Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary music writer Joel Selder. Great
Speaker 1: to be here, Bob, Good to see you. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: start with you did the Sammy Hagar book. It was
Speaker 1: a huge bestseller, number one. Did you have any anticipation
Speaker 1: was going to be that successful. I knew that I
Speaker 1: could get a very generous book deal with Sammy just
Speaker 1: based on his name. Uh, I think sam this interesting.
Speaker 1: Sammy had to do with the Van Halen thing. But
Speaker 1: I knew that that he would be likely candidate for
Speaker 1: a good sized book deal. And I just quit the
Speaker 1: paper after thirty six years. So on San Francisco, chronic right,
Speaker 1: I was there as there pop music critic, and and uh,
Speaker 1: Sammy had mentioned something years before, but I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was a really good idea yet. And then you know,
Speaker 1: like suddenly I thought it was a good idea. No,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that it was a number one bestseller.
Speaker 1: And I got a credit the one and only, the
Speaker 1: late great John Carter. Did you know Carter? Of course,
Speaker 1: Carter the writer of the lyrics of Incense and Pepper,
Speaker 1: amongst so many I mean private Dancer. He brought Tina
Speaker 1: Turner back, just an unbelievable list of things, and he
Speaker 1: was managing Sammy and yes, I do that. And he
Speaker 1: marshalled Sammy's fan club and cut him a deal for
Speaker 1: pre orders. And the day that book came out, we
Speaker 1: were already in the forties on Amazon, and by the
Speaker 1: end of that day we were in the top five. Wow.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. To what degree was Sammy's appearance
Speaker 1: on Howard Stern a factor. So we sat that day
Speaker 1: and he did Howard Stern and he did Good Morning America,
Speaker 1: and we watched the things squirret up the charts, and
Speaker 1: every time it hit the new time section, you know,
Speaker 1: at time zone, and it was hilarious. And and and
Speaker 1: then like I'm walking home back to my cousin's apartment
Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side, and my agent calls and
Speaker 1: they've already gone into the third printing, and he calls
Speaker 1: up to tell me that Walmart just ordered twenty books.
Speaker 1: And I'm at the Columbus Circle and standing in front
Speaker 1: of some shoe store I can't afford. So I went
Speaker 1: in and bought a pair of shoes and expensive. With
Speaker 1: those shoes, they tell I mean more I'd spend on shoes,
Speaker 1: and these are my best seller shoes. Okay, Now the
Speaker 1: book is fascinating because you wrote it in Sammy's voice.
Speaker 1: How did you decide? How did you perfect that experience? Oh?
Speaker 1: That was the whole mission, right, because that's what the
Speaker 1: readers want. They want to sit down and feel like
Speaker 1: Sammy's telling them the story. Right. So I had Sammy
Speaker 1: tell me the story. I tape recorded it, and then
Speaker 1: I sat there and fussed around with it until like
Speaker 1: red like sentences and stuff like that. A lot of
Speaker 1: it is straight out of Sammy's mouth, and all I
Speaker 1: had to do was put a period and a capital
Speaker 1: letter in the middle. Uh, there's very little of me
Speaker 1: in there, and what it is is transparent. Right. You
Speaker 1: can't see me because you can't see you at all. Certainly,
Speaker 1: having read your brother books, I didn't realize that much
Speaker 1: was actually straight from Sammy. So wonderful. Uh, it really
Speaker 1: feels like him, and he's he was. He did such
Speaker 1: an incredible job at telling his story. He he's in
Speaker 1: charge of his own narrative and a great degree. That's
Speaker 1: not always true of people. So how did you meet Sammy?
Speaker 1: Oh Man? So I I had a brief swing through
Speaker 1: college at Riverside. You see Riverside, and I hung and
Speaker 1: swung in the musicians down there. Uh, Sammy is from Fontana,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know Sammy wasas from Riverside, but he
Speaker 1: joined a band with a bunch of guys that I
Speaker 1: did know, and they started coming up to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: They were the Justice Brothers. Okay, but what brothers? Justice Brothers? Okay?
Speaker 1: And you bet? And you knew the band from having
Speaker 1: been briefly in Riverside. Yeah, I knew the bass player
Speaker 1: and the guitar player, and the drummer was Sammy's friend.
Speaker 1: He's still playing with Sammy, David Louser, but really yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh Bobby Anglin was an unbelievable guitar player, and
Speaker 1: and Jeff Nicholson was off selling uh Turner Burne Christian
Speaker 1: T shirts. But the Justice Brothers used to play this
Speaker 1: real sort of top forty dump in San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: I saw them there several times before Ronnie Montrose did.
Speaker 1: But I was there the night Ronnie Montrose came tell
Speaker 1: us that story Montrose had been in. Uh, Sammy had
Speaker 1: been in touch with Ronnie Montrose, who had just forming
Speaker 1: his own band after leaving Van Morrison's band. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I know all that history. So Ronnie's
Speaker 1: originally from where to the degree you remember, you know,
Speaker 1: he showed up in San Francisco with a band called
Speaker 1: Sawbuck that made a lot of noise at a Tuesday
Speaker 1: night audition in the last weeks of the film war
Speaker 1: and got signed to Bill Graham Management. But I believe
Speaker 1: they ever really recorded. And he's and he was bumping
Speaker 1: around as a freelance guitarist when Van picked him up.
Speaker 1: And I think he'd also done at Edgar Winterstant Okay,
Speaker 1: how how long was he with Van? Oh? Just the
Speaker 1: blink of an eye? So then one album and then
Speaker 1: did he already have his deal with Warner Brothers. I
Speaker 1: believe the deal was in place and he was looking
Speaker 1: to put together this band and Sammy went over to
Speaker 1: his house and they wrote space Station number six or whatever,
Speaker 1: number nine. Yeah, well Sammy is a big number guy. Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta stop you. That means what, Oh he's all
Speaker 1: about numerology? Oh really? Yeah? Okay, so that's when you
Speaker 1: met Sammy? Yeah, Justice Brother's days. Oh you know the
Speaker 1: famous Sammy's story about the van Halen review keep going.
Speaker 1: So he joins van Halen and does this tour in
Speaker 1: his final date is at the Cow Palace in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and I go out to review it. And essentially this
Speaker 1: is before he's a van Halen or what he's Well,
Speaker 1: he's in van Halen, first tour of van Halen and
Speaker 1: there he is at the end of the tour at
Speaker 1: his hometown and he's got four shows. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
Speaker 1: big deal and I'm there. Uh, and I write the
Speaker 1: review and essentially the review says, too bad, they ruined
Speaker 1: two perfectly decent bands, great line and uh the uh.
Speaker 1: Sammy gets on stage Monday night and it's just raging
Speaker 1: at the audience and he and and using his typical
Speaker 1: sort of profanity, he hands out what he thinks is
Speaker 1: my home phone number, tells him to call me. So
Speaker 1: I come home one morning, Uh and uh there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of messages on the machine, remember message machine? And uh.
Speaker 1: The first one is some very halting voicing. H Mr Sylvan,
Speaker 1: I have your former home phone number in Oakland. Would
Speaker 1: you please have your friends and business associates on you?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what you know. And on the next
Speaker 1: one is, uh, Joel Roger from Bill Graham Presents and
Speaker 1: Sammy Haygar gave every number out of the cow Palace
Speaker 1: night chaste. You might get a few calls. The next
Speaker 1: one is hey, fuck you. And that went on for
Speaker 1: weeks and and Herb Kane, the gossip columnist in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: picked up on it. He asked me about it. I said, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: for Sammy, that's what passes for wit. So how did
Speaker 1: you make it up with Sammy? I don't know. Oh
Speaker 1: so next time I see Sammy, use it's this Barry
Speaker 1: and Music Awards, which is just a complete, you know,
Speaker 1: cluster bang. And when there used to be the BAM
Speaker 1: newspaper used to read that religious Oh yeah, Well they
Speaker 1: had this big awards where all the leaguers showed up
Speaker 1: and they had this big suite of people that got
Speaker 1: into you know, the semi v I p uh and uh.
Speaker 1: There it's real crowded, real gril crowded, and they're Sammy
Speaker 1: sees me, goes Joel Joel, and man, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, Joel. And just as
Speaker 1: I hit the door, he goes Joel, I need your
Speaker 1: new home now. That is funny. No, Sammy's funny. There's
Speaker 1: no you know, he's obnoxious, but he's funny. Okay, at
Speaker 1: this late date, do you still think that it was
Speaker 1: a great life? Did they ruin ruin two good bands? Well,
Speaker 1: Sammy grew into van Halen, no question, and and I've
Speaker 1: come to really appreciate a lot of it that I
Speaker 1: didn't quite get at the same time. But I love
Speaker 1: the David Lee Roth van Halen, and I agree with
Speaker 1: you give Sammy's a better singer. But they completely lost
Speaker 1: their sense of view where I was a big band
Speaker 1: talking about Carter because Carter signed Sammy to Capitol and
Speaker 1: they did that album Rid. That's how I first got
Speaker 1: into it. But uh, before I can't drive fifty five,
Speaker 1: he was almost becoming a caricature of himself. Thank god
Speaker 1: van Halen picked him up. So you're in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: we are today? What brought you down here from the
Speaker 1: Bay Area? So I'm doing some research for a book
Speaker 1: that's forthcoming in like two years. I'm just starting out.
Speaker 1: Uh it Um revolves around a number of people who
Speaker 1: graduated from um University High School over in West l
Speaker 1: A in ninety just one specific year. It's this class
Speaker 1: was pretty rich with with interesting people, and it's where
Speaker 1: Jan and Dean started. And in fact, before they were
Speaker 1: out of high school. In the last semester, Jan and
Speaker 1: Arnie were on the charts. They had a hit record
Speaker 1: and they were walking around the school hallways. You can
Speaker 1: only imagine, right and uh. But then I was also
Speaker 1: this girl going around the hallway named Kathy Cohoner, who
Speaker 1: Sandra d was portraying in a movie called Gidget. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the last Jan it was Dean kim Fowley. Kim Fowley.
Speaker 1: You know, I knew Kim a little bit towards the end.
Speaker 1: One time I'm talking to him and he told me
Speaker 1: he had twin sons with some woman that he had
Speaker 1: no care and he gave me all the description. Then
Speaker 1: he died. I heard from PRESI wests. He totally made
Speaker 1: that up. So since he's gone, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the truth is. Do you remember his uh going to
Speaker 1: hospitals and and getting in a hospital gown and and
Speaker 1: and putting Facebook posts up about how he's dying. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. I was totally bogus too. Bally was not
Speaker 1: a good guy though everybody said that, and by this
Speaker 1: point he was running on fumes. I think I met
Speaker 1: him at Tony Wilson's conference in Manchester, England. So he
Speaker 1: was more about telling the old stories as opposed to
Speaker 1: ruining people's lives and careers. Shall we say, Well, people
Speaker 1: who remember him from high school, uh loathe him from
Speaker 1: day one. So I mean this guy is uh is
Speaker 1: kind of a fagan in this book, right. So it's
Speaker 1: the book concentrating It's like, you know, whatever happened to
Speaker 1: the class of written forty years ago. So there's other
Speaker 1: characters involved. Nancy Sinatras in there, and I'm gonna like
Speaker 1: put an ensemble together and it's gonna come to an
Speaker 1: extraordinary climax. Um but um eight years later in June
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six. Okay, without ruining. That is the
Speaker 1: book about the class, or is the book about Jan
Speaker 1: and Dean. It's about a group of people in that
Speaker 1: class and they how they interact over that as years
Speaker 1: and yes, Jan and Dean and central to that, the
Speaker 1: Beach Boys will turn up real early. Lou Adler and
Speaker 1: Herb Alpert turn up real early. Uh. The foulis in
Speaker 1: it all throughout. Uh, there's other people involved. Bruce Johnston.
