, and to know that 1:29:13.880 --> 1:29:15.519 this guy thinks they were wrong. I thought was a 1:29:15.560 --> 1:29:18.400 really important piece of the jigsaw. He said, it sounds 1:29:18.479 --> 1:29:20.120 like me I was a prick. It sounds like me 1:29:20.160 --> 1:29:31.439 I was a prick back then. Yeah, okay, Bobby. To 1:29:31.640 --> 1:29:35.840 what degree was the framework of the second album established 1:29:35.880 --> 1:29:41.200 by Al Cooper. We had been gigging already after the 1:29:41.240 --> 1:29:44.840 first album, and we were doing other songs, and Al 1:29:45.439 --> 1:29:47.439 found another song I Love You More and You'll Ever 1:29:47.560 --> 1:29:51.120 Know More and more, And we had songs that we 1:29:51.160 --> 1:29:54.120 would expand, like we'd play a song and then just 1:29:54.320 --> 1:29:58.280 solo on it and expand so there'd be another section 1:29:58.360 --> 1:30:01.559 to it. But now it's time to make a record. 1:30:02.560 --> 1:30:06.639 We had spent most of our time organizing a new band, 1:30:06.880 --> 1:30:11.040 finding musicians, finding the shape of the band. But we 1:30:11.080 --> 1:30:14.639 already had this material. And I remember a band meeting 1:30:14.960 --> 1:30:18.080 where at this point I'm the band leader and I'm 1:30:19.479 --> 1:30:21.800 I'm putting things together, and it was great because Clive 1:30:21.920 --> 1:30:27.200 Davis was fabulous, and he came to me after the 1:30:27.240 --> 1:30:29.400 band broke up. He said, what do you think? And 1:30:29.439 --> 1:30:31.599 I said, I think we're going to be a great 1:30:31.600 --> 1:30:34.280 band and I think I'm going to put the thing together. Right. 1:30:34.920 --> 1:30:37.000 He said, what do you need? I told it was 1:30:37.040 --> 1:30:40.240 like a ten thousand bucks or something. He said, oh, 1:30:40.280 --> 1:30:41.680 I'll get it to you. I just so I can 1:30:41.720 --> 1:30:44.280 pay some guys so we can rehearse and put it together. 1:30:44.680 --> 1:30:49.479 So the real emphasis at that point was find the band, 1:30:49.560 --> 1:30:52.840 finding musicians. Okay, now we have the band, we have 1:30:53.240 --> 1:30:57.240 some songs that have spilled over into this new band, 1:30:58.640 --> 1:31:01.599 and we have a band meeting and I explain my 1:31:01.720 --> 1:31:03.599 vision and I said, guys, I want to try and 1:31:03.720 --> 1:31:07.760 find songs that we all really like. And one of 1:31:07.800 --> 1:31:10.280 the band members just started laughing at me, saying, there, 1:31:10.320 --> 1:31:12.960 you'll never find a single song that everyone in this 1:31:13.040 --> 1:31:17.040 band likes. There's no way. We come from completely different sources. 1:31:17.240 --> 1:31:19.479 This is not a neighborhood bank the kids that grew 1:31:19.560 --> 1:31:22.519 up in a neighborhood. We're finding, you know, people from 1:31:22.560 --> 1:31:24.640 all over New York that we hear about that all 1:31:24.680 --> 1:31:27.439 this guy's grave, you should try and get him. So 1:31:29.360 --> 1:31:33.559 Steve is playing Eric Sati in his house Steve Katz, 1:31:34.040 --> 1:31:38.639 and it's just beautiful. So I take a copy of that. 1:31:39.400 --> 1:31:43.160 I love obviously, godb It's a Child, Billie Holiday's songs, 1:31:43.360 --> 1:31:47.120 gorgeous song. To prove a point, and I come into 1:31:47.200 --> 1:31:48.960 the next meeting, I said, okay, I'm gonna play with 1:31:49.040 --> 1:31:51.840 some songs. I play Eric Sati anyone not like this, 1:31:53.120 --> 1:31:56.479 And it was no, that's not fair. I mean, I said, 1:31:56.640 --> 1:31:58.920 I said, wait, wait, and they play godbas A Child 1:31:58.960 --> 1:32:02.400 anyone not like this song. But that's not fair. It's 1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:06.439 like Godsachai said, no, it's fair. The difference is we 1:32:06.600 --> 1:32:10.559 can play these songs other people can not in a 1:32:10.680 --> 1:32:14.759 popular band setting. So I just tried to find songs 1:32:14.800 --> 1:32:17.720 that were great songs that we could add to the 1:32:17.720 --> 1:32:20.599 ones we already had that everyone in the band liked. 1:32:21.200 --> 1:32:25.200 And it was an opportunity because the whole concept of 1:32:25.240 --> 1:32:29.479 bluss wed Tier is really for me was in every 1:32:29.520 --> 1:32:33.120 iteration of the band, it's it's it's a it's a 1:32:33.240 --> 1:32:39.840 concept as let's find great songs with these musicians, how 1:32:39.880 --> 1:32:42.559 do we make these songs work for us? And it's 1:32:42.600 --> 1:32:46.240 the arrangers. So we had two excellent arrangers in the band, 1:32:46.600 --> 1:32:49.479 Dick Halligan and for Elipsians, and I would have signed 1:32:49.920 --> 1:32:52.599 to each a song that I thought that they could arrange. 1:32:53.280 --> 1:32:56.280 And that was the fun for us, was to find 1:32:56.320 --> 1:32:59.240 a way to take these songs and and really do 1:32:59.280 --> 1:33:03.080 them differently that we could play them and have fun 1:33:03.160 --> 1:33:06.120 playing them. And that was that was it. To this day, 1:33:06.160 --> 1:33:08.960 there's a Blood Sweat and Tears. I'm still involved with them. 1:33:09.600 --> 1:33:14.040 I'm trying to find material and finding great arranges to 1:33:14.080 --> 1:33:17.400 work with, and there a lot better than we were 1:33:17.520 --> 1:33:20.479 right now. There's some great musicians right now. Okay, it's 1:33:20.520 --> 1:33:24.880 implied in the film that the downfall of Blood, Sweat 1:33:24.920 --> 1:33:28.960 and Tears was the result of that press conference in 1:33:29.000 --> 1:33:34.439 the press that ultimately came out from it. Bobby, what 1:33:34.479 --> 1:33:37.160 do you think really happened? You know, what do we