Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left SEPs Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today his guitarist extraordinaire, the one and only
Speaker 1: Mike Campbell. Mike, good to have you on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you, good morning. And uh is it true you
Speaker 1: only started playing guitar at age sixteen? That is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford one until then. Well, you know, we're
Speaker 1: about a similar age. And I remember the Folks scene
Speaker 1: and then the Beatles, everybody picking up guitars. Were you
Speaker 1: anxious to play then? Was it really money? What inspired
Speaker 1: you to finally pick up a guitar? Well, it was
Speaker 1: the sixties, you know, and the Beatles, of course, Uh
Speaker 1: had a huge impact on me. And that would have
Speaker 1: been fourteen when they hit the Ed Sullivan Show, and
Speaker 1: I got pretty excited then. Up until then, I was
Speaker 1: just hearing my dad's records, which were Johnny Cash and
Speaker 1: Elvis records, and I like the guitar. But when I saw,
Speaker 1: you know, the Beatles, it was like, I gotta have
Speaker 1: one of those. You know. It took a couple of
Speaker 1: years to save up fifteen bucks to get a little
Speaker 1: cheap guitar, but that's when the fire was lit. So
Speaker 1: what was your first guitar? It was a Harmony acoustic
Speaker 1: that my mom got me at a pawn shop and
Speaker 1: we were pretty hard up for cash, but she had
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars and it was unplayable, you know, the strings
Speaker 1: were so far off the fret board. But I didn't
Speaker 1: know any better. I thought that's just the way it was.
Speaker 1: And I just remember thinking, boy, these guys are strong,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I learned to play on that
Speaker 1: thing until my fingers was bleed, actually, and uh, until
Speaker 1: I saw a friend with the Gibson one day, and
Speaker 1: then I realized, I'm my god, it's easy. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: that was my personal harmony acoustic, f whole guitar. So
Speaker 1: how long after that you get your second guitar? And
Speaker 1: what was that? Well, my second guitar, my dad was
Speaker 1: in the Air Force. He was over in Okinama, and
Speaker 1: I kept begging him for an electric guitar, and he
Speaker 1: got together sixty bucks and sent me an electric Goya tone.
Speaker 1: I think it was called a Japanese thing. It looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a strat a little bit, and I
Speaker 1: learned to play on that, and I was playing on
Speaker 1: that when I met Tom years A few years later okay,
Speaker 1: So how did you teach yourself to play guitar? Did
Speaker 1: you take lessons or what do you do? No, I
Speaker 1: kind of I got a book that showed you how
Speaker 1: to make the chords, mel Bay Chord Book, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, And uh, I would listen to the records
Speaker 1: and just you know, look at the chords and taught
Speaker 1: myself by ear. You know, back then all you had
Speaker 1: was records. But if it was an album, you could
Speaker 1: slow it down to sixteen. I p s to really
Speaker 1: hear what the guitar was doing at half speed. And
Speaker 1: I did that a little bit to figure out stuff.
Speaker 1: But I was just obsessed, you know. I was possessed
Speaker 1: to figure this thing out. And uh I did not
Speaker 1: have any lessons. Although early in my life, when I
Speaker 1: was in elementary school, I did take accordion lessons. My
Speaker 1: parents forced me, so I excuse me. I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of music basic theory, you know, in my
Speaker 1: back pocket, you know, but the guitar was all self taught.
Speaker 1: How long did you take the accordion lessons for? I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe until Little League season started about a
Speaker 1: couple of months maybe, I don't know. Okay, so were
Speaker 1: you good athlete. No, I loved it. I mean I
Speaker 1: was a Sandlot sand Lot star. You know, I would
Speaker 1: get out of school. I couldn't make the school teams.
Speaker 1: I wasn't good enough. But I just love to get
Speaker 1: together my buddies and play in the in the park,
Speaker 1: at the in the neighborhood there and Uh, but once
Speaker 1: I started playing guitar, that all just disappeared. I didn't
Speaker 1: care about anything else. So did you find a team
Speaker 1: easily or did you have to work really hard? Both? Uh,
Speaker 1: A lot of it came easy. I had an instinct
Speaker 1: for it, but I worked really hard. Like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm not making a joke. I would
Speaker 1: play that thing and my fingers should start bleeding and
Speaker 1: I had to stop, you know, until it's scapped over
Speaker 1: and I'm done for the day. You know, there's blood,
Speaker 1: you know. But I just wanted to learn so bad.
Speaker 1: I think if you have a desire, you know, you'll
Speaker 1: find a way to figure out what you want to do.
Speaker 1: And at what point did you start to play with
Speaker 1: other people? Well? Uh, a year or so into it,
Speaker 1: I met a buddy who played acoustic guitar, and he
Speaker 1: turned me on to Bob Dylan, and uh, he taught
Speaker 1: me one of my first songs on the acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: which was off of Bob Dylan record. It was called
Speaker 1: Baby let Me Follow You Down. He showed me that,
Speaker 1: and then Uh, I had a couple of friends here
Speaker 1: and there. We'd sit in the garage and play, but
Speaker 1: nothing really uh crystallized until I got to Gainsville, Florida
Speaker 1: and got in my own little band. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: exactly did you grow up Jacksonville, Orlando and Jacksonville and
Speaker 1: your father was in the Air Force? Were your parents
Speaker 1: still together? They were to other until I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it was a pretty uh unhappy divorce and the
Speaker 1: money was really tight. Uh, but that's when we moved
Speaker 1: to Jacksonville. Cous my all, my my mom's folks lived there.
Speaker 1: So after the divorce, she wanted to be near her family,
Speaker 1: so we moved up there and I went to school
Speaker 1: there and uh eventually ended up back in Gainesville, uh
Speaker 1: for college. So what was it like being fifteen years
Speaker 1: old and having your parents have an acrimonious divorce? You know,
Speaker 1: I think it scarred me pretty good, but it made
Speaker 1: me tough, you know. I mean, it was you don't
Speaker 1: want to get deep into the psychology of it, but
Speaker 1: it hurt bad, you know. You know, that was my
Speaker 1: whole life. Like I kept thinking, like, can't you just
Speaker 1: stick together for me? But you know, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: older now, I understand how things happen, but it it
Speaker 1: did a number on me. And uh, I've worked on
Speaker 1: that over my life to resolve those issues, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it kind of gave me an intention to
Speaker 1: never do that to my children because it was pretty
Speaker 1: pretty rough. You know, I kind of felt worthless. I
Speaker 1: guess most kids that are from come from a divorce
Speaker 1: get that feeling of like God, you know, and back then,
Speaker 1: you know, being from a divorce family was kind of
Speaker 1: a shameful thing to be kind of. You know, you
Speaker 1: weren't anything you were proud of. Nowadays people probably don't
Speaker 1: think about it that much, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: a heavy traumatic thing back then. You're absolutely right. I
Speaker 1: remember it was really rare in the mid and late sixties. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you say you worked to resolve the trauma. How did
Speaker 1: you do that? Well? For a while, I went to
Speaker 1: this therapist, this lady who was really great at helping
Speaker 1: me work through some all kinds of stuff I was
Speaker 1: going through, uh, you know, being in a rock and
Speaker 1: roll band, in my marriage, and we eventually got into
Speaker 1: my childhood and she helped me see it from a
Speaker 1: different perspective and kind of mend those fences in my
Speaker 1: head and make you a little more at peace with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course my wife, you know, she's I've been
Speaker 1: with my wife for forty six years, and she was
Speaker 1: very supportive of helping me through whatever, you know, issues
Speaker 1: I might be going through, and vice versa. So how
Speaker 1: old were you when you got married? I was twenty six,
Speaker 1: twenty and then our first child was born and when
Speaker 1: I was twenty six And was that something you were
Speaker 1: inspired to do or was your wife pregnant or you know,
Speaker 1: you're a rock and roll musician. A lot of people
Speaker 1: love to live the free and easy lifestyle. Well that's
Speaker 1: a good question. Um. At that point in my life,
Speaker 1: I was not looking to get married per se. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't uh repelled by the idea like I had
Speaker 1: been a few years earlier. I mean back in Florida,
Speaker 1: I sold a lot of roots, you know, a young musician,
Speaker 1: and by the time I got out and started making
Speaker 1: you know, at the time I got married, she was
Speaker 1: making more money than I was. You know, we were
Speaker 1: on a deal with Shelter Records that wasn't really bringing
Speaker 1: in much dough and she was a grocery checker, so
Speaker 1: she was actually paying the bills. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: we just kind of connected. Unfortunately, we connected before I
Speaker 1: was a you know, celebrity or star or whatever. It
Speaker 1: was just Mike and we have that that special bond
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd ever find again, because you know,
Speaker 1: there's a different perspective of who and what I am now.
Speaker 1: So that was that was really good for us and
Speaker 1: for me. Um, I don't know if I answered your
Speaker 1: question or not. Well, what inspired you actually did tie
Speaker 1: the knot? Oh? Well, yeah, she she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess what I think we're gonna. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna be having a baby. And what was interesting is
Speaker 1: that if I'd heard that two years prior, I probably
Speaker 1: would have freaked out, Oh my god, nothing, no way,
Speaker 1: you know. But I kind of sat with it and
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, I think I'm I think
Speaker 1: I'm kind of okay with this at this point in
Speaker 1: my life. My head is kind of open to that
Speaker 1: idea and one thing just flowed into another. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Spigs the question was not long thereafter Petty and
Speaker 1: the Heartbreakers start to get traction did and there and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you have that fame that you
Speaker 1: did not have previously. And what about all the temptations
Speaker 1: of the road. Well, you know, that was really hard
Speaker 1: on my wife. God bless her. H here's a new
Speaker 1: baby shows up. And then I'm off on tour and
Speaker 1: the band starts to happen and I become, you know, successful,
Speaker 1: more than we had planned on that quickly, and it
Speaker 1: was very fortunate. And uh, you know, we would try
Speaker 1: to stay and sync with each other while I was
Speaker 1: on the road, she was home with a baby, and
Speaker 1: it was a struggle. You know, it was a struggle.
Speaker 1: But I love her and I would always put her
Speaker 1: in my family first, you know. And the other stuff,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the other party and young
Speaker 1: guys stuff. I had already kind of gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of it out of my system. Uh, And so it
Speaker 1: wasn't that hard for me to to be a good guy.
Speaker 1: So what's the key to having a forty six year
Speaker 1: long marriage. Don't get divorced? Okay, I mean, I has
Speaker 1: someone who's been divorced. I know exactly what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but that usually implies there's some heavy moments where the
Speaker 1: road could go another way. Would you would get divorced?
Speaker 1: Of course? Of course. Well I borrowed that line from
Speaker 1: Olivia Harris and somebody asked her once like, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you keep your marriage together? She goes,
Speaker 1: don't don't get divorced, but as a as a you know,
Speaker 1: a short little comment. But underneath that comment, you are
Speaker 1: going to hit bumps in the road. It's inevitable, and
Speaker 1: you can get divorced. You could split and go down
Speaker 1: different paths, or you can sit in there and really
Speaker 1: look at well, what do I what's really important here?
Speaker 1: You know? Is this something we could work out together
Speaker 1: or is it a deal breaker? You know? And of
Speaker 1: course in my lifestyle and being separated uh on tour
Speaker 1: and her at home with the babies and coming home
Speaker 1: and happen to get to know each other again and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, it was hard and it breaks most
Speaker 1: urges up, you know, And I can see why, and
Speaker 1: I'm just lucky that mine held together. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason is because, first of all, she's very understanding
Speaker 1: and very patient and was willing to accept her part
Speaker 1: of the dynamic, you know, and I was willing to
Speaker 1: meet her on at the table and go, well, you know, like,
Speaker 1: this is what happened. How do you really feel about it?
Speaker 1: You know, do you want to carry on together? Or
Speaker 1: is this? Are we done? And every time we hit
Speaker 1: a snag, it was always like, I think we can
Speaker 1: get over this because the love is stronger than this.
Speaker 1: So is she the product of divorce or her parents
Speaker 1: stayed together? No, her parents stayed together. U um they
Speaker 1: live into their nineties. Uh so No, she Uh, she's
Speaker 1: a California girl, went to Fairfax High School, you know,
Speaker 1: and I found my California girl. And no, she didn't
Speaker 1: have that trauma. She had other you know, everybody has
Speaker 1: her own personal issues with their parents. She had her
Speaker 1: own issues, but basically they were relatively stable. You know,
Speaker 1: they stayed together and they they put up with each other.
Speaker 1: You know, they well we're always you know, I'll walk
Speaker 1: in the park together. Either. But yeah, well, to keep
Speaker 1: a marriage together, how much of it do you think
Speaker 1: was her strength or your strength or both of you
Speaker 1: were very strong wanting to keep it going. Both, but
Speaker 1: I think especially her because I really, you know, when
Speaker 1: I think back on it being home, if it had
Speaker 1: been the other way around, if I'd have been home
Speaker 1: taking care of her baby and she was out party
Speaker 1: and being a rock star and having all this stuff happened,
Speaker 1: and going to different cities and countries and all the
Speaker 1: you know experiences that might be going she might be
Speaker 1: having without me, it probably would have been really hard
Speaker 1: on me. You know. I give her a lot of
Speaker 1: credit for for being strong and uh standing by me,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, and I give myself some credit
Speaker 1: to for not getting you know, distracted by the the
Speaker 1: the trappings of of rock star life. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's really pretty shallow, you know, if you're gonna go
Speaker 1: down that road and be a partier and stuff, eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not very fulfilling. And how many
Speaker 1: kids do you have? I have three, and I also
Speaker 1: now have three grandchildren that are about almost the same age,
Speaker 1: two twins, and my son has a son. And they're
Speaker 1: the joy of our life. You know, they're beautiful. And
Speaker 1: what are they up to? Well, they're almost five, so
Speaker 1: they're not up to nothing much except you know, drawing
Speaker 1: and playing and getting into trouble. But they're they're parents,
Speaker 1: your three kids. Oh, they're well, my my daughter had
Speaker 1: the twins, her husband's her husband's has a great job
Speaker 1: as a contractor. My other daughter is living alone, um,
Speaker 1: and she has a dog in her own place. And
Speaker 1: my son is married and has a child, and he's
Speaker 1: a dog trainer. He has a dog training business. So
Speaker 1: they're all maintaining. And they say, basically pretty happy. So
Speaker 1: you're from Florida and you met your wife before your
Speaker 1: success in California. How did you meet her? That's a
Speaker 1: great story. I don't know if you want to hear it.
Speaker 1: Tell her. I love telling the story. We met on Halloween,
Speaker 1: and uh, the story goes. Um. I was living in
Speaker 1: a house. The band Mudcrutch was struggling with a record
Speaker 1: deal and everything was falling apart. I was living in
Speaker 1: a house with out in Canoga Park with a couple
Speaker 1: of the other guys and they were going to go
Speaker 1: to a party. I didn't want to go, you know,
Speaker 1: And I was living in a bedroom with a mattress
Speaker 1: on the Florida. I didn't have much work for me,
Speaker 1: but I did have a little car. But they I'll
Speaker 1: come on, there'll be some girls there, you know. So
Speaker 1: they drugged me along. Of course we got there. There
Speaker 1: was one girl and eight guys typical you know, all
Speaker 1: not taking you know, uh kayludes or whatever. The day
Speaker 1: party was. I'm sitting there and uh, Marcy, my wife,
Speaker 1: shows up with her dog. And she was best friends
Speaker 1: with the girl, Marcia, who was there, and so she
Speaker 1: I saw her walk in. I was sitting in the
Speaker 1: other room and and her dog came over to me
Speaker 1: and connected with me. You know, I was just sitting
Speaker 1: like this dog was just like we had a bond
Speaker 1: going on. I was talking to the dog and petting
Speaker 1: the dog. She walked by and said, is this your dog?
