Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist Stevie Salas, who's worked with
Speaker 1: Rob Stewart, Mick Jagger, and so many more. Stevie, when
Speaker 1: did you realize you were Native American?
Speaker 2: Well? I knew I was a Native American from birth,
Speaker 2: but it was just, you know, nothing new. Wasn't like
Speaker 2: we walked around go hey, I'm a Native American. We're
Speaker 2: just like I knew who I was and we never
Speaker 2: really thought about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but did you experience any discrimination growing up?
Speaker 2: Not? See that? I'm lucky because I was. My father
Speaker 2: joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen and left
Speaker 2: the countryside of Cheyenne outside China, Wyoming. My parents, excuse me,
Speaker 2: my mother, my mother's family had migrated to Vista, California.
Speaker 2: My father was in Camp Pendleton and my mother's family
Speaker 2: was from New Mexico. And so I was born on
Speaker 2: the beach in Oceanside, California. And there was no racism
Speaker 2: where I grew up because there was the Marine Corps base,
Speaker 2: and I had kids of every color and we all
Speaker 2: served and skateboarded and listened to music, and it was
Speaker 2: so I really didn't experience any of those things. A
Speaker 2: lot of my friends from the reservations have dealt with
Speaker 2: all their lives.
Speaker 1: Well, you ultimately made a movie about Native Americans in
Speaker 1: rock called Rumble. So did you always embrace your Native
Speaker 1: American culture or was it more that when you left
Speaker 1: home and you saw what was going on that you said, hey,
Speaker 1: I have to make a statement.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of a double answer, because if
Speaker 2: you ever really looked back, like say, when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, you know, my first band was Rod Stewart.
Speaker 2: I went from a high school band, and I met
Speaker 2: George Clinton and when I was homeless in LA and
Speaker 2: then you know, I went from George and you know
Speaker 2: and Bootsy. Around that whole time, I was Dolby Seen
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah, right up to three years later
Speaker 2: on Rod Stewart's lead guitar player. And I was always
Speaker 2: I'm a Native American. I was never. I was always
Speaker 2: I'm a guitar player. I want to be a rock star.
Speaker 2: I happened to be a Native American. I was never
Speaker 2: I'm a Native American rock star. So if you ever
Speaker 2: look back at the old photos and things, you'll always
Speaker 2: see a little maybe I'd have on a little earring
Speaker 2: or a little bit of my necklace or something that
Speaker 2: was indigenous in my whole thing. But that was for me.
Speaker 2: That wasn't part of my like stage wardrobe, you know.
Speaker 2: But later on, around two thousand, around ninety nine, I
Speaker 2: was really sick of the music business. I kind of
Speaker 2: felt like I'd done everything I could possibly do, and
Speaker 2: you know, working from everybody from justin timer Lake and
Speaker 2: in Public Enemy to mc jagger, and you know, I
Speaker 2: worked with a lot of Sasash Jordan, and all these
Speaker 2: different people were all divers diversified, kind of different artists,
Speaker 2: and I just felt burned out after you know, a
Speaker 2: bunch of solo albums too, and a bunch of world tours.
Speaker 2: So around two thousand, maybe it was two ian and
Speaker 2: two or three, I went to open up for the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones in Canada and I met this guy called
Speaker 2: Brian Right McLeod who was a Native American writer, and
Speaker 2: he was writing a book, an encyclopedia that covered every
Speaker 2: bit of Indigenous recorded music going all the way back
Speaker 2: to nineteen oh eight and wax cylinders, and you know,
Speaker 2: there was there was there wasn't too many Native guys
Speaker 2: with my my resume at all. He wanted me in
Speaker 2: his book. So we sat down at his house and
Speaker 2: he started talking to me about Jesse Ed Davis and
Speaker 2: started talking to me about Link Ray and I knew,
Speaker 2: you know, I knew Link Ray was, of course, and
Speaker 2: Jesse had Davis. I mean, in sixth grade, I would
Speaker 2: read Rod Stewart's album you know, Atlantic Crossing, years before
Speaker 2: I was ever going to be his lead guitar player,
Speaker 2: and they would say Jesse ed Davis all over these
Speaker 2: amazing records that I used to read Lner notes. I
Speaker 2: had no idea he was a Native American. I had
Speaker 2: no idea that Link Ray was a Native American. I
Speaker 2: had no idea that Robbie Robertson was a Native American.
Speaker 2: In fact, in nineteen eighty eight, when I first we
Speaker 2: played a three night run at Madison Square Gardens, I
Speaker 2: walked on the stage at sound check and I got
Speaker 2: on my hands, knees and I kissed the stage at
Speaker 2: Madison Square Gardens saying I'm the first Native American ever
Speaker 2: played Madison Square Gardens. I mean no idea that I
Speaker 2: was not even close to the first American. So in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one I learned this about these guys.
Speaker 2: I realized that if I don't know this, and I'm
Speaker 2: in the business, I go, there's Native American people all
Speaker 2: over out there that don't know they have these role models.
Speaker 2: And that's when I felt the urge that I should
Speaker 2: give something back, and I felt like I needed to
Speaker 2: help bring these people to the forefront so Native people
Speaker 2: would know they had role models that were from now,
Speaker 2: that had accomplished things that would seem impossible, and not
Speaker 2: have to go only back to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: years ago, to Geronimo or somebody you know, or sitting
Speaker 2: bul That's why I did it. I had no idea though, Bob,
Speaker 2: it was going to change written history.
Speaker 1: So let's go sideways for a second. You talked about
Speaker 1: being burned out in the year two thousand. Tell me
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know you were around. It was like I
Speaker 2: came up. I moved to LA I left my parents'
Speaker 2: house in San Diego in nineteen eighty five and quit
Speaker 2: my high school band. By eight months later, I was
Speaker 2: living in l I was living in a walking closet.
Speaker 2: Then I was homeless, and there was a studio called
Speaker 2: Baby O Recording Studios. In LA and I was friends
Speaker 2: with a guy called David Oh. He was in a
Speaker 2: band called the plim Souls that I really loved when
Speaker 2: I was in high school, right, and David Oh really
Speaker 2: liked the way I played guitar, so him and a
Speaker 2: guy called Rick Parata who ran Baby O Studios that
Speaker 2: ended up inventing matchless amplifiers, he thought I was cool.
Speaker 2: He so he said, why don't you help us clean
Speaker 2: up and you can help run the rehearsal studio and
Speaker 2: at night just sleep on the couch. And I had
Speaker 2: all my clothes in plack, black plastic bags. And it
Speaker 2: was a horrible, horrible summer for me, summer of eighty five.
Speaker 2: But I'd go up to musicians and I'd go up
Speaker 2: to like Gene Simmons and anybody that was recording at BABYO,
Speaker 2: and I said, hey, my name is Steve Saliz. I
Speaker 2: played guitar. If you ever did they tell me to
Speaker 2: go f myself, you know, get out of here or
Speaker 2: whatever it was like, and I care. I had no prede.
Speaker 2: One night I went up to David S. Bradley and
Speaker 2: George Clinton who had did Atomic Dog, and I said
Speaker 2: I played guitar and George Clinton just kind of said okay, cool,
Speaker 2: like he was cool, like no big deal. But at
Speaker 2: two o'clock in the morning, David S. Bradley came and
Speaker 2: woke me up and asked me if I wanted to
Speaker 2: try some guitar on some track. And I went down
Speaker 2: there and he had a guy called Jack Sherman playing guitar,
Speaker 2: who was then the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili
Speaker 2: Peppers in nineteen eighty five. And I thought, God, Jack's
Speaker 2: playing some amazing stuff. He was playing like this amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: But George what he was I figured out later what
Speaker 2: he was doing was he he was playing exactly what
Speaker 2: he learned and worshiped about Parliament Funkadelic. So I thought
Speaker 2: George was kind of like he'd already done that. So
Speaker 2: I went bananas on this guitar funk Wang Bar Steve
Speaker 2: Stevens madness, and George went crazy. And so that's what
Speaker 2: set me on this path. Then the next fifteen years,
Speaker 2: I got signed in nineteen eighty eight, put my first album,
Speaker 2: Mountain in UH ninety, and then I just did world tour,
Speaker 2: world tour, you know, then music direct, Turnstrant Derby and
Speaker 2: Duran Durant or go back out in another world tour
Speaker 2: and then go back out and write and produce in
Speaker 2: sas Jordan Rat's album, and then to a tour with
Speaker 2: her and Arrowsmith. You know, it just never stopped. And
Speaker 2: the more the business kept going into the nineties, it
Speaker 2: stopped being about development, it stopped being about music, and
Speaker 2: it started being about how many times I could get
Speaker 2: played on K rock or you know all these and
Speaker 2: then all these rock and roll metal guys that I
Speaker 2: thought had no credibility were shaving their heads and pretending
Speaker 2: to be punk rockers and they'd get a record deal.
Speaker 2: I just thought the whole thing was becoming bullshit, and
Speaker 2: I just I had money, and I just thought, I'm
Speaker 2: sick of this and I'm sick of the business, and
Speaker 2: I want to go surf. And I bought a bunch
Speaker 2: of land in Costa Rica and I was just going
Speaker 2: to go retire and surf, and and that's what I mean.
Speaker 2: I was just burned out on all the the insincerity
Speaker 2: that was going on by the end of the end
Speaker 2: of the nineties, with all the fake, fake everything, fake
Speaker 2: punk rock, fake this, fake rid and it's just nothing
Speaker 2: that credibility to me. Anymore.
Speaker 1: So you know, you reconnected with your Native American roots
Speaker 1: and other Native American players in music. But what happened
Speaker 1: with you and music after that.
Speaker 2: Time, Well, actually what happened It was a bummer. Around
Speaker 2: two thousand, excuse me, about two thousand my girlfriend passed away,
Speaker 2: and wow, and I went into a deep, deep hole.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, you know, my nest egg
Speaker 2: I went. I lost a million dollars in the stock market,
Speaker 2: pretty much on a two thousand crash. And now you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you know what it was like back then.
Speaker 2: It was hard to say a million dollars playing guitar, right,
Speaker 2: you know. And all of a sudden I realized I
Speaker 2: had to go back to work. But I was so down,
Speaker 2: and it was like I've always felt like I had
Speaker 2: like a horseshoe up my ass. I feel like I've
Speaker 2: always been so lucky. Out of the blue, I show
Speaker 2: up at Virgin. I had a deal then with Virgin
Speaker 2: by the time with Tony Berg where I could develop
Speaker 2: and sign my own acts. If he liked the acts,
Speaker 2: they'd sign him and I could take him in development,
Speaker 2: because I mean, you came from the days of development
Speaker 2: when they'd rather give you ten grand and lose it,
Speaker 2: then sign a band and lose two million bucks or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I was one of those guys they'd let go
Speaker 2: develop acts, and I was developing Peter Cornell, who is
Speaker 2: Chris Cornell's brother, who's this amazing singer. But I was
Speaker 2: also in this deep depression. And I walked by Jima
Speaker 2: Corfield's office because I knew gem would because I produce
Speaker 2: was and I was in nineteen eighty seven with Down,
Speaker 2: so you know, I knew her really well. And she goes, hey,
Speaker 2: I got a I saw a list today that you know,
Speaker 2: it was from Nancy Berry's desk, that Mick Jagger's going
Speaker 2: to call you to be a guitar you know, he's
Speaker 2: a guitar player. I'm like, what so? And I'd known
Speaker 2: Mick because I used to hang out with Keith a Latin,
Speaker 2: Bernard Fowler and all the guys. So I got this
Speaker 2: call and it was like a gift from God. It
Speaker 2: was like, who else could get me out of that
Speaker 2: hell hole I was in then the biggest rock star
Speaker 2: in the world. It was like the gods were telling
Speaker 2: me to get my ass together and get my shit together.
Speaker 2: And so I got a call and there was five
Speaker 2: people that got that audition. That was me, Dave Navarro,
Speaker 2: Rusty Anderson, Doyle Bramhall, and I'm blanked on the fourth guy.
Speaker 2: But the Corey I forget his name, but he used
Speaker 2: to play with More's Day in the Time and Michelle
Speaker 2: and Decachello is really really cool guitar player. And I
Speaker 2: got the gig and then then Mick made me as
Speaker 2: music director and it's the only thing that could have
Speaker 2: got me back out. And I got back out and
Speaker 2: I got and Jagger. Jagger was like Jagger was like
Speaker 2: every detail mattered. And remember what I told you before
Speaker 2: in the nineties, when I felt like there was no
Speaker 2: more credibility, he instantly like made me believe in him
Speaker 2: because he would call and talk about this ship that
Speaker 2: I was hearing. That really made a difference to me,
Speaker 2: and I could tell he could hear it, and it
Speaker 2: was just the most It's the only thing that could
Speaker 2: have got me out of the hell I was in.
Speaker 2: And Jagger was just like young still even though he
Speaker 2: was old, and it was funny and it just it
Speaker 2: brought me back to life. And that's when I started
Speaker 2: kept playing. So then I started doing more European tours again.
Speaker 2: I started accepting more offers, you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: if Wayne Cramer called and I worked with the MC
Speaker 2: five or whatever. You know, whenever it was something that
Speaker 2: was good, it got me back into playing and got
Speaker 2: me into actually trying to enjoy myself again playing me.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were inducted in the Hall of Fame where
Speaker 1: you grew up recently, and in the quotes you say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not the best guitar player. I'm not the best singer,
Speaker 1: So how'd you get the gigs?
Speaker 2: You know, I tell kids this all the time. You know,
Speaker 2: I've been in all those readers poles, and I was
Speaker 2: number one in the Japan Guitar World Readers Bowl when
Speaker 2: I was in you know, nineteen ninety when my first album,
Speaker 2: Color Code came out, I was number three in the
Speaker 2: Guitar World in America. You know, I was in the
Speaker 2: fifty Greatest Guitar Players of All Time in like nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six and Guitar Player magazine. You know, But it's
Speaker 2: all bullshit. It's like if you got a great publicist
Speaker 2: and you hit at the right time and you ride
Speaker 2: this wave right. But the other thing I tell kids
Speaker 2: is this Boba I go, you don't have to be
Speaker 2: the greatest. You just got to be the greatest when
Speaker 2: it counts. And that's something I was great at. I
Speaker 2: could walk in the room and destroy and just destroy
Speaker 2: the room with an audition like Rod Stewart had no idea.
Speaker 2: I couldn't play slad guitar acoustic guitar when I got
Speaker 2: that gig, and it was too late for him to
Speaker 2: fire me, although he almost fired me every week. It
Speaker 2: was like I wrote a book about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, why don't you tell people why he almost
Speaker 1: fired you?
Speaker 2: Because I was an idiot. I was a stupid kid.
Speaker 2: You know, I was a little kid in a band
Speaker 2: full of genius grown ups. I mean it was Carma
Speaker 2: and Rojas on bass that you know, he brought the
Speaker 2: bassline to Let's Dance. It was like it was like
Speaker 2: Bowie's Guys, and it was the power station. Tony Thompson
Speaker 2: originally that Tony Brock from The Babies came back in
Speaker 2: my high school band used to play baby songs, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. It's like Carma and Rojas's poster
Speaker 2: was on the wall at my mom and dad's house
Speaker 2: in my bedroom. Still. You know, it was like I
Speaker 2: was in. They used to call me young Eddie Martinez
Speaker 2: because in eighty seven when I was a staff producer
Speaker 2: for David Cushabam, when I scored Billing Ted Sex and
Speaker 2: The Adventure, I was also the only guy doing rap
Speaker 2: songs for those soundtracks because nobody in LA in rock
Speaker 2: and roll knew a lot about rap. But I was
Speaker 2: really into Eddie Martinez and run DMC, so they used
Speaker 2: to call me a little Eddie Martinez. And now Eddie
Speaker 2: Martinez was in Rod's band, so the whole thing was
Speaker 2: just like nuts. So I think I was super immature.
Speaker 2: You know. One time at Miami Stadium, I was playing.
Speaker 2: It was only the third gig of the tour, of
Speaker 2: my first tour since my high schol band, keep in
Speaker 2: mind where I sold out Miami Dolphin Stadium, Joe Robbie Stadium.
Speaker 2: I saw myself on this giant diamond vision screen and
Speaker 2: I was starting the song first cut as the Deepest,
Speaker 2: and I just stopped. I started prank, and I just froze,
Speaker 2: and I pointed at this thing of myself and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my God. And then I realized Rod
Speaker 2: and I was staring at me. Sixty five thousand people
Speaker 2: there and I started the song again and go afterwards,
Speaker 2: I was like, what are you doing, you know, stopping
Speaker 2: to wave at the girls. And I told him, I go,
Speaker 2: wasn't waving at the girls. I frozen. He goes, that's
Speaker 2: even worse. I mean, I was almost fired so many times.
