Speaker 1: Pushkin, I want to let you know that Rick has
Speaker 1: a new podcast called Tetragrammaton. After about four to five
Speaker 1: years of recording Broken Record, Rick decided he wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to more than just musicians, so on his new podcast,
Speaker 1: he'll be talking to actors, directors, wrestlers, business people, anyone
Speaker 1: that Rick finds interesting. So make sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Tetragrammatin wherever you listen to podcasts. Roger mcgwin is best
Speaker 1: known as the driving force behind The Birds, a group
Speaker 1: that fused folk in popular music in the sixties, but
Speaker 1: mcgwinn is also a preservationist of traditional folk music. For
Speaker 1: the past twenty seven years, he's been re recording traditional
Speaker 1: folk songs and sharing them on a section of his
Speaker 1: website called The Folk Den. On today's episode, Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: talks to mcgwin about the Folk Den and about his
Speaker 1: decades long career, which started in the early sixties in
Speaker 1: Greenwich Village cafes, where he played alongside the likes of
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and Richie Havens. Mcgwinn reminisces two about the
Speaker 1: vibrant music scene in la and talks about meeting his
Speaker 1: Bird's bandmate David Crosby for the first time Rip Cross.
Speaker 1: You'll hear mcgwinn plays guitar throughout the interview and also
Speaker 1: talk about how playing basketball with Bob Dylan helped inspired
Speaker 1: Dylan's story tour The Rolling Thunder Review. This is broken
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin and Roger mcgwin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Hey, Rick, how you doing cool Man? Tell
Speaker 2: me about the folk den Back.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, I was listening to a Smithsonian
Speaker 3: Folkways album of traditional music, and it struck me that
Speaker 3: the new folk singers were not doing traditional songs anymore. There,
Speaker 3: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, they're writing their own songs, and
Speaker 3: they're great songs. But what happens if you know Pete
Speaker 3: Siegert eyes or Odetta Dyes and they did. I looked
Speaker 3: at NPR's Top one hundred folk songs, and only eight
Speaker 3: of them were traditional. The rest of them were, you know,
Speaker 3: James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Eric Anderson, John Denver, I mean,
Speaker 3: everybody but the hundreds of years old, like the child ballads,
Speaker 3: the cowboys songs, the sea shanties, the prison songs, all
Speaker 3: these songs were just neglected. They're just not being done.
Speaker 3: I thought, man, what's going to happen? So I knew
Speaker 3: how to record stuff on a computer. I learned that
Speaker 3: back in the early nineties when Terry Munscher invited me
Speaker 3: out to play on a Beach Boys album and it
Speaker 3: was the first pro Tools session with It was a
Speaker 3: Mac Quadra with twelve gigabytes of optical RAM and we
Speaker 3: did a Beach Boys album. It turned out to be
Speaker 3: the worst Beach Boys album in the world because he
Speaker 3: was using MIDI for the bass and drums and stuff.
Speaker 3: But it was an eye opener for me that you
Speaker 3: could record on a computer. Before that, everybody was like,
Speaker 3: you know, four track, eight track, sixteen track, thirty two tracks,
Speaker 3: sixty four tracks, and digital sixty four track. And then
Speaker 3: pro Tools came out. This is like a beta copy
Speaker 3: of pro Tools back in ninety one, and I, this
Speaker 3: is great, man. I got to get this going. So
Speaker 3: I came home and I got myself some recording software
Speaker 3: and I started recording songs and putting them up on
Speaker 3: my website in a section called the Folk Den to
Speaker 3: preserve the songs, and I put a little story about
Speaker 3: the song. The lyrics, the chords, and a little picture
Speaker 3: like a coffee table book to kind of tie it
Speaker 3: all together. And I've been doing that since November of
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, and to date it's the twenty seventh
Speaker 3: anniversary of.
Speaker 2: That unbelievable, so beautiful. I came to find folk then
Speaker 2: probably when I think when the CD Treasures of the
Speaker 2: Folk Then came out is when I got turned onto it.
Speaker 2: And I got turned onto it because I was researching
Speaker 2: folk songs and it was so hard to find them.
Speaker 3: And exactly they were going away, They were being just
Speaker 3: swept under the rug.
Speaker 2: Was it clear in the early days, like when you
Speaker 2: first learned folk songs when you were a kid, was
Speaker 2: it obvious that this was old music from another time?
Speaker 2: Tell me about your relationship to folk music when you
Speaker 2: first got into folk music.
Speaker 3: Well, I first got into it. I was going to
Speaker 3: high school in Chicago, and my music teacher invited Bob
Speaker 3: Gibson to come over and play a forty five minute
Speaker 3: set on the five string banjo, and he did all
Speaker 3: this fancy picking and telling stories about the songs, and
Speaker 3: I just loved it. Before that, I'd been to Elvis
Speaker 3: and Geane Vincent Carl Perkins, Rockabilly, Tiny Cash, the Everly Brothers.
Speaker 3: But when Gibson did that, it made me run up
Speaker 3: to my music teacher and ask what kind of music
Speaker 3: is that? And she said it's folk music and I said, wow,
Speaker 3: you know I heard Burr Lives. He didn't sound like
Speaker 3: like that. So she pointed me over to a new
Speaker 3: school that had just opened up in nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 3: in Chicago called the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Speaker 3: I went over there and Frank Hamilton sat me down
Speaker 3: and said, play me something you know, and I played
Speaker 3: a rockabilly song and he went uh huh. And then
Speaker 3: he said, you know how to play the circle of
Speaker 3: fifths and he went like. I said, no, I didn't
Speaker 3: know how to do that. He said, well, you know
Speaker 3: how to play the blues. I said no, I didn't
Speaker 3: know how to do that either. I said, well what
Speaker 3: about fingerpicking? I said, okay, I got a lot to learn.
Speaker 3: So I started going to the Old Town School two
Speaker 3: days a week and I did that for three years
Speaker 3: until Frank finally Frank Hamilton finally said, I really can't
Speaker 3: teach you anything more in this format. You know, you
Speaker 3: could have some private lessons for twelve dollars an hour. Well,
Speaker 3: I didn't have the twelve dollars an hour, so that
Speaker 3: was it. I kind of quit going to the Old
Speaker 3: Town School. But shortly after that, I went down to
Speaker 3: the Gate of Horn after a coffeehouse gig, and I
Speaker 3: had my banjo and guitar and hardshell cases, and I
Speaker 3: was real proud of them because I looked like a
Speaker 3: professional musician. And I walked to the Lime Lighters and
Speaker 3: Theodore Riquel were sitting around the bar. So I walked
Speaker 3: into the bar and this jam session was going on,
Speaker 3: and Alex Hasselev from the Limelighter said, what you got there, kid?
Speaker 3: I said, I got a banjo and a guitar, and
Speaker 3: he said, great, break out the banjo. We got too
Speaker 3: many guitars going. So I did, and I played with
Speaker 3: them till five o'clock in the morning, and that's when
Speaker 3: that's when they hired me. They hired me to be
Speaker 3: a backup musician for them. But I said, well, I
Speaker 3: can't start right now because I'm still going to high school.
Speaker 3: And so they sent me a letter and my parents
Speaker 3: had to sign it because I was under eighteen, and
Speaker 3: they sent me a plane ticket in June and flew
Speaker 3: me out to la and I recorded with them at
Speaker 3: the Ashgrove a record called Tonight in Person, and that
Speaker 3: was the beginning of my professional musical career.
Speaker 2: How old were you at that time?
Speaker 3: I was seventeen when I went out there. I turned
Speaker 3: eighteen at the Ashgrove.
Speaker 2: Amazing. But you started as a rock fan and then
Speaker 2: you fell in love with folk? Is that how it happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I got into Elvis when I was fourteen. I
Speaker 3: had a transistor radio, which was a new thing at
Speaker 3: the time, and it meant you could listen to what
Speaker 3: you wanted to listen to on the radio instead of
Speaker 3: a big wooden box in the living room. And I
Speaker 3: used to ride my bike around Chicago and listen to WJJAD,
Speaker 3: which was a rock station, and I heard like a.
Speaker 4: Well, it's my beloved new place to twelve.
Speaker 3: I went, Wow, that's really cool. And I had no
Speaker 3: idea that he was combining country music and blues and
Speaker 3: you know, he was doing a synthesis of different styles
Speaker 3: because he'd grown up with that all around him.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's what makes all great new forms
Speaker 2: of music are synthesis of other forms of music that
Speaker 2: come together to create something new.
