Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is guitarist, songwriter producer Danny Korchwater. Hey,
Speaker 1: there are people I'm not good to see you, Bob.
Speaker 1: So you're living in l A. You famously wrote a
Speaker 1: song that first appeared on James Taylor's Columbia album j
Speaker 1: T Honey, don't You Leave l A. So are you
Speaker 1: an East Coast guy or a West Coast guy? That's
Speaker 1: a really good question. I guess I'm bicoastal, a term
Speaker 1: I hate, but uh I'm done. I was born in
Speaker 1: New York City, and I love New York City. And
Speaker 1: I've moved back and forth a couple of times ridiculously,
Speaker 1: and and uh now I've ended about here because uh
Speaker 1: well it's difficult, it is to to get things going
Speaker 1: here in l A. It's even more difficult in New York.
Speaker 1: There's like maybe two or three studios left, you know,
Speaker 1: standing and uh, you know, the the the death of
Speaker 1: the recording industry really hit New York even harder than
Speaker 1: l A. Okay, so you're someone who lived through the
Speaker 1: heydays of the seventies. You started in the sixties from
Speaker 1: your perspective in your work. What is going on today?
Speaker 1: Oh jeez, But that's you know, Unfortunately, I don't have
Speaker 1: a very high opinion of popular music at this point.
Speaker 1: I haven't actually a real low opinion of popular music.
Speaker 1: At one time, popular music drove the culture, as as
Speaker 1: you've pointed out in your in your columns, and and
Speaker 1: at this point it doesn't exist. And it's just a
Speaker 1: to me, an ocean of mediocrity, a symphony of mediocrity.
Speaker 1: And uh, compared to the way music used to be
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, and and of course, uh,
Speaker 1: the the incredible people I got to play with, And
Speaker 1: I don't see that happening now. As you've pointed out,
Speaker 1: pop music no longer runs the culture, and it's no
Speaker 1: longer very important in the culture, which is a shame.
Speaker 1: But that's you know, that's the way things are. So
Speaker 1: where does that leave you? Well, it leaves me the
Speaker 1: same place I've always been. I have to play, I
Speaker 1: have to write songs, and I had got to keep going.
Speaker 1: So to me, um, whether it goes up, it goes down,
Speaker 1: the pendulum swings back and forth. But I have to
Speaker 1: keep playing and writing. That's what I do. That's what
Speaker 1: I live for So what are you doing right now? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm in a terrific band. I have a great band
Speaker 1: with my best friends and the band is called Immediate Family.
Speaker 1: And in that band is Pouning. My name is Steve Postel,
Speaker 1: and the the other members are Watty Wachtell Lees, Clara and
Speaker 1: Russ Kunkle and myself And these are my oldest and
Speaker 1: dearest friends. Okay, but when you were in the section,
Speaker 1: Watty wasn't in the second. No, it wasn't in the section. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how does that work? It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: Keith Richards Ron would play sort of in a similar style.
Speaker 1: They're both lead guitars. How do you work it out?
Speaker 1: We don't. It's funny with Wa and I. We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't work it out. We we We say very
Speaker 1: little to each other when it comes down to playing together.
Speaker 1: And we've played together for years in a lot of
Speaker 1: different circumstances, and we don't discuss it. We just start playing.
Speaker 1: We play very differently from each other, and our styles
Speaker 1: blend beautifully. And there's it's amazing how how quickly we
Speaker 1: come up with stuff without a lot of conversation. I
Speaker 1: start or he starts whatever he's doing. I do something else.
Speaker 1: Whatever I'm doing, he does something else, and they fit
Speaker 1: together beautifully and they always have from the first time
Speaker 1: we played together. Well, I've done a podcast with Waddy
Speaker 1: and he told me about the immediate family. But now
Speaker 1: basically about a year later, how much do you work? Well,
Speaker 1: not enough unfortunately. Like for instance, Russell right now is
Speaker 1: out on the road with Lyle Lovett and Leland is
Speaker 1: only on the road gig now it is with Phil Collins,
Speaker 1: which isn't an altar all the time thing, but we
Speaker 1: do have to work around their schedules to some degree.
Speaker 1: They're scaling down though, Uh, the two of them, which
Speaker 1: is great, and that means we'll be able to do more.
Speaker 1: But when we're not touring or not gigging, we're writing.
Speaker 1: We're working on songs in the studio. I'm always writing.
Speaker 1: So to what degree is it frustrating? Uh? Certainly people
Speaker 1: who are boomer musicians are from that era. You know,
Speaker 1: you could write the greatest song and it could go unheard,
Speaker 1: that's right. What's that like being on your end there? Well,
Speaker 1: that's always been the case to start with. But we'll
Speaker 1: tell me how it's always been the case well, and
Speaker 1: you know, you could write a great song and it
Speaker 1: could not be heard back to end or now or
Speaker 1: at any time. You know, it all depends on a
Speaker 1: lot of different things, you know, an awful lot of
Speaker 1: the variables in getting a song across to people. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, it's incredibly difficult to get anything across to
Speaker 1: people except for the the teen market, what I would
Speaker 1: call the you know, the youth or teen market, which
Speaker 1: all pop music seems to be directed towards. And you know,
Speaker 1: uh Andy Warhol said everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: I think in the modern era, no one will be famous, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, exactly. No one reaches everybody. So on a
Speaker 1: typical day, do you play the guitar every day? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do, really, Oh yeah, I play all the time.
Speaker 1: And uh, I gotta keep my chop so I could
Speaker 1: keep my hands moving so that when it's time to
Speaker 1: get in front of an audience, I can I can fly.
Speaker 1: But that's the fling. You get the feeling that you're
Speaker 1: really flying when when everything is right and you can
Speaker 1: hear right and uh, and the guitar feels great. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just like soaring. It's it's it's funny, but
Speaker 1: you know as well. Now I'm a big skier and
Speaker 1: there's like an extra ten or a hundred percent, and
Speaker 1: it's like if you ski thirty days straight, you can
Speaker 1: just feel it, you can recover, etcetera. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's analogous to what you're talking about, like if you
Speaker 1: don't play for a while, you feel just a little. No,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't tell the audience, but you can feel it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, list if I don't play for a week,
Speaker 1: it's like I never played the guitar ever. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to almost start over again. I've gotta work
Speaker 1: on to do scales and and finger exercises for like
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, and then it starts to come back.
Speaker 1: You know. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is.
Speaker 1: How many guitars do you own? Not as many as
Speaker 1: a lot of cats, I know bass players and all
Speaker 1: more guitars and me I got maybe what seventeen or
Speaker 1: eighteen guitars? And where are there there in my crib?
Speaker 1: So they're always all there? And how many amplifiers do
Speaker 1: you own at this point? Three? And well, if my
Speaker 1: favorite one is Roland is making a new app called
Speaker 1: the Blues Cube Artist, which is fabulous and Skunk Baxter
Speaker 1: was one of the designers of it and they gave
Speaker 1: me one and I love it. It's absolutely So what's
Speaker 1: special about it, Well, it's just has enough variable so
Speaker 1: you can tune it to any room. But what's really
Speaker 1: great about it just sounds great. You know, you plugging
Speaker 1: in right away, it sounds terrific and you can adjust
Speaker 1: it to any size room or any size venue, uh,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely terrific. And then what are your other ramps? Uh?
Speaker 1: The other one I have as an old Fender Deluxe
Speaker 1: from a million years ago that I've had forever, played
Speaker 1: it on an awful lot of records back in the day.
Speaker 1: So it's basically those two amps. And then is there
Speaker 1: any session work at all? At this point? There is
Speaker 1: for some people. For inst of my pal Jimmy Keltner
Speaker 1: still does dates and yeah, and Leland still does dates occasionally,
Speaker 1: but they both are gotten very peculiar about what they
Speaker 1: take because after a while, you know, it wears you down.
Speaker 1: Being a session musician can wear your ass down because
Speaker 1: a lot of what you do is mediocre, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: you do sessions all day They're not all great. You know,
Speaker 1: A small percentage of them are great. Most of them
Speaker 1: are just just chopping wood. You just you just you know,
Speaker 1: read the chart, look at your watch, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: wait for the break, wait, wait, wait till you can
Speaker 1: get out of there. So I was never really I
Speaker 1: never really wanted to be a session musician forever and ever.
Speaker 1: I did it and had a lot of fun doing it,
Speaker 1: but I got kicked upstairs, as you probably know when
Speaker 1: when Don Henley hired me to produce. Yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: back there. But okay, going back to the sessions and
Speaker 1: the charts. Can you read music? I used to be
Speaker 1: able to read really, I just be able to side
Speaker 1: read real well. But when I started doing dates, Uh,
Speaker 1: I was never called upon to read actual a score.
Speaker 1: We were given what it called lead sheets or rhythm charts,
Speaker 1: which is basically just the bars and then what chords
Speaker 1: they are, and then you're supposed to make up your
Speaker 1: own parts. That's what you're there for, is to come
Speaker 1: up with something great right now. And uh it's challenging,
Speaker 1: but it's terrific. And uh that that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I have a style, and I when when I get
Speaker 1: hired it's for that style. And can you remember any
Speaker 1: records that weren't with Henley or were with their uh
Speaker 1: Linda Ronstat or James Taylor that you feel proud of
Speaker 1: that you played on m I gotta think about that
Speaker 1: for a while. My memory is not what was I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are what one of comes to mind, has
Speaker 1: Harry Nelson? Uh, I played on Pussycats and really subsequence
Speaker 1: of records with with with Harry. Yeah. So if you
Speaker 1: played on Pussycatch you must have met John Lennon. I didn't, Yes,
Speaker 1: So what was that? Was the famous you know, West
Speaker 1: Coast exile with me pang? What was it like? Right? Well?
Speaker 1: I think Lennon was was highly misunderstood at that point
Speaker 1: because I saw him every day for three weeks when
Speaker 1: we were doing this, these these records. He was absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: He never pulled rank, he never talked down to you,
Speaker 1: He never acted like a star ever, very approachable. But
Speaker 1: he knew what he wanted musically, and he was breasqu
Speaker 1: about it. He didn't he didn't sit and go oh,
Speaker 1: could you please? He just said guitarist, it was me
Speaker 1: Jesse had and another guitar player. Jesse had did the
Speaker 1: great Jesse had David and he said, I want you
Speaker 1: to do this, and he would he grabbed my guitary,
Speaker 1: would show me, said okay, that's it. That's what we did.
Speaker 1: He didn't say he could you please, He just said this.
Speaker 1: And after you made that record, you have any contact
Speaker 1: with him? Yeah? I saw him once more. He called
Speaker 1: me to come play on a Ringo say. He'd written
Speaker 1: a song for Ringo called Cooking in the Kitchen of
Speaker 1: Love and he had requested I come down and play
Speaker 1: on it. So it was me and Jimmy Keltner and
Speaker 1: Ringo and and I ke probably cut for Himan on bass. Okay,
Speaker 1: other than yourself, who do you think is the greatest
Speaker 1: guitarist of all time of the rock era? Oh, there's
Speaker 1: no one greatest guitar player, but the first name that
Speaker 1: comes from obviously Jimmie Hendricks. I think he had the
Speaker 1: whole package, and I don't think anyone could touch him
Speaker 1: then or now in terms of having the whole deal.
Speaker 1: And the reason why he was so great is because
Speaker 1: he came from rhythm and blues and soul music. He
Speaker 1: was the second generation, his first generation. He found he
Speaker 1: learned that stuff and knew it and I feel that
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're here now was imitations of
Speaker 1: bad imitations of what of the of the real deal
Speaker 1: from back in the day, and other than Jimmy the
Speaker 1: next people like the three guitars from the Yardbirds, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, let me see. I mean, John McLaughlin is
Speaker 1: unbelievable as a guitar players just sensational to me. He
Speaker 1: is the John Coltrane of guitar, and John Scofield is
Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant with soulful and great. Jeff Beck of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: jeez on, waddi my old pal. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. So you grow up where I grew
Speaker 1: up in While I was born in New York City
Speaker 1: and then my family moved out to the suburbs about
Speaker 1: half an hour outside the city, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: where I went to high school. Well, what suburb was,
Speaker 1: Large Mont, New York. Okay, we used to go to it.
Speaker 1: I think I might have mentioned this. We used to
Speaker 1: go to a Chinese restaurant there and it would take
Speaker 1: us like fifty minutes to go, but for some reason
Speaker 1: we went. And Uh, in any event, your father called tongue. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what'd your father do for a living? My father
Speaker 1: ran a factory. He owned and ran a factory that
Speaker 1: met in the Bronx that made small brass parts for
Speaker 1: for larger things. He did a lot of work for
Speaker 1: the government during World War Two, and then he expanded.
Speaker 1: He made a lot of parts for for sprinklers and
Speaker 1: for fire alarms and for all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he did pretty well. He did pretty well.
Speaker 1: How many kids in the family. It's just me and
Speaker 1: my brother. Your brother's older, younger. My brother's two years old,
Speaker 1: was two years older than me is So he passed.
Speaker 1: He's gone. Now. Yeah, what did he end up doing
Speaker 1: for a little He did a bunch of different things.
Speaker 1: The last thing he did was h He had a
Speaker 1: boatyard out on Long Island and he would work on
Speaker 1: wooden boats. That was his passion. That's what he did,
Speaker 1: only wooden boats, and he would prepare them and work
Speaker 1: on them. And he was one of the only guys
Speaker 1: out there on Long Island that did that kind of work.