Speaker 1: And then we started talking and had a great conversation
Speaker 1: and kind of hit it off. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the night, Uh, I split. I didn't ask her
Speaker 1: for her number, she hadn't asked me for mine. I split,
Speaker 1: and the uh the next day, I thought, God, you know,
Speaker 1: that girl was really nice and I have no way
Speaker 1: to get ahold of her. And I wonder if I
Speaker 1: can find that apartment you know it was it was.
Speaker 1: I had only been there in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: So I got in my car drove over to where
Speaker 1: I thought it was it was on the second story,
Speaker 1: I remembered, and somehow I found the apartment and then
Speaker 1: knocked on the door and her friend Marcia opened the door.
Speaker 1: She was on the phone, and I was about to say,
Speaker 1: do you know how to get ahold of? And she
Speaker 1: handed me the phone and Marcy was on the phone
Speaker 1: to her asking her about me. You know, the guy
Speaker 1: never even asked me for my number. I I don't
Speaker 1: know who he is or how to go hold of him.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a serendipitous moment, you know.
Speaker 1: And and so we and we we now. You know,
Speaker 1: dogs are a major part of our lives. She had
Speaker 1: a dog rescue business for a while, and we have
Speaker 1: lots of dogs. So we were kind of brought together
Speaker 1: by by the dog and and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: And Okay, growing up, how many kids in the family?
Speaker 1: And my family, I had a brother and his sister.
Speaker 1: And where are you in the hierarchy? I'm the oldest,
Speaker 1: So how many years between all of you? Five five
Speaker 1: years apart, five years apart to the youngest. Yeah, well no, uh,
Speaker 1: I was born, my sister was born five years later,
Speaker 1: my son was born five years later. I mean my
Speaker 1: brother was born five years later, so we're spread over time, right,
Speaker 1: So you're growing up we kind of kid, are you
Speaker 1: good student, bad student, loaner? Popular? I was introverted. I
Speaker 1: was a pretty good student. I only had a couple
Speaker 1: of friends, and uh, you know, I had friends, Like
Speaker 1: I said, he used to play sand lot ball when
Speaker 1: I was younger. But once I got the guitar, it
Speaker 1: was me in the guitar, you know, and in the bedroom,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much my social life. And I
Speaker 1: was really shy and really but I noticed as I
Speaker 1: played the guitar and got a little bit good that
Speaker 1: people were drawn to me, you know, like girls would
Speaker 1: come up and talk to me, or guys would come up,
Speaker 1: and they were And my dad told me once, if
Speaker 1: you learned how to play an instrument, you'll always have friends.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what he meant, but he was right.
Speaker 1: And so the guitar kind of brought people to me
Speaker 1: and brought gave me confidence to be a little more talkative.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what I was, like, kind of quiet,
Speaker 1: and uh you know, I kept to myself a lot.
Speaker 1: So you go to Gainesville for college. How long do
Speaker 1: you stay in college? Did you graduate? I did not graduate.
Speaker 1: I went about a year and a half and then uh,
Speaker 1: I jumped into Tom's band and let my tuition run
Speaker 1: out and got a guitar and never look back. So unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it was just a couple of nights before Tom passed.
Speaker 1: But he was on stage in the Hollywood Bowl telling
Speaker 1: a long story of how you actually met with a
Speaker 1: lot of humor. Yeah, how did you? How did you
Speaker 1: actually meet? That is true, That whole story is true.
Speaker 1: You know. He he embellished it with the humor, but
Speaker 1: it is exactly true. I was in the back room
Speaker 1: of this house I was renting with the Mudcrutch drummer,
Speaker 1: and I had seen Tom play with this band. Mudcrutch
Speaker 1: was kind of like a Burrito Brothers country rock group
Speaker 1: at the college. I'd seen them and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good. It wasn't I was more into blues
Speaker 1: and rock at the time. But I saw on the
Speaker 1: bulletin board I saw they were looking for a drummer,
Speaker 1: and so I told my friend. My roommate said, you know,
Speaker 1: this band's looking for a drummer. You should call them.
Speaker 1: The true story. They came out to the house to
Speaker 1: audition the drummer. They said, oh, our guitar player just quit.
Speaker 1: Do you know somebody? I was in the back room
Speaker 1: with my little Japanese going a guitar and I came
Speaker 1: out and they're just like, oh God, not this guy.
Speaker 1: He can't be cool. I had short hair and cut
Speaker 1: off in this shitty little Japanese guitar and you could
Speaker 1: just see the looks on their faces like, oh, how
Speaker 1: do we get out of away from this guy? And
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, where do we play? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I know Johnny be Good? So we played Johnny be Good.
Speaker 1: That was it. Their their faces changed completely. That's just
Speaker 1: like Tom tells a story. It was like as soon
Speaker 1: as they heard me play, like, you're gonna be in
Speaker 1: my band forever. And I was yeah, that's how he
Speaker 1: told the story. So just to go back prior to
Speaker 1: meeting Tom, to what degree were you playing with other
Speaker 1: people and did you play out for money? I didn't
Speaker 1: play for much money, but I did have a little group,
Speaker 1: a three piece group, and we would play for free
Speaker 1: at the college and it was mostly blues and improvisation
Speaker 1: type playing and jamming, and so I was getting really
Speaker 1: in love with being the feeling of being in a
Speaker 1: band and playing in front of people. UM, and then
Speaker 1: Tom and and Mudcrutch. We we started getting little gigs
Speaker 1: like at the Topless Bar, the Women's club or at
Speaker 1: the college. You know, we pay you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks or whatever for the whole band. And Um,
Speaker 1: then we got a gig at Dubs topless Bar, which
Speaker 1: happened to be just up the street from my farmhouse.
Speaker 1: I could actually walk there. So we we played there
Speaker 1: for a couple of months, like you know, four sets
Speaker 1: of night and we got like a hundred bucks apiece
Speaker 1: a week, which was like a fortune for us. And
Speaker 1: that's when I really assumedly really became a band and
Speaker 1: learned how to play live, you know, hours and hours
Speaker 1: at this topless bar, and uh, pitch grew from there.
Speaker 1: So you say you were more into blues and rock
Speaker 1: this is the late sixties, what kind of acts? What
Speaker 1: were you into? Well, I was really enthralled. Of course,
Speaker 1: I loved the Beatles and Stones as much as anybody.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't into the California country rock scene so
Speaker 1: much as Tom was. But I learned to appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But I was listening to like Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, records,
Speaker 1: and uh, at the time, I like Jerry Garcia quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Um, but I like the English guys a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, George Harrison, Keith Richards and the Kinks, Animals.
Speaker 1: There were so many great bands with good guitar players,
Speaker 1: and I was in thrall with all that stuff. But
Speaker 1: when I when I was playing my first band I
Speaker 1: got together, I wasn't really singing much at all, and
Speaker 1: we didn't know any songs, so we would just start start,
Speaker 1: you know, of twelve bar and then it would just
Speaker 1: go on for five, five, six minutes, you know, So
Speaker 1: we were just kind of jamming mostly. But Tom it
Speaker 1: was cool about his band as they were doing songs
Speaker 1: with harmonies, like three minutes songs with the chorus and verses,
Speaker 1: and I like that. I was drawn to that, like,
Speaker 1: guess that's what I'd really like to do. And I
Speaker 1: hadn't really explored that part of being in a band
Speaker 1: until then. So let's just stop for a second. In
Speaker 1: your opinion, and it's obviously an opinion, who's the best
Speaker 1: rock guitarist? Boy, that's a loaded question. Uh wow, Well,
Speaker 1: the best, the most original and out of this world
Speaker 1: would be Jimmy Hendrix. Uh, does that make him the best?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I really like Mike Bloomfield's playing. I
Speaker 1: like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to pick one. There were so many greats
Speaker 1: back then, but Jimmy Hendrix kind of it was head
Speaker 1: and shoulders, unique above everybody else. He was taken to
Speaker 1: guitar places, but he was still good. You know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't just crazy, but he was able to really go
Speaker 1: into places to get sounds and and feelings out of
Speaker 1: the guitar that weren't your standard guitar approach, you know.
Speaker 1: And he really was pretty untouchable. So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the band. When you join Mud Crutch, is Tom
Speaker 1: already writing original material? Yeah, that's what kind of bonded
Speaker 1: us is. Uh. After we had, you know, played a
Speaker 1: little bit, we said and started talking and uh, I
Speaker 1: think he had showed us one song that he was writing,
Speaker 1: and he, I said, I'm righting, I'm trying to write
Speaker 1: some songs too. He said really, and he said yeah.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I got this. Damn. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any many words, but it was I said, just kind
Speaker 1: of like a Roger mcgwen type song, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: I like Roger mcgwin, And so we immediately picked up
Speaker 1: that each other was trying to to compose our own music.
Speaker 1: And he was a little bit more advanced than I
Speaker 1: was at that time. He'd already been writing songs, completed songs.
Speaker 1: I was still putting like little pieces together. But we
Speaker 1: had that bond right away, you know, writing our own stuff.
Speaker 1: And you drop out of college. You ever have a
Speaker 1: street gig? No? I mean in high school I worked
Speaker 1: at a burger joint, you know, um greasy spoon, mopping
Speaker 1: the floor. Mostly at the university, I got a temporary
Speaker 1: job like shelving books, old dusty books that were in
Speaker 1: the room. It was really a boring job. But no,
Speaker 1: I never really had a proper job to speak of. No,
Speaker 1: that's great. So, okay, you're playing the topless bar. What's
Speaker 1: the next step after that? Well, the next step out
Speaker 1: of that is to get away from the perverts and
Speaker 1: try to play a little more nicer places. Like at
Speaker 1: the university. You could get gigs playing in the park
Speaker 1: and you know, a bunch of hippies would show up
Speaker 1: with frisbees and you could play. They put up a
Speaker 1: stage or you could play the women's clubs. You could
Speaker 1: play the women's club for a couple of hundred bucks. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some bars here and there, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: drive to Tampa or Orlando and play you know, like
Speaker 1: like a youth center or something, just stuff like that,
Speaker 1: anything to get away from the CD bars. And then
Speaker 1: we began to realize that, you know, because also the
Speaker 1: thing with those gigs you can play your own so
Speaker 1: songs and the bars. She kind of had to play
Speaker 1: the top forty stuff. But in our on the other gigs,
Speaker 1: we could explore our own writing, you know, And so
Speaker 1: we liked that approach, and we just realized pretty soon
Speaker 1: that you know, this is the direction to go, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to you know, make a tape and
Speaker 1: get to try to get a record deal and move
Speaker 1: somewhere else where the records are happening. And over time
Speaker 1: we ended up in l A. You know, so how
Speaker 1: long between the time you meet Tom and you end
Speaker 1: up in l A, uh, three two or three years?
Speaker 1: And at that point, how often is the band rehearsing?
Speaker 1: How often is the band playing? Oh, we used to
Speaker 1: play all the time in rehearsal, all the time in
Speaker 1: my bedroom or whatever. In Gainesville. We you know, we
Speaker 1: just play and as soon as we got a gig,
Speaker 1: we tote the stuff out and towed it back. We
Speaker 1: didn't have roadies, uh, but you know, we were playing
Speaker 1: as much as we could, you know, and if we
Speaker 1: didn't have a gig, we just get together and rehearse
Speaker 1: and and try to learn new songs or just play
Speaker 1: for fun. And at what point do you replace the goya? Well, um,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting story. I wanted and we had gone up.
Speaker 1: We got a gig in Birmingham, Alabama for some reason,
Speaker 1: opening for Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels, if you
Speaker 1: can believe that. So we drive up there and we
Speaker 1: went to a pawn shop and uh, we said, do
Speaker 1: you have any guitars and she said, well, there's one,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't want it. So immediately the light bulbs
Speaker 1: go on. Yeah, you know, she brings out this Gibson Firebird,
Speaker 1: red Firebird, and it was a hundred and twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: You know, now it would be worth you know, forty grand.
Speaker 1: But I got that and that was my guitar for
Speaker 1: quite a while. And then later on I had seen
Speaker 1: a stratocaster at the music store which was two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks sixty four strat if you could believe that, And Uh,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the money. But a friend of a
Speaker 1: friend had just had an insurance UH automobile settlement and
Speaker 1: she had some cash. She said, well, here, I'll I'll
Speaker 1: loan you the money you can buy the Strato caster.
Speaker 1: So then I had to Gibson into the Strat And
Speaker 1: those are my two guitars for quite a wow. And
Speaker 1: what about a namp? I had a Fender. I got
Speaker 1: together enough to get a Fender twin. And back then
Speaker 1: you can get these things called electro voice speakers and
Speaker 1: put them in and they had a lifetime guarantee. If
Speaker 1: you blew it up, you can just take it to
Speaker 1: the store and they'd put a new one in for you.
Speaker 1: So that's the one I had. How often did you
Speaker 1: blow it up? Oh, every couple of months, I know,
Speaker 1: three or four months, and one of them would go
Speaker 1: on the fritz and just take it in and haven't
Speaker 1: pop a new one in. Pretty cool, Okay. So how
Speaker 1: many guitars going today? It's sick too many, but I
Speaker 1: love them all. I think I's just sold about a
Speaker 1: hundred of them for an auction. And uh, I've now
Speaker 1: got my guitars and a nice display where I can
Speaker 1: see them all and I can get to them. I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of my stuff is on this just
Speaker 1: carousel that I built in my rehearsal room. It goes
Speaker 1: up electronically and it's got hooks and there's all my
Speaker 1: nicest guitars up there. I push a button, it goes,
Speaker 1: it comes down, and I could pick what I want.
Speaker 1: But I've got a lot. You know, I've been collecting
Speaker 1: forever and I love them, and I used every one
Speaker 1: of them, you know, every one of them has been
Speaker 1: on the road or and on a record. I've kind
Speaker 1: of stopped buying now because I kind of got one
Speaker 1: of everything I wanted. And uh, which is funny because
Speaker 1: back in the day, when I couldn't afford one, I'd
Speaker 1: see the who and I'd get so piste off. You know,
Speaker 1: don't don't break that. Send it to me. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a good, good dog. You're just gonna break the
Speaker 1: neck off of it. Used to used to kill me,
Speaker 1: but you know now I I treasure my instruments and
Speaker 1: they they're good investments. So it worked out. How did
Speaker 1: you decide to part with a hundred, and how hard
Speaker 1: was that? It wasn't hard at all. I had too many,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't remember keep track of them all, and
Speaker 1: they were all in cases and stored away, and so
Speaker 1: I finally just got them all out, and I just
Speaker 1: picked the ones that I don't didn't use all the time,
Speaker 1: and auctioned them ount and got quite a bit of
Speaker 1: money for them all. But I still have plenty left,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't over a hundred. But they're all
Speaker 1: a vantage, choice, choice instruments. So if you could only
Speaker 1: save two, what would they be. Well, one would be
Speaker 1: my broadcaster Fender Broadcaster, which I used on the first album,
Speaker 1: And I guess my other one would be the fifty
Speaker 1: nine less Paul of which I only got about ten
Speaker 1: years ago and I used in the last several Heartbreakers records.
Speaker 1: Those two are kind of irreplaceable. Okay, broadcaster has one pickup.
Speaker 1: Telecaster has too. No broadcaster has two pickups. The esquare
Speaker 1: has one that Oh, you're right, that's what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I'm screwing up. Of course I'm right. I'm a guitar
Speaker 1: play right, Well, I thought, I you know, you know,
Speaker 1: my brain didn't go back enough time to absolutely, So
Speaker 1: tell me about moving to California. How does that all
Speaker 1: go down? Well, it said, we made a movie about it.
Speaker 1: I runed down a dream. It went down that. We
Speaker 1: made a demo tape and sent it around, got mostly rejected,
Speaker 1: and got a little bit of interest from this company
Speaker 1: called Shelter Records, which was Leon Russell and Denny Cordo's label.
