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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is performer Arkipass, singer the ambassador to

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Speaker 1: the Great American Songbook, Michael find Scott. I go on,

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Speaker 1: so you said you were just performing last night at

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Speaker 1: the Pasadena Pops. Tell me about that. This is the

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Speaker 1: this is the end of my seventh season. I've been

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Speaker 1: working for seven years conducting and it's something I've never

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Speaker 1: done before. I was asked to do it at the Pops,

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Speaker 1: and I primarily programmed classic American musical arrangements, ones that

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Speaker 1: often are not heard for decades, or some that have

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Speaker 1: never been publicly played before. We played for the first

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Speaker 1: time live the original orchestration of Over the Rainbow, which

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Speaker 1: was recorded October seven at MGM and has not been

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Speaker 1: performed in its entirety since that time because the orchestration

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Speaker 1: was lost and I just recently found it. Okay, what

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Speaker 1: is different from that than the well known version? The

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Speaker 1: version that Serta in the movie is wonderful, but it

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Speaker 1: was recorded with one microphone. There were different well, there

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Speaker 1: were I should say one input. There were a few microphones,

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Speaker 1: but it was recorded on one channel, so you don't

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Speaker 1: hear a lot of things that are in the arrangement,

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Speaker 1: and every time it's been transcribed, people have left out, uh,

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Speaker 1: what what I think are essential parts of the arrangement.

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Speaker 1: But you literally couldn't hear it. So it was a

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Speaker 1: revelation for people. People went crazy just being able to

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Speaker 1: hear this iconic piece of music in this iconic arrangement

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Speaker 1: that they thought they knew. But I've never really heard

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Speaker 1: that way. Okay, you're really an expert. So let's go

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Speaker 1: back at that time. Do they even have multi track recording? Yes,

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Speaker 1: yes they did. They recorded on separate strips of film.

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Speaker 1: It was optical film, so yeah, you get like the

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Speaker 1: Silver Street on the side. Yeah, and MGM was doing

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Speaker 1: it as early as there's a there's a recording of

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Speaker 1: a ballet by Dmitri Tiomkin that was written for an

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Speaker 1: unreleased MGM film called The March of Time, and it

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Speaker 1: exists in multi channel. And they usually would only record

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Speaker 1: multi channel when they did a choir, when they needed

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Speaker 1: a separate voice channel, or where there was something complex,

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Speaker 1: and oddly, with a Wizard of Oz which is a

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Speaker 1: very complex score with a lot going on, there are

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Speaker 1: only two cues that they recorded multi channel which was

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Speaker 1: the overture and the cyclone music. The rest of it

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Speaker 1: was recorded one channel, which I find a mystery because

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Speaker 1: b movies, lesser films with lower budgets were recorded multi

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Speaker 1: channel at that time. Okay, So how many channels could

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Speaker 1: they ultimately have as many strips of film as they

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Speaker 1: wanted they could line them up? I mean, I don't

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Speaker 1: literally know if there's but but but there are some

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Speaker 1: that there are six channels, seven channels. And of course

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Speaker 1: Fantasia was released in Fantas Sound in l A and

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Speaker 1: at Radio City, which was a six channel process, and

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Speaker 1: that's what they labeled fantas Sound. Yes, And was there

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Speaker 1: any other movie in fantas Sound? Just just one? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So if it was six if the theaters at that

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Speaker 1: time did they have multi channel exhibition rooms, they had

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Speaker 1: to fit them specially for that, and which is why

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Speaker 1: it wasn't, which is why they needs yet right, okay,

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Speaker 1: So what else did you play last night? What else

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Speaker 1: did I play? It was a salute to MGM, So

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Speaker 1: I played the Barn Dance from seven Rights for Seven Brothers,

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Speaker 1: the overture from High Society, which was orchestrated by Conrad Salinger.

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Speaker 1: The greatest Hollywood arranger, and Skip Martin. I played Love

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Speaker 1: Is Where You Find It, which was an aria for

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Speaker 1: Katherine Grayson because I found that original MGM chart. The

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Speaker 1: MGM library was thrown away in the late nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: by a guy named James Aubrey, who was head of

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Speaker 1: the studio, because it was a cost cutting measure. So

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Speaker 1: every single MGM arrangement was destroyed. They were all put

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Speaker 1: into a dumpster, or they were used as landfill for

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Speaker 1: the four oh five Freeway. The entire MGM library was destroyed,

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Speaker 1: so all the musical greats that worked for MGM, their

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Speaker 1: work was was destroyed unless somebody happened to keep a

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Speaker 1: copy themselves, and so this entire legacy was lost. So

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Speaker 1: whenever you hear an MGM arrangement like Singing in the

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Speaker 1: Rain or or any of those iconic things that they'll play,

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Speaker 1: and they're always reconstructed, and Over the Rainbow is a

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Speaker 1: chart that well, they saved the Conductor books, which is

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Speaker 1: which is a rudimentary reduction of the full scores, and

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Speaker 1: so they reconstruct from the Conductor books. But in the

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Speaker 1: case of Over the Rainbow, nothing survived. There was not

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Speaker 1: even a Conductor part for the original arrangement, and so

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Speaker 1: when I found it it was it was one of

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Speaker 1: those Eureka moments. Well, once again, how did you find it?

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Speaker 1: I found it at the offices of David Rose Music.

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Speaker 1: Angela Rose White, who is David Rose's daughter, had been

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Speaker 1: moving some things in our office and I went over

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Speaker 1: there and I saw a folder that said over the Rainbow,

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Speaker 1: and I assumed it would be an arrangement that her

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Speaker 1: father did in the nineteen fifties and instrumental thing because

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Speaker 1: he wrote these incredible He did these famous mostly for

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Speaker 1: the stripper. Yes, and um. I opened up the folder

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Speaker 1: and it said Loos Incorporated Production ten sixty and I

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Speaker 1: lest I was looking at a set of original parts

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Speaker 1: for the Over the Rainbow, which if David Rose had returned,

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Speaker 1: would have been destroyed. So the fact that he didn't

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Speaker 1: return it is why it survived. And he was married

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Speaker 1: to Judy Garland from so it must have been borrowed

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Speaker 1: for something and never returned. Did you find anything else

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Speaker 1: in Angela's trove? I found other charts that he created

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Speaker 1: for for Judy Garland, and he worked so ubiquitously in Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: There were charts for many other singers and he was

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Speaker 1: married to Martha Ray and got he did some wonderful

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Speaker 1: records with Martha Ray. And so this is the stuff

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Speaker 1: that I spent my lift looking for. You know, I

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Speaker 1: know we talked about this all the time, but let's

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Speaker 1: go stay with the Pasadena Pops. Had you ever conducted

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Speaker 1: before you got this gig? No, And you'd think that,

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Speaker 1: having worked with so many orchestras, that I would have

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Speaker 1: turned around and paid attention to a conductor. I always

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Speaker 1: took it for granted, you know. And when I started

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Speaker 1: doing about Jesus Christ, this is hard. So what was

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Speaker 1: the learning curve? Like? Tell us, Well, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like the actor's nightmare, you know, like being on a

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Speaker 1: stage and not knowing your lines. Because that first time,

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Speaker 1: well they asked, what happened was I had done an

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Speaker 1: appearance with the Past Lena Pops with Marvin Hamlets, who

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Speaker 1: was their principal Pops conductor, a Cole Porter show, and

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Speaker 1: two weeks later he died. That turned out to be

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Speaker 1: his last concert, and it was shocking to everybody and

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Speaker 1: in terrible and about two weeks after his passing, somebody

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Speaker 1: from the Past La Pops called and said, would you

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Speaker 1: consider taking over Marvin's post, and I said, well, why

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Speaker 1: don't you get somebody who's a conductor, And they said, well,

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Speaker 1: we need somebody that has some sort of name value,

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Speaker 1: and we we think that you'd be great. I said, well,

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Speaker 1: I love pops music. I said, but I don't conduct.

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Speaker 1: And I said no, and they kept after me, and

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Speaker 1: they contacted me again, say well, we've already asked her

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Speaker 1: season and we're gonna we could possibly go under if

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Speaker 1: we don't have someone to It was that, you know,

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Speaker 1: no guilt trip. So I said, well, I'm willing to

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Speaker 1: try it, but you have to understand I have never

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Speaker 1: done this and I don't know how to do it.

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Speaker 1: They said, well, we're willing to take that chance. I said, okay.

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Speaker 1: So I hired an orchestra to practice. I went to

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Speaker 1: Seattle and Larry Blank, who's an amazing conductor, coached me.

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Speaker 1: I went to Seattle and for three days I worked

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Speaker 1: with an orchestra and had the musicians give me notes.

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Speaker 1: And then I worked and worked and worked. And then

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Speaker 1: June of next year whatever that was seven years ago

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Speaker 1: or eight years ago. Uh and uh i uh. I

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Speaker 1: raised my hands and they came in and they played

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Speaker 1: and they really saved me, you know, they really were

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Speaker 1: very kind and and uh, and it worked and now

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Speaker 1: I can do it. Now I know what I'm doing.

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Speaker 1: But then I was what is the key? What? What

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Speaker 1: do you have to learn to conduct? Of course, the

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Speaker 1: rudimentary um signals UH, of of giving a clear downbeat,

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Speaker 1: of having your arms raised high enough that everybody can see.

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Speaker 1: It's it's clear communication when there are what we call corners,

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Speaker 1: when there's a change in tempo, or when there's two

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Speaker 1: things going on in the orchestra and you have to

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Speaker 1: cut them off on the left and keep going on

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Speaker 1: the ride. And and so it's all about communicating um,

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Speaker 1: a sense of the music and it's um. It looks

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Speaker 1: easy and parts of it are easy, but the parts

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Speaker 1: that are not easy can be fiendishly difficult. And one

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Speaker 1: of the hardest parts for me is that there is

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Speaker 1: always a slight time delay from the time you physically

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Speaker 1: give the down beat and the orchestra plays the down beat.

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Speaker 1: When I play the piano, it's instantaneous, but with an orchestra,

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Speaker 1: depending on which orchestra it is, there is a time delay.

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Speaker 1: And in Europe there are even longer time delays, and

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Speaker 1: the the conductors are accustomed to it, but it's maddening

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Speaker 1: because you have to conduct ahead of the beat, and

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Speaker 1: if you're accompanying a singer, you have to conduct ahead

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Speaker 1: of the beat, so you will hit the down beat

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Speaker 1: when they hit their downbeat in next bar. And it's

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Speaker 1: It was one of the most difficult things I'd ever

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Speaker 1: had to do. And I was talking to Andre Preven

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Speaker 1: about it, who of course was one of the most

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Speaker 1: magnificent conductors, and he said, it's just conditioning. You just

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Speaker 1: have to keep moving ahead because if you actually start

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Speaker 1: to follow the orchestra, you'll get behind the beat. Let's

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Speaker 1: just assume you were not on the podium and the band,

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Speaker 1: the orchestra had all the music in front of them.

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Speaker 1: With that work at any level, to what degree is

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Speaker 1: the conductor necessary? To what degree does the conductor add?

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Speaker 1: It's easy if it's a thing that just counts off

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Speaker 1: and it stays at the same tempo. Uh. It's very

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Speaker 1: difficult if it's a maller symphony, because somebody has to

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Speaker 1: give all of the cues. Uh. And there have been

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Speaker 1: times where an orchestra has continued to conduct. Famously, when

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Speaker 1: Tuscanini in his waning years I was conducting a Wagner

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Speaker 1: piece and he was very proud of his Uh. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it was a photographic memory, but he

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Speaker 1: memorized the music. And he is in the midst of

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Speaker 1: this Wagner piece and he forgot the music and he

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Speaker 1: was so humiliated that he hung his head and he

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Speaker 1: walked off the podium. And the NBC Symphony kept playing

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Speaker 1: because they weren't going to stop, but they they knew

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Speaker 1: to keep playing. And the default is the concert master.

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Speaker 1: The first violinist is the one that that you follow.

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Speaker 1: But if it's a piece that the orchestra has played before,

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Speaker 1: they have the muscle memory and the potential to keep playing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So when you have a great night, how much is

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Speaker 1: the responsibility of the conductor as opposed to the players.

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Speaker 1: It's both, It's really both, because there are still times

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Speaker 1: when they will save my ass and uh, where I'll

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Speaker 1: miss a cue here or there, and there are times

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Speaker 1: where I will bring them up because one of the

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Speaker 1: other things that's hard without if it's a piece that

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Speaker 1: doesn't have a drummer, keeping the pulse of the orchestra

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Speaker 1: because it's a lot of people playing, and especially this

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Speaker 1: is an outdoor vent so the acoustics are different from

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Speaker 1: the back of the place to the front, and so

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Speaker 1: there's gonna be a delay with the trombone, so you

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Speaker 1: have to tell them to play ahead of the beat.

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Speaker 1: So one has to communicate the pulse. You have to

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Speaker 1: keep the po I have to keep the pulse going.

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Speaker 1: And when it's a piece of music that's difficult, the

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Speaker 1: orchestra sometimes will will slow down. And the other thing

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Speaker 1: that you learn as a conductor that I learned, and

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Speaker 1: it's sort of counterintuitive, is that the beat has to

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Speaker 1: get smaller. And the tendency is when you want it

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Speaker 1: to be faster, is to flail your arms more and

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Speaker 1: move your arms more. But it actually you have to

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Speaker 1: do the opposite. You have to become more economic with

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Speaker 1: the beat and you have to bring it in uh, smaller,

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Speaker 1: so they pay. I don't know what it is, but

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Speaker 1: that's the way it's done. Okay, that's done so that

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Speaker 1: the orchestra is not over loud. So let's play faster.

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Speaker 1: So okay, the beat is smaller. Okay, let's go back

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Speaker 1: to the trombones. When you say the timing is different,

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Speaker 1: you're talking about for the audience or for the conductor,

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Speaker 1: the front of the house the back of the house.

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Speaker 1: The timing is different in that for the sound to

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Speaker 1: travel from the trumbo section to the front of the podium,

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Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a delay, and I, well,

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Speaker 1: that's what I found. Okay, So how many gigs a

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Speaker 1: year at the Pasadena Pops? We do five concerts every

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Speaker 1: every summer, three of which I conduct, one I just sing,

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Speaker 1: and then there's a fifth one that I that I

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Speaker 1: don't conduct, and then I conduct another orchestra in in

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Speaker 1: Palm Beach, Florida in the winter January, February, and March,

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Speaker 1: which which I do. Uh. Another three. So the other

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Speaker 1: thing that's hard for me is that I'm not conducting

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Speaker 1: all the time, so I have to get my chops

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Speaker 1: up before I returned to the podium, and I have

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Speaker 1: to practice, and I have to practice and get it's

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Speaker 1: And mainly the practice is wrapping my brain around it.

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Speaker 1: Then the physical movement, it's the visualization. Do you like it?

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Speaker 1: I love it now, But when I first was doing it,

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Speaker 1: it was so terrifying that I just would pray that

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Speaker 1: I would get through it. And now I love it

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Speaker 1: because it's the ultimate to cut. Okay, you know where

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Speaker 1: you can program anything you want. And I, because of

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Speaker 1: who I am, collected music and orchestrations for decades, and

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Speaker 1: now I have charts that I never dreamt I would

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Speaker 1: have the opportunity to conduct. I mean, charts for for

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Speaker 1: ladies that are not in my key vocally and things

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Speaker 1: that I would just find and now I can play them.

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Speaker 1: And the amazing thing is that the response of the

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Speaker 1: audience is so over the top for this music, which

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Speaker 1: is so gratifying because most other orchestras are skewing younger.

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Speaker 1: They're doing Elton John and Billy Joel and a lot

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Speaker 1: of pop stuff, which is great, but but very few

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Speaker 1: orchestras are playing classic pop music. So it's it's it

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Speaker 1: shows that there is an audience out there, Okay for

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Speaker 1: that at audience. You know, let's assume you go to

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Speaker 1: see one of the classic rock acts. They have their hits,

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Speaker 1: they know there's going to get a huge response. Okay,

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Speaker 1: do you have your tricks? Do you had to make

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Speaker 1: up the so called set list the program and say, oh,

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Speaker 1: I know this will get a big response or this won't,

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Speaker 1: or how do you deal with that putting a setlence

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Speaker 1: together for an orchestra as just the same as what

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Speaker 1: I did when I started playing in piano bars. It's

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Speaker 1: all about thinking of an opening number. It's sort of

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Speaker 1: like like a musical, where you program each piece of

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Speaker 1: music that tells a story. That's a musical journey. There's

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Speaker 1: a fast paced thing, there's an overture, there's a ballad,

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Speaker 1: there's a medium tempo thing. Uh, different styles of music.

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Speaker 1: Uh so Uh. It's very carefully programmed. And I probably

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Speaker 1: agonized more over the order of the pieces than choosing them,

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Speaker 1: because once I've chosen them, I have to to project

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Speaker 1: what kind of response it's going to get, and partially

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Speaker 1: that response is predicated on how I introduced the piece

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Speaker 1: of music, telling people what they're going to be hearing.

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Speaker 1: Like when I played over the Rainbow, I told the

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Speaker 1: story of this piece and it hadn't been heard in

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Speaker 1: eighty years, and it got a huge hand at the end.

