Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary singer songwriter Eric Anderson. Eric,
Speaker 1: you have a new song, Danger Lane. Tell us about it.
Speaker 2: I think it pretty much speaks for itself. It's about
Speaker 2: school shootings, mass shootings. Our quator with David Amram last
Speaker 2: May and we did it in one take.
Speaker 1: And you live in the Netherlands. You talk about David Amram,
Speaker 1: who still lives I think near Woodstock. How did you
Speaker 1: actually do it?
Speaker 2: Went into a studio, he started a piano and I
Speaker 2: got the on booth and I just read the lyric.
Speaker 2: I read the narrative and he played piano.
Speaker 1: And this was where.
Speaker 2: Shelter Shelter Island Studio in New York.
Speaker 1: I see, and you are doing some promotion on this.
Speaker 1: How you getting the word out?
Speaker 2: I put it on Facebook and nobody looked at it.
Speaker 1: You put it a Facebook and nobody looked at it.
Speaker 2: As what you said, maybe twenty people.
Speaker 1: So what are you doing to get people to look
Speaker 1: at it?
Speaker 2: Well, the guy I work with, the guy not the
Speaker 2: guy who does the visuals Rent and Fisheries in Toronto,
Speaker 2: he's like this very young wizard. I gave him the images,
Speaker 2: he put it together, and he's putting some stuff on
Speaker 2: TikTok and putting some teasers up like one Verse to
Speaker 2: try to get some interests. I mean it's growing. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like we've had about three hundred hits in about
Speaker 2: thirteen days. But I mean it's not a thing you
Speaker 2: can say you like, you know, like somebody's dog or
Speaker 2: somebody's anniversary or somebody's birthday. Yeah, I like this. I
Speaker 2: like that. You know, you don't you don't. You don't
Speaker 2: watch a video about mass shootings and school shootings and
Speaker 2: say I like it. So I don't know if people
Speaker 2: know how to respond, but if they watch it, they don't,
Speaker 2: they don't respond.
Speaker 1: Well, it's very impact though. What inspired you to weigh
Speaker 1: in on this now?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm probably one of the only artists who are
Speaker 2: doing it and weighing in on these kinds of things.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm I'm doing a thing like this. I'm
Speaker 2: working on a thing about militias private armies in America. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm working on a bunch of things that I guess
Speaker 2: nobody you know, things that are only in the news
Speaker 2: or newspapers or television. You know, things like that. Artists don't.
Speaker 2: It's too much to wrap your heads around. You can't.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not topical in the normal sense where
Speaker 2: you write a topical song and then the next day
Speaker 2: something else happens. You know, when people first started writing
Speaker 2: topical songs in the village, people that fill up folks
Speaker 2: or tom packs and those people. I mean, if something happened,
Speaker 2: you had to wait till Walter Cronkite come on and
Speaker 2: the next night for a half hour newscast or something,
Speaker 2: or get some people got the New York Times maybe,
Speaker 2: and you could write a protest song about a specific event. Now, man, all,
Speaker 2: I mean, this ship has hit the fan. I mean
Speaker 2: it's twenty four hour, twenty four to seven news c
Speaker 2: and I mean it's just it's NonStop. So for a writer,
Speaker 2: how do you put your where do you grab something
Speaker 2: and say, I'm going to write a protest song. So
Speaker 2: these songs that I'm doing on they're not really protest songs.
Speaker 2: They are more like descriptions of diseases, long term descriptions,
Speaker 2: you know, They're not dealing with an event at the moment.
Speaker 2: And of course, since we recorded this in May, many
Speaker 2: many mass shootings have happened, and many school shootings happened.
Speaker 2: I think there's over one hundred and seventy now since
Speaker 2: the New Year, there's been one hundred and seven many
Speaker 2: mass shootings when it's over three or four people in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 1: And to what did we Does music today have power
Speaker 1: to make change?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You tell me, well, the biggest challenge is being heard
Speaker 1: relevant of the content of the music. Tell me more
Speaker 1: about the private militias.
Speaker 2: Just getting back to dangerlund just say it's on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I'm from I was from Buffalo, New York, and we
Speaker 2: rolled into town the day after the want there was
Speaker 2: a shooting at the top supermarket, like about, you know,
Speaker 2: four blocks away from where I was doing a gig.
Speaker 2: And we've been driving around doing some shows and I
Speaker 2: went over there actually to pick up an honorary doctorate
Speaker 2: and we got some gigs around that we played. And
Speaker 2: it was the first time I went to the States, right,
Speaker 2: I felt this palpable, like something could happen to anybody.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like going this was last spring. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the feeling where you could you know, these things happened
Speaker 2: to somebody else, like somebody died or something happened to them,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to happen to me. But this
Speaker 2: time when I went over, I had, you know, man,
Speaker 2: the stuff could just happened to you know, I just
Speaker 2: it was in the air, something I ever felt before
Speaker 2: coming to the States. And then we rolled into town.
Speaker 2: Man the day after this thing at the tops happened,
Speaker 2: and then the EVOLVEDI thing, so last thing. So we
Speaker 2: put some of this stuff together and made a video.
Speaker 2: And that's what I'm doing. I'm making videos. And since then,
Speaker 2: how many look what's happened. It's like, it's a no
Speaker 2: brainer write a song about this. I mean, it's going
Speaker 2: to be happening next week, the week after that. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not a people, it's not a thing people on
Speaker 2: Facebook or Instagram. I really want to see who wants
Speaker 2: to hear about this stuff. I mean so, but anyway,
Speaker 2: somebody's got to take a look at it. And so
Speaker 2: it was me. So I was the one that got tapped.
Speaker 2: I was the shoulder that got tapped on. The militia
Speaker 2: thing is along the same lines, you know, using images
Speaker 2: and talking about being summoned by you know, like a
Speaker 2: leader who snaps his fingers and everybody's ready to go,
Speaker 2: uh little private armies. So it's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: a work about that. So we're we're working on this. Now.
Speaker 2: I've already done, I've already uh recorded the track. We
Speaker 2: just have to make the video with this this guy Brandan,
Speaker 2: he's got the images I sent and so so we're
Speaker 2: doing that. We're putting these kind of things together. But
Speaker 2: I don't know if anybody's going to look at it
Speaker 2: and want to see it, they're interested, who knows. But
Speaker 2: it's something I just show you I had to do.
Speaker 2: And but I don't think I don't know any artists
Speaker 2: that are the Dare Delvin of these the matters. So
Speaker 2: we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have it quite a perspective, having been in
Speaker 1: music and being very aware sixty plus years ago what
Speaker 1: changed in America?
Speaker 2: You're asking me, I'm asking you, what do you think.
Speaker 1: I think it was when the Baby boomers, after the
Speaker 1: sixties were over, became very focused on money, and then
Speaker 1: when Reagan legitimized greed, they sort of lost all of
Speaker 1: their sixties values. That's the key element in my book.
Speaker 1: And then committing quality after that, Well.
Speaker 2: It's a complex question. The stuff that. I think it
Speaker 2: just became more evident after the sixties. This stuff was
Speaker 2: always going on since Melan Carnegie Rock of this stuff's
Speaker 2: always been going on. I think people in the sixties,
Speaker 2: you know, they had this maybe they had this hope.
Speaker 2: You know. I was, I mean I was in the
Speaker 2: first handful of songwriters looking at this stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: in the village. I mean, it gave birth to what
Speaker 2: the so called singer songwriter movement, you know, and those
Speaker 2: people maybe might have seven people, five people writing writing
Speaker 2: about five hundred thousand things. Now you've got five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand singer songwriters and it's hard to even write about five.
Speaker 1: Things that well well put.
Speaker 2: So you get this, you get this dream of the sixties,
Speaker 2: and you think things are going to happen, and then
Speaker 2: you find out that the good guy's lost. You know.
Speaker 2: But it was a beautiful idea, but it just didn't fly.
Speaker 2: And you know, it just it goes on and it
Speaker 2: goes on and it goes on. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: the country. Well, first of all, America is many countries.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different kinds. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: America's happening in one country, and they're always amen, and
Speaker 2: getting trying to get everybody to agree on anything is
Speaker 2: very difficult. I mean, the Italians don't agree on anything,
Speaker 2: and they're just one people. In America, you get a
Speaker 2: country of immigrants, and every wave of immigrants hated the
Speaker 2: next wave, every wave of immigrants that came. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you ever read Cheos Without Money by Michael Golden.
Speaker 2: It's a brilliant book about the Lowers Side, about how
Speaker 2: people lived in their neighborhood cages. It's an absolutely incredible book.
Speaker 2: And every time I knew, you know, if you if
Speaker 2: you went around the corner, you went to the wrong block,
Speaker 2: they kicked the ship out of you. And I mean
Speaker 2: the Italians get you. If they didn't, then the Irish
Speaker 2: would get you. And I mean, and the whole thing
Speaker 2: was built up where you when you got to America,
Speaker 2: you dropped everything at the door. You know, you drop
Speaker 2: the language, you dropped the culture, you dropped You're going
Speaker 2: to you know, Lucy, you're going to be an American.
Speaker 2: Don't talk Italian, don't talk about this, don't talk about it.
Speaker 2: You're going to learn to be an American. And that's
Speaker 2: the way that was where things took a left turn.
Speaker 2: So a lot of beautiful cultural stuff just got thrown
Speaker 2: by the you know, cast aside because people wanted their
Speaker 2: kids to conform and to belong and to be part
Speaker 2: of the big, big dream. So, you know, so the
Speaker 2: splintering and all this and strange false consensus of what
Speaker 2: it is to be this or be that. It was
Speaker 2: a dangerous thing. It was a big weapon. It was
Speaker 2: a club, you know, promulgated by Hollywood, you know, white
Speaker 2: fences and keep mothers at the door with aprons, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's and no one can, no one could
Speaker 2: possibly not all people could fit into this thing. So
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know if the sixties something
Speaker 2: happened afterwards. There is always this way. That's a tough
Speaker 2: it's a tough question.
Speaker 1: Well, you were born in forty three, so you're really
Speaker 1: a child in the fifties. What were the fifties like?
Speaker 1: You were ten years older than I am. Were they
Speaker 1: as straight liced and repressed and mindless as they're depicted.
Speaker 2: Well, you had to have something to compare it to.
Speaker 2: I mean, you didn't. You can just walk around in
Speaker 2: your saddleshiares and say hmm no, but I had an
Speaker 2: ankling something was a little wrong. I mean, of course
Speaker 2: I did, you know, that's so I gravitated to things.
Speaker 2: I mean, when I was thirteen, I went to see
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley, and my parents took me to see Miles
Speaker 2: Davis when I was like fifteen, So I mean I
Speaker 2: got to see some stuff. But you know, you knew something,
Speaker 2: something was in the air. And I think it was
Speaker 2: just through reading and through films and stuff that I
Speaker 2: realized there was another world out there that had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with what I was looking at. And that's
Speaker 2: the world I wanted to find. And that's the world
Speaker 2: I wanted to see, and that's the world I wanted
Speaker 2: to live in. And that's why people jumped ship and
Speaker 2: they you know, that was the that was the thing
Speaker 2: that informed the sixties. Some people were braver than others.
Speaker 2: Some people, you know, cut a new path coming from
Speaker 2: the Beats, you know, the Beat. The beat things started
Speaker 2: it in the village and in San Francisco and the hippies,
Speaker 2: you know, the beats were like the Beats were like hippies,
Speaker 2: but hippies didn't read books. But it was a movement
Speaker 2: and uh literary movement and that and people at least
Speaker 2: I've got I picked up on it, and I think
Speaker 2: people like Bob, you know, Dylan and lou Reid and
Speaker 2: people like that picked up on it. A few people.
