Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is music producer Gary Katz. You known
Speaker 1: from the Steely Dana albums. He did the first Gaucho,
Speaker 1: We work with Tensee Ce so many other greats. Gary.
Speaker 1: Good to have you here, Nice to be hippo. Nice
Speaker 1: to meet you. So how did you meet the guys
Speaker 1: in Steely Dan in front of Us? I was in
Speaker 1: New York and my best friends were a singing group
Speaker 1: called Jay and the Americans who are having hit after
Speaker 1: hip hop singles. And I was sort of like the
Speaker 1: fifth wheel. Wherever they went, I went, And they were
Speaker 1: going into places you know that I wanted to be
Speaker 1: in in studios with Lieber and Stoller, and I was
Speaker 1: close friends with all of them, and one of them,
Speaker 1: can he Vans. I was working with Donald and Walter,
Speaker 1: and I had gotten a job at Africa Embassy with
Speaker 1: Joseph e Levine and I was actually producing my first record.
Speaker 1: We both lived in Brooklyn and we would drive in together.
Speaker 1: And I got done early one night and I called
Speaker 1: and I said ready, and he said, now come on here.
Speaker 1: I'm still I'm still working. And when I worked in
Speaker 1: I met Donald and Walter and they Kenny was doing
Speaker 1: what I guess they considered demos to be able to
Speaker 1: uh have people here and get a deal. And so
Speaker 1: I from the moment I heard their music, which is
Speaker 1: very much different than what you know is Steely Dan,
Speaker 1: I was a fan. So how was there music different?
Speaker 1: It was it just structurally in the way they went
Speaker 1: about creating, you know, songs and structure and hooks, and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was a fabulous form that
Speaker 1: evolved into what you know to be Steely Dan. So
Speaker 1: how did they ultimately become Steely Dan? And what was
Speaker 1: your role in that? I who was out of work
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. I was hanging around the music business, mainly
Speaker 1: through my Jane Americans friends, and I got a call
Speaker 1: one night from a friend at Dunhill Records who said,
Speaker 1: somebody got fired here. Why don't you write the presidential letter?
Speaker 1: And I said, you want me to write a cold letter? Ready?
Speaker 1: He said, just write him a letter and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to him. I wasn't in the best frames of mind.
Speaker 1: I was being able to get work and through the
Speaker 1: cost of the evening, my wife at the time just
Speaker 1: kept saying, write the guy a letter, Write the guy
Speaker 1: a letter, so I did, and I wrote, Dear j
Speaker 1: writing this letter to you right now is a much
Speaker 1: bigger pain in the ask for me than it is
Speaker 1: for you sitting in your chair reading it. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is my name. I've worked with Bobby Darren if you
Speaker 1: have any interest at all. And so j Laska called
Speaker 1: me and said he thought he was still laughing, and
Speaker 1: there was a ticket at the airport. And fifteen hours
Speaker 1: later I had a career, and having just having the
Speaker 1: ability to move to California and have a job, opportunities
Speaker 1: opened up. Okay, so did you sign Steely Dan at
Speaker 1: ABC Records? There was no Steely Dan at ABC Records.
Speaker 1: There was, which continues and I sort of read about
Speaker 1: it this week and my ex partner Richard Perry's book.
Speaker 1: But Donald Walter was signed with Jay in the Americans
Speaker 1: production company, and they and I became good friends over
Speaker 1: the time because they didn't really have work except they
Speaker 1: were writing on their own and they were part of
Speaker 1: the backup band for Jami the Americans for fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a night, um, And so you know, I would see
Speaker 1: Donald and Walter most every day, one way or another.
Speaker 1: I would bike right up and we'd sit around just
Speaker 1: hanging out, listening to music and whatever. And Donald was
Speaker 1: working in Miami and called me and said, so, what's
Speaker 1: going on. How the meeting go? I said, I got
Speaker 1: a job. He said, please get me out of here.
Speaker 1: So over time they had to negotiate a away out
Speaker 1: from the contract that they had, which they did, and
Speaker 1: they came to ABC as staff writers, not a band.
Speaker 1: There was no band. Steve Barry, who's a well known
Speaker 1: pitmaker and the my mentors, was pushing the grassroots in
Speaker 1: Hamilton Joe Frank and he thought he loved their music
Speaker 1: and thought they could write songs for him, which they
Speaker 1: did try to do, but it just wasn't a really
Speaker 1: good marriage between what they wrote and what they were
Speaker 1: looking for. And I went to Stephen. I said, Steve,
Speaker 1: let me put a band together. Let me make a
Speaker 1: band with these guys, and so we piece by piece.
Speaker 1: Steve said good. They supported us. Uh, A fabulous guy
Speaker 1: named Lee Young Senor who's Lester Young's brother. I was
Speaker 1: a fan of the band. It was the you know
Speaker 1: VP of A and R. And he found ways to
Speaker 1: help us out with gear that we didn't have money for,
Speaker 1: and he was he really supported us and we created
Speaker 1: a band, and then ultimately how did they get signed?
Speaker 1: They were signed as writers? How did you become a band?
Speaker 1: They became a end by Steve and and I going
Speaker 1: to Jay last and saying it's now going to be
Speaker 1: a band, and they negotiated the deal as a group. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back a couple of chapters. How do you
Speaker 1: know Jay in the Americans? We went to high school
Speaker 1: together Rasmuss in Brooklyn. Uh well, some of them weren't
Speaker 1: fit in uh Bell Harbor and by the Beach, and
Speaker 1: Howie and I and then Sandy. We became good friends.
Speaker 1: And there's still my some of my closest friends. We
Speaker 1: have lunch once a week or two. Okay. So legendarily
Speaker 1: J Black, the original singer in the singer of all
Speaker 1: the hits of J and the Americans, ultimately got in
Speaker 1: financial trouble and he no longer owns the name. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us anything about that? Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: well for one thing, Jay Black as you call him David, Okay,
Speaker 1: So J Black's real name is David Dave Black. How
Speaker 1: did Dave Black become J Black? Because Jay he was
Speaker 1: not the original singer. And when they had their first
Speaker 1: hits She Cried, which was a huge hit. That was
Speaker 1: a singer named Ja Trainer, and soon thereafter which I've
Speaker 1: still never quite understood. We still laugh about it. They
Speaker 1: made a change and they he brought in the new
Speaker 1: J and they just kept having hits, big hits. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have members in the band. How did it end
Speaker 1: with between them and that J? Probably not as well
Speaker 1: as everyone one might have liked. So what happened to
Speaker 1: your friends in music subsequent to that? Jay Black leaving
Speaker 1: nothing that continue to work as J and the Americans.
Speaker 1: Last week they were in I think Springfield, Massachusetts. They
Speaker 1: just work. They have a new J. I'm sorry whose
Speaker 1: name is really Jay as it turns out, but they
Speaker 1: have a new Ja has been there with them, might
Speaker 1: say maybe ten twelve years now, something like that, and
Speaker 1: they continue to play. And have they ever had to
Speaker 1: have day jobs or they've been daying the Americans from
Speaker 1: high school day jobs? No, they don't have day jobs.
Speaker 1: They oh Jay and the Americans. Okay, so you were
Speaker 1: in high school in Brooklyn. What was the music scene
Speaker 1: like there and how did you get hooked on the music? Well?
Speaker 1: I was you know, you could only hear what they
Speaker 1: played so I heard music. You know, it was how
Speaker 1: much is that dog in the window? And that's a more?
Speaker 1: And you know, you just got to appreciate whatever that was.
Speaker 1: And one and I used to go up on my
Speaker 1: roof with a pack of New Kent's cigarettes. I was
Speaker 1: about thirteen, and the transistor radio and I turned it
Speaker 1: on one day and they was this guy named Alan Freed,
Speaker 1: and I heard, uh, maybe Leen, and I thought I
Speaker 1: was sweating, but it was actually the blood running out
Speaker 1: of the side of my ear. I just freaked out.
Speaker 1: It just took one piece of music. And then I'd
Speaker 1: go on the roof every day and I listened to
Speaker 1: Alan Freed from the moment he signed on until off
Speaker 1: and I cut to your bow. Diddley and Ruth Brown
Speaker 1: and Little Richard and my favorite part of that. Alan
Speaker 1: Freed used to do these holiday shows at the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Powamount Theater. They became just extravagant as block. You could
Speaker 1: do it in Christmas and there'd be a block, you know,
Speaker 1: block long lines in four degree weather. And I would
Speaker 1: go and I'd see on one bill Um, you know,
Speaker 1: Little Richard and Fats Domino and Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of platters and all these groups, and
Speaker 1: I was just mesmerized. The manager of the of the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Paramount was a friend of my dad's and his
Speaker 1: name was Eugene Plashette, and his daughter is Susan Pischett,
Speaker 1: who became a well known actress, not the least of
Speaker 1: which was Bob Nuhaut's wife. And so we were in
Speaker 1: the same age. And there were seven shows a day.
Speaker 1: So they would the show would take maybe an hour
Speaker 1: and a half, whatever it was, they would empty the
Speaker 1: theater twenty minutes later the next bunch would come in.
Speaker 1: So Susan and I would go to her dad's office
Speaker 1: like twenty ft away and when the show started again.
Speaker 1: So I saw that show eight times a day for
Speaker 1: six days and things like that. There were other shows,
Speaker 1: and I just, you know, that's what I wanted to do. Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to play ball, but I stopped growing and
Speaker 1: the other passion I had was music. How good a
Speaker 1: ball player were you? I was pretty okay. So what
Speaker 1: did your parents do for a living? My dad owned
Speaker 1: a hot, very high end men's clothing store adjacent to
Speaker 1: the Well eventually adjacent to the St. Regis in New York. Okay.
Speaker 1: And your mother was at home always with my dad Okay,
Speaker 1: in the in the shop, inseparable yep. And how many
Speaker 1: kids in the family, me and my sister, and which
Speaker 1: one is older? I am? Okay. So growing up if
Speaker 1: your parents with the shop, was it relatively hands off?
Speaker 1: You could do what you wanted. I only wanted to
Speaker 1: play balls, so she always knew was and you know,
Speaker 1: she might go in the shop in the store at
Speaker 1: eight and come home maybe three thirty or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: But I was in the street playing ball, well, across
Speaker 1: the street in the temple in the winter, in the gym. Okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of student were you? Terrible? Not? Well? I was,
Speaker 1: And I was an okay student up to a point,
Speaker 1: and then I just really look. I didn't go to
Speaker 1: school for a semester. There was a pool hall to
Speaker 1: two blocks down called Spinelli's that I frequented daily. I
Speaker 1: would stand at the corner to go into school and
Speaker 1: then I walked by schooling down the stairs into the
Speaker 1: pool room for semester, and I would have graduated. I
Speaker 1: graduated with Bob Streisan and a bunch of other well
Speaker 1: known people, but I hadn't Mono and I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital and graduation day. But I did graduate, and
Speaker 1: I went to n y U thereafter, although first I
Speaker 1: went to Illinois College where I played ball for a while,
Speaker 1: and then I didn't like it there at all and
Speaker 1: came home and Thanksgiving and then how long did you
Speaker 1: stay at U? Two and a half years. It was
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War. I never took a student deferment
Speaker 1: because if you took a student deferment, the army had
Speaker 1: right to grab you up to you with thirty six.
