Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest this week is a musician extraordinaire, Wadi Wachtell Watty.
Speaker 1: Good to have you here. How are you you've seen him?
Speaker 1: He's the guy with the long curly hair, most famously
Speaker 1: with Linda ron Staff and seemingly with everybody in the
Speaker 1: southern California seene and even played with Brian Ferry on
Speaker 1: the Bright Strip Beer, which is one of my favorite Brian.
Speaker 1: Very well. Okay, you're from Queens right, So what do
Speaker 1: your parents do for a living. My dad was in
Speaker 1: the shoe business, ladies shoes. My mom was a mom
Speaker 1: who unfortunately died when I was pretty young. But really,
Speaker 1: how how young were you? Six years old? Okay, your
Speaker 1: father is in what level of the retail? So he
Speaker 1: owns like a story works in a store, and his
Speaker 1: brother owned a shoe store. Ye owned one and uh
Speaker 1: and Jackson Heights. There's one of the creepy things I
Speaker 1: remember as a kid walking on the main street near
Speaker 1: where I lived. We going every store, and I went
Speaker 1: into the shoe store when I wasn't actually buying something.
Speaker 1: Freaked me out. It's like I only went to the
Speaker 1: story when they had stride rights exactly, which was kids
Speaker 1: shooes if I wanted to buy something. So your father
Speaker 1: on the story your mother died at age six. Did
Speaker 1: your father get remarried? He yeah, he did once unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: when I was about sixteen, and then um, then again
Speaker 1: when I when I first moved to l A right
Speaker 1: what I was twenty years old. He married a wonderful
Speaker 1: woman and they were together until he passed. Okay, and
Speaker 1: how many kids in your family? Just my brother and
Speaker 1: myself and your brother's Jimmy. Yeah, famous art designer, very
Speaker 1: famous art Okay, who's older? Jimmy is older. Jimmy's older.
Speaker 1: So to what degree were you influenced by him? Well,
Speaker 1: we were to answer that. I don't know. Um, that's
Speaker 1: a hard one to answer. I've never been asked that question. Well,
Speaker 1: he taught me a lot about He had a big
Speaker 1: jazz record collection, and we were both into the heavy heavy,
Speaker 1: into the rock and roll records, do wop stuff. And
Speaker 1: he used to bring me to Uh there was a
Speaker 1: DJ in New York called Jocko. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember the Jocko radio show, and he's my brother.
Speaker 1: Brought me with him into the city one day, just
Speaker 1: go to a show, one of those rock and roll shows,
Speaker 1: which I've never seen before. So my brother was was
Speaker 1: musically influential actually in my life, even though I was.
Speaker 1: I saw a guitar on television before my mom died,
Speaker 1: and it just flipped me out. And I looked at
Speaker 1: my mother and when I was five years old, and
Speaker 1: I said, what is that? What's that guy doing? And
Speaker 1: she said, I said, what is he holding? What is
Speaker 1: that thing? She says, that's a guitar. And I went, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I want. She just what, what do you
Speaker 1: mean that's what you want? You're five years old? And
Speaker 1: I said, that's what I want to do. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm gonna play the guitar. And I
Speaker 1: was already attracted to music. I was always singing tunes
Speaker 1: and learning, learning songs and imitating singers stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But once once I saw that guitar on television, it
Speaker 1: blew me away. So that was it. From Okay, how
Speaker 1: old do you act when you when you actually got
Speaker 1: a guitar? Nine, Okay, let's go back. Your brother is
Speaker 1: how much older than you are? Three and a half
Speaker 1: years older than and so your father is essentially a
Speaker 1: single parent. Yeah, and he's working all the time, so
Speaker 1: you basically a free reign. I had free reign, and
Speaker 1: that was all working well until I wound up getting
Speaker 1: tonsillitis and realized and then I was home for you know,
Speaker 1: almost two weeks and realized, you know, this is hipper
Speaker 1: than going to school. I like this better. So I
Speaker 1: became quite a serious truant from then on, really, and
Speaker 1: actually wound up being the worst truant on record in
Speaker 1: New York City at one point. Okay, I have to asked,
Speaker 1: how much school did you miss? Well? I I didn't
Speaker 1: miss enough to where I was never set back a grade,
Speaker 1: you know. But as it went on and on, eventually
Speaker 1: I had to go to I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember a place in New York, a school for young professionals.
Speaker 1: It was called Quintano's. I don't know that you know
Speaker 1: it was. It was right near Carnegie Hall. And someone
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, you should try Quintano's because
Speaker 1: you know, you're never in school and you're never going
Speaker 1: to graduate, and probably right, so I went. I talked
Speaker 1: my father into letting me go there, and and it
Speaker 1: was a great The first day I was there. I
Speaker 1: met Mary from the Shangra laws was and sal Mineo
Speaker 1: had gone there. Patty Duke could go on to this place,
Speaker 1: and uh so I went there and wound up would
Speaker 1: up being truan from there too, because at that point
Speaker 1: my band that I had, we wound up going to Newport,
Speaker 1: RhoD Island. We got an offer. We were playing in
Speaker 1: the village when and a guy heard his place and
Speaker 1: would you like to go to Newport, Ohode Island. Went wow, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: let's go. So we went up there and loved it,
Speaker 1: and we wound up staying up there. We'd go for
Speaker 1: a weekend that would stretch it into it like a
Speaker 1: three day week, four day weekend today, and I'll be
Speaker 1: gonna be up here for the week. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like what it's about at school. Don't worry, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1: And so I came back down and eventually did graduate
Speaker 1: high school. Okay, so your father's single parent, any religious background,
Speaker 1: any of that Jewish? Did you get up bar mitzvah?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, yeah, call that my first professional gig really,
Speaker 1: because you know, you got paid. You know, I got
Speaker 1: up there saying my ass off and okay, so Jewish background.
Speaker 1: In addition to the bar Mitza usually summer camp. Did
Speaker 1: you go to summer and so? Were you a performer
Speaker 1: at summer camp? Somewhat? Yeah? Now? And then yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I was always a ham you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I would do these embarrassing parts and plays and
Speaker 1: things like that, you know, stuff like that, and then
Speaker 1: then when the guitar came along, then I would force
Speaker 1: that down everybody's throat. Okay, so you're nine when you
Speaker 1: get your first guitar, yeah, and how does that happen? Well?
Speaker 1: I just kept bugging my father about it, you know,
Speaker 1: since that time, you know, before my mom died. I
Speaker 1: kept saying guitar, guitar, and he kept saying no, no,
Speaker 1: And finally, by nine years old, he gave in and
Speaker 1: brought me this little Camiko. It was called this little
Speaker 1: cry Me a little guitar. But this was a folk guitar,
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar, it was. It was acoustic guitar, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a folk guitar. It wasn't a round hole guitar.
Speaker 1: It had f holes and stuff. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: a folk guitar was. I never Okay, well, all I
Speaker 1: remember is back in the days of the Hootings, before
Speaker 1: the Beatles, you'd get these folk guitars. They would cross
Speaker 1: like thirty dollars with really wide necks and nylon strings.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, So what was your mine was? No,
Speaker 1: mine was steel string and it was meant for guitar players.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a folk guitar. Like I said, I never
Speaker 1: even knew what a folk guitar was until I basically
Speaker 1: moved to l a and everyone said, you gotta get
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitaro. What what's that? You know? I had Gibson's.
Speaker 1: I had f hold jazz guitars. What they call him,
Speaker 1: there's a term for it, but you know, you know,
Speaker 1: not a folk guitar, right, okay, So yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: you grew up in New York. You call him folk guitar, right, okay.
Speaker 1: So you had this guitar, did you take lessons? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: He got me of the guitar, and then he got
Speaker 1: a teacher for me, a great guy named Gene Dale
Speaker 1: who lived in the Bronx would come to our house
Speaker 1: once a week. And the first day he came, I
Speaker 1: was holding it the way I would because I'm left handed,
Speaker 1: so I'm holding it like this, and he goes, all right,
Speaker 1: first of all, it goes like this, but but I'm
Speaker 1: left handed. He goes, not anymore, You're gonna play it
Speaker 1: this way. Fine. So that happened, and then I started
Speaker 1: taking my lessons, and shortly after we started, he realized
Speaker 1: that my ear was really good, you know, very I
Speaker 1: could learn stuff very quickly by ear. And he said,
Speaker 1: you're not reading. I said, well, I am reading, but
Speaker 1: once I get through a piece, I learned it, so,
Speaker 1: you know, so I said, why don't you start? If
Speaker 1: you would, why don't you record a song for we
Speaker 1: had a tape recorder. I said, well, you leave me
Speaker 1: some songs to learn. So he'd give me like Lulla
Speaker 1: by a Birdland or September in the Rain. He'd play
Speaker 1: it and I could listen to it and learn it
Speaker 1: that way, aside from reading the music as well. So
Speaker 1: you know, I studied with him for several years. That
Speaker 1: went on for a while, and i've about when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen fifteen kind of lost interest in it for
Speaker 1: a little while. And that's when Dad get married. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we moved to a place called Jamaica Estates if
Speaker 1: to this joint and it was it just didn't work. This,
Speaker 1: this marriage was not meant to be. And what's it
Speaker 1: like being the son of a guy who gets remarried
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna work. I mean, what do you thinking?
Speaker 1: And where does his leave you? Well, you know, it
Speaker 1: was all kind of bizarre to me, But unfortunately I
Speaker 1: was so involved in music that it didn't matter to me,
Speaker 1: you know. And and again when you brought up camp,
Speaker 1: Jimmy and I would go to campage summer because in
Speaker 1: New York was so horribly hot, and my dad's dream
Speaker 1: was to make sure the boys had a good time
Speaker 1: for the summer. So away we go. And and I
Speaker 1: remember when we left Jackson Heights and when Harry, my
Speaker 1: dad came up to get us, we drove to well,
Speaker 1: we went to Jamaica, excuse me. We we then moved
Speaker 1: to Jamaica States. Then when we left that summer we
Speaker 1: came back. We drove right to Forest Hills over it
Speaker 1: was where was the camp up state New York? At
Speaker 1: around x Okay, So he brings you back, you leave,
Speaker 1: find all your friends and everything in your new house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the many friends anyway. You know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have any friends because your personality or so deep
Speaker 1: into the music. Yeah, both, you know, and and we
Speaker 1: in Jamaica. I didn't know anybody there, and we weren't
Speaker 1: there that long. So I was commuting every day into
Speaker 1: I think I was still going to Newtown High School
Speaker 1: maybe or something on it. It's all a little vague
Speaker 1: at this point, but but nonetheless we moved to Forest
Speaker 1: Hills and then went started going to Forest Hills High School. Okay,
Speaker 1: So going back to the originally Teachered dell Um, you
Speaker 1: learned how to read music. Do you still read music
Speaker 1: to this day? So if you play a session and
Speaker 1: someone lays it out, you can read right off the page.
Speaker 1: I'm not a great reader at all. I'm I'm okay
Speaker 1: at it. Uh, Guys that I work with I can
Speaker 1: read anything. They're incredible at it because of my ear.
Speaker 1: I started just taking that road with it. So if
Speaker 1: I hear something once, I learn it. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: can still read. Okay. So then when you're taking lessons,
Speaker 1: what he's teaching you, scales, chords what both of those
Speaker 1: plus we were working out of there's a course called
Speaker 1: the mel Bay. Of course I had a bell Bay
Speaker 1: berl right. Well, so I went through all those books
Speaker 1: I know I have stopped at the first right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I went through one through nine. Well that's why
Speaker 1: I'm not guitarist. And and then he was teaching me
Speaker 1: Bach piano etudes. We would play, you know, two part inventions.
Speaker 1: They're cold, so I would read the top line, he
Speaker 1: would play the bottom line. It was like the two
Speaker 1: hands of a piano and it was great. It was
Speaker 1: really cool. But that was one of the things when
Speaker 1: he said you're not reading. I went, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: am reading. I said, you want me to play your part.
Speaker 1: I know both parts, I said, I get through it
Speaker 1: and I learned it, so, you know, halfway during the week,
Speaker 1: I said, oh, well, I might as well learn his
Speaker 1: part too. So he has switched parts of me. I'll
Speaker 1: play yours too. He goes out, man, and he realized
Speaker 1: that my ear was gonna be the ruler of my Look.
Speaker 1: The big issue when you take guitar lessons is whether
Speaker 1: you or any music lessons is whether you practice or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you practice? I practiced. I went through my lessons.
Speaker 1: You know I didn't. I didn't sit there and grind
Speaker 1: it out, grind it out, grind it out. I practiced
Speaker 1: more now as i've been trying to learn a certain
Speaker 1: type of a playing but n Hawaiian slack key guitar
Speaker 1: it's called and it's just this beautiful finger picking stuff
Speaker 1: that that the Hawaiians learned. How much work do you
Speaker 1: put into that today? Anywhere from an hour a day,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours a day, or you know. I'm
Speaker 1: constantly listening to it China, because I grew up again
Speaker 1: without a folk guitar, you know, so I grew up
Speaker 1: with a pick in my hand. I was never a
Speaker 1: finger picker. And I started listening when I realized I'm
Speaker 1: Beatle Records. These guys are the isn't their fingers a
Speaker 1: little bit? I gotta try to figure that out. But
Speaker 1: I never really had to do it much until working
Speaker 1: with Stevie Nicks and the band that she brought me
Speaker 1: back into. Um, there was someone else when we do Landslide,
Speaker 1: someone else would play Landslide, but then they they left
Speaker 1: the band, so suddenly you were Mr land Slide And
Speaker 1: I went, um, landslide? How does that go? Because Stevie
Speaker 1: said to me, do you know how to play landslide?
Speaker 1: And of course I'm going, yeah, sure, of course, how
Speaker 1: do you play landslide? You know, how do you play Landslide?
Speaker 1: I said to my friend Brett Tuggle, who was still
Speaker 1: in the band, and he would normally play it, How
Speaker 1: do you play lands side as well? There's a lot
Speaker 1: to it? And he started to play the song from me,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah that song? Yeah, I know that song. I
Speaker 1: didn't know it, you know. So it took a while
Speaker 1: and I how long did it take you to do
Speaker 1: it well? To do it? Well? It's I don't know,
Speaker 1: a couple of months of getting my fingers to do
Speaker 1: it correctly. And the first time I did it was Stevie.
Speaker 1: We went away to do these radio spots. She said
Speaker 1: to me, you know landslide, right? I went yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: and she goes, well, I gotta go do these radio spots.
Speaker 1: You want to do it with me? I went, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love to. So we went up to northern California
Speaker 1: and do these eight am radio bits and play Landslide
Speaker 1: and I was butchering it, and finally Stevie said to me.
Speaker 1: We went to dinner that night, she goes, you know what,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you that was the absolute worst landslide
Speaker 1: I've ever in my life. And yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry and uh. And then it came time to
Speaker 1: where Brett Tuggle was out of the band and I
Speaker 1: hadn't learned it. So I sat in my house and
Speaker 1: just practiced when and went on for a while, and
Speaker 1: my wife had walked by the room and she's going,
Speaker 1: that was a good landslide today, and I'm gonna thanks, honey,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was really nervous about it. And
Speaker 1: we got down to rehearsal and we're going through the
Speaker 1: show and all of a sudden, it's time for landslide
Speaker 1: and I'm sweating and it doesn't really worried. The last
Speaker 1: thing she ever said to me was that was the
Speaker 1: worst thing I've ever heard. So we started, we play it.
Speaker 1: She sings it all the way through. She looks at me,
Speaker 1: she goes, it's beautiful, all right, my girl. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when you're playing the guitar and you're a teenager, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, your teacher is bringing out all this classical stuff,
Speaker 1: but some you know, mel stuff, But don't you want
Speaker 1: to play the stuff that's on the radio. Well again, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. Well. One of the thing that made me
Speaker 1: realize I had this ear was I heard tequila, you know,
Speaker 1: by the Champs you know. And as he's teaching me,
Speaker 1: there's a thing called a one major chord. And I
Speaker 1: played the one major chord and then I just because
Speaker 1: I don't know what was one major chord, Well, it
Speaker 1: just means it's just a form of a chord, you know,
Speaker 1: if you know, like a bar chord. Yeah, you bar
Speaker 1: your bar with the first finger and you and you
Speaker 1: place these three friends and that's your basic one major chord.
Speaker 1: So so I was on the fifth fret, say fifth fret,
Speaker 1: and then I just accidentally went to the third fret
Speaker 1: and played the same chord and I heard that one
Speaker 1: and that one. I went, hey, wait a minute, that's
Speaker 1: that song, Tequila, that's what it is. So that and
Speaker 1: I went, alright, I'm playing that song, man, this is great,
Speaker 1: you know. So I from that and then I heard
Speaker 1: Rebel Rouser Dwayne Eddie, and I started realizing, oh, I
Speaker 1: can figure these things out, you know, And so one
Speaker 1: after the other I started just learning to So it's
Speaker 1: like that. And we you were a record collector, Well,
Speaker 1: like I said about my brother, my brother had a
Speaker 1: we we were both had a bunch of rock and
Speaker 1: roll records, for sure, But this is pre beatles. You
Speaker 1: know we had, you know, Elvis. I was playing guitar
Speaker 1: before Elvis came out. You know, when I first started
Speaker 1: playing guitar, out came Blue Swede Shoes by Carl Perkins,
Speaker 1: you know, and then then Elvis happened. Okay, since I
Speaker 1: can look it up on the internet, your how well,
Speaker 1: what year were you born? Seven? So you were literally
Speaker 1: playing before Elvis became big. Yeah, so in fifty seven,
Speaker 1: I think when Elvis came out, I was already had
Speaker 1: a guitar in my hand for a year, you know.