Speaker 3: I do, I really do. Yeah, And that's what happened
Speaker 3: when we combined the Beatles and Bob Dylan and people went, wow,
Speaker 3: that's that's different. I mean, they say, okay, well, Eric
Speaker 3: Eric Burdon had done The House of New Orleans, which
Speaker 3: was a blues a folk song, and he did that
Speaker 3: before mister Tambrieman. But somehow mister tam Brienman was a
Speaker 3: little different. It was more of a legato kind of thing,
Speaker 3: a flowing melody, and the lyrics were out of this world.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, take me for a trip on
Speaker 3: your magic swirling schip. All my senses have been stripped.
Speaker 3: My hands can't field the grip. I tosed two number
Speaker 3: a step wait only from my boot heels to be wandering.
Speaker 3: I went, wow, this is so cool and I fell
Speaker 3: in love with Dylan's writing at that point.
Speaker 2: Was that the first Bob Dylan song you ever heard? No.
Speaker 3: I was in the village hanging out in the early
Speaker 3: sixties when Bob got there. I was hanging out at
Speaker 3: Gertie Folks City and I saw Bob play there and
Speaker 3: he was mostly doing Woody Guthrie stuff at that point.
Speaker 3: He had one time though. I was over at the
Speaker 3: White Horse Tavern and Theodore Bikel came running over. He'd
Speaker 3: been in I guess the Gaslight cafe and he said,
Speaker 3: I just heard this marvelous song. It was blowing in
Speaker 3: the wind and he played it you, so yeah, I'd
Speaker 3: heard Dylan's stuff before the Birds.
Speaker 2: Was it obvious when you decided to do a cover
Speaker 2: song in the Birds of a Dylan song? Was it
Speaker 2: obvious that Tambourine Man would be the first one? How
Speaker 2: did it happen that you picked that song if you
Speaker 2: knew the others?
Speaker 3: We didn't really pick it. Jim Dixon was our manager
Speaker 3: and he was a producer engineer at World Pacific Records
Speaker 3: in LA and he had an advanced copy of Dylan's
Speaker 3: Mister Tambrie Men, which was something like a.
Speaker 4: Listed ham.
Speaker 3: And he thought it was a great song. I guess
Speaker 3: lyrically the tune, and he was kind of shopping it
Speaker 3: around different people. I think some of the guys who
Speaker 3: were blue dress guys back in La heard it first,
Speaker 3: and he played it for us. It was five minutes
Speaker 3: four and a half minute demo with Bob and Ramblin,
Speaker 3: Jack Elliott and Ramblin was just kind of out there
Speaker 3: and singing out a tune. So that's why he didn't
Speaker 3: release it, because Bob never liked to go back and
Speaker 3: fix stuff, you know, it's like very like to get
Speaker 3: the impromptu thing, whatever happened when you recorded it. So
Speaker 3: we had this demo and they played it for us
Speaker 3: and Crosby said, I don't like it, man, that folky
Speaker 3: two four time. It's never going to play on the radio.
Speaker 3: And he was right because radio wouldn't play anything over
Speaker 3: like two and a half minutes, and they're playing rock
Speaker 3: and roll four to four beat instead of two four.
Speaker 3: So I rearranged it. I'd been an arranger I worked
Speaker 3: with I was a studio guy in New York and
Speaker 3: I worked with Chudy Collins and some other people. So
Speaker 3: I rearranged it with the and it changed the whole
Speaker 3: thing a million percent.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the it's the signature musical sound of
Speaker 2: the song, and it created a whole new genre. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: You talked about so many interesting things, and I want
Speaker 2: to hear about all of them. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: the village folk scene when you were there. What was
Speaker 2: that world like? First? How long were we therefore? Who
Speaker 2: were the other artists around. Tell me everything about it, okay.
Speaker 3: Well, after the Limelighter's gig, I got a Sideman gig
Speaker 3: with the Chad Mitchell trio and I actually moved to
Speaker 3: New York and lived on I had an apartment with
Speaker 3: Mike Settle on Fourteenth Street. This is early sixties, I
Speaker 3: guess sixties sixty one, sixty two, sixty three round there,
Speaker 3: and the village was very vibrant with folk music. At
Speaker 3: the Gaslight Cafe, Dave van Rock was there and other
Speaker 3: artists and Bob would be around played Gerty's Folks City.
Speaker 3: I used to watch all the acts at Cisco Houston
Speaker 3: and all the guys that played Folk City, and I'd
Speaker 3: go to like the other coffee houses, the Cafe one.
Speaker 3: But I got a gig at the Cafe Playhouse. It
Speaker 3: was on McDougall Street and it was one of the
Speaker 3: pass ahead around kind of place, and I remember Richie
Speaker 3: Havens was there at the time. John Sebastian and Peter
Speaker 3: Tork was playing banjo at that point, and I remember
Speaker 3: Sebastian saying, you don't want to follow Richie Havens because
Speaker 3: if you passed, they had after Richie, there's no money left,
Speaker 3: that's all gone. So there was a vibrant folk scene.
Speaker 3: I remember Freddie Neil there hanging out and all kinds
Speaker 3: of folk singers.
Speaker 2: Around, and the majority of them were playing traditional folk songs.
Speaker 3: Yes, they're playing acoustic traditional songs. And then the Beatles
Speaker 3: came out while I was still living in New York
Speaker 3: and I heard the Beatles and I went, wow, they
Speaker 3: were using folk music chord changes. I thought, wow, the
Speaker 3: million folk songs had that, and it gave me the
Speaker 3: idea of combining folk music and rock and roll. And
Speaker 3: I started doing some Beatles songs at the Cafe Playhouse
Speaker 3: and people going, what's he doing? Man? It's like you know,
Speaker 3: but one clue I think. I was on the Bleaker
Speaker 3: Street and there were a couple of promoters that I'd
Speaker 3: seen around and they pointed to me and said, what
Speaker 3: we need is four of him, and I went, oh,
Speaker 3: I think I'm onto something amazing.
Speaker 2: And then when did you decide to put the band
Speaker 2: together or did you decide or did it just happen?
Speaker 3: It happened. So I was playing these Beatleaf kind of
Speaker 3: songs at the Cafe Playhouse and people weren't going for it.
Speaker 3: But the promoter liked it. He put a sign outside
Speaker 3: that said Beatle impersonation, and the tourist buses were coming around,
Speaker 3: and I thought, this is embarrassing. I want to get
Speaker 3: out of New York. So I flew out to la
Speaker 3: and I got a gig at the Troubadour opening up
Speaker 3: for Hoyd Accident, and I was doing the same kind
Speaker 3: of material and nobody liked it there either, except for
Speaker 3: Jean Clark. Jean Clark came backstage and said, hey, I
Speaker 3: get what you're doing. I like the Beatles, I like
Speaker 3: folk music. Let's write some songs and see what happens.
Speaker 3: So we started writing songs every day in the front
Speaker 3: room of the Tributur, which was open all day and
Speaker 3: you could go there for free. And then Crosby came in.
Speaker 3: Now I had met David Crosby years earlier when I
Speaker 3: was with the Lime Lighters, and we played the Ashgrove.
Speaker 3: The night before the Lime Letter's engagement. At the Ashgrove,
Speaker 3: there was a play going on called Endgame by Samuel Beckett.
Speaker 3: There was a one act play with four characters and
Speaker 3: two of them were in garbage cans and they pop
Speaker 3: up and save their lions and pop back back down again,
Speaker 3: and this is years before Sesame Street got the end.
Speaker 3: I stuck around to the end of the play and
Speaker 3: I met the guy who had been in the garbage can,
Speaker 3: and it was a young actor named David Crosby, so
Speaker 3: I met him. I think he was eighteen. I was
Speaker 3: seventeen by there. Maybe I was eighteen, but he was
Speaker 3: about a year older than me. And after the gig
Speaker 3: with the Lime Lighters, I wanted to go up to
Speaker 3: San Francisco, so David took me up to Santa Barbara,
Speaker 3: which was his boyhood home, and I stayed there overnight
Speaker 3: and his mother me and his lamb and avocado sandwiches
Speaker 3: and they were delicious. And then I went up to
Speaker 3: San Francisco and that's where I got a call from
Speaker 3: the Chad Mitchell Trio to fly to New York and
Speaker 3: work with them. So that's when I was in the village.
Speaker 3: I was living in New York around that time, this
Speaker 3: is nineteen sixty maybe the end of nineteen sixty, sixty
Speaker 3: one sixty two, and then I traveled extensively with the
Speaker 3: Chad Mitchell Trio. Didn't really have a home base. I
Speaker 3: had this apartment with Mike settle, but I didn't really
Speaker 3: spend any time.
Speaker 2: There was John Denver yet in the Chad Mitchell trio
Speaker 2: when you were part of it, or he was after.