Speaker 1: If you didn't take a student deferment, they only had
Speaker 1: you till twenty six. So I never did. And I
Speaker 1: got drafted in one thing led to another, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't in school after that. Okay, you got drafted.
Speaker 1: Did you go into the army? No? How did you
Speaker 1: get out? You found ways those days? Okay, so you
Speaker 1: get drafted, you stopped going to school, You get out?
Speaker 1: What's your next step? I got a job as an
Speaker 1: insurance salesman for Frudential. I can't believe I did that,
Speaker 1: but they paid you not to sell insurance, but just
Speaker 1: to get people to sign an application that they would
Speaker 1: talk to you about insurance. That was easy. Enough, and I, uh,
Speaker 1: I did that for a little while. Actually the last
Speaker 1: day I did that, Kenny Vance, old friend from Jay
Speaker 1: and the Americans. You asked about day jobs, that I
Speaker 1: have day jobs, right. Kenny was concerned, and so he
Speaker 1: was saying, so what are you doing, and you know,
Speaker 1: he knew what I was doing. And I said, and
Speaker 1: they pay you, you know, just for guys signing an
Speaker 1: app He said, ookay, I'll go with you. This is
Speaker 1: actually he was only a block from the Fool Hall.
Speaker 1: So um. We went to this gentleman's house. He was
Speaker 1: seventy ish. I'm pitching the life insurance and he kept
Speaker 1: telling me that he had been turned down frequently for
Speaker 1: a heart condition. And I said, that's okay, signed here.
Speaker 1: And that was the last day I did that. Kenny
Speaker 1: and I left and I was too something to do
Speaker 1: that again. Okay, so you quit that in the next
Speaker 1: step nothing. I was hanging around six fifty Broadway because
Speaker 1: Jay and the Americans were, and they were you know,
Speaker 1: they were just involved in stuff going on, and so
Speaker 1: I had access through them two places I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: It wasn't premeditated, you know, if they were going somewhere else,
Speaker 1: I probably would have been somewhere else, but I was.
Speaker 1: That's where they were, and I was doing and I
Speaker 1: was really fortunate to be in that, uh scene at
Speaker 1: the time. It was just fabulous. And where were you
Speaker 1: living at this point in Brooklyn? At home with your parents? No,
Speaker 1: I got married. What age were you when you got married? Three?
Speaker 1: And when you get married, usually someone says, hey, you
Speaker 1: gotta start supporting the family. I got a job. We
Speaker 1: hadn't apart. We got an apartment on Eastern Parkway, a
Speaker 1: neighborhood right where I grew up. And I got a job.
Speaker 1: So this is the same insurance job or is this? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 1: So but then you stop working, you're just hanging out
Speaker 1: with Jay and the Americans? What is your? Dad helped
Speaker 1: me out there was unemployment. I found odd jobs here
Speaker 1: and there to do, most of them legal, and I
Speaker 1: just kept My dad wanted me to take over the store.
Speaker 1: He was wanting to retire, and I just never had
Speaker 1: any interest. I don't dress the way the clothes. I
Speaker 1: never dressed in the style of his store. Um, and
Speaker 1: I just didn't care. And I remember I said to him,
Speaker 1: dead when a guy comes in here and you think
Speaker 1: he's gonna walk out and look really well, I know
Speaker 1: you like that. I don't give a ship, So I
Speaker 1: just I struggled until I wrote that letter to Jay Alaska.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling honestly, I had I didn't know how
Speaker 1: it was going to turn out. I was hoping. Okay,
Speaker 1: what'd your parents say about your quitting college? Nice Jewish boy?
Speaker 1: My My parents were remarkably support him. And how did
Speaker 1: you know this woman to marry her? She was my
Speaker 1: girlfriend from high school? Okay, so you get married? Who?
Speaker 1: Actually Richard Perry dated before I even knew her. Okay,
Speaker 1: how wo did she say about going to California? She
Speaker 1: was all for it. We were all for them. Mean,
Speaker 1: it was an opportunity for one journ a living, a
Speaker 1: real living, and you know California. I had been to
Speaker 1: California once because Kenny was going there and staying at
Speaker 1: Richard's house, and so I went along, and um, I
Speaker 1: liked it. You know. It was in Laurel Canyon, lived
Speaker 1: up on wonder Land. It's a nice place and it
Speaker 1: was Okay. I wasn't head over heels, but it was nice.
Speaker 1: And when I had an opportunity to come back with
Speaker 1: a job, it wasn't the worst thing I had heard. Okay,
Speaker 1: go back, how did you know Richard? You said you
Speaker 1: were partners. Well, Richard just wrote a book, and actually
Speaker 1: I know Richard's not feeling well these days, which I
Speaker 1: feel really badly about. But either he didn't have a
Speaker 1: really clear memory, or maybe Kenny and he is still friends.
Speaker 1: But he wrote that Kenny introduced us, which he did,
Speaker 1: saying Richard had just gotten out of graduated Michigan and
Speaker 1: I was in the place. I was two of us
Speaker 1: wanting to be in the music business. And what happened
Speaker 1: was we talked a few times. I went to his house,
Speaker 1: we talked. My mother gave me four thousand dollars, his
Speaker 1: mother gave him four thousand dollars, and we went to
Speaker 1: six fifty Broadway and we opened an office. Somehow, Richard
Speaker 1: recollected it as I came to him and said, you
Speaker 1: don't need any money. I have ten thousand dollars, but
Speaker 1: I don't have any talent. So I didn't expect you
Speaker 1: to ask me that. But I appreciate being able to
Speaker 1: correct the record. So what did you and Richard do
Speaker 1: together in this office? We we opened a company. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: be course, it's the title of his book called Cloud
Speaker 1: nine Productions, and we we're looking for talent. We you know,
Speaker 1: we just thought we could do it. We you know,
Speaker 1: we'd open an office and people would come to us.
Speaker 1: You know, sixteen fifty there was you know, well we
Speaker 1: literally shared a role next door with Kama Sutra, which
Speaker 1: I know lots of people won't know, but they were
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of production companies in the late sixties early
Speaker 1: seventies between you know, they just had hit after they
Speaker 1: had Loving Spoonful and John Sebastian, and they befriended us
Speaker 1: Hardy Ripped, who's a well known music business person and
Speaker 1: who definitely was a benefactor at the time, uh Bert Burns.
Speaker 1: The building was full of people, you know that were fabulous.
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd just go in and read make
Speaker 1: a go of it. And it wasn't so easy. Um.
Speaker 1: We found an act and and made a single. They
Speaker 1: were all singles, and made a single with this one act.
Speaker 1: Audi called one day and said, I have a group
Speaker 1: called the Vast Cells. Why don't you guys go in
Speaker 1: and do a track? Richard and I went in. Did
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan song Crawl through this Window? Um? And we struggled.
Speaker 1: You know, financially and trying to find that artist or
Speaker 1: writer that we wanted. And it a couple of years
Speaker 1: didn't pan out, and Richard went to California and I
Speaker 1: stayed in New York. Now, you told Jay Lasker you'd
Speaker 1: worked with Bobby Darren, So what's that story? I um,
Speaker 1: I applied for a job I heard about through to
Speaker 1: the people. At sixteen fifty. Bobby owned a publishing company,
Speaker 1: a successful publishing company called t M Music. It had
Speaker 1: Buffy St Marie Catalog, a very successful writer and artist
Speaker 1: named Van McCoy. At the time he was a wonderful
Speaker 1: artist and various songs. And as it turned out, there
Speaker 1: were two job openings and one of my really close
Speaker 1: friends in high school who remained my friend and until
Speaker 1: he sadly passed away a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: Eddie Lambert. Um. There were two job openings at TAM Music,
Speaker 1: and we got on both independently of each other. Um.
Speaker 1: Bobby was a fabulous guy. I mean I loved working there.
Speaker 1: Companies run by a music business veteran named Ed Burton,
Speaker 1: and we all got along. It was great. And Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy got killed and Bobby was one of the main
Speaker 1: figures in New York State for the election, and he
Speaker 1: freaked out, sold the company, got in a van, drove
Speaker 1: to Big Sir and wrote, my favorite Bobby Down in music.
Speaker 1: He put out an album under his real name called
Speaker 1: Robert Walden Cassado, which is available online somewhere, and if
Speaker 1: you're a Bobby Down fan, you want to find that
Speaker 1: record and listen to Who's just He played most everything.
Speaker 1: He was so much more gifted than the Las Vegas
Speaker 1: Bobby Down that he was. And when he sold the company,
Speaker 1: he sold it to some people. I knew, m hmm
Speaker 1: what he allowed us to do. I wanted to produce.
Speaker 1: Bobby knew I wanted to produce, and he would say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: if you can get a deal with the company and
Speaker 1: you can use the catalog to promote, you know, the company,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it. So I did. We I
Speaker 1: found a really nice guy, great singer. I went to
Speaker 1: Larry Utall at Amy Malla. He said, yeah, go in
Speaker 1: and you know, cut a single or two. So I did.
Speaker 1: One other artist somebody would we did? Uh. Petty wasn't
Speaker 1: as interested in that as I was, but we did
Speaker 1: it collaboratively. Um. When he sold the company somebody I
Speaker 1: knew pretty well. Uh that person installed someone who came
Speaker 1: in in the morning and said, okay, guys, so right now,
Speaker 1: all we are is a publishing company. Just get these
Speaker 1: songs plugged. I'm not interested in you going in the studio.
Speaker 1: That's not the business we're in. And I went to
Speaker 1: lunch it with my friend and Jack Dempsey's doing lunch
Speaker 1: and I went up and I quit, And I know
Speaker 1: it wasn't the right thing to do, but as it
Speaker 1: turns out, it worked out. Okay. Now, in your tenure
Speaker 1: with Bobby Darren, did you actually work with Bobby on
Speaker 1: any of his music? No? Okay. Whatever happened to the
Speaker 1: clothing store, my dad so well, he was. He was
Speaker 1: in that business for forty or five years. He ran
Speaker 1: a store called Nat Lewis and the forties and fifties
Speaker 1: when it was the store in New York, and then
Speaker 1: when that Lewis, Didy opened the store of his own
Speaker 1: on Seventh and he ran it till he sold it
Speaker 1: to someone um about five years before it closed, and
Speaker 1: for many years thereafter the sign of the store was
Speaker 1: still up called De Lasi. I would go to Sony,
Speaker 1: for instance, which was on Madison and fifty six, and
Speaker 1: the store was on fifty five between Fifth and six,
Speaker 1: and I'd often walked down the block and I'd look
Speaker 1: up and I would every time I worked by take
Speaker 1: a picture and I'd send it to my mom and say, Mom,
Speaker 1: the store still up. Where are you? He was a
Speaker 1: twelve to four in the morning guy. That was his life.
