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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary music writer Joel Selder. Great

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Speaker 1: to be here, Bob, Good to see you. Okay, let's

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Speaker 1: start with you did the Sammy Hagar book. It was

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Speaker 1: a huge bestseller, number one. Did you have any anticipation

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Speaker 1: was going to be that successful. I knew that I

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Speaker 1: could get a very generous book deal with Sammy just

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Speaker 1: based on his name. Uh, I think sam this interesting.

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Speaker 1: Sammy had to do with the Van Halen thing. But

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Speaker 1: I knew that that he would be likely candidate for

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Speaker 1: a good sized book deal. And I just quit the

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Speaker 1: paper after thirty six years. So on San Francisco, chronic right,

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Speaker 1: I was there as there pop music critic, and and uh,

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Speaker 1: Sammy had mentioned something years before, but I didn't think

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Speaker 1: it was a really good idea yet. And then you know,

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Speaker 1: like suddenly I thought it was a good idea. No,

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Speaker 1: I had no idea that it was a number one bestseller.

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Speaker 1: And I got a credit the one and only, the

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Speaker 1: late great John Carter. Did you know Carter? Of course,

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Speaker 1: Carter the writer of the lyrics of Incense and Pepper,

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Speaker 1: amongst so many I mean private Dancer. He brought Tina

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Speaker 1: Turner back, just an unbelievable list of things, and he

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Speaker 1: was managing Sammy and yes, I do that. And he

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Speaker 1: marshalled Sammy's fan club and cut him a deal for

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Speaker 1: pre orders. And the day that book came out, we

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Speaker 1: were already in the forties on Amazon, and by the

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Speaker 1: end of that day we were in the top five. Wow.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that. To what degree was Sammy's appearance

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Speaker 1: on Howard Stern a factor. So we sat that day

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Speaker 1: and he did Howard Stern and he did Good Morning America,

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Speaker 1: and we watched the things squirret up the charts, and

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Speaker 1: every time it hit the new time section, you know,

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Speaker 1: at time zone, and it was hilarious. And and and

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Speaker 1: then like I'm walking home back to my cousin's apartment

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Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side, and my agent calls and

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Speaker 1: they've already gone into the third printing, and he calls

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Speaker 1: up to tell me that Walmart just ordered twenty books.

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Speaker 1: And I'm at the Columbus Circle and standing in front

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Speaker 1: of some shoe store I can't afford. So I went

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Speaker 1: in and bought a pair of shoes and expensive. With

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Speaker 1: those shoes, they tell I mean more I'd spend on shoes,

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Speaker 1: and these are my best seller shoes. Okay, Now the

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Speaker 1: book is fascinating because you wrote it in Sammy's voice.

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Speaker 1: How did you decide? How did you perfect that experience? Oh?

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Speaker 1: That was the whole mission, right, because that's what the

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Speaker 1: readers want. They want to sit down and feel like

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Speaker 1: Sammy's telling them the story. Right. So I had Sammy

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Speaker 1: tell me the story. I tape recorded it, and then

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Speaker 1: I sat there and fussed around with it until like

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Speaker 1: red like sentences and stuff like that. A lot of

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Speaker 1: it is straight out of Sammy's mouth, and all I

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Speaker 1: had to do was put a period and a capital

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Speaker 1: letter in the middle. Uh, there's very little of me

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Speaker 1: in there, and what it is is transparent. Right. You

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Speaker 1: can't see me because you can't see you at all. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: having read your brother books, I didn't realize that much

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Speaker 1: was actually straight from Sammy. So wonderful. Uh, it really

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Speaker 1: feels like him, and he's he was. He did such

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Speaker 1: an incredible job at telling his story. He he's in

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Speaker 1: charge of his own narrative and a great degree. That's

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Speaker 1: not always true of people. So how did you meet Sammy?

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Speaker 1: Oh Man? So I I had a brief swing through

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Speaker 1: college at Riverside. You see Riverside, and I hung and

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Speaker 1: swung in the musicians down there. Uh, Sammy is from Fontana,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't know Sammy wasas from Riverside, but he

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Speaker 1: joined a band with a bunch of guys that I

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Speaker 1: did know, and they started coming up to San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: They were the Justice Brothers. Okay, but what brothers? Justice Brothers? Okay?

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Speaker 1: And you bet? And you knew the band from having

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Speaker 1: been briefly in Riverside. Yeah, I knew the bass player

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Speaker 1: and the guitar player, and the drummer was Sammy's friend.

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Speaker 1: He's still playing with Sammy, David Louser, but really yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh Bobby Anglin was an unbelievable guitar player, and

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Speaker 1: and Jeff Nicholson was off selling uh Turner Burne Christian

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Speaker 1: T shirts. But the Justice Brothers used to play this

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Speaker 1: real sort of top forty dump in San Francisco, and

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Speaker 1: I saw them there several times before Ronnie Montrose did.

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Speaker 1: But I was there the night Ronnie Montrose came tell

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Speaker 1: us that story Montrose had been in. Uh, Sammy had

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Speaker 1: been in touch with Ronnie Montrose, who had just forming

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Speaker 1: his own band after leaving Van Morrison's band. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure I know all that history. So Ronnie's

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Speaker 1: originally from where to the degree you remember, you know,

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Speaker 1: he showed up in San Francisco with a band called

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Speaker 1: Sawbuck that made a lot of noise at a Tuesday

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Speaker 1: night audition in the last weeks of the film war

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Speaker 1: and got signed to Bill Graham Management. But I believe

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Speaker 1: they ever really recorded. And he's and he was bumping

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Speaker 1: around as a freelance guitarist when Van picked him up.

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Speaker 1: And I think he'd also done at Edgar Winterstant Okay,

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Speaker 1: how how long was he with Van? Oh? Just the

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Speaker 1: blink of an eye? So then one album and then

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Speaker 1: did he already have his deal with Warner Brothers. I

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Speaker 1: believe the deal was in place and he was looking

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Speaker 1: to put together this band and Sammy went over to

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Speaker 1: his house and they wrote space Station number six or whatever,

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Speaker 1: number nine. Yeah, well Sammy is a big number guy. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I gotta stop you. That means what, Oh he's all

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Speaker 1: about numerology? Oh really? Yeah? Okay, so that's when you

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Speaker 1: met Sammy? Yeah, Justice Brother's days. Oh you know the

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Speaker 1: famous Sammy's story about the van Halen review keep going.

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Speaker 1: So he joins van Halen and does this tour in

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Speaker 1: his final date is at the Cow Palace in San Francisco,

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Speaker 1: and I go out to review it. And essentially this

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Speaker 1: is before he's a van Halen or what he's Well,

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Speaker 1: he's in van Halen, first tour of van Halen and

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Speaker 1: there he is at the end of the tour at

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Speaker 1: his hometown and he's got four shows. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,

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Speaker 1: big deal and I'm there. Uh, and I write the

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Speaker 1: review and essentially the review says, too bad, they ruined

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Speaker 1: two perfectly decent bands, great line and uh the uh.

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Speaker 1: Sammy gets on stage Monday night and it's just raging

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Speaker 1: at the audience and he and and using his typical

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Speaker 1: sort of profanity, he hands out what he thinks is

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Speaker 1: my home phone number, tells him to call me. So

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Speaker 1: I come home one morning, Uh and uh there's a

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Speaker 1: bunch of messages on the machine, remember message machine? And uh.

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Speaker 1: The first one is some very halting voicing. H Mr Sylvan,

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Speaker 1: I have your former home phone number in Oakland. Would

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Speaker 1: you please have your friends and business associates on you?

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Speaker 1: And I'm like, what you know. And on the next

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Speaker 1: one is, uh, Joel Roger from Bill Graham Presents and

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Speaker 1: Sammy Haygar gave every number out of the cow Palace

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Speaker 1: night chaste. You might get a few calls. The next

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Speaker 1: one is hey, fuck you. And that went on for

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Speaker 1: weeks and and Herb Kane, the gossip columnist in San Francisco,

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Speaker 1: picked up on it. He asked me about it. I said, oh, no, no,

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Speaker 1: for Sammy, that's what passes for wit. So how did

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Speaker 1: you make it up with Sammy? I don't know. Oh

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Speaker 1: so next time I see Sammy, use it's this Barry

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Speaker 1: and Music Awards, which is just a complete, you know,

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Speaker 1: cluster bang. And when there used to be the BAM

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Speaker 1: newspaper used to read that religious Oh yeah, Well they

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Speaker 1: had this big awards where all the leaguers showed up

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Speaker 1: and they had this big suite of people that got

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Speaker 1: into you know, the semi v I p uh and uh.

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Speaker 1: There it's real crowded, real gril crowded, and they're Sammy

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Speaker 1: sees me, goes Joel Joel, and man, I'm out of here.

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Speaker 1: Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, Joel. And just as

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Speaker 1: I hit the door, he goes Joel, I need your

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Speaker 1: new home now. That is funny. No, Sammy's funny. There's

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Speaker 1: no you know, he's obnoxious, but he's funny. Okay, at

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Speaker 1: this late date, do you still think that it was

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Speaker 1: a great life? Did they ruin ruin two good bands? Well,

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Speaker 1: Sammy grew into van Halen, no question, and and I've

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Speaker 1: come to really appreciate a lot of it that I

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Speaker 1: didn't quite get at the same time. But I love

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Speaker 1: the David Lee Roth van Halen, and I agree with

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Speaker 1: you give Sammy's a better singer. But they completely lost

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Speaker 1: their sense of view where I was a big band

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Speaker 1: talking about Carter because Carter signed Sammy to Capitol and

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Speaker 1: they did that album Rid. That's how I first got

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Speaker 1: into it. But uh, before I can't drive fifty five,

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Speaker 1: he was almost becoming a caricature of himself. Thank god

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Speaker 1: van Halen picked him up. So you're in Los Angeles,

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Speaker 1: we are today? What brought you down here from the

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Speaker 1: Bay Area? So I'm doing some research for a book

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Speaker 1: that's forthcoming in like two years. I'm just starting out.

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Speaker 1: Uh it Um revolves around a number of people who

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Speaker 1: graduated from um University High School over in West l

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Speaker 1: A in ninety just one specific year. It's this class

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Speaker 1: was pretty rich with with interesting people, and it's where

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Speaker 1: Jan and Dean started. And in fact, before they were

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Speaker 1: out of high school. In the last semester, Jan and

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Speaker 1: Arnie were on the charts. They had a hit record

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Speaker 1: and they were walking around the school hallways. You can

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Speaker 1: only imagine, right and uh. But then I was also

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Speaker 1: this girl going around the hallway named Kathy Cohoner, who

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Speaker 1: Sandra d was portraying in a movie called Gidget. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And the last Jan it was Dean kim Fowley. Kim Fowley.

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Speaker 1: You know, I knew Kim a little bit towards the end.

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Speaker 1: One time I'm talking to him and he told me

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Speaker 1: he had twin sons with some woman that he had

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Speaker 1: no care and he gave me all the description. Then

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Speaker 1: he died. I heard from PRESI wests. He totally made

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Speaker 1: that up. So since he's gone, I don't know what

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Speaker 1: the truth is. Do you remember his uh going to

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Speaker 1: hospitals and and getting in a hospital gown and and

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Speaker 1: and putting Facebook posts up about how he's dying. No, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was. I was totally bogus too. Bally was not

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Speaker 1: a good guy though everybody said that, and by this

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Speaker 1: point he was running on fumes. I think I met

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Speaker 1: him at Tony Wilson's conference in Manchester, England. So he

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Speaker 1: was more about telling the old stories as opposed to

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Speaker 1: ruining people's lives and careers. Shall we say, Well, people

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Speaker 1: who remember him from high school, uh loathe him from

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Speaker 1: day one. So I mean this guy is uh is

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Speaker 1: kind of a fagan in this book, right. So it's

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Speaker 1: the book concentrating It's like, you know, whatever happened to

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Speaker 1: the class of written forty years ago. So there's other

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Speaker 1: characters involved. Nancy Sinatras in there, and I'm gonna like

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Speaker 1: put an ensemble together and it's gonna come to an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary climax. Um but um eight years later in June

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Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six. Okay, without ruining. That is the

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Speaker 1: book about the class, or is the book about Jan

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Speaker 1: and Dean. It's about a group of people in that

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Speaker 1: class and they how they interact over that as years

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Speaker 1: and yes, Jan and Dean and central to that, the

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Speaker 1: Beach Boys will turn up real early. Lou Adler and

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Speaker 1: Herb Alpert turn up real early. Uh. The foulis in

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Speaker 1: it all throughout. Uh, there's other people involved. Bruce Johnston.

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Speaker 1: Bruce Johnston was a neighbor of Jan Berry's. Really, I

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Speaker 1: had a conversation with the mid length. Actually I asked

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Speaker 1: him to do a podcast and he said, I said,

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Speaker 1: he says, how much does it pay? Oh that's my man,

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Speaker 1: But he thought I said, doesn't pay anything. Then I said,

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Speaker 1: you don't have to do it. We were backstage at

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Speaker 1: the Beach Boys show and then I said, you know,

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Speaker 1: just get your story down. He was my stories out there.

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Speaker 1: I said, okay again, I want to press you. He.

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Speaker 1: I saw him backstage to Tahoe back in the mid

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Speaker 1: eighties and you know, he said, say, what are you driving?

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Speaker 1: I could get you a good price on a new Chevy.

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Speaker 1: Honest to god, what what was that about? He had

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Speaker 1: a friend, you know, I was kicking back some money.

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Speaker 1: I I don't know what the deal was, but you know,

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Speaker 1: rock stars. I love him right well, though I reminded me,

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Speaker 1: didn't remember they used you know all these like gas stations,

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Speaker 1: car washings have disappeared. And the seventies there was a

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Speaker 1: car washing Brentwood and I recognized him and I talked

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Speaker 1: about his new solo out and he gave me one

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Speaker 1: just like they're out of the back of his volvo.

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Speaker 1: And when I told him, they started reminiscing about cars.

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Speaker 1: Now you're also doing a book about Dave Mustain, right,

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Speaker 1: I'm working with Dave on on a book about um

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Speaker 1: his album Rust in Peace and the making of it.

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Speaker 1: It's it's it's pretty dramatic stuff and and and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, loaded with sex, drugs and rock and roll.