know? 1:33:38.760 --> 1:33:42.200 The second album was mega successful, was played a long time. 1:33:42.439 --> 1:33:45.360 Third album did not come out that soon. All right, 1:33:45.479 --> 1:33:48.320 big point. That's a great point. Actually, good for you, 1:33:48.680 --> 1:33:53.000 that's a great point. We had a new manager and wait, 1:33:53.080 --> 1:33:55.719 stop for one second. Okay, what happened to this? Larry 1:33:55.760 --> 1:34:01.360 Green Black Alive Gold Black, excuse me? I kind of 1:34:01.400 --> 1:34:05.679 said earlier. Our accountant caught him trying to steal something 1:34:05.680 --> 1:34:09.640 and he was fired and since then he had passed away. 1:34:09.720 --> 1:34:11.880 I'm not sure what he did right afterwards, but there 1:34:11.920 --> 1:34:14.479 was no anger or anything, like you knew this was 1:34:14.520 --> 1:34:16.439 going to happen. It was a matter of time and 1:34:16.479 --> 1:34:19.040 that was okay. So you have this new manager, right, 1:34:19.560 --> 1:34:22.800 and Paul Simon and I have been friends for a 1:34:22.920 --> 1:34:26.160 very long time, and I said, you know, I like 1:34:26.200 --> 1:34:28.960 your manager. He was more Lewis fantastic. He's just really great. 1:34:29.000 --> 1:34:32.400 He say, oh man, yeah, this is wonderful. Let's get him. 1:34:32.560 --> 1:34:36.040 So so the deal that's structured is he gets a 1:34:36.160 --> 1:34:41.799 piece a significant as a management piece of our touring, 1:34:42.120 --> 1:34:43.920 but not of the records that he has nothing to 1:34:43.960 --> 1:34:46.320 do with. That was it's a whole different thing. So 1:34:46.360 --> 1:34:50.000 he figures, well, I'll just tour him and he had 1:34:50.080 --> 1:34:54.559 us touring forever. We're on the road forever, and I'm 1:34:55.040 --> 1:34:57.080 knowing and Clive and I have friends, is like, when 1:34:57.080 --> 1:34:59.559 don't gonna make a record? It's like, I know, And 1:34:59.600 --> 1:35:01.240 we got to do so, and we didn't have time 1:35:01.280 --> 1:35:06.559 to really put together all new material. We had about 1:35:06.560 --> 1:35:09.600 half of the stuff was new and half was you know, 1:35:10.120 --> 1:35:15.200 things that Al had had had picked and we ended 1:35:15.280 --> 1:35:18.439 up doing the record kind of fast, like okay, you know, 1:35:18.520 --> 1:35:20.920 let's do it now, finally we can do it. And 1:35:20.960 --> 1:35:25.240 you're right, that was that was I mean, we really 1:35:25.240 --> 1:35:28.000 should have had an album out probably five months sooner. 1:35:28.439 --> 1:35:32.360 You're absolutely right. And everyone around us felt the same way, 1:35:32.360 --> 1:35:35.160 except the manager. And I asked Paul and day I said, 1:35:35.600 --> 1:35:39.559 so he so he's a great manager. He says, yeah, 1:35:39.560 --> 1:35:42.120 he does everything I tell him. I went, oh Jesus, Paul, 1:35:42.560 --> 1:35:45.600 why did a new manage us? Oh? Now, he was 1:35:45.640 --> 1:35:48.120 a great guy, but he had an agenda and what 1:35:48.280 --> 1:35:50.880 had nothing to do with us recording. But but if 1:35:50.920 --> 1:35:55.960 you're asking what the downfall was anytime you hit those 1:35:56.040 --> 1:35:59.680 heights and you have a very specific sound, horns and 1:35:59.760 --> 1:36:04.000 day Vid Clayton Thomas's voice. We were played all the 1:36:04.080 --> 1:36:06.920 time on every station. We were played on R and 1:36:06.960 --> 1:36:12.080 B stations, country stations, classical stations, and they picked certain 1:36:12.120 --> 1:36:16.439 songs to play that would fit their programming. And I 1:36:16.479 --> 1:36:19.559 think when you hear so much of one thing, and 1:36:20.920 --> 1:36:22.639 if you're a kid and you get in a cab 1:36:23.040 --> 1:36:25.280 and the cab has a radio on, and pose when 1:36:26.360 --> 1:36:28.880 and plose when tiers song comes on and the cab 1:36:28.960 --> 1:36:31.000 driver turns around and says, now there's a band I 1:36:31.040 --> 1:36:33.640 like here, immediately turned off. I don't want you to 1:36:33.720 --> 1:36:38.000 like this, bense my band. So we became so popular, 1:36:38.120 --> 1:36:42.600 and there was so much in this condensed, you know, 1:36:42.680 --> 1:36:47.040 time period that was harmful, but that Eastern European tour 1:36:47.680 --> 1:36:51.160 that triggered everything because that was a chance for anyone 1:36:51.240 --> 1:36:53.880 that wanted to shoot down a band that was on top, 1:36:54.400 --> 1:36:57.040 on top, that gave them the opportunity that was That 1:36:57.120 --> 1:37:02.000 was easily the reason a word we use a lot 1:37:02.040 --> 1:37:06.479 today as zeitgeist, and they really captured the zeitgeist back then. 1:37:06.840 --> 1:37:09.720 But those moments are fleeting, and those moments are fragile, 1:37:10.400 --> 1:37:15.160 and the littlest thing can throw it all off, and 1:37:15.479 --> 1:37:18.720 that's what the tour did. And Bobby and I may 1:37:18.720 --> 1:37:22.240 have slightly different opinions here, but what I feel happened 1:37:22.320 --> 1:37:24.519 is that, yes, it was Vegas, Yes it was Woodstock, 1:37:24.600 --> 1:37:27.760 Yes it was they were ubiquitous, But I think it 1:37:27.920 --> 1:37:31.920 also was that this experience in Eastern Europe and what 1:37:32.040 --> 1:37:34.639 happened to them when they got back, and how they 1:37:34.640 --> 1:37:37.160 were slammed by the right and the left, which is 1:37:37.600 --> 1:37:40.719 a unique situation. Usually you get it from one side 1:37:40.800 --> 1:37:44.160 or the other. They got it from both sides, and 1:37:44.760 --> 1:37:48.519 I think that exacerbated the personality conflicts within the band, 1:37:49.000 --> 1:37:51.519 and I think they started to fracture in terms of 