Speaker 1: The day he retired, he was done, moved to Florida.
Speaker 1: They played golf and he never did it again. Okay,
Speaker 1: you talked about going to high school Rasmus, and you say,
Speaker 1: Barbara Stris, did you know all these people you know?
Speaker 1: To this minute, even sharing the building with her on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions in l A Studios, I never met her
Speaker 1: to this minute, I have never met her. Okay, So
Speaker 1: now you're in l A. You're working with uh David
Speaker 1: and Donald and Walter. What else are you doing at ABC?
Speaker 1: Just general A and R work, you know, the A
Speaker 1: and R department. Well, there was a guy named Ed
Speaker 1: Michelle who's just a wonderful jazz producer and oversaw all
Speaker 1: the jazz collection. Um he was in. He was one
Speaker 1: in one room at the end of the hall. They
Speaker 1: hid him. I was the other. I was sort of
Speaker 1: in New York. You know, they were used to Steve Barry.
Speaker 1: You know, Steve is one of my closest friends still
Speaker 1: to this day. And I would have nothing, no career
Speaker 1: at all despite JA if Steve didn't here the potential
Speaker 1: of Donald and Walter and Steve. So Steve, Steve and
Speaker 1: myself with the A and R Department and Michelle had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that. He just went to the
Speaker 1: village and set in the room with John Coltrane tapes,
Speaker 1: which I totally admired and followed him there. Um, so
Speaker 1: I did regular hang our work. People would send tapes
Speaker 1: or I basically waited to go to the studio. And
Speaker 1: were you responsible for signing any of the other acts
Speaker 1: or on ABC records? Well, it was collaborative. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say we signed Rufus, which turned out to be TRACKIC.
Speaker 1: I have to think about it for a minute. We
Speaker 1: signed Buffett. Tell me, I mean, I know Jimmy, how
Speaker 1: will tell me the story of signing Jimmy. Jimmy used
Speaker 1: to play at the Troubador at night and I would
Speaker 1: go there and sit upstairs, who had a seating upstairs,
Speaker 1: and he'd stand on the stage alone and he would
Speaker 1: talk to the Carl Reefs who didn't exist every night,
Speaker 1: and I was a fan. Um, I just liked what
Speaker 1: he did, and I would go I'd leave the studio
Speaker 1: and I would go over there and see a set.
Speaker 1: And Steve Barry had heard him and we signed him.
Speaker 1: It was a good signing. Do you have any idea
Speaker 1: he would turn into what he was? What he is Juggernaut?
Speaker 1: No as a guy standing on stage, you know, wearing
Speaker 1: a beach outfit, talking to guys who aren't there. But
Speaker 1: he didn't come Monday pretty fast, right, Yes, Cooch, we
Speaker 1: signed Crochy and they'll come to me as we talk.
Speaker 1: But we had a very good ruster. Okay, so they're
Speaker 1: at ABC Records. You finally get a deal for what
Speaker 1: turns into Steely Dan. You have Donald and Walter. How
Speaker 1: do you who? How do you form the band? Tell
Speaker 1: me the process of leading up and then going in
Speaker 1: the studio. Well, we would you know, we were not
Speaker 1: any uh priority at the company, any of us. I
Speaker 1: don't mean that they weren't very respectful and nice. But
Speaker 1: for instance, uh, I knew Skunk Baxter from in New
Speaker 1: York because he played on something on the first thing.
Speaker 1: Donald Walter and I ever did with a girl named
Speaker 1: Linda Hoover. And when when we needed a band, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I know this guy in in Boston. And
Speaker 1: so Skunk came down and played this record with us,
Speaker 1: and I told him I knew a drummer in Boston
Speaker 1: who I loved. I had just made a record with
Speaker 1: him when I was at AFCO and see and he
Speaker 1: was the drummer of that band. And they knew Denny Diaz,
Speaker 1: and I got to know Denny. Denny was a friend
Speaker 1: of theirs in New York. So when they were doing
Speaker 1: their work with Kenny or just doing work alone, Danny
Speaker 1: was a part of Donald and Walter, and so I
Speaker 1: got to meet No Denny through them m hm. And
Speaker 1: so I said to you know, I played Jimmy's music
Speaker 1: for Donald, and uh. They they knew Jeff because he
Speaker 1: played on this record we did. So they came out
Speaker 1: and it was a band. We had Denny. We flew
Speaker 1: Denny out Jeff and how it came out thereafter they
Speaker 1: liked it. Okay, was it called Steely Dan at that point?
Speaker 1: I can't tell you if it was at that point,
Speaker 1: but the point it became Steely Dan was a ride
Speaker 1: up going over Laurel Canyon at night, and we were
Speaker 1: trying to think of names, and somebody said, I think
Speaker 1: Donald or said back seat manipulation, but they were sitting
Speaker 1: in the back and that didn't fly. But Walter said
Speaker 1: steely Dan and then elaborated on its significance, and that
Speaker 1: was that. Okay. The first album had another singer, David Palmer.
Speaker 1: How did that come to be? So we did the
Speaker 1: first record. I went to the village with which became
Speaker 1: and still is my home in l A. Nobody heard
Speaker 1: the record, not a soul. Steve Barry never came to studios,
Speaker 1: too busy doing his own records. This is a nice,
Speaker 1: a funny little anecdote that you might appreciate. So we
Speaker 1: finished the record. J Lesker was saying, so am I
Speaker 1: gonna hear this record? And I O this record and
Speaker 1: we went into the We were ever in the ABC
Speaker 1: studios at Dunhill. No, I wasn't. There was a small
Speaker 1: room that Steve used every day. It was a wonderful
Speaker 1: wound with little room, and so we said we'd you know,
Speaker 1: we played them this record. So j came in with
Speaker 1: Howard Stock as vice president and Marv Helfer who was
Speaker 1: marketing my very good friend Dennis Lavinthal, who did hear
Speaker 1: the record as we were doing it, because Dennis and
Speaker 1: I became very close friends and he became a fan
Speaker 1: of the music. As we went by, Donald Walter, myself
Speaker 1: and Roger Nichols, there were like eight people in a
Speaker 1: four person room, and we first track we played was
Speaker 1: do It Again. When the track was over, Jay, who
Speaker 1: smoked very long cigars and was sort of a loud,
Speaker 1: voiceterous kind of guy, started banging on the command then
Speaker 1: fucking Jack, fucking back Jack, and Donald, who was standing
Speaker 1: directly behind me, so we're in the middle of the speakers.
Speaker 1: He pokes his finger in my back and says, tell
Speaker 1: him it's called do it Again. I said, Jay, you
Speaker 1: know that's uh, let's do it again. Fuck do it again,
Speaker 1: back Jack, back Jack, Donald, who's getting nervous, now points
Speaker 1: me in the back. He said, tell me to do
Speaker 1: it again. The I won't repeat it. But the same
Speaker 1: sequence of events occurred. And if you can never find
Speaker 1: the forty five copy of do It Again, you'll see
Speaker 1: that the only way he would put it out was
Speaker 1: if we said do it again under a parenthesis. Back
Speaker 1: Jack and that that's set up our relationship with Jay.
Speaker 1: We played the record and they were excited, put out
Speaker 1: do it again. Honestly, not one of us I thought
Speaker 1: these were hit records. I was the biggest fan. I
Speaker 1: stole him. You know, I worked not as a producer,
Speaker 1: but as a fan. I got to hear the music
Speaker 1: before anyone else. But we didn't think they were hits.
Speaker 1: It was six minutes long. It was you know, it
Speaker 1: was a hit really quick. And Jay says, so they're
Speaker 1: gonna get ready to go on the road, right, ready
Speaker 1: to go on the road. Go on the road. So
Speaker 1: I go to Donald, I said, so this is what happened.
Speaker 1: He said, I don't go on the road. I I
Speaker 1: I'm not at I miss I'm a writer, I write songs.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you Jay is gonna he said, go
Speaker 1: and tell him that Stravinsky didn't tour. I knew my
Speaker 1: I knew better than to say that. And as you
Speaker 1: could imagine, Jay got his way and down said, what
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do. I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: in front of a band. I mean, I don't do that.
Speaker 1: So you found a singer? Well, Donald said, we can't
Speaker 1: have an album and not have somebody on who's then
Speaker 1: going to be the front of the band. So and
Speaker 1: I do really, really really appreciate and like David. He
Speaker 1: was a very nice guy. He couldn't have been more
Speaker 1: cooperative and part of what we were doing than he was.
Speaker 1: But I'm sorry that when I hear dirty Work, I
Speaker 1: don't hear Donald. That's just the truth. Dirty Work and Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: We always had a track called Midnight Cruiser that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Harder was going to sing, but we had to put
Speaker 1: David on some tracks so that it wasn't who's that
Speaker 1: strange guy singing the front of the band. That's how
Speaker 1: David Palmer came aback. When the when the when that
Speaker 1: was over again, I say thank you David for everything.
Speaker 1: I said to Donald, no more, you have to sing
Speaker 1: all the songs. So, contrary to the legend, ABC didn't
Speaker 1: say to get David Palmer. That was between you and Donald. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: they they they didn't care. Okay. So just so I understand,
Speaker 1: you made a whole album, but you only put out
Speaker 1: do it again, and then when back in the studio,
Speaker 1: you just didn't do it again. You know, I'm cloudy
Speaker 1: on the chronological order of those events. I remember the
Speaker 1: conversations about Donald saying I can't be the front man,
Speaker 1: and my conversation with Donald saying this can't be anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: we might have put through it. You know, in those
Speaker 1: days you would drop singles. It is possible we put
Speaker 1: out that to like K M. E. T at the
Speaker 1: time and some other states, and then it just blew
Speaker 1: up because we did put David on for those two
Speaker 1: tracks for that reason. Okay, so let's talk about the
Speaker 1: first album, Can't Buy a Thrill. You're in the studio.
Speaker 1: What is your role? What do you do? I can't
Speaker 1: put you know, designated roles. They weren't designated roles. Donald was.
Speaker 1: Donald was the We called him mother, and there was
Speaker 1: a reason for it. We all knew this. Donald's last
Speaker 1: word was the last word. Even Walter knew that. But
Speaker 1: the three of us worked. I know. I didn't do
Speaker 1: anything Donald did, And when it came to listening and doing,
Speaker 1: we did it collectively from day one until the end
Speaker 1: of the Nightfly. Okay, so you'll be sitting in the studio.
Speaker 1: What might you say, I like that, I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Can we do these two bars again? Uh? When it
Speaker 1: got to vocals, I did the vocals with Donald. I
Speaker 1: had a I created a way to do vocals that Donald,
Speaker 1: it was comfortable with and was was productive, and um,
Speaker 1: so I did the did I created the vocals with Donald.