Speaker 3: No, John Denver was a replacement for Chad Mitchell, who
Speaker 3: either left the trio to become a solo artist or
Speaker 3: I know he got busted for a large amount of
Speaker 3: marijuana over the Mexican border and I think he did
Speaker 3: some time for it. So the Mitchell Trio became the
Speaker 3: Mitchell Trio without Chad, and that's when they got John
Speaker 3: Denver to fill in for Chad.
Speaker 2: How did you connect with Bobby Darren?
Speaker 3: He was in the audience at the Crescendo Club when
Speaker 3: we were opening up the Chad Mitchell Trio was opening
Speaker 3: up for Lenny Bruce and Bobby came backstage after the
Speaker 3: Chad Mitchell set and said, Hey, I liked what you
Speaker 3: were doing up there. I'm thinking about putting a folk
Speaker 3: segment in my act and i'd like to hire you.
Speaker 3: I said, well, I've already got a job with a
Speaker 3: Chad Mitchell trio. And he said, yeah, what are they
Speaker 3: paying you? I told him, and he said I'll double it.
Speaker 3: I said, okay. I was getting ready to move on.
Speaker 3: I'd been hanging out with some people from the New
Speaker 3: Christie Minstrels and I thought about jumping ship with them.
Speaker 3: Bobby said, no, man, if you do that, you just
Speaker 3: get buried in a group that size.
Speaker 2: Did he ever talk to you about why he wanted
Speaker 2: to go from, let's say, a Sinatra esque singer to
Speaker 2: doing folk music.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he just appreciated it. I think he
Speaker 3: liked it. He was quite good at it. We didn't
Speaker 3: do just like Kingston Trio stuff. We did real prison songs.
Speaker 3: Makes a long time man feel bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that song?
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so he'd come out and do splish splash
Speaker 3: and his rock and roll hits for about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: He'd bring me on and I'd stand next to him
Speaker 3: and sing a harmony and play some folk songs with
Speaker 3: a twelve string, and then I was off for the
Speaker 3: rest of the night, and he'd go out and do
Speaker 3: his Sinatra stuff, Mac the Knife and all that. And
Speaker 3: this is fun because I used to on the strip
Speaker 3: in Vegas. I used to go up the strip and
Speaker 3: check out the other shows, and I remember I used
Speaker 3: to like Don Rickles, So I walked on the Don
Speaker 3: Rickles show one time, and he saw me coming in.
Speaker 3: He said, hey, there's this kid here. He plays for
Speaker 3: Bobby Darren. He walks around Vegas going I'm a star,
Speaker 3: I'm a star. I said, Wow, Don Rickles knew who
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. I'm just thinking about the world that Bobby
Speaker 2: Darren was in, and just based on what you already said,
Speaker 2: he went from splitsh splash, which is how we knew
Speaker 2: of him, to the more Frank Sinatra style, which it
Speaker 2: was already a style shift. So I guess for him
Speaker 2: doing folk music, he was already a chameleon stylistically he was.
Speaker 3: He was a very talented guy. He could do a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. He could tap dan and play the
Speaker 3: vibes and piano and guitar and do impressions. And it
Speaker 3: was kind of the old school of talent, where you know,
Speaker 3: suit press shoes shined in tune on time. It was
Speaker 3: like a discipline that rock and roll just threw out
Speaker 3: the window when I got into rock and roll bands.
Speaker 3: But working for Bobby was good experience. And I used
Speaker 3: to follow Bobby around and ask him stuff about how
Speaker 3: to make it in the business, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: you got to get up in front of audiences as
Speaker 3: much as you can, because it doesn't matter how good
Speaker 3: you are in your room. You got to test it
Speaker 3: under fire. And that was good advice. And then I
Speaker 3: mentioned that I wanted to do a movie. He said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm having a hard enough time getting myself in the
Speaker 3: movies around and see what I can do. So about
Speaker 3: a week later he came up with the script and
Speaker 3: he said, this is from Jackie Cooper. I said, okay.
Speaker 3: So I opened it up and it was about a
Speaker 3: banjo player. Said, oh, I'm a banjo player. I could
Speaker 3: do that. I turned to another patient. It was about
Speaker 3: a banjo player in petticoat junction. I said, oh, man,
Speaker 3: I don't think I could do this. Man, he said, well,
Speaker 3: you don't want to turn down Jackie Cooper because you'll
Speaker 3: never work in Hollywood. And you know what, I never have.
Speaker 2: It all worked out.
Speaker 3: It worked out great.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and then come
Speaker 1: back with more from Rick Rubin and Roger mcgwen. We're
Speaker 1: back with more from Rick Rubin and Roger mcgwen.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that you're in the village either playing
Speaker 2: folk songs or beatles songs. Everyone there playing cover songs.
Speaker 2: What was the impetus to start writing songs if you're
Speaker 2: coming out of a scene that's bas stun historic music.
Speaker 2: When did it become obvious we have to write our
Speaker 2: own songs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the singer songwriter thing, well, well before that, I
Speaker 3: had a job with Bobby Darn and I worked at
Speaker 3: the Brill Building as a songwriter. So you know, that
Speaker 3: was the impetus for me to write songs. And I
Speaker 3: think what happened was the folks thing kind of just
Speaker 3: started to fade out. It was like the end of
Speaker 3: it by sixty four, you know, starting to fade out,
Speaker 3: and people started writing more. So I don't know what
Speaker 3: made Joni Mitchell Bay Clouds or you know, I have
Speaker 3: no idea. Dylan was very inventive. At first he was
Speaker 3: doing kind of wood he got through imitation, and then
Speaker 3: he developed his own style. I remember I was friends
Speaker 3: with John and Michelle Phillips and I showed them some
Speaker 3: stuff I was doing it, you know, the Beatles' influence,
Speaker 3: and they said, oh, that's just bubblegum, that's kid stuff,
Speaker 3: and I said, well it's got something to it.
Speaker 2: Cool. Tell me about Jim Dixon. How did you come
Speaker 2: in contact with him. What was he like?
Speaker 3: Okay, I first met Jim back in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 3: and he was hanging around the Troubadour and Ashgrove and all.
Speaker 3: He was going around kind of scouting talent because he
Speaker 3: was a producer and he knew David Crosby. He had
Speaker 3: already recorded David and he was looking around for different ideas.
Speaker 3: And I remember when Gene Clark and I started writing
Speaker 3: songs at the Troubadour, David Crosby came in and started
Speaker 3: singing harmony with us, and he said, I want to
Speaker 3: be in your band. And I said, well, we don't
Speaker 3: really have a band here, David, we're just kind of
Speaker 3: writing some songs. He said, oh, come on, man, if
Speaker 3: I can be in your band, I know this guy's
Speaker 3: got a recordings today we could use for free. I said,
Speaker 3: you're in. That's how we met Jim Dixon cool, and
Speaker 3: he took us under his wing. He was still working
Speaker 3: at World Pacific. He'd recorded Lord Buckley there and he
Speaker 3: knew some jazz guys and he let us work out
Speaker 3: on the machines after all the sessions were over, and
Speaker 3: that's where we kind of honed our skill as a
Speaker 3: singing playing band in n I guess sixty four or
Speaker 3: sixty four by then. So we started working out at
Speaker 3: the studio and became a parent that we needed more
Speaker 3: musicians and more instruments. So we went to see the
Speaker 3: Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night and took notes on
Speaker 3: Ringo had Ludwig drums, and Harrison had a gretch guitar.
Speaker 3: John Lennon had a Rickenbacker, Paul McCartney at a Hoffner bass,
Speaker 3: a violin style bass, and then George Harrison came back
Speaker 3: out with another Rickenbacker. It looked like a six string
Speaker 3: from the front, but when he ch oed it sideway
Speaker 3: so you could see six other tuning pegs sticking out
Speaker 3: the back, and I went, oh, man, that's an electric
Speaker 3: twelve string. I got to get one of those, because
Speaker 3: I was already a twelve string player on acoustic twelve
Speaker 3: and we traded in. So I traded in a five
Speaker 3: string banjo and a Gibson acoustic twelve that Bobby Darren
Speaker 3: had given me, and got the Rickenbacker, and that became
Speaker 3: my main instrument for the rest of the Birds.
Speaker 2: Was the electric twelve string and new instrument at the time.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was. It was a brand new invention. George
Speaker 3: had the very second one ever made. First one went
Speaker 3: to a woman called Susie who played in Las Vegas
Speaker 3: and some sort of girl band, and George had the
Speaker 3: second one. Well, when Rickenbacker learned the Beatles were playing
Speaker 3: one of their instruments, FC. Hall, John Hall's father, flew
Speaker 3: to New York, had a meeting with the Beatles and
Speaker 3: gave George Harrison. Well, it was actually intended for John Lennon,
Speaker 3: but John was out and George had the flu and
Speaker 3: he was hanging around the hotel, so they gave him
Speaker 3: the twelve string and it became his kind of toy.
