Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is keyboardist extraordinary David Peach, you know
Speaker 1: from Toto and his work on album with Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: Bob Skags and so many more. He's just released his
Speaker 1: first solo album, Broken Toys. David, Why a solo album? Why? Now? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I kind of got bullied into this, Bob. My my
Speaker 1: cohorts and colleagues, Steve Lucather and uh Joseph Williams. We're
Speaker 1: making solo records pre COVID and uh I got involved
Speaker 1: with their solo records and uh uh uh they prompted me,
Speaker 1: They said, well, what you need to put out solo
Speaker 1: record out? And I said, why I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: do solo records. I do my band records. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's time for you to do that. You have some
Speaker 1: material lying around. To get that material out there and
Speaker 1: so people can hear it. So I got in uh uh,
Speaker 1: I got Joseph Williams to co produce with me, and
Speaker 1: uh we just got in the studio and started uh
Speaker 1: uh pulling open pieces out and uh I decided to
Speaker 1: start the album. And this is about two years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you have a lot of old pieces around and
Speaker 1: why were they not previously used? Uh, they just didn't
Speaker 1: have a home. Sometimes you come up with us just
Speaker 1: little sections of songs and uh, sometimes you work them
Speaker 1: into framing them into as a song, or sometimes they're
Speaker 1: just uh forgotten about. You know, by the way that
Speaker 1: the album titles forgotten Toys. Sorry, that's okay. No I
Speaker 1: mentioned that it was originally broken Toys, but it is
Speaker 1: Forgotten Toys now, so they're all forgotten songs that needed
Speaker 1: dusting off and uh and to find a new home.
Speaker 1: You know, So how many did you have to go
Speaker 1: through to find the one you want? Oh? Probably maybe
Speaker 1: about twenty pieces? Little pieces and stuff like this, because
Speaker 1: this is a song an album that was put together
Speaker 1: kind of like a puzzle where we said, we we
Speaker 1: have these pieces of music, but we don't know what
Speaker 1: the puzzle looks like. So we had to frame it,
Speaker 1: get the forum on it, and uh uh, get lyrics
Speaker 1: written and get melodies written to it. So it was
Speaker 1: a work in progress the whole time. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: started two weeks two years ago, not two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and it is forgotten Toy. Sorry for that. Funk up
Speaker 1: okay and uh, so when you started with Joseph, what
Speaker 1: were the first steps? The first step was Joseph came
Speaker 1: in and heard a demo that I had done, and
Speaker 1: this is on the song first Time, uh, which is
Speaker 1: like the third cut on the EP, and uh, he said,
Speaker 1: give me that. Let me take that and make a
Speaker 1: blueprint of that. And what he did was he took
Speaker 1: my original scynth little synth riff that I was playing
Speaker 1: uh on on a keyboard, and he added his samples
Speaker 1: to that and made a little rhythm track of that
Speaker 1: what he calls getting ready for Musicians, where he makes
Speaker 1: uh these little uh almost demos, but they're really fat
Speaker 1: good demos before we started adding the human element, which
Speaker 1: are the musicians. So he gave some stuff. How did
Speaker 1: you end up with the total compliment of songs? I mean,
Speaker 1: there are seven songs on the album? How do you
Speaker 1: get seven? Uh? I tried. There were some a couple
Speaker 1: of extra songs, but I didn't feel I wanted to
Speaker 1: convolute the record and and have songs that people skipped over.
Speaker 1: I don't what didn't want any filler in there, and
Speaker 1: this is just what I had at the at the
Speaker 1: given amount of time. Uh, it's just what I came
Speaker 1: up with. And I didn't want to include a little
Speaker 1: pieces that weren't together, you know, so uh uh these
Speaker 1: these were my favorite ones. Okay, So where did you
Speaker 1: cut it? We cut it at my studio here, which
Speaker 1: is called a t S that stands for across the street,
Speaker 1: and at Joseph's place also as well, and then we
Speaker 1: went to a few studios to get musicians. Steve Jordan,
Speaker 1: I sent him a track. Steve Jordan, who is now
Speaker 1: the current drummer with Rolling Stones. Uh. He did his
Speaker 1: in New York on Queen Charade and Uh. I went
Speaker 1: to Don Felder's house for this Queen Charade as well
Speaker 1: to have him put slide guitar on it. And he
Speaker 1: was great. He's a fantastic slide player. I can't say
Speaker 1: enough about what a great guy Don Felder is and
Speaker 1: how much he added to Uh. What a magical experience
Speaker 1: that was watching him play slide guitar. How do you
Speaker 1: know Felder who used to be in The Eagle, Um,
Speaker 1: he I have a common uh colleague of ours. Uh
Speaker 1: asked me to do overdubs. He was the producer of
Speaker 1: Don's album and he asked me to do some overdubs
Speaker 1: for Don's record, and so I have the last three
Speaker 1: or two or three albums I've worked on doing overdubs
Speaker 1: for Don. And then when I asked him to to
Speaker 1: uh play on my album, he didn't even flinch. It
Speaker 1: was just a big yes, with what time do you
Speaker 1: need me? You know, he was so great. Now in
Speaker 1: the old days, your studio musician, you're making, you know,
Speaker 1: uh the raid or double or triple. When you call
Speaker 1: in your friends, people are interested in how it works.
Speaker 1: Business is totally different. Everybody works for free and how
Speaker 1: does it work a combination of both? You know, I
Speaker 1: don't expect professionals to come in and work for free,
Speaker 1: but I have certain friends that won't, that refuse to
Speaker 1: work for money and stuff that will just their their
Speaker 1: returning favors. It's kind of like the old barter system.
Speaker 1: You know, you play on my record and I play
Speaker 1: on your record, so some sometimes it's exchanged that way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I write the person to check that's right here,
Speaker 1: right after they finished playing, and it's uh, it's done
Speaker 1: deal okay. And how extensive is your home studio? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's fairly extensive. I have an isolation booth. I have
Speaker 1: a control room. It was put together by the people
Speaker 1: that by a mastering house called the Mastering Lab, which
Speaker 1: is a was the famous mastering facility in l A. Well,
Speaker 1: those are the gentlemen that put in my sound system
Speaker 1: because I wanted a studio that sounded, uh, that you
Speaker 1: could listen to professionally at two recordings at home, and
Speaker 1: when you took it out of here, it wouldn't sound different.
Speaker 1: So I have a very professional small it's really for
Speaker 1: a keyboard player kind of producer. But yet I have
Speaker 1: a right behind me, I have a nine ft grand piano.
Speaker 1: But I've used on all the total records, and I've
Speaker 1: recorded vocals and brass players in here before. And uh
Speaker 1: uh that's about it. And what kind of equipment do
Speaker 1: you have? What kind of equipment? I've got old and new,
Speaker 1: just like me, bob old and new. Okay, uh, I've
Speaker 1: got um. I've got a ham and organ sitting right
Speaker 1: in front of me. Here, I've got a nine ft
Speaker 1: Baldwin st ten and back of me. But I've got
Speaker 1: also uh Nord instruments. I have core instruments. And I'm
Speaker 1: mainly using a computer now with a logic program and
Speaker 1: pro tools to do the recording. And I still have
Speaker 1: two analog machines sitting here just to remind my digital
Speaker 1: uh computers, uh that there once was a past there.
Speaker 1: You know, they're still sitting here watching, watching behind them.
Speaker 1: I've got a twenty four tracks student, had a two
Speaker 1: tracks student sitting in my studio. How long have you
Speaker 1: had those students? Since? Total four? Okay, I've had them,
Speaker 1: and I kept waiting to use them, you know, to
Speaker 1: start doing uh the old analog thing where we cut
Speaker 1: on analog and but the overdubs are done digitally. You know.
Speaker 1: I found that just doing everything on pro tools uh
Speaker 1: and eliminating tape is the way to go as far
Speaker 1: as my years go. And when did you last use
Speaker 1: the studs? Uh? Probably about that time, probably the early
Speaker 1: uh two thousand. I haven't used them. And what do
Speaker 1: you have for a board and speakers? Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: a virtual board right now. It's a I've got altic
Speaker 1: big reds in my studio. Um and uh, I have
Speaker 1: a little mini but just small board for opera for
Speaker 1: so you can manually do mixes and stuff. Uh, small
Speaker 1: mixing but nothing nothing, no large mixing and uh uh
Speaker 1: I don't know which really brand what my little board is,
Speaker 1: but it's it's all computer based, you know. Okay, do
Speaker 1: you have a sponsorship with Balden or do you for
Speaker 1: ball when to Steinway or Yamaha. I don't have one
Speaker 1: because I just used. I used whatever is the best
Speaker 1: for me. And uh, I was linked up with a
Speaker 1: couple of companies at one time, but now I'm a
Speaker 1: free agent and I'm linked up with nobody. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to get to keyboard endorsements because they
Speaker 1: don't really give keyboards away that often. And uh, but
Speaker 1: I was. I was associated with a larger company um
Speaker 1: which was Yamaha for for many years. And uh I
Speaker 1: used a lot of that stuff on like Africa and
Speaker 1: Total four record. So the bald when you have behind you?
Speaker 1: When did you get it? Where did it come from?
Speaker 1: It came from a piano tuner who was famous in
Speaker 1: town named Keith Albright, who tuned all the pianos for
Speaker 1: the best playing pianos in town. I bought it from
Speaker 1: him the day before we cut the first tracks of
Speaker 1: the first Total record. So the piano, my piano was there.
Speaker 1: Uh on hold the line, which was the first track
Speaker 1: we cut in the studio. It was there, uh for Hydra,
Speaker 1: for Turnback. I used it on Rosanna, I wrote, used
Speaker 1: it on Africa and uh all all our other records.
Speaker 1: I've always used this piano. So it has a special
Speaker 1: place in my heart. And uh uh it's been very
Speaker 1: good to me as far as playing on all uh
Speaker 1: are good our best records. Okay, when you used it
Speaker 1: for the total records, was it in your house then
Speaker 1: or did you have it slept to the studio? I
Speaker 1: had it slept, good word, I had slept to the studio.
Speaker 1: And as we went later on, when I finally got
Speaker 1: my new studio here, we started, I started doing overdubs here.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until you know this this millennium here
Speaker 1: that uh I started recording it uh away from the studio.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I had it brought there and tuned up and
Speaker 1: uh I brought my own mics with were chefs, uh
Speaker 1: stereo mics to put in the piano and uh uh
Speaker 1: that was it. So how did you ultimately learn how
Speaker 1: to mike the piano and what mikes to use? Asking
Speaker 1: a lot of engineers, a lot of questions and just
Speaker 1: seeing whatever whenever I was in the studio, which was
Speaker 1: many times playing piano. I'd watch the different guys mike
Speaker 1: the pianos. It's funny when I went in with the
Speaker 1: I used to work. I used to be a Neil
Speaker 1: Diamonds band and uh uh. Garmin Steiner, a very famous engineer,
Speaker 1: would use two k m a t eights on the piano.
Speaker 1: But when Neil came in, he would change the mic.
Speaker 1: It was like a secret his secret miking, which is
Speaker 1: to do a mono one mic uh you forty seven
Speaker 1: and to put it on the piano and it sounded.
Speaker 1: It would sounded zing. So I've gone anywhere from doing
Speaker 1: stereo pairs here was C. Twenty four's uh chefs mix,
Speaker 1: to using a mono. There's different ways, different sounds for
Speaker 1: different songs. Okay, if one looks at the credits of
Speaker 1: the new album, which of course is Forgotten Toys, not
Speaker 1: Broken Toys, it's a who's it's a who's who famous
Speaker 1: musicians you know, looking through How do you know Brian
Speaker 1: Eno and how did he end up working on the record? Well,
Speaker 1: actually I didn't. I didn't use any of those people
Speaker 1: on the cover right there, I just said I used them.
Speaker 1: I just put those up just to sell more records. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: I never met Brian, you know. Funny enough, I've never
Speaker 1: I've never met Brian. You know he worked on the
Speaker 1: first Dune record directly with David Lynch and uh, the
Speaker 1: same producer that produced Don Felder. Uh knew him through
Speaker 1: association because he was playing with my friend was playing
Speaker 1: with um uh Paul Siman, and Brian Eno happened to
Speaker 1: be co producing Paul Simon's record. So Uh, my friend
Speaker 1: played him a couple of my early roughs on my
Speaker 1: album here and apparently this is what he told me.
Speaker 1: Brian sent him heard the thing and sent him a
Speaker 1: couple of samples uh to include on this one song
Speaker 1: called All All the Tears That Shine, which is in
Speaker 1: the very beginning you hear this little pulse sating beacon,
Speaker 1: and you also hear throughout the song and at the
Speaker 1: very end. And that was his contribution. And I thank
Speaker 1: him for that, uh, and I hope to meet him
Speaker 1: face to face one day. Okay, you used Mike Laying
Speaker 1: on piano, who unfortunately recently passed as a piano player.
Speaker 1: Why would you use Mike? Mike and I go back,
Speaker 1: uh to when I was fifteen years old. My father
Speaker 1: was the musical director on the Glenn Campbell Show, and
Speaker 1: he put together a great rhythm section for that, one
Speaker 1: of which was Mike Lange, one of which was Joe
Speaker 1: Pricaro Jeff Percarro's dad on percussion, one was Louis Shelton
Speaker 1: uh steals and crops producer, and Paul Humphreys on drums
Speaker 1: who played on Let's Get It On, and all these
Speaker 1: great musicians. Well, he was the piano player and I
Speaker 1: used to sit next to him every Sunday during the
Speaker 1: Glenn Campbell Show and UH. He would teach me things
Speaker 1: like how to play Hammond organ. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: how to turn a Hammond organ on back then, you
Speaker 1: know much, Let's play it, and UH I learned. He
Speaker 1: he was my mentor, and so we started talking about
Speaker 1: doing UH. As the years kept going by and we
Speaker 1: kept playing together on various record dates. UM we did.
Speaker 1: We talked about possibly doing a record together sometime so
Speaker 1: about eight years ago, I started him and I started
Speaker 1: kicking around some ideas, and one of them was Lucy
Speaker 1: UH that we did. We ended up writing together. I
Speaker 1: played the head on it and he plays the incredib
Speaker 1: solo that's in the middle, and then I finished it
Speaker 1: on Hammond, Oregon. So it was just one of those
Speaker 1: things where we kind of started a duet album, but
Speaker 1: it didn't come to fruition because he was so busy
Speaker 1: and I was quite busy. So I just I grabbed
Speaker 1: this track from my solo record. And what about Davy Johnstone,
Speaker 1: Elton's guitarist. How did he end up on the record?
Speaker 1: Davy has been a friend for over thirty years. He's
Speaker 1: been a close friend of mine, and uh, I just
Speaker 1: called Davy. I knew he was in town from Elton,
Speaker 1: and uh I asked him. I said, Davy, would you
Speaker 1: mind playing acoustic? And of course, Davey's the sweetest guy
Speaker 1: in the world. He said, of course I will. And
Speaker 1: because I wanted this certain uh texture uh that he
Speaker 1: plays when he when he plays acoustic guitar that you
Speaker 1: hear on all these Elting John records. Now, what's unique
Speaker 1: about Davy's playing is every time I thought it was
Speaker 1: a high hat or a shaker plane, keeping like songs
Speaker 1: like Daniel together, it was Davy's guitar. His acoustic rhythm
Speaker 1: guitar is like a percussion instrument. And all the Elton
Speaker 1: John records are are nine of them where you heard
Speaker 1: Davy playing the rhythm to the guitar. So I thought
Speaker 1: he would be a great element to have. And like
Speaker 1: I said, he's a he's a dear friend, and uh
Speaker 1: it was just it was a magical experience. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Steve Jordan you mentioned earlier on drums, but you also
Speaker 1: have Greg Bissonette we all know, and Robin DiMaggio, who
Speaker 1: I don't know. Why are there different drummers and why
Speaker 1: are these particular people playing um When I'm making a record,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm making records have made records outside of Toto.
Speaker 1: You have to cast the music, and you cast the
Speaker 1: music by casting each song, who would be a good
Speaker 1: player on this song? So by having the luxury of
Speaker 1: doing a solo album, I was able to cast each
Speaker 1: song and Joseph helped me with the casting. But I
Speaker 1: knew definitely that I wanted to get to uh someone
Speaker 1: like Steve Jordan's for uh Queen Charade, because that's the
Speaker 1: kind of drummer he is. He's very reckless and cavalier
Speaker 1: and and loose with his plane. So I knew he'd
Speaker 1: be the right guy. And uh uh we got We
Speaker 1: knew hum Greg Bisonette from Ringo Starr. Of course I
Speaker 1: played with Greg before on he's played with Toto. He
Speaker 1: went out in the road with Toto for a week
Speaker 1: when our drummer got sick one time. And uh, he's
Speaker 1: been kind of an honorary member. And uh, we just
Speaker 1: cast these people, like I said, like their character actors.
