Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Says Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist, producer, songwriter Neil Giraldo. Neil,
Speaker 1: when we were setting this up, I heard that you're
Speaker 1: an early riser. How does that work with being a
Speaker 1: rock and roller.
Speaker 2: Well, let me give you what they give me. You're
Speaker 2: my philosophy to you, Bob, and I just want to say,
Speaker 2: you wanted a very few people that can actually pronounce
Speaker 2: my name properly, So you in Giraldo, you made sure
Speaker 2: that usually they leave the l out. I don't know why, Gerardo,
Speaker 2: and I just don't get it. But there's the idea
Speaker 2: about if you get up really early when it's dark,
Speaker 2: and you go to sleep when it's dark, you get
Speaker 2: two nights in every day. See how that works.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm very much a knight person, and that's a
Speaker 1: good line. So when do you get up and when
Speaker 1: do you go to bed?
Speaker 2: Well, it could be as early as nine thirty, and
Speaker 2: it could be as late as eleven, and I wake
Speaker 2: up usually three thirty, almost every day every day.
Speaker 1: Okay, one would say that's very little sleep.
Speaker 2: It is, but I think on percentages, the percentages of
Speaker 2: nine thirty are a lot better than the percentages of eleven,
Speaker 2: except when I'm on the road or something, or if
Speaker 2: in the studio. So yeah, it's just the thing. I
Speaker 2: always been that way. I always get up early and
Speaker 2: as soon as I want. The problem is is I
Speaker 2: want to be awake, that's the problem. And when I
Speaker 2: wake up, my mind just goes. I start writing immediately,
Speaker 2: and it's great. I'm by myself, my dog, I light
Speaker 2: a candle, the wife don't wake up till about seven
Speaker 2: thirty eight. I'm there by myself or four hours.
Speaker 1: So you write every day, every day. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's not only songwriting, but the words. I have
Speaker 2: a production company called bel Kiaso Entertainment, work on streaming
Speaker 2: TV shows, episodes, episodic things, and anything that pops into
Speaker 2: my head I kind of get carved into right away.
Speaker 2: I don't pick up an instrument. It's usually just writing
Speaker 2: scribbling that time. But sometimes they do that as well.
Speaker 1: So if you're on the road, what time do you
Speaker 1: get up?
Speaker 2: I kind of do the same thing. Sometimes it's more
Speaker 2: like around five, but it doesn't matter what times, though, Bob,
Speaker 2: It's it's really terrible. I mean, if I go to
Speaker 2: the East coast. I'll still get up at like three
Speaker 2: point thirty or four. I mean, it's bad. I've been
Speaker 2: doing it for years forever, you know, kind of who
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of the reverse. I like the nighttime on
Speaker 1: the other end, because as you say, it's very few
Speaker 1: distractions the time as your own. Just before we started,
Speaker 1: you said, oh, I have to turn off my phone.
Speaker 1: I'm in this text thread with all these comedians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is that about. Well, they dive into all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff. Not only them, they're journalists and writers,
Speaker 2: but they're just they're not only is a great information,
Speaker 2: they're very funny. You know, when I moved to New
Speaker 2: York and I was twenty one years old, I this
Speaker 2: is a I'll get to this better. The manager was
Speaker 2: owned catch a Issing Star and it was a comedy club.
Speaker 2: So basically it was in the comedy club every night,
Speaker 2: every night, every night. So all they become all friends,
Speaker 2: like Billy Crystal and Lenny Schultz, Gilbert Goffrey, Rodney Dagerfield,
Speaker 2: all those folks, right, So I was always surrounded, which
Speaker 2: was great because working in a band and doing everything
Speaker 2: you need to do to make music and make it
Speaker 2: all right, you need comedy, you know, because you just
Speaker 2: need to find it a way out so you can
Speaker 2: clear your head and come back and be discharged and
Speaker 2: ready to do what you're supposed to be doing, what
Speaker 2: is making music and writing songs.
Speaker 1: So who's on this thread?
Speaker 2: Well, I can't give you everybody. We had a couple
Speaker 2: John de Bellis, eve middleman, Uh, Brian Caram who's actually
Speaker 2: a White House journalist so he's on there, and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other folks. It's just uh, it's just crazy,
Speaker 2: it's just fun. Well how many people totally Oh, there's
Speaker 2: there's not many. They come and go. There's probably six
Speaker 2: something like that. But they're just they're they're they're brilliant.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just funny and and things all the time.
Speaker 2: One one comedy John he lives in Nicaragua, so he's
Speaker 2: in a whole totally other world. So yeah, person of
Speaker 2: Poup Spring, Sun of California, Spain, all over the place.
Speaker 1: And what is usually the topic of conversation.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's political, it's political, but uh it could it
Speaker 2: could swing. Like we were talking about David Johansson today.
Speaker 2: You know I did see your your your post today.
Speaker 2: I did read I also read the the responses that
Speaker 2: the folks do, and I just, you know, I just
Speaker 2: have to apologize to you because I read everything that
Speaker 2: you're right, and you're brilliant, You really are. You cover
Speaker 2: so many basis and so many so much ground on
Speaker 2: so many different subjects, which is what I really love.
Speaker 2: And what I do is I don't usually read them.
Speaker 2: I did today because I was gonna talk to you.
Speaker 2: Usually usually I wait for a week or two weeks,
Speaker 2: and then I read it as a book, as each
Speaker 2: one's a chapter, and then I read it like and
Speaker 2: I keep them my store them in a folder because
Speaker 2: they're great reading and they're great to share to, you know,
Speaker 2: especially the music things to young people who I talk
Speaker 2: to all the time, and I think it's brilliant writing.
Speaker 2: So anyway, you're talking about David Joe and the reason
Speaker 2: I don't and I'm not a oh, how do I
Speaker 2: say this? Right? I'm not oh. I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: make myself any better than anybody else here at all.
Speaker 2: So really you got to understand what this comes from.
Speaker 2: But I generally don't like posting it because I don't
Speaker 2: want to start with the word I. You know, I
Speaker 2: want the people to understand who that person is. So
Speaker 2: I saw when he did Jeff Beck, I's already to
Speaker 2: do all these people, and a lot of them I
Speaker 2: do know and had, you know, relationships with them. But
Speaker 2: I don't like seeing, well I record to this record
Speaker 2: for them or I try to leave that. It's really
Speaker 2: hard for me to post any of that. So it's difficult.
Speaker 1: Okay, I completely understand that. But to be a successful musician,
Speaker 1: you have to network and promote yourself.
Speaker 2: I do realize that, and I must say that I'm
Speaker 2: really bad at it, and I'm not the old guy
Speaker 2: that says I ain't going to do so. I don't
Speaker 2: want that, not that at all. If it disturbs my
Speaker 2: creative time, which isn't the morning i'd rather tip. On
Speaker 2: the other side, I do have to maybe I'll do
Speaker 2: better this year. Right. I do post some things and
Speaker 2: people respond. I try to get back to it's really
Speaker 2: hard for me, and I'm not I'm not that guy.
Speaker 2: I'm not that old guy that says I ain't going
Speaker 2: to do any of the stuff. It's all bullshit. You know,
Speaker 2: what's to go back to the telephone dial up or what.
Speaker 2: I'm not the guy, but I do need to promote
Speaker 2: that stuff, so so help me, Bob, help me out.
Speaker 1: Come on, Okay, let's go back to work. You get
Speaker 1: to me your work, and your manager is the guy
Speaker 1: who runs catch a rising star forget his name?
Speaker 2: Suddenly Rick Newman. Yeah, and how did that happen? Well,
Speaker 2: he came. He came a year later. I have to
Speaker 2: preface what happened before that. I was I'll give you
Speaker 2: the New York story because that's that's going to have
Speaker 2: some entrance in the way my kind of life expanded.
Speaker 2: But when I got to New York, I was there
Speaker 2: to audition for Dan Hartman and Rick Derringer. And it's
Speaker 2: because somebody saw me play in Cleveland at a club
Speaker 2: and they asked me if I would be interested. I says, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, but let me talk to my bandmates because
Speaker 2: I don't want to I don't want to do anything
Speaker 2: behind your back. I want to make sure they're okay
Speaker 2: with me doing it. Maybe if I get the gig,
Speaker 2: I won't be able to be in the band. So
Speaker 2: I went up there and I auditioned for Rick first,
Speaker 2: and after I got done, I says, well, I got
Speaker 2: an audition for Dan Hartman next. He goes, no, you don't.
Speaker 2: I said, what do you mean not doing? He goes, well,
Speaker 2: ain't going anywhere? Well, I said, do I got the gig?
Speaker 2: He goes not yet. I said, okay, So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of humor in this, and then I'll get to
Speaker 2: get to rising star. But there's a lot of humor
Speaker 2: in this. Because I was standing outside the door. I
Speaker 2: had a white T shirt on, a pair of jeans,
Speaker 2: a rope belt, a pair of white sneakers slip on
Speaker 2: sneakers kids, and I saw this guy walk out and
Speaker 2: I heard him playing, and he was amazing, like an
Speaker 2: amazing guitar player. He came out, hair beautiful, all poory
Speaker 2: in his studs, leather jacket, leather pants, shoes. He goes, hey,
Speaker 2: how you doing, kid? I go, oh, I'm good. But
Speaker 2: your name he goes, Rudy Valentino. I went, oh, shit,
Speaker 2: Rudy Valentino, Neil Geroldo. How I got a chance with this?
Speaker 2: I thought, I felt like just turning around and walking
Speaker 2: out of sires, this isn't gonna happen. But I did
Speaker 2: go in there and and I did get on with
Speaker 2: her quite well. So I went home back to Cleveland,
Speaker 2: and he asked me to come back, and eventually I
Speaker 2: got I had to go write some new music, so
Speaker 2: I wrote a couple songs, came back, played it for him.
Speaker 2: He goes, okay, all right, all right, I think you're okay,
Speaker 2: And because I played two and that kind of helped
Speaker 2: the whole thing. But anyway, so you got to progress
Speaker 2: a year later, and that's when I met Patricia. And
Speaker 2: Rick Newman was Patricia's manager and then he became my
Speaker 2: manager as well. So in the early days, which would
Speaker 2: have been set in nineteen seventy nine in the month
Speaker 2: of May, always in Catcher Isaac Star for years and
Speaker 2: years and years after all the time, and that's where
Speaker 2: all the comedians were, and they would always do their
Speaker 2: routines and then they'd come into the bar or where
Speaker 2: I would be, and then they would say, what do
Speaker 2: you think about that? Let me do Then they do
Speaker 2: their routine again, something different to see what I thought.
Speaker 2: And they were now super super great, super great people
Speaker 2: and real nice and I just enjoyed that and it
Speaker 2: was a lot of laughs, a lot of good times.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You're playing in your band in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Do you have dreams of making it at the time
Speaker 1: of going to the coast being a recording person. Are
Speaker 1: you just doing what you're doing?
Speaker 2: I had, I had big dreams, but I thought they
Speaker 2: were shattered and I thought they were gone. I I
Speaker 2: was a very sick child. I'll get to that. I'd
Speaker 2: get to that later, but really really sick. I had
Speaker 2: terrible health when I was younger, really really bad. But
Speaker 2: I got to the point where I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna make it as a as a rock and
Speaker 2: roll quote guitar player, It's not gonna happen. I could
Speaker 2: play piano. And some of my you know heroes, we
Speaker 2: were jazz people. But Paul Eric Gardner, you know, Bill Evans,
Speaker 2: all the great winscomb as dou Kellyton, all those folks. Right,
Speaker 2: So I studied a lot of piano, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I could get married, I can have a couple of kids.
Speaker 2: I can live in Cleveland and the weekends I'd go
Speaker 2: play cocktail bars and just play piano. That's probably the end.
Speaker 2: But then a very successful, very good musician, great musician
Speaker 2: named Kevin Rally who was in a bad called Michael
Speaker 2: Stanley Band. He wanted to put a band together and
Speaker 2: he thought it would be fun. We can, but they
Speaker 2: were terrible venues. It was like a lounge band, it was.
Speaker 2: And then we'd move around, play a different instruments. Okay,
Speaker 2: So and I thought, well, this is where it's going.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be that cocktail piano player. So my
Speaker 2: dreams were shattered. I was playing up there hoping, but
Speaker 2: and then somebody saw me and said, what are you
Speaker 2: doing here? You need to be with another top name artist,
Speaker 2: and I went okay. Then I got the I went
Speaker 2: up to New York and that's how began.
Speaker 1: Do you know where you were playing and who saw you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: At he was at the Brown Derby restaurant in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what city was it. And the guy
Speaker 2: that saw me, his name was Tracy Coates. You know, Bob, everybody,
Speaker 2: I think you can count five people. You can count
Speaker 2: the five people that I won't get metaphysical and getting
Speaker 2: a different play in here, but five people that changed
Speaker 2: your life. Five people. This guy was one of. His
Speaker 2: name is Tracy Coates, and he owned a PA company
Speaker 2: and meaning he would do He was from Cleveland, but
Speaker 2: he did a lot of shows nationally, right, so he
Speaker 2: always heard about all the different musicians and bands that
Speaker 2: were looking for players, right, So that's how it was.
Speaker 2: He saw me, and he was a great guy and
Speaker 2: he thought I played, thought it was pretty good. I
Speaker 2: don't know. And that was the guy. He's one of a.
Speaker 1: Five, okay, a little slower. So he sees you. Does
Speaker 1: he come up to you at the end of the
Speaker 1: gig and say, hey, I'm going to hook you up
Speaker 1: or you home in the phone rings? How does it
Speaker 1: actually happen? Do you end up with auditions for Darren
Speaker 1: jer and Hartman? Yeah?
Speaker 2: He's what he did is it was we took a break.
Speaker 2: You know that you do three sets. We did one
Speaker 2: set and I just went out to grab a smoke,
Speaker 2: have a cigarette, you know, And as I'm walking through
Speaker 2: the crowd, he comes out. He goes, hey, I'm Tracy
Speaker 2: Coates and man, you can play whenever and would you
Speaker 2: be interested? I said, really, of course I would be.
Speaker 2: He goes, well, here's my number, call me and I'll
Speaker 2: say her. And that's how it happened. He set it
Speaker 2: up about a weekly after my band. I must say
Speaker 2: this is you know, excuse me, it's important you're playing
Speaker 2: in a band you'd be true to and uh, you
Speaker 2: know you that's who you're with, and you have to
Speaker 2: ask them if it's okay, and they all said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: no problem, no problem. The ironic part of this, Bob,
Speaker 2: this is where the universe steps in the other guitar
Speaker 2: player bass player because I played bass in their guitar
Speaker 2: and keyboards all this stuff. You know, he went up
Speaker 2: to audition for Derrenger before me, but he never told anybody.
Speaker 2: Oh so, and and the real weird part about this
Speaker 2: is he came up there for the final five. Who's
Speaker 2: in the final five? And he's And I was shocked
Speaker 2: to see that he was there and go, what are
Speaker 2: you doing here? He goes, well, you know I've been
Speaker 2: up here. I went what I never knew, never knew. Right,
Speaker 2: he's a great guy too, but that was real weird.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So we were and we were rooming together in a hotel.
Speaker 2: We only had one one day, one night, and then
Speaker 2: we'd have to fly home. I'd have to fly home
Speaker 2: the next day. And so the manager called for Rick
Speaker 2: and said, when a thing, thank you. You're gonna love this, Bob,
Speaker 2: because this is a great call. He says, I really
Speaker 2: want to thank you for your time and your effort.
Speaker 2: Rick really liked the way you played. Really, I just
Speaker 2: want to wish you the best, and you know, thank
Speaker 2: you for coming up. Bob thinking, I looked, pointed at
Speaker 2: the guy. Go you got it, dude, right. He goes,
Speaker 2: can you just come by and say talk to Rick
Speaker 2: a little bit? He was in the it's on fourteenth Street.
