Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Sydney Bullet. Sid tell me about
Speaker 1: seeing the Stones in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: Oh, he starts right in, all right, Yeah, I was young.
Speaker 2: I was about fifteen, and my brother dropped me off.
Speaker 2: He was supposed to go with me, of course, and
Speaker 2: my older brother and said, nah, you go, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to go see my friends. And I, like all
Speaker 2: other teenagers back in the day in the mid sixties,
Speaker 2: was totally enchanted by the Stones. I was taken over
Speaker 2: by their music, their energy, their grit, you know, the
Speaker 2: whole pack just to me, spoke to me, and I
Speaker 2: really and and I had this thing where I I
Speaker 2: like to call it the hips and lips. I had
Speaker 2: the lips, and I had the the moves, and I
Speaker 2: just wanted to be Mick Jagger. And so when I
Speaker 2: they were coming to Lynn, Massachusetts, which was on their
Speaker 2: first ever tour of the US. I think I may
Speaker 2: be wrong about that, but I think it was. And
Speaker 2: H and I went and I wandered around in the crowd.
Speaker 2: It was all kids. There were very few adults. It
Speaker 2: was on this muddy field outside and Lynn Massachusetts, and uh,
Speaker 2: the story which I described in the book in my memoir,
Speaker 2: I did work my way up front, and a kind
Speaker 2: police officer let me into that forbidden zone between the
Speaker 2: wooden horses, remember those bob the wood absolutely back then
Speaker 2: that that provided whatever security was going to be, like
Speaker 2: they were going to hold anything back, and the stage
Speaker 2: between the sawhorses and the stage. So I was right there,
Speaker 2: feet away from Mick Jagger watching him. And as the
Speaker 2: story goes, there was a terrific thunderstorm and it started
Speaker 2: raining really hard, and for some reason in my in
Speaker 2: my imagination or in my view, the electricity just you know,
Speaker 2: infused the crowd, and the crowd and the stones were
Speaker 2: infusing the crowd, and suddenly there was this burst of
Speaker 2: eight thousand kids toward the stage, toward me, and uh,
Speaker 2: I got caught up in it, and the stones ran
Speaker 2: off the stage. Uh. You know, the limos were parked
Speaker 2: right to the side of the stage. Back in those days.
Speaker 2: We didn't have all the security, as I said, And
Speaker 2: I got swept up into the crowd and there was
Speaker 2: tear gas and it was pouring rain with lightning, and
Speaker 2: it was a movie scene. And I got pushed up
Speaker 2: into the limbo right there with Mick Jagger's face looking
Speaker 2: at me. It was just wild. It was great. I
Speaker 2: loved it. That was to me. It was all I
Speaker 2: needed to know that this was what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: It was rock and roll. It was the mud, it
Speaker 2: was the grit, it was the music, It was the fans,
Speaker 2: it was the the electricity of it. Loved it.
Speaker 1: So did you grow up? Was there music in the house?
Speaker 1: Did you play an instrument?
Speaker 2: I did. I started playing guitar when I was about ten.
Speaker 2: My brother already, who's five years older, already he was
Speaker 2: playing guitar. By that time. He was doing you know,
Speaker 2: folk music and stuff, which I wasn't really into, but
Speaker 2: of course I did. My first song I learned was
Speaker 2: a Bob Dylan song like the Times They Are Changing?
Speaker 2: Or where have all the Flowers Gone? Or something like that.
Speaker 2: But and my parents were not musicians, but they loved jazz.
Speaker 2: So we had everything from Benny Goodman to Miles Davis
Speaker 2: to Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson. They loved jazz for which
Speaker 2: I'm really grateful because even though I don't play jazz,
Speaker 2: it was a wonderful education on you know music. And
Speaker 2: they weren't classical people they didn't like I mean, my
Speaker 2: parents were middle class from Boston, you know, they didn't
Speaker 2: listen to classical music. However, I will put this caveat on.
Speaker 2: My mother made all five kids sit down and watch
Speaker 2: Leonard Bernstein.
Speaker 1: Of course, so.
Speaker 2: Every whatever it was, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, whenever it
Speaker 2: was on, I don't remember, but she used to make
Speaker 2: us sit down and watch it. So that was like
Speaker 2: her concession to Okay, I'm going to broaden my kid's,
Speaker 2: you know, views on music. So there was music in
Speaker 2: the house all the time. And every time my parents
Speaker 2: had a party, somebody one of their friends played piano,
Speaker 2: and there was always there was always music in the house.
Speaker 2: So even though they didn't play.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm your contemporary just a few years older than
Speaker 1: I am, and Elvis was before my time. I remember
Speaker 1: the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but the Beatles
Speaker 1: hit in January sixty four. The Way's Party. It was
Speaker 1: never the same, was that your experience?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely, The Beatles came on before the Stones. They
Speaker 2: kind of people think about it at the same time.
Speaker 2: But the Beatles, it really they really did, as they say,
Speaker 2: sweep the nation you know, I mean they came. Everybody's
Speaker 2: who's into you know, the music of the sixties has
Speaker 2: seen the pictures of them coming down the from the
Speaker 2: plane and in at Kennedy Airport where whatever it was
Speaker 2: at the time in New York, waving to you know,
Speaker 2: throngs of fans and all the girls crying and everything.
Speaker 2: And yeah, they were a phenomenon and they did change
Speaker 2: forever and ever the landscape of music and pop music
Speaker 2: and maybe other music. And yeah, I was swept up
Speaker 2: into it as much as anybody else. I wasn't one
Speaker 2: of those girls screaming and crying and doing all that,
Speaker 2: and you know that gets into the other part of
Speaker 2: my story. But I loved the music and what I
Speaker 2: loved about the Beatles. So there's two things, the Stones
Speaker 2: and the Beatles. What I loved about the Stones, I said,
Speaker 2: you know, the grit, the rock, the beat the influence
Speaker 2: of the blues and so on, R and B. What
Speaker 2: I loved about the Beatles was the melody and the harmonies.
Speaker 2: Because I was born, I believe with a sense of harmony.
Speaker 2: You know, I love to harmonize. Even when I was
Speaker 2: a little kid, somebody would be singing on the radio
Speaker 2: or whatever, or in our house, and I would start harmonizing,
Speaker 2: and my sisters and brother and I we would sing
Speaker 2: and I would be the harmony, and and so it
Speaker 2: to me. They were the melody, they were the music,
Speaker 2: and the Stones were the beat the grit. And I
Speaker 2: loved them. I loved them both for those different reasons.
Speaker 1: You were infected by the sound. At what point did
Speaker 1: the switch flip and you said, I want to do this.
Speaker 2: The switch flip before the Beatles and the Stones. And
Speaker 2: it was when I heard when I was, you know,
Speaker 2: in single digit numbers of age, when I heard Little Richard.
Speaker 2: When I heard because I had an older brother and
Speaker 2: a sister who was eight years older, and they listened.
Speaker 2: They were into the music of the day of the fifties.
Speaker 2: And when I heard Little Richard's two Dy Fruity, and
Speaker 2: I was about four or five six, I said, that's
Speaker 2: what I want to do. And it just I just
Speaker 2: got You used the word swept before I got swept
Speaker 2: into that rhythm, into that and I keep using the
Speaker 2: word grit because that's what I felt. It was this energy,
Speaker 2: of this kinetic energy, which of course became you know,
Speaker 2: the anathematic people who didn't want who thought rock and
Speaker 2: roll was the devil's music. Well that's what back in
Speaker 2: the day, right, That's what infused me. So I had
Speaker 2: already decided on some level that I was going to
Speaker 2: be in music. I mean I used to imitate I
Speaker 2: was six years old, imitating Elvis Presley and for my
Speaker 2: parents at their parties, you know, and lip syncing. And
Speaker 2: you know, I started playing piano. I'm not a piano
Speaker 2: great piano player. I'm a still in novice fifty sixty
Speaker 2: years later, but I did start making up my own
Speaker 2: songs and the piano I started, you know, air guitar
Speaker 2: playing before I even started playing. And so I was
Speaker 2: infused with the music at an early age. But the
Speaker 2: Beatles and the Stones when I was a teenager or
Speaker 2: what put me over the edge. And I mean I
Speaker 2: started writing songs even when I was about twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 2: but they were more of the folky kind of things
Speaker 2: until the Beatles and the Stones came along. So they
Speaker 2: are what put me on the track of real rock
Speaker 2: and roll.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you were in high school, did you sing
Speaker 1: in bands?
Speaker 2: I did, but yes I did. I tried to put
Speaker 2: together my own bands and I did sing in some
Speaker 2: other bands I was. I played my guitar a lot solo.
Speaker 2: I used to go to this. If anybody's from Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: who's north shore of Massachusetts, who's listening. There was a
Speaker 2: club in Ipswich, Massachusetts, called the King's Rook, and everybody
Speaker 2: came there. I mean all the old blues guys, you know,
Speaker 2: John Lee Hooker, you know Sunny Terry and Brownie McGhee,
Speaker 2: you know, all the people who played at like Club
Speaker 2: forty seven in Boston would come up to the King's
Speaker 2: Rook and play there as well. And I used to
Speaker 2: go there and do the the hout Nanny night and
Speaker 2: you know Monday nights. You know, I'd play my guitar
Speaker 2: and I did that kind of thing. So, yeah, I
Speaker 2: played in high school.
Speaker 1: Okay, while you're in high school, you run away to
Speaker 1: New York. Tell us that Steward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd had it with my I was fifteen. It
Speaker 2: was January of nineteen sixty six, and I had had
Speaker 2: it with my home life, with school. My parents had
Speaker 2: moved from one town and northern northeastern Massachusetts to another.
Speaker 2: I was not happy. It was the middle of my
Speaker 2: sophomore year. I was leaving my friends in my community
Speaker 2: that I had grown up in in West Newbury, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: and I was not a happy camper. I had, you know,
Speaker 2: I had started smoking weed, you know, and doing all
Speaker 2: the things that we did back then in the mid sixties,
Speaker 2: and my home life was chaotic at best, and I
Speaker 2: just said, I'm out of here. And my thought at
Speaker 2: fifteen years old, because I had this fantasy about Greenwich Village.
Speaker 2: Greenwich Village was the place to be, you know, it
Speaker 2: had all those folk clubs that were now they had
Speaker 2: some other stuff going on with the music and with
Speaker 2: rock and all that, and I just said, that's where
Speaker 2: I'm going. So a friend who said I'll go with you,
Speaker 2: who was a year older and had twenty dollars which
Speaker 2: I didn't have, so and so I ran away. One night,
Speaker 2: I told my mother I was going to the library
Speaker 2: with Jane, my friend, and I walked up to her
Speaker 2: house from my house and then we walked onto Route one,
Speaker 2: which we both lived near, and caught walked down to
Speaker 2: the gas station wherever the bus from where Greyhound came
Speaker 2: from north to south, and took a bus into Boston
Speaker 2: and then switched and took a bus and arrived in
Speaker 2: New York City at about two thirty in the morning
Speaker 2: into a port authority and there we were fifteen and
Speaker 2: sixteen year old girls, even though nobody knew whether I
Speaker 2: was a boy or a girl, because that's the way
Speaker 2: I liked it. And you know, not knowing a thing,
Speaker 2: never having been in New York, not knowing what to
Speaker 2: do or where to go or anything. And a very
Speaker 2: after a couple of attempts of guys trying to pick
Speaker 2: us up, this very attractive, tall black man approached just
Speaker 2: and said, do you need a place to go? And
Speaker 2: I looked him in the eye and I knew that
Speaker 2: he was safe. And he grabbed Jane's bag, which was
Speaker 2: very heavy, and my I only had a backpack, and
Speaker 2: he walked us side of the Port Authority down eighth
Speaker 2: Avenue or whatever it was, and into a YMCA on
Speaker 2: the thirty fourth Street YMCA, and that's where we stayed
Speaker 2: for the first night. And then we found a hotel,
Speaker 2: a flea bag I like to say, a flea bag
Speaker 2: hotel in Washington Square and for two fifty a night,
Speaker 2: two dollars and fifty cents a night, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was a flea bag hotel, and now, of course
Speaker 2: it's still there, it's just not a flea bag hotel anymore.