Speaker 1: But uh, but aside from the rock and roll records,
Speaker 1: Jimmy had an enormous jazz collection, and and I loved
Speaker 1: that too. So I would sit home and just put
Speaker 1: on a record and learn it, and put on another
Speaker 1: record and learn let's listen to the stuff. And then
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Mickey Baker, if you remember
Speaker 1: Mickey and Sylvia love Change, was a guitar player. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book about how to improvise, how to play,
Speaker 1: how to impvise. I'm dying to learn how to do that.
Speaker 1: And so the full first part of the book was
Speaker 1: all about chords and this and that. The second second
Speaker 1: part is about improvisation. And this disclaimer saying, well, nobody
Speaker 1: can teach you how to improvise, went, well, what the
Speaker 1: fund did I buy this book for? Then? And but
Speaker 1: in that page it's said, what I suggest you do
Speaker 1: is learn every solo you like. Listen to horn players,
Speaker 1: listen to jazz players, listen to guys, any solo you like,
Speaker 1: learn it and learn everything you like, and eventually you'll
Speaker 1: start generating your own stuff. So that was it for me.
Speaker 1: I just sat home, and that's what you know, reinforce
Speaker 1: the truancy. I just had a job to do, now,
Speaker 1: you know. So I would sit there and put on
Speaker 1: Miles Davis and Lou Donaldson or you know, Donald Bird
Speaker 1: or anybody and just listen to the solos. Fine one
Speaker 1: I like learn it, Find another one I like learn it.
Speaker 1: There was Johnny smith Le's good, great jazz guitar players
Speaker 1: to to emulate. So I did a lot of So
Speaker 1: when you're when you're doing this is the dream to
Speaker 1: be a professional musician, you know, I did it was
Speaker 1: just to learn. It was just to learn. I knew
Speaker 1: this was all I was gonna do. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that you could do it as a profession. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, it didn't even that didn't matter to me.
Speaker 1: I was just driven to to learn music on this instrument,
Speaker 1: and and then singing, and then the vocals and and
Speaker 1: you know, do wop stuff started mattering more and more
Speaker 1: and more. But my basis was a guitar. And like
Speaker 1: I said to my father, he'd say, you know, you
Speaker 1: should do that as a hobby. I'm going this is
Speaker 1: it for me. This is this is my hobby, and
Speaker 1: this is gonna be all I do. I can't you
Speaker 1: know what am I gonna do? Be it? Because you
Speaker 1: should be a doctor. I don't think so, you know
Speaker 1: diff I want to play guitar, you know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how old were you when you form your first band?
Speaker 1: I was about fourteen or fifteen when a guy that
Speaker 1: I was going to school and said, Bobby walked, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes, you play guitar, right, yeah, he goes, I've
Speaker 1: got a little band. You know you want to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. I never thought of doing that, sure,
Speaker 1: And it was just there wasn't even a base in
Speaker 1: the band. It was just accordion, drums, trumpet, and me.
Speaker 1: And eventually we got the accordion out of there. And
Speaker 1: we got a vibe player, but still no base and uh,
Speaker 1: but we did society gigs, you know, weddings and bar
Speaker 1: mitz fills and dances and things like that and who's sang. No,
Speaker 1: it was instrumentals. It was all instrumental. And what kind
Speaker 1: of money were you making? Twenty bucks a night? Well,
Speaker 1: twenty bucks a night when you're like fourteen a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Absolutely, yeah, would you spend the money on?
Speaker 1: We'd go we we would uh take the subway into
Speaker 1: New York and you know, go to the arcades and
Speaker 1: just you know, waste the money. You know, you can
Speaker 1: buy a hot dog her two and throw it into
Speaker 1: ski ball or whatever. You know. That's what I remember.
Speaker 1: The first thing. I'm going to my friends into the city.
Speaker 1: When you're fourteen, that's what you do, go to the arcade,
Speaker 1: get a slice. Okay, but you still playing that same guitar. No.
Speaker 1: The great thing was the second year, you know, nine
Speaker 1: years old, he gave me this. My dad gave me
Speaker 1: that Comico guitar. At ten years old, he bought me.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful Gibson L seven. It's called it's a single
Speaker 1: cutaway jazz guitar. Just gorgeous. So I was in heaven.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. And shortly after that I got
Speaker 1: an amp they'll pick up for the guitar, and that's
Speaker 1: what I was playing the band. I had my little
Speaker 1: tiny Fender amp and my big fat Gibson jazz guitar,
Speaker 1: and that's what I was playing. And then I went
Speaker 1: at summer camp. This guy had a less pull and
Speaker 1: I just had a less summer. Yeah, I was. And
Speaker 1: I saw this black just like Niel you was like black,
Speaker 1: three pick up bigs beyond it? What's that? Man? That's great?
Speaker 1: I gotta And this guy couldn't play at all. I
Speaker 1: mean I was. You know, I've been playing with two
Speaker 1: years already, so I can really, you know, play better
Speaker 1: than him. He was a lovely guy. Um. But so
Speaker 1: when I came back from campus summer, that's all I
Speaker 1: wanted was less pool, less pool, less pool, and my
Speaker 1: dad's gonna no, and I can't unafford it. A shoe
Speaker 1: store going here. My grandmother, who was my mom's mother,
Speaker 1: she she had a real attitude. This woman. I think
Speaker 1: I got a lot of her in me and she
Speaker 1: my dad grew up with a friend of his name
Speaker 1: Harry Waxman, who was very turned out to be a
Speaker 1: very wealthy builder in New York, built all these communities
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Always said he'd take care of
Speaker 1: my father blah blah blah. And my grandmother always had
Speaker 1: this thing. And she goes, why don't you you know, Bobby,
Speaker 1: you can't your dad can't afford this to guitar, and
Speaker 1: you keep talking about so why don't you write to
Speaker 1: your nasty uncle, Harry bunch of right to him and
Speaker 1: ask him to get it for you. We're going to
Speaker 1: really do you think? She goes, yeah, I write him
Speaker 1: a letter. He's got tons of money. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: wrote this letter and that three or four days later.
Speaker 1: It must have been longer than that, but not much longer.
Speaker 1: My dad calls me at home after school. He goes,
Speaker 1: get over here. That means come to the shoes get
Speaker 1: over here. Now. What just get over here right now? Okay?
Speaker 1: What what did I do? And I go to the store.
Speaker 1: He sees he get into the there's in the shoes store.
Speaker 1: There's that they called the die room, in the back
Speaker 1: room where they die the shoes and they you know,
Speaker 1: change things. Get in the die room, alright, alright, take
Speaker 1: it easy. What what? Just get in there? All right?
Speaker 1: He comes up to me and he's I'm sitting there.
Speaker 1: He goes, did you write to your uncle Harry? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, you wrote to your
Speaker 1: uncle Harry behind my back and asked him to get
Speaker 1: you a guitar. He says, what is the matter with you?
Speaker 1: What kind of manners do you have? Who do you think?
Speaker 1: And while he's yelling at me, I'm looking around, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to avoid his eyes. So I'm looking around
Speaker 1: this little room, and in the corner of the room
Speaker 1: I see the head of a guitar case and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it wait a minute, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: And he's yelling at me, but he's starting to smile
Speaker 1: at it. What's going on here? What is that? Because
Speaker 1: you better go look at that? So I opened it up.
Speaker 1: Then it's this less pool. Uh, not the one I wanted. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: however there was it was They called it a TV model.
Speaker 1: Let's Paul yellow. Ah, what what was the difference between
Speaker 1: this one and the one you wanted? Well? I saw
Speaker 1: this black, nasty looking one, you know, the three pickups
Speaker 1: with the bigs beyond it. One cut away just like
Speaker 1: Neil Young's right, I understand, but what was I understand
Speaker 1: what that is? I didn't know there was this different Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this. One was what they called
Speaker 1: the TV model, and it was it had two cutaways.
Speaker 1: It was a lighter guitar. It wasn't as heavy duty
Speaker 1: a job, had less pickups on it, but there it was.
Speaker 1: It was my solid body guitar. So I was in heaven,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh so I loved it. So I
Speaker 1: showed up to my society band gig with this thing
Speaker 1: or what what's that? This only new guitar. Man, It's great, Okay.
Speaker 1: So then you're playing the society gigs at the time,
Speaker 1: in the early sixties or late late thees. Rock and
Speaker 1: roll early sixties is pop tracks and folk and so
Speaker 1: before before the Beatles, you play in the science society
Speaker 1: gig and society being and what else jazz gigs, you know,
Speaker 1: jazz jazz tunes and uh standards, That's that's what it was.
Speaker 1: That's what we did for a living. You know. We
Speaker 1: played almost every weekend with this little band, the Nocturns,
Speaker 1: and you know, you know, that was it. You know,
Speaker 1: had they call a fake book. You know what a
Speaker 1: fake bootree explained to my audience. A fake book is
Speaker 1: this gigantic, loose leaf book that has every every standard
Speaker 1: ever written in it. And uh, it's what you do
Speaker 1: when you're playing society gigs, when you're playing what they
Speaker 1: call casuals or like weddings and bar missas. You have
Speaker 1: this enormous book and someone go go to go to
Speaker 1: to thirty, go to page two thirty and it's you know,
Speaker 1: sat and Doll go to Santiago, to September the rain,
Speaker 1: you know it a million songs in it. So we
Speaker 1: that's what we did with you know everything I remember
Speaker 1: the fake book was away. It gave you the chords
Speaker 1: and the lead without buying the real sheet music, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah. It was a collect yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was a bogus collection these tunes instead of having
Speaker 1: to go going on the internet, like yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: to the sheet music store, right, we're bruying five thousand songs, right,
Speaker 1: and they were like three dollars a piece. There was
Speaker 1: expensive as an album. Yeah. Yeah. So you're playing in
Speaker 1: the society gig and that happens all the way to
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Yeah, pretty much so yeah, and uh, we
Speaker 1: were worn for that, and Beach Boys and Beatles kind
Speaker 1: of happened around the same time earlier, earlier, so I
Speaker 1: was really taken by that. And and again at summer camp,
Speaker 1: I met some guys there who also loved music and saying.
Speaker 1: So we started every night we'd go down. We were
Speaker 1: waiters in this camp at that at that age, and
Speaker 1: we went to this camp long enough, you graduated to
Speaker 1: that level waiters, junior counselors, the whole thing, right, So
Speaker 1: we after clean up, after the dinner meal, we'd go
Speaker 1: down to the baseball diamond and sing do op tunes,
Speaker 1: you know we do remember then by the earls or
Speaker 1: you know, I can't even think of any titles right now,
Speaker 1: but do optunits and just acapella stuff. And really got
Speaker 1: into that, and then Beach Boys songs and and then
Speaker 1: Beatles happened. But and then I'd come back and I'd
Speaker 1: still be with the Society band. But at that point
Speaker 1: we had put together with my friends who lived in
Speaker 1: New Chelle, this other band playing surfing music, you know,
Speaker 1: surfing instrumentals, people from Nero. Well, I met him in camp,
Speaker 1: and uh, so I'd go up to there and we'd
Speaker 1: practice our surfing tunes. We started doing a lot. It
Speaker 1: was all instrumental still, and we started adding some beach
Speaker 1: boy vocals and stuff. But then then Beatles happened and
Speaker 1: everything a little bit slower. The beach. Which are you
Speaker 1: with the band with the friends from New Rochelle? Are
Speaker 1: you playing gigs with them? We started to do some
Speaker 1: gigs up up in New England. Yeah, okay, No England
Speaker 1: and Westchester. So how do you become aware of the Beatles?
Speaker 1: The way? The same way we all did at Sullivan Show. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you're watching on Sunday night and you're thinking, what
Speaker 1: I'm My mind is in a million pieces on the
Speaker 1: floor in front of me. I've never seen anything like this,
Speaker 1: you know, we all we went through Elvis and Everly's.
Speaker 1: Everly's was like the most incredible thing. I said, well,
Speaker 1: it's better than Elvis, two of them and the best
Speaker 1: looking things, the best looking guys I've ever seen, with
Speaker 1: these enormous guitars. So it was Everly's Everly's and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's Beetles with their haircuts, in their
Speaker 1: hip suits, and there's playing these tunes. It was all over. Man,
Speaker 1: that was it, and from then on the Society Band
Speaker 1: started doing Beatles songs. Really oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. You're
Speaker 1: still without a base, without a bad yeah, without a base,
Speaker 1: still no base. So the Society Band is doing Beatles.
Speaker 1: But to what degree to the Beatles energize you would say, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to go in this direction or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Completely they at that point. And what
Speaker 1: I have to say. When this happened, we were now
Speaker 1: living in Forest Hills. We had left in Jamaica. It
Speaker 1: was my brother and myself and my dad living in
Speaker 1: this apartment building and Queens and Forest Hills. So Beatles
Speaker 1: have come out. It's all you can think about. And again,
Speaker 1: I'm learning every tune, you know. I'm at home listening
Speaker 1: to every every song and every album, learning every song.
Speaker 1: And then one day I'm hearing we in this place.
Speaker 1: There was a building here, a big awning here, and
Speaker 1: another building here. This is in Forest Hills on Austin Street.
Speaker 1: And I went out one day, left left my place,
Speaker 1: cutting school, of course, and I heard guitar playing coming
Speaker 1: out of one of the apartments. What the hell, what's that?
Speaker 1: So it was in the other building. So I went
Speaker 1: into the other building and went from Florida floor. Uh,
Speaker 1: walking down each hallway until I found the place where
Speaker 1: it was coming out of. Knocked on the door. Big
Speaker 1: big guy answers that this is the door. Have you
Speaker 1: set cat, get a suit and tie on? Ties open?
Speaker 1: But I went, are you uh you playing guitar in here?
Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, oh yeah. I said, well, my name
Speaker 1: is Bobby walked tell and uh, I can help you.
Speaker 1: You need help. And because I can hear what he
Speaker 1: was doing, I said, you need help, but I can
Speaker 1: help you. Man, I play guitar. Because yeah, what's your name?
Speaker 1: He says? Leslie Weinstein? Okay, cool. So Leslie and I
Speaker 1: became brothers and we all lived in the same building,
Speaker 1: you know. So he knew my dad, I knew his
Speaker 1: mom and his dad and his brother, and he knew
Speaker 1: jim my brother Jimmy very well. And and uh I
Speaker 1: taught Leslie how to play. And for those people don't know,
Speaker 1: that's Leslie West. Yeah. I was gonna say. He became
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I on the radio one day
Speaker 1: here Mississippi Queen by this guy, Leslie West. Run wait
Speaker 1: a minute, and Leslie, this this all relates back to
Speaker 1: the guitar story. Just go on a second. Why is
Speaker 1: he dressed up with a suit Because Leslie worked at
Speaker 1: the jewelry Exchange, you know, because I said, how come
Speaker 1: you all dressed up? Exactly he said, I worked. I
Speaker 1: worked at the diamond Exchange. You know. We'll take a
Speaker 1: quick break and come back with more of my conversation
Speaker 1: with guitar virtuoso Wadi Wachtell, recorded live at the tune
Speaker 1: In Studios in Venice, California. It's so great having musicians
Speaker 1: here on the podcast. I'm sure you enjoyed Shirley Manson
Speaker 1: of Garbage and my interview with Moby at the l
Speaker 1: A Times Festival of Books. This week, Wadi wak Tells
Speaker 1: old some great stories about working in the studio with
Speaker 1: Linda ron Staton the Everly Brothers. Whether you come for
Speaker 1: the music protect business or otherwise, be the first year
Speaker 1: next week's episode of the podcast by subscribing I'm tune
Speaker 1: in Apple Podcast or your podcast player of choice. While
Speaker 1: you're there, please be sure to rate and review. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get back to my conversation with Wady Wachtell. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you were telling the story, so I had my
Speaker 1: still had my less poll, but I wanted beatle guitars.
Speaker 1: Now you know a country gentlemen. I wanted a Rickenbacker.
Speaker 1: So I got the Rickenbacker somehow, I don't remember even how,
Speaker 1: stealing money from my father probably and soul Leslie gave
Speaker 1: Leslie my less pole and he was most have bought it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we ever exchanged any money on it.
Speaker 1: And that was the guitar when you first saw Leslie
Speaker 1: West play, and that was my guitar. He was playing,
Speaker 1: you know, the this yellow little double cutaway in that pool.