Speaker 1: So we piled everything and pulled all our money and
Speaker 1: got been Much's parents station wagon and we rented a
Speaker 1: truck and piled everything in and drove out like the
Speaker 1: Beverly Hill Police, you know, and wound up in Hollywood
Speaker 1: like you know, rednecks from space. We were totally out
Speaker 1: of out of sink with everything, but we had to learn,
Speaker 1: you know. We just buckled down and you know, stumbled
Speaker 1: around the studio for a while the crutch dissolved, and
Speaker 1: then slowly we met up and there the guys just
Speaker 1: formed the Heartbreakers, made our first record, and then things
Speaker 1: started to get better a little bit slower though. Didn't
Speaker 1: you go back to Florida? Well there was a first,
Speaker 1: the first foray or say whatever the word is, out
Speaker 1: to California. Tom went went out with the Roady I
Speaker 1: stayed home. I gave him my fifty bucks, was all
Speaker 1: I had, and they went out and knocked on doors,
Speaker 1: and then they came back. And then we started getting
Speaker 1: the rejection letters, and then we got one that sounded
Speaker 1: interesting from Denny Cordell, and uh, then we all got
Speaker 1: together and headed out, hoping that he would save our lives,
Speaker 1: you know, and he did. So what was the magic
Speaker 1: of Danny Cordell. Denny Cordell? First of all, he believed
Speaker 1: in us, and he saw something that we didn't even see,
Speaker 1: that we had a chemistry and that we were unique,
Speaker 1: and that we had us, you know, some songwriting that
Speaker 1: was better than most people. He picked up on the
Speaker 1: songwriting and on Tom's charisma and on the chemistry of
Speaker 1: the band, you know, and he believed in us, and
Speaker 1: he gave us confidence. And he was really good at
Speaker 1: because we were so especially in the studio, we were
Speaker 1: so green. We didn't know what we were doing. Had
Speaker 1: to get a good sound or how to you know,
Speaker 1: play it right, or this and that, and he was
Speaker 1: good was saying, well, you know that's out of these
Speaker 1: three songs. Those two were crap, but this one's good.
Speaker 1: Write some more songs like this, one in that vein,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of directing us like a gurro
Speaker 1: down the path towards our pure self. And that was
Speaker 1: his his main contribution is giving us confidence and believing
Speaker 1: in us and the right advice that we needed. So,
Speaker 1: how long after you start figuring out the studio the
Speaker 1: zero in and you're making a record or you essentially
Speaker 1: making a record the whole time, Well, you're always trying
Speaker 1: to make a record, you know. You go and each
Speaker 1: time you're gonna record something, you think, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: will be on a record, But of course most of
Speaker 1: the time it was just you know, you have to
Speaker 1: throw it out and start over. But you just, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're always thinking of this is going to be a record,
Speaker 1: you know, until it's not okay. And so how long
Speaker 1: after you start playing around as the record done. Well,
Speaker 1: once we got the lineup of the Heartbreakers and Tom
Speaker 1: brought in at the same time, that happened. He brought
Speaker 1: in these great songs. It all just kind of happened
Speaker 1: at the same time. It didn't take us that much,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of months to record the first record,
Speaker 1: which we recorded at the office at Shelter Records. They
Speaker 1: had put a makeshift studio in there, and we called
Speaker 1: it the Brown Room, and and uh we got in
Speaker 1: there and just you know, one one or good time
Speaker 1: until we had you know, ten or twelve songs, and
Speaker 1: he brought in like American Girl Breakdown. All these great
Speaker 1: songs just came out of the air. He came in
Speaker 1: with those, and that we had the band, so it
Speaker 1: all started to gel. So what are you living on
Speaker 1: at this point in time? Well, I'm living on my
Speaker 1: wife's meager salary as a grocery checker. I was on
Speaker 1: a retainer I think for I don't know, a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks maybe a week. Sheolter Records was you know, not
Speaker 1: rolling in the dough, so they were kind of keeping
Speaker 1: us alive. I looked back, I don't know how we lived.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we paid her rent and got groceries.
Speaker 1: But for me personally, uh, my wife was at a
Speaker 1: steady job and she was you know, covering the bases
Speaker 1: until the music started bringing in money. And then she
Speaker 1: you know, had a baby and was able to quit
Speaker 1: her job. But we just I don't know we survived.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like kind of when I think
Speaker 1: back on it, I don't know how we did it.
Speaker 1: We we got through somehow. So the album comes out,
Speaker 1: certainly gets some mink that people know know that it's out,
Speaker 1: but nothing really happens in the US. How do you
Speaker 1: end up going to the UK? Well, we got a
Speaker 1: meager airplay in San Francisco, in Boston, but basically nothing happening.
Speaker 1: And somehow, um through the record company and the promoters,
Speaker 1: they got us onto a tour with Nose Loft Gran
Speaker 1: in England. I don't know how they did that, but
Speaker 1: we all went to England to open for Nose Left
Speaker 1: Grin and around around the country there, and uh, the
Speaker 1: press over there for some reason really loved us, you know,
Speaker 1: and so we started to get a buzz over there
Speaker 1: and positive press and that kind of snowballs when we
Speaker 1: gave us a little momentum. When we came back, we
Speaker 1: had a little you know, energy underneath us from that
Speaker 1: tour and we started to get a little more airplay.
Speaker 1: And it was a slow process, you know. We it
Speaker 1: took us a while. We paid some dutes for sure. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly remember in Los Angeles he started to play
Speaker 1: a live version of Breakdown, and you know, I remember
Speaker 1: it was a slow burn. I remember seeing you guys
Speaker 1: at the Whiskey in the summer of seventy seven. It
Speaker 1: was really starting to Oh that was a great game
Speaker 1: as it was. Uh So, in any event, at what
Speaker 1: point do you side, Okay, we gotta make a second record? Well, um,
Speaker 1: we always thought we were going to make a second record.
Speaker 1: It was a matter of, I guess this one's done,
Speaker 1: all that's gonna do, Let's make another one, you know.
Speaker 1: And back then the industry was way different than it
Speaker 1: is now, you know, And back then you could put
Speaker 1: out a record or two that maybe don't set the
Speaker 1: world on fire. But if you go out and tour
Speaker 1: and start to build up a fan base over time,
Speaker 1: by the third or fourth record, if things go well,
Speaker 1: your records will start selling because you've built up, you know,
Speaker 1: a fan based on the road. Nowadays it's different, but
Speaker 1: that's what we did, you know. We just go out
Speaker 1: and get whatever. We opened a lot of shows like
Speaker 1: for Ja Giles and Bob Seeger or whoever would have us,
Speaker 1: and we would play, you know, our own shows and
Speaker 1: the smaller clubs like I kind of like what I'm
Speaker 1: doing now with my band and um, and then in
Speaker 1: between that we would go in and try to work
Speaker 1: on the you know, songs for the second record, and
Speaker 1: when it was done, we put it out and kept going,
Speaker 1: you know, books and more gigs. At what point do
Speaker 1: you hook up with Tony demitriotus? He was around uh
Speaker 1: early on. Uh. There was a couple of managers that
Speaker 1: were snipping around us in the early days, and he
Speaker 1: was the one that seemed the most honest and trustworthy,
Speaker 1: and so he was. He was there for pretty early on.
Speaker 1: So you make the second album, I mean, the first
Speaker 1: album I absolutely love with Luna, the Wall, One Forever, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The second album comes out, it gets more attention. I
Speaker 1: do not like it as much as the first. That's
Speaker 1: not saying that I don't like it, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: quite break through with the expectations. What was your perspective
Speaker 1: being on the inside? I agree with you. I like that.
Speaker 1: I still think the first record is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite records of all our records. The second record was good,
Speaker 1: had I Need to Know and uh listen to Her Heart.
Speaker 1: You know, it had some good songs on there. Um,
Speaker 1: but we're still kind of learning, and so it's just
Speaker 1: a matter of, you know, more of the same. We
Speaker 1: got a record, you know, a couple of songs are
Speaker 1: getting a little bit of airplay, and we'll go out
Speaker 1: and get some gigs and maybe try to build up
Speaker 1: some momentum and make another record someday, you know. Of course,
Speaker 1: by the time we got to the third record, we realized,
Speaker 1: you know, we got to make a really good record
Speaker 1: now because this is you know, we can't go on
Speaker 1: like this. We need something that's going to break through.
Speaker 1: And that was for the third album was finally we
Speaker 1: we hit bigger. And are you still living on a
Speaker 1: subsistence level or have you ever seen him? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still getting by on you know, month to month,
Speaker 1: you know, paying her rent. So how do you find groceries?
Speaker 1: How do you end up poking up up with me iving? Well,
Speaker 1: it was Cordell actually, uh and his uh great wisdom. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said, you know what you guys need to to
Speaker 1: make a record that's more mainstream friendly. And he said,
Speaker 1: I don't think I know how to produce that type
Speaker 1: of record, but I should step aside. We should get
Speaker 1: you a producer that makes records that sound great on
Speaker 1: the radio. And so we said, well, like what and
Speaker 1: he played his so Patti Smith's song because the night
Speaker 1: which Jimmy had produced and it had this huge drum
Speaker 1: sound and it just sounded great on the radio. So
Speaker 1: we said, well, can we get that guy? And so
Speaker 1: he came in and we started working with him, going
Speaker 1: for the big sound. This is also the point where
Speaker 1: you get into the war with m c A. What
Speaker 1: was your perspective on that, Well, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: scuffling poor boys, you know. The record company kind of
Speaker 1: shuffled us over to a read other record company. We're
Speaker 1: not making any money and and uh that you know,
Speaker 1: we're not going to give them another record because there
Speaker 1: they don't deserve it. So we just won't record. We'll
Speaker 1: go out and play and we did a lawsuit tour.
Speaker 1: We refused to record for the new which I went
Speaker 1: from Shelter to M to ABC and then m c A.
Speaker 1: And they just shuffled us around and asked us, you know,
Speaker 1: said okay, well we're not gonna give you a record,
Speaker 1: we'll just play live, you know. And then eventually things
Speaker 1: came around and they renegotiated the deal and we got
Speaker 1: Jimmy to produce and uh get over at m c A.
Speaker 1: And it was it was just a I don't know
Speaker 1: as bad as it might sound. Uh, I'm in l A,
Speaker 1: I'm playing in the band. We have records out. I
Speaker 1: was already successful in my mind, you know, I had
Speaker 1: no idea what we were gonna do. But even though
Speaker 1: we were struggling and scuffling and getting by, I still
Speaker 1: felt coming from Gainesville, Florida, that was still pretty high
Speaker 1: end stuff for me. Okay, you work with Jimmy and
Speaker 1: obviously Damn the Torpedoes is the huge breakthrough. What is
Speaker 1: his influence? Well, Jimmy. First of all, he brought his
Speaker 1: engineer who got that great sound, Shelley Akis, And it
Speaker 1: was really hard work. Uh, I mean almost totally miserable,
Speaker 1: trying to get a sound, not really knowing what we're
Speaker 1: doing and learning and and you know, they would work
Speaker 1: on the snare drum for three days, you know, and
Speaker 1: then okay, we got the snare drum sound, let's work
Speaker 1: on the base, you know, and two weeks go by. Okay,
Speaker 1: now play this song. Well, I don't even feel like
Speaker 1: playing the song now. I'm sick of hearing the snare drum.
Speaker 1: So we had to learn how to get the sound
Speaker 1: in her head from the room into what we were
Speaker 1: hearing that back on the speakers, and Jimmy was good
Speaker 1: at that. He knew what he was going for and um,
Speaker 1: he was driven to make the best sounding record ever made.
Speaker 1: That was you know, jim he had and Tom too,
Speaker 1: this vision of you know, we're going for greatness. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna settle for anything that's not better than
Speaker 1: everything else out there. And Jimmy had that drive in
Speaker 1: that overview. Um, and he pushed his hard, you know.
Speaker 1: But that record came out and it did really well.
Speaker 1: So there you go. So we're all those songs written
Speaker 1: before you got into the studio with Jimmy, Uh, we're
Speaker 1: songs rejected. How did you end up with those songs? Well,
Speaker 1: we had a handful of songs. We had Refugee and
Speaker 1: here comes to My Girl, which I had written with Tom. Okay,
Speaker 1: you just stayed stopped there for a second. That change
Speaker 1: and here comes my Girl where it goes down and
Speaker 1: goes watch her walk? How did that come? How did
Speaker 1: that come together? That's something it's indelible. I tingled what
Speaker 1: I think about it. They called it a bridge, and
Speaker 1: it's very you know, it's just a matter of the
Speaker 1: two chords just going along, you know, and then go
Speaker 1: where do I go from there? Well, how about take
Speaker 1: it to another mood for a second and back. It
Speaker 1: was just a little interlude to give those chords a break,
Speaker 1: and that's what a good bridge should do. That should
Speaker 1: just like bridge you from that course into the next
Speaker 1: verse without distracting from the flow. It was just a
Speaker 1: chord really, It went down from A to F sharp
Speaker 1: and it's just something I came up with on my demo.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we had those two songs and some other songs. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't do me like that was in there, but we
Speaker 1: were we'd already tried that a few times with their
Speaker 1: first two albums and we're off of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: a Louis the Enter Reign, we might have had that song.
Speaker 1: But Jimmy Ivan he heard Refugee and Here Comes from
Speaker 1: a Girl and said, I don't care what else you
Speaker 1: guys do. That's the h We've got a record those
Speaker 1: two songs. I don't even want to hear the rest
Speaker 1: of you do whatever you want. We're gonna make a
Speaker 1: hit out of those two songs. And he goes, I
Speaker 1: never listened to side too of any record my whole lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of guy Jimmy was, you know, he
Speaker 1: wanted to business. He wanted it now, and he heard
Speaker 1: the business and those two songs, Okay, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: those that you guys make the rest of the record
Speaker 1: whatever you want, you know, which is really kind of hilarious.
Speaker 1: But don't do me like that. We did pull out
Speaker 1: at the last second. We had cut it and put
Speaker 1: it away, and then we heard it. So one that
Speaker 1: was pretty good. We should finish it. And so that
Speaker 1: came out on that record as well, and we usually
Speaker 1: enter reigning a few other rockers and but really it
Speaker 1: was the refugee and here comes to my girl kind
Speaker 1: of carried the weight on that one. So how did you?
Speaker 1: And Tom Right and even the losers even, how did you?
Speaker 1: That's my wife. That's my wife at the beginning, it's
Speaker 1: just a normal noise. Really, okay, that's my wife, Marcy. Uh.
Speaker 1: When I did the demo at my house and my
Speaker 1: four tracks, she was in the other room and the
Speaker 1: washing machine was going to took a ticker tick out?
Speaker 1: What is that? She goes, It's just the normal noises
Speaker 1: in here, and so I was it bled into my demo.
Speaker 1: So when Tom heard, he says, we have to use
Speaker 1: that that bit, and Jimmy thought he was nice. He said,
Speaker 1: what's that got to do with the record? Said no,
Speaker 1: but we need it because the two songs were in
Speaker 1: the same key, so that kind of distracted your mind
Speaker 1: from what key you were in, and so she became
Speaker 1: on the record. It was funny, that is. I never
Speaker 1: knew a little aside. I never knew that story. So
Speaker 1: how do you write refugee, which is really the big
Speaker 1: monster breakthrough, you know, how do you write it? I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, it's it's it's it's magic and luck
Speaker 1: and work, you know. I was just I had my
Speaker 1: four track, which, once again, my wife talked me into
Speaker 1: buying the four track. We could it was a t
Speaker 1: ac you know, we couldn't afford it, but she said, no,
Speaker 1: you should buy that. You know it'll pay off. And
Speaker 1: she was right. God bless her. She always believed in me.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I had my four track and I was
Speaker 1: playing around with it, you know, and trying to think it. Well,
Speaker 1: let me put it some chords on here so I
Speaker 1: could play lead guitar along with it and practice my leads.