Speaker 2: And we were there for a while, about a week
Speaker 2: or so, and then I started getting hints that my
Speaker 2: mother was looking for me. I had a friend who
Speaker 2: was at Ris, not Rizstie, that was in Rhode Island,
Speaker 2: Pratt in Brooklyn, Pratt Art School, the art school, an
Speaker 2: older friend from high school, and my mother had contacted her.
Speaker 2: This little bit is not in my book, but it is.
Speaker 1: Just to stop for a minute. Yeah, Sid has a
Speaker 1: book called trans Electric My Life is a Cosmic rock Star.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating quick read that will hook you and
Speaker 1: two days you'll be done. You'll hear all of these
Speaker 1: stories in many Moore, although I'm sure we'll cover some
Speaker 1: stuff that's not in the book like this, So continue
Speaker 1: your tale.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, and thanks for the promotion. Yeah. So, I
Speaker 2: had this friend who went to Pratt and my mother
Speaker 2: had contacted her, and of course my mother had the
Speaker 2: police with her. They had the FBI out looking, you know,
Speaker 2: and they had a fifty state alert out for me,
Speaker 2: and my friend was finally because she refused to tell
Speaker 2: them at first, and finally, of course, you know, she
Speaker 2: was just a freshman in college, and you know, they
Speaker 2: coerced her into saying where I was. So a few
Speaker 2: days later there was a big knock at our door,
Speaker 2: our hotel door, and then they busted in. We hid.
Speaker 2: It makes me laugh now, you know. One of us
Speaker 2: went under the bed, one went in the closet. You know,
Speaker 2: there was no place to hide. It's a hotel room.
Speaker 2: Where are you going to hide, you know, And and
Speaker 2: a small one at that. And they came in and
Speaker 2: dragged us out. They told us, and know un certain
Speaker 2: we had befriended. Let me back up a little bit.
Speaker 2: We had befriended a couple of drug addicts who were
Speaker 2: in the hotel, and they were nice guys older than us,
Speaker 2: and they had entered one of the guy's rooms and
Speaker 2: beaten the guy up. We didn't see him, We never
Speaker 2: saw him, but they told us it was it was
Speaker 2: a scene again, another movie scene, and dragged us down
Speaker 2: the stairs. And there was my mother and my aunt,
Speaker 2: her sister who lived in New Jersey, who was the
Speaker 2: socialite that I talk about in the book. And I
Speaker 2: was not happy. I did not want to go home,
Speaker 2: in fact, because I knew that my mother was looking
Speaker 2: for me, and the police were out looking for me.
Speaker 2: I had decided that I was I don't even know
Speaker 2: why I was. One of the guys who we were
Speaker 2: talking to in the hotel had a friend in Philadelphia
Speaker 2: or something. I don't quite remember, but we were going
Speaker 2: to be on our way to Philadelphia the next day
Speaker 2: because I knew my mother was in town, so I
Speaker 2: had no intention of ever going home again. At fifteen,
Speaker 2: I did not want to go home, and in that,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't What I do talk about in
Speaker 2: the book, which we haven't talked about here, is that
Speaker 2: I did think, before I knew my mother was in town,
Speaker 2: that I could get some kind of work as a
Speaker 2: musician in one of these folk clubs or something. And
Speaker 2: I went around, knocked on the doors during the day,
Speaker 2: went in, you know, talked to the managers, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get some connection of how I could, you know,
Speaker 2: get some work, even if it was, you know, passing
Speaker 2: the hat, which I, by the way, did later when
Speaker 2: I went back to school in New York City, I
Speaker 2: did work at the folk clubs passing the hat. So
Speaker 2: that was the runaway story. They did take me back
Speaker 2: to Topsfield, Massachusetts and My mother was a force to
Speaker 2: be reckoned with, with all her issues, and she convinced
Speaker 2: the school board, who wanted nothing to do with me,
Speaker 2: to not expel me. They did. They did expel my
Speaker 2: friend Jane, and they didn't expel me. And I went
Speaker 2: back to school unhappily. But that was the story of
Speaker 2: my running away. But I did run away after that again,
Speaker 2: but not it wasn't quite as dramatic.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you do graduate and go to the American
Speaker 1: Academy of Dramatic ORIGS in New York City. How does
Speaker 1: that happen?
Speaker 2: My mother, as I said, was a force to be
Speaker 2: reckoned with. And I did graduate from high school, not
Speaker 2: with honors, but I did get out of there. And
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I had no intention of going
Speaker 2: to school after I didn't apply to any colleges. I
Speaker 2: was going to be a musician. That's what I was
Speaker 2: going to do. Or maybe I thought, in the back
Speaker 2: of my mind an actor, you know, because I was
Speaker 2: in plays and stuff in high school. Mostly I was
Speaker 2: not actually that's not true. I was in some musicals
Speaker 2: and stuff. But anyway, and then my mother said, no,
Speaker 2: you've got your going to school, so pick a school.
Speaker 2: You're going to go to and that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: And I ended up going to New York to the
Speaker 2: American Academy of Dramatic Arts. So back to New York
Speaker 2: I went. And it was a great experience for me
Speaker 2: actually to go to the Academy. It was taught me
Speaker 2: a lot. I still have you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: my best friends in my roommate from those days is
Speaker 2: still my closest friend. And it was a great experience.
Speaker 2: I actually learned a lot. I got rid of my
Speaker 2: Boston accent, which I can bring back in any time
Speaker 2: if you want to hear it. In fact, whenever I
Speaker 2: get within one hundred miles of Massachusetts or you know,
Speaker 2: New England, it comes back automatically. But you know, I
Speaker 2: learned some great life lessons there. I had a great time.
Speaker 2: I started doing more drugs and drinking a little bit,
Speaker 2: but which I talk about in the book later what happened.
Speaker 2: But my mother was right, you know, I needed that time.
Speaker 2: I needed that experience to be in a I'm going
Speaker 2: to say in a controlled environment, although I'll say not
Speaker 2: controlled structured environment.
Speaker 1: So did you actually go to school?
Speaker 2: Two years I graduated the American Academy at Dramatic Arts.
Speaker 1: Okay, and since it is an acting school, to what
Speaker 1: degree did you try to be an actor?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I tried. I stayed in New York for another
Speaker 2: year trying to get roles. But because I didn't look
Speaker 2: like a normal girl back then, I did grow my
Speaker 2: hair the last year of the Academy just so I could, like,
Speaker 2: because I always had short hair, so I could look
Speaker 2: more like a girl and try to get some parts.
Speaker 2: But I just didn't have that ingenu look I They
Speaker 2: just I couldn't get work. I mean, I did get
Speaker 2: called back for some you know, for not Jesus Christ Superstar,
Speaker 2: I've forgotten the name of it now, but I got
Speaker 2: called for some things that were musicals because I did
Speaker 2: sing and play guitar and so on, and I did finally,
Speaker 2: after many, many, many rejections, and I hated auditioning, by
Speaker 2: the way, but after many rejections, I got cast in
Speaker 2: a Broadway show because I played guitar quote like a guy,
Speaker 2: Oh ask me. And I get cast in the band
Speaker 2: of the musical Lisistrata, which is a Greek play with
Speaker 2: Molina mccurree. For those of you of a certain age,
Speaker 2: She was the lead in a movie called Never on Sunday,
Speaker 2: and she was a big Greek star and it was
Speaker 2: directed by Michael Kachianus, who was a great Greek director
Speaker 2: and both of whom had made their way into American movies,
Speaker 2: and so it was a big deal. I was. So
Speaker 2: I was put in the band, but then they gave
Speaker 2: me three lines because they liked me. I was the
Speaker 2: youngest member of the cast. There was all these big
Speaker 2: Broadway show stars in the cast, you know, and so
Speaker 2: I did that. It flopped, so it wasn't a big thing,
Speaker 2: but but I made money. I made some money. I
Speaker 2: you know, was living in Greenwich Village in a you know,
Speaker 2: apartment with three other people, and so I got that.
Speaker 2: But then I decided that acting really wasn't what I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. But I'd keep it in my back
Speaker 2: pocket and I'd go to LA and I'd see if
Speaker 2: I could find some work there, either as an actor
Speaker 2: or a musician. And that's when my career started. When
Speaker 2: I went to La.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go to LA and you stay with Diane Bennett.
Speaker 2: No. I stayed with a woman named Helen Gorman, who
Speaker 2: was a friend of Diane ben Right Helen Gorman, that's
Speaker 2: her maiden name. And she was a friend of a
Speaker 2: friend of a somebody I had met in New York
Speaker 2: who was a producer for ABC Television, who I met
Speaker 2: on a bus. You know, you know, it was just
Speaker 2: one of those random things. My life, as you will
Speaker 2: read in the book those of you choose to read it,
Speaker 2: is a series of coincidences of who I meet and
Speaker 2: how it leads me to one thing and the other,
Speaker 2: which is why the title the Cosmic rock Star applies,
Speaker 2: cosmic being the operative word, meaning you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a rock star on earth, but my life was lived
Speaker 2: like one. And anyway, so Helen Gorman, this guy who
Speaker 2: I had randomly met in New York City, and we
Speaker 2: became acquaintances, and he liked me, you know, and and
Speaker 2: he called his friend of a friend who called another
Speaker 2: friend who happened to be Helen Gorman. And Helen Gorman
Speaker 2: turned out to be the the producer of the Johnny
Speaker 2: of the Jay Leno Show. And you know, she went
Speaker 2: on to do great things. But at the time she
Speaker 2: was writing for The Hollywood Reporter, which still is in
Speaker 2: existence today. Weekly rag out for the for the show
Speaker 2: business and she was friends with Diane Bennett, who also
Speaker 2: wrote for The Hollywood Reporter. So Helen Gorman let me
Speaker 2: sleep on her couch and for a long time actually,
Speaker 2: until she kicked me out. And you know the stories
Speaker 2: Bob go, you know, they weave into each other. So
Speaker 2: you know, I can stop, I can go, I can,
Speaker 2: you know, well tell us about meeting Bob Crue. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: so the Diane Bennett reference is because one day I
Speaker 2: got a job in a gas station on little Santa
Speaker 2: Monica Boulevard, which is no longer there. The gas station
Speaker 2: Jerry's Phillips sixty six, you know, and I had worked
Speaker 2: in a gas station in high schools. I loved pumping gas.
Speaker 2: These were before self serve, and I loved working on cars.
Speaker 2: I can't couldn't do much, you know, oil changes and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not a mechanic, but anyway, I loved being around
Speaker 2: that atmosphere and getting dirty and all that stuff because
Speaker 2: I was really not that. Women don't like that too,
Speaker 2: and women aren't great mechanics. But in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: I it was just to guys thing to do. So
Speaker 2: but Jerry I went around to try to find work,
Speaker 2: and Jerry gave me a job and working at the
Speaker 2: gas station. So I came home to Helen Gorman's one afternoon,
Speaker 2: all right from work, and she said, change your clothes,
Speaker 2: get your little three inch reel to reel demo tape
Speaker 2: which I had recorded in New York before I came
Speaker 2: of a few songs I had written. And you're going
Speaker 2: to go to this house in Beverly Hills, to Diane
Speaker 2: Bennett's house, and she's having a dinner party and Bob
Speaker 2: crue is going to be there.
Speaker 1: Diane ben In covered music quite powerfully for the Hollywood Reporter, just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was a she was well known at
Speaker 2: the time. She was high powered, and her husband, Peter Bennett,
Speaker 2: was a very high powered attorney at the time, and
Speaker 2: he was Bob CRUs attorney. So Helen said to me
Speaker 2: go to that because I had no car. I was
Speaker 2: hitchhiking back and forth to my work and wherever I
Speaker 2: had to go. And she said, take my car, take
Speaker 2: your clean up, take your tape, and go to the
Speaker 2: servant entrance at Diane Bennett's house and give the tape
Speaker 2: to whoever opens the door. And under no circumstances for
Speaker 2: you to go into that house. Do not go into
Speaker 2: the house. Said okay, So I get in her car.
