Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sense Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Steve Luke,
Speaker 1: guitarist extraordinaire, songwriter, singer, member of Toto. Luke, you stop
Speaker 1: dying your hair? What's that about?
Speaker 2: You know? I turned sixty five in October and I
Speaker 2: me at my son's house at his studio. And when
Speaker 2: I told him a long time ago, when he was
Speaker 2: young and I was still younger, I said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: if I start looking like the old guy with the
Speaker 2: jet black hair, you gotta tell me. And he said yeah,
Speaker 2: and that was a long time ago. And on my
Speaker 2: sixty fifth birthday was letting the beard go a little
Speaker 2: bit and he goes, pop, it's time, and he goes,
Speaker 2: Jimmy pay it's Brian May your friends. You know. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, you know what, I had no
Speaker 2: idea what color it was going to be, because I've
Speaker 2: been dying it since I was thirty two years old,
Speaker 2: thirty one years old, so I didn't know what color
Speaker 2: was underneath. I'm kind of glad it's white because it
Speaker 2: gives a little bit more of a thing. And you
Speaker 2: know there and also people were giving me shit and
Speaker 2: say hey, you weren't a wig or something like that,
Speaker 2: and going, no, dude, why would I wear a wig
Speaker 2: that looks like this? And when it all went, I
Speaker 2: still got the hair. So I said, well, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to be an old embrace my old age. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be sixty six in October, so I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to fool anybody. It was just the knee
Speaker 2: jerk thing I've been doing for thirty years, and that
Speaker 2: kept doing it and then it just became a pain
Speaker 2: in the ass. So fuck that.
Speaker 1: It looks very dignified. This is audio only, but you
Speaker 1: go online there are pictures of in many places, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of your son, there's a picture I think the
Speaker 1: first time I saw you without dyed. Here was the
Speaker 1: picture at your son's wedding.
Speaker 2: Well, I was letting it go. I gradually I started
Speaker 2: washing it out because it well, you know, and eventually
Speaker 2: it just all came out and this is what was
Speaker 2: underneath it.
Speaker 1: So you're at your son, Trevor's house studio. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he's the tech wizard. You're not that good with tech?
Speaker 2: All right. I'm lucky to get my underwear off and
Speaker 2: before I go into shower, that's how low tech I am.
Speaker 1: Okay, Luke, you have a new solo album, Bridges. How
Speaker 1: did this come about?
Speaker 2: Well, pandemic coming out of the pandemic. I did a
Speaker 2: record before the pandemic, like a month before the lockdown.
Speaker 2: That was two years ago or whatever it was, and
Speaker 2: I was all live in the studio, very self indulgent,
Speaker 2: if you will. I wanted to do something where I
Speaker 2: didn't overdub anything but the voice, and that's what we did.
Speaker 2: Didn't fix anything. So I did that now edited to
Speaker 2: two years later the sun was going to come back on,
Speaker 2: because for a while we didn't know if it was
Speaker 2: ever going to come back right. It was a very
Speaker 2: terrible time for me. I mean I went into a
Speaker 2: manic depression hole that may doctor was scared about. I
Speaker 2: was taking medication sport, and that got all squirrel.
Speaker 1: A little bit slower because you're a very upbeat guy.
Speaker 1: Although you know we talked about your down moods medication before.
Speaker 1: But tell me about this descent and how bad you were.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you live through it yourself. I mean
Speaker 2: we hit a brick wall, go in a thousand miles
Speaker 2: an hour. I had touring plants, I had all kinds
Speaker 2: of a year planned out in advance, because these things
Speaker 2: take a while to get together, as you well know,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden boom done, no idea when
Speaker 2: or if it's ever going to come back. Are we're
Speaker 2: all going to die from this thing? You know, everybody's
Speaker 2: sitting in their house with a mask on, scared to
Speaker 2: death to touch anybody or anything. And I went into
Speaker 2: a black hole. After first couple of months, it's like, ah,
Speaker 2: they great have being homes in the Nine Stabs some
Speaker 2: time off, and then it started to suck day by day.
Speaker 2: There was nothing to look forward to, no reason to
Speaker 2: get out of bed. I descended into my own private
Speaker 2: hell and it just lost its way and I had
Speaker 2: a massive breakdown. I did. I ended up in hospital
Speaker 2: and ended up in a crazy house. It was very
Speaker 2: scary time for me. I didn't know what to do
Speaker 2: with myself, Bob, I really didn't. I'm sorry. I've been
Speaker 2: NonStop since I was a kid. You know. I did
Speaker 2: my first union sessions in nineteen seventy six when I
Speaker 2: was eighteen years old at United Western three where they
Speaker 2: cut pet sounds, and that's when I was going, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is really starting to happen, you know. And I
Speaker 2: never stopped. I've been busy ever since, unless I wanted
Speaker 2: to take a few weeks off the vacation, which was
Speaker 2: not often. So when it all just stopped, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what do I do with myself? I don't know what
Speaker 2: to do, you know. And it was a very scary
Speaker 2: time for me. And once I pulled out of that
Speaker 2: dive and got myself together and got with a great
Speaker 2: doc and cleaned all that grubbish out that I was
Speaker 2: taking for this depression, which was not good for me
Speaker 2: at all. And of course, you know if one makes
Speaker 2: you feel better, what happens if you take five? You
Speaker 2: know what I mean? And they got to that, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. I was ashamed to say it,
Speaker 2: but I lost control of my life and it was
Speaker 2: a terrible time for me. And when I came out
Speaker 2: of it and woke up, I wanted to make some music.
Speaker 2: I knew we were going to get back on the road.
Speaker 2: I was once I started back in and we could
Speaker 2: do something again. Plan okay, we can tour again. Got
Speaker 2: all that together and we had two months off and
Speaker 2: I go, I want to do something. So I called
Speaker 2: up my old pile David Page, then Joseph Williams, my
Speaker 2: total partners and childhood friends. I said, let's make a
Speaker 2: record like old school. Let's make a shamelessly eighties who
Speaker 2: gives a fuck record like I'm not trying to Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to change the world. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to sell eight million copies like we used to. But
Speaker 2: I want to scratch the you know. I want to
Speaker 2: make a fun record with all of us guys and
Speaker 2: invite back Simon Phillips, who hadn't played with us in
Speaker 2: a long time, was our drummer, legendary drummer. And Shannon Forrest,
Speaker 2: who played with us last time the last incarnation I
Speaker 2: Just a Lease Clark came in. Jurgen Carlson from Government Mule.
Speaker 2: My Son produced and co wrote a track I Just did.
Speaker 2: We did it in three weeks, from soup to nuts,
Speaker 2: and then I sat on it for a year because
Speaker 2: we went on the road, and then we mixed it
Speaker 2: and it's coming out in June sixteenth.
Speaker 1: Okay, one other name you didn't mention, which I found interesting.
Speaker 1: Randy Goodroom is involved. How did that come together? Oh?
Speaker 2: Randy is one of my favorite songwriting partners. We started
Speaker 2: writing songs in the mid eighties, and we had our
Speaker 2: first hit with a song called I'll Be Over You,
Speaker 2: which is lasted some time. A matter of fact that
Speaker 2: it just went gold after all these years.
Speaker 1: So well, at this point that's my favorite Toto song.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, really, Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, Toto four is vastly underrated. That was first
Speaker 1: album with Joseph Williams.
Speaker 2: Honest, no, no, no, no, it wasn't. Total four was
Speaker 2: the album that we was the last album we did
Speaker 2: with Bobby Kimball singer.
Speaker 1: Well that's not what way. It was called Fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: Fahrenheit was the record that Joseph joined up. But Joseph
Speaker 2: and I have been for instance, we were teenagers.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, Joseph is the son of the composer John Williams. Yes,
Speaker 1: how'd you meet Joseph?
Speaker 2: Therest brother Mark who's a drummer, and myself and famous
Speaker 2: guitar player Michael Landau and I've been friends since we
Speaker 2: were twelve and bass players playing with Toto. Now John Pierce,
Speaker 2: we had a high school one of our many high
Speaker 2: school bands together, and that's how I met Joe, his
Speaker 2: little brother, and Joe could sing really great. He was
Speaker 2: really funny, and we sort of lost touch for a minute.
Speaker 2: And then when we were looking for another singer, he
Speaker 2: came in an audition and he had great songs to
Speaker 2: go along with it. Plus I knew him as its
Speaker 2: like this guy's great, perfect and we all fought and
Speaker 2: everybody else fell in love with him, and then we
Speaker 2: started making the records together.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you got this record. How'd you write the
Speaker 1: songs you.
Speaker 2: Mean on my new record? Yeah? Well, met called up
Speaker 2: page said meet you at Jose at noon. Let's see
Speaker 2: what we got. Every day we come in with nothing,
Speaker 2: and every day we would leave with a fairly well
Speaker 2: constructed track with an idea for what lyrics and melodies
Speaker 2: that we had wed. And then we'd say, hmm, well,
Speaker 2: I want to get this done quick. Who are we
Speaker 2: going to call? So I called either Stan Lynch, who's
Speaker 2: a dear friend who used to be the drummer in
Speaker 2: the Heartbreakers, but he's also a great lyricist, producer, did
Speaker 2: the Eagles, Handley and all that stuff, and he writes
Speaker 2: incredible words and he knows he has my demented sense
Speaker 2: of humor as well. And then Randy Goodram was the
Speaker 2: other guy who was my go to when it comes
Speaker 2: to writing ballads and stuff like that. We had we
Speaker 2: have something. I write these piano songs, and I have
Speaker 2: it all together except the words I can. Then we
Speaker 2: talk about how I'm feeling, what I want to write about,
Speaker 2: and he comes back with this poetic stuff that I
Speaker 2: would have never been able to come up with on
Speaker 2: my own. Because you know, I can write words. I'm
Speaker 2: also better at editing what somebody else gives me. I
Speaker 2: need a help getting started with it. Then I'm a closer.
Speaker 2: I like to finish stuff, but I'm not afraid to
Speaker 2: ask for help from guys that really are good at
Speaker 2: their gig, you know, and Randy's one of the best.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You show up, you got nothing,
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. How do you end up with something?
Speaker 2: Somebody starts playing some either I have a little bit
Speaker 2: of it. I start dicking around with the riff, and
Speaker 2: Page jumps in on the keyboards. We set up a
Speaker 2: little drum groove, you know, on a machine, with the
Speaker 2: intent of having real musicians play on it. But you know,
Speaker 2: the other thing is like, we don't do demos. Everything's
Speaker 2: a master no such thing as demos because a lot
Speaker 2: of times your original I vibe and the creativity comes
Speaker 2: without thought, you know what I mean, It just comes.
Speaker 2: Start thinking about it too much, Oh I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to redo that, and then it's never as good. Maybe
Speaker 2: sonically might be better, but we're as we're recording on
Speaker 2: pro tools are logic. When we were working in logic,
Speaker 2: it just sounds great, so there's no reason to redo it.
Speaker 2: So we sort of like made this as opposed to
Speaker 2: the last time, where everybody was in the room at
Speaker 2: the same time, everything live. This time, we just the
Speaker 2: three of us, Joseph, myself and David were working and
Speaker 2: we'd start overdubbing and start coming up with stuff in
Speaker 2: the forum would take place. We'd have a song done
Speaker 2: in less than an hour every day, with the exception
Speaker 2: of the lyrics. But we start overdubbing, and you know,
Speaker 2: I said, let's just shamelessly overproduce this like we used to.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the drum machine is only in your headphones
Speaker 1: and you replace it with real drums later.
Speaker 2: Yah, No, we weren't wearing headphones. We were playing through
Speaker 2: the speakers and stuff like that, and uh.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you replace the drum machine? Then?
Speaker 2: In the final product, well you take it, get a
Speaker 2: real higher, real drummer, and most of the song is
Speaker 2: completely done except for the bass and the real bass
Speaker 2: and drums. I like put that on last, and so
Speaker 2: he knew exactly what he was playing, so you have
Speaker 2: a click track with it. He can so he doesn't
Speaker 2: listen to the drum track. You know. We play the
Speaker 2: rough form once and we have a chart written out
Speaker 2: so everybody knows who we are, so we get stuff
Speaker 2: done real fast. Simon Phillips can read, you know, first
Speaker 2: take stuff, you know, and he knows what to play.
Speaker 2: I'd have to tell him. He here, he goes, I
Speaker 2: know what to play. So the nothing no more than
Speaker 2: one or two takes on anything. The other stuff I
Speaker 2: set to Shannon Forest via the Internet and he was
Speaker 2: living in his studio in Nashville, and he's he's an
Speaker 2: unbelievably great studio. He's a great engineer, great player, and
Speaker 2: he'd send me back the stuff. Now I go, that's great.
Speaker 2: Or sometimes I was in the room with Simon Trevor
Speaker 2: and I went out. My son Trevor, who worked on
Speaker 2: the record, co produced his track. He produced his track.
Speaker 2: He didn't cop we just like I want to let
Speaker 2: my son go with it. But that's what we can
Speaker 2: talk about that later. But I just I try and
Speaker 2: know who to call. It's like you know who to call,
Speaker 2: who's going to do the job. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: work with my old friends too. You know, people think
Speaker 2: O Simon's on the band anymore, so I almost hate him,
Speaker 2: and that's not true. He thinks everybody moves on. It
Speaker 2: was his choice to move on. We're all still friends,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, just technically because I'm interested. If you're in the
Speaker 1: room and everything through speakers, you hear the drum machine,
Speaker 1: but everything is recorded separately in logic, so you can
Speaker 1: pull the drums drum machine. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had my amps in another room out, you know,
Speaker 2: so that you couldn't hear them while we're in the room.
Speaker 2: So it was coming through the speakers like you would
Speaker 2: have listening to any recording. Uh. And David was going direct,
Speaker 2: as was Joe, so there was no leakids or anything
Speaker 2: like that. So we were able to use everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, And how do you decide what to use on
Speaker 1: the final record?
Speaker 2: Oh? Throughout the process, I mean, as we're adding vocals,
Speaker 2: it's I mean, Joseph Williams produced the record because hey,
Speaker 2: he's a great produce or especially with the vocals getting
Speaker 2: that out of me, and in the studio was in
Speaker 2: his house. We did everything at his house except for
Speaker 2: the drums, which we farmed out, and then I had
Speaker 2: my engineer, Ken Freeman, mixed the whole thing. We just
Speaker 2: gave it to him and said here, make this is
Speaker 2: it's all here, fresh airs. Make this sound great. And
Speaker 2: then we come in and I go, yes, no, no,
Speaker 2: do this, do this. I mean I know how to
Speaker 2: tech talk. I just don't sit behind and press the
Speaker 2: buttons myself. You know what I mean. I know how
Speaker 2: to speak engineer.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you make a record today, the nature of
Speaker 1: the marketplace is no matter how great, that record is
Speaker 1: going to have a fraction of the audience of what
Speaker 1: it had in the seventies and eighties. Does that impact
Speaker 1: your desire? How does that affect your attitude towards a project.
Speaker 2: It doesn't affect it at all. I try as hard
Speaker 2: as I ever did, so I'm trying to make it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we listen, nothing's going to sell eight million
Speaker 2: records anymore, Army, particularly older guys. Now, I just did
Speaker 2: this because I need to scratch the creative itch. I
Speaker 2: have to do something new, and it's a niche audience
Speaker 2: we play. We have a big enough audience that will
Speaker 2: buy this to facilitate me doing more. If I ever
Speaker 2: decided to do another record, I don't know. I'm just
Speaker 2: kind of dealing with this one at this point. And
Speaker 2: I love the tour. I loved and that's where we
Speaker 2: make all of our money. But that you know, I'm
Speaker 2: away from home, you know that's what that is. I
Speaker 2: just finished three months without coming home, just like last week.
Speaker 2: But making music is something I need to do. It's
Speaker 2: not something I do for the cash per se. We
Speaker 2: know that there's no real money in the recording business
Speaker 2: new music anymore. This money in the old music. Our
Speaker 2: Spotify numbers are scary good and uh, you know, billions
Speaker 2: of streams. And I made a great deal when I
Speaker 2: took over management of the band eight years ago. I
Speaker 2: made a great deal with Sony because they didn't know
Speaker 2: what they had and Spotify was brand new, so I
Speaker 2: got it the best percentage that you could get. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say what it is, but it's thirty
Speaker 2: percent more than we were getting on a regular record.
Speaker 2: Plus so I love Spotify. Everybody hates Spotify. I love Spotify,
Speaker 2: the gift that keeps on giving baby.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, for a long time you and Sony were
Speaker 1: not on the same page.
Speaker 2: Well, no, they hated us. Donnie Einer refused to release
Speaker 2: our records and Matola didn't do anything about it, you know,
Speaker 2: and yet are they wouldn't let us out of the
Speaker 2: deal because we sold too many records around the world.
