Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, brocome back to the Bob left Nets podcast.
Speaker 1: My yesterday it's Chris Stein and Blonde Chris so that
Speaker 1: taft bond always and the fan you know, it's whether
Speaker 1: you know. I guess you gathered over the years, but
Speaker 1: I appreciate your missives. So when we were setting this up,
Speaker 1: you had a busy schedule. So what was going on there?
Speaker 1: We've had just been the last three days working up
Speaker 1: new music, so that's we're very slow. The Blondie situation
Speaker 1: is glacial in its forward motion, and uh, we were
Speaker 1: you know, we're starting to get it going down. Let's
Speaker 1: break it down. What's the process? How do you decide
Speaker 1: to record? What do you do before you get in
Speaker 1: the room. We are collect material people, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a bit them all take stuff from outside sources wherever
Speaker 1: it's coming from. Uh, then the the this time me
Speaker 1: and the keyboard player and the other guitar player and
Speaker 1: Debbie get together. Do you started home alone other people
Speaker 1: started home alone, and then just bring it to the
Speaker 1: rehearsal room, or do you send it to other members
Speaker 1: and then they give their feedback. Yes, the latter I
Speaker 1: not necessarily feedback. Everybody just kind of knows what's good.
Speaker 1: But I do demos on my home equipment and then
Speaker 1: send it around and we wind it. We wind up
Speaker 1: with a big online list. This time we had like
Speaker 1: twenty five or so pieces that we pick and choose
Speaker 1: from and those are finished songs, no demos, stuff that
Speaker 1: might finish. I don't mean the recordings, but the songs themselves. No, No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. Debbie does a lot of the a lot
Speaker 1: of I don't write a lot of lyrics. For example, Debbie.
Speaker 1: I give Debbie of unfinished lyrical ideas with melodies, with
Speaker 1: melody lines that are suggestions of melodies, and she develops
Speaker 1: the lyrical ideas. Okay, when you gathered physically, what happens?
Speaker 1: Then we get together we have by then we have
Speaker 1: a few of these things chosen and we just go
Speaker 1: over them. So we went into these last three days
Speaker 1: we had seven things that we picked out and we
Speaker 1: just learned them and go over the chords and like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: need let's just say the music business has changed radically
Speaker 1: from your late seventies early eighties heyday, and a lot
Speaker 1: of as they say, I hate this term, but I'll
Speaker 1: use it any way. Heritage acts don't even record new music.
Speaker 1: What's the motivation to record new music today? For us,
Speaker 1: it's just what we do. And it's just like the
Speaker 1: shark moving forward. And uh, you know, I enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I hear so much modern stuff that I like. I
Speaker 1: you know, my what I've all I've said over the
Speaker 1: years is that of the stuff you here is always crap,
Speaker 1: but nobody remembers the bad stuff. You know, people are
Speaker 1: only familiar with the good material. Maybe it's a different ratio,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I hear a lot of modern
Speaker 1: stuff inspirationally, hear things that inspire me, styles, whatever, and
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, it's what we'd like to try
Speaker 1: to stay fresh in that respect. So what are you
Speaker 1: hearing that's turning now? All kinds of all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's gratifying. There are all these female
Speaker 1: fronted bands that I like. You know, there's you know,
Speaker 1: Surfboard and sun Slower Being and Churches and all these
Speaker 1: girls are out there doing their thing. Um. I personally
Speaker 1: have been a huge fan of modern Latin music for
Speaker 1: over fifteen years. I've been a reggaeton and could be
Speaker 1: a fan, and I knew that stuff was going to
Speaker 1: cross over, and now it's ubiquitous. Those grooves are very
Speaker 1: sexy to be the dembo beat. You know, dembo beat
Speaker 1: is don't want to explain to the audience what it is.
Speaker 1: It's just a boom boom. It's the reggaetone beat is
Speaker 1: very specific form. It's almost like a twelve bar blues
Speaker 1: in its specificity. And I just as soon as I
Speaker 1: started hearing that stuff years ago, I was really turned on.
Speaker 1: It really took a long time to cross over, and then,
Speaker 1: you know, and then we had finally we have things
Speaker 1: like lean On and some of these great tracks that
Speaker 1: are dipping into that groove a little bit. Okay, when
Speaker 1: we were growing up, music was driving the culture and
Speaker 1: if you were interested in new music, you could just
Speaker 1: turn on the FM radio station. Certainly am before that.
Speaker 1: How do you discover all this stuff? Or you make
Speaker 1: it actively? Are you doing it me? I? I pick
Speaker 1: up from the weirdest online sources, just you know, looking
Speaker 1: at TikTok videos or people's Instagram stories, and I'll hear
Speaker 1: two bars is something that really gets to me, and
Speaker 1: then I will shazam it and find out what it is.
Speaker 1: So for an old fucker, I am very adept and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I've been doing computers for a very
Speaker 1: long time. I started in the eighties, so I have
Speaker 1: good skills with the software and hardware. Well, let's buy
Speaker 1: for kat here and leave the skills aside for a second.
Speaker 1: You talk about TikTok irrelevant of knowing how to work
Speaker 1: the machine or the phone. Do you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time on TikTok, Instagram, etcetera. Instagram, on Instagram and Twitter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my main Well, I certainly see on Twitter all
Speaker 1: the time, and you have a sense of humor, and
Speaker 1: you about your photographs, But what is the inspiration You're
Speaker 1: expressing yourself on Twitter? But in TikTok and Instagram? Do
Speaker 1: you want to take the pulse of the nation or
Speaker 1: you just really interested Instagram. I just like the graphic
Speaker 1: aspect of it, and it was a great place to
Speaker 1: start doing the photographs. And I'm not like a huge
Speaker 1: influence or any of that kind of nonsense, but I
Speaker 1: like TikTok how it works with all these kids, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing audios and often sharing original audios. And my daughters
Speaker 1: get into it and they're always coming up to me
Speaker 1: and showing me some crazy little bit and that's fun.
Speaker 1: And I foresee I was just telling the guys in
Speaker 1: the rehearsal yesterday, I'm for seeing nine second songs. Now
Speaker 1: that's probably the new frontier. I don't know that we'll
Speaker 1: be doing any but it's probably coming, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think I guess you gotta blame blame fucking mine
Speaker 1: for all this short attention has been right right right?
Speaker 1: Have you actively tried to get any of Blondie's music
Speaker 1: past or present used on TikTok? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, heart
Speaker 1: a glasses all over the place for that was trending
Speaker 1: several times with whatever, you know, kind of visuals that
Speaker 1: was evoking in little kids. But it's out there. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you participate on Twitter? Do you follow a lot
Speaker 1: of people on Twitter too? And do you spend time
Speaker 1: reading Twitter? Yeah? Yeah, sure? What kind of people you follow?
Speaker 1: What are you looking for? A lot of left wing
Speaker 1: political people, but I pay attention to what the right
Speaker 1: wing maniacs are on about also, and you know a
Speaker 1: lot of the artists and film people, directors, writers, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a long list. I have really great people following
Speaker 1: me to them, you know, I'm not gonna flex about
Speaker 1: But I have followers that I'm proud of. So what
Speaker 1: motivates you to tweet? It's kind of this high of mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not it's not a real hie of mine,
Speaker 1: but it's I call it the false hive of mind.
Speaker 1: But I like the fact that whatever you're thinking now,
Speaker 1: somebody else's gonna be writing the same goddamn thing somewhere.
Speaker 1: If there's almost no individual commentary, and you know the
Speaker 1: fact that it's so all over the place too. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I thought one in the morning
Speaker 1: following the Ukrainian situation, and the immediacy of it is
Speaker 1: really fucking you know, intense. Also, uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: have people they're commenting on what's going on, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's every duty. It's not. It's changed a
Speaker 1: lot of things in the culture, the immediacy of the internet. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you follow a lot of left wing when you
Speaker 1: check in with the right, what's your hope for democracy
Speaker 1: or autocracy in the world today? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a really it's a rough time and it's a
Speaker 1: rough call. And I didn't you know, you and I
Speaker 1: have been through a lot of all that stuff back
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, I was right at the when
Speaker 1: the fugs tried to levitate the Pentagon without Alan Ginsberg.
Speaker 1: I was like right there sitting by the stage and
Speaker 1: got tear gased and all this stuff. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's it's I've never seen it so fifty
Speaker 1: fifty before with such a balance of maybe it's all
Speaker 1: going to go to ship or maybe it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: It's usually there's usually a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: pendulum swing to one side or the other generally that
Speaker 1: things will be okay. You know, we all lived through
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King a lot of positivity, you know, so
Speaker 1: to see the stuff that's going on now is it's frustrating.
Speaker 1: But I am continually amused. My general outlook on life
Speaker 1: is amusement, and there's a lot of it's funny what
Speaker 1: goes on to in the world. You know, you have children,
Speaker 1: so some of it's not that funny. I don't have
Speaker 1: children all die, you know. Yeah, I know. I talked
Speaker 1: to them about that stuff about you know, potential for
Speaker 1: bleak future. I don't know how much they get of that,
Speaker 1: but they're they're aware of current events certainly, like I'm
Speaker 1: really you know, I'm really amused now that all these
Speaker 1: right wing guys who are anti Marxists and calling you know,
Speaker 1: Alc a Marxist, letting this whatever, you know, socialist monster
Speaker 1: are now sort of supporting this Russian invasion, which is
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy, but it's also very funny on a
Speaker 1: certain level. I agree, But I was thinking about it
Speaker 1: just before we started. Is it literally black and white?