Speaker 2: I find the gate, you know, gated gated, big house
Speaker 2: in the flats, but it was gated and it's starting
Speaker 2: to go up Cold Water Canyon or something. And I
Speaker 2: go in and I go to the entrance and I
Speaker 2: knock on the door or ring the bell, and after
Speaker 2: a few minutes, this guy opens the door and it's
Speaker 2: this very handsome charism I could tell that charisma was
Speaker 2: oozing out of him, very flamboyant, you know, with a
Speaker 2: low cut bell bottoms with the big belt buckle and
Speaker 2: a shirt open and blonde hair kind of almost toewish
Speaker 2: shoulders and opens the door. And I was a little
Speaker 2: stunned because I thought somebody who was a servant or
Speaker 2: a maid or something was gonna housekeeper was going to
Speaker 2: come to the door. And I said, I'm here to
Speaker 2: give Bob, to give this tape to Bob Crue. And
Speaker 2: he said, well, I'm Bob Crue, and he literally reached
Speaker 2: grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the house.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, no, you know, because I'm
Speaker 2: telling you, Helen Gorman must have told me a hundred
Speaker 2: times do not go into the house. Do not go
Speaker 2: into the house. So I'm like, oh, shoot, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm in trouble. So he drags me, and it was
Speaker 2: the servants enterest So we go through the kitchen and
Speaker 2: into the living room, which was kind of like a
Speaker 2: living room, and then there was a dining area with
Speaker 2: a step above in another area of the house, but
Speaker 2: they were conjoined, and and here's all these people standing
Speaker 2: around and and Diane Bennett gives me the devil's look,
Speaker 2: and Bob goes set an. We hadn't even talked nothing.
Speaker 2: He drags me by the arm into the living room
Speaker 2: and says to Diane set another place at the dinner table.
Speaker 2: It was really something, and so Diane was really agitated
Speaker 2: and mad. But of course Bob Crewe had say over everything.
Speaker 2: He was the star of the evening. And so I
Speaker 2: sat down to dinner and with I don't know eight
Speaker 2: or twelve people, ten people, and it was just that
Speaker 2: a wild you know, another coincidence where one of the
Speaker 2: people at the table had said, you look familiar. He
Speaker 2: looked at me, and it turned out that we had
Speaker 2: sat beside each other on a plane going from New
Speaker 2: York to Los Angeles, and he was the road manager
Speaker 2: for Frank Sinatra and fly in the family Stone, And
Speaker 2: I mean, how does that happen? You know? And there's
Speaker 2: another part of that where they, you know, I wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to be in first class and that that flight,
Speaker 2: you know. But here I was this young kid, and
Speaker 2: I had somehow they bumped me up to first class.
Speaker 2: I don't even remember why. And and I sat beside
Speaker 2: this guy and here he was at this dinner table
Speaker 2: months later with Bob Crewe and Diane Bennett, and he
Speaker 2: gave me his phone number, took me to some studios
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. But that's where I met Bob Crewe,
Speaker 2: who becomes and still is a part of the rest
Speaker 2: of my life, you know. And and Bob Crewe I
Speaker 2: got kicked out of. I guess I'll go on with
Speaker 2: the story I got. I went back to Helen Gorman's.
Speaker 2: Of course, I got kicked out because I had done
Speaker 2: the one thing I was supposed to do, which was
Speaker 2: go into the house. So Helen Gorman kicked me out
Speaker 2: of her apartment. And she should have anyway, I was
Speaker 2: there for like a month, you know, And so I
Speaker 2: only number I had in my pocket was Bob crue.
Speaker 2: And I called Bob from a phone booth the next
Speaker 2: day and said, I'm I need a place to stay.
Speaker 2: I had no money, no place to stay. I was
Speaker 2: making like two bucks an hour at the gas station.
Speaker 2: And he said, call me back in an hour, and
Speaker 2: so I did. I called it. And there's other parts
Speaker 2: of the story which you'll read about in the book.
Speaker 2: But I called him back in the meantime. I had
Speaker 2: found a place to stay with some runaways in that hour.
Speaker 2: So I called him back and I said, I found
Speaker 2: a place to stay. He said, good, be in the
Speaker 2: studio at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. I want you to
Speaker 2: sing backup on a record I'm producing. It's just I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm pausing because even my own life, you know, when
Speaker 2: I think about these things, how things happened, how interconnected
Speaker 2: things were, the coincidences. If you believe in coincidences, you
Speaker 2: know how the connectors of my life just keep going
Speaker 2: and going and going. And from that moment where I
Speaker 2: went to the studio the next day, I took the
Speaker 2: bus to I can't I think it was hit Factory
Speaker 2: or one of those places in LA in the middle
Speaker 2: of Hollywood, and sound factory one of those and Hit
Speaker 2: factories in New York. I think it was sound fact
Speaker 2: And I walked in and started singing backup vocals for
Speaker 2: Bob Crue, and I never stopped. I didn't stop just.
Speaker 1: For a second. Do you know if he actually listened
Speaker 1: to your demo tape?
Speaker 2: No, No, nobody's ever asked me that question. Nobody in
Speaker 2: my whole life has ever asked me that question. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I never asked him if he listened to
Speaker 2: that demo tape, because.
Speaker 1: I've had someone where you had to do demos and
Speaker 1: the guy offered me a job. You go, Do you
Speaker 1: read what I wrote? He goes no, They said, well
Speaker 1: read the first says no, come to work. So this
Speaker 1: is when I was a lawyer for ten minutes. But
Speaker 1: in any event, you sing background, tell us how it
Speaker 1: plays out from there.
Speaker 2: Well, that begins the rest of my life, as they say,
Speaker 2: because I did end up becoming what this is the
Speaker 2: way I frame it. I became Bob Crue's gopher protege,
Speaker 2: and after my time living staying with the runaways, and
Speaker 2: then I ended up staying in the house with the
Speaker 2: other people who were putting up the runaways for a
Speaker 2: few months. Then Bob asked me to move in, and
Speaker 2: I moved into his storage unit on which was actually
Speaker 2: like a basement apartment or little studio apartment done in
Speaker 2: the basement of his penthouse, a building on Appian Way,
Speaker 2: not Appian Way. That's where he lived later in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: West Hollywood. And so I moved into his storage unit
Speaker 2: and I started really being his gopher protege. I went
Speaker 2: with him everywhere. I drove him around, I did tasks
Speaker 2: for him, I did errands for him. I answered the
Speaker 2: phone for him, and in return say it like that,
Speaker 2: because to me, it was in return what I got
Speaker 2: was an education in the music business as well as
Speaker 2: production and studio work, because I sat beside him when
Speaker 2: he worked with Hank Sakala, the great you know engineer,
Speaker 2: and Tom Dowd another great engineer. You know, look these
Speaker 2: people up, they've they're on every album from from those days,
Speaker 2: the sixties and the seventies and onward. You know, I
Speaker 2: got to meet Jerry Wexler and Joe Smith, you know,
Speaker 2: and people who in the business. I mean, Jerry Wexler
Speaker 2: and I became friends. I'm still friends with his wife
Speaker 2: Renee today, and you know, sit in the rooms when
Speaker 2: deals were made, I got to I just he just
Speaker 2: took me everywhere I was. I was like almost like
Speaker 2: a fly on the wall. And I sat beside him
Speaker 2: at the consoles with those great engineers, and I looked
Speaker 2: and I learned, and I asked questions, and I got
Speaker 2: to do an input. You know, I got to have
Speaker 2: input in these things, not without asking or not without
Speaker 2: somebody asking me. I didn't interject myself where I wasn't involved.
Speaker 2: I was a sponge. So Bob Crue, for all his
Speaker 2: craziness and as a you know, as a human, he
Speaker 2: was brilliant and a genius. He invented pop music basically
Speaker 2: with Four Seasons and Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels.
Speaker 2: He invented Frankie Valley. Frankie Valley didn't sing in Falsetto
Speaker 2: before Bob Crue got to him. You know, I was there.
Speaker 2: I was there when they did My eyes doored you.
Speaker 2: I was one of the background singers, you know, and
Speaker 2: and swearing to God and in the later for it,
Speaker 2: Frankie Valley hits and I was there. I watched Bob
Speaker 2: Crue go into the studio and sing frank Frankie Valley's
Speaker 2: part for Frankie Valley, and then Frankie Valley would go
Speaker 2: in and imitate Bob Crewe. Not that Frankie Valley didn't
Speaker 2: have his own voice. He did, but it was you know,
Speaker 2: I owe Bob Crewe a lot, and he was not
Speaker 2: a perfect person, you know, he was a very flawed person.
Speaker 2: But he gave me my the foundation of my career.
Speaker 2: And and then as the story goes, as you will read,
Speaker 2: I ended up marrying his brother and my two children,
Speaker 2: you know, are from Dan Crewe and Bob Crewe was
Speaker 2: the uncle. And the story goes on from there.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're Bob Gopher. To what degree are you in
Speaker 1: the studio? And how do you end up singing the
Speaker 1: songs on Greece.
Speaker 2: I was in the studio, as I said, all the time,
Speaker 2: with Bob Crewe.
Speaker 1: I guess what I mean is performing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He had me do my first single, which is
Speaker 2: I talk about the book. My first single that I
Speaker 2: ever sang on was called My Happy Birthday Baby, and
Speaker 2: it was a single with me and Kenny Nolan, who
Speaker 2: was his writing partner at the time, who wrote Lady Marmalade.
Speaker 2: I was in the room when that song was written.
Speaker 2: Lady marmalade, and he wrote my eyes Adore You and
Speaker 2: swear to God and all that with Bob and uh.
Speaker 2: So Bob, I sang a single uh and and I
Speaker 2: started uh. But that wasn't the beginning of my personal
Speaker 2: career because that song was a Bob Crue production and
Speaker 2: I sang on you know, I say, I was in
Speaker 2: disco Texas. If somebody really does their deep dive into
Speaker 2: me and asks me about disco texts and the sex,
Speaker 2: so lets I know they've done a deep dive into me.
Speaker 2: And so I was on those records too, and uh
Speaker 2: and Bob. This is a bone of contention for me
Speaker 2: because the one thing Bob did which I kind of
Speaker 2: regret in my you know, in my career, was that
Speaker 2: he encouraged me to sing in a high voice. And
Speaker 2: it started with that single My Happy Birthday Baby, which
Speaker 2: if you can find I doubt anybody can. It was
Speaker 2: on twentieth Century Fox at the time, the album the label,
Speaker 2: and he said, you've got to sing in a high voice.
Speaker 2: You've got to sing in a high voice. I had
Speaker 2: an alto naturally low voice, not quite as low as
Speaker 2: it is today, but I had a naturally low voice.
Speaker 2: If you find the bootlegs of the Rolling Thunder review,
Speaker 2: which I did, you'll hear me sing in my natural voice.
Speaker 2: But he said, you got to sing in a high voice,
Speaker 2: you know, like Frankie Valley. It has more energy, it
Speaker 2: has more oo, you know, people relate to it or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I started singing in this I you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to, but I did. And then you know
Speaker 2: the end of that story is is that I sang
Speaker 2: my first two albums in that high voice, which I
Speaker 2: can't listen to still today. The good songs, but the
Speaker 2: high voice. Nah. So but Bob was an influence on
Speaker 2: me and I started that started off my career and
Speaker 2: through Bob, I met Bobby Newarth through you know and I,
Speaker 2: as I said, Jerry Wexler and other people, and through
Speaker 2: Bob Newarth, I ended up doing some of the Rolling
Speaker 2: Thunder review and meeting those guys who are still friends
Speaker 2: of mine. And you know, it's it's multi layered.
Speaker 1: Okay. I have to ask Desmond Child was a protege
Speaker 1: of Bob Grew at one point. Yeah, and he would say,
Speaker 1: start with the title, come up with a good title.
Speaker 1: Did you have that experience with Bob?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I still use it to this day. You know,
Speaker 2: I mean the title is the you know for me.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I learned obviously, I learned a lot about
Speaker 2: songwriting from Bob Crue, even though my style is not his.
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not a commercial writer. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: started with the titles Lady Marmalade, you know. You know
Speaker 2: they were talking about you know, and I can't remember
Speaker 2: now whether Kenny had come up with a riff on
Speaker 2: the piano or whether Bob just said, I want to
Speaker 2: write a song about a hooker in New Orleans, you know.
Speaker 2: And but that's what he did. He started, and and
Speaker 2: Bob didn't play an instrument. He didn't play an instrument.
Speaker 2: He didn't He he sang the melody. He made up beats.
Speaker 2: You know, he clap his hands or stomp his feat
Speaker 2: and you know, you know, snap his fingers. He was
Speaker 2: a big finger snapper. And he would sing the melody
Speaker 2: and he sometimes it was nonsensical words, which I still
Speaker 2: do today as well, just to get the flavor, the
Speaker 2: feeling of what words would be fit into those points
Speaker 2: in the song. And he was brilliant, and he was
Speaker 2: just brilliant. And yeah, Desmond Child, I met Desmond in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, I think, and we became friends back then, and.