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Speaker 1: And is there any of the being kicked out of

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Speaker 1: metallic or that's just released covered that in his previous

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Speaker 1: best selling memoir. So he had a big hit memoir

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Speaker 1: almost twenty years ago. So he wants to come back

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Speaker 1: into the book world and he's like focused on this

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Speaker 1: particular album, which is some kind of landmark heavy metal album,

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Speaker 1: and uh, his story around it is just, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's chaos and uh, hectic in insanity. And that was

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Speaker 1: that his idea, and he found you or vice person,

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Speaker 1: it was his ideas. Sammy Hagar, you have a string

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Speaker 1: of successes as a book writer. To what degree people

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Speaker 1: come looking to you to write books with Well, it's

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Speaker 1: always the wrong person, you know. And uh, but I

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Speaker 1: had some really great experiences like that the book I

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Speaker 1: did with the tattoo artist at Hardy. That's just a

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Speaker 1: wonderful book and an important social document. It didn't really

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Speaker 1: sell a lot of copies because the ed Hardy brand

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Speaker 1: was so poisoned that nobody really realized that this was

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Speaker 1: the guy who started American because it had been sold,

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Speaker 1: would have been sold, they'd been no, you know what

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Speaker 1: killed the you'll love this. What killed the brand and

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Speaker 1: it went out like a light switch. Was John Gosselin.

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Speaker 1: You remember him, of course, so uh, he splits from

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Speaker 1: his wife, ok, plus eight, right, goes to the south

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Speaker 1: of France with his new girlfriend, hooks up with Christian Audagier,

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Speaker 1: who's the running the ed Hardy brand, and he puts

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Speaker 1: this guy head to toe in ed Hardy gear. So

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Speaker 1: all the pictures of the world's most famous deadbeat dad

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Speaker 1: is him in ed Hardy gear. And that it was

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Speaker 1: over instantly, like Macy's pulled the line. It was just

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Speaker 1: like that. And yeah, they sold it for a couple

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Speaker 1: of bucks. But those people, they couldn't even come awake

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Speaker 1: for the autobiography. They had eleven million dollars worth the inventory,

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Speaker 1: saying a warehouse, Yeah, I mean know, this is what

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Speaker 1: rag business is. Crazier than the record business. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: uh okay, so it's always the wrong people. But how

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Speaker 1: many people are looking for you? Is it something happens

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Speaker 1: once a year, once a month, yeah, once twice three

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Speaker 1: times a year somebody comes up and you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: there's some inquiries at either the agency level or get

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Speaker 1: an email from somebody. And you know, I'm always interested

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Speaker 1: in taking meetings, right, you know, I can't tell I

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Speaker 1: ended up doing a book with l A. Read and

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Speaker 1: that's an unlikely thing. Um, I'm trying to think of

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Speaker 1: who are Buddy and the trades? Is that Roy Tracan?

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Speaker 1: Of course Roy interviewed l A for when the book

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Speaker 1: came out. In the first question is what are you

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Speaker 1: doing with Selvin? That sounds like Roy, you know, and

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Speaker 1: and and l I said, all we bonded over sly Stone,

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Speaker 1: you know. So that was But that L. A. Read

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Speaker 1: book was fantastic experience. I loved working with l A.

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Speaker 1: And it was fantastic because well, first of all, uh,

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Speaker 1: just the experience of working with l A. Read and

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Speaker 1: spending all that time in the Sony executive suites and

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Speaker 1: being in New York and out in the Hampton's and

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Speaker 1: and just l A. L a was just a magnanimous, warm,

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Speaker 1: great guy. Uh. And the book is one of the

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Speaker 1: great stories of of of nineties R and B. I mean,

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Speaker 1: he created so much of the of the new pop

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Speaker 1: black pop music of that era in baby Face, and

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Speaker 1: their story is not really well known. It's pretty great.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he brought himself up out of Cincinnati's pop

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Speaker 1: funk scene. Did you know there was a Cincinnati func scene?

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Speaker 1: Actually I did, But don't quiz me any deeper. Midnight

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Speaker 1: Star they were the kings of it. Okay, So which

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Speaker 1: of your books are you proudest of relevant of what

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Speaker 1: it's sold? So no question about that, no question. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Here comes the Night, the burn, dark soul of Burns

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Speaker 1: and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues. Okay, what

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Speaker 1: inspired you to write that book? I first read about

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Speaker 1: Burt Burns in Charlie Gillett's book called The Sound of

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Speaker 1: the City back about nine Yes, yes, I owned that book.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made it all the way through.

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Speaker 1: But okay, what was really the first history we had?

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Speaker 1: And I devoured it. But he cites Burns and and

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Speaker 1: there's a little collection of records that he mentioned. Those

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Speaker 1: records were all sort of an intense little cluster of

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Speaker 1: of of hysterical soul records, you know, Garnett, Mims, Solomon, Burke,

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Speaker 1: Isley Brothers and went being So from that point on,

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Speaker 1: I just sort of like kept my eye out and

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Speaker 1: and the more I learned about Burns, more I've found fascinating.

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Speaker 1: I found early about the Damaged Heart, I found out

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Speaker 1: early about the gangster associations. I talked to Wexler about it,

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Speaker 1: and he was forthcoming to a degree. At that point,

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Speaker 1: Tony Orlando told me about him. Tony knew him really well.

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Speaker 1: And did you know Tony before I went to do

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Speaker 1: a Tony Orlando store when he came back from being nuts,

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Speaker 1: and uh, he was there in Brooks. Arthur was there

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Speaker 1: with him that day. And Brooks was an engineer on

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Speaker 1: Brown Eyed Grow and and so Brooks was telling me

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Speaker 1: all about him too. So over the years that and

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Speaker 1: and there came a point when I met his kids, uh,

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Speaker 1: and they really filled in the cracks and encouraged me

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Speaker 1: to do this. And that's like I bailed on the

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Speaker 1: chronicle and went to New York. And if I hadn't

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Speaker 1: done it, then so many of the key figures wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been alive to tell the story, and they told it,

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Speaker 1: and I collected it, and I had to put the

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Speaker 1: book down for many years, and when I picked it

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Speaker 1: back up to finish it, it was like an intense

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Speaker 1: uh and an unexpected gift to be able to finish

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Speaker 1: this book that I had started and spent so many

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Speaker 1: hours thinking about, so much time working on. And it worked.

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Speaker 1: We brought Burns back to life as absolutely. You know,

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Speaker 1: his articles in the New York Times about him an

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Speaker 1: NPR and and then the next year, boom, He's inducted

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Speaker 1: in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty proud of that. Absolutely. So they had a

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Speaker 1: play that I went to see, a musical that you know,

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Speaker 1: they say it's going to be revived, but that seems

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Speaker 1: Then they did the documentary, which was really quite good

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Speaker 1: from a viewer standpoint. Have we seen the end of

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Speaker 1: the promotion or is there anything I think that musical

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Speaker 1: is gonna have new life next year in London? Really? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I think I think it's going to open on West

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Speaker 1: End and with a new first act. That was my question. Yeah, No,

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Speaker 1: that first act didn't make it. I saw that show

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Speaker 1: like ten fifteen times. And of course I loved it.

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Speaker 1: But the second act was flawless, and and to have

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Speaker 1: them end uh with twist and shout. The audience went

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Speaker 1: nuts every night, every night. But the first act was convoluted,

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Speaker 1: slow and bumpy, and it didn't really set anything up.

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Speaker 1: And there are a couple of great songs missing. And

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Speaker 1: the opening number in the first act, what was that

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Speaker 1: that Gene Pittney thing about put a diamond the juke

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Speaker 1: bo pe? You? Okay, so let's go back to the beginning.

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Speaker 1: You grow up where that's a strange word us about

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Speaker 1: my youth growing up? So I was raised, my parents

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Speaker 1: had the best intentions for me in Berkeley. I was

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Speaker 1: supposed to have graduated from Berkeley High in June of

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and it fell short, like a few weeks,

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Speaker 1: never made the finish line. Okay, what was going on there?

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Speaker 1: Why did you saying L S D. Rock and No, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: no no. Why did you not as a nice Jewish boy,

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Speaker 1: why did you not finish high school? L? S D?

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Speaker 1: Rock and roll? Everything? And how many kids were in

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Speaker 1: the family. I'm the youngest of three and were the others?

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Speaker 1: Did they fly straight? Or yeah, yeah, they're geniuses and

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Speaker 1: and and corporate heroes. Uh. My oldest brother uh is

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Speaker 1: one of the major heroes of the cancer curing. He's

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Speaker 1: in public health. And my other brother was a big

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Speaker 1: deal at Bechdel uh for years and years and years,

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Speaker 1: huge construction, biggest in the world. And my parents always

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Speaker 1: looked upon me as the failure in the family. So

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Speaker 1: you're the only one will be remembered. What did your

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Speaker 1: father do for a living? My father was you'll love this.

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Speaker 1: It was a publicist for labor unions press agent. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I have to ask any influence upon you? Oh? Hell yeah. Uh.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I'm a great believer in the union movement.

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Speaker 1: I certainly have myself. It's just you know, out of

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Speaker 1: bounds in this day and age. It's ridiculous. It makes

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Speaker 1: me nuts and things like uber just like fill me

381
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Speaker 1: with fury. But just you know, all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: you as a result of Reagan and said a union

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Speaker 1: is a bad name. And certainly there were some excesses,

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Speaker 1: but now we have these oligarchs and these giant corporations

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Speaker 1: that their excesses ever matched the excesses of the other side.

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Speaker 1: That's my point. But it's been spun up of watch. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so he got your love of the union, son. My

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Speaker 1: father was a pain in the ass. Who who who?

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Speaker 1: You know? Forged my character in uh you know, like

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Speaker 1: a matrix, you know what I mean? Yeah, And I'm

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Speaker 1: grateful to him for it. Uh. And and I cared

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Speaker 1: for him way beyond the point where he evaporated as

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Speaker 1: reservoir of good will with me. But do you care

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Speaker 1: for him financially? No? No, you know I'd go take

395
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Speaker 1: make sure he had company and take him. Okay. And

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Speaker 1: your mother went when she had passed, she had gone,

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Speaker 1: she and she had an endless reservoir good will with me.

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Speaker 1: So you know how old was she when she passed?

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Speaker 1: I was she about eighty four. But she lost her

400
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:42,840
Speaker 1: she'd lost it to dementia, a long slope thing. And

401
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Speaker 1: he'd been great about it, he really had it was okay.

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Speaker 1: So usually I don't think of a union publicist as

403
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Speaker 1: being a job that reams down a lot of cash

404
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Speaker 1: or am I miss? No? No, No, he was definitely

405
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Speaker 1: you know, a middle class uh, living and back when

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Speaker 1: there still was a middle and they had and they

407
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Speaker 1: had a house in the Berkeley Hills that they bought

408
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Speaker 1: for five thousand dollars, which was an extraordinary sum to them.

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Speaker 1: Um and uh he was constantly being given awards by

410
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Speaker 1: the International Labor Press Association, which I don't know if

411
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Speaker 1: that even still exists, probably not. Um and he got

412
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Speaker 1: he caught a big time moment, uh, sort of in

413
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Speaker 1: the late sixties when one of the guys that he

414
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Speaker 1: had been working with became the head of the national

415
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Speaker 1: on the SEIU. So he was banging back and forth

416
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Speaker 1: between here in Washington for a while. And there is

417
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:35,200
Speaker 1: a picture of him in the White House shaking hands

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Speaker 1: with President Johnson. That's hilarious. Okay, So you grow up there,

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Speaker 1: and of course this is a different eraw it's a

420
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 1: free reign kid. What kind of kid were? You have

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Speaker 1: a lot of friends? Do So? I was a weird kid.

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00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: Uh had lots of friends, but I wasn't popular. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time in the library. I

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00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:56,359
Speaker 1: would cut school and go there. Uh and um my

425
00:23:56,440 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: whole um high school. A lot of park cards were

426
00:23:59,840 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: all these NEPs. I just did not attend school. And Uh.

427
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,199
Speaker 1: If I wasn't in the pool hall, I was in

428
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 1: the library. And my favorite thing doing the library, by

429
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: the way, was to pull old newspapers off the rack

430
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:15,920
Speaker 1: and like followed, say the Polar explanations of nineteen o

431
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 1: nine or the UH presidential election of nineteen thirty two. So,

432
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: like I said, weird kid, Okay, So to what degree?

433
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:29,199
Speaker 1: Because certainly rock and roll started in the fifty but

434
00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:31,679
Speaker 1: when the Beatles came along really blew it up. And

435
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,360
Speaker 1: then of course there was a San Francisco scene, arguably

436
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:38,199
Speaker 1: the first scene after the English scene. You're growing up,

437
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: you're a teenager, that impacts you. You're a music fan.

438
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: What's going on? A huge So you know, my lifespan

439
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:49,439
Speaker 1: is pretty perfectly timed. All this because of vivid, vivid

440
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: memories of coming in on Sunday night to see Elvis

441
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: Presley on Ed Sullivan. Wow. Right, so this whole thing

442
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: was like very exciting. My older brother were fully you know,

443
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:03,880
Speaker 1: fifties rock and rollers. My brother used to rub the

444
00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 1: Dixie peach into his levies every night because you wanted

445
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: them to like hang straight. This is something I never heard.

446
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 1: Dixie peach me, like a regular peach was for your hair.

447
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 1: It was like broke cream, vitalist, and it was a

448
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 1: cream and you rubbed it into your levies so they'd

449
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: be like stiff hang in these circles. Never heard that. Yeah, no,

450
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: that was a very cool thing. Uh and uh so

451
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: they were all into that. And I was like, you

452
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 1: know on the am radio and radio was a teenager

453
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: and and a and a pre teen's uh gate to

454
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 1: a different world. And if you ever remember the movie

455
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,400
Speaker 1: Putney Swoke? Did you ever see that's Robert Downey seen

456
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: here And it's a crazy movie. I'm not sure it

457
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:52,359
Speaker 1: really holds up because I talked about for years. Then

458
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: I saw it again. But there's always they have big question, okay,

459
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: and they said they it out what they now called

460
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,920
Speaker 1: Native American, but it was an Indian and he would

461
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: give him the answer. And he said, how do you know?

462
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: He says the drum? And I always said radio was

463
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: the tribal drum. You listen to you totally what was

464
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:15,480
Speaker 1: going on? Had the news that applied to had the records?

465
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:19,399
Speaker 1: Definitely a club. It spelled out our culture. And you

466
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 1: know when when the newsboys get together on the corner,

467
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: all the ten year olds was sitting there talking about

468
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 1: what have you heard? Running bear? Who is that cool?

469
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: Or what you know? And and a new record was

470
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: an event and that got only heightened. We got into

471
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: that post Beatles sing where a news single by the

472
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:41,399
Speaker 1: Beatles or the Rolling Stones was. You know, the entire

473
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: world stopped for that moment. So when you talk about

474
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,880
Speaker 1: the newsboys, did you uh distribute or sell newspapers? Ye? Yeah?