Speaker 1: Since Biden is taking one side, they have to take
Speaker 1: the other. What do you think philosophically that's the side
Speaker 1: They're wrong? No, no, no, for sure, It's just all
Speaker 1: partisan politics. It has nothing to do with the fucking
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think. I don't think Bill O'Reilly
Speaker 1: believes any fucking thing he ever said. I think he's
Speaker 1: just doing it for the bucks. I think maybe some
Speaker 1: of the other ones, you know, believe it. Maybe Carlson
Speaker 1: is genuinely that. But there's just as you know, I
Speaker 1: briefly met Ann Coulter, I think a lot of these
Speaker 1: guys are just doing it for effect and for uh
Speaker 1: the check. Okay, Bill Maher goes on that he's friends
Speaker 1: within Coulter. You know, with Tucker Carlson, I'd just like
Speaker 1: to get him alone, and Lauren would say, off the record,
Speaker 1: you really believe this ship. So you're talking to Ann Coulter,
Speaker 1: did you think she was just throwing, you know, bombs
Speaker 1: to have a career. I saw her in a very
Speaker 1: show busy situation that was and it was very obvious
Speaker 1: that she was part of the show bizmail you. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I could say that, Well, I guess for me.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember the sixties and seventies. I remember
Speaker 1: going to college. You could literally point out the Republicans
Speaker 1: on campus. You literally knew who they were, and they
Speaker 1: were a handful. And I hear from all day long
Speaker 1: the fact that a very significant part of the youth
Speaker 1: are Republicans and supporting the Fox News agenda. It's just
Speaker 1: mind blowing to me. Well, because that's what they're exposed to, though,
Speaker 1: It's just it's just indoctrination and not being supposed to
Speaker 1: another side. You know, I was lucky. I was when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I was you know, my parents
Speaker 1: were red as the FBI famously came to my house
Speaker 1: when I was maybe and talked to my old man
Speaker 1: C and so forth. M I was. I had both sides.
Speaker 1: The FBI came to your house. You remember that actually happening. No,
Speaker 1: I don't remember, I remember my father being really creeped
Speaker 1: out though, and telling me, you know, he gave them
Speaker 1: the name of some guy who was dead and they
Speaker 1: were happy that he was forthcoming and left. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you know, they're those famous stories of the Eagles raising
Speaker 1: money for Jerry Brown for president and Irving as Jerry
Speaker 1: wanted to come on stage, and Irving said, no, okay,
Speaker 1: the acts were bigger than the politicians. A lot of
Speaker 1: years since then. So where is the place, if any,
Speaker 1: for music in today's topsy turvy political world? Um, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't you know. There's just so much of it.
Speaker 1: What have you know, ten thousand songs an hour, go
Speaker 1: on to the sixty a day they say on Spotify,
Speaker 1: whatever the hell that's supposed to be. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult plus everybody, plus with the with the
Speaker 1: society being so split down the middle and pulling into directions,
Speaker 1: people are scared to alienate their fan bases. I think
Speaker 1: with heavy political statements, um, you know, it's just the
Speaker 1: obvious stuff I'd like to see. And then also making
Speaker 1: a political statement, you know, be it on Twitter or
Speaker 1: whatever by an artist just immediately gets shut down by
Speaker 1: the opposing group. It doesn't matter, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you come out and you say something that's meaningful to
Speaker 1: your fan base or your political affiliation, but the other
Speaker 1: guys are just gonna say, yeah, that's that guy, you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever. My guy is better. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: it almost, it's just blowing into the wind. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to make a meaningful impact on the culture
Speaker 1: politically really, except in little increments, you know. That's why
Speaker 1: I go on Twitter and say stuff. But again, I
Speaker 1: most of my stuff is is in a humorous vein.
Speaker 1: Are you worried at all about going on record about
Speaker 1: anything and alienating your audience? No, not really. I don't
Speaker 1: think so, because I I you know, I think I mean,
Speaker 1: Blondie fans are not going to be surprised how we
Speaker 1: stand on I'll be q T rights, you know, or etcetera,
Speaker 1: um or international politics. I don't think it's gonna nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna be surprised by how well what we think. What
Speaker 1: did you do for the two years of the pandemic?
Speaker 1: I wrote a memoir. I wrote a lot of a
Speaker 1: memoir and which I'm pitching now this that was nice.
Speaker 1: It didn't do a hell of a lot of music.
Speaker 1: I only did a little bit, but the writing was
Speaker 1: of full on project that's a year or more. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just finishing that up now and where
Speaker 1: we are pitching it? And did you write it yourself
Speaker 1: or do you have a ghost writer co writer? Now?
Speaker 1: I write it myself, and when we got a publisher,
Speaker 1: I'll start dealing with an editor. So usually when you
Speaker 1: start to write, you remember stuff that you didn't think
Speaker 1: of until you start to write. So were there any
Speaker 1: interesting things that came to you as you're writing that
Speaker 1: you forgot? Maybe? I, you know, I had to research
Speaker 1: a lot of it. I was referring to other Blondie
Speaker 1: books that had the bones and the chronology people who
Speaker 1: did that work for me, which was good. And I
Speaker 1: kept having to refer to the Blondie gig list, which
Speaker 1: is online list of all the shows we've done. Stuff
Speaker 1: like that was very helpful. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: stuff I didn't remember that, but I, you know, I
Speaker 1: talked to people and got some anecdotes and things that
Speaker 1: were unique. It is it more of a straightforward tale
Speaker 1: or does it have the sense of humor you employ
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, no, I've tried to make it
Speaker 1: white hearted. But it didn't have to, you know, I did.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how much you would have to delve
Speaker 1: into addiction, um specifically that became it became a theme
Speaker 1: in there, because you know, we got we all got
Speaker 1: really fucked up for a certain period. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of ups and downs. So how did you become addicted?
Speaker 1: Just from doing drugs always and from not having much
Speaker 1: information about it in that period in the seventies and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, emulating our heroes be it you know, Burrows
Speaker 1: or lou Reed or whatever, and only seeing the cool
Speaker 1: side of it somehow and not the downside. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we all smoked marijuana hash. What was your progression from there? Well,
Speaker 1: we just did a lot of coke, which was kind
Speaker 1: of okay with the powers that be, and then start
Speaker 1: to dabbling and smoked dragons, you know how you do
Speaker 1: that on tinfron smoking heroin, and that led into just
Speaker 1: regular heroin usage. Didn't last too long a couple of years.
Speaker 1: But then you know, and that's what how I wind
Speaker 1: up with that weird protect protracted illness because I, uh
Speaker 1: screwed my immune system really badly from doing this stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're smoking heroin whatever, you start injecting heroin in
Speaker 1: your mind, don't you somewhere say, wait a second, what
Speaker 1: am I doing? After a while, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: Came from going through withdrawals and from walking on the
Speaker 1: street and seeing everybody around me being normal and feeling
Speaker 1: so alienated from the normalcy of the rest of the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, being a rock star is tough. You
Speaker 1: play to, you know, twenty thousand adoring fans, you get
Speaker 1: on bust with the same five actors that you've known
Speaker 1: your whole life. Takes you hours to come down from
Speaker 1: the hit. A lot of people start taking drugs to
Speaker 1: cope with the road. What drove you to heroin? Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean there was a premenous amount of pressure we
Speaker 1: You know, you have to remember what the fucking period
Speaker 1: was like in the seventies. It was still a wild
Speaker 1: West out there. It wasn't like, there wasn't the smoothness
Speaker 1: that we have today when we were doing shows. It
Speaker 1: was it was rugged and we had a lot of
Speaker 1: bad representation and etcetera, etcetera. Again, with a lot of
Speaker 1: ups and downs. Financially, I wasn't trust trusted a lot
Speaker 1: of people I shouldn't have trusted necessarily, and um should
Speaker 1: have been bed. That was probably the I do blame
Speaker 1: my endless weed smoking on my lack of attention to business. Possibly,
Speaker 1: but I don't have any kind of ahead for mathematics.
Speaker 1: But I didn't pay a lot of I didn't pay
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to the business stuff. I just
Speaker 1: left it with people. So the year plus that you
Speaker 1: were a heroin addict. You know, people talk about scoring
Speaker 1: by the same token. You have a certain amount of money,
Speaker 1: your rock star. How did you get your dope which
Speaker 1: you need, you know, multiple times a day. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: initially we had people delivering, but as things declined generally
Speaker 1: and we ran out of money and sold our fancy
Speaker 1: living quarters. Um, you know, I was crawling around. And
Speaker 1: then I went you know, after after even after that,
Speaker 1: even after I got off being a junkie and went
Speaker 1: on to I was on a method on program for
Speaker 1: many years, and I then I became a full on
Speaker 1: cocaine addict once again, but much more so than I
Speaker 1: had been in the early days. So that was another
Speaker 1: thing I have to fight off. Okay, So how did
Speaker 1: you stop taking the methodon and you said in the
Speaker 1: past tense were you still taking it? No? No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I finally just I just tampered it off on my own,
Speaker 1: very gradually over a long period. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: city of stuff. But the Methodon is also a great
Speaker 1: cushion for for cocaine youth and many people I knew
Speaker 1: on the method and program. We're all using coke all
Speaker 1: the time because I had a doctor, had a really
Speaker 1: great doctor method On doctor who swore that Methodon was
Speaker 1: an antipsychotic, and that she was aware of lifelong schizophrenics
Speaker 1: who were cured cured by Methodon. But that, of course
Speaker 1: it can't. You know, it's too restricted to be experimented
Speaker 1: with in these psychiatric situations, as you know are many
Speaker 1: drugs in America. But so in that respect, the anti
Speaker 1: psychotic properties are kind of obvious for people doing cocaine.
Speaker 1: You'd get less paranoid and less insane, doo and cope
Speaker 1: when you're on method on. Both the high was still
Speaker 1: as good. Yeah, you know then, but then cocaine addiction.
Speaker 1: You know, it's when we were starting out and we're
Speaker 1: in the midst of the cocaine of the late seventies
Speaker 1: and early eighties, Nobody thought it was addictive, but you know,
Speaker 1: of course it is. And you feel horrible if you're
Speaker 1: using daily and then you stop your crashing and feeling
Speaker 1: slugged out and unhappy. So it's that. But yeah, with
Speaker 1: method on, it's uh, it's more a lot of aspects
Speaker 1: of it are tolerable. So how long did you do cocaine?
