Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The first time I saw Tommy Emmanuel play, it was
Speaker 2: like rediscovering guitar all over again. I was sixteen visiting
Speaker 2: Salt Lake City when I stopped into a store called
Speaker 2: Acoustic Music. At the time, I was listening heavily to
Speaker 2: guitarists like Lenny Brow and Chad Atkins. After sharing this
Speaker 2: with the guys who worked at the store, they told me.
Speaker 1: They had a DVD I needed to watch.
Speaker 2: They popped in a live performance of Tommy Emmanuel and
Speaker 2: I was floored. It's a key formative moment along my
Speaker 2: journey as a player and a fan, so having an
Speaker 2: opportunity to sit down and have an hour long conversation
Speaker 2: with Tommy Emmanuel was huge for me. On today's episode,
Speaker 2: we discussed Tommy Emmanuel's insane technique and how he developed
Speaker 2: the ability to play multiple parts on the guitar at once.
Speaker 2: He tells the story of opening for Stevie Wonder in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and walking in on him jamming with an
Speaker 2: early Lin drum machine and performing on the same bill
Speaker 2: as the Beg's in Australia during the sixties when he
Speaker 2: was just a kid.
Speaker 1: This is broken record.
Speaker 2: Real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Tommy Emmanuel
Speaker 2: from Amazon Music Studio one twenty six. You mentioned from
Speaker 2: six am to seven am this morning you were you
Speaker 2: were playing guitar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got up. I got up and to play. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And is that an everyday occurrence?
Speaker 3: Not always? Sometimes if I'm touring a lot, sometimes I
Speaker 3: need that time to sleep, you know, and I can
Speaker 3: play later. But I wanted to be I knew I
Speaker 3: had an early start here today, so I wanted to
Speaker 3: be already playing.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you start your motor you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I don't. I don't try to push my
Speaker 3: first thing in the morning. I usually play songs that
Speaker 3: I really enjoy playing that I can play quietly because
Speaker 3: I don't want to wake up the person in the
Speaker 3: room next to me in the hotel, you know.
Speaker 2: Right it's going to I mean, yeah. Do you do
Speaker 2: you do you get complaints in the hotels?
Speaker 3: One time, a friend of mine and I we were
Speaker 3: rehearsing for a show and there was a knock at
Speaker 3: the door, and there it was a reception lady, and
Speaker 3: she said, or the guy next door said, you're making
Speaker 3: a terrible noise in here. And I said, you tell
Speaker 3: him it's music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people are paying money to see that he's
Speaker 2: going to preciate.
Speaker 3: Well, these things happen. You've got to be You've got
Speaker 3: to be thinking of others in that situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And if there's something in my practice that that I
Speaker 3: that I need to work on, say, if I'm I'm
Speaker 3: going to try this song I'm I haven't played in
Speaker 3: a while in the show tonight. I need to run
Speaker 3: it down. I need my brain to know where my
Speaker 3: hands have to go.
Speaker 2: But you don't do settlers, right, You don't improvise on
Speaker 2: stage in terms of what you're going to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, at the moment, I've got a
Speaker 3: new album out called Living in the Light, and so
Speaker 3: I generally opened the show with like four brand new songs. Wow,
Speaker 3: you know, just to do something different, you know, And
Speaker 3: that always is Sometimes it works really great. Other times
Speaker 3: I think I should have done this earlier, or I
Speaker 3: you know, maybe I should have started with something slower.
Speaker 3: And you know, but I've been coming out, like, you know,
Speaker 3: one song after the other, bang bang bang in the
Speaker 3: in the first part of the show, and it always
Speaker 3: gets me into a good spiritually, physically, in a good
Speaker 3: place because I'm I'm already pushing myself amazing.
Speaker 1: Would you mind just doing something you might open a
Speaker 1: show with?
Speaker 3: Sure? You want to hear it now? Yeah, I'll play
Speaker 3: it for you and you'll hear where it goes to color.
Speaker 3: So it starts out with rock plus roll, it comes
Speaker 3: to color ready keep Yeah, that's black and white to color.
Speaker 3: Oh that is beautiful. It's a good opener because it's
Speaker 3: got everything. It's got a groove, it's got a message,
Speaker 3: it's got a breakdown section, it takes, it goes somewhere
Speaker 3: else and then it comes back in. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much happening when you like, when you play,
Speaker 2: there's so much your body's moving, your vocal.
Speaker 3: Eye already too hot in my coat in halfway through
Speaker 3: that song and I was like, shouldn't have put my
Speaker 3: coat on?
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't expect you to ask me to play,
Speaker 3: so so this is this is fun.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I jammed you up. I set you up man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but are you are you here? Because like and there's
Speaker 2: there's like a rhythm, there's uh I mean, there's those
Speaker 2: wonderful court changes. There's a mellow there's so much do
Speaker 2: you hear? Are you hearing other instruments in your head?
Speaker 3: Of course, this is a band, you know. This is
Speaker 3: the piano players. It's Ray Charlds, you know. And this
Speaker 3: is so there's the drama, right, and then the bass right,
Speaker 3: and then the rhythm. This is only you're just hearing
Speaker 3: this little guitar which is thin and everything about it. It's
Speaker 3: a great sounding little axe. But you plug this thing
Speaker 3: in into a PA and it is as big as
Speaker 3: a band, and you turn it up and it's got
Speaker 3: everything there. And that's another right reason why people often
Speaker 3: come up and say, I could have sworn there you're
Speaker 3: that you had backing tracks, or I could have sworn
Speaker 3: there was something else in there, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: it's just the way of doing it.
Speaker 2: There's even like a lot implied by the way in
Speaker 2: what you do, Like you can trick yourself into hearing
Speaker 2: things that aren't there because.
Speaker 3: Of you know, that's a good point. You're right.
Speaker 2: That happens a lot when I listened to you, because
Speaker 2: I'll start to hear multiple I mean, you're already doing
Speaker 2: a lot, but I'll hear even more than what's happening
Speaker 2: because I'm just my mind's filling things in, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well the other thing is is that when you
Speaker 3: leave it hanging, the time is still there. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: the time's internalized inside me. Right, nothing's going you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Then I so I kind of put
Speaker 3: a bit of pressure on it to say this is
Speaker 3: this is the groove right here?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So the first but I'm implying the time, I'm putting
Speaker 3: it out there, you know, for you to feel it
Speaker 3: and hear how the melody works. But then the second
Speaker 3: time around, I go and here it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful trick.
Speaker 3: Well, it's just I need that. All I'm doing is
Speaker 3: satisfying my needs inside, you know, and then I put
Speaker 3: him out there and it makes sense to me, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think most artists do the same thing. They
Speaker 3: have something inside that needs to be satisfied, you know.
Speaker 3: For me, it's it's the melody and how the song.
