Speaker 1: I think it was probably a trying time for Andy
Speaker 1: sitting across from me, but he set up a little
Speaker 1: black and white TV in the kitchen for me, and
Speaker 1: the Yankees were on and I was the Yankees guy,
Speaker 1: and he put it on. He kept just he would
Speaker 1: walk over a couple hours and just walk up and
Speaker 1: just say, do you like Famous Amous cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You drop off a crook, can't walk away. Welcome to
Speaker 1: episode three ninety one. Sam Hollander. I was at there's
Speaker 1: a little driving Ranger in my house. I went too
Speaker 1: for like thirty minutes yesterday that my golf clubs and
Speaker 1: back at the car, had a little time to kill,
Speaker 1: and so I stopped it hit some balls, and I
Speaker 1: was listening to the Weezer song records, the new song
Speaker 1: I got records in my head and it's in my
Speaker 1: head every it I've got, And so Sam Hollander wrote
Speaker 1: that song and we talked about it coming up in
Speaker 1: a minute. But that's new Weezer. But I could list you,
Speaker 1: and I think I probably will, but I want to
Speaker 1: say he's got a book called twenty one Hit Wonder
Speaker 1: and you get it at Sam Hollander Songs dot Com,
Speaker 1: or you can search twenty one hit Wonder on Amazon.
Speaker 1: That being said, I felt like I could have done
Speaker 1: two to three hours with Sam. He just had a
Speaker 1: story about everything, from whose babysitter was, his parents, all
Speaker 1: the songs that he wrote, and I can list some
Speaker 1: of them here, Panic at the Disco, High Hopes, Fits
Speaker 1: in the Tantrums, Handclapp, Boys Like Girls, The Great Escape,
Speaker 1: Jim Class Heroes, he produces when a Cupid show called
Speaker 1: metro Stations Shake It. He's just got so much. He's
Speaker 1: got over twenty two US top forty hits, ten number ones,
Speaker 1: ten top fives, eighty seven top tens. Globally, his songs
Speaker 1: have streamed over five billion times. In twenty nineteen, held
Speaker 1: the number one position on the Billboard Rock Songwriters Chart
Speaker 1: for nine weeks, which was a year end record. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I liked the guy. You know, I always
Speaker 1: will kind of feel their energy and fully give that
Speaker 1: back to them so they feel comfortable. And what I
Speaker 1: liked about Sam was he's like, hey, man, what's up Sam?
Speaker 1: Hanging out with chilling. He's so dry sometimes I didn't
Speaker 1: know if he was joking or not. And then I
Speaker 1: just sit there and be like, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: say the next thing because I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: kidding or not. Like talking about the baham In when
Speaker 1: he worked with them, there's just a lot where I
Speaker 1: was I don't know if he's kidding, And then sometimes
Speaker 1: he wasn't kidding, especially the kids Bop stuff. Yeah, kids Bop.
Speaker 1: I was like, is this a joke? It turns out
Speaker 1: it wasn't a joke. So just a really cool story.
Speaker 1: I mean, Sam spent thirty years just kind of fighting
Speaker 1: through this songwriting and the rapping and the producing, and
Speaker 1: he put all this in a book and he's speaking
Speaker 1: in a lot of places, and he's donating all the
Speaker 1: money to musicians on call. It's a very inspiring story.
Speaker 1: It's a very entertaining story. And again Sam Hollandersongs dot
Speaker 1: Com or twenty one Hit Wonder that's the name of
Speaker 1: the book. You can buy it on Amazon. What was
Speaker 1: your main takeaway here, Mike with Sam that you can
Speaker 1: get it start later in life. Yeah, he didn't write
Speaker 1: his first number one till after he had failed doing
Speaker 1: other things hard. Then you know, there's a story. I
Speaker 1: never want to say too much in this part of
Speaker 1: it because it's so good. But there's one story about
Speaker 1: a tragedy happening like right when he's about to launch something.
Speaker 1: So if it wasn't him failing, it was like things
Speaker 1: happening around it that cause things not to go right.
Speaker 1: But then he hit it, and I hope you like it.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it a whole bunch. Here he is, and
Speaker 1: follow him on Instagram if you don't even want to
Speaker 1: see what his face looks like. I like to do
Speaker 1: that at Sam Hollander And here he is, Sam. How
Speaker 1: is your day today? Hey? Pretty good? Pretty glorious. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, here's my problem. The shirt. I'm more in
Speaker 1: the T shirt. I think a woman's shirt. This one.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it and then I was looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror and I was like, that's a woman shirt.
Speaker 1: So I put this on over the top, so you
Speaker 1: think I was at least kind of cool. It was
Speaker 1: up from your Zomba class. You know, that's the one
Speaker 1: class I haven't done. Zoba. Have you ever been to Zoomba?
Speaker 1: You know? Honestly, I don't want to make this awkward
Speaker 1: for you, but actually trademark the name Zimba. I actually
Speaker 1: created Zimba. You didn't know I am the forbidden dance.
Speaker 1: You didn't I trademark zoom bass. I mean you've done
Speaker 1: everything else right, man? Have you ever been to a
Speaker 1: zoomba class? Though? Um, I've actually witnessed a zumba class,
Speaker 1: but you haven't done it. Oh look at me? Have
Speaker 1: you done tybo back in the day? Can Tybo can
Speaker 1: say something true? Yeah? I actually had a song on
Speaker 1: a Tybo vhs Banks Billy Blanks. What song was that though? Um?
Speaker 1: It was called Supersonic Love, and the royalties from that
Speaker 1: would definitely paid for the bottle of water. You guys
Speaker 1: were nice enough to push them on directions. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a massive song they wanted to put in it. No, No,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a filler song. It was a
Speaker 1: song of like many of my other early releases, that
Speaker 1: was dropped by a record label, and I found a
Speaker 1: way to make five dollars off of it. So you know,
Speaker 1: when I was going through your entire catalog of songs
Speaker 1: you wrote and produced, and it's it's it's so many
Speaker 1: massive hits, and you know the song that I really
Speaker 1: liked of yours, that I felt like was gonna like
Speaker 1: and it's still this sometimes because they played a clip
Speaker 1: of it in at the Naum stadiums all the time.
Speaker 1: Is handclap. That's a fun little dud. Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: do a lot of the in the stadiums. I was
Speaker 1: a pioneer in jack Jams. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's a jock jam. Remember the Tommy Boy Jack Jams compilation. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I had jock Jam one in Foyee goal. Yes, I
Speaker 1: had jock Jam two. Are you ready for this? Do do? Do?
Speaker 1: Dot dot? And then it was just one to one
Speaker 1: to the other. I went. I actually sat in on
Speaker 1: the uh the commercial for jack Jams two. My friend
Speaker 1: Kennedy directed it, and uh I got to watch Michael
Speaker 1: Buffer do his thing in real time on a commercial,
Speaker 1: which was pretty cool because he does in the middle
Speaker 1: of the jock jams, even the single version when I
Speaker 1: was because I did pop radio for a long time,
Speaker 1: he would do the let's get ready to rumble? Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's like so handclap was my version of a jack jam.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't think it was necessarily constructed that way,
Speaker 1: but um, it's funny. I mean it really, it's still
Speaker 1: play it every supporting thing around the world and it's neat,
Speaker 1: especially in New York because I hear it, you know,
Speaker 1: at the Yankee Games, at the Nick Games, at the
Speaker 1: Neck Games. It's kind of fun. Do you ever stand
Speaker 1: up in a wave? That's what I would do when
Speaker 1: you that's played to stand up, be like, that's that's me.
Speaker 1: If I do that, then that's the moment they stopped
Speaker 1: playing it when they realize what I looked like. That
Speaker 1: would be at the end of it, when you when
Speaker 1: when I look at again your massive body of work,
Speaker 1: there are so many even micro hooks or catchy things
Speaker 1: that I think, Nana, Nana, that was a fun yeah
Speaker 1: that I'm not responsible for that. I just took a
Speaker 1: free ride on. But it's a nice little ditty. No. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the thing. One thing I would say is I
Speaker 1: am I love immediacy in music, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I think it's born out of the fact that
Speaker 1: I think most kids today have, you know, severely warped
Speaker 1: attention spans. So when I'm digging in, I'm really just
Speaker 1: trying to get it in the intro immediately. And you
Speaker 1: know you TikTok before it was TikTok. It's what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. I'm i gonna say two seconds. I'll put
Speaker 1: it like this. If I had been born in a
Speaker 1: previous decade, I would not have been able to make
Speaker 1: Emerson Lake on Palmer Records, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It would have been a very different wiring. So there's
Speaker 1: no twelve minute intro in my vocab. So I was
Speaker 1: listening yesterday to Derek and the Domino's Leila, and you know,
Speaker 1: the song plays and hello, it's not the Clapton unplugged,
Speaker 1: it's the you know, the original, you know. And at
Speaker 1: the end it's a five minute piano So yeah, culture
Speaker 1: every time. Look, man, I wish, I wish I could
Speaker 1: have been that guy. But true, I would have been
Speaker 1: the guy who would have said to them in their
Speaker 1: main man, let's dedit this thing now, letten, Let's make
Speaker 1: it to like two minutes and forty seconds. Joy. Yeah
Speaker 1: it was and then. And I can enjoy older songs
Speaker 1: from before even you know, we were making anything creatively
Speaker 1: it's jokes or music. I can enjoy the process and
Speaker 1: how culture was different then. And but even that outro
Speaker 1: in that song, I was like, were they high drugs? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was just it just continued on and and I've
Speaker 1: heard it a hundred times, but as in my car
Speaker 1: and I we have an old Bronco that just has
Speaker 1: to Russial radio only awesome, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the channels are, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: change it. So I'm gonna listen to this four minute
Speaker 1: outro of the entire Leila you gotta stick it out,
Speaker 1: which is the exact opposite of Nana No No, because
Speaker 1: immediately you got us with cupid chokehold you know what.
Speaker 1: That was the genius of traving McCoy and he was
Speaker 1: driving it and he once again he let me hitch
Speaker 1: onto his wagon on that one. But um no, it's
Speaker 1: just a really really I do like going for the
Speaker 1: jugular early on, you know, And maybe it's I have
Speaker 1: no sense of dynamic anymore and I'm just warped, But
Speaker 1: I really just like things just sort of from the
Speaker 1: from the initial onset. I just wanted to hit where
Speaker 1: did that come from? Or what music did you like?