Speaker 3: He played it really well, and he did this cool
Speaker 3: thing that I learned from him. He did this thing
Speaker 3: on see the Achard strings. He used to play leads
Speaker 3: up and down the Jeeves string pair like had a
Speaker 3: lot of punch, much more than if you just want
Speaker 3: the you know. So I learned that trick from him.
Speaker 2: Did you incorporate that into any songwriting?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well it was in quite a few songs.
Speaker 3: The way I played lead on say Turn, Turn Turn
Speaker 3: and so on. I got out the riffs from other
Speaker 3: musicians like the Seekers and the searchers. You know, I
Speaker 3: stole whatever I could, but the Ricken Rocker had this
Speaker 3: really great sound. And then Ray Gerhard was the studio
Speaker 3: engineer at Columbia Records in la and he put I
Speaker 3: think it was two now I'm not sure the designation
Speaker 3: la uas it was a tube compressor, and he put
Speaker 3: the Rickenbacker into one and then out of the back
Speaker 3: of the one into another. So I had double compression
Speaker 3: on it, and it clamped it down and made it
Speaker 3: sustain more like a wind instrument because the original the
Speaker 3: Rickenbacker would fall off rather quickly. It was kind of
Speaker 3: a thuddy sounding instrument. So that's really what made the
Speaker 3: twelve stringth sounds so distinctive on mister Tambriene Man and
Speaker 3: Turn Turn, Turn eight miles high.
Speaker 2: So do you think without the compression, was it more
Speaker 2: like a harpsichord? Would you say?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: It sounded okay, but it didn't sustain as well. It
Speaker 3: wasn't as good for lead work. It was okay for recording,
Speaker 3: for strumming and so on, but it wasn't really a
Speaker 3: good lead instrument at that point.
Speaker 2: How did you find the other members to make the birds?
Speaker 2: The Birds?
Speaker 3: Geene Clark and I started writing songs. David Crosby came
Speaker 3: along and turned his son to Jim Dixon, and we
Speaker 3: got a free studio to work out you and Dixon
Speaker 3: recommended we get a drummer and a bass player, and
Speaker 3: we saw Michael Clark walk in front of the tributary.
Speaker 3: It looked like two of the Rolling Stones, and we
Speaker 3: got him mostly on looks.
Speaker 2: This is like nineteen sixty five, nineteen sixty six, sixty four,
Speaker 2: sixty four, Wow, incredible.
Speaker 3: Sixty four into sixty five. We recorded Mister Tamburin Man
Speaker 3: in January of sixty five, and Columbia didn't release it
Speaker 3: until I think June or May or sometime. They sat
Speaker 3: on it for a long time. I like to tell
Speaker 3: a story, but Columbia was very conservative. They had Steve
Speaker 3: Lawrence and ediegur May and Doris Stay. They didn't have
Speaker 3: any rock and roll, and their attitude toward rock and
Speaker 3: roll was they thought it might be distasteful, you know,
Speaker 3: like the Mob not wanting to sell heroin. But there
Speaker 3: was a lot of money in it.
Speaker 2: Was Mister tambrien Man the first rock record that came
Speaker 2: out on Columbia. I think it might have been it
Speaker 2: might have been.
Speaker 3: Certainly was something they weren't really into it yet, you know,
Speaker 3: they were kind of lagging behind the other labels RCA
Speaker 3: and Capital.
Speaker 2: But in some ways, wasn't the world lagging behind? Like
Speaker 2: was it yet the popular form of music or was
Speaker 2: it still sort of underground or well?
Speaker 3: No, no, rock and roll was a craze and people
Speaker 3: kept hoping it would go away quickly because it was
Speaker 3: creating juvenile delinquents.
Speaker 2: That was the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a story and so but RCIA had
Speaker 3: Albus back in what was fifty six, so it had
Speaker 3: been around a while. And then we had Chuck Berry,
Speaker 3: and we had Geene Vincent, Carl Perkins and Everly Brothers
Speaker 3: and Johnny Cash. There was quite a bit of rock
Speaker 3: and roll out there.
Speaker 2: All of those artists, though, have more of a country
Speaker 2: flavor in their rock. It's all coming from the South
Speaker 2: and it's more like an extension of the Sun record sound,
Speaker 2: which yeah, it was rockabilly, yeah, more rockabilly than rock
Speaker 2: and roll. And it seemed like, I guess Little Richard
Speaker 2: might have been more rock and roll, and Chuck Berry
Speaker 2: was rock and roll.
Speaker 3: Well. Billy Hally and the comments are credited with starting
Speaker 3: the craze, and they were kind of like a holiday
Speaker 3: in band. You know, they weren't really rocking or rolling.
Speaker 3: Geane Vince that really rocked, so did Elvis and Carl Perkins.
Speaker 2: The places you'd be playing in, those like Cero's in
Speaker 2: those days, would hold fifty people, one hundred, two hundred people.
Speaker 2: How many people would you say, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not sure of the capacity of Cerro's. It might have
Speaker 3: been one hundred, might have been one fifty. It was
Speaker 3: all these like sort of plush booths with tables. It
Speaker 3: was almost like a casino.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, like Las Vegas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Vegas. Yeah, there's something like that. It was
Speaker 3: old hat had been popular in the forties with all
Speaker 3: the movie stars, and then it lost its appeal. But
Speaker 3: when the birds got there, we started attracting Jack Nicholson
Speaker 3: and Peter Fonda and Marlon Brando, and then we had
Speaker 3: this group of dancers, Vito and his gang, and they
Speaker 3: were wild. They were just you know, they and they
Speaker 3: were just a scene by themselves, and so the whole
Speaker 3: thing really changed Hollywood a little bit.
Speaker 2: How did you meet Vito Pelicis? Yes, yeah, how did
Speaker 2: you meet him?
Speaker 3: I don't remember, I remember going to a studio and
Speaker 3: take an acid. That's all I remember. I don't know
Speaker 3: how we got hooked up with him, but they became
Speaker 3: our dancing troupe, and they even went with us on
Speaker 3: the road on our first tour, and they took him
Speaker 3: on a bus tour to Indiana and you know, Michigan
Speaker 3: and places where people were freaking out. They've never seen anything,
Speaker 3: never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: No, did they dance on the stage or in the audience?
Speaker 3: In the audience cool? In front of the.
Speaker 2: Stage, amazing, But did they face the band or did
Speaker 2: they face the audience? Like, did it feel like they
Speaker 2: were part of the show.
Speaker 3: They were totally No, they weren't facing anybody. They were
Speaker 3: totally absorbed in what they were doing. There just you know,
Speaker 3: they're just doing it.
Speaker 2: So it was like a traveling dance party that happened
Speaker 2: between you and the audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's wow.
Speaker 2: It's some wild to imagine, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was wold. The audience like teenagers, they're pretty square,
Speaker 3: you know, they're like preppy looking, most of them. And
Speaker 3: there may be thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds and they're
Speaker 3: just looking on in amazement at this whole spectacle. We
Speaker 3: did get screams. We got screaming fans at one point.
Speaker 2: How long did it take for the audience to go
Speaker 2: from square fans to starting looking like more like people
Speaker 2: who could have been in bands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I remember I used to wear those little glasses.
Speaker 3: I remember looking out in the audience and there'd be
Speaker 3: people with those little glasses on. So I was starting
Speaker 3: to catch on. Maybe not more than a few months.
Speaker 2: How's your relationship to music changed from the early days
Speaker 2: to now.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a labor of love. I do shows. I
Speaker 3: still do shows, and I do like a one man show.
Speaker 3: It's like a play that has a lot of these
Speaker 3: stories I'm telling you, and I fold in the songs
Speaker 3: that go with the stories. I changed it up. It's
Speaker 3: not always the same. Got about We got all these modules,
Speaker 3: can put in different modules of stories and songs, and
Speaker 3: my wife and I just hit the road together. It's
Speaker 3: the idea I got from rambling Jack Elliott when I
Speaker 3: was on the Rolling Thunder review and Ramblin said, yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the most fun things I ever did was
Speaker 3: throw the guitar in the back of the land Rover
Speaker 3: and me and Polly. That was as why hit the road.
Speaker 3: And we did all these little gigs and it was
Speaker 3: so much fun. And I've been in a band with
Speaker 3: you know. I had instrument cases and trucks and a
Speaker 3: lot of logistics and people to deal with, and I thought, man,
Speaker 3: this would be more fun. So I started doing that,
Speaker 3: and then gradually it became kind of a scripted one
Speaker 3: man play.