Speaker 1: So at what point do you become interested in music? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say all round, well I was. I started
Speaker 1: as soon as I heard rock and roll. Mean I
Speaker 1: fell in love when I Okay, well what what rock
Speaker 1: and roll records? Whatever? Well, that's Elvis, uh doing a
Speaker 1: hound Dog and Don't Be Crueled, little Richard doing Lucile
Speaker 1: and good Golly, miss Molly chuck Berry that stuff. So
Speaker 1: the first wave of rock and roll just really lit
Speaker 1: me up, like it did an awful lot of young people.
Speaker 1: And then later I started when I started started really
Speaker 1: listening heavily to uh Blues, Lighten Hopkins, Muddy Waters, a
Speaker 1: little Walter John the Hooker, those guys, and I loved
Speaker 1: that stuff still do. Okay, how did you find it?
Speaker 1: Did you? The first wave you're talking about, you know, Elvis, etcetera.
Speaker 1: A little rich how did you discover that stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: that was on the radio just turned over, and I
Speaker 1: used to sit in my father's car and wait by
Speaker 1: the radio for you know, Don't Be Cruel and one
Speaker 1: of those great songs to kind of just sit there
Speaker 1: and wait through the Patti Page and the you know,
Speaker 1: the Four Freshmen or whatever until they hit an Elvis record.
Speaker 1: What kind of car was that it was a show.
Speaker 1: It was a Chrysler New Yorker that was very uh
Speaker 1: large and quality car. So then Murray the k had
Speaker 1: his shows in New York City? Did you go to those?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately not. There's big shows where well, Alan Freed had
Speaker 1: the first big shows the Brooklyn Paramount, which I didn't
Speaker 1: get to see. Unfortunately, I was too young and my
Speaker 1: mother wouldn't take me and I was terrified to go
Speaker 1: by myself, so I didn't get to see those shows. Um,
Speaker 1: but I subsequently later I saw a ton of music
Speaker 1: and a great deal of music. I'll tell you about that. Um,
Speaker 1: we went to Me and my buddies used to go
Speaker 1: to the Apollo Theater pretty much every week. This is
Speaker 1: uh we we're a little bit slower, so this is
Speaker 1: pre Beatles. Yeah, and how many white people were in
Speaker 1: the audience? Me and my three friends and you were
Speaker 1: young enough not to be scared. Yes, that's right, there
Speaker 1: was nothing to be scared. They treated us great. Everyone was.
Speaker 1: Everyone there treated us great. You know the people in
Speaker 1: the audience, did people that at the at the front,
Speaker 1: at the front door, you know they all everyone treated
Speaker 1: us great. I guess the novelty of these little white
Speaker 1: kids come to see uh An R and B review
Speaker 1: was sufficient. But after Martin Luther King was killed, no,
Speaker 1: then you couldn't go up there anymore. That was it. Wow.
Speaker 1: So when do you think the first time you went
Speaker 1: up there was pre Beatles? Who did you see there?
Speaker 1: James Brown reviewed? Okay, now, James Brown at the time,
Speaker 1: it's popular reasons today that he rarely crossed over to
Speaker 1: white radio. It was a black thing. So you remember
Speaker 1: whatever he was in, you know, uh is before I
Speaker 1: say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. How did
Speaker 1: you know about him? Etcetera. Well, my buddies we found
Speaker 1: this stuff. We would find it, and you know, we
Speaker 1: listened to the R and B stations at the end
Speaker 1: of the dial and uh r L I think was
Speaker 1: one and w L I B and I love this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I heard the tastes of it then. And then
Speaker 1: of course James Brown's live album Live at the Apollo
Speaker 1: came out. It's still one of the absolute greatest albums
Speaker 1: you will ever hear in my opinion, and um, so
Speaker 1: I went up to see it. But I also saw
Speaker 1: the Motor City review with the Miracles and the Supremes
Speaker 1: and Martin Gay and and the Spinners. Unbelievable. We were
Speaker 1: there practically every week. Every other week. We'd go up
Speaker 1: there and me and my buddies would go up through me.
Speaker 1: So everyone, everybody can imagine. It was incredible. You know,
Speaker 1: I've not actually been inside the Apollo. About how many
Speaker 1: people does it said? Uh, it's smaller than say the
Speaker 1: b computer. It's you know, it's about I would say
Speaker 1: a third smaller than the cost you how much to
Speaker 1: get in back? Three bucks? Three bucks? Right? Ever? Okay,
Speaker 1: so you discovered the blues stuff how because I don't
Speaker 1: think they were playing that on the radio. No, they weren't.
Speaker 1: Um I I think it might have been one of
Speaker 1: my brother's friends had John the Hooker album, and um,
Speaker 1: so I listened to that. I thought it was great.
Speaker 1: And then I to J Corvettes. Was looking through the course,
Speaker 1: you know, and I saw a lightning on Hopkins right,
Speaker 1: and I said, I bet this is good. You know,
Speaker 1: it looks really good. So I bought it and I
Speaker 1: went home. That was it. And I just listened to
Speaker 1: Lightning Hopkins and bought all his albums and everything I
Speaker 1: get my hands on. So, uh, what was the first
Speaker 1: musical instrument you played? Well? My mother insisted on piano lists.
Speaker 1: That's why eight or nine something like that, and I
Speaker 1: hated it, hated never practiced. No, I couldn't stand and
Speaker 1: it was not it wasn't meant for me. So my
Speaker 1: mother decided that I she thought I would look cute
Speaker 1: with a guitar. So they got me a Stella guitar
Speaker 1: for you know, thirty five bucks for it. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was their idea. And you were how old? Ten? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I sat there and tried to play a scale
Speaker 1: board to death. You know why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: And then um, and I think I took some guitar
Speaker 1: lessons at the time, you know, again, just playing, learning
Speaker 1: how to play scales, very slowly. And then I learned
Speaker 1: a few chords, and then I found the three chords
Speaker 1: with which you could play all the rock and roll songs,
Speaker 1: right the one, the four, in the five chord. At
Speaker 1: that point, the heavens opened the heaven, the heavens parted,
Speaker 1: the clouds disappeared, and right then it was like a revelation.
Speaker 1: And never and I never looked back. So what you're
Speaker 1: playing the guitar in? What year? Ten? What year is that?
Speaker 1: I can't remember? Man, mid fifties, late fifties. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you're in the late fifties, are you the only
Speaker 1: kid in your neighborhood playing guitar. I think there was
Speaker 1: my buddy, uh Dicky Frank played the guitar as well.
Speaker 1: Because the only reason imagined I when I got into
Speaker 1: it just before the Beatles, I took piano lessons, but
Speaker 1: we were playing folk music. Did you ever play folk music? Trade?
Speaker 1: I did, yes, to admit it, but but I did. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the stella guitar, you're playing at home, right,
Speaker 1: At what point do you start playing with other people? Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing he does. I had a little band,
Speaker 1: or joined a little band that was playing bar mitzvahs
Speaker 1: and church dances and stuff like that. And then I
Speaker 1: got my first electric guitar. Now, my parents were appalled
Speaker 1: by the idea of an electric guitar. It was horrible,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. I used to look at the window
Speaker 1: at the music store and see these stratocasters lined up
Speaker 1: there and it was just like I just stare at them.
Speaker 1: But they wouldn't buy me one. So finally they bought
Speaker 1: me a big jazz box, you know, which they found
Speaker 1: acceptable and uh with a with a pickup on it.
Speaker 1: So I used that to play these dances, like I said,
Speaker 1: And that was my kind of first electric guitar. What
Speaker 1: was the amp you were using? Oh, man, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I think it was a premier amp, rush out of
Speaker 1: business appin. And after that then I finally, you know,
Speaker 1: went to Manage Music store of course, and traded in
Speaker 1: him for you know, something that was more rock and rolling.
Speaker 1: The thing that I just remember all Manni's is you
Speaker 1: would save and think and they would sell it to
Speaker 1: you like thirty seconds. Hey call you all the back, Hey,
Speaker 1: bring it up. Oh Henry, Henry Goldrich, the famous Henry
Speaker 1: who everyone knows and love. Is you gonna buy that?
Speaker 1: Get out of here, you know, you know, waste my
Speaker 1: time here? You want to buy it, and you don't
Speaker 1: want to buy it, you know. And I, even though
Speaker 1: I was a shy kid, I would still go back
Speaker 1: every chance I got in there. And he would yell
Speaker 1: at me every time. And didn't he have that yellow painted? Uh?
Speaker 1: It was? It was a Dan Electro. I played it
Speaker 1: many times, right be Could you you could check out
Speaker 1: the Yes and the other stores on that street? Did
Speaker 1: you check those out too? Well? Not? No, I would
Speaker 1: just going to Manny's. I don't care about you know.
Speaker 1: Manny's was the holy grail Manny's was, you know, Nirvana
Speaker 1: for guitar players. You know God, So if you want
Speaker 1: to buy something today, where do you go online? There
Speaker 1: is you know, uh, Guitar Center still exists, but it's
Speaker 1: it's catered entirely to from what I can tell to teenagers, beginners,
Speaker 1: you know, not really professional and professional guys that seems
Speaker 1: like their guitars there are not the best and they
Speaker 1: don't have a wide selection. It's like I said, it's
Speaker 1: mainly for beginners, people that are just starting off, you know,
Speaker 1: kids that want to learn Metallica songs and stuff like that. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what I do is, you know, I talked to the
Speaker 1: deal I talked to the actual manufacturers. So okay, your
Speaker 1: you get your guitar, you get the Stella guitar a
Speaker 1: little bit slower. How did you hook up with the
Speaker 1: other people in form a band? Well, there's just kids
Speaker 1: in high school and there was a found a drummer
Speaker 1: and found a trumpet player, and and the way we went,
Speaker 1: you know, we learned a few tunes. What were you playing?
Speaker 1: What songs? When the States go marching in was one?
Speaker 1: And summertime? You know, standards, but the easiest standards to
Speaker 1: play possible. You know, I didn't have enough chops to
Speaker 1: learn something like it might as well be spring, which
Speaker 1: is really involved tune. I just remember playing the guitar
Speaker 1: and playing with other people and feeling inadequate because I
Speaker 1: didn't have the skill. So you started to play with
Speaker 1: other people who'd immediately feel this is my ditch. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, absolutely. And you were in high school good student,
Speaker 1: bad students, terrible. I hated high school and I just
Speaker 1: basically phoned it in and barely graduated. Actually, so there
Speaker 1: was no issue of going to college. Uh no, No,
Speaker 1: there was one time. Actually, at one point I went
Speaker 1: to a place called the Madison Conservatory of Music, very
Speaker 1: highly thought of music school in Manhattan, and I went
Speaker 1: in there. I've been studying classical guitar with a terrific
Speaker 1: teacher that I had, who really taught me so much
Speaker 1: about applied theory and and and classical guitar and and
Speaker 1: jazz guitar a little bit. So I went in there
Speaker 1: to audition and I looked around and it was even
Speaker 1: more depressing than my high school. And the girls all
Speaker 1: had fat ankles and they were under you know, I said,
Speaker 1: I ain't doing this. I'm not gonna choose for four
Speaker 1: years forget it. So I left and started a rock
Speaker 1: and roll band, started rock and roll being playing what
Speaker 1: R and B style of rock and roll? R and
Speaker 1: B style of music. It's called the king Bees. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is before the Beatles, know, this is after the Beatles. Okay.
Speaker 1: So as someone who was a fan, were you a
Speaker 1: fan of surf music surf instrumentals? Well, because it was
Speaker 1: interested in anything that had guitars on it, certainly, so.
Speaker 1: I liked the Ventures and and and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but I was mainly listening to Motown and Stacks Voll
Speaker 1: and that stuff. That's what I really plus all the
Speaker 1: blue stuff I can find. And what did your parents
Speaker 1: say when you didn't want to go to college? They
Speaker 1: didn't They knew I was not college material. Did your
Speaker 1: brother go to college? He certainly did. Yes. So okay,
Speaker 1: the Beatles appear on it solve and they break on
Speaker 1: the radio with I want to hold your Hand in
Speaker 1: a month before thumbs upp or thumbs down. When I
Speaker 1: heard I had a little transistor radio, and when I
Speaker 1: heard I want to hold your Hand on their radio again,
Speaker 1: it was like the Heaven's Party. I said, there it
Speaker 1: is there is the template. That's what I wanted there,
Speaker 1: it is, that's it because what that what I sensed
Speaker 1: from them, especially from their their albums. Remember they had
Speaker 1: one on VJ and then when I'm on Capital that
Speaker 1: here was a you know, R and B and soul
Speaker 1: music at the time you have b threes and horns,
Speaker 1: sections and back chicks, background chicks and so this was
Speaker 1: just a guitar combo. And I recognize how they trans
Speaker 1: how they how they interpreted soul music and R and
Speaker 1: B and uh in a guitar combo. So I said,
Speaker 1: that's the template there, it is, that's what I want
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, and I didn't say it like
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, but that's that's that's what I felt. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you weren't playing live with the King beestill right,
Speaker 1: well the Beatles out there on Sullivan Are you want
Speaker 1: to be in? Then? Uh? I hadn't really started uh
Speaker 1: my band. Then I must tell you that I saw
Speaker 1: the Beatles live at Carnegie Hall. That was in Okay.
Speaker 1: When what if they broke at the beginning of the year,
Speaker 1: When did they play the Carnegie Hall gig? Man, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not gonna okay, could you hear anything?