Speaker 2: But but I was also this had this young energy
Speaker 2: that he loved that was unifying our band. And we
Speaker 2: became like a that band in eighty eight, if you
Speaker 2: recall that an order tour. It brought him back and
Speaker 2: we sold three or four million records and it was
Speaker 2: part of our band was like an army. It was
Speaker 2: what you dream of and you know, but but yeah,
Speaker 2: in the beginning it I almost got blown out, Like
Speaker 2: every every week was I was in trouble. And then
Speaker 2: I became the scapegoat for everything, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It was like if somebody else made a clam they
Speaker 2: point at me, and Roderd think it was me, and
Speaker 2: yeah it was. It was. You know, I got hazed
Speaker 2: a lot. I got hazed a ton until on Rod's airplane,
Speaker 2: I started a fight with the whole band. And then
Speaker 2: after that everybody got cool. And because I was born
Speaker 2: a fighter, you know, and I like to. You know,
Speaker 2: I used to punch people out open I was a kid,
Speaker 2: but because everyone did where I lived, surfing, and those
Speaker 2: guys I think were in shop because they're still musician musicians.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: What ways were you haved?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, like I'd get my bag. We had
Speaker 2: the zone. We had our own airplane, and so we
Speaker 2: used to fly from one city in the afternoon and
Speaker 2: go play a concert and fly back to when we'd
Speaker 2: home base out of one city like Atlanta, and we'd
Speaker 2: go do like ten shows and all that, and you know,
Speaker 2: you know about that stuff. And and the one time
Speaker 2: I get my clothes on the airplane, my bag and
Speaker 2: I go to open it up to get my clean
Speaker 2: clothes out because I'm all sweaty, it's stinky from the concert,
Speaker 2: and there's a bunch of squished fruit in my bag.
Speaker 2: You know, my clothes are you know, stupid shit like that,
Speaker 2: or you know, Rod Stewart used to paint penises like
Speaker 2: I like Kelly Emberg. We were all going into into
Speaker 2: uh Montreal and Rod you had to hide your passport.
Speaker 2: That was one of the things you had to do
Speaker 2: in the Rod Street Band, And you had to hide
Speaker 2: stuff like that. Like so like Kelly Emberg left her
Speaker 2: passport out and next thing you know, she opens it
Speaker 2: up at the custom and there's a penis drawn next
Speaker 2: to her face. Or you know, I'd go to go
Speaker 2: on stage with a brand new white jacket and on
Speaker 2: the back there was a giant black penis drawn on it,
Speaker 2: you know. Or one of Rod's friends would come on
Speaker 2: from a soccer team and he'd fall asleep and they'd
Speaker 2: fill his hair with shaving cream and cigarette butts and
Speaker 2: you know, put rigs and it chose. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was just like that kind of shit all day long,
Speaker 2: because Rod and them were still like, this is nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight, and you know, Rod was still a kid.
Speaker 2: He's still kind of a kid.
Speaker 1: Actually, So when it ends the World tour, what's your
Speaker 1: relationship with Rod and the band?
Speaker 2: They were like my big brothers, and I loved them
Speaker 2: so much. They were everything to me, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to quit the band, but I had signed, I
Speaker 2: secretly signed the biggest recording contract Island Records had ever
Speaker 2: given to somebody right before, right during the New Rod
Speaker 2: Stewart tour, and I was so afraid that they were
Speaker 2: going to find out and fire me. So I didn't
Speaker 2: tell anybody. And then one day in Wisconsin, I'm sitting
Speaker 2: down having a dinner before a show backstage with Randy
Speaker 2: Phillips and Rod, and Randy Phillips goes, hey, I heard
Speaker 2: you signed a big contract with the Island. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like I I yeah. And Rod started
Speaker 2: laughing at me, and I go, what's so funny? And
Speaker 2: he goes All my career, everyone in my band, they're
Speaker 2: always they're going to leave, They're going to get their
Speaker 2: own record deal, They're going to do this. And because
Speaker 2: you're just like this kid and you get this huge
Speaker 2: record deal, and because none of them ever did, I
Speaker 2: guess you know what I mean. They all used to
Speaker 2: threaten to quit. I'm gonna get my own deal, and
Speaker 2: I never threatened to quit to get my own deal.
Speaker 2: I didn't even want to know I had a deal.
Speaker 2: But when I got done, you know, with part of
Speaker 2: the out of order tour, Island Records had said to
Speaker 2: be you. And by then Bill Grahm was my manager,
Speaker 2: and there Mordy Wiggins, and then we're like, look, do
Speaker 2: you want to do you want to be his guitar player?
Speaker 2: Do you want to be your own artist. And I
Speaker 2: had to quit the band. But it was almost like
Speaker 2: getting a divorce. It was like leaving my family. It was.
Speaker 2: It really crushed me. I did not want to leave
Speaker 2: those guys.
Speaker 1: So what's your relationship with Rod today and what's happened
Speaker 1: over the ensuing thirty five years?
Speaker 2: Thirty five years is nuts. I love Rod Man. Rod
Speaker 2: loved my book and he teased me one time. I
Speaker 2: popped into a show at Buffalo and He's like, I'm
Speaker 2: getting your book and I can't wait. I'm gonna sue
Speaker 2: the shit out of you, you know. And I saw
Speaker 2: Rod this this the it was this this last February
Speaker 2: or the February before I came. I think it was
Speaker 2: this last February. I was down at the hard Rock
Speaker 2: Seminal hard Rock where I have a business. I have
Speaker 2: a sports music bar, and so I had the new
Speaker 2: Seminal Guitar Guitar Tower and Hollywood, Florida, and I was
Speaker 2: down there with my Seminal friends because they own all
Speaker 2: the hard rocks, and Rod was playing. So I goes,
Speaker 2: let's go see Rod. So Jimmy, Jimmy the sax player,
Speaker 2: was still in the band. He was in the band.
Speaker 2: When I was in the band, Jimmy Roberts, and Jimmy
Speaker 2: came and met me before the show, said hi, and
Speaker 2: I had a couple of tickets and I didn't really
Speaker 2: ask for anything, but Rod found out I was there,
Speaker 2: and before I could leave, some guy came out and
Speaker 2: grabbed me because he wants to see you and took
Speaker 2: me and my friends all backstage, and it was like
Speaker 2: it was like he was I got the photos. He
Speaker 2: was hugging me and he kissed my kissed my head
Speaker 2: and it was just like it was. It was the
Speaker 2: best because in a way psychologically he was like my
Speaker 2: big brother, almost like a father figure to me, you know,
Speaker 2: because it was twenty something years older than me when
Speaker 2: I was in his band, and for me it was
Speaker 2: it was beautiful. I love Rod story. I would take
Speaker 2: a bullet for him still to this day, even if
Speaker 2: he makes a shit record.
Speaker 1: How did you actually get that gig?
Speaker 2: I was hot? You know in La? You know how
Speaker 2: it is, You remember how it was if you got
Speaker 2: a buzz in La you know, some music connection magazine.
Speaker 2: Butd Scope I used to just think I was the
Speaker 2: coolest so but Scopa Scoop would write about me and
Speaker 2: everybody would write about me, and and I was around Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and I had this band, Color Code, and I was
Speaker 2: mixing this funk and rock thing and it sounded cool
Speaker 2: and people liked it. And I was also became a
Speaker 2: staff producer for David Kirshenbaum, and then I scored Bill
Speaker 2: and Ted's Excellent Adventure. You know, I was there when
Speaker 2: Tracy Chapman walked in with her birkenstocks and an afro.
Speaker 2: You know, it was like I was around when this
Speaker 2: shit was happening. And Jamie Cohen loved me, you know,
Speaker 2: so a lot of a and our guys loved me
Speaker 2: and would take me out with them to see bands.
Speaker 2: And I had this already done. George Clinton R and
Speaker 2: B Skills Senens in the closet. I told everyone. Everyone
Speaker 2: thought I was George Clinton's guitar player, so they thought
Speaker 2: I was famous already. But little did they know I
Speaker 2: was not from Detroit and I was not his guitar player.
Speaker 2: I just played on that record and so but they
Speaker 2: would hire me, and I would tell him I was
Speaker 2: double scale, so I did like that was a girl
Speaker 2: from Climax. I'm blanking on her name right now. She
Speaker 2: was the drummer that sing ladies, you know, they did
Speaker 2: Ladies Room and all that, and I did that. And
Speaker 2: then Dick Griffy asked me if I wanted to join
Speaker 2: a band with Babyface and La Reid, you know, because
Speaker 2: they were artists before they became record executives. And I
Speaker 2: didn't want to do that. And then Thomas Dolby Andy
Speaker 2: Taylor called me, And it turns out that Andy Taylor
Speaker 2: was managed by Randy Phillips and Arnold's Arnold Arnold Stifeler,
Speaker 2: Steph Yeah, Arnold Steve for Sorry. So Arnold and Randy
Speaker 2: managed him and and Andy Taylor had just left Randa Rand.
Speaker 2: He had a big buzz in nineteen eighty seven. He
Speaker 2: had a big hit going. It's called Don't Let called
Speaker 2: Take It Easy with the Florid EDDI singing backups, and
Speaker 2: he auditioned me and he thought I was cool, and
Speaker 2: I became his guitar player. But right before a week
Speaker 2: before the tour, we're opening the Psychedelic First Tour, and
Speaker 2: the first gig was the La Form and the second
Speaker 2: gig was going to be San Diego Opener Amphitheater, and
Speaker 2: I was my big homecoming and Andy fired me. It's
Speaker 2: like I've never been you know. I was devastated.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit slower. Why did he fire you?
Speaker 2: I think he fired me because he's a dick. But
Speaker 2: I also think he fired me because he was insecure
Speaker 2: and I was hot. I was hot. I worshiped Andy,
Speaker 2: but I was up. I was up in his you know,
Speaker 2: I was in his game with him. I was. I
Speaker 2: wasn't there to be in the back and be all
Speaker 2: like passive. I was like aggressive when I played, and
Speaker 2: I thought he would like that. And that's what Rod
Speaker 2: Stewart liked about me. I was. I was up. And
Speaker 2: if you watched the Rod Stewart tour from eighty eight,
Speaker 2: I was up in it. Man. I was like it was.
Speaker 2: It was Rockstar Central. But Andy like this is silly, Okay,
Speaker 2: I search the world. Randy Phillips said, you gotta go
Speaker 2: buy some amplifiers. Here's some money. You know, the good
Speaker 2: old days when you could go buy six Marshal stacks.
Speaker 2: So I ordered six Marshall stacks and I got Dave
Speaker 2: Wider made a guitar center to get him and find
Speaker 2: me Red ones. Okay, in nineteen eighty seven, it was
Speaker 2: hard to find red Marshall Stacks. Andy saw him. He
Speaker 2: goes and he spray painted all of them black. So
Speaker 2: right away I was in a rub. I was in
Speaker 2: a rub. You know. It was like everything I was
Speaker 2: doing was wrong. And I made a joke about swinging
Speaker 2: from a rope from the top of my aps Ted nugent,
Speaker 2: you know, I was joking, but he freaked out, and
Speaker 2: I think that's why he fired me. But he fired me.
Speaker 2: I then got a call from Jamie Cohen to go
Speaker 2: to San Francisco and produce the tubes for Columbia. They
Speaker 2: were doing demos. I was cutting demos on him because
Speaker 2: I wanted to see if they were going to sign him.
Speaker 2: While doing that, I got a call from Randy Phillips saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: would you want to come audition for Rod? And that
Speaker 2: was the dream, right, that was the dream Rod. People
Speaker 2: forget now, but Rod Stewart was a superstar and he rocked.
Speaker 2: I don't care what anybody says, you know. And I
Speaker 2: auditioned for Rod and he said I got the gig,
Speaker 2: and then they called me back and said I don't
Speaker 2: have the gigs. They realized that I just didn't have
Speaker 2: any skills whatsoever. And I never toured. I only had
Speaker 2: good rock skills, so I just kept calling, and I
Speaker 2: kept calling Arnold, I mean Arnold's office, and Malcolm callingmore
Speaker 2: Rod's personal assistant. And Tony Thompson was the drummer who
Speaker 2: was idolized, and I called him and I said, hey,
Speaker 2: around anything going on, you know? And by then I
Speaker 2: was living with the Frank Shackler. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you remember him. He was an A and R guy
Speaker 2: at Electra. I mean I'm at Aristas sorry, And we
Speaker 2: lived in this house of Nika Costa, nik A Costa's
Speaker 2: mom's house. I lived in the guest house while a
Speaker 2: Nica and I used to have to pick her up
Speaker 2: from high school. But I call and call and just
Speaker 2: I had no shame and I had no pride. Hey
Speaker 2: you They ever did me, and no one ever called
Speaker 2: me back. But all of a sudden, out of the blue,
Speaker 2: I get a called Stevie. It's Malcolm Rod would like
Speaker 2: to see you. Could you come down to Audible And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I went to Audible and he asked me
Speaker 2: the audition again turned out Eddie Martinez decided to go
Speaker 2: back to Robert Palmer because he was Robert Palmer's guitar player,
Speaker 2: and I played a lot like Eddie, and I rehearsed
Speaker 2: and I worked my ass off and I got the gig.
Speaker 2: And Rod looked at me and he said, Okay, you
Speaker 2: got the gig, and this time I mean it. And
Speaker 2: eight days later we were playing higher on Bissom Stadium in
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Wow, let's go back. How did you get your deal
Speaker 1: with Ireland?
Speaker 2: Well in eighty seven, and well, you know it's weird, Carter.
Speaker 2: There was a guy called Dino I Raley and I
Speaker 2: used to date his daughter Julie, and Dino used to
Speaker 2: run Restless Records and used to run the label with
Speaker 2: George Harrison's dark Horse for A and M. And he
Speaker 2: was he was an old promo guy from the early days.
Speaker 2: And he had found this girl in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: I think it was named Melissa Ethridge, and he asked
Speaker 2: me to help him develop Melissa Ethridge. So we went,
Speaker 2: we got he got some money from EMI, and we
Speaker 2: went to the old EMI America studios right there on
Speaker 2: Sunset they used to have there, and I cut a
Speaker 2: bunch of demos of Melissa Ethridge and I was horrible.
Speaker 2: I produced him, but I was way off. I made
Speaker 2: a rock because everything in that part of the eighties
Speaker 2: was heavy bon joviature. So I made a rock and
Speaker 2: it was I was way off and it was awful,
Speaker 2: but she was great. And there was one song, ironically
Speaker 2: that I didn't play on and I produced that Chris
Speaker 2: Blackwell hurt and he freaked out on her, and Chris
Speaker 2: Blackwell signed her. And so that Dino guy made me
Speaker 2: learn about making demos. So he introduced me to a
Speaker 2: guy called Carter who was his friend. And you remember Carter,
Speaker 2: I'm sure. So of course Carter.
Speaker 1: Wrote the lyrics for instance, and Peppermint's longtime A and
Speaker 1: R guy at Capitol brought Tina Turner back from the
Speaker 1: dead career.
Speaker 2: Wise to answer, well, Carter, Carter, these are the best
Speaker 2: things that ever happened to me. And I'm gonna tell
Speaker 2: you why, because nobody was kissing your ass back then.
Speaker 2: Carter said, I think this sucks, but there's something here
Speaker 2: that's a little interesting. So I mean he just tells
Speaker 2: you flat out you suck.
Speaker 1: Well, that was Carter very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this really sucks. He goes, but then
Speaker 2: he's a remember in his office at a m he
Speaker 2: had this elephant leg for a chair. I'm sitting on
Speaker 2: this eleph He's like super eclectic, right, and he goes,
Speaker 2: take this ten grand, and I want you to go
Speaker 2: work on some things that sound like this and come
Speaker 2: back and see me in two months or a month
Speaker 2: or whatever it was. So I did that and I
Speaker 2: cut some cut some shit, and I came back and
Speaker 2: he listened to it and he go, aw, this sucks,
Speaker 2: and this sucks, and he goes, this one's pretty good.
Speaker 2: So he goes, why don't you go, you know, over
Speaker 2: to New York. Here's a guy's number. I wanted to
Speaker 2: work with you and work on something, work in this direction.