Speaker 1: So growing up in the Buffalo area, what'd your father
Speaker 1: do for a living?
Speaker 2: Well, my father was He was a metal metallurgical engineer
Speaker 2: who went to Case Western Reserve and he dealt with
Speaker 2: nuclear energy projects. I don't know how specific you want
Speaker 2: to got.
Speaker 1: As specific as you do, well.
Speaker 2: I don't know. He uh, he worked with it. He
Speaker 2: worked with a metal called zirconium. Zirconium was a metal,
Speaker 2: and he worked with people that work with nuclear energy
Speaker 2: and nuclear reactors, submarines, all kinds of things that dealt
Speaker 2: with nuclear reactors. Zirconium was this metal that was a
Speaker 2: coat around uranium. It was like it was like a
Speaker 2: shaft something went around it and so the uranium would
Speaker 2: heat up and it was surrounded by water. And nuclear
Speaker 2: energy is basically steam, you know, like that makes electricity.
Speaker 2: That's all it is. Really, So you got it. You've
Speaker 2: got nuclear nuclear energy, nuclear rods, and you've got water
Speaker 2: and a mixed steam. But the problem is the uranium
Speaker 2: it oxidizes, it rusts, so Zirconium was an element of
Speaker 2: metal that allowed the electrons to pass through to you know,
Speaker 2: create a nuclear fission, and but it wouldn't rust. So
Speaker 2: the zirconium allowed the activity to go on without having
Speaker 2: the nuclear rods rusting or oxidizing. And in between those
Speaker 2: things were carbon rods that would absorb electrons that could
Speaker 2: make because you know, splitting atoms, the electrons went flying
Speaker 2: all over the place looking for other atoms to split.
Speaker 2: So they had carb they had carbon rods. It's very simple, actually,
Speaker 2: and then you had carbon rods in the next two
Speaker 2: They could absorb electrons and therefore you could control the heat,
Speaker 2: how hot you wanted it, and so did an explode
Speaker 2: like a nuclear bomb. So that's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: he was into, what he was involved with.
Speaker 1: So in the late fifties and early sixties, although we
Speaker 1: had fear of the H and A bombs, this was
Speaker 1: really cutting edge stuff. But by the late seventies there
Speaker 1: was a reaction the China syndrome. What'd your father think
Speaker 1: about all that?
Speaker 2: About what China?
Speaker 1: The people who suddenly were against nuclear power.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean these are things they probably read about
Speaker 2: in the newspapers. There were protest marches and whatnot. It
Speaker 2: didn't affect him directly. Nobody laid siege to the company
Speaker 2: or surrounded the surrounded them where they had to build
Speaker 2: a motor around it or something like that. They you know,
Speaker 2: they carried on business, and they still do today to
Speaker 2: some degree. I mean, there's people like my father that
Speaker 2: are working in France, you know, Germany, all over the
Speaker 2: all over the world, and in China and rush everywhere,
Speaker 2: and anybody who deals with nuclear energy deals with this.
Speaker 2: But protest wise, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, did you ever argue with your father about
Speaker 1: nuclear energy? Were you against nuclear power?
Speaker 2: My parents were Republicans, so I didn't. I didn't have
Speaker 2: any kind of I didn't take any kind of stance
Speaker 2: on this at all. In fact, I wasn't really aware
Speaker 2: of the of these movements, which is kind of an
Speaker 2: insular value of being in a suburb. I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: you get insulated from all this.
Speaker 1: So how many kids in the family?
Speaker 2: Whose family?
Speaker 1: Your family growing up?
Speaker 2: Well, there was a there was a mother, father, and
Speaker 2: two brothers.
Speaker 1: So where are you in the hierarchy of the three kids.
Speaker 2: Well, well, there are two brothers, me and another brother.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you the older or the younger.
Speaker 2: And the young I mean I'm the older.
Speaker 1: Why what kind of kid were you growing up? Were
Speaker 1: you like a member of the group? Were you outside
Speaker 1: of group? We're the leader?
Speaker 2: Well, man, I was on the student council, I was
Speaker 2: vice president of a class one year, and then I
Speaker 2: lost interests in all that stuff. And I, like I said,
Speaker 2: I was, I was in a lot of extra curricular reading.
Speaker 2: But I did. I work in a restaurant, and I
Speaker 2: worked in a record store make money to buy records.
Speaker 2: I uh played some sports. I played tennis. I was
Speaker 2: on a football team for a while and played baseball.
Speaker 2: You know, the usual stuff, whatever kid does.
Speaker 1: So you were aware at the birth of rock and roll?
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 2: Well, it was pretty earth shattering, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: I my parents been listening to people like Raynoble, My
Speaker 2: father like rayn Noble, Elbowdi you know, the very thought
Speaker 2: of you those I don't know how familiar with this stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, Benny Goodman, these kind of big band, big
Speaker 2: bands used to play this, you know. I mean he
Speaker 2: he when he went to when he went to high school.
Speaker 2: One weekend, count Basie played by high school in Cleveland
Speaker 2: and the other weekend, Duke Ellington played, so he was
Speaker 2: he was very exposed to big band music and America.
Speaker 2: You love music. Rock and roll was this was the way.
Speaker 2: It was the vehicle that taught us how to learn
Speaker 2: three chords on a guitar. See, we all started with
Speaker 2: rock and roll. And Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers
Speaker 2: came to my high school to play. I saw them.
Speaker 2: I saw I always performed at the Memorial auDA tourium
Speaker 2: and a goal suit. So it was and I've learned
Speaker 2: to start playing guitar, and you know, I was. I
Speaker 2: had a few I had a couple of folk groups,
Speaker 2: had a rock group. You know, but every kid does that,
Speaker 2: I think in the fifties.
Speaker 1: So what was it like seeing Elvis and Buddy Holly.
Speaker 2: Well, you were, you knew you were in the presence
Speaker 2: of it. I mean I didn't get to see Duke
Speaker 2: Ellington in person. I didn't get to see Gwen Miller,
Speaker 2: I didn't get to see Benny Good. They were all
Speaker 2: on records. I mean I never got to see but
Speaker 2: they were great. You know, you know, you were in
Speaker 2: the present and stead of a great musical explosion. It
Speaker 2: was like it was like being parachuted into a volcano.
Speaker 1: Okay, you graduate from high school, you go to college.
Speaker 1: What was college like?
Speaker 2: Well, I was in pre med. I'd been working at
Speaker 2: a cancer institute in Buffalo Roswell Park for a couple
Speaker 2: of years, and under the auspices of this Hungarian doctor
Speaker 2: who lived next door to me, we became friends and
Speaker 2: you got me interested in research. So I was going
Speaker 2: to I was interested in becoming a research scientist. And
Speaker 2: so I was in the pre med and college. But
Speaker 2: then I started getting too music and more and more,
Speaker 2: and I started reading stuff that wasn't part of the curriculum.
Speaker 2: And then I was in a motorcycle fraternity, which I
Speaker 2: quit very soon, and it wasn't in it for very long.
Speaker 2: When they they were rushing Jewish kids and they when
Speaker 2: they they said, come to the kitchen, I want to
Speaker 2: want to show our ovens that I just packed a
Speaker 2: bag and I booked out. Either I never went back again,
Speaker 2: but I still kept a motorcycle. So we were doing
Speaker 2: things like jumping freights. It was Lake Geneva was a
Speaker 2: Hobart Colleges and lake and the freight trains would go
Speaker 2: by and we were jumping freights. And then came the
Speaker 2: unfortunate day when a few of us went and ripped
Speaker 2: up the president's lawn with their motorcycles and fucked up
Speaker 2: the shrubs and just just really didn't care. So I
Speaker 2: was expelled, expelled, A few of us were expelled, and
Speaker 2: it's funny just to conclude this story, a year ago
Speaker 2: I got an email from the dean of the college.
Speaker 2: But parents before I say, when I got expelled by
Speaker 2: I went direpidly to San Francisco because I wanted to.
Speaker 2: I wanted to meet the beats or see the beat scene.
Speaker 2: So I had a plan. But a year ago I
Speaker 2: got this email saying they wanted to give me an
Speaker 2: honorary doctorate at this college, and I thought it was
Speaker 2: a hoax. I said, they got to be fucking crazy.
Speaker 2: So my wife, who is a doctor, she is a
Speaker 2: PhD actually, and she's a scientist. She said, maybe read
Speaker 2: this again, and the guy wrote me again. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, we want to give you this PhD. And
Speaker 2: the guy turned out to be great, this deane, he
Speaker 2: just turned out to be amazing. But he really said,
Speaker 2: we want to give you this PhD in Humanities and
Speaker 2: literature because you were the most accomplished dropout the school
Speaker 2: has ever seen in two hundred year history of its
Speaker 2: two hundred year history. So I went there and I
Speaker 2: I got uh work cap and gown, and I got
Speaker 2: a scroll and my wife and our biggest fear was within,
Speaker 2: you know, hidden within the scroll would be some kind
Speaker 2: of invoice or bill for like a gardening bill of
Speaker 2: like eighty thousand dollars or something for what we did
Speaker 2: to the to the to the loan of the president.
Speaker 2: But people remembered it, and I mean they're still talking
Speaker 2: about him who was extraordined. I mean, winning the lottery,
Speaker 2: all the lotteries would be probably greater the chances than
Speaker 2: me getting this in this college was this is Hobart College.
Speaker 2: It's a private school in Geneva, New York. And ingam.
Speaker 2: My wife said, you know, we tell people on some
Speaker 2: she sings in my group when we play we play,
Speaker 2: she says, you know what what took She was a
Speaker 2: little kind of mock irritated. She says, what took me
Speaker 2: like five years to get a PhD in the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: took you five minutes. She didn't like that. Sorry, but
Speaker 2: she's a good sport. So we did some shows and
Speaker 2: that's where That's where I rolled into town after the
Speaker 2: tops massacre the supermarket, and that's when the Boss started
Speaker 2: rolling on these these new kinds of topical works. I'm
Speaker 2: doing these videos.
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. So A what did your parents say
Speaker 1: when you got expelled? And B how did you literally
Speaker 1: decide and get to San Francisco?
Speaker 2: Well? I hitched out after college. I mean I just
Speaker 2: I talked. I mean they love music, so they understood
Speaker 2: to some degree. But when I talked to them, I
Speaker 2: would always say, promise them, yeah, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: back to school. You know. They said, were you going
Speaker 2: to go back? You ever going to Yeah? I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go back. This went on for years.
Speaker 2: I think I had two records out and I was
Speaker 2: still telling you I was going to go back to college.
Speaker 1: So what you hitch site? Did you have any money?
Speaker 1: You landed in San Francisco? What happens?
Speaker 2: Not? Really? I saved a little well. I had a
Speaker 2: little folk group. We did a Woodn't anything. There was
Speaker 2: a guy named Harry Altman. Harry Altman ran the Town Casino,
Speaker 2: which was which was the club. It was like the
Speaker 2: guy I'm trying to think of a comparison in New York.