Speaker 2: I think are close to it, right by Real Sweeney's
Speaker 2: in Manhattan. So I said, sure, I'll go down. I
Speaker 2: was really disappointed. Bum dot I walked. I mean, I
Speaker 2: got in the cab, opened the door, Rick opened me in.
Speaker 2: He stood there, he goes, shook my hand. He goes,
Speaker 2: come on in, you're in the band. I went, I'm
Speaker 2: in the band. It was. It was profound, it really was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: And then he hands me an explorer, a guitar, Gibson
Speaker 2: explorer with a serial number like fifty four, some ridiculous one.
Speaker 2: And we go back in the brown storm. We're jam
Speaker 2: and I'm saying, Rick, I got really good ears. I
Speaker 2: could say that, but my eyes are really bad. You
Speaker 2: got a lot of lamps around here. I go, dude, man,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be holding this guitar. And we just jammed,
Speaker 2: like for hours, and that's how I got the gig
Speaker 2: and went back to the hotel. I says, Rogers just
Speaker 2: looked at me and goes, you got the gig, right,
Speaker 2: I go, I did. I'm sorry. You know, I felt
Speaker 2: bad for him. You know, that's you know, everybody had
Speaker 2: those hopes and dreams and it just worked out.
Speaker 1: So what ended up happening to him and what ended
Speaker 1: up happening to the rest of the band.
Speaker 2: Oh well, the rest of the band, they kind of
Speaker 2: just split up. He just worked I think origionally in
Speaker 2: Ohio with different bands and stuff, and Kevin actually became
Speaker 2: He's a great guy. Kevin had a great voice, great writer,
Speaker 2: a great keyboard player. He became manager of the Dead
Speaker 2: Kennedys and a few other bands. Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: it was It was interesting. And then the drummer had
Speaker 2: a real bad health scare during COVID, but he again
Speaker 2: went to play with some other bands. I thinks, so
Speaker 2: they just they just stayed there.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ohio, you know right now it has been for
Speaker 1: years somewhat to press, you know, the steel industry and
Speaker 1: other things going on. I'm always amazed at Ohio. You
Speaker 1: drive through, There's this place in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 1: with all these people. So you're growing up in Ohio.
Speaker 1: You know Rick Deringer was from Ohio, wasn't he? And
Speaker 1: you have Joe Walsho's from New Jersey, but he makes
Speaker 1: it in the Ohio. Yeah. The Michael Stanley band who
Speaker 1: gets a number of shots that never really breaks through.
Speaker 1: So when you were Ohio, is there someone that you
Speaker 1: pointed to and said, Okay, I want to be like
Speaker 1: him or did you feel like, man, I'm in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. Well, it.
Speaker 2: Felt like the middle of nowhere one way, and in
Speaker 2: another way it didn't because it gave all the musicians
Speaker 2: and people that lived in a blue collar, very tough,
Speaker 2: tough town, Steel Town a chance to find an escape path.
Speaker 2: Right And since I was sick, and i'll go into
Speaker 2: that thing right now, is that you know I was
Speaker 2: sick from the day I was born for years and years.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I was saying, like sixteen fifteen sixteen
Speaker 2: where I thought I didn't get over and I did.
Speaker 2: But then I had a relapse when I was about twenty.
Speaker 2: But then I eventually got through it. But I'll get
Speaker 2: to that whatever it is. But I didn't feel I
Speaker 2: didn't feel small in that town. I really liked. I
Speaker 2: liked the mentality of a blue of a blue collar
Speaker 2: work ethic, because the people there really work hard. And
Speaker 2: when you had to go do gigs, you had to
Speaker 2: drive through snowstorms, your hands would freeze your knuckles, your
Speaker 2: cars wouldn't start. You slam your hands in the door.
Speaker 2: I mean, all that stuff which gives you a purpose,
Speaker 2: makes you think about, think about who you are and
Speaker 2: where are you're gonna go, and it keeps you strong.
Speaker 2: You don't there's no chance for you to get soft
Speaker 2: in a town like that. So to me it was
Speaker 2: a It was a real blessing. So I didn't feel small.
Speaker 2: And I always believe this, and I believe this from
Speaker 2: then till till the day I die. Is that if
Speaker 2: you have a great song or you have talent, you
Speaker 2: will be found.
Speaker 1: You won't.
Speaker 2: You won't disappear unless you unless for some reason it's
Speaker 2: you're not prepared, it's not going to work out for you,
Speaker 2: which happens sometimes, you know. But if you have a
Speaker 2: great song, people are going to hear that song. You know,
Speaker 2: even without the Internet, they'll hear it. You'll be found,
Speaker 2: you will.
Speaker 1: So what term did you grow up in Ohio?
Speaker 2: In a town, a little town called Parma outside of Cleveland,
Speaker 2: but it was very close to the Cleveland tracks. All
Speaker 2: the Italians Sicilian because of Sicilian. On one side of
Speaker 2: the three were all the Sicilian. The other side were
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians. So it was very weird. And that'll go
Speaker 2: back to my name too, but it was they thought
Speaker 2: the town of Parma, when they're coming from Bronte Katania,
Speaker 2: Sicily and they come into America, Parama, let's go live
Speaker 2: for that. It's gotta be Italian town, right, So a
Speaker 2: lot of Sicilians and like I said, Ukrainians. I'll go
Speaker 2: to this because we're on the subject of Cleveland's. When
Speaker 2: I was born, I was I had the cord wrapped
Speaker 2: around my head on my neck multiple multiple times, and
Speaker 2: when I came out, I was suffocated from I wasn't
Speaker 2: a blue baby, but I was the next step down,
Speaker 2: the next step up from that, so I couldn't breathe
Speaker 2: and they thought they were gonna lose me. My parents.
Speaker 2: My parents were Anthony Geraldo, my mother, Angelomettia Geraldo, my
Speaker 2: sister Priscillamettia Geraldo, Neil Geraldo. How does that happen? Bob, Well,
Speaker 2: let me tell you how it happens. So here I am.
Speaker 2: I'm not born, they slap, they do the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'm not breathing. They go into a panic back then,
Speaker 2: so they take me. It takes a while they bring
Speaker 2: me to be. I finally come in. My parents were
Speaker 2: so relieved that they didn't lose me and that I
Speaker 2: didn't die and end up a blue, blue baby, and
Speaker 2: that's the end. Right. But the doc there's name was
Speaker 2: Cornelius Cassidy. So I was supposed to be Nunzio Nunzio
Speaker 2: or Nunziato Nunziato Geraldo. Right, Instead I became Neil and
Speaker 2: not Cornelius because of doctor Cassidy. So that's how I
Speaker 2: got my name, bringing me into this life. So from
Speaker 2: the minute I was, I came out of the womb,
Speaker 2: I was, I was, I was, I was all planned
Speaker 2: out for me to be dealing with, Oh, the the
Speaker 2: crazy uh oh, the emotional sickness of what that means,
Speaker 2: you know, suffocating the day you were born, you know is.
Speaker 1: So tell me more about this illness and other health problems. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so I went to school at a very early
Speaker 2: age because I was born in December. My mother wanted
Speaker 2: to get me out of the house, right, you gotta
Speaker 2: go to the house. But I was sick. My stomach
Speaker 2: was always terrible, always sick. And then I had this
Speaker 2: emotional thing with this claustrophobia where the walls were always
Speaker 2: too tight and it was always too hot in those rooms.
Speaker 2: And then I got to then I group from claustrophobia
Speaker 2: to agoraphobia, where I had fear of the outside of
Speaker 2: the with all people. You know, I was going. I
Speaker 2: was going, like mentally off the rails. And every time
Speaker 2: I go to school, elementary school, did the principal, the
Speaker 2: people there would call my mother and say, you know,
Speaker 2: you got to come and pick up your son. He's
Speaker 2: sick again. It was all the time, and I barely
Speaker 2: was in school. I went to a Catholic school. I
Speaker 2: went to a public school first and a Catholic school,
Speaker 2: and I missed confirmation and things that you normally do
Speaker 2: in school because I was sick, always sick, and those
Speaker 2: emotional things took a toll. But what they did do
Speaker 2: is when I was six years old, my father bought
Speaker 2: me a guitar because they wanted me to do duets.
Speaker 2: My sister, who played accordion and so we can do
Speaker 2: Italian songs. That was a good idea, except my uncle
Speaker 2: Timmy on the other side of the family, my grandfather
Speaker 2: passed away at an early age, so he didn't have
Speaker 2: a father, and he was sort of the mistake of
Speaker 2: the family. He became a mentor, so in essence, he
Speaker 2: kind of lived with our family, and he was only
Speaker 2: four years older than me. So and from playing Italian
Speaker 2: songs with my sister, then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 2: Yardbirds are coming in and all the other bands, and
Speaker 2: then he started feeding me with all these other things.
Speaker 2: So this emotional thing, the idea that I had a
Speaker 2: guitar in my hands, it just felt really normal and
Speaker 2: felt right, and it was escape from life because it
Speaker 2: was really difficult for me to handle the emotional thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd walked through the door at school and
Speaker 2: I immediately felt like I have to throw up, you know,
Speaker 2: my stomach got oh, I can't be here. This is terrible,
Speaker 2: and then it was it was.
Speaker 1: Awful, Okay, So mostly the problem was emotional mental. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see a professional and how did you ultimately
Speaker 1: get over it or do you still wrestle with these
Speaker 1: issues today? Well?
Speaker 2: What I found out today is that I have an
Speaker 2: abnormality in one part of my boy that there was
Speaker 2: actually a reason why the physical part. So the mental
Speaker 2: part was real, but the physical part was real as well,
Speaker 2: and that nobody you got to understand that Cleveland and
Speaker 2: Parma is on the west side of Cleveland, Shaker Heights
Speaker 2: Pepper Pike is on the east side. When I was
Speaker 2: growing up, I didn't even know what golf was. There
Speaker 2: was no golf course around where I lived. I didn't
Speaker 2: know what that even was. On the east side, they
Speaker 2: had golf courses and they had doctors, real doctors. It
Speaker 2: was the rich side of the city. I lived on
Speaker 2: the foreside. So my parents I go to a doctor.
Speaker 2: I went to the Italian doctor. We say, eat more garlic,
Speaker 2: e moore garlic, drink some wine. So I got a
Speaker 2: little poor wine for dinner. You know, That's all they said.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't get it. You couldn't get it fixed.
Speaker 2: So the emotional part was really really difficult. But since
Speaker 2: that physical part was with such a stress on my body,
Speaker 2: I the two together were a nightmare. It was just
Speaker 2: I just it was horrible.
Speaker 1: So how did you ultimately get over it? Both of
Speaker 1: these I got over it.
Speaker 2: One of the five people, you know, the hand of
Speaker 2: the five is the trace, quotes this girl. Her name
Speaker 2: was Tara Bruno, Tera Bruno. You have to be listening
Speaker 2: to this when it comes out. You need to know this.
Speaker 2: And she knows it already. Anyway, she was she wanted
Speaker 2: to She was a friend of mine, and she I
Speaker 2: think she thought it was more like a girlfriend boyfriend,
Speaker 2: but I was more. I was thinking it was just
Speaker 2: like a friend, like a girlfriend. I think it was
Speaker 2: like twelve years old or something. And she went to
Speaker 2: California and she came back and goes, I got to
Speaker 2: tell you something. Two really great things happen, and you
Speaker 2: kind of really love him. I says, Okay, what is it?
Speaker 2: He goes, number one, it's a avocado, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato,
Speaker 2: mayonnaise on rye toast sandwich. I went, what's an avocado?
Speaker 2: That sounds beautiful? She goes, Oh, it's great. It's great.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make you want. I go fantastic, goes. And
Speaker 2: another thing that I found was this book called The
Speaker 2: Yea Ching. And I says, what is that? She goes,
Speaker 2: it can predict your future, and her and I would
Speaker 2: lay on these blankets in those Cleveland evenings in the summer,
Speaker 2: we look up and we see the stars. Well, we
Speaker 2: threw the coins in the e ching, and I still
Speaker 2: have that paper somewhere. I have to go find that
Speaker 2: one day. I know I have it. I stored away
Speaker 2: in like momentos things. But we did throw it, and
Speaker 2: it said that I would get my wish and my
Speaker 2: dream would come through. But you have to follow these
Speaker 2: rules and these laws of the spiritual realm of the eachan.
Speaker 2: That book saved my life. Without that book, without Terra Bruno,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be here period. That book did it without it?
Speaker 2: No way, no way.
Speaker 1: You're a very verbal friendly guy, Yet you say you
Speaker 1: grew up internalized in not going to school that much.
Speaker 1: Where does all this verbal facility come from?
Speaker 2: Because when I wasn't in school, I was reading. I
Speaker 2: love to read, and I would try to get every book.
Speaker 2: Library was my friend, every book I could possibly get
Speaker 2: my hands on and read. And I to this day
Speaker 2: i'm and I avid read. I read all the time.
Speaker 2: And it's really kind of the other part that's saved me.
Speaker 2: But with the eaching, let me just give you an
Speaker 2: idea where the Eaching lives in my life for a second.
Speaker 2: The day that Tracy Coates saw me play at the
Speaker 2: brown Derby that night driving up and it was in
Speaker 2: a winter it was like February maybe something like that,
Speaker 2: really bad, very cold, and I'm pulling up this place
Speaker 2: and the way those gigs went. You play there for
Speaker 2: a month, right, you play for three weeks a month
Speaker 2: and you go to the next place three weeks. So
Speaker 2: I pull up. I'm just pissed off, angry, right, just like,
Speaker 2: damn it, Why do I got to do this? This
Speaker 2: is terrible, sliding all over the road. I have my
Speaker 2: sixty three and Paula. I always have to park really
Speaker 2: far away from the club. I have to walk. I'm
Speaker 2: dropping the guitar and the case, banging my hands that
Speaker 2: way right, whining like a little chooch. Right, So I go,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna use the eching
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna get really embraced
Speaker 2: in what this was going to give me today or
Speaker 2: what I'm gonna be able to create myself. Let me
Speaker 2: just focus on it. I pull in a parking lot
Speaker 2: and I swear to you, this is absolute truth. I
Speaker 2: pull into a parking lot. The very first place for
Speaker 2: parking opens up right in front of the door. I
Speaker 2: got there, shut the car off, I lit up a cigarette,
Speaker 2: opened the window, I smoked a cigarette. I went, this
Speaker 2: is something's gonna happen tonight, something profound is going to
Speaker 2: change my life. And that was the night that Tracy
Speaker 2: Coate saw me. And that's how my life changed from
Speaker 2: that moment.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the family. Were your parents born
Speaker 1: in America or the Old Country in America?
Speaker 2: My grandparents came over.
Speaker 1: So how heavy an influence was the Italian background?
Speaker 2: Heavy? Heavy, really heavy. I mean, besides all the people
Speaker 2: on the street that were Sicilian. My next door neighbor
Speaker 2: was great. His last name was Alardo, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: pronounce it, and I'd give people nicknames. I called it
Speaker 2: mister Jim. He would be the guy who would cut
Speaker 2: tires and staple tires on my soles and my shoes.
Speaker 2: And I walk in the house and I walked and crooked,
Speaker 2: and my mother goes, did you see mister Jim again?
Speaker 2: Did he fix your shoes? I go, he did. They're
Speaker 2: working real good right now, thanks mom. You know, so
Speaker 2: there was a lot of Italian spoken in the house.
Speaker 2: But you know, my father was really proud to be
Speaker 2: an Italian American, you know, born in the country, so
Speaker 2: we really were. They really didn't want to press the
Speaker 2: speaking of Italian. But the Italian songs were really important, right,
Speaker 2: just like Catholic church and you know, all the Italian
Speaker 2: Catholic upbringing stuff very important.