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Speaker 1: If I if they just were listening to Over the Rainbow,

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Speaker 1: they would say that's nice, but they wouldn't know that

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Speaker 1: this was something special. So that's part of it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: you got the Palm Beach gig as a result of

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Speaker 1: the Pasadena gig. Yes, and so we you see more

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Speaker 1: of these in your future. Well, yes, the short answers, yes,

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Speaker 1: even though the economics are such that it doesn't pay

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Speaker 1: what what I make as a singer. So I'm doing

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Speaker 1: it out of passion. And the money that I've spent

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Speaker 1: restoring these orchestrations has has been much more than I've

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Speaker 1: than my salary has supplied. So okay. So when the

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Speaker 1: players in these various orchestra like in Pasadena, you're nearer

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Speaker 1: or Arcadia, literally you're near a big city. Who are

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Speaker 1: the players in the orchestra, it's an incredible orchestra. They

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Speaker 1: are uh players who often do Hollywood scoring sessions, like

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Speaker 1: Jim Thatcher, who's our principal French horn player. He is

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Speaker 1: John Williams favorite. He does all the John Williams sessions.

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Speaker 1: These are players that that play all kinds of music

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Speaker 1: because they work in Hollywood. So it is a dedicated

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Speaker 1: orchestra that it is usually the same faces, not always

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Speaker 1: because there always are subs, but they are, but they

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Speaker 1: are they are a savvy group. And yet with every orchestra,

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Speaker 1: the goal is to bring the music that will be

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Speaker 1: fun and challenging, and pops concerts are often so dumbed

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Speaker 1: down for the orchestra that they're bored, and so my

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Speaker 1: goal is to bring arrangements that are exciting, that are

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Speaker 1: fresh and will be challenging for the orchestra, so they're

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Speaker 1: not just what they call sawing footballs, you know, playing

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Speaker 1: whole notes that our company with someone singing yesterday, you know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there could be a great arrangement yesterday by

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Speaker 1: Johnny Mandel or Henry Mancini, or there could be one

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Speaker 1: that's just boring as I'll get out. So I have

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Speaker 1: to make sure that every chart is something that has

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Speaker 1: some kind of substance. And how much rehearsal is there.

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Speaker 1: We have two two and a half hour rehearsals, which

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Speaker 1: isn't enough. But they're so great that that they always

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Speaker 1: write to the occasion and it always is amazing to

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Speaker 1: me how they do it. Okay, can you just find

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Speaker 1: the Great American Sound Great American song Book? From my audience,

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Speaker 1: to me, the Great American Songbook is a body of

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Speaker 1: work that essentially begins in the teens of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: and it has no cut off point. Perhaps the golden

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Speaker 1: age of the Great American Songbook was the nineties, thirties

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Speaker 1: and forties, and that it was a period when we

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Speaker 1: had an amazing group of songwriters including George Gershwin, called Porter,

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Speaker 1: Jogi Carmichael, Duke Gallington, Fats Waller. I mean, you go

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Speaker 1: down the list that wrote classic songs that have survived.

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Speaker 1: But I think we had another amazing influx of amazing

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Speaker 1: of great writers in the sixties and seventies, you know,

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Speaker 1: with with Carol King and Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams

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Speaker 1: and Joni Mitchell and and uh Harry Nilsen, And I

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Speaker 1: mean they are to me just as significant, but to

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Speaker 1: me the great. For a song to qualify being part

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Speaker 1: of the Great American Songbook, it has to be a

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Speaker 1: piece of music that transcends the time in which it

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Speaker 1: was written, that it survives through the decades, and it

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Speaker 1: is known to everybody and survives from various recordings. And

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Speaker 1: so to me, uh, it's a song like over the

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Speaker 1: Rainbow or Singing in the Rain or God Bless America,

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Speaker 1: or There's No Business like Show Business, or maybe it's

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Speaker 1: We Will Rock You. You You know what I mean. There's

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Speaker 1: songs that are universe universally known, that that survived the

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Speaker 1: test of time and continually are reinvented and rerecorded and

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Speaker 1: are known. And so I think there are songs written

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Speaker 1: today that that will become part of the American songbook

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Speaker 1: because I think it's ever evolving. There's no cut off

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Speaker 1: for me, however we live, you know, in terms of

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Speaker 1: a lot of these songs made their fame or got

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Speaker 1: their fame as a result of being in films or

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Speaker 1: being on the hit so called hip parade. But in

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Speaker 1: the Internet era, where everything is so dispersed and h

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Speaker 1: the popular chart is dominated by hip hop music, you

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Speaker 1: still think that there are songs being written that will

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Speaker 1: be part of the song book. I do only because

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Speaker 1: history has shown that songs from every era somehow survive,

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Speaker 1: even though to me I couldn't tell you what they are.

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Speaker 1: And uh, I think I think Frozen from Let It

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Speaker 1: Go It's probably gonna be around for a long time,

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Speaker 1: unfortunately because the songwrives me crazy. But that's not the point, yeh.

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Speaker 1: And it's true that many songs from the Golden Era

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Speaker 1: came from films and came from uh other places. So

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Speaker 1: I don't really know the answer, but just looking at history,

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Speaker 1: I have to believe that there have to be things

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Speaker 1: that that will survive. Name the two songs that are

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Speaker 1: your favorites from the Great American Songbook. Oh well, that's

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00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:42,600
Speaker 1: that's almost like Sophie's choice, you know, but look the name.

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Speaker 1: More than that, name a handful that you just your

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Speaker 1: top tier. Well, things that pop into my brain. Love

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Speaker 1: is Here to Stay is a song that I never

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Speaker 1: get tired of singing, And for me, songs that constantly

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Speaker 1: stay fresh are ones that that our favorites. So I'm

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Speaker 1: king one Gershwin song. It would be Love is Here

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Speaker 1: to Stay. If it's a Manstine, it's two for the Road. Uh,

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Speaker 1: Jerome kern Um, probably the way you look tonight. I

377
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Speaker 1: mean there are obscure songs that I love that nobody

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Speaker 1: knows that our favorites of mine, like, uh, the theme

379
00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:20,119
Speaker 1: from The Bad and the Beautiful, which has a beautiful

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00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:22,320
Speaker 1: lyric by Dorry Prevn. It's one of my favorite pieces,

381
00:20:22,520 --> 00:20:25,080
Speaker 1: but it's completely obscure. Yeah yeah, but I was asking

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Speaker 1: answer the question appropriately. We're not reading the bell of

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00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:32,200
Speaker 1: the audience today. It's all about you. Oh well, thanks, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm Jewish. I'm not used to that unless it's my

385
00:20:34,760 --> 00:20:36,679
Speaker 1: mother scolding me. But at least your Jewish you have

386
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:38,800
Speaker 1: something to say. I remember going to college the first

387
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:40,760
Speaker 1: time I was involved when I went to a melting

388
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Speaker 1: about high school. But you know, when I went to college,

389
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Speaker 1: there were very few Jews, and I encounter people who

390
00:20:45,680 --> 00:20:49,119
Speaker 1: didn't talk. Whereas you know the scene in uh, the

391
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Speaker 1: Woody Allen movie where they're sitting around the table and

392
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Speaker 1: everybody's talking over each other radio days. That's certainly how

393
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:57,200
Speaker 1: I grew up. But you talk about being let me

394
00:20:57,240 --> 00:21:00,399
Speaker 1: go before that. You're obviously both an ex spred in

395
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:05,160
Speaker 1: this field and very knowledgeable. Is there anybody on your

396
00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:09,440
Speaker 1: level that you're aware of? Everybody has their niche, if

397
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Speaker 1: you will, Uh, I don't know that there's anybody that

398
00:21:14,880 --> 00:21:21,199
Speaker 1: knows as much about certain aspects of of orchestrations, of

399
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Speaker 1: pop orchestrations, and there are people out there, but I

400
00:21:24,480 --> 00:21:27,520
Speaker 1: think the conflagration of all the different things I know

401
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:32,840
Speaker 1: about American popular song is perhaps unique. But Will Friedwald,

402
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:34,879
Speaker 1: for example, as a guy who knows a hell of

403
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:39,720
Speaker 1: a lot, and Vince Giordano, who is a specialist in

404
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:43,679
Speaker 1: in vintage big band music, has devoted his life to it,

405
00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:48,639
Speaker 1: So they are certainly uh as knowledgeable or more knowledgeable

406
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,200
Speaker 1: than I am. About different aspects of American popular song.

407
00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:56,280
Speaker 1: But each of us have unique corners of our brain

408
00:21:56,600 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 1: that that are specialized, if you will, and how often

409
00:22:01,080 --> 00:22:05,800
Speaker 1: is your expertise called upon by third parties? Pretty often,

410
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:10,119
Speaker 1: because people will contact me almost every day asking about

411
00:22:10,119 --> 00:22:13,760
Speaker 1: a song or arrangement. Are looking for something, especially other conductors.

412
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 1: Are people working on projects that that want to find

413
00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:20,199
Speaker 1: something because it's not easy these days. In spite of

414
00:22:20,200 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 1: the fact that we have the Internet and we have

415
00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 1: so much access, it's sometimes not easy to find an

416
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:30,359
Speaker 1: arrangement or where something went through the years. Uh, even

417
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:33,960
Speaker 1: a piece of sheet music now can be problematic because

418
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,600
Speaker 1: if you download something from the internet, it might not

419
00:22:36,840 --> 00:22:41,880
Speaker 1: be the original because now we have all these iterations

420
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Speaker 1: of different things. You know, it's like recordings where things

421
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:50,120
Speaker 1: are remixed and what you're what you're feeling on remixing, Well,

422
00:22:51,080 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 1: they're so dangerous, exactly. We got the originals, like remixing

423
00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:57,920
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper I got into this, the guy who did

424
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,919
Speaker 1: originally and Giles who and remixed it. That's like sacrilegious.

425
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:04,040
Speaker 1: I mean, you got the one, you know, that's the

426
00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:06,480
Speaker 1: one they put out. You can't change that. Well, it's

427
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: like Capitol Records UH put out c D s issued

428
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: c ds of several original cast albums the Music Man, Um,

429
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 1: Funny Girl, Um, Somendheim's Follies, and I forget the other one.

430
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:24,160
Speaker 1: They did a bunch of them, but those cast albums

431
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:27,720
Speaker 1: were all mixed as if you were watching that from

432
00:23:27,720 --> 00:23:30,879
Speaker 1: the audience. They had the microphone panning like Robert Preston

433
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,639
Speaker 1: in the music Trouble My Friends. You hear his voice

434
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,600
Speaker 1: panning from left channel to right channel. Whoever produced that

435
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: album sat in the audience and made notes and produced

436
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:44,000
Speaker 1: that where you hear the voices moving around. Well, the

437
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 1: first CD releases the Capital put out, We're from the

438
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 1: album masters, so they were the same as the album's

439
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: transcribed to c D but they had a lot of hits,

440
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:54,760
Speaker 1: so someone said, oh, we gotta remix this. Well, whoever

441
00:23:54,800 --> 00:23:59,920
Speaker 1: remixed all those The voices panned absolute everything is pan center,

442
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:07,159
Speaker 1: and they are desecrations of those original UH productions, And

443
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: people say, oh, well the CD is better. Well, no,

444
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:12,880
Speaker 1: it's not. Okay, not necessarily unless the original producer goes back.

445
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 1: But sometimes even the original producers don't remember or you know,

446
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 1: because it's in the moment and there's a lot of

447
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:22,159
Speaker 1: other things going on. Okay, have you gotten any of

448
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,200
Speaker 1: these people to go back and do the best version

449
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:27,960
Speaker 1: of the original? Have I personally? I mean because I mean,

450
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 1: obviously you're a person in the field, you and you care.

451
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:34,919
Speaker 1: Does that backlash, so to speak, have any effect? Or

452
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 1: these multinational corporations don't care. Well for the most part,

453
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: they don't care. I mean, I'm like you. You you

454
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: complain because you care and you want and you want

455
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: people to pay attention. And sometimes they do and they say,

456
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: oh god, that's great, I'm sorry. But then it comes

457
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: down to the bottom line. You know, it comes down

458
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 1: to how much is it going to cost to do this?

459
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: And and and it's uh, it's sometimes heart sinking, but

460
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:56,239
Speaker 1: you know, it's the way of the world now. Well,

461
00:24:56,480 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 1: the worst thing is that becomes the default version. Yeah.

462
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: It makes me crazy, Like there are certain songs on

463
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 1: the radio all here or the alternate takes. Someone got

464
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: it from the box set and they put that up

465
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 1: that's that has a different change in it. How can

466
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 1: you do that? Yeah, and it's like it's the alternate

467
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: take because they didn't choose it exactly. Well, put okay,

468
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: let's go back you talk about your digging, your archivist,

469
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: uh side of your world, tell us more about that.

470
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, from the time I was a kid,

471
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:31,440
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by the history of the music that

472
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 1: I listened to. When I was five and six years

473
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: old and I discovered there was something called sheet music

474
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,719
Speaker 1: where a song was written down. I was fascinated by

475
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: the covers and the information, the names, even though I

476
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: was just learning to read. And so I've always had

477
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: an interest in where the music came from. And then

478
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 1: I became interested in the songwriters and the process. And

479
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:57,399
Speaker 1: so as a performer, when I performed music, I always

480
00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:00,399
Speaker 1: tried to go back to the original sources, being the

481
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: sheet music, a copy of the of the manuscript of

482
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: the first recordings, because they all give me keys to

483
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: how to interpret a piece of music. And there are

484
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: so many parts of popular music that are oral traditions.

485
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 1: For example, Summertime from Poor Game invest which is one

486
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:21,639
Speaker 1: of the best known pieces of music. A lot of

487
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: people think it's a folk song. They don't know that

488
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: it was actually composed by George Gershwin. He wrote it

489
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,360
Speaker 1: in for an opera called Poor Game Best, and it's

490
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: been recorded by everyone from Lantine Price to Janis Joplin,

491
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:38,159
Speaker 1: and the original sheet music of Summertime does not have

492
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: a high note that every soprano and every production of

493
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 1: Poor invest is sung since the beginning of time because

494
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:47,000
Speaker 1: it's Husha, little baby, don't you cry? And then in

495
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: the opera the soprano sayings this high note that goes

496
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: on forever and it's this melting moment. It's not in

497
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: the music, So the question is when did that start?

498
00:26:57,520 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: When when did that go? When did that become part

499
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: of poor game best. It's not notated there. So if

500
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:04,400
Speaker 1: you didn't know that, and you just go from the score,

501
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: you wouldn't sing the high note, and people would say,

502
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: where's the high note? You know? Or um? If I

503
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 1: only had a brain, I could while away the hours

504
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: confirmed with flowers, consultant with the rain. People are saying,

505
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 1: and my head I'd be scratched. That's not the way

506
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: the music is notated, and my head I'd be The

507
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: entire song is notated differently from the way everyone sings it.

508
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: I can't help loving that man um the bridge of

509
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: that as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.

510
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:36,159
Speaker 1: That's again, those high notes are not in it. The

511
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: music as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.

512
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: But anyone that sings that song always goes up because

513
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: that's okay. Well, some of these songs, they were written

514
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: and they were conducted. Couldn't they have been changed on

515
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 1: the fly in the original recording? Absolutely okay. Well, in

516
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: the case of can't help loving that Man, I found

517
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:58,479
Speaker 1: a manuscript of Jerome Kern where he was demonstrating for

518
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: some writer the way his songs are sung, and it

519
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 1: says original the way I wrote it, and it has

520
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:06,840
Speaker 1: without the high notes, and under that it says way

521
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:09,119
Speaker 1: Morgan sang it, referring to Helen Morgan who introduced it

522
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: in Showbout. So there is an acknowledgement of how it

523
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: was changed. Now. I don't know how jer own Current

524
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: felt about that. Now. Julie Stein told me that when

525
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: he was working on Funny Girl with Barbara streisand he

526
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 1: wrote the song people with Bob Merrill, one of the

527
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 1: great American standards. Now streisand when she sang it on

528
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: stage and Funny Girl, she sang instead of people, people

529
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,879
Speaker 1: who people who people, she was sanging people people who

530
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 1: need pupils. And Julie said, Barbara for the first recording,

531
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 1: would you please sing it the way I wrote it

532
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,680
Speaker 1: because everyone will copy you and I want people to

533
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: hear just for the recording. And she said okay, and

534
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: she went into the session and she sang the high

535
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: note and sang the way she wanted and it drove

536
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: Julie crazy. So now everyone says people people or the

537
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: song at Last, you know, everybody does the edit James

538
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,520
Speaker 1: of Vision at Last and I Love has Come Along

539
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: and Live Live. It's a song. That's not how the

540
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 1: songs written. At Last, My Love has Come along, My

541
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 1: lonely Days are over in life is just a song.

542
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: That's how it's notated. But every Wednesdays and Live is

543
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: just the song. Everybody is copying the Edda James record.

544
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: Thousands of people copying it. And she died only a

545
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: few years ago, and boy was she pissed about that. Okay,

546
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: So as you dig one thing that's been well known

547
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: at this point is a lot of these films were trashed. Okay,

548
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: to what degree are the scores or the original song,

549
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:47,000
Speaker 1: uh pages extant? It depends on the studio. MGM threw

550
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: away everything, I mean, music wise, paramount saved a lot

551
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: of stuff. Universal. It's very spotty, a lot of stuff missing,

552
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: but they do have some stuff. Um r k oh.