Speaker 2: I mean it was a supper club that had like
Speaker 2: people like Sinatra, Dean Martin, all these people. He was
Speaker 2: friends with all these people. So I had this idea
Speaker 2: and I went up to I says, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: like to do like a hoot and anything like because
Speaker 2: I figured I could make some money to go to
Speaker 2: the coast. So I had a little group and he
Speaker 2: was very receptive because you see, I've heard about this
Speaker 2: folk music stuff. Yeah, nanny, hmmm, Well we could give
Speaker 2: it a we could give it a whirl. And and
Speaker 2: the place we were doing it was in the Glen Casino,
Speaker 2: which is near where I lived, you know, in the
Speaker 2: suburbs and Snyder. And then the Union got wind of
Speaker 2: it and I had to get out of the union
Speaker 2: and join the union. But I couldn't play. I couldn't
Speaker 2: read me well, I had studied piano, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: read music enough to play guitar on a session in Buffalo,
Speaker 2: New York with jazz guys or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: they were trying to figure out a way to make
Speaker 2: the money, get me to pay for the union, but
Speaker 2: not have me do any work for the union. So
Speaker 2: I had that pan a couple hundred bucks, got in
Speaker 2: the union. Harry Oltman was happy about that. And I
Speaker 2: mean for years they came around to the clubs I
Speaker 2: played in the States, collecting dues. A guy in a
Speaker 2: trench call like Peter falkould come and wait til the
Speaker 2: end of the show and want twenty bucks and give
Speaker 2: me like a like a receipt this stuff when I mean,
Speaker 2: I want to and I mean it was crazy because
Speaker 2: I I you know, but we so we did this thing.
Speaker 2: It was a huge success. Harry Oltman couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: And we had this packed house and I made a
Speaker 2: few hundred bucks, took my guitar and I hitchhiked west,
Speaker 2: got rise and met my friend in California and we
Speaker 2: went up to went up and got a place in
Speaker 2: Stinton Beach in Marin County. This is like nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: And then I went down to the Coffee Gallery and
Speaker 2: North Beach, which is kind of the Italian equivalent village
Speaker 2: Greenwage Village, San Francisco. And I got a gig at
Speaker 2: the Coffee Gallery and I was playing there a couple
Speaker 2: of nights a week. Gino Valente. You know, come on, people,
Speaker 2: Let's get together. He wrote that song about peace, you know,
Speaker 2: Gino Valente h.
Speaker 1: Of course he was also beating quick Silver passengers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. His name is Chet. He had another
Speaker 2: Chet something right. Anyway, he wrote a song about peace
Speaker 2: and walked around dealing dope with a boweying k I've
Speaker 2: strapped to his thigh walk in the streets. And then
Speaker 2: Janet Shopping played another couple of nights, so we were
Speaker 2: all we had this little thing going at the Coffee
Speaker 2: Gery and that's where TODM. Paxson found me and he
Speaker 2: invited me to New York and that's how I got
Speaker 2: into the singer songwriter sing So.
Speaker 1: Before we get to New York. You were there when
Speaker 1: the bead poets were the thing, before it broke through,
Speaker 1: before all the hippies ultimately came. Sixty five, sixty six,
Speaker 1: sixty seven. What was it like and did you have
Speaker 1: access to fur Ling Getty and all these other people?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and no, I mean I was there. I
Speaker 2: met a poet named David Meltzer, and he's a published
Speaker 2: poet and he's written he wrote a book about the beats.
Speaker 2: He's he was very much into the scene with Michael
Speaker 2: McClure and those people, Philip Whalen and he was working
Speaker 2: at the City Lights Bookstarting through David, I met Farle
Speaker 2: and Getty and then then Alan gins were going to
Speaker 2: come in from Cambodia from Vietnam. He floated into town
Speaker 2: in all white, looking like he was an Indian guru,
Speaker 2: and I met him and met McClure, and uh. Of course,
Speaker 2: Alan gainsber was very much against the Vietnam War. He
Speaker 2: was over there and he saw all the stuff that
Speaker 2: was going on before it escalated. So and David, David
Speaker 2: and I had a little group called the Snoops County
Speaker 2: Camp Followers, which is like a little folk group that
Speaker 2: included my wife, Debbie Green, who was a singer. And
Speaker 2: she owned a club called the Cabal out there and Berkeley.
Speaker 2: The Cabal is a club. This is a kind of
Speaker 2: a tangent tangent tangent gentle uh interview. But she had
Speaker 2: a club that you know, like Lightning Hopkins auld play
Speaker 2: and Doc Watson, you know, Clarence A Actually Lenny Bruce,
Speaker 2: you know, they would play her club. It was kind
Speaker 2: of modeled up to the Club forty seven became later
Speaker 2: became an item and went to New York.
Speaker 1: But well, okay, what point did you start playing original material?
Speaker 2: Well, I was doing. I was doing. I was doing
Speaker 2: original material starting in San Francisco. I was trying stuff out.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wanted to be a writer. That that
Speaker 2: was that I knew.
Speaker 1: How'd you meet Tom Paxton And how did he convince
Speaker 1: you to come to New York?
Speaker 2: He was playing at the Cabal where Debbie had this club,
Speaker 2: and then he she brought him over to the Coffee Gallery.
Speaker 2: You heard me play, and he liked my act and
Speaker 2: he invited me to New York and said, here, stay
Speaker 2: in my house. He gave me the keys. So I
Speaker 2: went there, and Debbie and I went there and we
Speaker 2: lived in his house. He was in England for a while,
Speaker 2: and then I met Phil Oaks and Phil Phil took
Speaker 2: me around the streets. I met Davon Rock, I met Dylan,
Speaker 2: bob On Everybody, Patrick Sky, Buffy, Saint Marie, and and
Speaker 2: then I got a deal with Vanguard Records.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you get there, you hitchhiked to California. How
Speaker 1: do you get from California to New York.
Speaker 2: I flew to my parents' house in Buffalo. I stayed
Speaker 2: there for a couple of months to detox kind of.
Speaker 2: And then I went to New York and to Paxson's place.
Speaker 2: But when I was in, when I was at my house,
Speaker 2: all this stuff's in bios and stuff. Actually, But when
Speaker 2: I got to my my parents' house, it was nice
Speaker 2: because I could sit at the dining room table and
Speaker 2: I really started writing songs. Uh. I wrote a song
Speaker 2: called come on My bed Side there I remember, so
Speaker 2: it was a it was kind of a beautiful, very
Speaker 2: innocent time. And then I got, I think, uh, somehow
Speaker 2: I got to ride to New York and and then
Speaker 2: it all began.
Speaker 1: Now, Debbie was with you the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she flew she flew in and then joined me
Speaker 2: in New York.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're now in Tom Paxton's apartment. You're there
Speaker 1: with Debbie. You don't really know anybody.
Speaker 2: What happens, Well, phil Oaks took me around to meet
Speaker 2: a lot of people film and uh, and then and Dylan,
Speaker 2: you know, he introduced me to some people. I think
Speaker 2: he introduced me to Jack Elliott. And but you know,
Speaker 2: Bob was making you know, he was doing tours and
Speaker 2: making some good money. He was you know, he was
Speaker 2: doing sol tourists driving around. I mean, I think when
Speaker 2: I hit when I hit this, when I hit the set,
Speaker 2: I think he'd had three records out, you know, but
Speaker 2: he'd becoming down and plants testing stuff, and you know,
Speaker 2: in the clubs, which is great, and hang out and
Speaker 2: it was all about writers and writing and uh, this
Speaker 2: little this little group that thought could change the world.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about four or five songwriters of
Speaker 2: this kind of this kind of you know, people like
Speaker 2: Bob and David Blue and phil Oaks. It was just
Speaker 2: this a little handful. And there were guys who played
Speaker 2: over the night out, people like the great Fred Neil
Speaker 2: was like it was my favorite of all of them,
Speaker 2: but he and Tim Harden and people at least at Kendrick.
Speaker 2: These people played in the night Out. There's a whole
Speaker 2: thing over there, you know. And people like Lou Reed
Speaker 2: I never met. He was over on the East Side
Speaker 2: doing stuff, playing different things, clubs and stuff. So phil Oaks,
Speaker 2: phil Oaks will come on. You're saying, saying, Bob, how
Speaker 2: are we going to do this? This is nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four and it's now twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: How are we going to Well, we're going, as I say,
Speaker 1: we started this, we started with your new record. As
Speaker 1: I say, I'm willing to jump back to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: If there's something specific you want to mention.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. I'm just wondering. It's
Speaker 2: a there's a lot of a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of territory. But anyway, Yeah, So it was an exciting
Speaker 2: time and I think the highlight for me of being
Speaker 2: in the village was I had signed with Vanguard Records
Speaker 2: and had recorded, but I didn't the record didn't come
Speaker 2: up for ages. It seemed like an eternity. It's like
Speaker 2: being a kid trying to watch in the clock one
Speaker 2: as you know one is French French lessons going to
Speaker 2: be over, and like the hour never ends. And it
Speaker 2: was like this. I waited like a year and a
Speaker 2: half or something to the till the Bloody record came out,
Speaker 2: the first album, and it seemed like an eternity. And
Speaker 2: I was living on the Lower East Side, cooking for junkies,
Speaker 2: you know, on East tenth Street. So finally the one
Speaker 2: thing that was really good was it people in the village.
Speaker 2: I got to know all the club owners, like from
Speaker 2: the Gate Art to Lougovin. People are like people that
Speaker 2: the village vanguard, the jazz places and I and the
Speaker 2: people like the gas light and clubs like that on
Speaker 2: Gurtish Folks City. I had done one gig because Robert
Speaker 2: Shelton in the New York Times got me a gig
Speaker 2: at Folks City, and then kind of nothing happened. It
Speaker 2: was a good gig. Me and John Lee Hooker did
Speaker 2: a gig, but then nothing happens. I'm sitting around cooking
Speaker 2: for chunkies, trying to do some gardening and for people,
Speaker 2: and going to these clubs at night. And then I
Speaker 2: lived up at Broadside Magazine. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: heard of that. That broad of course topical songwriting. So
Speaker 2: I lived up there. But the most important thing is
Speaker 2: that people were playing for a week at venues. You
Speaker 2: know light it happens, you know Mississippi, John Hurt, Doc Watson,
Speaker 2: Clarence Ashley, all these people devon round fill everybody did
Speaker 2: we go in to a club and play for a
Speaker 2: week all over America. Miles Davids, John Coltrane, mingus we
Speaker 2: play the game for a week. So I could get
Speaker 2: down there and I'd sit at their knees at these
Speaker 2: people's knees. And this was my PhD in music. I mean,
Speaker 2: and sit there every single night and hear Lightning Hopkins
Speaker 2: and it blew my mind. And I don't think many
Speaker 2: people can say that. So, I mean, that's where I
Speaker 2: really learned, how about touch space music? You know, though
Speaker 2: I didn't apply everything I learned right away, because I
Speaker 2: can tell by all the scratch marks on my guitar.
Speaker 2: I was really overplaying sometimes it was a loud song.
Speaker 2: I gotta play loud, you know, and it doesn't. And
Speaker 2: I later I found out it really didn't work that
Speaker 2: way because it's all about space.
Speaker 1: You said you were cooking for junkies. What were you
Speaker 1: literally doing cooking for junkies?
Speaker 2: I was like living on a West t debian e.
Speaker 2: Were lived on West tenth Street. These guys lived on
Speaker 2: Ice Street. And I'd get down and go to the markets,
Speaker 2: the vegelable marketing stuff, had a kid to the place,
Speaker 2: go and cook launch for Then they'd be they'd be
Speaker 2: knotted out in the living room and I'd go and
Speaker 2: take plates to them food.
Speaker 1: And they paid you for this.
Speaker 2: They paid me, Yeah, they paid me. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know how much. Thirty bucks a week or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And what was Debbie doing.
Speaker 2: Debbie was going between here and Boston. I mean there
Speaker 2: in Boston, you know she was. She had her things,
Speaker 2: she had. We got kicked out of this place, said
Speaker 2: a German landlord. Was on Eastown Street. He took me
Speaker 2: out in the back and set me out of set
Speaker 2: me down on a milk carton. He said, I got
Speaker 2: to talk to you. I said, yes, what's wrong the rent? No? No,
Speaker 2: he said, are you married to that girl? And I
Speaker 2: said no. He said, you know, I didn't think so.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna I'm going to evict you from this place.