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan of the first album, which
Speaker 1: was called Mountain with Leslie West. It was the second
Speaker 1: album had the Mississippi Queen had and it had baby
Speaker 1: I'm Down. It was on some Columbia Pictures label. I
Speaker 1: went to see them at the Fillmore in the fall
Speaker 1: sixty and I was big Mountain fan. So okay, then
Speaker 1: we put his first Bandity of the Vagrants was Leslie's
Speaker 1: first band, and it was Larry, his brother Larry a
Speaker 1: great singer in Peter Sabatino, another guy and Jerry I
Speaker 1: just forgot his name. And they needed a drummer, so
Speaker 1: they didn't have a drummer yet. I said when I
Speaker 1: play a little drums. So I played drums until we
Speaker 1: found their drummer, Roger So and we played the scene
Speaker 1: in the in the city, we played some gigs, you
Speaker 1: know as the Vagrants, you know, with me on drums
Speaker 1: was okay, But he's got a band and he's starting
Speaker 1: down the road. What are you doing? Well at that point,
Speaker 1: I was very very uh annoyed that, you know, Leslie's
Speaker 1: got a gig and I can't. I can't even walk
Speaker 1: into Atlantic Record, you know, I can't get arrested, you know,
Speaker 1: uh musically and so well, like I said, I had
Speaker 1: put bands together in Newport. I had had this band
Speaker 1: from New York and I went This was all now
Speaker 1: late sixties, and the draft board was yelling for me.
Speaker 1: You know, it was time to go be drafted and
Speaker 1: I wasn't about to go in the army. So um,
Speaker 1: we had to move. We had to get out of there.
Speaker 1: I kept missing physicals and so we moved to Connecticut
Speaker 1: to go to college to get a deferment. With this.
Speaker 1: I had a band that my my same band from
Speaker 1: New York, the Guy No No, No, this was a band,
Speaker 1: this actually the Society band broke up. I'm getting out
Speaker 1: of context here. And when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I met some other guys I wanted to put together
Speaker 1: a different band, and I didn't want to keep going
Speaker 1: on New Achelle. So I met a guy who was
Speaker 1: a guitar player, convinced him he should be the bass player.
Speaker 1: We met and we heard a great drummer who was
Speaker 1: in some other band, and we convinced him to come
Speaker 1: play with us. And we found a friend who played Oregon.
Speaker 1: So we had this little four piece band, and that's
Speaker 1: where we went to Newport with originally. And that band
Speaker 1: lasted up until we got to Connecticut avoiding the draft,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, one day, they all just
Speaker 1: quit me. They all just said, we're out of this,
Speaker 1: We're leaving, We're done. We're done because we don't want
Speaker 1: to play music anymore. Well they don't want Yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't want to They don't want to be where they are.
Speaker 1: One of them was in love with a girl we
Speaker 1: had met along the way. He wanted to go be
Speaker 1: with her, play with her. Um My friend, my lifelong
Speaker 1: bass player friend, decided he'd had enough. I wanted to quit,
Speaker 1: and so I was just stuck and moved back to
Speaker 1: New York for a while. Eventually put another band together
Speaker 1: with some people I knew from Newport that we had met.
Speaker 1: I took my bass player with me again and we
Speaker 1: managed to put another band together and went back up
Speaker 1: to Newport and played up there for a while. How
Speaker 1: did you get the gigs in Newport? Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: we were playing at a place in the city and
Speaker 1: this man was at the show. He just happened to
Speaker 1: be in this club, the Eighth Wonder. If you remember
Speaker 1: the club on on Eighth Street, and I don't remember,
Speaker 1: we had scene. Well, this is the Hellers, Trudy Heller,
Speaker 1: Joel Heller. We had a club called the Eighth Wonder.
Speaker 1: So we were playing there and this guy came up
Speaker 1: to me and said, Hi, my name is Paul Schnittman actually,
Speaker 1: and I own a club up in Newport, Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: Would you guys like to come up there and play.
Speaker 1: I think you guys are really good. We'd love to
Speaker 1: have you up there. Wow. Okay, So then that started
Speaker 1: the whole Newport faction, which led to that band going
Speaker 1: to Connecticut breaking up, and eventually wound up back in
Speaker 1: Newport with pieces of other band that I had met
Speaker 1: up there, and we were. And the thing about Newport,
Speaker 1: this is where somebody said to me one day, have
Speaker 1: you heard the cow Sills? And I went, what's a
Speaker 1: cow Sill? What kind of word is that? And they said,
Speaker 1: that's that's this group. That's their name. So well, that's
Speaker 1: their name, you know, that's the last name of Cow's Lill. No,
Speaker 1: I've not heard them. What are you talking about? This
Speaker 1: is these four boys. They're really really good, really so
Speaker 1: I went over to this place where they were playing,
Speaker 1: and they were incredible. There was the four only just
Speaker 1: the four of them, Billy, Bobby Barry, and John Barry
Speaker 1: and John must have been like twelve and thirteen years
Speaker 1: old at the most, and and they were doing the
Speaker 1: best beatles you've ever heard. That's what they did. They
Speaker 1: just did beatles songs basically, and they sounded incredible and
Speaker 1: and I loved And then I didn't realize though, when
Speaker 1: I'd go back to this club. I worked in Dorian's
Speaker 1: usually once or twice a weekend. This drunk guy would
Speaker 1: come in, this alcoholic bastard would come in and be
Speaker 1: annoying and be loud and be obnoxious, and I'd have
Speaker 1: him thrown out. And finally the club owner one night
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, Watty, that's a that's Bud
Speaker 1: counsel what so, yeah, that's their father. You gotta be
Speaker 1: kidding me, man, that's their father. So and he would
Speaker 1: he'd still come in and come in. And he said
Speaker 1: to me one night he wanted to want to manage me.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna get serious, Are you kidding me? I
Speaker 1: can't stand being around you. You know, you're a fucking monster.
Speaker 1: You're drunk all the time. Because well, my kids are
Speaker 1: gonna make it. Well, good luck to them with you
Speaker 1: on board. And he goes, we're gonna get it together.
Speaker 1: I said, oh yeah, well when you get a million
Speaker 1: dollars together, ask me, then okay, it's okay. And so
Speaker 1: we went from playing in Newport wound up going up
Speaker 1: to Vermont. You know, we got an offer to come
Speaker 1: to this club in Vermont. Well, you know, since I
Speaker 1: went to college Vermont, but a lot of time in Vermont.
Speaker 1: We're in Vermont sugar Bush, Okay, you know with a
Speaker 1: bluetooth that's exactly right, with the big bluetooth hanging for
Speaker 1: the ceiling, the bluetooth, that's the club. That was it.
Speaker 1: So you went and played those so we went played
Speaker 1: up there and then they asked us come back for
Speaker 1: like the whole ski season, so we did. Which did
Speaker 1: you ski at all? I don't know. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Warren Vermont exactly. That's so we're up there and we
Speaker 1: were you know, we're running out of options now. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea was to get a record deal,
Speaker 1: and that didn't wasn't happening, and there was a DJ
Speaker 1: and Providence who was trying to help us, and that
Speaker 1: fell through. And I'm up there going, man, this is
Speaker 1: like the end of the road. We're up here and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be discovered at the winter in Vermont
Speaker 1: fifty below. I don't think we're gonna you know, Clive
Speaker 1: Davids Saint coming here again. And all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I got a phone call from the guy that used
Speaker 1: to run the club I played in, David Ray, What
Speaker 1: do you called me? What New England accent? Hey? What
Speaker 1: it's Dave? Hey man? What are you doing? He goes,
Speaker 1: what are you? I'm working for Bud now and what
Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding me? He goes, what he's got
Speaker 1: money now? He says, the kids are making it. He's
Speaker 1: got a serious deal with the Dairy Association. And he's so.
Speaker 1: He goes, hold on, I'm gonna put him on the phone.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? He said, I'm okay, Bud. He goes, yeah.
Speaker 1: He says, we're coming up to see you, but you
Speaker 1: are He goes, yeah, we're coming up tomorrow to see you. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: great blizzard. They drive up, pure fucking blizzard. Took him
Speaker 1: forever to get there. And at this what this band
Speaker 1: is now called. It was used to be called the Orphans,
Speaker 1: now it's called Twice Nicely, it's a different arrange as
Speaker 1: a girl, really talented girl who we moved out here
Speaker 1: together with that band. But so there's Budd and David
Speaker 1: Ray sitting at this club at the Bluetooth watching the band.
Speaker 1: And I get done with the set. He goes, band
Speaker 1: sounds good, wady, band sounds good. I said, yeah, good, thanks.
Speaker 1: He goes, So, I got the million dollars. Now you
Speaker 1: want to come with me? Absolutely, I'm ready. It's fine.
Speaker 1: We're moving into New York with us. You know, we
Speaker 1: got this apartment in New York. We got rooms all
Speaker 1: over the place. You guys can live downstairs. Okay, great.
Speaker 1: So at that point we moved back to the city,
Speaker 1: living with the councils at that point, up and down.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the kids is always hanging out
Speaker 1: with us. I'm always hanging out with Billy Counsel, the
Speaker 1: oldest one. And eventually Bud said, I'm moving my operation
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles. Do you want to go? Definitely? I
Speaker 1: said I can't. And this relates back to you know,
Speaker 1: Leslie has got a career goal, right, I can't get
Speaker 1: a session. I can't No one wants to hear me play.
Speaker 1: So yes, please, man, I want to go to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So we moved out with we drove out with our
Speaker 1: manager Dave, and came out here. What year was? This
Speaker 1: is okay, but let's go back. We were talking just
Speaker 1: before we started that you went into Haven College for
Speaker 1: a semester. Yeah, when was that? Well that was sixty seven,
Speaker 1: I guess. So how did you get out of the draft?
Speaker 1: I got out of the draft by Finally I told Bud,
Speaker 1: I said, look, I have this problem. The Jeff board
Speaker 1: is on my tail because I've missed five six physicals already,
Speaker 1: and uh, the last letter I got said you're going
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. You don't even need to take your physical,
Speaker 1: just show just show up at Fort Fort Washington, Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and you were going to go right from there to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: And so Bud and bless his heart and his the
Speaker 1: one good thing he ever did for anybody probably was
Speaker 1: he goes, We're gonna fix this for you, and I
Speaker 1: want to put you in touch with somebody. And he
Speaker 1: put me in touch with Herbie Cohen. Remember who Herbie?
Speaker 1: His brother was a publisher as a manager of Frank Zappa.
Speaker 1: Herbie was, Yeah, So I meet her one day in
Speaker 1: New York at the Carnegie I think it was, and
Speaker 1: I was sitting He goes, so Bud told me you've
Speaker 1: got a problem with the with the army and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you got a physical coming up. Point. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: So he says, well, I'm gonna help you. He says.
Speaker 1: First of all, you gotta believe something. What's that? He goes,
Speaker 1: they don't want you? What because they don't want people
Speaker 1: like you. You're not army material. They can't do anything
Speaker 1: with someone like you. You'll be a waste of their time.
Speaker 1: You won't bend to what they want. They don't need you.
Speaker 1: You got to believe that. You really got to believe it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're not going to get out of this. Okay,
Speaker 1: I believe it. I believe it. And so he told me,
Speaker 1: he said, well, when's your physical I said it's two
Speaker 1: and a half weeks or somebody three weeks. He was
Speaker 1: all right, well, go, what is your father think about this?
Speaker 1: I said, my father wants me to go in the army.
Speaker 1: He's so really well, he was just disheartened with my
Speaker 1: whole truant life, you know, the bad thing. And you
Speaker 1: know he didn't want to see me go to the
Speaker 1: front line or anything. But your army would street you, right.
Speaker 1: So ah, he said, well, listen, I think you should
Speaker 1: tell your father you're not going in and tell him
Speaker 1: he's going to help you. Because I want your father
Speaker 1: to drag you into that physical. I want you to
Speaker 1: have your father hand you over to the to the sergeant.
Speaker 1: I want them to see that you don't want to
Speaker 1: be there, and I want them that your father wants
Speaker 1: you in there. And this is all part of what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this Lucky. He says, you look like
Speaker 1: a nervous guy, man, so just play that up. Be nervous,
Speaker 1: be really nervous. He says, don't, don't do anything they
Speaker 1: want you to do. Don't answer questions on the physical.
Speaker 1: Don't ah, don't take the physical. Refused to take the physical.
Speaker 1: Tell them you can't undress in front of other people.
Speaker 1: You're too shy, you're too scared. Okay, fine, all right,
Speaker 1: yeah I can I can handle this, Okay. So so
Speaker 1: I took his advice and I just played it up
Speaker 1: from there, and I started. I didn't shower for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. I didn't shave till the day before.
Speaker 1: I didn't wash my hair, didn't do anything. I just
Speaker 1: I didn't eat. I just ate like fruit fruit. So
Speaker 1: I weighed nothing by the time. By the time that
Speaker 1: physical came, it wasn't sleeping. I was drinking coffee all
Speaker 1: night the only time I drank coffee. Stayed awake for
Speaker 1: days and days. I looked ridiculous. And I shaved that
Speaker 1: without water the day before, and so I was cunsoled
Speaker 1: over me and I prepped, I really prepped for it,
Speaker 1: and played it up and got there, and I was
Speaker 1: did your father drag you? And I made my father
Speaker 1: dragged me. And I said, not only are you gonna
Speaker 1: help me? Not only am I not going in the
Speaker 1: army you're gonna help me because what No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I said, yes you are. You're gonna drag me in
Speaker 1: there because I'm not gonna be any part of this,
Speaker 1: and yes you are. So he did. He got on
Speaker 1: board and he brought me in, and so I kept
Speaker 1: hearing Herbie's voice. You know, don't don't answer the questions
Speaker 1: on the on the on the paper, on the written part.
Speaker 1: So they'd hand me the thing and I'd sit there
Speaker 1: and I would just take the pencil and just go
Speaker 1: break the point of it. And then I think I
Speaker 1: would come around and see I haven't written anything. I went, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I broke it depends only give me another
Speaker 1: one break it. So I had hardly wrote anything on this.
Speaker 1: And then the physical part came and I just played
Speaker 1: it up, played it up. And when he said the
Speaker 1: thing about refused to take your clothes off, that was
Speaker 1: all well and good in theory, but there was nobody
Speaker 1: to say it too. There was There was nobody there
Speaker 1: except some old guy who all you did was hand
Speaker 1: him your clothes and he handed your receipt for it.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't gonna complain to him. He didn't ship
Speaker 1: so and the only by the way. The only other
Speaker 1: thing I had was I knew everyone else had scores
Speaker 1: and scores of paperwork from psychiatrists and things like that.
Speaker 1: All I had was like a note from my old
Speaker 1: family doctor. It's one little a little square piece of
Speaker 1: paper is saying, Robert walk tell his bad stuffing. He's
Speaker 1: never been the same since his mom died. He's been
Speaker 1: a little off since then, and he has just pepsia.
Speaker 1: He can't eat. I said, what does that mean, he goes,
Speaker 1: I means you can't eat fried food and that's all
Speaker 1: they cook. So okay, okay, good, it's my note. And
Speaker 1: uh so there was nobody to say I'm refusing to
Speaker 1: do this with. And I got really freaked at that point.
Speaker 1: I was really scared. I sat down and just was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do now. This is terrifying.
Speaker 1: Here I am alone in here, and everyone on these
Speaker 1: coons are taking their clothes off. And then so finally
Speaker 1: I went, okay, I gotta go through it. I went
Speaker 1: through this stuff. I had my little note in my hand.
Speaker 1: I was too afraid just tell anyone I want to
Speaker 1: see the psychiatrist. I didn't know what to do, so
Speaker 1: and but I was again funky, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So when they examined me certain parts of my body,
Speaker 1: they went you, which was kind of fun. And so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this guy, as you're walking up
Speaker 1: to this one checkpoint, he's looking at everyone's paperwork and goes,
Speaker 1: you there, you there, this guy in front of me,
Speaker 1: you psychiatrist. You there, you handed my thing? It was
Speaker 1: you psychiatrist. But oh wow, okay, someone's working here. So
Speaker 1: from then on I sat outside the sychatra's office, sat there,
Speaker 1: and there was on the bed there was a guy.
Speaker 1: And Herbie ha said, don't talk to anybody, even if
Speaker 1: you see someone you know, don't talk to anyone. Don't know,
Speaker 1: this is not a social event. Don't communicate with anyone.
Speaker 1: But there was this guy sitting outside the psychiatrist's office
Speaker 1: with like a million necklaces on and and smoking incense
Speaker 1: in a in a roach clip, and it was like wow.
Speaker 1: And I said to this guy, and I know that
Speaker 1: there was no one else around, and you don't really
Speaker 1: think you're gonna get out like that to you man?