Speaker 1: Or what was it that you didn't like so much
Speaker 1: that made you go we gotta grab him quick? Well?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, I grew up. I was
Speaker 1: the definitive ktel kid, you know, what I mean, I
Speaker 1: was like this, you know, late seventies early He's had
Speaker 1: all those k tail collections. And that's what I loved
Speaker 1: because it was it was so um. It wasn't genre
Speaker 1: specific for the most part, you know, so you could
Speaker 1: have Seals and Crofts next to David Gates next to um,
Speaker 1: you know, next to the Bellamy Brothers next to the
Speaker 1: Bags or some disco stuff or kiss. So that was
Speaker 1: my introduction of music. And the one thing I would
Speaker 1: say is, you know, it was usually the three minute
Speaker 1: edit on all those songs. They weren't going to let
Speaker 1: anything go extended. So I began to hear songs truly
Speaker 1: as like a three minute single. And I remember, I
Speaker 1: remember when I was twenty or so and Drama Rama hit,
Speaker 1: and I remember hearing, uh, you know, not Dramarama, what's
Speaker 1: the what's the Delamitri would roll to me right when
Speaker 1: hit Yeah, but that thing's like two minutes in two seconds, Rod,
Speaker 1: It's the fastest song in history. And what I realized
Speaker 1: about that song was one reason why I crushed it
Speaker 1: radio is because you could fit it into any slot
Speaker 1: going to a commercial. You know. It was like it
Speaker 1: was so short that it could work as a bumper
Speaker 1: to things. So then I just sort of got in
Speaker 1: that notion. So I guess I am TikTok pioneer Bobby
Speaker 1: what And that's what I thought, because everything goes quick,
Speaker 1: short attention span. You hit us quick. You give us
Speaker 1: what we're gonna need to know when that song's over,
Speaker 1: and if we don't listen to all of it, that's fine.
Speaker 1: If we do, we got it. I could do that
Speaker 1: with many of your songs and we can shake it
Speaker 1: Metro station shake. It's a zumba classic. Now see when
Speaker 1: you talk about zoom, but you lose me a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I think you're kidding because you only witnessed one.
Speaker 1: If you said tibout, I believe you because you probably
Speaker 1: saw a few more of those since you made five
Speaker 1: bucks off of it, and say a few more, Bobby.
Speaker 1: Growing up in New York, how much of your childhood
Speaker 1: to early adulthood were you there? Mostly? I was there
Speaker 1: every day. I mean the city was like until what age,
Speaker 1: you know? I was in the New York till I
Speaker 1: was the age of forty Okay, so I never left.
Speaker 1: So does that mean you're a billy Joel guy? I'm
Speaker 1: a Springsteen m Billy Joel Guy, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a rarity, you know what I mean, they're in the
Speaker 1: in the Tristate area. I do sometimes feel there's like
Speaker 1: a defined Mason Dixon between the two. Almost Mets Yankees,
Speaker 1: ye undred percent. I'm definitely Yankees, um, but for Billy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because Billie's thing. I love on
Speaker 1: the theatricality, and I love um the nods to um,
Speaker 1: you know, Sinatra and all the you know, sort of
Speaker 1: rappack kind of crooners, some the way he fused like
Speaker 1: theatrical crooner doom, you know. And then Springsteen. I love
Speaker 1: the word play. So Springsteen was a huge influence for
Speaker 1: me because I really really dug especially on Greetings from
Speaker 1: Asbury Park, that first record. Um, there's it's you know,
Speaker 1: he's pulling all this Dylan stuff, but there's just something
Speaker 1: about what he was doing melodically on that first record
Speaker 1: that blew my head. That's one of my first favorite records.
Speaker 1: So there had to be so much music around you,
Speaker 1: even if you didn't get to go to it. To
Speaker 1: just be living in New York City, I mean, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. There was no music
Speaker 1: around me, so anything I got had to be only
Speaker 1: from the radio or driving to get a tape which
Speaker 1: later turned into a CD. So it was like the
Speaker 1: nearest big venue hour and a half and it was
Speaker 1: little rock. Well, and it's another end every three months, right,
Speaker 1: you know? So was it important to whomever was raising
Speaker 1: you to make sure that you were cultured at all
Speaker 1: while living in New York? One thousand percent? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I was exposed to the arts early on my UM,
Speaker 1: I know the whole appeal to you, but my dad
Speaker 1: was a modern dancer and I know you're you're very
Speaker 1: well dashed in the modern and Dan, well, you're a
Speaker 1: champion dance. Um, so it's very very important to um.
Speaker 1: You know, my dad was a dancer and then he
Speaker 1: became an architect, but he was a modern He was
Speaker 1: a professional dancer kind of dancer. What he specialized in.
Speaker 1: He was with the Jose Lemone group doing modern dance
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. And how did he get started
Speaker 1: in that? He started dancing like eleven, was professional at
Speaker 1: seventeen toward the entire world. Broke every toe on both
Speaker 1: feet by the time he was twenty three, went back
Speaker 1: to Yale and became an architect. Do you remember him
Speaker 1: dancing at all? No, I wasn't okay, so you were
Speaker 1: not two hundred Yeah, jeez, man, But I didn't know
Speaker 1: if he's still like dance recreationally. He didn't dance recreationally,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's funny. He would sway around the room.
Speaker 1: He was an incredible guy. Man. He was just so
Speaker 1: rhythmic and cool. So when I listen to music and
Speaker 1: I sort of was less versed in my steps, I
Speaker 1: would watch him in the background listening to music, and
Speaker 1: the way he flowed was magical. Its beautiful. And my
Speaker 1: mom was an artist too, so I mom was what
Speaker 1: kind of artists? My mom was a heavy cat man.
Speaker 1: My mom was like really like that. She was an
Speaker 1: interior designer, but she came from the bottom of this thing.
Speaker 1: She just started at the very pit of this thing.
Speaker 1: And she became an expert on Victorian era furniture and
Speaker 1: which is a very strange sort of lane. And she
Speaker 1: really became like one of them foremost experts on it
Speaker 1: overnight and started doing apartments. But when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, she was sort of carrying our thing and
Speaker 1: she did Mick Jagger's apartment, Eve Saan Laurent's apartment, all
Speaker 1: these sort of studio fifty four era things. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I was a little guy. This is probably how
Speaker 1: I got a book deal. But when I was a
Speaker 1: little guy, you know, and I was always pleading for
Speaker 1: her to take me to record shops. One day she
Speaker 1: just said, I'm gonna rop you off at a babysitter's house.
Speaker 1: I gotta get rid of you. And she dropped me
Speaker 1: off at Andy Warhol's and Andy Warhole used to babysit
Speaker 1: me as a little kid, which is wild. I know
Speaker 1: that you wrote about that in your book. It's true.
Speaker 1: And the next question was is your book true or lies?
Speaker 1: And so you answered that it's true too. Yeah that's good.
Speaker 1: I like that because I we can keep going here act. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. Andy Warhole is a babysitter. Do you have
Speaker 1: memories of that or was it before you were No?
Speaker 1: I do, I do. Um, it happened through I would
Speaker 1: say three three, maybe a fourth time and then needs
Speaker 1: to come into our house too. Um. I have very
Speaker 1: distinct memories because this was somebody who probably wasn't that
Speaker 1: stoke to hang out with like a greasy little kid.
Speaker 1: With nose burgers running down his face, you know. So
Speaker 1: it was, Um, I think it was probably a trying
Speaker 1: time for Andy sitting across from me, but you know,
Speaker 1: he set up a little black and white TV in
Speaker 1: the kitchen for me, and it was a little little
Speaker 1: black and white TV and the Yankees were on and
Speaker 1: I was the Yankees guy and he put it on.
Speaker 1: He kept just he would walk over a couple hours
Speaker 1: and just walk up and just say, do you like
Speaker 1: Famous Miss Cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: drop off a cookie and walk away. It was about
Speaker 1: the extent of our frader in hissation. But it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Like, you know, your mom and dad are
Speaker 1: very interesting to me because so they pushed the arts.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when I played culture childhood, Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: played high school football, they thought literally like I had failed.
Speaker 1: How did they meet? Do you know? Um? I do know.
Speaker 1: My mom was widowed at um twenty three, and she
Speaker 1: was widowed and she was a single mom, and she
Speaker 1: met my dad through a friend in the city, just
Speaker 1: like casually, and so I assumed their their bond was
Speaker 1: something artistic, creative. It sounds like they both have that
Speaker 1: spirit inside of that they were incredible. Man. They were
Speaker 1: like both like they're both of their esthetics where at
Speaker 1: like a level I've never seen. They were both everything
Speaker 1: about them. You know. They lived in this little studio
Speaker 1: apartment in the city and they tricked this thing out
Speaker 1: to such an extent in like nineteen sixty nine or
Speaker 1: before I was born, but it was in magazines. It
Speaker 1: was featured because the design level of design was so
Speaker 1: sophisticated and cool, Like they were just like they were
Speaker 1: brilliant minds. So what do you remember as far as
Speaker 1: their parenting? What was a priority from them to you
Speaker 1: as for just being a good human? Like what were
Speaker 1: they trying to teach you? Well, I gotta be honestly,
Speaker 1: they were very They were very decent people. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the number one thing they wanted to teach
Speaker 1: me one was aspirational things that everything was obtainable. You know.
Speaker 1: I was blessed to have like a support network that
Speaker 1: other kids didn't have, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: and that's never been lost on me. Like when you
Speaker 1: have when you're entering this business and you have two
Speaker 1: parents who are cheering for you, hoping that you enter
Speaker 1: something or do something different or color outside the lines.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, you know, so I would say I
Speaker 1: was blessed with that, and then you know, they were
Speaker 1: just they were they were so kind and they're so gracious.
Speaker 1: In our town specifically, we lived an hour north in
Speaker 1: northern Westchester. And the way they approached everybody, they were
Speaker 1: so they were known. They'd just be like very generous,
Speaker 1: decent people, like they would talk to everybody. That's one
Speaker 1: thing that was stom me early on. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: have no fear of talking to people, look people in
Speaker 1: the eye, and like honestly just like be a human.