Speaker 1: Whoever is right for the part, you know, And we
Speaker 1: just felt each of those drummers was right for the
Speaker 1: parts that they played. Now, if for some reason you
Speaker 1: couldn't play, who would you cast to play your part?
Speaker 1: That's very easy. I would have Greg filling games in
Speaker 1: a second. Well, he ultimately played with Toto. But why
Speaker 1: do you say Greg great player? Because Greg is like
Speaker 1: a brother from another mother. I know that the phrase
Speaker 1: is used a lot, but he does a version of me.
Speaker 1: When I sit down and play the piano. He goes, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what you this is what you mean, and
Speaker 1: he sits down and plays exactly what I'm doing. But
Speaker 1: it's the way he plays it, and he just adds
Speaker 1: his little touches to it. He's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a doppelganger. It's weird. It's a him, but he's he's
Speaker 1: got ten times the technique that I do. I'm not
Speaker 1: comparing myself with him because he went out with Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, he joined Stevie when he was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: and he's just a phenomena. He really is. He got
Speaker 1: perfect pitch and uh, I hate him for being as
Speaker 1: talented as he is now. The signal from the album
Speaker 1: was Spirit of the Moon Rise. But my favorite song
Speaker 1: is will I Belong to You? What's the story with
Speaker 1: the title, How did will I Belong to You? Come together?
Speaker 1: That came together from Joseph Williams. He just had a piece,
Speaker 1: and he had a piece, and there was really the
Speaker 1: chorus to the song, and that's all he had was
Speaker 1: that little piece. So I said, I really I got
Speaker 1: to write a song for that chorus because it was
Speaker 1: such a beautiful chorus, which is who I belong to
Speaker 1: Who I belong to you? And uh, I came up
Speaker 1: with this little uh verse um that I thought would
Speaker 1: would be a nice uh uh bookend to the chorus.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm again. I'm a big Paul Simon fan
Speaker 1: and Paul McCartney fans, So I like the acoustic I
Speaker 1: um brought in acoustic. Dean Parks on Acoustic guitar and
Speaker 1: uh uh Nathan East on bass, and I just thought
Speaker 1: that Uh, Joseph and I filled it out, filled the
Speaker 1: rest of the between the course and the verses, filled
Speaker 1: it out with some transitional music and kind of just
Speaker 1: tried to get the imaginative with arrangement and how much
Speaker 1: of the record was cut with everybody in the room
Speaker 1: playing simultaneously, if at all, none of it. None of
Speaker 1: it was. But but the idea was to make it
Speaker 1: feel like that, and I think I achieved that pretty
Speaker 1: much because every time I listened to the record, and
Speaker 1: I've listened to this album hundreds and hundreds of times,
Speaker 1: I always feel like I'm listening to a live performance
Speaker 1: from the guys, because that's the specialty of the end
Speaker 1: of the instrumentalists that I called in have the ability
Speaker 1: to overdub and make it feel like it's here, it's
Speaker 1: being done live right there. It never sounds like an
Speaker 1: overdub to me, at least with these particular players. And
Speaker 1: Clear Mountain mixed. Did you just give him the tracks,
Speaker 1: say do what you do? Or do you give him
Speaker 1: a lot of instructions? And why Clear Mountain? Not that
Speaker 1: he's not great, but why him? Yes, yes to both
Speaker 1: of those. I always loved Bob clear Mountains mixing. He
Speaker 1: mits the Toto's album called Kingdom of Desire and I
Speaker 1: first we first made contact with him. Then I was
Speaker 1: a big Brian Adams fan with all of his records.
Speaker 1: Box was. Bob's done everything from in Excess to Uh,
Speaker 1: David Bowie and one of my favorite records, which is
Speaker 1: what I really liked him to be mixing Queen Charade on.
Speaker 1: He'd bixed Start Me Up for the Stones, and so
Speaker 1: it was a real treat having him the guy that
Speaker 1: mixed that record. Mix mix our record with Bob, I've
Speaker 1: usually had with mixer's I've usually had a a notepad
Speaker 1: with that had a couple of pages and notes on it.
Speaker 1: With Bob, I had I had a whole notepad and
Speaker 1: only had two uh suggestions on it. One was like, uh,
Speaker 1: turn the vocal up a little bit and turned the
Speaker 1: base up a little bit, and it was like two
Speaker 1: suggestions and the records done. He's so fast, he's uh
Speaker 1: he's another uh woonder kid, you know. So Needles just say,
Speaker 1: the record business is very different from the heyday of
Speaker 1: Toto to what Okay, so you're making the record at
Speaker 1: what point do you get a record company distributor? And
Speaker 1: are you still motivated to do it even though it's
Speaker 1: so hard to get anything recognized today? Those are all
Speaker 1: good questions. Uh. I I made the connection with the
Speaker 1: record company was his mascot through Steve Lucather, who has
Speaker 1: had solo albums more I think ten solo albums or
Speaker 1: more probably, and Joseph was on the label too, and
Speaker 1: I've hadn't heard nothing but good things about Mascott. So
Speaker 1: Luke started telling them, well, you know, David Pace might
Speaker 1: because they usually have good whole do guitar players the
Speaker 1: majority of their artists or guitar players. And uh, so
Speaker 1: Steve was touting me the fact that I was thinking
Speaker 1: about doing a solo record, and so he slipped them,
Speaker 1: he slipped them, slipped it in their ear. And I
Speaker 1: think that as my as I started gaining momentum and
Speaker 1: getting some tracks finished, uh, it started coming together. And
Speaker 1: then I got Steve Carris involved from a management standpoint,
Speaker 1: and uh they were kept waiting for waiting and waiting
Speaker 1: for me to get it done because I work at
Speaker 1: a snail's pace, and uh, because I have the luxury
Speaker 1: of having my studio here at home. So uh, they
Speaker 1: said they were interested, and I financed the record myself
Speaker 1: up until the point where we made the deal with them,
Speaker 1: and then they came in. Uh. But it's not like
Speaker 1: the old days where you can shop around all the
Speaker 1: majors and you're holding gold in your pocket, because no
Speaker 1: one's really waiting for my record to come out, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean specifically, So it's a it's a
Speaker 1: harder sell and I try and let the music sell itself.
Speaker 1: That's another reason I did the e P because I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure I had all my best songs,
Speaker 1: all my best material uh in there. And uh the
Speaker 1: business has definitely changed from when we started a shopping
Speaker 1: it for a deal uh back in Okay. Now, we
Speaker 1: delayed this podcast for about a month because you were
Speaker 1: going on the road. What was being on the road like.
Speaker 1: Being on the road was me flying into specific places
Speaker 1: uh uh two places like uh New Orleans at Nashville
Speaker 1: and Sacramento. I flew into and I played uh the
Speaker 1: Staples Center, which is now not the Staples Center anymore.
Speaker 1: But uh uh and I I do like the last
Speaker 1: five songs in the show, and it's just because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the Steve Luca there made me musical director for Toto,
Speaker 1: And what I do is just kind of oversee the
Speaker 1: rehearsals and make sure all the fine tuning and details
Speaker 1: are are maintained. And uh, and they asked me. They
Speaker 1: told me they wanted me to come out on the
Speaker 1: road whenever I can make it, to come out and
Speaker 1: do that. So I started getting the road itch, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to play with the band because it's one
Speaker 1: of the few last venues where you can actually play
Speaker 1: live music. It's not hardly done in recording studios anymore,
Speaker 1: which whereas where we used to play every single day
Speaker 1: all day long is in recording studios. But uh uh
Speaker 1: now uh it's on stage live, which is which is
Speaker 1: why I think so many artists, premiere artists and smaller
Speaker 1: artists are touring. It's just the fact that they're keeping
Speaker 1: a music alive and able to do the live experience
Speaker 1: where you commune with the audience there and it's a
Speaker 1: special as a special uh moment. Like I said, it's
Speaker 1: a magical experience. When you're out with an audience, they
Speaker 1: give you energy. You feed off that energy, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's why people love playing live now you
Speaker 1: were dropping in on these dates? What's your you know?
Speaker 1: Going on the road. There's a million songs. You know,
Speaker 1: the hour on stage pays for the other twenty three?
Speaker 1: Are you someone who likes the road? Who hates the roads? Done?
Speaker 1: Enough of the road? I've I love the two hours
Speaker 1: on stage that I play the last half an hour
Speaker 1: of But I am I'm past the road. Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: move have moved on to uh being a homebody here,
Speaker 1: and I still like to travel. I liked you know,
Speaker 1: but I've spent years on buses and uh have done
Speaker 1: the road thing. And uh as I'm getting not old
Speaker 1: but a little bit older here. Uh riding on a
Speaker 1: bus doing one night ors is a little heavy for me. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: you say you work at a snails Peace, go a
Speaker 1: little deeper. Why so slow? Why so slow? Because I'm
Speaker 1: a perfectionist and I know I know how to I
Speaker 1: pay attention to details. Now. The way the reason I
Speaker 1: got into details was when my first record date hit
Speaker 1: record was a song called Diamond Girl with Seals and Rofs,
Speaker 1: and Uh, I learned from Louis Shelton and Jimmy Seals
Speaker 1: specifically to not let anything go by, to make sure
Speaker 1: everything was just just right with either vocals or the
Speaker 1: rhythm track. And I'm talking about microscopic details that the
Speaker 1: normal listener would never pay attention to or notice. And
Speaker 1: this is how you get those clean layered records like
Speaker 1: Seals and Crops used to do. Steely Dan is another
Speaker 1: group that we learned from Jeffrey Carl and myself. We're
Speaker 1: paying attention watching them while they made Pretzel logic and
Speaker 1: Katie lied and they were they were so uh uh
Speaker 1: microscopic with all the details and the little ticks and
Speaker 1: pops in the tape and anything that would make a
Speaker 1: little sound. They were fanatical about having clean records. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is back in the analog days, so it was
Speaker 1: a little bit more of There was more had to
Speaker 1: be maintenance done with machines and cutting tape to edit
Speaker 1: and all these kind of things that they don't do anymore.
Speaker 1: But uh again back to your Wigan saying, well, I
Speaker 1: move moving to Snail's place because I like to take
Speaker 1: my time and uh, I cover a lot of details,
Speaker 1: but I also have a life here. I like to
Speaker 1: go out in the water my garden and uh I'd
Speaker 1: like to swim occasionally and ride my bike, and uh
Speaker 1: do things that to keep me in shape. So it's
Speaker 1: not just music. Your music used to be seven since
Speaker 1: I was ten years old up until you know, just
Speaker 1: recently when I started uh uh you know, just balancing
Speaker 1: my time. I think life. Life's a matter of balance. Okay,
Speaker 1: we know about Becker and Fagin. Tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about working with Louis Shelton. Louis Shelton was
Speaker 1: one of the great guitar players, session guitar players in town.
Speaker 1: He's right up with Dean Parks, Larry Carlton, one of
Speaker 1: those kind of guys. But he was the first real
Speaker 1: session guy that started producing music for people. So he
Speaker 1: would do it like a session guy would do it,
Speaker 1: which is to pay potential particular attention to these details.
Speaker 1: And uh he was I gained a relationship again on
Speaker 1: the Glen Campbell Show when I used to see him
Speaker 1: every Sunday, so I was familiar with jamming with him
Speaker 1: a little bit. But he was such a good record
Speaker 1: producer that uh he let me actually get my hands
Speaker 1: on the knobs and turn pan pots and turn echo
Speaker 1: knobs and turned faders and and actually uh taught me
Speaker 1: how to produce. So he was a huge mentor along
Speaker 1: with Jimmy Seals. Another thing I wanted to just back
Speaker 1: up for a second and mention about doing synthesizers and
Speaker 1: keyboards on on albums. Quincy Jones when we were doing Thriller.
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones said that doing synthesizers synth over dubs on
Speaker 1: Thriller was like painting a seven forty seven with a toothbrush. Okay,
Speaker 1: that gives you an ideal. That's why I take so
Speaker 1: much time making my records, Okay, because that's that's a
Speaker 1: kind of detail and a kind of it's a combination
Speaker 1: of science and music when you get into synthesizers and sonics. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, with engineers microphones, I have a good microphones here.
Speaker 1: I've got c C, I've got used forty seven's, I
Speaker 1: have uh telephone in two fifty, I've got cheps mics.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, we're all trying to do this.
Speaker 1: Does does this need to be acoustic or it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be sampled? We're in that age right now. Okay. You
Speaker 1: talked about life balance. Was this a revelation at some
Speaker 1: point that man or you just said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that anymore? And what does this balance look like. Well,
Speaker 1: the balance came from my upbringing with my parents. My
Speaker 1: father was a jazz arranger and jazz pianists who became
Speaker 1: a big orchestrator and orchestral conductor for people like Ray
Speaker 1: Charles and Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra streisand and my mom
Speaker 1: was a bookkeeper. So they taught me there's got to
Speaker 1: be a balance in life here and made sure that
Speaker 1: I always was able to play a little bit of
Speaker 1: sports when I was growing up, as well as practice
Speaker 1: the piano. But they always wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: I had a normal upbringing, you know, that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just all Hollywood and just all music music music. So
Speaker 1: I got that from my ingrained uh infused on my
Speaker 1: d n A from my folks. But uh, I think
Speaker 1: as I got older here, I think I had a
Speaker 1: couple of wake up calls that, uh let me know
Speaker 1: that the touring thing, I just wasn't able to uh
Speaker 1: keep up, uh physically with the touring thing, and I
Speaker 1: ended up suffering from fatigue and exhaustion and a little
Speaker 1: bit of depression and anxiety. And uh, those who were
Speaker 1: kind of all warring signs that I needed to try
Speaker 1: and hang up my road boots. Now you've only been
Speaker 1: married once, right, this is true. This is an unusual
Speaker 1: in this business too. That's why I'm asking why did
Speaker 1: your relationship sustain when so many don't. I think because
Speaker 1: my wife has a sense of humor about me. She
Speaker 1: doesn't take me seriously, I think, and we get along
Speaker 1: great and we keep laughing, and I think it's mutual respect.
Speaker 1: You know. She was a professional food stylist and used
Speaker 1: to go on location and I used to go in
Speaker 1: location when we first got married. So we'd meet up
Speaker 1: every once in a while to discuss our marriage a
Speaker 1: date and UH ended up just hitting it off immediately.
Speaker 1: So how did you actually meet her? Oh? Boy, I
Speaker 1: promised myself I'd never tell this story. Uh. I met
Speaker 1: on a blind date. Our engineer Greg Ladonni Uh was
Speaker 1: working with us and his wife was work with my
Speaker 1: uh with Lorraine, my soon to be wife, and so
Speaker 1: she set me up. She said, Greg, I've got a
Speaker 1: girl that David needs to go out with. So I
Speaker 1: hired a limousine and then she got cold feet, and
Speaker 1: so I invited my band because I was gonna take
Speaker 1: him to a fancy restaurant that I had invested in
Speaker 1: blah blah blah and uh the band. Lorraine decided she
Speaker 1: wanted to go on the on the on the date,
Speaker 1: so it caught me off guard. So my band showed
Speaker 1: up just before she showed up, and they ended up
Speaker 1: sitting in a limo and I sat in the front
Speaker 1: seat with my girlfriend Lorraine with the limo driver all
Speaker 1: the way to the restaurant. That was my first date experience,
Speaker 1: which was like, it couldn't be worse, but she made it.
Speaker 1: She was laughing the whole time. She thought it was hysterical.
Speaker 1: And that's why we're still married. And how often do
Speaker 1: you play? I try and play every day, and I
Speaker 1: just about do. I try and practice at least a
Speaker 1: half an hour a day, and uh sometimes I play
Speaker 1: a couple of hours at least, and I find that
Speaker 1: I need to, uh, even when I go on the road.