Speaker 2: It sounds great. Tell me about Rolling Thunder. What was
Speaker 2: that experience? Like?
Speaker 3: Rolling Thunder was great? It started off with Bob used
Speaker 3: to come over to my house in Malibu and he
Speaker 3: noticed a basketball hoop over the garage and he said,
Speaker 3: you have a basketball. I said no, because when I
Speaker 3: was fifteen, I jammed my finger on a basketball and
Speaker 3: I couldn't black guitar for a few weeks. But I
Speaker 3: bought a basketball the next day and I called up
Speaker 3: his house and he was out, but I got Sarah
Speaker 3: and I said, well, tell Bob I got a basketball.
Speaker 3: She said, oh, he'll be thrilled. So Bob came over
Speaker 3: the next day and we're shooting baskets in the backyard.
Speaker 3: He said, I want to do something different and I said, wow,
Speaker 3: what do you mean? He said, I don't know, something
Speaker 3: like a circus. Okay. So a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 3: I was on the road with a band and I
Speaker 3: had some time off and I went to the village,
Speaker 3: went to Gerty's Folk City, and I ran into Larry Sloman,
Speaker 3: who at the time was a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine.
Speaker 3: And Larry said, I think Dylan's over at the Other
Speaker 3: End or the Bitter End what it was called me.
Speaker 3: So I said, let's go see. So we went over
Speaker 3: there and walked in the back room and there was
Speaker 3: Shock Levy, my writing partner, and Bob Dylan sitting at
Speaker 3: a table with a couple of brandies. And I walked
Speaker 3: and they sit up and the brandy's went flying. They said, Roger,
Speaker 3: we're just talking about you. We're putting this tour together.
Speaker 3: We'd like you to go on it. So I had
Speaker 3: a band and I was on tour myself, but I
Speaker 3: postponed those states and went on Rolling Thunder, and it
Speaker 3: was all Bob's friends from the village. You know. It's
Speaker 3: Bobby NewART and Ramblin, Jack Elliott and Allen Ginsburg and
Speaker 3: Joan Bias came along, Joni Mitchell, and we'd pick up
Speaker 3: people like Willie Nelson in Texas and Gordon Lightfoot in
Speaker 3: Toronto and Leonard Cohne in Montreal. You know, it was
Speaker 3: an amazing, amazing tour, about one hundred people on the
Speaker 3: road in buses and cars, and it was like a parade,
Speaker 3: and it was like a circus. It was like a circus,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't exactly like this Corsese film portraits that.
Speaker 3: I think it was even more fun than that.
Speaker 2: I bet it sounds incredible, And the recordings from that
Speaker 2: era are some of my favorite of his, Like his
Speaker 2: might sounds great, his singing is great, The song sounds
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 3: He was really on his game at that point. And
Speaker 3: some of my favorite songs are the ones he wrote
Speaker 3: with Shaq Levy for Desire Agreed.
Speaker 2: Tell me about subud Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, when I was in the village, I was hanging
Speaker 3: out with Bob Carey, who had been in a group
Speaker 3: called the Terriers with Eric Darling and Ellen Arkin. And
Speaker 3: there was this mine Lionel Shepherd, and we're walking around
Speaker 3: and Bob and I are are sharing a joint and
Speaker 3: I offered it to Lionel and he said, now I
Speaker 3: got something better. I said, was that? He said, it's
Speaker 3: called subud I said, what is it? Something you put
Speaker 3: in your coffee and drink it? Or he said, come
Speaker 3: on down, you know, next Thursday and see what it is.
Speaker 3: So I did, and it was this spiritual exercise. It
Speaker 3: was kind of like the Holy Spirit, but it wasn't
Speaker 3: Christian or anything. It was just you know, So I
Speaker 3: got into it. It was something I did for a while.
Speaker 2: I had a friend who was who was in Subu,
Speaker 2: grew up in Subud and she followed Ramadan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of people were into is well. It
Speaker 3: came out of Indonesia. So the head guy, Bob Pak
Speaker 3: they called him, He was a Muslim, so it was
Speaker 3: a kind of non verbal Islam. There was no doctrine
Speaker 3: or anything. It was just you go in and do
Speaker 3: these It's almost like a dance. You do a spiritual
Speaker 3: dance and yeah, it's supposed to be good for your soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's great. I didn't realize that there was a
Speaker 2: physical component. Would you say that this was like TM,
Speaker 2: like a spiritual fad of the time.
Speaker 3: I think so, you know, I got out of it.
Speaker 3: I didn't stay in it, and later I accepted Jesus,
Speaker 3: so you know, that's all I needed.
Speaker 2: And how did that happen.
Speaker 3: It happened in seventy seven when Elvis Presley died and
Speaker 3: he was seven years older than I was. I was
Speaker 3: thirty five, and he was doing Quailud's and uppers and downers,
Speaker 3: and I had a doctor in LA who'd give me
Speaker 3: anything I wanted, and I was doing that too, plus
Speaker 3: the illegal drug so I got my hands on. So
Speaker 3: I thought, man, Elvis just died and he was seven
Speaker 3: years older. If I only got seven years, I'd better
Speaker 3: start cleaning up my act. And so I started working
Speaker 3: on that, and in the process, that's when I ran
Speaker 3: into this jazz guy named Billy, and he prayed with
Speaker 3: me about Jesus and I accepted Jesus beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it changed your lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle,
Speaker 2: and you have this spiritual connection right, speutiful inspiring.
Speaker 3: And my wife and well, I turned my wife onto it.
Speaker 3: I met her in an acting class. We were both
Speaker 3: starting the same night, and we had to do method
Speaker 3: acting and the assignment was to get her to do
Speaker 3: something she didn't want to do. And I had talked
Speaker 3: to her before and found out she'd been a Baptist
Speaker 3: when she was a kid but got away from it.
Speaker 3: So I knew something she didn't want to do, so
Speaker 3: I started singing. They shun me since I through Jesus.
Speaker 4: They see I'm listening World.
Speaker 3: Of Fun and she's I said, what do you think
Speaker 3: of that? She said, it sounds kind of country? I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: what do you think of the words? She said, Oh, man,
Speaker 3: you're trying to tell me about Jesus. And she stopped
Speaker 3: off the stage and all the kids in the class
Speaker 3: clapped and I said, wow, what was that. That sounded like,
Speaker 3: you know, a real play. And then a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks later she accepted Jesus. And now we've been together
Speaker 3: for forty four years and we read the Bible every morning.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, congratulations. Can you play that song for us? Now?
Speaker 5: Let's see, Ah tell me I should away?
Speaker 4: Did you say? I'm missing the whole World of Fun?
Speaker 4: But I still love it?
Speaker 6: Walking the creation line, Oh Blue, the friend he in
Speaker 6: God's calm, bo is the friend?
Speaker 4: What beautiful?
Speaker 7: There is calm, pleasure and things are tune line the
Speaker 7: creatu line.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. I never heard that song before.
Speaker 3: Really, No, it's a Living Brothers song. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a it's a written song. In the twentieth century. Not
Speaker 3: a gospel song, but it's the Living Brothers did it.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. I would hearing that makes me want to
Speaker 2: hear a whole album of you doing acoustic devotional material,
Speaker 2: just just sharing that I could do that. That's what
Speaker 2: I want to hear.
Speaker 3: If you wanted to hear something else. The Kane bluesy said.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yes, So this is my favorite written.
Speaker 2: My favorite of the folk den songs that I'm aware
Speaker 2: of is this one.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, that's interesting. The story goes, it's an old
Speaker 3: prison song and I recorded it back when there was
Speaker 3: a website called MP three dot com. Michael Robertson is
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur. He put together this website and he would
Speaker 3: take MP threes and make little CDs of him and
Speaker 3: he give you fifty percent, which is unheard of in
Speaker 3: the record business. So I signed up for that and
Speaker 3: I did Kane Blues. First. It was called Ain't No
Speaker 3: mo Cain on the Brazos and nobody was clicking on it.
Speaker 3: I changed the title to Caine Blues and it shut
Speaker 3: up the chart.
Speaker 4: He no Moquin?
Speaker 3: Pound it all into Eliza.
Speaker 4: Well, what's the matter. Serping must be wrong?
Speaker 3: Ooh, we're still here rolling in shorty George gun gon.
Speaker 8: oOoOO down old, don't you rise no more?
Speaker 4: O you ris anymore?
Speaker 3: Ring judgment shall.
Speaker 4: Look at my whole Hallo, she's a turning rest.