Speaker 1: You know, I ask all the childhood stuff because I
Speaker 1: grew into associopath. I was going to get there later
Speaker 1: about that specifically, but it's you know, when I'm reading
Speaker 1: about you and reading different parts of the book to Michael,
Speaker 1: was like, you gotta read this, you gotta read this
Speaker 1: that you didn't have it hit in two or thirty five,
Speaker 1: Is that accurate? That's completely well memory completely you had
Speaker 1: these parents is that you can do anything. They didn't
Speaker 1: really set boundaries for you. Accept the boundary of you
Speaker 1: can push the boundary as much as you'd like, hustle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just just go. Just hustle, and so you're eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen even up twenty four twenty five, like, where did
Speaker 1: you see your life going? What was the goal? What
Speaker 1: was the plan? Then? Well, the plan from day one
Speaker 1: it was I really, um, you know, I was a student.
Speaker 1: I was a student of records, right, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I collected records the way other kids collected baseball cards.
Speaker 1: Probably had a couple of thousand records about tom I
Speaker 1: was about twenty three twenty four because or flea markets
Speaker 1: in the city in the mid twenties and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four twenty fifth where you could buy Nickel records. So
Speaker 1: I used to stockpile Nickel records, and I just I
Speaker 1: was like a voracious collector. I was looking at the
Speaker 1: back and just trying to figure out who the songwriters were,
Speaker 1: who the producers were. I grew up up watching a
Speaker 1: lot of films, so I got really into screenwriting, right,
Speaker 1: So I nerded out over screenwriters like I wanted to
Speaker 1: be Albert Brooks or John Hughes are one of these cats,
Speaker 1: you know. And so with the songwriting, it was the
Speaker 1: same thing. And as far as my parents went, you know,
Speaker 1: I you know, they unleashed me into the city. You know.
Speaker 1: I went to school, I dropped out. I went to
Speaker 1: three colleges and two semesters, which I think is pretty
Speaker 1: unheard of, and I ended up ended up claw in
Speaker 1: the city. But I really did have one, one singular goal,
Speaker 1: and that was I wanted to write with artists and
Speaker 1: really just be that voice in the room who sort
Speaker 1: of directed the movie a little bit, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, who wrote the script and sort of. Um
Speaker 1: it was a trick I learned from Nol Rodgers down
Speaker 1: the road, but I really was I was early in
Speaker 1: my head, that was in my wiring, which was to
Speaker 1: constantly you try to write the sequel to whatever any artist,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if they're unknown or they've just put up
Speaker 1: their first song or whatever. I'm creating the next movie,
Speaker 1: like where would it go, what's the pivot? What's weekend?
Speaker 1: Bernie's too, you know, And that's what I started doing.
Speaker 1: And the problem was this guy named Kurt Cobain came along,
Speaker 1: this jerk, and he wrote his own songs, and so
Speaker 1: it became super I was twenty and suddenly was super
Speaker 1: inherently uncool to collaborate with an out guy outside of
Speaker 1: the room, you know, previously. You go back to Appetite
Speaker 1: for Destruction for G and R or any of those
Speaker 1: Eagles records, you know, and there's co writers all over
Speaker 1: these things. Carol King wrote it's too late with Tony Stern,
Speaker 1: you know. So there was a place for that person
Speaker 1: to be in the room who sort of is that
Speaker 1: other sort of appendant creatively but isn't part of the group.
Speaker 1: And suddenly it wasn't in vogue anymore. It wasn't cool,
Speaker 1: And so I had to claw my way through the
Speaker 1: city at that time, and I had to eat. So
Speaker 1: I Bobby. I was a rapper and I got a
Speaker 1: record Deals rapper. I don't know if you're kidding, because
Speaker 1: I also had a record Deals rapper. I did. My
Speaker 1: name is Captain Caucasian. What was your name? Um, we're
Speaker 1: gonna find out. Um, this is the This could be
Speaker 1: a Bobby cast trivia question for anyone who writes in
Speaker 1: but nobody writes it. Okay, that's a problem. But I did.
Speaker 1: I did get a record deal with Select Records, which
Speaker 1: is Atlantics hip hop records. So they had at the
Speaker 1: time they had um Kid and play Cha brock utfo
Speaker 1: Kidden player on top of the World, year was this.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is nineteen ninety one. Okay, so
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys have been around for a little bit. Beast
Speaker 1: He's been around. Third Base had come out and they
Speaker 1: were big Goes a Weasel, right, Yeah, that was big
Speaker 1: in the city. And then and then Filling It was
Speaker 1: where I was shopping when Vanilla Vanilla Ice came out
Speaker 1: And it was funny because Vanilla ICE's label tried to
Speaker 1: sign me. They flew me down a Plano, Texas Old
Speaker 1: Tracks Records, and I remember um pivotal moment in my youth.
Speaker 1: I'm probably twenty years old maybe yeah, I just probably
Speaker 1: turned twenty. And it took me into a closet and
Speaker 1: it was all the Vanilla Ice merch, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Vanilla's tooth braces, hunchboxes, you know whatever. It
Speaker 1: was like. It was so it was so um dystopian,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, I really like I've entered into
Speaker 1: like a universe I could never understand. But I made
Speaker 1: this record, I got signed, I had a video out,
Speaker 1: and then I got dropped within two weeks. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, what's the record. It's called Notorious Big, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of it. Then I have heard of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but after my failed hip, what was wrong
Speaker 1: with the record? Um? I made it myself. So the
Speaker 1: biggest mistake was I got a record deal and immediately
Speaker 1: Select tried to hook me up with producer so Bob
Speaker 1: Power wand to work with me, and he had done
Speaker 1: he had engineered and um he had engineered and mixed
Speaker 1: all those trip called Quest records. And then they hooked
Speaker 1: me with these guys track masters who would go on
Speaker 1: to do all of the Diddy and Mace stuff and
Speaker 1: getting Jiggy with it and all that nineties big sample
Speaker 1: heavy hip out. These guys all wanted to work with me,
Speaker 1: and I of course turned it all down to make
Speaker 1: my own record because I was very headstrong. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to collaborate with anybody, and I made the worst
Speaker 1: album ever recorded. So I made this terrible recording and
Speaker 1: I lost my record deal. By the time I would
Speaker 1: it came out, it was it was shell for a year.
Speaker 1: They finally like threw it against the wall and then
Speaker 1: Bobby decided to start rapping with a German accent because
Speaker 1: I think that was my next pivot. So I felt
Speaker 1: like I was doing cultural appropriation of I was an
Speaker 1: early cultural appropriator. So I started and cultural appropriation I
Speaker 1: did so. I started rapping with a German accent and
Speaker 1: I did that, Um, why was a good idea? Euro
Speaker 1: dance was beginning explode. Remember the Burman Brothers are different person.
Speaker 1: Yeah so you did so? You did? You had been
Speaker 1: gentleman Parterson, you'd that's a terrible German accent, but it
Speaker 1: d'd be like, oh I am German. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you ever watch uh, Whoopie Goldberg and Eddie,
Speaker 1: she's coaching the Knicks. She's angry Whoopie yelling at the knicks.
Speaker 1: Um my song plays, She's yelling at a knick and
Speaker 1: it's in the background. You can hear my weird German
Speaker 1: flow in the background, a little pronounced. But um, that
Speaker 1: didn't work. Hang tight the Bobby Cast. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. Then, um, I started
Speaker 1: making beats, and so that's when I started doing lots
Speaker 1: of programming and making beats. And well, your beats good
Speaker 1: on your record though you talk about you made your
Speaker 1: own records. I did. My beats were terrible. My records.
Speaker 1: So then I you know, back then, I actually worked
Speaker 1: with a programmer on it. But then when I started
Speaker 1: making beats, actually got an sp twelve of them. My
Speaker 1: beats were all right. I could actually I could do it,
Speaker 1: and I sort of had the tricks of the era
Speaker 1: of all that sort of tune hip hop stuff. But
Speaker 1: do you think, though, that that bad record bad? You
Speaker 1: said it, not me though. The failure there, And I
Speaker 1: guess the point that I'm hope being that I'm leading
Speaker 1: us to is that there was a lot of learning
Speaker 1: that happened from that failure. The best thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened to me, right, failure. See, the reason I wrote
Speaker 1: this book is because the failure defined me. You know.
Speaker 1: I read every entertainment bow for the most part. You
Speaker 1: know of my peers, certainly songwriter books, etcetera. And a
Speaker 1: lot of them are humble brags, you know, and I
Speaker 1: understand it. It's part of the game for me. What
Speaker 1: was interesting about my story was the first fifteen years
Speaker 1: of the career, not the second half. The second half's
Speaker 1: been magical, but it's not why I wrote a book.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book because the stuff at the front
Speaker 1: end was so fascinating. Because I made every possible tactical
Speaker 1: and creative error you could ever make, and I always
Speaker 1: learned from the lessons. So I make my first record
Speaker 1: and it's a colossalness. You know, I learned I need
Speaker 1: to be a collaborator. I might not be good enough
Speaker 1: on my own to pull off what I think when
Speaker 1: I'm hearing in my head, I'm not able to execute.
Speaker 1: So then it was like speed dating. Years of speed
Speaker 1: dating collaborators to try to find like the magic fit,
Speaker 1: and so everything was just like this weird learning curve.
Speaker 1: I started doing music for commercials and music for industrials, Garnier,
Speaker 1: Mabel and all the stuff. And basically then I started
Speaker 1: creating my own groups because I figured if I created
Speaker 1: the group, they'd have no choice but to sing my songs.
Speaker 1: Quality theory, let me fuck it on paper. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: the first five albums I made were major I got.
Speaker 1: You know, my manager M Brett was at the time,
Speaker 1: was able to get five major label deals for artists
Speaker 1: over a two year period, which was unheard of. We
Speaker 1: had nothing, We had never done anything. I'd never done anything,
Speaker 1: and um, I had the distinction of the first five
Speaker 1: albums I ever made weren't released, And you go, how
Speaker 1: does it work? Well? Because there's no Internet, no Spotify, nothing.
Speaker 1: This is not you know, so no iTunes. So back
Speaker 1: then it's still physical CDs and as you know, like
Speaker 1: a bunch of records they'd signed thirty x a year
Speaker 1: or whatever, but a couple were tax write offs. Mine
Speaker 1: were always the write off. So the first five albums
Speaker 1: didn't come out. The sixth, finally is the one that
Speaker 1: breaks through. Um. It was a group called Bad Ronald
Speaker 1: that took out an ad in the Village Voice in
Speaker 1: New York cast this thing we went to UM we
Speaker 1: recorded at Henson Um in LA and I had a
Speaker 1: panic attack in the middle of it because I knew
Speaker 1: this was my last shout in this business. And why
Speaker 1: did you think that was all? I shot that well,
Speaker 1: because when you have five albums, it's such a weird
Speaker 1: number to go, well, my six short certainly isn't gonna
Speaker 1: because you know what, the phone just wasn't ringing, got
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like, no one's taking my calls.