Speaker 1: And he goes, man, you kidding. I've been in the
Speaker 1: nuthouse five times. Ain't gonna take me. He went in
Speaker 1: and sure enough he was out of that psychiatrist's office
Speaker 1: in like thirty things. You know, he goes okay. And
Speaker 1: then I went in and talked to the psychiatrist and
Speaker 1: I told him how afraid of life I was, basically,
Speaker 1: and and uh said, you ever take drugs? So I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: LSD a lot of it, because how many times I
Speaker 1: would I don't know, it doesn't know, okay. And and
Speaker 1: there it's funny. They're they're really mean in there. They're
Speaker 1: really tough on you all the way through that whole
Speaker 1: physical yelling at do this, I don't do that. If
Speaker 1: you're blind in one eye, you pass. If you definitely
Speaker 1: want to hear, you pass, you're all going of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But from the moment I left that psychiatrists office, they
Speaker 1: were really kid gloves with me. Oh hey, Robert, come
Speaker 1: this way, you have a seat over here. Man, it
Speaker 1: will only be a minute, okay. You know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: give you the slip and you're gonna have a one
Speaker 1: ye and just take it easy and you know, everything's fine.
Speaker 1: And they were really gentle with me by that moment.
Speaker 1: On so I left there are I don't even know
Speaker 1: I got home. I was so he later, I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. So you found it right then that they
Speaker 1: weren't going to take you. Oh yeah, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: a one why instead of so what did? What did
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist say or do? He just did? He just
Speaker 1: asked me these questions about you know, where you see
Speaker 1: you've been in Vermont? And I said yeah, I said
Speaker 1: what did you do there? I said, I was washing
Speaker 1: dishes in this club the bluetooth. Uh what else do
Speaker 1: you do? I said, I don't too much else. You know,
Speaker 1: if he didn't let on your musician, Okay, why was
Speaker 1: Herbie doing you this? Solid? But asked him to really Yeah,
Speaker 1: he knew Bud and he said one of my guys
Speaker 1: needs help with the draft board, do you And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can help him. People have no idea if you
Speaker 1: didn't live through this. This was like the biggest thing
Speaker 1: they would be conversed about. It was Frank Creez. It
Speaker 1: was frightening. And then and still when we moved to
Speaker 1: l A, I was still waiting and it was only
Speaker 1: a one why. For anyone who doesn't know what that means,
Speaker 1: that means a one year deferment. What you were going
Speaker 1: for was a four F means you're out period, he'll
Speaker 1: never be in the army, but one why means they
Speaker 1: can come calling again, and they started, you know that.
Speaker 1: Then it went to the what do you call it,
Speaker 1: the the wattery? Yeah, lottery, And finally they didn't call
Speaker 1: my numbers, and I was out. Remember what your number was?
Speaker 1: I was to something. Oh, of course, come on, I
Speaker 1: was in college. I was gonna get four years. You
Speaker 1: were still worried. It was frightening, It really was so Uh.
Speaker 1: You moved to l A with Bud. Yeah, your band
Speaker 1: is living in this house. Is Budd doing anything for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He's What kind of language barrier have we on here?
Speaker 1: Can I use favorite adjective? Okay, he's fucking up every
Speaker 1: record deal I'm getting. We came out here. We did
Speaker 1: a demo, you know, and it was really pretty good,
Speaker 1: you know, original songs and everyone this band sounded really good.
Speaker 1: Everybody's sang five part harmonies, very good. Songs were musically
Speaker 1: good lyrically okay, and it was a good, good presentation
Speaker 1: and it was good enough to the first deal he
Speaker 1: went to get for us was with Atlantic, and I
Speaker 1: remember one day after Bud Wind saw m it. My
Speaker 1: phone rings and I pick it up and I can
Speaker 1: hear my demo in the background, and it's this voice.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to Watty. Uh. This is what
Speaker 1: he goes. This is I'm on nan because I love
Speaker 1: this fucking record. I love this fucking record. We're gonna
Speaker 1: welcome to Atlantic, man, We're gonna make a great record.
Speaker 1: I love this band. You guys sound beautiful. This is incredible.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. Hung up the phone. Guys. We
Speaker 1: gotta deal, we gotta deal. First deal, he went. Day later,
Speaker 1: no deal. Bud Cassel would go back to these meetings,
Speaker 1: asked for the moon and want to converge the cow Sils,
Speaker 1: make a bigger deal. Wanted he wanted this for me,
Speaker 1: but he wanted them to do this for the cow
Speaker 1: Sills and all this. He had all these big plans.
Speaker 1: Nomad passed, so then it was on to someone at Columbia.
Speaker 1: Loved it. He went, Bud went in to make the
Speaker 1: deal passed. He ruined at least three record deals that
Speaker 1: we had, and it was it was amazing, you know.
Speaker 1: He was just fucking it up left and right. And
Speaker 1: it's funny. When we first moved here, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to meet Brian Wilson. That was my dream, you know,
Speaker 1: Brian was what year you moved here? The councils have
Speaker 1: their had their head and he hits, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they ran in the park and the other things was
Speaker 1: a big hit, and uh, what was the second record
Speaker 1: was we Could Fly? We can Fly here? It was later,
Speaker 1: So we came out here and I wanted to meet Brian.
Speaker 1: And the other person I wanted to meet was Dave
Speaker 1: Crosby because at that point David was speaking for our generation.
Speaker 1: He was saying a lot of good, good things. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to meet Dave. And I love the birds,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, just a little stop for once.
Speaker 1: At what point do you go from Robert oh Well
Speaker 1: in the in the newer Schelle band. Actually, uh, there
Speaker 1: was a guy in that band who Jerry Burnback. His
Speaker 1: name is um. He used to funk up a lot.
Speaker 1: He used to make a lot of mistakes, so I'd
Speaker 1: be on his on his case all the time, and
Speaker 1: he got sick of it. So one day, to shut
Speaker 1: me up out of nowhere, he just went, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: whydy like that off of Wachtel. I guess he got
Speaker 1: it and and I went, what he was, Okay, why
Speaker 1: don't call me that man? What's the matter? Stopped that
Speaker 1: it's weird, and then after a while I went, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so sick of the word pardon me, Bob. I'm
Speaker 1: so sick of named Bob. Maybe why he ain't so bad,
Speaker 1: He's okay. And it's like after I met Leslie, because
Speaker 1: I know, I introduced myself as Bobby and any Waddy's okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta go with Watty. I'm sick of but I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear myself called Bob anymore. My wife
Speaker 1: still calls me Bob. It says my brother. But you know,
Speaker 1: and uh so that's when that happened. You're listening to
Speaker 1: my conversation with Wady walk Tell, recorded live at the
Speaker 1: tune In Studios in Venice, California. I hope you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this episode of the Bob Left Sets Podcast. As you know,
Speaker 1: we shoot a little video and take pictures here at
Speaker 1: the tune In studios so you can look them up
Speaker 1: at apt tune in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now
Speaker 1: more of my conversation with Waddy walk Tell. I'm the
Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets Podcast. Okay, by the seventies eight. You're
Speaker 1: here style curly here to your shoulders as legendary. When
Speaker 1: do you We all grew our here were the Beatles,
Speaker 1: But when did you develop the look you presently have?
Speaker 1: It just grows this way, so I've had it forever, okay,
Speaker 1: But people didn't have their here that long, no, fat time, No,
Speaker 1: but it was it was, you know, every ever since Beatles,
Speaker 1: everyone's hair started growing and you know, I used to
Speaker 1: try to straighten this stuff too, and it was it
Speaker 1: was a nightmare. Uh, But after a while I just
Speaker 1: went I saw it was funny. I saw Eric Clapton
Speaker 1: one day and he had like his big frizzy hair do. Well, gee,
Speaker 1: that's how my hair looks when I wake up. So
Speaker 1: fuck it, I'm done. Let's stop. Go back to close sideway.
Speaker 1: Was your brother your brother graduates from high school? Does
Speaker 1: he continue in school? Yeah? He went to Brooklyn College.
Speaker 1: He went to n y U and then he was
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn College studying broadcasting. And then how does he
Speaker 1: become a designer? Well, he came out here and I
Speaker 1: lived next to uh this great photographer, and Lorie Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Jimmy came out and he met Laurie and they
Speaker 1: just hit it off. And Laurie said, I do photography
Speaker 1: and you know, thinking to do an album covers, and Jimmy,
Speaker 1: oh that's great, I could. I could do layouts and
Speaker 1: stuff for that. And so they became this team and
Speaker 1: they did a lot of the covers, you know, all
Speaker 1: a lot of Dawn Patrol. Well even before Dawn Patrol,
Speaker 1: I think it was just Jimmy and Lloyd did Stevie
Speaker 1: Buckingham Knicks album covers them. But your brother had me training.
Speaker 1: You have to ask him, I don't think so, you know,
Speaker 1: are you still close? Oh? Yeah, okay, So anyway, let's
Speaker 1: back to you. So budd pocks up all the record deals, Yes,
Speaker 1: he does. And then where does that leave you? Well,
Speaker 1: it also leaves me. What I was gonna say was
Speaker 1: when I met the second night I'm in town, I
Speaker 1: see Dave Crosby sitting at this restaurant like two tables
Speaker 1: away from me, and I'm going, this is unbelievable. I can't,
Speaker 1: this isn't. What do I do do I introduce myself,
Speaker 1: make a fool of myself? Yep? Get up? Where do
Speaker 1: I let this opportunity pass by? No? Get up? Went
Speaker 1: over and interrupted his dinner and said, I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: bother you, Mr Crosby, but that is Watery walked down.
Speaker 1: I just came here with my band and he says, well,
Speaker 1: how did you get here? And I mentioned the counsels.
Speaker 1: He went, oh god, yeah, I said, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, but that it has nothing to do with us.
Speaker 1: We have our own band and I'd love you to
Speaker 1: come here our band, and he goes, okay, what, okay, well, okay, fine.
Speaker 1: So he came over and Judy Pulver, who was our
Speaker 1: our girl in the band, made dinner and we sat
Speaker 1: around and talking and and then Dave said this thing
Speaker 1: to me. This is during the the area where budd
Speaker 1: is screwing up deals and stuff. And I'm starting to
Speaker 1: get a little worried about it. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's my manager. I think everything's cool. He goes, So
Speaker 1: David says, who's your publisher? I want, um, my manager,
Speaker 1: and he just looks at me and he goes asshole,
Speaker 1: but huh, because nobody should be your publisher. You're your
Speaker 1: own publisher. Your manager is robbing you. This is what
Speaker 1: else has he got? I said, well, we signed management
Speaker 1: Production and Publishing, and he was you idiot? He says,
Speaker 1: that's robbing you. Nobody should have your publishing. So when
Speaker 1: he left at night, I called Bud. I said, I
Speaker 1: want my publishing back. You robbed me and everything. So
Speaker 1: things started getting a little intense. And as I kept
Speaker 1: going the band because of Bud screwing us up, we
Speaker 1: never got anywhere. We never got We finally did a gig.
Speaker 1: All we did. He says, I just want you guys
Speaker 1: to write and rehearse right, and rehearse right and rehearse,
Speaker 1: so he's paying for you to live. We had fifty
Speaker 1: bucks a week and living in a nice joint and
Speaker 1: we finally did a gig and and man, I'm it's funny.
Speaker 1: I met a dear friend of mine there who wound
Speaker 1: up writing Arwolves in London with Warren and myself. But
Speaker 1: he saw my band at night. But it kept going on,
Speaker 1: and David called me after he heard the band and everything,
Speaker 1: and and there was two phone calls he made to me.
Speaker 1: One of them was, let me ask you something, what
Speaker 1: would you think if I was to put a band
Speaker 1: together with Steven Stills and Graham Nash? And I went,
Speaker 1: I think I don't have to think it would be
Speaker 1: the biggest band in the world forever. That's what I think.
Speaker 1: It was. Okay, well, that's what we're doing. I went, oh, man,
Speaker 1: that's great. Then he called me a couple of days later.
Speaker 1: He goes, Whyty, I gotta talk to you about something.
Speaker 1: What he goes, you know you're the only one in
Speaker 1: that band, right Oh? No, no, he goes, he said
Speaker 1: that everybody sings. Okay, but he says, you know you're
Speaker 1: the only musician in that band, right, Well let me
Speaker 1: but this way, I hear what you're saying. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to keep this band together. He goes,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen, man. And and so eventually Budd
Speaker 1: screwing us up to screen us up, and everybody's starting
Speaker 1: to rag on me. And finally I said, oh, and
Speaker 1: we met Keith Olsen, producer. Yeah, and and his partner
Speaker 1: was a guy of Kurt Betcher. I don't remember Kurt.
Speaker 1: He died. And but Keith and Kurt we're gonna They
Speaker 1: heard us and loved our band, wanted to produce us.
Speaker 1: So we went in the studio with him and it
Speaker 1: just became a fight. It became a real It wasn't working,
Speaker 1: and Keith and I became well. I can tell he
Speaker 1: and I were hitting it off musically, but the band
Speaker 1: was not having so and I met. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: as I met some studio musicians, I'm still a green
Speaker 1: little radish, you know that just came out here. But
Speaker 1: I met guys who were studio musicians, and well, and
Speaker 1: I heard this guy playing. I went, well, I play
Speaker 1: that good. I play as good as he does. I
Speaker 1: want that's what I want to do. I want to
Speaker 1: become a studio musician and U And then I looked around.
Speaker 1: This band was just been giving me nothing but paint
Speaker 1: and the neck. But as a matter of fact, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. You're all fired and I'm not quitting.
Speaker 1: I want you to know there's a difference. You're fired.
Speaker 1: So this band's done now, and I'm gonna and Judy
Speaker 1: and I were the songwriters in the band. So she
Speaker 1: and I kept together and tried to pursue a deal
Speaker 1: for the two of us, which didn't happen, but she
Speaker 1: and I went up living together, and then I started working.
Speaker 1: I started getting sessions. Two questions, This is a romance
Speaker 1: between you and her? Yeah? OK, yeah, it didn't start
Speaker 1: that way, but it wound up and then the rest
Speaker 1: of the band. You tell them they're fired, but they say,
Speaker 1: they said, okay, fine, Well we were at a point
Speaker 1: of everything was friction anyway, Okay, Bud say oh Budd.
Speaker 1: At that point was out, Bud was gone. We were
Speaker 1: done with Bud. At that point I had taken back
Speaker 1: my publishing. I didn't want him to manage me anymore.
Speaker 1: It was over. I said it were done, We're done.
Speaker 1: And actually his son Bill got a record deal and
Speaker 1: that was the first session I did. I did. I
Speaker 1: played a session for Billy. Okay, but one has to ask,
Speaker 1: late sixties, he made you sign paper, his legendary story,
Speaker 1: Billy Joel. He makes a deal. They come back later
Speaker 1: when he's success. You know, he just let it go.
Speaker 1: He did, he did. He was cool in that level,
Speaker 1: I say, because he was screwing us and if anybody
Speaker 1: had taken him to court, they would have said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're dead man. So he knew he was in the rule.
Speaker 1: So you're you're working with Keith. You decided to become
Speaker 1: a studio musician, Okay, so how do you get your
Speaker 1: first gig? Is how much later? With counsel. Well, it
Speaker 1: just it's timing wise. It was kind of around the
Speaker 1: same period. You know, Billy left the band, left the
Speaker 1: Family group and got a record deal. So he goes,
Speaker 1: I gotta record deal. I want you to play on
Speaker 1: this session with me. Great, and and oh another facet
Speaker 1: of this is I did meet Brian Wilson. I met
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who became a lifelong friend, and
Speaker 1: he was the Brian's right hand man for many years.
Speaker 1: They weren't he wasn't working with him anymore. But I
Speaker 1: met this guy. His name was Arne Geller, and he
Speaker 1: looked he looked just like a Jewish relative. He was
Speaker 1: so New York looking, and he was an l a guy,
Speaker 1: but he was so New York. And anyway, he brought
Speaker 1: me to Bryant's. I met Brian and he said, so
Speaker 1: you met Brian, and you said and did one? I first, well,
Speaker 1: I went crazy, but I I just told him what
Speaker 1: a big fan I was, and I said, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I am such a fan of yours.
Speaker 1: I want to show you that there's a song by
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys called let the Wind Blow. You know
Speaker 1: that song, beautiful, beautiful piano part really bizarre piano part.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that I made myself
Speaker 1: learn on piano because I just loved it so much.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm such a fan of yours that I've learned.
Speaker 1: I'm a guitar player, but I had to learn let
Speaker 1: the wind blow. And I sat down at his piano
Speaker 1: and played it for him, and he's going, wow, that's heavy.
Speaker 1: You learned that. You're talking yourself that. Yeah, I had to.
Speaker 1: I said, I just love it. He was, wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1: So and then we went in his studio and he
Speaker 1: sat down, he played me some stuff on the on
Speaker 1: his board. But Brian was he was in a real
Speaker 1: fragile place then. And uh, but so I got to
Speaker 1: meet Brian, and Brian put me on a date. That's
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say. The second record date I
Speaker 1: did was through Brian Wilson, who was some I don't
Speaker 1: even know what it was for now, I don't remember. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you stopped working with Bud, and Bud stopped giving
Speaker 1: you your fifty dollars a week before you become a
Speaker 1: studio musician, what are you living on. We're living on
Speaker 1: a little bit of surplus money we had and Judy
Speaker 1: had money, had some bread. Family money, Yeah, family money.