Speaker 1: It was those chords that I borrowed from Albert Kane
Speaker 1: song and changed around a little bit, and I just
Speaker 1: threw a little demo together, uh not mostly for an
Speaker 1: excuse to practice lead guitar. And uh then Tom heard it,
Speaker 1: and of course he hit that that lyric and you know,
Speaker 1: forget about it. You know, he made it like eighteen
Speaker 1: times better, and uh it became this iconic song. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just luck, man, you know, I think about that
Speaker 1: all the time. Where do these songs come from? Hawaii?
Speaker 1: Where did it? You know? How can I why can
Speaker 1: I just conjure it up every day? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's magic, it's luck, it's spiritual, it's just I think,
Speaker 1: And it's just a lot of just keeping your head,
Speaker 1: your nose to the nose to the grindstone, just work
Speaker 1: and work and working and hoping that some miracle will
Speaker 1: happen in the middle of it all. You know. So
Speaker 1: when you wrote with Tom, is that generally the way
Speaker 1: it would go down. You would do something independently delivered
Speaker 1: to him, he'd write the lyrics. Yeah. Always we never
Speaker 1: sat down eyeball to eyeball. It seems always seem so intimidating,
Speaker 1: like what do you got? What you got? You know?
Speaker 1: So I would just come in, but well, here's an idea.
Speaker 1: I'd play the tape you know, how about this? You know?
Speaker 1: And he would if he liked it, he would just start,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess, singing along in his He go,
Speaker 1: I'll take it off to his house and come back
Speaker 1: to me and see, I think I got some words
Speaker 1: for that music. And that's the way it always worked.
Speaker 1: It was a great relationship. Did you ever add words?
Speaker 1: Did he ever change the music? Occasionally, like those two
Speaker 1: songs Refugee and Her christ m Girl. Most of the
Speaker 1: songs the music was intact. Occasionally he would come in
Speaker 1: and go, you know, I've got this this lyric going,
Speaker 1: and I need a different chord here to to carry
Speaker 1: through with what you've already got. He might add a chord,
Speaker 1: very rarely what I suggest a lyric maybe later on.
Speaker 1: I had a few lyrics suggestions, but I almost always
Speaker 1: left the lyrics up to him. And I would say,
Speaker 1: like a five percent of the time the demos were
Speaker 1: exactly the way I handed him to him. Okay, this
Speaker 1: begs the question of publishing. These are gigantic songs. How
Speaker 1: much of the publishing did you own? Then? Do you own? Now?
Speaker 1: We always split everything fifty. Okay, so we had fifty,
Speaker 1: you add five d and you owned it together, or
Speaker 1: there was another party that had another fifty. Now we
Speaker 1: owned it together, I mean until late recently. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know what his his stage is done with his publishing.
Speaker 1: But nowadays you can sell your publishing to a third
Speaker 1: party if you want to get all the cash that
Speaker 1: you're gonna end make over the next few years up front,
Speaker 1: if you want it. But we never did that. He
Speaker 1: had gone Gator Music. I had Wild Gator Music, and
Speaker 1: we kept our our publishing. You know, we didn't want
Speaker 1: to sell it. So it was just a you know,
Speaker 1: a two way partnership. Okay. But from the very first record,
Speaker 1: you and Tom owned the Hunter Present. Yeah that's kind
Speaker 1: of rare. And yeah, well well we learned. See, we
Speaker 1: had learned the hardway. On those first two records, we
Speaker 1: got shuffle around by the company. That's what that lawsuit
Speaker 1: was all about. It's like, you know, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: take our music, You're not gonna take our publishing. Like
Speaker 1: even Cordell and our first deal, he wrote in a
Speaker 1: piece of the publishing for himself, which we didn't know
Speaker 1: any better. But by the third record, we were smart,
Speaker 1: you know. Now we're keeping our songs, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can have the artists, you know, a piece of
Speaker 1: the artist record royalties, but the songs belong to us,
Speaker 1: and that's mostly Tom. Tom was very astute businessman. And
Speaker 1: did you ever get the pieces back from the first
Speaker 1: two records? We did? We did eventually buy them back.
Speaker 1: I forget, probably twenty years ago or something. It became
Speaker 1: available when we bought them back, so we owned it
Speaker 1: all now. And what what about you selling it to
Speaker 1: hypnosis or primary wave or something. Well, I'll have to
Speaker 1: be really hard up for cash to do that. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I recently did it. My wife is the
Speaker 1: businesswoman in the partnership. I think we did a temporary
Speaker 1: deal where we wanted to buy some property and we
Speaker 1: did like, okay, well you give us an advance for
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was four years or something,
Speaker 1: and then after the four years we get all the
Speaker 1: publishing back, a little temporary cash jump thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to give up my songs, you know, I
Speaker 1: really don't. Unless I'm really destitute or the kids need
Speaker 1: medical treatment or something, I would never sell The songs
Speaker 1: are my part of them. Okay. The record is done.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's gonna be make a successful Do
Speaker 1: you think refugees and instant hit? What's your perspective? We
Speaker 1: had no idea. I mean, Jimmy thought it was. And
Speaker 1: see the thing that Jimmy did more than just producing.
Speaker 1: He went out and promoted the record when it was done.
Speaker 1: You know, he would take the tapes and fly to
Speaker 1: New York and go to the radio station said, but
Speaker 1: let's play this, play this, this is the best thing
Speaker 1: ever done. He was a real promoter, you know, he
Speaker 1: went out and pushed that record and got it played
Speaker 1: a lot. But did what do we know? I mean,
Speaker 1: we made another record, you know, hopefully it'll do well.
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's pretty good. But you know,
Speaker 1: until people start buying it and and then you begin
Speaker 1: to realize like, wow, this connected with some people, but
Speaker 1: you don't really know. We didn't. Well, certainly Los Angeles
Speaker 1: refugee hits the radio instantly. So at what point did
Speaker 1: you realize, holy fuck, this is really happening. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was. There was kind of a moment there. Uh,
Speaker 1: when the first publishing check in. I remember looking at
Speaker 1: and going like with my wife, going like, honey, I
Speaker 1: think our ship just came in, you know, let's go
Speaker 1: by Mercedes. Then I went to the accountant and had
Speaker 1: the meeting. Yeah, that was your gross and then he
Speaker 1: pushed me a piece here, here's your money after taxes,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, this can't be true. I
Speaker 1: finally made it and you're taking or than have him
Speaker 1: it back. There was, you know, a lesson in life.
Speaker 1: So what was the whole damn the Torpedoes experience, Like
Speaker 1: being at the pinnacle of the music business, well you
Speaker 1: know where it's like, uh, it's like the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were right now. It's it's so heavy and your
Speaker 1: dream it all starts to happen. It's like it's so
Speaker 1: intense and wonderful and spiritual that you can hardly. Um.
Speaker 1: The only way we could deal with it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good, that's happening. Wow, it's gonna happen, and everything's
Speaker 1: gonna let's focus, you know, stay focused on on one
Speaker 1: work because otherwise you just get lost and and the
Speaker 1: glory of your success. You know, it was pretty heavy,
Speaker 1: and uh it was um, you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: first time, like the first time you ever have sex.
Speaker 1: You know, it's never quite as good as that first time,
Speaker 1: and then we've had hit records system. But when when
Speaker 1: you first breakthrough, it's like, Wow, we did it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be We're gonna this is gonna be big. Imagine that.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? And it's like, you never you
Speaker 1: only get that feeling once and we were fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to have that happen on that record. So what opportunities
Speaker 1: came your way? I'm not talking financial, but now you're
Speaker 1: sitting a top the charts, you suddenly start meeting your heroes.
Speaker 1: How does your life change? Yeah? Slowly, over time, you
Speaker 1: start to cross paths with, you know, people that you've
Speaker 1: looked up to because of your success in the in
Speaker 1: the the circles that you're you know, walking in. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, um, that just starts to happen organically.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't like all of a sudden, all
Speaker 1: these people showed up at our door, but you know,
Speaker 1: you bump into this guy at the studio or that
Speaker 1: guy you know, or at a gig, somebody's backstage and
Speaker 1: they say hi, and then uh, it was just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still blown away that the people I've met the
Speaker 1: heroes of mine that I've met that actually liked me
Speaker 1: and wanted to work with me. And I could never
Speaker 1: have dreamed that, you know, my life would unfold that way.
Speaker 1: When I was in Jacksonville, it was just like, it's
Speaker 1: beyond my wildest dreams. It really is. Okay, so that
Speaker 1: record runs its course. How much pressure do you feel
Speaker 1: doing hard promises? Well, I didn't think about it that much.
Speaker 1: We'll just make another record, you know, now we're now
Speaker 1: they they like us, so we don't have to break
Speaker 1: through and prove that we're They already think we're good.
Speaker 1: So now we we have that under our belt. But
Speaker 1: you want to you know that from then on, every
Speaker 1: record you're trying to make better than that one. Now,
Speaker 1: even to the last record we may, you're always trying
Speaker 1: to make the best record you ever. May you're not
Speaker 1: going to do that, nobody does, but you strive to
Speaker 1: do that. But we didn't struggle with pressure. You know,
Speaker 1: we were pretty confident that, you know, this may not
Speaker 1: be as good as Torpedoes, but it's good and it's
Speaker 1: just this chapter and maybe we'll make another record after
Speaker 1: see what happens there. But we didn't, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't agonize over it. My favorite song on that album.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs
Speaker 1: is a woman in love It's not Me? Can you
Speaker 1: tell me the story of that? I wrote the music
Speaker 1: and I had a demo and gave it to Time.
Speaker 1: He wrote the words, and I liked that song a
Speaker 1: lot too. It's it's it's a really interesting character in
Speaker 1: that song. And Duck Dunn was in the studio that
Speaker 1: week and he came in and played based on it
Speaker 1: and really made it grew really nicely, and uh, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, I like that song too. It's just
Speaker 1: another demo I gave Tom and he was inspired to
Speaker 1: write a song to it. You know, So you go
Speaker 1: on tour. I remember seeing you with you were opening
Speaker 1: for Joe Walsh, which seemed a little strange, but uh,
Speaker 1: in any event, that album is not as commercially successful
Speaker 1: you make long. I don't remember opening for Joe Walsh ever.
Speaker 1: I mean after Torpedoes, we didn't open for anybody. Then
Speaker 1: maybe Joe Walsh opened for you. Yeah, we never opened
Speaker 1: for Joe Walsh, but espec seriously, after actually before the
Speaker 1: third album, we made a decision. You know, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna open for anybody. Anymore. I'd rather play a smaller
Speaker 1: place where they all came to see us, and by torpedoes,
Speaker 1: we were certainly on our headliner all the time. Well
Speaker 1: then I must remember that upside down. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: in any event, long after Dark comes out and for me,
Speaker 1: of the initial run, that is the least satisfying record
Speaker 1: and not that commercially successful. Was that something you guys felt?
Speaker 1: Are you just making another record? Well? Um, by that point, Uh,
Speaker 1: It's funny when you get a producer and you it
Speaker 1: into a role and you make a few records. Sometimes
Speaker 1: by the third or fourth record, it starts to get
Speaker 1: a little less fresh, the energy between you and you
Speaker 1: get a little stale creatively. And I think by that
Speaker 1: record maybe Jimmy was being pulled in different directions and
Speaker 1: maybe we were kind of uh, a little too familiar
Speaker 1: with our routine and so the record. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. But the other thing is, like you
Speaker 1: asked me before, where do these songs come from? Those
Speaker 1: are the songs that came up that year, you know,
Speaker 1: and as a refugee or here comes my Girl or
Speaker 1: woman in Love. No, there's still quality, uh songs, but
Speaker 1: the bar is really high now and I agree with you.
Speaker 1: It's not one of my favorite records, although I like
Speaker 1: it and there's some high points in there, but it's
Speaker 1: not as good as those other records you mentioned. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's the way a career is. You know, every
Speaker 1: record it makes not going to be better than the
Speaker 1: last one. I don't care who you are, you know.
Speaker 1: In fact, usually they get worse with a lot of artists.
Speaker 1: But we felt that, you know, this one's not as
Speaker 1: but we're okay because we have a fan base and
Speaker 1: it's still doing pretty good. Maybe the next one will
Speaker 1: break through a big again, you know, just keep pushing forward. Well,
Speaker 1: Southern Accents ends up becoming huge based primarily I don't
Speaker 1: come around here no more. In the video on MTV.
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys are the opposite of what's normally
Speaker 1: being played at MTV at that particular point, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of English new wave. The song is different
Speaker 1: from anything anybody's ever heard before. Do you think that
Speaker 1: track is gonna go? Well, uh, you hope it will,
Speaker 1: but you never really know until it goes, you know,
Speaker 1: keep your fingers crossed. You know, hit records that have
Speaker 1: a lot to do with timing to the climate of
Speaker 1: the culture and what other records are out at the
Speaker 1: same time that you're competing with. So we thought it
Speaker 1: was atty catchy. Um, but you know, you never really know.
Speaker 1: I think the song's southern accents. Um. That song is
Speaker 1: one of the best songs he ever wrote, just as
Speaker 1: a song. Um, you know, don't come around here no more.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bells and whistles on that record
Speaker 1: and the video, and back then it was the MTV
Speaker 1: was was an issue. You know, you had to make
Speaker 1: a cool video, and so it had that going for it. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was good to have Dave Stewart around for
Speaker 1: a little while as some new energy, break us out
Speaker 1: of our routine a little bit. And the following album,
Speaker 1: the opening song is Jamming Me, which is certainly something
Speaker 1: became a staple. Oh, certainly live. Bob Telling was one
Speaker 1: of the cold writers. How does that? Yeah? I know,
Speaker 1: how lucky am I I wasn't even there, you know.
Speaker 1: I had the music, gave it to Tom and he
Speaker 1: had gone to see Bob at a hotel, local hotel
Speaker 1: for some reason or other, and he had my demo.
Speaker 1: He played it for Bob and they sat together and
Speaker 1: wrote the words. I wasn't even there, and he goes
Speaker 1: me up and he goes I think you know, Bob,
Speaker 1: and I wrote some words to your track. Oh great,
Speaker 1: you know, let let me hear it. You know it
Speaker 1: was jamming me. So there I am. I'm the luckiest
Speaker 1: guy in the world. How do you feel at the
Speaker 1: time about Tomson he wants to cut a solo record. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it made sense because the band was a
Speaker 1: little stale and we were kind of following into a
Speaker 1: boring energy with We were bored with each other, we
Speaker 1: were bored with our way of making records, and I
Speaker 1: think it was healthy for everybody. Whether the band liked
Speaker 1: it at the time or not. It never it didn't
Speaker 1: mean it didn't affect me that much because he asked
Speaker 1: me to produce it with him anyway, So I was
Speaker 1: there just the same as usual. It's just the band
Speaker 1: wasn't there. But it might have been hard on them
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I think in the long run
Speaker 1: it worked out good for everybody. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the great great songs, right, Let's go back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning. It's Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, not the Heartbreakers.
Speaker 1: How did you feel, How did it end? Up having
Speaker 1: his name at top, and how did the rest of
Speaker 1: the band feel about that. Well, I can only speak
Speaker 1: for myself, but I've talked to them all and they
Speaker 1: all kind of agree. Up until that point, it was
Speaker 1: all for one and one for all from Florida, you know,
Speaker 1: we were all on the same pay grade and sharing
Speaker 1: everything because we didn't have much to share, you know.
Speaker 1: And then as it became obvious that Tom was leading
Speaker 1: the group, writing most of the songs, seeing the songs
Speaker 1: um and it became obvious that the best way to
Speaker 1: present this this uh act is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,
Speaker 1: because it really was, That's what it was. And it
Speaker 1: was a little bit of an adjustment at first, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well he's gonna put his name on there, but you know,
Speaker 1: does he deserve it? Yeah? Are we all gonna do
Speaker 1: well anyway? Yeah, So we didn't spend much time I'm
Speaker 1: worrying about it. Just seemed like a natural progression. And
Speaker 1: I think the band, like I said, they probably agree
Speaker 1: with me. You have to ask them. But my ego
Speaker 1: was not so strong that I felt threatened by it.