Speaker 2: So everything else did really well around the world. But
Speaker 2: you know, the US, they'd released three hundred records in
Speaker 2: Pocatella and say that they released the records to fill
Speaker 2: the contract with a big middle finger towards us, which
Speaker 2: is really stupid.
Speaker 1: But you also said you prior to this we negotiation,
Speaker 1: you didn't think you were proper really accounted to on royalties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you turns out I was right. You know
Speaker 2: the end, you know what and not it is, we
Speaker 2: do it. We do it, We do it every two years,
Speaker 2: and they always there's always found money. And in any
Speaker 2: other corporation, if you default more than two times, you're
Speaker 2: out of your record. You're out of your deal. Not
Speaker 2: in the record business. In perpetuity, that's a word, that's
Speaker 2: a word in perpetuity for life, and then when I die,
Speaker 2: my kids will chase after it.
Speaker 1: And you know, some acts a little bit before the
Speaker 1: vintage of Toto had rights of reversions on the album.
Speaker 1: You didn't have that with Toto.
Speaker 2: We fought for it, and that's how I got the
Speaker 2: Spotify deal. They would they were never going to give
Speaker 2: any artists their rights to their record back as catalog
Speaker 2: is what keeps the building lights on. You know, they
Speaker 2: don't develop new talent for long careers anymore. And all
Speaker 2: all those old guys that everybody makes fun of, all
Speaker 2: those old guys, we're still selling records, We're still selling tickets.
Speaker 2: So we may not be relevant to today's hipster youngsters,
Speaker 2: but it turns out there are young people that got
Speaker 2: into our music due to this crazy Africa shit. You know,
Speaker 2: It's like that was the funniest thing that ever happened
Speaker 2: to me, but it was also the best. I'll take it.
Speaker 2: It's a gift, thank you, lord.
Speaker 1: You know, but tell us the story of how you
Speaker 1: found out Weizard was constantly being a cover of Africa.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you got this backwards. They were the
Speaker 2: last ones on board. They were they they batted clean
Speaker 2: up Basically this whole thing started from the show Stranger Things, right.
Speaker 2: They used the song in there and this, and it
Speaker 2: just all of a sudden came out and it became
Speaker 2: this worldwide thing, man, and we're like forty years after.
Speaker 2: It was the number one record in the United States.
Speaker 2: By the way, I never thought this song was ever
Speaker 2: going to see like any radio play. When we put
Speaker 2: it on the album was the last thing we cut
Speaker 2: on Total four, and Page had this great groove and
Speaker 2: all of this stuff. Thought wow, that's really interesting. And
Speaker 2: the lyrics were never done. It was just the melodies.
Speaker 2: And then we read the whole record and then Dave
Speaker 2: and Jeff, you know, Page was going to Africa. I'm
Speaker 2: feeling this vibe. We're going, okay, well, what are the
Speaker 2: words gonna be? The melody was killer, the groove Jeff
Speaker 2: Pacaro was the muse behind all of that, you know,
Speaker 2: he put put together. We started doing all these loops
Speaker 2: without the late great Al Schmidt, God bless them, our
Speaker 2: engineer at the time, and we did it old school loops,
Speaker 2: real loops, like tape loops. We're holding it with the
Speaker 2: cant soul and stuff, you know, and we just wanted
Speaker 2: experiment you know, we were young guys, you know, didn't
Speaker 2: you know, lived in the studio, loved it, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. And we spent like six months making
Speaker 2: that record, if not more, because it was like, if
Speaker 2: you don't have a hit record, you're gonna get dropped
Speaker 2: from the label. So it was our fourth record. We said, well,
Speaker 2: we've better bring it. So at that point we were like, okay,
Speaker 2: So Dave had this cool vibe and at the end
Speaker 2: they brought the lyrics and I was laughing at the lyrics.
Speaker 2: I'm going, Dave, we're from North Hollywood. You know what
Speaker 2: is this? You know, what are you talking about? It
Speaker 2: was just a fantasy song that Dave used to He's
Speaker 2: you know, him and Jeff and they were into this,
Speaker 2: you know, history, and they would all stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and they just started grabbing went for it, you know,
Speaker 2: all these ridiculous were serengetty and of course it doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense. I mean everything, well those don't really
Speaker 2: you can't see to kill the majority. You know, Let's
Speaker 2: say everyon's trying to like look at it like as
Speaker 2: a science project. Man, it's a goofy little song that
Speaker 2: we never really thought was gonna hit the nerve. The
Speaker 2: song we thought we had was Rosanna. We thought, okay,
Speaker 2: you know that's that's really us. That says it all.
Speaker 2: And we were proud of that, and that was the
Speaker 2: first thing we cut. The record company said we love it.
Speaker 2: We were off the hook. Okay, great, and then we
Speaker 2: just had fun making this record and we had it
Speaker 2: was our fourth record. We started to get a vibe
Speaker 2: as a band. We started feeling like we'd made three
Speaker 2: records and toured and it really felt good. Everybody who's
Speaker 2: writing song, David was going come on, bring some song,
Speaker 2: and we did. And it was really a band effort,
Speaker 2: really truly was, and we had a blast doing it.
Speaker 2: But Africa, who knew. I actually said at one point
Speaker 2: I've been quoted as stupid quote. I was very young.
Speaker 2: I said, I'll run naked down Hollywood Boulevard if this
Speaker 2: song's ever hit, Well, nobody would want to see that now.
Speaker 2: Plus I probably leave a trail like sparks, you know,
Speaker 2: my nutsack hitting the pavement running full speed. But it
Speaker 2: turned into this massive thing, and then once the TeV
Speaker 2: show then peopled parodies of it, then it was like
Speaker 2: some club in the UK just be torture for me.
Speaker 2: They only played that song for like twenty four hours
Speaker 2: in the club. Now I would have hung myself behind
Speaker 2: the bar after the third play, but that's me. But
Speaker 2: it became this thing, and then it became an internet thing,
Speaker 2: and then it was everywhere. And then this girl who
Speaker 2: was a Weezer fan saw it on Stranger Things and
Speaker 2: a parent those guys were doing covers, you know, and
Speaker 2: they she beg begged them to do it. Took a while.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was not involved in that part,
Speaker 2: and they they're not fan, they don't like our band
Speaker 2: or anything like that. They were just like the middle
Speaker 2: finger to us. And it backfired on them because now
Speaker 2: they have to play it every night for the rest
Speaker 2: of their life. But they weren't doing particularly well and
Speaker 2: this brought them up and gave him a hit record.
Speaker 2: So we both won from that. And I tried to
Speaker 2: reach out to the guy Rivers and say, hey, man,
Speaker 2: you know, he totally middle fingered me, man, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, really, dude, the guy is struggling to
Speaker 2: play bar chords is middle fingering me. Okay, I'm glad
Speaker 2: it worked out for him, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't have a hold of grudge or nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It helped us help them, But we did one of
Speaker 2: their songs right as a reply, you know, and then
Speaker 2: Universal bought it and shelved it and so wouldn't end
Speaker 2: up on the radio anywhere. They played it once on KROQ,
Speaker 2: and then they never played it and they buried it.
Speaker 2: It was kind of wow, man, Okay, it didn't even
Speaker 2: give us an even shot. But you know we did
Speaker 2: it as a joke too. It's a wink wink, you know.
Speaker 2: And then we carried on, let's do some.
Speaker 1: Cleanup work the new album. Are people going to be
Speaker 1: able to hear that live? You know?
Speaker 2: I don't know right now where I'm you know, I
Speaker 2: did the album just as an art project, scratch the
Speaker 2: creative itch makes something new, something from here for the
Speaker 2: old fans, because you know, we're not going to make
Speaker 2: total records anymore. It's just too complicated in terms of Ugh,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get I never want to see
Speaker 2: a lawyer again where I'm writing a check to a
Speaker 2: lawyer ever, unless it's to finish my living trust, which
Speaker 2: I've just done again updated. But I you know, I've
Speaker 2: just spent too much time and money and broken hearted
Speaker 2: moments over litigation. It's not worth the hassle or the
Speaker 2: cost to do that when I just want to make
Speaker 2: some music with my friends. So we all make solo
Speaker 2: records and we all work on them. So I still
Speaker 2: get to work with my friends without paying the ass
Speaker 2: of hearing from somebody's lawyer. You can't use this or
Speaker 2: where's my percentage or all that we pay everybody every
Speaker 2: night we play live from the gross. You know, people
Speaker 2: that wish me dead, I pay them. And the rest
Speaker 2: of it is, I just shut my mouth and play
Speaker 2: the guitar. And I got no fight with anybody anymore,
Speaker 2: Peace and love, no grudges, no anger. I'd let on,
Speaker 2: let go. I have a very good psychiatrist, and I'm
Speaker 2: not on any medication right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you talk about you love Spotify. They're multiple
Speaker 1: members of the band. After the income comes in and
Speaker 1: it's split all those ways, there's still enough significantly for you.
Speaker 2: I should be getting a gold plated thank you note. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, people that aren't in the band
Speaker 2: get paid. I mean the people that get paid the most,
Speaker 2: of the guys that played on the earliest, biggest hit records.
Speaker 2: I mean it's obviously a math problem in terms of
Speaker 2: how the splits are. But it's all you know, everybody
Speaker 2: gets free money. If those of us that are still
Speaker 2: Joseph and I that are still working it alive, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, we get the advantage of that. But the
Speaker 2: people that aren't in the band, like are you know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into all this because it's.
Speaker 1: Because I know, when you play live you have to
Speaker 1: pay people who are in Toto. Where there are states
Speaker 1: who are not performing with.
Speaker 2: You, well are not able to because they're not on
Speaker 2: the planet Earth anymore. But I'm trying to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: just that's the fact true. I mean, I I hesitate
Speaker 2: to say anything because like, the last thing I need
Speaker 2: right now is somebody's lawyer to call me. But I
Speaker 2: heard what you said on the left that show. It's
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, let's kill me now, just exact on
Speaker 2: knife across the neck, kill me.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. First Toto album, Hold the Line, huge success.
Speaker 1: Second album, you know, Hydra has ninety nine a few
Speaker 1: other things. Third album doesn't have as much radio success.
Speaker 1: Fourth album is a monster. How does that affect you personally?
Speaker 1: I mean, you played on hit records you'd played on Thriller,
Speaker 1: et cetera, but now it's your after that.
Speaker 2: That was after Thriller was the we won Album of
Speaker 2: the year, and then the next year Thriller one Album
Speaker 2: of the year.
Speaker 1: Okay, I get I'm not remembering correctly, but in any event,
Speaker 1: doesn't change my question, what's it like to be that successful?
Speaker 1: How does it affect you emotionally?
Speaker 2: For us, it was redemption. We saved ourselves, We saved
Speaker 2: our careers as a recording band. Yeah, we could have
Speaker 2: just stayed at the studio guys and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and some of the best years of my life. I'm
Speaker 2: very proud to say that I was a you know,
Speaker 2: first call session guitar player. You know, it started out
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager. It was a dream to
Speaker 2: have both to be the first call guy or one
Speaker 2: of the first called guitar players, playing all the hit
Speaker 2: records with all these amazing artists and have a hit
Speaker 2: band that was like beyond the dream. We felt. It
Speaker 2: was overwhelming, really, I mean we were like, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: thank god we got a record on the on the
Speaker 2: radio again. Rosanna was a hit, and oh we're gonna begin.
Speaker 2: But then I think Snowball and we had We weren't
Speaker 2: even members of Nerost to vote for ourselves. You know,
Speaker 2: people got pissed off that we want It's like we
Speaker 2: were also on like, you know, god knows how many
Speaker 2: records that were nominated that year, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: We were on everybody's records at least one of us.
Speaker 2: And I won for Best R and B Song for
Speaker 2: a song I wrote for George Benson with Jay Grayden
Speaker 2: and Randy and Bill Champlain. We did that in ten minute.
Speaker 2: That was a ten minute writing session, you know, that
Speaker 2: was and it became a Grammy Award winning song. You know.
Speaker 2: So it was like it was overwhelming to sit there
Speaker 2: and look around and going like, are we really here?
Speaker 2: Is this really? Did we really pull this off? I
Speaker 2: mean it was it was astounding. It was a great feeling.
Speaker 2: And then we want everybody turned on us. Oh there's
Speaker 2: a fix, those guys know everybody blah blah blah. We didn't,
Speaker 2: like we're talking about, we didn't vote for ourselves, you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't know. It was a weird, freaky thing, like
Speaker 2: every time we get success, everybody would punch us in
Speaker 2: the face, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, just talking about all the songs you wrote and
Speaker 1: all your royalty streams. A lot of people of our
Speaker 1: vintage are selling those. Would you ever sell your rights
Speaker 1: in your songs?
Speaker 2: That's the dumbest thing you could possibly do in your life.
Speaker 2: If you have something that's worth anything, you know, take
Speaker 2: for example, Africa, why would you sell that. That's like
Speaker 2: you just sold a standard that's going to play for
Speaker 2: a hundred years from now. Somebody will be playing it
Speaker 2: on some bizarre key board of the future and everybody'll
Speaker 2: laugh and go, remember this song from one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: And you know, assuming that AI doesn't wipe out every
Speaker 2: income stream that there is. I mean, for me, I'm
Speaker 2: going I would rather give my great grandchildren a thousand
Speaker 2: dollars check from old great granddad they never met, you know,
Speaker 2: over my neighboring rights. Because I played on thousands of records.
Speaker 2: That's a big check every year. And that's only in Europe.
Speaker 2: You know, the US decided to middle finger US and
Speaker 2: not give us anything for that either. But you know,
Speaker 2: all these records in this these it's it's sort of
Speaker 2: self perpetuating. You know, there are people that will be
Speaker 2: listening to this stuff. Maybe not as many people, but
Speaker 2: people I just don't want to give it up. Everybody
Speaker 2: I know that's given it up has regretted it, going,
Speaker 2: oh my god, what have I done? Because you don't
Speaker 2: get anything anymore. It's done over, not another penny. So
Speaker 2: even if they give you some gazillion dollar check, government
Speaker 2: gets half, then the people take their percentages. Then everybody's
Speaker 2: who gets a piece or whatever, and the next thing
Speaker 2: you know, it's watered down and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this income stream that you've had consistently is that you know,
Speaker 2: our songs believe it or not, get played all the time. Man,
Speaker 2: the numbers don't lie, they're there, And why would I
Speaker 2: want to sell that? I mean, did I look into it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I said, well, how much do you think I'm worth? Ben?
Speaker 2: And I said that's not nearly enough? And it was
Speaker 2: a lot. I said, no, man, if you're going to
Speaker 2: give me that now, I'm still convinced somebody knows something
Speaker 2: and they ain't telling anybody. But the next what then?
Speaker 2: Why would somebody pay half a billion dollars for somebody's
Speaker 2: catalog and not expect how do you make back that
Speaker 2: kind of cash? There must be something coming that we
Speaker 2: don't know about, you know, remember when records went to CDs,
Speaker 2: they went from seven bucks to twenty bucks. Well, they
Speaker 2: never adjusted it. They never adjusted it for the artist.
Speaker 2: But that's when all the executives started flying private and
Speaker 2: make more money than the artists, like a lot more money.
Speaker 2: And they never figure. Oh, they were retooling. That's why,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't been forty years of retooling. Have you
Speaker 2: tooled it yet?
Speaker 1: Guys, I agree with everything you say. I don't believe
Speaker 1: in selling the catalog and I wouldn't sell one of
Speaker 1: my kids. You know, when the executives started to make
Speaker 1: more than the acts of go this is really fucked up.
Speaker 2: But it's worse now unless you unless you've got some action.
Speaker 2: I so you can make fun of me being an
Speaker 2: old what's the word do you like to use? Ludite? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean I may be that, but you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm working. I've never been busier. Band's making more money
Speaker 2: on the road than we ever have. Everything's good. You know.
Speaker 2: I'm the only guy that believed that someday we're going
Speaker 2: to turn this around. Man, and I'm here to I'm thrilled.
Speaker 2: I'm not mad at anybody. I think everything's great in
Speaker 2: a world where everything's gone to shit. I feel pretty
Speaker 2: good about it. As long as I don't read the news,
Speaker 2: I'm great.
Speaker 1: Okay. Something we haven't gotten into depth in previous conversations
Speaker 1: is equipment. So how many guitars do you own?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, man, people are gonna hate me for
Speaker 2: I really don't know a lot. I have vintage ones.