Speaker 1: So we were living off a judy until I started
Speaker 1: getting working. And then okay, you go to you do
Speaker 1: the gig with Bill Cowsel. How do you establish your
Speaker 1: studio career? Well, I did that, I did the other
Speaker 1: session Brian. And then it's funny when I said I
Speaker 1: when we did our gig, the one gig we did
Speaker 1: with my band, my friend Roy Marinell, a guy who
Speaker 1: I came to meet then, was at that show, was
Speaker 1: really impressed by this band because we did it. Sounded
Speaker 1: amazing this band, and yeah, so we got to be
Speaker 1: friendly and he knew Nick Vnet and Linda Ronstads stone
Speaker 1: to so he says, you should meet Nick. So he
Speaker 1: set up a meeting and wanted Nick to hear me play.
Speaker 1: So Nick put me on a date and he liked
Speaker 1: what I was doing, so he hired me. So that's
Speaker 1: how I started working through Nick really and he would
Speaker 1: hire me over and over for days because he really
Speaker 1: doug what I was doing. And now you're giving up
Speaker 1: the dream, how do you feel about that? It was
Speaker 1: all the dream from the band thing, became studio musician.
Speaker 1: That's the new d That's what I want just because
Speaker 1: you and you you slug too hard without success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so yeah. Okay, so you were Judie and
Speaker 1: I were getting nowhere. Okay, so you're working with Nick
Speaker 1: and you're doing these sessions. What's the next step. The
Speaker 1: next step is somebody comes to me and says, I'm
Speaker 1: going to this guy's house to talk with him about
Speaker 1: some upcoming record sessions. Okay, great, and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: and by the way, the Everly Brothers need a guitar player.
Speaker 1: Uh so at that point though, but I've started working
Speaker 1: for Nick and I'm doing other sessions around town. I'm
Speaker 1: working with Keith Olsen produced He's producing other people. So
Speaker 1: while I was doing my own demos with Keith, he
Speaker 1: was working me on sessions. Okay, two things, Well, One,
Speaker 1: to what degree you're sitting home waiting for the phone
Speaker 1: to ring? Into what degree are you working it? Well,
Speaker 1: you're working the phone? You mean I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to do that. It was all a matter of that
Speaker 1: phone ringing. Okay, I didn't know how to. You didn't
Speaker 1: know how to, I mean the nature of being a musician,
Speaker 1: though apparently you're your networker. Well, but there was I
Speaker 1: didn't know what that meant? Okay, there, So, okay, you
Speaker 1: were playing specific gigs with Nick and with Keith, but
Speaker 1: there was was there someone who had your job and
Speaker 1: you said, well, I gotta knock this guy off to
Speaker 1: get that job. Well, you know, it's funny had that
Speaker 1: job really, because I'd see all these records with this
Speaker 1: name on it, and I'm going, why is he working
Speaker 1: so much? Who's this guy? And so I left Judy
Speaker 1: and I had our thing together. We split up and
Speaker 1: I moved in with this guy, Arnie Geller to his
Speaker 1: little house. Where's Judy to Judy works for Variety Daily Variety.
Speaker 1: She's a writer for Variety. Yeah, she's great. So she
Speaker 1: never made it in a music business. She got a record,
Speaker 1: she did a record, we went and toured it and so,
Speaker 1: but it never really turned into it. Judy Pulver Pulver
Speaker 1: Rising was the record. So, okay, you move in with Geller.
Speaker 1: I'm moving with Artie. And at that point, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to do sessions. I'm working the sessions here and there.
Speaker 1: And this meeting that I had about the Everly Brothers,
Speaker 1: this guy is talking about record dates. So he says
Speaker 1: to me, the Everly Brothers need a guitar player. I went, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, are you kidding? I said, that's my
Speaker 1: gig man. I know every song, I know both vocal parts.
Speaker 1: I know every guitar part. What do I do? How
Speaker 1: do I how do I get there? So he goes, well, um,
Speaker 1: call this guy Sandy Zevon, call Sandy's van and you'll you'll,
Speaker 1: you'll set up an audition for you. Okay, great, Hi Sandy.
Speaker 1: This is my name is Waddy waktell be it be
Speaker 1: down at s i R tomorrow rehearsal hall. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I go down there. I'm looking around. I don't know
Speaker 1: who's who. Are you Sandy? No, my name is Gene.
Speaker 1: I'm trying out for the band too. I'm the drummer. Okay,
Speaker 1: are you Sandy? No, I'm Bob Canniggie. I'm the bass
Speaker 1: player who I built the Everlies for quite a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh you're why do you come on in here? So
Speaker 1: we're in the room waiting. The door opens and incomes
Speaker 1: this guy with a fedora, had on a Searus sucker jacket.
Speaker 1: At that point, I'm walking around, I got a beard,
Speaker 1: I'm wearing an undershirt. It's a hot summer day. In
Speaker 1: l A. I'm Sandy zvon Oh. Okay, hey man, how
Speaker 1: you doing good? All right, So here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We'll play this song and then you'll play it. Okay,
Speaker 1: well you know you could. You can leave out that stick.
Speaker 1: I know all these tunes. He goes, No, this is
Speaker 1: how we're gonna do it. Okay, fine. So anyway, that's
Speaker 1: how I got the job of the Everly Brothers. That's
Speaker 1: where I met Warren. And uh, when did you go
Speaker 1: from being Sandy to war Well? Somebody, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Somebody just mentioned to me why he was calling himself Sandy,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember, with some cousins name that he
Speaker 1: he liked or something like that. So he adapted it
Speaker 1: for a little while. But when we were on the road,
Speaker 1: he was Warren Zevon right away it was Warren. I
Speaker 1: thought your name was Sandy Warren. Okay, fine? Um? But
Speaker 1: so and then okay, did you get close to him
Speaker 1: like a hear close to Keith Olsen? Yeah, well, in
Speaker 1: a manner of speaking, a Warren and I had a
Speaker 1: vinegar and water kind of relationship forever really, but we
Speaker 1: were we became very very close. But at first, it
Speaker 1: was sand and gravel next to each other. You know,
Speaker 1: we were always arguing about music. It was always about
Speaker 1: music though, you know. And but we we wound up
Speaker 1: playing music all the time, all night long, every night
Speaker 1: on the road with the A Relies. And what was
Speaker 1: wonderful about that was that when I got the job
Speaker 1: with the Averlies, they said, now listen, don't you try
Speaker 1: to get them together. I went, huh, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? They said, well, you know they don't get along.
Speaker 1: I went, fine, you know, so don't you be the
Speaker 1: one that thinks, you know, don't you let yourself think
Speaker 1: you'll be the one to bring them together? As are
Speaker 1: you kidding? I'm walking on egg show. I haven't even
Speaker 1: met them yet. You know. I didn't meet them until
Speaker 1: we went on stage at not's Bury Farm. It was
Speaker 1: the first gig, and then we went to Europe right
Speaker 1: away the next day, two days later. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: about it and try to meet and you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything. I was frightened to death. They said,
Speaker 1: my idols and uh, but one night and so every
Speaker 1: night we're just playing music all night long and Phil goes,
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing? I said, we were just
Speaker 1: we're playing all night, and he goes, I'm want to
Speaker 1: come by. And then the next day Donald goes, so
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing. I said, well, we've been
Speaker 1: playing at night. He goes, funk, I'm coming over. So
Speaker 1: this was the dream, Bob. You have the Everly brothers
Speaker 1: sitting in your hotel room, sitting on the floor singing.
Speaker 1: It was the most magical thing you can You can
Speaker 1: you brought them together? No, I didn't music, did you know? Me?
Speaker 1: Warren our our, our addiction to music brought them together,
Speaker 1: brought their addiction to music into the room with us.
Speaker 1: I guess. But there's the Everything brothers sitting on the
Speaker 1: floor in your hotel room singing. It was so beyond reality.
Speaker 1: And everybody was smoking cigarettes, smoking a little weed, drinking
Speaker 1: all night long. Every night. This was our life on
Speaker 1: the road. That was that we do a show. We'd
Speaker 1: go to the room play music all night. So Warren
Speaker 1: is and so Warren's playing me Desperadoes under the eaves,
Speaker 1: playing me Frank and Jesse Carmelita, I'm playing and maybe
Speaker 1: I'm right, you know a couple of my songs. It's great.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, and you know, went from that, came
Speaker 1: back to town. Still sessions are going. I'm getting more
Speaker 1: and more dates, and I was working with Nick Still
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Nick Manette takes me aside
Speaker 1: and because it's time for you to move on, Wady,
Speaker 1: what does that mean, I'm fired? You're firing me? He goes, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not firing you. It's time for you to move on.
Speaker 1: You're you're better than what we're doing here. We're doing
Speaker 1: these folk records a lot of folk artists, and I
Speaker 1: was playing acoustic all the time. And he goes, there's
Speaker 1: a new piano player in town, this guy named David Foster.
Speaker 1: He just moved here and he's the hot shot guy
Speaker 1: in town. And I've invited him to the session tomorrow
Speaker 1: night because I want him to hear you play. So
Speaker 1: bring your amp, bring your less Paul, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: play electric tomorrow. I wanted to hear you play slide play. Okay,
Speaker 1: So with the session came, I met Dave played he
Speaker 1: dug it, apparently, I guess I didn't know. And to
Speaker 1: three days later, I get a call from Lou Adler's
Speaker 1: office saying they want me on a session for Lou
Speaker 1: and I'm overlooking on one aspect of this in this
Speaker 1: interim time through working with Keith. I first, the first
Speaker 1: one of my brothers that I met was Leland Lee Clark,
Speaker 1: and he was we worked on a session for Bobby Womack.
Speaker 1: Keith was producing. So I meet Lee and I've already
Speaker 1: met Jim Keltner, but I hadn't met Coach, I hadn't
Speaker 1: met Russell and yeah, and so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm going to s i R one day and I'm
Speaker 1: I have my car, my fifty seven Chevy Wagon, and
Speaker 1: out of the driveway comes another fifty seven Chevy Wagon,
Speaker 1: both primary gray color, and this guy is driving it
Speaker 1: stops and he looks at me. He goes, are you waddy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes, I'm Russ. But yeah, all right, man, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? He goes. He says, I gotta go,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna be seeing a lot of each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, yeah. And so and then then I got
Speaker 1: the call to do this session for Lou for I
Speaker 1: think it was a Tim Curry. Tim Tim was making
Speaker 1: a record and Couch was on the date. So there
Speaker 1: was the crux of the brothers. I've grown up playing
Speaker 1: records with Russell Leland and Danny, and Danny and I
Speaker 1: had this thing against this guy, coach. I hate this
Speaker 1: fucking guy. Who is this guy's getting all this work?
Speaker 1: And I meet him and we loved each other instantly,
Speaker 1: and we you know, and the first tune was like
Speaker 1: a reggae tune, which was our my passion and Danny's passion,
Speaker 1: and Warren and I just craved hard did they come
Speaker 1: when that came out? We were Warren and I and
Speaker 1: Jorge Calderone. We saw the movie a million times and
Speaker 1: we learned yeah, yeah, yeah, you know Johnny too Bad
Speaker 1: every song, oh seven, all those great tunes, and so
Speaker 1: we were all reggae freaks. So Danny and I got
Speaker 1: on famously, and so it went from that too. Carol
Speaker 1: King and then Peter Peter Ashes saw me playing with
Speaker 1: Carol and he hired me to play for Lynda. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was on the road or for records? Who was for? Uh?
Speaker 1: So hard to say. I think it was for the
Speaker 1: road because the first session I did for Peter was
Speaker 1: with JD. Souther on a song called simple Dreams, Simple Man,
Speaker 1: Simple Dreams. Alum and j D and I were friends
Speaker 1: because Jimmy. My brother Jimmy did the Southern Hillman Fury
Speaker 1: album cover. So I met j D then and we
Speaker 1: liked each other. We spent a night one night getting
Speaker 1: really drug together, and I wanted to play a little
Speaker 1: and he wanted to sing Everley's and went Everley's right,
Speaker 1: now you're talking man. So I had my all I
Speaker 1: had was my lesson. I don't even have an acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: had my less pole and j D had an acoustic
Speaker 1: So we strummed the little guitars together and played all
Speaker 1: night and when it was funny when he left. When
Speaker 1: I woke up the next day, I said to Jimmy,
Speaker 1: I said, did he like me? Was it? He was?
Speaker 1: I think he liked it. He said, man, you're brothers funky? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that a compliment? I think I hope that's a compliment.
Speaker 1: J D and I became the best of friends and
Speaker 1: spent many years together working on songs and music and records.
Speaker 1: And Okay, so you're basically doing sessions for these individuals
Speaker 1: that you gave connections to, as opposed to a guy
Speaker 1: who's showing up at nine and uh, well I was
Speaker 1: doing that too. You were doing yeah, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was working real sessions. I was working like two
Speaker 1: or three sessions a day, like that's what was happening.
Speaker 1: And in that period, early seventies, was this incredible musical
Speaker 1: explosion in Los Angeles, and there was so much There
Speaker 1: was so many great artists, and there was so much
Speaker 1: work being done. You know, I was working. I've worked
Speaker 1: on a movie score with Lionel Newman, or for Jimmy Heskell.
Speaker 1: I worked with Mike Dacy, with Hal Blane, all these guys,
Speaker 1: all the guys, you know, working on Jackie's Shannon records,
Speaker 1: working on Helen Helen Ready records, you know, working on everything.
Speaker 1: We're read a Coolidgio one day. And then Stevie Linda
Speaker 1: We made Stevie Lindsay's record with Keith, the Buckingham Knicks record.
Speaker 1: We did that on Poldoria and and then I didn't
Speaker 1: see Stevie for a long time. Well before you go there,
Speaker 1: So you're working all these sessions, You're probably not making
Speaker 1: good money. So your lifestyle changes, yeah, somewhat, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: I mean not really. Okay, you know, my last style
Speaker 1: change didn't change, but I was supporting myself. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about coke and other drugs. Since you're working so much,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that around. Okay. So okay, so
Speaker 1: you do the Buckingham Knicks record and you said you
Speaker 1: haven't talked to Stevie for a while. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all of a sudden they were gone. I was
Speaker 1: I was working for Linda Peter. When Peter saw me
Speaker 1: cal he said, I want you to come play on
Speaker 1: the road with with Linda. Just to be clear, I
Speaker 1: Andrew Gold was a key part of that act. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So how did you fit in? Well, we played together.
Speaker 1: You know, like the first session I'd think I did
Speaker 1: for Linda, I didn't overdub on something pretty for her.
Speaker 1: But then the first tracking day I did for Linda
Speaker 1: was the song that will be the Day. And so
Speaker 1: Andrew and I, you know, I played my solo, he
Speaker 1: played his, and then we played a little lick at
Speaker 1: the end together and we got on. Well. I knew Andrew.
Speaker 1: I admit Andrew again through my friend Roy Marinell and
Speaker 1: there was there was a whole bunch of guys down
Speaker 1: in Venice, you know, Roy, Andrew, Kenny Edwards, all these
Speaker 1: guys had this little musical family going on down there,
Speaker 1: so I knew Andrew and so there was no competition,
Speaker 1: not really, no, no, okay, but so when it came
Speaker 1: to the records, you would both play on the records. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So okay, you're playing with the Andrew and you're now
Speaker 1: you're talking about Stevie. Well. Yeah. So it went through
Speaker 1: the years of Linda and we went through different UH
Speaker 1: band personnel changes in Linda's band. But I got to
Speaker 1: a point where was over for me. I just I
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. The music it's for me. It's some
Speaker 1: music dictates what I do, and if I'm not musically
Speaker 1: in a good place with it, I can't last. I
Speaker 1: just can't do it. You know, I mean you, when
Speaker 1: you're doing sessions, that's different. You know, you're walking sometimes
Speaker 1: and there's a song you don't like, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: do your best. You know you're gonna do your best,
Speaker 1: make sure you get something good on there, and and
Speaker 1: that's how it is on session. But when you're doing
Speaker 1: it live and stuff, it's just different. I get to
Speaker 1: a point the material of a sudden became stuff I
Speaker 1: couldn't play. I didn't want to play, So I left
Speaker 1: and UH and then Stevie and I was still doing sessions,
Speaker 1: like you know, two three sessions today, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I got a call from Jimmy Ivean's office saying,
Speaker 1: we want you to play on stevie next solo record.
Speaker 1: I don't. Oh wow, okay, I haven't seen her in
Speaker 1: a while, so I remember, I just thought of the Blue.
Speaker 1: You haven't seen her in years, and yeah, she told Jimmy,
Speaker 1: I want to get Wady walked out here, and so
Speaker 1: we showed up, saw each other and we just got
Speaker 1: right back into it. You know, we were we were
Speaker 1: friends a long time ago and we became fast friends again.