Speaker 1: And other than that, I was a third voice in
Speaker 1: the room when somebody was playing, and I liked it
Speaker 1: as much or less than anybody else. And I'd say, so, okay,
Speaker 1: did you have any you say you're talking about two
Speaker 1: bars two seconds, or did you have any musical training
Speaker 1: or just picked it up along in the book. When
Speaker 1: I was younger, my mother, who had the perfect pitch
Speaker 1: and could play by ear, had me taking piano lessons.
Speaker 1: And this was just before Alan freed, and I said, Mom,
Speaker 1: I don't want to play Mali Gray. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: care about this. And so the last lesson I had
Speaker 1: was I was pitching for the Police as Letic League
Speaker 1: and the baseball field behind the Brooklyn Museum, and my
Speaker 1: mother drove up onto the field in her car and
Speaker 1: yelled out the window that I was going to be
Speaker 1: late from my pianos. And that was my last lesson. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you complete the first album, you know that you
Speaker 1: have reeling in the years. The opening track on the
Speaker 1: other side. The album is mega successful, So where does
Speaker 1: that leave you in the band? You know, one day
Speaker 1: turned into the next day, and there were no like
Speaker 1: you know this day this happened. It just wasn't like that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a touring band as such, like lots of
Speaker 1: bands were. So Donald is always writing. That's what he
Speaker 1: does to this day. I'm sure he write songs. When
Speaker 1: we weren't recording. Donald was home, Walter was home. I
Speaker 1: was in the office. I was making other records. We
Speaker 1: were just living. What's your relationship with any with Donald today?
Speaker 1: We spoke a while ago. His mom passed away, which
Speaker 1: I oh really badly about, and spoke to him, and
Speaker 1: we don't speak much anymore. Okay, So the second album
Speaker 1: is Countdown to Ecstasy. Many fans, although I'm not one
Speaker 1: of them, consider this to be the best record yet
Speaker 1: there were no hits on it. The band went on
Speaker 1: the road and stopped touring. So tell me what was
Speaker 1: happening with Countdown to Extacy? Countdown to Ecstasy was actually
Speaker 1: no different than Camped by a Thrill. The process of
Speaker 1: making the records never really changed until maybe after Pretzel,
Speaker 1: when we started doing Pretologic and we had other musicians
Speaker 1: that were involved in in the process, but the record
Speaker 1: making really never was my different from one record to
Speaker 1: the next. UM, I don't know why I can't Countdown
Speaker 1: didn't have hits on it. I think we thought Showbiz
Speaker 1: Kids was was going to be a hit, which it wasn't. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't I have no explanation for it. Like I said,
Speaker 1: we didn't think the first record was going to be hits.
Speaker 1: So did you get any pushback from the label that
Speaker 1: there weren't hits and to make a hit on the
Speaker 1: next record. No, okay, never got pushed back one time.
Speaker 1: I will say that for all of the reputations and
Speaker 1: such of you know j who was this very boisterous,
Speaker 1: I never once heard pushback musically he did some some
Speaker 1: couple other things that would just mind bending. But I'll
Speaker 1: share with you if you'd like, actually about his Countdown
Speaker 1: to Ecstasy. So if you know the cover, the first
Speaker 1: cover was by somebody he assigned, and you know it
Speaker 1: was what it was. And when it got to a
Speaker 1: second record, Donald's girlfriend, Dorothy, who's a very good friend
Speaker 1: of all of us, was a fabulous artist, fabulous creative person,
Speaker 1: and so she drew did he countdown to Ecstasy drawing
Speaker 1: which we loved, and it was JD. Jay was Donald
Speaker 1: was scared of Jack sort of, but he said, you
Speaker 1: talked to him. I don't want to talk to him. You.
Speaker 1: So I was the lasers on between Donald and Walter
Speaker 1: and Jay all the time. So he said he has
Speaker 1: showed it to Jay. So I did. And if you
Speaker 1: know the drawing, it has these aliens sitting on chairs
Speaker 1: at the bottom in space. So I went to Jay,
Speaker 1: had a cigar in his mouth. I put the drawing
Speaker 1: in front of him and he looked at it for
Speaker 1: three or four minutes. He said, so, how many guys
Speaker 1: are there? And steely? Then I said, there are five guys?
Speaker 1: You know there are only three guys on the bottom.
Speaker 1: You Jay, you see this guy that's not Donald? You
Speaker 1: see this guy that's not Walter. Well he was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't quite beside himself, but when he dug his heels
Speaker 1: and there was nothing you could say. So he made
Speaker 1: Dorothy I had, by the way, I then had to
Speaker 1: go back to Donald and Dorothy and repeat this nonsense. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: everyone had a good sense of humor. And Jay said,
Speaker 1: if she just puts two white dots on the top
Speaker 1: on the left. I'll count those is two Morgan and
Speaker 1: if you look at the cover you will find two
Speaker 1: more dots at the top and the left of the corner.
Speaker 1: By the way, kras Now, I think bought it from
Speaker 1: Dorothy and it was in his home for years. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that album comes out, you know, that's the period
Speaker 1: of time where the band says they're not going. Donald's
Speaker 1: is not going on the road anymore. No, he didn't
Speaker 1: quite a say. He says, I don't want to go,
Speaker 1: and nobody bothered us. Jay didn't. Honestly, Jay was hands off. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you got a whole band. What is the rest
Speaker 1: of the band living on? Ah? There you go. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the band, Jeffrey Skunk, was a very outgoing
Speaker 1: kind of guy and made lots of friends and he
Speaker 1: would play with this guy or that guy, or he
Speaker 1: would find ways to do things. Denny, Denny and Jimmy
Speaker 1: waited for us to record again. Denny's a very high
Speaker 1: end um creates apps and he always did that, so
Speaker 1: he was always working tech work. He was. He was
Speaker 1: extremely tech. Donald and I never did anything that had
Speaker 1: to do with tech. It was all Walter, Denny and
Speaker 1: Roger Okay, how did you end up working with Roger
Speaker 1: Nichols as the engineer? So when we got you know,
Speaker 1: when Steve said, yeah you can, you know, put the
Speaker 1: band together. When we did, the only place to rehearse
Speaker 1: we had an empty out the accountants office at six o'clock.
Speaker 1: We'd have to carry all the files. And Roger Nichols
Speaker 1: was the midnight to six am lacquer cutter. He was
Speaker 1: the only available person who could turn on anything for us,
Speaker 1: and he turned into Roger Nichols. Yeah, I mean that's amazing,
Speaker 1: even known for pristine sounds. So let's get to the
Speaker 1: third album, Pretzel Logic, another monster success, Ricky, don't lose
Speaker 1: the number. But from a fan's perspective, that's where the
Speaker 1: jazz elements start to creep in. Was this We did
Speaker 1: East St. Louis to Okay, but the sound changed a
Speaker 1: little bit. So you're saying, on that record it was
Speaker 1: all the original five members plus uh, Jim Gordon. There
Speaker 1: was some exterior are your members people who came in
Speaker 1: and added to that record? And that record was recorded
Speaker 1: in a barn with an oak tree in the middle
Speaker 1: of the studio. And where's that Cherokee studios? Do you
Speaker 1: know who they are, of course. Well, Cherokee studios used
Speaker 1: to be out in like where Manson was, literally out
Speaker 1: that way. We were only a few minutes from wherever
Speaker 1: that place was. And the Robs a bunch of broad
Speaker 1: a couple of brothers, three brothers, they had a studio.
Speaker 1: Roger was friendly with them. I went out there, I
Speaker 1: made a I made a fabulous deal with the Robs.
Speaker 1: I paid them six thousand dollars for four months of
Speaker 1: work every day, which obviously was not even the penny
Speaker 1: on the dollar, not even. And in turn, the day
Speaker 1: the record came out, they took the coverage to the
Speaker 1: bank and they opened up on Fairfax. That's how it happened.
Speaker 1: I only knew fair of facts. Okay, now you have
Speaker 1: another hit. Does that change the vibe or the energy
Speaker 1: in the room amongst the grass? No, it was, it
Speaker 1: was a constant. It wasn't it was always what it was,
Speaker 1: not high nor lower of it. Um everybody, I mean,
Speaker 1: we no doubt everybody's excited that, you know, the records
Speaker 1: are hit, but not the demeanor of of any of
Speaker 1: the guys. We were different, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: guys were one way, some were were different and but
Speaker 1: it was generally even level. Okay. So Keatie Lied is
Speaker 1: the album the legend is and if I remember, if
Speaker 1: I have the right album, were you cut it at
Speaker 1: something pristine level? And then something happened to the tapes
Speaker 1: that certainly did so what happened so because we were always,
Speaker 1: when I say we, Roger, Walter, Dan always pushing to
Speaker 1: how much technically better can we get this? Or what
Speaker 1: can we do to make it sound even better? Um,
Speaker 1: They because we spent so much money in the studio,
Speaker 1: ABC wanted a piece of it. And so they allowed
Speaker 1: us us, meaning Roger and collectively to build a studio
Speaker 1: down the hall from Steve Studio. And so we built
Speaker 1: a room that we really liked, Roger Roger Bille. They
Speaker 1: allowed us to buy this remarkably expensive bosondof a piano
Speaker 1: Chris Donald I wanted to use that. They basically gave
Speaker 1: us caught blunt to build a studio, and in the
Speaker 1: course of it, Walter and Danny Roger whatever, they didn't
Speaker 1: love that. They said, I don't love the way Dolby sounding.
Speaker 1: There's a new system. It's called DBX. Let's try that, Okay,
Speaker 1: So they went out down Walter and Denny and Roger
Speaker 1: went to West l A Music and they bought these
Speaker 1: speakers called Magna players, which were just Incredi electro magnetic,
Speaker 1: you know, like infinities. They bought eight of them and
Speaker 1: they lined them up in front of the behind the console,
Speaker 1: in front of the windows. It was like, you couldn't
Speaker 1: hear anything better than that in the in the ways
Speaker 1: we were working. It was fabulous and I love that record.
Speaker 1: It also was the first time we were able to
Speaker 1: use more than one machine because Roger said, you know,
Speaker 1: I can hook up two machines with this thing called
Speaker 1: Adam Smith and Fagan, you could have thirty two tracks. Well,
Speaker 1: you couldn't say anything better than Donald than that, So
Speaker 1: we did, and we would work on a master and
Speaker 1: a slave. When it came to mixing. We didn't realize
Speaker 1: what the process was going to be until we actually
Speaker 1: did it. So what you would have to do is
Speaker 1: the the You'd run one of the machines and the
Speaker 1: other would catch up to it and they'd sink together.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like just pushing a button. They all worked together.
Speaker 1: What the master ran and the slave would follow it.
Speaker 1: I'm only repeating what they said. Please don't ask me
Speaker 1: what that means, except when he when you were saying, okay,
Speaker 1: you know that's good, let's want it again. Here's what
Speaker 1: would occur every time er er er h h h h,
Speaker 1: and then you could push play. It was maddening. The
Speaker 1: record was done, we make copies, We go home. Fagin
Speaker 1: calls me around three in the morning. He said, something's broken.