Speaker 1: You know. I thought, well, I'm just happy to be
Speaker 1: in this band, you know. I get to play guitarget
Speaker 1: to write songs. I don't really care whose names up there,
Speaker 1: as long as I get to do what I want
Speaker 1: to do, you know. So I never I didn't have
Speaker 1: a competitive thing about it. I felt, you know, it
Speaker 1: works if we're all still working together, we're still you know,
Speaker 1: having success together. I'm fine with it. And looking back
Speaker 1: on it, I think he deserved it. You know, he was.
Speaker 1: He was carrying a lot of the weight. He was
Speaker 1: making a lot of the decisions, management decisions as well.
Speaker 1: He was leading the group and he had to drive
Speaker 1: um of leadership that I think he deserved to have
Speaker 1: his name in on there. And when you played live,
Speaker 1: was it an even split? Uh? It was not. It
Speaker 1: was half and half half of Tom half of the band,
Speaker 1: and I think that was fair. And at what point
Speaker 1: did that starter? From the very beginning around Torpedoes. I
Speaker 1: think it was Elliott Roberts was our co manager of
Speaker 1: the time, and he came and said, look, guys, we
Speaker 1: need to make this fair. It's not fair to Tom.
Speaker 1: You know, he's carrying it. So here's how I think
Speaker 1: we should go forward. And everybody went, okay, fine, you know,
Speaker 1: book some gigs, let's all make some money. So I
Speaker 1: have you ended up working with Don Henley? Well, I've
Speaker 1: told that story many times. It was a demo I
Speaker 1: had uh music and I played it for Tom and
Speaker 1: Jimmy as we were working on whatever record we were
Speaker 1: working on at the time, and it didn't really fit
Speaker 1: that album, and so Tom said, no, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if I hear anything. I said, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I got other stuff. And then Jimmy called me and said,
Speaker 1: you know that track he played me, Uh, Don Henley's
Speaker 1: looking for a song for his solo record, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: was he looking for ballot or a rocker? And he
Speaker 1: says an image maker? Okay, well if he if you
Speaker 1: think that track is good. So he set up the meeting.
Speaker 1: I took it over and played it for Dawn, my
Speaker 1: little cassette, and he sat there like this, that's with
Speaker 1: your head down. He listened to the whole thing. He
Speaker 1: didn't tap his foot, getting not his head. Got to
Speaker 1: the end of the song and he goes, okay, thanks,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you later. I'll let you know. And
Speaker 1: I'm driving home and the phone rings and he goes, hey,
Speaker 1: it's done, because he said, I've just written the best
Speaker 1: song I've written in the last twenty years to your music.
Speaker 1: Oh great, okay, let me hear it, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's how it went. Okay, so you have the demo,
Speaker 1: how do you make the ultimate recording? Well, that was
Speaker 1: hard because the demo was so good, you know, my
Speaker 1: demos are good, and it was on a four track
Speaker 1: and he wanted to change the key. So we had
Speaker 1: to go into studio and recreate the demo, which is
Speaker 1: always just really hard if you have a demo that's
Speaker 1: gout survivee and it's just loosen off the cuff and
Speaker 1: you have to go back and try to recreate that
Speaker 1: magic that made it great in the first place. That
Speaker 1: was one of those It was really hard, but we
Speaker 1: did finally get it. That took a lot of work.
Speaker 1: And that stinging the guitar was that also on the demo? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I had to relearn that because I had on
Speaker 1: the demo I had put the guitar on your low
Speaker 1: dad this year about that there, did you know? Off
Speaker 1: the off the top of my head, and then of
Speaker 1: course Don fell in love with those bits, so I
Speaker 1: had to go back in and relearn what I had done.
Speaker 1: It was really hard. For me because okay, I guess
Speaker 1: comes on one, two, three and dat dada. You know,
Speaker 1: I had to go back and learn all those little bits, um,
Speaker 1: which I did get it, but it took some you know,
Speaker 1: it was some brain work. And in terms of working
Speaker 1: with other people. Is the phone just ringing? Is it's
Speaker 1: something that happens occasionally at the time or all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you have a couple of hits and people
Speaker 1: ringing your phone off. No, it was occasional, um. You know.
Speaker 1: I would get a note sometimes through the office. So
Speaker 1: and so was interested and if somebody liked to say okay,
Speaker 1: if not, I'd go never mind, I'm busy. Not as
Speaker 1: much as you might think, you know. It wasn't ringing
Speaker 1: off the hook, but occasionally i'd get an interesting call
Speaker 1: here and there. The other song, of course, it's legendary
Speaker 1: with Henley is heard of the Matter? What's the story there?
Speaker 1: Heart of the Matter? I got up when Marning I
Speaker 1: was half asleep, and I just went and that's all
Speaker 1: I had, out of a dream or something, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll make a demo out of that, you know,
Speaker 1: and threw it together. It's very simple music, really, it's
Speaker 1: so magical. They just come that was a little thing,
Speaker 1: little out of that grew into that he heard it,
Speaker 1: he took it into another level. And I remember going
Speaker 1: to the Forum years later to see Don Lee solo
Speaker 1: and they did that song. I'm sitting out in the audience.
Speaker 1: They did that song and he had a full on
Speaker 1: chorus singing the backgrounds and it was like a religious experience.
Speaker 1: It's like God smiled on me, you know. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I almost hate to talk about the
Speaker 1: mystery or songwriting because I don't want to jinx it.
Speaker 1: But I think it is a lot of it's just
Speaker 1: luck and timing and turning your brain off enough to
Speaker 1: let that little light china for a second. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: you tell me and we'll both know. No, I feel
Speaker 1: the same way, but in my work. But in any event, Uh,
Speaker 1: do you play the guitar every day? I do a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, are you just leaving the uh you know,
Speaker 1: recording all the time or you waiting for those bolts
Speaker 1: of inspiration? How does it go down? You're holding up
Speaker 1: one of you a portable digital recorder. Yeah. I I
Speaker 1: am so addicted to writing and I'm so of like,
Speaker 1: um sensitive to the little the little fairy dust that
Speaker 1: might come and might slip away that I have. Little
Speaker 1: recorders are handy, so if I do get a little
Speaker 1: piece of something, immediately record it so I don't forget it.
Speaker 1: It's funny and I don't really agree with what Roy
Speaker 1: Orbison said, but I asked him once, uh, and there's
Speaker 1: some something beautiful about what he said. I said, when
Speaker 1: you're writing songs, do you record the rough ideas so
Speaker 1: you don't forget them? He gaes, oh no, I never
Speaker 1: do that, and he goes, because I figured if I
Speaker 1: can't remember it, nobody else would have ever remembered it either.
Speaker 1: But I don't really agree with that, because I found
Speaker 1: little bits and pieces that I did forget about that
Speaker 1: we're good. And do you a good judge of your
Speaker 1: own material? Yeah? I mean not always In the moment
Speaker 1: and the moment you go with the muse and you
Speaker 1: just hope that it will shine on you with something great,
Speaker 1: and you've always feel like it's the best thing I
Speaker 1: ever did. And the next day you come back and
Speaker 1: listen to it and go, U, it's okay, you know,
Speaker 1: or or else you go, oh no, it's a kink song.
Speaker 1: I didn't even notice it, you know. Yeah, but uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, once I sit back and listen, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty good editor of bullshit. Yeah, my own book.
Speaker 1: And so now now you're working with Jeff Lynn. To
Speaker 1: what degree? What do you learn from Jeff Lynn that
Speaker 1: you don't know already? Oh so much, especially recording technique,
Speaker 1: um and uh, just so much, says I can't even
Speaker 1: hardly explain it. The way he records it is very
Speaker 1: fast and very um um efficient. You know. We come
Speaker 1: up with a song, uh on the guitar, like they
Speaker 1: had this song. Uh, that's all there was to it.
Speaker 1: And Jeff took that and built this whole record out
Speaker 1: of those two chords, you know, and he did it
Speaker 1: with background vocals. I learned so much about background vocals.
Speaker 1: I learned so much about arrangement. And he plays a
Speaker 1: lot of the bass himself. He's really good on the
Speaker 1: base at making the track move just right, and uh,
Speaker 1: he always has an idea And I learned quickly on
Speaker 1: the Full Moon Fever record with Jeff around one day
Speaker 1: he came in and we had started a track the
Speaker 1: afternoon before, and he came in because a lot of
Speaker 1: times with the guitars. I'll make it up on the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll say, okay, we'll run the track and
Speaker 1: I'll find something. Jeff doesn't work like that. Jeff works
Speaker 1: apart out in his head before he gets to the studio.
Speaker 1: So he came in. He goes, so, Mike, do you
Speaker 1: have any guitar ideas for this track? And I said,
Speaker 1: well no, I said, well I do, and he and
Speaker 1: so he said how about this? And it was this
Speaker 1: great part. You know. So the next time he asked me,
Speaker 1: I said, oh, yeah, I've got some ideas. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna do that to me again, you know, you gotta so,
Speaker 1: you know, he was like that. He was just so
Speaker 1: full of great ideas and he made it fun. He
Speaker 1: it was so, you know, we cut those records like
Speaker 1: free phone. He started at noon. By five o'clock is done,
Speaker 1: background vocals, guitar parts finished. Because he knew how to
Speaker 1: get things done really quickly and had to put everything
Speaker 1: in rhythm and grooving and the sounds and the microphone
Speaker 1: placements and the parts. And he would coach Tom and
Speaker 1: how to sing certain lines, and then his background vocal
Speaker 1: trip is just a whole other thing. I won't get
Speaker 1: into it, but well, don't get it, get into what
Speaker 1: is it? Well, at the time. Nowadays you can do
Speaker 1: it digitally, but at the time, you know Jeff Lynn
Speaker 1: if you listen to his records, he has a lot
Speaker 1: of these big background parts that sound amazing, and he
Speaker 1: shows us how to do it. And of course even
Speaker 1: if I tell you how to do it, you won't
Speaker 1: be able to do it, because it's the way he
Speaker 1: does it. But basically, at the time, we were on analog,
Speaker 1: we didn't have digital, and we had a twenty four
Speaker 1: track machine and then a little mixed down tape machine
Speaker 1: and said we'd start this song and he hears all
Speaker 1: the background parts. So say we've got out of twenty
Speaker 1: four tracks, we've got five or six of the acoustic
Speaker 1: guitars and a drum ba or whatever the basic format
Speaker 1: and live lead vocal. Okay, we'll go to the background parts.
Speaker 1: So he would find one note in the harmony and
Speaker 1: he and Tom would go out and sing it together
Speaker 1: in unison. Okay, double that, Okay, triple that. So you've
Speaker 1: got three tracks, six voices singing the one note. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we're gonna do the next note in the chords.
Speaker 1: Same thing. So by the time you've got a you know, three,
Speaker 1: three or four note chorus, it's really like twenty voices
Speaker 1: coming in sounding rich as hell, but it's all sped
Speaker 1: across the twenty four tracks. So there's no more room
Speaker 1: for the music. So what you do, I should take
Speaker 1: all those voices only blend them, because he knew how
Speaker 1: to blend them that they would end up right. Copy
Speaker 1: that down to the two track. It's stereo, okay, Then
Speaker 1: go back to your master track and bring up two
Speaker 1: tracks and put the two track and play and push
Speaker 1: the multi track and record and try to time it right.
Speaker 1: Boom right there the chorus comes in all so then
Speaker 1: and be cause it's on It's cause it's on a metronome.
Speaker 1: Every chorus is going to be on beat. So you
Speaker 1: went up to the next course drop these twenty voices.
Speaker 1: So each time the chorus come by on stereo tracks,
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, twenty voices in perfect tune and
Speaker 1: perfectly blended. So all of a sudden, you're a little
Speaker 1: twenty four tracks sounds huge. You know, that was one trick,
Speaker 1: but there's and there's just so many more. I mean,
Speaker 1: just he was just Brilliant's like going to college working
Speaker 1: with that guy. I really love and respect him so much.
Speaker 1: So that record is cut, the Full Moon Fever record
Speaker 1: long before it comes out. So what's it like when
Speaker 1: you have something like that and it's sitting in the kids,
Speaker 1: you detach or you just eager, wait, wait, wait till
Speaker 1: this record comes out. Well, you know, it's like you
Speaker 1: were asking before, do you ever know if it's a hit.
Speaker 1: You know, we had I Won't Back Down, Love is
Speaker 1: a Long Road, free Fallen, and whatever else is on
Speaker 1: that record. Lots of hits on there, and we thought
Speaker 1: it was pretty good, you know, because we the three
Speaker 1: of us said, just the three of us basically did
Speaker 1: it in my bedroom and then we took it over
Speaker 1: to m c A And played it for him. And
Speaker 1: well they went over and play it for him, and
Speaker 1: they came back. They were all depressed to go man,
Speaker 1: they didn't like it. They don't think there's any hits
Speaker 1: on here. They said, go back and cut a hit
Speaker 1: and then come play it for us. And we were demoralized, like, wow,
Speaker 1: I guess we're just we don't reclueless. We don't know
Speaker 1: what a hit is, you know, So okay, they want
Speaker 1: to hit so we'll do a bird's song that was
Speaker 1: a hit, feel a whole lot better, So we'll do
Speaker 1: a hit. You know, they want to hit. We don't
Speaker 1: know what a hit is. Obviously, we put that on there,
Speaker 1: and then in the meantime there was some Wilbery's action
Speaker 1: and the A and R department and m c A
Speaker 1: completely turned over. Everybody had left. There was a new
Speaker 1: group in there. So then we went back in with
Speaker 1: the same record and play it for him. This this
Speaker 1: record is six six, six hits deep, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like a whole different gang, and they totally got it.
Speaker 1: So we're just sitting back, Well, what the fund do
Speaker 1: we know? You know? Good? I hope, I hope it's
Speaker 1: a hit, you know, And of course it was. But
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the movie business. I know. From inside
Speaker 1: that building, they hoped that record never came out because
Speaker 1: the deal was so rich, and then ultimately came out
Speaker 1: it was, you know, a gigantic hit, which was a
Speaker 1: surprise to them. Now one thing that really blows my
Speaker 1: that blows my mind, both my mind is stan Lynch
Speaker 1: gets excise from the band, but he ends up working
Speaker 1: with Henley and then you're working with Henley. You know
Speaker 1: do your cross paths? You know, how does that all
Speaker 1: go down? It's just incestuous. I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, paths cross and I've since recently, I was
Speaker 1: doing a tour with my band, The Dirty Knobs, and
Speaker 1: my drummer had a commitment and I had Stan come
Speaker 1: back in and do a month's worth of days with
Speaker 1: me and we reconnected. It was beautiful. I really missed
Speaker 1: playing with him, but yeah, he ended up working with Don.
Speaker 1: I worked with Don and Da Da Da. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just l a music scene. He know, you crossed
Speaker 1: paths and somebody says you want to do this, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's try it, and the next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: into it. You know. So the Greatest Hits album comes out?
Speaker 1: Whose idea is it to do something in the air.