553
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: Because they went under so many years ago, a lot

554
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: of the stuff went into storage and a good chunk

555
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: of that survives. Sam Goldwyn, most of their scores are gone.

556
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: Twenty Century Fox has a lot, but not everything, because

557
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 1: people would borrow things and not return them. I was

558
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: trying to find the original Glenn Miller orchestration from the

559
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: movie of the song Chattanooga Cho. They didn't have it

560
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: because somebody borrowed it along the way. So it's a

561
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: case by case basis. And in some cases, as you said,

562
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: some films are lost and are gone and that now

563
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: finally well known Universal Fire. Nobody talks about all the

564
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: films that were gone on all the television shows that

565
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: were lost, and so there's a lot. There's a lot

566
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: that still is uh not spoken about with that thing. Okay,

567
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: how about songs like you know what the original versions

568
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: Gershwinds Rome Current in terms of their original writing, does

569
00:30:56,280 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: that tend to survive? Uh? There are almost there were

570
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: almost no Jerome current manuscripts. It was one of the like,

571
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: why don't they survive? And then in uh, I was

572
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: happily involved with it. They're turned up at the Warner

573
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: Brothers Music Warehouse, which became sort of a whole clearinghouse

574
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: of many different publishers that had gone, that had been

575
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: by succession become part of Warner Brothers Music Um. It

576
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 1: turns out that there was kind of like the the Um,

577
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 1: the Lost Arc of missing music manuscripts, and eighty seven

578
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: Gershwin manuscripts turned up, and a bunch of current manuscripts

579
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: turned up, much to the shock of the music world.

580
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: But the short answer is that a lot of a

581
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: lot is lost, and there are certain songs for which

582
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: we don't have the original manuscripts. And then in the

583
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: case of some songwriters, there's a lot because they saved everything.

584
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 1: Like Irving Berlin saved everything even though he couldn't write music,

585
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: so his man his original manuscripts are in the hand

586
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: of a copyist. Richard Rogers saved almost everything. But in

587
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: the case of many other songwriters, they're they're just gone.

588
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: You know, Fats Waller would sell his songs for for

589
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: the price of a couple of beers, or for twenty

590
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: bucks for pocket money, so his his manuscripts are gone.

591
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Ellington stuff. Uh, and and things

592
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 1: also morph. There's not always that aha moment like the

593
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: Way You Look Tonight Jerome Kerrn, which was an Oscar

594
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: winning song sung by so many people. I discovered quite

595
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: by accident that originally the germ of that was a

596
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: piece of underscore for a nine Jean Harlem movie called Reckless,

597
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: where the in the background of one seeing the orcasts

598
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: playing duh uh just a little phrase. And a year

599
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: later Jerome Current turned that into the way You Look tonight.

600
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: Let's assume you go to Let's so it exists and

601
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 1: you go to the archive. Is this stuff easily findable

602
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: or is it like going down a rabbit hole and

603
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:57,080
Speaker 1: you know it's somewhere. Uh, it depends, Like everything, it depends. Uh.

604
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: The Library of Congress is in many ways the premier

605
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: repository for this stuff, and their collections of Gershwin, of

606
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern are very well tended, and

607
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 1: yet it's not always easy to gain access. Uh. If

608
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: you can gain access, and if you have a legitimate reason,

609
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: you can get in there. And they're a wonderful scholarly

610
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: archivists who can help. Aren't they years behind? Though? Well

611
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: everybody is because it's a problem of economics, and they

612
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: catalog things by demand. It's like I wanted to find

613
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 1: a David Rexon piece because David Rexon's collection is there,

614
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: and he's best known for writing Laura and was a

615
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: wonderful guy and a good friend. They had never cataloged

616
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: his collection, which had been there for many years. And

617
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 1: I asked why and they said, because Michael, you're the

618
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: first person to ever asked for anything from the collection.

619
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: And then there's the situation of a place like Harvard,

620
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: which was one of the worst experiences I've ever had

621
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: as a person trying to do musical research. I was

622
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 1: treated very nicely by the archival employees there, and by

623
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: the higher ups. They treated in the most humiliating way.

624
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: And it was because of the Johnny Green collection, which

625
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: I knew Johnny Green quite well and was looking for

626
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: something and I went to somebody and said, there's stuff missing,

627
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: there's stuff that's not here, and they treat me like

628
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:20,360
Speaker 1: I was an idiot, and they said, well, it's just

629
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:22,879
Speaker 1: not there, and I said, I was at Johnny's house

630
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: when the stuff was being packed up and sent to

631
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: you guys, and it's a lot of stuff. They said, well,

632
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: then it maybe disappeared through the years. I said, it

633
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: can't have there's too much stuff. And I called the

634
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: acting head of the Department of the Special Collections. His

635
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: name was Tom Horricks, and he essentially hung up on me,

636
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:44,840
Speaker 1: and one of the people who was one of the

637
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: catalogers there sent me an email and said, I hope

638
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,919
Speaker 1: you're sitting down, And he said, I took to heart

639
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: what you said, and he said, I started going through

640
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,319
Speaker 1: with my colleague and we started looking at bar bar

641
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: code numbers and stuff. It turns out that there were

642
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: two hundred boxes of Johnny Green material that had been

643
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 1: received at the at the loading dock that had sat

644
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: there since like nineteen eighty nine or nine, and they

645
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: were never cataloged and nobody knew they were there. Do

646
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: you think I ever got an acknowledgement or an apology

647
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: or anything from Harvard nothing except for my this wonderful

648
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 1: So there's wonderful people on the staff there. It's just

649
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: the fact that they were arrogant about it and treated

650
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: me like I was an idiot. That story stands alone.

651
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 1: I don't need to uh make a comment about it, Okay. Now,

652
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: in the Great era of the twenties thirties forties, the

653
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: first people who wrote the songs tend to be different

654
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: from the people who performed the songs. Then in the

655
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,440
Speaker 1: rock era, starting with the Beatles, they tended to be

656
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:49,680
Speaker 1: the same people. Once again, we're an era where they're separate. Uh.

657
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,760
Speaker 1: Do you believe that the people who did it solely

658
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 1: as an advocation were better or dad had a different

659
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 1: insight or a different way of doing it. That must

660
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: be noted. I think there were all kinds of motives

661
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: for writing songs then as there are now. Some people

662
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: write out of inspiration and some people write for commerce. Certainly,

663
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,439
Speaker 1: even the great songwriters were mindful of trying to write

664
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 1: a hit song. But uh, the Gershwin's, for example, are

665
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: the guys that write for Broadway musicals wrote for Broadway

666
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: musicals back in the day. I had to write for

667
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:30,319
Speaker 1: plot and for character. They had to write for certain things. Uh.

668
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 1: I think that music always reflects the time in which

669
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: it's written. It's it is our history. Irving Berlin once

670
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 1: that history makes music, and music makes history. And regardless

671
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: of the reason that the music for which the reason

672
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:46,959
Speaker 1: is written, or if it's inspired or not, it still

673
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: is certainly a doc at historical document of what's going

674
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 1: on in the times. I don't know if I've answered

675
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:54,399
Speaker 1: your questions. Are you kind of did as I say?

676
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,799
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering whether you think people who solely right

677
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: are inherently better or different from the people reform in

678
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: their own music. Well, Michelle Grand wrote every single day,

679
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:06,880
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, regardless of where he was in

680
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, that was his thing. He just

681
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,840
Speaker 1: loved to write. Marilyn allen bergman, the favorite thing in

682
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: the world. We're writing. You know that they love it

683
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 1: and it's part of their blood. They have to write.

684
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between songwriters who have to write

685
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: because it's an expression of something that they have to

686
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: get out and someone that writes to order, even though

687
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: they can be one and the same. How about someone

688
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: who is a performer primarily and insists on using their

689
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,840
Speaker 1: own material. Do you think that's inherently better or worse

690
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: than the people who soli are songwriters. I don't think

691
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: it's better or worse, because sometimes the people who are

692
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: encouraged by producer, Hey kid, you could write your own songs,

693
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: so you get all the royalties and we'll split the publishing.

694
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: They may start out that way, but sometimes amazing writers

695
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:52,760
Speaker 1: have come from that. I'm trying to think of an example,

696
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there are many people who didn't really

697
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: know that they could write The Rolling Stones. One of

698
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 1: them that okay originally and then they wrote Okay. We're

699
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:04,359
Speaker 1: in era where people are suing for copyright infringement at

700
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:07,919
Speaker 1: a much greater quantity and velocity than they ever did.

701
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: What's your opinion on things are still copyrighted, People still

702
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: pay attention. Well, if you want it, you wrote it,

703
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: they seem to, Yeah, I know, I'm just it's just,

704
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: you know, copyright is such a ross. It's such a

705
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: tremendous miss. Okay, but let's stop there for a second.

706
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 1: In a perfect world, what would it look like. Well,

707
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: for one thing, in the world of songwriting, there is

708
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: this crazy divide where things written after January one or

709
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,879
Speaker 1: in copyright much longer than anything written before that. And

710
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: I think there should be a universal copyright for music.

711
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: So it's all the same because right now Rapsody in

712
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 1: Blue goes p D January one, two thousand, Yeah, public

713
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 1: domain two thousand and twenty, And um, I think that

714
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: eventually things should go public domain. I think that there

715
00:38:57,200 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: is a time when they absolutely belonged to the world.

716
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: So I'm not hard nosed about it, but uh, there

717
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: should be a uniform copyright law. And around the world

718
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: it's different. You know, it's twenty years is it twenty years?

719
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 1: In Japan and Germany, they're all different. And until recently

720
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: in the in Europe there was not joint nous, which

721
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: meant that the music of a song could go public domain,

722
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: but the lyric would still be in copyright, so you

723
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 1: could write new music for the lyrics. I mean, it's

724
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: so crazy, and so it needs to be uniform. Uh.

725
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: But as far as um people sampling and using a

726
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: piece of it, absolutely there should be payment for it.

727
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: And I don't understand why there would be any question

728
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: about I think to a great degree that's the case.

729
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 1: Even if talking about hip hop music, where it's famous

730
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,439
Speaker 1: for sampling, they used to sample stuff. Now they write

731
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 1: their own beats because they don't want to even get

732
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 1: into that. They don't want to an issue of infringement.

733
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: They also don't want to pay. But we had the um,

734
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: the Blurred Lines case. We have all these cases where

735
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: people are suing today where there are a lot of

736
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 1: similarities and saw it's in the past, and the people

737
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: never sued. Yeah. Well, there was a famous case in

738
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty with Jerome Kern and Fred Fisher, and this

739
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:14,439
Speaker 1: is pertinent because Fred Fisher wrote a piece called darden Ella,

740
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: and Jerome Kurn copied the baseline. It was an astana

741
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: bum bum bum bum bum um um um bum bum

742
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 1: bum bum and he just took that bassline and put

743
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:27,359
Speaker 1: it in another song, and Fred Fisher sued Jerome Kern.

744
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:30,440
Speaker 1: The current song was called Kolua and the Fred Fisher

745
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: song was called darden Ella. And the judge ruled that

746
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: technically it was a plagiarism, but he did not He's

747
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 1: felt that Kern did not do it on purpose, because

748
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:44,759
Speaker 1: a man so eminent as Jerome Kern would not have

749
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:49,399
Speaker 1: needed to plagiarize, and Kern assumed that it was fair game,

750
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: and so the award was one dollar to Fred Fisher.

751
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 1: So he acknowledged it was a plagiarism, but felt that

752
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,759
Speaker 1: it was not on purpose. But he acknowledged that that

753
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 1: it was indeed a plagiarism just using that baseline. Well,

754
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 1: of course, the opposite verdict would be the my sweet

755
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: Lord she right, he's so fine. Yeah, but okay, let's

756
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: go back to you originally from Ohio. Yes, we're in Ohio. Columbus. Okay,

757
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: when you grew up, what was Columbus like? Well, it

758
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: wasn't a cultural hotbed because everything was about football and

759
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 1: at my high my high school, Woody Hayes would come,

760
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:26,439
Speaker 1: you know and look for the next famous recruiting Archie

761
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: Griffin went to my high school, won the Heisman Trophy

762
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,360
Speaker 1: and all that, and so, uh, we had a symphony,

763
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: Columbus Symphony, which was always in danger of going under.

764
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 1: My great uncle lived in New York. It was in

765
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: the music in theater, not musical theater, and he said

766
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: that anytime the show played Columbus it was the death

767
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 1: town because culturally nobody went. And I went to see

768
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,800
Speaker 1: Vladimir Horowitz, who played Columbus when I was in my teens,

769
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 1: and it was the only city on the tour that

770
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:57,040
Speaker 1: was not sold out. So culturally it was not um fabulous.

771
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 1: But my parents loved music, and I grew up, you know,

772
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: with music by music. Would your father at that time

773
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: most women did not work outside the home. Was that

774
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: the case with your mother? It was? Would your father

775
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: do for a living. My father was He worked for

776
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: cons Meats. Cons Meats was a company centered in Cincinnati,

777
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:19,040
Speaker 1: headquartered in Cincinnati. Their slogan was the Weiner the world awaited.

778
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: Was it a kosher weiner? It wasn't kosher. And he

779
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 1: eventually went to work for another meat company, and when

780
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: it was absorbed by Sarah Lee, became a vice president

781
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: of Sarah Lee. And when I was twenty years old,

782
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: I I stopped eating meat. But did he bring home

783
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:38,719
Speaker 1: a lot of weaers before that? Boy? Yes, And he

784
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: always warned us, explained to us the difference between all

785
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:44,919
Speaker 1: be frightened, you know. And he explained as very taught

786
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 1: us very early, I'd be careful with those hot dogs kids, right.

787
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: I just remember my parents were only the Hebrew national

788
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:54,279
Speaker 1: That's right, because those were safe. Yeah. So okay. How

789
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 1: many generations were your parents families in America? My grant,

790
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: my four grand parents all emigrated from Russia Lithuania. If

791
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: you going back to check out where they grew up

792
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: or their upbringing situation, I haven't. I haven't. I had

793
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:13,759
Speaker 1: an offer to go to Russia and then it was postponed.

794
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: But I would love to go on to to do

795
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 1: some concerts and that's what I will go there. And

796
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 1: also right before she died, my father's mother mentioned in

797
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: passing that she had a sibling whom she from whom

798
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: she was separated when she came to America. So there

799
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 1: was a sibling that went somewhere else that I never

800
00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 1: knew about. So I may have relatives there that I mean,

801
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: I may never find them. But it's that whole thing

802
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 1: that there's people out there that It's funny because on

803
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 1: my mother's side, Uh, both her parents came from very

804
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: large families, one of nine, one of thirteen. And after

805
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: the war, you know, all these people re emerged. A

806
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: lot went to what was then Palestine eventually Israel, and

807
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:58,279
Speaker 1: then they'd have the Jewish newspaper where you would advertise,

808
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: like with one of our uncle, Saul, he came to

809
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:05,279
Speaker 1: America after being in the Russian Army, and he would

810
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: advertise the Jewish paper, Hey, I have these relative does

811
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: anybody know them? And that's how they found each other.

812
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 1: So was your family in Ohio and your father go

813
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 1: to there for work? Well, my parents were born in

814
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: in in Columbus. Uh, why so why did your grandparents

815
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,359
Speaker 1: go to Ohio? I asked my mother that not too

816
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: long ago, and there was some job opportunity for one

817
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: of them, and then others sort of followed suit. My grandmother,

818
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: my mother's mother, came to New York and worked in

819
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:41,440
Speaker 1: the sweat shops, you know, in the garment industry. And uh,

820
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly how she got to Columbus, but

821
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: sometimes one would go and then the rest would follow,

822
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: and then a community would be formed. Okay, so you

823
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: grow up? Uh? Are you accute as a member of

824
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,720
Speaker 1: the group and outsider just one of the great masses?

825
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: How did you fit into a society? I did not

826
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: fit into society. When did you realize that? From the beginning,

827
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: I stayed in the basement of our house um reading

828
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: books and drawing, and and listening to music and listening

829
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: to old records. My grandmother had some seventy eight rpm

830
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: records that she gave me, and I listened to them

831
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: in the basement, and and my mother would say, honey,

832
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 1: please go outside, go outside. I was always pale. I

833
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:29,839
Speaker 1: didn't relate to any of my friends because I didn't

834
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: listen to any of the music they listened to. I

835
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: didn't like kids my age because I thought they were

836
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:37,759
Speaker 1: dumb because I was all around adults all the time,

837
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: so I was it was very solitary. In high school,

838
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,800
Speaker 1: I got involved with theater and then I had friends,

839
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: and then it sort of changed. But prior to that time,

840
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: I was I was a lonely kid. And you had

841
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 1: a sibling. I had two siblings, an older brother and

842
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 1: have an older brother and an older sister, and they

843
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 1: were quote normal. My parents knew how to do with him,

844
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: but they didn't know how to deal with me because

845
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: I was the sensitive one. Okay, so they were half

846
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. No, they're they're full okay. So at

847
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:12,359
Speaker 1: what point do you pick up a musical instrument five

848
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: years old? When I was five, my parents moved into

849
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: a new home. They cobbled together enough money to buy

850
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: a new house, and and they had an empty living

851
00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: room and they had enough money left to buy a

852
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 1: little furniture. And my dad said, let's buy a piano.