Speaker 1: What's the matter? He said, in the middle of I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure bad sneakers, where I hit a chord instead
Speaker 1: of the piano decay, it's crescender ing. I'll save you
Speaker 1: all the between. But they all agreed that the dB
Speaker 1: X noise reduction did not decode the programming as it
Speaker 1: encoded it. I was really upsetting, so we took the modules.
Speaker 1: Roger Walter and I got on a late night flight,
Speaker 1: went to Boston. We were picked up. It was like midnight.
Speaker 1: They drove us to the dB X factory. There was
Speaker 1: a guy there with like a jeweler's glass. He took
Speaker 1: the module. He took the module, he opened it up.
Speaker 1: Roger handed him the tape he was playing it and
Speaker 1: there were eight sensors that made up this piece of gear.
Speaker 1: And he took a little greenie and as it was
Speaker 1: playing he would tweak the screws in it and look
Speaker 1: at us and say, is that any better? And we
Speaker 1: knew we were fill in the blink. Went home, told
Speaker 1: Fagan what happened because he could he couldn't. He wasn't
Speaker 1: comfortable having to deal with all this bad news. Tell
Speaker 1: me what the story is, and we did, and yes
Speaker 1: there was a decoding issue. We had three options. Fagan said,
Speaker 1: we could scrap the album. I said, that's not in it.
Speaker 1: That's not a possibility. We could we mix it, that's
Speaker 1: not a possibility. Or we could put the fucking thing out.
Speaker 1: And that's what we did. So the imperfections are in
Speaker 1: the final record. There was no alternative. YEP, Okay, great
Speaker 1: record because I always love that record. That your gold
Speaker 1: teeth too, etcetera. Okay, at what point band members wake
Speaker 1: up and say, wait a second, this isn't a band anymore.
Speaker 1: One day in the village recorder, Donald and Walter was
Speaker 1: sitting or standing behind the console and Jeffrey and Jimmy
Speaker 1: came in while they were there, and Jeffrey said, you know, O'donald,
Speaker 1: Jimmy and I've been writing songs and Donald said, this
Speaker 1: is not a democracy. That's the answer to your question. Well,
Speaker 1: do the other guys literally take a high cott it in?
Speaker 1: It was, it was gradual. We hot we we Donald
Speaker 1: and Walter wanted to be able to at this point
Speaker 1: have the ability to expand what they were doing and
Speaker 1: have additional people add to what we wore the records
Speaker 1: we were making. Jeffrey over time got very friendly with
Speaker 1: the Doobies, who were friends of Donald that they had
Speaker 1: toured together. Don't I think we opened for them? They
Speaker 1: got friendly. Jeffrey was playing with them, and honestly, it
Speaker 1: was gradual and then a phone call and Jeffrey had
Speaker 1: the ability to become part of the Doobie Brothers that
Speaker 1: were playing three hundred and forty two nights a year.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey likes playing, okay, and Danny and the drummer, well Danny,
Speaker 1: it was always you know, and he was always part
Speaker 1: of the with Donald and Walter. He he came with
Speaker 1: them and um, he played where it was appropriate, and
Speaker 1: he was always very supportive of Donald and Walter and
Speaker 1: Jimmy looks for work here and there. He's a very
Speaker 1: good drummer. Okay, So the next album, the Royal Scam,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, their lines like you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the you know turned up, the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.
Speaker 1: You always think of these guys being isolated. So to
Speaker 1: what degree were you now part of the front line
Speaker 1: camp with Irving A's off and the Eagles and all
Speaker 1: these people do what degree were you part of a
Speaker 1: scene at that time? I'm I can safe for myself
Speaker 1: and I think without any problems. Talk for Donald and Walter.
Speaker 1: We were never part of a scene just we would
Speaker 1: Nor were we as news Week said, eclusive we were
Speaker 1: all the time. We just worn out at the places
Speaker 1: where people get seen, and no we were. I wasn't
Speaker 1: at least, and again I feel safe saying it's just not.
Speaker 1: Wasn't our interest um and the Eagles that So here's
Speaker 1: how that started. We finished our record. We were new
Speaker 1: in l A. I had no idea what to do
Speaker 1: to Master. So I went to Steve and I said,
Speaker 1: so where do I Where do I go to Master?
Speaker 1: He said, go to this guy Doug Sex up in
Speaker 1: Mastering Lab. You know, he's the guy in town. So
Speaker 1: I made an appointment and we got there and there
Speaker 1: were these plastic chairs in the hallway. We were sitting
Speaker 1: and the girl came out and she said, the client
Speaker 1: who has been here is running a few minutes late.
Speaker 1: Do you mind will just be another ten fifty minutes?
Speaker 1: She said, no, it's okay. It was Donald Walter, myself
Speaker 1: and Denny and Roger. So she opened the door to
Speaker 1: go back into tell Doug that we were out there.
Speaker 1: And as she opened the door, you could hear take
Speaker 1: it easy, and Fagan, thankfully, who wasn't that big, hit
Speaker 1: me as hard as he could in the arm and
Speaker 1: said we stink. So that was how Eagles and Steely
Speaker 1: sort of meshed. It was that first day. I think
Speaker 1: we put our records out the same week our first records.
Speaker 1: We had no idea. I didn't know who they were.
Speaker 1: I don't even think I knew who Irving was at
Speaker 1: the time. And so you know, over the years, you know,
Speaker 1: we were a popular band in that city. The Eagles
Speaker 1: were a popular band in that city. They had the
Speaker 1: same manager. Just it was you know, there was a
Speaker 1: sympatico regarding just for those reasons. Okay, So the Royal scam,
Speaker 1: that's really when you start getting a lot of other
Speaker 1: studio musicians. Got Bernard Purdy, you got Larry Carlton, How
Speaker 1: did that all happen? Let's call some guys we really
Speaker 1: like driving in the car, you know, we heard rock
Speaker 1: Steady and said, why don't we hire that Ben? And
Speaker 1: we did. I love those guys. They're still my really
Speaker 1: close friends. The only other podcast I've done, not that
Speaker 1: it matters that I did him, but Chuck Rayney does
Speaker 1: one for Inner City Youth in Dallas, and I worked
Speaker 1: with him on some things there. But these they're still
Speaker 1: my friends. They were great musicians. They were they were
Speaker 1: the other camp. There was a camp of at least
Speaker 1: Claw and Kuncle and Andrew Gold and Warren Zevon and
Speaker 1: Linda and and there was that set of musicians. And
Speaker 1: we worked with you know, Rainey and Purdy and Paul
Speaker 1: Griffin and Victor Feldman and it's just a different bunch
Speaker 1: of musicians. But it was all cold quality. Had no
Speaker 1: previously say I like that song, I'm gonna call that person. No,
Speaker 1: I became friendly with Well, I knew Rainy and Uh.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how I met Paul Griffin and Purty,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I've known them my whole life. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is when, or maybe it's on Asia thereafter the
Speaker 1: band starts getting reputation recording a million things but only
Speaker 1: using a limited number. That's not true. So what is
Speaker 1: the treatment? But there were there were a few, and
Speaker 1: I say a few handful of tracks we didn't use,
Speaker 1: but just a handful we didn't pursue tracks at some
Speaker 1: point that Donald didn't feel good about. Okay, you're saying
Speaker 1: it's sort of a dictatorship with Donald? What was Walter's rule?
Speaker 1: It's not a dictatorship. We just all knew. The best
Speaker 1: thing I can say is one time I came to
Speaker 1: l A. I stated at a sort of uh you know,
Speaker 1: um no frills hotel there. When I came in, they said,
Speaker 1: you know, Walter's upstairs. I went, wow, okay, I checked in.
Speaker 1: He was on in three eighteen. I was in three sixteen.
Speaker 1: I called said, hey, what's going on. We talked for
Speaker 1: three hours on the phone. I never saw him on
Speaker 1: the trip, And during the conversation he said, so listen,
Speaker 1: you and I both know will never work with anyone
Speaker 1: more talented than Fagan again. And that's the best answer
Speaker 1: I can give you. Oh, I just knew he wasn't
Speaker 1: a dictatorship. Just for one. It's not his style Okay,
Speaker 1: so then comes easier and there's a you know, it
Speaker 1: takes a little bit more time. To the audience, it
Speaker 1: seems somewhat in a different direction. Is this conscious or
Speaker 1: you're just making another Steely Dan record. We're making another
Speaker 1: Steely Dan record. And those are the songs Donald number
Speaker 1: all they came with. There was always another Steely Dan record.
Speaker 1: We may have done some things in in making the
Speaker 1: record that we're not exactly like if they were, but
Speaker 1: when we when we came to the studio every day,
Speaker 1: it was the same as when we did Camp bire
Speaker 1: a thrill. Okay, So these are the songs. We'll get
Speaker 1: the appropriate people to play on them, exactly exactly. The
Speaker 1: album comes out and literally becomes legendary. What was it
Speaker 1: like being on the other side of the glass in
Speaker 1: the making of it or and in hearing about it both, Well,
Speaker 1: the songs were just spectacle pilla as a whole, As
Speaker 1: a whole unit individually, they were. They were as good
Speaker 1: as Donald and Walter ever wrote. And we were confident
Speaker 1: so that for instance, one day we're doing thinking about
Speaker 1: the solo of Asia and Donald or one of them said, well,
Speaker 1: called Wayne Shorter, and that's what they would say to
Speaker 1: me at times, call so much as if you know,
Speaker 1: it was like right, right, But that's what it was like.
Speaker 1: I would call. I called Wayne Shorter. He said, when
Speaker 1: do you want me there? What do you want me
Speaker 1: to do? I know your work? So he came in.
Speaker 1: For instance, I remember in the back room at the village, Um,
Speaker 1: we ran the track of I Don't Know two three times.
Speaker 1: He played every time he blows. You know it's something great,
Speaker 1: but he said, he said, hold on, you guys, go
Speaker 1: get lunch and give me a half hour and let
Speaker 1: me write something. And there you go. And were you
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the reception? What I mean the fact that
Speaker 1: the album was so big beloved, you know. To say
Speaker 1: I wasn't overwhelmed, you know, makes me sound you know,
Speaker 1: blase about it all. And honestly, as I said, I
Speaker 1: worked as the number one fan every day. Um, but
Speaker 1: it was like making the next record I did. Like
Speaker 1: when people said fabulous work or whatever. They would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice to hear. Who wouldn't want to hear that?
Speaker 1: But that's not the best story of Asia. Well tell
Speaker 1: me the best story. Well, when we got to the
Speaker 1: song Asia, you know, it has this significant drum solo.