Speaker 1: Bruce Johnston was a neighbor of Jan Berry's. Really, I
Speaker 1: had a conversation with the mid length. Actually I asked
Speaker 1: him to do a podcast and he said, I said,
Speaker 1: he says, how much does it pay? Oh that's my man,
Speaker 1: But he thought I said, doesn't pay anything. Then I said,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do it. We were backstage at
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys show and then I said, you know,
Speaker 1: just get your story down. He was my stories out there.
Speaker 1: I said, okay again, I want to press you. He.
Speaker 1: I saw him backstage to Tahoe back in the mid
Speaker 1: eighties and you know, he said, say, what are you driving?
Speaker 1: I could get you a good price on a new Chevy.
Speaker 1: Honest to god, what what was that about? He had
Speaker 1: a friend, you know, I was kicking back some money.
Speaker 1: I I don't know what the deal was, but you know,
Speaker 1: rock stars. I love him right well, though I reminded me,
Speaker 1: didn't remember they used you know all these like gas stations,
Speaker 1: car washings have disappeared. And the seventies there was a
Speaker 1: car washing Brentwood and I recognized him and I talked
Speaker 1: about his new solo out and he gave me one
Speaker 1: just like they're out of the back of his volvo.
Speaker 1: And when I told him, they started reminiscing about cars.
Speaker 1: Now you're also doing a book about Dave Mustain, right,
Speaker 1: I'm working with Dave on on a book about um
Speaker 1: his album Rust in Peace and the making of it.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's pretty dramatic stuff and and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, loaded with sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Speaker 1: And is there any of the being kicked out of
Speaker 1: metallic or that's just released covered that in his previous
Speaker 1: best selling memoir. So he had a big hit memoir
Speaker 1: almost twenty years ago. So he wants to come back
Speaker 1: into the book world and he's like focused on this
Speaker 1: particular album, which is some kind of landmark heavy metal album,
Speaker 1: and uh, his story around it is just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's chaos and uh, hectic in insanity. And that was
Speaker 1: that his idea, and he found you or vice person,
Speaker 1: it was his ideas. Sammy Hagar, you have a string
Speaker 1: of successes as a book writer. To what degree people
Speaker 1: come looking to you to write books with Well, it's
Speaker 1: always the wrong person, you know. And uh, but I
Speaker 1: had some really great experiences like that the book I
Speaker 1: did with the tattoo artist at Hardy. That's just a
Speaker 1: wonderful book and an important social document. It didn't really
Speaker 1: sell a lot of copies because the ed Hardy brand
Speaker 1: was so poisoned that nobody really realized that this was
Speaker 1: the guy who started American because it had been sold,
Speaker 1: would have been sold, they'd been no, you know what
Speaker 1: killed the you'll love this. What killed the brand and
Speaker 1: it went out like a light switch. Was John Gosselin.
Speaker 1: You remember him, of course, so uh, he splits from
Speaker 1: his wife, ok, plus eight, right, goes to the south
Speaker 1: of France with his new girlfriend, hooks up with Christian Audagier,
Speaker 1: who's the running the ed Hardy brand, and he puts
Speaker 1: this guy head to toe in ed Hardy gear. So
Speaker 1: all the pictures of the world's most famous deadbeat dad
Speaker 1: is him in ed Hardy gear. And that it was
Speaker 1: over instantly, like Macy's pulled the line. It was just
Speaker 1: like that. And yeah, they sold it for a couple
Speaker 1: of bucks. But those people, they couldn't even come awake
Speaker 1: for the autobiography. They had eleven million dollars worth the inventory,
Speaker 1: saying a warehouse, Yeah, I mean know, this is what
Speaker 1: rag business is. Crazier than the record business. Okay, so
Speaker 1: uh okay, so it's always the wrong people. But how
Speaker 1: many people are looking for you? Is it something happens
Speaker 1: once a year, once a month, yeah, once twice three
Speaker 1: times a year somebody comes up and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: there's some inquiries at either the agency level or get
Speaker 1: an email from somebody. And you know, I'm always interested
Speaker 1: in taking meetings, right, you know, I can't tell I
Speaker 1: ended up doing a book with l A. Read and
Speaker 1: that's an unlikely thing. Um, I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: who are Buddy and the trades? Is that Roy Tracan?
Speaker 1: Of course Roy interviewed l A for when the book
Speaker 1: came out. In the first question is what are you
Speaker 1: doing with Selvin? That sounds like Roy, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and l I said, all we bonded over sly Stone,
Speaker 1: you know. So that was But that L. A. Read
Speaker 1: book was fantastic experience. I loved working with l A.
Speaker 1: And it was fantastic because well, first of all, uh,
Speaker 1: just the experience of working with l A. Read and
Speaker 1: spending all that time in the Sony executive suites and
Speaker 1: being in New York and out in the Hampton's and
Speaker 1: and just l A. L a was just a magnanimous, warm,
Speaker 1: great guy. Uh. And the book is one of the
Speaker 1: great stories of of of nineties R and B. I mean,
Speaker 1: he created so much of the of the new pop
Speaker 1: black pop music of that era in baby Face, and
Speaker 1: their story is not really well known. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: I mean, he brought himself up out of Cincinnati's pop
Speaker 1: funk scene. Did you know there was a Cincinnati func scene?
Speaker 1: Actually I did, But don't quiz me any deeper. Midnight
Speaker 1: Star they were the kings of it. Okay, So which
Speaker 1: of your books are you proudest of relevant of what
Speaker 1: it's sold? So no question about that, no question. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here comes the Night, the burn, dark soul of Burns
Speaker 1: and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues. Okay, what
Speaker 1: inspired you to write that book? I first read about
Speaker 1: Burt Burns in Charlie Gillett's book called The Sound of
Speaker 1: the City back about nine Yes, yes, I owned that book.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made it all the way through.
Speaker 1: But okay, what was really the first history we had?
Speaker 1: And I devoured it. But he cites Burns and and
Speaker 1: there's a little collection of records that he mentioned. Those
Speaker 1: records were all sort of an intense little cluster of
Speaker 1: of of hysterical soul records, you know, Garnett, Mims, Solomon, Burke,
Speaker 1: Isley Brothers and went being So from that point on,
Speaker 1: I just sort of like kept my eye out and
Speaker 1: and the more I learned about Burns, more I've found fascinating.
Speaker 1: I found early about the Damaged Heart, I found out
Speaker 1: early about the gangster associations. I talked to Wexler about it,
Speaker 1: and he was forthcoming to a degree. At that point,
Speaker 1: Tony Orlando told me about him. Tony knew him really well.
Speaker 1: And did you know Tony before I went to do
Speaker 1: a Tony Orlando store when he came back from being nuts,
Speaker 1: and uh, he was there in Brooks. Arthur was there
Speaker 1: with him that day. And Brooks was an engineer on
Speaker 1: Brown Eyed Grow and and so Brooks was telling me
Speaker 1: all about him too. So over the years that and
Speaker 1: and there came a point when I met his kids, uh,
Speaker 1: and they really filled in the cracks and encouraged me
Speaker 1: to do this. And that's like I bailed on the
Speaker 1: chronicle and went to New York. And if I hadn't
Speaker 1: done it, then so many of the key figures wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been alive to tell the story, and they told it,
Speaker 1: and I collected it, and I had to put the
Speaker 1: book down for many years, and when I picked it
Speaker 1: back up to finish it, it was like an intense
Speaker 1: uh and an unexpected gift to be able to finish
Speaker 1: this book that I had started and spent so many
Speaker 1: hours thinking about, so much time working on. And it worked.
Speaker 1: We brought Burns back to life as absolutely. You know,
Speaker 1: his articles in the New York Times about him an
Speaker 1: NPR and and then the next year, boom, He's inducted
Speaker 1: in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty proud of that. Absolutely. So they had a
Speaker 1: play that I went to see, a musical that you know,
Speaker 1: they say it's going to be revived, but that seems
Speaker 1: Then they did the documentary, which was really quite good
Speaker 1: from a viewer standpoint. Have we seen the end of
Speaker 1: the promotion or is there anything I think that musical
Speaker 1: is gonna have new life next year in London? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I think it's going to open on West
Speaker 1: End and with a new first act. That was my question. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: that first act didn't make it. I saw that show
Speaker 1: like ten fifteen times. And of course I loved it.
Speaker 1: But the second act was flawless, and and to have
Speaker 1: them end uh with twist and shout. The audience went
Speaker 1: nuts every night, every night. But the first act was convoluted,
Speaker 1: slow and bumpy, and it didn't really set anything up.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of great songs missing. And
Speaker 1: the opening number in the first act, what was that
Speaker 1: that Gene Pittney thing about put a diamond the juke
Speaker 1: bo pe? You? Okay, so let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: You grow up where that's a strange word us about
Speaker 1: my youth growing up? So I was raised, my parents
Speaker 1: had the best intentions for me in Berkeley. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to have graduated from Berkeley High in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and it fell short, like a few weeks,
Speaker 1: never made the finish line. Okay, what was going on there?
Speaker 1: Why did you saying L S D. Rock and No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. Why did you not as a nice Jewish boy,
Speaker 1: why did you not finish high school? L? S D?
Speaker 1: Rock and roll? Everything? And how many kids were in
Speaker 1: the family. I'm the youngest of three and were the others?
Speaker 1: Did they fly straight? Or yeah, yeah, they're geniuses and
Speaker 1: and and corporate heroes. Uh. My oldest brother uh is
Speaker 1: one of the major heroes of the cancer curing. He's
Speaker 1: in public health. And my other brother was a big
Speaker 1: deal at Bechdel uh for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: huge construction, biggest in the world. And my parents always
Speaker 1: looked upon me as the failure in the family. So
Speaker 1: you're the only one will be remembered. What did your
Speaker 1: father do for a living? My father was you'll love this.
Speaker 1: It was a publicist for labor unions press agent. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have to ask any influence upon you? Oh? Hell yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm a great believer in the union movement.
Speaker 1: I certainly have myself. It's just you know, out of
Speaker 1: bounds in this day and age. It's ridiculous. It makes
Speaker 1: me nuts and things like uber just like fill me
Speaker 1: with fury. But just you know, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you as a result of Reagan and said a union
Speaker 1: is a bad name. And certainly there were some excesses,
Speaker 1: but now we have these oligarchs and these giant corporations
Speaker 1: that their excesses ever matched the excesses of the other side.
Speaker 1: That's my point. But it's been spun up of watch. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he got your love of the union, son. My
Speaker 1: father was a pain in the ass. Who who who?
Speaker 1: You know? Forged my character in uh you know, like
Speaker 1: a matrix, you know what I mean? Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 1: grateful to him for it. Uh. And and I cared
Speaker 1: for him way beyond the point where he evaporated as
Speaker 1: reservoir of good will with me. But do you care
Speaker 1: for him financially? No? No, you know I'd go take
Speaker 1: make sure he had company and take him. Okay. And
Speaker 1: your mother went when she had passed, she had gone,
Speaker 1: she and she had an endless reservoir good will with me.