Speaker 2: Oo.
Speaker 3: Look at my eye partner, he's almost dead.
Speaker 4: Then you should have been here fround nineteen four.
Speaker 3: It was a dead man at every turn, Rome marking
Speaker 3: all the surprizo round it all into alas.
Speaker 2: I love that song. I love that song.
Speaker 3: It's a cool song I heard from Bob Gibson. First time.
Speaker 3: He did a little different. I think I changed the
Speaker 3: chords on it, but I like the chord pattern. It's unusual,
Speaker 3: and that it's uh, it's got a lot of pasting chords,
Speaker 3: you know, and instead of just to see a minor
Speaker 3: to D and then it goes to a B minor.
Speaker 3: So it's got some interesting pasting chords it.
Speaker 2: There's so much emotion in it. And and I've played this.
Speaker 2: I've played that song for many artists that I work with,
Speaker 2: just to talk about the amount of emotion that can
Speaker 2: be held in a song, even when you don't necessarily
Speaker 2: know what all the words are about. And it's what's
Speaker 2: also interesting about it is it's so repetitive. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a very simple structure that just keeps repeating.
Speaker 2: There's no chorus or anything, but it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 2: get old, you know, it doesn't get old. That loop
Speaker 2: can go on for a long time, and it does
Speaker 2: feel like this, the emotion, and it just keeps getting
Speaker 2: deeper and deeper with the story. It's beautiful, beautiful song.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, Old Hannah is the sun sunrise.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, Old Hannah is the sun sunrising?
Speaker 2: What did the other? Yeah, decode as much as you
Speaker 2: can for me, it'd be grateful.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, no more cane on the broseet. It was
Speaker 3: a sugar cane like a work farm for a prison,
Speaker 3: and they cut all they came down and turned it
Speaker 3: into molasses. Something.
Speaker 2: Brazos is the river.
Speaker 3: Brazos River, Yeah, down in Texas. Uh, what's the matter.
Speaker 3: Something must be wrong. We're still rolling. That's being still
Speaker 3: in prison. Shorty George done gone. He got out, Shorty
Speaker 3: George got out somehow. What's something wrong? We're still here
Speaker 3: and he's gone. Yeah, look at my old Hannah. She's
Speaker 3: a turn in red. Who the sunrise or sunrise or
Speaker 3: it could be sunset. Yeah, look at my partner, he's
Speaker 3: almost dead. They just worked the people to death. There,
Speaker 3: go down, old Hannah. Don't you rise no more? Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the sunset. And if you rise anymore, your judgment,
Speaker 3: Sure you're we're gonna get in trouble tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 3: because we get in trouble every day. Yeah, yeah, every
Speaker 3: day is trouble. Should have been here a bund nineteen four.
Speaker 3: It's a dead man on every turn row. So people are,
Speaker 3: you know, getting work to death. There was one that
Speaker 3: should have been here in nineteen ten that work and
Speaker 3: women just like the men. So it's a prison song
Speaker 3: about harsh labor, intensive you know, work you to death
Speaker 3: kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Wow, I had no idea it even was prison related.
Speaker 2: You know, again, without knowing the context is nothing in
Speaker 2: the lyric if you don't know what what it means.
Speaker 2: It was clearly a sad song, and it was it
Speaker 2: was clearly a work song, but I didn't understand that
Speaker 2: it was a prison song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the kind of thing that gets lost
Speaker 3: with the singer songwriter genre. People aren't doing those old
Speaker 3: songs anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so thankful that you're that you're doing the
Speaker 2: folk then, and that these songs live on and if
Speaker 2: people want to hear them they go to the website.
Speaker 3: Is that the best mcgwin dot com The Folk Done section.
Speaker 1: Great, we have to pause for another quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be back with the rest of Rick's conversation with
Speaker 1: Roger mcgwin in just a sack. We're back with Rick
Speaker 1: Rubin and Roger mcgwen.
Speaker 2: How has recording changed over the course of your life?
Speaker 2: So it started you said it was tape in the beginning,
Speaker 2: but really more specifically technologically, from the early days of
Speaker 2: recording until now, what are all the changes that you've seen.
Speaker 3: The first recording I did was on an MPEx three
Speaker 3: track three track, and that was we recorded beach Ball
Speaker 3: on that Bobby Durna played drums and Frank Carey played
Speaker 3: piano and I played guitar, and we all sang and
Speaker 3: clapped her hands and we got a record deal on
Speaker 3: Capitol called herself the City Surfers, and that was a
Speaker 3: three track. He couldn't really overdub very well. And then
Speaker 3: when I got in the Birds, they had a four
Speaker 3: track at Columbia Studios in LA and they had an
Speaker 3: eight track. Who was over against the wall and somebody
Speaker 3: had written with a sharpie or you know, like felt
Speaker 3: pent big bastard on this eight track, and they didn't
Speaker 3: want to hook it up because it was too too new,
Speaker 3: too much trouble. They finally did, they finally got the
Speaker 3: A track going. But so I went from three track
Speaker 3: to fod track, to eight track, to sixteen track to
Speaker 3: thirty two tracks, sixty four track and digital. And then
Speaker 3: I told you about the digital audio workstations and got
Speaker 3: into couldn't afford Pro Tools when I first ran into
Speaker 3: it, it was like ten thousand dollars for rudimentary set up.
Speaker 3: So I got something called Digital Orchestrator Plus. It was
Speaker 3: like a ninety dollars program and it did the same thing.
Speaker 3: It recorded in forty four point waveforms, you know, sixteen bit.
Speaker 3: It sounded pretty good. I recorded the Treasures from the
Speaker 3: Folk on that system. And then gradually I got pro Tools,
Speaker 3: and I've had pro Tools for years and years now,
Speaker 3: and you know, I find it very easy to work
Speaker 3: with and fun. I love being able to pop things
Speaker 3: in and move them around like a word processor.
Speaker 2: And I imagined the advantage of being able to record
Speaker 2: at home versus in a big studio with all this
Speaker 2: equipment is a good It's a good change in terms
Speaker 2: of being able to make whatever you want, whenever you want.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean I tell kids, I say, you don't
Speaker 3: need to go to a recording studio and spend thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars. You can just get a Mac and pro
Speaker 3: tools and do it at home. All you need is
Speaker 3: a good microphone, maybe some editing skills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you said you went into the earliest version, the
Speaker 2: three man version of The Birds. I don't know what
Speaker 2: you were called at that time, into.
Speaker 3: The jet set called the jet set the jet set.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what you recorded in that first session
Speaker 2: when you decided we need more players.
Speaker 3: I think it was some stuff that Geene Clark and
Speaker 3: I had written, like the Only Girl that I Adore
Speaker 3: or whatever you showed me, which the Turtles later picked up.
Speaker 3: Was one of the songs that Sheen and I wrote,
Speaker 3: and it was rejected for The Birds. We didn't get
Speaker 3: to do it, but the Turtle's got a hit with it.
Speaker 2: Cool. Do you remember it at all? You showed me, Yeah?
Speaker 2: Can you play me a little of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, first, the original version was down there down here.
Speaker 3: You showed me how exactly what you do.
Speaker 4: In love with you.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 4: I'm in love with you. And when I tried, I
Speaker 4: could see you.
Speaker 3: And it's not a tele You told it to me too,
Speaker 3: exactly what you do and now you love me too.
Speaker 4: It's true too.
Speaker 3: And I always loved that relative minor thing to the
Speaker 3: g ju minor.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 4: I could see and uh, it's not a.
Speaker 2: True Are the chord changes rooted in classical music? It
Speaker 2: feels like it is.
Speaker 3: Well it was if it was. It was subliminally in
Speaker 3: classic because Gene Clark and I wrote it. We were
Speaker 3: standing in Jim Dixon's driveway and we both had a
Speaker 3: crush on the same girl, and we wrote it about
Speaker 3: this girl that we both had a crush on. And
Speaker 3: I remember something interesting. There's something like spiritual in it
Speaker 3: because as I was playing it my guitar, it was almos.
Speaker 3: It's like a divining rod. It was moving around in
Speaker 3: like you know figure eights, like an infinity sign. It
Speaker 3: was it was kind of unusual for that to happen.
Speaker 2: Amazing, Yeah, yeah, like a like a dowsing rod or
Speaker 2: divining rod.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, something like that, like a you know, divining
Speaker 3: water amazing. I've got a BMI Award for one million plays.