1:37:51.760 --> 1:37:53.240 what are we going to play on stage, how are 1:37:53.240 --> 1:37:54.680 we going to play on stage? What are we going 1:37:54.760 --> 1:37:56.880 to record, how are we going to record it? All 1:37:56.920 --> 1:37:59.439 of that started to happen. And then eighteen months after 1:37:59.479 --> 1:38:03.160 they got back, David and Fred and Dick leave. The 1:38:03.280 --> 1:38:08.040 next year Steve and Jim leave. Bobby soldiered on brilliantly, 1:38:09.120 --> 1:38:12.479 but the moment was gone. The zeitgeist was gone, and 1:38:12.720 --> 1:38:17.080 I do look back at the Eastern European tour as 1:38:17.200 --> 1:38:20.200 being the real turning point for the band. We did 1:38:20.280 --> 1:38:26.360 not disagree on any of that. Okay, how did this 1:38:26.479 --> 1:38:29.160 end up being a theatrical film? How did you end 1:38:29.240 --> 1:38:32.080 up selling it? Tell me about the distribution? Go ahead, 1:38:32.080 --> 1:38:36.400 thank you. I always envisioned this as a feature doc. 1:38:36.479 --> 1:38:38.479 In fact, most of the times I start off with 1:38:38.920 --> 1:38:40.960 a project, I am thinking this is going to be 1:38:41.000 --> 1:38:44.400 a feature doc because I have this experience us versus 1:38:44.439 --> 1:38:46.559 John Lennon, Who is Harry Nilson? Why is everybody talking 1:38:46.600 --> 1:38:49.200 about him? Chasing train? They were all feature doc so 1:38:49.240 --> 1:38:52.479 I'm always thinking that sort of ninety to one hundred 1:38:52.520 --> 1:38:54.519 and ten minute version of how to tell the story. 1:38:54.680 --> 1:38:56.600 Story's got to be strong enough, and this one was. 1:38:56.920 --> 1:38:59.760 So I always thought of it as being a feature doc. 1:39:01.080 --> 1:39:05.120 Because we were financed, fully financed upfront by James Bryant, 1:39:05.360 --> 1:39:10.400 one of the best bosses I've ever had. We could 1:39:10.479 --> 1:39:12.160 make I could make the film I wanted to make, 1:39:12.439 --> 1:39:15.640 and then armed with a finished product, we can go 1:39:15.680 --> 1:39:19.960 to these young buyers at at the platform services or 1:39:20.000 --> 1:39:22.720 at the theaters. They don't have to guess what it is. 1:39:22.760 --> 1:39:24.920 They can look at the film and see what it is. 1:39:25.360 --> 1:39:26.720 So it's like, you know, you don't have to go 1:39:26.760 --> 1:39:28.360 there and say, well, it's gonna have this, It's gonna 1:39:28.360 --> 1:39:29.880 have this, It's gonna have this, and it's like, no, 1:39:29.960 --> 1:39:33.559 we can just show it to you. So I always 1:39:33.560 --> 1:39:36.280 thought this is what it was gonna be. I'd had 1:39:36.280 --> 1:39:40.679 a great experience with a distributor Abrama Rama and Richard Abrama, 1:39:40.720 --> 1:39:43.120 which is the head guy, and love him, and so 1:39:43.160 --> 1:39:45.800 I showed him the film and I said, does this 1:39:45.920 --> 1:39:48.120 have theatrical legs? I hope it does, because this is 1:39:48.120 --> 1:39:49.960 what I want to want it to do with it, 1:39:50.640 --> 1:39:52.559 and He just went nuts for it. He just thought 1:39:52.600 --> 1:39:56.800 this was great and I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 1:39:56.840 --> 1:40:02.439 yeah yeah. So we put together marketing budget and we've 1:40:02.479 --> 1:40:06.200 gone with Richard and here we are. We opened Theatrically 1:40:06.240 --> 1:40:09.080 in New York on March twenty fourth for a week 1:40:09.120 --> 1:40:11.920 at the Quad Cinema. We opened in LA the next 1:40:11.920 --> 1:40:15.760 week at the Lemley Monica Film Center for a week. 1:40:16.439 --> 1:40:19.479 And now I counted this morning. Bobby and I hadn't 1:40:19.479 --> 1:40:21.320 even talked about this. I counted this morning. We got 1:40:21.360 --> 1:40:25.200 fifty theaters across the country now and growing thanks to 1:40:25.240 --> 1:40:29.000 you and a number of other buzz that we're getting. 1:40:29.640 --> 1:40:31.680 People are hearing about this film. They want to see it, 1:40:32.280 --> 1:40:35.080 and I think it's that kind of thing that it's 1:40:35.080 --> 1:40:40.000 a compelling enough story that it may may bring people 1:40:40.040 --> 1:40:43.679 back to the theaters. And that's what we wanted to do. Okay, 1:40:43.680 --> 1:40:48.800 we all know that primary viewership is on the flat screen. Yeah, 1:40:48.840 --> 1:40:51.960 So have you already made a TV distribution deal or 1:40:51.960 --> 1:40:54.439 you're waiting to see how it works theatrically. Yeah, we 1:40:54.520 --> 1:40:55.880 wanted to wait to see how it was going to 1:40:55.960 --> 1:41:00.240 turn out theatrically because there's so much out there's so 1:41:00.280 --> 1:41:03.639 much noise, there's so much product out there. We felt 1:41:03.640 --> 1:41:07.839 we wanted to distinguish ourselves, so we bet on ourselves. 1:41:07.920 --> 1:41:09.559 We bet that we were going to get good buzz. 1:41:09.640 --> 1:41:12.519 We're betting that we're going to get good reviews, and 1:41:12.600 --> 1:41:15.000 then armed with that, we will go to the streamers 1:41:15.240 --> 1:41:18.000 and say, look, you got to have this because everybody 1:41:18.080 --> 1:41:22.040 is talking about it. So we have not talked to 1:41:22.040 --> 1:41:24.280 any of the streamers yet. Actually I got an inquiry 1:41:24.320 --> 1:41:26.320 the other day from one that we slipped them a 1:41:26.360 --> 1:41:28.400 copy of it to see if they might want to 1:41:28.400 --> 1:41:30.600 make a preemptive bid. So we're waiting to see what 1:41:30.680 --> 1:41:33.400 happens there. But I think it will end up on 1:41:33.840 --> 1:41:36.439 a very good streamer, just not sure which one at 1:41:36.439 --> 1:41:41.440 the moment. Okay, Bobby, going back to the band, explain 1:41:41.600 --> 1:41:44.200 to me the economics of a band of eight or 1:41:44.320 --> 1:41:47.639 nine people's that doesn't people that don't generally speaking even 1:41:47.640 --> 1:41:51.200 write their own songs. Where is the money and how 1:41:51.240 --> 1:41:54.360 do you end up owning the name Blood, Sweat and Tears. 