Speaker 1: And I think I was somebody who generally people rooted for.
Speaker 1: But you know, man, it's like at some point you're
Speaker 1: like a you know you're a draft pick. At some
Speaker 1: point you know you're gonna get cut. Your stock isn't there,
Speaker 1: and that's where I was at, and so I m
Speaker 1: I was just at the very bottom of this thing.
Speaker 1: And we make this album and the floodgates open, and
Speaker 1: I have a song on MTV right and it's the
Speaker 1: first song ever, bad Ronald, Let's begin song on MTV,
Speaker 1: most magical feeling in the world, crying, first song, first
Speaker 1: song ever literally in a video, because up to that
Speaker 1: the only TV usage I had was background music in
Speaker 1: a real world Seattle, That's true. And so if you
Speaker 1: have this thing and on the night of the record releases,
Speaker 1: you remember, you know, record store releases were Tuesdays, so
Speaker 1: the Monday night before it, most record stores stay open
Speaker 1: to midnight, and you'd have record release Monday nights, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And so all throughout the city,
Speaker 1: like whatever. You were a fan of a New York city,
Speaker 1: those people will congregate for the record release of that record.
Speaker 1: You need to go to the record stourace. So our
Speaker 1: record was this It was the easy Rider helmet from
Speaker 1: the movie American Flag, and it was displayed at fourteenth
Speaker 1: and Broadway in the Virgin Mega store and we had
Speaker 1: the flat on the corner of Broadway sky High. It
Speaker 1: was the coolest thing I've ever seen, right, So we
Speaker 1: went to take pictures there directly before. It was the
Speaker 1: most magical feeling. I was so excited, and we were
Speaker 1: there at midnight and I went to bed next morning.
Speaker 1: We woke up of September eleventh, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: and as I ran down the street, I watched the
Speaker 1: towers fall from Washington Square Park around the corner. And
Speaker 1: then when I ran uptown and all these people are
Speaker 1: running towards me covered in soot, and all these people
Speaker 1: are screaming looking for family members that are all congregating
Speaker 1: in Union Square. So the press trucks are there and
Speaker 1: the press start photographing, and the city, you know, all
Speaker 1: the news trucks are photographing our album cover with people
Speaker 1: covered in white dust past the American flag. So um,
Speaker 1: it was the most harrowing, just awful day obviously my life.
Speaker 1: And you know, I never went back to that store
Speaker 1: for two and a half years, and I didn't fly
Speaker 1: for two years. And Bad Ronald were dropped within three
Speaker 1: weeks because their record was just like loud, abrasive, sort
Speaker 1: of raunchy hip hop and with rock hip hop, you know,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't what people wanted on September twelfth, they
Speaker 1: wanted Norah Jones, you know, so that was the end
Speaker 1: for me. So I had the phone stop ringing, and
Speaker 1: I had to take a side hustle. So I started
Speaker 1: making beats on kids pop records. That's not I'm serious,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm pausing here. Serious. So when you
Speaker 1: say making beats, so you're how about this, I wasn't
Speaker 1: even producing. I was the drum programmer. So you're making
Speaker 1: as close to as possible, like the real version, but
Speaker 1: a little softer version of the songs that family friendly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you get that job? Gary Phillips was a
Speaker 1: guitar player I'd used. He had done session work. He
Speaker 1: actually did the entire Bad Ronald record. He was amazing.
Speaker 1: He had produced a singer Songwriana Michael Tolture, a record
Speaker 1: that had done that didn't really happen, and he'd become
Speaker 1: my session guy, and he got the gig as the
Speaker 1: main producer for kids while he still is. And he
Speaker 1: knew that I was having a hard time, and he
Speaker 1: knew that my phone had stopped ringing and I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna quit. So he gave me, like he started throwing
Speaker 1: me a little big. He's like, hey, do the Beyonce
Speaker 1: crazy and love kids, Bob, And as I always say,
Speaker 1: that's my hot beat on that man. So in casey
Speaker 1: tonight want to do the forbidden Mamba to that thing,
Speaker 1: I got you, it's my beat. So when did you
Speaker 1: start to re establish, even within yourself, who you were. Well,
Speaker 1: I met a guy who changed my life. I met
Speaker 1: a guy named Jonathan Daniel. You know a couple of
Speaker 1: pivotal things. One and one Danny to say is even
Speaker 1: in the midst of all the failure and futility I had.
Speaker 1: The first thing that really changed my life was I
Speaker 1: met Carol King, and Carol King took an interest in me,
Speaker 1: and Karl did just meet. I brought her in on
Speaker 1: one of these records to sing a record that was
Speaker 1: never released, a female ours named Tarsha Viga and Urca,
Speaker 1: and she was like an MC and it was once
Speaker 1: again acoustics like sort of like a vibe acoustic hip
Speaker 1: hop record. And I brought her in and I, you know,
Speaker 1: they wanted arca. I wanted to feature on the record,
Speaker 1: and they were suggesting in there and people of that era,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of neo soul, and I suggested Carol
Speaker 1: King and Brian Maloof was at NR and he had
Speaker 1: a relationship with her camp And two days later she
Speaker 1: came down the studio to hang out with us, and
Speaker 1: she sat across from us and she's looking at Tarsha
Speaker 1: and she said, Tarsha, I love what you do lyrically.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. I love the nuances blah blah,
Speaker 1: and Tarsha God bless her looked at me and said, well,
Speaker 1: he writes it. I don't write the stuff he writes it.
Speaker 1: So next thing, you know, me and Carol and my
Speaker 1: boy Duke, we locked the door for like you know,
Speaker 1: over a year. We probably wrote ten or twelve songs
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, and we just kept it was
Speaker 1: a masterclass. It was like the first person and specifically
Speaker 1: for me, it was the first person who really identified
Speaker 1: something in me beyond the fact that I was mildly amusing,
Speaker 1: you know, and she uh, we did this thing and
Speaker 1: we ended up writing and producing the title track of
Speaker 1: the last album she ever made. It was the single
Speaker 1: the title track. It was a big gap commercial with
Speaker 1: her and her daughter as a song called Love Makes
Speaker 1: the World. And I had a Carol King song, so
Speaker 1: it was weird as I had five unreleased albums had
Speaker 1: a Carol King song and then you know, obviously you
Speaker 1: know my Baha men work right, so you do and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that too. Yeah that was big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got we got bahamen to come in a minute
Speaker 1: with the Carol King and you know when that's one
Speaker 1: of the big headlines that you read about you. Yeah, yeah, first,
Speaker 1: you know, Carol King the first big breakthrough. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if the breakthrough was that, as you're writing these songs,
Speaker 1: did she and maybe didn't need it, but did she
Speaker 1: give you a kind of a reintroduction to your confidence? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's just you know what was like I entered the
Speaker 1: building as the fan first um ilays want to work
Speaker 1: with all the real building cats, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So the notion that somebody so esteemed could find something
Speaker 1: in my writing that was a that offset all the
Speaker 1: failure to me because at least I felt like I
Speaker 1: was getting grandmothered into something. So then she told Paul
Speaker 1: Williams about me, and Paul Williams was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite writers ever. I was a massive Paul Bliams fan
Speaker 1: because he was like me. He was a lyricist and
Speaker 1: he was sort of kookie. And so suddenly me and
Speaker 1: Paul and Carol and Duca writing songs together, right, and
Speaker 1: she just she was she was. She was an advocate
Speaker 1: for me, and I desperately needed it, and so that
Speaker 1: gave me some currency in my head. And then but this,
Speaker 1: you know, a guy named Jonathan Daniel m. Change is
Speaker 1: the guy who really changed my career. He was as
Speaker 1: a manager and you know, he's about, you know, eight
Speaker 1: years older than me something like that. He'd been hair
Speaker 1: bands in the eighties at the same the same kind
Speaker 1: of trajectory though, like just dancing around all these scenes
Speaker 1: and then you know, like in the way I was
Speaker 1: dancing around scenes in New York City but never really
Speaker 1: having his own moment, that breakout moment. He was you know,
Speaker 1: his band was called Candy, it was and it was
Speaker 1: Jonathan and Gilby Clark, and then Gilbey Clark joins GNR then,
Speaker 1: you know, and he then became a publisher. He started
Speaker 1: he was running the Cures publishing company in the US,
Speaker 1: that sort of rance course, and he starts a management
Speaker 1: company called Crush Management, and he started reaching out to
Speaker 1: me and he would get advanced copies of all these
Speaker 1: albums I was making that weren't getting released, and he
Speaker 1: would take me out to launch and commit these pep talks,
Speaker 1: and he understood what I was pulling from, right, So
Speaker 1: he'd sit across from me and say, oh, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: You're going for like a bones how Turtles thing on this,
Speaker 1: or you're going for a love and spoonful thing on this.
Speaker 1: So you're going for a Dennis Lambert thing, or you
Speaker 1: know these idols, all these songwriters that idoled like a
Speaker 1: you know, like an idolized like a nerd, you know.
Speaker 1: And he was the only person who understood my references.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, look, he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm on the precipice of something, but I have a
Speaker 1: whole way of bands. They're pop punk, and this is
Speaker 1: growing into a scene, and we're gonna need somebody who,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe an adult in the room who understands
Speaker 1: song about a step more with a few of the
Speaker 1: act and they were these little indie records, no budget,
Speaker 1: fueled by Ramen. Records were run out of Jacksonville, you know,
Speaker 1: a dorm at Gainesville, originally with John Janet and I
Speaker 1: signed up and the first record ever made you know,
Speaker 1: so understand now I'm coming out of It ended up
Speaker 1: being seven albums. I made major label albums Real Budgets, right,
Speaker 1: Real Budgets, and first five aren't released. The sixth comes
Speaker 1: out in September eleventh, and the seventh was a group
Speaker 1: called the Cooler Kids that DreamWorks folded in the as
Speaker 1: the record came out, so they were folded in in
Speaker 1: our scope and they were dropped. So I made all
Speaker 1: these major label records for Budgets, and then suddenly here
Speaker 1: I am, and I'm pitched these records for you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand, all in for everything, mixing, mastering, production,
Speaker 1: you know, sample clearances if they use you know, so
Speaker 1: I'm losing money in these things. That first record was
Speaker 1: called The Gym Class Heroes, and I make this record,
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, and I have my first
Speaker 1: number one hit. So I went from having absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: in that thirty five have a number one hit? Does
Speaker 1: it happen like on the movie show where you get
Speaker 1: no calls? And didn't you have a number one hit?