Speaker 3: It's probably had more than that by now, but it's
Speaker 3: been covered by Salt and Pepper and Let's see You
Speaker 3: two Kanye West.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's such a beautiful song. I love that song.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Have you had any other mystical experiences?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, tell me, well, you know, I
Speaker 3: sometimes I see stuff through the walls, you know, like
Speaker 3: little dots of light and things like that. You could
Speaker 3: call it hallucinating whatever. And also I've always I've always
Speaker 3: had this thing, this tactle thing where you know, I
Speaker 3: could feel something in the air, something that isn't there.
Speaker 3: I used to do that. I remember in the Columbia studio.
Speaker 3: I'd be waving my hand around while I was singing,
Speaker 3: and when I sang mister Tambrieman, Oh. Jim Dixon had
Speaker 3: made us read an Actor of Preparers by Stanislavsky. Jim
Speaker 3: had a little experience in the Hollywood area. He was
Speaker 3: married to Diane Varsi for a short time and he
Speaker 3: helped her with her career until she decided she didn't
Speaker 3: want to live in Hollywood and do that, so he
Speaker 3: made us read an Actor Prepares which is about method acting.
Speaker 3: So when I got the lyrics to mister Tambourine Man,
Speaker 3: I wanted to do a parallel meaning. And I was singing, Hey,
Speaker 3: mister tamberine Man, play a song for me. I'm not
Speaker 3: sleepy and there is no place I'm going to. I
Speaker 3: wasn't singing to an abstract tamburrie man. I was singing
Speaker 3: to God beautiful. So that was a mystical experience to it.
Speaker 3: I think the reason that song was as popular as
Speaker 3: it was because it had some real heartfelt truth in it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and there's something about the like Lyrically, there's nothing
Speaker 2: obviously devotional in in Tambourine Man, but when you're connected
Speaker 2: in a devotional way, there's an energy that can come
Speaker 2: through that you can just feel it. I never knew that.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful story. I love hearing that story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you feel things in space in general or just
Speaker 2: in certain places?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not all the time. I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 3: dependent on the place so much as the time. And
Speaker 3: they you know, mental spiritual attitude I have whatever. I
Speaker 3: remember they asked Tom Petty about how he writes songs.
Speaker 3: They said, well, you know, they come down from I
Speaker 3: don't want to know. He said that you might go away.
Speaker 3: Tom was a great friend and a wonderful inspiration to me.
Speaker 3: I know I inspired him somewhat, but you know, he
Speaker 3: was just an incredible performer and songwriter and a really
Speaker 3: sweet guy. He was just the sweetest guy.
Speaker 2: He was the best. You inspired him a lot, and
Speaker 2: he talked about you all the time. This is the
Speaker 2: first time we're a meeting, but he talked about you
Speaker 2: all of the time.
Speaker 3: Oh well, we had a good friendship.
Speaker 2: It was such a great He was a great songwriter.
Speaker 2: He was such a great musician and had such a
Speaker 2: beautiful voice. But he knew everything about making records, like
Speaker 2: in the studio. He was a total craftsman. He could
Speaker 2: do anything. And uh, it was just fun to be
Speaker 2: around him. I learned so much being around him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, while we miss him absolutely. Have you heard other
Speaker 2: versions of songs you've written that made you hear them
Speaker 2: in a new way? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, eight Miles I got covered by husker Doo houtsker Doo.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, hohoskar doo.
Speaker 3: And they did sort of a real headbanger version of it,
Speaker 3: like loud and raucous. That was good and so you
Speaker 3: want to be a rock and roll star? Got covered
Speaker 3: a lot, yeah by Patty's and Tom Petty.
Speaker 2: When you hear other people do your songs, does it
Speaker 2: feel like that's my song? Or does it feel like, oh, oh,
Speaker 2: I like what they're doing with this thing? Like what's
Speaker 2: the experience like hearing someone else sing a song they've written?
Speaker 3: It's a nice feeling, you know, even if you don't
Speaker 3: appreciate the whole way they did it, it's a nice
Speaker 3: feeling to know that they did do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they picked you, They picked your song, they picked
Speaker 2: your work. Yeah yeah, and they could have picked anything
Speaker 2: and they picked yours. So tell me about Terry Melcher.
Speaker 3: Okay. When we got signed to Columbia Records, Jim Dixon
Speaker 3: assumed that he would be a producer because he was
Speaker 3: a record producer, and Columbia had a strict policy. They
Speaker 3: were a union house and they only used their staff producers.
Speaker 3: So they assigned us a twenty three year old son
Speaker 3: of one of their biggest artists. Do or a Stay
Speaker 3: It's Terry.
Speaker 2: Had he already produced a lot of stuff at twenty three.
Speaker 3: Well, he knew what he was doing. He was friends
Speaker 3: with Brian Wilson, and he knew Brian had used Wrecking
Speaker 3: Crew on some Beach Boys stuff, and he also knew
Speaker 3: that Michael Clark couldn't play the drums and we were
Speaker 3: a fledgling band just kind of learning how to play together.
Speaker 3: So he got the Wrecking Crew to come and do
Speaker 3: the band track of Mister Tambriene Man and the Flip Side.
Speaker 3: I knew I'd want you, and I was allowed to
Speaker 3: play on it because I'd been a studio musician in
Speaker 3: New York and I also had the Rickenbacker and the
Speaker 3: the lick, so I got to play on it, and
Speaker 3: then the band went nuts. It said no, we want
Speaker 3: to be like the Beatles, we want to play in
Speaker 3: our own stuff, and okay, so they got to. Ever
Speaker 3: after that, we just only did two tracks with the
Speaker 3: Wrecking Crew, but with the Wrecking Crew we knocked out
Speaker 3: two songs in a three hour session, and when we
Speaker 3: got the whole band playing, it took us seventy seven
Speaker 3: takes to get turnturn turned.
Speaker 2: What was it like playing with the Wrecking Crew.
Speaker 3: It was really fun. You know that they were so
Speaker 3: polished and professional. You know, they didn't do us trick
Speaker 3: beat I analyzed some of this stuff. And they're like
Speaker 3: a school of fish. You know, they go around together.
Speaker 3: You know, they maybe go up tempo, down tempa and
Speaker 3: sideways and you know, but they were always together. They
Speaker 3: were tight. And I was a little nervous. Hal Blaine said,
Speaker 3: you go out and have a couple of beers, kid,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't, so but I got We got
Speaker 3: the session done and it came out good.
Speaker 2: So were they older than you guys at that time?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're about maybe like seven years older, like
Speaker 3: Elvis's age. It was hel Blaine, Leanne Russell on electric piano,
Speaker 3: Cherry Cole on a six string guitar, and Cherry was
Speaker 3: playing Chinks like and that was something they got from
Speaker 3: Don't Worry Baby, because they played on Don't Worry Baby
Speaker 3: for the Beach Boys and the Chinks in that, and
Speaker 3: then Bill Pittman played on it. Bill Pittman was guitar,
Speaker 3: Cherry Cole guitar, and Larry Nektell, who usually did keyboards,
Speaker 3: play bass.
Speaker 2: Wow, he's great, Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3: He was great. It was a fun experience, a little
Speaker 3: nerve wracking, but fun for sure.
Speaker 2: But I think that some people know the story of
Speaker 2: the Wrecking Group but they're one of the greatest bands
Speaker 2: of all time.
Speaker 3: Really absolutely, and I you know, I didn't know they
Speaker 3: were the band that played on Phil Spectra's Wall of
Speaker 3: Sound steps. You know, I used to love to do
Speaker 3: Ron Ron and my Boyfriend's Back or whatever, all all
Speaker 3: those songs that And then when Hal passed away, the
Speaker 3: story came out. See I always thought this was a
Speaker 3: beatle beat le let's see, h okay. So the story
Speaker 3: goes that Hal dropped a stick. He was in one
Speaker 3: of the sessions, and so he couldn't he couldn't play
Speaker 3: boom boom boom boom. He could go boom boom boom
Speaker 3: boom boom boom. As a musician, when you make a mistake,
Speaker 3: you want to continue it so it sounds like you
Speaker 3: did it on purpose. And that's what he did. So
Speaker 3: he invented that boom boom bom beat because he dropped
Speaker 3: a stick.
Speaker 2: That's unbelieva. Yeah, that's the sound of all the Phil
Speaker 2: Spector records that it is.
Speaker 3: That's the sound. And then the Beatles picked it up
Speaker 3: and I called I used to call it a beatle
Speaker 3: beat because I didn't realize that Hall had come up
Speaker 3: with it for Phil Spector.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, and came up with it by mistake. This
Speaker 2: is a great thing to talk about. How much do
Speaker 2: mistakes play into the process of writing something?
Speaker 3: Well that one Shirre did. Yeah, I don't know, but
Speaker 3: I love the man.