Speaker 1: It had to be Tom because we did Mary James
Speaker 1: Last Dance, which is a new song. We did discuss like,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna play out the greatest Hits, let's at
Speaker 1: least put a new song that might be a hit,
Speaker 1: a new hit, so we're not just read regurgitating the
Speaker 1: old stuff. And Tom wrote that great song. You know,
Speaker 1: Mary James Last Dance, and then we needed another one
Speaker 1: for the B side, and he just I think it
Speaker 1: was him, He said, let's just try that Thurner clap
Speaker 1: new one song, excuse me, and we we recorded those
Speaker 1: two songs for that album, and Lo and behold, Mary
Speaker 1: james Last Dance is one of our biggest songs. That's
Speaker 1: Lucky again. He's phenomenal. I mean, the song is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: How much is the guitar part yours or how much
Speaker 1: was that in the original demo he brought on Mary
Speaker 1: Jay's Last Dance. It's kind of both of us, uh
Speaker 1: Dann down down. We both played that together. I think
Speaker 1: he had the first idea for it, and then I
Speaker 1: did my uh arrangement of it, and I think at
Speaker 1: the end, let Tom play a little Chuck Barriers solo
Speaker 1: on it. I played the middle solo. It was a
Speaker 1: I think he had the original idea of the riff,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of a group effort to make
Speaker 1: it say on the way that it did. And Stan
Speaker 1: played on that record. That was the last thing we
Speaker 1: did with him, I guess. So how did you feel
Speaker 1: when the centuries changed? Napster comes along? Suddenly rock is
Speaker 1: no longer the dominant format. What was that Your perspective
Speaker 1: on all that, Well, it's the same as is now.
Speaker 1: Who the funk knows? You know, it's a crazy business,
Speaker 1: you know. I remember when the uh, during the empty
Speaker 1: V days, there's a point there where video games became
Speaker 1: real popular, and like, video games are gonna take over.
Speaker 1: There'll be no more rock and roll music. It's all
Speaker 1: about video games. That's when we did that. You got
Speaker 1: Lucky video, He beats the video the game Shane to
Speaker 1: death because we were making a statement against all that. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Throughout the decades, the business just mismorphed,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like and now it's streaming and vinyls
Speaker 1: coming back a little bit. Cassettes are coming back a
Speaker 1: little bit, but CDs are hanging in there, but they're streaming,
Speaker 1: and who knows how you don't really get paid as
Speaker 1: you should on streaming. I'm not really deep into it,
Speaker 1: but I know that it's always changing, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: I have no control over it. I'm just gonna make
Speaker 1: the music and hope that somebody will pay me for eventually.
Speaker 1: So you accept these changes because a lot of people
Speaker 1: of our age you were successful, resisted these changes. Well,
Speaker 1: what good does it do you to resist that? You know,
Speaker 1: you can't stop it. The genies out of the bottle,
Speaker 1: you know. I just look at it like that's gonna
Speaker 1: be what it's gonna be. Ill probably changed, you know,
Speaker 1: eight times more before I die. But I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: make the music, you know, and somebody will find a
Speaker 1: way to to put it out and I can always
Speaker 1: play live. But there's no point agonizing over it. I mean,
Speaker 1: just it's a little weird at first when it seemed like, well,
Speaker 1: nobody's buying records anymore, nobody's buying CDs anymore, and it's
Speaker 1: all free on the internet, and that was like, it's
Speaker 1: kind of weird. But what can you do, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the wild West. You just, you know, keep making
Speaker 1: your music and hope that the powers that be will
Speaker 1: find it a channel for it. You know. Playing the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl good or bad experience. It was a great experience.
Speaker 1: It was. It was bad for me because I I
Speaker 1: had a mishap with my back. I was in so
Speaker 1: much pain. I pulled my lower back. I had to
Speaker 1: take like six ad bill to get through the show.
Speaker 1: But it was very stressful, but it was great. And
Speaker 1: what was great about for me too, is it was
Speaker 1: on my birthday, as it turned out, and my all
Speaker 1: my kids were there. So dad was playing at the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. You know, I'm up there with my ad like, well,
Speaker 1: I can get through here. But I was proud because
Speaker 1: my my family was there cheering for me. And it's
Speaker 1: you know, the NFL. I mean that's a big that's
Speaker 1: a big monster, and there was a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But it was exciting. I actually enjoyed it. A lot
Speaker 1: of preparation, a lot of work. What was the preparation, Well,
Speaker 1: we had to learn the songs and uh, figure out
Speaker 1: the staging and this and that, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: be at our best and just you know, the NFL,
Speaker 1: they're just they're just you know, slave drivers. You know,
Speaker 1: they had their rules we had to follow and this
Speaker 1: and that. I don't want to get into it, but
Speaker 1: it was a lot of work, but it paid off
Speaker 1: and it's over. You know, you do like weeks of
Speaker 1: work to get it to try to be this one
Speaker 1: moment you get ninety million people around the world, six
Speaker 1: minutes is over. Okay, Well there it was, but I
Speaker 1: think did as well. It raised our profile a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, so you have the final tour with Tom.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of stuff written in retrospect.
Speaker 1: He was in pain. He was doing it for everybody else.
Speaker 1: Did you have any foreshadowing or this was just another
Speaker 1: tour in your particular mind. He was not doing it
Speaker 1: for everybody else. He was doing it for himself. He
Speaker 1: told me, you know, straight to my face, Look, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got some issues, a little bit of pain. But
Speaker 1: you know, throughout his whole career he had this kind
Speaker 1: of pain or that kind of pain. And so I
Speaker 1: just thought, well, yeah, he said, just dealing with some stuff.
Speaker 1: You're getting older. And he said, he said, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do this tour if I have to sit in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair, because I want to do it, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, okay, if you're that gung ho,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to question You'll be there for you,
Speaker 1: you know, ste it. And so he wanted it, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing it for anybody else but himself. And
Speaker 1: did he have a foreshadowing? I don't think. So it
Speaker 1: was a mishap. I just to sit. We had talked
Speaker 1: about what we're gonna do next. We're gonna do with
Speaker 1: some more gigs, make another record, put out the film
Speaker 1: We're Live, and just keep on going like we always did. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there was no foreshadowing that this was going to
Speaker 1: be the last time we ever play. And the paint thing,
Speaker 1: I knew he was, you know, dealing with it, and
Speaker 1: he had to take some paint colors. But he'd always
Speaker 1: had stuff throughout all the years, you know, his voice
Speaker 1: would go out and he had to take a steroid
Speaker 1: shot for the gig or this, or his hip was
Speaker 1: bothering and his knee was bothering. So to me, it
Speaker 1: was just like, oh, well, it's just another aches and
Speaker 1: pains along the way, you know. That's the way that
Speaker 1: we all looked at it. How did you find out
Speaker 1: that he was rushed to the hospital. I got the
Speaker 1: phone call from his daughter like four in the morning,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was shocked, you know, and stunned, it's
Speaker 1: the best word I can think of. I rushed down there,
Speaker 1: but he was already kind of on life support at
Speaker 1: that point. But I had a moment to just sit
Speaker 1: and talk to him. I don't know if he heard
Speaker 1: me or not. I think he probably did, but he
Speaker 1: didn't respond. It was just horrible. He should still be
Speaker 1: here except for a mishap, um misjudgment of this this
Speaker 1: this medication or that medication that was a cloudy decision
Speaker 1: at some point that uh worked against him, or else
Speaker 1: he'd still be here. So this all goes down shockingly,
Speaker 1: And are you stunned and can't play guitar or you
Speaker 1: go back to your routine? How do you metabolize this
Speaker 1: terrible event? No, the music is always a place to
Speaker 1: go in good times were bad times that it's a
Speaker 1: safe place. I can pick up the guitar and I
Speaker 1: can ease my pain or I can celebrate my joy,
Speaker 1: you know. So I certainly never stopped playing guitar, and
Speaker 1: never even once a question that I wouldn't keep on
Speaker 1: making music. But you know, it's something like that, I'm
Speaker 1: still greeting. I'll be greeting the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, that's how big it was. But I
Speaker 1: can't just quit, you know, I've got to have my music.
Speaker 1: I gotta carry on. And I think probably what he
Speaker 1: would do it was the other way around. So no,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a couple of days of cloudiness,
Speaker 1: but then I just pick up the guitar and soothe
Speaker 1: my soul, you know, like I always do. So how
Speaker 1: did the Fleetwood Mac thing come together? Out of the blue? Uh?
Speaker 1: I was planning on just getting ready to record my
Speaker 1: album with the Dirty Knobs, and we were going to
Speaker 1: record it and you know, do what we're doing now.
Speaker 1: And I got a phone call. I think it was
Speaker 1: on my birthday again, and Mick called me and said, uh,
Speaker 1: that Lindsay's left the band and would you like to join,
Speaker 1: you know, And Uh, I said, give me twenty four
Speaker 1: hours to think about it, because it was a big decision.
Speaker 1: I thought they wanted to make a record and you know,
Speaker 1: but it turns out they had a bunch of tour requirements,
Speaker 1: which so I signed on for that. I thought it
Speaker 1: over and I have nothing but the greatest respect for Lindsay.
Speaker 1: And it was a little awkward for me to learn
Speaker 1: someone else's guitar parts, but those songs really do require
Speaker 1: those parts that need to be played. I did the
Speaker 1: best I could, and I think I honored them well.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm not here, and I did it
Speaker 1: my own way, but I did it as close to
Speaker 1: the songs I thought I could get it. And it
Speaker 1: was a great tour and uh, my wife went with me.
Speaker 1: We saw the world in a year and a half,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately the Knobs waited for me. They were curacious
Speaker 1: enough to let me have this moment and it was
Speaker 1: you know, the Fleetwood Mac treated me really good, you know,
Speaker 1: in always and it was a lot of fun. And uh,
Speaker 1: now it's over. You know, it's like, I guess that's
Speaker 1: something that happened in the past. So weird, how time
Speaker 1: does that. So when Mick gets ahold of you, was
Speaker 1: deal Finn already in No, No, they were, we were,
Speaker 1: they asked me, and then we were throwing We were
Speaker 1: having sessions to talk about who could we get, you know,
Speaker 1: and who would be a good singer. And uh, it
Speaker 1: turns out Mick new Neil and I was in Hawaii
Speaker 1: rehearsing with them, and so we called him in and
Speaker 1: he came up from New Zealand and he and I
Speaker 1: got along great and he was a great fill in.
Speaker 1: You know, he did a great job. It was a
Speaker 1: tough spot to stand there and sing those songs, harder
Speaker 1: than me for to have to play the guitar parts,
Speaker 1: but he did great and I love the guy. So
Speaker 1: what was the difference, if any, being on the stage
Speaker 1: with Fleetwood Mac as opposed to Petty, well, I wasn't
Speaker 1: playing my own songs. That was awkward for me to
Speaker 1: not play songs I wrote or that I'm involved with
Speaker 1: the records. It was new, uh to me to be
Speaker 1: up there and playing you know, their songs, although they
Speaker 1: did let me do uh oh, well, I got to
Speaker 1: sing that one, which is really fun. I got to
Speaker 1: sing in the arena for the first time. Not much
Speaker 1: singing on that song, but still I got to do it.
Speaker 1: And uh, aside from that, it was, you know, business
Speaker 1: as usual, you know, they they travel first class, was
Speaker 1: we had the private plane as the Heartbreakers did, and
Speaker 1: all the nice hotels and big gigs and you know,
Speaker 1: a great crew, and it was just kind of like
Speaker 1: walking off the stage under that stage, except I'm playing
Speaker 1: their songs instead of mine, you know, and the audience
Speaker 1: is similar or more passive, more enthusiastics. No, they're pretty similar.
Speaker 1: I mean, they love Stevie. Every time she would walk out,
Speaker 1: they would go crazy, you know. Uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: big crowd like that. It's just such a big mob
Speaker 1: of noise, you know it all. I never thought about
Speaker 1: it being different. It just seemed like they're they're digging it,
Speaker 1: they're Loud, same as usual. So how did you end
Speaker 1: up working with Stevie to begin with? On Bella Donna
Speaker 1: was at an irving connection. Yeah, yeah, well, Ivan had
Speaker 1: We had two song stop Dragging My Heart Around, which
Speaker 1: I had written with Tom that for some reason, Jimmy's
Speaker 1: heard it as uh a duet, which I think he
Speaker 1: was right. It's a great duet song, and he was
Speaker 1: doing Stevie's records, so he convinced Tom to let her
Speaker 1: have that song without asking me. I thought I would
Speaker 1: have agreed with it, you know, but uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: and so I get to know her through that and
Speaker 1: we you know, over the years we've written some songs
Speaker 1: and we have a great relationship. I love her and
Speaker 1: so the tour end. Do you ever hear from Mick
Speaker 1: or any of those people again? Yeah, I I occasionally
Speaker 1: we talk now and then I'm not lately in a while.
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to Neil in a long time. But
Speaker 1: occasionally I'll get a text, you know, here and there
Speaker 1: from Mix and hey, how you doing. I'm in Hawaii
Speaker 1: and you know, but I don't really know. I mean,
Speaker 1: we left the Fleetwood Mac project. We had a meeting
Speaker 1: and decided that we would take a quite a long
Speaker 1: break to rest because it was a long tour and
Speaker 1: you know, it was a little hard on Christine and John,
Speaker 1: who were having a little minor medical issues to do
Speaker 1: all that traveling. So the idea was, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't break up officially, but it was like, let's just
Speaker 1: take a hiatus and everybody rest, and if Stevie wanted
Speaker 1: to do her own tour and get for a couple
Speaker 1: of years to do that, and everybody take a couple
Speaker 1: of years. By then we're all a lot older even,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of how it's left. I kind
Speaker 1: of doubt that that that'll if it does stir up,
Speaker 1: that it will include me. But it might have been,
Speaker 1: might be a shift that's already sailed. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not up to me, Okay. So that brings us
Speaker 1: to the dirty knobs. So to what degree were you
Speaker 1: inspired to record make records because Tom had passed or
Speaker 1: would you have done that anywhere? Well? I think I
Speaker 1: would have done it anyway, because it's a it's a
Speaker 1: way for your musician to grow. You know, if you
Speaker 1: always play with the same five guys, it can get
Speaker 1: stale and no matter how good they are, and Uh,
Speaker 1: I started recording in the studio with these guys for fun,
Speaker 1: and then we liked it. So we went out and
Speaker 1: started playing a few bars us to try out new songs,
Speaker 1: and I found I really liked it. I like being
Speaker 1: in front of the band and Ian. I like doing
Speaker 1: my own songs. And I realized that Tom there's no
Speaker 1: way Tom was going to be able to write to
Speaker 1: all of them because I write so too much and
Speaker 1: he was overwhelmed with it, you know. So I figured,
Speaker 1: if unless I did these songs, you're just gonna end
Speaker 1: up in a on a shelf somewhere. So I might
Speaker 1: as well just do them and see what I can
Speaker 1: do with them. And so I started to enjoy doing that.
Speaker 1: And then when Tom passed, I figured, well, this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do, my own songs with my
Speaker 1: own band, and start over at the bottom and wip
Speaker 1: my way up as far as I can. So how
Speaker 1: did you collect the members of the Dirty Knobs? Well?
Speaker 1: I just met them. I didn't I didn't search for
Speaker 1: a band. They were just guys that knew friends of mine.
Speaker 1: It would come over to the studio and we'd record
Speaker 1: for fun, and it just sort of evolved into we
Speaker 1: like playing together and it became a band very organically.
Speaker 1: It was not an audition or a search. It just
Speaker 1: they just appeared. And do you have a studio with
Speaker 1: out to the house. I do. I'm in it right now.
Speaker 1: We're I record records here and I've done a lot
Speaker 1: of heartbreaker stuff here over the years. It's a great
Speaker 1: studio and I love it's my man cave. How extensive
Speaker 1: is it, well, it's It's just big enough for a
Speaker 1: four piece band. There's a control room with you know,
Speaker 1: state of the art gear. There's a drum room. There's
Speaker 1: a medium sized drum room, and then there's a lounge
Speaker 1: where I'm in now, which is a piano room for
Speaker 1: guitar amps. And the great thing about my studio is
Speaker 1: because I've learned over the years had to get a
Speaker 1: good sound. My sound is all up. It's tredy to go.