Speaker 1: So you know how old was she when she passed?
Speaker 1: I was she about eighty four. But she lost her
Speaker 1: she'd lost it to dementia, a long slope thing. And
Speaker 1: he'd been great about it, he really had it was okay.
Speaker 1: So usually I don't think of a union publicist as
Speaker 1: being a job that reams down a lot of cash
Speaker 1: or am I miss? No? No, No, he was definitely
Speaker 1: you know, a middle class uh, living and back when
Speaker 1: there still was a middle and they had and they
Speaker 1: had a house in the Berkeley Hills that they bought
Speaker 1: for five thousand dollars, which was an extraordinary sum to them.
Speaker 1: Um and uh he was constantly being given awards by
Speaker 1: the International Labor Press Association, which I don't know if
Speaker 1: that even still exists, probably not. Um and he got
Speaker 1: he caught a big time moment, uh, sort of in
Speaker 1: the late sixties when one of the guys that he
Speaker 1: had been working with became the head of the national
Speaker 1: on the SEIU. So he was banging back and forth
Speaker 1: between here in Washington for a while. And there is
Speaker 1: a picture of him in the White House shaking hands
Speaker 1: with President Johnson. That's hilarious. Okay, So you grow up there,
Speaker 1: and of course this is a different eraw it's a
Speaker 1: free reign kid. What kind of kid were? You have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends? Do So? I was a weird kid.
Speaker 1: Uh had lots of friends, but I wasn't popular. Uh.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time in the library. I
Speaker 1: would cut school and go there. Uh and um my
Speaker 1: whole um high school. A lot of park cards were
Speaker 1: all these NEPs. I just did not attend school. And Uh.
Speaker 1: If I wasn't in the pool hall, I was in
Speaker 1: the library. And my favorite thing doing the library, by
Speaker 1: the way, was to pull old newspapers off the rack
Speaker 1: and like followed, say the Polar explanations of nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine or the UH presidential election of nineteen thirty two. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, weird kid, Okay, So to what degree?
Speaker 1: Because certainly rock and roll started in the fifty but
Speaker 1: when the Beatles came along really blew it up. And
Speaker 1: then of course there was a San Francisco scene, arguably
Speaker 1: the first scene after the English scene. You're growing up,
Speaker 1: you're a teenager, that impacts you. You're a music fan.
Speaker 1: What's going on? A huge So you know, my lifespan
Speaker 1: is pretty perfectly timed. All this because of vivid, vivid
Speaker 1: memories of coming in on Sunday night to see Elvis
Speaker 1: Presley on Ed Sullivan. Wow. Right, so this whole thing
Speaker 1: was like very exciting. My older brother were fully you know,
Speaker 1: fifties rock and rollers. My brother used to rub the
Speaker 1: Dixie peach into his levies every night because you wanted
Speaker 1: them to like hang straight. This is something I never heard.
Speaker 1: Dixie peach me, like a regular peach was for your hair.
Speaker 1: It was like broke cream, vitalist, and it was a
Speaker 1: cream and you rubbed it into your levies so they'd
Speaker 1: be like stiff hang in these circles. Never heard that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that was a very cool thing. Uh and uh so
Speaker 1: they were all into that. And I was like, you
Speaker 1: know on the am radio and radio was a teenager
Speaker 1: and and a and a pre teen's uh gate to
Speaker 1: a different world. And if you ever remember the movie
Speaker 1: Putney Swoke? Did you ever see that's Robert Downey seen
Speaker 1: here And it's a crazy movie. I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: really holds up because I talked about for years. Then
Speaker 1: I saw it again. But there's always they have big question, okay,
Speaker 1: and they said they it out what they now called
Speaker 1: Native American, but it was an Indian and he would
Speaker 1: give him the answer. And he said, how do you know?
Speaker 1: He says the drum? And I always said radio was
Speaker 1: the tribal drum. You listen to you totally what was
Speaker 1: going on? Had the news that applied to had the records?
Speaker 1: Definitely a club. It spelled out our culture. And you
Speaker 1: know when when the newsboys get together on the corner,
Speaker 1: all the ten year olds was sitting there talking about
Speaker 1: what have you heard? Running bear? Who is that cool?
Speaker 1: Or what you know? And and a new record was
Speaker 1: an event and that got only heightened. We got into
Speaker 1: that post Beatles sing where a news single by the
Speaker 1: Beatles or the Rolling Stones was. You know, the entire
Speaker 1: world stopped for that moment. So when you talk about
Speaker 1: the newsboys, did you uh distribute or sell newspapers? Ye? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was a newspaper boy okay, yea on my little
Speaker 1: swin bike. And you know the what what was the
Speaker 1: maximum number of the whole houses you have? I think
Speaker 1: I had ninety papers at one point and it was
Speaker 1: just deep Berkeley Hill route. Now, my father at some
Speaker 1: point got p oed my the guy that was running
Speaker 1: the I don't know if people use that turned out
Speaker 1: that's pistol off. Yeah I didn't. I know it was stock,
Speaker 1: but I'm the old school as hell. Um. And uh
Speaker 1: he called up this guy, Mr Westfall. Why do you
Speaker 1: remember these people's names from? You know? And and he
Speaker 1: went all labor negotiator on him. Right. You know you
Speaker 1: didn't give my my son the route you promised him,
Speaker 1: and now you've stuck him with his horrible route. You
Speaker 1: need to double his hill bonus from three dollars to
Speaker 1: six dollars, and you need to split his bundle and
Speaker 1: deliver the second half down the hill. Wow. And I
Speaker 1: didn't even know there was a hill bundle. Okay, if
Speaker 1: we go back to that era, you're delivering newspapers, you're
Speaker 1: making money. What are you doing with that money? Well?
Speaker 1: I had my bicycle, that was a big deal. There
Speaker 1: was like car h a a few forty five, you know,
Speaker 1: a jar candy went to the movies. You know, it
Speaker 1: was it was pocket money. Uh So you were always
Speaker 1: into periodicals, the newspapers. Yeah, yeah, when we all mad
Speaker 1: magazine you know, I like the song hits things with
Speaker 1: uh lyrics and yeah, I forgot completely about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love those was that was the name of the
Speaker 1: magazine song. Wow. There are two or three versions of
Speaker 1: it too. Okay, now you you hit puberty, you're out there.
Speaker 1: To what degree and at what age can you palpably
Speaker 1: feel something is going on in San Francisco? Oh man?
Speaker 1: Uh so? Uh. I entered Berkeley High School in the
Speaker 1: fall in nineteen sixty four, and uh the Birds played
Speaker 1: a concert on the steps of our high school auditorium
Speaker 1: after school one day. Wow, we didn't get that where
Speaker 1: I went to high school. Okay. There was a band
Speaker 1: that was rehearsing across the street with the next year,
Speaker 1: so high ten. Uh. That became Country Joe in the
Speaker 1: Fish and that park across the street became like a
Speaker 1: place where bands would show up and and just rehearse.
Speaker 1: And that's the first time I saw Steve Miller was
Speaker 1: in that in that park. So it was just blowing
Speaker 1: up right around the corner. And if you didn't, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was impossible to avoid, but if you wanted to
Speaker 1: seek it out, it was just flowing through the streets.
Speaker 1: There are clubs everywhere. There were new bands everywhere. There
Speaker 1: was a grapevine. Hey, have you seen this new band
Speaker 1: Credence clear Water? No where are they? There are Gino
Speaker 1: and Carlos. Okay man, I'm gonna check that out Monday night,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And and every week there seemed like
Speaker 1: a new band and Fillmore and the Avalon. Uh the
Speaker 1: three bands a week and the three nights a week.
Speaker 1: And they're booking an acts besides the local bands. So
Speaker 1: you could catch up on Howling Wolf or Chuck Berry
Speaker 1: or Bow Didley. Bow Didley was huge with the hippies.
Speaker 1: He could really, you know, make it work with it
Speaker 1: at the Avalon. And he was dirty. It was funny.
Speaker 1: He could play guitar forever and uh, yeah, the hippies
Speaker 1: loved Bo Didley. Okay, from your house to the film war?
Speaker 1: How far? And how did you get there? Oh jove?
Speaker 1: You know, so it's Berkeley to San Francisco. It was
Speaker 1: a half hour. There was no traffic, but you had
Speaker 1: a car. You use your somebody had a car. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you talked about being in high school doing LSD, etcetera.
Speaker 1: How does that start into what degree? Or you remember
Speaker 1: that community. I first took LSD when it was still legal.
Speaker 1: I had a course cap of Owsley Purple, which costs
Speaker 1: five bucks. And you don't, well, I'm we're talking about
Speaker 1: the stuff made by Alsley. Uh and uh. The first
Speaker 1: time I've ever seen stereo headphones, Bob and somebody put
Speaker 1: on the New Rolling Stones album. Okay, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: It's embedded in my DNA now and the common nation
Speaker 1: of the New Rolling Stones album and the stereo headphones.
Speaker 1: It blew me out? How much did that experience change
Speaker 1: my life? The next day I went out and bought
Speaker 1: a record player. Okay, what do you mean a stereo
Speaker 1: or you literally didn't have a record player, didn't have
Speaker 1: a record player. I was always a radio guy. Until then,
Speaker 1: why would I want records? Everything was on the radio,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have any singles. You didn't that it
Speaker 1: was over singles by the time I was twelve. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you went out, got a record player. Let's go sideways.
Speaker 1: Because you mentioned it, you know, San Francisco was known
Speaker 1: as the land of the hippies. If you were actually
Speaker 1: there was that palpable oh oh yeah, and and uh
Speaker 1: it was huge. It was big. It was it was
Speaker 1: in our consciousness in a very strong and powerful way
Speaker 1: that it was a subject of discussion amongst the peers.
Speaker 1: And it created a division. Right, there was what I
Speaker 1: called the archie divide. Right, these kids belong archie. Comic
Speaker 1: books were the hip, the hip new thing. Uh and
Speaker 1: and I typically I was so berkeley about this that
Speaker 1: I chewed the identity as a hippie, although there is
Speaker 1: no way I didn't look like one. You know, I
Speaker 1: had the hair, I had the clothes. But I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's for conformists. I'm a non right
Speaker 1: al right, right, god, you're bringing it back. I remember
Speaker 1: cutting my hair when everybody had it long said your
Speaker 1: parents make you doing No, I just don't want to
Speaker 1: be like everybody else. Right now, I'm not gonna identify
Speaker 1: with that. Those guys don't get it right exactly off
Speaker 1: the bus, off the bus. But very exciting times in
Speaker 1: Berkeley and San Francisco. Okay, so of course you know
Speaker 1: I'm three thousand miles away. They talk about hate Ashbury.
Speaker 1: Was that an actual scene you were aware of? Man,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have believed hate Ashbury. N tell me. The
Speaker 1: streets were just throbbing with energy and not bad energy.