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, the phones like I
Speaker 1: don't anybody bringing, anybody wants to work with you? One
Speaker 1: thousand percent? What was interesting about it was one thing
Speaker 1: Jonathan Jonathan Daniel is based on my guru. He's one
Speaker 1: of my best friends, but he's also been my guru
Speaker 1: and I'm with Crush Management now too. But one thing
Speaker 1: he told me early on is he said, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily need to take all the calls. You need an
Speaker 1: infrastructure about three or four people in this business who
Speaker 1: believe in you, who've always been very loyal to you,
Speaker 1: and as long as they're in the position to make
Speaker 1: some sort of moves that you can just work with
Speaker 1: those people. And that's what I chose to do. So
Speaker 1: there was Steve Greenberg at es Curve. There was James
Speaker 1: Deaner when he was at Doctone, you know, be Interscope.
Speaker 1: There was you know, the Crush guys and Pete Gambarg
Speaker 1: and people like. There were people who just like constantly
Speaker 1: gave me work. So I didn't have to take all
Speaker 1: that incoming. And it's great for my psyche because I
Speaker 1: think it's a massive mistake that writers or producers make
Speaker 1: when they finally enter the zeitgeist, you know, because you
Speaker 1: just get so seduced by it, you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm getting all these calls blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: but you don't realize that you're fly by night to
Speaker 1: these other people. You know, that's a transient sort of
Speaker 1: relationship with the people who sort of rode with you
Speaker 1: from the beginning will stick with you through the lows.
Speaker 1: Because truthfully, for every sort of solid couple of you know,
Speaker 1: pockets where I'm really killing it, then of course there's
Speaker 1: going to be a fall. It happens. We all just
Speaker 1: roller coaster up and down. We were talking about before
Speaker 1: you got here doing the intro for this which, by
Speaker 1: the way, the book twenty one hit Wonder, which we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, and you write it, and you're you're
Speaker 1: donating the proceeds to every reason I call right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So every penny from my end from this book, from
Speaker 1: inception goes to musicians on call and all my speaking
Speaker 1: gigs too. So I've been torn around the country on
Speaker 1: my own time. I went to been a thirty university
Speaker 1: so far, five high schools. I'm gonna get up to fifty.
Speaker 1: And I've done you know, everything from a General Modus
Speaker 1: convent in Last Tuesday to you know, Music Business College's convention,
Speaker 1: the Media Convention in Las Vegas on Friday. Every penny
Speaker 1: that I raised goes to musicians on Call and why
Speaker 1: And I said that as someone who was on the
Speaker 1: board for a while, and I know he was very
Speaker 1: you've been involved in it. Well, the long and short
Speaker 1: of it is, I knew the gentleman who started it
Speaker 1: when we were all in our twenties, and I didn't
Speaker 1: really get involved. And then when my dad was in
Speaker 1: his last days, he was at a Mount Sina he
Speaker 1: was in a cancer word of Mount SINAI and I
Speaker 1: just lost my mom and now my dad's really sick,
Speaker 1: and I'm in a pretty dark space. And I walk
Speaker 1: up there and I hear, like I hear a man
Speaker 1: singing in the hallway. He's kind of warming up. And
Speaker 1: I walk out. It's like an eighty year old cat
Speaker 1: with a big, bushy beard and acoustic guitar and he's
Speaker 1: walking into a room to play for an elderly woman
Speaker 1: in the next room. And so I waited till he's completed,
Speaker 1: and I took him aside. I said, like, where do
Speaker 1: you know? Who are you? He said, I'm with musicians
Speaker 1: on call. And literally my face froze because I had,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd always wanted to get involved, and I
Speaker 1: felt like this was this weird, divine sort of religious experience.
Speaker 1: So I immediately signed on joining joined the advisory board.
Speaker 1: And then we have this Christmas group. It's me and
Speaker 1: Kevin Griffin, Mark McGrath. It's a bunch of us, Lisa
Speaker 1: Loebe and we just thing called Band of Merrymakers. And
Speaker 1: so we gave proceeds to it, and we started playing
Speaker 1: in the hospitals and like doing the workshops, and I
Speaker 1: was doing writing clinics like with kids who were in
Speaker 1: really tough shape, and it um is the most valuable
Speaker 1: work I've ever done. I figured, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of charities that get a ton of shine and
Speaker 1: have more financial resources, and I felt, well, if I
Speaker 1: could do anything to help, it was probably it was
Speaker 1: worth it. The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This
Speaker 1: is the Bobby Cast. When you speak at any other things,
Speaker 1: you said, a college, a convention, bunch executives, what's your
Speaker 1: one story that you know is going to light the
Speaker 1: room of people are gonna love it. They're going to
Speaker 1: be entertained. You may twist and turn on him a
Speaker 1: little bit, but you know that's your money story. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'll be The truth is I'm walking money, So I
Speaker 1: know that's why I'm asking you, like, what's your what's
Speaker 1: your antidote that you're like, this is the one I
Speaker 1: want to be known, not not what song did you
Speaker 1: write or produce? But what's your one antidote that you
Speaker 1: want to be known for? All right? You're ready? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right? So, um, I really think the one direction
Speaker 1: one lands a lot because kids like Harry styles so um,
Speaker 1: very quickly, I'm sitting at coffee shop in La. It's raining,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, everybody in La is scared of rain,
Speaker 1: so they're all on top of each other, and there's
Speaker 1: there's a meeting going on behind me, and it's a
Speaker 1: publisher pitching a writer and I recognize that's beca tishker
Speaker 1: is a huge manager and publisher. And she's she's pitching
Speaker 1: the Swedish guy and he's got very thick cent, very
Speaker 1: thick coccent, you know, and she's like, you know, so
Speaker 1: you're not doing your band anymore, blah blah blah. You
Speaker 1: know you're starting to write now, you're doing you're writing
Speaker 1: now blah blaha. Yes, I'm beginning to write them blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. For some reason, I turn around and I
Speaker 1: look at the sexy fella and I realized that it's
Speaker 1: Peter Spence and the guitarist and the Cardigans. And the
Speaker 1: Cardigans for me were mine er van, you know, really,
Speaker 1: Cardigans were my favorite band of the night. Love me,
Speaker 1: love me, say that should love me. For those that
Speaker 1: want to hear it perfectly, sing back, well the way,
Speaker 1: it's perfect, thank you yeah um, and so that I'm
Speaker 1: literally fanboy and this guy. I interrupt their conversation because
Speaker 1: I have no filter, and we kick it and she's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you guys should write together. It be
Speaker 1: such a great fit. And you know, I'm gonna bring
Speaker 1: I'll add my writer ko Jack, who's a track guy.
Speaker 1: Cool ko Jack, and the three you guys should write,
Speaker 1: I said, great. So we show up and secretly I'm
Speaker 1: thinking we're gonna write a Cardigans song. And this is
Speaker 1: like my my, my wish fulfilment, you know. And I
Speaker 1: show up at the studio and these guys are these
Speaker 1: guys are real pop guys. I'm not a real pop guy.
Speaker 1: I'm quirky. I'm more of a rock guy who sort
Speaker 1: of just has pop leanings, you know, And I show up.
Speaker 1: These guys are like, I'm like, so, let's dig in.
Speaker 1: Let's do something really vibeing cardigans and Feter's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not doing cardigans anymore. So wow, So
Speaker 1: we we we said what should we do? We said,
Speaker 1: let's write a song for one direction. Let's try that.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what that meant, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew what makes you beautiful? That that was the
Speaker 1: extent of my knowledge. I thought it was an incredible single,
Speaker 1: but this wasn't my forte. So I went outside and Bobby,
Speaker 1: I got high, like I do in these situations, smoked
Speaker 1: the reefer, and uh. I went outside and I just
Speaker 1: started writing these words. I write these words, and I
Speaker 1: write an entire lyric and I'm bring it inside. These
Speaker 1: guys have no idea what it's gonna land, you know.
Speaker 1: And fifteen minutes I'm quick, you know, and I'm bringing
Speaker 1: in and the guy started singing, and he's got the
Speaker 1: Swedish accent, you know, very thick. He's like, duh, you
Speaker 1: remember somewhere all nine. I want to go back there
Speaker 1: every night. And when he's singing, I'm thinking, man, this
Speaker 1: is this is like, this is like a Fellini movie. Man,
Speaker 1: this is not gonna this is not gonna stick, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, we finished this thing, finished the song, and
Speaker 1: I thought a zero percent chance of landing. But I
Speaker 1: was high and we you know, eat Thai food and
Speaker 1: they were nice guys, had a beer, and then I
Speaker 1: went home. The next day, they like, we're getting texts
Speaker 1: from Simon Cowell and getting texts from Max Martin and
Speaker 1: Doctor Luke and everyone's like rock me Equal Smash. So
Speaker 1: secretly I'm like, oh my god, what have I been
Speaker 1: doing my life? Man? Because I've spent my life now
Speaker 1: at this point, I've worked with, you know, everyone from
Speaker 1: you know, I would say, like Train and dawtry to
Speaker 1: you know, Carol, you know, Tom Jones, to a million
Speaker 1: fun bands with funny t shirts and funny haircuts, and
Speaker 1: thinking myself, why do I have to work with these
Speaker 1: like soul sucking artists when I could just literally get
Speaker 1: high and write like these little gibberish words and it lands,
Speaker 1: you know, So immediately the three of us become like
Speaker 1: a reading writing configuration. Right, It's me Co, Jack and Peter,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna We're gonna be the next writing team,
Speaker 1: you know, in La, and I've just moved La. Dudes,
Speaker 1: I'm new to all of this. You know. I'm from
Speaker 1: a very different thing in New York. And suddenly it's
Speaker 1: like teams in middle but you know, and I'll start
Speaker 1: digging in and we write for thirty days straight. We
Speaker 1: write the thirty worst songs ever written. And the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is, I'm the problem, not those guys. Those guys
Speaker 1: are really good, but they're dialed in. They're like, let's
Speaker 1: do Selena Gomez today. I don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I'm sitting there and going, oh,
Speaker 1: cool man, I'm gonna write like a Smith song, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm writing some Morrissey stuff. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, no,
Speaker 1: this isn't landing. It makes no sense. It's not logical.