853
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:29,400
Speaker 1: And my mother said, nobody's gonna play the piano. Uh.

854
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 1: I was five years old at the time. My sister

855
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:34,759
Speaker 1: was nine and my brother was eleven, and my dad

856
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 1: just loved music. He said, let's buy piano. Maybe one

857
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: of the kids will play, and my mom said, let's

858
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 1: get furniture. And I remember they took me to the

859
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 1: piano dealer in downtown Columbus. I don't know why they

860
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:49,520
Speaker 1: took me and not my brother and sister. And they

861
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: they picked picked out a spin At piano, the cheapest

862
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: piano they could buy. It was five dollars and they

863
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: brought it home. And the next day when it was delivered,

864
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: my dad was off at work, and I sat down

865
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: and played dough a dear a thing I played with

866
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,440
Speaker 1: both hands, and my mother came in from the kitchen

867
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,320
Speaker 1: and said, who taught you that? And I said, nobody

868
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: taught me that. She said, well, someone had to teach

869
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: your your your father must have shown you, because my

870
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: dad could play like chop sticks or whatever. I said, no,

871
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 1: I made it up. She sent me to my room

872
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 1: for lying to her because she was sure that somebody

873
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: had to teach me. And when my father came home later,

874
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: they realized that I was playing the piano by ear.

875
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: So I started playing immediately. Just from the get go,

876
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: I could play the piano, and then you had lessons.

877
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: I had lessons. Briefly, I had a piano teacher at

878
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 1: Capitol University and she would always play the lesson for me,

879
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:46,919
Speaker 1: and then she put the put the book on the piano,

880
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 1: play the lessons, and I would just listen to her

881
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: play the lesson and copy her. So after about two months,

882
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: she put the book on the piano first and didn't

883
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 1: play the lesson, and she said, okay, play this. I

884
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: said I can't. She said why not. I said, well,

885
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,799
Speaker 1: I don't know what it says. She said, You've been

886
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 1: playing this for two months. I said no, I've been

887
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: listening to you. And she got this look of rage

888
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 1: on her face and she went out in the hall

889
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 1: where my mother was waiting for me. She said, Mrs Feinstein,

890
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:11,840
Speaker 1: do you know your son has been playing by ear

891
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:15,279
Speaker 1: as if it was the dirtiest you know, expletive. And

892
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: my mother said, yeah, yeah, I knew that, didn't you.

893
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: She said no, so and I said to my mom

894
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:23,320
Speaker 1: I said I don't like piano lessons. So they said okay,

895
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: and I just learned to play just on my own.

896
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: I just kept so, when did you learn to read music? Well,

897
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: I still don't reading music very well. And that was

898
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 1: like the biggest sticking point with conducting, because I have

899
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:39,800
Speaker 1: to work laboriously on a score to really learn it

900
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 1: before I conducted, and Andre prevn when when I told

901
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: him I was conducting, he said, well, can you read

902
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:49,719
Speaker 1: the transposed instruments on a score? And I said no.

903
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:51,320
Speaker 1: He said, well don't you think I had to do that?

904
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:53,760
Speaker 1: I said yeah, I said, that's why I'm so embarrassed

905
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 1: even discussing this with you. So I'm still learning a lot. Okay,

906
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:02,399
Speaker 1: so you get rid of lessons you continue to play,

907
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:06,040
Speaker 1: like every day. I don't play every day, but I'm

908
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:08,839
Speaker 1: working so much. No, no, no, when you're at that oh,

909
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: at that age, at that age, yeah, I was playing

910
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 1: every day. I was listening to songs and listening to

911
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 1: things on the radio, and at that time there was

912
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: the the contemporary pop stations that my sister and brother

913
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:21,879
Speaker 1: were listening to me. So I was hearing Carol King

914
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: and the Beatles and all that. And then my parents

915
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 1: listened to w BNS, the easy listening, so I would

916
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: listen to all the standards and they would play all

917
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: the standard singers from Sinatra to Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Pegley,

918
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: Nat Call. So I heard all that, and then my parents, um,

919
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 1: like all households at that time, bought all the cast

920
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: albums of all the music. Of course, that was before

921
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: only gay people boughdcast albums enough and uh so I

922
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 1: learned My Fair Lady and the Sound of Music and

923
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 1: all those Everybody bought those albums. When Mary Poppins came out,

924
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 1: you know we did too, absolutely so. Uh So you're

925
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: playing and you get the high school, well, and you

926
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: say you become part of the theater group. What does

927
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:07,760
Speaker 1: that look like. Well, it was one of the places

928
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: where I could I could fit in the music. I

929
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 1: was kicked out of choir because, um, I talked back

930
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:17,439
Speaker 1: to the teacher too much. It was a real smart ass.

931
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: I thought, I knew more than Are you still a

932
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: smart ass? No, not anymore. I've I've I've learned that

933
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: it's important to fake humility and business. Now it was

934
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: George Burns said, when you can fake sincerity, you've made

935
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 1: it in show business. But the truth is that I'm

936
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 1: not a smart ass anymore. But I was. I was.

937
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: So you got kicked out for being a smart as? Yeah, okay,

938
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: that was the choir. What about the theater theater? Um,

939
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: no problem. I became the head of the Maskers Club,

940
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:50,239
Speaker 1: which was out of the theater group, and I also

941
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: did all the public address announcements you know in high school,

942
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 1: you know, the I would I would put together these little, uh,

943
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: little dramas, you know, these one minute sort of commercial

944
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 1: and play old music and stuff. And it was this

945
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:04,640
Speaker 1: would be for the whole school before school started. They

946
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: play over the speakers during home room. Okay, were you

947
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 1: in the plays once in a while, Once in a while,

948
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: I was. You were responsible for the music and the

949
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: I would sometimes put the music together for the players.

950
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: I played the piano for the show. Uh. When we

951
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 1: did Fiddler on the Roof, they cast me as the Rabbi,

952
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,719
Speaker 1: which was because I guess I was acting in many

953
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: ways like an old man. So I wasn't a particularly

954
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 1: good performer. But for some reason that year in my

955
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 1: senior year, I was named best Actor, which was a

956
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 1: sad commentary. Okay, did everybody know you were this uh

957
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:46,359
Speaker 1: prodigy and piano? Yes? So that was where? Okay, were

958
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 1: you a good student? Bad student? I was a terrible student,

959
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: terrible more kind of grades um sees d s. In

960
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: my senior year fs, I just barely graduated because I

961
00:51:57,120 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 1: hated school. I didn't care about it. I didn't understand

962
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:02,719
Speaker 1: why we had to study mathematics, and I mean, it

963
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: just it was incomprehensible to me. I just thought it

964
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 1: was a waste of time. But what did your parents

965
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 1: say about that? Well, my parents, I didn't know how

966
00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:13,399
Speaker 1: to deal with me, and I had them wrapped around

967
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: my finger. My mother. My dad was traveling, and my mom,

968
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:18,799
Speaker 1: she she just she was so exasperated. If she got

969
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 1: a call from me in the middle of the day.

970
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:22,480
Speaker 1: She know I did something wrong in school, I could say,

971
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: and I'd say, moms, she said, what did you do?

972
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:26,560
Speaker 1: And I was kicked out of school at one point,

973
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:28,680
Speaker 1: and I wasn't allowed to return until I went to

974
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: a therapist. Well, you kicked out for for talking back

975
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 1: to one of the teachers. They told me I had

976
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: to do something and I said, well why. They said,

977
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:37,399
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you why. I said, yes,

978
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 1: you do. And they kicked me out for questioning authority.

979
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 1: And then did you go to the therapist. I went

980
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,920
Speaker 1: to the therapist and we were dealing with anger issues

981
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 1: and he helped me a lot, actually, And then I

982
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,080
Speaker 1: went back to school and I was allowed back after

983
00:52:53,160 --> 00:52:56,279
Speaker 1: I had the note from the therapist, and and then

984
00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: everyone who was in their senior year and taking their

985
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: S A T S and you know all that. At

986
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:02,759
Speaker 1: and and UH, I decided I wasn't going to go

987
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: to go to college because the guidance counselor who was

988
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 1: who didn't like me at all. She said, you are

989
00:53:09,400 --> 00:53:13,359
Speaker 1: not college material. You should not go to college. Really. Yeah,

990
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 1: So I didn't go to college, and my parents never

991
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 1: said anything about it to me. And one day I

992
00:53:18,520 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: went to my mom and said, aren't you gonna ask

993
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: me if I'm going to college? And she said, well,

994
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 1: you never said anything about it, so we assumed you're not.

995
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: So then you knew it was cool. At what point

996
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:31,279
Speaker 1: did you know you wanted to make music your life? Well,

997
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: in high school I had started working uh in a

998
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,279
Speaker 1: in a in a restaurant, and I was making good money,

999
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 1: like at a piano bar, well playing I wasn't singing

1000
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 1: yet playing the piano, and I people started hiring me

1001
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:47,240
Speaker 1: when I was fifteen and sixteen to play for weddings,

1002
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 1: and that was amazing. I never thought you could get

1003
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: money for for making music. But after high school I

1004
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:55,440
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was gonna do, so by default

1005
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: I was playing in in a piano bar, excuse me,

1006
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:03,320
Speaker 1: and I was asked by somebody to sing, and I

1007
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:06,840
Speaker 1: had sun in choir, but before I got kick and

1008
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:09,080
Speaker 1: the hardest thing in the world was trying to play

1009
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:13,000
Speaker 1: the piano and sing at the same time. So over

1010
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:16,239
Speaker 1: about a year, I, while I was playing in the

1011
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: piano bar the restaurant called the Dell, I kind of

1012
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:22,279
Speaker 1: figured out how to accompany myself, and that was one

1013
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:24,160
Speaker 1: of the most valuable things I could have done because

1014
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:27,800
Speaker 1: but no teaching. You were self taught. Self taught, yes, okay,

1015
00:54:28,120 --> 00:54:30,359
Speaker 1: and so okay, you graduate from high school, you're still

1016
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: living in your family home. How long before you then move?

1017
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: I this is in Ohio. I played for about three

1018
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 1: years in piano bars, and I still didn't know what

1019
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: I was going to really do for my life because

1020
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:48,760
Speaker 1: I was convinced that I couldn't possibly have a life

1021
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: making music and I was playing in piano bars, so

1022
00:54:51,200 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: what what chance did I have of advancing? But I

1023
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:57,440
Speaker 1: decided to move to California at the age of twenty

1024
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: because from the time I was very young, I had

1025
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: this insistent voice telling me to move to California myself.

1026
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: Same thing, okay, it just used to beg my mother

1027
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:08,839
Speaker 1: when are we gonna move to California? And you heard

1028
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: those beach Boy records? Mom, we got to move to California.

1029
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 1: And then I did, uh huh, yeah, I mean it

1030
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:16,240
Speaker 1: was just it was it was a fad to complete

1031
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: that I was going to go. And my father, right

1032
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:23,239
Speaker 1: around the same time, had had started traveling into California

1033
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: and he said, let's he said to my mom, let's

1034
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: move to l A. So independently of me, they decided

1035
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,399
Speaker 1: to move to l A. But I traveled for a while.

1036
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:32,960
Speaker 1: I went to New York and moved traveled around. And

1037
00:55:33,040 --> 00:55:36,399
Speaker 1: then when I came to California, my parents had moved

1038
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:39,840
Speaker 1: there before they but you traveled around working or just

1039
00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:41,919
Speaker 1: I went. I was in New York for a while,

1040
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 1: just sort of taking time and staying with relatives and

1041
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:49,440
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out the music business. No, no,

1042
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 1: I knew I couldn't figure that out. Okay, so now

1043
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 1: you come to California. Your parents have moved here. Yes,

1044
00:55:56,800 --> 00:55:59,840
Speaker 1: I stayed with my parents, which was weird, uh in

1045
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:04,240
Speaker 1: in uh Canoga Park, Okay, which was actually the fringe

1046
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 1: of l A County. Yeah. Yeah, And I stayed with

1047
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:09,720
Speaker 1: him for a couple of months and then I started

1048
00:56:09,719 --> 00:56:12,720
Speaker 1: playing in piano bars, and I moved to an apartment

1049
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:15,960
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, the studio apartment. No goal, This is just

1050
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 1: what you're doing, just doing that, just trying to figure

1051
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:20,840
Speaker 1: things out. What kind of piano bars and where. The

1052
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:23,240
Speaker 1: first one was in Panorama City, in the San Fernando

1053
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 1: Valley called Mother's A good place to be was the

1054
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: Slogan and it was run by a guy, owned by

1055
00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: a guy who thought he was Humphrey Bogart playing that

1056
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:35,440
Speaker 1: playing that song. I mean, I was terrified of this man,

1057
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: and uh. I played there for a bit, and then

1058
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: I got a job as a piano salesman because I

1059
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: thought I can't possibly make a living playing the piano.

1060
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: And there was a piano dealership called Finnigan's owned by

1061
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: this guy, Bill Finnigan. He at four different stores, and

1062
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:52,240
Speaker 1: again in the San Fernando Valley. I was a piano

1063
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:55,640
Speaker 1: salesman at Finnigan's. And this guy was such a shyster.

1064
00:56:56,160 --> 00:57:00,720
Speaker 1: He had an old uh Steinway piano from the eighteen hundreds,

1065
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:02,720
Speaker 1: and these people came in and said, it's a beautiful piano.

1066
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 1: He said. Richard Wagner wrote The Bulkyry on this piano.

1067
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 1: I mean, he would make up these stories. Liveracchi first

1068
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 1: played chopsticks on this piano, and he would tell this

1069
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 1: pian and I would say that's not true. And he

1070
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 1: fired me because I challenged his authority, and and so

1071
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:21,320
Speaker 1: I was out of that shop. But before you were fired,

1072
00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,080
Speaker 1: could you sell piano? I sold a few. I wasn't

1073
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: a good salesman because I knew what the wholesale price was,

1074
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: and I felt so guilty, you know, charging in the

1075
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 1: retail price. I mean, it was, it was. It was

1076
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: just like that's another similarity between you and me. It's

1077
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:35,760
Speaker 1: like I could tell you a few stories, but at

1078
00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:38,000
Speaker 1: your podcast. So you get fired from there? Yeah, I

1079
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: got fired. And then something very strange happened. I was

1080
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: collecting records. I had always been a record collector of

1081
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: seventy eighths and just different stuff. And at this point,

1082
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 1: people believe seventy eight have the best sound because of

1083
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: the speed in the deeper groove and their direct disc right. Yeah,

1084
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:57,480
Speaker 1: oh there. I have a huge collection of seventy eights

1085
00:57:57,640 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 1: going back to the church. Okay, so you're collecting record

1086
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: are you buying them all over the place? Because in

1087
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: seventies six and seventy seven. When I came to California,

1088
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:07,919
Speaker 1: there were a lot of places where you could find

1089
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:12,320
Speaker 1: all kinds of records. It was amazing. And Uh, I

1090
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: went to a place in Hollywood, uh looking for records

1091
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: by Oscar Levant, because I discovered Oscar Levant and Gershwin

1092
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 1: and was looking for a rare Oscar Levant recording. And

1093
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:23,520
Speaker 1: he was the greatest interpreter of the music of George

1094
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:26,960
Speaker 1: Gershwin and an amazing classical pianist. And I went to

1095
00:58:27,040 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 1: the store in Hollywood called the record collector, and I said,

1096
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: do you have this Columbia album Oscar Levan at the

1097
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 1: piano And he said no, but we have some records

1098
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 1: that belonged to him. And he had this box of

1099
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 1: of acetates and air checks and test pressings all of

1100
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 1: Oscar Levant, the dated back to n four. I said,

1101
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 1: where did you get these and he said, We've got

1102
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:52,520
Speaker 1: them from an auction of the Levant to state. Well,

1103
00:58:53,040 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 1: I had to I put down fifty dollars on the

1104
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 1: box of records, and I had to borrow a hundred

1105
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars from my parents to buy these records.

1106
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: And it was an amazing cash of all these studio

1107
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 1: rehearsal recordings of Levant from MGM and radio show with

1108
00:59:10,600 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: him and being Crosby and Gershwin recordings. It was incredible.

1109
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 1: And I had met this lady at the piano store

1110
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 1: who knew agents William Morris, and I told her about

1111
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:26,560
Speaker 1: finding these records and she said, well, you should call

1112
00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:29,120
Speaker 1: Levant's widow, June Levant, and asked her why she got

1113
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 1: rid of these records. I said, well, I would if

1114
00:59:30,640 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: I knew her, but I don't know her. And she

1115
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: got me June Levant's phone number and I called up

1116
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:37,920
Speaker 1: June Levant out of the blue. I said, Hi, my

1117
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:40,680
Speaker 1: name is Mike Feinstein. I just moved here from Columbus, Ohio,

1118
00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 1: and I bought these records that belonged to your husband.

1119
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 1: She said, well, I have on my husband's records. Where

1120
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: did you get those? I said, from such such a

1121
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: piano star. She said, well, I have them all and

1122
00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: I said, well, this one has a letter tucked in

1123
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: the sleeve that's addressed to him. And I read her

1124
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 1: the letter. She said, oh my god, that's Skyler and

1125
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:00,760
Speaker 1: she said call me back into our and she hung up.