Speaker 2: I know exactly where they are at. But I did
Speaker 2: sell some of those at one point stupidly. It's like
Speaker 2: sort of like sellers regret or what do they call it,
Speaker 2: some of my old but I kept my my ap
Speaker 2: I have my fifty nine less Bald that's an infamous one,
Speaker 2: and uh, I sort of gave it to my son,
Speaker 2: but I said, you can't sell it. If you do,
Speaker 2: you have to give it, share it with your other
Speaker 2: three brothers and sisters. But that's after I'm dead. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, I still have it. I was threatening to
Speaker 2: to use it and bring out some of the old
Speaker 2: stuff that I used to use. But you know, I
Speaker 2: love my music man guitars, and I've been planning for
Speaker 2: thirty years and that's it. And they give me everything
Speaker 2: I need and they keep getting better and better. But
Speaker 2: the fitchure stuff I keep. I got hundreds of them.
Speaker 2: They're in my storage space, you know.
Speaker 1: So you have a storage space somewhere in LA where
Speaker 1: all this stuff is.
Speaker 2: Yes, I can't tell you. I'll have to kill you.
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, I got all kinds of gear that I
Speaker 2: you know, I really need to make up a set
Speaker 2: get rid of some of it. But some of it
Speaker 2: just has a lot of memories from a particular era.
Speaker 2: You know, when I'm dead, my kids can figure out
Speaker 2: what to do with it. You know.
Speaker 1: So what's so special about a fifty nine less Paul? Well,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: It was. I don't know they made They had a
Speaker 2: couple of really great years there in the fifties. Man,
Speaker 2: when the wood was right. It was a hands on craftmanship.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like machinery making things, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: There's still a few company music Man still makes it
Speaker 2: by hand, but a lot of these companies, so you know,
Speaker 2: the they do it in Korea, they do it in China,
Speaker 2: they do it and all you know, in these plants
Speaker 2: and they just wrick them out. I don't know that
Speaker 2: was the one to get because all my heroes had those,
Speaker 2: like you know, Jimmy Page and you know Eric Clapton
Speaker 2: and played these you know all my Jeff Beck, you
Speaker 2: know all my heroes and the later friends. Uh. You
Speaker 2: just I wanted that sound when you picked it up
Speaker 2: and played it, I got it. I remember when I
Speaker 2: bought my fifty nine first. It was on our first
Speaker 2: tour and we were in Phoenix somewhere and I went
Speaker 2: out and got you know, somebody said there was one
Speaker 2: there and I went down and bought it. It was like
Speaker 2: four thousand dollars. I remember my account and going four
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. You you know you can get these things
Speaker 2: for free. Now, what do you need a fourth? I said, no,
Speaker 2: you don't under you don't understand this is like and
Speaker 2: they only made a handful of these after that, there's
Speaker 2: no more. There's a lot of fakes now and stuff.
Speaker 2: You gotta be careful with that. Uh. But uh, I
Speaker 2: bought this thing, and now, I mean I had it
Speaker 2: a praise for like, you know this one because it's
Speaker 2: been on a lot of hit records. George Harrison played
Speaker 2: it when he played with us at the Amphitheater after
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Percaro passed, and so I voted, I mean it
Speaker 2: has all this history in it, you know, of all
Speaker 2: these and uh, it's worth like six hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. Now, I was appraised, and when I die,
Speaker 2: it might be worth more than that.
Speaker 1: You know what other vintage stuff you got.
Speaker 2: I got a fifty one Esquire, which is a really
Speaker 2: uh it's like the guitar Springsteen uses. It's it's a
Speaker 2: Keith Richards, you know. I bought that one for a
Speaker 2: couple of grand and that's worth like a boatload of
Speaker 2: dough now, you know, and I break that thing out.
Speaker 2: I've used it on some ringo stuff we were working on.
Speaker 2: But I sold a couple of like a fifty eight
Speaker 2: gold top and a nineteen sixty less ball SG which
Speaker 2: was actually a less ball. But you know, now I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be It's it's really not cost effective to start
Speaker 2: collecting vintage gear at that price. Now it's collectors and
Speaker 2: people that got to have it, really rich people.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you start your association with music Man.
Speaker 2: I was involved with a company called Valley Arts, which
Speaker 2: was like they were making like Frankenstratz, which are like
Speaker 2: stratocaster type with different pickups and electronics and stuff. And
Speaker 2: they went on went out of business and they sold
Speaker 2: to the Koreans. At the time, I had just met
Speaker 2: somebody who was one of my dearest friends, Sterling Ball,
Speaker 2: and who his father was, Ernie Ball, his Ernie Ball
Speaker 2: strings if you just got to make super slinking strings
Speaker 2: and all that. His son, Sterling took over the company
Speaker 2: and was working with Eddie van Halen on making him
Speaker 2: a what do you call it a signature guitar because
Speaker 2: he you know, and they they did. And I was
Speaker 2: hanging out at ads and stuff like that, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're as, what do you think of this guitar? What
Speaker 2: do you think of these pickups? I gave him a
Speaker 2: little input on the back pickup, and they made Eddie's guitar,
Speaker 2: which I really dug and I said, and they said.
Speaker 2: And Sterling, also known as Biff to his friends, Biff goes,
Speaker 2: let me, because you're not a feeling, let me make
Speaker 2: your guitar. And I feel like, give us the give
Speaker 2: us your favorite guitar, and let us put on a computer.
Speaker 2: And well, every little divid every little thing we're gonna make,
Speaker 2: we're gonna make that happen. And it turns out one
Speaker 2: of the luthiers at Valley Arts was hired by Sterling
Speaker 2: to work for his company, had already worked on my stuff.
Speaker 2: I love what they were doing with d and I
Speaker 2: got involved in this company and then we became best friends.
Speaker 2: And I've been there for thirty years this year, and
Speaker 2: I love the guitars I've been There's four different versions
Speaker 2: of my l four is coming out and I've done
Speaker 2: very very well by this. A lot of people have
Speaker 2: bought them and used them over the years, and I'm
Speaker 2: really proud and honored to be a part of that.
Speaker 1: You know, So what makes your guitar different from like
Speaker 1: your conventional strat or something else.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a different tool in the tool. You
Speaker 2: don't use one tool for everything. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: It's really a combination of a strat and a less
Speaker 2: Paul put into one guitar. Now, the guitars don't make
Speaker 2: noise until somebody picks it up and plays it. So
Speaker 2: I mean, I've played my famous friend's guitars and I
Speaker 2: just sound like me playing the guitar, and they played
Speaker 2: my guitars and they sound like them playing through it.
Speaker 2: So there's no magic guitar or amp. There's only magic people.
Speaker 2: A great instrument is a great tool, but in the
Speaker 2: hands of an amateur, it sounds. You can give my
Speaker 2: super expensive less ball to somebody that can't play, and
Speaker 2: it's not gonna make them play any better.
Speaker 1: Okay, But in terms of strings, pickups, action, what do
Speaker 1: you desire.
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty simple guy. If it gives me what
Speaker 2: I want, I mean, it's up to me to make
Speaker 2: noise come out of it and make some music come
Speaker 2: out of it. I've been using Ernie Ball string since
Speaker 2: I was a kid, you know, so that was the
Speaker 2: no brainer. And that's the most amazing company. I mean,
Speaker 2: anything I need, it could be shipped anywhere. They'll be
Speaker 2: there the next day. It's an unbelievably incredible company. Unbelievably Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm not speaking properly, and now I'm old. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love it. I mean it's not I'm not a tech guy.
Speaker 2: I don't take my guitars apart put them back together again,
Speaker 2: because if I did, either be parts left out. My
Speaker 2: dad used to get mad at me when i'd make
Speaker 2: models when I was a kid because I put it
Speaker 2: together and then I'd leave parts out. Oh I forgot.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to put that I'm not an idiot,
Speaker 2: I'm just lazy.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about amps.
Speaker 2: I use Bogner amps, and I have been using which
Speaker 2: is a Marshall style amp, but it's a little bit
Speaker 2: more high tech than that. I've been using that for
Speaker 2: John fifteen twelve fifteen years now. I've had them all old.
Speaker 2: I used to use old Fender amps. I used to
Speaker 2: use Marshals. I had some weird customized amps that I
Speaker 2: have in my collection. But in terms of a workhost,
Speaker 2: that gives me everything I need is the Bogner amps.
Speaker 2: Like my whole new record is just the Bogner amp
Speaker 2: and music man guitar, same guitar, same amp on every song,
Speaker 2: so you can, if you bother to listen to it,
Speaker 2: you can hear the versatility of different tones that I
Speaker 2: can get out of this effortlessly. I'm not into dragging.
Speaker 2: I used to be famous for always all the big
Speaker 2: racks of digital gears, and it was a great time.
Speaker 2: It was a great era, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But you know, at the same time, I wanted to
Speaker 2: simplify myself, you know, So I just use a couple
Speaker 2: of stop boxes on the ground, which are little fects
Speaker 2: pedals that could be taken out and thrown away and
Speaker 2: changed over. And I do everything manually, stepping on it myself,
Speaker 2: you know, if I want it, and I just have
Speaker 2: a little pedal board playing through the guitar into the amp.
Speaker 1: Nice talk with you, Okay, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning. I'm sure talking about father. So where did
Speaker 1: you exactly grow up?
Speaker 2: More parking to hung out in North Hollywood on a
Speaker 2: street called Elmer, across the street from what is now
Speaker 2: a park used to be a dirt lot When I
Speaker 2: was a kid. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So you know, LA used to have orange groves, all
Speaker 1: this stuff. What was it like in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties where you grew up?
Speaker 2: Well, I grew I was born in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 2: so I don't really the fifties is sort of a wash.
Speaker 2: But I was a child of the sixties, man, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was the greatest time ever for I mean,
Speaker 2: when the Beatles hit, my life went from black and
Speaker 2: white to color. I said, I have to do that,
Speaker 2: whatever that is. I wanted to be George Harrison. I
Speaker 2: wanted to make that sound. You know. My first first
Speaker 2: soul that drove me mad was the guitar solo, and
Speaker 2: I saw her standing there and I must have lifted up.
Speaker 2: My my parents bought me all looking and now cute
Speaker 2: that as he loves the Beatles, that little fad that
Speaker 2: was going to just be there for five minutes, you know.
Speaker 2: So I got a really shitty acoustic guitar which is
Speaker 2: now a lamp in my house. My parents. My parents
Speaker 2: made it into a lamp and gave it to me
Speaker 2: on my twenty first birthday. It was like a five
Speaker 2: dollars k guitar that was like screwed on neck. The
Speaker 2: action was like ten feet off the neck, a punishment guitar.
Speaker 2: But they gave me that in a copy and Meet
Speaker 2: the Beatles when I was like seven or eight years old,
Speaker 2: I maybe just turning eight, and I didn't I became obsessed,
Speaker 2: you know, and I would lift up the needle and
Speaker 2: just on the on the record player at the house
Speaker 2: and just play the solo O and Oregon. So my
Speaker 2: dad screamed to me to stop doing that. You know,
Speaker 2: if I hear this one more time, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: be whacked around the house or something. But I you know,
Speaker 2: I never grew out of it, man, I just had
Speaker 2: to grow into it. I was determined to make noise
Speaker 2: of this thing. You know.
Speaker 1: So what came after the cheap fifteen dollars guitar a.
Speaker 2: Twenty dollars ago, it didn't get much better. I got
Speaker 2: an electric guitar that was not much better. It was
Speaker 2: an astratone guitar that I got. Was I really wish
Speaker 2: I still had it, Man, that would probably be worth
Speaker 2: a lot of money now, ironically, because a lot of
Speaker 2: people liked to buy those old crappy guitars and they
Speaker 2: swear by them. You know, I'm gonna I don't get that,
Speaker 2: but okay, But I taught myself how to play on it,
Speaker 2: and a very strange thing happened to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: one day I could was struggling, and one day, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, my hands fell into the first position chords.
Speaker 2: And it was freakish and weird. I could get into
Speaker 2: this whole story about my grandmother with the psychics.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, tell it, tell it no.
Speaker 2: When I was my mother was pregnant at nineteen years old, right,
Speaker 2: and this would have been nineteen fifty seven, or the
Speaker 2: end of fifty six into fifty seven. I was born
Speaker 2: in October, so ten months back from that whenever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: my grandmother was a hipster before her time, as she
Speaker 2: was into like new agey stuff before there was a term.
Speaker 2: She had friends that were different psychics, so which she
Speaker 2: wouldn't say that out loud then, because you might as
Speaker 2: well say you were Satan's sister or something like that.
Speaker 2: So one of my grandma's friends came over my mom's mother,
Speaker 2: who was very hip, God bless her, she was fantastic,
Speaker 2: and she put her hand on my mom's pregnant tummy.
Speaker 2: I said, no, it's a boy. I hear music all
Speaker 2: around him, music, and something's gonna happen to him when
Speaker 2: he's seven or eight, and later down the line, people
Speaker 2: are gonna know who this kid is. Music all around him.
Speaker 2: And my mother said, oh great, I'm gonna have a
Speaker 2: musician son. Would she imagined like a guy with a
Speaker 2: little beat nick beerd needle hanging out of his arm,
Speaker 2: junkie guy, you know, jazz musician or something you know.
Speaker 2: And I saw the Beatles on the installment show, got
Speaker 2: a guitar, and all of a sudden, one day I
Speaker 2: could play it. It was the weirdest thing I could
Speaker 2: never explain to nobody. I'm sure, everybody's going yeah bullshit
Speaker 2: right bah w man man, I swear of got it
Speaker 2: happened to me. And then from there I was able
Speaker 2: to hear things and pick it out on the guitar.
Speaker 2: Then I meet all the older guys I started, and
Speaker 2: I had my first band when I was nine, but
Speaker 2: everybody else was twelve.
Speaker 1: So I mean, wait, wait, wait, wait, you're nine, you
Speaker 1: have this skill, you got a guitar, you gotta how
Speaker 1: do you find the band or how do they find you?
Speaker 2: Well, at the time after the Beatles hit, everybody wanted
Speaker 2: to be in a band. Now some of the older
Speaker 2: kids could actually play guitar, and then they plugged in
Speaker 2: an electric guitar. And I understand, music back then was
Speaker 2: much easier to play. There wasn't didn't require a lot
Speaker 2: of technical ability unless you were a classical musician or
Speaker 2: a jazz musician or in bluegrass or something like that,
Speaker 2: you know where technical ability really counter. But if you
Speaker 2: were just listening to bop music, rock me, the Beatles,
Speaker 2: the Stones, that was our whole life. The British invasion
Speaker 2: was our whole life. And I could play uh, you know,
Speaker 2: uh the songs of the era. You know, I could
Speaker 2: play like Gloria by them, you know, I could, and
Speaker 2: we've been a house of the Rising Sun and then
Speaker 2: Beatles stuff. You know, I saw her standing there, Please
Speaker 2: please me. We just sing and play man, you know,
Speaker 2: we could you buy? Then I bought, you know, the
Speaker 2: Songbook of the Beatles, and it showed you the positions
Speaker 2: of core that I didn't know. So I sponged up
Speaker 2: all that. And then I found older guys that could
Speaker 2: play good, and I stole all their stuff, and I
Speaker 2: just was a sponge. I could play whatever. And then
Speaker 2: my ears started working for me and I could play
Speaker 2: stuff off the radio. So the older guys wanted to
Speaker 2: play with me because I could teach everybody how to
Speaker 2: play their parts. And it was just for me. It
Speaker 2: was my life. For them, perhaps maybe not until some
Speaker 2: of the guys in my neighborhood started picking it up.
Speaker 2: And then I met my dear friend Michael Landau, who's
Speaker 2: a legendary guitar player. When we were twelve years old,
Speaker 2: we were the two hotshot guitar players in la you know,
Speaker 2: we were the same, you know, and we've been best
Speaker 2: friends ever since. And it worked out well for us.
Speaker 2: But we found like minded people in junior high school.
Speaker 2: The bass player in our band, now John Pierce was
Speaker 2: He started out with us, he was in our high
Speaker 2: school band. And when I met the Piccar brothers in
Speaker 2: high school, everything changed and then it was real serious
Speaker 2: and we found out about studium musicians.
Speaker 1: Oh whoa, whoa whoa. Okay, so you're in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You meet Lean daw Where do you go to high school?
Speaker 2: Grant High School in the Battle okay, And that's when
Speaker 2: we went from amateurs to taking the professional route very seriously.
Speaker 2: And a guy something that really helped me out. There
Speaker 2: was a guy that moved in next door to my parents'
Speaker 2: house who was the touring drummer for Helen Ready. His
Speaker 2: name was Mike Berkerwitz. His sweetheart of a guy, and
Speaker 2: my father said, Wow, this guy's not famous, but he
Speaker 2: owns a house. Like, what's the deal. My father was
Speaker 2: like talking to him, so what is this? You know? Well,
Speaker 2: you know she learned how to read music and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, you know, because I was playing by ear
Speaker 2: from the time I was seven to fourteen. And that's
Speaker 2: when Mike moved in next door and we started hearing
Speaker 2: about studio musicians and stuff. Who are these names on
Speaker 2: the back of these albums that I love, same names.