Speaker 1: I gotta do is push a button and the drums
Speaker 1: are on. Push your button, the bases on. I don't
Speaker 1: have to move mics around or try this room or
Speaker 1: that room, and so I don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: the sounds. I know that they sound good and I
Speaker 1: could just go in and start and work on the music,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it's really nice. Does anybody else
Speaker 1: work there other than you? Uh? Well, no, I suppostly
Speaker 1: just for me. I've done. I did a Marty Stewart
Speaker 1: record here. Occasionally I'll have someone over and I'll work
Speaker 1: with them, but mostly it's my own songs in my
Speaker 1: own band, and it's all pro tools. I do have
Speaker 1: pro tools as well as analog, but the analog has
Speaker 1: become so cumbersome that I mostly work on the pro tools. Now,
Speaker 1: the pro tools has advanced to the point. You know,
Speaker 1: when I convinced myself that I was okay with pro
Speaker 1: Tools is when Jeff Lynn signed off on it. Because
Speaker 1: when it first came out, it was a little dodgy
Speaker 1: sounding and you could put it. You can definitely hear analog.
Speaker 1: Put them side by side, and you can definitely hear it.
Speaker 1: Now they've got the converter is really good, and it's
Speaker 1: like Jeff was saying, you can blindfold me. I could
Speaker 1: probably tell, but it would be really, really hard, So
Speaker 1: I don't think he even bothers with the tape anymore.
Speaker 1: And tape is hard to get now, and it's just
Speaker 1: like I said, it's cumbersome. And the pro Tools is
Speaker 1: instant recall, and so yeah, I work on that. Occasionally
Speaker 1: we'll mix on the analog just to get some glue,
Speaker 1: but even that's kind of redundant nowadays. And are you
Speaker 1: computer savvy? You can run all this stuff pretty well yourself. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not computer savvy, but I know enough. I treat
Speaker 1: my pro Tools like a tape machine, you know, And
Speaker 1: I have my need console, and I know where all
Speaker 1: the inputs are, not got the sounds up, and I
Speaker 1: don't If the pro Tools breaks, I'm lost, you know.
Speaker 1: I know just enough to hit record and play and
Speaker 1: solo a track or move this over there, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But I try to look at like a tape recorder,
Speaker 1: you know. That's sorry. I just like I would if
Speaker 1: it was an analog machine. I kind of visualize it
Speaker 1: that way, and that's how I use it. But I
Speaker 1: don't get into the bells and whistles or details. I'm
Speaker 1: not that savvy. So how many times did the Dirty
Speaker 1: Knobs play out live before this latest push? Well, we
Speaker 1: used to play quite a lot. I mean on the
Speaker 1: breaks of the Heartbreakers, you know, we'd play, you know,
Speaker 1: for a couple of months. You might play four or
Speaker 1: five six gigs here and there, and then I do
Speaker 1: a tour with the band, I come back and then
Speaker 1: we throw a few gigs together, you know, quite a
Speaker 1: bit over. You know, we've been about twenty years or
Speaker 1: so really that we've known each other, so we're pretty
Speaker 1: we're pretty much a seasoned band. It isn't like a
Speaker 1: thrown together new thing. And how did Klaus Warman end
Speaker 1: up doing the cover of the first album. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: my wife's assistant is a German lady. Her name is
Speaker 1: Alex and she used to work for him over in
Speaker 1: Germany and she we were doing the cover and she said, well,
Speaker 1: you should check with Klaus. I said, as he still
Speaker 1: around and he still works. He said yeah, So on
Speaker 1: her recommendation we contacted him. I never spoke to him personally,
Speaker 1: but the office. I told him I wanted to train,
Speaker 1: you know, and with a with a cross bars and
Speaker 1: a guy on with a hat blowing off his head
Speaker 1: or whatever. And he did the whole thing himself. But
Speaker 1: I was tickled to have Klaus Warman's name on there,
Speaker 1: and he did a good job. And how did you
Speaker 1: end up working with George Droculius. Well, i'd worked with
Speaker 1: George through Rick Rubin on some of the Heartbreakers records,
Speaker 1: and he always just impressed me with his energy and
Speaker 1: it's nohow but and he such a great vibe and
Speaker 1: he was my first choice. I knew I needed a producer.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to produce it myself. I needed a
Speaker 1: perspective and George was a perfect guy to bounce things
Speaker 1: off of. So that was George's main role, to be
Speaker 1: a sounding board or what else did George had? Well,
Speaker 1: he did everything mostly he put everybody in a good
Speaker 1: mood and made everybody play to their best of their ability.
Speaker 1: But he was also helpful with arrangements. And he was
Speaker 1: really helpful with me because I had too many songs,
Speaker 1: and he helped me zero in and well, you know this,
Speaker 1: these these fifteen songs sound like you know, the band
Speaker 1: would be all on one record would be these you
Speaker 1: could use later or something. They're in a different vibe.
Speaker 1: So he helped me zero in on what would make
Speaker 1: a good band record, you know, where everything fit together
Speaker 1: as a package. And uh, he's really good with getting
Speaker 1: the tracks done quick. We didn't spend much time tracking.
Speaker 1: He puts everybody in a great mood and he's like
Speaker 1: a cheerleader. But he's really smart too. If something's off,
Speaker 1: he'll zero and go we gotta fix that, you know.
Speaker 1: But he's invaluable. I wouldn't want to make a record
Speaker 1: without him. So you make the first record and then covidiots.
Speaker 1: So how did that? How did that mess up your
Speaker 1: plans completely? Like everybody else in the world. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were all set to go, and then we had to
Speaker 1: just pull back and held the record back, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as we could. And everybody had to rethink
Speaker 1: their lives, you know, and we kind of I stayed
Speaker 1: off the road and I stayed home for the first year.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go outside at all. But I
Speaker 1: use that time to write and uh this and that,
Speaker 1: and you know, things are starting to open up a
Speaker 1: little bit. It was scary though, and plus at the beginning,
Speaker 1: everybody was dying. You know, It's like it's a death sentence.
Speaker 1: And once we got the vaccine and you could at
Speaker 1: least figure out if I get it, at least I
Speaker 1: can get over it. You know, I'm not gonna be
Speaker 1: in a corpse. But it was scary for everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: but we got through it. We just waited, you know, patiently,
Speaker 1: and put it out and we could. I have a
Speaker 1: great record company, BMG. They were very good with just
Speaker 1: waiting and being supportive and sticking with us through all that.
Speaker 1: And have you gotten COVID? I did. I got it.
Speaker 1: My wife and I got it about five months ago now,
Speaker 1: and uh, I had the vaccine. It was not bad
Speaker 1: for me at all. I mean, some people have had it,
Speaker 1: you know. I felt like I had a cold or
Speaker 1: maybe a mild flu. I've had flues that were worse.
Speaker 1: It lasted about a day and a half and then
Speaker 1: my nose a little clogged up, and then I got
Speaker 1: over it. You know, it was it was kind of
Speaker 1: great to get over it. It It was like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that I might getting I
Speaker 1: might get it again, but I've already had it, so
Speaker 1: it's not that fear. You know, you know how you
Speaker 1: got it? I don't know. I have no idea it
Speaker 1: could have been from try to think. I remember. I
Speaker 1: know we were hanging out with the grandkids who had
Speaker 1: been going to school, but they didn't get it at
Speaker 1: that time. They could have passed it on to us.
Speaker 1: But although we were wearing masks and being careful, I
Speaker 1: really don't know. It's just I think it was just
Speaker 1: in the air. A lot of people get it and
Speaker 1: they don't know where they got it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just swimming around out there, so watch out. And now
Speaker 1: it's monkey pops. Don't get the monkey pops. So you
Speaker 1: make the first record, COVID comes along. How do you
Speaker 1: decide to make a second record before you've even been
Speaker 1: out really to promote the first record? Because I had
Speaker 1: the songs and I love recording. You know, I've got
Speaker 1: enough songs for two more albums. I can't wait. I'm
Speaker 1: just December. I'm gonna record another album. You know, when
Speaker 1: your songs are there, you want to put them on
Speaker 1: tape and then as soon as it's a record. You know,
Speaker 1: if if the record company could find a window to
Speaker 1: stick you in there, there you go. But I'll make
Speaker 1: them whether they put them out or not. You know,
Speaker 1: I just love it. I love the process. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if one listens to your records, they are great rock
Speaker 1: records in a world where rock does not have that
Speaker 1: much presence. How do you feel about that? I kind
Speaker 1: of wear that as a badge of honor, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. All through my career, you know, there's
Speaker 1: been like you know, uh, you know, all the boy
Speaker 1: bands that come along or the hip hop and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and rock is dad, it's over. It's all
Speaker 1: about you know, rap or whatever, and then that would
Speaker 1: die out and rock is just always kind of still
Speaker 1: kind of bubbling under the surface. And I wear it
Speaker 1: as a badge of honor that we're a rock and
Speaker 1: roll bands and a boogie boogie rock and roll band
Speaker 1: with good songs, and that's what I grew up on,
Speaker 1: and I think at this age I can represent that
Speaker 1: music really truthfully. You know. I hear a lot of
Speaker 1: young bands trying to play rock and roll and it's
Speaker 1: just it's not They don't they don't understand the feel
Speaker 1: I do. You listen to the record to hear that immediately, Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's why we're offering, you know. If that's what
Speaker 1: you like, that's what we are. If you don't like it,
Speaker 1: then you can go listen to Harry Styles. I love
Speaker 1: Harry Styles, but it's got nothing to do with with
Speaker 1: my my music in my direction. But I'm honest to
Speaker 1: what I am, you know, and I know if I
Speaker 1: know from being on tour, the a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there still love that kind of music, and they
Speaker 1: love to hear it from I think I'm pretty close
Speaker 1: to the true source of say Chuck Berry or whatever,
Speaker 1: or Muddy Waters or whoever, or even the sixties bands.
Speaker 1: I can get inside that because I was there as
Speaker 1: part of my d n A and so I feel
Speaker 1: I can. I can share this with people. If that's
Speaker 1: what they want to hear, come to me. I'll give
Speaker 1: you the real thing, you know. And do you listen
Speaker 1: to new music or just try? I try, you know,
Speaker 1: but I always get I'm I don't know, man. You know.
Speaker 1: It's I grew up the Beach Boys, the Beatles and
Speaker 1: Stones and Zombies, the Kinks, animals, you know, Jeff Beck,
Speaker 1: Eric Clapton, Michael Bloomfield. I grew up around all that music,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I hear a new band. I
Speaker 1: might be on the on the in the car driving
Speaker 1: and hearing that's kind of catchy. I like that, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I'll get home and I'll tell me, oh,
Speaker 1: I heard this, this this cool song, but and she goes,
Speaker 1: how did it go? And I go, H, well, it
Speaker 1: had a good drum sound back in the day, Back
Speaker 1: in the day. If I'm driving home and I hear
Speaker 1: you really got me or satisfaction. By the time I
Speaker 1: get home, I can sing it to you, you know
Speaker 1: the song. I mean, it's just because I'm old and
Speaker 1: I'm an old geezer, but those songs to me are better.
Speaker 1: They're memorable you hear them one time. Nowadays it's all
Speaker 1: production and sounds and and grooves, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know just I can't grab onto it. I try.
Speaker 1: I keep trying to find a new band, but none
Speaker 1: of them. I always go back. I'd rather I'd rather
Speaker 1: hear the animals. You know, there are the yard person.
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that I like to, you know better,
Speaker 1: So I go back and listen to old records. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just doomed that way. Okay, And you know
Speaker 1: we have this whole COVID interruption. But as you've gotten older,
Speaker 1: do you find you stay home or do you still
Speaker 1: go out? I'm talking to not when you're working, when
Speaker 1: you're home, and right, No, we've opened up a little bit.
Speaker 1: And we went out to a restaurant the other day.
Speaker 1: You know, I wear my mask and took it off.
Speaker 1: I was eating and uh, I don't go to concerts
Speaker 1: or clubs but I don't. I don't think i'd go
Speaker 1: anyway unless there's somebody I really wanted to see, which
Speaker 1: there usually isn't. I don't, uh, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a homebody anyway. So in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: the COVID wasn't that hard for me, because I still
Speaker 1: I gotta stay home and work in my studio and
Speaker 1: play with my dogs. Okay, I'm fine with that. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't need the roar of the crowd to to
Speaker 1: feel good inside. So but I'm not afraid to go
Speaker 1: out to a store or to the restaurant or you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of it anymore like I used to be.
Speaker 1: But I'm cautious, you know, I want to be. I
Speaker 1: got I have gigs to do. I don't want to
Speaker 1: screw up my gigs, so i'd be careful. So what
Speaker 1: are the preparations and rules you use on the gigs
Speaker 1: so that people don't get infected? Well? I leave that
Speaker 1: A lot of that up to the to the clubs
Speaker 1: and the promoters. They have their own protocols for the audience.
Speaker 1: You know, at some places require a test, some places
Speaker 1: suggest a mask. Are our crew at this point of all, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty well had it and are over it. But we
Speaker 1: still wear masks and but we're not you know, hardcore.
Speaker 1: You don't come near me unless you show me your test.
Speaker 1: You know. We kind of it's kind of on a
Speaker 1: honor system around my band and according to the you know,
Speaker 1: the promoters rules. Like with Price Stapleton when we were
Speaker 1: upening for him, he had a protocol every Thursday, everybody
Speaker 1: gets a test, you know, which is fine. We did
Speaker 1: that and then he ended up getting it, so God
Speaker 1: bless him. He got over it. But it's awkward because
Speaker 1: nobody really knows. Are these this is really keeping me safe?
Speaker 1: This is mask really keeping me? Would I get it anyway?
Speaker 1: I'll take my chances and wear it just to be safe.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't really know, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's the way I look at it. Honor system and
Speaker 1: just common sense and uh, I keep in mind all
Speaker 1: the time. But on touring, like you know, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of gigs book and I've got these gigs
Speaker 1: coming up opening for the Who, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to screw that up, you know, So I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: real careful so that I'm healthy and my band is healthy.
Speaker 1: So that we don't have to cancel the gig. You know,
Speaker 1: how did you get the gig opening for The Who?
Speaker 1: And do you know those guys? I don't know them.
Speaker 1: It's it's my it's my luck, man, I don't know
Speaker 1: like Fleetwood Mac the Who stuff is pot Tom these songs,
Speaker 1: I feel sometimes I feel like I the most blessed
Speaker 1: guy on the universe. It dropped in our lap. We
Speaker 1: started this tour. We're playing little bars, and we're moving
Speaker 1: up to theaters, like we're moved up to the film
Speaker 1: where we could play there now headline and maybe the
Speaker 1: will turn here. So we're starting to get a little
Speaker 1: bit up above the CD bars into theaters. And then
Speaker 1: one day I just got the call like there's an
Speaker 1: opening slot here. Are you interested? I said, and I
Speaker 1: addressed sign me up, man. I want to stand on
Speaker 1: this side of the stage and watch Pete Townsend play.
Speaker 1: You know, absolutely, we'll play on before them, and it's
Speaker 1: we're the only other band, so we're second on the
Speaker 1: bill and they're being really nice to us. I don't
Speaker 1: know how we got that gig, just you know, a
Speaker 1: gift from God. I don't know, man, And how do
Speaker 1: you know Stapleton uh. He called me. I had uh
Speaker 1: uh scene. I had met him briefly once when the
Speaker 1: Heartbreakers are playing rigley Field and he was opening, and
Speaker 1: he walked by and said, hi, Mike. And so, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, now I'm gonna be playing rigley Field
Speaker 1: opening for him. That's fine. But he called me up
Speaker 1: on a break and said he was writing some songs.
Speaker 1: Would you like to try and write? And I don't
Speaker 1: usually do that because I'm right alone. And he came
Speaker 1: over and we spent a couple of days and we
Speaker 1: wrote some songs together and we became friends. And so
Speaker 1: he he was so cute. He goes like, well, and
Speaker 1: he knew I was putting out a record. I had
Speaker 1: got him just singing on one song, and he's a
Speaker 1: big fan of mine. Uh and uh, he says, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't mean any disrespect, but I've
Speaker 1: got some some gigs coming up, and if you want
Speaker 1: to be on the bill, I could put you on
Speaker 1: the tour opening. I said, sure, I'll take it. So
Speaker 1: you know, he was really kind to give me those slots.