1126
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: I called her back. She's well, I think I have

1127
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:05,120
Speaker 1: Oscars records. I just look, but can you come over

1128
01:00:05,160 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 1: and bring the records with you. I said, well, they're

1129
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 1: very fragile, but I'll come over. So I went over

1130
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:13,240
Speaker 1: to see her, and she was visibly surprised to see

1131
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:15,160
Speaker 1: this twenty year old kid at the door. And she

1132
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 1: had a guy with her whom she had introduced as

1133
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:18,680
Speaker 1: an attorney because I think she was ready for some

1134
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: big legal battle. And she started telling me stories about

1135
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 1: her husband, and I knew every story because I was

1136
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 1: a fan of Oscar Levant. And then she started looking

1137
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:28,960
Speaker 1: at me like the dog looking in the gramophone horn,

1138
01:00:29,040 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 1: with her head cocked to one side. And it turned

1139
01:00:33,720 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 1: out that the records I had bought were sold at

1140
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: the Levant State auction, but she didn't know they were

1141
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:42,600
Speaker 1: gone because she didn't go to the auction because it

1142
01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 1: was too emotional for her and she didn't mean to

1143
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:47,479
Speaker 1: sell them. She had put the records aside to save.

1144
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 1: So part of his collection was sold by accident, and

1145
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:54,440
Speaker 1: she had of it, and I had bought the other

1146
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 1: thirty percent of it that was sold by accident. So

1147
01:00:57,320 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: she we realized what had happened, and she said, you

1148
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: know what you can sold. You can keep those records,

1149
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:04,439
Speaker 1: but just don't do anything commercial with him. I said, okay,

1150
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:07,160
Speaker 1: and we became friends and she started taking me to

1151
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:10,919
Speaker 1: dinner and telling me stories about Oscar Levant and about

1152
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:14,360
Speaker 1: the Gershwins and all these people and and um, well,

1153
01:01:14,440 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me for someone who didn't get along

1154
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:19,720
Speaker 1: in high school and got kicked out all the time,

1155
01:01:20,200 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: that you instantly got along with Oscar Levan's widow. Well,

1156
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:28,160
Speaker 1: that's because I got along with adults. I mean, authority figures.

1157
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:30,560
Speaker 1: You're right, I didn't get along with but June I

1158
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 1: was so thrilled to meet her, and she's telling me

1159
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 1: stories about this era of music that I love. But

1160
01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 1: you kept the relationship up absolutely. That shows an interesting

1161
01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: aspect about you. That's contrary. I mean, you explained it

1162
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: by being an adult. But continue, Well, I have a fascination.

1163
01:01:54,720 --> 01:01:58,520
Speaker 1: For now, I'm not saying your interest. It's one thing

1164
01:01:58,560 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: to be one and done. I went, I met this person.

1165
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:04,120
Speaker 1: Let me tell my friends. To keep the relationship required

1166
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 1: a certain amount of effort on your on your behalf.

1167
01:02:06,560 --> 01:02:10,920
Speaker 1: I understand, yes, yes, well I had no ulterior motive

1168
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:12,320
Speaker 1: other than the fact that I know. But it is

1169
01:02:12,320 --> 01:02:15,320
Speaker 1: that part of your personality. You meet someone in your world,

1170
01:02:15,520 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: that you will pick up the phone and say, not

1171
01:02:17,840 --> 01:02:19,680
Speaker 1: only the first time, but after you met them, you

1172
01:02:19,720 --> 01:02:23,920
Speaker 1: will continue the relationship. Yes, yes, if I if I

1173
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 1: feel something, absolutely okay. So you went, you were continuing

1174
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 1: to see Oscar Levin's widow. You went to dinner and

1175
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 1: and she uh took me around the parties and started

1176
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:38,840
Speaker 1: introducing me as a protege. She took me to Sam

1177
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:41,960
Speaker 1: Goldwyn Junior's house and I said, meet my protege. And

1178
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:43,880
Speaker 1: they asked me to play the piano, and I sat

1179
01:02:43,920 --> 01:02:45,880
Speaker 1: down and played. Love walked in on the piano that

1180
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: George Gershwin had demonstrated it for Sam Goldwin Sr. And

1181
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 1: then she took me to a party at the studio

1182
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:53,920
Speaker 1: of Tony Duquette, and I played the piano, and I

1183
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:59,880
Speaker 1: met Dolores del Rio and Southern and all these ancient

1184
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:03,560
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars. And they liked me because I spoke their language,

1185
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: their movies and I knew their world. And and Dolores

1186
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 1: do Rio made a movie called Ramona. There was a

1187
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 1: big hit song Ramona. I heard the mission bells above,

1188
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:14,880
Speaker 1: and when they asked me to sit down and play

1189
01:03:14,920 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 1: the piano, I said, gee, maybe if I play Ramona

1190
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: Dolores del Rio will sing. And this one guest at

1191
01:03:20,200 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 1: the party looked at me and said, some dreams do

1192
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:29,680
Speaker 1: not come true. So anyway, eventually June Levant introduced me

1193
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: to Leonard and Ira Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was eighty years old. Okay,

1194
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 1: just because they wanted work done or this was part

1195
01:03:37,160 --> 01:03:41,680
Speaker 1: of our circle. June was very friendly with with Lee Gershwin,

1196
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:48,400
Speaker 1: uh and uh Oscar Levant was close friends with with

1197
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:51,280
Speaker 1: the Gershwin family. He had died in nineteen seventy two.

1198
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 1: This is nineteen seventy seven at this point, and June

1199
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: had periodic lunches with Leonard Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was house

1200
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,680
Speaker 1: bound and she told Lee about me. She said, I

1201
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:03,440
Speaker 1: met this young kid and he plays piano and it

1202
01:04:03,720 --> 01:04:05,600
Speaker 1: and Lee said, oh, well, we need all of our

1203
01:04:05,680 --> 01:04:07,920
Speaker 1: records cataloged and I need somebody and can you give

1204
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 1: me Can you tell him to call me? So she

1205
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: called me up and she said, Lee Gershwan wants you

1206
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:14,680
Speaker 1: to call her. I said why. She said, well, she

1207
01:04:14,800 --> 01:04:17,520
Speaker 1: and Ira have these records they need cataloged and uh,

1208
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:21,400
Speaker 1: you should you should call her? And I said, okay, great,

1209
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:23,480
Speaker 1: thank you And I said thanks you and she's, well,

1210
01:04:23,520 --> 01:04:25,120
Speaker 1: you have to be very careful. You have to call

1211
01:04:25,200 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: her Mrs Grosher, and she's a very tough, mean lady,

1212
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 1: and just don't screw it up. She's so I said, okay, okay, okay.

1213
01:04:31,920 --> 01:04:34,160
Speaker 1: So I called Lee Gershwin and she and told me

1214
01:04:34,280 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: to come over and and she was very tough, but

1215
01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:43,640
Speaker 1: she loved me. She she either loved you or we

1216
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:46,600
Speaker 1: were toast. And so she said, come over to the house.

1217
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:51,360
Speaker 1: And there was sitting Ira Gershwin, this legend of American

1218
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:53,440
Speaker 1: popular song who had written the lyrics to some of

1219
01:04:53,480 --> 01:04:57,960
Speaker 1: the greatest standards of the twentieth century, and he was

1220
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:01,000
Speaker 1: autographing a record album. And I was nervous, and I

1221
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:03,400
Speaker 1: sat down and leonor his wife and her sister were

1222
01:05:03,400 --> 01:05:07,440
Speaker 1: in a corner sort of watching, and somebody had issued

1223
01:05:07,480 --> 01:05:10,000
Speaker 1: an album of demos of Ira Gershwin singing and he

1224
01:05:10,080 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 1: had no voice, and he anyway, I said, Mr gersh

1225
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:15,720
Speaker 1: when I have that record, and he looked at me

1226
01:05:15,840 --> 01:05:17,600
Speaker 1: like I was crazy. He said, why do you have

1227
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:21,080
Speaker 1: this work? I said, because I love your working, And

1228
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: he said, you're the first person I met outside of

1229
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:26,480
Speaker 1: a relative who has this record. And then to make conversation.

1230
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:28,959
Speaker 1: I said, Mr Gershwen, I have a seventy eight record

1231
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:32,680
Speaker 1: of gems from La La Lucille. He said, La La Lucille.

1232
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:36,640
Speaker 1: That was George's first Broadway musical, nineteen nineteen. And he said, well,

1233
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,160
Speaker 1: it must have the songs on it, the two hits

1234
01:05:39,240 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 1: Teota Lum Bumbo and nobody but you. I said, that's right,

1235
01:05:42,600 --> 01:05:44,200
Speaker 1: and Lee gersh went turned to her sister and it

1236
01:05:44,280 --> 01:05:48,120
Speaker 1: isn't that cute? He's telling Ira that's right. So that's

1237
01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 1: how my relationship with him started. Immediately we sort of

1238
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:53,640
Speaker 1: hit it off and and uh, I ended up spending

1239
01:05:53,680 --> 01:05:58,320
Speaker 1: six years working for I doing what as his amanuensis,

1240
01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:00,920
Speaker 1: which is a fancy word for student. But I was

1241
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:04,880
Speaker 1: cataloging stuff in the house and Lee Gershwin came to

1242
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 1: me one day and said, look, you've given my husband

1243
01:06:06,880 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 1: a new lease on life, and we need you in

1244
01:06:10,160 --> 01:06:11,480
Speaker 1: this house. She said, I know you're going to go

1245
01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:14,320
Speaker 1: off and do other things one day, but um, just

1246
01:06:14,480 --> 01:06:18,560
Speaker 1: keep yourself busy and most importantly, keep Ira happy. So

1247
01:06:18,840 --> 01:06:23,600
Speaker 1: I basically was Irish companion, and then I became their

1248
01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:25,400
Speaker 1: eyes and ears to the outside world, and they would

1249
01:06:25,400 --> 01:06:27,320
Speaker 1: send me out to see a Gershwin production or if

1250
01:06:27,360 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 1: somebody wanted to do something, they would put me in

1251
01:06:29,600 --> 01:06:31,920
Speaker 1: touch with them to work with them to make sure

1252
01:06:31,960 --> 01:06:34,200
Speaker 1: it was what the family wanted. And when he died,

1253
01:06:34,240 --> 01:06:36,920
Speaker 1: I became his literary executor until I had a falling

1254
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:40,040
Speaker 1: out with Lee after I was death and they were

1255
01:06:40,120 --> 01:06:42,760
Speaker 1: able to push me out of that and I was

1256
01:06:42,840 --> 01:06:46,760
Speaker 1: bereft because I was separated from from them from the estate.

1257
01:06:46,920 --> 01:06:48,760
Speaker 1: And then a few years later we had a rap

1258
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:52,600
Speaker 1: Rochemont and Lee and I stayed close till her passing. Okay,

1259
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: while you were working with the Gershwins, well you still

1260
01:06:55,880 --> 01:06:59,680
Speaker 1: performing in piano bars. I was okay. So in any

1261
01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:02,720
Speaker 1: event he died, you're out of the estate. When does

1262
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 1: your so called it's not so called, it's when does

1263
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 1: your musical career begin. Well after after I was pushed

1264
01:07:11,400 --> 01:07:16,280
Speaker 1: out of Irish estate, I just started playing, dedicated, dedicated

1265
01:07:16,400 --> 01:07:18,320
Speaker 1: my time to playing in piano bars because I needed

1266
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:21,680
Speaker 1: to earn a living and UM. At that point I

1267
01:07:21,760 --> 01:07:24,160
Speaker 1: got hired to play to place on Las angele Bolevard

1268
01:07:24,200 --> 01:07:28,240
Speaker 1: called three North that was opened by the same investor

1269
01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 1: who's who. Investors who had invested in Spago and UM.

1270
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 1: They were convinced that this was going to be the

1271
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:37,520
Speaker 1: next big thing, and I was playing old songs in

1272
01:07:37,600 --> 01:07:42,080
Speaker 1: the lounge, and after two months they fired me because

1273
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:43,640
Speaker 1: they said, you're playing old songs. We need you to

1274
01:07:43,640 --> 01:07:45,560
Speaker 1: play pop stuff. I said, that's not what I do,

1275
01:07:46,480 --> 01:07:47,960
Speaker 1: and they gave me two weeks notice. But in the

1276
01:07:48,040 --> 01:07:50,040
Speaker 1: two weeks, for some reason, a lot of people started

1277
01:07:50,040 --> 01:07:53,160
Speaker 1: coming in to hear me play, and the my job

1278
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:56,280
Speaker 1: was preserved. When that place closed, I was hired to

1279
01:07:56,360 --> 01:07:59,360
Speaker 1: play at the Mandrean Hotel, which had just been opened

1280
01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:03,120
Speaker 1: in a lounge, and um, it was in that same

1281
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:07,520
Speaker 1: period that I became friends with Liza Minnelli. Just before that,

1282
01:08:07,960 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 1: Did you like this experience or you were solely doing

1283
01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:13,760
Speaker 1: it for the money? Well? I liked it too. Sometimes

1284
01:08:13,800 --> 01:08:15,440
Speaker 1: I liked it and sometimes I didn't like it. I

1285
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:17,679
Speaker 1: was playing five hours a night, and I was playing

1286
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:21,120
Speaker 1: in gay bars too, because gay bars, in some instances

1287
01:08:21,160 --> 01:08:23,120
Speaker 1: were the only places that would hire somebody that played

1288
01:08:23,720 --> 01:08:26,680
Speaker 1: mainly old movie songs and show tunes and such. But

1289
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 1: they were very mixed places where a lot of straight,

1290
01:08:29,360 --> 01:08:32,640
Speaker 1: straight people would come in and wanted to hear uh standards.

1291
01:08:33,479 --> 01:08:36,920
Speaker 1: Uh so how did you meet Liza Minelli? Well? I

1292
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:39,120
Speaker 1: had met her father, Vincent Minnelli, who was the great

1293
01:08:39,160 --> 01:08:41,479
Speaker 1: Hollywood director, because he was close friends with Ira and

1294
01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:45,639
Speaker 1: Lee Gershwin. Um Ira Gershwe was best man at Vincent

1295
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:49,160
Speaker 1: Minnelli and Judy Garland's wedding, and Liza was named after

1296
01:08:49,200 --> 01:08:52,519
Speaker 1: the Gershwin song Liza. So Ira Gershwan was Liza's godfather.

1297
01:08:53,439 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 1: So I had uh Christmas of whatever? That year was

1298
01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:00,600
Speaker 1: eight four. I guess I was playing a lot of

1299
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:04,080
Speaker 1: Christmas parties because people were hiring me to play private parties.

1300
01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:07,920
Speaker 1: And I played a party that Vincent hired me to

1301
01:09:08,000 --> 01:09:11,880
Speaker 1: play his his Christmas party, and Liza was there and

1302
01:09:13,640 --> 01:09:15,400
Speaker 1: Gene Kelly was there. So I'd play Singing in the

1303
01:09:15,479 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 1: Rain and I'd play like I like myself and obscure

1304
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:20,320
Speaker 1: songs from their movies, and they look at me like right.

1305
01:09:20,680 --> 01:09:22,840
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. And eventually everybody left and

1306
01:09:22,840 --> 01:09:24,639
Speaker 1: I was still at the piano, and Liza sat down

1307
01:09:24,960 --> 01:09:26,559
Speaker 1: next to me. She said, kid, from now when we're

1308
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: joined at the hip, really And I said, yeah, right,

1309
01:09:29,800 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 1: you know, and and and it was true she so,

1310
01:09:32,600 --> 01:09:34,160
Speaker 1: but that was the first thing she spoke to She

1311
01:09:34,240 --> 01:09:36,719
Speaker 1: hadn't been speaking to you during the evening that's correct.

1312
01:09:37,400 --> 01:09:40,160
Speaker 1: I had actually met her briefly previously at a party

1313
01:09:40,240 --> 01:09:43,599
Speaker 1: here that but it was that moment and we ended

1314
01:09:43,680 --> 01:09:47,120
Speaker 1: up going out to a place, a nightclub where we

1315
01:09:47,240 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 1: hung out and we stayed up all night and and

1316
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:52,240
Speaker 1: played music. And I told her was working at the Mandre.

1317
01:09:52,320 --> 01:09:54,000
Speaker 1: And the next night she came into the Mandre and

1318
01:09:54,040 --> 01:09:56,800
Speaker 1: and she came in every single night and brought people

1319
01:09:56,840 --> 01:09:59,559
Speaker 1: to hear me. She brought Elizabeth Taylor, she brought Gregory Peck,

1320
01:09:59,680 --> 01:10:02,240
Speaker 1: she brought at all these people. And then she decided

1321
01:10:02,320 --> 01:10:03,760
Speaker 1: she was going to host a party for me at

1322
01:10:03,800 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 1: the Mondrian. She said, at an inaugural party. I said,

1323
01:10:06,439 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 1: but I've been playing there for five months. She said,

1324
01:10:08,040 --> 01:10:10,519
Speaker 1: nobody knows. This is gonna be your debut party. And

1325
01:10:10,600 --> 01:10:13,639
Speaker 1: she hosted a party with Elizabeth Taylor, with Henry Mancini,

1326
01:10:13,720 --> 01:10:15,920
Speaker 1: with greg Rypeck. You know, Jenny Jenny was there, Jenny

1327
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: Mincy um. It was the kind of party that if

1328
01:10:18,600 --> 01:10:20,640
Speaker 1: it hadn't been thrown from me, I never would have

1329
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:24,320
Speaker 1: been invited to. And and she hired her publicists and

1330
01:10:24,360 --> 01:10:26,200
Speaker 1: it put me on the map. And then I was

1331
01:10:26,280 --> 01:10:28,360
Speaker 1: invited to be on the MERV Griffin Show, and I

1332
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:31,040
Speaker 1: did TV shows, and then I was hired to play

1333
01:10:31,080 --> 01:10:34,320
Speaker 1: the Algonquin in New York and got made my New

1334
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:37,400
Speaker 1: York debut and she hosted my New York debut. Uh.