Speaker 1: I'm like, but it is. It's deep, you know. So
Speaker 1: you can see the novelties wearing off. I'm flying back
Speaker 1: to Boston, right and I'm on a plane to Boston
Speaker 1: from LA and you know, Peter sends me a voice
Speaker 1: note and now he's cutting my verbal lungs because it's
Speaker 1: now he's giving me a lyric and it says, you
Speaker 1: must sing I got the got the goal I got
Speaker 1: the gotta gotta and he's like, all these gottas right,
Speaker 1: And I'm on the plane and I'm literally sitting in
Speaker 1: this seat and I'm gonna sweat. I'm so angry. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why is he making me sing gottas? I don't want
Speaker 1: to sing gattas. I want my own words on this melody.
Speaker 1: And so I text him in the plane. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: it has to be gotta you, gotta gotta you kept
Speaker 1: saying that back and forth. The weirdest exchange, one of
Speaker 1: the things where like, how are we adults? And this
Speaker 1: is what we get paid for, you know? And I
Speaker 1: finally at the last text backfarth A, Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't feel this man. Those guys never worked with me
Speaker 1: ever again. Okay, now here's the only problem. Driving my
Speaker 1: kid to school a year later, and I'm listening to
Speaker 1: kiss in La and Ariana grounds love me Harder, comes
Speaker 1: on you gotta gotta love me harder, and I heard
Speaker 1: the gottas and I hadn't heard gotta in a chorus
Speaker 1: like this repeated, and I just turned to my daughter.
Speaker 1: She's like six or seven. It makes by seven or eight,
Speaker 1: And I was like, can you just type something into
Speaker 1: my phone, just type writer Ariana gron love me Harder,
Speaker 1: Peter's funds And so you know, I've played that one wrong,
Speaker 1: but that was my only fay in the one direction
Speaker 1: and straight a hip hop stuff, and obviously it's probably
Speaker 1: not what I do best. You know a song I
Speaker 1: love as playing it on my radio show just a
Speaker 1: couple weeks ago. It's a new Weezer song Records. That's
Speaker 1: a fun duty And again it's so now that I've
Speaker 1: spoken with you and kind of hear the macro version
Speaker 1: of what you're about. Even that song starts with what
Speaker 1: that song is us. And when you talk about how
Speaker 1: you perceive music and you want to get to what
Speaker 1: to get too fast? I think old songs like Sweet Emotion.
Speaker 1: It starts right Aaron Smith. Sweet Emotion starts with a chorus.
Speaker 1: That's it. It comes back to that. But that's that's
Speaker 1: the heat of the song. When record starts, it's so
Speaker 1: hood you go for the jogular right at it. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing about records is um I started writing that
Speaker 1: with Rivers during the pandemic on the front end in
Speaker 1: like late twenty or something like that. I was I
Speaker 1: was in cape cod and I pulled out an acoustic
Speaker 1: and I was singing this idea and I kept singing.
Speaker 1: I got records in my head of I felt like
Speaker 1: it could land, you know, and I got on zoom
Speaker 1: with them and we kept kicking it back and forth.
Speaker 1: We kicked it back and forth about a year, a
Speaker 1: year and a half, and it was amazing because I
Speaker 1: really we kept debating. There was an internal debate. I
Speaker 1: think about front loading the hook to that extent, but
Speaker 1: that's why it works to me, like it's and the
Speaker 1: second hook just sonicla, a littlefficults, a little you know,
Speaker 1: I got work, and then the second comes around because
Speaker 1: he pops the octave. Yeah, that's my trip, you know,
Speaker 1: like man in my writing, it doesn't matter if it
Speaker 1: was you know, when we were doing the Boys like
Speaker 1: Girls are We the Kings or Metros any of those things.
Speaker 1: Like the one thing I love is when a chorus
Speaker 1: just explodes. I like melodies they're kind of static down
Speaker 1: sitting in a little box because that comes from the
Speaker 1: hip hop stuff, right, So I love melodies that are
Speaker 1: somewhat linear, and then that gives you room to just
Speaker 1: have like this big caboo sort of octave jumping records.
Speaker 1: Does it right? Like that first chorus, you know if
Speaker 1: you like, oh, it's sort of restrained rivers, and then
Speaker 1: when he hits the top note, you're like, Wow, I
Speaker 1: love Weezer. I wear I was visually impaired. My rideye
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and I was like, man, there's nobody cool
Speaker 1: that wears glasses. Right. Rivers hugellibration to me because I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, he's nerdy but awesome. He's so awesome,
Speaker 1: He's not nerdy, and I want to be that guy,
Speaker 1: the coolest. And so here's my quick Weezer story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worked on American Idol for four years as the
Speaker 1: head head mentor. I'd work with the kids, some young
Speaker 1: adults on everything from song selection to how to sing
Speaker 1: it tempo, being interviewed. They just had me there as
Speaker 1: the Swiss army knife. And at the end of every season,
Speaker 1: everybody would come in, all the big stars for it
Speaker 1: for duets, right, and this partist would be with this person,
Speaker 1: and Weezer was coming in. Now I had never met
Speaker 1: anyone from Weezer, and I was freaking pumped. I'm jaded,
Speaker 1: not in a way of I don't care, but I've
Speaker 1: seen everybody. I know that most people that I think
Speaker 1: are awesome in music, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are,
Speaker 1: but they're just normal folk. Sometimes abnormal, but not in
Speaker 1: the way you prefer. Absolutely, But as Weezer, right, there's
Speaker 1: like three or four my whole life that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I would totally fan boy out. And Weezer's playing the
Speaker 1: finale of American Idol. So I'll let my producer know.
Speaker 1: I say, Hey, I'm just letting you know I'm a
Speaker 1: massive Weezer fan. In the whole season. People have been
Speaker 1: in and out, but I'm not gonna go in, like, hey,
Speaker 1: would you sign this like a picture? I said, Weezer's coming,
Speaker 1: and if it's cool, I'd like to walk out and
Speaker 1: just say hello. And they're like, yeah, of course. I thought,
Speaker 1: like at your show too, there's five. There's five of
Speaker 1: you on this show is Luke, Lionel, Katie Ryan, and myself,
Speaker 1: and so we kind of had free rein over everything,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm gonna walk out to the bus
Speaker 1: if that's cool. They're like yeah, sure. So they come
Speaker 1: in and I go to the record store down by
Speaker 1: where the lot was and I get the blue vinyl Yes,
Speaker 1: because that blue album for me was it was near
Speaker 1: ami but right, it was right, Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was what I was. I'm a blue guy more than
Speaker 1: picker and guy myself. It took me later in life
Speaker 1: understand and appreciated so but Blue loved it immediately. I
Speaker 1: go get it big, Vinyl, I walk up. I'm nervous.
Speaker 1: I'm an adult man, I'm nervous. Like yeah, I say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: mine's Bobby. I'll be working with you guys later tonight.
Speaker 1: I'm the head mentor here and reckon, I don't I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna fake it. I'm just a massive fan.
Speaker 1: Do you care if would you guys sign this? And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: come on in, And so I don't. I don't see
Speaker 1: Rivers at all. And so all the other guys are around,
Speaker 1: and there's super cool and they're signing the man yet
Speaker 1: well where you from? From? Markets? Over? You guys? That
Speaker 1: all the small talk, But to me it means a
Speaker 1: little more than that. To them, just another dude knocking
Speaker 1: on the bus door. And so the into the star bunk,
Speaker 1: the door opens and it's Rivers. He just kind of
Speaker 1: opens it and kind of looks in and he sees
Speaker 1: me and the little bit. He's been like, you know,
Speaker 1: fixing his face there's like a mirror, like fixing his hair,
Speaker 1: doing a little teeth thing, and I'm just going there.
Speaker 1: He is of all the things that I can say.
Speaker 1: It's like an elevator pitch and I'm not pitching anything.
Speaker 1: I just want to let the guy know. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to let him know so hard that he's
Speaker 1: creeped out. It's behind line, sure, but I never met him, right,
Speaker 1: And so he looks at me, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to go, hey, will you sign this? But I wanted
Speaker 1: him to sign this, And so he goes back to
Speaker 1: just thing, looks at me again, and he starts to
Speaker 1: take a step toward me, and I'm like you My
Speaker 1: heart starts to beat a little bit. I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is my moment right here, It's time. He takes about
Speaker 1: a half step forward and then shuts the door and
Speaker 1: goes back. And it wasn't toward me. It wasn't toward me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't toward anything I did that, you know, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was in his person. I ask you a question,
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Yeah? Is that album
Speaker 1: still unsigned? In that space? They sent it back with
Speaker 1: him okay, and he was cool enough to sign it
Speaker 1: all right, because I was going to take care of
Speaker 1: that for you, you you know, And I wasn't upset. Actually
Speaker 1: I appreciated that because that was a dude being who
Speaker 1: exactly who he was. He's awesome. I gotta say something
Speaker 1: about Rivers, which is, you know, one thing I would
Speaker 1: tell is Rivers Pat Monahan, you know, fits like a
Speaker 1: few of these cats who I really love and I
Speaker 1: pretty close with. The one thing I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: all of them is the work ethic is like nothing
Speaker 1: you've ever seen. Rivers writes like three songs a day,
Speaker 1: like just absolutely just to permeate a Weezer record. For
Speaker 1: me is like Holy Grail, because honestly, I'm competing with
Speaker 1: the ten songs Rivers wrote last night. He's so prolific
Speaker 1: and really good. And Monahan is the same way and
Speaker 1: fits the same way. These guys work so hard and
Speaker 1: we're all the same age. So the notion that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can be this grown ass guy and
Speaker 1: just hit like aggressively wanted that bad and chase the
Speaker 1: art that to that extent. Rivers I learned that from
Speaker 1: more than any other artist I've never seen somebody work
Speaker 1: as hard as Rivers does. Next time we talk to him,
Speaker 1: tell him I love him. It's awkward. I didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance to tell him that it's a little awkward.
Speaker 1: It'd be very awkward and say Bobby loves you. No,
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna say it. I'm like, dude, honestly, like
Speaker 1: you shut the bus door on him, you kind of
Speaker 1: put the kind of bust him. You know. I met
Speaker 1: Pat probably January of this year for the first time. Wow.