Speaker 1: And musically it was I could I can see what
Speaker 1: to do on her stuff. I knew what to do
Speaker 1: and it just worked right away, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: what happened. Okay, that's I believe. And what else is
Speaker 1: going on with you? Then? Well, just that sessions and
Speaker 1: that a lot of it's still a lot of the
Speaker 1: great record dates and like Brian Bryan Ferry's record went down,
Speaker 1: and before that, you know that all the seventies was
Speaker 1: Warren you know Jackson. We did the the the album,
Speaker 1: the Blue cover album for the Sky, No No Are
Speaker 1: You talking about first the first Von album on Asylum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, I played on that record and Warren, introducing
Speaker 1: to Jay, brought me in and so we played that
Speaker 1: record and then Jackson called me and said, I want
Speaker 1: you to co produce his next record with me. What really? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's great. And Jackson said, well, he won't listen to
Speaker 1: me anymore. He will listen to me, and he'll listen
Speaker 1: to you right now, but he probably won't listen to
Speaker 1: you either after this one's done. And that's what happened exactly.
Speaker 1: But so and we went and we did Excitable Boy
Speaker 1: and that was the breakthrough record. It was it was
Speaker 1: and you are accredited right around Werewolves of London. So
Speaker 1: how did that come together? Well again, back to my
Speaker 1: friend Rouy Marinell. I had known him since maybe sevent
Speaker 1: and he and I would get together and work on songs,
Speaker 1: write songs, and one day right he said, I got
Speaker 1: this lick, and UH, play me this lick. And we
Speaker 1: tried for about two years to put it to a
Speaker 1: song and never could. And then what happened was I
Speaker 1: went to England with Linda, no excuse me, I went
Speaker 1: to England with my old friend Judy Pulver, which she
Speaker 1: had her record situation. And there I am in London
Speaker 1: and I went to a Chinese joint and so called
Speaker 1: le hop folks. And and when I came back, I
Speaker 1: stopped by Roy's one day as I was heading into
Speaker 1: town to work on a session for Linda, I think,
Speaker 1: and I stopped by Roy's and Warren was there, and
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, man, I'm glad you're here. He says.
Speaker 1: Phil called me last night. Phil Everley called me last
Speaker 1: night and he said, there's a song time. I got
Speaker 1: a song title for you. You and Watty you got
Speaker 1: to write a song called Warrells in London. And and
Speaker 1: I literally just got home from London, so I went, well,
Speaker 1: that's easy. And the best part was I looked at
Speaker 1: Roy with this lick that he'd been playing for years.
Speaker 1: I went, Roy, play that fucking lick and he started
Speaker 1: that that that, and I just looked at Warren and
Speaker 1: I said, so we need lyrics. You means something like
Speaker 1: I saw a werewolf of the Chinese menu in his
Speaker 1: hand walking down the streets and soho. And then he goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like that. And I wrote the first verse basically,
Speaker 1: I just spit out the first verse, recounting it what
Speaker 1: I just went through in London, and I said, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a war, it's a werewolf, so we
Speaker 1: should go oh and war. That's great, that's great. I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well you finish it. I gotta gonna work, I gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta leave. But we we we, so we we.
Speaker 1: They wrote some lyrics down and we got through the
Speaker 1: first verse. Warren and Royce sketched some more lyrics and
Speaker 1: we wrote our song and that was basically it. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: recording that song was the hardest song in the world
Speaker 1: to get on on tape. It just wouldn't behave so
Speaker 1: to speak, It wouldn't lay down. Every time we tried
Speaker 1: it war than I hated it. Uh Um, it just wasn't.
Speaker 1: It sounded cute, it sounded funny. The band track didn't
Speaker 1: sound heavy, you know, it didn't sound and we needed
Speaker 1: it to be. It had to juxtapose serious band track
Speaker 1: underneath this ridiculous lyric and h and Jorge Calderone, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it was. George said, you know who could
Speaker 1: We tried seven bands and all the greatest players in town,
Speaker 1: you know, Russell and Lee, Lee and Lee and and
Speaker 1: Rich Losser or Mike Botts or Jeff Procaro, Bob and Russ,
Speaker 1: Lee and Russ every combination we could try, and we
Speaker 1: kept failing, and we just said we don't like it.
Speaker 1: And Jackson's going it's good. We're going, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not good enough. Doesn't feel like it. And Jorge said,
Speaker 1: you know who could play this? Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.
Speaker 1: I bet could play this one. Yeah, that's a heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy beat. I think you're right, man, I bet that's right.
Speaker 1: So I called Nick and I said, would you guys
Speaker 1: consider coming down here to play? Says you want us
Speaker 1: to play? It was like this mutual admiration society. They
Speaker 1: were so taken that we would want them, and we
Speaker 1: were so taken that they would say yes. So it
Speaker 1: was a magical, crazy, long night of takes and where
Speaker 1: we finally at six in the morning, I looked at
Speaker 1: Jackson through the glass and I said, Take two was good,
Speaker 1: wasn't it? Because yeah, you want to hear it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when we did it, we did take one, we
Speaker 1: did take two. Jackson went, that was pretty good, man,
Speaker 1: I think that was good. Mick goes to how let's
Speaker 1: keep going, let's keep going, and they saying, I know
Speaker 1: it's like six in the morning, you know, and we're
Speaker 1: still like flogging away Jackson. Take two was good, right,
Speaker 1: he goes, yeah, we're gonna go here. Take two And
Speaker 1: because Mick was enemy, we've never done what we've never done?
Speaker 1: And I finally looked at mich We've done, we've done.
Speaker 1: Pack your fucking drums up, man, we'd finished. We got it,
Speaker 1: and take two was the one and uh, okay, did
Speaker 1: you have any idea that it would be a hit
Speaker 1: in a legendary record, No, not a clue. We were
Speaker 1: Warren and I were taken aback bet of fact when
Speaker 1: Asylum picked that as the single. We were amazed. We
Speaker 1: were so wrong, we were we so could not see
Speaker 1: the forest for the trees, I think is the phrase.
Speaker 1: We couldn't see it at all. We were we were
Speaker 1: aghas that they would pick the joke tune out of
Speaker 1: all these great songs. We thought, what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on here? And they were so right and we
Speaker 1: were so wrong. And knock wood it's been supporting me
Speaker 1: and Warren's family and was now passed away too, but
Speaker 1: it's supporting all of us. All these years, you know,
Speaker 1: so there's a good check that still comes in from
Speaker 1: world hopefully. Yeah, it's been quite a good earner. One
Speaker 1: other songs have you written that were that my audience
Speaker 1: would be familiar with? Her town too? Was another? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the great j D Souther James Taylor song. How did
Speaker 1: that come together? It came together with Peter suggested that
Speaker 1: James and j D write a song together, and and Peter, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we j D said, look, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know James at all. I said, well, I'll come
Speaker 1: to I'll come over because I was working with James.
Speaker 1: Then I said, okay, so I'll come over and and
Speaker 1: we got there and it was a crazy night and
Speaker 1: we just we're kind of sitting around. I was working
Speaker 1: on a session and and j D called. He says,
Speaker 1: where are you? Man? He says, James is here, and
Speaker 1: I don't don't know what to do with him. I said,
Speaker 1: we'll just give him. You gotta give a drink and
Speaker 1: just you know, hang out. Well, I'll be there soon.
Speaker 1: I'll be there soon. So I get there and we're
Speaker 1: kind of all. You know, it's a little tenuous when
Speaker 1: you're when you sit down and write a song with
Speaker 1: somebody if you're not that familiar with him or havn't
Speaker 1: written with him, it's how do you start? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the icebreaker? And and all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: don't know where James just started fingerpicking this really lovely
Speaker 1: chordal thing and I looked at j D. You know,
Speaker 1: where's your cassette player? Is what cassette player? Get a
Speaker 1: cassette player, Get a cassette machine. And James is still playing.
Speaker 1: And finally j D goes and gets it because I played,
Speaker 1: puts it down. It's a record. James stops and I
Speaker 1: don't know and he says, oh, Ship, what was I doing?
Speaker 1: I said, this is what you were doing? And again
Speaker 1: my ear, so this is what you were doing? He
Speaker 1: was oh, yeah, right, al right, that's it. And then
Speaker 1: we dug the changes and we just started working on lyrics,
Speaker 1: and by six or seven in the morning we had
Speaker 1: this beautiful song. That best song on that record. Dad
Speaker 1: loves his work, I think is the album? I think.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, so you work with Stevie and then
Speaker 1: you end up working with Henley. How does that come
Speaker 1: to be? Um? Well, i I'd worked with don you
Speaker 1: know through the years in town. I'd met the guys,
Speaker 1: so Don and Glenn would be at our at Warren sessions.
Speaker 1: You know. That's what I mean that that period in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles was incredible. If you weren't if you weren't
Speaker 1: on a session working there, chances are you were there
Speaker 1: hanging out with your friends and helping it. You know,
Speaker 1: you need an entertainbering part or something, or you just
Speaker 1: have a drink, sit down, have a have a cigarette,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, hang out. So that's how it was.
Speaker 1: It was such an intertwined creative period. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It was. I equate it to like Liverpool when Beatles
Speaker 1: explosion happened and everybody knew each other and all these bands,
Speaker 1: you know, we're collectively working, and that's how it was. Here.
Speaker 1: You were working. I met Crosby, so I knew day.
Speaker 1: I met Steve Stills, so I was working with Graham.
Speaker 1: I've worked on some stuff. Don Henley was producing an artist,
Speaker 1: so I played. He hired me to play on that,
Speaker 1: and that's how it was. I mean, you were just
Speaker 1: in the thick of it. Everybody was in the thick
Speaker 1: of it together and so um Don at one point
Speaker 1: decided he was gonna make a solo record, and he
Speaker 1: asked a few different people about producing, and I spoke
Speaker 1: to him about it, but he chose Danny. And Danny
Speaker 1: said to Don, well should get water? He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: bring Wady in here. So that's how I got on
Speaker 1: the Don's record. I knew Don and from already all
Speaker 1: of all these records you've played on. What are you
Speaker 1: proudest in terms of record? He'd work, that's hard, that's
Speaker 1: really hard. Or maybe I'll change the word, make it favorite.
Speaker 1: What are your favorites? Again? That's that's really tough. I
Speaker 1: mean it. How do you how do you choose between
Speaker 1: being on the the the live session for Blue by you, uh,
Speaker 1: the live session for Betty Davis Eyes um, and just
Speaker 1: seventeen you know, stand back, It's hard, you know, Bob Seeger.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been very fortunate and very blessed to
Speaker 1: be in the studio with these people when all these
Speaker 1: these incredible records get dead made and you're part of it,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean Betty Davis Eyes, I just happened
Speaker 1: to stop by record one. It was my favorite bar,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was done working for the day
Speaker 1: and I stopped buying. Val Garay said, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1: Josh Leo can't come. I need you to play on
Speaker 1: this record. Man, I've been playing all day. I don't
Speaker 1: want to work now because come here and listen to
Speaker 1: the song. That's pretty good. And everything was live. Everything
Speaker 1: you hear on that record is live, you know, everything
Speaker 1: went down when we cut it. Kim's vocal everything say
Speaker 1: with blue Boy, then his vocal that's the because she's
Speaker 1: sang when we cut it. So and then and then uh,
Speaker 1: then I went with word with Keith, with Keith Richards,
Speaker 1: and so then I'm in the studio with Keith Richards
Speaker 1: and before that, I'm in the studio with Joe Walsh.
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to pick a favorite. Those are
Speaker 1: guitar players. Well, Keith is more known as a rhythm player.
Speaker 1: You know, Joe Walsh would seem that he's doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Yeah, but because of that, we got on
Speaker 1: really well. You know, uh, we got on real well.
Speaker 1: And I just you know, a couple of two years
Speaker 1: ago did Joe called me and said would you come
Speaker 1: too with me? And it was fantastic playing solos with Joe,
Speaker 1: you know, next to Joe or instead of Joe. And
Speaker 1: it was wonderful, you know, so and it's great to
Speaker 1: know that he would trust me enough to say you
Speaker 1: you take this one. You know, we did his records.
Speaker 1: There's this stuff where I solo on was this is
Speaker 1: Soult Beautiful Salt Rosewood Bidders whereas, yeah, that's me on
Speaker 1: the solo, you know. And uh And it was a funny,
Speaker 1: funny moment in the studio with Joe. We were so
Speaker 1: locked into our guitar parts, so we're so excited about it.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, how about why don't I play
Speaker 1: that line? We call each other double w W and
Speaker 1: j W. You know, so I said, hey, man, why
Speaker 1: don't I I'll play that line. Okay, j W, listen,
Speaker 1: I should play that line. He goes, yeah, why don't you?
Speaker 1: Why don't you play that line? And then I'll double
Speaker 1: you do W. We just looked at each other. Did
Speaker 1: you really just say that? Then? What? So that, you know,
Speaker 1: to work on these records and then to get a
Speaker 1: call from Keith Richards saying I'm putting a band together
Speaker 1: and you're the other guitar player in it. And you
Speaker 1: never met him, No, we've met I met him when
Speaker 1: I was on the road with Linda. Then we fell
Speaker 1: in love right away. Then we got on, We got
Speaker 1: on very well, and uh so that was the call.
Speaker 1: I got the call. We'll plause here for a brief
Speaker 1: moment and get right back to Waddy Wachtell. First and
Speaker 1: for most, I'm a writer. I cover everything from music
Speaker 1: to tech, to my personal life to the zeitgeist at large.
Speaker 1: Go to left sets dot com and go down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole in addition to reading my commentary on music
Speaker 1: tech in the world at large. Will be the first
Speaker 1: to find out when we've published a new podcast. Plus,
Speaker 1: I'd like to give a little bit of behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: which I hope you find is a nice addition to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Go to left sets dot com and sign
Speaker 1: up for the newsletter. Now we're with guitar legend Waddy Wachtell,
Speaker 1: recorded live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of just questions for those on the outside
Speaker 1: that always wonder about this. Mick Fleetwood and John mcvieh
Speaker 1: come to play on Werewolves of London. Do they get paid? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you they built just like a session. Okay, so
Speaker 1: anybody shows up they're getting paid and listen, get away
Speaker 1: with not paying him. Yeah yeah, okay, but if there's
Speaker 1: a budget and somebody comes in and they're contributing there,
Speaker 1: they're going to get a check. Okay, Yeah, they got paid.
Speaker 1: Scaling right right when you're when you're a studio musician
Speaker 1: in town, there's a lot of talk that well a
Speaker 1: lot of the famous musicians or legendary musicians, musicians are
Speaker 1: afraid to leave town because someone's going to take their gig. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that something new experience? Well, you know, not really,
Speaker 1: but I mean by now yeah, you know, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: you were, you were. We would go out of town
Speaker 1: and come bight back to work work. There was enough
Speaker 1: work done yet, and we were of a certain level
Speaker 1: in people's minds. They wanted you, they wanted you. You know.
Speaker 1: I came home from months on road with Linda and
Speaker 1: I got a call to go work for Richard Perry,
Speaker 1: who had never met And I was going, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to work, but I went. You know,
Speaker 1: I got paid well for it, and and met Richard
Speaker 1: and got terrifically with Richard, and I love him dearly,
Speaker 1: you know. And so years of work with Richard, you
Speaker 1: know Leo Sayermant played with for Leo and point of Sisters.
Speaker 1: So what would it take for you to go on
Speaker 1: the road as opposed to stay in l A. What
Speaker 1: do you mean back in that era because you're doing
Speaker 1: a certain amount of touring and also a certain amount
Speaker 1: of studio work. You know, some people might say, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go on the road, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're a ham like me, you know you you
Speaker 1: love being on that stage. So so that's that's an
Speaker 1: attractive offer, and monetarily it was. It worked that fine,
Speaker 1: you know. And and Peter was a class act always,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know you're going to travel first
Speaker 1: class with us. That's how we do it. You know,
Speaker 1: the band is that important to us. And so I
Speaker 1: got spoiled at a young age and learned that, well,
Speaker 1: I am more important than just the guy who carries
Speaker 1: that guitar and knows how to plug it in. You know.
Speaker 1: So we were treated very well. You know, we've really
Speaker 1: kind of covered the eighties. What happens now when we
Speaker 1: get the nineties and beyond, well, nineties and beyond, I'm
Speaker 1: still doing sessions and I'm still with at that point, uh,
Speaker 1: Stevie and I had taken a break and I was
Speaker 1: with Keith from through I think. And that's when Stevie
Speaker 1: called me and said, please come back, come back. And
Speaker 1: I was little hesitant, and uh, but I did. I
Speaker 1: went back and I sat in on our show and
Speaker 1: and she said, that's great. She said, it's so great
Speaker 1: to have you back. I need you to do this
Speaker 1: with me again. I said, will if I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it with you again, he can't lead the band. My
Speaker 1: friend Carlos Rios who still plays with us, and it's
Speaker 1: a doll, but he was the band leader when I
Speaker 1: came back, and I said, if I'm going to do this,
Speaker 1: I lead the band. That's the only way I work.