Speaker 1: Okay, touch. You make a big point in the book
Speaker 1: that Bob gets you seriously into drugs and more or
Speaker 1: less pushes you into this lesbian relationship.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I started. I mean I had smoked marijuana
Speaker 2: and uh stuff from the time I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: as I said, but I was never into hard drugs
Speaker 2: or and I didn't drink much because my parents drank
Speaker 2: and I didn't really want to be like them, and
Speaker 2: I didn't want to drink. I just didn't like what
Speaker 2: alcohol did to people. And Bob drank, you know, and
Speaker 2: I didn't like what it did to him. But being
Speaker 2: in that environment living with him, and you know, I
Speaker 2: can't blame it all on Bob. I have to make
Speaker 2: my own choices, you know. But it was available then
Speaker 2: with Bob all the time, and he, you know, he'd
Speaker 2: make himself a drink and make me one, you know. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, and he started, you know, he was into cocaine,
Speaker 2: and so I got into cocaine and which was my downfall.
Speaker 2: And he didn't push me into a relationship with this woman,
Speaker 2: but he encouraged things. I mean, I was very very naive,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, you know, I look back and
Speaker 2: I just put my head in my hands, you know,
Speaker 2: because I was very gullible. I was very naive. I
Speaker 2: you know, I just didn't think through things and didn't
Speaker 2: see behind the curtains, and so Bob encouraged me into
Speaker 2: this relationship. But you know, I mean it was my
Speaker 2: choice and I didn't really have a relationship with this woman,
Speaker 2: although she wanted one. But it was where I started
Speaker 2: my hard drug uses because and this story is in
Speaker 2: the book and it still gives makes me kind of
Speaker 2: sick to my stomach. When it was hard for me
Speaker 2: to write that in the book. It was hard for
Speaker 2: me to really be honest about how how far down
Speaker 2: I went and what happened, and you know, taking responsibility
Speaker 2: for my own choices in getting into drugs. But this woman, Sue,
Speaker 2: shot up cocaine and one night she invited me to
Speaker 2: do that and I had had enough to drink, and
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, I said okay, And that was my bottom,
Speaker 2: you know a few months after that, because I continued
Speaker 2: to do it, and luckily I got sober, you know,
Speaker 2: not long after that.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going back, how did you end up singing
Speaker 1: on the Grease soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you asked me that. Sorry, I didn't get
Speaker 2: to that. Bob Crue in nineteen seventy seven, so I
Speaker 2: was sober by this time. By the way, I got
Speaker 2: sober not long. I only had a very short drug
Speaker 2: career about years with Bob two and a half years.
Speaker 2: And I did get sober and clean and sober in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six. So in nineteen seventy seven, Bob Crewe,
Speaker 2: who was also sober at that time, called me up
Speaker 2: and he said, you're going to get a call from
Speaker 2: a guy who's gonna you know who. I recommended you
Speaker 2: because they wanted somebody who could sing in a young
Speaker 2: woman's voice, a young girl's voice. And I suggested you
Speaker 2: just ironic when you know my whole story, And I said, okay.
Speaker 2: And I assumed that it was background vocals for a
Speaker 2: movie soundtrack. That's all I knew. I had dead, no
Speaker 2: name or nothing. So this guy called me Lewis Saint Louis,
Speaker 2: and he was one of the producers, and he said,
Speaker 2: I want you to come in and sing, you know,
Speaker 2: just be at the studio. Again. I thought it was
Speaker 2: background vocals, and I was going to get paid ninety dollars,
Speaker 2: you know, which was the going rate for three hour
Speaker 2: session back then. So I was thrilled. And I walk
Speaker 2: in and Lewis says to me, we'd like you to
Speaker 2: sing lead on this song. And I was like lead, okay,
Speaker 2: But it was unexpected and it was Freddie my love
Speaker 2: on the Grease movie soundtracked. So after I did that one,
Speaker 2: he said how about this one? And it was raining
Speaker 2: on prom night and I said great, and then and
Speaker 2: then I sang a duet called Mooning with Lewis. So
Speaker 2: I did three lead vocals on that album, all because
Speaker 2: of Bob Crue, which people still come up to me today.
Speaker 2: Go the Grease movie soundtrack, you know, it's still one
Speaker 2: of those things that people hang on to.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were not in the movie. The movie was
Speaker 1: a juggernaut, as was the double au them that accompanied it.
Speaker 1: And you do mention once in the book about getting
Speaker 1: a big royalty check would help you with the time.
Speaker 1: To what degree has that been a profitable experience?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a mistake on their part, And there's
Speaker 2: some side tentacle stories to that, but we won't we
Speaker 2: won't go into all of that. But I didn't expect
Speaker 2: to get royalties I did. I just sang the songs.
Speaker 2: I went home. I got a call. I don't know
Speaker 2: how long later, a week later, a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, and the guy says to me, we
Speaker 2: forgot to have you sign a release. Will you come
Speaker 2: in and sign a release? And this is absolutely a
Speaker 2: true story. There was a voice. Now, I knew very
Speaker 2: little about business. I'd been in on some of these
Speaker 2: conversations with Bob Crue and stuff, but I was naive.
Speaker 2: I was happy to get paid whatever I was getting paid,
Speaker 2: and I worked for Bob for basically nothing, so, you know,
Speaker 2: except a place to live. So I but this voice
Speaker 2: in my head said say no. So I said no,
Speaker 2: and the guy went what And I said no. He said,
Speaker 2: let me call you back. So a day later, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how long, another guy calls and he says,
Speaker 2: we'll give you thirty thousand dollars in cash if you
Speaker 2: sign a release. And I was not stupid. So I
Speaker 2: might have been naive, but I was not stupid. But
Speaker 2: I had no real money. I mean, I'd done a
Speaker 2: couple of gigs with Elton John and I had some
Speaker 2: I had a nice apartment. I was living in Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 2: You know, I got a car. I was sober. I
Speaker 2: was doing a sessions here and there. You know, I
Speaker 2: was okay, but I didn't you know, I wasn't rich.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of money. So thirty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars back in nineteen seventy seven was a lot of money.
Speaker 2: It's still a lot of money. And that little voice
Speaker 2: inside my head said say no, and so I said no.
Speaker 2: And at the time, this manager, Tony Defreese was courting me,
Speaker 2: who I had not met yet. But Bobby Newarth had
Speaker 2: talked to Tony. He was doing a project with Tony
Speaker 2: and said, Tony, you got to talk to Cindy Bullen's
Speaker 2: you guys should get together. So Tony had heard some
Speaker 2: stuff that I'd done and knew what I had done,
Speaker 2: and he was courting me. So I told I just
Speaker 2: happened to be on the phone with him. He was
Speaker 2: in New York. I was in LA and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I've got this thing where they you know,
Speaker 2: the Grease movie santre He said, let me take care
Speaker 2: of it. So Tony Defreese doesn't have the greatest reputation,
Speaker 2: but he did me that favor, and so I got
Speaker 2: a royalty, a royalty from that Grease album. And like
Speaker 2: I said, there is there are tentacles. At the time,
Speaker 2: I did make a lot of money. Now I was
Speaker 2: naive and stupid and young, and the money was spent
Speaker 2: without me knowing, and we're not going to go into
Speaker 2: that story. And I invested in some things that I
Speaker 2: was told to invest in, which I made no money from,
Speaker 2: so that money didn't last a long time. I didn't
Speaker 2: spend it. I bought a car, That's what I bought.
Speaker 2: I bought a Jeep Cherok wagon and which was twelve
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash. And that's what I did. But
Speaker 2: here's the tentacle I want to talk about. Can I
Speaker 2: do this? Can I Okay? Years later and we'll get
Speaker 2: to this. I'm sure we'll get to this, But I
Speaker 2: want to say how these things weave together. Years later,
Speaker 2: after the death of my daughter, my younger daughter, Jesse,
Speaker 2: who was eleven, and I was writing. So I know
Speaker 2: I'm jumping ahead, but I have to tell this. I'm
Speaker 2: jumping ahead. I was writing. I had written some songs.
Speaker 2: I didn't know it was going to become an album
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety seven in ninety eight.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: I at the time, I had written enough songs. And
Speaker 2: that's a whole story in the book. It's a whole
Speaker 2: big bunch of chapters in the book. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to I now knew I had enough songs to make
Speaker 2: an album, and I wanted to make an album in
Speaker 2: honor of my daughter. But I didn't know how to
Speaker 2: do it because I didn't have the money. And I
Speaker 2: won't go into the whole thing, but I found out
Speaker 2: through my sister who had no no no, my older
Speaker 2: sister had She was a housewife and Darienne, Connecticut. She
Speaker 2: had no business in the music nothing, knew nothing. She
Speaker 2: kept asking me if I had received grease from movie
Speaker 2: soundtrack royalties, and I'm like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I didn't I was in grief. My
Speaker 2: daughter had died. I was not thinking about anything. She
Speaker 2: kept asking me. She was like, she had this thing
Speaker 2: from heaven or wherever, the universe or whatever. Anyway. I
Speaker 2: finally said, Okay, Nancy, I'll find out. So I asked Dan,
Speaker 2: who's my husband, who was in the music business, this
Speaker 2: and new publishing and everything. He found out that I
Speaker 2: hadn't been paid for seven years. So that money that
Speaker 2: came in the accumulation of seven years royalties paid for
Speaker 2: my album Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth, which became my
Speaker 2: signature album. It's my legacy. So that's a little tentacle
Speaker 2: from the Grease movies.
Speaker 1: Just to stay on this one point, do you still
Speaker 1: own those royalties? Do you still get payments?
Speaker 2: Very little because there are mechanicals, you know, I mean
Speaker 2: I didn't write the songs, you know, I get you know,
Speaker 2: I get a little bit from Paramount Pictures, but I'm
Speaker 2: talking like two figures, you know, and I get twice
Speaker 2: a year. I get mechanicals, but it's very It's not
Speaker 2: a lot, not a lot of money, but I still
Speaker 2: get them.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the seventies. How do you
Speaker 1: meet Elton John?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I, uh, I had hutzpah back then. I had
Speaker 2: some Like I said, I was young and naive, but
Speaker 2: I was not stupid, and I had some hutzpah. And
Speaker 2: apparently I had some charisma too, because that's that's uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I guess what pulled people into me. But
Speaker 2: I was at Cherokee Studios where a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: went on I met the guys who owned Cherokee, the
Speaker 2: Rob Brothers, excuse me, through Bob Crue, because he recorded
Speaker 2: there as well. And I would hang out at the
Speaker 2: studio and you know, I'd get coffee for people I did,
Speaker 2: you know, just hang out with the guys. And I
Speaker 2: loved hanging out at Cherokee Studios. When they moved to
Speaker 2: Airfax Avenue, I just loved it, and I was friends
Speaker 2: with them, and people would come in and I would
Speaker 2: just be there anyway. So one day I was rehearsing
Speaker 2: with Bob Crue for a project that he wanted to
Speaker 2: put together, and it was stupid. It was not something
Speaker 2: I liked, and I was mad at him, and because
Speaker 2: he was not yet sober, and it was lashing out,
Speaker 2: and so I left that rehearsal and went to Cherokee Studios,
Speaker 2: where I knew they were doing a press party for
Speaker 2: Neil Sedaka, who was a hit songwriter and singer in
Speaker 2: the sixties who had signed with Rocket Records and was
Speaker 2: having a comeback single in nineteen This was nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Five, Rocket Records being Elton's record.
Speaker 2: That's right, And so I knew that Elton was going
Speaker 2: to be there at they were doing this press party
Speaker 2: at Cherokee Studios in the big room, and I was
Speaker 2: a fan of Elton like everybody else, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and and I had no intention
Speaker 2: at the time of meeting him or doing anything, just
Speaker 2: going to hang out with the rob brothers. So I
Speaker 2: walked into the control room and all they're all the
Speaker 2: three brothers and the father were all you know there,
Speaker 2: and there probably was a couple other people. And I'm
Speaker 2: in the control room watching this press party what I
Speaker 2: call like looking into a fish bowl of all these
Speaker 2: press people and publicists. And Neil Sadaka was in there,
Speaker 2: and so there wasn't stars or anything. It was all
Speaker 2: press people and there was Elton standing in the corner.