Speaker 1: Most of the drummers we used, which was every drummer
Speaker 1: we could think of over the time, I couldn't think
Speaker 1: of one of them who was going to play those
Speaker 1: thirty two bars. And over the years, for some reason inexplicable,
Speaker 1: we never worked with Steve Gett. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Every time we'd come to a track and his name
Speaker 1: would come up, somebody would say something ridiculous, and we
Speaker 1: didn't use him on the track. But we couldn't think
Speaker 1: of anyone else who could do that. So we did
Speaker 1: that actually in the back room called Producers Workshop. It's
Speaker 1: the back of Mastering Lab on Hollywood Boulevard and behind
Speaker 1: Douck Sex is Bill Schnay, a very famous producer and
Speaker 1: engineer owned that studio. So when we got there, it
Speaker 1: was Rainy and Victor Feldman and Joe Sample and Donald.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, an all star, a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys and Steve who everybody's feeling good. And Steve set
Speaker 1: up a music stand because it was a sixteen page trot,
Speaker 1: and he said to Victor and Joe, hey, guys, just
Speaker 1: run it down so I can mark my rot, which
Speaker 1: he did, and Donald went out in the studio where
Speaker 1: he would be and he would sing a scratch vocal
Speaker 1: low in their phone so they could hear the song.
Speaker 1: And Steve sat down and the only time he played
Speaker 1: it is what you hear, just played it. So Walter,
Speaker 1: who's sitting next to me, turned to me and said,
Speaker 1: maybe we've made a mistake over the year. You know,
Speaker 1: it was remarkable. I mean it was. It's really the
Speaker 1: only time he played it. That's not a good part
Speaker 1: of the story yet, Okay, I don't know. Months later,
Speaker 1: because we took a long time. We're in New York
Speaker 1: mixing at A and R with Eliott China, and it
Speaker 1: was the five of us, Donald Walter, myself, Roger Elliot
Speaker 1: and someone works in and says, you know, Gads down
Speaker 1: the hall, he's playing with Michael Frank's. So I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll go tell him. And I went down
Speaker 1: the hall and when they had a break, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Walter and I down the hall and
Speaker 1: you give him minute, come on down. And we were
Speaker 1: not only just mixing the song Asia, we were at
Speaker 1: the last, you know, thirty seconds of saying we're done.
Speaker 1: Wonderful sounding room. So Steve comes down. He's feeling good,
Speaker 1: so we want to play you something and he sits
Speaker 1: in front of the speakers and it was just great.
Speaker 1: So it was great, Sonning and he turns and said, wow,
Speaker 1: who's playing drums? Uh? You are? And he thinks for
Speaker 1: a second and says, I'm a motherfucker. That's my Asian story.
Speaker 1: True story. Okay, in terms that the songs are credited
Speaker 1: to Donald and Walter, did you know who did what?
Speaker 1: Or is it really the songs evolved? Good luck? I
Speaker 1: never saw them right and not? Okay? So now Asia
Speaker 1: becomes an ongoing success in the heyday of albums, and
Speaker 1: it's years before Gaucho comes out. Why are there years?
Speaker 1: Walter had a couple of incidents. He got hit by
Speaker 1: a car outside his home like a cab woman he
Speaker 1: was living with an hour close friend. He went home
Speaker 1: one night and she died. It was just a confluence,
Speaker 1: a confluence of events. So there was no conscious hangover
Speaker 1: after Asia. It's just things got in the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: and songs getting written. So Gaucho is done in retrospect,
Speaker 1: a real triumph. But then the band essentially breaks up.
Speaker 1: What happened there, Well, Walter was having you know, was
Speaker 1: having these issues for himself, and Donald wanted to make
Speaker 1: a record, and Walter wasn't in a place to make
Speaker 1: a record, so he said, let's let's make a solo record,
Speaker 1: and that was Nightline. Okay, and it How did it
Speaker 1: end with you? How did it end with you? Working
Speaker 1: with these two guys um well as sensibly Couch I
Speaker 1: ended working with Walter and Gaucho. He didn't participate Hayden
Speaker 1: in Knife Flying. And along the way, Roger Nichols created
Speaker 1: a computer called Wendell, which, okay, what happened was we
Speaker 1: were trying to cut Hey nineteen and we just couldn't
Speaker 1: get a drum track. And Fagin turned to Roger one
Speaker 1: day and he said, can't you build a fucking machine
Speaker 1: that will give me steady drum tracks? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: give me some months and money and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: And so he built a machine that's infamous in the
Speaker 1: studio world called Wendell, and to this day is the
Speaker 1: ultimate drum machine. How we collected, what we did was
Speaker 1: what happened. What we would do is he Roger would
Speaker 1: in today's world sample every great drama, only there was
Speaker 1: no such thing as sampling. I can't say Roger invented it.
Speaker 1: But for the purposes we needed, we did invent it
Speaker 1: because Roger had this machine rental that could sample. So
Speaker 1: let's say Pretty was in the room and he was
Speaker 1: finished recording. Roger would say, so Pretty, hit the druma
Speaker 1: on the side, or give me a rimshot, hit the symbols.
Speaker 1: He would do these thirty different things. Roger was sampling it.
Speaker 1: At the time, there was no such word, so none
Speaker 1: of the guys cared. They were just Roger was their friend,
Speaker 1: and they were just doing stuff with Roger. But at
Speaker 1: the end of time, Wendell owned the individual pieces of
Speaker 1: every great druma we worked with, literally, and Wendell Donald
Speaker 1: really liked that the tracks were so steady. And at
Speaker 1: some point one of the engineers we worked with, who
Speaker 1: became a friend of mine and who built a studio
Speaker 1: that Donald and I owned together, he created a room
Speaker 1: for Donald in his house. You know, it was becoming
Speaker 1: where you could work at home. You know, you could
Speaker 1: have a console at home and whatever. And Donald writes incessantly,
Speaker 1: and so now he wasn't only writing, he was being
Speaker 1: able to put it down somehow and recorded. And what
Speaker 1: what I contributed to those things that became records, he
Speaker 1: was doing some of that, are a lot of that
Speaker 1: on his own in the house. I didn't love machine
Speaker 1: stuff as much. I loved the being in a room
Speaker 1: with great musicians and creating uh music with them, and
Speaker 1: so it and Donald just one day said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this by myself and that was that
Speaker 1: was fine. Well, you never to the public worked with
Speaker 1: them again. Was there a sense of loss on who's
Speaker 1: put yours? No, I'm very proud of the work I
Speaker 1: was involved in. And now there's been a big evolution
Speaker 1: in the music business, certainly from the days you started.
Speaker 1: Certainly by the seventies, producers tend to be independent. They
Speaker 1: tend to get four points from record one, but there
Speaker 1: are other people who just worked for the company and
Speaker 1: didn't get points. Then we evolved to the eighties, weeven
Speaker 1: the A and our guys get points. Did you have
Speaker 1: Were you just getting a salary from ABC or were
Speaker 1: you getting participation on the records? I was any participation
Speaker 1: on the records from ABC? And does that last to
Speaker 1: this day? Yes? Okay? And you still own all those rights, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: I've never I've never had a direct contract with Donald
Speaker 1: Walter Ostilian. So I just word, we just worked together.
Speaker 1: ABC sold m c A. Throughout all that period, they've
Speaker 1: been accounting to you. Yes, and you know this is
Speaker 1: a business where people forget to write checks if you
Speaker 1: had to audit them. No, okay, I think there was
Speaker 1: a I think fifteen years ago maybe. Uh, they wanted
Speaker 1: to do an audit and we were doing an audit collaboratively,
Speaker 1: and when the guys were halfway through, they said, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll continue, but up to now they may have overpaid you.
Speaker 1: So we stopped that. Okay, So at what point do
Speaker 1: you stop working at ABC? Oh? I got uh. ABC
Speaker 1: was sold, The ABC was sold. Dunhill sold to ABC,
Speaker 1: and they installed Jay Left became the president of Motown UM,
Speaker 1: and they installed a person named Jerry Rubinstein to be um.
Speaker 1: That's not true. Sorry. A fellow named Steve Deaner became
Speaker 1: president and he became my good friend and actually wrote
Speaker 1: the liner notes and wonderful liner notes by Asia. He
Speaker 1: was a big fan and he treated us. You know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't ask to be treated by a record company
Speaker 1: president any better. Then Steve treated the aggregate members of
Speaker 1: the band to the extent. He called one day and
Speaker 1: said so would you would you ask Donald if he
Speaker 1: would tour this is Asian now, and uh Fagin said, uh,
Speaker 1: teld Steve, I don't want a tour, but we'll do
Speaker 1: an interview tour as long as he sends me to
Speaker 1: Monaco to see Napoleon's underwear in the Napoleonic Museum on
Speaker 1: the palace grounds. I'm writing a song about him, so
Speaker 1: see if that's true. So we did. We went to London.
Speaker 1: We did these few days of one after the other interviews.
Speaker 1: UM where, by the way, you asked the question earlier
Speaker 1: when when someone asked Donald how they write songs, The
Speaker 1: only thing I've ever heard him say about how they
Speaker 1: do it is Walter can't start him and I can't
Speaker 1: finish him. Wow, that explains it. That was the only
Speaker 1: time I've heard that responded to. So we went to London.
Speaker 1: We did these bunch of interviews. Donald and I went
Speaker 1: to Monaco, UM, spent a few days, came back. Steve
Speaker 1: Diner was fabulous. Steve left and they brought in a
Speaker 1: guy named Jerry Rubinstein. Rubinson Rubinstein, I don't know that
Speaker 1: we got along so well. He was of a different
Speaker 1: school of you know, do you know not do this,
Speaker 1: but this is how it's going to be. That didn't
Speaker 1: sit well and wasn't what we were used to. And
Speaker 1: I had an opportunity at that point to join the
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers. He and our team with Lenny and Ted,
Speaker 1: and that was very attractive to me. And so when
Speaker 1: Jerry Rubinstein called one night in the studio and I
Speaker 1: put him on the speaker phone and he said to
Speaker 1: what's it gonna be? Are we going to sign again
Speaker 1: or aren't we? I said, we aren't, and we Donald
Speaker 1: and Walter and their people. I brought them. I basically
Speaker 1: went to Warner Brothers and they came along. They never
Speaker 1: got a Steely Dan album, but they got Nightfly. So
Speaker 1: you as opposed to Mo, right, but you were the
Speaker 1: conduit to get him to Warner Brothers. Oh yeah, Lenny. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Moe is always obviously part of this and
Speaker 1: it's extremely supportive of me for all these years. But
Speaker 1: I was talking with Lenny and Lenny said, you know,
Speaker 1: he knew the contract was coming up, and I helped
Speaker 1: coordinate the meetings between Donald and Walter's people and Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers and they made a deal. Okay, So while you
Speaker 1: were making these Steely Dan Records. Were those consuming all
Speaker 1: your time or were you doing other projects for ABC? No?
Speaker 1: I was doing other projects. Okay, So let's go on
Speaker 1: to a couple of records. I want to cover. You
Speaker 1: ultimately work with Paul Brady being managed by you two's management.
Speaker 1: At that point, they have a big push. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know Paul, I know, and now I know you,
Speaker 1: and that is one of my favorite records of all time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just really great, never mind the duet
Speaker 1: with Bonnie Ray trick or treat. You know, every song,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't sound anything like what Paul has done
Speaker 1: before or after to the detriment of his career. So
Speaker 1: how did you come up doing that project and what
Speaker 1: was that experience? Well, I never doubt with Paul management.