Speaker 1: So and what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: Father was a carpenter, one of the toughest human beings
Speaker 2: on earth, but one of the sweetest guys and just
Speaker 2: the greatest great if he's the fire, he's one of
Speaker 2: the five. Because this man is I love him so much.
Speaker 2: He passed away. He was ninety six. In fact, one
Speaker 2: day he called me, he goes, son of bitch. Son,
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm ever gonna die. I go, pop,
Speaker 2: You're gonna die one day. Trust me, it's gonna happen,
Speaker 2: son a bitch. I don't think so very very tough.
Speaker 2: Really really, I can't even begin to tell you how
Speaker 2: to one story, he's got the snowblow where he bought
Speaker 2: for fifty bucks or whatever, and he's doing the sidewalks.
Speaker 2: All sudden it clogs up. He doesn't shut it off.
Speaker 2: He puts his hand in there, clips off the little
Speaker 2: piece of his finger. It goes flying with the blood
Speaker 2: spray following it behind trailing. He goes, goes, he had
Speaker 2: this little thing he did like this, He goes, son
Speaker 2: of a bitch, son, go find my finger. And I
Speaker 2: went found his finger packed in the snow. He went
Speaker 2: to the hospital and put it back on. So but
Speaker 2: that's that's the hardcore part of him. That the heart,
Speaker 2: the heart of him is. He never had a negative
Speaker 2: thing to say, my sickness and being home or anything.
Speaker 2: He would always say, you know, if that guitar makes
Speaker 2: you feel better, and playing the piano, do it, do it? Son.
Speaker 2: You know he wanted me to be a carpenter, but
Speaker 2: he didn't force it on me. Let me give you
Speaker 2: an idea too. He was a carpenter, work for other people.
Speaker 2: He was at a house somewhere. He'd come home with
Speaker 2: a piano. I go, pap, where'd you get the piano from? Me? Go?
Speaker 2: Do you want it? I go, sure, I want it
Speaker 2: was an upright with some broken keys, and I said, sure,
Speaker 2: I'd like it, and he put it in the basement.
Speaker 2: That's how I started playing piano because they gave it
Speaker 2: to somebody gave it to him because he was so
Speaker 2: kind and so thoughtful, thoughtful of a man that, you know,
Speaker 2: I wish I could be, you know, a quarter of
Speaker 2: the man he was, because he was just the greatest
Speaker 2: of all.
Speaker 1: What about your mother?
Speaker 2: My mother was more like a disciplinarian.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I had this philosophy I think is wrong, where one
Speaker 2: parent has to be passive the other one has to
Speaker 2: be assertive. I think that's wrong. But in my house
Speaker 2: it was that way. My mother was the assertive. My
Speaker 2: father was passive. Sometimes I walked through the door and
Speaker 2: my father would say, don't say anything, it's not your fault,
Speaker 2: but you're gonna probably hear it's your fault. I say, okay,
Speaker 2: I walked through and there it was right. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: she but she was the disciplinarian one. She was the
Speaker 2: one when I was playing, uh, you know, street football
Speaker 2: outside in the snow, and she'd come and yell out
Speaker 2: out of the window, it's time to come in and practice, son.
Speaker 2: Come on, you got to come in and all the
Speaker 2: all the boys where all the you know, all my
Speaker 2: buddies are going man mine, are you coming in to play?
Speaker 2: You can't play when you know, give me shit about them.
Speaker 2: Oh man, my hands will be frozen. I have to
Speaker 2: play these stupid songs. I for not the Italian songs,
Speaker 2: but I took lessons for I think a year and
Speaker 2: a half or two years. It was horrible. The guy
Speaker 2: farted in the room. He smoked cigarettes and I had
Speaker 2: to deal with that was horrible. But my mother made
Speaker 2: sure I played oh man, Joe and uh well Santa
Speaker 2: Luccia too. But you know, somebody else is like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not this isn't working for me. That part, that
Speaker 2: part ain't working.
Speaker 1: This was guitar lessons or piano listens.
Speaker 2: This was guitar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so you were playing the Italian songs. You know,
Speaker 1: we're contemporaries. You're born in fifty five. What is the
Speaker 1: rock and roll inspiration? Was it the Beatles or did
Speaker 1: it come before that? Or was it none of that?
Speaker 1: And just your uncle in the yard bruders?
Speaker 2: Okay, it was It was in ninety It was I
Speaker 2: think I was five years old. It's five years old
Speaker 2: and my mother was playing Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis and
Speaker 2: I was in the other room and I went, what
Speaker 2: is that? And I ran in I remember to this day,
Speaker 2: I'm listened. I sat in front of the year old
Speaker 2: enough to remember this. The Wi Fi, the high Fi sorry,
Speaker 2: the hip fhissist, the console Hi Fi systems.
Speaker 1: Right of course you could.
Speaker 2: Sit in the middle and then the two speakers were
Speaker 2: on the side and it had a two bamp fire
Speaker 2: and I'm listening to this, and I'm here's what defined
Speaker 2: me in oh, well, sort of in the music world,
Speaker 2: right when I heard the sparseness of that song, Heartbreak Hotel,
Speaker 2: Heartbreak Hotel, and I heard Elvis's voice resonate, the richness
Speaker 2: of it, and the reverb and all that spatialness. The
Speaker 2: guitar had its own part, but it was really defined
Speaker 2: and often the left and the bass was thumping, and
Speaker 2: the drums were small, not small, big in sound, but
Speaker 2: a lot of air, reverb, distinct, huge reverb happening kick it.
Speaker 2: I deciphered what was going on with that record. At
Speaker 2: five years old, I says something about this is what
Speaker 2: I want to do. I want to which I didn't
Speaker 2: know what producer, I didn't know what arrange any of
Speaker 2: that meant, but I didn't know that I wanted to
Speaker 2: make records that sounded like that. Not only did I
Speaker 2: want that. When I saw the RCAA dog the nipper
Speaker 2: go around and RCAA round and round and around, I
Speaker 2: went that labels really great looking and I loved art.
Speaker 2: I would have went to art school, but my mother
Speaker 2: said it was stupid, I shouldn't go, so I didn't go.
Speaker 2: I should have went, but I didn't go. But by
Speaker 2: seeing those labels, that was just as powerful as the
Speaker 2: music coming out to me. Right, So I knew then
Speaker 2: that I wanted to play instruments because I wanted to
Speaker 2: create that sound. I wanted that sound. I wanted that feel.
Speaker 2: You know that it was. It really was lonesome. It
Speaker 2: was a person walking to their death. Not in a
Speaker 2: negative not the darkness of it. But you know how
Speaker 2: the somberness that the richness of that record to me
Speaker 2: just really sunk into me. Really did it hit me?
Speaker 1: Okay, So did you watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan?
Speaker 2: I did, I did it. I didn't get that as much.
Speaker 2: I didn't get it. I I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, what is that?
Speaker 2: Sixty four? It? Yeah, sixty four. I mean I got that,
Speaker 2: but it didn't it didn't resonate to me as as
Speaker 2: much as as you know hearing that office record and things.
Speaker 2: I I thought it was I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 2: I just I couldn't understand why they were screaming all
Speaker 2: the time, you know, they said, you know, I just
Speaker 2: don't understand all the screaming, you know, the headshaking. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I just it didn't kind of didn't kind
Speaker 2: of settle settle into me, you know. I mean I
Speaker 2: thought it was cool, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: So tell me about your uncle of the Yardbirds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Uncle Tim was he was great. He took
Speaker 2: me to see to who when I was twelve years old.
Speaker 2: That that changed my life. That was it, because I
Speaker 2: was listening to the Stones and the Kinks. You know.
Speaker 2: He had all those records and he'd you know, we'd
Speaker 2: have them and we'd play them all the time, and
Speaker 2: it was it was phenomenal. But he was the guy
Speaker 2: he was. He'd be the guy who said, you're gonna
Speaker 2: listen to heart full of Soul and you're gonna play
Speaker 2: it right. And I'd be playing you a heartful soul.
Speaker 2: You know, now, this is great. Go doesn't sound good?
Speaker 2: I said, what do you mean it doesn't sound good?
Speaker 2: He goes, it doesn't sound good? Coming out of an
Speaker 2: app you need like a distortion what is a distortion pillow? Well,
Speaker 2: you got to get what we got to get you
Speaker 2: on and that he was the guy. And then when
Speaker 2: I saw Pete Townsend play at the Music Carnival and
Speaker 2: the Who and Daltry with the swing and the mica
Speaker 2: a all like this and Peete just tearing it up,
Speaker 2: and then I saw that and I went, that's resonating
Speaker 2: because it represented to me growing up in a blue
Speaker 2: collar town like Cleveland. It represented that it wasn't it
Speaker 2: wasn't it wasn't the Beatles. To me, it was that
Speaker 2: that you know you're on stage, you're giving it everything
Speaker 2: you got, like the Jerry Lee Lewis blood is what
Speaker 2: I call it. You hit the stage, give it all,
Speaker 2: give it, give it all there, everything you have, and
Speaker 2: then when you walk away, you get off the stage,
Speaker 2: you go back to your other kind of life. So
Speaker 2: that really did it. And the concert was crazy because
Speaker 2: they only played three songs, and they destroyed all the
Speaker 2: gear because Pete didn't like the sun amps. And then
Speaker 2: they were walking out and then we went to come
Speaker 2: back in because they said the concert is still going
Speaker 2: to go on. They're gonna use the opening band equipment.
Speaker 2: So we went in there. But that day I get
Speaker 2: back home and I turned my little tiny epiphone INP
Speaker 2: but I turned it up to ten and I went, ooh, ooh,
Speaker 2: this is kind of fun, this is working.
Speaker 1: So so when did you first start playing in bands?
Speaker 2: When I was eleven eleven something like that, and we
Speaker 2: were eleven and twelve, and my uncle Tim was the
Speaker 2: lead singer, so it was being four years older, and
Speaker 2: we called the band. It was stupid, stupid name. It
Speaker 2: was called neok and Eel, really dumb, stupid name. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the first band.
Speaker 1: Well did you just rehearse to the living room or
Speaker 1: did you play gigs.
Speaker 2: In the basement rehearsing the base We did gigs. We
Speaker 2: have to sneak me in through the back door, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'd get there to here as this little kid
Speaker 2: up there playing and you know, we were doing whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, but whatever. We had to play songs.
Speaker 2: We were just playing them, and yeah, it was weird
Speaker 2: because we'd be playing a memory, were playing them, going Wow,
Speaker 2: that guy looks like like I'm playing them. They going,
Speaker 2: what the hell is he gonna do? It looks like
Speaker 2: he's gonna beat the shit out of me. Where am
Speaker 2: I playing? What am I doing? Are they angry? You know,
Speaker 2: sneaking me into pars places behind in the backstage and stuff.
Speaker 2: So so we did that for a while. That didn't
Speaker 2: last very long, and then I started playing with other bands,
Speaker 2: other guys in the neighborhood and stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in high school. To what degree are
Speaker 1: you playing gigs in a band?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, it was because because I was that younger
Speaker 2: guy was five years old in the first grade. So
Speaker 2: I don't know add up what that is. I don't
Speaker 2: know what I was as a freshman or whatever. But
Speaker 2: I was playing. I was playing out all the time
Speaker 2: with you know, different bands that we were putting together
Speaker 2: and stuff. Yeah, all the time. What did you do
Speaker 2: with the money there was? It really wasn't much. I
Speaker 2: don't remember eating after the gig. We'd go to eat
Speaker 2: at like two o'clock in the morning, two thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning. That's all I remember. There was no money,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, no money.
Speaker 1: We just did it. And what did you use for equipment? Then?
Speaker 2: Well, I had my little epaphone app and then this
Speaker 2: guy down the street was he worked at the steel mills,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of cool. He had a band too,
Speaker 2: and the guitar player in that band his name was
Speaker 2: philm Megalarino, and he had this quiver when you know
Speaker 2: the vibrato, we called it a quiver, and he played
Speaker 2: this red guild starfire. I remember really well, and I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, sitting there that's all around, that eleven twelve
Speaker 2: year old thing, and I'm watching him. I'm going, man,
Speaker 2: he got a great quiver. I gotta get that thing right.
Speaker 2: But this guy that's where they rehearsed at his house
Speaker 2: worked in the steel mills, and his uncle worked at
Speaker 2: his shipping location the dock, and Marshall amplifiers were coming
Speaker 2: through there. He was able to get him really cheap,
Speaker 2: really cheap. So I said, Papa, I'll work with you.
Speaker 2: I'll do whatever it is I have to do. These
Speaker 2: Marshall apps are like really great, and you know, I
Speaker 2: think they're only like, I know, three hundred, three hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: That's that's a lot of money. I said, I know,
Speaker 2: but I'll pay a bag pop. So I got a
Speaker 2: Marshall Marshall amp so I had there, I go, I
Speaker 2: had this, I had a stack when I was like
Speaker 2: thirteen or something or fight, I don't know, fourteen, something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump forward. M Rick says, you've got the gig.
Speaker 1: What did that look like? Did you go back to
Speaker 1: Ohio and wait for the call to go on the
Speaker 1: road or stay in New York?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went. I went back to Ohio. I went
Speaker 2: back to Ohio, he says, get your you know, things
Speaker 2: in order, affairs in order. So I got back there
Speaker 2: and I just I thought it was kind of funny
Speaker 2: because all the girls I thought were real cute, they
Speaker 2: didn't have time to talk to me. We're all of
Speaker 2: a sudden ready to talk to me now, which I
Speaker 2: thought that was. That was kind of cool, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, cause man, they weren't paying attention to me.
Speaker 2: I was that weird, weird kid in school, you know that,
Speaker 2: you know, no loaner guy, nobody would talk to you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of weird, you know. I didn't feel like
Speaker 2: I really connected with most people there, and there I
Speaker 2: am walking around. But yeah, then I got my things
Speaker 2: together and I had one guitar and SG gipson SG.
Speaker 2: I went up and then I Rick says, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: all the songs we're gonna do. But you need another guitar.
Speaker 2: You can't be playing that. I need you. You need
Speaker 2: to play BC Rich. That's what I play. He goes,
Speaker 2: but you can have anything you want, but not what
Speaker 2: I have. Then he hooked me up with BC Rich
Speaker 2: and that's how I started playing the BC Rich Eagles
Speaker 2: through that. Now that the peculiar thing, you know, because
Speaker 2: life is this is a comedy, right, it really is,
Speaker 2: you meaning me? You join Rick Darringer, Okay, and you
Speaker 2: end up recording a record with Rick and it's called
Speaker 2: Guitars and Women. Now, then my life goes forward, you know.
Speaker 2: But a record Guitars and Women is kind of ironic
Speaker 2: in a way, right. So, and the other part was
Speaker 2: I didn't play much guitar and I played most mostly piano.
Speaker 2: If you if you want to hear some of the
Speaker 2: stuff I did. There's a song called Everything, another song
Speaker 2: called Hopeless Romantic. Now. I was playing a lot of
Speaker 2: piano back then, a lot of guitar too, But I
Speaker 2: respected Rick. He was such a great player. If he
Speaker 2: didn't want me to play guitar on it's okay, I'll
Speaker 2: play piano, but i'll play on the record.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go back to Ohio to get your affairs together.
Speaker 1: Then do you go to New York to rehearse? Where
Speaker 1: do you live? When do you go on the road?
Speaker 2: I go to live at my favorite place, the hotel
Speaker 2: I was in when I got the call, the Wellington
Speaker 2: Hotel and what is it fifty eighth or fifty seventh
Speaker 2: and seventh, And that was my home. And there was
Speaker 2: a guy named Pops there by the way. I am
Speaker 2: writing a book. I've been writing one for about ten years.