Speaker 1: I just got back from the Zurich Film Festival. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I always bring a little keyboard with me so
Speaker 1: I can practice in my room to to keep up
Speaker 1: my chops. Otherwise, if I go two or three days
Speaker 1: without playing, uh, I just everything starts tightening up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay, So you grew up in the valley
Speaker 1: where I grew up. I was born and raised in Rosita,
Speaker 1: and uh that's where my folks lived on Hesperian sati
Speaker 1: Quoi in the valley. And when they were five years old,
Speaker 1: my parents moved to Hidden Hills, which wasn't all fu
Speaker 1: food at the time, and it was just hardly anybody
Speaker 1: but pours people out there and my dad. They told
Speaker 1: my dad he had to get out of the valley
Speaker 1: and moved outside after the outskirts because he wasn't getting
Speaker 1: enough sleep, uh, writing arrangements and stuff. So it was
Speaker 1: for health reasons. He ventured out into the Hidden Hills area,
Speaker 1: which has become you know, the home of the Kardashians now.
Speaker 1: But that's where I lived. That's where I lived from
Speaker 1: five until one that when I entered college. And uh
Speaker 1: so that's that's how I grew up. That's where I
Speaker 1: was a valley boy, you know. And where do you
Speaker 1: live now? I live in Calabasas, I know, but I
Speaker 1: kind of where I grew up, right across the freeway
Speaker 1: from where I grew up, off a mahole and drive. Okay,
Speaker 1: when did you realize your father was a musician and
Speaker 1: when did you become interested fascinated by that. Uh when
Speaker 1: I went to my dad took us to a concert
Speaker 1: I think, and I think it was al Hurt who
Speaker 1: was playing trumpet, and they introduced my father in the
Speaker 1: audience at the Greek Theater and he stood up and
Speaker 1: took a bow. And that's when we did. That's when
Speaker 1: we knew that dad was something. Yeah, my dad used
Speaker 1: to get singled out because he was a very prolific arranger,
Speaker 1: and they would single him out and make him stand
Speaker 1: up and take bows whenever he was with somebody, like
Speaker 1: because he arranged for such so many of the greats.
Speaker 1: I mean, he ranged for Sinatra, He arranged for Sammy
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Dean Martin, Ella Fantzgerald, Lena Horne, and the
Speaker 1: list goes on. You know, he was because he handled
Speaker 1: big orchestras. That's what his claim to fame was that
Speaker 1: he wrote classical style or string parts and orchestral music.
Speaker 1: Uh like take the take for instance, The Way We Were.
Speaker 1: My dad produced and arranged that record for Barbara Streisan.
Speaker 1: So he was he was pretty much of a icon
Speaker 1: and alleged you know, how did he get into it?
Speaker 1: Interesting question. His father was from Croatia originally and wanted
Speaker 1: him to be an accordion teacher. So he bought him
Speaker 1: an accordion when I think my dad was elect twelve
Speaker 1: years old and hopes that he would be an accordion teacher.
Speaker 1: And my dad loved jazz so much he started uh
Speaker 1: learning how to write music and learning how to play jazz,
Speaker 1: and UH ended up joining the Air Force ban in
Speaker 1: the army, which he still played accordion, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: in the jazz band. I have a picture of that,
Speaker 1: and uh uh he just kept at it, at it
Speaker 1: and then he finally UH went to USC and the
Speaker 1: l a conservatory of with by the way, which is
Speaker 1: because his colleagues at the time where John Williams and
Speaker 1: Andre Prevan. Uh, and he learned he got a master's
Speaker 1: degree in composition from USC, and UH learned how to
Speaker 1: write fugues and uh and uh all the classical training
Speaker 1: that he needed to UH launch into doing orchestras. So
Speaker 1: how many kids in the family my my family, I
Speaker 1: have one daughter, No, when you were growing up, brothers, sisters?
Speaker 1: I have one. I had one sister, one older sister. Okay,
Speaker 1: So at what point do you start taking lessons? I
Speaker 1: started taking lessons around eight years old, I started playing
Speaker 1: the piano, and it was about five I think my
Speaker 1: dad had done two versions of a song called Blues
Speaker 1: in the Night. My mom and then told him that
Speaker 1: that little riff right there was the first thing that
Speaker 1: I ever picked out on the piano, and my father
Speaker 1: noticed it. I think he was doing it for meltor May,
Speaker 1: either him or Elphitzgerald at the time. I think it
Speaker 1: was Meltormey though, and uh, I just picked that out
Speaker 1: on the piano. And then uh, I decided, after sitting
Speaker 1: next to Shelly Man and Louie Belson, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a drummer when I was very young, about five
Speaker 1: six seven years old. So I get to use next
Speaker 1: to drummers like Shelley Man, Louie Belson and and uh
Speaker 1: uh my dad, I said, I wanted to do this
Speaker 1: for a living like my father, and I was only
Speaker 1: seven or eight, and he says, well, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to start studying seriously if you really want to do that.
Speaker 1: So I started with my piano lessons at eight years old,
Speaker 1: and uh uh. When I got to be twelve, my
Speaker 1: dad says, now you've got to really take it seriously.
Speaker 1: I was playing little league at the time, and I
Speaker 1: was a catcher and uh he told me that I
Speaker 1: would end up hurt in my hands if I kept
Speaker 1: on doing a catcher because he had a cousin that
Speaker 1: was a professional catcher and he had all broken fingers
Speaker 1: and stuff. Anyway, I didn't want. I definitely uh nudged
Speaker 1: me to being a musician. And at thirteen I got
Speaker 1: a classical uh pianist teacher that trained me for the
Speaker 1: next four or five years. Uh and uh it gave
Speaker 1: me all my sound and technique. It really changed my life.
Speaker 1: So you're taking piano lessons, I how much are you
Speaker 1: putting into it? You know, I took piano lessons. The
Speaker 1: big thing was practicing and we didn't so right, well,
Speaker 1: not enough, you know, you go back the next week whatever.
Speaker 1: So what you know? You were dedicated. And what happened
Speaker 1: to the drums? The drums? Uh, I found out just
Speaker 1: another funny story, not funny to me, but funny. Uh.
Speaker 1: Louie Belson ended up giving my dad a set of
Speaker 1: drums to give to me. Okay, well, my father, who
Speaker 1: wanted me to be a piano player, not a drummer,
Speaker 1: never gave me the set of drums. I was supposed
Speaker 1: to get so okay, so when I never knew that
Speaker 1: all I had was a snare drum and a ride
Speaker 1: symbol from Louie Belson, which was to me, I was,
Speaker 1: I was in heaven. I was in paradise just with that.
Speaker 1: And I had a snare drum and a ride symbol
Speaker 1: Zilgian and uh because he figured that if push comes
Speaker 1: to shove, the only eye that gets hired. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: always the piano player. When they don't have a budget
Speaker 1: for anybody, you always see uh piano players and lounges
Speaker 1: and hotels and parties playing by themselves, which is what
Speaker 1: my dad did primarily before he became a professional jazz musician,
Speaker 1: was to go on the road and play for singers.
Speaker 1: Uh Dorothy Dandridge was he accompanied her, and uh Peggy
Speaker 1: Lee also and uh uh so he instilled in me
Speaker 1: that uh uh, he said, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: an old guy having to lug all your drums around.
Speaker 1: There's always a piano there. And now I told him,
Speaker 1: I remember I called him and said, Dad, now I
Speaker 1: have three and a half tons worth of gear. I
Speaker 1: got a transport from one stage to another, and the
Speaker 1: irony and that just uh, it just made us both laugh. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're a year younger than me, so we're essentially the
Speaker 1: same time. I'm growing up on the East Coast in
Speaker 1: the suburbs. You're in the heart of the action. So
Speaker 1: what do I remember? I remember the folk scene and
Speaker 1: then the surf and car scene, and then the Beatles
Speaker 1: came along and everybody formed bands. What was going on
Speaker 1: for you? I was playing drums at a surf band.
Speaker 1: I was eight years old, and uh doing wipe out,
Speaker 1: doing the solo to wipe out, and then um, I
Speaker 1: had a uh an epiphany. My dad did a record
Speaker 1: with Johnny Rivers called Poor Side of Town. It was
Speaker 1: Johnny rivers first hit single, and there was a piano
Speaker 1: player that played the track on it named Larry Nectel.
Speaker 1: Now I know he's not defamiliar with a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there, but he played the piano on Paul
Speaker 1: Simon's Bridge over Trouble Waters and he was the most
Speaker 1: incredibly talented new funky player I'd ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: Brilliant player. I mean, if you hear a Bridge over
Speaker 1: Trouble Waters, you can see what kind of player this
Speaker 1: guy is. And he played on so many people's hit records.
Speaker 1: Also played bass on Uh You've lost that love and feeling,
Speaker 1: and uh, that was my epiphany as soon as I
Speaker 1: heard what he was playing, because he didn't play rock
Speaker 1: and roll like the older guys, jazz guys where they
Speaker 1: played the triplets up high. Uh, he was down on
Speaker 1: the last low two octaves of the piano, rolling it sound,
Speaker 1: so it sounded like a rhythm guitar. And I was
Speaker 1: just amazed by that. And I uh just gravitated towards
Speaker 1: that and started following and sitting next to him on
Speaker 1: sessions so I could steal everything that he knew. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're growing up when I was growing up at the
Speaker 1: same time, had the transistor under the pillow. But you
Speaker 1: were in Hollywood. You know, to what degree were you
Speaker 1: a fan of popular music listening on the radio, dedicated
Speaker 1: or it was more about playing sports. What was it like?
Speaker 1: I was credibly submerged in music. My dad was working
Speaker 1: with great artists. I was just taken by all the
Speaker 1: artists at the time. I love folk rock, I love country,
Speaker 1: I love classical stuff. Uh. I loved all the music
Speaker 1: at the time, especially the Beatles. I'm still a huge
Speaker 1: Beatles fan and a Rolling Stones fan, and uh to
Speaker 1: this day. Uh again, like you said, we kind of
Speaker 1: dropped off the surf music dropped off, and we started
Speaker 1: wanting to play in bands that were playing Jimmy Hendricks
Speaker 1: and the Beatles and uh uh traffic kind of songs
Speaker 1: I play. I got a band that we did nothing
Speaker 1: but traffic and Hendrick songs. So uh, I was an
Speaker 1: interesting combination. It is, it is, but those are the
Speaker 1: kind of songs that we did. That was back in
Speaker 1: the day. You know, you'd see how sly Stone on
Speaker 1: a bill with Hendricks and Chicago the Stadium, you know,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of they were more diverse back
Speaker 1: then when it comes to putting acts together, I think.
Speaker 1: And because my dad was required listening, he was he
Speaker 1: got all these free records all the time because he
Speaker 1: was doing TV shows and they'd give him a not
Speaker 1: for sale um demo demonstration record and uh, so I
Speaker 1: was listening to the Beatles before people were, and uh uh,
Speaker 1: people like Glenn Campbell I was. My dad was friends
Speaker 1: with all the Wrecking Crew, so I used to sit
Speaker 1: next to those guys all the time, and the Wrecking
Speaker 1: Crew individually. But my dad never really used the Wrecking Crew,
Speaker 1: but he did use um Lou Adler put a version
Speaker 1: of the Wrecking Crew together which was Hal Blaine, Joe Osborne,
Speaker 1: Larry Nicktol, and Tommy Tedesco along with John Phillips and
Speaker 1: there these were made up of all the moms and
Speaker 1: Papa's records which my dad started to arrange strings for.
Speaker 1: He did Johnny. He was doing Johnny Rivers at the
Speaker 1: time that he did The Fifth Dimension, which is where
Speaker 1: I met. This goes into my songwriting beginning, which as
Speaker 1: I met Jimmy Webb when I was ten and Jimmy
Speaker 1: Webb was seventeen and had a huge influence on me
Speaker 1: when he was doing the first Fifth Dimension album and
Speaker 1: uh uh to this day, Uh again, Uh, that's where
Speaker 1: I started getting into songwriting and wanting to become a songwriter.
Speaker 1: And right after that, Elton John's first album came out,
Speaker 1: and I just it's just opened the whole door for me.
Speaker 1: You know, when did you actually start writing songs and
Speaker 1: how frequently and how good were they? I started writing
Speaker 1: when I was about thirteen. I think it was about
Speaker 1: the time the first Elton John song came out and
Speaker 1: I started, uh trying to imitate him all my first
Speaker 1: songs were horrible, you know. They were just imitations of
Speaker 1: Elton John's first album, The King Must Die. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that record, and uh uh. I wasn't writing
Speaker 1: too often because again I was a little bit slow,
Speaker 1: but I liked I I really wanted to do to
Speaker 1: be Elton John and to perform on piano and write
Speaker 1: songs like that. And I just kept at it, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: writing bad song after bad song. Of course, they were
Speaker 1: incredible to me because I was trying to trying to
Speaker 1: be like Elton. Uh. But I was going to an
Speaker 1: all boys prep school at the time called Shamanad, which
Speaker 1: people will probably know in the area. It was an
Speaker 1: all boys school, and I had short hair and horm
Speaker 1: waring glass. It's kind of like Elton you see on
Speaker 1: it in his pictures, so I could really really relate
Speaker 1: to him also as a as a dude. And uh uh.
Speaker 1: I just started writing and trying writing and writing, and
Speaker 1: then I wrote a song. Uh. My daddy started doing
Speaker 1: the Glenn Campbell's show at about seventy one, I think,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a song. My first hit record was
Speaker 1: semi hit record was a country western song called Houston,
Speaker 1: I'm Coming to see you, and it was Glenn Campbell
Speaker 1: made a title track on his album, and so that
Speaker 1: gave me the confidence to keep writing and to keep
Speaker 1: at it. Okay, a little bit slower. How did you
Speaker 1: write that song? How did it get in front of
Speaker 1: Glenn Campbell? And how did you feel when he did
Speaker 1: cut it? Okay, good questions. Uh again, My my dad
Speaker 1: was doing the Glenn Campbell's show. Jimmy Webb had been
Speaker 1: writing all of Glenn's uh uh hit records, which had
Speaker 1: to do with by the time I get to Phoenix, Galveston, Wichita, Lineman,
Speaker 1: all these city songs. So I thought, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: do I'll just follow along Jimmy Webb's lines and write
Speaker 1: a song called Houston. And so I made up a
Speaker 1: little ditty and if you get a chance, you listen
Speaker 1: to it, you'll see how I'm kind of trying to
Speaker 1: be like Jimmy Webb on it. And then my father,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to me, was so impressed with it, and I
Speaker 1: just did it. I had a little Revox two track
Speaker 1: it would be belonging to my father where you could
Speaker 1: do sound on sound and you could overdub with it.
Speaker 1: So my father snagged the tape and you played it
Speaker 1: for Glenn Campbell, just my little rough demo that I
Speaker 1: would have never in a million years played anybody to
Speaker 1: this day. And Glenn said he liked it and he
Speaker 1: wanted to cut it, and I just I was taken aback.
Speaker 1: I was just flabbergasted, you know that we he actually
Speaker 1: wanted to do my song. So immediately I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta get how blamed Joe Osborne and the Cracking
Speaker 1: Crew guys cut my song? Like you know, I thought
Speaker 1: I was one of the wrecking Crew myself, you know
Speaker 1: at the time, And uh, that started it all for me.
Speaker 1: Got on a station, now checked this out. There was
Speaker 1: this country western station, uh I used to listen to
Speaker 1: when I was going to USC called K Barbecue. How's
Speaker 1: that for a radio station? K b b Q, And
Speaker 1: they played it all the time. Did you ever get
Speaker 1: paid for it? Sure did. I got a Union's double
Speaker 1: scale and I got uh, I got some royalties. I
Speaker 1: also won publishing award that year, uh for the most
Speaker 1: played Songs as CAP award I think I got. And
Speaker 1: I got flown to Nashville and met Roy Clark and
Speaker 1: uh all the the big country stars there. What do
Speaker 1: you do with the money. What I do with the money? Uh?
Speaker 1: Put it toward a car. Well that's what I figured, Yeah,
Speaker 1: put it called all all my money. All my money
Speaker 1: came from bar Mitzvah's weddings and that song, but mainly
Speaker 1: bar Mitzvah's and weddings for four years, all all to
Speaker 1: pay for a car. What was the car? Ultimately it
Speaker 1: was an Econoline Van three hundred. Because of course I'm
Speaker 1: a keyboard player. I have to be able to be
Speaker 1: able to fit Fender Rhodes or Hammond Oregon to to
Speaker 1: get to the gig. So I bought an Econoline three hundred.