Speaker 2: Evict me for what he said, because you and her
Speaker 2: are the reason Adam and iQue got thrown out of
Speaker 2: the garden of beating. Pack your bags be out of
Speaker 2: here in a week. I mean, you couldn't make this
Speaker 2: ship up. But these are the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: were happening. I mean, you never knew everything. It's like
Speaker 2: a piano fell out of a tree and hitch on
Speaker 2: the head. You don't have any You never prepared for
Speaker 2: these things.
Speaker 1: How'd you get your record deal?
Speaker 2: Well? I think Tom Paxston called Robert Shelton at the
Speaker 2: New York Times, and Robert Shelton came down to Tom's
Speaker 2: house and I played him some songs. I was sitting
Speaker 2: in a chair, he was sitting on the bed, and
Speaker 2: he liked what he heard and he wrote a thing.
Speaker 2: He wrote. He got arranged for a gig at the
Speaker 2: Curtius Folks City, and he wrote a thing about me
Speaker 2: in the New York Times that I was the antidote
Speaker 2: to the Beatles. Because Robert Shelton was a writer who
Speaker 2: a brilliant guy. He believed that after Elvis in the
Speaker 2: fifties and the rock and roll, the next big thing
Speaker 2: should be the singer songwriters, the phil oaks Is and
Speaker 2: the Bob Dylans, and that should be the big thing
Speaker 2: in American culture. Is musically, the Beatles were immortal ono
Speaker 2: me to him. And the ironic thing is that the
Speaker 2: Beatles manager became my manager, Brian Epston. That was the
Speaker 2: whole twist. And the headline of this article is the
Speaker 2: Antidote to the Beatles. So there you go. I mean,
Speaker 2: like I said, it's like the piano's falling out of
Speaker 2: the trees. So he called Robert Shelton, called Maynard Solomon
Speaker 2: and manutt Solomon came down. He said on the bed,
Speaker 2: and I said on the terror, and I sang them
Speaker 2: songs and we went and he got me a deal
Speaker 2: and that was it. I mean, almost too easy, you know,
Speaker 2: it was almost too easy. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Okay, while you're cooking for junkies waiting for the album
Speaker 1: to come out, are you playing out live? No?
Speaker 2: Like I said, I couldn't get any work waiting for
Speaker 2: this record to come out. I'm sitting around doing nothing.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to hear people playing clubs.
Speaker 1: So what happens when the record does come out?
Speaker 2: Nothing happened right away, but you know, suddenly there, you know,
Speaker 2: people were interested in it because it got really good reviews.
Speaker 2: And so I started playing gigs, you know, for a week,
Speaker 2: like like like Miles did, and like Hofkins did, and
Speaker 2: all these all my heroes. So you go to you'd
Speaker 2: go play a gig in Cleveland, you go play a
Speaker 2: gig in Chicago, you go play a gig in Montreal,
Speaker 2: you go play a gig in Toronto, you go play
Speaker 2: a gig in Atlanta, and it's like you could you
Speaker 2: could live there. You knew the restaurants, you knew where
Speaker 2: the movie theaters, you could start a family. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was just you basically moved into a town. You
Speaker 2: became this sort of weird Dennison of a city. It
Speaker 2: was incredible, you know. And you know then, so the
Speaker 2: people like me who could see Light Hopkins played for
Speaker 2: a week or Mississippi John like multiple times in a
Speaker 2: year to see these guys play. People were lucky if
Speaker 2: they could even see him play at a college concert
Speaker 2: somewhere for one night. I mean, the stuff I saw,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't exist anymore, it doesn't skip chains Son House.
Speaker 2: All these people I saw, they're gone. Nobody ever got
Speaker 2: to see him, I mean except the people who paid
Speaker 2: to come, you know, to come to the gigs. But
Speaker 2: I got into free so I could just sit there
Speaker 2: all week. And I think I was the only songwriter
Speaker 2: who was doing that. I didn't. I don't remember seeing
Speaker 2: any pack Center dum Von Rock or Feliks or It
Speaker 2: was only me there catching all these blues acts and
Speaker 2: jazz acts and you know, and the great folk act
Speaker 2: like Clarence Ashley, Gene Ritchie and uh Reverend Gary Davis,
Speaker 2: people like that. I mean, it was phenomenal because then
Speaker 2: I didn't have a record collection I didn't have. I
Speaker 2: didn't have blues records or anything, and it was just phenomenal.
Speaker 1: How did you hook up with Epstein?
Speaker 2: I was playing a gig down at the Steve Paul
Speaker 2: scene and Bob Bobby Columbia was my drummer. Bobby, you know,
Speaker 2: he started blood spotting Terrace later on. Bobby. I don't
Speaker 2: know how the hell I met Bobby Colombia, but he
Speaker 2: but he was my drummer and I had a little band.
Speaker 2: Gabby played some piano and he's somehow knew brianis and
Speaker 2: he just I don't know his brother knew him or something,
Speaker 2: and he brought Brian down. I didn't know if you
Speaker 2: know he was there, Brian was. Brian came down to
Speaker 2: the gate. We played, you know, like another gig for
Speaker 2: a week. Brian came down for every single night, and
Speaker 2: I didn't know he was there for like five nights.
Speaker 2: But I just there was this guy sitting there in
Speaker 2: the middle. There was always this one person sitting at
Speaker 2: the at the table there. And then finally I met
Speaker 2: him and we went to Bobby's. He wanted he said,
Speaker 2: can I manage you? You know, I'd love to do that.
Speaker 2: I said, sure, he said, Oh, I mean this is
Speaker 2: the guy who really trusted. I mean, we loved him
Speaker 2: right away. We were just shattered when he died. It
Speaker 2: was like it's really horrible, really horrible, because he had
Speaker 2: this thing. He just said, look, just do what you do.
Speaker 2: Just don't call me. Remember there's six hours difference, five
Speaker 2: hours differences during England and London and New York. Don't
Speaker 2: call me at night because I'm trying to sleep, because
Speaker 2: I didn't think about the time difference, you know. So
Speaker 2: but he said, look, just do what you do and
Speaker 2: if it's okay with you, I'll try to put you
Speaker 2: in very special places. If you approve of it, I
Speaker 2: agree with it. And that was the only managerial thing
Speaker 2: was said.
Speaker 1: So you make a number of albums for Vanguard, ultimately six.
Speaker 1: It supports your touring in these varying cities. But can
Speaker 1: you feel the momentum building or.
Speaker 2: What was it like? Well, I don't know. Show business
Speaker 2: ever was my thing, you know, as my record sales
Speaker 2: will a test. I mean I've never been. I think
Speaker 2: my main interest is writing, always exploring my mindset is
Speaker 2: I was just I was in a dugout canoe somewhere
Speaker 2: at the Amazon River and I just was paddling upstream
Speaker 2: to see what I could find. So, I mean, I
Speaker 2: was always interested in the writing. And then of course
Speaker 2: you document the stuff and make records and you experiment
Speaker 2: with music and you fool around and stuff. But I
Speaker 2: guess the momentum was building. Yeah, things were happening, but
Speaker 2: I didn't. I can't tell you anything about how much
Speaker 2: I thought about it.
Speaker 1: I'd you end up on Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: Oh, this friend of Philokes is uh Andy Wickham signed me?
Speaker 2: And was that a good experience or bad experience? Well,
Speaker 2: I think they gave me too much freedom, O the way.
Speaker 2: One album I made in Nashville that was pretty good
Speaker 2: and some good well they all had good songs. But
Speaker 2: the other one in LA was kind of it was
Speaker 2: kind of a big band extravaganza, and I didn't think
Speaker 2: it worked at all. I think there were some really
Speaker 2: good songs in it, but it didn't really do that well.
Speaker 2: And even Eve Babbis did the cover you know her
Speaker 2: of course recently died. Yes, we were friends, and she
Speaker 2: did she did a cover and uh and uh the
Speaker 2: record didn't do very well. So Mo Austin said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm going to release you and hey, you can have
Speaker 2: the tapes, okay. And I'm living in Venice, and you know,
Speaker 2: I mean I have no sense of business at all.
Speaker 2: I mean I think I think my dog has more
Speaker 2: sense of business than I do. But I and then
Speaker 2: Clive Davis came along and signed me from from Columbia Records.
Speaker 1: Can you be a little bit more specific? How did
Speaker 1: you connect with Clive Davis?
Speaker 2: I think, I think again it was like through Bobby
Speaker 2: Bobby Columbia. Again, it was both of these things happened
Speaker 2: through Bobby.
Speaker 1: So you switched to Colombia and you make Blue River,
Speaker 1: which is considered to be legendary and has some impact.
Speaker 1: Did you feel that on the inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I knew there was a special, something
Speaker 2: very special happened. I mean because it was kind of
Speaker 2: taped together in a way. I mean, forgive the pun,
Speaker 2: but because I did some of the stuff. I did
Speaker 2: one track with Roy Halley and San Francisco. I did
Speaker 2: one track New York at Columbia Studios. I did two
Speaker 2: tracks at Wally Hyder's in LA I did the rest
Speaker 2: the other five tracks in Nashville, and somehow the guy
Speaker 2: put it together. It sounded like it was all done.
Speaker 2: I don't know how it happened. This was like something
Speaker 2: that this is mono from having or something. I don't
Speaker 2: know how it happened. And then there you go. You
Speaker 2: got a thing that's like more than some of its parts.
Speaker 2: I mean, the sum is greater than the you know,
Speaker 2: than the parts.
Speaker 1: Gestalt And how did you end up moving from Columbia
Speaker 1: day Arista.
Speaker 2: Well, my second album for Columbia got lost, I think
Speaker 2: on purpose, because when I was making the album, Clive
Speaker 2: got fired. People all over Columbia Records was crawling with
Speaker 2: FBI people. There's like pay all accusations and drugs, and
Speaker 2: I mean the whole place was exploding. Clive had you know,
Speaker 2: Clyde was on the streets. And the people that Clive
Speaker 2: picked for me, who worked with me, they weren't into
Speaker 2: I don't think they were so interested in losing their gigs.
Speaker 2: They are very ambitious at Sony or Columbia, and I
Speaker 2: think they held on to their jobs. Nobody wanted to
Speaker 2: finish this album and it just got dropped. So we
Speaker 2: finished it in Nashville. We finished it, and then I
Speaker 2: got a call in New York from somebody from and naturally, oops,
Speaker 2: we got to tell sorry, we think your album got lost. Well,
Speaker 2: of course nothing gets lost. And years later a woman
Speaker 2: named Amy Herriton started this research around the world at Columbia,
Speaker 2: I mean searching all the vaults from Tokyo to Paris, London, Berlin,
Speaker 2: everywhere there was vaults Columbia, they or you know CBS records.
Speaker 2: They searched us in and they turned it out, turned
Speaker 2: up and they were in Nashville because a truck came
Speaker 2: up with no identification went into the vaults on fifty
Speaker 2: first Street. A lot of the tapes of Columbia are
Speaker 2: like where IBM keeps stuff, and it's in a mountain
Speaker 2: up and near Woodstock, like a mountain. What's it called.
Speaker 1: There's a name, Iron Mountain.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they got all but anyway, some stuff was put.