1:41:55.160 --> 1:41:58.760 When we began, that lawyer that I spoke about that 1:41:58.840 --> 1:42:03.560 found the Slowy Gobla said you need an internal employment 1:42:03.800 --> 1:42:08.679 agreement agreement employee agreement. So there were shares like like 1:42:08.680 --> 1:42:13.080 like a corporation, and each person would get a share 1:42:13.240 --> 1:42:15.840 of the band. If I think five of us were 1:42:15.840 --> 1:42:21.639 the primary guys, and then well that begs a question. 1:42:21.640 --> 1:42:26.479 Were the other four or three getting paid less? No? No, no, 1:42:26.479 --> 1:42:28.439 we all got paid exactly the same amount of money. 1:42:28.439 --> 1:42:32.240 It was just the ownership concept. So so now what 1:42:32.360 --> 1:42:37.000 happens is we have this agreement and the way it structured, 1:42:37.080 --> 1:42:40.360 if anyone leaves the band, whatever the band is worth 1:42:40.360 --> 1:42:44.599 at that moment, whatever stuff we have, the value of it, 1:42:45.080 --> 1:42:49.920 they get that money. They have royalties ongoing obviously, and 1:42:50.360 --> 1:42:52.800 they leave and then the share, that share goes back 1:42:52.840 --> 1:42:57.880 to the pot. Eventually, one day I realized there's nobody left. 1:42:59.040 --> 1:43:02.000 And it's so funny because I have friends like all, 1:43:02.080 --> 1:43:04.559 you were really smart, man, you had it all worked out. 1:43:04.640 --> 1:43:07.880 I had nothing worked out. It's just it landed on me. 1:43:07.920 --> 1:43:10.720 I said, Oh, man, but I love I love the 1:43:10.800 --> 1:43:14.200 idea of the band. I always love the idea of 1:43:14.280 --> 1:43:18.080 having a band that would play anything, could play anything, 1:43:18.600 --> 1:43:22.080 and and be loose and have wonderful musicians. That was 1:43:22.280 --> 1:43:25.080 that was a concept in my head from from day one. 1:43:25.680 --> 1:43:28.960 So uh, that's how I ended up with it. I 1:43:30.120 --> 1:43:35.080 didn't have a master plan, you know. Okay, so eventually 1:43:35.840 --> 1:43:38.040 you stopped playing in the men and you go to 1:43:38.080 --> 1:43:42.679 the other side. Okay, so I love this guy. I'm sorry, 1:43:43.040 --> 1:43:46.920 I'm in loving your questions because they're opening up a 1:43:47.000 --> 1:43:52.040 Pandora's box for me. Okay. So what happens is h 1:43:52.520 --> 1:43:54.719 I stopped producing. I have a studio in my house 1:43:56.439 --> 1:44:01.800 up in Rockland County, UM. The band is playing in Florida. 1:44:02.080 --> 1:44:06.640 I'm playing softball with a club team and there's an outfielder, 1:44:07.040 --> 1:44:10.000 little blonde girl playing center field. I'm playing left field, 1:44:10.280 --> 1:44:12.800 and she has her hands in her mit and her 1:44:12.840 --> 1:44:15.400 hand on her knees, going bad bad. I hate bad bad, 1:44:15.479 --> 1:44:18.880 and I'm thinking, wow, this goes really into it. So 1:44:18.920 --> 1:44:21.680 we go back to this kind of dugout situation and 1:44:21.800 --> 1:44:24.760 I say, I said, who are you? She goes, oh, 1:44:24.800 --> 1:44:26.320 I work at the club. I said, I never saw 1:44:26.360 --> 1:44:28.839 you there because while I'm married and I have kids, 1:44:29.520 --> 1:44:32.800 pause to the best bass player in the world. And 1:44:32.960 --> 1:44:36.760 my comment is, oh, that's very sweet of you. I 1:44:36.800 --> 1:44:38.800 hope if I get married one day my wife thinks 1:44:38.800 --> 1:44:42.400 I'm a good I'm the best drop I'm not. But no, no, 1:44:42.520 --> 1:44:44.439 she's no, he really is. I said, of course, and 1:44:44.479 --> 1:44:47.639 then my New York arrogance kicks in and I go, oh, really, 1:44:47.680 --> 1:44:49.720 if I go to your house, Now, what's on your turntable? 1:44:49.800 --> 1:44:53.760 She says, Giant Steps, said Coltrane's Giant Steps. She goes, yeah, 1:44:53.880 --> 1:44:56.519 Now I take it another step. So if you're listening 1:44:56.560 --> 1:44:59.120 to it, can you tell me while he's soloing when 1:44:59.160 --> 1:45:01.040 the chorus began, and she goes, yeah, I said, I 1:45:01.120 --> 1:45:05.320 got to meet your husband. Husband's Joco Pastorius. So so 1:45:05.360 --> 1:45:09.800 that's how I meet Jocko. And I have a relationship 1:45:10.200 --> 1:45:14.280 with Steve Popovich, who was head of promotion in Cleveland 1:45:14.640 --> 1:45:16.920 when I was out there, and he's the most passionate guy. 1:45:16.960 --> 1:45:18.360 And I told Climb and I came back and said, 1:45:18.360 --> 1:45:21.479 you've got a guy in Cleveland that's fantastic, you know, 1:45:21.520 --> 1:45:24.599 bring him here, he'd be great. He did. He ends 1:45:24.680 --> 1:45:27.240 up being head of A and R for Epic Records. 1:45:27.840 --> 1:45:30.439 They call me and say, we want to make a 1:45:30.439 --> 1:45:32.680 production deal with you because we know you love to 1:45:32.680 --> 1:45:34.479 produce and you're going to go somewhere else. We don't 1:45:34.520 --> 1:45:39.120 want that. We want you in the group. So I 1:45:39.160 --> 1:45:41.439 get it. What's called a put Like anything I want 1:45:41.439 --> 1:45:43.479 to produce, I can produce and they'll you know, I 1:45:43.520 --> 1:45:46.880 mean unlyst it's insane and you know, billion dollars. And 1:45:46.920 --> 1:45:50.240 I said, okay, I I have something I want to produce. 1:45:50.880 --> 1:45:53.960 Steve used to play bass. His head of marketing is 1:45:54.479 --> 1:45:58.519 a guy named a guy named Jim Terrell, bass player. 