Speaker 1: Amazingly yes, And for some reason I called Carnegie hallan
Speaker 1: got tickets, and for some reason I got one of
Speaker 1: the boxes right near the stag car how that was
Speaker 1: positive alight, just just the luck of the drugs. So
Speaker 1: me and my girlfriend, my pal and his girlfriend were
Speaker 1: up there in this box and you could hear them,
Speaker 1: uh not not well over the screen, but you could
Speaker 1: hear them. And they kicked off with rollover Beethoven. And
Speaker 1: I knew bands at the time. I had heard local
Speaker 1: bands and various bands around Westchester County. So and they
Speaker 1: were murder they killed. It was obviously brilliant, brilliant, brilliant,
Speaker 1: and uh, I went, I just knocked me back in
Speaker 1: my seat. You know, I'll never forget it. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: So you're really blown away, completely blown away. And did
Speaker 1: you remain a Beatles fan until the end? Of course?
Speaker 1: What about the Stones? Absolutely? I love the Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: There was no battle in your mind between the Stones
Speaker 1: and the Beatles. They were different. You know some people
Speaker 1: you know, I remember on w ABC, you know these
Speaker 1: other battle right of course. Yeah, but you know that
Speaker 1: that was for casual listeners. That was you know that
Speaker 1: wasn't for people ever serious. Okay, So you saw the
Speaker 1: Beatles you started The band was King Bees, the first band.
Speaker 1: King Bees was the first band I had. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: King Bees did the did you go through a rotation
Speaker 1: of players or the players? We had the same guys
Speaker 1: with us, uh for the duration of the band, which
Speaker 1: wasn't that long, maybe a couple of years. Okay, were
Speaker 1: those guys today? Unfortunately two of them are dead and
Speaker 1: one of them, Richard frankis in New York playing gigs
Speaker 1: still around. Yeah. Okay, So and the king Bees, you're
Speaker 1: once again doing the wedding bar mitzvah circuit or at
Speaker 1: that point we're playing. We started off in Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: playing like the Cafe Bazaar, the Cafe wall on those gigs.
Speaker 1: Then uh, we got our biggest gig at the time
Speaker 1: was the Royally Hotel and the Catskills and we were
Speaker 1: they had seven bands there. We were band number seven
Speaker 1: and we played were supposed to be the teen band.
Speaker 1: But you know, at that point we were a very
Speaker 1: bad influence. We were very unhealthy people to have. Next day,
Speaker 1: your kids if they had known what we were really like,
Speaker 1: because well we did all day was drink cheap wine,
Speaker 1: and and and curse and yelled at each other and
Speaker 1: you know, well you were you there for like a weekend?
Speaker 1: Were like the whole summer. We were there for I
Speaker 1: think three months, I know, three weeks, three or four weeks. Okay,
Speaker 1: was it like the movies Dirty Dancing, etcetera, etcetera. It
Speaker 1: was dirtier than Dirty Dancing, promised that And you interacted
Speaker 1: with the guests a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that whole scene is under Okay, you graduate from high
Speaker 1: schoo Well, what point do you move out of the house? Um?
Speaker 1: That was a cup Maybe a year and a half
Speaker 1: later that I finally moved down to the beach. Um.
Speaker 1: The first place I moved was my brother had a
Speaker 1: loft downtown and this is a loft right near Union
Speaker 1: Square and uh now it's probably worth four million dollars. Course,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was a complete dump, like
Speaker 1: you can't believe as a matter of so much so
Speaker 1: that you get up and go into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: the cockroaches going like that horrible dump. But I liked
Speaker 1: it was you know what, did I know? I was
Speaker 1: having a ball, so didn't bother me, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you played the Raleigh, and you played Downtown Greenwich Village,
Speaker 1: any other you play out of Well, the next gig
Speaker 1: we had right out of the Raleigh Hotel was the
Speaker 1: person that was taking care of us or handling us
Speaker 1: got us an audition at the club called Arthur. Now,
Speaker 1: Arthur was the biggest discotheque in New York at the time,
Speaker 1: run by Sybil Burton, and Sybil had just been you know,
Speaker 1: Triburton has just broken up with there. It was a
Speaker 1: huge cost to leave. All the celebrities were there, all
Speaker 1: the all the glitterati were at this place, and we
Speaker 1: got to audition there and we got the gig. So
Speaker 1: we're there a half hour on, half hour off all
Speaker 1: night and there we were in the middle of it
Speaker 1: was covers um. Yeah, mostly covers we did. We had
Speaker 1: some originals. Yeah, we had three or four originals. What
Speaker 1: kind of money were you making? Oh fortune? Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: I think we were making two hundred bucks each a week,
Speaker 1: so that that might as well have been four thousands, right, right, So,
Speaker 1: in any event, you weren't asking your parents for money
Speaker 1: at that time. I stopped asking my parents for money
Speaker 1: and never did again. Wow. Okay, so you're headline and
Speaker 1: get Arthur. What's the next step after that? Oh? Every
Speaker 1: dump in New York, every dump up and down the
Speaker 1: East coast. We played biker bars, gay bars, alcoholic bars,
Speaker 1: bars where the band stand was on top of the bar,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, just every dump you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: up and down And what was the dream? But I
Speaker 1: was the same dream everybody had. Uh. It never occurred
Speaker 1: to me that I wasn't gonna get somewhere with this.
Speaker 1: It never occurred to me to quit. Never Uh, and uh,
Speaker 1: we just went on and on and on. We kept
Speaker 1: playing these games, and eventually, of course, it burned me
Speaker 1: out and I quit. And I had other ideas, which
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about. Um, okay, my other idea was
Speaker 1: a band with James Taylor. James and I were childhood buddies.
Speaker 1: We grew up together. We would summer, our families would
Speaker 1: summer on Martha's vineyard. Uh. And that's where I met him,
Speaker 1: and we hung out together every summer and we came
Speaker 1: tight pass and we still are, you know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: but when you meet him then, was he playing the guitar? No?
Speaker 1: Not really, not really. It's interesting because we just hung out.
Speaker 1: We didn't you know. We were just hanging out, hitchhiking
Speaker 1: places and and trying to pick up girls. And then
Speaker 1: one time we hitch hitchhiking in someplace on the road
Speaker 1: and he starts to sing. He sings and the song
Speaker 1: I'll never forget it because he sings, Hallelujah, I lover
Speaker 1: so Ray Charles Is. I looked at him like, what
Speaker 1: you can sing? Oh my god, you know, because I
Speaker 1: knew what good scene was, right, I was pretty you know,
Speaker 1: I was. I was hit at that point, and uh,
Speaker 1: I flipped. And at that point he had a guitar.
Speaker 1: He wasn't very good, but he came back the next
Speaker 1: summer and basically had his whole style, which is the
Speaker 1: essence of what you're hearing playing now. And he's there's
Speaker 1: nobody like him on acoustic guitar, you know. So the
Speaker 1: theory about standing at the crossroads and making a deal
Speaker 1: with the devil, No, you just go to the wood
Speaker 1: shed and how to play. You know, there's no devil,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so he comes you hear him staying.
Speaker 1: The next summer he comes back, he can play. When
Speaker 1: does he start writing songs right away? I think he
Speaker 1: rose first. So many of the sixteen. That's when you
Speaker 1: knew him. Yes, And did you immediately say, whoa, this
Speaker 1: is a career path through either him or us together.
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it that way, but I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew we had to start a band together. I
Speaker 1: knew we had to do. Okay, if you're in the
Speaker 1: King Bees, what was he doing then? Uh? Well to
Speaker 1: join the king because he was in the McLean's Hospital
Speaker 1: hospital at the time, and so he escaped. He jumped
Speaker 1: the wall and hitchhike down to Manhattan amazingly and crashed
Speaker 1: up my path for a while, got his own place,
Speaker 1: and we started the King Bees. We started the Flying Machine.
Speaker 1: That was our band. He never had to go back
Speaker 1: to mc lean's. Okay, so you started the Flying Machine.
Speaker 1: Now that record, of course came out after James blew up.
Speaker 1: But what was the perspective from your and so this
Speaker 1: was a little bit of different kind of music than
Speaker 1: what the King Bees were playing. King Bees were doing.
Speaker 1: Maason Manager doing like R and B, you know, rock
Speaker 1: and soul, that is what I would call it, right
Speaker 1: And by the way, that stuff is available. Our c
Speaker 1: was on our c a victim. We did a bunch
Speaker 1: of Singles for Our Cia and it's available on on
Speaker 1: Spotify now. We released it in Yeah, Columbia, Columbia bought it. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's stay with the Kingpins. Excuse me. You had
Speaker 1: a manager, you had an agent. We had a few
Speaker 1: different managers. They all were terrible. They were all shysters,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was a low We were pretty
Speaker 1: low on the on the Totem poll. But we did
Speaker 1: get to record, so that was great for us, you know,
Speaker 1: so you must yeah, that must have been a dream
Speaker 1: come true getting a record deal. Absolutely, yes. Okay, so
Speaker 1: then you get together with James and what is the vision? Well,
Speaker 1: you literally left the king Bees to do this pretty much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. I'd gotten tired of the the grind. We were
Speaker 1: playing dumps all we're doing it's obviously weren't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: And also I was getting tired of the guys in
Speaker 1: the band. They were starting to really, you know, wear
Speaker 1: me down, so as, which is what happens in bands.
Speaker 1: As you know, so I can't believe you know, you're
Speaker 1: a band. Let's send the band stays together. You know
Speaker 1: each other from high school. Now it's ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: years later. You gotta be on the road with the
Speaker 1: same four assholes must drive you nuts. It can do, yes,
Speaker 1: it can do. But like I'm in a band now
Speaker 1: with guys I've known fifty years and we love each other. Well,
Speaker 1: fifty years is enough to you know, wead out the
Speaker 1: good in the bat. Okay, So what is the vision
Speaker 1: that you're gonna go with James? Well, I thought it
Speaker 1: would be more like a love and spoonful kind of thing.
Speaker 1: In other ways, it would be along the lines of
Speaker 1: what James already did. James was a wonderful blue single.
Speaker 1: You can't believe you don't hear him do that now.
Speaker 1: But he was a badass because great blue singer um.
Speaker 1: But he was never comfortable. He wasn't comfortable in New York.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, it's a troubled fellow at that time.
Speaker 1: And I think that's when he got into using heroin. Um.
Speaker 1: The drummer and our Bandwids was it was a junkie
Speaker 1: and everyone down in the village that you know, most
Speaker 1: people were on some you know, we're doped up in
Speaker 1: somewhere or another. How about yourself? Not me? I was,
Speaker 1: I'm a nice Jewish boy, I was. I was. I
Speaker 1: think that's What saved me from from turning to turning
Speaker 1: to dope is just scare the hell out of me.
Speaker 1: And where the people you know dying? O ding? It's
Speaker 1: that thing where they were a lot of them are
Speaker 1: gone now, but at that point, I don't remember any
Speaker 1: of my past dropping dead. Let's go back to James.
Speaker 1: He escapes from McLean. He's known him for all these years.
Speaker 1: Was he always one step left of center? Or did
Speaker 1: something happen su should have made his experience bad? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm an understanding exactly the question. There's
Speaker 1: some people you said he was a troubled guy when
Speaker 1: you knew him back in the vineyard. Was he always
Speaker 1: a trouble old guy? Yeah, he had problems with his family.
Speaker 1: He was you know, he was prone to depression. But
Speaker 1: he was also hilarious at the same time. It's very
Speaker 1: funny and charming fellow, but he also had this kind
Speaker 1: of dark side to him, probably because of his family. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in the flying machine, he's hooked out heroin.
Speaker 1: What is going on? Well, we're struggling and we're scuffling.
Speaker 1: We played the Night at Cafe from a long time. Now,
Speaker 1: the Night at cafe. They used to bring guys in
Speaker 1: every day to audition, and we were there for a year.
Speaker 1: Nobody could knock us out of the box. We were
Speaker 1: really good. We had James down, so we're really really good.
Speaker 1: And uh, how much were they paying, you know, um,
Speaker 1: four fifteen bucks a night? Who else was in the
Speaker 1: band at that time. Joe O'Brien was on drums, um
Speaker 1: Me and James and a fellow named Zach Weasner started
Speaker 1: with us on basis a pal of oars from Martha's vineyards,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't play the bass, but James sat down
Speaker 1: and told him exactly what notes to play on every
Speaker 1: song and he did. He did fine. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: how long does the Flying Machine laugh? About? A year? Okay?
Speaker 1: But you did make a record? Well, yeah, we had
Speaker 1: hooked up with m chip Taylor and Al Goregoni and
Speaker 1: they had a production company and and we hooked up
Speaker 1: with them and went into the studio I think one day,
Speaker 1: and uh, out of that one day came enough for
Speaker 1: a single. And the single was night Out I'm a
Speaker 1: Night Out Baby, backed with Brighton Your Night with My Day.
Speaker 1: It was a very nice tune of James is lovely
Speaker 1: tune of course on the first album. But that album
Speaker 1: we never you know, we never intended that to come out.
Speaker 1: Nobody asked us if they could put out an album out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it was. It was a lousy album. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of filler and a lot of bullshit,
Speaker 1: and they had no business making it and putting it out.
Speaker 1: I still, you know, James, and I still loathe both
Speaker 1: of them for having pulled that ship with us. It's funny,
Speaker 1: like two years ago, I think it was I got
Speaker 1: a check for a g thanks, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, maybe you need this more than I do.
Speaker 1: That was my attitude, you know. And uh, this is
Speaker 1: typical of the music business York at the time as well.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, so the band breaks up, how uh
Speaker 1: James just couldn't take it anymore. One of the reasons why,
Speaker 1: along with with he he was having trouble with dope.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons why, I was the places
Speaker 1: we were playing. There were no monitors on the floor.