Speaker 1: Now the interesting part about this stories. I used to
Speaker 1: go on the road with Sonny and Share and I
Speaker 1: would park. My parents had another ranch up in santy
Speaker 1: Andez Valley, and uh uh, I used to keep my
Speaker 1: van at the ranch when I go on the road
Speaker 1: with Sunny and Share for six weeks or seals and crops.
Speaker 1: I tour with them and I came back off the
Speaker 1: road one day and my van was gone, and I said,
Speaker 1: what where's my van? And my dad said, I sold it?
Speaker 1: And I and and I said, what do you mean
Speaker 1: you sold it? He goes, it's on my property. He goes, uh,
Speaker 1: it's mine. When it's on my property, it's my dad
Speaker 1: who was like he was like a junk collector also,
Speaker 1: and uh he said, yeah, it was on my property.
Speaker 1: So I sold it. I said, well, how much money
Speaker 1: did you get for it? He said fifteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I said, what did you do with the money? He said,
Speaker 1: I spent it, you know, and and it uh uh,
Speaker 1: it's just solidified our our relationship so much more. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a bad Sorry it is. It isastic. I'm
Speaker 1: being sarcastic right now, trying to be okay. So your
Speaker 1: relationship with your father was not good as you got older, well,
Speaker 1: you know it was. I always had a great relationship
Speaker 1: with my father, him and I. I used to get
Speaker 1: to work with him. I was his like his wingman
Speaker 1: on sessions. I started out as a pencil sharp there,
Speaker 1: which would be and Joseph Williams talk about this all
Speaker 1: the time. He did the same thing I did with
Speaker 1: his dad, John Williams, which was all we did was
Speaker 1: sharpen our dad's pencils when we were allowed in the
Speaker 1: room with him to listen to them writing music because
Speaker 1: it was very little music being played on piano. Most
Speaker 1: of it was writing between his father and my father. Well,
Speaker 1: let me know the so I'll talk about the relationship
Speaker 1: with your father, but let's just move on. You play
Speaker 1: in that band with wipe out and drums at eight,
Speaker 1: the Beatles hit, When the Beatles hit, When you're ten,
Speaker 1: At what point do you start playing in bands? I
Speaker 1: started playing and balanced, well, look again, the first band
Speaker 1: I was on drums. Okay, that's my surf band thing.
Speaker 1: But then I started getting There wasn't any really electric
Speaker 1: piano instruments, so I started playing acoustic piano when everybody
Speaker 1: else had electric guitars and bass. I was playing an
Speaker 1: up spin it's spinet pianos at dances for schools and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I must have been eleven eleven years
Speaker 1: old when I started playing in bands with acoustic piano.
Speaker 1: Of course, you couldn't hear me, so we'd always put
Speaker 1: a vocal mic into another channel in the amplifier and
Speaker 1: stick it down in the piano so you could hear
Speaker 1: the piano, which I think a lot of piano players
Speaker 1: had to do that at that time because there was
Speaker 1: no Fender Rhods yet. But then it's a life changing
Speaker 1: situation happened. My dad got me a Fender Rhodes and
Speaker 1: that just all of a sudden, I was able to
Speaker 1: be joining a band. That's when you saw Kate Ja
Speaker 1: giving away all that Fender gear and they were giving
Speaker 1: away Fender pianos. When my dad happened to know someone
Speaker 1: that had an adornment, which was Louis Belson, the drummer,
Speaker 1: and uh, I got a Fender Rhodes. And shortly after
Speaker 1: that was when my dad did the Glenn Campbell show
Speaker 1: and he he hired Joe Pracaro. No, this is no
Speaker 1: Lie hired him. Uh, and he just Joe had just
Speaker 1: moved out from Connecticut and Joe Pracaro's son was Jeff Pricaro,
Speaker 1: and Jeff's band, which is called the Merciful Souls, had
Speaker 1: just won the Battle of the Band's contest in the
Speaker 1: Valley in the San Fernando Valley and they just lost
Speaker 1: their piano player. I think he passed away, and Joe says,
Speaker 1: they're looking for a piano player, you should get together
Speaker 1: with my son and arranged for us to switch numbers.
Speaker 1: And that's when I met Jeff Pricaro when I was
Speaker 1: like fourteen and a half fifteen years old, and uh
Speaker 1: we became best friends and I played with him ever since. Okay,
Speaker 1: So those bands that you play did bar mitzvah parties, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That was with the poor Karo Brothers. No, those are
Speaker 1: different bands. There were the Shermer brothers and Dan Holtzman
Speaker 1: and his brother and these were specific, specific bar Mitzvah
Speaker 1: wedding bands, like the weddings like when you see the
Speaker 1: movie the Wedding Singer. Well, that's why these bands were.
Speaker 1: But all the musicians of the bands were like that.
Speaker 1: So I was a little bit. I was a better
Speaker 1: musician than the guys in most of the bands. But
Speaker 1: every once in a while a good drummer would come
Speaker 1: in and we'd started taking freedoms with the songs and
Speaker 1: turning them into jazz songs and everything like that. So
Speaker 1: I got a lot of experience. I got a lot
Speaker 1: of time, a chance to play different standards and learn
Speaker 1: how to, uh basically play weddings and bar mitzvah's. And
Speaker 1: how often did you play? I did about two, three,
Speaker 1: between five and six uh engagements every weekend for four years. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two engagements a day. Wow. Okay, So that was work,
Speaker 1: although you're gaining skills. What about playing traffic? Playing Hendrix?
Speaker 1: Was that with the procrlos? Where who's that with? That
Speaker 1: was with the perk Carlo's that's and and also I
Speaker 1: had there was an intermediate band before I met Jeff.
Speaker 1: Uh there was in a band with a guy named
Speaker 1: Dan Ferguson, who's uh one of our best friends and
Speaker 1: credible guitarist, and him and I started a band together
Speaker 1: with another singer and we all brought a drummer in
Speaker 1: from Canoga High I think, and we started doing Hendricks
Speaker 1: songs and Traffic songs. Uh. For there's a in hitting Hills.
Speaker 1: There was a place called the Hitting Hills Pool and
Speaker 1: they used to have dances there and we got the
Speaker 1: gig playing a dance at the pool. So we had
Speaker 1: a stinger who had a strobe believe it or not,
Speaker 1: had a microphone and a strobe light, which is why
Speaker 1: we hired him. Okay and uh uh it turned out
Speaker 1: to be a incredible gig and uh uh this time
Speaker 1: went on uh and we broke up kind of in
Speaker 1: high school. And that's just when I met Jeff. So
Speaker 1: did you ever meet her? Works with Stevie Winwood? I
Speaker 1: met him one time on the phone. No, I met him.
Speaker 1: I met him, also met him. Uh. They were doing
Speaker 1: a tribute to Mike Yamaha did a Mike McDonald I
Speaker 1: think tribute, and I think Stevie Winwood was there and
Speaker 1: I got to meet him. But Jim Horne, there's a
Speaker 1: very famous saxophone player who I met when I was
Speaker 1: twelve years old, very famous guy named Jim Horne who's
Speaker 1: played with the Beatles, He's played with Clapton and the Stones.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows Jim Horne. Well, uh uh. He introduced He said,
Speaker 1: I want to someone's gonna call you today. And I
Speaker 1: was in Nashville, Jim, and the phone rang and it
Speaker 1: was Jim. It was Stevie Winwood on the phone because
Speaker 1: he knew I was a Stevie Winwood fan, and he
Speaker 1: had introduced himself to me on the phone. And I
Speaker 1: just I was in heaven. I was just like I
Speaker 1: was walking on clouds, you know, because Stevie Winwood was
Speaker 1: a big, big influence on me. And when you played
Speaker 1: with the Porcaro's, did you ever play for money or
Speaker 1: were you just playing in the garage. We were at
Speaker 1: the first time, we were playing in the garage. But
Speaker 1: there's an old joke that says, how do you want
Speaker 1: how do you get a band to get together and play?
Speaker 1: You find? Get him a gig, you know. So they
Speaker 1: were rehearsing for a gig at the time. We were
Speaker 1: learning all these songs. So they had to teach me
Speaker 1: all the new songs, which are mainly blood, Sweat and
Speaker 1: Tears songs, Uh, Buddy Miles songs and sly and the
Speaker 1: family's own songs, you know. And Uh, I brought in
Speaker 1: a little bit more of the rock and roll stuff.
Speaker 1: I brought in the Rolling Stones, Give Me Shelter and
Speaker 1: three Dog Night, and that's what kind of stuff I
Speaker 1: was listening to. Okay, many musicians in that era did
Speaker 1: not go to college. How did you end up going
Speaker 1: to college? And did you finish? My dad went to college,
Speaker 1: and I had a long talk with my dad, dad
Speaker 1: should I go to college? And he goes, He told me,
Speaker 1: he says, that's a good question. He goes, Musically, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be fine musically. But he says his advice
Speaker 1: to me was, you're gonna go to college one day,
Speaker 1: and that one day you're gonna learn something that's gonna
Speaker 1: change your life and be with you for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. And so I just took his advice.
Speaker 1: I had total faith in my father, and I went
Speaker 1: to USC for two and a half years, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there was a day came when they taught modulation UH
Speaker 1: in USC, which is how to modulate from transition from
Speaker 1: one key to another key. Well, I found out that
Speaker 1: you have six six different possibilities because you have three
Speaker 1: three notes on the left hand, three notes on the
Speaker 1: right hand, and for chords, actually four notes on each hand,
Speaker 1: so you can uh pivot between any of those sent
Speaker 1: four or eight notes as far as changing keys. So
Speaker 1: I've used it to this day and as far as
Speaker 1: my songwriting. That's why I'm able to uh navigate through
Speaker 1: the song structures and always find something interesting to do
Speaker 1: because I know how to pivot and modulate into uh
Speaker 1: lots of different keys. Why did you drop out? And
Speaker 1: then what do you do? Uh? I started stopped attending
Speaker 1: classes because I was on the road too much. I
Speaker 1: was I was conducting for Sunny and Share and unfortunately
Speaker 1: they didn't have any internship program at USC. I mean,
Speaker 1: I told him and I asked me how much money
Speaker 1: I was making and I was making twice as much
Speaker 1: as the teachers, so they kind of got a little
Speaker 1: bugged at that. And then I always thought you didn't
Speaker 1: have as long as you took the test, you could
Speaker 1: pass college. Well, they started marking me down for attendance
Speaker 1: because I was I was on the charts. I was
Speaker 1: working with Seals and Crofts and Sunny and Share and
Speaker 1: doing professional gigs. But they they they I might as
Speaker 1: well be playing billiards at a pool hall where all
Speaker 1: they cared at the time. There. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's changed now because they have a thought in school
Speaker 1: of music and they have movie sound stages and they
Speaker 1: teach record production. But all that was that was like
Speaker 1: joining the circus at the time. So how did you
Speaker 1: first get these road gigs and who did it start
Speaker 1: with and who did it evolved too. My first road
Speaker 1: gig was with Sunny and Share, and funnily enough, Jeff
Speaker 1: Ricaro had just gotten the gig before I did. So
Speaker 1: Jeff was the first guy, and he left high school early,
Speaker 1: didn't graduate high school. He went back and got his diploma,
Speaker 1: but he left high school early to go on the
Speaker 1: road with Sunny and Share, and they were huge at
Speaker 1: the time. They were like, how did you get the gig?
Speaker 1: I got the gig because my dad ended up Sonny Bono.
Speaker 1: They called my dad to arrange a song for Shares album.
Speaker 1: I believe he was producing, and he'd heard about Marty Page.
Speaker 1: He knew Marty Page, and he asked him to arrange
Speaker 1: a couple of songs. Well, my dad dad hired me,
Speaker 1: which something he rarely did back then, hired me to
Speaker 1: play on this song, and Sonny Bono heard me and
Speaker 1: really flipped out over my plane. So Jeffercarlo calls Sonny
Speaker 1: and says, I have the new keyboard player for you,
Speaker 1: and Sonny goes, let's tell that guy to stand down.
Speaker 1: I just found a new keyboard player. So when I
Speaker 1: showed up at Jeff's house, Sonny Bono showed up and
Speaker 1: he goes, here's the new keyboard player. And Jeff goes, well,
Speaker 1: that's the guy just joined my band. Right there. It
Speaker 1: was I was the same guy. And that's how I
Speaker 1: got the gig because Sonny hired me and Jeff recommended
Speaker 1: him to me. So how long did you work with
Speaker 1: Sonny and chair? What was that like? That was probably
Speaker 1: about three years. That was fantastic. Uh, they had private
Speaker 1: jets at the time, and uh, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: I came right out of all boys high school and
Speaker 1: the jet that they hired was the Hugh Hefner Playboy Jet.
Speaker 1: So so it was like, uh, put put us in
Speaker 1: a in a candy shop, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And uh I was on the road with him for
Speaker 1: three years. But this is they go on the road
Speaker 1: for six weeks and then come back for three months.
Speaker 1: Go on the road for six weeks, come back for
Speaker 1: three months, that kind of thing. But we did a
Speaker 1: little time in Vegas. I was a musical conductor at
Speaker 1: the Sahara Hotel. My main name was up on the
Speaker 1: Marquee and I was about nineteen years old. And uh
Speaker 1: uh that's my sunny and share experience. Okay, were you
Speaker 1: taking were you partaking of the fruits of the road. Well,
Speaker 1: funny you should mention that, Bob, because I just I
Speaker 1: had to send a sign an n d A before
Speaker 1: I did your program today that forbids me to talk
Speaker 1: about any rock and roll mischief during that time. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that would imply that you did partake in rock
Speaker 1: and roll. We had a couple of cups of coffee
Speaker 1: and uh Uh. Like I said, there was the eighties,
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and uh uh, we'll just leave it
Speaker 1: at that. Okay. So, uh, you're working with Sonny and Share,
Speaker 1: they're working like you know once every couple of months.
Speaker 1: Are you doing any sessions or you just going to school?
Speaker 1: How do you start doing sessions? I'm uh once I did.
Speaker 1: I was going to school. They were even flying me
Speaker 1: in to go to school because they wanted me to
Speaker 1: keep me and my dad says, well, he's going to school.
Speaker 1: They said, we'll fly him into USC So I go
Speaker 1: to school once a week on their ticket, and uh
Speaker 1: what happened. Then the big day came when I did
Speaker 1: Diamond Girl for Louis Shelton. And as soon as that
Speaker 1: became a hit record and there's a there, you can
Speaker 1: pretty much here my piano part on it pretty good.
Speaker 1: Uh Uh. The word got around and I started getting
Speaker 1: higher for sessions, a lot of sessions, but I was
Speaker 1: still doing our myth physic and weddings at the same time.
Speaker 1: I carried that on because it's always musicians need to
Speaker 1: pick up money where they can get money. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not a steady, steady job like a nine to
Speaker 1: five or although it became that later on when I
Speaker 1: started getting really busy with sessions. Okay, so you work
Speaker 1: with Sunny and Chair for three years, why does that
Speaker 1: end and you go out back out on the road
Speaker 1: or what that ended? Because I think Sunny and Share
Speaker 1: we're having they broke up, their marriage broke up, but
Speaker 1: then they kept it together for a little while and
Speaker 1: we were we were. My dad became the musical director
Speaker 1: on the Sunny and Chair show after that, and Jeff
Speaker 1: and I were both playing on that show. And then
Speaker 1: I think the show either got canceled or something else
Speaker 1: took it for a break. I think another show came
Speaker 1: in and replaced it, and uh, so we all started
Speaker 1: looking for gigs, and that's when Jeff joined. I thought
Speaker 1: we were gonna get out of the ending result out
Speaker 1: of doing all these gigs was gonna be putting another
Speaker 1: put our band back together from high school after we
Speaker 1: eventually got experienced down the road. But Jeff got an
Speaker 1: invitation and joined Steely Dan, which he accepted because he
Speaker 1: was a giant ganic Steely Dan freak and uh and
Speaker 1: he joined Steely Dan. So I thought, well, there's there's
Speaker 1: goes my dream, you know, and there we will never
Speaker 1: be able to put the band together and I won't
Speaker 1: be able to beat Elton John and uh uh it's
Speaker 1: just looked dismal. And then uh Steely Dan broke up
Speaker 1: and start hiring session guys, which they've kept hiring Jeff,
Speaker 1: but they had more no more road band, So Jeff decided, Uh,
Speaker 1: after silk degrees, which I'm jumping ahead here. After silk degrees,
Speaker 1: a lot of what do I wait, wait, wait, don't
Speaker 1: jump ahead, I won't jump ahead, Okay, Sonny and Share.