1335
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:40,320
Speaker 1: And then I got an offer, uh to play Broadway.

1336
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:42,360
Speaker 1: And then I got an offer from Ernest Fleischmann to

1337
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 1: play Raps in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl. Okay, what

1338
01:10:45,439 --> 01:10:46,840
Speaker 1: period of time were we talking about? How long a

1339
01:10:46,880 --> 01:10:48,960
Speaker 1: period this was? This was a two year period. Okay,

1340
01:10:49,680 --> 01:10:53,439
Speaker 1: now you meet lies to what degree we were star

1341
01:10:53,560 --> 01:10:56,640
Speaker 1: struck by these people? Well? I was star struck, but

1342
01:10:56,680 --> 01:11:00,639
Speaker 1: I also again could speak their language. Okay, So then

1343
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:04,400
Speaker 1: you're playing at the Marion. How long after the inaugural

1344
01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:08,120
Speaker 1: party do you end up on MERV Griffin? Uh? It

1345
01:11:08,439 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: was let's see, the inaugural party was May of nine

1346
01:11:13,360 --> 01:11:15,960
Speaker 1: and MERV Griffin was later and it was just like

1347
01:11:16,040 --> 01:11:21,000
Speaker 1: a month later. Okay, wasn't your mind blown? Yeah? And

1348
01:11:21,080 --> 01:11:23,360
Speaker 1: at this point did you have any so called people

1349
01:11:23,439 --> 01:11:26,840
Speaker 1: working for you? Manager, agent, publicist, any of that. I

1350
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:30,840
Speaker 1: had a default agent who liked my playing in the

1351
01:11:30,840 --> 01:11:33,200
Speaker 1: piano barns A kid, I'll work you know, I'll represent

1352
01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:35,840
Speaker 1: you like he's doing me a forever. So he became

1353
01:11:35,880 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 1: my agent and what agency do you work at? It

1354
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:42,519
Speaker 1: was a p A and uh I got a gig

1355
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:45,640
Speaker 1: in San Francisco doing a show because prior when I

1356
01:11:45,680 --> 01:11:48,400
Speaker 1: was still playing in piano bars, it was not a show.

1357
01:11:48,479 --> 01:11:51,800
Speaker 1: I was background. Then in San Francisco, they were opening

1358
01:11:51,840 --> 01:11:54,080
Speaker 1: a new hotel and they needed someone to play in

1359
01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:56,240
Speaker 1: the show room. They had small show room, and I

1360
01:11:56,360 --> 01:11:58,800
Speaker 1: was hired by default because they couldn't find anybody else.

1361
01:11:58,840 --> 01:12:02,160
Speaker 1: And somehow they hired me, and the critic for the

1362
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:06,320
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle wrote this rave review and that I

1363
01:12:06,400 --> 01:12:08,519
Speaker 1: put together a show. I figured out what songs I

1364
01:12:08,640 --> 01:12:10,519
Speaker 1: was going to sing. I talked to the aufics before

1365
01:12:10,600 --> 01:12:16,080
Speaker 1: or after MERV Griffin. It was before because MERV happened

1366
01:12:16,240 --> 01:12:18,720
Speaker 1: well I don't know the exactly, I don't remember, but

1367
01:12:18,840 --> 01:12:21,320
Speaker 1: it was all happened within a couple of months, and

1368
01:12:22,040 --> 01:12:26,880
Speaker 1: uh I got this of review and suddenly the gig

1369
01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:28,519
Speaker 1: was sold out, the two gig was sold out, and

1370
01:12:28,520 --> 01:12:31,960
Speaker 1: they extended me. So my tom My agent flew up

1371
01:12:32,000 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: to San Francisco to see me do this show where

1372
01:12:34,640 --> 01:12:37,759
Speaker 1: he saw me talking and do I put a show together?

1373
01:12:38,200 --> 01:12:40,000
Speaker 1: And I remember he came backstage and he was jumping

1374
01:12:40,080 --> 01:12:41,400
Speaker 1: up and down like a little kid, and he said,

1375
01:12:41,600 --> 01:12:45,200
Speaker 1: We're going to make a lot of money, and I thought, Wow,

1376
01:12:45,680 --> 01:12:50,600
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm worth something to somebody. That was you know,

1377
01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:55,439
Speaker 1: the Blessing and the curse. Okay, so you dur MERV Griffin. Uh?

1378
01:12:56,080 --> 01:13:00,400
Speaker 1: To what degree does that help your career? Uh? I

1379
01:13:00,439 --> 01:13:03,080
Speaker 1: don't remember any shock waves from it. And I asked

1380
01:13:03,200 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 1: Rosemary Clooney if she would go on the show with

1381
01:13:05,080 --> 01:13:07,800
Speaker 1: me because I was so scared, and she agreed to

1382
01:13:07,880 --> 01:13:09,759
Speaker 1: go on the show. And how did you know Rosemary?

1383
01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:13,200
Speaker 1: She was Ira Gershwin's next door neighbor. So I met

1384
01:13:13,280 --> 01:13:15,680
Speaker 1: Rosemary during the time I was working for Ira. You

1385
01:13:15,760 --> 01:13:18,759
Speaker 1: basically knew everybody. Well. I had met a lot of people,

1386
01:13:19,400 --> 01:13:21,040
Speaker 1: and I played a lot of Hollywood parties, you know,

1387
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:25,240
Speaker 1: so meet people. Okay, so you do MERV give Griffin,

1388
01:13:25,320 --> 01:13:29,640
Speaker 1: you play the Algonquin. Continue from there. Well after the

1389
01:13:29,920 --> 01:13:35,559
Speaker 1: Algonquin again, I got these fantastic reviews and they did

1390
01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:38,320
Speaker 1: a New York Times Sunday magazine piece on me. That's

1391
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:42,080
Speaker 1: a really big deal. How how long after the Mandrean

1392
01:13:42,240 --> 01:13:46,360
Speaker 1: inauguration was that? That was one year? So one year later,

1393
01:13:46,400 --> 01:13:48,760
Speaker 1: I'm in New York and playing the algon. Okay, but internally,

1394
01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:51,160
Speaker 1: aren't you like I mean, that's kind of hard to

1395
01:13:51,240 --> 01:13:54,560
Speaker 1: cope with all that success. Oh, I was. I was

1396
01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:57,559
Speaker 1: in shock, and I also didn't know how to handle

1397
01:13:57,640 --> 01:14:00,400
Speaker 1: with it. And I became at one point very arrogant,

1398
01:14:00,400 --> 01:14:03,160
Speaker 1: and I became I became an asshole a lot of times.

1399
01:14:03,240 --> 01:14:06,400
Speaker 1: That's not good for your career. It wasn't. But somehow

1400
01:14:06,439 --> 01:14:09,360
Speaker 1: I learned. I learned pretty quickly, and I survived. I

1401
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:12,679
Speaker 1: have I'm not gonna name names, but I was friends

1402
01:14:12,720 --> 01:14:14,519
Speaker 1: with a couple of people that I saw them destroy

1403
01:14:14,560 --> 01:14:19,040
Speaker 1: their career. The thing is that I, I'm fundamentally a

1404
01:14:19,120 --> 01:14:23,240
Speaker 1: good person. You know, I mean tolerate idiots, right, I

1405
01:14:23,360 --> 01:14:27,960
Speaker 1: just I mean I I was inappropriate. I was inappropriate

1406
01:14:28,040 --> 01:14:30,840
Speaker 1: and also when I got scared, I would lash out

1407
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:34,120
Speaker 1: of people. And you did this totally by yourself or

1408
01:14:34,160 --> 01:14:36,760
Speaker 1: at some point your career if you had therapy. Well,

1409
01:14:37,120 --> 01:14:39,400
Speaker 1: I started therapy. I started therapy in that period. And

1410
01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:41,400
Speaker 1: also they sent me out on the road and I

1411
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:45,000
Speaker 1: didn't have a lighting person, I didn't have a sound person.

1412
01:14:45,439 --> 01:14:48,040
Speaker 1: I was going out doing concerts. I was all by myself.

1413
01:14:48,760 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 1: I don't even have a road manager. No I didn't.

1414
01:14:52,080 --> 01:14:54,320
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody I had the age they sent me up.

1415
01:14:54,600 --> 01:14:56,360
Speaker 1: I didn't, so I didn't know what I was doing.

1416
01:14:56,439 --> 01:14:58,719
Speaker 1: So i'd get scared. And I was trying to figure

1417
01:14:58,720 --> 01:15:01,639
Speaker 1: out how to light do lighting and it of course,

1418
01:15:01,680 --> 01:15:03,599
Speaker 1: and you want to be right, and I'm up there

1419
01:15:03,640 --> 01:15:06,960
Speaker 1: and in there they're saying how's it sound? And I didn't,

1420
01:15:07,000 --> 01:15:10,080
Speaker 1: you know? You know this? So it wasn't until a

1421
01:15:10,200 --> 01:15:13,160
Speaker 1: couple of years later somebody said, oh, well, you know

1422
01:15:13,320 --> 01:15:16,280
Speaker 1: you there's people that do that. I said really, So

1423
01:15:16,439 --> 01:15:20,120
Speaker 1: then I got a road manager, and so I learned

1424
01:15:21,240 --> 01:15:24,240
Speaker 1: on the job. On the job, okay, And at what

1425
01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:29,320
Speaker 1: point did you get a recording contract? I was at

1426
01:15:29,400 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 1: the Mandrean and a man named Herb Eisenman, who was

1427
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:35,559
Speaker 1: I believe the head of publishing a twenty century Fox Music,

1428
01:15:35,640 --> 01:15:37,760
Speaker 1: came in to hear me and he said, I'd like

1429
01:15:37,840 --> 01:15:40,880
Speaker 1: to record you doing an album. And I said why

1430
01:15:42,360 --> 01:15:44,519
Speaker 1: He said, because I think could be a good album.

1431
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:48,479
Speaker 1: I said, nobody's going to buy an album me and

1432
01:15:48,560 --> 01:15:52,960
Speaker 1: he said come on? And I kept saying no, and

1433
01:15:53,360 --> 01:15:55,920
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you say yes? Because I didn't think I

1434
01:15:56,000 --> 01:15:59,439
Speaker 1: was good enough. I didn't think enough. I was like,

1435
01:15:59,640 --> 01:16:05,160
Speaker 1: come on I'm playing piano bar and he said, finally

1436
01:16:05,200 --> 01:16:08,240
Speaker 1: said would you let me worry about that? If who's

1437
01:16:08,240 --> 01:16:11,360
Speaker 1: gonna buy it? Let me? I said, okay. So we

1438
01:16:11,439 --> 01:16:14,120
Speaker 1: went into a studio and we started doing a Gershwin

1439
01:16:14,280 --> 01:16:16,519
Speaker 1: recording called Pure Girl. We called a Pure Gerze when

1440
01:16:16,560 --> 01:16:19,799
Speaker 1: it was Herb's Herb's Little Company again, I asked Rosemary

1441
01:16:19,840 --> 01:16:21,720
Speaker 1: Clooney if she did a duet with me, and she did,

1442
01:16:23,080 --> 01:16:26,600
Speaker 1: and uh I recorded this Gershwe album and I was

1443
01:16:26,640 --> 01:16:28,559
Speaker 1: still at the Mondrian when he had the first copies.

1444
01:16:28,600 --> 01:16:30,719
Speaker 1: I remember he brought them. This came out on twentieth

1445
01:16:30,800 --> 01:16:33,120
Speaker 1: Century Fox. Right. No, No, he started a little label

1446
01:16:33,160 --> 01:16:38,960
Speaker 1: for Parnassis and uh I remember he did cassettes and LPs.

1447
01:16:39,560 --> 01:16:42,560
Speaker 1: We couldn't find a pressing plant that was available to

1448
01:16:42,640 --> 01:16:46,840
Speaker 1: do CDs because there was such a demand for CDs right,

1449
01:16:46,960 --> 01:16:50,960
Speaker 1: especially an independent company. We couldn't get pressing, So the

1450
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:53,680
Speaker 1: CD didn't come out till much later, until like six

1451
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:56,599
Speaker 1: months whenever he could get it. So he had these albums,

1452
01:16:56,640 --> 01:17:00,400
Speaker 1: he started sending them out to people and a DJ

1453
01:17:00,560 --> 01:17:03,560
Speaker 1: New York named Jonathan Schwartz who was on w n

1454
01:17:03,840 --> 01:17:08,880
Speaker 1: W who played classic American standards, paid attention to the

1455
01:17:08,960 --> 01:17:11,880
Speaker 1: album because there was a duet with Rosemary Clooney and

1456
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,799
Speaker 1: he played that track. So he started playing this record

1457
01:17:15,160 --> 01:17:19,360
Speaker 1: and the recording started selling, and it started selling several

1458
01:17:19,479 --> 01:17:22,360
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies, and I mean suddenly it was selling

1459
01:17:22,479 --> 01:17:25,720
Speaker 1: because it was unusual for a kid my age doing

1460
01:17:25,840 --> 01:17:30,040
Speaker 1: Gershwin and and uh it it was selling. And then

1461
01:17:30,120 --> 01:17:32,160
Speaker 1: when I went to New York and did the Algonquin

1462
01:17:33,120 --> 01:17:36,160
Speaker 1: a year later, he recorded a live album because we

1463
01:17:36,240 --> 01:17:39,080
Speaker 1: came live at the Algonquin and Al Hirschfeld did the

1464
01:17:39,160 --> 01:17:42,040
Speaker 1: cover of the so I had a Hirshfeld caricature. And

1465
01:17:42,120 --> 01:17:44,920
Speaker 1: then the next year, one of my second year at

1466
01:17:44,920 --> 01:17:48,320
Speaker 1: the Algonquin, Sardis did a caricature me. It was there

1467
01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:50,880
Speaker 1: was a caricature me and Sarties and I said, why

1468
01:17:50,920 --> 01:17:52,640
Speaker 1: are you doing a caricature of me? I haven't been

1469
01:17:52,680 --> 01:17:54,960
Speaker 1: on Broadway. I mean, it was crazy. And then I

1470
01:17:55,080 --> 01:17:56,560
Speaker 1: was invited to play the raps and he blew with

1471
01:17:56,600 --> 01:17:59,519
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Bowl. And and then in the next year,

1472
01:17:59,560 --> 01:18:02,400
Speaker 1: in nineteen d eight, Ron Daylsoner produced me on Broadway.

1473
01:18:02,439 --> 01:18:05,639
Speaker 1: I was in a show called Michael Feinstein, Isn't It Romantic?

1474
01:18:05,680 --> 01:18:07,439
Speaker 1: And I did a Broadway musical and a tour all

1475
01:18:07,520 --> 01:18:11,000
Speaker 1: over the country. Okay, okay, at this point, you still

1476
01:18:11,040 --> 01:18:13,600
Speaker 1: have the same agent, yes, And did you have a

1477
01:18:13,680 --> 01:18:16,240
Speaker 1: manager at that point? Yes? How did you get a manager?

1478
01:18:16,640 --> 01:18:18,880
Speaker 1: I was playing at the Algonquin and a lovely guy

1479
01:18:18,960 --> 01:18:20,960
Speaker 1: named Winston Simone came up to me and said, I'd

1480
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:22,240
Speaker 1: like to manage you. And I said, I don't need

1481
01:18:22,280 --> 01:18:25,640
Speaker 1: a manager. And he said, I'll tell you what. I

1482
01:18:25,720 --> 01:18:28,280
Speaker 1: will manage you for free for the next year, and

1483
01:18:28,400 --> 01:18:30,080
Speaker 1: if you don't like what I do, you can tell

1484
01:18:30,160 --> 01:18:33,920
Speaker 1: me goodbye. And I said okay. And he managed me

1485
01:18:34,000 --> 01:18:37,080
Speaker 1: for about six months and I and I'd say, uh no,

1486
01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:38,680
Speaker 1: it was about four months. And I put him on

1487
01:18:38,760 --> 01:18:43,360
Speaker 1: salary because he knew what he was doing. Okay. So um,

1488
01:18:44,760 --> 01:18:50,080
Speaker 1: at this point, what are you feeling internally? Fear fear,

1489
01:18:50,560 --> 01:18:55,800
Speaker 1: afraid you're gonna be exposed? Absolutely? And are you making

1490
01:18:55,880 --> 01:18:59,360
Speaker 1: any money? I'm making money, like crazy? Okay. What are

1491
01:18:59,360 --> 01:19:03,400
Speaker 1: your parents say? Well, Jewish parents, you know they were

1492
01:19:03,520 --> 01:19:05,640
Speaker 1: They're like, oh my god, my son and son. Have

1493
01:19:05,760 --> 01:19:09,240
Speaker 1: you met my son? You know they were they were

1494
01:19:09,520 --> 01:19:14,760
Speaker 1: over the moon. Okay, how did this affect your personal life? Well?