Speaker 1: He's playing guitar and trying to sing against this din
Speaker 1: and there was no no monitors, so he couldn't hear himself.
Speaker 1: So he's singing louder and ladder. James is not meant
Speaker 1: to sing loud. He's not just ment to sing over
Speaker 1: a rock band, so it's starting to drive him crazy.
Speaker 1: And uh, after a while, he's just obviously, we couldn't
Speaker 1: go on, We couldn't, we couldn't go on any further.
Speaker 1: So the band breaks up. Where does that leave you? Well,
Speaker 1: right after them, when the band broke up, I was
Speaker 1: still in New York. So um, the Fogs were looking
Speaker 1: for Sideman a lot and everything we want, any of
Speaker 1: the records. I was on Tenderness Junctions. Okay, explain to
Speaker 1: my audience, because unless you're insider, you probably didn't know
Speaker 1: the Fox. Well, if you're in New York, and at
Speaker 1: that time everyone knew them. The Fogs were three basically poets.
Speaker 1: Sanders was the head head FuG was a poet and
Speaker 1: he had a bookstore in the East Village and he decided,
Speaker 1: like everyone did, let's be rock and rollers. Everyone to
Speaker 1: be a rock and rar back then, you know, because
Speaker 1: they were getting all the chicks, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: being a poet wasn't getting you babes. So they had
Speaker 1: They were doing a show at the McDougal Theater one
Speaker 1: of the one of the small theaters um in the village.
Speaker 1: I think it was on McDougall Street, right next to
Speaker 1: the Cafe Wah. So I went over there an audition.
Speaker 1: Of course, got the gig right away. They had to
Speaker 1: hire musicians because they stunk, and uh, they weren't musicians
Speaker 1: at all. So as me and some of the other
Speaker 1: cats that I knew from the village came in there
Speaker 1: and we were backing them up, and uh we were
Speaker 1: the Fuguets, I guess. And we made that one album,
Speaker 1: Tender this Junction, like I said, And uh, after about
Speaker 1: four or five months of that, I quit. I couldn't
Speaker 1: take it anymore. But there's a lot of great adventures,
Speaker 1: you know, from being in the fogs. We were at
Speaker 1: the march on the to levitate the Pentagon. We were
Speaker 1: there on that bar. Yeah, that's a long story. I'll
Speaker 1: take you some time. But um, so it was fun
Speaker 1: and Ed Sanders was hilarious. I found it to be stunning,
Speaker 1: stunningly funny and hilarious. And um but I couldn't say
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't musical. It was it wasn't a
Speaker 1: musical act, you know, And uh, I wanted something way
Speaker 1: more musical and more than serious, you know, musically serious. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you quit with another gig lined up or you
Speaker 1: just burned out. Um, that's a good question. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember because at that point I joined a band
Speaker 1: called clear Light. Now Clear Light was on Electra Records,
Speaker 1: and they were supposed to be the next doors. There
Speaker 1: were kind of a psychedelic rock band from l A.
Speaker 1: They were playing at the Cafe Go Go down the street.
Speaker 1: They had either fired or as their guitar player quit,
Speaker 1: I can't remember which. They were looking for someone else.
Speaker 1: I knew someone that knew them, and so I went
Speaker 1: down there an audition from got the gig, and UH
Speaker 1: agreed to move to Los Angeles at that point, and
Speaker 1: I remember the We got paid um, seventy bucks a
Speaker 1: month for rent and thirty bucks a week to live
Speaker 1: on I said, and I said, I'm gone because I
Speaker 1: was totally sick of New York at that front, freezing
Speaker 1: my ass off. There was nothing going on. I wasn't gonna,
Speaker 1: I didn't wasn't interested in doing jingles or playing in
Speaker 1: in the pit band of Broadway shows. And those are
Speaker 1: the biggest girl, those are the main gigs in New
Speaker 1: York that everybody wanted still is still that way, by
Speaker 1: the way, and um it wasn't interested in that, so
Speaker 1: moved out to California, and of course the timing was
Speaker 1: brilliant and uh moved right to uh Royal Canyon. What
Speaker 1: was your experience of being in Laurel car yet, Well,
Speaker 1: it was a lot likely to think. Um, everyone knew
Speaker 1: everyone else and everyone would come over the fellow that
Speaker 1: me and my wife at the time we're living once
Speaker 1: a guy named Barry Friedman. Wait to th jo Barry
Speaker 1: freedmanant being the promo guy for Atlantic Records at Barry Freedman.
Speaker 1: But before you get there, when in this picture did
Speaker 1: you get married? Oh? I got married in New York
Speaker 1: while I was still in the king Bees. So I
Speaker 1: got married way too young to this really good looking
Speaker 1: woman who threatened to leave me if I didn't marry
Speaker 1: it right away, and stupid me said, okay, but she
Speaker 1: but she moved to l A with you, Yes she did.
Speaker 1: Now you're a musician who's on the road. When you
Speaker 1: were married or did you remain faithful? Well, that's funny
Speaker 1: you mentioned it, because the first time I ever went
Speaker 1: out in New York was with the fugs, and uh
Speaker 1: Ed says, oh, you know you're gonna get some good
Speaker 1: pussy when you got to the road. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't do that, man, I'm married. I don't do that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the next day we were in Boston. The next day
Speaker 1: I was with a chick check. But your wife at
Speaker 1: the time agreed to move to l a Yes, so yeah,
Speaker 1: what was she doing other than being married to She
Speaker 1: wanted to be an actress. Okay, so it's good for her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you moved to Laurel Canyon. You say, Barry Freed. Okay,
Speaker 1: Barry changed his name to Fraser Mohawk, of course, And
Speaker 1: that's right. He was married to Ezra Mohawk. I gave
Speaker 1: him that name. By the way, I came up with that.
Speaker 1: I just was saying, James and I are always coming
Speaker 1: with funny names and nicknames and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: that was one that I just remembered, and so I said,
Speaker 1: you should call yourself Frasier Mohawk. And he took me
Speaker 1: serious and did change his name. Anyway, he was a
Speaker 1: real hipster there, and he knew every buddy, and you know,
Speaker 1: everyone was coming by um to to hang out at
Speaker 1: our place. The great engineer John Haney lived down the street.
Speaker 1: Terrific singer named Penny Nichols lived down the street. Um
Speaker 1: Jackson would come over. That's when I met Jackson. It's
Speaker 1: like nineteen or something, and he would come over and
Speaker 1: hang out. I'm at Crosby then, uh right, at the
Speaker 1: same period of time it stills. Everyone was coming by,
Speaker 1: uh Fraser's place when a really good pot for one,
Speaker 1: really good dope one thing, and um he was. He was,
Speaker 1: like I said, kind of a hipster cap that knew everybody.
Speaker 1: So I started falling into it right away. It wasn't
Speaker 1: ground central. I was at ground zero in Laurel Canyon
Speaker 1: and I met all these people. And you remain with
Speaker 1: clear Light for about four or five months. And how
Speaker 1: did that end? It end with me quitting. I left
Speaker 1: the band. I had to quit, And there did a
Speaker 1: record ever come out? No, they did have one album map,
Speaker 1: but this was before I joined the band, and there
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the next Door. There was no
Speaker 1: way they were gonna be the next Doors because we
Speaker 1: had zero charisma and she didn't have the you know,
Speaker 1: and you quit with another gig in mind certainly did,
Speaker 1: which was what that was a man called this city,
Speaker 1: Carol King, Charlie Larkin, and myself. Okay, now, of course
Speaker 1: Carol King is legendary today for numerous reasons. Insiders should
Speaker 1: be certainly knew her as a songwriter with her then husband.
Speaker 1: What was the status and how did you meet her? All? Right?
Speaker 1: I met Carol. I was friends with the guy Charlie Larky,
Speaker 1: bass player who's playing in a band called the Middle Class,
Speaker 1: and they were playing at the night Owl, kind of
Speaker 1: alternating with this one night, alternating with our man. So
Speaker 1: I became friends with him, and he was had started
Speaker 1: to date Carol. Carol had broken up with Jerry Goff
Speaker 1: and her husband, and he brought Carol down to the
Speaker 1: club to see us play. And I was saying, I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew she was, I knew all about her, and
Speaker 1: I was shaking in my shoes to meet her. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Carol King. You know, this is the most
Speaker 1: brilliant person I've ever met in my life, you know.
Speaker 1: So I was thrilled. I called names. So he came
Speaker 1: over and painfully shy, I said, this, it's Carol King,
Speaker 1: and then he fled to the back of the club.
Speaker 1: So I talked to her for a while, and then amazingly,
Speaker 1: to my surprise, she started calling me to plan her demos,
Speaker 1: her and Jerry's demos, and they were doing you know,
Speaker 1: they were signed to screen James Colombia, so they were
Speaker 1: writing songs continuously and demoing them. So I got that
Speaker 1: was my first experience really in the studio was was
Speaker 1: playing on Carol's demos, and she was a brilliant producer.
Speaker 1: I learned so much from her, It's like going to Harvard.
Speaker 1: I mean, she knew exactly what she wanted. She knew
Speaker 1: exactly what to say to me for me to play, uh,
Speaker 1: the right stuff. But I think I already was kind
Speaker 1: of playing pretty much what she wanted. So I played
Speaker 1: a bunch of her demos in UM in New York.
Speaker 1: And also when she moved to l A, I was
Speaker 1: already there a ton of them in l A as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: when she moved, she did, she moved to l A
Speaker 1: with Larkin Charlie. Yes, that's that's why she moved. Everyone
Speaker 1: was moving there. I think she had hooked up with
Speaker 1: Lou Adler, and Lou probably also convinced her and Okay,
Speaker 1: so they're there, and from the moment you land, you're
Speaker 1: playing on her demos. OK, So then how do you
Speaker 1: decided to form a group? Well, Carol, Lou Addler wanted
Speaker 1: her to perform and make a record, and and you
Speaker 1: know he had been, you know, encouraging her to make
Speaker 1: an album with her as the artist. And she was
Speaker 1: very shy and very stage you know, afraid, had terrible
Speaker 1: stage fright, and wanted to present herself in a group
Speaker 1: rather than as a solo artist. So as it was
Speaker 1: me and and and Charlie and her Lou Adler producing,
Speaker 1: we went into the studio. This is this is the
Speaker 1: first album I played on from beginning to end. And uh,
Speaker 1: the drummer was Jim Gordon, the great Jim Gordon. Course,
Speaker 1: so I was losing my I couldn't believe it. I
Speaker 1: could not believe it because I've never been in a
Speaker 1: studio before and I've never seen you know, Lou worked
Speaker 1: his magic. He would Uh. At one point he put
Speaker 1: tons of compression on the overheads over Jim Gordon said, yeah,
Speaker 1: just put some comfft. What was he talking about? Is
Speaker 1: he talking about? And I go into the studio and
Speaker 1: listen to it in this big sound comes out. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe my ears. This is a whole other level
Speaker 1: for me. And uh, it was incredible. I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: It was an incredible experience. And it was the first
Speaker 1: complete album that I played on. So the album comes out,
Speaker 1: I assume you have high expectations and it's stiffs. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: did you go on the road with her? Never? She
Speaker 1: she did not want to play live. We had a
Speaker 1: gig book at the Troubador and she canceled it like
Speaker 1: a week before the gig. She just was too afraid
Speaker 1: to go on stage. Okay, so the album stiff, she
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Where does that leave you? Um? Well, I
Speaker 1: Suppo was doing the loose days of sucking around. I
Speaker 1: don't know, not not great. I was, you know, scuffling.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for let's go to right field here.
Speaker 1: So how does it end with the wife? Well, just
Speaker 1: as you could probably probably imagine, she was really good looking.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be an actress. So what do you
Speaker 1: think happened Gauntsville? You know, within about six or eight
Speaker 1: months he was gone. He was absolutely gone, No surprise there.
Speaker 1: I could see it coming, but I didn't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. I was too young and stupid to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with it correctly, you know, and that
Speaker 1: dealing with correctly would have been what, uh, either leaving
Speaker 1: her before she left me or tring to funk Off
Speaker 1: or any number of things. And where today she's in
Speaker 1: l A, married to a very successful film director, I think,
Speaker 1: and she would she did some bit parts in a
Speaker 1: few TV series and stuff like that, but she never
Speaker 1: made it. Okay, So the you made the record to stiff,
Speaker 1: then what then? Uh? The next then she was going
Speaker 1: to make another album also for lou for Ode Records
Speaker 1: Lose label with a different producer full named John Fishback
Speaker 1: was did a lot of work with Stevie Wonder and
Speaker 1: has the studio in New Orleans. Now, great guy, and
Speaker 1: we went in. By that time, James had met Carol,
Speaker 1: I had introduced, you know, he came back out to
Speaker 1: l A and I put them together again or they
Speaker 1: got together. Peter Esher was there by that time as well,
Speaker 1: so um, we all knew each other and we were
Speaker 1: all hanging out together, and we went into make an
Speaker 1: album called Writer Carol King, which is also great, I mean,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, fantastic album also tanked, as you right,
Speaker 1: So now I'm kind of going well, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: You know, she's great. How could this stuff not go notice?