Speaker 2: So they dumped all these tapes all over the floor
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night with no signing and
Speaker 2: no signing out, no nothing. Somebody just ran in from
Speaker 2: a truck dumped the ta They saw them. Somebody saw them,
Speaker 2: but nobody knew who they were. Dumped the tapes and
Speaker 2: the next day a guy who worked there was carrying
Speaker 2: a whole armful of tapes that went over his head,
Speaker 2: walked around the corner, slipped on the tapes that are
Speaker 2: ond the floor, broke his vertebrand, his back and he's
Speaker 2: been out of work ever since. Wow, and that's how
Speaker 2: the tapes are found. So you go to.
Speaker 1: Arista just when Clive Davis starts that company. You make
Speaker 1: a couple of albums there. The record copany doesn't even
Speaker 1: have that many records, he puts out. Patty Smith puts
Speaker 1: out Eric Carmon, did you feel you got the proper
Speaker 1: attention you made the right records there?
Speaker 2: Well, he was just starting up. I mean, you know
Speaker 2: you make records, you don't. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 2: if they were right. They felt that, you know, they
Speaker 2: feel right when you're doing it, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: in hindsight they were right.
Speaker 1: So ultimately you end up moving to Norway. How does
Speaker 1: that happen?
Speaker 2: You meet somebody you know, like journalists? Well, I don't
Speaker 2: know about you, but sometimes a journalist will say, well,
Speaker 2: why did you, why did you? Why are you in
Speaker 2: the Netherlands? You say a woman and there's never a
Speaker 2: follow up. Course it's incredible in your case, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I can't predict.
Speaker 1: So where'd you meet this woman. I think I met
Speaker 1: her in I met her in Norway and you were
Speaker 1: there working.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I met her return of concert, I met her.
Speaker 1: And what had happened between you and Debbie at this point?
Speaker 2: Oh, deb and Debbie and I had been separated for
Speaker 2: twenty years, but we still got together making Did you
Speaker 2: ever see the movie the song.
Speaker 1: Poet, not the whole thing?
Speaker 2: No? Well, if you watch the whole Thaniel, you understand more.
Speaker 1: Okay, And that's something you'd rather not speak about.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you know that's already on record. No,
Speaker 2: I mean you know it's there the story, okayage journalist. Man,
Speaker 2: it's I'm the one living the life and doing the art.
Speaker 1: So okay, So you had you had a daughter? Was
Speaker 1: that a big responsibility? And what she up to today?
Speaker 2: She's a singer, and she's a yoga practitioner, and she
Speaker 2: lives in Hawaii. She has a couple of kids, and
Speaker 2: she's studying medicine. She's taking courses in medicine, and she's
Speaker 2: become a quite serious about it.
Speaker 1: And what kind of relationship do you have with her?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, Bob, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: these questions are I think I don't want to talk
Speaker 2: about my private life and my relationships. I don't ask
Speaker 2: you about yours.
Speaker 1: Well you could, but we don't have to go there.
Speaker 2: So was it about I mean, I'm very close. I
Speaker 2: love her very much. We're very close. She's a great,
Speaker 2: very talented girl. She's on this album, this tribute album.
Speaker 2: She sings a song. You can hear what she does.
Speaker 2: If you have an album, I don't know if you do.
Speaker 2: Somebody one too.
Speaker 1: It's on streaming services. So was it a big decision
Speaker 1: to move to Norway? Because Norway is not the I've
Speaker 1: been there a couple of times, but it's not the
Speaker 1: epicenter of the music business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but say, I never really felt I was in
Speaker 2: the music business, so that that didn't even I was
Speaker 2: mainly in the writing business in my so I didn't
Speaker 2: think about that. And I wanted to go to Europe.
Speaker 2: I wanted to poke around and see things in Europe
Speaker 2: and spend some time in Europe. So Norway is a
Speaker 2: good place to, you know, to move around from any place,
Speaker 2: any place in Europe's could you have you just have
Speaker 2: a place. It's always a good place to leave and
Speaker 2: go to from Europe, you know, And I'd read a
Speaker 2: lot of I think a lot of the is my
Speaker 2: early inspirations of stuff were European. I think, you know
Speaker 2: Rambo Bolt of the poets I read and Russian writers
Speaker 2: I never got to rush with. I can't go, No,
Speaker 2: they just napped this guy from the Wall Street RAI
Speaker 2: very unsafe place to go. But yeah, so I got
Speaker 2: to see Europe and I got to see things that
Speaker 2: I wanted to see. But I mean New York was
Speaker 2: always you know, I think it's always in your soul.
Speaker 2: I mean you I was thinking about New York City,
Speaker 2: you know, the walking down the street, and it's the
Speaker 2: same as it was ten years ago, fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, thirty, The rhythm of the streets, the pace,
Speaker 2: the walking, I mean, it's it's just always the same.
Speaker 2: That's the thing about New York that I love. It
Speaker 2: just will never change. As long as there's street lights
Speaker 2: and as long as there's you know, traffic, the pace,
Speaker 2: the walking pace, it's like it epitomizes New York and
Speaker 2: that stays with me. And I guess, I guess you
Speaker 2: really are in New York. Or if you think about
Speaker 2: how the Yankees did me, you go to sleep at
Speaker 2: night in this chair?
Speaker 1: How often do you get to New York.
Speaker 2: I'm going on a couple of weeks. I'm recording, finishing
Speaker 2: an album that I started a few weeks. I'm doing
Speaker 2: some shows. I'm doing one out at mccabs. Maybe I'll
Speaker 2: see you there, right, And.
Speaker 1: How about financially? You move to you know, Oslo or
Speaker 1: wherever you were in Norway? How does it work financially?
Speaker 1: Do you have enough money from the music business where
Speaker 1: you're playing gigs?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you get royalties, you play good. I
Speaker 2: mean the royalties aren't so great now and then it's
Speaker 2: so good. They kind of drastically fell. I mean, even
Speaker 2: with Bob Dylan singing my song on three records, it's
Speaker 2: still that he ain't making me any money. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's enough. You play, you get some royalties.
Speaker 2: You know, there's enough, and you can survive money. I've
Speaker 2: never I don't think about it too much. So what
Speaker 2: was it like?
Speaker 1: Living in Norway is supposed to living in the US.
Speaker 2: Safer. It's safer. They got to they have a healthcare sist.
Speaker 2: Nobody's walking around with guns. I mean, you know, man,
Speaker 2: in like fourteenth States, you can walk around with guns
Speaker 2: concealed or or not concealed without a permit handguns. How
Speaker 2: do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: I feel pretty bad. And uh, you know, the world
Speaker 1: situation in light of what's going on not only in
Speaker 1: Hungry but China and Israel, and then you have Trump,
Speaker 1: it's it's a scary time. Something I've never experienced in
Speaker 1: my lifetime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's the hour of the autocrats. It's uh,
Speaker 2: it's like something you didn't think, what ever happened? I mean,
Speaker 2: but it is happening. I mean, Holland has a right
Speaker 2: wing government. I mean it's not anything nobody's walking around
Speaker 2: doing saying it Kyle Hitler or anything like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: but it's a right wing government. It's very pro business.
Speaker 2: They're not really into helping anybody. They're into taking stuff
Speaker 2: away if they can. It's not it's not as bad
Speaker 2: as the States. I mean the States. The States are
Speaker 2: the paradigm of oh, you can't all, you don't get
Speaker 2: or can't cut.
Speaker 1: Can you amplify that a little bit.
Speaker 2: I'm saying the States they're they're the paradom. You know,
Speaker 2: They're the ones representing a country, social system, cultures of
Speaker 2: all the things you can't get and are not protected
Speaker 2: or not covered. I mean like health care, healthcare, education.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a country that doesn't realize that healthcare
Speaker 2: and education are the main ingredients in the recipe for
Speaker 2: the future. For a country, you have to have healthy
Speaker 2: people who are educated and know things to carry out
Speaker 2: to carry the torch. But it's always been an elite,
Speaker 2: you know, with it's an elitist. I mean, it's not
Speaker 2: quite as elitist as England. You know, where the minute,
Speaker 2: the minute of the second you open your mouth, they
Speaker 2: know what class you're coming from. You know, just by
Speaker 2: the first word you say. They can pinpoint you. You know,
Speaker 2: just just by the sound of the words you use,
Speaker 2: like somebody from Brooklyn or somebody from Queens. There's somebody
Speaker 2: from you know, in England, there's there's a there's a
Speaker 2: whole hierarchy of language, of elocution. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: Norway's nice. I mean Europe's nice. It's a europe is people.
Speaker 2: They complain about the taxes, but people are driving tesla's
Speaker 2: around here. People are driving, I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 2: people are many people are doing fine, but of course
Speaker 2: there are some people who aren't. But that's true of everywhere.
Speaker 1: So you had a number of kids in Oslo. What
Speaker 1: are they up to?
Speaker 2: One's a singer, she's on the album named Signa. You
Speaker 2: can hear her on the Spotify. One's a painter. That
Speaker 2: there's a photographer, and the other one's a school teacher.
Speaker 1: And how old are they?
Speaker 2: Man? Now, I got to think they range from thirty
Speaker 2: five to an early late twenties.
Speaker 1: And so the mother of those children was an artist herself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of some renowned correct.
Speaker 2: Yep, she is. She's she's a famous painter and artist
Speaker 2: in Norway and scount Avia, Sweden and Denmark somewhat too.
Speaker 1: And how did it end with her? Such you met
Speaker 1: a new woman and you're now living in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2: Read my book Bomb read my book.
Speaker 1: So how long you been living in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2: I've been here about twenty years. I mean I met
Speaker 2: I met my wife in Switzerland anger and she we
Speaker 2: joke and sometimes on stage. She's the one who said
Speaker 2: it took her five years to get her pH d.
Speaker 2: She says, well, what are you doing here in Switzerland?
Speaker 2: I said, well, I'm here to count my money. And
Speaker 2: she she tells people, well, and it took him a
Speaker 2: very long time because it was all in coins. It
Speaker 2: was all in coins. I'm writing, I'm writing a song
Speaker 2: about this now actually yeah. But and she's a musician
Speaker 2: and she sings, and she made an album herself called
Speaker 2: Fallen angel and we were in Riterda and we gave
Speaker 2: a copy to Bob to do them. Three months later
Speaker 2: an album came out called Fallen Angels. Now, I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's any connection.
Speaker 1: When it was the last time you connected with Bob.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. He he must like me, because
Speaker 2: you know, they were great giving me the you know,
Speaker 2: for the song for this tribute album, you know, give
Speaker 2: me all the I mean, they just they just handled
Speaker 2: it over on a silver platter, him and his manager.
Speaker 2: They were wonderful in terms of well, I was doing
Speaker 2: this album about there's I think there's a part of
Speaker 2: my life you don't know much about. But I made
Speaker 2: a few albums about writers about Heinriz Bull, the writer,
Speaker 2: the Nobil Prize German writer Lord Byron and Albert Camu
Speaker 2: three albums of writers. They were done in Germany and
Speaker 2: I was doing stuff on Camu and I know the
Speaker 2: Jefs sent stuff to doing about the stuff I was
Speaker 2: doing with that the you know, the lyrics. I didn't
Speaker 2: ask him to do it. I didn't even it wasn't
Speaker 2: intended for him, but I was thinking Jesus is going
Speaker 2: to show up in his next record or something. So
Speaker 2: I mean, I haven't but I haven't been. I have
Speaker 2: been in touch with it. I haven't been in touch
Speaker 2: with them in a while. Actually, well, I mean we went. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been a while. But he's great to talk to
Speaker 2: because he loves and he loves Literturney. He loves them.
Speaker 2: He's very curious. The good beauty of him is he's
Speaker 2: very curious about stuff. So I mean, I feel a
Speaker 2: kinship with him.