Speaker 2: Hopefully I get it finished at one point there. But
Speaker 2: Pops was great. Pops would go and he'd get me
Speaker 2: some beer and pizza if I wanted, and he told
Speaker 2: me stories of all the old actors and actresses that
Speaker 2: came through the place. He was a phenomenal, phenomenal guy,
Speaker 2: was a great guy. And I remember I always wanted
Speaker 2: a room by the e and the Wellington, you know,
Speaker 2: and it just with the neon light. It was just
Speaker 2: super super cool. So I lived there and and we
Speaker 2: just rehearsed for a little while and then off off
Speaker 2: in a row we went. And the way we went.
Speaker 1: Okay, any anxiety, any imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the first show. When I did the first show,
Speaker 2: I got back after and Rick goes, what did you do? Go?
Speaker 2: I go, Rick, I'm really sorry. I was so nervous. Right,
Speaker 2: I went from playing two hundred and fifty people to
Speaker 2: whatever five thousand I mean then went Eventually we did
Speaker 2: stadiums and did everything. And I said, I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2: I was just so nervous. I said, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2: I'll make you a deal. It will never happen again,
Speaker 2: never ever happen again. And I told myself and I practiced.
Speaker 2: I focused, I got strong, got the eaching book out,
Speaker 2: got it together. But that was I remember his face.
Speaker 2: I picked you because I felt you were the best one,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh boy, I really screwed this up.
Speaker 2: So never did again.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a young man on the road. Are you
Speaker 1: partaking in the fruits of the road.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about, Bob?
Speaker 1: Those fruits?
Speaker 2: What is that hanging fruits you're talking about? Well, back
Speaker 2: back to the thing where nobody paid attention. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of attention you paid at that time. But
Speaker 2: I but I was really I was really focused. I
Speaker 2: was focused on making a career and really really making
Speaker 2: sure I do this right, And I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 2: partake into drugs, you know, I didn't do any of that.
Speaker 2: You know. I drinking some stuff, but but nothing, nothing
Speaker 2: excessive at all. I practiced a lot, played a lot.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was all over the place.
Speaker 1: So how long did it last with Rick?
Speaker 2: I think it was about a year and a half.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, we got done and uh we were
Speaker 2: doing the record guitars and women, and there was eventually
Speaker 2: there'll be tense songs, right, So I played on maybe
Speaker 2: I think eight of them, I'm not sure eight and
Speaker 2: then there was two more to go, and and Rick says,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't really need you on the last two.
Speaker 2: And you know I was. I was kind of depressed
Speaker 2: a little. I said, you know, I could still do
Speaker 2: any I can still do something. I could play some
Speaker 2: rhythm guitar if you want. I mean, I'll eve an engineer.
Speaker 2: If you want anything you want me to do, I'll
Speaker 2: do for you. And he says, no, I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't think so. And as a manager, you had two managers.
Speaker 2: One guy was named Teddy slatis. Well, Teddy Slatist said
Speaker 2: to me, he goes, how about a free trip feet
Speaker 2: a free ticket back to Cleveland. I went, mmm, mmm, interesting,
Speaker 2: a free ticket. He was always a smart ass, always
Speaker 2: a wise ass. Right, So I'm at the place. Here's
Speaker 2: back to the eaching. I'm at this. We recorded in Woodstock,
Speaker 2: by the way, which was good fun doing that, and
Speaker 2: Kenny here and said, and myself and the crew were
Speaker 2: all living in one part, and Rick and the rest
Speaker 2: and mind and the drummer. We're in another part. And
Speaker 2: they have they had the house, and we had this
Speaker 2: little avery there. It was all totally cool. Anyway, So
Speaker 2: here's where the e ching comes back in. So you know,
Speaker 2: he says, well, Teddy says, okay, your free tickets ready,
Speaker 2: you know, leave tomorrow. Okay, I'll leave tomorrow. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: So there I have I drink tea. I don't try coffee.
Speaker 2: I drink green tea, and a lot of it. So
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there a green tea and I'm thinking, oh geez,
Speaker 2: what am I going to do next. I'm reading my
Speaker 2: eaching book this thing, getting ready to go in the
Speaker 2: car to go from Woodstock to LaGuardia, which you know
Speaker 2: is one of the worst airports in the world, was
Speaker 2: even bad back then. I get in the car and
Speaker 2: I got my suitcase in there. I'm ready to go in,
Speaker 2: ready to close the door. The guy in the in
Speaker 2: the studio the kitchen says, you know, somebody's on the phone.
Speaker 2: They need to talk to you. It's really important. I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's really too important right now, I'm going back
Speaker 2: to Cleveland. Is any fun? He goes, No, I think
Speaker 2: you really need to take this call. Some guy from
Speaker 2: a record company, he said, needs to talk to you.
Speaker 2: And I says, oh, come on, he goes, He goes,
Speaker 2: I think it's real. I said, all right, So I
Speaker 2: went inside and picked up the phone. The guy's talking.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, okay, it was just like a little Louis
Speaker 2: busting my balls over there in Cleveland, giving me, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to be a jerk or whatever. And guy says, go, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is I'm serious. I want you to meet this
Speaker 2: singer who wants to put a band together and doesn't
Speaker 2: have a band and really looking for that partner. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, all right, it's interesting. I had some
Speaker 2: other gigs, some other bands that were interested. I had
Speaker 2: two other bands that were in the play that I
Speaker 2: could to join or work with and stuff. So I
Speaker 2: wasn't like I had no gig, but I wanted to
Speaker 2: be with Rick. I wanted to finish a record. So
Speaker 2: I'm talking to guy goes. He goes, listen, I Mike Chapman,
Speaker 2: who produced. If I wasn't so romantic, i'd shoot you
Speaker 2: by Rick Darringer the record before the one you did
Speaker 2: just now. Saw you on the road with Rick and
Speaker 2: thought you would be a great person to be with
Speaker 2: this other person that I want you to meet, because
Speaker 2: you you know song structure, you write songs, you multi
Speaker 2: versed in other instruments. You're You're not a show like
Speaker 2: a showbo guy. You know you want to play song.
Speaker 2: That's because I really want That's all I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I was not that type of player that just can virtuoso.
Speaker 2: I was never that guy. I just want to write
Speaker 2: songs and play play instruments. So I'm talking. He goes, Okay,
Speaker 2: all you got to do is meet this person in sir,
Speaker 2: Can you do it today? I says yeah. Can I
Speaker 2: get a free ticket to Cleveland? I had one, but
Speaker 2: it could be no good anymore. Can I get a
Speaker 2: free ticket? He goes, no problem. I says, okay, what
Speaker 2: about if something goes good and I stay. He goes,
Speaker 2: I'll take care of you. I said, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Now I had a girlfriend at the time too, so
Speaker 2: this this she was living in Connecticut, but whatever, that
Speaker 2: wasn't going so good. So anyway, I go down. But
Speaker 2: before I go down, I mentioned I says, well, who's
Speaker 2: this guy? Maybe I heard of him. He says, no,
Speaker 2: it's not a guy. It's a girl. And I went
Speaker 2: a girl. He says, yeah, go is she good looking?
Speaker 2: I mean, is my Sicilian thinking? Is she good look?
Speaker 2: And he goes, yeah she is, but she's married. I go, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: well fair enough, and I was just playing way they
Speaker 2: having fun with you? You know? So what I did is
Speaker 2: I drove down in the in the sedan to s
Speaker 2: I R got in there and met this person it's Patricia,
Speaker 2: and sat down at the piano, started playing some stuff
Speaker 2: and said what are you thinking about? What is it
Speaker 2: you want to do? And then explained it all, did
Speaker 2: it all, and picked up a guitar and made some
Speaker 2: racket and we talked about stuff and it became a partnership.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the guy's name is Jeff Aldrich who
Speaker 2: called me from the record company who's a tremendous guy.
Speaker 2: A great day and our guy really nice guy. So
Speaker 2: he picks up Patricia and I'm sitting at a couch.
Speaker 2: He picks up Patricia. He goes like, does it drops
Speaker 2: her in my laby? And she and he says, here's
Speaker 2: your guy to her, here's your guy. And I went like,
Speaker 2: that's a little awkward here. You know, that's a little awkwards.
Speaker 2: First day, what's calling out here? So that's how that's
Speaker 2: how that kind of began.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in Woodstock, you have the free ticket back
Speaker 1: to Cleveland. Forget the Derringer record and the other two tracks.
Speaker 1: Was this going back to Cleveland or you talked about
Speaker 1: some other opportunities. Was this the end of the road
Speaker 1: for you or just an interlude before you got the
Speaker 1: call to work with pat Oh? This was it was
Speaker 1: like a fifty to fifty. I had some opportunities. They
Speaker 1: weren't They weren't great.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of bands I thought they're okay
Speaker 2: because it was only meant to be in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you know what I was tall Rick's I want you
Speaker 2: to come back. I want you to come back. Well,
Speaker 2: be careful of what you let go. You know, people
Speaker 2: have good memories. I mean, I mean, I will. I
Speaker 2: don't want to be a prick about anything. And I
Speaker 2: wasn't because I love Rick, He's a great guy. But
Speaker 2: I didn't like that way that was handle. I thought
Speaker 2: it was. It wasn't cool. I mean, if they would
Speaker 2: have said, uh, you know, you know, we look forward
Speaker 2: to you coming back. Rick wants to finish the record. Okay, good,
Speaker 2: thank you very much. Maybe I'll get a gig to
Speaker 2: me time. Well I could have, it's not a problem,
Speaker 2: but it wouldn't be a great gig. I'll and be
Speaker 2: where I was. What reck right, So so that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of what happened. So it was like a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty go back to Cleveland, you know, kick around
Speaker 2: there for a while, make the foot, few calls, see
Speaker 2: what's up. But I got the call before I left, right.
Speaker 1: So did Rick ever call you to come back?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: And what did you tell him?
Speaker 2: I said, I'm sorry, I can't. I said I can't.
Speaker 2: I I'm an integral part of it. Another situation. And
Speaker 2: we're partners. I partnered up with somebody. You may not
Speaker 2: know it, but we were partners. And I remember playing
Speaker 2: the record the first record in a heated night for
Speaker 2: Johnny Winter, and I remember even talking to him and
Speaker 2: he said, oh man, yeah you got, this is your thing?
Speaker 1: You got?
Speaker 2: I said, okay, thanks, Johnny. I have a great picture
Speaker 2: you usould see one time. It's because Rick Deringer's wife
Speaker 2: was named Liz, and she was more than one Liz.
Speaker 2: She was Liz Liz, I called her. But I was
Speaker 2: like her boy toy. She would take me around because
Speaker 2: I was twenty just turned twenty two, and she would
Speaker 2: take me around to all these places like Studio fifty
Speaker 2: four and all these different clubs, Maxes and all these things,
Speaker 2: and she would parade me around. And she was a
Speaker 2: huge social lighte and she thought it was funny because
Speaker 2: I had this rope belt and a pair of jeans
Speaker 2: and white T shirt. Everybody else was dressed up and
Speaker 2: there I am walking around like a goofball you go
Speaker 2: out of Cleveland like Jethrow or something. I felt like him,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I was going around and doing
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, so old Rich introduces you to Pat. You work
Speaker 1: out what's the next step.
Speaker 2: Next step is well, next step, here's your guy boom
Speaker 2: in my lap, And I says Okay, now what goes? Well,
Speaker 2: go back to Cleveland. But then you only got two
Speaker 2: days come back because you guys got to put a
Speaker 2: band together, You got to get going, and you need
Speaker 2: to go through all kinds of stuff. So I says,
Speaker 2: They says, where you want to stay? Do you want
Speaker 2: to stay at the may Mayflower, the Mayflower Hotel? I says, no,
Speaker 2: I'm want to stay at Wellington. They say the Wellington.
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I like the Wellington. Are you sure?
Speaker 2: I go? Yeah, I want to stay at the Wellington.
Speaker 2: It was my home away from home. I liked it.
Speaker 2: They would add a good vibe to it. So I left,
Speaker 2: go back to Cleveland. Like I said, That's when all
Speaker 2: the girls that didn't have time for me pay attention
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, where you know, they kind of
Speaker 2: knew where I was. So I stayed there for just
Speaker 2: a couple week maybe, and then I came up and
Speaker 2: started to work.
Speaker 1: Okay, how long from that initial meeting before you go
Speaker 1: in the studio.
Speaker 2: Well, that would be probably May of nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: We didn't go in the studio until I think it
Speaker 2: was August, July or August maybe the beginning of May
Speaker 2: is when we started Mart April, i'd have to look
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty soon. So what happened in those intervening months?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well, first of all, we had to put
Speaker 2: a band together, so I had to audition players, people,
Speaker 2: and then at the whole time Patricia and I were
Speaker 2: working together, I told her the first time we talked
Speaker 2: and played, I says, you know, you got a really
Speaker 2: beautiful voice. Beautiful voice. I'd hate to be the guy
Speaker 2: to wreck that voice. I says, you understand that the
Speaker 2: way you're going to sing next is not what you've
Speaker 2: ever done before, because we're going to find a breaking
Speaker 2: point in your voice where that high stuff is not
Speaker 2: going to be falsetto. It's going to be real. It's
Speaker 2: going to be your real voice. You ain't gonna go
Speaker 2: to falsetto. What is that? What's that going to happen?
Speaker 2: I go, I'll show you. We're going to raise these
Speaker 2: keys and these courses you're going to have to really
Speaker 2: belt out. They're going to have to get in that
Speaker 2: range to support what's going to be underneath it. Right,
Speaker 2: So her and I worked a lot on that. So
Speaker 2: we had because to understand, Patricia, is that not that
Speaker 2: there's anything wrong with being the rock chick, but that's
Speaker 2: not what she was. She was a highly educated, intelligent
Speaker 2: person that came from a middle class family in Long Island,
Speaker 2: and she went to school. She she was you know,
Speaker 2: she studied singing, She she did all the oppera. She
Speaker 2: just she she knew all those things. She wasn't kicking
Speaker 2: around clubs for a couple of years. That wasn't her.
Speaker 2: But what she wanted to get into was a different world.
Speaker 2: And I was that. I was representing that world that
Speaker 2: I knew the most. So we worked hard on that.
Speaker 2: And then uh, and then I found I found different musicians.
Speaker 2: Got another guitar player because they had a good looking haircut.
Speaker 2: He looked good. I don't care about it, did anything else.
Speaker 2: He looked good, and I thought that was great. The
Speaker 2: bass player would play with her in a lounge band prior.
Speaker 2: And then I brought my drummer from Darrow that worked
Speaker 2: with Reck and that was Byron Grobacker. I brought him
Speaker 2: in for the two. Oh no, I didn't bring him
Speaker 2: in yet. I'm sorry, sorry saying no, no, no. This was
Speaker 2: for the record. Then I got a drummer and then
Speaker 2: we rehearsed in New York and then we came to
Speaker 2: California to make the record.
Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of times when people are relatively green,
Speaker 1: they don't really want the band. They want to use
Speaker 1: studio musicians, right, So whose idea was it to make
Speaker 1: it a band?
Speaker 2: Well, because in the beginning, what Patricius tried to do
Speaker 2: was work with studio musicians and a producer to do
Speaker 2: what she wanted to do. But nobody was listening. They
Speaker 2: had her wanting to sound like again, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with this, having her sound like Linda Ronstad on this song,
Speaker 2: having sound like this on this song, but not totally
Speaker 2: missing a point. And even after she did these demos
Speaker 2: of five songs or whatever she did with this studio musician,
Speaker 2: she record company guy says, listen, don't don't get your
Speaker 2: hope up. You know this, you know, and then they
Speaker 2: shoved it. They says, no, this isn't this isn't where
Speaker 2: it needs to be. That's where Mike Chapman came in.
Speaker 2: So Mike who referred me because he thought and he
Speaker 2: was supposed to produce only four songs of the record
Speaker 2: the first record, So Mike's idea was because he was
Speaker 2: busy doing Commander Chapman. He wasn't Commander Chapman yet, it
Speaker 2: came later, but he was, you know, the Knack and everybody.