Speaker 1: What period was this and how did you get off
Speaker 1: the cocaine this time? After we stopped doing the blondie situation,
Speaker 1: which really just kind of fizzled out, then I was
Speaker 1: doing coke for I don't know, you know, four or
Speaker 1: five years, probably maybe even longer. And then we started
Speaker 1: putting the Banta back together. Then I met my great
Speaker 1: wife and she was instrumental in me so bring up
Speaker 1: and that was it, and we were on tour somewhere
Speaker 1: and I this is just there was the point where
Speaker 1: I stopped doing the method on and I had gotten
Speaker 1: it down to five milligrams a day, and then I
Speaker 1: just stopped. And I felt a little weird for about
Speaker 1: a week and then I was okay. And now now
Speaker 1: i've been I've been relatively sober for uh twenty years
Speaker 1: or so, but you smoked marijuana on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Still no, don you're essentially clean. It gets me too, Stone,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I would like to. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm missing something now that's everywhere, but I just
Speaker 1: don't do it. What do I know? Every drug I've
Speaker 1: ever taken has never lived up to the building everybody
Speaker 1: says it's so great. Maybe so you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think you know. I think Pott interfaces well with
Speaker 1: being a teenager, and in your twenties there's a different interface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go down this path. I certainly think, you know,
Speaker 1: but it makes me wonder. You know, if marijuana was
Speaker 1: legal everywhere, would everybody still talk about it in the
Speaker 1: same insider way. I mean, people talk about being drunk,
Speaker 1: but you know, being drunk, you're active. Although there's different
Speaker 1: strands of mariwater as they say canabis. Now you know
Speaker 1: it's relatively pacifying and you retreat you I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I you know, my kids, I've I tell them,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're gonna get stone, smoke weed and
Speaker 1: don't get drunk, don't drink alcohol. So there's that. How
Speaker 1: did you meet your wife, Um just through the New
Speaker 1: York scene. She met her at a she was doing
Speaker 1: some stage work with Penny Arcade. You know, Penny Arcade
Speaker 1: is m great individual, very insightful person Um just so
Speaker 1: in a in a performance situation. And then you know,
Speaker 1: we were friends for a while. She's terrific. She says,
Speaker 1: she's an actor a couple of films and more theater.
Speaker 1: And you have kids. Did you want to have kids
Speaker 1: or did she say this is something she wants to do.
Speaker 1: So it just happened. But I kind of always had
Speaker 1: it in the back of my head. I was close
Speaker 1: to my father and mother. I was really close to
Speaker 1: my old man and I you know, I had dreams
Speaker 1: of taking care of small living creatures. Uh. For it
Speaker 1: was kind of a recurrent theme in my dreams. And
Speaker 1: it's just always there. How old your kids to sixteen
Speaker 1: and eighteen? And what have you learned having kids? Forget
Speaker 1: about just you know, just all this stuff that one learns.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of stuff, just how to negotiated to Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm pretty lenient with them. My wife is
Speaker 1: more of the discipline area. But they listen to me.
Speaker 1: It's good. But you know, there's a lot of ups
Speaker 1: and downs with that too. So to what degree are
Speaker 1: you concerned about the future of your two girls. Yeah, considerably,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're still seeking for what they're gonna
Speaker 1: do in life. There's that, Then there's the climate. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're you know, okay, financially, I'm lucky in that respect,
Speaker 1: but things are weird. It's a weird time. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess you were an artist. If your two daughters said
Speaker 1: they want to be artists, that's fine with you. Or
Speaker 1: you want them to like to go to college and
Speaker 1: get all that they can do whatever the hell they want,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's that's it. Yeah, my younger daughter
Speaker 1: has overnights become a real fashionista and this fashion but
Speaker 1: she's always been a graphic artist, and the older one
Speaker 1: had it's done a bunch of filmmaking and know this
Speaker 1: how to work final cut really well and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Okay, you talked about the ups and downs
Speaker 1: of the money, you know, having to sell your apartment,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So how's the money today We're doing okay?
Speaker 1: You know, we did a deal with merk with Hypnosis,
Speaker 1: so we sold some aspects and got a you know,
Speaker 1: immediate payback for that, not like Bob Dylan money necessarily,
Speaker 1: but it's okay. Um, you know, I'm not complaining. I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: I mean a fucking privileged situation here, which is weird.
Speaker 1: I mean I never came from any money. My parents
Speaker 1: were just lower middle class. But all this stuff, after
Speaker 1: all this time, I mean, it's quite a while to
Speaker 1: pay off financially for us. So I gotta say I
Speaker 1: go into a little more det tale in my book.
Speaker 1: But you know, we got screwed over in your very
Speaker 1: standard show biz way. So when did you start finally
Speaker 1: seeing the money? Least ten fifteen years? Less ten years maybe? Wow?
Speaker 1: So why did you sell the murk? What was that
Speaker 1: decision about? We were you know, prompted, Uh, he got it,
Speaker 1: gave us a really great multiple, et cetera. That kind
Speaker 1: of not says But I don't know, I probably should
Speaker 1: have held that for more money at this point. It
Speaker 1: was very early on in this um uh moments of
Speaker 1: people selling, you know, but we we held on to
Speaker 1: aspects of the of the catalog of the songs. So
Speaker 1: you know, we're still getting licensing fees and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And what do you do with the money.
Speaker 1: Nothing just sitting there. Um. And we have a nice
Speaker 1: apartment in Manhattan now, and we've got a house up
Speaker 1: in Woodstock. We've always Actually the house of Woodstock was
Speaker 1: financed by Andy Warhol skull paintings that I sold under
Speaker 1: market also, But that's what happens, you know. Okay, how
Speaker 1: did you end up with it? And how did you
Speaker 1: decide to sell it? Wish the paintings. The painting I
Speaker 1: had like four Warhole skulls, you know, I just bought
Speaker 1: him from Andy. Um, probably really cheap. I could have
Speaker 1: brought all that fucking stuff, you know, I could have
Speaker 1: brought all the Maryland's and Elvis's, but I just didn't
Speaker 1: have the foresight. I took it for granted because I
Speaker 1: was around it all the time. And uh I so
Speaker 1: I bought four from Andy. I sold two really cheap.
Speaker 1: Early on when I was broke. I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I was broke really a lot. Because I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: go into all the details. It's in the book. You'll
Speaker 1: read all the details in the book. But I was
Speaker 1: didn't you know, I was in financial distress for quite
Speaker 1: a while. And then in later years I sold the
Speaker 1: in two of the skull paintings, and that helped finance
Speaker 1: the house up in Woodstock. But I what I do
Speaker 1: have still is the actual skull that Andy painted. I
Speaker 1: have the actual physical human skull in my collection of
Speaker 1: weird stuff. So did you sell those other two primarily
Speaker 1: to buy the house? Yeah? Just yes, But yeah, because
Speaker 1: who was that. We were very close to nine eleven
Speaker 1: when that happened, and you know, I probably should have
Speaker 1: looked around the city for a cheap town house at
Speaker 1: that point, but because there everybody was, you know, running
Speaker 1: for it. But we did want to. We had made
Speaker 1: a bunch of trips up to Woodstock, and we knew
Speaker 1: people from the film community up there, and I have
Speaker 1: have old friends up there, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: the community. Um, So we just kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: get the country life thing out of our system. So
Speaker 1: we did that. We were up there for like ten years,
Speaker 1: pretty much straight straight through. Okay, so you say you
Speaker 1: have the original skull? Are you a collector? I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about collector like going to art basil. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about do you have all this stuff? Do you have
Speaker 1: all the memorabilia from Blondie? I have a lot of stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of stuff. I have a really
Speaker 1: great knife collection. I collect knives, military, American custom knives,
Speaker 1: and very knowledgeable in the knife world. And I know
Speaker 1: a lot of the old knife makers. It's a very
Speaker 1: niche fucking thing. I write about it in the book.
Speaker 1: Um it's what it is. How did you get into knives? Well,
Speaker 1: my old man took me to army and Navy stories
Speaker 1: when as a kid, and I think that's where it
Speaker 1: started out. He put me a couple of knives early on. Um,
Speaker 1: it just it just went from there. And then in
Speaker 1: the early in the seventies, not the early seventies, but
Speaker 1: in the you know, mid late seventies when we were
Speaker 1: doing the band thing, I started seeing the American custom knife,
Speaker 1: which was in its infancy at that point. But I
Speaker 1: just found it fascinating and all these things connected up,
Speaker 1: and I started going to the knife shows in New
Speaker 1: York all the time, and I met all the guys,
Speaker 1: all these great makers. Um, it's it's still going on.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a pretty big scene. Still.
Speaker 1: How many knowledge do you think you have? And where
Speaker 1: are they? Thousands there? You know, put away, Some of
Speaker 1: them are put away, some out on display, but not
Speaker 1: a lot, A lot of them are just in storage. Okay,
Speaker 1: So where do you grow up Brooklyn and your parents
Speaker 1: their parents were from the Old Country or how long
Speaker 1: was your family here. My old man came from Russia
Speaker 1: when he was probably, um, you know, five six years old.
Speaker 1: My mom was born here. I think her. Maybe my grandfather,
Speaker 1: my maternal grandfather, may have been born out of the country,
Speaker 1: but I think my grandmother was born here. I you know,
Speaker 1: I traced a bunch of this lineage recently. I just
Speaker 1: very recently had a guy from Germany and cousin get
Speaker 1: in touch with me through one of the DNA things
Speaker 1: that I had done, and he had a bunch of
Speaker 1: facts that I didn't have any had a copy of
Speaker 1: my old man's birth certificate, which um, I don't know
Speaker 1: when it was made, and interesting stuff. My old my
Speaker 1: father had the same birthday as my older daughter, which
Speaker 1: we were all taken back by. Right. So it's unusual
Speaker 1: for a Jewish boy to be named Chris. I had
Speaker 1: kids coming up to me when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and saying, it's a weird name for a jew boy
Speaker 1: ivan back then, you know, but I think it may
Speaker 1: have my parents may have been trying to bypass some
Speaker 1: aspects of anti Semitism that they may have been confronted with.