Speaker 1: When you were in Norway, you formed a group with
Speaker 1: Rick Danko of the band and a local musician. How
Speaker 1: did that come together?
Speaker 2: I saw Rick in New York and Rick said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: come and sing on the show. I sang on a show.
Speaker 2: It was with the Room full of Blues, him in
Speaker 2: the room full of blues. Yeah, of course, And I
Speaker 2: sang on a show and he said, hey, come up
Speaker 2: to Woodstock, Let's write some stuff, let's do something. And
Speaker 2: so I went up to Woodstock for a few days.
Speaker 2: I didn't even bring a spare pair of underwear. And
Speaker 2: I ended up there for two weeks, maybe more three weeks.
Speaker 2: I went, his wife got me underwear, got me shirts.
Speaker 2: I went and I bought a jacket. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just I was just going up for a couple of days.
Speaker 2: And then we started working together. And then I knew
Speaker 2: this guy Yonis fell in North Norway and I had
Speaker 2: done some over some this album stages that you know, dismissing.
Speaker 2: It was an album that got lost in Columbia and
Speaker 2: it got found. I told you it got found. I
Speaker 2: don't know or maybe you know this. And after they
Speaker 2: searched all over the place, that showed up on the
Speaker 2: floor of a tapefault. So we did some bonus tracks
Speaker 2: for the CD, and Rick arranged the gig for me,
Speaker 2: and Rick played on it, and Jonas came in from
Speaker 2: Norway and sang a little. Willie Nile did some singing.
Speaker 2: I think Garth Hudson was a jumped. Anyway, we went
Speaker 2: up to Woodstock and Rick arranged his gig. He got
Speaker 2: an amp and he got Mike's and stuff at this
Speaker 2: little place and what was it called the Woodstock the
Speaker 2: Cafe Tinker Street Cafe, very famous place. So he did
Speaker 2: this gig and Jonas had been drinking beer all day,
Speaker 2: sitting in the audience. I'm playing singing, Rick's playing bass, saying,
Speaker 2: and we did the song called Blue River, and Jonas
Speaker 2: just jumps up and starts singing a third part, and
Speaker 2: the whole place just exploded. It was like the Beatles
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know, it was like, and the
Speaker 2: whole roof just splintered. So we said, hey, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: Mick Ronson was there too. Mick was playing some slide
Speaker 2: and the whole place just everybody went whoa, all of us,
Speaker 2: including us. So we started this little group and made
Speaker 2: a couple of records and people loved it.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's on the first record. You have
Speaker 1: a definitive version of that song Twilight from the band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fixt time.
Speaker 1: So during this period when you leave the state you
Speaker 1: live in Norway, live in Netherlands, you're obviously searching, going
Speaker 1: to Europe, learning things, studying. Did you always view yourself
Speaker 1: as a musician, recording artist or did you think that
Speaker 1: part of your life was done and then you would return.
Speaker 1: What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2: You know, I got to tell you something, thinking is
Speaker 2: the Antichrist of art. I don't think about those things.
Speaker 1: Okay, there seems to be somewhat of a renaissance now
Speaker 1: you talk about the tribute to album. We have the
Speaker 1: news song danger Land. Is this conscious like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to get back in the game, get some attention.
Speaker 2: I don't think that way, Bun. Maybe I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a little clue. When it comes to writing,
Speaker 2: I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I'm probably like an idiots avants.
Speaker 2: The songs just basically visit me and I just sit
Speaker 2: with a pen and I just I'm a scenographer. I
Speaker 2: just take it down. They're already there. They just come
Speaker 2: through me and I write them down. I don't think
Speaker 2: about it. I don't plan it, I don't craft it out,
Speaker 2: I don't. It just goes through my fingers and I
Speaker 2: write it down. There's like visitations or something. They come
Speaker 2: from the air. And I think that's about pretty much
Speaker 2: sums up for everything that in terms of how I operate.
Speaker 1: How did the tribute album come together?
Speaker 2: This guy had this idea he wanted to do it,
Speaker 2: and so we contacted people and I had ideas about
Speaker 2: who could do what songs? Have you heard it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I had an idea who could do what? And and
Speaker 2: there were people were very cooperative and nice and they
Speaker 2: recorded the songs and I think they I think I
Speaker 2: did a pretty good job eight with an R and
Speaker 2: the thing because they liked what they they wanted to
Speaker 2: do the songs. We had a couple, you know something
Speaker 2: you know I was hoping to get, you know, we
Speaker 2: were thinking about Jackson Brown and UH and James Taylor
Speaker 2: on a song that James and I had worked on
Speaker 2: once years ago and this was before the pandemic and
Speaker 2: then he was going on tour this kind of thing
Speaker 2: and Jackson, I don't know, it just got nothing. Ever
Speaker 2: came to marry Go Shay was going to do something.
Speaker 2: You know, she got money for the record and she
Speaker 2: had this song that she wanted that song, another song,
Speaker 2: but she ended up not doing it. So I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe there's some kind of like you got to have
Speaker 2: a certain star pouper, Maybe you have to be of
Speaker 2: a certain kind of echelons thing to say, Oh, Paul mccartti,
Speaker 2: you be on my record, and like if you've had
Speaker 2: three number one hits, they might say yes. So you know,
Speaker 2: there might be a subtext or a hidden story of
Speaker 2: this thing. You know what I'm saying to get people
Speaker 2: to be to do your songs.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a whole political thing. And I think you
Speaker 1: have a pretty good angle on it.
Speaker 2: I mean I wrote like Graham, I wrote Graham on
Speaker 2: Nash and he just said no.
Speaker 1: Well, at least, you know, a lot of times, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you can't even hear from people. You know,
Speaker 1: they figure if you don't hear from them, that means no.
Speaker 2: Well, you know whatever. But I mean the people who
Speaker 2: did it, I think they put their hearts and souls
Speaker 2: onto it, and I think they did a beautiful, beautiful
Speaker 2: and Bob was Dylan was the first to get on board.
Speaker 1: So Joni Mitchell credits you with learning about open tunings.
Speaker 1: How did you start experimenting with open tunings?
Speaker 2: You're in these blues guys down in the village, you know,
Speaker 2: like like like Fred McDowell, he's he plays slide guitar.
Speaker 2: Booka White does tunings, you know. I you know, I
Speaker 2: got interested in tunings. And so I was at her
Speaker 2: house in Detroit, she was living there with her husband,
Speaker 2: and she did just fed up with doing normal to me,
Speaker 2: she hated it playing c's and acts and she's And
Speaker 2: I understood it because it's you know, tunings are more trancy,
Speaker 2: they're more there's a fluidity to them. You know, it's
Speaker 2: more shall I say, more Arabic, because it's more, it's
Speaker 2: less defined in terms of like chords using straight chords.
Speaker 2: And she so taught her I think etuning E or
Speaker 2: T and she tuning and she loved it. And I
Speaker 2: think she told me she went on. She's probably made.
Speaker 2: She made about one hundred and two tunings. One night
Speaker 2: on the phone. She played me was the place she
Speaker 2: played me about fourteen tunings she did. I mean I
Speaker 2: was just sitting and she even played the tunings of
Speaker 2: Keith Richards Uses. It probably got from her, you know,
Speaker 2: she got you got it from her, So she did.
Speaker 2: It was phenomenal what she did. She took off. It
Speaker 2: took off. And I mean if she hadn't learned it
Speaker 2: from me, she would have learned it from somebody else.
Speaker 2: But I think maybe I saved her a little time now.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, Joni Mitchell, not only being a great artist,
Speaker 1: has gotten a great amount of acclaim anybody from that era,
Speaker 1: who you feel needs recognition or music needs to be
Speaker 1: heard today, who's fallen off the radar to a degree
Speaker 1: besides myself, besides yourself.
Speaker 2: Beside as myself, Well, I mean, you know, we're in
Speaker 2: the danger zone now. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 2: aren't alonger with us. I'm trying to think, like, like,
Speaker 2: what do you can be? Could you make it? Could
Speaker 2: you be a little clearer about.
Speaker 1: That when you say, well, you know Tim hard in
Speaker 1: a couple of his songs, if I were a carpenter,
Speaker 1: a couple of things are remembered, but he's fading into
Speaker 1: UH history. You know, you talk about Mississippi, Fred McDowell.
Speaker 1: These are people if you live through the era, you're
Speaker 1: aware of, but younger generations are not aware of a
Speaker 1: lot of these UH performers.
Speaker 2: Well, they all had their own music, you know. They
Speaker 2: are things that speak to them that you know, that
Speaker 2: express what they're feeling. And that's just that's how things
Speaker 2: have been since you know Mozart before However, that said Mozart,
Speaker 2: some of these things that leak through the ages, you know,
Speaker 2: like especially in the classical world and to some extent
Speaker 2: in the jazz world. I've been listening to a lot
Speaker 2: to Oscar Peterson lately, you know, and uh Canadian guy
Speaker 2: from Montreal phenomenal. But I'm I think, you know, I
Speaker 2: like people like Fred Neil. He's probably the greatest white
Speaker 2: singer there ever was, you know, outside of like George
Speaker 2: Jones and like Sinatra and Mat Papado to or somebody
Speaker 2: like that, those people, you know, but bred Neil was great.
Speaker 2: I think Tim Harden is great. He wrote these beautiful songs.
Speaker 2: All the blues people, you know, I think they're always pertinent,
Speaker 2: They're always significant, and they'll never go away. And like
Speaker 2: the jazz people, I mean, you know, Miles will always
Speaker 2: be with us, called Trane, you know, all these people
Speaker 2: will be with us. So I mean I'm a funny
Speaker 2: guy to ask, because I've listened to all this old
Speaker 2: you know. I listened to Fat Swaller, and I listened
Speaker 2: to you know, real Father Heinz, And I mean I
Speaker 2: listened to all this stuff all the time. So I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not of this world. I'm not of this time zone.
Speaker 2: But I mean there's a lot of people that you know,
Speaker 2: probably deserve to be heard more.
Speaker 1: Of, you know, And Thirsty Boots ended up being covered
Speaker 1: by many artists Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, etcetera. Was that
Speaker 1: just serendipitous that all of a sudden you found out
Speaker 1: they were recording your songs? Or do you know how
Speaker 1: they ended.
Speaker 2: Up doing it? No idea, They just did it. I
Speaker 2: had no idea one day you turned on the radio
Speaker 2: or something. There it is you never know in advance.
Speaker 2: And the thing with the Dylan thing was very strange.
Speaker 2: I mean, al Cooper kind of inted at something. He said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he did this. Somebody thought it sounded too
Speaker 2: much like you, al Cooper. You told me this once
Speaker 2: years ago. I never gave it any thought. But then
Speaker 2: he recorded like for It was on a one version,
Speaker 2: a record day version, one was on another portraits, another
Speaker 2: support one, an album, another version. And then when I
Speaker 2: talked to Jeff Rosen and as manager, he came up
Speaker 2: with another version that was completely beautiful, that was just
Speaker 2: sitting there and gave it to us and we put
Speaker 2: Tony Garnier out of you know, the basse player from
Speaker 2: his band, Tony, and it came out beautifully. Everybody loved it.
Speaker 2: But I don't you don't know. I mean, it's Judy.
Speaker 2: I didn't know about her I didn't know. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: hear about a recording I never knew about from Australia,
Speaker 2: from like Fancois Hardie. I didn't know she had recorded Violenceadahn.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: You think I live in an igloo or something in
Speaker 2: a bubble, but probably I do, But I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't really, I'm not always aware of the recordings.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned we're discussing that people who need more
Speaker 1: attention didn't get it. You mentioned yourself. So how do
Speaker 1: you feel about your place in the firmament in history
Speaker 1: and to what degree do you want more recognition?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I never had a hit record, you know.