Speaker 1: Do you go out with any other bands after Sunny
Speaker 1: and Share? Yes, I went out with Seals and Crofts,
Speaker 1: and uh, the only people else I went out with
Speaker 1: was We're getting to that, which is boss ex. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you work with Louis Shelton, you start to get,
Speaker 1: uh studio gigs. At what point can you give up
Speaker 1: the weekend gigs and just be a studio musician. A
Speaker 1: couple of years after uh, I think Diamond Girl hit.
Speaker 1: I think I was doing three days a day, five
Speaker 1: days a week, which is pretty good. And uh uh
Speaker 1: you know, I think I stopped taking barn Mitts visit
Speaker 1: Weddingston I was able to afford that. Okay. Most musicians
Speaker 1: are heavily networked. Did you get all these studio gigs
Speaker 1: through your network? Were you working it? At what point?
Speaker 1: Could you just wait for the phone to ring? What
Speaker 1: was going on? I was waiting for the phone to
Speaker 1: a lot of times. A lot of musicians like the
Speaker 1: network and hang out or my father was always the thing.
Speaker 1: My father never called anybody for work, so he was
Speaker 1: always wait, they'll call you. Don't call them, they'll call you.
Speaker 1: So I was basically sitting around waiting for the phone
Speaker 1: to ring. And sometimes it would be a contractor saying
Speaker 1: your father wants you for a date. Sometimes my father
Speaker 1: would hire me and it would be great because I
Speaker 1: would be on the inside of the loop as far
Speaker 1: as the parts go. And uh so uh uh is
Speaker 1: mainly word of mouth, and that's how musicians get their things,
Speaker 1: credits on albums. Was that's how networking was done back
Speaker 1: in the day, you know. And then what kind of
Speaker 1: sessions were you doing? I was doing R and B sessions.
Speaker 1: I started working at Motown which was called mo West,
Speaker 1: where I got to work with uh people like Dean Parks,
Speaker 1: people like Clarence McDonald. Uh we very rarely knew who
Speaker 1: the artist was, because on the top of the page
Speaker 1: they wouldn't put the artist names. They would just cut
Speaker 1: a track. And because sometimes it would go to Diana Ross,
Speaker 1: sometimes it would go to Thelmy Houston, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: just didn't know who the artist was on it. So
Speaker 1: I I think I worked on some things for Thelmy
Speaker 1: Houston and Diana Ross, but uh, other than that, I
Speaker 1: was working a lot of motown. I started doing more
Speaker 1: seals and crops records and what else was I doing?
Speaker 1: Just a lot of demos and a lot of freelancing
Speaker 1: sessions of people that you never heard, you know. So
Speaker 1: how does it turn into silk degrees? It turns into
Speaker 1: silk degrees. Uh. One of those dates that Jeff did,
Speaker 1: uh bos Skaggs decided he wanted to produce a blues
Speaker 1: guitarist named les Do Deck who was in the Almand
Speaker 1: Brothers at the time, and Jeff got the call to
Speaker 1: go play with them. Well, they needed an organ player,
Speaker 1: so Jeff through my name in the basket and they
Speaker 1: called me, and so I got to play Oregon and
Speaker 1: jam and me, Me and Jeff were jamming with him
Speaker 1: on this album Untiled Less Do Dick. But that's where
Speaker 1: I met Bozz Skaggs through Jeff Precaro, which I'll I'll
Speaker 1: always be grateful for, you know. Okay, so you're playing
Speaker 1: on the Less Do Dick album, which I actually own,
Speaker 1: and how do you end up working with Boss? Boss
Speaker 1: is looking to do work with a co writer, which
Speaker 1: he never did before, and he wanted to be a
Speaker 1: keyboard player, he thought, and Uh, Jeff sold him, I've
Speaker 1: got the perfect guy for you, David Page, because I've
Speaker 1: been playing my songs start the beginnings of my songs
Speaker 1: on the first album I. Every time we had a session,
Speaker 1: I would always we'd always start jamming on our songs
Speaker 1: that we wanted to record eventually when we made a band,
Speaker 1: which wasn't existing yet. So uh, Boss decided he wanted
Speaker 1: to co write the next album with me, and so
Speaker 1: we went up to my dad's place up in santy Ennez,
Speaker 1: the Ranch, and uh, he sat down on my dad's
Speaker 1: piano and we wrote half the album. We wrote low Down,
Speaker 1: we wrote leto Shuffle, we wrote jump Street, we wrote
Speaker 1: It's Over uh and UH We're All Alone was on that.
Speaker 1: We wrote that there Boss Binley wrote that, uh, and
Speaker 1: that's how it happened. Then I got Cheffer, Carl and
Speaker 1: David Hungate the sunny and share rhythm section, who became
Speaker 1: the total rhythm section. Uh, and Louis I added Louis
Speaker 1: Shelton to that compliment. So you're talking about on the
Speaker 1: Boss Skaggs record. I just took the Luish the Seals
Speaker 1: and crops rhythm section which was Hungate, Cheffer, Carl and
Speaker 1: myself and added Louis Shelton to it. And that's that's
Speaker 1: that was almost total because Louis, Louis wanted to be
Speaker 1: in the band real bed. Okay, so wait, Louis wanted
Speaker 1: to be in Boss's Banter he wanted to be and
Speaker 1: what became Toto he wanted to be and what became Toto?
Speaker 1: But really, yeah, but we found but we we ran
Speaker 1: into Luca or too too early, you know. Okay, before
Speaker 1: we get to Luca third, did you have any idea
Speaker 1: how big those songs were gonna be? No, we were
Speaker 1: trying to just make great music and uh, we had done.
Speaker 1: You know, this is my first chance. I really got
Speaker 1: to do all the arranging on it and uh and
Speaker 1: laying the tracks out. But we had no idea because
Speaker 1: we were trying to do sophisticated stuff. I mean the
Speaker 1: Lowdown is more of a assistant excuse me, sophisticated song
Speaker 1: than most songs at that time. We're getting radio play.
Speaker 1: I have to admit it sounds jazzier to me. And
Speaker 1: uh so that caught it every That was the first
Speaker 1: big single off of it. No, I think It's Over
Speaker 1: was the first single, and then uh uh low Down
Speaker 1: became the next one after that, and it's just started
Speaker 1: getting It took off like a bullet, and I think
Speaker 1: I got the number two with a bullet, and uh
Speaker 1: that's when we got an ideal. That when then Boss
Speaker 1: got management at right after that, and it was Irving
Speaker 1: as off well. Irving had the Eagles and he had
Speaker 1: Boss Gags, so he just started selling a shipload of records.
Speaker 1: Uh they were still was sounding like a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: records a day at the peak of Silk Degrees, and
Speaker 1: the only album that was ahead of that we never
Speaker 1: got the number one was Frampton Comes Alive was number
Speaker 1: one for like twelve weeks. So we were always at
Speaker 1: number two with a bullet, never got the number one
Speaker 1: with Silk Degrees. What did Joe Wizard ad or not add?
Speaker 1: He took care of most of the vocals with Boss
Speaker 1: and Uh and he you know, picked, helped pick the
Speaker 1: takes and just in general the overdubs, the background vocals
Speaker 1: and stuff. But it was a combination of me and
Speaker 1: him that made the album. Okay, So when Bobs went
Speaker 1: on the road, did you go the road with him? Yes,
Speaker 1: I went on the road. Uh, Jeff went on the road,
Speaker 1: and I think Hungate went on the Hungate went on
Speaker 1: the road too. And I forget who was playing other
Speaker 1: guitar part, and I think that Steve Riccaro at this
Speaker 1: time had just left Gary, right and I think he
Speaker 1: was looking for a job. And Bobs we needed a
Speaker 1: second keyboard player to do over for the overdub parts,
Speaker 1: and we hired Steve Riccaro UH to come in and
Speaker 1: being part of the rhythm section. So now we had Jeff,
Speaker 1: David Hungate, myself and Steve Ricardo. Okay, you must have
Speaker 1: made a fortune on silk degrees. I had a couple
Speaker 1: of nickels to rub together. Do you still own that publishing? Yes,
Speaker 1: I own all my publishing. Okay. Would you in this
Speaker 1: heyday of eighteen to twenty two, multiple would you ever
Speaker 1: sell it? Not on that kind of multiple. Maybe you
Speaker 1: give me a twenty seven twenty eight multiple and uh
Speaker 1: and we'll we I'll consider it. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: really don't want to sell my publishing at this point.
Speaker 1: I know everybody else it's the big fads to do
Speaker 1: and it's and it's a little bit touchy because of
Speaker 1: the way the financing is going in the United States
Speaker 1: and how the economy going, and uh uh it's tempting,
Speaker 1: uh uh, but uh, I would not sell my publishing
Speaker 1: at this point. At the moment, I I don't believe
Speaker 1: in it. You know, the light you know, the term
Speaker 1: of copyright is life plus seventy years. That's a long time,
Speaker 1: you know. And what are you gonna do with the
Speaker 1: money after you get it, never mind the wax that
Speaker 1: the government and other people take from it. So after
Speaker 1: bos uh silk degrees, what's the next thing you're working on?
Speaker 1: What did we work on? I think we worked I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure when we worked on Steely Dan Katie Lide album.
Speaker 1: Well I did. I've worked on Black Friday and Dr
Speaker 1: Woo on the Katie Lied album and that was salt
Speaker 1: and peppered in between the Boss Skaggs years. Because I
Speaker 1: remember Donald and Walter had heard Silk Degrees and really
Speaker 1: loved it. So that's why they think. I think they
Speaker 1: hired me and Jeff to play on Katie Lied. I
Speaker 1: may be mistaken, but that's how I remember it, and
Speaker 1: I'm sticking with that story. So. Uh. Then after that,
Speaker 1: I started getting into the Quincy Jones camp, which he
Speaker 1: was doing James Ingram and Donna Summers at the time.
Speaker 1: How I got in there was Steve Bracaro was a
Speaker 1: very sought after synthesis. He was a programming sense and
Speaker 1: playing sense for people like David Foster who did all
Speaker 1: the Chicago stuff. And uh uh, Steve started doing all
Speaker 1: the Quincy Jones stuff and he got me into the session.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of snuck into the session. Uh. I
Speaker 1: was carrying a piece of gear and Steve said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you have David play the part? So I
Speaker 1: started playing parts. They were like the engineer was like,
Speaker 1: well this, you're pretty good. You should stay. I was
Speaker 1: kind of a snuck in there. You know. I had
Speaker 1: actually known Quincy Jones met him when I was fourteen
Speaker 1: because my dad had been a ranger on some of
Speaker 1: his solo records. So I had met Quincy at a
Speaker 1: very early age, so he knew of me, but really
Speaker 1: I wasn't in his loop, you know. So I got
Speaker 1: into that, started doing James Ingram record, Donna Summer Record,
Speaker 1: and then the Michael jab Big Michael Jackson record game. Okay,
Speaker 1: before the Michael Jackson how come you didn't work on
Speaker 1: the follow up bozz Gags record? Mm hmmm mm hmm,
Speaker 1: good question. Uh. It really came down to two credits
Speaker 1: and and and value how much they valued me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to co produce on their album, and uh that
Speaker 1: wasn't flying with him and Joe Wizard for some reason. Uh,
Speaker 1: they just didn't work out. And so my dad said,
Speaker 1: I said once and I formed my band. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you should do this album if you can do it.
Speaker 1: But if they say no, uh, now is the time
Speaker 1: to probably form your band, you know, because uh uh
Speaker 1: you have. There was a lot of people uh smooziness
Speaker 1: at the time for big record companies because of the
Speaker 1: boss s Gags thing. And we've been as we went
Speaker 1: on the road, we kept telling people we're gonna be
Speaker 1: forming a band, and everybody we got cards from everybody's
Speaker 1: before cell phones and everything. Everybody had cards. People that
Speaker 1: we contacted or would play our demos for to get
Speaker 1: a record deal. So uh it was uh that's because
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wanted to co produce and basically couldn't.
Speaker 1: And did he ever come back to the table because
Speaker 1: he never had as much success as he had with you? Yes,
Speaker 1: and I did. Uh. I co produced an album called
Speaker 1: Dig with him that came out and uh I co
Speaker 1: produced that with him and a couple of other songs
Speaker 1: off we did remade Low Down and uh Lido Shuffle
Speaker 1: to do so he could own. He wanted to own
Speaker 1: the masters on it, so we remade him. So tell
Speaker 1: me about working with Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was a perfectionist.
Speaker 1: I would love him. He was the sweetheart to work with.
Speaker 1: He totally gave a total autonomy whenever you were doing
Speaker 1: something too. If you heard doing this or heard in
Speaker 1: a choir or one of an orchestra or one of you,
Speaker 1: just say, just think big, use your imagination, he would say.
Speaker 1: He would say, I think, imagine you're Michael Angelo and
Speaker 1: your painting the Sistine Chapel. That's why I want you
Speaker 1: to produce, arrange your your part. You know, because he
Speaker 1: didn't treat you like he were just a musician. He
Speaker 1: treated you like he were a creative force in making
Speaker 1: a part of his music. So, uh, I got in
Speaker 1: a room with him and we were just playing music.
Speaker 1: I was playing I think it was Billy Jean, which
Speaker 1: I didn't end up playing on, but I played. I
Speaker 1: did a couple of overdubs on it, and he he
Speaker 1: let a couple of mistakes go by, and I stopped
Speaker 1: him right there and I said, Michael, you're you're sloughing off.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm a perfectionist and he goes, well, so
Speaker 1: am I. He goes, you don't mind. You don't mind
Speaker 1: if I say you're you made a mistake there. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I want just to bust me on it. So I
Speaker 1: went back, cleaned up all my stuff, and from there
Speaker 1: on her him and his relationship was great because he
Speaker 1: said he'd go in a room and go, yeah, David's
Speaker 1: got to be in the room with me when I
Speaker 1: do vocals. He's a perfectionist like I am. He say
Speaker 1: this to people, and I'm Quincy Jones would be in
Speaker 1: the room and be a get embarrassing after a while,
Speaker 1: you know. So why was it a phenomenon? Was it?
Speaker 1: Michael was a que who do we give the credit to.
Speaker 1: I think you can start with them. I think you
Speaker 1: can start with Quincy Jones. Uh put Lane the groundwork
Speaker 1: of again, giving him a cast of characters to choose from,
Speaker 1: uh to play on all these albums, I mean all
Speaker 1: the bets best players were sitting out in the hallway
Speaker 1: ready to go in. It was like relief pictures for
Speaker 1: the Dodgers or something, you know what I mean, bad example.
Speaker 1: Um Uh. There was Foster, there was Me, there was
Speaker 1: filling Games, there was Michael Boddicker, there was Steve Racrl,
Speaker 1: all sitting in the hallway to go. Each go in
Speaker 1: for whatever duties you need to do, either tune in
Speaker 1: a scent or getting figuring out the tempos or uh
Speaker 1: uh one of a million things that you could possibly
Speaker 1: be doing. So back to your what you were saying,
Speaker 1: I think Quincy had framed the whole package and let
Speaker 1: Michael just be a great artist, which he is incredible artist,
Speaker 1: and Quincy uh is a song man and made sure
Speaker 1: that all the songs were up to par and uh
Speaker 1: uh he even called McCartney and uh, I think McCartney
Speaker 1: may have approached him, but Quincy may have approached McCartney.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I got to check that out about
Speaker 1: the Girl is Mine because they wanted to get a
Speaker 1: duet on the album, and who other than Paul McCartney,
Speaker 1: you know, perfect call, perfect casting right there, So uh uh,
Speaker 1: that was I think Quincy and Michael, and not to
Speaker 1: mention all the great musicians that played on the record too,
Speaker 1: you know, and a guy who I love dearly who's
Speaker 1: not with us any doing more named Rod Temperton who
Speaker 1: wrote most of those songs on the Thriller album. He
Speaker 1: was he made great demos and was a great songwriter.
Speaker 1: And do you think Michael changed with the success? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think that success changes alters everybody a little bit.
Speaker 1: Not maybe everybody, but most people are affected by it somehow.