Speaker 2: Who are these guys? And uh, that's the short version
Speaker 2: of it. And then my dad said, Okay, man, you
Speaker 2: gotta have to study music. If you're gonna do this,
Speaker 2: I want you to. He talked to his friend Carl Furtina,
Speaker 2: who was the main musical contractor at Paramount, because my
Speaker 2: dad was working on at the time. I think it
Speaker 2: was right before Happy Days or something like that. My
Speaker 2: dad was an assistant director production manager for television and film,
Speaker 2: as was my grandfather. I have no interest in that.
Speaker 2: That was heinous to me. Boring, boring, boring. Music was
Speaker 2: my whole thing and I had I had a gift
Speaker 2: for it, I guess, and to take it to that
Speaker 2: next level. My dad wanted me to study. As it
Speaker 2: turns out, when he wanted me to studies, when I
Speaker 2: met the Picar brothers and all this stuff, and me
Speaker 2: and all my friends start studying music hard, like we
Speaker 2: had to catch up learning how to read. We could
Speaker 2: play good, but we didn't have the basics, you know,
Speaker 2: so it was really hard to learn how to read
Speaker 2: music after you played for a while, because it was
Speaker 2: you have to go back to maryhad a little lamb
Speaker 2: in terms of ability to site read the notes on
Speaker 2: the paper, and that was harder to do, but you know,
Speaker 2: you had to get it together.
Speaker 1: How long did you study for I.
Speaker 2: Would say I put ten years of study into three years.
Speaker 2: All we did was music, music, music, all day long.
Speaker 2: I studied guitar privately, I was studying orchestration. I was
Speaker 2: studying at the first year of the Dick Grove Music
Speaker 2: School for jazz improvisation, site reading, harmony and theory and school.
Speaker 2: I was taking piano sit singing harmony theory. And then
Speaker 2: we had our band, and then there was other bands,
Speaker 2: and then there was people were just starting to make demos.
Speaker 2: So we started play on sessions like demo sessions for
Speaker 2: singer songwriters. Started like joining the minor leagues for studio
Speaker 2: playing before, because nobody had home studios or recording devices
Speaker 2: that they got anytime at all. They were hired guys
Speaker 2: to get paid twenty bucks or two and or something
Speaker 2: like that. So started to get a feel of what
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, headphone, studio time, sound, getting
Speaker 2: it all together, coming up with parts really fast on
Speaker 2: the spot without any rehearsal or demos or anything like that.
Speaker 2: We were the demos, so we had to come up
Speaker 2: with our stuff. Turns out that was a useful skill
Speaker 2: to learn, because I spent ninety eight percent of the
Speaker 2: time as a professional studio musician coming up with my
Speaker 2: own parts on everything we ever did.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how'd you meet to Piccaro Brothers.
Speaker 2: High school? Tenth grade? There was all bands, you know,
Speaker 2: we already had. I had already had bands and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, really good ones. Actually just stop here for
Speaker 2: a second. Were the bns playing gigs for money? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They actually paid us money to play, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean not a lot. But by the time we had
Speaker 2: Still Life together, which is our high school band with
Speaker 2: you know, Steve Pacaro's band. I met Steve Pacaro through
Speaker 2: our music teacher, mister Neil. He said, I got as
Speaker 2: a guy you should meet. And Steve had the hotshot band,
Speaker 2: still Life in the first version of it, and we
Speaker 2: had heard Jeff Pacarr was already a legend at that
Speaker 2: point before he was even famous. Yet he was like,
Speaker 2: I have you heard this guy? The best drummer that
Speaker 2: there is, and you know, and when I met Steve,
Speaker 2: we hit it off and he had a band and
Speaker 2: he wanted to use I'm looking for another guitar player,
Speaker 2: and so me and I I grabbed Mike Land and
Speaker 2: I said, come on, we'll do this together. We were
Speaker 2: convinced we could both get the gig because it was
Speaker 2: at the time when Steely Dan was really happening. A
Speaker 2: lot of two guitar playing player bands that they were
Speaker 2: looking for that sort of a thing. So rather than
Speaker 2: choose between us, he said, I want both of you
Speaker 2: guys to be in it. And that's how I met
Speaker 2: David Page and how I started the reality meeting all
Speaker 2: these people that were the names on the back of
Speaker 2: records after high school and I got out. I it
Speaker 2: was just it just happened really fast. All of a sudden,
Speaker 2: everything started to happen really quickly, and I got the
Speaker 2: gig with Boss Skaggs for the Silk Degrees Tour that
Speaker 2: changed my life. And that was thanks to Jeff and
Speaker 2: Steve Pacaro and Jay Wendy, who was a famous keyboard
Speaker 2: player at the time and one of my he was
Speaker 2: a close brother of mine. I met Willie Ornellis drummer
Speaker 2: who introduced me to Larry Carlton, who Jeff knew and everybody,
Speaker 2: and I started meeting all the guys that I met,
Speaker 2: David Foster, the young David Foster, and he was a big,
Speaker 2: huge help to me, and we became fast friends and
Speaker 2: I did all his stuff, and then I started playing
Speaker 2: on hit records. Boss Boss was looking for a band,
Speaker 2: you know, and he's looking for a guitar player, and
Speaker 2: Jeff and those guys said, yeah, get look at her.
Speaker 2: And I got there. And the day, first day of
Speaker 2: rehears I was so excited to get this gig. I
Speaker 2: wanted the gig so bad because Boss had, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the biggest records of seventy six seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and so I got to do the tour in seventy seven.
Speaker 2: And the first day, Less Dudak, who was a famous
Speaker 2: blues player, you know, he was working with Bo. More
Speaker 2: of a in the style of the Almond Brothers, you know,
Speaker 2: that southern rock guitar player. And this stuff was Page's Riding,
Speaker 2: had more you know, adults in it, and a little
Speaker 2: bit more of a different groove. And the first day
Speaker 2: of rehearsal, Lesson Boss got in a fight and Less
Speaker 2: quit and Boss turned to the band. We're all rehearsing
Speaker 2: at Sir down in Hollywood, you know, and Boss goes,
Speaker 2: I think we needed to get another guitar player, and
Speaker 2: Jeff stood up and said, no, you don't, pointed at me.
Speaker 2: He goes, calls him out, let him play, and he
Speaker 2: called out the song jump Street, which was a slide
Speaker 2: guitar song actually, but I didn't have a slide so
Speaker 2: I just did it my own way. And I apparently
Speaker 2: did really well because everybody kind of applauded for me afterwards,
Speaker 2: and Boss goes, well, I don't need another guitar player.
Speaker 2: I was nineteen years old, which was weird at the time.
Speaker 2: I was very young, not by today's standards, but very
Speaker 2: young at the time to be on that kind of
Speaker 2: a tour. I mean I couldn't even go to the
Speaker 2: bar and have a drink after the gig, you know.
Speaker 2: And you know I got this gig. It changed my life.
Speaker 2: Boss changed my life. I owe so much to him.
Speaker 2: He made a big deal about me, invited me to
Speaker 2: play on the follow up record, which I gave me
Speaker 2: some solos on that, which really opened up my career.
Speaker 2: People going wow, this is an important record. Who's this guy?
Speaker 2: This is good with? Get me that guy. And then
Speaker 2: Jake Graden, who was like one of my oldest friends,
Speaker 2: famous record producer, guitar player, he was the a guy
Speaker 2: at the time. He turned me on all you get
Speaker 2: lugat there man, you know. Yeah, and then he got
Speaker 2: out and went to be a producer and he gave
Speaker 2: me all of his work. And it's how it snowballs.
Speaker 2: You know, you play on a hit record, then everybody
Speaker 2: finds out about you and they've hired you, and you deliver,
Speaker 2: and you have to deliver. It's luck to get in
Speaker 2: the door, but not luck to get called back twice.
Speaker 2: And so I lived that life and then the band
Speaker 2: was starting to happen. It was all at one time.
Speaker 2: It was like overwhelming. I don't even know how I
Speaker 2: how we made the time for it all. But I
Speaker 2: woke up with a smile and went to bed with
Speaker 2: a smile every day in my life for like twenty years,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, it was all working for us.
Speaker 2: You know. It was really an incredible time in my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to high school, I mean, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: were all these bands that grew up with the Beatles,
Speaker 1: but certainly in the late seventies mid seventies bands were
Speaker 1: a really big deal in LA I mean, you had
Speaker 1: Van Allen at the star Wood whatever, you know, did
Speaker 1: you think you were going to make it? How is
Speaker 1: still Life relative to these other bands?
Speaker 2: Well, prior to Still Life, we had another band that
Speaker 2: auditioned for Gazaris when Van Halen was headlining, right, and
Speaker 2: we got the gig until they found out we were sixteen,
Speaker 2: and then they said you can't work here. So and
Speaker 2: the Van Halen thing, we'd always heard about Van Hallen,
Speaker 2: but we never heard him. Like, we'd all hang out
Speaker 2: at me and Landau and a bunch of our friends
Speaker 2: would go down to the Guitar Center Hollywood and play
Speaker 2: all the guitars we couldn't afford and play all the apps,
Speaker 2: so they used to let us do it because we
Speaker 2: were good. We were like, look at these guys, they
Speaker 2: can play it. And one of the guys who worked
Speaker 2: there is this is this guy from Pasadena, Eddie. You
Speaker 2: should meet him someday. We're like, oh, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: and we didn't. I didn't know Eddie until after the
Speaker 2: first album came out. I heard about it, but I
Speaker 2: didn't know he was the wonder, you know, he was
Speaker 2: this amazing guitar player. And I mean because there wasn't really,
Speaker 2: the communication wasn't like it is now. You'd hear rumblings,
Speaker 2: oh there's this ban Oh yeah, I wonder for better
Speaker 2: than they are or whatever, you know, cocky little bastards
Speaker 2: that we were, and you know, and then it all
Speaker 2: came together. We all became friends in the end, and
Speaker 2: you know, we were doing our first album. I was
Speaker 2: doing a solo and pagewalks in with the first Van
Speaker 2: Aalen record. He goes, I got something for you to
Speaker 2: I want to play something, and I go, van Ellen, yeah,
Speaker 2: I heard of them, and he plays eruption. He drops
Speaker 2: the kneel on eruption on my fucking jaw hits the floor.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the fuck is that? Who is the
Speaker 2: how is he doing that? And I got to play.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, oh, I'm pretty good man for a nineteen
Speaker 2: year old kid. And then fucking Eddie comes in and
Speaker 2: blows the socks off everybody, and then I was on
Speaker 2: a quest to meet him. I'm like, I gotta find
Speaker 2: out who this guy is. I want to meet Eddie
Speaker 2: van Aalen. And obviously that album just you know, changed
Speaker 2: rock and roll forever, and then added to like we
Speaker 2: meet at the California World Music Festival in seventy eight.
Speaker 2: We're both on the bill, and we met and said
Speaker 2: we got to hang out. And then some time went
Speaker 2: by and he called me on the once to come
Speaker 2: over the house. I said, oh great. So I went
Speaker 2: over to his house and stayed a year one night
Speaker 2: and we became very fast friends immediately, and he would
Speaker 2: play me stuff like you know, they were already on
Speaker 2: there it was he was doing. He had a demo
Speaker 2: for Jump he played for me. I said, dude, keyboards too.
Speaker 2: I said, this is incredible. This is the number one record.
Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but Roth doesn't like it.
Speaker 2: I go, what are you talking about? He goes out
Speaker 2: of the keyboards like, oh, come on, I go this
Speaker 2: this is a smash record. And that was the demo
Speaker 2: of it. And you know, it turns out I was right.
Speaker 2: But you know, he didn't need me to tell him
Speaker 2: it was. It was a you know already in stone
Speaker 2: that that was going to be a hit record. It
Speaker 2: was just a brilliant piece of music, you know. And
Speaker 2: I've always loved the guys, you know, I mean broke
Speaker 2: my heart to lose my friend. You know, we were close, man.
Speaker 2: I Drahm and Alex and I are friends. You know,
Speaker 2: I still talk to him all the time, and I'm
Speaker 2: like Switzerland. I love all the guys. The only guy
Speaker 2: I don't know is David Lee Roth. I met him
Speaker 2: a couple of times, but I don't know him. But
Speaker 2: you know, I was other than that. I mean Mike
Speaker 2: and Sammy and all those guys and everybody else who
Speaker 2: had come through. I mean, we're all buddies. You know,
Speaker 2: those friendships I made and most of my still have,
Speaker 2: assuming people are still here, you know they were at
Speaker 2: the stage now that what sucks about getting all is
Speaker 2: losing all your friends.
Speaker 1: So hanging with Eddie did you learn stuff hanging with him?
Speaker 2: No, because it wasn't what our hangs were about. Man.
Speaker 2: We'd play music for each other. We'd always play each
Speaker 2: other what we were working on. Here's I'm working on
Speaker 2: this record. What do you think? Can he play me stuff?
Speaker 2: I play him stuff. Other than that, we just hung
Speaker 2: out as buddies. Man. It was never like, oh sure,
Speaker 2: I you know. The first night we hung out, you know,
Speaker 2: we played some guitars a little bit. You know, let
Speaker 2: me check out your guitar, let me check out your
Speaker 2: you know, there's that magic amp that was on the
Speaker 2: first album. There's no magic, camp man, I sound just
Speaker 2: like me coming to this stuff. You know. It's the
Speaker 2: magic is in the person who's playing the guitar. You know,
Speaker 2: you can get the same gear. It doesn't mean anything,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean I believed me. I played a
Speaker 2: lot of famous guitarsn't It didn't help by playing at all,
Speaker 2: But it was neat to play and see how they
Speaker 2: set it up because everybody's guitars are set up a
Speaker 2: little differently. It's a personal thing, you know.
Speaker 1: Is it you who's just Switzerland or does everybody get along.
Speaker 2: I've made a point to try to be Switzerland in
Speaker 2: my life, you know what I mean, I really have.
Speaker 2: I know what it's like to be in turmoil in
Speaker 2: your own band. I mean, it really sucks. But friendships
Speaker 2: that I've made I've kept, you know, and they mean
Speaker 2: a lot to me. I've only lost a few buddies
Speaker 2: along the way in terms of friendships. But that's usually
Speaker 2: some way business oriented, you know, and not really my fault.
Speaker 2: It's just a different point of view or that opens
Speaker 2: up a can of worms I'd rather not get into.
Speaker 2: But that's you know. I make friends for life unless
Speaker 2: something weird happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, but if I talk to the league guitarists of
Speaker 1: another famous band, would you say he's friends with all
Speaker 1: the guitarists or would he feel competitive?
Speaker 2: Oh there's I don't feel competitive with anybody anymore. Man,
Speaker 2: when that's a young man's game. When you're you know,
Speaker 2: when you're young, you want to be the fastest gun
Speaker 2: in the West or whatever, you know, And I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily mean the fastest and technical ability, although that may
Speaker 2: play into it back in the day when that mattered.
Speaker 2: But I'm so glad not to be like that now
Speaker 2: that I purposely played very simple on my new record.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't hotdog it at all. I play,
Speaker 2: I down shifted, play melody, play, play something more memorable.
Speaker 2: Because there's a seven year old kid in Japan that
Speaker 2: can play faster than you can blink, you know, and
Speaker 2: it almost becomes a parlor trick that's meaningless. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's some really young talent they't get me wrong. There's
Speaker 2: some incredible younger players that are just great blues players,
Speaker 2: great people doing different things with the instrument. There's some
Speaker 2: new bands. I'm just whoa, what the hell is that
Speaker 2: some young guitar players that are and female guitar players
Speaker 2: that are really incredible. You know, you're never going to
Speaker 2: hear the word, oh, she's good for a chick, which
Speaker 2: is completely insulting. I understand that. But the girls are like,
Speaker 2: you know, the girl's bad ass. Many better look out,
Speaker 2: you better look out. Man. It's just it's just I
Speaker 2: look at the women and guitar players. It's just great
Speaker 2: guitar player. If I started naming them all off right now,
Speaker 2: and there's a bunch that I could, i'd forget somebody
Speaker 2: and feel bad. So I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: But the watch out for the girls. They're coming and
Speaker 2: they're just this is good, if not better than most
Speaker 2: of the guys.
Speaker 1: Okay, And who are your guitar heroes?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, you know my guitar heroes are? We just
Speaker 2: lost one of them. Jeff Beck was probably one of
Speaker 2: one of my favorites, and.
Speaker 1: I thought he was the absolute best. I can't believe
Speaker 1: he's going either.
Speaker 2: Well, we were friends, man, you know. I made a
Speaker 2: record with him that never came out. Produced it in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven, but we never got to finish it
Speaker 2: because he got into techno and left it all behind.