1:45:58.560 --> 1:46:00.479 I used to play with him. He was a very 1:46:00.479 --> 1:46:03.800 good bass player, he said of marketing. And I'm thinking, God, 1:46:03.800 --> 1:46:07.559 this two bass players, this is even easier. So I said, okay, 1:46:07.600 --> 1:46:11.439 I have something. It's a bass player. Okay, I said, great, 1:46:12.920 --> 1:46:14.920 like we hear, I said sure. I said, so I'm 1:46:14.960 --> 1:46:16.639 gonna do an album with a bass player and then 1:46:17.400 --> 1:46:20.800 an accordion. Looking at me, I said, I'm just kidding 1:46:20.800 --> 1:46:23.360 about the accordion. But this guy is a great bass player. 1:46:23.560 --> 1:46:26.559 So I end up you're producing and enjoying the hell 1:46:26.560 --> 1:46:29.599 out of that. And I have Jocko in my house. 1:46:29.600 --> 1:46:31.759 He's living with me, and we're coming up with ideas 1:46:31.760 --> 1:46:34.479 how to make an album of a bass player, which 1:46:34.520 --> 1:46:38.160 ain't the easiest thing to do. So anyway, back to 1:46:38.160 --> 1:46:43.360 your question. So these executives at CBS Records at the time, 1:46:43.400 --> 1:46:48.439 now Sony saw my interest in producing and they and 1:46:48.600 --> 1:46:51.160 they all of a sudden. Rona Lexenberg, who's now the 1:46:51.240 --> 1:46:54.200 head of Epic Records, who was head of promotion for 1:46:54.240 --> 1:46:57.360 Columbia Records and a friend of mine. He came to 1:46:57.439 --> 1:47:00.599 me and said, how'd you like to be the head 1:47:00.600 --> 1:47:04.400 of an r of Epic Records in California. I said, 1:47:04.479 --> 1:47:08.280 as much as my eye teeth extracted, I said, why 1:47:08.320 --> 1:47:10.360 in the world would I want to do that? It 1:47:10.479 --> 1:47:12.040 was like the last thing. And I said, no, But 1:47:12.080 --> 1:47:13.720 you'd be great at it. You'd be I said, but 1:47:13.960 --> 1:47:17.240 I you know, I get why it would be nice 1:47:17.240 --> 1:47:19.320 for you, but I have no interest, first of all, 1:47:19.360 --> 1:47:22.120 in being in California at all. And I have no 1:47:22.240 --> 1:47:25.240 And so it started out that way. And then Bruce Lunvoll, 1:47:25.280 --> 1:47:28.280 who was my product manager epliswent in tears. He's now 1:47:28.360 --> 1:47:30.479 head of all of CBS, and he says, man, you 1:47:30.479 --> 1:47:32.320 should do it and be fun. I figure, I'll do 1:47:32.320 --> 1:47:35.320 it for six months, like a couple of months. It's 1:47:35.360 --> 1:47:38.400 a challenge. I love new stuff to do. But the 1:47:38.439 --> 1:47:43.920 most important thing, secretly, I'm infiltrating. I'm thinking, you know what, 1:47:44.000 --> 1:47:46.640 I'm going to that side. I can help I can 1:47:46.680 --> 1:47:49.639 actually help artists. I can bail him out of bad deals. 1:47:49.680 --> 1:47:52.920 I even I can do things to help them. And 1:47:52.960 --> 1:47:55.479 at the time, Minnie Ripertson was a dear friend and 1:47:55.560 --> 1:47:57.519 her husband was a dear friend. She was signed to Epic. 1:47:58.040 --> 1:48:00.559 I thought, oh, I gotta do this. I actually live 1:48:00.600 --> 1:48:02.280 where I live because it was near where they live 1:48:03.640 --> 1:48:07.559 lived at that time, and so I took the gig 1:48:07.640 --> 1:48:10.479 just thinking I'm gonna help people, this will be fun, 1:48:10.640 --> 1:48:14.600 and I'm out of here in six months. I never left. Okay, 1:48:15.400 --> 1:48:18.760 you stopped playing drums? Did you miss Yeah? You missed it? 1:48:18.840 --> 1:48:22.200 When was How do you ever played drums again? Okay? 1:48:22.360 --> 1:48:26.400 So I'm playing with the band. It's I guess nineteen 1:48:26.439 --> 1:48:30.800 seventy five. Ish. I add a percussionist, Donna Lias, fantastic 1:48:31.560 --> 1:48:34.320 Jocko's in the band at this point, just you know, 1:48:34.479 --> 1:48:36.960 like like for a little while. Larry Willis is playing 1:48:38.200 --> 1:48:40.559 in the band of piano and Mike Sterns on guitar. 1:48:40.640 --> 1:48:44.120 The band's unbelievably good, and I'm actually playing well at 1:48:44.160 --> 1:48:45.960 this point because I have no choice. These guys are 1:48:45.960 --> 1:48:49.760 so good. So I see Donna Lias on percussion, and 1:48:49.800 --> 1:48:51.800 I go, let's switch. And Don's a great drummer, and 1:48:51.920 --> 1:48:53.200 he looks at me, no, no, no no, I said, come on, 1:48:53.200 --> 1:48:55.840 come on, come on, switch. I forced him to sit 1:48:55.880 --> 1:48:57.400 at the drums. I don't know what. I don't know 1:48:57.439 --> 1:49:00.000 how to play conga drums. I'm horrible, and I'm sitting 1:49:00.200 --> 1:49:02.960 like an idiot, like you know, like slapping away, and 1:49:03.040 --> 1:49:05.920 he's killing He's playing great. And it occurred to me, 1:49:07.000 --> 1:49:08.880 I have a studio in my house in New York. 1:49:09.360 --> 1:49:12.559 I love to produce. Why am I out here? He 1:49:12.760 --> 1:49:15.360 sounds great, the band is great. They don't need me 1:49:15.520 --> 1:49:18.640 at all. And I just said, you know what, this 1:49:18.720 --> 1:49:21.960 is my last gig. You got it, and I left. 1:49:22.320 --> 1:49:25.200 I got a call from the manager saying, you have 1:49:25.240 --> 1:49:26.680 to do one more gig. I sas, what do you 1:49:26.720 --> 1:49:29.200 mean while there's a guy out in Nassau at the 1:49:29.280 --> 1:49:32.639 coliseum and he's not like he's gonna drop us unless 1:49:32.640 --> 1:49:34.920 you're on the gig. I said, oh jeezus. And I 1:49:34.920 --> 1:49:38.120 had already not played for a few months. I said, okay, 1:49:38.160 --> 1:49:40.800 I'll do it. And again, you know, if there's a god, 1:49:40.880 --> 1:49:44.679 I don't know, but certainly something happened. I sit down, 1:49:45.280 --> 1:49:49.680 like to do this gig. You know, I'm already not 1:49:49.800 --> 1:49:54.559 playing a lot, and my throne the seat I sit 1:49:54.640 --> 1:49:58.320 on collapses. Then the symbol stand just dropped, like symbol 1:49:58.360 --> 1:50:01.479 start dropping, snared ROMs a hole in it everything, and 1:50:01.520 --> 1:50:04.000 there's a new road. He has no idea what he's doing. 