Speaker 1: You know. That came the next year when all the
Speaker 1: so called street people showed up. But these were the
Speaker 1: original hippies and and they were out there to create
Speaker 1: a new community and they meant well, they meant to
Speaker 1: h They were given out free food in the park
Speaker 1: every afternoon. Now supposedly Emmett Grogan of the Diggers said
Speaker 1: that he stole all that food. I was stolen, It
Speaker 1: was donated. It was you know, they they didn't have
Speaker 1: the same kind of like ritual boundaries that the conventional
Speaker 1: people did. That was out um there was. They had
Speaker 1: a free store where everything was free and was there
Speaker 1: something worth taking? It was like a thrift store, you know,
Speaker 1: it was cast off stuff. But I'm in there and
Speaker 1: you gotta go to the free store, of course. And
Speaker 1: I'm in there and there's a couple of older black
Speaker 1: ladies in there, you know, like maybe like church type
Speaker 1: of ladies and the and they're walking around with this
Speaker 1: look on their face like, well, what the heck is this,
Speaker 1: you know, And then one of them see something that
Speaker 1: she wants I think was pair of shoes, maybe a handbag,
Speaker 1: I can't remember, and she picks it up and she
Speaker 1: looks at her friend like well, and friends nag yeah,
Speaker 1: and she still puts it away under arm and sneaks
Speaker 1: out with it. So the whole thing was like a
Speaker 1: social laboratory, right and and and and everybody was in
Speaker 1: it for a giggle and uh no harm. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: sixty six and the bands were everywhere, Okay, not that
Speaker 1: you would know. But the hippies in the street before
Speaker 1: the street people came, did they have jobs? I don't
Speaker 1: remember much jobs r That's why I ask some of
Speaker 1: them would like The job that I remember people having
Speaker 1: was throwing mail at the post office because they had
Speaker 1: no Um, you could have long hair and work at
Speaker 1: the post Most places in the nineteen sixty six made
Speaker 1: you cut your hair, Okay, let's talk about the some
Speaker 1: of these legendary people. Emmic Rogan, did you ever meet him?
Speaker 1: What was he like? You wrote that great book, Rina
Speaker 1: Leave You ring Leavia was a classic parts of it
Speaker 1: or true? Well, definitely even reading that you could you
Speaker 1: can see. How about Ken Kesey. I met Kiss once
Speaker 1: and and uh, well I actually I was around him
Speaker 1: a bunch at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: Uh in his louder years. He was a drunk. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was a little bit of a drag. But
Speaker 1: Cantoner introduced me at one point, so I had, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a good ten minute chat with once at
Speaker 1: the film wore But then the rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame thing, they'd hired him to pay him a
Speaker 1: lot of money and that just earned his complete contempt.
Speaker 1: So he didn't show up sober for anything. Okay, who
Speaker 1: from that theme either didn't make it or didn't make
Speaker 1: it as big as you thought they should. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know where to to to end uh
Speaker 1: with that? Um so uh the first thing comes to
Speaker 1: mind is Bruce Stevenson Fillmore Shuffle. I don't know why
Speaker 1: that wasn't a hit. Uh, he was in some version
Speaker 1: of Blue Cheek her. But I mean nobody, nobody ever
Speaker 1: heard either of those. Uh and uh golly, what about
Speaker 1: the Flame and Groovies? I mean, shouldn't have been like
Speaker 1: a big band at some point. Well, I bought the
Speaker 1: one record what was the famous record where they really
Speaker 1: tried to push it over teenage head? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a counter you know the times, right, that was exactly
Speaker 1: he was trying to be, you know, retro to a degree, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They two of the code, though, you gotta give them
Speaker 1: that they're still doing it and there's still true to
Speaker 1: the code. Okay, how about some people who made it
Speaker 1: and then then could never replicate it, like Salve Valentino. Man,
Speaker 1: Sal Valentino, I think about fifteen years ago, maybe a
Speaker 1: little more. He was homeless, he was couch surfing and
Speaker 1: and you mentioned Sal Valentino. That's the lead singer of
Speaker 1: the bou Bramos. It really San Francisco's first hit rock group.
Speaker 1: Sly Stone produced their records and sal Valentino, to me,
Speaker 1: has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. Me
Speaker 1: but what lost career? Right? So, uh, Sal, what's the
Speaker 1: most money you ever made in the record business? He
Speaker 1: goes Oh, I got five thousand dollars once from Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: Is a finder's fee for bringing Ricky Lee Jones to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the guy who did the guide
Speaker 1: vocals on Randy Newman's first album because Randy had to
Speaker 1: play piano and conduct. Oh I didn't know that. Oh man,
Speaker 1: do I like to hear it that? Wow? Okay, so
Speaker 1: you kind of don't finish high school. Then where do
Speaker 1: you go from there? Well, I went to work at
Speaker 1: the Chronicle as a copy boy. Okay, let's a lot
Speaker 1: of these jobs don't exist anymore. I want to tell
Speaker 1: my audience what a copy boy was. Fifty five dollars
Speaker 1: a week, whatever they want me to do. And while
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, I fold carbon paper between sheets of
Speaker 1: newsprints so the reporters don't get their fingers dirty. Is
Speaker 1: that a hard job to get? Yeah? Very hard job.
Speaker 1: You have to have be nepotically connected, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: like you could even get a job on its sunset
Speaker 1: of tower records in the seventies. You know things that
Speaker 1: people don't think. Hey, there are low wage jobs, So
Speaker 1: how did you actually get the job. So my parents
Speaker 1: and my older brothers were family friends of the UH
Speaker 1: editor Scott new All And and uh so I was
Speaker 1: paved in from the top, and uh Scott's wife, Ruth
Speaker 1: was you know, all concerned about me for being a
Speaker 1: high school dropout and thought that this would like be
Speaker 1: a corrective and in fact it was. I mean, I
Speaker 1: met my tribe. You know. I walked in there the
Speaker 1: first day and I had on a necktie. I was
Speaker 1: super uptight. And uh, I looked around this room and
Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, after having been told my
Speaker 1: whole life that I don't fit in and I always
Speaker 1: wandered fit into what uh, I was in a room
Speaker 1: full of people who have been told the same thing. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. I know it instinctively and instantly. You know.
Speaker 1: When I went to I was college, I was the
Speaker 1: one person going to Vermont. You felt like an outcast
Speaker 1: came to l a. There are a million people to
Speaker 1: like me. So uh and so was this a dream
Speaker 1: or was it just that this was the connection you had?
Speaker 1: I like newspapers. I printed the newspaper in high school
Speaker 1: because I'd been counseled into vocational studies and uh, I'd
Speaker 1: run a newspaper in junior high. You know, a little.
Speaker 1: You know, so I sort of had a thing for newspapers.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I used to read them in the library.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it would be a cool place to work,
Speaker 1: but I tell you it turned it just suited me
Speaker 1: right away, just like my character was built to stand outside,
Speaker 1: observe and and scrawled down the observations. Okay, now, how
Speaker 1: long after you started there did you go for your
Speaker 1: short tenure Riverside. I was at the Chronicle as a
Speaker 1: copyboy for a year, and then I cycled into Riverside.
Speaker 1: I spent one year in Riverside trying really hard to
Speaker 1: do college, which I found to be high school with
Speaker 1: ash trays and there was good lives. The second year
Speaker 1: I just did the student newspaper and I was an
Speaker 1: hour outside of Los Angeles. It was nine. You would
Speaker 1: be surprised at how much access I could get. I
Speaker 1: spent five days doing a story with Little Richard while
Speaker 1: he was at the Whiskey A Go Go. I'll go
Speaker 1: back to his hotel room with him afterwards and listened
Speaker 1: to him talk story for hours. I've had interviews with
Speaker 1: sly Stone, with with Alvin Lee, big pieces in the
Speaker 1: college newspaper. Look a little bit slower. How did you
Speaker 1: actually make that happen? Are publicists okay? Were you reaching
Speaker 1: out to them or did you have a name? And
Speaker 1: some people started to call him up and tell him
Speaker 1: I was a college newspapers. They loved college newspapers because
Speaker 1: there wasn't any coverage in mainstream media and the underground
Speaker 1: press was a kind of bizarre, sort of marginal thing.
Speaker 1: But college newspapers they knew that that was something they
Speaker 1: could get into. So, I mean there are guys like
Speaker 1: grayland Landon at r C, a victor who was just
Speaker 1: so glad to hear from somebody at a college newspaper.
Speaker 1: And I was right on the service list immediately. I
Speaker 1: mean I started getting free records in the mail in
Speaker 1: a moment. And you know that was like getting a
Speaker 1: shot of morphine in your stomach. Okay, for we all
Speaker 1: feel that felt that way. That was currency. Now, needless
Speaker 1: to say, you ended up with more records than you
Speaker 1: wanted because they would send you everything. What did you
Speaker 1: do with the excess? Oh? You know, over the years,
Speaker 1: I developed very strategies. You know, I didn't keep them all.
Speaker 1: I kept all the books though, Bob, you know I'm
Speaker 1: going through that right now literally all the books are
Speaker 1: just all the music books, all the music books. I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't you know, they didn't send me review copies.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to say in general, because I'm moving
Speaker 1: right now. My god, I'm dealing with the uh you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta downsize a little bit. So I
Speaker 1: was looking at the books because of course and everything
Speaker 1: is eventually digital. And then I said, well, I get
Speaker 1: it like you to this day. I get a lot
Speaker 1: of books. Not a week goes by that I don't
Speaker 1: get at least one. And uh, you say, well should
Speaker 1: I throw out the self published one? Because that's one
Speaker 1: thing about rock and roll. When person is done, they
Speaker 1: write a book and they wanted me to read it.
Speaker 1: So then I said, well, where's where's the cut off point?
Speaker 1: They said? And then I was watching the Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: documentary on Showtime and he's got an archivist and he
Speaker 1: has all the books. I said, Fuck, if I ever
Speaker 1: get rich, I want to do that. So I'm saving
Speaker 1: all the music books. I have an enormous library of
Speaker 1: music books, enormous and they're never going back in print.
Speaker 1: I mean you haven't. It's an artifact. And the ones
Speaker 1: that are hard to find, are already super expensive, right,
Speaker 1: So uh, let's go back to being a copy boy.
Speaker 1: So you're a copy boy, and how far do you
Speaker 1: move up in that year? Ah, there's no moving up
Speaker 1: from copy boy. But I'll tell you what UH did
Speaker 1: get out of that is free tickets to the film War,
Speaker 1: So a little bit slower. You're the copy boy. How
Speaker 1: did you get the free tickets? I'd go back to
Speaker 1: uh John Wasserman, who was the junior drama critic, and say,
Speaker 1: can you get me on the guest list this week?
Speaker 1: And he'd called Vicky Cunningham, who's Bill Graham's secretary, and say,
Speaker 1: but you Selvin on the list? So I went to
Speaker 1: I Want nine seven and sixty first half sixty eight.
Speaker 1: I went out to music six nights a week. Wow.