475
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: I was a newspaper boy okay, yea on my little

476
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 1: swin bike. And you know the what what was the

477
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:57,360
Speaker 1: maximum number of the whole houses you have? I think

478
00:26:57,359 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: I had ninety papers at one point and it was

479
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: just deep Berkeley Hill route. Now, my father at some

480
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,159
Speaker 1: point got p oed my the guy that was running

481
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 1: the I don't know if people use that turned out

482
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: that's pistol off. Yeah I didn't. I know it was stock,

483
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,360
Speaker 1: but I'm the old school as hell. Um. And uh

484
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: he called up this guy, Mr Westfall. Why do you

485
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: remember these people's names from? You know? And and he

486
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: went all labor negotiator on him. Right. You know you

487
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: didn't give my my son the route you promised him,

488
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: and now you've stuck him with his horrible route. You

489
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 1: need to double his hill bonus from three dollars to

490
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: six dollars, and you need to split his bundle and

491
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: deliver the second half down the hill. Wow. And I

492
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 1: didn't even know there was a hill bundle. Okay, if

493
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: we go back to that era, you're delivering newspapers, you're

494
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: making money. What are you doing with that money? Well?

495
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: I had my bicycle, that was a big deal. There

496
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:58,399
Speaker 1: was like car h a a few forty five, you know,

497
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:01,959
Speaker 1: a jar candy went to the movies. You know, it

498
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: was it was pocket money. Uh So you were always

499
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: into periodicals, the newspapers. Yeah, yeah, when we all mad

500
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 1: magazine you know, I like the song hits things with

501
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:19,320
Speaker 1: uh lyrics and yeah, I forgot completely about that. Yeah,

502
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: I love those was that was the name of the

503
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: magazine song. Wow. There are two or three versions of

504
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: it too. Okay, now you you hit puberty, you're out there.

505
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:34,199
Speaker 1: To what degree and at what age can you palpably

506
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 1: feel something is going on in San Francisco? Oh man?

507
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: Uh so? Uh. I entered Berkeley High School in the

508
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 1: fall in nineteen sixty four, and uh the Birds played

509
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:52,760
Speaker 1: a concert on the steps of our high school auditorium

510
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: after school one day. Wow, we didn't get that where

511
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: I went to high school. Okay. There was a band

512
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: that was rehearsing across the street with the next year,

513
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: so high ten. Uh. That became Country Joe in the

514
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: Fish and that park across the street became like a

515
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: place where bands would show up and and just rehearse.

516
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: And that's the first time I saw Steve Miller was

517
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 1: in that in that park. So it was just blowing

518
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: up right around the corner. And if you didn't, I mean,

519
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: it was impossible to avoid, but if you wanted to

520
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: seek it out, it was just flowing through the streets.

521
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 1: There are clubs everywhere. There were new bands everywhere. There

522
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: was a grapevine. Hey, have you seen this new band

523
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: Credence clear Water? No where are they? There are Gino

524
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: and Carlos. Okay man, I'm gonna check that out Monday night,

525
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And and every week there seemed like

526
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: a new band and Fillmore and the Avalon. Uh the

527
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 1: three bands a week and the three nights a week.

528
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: And they're booking an acts besides the local bands. So

529
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,880
Speaker 1: you could catch up on Howling Wolf or Chuck Berry

530
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 1: or Bow Didley. Bow Didley was huge with the hippies.

531
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: He could really, you know, make it work with it

532
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: at the Avalon. And he was dirty. It was funny.

533
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: He could play guitar forever and uh, yeah, the hippies

534
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: loved Bo Didley. Okay, from your house to the film war?

535
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: How far? And how did you get there? Oh jove?

536
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: You know, so it's Berkeley to San Francisco. It was

537
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: a half hour. There was no traffic, but you had

538
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: a car. You use your somebody had a car. Okay,

539
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: So you talked about being in high school doing LSD, etcetera.

540
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: How does that start into what degree? Or you remember

541
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: that community. I first took LSD when it was still legal.

542
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: I had a course cap of Owsley Purple, which costs

543
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 1: five bucks. And you don't, well, I'm we're talking about

544
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: the stuff made by Alsley. Uh and uh. The first

545
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 1: time I've ever seen stereo headphones, Bob and somebody put

546
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: on the New Rolling Stones album. Okay, are you kidding?

547
00:30:56,720 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: It's embedded in my DNA now and the common nation

548
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: of the New Rolling Stones album and the stereo headphones.

549
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: It blew me out? How much did that experience change

550
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: my life? The next day I went out and bought

551
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: a record player. Okay, what do you mean a stereo

552
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: or you literally didn't have a record player, didn't have

553
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:15,959
Speaker 1: a record player. I was always a radio guy. Until then,

554
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: why would I want records? Everything was on the radio,

555
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 1: so you didn't have any singles. You didn't that it

556
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: was over singles by the time I was twelve. Okay,

557
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: so you went out, got a record player. Let's go sideways.

558
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: Because you mentioned it, you know, San Francisco was known

559
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: as the land of the hippies. If you were actually

560
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 1: there was that palpable oh oh yeah, and and uh

561
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: it was huge. It was big. It was it was

562
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: in our consciousness in a very strong and powerful way

563
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 1: that it was a subject of discussion amongst the peers.

564
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 1: And it created a division. Right, there was what I

565
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: called the archie divide. Right, these kids belong archie. Comic

566
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 1: books were the hip, the hip new thing. Uh and

567
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: and I typically I was so berkeley about this that

568
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: I chewed the identity as a hippie, although there is

569
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: no way I didn't look like one. You know, I

570
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 1: had the hair, I had the clothes. But I was like,

571
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's for conformists. I'm a non right

572
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: al right, right, god, you're bringing it back. I remember

573
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: cutting my hair when everybody had it long said your

574
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:30,200
Speaker 1: parents make you doing No, I just don't want to

575
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: be like everybody else. Right now, I'm not gonna identify

576
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: with that. Those guys don't get it right exactly off

577
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: the bus, off the bus. But very exciting times in

578
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: Berkeley and San Francisco. Okay, so of course you know

579
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 1: I'm three thousand miles away. They talk about hate Ashbury.

580
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: Was that an actual scene you were aware of? Man,

581
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have believed hate Ashbury. N tell me. The

582
00:32:55,480 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: streets were just throbbing with energy and not bad energy.

583
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: You know. That came the next year when all the

584
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: so called street people showed up. But these were the

585
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: original hippies and and they were out there to create

586
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: a new community and they meant well, they meant to

587
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: h They were given out free food in the park

588
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 1: every afternoon. Now supposedly Emmett Grogan of the Diggers said

589
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,200
Speaker 1: that he stole all that food. I was stolen, It

590
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: was donated. It was you know, they they didn't have

591
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: the same kind of like ritual boundaries that the conventional

592
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: people did. That was out um there was. They had

593
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: a free store where everything was free and was there

594
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: something worth taking? It was like a thrift store, you know,

595
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: it was cast off stuff. But I'm in there and

596
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: you gotta go to the free store, of course. And

597
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: I'm in there and there's a couple of older black

598
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: ladies in there, you know, like maybe like church type

599
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: of ladies and the and they're walking around with this

600
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,840
Speaker 1: look on their face like, well, what the heck is this,

601
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: you know, And then one of them see something that

602
00:33:57,880 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: she wants I think was pair of shoes, maybe a handbag,

603
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: I can't remember, and she picks it up and she

604
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: looks at her friend like well, and friends nag yeah,

605
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: and she still puts it away under arm and sneaks

606
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: out with it. So the whole thing was like a

607
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: social laboratory, right and and and and everybody was in

608
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: it for a giggle and uh no harm. Yeah. So

609
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: sixty six and the bands were everywhere, Okay, not that

610
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:29,439
Speaker 1: you would know. But the hippies in the street before

611
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 1: the street people came, did they have jobs? I don't

612
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,360
Speaker 1: remember much jobs r That's why I ask some of

613
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: them would like The job that I remember people having

614
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: was throwing mail at the post office because they had

615
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: no Um, you could have long hair and work at

616
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: the post Most places in the nineteen sixty six made

617
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:52,799
Speaker 1: you cut your hair, Okay, let's talk about the some

618
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 1: of these legendary people. Emmic Rogan, did you ever meet him?

619
00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:59,479
Speaker 1: What was he like? You wrote that great book, Rina

620
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: Leave You ring Leavia was a classic parts of it

621
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:06,840
Speaker 1: or true? Well, definitely even reading that you could you

622
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: can see. How about Ken Kesey. I met Kiss once

623
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: and and uh, well I actually I was around him

624
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: a bunch at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

625
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:21,000
Speaker 1: Uh in his louder years. He was a drunk. Wow.

626
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 1: Yeah it was a little bit of a drag. But

627
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: Cantoner introduced me at one point, so I had, like,

628
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: you know, a good ten minute chat with once at

629
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: the film wore But then the rock and Roll Hall

630
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: of Fame thing, they'd hired him to pay him a

631
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: lot of money and that just earned his complete contempt.

632
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: So he didn't show up sober for anything. Okay, who

633
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: from that theme either didn't make it or didn't make

634
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: it as big as you thought they should. You know,

635
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,760
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know where to to to end uh

636
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: with that? Um so uh the first thing comes to

637
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: mind is Bruce Stevenson Fillmore Shuffle. I don't know why

638
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 1: that wasn't a hit. Uh, he was in some version

639
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:01,880
Speaker 1: of Blue Cheek her. But I mean nobody, nobody ever

640
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: heard either of those. Uh and uh golly, what about

641
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: the Flame and Groovies? I mean, shouldn't have been like

642
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: a big band at some point. Well, I bought the

643
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: one record what was the famous record where they really

644
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 1: tried to push it over teenage head? Yeah, that was

645
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: a counter you know the times, right, that was exactly

646
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: he was trying to be, you know, retro to a degree, etcetera.

647
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: They two of the code, though, you gotta give them

648
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: that they're still doing it and there's still true to

649
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:31,439
Speaker 1: the code. Okay, how about some people who made it

650
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: and then then could never replicate it, like Salve Valentino. Man,

651
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: Sal Valentino, I think about fifteen years ago, maybe a

652
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: little more. He was homeless, he was couch surfing and

653
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:50,360
Speaker 1: and you mentioned Sal Valentino. That's the lead singer of

654
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: the bou Bramos. It really San Francisco's first hit rock group.

655
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: Sly Stone produced their records and sal Valentino, to me,

656
00:36:57,040 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. Me

657
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: but what lost career? Right? So, uh, Sal, what's the

658
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: most money you ever made in the record business? He

659
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 1: goes Oh, I got five thousand dollars once from Warner Brothers.

660
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,720
Speaker 1: Is a finder's fee for bringing Ricky Lee Jones to him.

661
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the guy who did the guide

662
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: vocals on Randy Newman's first album because Randy had to

663
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: play piano and conduct. Oh I didn't know that. Oh man,

664
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: do I like to hear it that? Wow? Okay, so

665
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 1: you kind of don't finish high school. Then where do

666
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: you go from there? Well, I went to work at

667
00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 1: the Chronicle as a copy boy. Okay, let's a lot

668
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:40,239
Speaker 1: of these jobs don't exist anymore. I want to tell

669
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:43,280
Speaker 1: my audience what a copy boy was. Fifty five dollars

670
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 1: a week, whatever they want me to do. And while

671
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, I fold carbon paper between sheets of

672
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: newsprints so the reporters don't get their fingers dirty. Is

673
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: that a hard job to get? Yeah? Very hard job.

674
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: You have to have be nepotically connected, right, because you know,

675
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,720
Speaker 1: like you could even get a job on its sunset

676
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 1: of tower records in the seventies. You know things that

677
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 1: people don't think. Hey, there are low wage jobs, So

678
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 1: how did you actually get the job. So my parents

679
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:12,680
Speaker 1: and my older brothers were family friends of the UH

680
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: editor Scott new All And and uh so I was

681
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: paved in from the top, and uh Scott's wife, Ruth

682
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 1: was you know, all concerned about me for being a

683
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 1: high school dropout and thought that this would like be

684
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 1: a corrective and in fact it was. I mean, I

685
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: met my tribe. You know. I walked in there the

686
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 1: first day and I had on a necktie. I was

687
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: super uptight. And uh, I looked around this room and

688
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, after having been told my

689
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,880
Speaker 1: whole life that I don't fit in and I always

690
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,879
Speaker 1: wandered fit into what uh, I was in a room

691
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:50,839
Speaker 1: full of people who have been told the same thing. Really, Yeah,

692
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: that's one thing. I know it instinctively and instantly. You know.

693
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: When I went to I was college, I was the

694
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,240
Speaker 1: one person going to Vermont. You felt like an outcast

695
00:38:58,400 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: came to l a. There are a million people to

696
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:04,760
Speaker 1: like me. So uh and so was this a dream

697
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,319
Speaker 1: or was it just that this was the connection you had?

698
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 1: I like newspapers. I printed the newspaper in high school

699
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: because I'd been counseled into vocational studies and uh, I'd

700
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: run a newspaper in junior high. You know, a little.

701
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: You know, so I sort of had a thing for newspapers.

702
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 1: Like I said, I used to read them in the library.

703
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: It seemed like it would be a cool place to work,

704
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 1: but I tell you it turned it just suited me

705
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: right away, just like my character was built to stand outside,

706
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 1: observe and and scrawled down the observations. Okay, now, how

707
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: long after you started there did you go for your

708
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: short tenure Riverside. I was at the Chronicle as a

709
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: copyboy for a year, and then I cycled into Riverside.

710
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:53,319
Speaker 1: I spent one year in Riverside trying really hard to

711
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 1: do college, which I found to be high school with

712
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,919
Speaker 1: ash trays and there was good lives. The second year

713
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:02,839
Speaker 1: I just did the student newspaper and I was an

714
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:05,879
Speaker 1: hour outside of Los Angeles. It was nine. You would

715
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: be surprised at how much access I could get. I

716
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: spent five days doing a story with Little Richard while

717
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 1: he was at the Whiskey A Go Go. I'll go

718
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: back to his hotel room with him afterwards and listened

719
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: to him talk story for hours. I've had interviews with

720
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: sly Stone, with with Alvin Lee, big pieces in the

721
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 1: college newspaper. Look a little bit slower. How did you

722
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 1: actually make that happen? Are publicists okay? Were you reaching

723
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: out to them or did you have a name? And

724
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: some people started to call him up and tell him

725
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: I was a college newspapers. They loved college newspapers because

726
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:43,320
Speaker 1: there wasn't any coverage in mainstream media and the underground

727
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,239
Speaker 1: press was a kind of bizarre, sort of marginal thing.