Speaker 1: And on your birth certificate is it Christopher or Christopher?
Speaker 1: And you grow up and once again, what are your
Speaker 1: parents do all day? My father was a salesman and
Speaker 1: a frustrated writer. Um. He had been a labor organizer briefly.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the FBI story. You know,
Speaker 1: I know those guys they told me. My mom told
Speaker 1: me that they met in the party in Syracuse, New York.
Speaker 1: So you know, uh, it's kind of all. I wish
Speaker 1: I had questioned them more about it, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, again, I took it all for granted when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. But my mother was a really
Speaker 1: great painter, and I just don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: her stuff left. I have a handful of her work.
Speaker 1: Most of it got, you know, as we got booted
Speaker 1: out of different environments. That got the discarded all by
Speaker 1: the wayside. But during her heyday, was this just a
Speaker 1: passion or did she actually sell someone her work? No,
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever sold. She was a window
Speaker 1: designer in the forties. She told me she knew decooning
Speaker 1: a little in downtown. Um, She used to do some
Speaker 1: of the Lord and Taylors and some of those big
Speaker 1: windows right around the around the same period that Dolly
Speaker 1: was doing windows in Manhattan too, So I mean she
Speaker 1: was successful with that. And she was a really great
Speaker 1: abstract impressionist painter, but you know, picasso Esque in some places,
Speaker 1: but also experimental and others. But I have a handful
Speaker 1: of her things. Do you think that her identity and
Speaker 1: her you know, the things around, is that what Drew
Speaker 1: drove you to be an artist? Yeah? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: she was my dad. My dad died when I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: so that was early on the dramatic and um, she
Speaker 1: was very permissive and she let all my friends gather
Speaker 1: at my house and hang around and jam and smoke
Speaker 1: weed and it was, you know, nice period. But I
Speaker 1: was called up in the sixties and moved gravitated towards
Speaker 1: the music culture. You said you were very close to
Speaker 1: your father. What did that look like. It must have
Speaker 1: been very painful when he passed. Yeah, yeah, no, it
Speaker 1: took me a while too. I like, I can you know,
Speaker 1: I just kind of complete breakdown when I was nineteen.
Speaker 1: That was probably spurred on as it was part of that,
Speaker 1: you know, processing his death, which I probably hadn't reacted to,
Speaker 1: and taking acid in all the general you know, melt
Speaker 1: down to the sixties. What did the breakdown look like?
Speaker 1: I want? I wanted up in a nuthouse for you know,
Speaker 1: in a Beth Israel for three months. Did but I
Speaker 1: got a lot of benefits out of it, so I was, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got welfare. I got, uh, the remainder might stay
Speaker 1: in art school, paid for by the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: so you know, it wasn't total loss. So what kind
Speaker 1: of kids were you in school? Good student, student, popular, unpopular? No,
Speaker 1: I was just kind of fringe nerd kid. I don't
Speaker 1: think I was. I certainly wasn't a good student. Um.
Speaker 1: I was indifferent to school. I didn't like school at all.
Speaker 1: I fight and then getting this is my whole biography here.
Speaker 1: Um I got thrown out of Midwood High School for
Speaker 1: having long hair in nineteen The fucking dean rounded up
Speaker 1: me and my two or three friends and he said,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna be a crossing the street and
Speaker 1: your hair is gonna blow in front of your eyes
Speaker 1: and you get hit by a car and you have
Speaker 1: to get a hair cut before you come back. And
Speaker 1: I was really happy and felt very liberated to leave.
Speaker 1: And I, um, they did, somebody from the school, but
Speaker 1: right at that moment, all those civil rights cases were
Speaker 1: coming up about long hair. So somebody actually called me
Speaker 1: from the school and said, okay, you can come back
Speaker 1: and you won't have to take jim and everything's okay.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, my mother found a very cheap private school
Speaker 1: uptown in Manhattan. So I wound up finishing high school there,
Speaker 1: which was great. And you graduate from high school and
Speaker 1: then one then I went to San Francisco, played music
Speaker 1: with my friends, started a little later dabbling in photography,
Speaker 1: all this stuff, A lot of a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: You mentioned art school. How does that fit in. I
Speaker 1: was in the School of Visual Arts. Well, that was
Speaker 1: that that was financed by the city as a results
Speaker 1: of my being insane, which was great, and um my
Speaker 1: last year, I guess there I last year. At two years,
Speaker 1: you know, I started seeing flyers in the lobby for
Speaker 1: this thing called the New York Dolls, which I initially
Speaker 1: thought was a drag act. But then when I finally
Speaker 1: saw something in the Village Voice about these guys are
Speaker 1: really great and the singers like Mick Jagger. I went
Speaker 1: to see them. I fell in with this other band
Speaker 1: called the Magic Tramps, who got a shout out in
Speaker 1: that Miserable Vinyl TV show. And oddly enough, because they're
Speaker 1: very unknown and never really recorded, Eric Emerson was the
Speaker 1: lead singer. He was a Warhol superstar. I fell in
Speaker 1: with those guys. I played with them, was part of
Speaker 1: their entourage, and did a roadies situation with them, on
Speaker 1: and on, and then that led into meeting Debbie and
Speaker 1: then then well that happened. Okay, a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: You graduate from high school, you know, your father has passed.
Speaker 1: What are you doing for money? My mom had whatever
Speaker 1: insurance or security stuff. Uh, but you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how the hell we got by. She managed to
Speaker 1: pull together enough income. We moved out of our ancestral
Speaker 1: home and moved to an apartment in Brooklyn that was smaller.
Speaker 1: That's when we lost a lot of her paintings. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, we managed to get by and still
Speaker 1: enough money to financed a couple of trips to California
Speaker 1: for me. Okay, so the first trip that was when
Speaker 1: and what was going on there? Went to streets somewhere loved. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you saw something love and you said I gotta go. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. I heard the song you know flowers in
Speaker 1: your Hair like, yeah, I remember. So did you hitchhike there? No? No,
Speaker 1: I uh. The first time I drove out with buddies
Speaker 1: with older guys from my Brooklyn neighborhood, which was a
Speaker 1: nice road trip with some anecdotes and around that. Um.
Speaker 1: Then I got to l A the weekend of Monterey Pop. Well,
Speaker 1: I was so horny to go to San Francisco. I
Speaker 1: didn't fucking go, and I always regretted that going to
Speaker 1: Battery Pop. But I did go right up. I went
Speaker 1: up to h I went to Saronisco at a reasonably
Speaker 1: good time there for a bunch of weeks, and I
Speaker 1: went back to Brooklyn. I think, Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I started up art school in that year in between,
Speaker 1: but I went to I probably I may have been
Speaker 1: my first year at art school in that year in between.
Speaker 1: I went back to San Francisco and summer nine, they
Speaker 1: cracked up completely from taking acid too much, all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Heard weird things in the White album,
Speaker 1: the same as a lot of other people. All of
Speaker 1: you know, it was I was microcosmo of the macrocosm,
Speaker 1: as they say, what were you doing in San Francisco?
Speaker 1: And where were you sleeping? With friends who had were
Speaker 1: had inhabited a big house there, people I knew and
Speaker 1: people I was. I mean, I got off the I
Speaker 1: got off the bus the first time I was there
Speaker 1: in sixty seven, got off the bus, walked across the
Speaker 1: street into a party. People were dancing to Lucy and
Speaker 1: the Sky with Diamonds true story. Walked into the kitchen.
Speaker 1: I had a joint. I started smoking with some kid.
Speaker 1: He said, who are you? I said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I wound up. He said, oh, you
Speaker 1: can stay at my house, you know, any place to stay.
Speaker 1: It was like that, very easy. Okay, well, you know
Speaker 1: the summer of love and then everybody goes in sixty
Speaker 1: eight and the media portrays it is negative. What was
Speaker 1: your experience like once in a lifetime great or you know,
Speaker 1: I just happened to be there. So so it got
Speaker 1: dark later on, you know, I mean I started seeing
Speaker 1: elements of darkness and predatory people surrounding all this stuff,
Speaker 1: even even probably in sixty seven. But yeah, there was
Speaker 1: it was by by by sixty eight, it was on
Speaker 1: the way, you know, it was the flood gates had opened.
Speaker 1: So obviously music is everything in that era. When did
Speaker 1: you start playing an instrument when that I had been
Speaker 1: playing guitar for when I was twelves before the Beatles.
Speaker 1: What motivated to folk music? Yes, and just being attracted
Speaker 1: to it. The electric guitar, The essence of the electric
Speaker 1: guitar was fascinating to me, and I, you know, I
Speaker 1: would see occasionally one in Brooklyn and looking a basement
Speaker 1: window and there will be some guy with playing a
Speaker 1: fancy electric guitar, and that was very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I was aware of some of
Speaker 1: those twiny songs that were on the radio and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um uh. I always West Side Story
Speaker 1: was such a huge influence on me and everybody, and
Speaker 1: I feel like it pumped up a lot of people
Speaker 1: for the British invasion later on. People don't get what
Speaker 1: a big deal West Side Story was for the kids
Speaker 1: back then. Well, so all you know the original soundtrack,
Speaker 1: original Broadway soundtrack. Did you see the new West Side Story? No, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I was really kind of hyped for it.
Speaker 1: But then it sort of gradually fizzled out, and now
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know if I give you ship
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah, I don't really feel that way.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a huge Spielberg fan anyway. So did
Speaker 1: you play in bands in high school? Were you any
Speaker 1: good playing with bands and playing My friends, we've famously
Speaker 1: opened up for the Velvet Underground in the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven at a place called the Gymnasium. I had a buddy.