Speaker 1: And I think that when that album became so big,
Speaker 1: I don't think Michael was insulated enough to keep all
Speaker 1: the other people away from the people that weren't interested
Speaker 1: in him for his talent. And uh uh, he started
Speaker 1: making bigger deals with outside people and and just becoming
Speaker 1: a larger than life figure. So I think that I
Speaker 1: think I can't actually put my finger on it, but
Speaker 1: I think success may have put him in a certain
Speaker 1: perspective let him view everything for a certain lens and
Speaker 1: uh that maybe the normal person wouldn't view the world,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so you're out with the bos. How
Speaker 1: does the how do you meet Lucather? To begin with
Speaker 1: good question, I met him uh at a high school
Speaker 1: we were playing. They were playing a gig. The follow
Speaker 1: up band. You have to understand our band, it's called
Speaker 1: still Life in high school. Well, when we all left
Speaker 1: with Mike Ricaro and Jeff and Jeff and I left,
Speaker 1: Steve Pricaro and Steve Lucas took over our band, which
Speaker 1: was called still Life, so they became still Life And
Speaker 1: excuse me, uh uh, so I world start getting around
Speaker 1: when we started looking for a band to put together.
Speaker 1: Uh that there was this guy, Steve Lukather, and you
Speaker 1: guys ought to really check him out. Actually, there was
Speaker 1: two guitar players, Steve Lukather and Mike Landau. They were
Speaker 1: both in the same band. And but me and Jeff
Speaker 1: went down to Taft High School, which is right down
Speaker 1: the street here, and I saw somebody running around on
Speaker 1: stage and it looked like some derelict or something like this,
Speaker 1: some older guy. And as I got closer to the stage,
Speaker 1: I realized that the guitar player was a guitar player,
Speaker 1: and he had a monkey mask on on stage wearing it,
Speaker 1: and the when when I got up closer to the
Speaker 1: stage you could see him, he ran and jumped through
Speaker 1: the air like Pete Townsend and slid on his knees
Speaker 1: and got up and saying Johnny be Good with his
Speaker 1: impression of Johnny Winter kind of voice on Johnny be Good,
Speaker 1: and Jeff says, Jett goes, there's our front man right there,
Speaker 1: Jeff pointing to him and says, there's our front man.
Speaker 1: You know. I was just listening to the guitar playing
Speaker 1: and he was just playing faster than ship. And Landau
Speaker 1: was playing a strato caster, which I was a big
Speaker 1: Strap fan, so I was kind of leaning towards Landau
Speaker 1: because uh of a strato caster playing, But Jeff Saud said,
Speaker 1: that's what we need. He's a star. Jeff recognized that
Speaker 1: Luca there was a star from the beginning there. So
Speaker 1: that's how we met. And I started going to some
Speaker 1: of their gigs, sitting in on some of their gigs
Speaker 1: when they would go play UH Beverly Hills UH High
Speaker 1: School and they'd have their their gig at the Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills Hotel. I showed up, uh did a cameo performance
Speaker 1: and played with him a couple of times. So uh,
Speaker 1: I think even jeff Off got Steely, Donald and Walter
Speaker 1: to come down to one of their gigs because they
Speaker 1: were so fabulous and hear the band. And how did
Speaker 1: Lucather get into sessions? Lucather started, Lucy got into our band,
Speaker 1: and that's how he got sessions. Once once with Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: Carl put his arm around you. That was the guy
Speaker 1: to be, you know what I mean, because everybody, a
Speaker 1: lot of other people we go that should uh go nameless.
Speaker 1: A lot of people wanted the guitar spot on on
Speaker 1: the total thing. But Lucas showed up. He just showed
Speaker 1: up when we were making our demos and we didn't
Speaker 1: put the word out or call or anything. He just
Speaker 1: shirt up, showed up. We sat in the hall and
Speaker 1: learned the tunes out of the hallway and came in
Speaker 1: and just roasted the four songs like a guy that's
Speaker 1: been playing him for twenty years. It was unbelievable, you know,
Speaker 1: it was phenomenal. We just Jeff and I were just
Speaker 1: looking at each other, was shaking our heads. We couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it, you know, because these were just songs that
Speaker 1: were just freshly written that you know, And so he
Speaker 1: put the original guitar parts on. So Jeff started taking
Speaker 1: him around when Jeff would do a session, because you
Speaker 1: gotta meet you gotta use Steve lukeather on guitar. You
Speaker 1: got and introduced him to Larry Carlton. So guitar players
Speaker 1: started recommending him when they couldn't make gigs, you know where.
Speaker 1: He got around very fast about Luke. He was a
Speaker 1: quick learner. And how did Bobby Kimball get in the band?
Speaker 1: Bobby Kimball was in a band I was gonna co
Speaker 1: produce called SS Fools, which is the old Three Dog
Speaker 1: Night rhythm section, and they had a band, and Jeff
Speaker 1: and I had been rehearsing with that band with those
Speaker 1: guys uh before to make a band called SS Fools,
Speaker 1: But me and Jeff didn't want to join the band.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to make the record. So we were
Speaker 1: playing with this guy Joe Schremy and a couple other
Speaker 1: ex guys from Three Dog Night and Bobby Kimball was
Speaker 1: one of the singers, and uh, he would I all
Speaker 1: I noticed when he would sit and play a song
Speaker 1: by himself, it would practically shatter windows. And he could
Speaker 1: sing really high, really high, and really powerful and really
Speaker 1: bluesy because it was from New Orleans and so it
Speaker 1: was very powerful and very very funky, and uh uh,
Speaker 1: we try to contact other singers. I asked Mike McDonald
Speaker 1: to be in the band. I asked Kenny Loggins to
Speaker 1: be in the band. I was Mickey Thomps Thomas to
Speaker 1: be in the band, and they were all wanted us
Speaker 1: to join their bands. Uh So it was a kind
Speaker 1: of a stalemate. It was a push and uh at
Speaker 1: the last minute because I had done the vocals on
Speaker 1: the demos, which were barely acceptable, but they were okay
Speaker 1: for people to listen to. I finally they kept saying,
Speaker 1: how's your vocals gonna be? People kept questioning, well, what's Total?
Speaker 1: We know Total can play, but who does their vocals?
Speaker 1: Who's the singer? And how are the vocals gonna be? Now,
Speaker 1: you have to understand, this was a time when Boston
Speaker 1: had just come out and owned the charts and Foreigner
Speaker 1: was out, So backgrounds were heavy and they had to
Speaker 1: be high and powerful. So I just took a chance
Speaker 1: and we Uh. I brought Bobby Kimball in and to
Speaker 1: audition with us, and the first thing we did was
Speaker 1: hold the Line. We we rehearsed that. On the first
Speaker 1: time we played it, it sounded al just like the
Speaker 1: record with him singing, Luca there on guitar, me and
Speaker 1: Jeff on our instruments and Hungate on drums, and that's
Speaker 1: what sold us on him. Okay, So hold the Line
Speaker 1: came before the record deal or vice versa. Hold the
Speaker 1: line came before the record deal? Yes, and how did
Speaker 1: you get the record deal? And how did you end
Speaker 1: up on Columbia? Uh? We were, Jeff. Jeff always kept
Speaker 1: a cassette. We always kept cassettes of our demos in
Speaker 1: our pockets. And because we visited every session in town,
Speaker 1: we would also meet all the record executives from every company.
Speaker 1: So every time there'd be a break on the session,
Speaker 1: Jeff would pop in our cassette and let the executives
Speaker 1: listened to it from that company. So every company knew
Speaker 1: about us, Warner Brothers, UH, CBS, you name it, they
Speaker 1: all knew about us, and uh we were. Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: was bidding against CBS. Uh, because CBS wanted to sign us,
Speaker 1: but Warners wasn't bid, wasn't was bidding against Warner CBS.
Speaker 1: So we got a call from Walter yet Nikov, who
Speaker 1: was president of CBS at the time, to Cheff South
Speaker 1: and he said he wanted us to go. He would
Speaker 1: he wanted us to be on CBS. So he wanted
Speaker 1: to stop this uh bidding war, bidding war nonsense and
Speaker 1: uh uh he wanted uh. Two managers called Fitzgerald and Hartley,
Speaker 1: Mark Hartley and Larry Fitzgerald managers because they were managing Chicago.
Speaker 1: And I know Larry had been tour manager from McCarty
Speaker 1: on this tour, so I know they had touring and
Speaker 1: they knew how to work the record company. The reason
Speaker 1: the manly higher managers is at that time was because
Speaker 1: they knew how to manipulate the record companies. So we
Speaker 1: knew that they had were in good standing with Sony,
Speaker 1: and yet Nikov had requested that we do it that way.
Speaker 1: So we followed Waltri Yetnikov's lead in there and went
Speaker 1: with Sony. Uh instead of smaller labels and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And uh uh it was they signed us without even
Speaker 1: seeing us performed live. I think the guy that signed
Speaker 1: us got fired because of that, but they were. There
Speaker 1: was so much confidence in a total at that time
Speaker 1: unseen that just the word of mouth got us signed. Now,
Speaker 1: in the first album, you wrote almost all the songs. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably because I started to writing songs
Speaker 1: before everyone No, everyone else was kind of there were
Speaker 1: mainly musicians not songwriters. Where I had been writing songs
Speaker 1: for the last I don't know, ten years be time
Speaker 1: to be between uh, let's see, or maybe five years,
Speaker 1: five years before the band, and so I had this
Speaker 1: backlog of pieces of songs, not unlike my my solo
Speaker 1: record here, which had pieces of songs. But I started
Speaker 1: putting the pieces together and made these songs, made the
Speaker 1: most of the songs that you heard on the very
Speaker 1: first album. It's just that I had a head start
Speaker 1: and I had a backlog of songs. Uh to popularly,
Speaker 1: plus so I wrote, I wrote why we were doing
Speaker 1: the record too, so uh uh, maybe I just was
Speaker 1: a little bit of because I'm a little bit older
Speaker 1: than Lucather and uh and Steve Riccaro and the guy.
Speaker 1: So I had a little bit of head start. Those
Speaker 1: were like undergrads. Okay, did you know whole the line
Speaker 1: was going to be a hit. No, but I was
Speaker 1: hoping it would be a hit, but I didn't know.
Speaker 1: All I know was is catchy. It was very catchy.
Speaker 1: And uh, I loved hot fun in the summertime by
Speaker 1: Slice Stone. So I wanted to write something that made
Speaker 1: me feel like that, and so I, uh, I started
Speaker 1: playing this riff when I got out of when I
Speaker 1: moved out of my parents house and I got an
Speaker 1: apartment in Westwood, and I got an upright piano and
Speaker 1: I started playing this riff and I didn't stop playing
Speaker 1: the riff for about three days. I started to keep
Speaker 1: playing the song, working on the song, and the neighbor
Speaker 1: next door neighbors started pounding on the wall for me
Speaker 1: to stop. It got so monotonous. So we we we
Speaker 1: we rehearsed it. That's when we went to the studio
Speaker 1: and rehearsed with Bobby Kimball and found out that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a band here, which meant all these little
Speaker 1: pieces of songs, whatever I have possibly going, we have
Speaker 1: a band. We have an outlet for where there's a
Speaker 1: vehicle for it. Now, UH that that we proved ourselves
Speaker 1: withhold the line. So we started rehearsing the other songs
Speaker 1: to go in and cut the first album. So it's
Speaker 1: a success, you know, back and there there, I mean
Speaker 1: the record was everywhere. What changed? I mean then you
Speaker 1: have to go on the road, you have to go
Speaker 1: to photo shoots. What was it like? It was? It
Speaker 1: was we had a lot of smiles on our face.
Speaker 1: You know. The album went double platinum and uh we
Speaker 1: were supposed to We got an agent, uh uh the
Speaker 1: booking agents and what we kept telling people we wanted
Speaker 1: the headline the first time out because we'd heard of
Speaker 1: other bands doing that successfully if they had a great
Speaker 1: live show. So we kept telling our They kept wanting
Speaker 1: us to open for people, and we didn't want to
Speaker 1: do that. So they booked us and we started working
Speaker 1: small gigs uh around as as the headliners. Of course
Speaker 1: there were just small venues at the time. But we
Speaker 1: started going on the road and as our records started
Speaker 1: taking off. Uh, we got an offer from Japan to
Speaker 1: play big, big places because our our record became a
Speaker 1: huge hit in Japan right after that, and we went
Speaker 1: over to Japan and it was like total mania there.
Speaker 1: It was like the beat It was not unlike not
Speaker 1: quite the Beatles, but it was a lot of fan
Speaker 1: uh fan boys and fan girls over there that just
Speaker 1: followed total from from gig the gig on the trains
Speaker 1: and uh sold out concerts and it was really great
Speaker 1: for our egos and for our to validate our band,
Speaker 1: and uh Uh a little by little our records started.
Speaker 1: Records helped enormously at that time. You gain recognition if
Speaker 1: you had to hit record. There was a guy named
Speaker 1: big Uh big Al in UH Amsterdam that broke hold
Speaker 1: the line there, which is why we ended up being
Speaker 1: so huge in Europe as everybody heard the station in
Speaker 1: Amsterdam and UH we just played totally, just played the
Speaker 1: Zygodom in Amsterdam and it sold out the seventeen thousand people.
Speaker 1: So it shows you how our success story started with
Speaker 1: just a radio play at that time and knowing the DJ.
Speaker 1: You know, back in that day, swing by knowing if
Speaker 1: you knew the DJ or had a relationship with our managers.
Speaker 1: Had a had a relationship with a guy named Steve
Speaker 1: West at kJ R in Seattle, and he broke all
Speaker 1: the line in the United States and all the other registers,
Speaker 1: all the other stations went on it because I think
Speaker 1: they're called p ones or something like that, Regio stations
Speaker 1: and popular market right. So that's how that's what we
Speaker 1: were doing, was playing live and uh and getting ready
Speaker 1: for to make another record, but mainly touring live and
Speaker 1: uh enjoying being rock stars. You know, you were very
Speaker 1: experienced guys. Most people who have success like that out
Speaker 1: of the box end up being ripped off. They're so
Speaker 1: busy working they don't know what the hell was going on.
Speaker 1: What happened with you guys? Uh, we're pretty luck when
Speaker 1: it comes to that stuff. But you had a lot
Speaker 1: of people watching us, my father and my mom who
Speaker 1: was and my mom was a corporate bookkeeper. She was
Speaker 1: always looking at my checks. And because I I had
Speaker 1: already had a career doing sessions, so uh, and I
Speaker 1: was I had a publishing. I was already published and
Speaker 1: was had my own publishing and so uh uh, but
Speaker 1: they were it was more transparent with uh. My parents
Speaker 1: had to relate. Uh. We're able to talk to the
Speaker 1: managers and ask around to see who's honest and who's
Speaker 1: not as honest. And we found out that our managers
Speaker 1: were were more honest than all the others out there.
Speaker 1: I say more honest, you know, because there we put
Speaker 1: the name manager in front of anybody and they can't
Speaker 1: be that honest, you know. Uh. But anyway, Uh, we
Speaker 1: had people looking at the books all the time. You know.
Speaker 1: We had an accountant to a band had an accountant,
Speaker 1: the managers had an accountant, and I had my own accountant.
Speaker 1: So there were three people. What loved watching keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on everything at the time and making sure we
Speaker 1: didn't move too fast too quickly, you know. So tell
Speaker 1: me about making the second record. The second record, we
Speaker 1: had been playing live to bigger venues, and we had
Speaker 1: seen that there's bands out there doing stuff that was
Speaker 1: working specifically for live audiences. Bands like Queen, bands like
Speaker 1: Jethro Toll, bands like General Giant, bands like Genesis. We're
Speaker 1: making a noise out there, but they were doing not
Speaker 1: necessarily hit singles, they were doing great concert music. So
Speaker 1: we started writing a few things, like the word the
Speaker 1: next album is called Hydra, which I got from a
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen poem called Hydra. Uh and uh, we we
Speaker 1: kind of start experimenting with that as an opening a
Speaker 1: show opener, which it did open our show live for
Speaker 1: a tour, and it ended up being great and we
Speaker 1: ended up had getting a lot of fulfillment and and
Speaker 1: crowd pleaser from doing more extended work on that album,
Speaker 1: and again I had a couple of songs lying around
Speaker 1: that I had written. Again in the meantime after the
Speaker 1: first album and the second album, we're still doing sessions
Speaker 1: all the time. Jeff and Luke are are over with
Speaker 1: Elton John and France cutting an Elton John record. I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio doing some keyboard overdubs with Steve Ricaro
Speaker 1: and so, uh, we're working and I was constantly writing songs,
Speaker 1: trying to write some new material for the second album,
Speaker 1: and that's what we ended up with was a couple
Speaker 1: of uh. There was a step Er Carlo song, and
Speaker 1: I think I wrote most of the rest of the songs,
Speaker 1: although I'd have to look at it again. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is how I really got into that album. I was
Speaker 1: on a plane and they played ninety nine in the
Speaker 1: old days when you use to listen to the programming,
Speaker 1: tell me about nine and why that's the name of
Speaker 1: the song, and had that come to you. I've just
Speaker 1: seen a George Lucas movie called t Checks. I think
Speaker 1: it is one eighty three something like that. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: premise was everyone in the future. It was about every
Speaker 1: futuristic a dystopian society where everybody had numbers and not names.