Speaker 2: So I went and did that, and I you know,
Speaker 2: he gave me twenty grand, you know. And back then
Speaker 2: it was the guy I can't even remember Glenn fight,
Speaker 2: Glenn Fight maybe or something like that. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it was like So I went over there and
Speaker 2: I did this, and then I came back and he goes, ah,
Speaker 2: it's all cool, but it's not for me. So then,
Speaker 2: you know, in those days, you take I owned the demos,
Speaker 2: they give him back. So I took the demos and
Speaker 2: at this time I started going to London. They started
Speaker 2: flying me over to London early nineteen eighty seven, so
Speaker 2: I started in the new was not was what Ap
Speaker 2: Dog album, but it was before Dawn asked me to
Speaker 2: co produce the song Outcome to the Freaks. So I
Speaker 2: was playing guitar on it and we we were doing that,
Speaker 2: and then I was getting a call from the guy
Speaker 2: who one of the guys that worked with paul Oakenfeldt
Speaker 2: and invented acid house music in London, and they were
Speaker 2: They were saying, nobody plays guitar like me in London
Speaker 2: and will you come over? So they kept flying me
Speaker 2: over and while I was there, I was working with
Speaker 2: a company called Park Music that managed these guys, but
Speaker 2: they also managed a young kid called Terrence trad Darby
Speaker 2: and his album hadn't come out yet, and they offered
Speaker 2: me that gig, but there was no rock guitar on it.
Speaker 2: You know, later I would become late Terrence's music director,
Speaker 2: but this is way early. This is eighty seven. Terrence's
Speaker 2: album comes out Hardline. According to terrorits Had Explodes, goes
Speaker 2: number one, sells twenty million copies. I go back. I
Speaker 2: just get to put a band together. If it was
Speaker 2: and I was with Winston and Carla Zar who you know,
Speaker 2: all of us AMT Fiddler. We were all up up
Speaker 2: and comers, and nobody kN who were Amp Fiddler from
Speaker 2: p funk Me Carla Zar who became the drummer for
Speaker 2: Wendy and Lisa and the water Boys, Amp Phil you
Speaker 2: know who took Bourney where else place in Funkadelic. And
Speaker 2: we put this band together around Don David and Harry
Speaker 2: and Sweetpeat from What's Not Was, And next thing you know,
Speaker 2: we have a number one record called Walk the Dinosaur,
Speaker 2: just number one, and we're just we're so we're doing
Speaker 2: top of the Pops. When in London, I mean a
Speaker 2: guy called Mitchell krass now Bob Krasnow's kid, who's a
Speaker 2: head A and R in London, and he thought I
Speaker 2: was cool. He heard my demos, he thought they were cool.
Speaker 2: But he wanted me to go to Holland and play
Speaker 2: guitar on this record for this artist he was developing
Speaker 2: and wanted to sign. And I by this time I
Speaker 2: had just gotten fired by Eddie Taylor, and I said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing it. I go I'm only going to
Speaker 2: work on my own stuff and I'm never going to
Speaker 2: get myself in a position again where somebody can humiliate
Speaker 2: me like Andy did, because my high school friends and
Speaker 2: parents have bought tickets to see us in San Diego
Speaker 2: with the first and I was I've never been so
Speaker 2: embarrassed in my life because everyone thought it was a
Speaker 2: liar and full of shit, and you know, I wasn't there.
Speaker 2: So instead of him saying taking no for an answer,
Speaker 2: he said, I'll give you five thousand dollars that you
Speaker 2: can work down downstairs on your own demos while you're
Speaker 2: working on this other girl's record. And I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do that. So I went to Holland and def
Speaker 2: Leppard was working on a Hysteria album in one room
Speaker 2: with mut Lang, and I was working with the Zeo
Speaker 2: and these other guys in the room next door. It
Speaker 2: was super awesome. I mean, I hate to keep sounding
Speaker 2: like this, but the late eighties and the early nineties
Speaker 2: was just the most amazing time to be an artist.
Speaker 2: It was just insane, that kind of shited it went on,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I'm in Holland and I'm doing that,
Speaker 2: and Mitchell hooked me up with a guy called Steve
Speaker 2: Pross in La at Electra Records, and Steve Pross had
Speaker 2: just signed the Pandoras. The Pandoras then got dropped. He
Speaker 2: was really convinced that Pandoras were real. So I took
Speaker 2: five grand from Restless and I went and recut their
Speaker 2: record called rock Hard, and produced it. And by doing
Speaker 2: it and Steve really felt loyal to me. So Steve
Speaker 2: left Electra got fired actually, and got hired at Island
Speaker 2: and signed me to Island. And that's how I got
Speaker 2: my record.
Speaker 1: Doue, Okay, finish up with Rod Stewart. What's the experience
Speaker 1: for you making the record? When the record comes out?
Speaker 2: The problem was is I got super good during that
Speaker 2: year with Rod Stewart, playing with the Carlin Rojas and
Speaker 2: Jeff Gollub and Tony Brock and I mean they were
Speaker 2: the best musicians in the world, and I got really
Speaker 2: really I'm not trying to brag. I mean I just
Speaker 2: got really, really good a year of that's like every
Speaker 2: night at arenas and stadiums, you know, you either get
Speaker 2: good or you get fired. And I got really good.
Speaker 2: So when I came back to my band that I
Speaker 2: had before I left on tour with Rod, I almost couldn't.
Speaker 2: I almost couldn't even I was I just couldn't were like,
Speaker 2: like I was a different person and we had to
Speaker 2: work really hard to I had to rediscover myself. I
Speaker 2: was become way too commercial. I remember Island's like, what
Speaker 2: are these crappy songs?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: You know you make it a you know you're not
Speaker 2: what happened to your alternative edge? And I'm like, you're right.
Speaker 2: I was really into otis reading now because of Rod,
Speaker 2: and I was really in the East Memphis soul, and
Speaker 2: I had to sort of learn how to get back
Speaker 2: to being who I was before Rod. But my skill
Speaker 2: level was way higher, and I'd spent Rod had told
Speaker 2: me go go meet your album, hurry and finishing it and
Speaker 2: come on, we're going to do the South American tour.
Speaker 2: I couldn't do that. I just couldn't do it. I
Speaker 2: didn't I didn't have enough of the great songs I needed.
Speaker 2: I remember Tony Berg came over to talk to me
Speaker 2: at my Hollywood Hills house and and talked to me
Speaker 2: about producing my album. And I loved Tony, you know really,
Speaker 2: Tony was always nice to me when I was nobody,
Speaker 2: and he said to me, he goes he listened to
Speaker 2: the demos, like have you ever read a book. And
Speaker 2: you know what, he was right. I hadn't. I hadn't
Speaker 2: been shit, you know. I you know, I was a surfer, skateboarder.
Speaker 2: It was full of my own bullshit. And and I
Speaker 2: had just been in a bidding war, okay, on my deal,
Speaker 2: and I thought about saying, off, Tony Berg, we can talk.
Speaker 2: Shut up, you know. I thought about my ego. Then
Speaker 2: I this might have been a turning point in my life.
Speaker 2: I stopped myself and I thought about it, and I said,
Speaker 2: maybe I need to shut up and listen to what
Speaker 2: he's saying, you know what. And he was dead right.
Speaker 2: He was dead right. And that's that's that was a
Speaker 2: life changing move for me, because I could have just
Speaker 2: did my own thing and been my own bullshit and
Speaker 2: you know, followed me. Everybody's telling me how great I am.
Speaker 2: I'm the guy and Bill and Ted's you know, huge
Speaker 2: movie now and I did that and wasn't wasn't number one,
Speaker 2: and you know what I mean. It's like, but I
Speaker 2: listened to him, and so I found a guy called
Speaker 2: parthon On Huxley. I loved him. Jamie Cohen and David
Speaker 2: David at Columbia, you know, David. Why am I blanking
Speaker 2: on his name? David the produce McCartney. You know, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about, you know, David David, David David.
Speaker 1: Well, there was the guy who the guy that was
Speaker 1: four one five records keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he still produced mccartey now and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But David David had signed Parthenon Huxley, and I loved
Speaker 2: the Parthenon Huxley's record. It sounded like Bowie mixed with
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, And so I loved his lyrics,
Speaker 2: and so I sat down and started writing lyrics for
Speaker 2: Parthenon Huxley and and it taught me so much, and
Speaker 2: it saved my record. But that took me. That took
Speaker 2: me that whole year of nineteen eighty nine to go
Speaker 2: through that metamorphosis. Well, David Kahn, David Kahn. So, David
Speaker 2: Kahn had signed Parthenon Huxley, and and I used to
Speaker 2: hang out with Jamie Cohen and David Conn their officers
Speaker 2: were next to each other. And you know, I watched Fistbone,
Speaker 2: you know, record got me bone. And because David invited
Speaker 2: me to the studio in nineteen eighty seven, I sat
Speaker 2: in a room and watch watching or would play those
Speaker 2: bass parts, you know, So I sit there. I got
Speaker 2: parthon On Huxley involved, and then I wanted to work
Speaker 2: with always dreamed of working in Australia with the guy
Speaker 2: who had produced In Excess and he had produced Midnight Oil,
Speaker 2: British guy. I'm blanking on his name right now, and
Speaker 2: it's super cool. I just actually ran into him a
Speaker 2: slim Jim Phantom's wedding party not too long ago. And
Speaker 2: I was going to go to Australia and do it
Speaker 2: with him because I loved those In Excess and Midnight
Speaker 2: Oil records. But Island Records is like, We're not sending
Speaker 2: you to Australia for three months, no way. So Bill
Speaker 2: Laswell called he had mad credibility. He was considered untouchable.
Speaker 2: Like no, you know, you don't call Bill Laswell. He
Speaker 2: calls you. You know, record companies bag him to do
Speaker 2: records and he says no to everything. And he said,
Speaker 2: you know, Randy Phillips told me that he turned down
Speaker 2: four hundred grand to produce Simple Minds for Randy to
Speaker 2: do my record for forty grand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It was like, so Laswell called and that's why I
Speaker 2: went to New York and I recorded with Laswell in
Speaker 2: New York with that whole scene that you know he
Speaker 2: had did Public Enemy and I mean, I mean a
Speaker 2: Public Image and Johnny Lyden, all these different records that
Speaker 2: became my whole start as a solo artist or recording artist.
Speaker 1: And were you happy with that record? Were you happy
Speaker 1: with the commercial performance of that record?
Speaker 2: No? I hated that record, but I think I was wrong.
Speaker 2: Everyone still to this day that it's like a cult,
Speaker 2: cult classic record. The problem was the record was hugely
Speaker 2: successful in Europe and in Japan, but I was on
Speaker 2: Island Records, and in nineteen ninety they got bought by PolyGram.
Speaker 2: So I was on tour opening for Joe Satrianni, which
Speaker 2: was which was both a blessing and a curse because
Speaker 2: I was gone from doing twenty thousand seaters with rod
Speaker 2: full of supermodels and movie stars and people like screaming
Speaker 2: and going crazy to opening for Joe Satrianni in front
Speaker 2: of about three thousand, five hundred to five thousand people
Speaker 2: a night, sold out everywhere, and it was pretty much
Speaker 2: three thousand, It was pretty much four thy nine hundred
Speaker 2: ninety nine guys and maybe one girlfriend, and it was
Speaker 2: dudes and they would just stare at your neck and
Speaker 2: they would stare at my fingers, you know, and then
Speaker 2: they'd yell, oh, he plays panatonics, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what a panatonic is. I never
Speaker 2: took a lesson. So it's like it was no fun,
Speaker 2: but it made me a real It established me as
Speaker 2: a guitar player that was a serious guitar player in
Speaker 2: the world. And that's sort of like it was. It
Speaker 2: was not fun for me. So the record didn't sell
Speaker 2: well because Warner's was losing it, so they couldn't the
Speaker 2: distribute distributor was losing it so they couldn't just shit
Speaker 2: with it, and PolyGram couldn't touch it for six months.
Speaker 2: So I really fell through the cracks in America and
Speaker 2: I and I never recovered, but I almost I almost
Speaker 2: recovered when Charlie Miner called me on my second album.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, Charlie Minor, legendary promo guy at A and
Speaker 1: M Records, Charlie calls you, and.
Speaker 2: What, Charlie, here's a song I that's blowing up in
Speaker 2: Japan called Start Again. And he says, this is a
Speaker 2: huge record I can make this, you know how he was,
Speaker 2: I can make this a charide record in America. And
Speaker 2: I got to hang out with Charlie Minor. And then
Speaker 2: his assistant was Charlie Little Charlie who ended up running
Speaker 2: Sony Records in the late nineties. Charlie Walker, Charlie Walkee
Speaker 2: as Charlie WALKI used to be our day to day
Speaker 2: for Omaguy and the Derandauran tour and Charlie Miner. You know,
Speaker 2: he'd come up and it was like he was like
Speaker 2: the Godfather or some shit man mine was. So he
Speaker 2: was like, you know, the man, and so in dubious
Speaker 2: dubious of course. So I get a call. Charlie's wants
Speaker 2: to meet you. He's got some kind of production deal.
Speaker 2: He's going to sign you, and he's going to make
Speaker 2: this a number one record. And I'm finally nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: I'm going to break through. I'm going to get my
Speaker 2: due in America. And I'm supposed to go see him
Speaker 2: on a Monday. And this is a true story about
Speaker 2: I call up on the Friday. I call up on
Speaker 2: the Monday and I'm saying okay, guys to his assistant
Speaker 2: and she answers the phone that she sounds really strange,
Speaker 2: and she tells me the story how that weekend, Charlie's
Speaker 2: girlfriend caught him with another girl literally and walked in
Speaker 2: the room and shot him dead. And do you remember
Speaker 2: when that happened.
Speaker 1: I saw him Friday night, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: days before of a Sunday.
Speaker 2: That happened.
Speaker 1: It was very weird.
Speaker 2: And I was supposed to see him on the Monday
Speaker 2: or the Tuesday. So there you go. It was really weird.
Speaker 2: And I just thought of my curt. I think I'm
Speaker 2: cursed in America. I am cursed. I mean, I can
Speaker 2: play with the biggest people in the world that I
Speaker 2: can't seem to get my You know, I sold a
Speaker 2: few million solo albums, just hardly any in America. It
Speaker 2: was like so and there was no Internet, so nobody
Speaker 2: knew how successful I was around the world. They just
Speaker 2: assumed I bombed or you know, I don't know. Steve
Speaker 2: Luca there used to ask people because he lived up
Speaker 2: my street, or Stevie getting all that money for that
Speaker 2: Mercedes Benz or whatever, he thought I was a drug dealer.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So, what did you learn making solo records? And how
Speaker 1: do you feel about the status of your solo career today.
Speaker 2: I think my solo career was it was two things.
Speaker 2: I you know, during those days, you could keep making
Speaker 2: records if you had credibility, so if I sold just
Speaker 2: enough records to always have a record deal. But I
Speaker 2: never delivered what everyone thought I I just never did,
Speaker 2: except for in Japan. I was Japan for some reason.
Speaker 2: I would just because there's this huge I wish, I mean,
Speaker 2: like people ripping my hair out, and and I did
Speaker 2: well in Germany, and I did well in France and
Speaker 2: and you know, but it's just I would have liked
Speaker 2: to have I would like to have had that, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple albums that sold a few million copies in
Speaker 2: the States, because in right now I could probably go
Speaker 2: make you know, one hundred grand a night playing all
Speaker 2: the festivals still to this day, you know, and now
Speaker 2: I can only do that in a couple of countries.
Speaker 2: But I wish that I could every summer go out
Speaker 2: and do my lallapaloozas and do all that shit, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's what not having success in America gets you.
Speaker 2: You don't get that ride where. But you know, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you something else. In the two thousandth fix, I
Speaker 2: started working at American Idol, and that's when things were
Speaker 2: really different because we would have an artist I remember
Speaker 2: doing Jordan Sparks. We sold two million albums and they
Speaker 2: drop her the next year, So things really changed later on.
Speaker 2: So you know, you could sell two million albums and
Speaker 2: still nobody give a shit.
Speaker 1: So at this late date, do you still have a
Speaker 1: dream of breaking through as a solo artist in America
Speaker 1: or if you put that dream.
Speaker 2: To bid I kind of never really have that dream
Speaker 2: of being a superstar. I just wanted to be able
Speaker 2: to I like playing big places. I wanted to be
Speaker 2: able to keep playing the big, big rooms. That's my dream.
Speaker 2: But I do. Here's my dream now, Okay. I've written
Speaker 2: a lot of songs for a lot of people, all
Speaker 2: those Sash Jordan songs and Jeff Healy songs and all
Speaker 2: this stuff that I wrote back in the nineties. My
Speaker 2: dream is some country person's gonna cut one of them
Speaker 2: and it's gonna go number one, and I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: make up fortunes and leave my kid with a ton
Speaker 2: of money. That's what I's That's my dream.
Speaker 1: Okay, how old is your kid sixteen.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, you have.
Speaker 1: The girlfriend who passed who is the mother of your child.
Speaker 2: It's a woman named Karen, Karen Silva, and she was
Speaker 2: one of my best friends and I and she came
Speaker 2: in my life when I was at the I just
Speaker 2: I was just lost soul. I was a lost soul.
Speaker 2: I was hanging around in La every day with a
Speaker 2: bunch of my buddies that were all Seinfeld writer producers,
Speaker 2: and they were all super rich. And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of drugs and a lot of a lot of booze
Speaker 2: and a lot of drugs, a lot of women, a
Speaker 2: lot of booze and a lot of drugs. And I
Speaker 2: had my friend and I used to go to Africa
Speaker 2: on Safari and she'd come and we do all these
Speaker 2: things together. And she got to the point where she
Speaker 2: was going to be too old to have a child,
Speaker 2: and she was going to have to maybe go to
Speaker 2: a clinic. And I thought to myself, when am I
Speaker 2: ever going to be able to get it together? So
Speaker 2: I said, let me help you, because I knew she'd
Speaker 2: be a fantastic mother, and and it changed my life.
Speaker 2: It saved my life. You know. I I work my
Speaker 2: ass off now. And I love working, and I got
Speaker 2: a kid, you know, and to take care of it,
Speaker 2: I have to set an example. And and she's an
Speaker 2: incredible mother. And and we we know we live on
Speaker 2: you know, I got a house here in Austin. It's
Speaker 2: you know, five thousand square feet. And she was one
Speaker 2: side and I live on the other. And we're mom
Speaker 2: and dad. We do things together as a family, but
Speaker 2: we're not a couple. But you know, and my kid's
Speaker 2: always known what's going on, and we have we have
Speaker 2: a good time, and my kid's doing amazing.
Speaker 1: Were you ever a couple?
Speaker 2: Rinda early on? Yeah, okay, why do you live in Austin? Well,
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I work in Canada. I was
Speaker 2: a film company in Canada, and I was in Canada.
Speaker 2: We were living on I run the lake. I sold
Speaker 2: my house and got rid of my house in Carlsbad, California.
Speaker 2: Got rid of my house in the Hollywood Hills. I
Speaker 2: haven't had a house in Venice Beach. Got rid of that.
Speaker 2: I got rid of everything in California, moved to Canada.
Speaker 2: And when it was time for my son to start school,
Speaker 2: his mother was adamant. He had to go to a
Speaker 2: Waldorf School, And so we went and toured Waldorf schools
Speaker 2: in Toronto and Burlington and East Aurora, New York and
Speaker 2: places where. Because I lived in a place called Niagar
Speaker 2: around the lake, this little town where the War of
Speaker 2: eighteen twelve was spot and I was also then working
Speaker 2: at the Smithsonian. I took a job at the Smithsonian
Speaker 2: National Museum of the American Indian where I created the
Speaker 2: exhibit that later would become the film Rumbled the Indians
Speaker 2: of Rock the World. So I was flying in and
Speaker 2: out of DC, and I was shooting a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that was ended up in the movie Rumble, and
Speaker 2: I went to Austin to shoot one of these Jimmy
Speaker 2: Hendricks experienced things and talked to Janie Hendrix about Jimmy,
Speaker 2: and you know, I talked to a lot of guys.
Speaker 2: Brad Whitford and they're all my different friends that I've
Speaker 2: had forever in the music business were there. And while
Speaker 2: in Austin, I ran into a lot of my old
Speaker 2: music business friends that were that, you know, chewed a
Speaker 2: lot of the same dirt as me. And when you
Speaker 2: have somebody that really knows what you went through, it's
Speaker 2: a lot easier to communicate because a lot of people
Speaker 2: didn't get that life. So my neighbor's Charlie Sexton, you
Speaker 2: know who. Charlie and I were pal since I was
Speaker 2: in rod Stewart, you know. And Charlie was playing with
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan at the time. And I bought a house
Speaker 2: around the corner, and his kid was going to the
Speaker 2: same school. And Marty, Marty McGuire from the Dixie Chicks,
Speaker 2: her daughter was in my son's class, and that Waldorf
Speaker 2: was happening and it was a great price in Walt
Speaker 2: and Austin had still had music then before it got
Speaker 2: the tech takeover. And I bought a house here right
Speaker 2: next to the school. We just said we're moving to Austin.
Speaker 2: So that's what we did.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you do do not live in that same house?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I live in that same house.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you talk about the tech take you and
Speaker 1: I've talked to other musicians who've moved further and further
Speaker 1: out from the center of town. What's going on with
Speaker 1: music in Austin now?
Speaker 2: I don't think there's such a thing. I think it's
Speaker 2: all bullshit. First of all, you know, it used to
Speaker 2: be cool because you could go see Junior Brown on
Speaker 2: a Sunday afternoon and a beer was two bucks and
Speaker 2: you could park your car and leave it all night.
Speaker 2: And this was only eleven years ago, ten eleven, twelve
Speaker 2: years ago. You know, a house here on an acre
Speaker 2: for what the down payment of my San Diego house
Speaker 2: was right for the whole house on an acre, you know.
Speaker 2: And I remember calling Great Cabin, one of my Seinfeld buddies,
Speaker 2: and I say, hey, I just bout a house. It
Speaker 2: was two hundred and fifty three thousand dollars. He's like what,
Speaker 2: I goes, Yeah, he goes what He's like, he just
Speaker 2: you know, now that house is probably two million bucks.
Speaker 2: But it's like, you know, it was this little town
Speaker 2: that was so cool and every and there's all these
Speaker 2: people around and it was like they had great restaurants
Speaker 2: and there's music everywhere. But all of a sudden, Allehandra
Speaker 2: Escaveto had to move out and Junior Brown's gone, and
Speaker 2: nobody could afford. The rents went bonkers. The rents were nuts,
Speaker 2: and then the housing prizes went nuts because the tech
Speaker 2: people kept coming in. And you know, tech people, they
Speaker 2: don't have a realistic idea of money. Someone gives them
Speaker 2: a ton of stock, and then they're like, okay, that
Speaker 2: seems cheap, and they have no A lot of them
Speaker 2: have no artistic sense. There's no style, so they all
Speaker 2: look the same. I'm pretty soon every place you'd look
Speaker 2: downtown had every guy had a beard, and they sit
Speaker 2: there with an ipa and I couldn't even find a
Speaker 2: corona anymore. But my kid was doing so good in school.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to get
Speaker 2: out of here because my kid is all about my kid.
Speaker 2: So I'm still here because he's now at sophomore in
Speaker 2: high school.
Speaker 1: And is he what school does he go to now?
Speaker 2: We used to go to the Waldorf and now he
Speaker 2: goes to Saint Michael's Academy.
Speaker 1: Okay, I got to get into this. What's it like
Speaker 1: with both of you living in the same house. Does
Speaker 1: your the mother of your son? Does she bring people home?
Speaker 1: Do you bring people home? Do you get jealous? What's
Speaker 1: it like you have dinner together?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, we have dinner, and we go on vacations
Speaker 2: together and everything, or you know, I get a sweet
Speaker 2: and I sleep on a couch and no, but no,
Speaker 2: we we have one goal and it's to raise that son.
Speaker 2: Of ours. We don't. I have no ego. I've I've
Speaker 2: done it. You know, if you knew me, Bobby probably
Speaker 2: saw me around back when I was a kid. I
Speaker 2: had had no no, no. I had everything you could
Speaker 2: ask for as a guy, constantly everywhere. And you know,
Speaker 2: when you get to hang out with Keith Richards and people,
Speaker 2: then you can multiply it by twenty. And I have
Speaker 2: no fascination with anything. I've never had a hard time
Speaker 2: with any stuff. So for me, when we're at home,
Speaker 2: we're all about being mom and dad, and I don't
Speaker 2: ask her what she does, and she doesn't ask me
Speaker 2: what I do, And my priority is him and her
Speaker 2: to make sure they're taking care of it. Everything's great.
Speaker 2: I work, she stays home and she takes care of
Speaker 2: our son and he gets a full time mom and
Speaker 2: I work my ass off, and when he turns eighteen,
Speaker 2: I'll probably buy two houses and put him in a
Speaker 2: trust and she can live where in it as she wants.
Speaker 2: And everything's about him. Everything's about him. So we don't
Speaker 2: have any of those issues, and I don't at least.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. How did you get the gig?
Speaker 2: On? Bill?
Speaker 1: And Ted?
Speaker 2: Well? So in San Diego there was a guy called
Speaker 2: Mark Levy. Mark Levy was an agent and he man.
Speaker 2: He was an agent for some of the really big
Speaker 2: local bands in San Diego, where I'm from, and he
Speaker 2: moved to LA and somehow he had hooked up with
Speaker 2: Randy Phillips. And you know Randy Phillips, and I know
Speaker 2: you don't. Of course, Mark Levy, when he was looking
Speaker 2: for the guitar player for Andy Taylor helping Randy Phillips,
Speaker 2: he knew me and he called me, and of course
Speaker 2: I got the gig because I just nailed every audition
Speaker 2: when I was young. And later on he said, do
Speaker 2: you know David Kershenbaum And I said, I hadn't know
Speaker 2: the name from reading it on liner notes? You know
Speaker 2: me and liner notes? Did I read liner notes and
Speaker 2: liner notes life? I feel bad for kids today. They
Speaker 2: don't have liner notes to understand who's doing what. But
Speaker 2: David Kussebaum's you know Joe Jackson. The first two Joe
Speaker 2: Jackson albums are like bibles to me. I love him,
Speaker 2: so of course I know. You know David kushimbamb Is.
Speaker 2: He wants to meet me because he's looking. He got
Speaker 2: a studio called Power Tracks on Kouwanga there next to
Speaker 2: next to the old Shandhara, and he was need some
Speaker 2: help and so he met me and that's when he said.
Speaker 2: What happened was they had known I'd played with Parliament Funkadelic.
Speaker 2: They there's a guy called Gene Page who used to
Speaker 2: do all the arrangements from the big Motown stuff. There's
Speaker 2: Geen Page was this Motown arranger. You know, he did
Speaker 2: Love Unlimited Orchestra, you know, for Berry White and all this,
Speaker 2: do all the string stuff and everything. You know, he's
Speaker 2: a genius. And he had these sixteen year old rapper
Speaker 2: kids and they were called uh I forget what they're
Speaker 2: called right now, but there were these two kids. It's
Speaker 2: sixteen years old and they rapped. And in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: I don't care what anyone says, no, not that many
Speaker 2: people in LA were knowing what was going on with
Speaker 2: rap music was much bigger in New York and nobody
Speaker 2: was dealing with Doctor Dray then, because he had a
Speaker 2: band called the La Dream Team and you'd listen to
Speaker 2: the Stevie Wonders station called kjla's Kind of Joy, Love
Speaker 2: and Happiness KJLH, and you'd hear the dream Team, The
Speaker 2: Dree dream Team is in the house, you know, and
Speaker 2: they sampled. Everybody used the sampler. All of a sudden
Speaker 2: was new, the new sampler and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: I kind of got into that stuff because I liked
Speaker 2: one DMC. Like I said before, So David Kushier mom says,
Speaker 2: I need someone who knows about rap music. They to
Speaker 2: just call it rap music. And I go, I do.
Speaker 2: I got it, And I know these two kids Gene
Speaker 2: Page introduced me to, so David didn't know. So David
Speaker 2: had me come in the studio and it was a
Speaker 2: movie called Big Shots and he was the music supervisor
Speaker 2: for it for Lori Mar I think it was or something.
Speaker 2: So I cut this song called put on the Brakes
Speaker 2: with the two rappers. They used it in the movie
Speaker 2: and in the Atlantic signed I put out a twelve
Speaker 2: inch and so now now it's and it says produced
Speaker 2: by David Kirshienbaum and Stevie No Wonder Solace because my
Speaker 2: nickname was No Wonder back thanks Bootsy Collins used to
Speaker 2: call me Stevie No Wonder And and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: David's like, come on, let's keep going. So then I
Speaker 2: start working. He's got in the studio at that time,
Speaker 2: he was doing what's his name, the guy with the glasses.
Speaker 2: It's saying somedays some way, Oh, Marshall, Marshall Crenshaw. So
Speaker 2: he's producing Marshall Crenshaw. And he has me working in
Speaker 2: the studio from seven pm until you know, whenever. I
Speaker 2: drop all night every night on soundtrack stuff. So the
Speaker 2: next movie we get is this one called it was
Speaker 2: called Action Jackson with Carl Withers and Vanity and they
Speaker 2: need more rap songs, so I bring in bring in
Speaker 2: the boys again, you know, And I do another one
Speaker 2: and it becomes another twelve inch for Atlantic. It says
Speaker 2: produced by David Kirshiabamb and Stevie Solace, you know. And
Speaker 2: so I this time, now it's eighty seven, I'm producing
Speaker 2: them there and I'm cutting my demos at night in
Speaker 2: the studio when it's empty. I can work there whenever
Speaker 2: I want. And uh, he comes to me one day,
Speaker 2: David Kushimbaum, and he says to me, we got to
Speaker 2: go see this band that we have to produce because
Speaker 2: they want him in the bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Speaker 2: soundtrack album. And I really didn't know much about Bill
Speaker 2: and Ted's excellent Adventure. Nobody did. Really. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: some blockbuster budget or anything, you know, and uh, it
Speaker 2: was a Delentis picture and it got dropped. They dropped it,
Speaker 2: and I think Lormar somebody again picked it up or
Speaker 2: vice versus something like that was Lormar and the delarent
Speaker 2: just picked up with it. But we never even thought
Speaker 2: it was going to come out. But he made me
Speaker 2: go see this band, and I had to produce them.
Speaker 2: And I had no say in it. David said produce him.
Speaker 2: I had to produce them. And it was a band
Speaker 2: called Warrant. You remember Warrant this they had worn Cherry Pie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was way before Cherry Pie. So the Warrants this
Speaker 2: big buzz band in Hollywood and they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: playing everywhere, and I kind of like poison or whatever.
Speaker 2: And I hated that kind of music because again I
Speaker 2: thought the eighties hair metal, you know, unless it was
Speaker 2: you know, I liked the bon Jovi, you know, because
Speaker 2: the songwriting was so good on you know, you give
Speaker 2: love a bad names. But I hated the whole thing.
Speaker 2: There was a million of those eighties bands that are
Speaker 2: just horrible, you know, and they're horrible, and I didn't
Speaker 2: like Warrant, but I tell David, David, I do I
Speaker 2: got to do it, because yeah, you got to do it.
Speaker 2: So I go to the rehearsal with David and those
Speaker 2: kidchers my age, you know, I'm the same age as then,
Speaker 2: and I met him and I fell in love with him.
Speaker 2: They were the most amazing, amazing guys. They were just wonderful,
Speaker 2: enthusiastic and sincere, and they worked really hard and they
Speaker 2: wanted to be great. They had no egos. And ironically,
Speaker 2: you saw the last week or whatever, I got to
Speaker 2: San Diego Lifetime Achievement Award and you're talking about at
Speaker 2: the music thing there in San Diego, like, and Jerry
Speaker 2: from Warrant showed up. I saw him backstage. He came
Speaker 2: to see me. Yeah, one hundred years later, right. So
Speaker 2: I produced Warrant for the soundtrack for Kushimbaum. Aaron Jakovis
Speaker 2: was trying to sign him at A and M and
Speaker 2: Columbius came in and swooped up and signed him, and
Speaker 2: so we pulled them off the Bill and Ted's soundtrack.
Speaker 2: So now I'm not thinking about Bill and Ted for
Speaker 2: a while I'm working on another shit for David and
Speaker 2: my own stuff, and it was not was and I
Speaker 2: get it. David comes up to me in the office.