Speaker 1: I had a buddy, this guy, Joey Freeman, who I
Speaker 1: grew up with. I knew him for me. He was
Speaker 1: he was maybe a year younger than me, but I've
Speaker 1: known him for you know, fifty odd years. He worked
Speaker 1: for Andy, for the factory. And he showed up my house.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all knew he was associated with Andy,
Speaker 1: and he showed up my house one day in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: and he said, listen, there was an opening act for
Speaker 1: the Velvets, and we all know who they were, of course,
Speaker 1: and they open the act, didn't show up, would you
Speaker 1: guys do it? So we brought our guitars on the
Speaker 1: subway and went up uptown. I think it's in the
Speaker 1: East seventies. This old Polish Hall, and we opened up
Speaker 1: for the Velvets and Marine Tucker let us turn her
Speaker 1: bass drum right side up, you know, because she played
Speaker 1: it like a like a timpany, you know. And we
Speaker 1: did a little set and it was hardly anybody there.
Speaker 1: After this set, you know, somebody came up and said, oh,
Speaker 1: Andy thinks you're really great, and that was nice. And
Speaker 1: Velvets were great. They were awesome and powerful. That was it,
Speaker 1: you know, hanging with famous people as a thing unto itself,
Speaker 1: which most people never experience. When they experience, they either
Speaker 1: become tongue tied or become fan boys or fan girls.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't work. You know. You talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: I meeting Andy, you know, are you just kind of
Speaker 1: an artist? You just kind of go with the flow
Speaker 1: and it fits. I mean where you say, hey, this
Speaker 1: he was already Andy Warhol when your battle. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I had been seeing Andy since I was
Speaker 1: a little kid on TV. I mean I saw him
Speaker 1: on David Suskind or whatever that was. So I mean
Speaker 1: I was aware that always. And Andy was you know,
Speaker 1: very high up there in the ether, but he was
Speaker 1: also close to the streets. So there was this He
Speaker 1: managed to negotiate this position that he was in. Everybody
Speaker 1: in New York who was in any kind of the
Speaker 1: arts had some connection to Andy one way or the others,
Speaker 1: and that started out. That whole thing started out earlier
Speaker 1: for me, I think, I mean later on. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: frequently star struck. Um. I met Peter Dinklage in a
Speaker 1: gas station and he was charming and really nice and
Speaker 1: and being in my position is great. It's like being
Speaker 1: a Mason or something because I can just go up
Speaker 1: to anybody in show business and go high, it's me
Speaker 1: from Blondie and they Okay, yeah, it's you. That's a
Speaker 1: really great thing. Debbie and me met Liz Taylor when
Speaker 1: she was on Broadway for the first time. Our buddy
Speaker 1: Dennis Christopher was in The Little Foxes with her. That
Speaker 1: was memorable. Um, Milton Burrow gave me a big kiss.
Speaker 1: We were at a George Burns. We met George Burns
Speaker 1: several times and we were at some uh toasting situation
Speaker 1: for him, and Milton Burrow was the MC and we
Speaker 1: got dragged out on stage and he grabbed my head
Speaker 1: and give me a big kiss on the lifts in
Speaker 1: front of the whole audience, which is pretty nice. There's
Speaker 1: not many people can say that. So if you talk
Speaker 1: about all the characters in the Factory, Joe Dallassandro, Dy whatever,
Speaker 1: did you know all that? No, not a lot. No,
Speaker 1: because we were We didn't hook up early on with Andy.
Speaker 1: He was in the third Factory by the time. We
Speaker 1: were seeing him frequently more in the eighties, right from
Speaker 1: around on. Um, I know Joe Moore from online and
Speaker 1: talking to him online in this period. So how do
Speaker 1: you meet Debby? I went, I went to a show
Speaker 1: that they were doing with her girl trio thing called
Speaker 1: the Stilettos, and I went to their first show at
Speaker 1: a bar on twenty four Street, I think, and uh,
Speaker 1: that was it. And I was very taken with her
Speaker 1: because she was very magnetic and beautiful. And um, I
Speaker 1: they had they only had rotating musicians in their band,
Speaker 1: and I as soon as I would say well, I
Speaker 1: signed up with the band and became the first permanent member.
Speaker 1: You remember what year? That was? Seventy three. So seventy three,
Speaker 1: the Dolls get their deal, They make their first record
Speaker 1: for Mercury, gets a lot of hype. Doesn't happen the
Speaker 1: Ramons albums the first one, Yeah, maybe I'm I can't
Speaker 1: maybe say Clive or six? Yeah, maybe said five. So
Speaker 1: what was the scene like? You know, you went to
Speaker 1: see Debbie's bean Stiletto, But what other acts were going
Speaker 1: in seventy three? By the late seventies, the whole different world.
Speaker 1: But what's the scene like in the early seventies teenage
Speaker 1: lust here, teenage lust. There was three Girls and the sky.
Speaker 1: Harold Um. I knew Tommy Ramon from Mercer Arts Center,
Speaker 1: from a band called Butch, And when we started playing
Speaker 1: a cb GEVs, he approached me and said, I heard
Speaker 1: you found a place to play downtown. He meant cb
Speaker 1: g VS, and I have this band called the Ramons,
Speaker 1: and we played with their owns at their first gig
Speaker 1: at CBGVS, which I've only figured out recently because all
Speaker 1: these dates are out there in the world. But that happened, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and but early on, you know, Eric Emerson,
Speaker 1: Magic Trams, teenage lust bands. I'm not forgetting. I'm not remembering. Rather,
Speaker 1: loth are in the hand people of silver apples, right,
Speaker 1: silver apples. Those guys were around a little earlier. Um.
Speaker 1: Suicide was around for a long time that you know
Speaker 1: all day I think even pre date the Dolts a
Speaker 1: little bit. So what were you living on? Then? Welfare
Speaker 1: was very helpful. That was pretty much it. Occasional odd jobs,
Speaker 1: but mostly welfare. Okay, so you go to see stiletto
Speaker 1: you're struck by Debbie. How do you introduce yourself and
Speaker 1: what do you say? Well? I knew one of the
Speaker 1: other girls, One of the other girls in Stilettos was
Speaker 1: one of Eric Emerson's girlfriends, and they had a kid together,
Speaker 1: and it was all very incestuous actually, so you know,
Speaker 1: I I don't know how much I spoke to her
Speaker 1: that first night, but soon after I joined up as
Speaker 1: their guitar player. Well you how to sell yourself, right?
Speaker 1: What was your pitch? Well, we were working together at
Speaker 1: that point and we just you see them. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a peripheral character. How do you say, no, you
Speaker 1: need me in the band? I was probably more of
Speaker 1: the two elder the other girl, Eric's girlfriend that because
Speaker 1: she was kind of the leader, the default leader, because
Speaker 1: she had the loft that they were rehearsed again. Um,
Speaker 1: but Debbie's claims to have been had some notice of
Speaker 1: me and some attraction early on too, because I had
Speaker 1: really long hair and I where I make up of
Speaker 1: the whole fucking other image. I might have been more striking,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And how long after you met her
Speaker 1: to turn into a romance? A few months? We were
Speaker 1: friends here, a couple of months, maybe maybe a month,
Speaker 1: maybe one month, two months somewhere in there. Now she's
Speaker 1: spent five years older than you. That that's unusual. Back,
Speaker 1: did you notice that or you know you're in the
Speaker 1: downtown SENI who cares, No, she looked like she was
Speaker 1: a little kid when she was thirty. She looked like
Speaker 1: she was nineteen. Yeah, believe me, I know. I just
Speaker 1: want to know what was going through your head. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now you're part of the group which has got
Speaker 1: free flowed. When do you start having a plan or
Speaker 1: is there never a plan? No? It was I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the dolls going out in the world and
Speaker 1: not succeeding, or at least going out in America and
Speaker 1: not succeeding, made everybody sort of step back, pull it back.
Speaker 1: So the whole New York music scene for several years
Speaker 1: was just done for each other and the only people
Speaker 1: in the audience were other band members and their entourages,
Speaker 1: and there was you know, a peripheral group of friends.
Speaker 1: But generally it was again pretty incestuous. But it was
Speaker 1: there a plan. I don't know if there was a plan.
Speaker 1: We just worked. I mean the plan was to maybe
Speaker 1: get a record deal, but that was pretty nebulous. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know how anybody thought that was
Speaker 1: really going to happen. And what were you using for material?
Speaker 1: Even wrote songs that did cover songs, all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: but everybody wrote songs. Had you been writing songs previously
Speaker 1: or when did you start to blossom? Now? Most of
Speaker 1: that was done because there was a need for it.
Speaker 1: With the early songs we wrote with the Stilettos, I
Speaker 1: think the only man the big song that we wrote
Speaker 1: in the Stilettos period that carried carried over was in
Speaker 1: the Flesh, that one that was a hit in Australia run.
Speaker 1: So how did it more fit from the Stilettos to Blondie. Well,
Speaker 1: the girls, you know, it was hard to keep maintaining
Speaker 1: a three girls situation where they were all taking turn
Speaker 1: singing leads and stuff like that, and there was you know,
Speaker 1: there was a certain amount of competition involved, and eventually
Speaker 1: we just split off and the band followed Debbie into
Speaker 1: the next incarnation. How did it become the name blondie?
Speaker 1: Debbie died or air blonde one day and and we
Speaker 1: didn't really have a name for a while. And came
Speaker 1: home him and said, all these guys are yelling a
Speaker 1: blondie at me. That really was That was really it? Now,
Speaker 1: how do you end up working at CBGB's. That was
Speaker 1: pretty early? I remember, Um, that was with the Stilettos.