Speaker 2: I mean, Jeff's probably got fifteen albums unfinished in the
Speaker 2: vault somewhere, but he was like, I don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to hear this stuff. So I just saw him last summer.
Speaker 2: We did a festival together in Europe and France, the
Speaker 2: one off thing, whereas you know, twenty bands on the
Speaker 2: same festival. And it was just great to see him
Speaker 2: gig because I han't seen him for a while. He's
Speaker 2: with Johnny deppho was a really lovely guy and really
Speaker 2: nice guy, and they were just having fun together, man,
Speaker 2: you know, and the band was kid. He played so
Speaker 2: great and it was like he was like I saw him,
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, don't expect too much. I've been playing.
Speaker 2: I'm going to shut up. You're gonna devastate And he
Speaker 2: did just ripped it a new asshole. You know. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, well, there's Jeff Beck and then there's everybody else.
Speaker 2: And that's not to take anything away from all the
Speaker 2: other amazing musicians I know, but I think Jeff was
Speaker 2: like every guitar player's favorite guitar player.
Speaker 1: What about him switching from using a pick to using
Speaker 1: his fingers.
Speaker 2: He told me a story once that the reason why
Speaker 2: he started not using a pick is because he was
Speaker 2: on the Ed Sullivan Show and dropped his pick and
Speaker 2: he flipped out, I'm not going to have this thing
Speaker 2: getting make or break me now. He told me that story.
Speaker 2: But you know, he told a lot of stories. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I think, are you just bullshitting me or what?
Speaker 2: Because when he picked up a pick and started playing,
Speaker 2: it sounded funny. It's you know he did in the
Speaker 2: early days. Of course, you know he used to pick.
Speaker 2: Didn't think he's hybrid version of both. But Jeff Beck
Speaker 2: sounded like Jeff Beck when it was just all skin
Speaker 2: on strings. That's how the magic is in him. I
Speaker 2: played his guitar, I don't sound like Jeff Beck playing
Speaker 2: his guitar. He'd pick up an attitude guitar and when
Speaker 2: he played it was in tune. I'm convinced he had
Speaker 2: perfect pitch. We didn't even know what that was. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was very unschooled. Everything was by ear and by feel.
Speaker 2: And he made a point that he told me once
Speaker 2: he goes if it's normal, if it sounds normal, I'm
Speaker 2: not interested. So he would just come at whatever. It
Speaker 2: was a simple melody notes or notes. You know, it
Speaker 2: was an ease and E and F sharp's and F shark. However,
Speaker 2: how you attack it and how you make that feel
Speaker 2: with the touch is what changes everything. It's like your vibrados,
Speaker 2: a thumbprint, a thumbprint. Nobody has no two alike. You know,
Speaker 2: That's that's the whole thing touches everything when it comes
Speaker 2: to playing the guitar.
Speaker 1: How about people who were not stars, who were studio players.
Speaker 1: Anybody come to mind? You think especially great?
Speaker 2: Oh, they're all great. I mean all the guys that
Speaker 2: I came up with, my heroes, Larry Carlton, Lee Rittenauer,
Speaker 2: Jay Graydon Ray Parker, Junior Dean Parks. Uh, those are
Speaker 2: the guys, the A guys when I first hit the scene,
Speaker 2: and then my buddy Michael Landau and Dan Huff. Then
Speaker 2: there was, Oh, I'm gonna start forgetting guys. There's Tim Pearce,
Speaker 2: who's a brilliant guitar player. Michael Thompson brilliant. There's some
Speaker 2: new guys that I don't know, but I hear there's
Speaker 2: some new blood in there now. There are other guy
Speaker 2: Paul Jackson, Junior, David William, the late Great David Williams. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are the guys that you know, we were all
Speaker 2: working together and we were all brothers. Man, I mean
Speaker 2: it was I learned everything. Those guys are my heroes.
Speaker 2: The inspiration still are.
Speaker 1: Is there any session work at all?
Speaker 2: Now? Yeah, the guy's doing it now, do it like
Speaker 2: I me at my son's home studio right now talking
Speaker 2: to you. Everybody does it like this. So I'm looking
Speaker 2: at you on the screen going, okay, you want me
Speaker 2: to do another take? Do you want me to do this?
Speaker 2: And everybody's their own engineer's studio and player. There's like
Speaker 2: live recording sessions where everybody shows up and plays together
Speaker 2: is rare. It's financially not feasible for most people now
Speaker 2: because they took all the money. Once the record companies
Speaker 2: figured out there was home studios and you can make
Speaker 2: records for you know, ten, you know, one hundred times
Speaker 2: less than what we were making them for. Then they
Speaker 2: took the budgets away. They say, oh, here's X amount
Speaker 2: of dog you can keep whatever you don't use. So
Speaker 2: everybody's like, well, I'm going to keep this money for myself.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd like to hire so and so, but
Speaker 2: you know, maybe he'll do it for cheap, now, dude,
Speaker 2: that's where the Union failed us miserably. Do you how
Speaker 2: much not I played on thousands of records, and that's
Speaker 2: not a facetious count, all right over my years, all
Speaker 2: the forty six, forty seven years or whatever it is now,
Speaker 2: And how much do you think my union pension is
Speaker 2: per month?
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Now, understand something. Television and film are the guys that
Speaker 2: you have to site read anything that's put in front
Speaker 2: of you. And it can be classical, scary stuff, or
Speaker 2: it could be dumb stuff easy. You don't know what
Speaker 2: you're gonna get. So those guys they read the notes
Speaker 2: and they do it incredibly well. That's a talent and
Speaker 2: a gift. Wow. I mean I can read music, but
Speaker 2: not like that. You know, my chops are way to
Speaker 2: I haven't done it in a long time. It's like
Speaker 2: speaking French, and when you're living in France, you forget
Speaker 2: it if you're not living in France for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 2: getting back to it, and that's one thing. And those
Speaker 2: guys got good pensions for some reason. But the recording guys,
Speaker 2: guys like me who ninety eight percent of the time
Speaker 2: made up my own parts on the spot with no rearsal,
Speaker 2: no demos, play something great. Here's here's a chord sheet
Speaker 2: with you know, letters written on it. Count it off?
Speaker 2: You know, we get we got shit? How much you
Speaker 2: think all the records I played for all of the
Speaker 2: years I've been in what's you've never been a.
Speaker 1: Memory of union? I have no idea. If I'm gonna guess,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fuck it up. Just tell us no.
Speaker 2: But that's why I want you to guess, because you
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, when did you start receiving your pension?
Speaker 2: Well? I took it a couple of years ago because
Speaker 2: I figured, well I better get it before there's nothing. Okay,
Speaker 2: But here's the deal. Nobody joins the union anymore, so
Speaker 2: you can't replenish the fun for the old guys. So
Speaker 2: when the no new guys join, where's the money coming
Speaker 2: in to pay the pensions? For life? The worst medical
Speaker 2: So I thank god I got after sag is I
Speaker 2: sing and stuff. But even that's going They're gonna throw
Speaker 2: me off of that in October, even though I've been
Speaker 2: on it for life. But that's the whole other story.
Speaker 2: But the musicians, I mean, you think they would have
Speaker 2: gone to bat for us, right, No, they didn't. So
Speaker 2: I get one thousand dollars a month taxable at fifty
Speaker 2: three percent in California. I wouldn't even be able to
Speaker 2: afford to live into the freeway for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me just ask you. Somebody calls you up
Speaker 1: to play on a track, do you charge them? And
Speaker 1: how much?
Speaker 2: These days two things happen. First of all, I don't
Speaker 2: do it much anymore. I played on a lot of
Speaker 2: people's stuff for free, just saying yeah, man, I love that.
Speaker 2: That's great. You know, there's a great guitar player named
Speaker 2: Mark Letterry. He's part of the whole Snarky Puppy group
Speaker 2: of musicis young musicians that are absolutely phenomenal musicians, incredible.
Speaker 2: He's a badass guitar player, a sweet guy. And he
Speaker 2: just found me and said, hey, man, would you play
Speaker 2: on my record? How much did it cost to play
Speaker 2: on my record? I said, Mark, I go, what do
Speaker 2: you need me for? Number?
Speaker 1: One?
Speaker 2: Two? If you really want me to do this, I'll
Speaker 2: do it for nothing. I said. I'll come up to
Speaker 2: my son's place where I'm sitting right and I'll throw
Speaker 2: I'll throw something on there. If you like it, keep
Speaker 2: it if you don't fuck it. Now that was the choice.
Speaker 2: Now somebody that comes and says, I want to pay
Speaker 2: you a million dollars to play on my session being facetious,
Speaker 2: but you know what I mean, like a lot of money.
Speaker 2: You got my attention, maybe, but if I don't tag
Speaker 2: the music, I don't want to do it, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I I don't want to take somebody's money
Speaker 2: just to be a whore, you know, and take make
Speaker 2: them feel bad because I got it done in twenty
Speaker 2: minutes and they spend all this money, you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'd rather be enthusiastic about it and do it as
Speaker 2: a favor. And we do this a lot amongst ourselves
Speaker 2: with the barter system, Like I paid all the guys
Speaker 2: money throw double scale at least legitimate money to play
Speaker 2: on my record. Other people I go like, I'll do
Speaker 2: yours if you do my. And we do a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff like that, you know what I mean, because
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of doing it anymore, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can make a little bit, but you
Speaker 2: know I have a big nut. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: a lot of families, divorces and four children, well two
Speaker 2: of them are married, they don't need me anymore. But
Speaker 2: I got two kids that I still got to put
Speaker 2: through school and college, and you know, buy cars and
Speaker 2: nurture them until they're adults and they can take care
Speaker 2: of themselves. So I mean, I gotta let you know.
Speaker 2: Being a session player was like the greatest times of
Speaker 2: my life. But it's time to move out of the way.
Speaker 2: I stopped doing it. When I start feeling like I
Speaker 2: better get out before I don't they stop calling me.
Speaker 2: I'd rather go out on top and just I had
Speaker 2: the good fortune of being able to start a solo
Speaker 2: career on the side and do some other weird side
Speaker 2: projects and still have the band to make a living.
Speaker 2: I was told by Carlton Graydon Ritt and all the guys,
Speaker 2: you got ten twelve years, then you got to get
Speaker 2: out make room for somebody else. When you're a recording musician,
Speaker 2: when you're a TV film guy, once you get that gig,
Speaker 2: you never leave town. You stay there until you die,
Speaker 2: and you get the great pet and six bigger pensions
Speaker 2: and all that stuff if you're a recording guy. For
Speaker 2: some reason, we got fucked on the deal. I don't
Speaker 2: know who made that deal, but it's a drag for
Speaker 2: all the musicians like myself who maybe don't have a
Speaker 2: band to carry on the rest of their life and
Speaker 2: make a living. And you know, I feel like you're
Speaker 2: a valuable member of the musical society.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in high school, you go out on
Speaker 1: the what's it like going out on the road. You
Speaker 1: can't go to a bar, but that doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: can't drink, you can't smoke, you can't get laid. What's
Speaker 1: it like being nineteen going on the road.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun because i it sneak
Speaker 2: bears out to us and stuff, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, we were, but we weren't drunks at that point.
Speaker 2: We were just kids having a good time. When it
Speaker 2: all went crazy, and it did like the late you know,
Speaker 2: anybody that lived through this, you know, nineteen seventy five
Speaker 2: to nineteen ninety five, knows what I'm talking about. I
Speaker 2: mean everybody. You know, everybody went out of there and
Speaker 2: got a little bit out of their minds. You know,
Speaker 2: all the drugs, the booth and the hanging and the craziness.
Speaker 2: You know, you read about all this stuff when you're
Speaker 2: a kid. Oh, when I'm a rock star, I get
Speaker 2: to do this and throw TVs out the window and
Speaker 2: be an asshole. It's not really how you want to
Speaker 2: live your life, you know what I mean? And as
Speaker 2: an older guy, I mean, yeah, we had fun, but
Speaker 2: we took the gigs very serious after hours, whatever and whatever.
Speaker 2: But like you know, there was all these rumors about
Speaker 2: all the drugs, everything that we were supposed to be doing. Man,
Speaker 2: come on, man, to have your own band do that
Speaker 2: and then play on everybody else's records doing twenty some
Speaker 2: odd sessions a week. You can't be that fucked up man.
Speaker 2: If you are, then you don't get called back, so
Speaker 2: you have a very short career, or you get big
Speaker 2: time and outprice yourself. Oh I need X amount of
Speaker 2: dollars to do the session. People, you might be able
Speaker 2: to get away with that for a minute, but it's
Speaker 2: like anybody else when they fall down the ladder, there's
Speaker 2: nobody there to catch you. They just move out of
Speaker 2: the way and watch it splat. You know. So I
Speaker 2: was given a lot of great tips and rules to
Speaker 2: live by by my older peers. Do this, don't do that,
Speaker 2: you know, shut up, don't be like that. And I listened,
Speaker 2: you know, but now I you know, we do the shows.
Speaker 2: I you know, I haven't had a drink in almost
Speaker 2: fourteen years. I don't do drugs. I don't do you know.
Speaker 2: I'm That's not how I live. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I the booze got to me. That was my poison.
Speaker 2: I would say. In the two thousands was when I
Speaker 2: got out of control and I almost ruined everything. I did,
Speaker 2: ruin a lot of things. Mostly I hurt myself and
Speaker 2: my reputation because I became a drunk and it was
Speaker 2: pitiful and I'm really ashamed of that and I'm really
Speaker 2: sorry about it. But I hit the wall and that
Speaker 2: was it, and I just I threw away the cigarettes
Speaker 2: and the booze and didn't look back. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you decide to stop? And how did
Speaker 1: you literally stop?
Speaker 2: A man? I knew I was swirling the bowl. Man,
Speaker 2: I knew I felt like all the time, and I
Speaker 2: was just trying to chase that away by doing more.
Speaker 2: And one day I was right at the end of
Speaker 2: my last marriage. I was so beat down from it.
Speaker 2: I was out all night drinking and being an idiot,
Speaker 2: and I was like ten in the morning, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I feel so bad. I started drinking in the morning
Speaker 2: to make the pain go, and I couldn't look at
Speaker 2: myself in the mirror when I was shaving. I'd be like,
Speaker 2: I'd look away. Go. I know I looked bad. I
Speaker 2: felt bad. I wasn't playing well. I hated myself. My
Speaker 2: life was falling apart, and I had a little girl
Speaker 2: that had just come into the world who's now going
Speaker 2: to be sixteen. But at that time, I started going,
Speaker 2: this is not good, man, I can't do this, and
Speaker 2: people were worried about me, and I was blowing it.
Speaker 2: To be quite honest with you, I've been given this
Speaker 2: incredible gift of a career. And you know, alcoholism runs
Speaker 2: my family, man. My mother died from it. You know
Speaker 2: other members of my family have been crippled by it
Speaker 2: and they've either died or come out of it. And
Speaker 2: I didn't want to be a casualty. I figured I'd
Speaker 2: better do this and I felt so bad and I was.
Speaker 2: It's one of those days. It was like worst day ever.
Speaker 2: You know, you wake up in the morning, you feel
Speaker 2: like an elephant shit in your mouth and sucked your
Speaker 2: It sucked all your soul out, and you I walked
Speaker 2: out to the outside garage and I opened up the
Speaker 2: freezer and there was a bottle of vodka in the freezer,
Speaker 2: you know, And I just grabbed it and I started
Speaker 2: chugging it like it was water. And it was ten
Speaker 2: in the morning, and my then next my then wife
Speaker 2: walked out saw me. She and I turned around. She's
Speaker 2: caught me, she goes, So it's come to this now, huh.
Speaker 2: And I suck I and I hated her for telling
Speaker 2: me the truth. And I said, that's it, man, I'm
Speaker 2: fucking done. I am done. I'm the cigarettes. The booze
Speaker 2: does she yeah, yeah, you quit before for a month,
Speaker 2: you'll be back, I go, not this time. And I
Speaker 2: never did, never went back, never touched a booze again.
Speaker 2: I did pitifully pick up cigarettes again for a minute
Speaker 2: during the pandemic and I was feeling all sorry for
Speaker 2: myself and fucked up on antidepressants, and I started and
Speaker 2: I quit. I'm not I haven't smoked. I'm not smoking anymore.
Speaker 2: But for a minute there, that's a dangerous one. Smoking
Speaker 2: cigarettes is awful. It's the most awful thing. And I
Speaker 2: didn't drink, you know, I mean, that's the one thing
Speaker 2: I didn't crack there and I didn't, you know. But
Speaker 2: you know, I've done some very shameful things in my life. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm not a perfect guy. I'm not trying to put
Speaker 2: myself out there as be this saint when I'm not.
Speaker 2: But I tried to learn from my mistakes.
Speaker 1: So did you go to rehab? Do you go to AA?