728
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,640
Speaker 1: But college newspapers they knew that that was something they

729
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: could get into. So, I mean there are guys like

730
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: grayland Landon at r C, a victor who was just

731
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: so glad to hear from somebody at a college newspaper.

732
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: And I was right on the service list immediately. I

733
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 1: mean I started getting free records in the mail in

734
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: a moment. And you know that was like getting a

735
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: shot of morphine in your stomach. Okay, for we all

736
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 1: feel that felt that way. That was currency. Now, needless

737
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: to say, you ended up with more records than you

738
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: wanted because they would send you everything. What did you

739
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: do with the excess? Oh? You know, over the years,

740
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:20,799
Speaker 1: I developed very strategies. You know, I didn't keep them all.

741
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: I kept all the books though, Bob, you know I'm

742
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: going through that right now literally all the books are

743
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: just all the music books, all the music books. I mean,

744
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: I didn't you know, they didn't send me review copies.

745
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to say in general, because I'm moving

746
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 1: right now. My god, I'm dealing with the uh you know,

747
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta downsize a little bit. So I

748
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: was looking at the books because of course and everything

749
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: is eventually digital. And then I said, well, I get

750
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: it like you to this day. I get a lot

751
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:50,160
Speaker 1: of books. Not a week goes by that I don't

752
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:55,000
Speaker 1: get at least one. And uh, you say, well should

753
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 1: I throw out the self published one? Because that's one

754
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,480
Speaker 1: thing about rock and roll. When person is done, they

755
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: write a book and they wanted me to read it.

756
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: So then I said, well, where's where's the cut off point?

757
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 1: They said? And then I was watching the Rick Rubin

758
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 1: documentary on Showtime and he's got an archivist and he

759
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: has all the books. I said, Fuck, if I ever

760
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: get rich, I want to do that. So I'm saving

761
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 1: all the music books. I have an enormous library of

762
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 1: music books, enormous and they're never going back in print.

763
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: I mean you haven't. It's an artifact. And the ones

764
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: that are hard to find, are already super expensive, right,

765
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: So uh, let's go back to being a copy boy.

766
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: So you're a copy boy, and how far do you

767
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: move up in that year? Ah, there's no moving up

768
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,879
Speaker 1: from copy boy. But I'll tell you what UH did

769
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: get out of that is free tickets to the film War,

770
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 1: So a little bit slower. You're the copy boy. How

771
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:50,040
Speaker 1: did you get the free tickets? I'd go back to

772
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: uh John Wasserman, who was the junior drama critic, and say,

773
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:55,439
Speaker 1: can you get me on the guest list this week?

774
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: And he'd called Vicky Cunningham, who's Bill Graham's secretary, and say,

775
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: but you Selvin on the list? So I went to

776
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: I Want nine seven and sixty first half sixty eight.

777
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,760
Speaker 1: I went out to music six nights a week. Wow.

778
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: And you were living where I lived, in the ghetto

779
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: in Oakland, right near where uh Eldridge Cleaver got shot

780
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: and arrested. I heard the gunfire that night. Wow. So

781
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: once you dropped out of high school, you were left

782
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: your parents house, you were out on your own. Oh yeah, okay,

783
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: So if you're going out six nights a week, I

784
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: mean that was when it was really happening. Totally and

785
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: late shows. Okay, now you're having established your identity. You

786
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 1: were going for the show, not to hang. No, I

787
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: was just in the audience, right, and and I hadn't

788
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 1: really started writing articles, so I'll just get in. I

789
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: got slid in and just sit there and go oh wow,

790
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: and just soaking this stuff. Well, I mean, but you

791
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 1: were not part of a group. You didn't go there

792
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,439
Speaker 1: to talk to people or whatever. You would just taking

793
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: it all out. I was on a mission. I wanted

794
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 1: to absorb with most of this as I could. Okay,

795
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: you have a memory, and obviously things start to blur,

796
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:10,879
Speaker 1: But from that era, do you remember any specific performances

797
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:15,360
Speaker 1: that blew your minds? Many? How about Albert Collins, Elvin

798
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 1: Bishop and Johnny Winter playing in the Matrix, a club

799
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: with about fifty people sitting in the room. Okay, I

800
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: did see Albert Collins and the Iceman you know album era,

801
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 1: and he had that really long guitar corner dark. He

802
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: was badass, and you know, he was fantastic. And that

803
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: was Johnny Winter before the first album. Uh. This guy

804
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:41,720
Speaker 1: named Henry Carr brought him out from Texas and Henry

805
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: had been part of the Mother Earth thing which had

806
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: a big Texas connection, and Alvin was always around. I

807
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: mean Alvin was out six nights a week too. I

808
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 1: used to see Alvin three nights a week. Okay, the

809
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 1: guy always looks like he's done too many drugs. Is

810
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: he on the planet or not? Alvin? Yeah, Elvin Um

811
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 1: sobered up a long time ago. And Uh, I think

812
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: that he is probably one of the greatest bluesmen of

813
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: our time. Uh. And he has taken to doing performances occasionally,

814
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: just the two of them with Charlie Mussell White, and

815
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: Charlie is another person who just keeps getting better on

816
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: his instrument. I mean, it's amazing. He's like the Horowitz

817
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: of the harmonica. Uh. And these guys are in their

818
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: seventies now, they're they're really getting soulful. I haven't seen

819
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,439
Speaker 1: the Elvin Charlie show. I'm dying to see it. Those

820
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:31,840
Speaker 1: two guys blow me away. And how about some of

821
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: the bands from that scene, What was your experience, Like Quicksilver,

822
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 1: Cooksilver could be great and they could be horrible. Uh.

823
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: And the thing that I love about Cooksilver because they

824
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: were a five piece band in sixty six and then

825
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: sixties seven, like everything got a little bit more serious

826
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: and professional and stuff like that. And and they moved

827
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: back from their their dairy farm and Randa the hate

828
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: and they were gonna like start rehearsing. And the lead

829
00:45:55,680 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 1: singer is guy named Jimmy Murray said rehearsing, Oh man,

830
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. So he quit the band over rehearsals.

831
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: I mean that is that a fantastically that's the sixties.

832
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: That's about hippie moment. Rehearse So any given night, you know,

833
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: on the Bill of the Dead, Quicksilver could hand him

834
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: their butts. Uh And uh, it's Duncan. You know, because

835
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 1: Trippolina played the same solo every night, it got a

836
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 1: little bit better, I suppose. But you know, he was

837
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:30,719
Speaker 1: not improvisationalist. And Duncan if he if he was on,

838
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 1: it was gonna tear ass um. And he just died

839
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Man. And I gotta tell you,

840
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 1: Gary Duncan was the real deal, Bob. I mean, I

841
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: don't think the guy wore shoes the last forty years

842
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:46,800
Speaker 1: of his life. Yeah yeah, And uh he was like, uh,

843
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: absolutely incorrupted by success. Well he didn't have any. He

844
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,319
Speaker 1: was broken. He lived like quite trash, but it was

845
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:59,560
Speaker 1: a lovely guy. Worked on cars, played guitar and somehow

846
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,120
Speaker 1: managed make that work. I don't know what he lived

847
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 1: on because Quicksilver, Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they didn't

848
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,160
Speaker 1: even pay him. I don't know, but you know, the

849
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 1: manager of Quicksilver was also such a story. Ron Poulty.

850
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:19,000
Speaker 1: Paulty was another total hippie UM who came out to

851
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: San Francisco after accidentally killing his best friend. And that's

852
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,280
Speaker 1: incredible story. But he never got caught. Oh they everybody

853
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: knew he was acquitted by the coroner's jury, but it

854
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 1: was his friends friends he was worried about. So he

855
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:36,360
Speaker 1: got out of town. He was a full scale criminal

856
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: into Chicago. You know, he had a twenty four hour

857
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:42,879
Speaker 1: locksmith shop. Imagine that, right? Uh? And Poulty turned into

858
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: this fantastic hippie who was totally believed in the whole

859
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:49,480
Speaker 1: thing and and screwed up every career he handled. Uh.

860
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: The recently, um one of his groups has gotten back

861
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: together and recorded their first album is of Copps. Right,

862
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:57,799
Speaker 1: have you have you heard the record? I have her,

863
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 1: but I run into which one is the yoga? Exactly?

864
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:03,400
Speaker 1: I went to a couple of vents you there. They

865
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,880
Speaker 1: were telling me the whole story. So, uh, Denise Kaufman,

866
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: Madonna's yoga teacher. I mean she's amazing, clear uh, creative personality,

867
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: just amazing. And these girls all got back together. They

868
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: spent two years, they had some angel paying for it,

869
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:22,759
Speaker 1: recording the album they always wanted to record. And it

870
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: is gorgeous. It is just a fantastic album. It's like

871
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: being in nine seven all over again. Right, And so

872
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, you know, and uh, I told him,

873
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I talked to a lawyer that

874
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:42,120
Speaker 1: had a big money record deal for you, but Palty

875
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:44,879
Speaker 1: wouldn't take it. And and and they go, oh no,

876
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: that's not true. And I go, my god, and and

877
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,279
Speaker 1: and so I said, let me check because I know

878
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 1: the guy he was talking to. So I called the

879
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: guy from Columbia that made the offer. He goes, oh yeah, man,

880
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:55,600
Speaker 1: I I wanted that band really bad, but Palty wouldn't

881
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 1: let us. And then that was what happened to Quicksover too.

882
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: It's Booksover didn't put out an album until light six years, right,

883
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 1: and and they're pretty fizzled by then. Uh, if that

884
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: album come out in sixty seven good GOLLI right, well, paulty.

885
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:15,319
Speaker 1: Uh was backstage at Monterey Pop Festival and Krik Silver

886
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:18,799
Speaker 1: played and Albert Goldman told him you hauled out for

887
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:22,359
Speaker 1: a million dollars and he did, gush, darn't it? And

888
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: you know, nobody wanted to pay a million dollars, so

889
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: like you're a half later he goes, okay, we'll take

890
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: the hundred thousand. Okay, what about Bloomfield? I love Michael Bloomfield.

891
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 1: He was a reader. Hey Michael, what are you reading?

892
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reading the letters of Evelyn Waugh is

893
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: so fascinating. Wow. Okay, then the other Okay, Dan Hicks,

894
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 1: Oh god, I love Dan to god miss him. Uh.

895
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,439
Speaker 1: He was dry sardonic for real. He used to send

896
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:57,799
Speaker 1: out postcard Did you get him with the jumbles on him? Man?

897
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:02,000
Speaker 1: I mean you know who does that? And nobody? Uh?

898
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so I mean his memorial And and

899
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: Ria Maldaur speaking and she's talking about how she went

900
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:13,760
Speaker 1: by his garage sale one weekend and the gold record

901
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:20,120
Speaker 1: that she gave him was out for sale. That was

902
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:25,799
Speaker 1: a mistake, I'm okay. And what was the viewpoint of

903
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 1: the dead from you know, were they the house band

904
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 1: or were they seen as something special in San Francisco.

905
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 1: So the Dead were just a part of the firmament.

906
00:50:36,120 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: And and very early on there was a contingency known

907
00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: as deadheads, and they were the sort of stinky hippies

908
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,719
Speaker 1: over on the side doing the kelp dancing with their

909
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: hands over their head, right. Uh. And they're a part

910
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:50,200
Speaker 1: of every show the Dead were on. Um. So you know,

911
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: they weren't really Uh, they were a factor from the

912
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: very beginning. But the Dead didn't have an audience outside

913
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:03,040
Speaker 1: of San Francisco and in New York for years. For

914
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: years they were just didn't have me took took him

915
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 1: to like nineteen seventy to make it in New York. Yeah. Um.

916
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: One of the whole things about around Altamont was they

917
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: were all so pro Uh. Mountain Girl told me that

918
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:18,960
Speaker 1: they were still she was stealing baskets of strawberries for

919
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 1: her kids from the supermarket. Wow. Okay, so let's go

920
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:27,080
Speaker 1: back to you. How does it end at Riverside for you? Yeah,

921
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: I'm taking this three hour um art appreciation class where

922
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 1: they draw the shades and uh, well I'm out called

923
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: sleeping and uh I wake up and my friend Michael

924
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:48,959
Speaker 1: is in the seat in front of me. He's turned around.

925
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: He looks at me with this incredible look of frustration,

926
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 1: and he says, uh, what are we doing here? And

927
00:51:57,640 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: I said, I just woke up. And he goes just

928
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: discussed turns away from me and then like sort of

929
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:06,920
Speaker 1: tick tick tick tick tick ding. Oh I get it,

930
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: and I tap him on the shoulder. I said, let's split.

931
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: So we walked out of that class. That's the last

932
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:12,800
Speaker 1: class I went to. But you know it's pretty s

933
00:52:12,840 --> 00:52:16,080
Speaker 1: much short of the semester. So I paid Mike a

934
00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: few bucks to go take my final for me, so

935
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:20,759
Speaker 1: you know he could pass it because I knew I

936
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: wasn't going to And uh, he split in the middle

937
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 1: because the teacher collected the paper road by row and

938
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:28,839
Speaker 1: she he saw her like look down the road after

939
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:30,880
Speaker 1: she looked at the names on the paper and double checked.

940
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:33,879
Speaker 1: So he figured we've been had, and indeed we had.

941
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: They called me in and they were very very upset

942
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:41,000
Speaker 1: with me, and they said, well, why did you hire

943
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: someone who flunked? And I said, well, he had a chance.

944
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 1: So they suggested that I withdraw from the university for

945
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: a while and they would let it go, and I

946
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:57,479
Speaker 1: said that was a very generous offer. So they didn't

947
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,399
Speaker 1: actually kick me out, but you know, I went out

948
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: through misadventure, that's for sure. And you when you were out,

949
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: any intention idea that you would ever return. No, Okay,

950
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: so it ends that way. How do you get back

951
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 1: working at the Chronicle? So I went back up to

952
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:23,720
Speaker 1: San Francisco and I started like knocking on doors writing

953
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:27,600
Speaker 1: this article right in that article, and the Chronicle was

954
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: one of those places, and I've been there. I knew

955
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: who to talk to. So I was in the pink

956
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 1: section the Sunday date book, uh, the calendar of the Chronicle. UH,

957
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: and I was UH in and out of Rolling Stone

958
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 1: a little. There was a thing called Earth Magazine that

959
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 1: was very good to me. UH. Jim Good from Playboys

960
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 1: started that it was supposed to be a big slick

961
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 1: counter culture think didn't last that long, and UH I

962
00:53:52,719 --> 00:53:56,840
Speaker 1: got involved in a lot of interesting stories like UH,

963
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:00,360
Speaker 1: I was following Creden's Clear Waters recording a pen Jelan.