Speaker 1: He's absolutely brilliant. This is Carol King for Christ's sake,
Speaker 1: you know. So by the time we did Tapestry, I
Speaker 1: didn't have high hopes for that either, you know, Lou
Speaker 1: he knew he knew it was going to be a smash,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. Okay, when you're working on Tapestry, that's
Speaker 1: before you're working on with the James again. Um good
Speaker 1: questions all happened around the same time James had met
Speaker 1: Peter Asher. James went to London after the Flying Machine
Speaker 1: broke up, and I had given him Peter Asher's that
Speaker 1: was pals with Peter. So I had given him Peter's
Speaker 1: address and phone number, and he just showed up at
Speaker 1: at his door one day. Uh knocked on the door
Speaker 1: and said, I'm friends with Danny Kortchmar. They let him in.
Speaker 1: He's saying a few tunes for Peter onward. You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I love that first album where you did you
Speaker 1: like the first album? I thought it was terrible, overproduced.
Speaker 1: That's okay. So that album doesn't do anything really in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. How does and James moves with Peter to
Speaker 1: l A. Well, Peter moved to l A. James never
Speaker 1: liked la never felt comfortable there, so he'd only be
Speaker 1: out there to work and then he'd go back to
Speaker 1: I think he leaves living on Martha's vineyard at the time. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: at what point is he's gonna make Sweet Baby James?
Speaker 1: At what point do we integrate with him musically? Well
Speaker 1: at that point right there? Uh, when he came back
Speaker 1: out to l A and Peter had then gotten him
Speaker 1: a deal at Warner Brothers, of course, and they went
Speaker 1: in to make Sweet Baby James. So I played on that.
Speaker 1: I didn't play at all. I only played on maybe
Speaker 1: two or three four songs on it. Did you foresee
Speaker 1: that blowing up? No? Not really. I knew he was great.
Speaker 1: I knew Carol, I knew they were all great, But
Speaker 1: I had no idea whether it's going to go or not.
Speaker 1: Stuff I loved a lot of times wasn't successful. So
Speaker 1: when it was successful, would you think, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: how great this is, you know, how terrific and um.
Speaker 1: And then we started gigging, We started and that really,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit slower. So then Carol's album
Speaker 1: comes out in seventy one. Sweet Baby James comes out
Speaker 1: in seventy So you said that, Uh, Lou Adler knew
Speaker 1: was going to be a smash, but but you had
Speaker 1: been through so many stints you didn't think so all right, Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, Lou of of course knows
Speaker 1: what the hit is if anyone does Lou Wood, you know,
Speaker 1: after his uh, after his experience. Um, I knew the
Speaker 1: songs were great. I knew she was great, but I
Speaker 1: I went, well, I hope this does better. The last
Speaker 1: two were great and nothing happened. So I didn't have
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was gonna do like it did.
Speaker 1: So she goes out, James starts to work with a band.
Speaker 1: At what point is she in the band? What point
Speaker 1: are you in the band? Um? Well, pretty quickly, uh,
Speaker 1: Peter and James had found Russ Kunklin and Lee Clare
Speaker 1: and put them together as they rhythm section. I think
Speaker 1: he did a few gigs just with the two of
Speaker 1: them then, and um I came in and joined the band.
Speaker 1: And then Carol came at just as piano player. All
Speaker 1: she was supposed to just play the piano and back
Speaker 1: James up. I'm sure you know the story at the
Speaker 1: Trude door where he says, listen, you've got to do
Speaker 1: a couple of your tunes. Carol, Oh no, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: they'll love you, and she was terrified. And then James
Speaker 1: introduces this Carol Kinge she wrote this, that, that, and
Speaker 1: so as soon as she starts to play, everyone freaks
Speaker 1: and and her stage fright, dissipation. It goes away when
Speaker 1: she realized it's okay. You know they love you. So
Speaker 1: it took off from there her she's on the road
Speaker 1: with you when her album blows up, right, Um, I
Speaker 1: guess so yeah, I don't really like I said, I
Speaker 1: don't remember the chron chronology that, so let's stay. So
Speaker 1: you're so at that point, you're with James. You're not
Speaker 1: doing anything else, No, not much snow okay, And there's
Speaker 1: album after album that Warner Brothers and it's huge, all
Speaker 1: good times for you. Oh yeah, I loved it. I
Speaker 1: love that. James didn't love it, but I loved it.
Speaker 1: And in Rusting Lee, we loved it. We I can't.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget getting on stage and I looked down
Speaker 1: and there's this thing on stage and what's that. That's
Speaker 1: a monitor? A monitor what do you mean. It means,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll be able to hear the drums and
Speaker 1: the vocals. Wow, I was freaking out a monitor. You're
Speaker 1: kidding me, you know. So, uh, everything changed at that
Speaker 1: point and it was brilliant. My eyes were wide open.
Speaker 1: I was loving every minute of it, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: I loved Russell and Lee and and it was just
Speaker 1: a great experience. Except for James, who was morose and
Speaker 1: was having problems and was not enjoying it. It's too
Speaker 1: much too soon for him, as it is for a
Speaker 1: lot of young artists. There is on the cover of
Speaker 1: Time magazine. Wasn't ready for that, you know, in no way. Um,
Speaker 1: but he scuffled through it. And of course so he
Speaker 1: You're working down the road pretty much constantly at that point. Well,
Speaker 1: I was doing a lot with James, and at that
Speaker 1: point we also started see Peter Escher put our names
Speaker 1: on Sweet Baby, James and lou put our names on Tapestry. Now,
Speaker 1: if you remember, like the Wrecking Crew never had their
Speaker 1: names of those records. Nobody knew who they were, but
Speaker 1: everyone knew who we were, so they knew to call
Speaker 1: us to get in touch with us, to get that
Speaker 1: sound that groovy sound that we had gotten James and Carroll,
Speaker 1: you know. So it was a great Uh, it was
Speaker 1: really fortunate for us. So we started doing dates. All
Speaker 1: of us started doing record days here and there. We
Speaker 1: were kind of the next wave of the Wrecking Crew.
Speaker 1: I guess, okay, then you form your old band, the Section. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the three of us. Craig Dirgy came in replacing Carol
Speaker 1: Calder want going to road anymore? So Craig Dirgy came
Speaker 1: in replacing Carol, and we were always Jamed. We would
Speaker 1: do a sound check and James would get his sound
Speaker 1: that he would leave the stag when we would stay
Speaker 1: up there and jam and jam and jam and jam.
Speaker 1: And Peter was recording it on the front of house
Speaker 1: cassette player, so he said, you guys should listen to this,
Speaker 1: So he listened to the cassettment good and James gave
Speaker 1: us the name the Section, and we were offered will
Speaker 1: deal at at Warner Brothers. So we went in and
Speaker 1: made an album and we started doing little gigs here
Speaker 1: and there, but it didn't ultimately go over. Why do
Speaker 1: you think it didn't? Uh, well, we were playing kind
Speaker 1: of this weird I don't know if it's nothing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't weird at all, but we were playing instrumental music.
Speaker 1: It was kind of it was neither fish nor foul,
Speaker 1: and we didn't really know where we fit in exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: We didn't sound like book Often and the MG's and
Speaker 1: we didn't sound like Miles Davis either, so it kind
Speaker 1: of it didn't really gel. I have to also tell
Speaker 1: you that the section was very good, but I never
Speaker 1: really felt that comfortable in this section because I wasn't
Speaker 1: a jazz musician and I didn't consider myself ablazing. I
Speaker 1: played really good souls, but I didn't feel comfortable just
Speaker 1: as as as a guitar soloist. I was writing songs
Speaker 1: and I thought on myself more in that way. So
Speaker 1: you didn't view this as your opportunity to break through, No,
Speaker 1: I did not. Okay, Now, eventually James goes, when do
Speaker 1: you start playing with Linda? Oh? That wasn' until like
Speaker 1: or something like that. How did that come together? Well? Um,
Speaker 1: after what I had quit James's band right, Okay, before
Speaker 1: we get there, he switches to Columbia and you have
Speaker 1: a song Honey Don't Leave l A on his album.
Speaker 1: How does that come together? Well? You know. He did
Speaker 1: one of my songs on mud Slide, Slim and the
Speaker 1: Blue Horizon the album right after Remind me, what's on
Speaker 1: that machine gun? Kelly? You wrote machine gun? Kelly? Indeed,
Speaker 1: that's the play those machines. I had a little thing
Speaker 1: I would play three songs in a ride down a railroad.
Speaker 1: It was right there. And then, uh, on the first
Speaker 1: suddenly I can't remember the name of mission as me
Speaker 1: on the jukebox is great. Nothing that hundred miles in
Speaker 1: the pocket. But see how come I can't remember? But
Speaker 1: in any event, how do you write machine gun? Kelly?
Speaker 1: I was just sitting in my room. My wife had
Speaker 1: left me, and like I said, and I was reading
Speaker 1: a book about gangsters, and uh so I saw a
Speaker 1: machine gun Kelly, and just I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: started playing and singing. I wrote it very quickly. The
Speaker 1: other track is you Could Close your Eyes. Oh, great
Speaker 1: phenomenal song. Okay, so how does James end up recording it?
Speaker 1: I played it for him and they went, oh, that's good,
Speaker 1: let's do it just like that. You must have been thrilled.
Speaker 1: I certainly was. And then how did uh, honey, don't
Speaker 1: leave l a getting up on the j T album, Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing after I when I wrote it, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, James is gonna dig this tune. I knew
Speaker 1: he would. Also, he doesn't right like that. You know,
Speaker 1: that's more of a rock and roll song. James doesn't
Speaker 1: write rock and roll songs, and so I figured this
Speaker 1: would be something I knew he would dig it, and
Speaker 1: of course he did. I played it for him, he
Speaker 1: liked it. We recorded it right away. What was the
Speaker 1: inspiration for that song? Uh, a woman. It's it's pretty literal,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to tell you what a woman,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty literal. That's kind of what happened. Of course,
Speaker 1: I made a big deal out of it, and I
Speaker 1: made myself look good, as many of us do the
Speaker 1: right songs. I made myself into the you know, the
Speaker 1: the wounded uh groovy guy. But that's kind of what happened,
Speaker 1: you know with this this particular one and and one
Speaker 1: ended up happening with that romance, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I slept with her once or twice. She
Speaker 1: was gone. That was it. Yeah, it was a really
Speaker 1: famous individual. But you got a song, Yeah I didn't. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: then how do you decide to quit James's band. Well,
Speaker 1: that was way later. We had done several albums and
Speaker 1: a bunch of albums now as the end of the seventies,
Speaker 1: and the things I really wanted to play rock and roll.
Speaker 1: I wanted to play louder and stronger and bigger and tougher.
Speaker 1: And I knew it wasn't right too for me to
Speaker 1: try to steer James in that direction. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: rock and roller. I didn't want to be um. So
Speaker 1: I felt like, I gotta do this. I gotta make
Speaker 1: a change. I gotta do something where I can dig
Speaker 1: in and play harder and and be more rock and
Speaker 1: rolla and so uh Peter Coleman and asked me, I
Speaker 1: found to play in Linda's band, and I said absolutely,
Speaker 1: And yeah, what a what an incredible thrill that was.
Speaker 1: So it was in the band when you were in
Speaker 1: the band? Oh, let's see. It was Russ on drums,
Speaker 1: Bob Cloud on bass, Billy Payne on keys, Kenny Edwards
Speaker 1: was there. I think Andrew was there some of the time.
Speaker 1: Dan dougmar was there some of the time. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a revolving cast between them and me. And
Speaker 1: how long did that last two or three tours and
Speaker 1: a couple of albums, is okay? And anything else you
Speaker 1: were doing at that time, You're pretty committed to Linda. Well,
Speaker 1: I love playing with Linda, but I was you know,
Speaker 1: I was doing dates, I was doing this in that
Speaker 1: little off things. I was still writing and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but mainly I was you know, my my my main
Speaker 1: gig and my favorite gig was ron Stand And so
Speaker 1: it's then that you hook up with Henley. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: right after that. I had produced a woman named Louise Goffin,
Speaker 1: and you know, Peter Asher got me this gig producing
Speaker 1: her first album. She had the one song on the
Speaker 1: Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Did she did you do
Speaker 1: that song? She? I don't remember that. I probably I
Speaker 1: probably did. Yeah. Okay, So you make the album Louise
Speaker 1: Golfin and are you happy with that album? Thought? Well,
Speaker 1: I was thrilled to be producing, and I loved having
Speaker 1: you know, these great musicians in there. It was funny
Speaker 1: because the guys I I brought in were but there
Speaker 1: were Louise's age and we're contemporaries of Louise's and uh,
Speaker 1: I remember Peter saying to me, are you crazy, And
Speaker 1: he said, what once you get like, you know, the
Speaker 1: tried and true cats instead of these guys no one
Speaker 1: ever heard of, Like Luke was one of them, you know,
Speaker 1: Mike Lando, you know. So then at the time, I
Speaker 1: mean Luca nineteen when I met him, you know, but
Speaker 1: they were obviously great, you know, Lucas one of those guys.
Speaker 1: You take one look at him, it's love at first sight.
Speaker 1: He's just Steve Luca, incredibly love a book fell and great, great,
Speaker 1: great musician, one of the best ever. Really, I'll tell him,
Speaker 1: you said that, I've told him. You can tell him.
Speaker 1: You can tell you do the album you think that
Speaker 1: that's gonna go or you don't know which one? The
Speaker 1: Louise Golford album. Well, I hoped they would, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of interest in her because she was
Speaker 1: young and adorable and Coul's daughter and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The single went got I think up into the forties,
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but then the whole thing stalled and
Speaker 1: didn't go. And that's life and where did you leave you? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I was able to do. Uh. So they promised me
Speaker 1: a solo album on Silent for myself, So I made
Speaker 1: a record, Uh, on a solum it's called innuendo. Not
Speaker 1: very good. But back to in the hindsight, did you
Speaker 1: think it was good? Then? Um? Probably not? I was.