Speaker 1: He was signed to Mercury Records. And the person who
Speaker 1: ran Mercury name is David Bates, an extraordinarily successful a
Speaker 1: and our guy. You know, he invented death Flap food
Speaker 1: and dire Straits and blah blah blah. He and I
Speaker 1: are very close friends. And he called me one day
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I think you two guys would
Speaker 1: really get along. And Grady and I met, and to
Speaker 1: this day I mean I spoke to him not too
Speaker 1: many days ago. We've remained very close. I just thought
Speaker 1: he was fabulous and he wanted to make a record
Speaker 1: with the guys some of the guys I worked with.
Speaker 1: So I went up to Bearsville and there was Jeff
Speaker 1: it was Picaro, and David Paige was for those are
Speaker 1: the main parts of Totam. Parts of Tournam Chuck Rainey,
Speaker 1: Paul Brady and we made a reckon well these, let say,
Speaker 1: at the time, Victory was not a great label in
Speaker 1: the US. I don't know if I got it to
Speaker 1: do and maybe it was out of time. Tell me
Speaker 1: about working with Laura Nero on how do you talk
Speaker 1: about falling in love and explain it? She was my
Speaker 1: I just loved Laura. I've known her for years. How
Speaker 1: did you first meet her? When I couldn't get a
Speaker 1: job in those years and I was at sixteen fifty,
Speaker 1: One of my musical idol, so to speak, was a
Speaker 1: guy named Thomas Jefferson Kay, who I actually did two
Speaker 1: records with on ABC, and he and Laura were living
Speaker 1: together at the time, and both of them had significant
Speaker 1: drug problems at the time, and I was working up
Speaker 1: Broadway and they were walking down and Tommy said, where
Speaker 1: are you going? I said wherever I was going? He said, no,
Speaker 1: come with us. We're doing a background dated mercury. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't sing. He said it would be cool.
Speaker 1: Laurel'll sing the note in Uria, and so I did.
Speaker 1: Dad I met her. We didn't see each other a
Speaker 1: lot over the number of years. I would run into
Speaker 1: it once in a while. It was always terrific. And
Speaker 1: one night she called me, I'm in extreme night owl,
Speaker 1: and so is she. That's because I'm a night owl
Speaker 1: to put hours on that and always that way, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom was. I'd come home, my mom be sitting
Speaker 1: at a bridge table with a piece of chicksaw puzzle
Speaker 1: and eight bags of different kind of chocolate around the frame,
Speaker 1: and always that way, even last night. And I'm not anymore.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't feel any different. Is there a specific reason?
Speaker 1: Is that your internal clock ors or something you like
Speaker 1: about it? Both? I love about it and it is
Speaker 1: my intern internal clocks. Well, I love it because once
Speaker 1: you get to a certain hour, everything shuts down in
Speaker 1: your internal market. You can do your own thing. The
Speaker 1: only people who call some is somebody I want to
Speaker 1: talk to exactly. There's no interrupt in the internet age,
Speaker 1: start hearing from Europe whatever, But I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: in that age. I'm I'm watching games or you're watching games.
Speaker 1: What else you're doing? I'm reading and watching games, watching
Speaker 1: just DV owing things I want to watch. In between
Speaker 1: twelve and six, speaking to some friends in London and
Speaker 1: around four my l a friends are in bed by
Speaker 1: what what friends I have left there? So no? I
Speaker 1: love that time? Okay? And are you presently married? I
Speaker 1: am presently married. And does your wife what scheduled? Does
Speaker 1: she keep? Not mine? I have the same situation with
Speaker 1: my girlfriend, and you know, the therapist said, what is this?
Speaker 1: You know, this is the only way I can live
Speaker 1: my life, to create you know when everything shots not
Speaker 1: only that it might be advantageous. Oh, I'm totally believe.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact we don't go to bed at
Speaker 1: the same time. What time does your wife go to
Speaker 1: bed and wake up on any given night? It can
Speaker 1: be from I'm beat, I'm putting my feet up and
Speaker 1: that's it. At nine o'clock or not much later than eleven,
Speaker 1: and my girlfriend's eleven and seven. You know, get a
Speaker 1: good a bit of eleven, great up seven like clockwork.
Speaker 1: If I got up at seven, I'd have to make
Speaker 1: sure there were no small instruments near me. I don't
Speaker 1: even want to get up, you know, to get on
Speaker 1: an early flight. Even let's I'm on the dying these days,
Speaker 1: I am not flying. That's a whole you know. My
Speaker 1: very very very close friend, Howard Gilman, who used to
Speaker 1: be was Dennis leaven Toole's partner and closest friend. His son,
Speaker 1: who I was there the day he was born, was
Speaker 1: getting married in a very nice place up in Carmel
Speaker 1: three weeks ago. I had my flights in my hotel.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't do it. I'm not willing to make
Speaker 1: an unforced error. That's exactly what If I was not
Speaker 1: lying in bed and I was dying of COVID and
Speaker 1: I did something like that, That's just not the way
Speaker 1: I want to go. Okay, So you knew Laura. So
Speaker 1: I knew Laura. And she called me in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and said, I'm getting sick again. I
Speaker 1: have a record in me, please make it with me.
Speaker 1: That's what happened. And did her sickness affect the record?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not? Does it sounded no? But I will say,
Speaker 1: and I'm a huge fan saw her multiple times, did
Speaker 1: not know her okay up through uh certainly the first
Speaker 1: the third album, New York Tenderbury, and then the Christmas
Speaker 1: Beads a Sweat. What came thereafter forget production. The songs
Speaker 1: were not of the quality of what came before. Laura
Speaker 1: had things in her life, and I have no I mean,
Speaker 1: I have no idea to put it upon her foot
Speaker 1: for why that might be. But Laura was just dealing
Speaker 1: with a bunch of things and maybe she just wasn't
Speaker 1: plugged into that the greatest part of her because she
Speaker 1: was the minute she walked in the studio. First of all,
Speaker 1: we did it up in my studio that Donald and
Speaker 1: I owned, which was an extremely private place that had
Speaker 1: a window and when you looked out the window, all
Speaker 1: you could see was the Tribe or bridge, and at
Speaker 1: night it was just it was a very nice, chill
Speaker 1: place to be and it was Laura Party, Rainy Elliott, random,
Speaker 1: everybody who was friendly. They all knew each other. It
Speaker 1: was very let's just play. And when she opened her mouth,
Speaker 1: it was just magic. I mean, she was a magical singer.
Speaker 1: Never sang a bad not ever not, not that I
Speaker 1: ever heard. She was just remarkably good. Was she aware
Speaker 1: of how beloved she was by her fans? If yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sure she was. You couldn't be more. This is
Speaker 1: who I am. And she was talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: not being involved in the scene. She just she was cool.
Speaker 1: Although at the end of it, I was a little
Speaker 1: I was upset at because I as we were making
Speaker 1: the record, the studio was up on nine five in
Speaker 1: the very very East Side, and Mattola and I would
Speaker 1: be on their way to Connecticut at home, and they
Speaker 1: were a big fan and friends of mine for a
Speaker 1: long time, so they were once in a while, come
Speaker 1: by the studio, you know, how's it going, see Laura?
Speaker 1: And they were when I sent them the final at
Speaker 1: that time debt. Donnie called me back in the study.
Speaker 1: He said, this is you know, she's just one remarkable singer.
Speaker 1: I just hung up from Lawn and she's gonna open
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live this season. I went, wow, that's great. Great.
Speaker 1: I went into studio because we were still doing some things.
Speaker 1: I said, Laura did this, and she said called Donnie back,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that show. I'm not going on TV.
Speaker 1: And Donnie called her and Tommy spoke to her and
Speaker 1: she just she was so self conscious about her weight
Speaker 1: she wouldn't go on TV and they dropped her. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's what I knew he was excited about the record
Speaker 1: because he called me about the record then too. So,
Speaker 1: how was your experience at Warner Brothers working in part
Speaker 1: of that legendary in our team? How good does it get?
Speaker 1: It was magic? Then? Who were you in the studio
Speaker 1: with at that time? I was we were doing Nightflying.
Speaker 1: I had done a record that as a story of
Speaker 1: its own that we all loved. That is one of
Speaker 1: my two or three favorite records called Rut Boy, Slim
Speaker 1: in the Sex, Dare to Be Fat, Fat is where
Speaker 1: It's at. You know those first two road group boys,
Speaker 1: Slim of the Sex, Change Hield he unfortunately died. I
Speaker 1: used to talk about those albums all the time. I
Speaker 1: have a picture of Roots in my bedroom. I have
Speaker 1: two pictures in my bedroom. I have a picture of
Speaker 1: Root that no matter where you go, he's looking at you.
Speaker 1: I mean if you're on the side of the picture,
Speaker 1: like literally sitting standing next to the picture, he's looking
Speaker 1: at you. And I have a picture of Donald Dusty
Speaker 1: Springfield and my friend Thomas Jefferson, Kay, and the a
Speaker 1: let's at a piano. That's what I have in my
Speaker 1: bedroom A picture of Rude. Wow. So Rude supposedly dropped
Speaker 1: out of Yale. I believe what was his And then
Speaker 1: they said there was mental illness? What was really his story?
Speaker 1: I get to talk about Rude. This is good. His
Speaker 1: story is. I don't know where to start. I'm in
Speaker 1: the village. One night, Fagin's comes by, which he would
Speaker 1: do occasionally, you would play on records I was making
Speaker 1: or come by, and as he left that day, he
Speaker 1: dropped a cassette on the console. He says, so check
Speaker 1: this out. Well, he would do that occasionally for me
Speaker 1: to hear a new song, not often, but occasionally. I
Speaker 1: really heard the songs till they came into studio and
Speaker 1: we played him. And I got in my car to
Speaker 1: go home, and I put the cassette in and I
Speaker 1: heard put a nickel in the duke and boogie to
Speaker 1: your puke, And I went, Fagan, what the funk is this?
Speaker 1: I thought it was Fagan joking me. I got home.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a ridiculous hour. What the hell? What's this?
Speaker 1: He tells me about this friend of his in d C.
Speaker 1: Who this guy is there and he's like a legend
Speaker 1: in town, and so fake and I got on the
Speaker 1: plane and we went to the University of Maryland. It
Speaker 1: was the Christmas show for whatever the students there. It
Speaker 1: was a big room. Ken at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: well rude, if you know, roots worked. Every night was
Speaker 1: a different theme. So he always dressed up one night
Speaker 1: as a soldier or a Santa, and this night he
Speaker 1: was Santa. And at the end of the show he
Speaker 1: sat on a chair and he said, okay, all you
Speaker 1: boys and girls your book girls, really you hang up
Speaker 1: on their left and you sit on Santa's lap. And
Speaker 1: when they got up on Santa's lap, when they got
Speaker 1: up on his, he popped in amy under their nose,
Speaker 1: really really Fagin and I well, I hit my head
Speaker 1: on the table, laughing. I thought I saw Fagin's hit
Speaker 1: the table as well. It was just beyond shows over whatever,
Speaker 1: that's over, and we were going to meet at some
Speaker 1: little place at a pool table and whatever. As I
Speaker 1: told you earlier, I got pretty good at shooting pool.