Speaker 1: That was earlier. Um, it was just there, and I
Speaker 1: remember distinctly. I was in the backroom in Maxis, Kansas City,
Speaker 1: which is where people played, and you know, we people
Speaker 1: played at mercer ars. I never I never the Spilettos
Speaker 1: never played at mercer Arts. But we did gigs with
Speaker 1: the dolls and played the eighty two Club. You know
Speaker 1: what the two Club was? Two Club? I don't know.
Speaker 1: The two Club was an old uh not really a
Speaker 1: drag bar. It was a mafia owned transvestide bar. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I don't want to be politically incorrect,
Speaker 1: but but I don't know if it really was dragged
Speaker 1: as such, but it was female impersonator. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is you know, I don't being too, kid,
Speaker 1: We'll let you off the hook to offend anybody by
Speaker 1: this terminology. But but it was a great situation there
Speaker 1: were It was downstairs in a basement. It was this
Speaker 1: old mafia run club. There were photos in there. There
Speaker 1: was a photo of Abbott and Costello with a drag
Speaker 1: queen that I was I thought it was the greatest
Speaker 1: fucking art effect that I had seen at that point.
Speaker 1: So we played. We used to play there. There's very
Speaker 1: little information out in the world about the eighties two club.
Speaker 1: It was number eighty two I think Third Street, East
Speaker 1: third Street. Uh, but Seabees. So we were in the
Speaker 1: back room at back to Kansas City and Elda, one
Speaker 1: of the girls from Selettos, showed up and she said,
Speaker 1: I just was downtown in this bar and I saw
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys playing in a band and they
Speaker 1: were all dressed like old men, and she meant television,
Speaker 1: and so we went down to see them, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then we just got in there and started playing.
Speaker 1: We we played at cbt VS every weekend for seven
Speaker 1: months in a row. At one point. Now, the sound
Speaker 1: of Blondie was different from the other acts downtown. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of them were really punk. Television was
Speaker 1: thinking to itself, was it notable or you're just another
Speaker 1: band doing your thing. It was really diverse musically, I
Speaker 1: mean the bands the out of all the big bands,
Speaker 1: you know, us and the Ramans and talking heads and
Speaker 1: television and that was that's a real big spread of
Speaker 1: sound and styles. And how do you end up with
Speaker 1: Private Stock? Um? Private Stock? I guess right, I guess
Speaker 1: we had gotten our manager at that point and we
Speaker 1: just wound up there. It was early on, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We might have got picked up by
Speaker 1: Sire a little later, I don't know. But Private Stock
Speaker 1: was a weird sort of vanity label for this guy,
Speaker 1: Larry Utall, who used to be with Bell Records, I believe,
Speaker 1: with Marty Thaou and uh Seymour. I think they were
Speaker 1: those guys and open partners. Um. He didn't really have
Speaker 1: a clue as to what to do with the allegedly
Speaker 1: punk act. He you know, they had they had the
Speaker 1: Fifth of Beethoven, remember that, absolutely, that was one of
Speaker 1: their big hits. They had Ship and they had oh god,
Speaker 1: I can't remember now I'm blanket, but they had a
Speaker 1: couple had Peter Lemon, Jello. You know, Peter Lemon Jello
Speaker 1: was absolutely MLR guy. You know, so, I mean that
Speaker 1: was what was on Private Stuck and you know, so
Speaker 1: we were there and then who got bought by chrystalis
Speaker 1: after the first album? They wait wait wait wait wait,
Speaker 1: so slow down a little bit. Who is the manage
Speaker 1: of them leaves? This guy? Peter Leeds? All right, now,
Speaker 1: Peter Leeds was not a good experience or baddocks. No,
Speaker 1: it was terrible. But you know because he continued to
Speaker 1: be a manager. So it was terrible because he just
Speaker 1: didn't have good people skills. He had good ideas and
Speaker 1: he but he was just you know, it was just belligerent.
Speaker 1: He would have been better as a CEO, cranky ce
Speaker 1: CEO of something. I think. Okay, so you make these
Speaker 1: two records for Private Stock. Private Stock is there in
Speaker 1: the middle of recording the second one when the negotiations
Speaker 1: commenced with crystalis how do you get hooked up with
Speaker 1: Richard Godderay? He was just around he Um Craig Leon
Speaker 1: was responsible for recording, doing live recordings and CBGBs. At
Speaker 1: one point there was a cbg VS live album done,
Speaker 1: but by that time none of the big bands wanted
Speaker 1: to be on this because everybody it was dealing with
Speaker 1: their own contracts and record labels. So allegedly there are
Speaker 1: all these lost tapes somewhere of you know us in
Speaker 1: television and whatever that we're done with the twenty four
Speaker 1: track truck. So Craig at some point during that was
Speaker 1: approached by Debbie May. I think maybe that's the connection
Speaker 1: with Goda. Craig was hooked up with Gadara. Uh, I
Speaker 1: think that's it. So how did you feel about the
Speaker 1: capturing of your sound? Feel good about it? Bad about it?
Speaker 1: It was good? It was great, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: just got her ahead. A tremendously different approach than Mike Chapman.
Speaker 1: You know, he was you know, he was just very
Speaker 1: old school. We go in and do the do for
Speaker 1: takes of something and then pick the best one. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like that. Okay, how does it get
Speaker 1: started with crystalis? Then Christmas bought us from private stock.
Speaker 1: You know, that just doesn't happen, you know, Blondie looked
Speaker 1: like it was not going anywhere. How did Crystals even
Speaker 1: get interested? Well, we had that. We had a hit
Speaker 1: within the flesh in Australia. It was a weird. It's
Speaker 1: own weird fluke. Um. You know the story. You know
Speaker 1: the story of that is that Molly Meldrum allegedly played
Speaker 1: in the Flesh, which was the B side of Ex Offender.
Speaker 1: He allegedly played it by mistake on his show. I
Speaker 1: asked him. I don't think it was a mistake. I
Speaker 1: think he knew his audience and that's just the story.
Speaker 1: We also had a video that went with it too,
Speaker 1: which was very early on. So you think that it
Speaker 1: was the action in Australia that got Crystal was interested.
Speaker 1: It was it was encouraging to them that we had
Speaker 1: a number one hit somewhere in the world. I think
Speaker 1: it was part of the package. So you make this switch.
Speaker 1: At some point you switched to ship. Where is that? Um?
Speaker 1: That was pretty much after we had been a established
Speaker 1: I guess it was after Hearted Glass was right. Okay,
Speaker 1: then let's go back. You make this deal with Chris Salis.
Speaker 1: Obviously private stock has to be paid off. Are they
Speaker 1: also paid off out of your own money or theoretical money?
Speaker 1: I don't know, yes, probably, yeah. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: we were we were contracted to Chrysalists to do three
Speaker 1: albums in a year. So we were always in fucking
Speaker 1: arrears with this ship. We never we were always in
Speaker 1: breach of contract with those guys, and that led to
Speaker 1: a lot of stress. Two. I mean, that's partly why
Speaker 1: we're all doing drugs all the time. Elton seems to
Speaker 1: be the only person who actually delivered on those contracts.
Speaker 1: You know, you're having big success, and were they really
Speaker 1: pushing you, Hey, we want three albums a year. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't pushing, but it was just it was the
Speaker 1: fact that we were always always in default. You know, Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: how do you get hooked up with Mike Chopman. Chapman
Speaker 1: was probably Terry Ellis also leads, but Terry ellis a
Speaker 1: lot and he came to see us at the Whiskey
Speaker 1: and he thought we were funny and amusing, and when
Speaker 1: we met with him, and that was it just you know, well,
Speaker 1: you know that was when he was the Commander. He
Speaker 1: did hit It, Hit It a little later. The Commander
Speaker 1: was a little bit later. But yeah, that was right.
Speaker 1: But I've been trying to say, yeah, it starts then
Speaker 1: and he ends up having Dreamland Records. He really build
Speaker 1: his own reputation on top of Blondie. You said his
Speaker 1: style of working in the studio was different from god Erers.
Speaker 1: What was his style? Well, it was very regimented, you know.
Speaker 1: The um Parallel Lines record was. He was you know,
Speaker 1: quite the taskmaster, which we weren't prepared for, but it was.
Speaker 1: We got great results with that. So how many of
Speaker 1: those songs were either chosen or written when you started
Speaker 1: in the studio There was a probably a budge. I
Speaker 1: don't think any of them were two worked up in
Speaker 1: the studio. Uh, some of them, you know, but the
Speaker 1: like you know, the Heart of Glass demo was floating
Speaker 1: around for forever. There were very various versions of that
Speaker 1: out in the world. So how did it turn into
Speaker 1: the Heart of Glass that we all know? Well, we
Speaker 1: had this, we had the rolland rhythm machine that synchronized
Speaker 1: with this rolland sin. So they went and then had
Speaker 1: this was the days before MIDI. But there was you know,
Speaker 1: trigger electorbal trigger with each other. They spoke to each other.
Speaker 1: So that was part of the putting it together aspect.
Speaker 1: And did you realize it was did you hear in
Speaker 1: the studio and say this is gonna go No, it's
Speaker 1: not really you know, you know, the Parallel Lines was
Speaker 1: on the charts for six months before that was released
Speaker 1: as a single. So I don't know if anybody got
Speaker 1: the idea right away, and who the idea was it
Speaker 1: to get hanging on the telephone. That was me and Debbie.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lee Parris right from the Gun Club right had
Speaker 1: given me a mixtape and that's that was on this mixtape.
Speaker 1: And famously we were in Tokyo in a taxi cab
Speaker 1: and I had playing it on a boom box and
Speaker 1: the old cab driver started tapping his fingers on the
Speaker 1: steering wheel and I, okay, this is this is making
Speaker 1: a connection with this guy. There's something to it, But
Speaker 1: I was I just really loved the original version, the
Speaker 1: nerves or and then you know, the vocal on that
Speaker 1: is unbelievable, the way it's shouting it. Was that something
Speaker 1: that Chapman got out of you or did you say,
Speaker 1: this is why we want to do it? Don't know.