Speaker 1: And you know, Stapleton is like the great White Hope
Speaker 1: in Nashville, which is certainly pretty white. Have you uh
Speaker 1: been invested or checked out the Nashville scene or not?
Speaker 1: And he takes on what's going on there. Well. I
Speaker 1: think he is the cream of the crop. Him and
Speaker 1: Memago Price, who I've also gotten to know. I love
Speaker 1: both of them. I think Chris is we got one
Speaker 1: of those Roy Orbison type boy is where it's just
Speaker 1: a gift. And I've you know, playing these gigs with him.
Speaker 1: I watch him. He just stands there. He doesn't run around,
Speaker 1: he doesn't wave his arms. He just opens up his
Speaker 1: mouth and people are enthralled. He's got a gift of
Speaker 1: a voice and a good soul. He comes from a
Speaker 1: very soulful, believable personality, and so does Margot I'm aware
Speaker 1: of through them. I where it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: the country stuff. I don't like modern country, rock and roll,
Speaker 1: poppy country. You know. Once again, if I want to
Speaker 1: hear country music, I'm gonna go listen to George Jones
Speaker 1: or Tammy Whine or Patsy Klein. You know, Margot Price,
Speaker 1: I would put her in there. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if any other new artists that that impressed me as
Speaker 1: much as Chris. I think he's heading shoulders above most
Speaker 1: of them. But I don't listen that much, you know.
Speaker 1: I have I have Serious Radio, I have Tom Petty Radio,
Speaker 1: and I have Deep Tracted and I have Outlaw Country.
Speaker 1: So I I checked those from time to time and
Speaker 1: if somebody looks interesting, I'll click on it. But I
Speaker 1: don't follow country music per se, but I do prefer
Speaker 1: the older stuff. Okay, what's it like, It's Todd Rundgan putted,
Speaker 1: going back to the bars. Well, it's it's wonderful. It
Speaker 1: is an ego check for me. Um. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: flying on commercial flights in the airports. I'm not on
Speaker 1: the private plane. You know, I'm driving in a van.
Speaker 1: I don't have a limo, I don't have all those
Speaker 1: the trappings. But I love the small rooms musically, I
Speaker 1: just and I love seeing the people and I drive
Speaker 1: up and it's it's my name, my band on there,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm really proud. And I'm really proud
Speaker 1: too that it's growing. You know. We're playing some smaller
Speaker 1: places this year, but we're already getting offers for some
Speaker 1: festivals coming up later. And like I said, the Filmore
Speaker 1: and the Wiltern and some theaters. So my, my goal
Speaker 1: is to get move up through the bars to the
Speaker 1: theaters and I could see who's going to happen in
Speaker 1: the meantime. Uh, I love it. You know, the music
Speaker 1: is so much better in a room of four hundred
Speaker 1: to eight hundred people. Everybody's in on it. I can
Speaker 1: see their faces and I'm can interact with the crowd.
Speaker 1: When you get into the big thing, it's like this
Speaker 1: big sea of of there's a crowd out there. It's
Speaker 1: just a big sea of you know, uh, collage of
Speaker 1: people when you're in the club there right there, and
Speaker 1: you can really, you know, tune in with them and
Speaker 1: they could feel the music, you can feel them back.
Speaker 1: So going back to the bars is really fun, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as I know I'm not gonna be stuck
Speaker 1: there the rest of my life because I am a
Speaker 1: little spoiled, you know, and I want the guys. I
Speaker 1: want the guys to to take to move up and
Speaker 1: get a taste of it. You know, it makes some money,
Speaker 1: which would be nice and make me happy to see
Speaker 1: them make some money. And to what degree are you
Speaker 1: finding that these audiences know them at two real or
Speaker 1: just coming because you're Mike Campbell A lot I see
Speaker 1: a lot of people singing along to uh, you know
Speaker 1: some of the tracks on the album that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think that they would know those words, but you know,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of people that know who I
Speaker 1: am from the Heartbreakers, and I do occasionally do a
Speaker 1: Heartbreaker song here and there, and especially when I had
Speaker 1: stand on the drums, we did some Heartbreakers songs here
Speaker 1: and there. It was really emotional and people loved it.
Speaker 1: But they love our music too, you know, they sing
Speaker 1: along and there there is it's I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: they they they're so excited, you know, and their their
Speaker 1: eyes are so full of joy, and I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have the best job in the world. Okay.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories is I'm in Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: def Leopard and Brian Adams run a baseball tour baseball
Speaker 1: stadium toward minor league parks, and they switch openers. In
Speaker 1: this particular day, Brian Adams is the opener, so he's
Speaker 1: playing when it's when there's still sunlight out and he's
Speaker 1: playing along. I'm on the side of the stage and
Speaker 1: he turns around to the rest of the band, holds
Speaker 1: up the set list, rips it in half. And then
Speaker 1: I see him literally win over the audience and the
Speaker 1: time that's left to what degree do you feel that
Speaker 1: need into what degree? I mean, when you're top any
Speaker 1: of the Heartbreakers, the audience is already convinced, right right right.
Speaker 1: I like the challenge. And uh, it's interesting you had
Speaker 1: mentioned that because on some of these gigs with Chris
Speaker 1: Stapleton and some of the the sheds where they have
Speaker 1: the lawn and the seats. Uh I I remember when
Speaker 1: the Heartbreaker used to play those. I used to feel
Speaker 1: so sorry for the opening ask because there'd be nobody
Speaker 1: there and I go, oh, I feel so so bad
Speaker 1: for them, you know. And I was ready for that
Speaker 1: when we started doing these opening shows. But you know,
Speaker 1: I believing or not, a lot of people showed up early,
Speaker 1: and I don't know who. I maybe as a country
Speaker 1: artistist artists bring people in earlier. I don't know where
Speaker 1: they came to see me. Some of them I don't know.
Speaker 1: But we were blessed with pretty good audiences. But I
Speaker 1: love the challenge of winning them over. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I call attention to the fact, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of those shows. I'll start with running down a Dream,
Speaker 1: I'll go I might camera with the Dirty nil as
Speaker 1: we said, I'm like this, here's an old song, and
Speaker 1: so I think I can see them kind of going, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think that's the guys in that band.
Speaker 1: I think that's the guy that does that song. You know,
Speaker 1: he's doing it now. And then we do some of
Speaker 1: our songs, and then uh, we have I have a
Speaker 1: version of refugee that I do this like a waltz
Speaker 1: that's a Irish waltz field for the words are real
Speaker 1: upfront and powerful, and I get and the audience sings along,
Speaker 1: you know, and I end a song go and I
Speaker 1: start saying, don't have to live like a refugee, and
Speaker 1: I walk away from the mic and they keep singing
Speaker 1: and I end with them singing the last line all
Speaker 1: by themselves and I say good night. And I love
Speaker 1: winning them over, you know. And it's a challenge, but
Speaker 1: I found I can do it. You know. I'm really
Speaker 1: kind of learning how to tune into them and pull
Speaker 1: them in with saying the right things at the right
Speaker 1: time and the right song at the right time. And confidence.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got my confidence now that I could
Speaker 1: walk out to a crowd that some of them may
Speaker 1: not know who I am and convince them to like me,
Speaker 1: you know, and to what degree to the set list change? Well,
Speaker 1: if it's a dirty knob some of the places we
Speaker 1: play our gigs, and I change it quite a bit,
Speaker 1: you know, on the Chris Staples and stuff, especially when
Speaker 1: Margaret Prices out. She would come out in the middle
Speaker 1: of our set and do the song state of mind,
Speaker 1: what she's saying on our record with us. So I've
Speaker 1: only got five songs, so I kind of keep it,
Speaker 1: and I changed one or two songs here and there,
Speaker 1: but I kind of keep it to what works because
Speaker 1: I'm the opening act, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: just go start going deep track. I'm trying to win
Speaker 1: these people over, you know, in five songs. So I
Speaker 1: give them a heartbreaker song and some of ours and
Speaker 1: then closed with a heartbreaker song. So I keep that
Speaker 1: pretty well set. But with my band, we always change
Speaker 1: the setup. We got a lot of songs and lots
Speaker 1: of covers, and you know, I have a you know,
Speaker 1: a handful of heart baker songs I can throw in
Speaker 1: now and then for fun, and I love doing those,
Speaker 1: most of them ones that I wrote, you know, and
Speaker 1: so um it's interesting I found that our dirty Knobs
Speaker 1: songs hold up really well in these gigs alongside the
Speaker 1: big songs, so that's encouraging. And uh yeah. And one
Speaker 1: of the criticisms of my head of the Heartbreakers is
Speaker 1: we get our show not very that much. But I
Speaker 1: so I'd like to change the set, you know. I
Speaker 1: like to surprise the band so they don't know what
Speaker 1: song is coming next. Or sometimes I'll just call an audible,
Speaker 1: I go forget that song on the list, We're gonna
Speaker 1: play this one, and they'll go like, but then you've
Speaker 1: got them, you know, you got them tuned in. You know,
Speaker 1: how how hard are you willing to work? How hard
Speaker 1: am I willing to work? Like? You know, the old
Speaker 1: days you start out, you played two It in fifty
Speaker 1: dates a year. I'm sure you don't want to play
Speaker 1: Twitter in fifty dates. No, I'm down. I'm working. I'm
Speaker 1: out there. I told you book a gig, I'll be there.
Speaker 1: You know. I want to I want these records to
Speaker 1: get hurt. I want people to know that we're here
Speaker 1: and I'm still young enough to do it, you know, barely,
Speaker 1: But I want to work, you know. I think we
Speaker 1: might go to Europe. Next year and I'm I'm I'm down.
Speaker 1: And my wife and I now travel together so that's easier,
Speaker 1: and she's into it, and we want to go out,
Speaker 1: and uh, I really enjoy this part of our life,
Speaker 1: you know, and I want to work hard, you know,
Speaker 1: I have I know this guy who has led Zeppelin's
Speaker 1: photographer back in the film Days, and he said, I've
Speaker 1: been around the world multiple times and I've seen nothing.
Speaker 1: Are you the type of guy who takes advantage or
Speaker 1: you're just going from the hotel room to the hall. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: it depends on how much time. If that I got
Speaker 1: a day off, we try to find something to do.
Speaker 1: The great thing about the Fleetwood Mac tour is there
Speaker 1: several days off and you might be in Belgium, or
Speaker 1: you might be in Sydney, or you might be in Dublin,
Speaker 1: and you got a day or two off, you know,
Speaker 1: and we would go out and do stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: you would go to museums or go, uh take a
Speaker 1: train ride and go shopping, or go out to different restaurants,
Speaker 1: or go out and see the you know, architecture. Um.
Speaker 1: I like to get out if there's time, and I
Speaker 1: had as long as I get enough rest and get
Speaker 1: out and and take it all in, you know. But
Speaker 1: I know what he means. A lot of heart packers tours.
Speaker 1: You know. We went through the city and I didn't
Speaker 1: even see anything, you know, I saw the hotel in
Speaker 1: the in the car in the state. But now I
Speaker 1: like to I like to take up the culture of
Speaker 1: wherever I am. We just played the Knobs played up
Speaker 1: in Napa Valley at this beautiful old theater called Uptown
Speaker 1: Theater as great old Pricenium Hall, and we were driving
Speaker 1: through the town. I was wishing we'd have had more
Speaker 1: days off because it was a beautiful little town, you know,
Speaker 1: really parks and lakes and cool buildings and shopping. But
Speaker 1: we didn't have time to take it all in. But generally, yeah,
Speaker 1: we wanna, we wanna, you know, experience everything. Okay, you've
Speaker 1: done a great description of the live act and enticing
Speaker 1: people to go. If for those people who are gonna
Speaker 1: start with the records, tell them how they should get started,
Speaker 1: well by them and listen to them. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know what you mean. I mean, there's too well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's two albums. We live in an era
Speaker 1: where people have streaming and there's you know, you can
Speaker 1: pick and choose the tracks. Certainly Spotify will tell you
Speaker 1: what's most played, and then they have the albums or
Speaker 1: they're one or two songs. People say start here. No,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that. I would just say just just
Speaker 1: dig in and and if you like it, listen to it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you don't like it, skipped to the
Speaker 1: next one. I don't know, that's up to them. But
Speaker 1: I think all the stuff, all all the songs and
Speaker 1: all the albums are indicative of the of the dirty knobs,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, they're all good in their own way,
Speaker 1: you know. And Ian Hunters on one of the tracks,
Speaker 1: how did that do? You can start with that one?
Speaker 1: It's a dirty job. That's a good one. Uh. That
Speaker 1: was that was another thing fell on my lap. I've
Speaker 1: never met the guy, but he was gracious enough to
Speaker 1: just sing. He sent me a couple of tracks that
Speaker 1: he was working on, which are great. By the way,
Speaker 1: up start at the very beginning. How did you make contact?
Speaker 1: He called the office and asked if I would be
Speaker 1: interested and overdubbing some guitar and some new songs, and
Speaker 1: of course I said yes. I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: Matt the Hoople and that he they sent the in
Speaker 1: the mail, came over these tracks and might put him
Speaker 1: up in my session, put my guitars on and sent
Speaker 1: him back to him and he loved it. Well, actually
Speaker 1: he sent one. He liked it so much he sent
Speaker 1: me another song. And then I was getting a little
Speaker 1: brave and said, well, would you consider maybe singing one
Speaker 1: of our songs? I didn't think he would, but he
Speaker 1: said sure. So I sent him over the song dirty Job,
Speaker 1: and he'd sing a verse and put some piano on it.
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to meet him and thank him
Speaker 1: in person. But yeah, that's a good place to start.
Speaker 1: If you like Matt the Hoople, go for that song.
Speaker 1: And when you're on stage, it's a friend perception that
Speaker 1: when you're in the audience and you know when you're great,
Speaker 1: and you know when you're off a little bit, even
Speaker 1: though the audience may still enjoy it. What are one
Speaker 1: or two gigs that you've played, whether it be the Knobs,
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac or Tom Petty Go that really stand out
Speaker 1: in your brain? Well, Um, Madison Square Garden with the
Speaker 1: Heartbreakers a couple of times there. I was very spiritual.
Speaker 1: Royal Albert Hall I've always loved playing there. It just
Speaker 1: has an ambiance to it, the Hollywood Bowl. You know,
Speaker 1: it's ironic about the Hollywood Bowls. That's the last show
Speaker 1: I played with Tom, and I remember leaving thinking I'll
Speaker 1: never be back here again. And I'm going back to
Speaker 1: open for the Who at the Hollywood Bolts, our last
Speaker 1: show together. So that's a great place to play. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those are the first ones that popped to my mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how about the opposite? A couple of gigs that
Speaker 1: you've been to that that I liked other bands you? Oh? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I saw it led Zeppelin back in the Atlanta Pop
Speaker 1: Festival and whenever that was when? Uh, that was impressive.
Speaker 1: I've seen the Beach Boys back in the day a
Speaker 1: few times and they always blew me away. Um. Neil Young,
Speaker 1: I've seen him a couple of times out here in
Speaker 1: l A from time to time. He's always great. Um,
Speaker 1: those are the first thing that popped in my mind. Well, Mike,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking the time. This
Speaker 1: has just been riveting. I could talk to you for days.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being so forthcoming. Thank you. I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: very grateful person and I have a right to be,
Speaker 1: you know, but thank you for your time. You asked
Speaker 1: the good questions and I hope I didn't go off
Speaker 1: on too many tangents, but I think it was good. No,
Speaker 1: you know, digression is a spice of life, and I
Speaker 1: feel lucky that I've been able to have this conversation
Speaker 1: with you. Until next time, This is Bob leff sett
Speaker 1: h