Speaker 1: And you were living where I lived, in the ghetto
Speaker 1: in Oakland, right near where uh Eldridge Cleaver got shot
Speaker 1: and arrested. I heard the gunfire that night. Wow. So
Speaker 1: once you dropped out of high school, you were left
Speaker 1: your parents house, you were out on your own. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So if you're going out six nights a week, I
Speaker 1: mean that was when it was really happening. Totally and
Speaker 1: late shows. Okay, now you're having established your identity. You
Speaker 1: were going for the show, not to hang. No, I
Speaker 1: was just in the audience, right, and and I hadn't
Speaker 1: really started writing articles, so I'll just get in. I
Speaker 1: got slid in and just sit there and go oh wow,
Speaker 1: and just soaking this stuff. Well, I mean, but you
Speaker 1: were not part of a group. You didn't go there
Speaker 1: to talk to people or whatever. You would just taking
Speaker 1: it all out. I was on a mission. I wanted
Speaker 1: to absorb with most of this as I could. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have a memory, and obviously things start to blur,
Speaker 1: But from that era, do you remember any specific performances
Speaker 1: that blew your minds? Many? How about Albert Collins, Elvin
Speaker 1: Bishop and Johnny Winter playing in the Matrix, a club
Speaker 1: with about fifty people sitting in the room. Okay, I
Speaker 1: did see Albert Collins and the Iceman you know album era,
Speaker 1: and he had that really long guitar corner dark. He
Speaker 1: was badass, and you know, he was fantastic. And that
Speaker 1: was Johnny Winter before the first album. Uh. This guy
Speaker 1: named Henry Carr brought him out from Texas and Henry
Speaker 1: had been part of the Mother Earth thing which had
Speaker 1: a big Texas connection, and Alvin was always around. I
Speaker 1: mean Alvin was out six nights a week too. I
Speaker 1: used to see Alvin three nights a week. Okay, the
Speaker 1: guy always looks like he's done too many drugs. Is
Speaker 1: he on the planet or not? Alvin? Yeah, Elvin Um
Speaker 1: sobered up a long time ago. And Uh, I think
Speaker 1: that he is probably one of the greatest bluesmen of
Speaker 1: our time. Uh. And he has taken to doing performances occasionally,
Speaker 1: just the two of them with Charlie Mussell White, and
Speaker 1: Charlie is another person who just keeps getting better on
Speaker 1: his instrument. I mean, it's amazing. He's like the Horowitz
Speaker 1: of the harmonica. Uh. And these guys are in their
Speaker 1: seventies now, they're they're really getting soulful. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the Elvin Charlie show. I'm dying to see it. Those
Speaker 1: two guys blow me away. And how about some of
Speaker 1: the bands from that scene, What was your experience, Like Quicksilver,
Speaker 1: Cooksilver could be great and they could be horrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I love about Cooksilver because they
Speaker 1: were a five piece band in sixty six and then
Speaker 1: sixties seven, like everything got a little bit more serious
Speaker 1: and professional and stuff like that. And and they moved
Speaker 1: back from their their dairy farm and Randa the hate
Speaker 1: and they were gonna like start rehearsing. And the lead
Speaker 1: singer is guy named Jimmy Murray said rehearsing, Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. So he quit the band over rehearsals.
Speaker 1: I mean that is that a fantastically that's the sixties.
Speaker 1: That's about hippie moment. Rehearse So any given night, you know,
Speaker 1: on the Bill of the Dead, Quicksilver could hand him
Speaker 1: their butts. Uh And uh, it's Duncan. You know, because
Speaker 1: Trippolina played the same solo every night, it got a
Speaker 1: little bit better, I suppose. But you know, he was
Speaker 1: not improvisationalist. And Duncan if he if he was on,
Speaker 1: it was gonna tear ass um. And he just died
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Man. And I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: Gary Duncan was the real deal, Bob. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think the guy wore shoes the last forty years
Speaker 1: of his life. Yeah yeah, And uh he was like, uh,
Speaker 1: absolutely incorrupted by success. Well he didn't have any. He
Speaker 1: was broken. He lived like quite trash, but it was
Speaker 1: a lovely guy. Worked on cars, played guitar and somehow
Speaker 1: managed make that work. I don't know what he lived
Speaker 1: on because Quicksilver, Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they didn't
Speaker 1: even pay him. I don't know, but you know, the
Speaker 1: manager of Quicksilver was also such a story. Ron Poulty.
Speaker 1: Paulty was another total hippie UM who came out to
Speaker 1: San Francisco after accidentally killing his best friend. And that's
Speaker 1: incredible story. But he never got caught. Oh they everybody
Speaker 1: knew he was acquitted by the coroner's jury, but it
Speaker 1: was his friends friends he was worried about. So he
Speaker 1: got out of town. He was a full scale criminal
Speaker 1: into Chicago. You know, he had a twenty four hour
Speaker 1: locksmith shop. Imagine that, right? Uh? And Poulty turned into
Speaker 1: this fantastic hippie who was totally believed in the whole
Speaker 1: thing and and screwed up every career he handled. Uh.
Speaker 1: The recently, um one of his groups has gotten back
Speaker 1: together and recorded their first album is of Copps. Right,
Speaker 1: have you have you heard the record? I have her,
Speaker 1: but I run into which one is the yoga? Exactly?
Speaker 1: I went to a couple of vents you there. They
Speaker 1: were telling me the whole story. So, uh, Denise Kaufman,
Speaker 1: Madonna's yoga teacher. I mean she's amazing, clear uh, creative personality,
Speaker 1: just amazing. And these girls all got back together. They
Speaker 1: spent two years, they had some angel paying for it,
Speaker 1: recording the album they always wanted to record. And it
Speaker 1: is gorgeous. It is just a fantastic album. It's like
Speaker 1: being in nine seven all over again. Right, And so
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, you know, and uh, I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I talked to a lawyer that
Speaker 1: had a big money record deal for you, but Palty
Speaker 1: wouldn't take it. And and and they go, oh no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. And I go, my god, and and
Speaker 1: and so I said, let me check because I know
Speaker 1: the guy he was talking to. So I called the
Speaker 1: guy from Columbia that made the offer. He goes, oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I I wanted that band really bad, but Palty wouldn't
Speaker 1: let us. And then that was what happened to Quicksover too.
Speaker 1: It's Booksover didn't put out an album until light six years, right,
Speaker 1: and and they're pretty fizzled by then. Uh, if that
Speaker 1: album come out in sixty seven good GOLLI right, well, paulty.
Speaker 1: Uh was backstage at Monterey Pop Festival and Krik Silver
Speaker 1: played and Albert Goldman told him you hauled out for
Speaker 1: a million dollars and he did, gush, darn't it? And
Speaker 1: you know, nobody wanted to pay a million dollars, so
Speaker 1: like you're a half later he goes, okay, we'll take
Speaker 1: the hundred thousand. Okay, what about Bloomfield? I love Michael Bloomfield.
Speaker 1: He was a reader. Hey Michael, what are you reading?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reading the letters of Evelyn Waugh is
Speaker 1: so fascinating. Wow. Okay, then the other Okay, Dan Hicks,
Speaker 1: Oh god, I love Dan to god miss him. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was dry sardonic for real. He used to send
Speaker 1: out postcard Did you get him with the jumbles on him? Man?
Speaker 1: I mean you know who does that? And nobody? Uh?
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so I mean his memorial And and
Speaker 1: Ria Maldaur speaking and she's talking about how she went
Speaker 1: by his garage sale one weekend and the gold record
Speaker 1: that she gave him was out for sale. That was
Speaker 1: a mistake, I'm okay. And what was the viewpoint of
Speaker 1: the dead from you know, were they the house band
Speaker 1: or were they seen as something special in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So the Dead were just a part of the firmament.
Speaker 1: And and very early on there was a contingency known
Speaker 1: as deadheads, and they were the sort of stinky hippies
Speaker 1: over on the side doing the kelp dancing with their
Speaker 1: hands over their head, right. Uh. And they're a part
Speaker 1: of every show the Dead were on. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: they weren't really Uh, they were a factor from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. But the Dead didn't have an audience outside
Speaker 1: of San Francisco and in New York for years. For
Speaker 1: years they were just didn't have me took took him
Speaker 1: to like nineteen seventy to make it in New York. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the whole things about around Altamont was they
Speaker 1: were all so pro Uh. Mountain Girl told me that
Speaker 1: they were still she was stealing baskets of strawberries for
Speaker 1: her kids from the supermarket. Wow. Okay, so let's go
Speaker 1: back to you. How does it end at Riverside for you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm taking this three hour um art appreciation class where
Speaker 1: they draw the shades and uh, well I'm out called
Speaker 1: sleeping and uh I wake up and my friend Michael
Speaker 1: is in the seat in front of me. He's turned around.
Speaker 1: He looks at me with this incredible look of frustration,
Speaker 1: and he says, uh, what are we doing here? And
Speaker 1: I said, I just woke up. And he goes just
Speaker 1: discussed turns away from me and then like sort of
Speaker 1: tick tick tick tick tick ding. Oh I get it,
Speaker 1: and I tap him on the shoulder. I said, let's split.
Speaker 1: So we walked out of that class. That's the last
Speaker 1: class I went to. But you know it's pretty s
Speaker 1: much short of the semester. So I paid Mike a
Speaker 1: few bucks to go take my final for me, so
Speaker 1: you know he could pass it because I knew I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to And uh, he split in the middle
Speaker 1: because the teacher collected the paper road by row and
Speaker 1: she he saw her like look down the road after
Speaker 1: she looked at the names on the paper and double checked.
Speaker 1: So he figured we've been had, and indeed we had.
Speaker 1: They called me in and they were very very upset
Speaker 1: with me, and they said, well, why did you hire
Speaker 1: someone who flunked? And I said, well, he had a chance.
Speaker 1: So they suggested that I withdraw from the university for
Speaker 1: a while and they would let it go, and I
Speaker 1: said that was a very generous offer. So they didn't
Speaker 1: actually kick me out, but you know, I went out
Speaker 1: through misadventure, that's for sure. And you when you were out,
Speaker 1: any intention idea that you would ever return. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it ends that way. How do you get back
Speaker 1: working at the Chronicle? So I went back up to
Speaker 1: San Francisco and I started like knocking on doors writing
Speaker 1: this article right in that article, and the Chronicle was
Speaker 1: one of those places, and I've been there. I knew
Speaker 1: who to talk to. So I was in the pink
Speaker 1: section the Sunday date book, uh, the calendar of the Chronicle. UH,
Speaker 1: and I was UH in and out of Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: a little. There was a thing called Earth Magazine that
Speaker 1: was very good to me. UH. Jim Good from Playboys
Speaker 1: started that it was supposed to be a big slick
Speaker 1: counter culture think didn't last that long, and UH I
Speaker 1: got involved in a lot of interesting stories like UH,
Speaker 1: I was following Creden's Clear Waters recording a pen Jelan.
Speaker 1: I watched them rehearse it. I watched them record it.
Speaker 1: UH interviewed them extensionally for a while. UH. That year
Speaker 1: seventy and seventy one uhcod was like a cottage industry
Speaker 1: for me. They were like the biggest band in the
Speaker 1: world and here they were right in the East Bay. Okay, Alex,
Speaker 1: since you mentioned it, what was the perspective on Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone which started in sixty seven? Was it God had
Speaker 1: ry or another rag or did people hate Winner or
Speaker 1: what was going on? Oh? No, they eve't. Nobody hated
Speaker 1: Winner right away that he had to work up to that.
Speaker 1: I remember reading the first issue. I remember where I was.
Speaker 1: Uh it was November sixty seven. I bought it at
Speaker 1: this bookstore called UC Corner, which catered to the college crowd,
Speaker 1: and I walked up to a diner called Size Child Broider,
Speaker 1: and I remember being spellbound by I believe that John
Speaker 1: Landau wrote an article about Sam and Dave in that
Speaker 1: first issue. That just stunned me that there would be
Speaker 1: uh literate journalism about soul music, which was a current
Speaker 1: obsession with me. And uh the rest of it was
Speaker 1: right up my alley. I mean, I just the it
Speaker 1: was not a national magazine that first issue. The front
Speaker 1: page story was Tom Rowns quits his k f r
Speaker 1: C program director, and that was the local top forty station,
Speaker 1: so he sort of like stumbled into that whole national
Speaker 1: international thing, but it stumbled into itself rolling stone. I
Speaker 1: mean they stepped into a vortex and they managed to
Speaker 1: hold on and ride that to the bell. Okay, a
Speaker 1: couple of people. Ralph Gleeson. Ralph Gleason was a hero.