Speaker 3: Because when I'm writing and when I'm playing, I've got
Speaker 3: several hats on. I'm also the arranger, the producer, the artist,
Speaker 3: the I'm the listener. I'm trying to do everything to
Speaker 3: make sure that when I play this song to you
Speaker 3: and you're you're listening to it for the first time,
Speaker 3: that it does everything. It ticks every box. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: that's all I'm trying to do, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, and you're right too. I mean, I think about it.
Speaker 2: It's probably a lot of there's a lot of people
Speaker 2: I could think of, but the first one that comes
Speaker 2: to mind is Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, if he's just sitting just like how you were,
Speaker 2: if he's just playing piano, there is an implied rhythm that.
Speaker 1: Is uniquely Stevie, you know, totally. And so when he
Speaker 1: plays drums, by the way and his records, even like Superstition,
Speaker 1: which is a great drum part, it's bizarre. It's like
Speaker 1: not like a normal feel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Well, in nineteen eighty, which was a
Speaker 3: long time ago, I was working with a great in
Speaker 3: Australia named John Farnham and we were opening for Stevie Wonder,
Speaker 3: and that was one of the most incredible tours. I
Speaker 3: got to be there at soundcheck every day and Stevie
Speaker 3: sang and played for like three hours in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: and then they had to literally take him off the stage,
Speaker 3: take him to his dressing room so we could get
Speaker 3: set up and do our sound check because he didn't
Speaker 3: want to stop playing. But he was so wonderful, I mean,
Speaker 3: and his band and everything. And I remember when we
Speaker 3: were in the city of Perth in Australia. I walked
Speaker 3: past his dressing room and I could hear this drum
Speaker 3: machine thing going and I could hear him jamming away
Speaker 3: on it like great. And his bodyguard guy was standing there,
Speaker 3: and I said, can I go in and see what
Speaker 3: he's doing? And he said, and he opened the door
Speaker 3: and let me in. Right, So Steve's got he's back
Speaker 3: to the door and he's jamming away with this machine.
Speaker 3: And he suddenly quoted the guitar solo from Memphis, Tennessee. Dude,
Speaker 3: it do do the original guitar solo. He quoted it.
Speaker 3: He says, hey, guitar player, I'm back there behind him.
Speaker 3: He knew it was me. It was unbelievable. Anyway, what
Speaker 3: he was doing was programming the Linn drum machine before
Speaker 3: it was even completely imbedded kind of thing. He was
Speaker 3: programming this piece of technology. It looked like a homemade computer.
Speaker 3: And he was in there doing stuff, showed me how
Speaker 3: it worked, and played along with it and you try it,
Speaker 3: you know, did you actually try? I mean no, you know,
Speaker 3: he just watched him, you know, yeah. Wow, he's amazing.
Speaker 3: And the best part of this story is fifteen years later,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, I was at Lax Airport about to
Speaker 3: get on a plane. I needed to go into the
Speaker 3: men's room for a minute, and I walked into the
Speaker 3: public toilet and there was this big, tall guy standing
Speaker 3: by the door of one of the cubicles and I
Speaker 3: recognized him and I said, I know you. I met
Speaker 3: you like that, And a voice in the cubicle said,
Speaker 3: that's the guitar player from Australia.
Speaker 1: Was stid out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can you believe that he knew my voice instantly?
Speaker 1: Instantly that level of to be able to recall, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that, and not only just recall your voice,
Speaker 1: but then also that that anecdote of you entering the room.
Speaker 1: And there's like a.
Speaker 2: Sense that he that has to be tied to hear
Speaker 2: some of his music.
Speaker 3: We don't know what the kind of abilities that a
Speaker 3: man like that has, who's been blind since he was young,
Speaker 3: and his abilities and his senses on a well spiritual
Speaker 3: level that are almost otherworldly, you know, Yeah, so you
Speaker 3: can hear it the moment you hear him sing and play,
Speaker 3: you know, oh boy, look out, there's something going on here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's why we all love our Stevie Wonder because
Speaker 3: there's never been anybody like in him and Ray Charles.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, where would we be without them? Yeah? Musically,
Speaker 3: musically yeah, we'd be. There'd be a big hole.
Speaker 1: But black and white to color.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was that the tour? I think in the States on
Speaker 1: that that was a tour where he was lobbying to
Speaker 1: get the.
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior Holiday in the States too, right,
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty probably was. And I think in at
Speaker 2: least in the States. I don't know if in Australia
Speaker 2: he had.
Speaker 3: In a Square Circle album.
Speaker 2: Well maybe it would have been a master Blaster.
Speaker 3: It was master Blast, master Blast, yeah, because every night
Speaker 3: we got up and played with with with him in
Speaker 3: the band. Because when he heard John Farnum's sing, he said,
Speaker 3: you got to come and you guys have got to
Speaker 3: come and join us and and we'll we'll do something
Speaker 3: together and so and Ben Bridges was was his Steve
Speaker 3: Stevie's guitar player, and he invited me to plug into
Speaker 3: his gear and and we just jammed together on Happy
Speaker 3: Birthday too, and then we were into Master Blaster. It
Speaker 3: was awesome. Dennis Davis was playing drums and h and
Speaker 3: he was so nice to work with. Two and our
Speaker 3: drummer David Jones jumped up on on the kit and
Speaker 3: and Dennis just took off one of the toms and
Speaker 3: just danced around and played the tom while our drama played.
Speaker 3: You know. It was just that's what it was like
Speaker 3: in those days. See, if you found somebody that you
Speaker 3: that you really click with, you got together. You know,
Speaker 3: what a dream, What a dream? It was unbelievable. Well, uh,
Speaker 3: this story could go on because the last show was
Speaker 3: in Perth and the next day was was Billy Joel
Speaker 3: in Australia for the first time, all right, and so
Speaker 3: we were all staying in the same hotel. So I
Speaker 3: got to meet Billy and his band and everything and
Speaker 3: we all hung it. And then after the show, the
Speaker 3: hotel put ropes across the bar area, so the public
Speaker 3: had to stay out and we hang around the piano here.
Speaker 3: So there was me and Ben and David Brown from
Speaker 3: Billy Joel's band. There was Billy Stevie and and John
Speaker 3: Farnum at the piano and just we were just jamming
Speaker 3: tunes and Stevie wonder knew most of Billy Joel's songs
Speaker 3: what he could sing them. Yeah, it was unbelievable. That's
Speaker 3: an amazing It would be a long time ago.
Speaker 1: So we're recorded.
Speaker 3: You know. It's the same thing with the day that
Speaker 3: I met Chet Atkins and and we we played together.
Speaker 3: There was a cassette player with a microphone set up
Speaker 3: on the table, and neither of us thought to record it.
Speaker 3: You know, we played for hours and never recorded it.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what you played? Was it or was
Speaker 1: it just?
Speaker 3: It was? It was? It was tunes that that were popular,
Speaker 3: kind of jazz tunes, you know, like Lover Come Back
Speaker 3: to Me and Caravan and tunes like that.