1:50:04.320 --> 1:50:06.559 That's a calamity. And I'm thinking, oh, this is this 1:50:06.640 --> 1:50:09.160 is like Fred vomiting on me. This is this is 1:50:09.200 --> 1:50:13.280 my last game. And I really don't miss it at all, 1:50:13.320 --> 1:50:15.639 because if I did, i'd play. There's no one saying 1:50:15.640 --> 1:50:20.000 you can't play anymore. But I'm so interested in everything 1:50:20.080 --> 1:50:25.599 else about music and recording and finding artists and working 1:50:25.600 --> 1:50:27.800 with people in the studio. That's to me the most 1:50:27.840 --> 1:50:32.519 exciting thing. And really it almost always was okay on 1:50:32.680 --> 1:50:37.439 these records. I'm sure your deal is cross collateralized. Ever 1:50:37.520 --> 1:50:41.400 see any royalties on those hit records? Another great question. 1:50:41.520 --> 1:50:47.559 So I end up leaving Epic after every about a 1:50:47.600 --> 1:50:51.640 year and a half, and Capitol Records kind of you know, 1:50:51.720 --> 1:50:53.960 gets me and they say we need you here, we 1:50:54.000 --> 1:50:58.519 need you. So I go there and end up back. 1:50:58.760 --> 1:51:00.519 Well there's a long story between mean, I end up 1:51:00.560 --> 1:51:03.800 on television for about five years, but then I come 1:51:04.400 --> 1:51:08.479 I come back. I get offered a job a creative 1:51:08.520 --> 1:51:12.519 development with which like a friend of mine coined that. 1:51:12.560 --> 1:51:14.760 I said, what does that mean? He goes, nothing, It 1:51:14.800 --> 1:51:17.240 doesn't mean anything. But they want to hire you so badly. 1:51:17.360 --> 1:51:19.960 Just take the gig. I said, all right, so I 1:51:20.000 --> 1:51:23.400 go back. Just now it's Sony, but I'm not really 1:51:23.439 --> 1:51:28.920 reporting to a label. I'm actually just Sony. They didn't 1:51:29.200 --> 1:51:31.640 really structure a deal where I had to report in. 1:51:32.120 --> 1:51:33.840 I could do what I wanted to do, which was 1:51:34.080 --> 1:51:36.720 exactly the way I wanted to work, because otherwise, at 1:51:36.720 --> 1:51:38.519 this point, you know, I don't want to do it. 1:51:39.200 --> 1:51:45.040 So it was super enjoyable. I got the question. I 1:51:45.080 --> 1:51:49.639 just went Blounts went in tears royalties. Right. So luckily, 1:51:50.720 --> 1:51:56.520 since I have an executive job. Now I meet Scott Pascucci. 1:51:57.320 --> 1:52:01.280 He is the I think that they had lawyer out here, 1:52:01.360 --> 1:52:04.720 and he's just a fabulous guy. And I sit with him. 1:52:04.760 --> 1:52:06.920 I said, Scott, I don't know if the guys are 1:52:06.920 --> 1:52:09.200 getting paid. I don't know what's going on. I haven't 1:52:09.240 --> 1:52:14.080 tracked this thing at all. Can you help me? He said, yeah, 1:52:14.280 --> 1:52:16.720 speak to this woman. I speak to a woman and 1:52:16.800 --> 1:52:18.840 I sit down with her and tell her who played 1:52:18.880 --> 1:52:23.439 on what everything that anyone would have done on any record. 1:52:23.520 --> 1:52:26.320 I said, please get these people paid. She goes, okay, 1:52:26.840 --> 1:52:30.479 it was the first time because in the first place, 1:52:30.520 --> 1:52:34.760 our deal was horrible to begin with, like nothing, and 1:52:34.800 --> 1:52:37.320 then we split it with a lot of people, so 1:52:37.439 --> 1:52:39.719 no one really expected anything but what they were doing 1:52:40.720 --> 1:52:43.479 at the record company like there'd be a new version 1:52:43.520 --> 1:52:46.680 of a Blood, Sweat and Tears greatest hit. So I'm 1:52:46.720 --> 1:52:49.719 like newly mastered, but no one came to me and said, 1:52:51.280 --> 1:52:54.040 we'd like to put this out and we want to 1:52:54.120 --> 1:52:58.639 use our mastering. And all of a sudden, I started realizing, 1:52:58.680 --> 1:53:02.960 wait a minute, no one's asking me without permission. They 1:53:03.120 --> 1:53:05.920 keep finding ways to charge us more money. I said, 1:53:06.120 --> 1:53:08.439 why are we being charged money? We haven't played together 1:53:08.560 --> 1:53:11.680 in twenty years, and you're finding ways to charge us 1:53:11.720 --> 1:53:16.280 money for what. There's no advances? What, oh like the 1:53:16.320 --> 1:53:19.360 cost of this new version of this record? I said, 1:53:19.800 --> 1:53:23.240 enough because and now I actually I have a day 1:53:23.240 --> 1:53:26.400 gig that gives me enough power that I can call 1:53:26.479 --> 1:53:29.120 someone say you can't do this anymore. So all of 1:53:29.160 --> 1:53:31.120 a sudden, the guy, I mean not a lot of money, 1:53:31.160 --> 1:53:34.439 but the guys starting started to get paid. And one 1:53:34.520 --> 1:53:38.160 member of the band, guy Chuck Winfield, called me and said, man, 1:53:39.120 --> 1:53:40.960 it had to be you this first time I saw 1:53:41.000 --> 1:53:44.040 any money, I said, it was and thank god you're 1:53:44.040 --> 1:53:48.960 getting paid. Okay, talking about the band, you're making a 1:53:49.000 --> 1:53:53.639 movie with so many members. We all know everybody doesn't 1:53:53.640 --> 1:53:58.280 remember the story the same way. So to what degree 1:53:58.280 --> 1:54:03.840 with their disagreements and who had the final call that 1:54:04.200 --> 1:54:07.519 I wouldn't say disagreements. I would just say