Speaker 1: We were at a Pebble beach playing the play Pebble
Speaker 1: Beach Front and so I guess this year they finally
Speaker 1: thought I was famous enough to be invited. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: pitch on him and so, well, I appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I go out. I heard he's not bad,
Speaker 1: he's pretty good. Yeah, and so, but he was also
Speaker 1: super kind. He's a great guy, like overly kind to
Speaker 1: where I was like, man, you do not have to
Speaker 1: be this night. But he wasn't being anything that he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He's the best. And I went and ask a couple
Speaker 1: of other friends that have played it. He was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Pat Money and he's like the greatest dude.
Speaker 1: Oh no, he's my guy. Like iow Iowa pat so much.
Speaker 1: He's an incredible friend and honestly, he's always he's he's
Speaker 1: so funny, he's so quick, and he doesn't suffer fools.
Speaker 1: He's really he's brilliant. Let's take a quick pause for
Speaker 1: a message from our sponsor, Wow, and we're back on
Speaker 1: the Bobby Cast. Bobby, one thing I did want to
Speaker 1: say to us in the six degrees between us, do
Speaker 1: you know where we cross in the greatest way. You
Speaker 1: gotta take this dancing with the stars. John Schneider, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to my high school, really, Dukes of Hazzard.
Speaker 1: He is from upstate New York. Why nobody knows that fact,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I'm going to throw that out
Speaker 1: for all the Foxes out there, But John Schneider attended
Speaker 1: Fox Lane High School. The reason I know that, which
Speaker 1: is a little interesting aside, is I did always want
Speaker 1: to get out and I wanted to get down the
Speaker 1: world and do something, you know, something loud in this business.
Speaker 1: When I was in ninth grade, he took the bus
Speaker 1: every Friday after school and I'll go to the Bedford
Speaker 1: Hills Library and upstairs on the third floor, this a
Speaker 1: little like beat up building. They kept old yearbooks like
Speaker 1: the stacks from historically from our high school. So I
Speaker 1: found both. There are our Illuminati where John Schneider and
Speaker 1: Susan Day from the Partridge family in La Law and
Speaker 1: I would find their yearbooks and then I would start
Speaker 1: to create these composites in my brain of how we
Speaker 1: could have been friends and who they hung out with,
Speaker 1: them trying to figure out who they ung out with
Speaker 1: and stuffing. I just I was obsessed with it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the John Schneider reveals that shouldn't be from upstate New York.
Speaker 1: They should have made sure medium money in mountains. Quite
Speaker 1: good looking as it as a young guy. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: looking older guy, but like really good looking younger. No
Speaker 1: one's ever accused me of that. I didn't know you're
Speaker 1: younger guy. I might fall in love with you then too. No,
Speaker 1: you know, I have big Doughey features and I've always have,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of exaggerated. I wouldn't say cartoonium Ringo star,
Speaker 1: He's a bully um Ringo star. Honestly show up at
Speaker 1: Ringo's house, you know, buddy, my Winston Simone with the
Speaker 1: great managers, my favorite managers ever in this business. Winston
Speaker 1: Simone connects me with a word had gotten out that
Speaker 1: Ringo was open to new collaborators because he's got a
Speaker 1: really tight circle. Right, It's Luca, Third's Joe Walsh. It's um,
Speaker 1: do you get nervous about the Ringo though you've been
Speaker 1: with a lot of people, but it's a beatle okay, Ringo.
Speaker 1: I don't get nervous with anybody. And still, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably you know, And that's honestly goes back to the
Speaker 1: war whole thing. I think, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: when you're exposed to stuff so young, you just get
Speaker 1: kind of numb to it. Maybe nervous isn't the word.
Speaker 1: And I don't get nervous really either. Same again, but
Speaker 1: still I was excited. But to meet Rivers, I was
Speaker 1: definitely stoked, you know, like I mean's Ringo, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, but I was able to at
Speaker 1: least I was composed, which helps, you know. And I
Speaker 1: would say, I showed up to the house and we
Speaker 1: dug in, you know, and we sat down the couch
Speaker 1: and right off the battles like piece of love, Piece
Speaker 1: of love. And then with like six seconds, it was
Speaker 1: like he was grilling me, like the toughest job interview
Speaker 1: in history for what reason. Well, I just think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, he probably, you know, he's got his guard up.
Speaker 1: I think he's probably trying to figure out my motives
Speaker 1: of why I'm so psyched to work with him, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You know. And it was very interesting because I really
Speaker 1: I tried to punch back whenever you'd say something, I
Speaker 1: try to say something weighty back, and it wasn't landing.
Speaker 1: And I thought, okay, I've literally screwed up this one opportunity.
Speaker 1: I'm in my car driving home and I said to him,
Speaker 1: I said, look, I said, you know, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: home and I'm going to write a song and if
Speaker 1: you'll have me back tomorrow, i'll play for you said,
Speaker 1: come at two o'clock. So I came back. I wrote
Speaker 1: this tune, and my boy grand Michael's my engineer programmer
Speaker 1: as a writer, really talented kid. He reharmed what I
Speaker 1: was going for because I was trying to do some
Speaker 1: really randy newmany kind of chordal stuff, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm somewhat limited. And I went and sang ringo the tune,
Speaker 1: and he's sitting there at Ringo and his engineer, Bruce Sugars,
Speaker 1: a engineer, producer, a great guy, and these guys are
Speaker 1: just they dead pan me and I sing it, and
Speaker 1: you know, my voice is, you know, isn't the sexiest tone.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, you know, it's like the Budweiser
Speaker 1: commercial that you turned down, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: sing this thing for him and Ringo goes, that's absolute shit,
Speaker 1: and I was like, whoa, and he's so dry and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to read him and he goes, no, I'm joking, joking.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it, he said, but you
Speaker 1: know what, you sang me a song. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: cut you a song. And I said, well, I didn't
Speaker 1: sing you a second verse or a bridge. H And
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, he just ripped into it and
Speaker 1: wrote a second verse. And this guy like comes alive
Speaker 1: at a level I've never seen, and his energy is freakish.
Speaker 1: He's jumping up and down, and I said, it's like
Speaker 1: one of these kids at a rave. You know, he's
Speaker 1: like po going and he's eighty at the time. Well
Speaker 1: he's probably seventy eight at the time. He's po going
Speaker 1: up and down. The best physicality in the world. He's
Speaker 1: running behind the kid. I'm watching Ringo play and his
Speaker 1: pocket is so nasty. He's doing all the sort of
Speaker 1: tricks they all did them, nasty, no embellishment, incredible feel,
Speaker 1: his pockets crazy and he's doing all the hambercushion. They's singing,
Speaker 1: he's doing everything's running around the room and I looked
Speaker 1: at it. It It was the first moment I really like
Speaker 1: felt like, man if this is how people age now,
Speaker 1: Like I'm alright with it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I over appeared. You know, I've
Speaker 1: worked with some some incredible greats of the era, right
Speaker 1: Carol King, Ringo on the OJS, Eddie Lavert my god
Speaker 1: Eddie and Walter h Tom Jones, Joe Cocker. One thing
Speaker 1: I say about all these people, Mike love they all.
Speaker 1: They're the most incredible physical shape. It's humbling like every
Speaker 1: single time, Like you know, I had a night with
Speaker 1: the OJ's and we went out they played the Apollo
Speaker 1: Theater and then we all went out for drinks at
Speaker 1: some hotel bar and it's two in the morning and
Speaker 1: Eddie Laverte is gone. He's like, we're not done we're
Speaker 1: not done. He's dancing around more bloc goal. You know,
Speaker 1: these guys like they live it, and the fact that
Speaker 1: they have that energy makes me just feel so good.
Speaker 1: As you know, as I hit thirty now, I felt that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? I got four final questions.
Speaker 1: Number one is I was watching my TikTok. Lets me
Speaker 1: watch a lot of late sixties, early seventies, especially singer
Speaker 1: songwriter kind of acoustic. I want your TikTok that's where,
Speaker 1: that's where I live, and nineties wrestling. You know what
Speaker 1: mine is? What mine's usually like. It's usually like a
Speaker 1: young artist, usually from Nashville or something along the lines,
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, they're in their car and the
Speaker 1: cameras are gonna go, Hey, I just broke up with
Speaker 1: my girlfriend today and I wrote a song about it.
Speaker 1: You want to hear it. And then they do the
Speaker 1: fake turn of the dial and then they lipsick a
Speaker 1: log to it for a second. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of hand movements, and that's when I just keep scrolling past. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I digress. That's I don't live there. I see those
Speaker 1: sometimes said to maybe I don't live there. I want
Speaker 1: to live where you live, all right, so go ahead.
Speaker 1: So I lives cool. Now loves cool because I see
Speaker 1: a lot of Tom Jones singing, either live or like
Speaker 1: on a television studio syste. I had no idea because
Speaker 1: the Tom Jones version that I know from my life
Speaker 1: is older Tom Jones caricature. Yeah, he's a beast. He's
Speaker 1: a real soul singer, one of the best I've ever heard,
Speaker 1: superstar good. I watched him and Ray Charles sing together,
Speaker 1: he back and forth. Yeah, Tom Jones had all the
Speaker 1: respect I mean, like he's literally look, he's one of
Speaker 1: those British like sort of just like soul like it's
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah. No, it's funny because like his pop
Speaker 1: cultural presence I think is so different from actually the
Speaker 1: core of his voice. He's a singer. And then I
Speaker 1: heard him sing later, maybe like two years ago on
Speaker 1: the voice in another country as an older guy and
Speaker 1: still sings something. I just had no idea. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like a fetishist for raspy vocals, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So coming out of the UK, there's all
Speaker 1: those those cats like Tom Jones or Chris Riya, who's
Speaker 1: like very forgotten, but Chris Riha, you know, certainly in
Speaker 1: the States over the he's big, but like it's a
Speaker 1: gravel and when singers come along and have that British
Speaker 1: gravelly thing, Man, I'm the first guy at the record store,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Every single time it's my
Speaker 1: favorite voice. Cocker. I mean, come on, it's like literally
Speaker 1: like like like literally like like if you're gonna sweat
Speaker 1: that much when you sing, I need to appreciate that exactly.