Speaker 2: And for I don't even remember what I was thinking.
Speaker 2: I just turned to the guys and I said I'm
Speaker 2: going in. I'm going to go in there. And they said, no,
Speaker 2: you're not, you can't go in, and I said, yes,
Speaker 2: I can. I opened the door and walked in and
Speaker 2: headed straight for the food. This is the absolute truth.
Speaker 2: I didn't go right up to Elton. I didn't have
Speaker 2: that much hutzbah, you know. I walked to the food.
Speaker 2: I got a glass of wine or something and some
Speaker 2: carrots and crew de tee or whatever, and I'm like
Speaker 2: standing there hoping that something, you know, I don't even
Speaker 2: know what. Anyway, I started talking to this one guy.
Speaker 2: I can't remember who it was or what he did.
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, I work with Bob Crewe, and
Speaker 2: of course everybody knew Bob Cruise, so I was, you know, valid,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, I'm a background singer. I
Speaker 2: sing with Bob Crue. I had not yet sung in
Speaker 2: the Grease movie contrac This is nineteen seventy five, and
Speaker 2: I had, you know, met Bobby new Earth and stuff,
Speaker 2: so I knew some people and I said that, and
Speaker 2: so we started talking and I expected to be kicked out,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't. And out of the corner of my
Speaker 2: eye he went away, that guy I was talking to,
Speaker 2: and I'm standing there again, and out of the corner
Speaker 2: of my eye, I see Elton walking toward me. And
Speaker 2: my first thought was he's going to kick me out,
Speaker 2: which is stupid because Elton wouldn't be the one to
Speaker 2: kick me out, but that's what I thought. And he
Speaker 2: walks up and he says, verbatim I'll never forget it. Hi,
Speaker 2: my name is Elton. I don't believe we've met yet.
Speaker 2: And I went completely black, you know, I said, Hi,
Speaker 2: my name is Cindy, but I really don't remember anything
Speaker 2: else we said. And but we talked for a few
Speaker 2: minutes and until one of his people came up and
Speaker 2: kind of dragged him away, and nobody kicked me out.
Speaker 2: And then so I'm like, okay, I'm here. I start
Speaker 2: talking to some other people, and then a woman walks
Speaker 2: up to me, a young woman, and she asks me
Speaker 2: what I do, and I said, well, I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a singer, you know, like with all the you know,
Speaker 2: whatever I could put into that. And we talked for
Speaker 2: a minute. She goes away, and I hang out for
Speaker 2: a little while longer, and I'm just about to leave
Speaker 2: because I'd met Elton by this time. What else am
Speaker 2: I going to do? And I go up to her
Speaker 2: hold on a second, just and I mean, she walks
Speaker 2: up to me, and it turns out her name is
Speaker 2: Connie Pappus and she works with Elton and in his
Speaker 2: management with John Reid. She works with John Reid Management,
Speaker 2: And she says to me, what are you doing for
Speaker 2: the next two months, and I thought, uh oh, and this,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell the whole story because it it
Speaker 2: is it. I did know what I was doing for
Speaker 2: the next two months. I was supposed to go on
Speaker 2: the road with the Rolling Thunder Review with Bob Dylan.
Speaker 2: That's a whole nother story that's in the book. But
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know why, And she said, Elton
Speaker 2: wants to know if you want to go on the
Speaker 2: road with him. Now this isn't an hour later from
Speaker 2: when I met him. He hadn't heard me sing. He
Speaker 2: The reason for him to walk up to me, you know,
Speaker 2: was I think to see if I was a boy
Speaker 2: or a girl, a man or a woman, because I
Speaker 2: had a very androgynous look. So here's what I think happened.
Speaker 2: So this was a Wednesday night. It was September seventeenth
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy five Wednesday. The rehearsals for the road
Speaker 2: started Friday, two days from when. So the next day,
Speaker 2: so I so I was like, what do I do.
Speaker 2: I've got to choose between Elton John and Bob Dylan
Speaker 2: because the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Review is going to
Speaker 2: start like in two weeks from then, and they were overlapping,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't do both. I had to choose between
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan and Elton John, and I chose Elton, much
Speaker 2: to Bobby Newris's Chagrinny never forgave me. And so the
Speaker 2: next day on Thursday, and I was living in a
Speaker 2: little hovel on Honey Drive in Hollywood, on the bottom
Speaker 2: of Laurel Canyon, and a limo pulls up and drops
Speaker 2: off a stack of Elton John records, even in those days,
Speaker 2: and I had a turntable on the floor. I had
Speaker 2: no furniture except a couch, no table, no coffee table,
Speaker 2: no nothing. I had a single bed and a couch.
Speaker 2: So my turntable was on the floor of this hovel.
Speaker 2: And I'm supposed to learn these songs before the next
Speaker 2: day when I go to rehearsal. But anyway, my feeling
Speaker 2: on how I got that was two is twofold. I
Speaker 2: think Elton liked the liked me. I think he liked
Speaker 2: the way I looked. But Connie Pappis sister is Renee Pappis,
Speaker 2: who is married to Jerry Wexler, So I think that
Speaker 2: con somehow they had to I'm sure somebody said to
Speaker 2: Elton you know, you can't just hire this kid because
Speaker 2: you we got to find out if they can sing.
Speaker 2: So I think what happened? I should ask Renee because
Speaker 2: she and was that somebody said to Elton, you got
Speaker 2: to find out, So Connie, I don't know. Probably I
Speaker 2: think Jerry Wexler probably said, yeah, I go for it.
Speaker 2: You know, they probably got, you know, through those circles.
Speaker 2: So I ended up on the road rehearsing with Elton
Speaker 2: john in two days after I met him.
Speaker 1: Okay, you end up working with Elton for years. During
Speaker 1: that time, you are, as they say, partying, but unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of the people on the road, you're actually
Speaker 1: hanging without Elton. So what was the experience of the
Speaker 1: Blue Moves and all that other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Elton and I became really close and I adore
Speaker 2: him to this day. The best part of all this
Speaker 2: story is that we are still friends, and he wrote
Speaker 2: the little forward for my book, for my memoir, which
Speaker 2: he did not have to do. I mean, we're still
Speaker 2: friends to this day. And but going back, yeah, I
Speaker 2: we he kind of took me. He took me under
Speaker 2: his wing. He didn't kind of he did take me
Speaker 2: under his wing, you know, kind of like Bob Crue
Speaker 2: and Bobby Newarth, those three people. If you look on
Speaker 2: the back of my first album, Desire Why, you'll see
Speaker 2: it's dedicated to three people, three men, Bob Crue, Bobby
Speaker 2: Newirth and Elton John Because those three guys really and
Speaker 2: they each saw different things than me. But whatever they saw,
Speaker 2: they brought me into their worlds and they elevated me
Speaker 2: to a different plane. They educated me the elevation, They
Speaker 2: taught me things. They they allowed me to, you know,
Speaker 2: become more of who I was and as an artist
Speaker 2: and uh and as a human. So being with Elton
Speaker 2: was an education first of all about what it was
Speaker 2: like to be the most famous person on earth at
Speaker 2: that time. He was the Taylor Swift of the mid seventies,
Speaker 2: you know, and it burst my bubble of to understand
Speaker 2: what happens when you're that famous personally to someone. But
Speaker 2: it was also fun. It was it was he was
Speaker 2: so kind and loving to me. He he brought me everywhere.
Speaker 2: He took me to England. I had, you know, so
Speaker 2: many private moments with him. He took me. I mean,
Speaker 2: I went to dinner with Shirley Maclain and you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, and it wasn't just about the famous people
Speaker 2: that he introduced me to or the places. It was
Speaker 2: the intimate moments that we had together in talking or
Speaker 2: just being together. And I will cherish those for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life. And singing on the you know,
Speaker 2: being asked to sing on the Don't Go Break in
Speaker 2: My Heart, I sang all.
Speaker 1: The woo's nobody knows.
Speaker 2: You know, all that stuff, you know, Don't Go Break
Speaker 2: in my Heart, the Blue Moves album, being invited to
Speaker 2: be a part of those. But more than anything in
Speaker 2: my relationship with Elton, it is those quiet moments and
Speaker 2: the moments you know, and he'd sit at the piano
Speaker 2: and play me song, you know, and just he and
Speaker 2: I in the room, you know, or just talking about
Speaker 2: things and he he It wasn't all about Elton all
Speaker 2: the time. You know. I don't know what conceptions people
Speaker 2: have about Elton John, but he is one of the
Speaker 2: most kind, loving people I've ever known, and he cares.
Speaker 2: He cares. He cares about people both individually and of
Speaker 2: course we all know what he's done with the AIDS
Speaker 2: Foundation and more things like that, raising millions and millions
Speaker 2: and millions of dollars for those in need. And yeah,
Speaker 2: is he complicated. Absolutely, you can't not be and be
Speaker 2: that famous. You can't. You can't navigate in the world
Speaker 2: without having some defense systems and so on. But I him,
Speaker 2: I absolutely adore him.
Speaker 1: But you in the book say you had a breakup,
Speaker 1: falling out when something happened on stage you weren't happy about,
Speaker 1: and you confronted him in his dressing room. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: the book, you do not talk about a reconciliation. You
Speaker 1: say that it's basically over between you and Elton. So
Speaker 1: tell us, really what happened to the aftermath of you
Speaker 1: cursing him out in front of a bunch of people backstage,
Speaker 1: and how you reconnected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I regret because a couple of people
Speaker 2: have said to me, you don't talk about reconciliation. And
Speaker 2: I thought I had covered that when I said after
Speaker 2: the end of the and I'll go back into that incident.
Speaker 2: But when I said at the end of that, when
Speaker 2: he said to me at the end of the tour,
Speaker 2: he gave me a big hug instead, it's your turn now,
Speaker 2: And it was basically that that was the reconciliation. I mean,
Speaker 2: I made amends when I got sober, I made amends
Speaker 2: to him for it, and you know, and he said,
Speaker 2: you don't owe me any amends but the incident itself.
Speaker 2: And to be perfectly honest with you, I really didn't
Speaker 2: want to write about that incident at all because it's
Speaker 2: a blip in our relationship. The reason I wrote about
Speaker 2: that incident where and it was me. I mean, he
Speaker 2: he had his part in it, but it was my
Speaker 2: reaction that that was the issue. But I wrote about
Speaker 2: it because it led to my my looking in word
Speaker 2: at myself and saying, what the heck are you doing
Speaker 2: and why? And you got to get your shit together
Speaker 2: to myself. But anyway, so the incident was that we
Speaker 2: were on stage in Greenville, South Carolina, Greensboro, South Carolina,
Speaker 2: and some one of those anyway, uh, And it was
Speaker 2: at the end of a long two tours put together.
Speaker 2: Everybody was exhausted. We it was just everybody was exhausted,
Speaker 2: and you know it was there was a lot of
Speaker 2: drug usage, there was a lot of I'm speaking for myself,
Speaker 2: you know, I was out of control on a lot
Speaker 2: of levels. And this one night, something happen in one
Speaker 2: of the songs and toward the end of the set
Speaker 2: and the music kind of hung there, and the background vocalists,
Speaker 2: of which I was one of three, could have could
Speaker 2: either make come in at the time we were supposed
Speaker 2: to come in or let it just play out. And
Speaker 2: we came in and at the time we were supposed to,
Speaker 2: and of course we should have waited for the for
Speaker 2: Elton to do whatever he was going to do. And
Speaker 2: Elton turned around and gave us the finger, and I
Speaker 2: went ballistic and I the song finished. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: in much more detail in the book. The song finished,
Speaker 2: and I went off stage and went into the dressing
Speaker 2: room and it was crowded with people, and I put
Speaker 2: my finger in his face and I said, don't to
Speaker 2: ever do that to me again. I took it. You know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't about me. He wasn't even given their finger
Speaker 2: to the three of us. But I was so you know,
Speaker 2: I was doing a lot of cocaine. I was drinking.