Speaker 2: So I think if I'll tell you one thing, if
Speaker 2: you have a hit record, you can play state fairs. Now,
Speaker 2: you can play corporate parties. Maybe, I mean you can
Speaker 2: play you know, I mean having you only need one
Speaker 2: hit record, and I mean you can. And if people
Speaker 2: will follow they like that, they might if they look
Speaker 2: into your work, they might like other parts of your work,
Speaker 2: like in the case of Lou Read for example. You know,
Speaker 2: but with not having a hit it's kind of it's
Speaker 2: kind of heavy. It's like heavy lifting, you know, to
Speaker 2: try to get your stuff out there, and I accept that.
Speaker 2: I realized it's true. You can't do what can you do?
Speaker 2: So or even if you have somebody else get a
Speaker 2: hit of your song, that can help too. And I
Speaker 2: think I think the Blues Project had a hit on
Speaker 2: Violence of John. I think it was a top ten
Speaker 2: hit something like that. But I mean a little bit
Speaker 2: of it rubs off I was supposed. But so you
Speaker 2: just go and carry on and you do what you
Speaker 2: what you got into doing it for, and that's the writing.
Speaker 2: And you just soldier on and you know whatever may
Speaker 2: be will be, because I mean, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: sit down and try to write a pop hit. I
Speaker 2: would not. I never know how to do it in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get any pressure from Clive Davis to
Speaker 1: try to write a hit?
Speaker 2: No, Clive never said a word. You just let me
Speaker 2: do what I wanted to do. It was great. We
Speaker 2: were surprised. We invited me. We flew over for his
Speaker 2: birthday party. He turned ninety years old. He had this
Speaker 2: big party at Chipriani's in New York and Wall Street.
Speaker 2: So we ang and I fly over and we're saying,
Speaker 2: all right, we'll probably end up under a balcony or
Speaker 2: something or by a pillar. So we walk in and
Speaker 2: I'm not performing or anything. And we walk into the
Speaker 2: place and somebody comes with a little name tag, and
Speaker 2: we were at the door. They wouldn't let Stevie vanzanin.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't let him into the party because he didn't
Speaker 2: have any ID, and I mean, and so I'm standing
Speaker 2: there not even knowing him, arguing with the guy at
Speaker 2: the door, saying, wait a minute, he's you know, such
Speaker 2: and such and so and so, and they finally let
Speaker 2: him in, so we got him. But so anyway, somebody
Speaker 2: comes with a name tag in a suit and we
Speaker 2: rushes through this huge place with all these round tables. Man,
Speaker 2: and we go right to the front of the stage.
Speaker 2: Put us down, and we're sitting down, and like Judy
Speaker 2: Cowns is on the right, Alicia Keys is on the left,
Speaker 2: Patti Smith is in front, art Guardfuncle and Robert de Niro.
Speaker 2: This is the table we're sitting at. And we're thinking,
Speaker 2: oh shit, man, we're going to probably end up, you know,
Speaker 2: eating peanut but or sandwiches or something by some pillar.
Speaker 2: But how nice it is of Clive to advise us.
Speaker 2: They Clive, he put us right. You know, with all
Speaker 2: these beautiful people. John Warwick is over the next table,
Speaker 2: and Barry Manilow and you know the people that he
Speaker 2: worked with. So it was a beautiful night. It was
Speaker 2: very a wonderful thing, and I talked to Clive a
Speaker 2: little bit. There was a great wonderful thing to do.
Speaker 2: But you never know, I mean, how you stand in
Speaker 2: this world where how your music affects people or what
Speaker 2: it does to people. You basically don't have a clue.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're like orphans that they go off on
Speaker 2: their own and they live in their own lives. You
Speaker 2: don't know what they will mean or what they do
Speaker 2: mean to other people. You have, no, you don't have
Speaker 2: a clue. You go, You're in your world and you
Speaker 2: keep doing and doing more of what you did.
Speaker 1: And how much are you touring these days?
Speaker 2: Well, I would like to tour more, I think, but
Speaker 2: I'm touring not too much, very little. I'm doing some
Speaker 2: dates in the spring. We're doing the Winery, We're doing
Speaker 2: the Cage, doing a show in Arizona, Musical Instrument Museum,
Speaker 2: Strange Eclectic dates, a date in Boston. Yeah, some are
Speaker 2: sprinkling on the East coast. Not too much though, but
Speaker 2: ten dates. I ain't going to get rich during concerts.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about so many of your contemporaries passing?
Speaker 2: Where do you begin? I mean, well, not too good.
Speaker 2: I mean I feel I mean people I knew, like
Speaker 2: like Lou Reid was my best friend in New York.
Speaker 2: Laurie kept Laurie is you know, she says, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's okay to feel said, but don't be sad.
Speaker 2: You know she's a She's a Buddhist too. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was a tight she guy. But I mean Lou,
Speaker 2: I was very close to Townsman sand we wrote together.
Speaker 2: And I was close to you know, Rick Tanko, we
Speaker 2: worked together. I mean, these are people that meant a
Speaker 2: lot to me, and they knew my kids, so as
Speaker 2: you know, and the list goes on. So you do
Speaker 2: feel kind of in one way, you feel kind of isolated.
Speaker 2: You feel you feel kind of left. I mean, I
Speaker 2: wonder where you begin to realize that the question is
Speaker 2: and why are they? Did they did they die? Or
Speaker 2: why did they pass into the other world or the
Speaker 2: other side. The real question is why are we still here?
Speaker 2: Then you got to grapple with that. I and I
Speaker 2: think sometimes you walk around and think, well, man, you
Speaker 2: know you feel okay, you might be the eyes for Towns.
Speaker 2: You might be the eyes for Lou, or you might
Speaker 2: be the eyes for these or Phi looks. You know,
Speaker 2: he was my brother, Fred Neil. He should be very
Speaker 2: close people to me, and so you feel why am I?
Speaker 2: You know, you feel kind of like the last man standing.
Speaker 2: And Joni, who's the godmother my daughter. We almost lost her.
Speaker 2: She fell on the floor, you know, was on the
Speaker 2: floor for two days. Nobody found her, so you know,
Speaker 2: and she'll probably be at the gig in La because
Speaker 2: she always comes to the show. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a strange, strange thing to see these beautiful, wonderful, talented, funny,
Speaker 2: great people who you were very close to. But you
Speaker 2: know they live on within you too, They live on inside.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when I'm writing, a line will come up or something,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, towns or run don't remind me of Lou
Speaker 2: or something remind me of speaking of Lou. I had
Speaker 2: the impression you were the Lou read of interviewers.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm pretty familiar with Lou Reed's career. I didn't
Speaker 1: know him personally. I've heard from LORII. But what exactly
Speaker 1: does that mean?
Speaker 2: Well, Taylor Swift called me and she told me that
Speaker 2: you were like the lou Read of interviewers. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Well that's obviously a joke. But okay, so.
Speaker 2: Anyway, but but I mean these people, you know, you
Speaker 2: they you know, you just carry them with you. They're
Speaker 2: inside you know. But it is a bizarre thing. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think that there's there's many more too, the
Speaker 2: ones whose names you don't know. You know Debbie also,
Speaker 2: we lost her. Debbie figured very big in my life.
Speaker 2: We worked a lot on the music and she's in
Speaker 2: the film. She's She does a great She narrates a
Speaker 2: lot of the film. Do what do we do?
Speaker 1: You come to play your own death?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think. I don't. I don't think about
Speaker 2: it that much and I don't really it doesn't really,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really bother me. I H. I think you
Speaker 2: reach a certain point when you know you're in the
Speaker 2: danger zone with you know, with things like hell, things
Speaker 2: that are going on. Fortunately I'm okay. But I think
Speaker 2: you think about it and you know, you get your head,
Speaker 2: you get yourself prepared for it. You have to be
Speaker 2: a little you can't get attached to it though, But
Speaker 2: you have to see it's a thing that's it's gonna
Speaker 2: it's gonna happen. It's gonna come like I just turned
Speaker 2: the big eight. Oh you know that was a number
Speaker 2: for years. Oh yeah, people turn eighty you know her
Speaker 2: people people you know, people get pensions or people. I
Speaker 2: don't get a pension, but I mean, and then one
Speaker 2: day you are eighty years old, that number has visited you.
Speaker 1: You know, is there anything you want to accomplish or
Speaker 1: do before you leave this mortal claw?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm working. You know, I'm a great believer that
Speaker 2: you don't really leave the You don't leave the planet
Speaker 2: until you finish what you were intended or what you
Speaker 2: were meant to do. Until you've finished your work. And
Speaker 2: when you've finished those things, then you're ready to let
Speaker 2: go with a body. You know. I'm working. I've got
Speaker 2: an episodic novel I've been working on for years. I
Speaker 2: would love to see it, see that into the light
Speaker 2: of day. And I've got this memoir thing I've been
Speaker 2: working on. I would love it to be able to
Speaker 2: walk into the sun. But it all takes time. And
Speaker 2: I'm working on this album now that I started and
Speaker 2: I got to finish their stamp thing. It's like it's
Speaker 2: like the cross on my back. I got this burden
Speaker 2: I've got to carry to Calvary or something. So we're
Speaker 2: going to try to finish. It's the spring and have
Speaker 2: it out in the fall. To I thing called Dance
Speaker 2: and Love and Death and another another writer toose Leonard Cohen.
Speaker 2: You know Leonard left so these I didn't know Crosby
Speaker 2: that well, I mean I know, but you know these.
Speaker 2: This is what happens. I mean, you reach this danger
Speaker 2: zone and this is but a lot of people they
Speaker 2: left way before their time, you know, way before they
Speaker 2: There's a new book Lou Reed put out. You should
Speaker 2: get it. It's called The Art of the Straight Line.
Speaker 2: It's really beautiful. I'm reading it now. LORI put it
Speaker 2: together and it's really a sensational it's a really a
Speaker 2: great book. Hel Willners in it, and uh and Ramanta
Speaker 2: Ramuncho Mata from in Paris season. He does a great
Speaker 2: chapter and now it's wonderful to read. It's very refreshing
Speaker 2: and lu jumps off the page. He's right comes alive.
Speaker 2: Have you heard about it?
Speaker 1: Of course? So what's an average day like for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I get up and I walk the dog and
Speaker 2: I start writing.
Speaker 1: So you're working as hard as you ever were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've writ a lot of new songs for this record.
Speaker 2: Plus I'm doing these video I'm doing these projects, these
Speaker 2: sort of topical songs that nobody wants to look at
Speaker 2: her face or even think about. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: do it anyway because in the end they're going to
Speaker 2: see that it mattered.
Speaker 1: Why do you think doing topical song sixty years ago
Speaker 1: was at the forefront of artistic culture and now it's
Speaker 1: way in the background.
Speaker 2: Well, topical songs. See these things? I don't know. I
Speaker 2: sent you the rain falls down in Amsterdam, did you
Speaker 2: hear it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: About fascism and Nazis and how these things. This was
Speaker 2: I wrote right after the wall fell down. They they're precient.
Speaker 2: They're like, they're not the protest songs. They're not really
Speaker 2: topical songs. We're using that as a term of convenience,
Speaker 2: but I mean it's these are these are more like
Speaker 2: I say, like from a medical journalistic if you go
Speaker 2: to the Meal clinic site, you know that you read
Speaker 2: a description of a disease, you get a disease say
Speaker 2: about mass shootings. It's not going to change. It's never
Speaker 2: going to change. It's just going to get worse if
Speaker 2: the bodies are going to pile up. And this thing,
Speaker 2: this song, this lays it all out. And it's from
Speaker 2: the point of view of a shooter, which is unique.