Speaker 1: That's one caveat with me is I'm pretty much a
Speaker 1: loud mouth when it comes to band. So so I said,
Speaker 1: I have to lead the band. I can't let I
Speaker 1: can't take do it his way. We gotta do it
Speaker 1: my way. And I said, okay, So Carlos I'm just
Speaker 1: stood and graciously stepped aside. And so Steve and I
Speaker 1: have toured incredibly through the all nineties and into the
Speaker 1: thousands and into the two thousand's and then, like I said,
Speaker 1: and all a sudden, Joe called me and next time
Speaker 1: I knew us on the road with Joe for about
Speaker 1: almost a year. So you know, it just thank God
Speaker 1: keeps going. Okay, So at this point in time, how
Speaker 1: much do you work right now? Right now? It's little slower,
Speaker 1: which is cool, which is cool, It's all right. But
Speaker 1: it's like I said, Stevie, and Stevie is going to
Speaker 1: go with Fleetwood. They're starting on Fleetwood. So so we're
Speaker 1: having are what I call a trial separation. And when
Speaker 1: Fleetwood tours over, we'll go back to work, and so
Speaker 1: record dates will be coming. I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: anything right now. It's pretty open right now. So but
Speaker 1: there are still sessions. And I hear from Luca the time,
Speaker 1: right and he laments that the days you're talking about
Speaker 1: the seventies and the eighties are over there over, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are over but there are calls still get calls
Speaker 1: to do what kind of work guitar? I mean, record dates,
Speaker 1: movie dates, TV dates, all of the above, all the above.
Speaker 1: I mean I was fortunate. At one point I scored
Speaker 1: I think it was about ten movies and uh, I
Speaker 1: loved it. And Adam Sander gave me the shot at
Speaker 1: that and I knew Adam because I worked on a
Speaker 1: record for him a long time ago. Brooks Arthur, his producer,
Speaker 1: called me and said, would you consider arranging a couple
Speaker 1: of songs for Adam Sandler? You know comedy rock? I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, but I went down and met Adam.
Speaker 1: The song was great. It's called well it became. It
Speaker 1: came out called ode to My Car, but they made
Speaker 1: a piece of ship cars and it's hysterical and it's
Speaker 1: a reggae and he says, I want to do this reggae.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Well, let me tell you you called the
Speaker 1: right person because I can do that for you easily,
Speaker 1: and and he played me The song was hysterical, and
Speaker 1: there was another song called Baked, which was hilarious. So
Speaker 1: we went in the studio and cut these songs and
Speaker 1: then developed a musical relationship. And next time I know,
Speaker 1: Adam did a tour. He wanted a tour, so we
Speaker 1: went out on the road for a summer and it
Speaker 1: was incredibly funny. And after it, I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: want you to score a movie. I want you to
Speaker 1: score film. I'm doing movies now and I want you
Speaker 1: to score movies. So I started to work on Waterboy
Speaker 1: and I had to stop on that one various reasons.
Speaker 1: But then he called me on Joe Dirt. It was
Speaker 1: the next one for me and I that was my
Speaker 1: first complete score, and so I did that. I did
Speaker 1: several others for him, and so there's there's movie work.
Speaker 1: Hopefully he's away right now, maybe I'll get another score.
Speaker 1: But I did a couple of independent films as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you never can tell, you know, you never know.
Speaker 1: I came back and well of a sudd I got
Speaker 1: a call that they were doing Joe Dirt too, you know.
Speaker 1: I went, oh, well, okay, well and there was budget
Speaker 1: wasn't big, but I said, well I gotta do it.
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone else to do it, so I'll
Speaker 1: do it, you know. So I did that. It just happens,
Speaker 1: so you never know what's gonna happen. You get a
Speaker 1: call commercial or a song score, but you still believe
Speaker 1: the phone will ring. Yeah, you're not sitting at home
Speaker 1: saying again you always think that. I thought that from
Speaker 1: day one. And also I'm leaving out a very important
Speaker 1: part of my musical stuff. Don was. I worked tons
Speaker 1: with Don at one point during the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: a lot of sessions with Don beautiful. But I mean
Speaker 1: from day one, you get home staring at that phone,
Speaker 1: is it ever going to ring again? And it's it's
Speaker 1: been that way forever, it'll it'll always be that way.
Speaker 1: And at what point, I mean, once you start to
Speaker 1: gain a reputation, as I say, are you actively networking?
Speaker 1: I'm going back back in the day as supposed to today.
Speaker 1: Are you hunting for jobs or just waiting for them
Speaker 1: to come to you? You're waiting. I mean I'm waiting.
Speaker 1: I'm I think I've called a couple of people say hey,
Speaker 1: you're working, you know, stuff like that. But no, I think,
Speaker 1: thank god, people call me. And then, of course you're
Speaker 1: not gonna want to answer this question, but I'll ask
Speaker 1: it anyway. If they can't get you, who do they call? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny, Lucas, there was the new me.
Speaker 1: You know, when I met Luke, he was his baby.
Speaker 1: They came on board and came into towns on a
Speaker 1: Richard Perry date and Luke was the new Wady. You know,
Speaker 1: so who knows? You know, there's so many guys and
Speaker 1: now it's it's such a closed scene now. And aside
Speaker 1: from that, people will record at home now, you know,
Speaker 1: so a lot of times you get a call and
Speaker 1: you're sitting Leland says, you know, I don't like sitting
Speaker 1: in the corner of someone's bed and playing the base
Speaker 1: you but he's right, you know, you wind up doing
Speaker 1: some date for somebody in their house. You over. But
Speaker 1: I was. I was eating lunch somewhere and uh, someone
Speaker 1: came in and said, are you wady? Yeah, and he says,
Speaker 1: my name's Jude Cole, and uh, and i'd heard that
Speaker 1: name and I said, I've heard of you and and
Speaker 1: he said, I've produced a key for Sutherland and we
Speaker 1: have no keeper for other and and we're doing a record.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, like who's playing on it? And
Speaker 1: he named a few people, and he named Jim Cox,
Speaker 1: who was my favorite piano player in town. Jim Cox
Speaker 1: is playing with you. Well, hell, I'll do it too then,
Speaker 1: you know. So I came. You know, this was like
Speaker 1: last year, so you never know what's gonna happen now.
Speaker 1: And and Keifer was a doll, and the songs were
Speaker 1: great and Jude is great. We had a ball funny
Speaker 1: thing with Jude. He used to be an artist himself. Right,
Speaker 1: So uh, now you also play at the bar down
Speaker 1: here to on Pico. Yeah, well and not we don't
Speaker 1: play there anymore, but we did like ten years worth
Speaker 1: of that, almost almost fourteen years, I think, and that
Speaker 1: was just something to do. Yeah, and why did you
Speaker 1: stop employment? You know, everyone's schedules started yanking people out
Speaker 1: of town. Next thing I know, I was on the
Speaker 1: road with Stevie for months. When I get back. My
Speaker 1: drummer Phil Jones was working with Peggy Young, Rick my latey,
Speaker 1: late dear friend, Rick Roses was working for Neil. So
Speaker 1: you'd come back a lot of times. Everyone's schedule was right,
Speaker 1: We'd all be here for months at a time, so
Speaker 1: we could do it. But then it became harder. It's
Speaker 1: I don't know, we're actually striking it up in August
Speaker 1: at this place in Ventura Plug Discovery, Ventura August there
Speaker 1: rock and roll Knight. But and also I've been playing
Speaker 1: with Danny cor Les Claw and Russ Kunkle and Steve
Speaker 1: Postela's name is and we did Danny got a record deal.
Speaker 1: A Japanese label wanted good to do a record, so
Speaker 1: the you got the old the Brothers together and we
Speaker 1: did it and Danny said, look, it's gotta be us
Speaker 1: to go play this stuff. Can't be anyone else. So
Speaker 1: we said, yeah, how grew right. We finally get to
Speaker 1: play in a band together. So that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 1: So we did that too. We just finished. We just
Speaker 1: went to Japan and did like ten eleven days there
Speaker 1: and we just played a club. But schedule wise, now
Speaker 1: again with schedules, it's tougher. With Russell's ad is in
Speaker 1: France right now, work up with Cat Stevens and then
Speaker 1: he's gonna be on the road in August, and then
Speaker 1: I'll lose Leland at some point. But Danny and I
Speaker 1: are writing and Steve and we're writing songs and getting
Speaker 1: ready for autumn when we're all back together again. So
Speaker 1: we'll be doing that. So I have the two bands
Speaker 1: going okay now. In the seventies, in the eighties, before
Speaker 1: the days of cameras in phones, I would assume being
Speaker 1: on the road was, shall we say, a lot of fun. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but those days, granted you're older and you're married, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, those days are done for people on the road.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? I mean? Uh, the the old
Speaker 1: dream and this is you know, uh, maybe a sexist
Speaker 1: dream was the musician has a hard time communicating with people,
Speaker 1: speaks to his music, goes on the road and meets women,
Speaker 1: and does drugs. Yeah do you You don't have to
Speaker 1: do drugs, but you know, but most people did. The
Speaker 1: reason I say you do drugs is you know, you
Speaker 1: you play from eight to eleven. It's gonna take you
Speaker 1: at least if then to three in the morning to
Speaker 1: calm down. You're in the bus with the same assholes
Speaker 1: that you knew from like ten years. You know, you
Speaker 1: do drugs just a cope. I think a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But have you found that modern technology has affected being
Speaker 1: on the road. I mean, granted you're older and you're married,
Speaker 1: I would say I would tell you this. I would
Speaker 1: bet you a young band I would see it the
Speaker 1: same way it always was. That's what I would think.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're older and we're married, but we you know,
Speaker 1: we go out. We still have a drink, you know,
Speaker 1: sit around and talk about the old days or talk
Speaker 1: about the new days, and talk about music. It's still music.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the speaking the old days, I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, we look at that period from sixty four
Speaker 1: to eighty and then even MTV after that. Music really
Speaker 1: drove the culture. If you want to know what was
Speaker 1: going on, you listen to a record. Radio stations were
Speaker 1: not like they were today. The radio the jock was
Speaker 1: giving you all your news, was really your best friend.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the music scene today. It's
Speaker 1: hard for me. It's hard for me. I wind up.
Speaker 1: I don't listen to a lot of new music. I
Speaker 1: hate to sound like an old dinosaur, but I don't
Speaker 1: hear the kind of melodic music anymore that I grew
Speaker 1: up knowing that that was how you were supposed to
Speaker 1: write songs, you know. I mean, it was one thing
Speaker 1: to go from jazz and standards to all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there's Beatles and Stones writing great songs, and then
Speaker 1: everyone else is trying to write great songs. But now
Speaker 1: the melodic, the melodic approach to songs these days is
Speaker 1: very nil, very lack lacking. To me, it's either way
Speaker 1: too repetitive and simple, and repetitive is a great thing
Speaker 1: to have. You have to have repetition, but not the
Speaker 1: way it's done today, or it's way overly exaggerated to
Speaker 1: where people are demonstrating their wonderful vocal range. Well that that,
Speaker 1: but even just some of the stuff I have a
Speaker 1: hard time with with with it. I I love Muse.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great band, you know, but they're
Speaker 1: not even new anymore, you know what I mean. It's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me. So I don't hear. I listened
Speaker 1: to a lot of older stuff and the hip hop.
Speaker 1: You listen to the hip hop, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I've heard something really dug, you know. And do you
Speaker 1: have hope or do you think we live through the
Speaker 1: renaissance and it's not going to return? One never knows,
Speaker 1: you know, History repeats itself, right, that's what they say.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time coming. And I don't even
Speaker 1: know how that's right, how I could right now? You know,
Speaker 1: guitars have become almost meaningless and today's records and it's tough,
Speaker 1: it's it's weird, but it's that it's that song structure
Speaker 1: that I miss that was so important to us when
Speaker 1: we were growing up, and that's what it was all about,
Speaker 1: right in a great tune, you know, someone something that
Speaker 1: you could sing, you know, instead of some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's out there. I don't want to name. I
Speaker 1: don't want to name anything that's we can fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks. Yeah, you know, but I I don't like
Speaker 1: a lot of what I hear and and I have
Speaker 1: to agree with Couch about something you said about that
Speaker 1: that Barnum. I don't dig those songs. I don't let
Speaker 1: me tell you I didn't. It's funny because when we
Speaker 1: just went to Japan, right person next to me was
Speaker 1: watching this movie. I went, what the what does that movie?
Speaker 1: And I saw Hugh Jackman and it Oh, I see
Speaker 1: And I didn't watch it, but that's when I first
Speaker 1: became aware of it. And then Danny told me about
Speaker 1: We had back and forth usually Danny O Danny is,
Speaker 1: you know him much better than I know him. But
Speaker 1: he can be I wouldn't say contrary, but he's not
Speaker 1: afraid to show in a little bit of an edge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's warm underneath. But he stand me right away.
Speaker 1: There were two things for those people who may not
Speaker 1: be aware. There's this, you know, movie with the soundtrack
Speaker 1: called Greatest Showman. And we are living in a world
Speaker 1: where if you look at the Spotify top fifty, it's
Speaker 1: all hip hop. All you read about is hip hop.
Speaker 1: But this album is unbelievably successful, was number one in
Speaker 1: UK for twenty one weeks and definitely the best selling
Speaker 1: album of the year I think in America, even exceeding
Speaker 1: Drake Now. It is an album, especially the single with
Speaker 1: the name of which I don't remember they sang on
Speaker 1: the oscars, I believe has melody in it. It's exactly
Speaker 1: what you were talking. It's not exactly, but it has melody,
Speaker 1: but it's overstated, like wait, wait, say it's this is
Speaker 1: like writing about Greta van Fleet. If you've heard led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin you say, hey, this is our SATs By the
Speaker 1: same token. Then wasn't that amount of communication If you
Speaker 1: were listening to all the British blues bands of the
Speaker 1: late sixties or early seventies, people heard the originals this
Speaker 1: year Robert Johnson, this is not the same thing. But
Speaker 1: what I feel, as I'm busy explaining and justifying myself here,
Speaker 1: I feel with The Greatest Showman. My main point was
Speaker 1: there's an alternative to what everybody thinks is the default
Speaker 1: music of today. The act that Greatest Showman is successful
Speaker 1: shows that there are opportunities for other things, as opposed
Speaker 1: to me sitting here and saying oh, Greatest Showman is
Speaker 1: so great. Yeah, well that's true. I can I can
Speaker 1: go with you that far. But that's all I meant.
Speaker 1: You know, as I say, you know you're right. Stuff
Speaker 1: is one of the problems writing you if you were
Speaker 1: gonna write I have enough problems with this anyway you're
Speaker 1: writing it. Oh, this person is gonna have a problem
Speaker 1: with this, so I gotta add a sentence here, I
Speaker 1: gotta sence here. It ended up being, you know, everything,
Speaker 1: where and what. My point was just so to illuminate
Speaker 1: that there's a world beyond hip hop. And then when
Speaker 1: someone slams me Danny, you know, I just written it.
Speaker 1: You hear from Danny, it's like eleven o'clock at the
Speaker 1: night here. You never it's like come on. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like I just wrote it and you know better.
Speaker 1: We're on the same team here. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: and it's always funny in email, because you know, arguments
Speaker 1: can get really you can. You can misinterpret someone's meanings
Speaker 1: so quickly in a in a written sentence, instead of
Speaker 1: hearing them say it. He was couch was indignant, and
Speaker 1: my first is said, you're really indignant about this. I mean,
Speaker 1: as we're sitting here was I talking Sergeant Pepper. It's like,
Speaker 1: come on. So he was so indignant. I said, fuck
Speaker 1: you back that I that I did that. You know
Speaker 1: that we're gonna get email style. I won't say that
Speaker 1: to somebody I don't know unless I know there's gonna
Speaker 1: be consequence. I just did that to make him re
Speaker 1: evaluate where he was coming from, right, not not to
Speaker 1: like make him piste off. It's like, come on, but
Speaker 1: I must say, and I understand what you're saying about.
Speaker 1: There is a world aside from hipp a grant that
Speaker 1: that's a very valid observation. But I went and I
Speaker 1: made a point of it before coming in. I sat
Speaker 1: down and listened to all those fucking songs in that movie,
Speaker 1: you know. And like I said, I hate to doubt,
Speaker 1: doubt or put down anyone's work, any every work. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: all good, Well I don't care. I don't care for
Speaker 1: that music. Okay. First of all, you probably listen to
Speaker 1: it more than I did. Secondly, have you seen it
Speaker 1: with the picture would put it in perspective? Songs? Well
Speaker 1: the movie. I haven't seen the movie other than snippets
Speaker 1: here and there. No one seems to think the movie
Speaker 1: is any good. At the same time of this, this
Speaker 1: movie next Netflix about a kissing booth, which everybody says
Speaker 1: is shitty, but it's also a phenomenon, so it's you
Speaker 1: know this this crosses over to news too. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm on the hand. You have the people who were
Speaker 1: reading these news sites that people make up in their basement,
Speaker 1: the theoretical forder pound guy that Trump is talking about,
Speaker 1: and then you have the the big newspapers, and you say, well,
Speaker 1: what are they missing? But without going deeper into this
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, which I'd be willing to, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure your audience wants to hear it. Are you a
Speaker 1: gear freak? No, not at all. How many guitars you owned? Well,
Speaker 1: the guitars aren't gear. You know what I mean it,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what you mean. I I don't own
Speaker 1: a plethora of guitars like some of my friends do.