Speaker 1: I Chapman with Debbie was I don't think Debbie was
Speaker 1: forced into as much repetition as the band was. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, he tried to get a spontaneous emotional content
Speaker 1: out of her. And how does Fripp end up on
Speaker 1: Fadeaway and radiate. Well, Frippen approached us I think after
Speaker 1: a Palladium gig in New York and we had gotten
Speaker 1: friendly with him. We did and he we did a
Speaker 1: bunch of shows with him, off beat things, so it
Speaker 1: just seemed like a no brainer to ask him. And
Speaker 1: that was that song was kind of weird and experimental anyway,
Speaker 1: phenomenal song. The song I played most still from that album. Okay,
Speaker 1: old history. But to go through that crazy lawsuit with
Speaker 1: Frank and Fante, what the hell's up there? That was
Speaker 1: much later, and that was you know, they just wanted
Speaker 1: to uh, well it was Nigel. Also, they wanted to
Speaker 1: be paid on us moving forward. They got they were
Speaker 1: always paid on their historical connection. They're they're no when
Speaker 1: he's trying to not pay them on this stuff that
Speaker 1: they were they worked on. But we just thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, moving forward, touring whatever, we weren't obliged to
Speaker 1: pay them for uh, just having worked with us in
Speaker 1: the past. It hinged on some very weird legal little point.
Speaker 1: And do you know who Marty Sulfon is, No, he
Speaker 1: was our lawyer. He was. He was great, great character.
Speaker 1: He wrote various legal showbiz textbooks that are in place
Speaker 1: to this day. Um, he nailed the case. I mean,
Speaker 1: none of us really would they had to testify. It
Speaker 1: could have just been him. The judge was the judge
Speaker 1: didn't leave the bench. She just said, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I can roll down. But supposedly the press was back
Speaker 1: then that you didn't want Frank to play on the records.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Well, yeah, we all fell out with
Speaker 1: those guys, you know, But no, this was much later.
Speaker 1: This was going into the no exit period. Okay, at
Speaker 1: some point you get hooked up with Sheep. He makes
Speaker 1: the movie Roady Wasn't on Eat to the Beat where
Speaker 1: he made a video for every song, Yes, every song.
Speaker 1: I think we were the first bands of do that.
Speaker 1: I think they can't in it around the same period,
Speaker 1: but I think we were the first one to do
Speaker 1: like a specific setup and working. We sat good bad
Speaker 1: Otherwise it was good up to a point. You know,
Speaker 1: what was the point? Well, we just kind of it
Speaker 1: just all fell apart. But it was a lot to
Speaker 1: do with us being drug addicts. Also, well when you're
Speaker 1: hey day before it fell apart. He is big on
Speaker 1: promotional stuff and by the same token, you were really
Speaker 1: his first step outside after Alice Cooper. So did he
Speaker 1: give enough time? And we're a lot of his things
Speaker 1: helpful or it's just you know, he was better than
Speaker 1: Peter Leeds. No, he was good. He was you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I liked him. It just ended up unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Uh there we did. We went to a party on
Speaker 1: a tank. He gotta he we We've had some party
Speaker 1: at some club. It might have been a Parallel Lines
Speaker 1: or Auto American release party, and we they rented a
Speaker 1: Sherman tank and we pulled up to the club dried
Speaker 1: a actual tank that was a sheep thing. It was nice. Okay.
Speaker 1: On Eat to the Beat, you know, my favorite song
Speaker 1: on that is the hardest part. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: any backstory there? That was just to do a sort
Speaker 1: of metal funk song. I can't really remember the specific
Speaker 1: inspiration on that excepts stylistically okay, and then Auto American
Speaker 1: has the rap on it. That was the thing. I mean, Actually,
Speaker 1: the only song I really knew was going to be
Speaker 1: a hit even before we recorded it was Tired It's High.
Speaker 1: I just was enamored of the original version and I
Speaker 1: just had but I was aware of our position at
Speaker 1: the time, which was, you know, we were all the
Speaker 1: way up there, and I knew if we recorded this
Speaker 1: well and put it out, it would be successful. By
Speaker 1: the same toke at At this point, reggae has very
Speaker 1: little traction in the marketplace. One could say that you
Speaker 1: broke reggae wide in America. Man, maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: Then there's the Richard dear a movie and call me
Speaker 1: his build as a debbie herey solo track? Why and
Speaker 1: you feel good or bad about that? Because we went
Speaker 1: in with Georgio and he just didn't want to. You know,
Speaker 1: Georgio was not like Chapman who was willing to um
Speaker 1: oversee the band. He just wanted to. He was very
Speaker 1: He worked very quickly. So we we did our version
Speaker 1: of the stuff. But I'm as far as I know,
Speaker 1: he replaced a lot of the stuff, and some of
Speaker 1: our original parts may have inspired the stuff he replaced
Speaker 1: them with, but I think he used his own guys.
Speaker 1: He just had, you know, to two assistance who did stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's clem clemma is on there for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: can you put out the next album? And it's a
Speaker 1: stiff relative to expectations? What was that like? It? You know?
Speaker 1: It was this dressing. I guess Um, the cover really sucked.
Speaker 1: We just couldn't get We couldn't get I couldn't get
Speaker 1: it off the ground. The covered. The idea for the
Speaker 1: cover was to have everybody be get like Rick Baker
Speaker 1: or one of these really great makeup guys and have
Speaker 1: everybody be half animal half human and call it The Hunter. Okay,
Speaker 1: but they just couldn't get that ship together, so it
Speaker 1: just wound up being this sort of mediocre photograph. Okay,
Speaker 1: At what point do you realize the album isn't going oh?
Speaker 1: You know. At the same time, ever, we were dealing
Speaker 1: with this drug addiction stuff that was ongoing. We were
Speaker 1: uh doing promotion, and we were working constantly. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of headbutting in the band. I
Speaker 1: mean that's somewhere in there is when we parted with Frankie,
Speaker 1: you know, towards the end there we the very the
Speaker 1: very last tour we did without Frankie. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was a difficult period. You have any
Speaker 1: conversation with Frankie and Nigel these days, No, No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I Mean that's why the whole you know, the whole
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame thing was so fucking weird, because I
Speaker 1: hadn't at that point. I hadn't spoken to Frankie for
Speaker 1: twenty years or whatever. And you know, if those guys
Speaker 1: had really wanted to play with us, I might have
Speaker 1: considered it. I mean probably not, but if I had
Speaker 1: heard from them, I might have considered it, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what was it like for the three four years
Speaker 1: we were on top of the world. That was nice.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember Marty Thou coming to our fancy
Speaker 1: house and saying, do you guys realized you can buy
Speaker 1: it if you want, And I hadn't really thought of that,
Speaker 1: and I bought a Tympani. You know, as as I
Speaker 1: frequently say now, the model for a rock star has
Speaker 1: changed so much. I really wasn't thinking about buying a
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce and buying a diamond watch or any of
Speaker 1: this kind of nonsense back then, if I you know,
Speaker 1: when I thought about spending money was just to buy
Speaker 1: more guitars and recording equipment. Did you like being on
Speaker 1: the road? Not like being on the road? It was okay,
Speaker 1: it was we were on the road, you know, really
Speaker 1: straight through for several years. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: almost very little let up between with recording and being
Speaker 1: on the road. It was just it was it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm lucky I was a kid, so I
Speaker 1: could put up with that stuff. Well, some people have
Speaker 1: been around the world and see nothing. And when you
Speaker 1: would travel to these different places, would you take advantage? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure we go. Yeah, we would go around. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun memories. All this ship is
Speaker 1: going to be covered in my memoir. But okay, so
Speaker 1: if you were in Europe and you had a gig
Speaker 1: at night, did you say, Okay, this is the first
Speaker 1: time I've been to this town. I'm gonna check out
Speaker 1: the cultural stuff. Yeah, we would go out. We went
Speaker 1: to We went to Liverpool, I think, I don't know
Speaker 1: we were playing nearby. I don't know if we actually
Speaker 1: we're doing a Liverpool game. We saw the remains of
Speaker 1: the Cavern Club, which at that point was just an
Speaker 1: empty lot that was rubble strewn and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So, what are one or two peaks from
Speaker 1: the touring years in the first generation. Bangkok was really great.
Speaker 1: We were in we played New Year's even Bangkok, and
Speaker 1: there had been like a there had been a coup
Speaker 1: there and they everybody would have had to be off
Speaker 1: the streets from like midnight to five in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, and you weren't allowed out. There was a curfew.
Speaker 1: And the New Year's Eve that we played, the curfew
Speaker 1: was lifted and Bangkok, needless to say, is a big
Speaker 1: party town and everybody went completely fucking nuts and it
Speaker 1: was a really beautiful moment. Okay, how do you decide
Speaker 1: to hang it up first time around? There was it was.
Speaker 1: There was no moment there was. It was never addressed
Speaker 1: in the media. We just were sucked up on drugs.
Speaker 1: I got really sick. I got that weird skin disorder,
Speaker 1: you know, as a result of h I mean, my
Speaker 1: immune system compromised. That was it just went. You know,
Speaker 1: we just stopped for a while and then did a
Speaker 1: bunch of some of Debbie solo stuff after that, and
Speaker 1: then uh put it all together later and whatever year
Speaker 1: that was ninety six or something. Okay, So for that,
Speaker 1: you know, ten plus years in the interim, were you
Speaker 1: just so fucked up on drugs or did you feel
Speaker 1: like it has been or do you feel like royalty
Speaker 1: would you feel like, I mean, we never really made
Speaker 1: I always felt like we never made it to the
Speaker 1: A lists anyway, you know, regardless of what the public
Speaker 1: perception might be. Um, I always felt like we were
Speaker 1: just you know, large cult phenomena. Uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: weren't completely fucked up on drugs. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: ups and downs. Um, I don't know what I felt
Speaker 1: like necessarily, It's just it was just all, you know,
Speaker 1: everything was part of everything else. It just seemed like
Speaker 1: an tension. And now you have another career as a photographer.