964
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,360
Speaker 1: I watched them rehearse it. I watched them record it.

965
00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: UH interviewed them extensionally for a while. UH. That year

966
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: seventy and seventy one uhcod was like a cottage industry

967
00:54:11,239 --> 00:54:13,160
Speaker 1: for me. They were like the biggest band in the

968
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 1: world and here they were right in the East Bay. Okay, Alex,

969
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:21,320
Speaker 1: since you mentioned it, what was the perspective on Rolling

970
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:25,359
Speaker 1: Stone which started in sixty seven? Was it God had

971
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: ry or another rag or did people hate Winner or

972
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: what was going on? Oh? No, they eve't. Nobody hated

973
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: Winner right away that he had to work up to that.

974
00:54:33,239 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: I remember reading the first issue. I remember where I was.

975
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 1: Uh it was November sixty seven. I bought it at

976
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:43,360
Speaker 1: this bookstore called UC Corner, which catered to the college crowd,

977
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: and I walked up to a diner called Size Child Broider,

978
00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:49,640
Speaker 1: and I remember being spellbound by I believe that John

979
00:54:49,719 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 1: Landau wrote an article about Sam and Dave in that

980
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: first issue. That just stunned me that there would be

981
00:54:55,880 --> 00:55:00,840
Speaker 1: uh literate journalism about soul music, which was a current

982
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: obsession with me. And uh the rest of it was

983
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:09,759
Speaker 1: right up my alley. I mean, I just the it

984
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: was not a national magazine that first issue. The front

985
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,759
Speaker 1: page story was Tom Rowns quits his k f r

986
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: C program director, and that was the local top forty station,

987
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:23,800
Speaker 1: so he sort of like stumbled into that whole national

988
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: international thing, but it stumbled into itself rolling stone. I

989
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 1: mean they stepped into a vortex and they managed to

990
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: hold on and ride that to the bell. Okay, a

991
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:37,600
Speaker 1: couple of people. Ralph Gleeson. Ralph Gleason was a hero.

992
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:41,520
Speaker 1: I went to high school with his kids. Uh he.

993
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: When I got the job at the Chronicle, I was

994
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 1: hired by his complete nemesis, so I was like immediately

995
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 1: blacklisted by him while he was in Fantasy. At one

996
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 1: point I ran into him over at Fantasy and we

997
00:55:54,880 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: had a complete, uh you know, um conciliation. In fact,

998
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 1: he called my boss that night and they had a

999
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,879
Speaker 1: conciliation and he sat on a filing cabinet that night

1000
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:07,560
Speaker 1: that afternoon and Fantasy and gave me a two hour

1001
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: lecture and how to do my job. That stayed with

1002
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: me for the next thirty four years. And he was

1003
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:15,319
Speaker 1: an amazing guy. And when I had a point in

1004
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 1: two thousand and one where the management decided that I

1005
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:20,839
Speaker 1: was holding in the way, and uh, I took him

1006
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:23,279
Speaker 1: down on an aged discrimination beef and I came back

1007
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:26,440
Speaker 1: to the newsroom and I was like radioactive. You know,

1008
00:56:26,520 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 1: nobody wanted to tell me to do anything, uh, And

1009
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:31,520
Speaker 1: I had a bad attitude about my job as a

1010
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,160
Speaker 1: matter of fact. So I went downstairs to where they

1011
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:37,879
Speaker 1: keep the micro fiche, and I went and I read

1012
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: every single Ralph Gleason article that he ever wrote for

1013
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:44,400
Speaker 1: the Chronicle in order, starting in nineteen fifty. Wow. And

1014
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I did this, A little bit

1015
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:50,319
Speaker 1: like the guy in Close Encounters, right, But by the

1016
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:53,960
Speaker 1: end of it, I had uh decided to write a

1017
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:58,240
Speaker 1: major article, and I had kind of reconnected with my bliss,

1018
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: and I'd also become credibly uh familiar with Ralph's work.

1019
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: I mean, covering Hank Williams out in San Pablo in

1020
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, and covering Fats Domino at the Oakland

1021
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: Auditorium in fifty four, and calling out Pat Boone as

1022
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 1: a phony in nineteen fifty six. I mean, he was

1023
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: known as a jazz guy, and indeed, like Louis Armstrong

1024
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 1: and Duke Ellington couldn't believe that they were getting written

1025
00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: about in a white newspaper in California, and they thought

1026
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: he was their close friend for the rest of their lives.

1027
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 1: But he was also on the rock and roll stuff

1028
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:33,440
Speaker 1: all the way and then Dylan blew him out and

1029
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: he became like the first guy to really endorse Dylan

1030
00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 1: and major way, uh even ahead of handoff. And then

1031
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:42,560
Speaker 1: he caught the San Francisco thing right away from the

1032
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: very first concert at the Family Dog concert at the

1033
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 1: Long Sharman's Hall. He was there. He was on the scene.

1034
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: And you know, if people made fun of him, they

1035
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: said that he was either uh uh to uh sixteen

1036
00:57:55,480 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: year olds. He was forty eight, and he's either two

1037
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: twenty four year olds, three sixteen year olds, or four

1038
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: twelve year olds. But uh, you know, Garcia loved him,

1039
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: the Airplane loved him. The Santana guys all admired him.

1040
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: I mean, he was the dude nobody will ever have

1041
00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 1: that career again. He was the first guy to write

1042
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:18,360
Speaker 1: about pop music on a regular basis for um daily newspaper,

1043
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: you know, like the Gilbert Seldis of pop music. Covering

1044
00:58:22,520 --> 00:58:27,240
Speaker 1: a couple other legends. How about Tom Donahue, huge, huge guy,

1045
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 1: God Bob. I'm not surprised, but these are the right

1046
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:34,880
Speaker 1: people to be asking about. Donahue was a father of

1047
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 1: FM rating. He was a mental giant. It wasn't just radio.

1048
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 1: He knew what life was about. He got it in

1049
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: that really supreme way, and he had these enormous appetites.

1050
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:51,120
Speaker 1: He was six five and four fifty pounds, his wife

1051
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 1: was pounds, and he just was this incredibly penetrating intellect.

1052
00:58:57,880 --> 00:59:00,480
Speaker 1: When I called Carl Scott, you know, call from Warner Others, right,

1053
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 1: and he worked for Tom way way way back, and

1054
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 1: all the other people are gone, and I'm writing this

1055
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:07,240
Speaker 1: book about sly Stone and I need somebody like sort

1056
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: of like qualify Tom and Carlson. I think of a

1057
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:15,240
Speaker 1: young Orson Welles and that's right, and and uh yeah,

1058
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 1: he took over kmp X when it was midnight to

1059
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:22,439
Speaker 1: six am operation and turned it into a twenty four

1060
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 1: hour and no time, and he figured out the whole

1061
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: underground rock radio thing. He was doing Los Angeles and

1062
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: San Francisco radio every night, and uh, you know, he

1063
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:35,800
Speaker 1: just had vision and intellect way beyond a Bill Graham,

1064
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:38,560
Speaker 1: who was really kind of a narrow minded sort of

1065
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 1: capitalist who didn't get it. I mean Bill didn't take LSD.

1066
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:52,720
Speaker 1: Tom gobbled it. Okay, So how do you get back

1067
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 1: into the chronicle? How did I get back in while

1068
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:58,040
Speaker 1: I was doing all this pink section work then uh

1069
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 1: uh Gleason took the job with Fantasy, and Wasserman became

1070
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:05,880
Speaker 1: the Oh yeah, okay, this is good. Uh. Wasserman became

1071
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 1: the guy. And John had this goofy idea that to

1072
01:00:10,600 --> 01:00:13,120
Speaker 1: hire a jazz musician to be a jazz critic. So

1073
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:17,480
Speaker 1: I hired John Hendrix, the jazz singer two halftime job,

1074
01:00:17,520 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 1: to be a jazz critic. And Hendricks thought this was

1075
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 1: cool as hell, and he would go sit in with

1076
01:00:21,240 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 1: the acts and write about it. And it just wasn't

1077
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:28,160
Speaker 1: quite clear to him what the distant journalistic distance was, right,

1078
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:31,560
Speaker 1: and he and so John tried to explain to him, no,

1079
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:34,480
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So he would do it and

1080
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:38,120
Speaker 1: not tell about it, right, so the last and and

1081
01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: then he had a gig in London for six weeks.

1082
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: So I had his gig for six weeks, and I

1083
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 1: knew where the paper clips were, That's what Wasserman said,

1084
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,360
Speaker 1: you know, And I answered the mail and I answered

1085
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: the phone. So I did all this stuff that jazz

1086
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:53,000
Speaker 1: criticks can't do. And then Hendricks came back and they

1087
01:00:53,040 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 1: started like, well, you know, you have six hours this week,

1088
01:00:56,920 --> 01:01:00,480
Speaker 1: he'll have ten. And then he there's this famous Giants

1089
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:03,720
Speaker 1: of Jazz Concert Big Deal Concert at the Masonic Auditory

1090
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,640
Speaker 1: and Felonious Monks, Sonny Rowland's Art Blakey blah blah blah,

1091
01:01:07,720 --> 01:01:11,480
Speaker 1: and Hendrix appeared the entire second half on stage and

1092
01:01:11,520 --> 01:01:13,760
Speaker 1: then wrote the review Monday for getting to mention that part.

1093
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:17,360
Speaker 1: So that was it. I got the job, and uh

1094
01:01:17,560 --> 01:01:19,920
Speaker 1: many many many years later he was ninety one years old.

1095
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:22,000
Speaker 1: They had a sort of tribute to John Hendricks over

1096
01:01:22,080 --> 01:01:24,160
Speaker 1: Marin County and I got to go out in front

1097
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:26,120
Speaker 1: of an audience that, like y'all, you know, that is

1098
01:01:26,120 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: the Chronicles guying. I have to go to no man,

1099
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: I'm like Bill Cosby. I'm just another guy that John

1100
01:01:31,880 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: Hendrix put in the business. Okay, So Hendrix was covering

1101
01:01:36,800 --> 01:01:39,120
Speaker 1: jazz when you got the job. Was a jazz, roll,

1102
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:44,280
Speaker 1: pop music whatever, you know. John Wasserman, he was like

1103
01:01:44,680 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 1: a kind of a Playboy magazine, hi fi kind of guy,

1104
01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He wasn't hippie. He liked

1105
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 1: al Jaro and uh Diadado and and that was his

1106
01:01:55,280 --> 01:01:58,600
Speaker 1: idea of music. And so he was really anxious to

1107
01:01:58,640 --> 01:02:00,960
Speaker 1: have the rock scene covered us. He knew that it

1108
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:03,960
Speaker 1: was on. Okay, I mean, you were one of a

1109
01:02:04,080 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: pretty small fraternity. What was it like being on your end?

1110
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 1: It was weird for a long time because, uh, the

1111
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:17,800
Speaker 1: until like the late seventies, there was no infrastructure for

1112
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: for publicity and and and you know, photo passes and

1113
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:25,600
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. I mean, I remember like taking photographers.

1114
01:02:25,640 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: It was hard to get the newspaper to give me

1115
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:30,400
Speaker 1: a photographer, you know, like they didn't think it was important.

1116
01:02:30,800 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 1: The first two years, all my reviews ran between the

1117
01:02:34,480 --> 01:02:36,680
Speaker 1: adult theater ads in the edge of the paper. And

1118
01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 1: and I remember the first article that had a one

1119
01:02:39,520 --> 01:02:42,640
Speaker 1: column mugshot was the review of the Bob Marley and

1120
01:02:42,640 --> 01:02:46,240
Speaker 1: the Whalers first show in in uh the United States. Uh,

1121
01:02:46,280 --> 01:02:49,720
Speaker 1: they that they had gotten uh Blackwell thought they were

1122
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: going to get over with American blacks. So he booked

1123
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: him on a tour with slying the family Stone. Lasted

1124
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:58,600
Speaker 1: one date and they threw him out, Uh in Las Vegas,

1125
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: and some nightclub owner named Scot Peering ended up at

1126
01:03:01,560 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: Rough Trade Records in London calls me up and says,

1127
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 1: you know, if I booked this group called the Whalers,

1128
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: would anybody come? And I remember saying, Scott, if it's

1129
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:13,480
Speaker 1: just you and me do it. And not only did

1130
01:03:13,520 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 1: anybody come, the place was packed both nights, and it

1131
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:21,000
Speaker 1: was packed with the scene. You know. Grateful Dead was there,

1132
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,120
Speaker 1: the airplane was there, That Steve Miller band was there.

1133
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: It was on you know, and uh, Donnihue was there,

1134
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 1: and Donnie came backstage and told him if they stayed

1135
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 1: over and played next week at this club, he put

1136
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:36,840
Speaker 1: them on the radio live in between and helped drive

1137
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: up business. And this was the real whalers. This is

1138
01:03:40,040 --> 01:03:45,560
Speaker 1: Neville Livingston, Bunny versus Peter McIntosh, Tosh and Bob and uh,

1139
01:03:45,640 --> 01:03:48,600
Speaker 1: you know, no I threees no rita. They hired some

1140
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 1: girl to wear a watch because they were so incapable

1141
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:54,520
Speaker 1: of telling time. Her whole job was to stand by

1142
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 1: the side of the stage and tell them it's an

1143
01:03:56,880 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 1: hour now, you know. They were amazing and the uh

1144
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:05,440
Speaker 1: the show which is that that that live show is

1145
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:10,160
Speaker 1: on an album called Talking Blues. That that case on broadcast. Whoa,

1146
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:14,240
Speaker 1: that was amazing and okay. So then in the set

1147
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:18,120
Speaker 1: late seventies, you're saying, the record companies get their publicity

1148
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:25,640
Speaker 1: infrastructure down, So how is it for you? Uh? You know, uh,

1149
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:28,400
Speaker 1: it just meant everything was getting amped up, and the

1150
01:04:28,480 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 1: service was better, and you got a lot more interviews.