Speaker 2: I was My ego was out of control at that point,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, I I so, I you know,
Speaker 2: I went in and put my finger in his face,
Speaker 2: and he was stunned and started to you know, we
Speaker 2: started to get into it, and I, of course was
Speaker 2: as I talk about in the book. I was pulled
Speaker 2: away by everybody who was around, taken by the bodyguards
Speaker 2: out of the room, and thrown into a shower stall
Speaker 2: somewhere down the hall. And I knew I had completely
Speaker 2: screwed up. I knew because you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've ever had this happen, but you know, when
Speaker 2: you're doing something and you can see yourself doing something
Speaker 2: and you're going, what the heck am I doing? I'm not,
Speaker 2: you know, you're kind of outside your self doing something.
Speaker 2: And that's the way it was. As I'm pointing my
Speaker 2: finger in his face, don't ever do that to me again,
Speaker 2: I'm going, what the hell are you doing? You know?
Speaker 2: And anyway, he didn't speak to me for the rest
Speaker 2: of the tour, and it was it crushed me, and
Speaker 2: I knew I was wrong. And I don't blame him.
Speaker 2: I mean, he was hurt. I know. I know a
Speaker 2: lot of the details that I don't put in the book,
Speaker 2: the private details about what happened after, you know, and
Speaker 2: how he felt. But I say in the book I
Speaker 2: had betrayed as trust and I did, you know. And
Speaker 2: it was a turning point for me in terms of
Speaker 2: looking at my own self and my own actions and
Speaker 2: my own what I was, where I was, and I
Speaker 2: it was the beginning of the end for me in
Speaker 2: terms of my drug usage and my alcohol usage. It
Speaker 2: took another two months for me to get sober, but
Speaker 2: it was it was the beginning of the end. And
Speaker 2: that's why I bring it up in the book because
Speaker 2: it's not really relevant, I mean, to anything else in
Speaker 2: my mind. And and Elton and I we reconciled right
Speaker 2: after the tour, you know, and there was no no
Speaker 2: harm done. And when I did, when I did get
Speaker 2: sober and made an amends, I wrote him a letter.
Speaker 2: He wrote me back, and you know, making amends for that,
Speaker 2: which is one of the steps in alcoholics anonymous. And
Speaker 2: I'm breaking my own inanimity, but I can do that
Speaker 2: after forty seven years, and you know, I had to
Speaker 2: make amends to him, and I did, and to other
Speaker 2: people who are on that tour. He never he said,
Speaker 2: you don't owe me any amends. You know, it just
Speaker 2: just happened. And but it was the incident that was
Speaker 2: kind of the last Neon sign for me. You're in trouble, Cindy,
Speaker 2: get it together. You're going down the wrong path. And
Speaker 2: because I had heard him so badly. Let's jump forward.
Speaker 2: You end up marrying Bob, who's brother who you say
Speaker 2: in the book from the beginning is gay. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: also say, although it's not really clear that you are gay.
Speaker 2: But at that time, were you only with women or
Speaker 2: were you with men too, or what? So? I had
Speaker 2: very few relationships, in fact, almost none, because I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I kind of thought, well, maybe I'm gay,
Speaker 2: you know, because I'm attracted to women, but I'm also
Speaker 2: you know, have some attraction to men and so on.
Speaker 2: But I always felt like I was a guy. I
Speaker 2: always felt like I was a guy from the time
Speaker 2: I was three years old and I told my mother,
Speaker 2: I'm a guy. I'm a boy. Don't call me Cindy,
Speaker 2: I'm a boy. So so, but growing up in puberty
Speaker 2: and then beyond and then not knowing, you know, nobody
Speaker 2: knew anything about the word transgender wasn't even in the vocabulary.
Speaker 2: There was no word transgender back then. It was transsexual
Speaker 2: if anything, and it was kind of a pathological, you
Speaker 2: know condition. And so yes, Dan, Dan, and I I
Speaker 2: was I did have some attraction to men and and
Speaker 2: but I didn't have a lot of relationship Bob. I didn't.
Speaker 2: I avoided them like the plague because I didn't know
Speaker 2: who I was. I didn't feel like I was in
Speaker 2: the wrong body. So I didn't really want to, you know,
Speaker 2: I just it was I just wanted to stay away
Speaker 2: from physical contact as much as possible with anybody. And
Speaker 2: but I did have a couple of short relationships with women,
Speaker 2: one in high school and one afterwards. But I I
Speaker 2: didn't consider myself gay, although I thought, well, that's what
Speaker 2: I must be. Anyway, I met Dan through Bob, obviously,
Speaker 2: and he was completely gay, had never had a relationship
Speaker 2: with a woman before. And when he was older. He's
Speaker 2: older than me, He's sixteen years older. And we met
Speaker 2: and we had an attraction to each other, and we
Speaker 2: had a little fling for about eight months, and then
Speaker 2: we didn't and then we after we both got sober
Speaker 2: in AA. Bob got sober too, he and we were friends.
Speaker 2: He said to me, I think we should get married,
Speaker 2: and I said, you're crazy. I don't want to get married.
Speaker 2: I met in the middle trying, you know that I
Speaker 2: was recording my first album, and this was in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, and I was, you know, on the road
Speaker 2: and doing my thing and trying to become a rock star.
Speaker 2: He said, we have the same values. We have, you know,
Speaker 2: we should get married. And you know, finally, after a
Speaker 2: while I said yes, because I was getting beaten up
Speaker 2: in the record business. And you know, I love Dan.
Speaker 2: I still love him today. I'll see him next week.
Speaker 2: But you know, I I just thought, well, if I'm
Speaker 2: not going to be able to be a rock star,
Speaker 2: because in nineteen seventy nine, a lot of stuff started
Speaker 2: happening and I and you know, I was nominated for
Speaker 2: a Grammy and good stuff and all that, and then
Speaker 2: the record companies folded, and you you know all the story.
Speaker 2: Plus yes, I was being told to be more feminine
Speaker 2: if I wanted to get ahead in the music business.
Speaker 2: And I said, no, not changing who I am, I can't.
Speaker 2: And that didn't go over real well. And so I
Speaker 2: married Dan and we had two kids. We moved back
Speaker 2: East and we had a monogamous relationship. It wasn't an
Speaker 2: arrangement like somebody think, oh, well, okay, he's gay and
Speaker 2: you're trands and you know whatever. But we didn't. We tried.
Speaker 2: I don't even know why, but we tried to be
Speaker 2: a normal couple. And of course we weren't, so it
Speaker 2: led to a lot of issues, but we had two
Speaker 2: beautiful children and we're still friends.
Speaker 1: Okay, you don't have children immediately. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: Bob suggests having children, What did you think about having children?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think Bob's I don't remember Bob suggesting
Speaker 2: having children. Dan was the one who suggested.
Speaker 1: That that's what I meant to say, I said, Bob,
Speaker 1: I meant.
Speaker 2: Dan, Yeah, yeah, Dan, And we sat down and we
Speaker 2: talked about it very honestly one night. I talk about
Speaker 2: that in the book, because we looked at each other,
Speaker 2: and you know, he was gay and I was who
Speaker 2: I was. And I was still in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: trying to even though we'd moved to New York by
Speaker 2: that time, but I still wanted to have some kind
Speaker 2: of career. Now for those younger people, I was thirty
Speaker 2: years old, and I and you were old to have
Speaker 2: a career when you were thirty years old back then,
Speaker 2: and so time was running out for me. But I did,
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind somewhere want to have kids.
Speaker 2: And I thought, Okay, if the music business isn't going
Speaker 2: to happen for me, then you know, I want to
Speaker 2: have kids. And Dan and I did discuss the fact
Speaker 2: that we weren't normal. I hate that we use the
Speaker 2: word normal. We weren't typical male, female, married couple having children,
Speaker 2: but we both wanted kids and we did.
Speaker 1: Okay, you end up moving to Connecticut, you're a suburban
Speaker 1: mom prior to your younger daughter than getting ill. Were
Speaker 1: you happy the circumstances you were under or was it
Speaker 1: a struggle?
Speaker 2: It was a struggle. It was always a struggle for me.
Speaker 2: It was always a struggle for me. I felt like
Speaker 2: I was living out of my own body. I felt,
Speaker 2: you know, we really did, honestly try to fit in
Speaker 2: in Westport, Connecticut because we moved out of New York.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of gay friends, a lot of
Speaker 2: friends in the LGBTQ community in New York and in
Speaker 2: LA and when we moved to Westport, Connecticut, that kind
Speaker 2: of fell away. And here we were going to preschool
Speaker 2: with you know, the Montessori school and all these you know,
Speaker 2: straight couples and you know, living in Westport, Connecticut, and
Speaker 2: we both Dan and I really tried to fit in
Speaker 2: and do you know all the things that parents, young
Speaker 2: parents do and with the kids, and I listen, I
Speaker 2: loved having children. There's nothing about having children that I regret,
Speaker 2: even with the death of my younger daughter. And I
Speaker 2: loved being pregnant. I loved breastfeeding. I loved being a mother.
Speaker 2: I still love I love being a grandparent. But that
Speaker 2: wasn't what the struggle was. The struggle was presenting as
Speaker 2: a straight couple, even though we didn't lie, we just
Speaker 2: were and trying to fit the square peg of a
Speaker 2: relationship or a couple into the round hole of Westport,
Speaker 2: Connecticut and what that meant. And it was a struggle.
Speaker 2: And I was still I still had some creativetivity left
Speaker 2: in me, and I still had the desire to write
Speaker 2: and perform and record. So that presented its own struggle
Speaker 2: for me because I had kids.
Speaker 1: Your daughter tragically dies of cancer. A you work out
Speaker 1: your grief ultimately in the album that you referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: that you made with the Grief Royalties. As time has
Speaker 1: gone by, to what degree does that metabolize, to what
Speaker 1: degree can one get over it? Or is it always
Speaker 1: a hole that can't be filled?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I my belief, and I've talked to thousands of
Speaker 2: brave parents because I worked with them for fifteen years
Speaker 2: with that music from Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: My experience for myself and for anyone I've ever talked
Speaker 2: to who's a brief parent, is that you never get
Speaker 2: over it. There is no such thing as getting over it.
Speaker 2: You can get through it. And even that, I say
Speaker 2: with some kind of caveat, it's a hole that never
Speaker 2: goes away. There's never I mean, Jesse's birthday is this month,
Speaker 2: you know, she would have been thirty nine years old.
Speaker 2: Her death day is next month, and it's complicated for those.
Speaker 2: So grief, grief has a has a life of its own,
Speaker 2: and it and it and it grows and changes and
Speaker 2: shifts and sometimes it metastasized in the early days and
Speaker 2: and and then it kind of shifts around to different
Speaker 2: places in your life. It's an entity all its own
Speaker 2: and it's always there. And so Jesse's death presented me
Speaker 2: not only with abject grief, which I had to go
Speaker 2: through and did go through, but it also gave me
Speaker 2: a different life on a bunch of levels. It gave
Speaker 2: me a different life because you're never the same person
Speaker 2: after the death of a child. It affected my relationship
Speaker 2: with my older daughter. Of course it affected her, her
Speaker 2: sibling died. It affected my relationship with life, but it
Speaker 2: also now looking back, and it's going to be next month,
Speaker 2: it'll be twenty seven years since her death. It's a lifetime,
Speaker 2: actually be twenty eight years. Twenty eight years, and her
Speaker 2: death gave me a new life. I can only say
Speaker 2: that now and have only been able to say that
Speaker 2: for the last ten years, let's say, or fifteen years,
Speaker 2: because she gave me a different life. She made me
Speaker 2: a more compassionate person. She gave me the gifts of
Speaker 2: those songs from somewhere between heaven and Earth that were
Speaker 2: all channeled from and I'm using that word loosely from
Speaker 2: a different place in me that before that album and
Speaker 2: after that album. Nope, those songs that I wrote before
Speaker 2: and after do not have the same depth or weight
Speaker 2: of those songs. They didn't cut those songs before and after.
Speaker 2: It didn't come from the same place those ten songs
Speaker 2: from that album came from. And that's that album continues
Speaker 2: to this day. I get emails from people, you know,
Speaker 2: messages from people. I have to answer one today. I
Speaker 2: just got, you know that about somebody listening to that
Speaker 2: album after the death of someone a loved one. Mostly
Speaker 2: it's children, but it could be anybody saying how profoundly
Speaker 2: it affected them to this day. That album is my legacy.