Speaker 1: I went to high school with his kids. Uh he.
Speaker 1: When I got the job at the Chronicle, I was
Speaker 1: hired by his complete nemesis, so I was like immediately
Speaker 1: blacklisted by him while he was in Fantasy. At one
Speaker 1: point I ran into him over at Fantasy and we
Speaker 1: had a complete, uh you know, um conciliation. In fact,
Speaker 1: he called my boss that night and they had a
Speaker 1: conciliation and he sat on a filing cabinet that night
Speaker 1: that afternoon and Fantasy and gave me a two hour
Speaker 1: lecture and how to do my job. That stayed with
Speaker 1: me for the next thirty four years. And he was
Speaker 1: an amazing guy. And when I had a point in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one where the management decided that I
Speaker 1: was holding in the way, and uh, I took him
Speaker 1: down on an aged discrimination beef and I came back
Speaker 1: to the newsroom and I was like radioactive. You know,
Speaker 1: nobody wanted to tell me to do anything, uh, And
Speaker 1: I had a bad attitude about my job as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact. So I went downstairs to where they
Speaker 1: keep the micro fiche, and I went and I read
Speaker 1: every single Ralph Gleason article that he ever wrote for
Speaker 1: the Chronicle in order, starting in nineteen fifty. Wow. And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I did this, A little bit
Speaker 1: like the guy in Close Encounters, right, But by the
Speaker 1: end of it, I had uh decided to write a
Speaker 1: major article, and I had kind of reconnected with my bliss,
Speaker 1: and I'd also become credibly uh familiar with Ralph's work.
Speaker 1: I mean, covering Hank Williams out in San Pablo in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, and covering Fats Domino at the Oakland
Speaker 1: Auditorium in fifty four, and calling out Pat Boone as
Speaker 1: a phony in nineteen fifty six. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: known as a jazz guy, and indeed, like Louis Armstrong
Speaker 1: and Duke Ellington couldn't believe that they were getting written
Speaker 1: about in a white newspaper in California, and they thought
Speaker 1: he was their close friend for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: But he was also on the rock and roll stuff
Speaker 1: all the way and then Dylan blew him out and
Speaker 1: he became like the first guy to really endorse Dylan
Speaker 1: and major way, uh even ahead of handoff. And then
Speaker 1: he caught the San Francisco thing right away from the
Speaker 1: very first concert at the Family Dog concert at the
Speaker 1: Long Sharman's Hall. He was there. He was on the scene.
Speaker 1: And you know, if people made fun of him, they
Speaker 1: said that he was either uh uh to uh sixteen
Speaker 1: year olds. He was forty eight, and he's either two
Speaker 1: twenty four year olds, three sixteen year olds, or four
Speaker 1: twelve year olds. But uh, you know, Garcia loved him,
Speaker 1: the Airplane loved him. The Santana guys all admired him.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was the dude nobody will ever have
Speaker 1: that career again. He was the first guy to write
Speaker 1: about pop music on a regular basis for um daily newspaper,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Gilbert Seldis of pop music. Covering
Speaker 1: a couple other legends. How about Tom Donahue, huge, huge guy,
Speaker 1: God Bob. I'm not surprised, but these are the right
Speaker 1: people to be asking about. Donahue was a father of
Speaker 1: FM rating. He was a mental giant. It wasn't just radio.
Speaker 1: He knew what life was about. He got it in
Speaker 1: that really supreme way, and he had these enormous appetites.
Speaker 1: He was six five and four fifty pounds, his wife
Speaker 1: was pounds, and he just was this incredibly penetrating intellect.
Speaker 1: When I called Carl Scott, you know, call from Warner Others, right,
Speaker 1: and he worked for Tom way way way back, and
Speaker 1: all the other people are gone, and I'm writing this
Speaker 1: book about sly Stone and I need somebody like sort
Speaker 1: of like qualify Tom and Carlson. I think of a
Speaker 1: young Orson Welles and that's right, and and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he took over kmp X when it was midnight to
Speaker 1: six am operation and turned it into a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour and no time, and he figured out the whole
Speaker 1: underground rock radio thing. He was doing Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: San Francisco radio every night, and uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: just had vision and intellect way beyond a Bill Graham,
Speaker 1: who was really kind of a narrow minded sort of
Speaker 1: capitalist who didn't get it. I mean Bill didn't take LSD.
Speaker 1: Tom gobbled it. Okay, So how do you get back
Speaker 1: into the chronicle? How did I get back in while
Speaker 1: I was doing all this pink section work then uh
Speaker 1: uh Gleason took the job with Fantasy, and Wasserman became
Speaker 1: the Oh yeah, okay, this is good. Uh. Wasserman became
Speaker 1: the guy. And John had this goofy idea that to
Speaker 1: hire a jazz musician to be a jazz critic. So
Speaker 1: I hired John Hendrix, the jazz singer two halftime job,
Speaker 1: to be a jazz critic. And Hendricks thought this was
Speaker 1: cool as hell, and he would go sit in with
Speaker 1: the acts and write about it. And it just wasn't
Speaker 1: quite clear to him what the distant journalistic distance was, right,
Speaker 1: and he and so John tried to explain to him, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So he would do it and
Speaker 1: not tell about it, right, so the last and and
Speaker 1: then he had a gig in London for six weeks.
Speaker 1: So I had his gig for six weeks, and I
Speaker 1: knew where the paper clips were, That's what Wasserman said,
Speaker 1: you know, And I answered the mail and I answered
Speaker 1: the phone. So I did all this stuff that jazz
Speaker 1: criticks can't do. And then Hendricks came back and they
Speaker 1: started like, well, you know, you have six hours this week,
Speaker 1: he'll have ten. And then he there's this famous Giants
Speaker 1: of Jazz Concert Big Deal Concert at the Masonic Auditory
Speaker 1: and Felonious Monks, Sonny Rowland's Art Blakey blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and Hendrix appeared the entire second half on stage and
Speaker 1: then wrote the review Monday for getting to mention that part.
Speaker 1: So that was it. I got the job, and uh
Speaker 1: many many many years later he was ninety one years old.
Speaker 1: They had a sort of tribute to John Hendricks over
Speaker 1: Marin County and I got to go out in front
Speaker 1: of an audience that, like y'all, you know, that is
Speaker 1: the Chronicles guying. I have to go to no man,
Speaker 1: I'm like Bill Cosby. I'm just another guy that John
Speaker 1: Hendrix put in the business. Okay, So Hendrix was covering
Speaker 1: jazz when you got the job. Was a jazz, roll,
Speaker 1: pop music whatever, you know. John Wasserman, he was like
Speaker 1: a kind of a Playboy magazine, hi fi kind of guy,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He wasn't hippie. He liked
Speaker 1: al Jaro and uh Diadado and and that was his
Speaker 1: idea of music. And so he was really anxious to
Speaker 1: have the rock scene covered us. He knew that it
Speaker 1: was on. Okay, I mean, you were one of a
Speaker 1: pretty small fraternity. What was it like being on your end?
Speaker 1: It was weird for a long time because, uh, the
Speaker 1: until like the late seventies, there was no infrastructure for
Speaker 1: for publicity and and and you know, photo passes and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. I mean, I remember like taking photographers.
Speaker 1: It was hard to get the newspaper to give me
Speaker 1: a photographer, you know, like they didn't think it was important.
Speaker 1: The first two years, all my reviews ran between the
Speaker 1: adult theater ads in the edge of the paper. And
Speaker 1: and I remember the first article that had a one
Speaker 1: column mugshot was the review of the Bob Marley and
Speaker 1: the Whalers first show in in uh the United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: they that they had gotten uh Blackwell thought they were
Speaker 1: going to get over with American blacks. So he booked
Speaker 1: him on a tour with slying the family Stone. Lasted
Speaker 1: one date and they threw him out, Uh in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and some nightclub owner named Scot Peering ended up at
Speaker 1: Rough Trade Records in London calls me up and says,
Speaker 1: you know, if I booked this group called the Whalers,
Speaker 1: would anybody come? And I remember saying, Scott, if it's
Speaker 1: just you and me do it. And not only did
Speaker 1: anybody come, the place was packed both nights, and it
Speaker 1: was packed with the scene. You know. Grateful Dead was there,
Speaker 1: the airplane was there, That Steve Miller band was there.
Speaker 1: It was on you know, and uh, Donnihue was there,
Speaker 1: and Donnie came backstage and told him if they stayed
Speaker 1: over and played next week at this club, he put
Speaker 1: them on the radio live in between and helped drive
Speaker 1: up business. And this was the real whalers. This is
Speaker 1: Neville Livingston, Bunny versus Peter McIntosh, Tosh and Bob and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, no I threees no rita. They hired some
Speaker 1: girl to wear a watch because they were so incapable
Speaker 1: of telling time. Her whole job was to stand by
Speaker 1: the side of the stage and tell them it's an
Speaker 1: hour now, you know. They were amazing and the uh
Speaker 1: the show which is that that that live show is
Speaker 1: on an album called Talking Blues. That that case on broadcast. Whoa,
Speaker 1: that was amazing and okay. So then in the set
Speaker 1: late seventies, you're saying, the record companies get their publicity
Speaker 1: infrastructure down, So how is it for you? Uh? You know, uh,
Speaker 1: it just meant everything was getting amped up, and the
Speaker 1: service was better, and you got a lot more interviews.
Speaker 1: I mean that was sort of new. You know, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to interview Bonnie Rate? She just put
Speaker 1: out her first album. You might like her, you know
Speaker 1: you like blues. Oh yeah, I told Bonnie that, you know,
Speaker 1: uh did uh interview with her twenty five years ago
Speaker 1: when I was like at the paper for a couple
Speaker 1: of months and she just put out her first album
Speaker 1: And she said yeah, and we both still got our
Speaker 1: same jobs. So did you end up burning up because
Speaker 1: the music went through a lot of changes from when
Speaker 1: you started until you left the chronicles? You ever burned
Speaker 1: out on the music have burn outs and reefrethings. I
Speaker 1: mean like I got really sick of the Rio Speedwagon
Speaker 1: sticks here, but then a new wave of revitalized me.
Speaker 1: I think that happened to a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: got really sick of the uh turn of the century
Speaker 1: stuff because there was so much interest upstairs and me
Speaker 1: covering things like the Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears. I
Speaker 1: went to three Britney Spears concerts, and each time I
Speaker 1: sat there and my life flash before my eyes. I
Speaker 1: could not think bom I couldn't think what I could
Speaker 1: contribute to the conversation about this. Right, making fun of
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense, right, and and there's no
Speaker 1: serious criticism associated here, and the cultural movement is like
Speaker 1: almost non existent. So you know, what do I have
Speaker 1: to say about this? I wanted to like die uh
Speaker 1: and and so somewhere around like two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: when I got back after the uh IS discrimination, I
Speaker 1: really steered myself into an entirely different type of coverage.
Speaker 1: You know, I stopped doing concerts. I stopped you know,
Speaker 1: I had a younger guy working for me, uh, work
Speaker 1: for the paper, not for me. What am I thinking? Like?