Speaker 1: You go, a great version of Caravan on you had
Speaker 1: a trio record passing through from a few years ago.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah you know about that. Yeah, yeah, with you
Speaker 3: it's you and Ian Date and and fiddler I Ian Cooper,
Speaker 3: the incredible violin player.
Speaker 1: You guys have great You guys play off each other.
Speaker 3: I was recorded in a heartbeat, that whole album. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just just put it together quickly and it's great album,
Speaker 3: all that stuff. Thanks, But playing with Chack, I mean,
Speaker 3: playing with chet I must have.
Speaker 1: That had to be.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest days of my life. You know,
Speaker 3: I'll just never forget it. And you know, when I
Speaker 3: was a little boy and I'm trying to trying to
Speaker 3: collect ched Atkins records and all that, and I had
Speaker 3: a little portable turntable with the speaker in it that
Speaker 3: my mum had given me, and I said many times,
Speaker 3: I'm going to meet him and we're going to play
Speaker 3: together like that. And I'm just a kid, you know.
Speaker 3: My mother said, I believe you will. You know, you
Speaker 3: just keep at it, you know, and I believe you will.
Speaker 3: And sure enough, I ended up writing him a fan letter.
Speaker 3: I was eleven. I wrote this fan letter telling him
Speaker 3: him that I was listening to his music and trying
Speaker 3: to work it out and all that, and could he
Speaker 3: send me a photograph with an autograph on it. And
Speaker 3: about two months later, I came home from school and
Speaker 3: my mum said, go into your room. There's something on
Speaker 3: your bed, and there was this big brown envelope and
Speaker 3: I had American eagle kind of stamps, and you know,
Speaker 3: my heart started going like this and it was a
Speaker 3: letter from Chet with a black and white photograph signed
Speaker 3: to me. And yeah, I remember when I opened it,
Speaker 3: it was just like pristine. You know. It had RCA Victor,
Speaker 3: you know, from the desk of chet Akers, all written
Speaker 3: in gold at the top of this thing, you know,
Speaker 3: it was all typed out and his signature on the bottom.
Speaker 1: That for all the way from the America, I feel
Speaker 1: like incredible.
Speaker 3: To nowhere in Australia. I was just a kid going
Speaker 3: to school in a little town and park call parks
Speaker 3: in Australia. But I was already dreaming. I'd already seen
Speaker 3: coming over here, you know what I mean. I'd already
Speaker 3: dreamt it and had that vision in my mind. And
Speaker 3: this is what leads me when I'm talking with young
Speaker 3: guys now who you know, they want to be doing
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. They want to be a concert player,
Speaker 3: they want to get out there and tour the world
Speaker 3: and all that. And I always say, you know, where's
Speaker 3: your vision? Where do you see yourself? Where do you belong?
Speaker 3: You know? And because I always knew I was a
Speaker 3: concert player, I just didn't know how I was going
Speaker 3: to get there. And I had to do the hard
Speaker 3: road I had to play every musical situation I could.
Speaker 3: I had to play where people didn't listen to you.
Speaker 3: I had to play in bars where I was under
Speaker 3: rage and all that. I had to play for free
Speaker 3: a lot. I had to play for food and all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. And I ran away from school
Speaker 3: when I was fifteen, and because it was a waste
Speaker 3: of time to me, I needed to get to work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and your mom just did that, No, she
Speaker 3: I broke her heart, Yeah, because she wanted me to
Speaker 3: finish high school and get a higher school certificate. And
Speaker 3: I was more interested in going to Sydney to play
Speaker 3: with the big boys.
Speaker 2: Who were the like and who in Sydney would have
Speaker 2: been the people you were wanted to go play with
Speaker 2: at that time.
Speaker 3: Well, nobody who could really play what I wanted, the
Speaker 3: kind of style that I play, But people who knew
Speaker 3: more about music than I did, that's for sure. And
Speaker 3: so the next best thing to go on to Nashville.
Speaker 3: Well it's what you could do. Yeah, And well I
Speaker 3: just wanted I just wanted to. I was hungry for knowledge.
Speaker 3: I was hungry for it, and I still am, you know,
Speaker 3: And I'm hungry for experience as well, because you can't
Speaker 3: play anything meaningful without experiencing life, you know. And that's
Speaker 3: why when we listened to a teenager like Stevie Wonder
Speaker 3: was playing you Are the Sunshine my Life, you know,
Speaker 3: how does he do that? It's a gift, it's otherworldly,
Speaker 3: you know. So anyway, I wanted to move to Sydney,
Speaker 3: and I got some people to help me get down there,
Speaker 3: and I rented a room, I got a day job,
Speaker 3: and then I auditioned for different artists and stuff, and
Speaker 3: people laughed, They just outwardly laughed when I walked in
Speaker 3: for the audition because I was a fifteen year old kid,
Speaker 3: and you know, who do you think you are? What
Speaker 3: do you think you're going to do? Well, let's just
Speaker 3: play the music, and you know, and I knew all
Speaker 3: the songs. I knew all the vocal harmonies. I knew
Speaker 3: I could quote the record if if it was a
Speaker 3: song I'd learned from a record, and I was ready
Speaker 3: to go, you know, and electric at that point, electric, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: did you I mean?
Speaker 2: And it was quite an interesting road to what you're
Speaker 2: doing now. So when you had that vision as a kid,
Speaker 2: the youth of concert Plane, was it more in the
Speaker 2: who was it in the vein of at that time?
Speaker 3: If you had to imagine it, well, when I played tune,
Speaker 3: so I was playing a kind of a Chad Atkins
Speaker 3: type style. But I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond,
Speaker 3: Carol King, James Taylor in the seventies, I mean I was,
Speaker 3: and Stevie Wonder, Ray, Charles, Jerry Reid, you know, people
Speaker 3: like that I was listening to. And I was listening
Speaker 3: to what was on the radio, the Beatles, the Rolling
Speaker 3: Stones and all. When I was young, I thought the
Speaker 3: Rolling Stones and the Beatles were so out of tune,
Speaker 3: you know, And I just couldn't understand it because I
Speaker 3: was so used to listening to chedd Atkins, who was
Speaker 3: so in tune it was unbelievable, you know. And you
Speaker 3: listen to a Stevie Wonder record and his vocal is
Speaker 3: so unbelievable, you know. And when you hear guys playing
Speaker 3: in and out and singing in and out of tune,
Speaker 3: it's kind of weird. You know.
Speaker 1: What do you think about it?
Speaker 3: Do how? I totally love everything they've ever done, and
Speaker 3: I totally get it. But when I was young, I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the only filter I had. Yeah, you know, is.
Speaker 2: The difference between when you're a young, kind of hot
Speaker 2: shot player and you're listening to Chad and it's precision
Speaker 2: and it's beautiful, but.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of soul and chat too.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's clearly there's that other bit of it
Speaker 2: that's just you know, just another level of talent, and
Speaker 2: then you're listening to the Beatles and the Stones and
Speaker 2: it sounds slightly out of tune? Is that the difference
Speaker 2: between learning to be a player and learning to make records?