Speaker 2: So he was pretty hot. So he didn't have the
Speaker 2: time for us, you know. And the best thing that
Speaker 2: he did was have his engineer, Pete Coleman work and
Speaker 2: him and I together were a great team. We were
Speaker 2: we had the greatest time, and we aligned beautiful. Right.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, so Mike was on board, and we
Speaker 2: were just going to come to LA and make the record.
Speaker 1: Okay, you come to LA, do you know, as Mike
Speaker 1: told you what songs you want to record, you get
Speaker 1: there and he goes hear the songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he told us the songs. He goes four songs,
Speaker 2: I think a couple of them were he wrote, were
Speaker 2: probably from Exile or one of the other bands he
Speaker 2: worked with. But and then subsequently what happened was the
Speaker 2: record company would release a couple of those songs that failed.
Speaker 2: So and meanwhile, all the other tracks that Pete and
Speaker 2: I did had substance, you know, they were Heartbreaker, we
Speaker 2: Lived for Love. There were all these other songs like Clone,
Speaker 2: sleeps Alone, these these other things. So right then Mike
Speaker 2: was getting a little angry because the record companies released
Speaker 2: songs and his aren't working.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: And of course we Lived for Love became the second
Speaker 2: signal a single, the one that I wrote, and Heartbreaker
Speaker 2: was first. But even that they it didn't catch on
Speaker 2: right away because they said there was too much guitar
Speaker 2: on it. But that was where disco. We were right
Speaker 2: on that board. Are we gonna redefine rock music at
Speaker 2: that point and break away from disco? And that's where
Speaker 2: the guitar focus of Heartbreaking movement forward. So does that
Speaker 2: answer your question?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, you know it's a long time ago. Do
Speaker 1: you remember which four songs were Chapman, Yes, okay, which one?
Speaker 2: It was? In the heat of the night right if
Speaker 2: you think you know how to love me?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: He brought in I Need a Lover from Johnny Mellicamp Cougar. Oh,
Speaker 2: and then what was the other one? I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think of it, ken me what or what it was, but.
Speaker 1: It looks like I know, you don't the sweet cover.
Speaker 2: Oh, there you go, No you don't, there you go.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So in terms of recording, you and Peter
Speaker 1: Coleman did Heartbreaker and the rest of the you know,
Speaker 1: we live for Love, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, Pete and I did. It was great. We
Speaker 2: had We had the best time. You know. It was
Speaker 2: great because I loved engineering, and even when I did
Speaker 2: the Derringer record with Todd Rudgren producing the guitars at
Speaker 2: women thing, I was always around, you know, the studio.
Speaker 2: Even prior to joining Rick, I was in the studio
Speaker 2: in Cleveland too, in other bands. We were doing original
Speaker 2: music and things like that. So I really loved the
Speaker 2: engineering part. And it goes back to Heartbreak, Hotel here
Speaker 2: in those tones and all that other stuff going on. Right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Pete and I were great. I mean
Speaker 2: we take turns in different machines of twenty four track
Speaker 2: or the two inch or the half inch and just
Speaker 2: everything and everything. It was just beautiful.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you feel at the time, because really
Speaker 1: the breakthrough was the cover of I Need a Lover
Speaker 1: and at that point he was still Johnny Couger. It
Speaker 1: was one of those early albums. It had no traction.
Speaker 1: Did you want to do that? Did you care? Did
Speaker 1: you think it was going to be good? I?
Speaker 2: Well, I I mean I I I understand the the
Speaker 2: campiness of a girl singing I need a lover because
Speaker 2: only guys were singing kind of stuff, and then for
Speaker 2: a girl to do it. I got it. I I
Speaker 2: thought it. I thought it was pushing, just like a
Speaker 2: couple of records that follow certain songs were pushing towards
Speaker 2: the the uh, this is an important thing to tell
Speaker 2: you too. It was pushing more towards the focus of
Speaker 2: you know, we can sell this by making it the
Speaker 2: girl talk about this, and we can sell it this way.
Speaker 2: We can do this right. So the part for me
Speaker 2: is my sister kind of cursed me when I was younger.
Speaker 2: She said I'd be surrounded by women my whole life,
Speaker 2: and she was right right. But I never looked at
Speaker 2: Patricia as as the female chick singer. Never. I looked
Speaker 2: at her as a bandmatee and a partner. Right. So
Speaker 2: so when it was it all felt like this, the
Speaker 2: the like the like a Linda ron st Er, just
Speaker 2: the female the focus of this. Never I never looked
Speaker 2: at that that way. And I I must say I did.
Speaker 2: I did do something like that with the True Love record.
Speaker 2: I did cost to be the boss. I you know,
Speaker 2: I had you know her do that, which would be
Speaker 2: a reversal of the sex reversal right instead of bb kings.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a girl singing I'm the cost to
Speaker 2: be the boss, right, So I was I was just
Speaker 2: like that. I suppose I was like Mike in that point.
Speaker 2: So I can't you know, we all make we all
Speaker 2: do stupid and good stuff. Okay, okay, tell me get
Speaker 2: out of that. The first album I Love, We Will,
Speaker 2: We Live for Love?
Speaker 1: You wrote it? Tell me how you wrote it?
Speaker 2: I wrote it. I was with my girlfriend at the
Speaker 2: time and we were living in Los Angeles and we
Speaker 2: needed another song for the record, two songs, and I went, okay,
Speaker 2: let me, let me scratch something together. And I started
Speaker 2: writing it there and I was just coming together, and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, how do you write a story about something
Speaker 2: that could apply for what the project you're doing? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you how do you make this song we
Speaker 2: Live for Love? Why would you do a song called
Speaker 2: we Live for Love?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: So I had a good first line, and then I
Speaker 2: just kept calling on it, right, and and then you know,
Speaker 2: we have a running joke that Pittrish always says it
Speaker 2: wasn't written about her, and it was written about somebody else.
Speaker 2: And I always say no, I wrote it about you,
Speaker 2: So I did it as a reversal. So I got
Speaker 2: off to leave that up in the air.
Speaker 1: Okay. So at the time, you know, Chrysalish has some
Speaker 1: American success with Blondie, but it's not the equivalent to
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers or Columbia. And it looks like the record
Speaker 1: has a slow percolation. And then you start to hear
Speaker 1: the Melancamp cover and you start to hear it on
Speaker 1: all these stations in LA. What was the experience on
Speaker 1: your side of the fence.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't really hear I Need a Lover. Mostly
Speaker 2: I heard when Heartbreaker hit it. That's the first time
Speaker 2: I heard a record song from that record come out.
Speaker 2: And when I heard that, I just went ooh, now
Speaker 2: that's moving. Some are that sounds really in a compression
Speaker 2: all working and stuff? You know.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess what I'm saying is the record is finished?
Speaker 1: How long until it comes out? And what do you do?
Speaker 1: Do you go on the road and at what point
Speaker 1: do you say this is work and we have something here.
Speaker 2: Well, and what happened as they were releasing those songs.
Speaker 2: I think they even tried. If you think you know
Speaker 2: how to love me, you know, put it out there
Speaker 2: lit no radio traction, and they did I need a
Speaker 2: lover too, and that didn't really get traction in the beginning.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of floating around. It was heartbreaking
Speaker 2: that took it so but to answer the question, we
Speaker 2: went and I can't remember when our first gig was.
Speaker 2: We got there and I was using these new amps.
Speaker 2: I got these little Marshall combos and they all blew up.
Speaker 2: I think we maybe made it through the set. I
Speaker 2: can't remember if we made it all through or not,
Speaker 2: but I know that there was not a lot of
Speaker 2: people there. I don't know, maybe thirty forty fifty, I
Speaker 2: can't remember, but I do know that the next night
Speaker 2: there was a few more and next night and it
Speaker 2: happened really quick, really really quick. It just seemed to
Speaker 2: kind of escalate really fast, and we got it to
Speaker 2: the point where we couldn't leave the stage and we'd
Speaker 2: do the set over twice because we didn't have enough songs,
Speaker 2: right we do, Richie Vallence, come on, let's go some
Speaker 2: other covers that I throw out through out there that
Speaker 2: people seem to like. So we yeah, just started really
Speaker 2: escalating and then we were asked to play open for
Speaker 2: a different couple bands of any money. We opened for
Speaker 2: him once in New York. I think it was at
Speaker 2: the Central Park thing or something. Eddie's mother came up
Speaker 2: and she goes, Eddie, you should be opening for them,
Speaker 2: and then you know, crazy, he's you know, he's like
Speaker 2: Rodney Danger. Yeah, thanks, I'm sure, okay, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: so and then yeah, and then we had another guy
Speaker 2: we opened for, David Werner, and he was from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: He was one of the bands too that that wanted
Speaker 2: me to come along early on and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think you guys should be playing some of
Speaker 2: those songs if you're opening up for me. I says, well,
Speaker 2: guess what, David, We're not going to open up for
Speaker 2: you no more. You're gone. We're moving on.
Speaker 1: So between the first and second Bennett Tuck albums, how
Speaker 1: much did you work?
Speaker 2: Live? Oh? A lot, a lot. We went to Europe
Speaker 2: right away. Actually I almost wish we went to Europe
Speaker 2: first and it came Europe to America. That's always a
Speaker 2: really good move. Yeah, we worked a lot, like a lot,
Speaker 2: and we had to go right from the road into
Speaker 2: the next record, which was Crimes and Passion, And the
Speaker 2: reason we had to change the producer at that time
Speaker 2: was because Mike well, I think it was so pissed
Speaker 2: off that we had more success with the other songs
Speaker 2: and not his songs. And the story was that he
Speaker 2: didn't get along with the record company, Terry Els, and
Speaker 2: they had an argument in a fight or whatever. Maybe
Speaker 2: they did, maybe that's the truth of it. It just
Speaker 2: didn't feel to me like that's what it was. It
Speaker 2: felt like sour grape sort of, you know, So they
Speaker 2: wanted a different producer. We met with Keith also. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: well this this is okay. I was really just one.
Speaker 2: I really want to do it Pete, him and I
Speaker 2: together like we did the first time, you know, that
Speaker 2: I'd be credited and we would do you know, do
Speaker 2: it like a partnership. But that didn't happen, so we went.
Speaker 2: But it was a good idea in retrospect, because it
Speaker 2: was it was taking the band like a live band
Speaker 2: and going into the studio making a record. That's why
Speaker 2: it's sounds different. But I missed the air of of
Speaker 2: of the MCA Whitney where we did the Heat of
Speaker 2: the Night, the way Pete's sounds, his tones where there's
Speaker 2: a lot of air in it, and also during crimes
Speaker 2: of passion. I always like to do record maybe the
Speaker 2: song or songs that have the strongest has the most
Speaker 2: strength behind them in something that you're gonna be able
Speaker 2: to play the record company that you know, if you
Speaker 2: do two songs first, the three songs they have the
Speaker 2: record company come in, come in and get them charged
Speaker 2: up right, and get those out of the way. And
Speaker 2: one of them was housed for children and and that
Speaker 2: was one of the I think was the first song
Speaker 2: that Patricia was going to sing for the record. And
Speaker 2: I remember Keith gave me the keys to his poor
Speaker 2: She goes, if you want to just go cruise around,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll just do the vocal here with Patricia,
Speaker 2: and when you come back, you can do over dumps,
Speaker 2: we can do the other stuff. I go, okay. So
Speaker 2: I took the keys and I came back Patria. Patricia
Speaker 2: was in the studio crying on the floor, and I go, Pete,
Speaker 2: I mean, Keith, where's Patricia? She goes. He says, she's
Speaker 2: in there. She's in the studio. I go, what's the matter?
Speaker 2: He goes, Things are going so good? Oh, yet what happened,
Speaker 2: So I went on, I talked to her. So I
Speaker 2: had to go in and start rebuilding a different mix
Speaker 2: for her in her headphones to be able to sing,
Speaker 2: and and all of a sudden she started singing the
Speaker 2: way she was normally she normally sang. She felt more
Speaker 2: comfortable with me in there from heat to night and
Speaker 2: working with Pete and I never left. And that's that's
Speaker 2: why the producer chair kind of and the credited part
Speaker 2: of it began was during that. For that reason, I
Speaker 2: never left. Then. I was there for everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, Keith is no longer with us, but
Speaker 1: he had some great success with Leetwood Mac and others.
Speaker 1: You worked with a lot of producers. What's your take
Speaker 1: on Keith. Did he add anything? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I thought he was great. What he added was letting,
Speaker 2: letting the artists just just do it. He would record
Speaker 2: it to make sure it was recorded properly. He used
Speaker 2: this Dolby, which which not a lot of people used
Speaker 2: Dolby on rock records. But there was a compression part
Speaker 2: of it that that I kind of liked. It made
Speaker 2: it kind of solid. It lost some of the top
Speaker 2: and air and some of the openness of it, but
Speaker 2: it had another sound to it, and I kind of
Speaker 2: like that. I thought Keith was was great and we
Speaker 2: got along really really well in the beginning, but then
Speaker 2: there is the temptation and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the double creeps in, and you know, there was some
Speaker 2: issues with drugs and things like that, and I could
Speaker 2: I saw a decline during that record. I saw it
Speaker 2: sort of fade out. He was having trouble personally, and
Speaker 2: and then I just felt as I really needed to
Speaker 2: step in and kind of say what was going on
Speaker 2: because he wasn't himself. It's like I've known him in
Speaker 2: the beginning. Uh, you know, cutting the tracks that we
Speaker 2: did so.
Speaker 1: Okay on that album is really pats gigantic breakthrough hit
Speaker 1: Me with your Best Shot. How did that come into
Speaker 1: the mix?
Speaker 2: Uh? That song was also floating around when I was
Speaker 2: with Darrenger, and I kind of had it and and
Speaker 2: I I brought it in. Keith said he brought it in,
Speaker 2: and I did a demo of it in New York
Speaker 2: in a studio with Patricia before we before we went
Speaker 2: to LA to do the Crimes of Passion record, and
Speaker 2: I brought the demo with me and of us doing it,
Speaker 2: I says, this, this is probably a hit. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it has all those things, and a record
Speaker 2: company loved it. So that's that's how we did that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I brought it a demo of art, we
Speaker 2: did a version of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, when it was done, did you say, man, this
Speaker 1: is a hit, this is going to go all the way,
Speaker 1: or you just say, hey, this is another good track.
Speaker 1: It'll get some radioaction.
Speaker 2: No, I knew it was a hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It had all that stuff, you know. Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's a cliche line. It's easy for people to sing,
Speaker 2: it's a pop song. It had everything there, you know.
Speaker 2: I kind of like the guitar solo too. I don't
Speaker 2: I'm not a I don't really pay attention to any
Speaker 2: of that stuff. But it did. It did fire through
Speaker 2: the like normally when a guitar solo solo would come in,
Speaker 2: if it's just wheedling and just a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: that doesn't have any meaning to it. Not that there's
Speaker 2: anything wrong with that either, sometimes just the intensity of that.
Speaker 2: But I wanted it to be melodic. I wanted to
Speaker 2: fire it off and keep people's attention because nobody really
Speaker 2: wants to hear to me. I don't know, when they're
Speaker 2: listening to a song sing along, they don't really want
Speaker 2: to hear guitar solos, right unless unless there's something memorable
Speaker 2: about it, and what mel I some sort or whatever.
Speaker 2: And I thought as a record that completed everything at
Speaker 2: the very end of the song, what I used to
Speaker 2: put on the end of all of them, every one
Speaker 2: on Crimes and Passion, it was called it E nine
Speaker 2: to eleven chord, And no matter what song it was,
Speaker 2: I'd always played a SA so all the outtakes, if
Speaker 2: you heard outtekes of the record, they'd have that little
Speaker 2: chord on the end of it and hit me add
Speaker 2: that to the sad.