Speaker 2: I go in the office of power tracks and he goes, okay,
Speaker 2: this movie Bill and Ted. They're realizing that the soundtrack
Speaker 2: the score, not the soundtrack. I'm sorry, the score. It's
Speaker 2: a story about these two kids that would want to
Speaker 2: be in a rock band and they play rock guitar,
Speaker 2: and it's all about this guitar and this rock and
Speaker 2: roll and there's not one ounce of rock and roll
Speaker 2: in the score. In the score, and Amos Newman's Amos
Speaker 2: Newman's brother I think did the score. It was either
Speaker 2: Amos Newman's brother or Amos Newman's cousin. I forget Amos
Speaker 2: told me which one it was. I just can't remember.
Speaker 2: So they hired me. Stephen Herrick was the director and
Speaker 2: he'd only done one other movie, okay, Stephen Herrick that
Speaker 2: went on to do you know mister Holland's Opus, and
Speaker 2: I think he did one hundred and one Dalmations and
Speaker 2: he didn you know, Three Musketeers and rock Star. You know,
Speaker 2: he did a ton of shit, but this was he
Speaker 2: was still young. So he had this soundtrack and this
Speaker 2: music in there, and it was like it was like
Speaker 2: a traditional score, and between me and you was kind
Speaker 2: of a crappy score. It sounded like something I could
Speaker 2: have done on a fair light, even though they used
Speaker 2: an orchestra. You know, it just wasn't great. No disrespect
Speaker 2: to Ames's cousin, but it just wasn't great. So I
Speaker 2: rescored the whole film and played guitar over the score.
Speaker 2: I rescored over the score, which is really weird, right,
Speaker 2: And then I also had to do the score where
Speaker 2: they were jumping around and didn't know how to play
Speaker 2: you know, Bill AND's head, and I was really took.
Speaker 2: I took it very serious. Everything that I did when
Speaker 2: they were jumping around and the guitar and trying, and
Speaker 2: I saw, I'm so horrible. Well, everything I did it
Speaker 2: sounded horrible to me, sounded fake. It sounded like a cocky,
Speaker 2: egotistical guy trying to play like a dummy. And I
Speaker 2: felt like I was making fun of Bill and Ted
Speaker 2: and I didn't like that, And I know that sounds nuts,
Speaker 2: but I felt like I was disrespecting them, those characters
Speaker 2: by just trying to be I look at how shitty
Speaker 2: I am. And so I ended up. What I ended
Speaker 2: up doing was I turned my guitar upside down and
Speaker 2: I played it left handed. So when you see those
Speaker 2: parts in the movie and it sounds I'm actually trying
Speaker 2: to play chords and I'm trying, but it sounds like shit.
Speaker 2: And that's how I did the wild stallions. Okay, so
Speaker 2: then that's over, and i'd score over. I score over
Speaker 2: this Robbie rob song and do because they really wanted
Speaker 2: you too, and they couldn't get YouTube, so they got
Speaker 2: Robbie rob song called in Time, but they wanted me
Speaker 2: to put so I put all this guitar over the
Speaker 2: top that was like like the edge. So it's only
Speaker 2: in the soundtrack that way, and there's no version of
Speaker 2: that that exists other than the soundtrack version, which became
Speaker 2: this cult internet cult classic of Robbie Robin Time featuring
Speaker 2: Stevie Solace. That version, I don't know why, so you
Speaker 2: can find it online. It's still like it's got a
Speaker 2: whole massive fan base just for that weird version. But
Speaker 2: he says the movie's done, it not testing well, the
Speaker 2: ending's not testing well, you know, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means really, because I'm
Speaker 2: stupid kid. And he goes, Steven wants us to go
Speaker 2: into the Palisades and on Monday night or so whatever
Speaker 2: it was, and we're going to shoot this new ending
Speaker 2: and I need you in it. And I go, what
Speaker 2: do you mean? He goes, they want you to play
Speaker 2: some kind of guitar solo. I go, okay, So we
Speaker 2: go to the Palisades. They got somebody's house, and they
Speaker 2: got the phone booth in the garage, and they got
Speaker 2: all this. You know, the set decorator made this person's
Speaker 2: garage look like the set of Bill and Ted. It
Speaker 2: was in a garage, and and Keanu, who was completely unknown then,
Speaker 2: and the other guy I'm blanking on his name right now.
Speaker 2: They were all there, and George Carlin was there, and
Speaker 2: so they dressed me in George Carlin in a matching outfit.
Speaker 2: And I got to share the share of a dressing
Speaker 2: room Winnebago with George Carlin. So me and George Colin
Speaker 2: would sit there all night, and he told me the
Speaker 2: most insane stories I asked him about. I go went
Speaker 2: out a little kid. I saw you walk out on
Speaker 2: like like the Grammys or Academy Awards or something, and
Speaker 2: they go, ladies and gentlemen, George Carlin, and he walked
Speaker 2: out and he stood at the microphone and he didn't
Speaker 2: say one word, not one word, and it was dead silent.
Speaker 2: I mean dead silent for like at least it felt
Speaker 2: like an eternity, and all of a sudden, one person
Speaker 2: kind of goes, and then another person, and then by
Speaker 2: the end of it, everyone was laughing, and he just says,
Speaker 2: thank you very much, and he walked off the stage.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever saw that, but it
Speaker 2: was like an keep going. You got to find it.
Speaker 2: And he said to me, he goes, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: he goes. He goes, I had a plan, he goes,
Speaker 2: He told me the whole thing. He says, I was
Speaker 2: going to try this experiment. He goes, but I had
Speaker 2: a bail at it one minute and he says, I
Speaker 2: was dying. I was standing there, just dying, because he
Speaker 2: was standing there at the mic just kind of looking
Speaker 2: at people, just kind of looking around, looking at people
Speaker 2: and not saying anything. And he said he was dying,
Speaker 2: and right before he broke he heard that first laugh.
Speaker 2: So he goes, hold on, just hold on. Then he
Speaker 2: heard the second he goes, okay, to hold on, and
Speaker 2: then he said he felt the confidence and just not
Speaker 2: say anything. And so I was one of the most
Speaker 2: fascinating nights of my life. So then after that, Stephen
Speaker 2: Harrett calls they they stand me on a soap box
Speaker 2: and Keanu and Alex Winter and the two girls they
Speaker 2: stand around me and they're staring at me and they're
Speaker 2: shooting me from the neck down. Okay, now it's like September.
Speaker 2: So and I surf and I'm at the beach olch
Speaker 2: so my hands and I'm a Native American and my
Speaker 2: hands are dark brown. Keep that in mind. My hands
Speaker 2: are dark brown. They shoot me from the neck down,
Speaker 2: and I go, what do you want me to play?
Speaker 2: And Steven goes, I don't know, just something crazy, and
Speaker 2: so I think. The first thing I think of is
Speaker 2: the opening chord to Eruption No I, A big a chord.
Speaker 2: And then I just go and I think this is
Speaker 2: a comedy. I don't take it seriously as a musician.
Speaker 2: I think it's a comedy. And I just start moving
Speaker 2: my fingers in the most crazy way and I'm playing
Speaker 2: air guitar. Okay, it's just air guitar and I'm moving him.
Speaker 2: If you're look at like new stuff that you would
Speaker 2: never do. And it was like I was trying to
Speaker 2: be ridiculous. And then I finished that, and then they
Speaker 2: have George stand on the box and he holds the guitar,
Speaker 2: and then they picture his face. He's doing all his
Speaker 2: facial expressions that you see in the movie. And now
Speaker 2: if you look, now, George Carlin's neck is as white
Speaker 2: as a ghost, and so is his face. And then
Speaker 2: look at the hands, they're almost black. Okay, now you'll
Speaker 2: notice it, and you'll be like, I never noticed that,
Speaker 2: And so that it's always been my big joke I
Speaker 2: laugh about. So we do this thing, and the next
Speaker 2: day I go back to Kirshienbaum's studio to power tracks,
Speaker 2: and I got a score ahead. I got a score
Speaker 2: to what I did. And so all I did was
Speaker 2: I watched my fingers and I played in this. I
Speaker 2: just tried to emulate exactly what I was doing and
Speaker 2: just followed my fingers. It was no no mathematics involved.
Speaker 2: I never took a lesson, so it certainly wasn't I'm
Speaker 2: going to go from this to that to this kind
Speaker 2: of movement and nothing. It was just nonsense cut till
Speaker 2: the movie comes out. The solo at the end becomes
Speaker 2: the iconic thing. And now every Bill and Ted movie
Speaker 2: has like the next one with Steve Vai, and then
Speaker 2: the third one was just somebody else. And it all
Speaker 2: started as a joke. Now I'm in London hanging out
Speaker 2: with Jimmy Dunlap, you know, I don't know, sometime ten
Speaker 2: years ago or twelve years ig, I don't know what
Speaker 2: it was been, and I'm having a drink in the
Speaker 2: afternoon and they had a barn and soho, and these
Speaker 2: kids came up and wanted my autograph from London and
Speaker 2: they go, we're studying at the Conservative yor some music
Speaker 2: thing there, and they said, our fine, our whole thesis
Speaker 2: is based on what you did in Bill and Ted.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, yeah, what did I do? And
Speaker 2: they go, well, you know, you go from a pan
Speaker 2: of time to a you know, mix, a loading to
Speaker 2: a blah blah blah and then back up to a
Speaker 2: ball and I'm like look, and I'm going wow. I
Speaker 2: didn't have the heart to tell them I just played
Speaker 2: air guitar, but they analyzed what I did, so again,
Speaker 2: was I smarter than anybody else? Or am I the
Speaker 2: dumb ass and the jokes on me? Maybe I was
Speaker 2: channeling shit that was this cool and I had no idea,
Speaker 2: and I should just shut my mouth because they seem
Speaker 2: them they seem to think it's fascinating, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what the hell it is. The
Speaker 2: segrets just purely so kind of like you become kind
Speaker 2: of legendary in a funny way when I die. I
Speaker 2: was hanging out with Kunta Reeves just a few months
Speaker 2: ago in Austin, and I took Charlie Sexton, and I
Speaker 2: took the actor Graham Green to meet Keanu and went
Speaker 2: to a show and Kan and I were talking because
Speaker 2: they had just done Bill and Ted three or it
Speaker 2: just came out the year before them, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm gonna do all these things like
Speaker 2: Jagger and blah blah blah and rumble and whatever they
Speaker 2: and they're on my tombstone. It's gonna say I'm the
Speaker 2: guy that did Bill and Ted.
Speaker 1: Okay, we even say Bill and Ted blows up? How
Speaker 1: does that affect your career?
Speaker 2: I just I'm like the guy I do was not
Speaker 2: was it's number one. I played with Rod Stewart. He's
Speaker 2: three and a half million records, eighteen months sold out.
Speaker 2: It's like what you might call it. Everybody wants me
Speaker 2: and I'm in La and it's like I got a
Speaker 2: huge contract on the island and I'm it was like
Speaker 2: I could, you could, I could do It was like
Speaker 2: I was could do anything. So then in ninety three,
Speaker 2: when I needed a break from everything and I was
Speaker 2: changing record labels, you know, I had been working with
Speaker 2: Terrence Trent Darby. His name is Sonona Maitreya now he
Speaker 2: changed his name and I actually just had lunch of
Speaker 2: them in Italy about three four weeks ago. But he
Speaker 2: he calls me and he's in La now, and so
Speaker 2: I go work on his album and then Michael Lipman says,
Speaker 2: you got to be Terrence's music director. We're going on
Speaker 2: tour Grand Rand and I'm like okay, So you know,
Speaker 2: so I go do that for a year and I'm
Speaker 2: and now I'm an MD. So I'm producing records and
Speaker 2: I'm a music director and I'm the guy in charge
Speaker 2: of hiring people. So every musician's like up my ass
Speaker 2: because they all want gigs and it seems like I
Speaker 2: just had my pick of all the gigs, and I
Speaker 2: had had it this way for a long time. You know.
Speaker 2: It's just really lucky, really really lucky. And I have
Speaker 2: music directs still to this day, tons of stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: So how did Bill Graham end up being your manager?
Speaker 2: That buzz going we talked about and around eighty six
Speaker 2: eighty seven in LA and somebody introduced me to Morty Wiggins,
Speaker 2: and Morty had signed Morty had signed Ivan Neville. So
Speaker 2: Morty was thinking, I'd like you to work with Ivan Neville.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know who Ivan Neville was because I was,
Speaker 2: you know, an educated guy from San Diego, surfed and skateboard.
Speaker 2: I didn't know the Neville brothers. I didn't know any
Speaker 2: of that shit. And so he arranged. Morty arranged for
Speaker 2: me and Ivan Neville to meet because he hadn't recorded
Speaker 2: his first record. If my ancestors could see me now,
Speaker 2: and then they saying that Dan Reid network. So they
Speaker 2: had all these diverse multicultural bands. Dan Reid had a
Speaker 2: couple African Americans in the band, and Ivan was an
Speaker 2: African American, a part native played Creole. You know, they
Speaker 2: had all these people of color, and so Mordy started
Speaker 2: hearing my demos, and Morty signed me, and he signed
Speaker 2: me before I joined Rod Stewart and he started developing me.
Speaker 2: And so I was with Bill Graham, and I got
Speaker 2: to tell you, Bill Graham, there was only two people
Speaker 2: that I was ever starstruck around. Maybe a little bit
Speaker 2: when Bowie would come talk to me. I was a
Speaker 2: little bit because I was just love Bowie so much,
Speaker 2: but really uncomfortably starstruck. I was always really uncomfortably starstruck
Speaker 2: when Bill Graham would come sit with me and talk.
Speaker 2: Because Bill was just like he had this in charisma.
Speaker 2: A lot of people hated him, like Rod stories to
Speaker 2: that guy's are very blaslah blah. But I thought he
Speaker 2: was the most fascinating guy and I thought he was
Speaker 2: hilarious and he would I felt just I was all
Speaker 2: geeked up around him all the time. He was like
Speaker 2: he had so much star power, you know. And the
Speaker 2: other guy was really geeked up around was George Harrison.
Speaker 2: George Harrison sitting at my table and buy me drinks,
Speaker 2: and I'd be like, I just I just lose my
Speaker 2: cool completely. But Bill Graham had that effect on me.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you were getting called to play in England,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Did you have a manager? Were you fielding
Speaker 1: all that yourself?
Speaker 2: Oh? That myself? Man? Yeah, But you know I had friends,
Speaker 2: you know, I had friends that were smart and and
Speaker 2: you know, like Ken Kushnik was Don was his manager,
Speaker 2: and David Passik and they would help me. They go,
Speaker 2: you need to buy a suit because we're doing the
Speaker 2: top of the pop. So I don't know how to
Speaker 2: buy a suit. So they, you know, they well, you
Speaker 2: don't spend more than one hundred and fifty dollars. You know.
Speaker 2: They were like babysitters almost, like you know, we're all
Speaker 2: like a bunch of dummies. And you know, now if
Speaker 2: you go see the Walk to Dinosaur video or spying
Speaker 2: a house eleven and all that, you'll see me back
Speaker 2: there going, oh fuck, that's Stevie.
Speaker 1: Okay. How'd you know how much to charge?
Speaker 2: I don't know how I knew that, but I didn't
Speaker 2: and I'm sure I didn't charge enough, you know, because money.
Speaker 2: I needed money. I remember Kurshian mom. You know, if
Speaker 2: they were to say, hey, to produce this track and
Speaker 2: we're just gonna give you a payout, just take two grand,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'll take that two grand right now.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen eighty seven, two thousand dollars there was
Speaker 2: a lot more money than it is right now, you know,
Speaker 2: especially for me. You know, rent back then in Hollywood
Speaker 2: was probably three hundred dollars for a cool house, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was I didn't know how much I wasn't
Speaker 2: getting rich. I'll tell you that I didn't start. I
Speaker 2: didn't have real money till I joined Rod Stewart, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: You know, if you could make three thousand dollars a week.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, it was like unheard of money,
Speaker 2: unheard of money. Then I found out all my friends
Speaker 2: were making ten thousand a week. I didn't know though.
Speaker 2: For me, three thousand. I was out of my mind.
Speaker 1: So how did you get the gig? With American Idol?