Speaker 1: Or you just did it all yourselves top one day?
Speaker 2: That was it? Well, no, I didn't go at that point.
Speaker 2: I had never gone to an AA meeting. I just stopped.
Speaker 2: But apparently, you know, there was anger still left inside
Speaker 2: of me, which I didn't believe when people told, oh, man,
Speaker 2: you know you don't drink anymore. Man, but you're, uh,
Speaker 2: you're still mad at everybody, mad at the world, you know.
Speaker 2: And I had a chip on my shoulder from carrying
Speaker 2: around all the negative vibe that was coming on. I
Speaker 2: took it as a personal somebody dogged the band or
Speaker 2: somebody that I took it personally, which I shouldn't know. Now,
Speaker 2: I laugh, I go, okay, well change the channel, you know.
Speaker 2: But you know, for a while there I was trying
Speaker 2: to drink all that pain and all this other weird
Speaker 2: shit that happened from my childhood, which I don't want
Speaker 2: to get into.
Speaker 1: Waitweit do? Wait wait, give us a hint. What do
Speaker 1: you tell you portrayed a relatively pleasant childhood? What mom
Speaker 1: my child was actually wrong?
Speaker 2: Oh? I've been bullied school. When I was in grammar school,
Speaker 2: it was really rough taking the bus every day when
Speaker 2: I was still single digits before I found my I mean,
Speaker 2: the guitar actually saved my life in school, because I
Speaker 2: was when I played at the fifth grade graduation in
Speaker 2: the auditorium and we could play. I was in a band.
Speaker 2: We could play and the girls screamed for us and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And prior to that, every day was
Speaker 2: somebody was torturing me, you know. And because I was
Speaker 2: little and I was terrible in sports. I weighed about,
Speaker 2: you know, ten pounds wet, I was painfully shy, if
Speaker 2: you can imagine. But okay, no, but I was man,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was afraid of everybody, and everybody saw
Speaker 2: my weakness and picked at it. In an era when
Speaker 2: I was like I don't want to get on the
Speaker 2: school bus, seemed like, you know, and my parents, sare
Speaker 2: you getting on the school bus? You know? You got
Speaker 2: My father's like tough it out. Man, like when you
Speaker 2: used to get the old I'll see you at the
Speaker 2: flagpole at three o'clock. I'm going to kick your ass.
Speaker 2: You had to show up. And I was an easy
Speaker 2: beat down, like when I remember playing dodgeball in school
Speaker 2: with the big red rubber ball. You're not supposed to
Speaker 2: throw it at the guy's head. He was always hit
Speaker 2: my face smack on full blast, you know, and I
Speaker 2: you know it. I know it sounds like, oh, poor
Speaker 2: beautiful Luca there blah blah blah, but humiliating, you know.
Speaker 2: And then when I was you know, it's just kids
Speaker 2: that can be so cruel, and i'd see, I tell
Speaker 2: my old man, it's like, I mean, we got to
Speaker 2: go show up with the flag boys, like you got
Speaker 2: to show up. My dad was a marine. You don't
Speaker 2: puss out, you know. And you know, yeah, it made me.
Speaker 2: It gave me an edge, which I maybe he's still
Speaker 2: in there somewhere. It comes out every now and then
Speaker 2: something I'm not very proud of. You know. It was
Speaker 2: more like fight or flight whatever. I don't know what that.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm trying to say here, but
Speaker 2: I mean, emotionally speaking, I had it, and there was
Speaker 2: weird shit in my family and stuff, you know, I
Speaker 2: want to dig up everybody's dirty laundry. But yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: There were as much great as there was, there was
Speaker 2: equally some weird stuff. You know. Every family has it, man,
Speaker 2: you know, and I you know, I feel comfortable in
Speaker 2: my own skin for the first time in my life
Speaker 2: these last two years coming out of the pandemic, and
Speaker 2: I really learned to really appreciate what I had and
Speaker 2: who I had, and the people around me, and most
Speaker 2: of all my kids, you know, and the people that
Speaker 2: I loved to hang out with. Because the last incarnation
Speaker 2: of the band ended on my ironically my birthday, October
Speaker 2: twenty first, twenty nineteen. I walked away from that going,
Speaker 2: there's some people here that I'm never going to speak
Speaker 2: to again ever in my life. And I said maybe, well,
Speaker 2: I said, I got to get away from this, and
Speaker 2: then the pen and said, I got I want to
Speaker 2: put together another version. I talked to the page. She said,
Speaker 2: I still want to keep doing this, but there's some
Speaker 2: guys that just don't want to be here and hate
Speaker 2: my guts and they're going to do this anymore. So
Speaker 2: we were going to do all this and then the
Speaker 2: pandemic hit and then I was like all dressed up
Speaker 2: and nowhere to go. And that started me the depression
Speaker 2: and all the other weird stuff. I was really happy
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: Tell me about going to the hospital.
Speaker 2: I had a nervous breakdown on this and it was
Speaker 2: really scary. I don't know how deep I want to
Speaker 2: get into this, because it's they're they're there. There's humiliating
Speaker 2: really that I let myself go. But I had a
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown thanks to the fucking to overdoing it with
Speaker 2: the anti depressed it stuff. I was in there with
Speaker 2: like psycho murders and home was crying me. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I was so not in the right place at the
Speaker 2: right time. But I look at it this as God
Speaker 2: smacked my ass down. I said, Okay, bud, asshole, one
Speaker 2: more try. I had actually semi near death experience, you know,
Speaker 2: like I saw the light the tunnel and the light
Speaker 2: of God and all these things, and I thought I
Speaker 2: was dead. I really, I mean I went out. I
Speaker 2: don't know how out I was, but when I came to,
Speaker 2: I was in a hospital with a guy sitting at
Speaker 2: the end of my bed with a gun. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm like, where am I said, I'm in Hell. I
Speaker 2: wake up and I looked behind me. I'm in bed thirteen,
Speaker 2: and I go, I'm this it. I'm in Hell. I
Speaker 2: died and went to Hell. I am an asshole. I'm
Speaker 2: not worthy of anybody's love or anything. I'm a piece
Speaker 2: of shit. And I kept going, I gotta take a
Speaker 2: piss can, I gotta take a I go, I'm in Hell,
Speaker 2: aren't I? He goes, you know, in Hell? I go,
Speaker 2: this is hell? Look around me, this is There's nobody
Speaker 2: here but you and me in this we're green room
Speaker 2: and I'm thirteen. I'm like coming, How did I get here?
Speaker 2: What happened to me? And it all started to come
Speaker 2: back together, and you know, and so they threw me
Speaker 2: in this joint with these insane people. There was a
Speaker 2: couple of people in there that were nice to me,
Speaker 2: but the guy, the main guy, this Sigmund Freud, wanna
Speaker 2: be dude. And he'd be asking me things like looking
Speaker 2: at me, like trying to get me to confess the
Speaker 2: sins I didn't have, you know, you know, and it
Speaker 2: was and it was just I realized I gotta play
Speaker 2: this guy to get out. And he didn't want to.
Speaker 2: He thought it got weird when he started asking me
Speaker 2: how much money I made? The Yeah, I realized, why
Speaker 2: is he asking how much money you made? Because he's
Speaker 2: looking at me like, going, you don't he knew I
Speaker 2: didn't belong in this joint. He's trying to figure me
Speaker 2: out and googled me or whatever. He said, Okay, let's
Speaker 2: see what the cats all about. When I he threw
Speaker 2: out a number at me, and I laughed at him.
Speaker 2: I said, I went like this, No, it's more than that.
Speaker 2: That's a finger pointing up for the non visual. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I didn't want to say.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I say, you know, he threw out
Speaker 2: a small figure. I said, I said, I do a
Speaker 2: little better than that, and I pointed up. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to say because I knew what he was trying
Speaker 2: to get out him. He said how much more money
Speaker 2: than I make than he did? And then he turned
Speaker 2: sour on me and he wasn't going to let me
Speaker 2: out like I was supposed to be three days out. Okay,
Speaker 2: that scared the fuck out of me, and I was
Speaker 2: really upset. But anyway, the only way for me to
Speaker 2: get out was to go to a rehab. So I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not addicted to anything, but I'll go just to
Speaker 2: get out of here. So I said, give me a
Speaker 2: I told my son. I was like he had he's
Speaker 2: a pay phone. It was like scariest hell in there, man.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was guys just being in prison. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm going to belonging here? What the fuck? And scared
Speaker 2: the holy living shit out of me. I mean, more
Speaker 2: than anything in my whole life. And I've seen some
Speaker 2: pretty frightening stuff in my life. That was the one.
Speaker 2: And so I checked myself. I mean, I said, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to this place in Malibu. Make
Speaker 2: sure it's a nice place. Cost me a fortune, but
Speaker 2: I didn't give a shit. I just wanted to get out,
Speaker 2: and I figure, you know what, this would be good
Speaker 2: for me. I didn't do it when I stopped drinking,
Speaker 2: and I didn't drink, but I figured, okay, in order
Speaker 2: for me to get out, I'll take a month and
Speaker 2: I'll go and I'll do everything they tell me to do,
Speaker 2: and I'll still be by the ocean. I could take
Speaker 2: a walk by the ocean and you know, just kind
Speaker 2: of clear my head. And I met some really nice people.
Speaker 2: In there, and there's some other people. I'm going like,
Speaker 2: what am I doing in here? Man, like you know,
Speaker 2: and they're all like, I'm not allowed to say anything.
Speaker 2: There are some kids, you know, young people, and that
Speaker 2: I really felt or there was struggling really hard. And
Speaker 2: I met a couple of nice people that you know,
Speaker 2: and I went to all the classes and went to
Speaker 2: the meetings on the beach and I did it for
Speaker 2: a while. And you know, first thing I did was
Speaker 2: called ringo when I got out and gone, dude, I
Speaker 2: really fucked up. And you know, his friendship is everything
Speaker 2: to me. You know, he's a very close brother to me.
Speaker 2: And and he talked me down and said, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. I confessed my sins and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, but I didn't fall off the wagon like
Speaker 2: other people do with something that was terribly addicting. Or
Speaker 2: I didn't start drinking or starting blow or do anything stupid.
Speaker 2: But I did do stupid shit with the antidepressants that
Speaker 2: I was taking, you know, and which were okay by
Speaker 2: my now former doctor.
Speaker 1: What were the stupid things you were doing? Just taking
Speaker 1: too much ketamine? So you were going to a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: who was prescribing ketamine.
Speaker 2: Well my doctor said it was okay, yeah, and you
Speaker 2: get the ship.
Speaker 1: Well, was kend of forget when you had this bad experience?
Speaker 1: Was keny that was that was working for you before?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it would take you to another place,
Speaker 2: but you're only supposed to take a little bit of it.
Speaker 2: But I was going, well, what happens if you take
Speaker 2: a little bit more? And then it got darker and
Speaker 2: I was hiding it and it was really a shameful
Speaker 2: period of time for me. And then it just I
Speaker 2: did too much and went out. And that's when I
Speaker 2: have no recollection of what really would happened, other than
Speaker 2: I woke up in a hospital going what the fuck
Speaker 2: happened to me? And where is everybody? I want to
Speaker 2: leave here, but they wouldn't let me leave. It was scary.
Speaker 2: It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me, Bob.
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding you, man. It really put everything into
Speaker 2: perspective in my whole life. And I wanted to escape
Speaker 2: so bad. I didn't want to feel anything. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to deal with anything. And this, you know, a
Speaker 2: little bit, okay, last for a half hour and then whatever.
Speaker 2: But I just once I I realized it made me
Speaker 2: feel better. I just kept taking it. It's not illegal,
Speaker 2: it's not addicting, but it'll fuck you up if you
Speaker 2: do too much of it, like anything else.
Speaker 1: So did you would you learn in rehab, if anything.
Speaker 2: How lucky I really am, and how much my family
Speaker 2: meant to me, and how much my career meant to me,
Speaker 2: and how I almost lost it all because of feeling
Speaker 2: sorry for myself, like everybody else in the world wasn't
Speaker 2: fucked over, and like I was the only one. I mean,
Speaker 2: that was an incredibly selfish move on my part. I
Speaker 2: realized that I almost ruined everything, and I started from
Speaker 2: ground zero again. I was broken down to the nub,
Speaker 2: and I was very active and all the you know,
Speaker 2: I got a lot out of it, you know, I
Speaker 2: put You know, you get as much as you put
Speaker 2: into it, you know what I mean. But it was
Speaker 2: the scariest thing that ever happened to me. And I'm
Speaker 2: not proud of it. I mean, I don't really talk
Speaker 2: about it. I mean, you know, now everybody's gonna know
Speaker 2: about it and all that shit, but whatever, I don't care.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had some mistakes in my life, but
Speaker 2: I'm not the only one. It was really surprising that
Speaker 2: at my age I would have let myself do that again.
Speaker 2: But I had. I kept going, are we coming back?
Speaker 2: Is it coming back? No, man, I don't know when
Speaker 2: it's coming back. And my depression led me down the
Speaker 2: road and I told my doctor, this is what's up.
Speaker 2: He goes, well, that's interesting, he goes, that might work
Speaker 2: for you. Well, once you get a green light from
Speaker 2: a doctor to a guy like me, forget about it.
Speaker 2: So the first thing I did was abuse it like
Speaker 2: a drunk an addict, would you know? So I just
Speaker 2: changed poison. So I fucked myself up. But I still,
Speaker 2: you know, think about AA. I mean, I would go
Speaker 2: every day if I needed it, but you know, and
Speaker 2: and I went for a while. But I have a
Speaker 2: The guy that I met in there, who is now
Speaker 2: my psychiatrist, is an addiction expert, is now my sponsor
Speaker 2: as well, in the sense of I talked to him
Speaker 2: three times a week and sometimes more, sometimes a little less.
Speaker 2: But I mean he's helped me through this and he
Speaker 2: knows everything that I'm doing everything, and I can get
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff off my shoulder that I didn't
Speaker 2: want to say in front of a group of people
Speaker 2: that know me. There's nothing anonymous about alcoholics anonymous, especially
Speaker 2: if you live in Hollywood, you know, I mean, the
Speaker 2: would be guys at an arm wrestle me on that. Hey,
Speaker 2: it stays in the brotherhood and all that. But once
Speaker 2: you say something that you wish nobody ever knew in
Speaker 2: your whole life, and everybody knows about it, even if
Speaker 2: they swear not to tell, they still know when they
Speaker 2: look at you. And there's some things that I just
Speaker 2: didn't want anybody to know about, not you, not anybody.
Speaker 1: So the thirty days are up. What happens after they
Speaker 1: let you out?
Speaker 2: I went home and started my life over again.
Speaker 1: Well that's got to be hard after being you know,
Speaker 1: in a controlled environment for thirty days, suddenly be alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a little weird. But my older kids
Speaker 2: came to my rescue and they fixed up the house
Speaker 2: for me and kind of you know, they were really supportive.
Speaker 2: You know, all my kids were. You know, my youngest
Speaker 2: son's autistic, so he didn't understand why. He's just figured
Speaker 2: I went on the road, and you know, but the
Speaker 2: rest of my kids were very supportive of me, particularly
Speaker 2: my older children. They really came to my rescue and
Speaker 2: cleaned out all the people that were around that shouldn't
Speaker 2: be around anymore. And and it was like an incredibly
Speaker 2: painful thing for me to realize how badly I fucked
Speaker 2: up and I almost died, and I let everybody down.
Speaker 2: I've humiliated myself. Now where do I go? So I
Speaker 2: own it? You know, I mean, I mean that's part
Speaker 2: of the program. I mean, just to own your sins.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's humiliating to talk about, but you
Speaker 2: know what, man, maybe it'll help somebody go, wow, you
Speaker 2: know how long go?
Speaker 1: Did this all happen?
Speaker 2: A few years ago? A couple of years ago? Actually,
Speaker 2: if you want to get exact about it, because all
Speaker 2: the AA guys like to get exact. August twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: two years ago. So when it comes up this August,
Speaker 2: it'll be two years since the disaster.
Speaker 1: So how long did it take you to normalize, to
Speaker 1: feel back on your feet, to feel like you were?
Speaker 2: I felt normal. I mean there were Like I said,
Speaker 2: there's no come down. I wasn't. There's not an addictive
Speaker 2: drugs there was. I didn't have any physical.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about coming down from drugs. I've had
Speaker 1: my own experience here and you're in the environment, then
Speaker 1: you go home and look at the four walls.
Speaker 2: I was really happy to be there with my dog
Speaker 2: and like you know, everybody ever, I mean, I you know,
Speaker 2: my kids forgave me. They understood that I went left field.
Speaker 2: You know, it hurt them to watch their old man
Speaker 2: like that. I scared my youngest daughter. I was just
Speaker 2: she was like, what the fuck is wrong with dad?