Speaker 1: I was. I was very insecure about my abilities to
Speaker 1: be an artist. Uh so, and it came out when
Speaker 1: I when I listen to it now, I go, what
Speaker 1: was I thinking? It's it's just not that great? You know.
Speaker 1: I did the best I could, and I was really
Speaker 1: infatuated with, uh some new wave acts that were coming in.
Speaker 1: I loved Elvis Costello and other bands like that, and
Speaker 1: I was really interested in that stuff. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: wanted to make an album that it was kind of
Speaker 1: fast and noisy and loud, but in retrospect it it
Speaker 1: really wasn't the real deal. Okay, so you made your
Speaker 1: own album and that didn't light up the chart. Where
Speaker 1: does that leave you? So? Well, the next thing we
Speaker 1: do is another Louise album, her second album, which also
Speaker 1: went nowhere Again. That's one of the singles got kind
Speaker 1: of on the charts, but it didn't explode so uh uh.
Speaker 1: At that point, I was kind of fishing around it
Speaker 1: and I didn't really know what to do, you know,
Speaker 1: doing odds and ends, doing some sessions, here and there
Speaker 1: still playing with Linda. Um. I left out Jackson, which
Speaker 1: you know I was on that tour Ring on Empty.
Speaker 1: It was on that tour. How did that? How did
Speaker 1: you get the gig? Um? Jackson wanted the section to uh,
Speaker 1: to do a thing with us, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: make this total live album. You know the story right,
Speaker 1: but my audience may not all right. So Jackson wanted
Speaker 1: to make a live album where all the songs the theme,
Speaker 1: all the songs were had themes of the road, and uh,
Speaker 1: he wanted to record it on the road. He wanted
Speaker 1: to record it backstage and dressing rooms. We did something
Speaker 1: in the hotel rooms. We did a couple of tracks
Speaker 1: on the bus, actually moved stuff onto on the bus
Speaker 1: and recorded some stuff. And uh, you know Jackson, once
Speaker 1: he gets an idea, that's it, man, he just goes
Speaker 1: and goes and goes. And uh so we ended up
Speaker 1: doing this Running on Empty and it was incredible. You
Speaker 1: had a song on that album I did, yes, uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We were in a hotel room and I'd written Shaky Town.
Speaker 1: This sounds shaking now, which has a lot of references
Speaker 1: to CB Talk, which of course now is arcane and
Speaker 1: means nothing. But at the time it was a thing.
Speaker 1: And um, so I said, I got this tune Jackson
Speaker 1: and played it for him and goes, oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: record that, and we did well. That was really as
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan. I saw him at the
Speaker 1: Philmorice with Laura Nearro before you gotta record out. But
Speaker 1: despite the records became, there were four before that. That
Speaker 1: album really broke him. Why that was a monster, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And do you have any idea Running Empty was gonna
Speaker 1: be so big? I didn't think that way at the time.
Speaker 1: I just know I didn't. I just thought it was
Speaker 1: great and it was we were having a ball. I
Speaker 1: knew it would be heard because Jackson had a real
Speaker 1: loyal you know, uh rabid following, and uh I knew
Speaker 1: it would be heard, but I didn't know it was
Speaker 1: gonna explode like it did. Okay, So you write songs
Speaker 1: on these hit albums. Did you get paid? Okay, no,
Speaker 1: no problem collecting your money. Okay. So you worked with Jackson,
Speaker 1: you're working with there, you're working with Carol's daughter, and
Speaker 1: then well I heard, um, let me see, I think
Speaker 1: I just finished a tour or an album with Linda.
Speaker 1: I played on a couple of her albums and did
Speaker 1: two or three tours with her, and I loved every
Speaker 1: minute of it. But I'll tell you about that later. Uh.
Speaker 1: Right after that, I heard that the Eagles had broken up.
Speaker 1: As you know, Glenn had made a solo that I
Speaker 1: played on, really No Funnel. I played on No Funnel Loud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you know everyone? We all knew each other.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew everybody. You know, there's l a We all
Speaker 1: knew each other. It was a big community. I knew
Speaker 1: Don and Glenn and everybody, like you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to name drop, but you know, Joni and and
Speaker 1: Carol and everyone was around. Everyone knew everyone else. And
Speaker 1: did you like the Eagles music? Uh? Not really not
Speaker 1: and not not at first? There was there were tunes
Speaker 1: I liked of theirs and tunes that I didn't like,
Speaker 1: like take It Easy. I hated that and I thought
Speaker 1: it was a total shit. But uh, I'm sorry, it
Speaker 1: was a really good song. But uh um, when they
Speaker 1: did I thought Witchy Woman was great because I was
Speaker 1: more in my wheelhouse, you know, And their album One
Speaker 1: of These Nights was way more R and B influence,
Speaker 1: especially that track, and I love that. And also they
Speaker 1: were great guys. They were really really nice guys, and
Speaker 1: I liked them very much, so I was I was
Speaker 1: rooting for them, but I didn't dig country rock. I
Speaker 1: hated Banjo's and that wasn't my thing, you know, it
Speaker 1: just wasn't. And again, it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that, it wasn't you know. So is that simple?
Speaker 1: And so Glenn had made this album, they had broken up,
Speaker 1: Glenn and Don weren't speaking at all, and um, I
Speaker 1: had heard that Don wanted to make a solo album,
Speaker 1: and I had heard that he was calling people to
Speaker 1: come up to his pad and hang out with him
Speaker 1: and jam a little bit, and uh, some of my
Speaker 1: pasts went up there and stuff, and I knew he
Speaker 1: was gonna call me. I just knew he was gonna
Speaker 1: call me. And I knew when I went up there,
Speaker 1: i'd get the gig. Don't ask me why I knew them,
Speaker 1: but I just knew it. And sure enough, that's what happened. Really, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you didn't put yourself. You just sat by the telephones
Speaker 1: going to get the gig. I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: knew I was going to get that gig. I knew
Speaker 1: he was gonna call, which he did after you know,
Speaker 1: it took ten days or something. Then he did call,
Speaker 1: and I knew I was going to get that gig.
Speaker 1: I don't know why or how how I knew that.
Speaker 1: It was just instinct, something something about it. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is for the first solo album, or the very first
Speaker 1: one with Dirty Laundry. Yeah. I worked on all three
Speaker 1: three of his solo albums from the nineties, three in
Speaker 1: a row, and that was this is So this was
Speaker 1: the first one. And I went up there and played
Speaker 1: him some ideas that I had something that has and
Speaker 1: he said, said, well, do you want to work on
Speaker 1: an album with me? I said absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: we went on from there. We became very good friends
Speaker 1: and we had a ball putting music together. And so
Speaker 1: it was only the two of you know. We brought
Speaker 1: Greg Ladoni in, the great Greg Ludonia, and he was
Speaker 1: one of the best engineers ever. Also, he had a
Speaker 1: rock and roll feel. He wasn't one of these lab
Speaker 1: coade guys. He was a big beat guy. He liked
Speaker 1: that big beat and he liked rock and roll. He
Speaker 1: liked volume. We'd listen back at deafening levels, you know,
Speaker 1: in the studio. And it was a lot of fun. Okay.
Speaker 1: And Stan Lynch wasn't he involved a little bit? That
Speaker 1: was way later. Okay. So you make the first record,
Speaker 1: the first record as a gigantic kid, uh, Dirty Laundry.
Speaker 1: But the album itself doesn't really make a gigantic impact.
Speaker 1: And your role is what on that album? I co
Speaker 1: wrote it and produced it, you know, co wrote pretty
Speaker 1: much all the tracks, played on it, and produced it.
Speaker 1: And what did Don say? Because Don is not Mr Happy? Well,
Speaker 1: this is true. Although we had a lot of great times.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of fun together, but uh no,
Speaker 1: he's not Mr cheerful. Um, I'll tell you about writing
Speaker 1: Dirty Laundry interested okay, So at him, I had a
Speaker 1: far feast of Oregon and um one day I was
Speaker 1: I ran it through an ecoplex and I started playing
Speaker 1: the beat that you hear, I'm Dirty Laundry Dag dang dang,
Speaker 1: and I said, wow, this is cool. I started playing
Speaker 1: it and I had a drum machine going this way.
Speaker 1: But this is the first Lynn drum machine that I had.
Speaker 1: For some reason, we had we had all the latest
Speaker 1: gear working with Don. That's what happens. You get every right,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget because here I'm playing this beat
Speaker 1: and I'm going there. We had talked about dirty Laundry,
Speaker 1: writing a song called dirty Laundry, and he had a
Speaker 1: real bug up his ass about local media because they
Speaker 1: had really raked him through the coals recently about some episode.
Speaker 1: So um, I said, this is dirty. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be dirty laundry. Listened to it, it it would be great.
Speaker 1: There's a knock on the door. It's like maybe one
Speaker 1: in the morning. It's Jackson. Come on, I gotta play something.
Speaker 1: We were all hanging at each other's pads all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: So he came and said, dig this. I started playing.
Speaker 1: What you hear is dirty Lawder. He goes, well, that's it,
Speaker 1: just that, over and over again. I said yes, over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. Now nobody was doing it
Speaker 1: over nobody in my creek was doing anything like that.
Speaker 1: They wearing songs on acoustic guitar. I didn't want any
Speaker 1: of that. Didn't want anything that sounded like the Eagles.
Speaker 1: He didn't want background parts, he didn't want acoustic guitars.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go a whole other direction. And that's
Speaker 1: why I fit in really well because I was that
Speaker 1: whole other direction. And uh, sure enough we recorded it.
Speaker 1: He came up with the lyrics very quickly. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh away we went okay, that was a monster, and
Speaker 1: he had Johnny can't read. He wrote down for Fay
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, okay, But ultimately the album was not
Speaker 1: a huge success. How did Don take that? Uh? He um.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how he took it. He wasn't
Speaker 1: screaming and yelling or tearing his hair, that's for sure,
Speaker 1: because we were we did really well with with Dirty Laundry,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't going on the road. He didn't go
Speaker 1: on the road to promote that album. It wasn'tuntil the
Speaker 1: next one. Then he went out, Okay, so you make
Speaker 1: that album, it comes out, it runs its course. Are
Speaker 1: you still going up there every day? You're taking a break.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing them all the time. You know. Don and
Speaker 1: I hung out a lot, and I can't remember if
Speaker 1: I went up there every day, but we saw a
Speaker 1: lot of each From what point did he say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do another album? What was he working the
Speaker 1: whole time? He was? No, he wasn't working the whole time.
Speaker 1: He I think he already had it in his head.
Speaker 1: He had to make another album. He wanted to have
Speaker 1: a hit album, you know. Again A lot of that
Speaker 1: had to do with competition with Glenn, of course. So
Speaker 1: at the time I was working with Brown, we had
Speaker 1: let me see, I's trying to remember all this. Linda
Speaker 1: had just finished one of her tours and I was
Speaker 1: working with Jackson on his album Lawyers in Love, and
Speaker 1: as you know, didn't do that well. I love some
Speaker 1: of the songs like for a ro Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good track, you're right. So I played on all of that.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote two or three of the tunes on
Speaker 1: that album with him, which Knock on any Door was yeah.
Speaker 1: And I had written um um Somebody's Baby with him,
Speaker 1: uh and he but he didn't want to put it
Speaker 1: on his album. It was it was too poppy for him.
Speaker 1: He was, so we put it on Fast Times of
Speaker 1: Richmond High soundtrack. That could be his biggest track because
Speaker 1: he was he was. I thinking arristed about it because
Speaker 1: it was so poppy. It was that such a great
Speaker 1: you know, strictly a pop record. And I have said
Speaker 1: before I Brown ain't offended, but there wasn't even one
Speaker 1: Nicaraguin in the whole side. So he didn't you know,
Speaker 1: he was embarrassed about it. Jeff and said you gotta
Speaker 1: put that on the album, and he didn't, and the
Speaker 1: album tanked, of course, but the single was huge and
Speaker 1: you know, as you said, his biggest hit. Now he
Speaker 1: plays it all the time. Okay, so you work on
Speaker 1: Lawyers and Love. Then do you go on the road
Speaker 1: with Jackson? Okay? What happened right then was uh don
Speaker 1: then calls, he says, oh, let's make the next album.
Speaker 1: Now I was supposed to go out with with Jackson
Speaker 1: and tour that album. Um but at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: I had just bailed with the choice between producing with
Speaker 1: Heinley and and and touring as a sideman was there
Speaker 1: was no no choice at all. So he was not happy.
Speaker 1: He was not happy at all. And he actually, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't mad at me. We're very good
Speaker 1: friends and we never weren't. But he took my name
Speaker 1: off the album, and uh so had his guitarist Ricky
Speaker 1: veto with the other guitar player. Ricky is a phenomenal player. Um.
Speaker 1: Everyone he had pictures of everyone and their name. Of course,
Speaker 1: he took my Picture in my Name off, so I
Speaker 1: had I got no credit for it, even though I
Speaker 1: didn't awful lot of work on that album, as he
Speaker 1: will tell you. Okay, so but Handley calls yes and
Speaker 1: take us from the beginning of building the Perfect Beast. Well,
Speaker 1: he immediately started. The first thing we did was sit
Speaker 1: around and talk about what we wanted to say. And
Speaker 1: Don had a lot of ideas, so we throw ideas
Speaker 1: back and forth. For instance, he had this idea he
Speaker 1: wanted to write a song called Sunset Grill. He loved
Speaker 1: the that little Hamburger stand on Sunset Boulevard, and he
Speaker 1: loved the idea of the old man who ran it
Speaker 1: made the burghers himself, and he felt this was wonderful
Speaker 1: and a changing culture where everything was being manufactured unseen.