Speaker 1: But Joe Cocker, like you know, you're one third of
Speaker 1: the way into a Cocker show. Or I would watch
Speaker 1: him live. Didn't get to go watch him in person,
Speaker 1: but I would watch Cocker live. You guys pouring sweat,
Speaker 1: like wiping himself down singing ballads. Well, the problem is
Speaker 1: like the bar was so high, you know, these guys,
Speaker 1: the performance level and the and the and the way
Speaker 1: they just left it all out on the stage. And
Speaker 1: there are very few singers I would say the same
Speaker 1: thing about now. It's not the same level of commitment,
Speaker 1: you know, like Cocker's thing was unbelievable. It's just and
Speaker 1: to cover a Beatles song, you're right right, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of and listen, I love a lot
Speaker 1: of Joe Cocker, but I think how ballsy to cover
Speaker 1: a Beatles song period, but then you do have big
Speaker 1: balls when you do it, and you nail it. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's one of the greatest covers ever. And
Speaker 1: the intro it's so was it the Wonder Years it
Speaker 1: was it was ahead of Yeah, so you know it
Speaker 1: was you know, once against that intro. I mean you
Speaker 1: are so like, that's an intro that'll suck you in.
Speaker 1: You instantly know that record wrap the bat and I
Speaker 1: mean his commitment level on the vocal and I'm with you, man,
Speaker 1: like I feel like, um, I feel like when people
Speaker 1: bludge in um classics, it's um. You know, that's just
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a no can do for me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it kind of sucks you
Speaker 1: in it at the beginning of all of his songs,
Speaker 1: I mean, even going You are So Beautiful to Me
Speaker 1: right comes on and it's and it's so you It's
Speaker 1: just it's that first vocal note and you're like, well
Speaker 1: this is different, but you can leave your hat on
Speaker 1: or any of the eighties stuff. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just consistent, you know it um really really and one
Speaker 1: of the greatest singers. I didn't get to know him
Speaker 1: or anything. He just cut one of the songs, but
Speaker 1: he uh, he's incredible. You know. So my book that
Speaker 1: I wrote was called fail until You Don't, and it
Speaker 1: was basically me just screwing it right and some of
Speaker 1: the complations we've had, I knew the answer for. I
Speaker 1: would just want to walk down it with you. But
Speaker 1: I knew. Listen, you your rap care didn't go well
Speaker 1: at DJ. You know you weren't near as good as I.
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. You know I've made a big career
Speaker 1: out of this and you've done fair at what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I do have a face for radio, so you have
Speaker 1: all But why why was it important to you in
Speaker 1: this book to showcase the difficult times as the main theme?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you because, um, you know, my daughter's seventeen,
Speaker 1: so what is that gen z or whatever? You know.
Speaker 1: I'm scared for these kids because when you have, when
Speaker 1: you have so much technology at your hands and so
Speaker 1: much everything is just pulling at your attention twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day. I'm scared that these kids might not
Speaker 1: have the same work ethic because I think they might
Speaker 1: get just constantly pulled and like, hey, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do this very long, and maybe I'll do this
Speaker 1: job for six weeks, and maybe I'll do this and
Speaker 1: quit this and quit this and quit this. And I
Speaker 1: stuck something out against improbable odds, and it was the
Speaker 1: greatest decision in my life, and I think I believe there.
Speaker 1: I want to speak to two people with this book,
Speaker 1: one to the youth, just to say there is a pathway,
Speaker 1: but I want you to be aware of what you're entering. Right.
Speaker 1: You have to understand you're going to get failed two
Speaker 1: thousand times two thousand Knows Matt Tell, Negrom and Buddy's book.
Speaker 1: It's like two thousand knows. It's just the truth. You're
Speaker 1: gonna You're the rejections. You have to use them as scars,
Speaker 1: you know. You have to take those scars and take
Speaker 1: those calluses and have them fuel you to go forward.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have that wiring, and if you're
Speaker 1: going into this delusion, they thinking okay, Like once again,
Speaker 1: like I got TikTok famous last night, I had a
Speaker 1: song and went viral, blah blah blah. You don't understand
Speaker 1: what you're in for. If you want to do this
Speaker 1: as long as I've been doing it. The rejections will
Speaker 1: mount at a freakish level, and I just want people
Speaker 1: to be aware of it. But there is a way out.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is I really want to reach
Speaker 1: anybody who has creative wiring who just might have packed
Speaker 1: it in early, you know, because I was blessed, Like
Speaker 1: I came up in the city and you know, we're
Speaker 1: in these village in New York, and I would say,
Speaker 1: if I came up with like a hundred cats in
Speaker 1: that time, you know, five six of us left doing it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like most people went on
Speaker 1: to different things, some because they lost interest and others
Speaker 1: because they just couldn't feasibly make it work anymore. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to speak to those people and say,
Speaker 1: you know, give it another shot. Give it another shot.
Speaker 1: It's not you're not done by any stretch. Because honestly,
Speaker 1: if you are as tenacious about it as I was,
Speaker 1: you can probably you know, I don't know what goal.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to ascertain your own goals, but
Speaker 1: like you could, you know, you could do something special.
Speaker 1: It's just here's case in point of somebody who was
Speaker 1: like moderately gifted at best when he started and just
Speaker 1: got better, you know, third question of four why now, though,
Speaker 1: because I felt like I was still like mildly culturally relevant,
Speaker 1: and my fear was, you know, in a decade from now,
Speaker 1: some of these songs might not have the same residence,
Speaker 1: and I want to do it when people actually might
Speaker 1: still take my phone calls, you know, including a publisher.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I don't know if a book
Speaker 1: do it, you know, ten years from now, if a
Speaker 1: publisher would have been interested. But also, look, we're in
Speaker 1: such a crazy time right, We're entering into the AI
Speaker 1: phase and all these other you know, technological advances, they're
Speaker 1: gonna just absolutely affect the music. It's just obvious where
Speaker 1: all the stuff is headed. And it felt like a
Speaker 1: nice moment to pivot creatively for a second and to
Speaker 1: just get out of the fray, clear my head. Right,
Speaker 1: everything this is all me. There's no co writers or
Speaker 1: ghost writers. It's literally three hundred zillion pages of my psyche.
Speaker 1: But I felt like this was like a rinse out
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to come back like just stronger
Speaker 1: than ever because I feel so creatively sort of motivated,
Speaker 1: because I needed the break. My final question it's just
Speaker 1: two words with the question mark at the end of it,
Speaker 1: Harry's close Baha Man. Question one. All right, so you
Speaker 1: guys are all very familiar with who let the dogs out,
Speaker 1: so let's not make it weird between us. Couldn't be
Speaker 1: more Yeah, So I didn't do that one, Okay, I
Speaker 1: did the follow up. It was called move It like This.
Speaker 1: It was recorded the Bahamas with the Baham and a
Speaker 1: couple little fun facts for you. Won the Bahaman stole
Speaker 1: my headphones and didn't return them, which was kind of dark.
Speaker 1: So if you ever like our ent cruise ship and
Speaker 1: you see one of the Bahaman guys wearing a nice,
Speaker 1: nice pair of Panasonic phones from back in the day,
Speaker 1: I think you could make a case for me. Second
Speaker 1: of all, we did get yelled at we're in the Bam.
Speaker 1: There was a McDonald's in the Bahamas and me and
Speaker 1: Mike Mangini, my buddy, and Dave Shomer we were working
Speaker 1: with these guys and we had a twelve Newton session
Speaker 1: and Mike walked through the door at twelve o two
Speaker 1: carrying a couple of bags of McDonald's for us, and
Speaker 1: the leader of the Bahaman screamed at him about being
Speaker 1: late and that McDonald's should never be a priority. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I remember I didn't learn from mistakes, right,
Speaker 1: I've learned from mistakes. I have never let McDonald's be
Speaker 1: a priority, and you know my bookings. Ever again, you
Speaker 1: never know where you will learn something from a Bahaman.
Speaker 1: It could be in the Bahamas with the Bahama men.
Speaker 1: You know. I gambled down there. We went to the
Speaker 1: we went to the paradise. What's called the what's accompassment?
Speaker 1: What's what's the big casino? And uh robin down there
Speaker 1: about the casino? I trust it. There's a casino, so
Speaker 1: you know. And I won like nine hundred dollars, which
Speaker 1: was so huge for me. And I'm so cheap. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's goating me. They're like double down, double down. I'm
Speaker 1: like nine hundred dollars. This is a new stereo. And
Speaker 1: I took it back to New York and I bought
Speaker 1: this shitty stereo. It's amazing, prodest moment of life. Listen,
Speaker 1: this has been I could do this for two hours. Hey,
Speaker 1: we've done over an hour here. I'm just a massive
Speaker 1: fan of your word. Brother, I'm a bigger fan. And honestly,
Speaker 1: this that you have no idea much means to me man,
Speaker 1: you're a you're a you're an icon, You're a beacon
Speaker 1: of light for the community. And also you did great
Speaker 1: work with music music. It's on call, which I know of,
Speaker 1: so it's awesome. Well thanks, I appreciate the time. Everybody
Speaker 1: twenty one hit Wonder if they want to order it, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just go to Amazon and you know and
Speaker 1: order it. And um, if they have any questions that
Speaker 1: can always hit me on the Graham. I'm on the Graham.
Speaker 1: Just give out your number of text you Yeah, they can.
Speaker 1: You know, it's great. They're good. All right, you guys
Speaker 1: follow Sam Sam Hollander on Instagram. Twenty one hit Wonder
Speaker 1: is the book? And you still making money off all
Speaker 1: these songs? It still come in. I progress and sold
Speaker 1: my catalogs. Did is that in the news? And how
Speaker 1: much it was? I would never let that out, but
Speaker 1: you know it was great. So I did it twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen to Hypnosis and um sold at all? I did
Speaker 1: over ten million, Um, it doesn't matter, Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: it's always said to my daughter, over ten million dollar hairs.
Speaker 1: So no, I did great and um and everything I
Speaker 1: have going forward since two thousand nineteen is mine and
Speaker 1: hopefully I'll sell another one. But what it did was
Speaker 1: it really freed me up to do things like this
Speaker 1: and you know, just be a better human. When did
Speaker 1: you write records? Um, that's twenty twenty one, so I
Speaker 1: owe on records. We're on the way, We're on our way.
Speaker 1: That's records in my hit jam, Sam, thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. Guys, thanks for listening to a
Speaker 1: Bobby Cast production