Speaker 1: So how did you end up recording You Better Run
Speaker 1: by the Rascals?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was for the Roady Soundcheck soundtrack the film,
Speaker 2: and that's where we worked with Keith first. And that
Speaker 2: warned great. That was almost a test, a testing point.
Speaker 2: They said, well we'll do that first. That was the
Speaker 2: first song we recorded, and we were all in a
Speaker 2: studio for that, so I was in there. We did
Speaker 2: the vocal. Everything nobody ever left out of that and
Speaker 2: that was just done for the Roady soundtrack.
Speaker 1: I think who picked the track.
Speaker 2: Actually Patricia used to use it in some of those
Speaker 2: gigs that she was doing before, but more, you know,
Speaker 2: more like a tame version, like a little organ part
Speaker 2: had it and more it wasn't as like maybe guitar
Speaker 2: driven that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And what's the story on Treat Me Right?
Speaker 2: I think Treat Me Right just came in as a
Speaker 2: collection of songs that people thought the record company thought
Speaker 2: would be good. Normally, if if we didn't write the songs,
Speaker 2: they would be given to me. And what I always
Speaker 2: did always is I would I would really rip them
Speaker 2: apart and it would never sound like any demo that
Speaker 2: was given I did. I did that all the time.
Speaker 2: I wanted to. I wanted to make it for Patricia
Speaker 2: and make it different, and I just I just I
Speaker 2: just hear it different. That's another thing that which I
Speaker 2: do and I love. When I was learning guitar and
Speaker 2: keepers well guitar, especially from the pioneers, I would learn
Speaker 2: the parts, but I wouldn't concentrate on the parts. I
Speaker 2: would try to find parts that I would play and
Speaker 2: embellish the parts. So I was always looking as a
Speaker 2: sidebar to kind of change the arrangement or parts in
Speaker 2: all those songs. So by taking a song if we
Speaker 2: didn't write it, I would try to really mess it
Speaker 2: up and try a lot of different ways to do
Speaker 2: it and come up with something different, interesting, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, on the second album there's a cover of Wuthering Heights.
Speaker 1: Kate Bush is an icon. Now that was on our
Speaker 1: first album, had like no traction in America. How'd you
Speaker 1: end up recording that song?
Speaker 2: We were on tour in the beginning of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: We were in this little petit cap what is it
Speaker 2: called the Petite I can't remember the name. It was
Speaker 2: this little cafe in France, in Paris, and we were
Speaker 2: having lunch and I love Kate Bush. I was aware
Speaker 2: of that, and I heard out in the landing. I'm thinking, ooh,
Speaker 2: we should do that. I love Kate Bush. We should
Speaker 2: do that song. So at that point that's when we
Speaker 2: did it. After hearing it in the cafe, I said, Patricia,
Speaker 2: than it is, this could be a really good song
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 1: Okay from the outside, I mean I had the first
Speaker 1: album and was certainly aware, but hit me with your
Speaker 1: best shot, blows pat bennettar into the upper leagues as
Speaker 1: big as anybody else. What does it look like from
Speaker 1: your perspective, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was the same thing. It was right around the time,
Speaker 2: and it would be after MTV, I mean after the
Speaker 2: beginning of MTV, which would be You Better Run, So
Speaker 2: you Better Run was out there before hit me was
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure. So yeah, that blew up. That blew up,
Speaker 2: it did. It blew up big. The part I liked
Speaker 2: is it pulled attention to some of the other hells
Speaker 2: for children's songs like that. Those are my favorite because
Speaker 2: they're I don't know, I just I just like them.
Speaker 1: And you wrote them. Okay. Meanwhile, as you referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: Pat is married. Her married name is Bennett tar where's
Speaker 1: her husband doing all this?
Speaker 2: Well, he was there. He was there in the beginning
Speaker 2: of I remember. I remember when I went to meet her.
Speaker 2: She was like, it was like insane, because this is
Speaker 2: part of the metaphysical stuff, the universe, which never seems
Speaker 2: to get it wrong. As I'm walking through the door,
Speaker 2: I see her and I'm walking towards her, and the
Speaker 2: whole room disappeared. There was like for her too. There's
Speaker 2: no one else made any difference in the room, just
Speaker 2: her and I'm just walking up and I remember just
Speaker 2: talking to her and all of a sudden she turns around.
Speaker 2: She goes, well, this is my home husband. And I said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: nice to meet you. I mean, sure, nice.
Speaker 1: And he was.
Speaker 2: Around and I didn't know any I didn't know anything.
Speaker 2: I didn't know their relationship. But it wasn't like that
Speaker 2: wasn't what I was there for. I'm professional, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do that there. Whatever the relationship is, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's sure. I'm there to be a partner, work together
Speaker 2: and make great records and have a great career. That
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 1: So how did it end with him and begin with
Speaker 1: you or vice versa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I didn't realize that there was a friction
Speaker 2: in the relationship relationship, but I remember, uh, there was
Speaker 2: friction in my relationship.
Speaker 1: And this was the same woman from Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, And it was just the timing it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't right for it wasn't right for her and I.
Speaker 2: You know, but I remember, I mean, here, you it's
Speaker 2: like the water cooler syndrome. You know, you're you're you're
Speaker 2: in the band together. Here and I are partners. The
Speaker 2: rest of the guys were going to tell them what
Speaker 2: we want to do. But we are the partners, so
Speaker 2: here we go. You know what what she wanted? What
Speaker 2: you know what the plan was is, you know, you
Speaker 2: know Keith and what do you call it? Sorry, Jimmy,
Speaker 2: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, you know, and Keith and
Speaker 2: Mick and you know that whole sender, guitar singer, right,
Speaker 2: this is the whole pattern. Right. So we're getting We're
Speaker 2: getting closer and closer. We're together all the time, so
Speaker 2: things are starting to have a little bit. So I says,
Speaker 2: I think we need to have a meeting. I need
Speaker 2: to tell you something important. So she thought I was
Speaker 2: going to tell her that I was leaving the band.
Speaker 2: That was just going to be gone. This was after
Speaker 2: the record was done. By the way, we weren't we
Speaker 2: weren't together. This was we just musicians out a relationship.
Speaker 2: So I had this conversation. She thought I was leaving
Speaker 2: the band, and I remember I was doing these little
Speaker 2: figures that I were sitting there and I'm having a
Speaker 2: cup of tea or something, and I tell her, my girlfriend,
Speaker 2: it's not working out. She did something that wasn't appropriate,
Speaker 2: and I'm leaving her you know. And then she subsequently
Speaker 2: said things aren't working out with me either, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: you want to go out or something and nuts, and
Speaker 2: that's that's what happened. That's how it happened.
Speaker 1: And I think his name was Dennis. How did he
Speaker 1: take it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think he took it well. My girlfriend
Speaker 2: at the time didn't take it well. But we had
Speaker 2: a record. We had an after record party in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Were heated in that record and my girlfriend was there
Speaker 2: and her husband, Dennis was there, but they were sitting
Speaker 2: next to each other, so it was well, and the
Speaker 2: Patricia was more towards me and we both kind of
Speaker 2: just looked at her for a second and went, maybe
Speaker 2: that's an omen you know. And that never happened. They
Speaker 2: they never got together, but they were having so much
Speaker 2: fun talking. I'm thinking, well, I guess I think something
Speaker 2: else is gonna happen. But this this was before any
Speaker 2: ideas were going on. This is when we're still in
Speaker 2: La So and from the very first show we did
Speaker 2: live we were a couple. That was it.
Speaker 1: Okay, how does MTV change the UH Act from being
Speaker 1: inside the act? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, that thing it blew up everything. I mean, it was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was from walking out your front door
Speaker 2: and getting in the car and going to CVS or
Speaker 2: something to go buy some toothpaste. So you can't get
Speaker 2: out your front door because a bunch of people there.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Right. I was like, oh shit, this
Speaker 2: what just happened? And then it never stopped. So it
Speaker 2: got it. We just got out of control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the next album you also work with Keith O.
Speaker 1: You get a co producer credit. If there were issues
Speaker 1: on the previous album, why'd you work with them on
Speaker 1: that album?
Speaker 2: Because of the success of it. You know, the record companies,
Speaker 2: you know, they're not going to make a move and
Speaker 2: I fight it. I wanted Pete to come back, him
Speaker 2: and I, but I wasn't gonna fight a battle with that.
Speaker 2: I just said, okay, we'll do it. And that was
Speaker 2: that was. That was a disaster. So that was that
Speaker 2: was lining up to be the end with with working
Speaker 2: with Keith for sure. Yeah, that was. Yeah. It really
Speaker 2: had some trouble times and I feel bad for him.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, his his his wife's sister lived
Speaker 2: across from where we lived, and you know, he'd call
Speaker 2: me in the middle and I could you do me
Speaker 2: a favorite. Could you just walk over there? I can't
Speaker 2: find my wife, and I mean it really personal issues.
Speaker 2: It was awful. I hated to see that happen to him.
Speaker 2: But but I was growing too, We were all growing.
Speaker 2: I didn't want I didn't want to make the same
Speaker 2: record again. I I needed to make different I wanted
Speaker 2: something different to happen, more genres of different space, different things.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're not front person. However, there's gigantic success. To
Speaker 1: what degree do you feel pressure to equal it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, there was always pressure, but it didn't It
Speaker 2: didn't affect me at all. Pressure pressure is living in
Speaker 2: Cleveland and not knowing what your future holds and how
Speaker 2: how you have to live through neurosis and sickness and
Speaker 2: all the other things. None of that stuff. I wasn't
Speaker 2: afraid of any of that. Part of the thing, Bob,
Speaker 2: is that with everything I did, I want to challenge
Speaker 2: myself because I got over some really nasty sickness and
Speaker 2: emotional chaos that I was going to challenge everything myself.
Speaker 2: The audience didn't matter what. I wasn't afraid for one second.
Speaker 1: So you had complete confidence. You never second guess yourself,
Speaker 1: You were never up the middle of the night, saying, shit,
Speaker 1: maybe we're going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: Nope, not once did. I did later on. I think
Speaker 2: it was around this seventh record or something. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2: I did later, but not in the beginning. Not then. No,
Speaker 2: I was coming in and I would say, this is
Speaker 2: I want to try this. Everybody on board, We're going
Speaker 2: to do this. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you end up recording Fire and Ice?
Speaker 2: Fire and Ice was a song that Tom Kelly was writing,
Speaker 2: and uh, and uh, he just had it, he just
Speaker 2: had it. We brought it in when wow, this this
Speaker 2: course explodes here, this is this will be really good
Speaker 2: for Patricia and and we just went in and did it.
Speaker 2: I think I was on precious time. Uh yeah, that
Speaker 2: record right, the second third one?
Speaker 1: And then how about the Raiders cover?
Speaker 2: Uh that was just Look. Here's the thing too, this
Speaker 2: was we we really didn't have enough time between records,
Speaker 2: you know, the the management this was a poor decision
Speaker 2: on their part. Our legal team too, was it was
Speaker 2: wasn't a good thing. When we had the huge success
Speaker 2: with Crimes of Passion, we had a if we didn't
Speaker 2: make a record every nine months, we'd go into suspension. Now,
Speaker 2: if you make to have that kind of success the
Speaker 2: Crimes of Passion had, you can waive all that stuff.
Speaker 2: You can make a difference, you can change all kinds
Speaker 2: of things. Well, they never changed that. They get more money,
Speaker 2: He got more money, but that was just an advance.
Speaker 2: So it was a really bad, bad business management decision.
Speaker 2: So we'd get done with the road and they say, well,
Speaker 2: guess what. You got to go back in the studio
Speaker 2: in about two weeks. So we didn't have time to
Speaker 2: sit there and write songs. We were writing songs on
Speaker 2: the road. There was too much chaos, right, so we
Speaker 2: didn't have the time to do it, you know. And
Speaker 2: they were just looking for covers, you know. And Patricia
Speaker 2: found it and said let's do that. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: sure you want to do it, we'll do it.
Speaker 3: It was, you know whatever, Okay, who's the manager?
Speaker 1: Rick Newman, right, so he was still the manager. Now
Speaker 1: somewhere along this line you get involved with Rick Springfield
Speaker 1: and Jesse's girl. How the hell does that happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that happens because I let's see, it was
Speaker 2: I think it was after Crimes of Passion. Crimes of
Speaker 2: Passion was done, and then I was offered a job
Speaker 2: to produce John Waite's for a solo record, So I
Speaker 2: produced Ignition for John Waite and and then that was
Speaker 2: starting to do really well. And then Keith and I
Speaker 2: were getting along at that time, and he says, you know,
Speaker 2: I really want you to do let's do this together.
Speaker 2: That was the idea. We're going to produce it together.
Speaker 2: You and I were going to do this thing. And
Speaker 2: and then I heard the song from Rick and I'm thinking, wow, Rick,
Speaker 2: he wrote it, this is a great song. This is
Speaker 2: going to be a great pop song, going to be great.
Speaker 2: And it was very stiff, and it didn't have the
Speaker 2: middle eight section and it needed help. But the song
Speaker 2: itself was very, very strong, and like Rick likes to
Speaker 2: explain it, when he was doing ad Do Do Do
Speaker 2: is very stiff, right, It was more like a like
Speaker 2: you know, and then my natural thing is to swing
Speaker 2: it more dumb bob boom boom boom, just kind of
Speaker 2: grab that kind of feel and beat. So then we
Speaker 2: went in the studio and I do what I would
Speaker 2: do most of the time if it's a live track
Speaker 2: we're cutting it on, you do guitar and drums and vocals,
Speaker 2: and then you do overdubbed the bass. I don't want
Speaker 2: the bass in there because I really want to work
Speaker 2: inside the drummer because I played drums and I like
Speaker 2: the rhythm to really kind of link together so I
Speaker 2: can hear that really defined in the vocal. And so
Speaker 2: we just went in and did that. We did I've
Speaker 2: done everything for you. That was another song that was
Speaker 2: I think floating around that Sammy Hagar did and kind
Speaker 2: of introduced that to Rick too.
Speaker 1: So did you know because Rick Springfield was at the
Speaker 1: nader of his career, no one cared about Rick Springfield.
Speaker 1: Did you have any idea that was going to be
Speaker 1: the gigantic track it was?
Speaker 2: Truthfully, yeah, I thought it was a smash. When we
Speaker 2: had it done, I went, this is this is a
Speaker 2: number one song, and then it became number one. So so, Bob,
Speaker 2: here's the deal. I have a number one song. I
Speaker 2: just got done producer John Waite's record. Ozzie's asking me
Speaker 2: to produce his record. I'm getting all these other offers.
Speaker 2: Crimes of Passion is exploding. I feel like, Oh, I
Speaker 2: can do anything, do anything. Now, look out, I'm coming
Speaker 2: at you.
Speaker 1: Okay. This is the music business and a lot of
Speaker 1: the songs were not written by either you or Pat
Speaker 1: correct Were you seeing the money and were you seeing
Speaker 1: the amount of money you should have seen?
Speaker 2: No, no, but but it certainly was enough that it
Speaker 2: was okay. So it really wasn't about that part, you know.
Speaker 2: I always felt, like I said in earlier in our
Speaker 2: conversation today, is that if you do a great song,
Speaker 2: it's going to be heard. If if I take somebody
Speaker 2: else's song that they wrote and I completely dismantled the
Speaker 2: hell out of it and make it into something that's great,
Speaker 2: it's gonna make but it's gonna do what it has
Speaker 2: to do. And I'm not worried about the money. I
Speaker 2: don't care about it. I want it to be a hit.
Speaker 2: Listen loves a Battlefee was turned down by the record company.
Speaker 2: They hate it and said, what's it? What's your problem?