Speaker 4: On Sunday anything was to do Run Run Run, Do
Speaker 4: Run Run run.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. At the Brill Building, Kenny Young and I
Speaker 3: used to analyze Phil Spector records, you know, and we
Speaker 3: look at that. He used the scribbled little stuff on
Speaker 3: the vinyl. It's like audio matrix. He wrote with little
Speaker 3: stylist the Wall of Sound. Wow.
Speaker 2: Why did Gene Clark leave the band?
Speaker 3: Well, there's two stories about that. The first one goes,
Speaker 3: we were ready to fly from LA to New York
Speaker 3: to do a TV special with Murray the k And
Speaker 3: back in those days, you could kind of get on
Speaker 3: a plane whenever you wanted. They didn't have the screening
Speaker 3: and all the stuff they got now. So I used
Speaker 3: to show up late, you know, I'd get there just
Speaker 3: before the close the door. And so I got on
Speaker 3: the plane and everybody's on the plane and Jean Clark
Speaker 3: is standing up in the aisle in a cold sweat.
Speaker 3: He's gone, man, I can't do this man, you know,
Speaker 3: and we thought, wow, this maybe he's psychic, maybe you
Speaker 3: know something. Anyway, he got off the plane and I
Speaker 3: remember saying, well, if you can't fly, you can't be
Speaker 3: a bird.
Speaker 2: That's really funny. So you said there are two versions
Speaker 2: of the story. That's one, okay, Well that was one.
Speaker 3: He had a nervous breakdown on the plane and left.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was and you think it was he's
Speaker 2: just afraid of flying.
Speaker 3: He was afraid of flying and it just.
Speaker 2: Got worked by that time. The pressure.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, he was doing some heavy LSD and stuff, and
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think he was on ASCID at
Speaker 3: that point, but something had damaged his nervous system. He
Speaker 3: is not a well man. He was, but Jim Dixon
Speaker 3: in his later years developed some kind of illness where
Speaker 3: he had to go to the hospital and we didn't
Speaker 3: know if he was going to make it. So I
Speaker 3: went to the hospital with my guitar to share him
Speaker 3: up and played some songs for him, and that's when
Speaker 3: he gave me what I think might have been a
Speaker 3: deathbed confession, although he didn't die then, but he said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, Jean left the band, but Eddie Tickner and
Speaker 3: I that was his co manager. We're thinking about spinning
Speaker 3: him off to be a new Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2: So he was going to go solo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he did. Wow, Wow, he did and he
Speaker 3: didn't become Elvis Presley.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, interesting, he.
Speaker 3: Did some good stuff. He did some really crystal like
Speaker 3: no other is really a fine album.
Speaker 2: When did Ticket to Ride come out? In relation to
Speaker 2: Bird's time?
Speaker 3: It came out after the Birds.
Speaker 2: So guitar wise, it must be inspired by because it's
Speaker 2: so much of the Birds sound.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I know we did influence George
Speaker 3: because he he sent Derek Taylor back from London with
Speaker 3: a tape of If I Needed Someone, and he got
Speaker 3: the riff from My Bells of Rumney and he asked
Speaker 3: Derek to tell me that, and I was wow, Man,
Speaker 3: the Beatles inspired us, and we've inspired the Beatles back.
Speaker 3: Isn't really a cool thing.
Speaker 2: It's the best. It's the best to make something you
Speaker 2: love and to also to be recognized by someone that
Speaker 2: do you respect their works. There's no better feeling.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: It's great. And we became friends, the Beatles and the
Speaker 3: Birds became friends, and we hung out together and took
Speaker 3: acid with him.
Speaker 2: This is a weird thing I was thinking about right
Speaker 2: before we started talking. I looked at your discography and
Speaker 2: started thinking that we tend to think of musicians' lives
Speaker 2: through their discography, and I was feeling like it doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense, and I feel like it's not fair. I
Speaker 2: don't think the discography does is a true reflection of you.
Speaker 3: Doesn't do justice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think so. Thought. I never thought about
Speaker 2: it before, but for some reason it hit me today
Speaker 2: that the discography it's just another detail.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just so the gig. It's just what we
Speaker 3: do for a living, and then there's a life that
Speaker 3: goes on beyond that. But it's an exciting gig. I've
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. I've been very blessed that I could make
Speaker 3: money as a musician my whole life and never really
Speaker 3: had to do a day job except the real building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is not bad and it's a good story.
Speaker 3: That was good experience. And then being a studio musician
Speaker 3: was good experience.
Speaker 2: Do you write songs all the time?
Speaker 3: No, not anymore. There's no market for me doing that
Speaker 3: at this point. I don't really feel inspired to do that.
Speaker 3: I'm happy just doing the folk and keeping the traditional
Speaker 3: stuff alive. And it keeps my chops up and keeps
Speaker 3: my recording chops up and my playing chops up in vocal,
Speaker 3: so it's really fulfilling. I'm working on a project. It's
Speaker 3: a slow going labor of love kind of thing. But
Speaker 3: Jack Leedy and I collaborated on a musical back in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight called Trip troyp Geene. Tripp was an
Speaker 3: anagram of pure Gant, and he got the idea for
Speaker 3: the story from Ibsen's peer Gant, but he wanted to
Speaker 3: move it to the Western United States and nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: it is when the Bird Sweetheart of the Rodeo came out,
Speaker 3: So he thought I'd be a good guy to co
Speaker 3: write the music with him, and we wrote about twenty
Speaker 3: six songs and the thing never got mounted on Broadway.
Speaker 3: It did finally get played when Shock became the theatrical
Speaker 3: instructor at Colgate College in Hamilton, New York, and the
Speaker 3: kids there did a version of it. But I'm re
Speaker 3: recording some of the songs, and some of the songs
Speaker 3: were on the Birds records, like Chestnut Mayor. And I'm
Speaker 3: a little conflicted because I've rerecorded Chestnut Mayor, but you're
Speaker 3: never going to get it to sound like the Clarence
Speaker 3: White version that came out on the untitled album. I
Speaker 3: was thinking, man, do I want to license this stuff
Speaker 3: from Sony or what do I want to do? You know? Anyway,
Speaker 3: I've rerecorded it. It sounds pretty good. I got Marty Stewart
Speaker 3: to play the Clarence White parts on Chestnut Mayor and
Speaker 3: they're they're spot on. He got that part right. So
Speaker 3: I was going to do a narration between the songs,
Speaker 3: kind of like Peter and the Wolf. Nice and some
Speaker 3: of the songs have never been recorded before, like the
Speaker 3: song over stage, over stage, you got to be proficient.
Speaker 3: The robin over the stage with the cold smith in
Speaker 3: wesn't Reminton engaged, so it's up pure again, went around,
Speaker 3: he had to the board. It's like this supernatural force
Speaker 3: that kept him going from job to job. And so
Speaker 3: that's what happens in the Gene Tripp thing. He goes
Speaker 3: he's a preacher, he's a riverboat gambler, and he becomes
Speaker 3: a stagecoach robber at one point and a politician. And
Speaker 3: that's where the song I want to grow up to
Speaker 3: be a politician came from.
Speaker 2: That sounds great. I can't wait to hear the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I have one thought when you when you talk about
Speaker 2: doing covers of songs you've already been involved with, think
Speaker 2: about it like you're doing a cover of a song
Speaker 2: that you had no part in, and do you want
Speaker 2: to reinterpret it in your own voice, making believe that
Speaker 2: the other one was not you? Like, what what would
Speaker 2: be the new? Do you know what I'm saying? Instead
Speaker 2: of trying to.
Speaker 3: Read it's a metal adjustment, it's a mental adjustment intimidated
Speaker 3: by don't get intimidated by the original.
Speaker 2: No, let go of the original completely and make the
Speaker 2: most interesting version to you today forgetting what the old
Speaker 2: one was. Just look at the chords and the melody
Speaker 2: and rethink, rethink the approach, and it's great. U. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's great because you can also there's a chance you'll
Speaker 2: make one that's better than the original. You're never gonna
Speaker 2: make one better than the original trying to do the original.
Speaker 2: But now you know it happens sometimes where a cover
Speaker 2: song transcends the original because you find a new way
Speaker 2: in and it's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Well, Thank you so much for talking to me today.
Speaker 2: This is great.
Speaker 3: Look I had fun. I had fun. It was great.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to the great Roger mcgwinn. You can hear
Speaker 1: a playlist of our favorite Roger mcgwin and Bird songs
Speaker 1: at Broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 1: where you can find all of our new episodes. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter at broken Records. Broken Record
Speaker 1: is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Holliday,
Speaker 1: and Eric sam Our editor is Sophie Craig. Broken Record
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Speaker 1: by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Wischer