Speaker 1: So he had this idea that he wanted to write
Speaker 1: a song. Um but all the right. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: had this. I had a piece of music that it
Speaker 1: was actually in sixth eight that since it grows in
Speaker 1: four forward, I've written it in sixth eight. I was
Speaker 1: trying to be Joe's a uh, and it had some
Speaker 1: groovy chord changes and stuff like that. So I played
Speaker 1: it for him and I said Oh, that's it, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's start recording it. And that's what he would do.
Speaker 1: I play him a piece of music and go, I
Speaker 1: can write to that. Bang we go in the studio
Speaker 1: before the song was written and start recording and uh
Speaker 1: then he would write to the track. That happened a
Speaker 1: lot and you would work where, uh, well, at this place.
Speaker 1: I had a little demo studio at my place, very
Speaker 1: primitive demo studio at my place. I'd make these little demos.
Speaker 1: Where were you going to the studio? Where would you
Speaker 1: go to cut? All right, we would cut. We had
Speaker 1: a few different places. One was definitely Record One, and
Speaker 1: we loved Record One. We did a lot of work
Speaker 1: there Vos place, Yes, and we lived there for a
Speaker 1: long time. We also and then later in the process
Speaker 1: we started cutting at A and M H A M D.
Speaker 1: Which is also okay. Were you in charge of making
Speaker 1: that happen? How so? How do you mean like you
Speaker 1: were the one saying, OK, they're gonna record, let me call,
Speaker 1: let me get a studio, etcetera. Or was don taking
Speaker 1: action and would just call the office it say I
Speaker 1: want to record, getting you know, uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: just called Irving or whoever the guy was Boom, what happened? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the songs on that album, that's Sunset Grill, which
Speaker 1: I heard on the Reader just two days ago. I'm serious,
Speaker 1: and you know that's great. And it's got the you know,
Speaker 1: essentially the synth at the end, which is really great.
Speaker 1: And but the most legendary track from that is Boys
Speaker 1: This Summer. How does Boys of Summer come togin? All right?
Speaker 1: So Boys the Summer was Mike, Mike Campbell, the Great
Speaker 1: Mike Campbell came in and brought this very primitive demo
Speaker 1: that he had made it home on a T four
Speaker 1: track and played it for Don, who immediately loved it.
Speaker 1: Was terrific. That just the track was great. So now
Speaker 1: we have to re record the whole track to get
Speaker 1: it right. And what degree was the track that he
Speaker 1: brought in, like the finished track? Almost exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: we added a bunch of stuff to it, but it
Speaker 1: was it was basically a duplication of the original two
Speaker 1: or three track thing that he brought in that Mike
Speaker 1: brought in. And Henley, you know, being the stickler and
Speaker 1: being as meticulous as he is, was driving Mike crazy,
Speaker 1: because Mike is not a studio musician. So there was
Speaker 1: a part that you played that opening lickid you hear
Speaker 1: bang burned in? He had played that on the demo.
Speaker 1: Don said you gotta play that, So Mike, it was
Speaker 1: a guy that doesn't play the same thing every time ever.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not a studio guy, so he was
Speaker 1: going after it, but he wasn't playing exactly what Donn
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. We were there for days getting that
Speaker 1: one lip. You know, I'm not kidding, And we went
Speaker 1: on on and on worked on it, and finally we
Speaker 1: got it to the point where Don could sing on it.
Speaker 1: So this is like ten days at least of continuous
Speaker 1: work and um so Don goes out to sing it
Speaker 1: and he was, um, wow, it's too low. He needs
Speaker 1: to go up a half step. Oh my god. This
Speaker 1: is before approach was where you just Keith jokes and
Speaker 1: it goes up and we basically had to take the
Speaker 1: rhythm and then recreate the whole rest of the thing.
Speaker 1: So here comes Mike again. At that point, Mike went
Speaker 1: into the hospital. I think we I think we put
Speaker 1: him in the hospital. He had some kind of stomach
Speaker 1: problem with that from the stress. No doubt trying to
Speaker 1: get McDon happy, you know. And uh, finally we finished
Speaker 1: it and I put some synths on and put a
Speaker 1: bunch of synth guitar on it and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and uh, there there it was. He wrote the lyrics
Speaker 1: very quickly. He knew what he wanted to say, Don,
Speaker 1: he usually does, so he wrote the lyrics after you
Speaker 1: were recording the track. Yes, And how long do you
Speaker 1: think it took him to write the lyrics. I think
Speaker 1: it went real quickly. It's funny with him because, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes we'll do a track and a year will go
Speaker 1: by before he writes a lyric to it. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll give him a track and uh, two or three
Speaker 1: days later, it's done the whole thing, the whole lyric.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's so meticulous. It's funny to hear that
Speaker 1: he works that fast. Well, he works fast sometimes and
Speaker 1: slow sometimes. But I think with the lyrics, once he
Speaker 1: knows what he wants to say, he starts to write
Speaker 1: and and things and and things start coming to him.
Speaker 1: Let me go to left field for a second, because
Speaker 1: I get this question for readers all the time. Let's
Speaker 1: just assume back in the day, forget today. Okay, one
Speaker 1: of your friends calls up and says, hey, uh, lay
Speaker 1: this lick on this track? Would you do it as
Speaker 1: a favor? Would you get paid? It depends on who
Speaker 1: was it was my When any of my friends, I
Speaker 1: would do it without asking. Okay, they would say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to pay you. I mean it was it
Speaker 1: was a mutual thing. You would play on each other's
Speaker 1: I'd do anything for my friends. I'd be glad to
Speaker 1: plan on something from one of my buddies. But okay,
Speaker 1: so you cut Boys of Summer, which becomes iconic? Did
Speaker 1: you so? So you did all this sense stuff? Wow?
Speaker 1: So did you know what was going to become iconic?
Speaker 1: I thought it had a good chance of being a
Speaker 1: hit record because it was so It's such a good
Speaker 1: everything about it was terrific that everyone was graving and
Speaker 1: I got this could do it. You know, this could
Speaker 1: be a big hit. And it was a person and
Speaker 1: all she wants to do his dance? What the stories
Speaker 1: are with that? Let me see? Um, well, we had
Speaker 1: one of the very first d X sevens. It's funny
Speaker 1: because that is all right dad. The Yamaha d X
Speaker 1: seven is one of the first synthesizers that had a
Speaker 1: lot of different sounds on it, and it was used
Speaker 1: on a ton of records that had a bunch of
Speaker 1: different sounds. At the time, that was the instrument, you know,
Speaker 1: the happening instrument. It was the synth du jour, and
Speaker 1: everyone wanted one. But we've been here, we've heard about it.
Speaker 1: One of the guys in Toto told us about it.
Speaker 1: So Don turns to his aide de camp, Tony tab
Speaker 1: and said, Tony, get one. Two days later, the only
Speaker 1: d X seven in the whole world shows up at
Speaker 1: our studio. So I took it home and I started
Speaker 1: to screwing around with it and came up with the
Speaker 1: sound you hear on on Dirty Laundry, which is a
Speaker 1: sample and hold sound you hit the kind Uh, so
Speaker 1: there's a key. I had one of the keys and
Speaker 1: I went come back back one, Oh cool sample and hold.
Speaker 1: So I slowed it way down on and I ran
Speaker 1: it through a foot and ran through an amplifier to
Speaker 1: make it distorted. And that's what you're here. We recreated that.
Speaker 1: That's how the song, that's how the track got started.
Speaker 1: So then I went to sleep. I woke up and
Speaker 1: wrote the lyrics in about ten minutes, and Don immediately said,
Speaker 1: I'm good. Yeah, that's right. And then what about this song?
Speaker 1: I forget the name of that. You know you're no
Speaker 1: picnic either, baby, that's one of the things I love
Speaker 1: abou oh boy, not enough love in the world, Not
Speaker 1: enough love in the world. Great, great too. How do
Speaker 1: you know I'll remember how that comes together? Um again,
Speaker 1: he had this idea and he started singing. The changes
Speaker 1: were pretty obvious to me what they had to be.
Speaker 1: Ben Mont was in the studio with us, and it
Speaker 1: was very helpful, and um it was pretty obvious what
Speaker 1: the chords needed to be to go on with his melody.
Speaker 1: So I started playing him and h you know, I said,
Speaker 1: that's good. He don you know, I play him some
Speaker 1: changes to go that, I play another not that was
Speaker 1: leaving another court that and you know, and after a
Speaker 1: while you could see how they followed. I knew a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, at that point, I was pretty good. I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew about songs, and I knew how you can
Speaker 1: you know what chords needed to go with the melody,
Speaker 1: and uh so pretty soon it came about and there
Speaker 1: it was. Uh. Benmon came in and helped us with him.
Speaker 1: So from first going to and he says about Sunset Girl.
Speaker 1: I want to write a song about Sunset Grill until finish.
Speaker 1: How long a period of time is that? Um, well,
Speaker 1: let me see. I made the demo. I had Benmont
Speaker 1: come over and helped me with the bridge because I'd
Speaker 1: run out of ideas and needed a new another wig,
Speaker 1: as they say. So Benmon came over and helped me.
Speaker 1: When we had the demo, played it for Don was
Speaker 1: in the wrong key, so we had to change the key.
Speaker 1: At that point, he called Randy Newman to come in
Speaker 1: and do the the arrangement, and of course Randy genius
Speaker 1: at that and he did this beautiful arrangement. Michael Bodicker
Speaker 1: played the keyboards, you know the SyncE that you hear
Speaker 1: on it, and uh, it came about and Don wanted um.
Speaker 1: He kept referencing the theme two Roots sixty six, the
Speaker 1: old TV show with the theme of which was by
Speaker 1: Nelson Riddle, so he would reference this stuff, and uh,
Speaker 1: we started putting it together. He wanted this real long ending,
Speaker 1: which I was surprised about, but because it went on
Speaker 1: quite a lot. Of course, we got Jerry hay in
Speaker 1: to do the horn arrangements and we told him exactly
Speaker 1: we want. I sang a lot of those parts that
Speaker 1: he wrote down, and then I played what sounds like
Speaker 1: trombone solo, which is played that on a guitar synth,
Speaker 1: and then dy that I'm a guitar synth. You know.
Speaker 1: But from the moment you start the album to the
Speaker 1: moment you finished the album, how long a period it's time?
Speaker 1: I say a year at least. Okay, so the album
Speaker 1: comes out from an outside perspective, it seems like it's
Speaker 1: an immediate success. And at what point does don say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go on the road. Then, so you went
Speaker 1: on the road with him all that time I did
Speaker 1: not know. No, you did not went well. I went
Speaker 1: and rehearsed with him for a day or two. He
Speaker 1: had hired some the the usual suspects, guys that could
Speaker 1: you know. That's what they did, But that isn't what
Speaker 1: I did. I never had to learn anyone else's guitar parts.
Speaker 1: I've never called upon, and I don't learn other people's
Speaker 1: guitar parts. I just play my own. So when it
Speaker 1: came time to learn um Hotel California, I said, why,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? I don't know this right? So that's
Speaker 1: when we realized it's better if I stayed at home
Speaker 1: and wrote more music. And then he went on the
Speaker 1: road with guys that could play anything, because that's what
Speaker 1: they did. They were sidemen at that point. Okay, the
Speaker 1: next album didn't come out until eighty nine, or the
Speaker 1: end of eight eight for that. Before you cut the
Speaker 1: end of the Innocence. What were you working on personally?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I can't remember exactly various stuff. I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what I was working on, but I
Speaker 1: was always writing. But your mind was I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: another album with Don Right, Okay, So how does the
Speaker 1: end of the Innocence album come together? Well, it starts
Speaker 1: with that wonderful track that Bruce Hornsby did, which is
Speaker 1: the basis of the Innocence, and boy, I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: it when when what it happens? We started on some
Speaker 1: other tunes, I can't remember what. Then I got fired.
Speaker 1: I got fired two or three times. Well, well, fired
Speaker 1: two or three times on this album were also on
Speaker 1: all of them. What would the circumstances being fired be?
Speaker 1: You didn't have to do much to get fired by
Speaker 1: Don Okay, give me give me like an example of
Speaker 1: how he would act or what he would say. Well,
Speaker 1: there was one night. There was one time in the
Speaker 1: first album. I was hanging out with Stevie Nicks and
Speaker 1: stayed up really late and I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: at the studio, slept through, slept past the time. I
Speaker 1: get a call from Don You're fired. Hangs up like,
Speaker 1: oh shoot, oh my god, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: Two minutes later, the phone rings and it's Irving. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're not fired. Get down to the studios as you can.
Speaker 1: When I get there and he says, this was a
Speaker 1: mere warning, you know this this had this been a
Speaker 1: real he gave me one of those you know And
Speaker 1: that was the first time. The second time, I remember,
Speaker 1: it didn't take much. Okay. But you're saying, when they
Speaker 1: do the end of the Innocence album, you gotten fired again? Yeah? Sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is before it's made or while you're making and
Speaker 1: of the Innocence. That was early in the project, early
Speaker 1: in the UH album, after we've done a couple of tracks.
Speaker 1: This is before UH end of the Innocence. Okay, you've
Speaker 1: gotten fired. How long were you fired for that? A
Speaker 1: couple of months, two or three months? And did you
Speaker 1: back your mind say hey, he's gonna call me again?