Speaker 3: Or I think the lesson when I look back on
Speaker 3: it now was how good are the songs? You know
Speaker 3: what I mean? So I could tell you in my
Speaker 3: own recordings where I could have got the tuning a
Speaker 3: bit better, but the feeling on the track was exactly
Speaker 3: the right one, and I was willing to live with it.
Speaker 3: And I think I learned that from, you know, hearing
Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones and going it's a bit out of tune,
Speaker 3: but boy doesn't it feel good? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I had to learn that, and like I was saying,
Speaker 3: you know, you just got to grow up a little
Speaker 3: and see what works, you know, I mean, I still
Speaker 3: it still bothers me. When a person comes up to
Speaker 3: play for me and they're not in tune, it's like,
Speaker 3: hang on a sec, just just take a second in
Speaker 3: tune up, you know. And or I have an artist
Speaker 3: who's opening for me on tour and I kind of
Speaker 3: say at the start of at the run, you know,
Speaker 3: make sure you check your tuning when you come out,
Speaker 3: you know, And I'll do the same before I introduce you.
Speaker 3: I'll make sure I'm dead in tune and all that.
Speaker 3: So when we start to play that, it just is
Speaker 3: right on. And there's been quite a few people who
Speaker 3: are open for me who walked out and we went
Speaker 3: into it and it's like that's how to tune and
Speaker 3: they're smiling away and I'm like, no, no, no, this
Speaker 3: is not good enough. Yeah, but yeah, tuning is so
Speaker 3: it's so everything to me. You know. There are people
Speaker 3: like Paco de Lucia. The last couple of times that
Speaker 3: I saw him, I didn't see him tune once, but
Speaker 3: I never heard anything at all, even the slightest bit
Speaker 3: out of tune. He was so perfect in his tuning
Speaker 3: and he's playing and everything that you know, it was
Speaker 3: it was otherworldly, Like Steve, you wonder it was like
Speaker 3: Paco was just another one of those gifted, incredible guys, you.
Speaker 1: Know, one of the things you just can't explain probably.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, He's just he's that good. It's on another level,
Speaker 3: you know. And you never see him, you know, looking
Speaker 3: at the tuna and he's just like he's he's ready
Speaker 3: to play, and away he goes, and it's perfect, and
Speaker 3: then he goes into the next song and it's perfect again.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I was watching a video of him recently from like
Speaker 2: I think seventy nine. It was early eighties with.
Speaker 3: When John and.
Speaker 1: With John and I think this one was just solo
Speaker 1: for some real or just the two. It was just
Speaker 1: al And and Paco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the one of the comments was, man,
Speaker 2: Paco just smoked out.
Speaker 1: I don't think he has a problem.
Speaker 3: But there's only been one Paco, you know. And I
Speaker 3: work with him in Germany and I played the first
Speaker 3: hour and he played the second hour, right, and I
Speaker 3: cried through the whole show. It just it brought me
Speaker 3: to tears. It affected me emotionally on a little deep
Speaker 3: level that that very rarely happens to me. But as
Speaker 3: soon as he started to play, I was totally gone.
Speaker 2: You know, when something like that happens for you, like,
Speaker 2: is there any part of you that consciously or unconsciously
Speaker 2: wants to or or and orporates something from that into
Speaker 2: your own plane of course.
Speaker 3: Of course, emotions are such an important part of my show.
Speaker 3: You know, I want people to forget their troubles. I
Speaker 3: want people not to be engaged in a way that
Speaker 3: they're not thinking about you know, money, health, the future,
Speaker 3: children or whatever. They're having a break from that. That's
Speaker 3: my job. My job is to take you out of
Speaker 3: your life that can be hard and at least give
Speaker 3: you an hour and a half of respite from it.
Speaker 3: This is today's reprieve from from stress and the strain
Speaker 3: of life, you know, And so I definitely try to
Speaker 3: surprise people because surprise is a big element in entertainment.
Speaker 3: You know, it's an important tool that everybody who's good
Speaker 3: at entertainment has surprised built in. You know, if you
Speaker 3: go back to Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers or
Speaker 3: you know, anybody like that, you'll see that the funniest
Speaker 3: part is when things don't turn out how you think,
Speaker 3: or they just constantly surprise you. You know, it's what
Speaker 3: I love about Penn and Teller. They do the same thing,
Speaker 3: you know. And I think it was Penn who said,
Speaker 3: you know what is entertainment, Well, surprise me, surprise me,
Speaker 3: that's entertainment. Yeah, it's beautiful, and really I try to
Speaker 3: keep things that simple, you know. And there are certain
Speaker 3: songs that I play that are designed to make you
Speaker 3: want to close your eyes and just go with it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Somewhere over the Rainbow, that's a song that means so
Speaker 3: much to people, you know. And I have a new
Speaker 3: song that I that that I wrote for my youngest granddaughter.
Speaker 3: I'll play a little bit of it to you. And
Speaker 3: after I've been you know, hosing the hell out of
Speaker 3: it and and and throwing all my stuff at at
Speaker 3: everybody and getting the crowd going, now it's time for
Speaker 3: them to have a little break for a minute. So
Speaker 3: I just play this and I'll do.
Speaker 4: About of.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 3: It's just real simple. But once I start playing it,
Speaker 3: everybody has that moment to be able to just just
Speaker 3: go with it, you know, And I do when I'm
Speaker 3: playing it. I just go with it.
Speaker 2: And there's no part of you that wants to do more.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't need anything else. It needs me to
Speaker 3: play it with as much expression as I can, to
Speaker 3: take my time, you know, just tell the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really beautiful.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's little Georgia. She's four years old. I
Speaker 3: wrote that for her for when she's like forty five
Speaker 3: and she can play that song and say, oh, it's
Speaker 3: who I really am. You know, So you you and.
Speaker 1: Did you set out to write.
Speaker 3: That for her? It I did, Yeah, when she was
Speaker 3: only tawny. You know, she's four now. She was probably
Speaker 3: two when I when I wrote that, I just had
Speaker 3: a vision kind of thing of the woman she might
Speaker 3: grow into. You know.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Tommy Emmanuel after the break.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about a few guitar players, okay,
Speaker 2: and we can start with Paco since you were talking
Speaker 2: about him. Is there anything he was doing that night
Speaker 2: that brought you to tears that you can point to.
Speaker 1: Tech like on the guitar in terms of whether it's
Speaker 1: harmonically or melodically or everything.
Speaker 3: It was absolutely everything. It was expression on an incredible level.
Speaker 3: It was tone, It was chords that that were deep,
Speaker 3: you know, that was stuff he was playing and it
Speaker 3: was just the ultimate experience for me. You know, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't point to one thing. It was just everything.