Raschiman. They 1:54:07.640 --> 1:54:12.920 remembered things differently, and I was the final arbiter here. 1:54:14.160 --> 1:54:16.920 Bobby didn't tell me the movie to make. James Bryant 1:54:16.920 --> 1:54:20.200 didn't tell me the movie to make. So I felt 1:54:20.280 --> 1:54:24.120 I had to corroborate things twice or three times or 1:54:24.200 --> 1:54:27.840 I couldn't go down that road. So I really had 1:54:27.880 --> 1:54:30.240 to evaluate what they were saying to me, and is 1:54:30.280 --> 1:54:32.120 this true? Is this not true? Is it borne out 1:54:32.120 --> 1:54:33.920 by what other people are saying? Is it borne out 1:54:33.920 --> 1:54:37.760 by the documents that we found? And ultimately it was 1:54:37.800 --> 1:54:44.080 my call, and so for better and worse, I'm responsible. Okay, 1:54:44.200 --> 1:54:47.200 we live and you referenced it earlier. We live in 1:54:47.240 --> 1:54:50.360 an era of cacophony. What do we know? The peak 1:54:50.560 --> 1:54:54.800 of blood, sweat and tears was really sixty eight sixty nine. 1:54:54.880 --> 1:54:59.000 That's in excess of fifty years ago. How do you 1:54:59.080 --> 1:55:01.920 get the message out? And to what degree are you 1:55:02.080 --> 1:55:07.840 frustrated excited about what's coming down the road. I'm very excited. 1:55:08.320 --> 1:55:11.160 And I think of some of this is your fault, Bob. 1:55:12.200 --> 1:55:14.080 You were the first person that wrote about it, and 1:55:14.200 --> 1:55:18.120 and what you said meant so much to me and 1:55:18.680 --> 1:55:20.800 Bobby where you said, you know, you don't need to 1:55:20.800 --> 1:55:23.320 know Blitzwitt and Tears to appreciate this movie. You don't 1:55:23.320 --> 1:55:25.800 need to know the hits to appreciate this movie. And 1:55:25.840 --> 1:55:28.760 I think that's what distinguishes it from your basic music doc. 1:55:29.120 --> 1:55:30.960 It's not about the band in a way that you 1:55:31.000 --> 1:55:32.920 need to know him or appreciate him or love them. 1:55:33.440 --> 1:55:37.560 It's a story of It's a thriller story that happens 1:55:37.560 --> 1:55:41.880 to have great music in it. And you started us off. 1:55:42.240 --> 1:55:45.760 And now we're getting coverage from Rolling Stone in the 1:55:45.760 --> 1:55:47.880 New York Times, and all these people are calling and 1:55:47.920 --> 1:55:52.040 wanting to do interviews, and they're asking reasonably smart, thoughtful 1:55:52.120 --> 1:55:55.760 questions that are not about and I do say, it's 1:55:55.800 --> 1:55:57.520 not a history of the band, it's and they said, 1:55:57.520 --> 1:55:59.520 no, no no, no, we know that, and they're onto the 1:55:59.560 --> 1:56:02.240 politics of it and all of that. So I'm actually 1:56:02.320 --> 1:56:05.280 quite excited that that as a result of the buzz 1:56:05.320 --> 1:56:08.760 we're getting and hopefully the reviews were going to get that, 1:56:08.800 --> 1:56:10.200 they're going to be people out there is it. It 1:56:10.320 --> 1:56:12.920 sounds really interesting and you should talk about it because 1:56:12.920 --> 1:56:15.960 you get this all the time. I had such a 1:56:16.800 --> 1:56:20.200 it's so funny. All of a sudden, my phone's ringing 1:56:20.880 --> 1:56:24.480 like crazy to see what bob Let's sits it. I said, no, 1:56:24.720 --> 1:56:27.960 I don't. I who what, Oh, you gotta see this? 1:56:28.600 --> 1:56:30.840 And I read this. I go, oh, this is so nice. 1:56:30.960 --> 1:56:34.200 He's so right. Oh my god. And I'm getting a 1:56:34.200 --> 1:56:36.520 lot of phone calls from people in the music business 1:56:36.680 --> 1:56:40.480 that I know. And that called John Up. I said, John, 1:56:41.640 --> 1:56:44.680 my only experiences in the music business and my only 1:56:44.720 --> 1:56:48.960 experience for hit records because I've been involved with the 1:56:49.680 --> 1:56:53.000 whole bunch of them. It's like, and I explained what 1:56:53.080 --> 1:56:56.080 you did. I said, here's the analogy. There was a 1:56:56.160 --> 1:56:59.880 station in Chicago it was called WLS that had them. 1:57:00.160 --> 1:57:03.400 It was the most powerful station. It reached Mexico, for 1:57:03.480 --> 1:57:09.120 God's sake, again out of Chicago. They would play fifteen songs, 1:57:09.680 --> 1:57:11.760 maybe a top twenty. But I didn't even think that much. 1:57:12.360 --> 1:57:17.520 You could never ever get break into that rotation unless 1:57:17.880 --> 1:57:20.640 a million of the stations had been playing it in 1:57:20.640 --> 1:57:23.840 the area. People were responding, buying the I mean, it's 1:57:23.840 --> 1:57:27.680 a whole process. Called John, I said, you know what 1:57:27.680 --> 1:57:30.960 Bob just did for us, what we're on LS. We're 1:57:31.000 --> 1:57:34.720 on LS before any stations. I said, this feels like 1:57:34.720 --> 1:57:37.560 a hit record. This is insane. And that's like I 1:57:37.560 --> 1:57:39.280 don't want to blow too much smoked your way, but 1:57:39.360 --> 1:57:42.440 it was amazing. Well, you know, in this particular case, 1:57:42.760 --> 1:57:45.880 I certainly was a fan of the band. I saw 1:57:46.000 --> 1:57:49.800 the band. Where did you see us? Bridgeport, Connecticut, Katie 1:57:49.920 --> 1:57:55.960 Kennedy Stadium. Wow. So as I say that, just the 1:57:56.040 --> 1:57:59.040 concept of the film was fascinating to me. I wanted 1:57:59.080 --> 1:58:03.000 to know more. I didn't expect, you know, after watching 1:58:03.040 --> 1:58:06.400 the film, I remembered the blowback about the statements after 1:58:06.480 --> 1:58:09.880 the trip to Eastern Europe, but it was not top 1:58:09.920 --> 1:58:14.200 of mind. But you know, only right from the heart. 