Speaker 1: So I thought it was really would be clever to
Speaker 1: write a song about a girl or mate as it
Speaker 1: may be, that had a number and not a name.
Speaker 1: And I just picked up ninety nine. It just came
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. I was just saying, playing the
Speaker 1: groove to nine, and I went nine and nine. It's
Speaker 1: been waiting so long, and that's how it happened. And
Speaker 1: I just finished the song, and uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was one of totals better tracks
Speaker 1: that we cut, and I thought it has extended guitar,
Speaker 1: has extended guitar and bass solos on the end, which
Speaker 1: were pretty innovative for that time, and they played all
Speaker 1: till the very end. It just shows you what a
Speaker 1: great rhythm section, uh total was is on that record
Speaker 1: is very indicative. David Hungate, Jeffrey carl and drums, Steve
Speaker 1: Lucather uh on guitar, and Bobby Kimball didn't sing on
Speaker 1: that at all, right, and so the album holds together.
Speaker 1: But nine had some chart impact, but not as much
Speaker 1: as hold the line. What did you guys think and
Speaker 1: what did the label think. We thought that we had
Speaker 1: we were hoping for bigger numbers within but we we
Speaker 1: saw that it was kind of a minor hit, kind
Speaker 1: of adult contemporary kind of thing, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we were I think we were so busy trying to
Speaker 1: get our touring show together that we weren't so interested
Speaker 1: in singles. We thought we thought maybe all as boys
Speaker 1: or uh, I forget what else is on their MoMA
Speaker 1: or something like that. I don't know. I think the
Speaker 1: record company also once once the album didn't take off,
Speaker 1: they started losing interest a little bit. And I think
Speaker 1: maybe though one of the record presidents h Man. They
Speaker 1: may have changed presidents at that time from Bruce Lundball
Speaker 1: to another guy, but I remember, uh that has a
Speaker 1: devastating effect on bands when you're the person that signs
Speaker 1: you gets replaced by another person because they bring it
Speaker 1: a whole another team. So I think it was maybe
Speaker 1: the lack of uh uh the fact that there was
Speaker 1: no hole the line uh on or Georgie Porgy for
Speaker 1: that matter, on on the second album, and uh it
Speaker 1: kind of h we went by the wayside, I think
Speaker 1: for a little bit, and then the third album comes
Speaker 1: out and is less commercially successful. What what do you
Speaker 1: guys think? We're thinking more live show again, this is
Speaker 1: more We've seen Queen in concert. Uh, we'd heard Queen records,
Speaker 1: and we even hired Queen's engineer, Jeff Workman to engineer
Speaker 1: the record, uh because he used to record for Roy
Speaker 1: Thomas Baker r RTB and uh. Uh so we thought
Speaker 1: if we sounded like Queen, we'd be we'd we'd beat Queen,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of our Queen thing. But we still
Speaker 1: did our own Total stuff and we thought we had
Speaker 1: it was. It was just a change of one eighty
Speaker 1: degree change from Total into the big leagues of rock
Speaker 1: and roll. We thought our sound would be bigger and
Speaker 1: more like Zeppelin, e more Queenish on record, and it
Speaker 1: would be driving, driven harder and sound like a big,
Speaker 1: big rock show, you know. And we were playing with
Speaker 1: music more geared for live playing, I think than it
Speaker 1: was for making singles, although we thought there was a
Speaker 1: few singles on there. But uh, again the record company
Speaker 1: changed precedents at that time, right right when that album
Speaker 1: came out, and uh, it had a deaf ear turned
Speaker 1: turned to it. I think. Okay, so what are your thoughts,
Speaker 1: the band's thoughts going into Total four, which in retrospect
Speaker 1: is huge, but you don't know that going in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know that we have one more record. The record company,
Speaker 1: let's just know we have one more record to do
Speaker 1: good or that's gonna be it. They thought they wanted
Speaker 1: to prove that we weren't a one hit wonder, which
Speaker 1: by the way, we had more than one hit on
Speaker 1: the on the first album. But we had to prove
Speaker 1: that we still could make hit singles. Uh for the
Speaker 1: record label. You know, they were getting tired of these
Speaker 1: album cuts on Hydra and turn Back. So uh, I
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to make an album that was so
Speaker 1: powerful that was the absolute best we could possibly do.
Speaker 1: And uh so the first song, I started constructing a
Speaker 1: song that I thought would be idea if UH throw
Speaker 1: everything that I know into one single to make a
Speaker 1: hit record, and if that didn't work out, I'd I'd
Speaker 1: hang up, I'd hang it up. And uh I wrote
Speaker 1: Rosanna right then and there kind of constructed it from
Speaker 1: all my all my favorite little devices and riffs and
Speaker 1: and part of my soul, so part of my heartfelt
Speaker 1: lyrics and uh uh while ah we did we I
Speaker 1: got Al Schmidt to engineer it. We called him in
Speaker 1: who's the greatest engineer in the world at that time
Speaker 1: and still has the most Grammys of anybody. Girl Al Schmidt.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows him, and he cut all of our tracks
Speaker 1: at Sunset Sound and from the big beginning of Rosanna, Uh,
Speaker 1: we knew that we had something there. We vited the
Speaker 1: President down who heard the Rosanna and the rough rough mixes,
Speaker 1: and they loved it and told us to keep working
Speaker 1: on the record because we were spending a lot of
Speaker 1: money in studio time doing all the overdubs. At one time,
Speaker 1: we had all three studios at Sunset Sound working on
Speaker 1: our record right there, so we knew. We knew Total
Speaker 1: four was gonna be something special, and we treated it
Speaker 1: as such. We hired, you know, hired Tim Schmidt came
Speaker 1: in saying backgrounds, but Joe Percaro played some percussion. We
Speaker 1: hired James pink how to play trombone on the Rosanna
Speaker 1: I got. We hired heard a lot of great professionals
Speaker 1: to work on that album as well as Uh. I
Speaker 1: think with Miles Stone in the album was when I
Speaker 1: went to U C L. S O in London. McCartney
Speaker 1: had just come out with Live and Let Die, and
Speaker 1: I was so impressed with the orchestra and Live and
Speaker 1: Let Die that I wanted to write something that showed
Speaker 1: off the orchestra, which we ended up bright doing Lucather
Speaker 1: and myself. Uh started work did Afraid of Love, which
Speaker 1: features the L H L S O on it, And
Speaker 1: I think that in an impact and powerful was was
Speaker 1: really powerful. Uh that addition to our sound and uh,
Speaker 1: I just think there was a lot of more co
Speaker 1: writing on that album as well. So I think that
Speaker 1: our our whole uh standard or the bar was raised
Speaker 1: on that album. Okay, a lot of great tracks on
Speaker 1: that album. Make believe who says the Crimson Moon doesn't shine?
Speaker 1: If you remember I wrote that, Yes I do. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me what it means, but uh, that's just one
Speaker 1: of my lyrics, you know what I mean? You know,
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I was in love at the time.
Speaker 1: I think. You know. The album is gigantic, sells twelve
Speaker 1: million copies, wins all these Grammys. What was it like
Speaker 1: being on the inside, Uh what of the Grammys or
Speaker 1: being on the inside of the time period, Being the
Speaker 1: inside of the success. Grammys are secondary. It was great
Speaker 1: because It just validated a lot of stuff that we
Speaker 1: already thought that we were. We already knew that we
Speaker 1: were pretty good because we had confidence from doing sessions
Speaker 1: and from our first album, so we already knew that
Speaker 1: kind of Well, this helped validate our band and gave
Speaker 1: us confidences. Mainly, we gained a whole lot of confidence
Speaker 1: and uh uh you know, we had our fifteen seconds
Speaker 1: of uh fame there and everybody was interviewing us. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to know Toto, and uh, we just kind of
Speaker 1: took the stride. But we've been around success in stars before,
Speaker 1: so we didn't let it go to our heads because
Speaker 1: we had all the other producers and all the other
Speaker 1: our peers and colleagues were there to keep us in line.
Speaker 1: You know. So the next album, how does Bobby Kim
Speaker 1: Believe and Frugie Frederickson come in? Okay, Um, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna ponder this, uh stay dwell on this subject too long.
Speaker 1: But Bobby ended up being one of those persons that
Speaker 1: couldn't handle success as well as the rest of us
Speaker 1: good and uh it got out of hand uh to
Speaker 1: where uh we were trying to record and he was
Speaker 1: stopped showing up for vocals. So Jeff just put his
Speaker 1: foot down and said, we've got to get someone here immediately,
Speaker 1: because we had a we had a half of an
Speaker 1: album written that we had recorded with him, was Those Isolation,
Speaker 1: And Jeff said, heard this singer, Fergie Frederickson from this
Speaker 1: Louisiana band, and at that moment, it seemed just like
Speaker 1: a beam of light, uh, a guy who could sing
Speaker 1: up high, a guy who looked good, who could uh
Speaker 1: perform good on stage. And we we thought total thought
Speaker 1: our rhythm section. We really thought we had the magic,
Speaker 1: the mightas touch with singers because we had worked with
Speaker 1: Leo Sayer, Boss Scaggs, just about every singer out there,
Speaker 1: and we had been made hit records with people. So
Speaker 1: we thought, it's just another sing We'll bring this singer
Speaker 1: in and we'll mold him into being that that front
Speaker 1: man that you need so badly for your identity. Now,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, I wish I'd gone in a different direction
Speaker 1: and we and we'd had still uh you know, made
Speaker 1: uh some course corrections back there and kept bobbying the band.
Speaker 1: But it's just what didn't work out that way. Well,
Speaker 1: needless to say, you have this gigantic album and it's
Speaker 1: not commercially successful. How disheartening was that? It was very disheartening.
Speaker 1: First of all, the they shipped a whole lot of records,
Speaker 1: and a lot of records were rack jobbers. Got stuck
Speaker 1: with their records, and they weren't happy about that. So
Speaker 1: we got a bad rap on the fact that the
Speaker 1: album was overhyped and this wasn't the same singer, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of uh uh boomeranged on us a
Speaker 1: little bit there. Now, if you talk to Steve, he
Speaker 1: will talk about the backlash people talking shit about Toto.
Speaker 1: Did you feel the same way? Um, I got a
Speaker 1: little thicker skin than Steve does. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: when every time anybody starts picking apart lyrics are picking
Speaker 1: up art songs, I you know, I have feelings the
Speaker 1: same as the other guy, but I I've learned to
Speaker 1: let him roll off my back a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But but there's certain times when we were a band
Speaker 1: where we all jointly we're reading bad press for us
Speaker 1: and getting a piste off about it, you know, because
Speaker 1: we do something we thought would be great in Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone magazine. We were doing great work with other artists,
Speaker 1: and every time they just find a total member in
Speaker 1: on the album, they would say something bad about the
Speaker 1: total member, you know what I mean. So everywhere we
Speaker 1: were getting bad pressed. You know, So, how do you
Speaker 1: kick Freddie Frederick Fergie Frederickson out of the band. You're
Speaker 1: going deep on me. Uh again, when you have personnel
Speaker 1: that you go through, how can I say this? There's
Speaker 1: like a like a team that puts in a player
Speaker 1: and they don't work out and you have to bring
Speaker 1: in a new player. We were having to. We were
Speaker 1: treating the lead singer positions just like it was a variable,
Speaker 1: a concert spot that we could fill with somebody else
Speaker 1: and we could replace that person. Uh. Fergie just it
Speaker 1: wasn't a fit, That's all I can tell you. It
Speaker 1: just it just wasn't quite a fit. And people's reaction
Speaker 1: to him wasn't that good. And our record sales um
Speaker 1: record company again we had to tell the president that
Speaker 1: wasn't running, wasn't in our pocket as far as the
Speaker 1: records go, and so uh uh uh we weren't getting
Speaker 1: much help from the label because of a single nut
Speaker 1: popping off there which we thought they chose the wrong single.
Speaker 1: But uh uh so that helped. Uh. We just started
Speaker 1: looking around, and Steve Lucather started singing more and more
Speaker 1: and uh, uh we had started having background singers singing
Speaker 1: some lead vocals and stuff to replace our lead vocalist.
Speaker 1: And uh, he just kind of evolved out of the band.
Speaker 1: And why did hung Gate leave? Hung Gate just didn't
Speaker 1: like going on the road home. Gate was a home
Speaker 1: home body and he didn't like like touring that much.
Speaker 1: He had been touring with Sunny and Share ever since
Speaker 1: he was in college. And uh, when Toto kept wanting
Speaker 1: to tour, Uh, Toto originally was gonna make records, tour
Speaker 1: a little bit, but still do sessions all the time.
Speaker 1: You know. It was kind of like our our side
Speaker 1: gig Toto was gonna be until it became our full
Speaker 1: time job, you know. And uh, he just wanted to
Speaker 1: stay home. Okay, how does Joseph Williams get in the band? Joseph?
Speaker 1: Good question. Joseph knew Lucather back when they were fourteen
Speaker 1: years old. Uh, from high school, I think, And uh,
Speaker 1: Jeff was aware of his talent and I was aware,
Speaker 1: and I became aware of Joseph on twilight Zone, the
Speaker 1: movie the Spielberg produced which Joe Joe they had called
Speaker 1: in Joe to do a demo vocal for the song
Speaker 1: that he wrote for the opening sequence in Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: the movie. So I went down to where they were
Speaker 1: recording it because I played on the track, and they said,
Speaker 1: well who should we get to sing? And Joseph was
Speaker 1: standing there and he sounded amazing on the vocal. I said, well,
Speaker 1: you have your singeries right here, get him to sing.
Speaker 1: So I had heard him sing. But then when we
Speaker 1: were looking for another sing we're looking for this is
Speaker 1: just after Isolation, We're looking for another singer, and we
Speaker 1: tried out some singers, but then we jammed with Joseph
Speaker 1: in a in a rehearsal hall, and Joseph so fast
Speaker 1: and had such good pitch and it was so hip
Speaker 1: that it was just undeniable that he should be the singer,
Speaker 1: our singer, because he was. He just he clicked. It
Speaker 1: was a fit. That album is my favorite Toto album.
Speaker 1: Certainly had a hit with I'll Be Over You. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like the engine was running on high test again?
Speaker 1: What was it like being on the absolutely absolutely when
Speaker 1: Lucather had I'll be over You? Uh and Steve Is
Speaker 1: his songs are like my favorite songs there I think
Speaker 1: they're the best written, the most well written songs in
Speaker 1: our catalog, which is Won't Hold You Back and I'll
Speaker 1: be over You. That comes from me. Who's you have
Speaker 1: yet as yet to write a love ballad? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is those are such sensitive songs, and
Speaker 1: he really is a sensitive guy, but he presents so differently.
Speaker 1: He certainly does. That's the He's a real paradox, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, uh, Luca, there will I'll be over you.
Speaker 1: We brought in Mike McDonald to sing backgrounds and I'll
Speaker 1: be over you, and again we had an album budget
Speaker 1: to do videos. That's when videos are really big. We
Speaker 1: did a video for that and uh uh again I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought that, uh, it's not the same without your
Speaker 1: love was gonna be a smash hit and it didn't be.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a hit, you know, same way Africa. No one
Speaker 1: thought Africa was gonna be a hit, but it became
Speaker 1: a hit. So odd things happen. Sometimes magic just happens
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, you know what I mean. But back
Speaker 1: to the alb over you, Uh, Steve started coming along
Speaker 1: singing more, and uh that was a really good sign
Speaker 1: of our being able to say, well, we still got
Speaker 1: the core guys. We still have David Page who sang
Speaker 1: on Africa, and we have Steve Lucather that sang on
Speaker 1: I won't hold you back. Okay, you kick Williams out
Speaker 1: of the band, How does that happen? Uh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: love move along faster. This just some of our road habits.