Speaker 3: You know, there are some people like when I hear
Speaker 3: Stevie ray Vaughn and I hear that Varbrado he's got
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and that's the tone that he
Speaker 3: plays stuff with. Wow, it just touches me so much,
Speaker 3: you know, And I can hear I can hear his
Speaker 3: intense love for what he's doing in what he plays,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, and uh and then that goes for
Speaker 3: so many people out there are so many good musicians
Speaker 3: out there, and I'm just so grateful that people still
Speaker 3: still want to see me play.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're a wonderful player and and and
Speaker 1: and you come from you know, like one of the
Speaker 1: people that you got to play with. It's one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. And you're where you're part of that.
Speaker 2: His lineage is as Lenny bros. A guy I lot with,
Speaker 2: don't I already know about today, but phenomenal player, interesting guy.
Speaker 3: From what I've read what he did in uh in
Speaker 3: uh Sweet Georgia Brown with with with Chet when you
Speaker 3: see so uh les and then away he went, he
Speaker 3: went off into Lenny down land, and you know, Chet
Speaker 3: stopped playing and he played the whole thing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was phenomenal. The day I was talking about when
Speaker 3: I met Chet in nineteen eighty, I met Lenny that
Speaker 3: day too. He was in Chet's office on the third level.
Speaker 3: I took him to his gig that night.
Speaker 1: Was he as wild as day? He was?
Speaker 3: He was freaked out. It's a beautiful, beautiful soul. Wow.
Speaker 3: He was a beautiful person and had a massive gift,
Speaker 3: you know. And but he just I think Lenny just
Speaker 3: saw well the world through his own kind of filters,
Speaker 3: and that wasn't the.
Speaker 1: Real world, you know, meaning just he was he was
Speaker 1: living by different Yeah.
Speaker 3: The lie is jazz players are supposed to work for
Speaker 3: peanuts and and and stay with all their friends and
Speaker 3: be down and out. I think that that's his you know.
Speaker 3: I know most of the good jazz players I know
Speaker 3: are exactly the opposite. They're great businessmen. They play because
Speaker 3: they love it, but they know how how to work properly,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But he model himself more after the Charlie Parker's,
Speaker 1: the torture artists who couldn't That's.
Speaker 3: What I was looking for. Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: a lot people around him who encouraged him, and I
Speaker 3: think in his life he was he was supposed to
Speaker 3: be the torture genius.
Speaker 2: You know, I want to ask you about this about
Speaker 2: the plane too, But personality wise, I mean, and I
Speaker 2: love that Chet and Leney record. Oh yeah, but they
Speaker 2: seemed like they were just very chat seems like the
Speaker 2: exact opposite totally.
Speaker 3: Chet was. But Chad had such a beautiful heart for
Speaker 3: people in need. You know, he helped everybody. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm just one of millions he helped, you know. So
Speaker 3: he was a beautiful guy. After Chet died and everything,
Speaker 3: when they went through his desk and everything, they found
Speaker 3: little notes from you know, Chet, can I have another
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars? I promise I'll pay it back, love Lenny.
Speaker 3: You know, Chet gave him money and stuff like that
Speaker 3: to help him out.
Speaker 1: You know, he's had a big hope for him.
Speaker 3: But the last time I saw Lennie, he was playing
Speaker 3: at Dante's here in La and I walked in and
Speaker 3: sat down and it was him playing that electric Kirk
Speaker 3: sand with the extra high string. He had a bass
Speaker 3: player and a drummer and there were three people in
Speaker 3: the room. You know, it should have been three hundred.
Speaker 3: There were like three people in the room, and I
Speaker 3: sat down and he was playing away and he looked
Speaker 3: up and he went like that because he recognized me
Speaker 3: like that. And then in the middle of whatever he
Speaker 3: was playing, Giant Steps or something, he quoted wal Cie Matilda.
Speaker 3: He did that in the middle of the solo, you know,
Speaker 3: a classic. And then I went up and talked to
Speaker 3: him in the break, and he seemed in really good shape.
Speaker 3: He was teaching at g T in those days, which
Speaker 3: is Missians Institute, and I thought he was going to
Speaker 3: really do well. He was gone not long after that,
Speaker 3: in eighty four.
Speaker 2: And what made Chet and Lenny's playing work because they
Speaker 2: are both you wouldn't think because they're so their own players,
Speaker 2: and they are so they can both do a lot well.
Speaker 3: I can relate to it because when I play with
Speaker 3: people like Martin Taylor or Frank Rignola who have a
Speaker 3: much bigger, bolder chord knowledge than I have. I'm the
Speaker 3: melody guy, you know what I mean. So if you
Speaker 3: think about what what what Chet played in that, he
Speaker 3: played the singer's part. Lenny play, he played all those
Speaker 3: beautiful shapes underneath, you know. And I have the same experience,
Speaker 3: so I can relate to what chat like me. He's
Speaker 3: a song player, where we want to play like a singer,
Speaker 3: you know. So first thing you got to do is
Speaker 3: learn the melody right as if it was being sung,
Speaker 3: and then find the person to give you the right
Speaker 3: chords underneath, or learn them yourself, and then show them
Speaker 3: show them to somebody, you know, Like I remember when
Speaker 3: I learned the Nearness of You, the first thing I
Speaker 3: did is listen to Ela Fitzgerald Singer and Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 3: They're like my two signs, you know, go this way
Speaker 3: and go that way, and find which way works for you,
Speaker 3: you know. And then when I played it with Martin Taylor,
Speaker 3: he had some slightly more B bop changes in in
Speaker 3: the uh in the section of something let's see.
Speaker 1: His is do.
Speaker 3: Let's see that. That's like that piano sound. So the
Speaker 3: original was it went to that sound? Oh, no, like that,
Speaker 3: so it was a little more orchestral sounding, you know,
Speaker 3: And I like that kind of piano thing, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh you like what he did, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So when I play it with with Martin, I play
Speaker 3: his changes, because that's really like when I play it
Speaker 3: with someone else, I play I try to remember their
Speaker 3: changes so they're in their their zone, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also the other thing that I think I learned
Speaker 3: from Chat was like when the bridge comes around, if
Speaker 3: you listen to the bridge in the ninas of you,
Speaker 3: Ella Fitzgerald just sings it exactly. All my sound was
Speaker 3: written just as simple as that. I don't need to
Speaker 3: be going, you know, because I can do. You know, well,
Speaker 3: look at all this stuff. I know, I purposely stay
Speaker 3: away from that, you know, to honor the song and
Speaker 3: to play the song right. Yeah, you know, there's guys
Speaker 3: out there, like I remember the first time I saw
Speaker 3: George Benson. It was about seventy nine, and George was
Speaker 3: just like he was so damn good. It was like
Speaker 3: from the very first bar of the first song, your
Speaker 3: jaw hit the ground and it never came up, you know,
Speaker 3: it was it was so incredible.
Speaker 1: And I bought.