1151
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:33,000
Speaker 1: I mean that was sort of new. You know, Hey,

1152
01:04:33,040 --> 01:04:35,080
Speaker 1: do you want to interview Bonnie Rate? She just put

1153
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 1: out her first album. You might like her, you know

1154
01:04:37,160 --> 01:04:40,440
Speaker 1: you like blues. Oh yeah, I told Bonnie that, you know,

1155
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:43,960
Speaker 1: uh did uh interview with her twenty five years ago

1156
01:04:44,040 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: when I was like at the paper for a couple

1157
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: of months and she just put out her first album

1158
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:50,200
Speaker 1: And she said yeah, and we both still got our

1159
01:04:50,240 --> 01:04:54,280
Speaker 1: same jobs. So did you end up burning up because

1160
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:56,160
Speaker 1: the music went through a lot of changes from when

1161
01:04:56,200 --> 01:04:58,680
Speaker 1: you started until you left the chronicles? You ever burned

1162
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:01,560
Speaker 1: out on the music have burn outs and reefrethings. I

1163
01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:04,520
Speaker 1: mean like I got really sick of the Rio Speedwagon

1164
01:05:04,600 --> 01:05:06,920
Speaker 1: sticks here, but then a new wave of revitalized me.

1165
01:05:07,400 --> 01:05:09,920
Speaker 1: I think that happened to a lot of people. I

1166
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 1: got really sick of the uh turn of the century

1167
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:17,120
Speaker 1: stuff because there was so much interest upstairs and me

1168
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:20,680
Speaker 1: covering things like the Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears. I

1169
01:05:20,720 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: went to three Britney Spears concerts, and each time I

1170
01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 1: sat there and my life flash before my eyes. I

1171
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:29,320
Speaker 1: could not think bom I couldn't think what I could

1172
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 1: contribute to the conversation about this. Right, making fun of

1173
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense, right, and and there's no

1174
01:05:35,520 --> 01:05:39,480
Speaker 1: serious criticism associated here, and the cultural movement is like

1175
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:41,920
Speaker 1: almost non existent. So you know, what do I have

1176
01:05:42,040 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 1: to say about this? I wanted to like die uh

1177
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:48,440
Speaker 1: and and so somewhere around like two thousand and two,

1178
01:05:48,520 --> 01:05:52,920
Speaker 1: when I got back after the uh IS discrimination, I

1179
01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 1: really steered myself into an entirely different type of coverage.

1180
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 1: You know, I stopped doing concerts. I stopped you know,

1181
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:03,040
Speaker 1: I had a younger guy working for me, uh, work

1182
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:04,960
Speaker 1: for the paper, not for me. What am I thinking? Like?

1183
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:08,480
Speaker 1: UH named Iden Wazirian. And you know, if we needed

1184
01:06:08,520 --> 01:06:11,720
Speaker 1: to cover one of these uh Aaron Carter shows, a

1185
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:13,880
Speaker 1: Den was the man for that. I think I'll do

1186
01:06:13,960 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 1: the interview with Taj Mahal about his Caribbean seed business

1187
01:06:18,160 --> 01:06:22,400
Speaker 1: and how he's helping farmers all over the Caribbean. UM

1188
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: or do some public health stuff about UH earbuds and

1189
01:06:27,720 --> 01:06:31,959
Speaker 1: the dangers of audio. Yeah. I just moved into trying

1190
01:06:32,000 --> 01:06:35,520
Speaker 1: to find other ways to reach the audience. For a

1191
01:06:35,240 --> 01:06:38,600
Speaker 1: bit there, I was doing MP three's because you could

1192
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 1: post MP three, right of course. And I was like,

1193
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 1: oh man, you know, and I'd clear the publishing with people.

1194
01:06:43,960 --> 01:06:46,000
Speaker 1: It was like as a dream come true for a

1195
01:06:46,080 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 1: music cricket. Through the music three, through the pages go here,

1196
01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:54,320
Speaker 1: the fact you can write about something that they can

1197
01:06:54,400 --> 01:06:56,760
Speaker 1: listen right then now they don't even have the time

1198
01:06:56,800 --> 01:06:59,360
Speaker 1: to listen to anything, never mind read. There's this Japanese

1199
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:02,720
Speaker 1: guy around San Francisco doing all the hipster clubs as

1200
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 1: an opening act. His name was Toshio Harano and he

1201
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:09,040
Speaker 1: was a huge Jimmy Rogers fan. He would go and

1202
01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:11,640
Speaker 1: do Jimmy Rogers songs and nothing. But it was just

1203
01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:16,280
Speaker 1: hilarious because he hadn't lost his accent, right, so he'd

1204
01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:19,800
Speaker 1: as peach picking time in Georgia at pick a girl

1205
01:07:19,840 --> 01:07:23,040
Speaker 1: for me all all. And I mean I took him

1206
01:07:23,040 --> 01:07:25,920
Speaker 1: down to my basement and I recorded him, and I

1207
01:07:25,960 --> 01:07:28,360
Speaker 1: recorded him over three or four times, and I said,

1208
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:30,040
Speaker 1: you want to do it again, and goes no, that's

1209
01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:32,080
Speaker 1: as good as I can do it. And then I

1210
01:07:32,440 --> 01:07:36,240
Speaker 1: sent it to the publisher, Ralph Piers, the publisher, right,

1211
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:38,560
Speaker 1: and he lives up in Nevada and I know him,

1212
01:07:38,800 --> 01:07:40,680
Speaker 1: and I sent him an MP three and said, you know,

1213
01:07:40,760 --> 01:07:43,200
Speaker 1: can I get a clearance for this? And and he

1214
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 1: wrote back, he said, you know, I can feel this

1215
01:07:45,600 --> 01:07:50,280
Speaker 1: guy's sincerity. Yes, Okay, So how does it end with

1216
01:07:50,320 --> 01:07:57,720
Speaker 1: a Chronicle? Oh? That was uh to UH nineteen, uh

1217
01:07:58,360 --> 01:08:02,160
Speaker 1: two thousand and and and UM nine and the new

1218
01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:05,480
Speaker 1: union contract. And we come in to look at the

1219
01:08:05,600 --> 01:08:07,480
Speaker 1: eight and a half by eleven bullet points to the

1220
01:08:07,520 --> 01:08:11,280
Speaker 1: new contract. And I'm going down one draconian thing after another.

1221
01:08:11,360 --> 01:08:13,760
Speaker 1: Now in truth that Hurst people are losing a million

1222
01:08:13,760 --> 01:08:16,560
Speaker 1: dollars a week. So I'm in there in trouble and

1223
01:08:16,640 --> 01:08:19,320
Speaker 1: they've got to take some actions. And I get about

1224
01:08:19,360 --> 01:08:23,160
Speaker 1: halfway down and it says, uh, no more early retirement,

1225
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:25,680
Speaker 1: and I want I'm fifty nine. I wonder is this

1226
01:08:25,720 --> 01:08:29,400
Speaker 1: paper even gonna be here six years from now? I'm

1227
01:08:29,439 --> 01:08:31,599
Speaker 1: out of here? And did you get a check from

1228
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:35,600
Speaker 1: the Chronicle since before the next day, Okay, I was

1229
01:08:35,640 --> 01:08:40,560
Speaker 1: gone and uh I was one of editorial players to

1230
01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:42,439
Speaker 1: leave their jobs that year. I mean, it was just

1231
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:45,920
Speaker 1: like it was sinking shift. Okay. So let's go through

1232
01:08:45,960 --> 01:08:48,719
Speaker 1: a few things. What do you think about today's music?

1233
01:08:49,920 --> 01:08:51,599
Speaker 1: Very little. I don't think about it much at all.

1234
01:08:52,800 --> 01:08:54,519
Speaker 1: Since I left the paper. I don't have to watch

1235
01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:58,920
Speaker 1: the rookies play baseball. You have a lot of good lives. Okay,

1236
01:08:59,800 --> 01:09:04,559
Speaker 1: what the future of newspapers? Wow, my crystal ball is

1237
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: pretty foggy. I've been reading The Times this week while

1238
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 1: I've been down. Boy, it's gone to hell again someone

1239
01:09:10,920 --> 01:09:14,200
Speaker 1: who reads it every day. There was a period before

1240
01:09:14,200 --> 01:09:16,280
Speaker 1: they were talking about the l A Times, when they

1241
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:19,599
Speaker 1: had Michael kins leaves headed irrelevant? What you think about

1242
01:09:19,600 --> 01:09:22,599
Speaker 1: Michael Kinsley? How do the opinion page? They were covering

1243
01:09:22,720 --> 01:09:27,320
Speaker 1: Washington whatever. Then they sold it out to Tribune and

1244
01:09:27,400 --> 01:09:29,920
Speaker 1: it's been downhill ever since. I mean, it's had a

1245
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:32,800
Speaker 1: slight return that well, but I don't know what they

1246
01:09:32,800 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 1: have a right turn. But I will tell you this,

1247
01:09:35,280 --> 01:09:39,240
Speaker 1: since uh it was sold to the new owner, I

1248
01:09:39,280 --> 01:09:42,519
Speaker 1: can feel, even though pearl Stein is the editor, you

1249
01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 1: expected some big change. They just redid the app which

1250
01:09:45,800 --> 01:09:48,240
Speaker 1: I gotta give him some credit for. There's a little

1251
01:09:48,240 --> 01:09:50,839
Speaker 1: more coverage because I used to call it a toy newspaper.

1252
01:09:50,880 --> 01:09:52,560
Speaker 1: Everybody I know canceled it, but I said, I'm not,

1253
01:09:52,640 --> 01:09:54,880
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta know what's going on. But the

1254
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:57,720
Speaker 1: business actually would be two pages now it can be

1255
01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:01,080
Speaker 1: three or four. So if you're coming from a real paper,

1256
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:04,719
Speaker 1: it still looks like a toy paper. But if you're looking,

1257
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:07,040
Speaker 1: you know, as someone who's here every day, I would

1258
01:10:07,080 --> 01:10:09,760
Speaker 1: say that it's got a chance. But the bleeding has

1259
01:10:09,760 --> 01:10:13,360
Speaker 1: been stanched. Yes, I think that's true of the chronicle too.

1260
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 1: And I don't know that they're reaching new people. They're

1261
01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:21,679
Speaker 1: definitely not reaching new people. What are They're just serving

1262
01:10:21,720 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 1: their old audience. You know, what are the amazing things?

1263
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 1: You know, having lived through this digital disruption, If you

1264
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:29,280
Speaker 1: go back twenty years ago, if it was in the

1265
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:33,759
Speaker 1: newspaper l A Times, New York Times, you assumes everybody

1266
01:10:33,760 --> 01:10:37,840
Speaker 1: who cared had seen it, knew the story today. No, No,

1267
01:10:37,960 --> 01:10:40,720
Speaker 1: I mean it's like it could be anywhere. Most people

1268
01:10:40,800 --> 01:10:42,759
Speaker 1: have not heard the story. They're hearing it from you first,

1269
01:10:43,000 --> 01:10:44,960
Speaker 1: which is really strange. Well, so this is one of

1270
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:47,840
Speaker 1: the themes of your of your your newsletter, which I

1271
01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:50,559
Speaker 1: still think of, by the way, as a newsletter when

1272
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:55,840
Speaker 1: it came to mail. Uh is the sources of information

1273
01:10:56,040 --> 01:10:58,920
Speaker 1: are so fragment of this day that you can't really

1274
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:02,320
Speaker 1: reach a consensus of media at all. Well, it's very

1275
01:11:02,400 --> 01:11:06,560
Speaker 1: strange for someone like me, you know, the original dream

1276
01:11:06,720 --> 01:11:09,679
Speaker 1: is to reach a point where you can reach everybody. Now,

1277
01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: like you, I'm an outside guy. They're never gonna hire

1278
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 1: me from the New York Times whatever, blah blah blah.

1279
01:11:14,240 --> 01:11:15,479
Speaker 1: But it used to be, well, if you're in the

1280
01:11:15,479 --> 01:11:17,760
Speaker 1: New York Times, or if you're a comedian, if you

1281
01:11:17,840 --> 01:11:20,439
Speaker 1: had a network television show, you were at the pinnacle.

1282
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:23,640
Speaker 1: Everybody knew your name yesterday. I mean, why would you

1283
01:11:23,680 --> 01:11:26,960
Speaker 1: want to sitcom today? I mean, what is Mark Marin?

1284
01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:29,120
Speaker 1: Who does podcast? He had his own show on I

1285
01:11:29,280 --> 01:11:32,519
Speaker 1: s C. Did anybody see it? So now, I mean,

1286
01:11:32,560 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: things are written in the New York Times, so the

1287
01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:38,760
Speaker 1: goal is a little obscured. And now because there's so

1288
01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:43,360
Speaker 1: many messages, it's the virality has become harder. But without

1289
01:11:43,400 --> 01:11:45,720
Speaker 1: making a personal going back to music again, a couple

1290
01:11:45,800 --> 01:11:49,679
Speaker 1: more questions, What did you feel about writing negative reviews?

1291
01:11:51,320 --> 01:11:53,599
Speaker 1: I felt like I was an advocate for the arts

1292
01:11:54,120 --> 01:11:57,920
Speaker 1: and that uh, I could say whatever I wanted as

1293
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:02,320
Speaker 1: long as I stayed true to my core beliefs and

1294
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:08,840
Speaker 1: represented those openly. Uh uh. And I was uh, you know,

1295
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:10,519
Speaker 1: I don't want to say I was fearless as a

1296
01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:12,640
Speaker 1: shifty word to say about yourself, but but I was

1297
01:12:13,240 --> 01:12:17,880
Speaker 1: unafraid to write terrible reviews of people I knew. You know,

1298
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:20,479
Speaker 1: you saw Grace the other day, right, absolutely, God, Grace

1299
01:12:20,560 --> 01:12:22,920
Speaker 1: is the greatest. You know what else I got her

1300
01:12:22,920 --> 01:12:26,639
Speaker 1: out of that band I did? I went to see

1301
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:31,040
Speaker 1: a starship show at a ship, a little disco called Dreamland,

1302
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:35,200
Speaker 1: and there were twenty thirty people there and they were

1303
01:12:35,240 --> 01:12:39,200
Speaker 1: doing a fortnight run, and and I just said that

1304
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 1: this thing was a complete embarrassment, just a complete embarrassing

1305
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:44,400
Speaker 1: this is what you wrote in the band the paper

1306
01:12:44,439 --> 01:12:46,760
Speaker 1: and it ran on Saturday, and Grace picked up the

1307
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:49,759
Speaker 1: phone and called Bill Thompson, the manager, and she said,

1308
01:12:50,479 --> 01:12:55,000
Speaker 1: Selvan is right, I'm not coming tonight. And that was

1309
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:57,800
Speaker 1: the end. That was the end. Okay, Well, that just

1310
01:12:57,840 --> 01:13:00,559
Speaker 1: goes to one of my final questions. Maybe the final

1311
01:13:00,680 --> 01:13:04,240
Speaker 1: question is you look back at this era, hey, will

1312
01:13:04,360 --> 01:13:08,680
Speaker 1: anything survive? And certainly in your location, will any of

1313
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:11,880
Speaker 1: that survive? And does it deserve to survive? This era? No,

1314
01:13:12,280 --> 01:13:17,360
Speaker 1: the era when the king, the era from sixty five

1315
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:22,720
Speaker 1: to let's call it seventy five whatever, it's like, uh,

1316
01:13:22,760 --> 01:13:25,760
Speaker 1: the uh English novels of the Victorian era, of course

1317
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:28,280
Speaker 1: they're gonna stay. Really, it's a class it's a classic

1318
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:31,280
Speaker 1: art form. It uh, it's the peak of the classic

1319
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:34,000
Speaker 1: art form. I mean you can see it rise, you

1320
01:13:34,000 --> 01:13:36,719
Speaker 1: can see it fall and just disappears in the nineties.