Speaker 1: And he was this larger than life figure, you know,
Speaker 1: he was. I think he graduated three from Yale and
Speaker 1: green Lee, who was his partner, was rude boy was
Speaker 1: six five to sixty, green Lee was six nine. He
Speaker 1: was a draft choice of the Dolphins offensive lineman mhm.
Speaker 1: And we went to this place and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a pool table there, and you know, he's etching and
Speaker 1: unjust weird. And he said, don't watch the shooting game
Speaker 1: a pool. So I not only beat him, but I
Speaker 1: ended the eight ball game with a bank shot. Literally
Speaker 1: he fell to his knees and he went and we
Speaker 1: became friends, and they let me sign him at Warner's unbelievably,
Speaker 1: and we made a record that just like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know how to tell you the unbelievable uniqueness of
Speaker 1: that record. Well, what pisces me off is that whole
Speaker 1: attitude is absent, not only in music, and that irreverence.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not too old for you. The second
Speaker 1: song on the album, the Mood Ring, he really nailed
Speaker 1: these things. They served chicken chassis chicken. I remember saying,
Speaker 1: chicken chess. Hey, what do you mean the bones of
Speaker 1: a chicken? Okay, See how the other thing is they
Speaker 1: were autobiographical. That's the other thing. I didn't know that
Speaker 1: in jail and Jacksonville too Sick to reggae. Right, those
Speaker 1: are autobiographical and so much more than we could sit
Speaker 1: here talking. If you want to call me at three
Speaker 1: in the morning, call me and I'll tell you unbelievable
Speaker 1: things that went on doing that. But I will tell
Speaker 1: you one and I'll leave it at that. He comes
Speaker 1: to me one morning and says, I need to go
Speaker 1: see a doctor. I didn't know doctors down there. So
Speaker 1: the Eagles were living there at the time, with the
Speaker 1: Simpson and Coconut Grove, and I called Glenn and I said, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I need a doctor for this guy. They
Speaker 1: always had doctors to go see, and they gave me
Speaker 1: the name and I went down with driving and driving
Speaker 1: and I said, so, what are we going for it?
Speaker 1: He said, I need to get a shot. I get
Speaker 1: a shot. I carry around this paper. I said, what
Speaker 1: what is it? Mixing? M What does it do? Well?
Speaker 1: It lets me feel my left side and my right side. Okay,
Speaker 1: m hm, great time, greatest thirty days in my life. Okay.
Speaker 1: What did Warner brothers say about the record? I certainly well,
Speaker 1: I certainly found it through the press, and that's why
Speaker 1: I bought it and fell in love with it, but
Speaker 1: what was it like being on the inside. Well, this
Speaker 1: will be good too. They were wild. I mean everyone
Speaker 1: appreciated the things about you know, the musics, like you know,
Speaker 1: Lenny and Teddy and all these guys. And because we
Speaker 1: got it excited, it translated to Mo and the other people.
Speaker 1: So we booked out the Roxy one night. They were
Speaker 1: terrible drug uses coke. I mean, he was Dicky and
Speaker 1: Greenley consumed. They were these huge guys and consumed drugs.
Speaker 1: So we booked out the Roxy one night and the
Speaker 1: morning of the show, I get when my my secretary,
Speaker 1: who they really liked but was naive to all of
Speaker 1: this scene, went over to the month to you know
Speaker 1: where Blush passed when he was staying at the Chateau.
Speaker 1: Baman Boby said. They called that she was going to
Speaker 1: go over there and he was just gone. She called
Speaker 1: me in tears. I went over there. We injected coffee
Speaker 1: in his veins. Somehow he got it together. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a I was you know rather if you
Speaker 1: know this song used to be a radical right at
Speaker 1: the end of that song, like I said, was autobiographical,
Speaker 1: climbed over the White House fence took a billy clip
Speaker 1: to the head if it weren't for the freaky freaky
Speaker 1: doctor who boy Slim long since be dead. So that's
Speaker 1: who he was. And at the we packed the roxy,
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't get in. And Moe is sitting
Speaker 1: at the front table with who used to be the
Speaker 1: guy at Warna time Warna you know the main CEO guy.
Speaker 1: Oh you're talking about you know, Bob Morgato. No, the
Speaker 1: guy he s ross exactly so Stephen Mower at the table.
Speaker 1: Oh god, and they come out. He comes out and
Speaker 1: opens with two uh boogie to your puke. It was fabulous.
Speaker 1: And he looks out he's loaded and he says, I
Speaker 1: can see tonight we have some corporate criminals in the house.
Speaker 1: That was the end of the record that minute. Mhm
Speaker 1: did you mean team contact with him? Oh? Absolutely, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I didn't wear my boy from President T shirt for this.
Speaker 1: And what was the real story with him dying? P
Speaker 1: O DD and Betty were taught at it. There's no story,
Speaker 1: and was there were second every member of the man
Speaker 1: has passed away. And there actually was a sex change band.
Speaker 1: It was not a studio. Oh my god. They were
Speaker 1: that band. That you here right. They were great. They
Speaker 1: were Ernie Lancaster was as good as swamp blues guitar player.
Speaker 1: These guys were great. They played live. So how did
Speaker 1: it end with you and Warner Brothers? It didn't really
Speaker 1: quote And as much I was living in l A,
Speaker 1: I had my living in l A in my office
Speaker 1: in Burbank, and I had a I get kidney stuntes
Speaker 1: often and badly, and I had an operation. I was
Speaker 1: in Cedars Side night and Donald told me one day
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I'm standing here on forty
Speaker 1: seven and Broadway. Let's come home. And I said I
Speaker 1: was getting divorced at the time. And I said absolutely,
Speaker 1: Let me get out of the hospital recoup, and I
Speaker 1: left and I went back home. And then I had
Speaker 1: an office at Warners in New York, which they were
Speaker 1: very nice about. And I had that for some years,
Speaker 1: and then just one thing led to another, and I maintained.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Lenny yesterday last night. Days and my
Speaker 1: friends and Lenny and I have born six hours apart,
Speaker 1: and so we have been friends for years. It's been fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the best years of my life,
Speaker 1: for sure. And what occupies your time today. Other than
Speaker 1: that twelve to six am period, we covered every night
Speaker 1: at nine o'clock or most every night at nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: I go online with a close friend of mine in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: a cognitive brain doctor who's a fabulous keyboard player, and
Speaker 1: we were talking one day and he told me, how
Speaker 1: you know, once a week is so his brother in
Speaker 1: law and some couple other guys come down. He has
Speaker 1: a studio down in the basement of his house where
Speaker 1: I've been. He grows wed against the studio. His friends
Speaker 1: come over, they have a beer, smoke a joint and
Speaker 1: they play covers. I said, oh cool, let me here.
Speaker 1: So he played me a track one night. And these
Speaker 1: guys are really good musicians, I mean really good musicians.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know that sex is really cool?
Speaker 1: And it turns so I go on every night. There
Speaker 1: are many tracks and they're rerecording again because his wife
Speaker 1: will let people in the house again. They were all vaccinate,
Speaker 1: and I take these tracks and I because what you
Speaker 1: can do digitally these days. I am creating tracks with him,
Speaker 1: thankfully no vocals, and I send him to a good
Speaker 1: my friend, Jennifer Lioness, who connected with you to create
Speaker 1: this podcast. And she puts him up for licensing. And
Speaker 1: I don't care if anyone likes him and not. I
Speaker 1: do something for two hours and have fun, okay. And
Speaker 1: and I have three fabulous new grandsons. How many children
Speaker 1: do you have? I have four children, so you've been
Speaker 1: married how many times? Twice? And the four children are
Speaker 1: from which marriage. I have a son and daughter from
Speaker 1: my first marriage and two daughters from my second marriage,
Speaker 1: and the daughters have I have a one year old
Speaker 1: grandson and three year old identical twins, and I can't
Speaker 1: get enough. And they all live in the New York
Speaker 1: area and they wont Mimi, who has the one year old,
Speaker 1: lives a six minute walk from where I grew up
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, and my other one lives ten minutes away.
Speaker 1: To what agreed to the music business cause your first
Speaker 1: divorce only divorce? Well we you know we we we
Speaker 1: knew each other and we're still friendly. We knew each
Speaker 1: other since we were fourteen. In one place we were
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, we knew the same people, We had the
Speaker 1: same friends. When we moved to California. I can't say
Speaker 1: that had anything to do with it. It was an
Speaker 1: entirely new environment. Meeting up, you know, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of new people in different ways. You know, I was
Speaker 1: in the studio to a ridiculous hours. It couldn't have helped,
Speaker 1: but I can't attribute what part of it was. None
Speaker 1: of it helped. Okay, you're talking about rude and the cocaine.
Speaker 1: You know, Walter had his own issues. To what degree
Speaker 1: were you involved in drugs? I was fortunate. I've always
Speaker 1: liked smoking weed forever. I had friends, too, many friends
Speaker 1: who liked blow. I tried it a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but the best way I can describe it is every
Speaker 1: once in a while, very not often. It would be
Speaker 1: like twelve or one, and Fagin would say, you want
Speaker 1: to work late tonight, and uh, I'd say okay. And
Speaker 1: we always said, well there was a little vial there,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you why. But I'd say okay,
Speaker 1: and we put out a line, you know, that couldn't
Speaker 1: get a cat high, and I'd split it even and
Speaker 1: each of us would do you know, it's like a flake,
Speaker 1: And one of us would say, now I feel shitty
Speaker 1: and nervous, and that's how it made me feel. So
Speaker 1: I was lucky. I didn't like it. It was so
Speaker 1: around you all the time in those days. But I
Speaker 1: like smoking weed, which I still do, but I never
Speaker 1: liked any of the other drugs. Well, Gary, it's been
Speaker 1: great talking to you. There a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: important stuff that unfore and he's going to pass with
Speaker 1: the people who lived it. I'm glad we got a
Speaker 1: lot of this information. Thanks so much for doing this podcast. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm appreciating it. Nice meeting you. Until next time. The
Speaker 1: next time I'm here every night, listen, I'll start calling you.
Speaker 1: It's like Billy Gibbons, He's another one calls me after midnight.
Speaker 1: It's there's a club of those people. There should be more.
Speaker 1: Can I join the club? Well, I think we're all
Speaker 1: the club. You know, this is this is you know
Speaker 1: in terms of I'm more. I like to work after midnight,
Speaker 1: so I don't really like to talk and interact that much,
Speaker 1: which is different. But that's a private conversation. We'll leave
Speaker 1: the audience out of this. Thanks again, Thank you. Until
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left. Ste