Speaker 3: Tickets to both shows that he did. He did a
Speaker 3: matinee and then an evening show, and I went to
Speaker 3: both shows and he was he was beyond anything I'd
Speaker 3: ever seen, you know. And he started with yeah, all
Speaker 3: that stuff, and but but the stuff that he improvised
Speaker 3: to start the song was like it just blew everyone away,
Speaker 3: you know. And two of my dear friends who were
Speaker 3: teachers at the Conservatorium in in Sydney in those days,
Speaker 3: they were they were biggrudgingly going to the show because
Speaker 3: I bought tickets for them, and they're like, we didn't
Speaker 3: want to see this guy. We want a real jazz musician,
Speaker 3: you know. And of course George in the first song. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And they said to me afterwards, well, we heard more
Speaker 3: music in his cadenzas than we've ever heard, you know.
Speaker 3: And that's what he was like.
Speaker 2: That's the thing about George Benson, I was like, you know,
Speaker 2: because he can disappear into the song like you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, he can be the pop guy, but he's
Speaker 2: you know, everything he does could be a bebop guy.
Speaker 1: He could. I mean, he could go.
Speaker 3: Back to the early records, you know, It's Uptown and
Speaker 3: George Benson Cookbook. Oh my god, some of those tunes.
Speaker 3: It's so extraordinary, you know. And yeah, when you talk
Speaker 3: with George about his early days, he can tell you
Speaker 3: who he listened to and what they played, and where
Speaker 3: he got ideas from from the organ players and horned players,
Speaker 3: I mean just everything. He remembers everything he's got an
Speaker 3: amazing mind. Credible.
Speaker 1: Do you remember hearing Joe Pass for the first time? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, when I first heard Joe Pass, I was
Speaker 3: still discovering jazz.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: When I was young, we didn't listen to jazz, you know,
Speaker 3: we didn't listen to classical music either. I had to
Speaker 3: get away from my family environment and move to the
Speaker 3: city to meet people who were big into a music
Speaker 3: that I'd never experienced. And it was somebody opened a
Speaker 3: door for me and I saw some guitar players. I said,
Speaker 3: what the hell is that? What is this thing you're doing?
Speaker 3: He said, Oh, it's Where's Montgomery, you know, it's where
Speaker 3: Who's Where's Montgomery? Well, here's some records. Go away and listen,
Speaker 3: you know, and then you know, you've got to listen
Speaker 3: to Joe Pass. You've got to listen to you know.
Speaker 3: And I discovered all those guys. I was about eighteen,
Speaker 3: you know, and it was just a whole new world
Speaker 3: for me, you know. And over the years, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I noticed about the players that I
Speaker 3: really loved is that you could sing their solos. You
Speaker 3: could learn how to sing what they improvised because it
Speaker 3: was so singable, you know. It was beautiful, and Chat
Speaker 3: always did that with his solos. You know, anybody who's
Speaker 3: listened to Chet, they'll go straight in to sing his
Speaker 3: improvised soul because it's totally singable.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with Tommy Emmanuel.
Speaker 2: Going back a bit to our Stevie conversation while we're
Speaker 2: talking about the guitar players and just about how there's
Speaker 2: something maybe extra sensory happening with Steve, even though he
Speaker 2: doesn't have one of his senses, there's certainly something extra
Speaker 2: sensory happening with him.
Speaker 3: Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Do I have a right that you learned how to
Speaker 1: do harmonics like Chad Atkins through a dream?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah. I don't tell this story on stage, but
Speaker 3: the truth is, I said, I wanted to make this sound.
Speaker 3: I'll show you what I'm talking about. This sound here,
Speaker 3: that sound there. I couldn't figure out how he was
Speaker 3: doing that right, and I just I asked people. I
Speaker 3: tried to find videos that might have someone doing that.
Speaker 3: I never saw anybody do it. I just couldn't figure
Speaker 3: it out. And one night I had a dream, and
Speaker 3: in the the dream was so quick and it was
Speaker 3: just it was simply this. It was like a red
Speaker 3: velvet curtain. Spotlight came on. Chad Atkins came out in
Speaker 3: a tuxedo with his gretch guitar and he sat down
Speaker 3: on a chair and he went deliver and he did
Speaker 3: it like this, up and down. And then that's all
Speaker 3: I remember. When I woke up, somehow I knew I
Speaker 3: knew that I knew how to do it, and I
Speaker 3: picked up the guitar and I went, there it is,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Yeah, And the only answer
Speaker 3: to that that I could come up with that was
Speaker 3: logical is that maybe my subconscious figured it out and
Speaker 3: showed it to my conscious part of the brain, and
Speaker 3: when I woke up, my conscious said, this is it.
Speaker 3: That's the only thing I can still.
Speaker 2: Pretty wild, you mean, really, I mean, even if that
Speaker 2: is the logical explanation that your brain can do, that
Speaker 2: that your brain did, that is really interesting.
Speaker 3: Sometimes things happen and you can't explain them. I always
Speaker 3: call it. A white man calls it coincidence. You know
Speaker 3: what I mean, because you know, when you look at
Speaker 3: what's going on in the world, you know that we're
Speaker 3: all the same, We're all connected, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: where we come from, what color we are, and none
Speaker 3: of that stuff matters. That we're all pretty much the same,
Speaker 3: and we have to find why we're here. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm lucky because when I was little, all I wanted
Speaker 3: to do was make music, and I just found something
Speaker 3: that I was so passionate about. And I still am.
Speaker 3: I still want to play as much today as I
Speaker 3: did when I was six years old. You know, it's
Speaker 3: the same. It's exactly the same passion. It's just ignited
Speaker 3: by the amount of information that's coming at me from
Speaker 3: the people I listened to. See a lot of guitar
Speaker 3: players don't look at the big picture, you know. And
Speaker 3: those years from nineteen seventy to nineteen eighty were really
Speaker 3: important in my growth and my knowledge as a songwriter,
Speaker 3: as a player who can write a song. And that
Speaker 3: was because all I listened to were great singers, great songwriters,
Speaker 3: you know, people whose music was what was still wonderful,
Speaker 3: you know. I remember in seventy one, I was playing
Speaker 3: in a band and we were doing covers. We were
Speaker 3: playing Chuck Berry, Credence, Beatles, Rolling Stones, all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Was a great band to be in. And I bought
Speaker 3: a little turntable and a speaker and everything. Put it
Speaker 3: in my little caravan that I had, and I bought
Speaker 3: American Pie because it came out. It was on the
Speaker 3: radio every five minutes. You heard bye Bye Me basically
Speaker 3: the whole thing, the whole song. Oh yeah, wow, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I had American Pie album, Carol King's Tapestry album,
Speaker 3: and Chris Christofferson's Silver Tounge Devil album. What an album.