1321
01:13:37,000 --> 01:13:39,519
Speaker 1: And but all that stuff is going to be an

1322
01:13:39,560 --> 01:13:42,840
Speaker 1: important part of American culture for as long as as.

1323
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:45,679
Speaker 1: I mean, the Grateful Dead are just gonna be here.

1324
01:13:45,960 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen is gonna be here, Michael Jackson despite all

1325
01:13:49,280 --> 01:13:51,719
Speaker 1: the Woody Allen, No, this is going to be around.

1326
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:55,639
Speaker 1: This is what America was. This was like blue jeans

1327
01:13:55,640 --> 01:13:59,240
Speaker 1: and Coca Cola. It's embedded in our fabric. But I

1328
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:01,679
Speaker 1: got one for you on because I played this game

1329
01:14:01,800 --> 01:14:04,000
Speaker 1: quite a lot. I want to want to play this

1330
01:14:04,080 --> 01:14:06,200
Speaker 1: with you and you could be a podcaster or whatever.

1331
01:14:06,240 --> 01:14:09,280
Speaker 1: But so here's my question. You know, listening around late

1332
01:14:09,320 --> 01:14:11,519
Speaker 1: at night with music business people and that man, you know,

1333
01:14:11,800 --> 01:14:15,240
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. What are the classic

1334
01:14:15,400 --> 01:14:18,599
Speaker 1: songs of the twenty one century? What are the songs

1335
01:14:19,240 --> 01:14:21,160
Speaker 1: the people are gonna be singing fifty years from now,

1336
01:14:21,200 --> 01:14:23,360
Speaker 1: like the motown stuff, of the Beatles, stuff of the

1337
01:14:23,400 --> 01:14:25,960
Speaker 1: back rock stuff that we're saying still using. I mean,

1338
01:14:26,320 --> 01:14:29,479
Speaker 1: is it gonna be single ladies? Put a ring on it?

1339
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:31,880
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be crazy? Is it gonna be? Since

1340
01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:33,880
Speaker 1: you've been gone? Are there any what do you think?

1341
01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:37,599
Speaker 1: What songs? Okay, let's be really honest. Although I'm not

1342
01:14:37,680 --> 01:14:41,120
Speaker 1: that much younger than you, my listening starts, you know,

1343
01:14:41,240 --> 01:14:45,040
Speaker 1: early sixties, so anything before early sixties, I'm just gonna say,

1344
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:48,120
Speaker 1: I'm not an We get Michael Einstein in here, he'll

1345
01:14:48,160 --> 01:14:51,519
Speaker 1: talk about the American Songbook. So let's go after my

1346
01:14:52,320 --> 01:14:56,240
Speaker 1: I listened intently to what you just had to say.

1347
01:14:56,400 --> 01:14:59,479
Speaker 1: But I believe unless you're a student of the game,

1348
01:15:00,040 --> 01:15:03,240
Speaker 1: hundred years from now, the only thing that survives is

1349
01:15:03,320 --> 01:15:09,720
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Oh uh, you know um Thackeray and Trollip survived,

1350
01:15:11,320 --> 01:15:13,599
Speaker 1: so the Stones will be there, Queen will be there.

1351
01:15:14,040 --> 01:15:16,519
Speaker 1: Well well, well let's put it this way. I will

1352
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:20,840
Speaker 1: write about records, and some of these bands are somewhat pejoratives,

1353
01:15:20,840 --> 01:15:24,000
Speaker 1: but they did some good material, like Loggins and Messina. Okay,

1354
01:15:24,080 --> 01:15:27,559
Speaker 1: when Loggins went solo, became totally Sacharin. But with Jimmy,

1355
01:15:27,600 --> 01:15:29,559
Speaker 1: I could play you stuff. Anybody would say it was great,

1356
01:15:30,040 --> 01:15:35,040
Speaker 1: but almost completely forgotten. I'll give you another one. See trains.

1357
01:15:35,080 --> 01:15:39,600
Speaker 1: Remember the man c train. Uh Andy Cahlberg was a

1358
01:15:39,600 --> 01:15:44,800
Speaker 1: good friend, Yeah, I mean forgotten. Okay, you even remembered them?

1359
01:15:44,840 --> 01:15:47,080
Speaker 1: They were never hit to begin with. They did they

1360
01:15:47,720 --> 01:15:50,840
Speaker 1: did Song at Joe, but they did the first version

1361
01:15:50,880 --> 01:15:54,920
Speaker 1: of exactly first version they got introduced one of their

1362
01:15:54,920 --> 01:15:57,479
Speaker 1: albums too right, that was already but then no nobody

1363
01:15:57,479 --> 01:16:01,280
Speaker 1: remembered them then, okay, but let's go on, let's go

1364
01:16:01,360 --> 01:16:05,520
Speaker 1: one step deeper. Do they remember Mike Bloomfield and Supersession?

1365
01:16:05,960 --> 01:16:12,920
Speaker 1: So Airplanes gone, Quicksilver's gone, uh, stop with Camel? I

1366
01:16:12,920 --> 01:16:17,400
Speaker 1: mean no, those bands have lost tremendous amount of their

1367
01:16:17,520 --> 01:16:20,839
Speaker 1: cache and their and their presence and their catalog is dimmed.

1368
01:16:21,240 --> 01:16:25,120
Speaker 1: But you know, how do you explain to Steve Miller band? Okay, Steve,

1369
01:16:25,640 --> 01:16:28,160
Speaker 1: let's go back if you trapped or Steve Miller's sort

1370
01:16:28,160 --> 01:16:33,519
Speaker 1: of unique. But what does survive, I believe are songs,

1371
01:16:33,560 --> 01:16:36,960
Speaker 1: not records. And that's one of the reasons why today's

1372
01:16:37,000 --> 01:16:39,280
Speaker 1: music is not going to survive. They don't. Is it

1373
01:16:39,400 --> 01:16:42,040
Speaker 1: that they don't have songs that they're no melody, there's

1374
01:16:42,080 --> 01:16:46,600
Speaker 1: nothing for future generations to hook on. Okay, and but

1375
01:16:47,520 --> 01:16:51,280
Speaker 1: when you go back so ironically, it's the sauce stuff

1376
01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 1: like Michelle and other Beatles songs as opposed to just

1377
01:16:56,880 --> 01:17:01,240
Speaker 1: a bad example helter skelter. If you look at these Stones,

1378
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:04,679
Speaker 1: and I'm a Stones fan, okay, it will be seen

1379
01:17:04,960 --> 01:17:08,760
Speaker 1: as a great degree a rip off of Mississippi Mississippi

1380
01:17:08,760 --> 01:17:13,080
Speaker 1: Delta Blues. Now those are those recordings are poor, but

1381
01:17:13,400 --> 01:17:17,040
Speaker 1: and they certainly survived. But I'm not a big believer,

1382
01:17:17,160 --> 01:17:19,479
Speaker 1: and let me be I'm not cynical about this. I

1383
01:17:19,520 --> 01:17:22,880
Speaker 1: would like it to survive, but I see how much

1384
01:17:23,240 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 1: has been forgotten. And also certain few points of the

1385
01:17:27,000 --> 01:17:29,639
Speaker 1: people who were there, Like if you mentioned Culture Club,

1386
01:17:29,760 --> 01:17:32,559
Speaker 1: they're negative. Culture Club did a couple of Stones, Church

1387
01:17:32,600 --> 01:17:35,400
Speaker 1: of the Poison Mind. It was like Culture Club was there, right,

1388
01:17:35,640 --> 01:17:40,240
Speaker 1: But the point is right, and he could still deliver it.

1389
01:17:40,280 --> 01:17:43,120
Speaker 1: But the point is that people who are there, you

1390
01:17:43,240 --> 01:17:47,120
Speaker 1: need a consensus to move it forward. So the people

1391
01:17:47,160 --> 01:17:52,080
Speaker 1: who are there who feel negative are helping keep this music.

1392
01:17:52,120 --> 01:17:55,200
Speaker 1: Someone underground. I I asked a different question. Okay, this

1393
01:17:55,760 --> 01:17:58,599
Speaker 1: guy is pretty successful at the label, This guy Mike Karen,

1394
01:17:59,160 --> 01:18:01,479
Speaker 1: and he was talking at his kid, like five years ago,

1395
01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:05,760
Speaker 1: two year old kids playing with his iPad and says,

1396
01:18:05,880 --> 01:18:09,840
Speaker 1: this will be the instrument of the future. Now, what

1397
01:18:09,920 --> 01:18:13,320
Speaker 1: do we know. You've had a lot of close up experience.

1398
01:18:13,960 --> 01:18:17,080
Speaker 1: Most of these guys all they could do was play.

1399
01:18:17,160 --> 01:18:20,280
Speaker 1: They couldn't really have a good conversation, and they would

1400
01:18:20,320 --> 01:18:22,479
Speaker 1: shed it and they did it to get laid. I

1401
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:25,320
Speaker 1: have a theory beyond that, once they realized it didn't

1402
01:18:25,320 --> 01:18:27,639
Speaker 1: solve other problems, than they couldn't write any hits anymore.

1403
01:18:28,160 --> 01:18:32,960
Speaker 1: But today, to interact with society, there's so many easier

1404
01:18:33,000 --> 01:18:35,800
Speaker 1: ways to do it that you don't get these people

1405
01:18:35,920 --> 01:18:39,880
Speaker 1: off the grid rehearse it. But you know, there's just

1406
01:18:39,960 --> 01:18:43,440
Speaker 1: being greta van fleet that gets a lot of negative blowback.

1407
01:18:44,040 --> 01:18:46,880
Speaker 1: The first EP, there were a couple of very good

1408
01:18:46,920 --> 01:18:50,160
Speaker 1: tracks rip off of led Zeppelin, but not like Kingdom Come,

1409
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,799
Speaker 1: not literally, it's just reminiscent sound. All the old people

1410
01:18:53,880 --> 01:18:57,559
Speaker 1: say it's just led Zeppa. I said led Zeppin was

1411
01:18:57,680 --> 01:19:03,040
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. The led Zeppelin were inspired by that

1412
01:19:03,200 --> 01:19:05,920
Speaker 1: wasn't even fifty years ago. So just to finish and sense,

1413
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:08,320
Speaker 1: you'll hope that at some point people will wake up

1414
01:19:08,360 --> 01:19:10,400
Speaker 1: and we'll go back to this music and being inspired.

1415
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:14,360
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, all these years later, there really

1416
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:17,799
Speaker 1: hasn't been another led Zeppelin. There hasn't been another who

1417
01:19:18,520 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 1: there hasn't been another Bob Marley and and my kids

1418
01:19:21,960 --> 01:19:24,960
Speaker 1: twenty nine and and she went through the whole teenage

1419
01:19:25,000 --> 01:19:28,240
Speaker 1: years bringing all these guys over, you know, and all

1420
01:19:28,280 --> 01:19:32,679
Speaker 1: of them we're listening to. Who led Zeppelin had Marley

1421
01:19:32,760 --> 01:19:35,559
Speaker 1: T shirts on. I'm like, that would be like you

1422
01:19:35,600 --> 01:19:38,200
Speaker 1: and me having Glenn Miller T shirt. That's what I'd

1423
01:19:38,200 --> 01:19:41,439
Speaker 1: try to tell people. Let's say, when I was listening

1424
01:19:41,479 --> 01:19:43,879
Speaker 1: to the Beatles, I was not listening to Frank Sinatra,

1425
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:46,639
Speaker 1: whom I still don't like. It's not listening to Perry Como.

1426
01:19:46,760 --> 01:19:49,000
Speaker 1: It's not like they that was wiped off the map,

1427
01:19:49,840 --> 01:19:52,639
Speaker 1: but it was also I have another theory, which it's funny.

1428
01:19:52,640 --> 01:19:55,120
Speaker 1: I've seen other people pick up on it. There was

1429
01:19:55,200 --> 01:20:00,160
Speaker 1: one renaissance. Okay, they painted and sculpted since then, but

1430
01:20:00,200 --> 01:20:04,000
Speaker 1: there was one renaissance. We lived through the renisend. They'll

1431
01:20:04,080 --> 01:20:08,120
Speaker 1: make music, but what do we know. You had to

1432
01:20:08,120 --> 01:20:09,960
Speaker 1: get a deal, you had to get on the radio.