1495
01:19:14,880 --> 01:19:16,640
Speaker 1: I was suddenly traveling a lot. I was on the

1496
01:19:16,760 --> 01:19:20,479
Speaker 1: road and I was very lonely, and I was smoking

1497
01:19:20,520 --> 01:19:24,160
Speaker 1: a lot of grass. It never affected my performances because

1498
01:19:24,280 --> 01:19:27,160
Speaker 1: I was very disciplined. When did you start smoking grass?

1499
01:19:27,880 --> 01:19:30,680
Speaker 1: Sometime after high school? Sometime after high school? So it

1500
01:19:30,800 --> 01:19:34,160
Speaker 1: was a musician thing, that's how you fell into it. Well, Uh,

1501
01:19:34,400 --> 01:19:37,559
Speaker 1: it was something that I was dead set against because

1502
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:40,040
Speaker 1: some of my some some of my extended family had

1503
01:19:40,120 --> 01:19:43,320
Speaker 1: drug problems. But then I did it, and then I

1504
01:19:43,439 --> 01:19:45,840
Speaker 1: discovered that it opened music for me in a way

1505
01:19:45,960 --> 01:19:48,439
Speaker 1: that that was different, and I couldn't get to that

1506
01:19:48,600 --> 01:19:51,719
Speaker 1: place of connecting with music that deeply without it, which

1507
01:19:51,800 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 1: was of course a dangerous thing. But um, it was

1508
01:19:55,560 --> 01:19:59,200
Speaker 1: something that I loved and it I have to say

1509
01:19:59,360 --> 01:20:03,000
Speaker 1: that I came up with a lot of arrangements when

1510
01:20:03,080 --> 01:20:06,040
Speaker 1: I was smoking, and a lot of stuff that I

1511
01:20:06,160 --> 01:20:08,559
Speaker 1: looked back at and listened to some of his recordings

1512
01:20:08,760 --> 01:20:10,479
Speaker 1: and they were good, you know, because people always say

1513
01:20:10,479 --> 01:20:12,960
Speaker 1: it gradually, but the truth is that if it only

1514
01:20:13,000 --> 01:20:16,400
Speaker 1: fried your brain, people wouldn't do it. Right. But do

1515
01:20:16,479 --> 01:20:19,840
Speaker 1: you still smoke? Though I stopped for twenty two years,

1516
01:20:20,800 --> 01:20:25,400
Speaker 1: and now I do it maybe like every two months,

1517
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:27,720
Speaker 1: I'll do a little bit, maybe just for a week,

1518
01:20:29,120 --> 01:20:30,360
Speaker 1: and I only do a little bit of it. And

1519
01:20:30,479 --> 01:20:33,200
Speaker 1: because I had gotten so addicted to it, when I stopped,

1520
01:20:33,280 --> 01:20:35,240
Speaker 1: I never thought I would touch it again in a

1521
01:20:35,320 --> 01:20:39,120
Speaker 1: million years. But I don't have a problem with it,

1522
01:20:39,240 --> 01:20:41,280
Speaker 1: mainly because the thrill is gone. It doesn't do for me.

1523
01:20:41,720 --> 01:20:46,720
Speaker 1: Did you stop years? I was. I was so addicted

1524
01:20:46,760 --> 01:20:51,120
Speaker 1: to it and and I couldn't stop. I prayed to

1525
01:20:51,280 --> 01:20:53,640
Speaker 1: God that I could stop. I mean, it was it

1526
01:20:53,800 --> 01:20:57,600
Speaker 1: was something that was It was becoming debilitating because I

1527
01:20:57,880 --> 01:21:01,080
Speaker 1: couldn't do without it, and I was because I was

1528
01:21:01,240 --> 01:21:04,040
Speaker 1: using it to medicate emotionally, you know, my loneliness and

1529
01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:06,599
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And then one day I woke up

1530
01:21:07,840 --> 01:21:09,439
Speaker 1: and I flushed it down the toilet and I never

1531
01:21:09,520 --> 01:21:12,360
Speaker 1: touched it again. I didn't go to a program or anything.

1532
01:21:12,960 --> 01:21:15,920
Speaker 1: But how hard was that period? After you flushed down

1533
01:21:15,960 --> 01:21:18,240
Speaker 1: the toilet? The next couple of months, it was not

1534
01:21:18,520 --> 01:21:20,760
Speaker 1: that hard, which was the odd thing. And I still

1535
01:21:20,840 --> 01:21:24,400
Speaker 1: don't understand it because prior to that, I literally it

1536
01:21:24,560 --> 01:21:26,719
Speaker 1: was like cold turkey. I mean, I just I tried

1537
01:21:26,800 --> 01:21:29,320
Speaker 1: and tried, and I had to I just like I

1538
01:21:29,400 --> 01:21:31,960
Speaker 1: would light up. I couldn't help it. Okay, So you're

1539
01:21:32,000 --> 01:21:34,840
Speaker 1: on the road. Now you ultimately get a manager and

1540
01:21:35,120 --> 01:21:38,280
Speaker 1: you're touring and you're making a couple of records. What's

1541
01:21:38,280 --> 01:21:43,320
Speaker 1: the next step after that? What's the next step after that? Well, um,

1542
01:21:44,920 --> 01:21:47,519
Speaker 1: I was doing these touring shows, you know, doing a lot,

1543
01:21:47,640 --> 01:21:50,200
Speaker 1: did the Ron Delson you do the Broadway show, and

1544
01:21:50,280 --> 01:21:53,519
Speaker 1: then just doing concerts, touring during concerts and performing arts centers,

1545
01:21:53,600 --> 01:22:00,960
Speaker 1: and and the recordings they started to wane. Uh, aside

1546
01:22:01,000 --> 01:22:04,560
Speaker 1: from the first several albums. Well, my fourth album was

1547
01:22:05,280 --> 01:22:09,760
Speaker 1: my fourth album. Electra Records bought my contract and uh,

1548
01:22:10,960 --> 01:22:12,799
Speaker 1: they did an album with me called Isn't It Romantic?

1549
01:22:12,840 --> 01:22:15,960
Speaker 1: With the orchestrations by Johnny Mandel, and that was very successful.

1550
01:22:16,479 --> 01:22:19,760
Speaker 1: It was never a million seller, but cumulatively I ended

1551
01:22:19,840 --> 01:22:22,560
Speaker 1: up selling a couple of million recordings. But that was

1552
01:22:22,640 --> 01:22:25,240
Speaker 1: long before sound scan, so it's not documented, but I did.

1553
01:22:26,360 --> 01:22:28,840
Speaker 1: But Isn't It Romantic did really well and it was

1554
01:22:28,880 --> 01:22:33,200
Speaker 1: a lush orchestral album. And then they could no one

1555
01:22:33,240 --> 01:22:35,760
Speaker 1: could figure out what the next album was. I said,

1556
01:22:35,840 --> 01:22:38,360
Speaker 1: let's do an MGM album and they said, great, Well,

1557
01:22:38,439 --> 01:22:42,040
Speaker 1: nobody wanted an MGM album. But but up to that point,

1558
01:22:42,479 --> 01:22:44,640
Speaker 1: everything I did, people were it was four albums, but

1559
01:22:44,680 --> 01:22:46,880
Speaker 1: the people bought them, you know, the Algonquina of this,

1560
01:22:46,960 --> 01:22:48,960
Speaker 1: and they say, I thought everything would work and I

1561
01:22:49,040 --> 01:22:51,839
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about the music business and and nobody

1562
01:22:51,880 --> 01:22:54,800
Speaker 1: else knew what to do with me. So then after

1563
01:22:55,160 --> 01:22:57,920
Speaker 1: the next album didn't do very well, and the next one,

1564
01:22:58,000 --> 01:23:01,599
Speaker 1: and it was like this is this is kind of tough.

1565
01:23:01,680 --> 01:23:03,800
Speaker 1: And then it was that whole period for years, and

1566
01:23:03,840 --> 01:23:05,599
Speaker 1: people are saying, well, you sold a lot of records,

1567
01:23:05,680 --> 01:23:07,479
Speaker 1: Let's see what we can do with you, and let's

1568
01:23:07,479 --> 01:23:10,080
Speaker 1: try this, let's try that, and and I made a

1569
01:23:10,120 --> 01:23:12,240
Speaker 1: lot of good records, but none of them really sold much.

1570
01:23:12,320 --> 01:23:14,280
Speaker 1: You know. I did an album with with Jimmy Webb

1571
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:16,800
Speaker 1: that was a great record and we're both proud of it,

1572
01:23:16,920 --> 01:23:18,800
Speaker 1: but it didn't do much. But you know, the thing

1573
01:23:18,840 --> 01:23:21,800
Speaker 1: about a record is that it's there for a long time.

1574
01:23:22,040 --> 01:23:25,400
Speaker 1: People can reevaluate and come back to them. And and uh,

1575
01:23:26,120 --> 01:23:27,720
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff I did that I don't like,

1576
01:23:27,880 --> 01:23:30,320
Speaker 1: and there's things I did that I do And a

1577
01:23:30,439 --> 01:23:32,760
Speaker 1: station like the you know, seriously Sinatra that will play

1578
01:23:32,800 --> 01:23:35,360
Speaker 1: my records, they play things that I don't like, and

1579
01:23:35,400 --> 01:23:37,160
Speaker 1: I was like, god, I wish they played these other things,

1580
01:23:37,280 --> 01:23:39,599
Speaker 1: But you know, that's life. It's still it's still all

1581
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:42,599
Speaker 1: a blessing. Okay. And at this point you're touring, you're

1582
01:23:42,640 --> 01:23:47,000
Speaker 1: obviously making money. Uh you say you're lonely? Do you

1583
01:23:47,640 --> 01:23:51,960
Speaker 1: just keep doing it? Yeah, that's what I did. And

1584
01:23:52,280 --> 01:23:55,519
Speaker 1: I did it for a long time, and then I

1585
01:23:55,600 --> 01:23:58,439
Speaker 1: got to the point where I was so burned out.

1586
01:23:59,400 --> 01:24:01,920
Speaker 1: I said I'm to take in a year off. And

1587
01:24:02,120 --> 01:24:05,600
Speaker 1: then all the business people said, oh, you take a

1588
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:08,200
Speaker 1: year off. You know they'll forget about you. You did

1589
01:24:08,280 --> 01:24:10,800
Speaker 1: this is a really done No, no, no, don't do this.

1590
01:24:11,000 --> 01:24:13,360
Speaker 1: This is the worst thing you can possibly do. And

1591
01:24:13,479 --> 01:24:15,360
Speaker 1: I said, I'm taking a year off, and I did.

1592
01:24:16,080 --> 01:24:18,160
Speaker 1: And it was in that period that I had stopped

1593
01:24:18,200 --> 01:24:22,679
Speaker 1: smoking grass. I met my partner and then my husband,

1594
01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:26,280
Speaker 1: Terence Flannery, whom I never would have met. I met

1595
01:24:26,360 --> 01:24:28,320
Speaker 1: him at a party. I had nothing to do, and

1596
01:24:28,439 --> 01:24:31,200
Speaker 1: someone invited me over to watch the Tony Awards telecast.

1597
01:24:31,320 --> 01:24:33,880
Speaker 1: And I hate Awards shows. I went because I had

1598
01:24:33,920 --> 01:24:36,559
Speaker 1: nothing to do. I had recently stopped smoking the grass,

1599
01:24:36,600 --> 01:24:40,680
Speaker 1: and and I met Terrence. We just started talking and

1600
01:24:41,240 --> 01:24:43,000
Speaker 1: and he never would have even spoken to me if

1601
01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:46,160
Speaker 1: he knew that I did drugs. But I stopped, and uh,

1602
01:24:46,439 --> 01:24:48,960
Speaker 1: we got to know each other. And prior to that,

1603
01:24:49,720 --> 01:24:52,000
Speaker 1: I could only if the only way I could get

1604
01:24:52,040 --> 01:24:53,560
Speaker 1: to know someone is if I paid for them and

1605
01:24:53,600 --> 01:24:55,519
Speaker 1: brought them on the road with me. So anyone that

1606
01:24:55,640 --> 01:24:59,120
Speaker 1: I was involved with I basically had to support. Okay,

1607
01:24:59,200 --> 01:25:03,439
Speaker 1: had you had what was your relationship history prior to Terrence? UM?

1608
01:25:04,400 --> 01:25:07,840
Speaker 1: A lot of fun? Okay, So you dip your toe

1609
01:25:07,920 --> 01:25:09,719
Speaker 1: in the water, shall to say, but you haven't found

1610
01:25:09,800 --> 01:25:14,639
Speaker 1: Mr Wright right? Okay? So after that year off? Yeah,

1611
01:25:14,760 --> 01:25:22,720
Speaker 1: and in that period, UM, I reevaluated, reevaluated and went

1612
01:25:22,800 --> 01:25:26,840
Speaker 1: back to performing with a renewed love for what I

1613
01:25:26,960 --> 01:25:32,599
Speaker 1: do and with less caring about about success. I mean,

1614
01:25:32,680 --> 01:25:34,680
Speaker 1: of course I still cared about success, but I really

1615
01:25:34,720 --> 01:25:39,120
Speaker 1: focused more on the music and started writing a little

1616
01:25:39,160 --> 01:25:43,719
Speaker 1: bit more. And we're talking about writing music. Were writing

1617
01:25:43,800 --> 01:25:46,320
Speaker 1: music here and there. I worked on a show for

1618
01:25:46,439 --> 01:25:50,920
Speaker 1: seven years and ultimately it didn't happen, but it showed

1619
01:25:50,960 --> 01:25:53,560
Speaker 1: me that I could do it, and it's something that

1620
01:25:53,600 --> 01:25:55,960
Speaker 1: I still want to do more of. Okay, So how

1621
01:25:56,000 --> 01:25:58,479
Speaker 1: do you ultimately open a club in New York City?

1622
01:25:59,360 --> 01:26:01,760
Speaker 1: That was when I was working with Alex spirit Off

1623
01:26:01,800 --> 01:26:03,360
Speaker 1: as a manager and he said, what do you want

1624
01:26:03,360 --> 01:26:05,360
Speaker 1: to do? And I said, well, I've always had a

1625
01:26:05,400 --> 01:26:08,320
Speaker 1: fantasy of having a nightclub, but a nightclub is a

1626
01:26:08,400 --> 01:26:12,960
Speaker 1: hard business. And he created the collaboration with the Regency

1627
01:26:13,040 --> 01:26:17,760
Speaker 1: Hotel and I had played a private party for the

1628
01:26:17,880 --> 01:26:20,120
Speaker 1: Tische family, the owners of the hotel, prior to that,

1629
01:26:21,000 --> 01:26:23,919
Speaker 1: and so I had this. Suddenly I had a nightclub,

1630
01:26:24,840 --> 01:26:29,240
Speaker 1: and uh it was a wonderful fourteen years. And from

1631
01:26:29,320 --> 01:26:32,720
Speaker 1: that came the opportunity to open other clubs. And I

1632
01:26:32,800 --> 01:26:35,320
Speaker 1: opened a club in San Francisco and one and here

1633
01:26:35,360 --> 01:26:41,920
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles more recently, and U um uh there's

1634
01:26:42,000 --> 01:26:44,320
Speaker 1: now we're working actually on we're gonna be opening one

1635
01:26:44,360 --> 01:26:48,719
Speaker 1: in Indiana and there's going to be one in in Australia. Okay,

1636
01:26:48,960 --> 01:26:54,600
Speaker 1: As you said, nightclubs very hard business. Why is yours successful?

1637
01:26:56,800 --> 01:27:01,360
Speaker 1: Because I work with people who understand the business. And

1638
01:27:04,880 --> 01:27:07,960
Speaker 1: you have to watch the numbers so carefully. How much

1639
01:27:08,000 --> 01:27:10,280
Speaker 1: you spend on food, how much you spend on entertainment?

1640
01:27:10,400 --> 01:27:12,800
Speaker 1: Have I mean it is. It has to be very

1641
01:27:12,920 --> 01:27:16,040
Speaker 1: very finely calibrated. And there aren't too many clubs that

1642
01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:18,920
Speaker 1: have longevity. And there's bird Land in New York because

1643
01:27:19,280 --> 01:27:22,240
Speaker 1: Johnny VALENTI knows how to do that. There's a blue

1644
01:27:22,320 --> 01:27:26,200
Speaker 1: note and such uh, And you have to understand with

1645
01:27:26,280 --> 01:27:31,120
Speaker 1: booking talent, the pay scale, how how to to pay

1646
01:27:31,560 --> 01:27:35,439
Speaker 1: a lesser a person who gets less money a certain

1647
01:27:35,439 --> 01:27:37,160
Speaker 1: amount so you can afford money to pay someone who

1648
01:27:37,160 --> 01:27:40,760
Speaker 1: gets more money and amortize it. And it's it's difficult.