Speaker 3: So that's nineteen seventy one. You know, that started me going,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I listen to this music. And then
Speaker 3: you know, I played in different bands and there were
Speaker 3: some people who were big into Stevie Wonder and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, and so I had to learn all this
Speaker 3: R and B music as well, and so and so
Speaker 3: my education really began then, you know, in pop music
Speaker 3: and all that sort of stuff. And Chet Atkins came
Speaker 3: out with an album called chet Picks on the Beatles, right,
Speaker 3: and that's when he first did that, right, that lead do.
Speaker 3: I worked out how to do that, and then I
Speaker 3: started messing with it, giving it a backbeat. And when
Speaker 3: I was first doing my solo thing, I would go
Speaker 3: into that tune and people were like, you know, they'd
Speaker 3: never heard anybody play that. You know, they're all the
Speaker 3: parts at the same time, and so I was only
Speaker 3: doing Lady Madonna that way. So then I started working
Speaker 3: out other things like and so forth, and then I
Speaker 3: came right, you can train yourself to do that stuff.
Speaker 3: You just have to work it out and then be
Speaker 3: willing to put the time in. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Because someone who hasn't played a lot comes up and says,
Speaker 3: I want to learn Lady Madonna, and I said, well,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to. You're going to have to
Speaker 3: learn it bar by bar because because it's two completely
Speaker 3: separate parts. So you got the piano party, you got that,
Speaker 3: then you got them, you got the melody part Paul
Speaker 3: McCartney's singing bit, right, So you go to the two
Speaker 3: at the same time. So here's here's what it sounds
Speaker 3: like at a learner's pace. You ready, that's the first
Speaker 3: two bars. Go away and play that for all day
Speaker 3: to day and tomorrow. I'll see you the next day
Speaker 3: and we'll learn the next two bars. That's kind of
Speaker 3: what it's like to learn something complicated like that. And
Speaker 3: is that how when you first started putting the style together?
Speaker 3: Is that how you would or were you already? No,
Speaker 3: I was wanting to get to the end of it,
Speaker 3: so I could do it all again, right, But then
Speaker 3: I learned along the way that you can if you
Speaker 3: want to, you can piece it together, but you've got
Speaker 3: to stop and fix the bumps in the road where
Speaker 3: you're struggling, you know what I mean. So you want
Speaker 3: it to be like that, right, But sometimes it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a there's some bumps and anything because
Speaker 3: you haven't practiced it and smoothed it out yet, you know.
Speaker 3: So beyond that beginner's one though, because then you have
Speaker 3: to add the courts, yeah, or you don't have to,
Speaker 3: but you do, well, I add the backbeat, right. So,
Speaker 3: but when I'm playing it, I've practiced it enough that
Speaker 3: I'm not thinking about all the technique of playing it,
Speaker 3: all the stuff that's going on. I'm only thinking about
Speaker 3: Lady Madonna. I wonder how.
Speaker 4: Again funds the money?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. I'm totally into the melody
Speaker 3: and singing it. That's why it feels that way. But
Speaker 3: if all the rest of it doesn't happen, right, I
Speaker 3: have to stop and make sure that it does, you know.
Speaker 3: But that hasn't happened yet, so, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Those fast licks.
Speaker 3: You're able to do it Ray Charles, Ray Charles. It's
Speaker 3: not even super clear. It's purposely a little bit muffled,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. That makes it even funkier
Speaker 3: if you go back to Jerry Reid's the claw all right,
Speaker 3: so that says piano and he's put it on the guitar.
Speaker 3: You know, when I met Jerry the very first time,
Speaker 3: I said, how on earth did you end up writing
Speaker 3: and playing and singing this, you know, and He's just
Speaker 3: looked at me and he said, I'm just trying to
Speaker 3: be Ray Charles. Man, I'm just trying to be Ray. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it answered everything for me, you know. You know,
Speaker 3: you cannot underestimate the influence of Ray Charles in modern music,
Speaker 3: in all music. Ray has has his place up here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I have a daughter, Rachel, and we purposely named a
Speaker 3: Rachel so we could shorten it to Ray and just
Speaker 3: say his name all the time.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And at this point do you are you have you
Speaker 2: done this enough that you sort of know based on
Speaker 2: where you're playing the melody, like what like how you
Speaker 2: can play an A there or a g.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's a written key. I think, and I'm
Speaker 3: always looking for the best key to play a song
Speaker 3: in any way, but a song like that, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to learn the melody right and then move the chords
Speaker 3: underneath it, you know. And I just started doing that
Speaker 3: because I was doing a TV show in Australia and
Speaker 3: they said, we were hoping you might play what's that
Speaker 3: song called You're My wonder Wall? Wonder He said, every
Speaker 3: every guest has to play wonder Wall. And I said,
Speaker 3: wonder Wall. I know the song, but I you know,
Speaker 3: it's not a song that I thought I would want
Speaker 3: to arrange, right So before the show, like a minute
Speaker 3: before the show, I started going, oh yeah, I think
Speaker 3: I can make it work, you know. And it actually
Speaker 3: is a really great song. Yeah yeah, and I've still
Speaker 3: got to work on it. I just throw it in
Speaker 3: occasion the union happening and all that, you know, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't it doesn't have musically the big the big
Speaker 3: payoff that like he comes the chorus, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, The whole thing is this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but not in a bad way, but in a
Speaker 1: good way.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. But see, songs like that sometimes don't work instrumentally.
Speaker 3: This is why, you know, a lot of times people saying,
Speaker 3: why don't you play blah blah blah, or my son's
Speaker 3: learning this Ed Sheeran song or whatever. I love Edge Shearing, right,
Speaker 3: But not all songs that are popular make good instrumentals,
Speaker 3: you know, and instrumental has to be interesting, has to
Speaker 3: tell you a story and take you somewhere. And sometimes
Speaker 3: if you don't know the lyric and you're just listening
Speaker 3: to it as a song, it can get boring. But
Speaker 3: there are certain songs that really work as instruments. For instance,
Speaker 3: years ago, I was asked to do a to submit
Speaker 3: a track as a tribute to Bert Bachac right, And
Speaker 3: of course I wanted to play this guy's in love
Speaker 3: or one of those early songs of his, and some
Speaker 3: other artists had already done it, and the only song
Speaker 3: left was Close to You by the Carpenters, which is
Speaker 3: a Burt Backrack song. Right. It's a masterpiece, that song,
Speaker 3: but nobody wanted to touch it, and I said, great,
Speaker 3: that's my reason for doing it, right there, I love
Speaker 3: the song and how can I make it? How can
Speaker 3: I breathe some new life into a song that's been
Speaker 3: done so much? So I went looking for the right
Speaker 3: key to play the song in a right. I listened
Speaker 3: to the Carpenter's version several times. I knew it anyway,
Speaker 3: because I learned it when I was a teenager. But
Speaker 3: so I put the melody, so I found a good
Speaker 3: key to play it in. Why do So you got
Speaker 3: the melody do do do.
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 3: And I made sure that at every turn it was
Speaker 3: it was unresolved then resolved. So like that you said, yeah, the.