Speaker 1: How did that start? I always just always doing it.
Speaker 1: I you know, I was even when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid. I was screwing around with a little brownie cameras.
Speaker 1: Then I had a guy I grew up with him,
Speaker 1: Dennis McGuire, and he was brilliant young photographer. He still is.
Speaker 1: He's he's master photographer. He apprenticed with Arbis and studied
Speaker 1: with Gary Winnigrad and all this stuff, and he's he was,
Speaker 1: you know, in a big influence on my early photographic days.
Speaker 1: And I just started carrying cameras around around or so nine.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's one thing having a good eye,
Speaker 1: it's another thing being technologically savvy. Are you also technologically
Speaker 1: chay savvy? Are you more point and shoot? Yeah? No?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I knew your basic stuff. I
Speaker 1: never developed my own film. I would just I would
Speaker 1: print a lot, but I would never I would always
Speaker 1: to send it film out two labs. But you know,
Speaker 1: I knew about F stops and I S O and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And is there some greater acknowledgement you're
Speaker 1: looking for in the photographic world. No, I did good.
Speaker 1: I mean the books were very popular. Water really big
Speaker 1: show in London at the Sumrset House that was really
Speaker 1: terrifically attended. Um, you know, I'm okay with where I stand.
Speaker 1: I could use more Instagram followers, but beyond that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So how did it in with you and Debbie?
Speaker 1: We just kind of ran in a steam. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of this drugs stuff. I think we fell
Speaker 1: out of synchronization and but a lot of times, I
Speaker 1: mean I have a hard time connecting with their excess.
Speaker 1: How was it after you were disconnected? I always pissed
Speaker 1: off for a week or so, But then we, you know,
Speaker 1: just formed a new connection. And we've been always been friends.
Speaker 1: We were always we always had this uh like, I've
Speaker 1: never had a lot of fights with Debbie. You know,
Speaker 1: we always are very connected and we have a similar
Speaker 1: mindset in a similar sense of humor and we just
Speaker 1: get along. How do you feel when you got married?
Speaker 1: She was okay with that. I mean that was much later.
Speaker 1: I mean we both have been dating and doing different
Speaker 1: having different relationships. Okay, So where do you see yourself?
Speaker 1: You say you see yourself as a B player in
Speaker 1: the rock roll but you're in the rock and roll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. You know, what do you see yourself
Speaker 1: and what do you still yearn to achieve? I just,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I may be nice to
Speaker 1: have a little I guess I have a small bit
Speaker 1: of influence, you know, I have people that pay attention
Speaker 1: to my stupid commentary online. But I just you don't
Speaker 1: want to be happy and I have a have a
Speaker 1: good time. You know. My energy level is way down now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna do the touring with
Speaker 1: the band going forward. I will definitely do recording, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm gonna go out with the touring situation.
Speaker 1: I just have kind of had it with airports and
Speaker 1: hotels at this point. But I just want to be
Speaker 1: happy and have the family be safe and happy. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you are touring imminently, right, Yeah, No, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm gonna do it. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it. I missed a few shows here and
Speaker 1: there recently. I just I don't have the energy. I
Speaker 1: have fucking heart bullshit, you know, murmur of the heart,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. I take medications for that
Speaker 1: and a little fatigue, and I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to go out with the guys. They'll have it replacement.
Speaker 1: How did you discover you had a heart issue? Um?
Speaker 1: And I discover just doubting a couple of like sort
Speaker 1: of semurite painting things, low blood pressure check ups. I
Speaker 1: do have a fib you know. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: I don't have any I have never had any kind
Speaker 1: of surgery or anything like that. I just if they
Speaker 1: just keep it steady with medications, and if you don't
Speaker 1: go out, you still get paid. How does everybody else feel?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know bon Jovi does without Richie sam
Speaker 1: Bora the rest of the band. Fine, if you don't
Speaker 1: go out, no, I mean they're you know, it's but
Speaker 1: we we the last couple of shows that I didn't do.
Speaker 1: They we got some kid who's really great and he
Speaker 1: just replicates the parts. But yeah, no, I mean I
Speaker 1: feel you know, I I don't want to let the
Speaker 1: fans down and let the band down. But I am
Speaker 1: completely involved with this next bunch of recordings that we're
Speaker 1: working on. So and and you know, and I'm again
Speaker 1: I'm pitching this memoir and I then we have another
Speaker 1: I have another photo book coming out in October, I'm told,
Speaker 1: which is the our adventures with Geeger. You know when
Speaker 1: we did the cuckoo stuff. So I'm still in the mix, okay,
Speaker 1: And how often do you play the guitar? Occasionally? It
Speaker 1: was it was the last couple of days. It doesn't
Speaker 1: go away, this total muscle memory. I'm kind of amazed
Speaker 1: they could not play for months and then just pick
Speaker 1: it up and be the exactly where he left off.
Speaker 1: I mean, Johnny Raman told me he never played except
Speaker 1: what he was doing shows or recording period. That was it.
Speaker 1: Since you saw them from the beginning, was there any
Speaker 1: evolution or was that the acht from gig one? Yeah? No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was an evolution, and they got tighter and tighter,
Speaker 1: and then the whole Joey phenomenon was so great to
Speaker 1: see him, you know, because he was very awkward and
Speaker 1: much more tentative in the beginning, and to see him
Speaker 1: become this powerful, dominant rock god by the end of
Speaker 1: the whole thing was fucking amazing. You know. Well, the
Speaker 1: weird things, so they're all dead. You think there must
Speaker 1: have been something in the water in the videos, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're gonna say. I don't know
Speaker 1: about that ship, you know. Now, my wife was My
Speaker 1: wife is from Queen's also, and she had thyroid cancer.
Speaker 1: But we I think we also think that it was
Speaker 1: from being so close to the towers during nine eleven
Speaker 1: because we were living right there, so we were in
Speaker 1: the area that is, uh, you know, suggested for that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff happening. And how is she now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's okay. I mean she's got to take you know,
Speaker 1: the synthroid forever. So in terms of other art forms
Speaker 1: like movies and streaming television, you spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time there. Really yeah, yeah, well, actually watched Sucking Everything. Well,
Speaker 1: can you recommend the new Ben Stiller thing, Severance. It's
Speaker 1: really great. I only watched two of those. That's totally great.
Speaker 1: I love fucking Peacemaker. Peacemaker is the greatest God damned thing. Um.
Speaker 1: John Cena is like uh Carrie Grant as a bodybuilder.
Speaker 1: I mean, he has got this old world Hollywood charm.
Speaker 1: That's just fantastic. I had no idea that that guy was,
Speaker 1: you know, up to that level. But he's really great.
Speaker 1: And you know, James Gunn it's great. All those guys
Speaker 1: are great. And then you know, of course Succession. We're
Speaker 1: big fans of um a lot of stuff. I really
Speaker 1: like Power the Dog. The Dog was great. I love
Speaker 1: the Korean movies. You know, I'm watching this series starting
Speaker 1: last night. Did you watch squid Game? Yea, they say
Speaker 1: this is bigger than squid Game In South Korea. The
Speaker 1: show called hell Bound. You know this one hell I
Speaker 1: can't really remember it though, Well, don't ruin it for me.
Speaker 1: I'm only like a third in, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: only six episodes, really wild. That's one where they tell
Speaker 1: you when you're gonna die. Yeah, yeah, well that's you know.
Speaker 1: The original is the anime Death Note. You know Death Note? No,
Speaker 1: I don't Death Note. It's an old anime manga whereby
Speaker 1: the guy gets a notebook from hell or wherever it is,
Speaker 1: and if you write somebody's name and it, they die
Speaker 1: and it goes from there, right, the same thing. So
Speaker 1: I know you're into the modern music, but having seen
Speaker 1: the scene for sixty years, what do you think about
Speaker 1: the music and the music business today relative to yesteryear.
Speaker 1: There's just there's a lot of great stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: I always hear stuff. I just watched Um House of
Speaker 1: Gucci and there was a fucking fantastic song by somebody
Speaker 1: named Alice, an Italian song, Italian language song and there
Speaker 1: that I just have been playing over and over against
Speaker 1: since seeing the movie. That was the most that was
Speaker 1: my biggest takeaway from the movie was this song. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's great stuff out there. Well, I guess you know.
Speaker 1: The ethos is different now. The music is a step
Speaker 1: to create a brand to sell and other stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's very different than it was during. The model for
Speaker 1: the rock star is a completely different thing, you know.
Speaker 1: It's now it's all about bling or whatever. I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm consistently amused by Kanye A. That thing the other
Speaker 1: night was very was amusing. Let's go just a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper. Yes, it was amusing. But isn't it sad
Speaker 1: to see a bipolar guy reported on in the news
Speaker 1: at infinite. You know, eventually it's going to turn out
Speaker 1: bad if it hasn't already. Yeah, No, it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: but the guy has so much influence. Um. Like I say,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's like giving an arsonist gallons
Speaker 1: of gasoline. You know, he putting him in this position.
Speaker 1: He Um, it's bizarre. But maybe it was always going on.
Speaker 1: It's just a little more in your face now. Maybe
Speaker 1: these kinds of things were always happening. Well, what do
Speaker 1: you think is drawing everybody to Kanye? He successfully? He does.
Speaker 1: He is a genius. He does a lot of great stuff.
Speaker 1: But people are also absorbed in the drama. And you know,
Speaker 1: coming out in front of thirty thousand people and complaining
Speaker 1: about your ex's boyfriend and how you're gonna beat him
Speaker 1: up is certainly it's on level. You know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: the train wreck. I mean, you can't stop paying attention
Speaker 1: to the train wreck. But eventually, you know, it hits
Speaker 1: a wall. Okay, Chris, thanks so much for taking the track. Thanks,
Speaker 1: but I really appreciate your message that they say until
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left SAX