Speaker 1: I have quite a few forty I don't know if
Speaker 1: I have forty. I have like, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: have like three J Gibson J two hundreds. I have
Speaker 1: about four maybe five less Poles. I have a couple
Speaker 1: of Fender Strats, I have some telecasters. I've got a
Speaker 1: bunch more acoustic guitars. I've got dough Bro guitar, Hawaiian
Speaker 1: lap steel guitars. You know what I mean. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a warehouse full of guitars. Put it
Speaker 1: that way, but I don't. I just remember when I played,
Speaker 1: you know, in the sixties, when everybody played every guitar,
Speaker 1: even if it was the same model, sounded a little different.
Speaker 1: Still the same today. Yeah, do you have one particular
Speaker 1: guitar that your go to guitar? Well, I've came up
Speaker 1: playing my sixty less Paul. I brought it from Steve
Speaker 1: Stills when we first met. Stuff like that, And why
Speaker 1: was it just had this room full of guitars and
Speaker 1: and I at that point, I I was still playing
Speaker 1: my big jazz guitar and not not the L seven.
Speaker 1: There's this thing called Super four hundred that Frank's Apple
Speaker 1: was playing when I saw him in the village. It
Speaker 1: was this big, old fat Gibson. It was gorgeous. I said,
Speaker 1: that's what I want someday. And uh so when I
Speaker 1: moved out to California, I got myself Super four hundred
Speaker 1: and it was great. But what are we talking about
Speaker 1: for good? Yeah? So and then we were rehearsing at
Speaker 1: s I R. And the only people there were Corosi
Speaker 1: Stills in Nash and my band and I looked in
Speaker 1: their room and there was like a circle of guitars
Speaker 1: all around the whole room, and I went, wow, I
Speaker 1: was thinking less poor again. I was getting sick of
Speaker 1: the big box. So what, Steve, would you consider selling
Speaker 1: one of any one of those guitars? He goes, why
Speaker 1: don't we just trade rooms tonight, you guys rehearsing our room,
Speaker 1: and we'll use your room and just try pick whichever
Speaker 1: one you want. Really great, man, fantastic. So we did that,
Speaker 1: and I went through all these less poles and came
Speaker 1: up with this Sunburst that was just gorgeous, and and
Speaker 1: I got that one so that I used that on
Speaker 1: every record I did forever, you know, and I made
Speaker 1: I used to do what I called my phony steel guitar,
Speaker 1: and that's how I did a lot of sessions, just
Speaker 1: plug right into the board. I'm sorry when you said
Speaker 1: gear Free made like pedals and things like that, because
Speaker 1: I don't use any but I using any volume pedal
Speaker 1: like a steel guitar. But I would plug right into
Speaker 1: the board and just you know, put some reverb on
Speaker 1: it and play that way. And uh, that's the first
Speaker 1: thing I did like on Randy's record, not on short People.
Speaker 1: That's playing some slide. But there's a single writer in
Speaker 1: the rain on that great record. And I'm playing my
Speaker 1: phony pedal steel guitar and it's great. Randy loved it.
Speaker 1: And but so I used my last pole until it
Speaker 1: broke too many times and I had to replace it.
Speaker 1: And now I played this other three less poll it's
Speaker 1: it's it's I call it a white one, but it's
Speaker 1: actually a gold top spray painted white that I just
Speaker 1: found in this shop one day and it's great. And
Speaker 1: the road, oh yeah, that goes on the road. My my, My,
Speaker 1: My original less pole stays home. It's ensured for a
Speaker 1: lot of bread. It's very valuable and it's gorgeous. And
Speaker 1: but Gibson made a Waddy walktail model I walktail less
Speaker 1: pool and they copied my guitar exactly, my sixty. It's
Speaker 1: just sunburst and it's beautiful. They did a great job. Okay,
Speaker 1: So will you play that guitar? Yeah, I use it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a white one in that one, okay. And
Speaker 1: then how about amps amp seven using this company called
Speaker 1: black Star really sweet sounding amps. I used to play
Speaker 1: everything and when we did all the records in the
Speaker 1: in the seventies and stuff, they were music Man was
Speaker 1: the amp, and that was Leo, that's right, And we
Speaker 1: had they were small enough to have live in the
Speaker 1: studio and I'd be here Andrew be here right next
Speaker 1: to each other, and you have a little baffle in between,
Speaker 1: and and it was loud enough. But and then I
Speaker 1: went from those to my marshals and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And and then Fender makes a great ample of vibro king,
Speaker 1: so I was using that for a while. To this
Speaker 1: is a current or an old model. It's current is
Speaker 1: meaning right with the last twenty years. So so I
Speaker 1: was using that. I was using two of those together,
Speaker 1: which is enough to like, shave you really loud and
Speaker 1: very brilliant. Is you're hearing? Yeah? My hearing. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but it's okay. You don't have to wear
Speaker 1: the hearing age or anything. And I'm not that good
Speaker 1: on I do say what a lot, like like my
Speaker 1: father what. But no, my hearing is surprisingly good. I
Speaker 1: don't know why that is. But so that these black
Speaker 1: Star amps are beautiful sounding, so I've been used them lately.
Speaker 1: And then greatest guitarist of all time? Hard to say
Speaker 1: that one? Who are your favorites? Well, uh starts to
Speaker 1: jazz Johnny Smith. If you know Johnny Smith, is you
Speaker 1: know that Johnny Smith was a jazz player who all
Speaker 1: the other jazz players said he's too corny and he's
Speaker 1: too fucking square. But this guy is the most incredible
Speaker 1: guitar player ever and he wrote And I didn't even
Speaker 1: know this for years, and it's funny. I just did
Speaker 1: an interview with the daughter of one of the Ventures
Speaker 1: and that song walk Don't Run was written by Johnny Smith.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even I wasn't even aware of it.
Speaker 1: I had all these Johnny Smith records and one day
Speaker 1: I was home and and I went, walk Don't Run,
Speaker 1: And I looked at the Ventures record it says j Smith, Oh,
Speaker 1: this can't be. And I went and I played it
Speaker 1: and it's this beautiful shuffles, really gorgeous little lazz and
Speaker 1: uh so I asked her, I said, how did the
Speaker 1: Ventures find that song? And she wasn't even sure that
Speaker 1: someone just found it one day on a record and
Speaker 1: thought it would make a good roll. So I thought
Speaker 1: that started with the ventures. I didn't know that well
Speaker 1: it did, but it came from this guy, Johnny Smith.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Johnny Smith was my god like idol. He
Speaker 1: was incredible. But Jimmy Hendricks was unbelievable, you know. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Page is fantastic, Keith is unreal with the best rhythm
Speaker 1: playing in the world, and and someone amazing leads too,
Speaker 1: But Mick was Mick Taylor is great. As there's too
Speaker 1: many guys, it's just impossible to say a favorite. I
Speaker 1: always thought of the rock guitars, I thought that Jeff
Speaker 1: Beck was the best. Jeff is great, but he's but
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page can do amazing things too, So what he is,
Speaker 1: you know? Well, the only one there was those these
Speaker 1: Arms concerts. I don't yeah, you know, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: It's funny to say that because I had never seen
Speaker 1: Jeff and I went to that show and there he
Speaker 1: was planning. He was fantastic and it was great, and
Speaker 1: I loved that his tone was beautiful. He's doing great.
Speaker 1: He got a good, good, good applause, you know, And
Speaker 1: then a few minutes later, Jimmy Page just walked out
Speaker 1: onto the stage, didn't even have a guitar on. He
Speaker 1: just kind of came out and Madison Square Garden almost
Speaker 1: self destructed. It was like, what's happening? Oh my god?
Speaker 1: And I could see Jeff backstage was just just been
Speaker 1: killing himself. What the funk do I have to do
Speaker 1: to get over well? You know, I thought this was
Speaker 1: Ronnie Lane of the faces about these benefit concerts, multiple roses,
Speaker 1: and it had all three of them. Clapton played, Beck played,
Speaker 1: and Paige played with Paul Rodgers, and and that wasn't
Speaker 1: in good shape that night either. He was a mess
Speaker 1: right in l A. I thought that Beck blew him
Speaker 1: off the stage. But you know, we saw a different Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, Jeff played better. But it was like
Speaker 1: night and day and it was a big bright day.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you when Paige when Page, he came
Speaker 1: out on that stage and he was you know, he
Speaker 1: was just getting over smacked then and stuff. He was
Speaker 1: a mess, but he was so cool. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I mean, Jeff is an incredible player, ridiculous. But at
Speaker 1: the same time as Jimmy Pages trying to get through
Speaker 1: she got the double neck on trying to get through
Speaker 1: stairway to Heaven and it's a mess. And his solos
Speaker 1: are a mess. His solos on records are a mess.
Speaker 1: But some of his things that he does are so brilliant.
Speaker 1: Record but I was gonna say it was at the
Speaker 1: end of this mess of stairway, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: the guitar. He just takes the guitar off, and I said,
Speaker 1: what's he doing? And he just here's the back end
Speaker 1: of it, and here's the double necks and he picks
Speaker 1: it up like this. He grabbed it like this at
Speaker 1: his like like this and held it like that and
Speaker 1: it's straight up in his hand, held it like that
Speaker 1: over the audience just going insane, And so was I
Speaker 1: look at this guy, where did he learned that? That
Speaker 1: is the coolest thing I've ever seen? You know, he
Speaker 1: didn't have to do, he didn't have to play great,
Speaker 1: but Jimmy Page is a brilliant guitar player. Well so
Speaker 1: also he wrote that stuff for the stuff that he
Speaker 1: didn't introduced it introduced it, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just some of those things that you know over
Speaker 1: the hills and far away, like acoustic part, What where's
Speaker 1: that coming from? You know, that's amazing. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: can come up with stuff like that. I love. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know the song Physical Graffiti ten
Speaker 1: years gone. Damn dam at the end, especially his licks
Speaker 1: at the end over that figure, so gorgeous. He's serious, man, Okay,
Speaker 1: just a couple since we're into deep, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you he came to the joint one night. Somebody said,
Speaker 1: jim just you know what, Come on, you gotta be kidding.
Speaker 1: He says, no, he's he's outside in the varlt really.
Speaker 1: So I went out there and I see this white
Speaker 1: hair and I went, Jimmy, yes, you know he's the
Speaker 1: gentlest right right exactly. He goes, of course you are?
Speaker 1: How are you? Man? And I said, oh man, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled that you're here. Do you do you
Speaker 1: want to come play with? No, he says, I'm just
Speaker 1: here to watch, man, I'm just here to watch. It
Speaker 1: was too much, man, it blew me away. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we have those moments. I won't whip out mind. But
Speaker 1: it's not quite the same thing. But the one night
Speaker 1: I spent it was after the uh premiere of It
Speaker 1: Might Get Loud, the guitar movie You Knows Him and
Speaker 1: Jack White and the Edge was not there the after party,
Speaker 1: and people want to talk about he's so gentle. You
Speaker 1: can't imagine the same guy with these legendary stories. What
Speaker 1: about Eddie van Halen, And he's a great player, amazing
Speaker 1: guitar player. Of records, Any specific records that stick out
Speaker 1: with you? You say, Johnny Smith in terms of guitar player,
Speaker 1: Any great records? You say, Wow, this is just you know,
Speaker 1: my favorite, I mean just anything? Well, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can start with quarter to three by
Speaker 1: Garry us Bonds. I mean New Orleans, I should say
Speaker 1: not quarter three. Quarter three was great? But remember where
Speaker 1: you how you how you felt the first time you
Speaker 1: heard that song, or good vibrations or you know, I
Speaker 1: want to hold your hand or no. I mean there's
Speaker 1: countless incredible moments in our lives. We've been so lucky
Speaker 1: to live and to hear these things. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, take it so hard when we put that
Speaker 1: record out with Keith at first single, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: That's like that's some badass rock and roll right there, man,
Speaker 1: that's some fucking serious rocket. Okay, So yout home, do
Speaker 1: you play music at this point? Well, you know somewhat.
Speaker 1: My wife plays more records than I. You you know,
Speaker 1: I on the road, I I play music. I bother
Speaker 1: people all the time. You know. I have this Marshall's thing.
Speaker 1: Marshall made this boom box. It's great. So I'm backstage
Speaker 1: before shows, I'm blast in rock and roll all the time.
Speaker 1: But at home, my wife takes over on the records.
Speaker 1: I'm usually just trying to learn, you know, some Hawaiian stuff,
Speaker 1: or playing working in my studio, you know, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of times now you work at home. You
Speaker 1: know people you're actually recording on home. People say, yeah,
Speaker 1: how extensive a studio do you have. I have a
Speaker 1: You couldn't record a whole band in it, let's put
Speaker 1: it that way, you know, but you could record a
Speaker 1: couple of guys playing the guitars together, a guitar and
Speaker 1: bass singer. You know. I don't have a drum room.
Speaker 1: It's a workstation where you call it right. And you're
Speaker 1: pretty savvy with pro tools. I use digital Performer actually,
Speaker 1: because when I started doing scoring for film pro tools
Speaker 1: MIDI was not happening at all, and everyone said, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta use digital Performer, and I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about any of it. So performers where I went, and
Speaker 1: now I'm versed in performers, so I don't feel the
Speaker 1: need to switch over. And how often will someone just
Speaker 1: send you something to say put something on it? You know? Often?
Speaker 1: I mean I just got done doing that with Holly Knights,
Speaker 1: a great, great songwriter, and uh, it was funny. I
Speaker 1: did something for Holly a couple but three years ago,
Speaker 1: I mean four years ago, and then she wrote to
Speaker 1: me and said, I've got another song working on it
Speaker 1: and uh, which could you put some guitars on it?
Speaker 1: And I said sure, I'd love to her, so I
Speaker 1: did sent them to her. She said, yeah, it's great,
Speaker 1: but it's not quiet this and not quite that. And
Speaker 1: finally I said, Holly, and it's great. It's great when
Speaker 1: someone knows what they want. You know, it's either you
Speaker 1: know exactly what you want or you let someone you
Speaker 1: trust give you what they want that what they think
Speaker 1: is right, and it works out both ways. But Holly
Speaker 1: said it not quite. I said, Holly, why don't you
Speaker 1: come here because otherwise I'm gonna be sending you stuff
Speaker 1: for months? You know, why don't you just come here
Speaker 1: and we'll just do it together. So she came out
Speaker 1: to my house and we met. We've we've never met,
Speaker 1: you know. We we've done it this way, you know.
Speaker 1: And I worked for Val Garage and several albums for
Speaker 1: him that way, you know. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: on Keith's last record, I went to New York and
Speaker 1: played with him on some of it, but on some
Speaker 1: of it they sent some of the tracks to me
Speaker 1: and I put stuff on it at my house, you know.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter where you are so at this
Speaker 1: late date, anything you want to achieve or do before
Speaker 1: the grim Reaper shows up, well, I just want to
Speaker 1: continue being valid musically. And like I said, Danny and
Speaker 1: Russell and Leland and Postel and myself for this band now,
Speaker 1: and we've been writing, so writing good songs at this
Speaker 1: point and being able to perform them would be a
Speaker 1: great thing. And hearing having people agree it would be
Speaker 1: a great thing. Getting him heard, which is getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder when you're this old. But it's getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder without making a whole podcast about it. Even
Speaker 1: if you used to be in the first part of
Speaker 1: the centry, you made something greater with surface. Now you
Speaker 1: can do something great and it and it won't surface.
Speaker 1: It's hard to break through the noise. So if you're
Speaker 1: doing something and not only the noise, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: only the amount of output. It's just so much. The
Speaker 1: barrier to entry is solo, which is why I have
Speaker 1: a special deal for you to work on The Greatest
Speaker 1: Showman Too. But send me the contract exactly. It's as
Speaker 1: I write the songs, we're ready. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's depressing and overwhelming and one of the problems. You know,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people who say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know all the good stuff, that stuff today as
Speaker 1: good as it was yesterday ago. No, it wasn't. It's not.
Speaker 1: It's like we lived through something. It's like just pulling
Speaker 1: a record out of my ask like walk Away Renee
Speaker 1: something you have to hear once. It's got that feeling.
Speaker 1: Even Pretty Ballerweena also by the Left Bank, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can talk about tracks forever. But it's been so
Speaker 1: great hearing your history and talking about this. Waddy, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming, my pleasure, Bob, thanks for having me man.
Speaker 1: I was so glad you asked me to come by.
Speaker 1: Until next time. It's watery walk tell with me here
Speaker 1: on the Bob Left sets podcast. How great was that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I only knew Watty from seeing him on
Speaker 1: stage at the Roxy, in Films, etcetera. Hearing all those
Speaker 1: stories how he made it from there, in this case
Speaker 1: Queen's Forest Hills. To hear it is just unbelievable for
Speaker 1: those you live through the era and those who didn't.
Speaker 1: I'm just sure it was astounding even hearing the story
Speaker 1: Werewolves of London. So you can email me tell me
Speaker 1: what you think. Until next time, It's Bob Left Sets
Speaker 1: on my podcast, The Bob Left. That's podcast me reas
Speaker 1: and don't know exactly why must beeds out of the
Speaker 1: season Dry