1433
01:20:10,120 --> 01:20:13,639
Speaker 1: We lived for the music. Music was everything. It's amazing

1434
01:20:13,720 --> 01:20:16,479
Speaker 1: you talk to everybody, So I don't think we can

1435
01:20:16,520 --> 01:20:21,479
Speaker 1: recreate that. So to me, and looking at music history,

1436
01:20:21,520 --> 01:20:25,599
Speaker 1: which is what I do now. The corporate control of

1437
01:20:25,640 --> 01:20:29,599
Speaker 1: the record business. Uh starts in the late seventies, the

1438
01:20:29,680 --> 01:20:32,720
Speaker 1: independent labels like Motown and A and M, who were

1439
01:20:32,800 --> 01:20:36,600
Speaker 1: run by people that made music, that ran experiments in

1440
01:20:36,600 --> 01:20:41,240
Speaker 1: the studio personally. Uh, the corporations began absorbing those. And

1441
01:20:41,320 --> 01:20:43,600
Speaker 1: I think that there was the Fleetwood Mac album and

1442
01:20:43,640 --> 01:20:48,360
Speaker 1: the enormous profits of fourteen million copies of rumors to

1443
01:20:48,479 --> 01:20:52,760
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers that really convinced the corporations to well, you

1444
01:20:52,840 --> 01:20:56,080
Speaker 1: know what, people don't realize that was the entertainment division

1445
01:20:56,080 --> 01:20:59,439
Speaker 1: that was making the most profits the rest of their surprise, right, yeah,

1446
01:20:59,640 --> 01:21:02,160
Speaker 1: that made more money than television. And the whole Warner

1447
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:04,160
Speaker 1: cable system was built on the back of the record

1448
01:21:04,479 --> 01:21:07,240
Speaker 1: what all happened to? To surprise right back side? What

1449
01:21:07,280 --> 01:21:10,679
Speaker 1: where's that money coming from? So at the late seventies

1450
01:21:10,680 --> 01:21:14,519
Speaker 1: and in early ages, start seeing this corporatestation, and then

1451
01:21:14,560 --> 01:21:18,080
Speaker 1: they started playing corporate marketing methods, right, And so I mean,

1452
01:21:18,160 --> 01:21:21,040
Speaker 1: I don't really want to get to be such an old,

1453
01:21:21,520 --> 01:21:24,800
Speaker 1: uh you know, growning guy, but I think the last

1454
01:21:24,800 --> 01:21:27,400
Speaker 1: original American rock band was the Talking Heads, and the

1455
01:21:27,400 --> 01:21:29,840
Speaker 1: rest have been all I might give you YouTube, but

1456
01:21:29,880 --> 01:21:33,720
Speaker 1: they're an American that After that, all the bands are

1457
01:21:33,760 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: like you say, we got to get a deal. So

1458
01:21:35,240 --> 01:21:36,800
Speaker 1: in order to get a deal, they had to fit

1459
01:21:36,840 --> 01:21:40,360
Speaker 1: the matrix that the corporate marketing people wanted. And so

1460
01:21:40,439 --> 01:21:42,600
Speaker 1: there that was the end of imagination. That was the

1461
01:21:42,640 --> 01:21:45,240
Speaker 1: end of originality, That was the end of of of

1462
01:21:45,680 --> 01:21:49,000
Speaker 1: any kind of like freethinking or connection. And people like

1463
01:21:49,040 --> 01:21:51,920
Speaker 1: they have this idea that like, well you know, if

1464
01:21:51,960 --> 01:21:54,800
Speaker 1: if Fleetwood Mac successful, what they wanted something just like

1465
01:21:54,840 --> 01:21:58,000
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac. No, because people abought Fleetwood Math. The next

1466
01:21:58,040 --> 01:22:01,680
Speaker 1: thing they bought was the clash and people had Catholic

1467
01:22:01,720 --> 01:22:03,960
Speaker 1: taste first. Well there, you know, you're hitting a lot

1468
01:22:03,960 --> 01:22:06,000
Speaker 1: of points. First of all, for some reason, with the

1469
01:22:06,040 --> 01:22:09,160
Speaker 1: crazy world we live in, I've been singing life during

1470
01:22:09,200 --> 01:22:12,559
Speaker 1: wartime in my head, the talking Head song show this

1471
01:22:12,600 --> 01:22:15,200
Speaker 1: Ain't no Party, This Ain't no Disco before, and you

1472
01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:19,200
Speaker 1: realize how far ahead even though the times they were,

1473
01:22:19,520 --> 01:22:22,000
Speaker 1: even though you know he's a difficult guy, David Burn,

1474
01:22:22,160 --> 01:22:26,759
Speaker 1: and he has now changed, single handedly changing the market.

1475
01:22:26,800 --> 01:22:31,840
Speaker 1: I remember going in Rock Acoustic Christmas. This was like

1476
01:22:31,880 --> 01:22:34,280
Speaker 1: the second or third one when it started to become big,

1477
01:22:34,320 --> 01:22:37,600
Speaker 1: when you couldn't get a ticket, instant sellout, and the

1478
01:22:37,640 --> 01:22:41,679
Speaker 1: headliner was Duran Duran on their comeback and David Byrne

1479
01:22:41,720 --> 01:22:43,920
Speaker 1: performed and literally the two girls in front of me.

1480
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:47,920
Speaker 1: I'm not making this upset. Who's this? Okay? But he

1481
01:22:48,080 --> 01:22:51,960
Speaker 1: did such a killer show at Coachella, at a live show.

1482
01:22:52,200 --> 01:22:55,920
Speaker 1: There is an underpinning. Okay, he's gonna open it on Broadway.

1483
01:22:56,240 --> 01:22:59,320
Speaker 1: It's like a new way to sell what he's doing.

1484
01:22:59,400 --> 01:23:01,559
Speaker 1: I did not you the show, but I sure heard

1485
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:04,320
Speaker 1: about it. That'd be my boy in New Orleans Jazz

1486
01:23:04,360 --> 01:23:08,400
Speaker 1: Fest out right. Okay. So going back to your point,

1487
01:23:08,400 --> 01:23:10,679
Speaker 1: because this is a lot of questions we have about

1488
01:23:10,720 --> 01:23:13,599
Speaker 1: the future. I was under the belief, what do we

1489
01:23:13,640 --> 01:23:18,600
Speaker 1: know now? Theoretically you can reach everybody theoretically, so I

1490
01:23:18,680 --> 01:23:21,400
Speaker 1: thought there would be a very thin layer of acts

1491
01:23:21,439 --> 01:23:24,080
Speaker 1: that would reach everybody. That turns out not to be true.

1492
01:23:24,400 --> 01:23:27,880
Speaker 1: You ask anybody to sing to Drake songs, it's a

1493
01:23:28,080 --> 01:23:31,320
Speaker 1: very small market of people. Not that there aren't even sought.

1494
01:23:31,360 --> 01:23:34,120
Speaker 1: They are not even same even with Taylor Swift. Okay,

1495
01:23:34,520 --> 01:23:38,599
Speaker 1: so we have all these other genres. What people thought

1496
01:23:38,640 --> 01:23:42,080
Speaker 1: that the record major labels were going to be killed

1497
01:23:42,080 --> 01:23:45,479
Speaker 1: by napster in the Internet, that was not true. Without

1498
01:23:45,560 --> 01:23:48,680
Speaker 1: even talking about why that was not true. They are

1499
01:23:48,720 --> 01:23:53,320
Speaker 1: now killing themselves because they're only interested in the cream

1500
01:23:53,320 --> 01:23:56,320
Speaker 1: of the crop, not talent wise, but what is more

1501
01:23:56,400 --> 01:24:00,519
Speaker 1: instantly marketable and unlike an our era Warner, this electra

1502
01:24:00,760 --> 01:24:03,360
Speaker 1: they only sign one kind of music. If you go

1503
01:24:03,360 --> 01:24:05,679
Speaker 1: in to say this is phenomenal on its own terms,

1504
01:24:05,880 --> 01:24:09,479
Speaker 1: forget it. I remember Warner has signed this electronic Beaver

1505
01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:12,839
Speaker 1: and Krause. I mean it's like, who would get traction

1506
01:24:12,960 --> 01:24:16,920
Speaker 1: like that again? So so it is left in the

1507
01:24:17,320 --> 01:24:21,200
Speaker 1: touch with Bernie Krause, by the really and it's like,

1508
01:24:21,360 --> 01:24:23,799
Speaker 1: so it is now left in the hands of the people.

1509
01:24:24,080 --> 01:24:26,479
Speaker 1: Just taking it one step further. We've been talking about

1510
01:24:26,479 --> 01:24:29,560
Speaker 1: Gary Duncan, etcetera. When I moved to l A in

1511
01:24:29,600 --> 01:24:33,200
Speaker 1: the seventies, you could work retail and survive. I did

1512
01:24:33,760 --> 01:24:36,639
Speaker 1: the Sporting Good story. You work retail, you do any job.

1513
01:24:37,120 --> 01:24:39,400
Speaker 1: You can't get a roof over your head. So what

1514
01:24:39,560 --> 01:24:43,080
Speaker 1: we have as a result of income inequality is the

1515
01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:45,280
Speaker 1: best in the brightest. This is what people don't realize.

1516
01:24:45,520 --> 01:24:48,120
Speaker 1: These people going to college, etcetera. They know the game.

1517
01:24:48,880 --> 01:24:51,040
Speaker 1: They know if they don't find their place where they're

1518
01:24:51,040 --> 01:24:52,800
Speaker 1: making a certain mo money, they're immediately going to be

1519
01:24:52,840 --> 01:24:56,080
Speaker 1: left behind. I mean I graduate college. I was a scheme, bummers.

1520
01:24:56,120 --> 01:24:58,559
Speaker 1: You know I was not looking for that. So only

1521
01:24:58,600 --> 01:25:02,439
Speaker 1: the lower classes go in. Grace is a perfect point.

1522
01:25:03,120 --> 01:25:07,839
Speaker 1: Grace actually the upper middle class, No, no, upper well whatever,

1523
01:25:08,160 --> 01:25:10,839
Speaker 1: I know where she grew up. Okay, she's got money.

1524
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:14,000
Speaker 1: Father was an investment baker, but not like an investment

1525
01:25:14,000 --> 01:25:17,320
Speaker 1: baker today. No, but he was the original, you know,

1526
01:25:17,400 --> 01:25:20,600
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley thing investment banker in Palo Alto. Well, she

1527
01:25:20,680 --> 01:25:23,320
Speaker 1: didn't tell me that. I didn't. But in any of them,

1528
01:25:23,360 --> 01:25:26,160
Speaker 1: if you were middle class in the sixties, never mind

1529
01:25:26,160 --> 01:25:29,479
Speaker 1: in the seventies, you could say no. No one says

1530
01:25:29,479 --> 01:25:32,479
Speaker 1: no anymore based on your upbringing. I'm not gonna do that.

1531
01:25:32,640 --> 01:25:35,200
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make that endorsement. I'm not gonna sing

1532
01:25:35,280 --> 01:25:39,000
Speaker 1: that song, whereas today the lower classes of the musicians

1533
01:25:39,479 --> 01:25:41,880
Speaker 1: tell me, I'll do whatever it is, whatever you want,

1534
01:25:42,000 --> 01:25:47,000
Speaker 1: so there's no credibility. Well, it's not heroic endeavor anymore. Absolutely,

1535
01:25:47,080 --> 01:25:49,720
Speaker 1: you know it was a heroic deva. To be in

1536
01:25:49,760 --> 01:25:52,880
Speaker 1: a rock band was like to be Ulysses and to

1537
01:25:53,200 --> 01:25:57,599
Speaker 1: go off on a ground journey and the music. Bob,

1538
01:25:57,640 --> 01:25:59,679
Speaker 1: you know, you stand up for this stuff all the time.

1539
01:25:59,720 --> 01:26:01,599
Speaker 1: About like, you know, it's got to be the music.

1540
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:04,960
Speaker 1: It's got to be about the music, dude. Uh. That

1541
01:26:05,120 --> 01:26:09,920
Speaker 1: was when it had something in it. Now music is

1542
01:26:10,000 --> 01:26:14,240
Speaker 1: just an entertainment. That's why people don't realize. I mean,

1543
01:26:14,320 --> 01:26:17,400
Speaker 1: I'm stunned because I come from that era where you

1544
01:26:17,400 --> 01:26:19,439
Speaker 1: couldn't even get a job at the record store, never

1545
01:26:19,479 --> 01:26:21,760
Speaker 1: mind get a job at the label. You were all

1546
01:26:21,800 --> 01:26:23,840
Speaker 1: high again how much you were being paid. You were

1547
01:26:23,880 --> 01:26:26,640
Speaker 1: a kingpin, you were on the inside. Now I know

1548
01:26:26,680 --> 01:26:28,880
Speaker 1: what it's like before the Beatles. Oh, somebody works at

1549
01:26:28,880 --> 01:26:31,800
Speaker 1: a record company. They're just turning it out. It's another profession,

1550
01:26:32,120 --> 01:26:35,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, we're selling vacuum cleaners. It

1551
01:26:35,200 --> 01:26:38,599
Speaker 1: doesn't have this aura. That's why rock and roll was different,

1552
01:26:38,760 --> 01:26:42,000
Speaker 1: is that, you know, Perry Como was entertainment and he

1553
01:26:42,080 --> 01:26:46,719
Speaker 1: meant nothing. Uh. Rock and roll was a coded message

1554
01:26:46,880 --> 01:26:50,439
Speaker 1: to an entire generation. And it was an education. It

1555
01:26:50,520 --> 01:26:56,360
Speaker 1: was called arms. It was an indoctrination. It was it

1556
01:26:56,479 --> 01:27:01,080
Speaker 1: was the culture. Filled those sales with air and that

1557
01:27:01,160 --> 01:27:03,479
Speaker 1: was what brought us all into it. And that's why

1558
01:27:03,479 --> 01:27:05,880
Speaker 1: it had such power as an art movement. And it

1559
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:11,040
Speaker 1: was corrupted by commercial interests. Uh, corporate interests. Hello, welcome

1560
01:27:11,080 --> 01:27:15,160
Speaker 1: to America. Well, I you articulated really well, and I

1561
01:27:15,240 --> 01:27:17,799
Speaker 1: don't have anything specifically that to that, but I remember

1562
01:27:17,840 --> 01:27:20,679
Speaker 1: and you may or may not remember, after Kirk Coban

1563
01:27:20,800 --> 01:27:25,800
Speaker 1: off himself, uh sixty minutes, who was in the guy's name,

1564
01:27:25,840 --> 01:27:28,280
Speaker 1: who did the commentary at the end. You know I'm

1565
01:27:28,280 --> 01:27:36,040
Speaker 1: talking about he beat a can't he? Uh? He beat

1566
01:27:36,080 --> 01:27:38,559
Speaker 1: Kurt coban up. So the next day I was on

1567
01:27:38,600 --> 01:27:40,479
Speaker 1: the phone with Eddie Rosenbladd, who was the head of

1568
01:27:40,520 --> 01:27:43,760
Speaker 1: Geffen Records, and he said something I'd quote all the

1569
01:27:43,880 --> 01:27:48,320
Speaker 1: time now. He said, movies, when done right, are larger

1570
01:27:48,360 --> 01:27:52,519
Speaker 1: than life. Rock music, when done right, is life itself.

1571
01:27:54,280 --> 01:27:56,560
Speaker 1: And on that note, it's been wonderful to have you.

1572
01:27:57,560 --> 01:28:01,160
Speaker 1: We could continue just discussing. That's all the pay Bob

1573
01:28:01,479 --> 01:28:05,040
Speaker 1: you're he wrote to me. Okay, well, we'll talk about

1574
01:28:05,080 --> 01:28:08,160
Speaker 1: this after bike. That makes me feel good until next time.

1575
01:28:08,200 --> 01:28:25,120
Speaker 1: It's Bob website