Speaker 1: Just people weren't taking the care of themselves. I wasn't
Speaker 1: taking care of myself. Joe wasn't. The road is very
Speaker 1: hard and uh, it's hard enough when you have to
Speaker 1: go out and wine and dying. Uh. Promoters and uh
Speaker 1: and uh have different managers after each show, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of drinking going on, a lot of uh
Speaker 1: this going on, um Joe uh uh, it just didn't
Speaker 1: become a fit uh after that, and we had to
Speaker 1: make a change. And I'm just gonna make a left
Speaker 1: turn right here and move on and put that into
Speaker 1: a rear view mirror. Okay, But he does sing on
Speaker 1: the seventh one, which you have a hit again. So
Speaker 1: what's the vibe in the band? Then? Vibe is very good,
Speaker 1: very positive. Joe's doing great. Uh uh. He sang on
Speaker 1: that whole record and uh, um, the Vibe. On the
Speaker 1: seventh one, you and I had co co wrote a
Speaker 1: song called Pamela, which became a believe it or not,
Speaker 1: a very big record. It was it was destined to
Speaker 1: be number top ten and it was headed it was
Speaker 1: the top thirty with a bullet and again CBS closed
Speaker 1: their doors Sony and fired the president at the time,
Speaker 1: and they dropped the Springsteen record, which was number fifteen
Speaker 1: with a bullet that fell off the charts, and our record,
Speaker 1: which was top thirty, which is called Pamela. We had
Speaker 1: every station in the country except a big station in
Speaker 1: New York that we needed, and it would have been
Speaker 1: top ten. But anyway, back to Joseph, him and I
Speaker 1: wrote a Pamela together and that kind of uh uh,
Speaker 1: blew some wind back into our sales. Okay, then it
Speaker 1: ends with Sony. Why is it end with Sony? I
Speaker 1: think just there lack of interest, lack of participation with us.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to it's hard to say what
Speaker 1: exactly put your finger on it. You know. I think
Speaker 1: if you're not the flavor of the month and you're
Speaker 1: in the team that signs you, isn't there. I think
Speaker 1: that you don't have the same kind of support that
Speaker 1: you do when you have like you know, look at
Speaker 1: Moe Austin, how long he was at Warner Brothers. Look
Speaker 1: at her Aboutpert with a and m how long these
Speaker 1: guys and they with sign these acts and they nurture
Speaker 1: them and they believe in them. You know where other
Speaker 1: companies uh uh they change presidents and they change uh
Speaker 1: support teams. So uh uh it's hard to say, uh
Speaker 1: what exactly why we got We kept being on Legacy,
Speaker 1: which is a subsidiary of Sony, because we were making
Speaker 1: smaller out we were making we had lesser of a budget,
Speaker 1: and we were uh starting to record in our home
Speaker 1: studios a little bit more. You know. So how do
Speaker 1: you feel? Do you you're not gonna have another hit single?
Speaker 1: Do you realize that? What's you know, what's the vibe? Well,
Speaker 1: this is what I do. I'm gonna continue to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so that's the vibe. We're not going to rely
Speaker 1: on our singles. We always feel we have that uh
Speaker 1: plenty of singles left, but we're not intentionally writing like
Speaker 1: that big hit single. Uh. We were trying to be
Speaker 1: more of a rock band at that time and be
Speaker 1: a live, a big live event band. You know, So
Speaker 1: after the hits, after the Columbia Days, are you are
Speaker 1: you basically in Toto and that's your career or do
Speaker 1: you go back to doing sessions or I don't think
Speaker 1: the sessions of every really stopped, but yes, everybody went
Speaker 1: back to sessions what there were of them. I think
Speaker 1: that that around that time, Um, after we did Kingdom
Speaker 1: of Desire, because that was with Jeff and and Bob
Speaker 1: clair Mountain, we eventually got did uh Through the Looking Glass,
Speaker 1: Through the Through the Looking Mirror anyway. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: a total album where we did all cover songs where
Speaker 1: we weren't on any label at all. We just did
Speaker 1: it ourselves and did it uh at Simon Phillips House,
Speaker 1: recording the whole thing, and uh it was amazing, and
Speaker 1: uh that's we kind of just chummed around and uh
Speaker 1: uh did the record dates and kept working on our
Speaker 1: our albums. Meanwhile, I think Luke was working on solo
Speaker 1: records in between that. I think I have my chronology right.
Speaker 1: Probably not. Lucather has a steel trap memory and he
Speaker 1: can recall any date, any concert, any day. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm an exact opposite. Uh so, Uh I hope that
Speaker 1: answers your question. Yeah, and how does Bobby Kimball get
Speaker 1: back in the band? Huh? Well, he kind of got
Speaker 1: his act together and everybody had heard that he was
Speaker 1: doing well and cleaned up, and everybody was dying to
Speaker 1: get here Kimball sing back with the band. So we
Speaker 1: were like, well, if he's together, if he's in shape
Speaker 1: and physically and hew theme mentally, mentally and in into it,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd give it another shot. And how did
Speaker 1: it end with him again? And then Joseph Williams come
Speaker 1: back again? Boy, this says you're gonna be a broken
Speaker 1: record on that. Huh. Now, I'm just kidding. Um uh,
Speaker 1: let's see Bobby uh again. Uh, I'm I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: It just was kind of falling out I think personality wise,
Speaker 1: and it was never really a fit with Bobby in
Speaker 1: the first place. I mean, because we all used to
Speaker 1: hang out in high school. Bobby was older than we were, okay,
Speaker 1: so we weren't. He kind of kept to himself and
Speaker 1: we kind of all chummed around together from high school days. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I think it was just chumming around and getting going.
Speaker 1: You know, we're this isn't he's not working out live
Speaker 1: because you start falling back into some of the old
Speaker 1: UH problems and habits UH which prevent you from going
Speaker 1: on the road um and performing every night, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and taking care of your voice and
Speaker 1: doing all this stuff. And that's when we realized that
Speaker 1: we needed a singer that knew us but could could
Speaker 1: go on the road because the physical aspects of going
Speaker 1: on the road are are terribly hard, you know, to
Speaker 1: travel and bus plains easier. Okay. The music business, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: starts to change, Rock starts to fade, hip hop comes in,
Speaker 1: the napster comes in, and today everything's blown apart. So
Speaker 1: where do you see yourself in the landscape or do
Speaker 1: you just feel I'm separate from the landscape and I
Speaker 1: do what I do a little bit of both. I
Speaker 1: feel ingrained in the landscape, musical landscape. I feel part
Speaker 1: of it for the last forty years, and uh uh,
Speaker 1: I I roll with the punches. You know, music is funny.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the band has their own opinion about the
Speaker 1: direction music takes. You know. I I opened my arms
Speaker 1: to wrap rap music when it came around, not the
Speaker 1: original stuff, but when they started covering some of my
Speaker 1: songs and and and cutting and pasting them and mashing
Speaker 1: them up. I was like more way into it, you know,
Speaker 1: just like I always took the Quincy Jones attitude, which
Speaker 1: is the more of the merrier, and and music has
Speaker 1: to move on, you know. So Uh, basically we're a
Speaker 1: half rock and roll and half of it. Half of
Speaker 1: us wanted to move on a little bit with hip hop.
Speaker 1: But again back in the talk about hip hop, Waiting
Speaker 1: for Your Love was the song on the Total four
Speaker 1: record that was like one of the first hip hop
Speaker 1: songs as far as I'm concerned. In the band was
Speaker 1: concerned too, so we all, well we understood it, why
Speaker 1: people were digging it, and and uh one of the
Speaker 1: the uh classic songs that came out and showed showed
Speaker 1: us all what we should be doing with rap was Aerosmith,
Speaker 1: who did Walk This Way with the run DMC. There
Speaker 1: there was the there was the guiding light right there.
Speaker 1: That's how rock and rollers should treat rap music and rappers,
Speaker 1: you know. So in any event, Uh, I've tried to
Speaker 1: uh you know a lot of people have covered uh
Speaker 1: Georgie Porgy and Africa and stuff. So I've opened my
Speaker 1: my heart to uh wrapped my arms around uh people
Speaker 1: mashing up records of mine. And eventually Lucather got into
Speaker 1: it too when they started doing his uh making disco
Speaker 1: mixes of his songs. So uh, a little by little,
Speaker 1: uh you started the the old horses started learning new tricks.
Speaker 1: And did people reach out and license or did you
Speaker 1: have to find out people who ripped off your records? Uh?
Speaker 1: There were people that would you would think I would
Speaker 1: never call it ripping up people without permission, without sync
Speaker 1: permission had performed our records. But all we would do
Speaker 1: is call them and let them know that you guys
Speaker 1: will have oh this money for our record. And they
Speaker 1: were gladly. They were like, here, take half the song,
Speaker 1: take all the song. We're we're we have no problem
Speaker 1: with that. We would we would make people aware that
Speaker 1: they were uh in potential breach and uh uh they
Speaker 1: would gladly split anything he wants uh and make a deal.
Speaker 1: So we grew up in the era where the Beatles broke.
Speaker 1: Everybody picked up an instrument, they played in bands. There
Speaker 1: was a band everywhere, and there were ups and downs.
Speaker 1: There were some disco DJ whatever, But that scene has
Speaker 1: really been undercut. You know, the old scene of well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play in my band, I'm gonna work the
Speaker 1: way there aren't some people who do it, but most
Speaker 1: stuff is cut it home and most stuff is electronic.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about today's music do you think
Speaker 1: and the fact that rock is not primary? Uh? I
Speaker 1: have mixed feelings about it. I I I like a
Speaker 1: lot some of those stuff that's being done today. I
Speaker 1: understand it. Maybe it's because I understand the process of
Speaker 1: how it's done on pro tools and with logic and uh,
Speaker 1: and how they humanize it. Uh. Funny someone said something
Speaker 1: to me the other day and he just hit home.
Speaker 1: We grew up in a band of when bands were popular,
Speaker 1: and now singers are popular singers because singers are everything
Speaker 1: they make. They make everything humanized. You hear all these
Speaker 1: incredible girl vocalists and some incredible guys out there too.
Speaker 1: But you put a kick ass singer on a on
Speaker 1: a sterile dance track and it's gonna sound incredible, you know.
Speaker 1: So Uh, and some people make musical strides and uh,
Speaker 1: Kendrick Lamar, I guess he is doing some some good
Speaker 1: out there, and uh, he seems to be ahead of
Speaker 1: the game. And uh. Um I I like. I like
Speaker 1: the process of using the modern technology with why I
Speaker 1: make records personally, uh, being a chance that I don't have.
Speaker 1: I don't have the luxury of being able to have
Speaker 1: these people that live in different cities at my beck
Speaker 1: and call to get in a room and play. I
Speaker 1: try and make do with what I have, and these
Speaker 1: tools allow you to do that. I love mash ups.
Speaker 1: I love the new genres, the mashing up genres and
Speaker 1: all the kind of experimentation. I think because I I
Speaker 1: just grew up in the and the Beatles era Sergeant Pepper,
Speaker 1: where they tried everything imaginable on tape and and uh,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things between sound effects, playing shipped backwards
Speaker 1: and doing everything they open the floodgates as far as
Speaker 1: I was concerned. And do you keep up on modern
Speaker 1: music or you're just kind of aware? I'm kind of aware.
Speaker 1: I don't keep up as much as I should. I have.
Speaker 1: I have a daughter, a thirty three year old daughter
Speaker 1: that keeps me in the know. Uh, real cool, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And but as far as me knowing,
Speaker 1: I listened to the radio a lot when I'm driving.
Speaker 1: Serious radio a lot of its Beatle channel, but I'll
Speaker 1: occasionally listen to some other channels, and uh again, I
Speaker 1: like people out there. I like Uh, I like Adele,
Speaker 1: I like Pink, I like Harry Styles is pretty good.
Speaker 1: I like Sam Smith, you know, but they're mostly they're
Speaker 1: mostly singers, you know, and you know, once the business
Speaker 1: hit turmoil, certainly in thousand, Napster budgets went down, sessions
Speaker 1: dried up. Are there any sessions and anymore? Anybody ever
Speaker 1: call you all need to do overdubs? You know. I
Speaker 1: got called from Mike McDonald to do do do some
Speaker 1: overdubs on his album. Don Felder called me, Uh, the
Speaker 1: only movie sessions that are really being done now are
Speaker 1: movie sessions or for video games. My daughter is a
Speaker 1: video game producer and she's doing sessions all the time,
Speaker 1: but they're with orchestras, and uh uh, Like I said,
Speaker 1: a few sessions are being done here and there, but
Speaker 1: not really live sessions that I know about, except in Nashville.
Speaker 1: I think they still do them in Nashville quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Uh That, which is kind of becoming the new recording
Speaker 1: capital that l A was as the recording capital, you know, right,
Speaker 1: So what's next for you personally? Next? Rest I'm trying
Speaker 1: to improve my songwriting. I'm trying to improve my lyric writing. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've just wrote a song with Shania Twain, who I've
Speaker 1: been a big fan of for a long time. I
Speaker 1: might be getting ready to write with Richard Marks uh
Speaker 1: co write something for his album with him. And so
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to better myself as a piano player
Speaker 1: and as a songwriter and be the best version of
Speaker 1: myself that I can. And when we see another solo
Speaker 1: album from you, possibly, possibly, I'd like to do one,
Speaker 1: but not in the near future. Okay, David, this has
Speaker 1: been fanta stick, you know, from someone who was there,
Speaker 1: a real inside view. I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: taking the time. But Bob, I have so much more
Speaker 1: to tell you. Is that a joker? You really know?
Speaker 1: It's really okay? Well, just just just a preview. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna go into it now. But if we did
Speaker 1: talk more, what would we talk about? Weston? Grab that
Speaker 1: picture off the wall. I'll just show you a little
Speaker 1: bit more about my past. Here. I've got a picture
Speaker 1: I want to show you. This is when I was
Speaker 1: in London in nineteen seven, the Summer of Love. I
Speaker 1: was at Olympic Studios, where watching Procol Harem record their
Speaker 1: first album. But my dad was recording Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: And here's the proof of it right here. If you
Speaker 1: can see that. Can you see wow? Just being next
Speaker 1: to Sammy? Okay, I was thirteen. That was two year
Speaker 1: and happy before I met Jeff. Unbelievable. That's at Olympic Studios,
Speaker 1: just to show you the the amazing stuff I saw
Speaker 1: in my life was was before Toto ever started, was
Speaker 1: with my dad, you know, and everything right now. Another
Speaker 1: thing I'm doing that I'm really interested in is I'm
Speaker 1: archiving my father's arrangements with the Eastman School of Music,
Speaker 1: who has started a jazz program teaching Marty Paige the
Speaker 1: style of writing that he did, which is famous for
Speaker 1: West Coast writing. And so they're they're making they're making
Speaker 1: prints of it, and they're making recordings of it and
Speaker 1: keeping the jazz alive, which is our real art art
Speaker 1: form that we've contributed up in the United States to
Speaker 1: the world is jazz is the art of jazz. Keeping
Speaker 1: that alive, you know. So I'm involved in that too, okay.
Speaker 1: And how did you decide to wear the top hat?
Speaker 1: A top hat? It's kind of right of passage. You know,
Speaker 1: Leon had that with mad Dogs and Englishmen. Although I
Speaker 1: do my one of my biggest heroes is WC. Fields,
Speaker 1: who always had a time pad on. I have to
Speaker 1: tell you that I did get it from Leon Russell,
Speaker 1: and then I know L. John had it one for
Speaker 1: a little bit there. But Leon Russell, the master's space
Speaker 1: and time, who I knew uh pretty well, and one
Speaker 1: of one of my major major influences. The other one
Speaker 1: besides Elton was Leon Russell. Um and uh I even
Speaker 1: did a song uh on through the looking Glass. Uh.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot to cry, It takes it. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot to laugh. It takes a train to cry.
Speaker 1: The Bob Dylan song I dedicated to Leon Russell, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's where I got the top hat. But anybody
Speaker 1: who wears the top pat knows they're relatively heavy and
Speaker 1: they're not that comfortable. Well you know that's true. I
Speaker 1: have light ones and there I have a big head,
Speaker 1: so uh it swells occasionally, so I have to have
Speaker 1: different sizes black ass. There you have it. We could
Speaker 1: go on forever, David, but we gotta cut it off today.
Speaker 1: Promise me we'll do it again. We definitely will because
Speaker 1: you know the stories that you tell are different from
Speaker 1: a lot of perspectives because you've seen both sides of
Speaker 1: the fence. In an addition, you had that peak from
Speaker 1: a very young age because of your father. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Left Sex