Speaker 1: UH named Iden Wazirian. And you know, if we needed
Speaker 1: to cover one of these uh Aaron Carter shows, a
Speaker 1: Den was the man for that. I think I'll do
Speaker 1: the interview with Taj Mahal about his Caribbean seed business
Speaker 1: and how he's helping farmers all over the Caribbean. UM
Speaker 1: or do some public health stuff about UH earbuds and
Speaker 1: the dangers of audio. Yeah. I just moved into trying
Speaker 1: to find other ways to reach the audience. For a
Speaker 1: bit there, I was doing MP three's because you could
Speaker 1: post MP three, right of course. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you know, and I'd clear the publishing with people.
Speaker 1: It was like as a dream come true for a
Speaker 1: music cricket. Through the music three, through the pages go here,
Speaker 1: the fact you can write about something that they can
Speaker 1: listen right then now they don't even have the time
Speaker 1: to listen to anything, never mind read. There's this Japanese
Speaker 1: guy around San Francisco doing all the hipster clubs as
Speaker 1: an opening act. His name was Toshio Harano and he
Speaker 1: was a huge Jimmy Rogers fan. He would go and
Speaker 1: do Jimmy Rogers songs and nothing. But it was just
Speaker 1: hilarious because he hadn't lost his accent, right, so he'd
Speaker 1: as peach picking time in Georgia at pick a girl
Speaker 1: for me all all. And I mean I took him
Speaker 1: down to my basement and I recorded him, and I
Speaker 1: recorded him over three or four times, and I said,
Speaker 1: you want to do it again, and goes no, that's
Speaker 1: as good as I can do it. And then I
Speaker 1: sent it to the publisher, Ralph Piers, the publisher, right,
Speaker 1: and he lives up in Nevada and I know him,
Speaker 1: and I sent him an MP three and said, you know,
Speaker 1: can I get a clearance for this? And and he
Speaker 1: wrote back, he said, you know, I can feel this
Speaker 1: guy's sincerity. Yes, Okay, So how does it end with
Speaker 1: a Chronicle? Oh? That was uh to UH nineteen, uh
Speaker 1: two thousand and and and UM nine and the new
Speaker 1: union contract. And we come in to look at the
Speaker 1: eight and a half by eleven bullet points to the
Speaker 1: new contract. And I'm going down one draconian thing after another.
Speaker 1: Now in truth that Hurst people are losing a million
Speaker 1: dollars a week. So I'm in there in trouble and
Speaker 1: they've got to take some actions. And I get about
Speaker 1: halfway down and it says, uh, no more early retirement,
Speaker 1: and I want I'm fifty nine. I wonder is this
Speaker 1: paper even gonna be here six years from now? I'm
Speaker 1: out of here? And did you get a check from
Speaker 1: the Chronicle since before the next day, Okay, I was
Speaker 1: gone and uh I was one of editorial players to
Speaker 1: leave their jobs that year. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: like it was sinking shift. Okay. So let's go through
Speaker 1: a few things. What do you think about today's music?
Speaker 1: Very little. I don't think about it much at all.
Speaker 1: Since I left the paper. I don't have to watch
Speaker 1: the rookies play baseball. You have a lot of good lives. Okay,
Speaker 1: what the future of newspapers? Wow, my crystal ball is
Speaker 1: pretty foggy. I've been reading The Times this week while
Speaker 1: I've been down. Boy, it's gone to hell again someone
Speaker 1: who reads it every day. There was a period before
Speaker 1: they were talking about the l A Times, when they
Speaker 1: had Michael kins leaves headed irrelevant? What you think about
Speaker 1: Michael Kinsley? How do the opinion page? They were covering
Speaker 1: Washington whatever. Then they sold it out to Tribune and
Speaker 1: it's been downhill ever since. I mean, it's had a
Speaker 1: slight return that well, but I don't know what they
Speaker 1: have a right turn. But I will tell you this,
Speaker 1: since uh it was sold to the new owner, I
Speaker 1: can feel, even though pearl Stein is the editor, you
Speaker 1: expected some big change. They just redid the app which
Speaker 1: I gotta give him some credit for. There's a little
Speaker 1: more coverage because I used to call it a toy newspaper.
Speaker 1: Everybody I know canceled it, but I said, I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta know what's going on. But the
Speaker 1: business actually would be two pages now it can be
Speaker 1: three or four. So if you're coming from a real paper,
Speaker 1: it still looks like a toy paper. But if you're looking,
Speaker 1: you know, as someone who's here every day, I would
Speaker 1: say that it's got a chance. But the bleeding has
Speaker 1: been stanched. Yes, I think that's true of the chronicle too.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that they're reaching new people. They're
Speaker 1: definitely not reaching new people. What are They're just serving
Speaker 1: their old audience. You know, what are the amazing things?
Speaker 1: You know, having lived through this digital disruption, If you
Speaker 1: go back twenty years ago, if it was in the
Speaker 1: newspaper l A Times, New York Times, you assumes everybody
Speaker 1: who cared had seen it, knew the story today. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like it could be anywhere. Most people
Speaker 1: have not heard the story. They're hearing it from you first,
Speaker 1: which is really strange. Well, so this is one of
Speaker 1: the themes of your of your your newsletter, which I
Speaker 1: still think of, by the way, as a newsletter when
Speaker 1: it came to mail. Uh is the sources of information
Speaker 1: are so fragment of this day that you can't really
Speaker 1: reach a consensus of media at all. Well, it's very
Speaker 1: strange for someone like me, you know, the original dream
Speaker 1: is to reach a point where you can reach everybody. Now,
Speaker 1: like you, I'm an outside guy. They're never gonna hire
Speaker 1: me from the New York Times whatever, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But it used to be, well, if you're in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, or if you're a comedian, if you
Speaker 1: had a network television show, you were at the pinnacle.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew your name yesterday. I mean, why would you
Speaker 1: want to sitcom today? I mean, what is Mark Marin?
Speaker 1: Who does podcast? He had his own show on I
Speaker 1: s C. Did anybody see it? So now, I mean,
Speaker 1: things are written in the New York Times, so the
Speaker 1: goal is a little obscured. And now because there's so
Speaker 1: many messages, it's the virality has become harder. But without
Speaker 1: making a personal going back to music again, a couple
Speaker 1: more questions, What did you feel about writing negative reviews?
Speaker 1: I felt like I was an advocate for the arts
Speaker 1: and that uh, I could say whatever I wanted as
Speaker 1: long as I stayed true to my core beliefs and
Speaker 1: represented those openly. Uh uh. And I was uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say I was fearless as a
Speaker 1: shifty word to say about yourself, but but I was
Speaker 1: unafraid to write terrible reviews of people I knew. You know,
Speaker 1: you saw Grace the other day, right, absolutely, God, Grace
Speaker 1: is the greatest. You know what else I got her
Speaker 1: out of that band I did? I went to see
Speaker 1: a starship show at a ship, a little disco called Dreamland,
Speaker 1: and there were twenty thirty people there and they were
Speaker 1: doing a fortnight run, and and I just said that
Speaker 1: this thing was a complete embarrassment, just a complete embarrassing
Speaker 1: this is what you wrote in the band the paper
Speaker 1: and it ran on Saturday, and Grace picked up the
Speaker 1: phone and called Bill Thompson, the manager, and she said,
Speaker 1: Selvan is right, I'm not coming tonight. And that was
Speaker 1: the end. That was the end. Okay, Well, that just
Speaker 1: goes to one of my final questions. Maybe the final
Speaker 1: question is you look back at this era, hey, will
Speaker 1: anything survive? And certainly in your location, will any of
Speaker 1: that survive? And does it deserve to survive? This era? No,
Speaker 1: the era when the king, the era from sixty five
Speaker 1: to let's call it seventy five whatever, it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: the uh English novels of the Victorian era, of course
Speaker 1: they're gonna stay. Really, it's a class it's a classic
Speaker 1: art form. It uh, it's the peak of the classic
Speaker 1: art form. I mean you can see it rise, you
Speaker 1: can see it fall and just disappears in the nineties.
Speaker 1: And but all that stuff is going to be an
Speaker 1: important part of American culture for as long as as.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Grateful Dead are just gonna be here.
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen is gonna be here, Michael Jackson despite all
Speaker 1: the Woody Allen, No, this is going to be around.
Speaker 1: This is what America was. This was like blue jeans
Speaker 1: and Coca Cola. It's embedded in our fabric. But I
Speaker 1: got one for you on because I played this game
Speaker 1: quite a lot. I want to want to play this
Speaker 1: with you and you could be a podcaster or whatever.
Speaker 1: But so here's my question. You know, listening around late
Speaker 1: at night with music business people and that man, you know,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. What are the classic
Speaker 1: songs of the twenty one century? What are the songs
Speaker 1: the people are gonna be singing fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: like the motown stuff, of the Beatles, stuff of the
Speaker 1: back rock stuff that we're saying still using. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it gonna be single ladies? Put a ring on it?
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be crazy? Is it gonna be? Since
Speaker 1: you've been gone? Are there any what do you think?
Speaker 1: What songs? Okay, let's be really honest. Although I'm not
Speaker 1: that much younger than you, my listening starts, you know,
Speaker 1: early sixties, so anything before early sixties, I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: I'm not an We get Michael Einstein in here, he'll
Speaker 1: talk about the American Songbook. So let's go after my
Speaker 1: I listened intently to what you just had to say.
Speaker 1: But I believe unless you're a student of the game,
Speaker 1: hundred years from now, the only thing that survives is
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Oh uh, you know um Thackeray and Trollip survived,
Speaker 1: so the Stones will be there, Queen will be there.
Speaker 1: Well well, well let's put it this way. I will
Speaker 1: write about records, and some of these bands are somewhat pejoratives,
Speaker 1: but they did some good material, like Loggins and Messina. Okay,
Speaker 1: when Loggins went solo, became totally Sacharin. But with Jimmy,
Speaker 1: I could play you stuff. Anybody would say it was great,
Speaker 1: but almost completely forgotten. I'll give you another one. See trains.
Speaker 1: Remember the man c train. Uh Andy Cahlberg was a
Speaker 1: good friend, Yeah, I mean forgotten. Okay, you even remembered them?
Speaker 1: They were never hit to begin with. They did they
Speaker 1: did Song at Joe, but they did the first version
Speaker 1: of exactly first version they got introduced one of their
Speaker 1: albums too right, that was already but then no nobody
Speaker 1: remembered them then, okay, but let's go on, let's go
Speaker 1: one step deeper. Do they remember Mike Bloomfield and Supersession?
Speaker 1: So Airplanes gone, Quicksilver's gone, uh, stop with Camel? I
Speaker 1: mean no, those bands have lost tremendous amount of their
Speaker 1: cache and their and their presence and their catalog is dimmed.
Speaker 1: But you know, how do you explain to Steve Miller band? Okay, Steve,
Speaker 1: let's go back if you trapped or Steve Miller's sort
Speaker 1: of unique. But what does survive, I believe are songs,
Speaker 1: not records. And that's one of the reasons why today's
Speaker 1: music is not going to survive. They don't. Is it
Speaker 1: that they don't have songs that they're no melody, there's
Speaker 1: nothing for future generations to hook on. Okay, and but
Speaker 1: when you go back so ironically, it's the sauce stuff
Speaker 1: like Michelle and other Beatles songs as opposed to just
Speaker 1: a bad example helter skelter. If you look at these Stones,
Speaker 1: and I'm a Stones fan, okay, it will be seen
Speaker 1: as a great degree a rip off of Mississippi Mississippi
Speaker 1: Delta Blues. Now those are those recordings are poor, but
Speaker 1: and they certainly survived. But I'm not a big believer,
Speaker 1: and let me be I'm not cynical about this. I
Speaker 1: would like it to survive, but I see how much
Speaker 1: has been forgotten. And also certain few points of the
Speaker 1: people who were there, Like if you mentioned Culture Club,
Speaker 1: they're negative. Culture Club did a couple of Stones, Church
Speaker 1: of the Poison Mind. It was like Culture Club was there, right,
Speaker 1: But the point is right, and he could still deliver it.