Speaker 4: Only world in to.
Speaker 3: Follow you like me? The long right and and it's
Speaker 3: still plain the melody how it was the composer intended.
Speaker 3: But I'm doing all I can to make it colorful
Speaker 3: and different, you know. And and uh, and this chord
Speaker 3: is an unexpected it's not in the the the original
Speaker 3: close to right, yeah, yeah, that has intension yeah, and uh.
Speaker 3: And then on the end.
Speaker 1: Close to.
Speaker 3: The second time, which is that's a typical little jazz piano.
Speaker 3: Now the ending close to like a white to color
Speaker 3: it went into it ended in a different key. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So these are some of the things that are really
Speaker 3: simple ideas that I picked up along the way somehow.
Speaker 3: And that's an example of how you can use them
Speaker 3: to make something that has been played a million times
Speaker 3: make it interesting yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's been amazing talking to you, and you so
Speaker 2: many more things. I mean, I have a lot more
Speaker 2: I want to ask about air supply o Turner, but.
Speaker 3: You know you can ask me whenever.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, we can save it for next time.
Speaker 1: To screw it.
Speaker 3: You told it Tina Turner. Yeah, which is well. I
Speaker 3: was in the band that were opening opening, you know,
Speaker 3: and that was a great tour. It was nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: seven and it was break every rule to her. But
Speaker 3: I have an interesting Tina Turner story because her manager,
Speaker 3: Roger and was an Australian is an Australian and I
Speaker 3: was songwriting with my friend Steve Kipner, who wrote Let's
Speaker 3: Get Physical and Twister, Fate and heart Attack all those
Speaker 3: songs for Living Newton John and anyway, I got a
Speaker 3: call from Roger, who was managing Olivia at that time
Speaker 3: as well, and he rang me and he said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to take on Tina Turner and everything, and he said,
Speaker 3: can you come by the office. I want to play
Speaker 3: you something. So I went past his office and he
Speaker 3: played me the demo of What's Love Got to Do
Speaker 3: With It? And I got to the end of the
Speaker 3: first chorus and I said, Roger, this is a smash.
Speaker 3: This is so fantastic. He said, I know, she doesn't
Speaker 3: want to do it, and I said, what he said,
Speaker 3: she doesn't want to do it, but he found a
Speaker 3: way of helping her come into the song. The guy
Speaker 3: who wrote it, Terry Bretton, brilliant English guy, came over
Speaker 3: from London to hear, spent the day with Tina and
Speaker 3: coached her into singing the song and then she got
Speaker 3: inside it.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I heard the demo before, but the record.
Speaker 3: Was basically the demo. They just put her voice in
Speaker 3: there and put a different solo on it. That's what
Speaker 3: the demo sounded like. The demo sounded like a hit record.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, that's insane.
Speaker 3: That's what all demos in the eighties sounded like. They
Speaker 3: sounded like a hit record.
Speaker 1: Did you did you ever try your hand at that
Speaker 1: pop songwriting?
Speaker 3: For of course?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well I always think everything our writes pop, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: now it's grand grandpop.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, now it's did you ever? Did you ever?
Speaker 1: Do you know the beaches?
Speaker 2: However, because when you you did a lot of toy
Speaker 2: on in Australia through the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3: Well, in the early sixties, we were playing some you know,
Speaker 3: rock and roll festivals, and we were playing kind of
Speaker 3: surfy instrumental music. And then this, uh, this other band
Speaker 3: with with boys in it. You know, they were just
Speaker 3: a little older than us. And I remember Barry, Barry
Speaker 3: Gibb played guitar in an open e tuning, so when
Speaker 3: he played a chord, it looked like that. And I'll
Speaker 3: just never forget my brother Phil. He said, Oh, these
Speaker 3: guys will never get anywhere. Look at this guy. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were so good, you know. And when I hear
Speaker 3: How Deep is Your Love on the radio, just parts
Speaker 3: of it, they're so beautiful, and I just just amazed
Speaker 3: at how good they write and sing, and you know
Speaker 3: those I got to re record How Deep Is Your
Speaker 3: Love with Barry for that album Green the Green.
Speaker 1: Fields twelve years ago.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we did it at OURCA Studio A and
Speaker 3: we did fourteen takes, one after the other, and Barry
Speaker 3: was standing right where you're sitting. He was standing that
Speaker 3: close to me, and I'm playing just with a mic
Speaker 3: on and the band are all live, and I tell you,
Speaker 3: he sang his heart out in every take. He was amazing.
Speaker 1: He is incredible.
Speaker 3: But that's how that guy, the producer from Nashville, Dave
Speaker 3: Dave Cubb, that's how he works. It's like, Yep, we
Speaker 3: got a great take, Let's do another one. Yep, we
Speaker 3: got another great take, Let's do another one.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm like, he's saying it perfectly, it's done, you know,
Speaker 3: and he's like, no, no, let's keep going.
Speaker 1: So he just do you know what he ended up
Speaker 1: getting useder Now.
Speaker 3: You never know because people do this, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but I can tell you that it's a beautiful record
Speaker 3: and Barry saying his heart out.
Speaker 1: Is that your first time I meet him?
Speaker 3: Barry? Now, I met Barry years ago and they interviewed
Speaker 3: him for an interview for a documentary thing on me,
Speaker 3: and I was really surpris eyes when I saw him.
Speaker 3: I said, you spoke to Barry, you know, like and
Speaker 3: he he always said, you know, they are the world's
Speaker 3: full of great guitar players, and then there's this guy.
Speaker 3: You know, he always put me in another category.
Speaker 1: You know. But anyway, he's that from a guy like
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, because again considered his facilities, Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a fantastic.
Speaker 1: Guy singer songwriter the whole day and performing.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a funny thing. I was playing in
Speaker 3: I was playing a show in Miami and there was
Speaker 3: a young guy with like a beard and tats, and
Speaker 3: he's sitting in front of me, and every now and
Speaker 3: again i'd see him and he was had tears in
Speaker 3: his eyes when I was I was playing, and he
Speaker 3: got very emotional when I played certain songs and I
Speaker 3: saw it and I thought, Gee, wondered, what's going on
Speaker 3: with this guy? And I eventually met him and it
Speaker 3: was Barry's son, Steven. He's a great guy. Yeah, great dude. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a great family. Beautiful people. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Tommy, thank you so much, man. Wonderful to Bill that
Speaker 1: you and sit with you.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Oh here you played this close? I mean, come on insane.
Speaker 2: An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
Speaker 2: featuring our favorite songs from Tommy Emmanuel, as well as
Speaker 2: his new album Living in the Light. Check out YouTube
Speaker 2: dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to see more content
Speaker 2: from the show, and be sure to follow us on
Speaker 2: Instagram at the Broken Record pot. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 2: and edited by Leah Rose with marketing and help from
Speaker 2: Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday.
Speaker 2: Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
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Speaker 1: I'm justin Rich. What s