Speaker 2: Mike Chapman, who wrote it, said in Holly and I said,
Speaker 2: what the hell you do it? We hate it. Peter Coleman,
Speaker 2: who I did it with Pete and he says, I
Speaker 2: don't think. I don't get that. What were you thinking about?
Speaker 2: I go, Pete, I know this is a hit like this,
Speaker 2: I know it's a hit. I guarantee this song's a hit.
Speaker 2: And then Pete. The great story is Pete goes home.
Speaker 2: He's not a drinker. He goes home and he drinks
Speaker 2: half a bottle of Kognak. He puts it on and
Speaker 2: he listens to it. He goes son of a Bitchniel's
Speaker 2: right came in the next day. He says, I'm behind
Speaker 2: you one hundred percent. Get it now.
Speaker 1: Okay. They didn't like it because radically different from the demo,
Speaker 1: or they just didn't like it.
Speaker 2: Oh, radically different, a different, completely different song. You know,
Speaker 2: the demo was very melancholy, and you know, didn't have
Speaker 2: the didn't have any of those things that were going
Speaker 2: on that would give it the kick the charge, right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not starting up, you know, you know.
Speaker 2: And I put the talking on because I thought it'd
Speaker 2: be funny, like the Supremes put whistling on. I thought
Speaker 2: that was kind of fun. Took a little light hearted thing,
Speaker 2: made it more like a Bo Diddley beat, got a
Speaker 2: different groove, sped it up considerably, changed the whole dynamic
Speaker 2: of the song. But I felt that was the right
Speaker 2: thing to do. And the real funny part is that
Speaker 2: when it be and Mike hated it, so when it
Speaker 2: became a hit, people were calling him and saying, could
Speaker 2: you write another one like Battlefield? I know somebody that did,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you who that was. You know, the
Speaker 2: saw Boys of some of course. Okay, how similar is that?
Speaker 2: The Love is a Battlefield?
Speaker 1: Pretty similar?
Speaker 2: Oh? Interesting? Interesting? Well, listen, you could say what you
Speaker 2: want about Don Haley. He's a very talented guy. He's
Speaker 2: got a little reputation sometimes not being a nice guy whatever,
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you what that guy is an honest guy.
Speaker 2: He's honest and he's a great talent. Right. He ran
Speaker 2: into me at MCA Whitney Studios. He said, how did
Speaker 2: you do Battlefield? I said, you want to know? He goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to steal it. I said, you do. I
Speaker 2: go Here's how I did it. I did it on
Speaker 2: a LYNDR. I did this. I did it on this beat.
Speaker 2: I wanted a bowdilly beat. I wanted to have this.
Speaker 2: This is what I did. So I explained it to
Speaker 2: him and he went out and he did it.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: But somebody else that was part of it doesn't say
Speaker 2: the same story.
Speaker 1: So okay, well, you know, I both know personally and
Speaker 1: you know it's pretty out there who's involved. But when
Speaker 1: it is a hit, do you feel proud or rip doll?
Speaker 2: I proud? From from from Don Henley's point of view,
Speaker 2: I feel proud. Yeah, I don't. I don't feel ripped.
Speaker 2: I just you know, in music, you you you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's important to be truth people. People can smell
Speaker 2: when it's not the truth, right, it's important. And and
Speaker 2: I just think if you if you're gonna, if you're
Speaker 2: gonna go on social media or something like that, just
Speaker 2: tell the truth, you know, find you know, you don't
Speaker 2: have to, you don't have to make up something. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's just it's just odd to me. You think
Speaker 2: somebody would kind of make sense. You know. I heard
Speaker 2: this record, you know, I really liked it. Doesn't buy
Speaker 2: you bother anybody. Just tell the truth on it, right.
Speaker 2: But I did see a little I have to say
Speaker 2: that because I saw a little YouTube thing I'm talking with, like,
Speaker 2: I wonder how you got that idea?
Speaker 1: So okay, moving on Shadows of the Night, Yeah, m hmm,
Speaker 1: Shadows of the Night.
Speaker 2: It's a story there, great chorus, had a great chorus,
Speaker 2: and knew that was right.
Speaker 1: The verse.
Speaker 2: The verse lyrics were not good, so we rewrote those.
Speaker 2: That's the one where there should be credit established for that,
Speaker 2: but there wasn't. Didn't have an intro was killing me
Speaker 2: because I the intro I had was horrible. It's like
Speaker 2: d D D D D D D D ball boom.
Speaker 2: It's horrible. It was bothering me. I knew I had
Speaker 2: a hit, but I didn't know how to start it.
Speaker 2: And you know that if you if you're gonna have
Speaker 2: a hit record, that intro better defined. You better know
Speaker 2: what that is within the first eight bars. So I
Speaker 2: battlefield boomed bah bah boom, bah bah bah boom, ba boom.
Speaker 2: You know the song we belong baa b b b
Speaker 2: b buh. You know the song right shuttles at the night.
Speaker 2: So Pete's in the other room. I'm getting a cup
Speaker 2: of tea. I hear through the hall of him balancing
Speaker 2: the vocals of the horus. As I hear that, I go,
Speaker 2: that's it. So I go running from the kitchen and
Speaker 2: I go, Pete, stop, stop that right there. That's our intro.
Speaker 2: He said, what are you talking about? He says, Let's
Speaker 2: take that. Let's put it on a quarter inch machine.
Speaker 2: Let's fly it in the beginning that is our intro,
Speaker 2: and that's how we got the intro, the a cappella part.
Speaker 2: He was balancing the vocals there and I wanted to
Speaker 2: put that on the front of front of the record,
Speaker 2: and that's, to me, was a part that really made
Speaker 2: that song hit because you want to have a great beginning,
Speaker 2: and that's starting. What all those vocals was. It just
Speaker 2: sounds so beautiful. Her voice sounds tremendous on it.
Speaker 1: So you're working with Peter Coleman again. Is the magic
Speaker 1: still there? Yes?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we could have went him and I could have
Speaker 2: went on to be a producer of partnership with so
Speaker 2: many people. We would have had such a great career
Speaker 2: together like that. But Pete's is such a great guy,
Speaker 2: such a great great and he's you know, he he's
Speaker 2: happy to just go to the studio, same studio every day.
Speaker 2: An engineer, he's a brilliant engineer. He doesn't have the
Speaker 2: pressure of anything. He could just go in into it
Speaker 2: and that was what he loved the most. So then
Speaker 2: he moved to Nashville and he's a great engineer. Jason Aldine,
Speaker 2: I think he does his records and it just goes
Speaker 2: the same studio, comes in at ten o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: leaves it six or whenever he does it, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it was still there.
Speaker 1: And what about we Belong? How do you end up
Speaker 1: recording that we belong?
Speaker 2: It came as an acoustic demo with just acoustic guitar
Speaker 2: and vocal, and Patricia heard it and she goes, I
Speaker 2: think I think this could be a hit. We can
Speaker 2: make a hit with this. I go, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm not getting it. I'm not hearing it yet.
Speaker 2: I got I got the I get it, I get
Speaker 2: the course, I get it, but I'm not I don't
Speaker 2: know yet. I don't know yet. And then and she said,
Speaker 2: I know you could do it. You could come up.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, thanks to Pete in my love
Speaker 2: of everything he does and his use of of rhythm, sequence, rhythm,
Speaker 2: whether it's Bob O'Reilly or you know, any of that stuff,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking maybe I should have like a fast repeating thing,
Speaker 2: you know, that up something that would change. So I
Speaker 2: had this super prime time unit was a delay unit,
Speaker 2: and I played one chord on it. Oh, Charlie, I
Speaker 2: think he was a keyboard player. I played this one
Speaker 2: chord and I took these knobs and I start switching
Speaker 2: the delays up to create this kind of hypnotic delay part.
Speaker 2: And that gave me the idea of Okay, now I
Speaker 2: can develop this into something different and and that's and
Speaker 2: that's how that's from that point I went, okay, now
Speaker 2: I can develop this song properly.
Speaker 1: So okay. Ultimately, Pat's hits dry up, as they do
Speaker 1: for everybody. But what was the experience for you and Pat?
Speaker 2: In what regard.
Speaker 1: Did you feel that the record company let you down?
Speaker 1: Do you feel that the records were good enough and
Speaker 1: not promoted? Do you feel that somehow you weren't nailing
Speaker 1: it anymore? Did an executive leave? You know, people usually
Speaker 1: have a story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we kind of got We kind of got over it.
Speaker 2: You know. It wasn't the record company's fault, nobody's fault.
Speaker 2: All it was us that we got it was too
Speaker 2: long doing the same thing, and I, you know, really
Speaker 2: I tried to mix it up as best I could,
Speaker 2: different genres and everything else. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 2: True Love record. I've been trying to do a swing blues,
Speaker 2: jump blues record for years. So we were in a
Speaker 2: port of renegotiating the record deal, and I says, why
Speaker 2: do we do it like a jump blues record. I
Speaker 2: heard this great record by the Room full of Blues
Speaker 2: with Big Joe TURNERU, I said me, if we can
Speaker 2: capture that kind of sound and the roof flow are
Speaker 2: great because they played the horse way behind the beat
Speaker 2: and John Rossy phenomenal drummer, really fattens that thing up.
Speaker 2: It's a great feel, and that's what we wanted to
Speaker 2: change it. We weren't interested in just keep doing pop
Speaker 2: songs as hits, and we wanted to do others, something,
Speaker 2: something different. And I was producing so many other people
Speaker 2: at the time. I was all over the place, Steve Forbert, jeez,
Speaker 2: I can't even think of you know, the del Lords,
Speaker 2: two albums for the Delords, Beth Hart. I mean, I
Speaker 2: was all over the place, and that was at least
Speaker 2: feeding me and Patrician didn't Carris and she wasn't sure
Speaker 2: she could be able to do a swing. Recognizays, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can listen to Big may Bell. You can be
Speaker 2: Big may Bell on this. You got it right. So
Speaker 2: that changed it. So from that point moving forward, we
Speaker 2: were okay.
Speaker 1: So you're producing records, jamaking records with Pat pat stops
Speaker 1: having hits. What happens with your production career.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of what was going on at
Speaker 2: that time. I think I was still producing people. I
Speaker 2: was writing, writing a lot. And the thing about writing
Speaker 2: is you write and if you collect it, which I
Speaker 2: always did, whether it was at that machine, it has said,
Speaker 2: whatever those parts, if they're good and they have life,
Speaker 2: they'll live forever. Right. They're melodies right there, there are words,
Speaker 2: you know whatever. You have, not full songs, but you
Speaker 2: have those parts. So I was doing a lot of that.
Speaker 2: But I got to think of the time I did
Speaker 2: some film composing. Patrisia was kind of worn out, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, the same routine over and over again, trying
Speaker 2: to be part of that machine. And you know, we
Speaker 2: didn't really we really didn't want to continue. Basically, she
Speaker 2: didn't want to continue with that. So I'd produce other people,
Speaker 2: like I said, film scoring and work on other things.
Speaker 1: Well how'd you get the film scoring gigs?
Speaker 2: Just from a couple of different directors, you know, they said,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, you should be doing film scores. I said, okay, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: I'll do that. In fact, I got one coming up
Speaker 2: now this director Jeff Kramer, who's a great director. So
Speaker 2: that's going to be happening sometime later this after later
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 1: So do you like film scoring?
Speaker 2: I do? I do. I I like the usage of
Speaker 2: different instruments. I like the palette. I like to create
Speaker 2: for like a film score. I like to create the
Speaker 2: so called band, whether you'll be an upright bass player,
Speaker 2: you know, a trumpet player, small kit drums, maybe just
Speaker 2: acoustic guitars, electric or violin or quartet, all different things
Speaker 2: like that. I want to mix it up a little
Speaker 2: bit and try to get the emotion whichever the film
Speaker 2: is explaining or talking to me to do. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I do like that, and I love I love writing.
Speaker 2: So writing writing moves everything forward to me.
Speaker 1: At some point it goes from being Pat Bennittar to
Speaker 1: Pat bennetts Ar and Neil Giraldo. How does that happen?
Speaker 2: That happens because Patricia, it's not it's not something she
Speaker 2: was guilty about, but she she felt so much of
Speaker 2: the career that we did really was a partnership. You know,
Speaker 2: you have you have so many bands out there that
Speaker 2: that whatever they are, you know, there's usually one person
Speaker 2: in the band or two people in a band does
Speaker 2: everything and controls there, you know, their dynamic controls, not
Speaker 2: control wrong word musically makes it all kind of flow.
Speaker 2: And she knows, uh what I put into it and
Speaker 2: what I did. But see, early on, for me, I
Speaker 2: followed the Truman thing. You know, you be amazed at
Speaker 2: what you can accomplish if you don't care about who
Speaker 2: gets a credit. And I didn't care. I was just
Speaker 2: happy to do the work that I did. And Patricia
Speaker 2: didn't like how I was treated by the record company
Speaker 2: because at times they weren't very kind, uh, you know
Speaker 2: to me and things. And but it was okay. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're winning, it's like if you're on a football
Speaker 2: team or baseball whatever it is. If you're winning, that
Speaker 2: changes everything. That's all you care about. Right, So she
Speaker 2: just wanted to be partnering with that we could do
Speaker 2: more things with it. It just it just kind of
Speaker 2: explain what it was from the very beginning. And actually
Speaker 2: her thing too was she never really wanted to be
Speaker 2: the girl, like just the girl singer, like every what
Speaker 2: the record companies were doing. You know, there were no
Speaker 2: girls in bands. There were a few, but not a lot, right,
Speaker 2: And when that happened. If you didn't have a girl
Speaker 2: in a band, you couldn't get signed, you couldn't get
Speaker 2: a record deal. That's when you saw all the influx
Speaker 2: of all these girl driven bands that happened. Right, So
Speaker 2: that's all was so I change it and says, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: whatever you want.
Speaker 1: So how was it raising kids as a musician?
Speaker 2: It was great. I mean, you know, we'd watch the
Speaker 2: Laker games and when the kids were younger, and I'd
Speaker 2: have a dat machine run and I'd be writing songs
Speaker 2: in the background and you would be hearing check her
Speaker 2: and talk about how they make plays. You know, somebody
Speaker 2: scoring and you know the kids are laughing and I'm
Speaker 2: writing songs. Yeah, it was easy. I mean we took
Speaker 2: them on every tour, every single one, all the time.
Speaker 1: Well what if they were in.
Speaker 2: School and then we did that and they would we
Speaker 2: were a tutor.
Speaker 1: Doctor, And what are they up to today?
Speaker 2: My youngest Hannah is a tremendous songwriter. My god, she's tremendous,
Speaker 2: a great actress as well. She's It's the blessing and
Speaker 2: the curse to this is I love children. I want
Speaker 2: to have children badly. I thought on Sunday's Italian Day.
Speaker 2: You know, you're gonna break bread, gonna have the family,
Speaker 2: They're gonna eat for like five hours long. It's gonna
Speaker 2: be great. Great kids come over, Hinda walks through the door, Papa,
Speaker 2: can we go in the studio? It's like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: can we just sit around and relax today. So but
Speaker 2: it's great. And my oldest daughter is really talented as well.
Speaker 2: She's the one that has the three babies, three grand
Speaker 2: babies that we have, which she's really talented too, with
Speaker 2: art and a lot of different things, planning, she does these.
Speaker 2: She's just she's a she's got a phenomenal eye. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's great.
Speaker 1: So how much do you and Pat work now I'm
Speaker 1: talking about on the road.
Speaker 2: On the road a couple well, let's say maybe a
Speaker 2: couple month and a half or something in the summer.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's a month in the fall, month in the spring.
Speaker 2: That's the for me personally, it's the only time I
Speaker 2: can let my brain rest a little bit and I
Speaker 2: could be sort of a teenager while I'm out there.