Speaker 2: In the nineties there was a group of Paul Ponteis,
Speaker 2: you know, Amos Newman, Sterling, Macelewain, a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: guys that had a surfing club, John Marks, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was all agents, lawyers, managers, record executives, no musicians,
Speaker 2: And I surfed and I surfed a lot, and I
Speaker 2: was a good surfer, and they asked me if I
Speaker 2: wanted to go on one of their trips. I was
Speaker 2: the only musician invited. And I became a part of
Speaker 2: this private little group of clubs and we were all
Speaker 2: inside it, and we hired each other and we only
Speaker 2: we John Mark's, you know, And I'm going to play
Speaker 2: Fuji Rock Fest? Can you can you help me with
Speaker 2: the contract? Yeah, I come over with you know. It
Speaker 2: was like that. It was like we were like goodfellas
Speaker 2: and we'd help each other. And I got a phone
Speaker 2: call from Stirling mclewain, who was managing He was already
Speaker 2: done managing Hanson, I think at that particular time. He says,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm getting a call from from nineteen Entertainment
Speaker 2: and they want me to come over there and work
Speaker 2: with this kid called Daughtry maybe and manage them, and
Speaker 2: said And at this particular time in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: I worked with a girl called Lamya who was in
Speaker 2: Duran Duran and she was in soulda Soul and Peter
Speaker 2: Edge att signed her and it was a Clive Davis thing.
Speaker 2: And I had to go to New York and I
Speaker 2: music directed it, and I really got into this whole
Speaker 2: thing because I loved that Clive Davis would come into
Speaker 2: a room and he would talk to me about what
Speaker 2: we were doing, and everyone make tuckshit after he left.
Speaker 2: Oh what do you mean? Clive says, you know, take
Speaker 2: it up, take it up, and I go, you guys
Speaker 2: don't get it. I know what he means. You know,
Speaker 2: you know Clive. I loved it. I loved having that
Speaker 2: kind of power around me and I listened to I
Speaker 2: never thought Clive was a goof. I thought clyd was amazing.
Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden, Sterling goes to Idol.
Speaker 2: He says, I need you to help me with Daughtry.
Speaker 2: So I came and I started working at nineteen and
Speaker 2: my first guy, I was a music director and a
Speaker 2: consultant for nineteen and a music director for Chris Daughtry.
Speaker 2: And we started to plan early. He started to planning, well,
Speaker 2: how are we going to market this kid? Where are
Speaker 2: the songs coming from, what's his band going to look like?
Speaker 2: You know, who's just you know, all of that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. How are we going to deal with this?
Speaker 2: And I was so I'd sit in and I was
Speaker 2: in all those meetings with the Imperia and everybody, and
Speaker 2: we come out with Daughtry and we sell five million records.
Speaker 2: And I put this whole thing together and taught them
Speaker 2: all how to play the songs because Phil X, and
Speaker 2: my dear friend Phil X had played did the album,
Speaker 2: and he's an insane guitar player. So I'd have to
Speaker 2: teach these guys how to play the parts, you know,
Speaker 2: because they couldn't figure it out, because a lot of
Speaker 2: that shit was tricky, and Clyd Davis would call again
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know, I wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: do IDL And when it started, I thought it was lame.
Speaker 2: I hated and Mick Jagger wouldn't have called me if
Speaker 2: I was the guy who worked at American Idol in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three or whatever it was. But in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, the writing was on the wall.
Speaker 2: The music business was in a free fall, and IDOL
Speaker 2: was the biggest thing in town in two thousand and six, biggest.
Speaker 2: It was just big. And so I took that gig
Speaker 2: and instantly clid d you know, talking to Clive Davis again,
Speaker 2: and I'm talking to big guys again, and I'm back
Speaker 2: in that game that you know, well, you know, you
Speaker 2: got to do something every four years to keep in
Speaker 2: that game where people take your phone calls or they
Speaker 2: call you. And I was back in that game and
Speaker 2: we sold a ton of records with Daughtry. So then
Speaker 2: I came back next year and I did Jordan's Sparks
Speaker 2: and we sold a couple million with her, and with
Speaker 2: her she was seventeen, so I actually played guitar in
Speaker 2: the band until I until she turned eighteen. Then I
Speaker 2: hired a kid to take my place and we went
Speaker 2: out with Alicia Keys. And then into the next year,
Speaker 2: I did David Cook, which was really fun because David
Speaker 2: was just a sweet kid. It was like tried to
Speaker 2: make it his whole life, and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: he was the most famous guy on the planet, and
Speaker 2: you know, he was just like, oh what do I do?
Speaker 2: He didn't know what to do. And I enjoyed mentoring
Speaker 2: those guys, you know. And then the last year, I
Speaker 2: took three idols. I had Alis and Irita, and I
Speaker 2: had Chris Allen who won, and I had Adam Lambert
Speaker 2: who was just a wild card, and I pretty much
Speaker 2: took over all of SR and I had all the
Speaker 2: idols in there, and I was running the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and that was a crazy year. But those four years
Speaker 2: and I was there, there was the highest rated show
Speaker 2: in the world, I think, And and the next year
Speaker 2: I left. The next year because all the winners were country,
Speaker 2: and I don't know anything about country music, but it
Speaker 2: looked like and the ratings started going down then. So
Speaker 2: in the bullshit word of World of Hollywood, it kind
Speaker 2: of looked like Stevie Laft and are not doing so
Speaker 2: good now, right, you know people actually think stupid shit
Speaker 2: like that, And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know
Speaker 2: it is I'll ride that.
Speaker 1: Okay. Just to be clear, you would work with the
Speaker 1: act once they had won, or you would be there
Speaker 1: while the television show was being shot.
Speaker 2: Let's start early in the season and we would start
Speaker 2: to identify who they wanted to keep, because nineteen could
Speaker 2: keep twelve of ten of them. I don't forget what
Speaker 2: the number was. They had contracts with all of them.
Speaker 2: They could not decided, so it wasn't like they just
Speaker 2: got the winner. As a matter of fact, Doctry didn't
Speaker 2: even win. They farmed out the other ones and they
Speaker 2: kept Doctry as an in House, and that's why they
Speaker 2: brought in Stirling mackawin. So I would come in about
Speaker 2: a first quarter of the series and I could go
Speaker 2: down on set if I wanted, and I could do it.
Speaker 2: But I hated that stuff, if you really want to
Speaker 2: know the truth, I just thought it was like it
Speaker 2: was like babysitting or something. It was like the TV show.
Speaker 2: But what was good about it was I could take
Speaker 2: people on set or I could do you know, being
Speaker 2: seen reminds people that you got power in that town.
Speaker 2: And so on the final the Big Idol finales, when
Speaker 2: I could roll in backstage and you'd see anybody who's anybody,
Speaker 2: or I'd have my idol playing at the Jingle Ball
Speaker 2: and you know, all the heads of Disney and everybody
Speaker 2: and their kids are backstage. You know, I had power
Speaker 2: and everything in that town. You know, I don't know
Speaker 2: about now, but everything back then was about perceived power,
Speaker 2: and I had power. You know, I wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: sell millions and millions of albums and I still have power.
Speaker 2: You know. MC Jagger would call me on the phone.
Speaker 2: I gave me power, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it ends with American Idol. Would you turn
Speaker 1: next with this power.
Speaker 2: I never really turned next back for the power that
Speaker 2: I can remember, I went for and I started touring, touring.
Speaker 2: My old catalog was doing really well in Germany and
Speaker 2: these countries, and I kept getting tour offers. So I
Speaker 2: just started touring a lot. I became a dad during
Speaker 2: the year that Jordan Spark's won. You know, my son
Speaker 2: didn't realize that Jordan Sparks used to pick him up
Speaker 2: and sing to him. He was a baby. We used
Speaker 2: to stop rehearsal with Adam Lambert so Adam could so
Speaker 2: my son could play on his drum set for ten minutes.
Speaker 2: You know. You know, it's like my son's like whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't give a shit. Steven Tyler texts
Speaker 2: my son and they talked about this his Skibbles commercial,
Speaker 2: and he's just like, yeah, whatever. You know, my son
Speaker 2: grew up in it. You know, he's got no fascination
Speaker 2: with it or cares about it at all. But so
Speaker 2: I started touring Europe. I'd go off and do gigs
Speaker 2: like with Steven Tyler, with Billy Gibbons. They'd call me
Speaker 2: and I'd come play guitar with with those guys. When
Speaker 2: and then I was always pretty famous in Japan. So
Speaker 2: I got a call in twenty sixteen from a guy
Speaker 2: called Koshi Inaba and he's in a band called the Bees,
Speaker 2: and he's the biggest selling artist in the history of Japan.
Speaker 2: He sold over one hundred million records just in Japan.
Speaker 2: And he was a friend and he loved my records
Speaker 2: and I used to play on his solo albums and
Speaker 2: we were just friends. And he calls me in twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen and he says, I'm really burned out. I'm uninspired.
Speaker 2: I can't write a song. I'm kind of depressed. He goes,
Speaker 2: you think you'd want to come over, you know, and
Speaker 2: maybe try writing some songs with me, And I'm like yeah.
Speaker 2: So I jump on a plane, I go to Tokyo
Speaker 2: and we start writing. And I said, let's not write
Speaker 2: Stevie solo songs with the Koshi Nava singing. Let's not
Speaker 2: write Koshi Nava songs with STEVEE. Sauas playing guitar, because
Speaker 2: we kind of did that throughout our the you know,
Speaker 2: in the nineties and stuff, you know, we did that.
Speaker 2: I go, let's think about this, let's think about a concept.
Speaker 2: I go, and when I was in England, in eighty
Speaker 2: seven eighty eight, everything had this funk feel. Durand Tears
Speaker 2: for Fears. They all had slap bass, boom boom, you know,
Speaker 2: like it was not was the funk bass that slapped,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't black music. It was like this pop
Speaker 2: swore of music that kind of rocked like Duran Durant,
Speaker 2: but it all had this synthetic synthesizer bass. It was
Speaker 2: kind of like fun, but it wasn't funk. And I
Speaker 2: had slapping bass, and and I go, let's let's write
Speaker 2: songs with that groove so the girls can dance. And
Speaker 2: I go, and let's make all the guitars sound like
Speaker 2: the Clash. It's just just go back, and let's make
Speaker 2: him sound raty, like we're in the Clash, because he
Speaker 2: loved the Clash, and let's do what happened. So we
Speaker 2: started writing songs and it was really fun, and he
Speaker 2: started having fun. So we'd go to Nackville and we'd
Speaker 2: worked on some songs and we'd fly to LA and
Speaker 2: I'd have Taylor Hawkins play drums. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know that, but I discovered Taylor Hawkins. I'm the
Speaker 2: guy that discovered him.
Speaker 1: And well, I know that, but tell my audience the story.
Speaker 2: Okay, well well let me tell you finish Koshy. So
Speaker 2: we finished, We do the album. I get all my
Speaker 2: friends to play on a Taylor and I I mean,
Speaker 2: tons of people are jamming on it and it's really
Speaker 2: really fun and the albums it's not just songs. But
Speaker 2: then his manager in Japan's like going, this, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: He goes, I'm putting it out. I'm like what he goes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I booked a tour in January. We're gonna go do.
Speaker 2: It's a small tour. We're gonna do three months of
Speaker 2: five thousand seaters. And they put the tickets on sale.
Speaker 2: We called it a Naba Solace and it sold out
Speaker 2: and I'm not lying every it was sold out within
Speaker 2: three minutes. And I went over there and so I
Speaker 2: got to put my own band together. So I hired
Speaker 2: Stuart Zender from Jamikoy to play bass, am fiddler again
Speaker 2: from Parliament Funkadelic, who was was not Wes and we
Speaker 2: ever had to play synth. And Matt Sharad who I
Speaker 2: worked with a ton who was a remixer and a
Speaker 2: producer and he was the drummer for Beck and the
Speaker 2: drummers for Crowded House, and I put this super band
Speaker 2: together with me and I Naba and we went and
Speaker 2: played and people went crazy. So we came back, took
Speaker 2: a year off when he went back to his bad
Speaker 2: bees because they could do, you know, ten nights at
Speaker 2: the Tokyo Dome. And we came back and did another
Speaker 2: album in twenty twenty, and we booked it. This time,
Speaker 2: we booked another tour, and this time it was multiple
Speaker 2: nights at Castle Hall, multiple nights. You know, it was
Speaker 2: twenty thousand seaters now doing multiple nights. We sold eighty
Speaker 2: five thousand tickets in four minutes and I go over
Speaker 2: I shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. So I'm under
Speaker 2: cover of Rolling Stone for the first time of my
Speaker 2: life with me and in Aba and Covid hits. Whole
Speaker 2: tour cancels. We rebook it for twenty twenty one. We
Speaker 2: still can't do it. We ended up sending all the
Speaker 2: money back for the eighty five thousand tickets. It was
Speaker 2: a lot of money, Bob, a lot. I was like
Speaker 2: buy a new house money. And and we haven't remade
Speaker 2: it up yet and we're hoping maybe in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five I'm gonna go back, so I'll have to lose
Speaker 2: some weight and to try to, you know, make it happen.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's what I've been doing. And that's big, big,
Speaker 2: big stuff because it's multiple arenas again, and you know,
Speaker 2: it feels good when you can sell twenty thousand tickets.
Speaker 1: Now, it would appear from the outside you work with
Speaker 1: somebody and then you don't work with them again. What
Speaker 1: would you say to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I started doing. Wayne Kramer asked me
Speaker 2: to come help them with a new MC five album
Speaker 2: with Bob Ezrin, and I did it. And then d
Speaker 2: Wayne said, let's put a band together and let's go
Speaker 2: do do some some dates. And I'm like, I love
Speaker 2: you wayn Kramer. I'll do whatever you want, you know.
Speaker 2: But I was really adamant. I had thought Wayne had
Speaker 2: put a band together with some really great musicians, guys
Speaker 2: you know from Soundgarden and a bunch other you know
Speaker 2: guys that you know from the eighties and nineties that
Speaker 2: were famous guys. But they all thought the MC five
Speaker 2: was it was just brutality and punk rock force. They
Speaker 2: just think that because it's one of the these one
Speaker 2: of the inventors of punk rock. They give him that credit,
Speaker 2: but if you really listen to the MC five, they
Speaker 2: were they were trying to be a soul band. They
Speaker 2: were trying to be an R and B band with
Speaker 2: distorted guitars, and they were failing miserably and creating something
Speaker 2: completely new and original by accident. So so Wayne and
Speaker 2: I realized that nobody was playing the music right, and
Speaker 2: it bothered him. So him and I started going back
Speaker 2: to the actual original masters. And I had listened to
Speaker 2: to fred Sonicsmith's parts, and I'd listened to what Wayne
Speaker 2: was doing. And Wayne and I would sit there with
Speaker 2: just two guitars like kids, not even plugged in. It
Speaker 2: was like going back to being a kid again. And
Speaker 2: Wayne and I would go through these parts and figure
Speaker 2: out why they worked and what made them work. And
Speaker 2: so when we went out on that tour, we really slam.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. I mean, people were saying, Mike Caller
Speaker 2: and guys like there was, you know, Stevie dan Zance
Speaker 2: was the best, one of the best shows they'd ever seen.
Speaker 2: Definitely the best MC vibe show they had ever seen,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I was going to go back
Speaker 2: with Wayne. The album was getting ready to come out,
Speaker 2: and then, as you know, Wayne passed away out of
Speaker 2: the blue, just unannounced, fast, just like he was gone.
Speaker 2: And but we were going out this year and we're
Speaker 2: going to do tons of festivals and big shows. And
Speaker 2: it was a real shame because now he's going in
Speaker 2: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he's not here,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's a bit of a crush.
Speaker 2: But I do stick with them sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's more that you decide to move on, or
Speaker 1: is it more that they decide to move on.
Speaker 2: I think it's me. I if I want to stick
Speaker 2: to one thing for a long time, I do my
Speaker 2: own thing. But I do like playing like I love
Speaker 2: playing with you now because that is my thing. I'm
Speaker 2: writing all the songs, you know, and I'm producing the
Speaker 2: records with Koshi, so it is my thing. So I
Speaker 2: could play with him, and let's face it, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna lie when you can go on to it and
Speaker 2: you know your shows are automatically sold out and you
Speaker 2: don't have that anxiety. Is there anybody here tonight? I'm
Speaker 2: playing in Paris. Oh my god, don't tell me it's empty.
Speaker 2: You know, those anxieties are real and when you know
Speaker 2: your shows are all sold out and you've got a
Speaker 2: captive audience that just worships you. I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: lot more fun. I mean, you know, the MC five
Speaker 2: we're playing small places, and there was MC five worshippers there,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't like We're playing like Lollapalooza or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree does your mood depend on whether
Speaker 1: people are looking for you?