Speaker 2: There's other things to the book and one person show
Speaker 2: and another show, you know, things like that, But that
Speaker 2: album is my true legacy. There is and that would
Speaker 2: not the horrible thing about it. And it brought me
Speaker 2: back into the music business, to that album. So I
Speaker 2: I would much rather have a tall, redheaded adult standing
Speaker 2: in front of me, who's my beautiful daughter, than I
Speaker 2: would all the rest of the life that came in
Speaker 2: the last twenty eight years, but her gifts to me
Speaker 2: in her death, I would not have the same life.
Speaker 2: I would not have been the most more compassionate or
Speaker 2: would have had my legacy. I would have just been
Speaker 2: another struggling whatever. And so it's a complicated issue about
Speaker 2: the death of a child. But does the grief go away? Nope,
Speaker 2: it doesn't. And there are choices to be made when
Speaker 2: a child dies. You either live or you die figuratively
Speaker 2: or live or physically. Because I know parents who have
Speaker 2: physically died from the death of their children. So somehow,
Speaker 2: in some way I chose to live and I can't
Speaker 2: take credit really for somewhere between Heaven and Earth, that
Speaker 2: album and those songs, other than the fact that I
Speaker 2: was compelled to show up to do them, to write them,
Speaker 2: and to record them, and then the powers that be
Speaker 2: took over and took it in a direction and took
Speaker 2: it out into the world that I had no intention
Speaker 2: of doing myself.
Speaker 1: Now, do you still think of Jesse every day? Does
Speaker 1: the number of times you think about her fate over
Speaker 1: the years.
Speaker 2: No. I think about her every day. She's with me
Speaker 2: every day. If you talk to a bereef parent, more
Speaker 2: than likely they will have some kind of symbol that
Speaker 2: represents their child. To me and to many other people
Speaker 2: who've lost loved ones, it's a cardinal. Jesse had red hair,
Speaker 2: really red hair, this beautiful auburn, thick hair, and the
Speaker 2: stories about cardinals that appeared to people when she died
Speaker 2: and they knew she had died, and so the cardinal
Speaker 2: became symbol for her. I have tons of cardinals in
Speaker 2: my yard, you know, And but I think of her
Speaker 2: even beyond the cardinals and stuff. I think of her
Speaker 2: all the time. I've got her pictures right here. I've
Speaker 2: got pictures right here. She's become a part of me
Speaker 2: in you know, she's become a part of my own being.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm walking around and that part of
Speaker 2: my mission here on earth is to let people know
Speaker 2: that she lived and that she was important, and that
Speaker 2: part of my gifts come which I just said, are
Speaker 2: from her. And so she's always with me at all times,
Speaker 2: and I never there's not a day that goes by.
Speaker 2: I don't know that she's not a part of my day.
Speaker 1: Switching gears at this late date, can you be totally
Speaker 1: comfortable being a trans man in society, both internally and externally.
Speaker 1: Do you feel comfortable inside and do you find the
Speaker 1: perceptions of others or such that you can feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. I feel comfortable within myself.
Speaker 2: If I didn't have to deal with transphobia and the
Speaker 2: outside world, I would be very happy about that. It
Speaker 2: really is. So it's such a shame that a certain
Speaker 2: group of people are targeting trans people. People don't understand,
Speaker 2: and I don't expect people to understand that it's a
Speaker 2: real thing. That it's not, you know, some crazy whim
Speaker 2: you know, or some psychological problem or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It is a physiological condition. And I mean I have
Speaker 2: known since I was three years old. As I meant
Speaker 2: before that, I was a boy at that time, a
Speaker 2: boy in a girl's body, and one of There is
Speaker 2: a spectrum of transgenderness too, I mean people transgenderness. That's
Speaker 2: not even a word, but there is a spectrum, and
Speaker 2: there are people who feel differently than I do. There
Speaker 2: are people who are on a different part of the spectrum,
Speaker 2: who feel that they're gender fluid or something like that.
Speaker 2: I am on the real side, you know, flat end
Speaker 2: of the spectrum where I never in my life felt
Speaker 2: like a female. I don't relate to women, never did
Speaker 2: relate to women. I loved being a mother, I loved
Speaker 2: being pregnant, I loved breastfeeding. But I even then, even
Speaker 2: at nine months pregnant, I didn't relate to being a woman.
Speaker 2: I was just a vessel carrying a baby. And I
Speaker 2: I just so sociologically it's difficult, I look even though
Speaker 2: no one. I mean, I've been, Believe me, I've been
Speaker 2: in men's rooms in Fenway Park and Jillette Stadium and
Speaker 2: Titans Nissan State. You know I've been. I've been in
Speaker 2: men's room and gas stations out in the middle of Nebraska.
Speaker 2: You know, no one will ever look at me and
Speaker 2: say there's something about that guy that looks like a woman. Nobody.
Speaker 2: But I still look over my shoulder. I am still
Speaker 2: aware of where I am at all times in public,
Speaker 2: you know, and what's around me. If I go into
Speaker 2: a restroom and into a stall, if you want to
Speaker 2: get personal about it, I make I have to, you know,
Speaker 2: I make sure that I'm safe. It's a shame that,
Speaker 2: as I said, that people don't and don't want to understand.
Speaker 2: They don't want to believe that this is just a
Speaker 2: human condition, just like other human conditions. I say at
Speaker 2: the end of my book in the epilogue, you know,
Speaker 2: if we are indeed the most advanced species on Earth,
Speaker 2: then wouldn't we by definition be the most diverse. And
Speaker 2: we are diverse, you know, we are. We don't look
Speaker 2: at whatever that fish is or whatever that bug is
Speaker 2: where the male gives birth and say that's an anomaly
Speaker 2: of nature. We say, oh, that's a male fish who
Speaker 2: gives birth. Wow. You know. It's the misinformation and the disinformation,
Speaker 2: as people like to say about trans people that bothers
Speaker 2: me the most. And that's why I'm an advocate, and
Speaker 2: I try to speak out loud about being trans. Now,
Speaker 2: we could get into a whole political discussion about why
Speaker 2: there are bathroom bills. Guess what, there's not a bathroom
Speaker 2: bill because somebody's afraid that I'm going to walk into
Speaker 2: a men's room. Nobody knows. I could stand washing my
Speaker 2: hands beside Mitch McConnell or you know, one of the
Speaker 2: red wing, red wing I was gonna say, red neck,
Speaker 2: right wing, one of the right wing politicians. I could
Speaker 2: stand beside any one of them in a restroom washing
Speaker 2: my hands and they wouldn't know. Why do they have
Speaker 2: bathroom bills? Why is it illegal for me to walk
Speaker 2: into a restroom in many states? Even though I do anyway?
Speaker 2: Because it's the trans women who they're afraid of. Men
Speaker 2: are afraid of trans women. It threatens their masculinity for
Speaker 2: some reason. And yeah, I could go on a whole
Speaker 2: diatribe and I won't, but it, you know, we have
Speaker 2: to educate. That's the only way we can do it.
Speaker 2: And the only you know, I'm out. I'm an out
Speaker 2: trans person, you know. And do I worry every once
Speaker 2: in a while that some person's gonna say, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: Sydney Bullens is a trans person and doesn't deserve to live. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I worry about that sometimes, but I can't live my
Speaker 2: life doing that. What I can live my life doing
Speaker 2: is talking about it, writing about it. You know the
Speaker 2: thing about my story, Bob, which you got when you
Speaker 2: wrote about it, you got it. It's a human story.
Speaker 2: It's not about being a transgender person who happened to
Speaker 2: have a career in rock and roll or happen to
Speaker 2: have kids, even though that thread runs through the book
Speaker 2: along with the music. It's a human story. My story
Speaker 2: is human. I lived as a woman for sixty one years.
Speaker 2: I had two babies. I watched one of them take
Speaker 2: their last breath. I have four beautiful granddaughters, grandbabies, two
Speaker 2: granddaughters and two grandsons, four beautiful grandchildren. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: a grandparent. I act like a grandparent. I'm not a
Speaker 2: freak or an anomaly or a deranged person. I contribute
Speaker 2: to my community, and that's what we really That's what
Speaker 2: my book is about. It's about a human story. So
Speaker 2: that maybe if somebody chooses to read it, although it's
Speaker 2: got trands in the title, maybe they'll have a different view.
Speaker 2: Maybe they'll get a different perspective. Maybe they'll say, you
Speaker 2: know what, maybe I can learn a little bit from this.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to start pontificating, but it bugs me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I'm afraid for the trans people. And know I'm
Speaker 2: not always comfortable in the world, but I'm comfortable within
Speaker 2: myself and I don't regret making the decision, even though
Speaker 2: let's get honest here, it's harder for me in the
Speaker 2: music business. It's harder for me out in the world.
Speaker 2: It's harder for me to meet people. It's harder for
Speaker 2: me to tell my story. Somebody says, what do you do? Well?
Speaker 1: I do this?
Speaker 2: Oh what have you done in the past? Ah. I
Speaker 2: sang with Elton John. I sang on the Grease movie soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Guess what Cindy sang on the Grease movie soundtrack. Cindy
Speaker 2: sang with Elton John. So now they go and look
Speaker 2: me up. I had this happen the other day with
Speaker 2: a guy with the Trump. I was in a store
Speaker 2: and he had a Trump, you know, cut out, a
Speaker 2: life sized Trump cut out, and I mistakenly said to him,
Speaker 2: you know, I was doing a transaction, and he I
Speaker 2: mistakenly said, yeah, yeah, he said, what do you do?
Speaker 2: I said, I'm you know, I'm one of those songwriters
Speaker 2: in Nashville. He looks up my name and I had
Speaker 2: to turn to him and I said, wait until I
Speaker 2: leave before you look me up. And I laughed and
Speaker 2: he put his phone away. So it's harder for me
Speaker 2: to live in the world as a trans person. But
Speaker 2: do I regret it, No, because I am being the
Speaker 2: person that I am meant to be and part of that.
Speaker 2: When when my siblings didn't want me to transition, when
Speaker 2: I told them I was going to one of my
Speaker 2: sisters said why, why, why why? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: there's a couple of reasons. One is I I want
Speaker 2: to see what it feels like to be in the
Speaker 2: body it was meant to have, minus a few things. Two,
Speaker 2: if I can, because I'm a known person in certain communities,
Speaker 2: maybe not a household name, but I'm a public figure.
Speaker 2: If I can change one person's opinion about what a
Speaker 2: transperson is, then it's worth it to me. Just like
Speaker 2: I did with the death of a child, I affected,
Speaker 2: not me, that music affected a lot of people in
Speaker 2: a positive way in expressing their grief, in knowing they
Speaker 2: weren't alone, whatever it was so with somewhere between heaven
Speaker 2: and Earth. So now it's this. Now I'm a transperson.
Speaker 2: If I can affect anybody to maybe take it just
Speaker 2: a little bit of a deeper beak into what it
Speaker 2: is to be transgender, or to empathize a little bit
Speaker 2: with the fact that this is a human condition, then
Speaker 2: it's worth it to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, you transitioned a little over a decade ago. In
Speaker 1: that time, although I have a friend who has a
Speaker 1: brother who turned into as she would say, his sister,
Speaker 1: and I've known that person for thirty five years. In
Speaker 1: the last half a decade, this has become more of
Speaker 1: a public issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Has this been better or worse for you?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's been. It's been worse that it's been a
Speaker 2: public issue because, as I said, you know, I look
Speaker 2: over my shoulder. Look. I transitioned in Portland, Maine. I
Speaker 2: lived in Maine. You know, I'm a big fish in
Speaker 2: a little pond in Portland, Mainor I was you know
Speaker 2: where I you know, I was known to a lot
Speaker 2: of media people. I've done a lot of charity work.
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of things there. When I started transitioning,
Speaker 2: the local networks did stories on me as like, oh
Speaker 2: you know this, you know this person is transitioning, and
Speaker 2: what a great story this is and great for them
Speaker 2: and me, and you know, little did I know, and
Speaker 2: its been twelve years that the world that we would
Speaker 2: become trans people would become the number one targeted group
Speaker 2: of all the vitriol, that the violence that trans people
Speaker 2: encounter is off the charts. So, as I said, it's harder,
Speaker 2: and especially living now in a red state, even though
Speaker 2: Nashville is a blue city, and having all these laws
Speaker 2: passed and everything else, it's much harder. One of the
Speaker 2: reasons I moved back to Maine. Not that there aren't
Speaker 2: people who disagree in Maine too, you know, every place
Speaker 2: has its as it's you know, divisions, but uh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it is harder. It's much harder, Okay.