1649
01:27:40,920 --> 01:27:44,040
Speaker 1: And what the ticket price can be that is justifiable

1650
01:27:44,120 --> 01:27:46,680
Speaker 1: for patron and it has to be great. Food has

1651
01:27:46,720 --> 01:27:48,840
Speaker 1: to be comforted, has to be value for the money,

1652
01:27:49,320 --> 01:27:51,920
Speaker 1: has to be an incredibly comfortable atmosphere, and it has

1653
01:27:52,000 --> 01:27:54,680
Speaker 1: to be an atmosphere that has a unique purpose that

1654
01:27:54,800 --> 01:27:57,240
Speaker 1: somebody will want to go here, somebody in that setting

1655
01:27:57,720 --> 01:28:00,479
Speaker 1: and it's so wonderful that it's worth it financial to them.

1656
01:28:00,800 --> 01:28:03,360
Speaker 1: So it's it's tough, but it's it's when it works,

1657
01:28:03,439 --> 01:28:06,040
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. Okay, to what degree are you down in

1658
01:28:06,080 --> 01:28:09,519
Speaker 1: the weeds in terms of booking, food, etcetera. I'm not

1659
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:12,000
Speaker 1: down very far in the ways with with booking, but

1660
01:28:12,120 --> 01:28:14,120
Speaker 1: I am somewhat involved with it, and my name's on

1661
01:28:14,160 --> 01:28:17,400
Speaker 1: the room, so the buck stops with me. But I'm

1662
01:28:17,520 --> 01:28:20,960
Speaker 1: lucky to collaborate with wonderful people who who know how

1663
01:28:21,040 --> 01:28:24,000
Speaker 1: to do it like Brad Rowan and his partner Whore

1664
01:28:24,040 --> 01:28:27,040
Speaker 1: with with with Vitelos, that's now find Stein at Vitelos.

1665
01:28:27,880 --> 01:28:31,360
Speaker 1: We have a great relationship and it's a capacity there.

1666
01:28:31,840 --> 01:28:36,679
Speaker 1: I think it's between one and one forty. And again

1667
01:28:36,760 --> 01:28:39,080
Speaker 1: with with that, the seating has to be comfortable and

1668
01:28:39,200 --> 01:28:41,280
Speaker 1: it has to have to be crowded to have a buzz,

1669
01:28:41,280 --> 01:28:45,439
Speaker 1: but it can't be too crowded so people can can relax.

1670
01:28:45,680 --> 01:28:50,320
Speaker 1: And it's a whole psychological thing. It's and putting a

1671
01:28:50,439 --> 01:28:54,120
Speaker 1: room together. The components are things that people never think about,

1672
01:28:54,240 --> 01:28:56,840
Speaker 1: the comfort of the chairs, the spacing of the tables,

1673
01:28:56,960 --> 01:29:01,600
Speaker 1: the the the the lighting, the sund down, the decoration,

1674
01:29:02,400 --> 01:29:04,760
Speaker 1: the level of the lights. I mean the stage lining,

1675
01:29:04,800 --> 01:29:06,479
Speaker 1: but the level of the lights, so people feel like

1676
01:29:06,560 --> 01:29:10,040
Speaker 1: it's intimate. But I mean it in a room either

1677
01:29:10,120 --> 01:29:12,400
Speaker 1: works or it doesn't work. Okay. In all these cases,

1678
01:29:12,400 --> 01:29:15,320
Speaker 1: because it teems to be associated with other businesses, who's

1679
01:29:15,360 --> 01:29:18,479
Speaker 1: at risk you or them? Well, it depends on the

1680
01:29:18,720 --> 01:29:25,320
Speaker 1: on the partnership. In most cases it's them because in

1681
01:29:25,439 --> 01:29:29,720
Speaker 1: one case, uh, in two cases, my name is licensed uh.

1682
01:29:30,960 --> 01:29:32,840
Speaker 1: And it's the old joke, how do you go into

1683
01:29:32,840 --> 01:29:35,040
Speaker 1: the nightclub? Business and have a million dollars. You start

1684
01:29:35,080 --> 01:29:39,120
Speaker 1: with two million dollars. So but it's it's but it's

1685
01:29:39,200 --> 01:29:43,800
Speaker 1: but it's ongoing despite all these challenges. Yeah, and how

1686
01:29:43,920 --> 01:29:47,760
Speaker 1: often do you play in the varying clubs? Um? The

1687
01:29:47,840 --> 01:29:50,759
Speaker 1: New York club which is now fine Stein's fifty four below.

1688
01:29:51,479 --> 01:29:54,639
Speaker 1: I play twice a year August because it's a tough

1689
01:29:54,720 --> 01:29:57,600
Speaker 1: month to get people to come into the room. So

1690
01:29:57,680 --> 01:30:00,160
Speaker 1: I do pretty well there. And then holiday time was

1691
01:30:00,200 --> 01:30:04,439
Speaker 1: my grandmother was a holiday time. And then uh, find

1692
01:30:04,439 --> 01:30:06,240
Speaker 1: Science of the Tellers. We're still working out when I'll

1693
01:30:06,280 --> 01:30:07,760
Speaker 1: work there because I'm on the road a lot of

1694
01:30:07,800 --> 01:30:11,320
Speaker 1: daring concerts and other venues, large larger venues, and so

1695
01:30:11,479 --> 01:30:16,479
Speaker 1: I don't normally play nightclubs because economically it's not. But

1696
01:30:16,600 --> 01:30:19,759
Speaker 1: the thing about a nightclub, like playing Fine Science fifty

1697
01:30:19,800 --> 01:30:23,000
Speaker 1: four in New York, people will play it because of

1698
01:30:23,040 --> 01:30:25,400
Speaker 1: the attention it gets in the publicity it gets, and

1699
01:30:25,560 --> 01:30:27,719
Speaker 1: and it sets you up for a lot of other gigs.

1700
01:30:28,439 --> 01:30:31,000
Speaker 1: So there's great value in doing it right. Okay, how

1701
01:30:31,000 --> 01:30:33,640
Speaker 1: about other things like radio and television that you've been

1702
01:30:33,680 --> 01:30:38,000
Speaker 1: involved in. Well, yeah, I had a radio series for

1703
01:30:38,080 --> 01:30:41,000
Speaker 1: three years on NPR that was called song Travels that

1704
01:30:41,120 --> 01:30:43,599
Speaker 1: I finally had to give up because it was too

1705
01:30:43,760 --> 01:30:46,559
Speaker 1: hard to do the darn thing with guests and live

1706
01:30:46,760 --> 01:30:49,720
Speaker 1: music and oh my god, it was. I loved it,

1707
01:30:49,800 --> 01:30:53,680
Speaker 1: but it just was. It was. It took so much

1708
01:30:53,800 --> 01:30:57,040
Speaker 1: time to put together that one hour, because the music,

1709
01:30:57,400 --> 01:31:02,000
Speaker 1: because the music and making live music with with the guest, uh.

1710
01:31:02,160 --> 01:31:05,400
Speaker 1: And television. I've had a number of series on PBS

1711
01:31:05,520 --> 01:31:09,200
Speaker 1: and beyond and and uh. I want to do more

1712
01:31:09,240 --> 01:31:12,360
Speaker 1: of those things. And I'm so you found that rewarding. Yeah,

1713
01:31:12,479 --> 01:31:15,680
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Okay. So, at

1714
01:31:15,720 --> 01:31:18,320
Speaker 1: this point in the game, where your status still exists,

1715
01:31:18,400 --> 01:31:20,120
Speaker 1: what would you like to do in the future your

1716
01:31:20,160 --> 01:31:24,040
Speaker 1: own personal career bucket list? Well, I still want to

1717
01:31:24,080 --> 01:31:26,720
Speaker 1: write a musical because I think there's a place for

1718
01:31:26,800 --> 01:31:28,360
Speaker 1: the kind of show that I have in mind, which

1719
01:31:28,400 --> 01:31:32,200
Speaker 1: would be an amalga mora uh an homage to the past,

1720
01:31:32,360 --> 01:31:35,439
Speaker 1: but also is rooted in the contemporary world. Because one

1721
01:31:35,479 --> 01:31:37,680
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting about the music world is

1722
01:31:37,720 --> 01:31:39,800
Speaker 1: that everything is always you know, the next, the next,

1723
01:31:39,840 --> 01:31:42,439
Speaker 1: the next, the news, the news, the newest, But there

1724
01:31:42,479 --> 01:31:47,080
Speaker 1: are so many underserved people who care about classic music,

1725
01:31:47,280 --> 01:31:49,160
Speaker 1: and I think that there's a way to combine the two,

1726
01:31:50,040 --> 01:31:55,439
Speaker 1: because when you get people are judgmental about what people

1727
01:31:55,560 --> 01:31:57,519
Speaker 1: like and what people listen to. And the truth is

1728
01:31:57,640 --> 01:32:01,479
Speaker 1: that well illustrated with a store right. Elizam and Ellie

1729
01:32:02,280 --> 01:32:04,120
Speaker 1: years ago had a hit record with the Pet Shop

1730
01:32:04,120 --> 01:32:06,640
Speaker 1: Boys called Results. It was more famous in the UK,

1731
01:32:06,800 --> 01:32:09,000
Speaker 1: more popular, and she had a hit single in the

1732
01:32:09,120 --> 01:32:11,080
Speaker 1: UK of the song losing my Mind, and it was

1733
01:32:11,640 --> 01:32:13,160
Speaker 1: it was on the top ten, and she did the

1734
01:32:13,200 --> 01:32:16,280
Speaker 1: TV show Top of the Pops and and so she's

1735
01:32:16,320 --> 01:32:19,479
Speaker 1: suddenly touring and a lot of people are coming to

1736
01:32:19,560 --> 01:32:21,639
Speaker 1: hear her and because of her album with the Pet

1737
01:32:21,680 --> 01:32:23,160
Speaker 1: Shop Boys, so they think it's going to be this

1738
01:32:23,280 --> 01:32:26,559
Speaker 1: pop techno music. And I said, what are you gonna

1739
01:32:26,600 --> 01:32:28,200
Speaker 1: do when these people come to your show and they

1740
01:32:28,240 --> 01:32:30,960
Speaker 1: expect to hear the techno stuff? And she said, Honey,

1741
01:32:31,320 --> 01:32:32,840
Speaker 1: all I have to do is get him in the seats.

1742
01:32:34,320 --> 01:32:37,439
Speaker 1: And I've never forgotten that, and so like, what's good

1743
01:32:37,560 --> 01:32:42,800
Speaker 1: is good? Wow? On that note, you're a great rock

1744
01:32:42,880 --> 01:32:47,000
Speaker 1: and tour We could go on forever, but Michael, amazing

1745
01:32:47,160 --> 01:32:50,639
Speaker 1: stories more to come. Thanks so much for doing the podcast. Well,

1746
01:32:50,680 --> 01:32:53,840
Speaker 1: thank you. I admire you so much because I love

1747
01:32:53,960 --> 01:32:58,679
Speaker 1: the fact that you care so deeply about this world,

1748
01:32:58,800 --> 01:33:01,360
Speaker 1: and you are so smart, and you were so tough

1749
01:33:01,439 --> 01:33:03,400
Speaker 1: on people that need to hear what you have to say.

1750
01:33:03,840 --> 01:33:06,040
Speaker 1: So I'm very honored to be on this program. Well,

1751
01:33:06,160 --> 01:33:09,559
Speaker 1: all that stuff, I'm twelling right now, but the eye,

1752
01:33:09,600 --> 01:33:12,080
Speaker 1: you know, just conft. I'm astounded, And I did not

1753
01:33:12,240 --> 01:33:16,879
Speaker 1: expect all the similarities between yourself and me. I remember

1754
01:33:17,439 --> 01:33:19,240
Speaker 1: when I was a freshman in college, I had a

1755
01:33:19,240 --> 01:33:23,240
Speaker 1: connection where you could get records and electronic goods for wholesale. Okay,

1756
01:33:24,040 --> 01:33:27,479
Speaker 1: and theoretically it could be a business, but I just

1757
01:33:27,720 --> 01:33:32,000
Speaker 1: could not charge the people retail okay. And as far

1758
01:33:32,120 --> 01:33:35,080
Speaker 1: as getting in trouble in school for talking people, I

1759
01:33:35,200 --> 01:33:37,600
Speaker 1: had that even in law school. It's like, you know,

1760
01:33:37,960 --> 01:33:40,439
Speaker 1: that is definitely I certainly go onto the shrink. My

1761
01:33:41,200 --> 01:33:44,639
Speaker 1: my opinion of external people has changed with a certain quay.

1762
01:33:44,720 --> 01:33:48,040
Speaker 1: There's a song Dear Landlord by Bob Dylan. The famous

1763
01:33:48,160 --> 01:33:50,680
Speaker 1: version is the cover by Joe Cocker, and it goes

1764
01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:53,479
Speaker 1: each of us has his own special gift, and you

1765
01:33:53,560 --> 01:33:55,760
Speaker 1: know that was meant to be true. And if you

1766
01:33:55,880 --> 01:34:00,160
Speaker 1: don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you. And I have

1767
01:34:00,280 --> 01:34:05,280
Speaker 1: found everybody's a genius in some vertical Okay, and I've

1768
01:34:05,439 --> 01:34:07,840
Speaker 1: learned that, but there's a lot of stuff I'm really

1769
01:34:07,920 --> 01:34:09,720
Speaker 1: I've got. I've gotten in trouble that happens all the time.

1770
01:34:09,720 --> 01:34:12,640
Speaker 1: I just can't not tolerate the bs. I always end

1771
01:34:12,720 --> 01:34:15,320
Speaker 1: up saying something or even I'll get up and leave it.

1772
01:34:15,400 --> 01:34:17,240
Speaker 1: It was you got up and left. You know what

1773
01:34:17,400 --> 01:34:20,040
Speaker 1: it is the story and the other thing is, you know,

1774
01:34:20,160 --> 01:34:22,519
Speaker 1: the passion. I've had the same situation because we just

1775
01:34:22,920 --> 01:34:26,519
Speaker 1: remember first moved to l A. And I was going

1776
01:34:26,560 --> 01:34:28,240
Speaker 1: to law school. This was a couple of years after

1777
01:34:28,280 --> 01:34:29,519
Speaker 1: it was in l A. And I took a course

1778
01:34:30,320 --> 01:34:32,040
Speaker 1: uh U c l A extension. They used to have

1779
01:34:32,160 --> 01:34:34,759
Speaker 1: these music courses. I remember it was there. Joe Smith

1780
01:34:34,840 --> 01:34:41,479
Speaker 1: you've probably been from really he lived at Tentelf North Roxbury,

1781
01:34:41,520 --> 01:34:44,840
Speaker 1: Are Yeah, did you know him back then? I met

1782
01:34:44,920 --> 01:34:47,360
Speaker 1: him a few years after. Okay, Well, I remember going

1783
01:34:47,439 --> 01:34:50,479
Speaker 1: up to him asking the questions, you know everything, and

1784
01:34:50,640 --> 01:34:53,400
Speaker 1: it's like it's the same time thing. I'm just thrilled

1785
01:34:53,479 --> 01:34:56,880
Speaker 1: up talking to the guy, right, you know, and it

1786
01:34:56,920 --> 01:34:58,880
Speaker 1: could be both good and bad. Some people who feel

1787
01:34:58,880 --> 01:35:01,720
Speaker 1: inhibited other people it's like, you know, the best thing

1788
01:35:01,760 --> 01:35:04,760
Speaker 1: that ever happened to them. But you do a better

1789
01:35:04,960 --> 01:35:09,360
Speaker 1: job of I hate to say this, but I'm trying

1790
01:35:09,400 --> 01:35:11,040
Speaker 1: to say in a way that doesn't have judgment at me.

1791
01:35:11,320 --> 01:35:13,960
Speaker 1: You take advantage of the situation better than I do.

1792
01:35:14,439 --> 01:35:17,960
Speaker 1: I become intimidated. This happens. I meet these people saying

1793
01:35:18,160 --> 01:35:21,439
Speaker 1: let's get together, and I get too uptight. I haven't

1794
01:35:21,439 --> 01:35:24,280
Speaker 1: got time. I'm gonna know what's gonna happen. I've learned

1795
01:35:24,320 --> 01:35:27,320
Speaker 1: actually recently, because you know, being a Jewish family, my

1796
01:35:27,400 --> 01:35:29,400
Speaker 1: mother always told me I was a ship head, and

1797
01:35:29,520 --> 01:35:32,840
Speaker 1: it's like you, you know, the point is you get

1798
01:35:32,920 --> 01:35:35,519
Speaker 1: older and you realize everybody's got their issues and if

1799
01:35:35,560 --> 01:35:39,000
Speaker 1: you go, it'll be all right. But I'm still dealing

1800
01:35:39,080 --> 01:35:44,599
Speaker 1: with that now. Well that's very revealing and intimate. If

1801
01:35:44,640 --> 01:35:47,080
Speaker 1: you're just revealing that, as I say, you know once

1802
01:35:47,080 --> 01:35:49,120
Speaker 1: it's a similarity between you and me. But before we

1803
01:35:49,200 --> 01:35:52,080
Speaker 1: have our own private therapy session, I'm gonna end this.

1804
01:35:52,240 --> 01:35:56,200
Speaker 1: Thank you Michael so much for doing the podcast. Until

1805
01:35:56,280 --> 01:35:57,840
Speaker 1: next time, it's Bob left Sense