Speaker 2: You know, because I was just spaced out and I
Speaker 2: didn't realize what it looked like to look at me.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, when you're inside of yourself,
Speaker 2: you think I'm cool, every nobody's everything's all right. But
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I was fucking dying inside. And this little
Speaker 2: band aid that I would put on with this fucking
Speaker 2: shit blinded me to the reality of my situation. And
Speaker 2: it's my fault. I can't point the finger at anybody.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's my fault. And that's the end of it,
Speaker 2: you know. And I made a mistake and I fixed it,
Speaker 2: and I still believe. I believe in the AA program.
Speaker 2: I think it's a fantastic thing. Everybody needs a different
Speaker 2: version of it, you know what I mean. There's a
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred different kinds of AA meetings in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and different people in their own little clicks
Speaker 2: and stuff. I just preferred to get my treatment privately,
Speaker 2: and it's worked for me very very well, and I've
Speaker 2: got a lot of stuff out that's made me a
Speaker 2: much better person. The hardest part is forgiving myself. Some
Speaker 2: people are gonna hear this a guy. I knew that
Speaker 2: motherfucker man, look at that loser. I knew. You know,
Speaker 2: they're going to get off on hearing this, you know,
Speaker 2: and because they don't like me for whatever reason, or
Speaker 2: they just get off on other people's pain, having any
Speaker 2: fame whatsoever, even at a low level like myself. You know,
Speaker 2: people you know, like they like to take you down.
Speaker 2: That's why I got off all social media. I don't
Speaker 2: I don't look read the comments anymore. I don't do
Speaker 2: that because it was like cutting myself. There's always somebody
Speaker 2: who's gonna you know, I don't need to read I'm great.
Speaker 2: I don't need to read I suck. I don't need that.
Speaker 2: I try to do what I be the best me
Speaker 2: I can be, Try to forgive myself, be a better father,
Speaker 2: be a better friend. Maybe someday I'll meet a girl
Speaker 2: that makes sense for me, but you know, at this point,
Speaker 2: I'm better off alone. You know, I'm working a lot,
Speaker 2: work in my and my family is all I care
Speaker 2: about at this point. You know.
Speaker 1: So you talk about when you were married to your
Speaker 1: second wife, stopping drinking and having this anger is the
Speaker 1: anger now taking care of.
Speaker 2: As much as it can be. I come from a
Speaker 2: long line of angry men, my grandfather, my father, and
Speaker 2: it lessens every generation. My son travels, he's not he's
Speaker 2: not angry, he's you know, he can get angry. And
Speaker 2: sometimes I go, oh, I see that guy. I know
Speaker 2: where that comes from. But they all much. My oldest'll
Speaker 2: make do impressions of me, Matt, which kind of makes
Speaker 2: me laugh. I go, come on, I don't really look
Speaker 2: like that. Oh yes, you do nothing. You know. My
Speaker 2: kids are you know, gonna be thirty six and thirty
Speaker 2: eight next month. They're both May babies or this month,
Speaker 2: so I mean, you know, they've seen the whole ride,
Speaker 2: and I'm very tight with them. You know, my old
Speaker 2: my oldest daughter went through her own alcohol issue, which
Speaker 2: she's been clean for a long time now, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's you don't go into this trying to be an asshole,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It's always starts out as
Speaker 2: fun and some people can stay in that zone. Normal
Speaker 2: people have a couple of drinks, spoke a joint, whatever,
Speaker 2: you know. I I mean count weed. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: a whole other thing. But you know, when you start
Speaker 2: playing around with drugs that alter your mind or booze
Speaker 2: that alters your everything, it never ends well if you
Speaker 2: overdo it. You know.
Speaker 1: So you have four kids, Two are still in the home,
Speaker 1: two are out. Are the two are out? Do you
Speaker 1: support them at all? Are they off the payroll?
Speaker 2: Well, they're off the payroll. I support them wholeheartedly as
Speaker 2: a father, But I don't. I'm not writing any chext anybody. Then,
Speaker 2: both of my children married really well wonderful people that
Speaker 2: My oldest daughter's husband is a Saint Tony. He's a
Speaker 2: beautiful guy. They're trying to have a baby right now,
Speaker 2: which is great because I want grandpa something I want
Speaker 2: on the list. You know, most of my friends have grandkids.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I want one of those. And my oldest
Speaker 2: son just got married. He married Jonathan Cane's daughter from Journey,
Speaker 2: who is a wonderful cat.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't get into anybody's drama. That's their own.
Speaker 2: I've lived through my own. I might when we did
Speaker 2: the tour with these guys, it's like, I love you both,
Speaker 2: I please don't don I want to be involved. I
Speaker 2: I've been through this. I don't know. I don't want
Speaker 2: to be in it anymore. So we had a great time.
Speaker 2: It was great. But she's a wonderful daughter in law.
Speaker 2: She's fantastic, beautiful, smart, funny, and they live in a
Speaker 2: beautiful pad. You know, they're my kids do producing records
Speaker 2: and writing songs for people. And he's done very well
Speaker 2: in a time when it's almost impossible to do well
Speaker 2: in the music business as a young artist coming up.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So how'd you meet Ringo?
Speaker 2: Oh god, do I love that guy. He's been such
Speaker 2: a great friend to me and we went an honor
Speaker 2: to even say that out loud. I met him because
Speaker 2: I knew he had the all stars right, and there
Speaker 2: was I go, I want I want to be in
Speaker 2: that band more. I think I'm the right guy for
Speaker 2: this band. I think I could do. And my dear
Speaker 2: friend Greg Bissinette, who plays double dramas with Ringo. He
Speaker 2: recommended me, and he brought Dave Hart, who's the agent
Speaker 2: and producer of the shows. He finds the guys. Ringo
Speaker 2: used to change out the band every year and a half,
Speaker 2: you know, so it was coming time to change the band.
Speaker 2: They were looking for new players, and I and Greg
Speaker 2: brought him to a show we were doing Tota was
Speaker 2: doing in Paris, and so he saw the show and
Speaker 2: saw me, and it was sold out arena and we
Speaker 2: did great, and he's like, yeah, that guy's okay, So
Speaker 2: he ran in. Ringo's the bottom line, it's always up
Speaker 2: to him, you know, who he wants in the band
Speaker 2: and what music he wants to play or whatever. And
Speaker 2: the only thing I did was call up my buddy
Speaker 2: Jim Keltner and go Celtner put in a good word
Speaker 2: for me. Man, I really want to do this gig
Speaker 2: because him and Ringo are tight. And obviously there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people that have been in the band,
Speaker 2: were friends of mine or are still friends of mine.
Speaker 2: Why'd you want to do it so badly because it's Ringo? Man?
Speaker 2: I thought it'd be a great asset to the band.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had got a chance to work with
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney on the first time during the Thriller record
Speaker 2: with Michael Jackson, and then we did the film and
Speaker 2: he hired me and Jeff Bacar to go do the
Speaker 2: film in London, so we got to hang out with him,
Speaker 2: George Martin and Jeff Emerck for two weeks, which was awesome,
Speaker 2: beyond austome. And I met Dave Gilmour when I was
Speaker 2: there because he wanted Jeff to play, So, I mean,
Speaker 2: getting to meet all my heroes is pretty cool. And
Speaker 2: then I didn't see Paul for a while, and then
Speaker 2: I met George in a club George Harrison at the
Speaker 2: right three days before after you know, it was the
Speaker 2: year Jeff passed away in nineteen ninety two, and we
Speaker 2: were doing a benefit tribute concert room at the Amphitheater
Speaker 2: and everybody came out to this. Eddie van Halen joined up,
Speaker 2: Donald Fagan came out this before Steely got back together again,
Speaker 2: and Boz came out. Michael McDonald was there, James Newton
Speaker 2: Howard was there, all the guys that have played in
Speaker 2: the band, you know, Lenny Castro, all of our brothers
Speaker 2: came out and played. And then I had met George
Speaker 2: a couple of days before. Just wanted to say, Hi,
Speaker 2: you're the reason why I play. I was, I was humble,
Speaker 2: and I'll and he said, no, sit down, stay for
Speaker 2: a while.
Speaker 1: You know who you were?
Speaker 2: Yeah, surprisingly enough, you know, because I I at that point.
Speaker 2: You know, it was nineteen ninety two. You know, he
Speaker 2: had heard my name through musual friends, but we never met.
Speaker 2: And I said, hey, I'd worked with Paul. He says,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he goes and I just started
Speaker 2: making him laugh because a lot of people will say
Speaker 2: I love the solo you played on Taxman. It wasn't him,
Speaker 2: it was Paul. You know, I knew in the right
Speaker 2: songs and I knew. I said, hey, man, you're the
Speaker 2: reason why I played the guitar. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: say I love you and thank you very much. I'm
Speaker 2: going to leave you alone.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He said, no, sit down for a minute. So we start.
Speaker 2: I was drinking still then, so I was my happy,
Speaker 2: jovial self at that point. I think I amused him
Speaker 2: to a certain degree. And we had a little few
Speaker 2: laughs and and I was I was leaving. I said,
Speaker 2: you know, we're doing this benefit from our I told
Speaker 2: him about losing Jeff and stuff, and obviously he knew
Speaker 2: something about loss at that point. Uh, losing a band member, brother,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean to relate to that. He doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be famous to relate to that. There's a
Speaker 2: brotherhood that once you joined a band, you just you
Speaker 2: either understand or you don't. Anyway, I said, we're playing
Speaker 2: like wy don't you combine? You know, combined and hang,
Speaker 2: I got the last song we're doing is Little Help
Speaker 2: of my Friends, and he laughed. He goes said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I maybe I'll show up, and I said, I'll
Speaker 2: leave a couple of tickets for you just in case,
Speaker 2: but I know you're not gonna come. So we end
Speaker 2: up there and we're rehearsing. David Crosby was there. I mean,
Speaker 2: like I said, I'm forgetting people that I And we're
Speaker 2: rehearsing the end bit and all of a sudden, somebody goes, hey,
Speaker 2: somebody's here to see I said, not now, man, I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm trying to figure. I'm sitting at the piano.
Speaker 2: We're all sitting around, throwing the parts around. He goes, no,
Speaker 2: this guy's from Liverpool. I go, you're shitting me. I
Speaker 2: turned around. There's George at the MP Theater, the old Amphitheater,
Speaker 2: and sitting there smiling at me. He goes, he goes,
Speaker 2: he didn't think I was going to show up, did you?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I didn't, And I go, do you want to play
Speaker 2: on this? And he goes and he goes in. He
Speaker 2: was what I said, little help of my friends, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden I realized we're doing the Joe
Speaker 2: Cocker version, you know. So we start playing around and
Speaker 2: he's got my old less ball in this in his hands,
Speaker 2: playing it, and he goes, well, that's not the way
Speaker 2: me and the last I said. I know, I said,
Speaker 2: I know, I know, this is terrible, and but he
Speaker 2: was great and he came out and played. You know
Speaker 2: that there's photos of me, him and Eddie Van Hale
Speaker 2: and I mean George. He took it a little bit
Speaker 2: of a shine to me. And we started hanging out.
Speaker 2: Every time he'd come into LA he would, we'd come on,
Speaker 2: have dinner and stuff, you know, and he I'd see
Speaker 2: him all the time. I've got lots of George stories,
Speaker 2: but that would take a whole other hour. But long
Speaker 2: story short, I stayed in touch with him and then
Speaker 2: when that idiot stabbed him at his house. He little
Speaker 2: lost touch with everybody. I'd hear like Kelder would say,
Speaker 2: George said to say, Hi, he's he's just hiding out
Speaker 2: at the house, man, you know, like, and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: I understand, you know, okay, edit we lose George. I
Speaker 2: mean try. I mean I was crushed, you know. And
Speaker 2: the whole Ringo thing started coming up, and that started
Speaker 2: became like, I really want to do this gig, you know,
Speaker 2: I really want to meet Ringo and I want him
Speaker 2: to like me, and I want to do this gig,
Speaker 2: and I want to do. My friend Richard Page and
Speaker 2: all these great artists that were playing with him at
Speaker 2: the time put a good word in for me, and
Speaker 2: then Kelder put a good When I finally talked to me,
Speaker 2: he goes, because you had everybody in the world calling
Speaker 2: me telling you to hire you know, I'm doing a
Speaker 2: terrible impression. And the first and I got the gig,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't allowed to talk about it for like
Speaker 2: three or four months. I couldn't tell anybody because the
Speaker 2: other band was ending. He didn't want it to get
Speaker 2: out that, you know, there was going to be changes, man,
Speaker 2: So I had to sit on that, and when I
Speaker 2: found out it was all going, I mean, I was
Speaker 2: so excited, thrilled to be in the band, you know,
Speaker 2: and I figured, wow, this is I told the guys been, look,
Speaker 2: I really want to do this band. Give me a
Speaker 2: couple of months off so I can do this. And
Speaker 2: at the time, Todd Rundren was in the band, you know,
Speaker 2: and Greg Rawley from Santana Journey in which we did
Speaker 2: all the Santana's. Anyway, I thought, you know what I
Speaker 2: could as a studio player. I could play everybody else's
Speaker 2: stuff just the way they wanted to be played. So
Speaker 2: I figured I'd be a good asset to the band.
Speaker 2: And you know, I remember getting off the elevator in
Speaker 2: Canada for the rehearsals, you know, and he was standing
Speaker 2: that I just looked at him. It's like he's such
Speaker 2: a warm human being. Give me a hug, and he says,
Speaker 2: all right, see you in the morning. And I've been
Speaker 2: there for eleven years and we become great friends, and
Speaker 2: that's a great honor. He's changed my life for the
Speaker 2: better and a He's been like the big brother had,
Speaker 2: you know, just always wise and positive and hilarious. And
Speaker 2: it's a joy to be around and make music with him.
Speaker 2: And see this guy who's gonna be eighty four in July.
Speaker 2: Every time I call him, he's on the treadmill. It's
Speaker 2: like your FaceTime on the treadmill a lot. You always
Speaker 2: bothering me on the faith time. He's never he never stops.
Speaker 2: He's working on three EPs at the same time, getting
Speaker 2: ready to go on the road. Now we're you know,
Speaker 2: we leave in three weeks. We start rehearsals and it's
Speaker 2: a thrill. And I told him he's gonna have to
Speaker 2: kill me to get rid of me. Man. He laughs
Speaker 2: about it. And I have no idea why I've lasted
Speaker 2: this long. I mean, we just have a great relationship.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of the most important things that
Speaker 2: ever happened to me in my life. I love the man.
Speaker 2: I would do any His family, unbelievably great people, His
Speaker 2: wife Barbara's fantastic, All the people are the kids, and
Speaker 2: all the people I met through him, world class human beings.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's made me a better person hundred percent. And that's
Speaker 2: why I felt shitty when I blew it. I had
Speaker 2: to calm and say, look, man, I really fucked up
Speaker 2: because he didn't see it. I mean, I wouldn't show
Speaker 2: that side. It was like a secret dark spot that
Speaker 2: I would go to that very few people saw. And
Speaker 2: I fucked up my relationship with I fucked up everything
Speaker 2: with it. I mean, I really lost my mind literally,
Speaker 2: And now that I've got it back and everybody's all's forgiven.
Speaker 2: I made amends with the people that I needed to
Speaker 2: do that with, and the people that I have lost
Speaker 2: touch with for one reason or another. There's a reason
Speaker 2: for that. But for the most part, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: more calm and happy and content and appreciative and more spiritual,
Speaker 2: closer to God, closer to everything. Realizing that I'm closer
Speaker 2: to the dirt napp than I am the beginning, you know,
Speaker 2: so I better savor these moments and make the most
Speaker 2: out of be healthy and be present, be there for
Speaker 2: my kids. You know, I had to make all the effets,
Speaker 2: especially to my to my youngest daughter. I scared her
Speaker 2: and for that, I'm you know, it's taking a long time.
Speaker 2: Everything's cool now, we're closer than ever. But you know,
Speaker 2: it was a bad time, man, and I'm back and
Speaker 2: I feel great, And I wanted to make new music.