Speaker 1: Or do you think it was really done this? I
Speaker 1: was really piste at that point, and I was writing
Speaker 1: with with Jackson a little bit, I was doing other things.
Speaker 1: At no point did I say, oh my god, my
Speaker 1: life is over. I never said that, because I knew
Speaker 1: nothing was gonna stop me. Uh and was there Do
Speaker 1: you remember the reason he fired at that time? Oh,
Speaker 1: let me see. I think it was because it was
Speaker 1: my wife at the time's birthday. And we went to
Speaker 1: the ivy and when the check came, everybody through their
Speaker 1: credit card in like usual, and Don was enraged that
Speaker 1: I didn't pay for the whole thing and fired me
Speaker 1: and sent me a letter, you cheap bastard. You know,
Speaker 1: I did something like this, and I was fired again.
Speaker 1: I sent him back a letter equally victoryolic and calling him,
Speaker 1: you know, reading him the Riot Act, you know. And then, um,
Speaker 1: right after that, I wrote a track Stanley should come
Speaker 1: to the picture that I introduced him to stand. Stan
Speaker 1: was a great guy and a really terrific fellow, and um,
Speaker 1: he and Henley Henley hit it off like I knew
Speaker 1: they would right away. So I had written another track
Speaker 1: which ended up being how bad do you want it?
Speaker 1: You remember that? And so I sent that over to Don.
Speaker 1: He said, oh, this is great, come on back, you know,
Speaker 1: and nothing else was said, you know, but he did.
Speaker 1: Uh that week, he did call my wife at the
Speaker 1: time and apologized her. Wow, dig it, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of guy, the complex guy. You know, it's been said
Speaker 1: about done that he's an interesting bunch of guys, and
Speaker 1: that is the case. Okay, So then how much of
Speaker 1: that album were you involved? You know, a lot pretty much,
Speaker 1: so just at the beginning you were gone, right, okay,
Speaker 1: so your contributions were certainly that song. Uh how does
Speaker 1: things songs like uh uh New York Minute come together?
Speaker 1: All right? Well again, he's you wanted to write a
Speaker 1: song called New York Minute, and he wanted to reference uh,
Speaker 1: autumn leaves blowing through the park and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So I just started went home, started playing what you hear,
Speaker 1: you know, the music, and then I came with the
Speaker 1: idea of records even in the New York and I
Speaker 1: sang that to him, played him, you know, the basic music,
Speaker 1: and sang that line to him if we went so
Speaker 1: let's record it, no words to except for that, you know,
Speaker 1: And we started recording it with David Page, the Great
Speaker 1: David Paige. Wow. And then how about the Heart of
Speaker 1: the Matter. Heart of the Matter. I wasn't involved in
Speaker 1: that one. I was on listed as producer, and so
Speaker 1: I just got kind of oversaw what was going on. Um,
Speaker 1: I think he wrote that with Southern and uh, Mike
Speaker 1: Campbell did the original track and the bass part I
Speaker 1: thought was terrible. So I got Larry Kleined to come
Speaker 1: in and play a beautiful bass part on it, and uh,
Speaker 1: away we went. You know, it's a nice it's a
Speaker 1: nice tune to me. That's you know, that's one side
Speaker 1: of Henley, and that's the site of his record company
Speaker 1: always wanted the most truth. They considered him a ballad
Speaker 1: deer and they couldn't understand at all the heavy duty
Speaker 1: tracks I was giving him. You know, they didn't think
Speaker 1: Dirty Laundry is going to be a hit, the not
Speaker 1: at all. They were forced to put it out as
Speaker 1: a single by the DJs. So that album comes out,
Speaker 1: Henley doesn't make another record for eleven years. He goes
Speaker 1: on the road, but you're essentially done at this point.
Speaker 1: You're not going on the road, and the albums finished
Speaker 1: you're on good terms with Henley? Yeah, I thought, so
Speaker 1: where does what do you do for the next ten years? Well, um,
Speaker 1: after that album came out, I guess he went on
Speaker 1: the road. I was doing other things. I can't be
Speaker 1: honest with you. I don't remember all this thing. I
Speaker 1: remember I was playing all the time, working on all
Speaker 1: the time. I produced co produced a John bon Jovi's
Speaker 1: solo album, Blaze of Glory. Okay, I gotta ask Blaze
Speaker 1: of Glory. The song certainly sounds like a remake of
Speaker 1: Wanted Dead or Alive? As much as I like the track,
Speaker 1: You're kidding? Was there any thought process or was left unset?
Speaker 1: And you don't have to ask Johnny that. It's obviously
Speaker 1: it's from the same family. Um, But that was We
Speaker 1: had a ton of fun making that out. It was
Speaker 1: really really a ball and it changed John's attitude about
Speaker 1: recording and what the whole deal was. Why did it
Speaker 1: change because he was working with the guys that they
Speaker 1: weren't band members, they were like great guys, and Kenny
Speaker 1: Aronoff and Brandy Jackson on bass, Waddy ben Mont. I mean,
Speaker 1: he'd never been around people like that. He only worked
Speaker 1: for this band. Man when he saw how badass everyone was,
Speaker 1: but also how friendly. I fun it was. This was fun.
Speaker 1: I don't think John ever thought about being in the
Speaker 1: studio was fun, but it was. How did you get
Speaker 1: that gig? I think, Um, he was asking a bunch
Speaker 1: of people about who would be good. I think he
Speaker 1: asked Jimmy Ivan, and Jimmy said, yeah, Danny's great. You know,
Speaker 1: I was one of guys on the list, I guess.
Speaker 1: And Um, when I spoke to him on the phone,
Speaker 1: we started getting along and I suggested to him who
Speaker 1: I thought should play on it. And uh, since you
Speaker 1: had this great success with Henley, never mind the success
Speaker 1: before that, did that make your phone ring more? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit more. But yeah, I got more production gigs.
Speaker 1: But it's funny. I realized at that point that producing
Speaker 1: with Don is not the same as producing just people.
Speaker 1: You know. The next band I produced here such a
Speaker 1: fucking pain in the ass that I you know, I
Speaker 1: hated him, But the time the record was done, I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the band, thank god. But
Speaker 1: I used to get gigs like that, right, Jesus, they
Speaker 1: would they would give me gigs. I would get gigs
Speaker 1: and I would listen to the stuff, and I I go, well,
Speaker 1: there's no hits here. But the A and R guy
Speaker 1: was ready to go. I was ready to pay me
Speaker 1: a great deal of money to start, so I said, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll take the money. You know, you weren't worried it
Speaker 1: might hurt your reputation if there were no hits. Uh No,
Speaker 1: I didn't think that way. I didn't think that way. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the next Henley album, inside Job, does he call you?
Speaker 1: Not call your inside? No? I didn't do it work
Speaker 1: on that, Okay. So you haven't worked with him since? No,
Speaker 1: are you friendly with him? To degree you could be
Speaker 1: somebody friendly with somebody like Henley? So basically you work
Speaker 1: on the end of the Innocence and summer Camp friends.
Speaker 1: You don't see each other again, right, Well, was the
Speaker 1: last time you talked to him three or four years ago? Okay?
Speaker 1: So what then? The Internet happens, Turn of the century.
Speaker 1: Now you're producing records. Then everything starts to change. What's
Speaker 1: your view about what's going on? Then? Well, you know
Speaker 1: it was a sea change. But what was happening more
Speaker 1: and more was all the musicians started to have a
Speaker 1: home studios. Everyone had a studio in their garage. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you drive through the valley, every house you know
Speaker 1: in certain neighborhoods had had a studio in the garage.
Speaker 1: So that changed everything changed, the whole as you know,
Speaker 1: the whole paradigm changed once you had pro tools or
Speaker 1: pro pro tools breaking home. And as you know, that's
Speaker 1: how pretty much all records are made now, piecemeal, one
Speaker 1: guy at a time, just you know, they type it
Speaker 1: in corrected, et cetera. So I don't know how did
Speaker 1: I feel about it. I missed live playing. When I
Speaker 1: realized that there wasn't gonna be very you know, live
Speaker 1: playing in the studio, I was really disappointed. At that time,
Speaker 1: I was still producing that produced a Spin Doctors record.
Speaker 1: I produced a guy named Martin Sexton, is a good singer.
Speaker 1: I produced a guy named Fredy Johnston who's a very
Speaker 1: good songwriter. So I was doing these these albums and
Speaker 1: they were I did have guys play live in the studio.
Speaker 1: Um and I actually I never made any more albums
Speaker 1: where it was just you know, one piece at a time.
Speaker 1: And then at what point do you say, WHOA, there's
Speaker 1: a change. My generation is being superseded by the hip
Speaker 1: hop and the pop etcetera. Well, you know, what can
Speaker 1: I say about that? Only that musician, Like me and
Speaker 1: like most of my friends, you don't give up. You
Speaker 1: don't think about it like that. You've gotta keep playing.
Speaker 1: You're gonna keep playing one way or the other. So
Speaker 1: I never thought about being replaced or about, uh, the
Speaker 1: time has passed me by. I was gonna keep playing
Speaker 1: and keep doing what I did, and and not I
Speaker 1: was gonna stop me um right around then. Let me see.
Speaker 1: At one point, I moved to the East Coast. I
Speaker 1: moved to Connecticut with my family. We had just had
Speaker 1: my wife at the time, had given birth to my
Speaker 1: first daughter, and I didn't want to bring her up
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. I just didn't want to be around
Speaker 1: all those entitled, self involved you know, doing blow at
Speaker 1: age twelve, having sex at age nine. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't want her in that environment. I just didn't. Now,
Speaker 1: plenty of great kids come out of Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: they're just fine, but I didn't want to. I felt
Speaker 1: that I didn't want to bring my daughter up in
Speaker 1: that environment. And also I missed the East Coast a lot.
Speaker 1: So we moved back to the East Coast and did
Speaker 1: it deliver on an emotional level for you when you
Speaker 1: get there and say I missed California, No I was,
Speaker 1: I loved it. You're in Connecticut. Does that sort of
Speaker 1: on a distance level keep you a little out of
Speaker 1: the loop. Well, yeah, but there was no loop at
Speaker 1: that point. You know that, you know, the whole infrastructure
Speaker 1: that that we've grown up with and that was prevalent
Speaker 1: for us. Well, it was basically gone. It was over,
Speaker 1: just like h and then when he decided to start
Speaker 1: to work with James again. Um, geez, when I started
Speaker 1: working well, I never not wanted to work with James,
Speaker 1: but but at that point he had hired his backup
Speaker 1: band that he has now he's touring band that he
Speaker 1: has now, and then he has for many many years. Um.
Speaker 1: The last time I worked with James was to do uh,
Speaker 1: the Troubador Reunion tour with James and Carroll, which was
Speaker 1: just an incredible experience. Um yeah, okay, So that brings
Speaker 1: us up today. Is there any bucket list, anything that's
Speaker 1: on the horizon that you specifically want to do. I
Speaker 1: want to keep playing with my band immediate family. I
Speaker 1: want to keep writing and playing and recording with them,
Speaker 1: you know, I really Uh, I started writing like crazy again.
Speaker 1: I'd stopped for a while because I had no muse.
Speaker 1: Henley was my muse and it was something they could
Speaker 1: write for. Not only that, but if it came up
Speaker 1: with something great, we go in the studio the next
Speaker 1: day and start cutting. Uh. Now, when that went away,
Speaker 1: I kind of stopped writing for years. For a few years.
Speaker 1: Then um, when I got together with the Immediate Family,
Speaker 1: guys started writing like crazy again. So in this fracture world,
Speaker 1: what would success look like for you with immediate family? Uh,
Speaker 1: more gigs, more money. I'd like us to do corporate
Speaker 1: gigs because a lot of bread there. Like us to
Speaker 1: play all over the place. We've been to Japan a
Speaker 1: couple of times. I'd like to play all over the
Speaker 1: world with this great band. And that really is town
Speaker 1: when you did a local gig. So I don't know
Speaker 1: the set list is a set list all new material
Speaker 1: or do you play some of the greatest hits of
Speaker 1: the bands that every all the player has been involved in. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I introduced the band is saying we're
Speaker 1: a cover band that plays all original material. That is
Speaker 1: because everything we play, we wrote, we played on, we produced,
Speaker 1: you know, all of it. We do some Zevon. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as you know why. He was closely associated
Speaker 1: with Warren and I played on a few Warren stuff too.
Speaker 1: Loved him. I really missed him all the time. And
Speaker 1: then we play all of my tunes. So the stuff
Speaker 1: I wrote with Henley, uh, the stuff I wrote that
Speaker 1: James did, the stuff I wrote jet with it with Jackson.
Speaker 1: We do all that, plus we do some new material
Speaker 1: that we've just written. So it's a cross section of stuff.
Speaker 1: And who books it? Good question. We're looking for a
Speaker 1: booking agent right now. We have a guy that helps
Speaker 1: us in New York. We're about to play a ridium
Speaker 1: uh this fall, and you know, basically we're looking for
Speaker 1: an actual booking agent and you manage it yourself. No,
Speaker 1: we have managers who were the managers, David health Fan
Speaker 1: and Fred Crosh right right right, right right, and they're
Speaker 1: taking care of whatever. Well, listen, it's been wonderful talking
Speaker 1: to you, Danny. You're as alive as you ever were.
Speaker 1: You have a great resume, you're continue it. Thanks for
Speaker 1: coming to my pleasure. Thanks Bud. Until next time, all right,
Speaker 1: it's Bob left sense talk to you next week.