Speaker 2: I don't really think about that too much because I
Speaker 2: got a lot going on. You know, I really endo
Speaker 2: making movies and television and writing and developing television, and
Speaker 2: I keep myself really busy. I have a really cool
Speaker 2: company with a partner of Mohawk and native guy named
Speaker 2: Bran Porter. Up on the Six Nations Reservation in Canada,
Speaker 2: I became a Canadian permanent resident and after Rumble, and
Speaker 2: I really love developing television. I love developing films because
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm doing and it's scary and
Speaker 2: it's therefore it's exciting. Where in music, I kind of
Speaker 2: feel like, you know, Bowie could call me and I
Speaker 2: know what to do, and I know what to do,
Speaker 2: and I really know what to do, you know, I
Speaker 2: know what the sound should sound like. And I know
Speaker 2: where the energy comes from. You know, I said in
Speaker 2: my speech last week in San Diego for that big
Speaker 2: award I got, I said, I never thought my job
Speaker 2: as a guitar player was to play notes. I thought
Speaker 2: my job was to move energy. And I've always felt
Speaker 2: that way. And that's what I do when I play
Speaker 2: with these guys. I try to create energy.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the status of these developing projects.
Speaker 2: I got a really badass series right now that I'm
Speaker 2: working on with a guy called Cliff Roberts, a producet Emancipation.
Speaker 2: He used to be a big agent, William Morris. He
Speaker 2: manages a lot of the biggest writers and showrunners in
Speaker 2: the business. And so John Fusco, who's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite writers. He's Spielberg's favorite writer. You know. He did
Speaker 2: Young Guns one and Young Guns two, and in the
Speaker 2: Thunderheart and he did Crossroads, you know, with the Crossroads film.
Speaker 2: That was his first movie he ever wrote. But he's
Speaker 2: done gigantic. He's a gigantic showrunner. He did the series
Speaker 2: Marco Polo on Netflix, and so he's the showrunner with
Speaker 2: me and my partner writing partner's guy called Kevin Monroe,
Speaker 2: who wrote and directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Miramax,
Speaker 2: and he had done my son's favorite movie, Ratchet Klank.
Speaker 2: So I got this insane team of people, and as usual,
Speaker 2: I'm the shittiest guy in the room. I'm the stupidest
Speaker 2: guy in the room, and that's where I want to be.
Speaker 2: These guys are beasts, and so I'm working on that
Speaker 2: right now or shopping that around. It's a series. It's
Speaker 2: like a Native American Godfather or the Sopranos kind of
Speaker 2: a thing about a family that you know, you know,
Speaker 2: can face down another season of being on welfare on
Speaker 2: the reservation and they discover what sovereign law means and
Speaker 2: they learn how to create their own tobacco supplies instead
Speaker 2: of smuggling for the big tobacco into Canada. They'd learned
Speaker 2: how to do it themselves. And you know, it's like
Speaker 2: the Brofmans who were who were literally bootleggers and then
Speaker 2: became a legitimate business and became very powerful. And it's
Speaker 2: a story about a Native group that does this. It's
Speaker 2: called Smoke River and I hope I get to make
Speaker 2: that series, and I hope soon because it's kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, John Fusco said, as he said, it's a
Speaker 2: game changer. And I got a couple more things like that.
Speaker 2: I work with Robert Stromberg, who directed in The Lificent
Speaker 2: But I actually grew up with Robert and Carlsbad, California.
Speaker 2: We had rival rock bands. And then you know, Robert
Speaker 2: did Avatar and all these other He got five Academy
Speaker 2: Award nominations. And so I worked with Robert and and
Speaker 2: when we work with a group, a lot of group
Speaker 2: of Native Americans. I had a new two films that
Speaker 2: premiered at tiff and you know, Rumble one Sun Dance,
Speaker 2: and I got nominated for an Emmy for Rumble as well.
Speaker 2: So I'm an Emmy loser, official Emmy loser. Well you
Speaker 2: know what it is. And they saying that he's an
Speaker 2: Emmy nominated producer. That just means you lost. If you
Speaker 2: really think about it, people always say, come on, man,
Speaker 2: it's you nominate to lose. You know, They're like feel like,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm serious, and I'm like, na, Emmy loser
Speaker 2: sounds so punk rock. I just think it's so cool.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So how do you pick up the guitar in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 2: I started playing when I was and it just became easy.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me.
Speaker 1: It was like, well, there must have been some inspiration.
Speaker 1: Was there music in the house or what.
Speaker 2: When I was a little kid, my stepfather was in
Speaker 2: a rock band who I recently lost contact with him
Speaker 2: fourth grade and I recently found him in the Florida Keys.
Speaker 2: It's crazy and we talk all the time now, but
Speaker 2: he had a rock band, so he was introducing me
Speaker 2: to Clapton. I was listening to Clapton as five years old.
Speaker 2: You know, some sign Your Love was like my favorite song.
Speaker 2: I was listening to Hendrix. I was listening to led Zeppelin,
Speaker 2: so ironically weird when I hang out with Jimmy Page,
Speaker 2: but I can still remember the day, being in the third,
Speaker 2: you know, first grade or something, whenever it was listening
Speaker 2: in good times, bad times, you know, hanging out with
Speaker 2: playing with Steven Tyler, and I can remember being in
Speaker 2: the back of the van and and my brother in
Speaker 2: law and his friends are all, you know, in their
Speaker 2: twenties playing me get your Wings into It's just it's
Speaker 2: just all a complete mind blowing thing for me. That
Speaker 2: you know. When I got this award last week, you
Speaker 2: talked about Billy Gibbons, ro Robin xandervitt, Rick Nielsen and
Speaker 2: Sammy Hagar all made their own homemade iPhone videos and
Speaker 2: set it in and they put it into the the
Speaker 2: the video that they played before they introduced me, and
Speaker 2: it's like all of a sudden san Diego, like, damn you,
Speaker 2: there's some good star power. And then Matt's arm came
Speaker 2: down to introduce me. And so having these kind of
Speaker 2: guys in my life that I worshiped as a kid
Speaker 2: that actually talk to me like a peer, now, that's
Speaker 2: to me the greatest reward of everything, better than money,
Speaker 2: better than than anything. To me, that's just like, that's
Speaker 2: to me is the dream. That's the real dream.
Speaker 1: Okay, But there must have been a specific spark that said, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to play the guitar.
Speaker 2: Here's what it was. I started playing guitar. It seemed
Speaker 2: like it was coming easy to me, and I was.
Speaker 2: I was possessed by it.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I would play three hours a day and I never
Speaker 2: took a lesson, but a couple of friends would help
Speaker 2: me out, teach me how to play a chord or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, which was really super helpful. And I just
Speaker 2: played and I and I and I surfed and I skateboarded,
Speaker 2: and so the way I played guitar was kind of
Speaker 2: the way and I raced motocross, and the way I
Speaker 2: raced motocross it was aggressive. And the way I served
Speaker 2: was somewhat aggressive. And the way I skateboard it was aggressive.
Speaker 2: You know. I lived in San Diego, an Oceanside done,
Speaker 2: you know where Tony Hawk and the Flying Tomato, you know,
Speaker 2: Sean shown White and the greatest surfer Joey Brand who
Speaker 2: you know won the pipeline. I said, I was around
Speaker 2: all these kind of energy, that kind of energy, and
Speaker 2: my guitar playing felt like that same, like it all
Speaker 2: made sense with all of that, and so I kept playing.
Speaker 2: So then I got a band. I was in the
Speaker 2: band and I just played vis the guitar. But I
Speaker 2: was good. Wasn't great? It was good then that band
Speaker 2: more when I was still in high school. All the
Speaker 2: guys were older than me, a year two older than me,
Speaker 2: and we became the hottest band in San Diego. I
Speaker 2: mean we would play everywhere and it was like high
Speaker 2: school dances and colleges and girls were screaming like We're
Speaker 2: the Beatles. And so I told my dad I didn't
Speaker 2: know what I was going to do with my life,
Speaker 2: but I said, Dad, I'm pretty good at this thing,
Speaker 2: and I go, let me give it till I'm twenty
Speaker 2: four years old. In twenty four I haven't made it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to join the Coast Guard because I love
Speaker 2: the ocean, right. I'm from the beach, and I'm from
Speaker 2: the and I worked on fishing boats and I all
Speaker 2: want to join the coast Guard. So that's my out.
Speaker 2: And so my dad's like, okay, Luckily, I'm luckily I
Speaker 2: made it before the ad.
Speaker 1: So okay, okay. You talk about your father being in
Speaker 1: the Marines, moving give me the narrative here. You have
Speaker 1: a biological father, you have a stepfather. Was your biological
Speaker 1: father still in the picture? You talk about your ex stepfather,
Speaker 1: meaning you're broke up with your mother? What was going
Speaker 1: on here?
Speaker 2: So my parents were splitting up before I was born.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this, of course I was born, but
Speaker 2: my mom got pregnant with me and they stayed together.
Speaker 2: But that only lasted I think a year or two,
Speaker 2: maybe two, I don't know exactly, because I was, you know,
Speaker 2: the baby my mother fell in love with the musician.
Speaker 2: My dad. I'd moved out. My mother fell in love
Speaker 2: with a musician, so I had she married him, and
Speaker 2: I had him as a stepdad. But my real father
Speaker 2: was in my life always, you know. He worked on
Speaker 2: the marine base and he was in my life. And
Speaker 2: it was great because my stepdad was a hippie and
Speaker 2: my mom became a hippie and so, you know, we
Speaker 2: learned about you know, we'd go to the Paula Indian
Speaker 2: Reservation and they'd all everybody, all the families. We'd run
Speaker 2: around naked, and she was like hippie shit, you know,
Speaker 2: And I grew up in that. But my father was
Speaker 2: a disciplined man, and he was super cool, super cool.
Speaker 2: Not an asshole, but he he provided me with a
Speaker 2: foundation of discipline. So when my mother and my stepfather
Speaker 2: split up when I was four years old, I was
Speaker 2: in fourth grade, I'm sorry. My mother went off the
Speaker 2: deep end. She had lost a child, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I and she went off the deep end and
Speaker 2: she was on prescription drugs and she disappeared. And I
Speaker 2: was a period of about four days, three days when
Speaker 2: I was by myself at the house because my older
Speaker 2: sister had left already too and and I was literally
Speaker 2: by myself. I have to dressed myself and get to school.
Speaker 2: Was awful. And my dad showed up one day to
Speaker 2: check what are you doing? What checked on me? And
Speaker 2: I told him, whe's your mom's I haven't seen her,
Speaker 2: and he's get in the car. I moved. This is
Speaker 2: in fifth grade now. I moved to Oceanside and I'm
Speaker 2: moving with my dad. And we were like two bachelors,
Speaker 2: and he worked three jobs. And I never went back
Speaker 2: to live with my mom and she got it together.
Speaker 2: She figured herself out, and I bought her a house
Speaker 2: years later whenever he came and looaded, you know. But
Speaker 2: I lived with my dad. My dad was really great
Speaker 2: for me. And then my dad ended up remarrying years later.
Speaker 2: And that's my stepmother who is still in my life.
Speaker 2: And my mom passed away at eighty seven, and my
Speaker 2: father passed away at eighty unfortunately he got cancer. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so I had him both in my life. And actually
Speaker 2: the combination of the hippie step dad and the discipline
Speaker 2: real dad was really fantastic. It was a really fantastic
Speaker 2: combination for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, who in this picture was Native American.
Speaker 2: My mother and my father, but not the stepfather. No, No,
Speaker 2: he's a white guy.
Speaker 1: And your father's got remarried.
Speaker 2: He got remarried in my mom's cousin actually, and yeah,
Speaker 2: not his cousin. Let's not get that. Let's make a
Speaker 2: sense my mom's cousin and that caused a big ruckus
Speaker 2: in the family. Oh my god. You know. But you know,
Speaker 2: he identifies as Chicano because a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the New Mexico days, especially back in the thirties and stuff,
Speaker 2: would never want to admit to being Native American because
Speaker 2: if you're a Native American, you were probably you know,
Speaker 2: you were looked at as the scum of the earth,
Speaker 2: which sounds crazy now, but it's the fact. So nobody,
Speaker 2: nobody wanted to be a Native. You could be a
Speaker 2: Native in those days, and if somebody raped you, or
Speaker 2: somebody kidnapped you, or somebody killed you, it was not
Speaker 2: priority number one to figure out where you were. And
Speaker 2: essentially nuts to me. And I didn't know about any
Speaker 2: of this stuff until I got older and started learning
Speaker 2: about it. You know. So a lot of people, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of Native people like Robert Trhillo from Metallica,
Speaker 2: Randy Castillo, who was in Rumble from Ozzie. A lot
Speaker 2: of US pat vegas from from uh, you know, saying
Speaker 2: come and get your love from from Redbone. A lot
Speaker 2: of US guys in America grew up Taboo from Black
Speaker 2: Eyed Peas. We grew up not really knowing who we
Speaker 2: were or a lot about our culture because we were
Speaker 2: in this mix everybody from the New Mexico Southwest area.
Speaker 2: We're either trying to identify as Spaniards or Mexican or Chicano,
Speaker 2: and you know, you start to have to dig to
Speaker 2: make sure you know what Indian you were because because
Speaker 2: a lot of the older aunts and stuff. But deny it,
Speaker 2: I'm not a Savage. I remember my two aunts were
Speaker 2: arguing with my cousin Gilbert, and you know, she was
Speaker 2: one was saying we're Apache and the end she said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm not a Savage. I mean and they
Speaker 2: were like losing their minds over this stuff. So it's
Speaker 2: weird to think that this is still an issue. Right,
Speaker 2: So a lot of people don't know who they are.
Speaker 1: And then you talk about your mother going to the reservation.
Speaker 1: Was that part of you growing up going to the reservation.
Speaker 2: It might have been, but to me it was just
Speaker 2: some hippie shit. There's a bunch of hippies with long hair,
Speaker 2: and they'd go out and play music and we all,
Speaker 2: all the kids would swim in the river there and
Speaker 2: Paula at the Indian restaurant, but she was not a
Speaker 2: part of the Paula tribe. But we would go to
Speaker 2: the Paula Indi Indian reservation all the time. Wait before
Speaker 2: there was a casino there, and there was nothing out
Speaker 2: there but wild dogs and a few skins and uh.
Speaker 2: But you know, I always felt at home in Indian Country.
Speaker 2: I didn't know a lot about it. And like I
Speaker 2: said in Rumble, when I was losing my mind after
Speaker 2: Rod Stewart, when I was just so full of my
Speaker 2: own bs and I was so yeah, I was out
Speaker 2: of my mind. Everything was tequila and parties and chicks
Speaker 2: and rockstar shit. And Randy Castillo, who was the drummer
Speaker 2: of Ozzie, it was like me, and it was from
Speaker 2: New Mexico. My family's from New Mexico. And he said,
Speaker 2: he says, I got to take you to Indian Country.
Speaker 2: You're out of control. And I didn't know what that meant,
Speaker 2: you know, Indian Country. And so I went with him
Speaker 2: and we went to Santa Fe and then he took
Speaker 2: me up to Taos, and that started me on this
Speaker 2: path in the early nineties of balance where I would
Speaker 2: lose my mind in La and I could go to
Speaker 2: Indian Country and kind of just not be, not trying
Speaker 2: to be some kind of badass rock star. I was
Speaker 2: just I was trying to be trying to be a
Speaker 2: human being, right, And Randy was the same way. And
Speaker 2: then we'd go back to LA or New York or
Speaker 2: London or whatever we need rock stars and go play
Speaker 2: sports arenas and and that that's kind of how it was.
Speaker 1: Okay, we hear about the plight of the Native American
Speaker 1: on the reservation, we hear about economic issues, obesity, alcoholism,
Speaker 1: to what degree is that something you're invested in because
Speaker 1: your upbringing certainly was very different.
Speaker 2: My upbringion was super different. Like my part in my
Speaker 2: film company, Bran Porter grew up on the Six Nations
Speaker 2: reservation where Robbie Robertson's from, actually, but Robbie would only
Speaker 2: spend summers there because he had a Jewish dad and
Speaker 2: they lived in Toronto and lived a good life. But
Speaker 2: I've got to be honest, I don't think I would
Speaker 2: be where I am right now talking to you if
Speaker 2: I was brought up on a reservation. There's a definite
Speaker 2: energy that has been passed down from generation to generation
Speaker 2: where the people are made to feel like they're worthless,
Speaker 2: made to feel like, hey, this isn't for me. This
Speaker 2: is maybe for them, but we don't get to do
Speaker 2: these kind of things. So I'd be like, hey, look
Speaker 2: at me, I did it. I remember these kids would
Speaker 2: tell me I was doing a TV series that I
Speaker 2: was producing and hosting in Winnipeg in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: eight nine, ten or something like that. I did three
Speaker 2: seasons of it, and the Native kids would come to
Speaker 2: me and go, we want to do what you're doing,
Speaker 2: but they won't let us. And I'd say, like, who
Speaker 2: are they? Because whoever they are, they let me, you know,
Speaker 2: and they think of about that what I said. But
Speaker 2: I was brought up to believe that anything was possible.