Speaker 2: You know, I can just play instruments and not have
Speaker 2: to create anything, and just you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know where songs care. I don't know how
Speaker 2: this even works, and nobody really does and nobody can
Speaker 2: really tell it. But I'll tell you this though. It's
Speaker 2: an obsessive compulsive disorder because it never leaves, so totally
Speaker 2: every minute of my life is writing something, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're a great writer, Bob. I mean the way you
Speaker 2: write it. You cover so many things, and when I
Speaker 2: read it, it's like this guy is like writing these
Speaker 2: amazing things. Forget the subject matter. It's brilliant writing, right.
Speaker 2: So you can't stop either. You know, when I wake up,
Speaker 2: I want to be wake Why do I want to
Speaker 2: be awake? Because I want to start writing and it's
Speaker 2: a sickness, so I have. I'm about ready to do
Speaker 2: something profound in a career because I've waited a long time.
Speaker 2: I may be doing a solo record with of course
Speaker 2: all original songs, but different guest stars, a different singers
Speaker 2: and different people on it. That's all about the songs,
Speaker 2: of production and you know the music.
Speaker 1: So needless to say, the landscape has changed dramatically in
Speaker 1: forty years. There were fewer records. Record companies were powerful.
Speaker 1: If you have an established name, you got a shot.
Speaker 1: Now you can be a legendary act from the seventies
Speaker 1: maybe eighties. You can put your heart and soul into
Speaker 1: a record and it falls flat, irrelevant of the quality.
Speaker 1: You know, how is that relative to your incentive to
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 2: I don't care. I don't care at all. Honestly, I
Speaker 2: don't care, because just because it falls flat doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it stays flat. Alls it takes is one ear, one
Speaker 2: listened somewhere that kind of goes, wait a minute, this
Speaker 2: could be something. Listen the history of the things that
Speaker 2: I've done. Here's I have a fought be about this too.
Speaker 2: If you listen to a record the first time you
Speaker 2: hear the record, if you love it as a listener,
Speaker 2: that's a problem. I want somebody to listen to it
Speaker 2: and go, hm, I don't know if I'm getting this.
Speaker 2: Second listen maybe, and by the fifth listen, you're going
Speaker 2: I can live with this now, you know. I love this.
Speaker 2: And that's It's like I said in the very beginning
Speaker 2: we're talking, is that it doesn't matter where you're at.
Speaker 2: If you have a great song, it will be heard.
Speaker 2: It'll work. And here's the thing that I don't think
Speaker 2: you know. The the thing the rock and roll or
Speaker 2: rock that word or whatever you want to do with that.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a way to rejuvenate that. Bring
Speaker 2: back phil Oaks. Try to try to mix genres, try
Speaker 2: to have something that has meaning and mix things up.
Speaker 2: Don't be afraid, right, I mean, if you're not brave,
Speaker 2: you have nothing to lose. I mean, you know, huh,
Speaker 2: you know, I just I think it's I have hope,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I gotta I gotta stop for a second.
Speaker 1: You mentioned phil Oaks. Correct, why phil Oaks?
Speaker 2: Because you know the that genre, you know, the the
Speaker 2: protest music. I mean that that was that was rocking
Speaker 2: its own self. Like why can't you open up, you know,
Speaker 2: like where his head was at, find out what that is?
Speaker 2: Speak that language. Mix it with Howland Wolf across a
Speaker 2: cross cross gender that not grot wrong words, all right,
Speaker 2: I mean that word across like mix up things so
Speaker 2: different that you have to question, what are you listening to?
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: I know exactly what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, uh great, you know dre Oh my god,
Speaker 2: that's rock news. If you look at rock as being
Speaker 2: the thing that you know defines a generation, you know,
Speaker 2: the stuff he did was phenomenal, But why don't you
Speaker 2: take uh, you know, like blues Junior kimbroke that vibe
Speaker 2: that really like scary. Oh, I don't know what the
Speaker 2: word scary blues Mississippi blues thing and put it with
Speaker 2: phil Oaks. You know, phil Oaks wrote beautiful songs with
Speaker 2: power Changes is a beautiful melody, one of the most
Speaker 2: prettiest melodies ever written. I mean, and this his mind was,
Speaker 2: it was pure, he was real, you know, So, uh,
Speaker 2: is there something there? I think? Don't be afraid? I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, I.
Speaker 1: Think.
Speaker 2: Uh, I personally, I don't have fear of failure in
Speaker 2: that I don't. I don't have fear of releasing something
Speaker 2: and somebody goes, who cares it gets thirty views? I
Speaker 2: don't care because if I know it's good, it's all
Speaker 2: matters to me. I'm not and I don't think i'll be.
Speaker 2: I'm not the renaissance man, and I'm not gonna change
Speaker 2: the way people listen to music of the way sounds
Speaker 2: are going to be completely different. That's not gonna happen,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be interesting and you may be
Speaker 2: a little shocked what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna make this solo album. I Am I
Speaker 1: Am okay human. Pat also wrote a children's book. How
Speaker 1: did that come to be?
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, they got a hold of us about writing
Speaker 2: a grandparents book. It was the love the I love Caa,
Speaker 2: I love Rob Light and everybody up there. They've been
Speaker 2: really good for us and really nice people and creative people.
Speaker 2: And we have grand babies and we love them to death, right,
Speaker 2: so why not write a book about grand babies? Just
Speaker 2: have fun, you know, just something something that people can
Speaker 2: look at. You know. The the image of a grandparent
Speaker 2: used to be that old. You know your grandparents, do you?
Speaker 2: You remember then your grandparents see you do? Right? So
Speaker 2: that's not the way it is now, you know. And
Speaker 2: here's the other thing I talk about too. Nobody ever
Speaker 2: thought about what's going to happen to all these rock
Speaker 2: and roll musicians with their health going forward? What's going
Speaker 2: to happen? You know, you got Pete Trampton with his
Speaker 2: terrible thing, you Phil Collins, you got serious issues with
Speaker 2: their health. So for me, I'm looking for Kobe Bryant
Speaker 2: to be my example a person that had in order
Speaker 2: to be a musician in this age group in the sixties,
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties. You have to think of yourself like
Speaker 2: Kobe Bryant, as an athlete because you can't do those
Speaker 2: things you did when you were younger. You have to
Speaker 2: change your diet, you have to exercise. You got all
Speaker 2: these things that are and you have to be sound mind.
Speaker 2: That helps everything you're writing your life.
Speaker 1: Okay, you and Pat were inducted into the Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame. That has to feel good. But
Speaker 1: do you think Pat gets the recognition and attention she deserves.
Speaker 1: Let me use sort of an equivalent thing. Yeah, Stevie
Speaker 1: Nick she has very much has a persona, but as
Speaker 1: a solo act, Pat has more hits and Stevie's been
Speaker 1: embraced by younger generations. You know, what do you think
Speaker 1: about this Pat's place in the firmament and whether there's
Speaker 1: you know, runway to get younger generations on board. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think what we see usually is we have a
Speaker 2: young collection of people that come to see us all
Speaker 2: the time, and it's evident in our lives. Maybe not
Speaker 2: in the public sector or whatever you're looking at there,
Speaker 2: but in real life. And the parents that bring the
Speaker 2: kids who are like nine years old, thirteen, they're they're
Speaker 2: in it. They're there, and and there's boys, young boys
Speaker 2: that are musicians that are learning the stuff that I've done.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of that. But for Patricia, she's
Speaker 2: a defiant person. She's a tough person who worked really
Speaker 2: really hard. So and she don't give a fuck. I
Speaker 2: gotta tell you. Her attitude is like, I don't give
Speaker 2: a fuck. She don't care. She's defiant. I love it.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that she's like that. She
Speaker 2: don't care. So she don't care about that either. She
Speaker 2: don't think about this person getting this person. I think
Speaker 2: the only thing about that rock Call thing was I
Speaker 2: think it takes that long, really like it has to
Speaker 2: take that long. Well, then you got to look at
Speaker 2: who's who's running it. Now, you know, Greg Harris a
Speaker 2: great guy. These are great people. John Sykes go and
Speaker 2: guess guess what, John Sykes. She said, drive me around
Speaker 2: in his station wagon. And I was Rick Darenter to
Speaker 2: to radio stations. He was the guy when I saw him.
Speaker 2: He go, Okay, do you remember in nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: I was driving you and Ric Roundry. I says, sure
Speaker 2: I do, John, Yes, I do. You did good?
Speaker 1: Okay? At the Rock and Roll induction ceremony. You did
Speaker 1: most of the talking and Pat was relatively silent. Is
Speaker 1: that your relationship is that Pat? Uh?
Speaker 2: Nah? Well, no, I do not really, I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's a tough question to ask, a tough question to answer.
Speaker 2: I mean, on certain subjects, I definitely are I'm the
Speaker 2: one that's gonna do the talking about other things like
Speaker 2: if we go out with friends or like that she
Speaker 2: does all the time. Can I just listen? I can't
Speaker 2: get a word in. She just talks.
Speaker 1: But she was.
Speaker 2: She she wanted my voice to be heard too, you know.
Speaker 2: She I support a lot of things. I support support children,
Speaker 2: I support schools, music education, I support a lot of
Speaker 2: different things. A lot of people don't know because I've
Speaker 2: been so quiet. To your point early on in our
Speaker 2: conversation today, social media, you should be out there. You
Speaker 2: should be doing that stuff. I don't do it. I
Speaker 2: should do more. I definitely should do more, without a doubt.
Speaker 2: So it was I don't know, I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Just she just she was happy just to kind of
Speaker 2: be there. And she said, go ahead and spider talk,
Speaker 2: do whatever you want, you know.
Speaker 1: So okay, as I said earlier, you're a very verbal, friendly,
Speaker 1: nice guy. Great hang. But you talk about growing up
Speaker 1: with a gooraphobia and other mental maladies. Yeah, we're seeing
Speaker 1: me now telling your story. But do you ever get depressed?
Speaker 1: You ever have moods?
Speaker 2: Sure, I get I get it, but I don't have
Speaker 2: anything like I had before, not at all, nothing like that. Nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I sometimes I'm afraid of moods because I don't really
Speaker 2: get that angry bob. You know. But if I get
Speaker 2: angry about something, I have a little bit fear because
Speaker 2: if somebody, somebody harms somebody emotionally, somebody else, I go
Speaker 2: into Anthony gerald on my fatherland and I will put
Speaker 2: my head, my fist or concrete if I have to,
Speaker 2: I'll protect my own, no question. Or if somebody's bullying.
Speaker 2: I hate bullying. I hate faceless cowards. I hate all
Speaker 2: that stuff. Don't like it. You know that don't get me?
Speaker 2: So maybe I maybe I choose to be silent in
Speaker 2: that way because I don't want to deal with the ugliness.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll write about it. You'll see it in
Speaker 2: the New Star songs that I'm writing. Is there's something there,
Speaker 2: you'll hear it.
Speaker 1: Okay, But you portray your life. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: solitary time. You wake up at three point thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning, you never get into dark spaces.
Speaker 2: I do, I do, but I let. Luckily, I'm able
Speaker 2: to channel that into writing. I mean, because it's the
Speaker 2: only way you can let the endorphins take care of depression.
Speaker 2: You know what it's like when you write something great.
Speaker 2: I know you you're writing something. You go, damn, that's
Speaker 2: a good line. Damn I wrote that. That was really good.
Speaker 2: I know you're doing that.
Speaker 1: Bob.
Speaker 2: Well, the funny are you?
Speaker 1: The funny thing is I can see that people say, oh,
Speaker 1: nobody knows what a hit is et One of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories. That's hanging with Al Cooper and he's telling
Speaker 1: me the story of how he got a call from
Speaker 1: Ronnie van zandt we have a new record. We do
Speaker 1: song we want to record. The first album had just
Speaker 1: come out. He says, come into the studio. They're in Florida,
Speaker 1: he's in Atlanta, says, come to the studio on Monday,
Speaker 1: we'll cut it. The record did not come out for
Speaker 1: a year. It was you know, Sweet Home Alabama. And
Speaker 1: I said, Al, did you know it was a hit?
Speaker 1: And he said it was sweet Home Alabama. The people
Speaker 1: who do something great. You know when you do something great,
Speaker 1: And that's why I love you talked earlier. You hit
Speaker 1: me with your best shot of it. You know it,
Speaker 1: and you bet you try to hit an eleven and
Speaker 1: you can't hit an eleven on a regular basis. Anybody
Speaker 1: tells you they can is full of shit. You're never
Speaker 1: gonna do something shitty, but something that little bit extra.
Speaker 1: You're searching for it. You know when you do it,
Speaker 1: and then you're depressed after its over. I listen, by
Speaker 1: the way, I love Al Cooper. He's a great guy.
Speaker 1: I love that guy. He's done great, great stuff. But
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, you know, it's just being trueful.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's all it is. Here's the thing, too,
Speaker 1: I love the what is it Warren Buffett thing? What
Speaker 1: he says he says, if if what he uses as
Speaker 1: a deal, I don't care if it's a deal any
Speaker 1: this is any subject. But if he says it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good deal, he says, don't do it.
Speaker 1: That's a great deal. Don't do it.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah, do it. And so it's the same
Speaker 2: with a hit. You just know it when I heard
Speaker 2: When Doves Cry the first time, I went, that's a smash.
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic song. Different hit, you know, And the
Speaker 2: things that we've done that were big hits, I knew
Speaker 2: they were. You can't kid yourself. I know that. You
Speaker 2: know if somebody like the record companies, So what do
Speaker 2: you think of this? If you say, yeah, excuse me,
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty good. That's not a hit. That's
Speaker 2: not you got to say, oh hell yeah, oh hell yeah.
Speaker 2: That's why Bob that oh hell yeah song will always
Speaker 2: get hurt. It will always get hurt. Alls it takes
Speaker 2: is the right thing, and then it multiplies and multiplies.
Speaker 2: It's like sickness. It's like a disease. It just keeps
Speaker 2: going in a positive way.
Speaker 1: Well, now you're inspiring me.
Speaker 2: Well hell yeah, I mean I don't have to inspire you.
Speaker 2: You're a I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I love Colin Coward, you know, the sports guy, right
Speaker 2: because he talks about sports, but then he goes off
Speaker 2: and talks about other things because sports is real life.
Speaker 2: Like there's a real life going on right there. And
Speaker 2: like Bill Cower, similar sort of name, Bill Cowher. I
Speaker 2: love it. I ran into coach Cower, and I says,
Speaker 2: you know what, I really loved that. She said, if
Speaker 2: a player makes a mistake, he pulls them aside and goes.
Speaker 2: You owe me. The player does good, he comes back,
Speaker 2: he goes worry even right, So you know these things
Speaker 2: are all true. I'm telling you that the reason you
Speaker 2: love to write is you're getting in the doorphin rush
Speaker 2: because you got a lot of shit wrong with you.
Speaker 2: I read this stuff. You know, Ah you got you
Speaker 2: went to the dentist, you went to ah, you got
Speaker 2: all these things. I've seen you laughing. They can't hear
Speaker 2: you on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Say, you know, the funny thing is you're one hundred
Speaker 1: percent right, and you know these types of things. I
Speaker 1: talk to my psychiatrist. I know a lot of business
Speaker 1: people and we're friends. But the people I really could
Speaker 1: relate to the artists. It's just something different. I could
Speaker 1: go on and on, but that's about me in any event, Neil, Hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was great talking to you. Great talking to you too.
Speaker 2: Anytime you need you need any ps psychiatric help, call me.
Speaker 2: I'll help you through it. As well as I say,
Speaker 2: you're inspiring me. And I wasn't in the greatest mood earlier. Well,
Speaker 2: anytime you need to you need to talk, just call me.
Speaker 2: I'll be happy to talk to you off the record,
Speaker 2: whatever you want. Man I love what you do of
Speaker 2: thin song. That's been amazing. Thank you until next time.
Speaker 2: This is Bob left set H