Speaker 1: In the seventies, mid seventies, I lived in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: Utah is not the same state it used to be.
Speaker 1: It used to be very heavily Mormon. Not that there
Speaker 1: aren't a lot of Mormons there, but they really dominated.
Speaker 1: And within a month seemingly every Jew in Utah found
Speaker 1: me and I wasn't looking for them. Okay, is their compassion.
Speaker 1: Is there I hate to use the word network's got
Speaker 1: a weird connotation. Is there a community that strengthens each
Speaker 1: individual in the trans world.
Speaker 2: There are many communities that are are out there, and
Speaker 2: I list a bunch of resources in the back of
Speaker 2: my book for people. I mean, every city and some
Speaker 2: towns have their own LGBTQ organizations that help people. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there is human rights organizations all over the place, so
Speaker 2: there are places to go and places that are safe
Speaker 2: for people, and certainly online there's a ton of ton
Speaker 2: of them for trans people. I'm not going to name
Speaker 2: them all, but yes, and we need every single one.
Speaker 2: We need every single person. I'm privileged. I'm lucky. First
Speaker 2: of all, I have support human support for me personally.
Speaker 2: My family, my friends, my colleagues, you know, support me
Speaker 2: in what I've done in terms of transitioning and who
Speaker 2: I am now and who they want me to be
Speaker 2: and how they want me to be. So I'm supported.
Speaker 2: I also am invisible two people who don't know me.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I can walk down the street and
Speaker 2: no one's going to be the wiser. No one ever
Speaker 2: raises their eyebrows at me. I'm just a guy. I'm
Speaker 2: an old man. You know, I'm just another old white guy,
Speaker 2: you know that's wandering through the world. And so I
Speaker 2: have privilege in that I'm now seen as an older
Speaker 2: white male, and believe me, I have I'm like a
Speaker 2: fly on the wall. I'm like a spy because i
Speaker 2: was a woman for sixty years and now I've been
Speaker 2: a guy, and I there are believe me, there are
Speaker 2: big differences. But I'm privileged. Not everybody is. And my
Speaker 2: concern now more than anything is the trans youth. And
Speaker 2: there are a lot of organizations out there for trans youth,
Speaker 2: but it's the youth who are being punished now more
Speaker 2: than anything with the laws that are being taken away
Speaker 2: about trans care. And people can have their opinions about
Speaker 2: this stuff, but you know, you don't have the right
Speaker 2: to take away what someone needs to live their life.
Speaker 2: There's going to be and I hate to be so
Speaker 2: crass about it, but each state Ohio being the last
Speaker 2: last week that takes away trans care for youth is
Speaker 2: causing the death of kids. There are kids who will
Speaker 2: commit suicide because they don't think they have any options
Speaker 2: left in becoming who they feel they are. And that's
Speaker 2: not a joke. There's no fun in that. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no you know, people who you know, they brush
Speaker 2: off trans people. You know, Oh, they're just crazy, you know,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, there is no there's only two genders
Speaker 2: and all this bullshit. You know, you don't know. They're ignorant.
Speaker 2: If you were inside my body, you would know. You
Speaker 2: can't be inside my body any more than you can
Speaker 2: understand what it's like to lose a child. If you haven't,
Speaker 2: you can't understand what it's like to be transgender. And
Speaker 2: I don't expect anybody to understand. What I expect is
Speaker 2: that you let me live and that you don't make
Speaker 2: decisions and assumptions about my life. For me, it's the
Speaker 2: same with Roe v. Wade. But we could get into women,
Speaker 2: you know, we could go into all of that stuff too.
Speaker 2: Don't you who don't know anything about me make decisions
Speaker 2: about my life. Believe me, it's not just the trans
Speaker 2: youth medical care that's going to be taken away. These
Speaker 2: people in these states want to take away all transcare
Speaker 2: for all trans people, which means I take testosterone. You know,
Speaker 2: they want to take that away from me. They don't
Speaker 2: Florida the law or Texas. I can't remember which one,
Speaker 2: but just in the last week or so, you can't
Speaker 2: have your name. My name is Sydney now right, I
Speaker 2: have a license it says Sydney Bullens mail my birthday,
Speaker 2: all of that now. I think it's the state of Texas.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be wrong, so I don't want to. But
Speaker 2: in some state, just in the last week or two,
Speaker 2: it is now illegal to have my I couldn't have
Speaker 2: Cindy on my license, Sydney. I'd have to have Cindy
Speaker 2: Bulloans on my license looking like I look, you know,
Speaker 2: don't take away my right to exist. And that's what
Speaker 2: I have to say about it.
Speaker 1: What might you say to someone who is struggling with
Speaker 1: feeling that they're born in the wrong body and are
Speaker 1: contemplating transition.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends if if they're a youth or an
Speaker 2: adult or what or whatever. But there are lots and
Speaker 2: lots of resources out there, there really are, So I
Speaker 2: would go online or find your local LGBTQ community and
Speaker 2: or talk talk to anybody you can. I have people
Speaker 2: emailing me, you know, telling me about their son or
Speaker 2: their daughter, their brother or sister, you know, and sometimes themselves.
Speaker 2: You know who I've chatted with about it. It's a
Speaker 2: serious consideration. There are differences between transitioning with trans women
Speaker 2: and trans men. There are different procedures, different costs, so
Speaker 2: it's not a one, one size fits all decision. I
Speaker 2: know people who feel that they are transgender, who have
Speaker 2: never transitioned and who will never transition because they don't
Speaker 2: want to go through the hardships of transitioning, or they
Speaker 2: don't have the cost of doing it, or they're afraid
Speaker 2: for their lives and their livelihoods. Because many trans people
Speaker 2: lose jobs or don't get jobs because they're trans. They're
Speaker 2: a transperson. We're discriminated against. So there's so many considerations
Speaker 2: that it's not just a one sentence or a one
Speaker 2: even a one paragraph answer. But the but what I
Speaker 2: would say is talk to people. You know what I did, well,
Speaker 2: I read every book I could get my hands on.
Speaker 2: I went on I did find some books written by
Speaker 2: trans people, and I read every one of them that
Speaker 2: I could, and I watched YouTube videos of trans people
Speaker 2: there were I had no idea there was so many
Speaker 2: trans people out there who were transitioning, and and I
Speaker 2: did a lot of I went to my doctor, I
Speaker 2: went to a gender therapist in Boston so that I
Speaker 2: could because I never talked about it. I never I
Speaker 2: put it so far back in the back of my
Speaker 2: mind that I didn't keep up with it. I didn't,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, I read Chaz Bono's book before
Speaker 2: I decided to transition, just because you know, it was there.
Speaker 2: But I never. If you had told me a day
Speaker 2: before I decided that I had to look into it,
Speaker 2: that I was going to look into it, I would
Speaker 2: have told you were crazy. I was living my life.
Speaker 2: I was Cindy Bullen's I had grandchildren by that time.
Speaker 2: I was in the refugees and doing some gigs and
Speaker 2: you know, hi, but I had to do it. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot to consider. And I would just say,
Speaker 2: find as many resources as you possibly can before you
Speaker 2: move forward with it. But let me just tell you something.
Speaker 2: Once I knew it was possible for me, there was
Speaker 2: no going back. There was no going back, even though
Speaker 2: I talk about it in the book that yes no, yes, no,
Speaker 2: yes no. But all the while I was transitioning, even
Speaker 2: though I was afraid at certain points.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel about the piction of trans
Speaker 1: people in the generically called Hollywood. We have the show Transparent,
Speaker 1: We've had other transactors. Do you feel this is fair
Speaker 1: or they're not getting it right?
Speaker 2: To be perfectly honest with you, I don't watch much
Speaker 2: TV and at all I know obviously I watched a
Speaker 2: few episodes of Transparent a few years ago. The general
Speaker 2: statement I have, I'm really kind of neutral about trans
Speaker 2: people playing trans people. I think, if at all possible,
Speaker 2: if there's a trans character, it could should be played
Speaker 2: by a trans person. But that's not always possible, like
Speaker 2: in Transparent. You know, I'm not a militant trans person.
Speaker 2: I think there are circumstances that you have to weigh
Speaker 2: about depicting trans people. And my hope was and I
Speaker 2: actually developed a TV pilot with a writer in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: We haven't sold it yet, but we're developing a TV
Speaker 2: pilot about a trans character.
Speaker 1: And my.
Speaker 2: View, what I'm trying to put into it is the
Speaker 2: reality both internally and externally. Like you asked me, how
Speaker 2: comfortable am I? How happy I am I internally and externally?
Speaker 2: So there's an internal thought process with being trans that
Speaker 2: people don't think about, like going into to a restroom
Speaker 2: for example. You know, And so I'm trying to interject,
Speaker 2: you know, little incidences and idiosyncrasies about being trans, and
Speaker 2: so I think that Hollywood needs to educate themselves as
Speaker 2: much as possible so that those idiosyncrasies and the reality
Speaker 2: of being trands, not just the violent part and not
Speaker 2: just the horrible parts of what happens, and not just
Speaker 2: making you know, comedies about us, but really having an
Speaker 2: in depth view of what it is and in a
Speaker 2: character and the pathos of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot of stuff going in the wrong direction,
Speaker 1: the hate, the laws. You know, I tend to be
Speaker 1: a glass half empty person. But is there any sunlight
Speaker 1: in this situation, anything positive happening?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm I think I become a class half
Speaker 2: empty person too, Bob. But here's my hope. My hope
Speaker 2: is with the young people. You know, I'm an old
Speaker 2: guy right now. I'm you know, I'm I try to
Speaker 2: be as helpful and as informed as I can be
Speaker 2: on this in this world until the day I drop
Speaker 2: dead or get hit by a bus or whatever is
Speaker 2: going to happen. But my hope is with the young people,
Speaker 2: because they don't care about your pronouns. I have a
Speaker 2: sixteen year old and fourteen year old granddaughters. You know,
Speaker 2: they don't care. What's your pronoun them? Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: all right, they don't care. They don't care if you're
Speaker 2: a trans girl or a trans boy, or you're you know,
Speaker 2: a they or you know, they don't care. Now, if
Speaker 2: you're brought up by somebody who is vitriolic and and
Speaker 2: doesn't understand as a young person, then you're going to
Speaker 2: have your parents' viewpoint more than not. But there are
Speaker 2: more people. But you know, evolution goes on whether we
Speaker 2: like it or not, and sooner or later, all of
Speaker 2: us old white guys are going to be dead, and
Speaker 2: the younger people are going to bring us up. If
Speaker 2: we can live that long, if we can retain our democracy,
Speaker 2: if we can retain our planet, then these which is
Speaker 2: really the critical question, these young people will show the way.
Speaker 2: I have great faith in the young people. I have
Speaker 2: a twenty six year old step You know, I have
Speaker 2: great faith. My daughter is forty, but she's you know hip,
Speaker 2: you know, she's she knows, she doesn't care, she doesn't
Speaker 2: care for her kids are gay, straight, whatever they are.
Speaker 2: You know. It's so the hope that I have is
Speaker 2: with the young people, and we do have advocates, and
Speaker 2: that beyond the young people, and I hope to be
Speaker 2: one of them. I hope that people will hear my
Speaker 2: story and ask me questions and understand that I'm just
Speaker 2: a human being. You know, I'm a human being who
Speaker 2: has lived a full, complicated, not easy life with lots
Speaker 2: of bells and whistles, and that there's more about us
Speaker 2: that you know. You've heard this term before, but it
Speaker 2: stands true here too. There's more about me, you know,
Speaker 2: us all being alike, trans people and non trans people
Speaker 2: being alike. Then there are differences because we're all human.
Speaker 2: So I have hope, but I go into the glass
Speaker 2: half empty thing a lot. I have to pull myself
Speaker 2: out of the bottom of the glass.
Speaker 1: Well, Sid, I want to thank you for being so
Speaker 1: open and honest with my audience today. You know, this
Speaker 1: is not a plug, but the book is fascinating. It
Speaker 1: certainly fleshes out a lot of these stories. It talks
Speaker 1: more about Sid's musical endeavors. But we only have so
Speaker 1: much time today, So in any event, Sydney, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for speaking with my audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Bob Great
Speaker 2: to be with.
Speaker 1: You until next time. This is Bob left sets