Speaker 1: But the point is that people who are there, you
Speaker 1: need a consensus to move it forward. So the people
Speaker 1: who are there who feel negative are helping keep this music.
Speaker 1: Someone underground. I I asked a different question. Okay, this
Speaker 1: guy is pretty successful at the label, This guy Mike Karen,
Speaker 1: and he was talking at his kid, like five years ago,
Speaker 1: two year old kids playing with his iPad and says,
Speaker 1: this will be the instrument of the future. Now, what
Speaker 1: do we know. You've had a lot of close up experience.
Speaker 1: Most of these guys all they could do was play.
Speaker 1: They couldn't really have a good conversation, and they would
Speaker 1: shed it and they did it to get laid. I
Speaker 1: have a theory beyond that, once they realized it didn't
Speaker 1: solve other problems, than they couldn't write any hits anymore.
Speaker 1: But today, to interact with society, there's so many easier
Speaker 1: ways to do it that you don't get these people
Speaker 1: off the grid rehearse it. But you know, there's just
Speaker 1: being greta van fleet that gets a lot of negative blowback.
Speaker 1: The first EP, there were a couple of very good
Speaker 1: tracks rip off of led Zeppelin, but not like Kingdom Come,
Speaker 1: not literally, it's just reminiscent sound. All the old people
Speaker 1: say it's just led Zeppa. I said led Zeppin was
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. The led Zeppelin were inspired by that
Speaker 1: wasn't even fifty years ago. So just to finish and sense,
Speaker 1: you'll hope that at some point people will wake up
Speaker 1: and we'll go back to this music and being inspired.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, all these years later, there really
Speaker 1: hasn't been another led Zeppelin. There hasn't been another who
Speaker 1: there hasn't been another Bob Marley and and my kids
Speaker 1: twenty nine and and she went through the whole teenage
Speaker 1: years bringing all these guys over, you know, and all
Speaker 1: of them we're listening to. Who led Zeppelin had Marley
Speaker 1: T shirts on. I'm like, that would be like you
Speaker 1: and me having Glenn Miller T shirt. That's what I'd
Speaker 1: try to tell people. Let's say, when I was listening
Speaker 1: to the Beatles, I was not listening to Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: whom I still don't like. It's not listening to Perry Como.
Speaker 1: It's not like they that was wiped off the map,
Speaker 1: but it was also I have another theory, which it's funny.
Speaker 1: I've seen other people pick up on it. There was
Speaker 1: one renaissance. Okay, they painted and sculpted since then, but
Speaker 1: there was one renaissance. We lived through the renisend. They'll
Speaker 1: make music, but what do we know. You had to
Speaker 1: get a deal, you had to get on the radio.
Speaker 1: We lived for the music. Music was everything. It's amazing
Speaker 1: you talk to everybody, So I don't think we can
Speaker 1: recreate that. So to me, and looking at music history,
Speaker 1: which is what I do now. The corporate control of
Speaker 1: the record business. Uh starts in the late seventies, the
Speaker 1: independent labels like Motown and A and M, who were
Speaker 1: run by people that made music, that ran experiments in
Speaker 1: the studio personally. Uh, the corporations began absorbing those. And
Speaker 1: I think that there was the Fleetwood Mac album and
Speaker 1: the enormous profits of fourteen million copies of rumors to
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers that really convinced the corporations to well, you
Speaker 1: know what, people don't realize that was the entertainment division
Speaker 1: that was making the most profits the rest of their surprise, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that made more money than television. And the whole Warner
Speaker 1: cable system was built on the back of the record
Speaker 1: what all happened to? To surprise right back side? What
Speaker 1: where's that money coming from? So at the late seventies
Speaker 1: and in early ages, start seeing this corporatestation, and then
Speaker 1: they started playing corporate marketing methods, right, And so I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to get to be such an old,
Speaker 1: uh you know, growning guy, but I think the last
Speaker 1: original American rock band was the Talking Heads, and the
Speaker 1: rest have been all I might give you YouTube, but
Speaker 1: they're an American that After that, all the bands are
Speaker 1: like you say, we got to get a deal. So
Speaker 1: in order to get a deal, they had to fit
Speaker 1: the matrix that the corporate marketing people wanted. And so
Speaker 1: there that was the end of imagination. That was the
Speaker 1: end of originality, That was the end of of of
Speaker 1: any kind of like freethinking or connection. And people like
Speaker 1: they have this idea that like, well you know, if
Speaker 1: if Fleetwood Mac successful, what they wanted something just like
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac. No, because people abought Fleetwood Math. The next
Speaker 1: thing they bought was the clash and people had Catholic
Speaker 1: taste first. Well there, you know, you're hitting a lot
Speaker 1: of points. First of all, for some reason, with the
Speaker 1: crazy world we live in, I've been singing life during
Speaker 1: wartime in my head, the talking Head song show this
Speaker 1: Ain't no Party, This Ain't no Disco before, and you
Speaker 1: realize how far ahead even though the times they were,
Speaker 1: even though you know he's a difficult guy, David Burn,
Speaker 1: and he has now changed, single handedly changing the market.
Speaker 1: I remember going in Rock Acoustic Christmas. This was like
Speaker 1: the second or third one when it started to become big,
Speaker 1: when you couldn't get a ticket, instant sellout, and the
Speaker 1: headliner was Duran Duran on their comeback and David Byrne
Speaker 1: performed and literally the two girls in front of me.
Speaker 1: I'm not making this upset. Who's this? Okay? But he
Speaker 1: did such a killer show at Coachella, at a live show.
Speaker 1: There is an underpinning. Okay, he's gonna open it on Broadway.
Speaker 1: It's like a new way to sell what he's doing.
Speaker 1: I did not you the show, but I sure heard
Speaker 1: about it. That'd be my boy in New Orleans Jazz
Speaker 1: Fest out right. Okay. So going back to your point,
Speaker 1: because this is a lot of questions we have about
Speaker 1: the future. I was under the belief, what do we
Speaker 1: know now? Theoretically you can reach everybody theoretically, so I
Speaker 1: thought there would be a very thin layer of acts
Speaker 1: that would reach everybody. That turns out not to be true.
Speaker 1: You ask anybody to sing to Drake songs, it's a
Speaker 1: very small market of people. Not that there aren't even sought.
Speaker 1: They are not even same even with Taylor Swift. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have all these other genres. What people thought
Speaker 1: that the record major labels were going to be killed
Speaker 1: by napster in the Internet, that was not true. Without
Speaker 1: even talking about why that was not true. They are
Speaker 1: now killing themselves because they're only interested in the cream
Speaker 1: of the crop, not talent wise, but what is more
Speaker 1: instantly marketable and unlike an our era Warner, this electra
Speaker 1: they only sign one kind of music. If you go
Speaker 1: in to say this is phenomenal on its own terms,
Speaker 1: forget it. I remember Warner has signed this electronic Beaver
Speaker 1: and Krause. I mean it's like, who would get traction
Speaker 1: like that again? So so it is left in the
Speaker 1: touch with Bernie Krause, by the really and it's like,
Speaker 1: so it is now left in the hands of the people.
Speaker 1: Just taking it one step further. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: Gary Duncan, etcetera. When I moved to l A in
Speaker 1: the seventies, you could work retail and survive. I did
Speaker 1: the Sporting Good story. You work retail, you do any job.
Speaker 1: You can't get a roof over your head. So what
Speaker 1: we have as a result of income inequality is the
Speaker 1: best in the brightest. This is what people don't realize.
Speaker 1: These people going to college, etcetera. They know the game.
Speaker 1: They know if they don't find their place where they're
Speaker 1: making a certain mo money, they're immediately going to be
Speaker 1: left behind. I mean I graduate college. I was a scheme, bummers.
Speaker 1: You know I was not looking for that. So only
Speaker 1: the lower classes go in. Grace is a perfect point.
Speaker 1: Grace actually the upper middle class, No, no, upper well whatever,
Speaker 1: I know where she grew up. Okay, she's got money.
Speaker 1: Father was an investment baker, but not like an investment
Speaker 1: baker today. No, but he was the original, you know,
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley thing investment banker in Palo Alto. Well, she
Speaker 1: didn't tell me that. I didn't. But in any of them,
Speaker 1: if you were middle class in the sixties, never mind
Speaker 1: in the seventies, you could say no. No one says
Speaker 1: no anymore based on your upbringing. I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make that endorsement. I'm not gonna sing
Speaker 1: that song, whereas today the lower classes of the musicians
Speaker 1: tell me, I'll do whatever it is, whatever you want,
Speaker 1: so there's no credibility. Well, it's not heroic endeavor anymore. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know it was a heroic deva. To be in
Speaker 1: a rock band was like to be Ulysses and to
Speaker 1: go off on a ground journey and the music. Bob,
Speaker 1: you know, you stand up for this stuff all the time.
Speaker 1: About like, you know, it's got to be the music.
Speaker 1: It's got to be about the music, dude. Uh. That
Speaker 1: was when it had something in it. Now music is
Speaker 1: just an entertainment. That's why people don't realize. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm stunned because I come from that era where you
Speaker 1: couldn't even get a job at the record store, never
Speaker 1: mind get a job at the label. You were all
Speaker 1: high again how much you were being paid. You were
Speaker 1: a kingpin, you were on the inside. Now I know
Speaker 1: what it's like before the Beatles. Oh, somebody works at
Speaker 1: a record company. They're just turning it out. It's another profession,
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, we're selling vacuum cleaners. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have this aura. That's why rock and roll was different,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, Perry Como was entertainment and he
Speaker 1: meant nothing. Uh. Rock and roll was a coded message
Speaker 1: to an entire generation. And it was an education. It
Speaker 1: was called arms. It was an indoctrination. It was it
Speaker 1: was the culture. Filled those sales with air and that
Speaker 1: was what brought us all into it. And that's why
Speaker 1: it had such power as an art movement. And it
Speaker 1: was corrupted by commercial interests. Uh, corporate interests. Hello, welcome
Speaker 1: to America. Well, I you articulated really well, and I
Speaker 1: don't have anything specifically that to that, but I remember
Speaker 1: and you may or may not remember, after Kirk Coban
Speaker 1: off himself, uh sixty minutes, who was in the guy's name,
Speaker 1: who did the commentary at the end. You know I'm
Speaker 1: talking about he beat a can't he? Uh? He beat
Speaker 1: Kurt coban up. So the next day I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with Eddie Rosenbladd, who was the head of
Speaker 1: Geffen Records, and he said something I'd quote all the
Speaker 1: time now. He said, movies, when done right, are larger
Speaker 1: than life. Rock music, when done right, is life itself.
Speaker 1: And on that note, it's been wonderful to have you.
Speaker 1: We could continue just discussing. That's all the pay Bob
Speaker 1: you're he wrote to me. Okay, well, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this after bike. That makes me feel good until next time.
Speaker 1: It's Bob website