1:58:14.480 --> 1:58:20.080 The film is fantastic. It really is. And I think 1:58:20.120 --> 1:58:23.560 I said it's one of the best rock documentaries ever done. 1:58:23.840 --> 1:58:27.320 And I do believe that, And I could go on 1:58:27.360 --> 1:58:30.520 and on, but I just hope people see it. I 1:58:30.560 --> 1:58:33.160 think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known. 1:58:33.480 --> 1:58:36.320 I have a lot more questions, but for a different time. 1:58:36.840 --> 1:58:39.880 John and Bobby, thank you for taking this time to 1:58:39.880 --> 1:58:43.040 speak to my audience, and thank you for asking the 1:58:43.080 --> 1:58:48.320 most questions that we haven't been asked before. It's fantastic 1:58:48.440 --> 1:58:51.320 and I have many more, but not today, especially about 1:58:51.320 --> 1:58:54.600 the band. You couldn't call me any side one and 1:58:55.320 --> 1:58:58.280 there's a gay history, and you know all these songs 1:58:58.360 --> 1:59:02.200 because the other thing is Blood, Sweat and Tears. Was 1:59:02.240 --> 1:59:06.080 the first rock band to do a Laura Neuros song. Yeah, 1:59:06.120 --> 1:59:09.840 well she was going to be our lead singer. Listen 1:59:09.880 --> 1:59:13.440 to do you have time for a little bit? Yes? Yes, okay, okay, 1:59:13.480 --> 1:59:18.440 sorry after Al's gone. I loved Laura. She was a 1:59:18.440 --> 1:59:22.640 friend of mine. Both signed to Columbia Records. Jimmy Field 1:59:22.640 --> 1:59:26.120 are our bass player, starts living with her and we're 1:59:26.160 --> 1:59:30.280 all friends. And I hear Eli that album she has Eli, 1:59:30.320 --> 1:59:34.320 and it blows me out of my chair. And it's 1:59:34.320 --> 1:59:37.960 got great horn arrangements by Charlie Callella. I mean, it's 1:59:38.040 --> 1:59:40.720 really a cool record, and I'm falling in love. And 1:59:40.720 --> 1:59:43.440 I said, man, she would be the perfect singer for us, 1:59:44.080 --> 1:59:47.640 So I call her her managers David Geffen, and I said, 1:59:47.720 --> 1:59:51.080 what do you think of this idea? She goes, oh, Bobby, 1:59:51.720 --> 1:59:54.560 I don't know. I have to speak to David, and 1:59:54.560 --> 1:59:57.320 I said, we'll call him. I know him really well. 1:59:57.360 --> 2:00:00.280 I said, call him. Let's let's do it. We had 2:00:00.280 --> 2:00:04.320 a rehearsal and we oh yeah, and we're I think, 2:00:04.320 --> 2:00:07.120 at the cafe, Go go, and we have the charts 2:00:07.560 --> 2:00:11.880 to Eli's Eli's Coming, and she started and she's at 2:00:11.920 --> 2:00:15.560 the piano. She starts singing Eli's Coming, and I had 2:00:15.840 --> 2:00:20.360 some falsetto then I'd say, Elias coming, whoa you bet? 2:00:20.520 --> 2:00:22.360 And we look at each other. We're laughing and it 2:00:22.520 --> 2:00:26.000 sounds and went down to day and we're playing. It's killing. 2:00:26.400 --> 2:00:29.280 It's so great, and I said, oh, man, Clive's gotta 2:00:29.320 --> 2:00:32.720 be he's gonna be happy. Here's two artists. This band's 2:00:32.760 --> 2:00:36.400 gonna be fantastic. And David was calling me, oh, this 2:00:36.480 --> 2:00:40.320 is gonna be great, and he actually wanted to manage 2:00:40.360 --> 2:00:43.280 the band. And I knew David well, and I thought, 2:00:43.480 --> 2:00:45.400 you know, I think be better to get like a 2:00:45.440 --> 2:00:49.360 neutral manager. And so then she calls me one day 2:00:49.400 --> 2:00:51.360 and says, I don't think it's gonna work I can't 2:00:51.360 --> 2:00:54.120 do it. I said, what do you mean what David 2:00:54.240 --> 2:00:56.720 said that you guys are never gonna make it and 2:00:57.000 --> 2:00:59.800 you know I'm gonna be a big star, And I said, 2:00:59.800 --> 2:01:01.360 I just spoke to him. He said, this is a 2:01:01.400 --> 2:01:03.840 great idea. I probably spoke to him right at the 2:01:03.920 --> 2:01:05.360 point when I said I don't think you should be 2:01:05.400 --> 2:01:08.480 the manager when he called her up and said, forget it, 2:01:08.880 --> 2:01:12.120 this is never gonna work, and she was going to be. 2:01:12.400 --> 2:01:15.320 I mean, the choices that we were going after. Let 2:01:15.320 --> 2:01:18.480 me give you some names. Stevie Wonder he was not 2:01:18.600 --> 2:01:21.720 doing amazingly well at that point. And I got to 2:01:21.840 --> 2:01:25.000 Motown spoke. I spoke to a lawyer, and not knowing 2:01:25.040 --> 2:01:28.560 he was not only Stevie's lawyer but also Moto's lawyer, 2:01:28.960 --> 2:01:31.200 I said, any chance that he would ever be free 2:01:31.240 --> 2:01:33.800 to no, sorry, okay, that was the end of that idea. 2:01:33.960 --> 2:01:37.040 And then I hear very superstitious like, oh, it would 2:01:37.080 --> 2:01:39.640 have been perfect for us, so like you know, going 2:01:39.680 --> 2:01:42.920 step by step. And then our bass player knew like 2:01:43.000 --> 2:01:45.600 Steve Stills well because he was in the springfield with 2:01:45.640 --> 2:01:48.200 them for a minute. He said, be great. I said, yeah, 2:01:48.240 --> 2:01:50.720 he'd be great, and I spoke to him and he 2:01:50.720 --> 2:01:53.920 said no, I'm forming a super band with Buddy Miles. 2:01:54.080 --> 2:01:57.040 I said, okay, he's not available, and that's the point 2:01:57.080 --> 2:02:00.240 when we started to look for other people. But but 2:02:00.400 --> 2:02:02.840 you happen to mention Lauren, he or I couldn't just 2:02:02.920 --> 2:02:05.760 sit here well like I know that. I mean, I've 2:02:05.800 --> 2:02:08.080 never heard that story and that kind of blows my 2:02:08.120 --> 2:02:10.960 mind and everybody all the personalities there. We could go 2:02:11.040 --> 2:02:14.640 much deeper, but not today. I want to thank you 2:02:14.680 --> 2:02:18.600 guys so much. Till next time. This is Bob left 2:02:18.600 --> 2:02:18.960 Sex