Speaker 2: I want to go on the road. That was a
Speaker 2: huge success for us last two years in the United States,
Speaker 2: because that's always been an Achilles deal. We do great
Speaker 2: around the world, but getting the US back, you know,
Speaker 2: that was important to me before I die, And that's
Speaker 2: happening right now in terms of touring, what our value
Speaker 2: is and finally getting a little respect as they say,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I mean. I remember Henley
Speaker 2: telling me in nineteen eighty when we were working on
Speaker 2: his first record, there's a shameless name drop. I go,
Speaker 2: why of these guys hate us so much?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: And I was sitting around the table. We were still
Speaker 2: like a post session hang and Don goes, He goes, look, man,
Speaker 2: he goes. They didn't like us either when we start out,
Speaker 2: He goes, But you hang in there and you work hard,
Speaker 2: you don't go away, don't. They don't win, and they'll
Speaker 2: eventually come around, which is a great piece of advice
Speaker 2: that I kind of like at the time. Was like, okay, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll wait around for another thirty years. Waited forty years
Speaker 2: for it. And Ton's a great cat. I love the
Speaker 2: death and one of my favorite singers of all time,
Speaker 2: but you know, there's a through the years, I've worked
Speaker 2: with people that you know, I've stayed friendly with over
Speaker 2: the years. You know, we don't hang out all the
Speaker 2: time or nothing, but I get an email now and
Speaker 2: then what's up and how you doing? And I see,
Speaker 2: you know, in Ringo's brother in law is Joe Walsh,
Speaker 2: one of my all time heroes, and I see him
Speaker 2: every once in a while, and we work together and
Speaker 2: over the years played together. Uh. You know, so I've
Speaker 2: got a chance to work with a lot of my heroes,
Speaker 2: which and that's how I pinched myself moments, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you I'm losing a lot of my friends too,
Speaker 2: which is like also very humbling, realizing I better take
Speaker 2: care of myself. You know, I'm not I'm the guy.
Speaker 2: If I stub my toe, I go to the doctor.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. I'm not. I got a
Speaker 2: cyst in my eye. It's you know, it's just a
Speaker 2: tear duc thing. But you know, at one point I
Speaker 2: during this last tour, I felt my right breast, I'm
Speaker 2: going with something in here. Man, Oh, this is gonna
Speaker 2: be it for me, right, So I go to the doctor.
Speaker 2: I find out it's nothing, you know, but I'm already
Speaker 2: you know, throwing dirt on myself and in the hole,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. I'm very paranoid about that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I used up my nine lives a long time ago,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And you once told me that Ringo said you were
Speaker 1: his last best friend.
Speaker 2: He wrote that down once, and he wrote it on
Speaker 2: something for me, which I was very touched by. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, he says a lot of things like that.
Speaker 2: I'd like to see. You know, I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you that we are close buddies. Man. I adore them, man,
Speaker 2: but I you know, they ask him. He certainly seems
Speaker 2: to treat me, really treats me like like a real friend.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I cherished one of the most important friendships I've ever had.
Speaker 2: I love the man to death. I would do anything
Speaker 2: for him. You know. So you're the longest standing member
Speaker 2: of the band, right, great Busionet's a little longer than me.
Speaker 2: But as far as being a front line guy, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think so. I don't know. I never really looked
Speaker 2: at it, but that's the rumor.
Speaker 1: So you'll do it forever.
Speaker 2: Well. It keeps me on the road a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I just finished three months with Toto without coming
Speaker 2: home and then we go out. But see, working with
Speaker 2: him is not work. It's it's a vacation for me
Speaker 2: because it's it's a fun environment where I don't have
Speaker 2: I can just be the guitar player, Like I don't
Speaker 2: have to run the band and take care of everything
Speaker 2: or nobody yells at me if something screws up or
Speaker 2: something like that. You know what I mean, I can
Speaker 2: just it's it's it's a wonderful group of guys. You know,
Speaker 2: I love everybody in the band, and so I make
Speaker 2: it work. You know. It's where where I'm able to
Speaker 2: book around them, they book around me. It just means
Speaker 2: I'm away a lot. But I mean, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to ever say no to Ringo unless he wants to
Speaker 2: get rid of me. I mean that then that would
Speaker 2: be up to him, but we'd still stay friends. But
Speaker 2: I think he's at the age now and I'm I
Speaker 2: shouldn't speak for him, but I mean he likes to
Speaker 2: be around certain people that he's comfortable with, like meeting
Speaker 2: like a new bunch of guys. I don't think he
Speaker 2: really feels like doing that at this point.
Speaker 1: And you like being you know, patritired from the road.
Speaker 1: Do you like being on the road or it's something
Speaker 1: you have to do for the money, or you know,
Speaker 1: I play, I don't experience.
Speaker 2: I don't have to do any of that. I was
Speaker 2: born for this life, man, you know, I really you know,
Speaker 2: some people hate the road, and I can understand that,
Speaker 2: but I need to do this. I mean, once you
Speaker 2: joined the circus, you can never leave, and all that
Speaker 2: this cliches and all that. For me, it's like that,
Speaker 2: I still man when the house lights go and the
Speaker 2: crowd goes. I mean, I forget about everything in my
Speaker 2: world for those two hours or whatever it is. And
Speaker 2: that's more than money. That's why I started playing in
Speaker 2: the first place, before there was money or anything but
Speaker 2: the music to care about. When I was just a kid,
Speaker 2: I never lost that feeling. Sure, you get tired, I
Speaker 2: mean there is the you know, harsh reality of the
Speaker 2: physicality of it. But man, now, man, I'm if we're
Speaker 2: doing it by bus, I'm as sleep. I do the gig,
Speaker 2: eat some food, crawling my bunk with my kindle, and
Speaker 2: I read. I read spiritual stuff. I read UFO stuff,
Speaker 2: for science fiction stuff, you know, anything not music, you know,
Speaker 2: And I go to sleep early, and I wake up early,
Speaker 2: and I feel good. I eat right. I try to
Speaker 2: keep it together, you know, make up for the times
Speaker 2: that I did.
Speaker 1: And you're going on the road because you have to.
Speaker 1: But if you sat at home, wa wait wait wait
Speaker 1: wait wait when I say I have to, No, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about emotionally. I'm not talking about financially for your
Speaker 1: identity money.
Speaker 2: But I'm a musician. What am I expected? What am
Speaker 2: I going to retire and do go back to being
Speaker 2: in pandemic mode?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I don't think that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: No, But I was going to ask this one question,
Speaker 1: assuming you did stay home, do you have enough income
Speaker 1: streams from all you know, the songs you wrote, the
Speaker 1: record royalties, so that you can make it without going
Speaker 1: on the road.
Speaker 2: I could. I mean, I got really smart about all
Speaker 2: that stuff. You know. I got ripped off and I
Speaker 2: pissed away money. I've been divorced twice. I know what
Speaker 2: it's like to have money, lose it, and have to
Speaker 2: go over again. Now I'm not going to do that again. Now,
Speaker 2: I save money. I save for my kids. When I die,
Speaker 2: They're going to do real happy A couple of days
Speaker 2: after they realized Dad's dead. They go, oh wow, but no,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean I saved money. Man. I live
Speaker 2: in a nice little house in the hills. I got
Speaker 2: one nice car. I don't have diamond rings or spent
Speaker 2: you know, I don't worry about money. I spend it
Speaker 2: if I want to. But I'm not stupid with it either,
Speaker 2: because I've had it, lost it and had to make
Speaker 2: it back again. And when you get to be a
Speaker 2: certain age, you don't want to have to make it
Speaker 2: back again.
Speaker 1: And then is there anybody who's on a list of
Speaker 1: people you haven't met or haven't played with? There's still
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: Well, I Peter Gabriel, but I met him, but he
Speaker 2: doesn't need me. He's got David, this guitar player. David's awesome.
Speaker 2: David Rhoades, great guitar player. But I mean there are
Speaker 2: people that Phil Collins. I was a big Genesis band
Speaker 2: when I was young, you know, the original band. I
Speaker 2: loved all their incarnations. But you know, great musicians, great songs.
Speaker 2: I you know, I had a thing about being in
Speaker 2: steely Dan and for five minutes after the Boss tour
Speaker 2: in seventy seven, Irving asked me if I would do that.
Speaker 2: I was like, what are you kidding me? Jeff was
Speaker 2: going to do it, and we were going to put
Speaker 2: starting Toto off. We'd already had done demos for Toto
Speaker 2: to get a record deal, and Sony came to us
Speaker 2: and offered us the deal Columbia at the time without
Speaker 2: even seeing the band live. We weren't even a live
Speaker 2: band yet. We were just it was Dave and Jeff
Speaker 2: coming off Silk Degrees and all that. And obviously Jeff
Speaker 2: was and Steely Dan when we were in high school,
Speaker 2: Like we heard the Katie Light album before it was out,
Speaker 2: We're the rhythm tracks. Jeff would come by and play
Speaker 2: us cassette of what they were doing, and we were
Speaker 2: just doing all Steely Dan stuff anyway, me and Landau.
Speaker 2: Landau was Danny Diaz. I was Jeff Baxter. That was
Speaker 2: the running wink joke that we had in high school.
Speaker 2: And after the Boss thing happened and I met Irving,
Speaker 2: who was incredibly nice to me as a kid, it
Speaker 2: was what a management team was. Irving was the manager,
Speaker 2: Craig frun was the tour manager, and Howard Coffin was
Speaker 2: the count. And I was nineteen years old and these
Speaker 2: guys all took a little shine to me and irving
Speaker 2: you know i'd heard, you know, he came said, you
Speaker 2: want to go out with Steely Dan, Like does Flipper
Speaker 2: have a blowhole? Yes, you know, but I didn't realize
Speaker 2: that Donald and Walter had come down to rehearsal and
Speaker 2: kind of checked me out in the dark, you know.
Speaker 2: And then I got to rehearse with Danny Diaz, the
Speaker 2: original guitar player that I played the solo on you know,
Speaker 2: Do It Again and Your Gold Teeth and Asia and all.
Speaker 2: You know. Danny's beautiful cat, great player, really unique and
Speaker 2: lovely guy and and his wife are great. Anyway, long
Speaker 2: story short, Without even meeting Donald or Walter at that time,
Speaker 2: I started getting together with Denny Diaz and going over
Speaker 2: who's gonna play what part? And then it all fell
Speaker 2: apart for whatever reason that I wasn't privy to. And
Speaker 2: so I could say I was in Steely Dan for
Speaker 2: five seconds, but I never got to record with him.
Speaker 2: I did get to play with Donald at the Jeff Tribute,
Speaker 2: so that kind of fulfilled the fantasy, I think, and
Speaker 2: I worked with Walter at a at a guitar thing.
Speaker 2: Once we played together on stage, he was very nice.
Speaker 2: They were both really really nice to me. But you
Speaker 2: know that music is really important to me. That Steely
Speaker 2: Dan is an incredibly important band to me. You know, musically,
Speaker 2: I mean Donald Faga's Nightfly album is a Desert Island
Speaker 2: album for me. You know, one of the greatest albums
Speaker 2: ever made. Should have beat us in the Grammys. It
Speaker 2: was a better record, but we were all fans of it,
Speaker 2: you know, and stanzas Test the time. You know, their
Speaker 2: music is just it's like it's like there's the Beatles
Speaker 2: in Steely those and Hendricks and stuff, and you know,
Speaker 2: that music stuck with me my whole life. You know,
Speaker 2: I go, well, what about Zeppelin? What about Becco? What
Speaker 2: about you know Cream and all that. Yeah, of course
Speaker 2: that's all there. But in terms of songwriting production, Steely Dan, man,
Speaker 2: the Beatles, Steely Dan. Really that's in my DNA heart.
Speaker 1: So since you knew and still no three members of
Speaker 1: the Beatles, what you learned about the magic of the Beatles?
Speaker 1: Why did it become so big? Why were they so great?
Speaker 2: Wow? Man, sh it's just great songs. They're the real thing.
Speaker 2: What they brought the there It was the combination of
Speaker 2: the four of them. I mean, it's magic. It's an
Speaker 2: elixir that comes along once in a lifetime, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. I don't know if there's ever good
Speaker 2: there's I don't think there's gonna be another Beatles again.
Speaker 1: Oh we've been waiting and there hasn't been one for
Speaker 1: sixty years, so I don't think so.
Speaker 2: You know, I think everything they put out still goes
Speaker 2: number one, right, you know what I mean. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's I mean, I look, I say, the Beatles are
Speaker 2: classical music, you know, and the fact that I have
Speaker 2: a little teeny piece of sand history with them, you know,
Speaker 2: working having the honor of great honor of working with
Speaker 2: all three of them at one point or another. It
Speaker 2: was beyond my wildest dreams. The one of w really
Speaker 2: hit me was when I was invited to do the
Speaker 2: Beatles fiftieth anniversary of the Ed Sullivan Show, right, and
Speaker 2: we were and you know, it was an all star
Speaker 2: backing band, Me and Peter Franton on guitar, and you know,
Speaker 2: I could go on. Don Wills was the musical director,
Speaker 2: and there was all these great players that all the
Speaker 2: A list guys, and we got to back all these
Speaker 2: people that apparently CBS television shows to be artists, sing
Speaker 2: Beatles song and to make a long story short, I
Speaker 2: was honored to be there, to say the least. And
Speaker 2: then right before we were going it was busy week.
Speaker 2: We were rehearsals, and then we had the Grammys with
Speaker 2: Ringo to be on that show, and then this whole thing,
Speaker 2: and Paul was there. It was a nice reunion to
Speaker 2: see him again. And we were playing right before we
Speaker 2: went on. I see Paul and Ringo in the flesh
Speaker 2: right here, and then I see the guys, and then
Speaker 2: I look up at the screen and they're playing Hard
Speaker 2: Days Night black and white, in which my grandmother took
Speaker 2: me to see ten times, if not twenty when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, bought me Beatle Boots the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It hit me that, like that little shitty you know,
Speaker 2: that little kid with a shit eating grin, is now
Speaker 2: standing here fifty years later celebrating this thing with the
Speaker 2: real guys, and I would It was at that moment
Speaker 2: in my life I said, I really fucking pulled off
Speaker 2: the dream. I really pulled this off. I'm dems here.
Speaker 2: I mean, what am I doing standing here? This is incredible?
Speaker 2: I can I pinched myself, but I like, I got
Speaker 2: a little of a clempse. Man, I was a little
Speaker 2: tear in my eye. You know, I'm like, like, this
Speaker 2: isn't ma, And I kept it was a personal moment
Speaker 2: that I not really share it. You know, I'm telling
Speaker 2: you this story. A couple people in my family know
Speaker 2: how I felt about it. But Ringo did that for me. Man,
Speaker 2: Ringo is such a friend. I mean he would dragged
Speaker 2: me along to be a part of this thing. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't even ask him. I just said, Man, I'd
Speaker 2: love to be a part of that and to have
Speaker 2: been there, to be a part see the fifty years
Speaker 2: of my life flash before in my lies. It was
Speaker 2: a it was a moment I'll never and it missed.
Speaker 2: Made me really really appreciate all of it not much more.
Speaker 1: And finally, are you ever Steve or we always Luke? Well?
Speaker 2: I started out as Steven, which is what my mother
Speaker 2: called me with a V. She was the only person
Speaker 2: they called my grandmother. My mom and my grandmother called
Speaker 2: me Steven, but uh I was Steve. Uh Luke happened
Speaker 2: because I started hanging around with a lot of guys
Speaker 2: named Steve. I think it really got solidified in high
Speaker 2: school when Steve Pacar was the leader of Still Life,
Speaker 2: which was the band that we were, which is the
Speaker 2: second generation of the band that Jeff Pacar and David
Speaker 2: paichad in high school and they went off to be pros.
Speaker 2: Steve took over the band called it still Life. And
Speaker 2: with Steve it's every time somebody said Steve, both of
Speaker 2: us would answer, it's like, no, you're Luke. You're Luke okay, okay,
Speaker 2: and that I've been that ever since high school.
Speaker 1: And do your ex wives girlfriends call you Luke or
Speaker 1: do they call you Steve.
Speaker 2: Nope, not one of them. I said, no, it doesn't
Speaker 2: sound right coming out of you. Anywise, they don't call
Speaker 2: me Steve. They might refer to me in third person.
Speaker 2: Is like, I have a Luke. You know, he's not
Speaker 2: here right now. Just knowing that that's maybe how somebody
Speaker 2: knows me. But you know, it's almost like I don't
Speaker 2: even hardly answer to Steve anyway. You know what I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm either Dad or Luke, and you know, Steve is
Speaker 2: just something that's all right, I have to fill out
Speaker 2: this passport, work permit or something.
Speaker 1: Okay, Luke. This has been amazing. I can't thank you
Speaker 1: enough for being so open and honest in a world
Speaker 1: that's so guarded. And you are definitely that genuine person
Speaker 1: I know over twenty years of knowing you, and you're
Speaker 1: someone who stays connected, and it sounds like you're in
Speaker 1: a really good place now.
Speaker 2: I am man. You know, I went to the darkness. Man.
Speaker 2: Everybody's life has darkness, and some people don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it, you know. I mean, I'm lucky I
Speaker 2: pulled myself out of the mud man. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I feel great life is. I'm really positive right now,
Speaker 2: really super positive place.
Speaker 1: I have nothing I can say they can top that.
Speaker 1: That's what life is really about. That, as you say,
Speaker 1: feeling good about yourself and family. So thanks for doing this, Luke.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left Sex