Speaker 2: I was brought up to believe that there's the King
Speaker 2: of England has his blood is not better than my blood,
Speaker 2: And I'm not buying any of that kind of bullshit.
Speaker 2: And I was brought up to believe that. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think that he has royal blood and I
Speaker 2: have bullshit blood, you know. I challenge all that, and
Speaker 2: I think that Native people now are finding more strength
Speaker 2: and there's becoming more success. But there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of this feeling, especially on the poor reservations where you're
Speaker 2: living on welfare, then pretty much all you're getting in
Speaker 2: is all the food whatever they'll give you, and most
Speaker 2: of its gmode crap and a bunch of terrible stuff
Speaker 2: that's not good for you, you know. So there is
Speaker 2: a lot of problems with the diabetes and obesity, bad water.
Speaker 2: I go into Indian reservations, Bradworter and I spend our
Speaker 2: own money and we hooked up with swear Water and
Speaker 2: we go into Indian country, these places where they don't
Speaker 2: have he can't drink the water, and we put in
Speaker 2: water filtration systems in there ourselves because we can't wait
Speaker 2: for the government any more to figure out the problems.
Speaker 2: So we do it ourselves, and then the government guys
Speaker 2: call us, hey, hey, what are you guys doing. It's
Speaker 2: like what can we do to help? And it's like
Speaker 2: we're just doing it. Either don't come and do it
Speaker 2: with us, or we're going to do it Anyways, luckily
Speaker 2: my partner and that and where he works on Six
Speaker 2: Nations there were very well financed. So we're able to
Speaker 2: if we have to spend forty thousand dollars on water
Speaker 2: filtration systems and donate them through our Dream Catcher charity
Speaker 2: that we do in Six Nations, you know we can.
Speaker 2: We can get these things as we're very fortunate that way.
Speaker 1: Now in Canada they talk about the natives there. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of controversy Native Canadian schools and tragedies tragically.
Speaker 1: Ip even has a song about that. What is the
Speaker 1: difference between being a Native in Canada as opposed to
Speaker 1: a Native in America?
Speaker 2: If any Well, there's a couple of things. In Canada,
Speaker 2: people identified with being Native and brought We're brought up
Speaker 2: as Native. They even have these cards called status cards,
Speaker 2: or everyone kind of has one. And then there's guys
Speaker 2: like us whose families denied it. They didn't want you know,
Speaker 2: they're great. My great grandpaent mom didn't want to be
Speaker 2: sent onto the trailer tears. So if you were in
Speaker 2: Mexican you could stay in farm in New Mexico. But
Speaker 2: if you're an Indian, you're gonna get shipped off, you know,
Speaker 2: so then we're not Indians. So there's a huge denial
Speaker 2: of My one friend Brian right McLoud who wrote that encyclopedia,
Speaker 2: told me, you guys are part of the lost Indians,
Speaker 2: that's what they call them. They don't know who we are,
Speaker 2: We don't know where we were. You know, we have
Speaker 2: the search fried you know where our family came from
Speaker 2: and how they identified and what they had to do
Speaker 2: to survive. In Canada, their fronts, tons of programs where
Speaker 2: you're an artist, you want to make a film, you
Speaker 2: want to make a record, there's all these funds for
Speaker 2: not just Native people but for their citizens. You know,
Speaker 2: you can get funding to do all kinds of stuff
Speaker 2: through your tax dollars. So everyone goes your taxes are high,
Speaker 2: but you actually get a lot for tax dollars, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And so that's why you see
Speaker 2: a lot more development in the arts from the Canadian
Speaker 2: Indigenous community. The Americans one just like here, you know
Speaker 2: it is it's it's if you can't sell something and
Speaker 2: make the money, then you can't you don't get money
Speaker 2: for it. You know, there's it's a lot harder to
Speaker 2: be successful in America. Than it is in Canada.
Speaker 1: What do you think about some of these Native American
Speaker 1: shows like Smoke Signals and Reservation. Never mind the recent
Speaker 1: Scorsese picture.
Speaker 2: That's funny my my friend Lily, Lily got the Academy
Speaker 2: Award nomination for that new Scorsese picture. Marty was, actually, well,
Speaker 2: that makes it sound like every Native American knows every
Speaker 2: other Native American. Kind of do you kind of do
Speaker 2: you figure out there's not a lot of us, Bob,
Speaker 2: we kind of do you figure out who's who, especially
Speaker 2: the people that are doing things. You know, then you
Speaker 2: have a little bit of this thing that goes on
Speaker 2: with gatekeepers, which I don't participate in that because I
Speaker 2: just think that's just ridiculous, but you know I had Marty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.
Speaker 1: What gatekeepers in the Native American world?
Speaker 2: You put some it happens, it's a common nature. People
Speaker 2: have been held down for a long time. So you
Speaker 2: empower some person and can they really allow you Remember
Speaker 2: on the movie Out of Africa where they were trying
Speaker 2: to put a school on for the for the African kids,
Speaker 2: and the chief shut it down because he found out
Speaker 2: that the kids were actually becoming smarter than the chief,
Speaker 2: so he shut it down. Well, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: that gatekeeper thing where oh, this girl's so popular with
Speaker 2: her music, and so warners or give her a record label,
Speaker 2: and she's supposed to help develop native stuff. Well she
Speaker 2: never had a hit record herself, or he never had
Speaker 2: to hit record themselves, So how are they supposed to
Speaker 2: know if this guy's any good. So what they end
Speaker 2: up doing is they work with people who worship them
Speaker 2: and are their friends, and anybody that might be a threat,
Speaker 2: that might be more popular better than them, maybe they
Speaker 2: push away where I again, not that I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to brag. I want to be the dumbest guy in
Speaker 2: the room. I want to surround myself with the baddest
Speaker 2: ass dudes there are. But if I surround it with you,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try to eat you alive. I'm gonna try
Speaker 2: my best to eat you alive to prove that you
Speaker 2: are the best. And otherwise I'm gonna eat you alive,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna get bored with you. You know, And
Speaker 2: me and my friends do this, Phil X and I
Speaker 2: and Richie Kotts and all those guitar player guys. We
Speaker 2: love each other and we respect each other. But when
Speaker 2: we get on that stage, man Philo embarrass me or
Speaker 2: I'll try my best to like, I'm not gonna be crappy.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna kill them, you know what I mean. It's like,
Speaker 2: I think there's competition, but up there, instead of finding competition,
Speaker 2: what they do sometimes is they surround themselves with people
Speaker 2: who worship them. And that's no good for anybody.
Speaker 1: But you were talking, I cut you off about these
Speaker 1: Indian As people say, but Native American productions Killers of
Speaker 1: the Flower Moon smoke signals reservation. You're gonna give me
Speaker 1: your take.
Speaker 2: On those, Yeah, I like. Okay, So Killers of the
Speaker 2: Flower Moon, let's say. You know, obviously it's like a
Speaker 2: powerful movie. You see the Injustice. Okay, there's another series
Speaker 2: that's really amazing you should watch and it's called Little Bird,
Speaker 2: and it's about how the nuns used to come in
Speaker 2: and take the kids away because they were let's find
Speaker 2: a better home so these kids have a better chance.
Speaker 2: You know. They was horrible. They were doing it into
Speaker 2: the eighties. I think, you know, they're you know, and
Speaker 2: these things are like a victim films, you know, and
Speaker 2: people need to know the history. So you have to
Speaker 2: make these victim films, but non native people who are
Speaker 2: gatekeepers that get to decide what shows get made. Oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like in spinal Tap when Artie Fluffkin says, Oh,
Speaker 2: kick my ass, it's my fault. Well, they're kind of
Speaker 2: like that. Oh, all white people are bad. We need
Speaker 2: to tell this story how we screwed you over, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you really watch Rumble, Rumble the co director
Speaker 2: Catherine Bainbridge, and they kept reaching for the negative because
Speaker 2: they were angry, and there was negative, There was racism,
Speaker 2: there was all this stuff. And I kept pushing for
Speaker 2: a film about heroes. I don't want to film about victims,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the films that get made, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and Rumble was the story of heroes. We really kept
Speaker 2: the victim thing out of it. You feel the victimness
Speaker 2: if you do it right, but you don't have to
Speaker 2: harp on it. And we don't want to be victims,
Speaker 2: you know, we want to be heroes. And a lot
Speaker 2: of these films that get made now are still victims.
Speaker 2: Oh you got your ass kicked, and it doesn't leave
Speaker 2: you feeling like anything's better, If anything that makes you
Speaker 2: feel like I'm trying to releaeve some guilt or some
Speaker 2: shit if I'm non native and I don't like that.
Speaker 2: Reservation Dogs was at least it had a lightness to
Speaker 2: it that was fun. And the kid, the Pharaoh, the
Speaker 2: young kid, he's got so much star power. I love him.
Speaker 2: He's doing a film right now in England. He texted
Speaker 2: me yesterday because, like you said, all the guys and
Speaker 2: all us native guys to know each Okay.
Speaker 1: Prior to this moment, I only knew you in email.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you now. You're incredibly endearing.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. I mean, you talk to me.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're You're the best. You're our best friend.
Speaker 1: We want to hang with you. You have any enemies,
Speaker 1: anybody dislike you.
Speaker 2: A lot of people hate me because you know, some
Speaker 2: people don't like I'm not you know. Maybe it sounds cocky,
Speaker 2: but I try just to be confident. I try to
Speaker 2: know who I am. I'm not usually the best diplomat,
Speaker 2: like if somebody's you know, I had the hardest time
Speaker 2: when we're when I was a kid, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how you did this being in a music business.
Speaker 2: But I go see your friend's Ben and I suck,
Speaker 2: and I'd have to lie to them and I and
Speaker 2: I feel like when I was lying to them, like hey, man,
Speaker 2: you guys are great, I feel like they were looking
Speaker 2: in my eyes and telling me you could see I'm lying.
Speaker 2: So one day my friend Melvin Brandon Junior is from
Speaker 2: den Rey Network, says to me, Oh, you don't lie
Speaker 2: to them, you say, And when they say, hey, what'd
Speaker 2: you think of the show? You say, and you guys
Speaker 2: were up there doing it. And it got me off
Speaker 2: the hook because it was positive. It didn't mean that
Speaker 2: I liked them, and I didn't have to lie, you know.
Speaker 2: So I got to tell you. You know, you print
Speaker 2: a lot of my letters. When I write write on
Speaker 2: some of the things you write about, which which some
Speaker 2: some of the guys around here are like, oh, your
Speaker 2: Bob's little little a little pal. You always post your letters,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, I think it's cool. And then
Speaker 2: you post my letters, man, because you know, it means
Speaker 2: maybe I'm saying something that makes sense to some people
Speaker 2: with some brains. You know, you don't know, you know, so,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I get shipped sometimes because you post my letters,
Speaker 2: and some of the people in the business, you know,
Speaker 2: we are more. So we call doll your bob's a
Speaker 2: little pet. I get some shit for that, just so
Speaker 2: you know, you make it.
Speaker 1: Sound like it was all an accident, but nothing's a
Speaker 1: fucking accident. There's a lot of desire, a lot of networking,
Speaker 1: and somehow you do it and don't look like you
Speaker 1: have sharp elbows. A lot of people they do it
Speaker 1: and you go, I can see him in that, and
Speaker 1: you get a negative feeling about him, but not from you.
Speaker 2: Maybe because I can actually put on the instrument deliver,
Speaker 2: or I can write the song. And I had publishing
Speaker 2: deals with Virgin with Polygrin. You know, you gotta do it.
Speaker 2: You don't just get those deals. You got to deliver.
Speaker 2: So maybe people can respect the fact that, you know
Speaker 2: that I produced a track with Don Woz who became
Speaker 2: the biggest producer you know, and I actually was a kid,
Speaker 2: you know, but not like I'm the greatest. But also
Speaker 2: I think all those a lot of people have those
Speaker 2: desires and that drive and the push and they just
Speaker 2: don't get lucky. I just think I got lucky. And
Speaker 2: you know how it is if you connect, if you
Speaker 2: fall into one thing once I did George Clinton, like,
Speaker 2: let's just say it wasn't George Clinton. Let's say it
Speaker 2: was David Cassidy or something, which still would have been
Speaker 2: a job and he would have paid me, and I
Speaker 2: could have played in Vegas. Well, that wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 2: George Clinton had so much credibility that it was George Clinton.
Speaker 2: You must be cool, okay. Keith Richards used to say,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a big thing that happened. One time.
Speaker 2: I got invited to Keith richards fiftieth birthday party before
Speaker 2: I knew him in New York. I was in New
Speaker 2: York City and walk in the door and it's very private,
Speaker 2: and the first guy I see is Bernard Fowler, who's
Speaker 2: like my brother. And Fowler looks me. He it was
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And then there's there's Clapton sitting there
Speaker 2: in Naomi Campbell and you know the whole thing, you
Speaker 2: know it is. And then I see Ivan Neville. Iven
Speaker 2: comes up gives me a big hug. Everything's cool. Keith
Speaker 2: Richards walks up, he shakes my hand, kind of gives
Speaker 2: me a hug and talks to me a bit and
Speaker 2: then he leads, and so I think I'm in. Keith
Speaker 2: likes me I'm in because you know, if Keith don't
Speaker 2: like you, there's nothing you can do. Man, it's gnarley,
Speaker 2: you know. And when I was playing with Jagger, I
Speaker 2: used to yell, Mick, tell me what Stone songs were
Speaker 2: playing because I don't want I don't want to not
Speaker 2: know it and play it wrong and have Keith want
Speaker 2: to pull his knife out and stab me, you know, so,
Speaker 2: but Keith so, Keith walks away. Later on I find
Speaker 2: out Keith goes back to Bernard Fowler and he says,
Speaker 2: who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool? The Fowler?
Speaker 2: You know, he's not a hype guy. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's cool. Later on I find out he goes to
Speaker 2: Ivan Neville, Who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool?
Speaker 2: Ivan never goes, yeah, he's my brother, He's cool. Then
Speaker 2: I got invited to sit at his table and you know,
Speaker 2: drink vodka. But you know, there's a thing about it
Speaker 2: that when you got to get in and you got it,
Speaker 2: you don't just get in and you can't be all bullshit,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. And maybe you got to
Speaker 2: know how to fight, you know what I mean. Maybe
Speaker 2: you got to know how to tell someone to fuck off.
Speaker 2: You know, and not be an ass kisser, but you
Speaker 2: got to be. You know, if you associate with the
Speaker 2: right kind of people, you you may not get rich
Speaker 2: or rise to the top, but you will get respect
Speaker 2: and and and when you lose that respect, like if
Speaker 2: I were have picked the wrong bands to play with. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. Richie Cootson one of my best friends,
Speaker 2: insanely great guitar player. Early on, he joined Poison when
Speaker 2: c c de Bill quick. Okay, that didn't turn out
Speaker 2: so good. They wrote a few hits and then he
Speaker 2: went on his own again. Years later, he gets a
Speaker 2: call to audition for Trent Resnor. You're Twiggy because Tweggy
Speaker 2: knows Richie's an incredible guitar player and incredible singer. Richie
Speaker 2: comes in auditions for him, blows Trent Resnor doesn't want
Speaker 2: him to come, but he comes, and he doesn't He
Speaker 2: does it as a favorite of Twiggy. He blows Trent
Speaker 2: Resnor's mind like he should because he's amazing. Trent Resner goes,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, he goes, I had no idea you
Speaker 2: were going to be this good. He goes, I want
Speaker 2: to hire you, he goes, but I can't think of
Speaker 2: what I'm gonna say the first time a magazine or
Speaker 2: somebody interviews me and asks, what made you hire the
Speaker 2: guy from poison so Richie couldn't get that gig. So
Speaker 2: sometimes you gave, You make a wrong move and you
Speaker 2: pay for it for a long time.
Speaker 1: Wow, you're really drop in wisdom here, Stevie. We could
Speaker 1: go on forever. Listen. You're a great guy, all incredible stories.
Speaker 1: I could literally talk to you all afternoon. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for taking this time with my audience.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Thank you, Bob's it was a pleasure and I'm
Speaker 2: glad I'm on your radar. Thank you until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Left, Sat