Speaker 2: It's not like singing about something or what's a bad
Speaker 2: thing to do? Shoot, you know. This is actually about
Speaker 2: a kid who goes and shoots some shoots up his class,
Speaker 2: you know. So, I mean it's these perspectives are very interesting,
Speaker 2: you know. It's almost cinemagraph h h. Cinemagraphic, and they
Speaker 2: approach in some ways, but it's not descriptive. It's actually active.
Speaker 2: So it's I think they're important, these things, these songs,
Speaker 2: and nobody's doing it. No artists are reacting. They just
Speaker 2: it's just newspapers and television. That's it. And it's vers
Speaker 2: so sorry, and like at the end of danger landswers,
Speaker 2: you know, prayers and our prayers are with you, you know,
Speaker 2: our thoughts and prayer prayers are cheap in danger Land,
Speaker 2: you know, and you always hear it the same old
Speaker 2: ship over and over again, and it's like, come on,
Speaker 2: a government is supposed to a government is supposed to protect,
Speaker 2: you know, keep your keep its people safe. All right,
Speaker 2: there's criminals. They're gonna go kill them. You can't stop
Speaker 2: criminals they go, But you just take their toys away.
Speaker 2: They can't have these toys. They can be criminal all
Speaker 2: they want, but don't let them have these these weapons.
Speaker 2: Read the Washington Post. Read what a read? What an eight?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I saw that post yesterday.
Speaker 2: See what a book? See what a bully can do
Speaker 2: to a kid? You know? I mean, so these this
Speaker 2: is this, these songs are important, but nobody knows it yet.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows.
Speaker 1: Well, we're getting the word out here. But also, why
Speaker 1: do you believe there can be no change?
Speaker 2: Well, I read the Times. I must be a there
Speaker 2: must be some kind of newsprint massacres because I get
Speaker 2: the New York Times delivered to my door every day
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands, and I read the article about that.
Speaker 2: Do you get the New York Times? Absolutely well, I'll
Speaker 2: send you a link to this thing if you didn't
Speaker 2: catch it. About to republic kends, who are going to
Speaker 2: empower the ones that can make or break anything? They
Speaker 2: say the same old talking points, nothing can be done.
Speaker 2: It's the most extraordinary comments they made about it.
Speaker 1: I read the article.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're asking me, can things change? What do
Speaker 2: you think when you read that?
Speaker 1: Well, I view it. Listen, public protests driven by younger
Speaker 1: people helped stop the Vietnam War, and I certainly remember that.
Speaker 1: I thought that when the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights,
Speaker 1: people would be rioting in the streets. They were not.
Speaker 1: So I think back to what was happening in Vietnam. Well,
Speaker 1: half the public was affected because of the draft. So
Speaker 1: my question becomes in my mind, what is the trigger
Speaker 1: point where people react. We saw this in Israel. There
Speaker 1: was a trigger point. It was not anticipated. No one
Speaker 1: felt that they would get into power and do this,
Speaker 1: and the public said no, Moss. We certainly know there
Speaker 1: are plenty of trigger points on the right. Is there
Speaker 1: a trigger point on the left? As I say, I
Speaker 1: thought there was. Things are going in the wrong direction,
Speaker 1: even if I mean, one can't predict the future. But
Speaker 1: the Republicans presently control the House of Representatives. They passed
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling limits under Trump when there was a
Speaker 1: lot of spending. They won't do it under Biden. They
Speaker 1: won't even put forth a budget. How long can this
Speaker 1: go on? Before people react and at this point, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Remember Israel is a country. It's more homogeneous. America is
Speaker 2: not really a homogeneous is not a homogeneous country like
Speaker 2: Italy Israel. I know, Israel's come from all over Europe
Speaker 2: and other people. After the diaspora. Diaspora, however you have
Speaker 2: pronounced that. I mean they are many, many came back return.
Speaker 2: It's still through the cultural and the religion there's more homogeneous,
Speaker 2: you know, the Orthodox alternate notwithstanding or Italy or French,
Speaker 2: you know, you got this sort of or the Dutch people.
Speaker 2: America is a different story. And I'll tell you this counting,
Speaker 2: it's not going to end in like several lifetimes as
Speaker 2: far as we know, because the way the thing was
Speaker 2: set up Israel, they don't have states. They don't have
Speaker 2: an Alabama, they don't have a Massachusetts, they don't have
Speaker 2: a South Dakota. It's set up so you've got to
Speaker 2: go through a lot of hoops and a lot of
Speaker 2: ringers to get things to stop, especially taking because it's
Speaker 2: not just not selling assault weapons. You got to do
Speaker 2: what Australia is. You've got to turn the weapons in
Speaker 2: and pay, you know, pay people to turn their weapons
Speaker 2: and they've got more webs than people. It's just and
Speaker 2: it's it's going on and on and on. So I mean,
Speaker 2: it's become it's like palpable. It's the danger in the
Speaker 2: States is and the Republicans are whoever they those people are,
Speaker 2: they're not. No one's going to change this. There's going
Speaker 2: to be more than what there's been one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy mass shootings. I said before, since the New Year.
Speaker 2: It's March thirtieth now, it's these things are going to espect.
Speaker 2: More of these guns are being sold. It's a good
Speaker 2: business to be in selling guns, you know, the handgun
Speaker 2: thing with no licenses, right, They don't even need to
Speaker 2: get a lesson. They don't have to go learn how
Speaker 2: to shoot, go to get a certificate from a shooting
Speaker 2: club that you know how to use a weapon, and
Speaker 2: you can carry it around to a bar, into a
Speaker 2: high school, into a college behind your back, your belt.
Speaker 2: So I don't know how this is going to play,
Speaker 2: you know, but you read the article. That was the
Speaker 2: scariest thing I ever read. Because there's no support, there's
Speaker 2: no backing up. They just want to live. They want
Speaker 2: to unleash it more. They want to what's the word
Speaker 2: on leash or they want to lessen the restrictions, right.
Speaker 1: I mean some of the stuff is absolutely head turning,
Speaker 1: like getting in Arkansas, getting rid of protections for child workers.
Speaker 1: I am a pessimist, but I must throw in here.
Speaker 1: We grew up the concept that marijuana would be legal.
Speaker 1: People talked about it, we laughed about it. But it's
Speaker 1: true gays can get married. So as much as I'm
Speaker 1: a pessimist, things can change. The other thing is, we
Speaker 1: grew up with all these people fighting for their nations
Speaker 1: and we'd say, man, that's not where I'm at. You
Speaker 1: look at some of these countries like Hungry, like Ukraine.
Speaker 1: In the reverse, you realize at some point maybe you
Speaker 1: have to. I'm an old guy, but you have to
Speaker 1: sacrifice your life for some This is the other thing
Speaker 1: that you're talking about in your art. You're standing for
Speaker 1: something that's a concept that has been lost to say.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put everything on the line, irrelevant of what
Speaker 1: goes on.
Speaker 2: I'm putting things on the line, and you got to
Speaker 2: start with one person, start somewhere. Also, remember game marriage,
Speaker 2: marijuana doesn't have This thing chizzled into the Constitution called
Speaker 2: the Second Amendment and the second Second Amendment. By the way,
Speaker 2: it was where Robert Palmer hit me into this. You know,
Speaker 2: the writer from the name.
Speaker 1: Robert Palmer, the writer New York Times nowseason.
Speaker 2: Palmer, it's you know him and his daughter in mine
Speaker 2: went to Sarah Lawrence together. They were very best friends,
Speaker 2: and Palmer was very close friend of mine. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, the Second Amendment, and I it turned out
Speaker 2: to be totally, patently true. The Second Amendment was not about, well,
Speaker 2: the British are going to come, let's all get our
Speaker 2: guns out to protect ourselves. It was put in by
Speaker 2: Southern states only for white slave owners to have enough AMMO,
Speaker 2: have enough guns to prevent uprisings. That's all the Second
Speaker 2: Amendent was ever about. And it was nothing more or
Speaker 2: nothing less, nothing to do but the British are coming,
Speaker 2: or this is kind of nothing like that. It was
Speaker 2: only about protecting against slave uprisings. And I mean, think
Speaker 2: about that and that and that tacit understanding that built
Speaker 2: in thing. People aren't You don't need a pistol to
Speaker 2: shoot a deer for food. You don't need an assault
Speaker 2: rifle to shoot a deer to eat food. So they
Speaker 2: changed the narrative to saying well, government's bad. They're going
Speaker 2: to come and fuck us over, not only take our
Speaker 2: guns away, but they're going to tax us. They're gonna this,
Speaker 2: they're going to that. So they switched from deer to government.
Speaker 2: They switched the whole rationale at the NRA. So you know,
Speaker 2: the and this thing, it's going to be the second amount.
Speaker 2: That's a tough rock to pry loose in this thing,
Speaker 2: which is different than the gay marriage, are different than
Speaker 2: the marijuana things. Those are cultural. Those things cultural evolutions
Speaker 2: that happen, and that's good. It's off of the good.
Speaker 2: I mean, William Browse was talking about decriminalizing pot like
Speaker 2: in the forties. But I mean it's it's just a
Speaker 2: very difficult and a very dangerous and I mean I
Speaker 2: don't like to be alarmists, but what's going on. It's
Speaker 2: a very very dangerous thing. And the young people that
Speaker 2: should be changing the rules are the ones pulling the
Speaker 2: triggers killing everybody.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty dynamic. So needless to say, as you
Speaker 1: said earlier, the pace is accelerating. So what will be
Speaker 1: the effect of the pace accelerating.
Speaker 2: Well, there'll be more people killed, There'll be more shootings,
Speaker 2: more mass shootings, more suicides, young people at home in
Speaker 2: their homes. I mean guns, I guess after the thing
Speaker 2: I wrote. Guns are kind of unavoidable to discuss this
Speaker 2: at this point, especially it's right in your face in
Speaker 2: the newspaper, on TV all the time as we speak.
Speaker 2: Something's probably happened. But young people having guns. It's the
Speaker 2: leading cause of death with young people. Teenagers are guns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that report. But let's just assume for
Speaker 1: the sake of discussion that there won't be laws preventing this.
Speaker 1: What's going to happen. Do you think everybody's going to
Speaker 1: get a gun? What's going to happen in schools? What
Speaker 1: do you think will be the reaction to this action?
Speaker 2: Well, the reaction from the right is that teachers should
Speaker 2: be armed. Maybe students should be armed to protect themselves
Speaker 2: for somebody's going to come and kill them. That have
Speaker 2: more guns is the answer to guns in places where
Speaker 2: there could be a mass gatherings, where there could be
Speaker 2: some kind of a threat. But look, man, these things
Speaker 2: have in MYO the video, I mean, it's this little
Speaker 2: film art piece thing. It's not hard, it's just a film.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's McDonald's. There's restaurants, there's gas stations. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're on the road, man, you pull into a
Speaker 2: gas station two in the morning, there's some pretty weird
Speaker 2: people standing around the pumps. And man, some of these
Speaker 2: people got guns. And you're just going to get a
Speaker 2: cant a Snickers bar, you know, And it's I, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know, but mark my mark my
Speaker 2: words out of this thing. Yeah, keep tune in and
Speaker 2: kick tuned in to my my, my little movies.
Speaker 1: On that note, Eric, I think we're going to put
Speaker 1: a stop to it. You're a very aer udite, intelligent man.
Speaker 1: Great to get the history. You can obviously wrestle with
Speaker 1: the issues. Thanks so much for taking the time with
Speaker 1: my audience. Good night, Okay, till next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets