Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Susannah Fus, who has a new book,
Speaker 1: This Bird Has Flown and a new album, The Deep End. Susannah,
Speaker 1: why a book? Why? Now? Oh? I love this question. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been a lifelong reader. My favorite thing is to
Speaker 1: escape from my own thoughts and being in someone else's story.
Speaker 1: And I love I love disappearing into a into a fiction.
Speaker 1: And you know this is true for you know, I
Speaker 1: think why I'm addicted to listening to songs, why I
Speaker 1: obsessively watch movies, um, and and why I love novels.
Speaker 1: And I've been reading since I was a little girl,
Speaker 1: and it had always been kind of, um a dream
Speaker 1: to one day write a novel. I started one in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine as the Bengals were winding down, but
Speaker 1: then then I didn't really pursue it, you know. So
Speaker 1: suddenly and I'd written, and I've co written several screenplays,
Speaker 1: some of which have been optioned, but then they just
Speaker 1: sort of found themselves on a shelf in some studio
Speaker 1: in development. Hell. So, um, it was around I sort
Speaker 1: of embarrassed to say how long the process of me
Speaker 1: of me writing this novel has been but I'll be
Speaker 1: honest with you, it's the idea really came to fruition
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen. I was still doing Bengals shows and
Speaker 1: working on solo music, but it became an absolute passion.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was almost like a psychotic addiction to
Speaker 1: the process of writing the novel. I became completely cessed
Speaker 1: and immersed in it. Let's go back a chapter. You
Speaker 1: say you're a big reader. I hate to put people
Speaker 1: on the spot because their mind goes blank. But what
Speaker 1: have you read recently that you'd enjoyed? Well? I read, um, um, Well,
Speaker 1: I read Daisy in the Six Okay, I thought so,
Speaker 1: and I've um, oh, gosh, you put me on the spot. Here.
Speaker 1: What there's all these books in my I should look
Speaker 1: at my phone. What's in my my phone? Here? Bear
Speaker 1: with me, because there's um I'm reading the love Songs
Speaker 1: of W. E. B. Du Bois. Um. I just recently
Speaker 1: read Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany. It's extraordinary and
Speaker 1: I want to revisit in cold Blood. Um I just
Speaker 1: read I revisited Brideshead, revisited um oh, this is it.
Speaker 1: I went on a deep dive of books that were
Speaker 1: turned into motion pictures that I loved so and I
Speaker 1: went in any even further in a kind of rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of books about teachers inspiring students, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So I recently reread or recently read for the first time,
Speaker 1: To Serve with Love by e Our Braithwait, and it's
Speaker 1: really great the novel because a movie only can show
Speaker 1: so much, you only have an hour and a half
Speaker 1: to tell the story. I revisited Muriel Sparks, Amazing, The
Speaker 1: Prime of Miss Jane Brody. Oh, George Saunders, Lincoln in
Speaker 1: the Bardo. I'm glad I have my books in my phone,
Speaker 1: So there's those. Yeah. Oh, and I recently reread About
Speaker 1: a Boy by Nick hornby Nick hornby the great novelist
Speaker 1: and also lover of music, and had the great fortune
Speaker 1: to meet Nick a few about a month ago, and
Speaker 1: um and get a lot of play lists from him.
Speaker 1: He's he, like me, has an addiction to music. And
Speaker 1: I always say music is the beginning, middle, and end
Speaker 1: of every day, and I think that's true for Nick
Speaker 1: Hornby anyway, I have like ten great playlists from him. Okay,
Speaker 1: one step at a time. You looked at your phone
Speaker 1: for the books you read or reading. Do you read
Speaker 1: digitally or do you read on paper? Well, I have
Speaker 1: to say, at age sixty four, my eyesight isn't what
Speaker 1: it was in my teens, nor my two empties. So um, yes,
Speaker 1: I have taken to reading on you know, e reader
Speaker 1: and I have a kindle, and then I'm obsessive about audiobooks.
Speaker 1: I love to be read too. What can I say?
Speaker 1: Who doesn't? Okay? And a lot of people are readers
Speaker 1: who are sort of you know, inner focused and don't interact,
Speaker 1: have some social anxiety, etc. What's your personality? Well, I
Speaker 1: love connecting. That's why my novel is is kind of
Speaker 1: That's one of the themes of the novel. You know
Speaker 1: where we find ourselves in this planet we call Earth,
Speaker 1: and you know what, somehow, as humans, I just think
Speaker 1: we're meant to commune with each other. I love alone
Speaker 1: time again, disappearing into fictions of all forms, but I
Speaker 1: also crave human connection. And I'm fortunate to have a
Speaker 1: great husband who just did all this tech support for me,
Speaker 1: and two great sons, Jackson and sam Roach, and my
Speaker 1: parents are still with me with us and um my
Speaker 1: brothers and my sisters in arms, the other Bengals, and
Speaker 1: so I feel very fortunate. But yeah, I think I think.
Speaker 1: Though it's solitary to read a novel by yourself in
Speaker 1: your room, I find connection there too. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the book. So all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: decided to start the book about seven eight years ago,
Speaker 1: and you were furious. Furious is the right where be
Speaker 1: really very active? So tell us what went down there?
Speaker 1: I think that's correct. Use, I think that's a good
Speaker 1: way of saying it. I was furiously engaged, furiously writing.
Speaker 1: So what was that like? So I it took me
Speaker 1: a while before I sat down and started the first sentence.
Speaker 1: That is quite different from what the actual first sentence
Speaker 1: now that you read if you buy the book. But
Speaker 1: I was intrigued with a couple of books that I
Speaker 1: had listened to the audio book, and in both cases
Speaker 1: I had read and reread these two novels. One was
Speaker 1: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The other was Rebecca by
Speaker 1: Daphne de Mourier, and I was intrigued with the themes.
Speaker 1: They both have this sort of gothic setting. It's both
Speaker 1: In both cases, the protagonist is a person who feels
Speaker 1: somewhat out of their element in a kind of Gothic setting.
Speaker 1: I set my book in Oxford. The male love interest
Speaker 1: is an Oxford professor. He's nothing like mister Rochester in
Speaker 1: Jane Eyre because he's not twice my Jane's my character
Speaker 1: Jane's age, nor is he rich or arrogant. But I
Speaker 1: felt Rochester, if I was going to use that as inspiration,
Speaker 1: was due for a little bit of an overhaul as
Speaker 1: a character that a character like my Jane start whatever
Speaker 1: fancy being involved with. And in Rebecca, interestingly, the protagonist
Speaker 1: is unnamed. Rebecca is the name of Max de Winter,
Speaker 1: the man that she marries and then moves to to
Speaker 1: what was it Thornfield Hall? I think it was called Yeah, no, Yes,
Speaker 1: I might have mixed up the names of the mansions
Speaker 1: that these women find themselves in, But I just like
Speaker 1: the themes that there are ghosts that haunt these two
Speaker 1: women and sort of threaten whatever it is, their sense
Speaker 1: of trust in their relationships. And you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways love is as much about trust as anything else.
Speaker 1: You know, you take a leap of faith when you
Speaker 1: decide to be with someone in an intimate way, and
Speaker 1: I just think, yeah, I think that those themes resonated
Speaker 1: for me. I'm happy to say that I've been with
Speaker 1: Jay for thirty years, so obviously we trust each other.
Speaker 1: But when when I'm writing fiction, I you know, you're
Speaker 1: a story. Isn't that interesting if there's not some conflict
Speaker 1: or peril or predicament, you know? So I wanted to
Speaker 1: that sort of theme to be one of the things
Speaker 1: that the character is grappling with. Can she trust him?
Speaker 1: Can she trust herself? Tell us more about trusting yourself? Well,
Speaker 1: I think for my character, we find her descending an elevator,
Speaker 1: kind of tarted up in what she thinks is the
Speaker 1: expected costume. Ten years after she wore that costume to
Speaker 1: perform her her song, which was she really only had
Speaker 1: one hit song at a bachelor party. She's at a
Speaker 1: very low point in her life. She's been dumped and
Speaker 1: cheated on. She's years out from when she had this
Speaker 1: hit song. She put out an album following the hit
Speaker 1: song that nobody really cared about. And yeah, she's she's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out her life really and whether her
Speaker 1: making music matters to anyone beside herself besides herself. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I know that I had a
Speaker 1: lot of really great luck and in the eighties, but
Speaker 1: you know, I do relate to that feeling of growing older.
Speaker 1: And I mean there used to be this idea that
Speaker 1: pop stars there are no you can't be a pop
Speaker 1: star in your thirties. Even I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: still true. What do you think, Bob. That's a much
Speaker 1: longer discussion because anything's possible. But by the same token,
Speaker 1: in the Bengals heyday at MTV, everybody knew you if
Speaker 1: you were a star. Everybody knows the Bengals hits. Today,
Speaker 1: a record can be number one and nobody knows it,
Speaker 1: irrelevant of the age of the person. So people can
Speaker 1: be a little older. But it's not like it used
Speaker 1: to be. No, I mean, think how young the Beatles
Speaker 1: were when they started out, Like I think I remember.
Speaker 1: It's something that I haven't really reflected on till recently,
Speaker 1: even even for anyone in show biz. You know, there
Speaker 1: is a sort of period where I noticed that a
Speaker 1: lot of the winners of Best Supporting Actress or Best
Speaker 1: Actress are often like around twenty seven, twenty eight years old.
Speaker 1: I have not done the map. I have not I
Speaker 1: don't have hard facts on this, but yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: interesting and I think maybe I don't know, it's probably
Speaker 1: true for any gender, but I think my character for
Speaker 1: sure feels like at thirty three and with being down
Speaker 1: on her luck in the music business, I feel like
Speaker 1: she's ready to pack it in, like who's going to
Speaker 1: want some thirty thirty something, you know, one hit? Wonder
Speaker 1: like who's going to care? So I kind of I
Speaker 1: was able to write that because even though, as I said,
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for the success that I've had, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I haven't been disappointed in making music that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily find its audience. Wow. Just going back to
Speaker 1: something you said earlier about the Beatles. One of the
Speaker 1: things it's dune me about the Beatles and Jackson Brown
Speaker 1: being another example, they were so wise at a young age.
Speaker 1: Now you listen to those records today and you go,
Speaker 1: how did they know all that? I know that's so true.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Beatles were so young and Jackson Brown
Speaker 1: was so there's so much wisdom and sort of philosophical
Speaker 1: you know, badass road for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: going on in that young man's mind to be able
Speaker 1: to do those early records, it's extraordinary. So you're having
Speaker 1: these thoughts now of your peak and pop dam being
Speaker 1: in the past. Is it something a feeling that's just
Speaker 1: started now or did it start some time in the past. Well,
Speaker 1: I look at myself when I was I can find
Speaker 1: videos and whatnot of myself at age I guess thirty
Speaker 1: one or two, when I was embarking on a solo
Speaker 1: career and my first solo record came out on Columbia,
Speaker 1: and I guess I wasn't too concerned at that age.
Speaker 1: But as the years ticked by, and I was so
Speaker 1: fortunate to make three covers records with Matthew Sweet and
Speaker 1: I and I have a little yeah sometimes I lately
Speaker 1: I've been questioning the idea of like a covers record
Speaker 1: versus a not a record of original songs, because I
Speaker 1: was thinking, like I'm digressing here, sorry, POSI is a
Speaker 1: spice of life, Go forward, Okay, there we go. I
Speaker 1: was realizing that I and you you probably could correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, because you know so much about
Speaker 1: music history. But I don't think Elvis ever wrote a
Speaker 1: single song. And he's Elvis. We know him and love him,
Speaker 1: But do we say, oh, when you pick up an
Speaker 1: Elvis record, do you go, this is such a great
Speaker 1: covers record that Elvis did do I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever heard anybody characterize those records as cover records, Nor
Speaker 1: do I think that Frank Sinatra, not that he's in
Speaker 1: the pop side of things, those were all covers too,
Speaker 1: am I right? Yeah, so there is suddenly, and I
Speaker 1: do feel very proud of the songs that I've written,
Speaker 1: co written almost always, if not always. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the thing about this novel, As they said, maybe
Speaker 1: earlier or not, it's one of the first things I've
Speaker 1: ever done alone, completely alone. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Back to your question, I might have drifted. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you're out and about outside your own neighborhood
Speaker 1: where you're known. Do people recognize you? No, Once in
Speaker 1: a blue moon. Once in a blue moon. What popped
Speaker 1: into my mind was that, I think, because of Instagram
Speaker 1: or something, a woman was at the supermarket and with
Speaker 1: her two little kids, and I think that one of
Speaker 1: the kids recognized me from somehow seeing something. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not recognized. I don't think. No. But in the
Speaker 1: heyday of the Bengal success. You were recognized, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't have a lot of memories of that.
Speaker 1: I think that we kind of when not on stage,
Speaker 1: we were kind of we mostly disappeared under the radar somehow.
Speaker 1: That was not something that happened that much. I don't
Speaker 1: have memories. It was certainly not like what you see
Speaker 1: in the movies with in Beatles movies, with being chased
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It was nothing like that now.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had wonderful fans, and we had a
Speaker 1: fusive fans, but um, yeah, no, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: remember us being unless we were together. I don't that
Speaker 1: that would happen. If we were in a hotel and something,
Speaker 1: some people would recognize us, but often not more often
Speaker 1: than not. Well, is there a sense of loss from
Speaker 1: what you had and the way it was and the
Speaker 1: way it is now? No, I mean I can really
Speaker 1: safely say that was a really intense decade of having
Speaker 1: met the Peterson's in eighty one and decided that very night,
Speaker 1: um that we would be a band. I've always described
Speaker 1: it as we may as well run off that that
Speaker 1: that next day or that evening to Vegas and gotten
Speaker 1: married in an Elvis chapel because it was that fast
Speaker 1: and that kind of impulsive. That's the best word I
Speaker 1: have for it. You know. Obviously, Vicky and Debbie had
Speaker 1: grown up together and they already had been playing in bands.
Speaker 1: My only band experience was in a duo with David Roeback,
Speaker 1: who went on to form Mazzy Star, and that was
Speaker 1: our sound. Our sound was what you know, what he
Speaker 1: ended up doing with Hope sandoval In, but that was
Speaker 1: sort of the vibe of it. And Vicky and Debbie
Speaker 1: were seasoned, you know, high school band kind of thing,
Speaker 1: so they taught me a thing or two. And I
Speaker 1: can still remember. I was living in the garage, the
Speaker 1: converted garage of my parents' house, and they had brought
Speaker 1: microphones and I went up to this foreign thing and
Speaker 1: I went like, I blew on the microphone. They just
Speaker 1: started laughing, like she's so green, she knows nothing, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I really didn't know anything about performing live
Speaker 1: because everything David Rebeck and I did was just make
Speaker 1: recordings in the apartment where we were living in. So
Speaker 1: I was very unseasoned when it came to performing. So
Speaker 1: I soon found out what it was like to Carter
Speaker 1: gear around and hope that anybody showed up at these
Speaker 1: kind of out of the way gigs that we had
Speaker 1: initially in La Okay, if we go back to that heyday,
Speaker 1: you didn't write every song, hit song and the Bengals
Speaker 1: and the but the Bengals only had most of the
Speaker 1: albums relatively successful. So my question is, how's your royalty situation?
Speaker 1: That's so interesting? Um, I don't really think about it
Speaker 1: that much. I assume somebody will tell me. I mean,
Speaker 1: we get a lot of licensing requests, which always makes
Speaker 1: me happy, not because of the money part, um, really
Speaker 1: mostly because they're they're those songs are staying alive, so
Speaker 1: to speak, in when they're placed in movies, and I
Speaker 1: love I love when someone wants to use um one
Speaker 1: of our songs in a movie. So um, that's it's
Speaker 1: more like the idea that the music is still relevant.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is to me, but it always makes
Speaker 1: me smile that, you know, people still want to listen
Speaker 1: to the songs um and or have them as part
Speaker 1: of another work of art, you know, within a movie
Speaker 1: or a television show. So I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Speaker 1: Could you live on the income from the Bengals. Well,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, no, I mean, I don't know, because I've
Speaker 1: had this new career as a novelist, and also Universal
Speaker 1: Pictures bought the books the book rights to my novel
Speaker 1: and employed me to write the screenplay. And I'm happy
Speaker 1: to say that I delivered the screenplay just very recently.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually making in my sixties, actually more money
Speaker 1: than I think I made as a musician. But maybe
Speaker 1: that makes sense. The music business has always been hard
Speaker 1: to figure out. It's a complicate. The way everything works
Speaker 1: in the music business is complicated. I feel slightly ghost
Speaker 1: talking that way though, about how surprising it was that
Speaker 1: I had this other career. But anyway, so let's go
Speaker 1: back to the book. You attempted a novel in the
Speaker 1: last century. What literally inspired you to write this time?
Speaker 1: Just a passion for books, for fiction, and just a
Speaker 1: genuine passion as a reader myself and I had always
Speaker 1: wanted to. And I was sitting there with my kids
Speaker 1: and Jay one day on the heels of a screenplay
Speaker 1: that I had just co written for Warner Brothers, of
Speaker 1: all things, and it looked like it was just going
Speaker 1: to be shelved. And I'd had this wonderful collaboration with
Speaker 1: a guy named Larry Stuckey writing this kind of musical.
Speaker 1: It was a musical movie. And I thought, what now?
Speaker 1: And my kid, my older kid, Jackson, said, Mom, you've
Speaker 1: always wanted to write in a novel. What are you
Speaker 1: waiting for? And I said, what am I waiting for?
Speaker 1: And then he kind of prodded me again. I started
Speaker 1: to craft the story, as I told you, sort of
Speaker 1: the themes and the story and the character might be it.
Speaker 1: Should she be in showbiz? Should she be? It took
Speaker 1: me a while to comerade. I originally thought maybe she'd
Speaker 1: be an actress, and I thought, well, I know music,
Speaker 1: I know what that feels like. I think I could
Speaker 1: imbue the story and the character with with really rich
Speaker 1: conflict and predicament because I've I've been there, done that.
Speaker 1: So and then I just I just He said, about
Speaker 1: a week later, stop talking about your story and just start,
Speaker 1: and he like gave me this edict and I sort
Speaker 1: of said and he said He even went on to
Speaker 1: detail it. He said, Mom, I want you to wake
Speaker 1: up tomorrow morning, open your computer, stare at that bank
Speaker 1: blank page, and just start writing. And I was like done,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. And I did, and I
Speaker 1: sat down. I had no idea. My fingers just automatically typed.
Speaker 1: And the first line was not the first line that
Speaker 1: you see in the in the final novel, but it
Speaker 1: was a first. It was a start. I wrote about
Speaker 1: two pages and I went, Okay, I'm going to force
Speaker 1: myself to read it to my family. I invited my
Speaker 1: even my parents over. I wanted to know that I
Speaker 1: had done it. It was like I planted my flag
Speaker 1: in the sand and they were all and I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to chicken out and I wasn't gonna you know,
Speaker 1: I was going to make good on my promise. And
Speaker 1: that was it. That was the beginning, and I never
Speaker 1: looked back. How old was your son when he implored
Speaker 1: you to do this? Okay, so it was I'm admitting
Speaker 1: how long ago was It was twenty fifteen, so he
Speaker 1: was twenty okay, so an adult. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: having the story before you wrote. To what degree was
Speaker 1: the story fleshed out before you put your fingers to keyboard.
Speaker 1: It wasn't fleshed out much at all. Really, I knew
Speaker 1: I basically because I wrote a first person, narrated story.
Speaker 1: What would happen would be I would almost disappear, I
Speaker 1: would disappear out of myself, even though I was sort
Speaker 1: of the god of her, you know, I was, I
Speaker 1: was puppeting her, but I would just let her go
Speaker 1: in my imagination and Jane start would just start talking.
Speaker 1: And I found that she had a voice, and she
Speaker 1: was sassy, and she was emotional, and she was occasionally unhinged,
Speaker 1: but also a smart young lady, a smart thirty something girl.
Speaker 1: She has tremendous compassion and empathy for other people. She's
Speaker 1: a good person. And that mattered to me that the
Speaker 1: characters that I wanted to fall in love, that they
Speaker 1: though they have many flaws as all of us have,
Speaker 1: that they actually were goodhearted human beings. And I wanted
Speaker 1: her to go through her paces and her struggles, but
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I wanted I hoped
Speaker 1: that she would find love and connection in her life.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of those were important things. And
Speaker 1: all of the characters started to just talk to me.
Speaker 1: I know it was kind of a form of psychosis.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I've never asked other is about it,
Speaker 1: but um, you kind of you kind of just hear
Speaker 1: voices in your head tell that they would, they would
Speaker 1: narrate their thoughts. And also, actually, I'm looking over here
Speaker 1: at my phone. This is my new phone. I had
Speaker 1: an old, older phone when I was writing the book.
Speaker 1: I would just try to bottle what they were saying immediately,
Speaker 1: so I had I would wake up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. I always kept a pen and pad
Speaker 1: by the bed during the day. If my characters start
Speaker 1: talking to me, I would I would. I learned the
Speaker 1: hard way. Don't assume this great thing that they said
Speaker 1: you're going to remember. I would just capture it on
Speaker 1: my phone. I would text myself or email myself at
Speaker 1: thousands of texts and emails to myself. Okay, they're different
Speaker 1: styles of writing. Some people plot it all out and
Speaker 1: then lay it all down. One of the things I
Speaker 1: love about writing is you never know where you're really
Speaker 1: going in your surprise, did you learn things without even
Speaker 1: realizing and you look at the paper, what was your
Speaker 1: experience it was? It was kind of similar to that. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't have it all plotted out, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if I probably should have. But even in the eleventh hour,
Speaker 1: I remember I was sitting there about to do send
Speaker 1: my editor and this is cut to years later, Little
Speaker 1: Brown and we you know, wants the book. I take
Speaker 1: their offer. I have finally an actual editor. I commune
Speaker 1: with her. Revisions happen. But at the eleventh hour I
Speaker 1: was I had a sudden thought, well, actually, Jay, Jay
Speaker 1: took a look at at a little thing that I did.
Speaker 1: I asked for him to clap eyes on something in
Speaker 1: the in the eleventh hour, and he said, it's repetitive.
Speaker 1: He gave me the golden nugget and I didn't really
Speaker 1: want to hear it. I mean, I was due to
Speaker 1: hit send on this draft. It was really right, like
Speaker 1: the final thing. And apart from catching typos or something
Speaker 1: like that that they sometimes they have people that because
Speaker 1: you read these sentences over and over again, you stop,
Speaker 1: you stop seeing a typo. But I sat there and
Speaker 1: I did this revision and my hands were kind of shaking,
Speaker 1: and it was like an emotional part of the book,
Speaker 1: and I knew that it was working because I was
Speaker 1: crying a little bit for Jane. I was crying tears
Speaker 1: of anxiety and tears of joy all mixed together. And
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, yeah, if I whenever I'm triggered like that,
Speaker 1: it means something, and then I just hit send and
Speaker 1: then that's what That's what ended up being in that spot.
Speaker 1: It was really eleventh hour. Okay, So the first draft
Speaker 1: took I mean yeah, first run a completion to Cowlong
Speaker 1: several years, several years. I didn't. I had one friend.
Speaker 1: It was very solitary. But I had my best childhood
Speaker 1: friend who was going through some hard times and I
Speaker 1: had this behemoth draft. It's like this thick. It had
Speaker 1: a whole section that's not in the book anymore. But
Speaker 1: she is a lover of fiction and it was something
Speaker 1: we had shared as kids. But we were always talking
Speaker 1: about what books were reading. And she she's an aspiring
Speaker 1: writer herself. She would schlep over to my house and
Speaker 1: she just wanted me to read to her. So I said,
Speaker 1: well you, I'll read you my book. She's I said,
Speaker 1: it's not finished, it's this is the current draft. Said go,
Speaker 1: and she would come over and I would read it
Speaker 1: aloud and act out the parts as best that I could,
Speaker 1: and she was It was like a It was like
Speaker 1: a healing thing for her to just to be read to.
Speaker 1: And I needed to say the words out loud. I
Speaker 1: don't know if novelists all do this, but it's important
Speaker 1: to say the words out loud to see if the
Speaker 1: dialogue feels right and to see if it makes sense.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if everybody does it, but the
Speaker 1: fact that my friend wanted me to read her my
Speaker 1: early draft, I think I learned a lot from that, actually,
Speaker 1: And what do you think you learned? Well? I learned
Speaker 1: that the story was affecting her, which was very important.
Speaker 1: I learned that this giant section of the book needed
Speaker 1: not to be in the book, that it was just
Speaker 1: something that I had written as an exploration. And I
Speaker 1: love it and I want to I want to rescue
Speaker 1: it and resurrect it for my next book because it
Speaker 1: was really fun. One of the characters, which is the
Speaker 1: character of Alfie, figured prominently in it. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: learned a heck of a lot. The act of reading
Speaker 1: aloud was useful, and I ended up reading my audio
Speaker 1: book myself. I knew that I had to. I knew
Speaker 1: that no one else would understand the inflection, and quite
Speaker 1: as I told you, I hear the voices in my head,
Speaker 1: so I did my best to read them as I
Speaker 1: heard them. Except then I found this, I found myself
Speaker 1: at this moment where it's like, I'm not good at
Speaker 1: British accents and there's like five different kind of British
Speaker 1: accents in my book. And the Jane Eyre that had
Speaker 1: blown my mind was read by a wonderful British actress
Speaker 1: named Juliette Stevenson. So so many of my dreams came true,
Speaker 1: like in this process because I started to I had
Speaker 1: listened to Juliet read to me some of my favorite books,
Speaker 1: not just Jane Eyre, but there's a book by Sarah Waters,
Speaker 1: a wonderful Irish novelist called The Paying Guests. And I
Speaker 1: had studied certain books, certain books while while I was reading.
Speaker 1: I want to say, whilst I was reading, I would
Speaker 1: reread certain books over and over and over again, and
Speaker 1: they just were like it was like a tutorial for me.
Speaker 1: And so I reached out to every single person I
Speaker 1: knew who might know Juliet Stevenson to see if she
Speaker 1: would do the British voices in my audiobook. And guess what,
Speaker 1: I just checked audible dot com wait wait for it,
Speaker 1: and she's listed. She did it. I found out that
Speaker 1: she did it, but also to see it, I can't
Speaker 1: find it on here, but to see it on listed
Speaker 1: on my Audible for my book narrated by Susannah Hoffs
Speaker 1: and Juliet Stevenson. Wow, dream come true. M. We live
Speaker 1: in a society where most people can't even complete things.
Speaker 1: How did you keep yourself going over a two year process?
Speaker 1: Well it was actually more than two years, but yes,
Speaker 1: how did I keep myself going? Just the passion to
Speaker 1: do it? It was escapist for me, the writing you
Speaker 1: mean in particular, yes, yeah, um, wanting to hang out
Speaker 1: with my characters. M. Music really really really triggered all
Speaker 1: these It was like the juice. It was like knocking
Speaker 1: back a whiskey if that's your thing. Like I would
Speaker 1: just get like excited music. And that's why I posted
Speaker 1: the playlist of the book on my Spotify Spotify people
Speaker 1: go check it out, but also, um, and check out
Speaker 1: my new music on Spotify. Sorry, it's so hard to
Speaker 1: connect with the music side of things right now, but UM,
Speaker 1: I hope that that will happen. But yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: looking at my my Spotify posted the playlist on there
Speaker 1: and most of the chapter headings, not all, but when
Speaker 1: whenever I could use a song title as a chop
Speaker 1: as a chapter heading I did for music Lovers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you finished the book? To what degree did you rewrite?
Speaker 1: Some people the original is just you know, code hangers
Speaker 1: where they hang everything. I'm the opposite. It's pretty close
Speaker 1: to done when I finished the first draft. What was
Speaker 1: your experience, Well, there were there were so many drafts
Speaker 1: that leading up to the to the draft that my
Speaker 1: my best friend who's a novelist, Margaret, stole Pride from
Speaker 1: my reticent grasp I guess, I would say. And she
Speaker 1: read it very quickly and said, I don't know, said
Speaker 1: a lot of really nice things and that she was
Speaker 1: extremely moved by it, and she's she insisted I get
Speaker 1: it to a literary agent asap. And I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: do you have someone in mind? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: I think my agent, Sarah Burn would love it. And
Speaker 1: so on my sixtieth birthday, when it was pissing down
Speaker 1: rain in La, I was due to have lunch with
Speaker 1: Belinda Carlyle, who I love from the Go Gos, a
Speaker 1: Bengal and a Go Go had planned lunch and a
Speaker 1: kind of a birthday lunch for me, and I asked
Speaker 1: my son, Jackson, the same kid of mine that insisted
Speaker 1: I write the novel and all that. He said, Mom,
Speaker 1: I'll drive it to FedEx. I was like, that's the
Speaker 1: best birthday present a gal ever got. Thank you. And
Speaker 1: so Sarah got the manuscript the next day. We did
Speaker 1: an overnight. She read it very quickly. I was at
Speaker 1: a friend's house. This is pre pandemic, and he had
Speaker 1: a little movie night thing on Sundays. I tried to
Speaker 1: put it out of my mind that Sarah was reading
Speaker 1: my manuscript. And I just sat down with everybody and
Speaker 1: they just put on the movie that we were watching.
Speaker 1: When I had the stink or they were just about
Speaker 1: to turn on the movie, the instinct, Well, maybe I
Speaker 1: should check my email, And there was the email from
Speaker 1: Sarah saying, I'm actually near you in La. I flew
Speaker 1: in from New York. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow?
Speaker 1: And I was actually I couldn't because I was recording
Speaker 1: my Bright Lights record. At that point I had started
Speaker 1: piecing together recording session. Sorry, this is a rambling story,
Speaker 1: Keep going, keep going. But I couldn't meet with her.
Speaker 1: So she said, I said, but I'm due to come
Speaker 1: to New York in a couple of weeks, and she said, great,
Speaker 1: let's meet at my office. So Jay and I had
Speaker 1: planned this trip to New York. I get there. I
Speaker 1: actually wore a suit and I walked from where we
Speaker 1: were staying in Midtown to Sarah Burne's office and I
Speaker 1: kind of cried a little bit on the way. There
Speaker 1: was very cold, because I thought, I'm really, this is
Speaker 1: really happening. I'm meeting a literary agent in New York
Speaker 1: City at her office. And then she took me out
Speaker 1: to lunch. I met the other her cohort at the office.
Speaker 1: They were amazing. One of them, David Gerner, it's the
Speaker 1: Gern Company, said I love Hero Takes a Fall. I
Speaker 1: was like, check, you had me at Hello. It was like,
Speaker 1: what you know that song? Nobody mentions that song? And
Speaker 1: then um, Sarah at Burns and I went to the
Speaker 1: restaurant where the literary where the book people did the
Speaker 1: book community gather their watering hole. I was dying. I
Speaker 1: was just dying. It was so awesome. And we talked
Speaker 1: about the book and she told me which things she
Speaker 1: loved the most and which things that you know, just
Speaker 1: we just started the conversation and it just went from there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then eventually we you know, we we got a
Speaker 1: Little Brown picked up the book anyway, So did she
Speaker 1: say at that first meeting she wanted to do it? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she wanted to meet me. Even before that,
Speaker 1: she wanted to she was going to stay in La
Speaker 1: maybe another day because she's based in New York to
Speaker 1: meet me. So she was very enthusiastic right from the
Speaker 1: get go. And who knew my friend Margaret. I mean
Speaker 1: she just I was so afraid to share the book
Speaker 1: with anybody. It was such a it was such a
Speaker 1: blissful journey solo. But I just wasn't. I just kept
Speaker 1: wanting to make it better and better, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I was a little resistant. And how
Speaker 1: did it end up at Little Brown? Well, so Sarah
Speaker 1: then finally came the day where I worked on some revisions.
Speaker 1: And Sarah, because she had edited The Lovely Bones and
Speaker 1: many other books and came from editing, had just beautiful
Speaker 1: ideas and suggestions. At one point, my book was all
Speaker 1: in present tense, for example, and there was a moment
Speaker 1: where she suggested trying past tense and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, and I did. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of learning on it because my friend Margaret's and novelists.
Speaker 1: She read the book a lot of times for me, Sarah,
Speaker 1: I just had a few good compadres early on after
Speaker 1: years of you know, hammering away at it. So then
Speaker 1: it came time, She's like, we're ready. I sent in
Speaker 1: a draft. I worked really hard on it. It was
Speaker 1: like I would send these drafts at like eleven fifty
Speaker 1: nine PM when they were due for her to wake
Speaker 1: up to the draft, you know that she needed from me.
Speaker 1: And so she said, we're ready, and she's like, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out to publishing houses and she said,
Speaker 1: don't be alarmed if we don't hear anything for it.
Speaker 1: They take they need to read it and they sometimes
Speaker 1: take a little bit of time people traveling. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna be so calm. I'm taking this advice
Speaker 1: from you. And like about Thursday or Wednesday of that
Speaker 1: day of that week, while I was waiting, I couldn't
Speaker 1: help it, and I called Sarah and I said, I'm
Speaker 1: just calling, just calling. I hope everything's okay. I know
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be tuning all of this out, but
Speaker 1: I am admitting to you that I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: pacing around aimlessly in my house, wringing my hands and UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: just let me know if you hear anything. And then
Speaker 1: sure enough, the beginning of the following week, she was
Speaker 1: starting to get the reads were in and she was
Speaker 1: starting to get a lot of interest. And then there
Speaker 1: was a Right around that time, I got a text
Speaker 1: from her saying that the incredible editor Judy Klain, who
Speaker 1: had edited I mean so many books Julie and Julia, well,
Speaker 1: we could look it up. I'm you know, where'd you
Speaker 1: go Bernadette for examp couple incredible books. She was reading
Speaker 1: it and my friend Margaret and I were having coffee,
Speaker 1: and Margaret started crying. She goes, do you know about
Speaker 1: Judy Claine? I said, I know nothing. I know the
Speaker 1: music business, I don't know the book business. I don't
Speaker 1: know who the people at the book business are. And
Speaker 1: she said she was so happy for me that Judy
Speaker 1: was reading them and really enjoying the book. So it
Speaker 1: turned out that a wonderful young editor, Helen O'Hare at
Speaker 1: Judy shared the book with Helen and said, I think
Speaker 1: this might be up your alley, and then Helen read it,
Speaker 1: and then things were likely went really really fast. In fact,
Speaker 1: they made me a preemptive offer, and it actually had
Speaker 1: a ticking clock on it, and I just Sarah Burns
Speaker 1: happened to fly in from New York that day and
Speaker 1: we just I had to come to a decision before
Speaker 1: it was like five pm LA time, eight pm New
Speaker 1: York time. I had to say yes or no. And
Speaker 1: I said yes, okay? And how long from that verbalization
Speaker 1: of yes until the book came out? So that would
Speaker 1: have been May of twenty twenty one, So we were
Speaker 1: right in the midst of the pandemic. And so now
Speaker 1: the book is coming out, and I was told that
Speaker 1: it would take way longer than one expects. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So they got the book around that time. So May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one. I did revisions, but they already
Speaker 1: knew bye bye bye. A year later it had been
Speaker 1: any revisions that had done had apart from odd type
Speaker 1: post that snuck their way through. Um, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much done. But then there's that build up to pub date,
Speaker 1: you know, and they and they said pub date would
Speaker 1: be uh, it's just coming up April fourth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: There's a long journey for books. There's and there's kind
Speaker 1: of the way that they set it up. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's good because it gave me a chance to um
Speaker 1: read the audio book and a lot of other things.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of steps in the pre promotion.
Speaker 1: There was quite a bit of pre promotion, some of
Speaker 1: it in house with Little Brown. Okay, can you tell
Speaker 1: us more about external pre promotion and how the whole
Speaker 1: process of promotion uh looks visa v. The music business? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, then then I met the wonderful Nicole Dewey
Speaker 1: and Carla who you know that because it was Carla
Speaker 1: I had met on the Bright Lights record through my
Speaker 1: managers Russell Carter and Kathy Lyons and Adrian Carter that
Speaker 1: the team there at ar camp, and so I already
Speaker 1: was just so happy to be to be united with
Speaker 1: Carla because she has such a great love of music.
Speaker 1: And actually I insisted she read She's I don't know
Speaker 1: if Carlo's listening her. If she's not, she'll hear this
Speaker 1: on the podcast if it stays in. But I insisted
Speaker 1: that Carla read John Updike's Couples, which is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite books. So even even when I first Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm digressing, I'm all over the place here, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so what was your question again, sorry, any more coffee.
Speaker 1: It was precisely what you wanted to know. The timeline.
Speaker 1: Two things. The process of pre promotion, I know, like
Speaker 1: if you go on Amazon and these other places, books
Speaker 1: are sent to people pre publishing day, trying to build
Speaker 1: a buzz. Oh yeah. And I was also interested in
Speaker 1: the process your experience relatives your experience of promoting music. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the process with books is that they send out galleys,
Speaker 1: so they're not the final, final, final, final version. But
Speaker 1: um and and there's different aspects to it, like there's
Speaker 1: a there's a tradition with books to get blurbs from blurbs,
Speaker 1: quotes from other novelists. So um, that started to happen,
Speaker 1: and there was some element of having to write letters
Speaker 1: to people. Um and and then I was so happy
Speaker 1: when um Tom Perata, who I worship his novels, and
Speaker 1: had the great fortune to meet him years back when
Speaker 1: I was on the road with Matthew Sweet doing our
Speaker 1: covers records, and um he came to He and his
Speaker 1: wife Mary came to a few of the shows and
Speaker 1: and so Tom read my manus script. At that point,
Speaker 1: it was still the printed out pages nothing fancy or
Speaker 1: bound early reading copy or anything like that. Not before
Speaker 1: the galleys. He read a version on a coast to
Speaker 1: coast flight from LA to New York, which is really
Speaker 1: fitting for the story. If you've read the book, there's
Speaker 1: a plane scene that factors really heavily in it, and
Speaker 1: he really loved it, and he stepped right up and
Speaker 1: wrote the most incredible blurb. I also shared it with
Speaker 1: other novelist friends like Helen Fielding, who's written the wonderful
Speaker 1: Bridget Jones books and is really a wonderful friend and writer.
Speaker 1: And then then I would reach out to other people,
Speaker 1: and Little Brown had some people that they thought would
Speaker 1: would be interested in the book as well who's stepped
Speaker 1: up and took the time to read it and to
Speaker 1: you know, put a little stamp of endorsement with a
Speaker 1: blurb of what they liked about it. So there was that.
Speaker 1: It was a busy time in the beginning of doing
Speaker 1: interviews and starting to think about coming out of my
Speaker 1: my hell my not my hell my, my whole, my
Speaker 1: cloistered life, pandemic life, being just sitting in a little
Speaker 1: room writing all the time, to come out and be
Speaker 1: more part of engaging with the outside world with getting
Speaker 1: feedback and so on. Okay, mentioned Tom Parada. Did you
Speaker 1: ever read his book to Wishbones? Oh? Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: I just did a piece for the I just did
Speaker 1: a by the book for the New York Times, which
Speaker 1: is a running piece where they talked to novelists and
Speaker 1: about you know, they post a set of questions, and um,
Speaker 1: there was one of the questions I'm paraphrasing here about
Speaker 1: what books or what authors who write about music? Um,
Speaker 1: do you love and and and the Wishbones was? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I've read every every Tom Parata book, but
Speaker 1: I really loved reading The Wishbones because anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: started a band, you know, understands that story. Okay, how
Speaker 1: did the book end up at Universal? Okay? So um.
Speaker 1: Early on in the process, Sarah Burns connected me with
Speaker 1: someone who happened to be a friend. And she didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Sylvie rabina who's who reps Tom Parata. As
Speaker 1: it happens, she's their agent. And I went to high
Speaker 1: school with Sylvie Rabineau's husband, Steve Rabinou. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think my first boy crush was on Steve, and the
Speaker 1: first time I ever went on a date with anybody.
Speaker 1: I was very late. Bloomer was with Steve and we
Speaker 1: went to I think it was Alice's restaurant in Westwood.
Speaker 1: It was, it was, it was. So it's so funny
Speaker 1: that I've known him all these years and I have
Speaker 1: this sort of awkward first date story. But so Sylvie
Speaker 1: read read a draft of the book and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to rep this for a movie adaptation, a
Speaker 1: film adaptation. So early on there was this idea of
Speaker 1: a film adaptation, which made sense to me because it
Speaker 1: was really like writing the book was like watching the
Speaker 1: movie of the book. It was just an inside my
Speaker 1: brain is like a screen would come down and I'd
Speaker 1: see the characters and then I'd just like write what
Speaker 1: they were saying and where they were and what their
Speaker 1: expressions were, etc. So it did make sense to me,
Speaker 1: and it was like deep a deep down dream beyond
Speaker 1: writing the novel that there would be a film adaptation
Speaker 1: of it, because I mean, especially after all the years
Speaker 1: writing writing screenplays, co writing screenplays with people, but wondering
Speaker 1: if anything would ever happen. So yeah, So now then
Speaker 1: Liza Chasin and Bruno Pop and Drea teamed up their
Speaker 1: incredible movie producers, women that I've known through Jay. And
Speaker 1: then um, I started to do a bunch of zooms.
Speaker 1: It was still all zooms, as it still is to
Speaker 1: some extent, and not not in person meetings, and I
Speaker 1: met with all kinds of streaming you know, Netflix, different,
Speaker 1: I don't want to name all the names, but and
Speaker 1: then then, um, one day I got my list of
Speaker 1: who I was zooming with and it was Eric Buyers
Speaker 1: at Universal. Jay walked in the door and he said,
Speaker 1: I said, Jay, guess who I'm zooming with today Universal Pictures,
Speaker 1: and it's Eric Buyers. And he just stopped in his
Speaker 1: tracks and he said, Eric Buyers and Universal, those those
Speaker 1: are my favorite that that is, those are my favorites.
Speaker 1: You know that Eric is my favorite executive in all
Speaker 1: of Hollywood. I probably shouldn't say these things because I'm
Speaker 1: sure he loves other ones too, but he just and
Speaker 1: then he said something like, wait, Eric Buyers read your book,
Speaker 1: said apparently, And then I zoomed with him and Liza
Speaker 1: and Bruna and it was just again it was like
Speaker 1: little Brown. They just were like, boom, We're in. So,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's like I met Janna blind date.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was that kind of thing. I'd just been
Speaker 1: lucky that way. When the chemistry's there, it's just as there. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell me about being a late bloomer. A late bloomer,
Speaker 1: Oh you mean in love? Yes, Okay, Well I was
Speaker 1: because I don't know, I was one of those kids
Speaker 1: who just was a late bloomer. I just, you know,
Speaker 1: right when everybody else was turning into like sex goddesses
Speaker 1: in high school, I still was like sneaking in on
Speaker 1: the kids tickets at the movie theaters. Remember the kids
Speaker 1: tickets of course, So you know, I mean it's I
Speaker 1: was surprised when the Bengals thing happened that I somehow
Speaker 1: cast off my like the girl on the schoolyard who
Speaker 1: looked like she was in a couple grades back, you know,
Speaker 1: like not because of her intelligence, but because she just
Speaker 1: looked really tiny. Um, I'm a small Jewish woman. What
Speaker 1: could I say? Not that being Judaish has anything to
Speaker 1: do with it, But my identity was not. I was
Speaker 1: not like if you go to school, high school at
Speaker 1: Pali High, it's like fast Times at Ridgemont High. Like
Speaker 1: there's the cool kids and then there's like the bookish kids,
Speaker 1: or like the music drama kids that are in this
Speaker 1: little subset. I was in the music drama kids, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I wasn't a cool kid. I wasn't a
Speaker 1: surfer girl. That's that's what it was back then. So
Speaker 1: what was your experience in college? Well, that just broke
Speaker 1: open all the doors, didn't it. I mean, I go
Speaker 1: up to UC Berkeley, and I flew up there by myself.
Speaker 1: There it's the seventies. Nobody's parents came and unpacked their
Speaker 1: betting for them. It was like, here's your plane ticket.
Speaker 1: I flew up, I land in Oakland, I get off
Speaker 1: the thing. I have this giant Duffel bag. I get
Speaker 1: off the plane and I get to take the bus
Speaker 1: to Berkeley, and I'm literally on Telegraph Avenue. Have there's
Speaker 1: no iPhones, there's no map Quest, there's no you know.
Speaker 1: I just dragged this Duffel bag towards the dorm and
Speaker 1: I'm like immediately in love with Berkeley. I'm like the
Speaker 1: seventies hippie chicken me was going crazy. All these bookstores,
Speaker 1: all these cool coffee houses. But I am am dragging
Speaker 1: this thing that was too heavy. And suddenly these two
Speaker 1: guys come over and say, can we help you with that,
Speaker 1: and I'm like looking over my shoulder, like you mean me,
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, yeah, you're struggling with that duffel bag.
Speaker 1: And I thought, they don't know me. They don't know that.
Speaker 1: They don't know the me I think of myself from
Speaker 1: high school. They don't know that. So I went, oh, why, yes,
Speaker 1: you can help me, and they dried. They took my
Speaker 1: bag into the dorm and helped me, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I had I can start, I can start fresh. Yeah
Speaker 1: it was weird, and did you continue down that path
Speaker 1: of being a different person, Well, it wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: an invitation to be this other person and to realize
Speaker 1: that the slate was blank and I could, yeah, I
Speaker 1: could start this chapter, like really turned the page and
Speaker 1: start this new chapter. And you know, Berkeley was so bohemian,
Speaker 1: and you know, it wasn't like my high school was
Speaker 1: one of those sort of giant kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: high school was hard. Yeah I did. Let's just say
Speaker 1: that it was the beginning of a brand new chapter.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to say a new me, but
Speaker 1: a new confidence in being me. That's one way to
Speaker 1: put it. And tell me the circumstances of the blind
Speaker 1: date with Jay oh Okay cut through later later, later, later.
Speaker 1: It was November twenty second, nineteen ninety one. I had
Speaker 1: been yet again working on a creative writing project with
Speaker 1: my boyfriend at the time, Donovan Leech, who was the
Speaker 1: son of or my ex boyfriend. Sorry, of course I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be going on. We had already broken up, but
Speaker 1: we were still friends and still are. So Donovan leached
Speaker 1: the son of the singer Donovan, and a guy named
Speaker 1: Mark Stern, and I don't remember how I was connected
Speaker 1: to Mark, but we were writing sort of a twenty something,
Speaker 1: like a melrose Place thing before Melrose Place. It was
Speaker 1: a kind of a take on the series thirty something
Speaker 1: that I loved. Edswick and Marshall Herskovitz, who I got
Speaker 1: to know over the years too, had written it. And anyway,
Speaker 1: Mark Stern, I said, who, who can you invite me
Speaker 1: to a party? I'm single, I don't know how to date.
Speaker 1: This is before apps anyway, not that I would have
Speaker 1: used apps maybe, I don't know. That wasn't something that
Speaker 1: was available to people then. It was more like word
Speaker 1: of mouth. And he said, well, I know this film
Speaker 1: professor at USC who has written some stuff at our company.
Speaker 1: He's a screenwriter, but his sort of day job is
Speaker 1: he teaches at USC and I went, film person, film professor,
Speaker 1: not rock star or not I mean, not person from
Speaker 1: the music business, not person exactly. Not an actor or
Speaker 1: not a sorry i'm babbling. Not an actor, not a musician.
Speaker 1: This sounds good because I like academics, and I like academias.
Speaker 1: So I get. I'm told where the appointed restaurant is
Speaker 1: and what time to be there, and I show up.
Speaker 1: I go up to the host as she said, oh,
Speaker 1: because it was meant to be a dinner party, let
Speaker 1: me just put it that way. I'm sorry, a more coffee.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a one on one date. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go on a one on one date. I wanted
Speaker 1: to just be invited to it, like a dinner party
Speaker 1: of some sort, because I didn't want the pressure of
Speaker 1: it a single date. So I she said, oh, the
Speaker 1: first guest is here, and she points just as Jay
Speaker 1: is sitting at the bar and the chairs wheels around,
Speaker 1: and I like, look at him for one second, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought this, but I thought
Speaker 1: he looks kind and he looks trustworthy. Ding ding to
Speaker 1: both those boxes. It was like, those are two qualities
Speaker 1: that I just really want in a person. So then
Speaker 1: he walks me with the hostess, walks us to the table.
Speaker 1: Were the first ones there, and suddenly I feel this
Speaker 1: strange feeling of someone helping me with my jacket, and
Speaker 1: even though this is nineteen ninety one, I'm thinking, wait,
Speaker 1: what's happening. He's such a gentleman. I not that I
Speaker 1: cared about those kind of old school manners, but like
Speaker 1: it was, it was just kind of notable in that
Speaker 1: moment that he was helping me take off my jacket
Speaker 1: and he pulled out my chair. I was like, who
Speaker 1: the hell is this a person? And then we proceeded.
Speaker 1: The other people showed up, except none of the three
Speaker 1: other women who were supposed to be there for this
Speaker 1: so called dinner party showed up. Mark Stern's wife was
Speaker 1: not you know, she was under the weather, had a
Speaker 1: cold or something. And the two other women who were
Speaker 1: supposed to come to the party didn't show, so it
Speaker 1: was just me, Mark Stern, the host, and bachelor number one,
Speaker 1: two and three, And so I was like, okay, but
Speaker 1: I really only had eyes for Jay. I liked him immediately,
Speaker 1: not because of the especially the polite things. Those just
Speaker 1: struck me and stayed with me all these years. But
Speaker 1: because we had such a good conversation, and I loved
Speaker 1: that he was, you know, a screenwriter, and that he
Speaker 1: loved movies as much as I did and was obsessed
Speaker 1: with movies and stories. And at one point we shared
Speaker 1: where we went to college and when he went to Stanford.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why. My parents went to Ivy
Speaker 1: League schools, and so it was always a big thing
Speaker 1: going to college in my family. My brother went to
Speaker 1: Yale Um. And so when he said that he went
Speaker 1: to Stanford, it was like the guy at the at
Speaker 1: the fair who goes tries to hit the thing went.
Speaker 1: There was a little ding. I thought, Oh, I love this.
Speaker 1: He's kind of you know, he's into academics, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I kind of for him.
Speaker 1: You fell for him? Was he instantly into you? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. No, I don't think he was a
Speaker 1: good question, Bob. I don't think he. I think he thought,
Speaker 1: well that was interesting, she's nice. We had a great,
Speaker 1: great conversation. But all I know is that, um, how
Speaker 1: did I get his number? Let's see, I might have
Speaker 1: given him my number. I was. I was the rockman
Speaker 1: roll Chick at that time. I guess I think I
Speaker 1: gave him my number. And then I got in my car,
Speaker 1: which at the time had the hard wired phone in it,
Speaker 1: you know, not there were no cell phones, I don't
Speaker 1: think back in ninety one, and I called my mom.
Speaker 1: This is very telling, and I said, Mom, I don't
Speaker 1: know why I feel this way that I just think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've met somebody that I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think this is might work here. And so I was right.
Speaker 1: Jay called initially it was right around Thanksgiving, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to visit my parents in Albuquerque, but you know,
Speaker 1: let's talk again. And then then he dropped off the
Speaker 1: face of the earth. He just finally. I paced around
Speaker 1: for a while and I called Mark Stern and said,
Speaker 1: what's the deal, because he hasn't called you yet. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give him a nudge. So he gave
Speaker 1: him a nudge and then and then we finally went
Speaker 1: to see a movie together, and then we went to
Speaker 1: see another movie together. And weirdly, the two movies that
Speaker 1: we saw were both very um One was at the
Speaker 1: Black Robe, so it was about a missionary going to
Speaker 1: somewhere that I can't remember. We'd have to look this up,
Speaker 1: and it was all this sort of like I didn't
Speaker 1: know the content. It was. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: like sexy content in these two movies about missionaries going
Speaker 1: to places. The other one I think was called at
Speaker 1: Play at the Field of the You know, I'll send
Speaker 1: you the names of these movies. I can't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to get it wrong. Okay. Had there been any
Speaker 1: long term romances before Jay Um? Yeah, there was. There
Speaker 1: was a long term romance in the Paisley Underground with
Speaker 1: Louis Gutierrez who was in the band. Um. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was that, and and um, let me think back, there
Speaker 1: was quite a long mace with Lewis, like starting in
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty two or three when we when we
Speaker 1: when that scene was really happening. And then after that
Speaker 1: there was a long along romance with Donovan Leech, the
Speaker 1: son of Donovan, And prior to that, I'd had a
Speaker 1: relationship with David Roebeck. They were all they're all musicians.
Speaker 1: That's right now that they're doing the math on that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that maybe that and no no offense to any of
Speaker 1: the musicians, but maybe that's why maybe that collective amount
Speaker 1: of relationships there um added up to me thinking maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not a musician. I don't know. But also, um,
Speaker 1: there were a few actors and I and yeah, there
Speaker 1: are actors and musicians up until Jay. What was it
Speaker 1: like being famous and on the road as a woman,
Speaker 1: both in terms of romance and me too? Stuff? Ah,
Speaker 1: interesting and say it again on the road? Okay? You
Speaker 1: know in that era, certainly pre cell phone, one of
Speaker 1: the reason musicians wanted to become musicians, to be famous
Speaker 1: is to experience the Shenanigans of the road. What was
Speaker 1: it like being a woman and in your case it
Speaker 1: was a band of women as opposed to some other
Speaker 1: acts there was a female front person. And then right, well, um,
Speaker 1: I had mostly good experiences unless I blocked things out.
Speaker 1: I seem to always be or most of the time
Speaker 1: I was involved in a relationship. I'm going way back here.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've always kind of had my wits
Speaker 1: about me, you know, in a sense, if that expression
Speaker 1: is the right one, because I felt quite vulnerable just
Speaker 1: due to my stature, physical stature. I've always had my
Speaker 1: eye out for anything that felt like ding ding ding, danger,
Speaker 1: approaching so I think that I got through that period
Speaker 1: pretty well. I skated through. But I do feel like
Speaker 1: as a female in an all girl band, I did
Speaker 1: feel a sense that, say, as an example, walking into
Speaker 1: a record company and having a lineup of male executives
Speaker 1: and suits looking at you. Um I, you know, of course,
Speaker 1: I felt like, oh god, you know, is this am
Speaker 1: I being judged? Am I? Am? I? Is there some
Speaker 1: imperative for me to be to look to dress the
Speaker 1: part of a sexy rock star? Or you know I
Speaker 1: I you know, I still grapple with that, you know,
Speaker 1: even as we age too. It's like it's it's there's
Speaker 1: an aspect of being in the in the limelight, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, or um, a performer where there's
Speaker 1: a natural aspect where the sexuality is part of it.
Speaker 1: Let's just face it. It's part of rock and roll
Speaker 1: for both for all sexes, you know, for all genders
Speaker 1: and all there's just rock and roll is most often
Speaker 1: imbued with sex and sexuality. So it's it makes it
Speaker 1: very It's very complex, Bob, That's what I think. It's
Speaker 1: a complex thing. But I do think that there's a parallel.
Speaker 1: In my book, I was able to kind of recall
Speaker 1: that feeling of like I've got to put on I've
Speaker 1: got to become her. I've got to I've got to
Speaker 1: be someone who's confident and who can tap into the
Speaker 1: natural sexuality that's sort of vibrating under the surface. That
Speaker 1: that's part of what this music is about. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a part of making music and performing music.
Speaker 1: I can be honest with you. It's it definitely, and
Speaker 1: that's why I love it. I mean, who doesn't love
Speaker 1: being lost in that feeling. Let's just go back a
Speaker 1: second to Jay. You reference being a nice Jewish girl earlier,
Speaker 1: and Jay was Jewish according to the information online. Whatever
Speaker 1: that's worth it. He converted? Can you tell us all
Speaker 1: about that? Yes, he did, He did ultimately convert. I
Speaker 1: am the granddaughter of a rabbi who's no longer with us,
Speaker 1: But my dream was to be married by my grandpa
Speaker 1: and my uncle, who are both rabbis on the Simon's
Speaker 1: side of my family, and in order for that to
Speaker 1: really happen, Jay was totally fine and was happy to
Speaker 1: It was a very easy conversion. It was made easy
Speaker 1: by the fact that my mother could teach him a
Speaker 1: few things. He didn't have to go through months of lessons,
Speaker 1: and he learned just what he needed to learn. And
Speaker 1: my grandpa, Ralph Simon also gave Jason tutorials and it
Speaker 1: was a very quick and easy. Becoming Jewish was not
Speaker 1: a big thing. It was the family made it very
Speaker 1: easy for him, and it meant it meant a lot
Speaker 1: to me. I get a little chair choked up to
Speaker 1: thinking back on my grandpa marrying me and my uncle.
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful thing. And to what degree were
Speaker 1: you observed? Did your kids have bar mitzvahs, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: not particularly observant. Mostly just for me, it's always been
Speaker 1: part of my identity, my jewishness. The boys didn't really have.
Speaker 1: I had a bat mitzvah in Israel. My older brother
Speaker 1: John is only a year older. So we went in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, in nineteen seventy four, but I think
Speaker 1: my brother would have been, Yeah, he would have been.
Speaker 1: I think it was seventy two. We just went to
Speaker 1: the whaling wall. He read out a little phonetically spelled
Speaker 1: out a prayer and then at the whaling wall and
Speaker 1: we all watched that, and nobody was sitting there with
Speaker 1: iPhones filming it. By the way, it was like the
Speaker 1: dark ages before pre cell phones. And then we went
Speaker 1: to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and we had
Speaker 1: a big luncheon with my grandparents and then I did
Speaker 1: the Hamotzi prayer over the bread, which I never forgot,
Speaker 1: and that was my bot mitzvah, and our kids have not.
Speaker 1: Although I had this funny idea, I don't want anybody
Speaker 1: to steal it because I think it's pretty funny, but
Speaker 1: I'll share it with you that we you know, how
Speaker 1: you can throw a surprise party for someone's birthday. I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I had this fantasy of throwing a
Speaker 1: surprise bar mitzvah for my two kids and do it
Speaker 1: similarly simply, where they just have to read the odd
Speaker 1: prayer phonetically spelled out and they just walk in the
Speaker 1: door one day and everyone would be there, it's your
Speaker 1: bar mitzvah, and the boys would read it and we'd
Speaker 1: have someone officiating and that would be it. They were
Speaker 1: both par misfit. Speaking of your two kids, what are
Speaker 1: they up to? So? Jackson Roach is a podcast in
Speaker 1: the podcast world. It's he has been in love with
Speaker 1: radio storytelling. Radio play since he was a kid and
Speaker 1: also has been like a tremendous reader. He just loves
Speaker 1: fiction too, like his mom. And so he has done.
Speaker 1: He produced and wrote a show that was got on radio,
Speaker 1: that got on Radio Lab and ninety nine percent Invisible.
Speaker 1: Now he's working for a podcast company called the Dig,
Speaker 1: so he's immersed in creating podcast and in that world.
Speaker 1: And then my younger son, Sam Roach, he is a
Speaker 1: screenwriter and actor. And where did they go to college?
Speaker 1: They both went to Stanford. That okay, so they have
Speaker 1: that pedigree. Let's go back to the Bengals era. To
Speaker 1: what degree were you and the other women in the
Speaker 1: act involved in drugs and alcohol back in that period? Well,
Speaker 1: I liked a little bit of the white wine back then.
Speaker 1: I don't drink at all now I don't think. I
Speaker 1: actually don't know if i'd have written the book if
Speaker 1: I still did. I didn't have what I would consider
Speaker 1: a problem. But I liked it and it just was
Speaker 1: a nice relaxing thing to do. But I one day
Speaker 1: I just thought, what would life be like if I
Speaker 1: didn't have that wine, you know, at six o'clock every
Speaker 1: night or however whenever, Um gosh, I'm being so confessional
Speaker 1: with you, Bob, I hope it's okay. Is everything? This
Speaker 1: is exactly what I'm looking for. Stuff Okay, good, I
Speaker 1: figured as much. But so um, No, the Bengals were
Speaker 1: quite We liked the odd drink. We would have, you know,
Speaker 1: a glass the wine before going on stage or not.
Speaker 1: You know, it depended. I'm speaking mostly for myself, but
Speaker 1: afterwards for sure, And yeah, I think it was. But
Speaker 1: I don't think we were out of control. We were not.
Speaker 1: It was it was not. Let me put it this way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an issue. Nobody had to go. There were
Speaker 1: no trips to rehab in our band. We're very lucky
Speaker 1: that way. We just we just enjoyed a little bit
Speaker 1: of wine from on the road. But it wasn't beyond that.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the Bengals, although the Go Gos were maybe
Speaker 1: the progenitors, the Bengals actually had more hits than the
Speaker 1: Go Gos. The Go Gos are in the Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame. I'm not a big believer in
Speaker 1: the rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I bring
Speaker 1: it up. If the Go Goes are in the rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, shouldn't the Bengals be in
Speaker 1: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Well, I I
Speaker 1: think that would be very nice. I don't, I don't
Speaker 1: What's what am I trying to say? It would be
Speaker 1: very fun, I think to get inducted in the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame. I say this partly because
Speaker 1: I inducted the Zombies and I had no idea what
Speaker 1: it would be like to be there among peers in
Speaker 1: the music business. But that experience, because I love the
Speaker 1: Zombies so much and I was so honored to be
Speaker 1: asked to even you know, to be asked to induct them,
Speaker 1: that I had one of the best nights of my
Speaker 1: life at that show because I just ran into all
Speaker 1: these musicians that I hadn't seen. Brian May from Queen
Speaker 1: the Bengals opened for Queen and at Slane Castle in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. I think it was one of Freddie's
Speaker 1: Mercury's last show with them, or last show, and it
Speaker 1: might have been we'd have to do some fact checking.
Speaker 1: But to just reconnect with Brian May and then um,
Speaker 1: to be with the Zombies and to meet all the
Speaker 1: other to read John Taylor was there who hadn't seen
Speaker 1: There was a really fun party that Stevie Nicks threw
Speaker 1: and I got to hang out with Simon Lebon and
Speaker 1: John who hadn't seen in years because they I think
Speaker 1: they inducted. Okay, now I'm forgetting, but we can look
Speaker 1: it up. It was just a magical night and mostly
Speaker 1: just to celebrate music. So yeah, I mean, I yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to. I don't have a last check.
Speaker 1: Let me let me change the question a little bit.
Speaker 1: Do you feel a little ripped off that they're in
Speaker 1: and you're not in? Oh? No, no, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: like that. No No. I went also, um to see
Speaker 1: their induction because I was again invited to because because
Speaker 1: I'm so close with the Go Goes. So um No,
Speaker 1: it was incredible, Like not at all. No, I'm just yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not how my I'm not that Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not where I go with those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how much you love the Zombies. You talked
Speaker 1: about exchanging uh playlists with Nick Hornby. So how did
Speaker 1: your interest in music begin into what degree? Was an infatuation? Well,
Speaker 1: let's start with that second part. It's always been an
Speaker 1: infatuation and per my mother, who loves music as much
Speaker 1: as I did and played the AM radio and had
Speaker 1: bought records all the time, played it constantly, and claims
Speaker 1: that that when I was born, I was in this
Speaker 1: little crib, and for that period of time in the crib,
Speaker 1: she had the music playing and that I would cool
Speaker 1: along to it, and it was in a room with
Speaker 1: a floor that it had wheels on it or something
Speaker 1: that she'd find that I sort of bopped around to
Speaker 1: it as a baby, and I was so like turned
Speaker 1: on by the music. I was so activated by it.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as and then growing up in
Speaker 1: La you're in the car, you're in the backseat of
Speaker 1: the station Reagan, and my mom was always blasting AM radio.
Speaker 1: So I was teaching myself to sing first well, from
Speaker 1: the crib, if she's right about that might be an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: the backseat of the car and when the radio was on.
Speaker 1: And then the minute I started buying records, or my
Speaker 1: mom would buy records for me, I would play them continuously,
Speaker 1: and then I would teach myself the exact moves and
Speaker 1: nuances that the singers were giving their performance. I just
Speaker 1: studied them without knowing that I was studying them. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is true of a lot of singers I've met
Speaker 1: and had this conversation with Joni Mitchell Records, Linda Ronstadt Records.
Speaker 1: Now having worked with Peter Asher, those childhood memories resonate
Speaker 1: even more. But just learning the like mimicking that them,
Speaker 1: actually trying to mimic every one of their little swoops
Speaker 1: and growls and moves vocally. How did you decide you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a musician, Well, it was just a passion.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that I ever thought of
Speaker 1: any other career path besides being in the arts, for sure,
Speaker 1: because I was always painting and drawing. I was around
Speaker 1: my mother painting and drawing and sculpting all the time too,
Speaker 1: and my dad being a psychoanalyst. He was just a
Speaker 1: cool presence in the house who was so open minded
Speaker 1: about everything and so so cool. Let me just say
Speaker 1: that cool parents. But it Singing was just a part
Speaker 1: of my life from childhood. So it was as soon
Speaker 1: as my uncle, my mother's younger brother, put a guitar
Speaker 1: in my hands. You know. Again, everything that I've done
Speaker 1: in the arts has pretty much been self taught. I'm
Speaker 1: embarrassed to say I don't read music. I really should.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with me. I don't know, but I just
Speaker 1: never got round to it. I think I was always
Speaker 1: so impulsive about it, like teach me the chords of
Speaker 1: that song, and I would just I just know the chords.
Speaker 1: It's not like I can read a musical chart, and
Speaker 1: I would just try to figure out how to play
Speaker 1: a song that way. And like compared to hanging out
Speaker 1: with Peter Asher, who's so are youdite when it comes
Speaker 1: to music and has all the charts there, and I
Speaker 1: see them reading the charts and I'm like, yeah, what
Speaker 1: are the chords? I can do it that way? Folk
Speaker 1: folk folk style and sharing. For me, it was people
Speaker 1: sharing their recipes like that's what That's what it was
Speaker 1: to learn a song. Um. Yeah, am I answering your question? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Did you play in bands or play live alone in
Speaker 1: high school? Um? I did more dance and theater and
Speaker 1: dancing and acting in high school. I was always in
Speaker 1: the musicals. I would play with friends on the schoolyard occasionally.
Speaker 1: I definitely had other friends like me who could play,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe various songs on the guitar. I was singing,
Speaker 1: for sure, but I don't know if I and I
Speaker 1: was in the musicals, but I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: sang like in a school concert like my own stuff.
Speaker 1: I was in the choir. But yeah, the stuff that
Speaker 1: I really cared most about was the stuff I would
Speaker 1: just do with my friends. Nobody really heard it besides us.
Speaker 1: What about in college? In college, let's see, I was
Speaker 1: a dance major, A drama dance major. I must have
Speaker 1: had a guitar up there. I was obsessed with music
Speaker 1: in college. I remember we had eight tracks. Was that
Speaker 1: when eight tracks where? Absolutely? Yeah, I definitely. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember if I had I debt what? Oh? Part
Speaker 1: way through college, absolutely I was with David Roeback. I
Speaker 1: was still back on that story of the first year
Speaker 1: when I was in the dorm. Oh yeah, no. Starting
Speaker 1: after the year in the dorm, I was playing music,
Speaker 1: but not publicly, just for myself. And you graduate then
Speaker 1: would then? I? Okay? So I went to see the
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols, and at winter Lamba Room I went to
Speaker 1: see Patti Smith. So during college and during the David
Speaker 1: Roeback period of college, which was the second half my
Speaker 1: junior and senior year, I was totally immersed in making art, painting, sculpture, singing,
Speaker 1: recording music with David on little cassettes, going to see shows,
Speaker 1: going to San Francisco, going to the punk clubs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. Music became the big headline. And my dream
Speaker 1: was to come back to LA and either be in
Speaker 1: the band with David Roeback whatever that we were just
Speaker 1: a duo at that point, to create a band with him,
Speaker 1: and then when that didn't work out because the relationship
Speaker 1: was kind of rocky, I realized that I needed to
Speaker 1: do it some other way. So I just started to
Speaker 1: adversisise myself in the recycler and I drew because I
Speaker 1: was still kind of post art school I was. I
Speaker 1: would draw all these flyers and xerox them at a
Speaker 1: xerox place and pat put them at reck stores. And
Speaker 1: I took a stack of my flyers to the Gogs
Speaker 1: show at the Whiskey of Go Go and they got
Speaker 1: thrown in the trash. I had to dig them out
Speaker 1: a few times. Then I gave up. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: like an old school Okay, these were flyers saying I
Speaker 1: want to start a band, yeah, and I can send
Speaker 1: there's some of them are online. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hand drawn flyers that I made let's go back to
Speaker 1: David Roebeck. What came first? The music of the romance? Oh?
Speaker 1: That well, we were he was. He was my brother's
Speaker 1: best friend growing up, so we went to high school together.
Speaker 1: He was a grade older than me. Um. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. At one point my brother wasn't too
Speaker 1: happy about it. A romance bloomed. But I think I
Speaker 1: was in college already. Yeah, no, it would have been
Speaker 1: in college. It would have been in college because yeah,
Speaker 1: you also do you also go to Berkeley. He transferred
Speaker 1: to Berkeley. He started out at a college called Carlton
Speaker 1: College in Minnesota, and he started there in seventy five.
Speaker 1: I started Berkeley in seventy six, and then he transferred.
Speaker 1: It had probably been seventy seven seventy eight that around
Speaker 1: the time he transferred, and then we eventually lived together
Speaker 1: at Berkeley. Did he transfer to be with you? I
Speaker 1: may partly? I think maybe? So. How hard was it
Speaker 1: when you broke up? Not only romance wise but musically. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're taking a long time ago. I'm sure tears were
Speaker 1: shed and emotions were felt deeply. It was hard, I
Speaker 1: think because I loved the vibe of what David and
Speaker 1: I were doing. I mean, we would play like Little
Speaker 1: Honda by the Beach Boys, but Mazzie Star style, if
Speaker 1: you can try to picture that like sort of droney
Speaker 1: and slowed down and kind of etherial, you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, of course we love The Velvet Underground. I think, um,
Speaker 1: my recordings that I made with David of I'll be
Speaker 1: your mirror and I'll keep it with mine, which was
Speaker 1: the Nico song from her record that was produced by um.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm having a a senior momentum guy
Speaker 1: from Guy from the Velvet Underground. Now I can't remember
Speaker 1: there it is there, it is, thank you. Um. Those
Speaker 1: were like seminal records for me and still are, I think.
Speaker 1: So I'm really glad that finally on my Spotify you
Speaker 1: can find those recordings. I'll keep it with mine and
Speaker 1: I'll be your mirror. U. So yeah, I mean, David,
Speaker 1: until he passed away, has been a close family friend,
Speaker 1: close with my parents, close with my brother John, who
Speaker 1: they were in the same grade. They were best friends
Speaker 1: and such a special person. So you talk about exchanging
Speaker 1: playlists with Nick Hornby. Is this new music or is
Speaker 1: this music throughout rock history? Just throughout rock history, just
Speaker 1: stuff that he's his listening practice. His discovery practice of
Speaker 1: finding stuff is like well honed. Mine is haphazard. I
Speaker 1: have a tradition of sending links to my family, we
Speaker 1: share links all the time, and friends and sharing playlists
Speaker 1: that I've made. But Nick's blow all those out of
Speaker 1: the water. I mean he is a master curator of playlists,
Speaker 1: and some are thematic and some are more of a jumble.
Speaker 1: But like it's a gift. Yeah, I mean, because I'm
Speaker 1: finding all sorts of new artists that way, he's he's
Speaker 1: more tapped into new music. And to what degree are
Speaker 1: you listening to new music as opposed to the old music? Well,
Speaker 1: I tend to default to the oldies. But because I
Speaker 1: have playlists that friends have been sending me with newer artists,
Speaker 1: it's been a great way to crack open that, you know,
Speaker 1: that side of things, and to have exposure. The other
Speaker 1: person who, like Nick Hornby, is great at discovering new
Speaker 1: stuff is Peter Asher, and he's the one who turned
Speaker 1: me onto Holly Humberstone. Did we already talk about this
Speaker 1: or recycling back? So Holly Hush, Joe Joy odellacum adela
Speaker 1: cum I always pronounced it ode locum, but I think
Speaker 1: I have it the emphasis and is meant to be
Speaker 1: on the other syllables. If you've got her song, if
Speaker 1: you've got a problem, it is just extraordinary. And it
Speaker 1: was a pleasure to sing. Yeah. And then you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it was Peter who had
Speaker 1: the cool idea of covering a Billie Eilish song that
Speaker 1: was great. Of course I knew about Billie Eilish, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know that song. So I really owe a
Speaker 1: lot to Peter for opening my eyes too and my ears.
Speaker 1: I should say to these some of these young artists
Speaker 1: that I hadn't crossed paths with on my Spotify or
Speaker 1: on my streaming searches. So how did you end up
Speaker 1: making a record with Peter Rasher? Well, it was kind
Speaker 1: of the dark days of the pandemic. It was ninth
Speaker 1: sorry nineteen. It was two thousand twenty one when I
Speaker 1: got an I heard a voicemail that I had missed
Speaker 1: from the day before from my longtime road manager, John Kollachi.
Speaker 1: That word was that Peter Asher wanted to make a
Speaker 1: record with me. And it was such a dark period
Speaker 1: right then, and I it was like sunshine burst through
Speaker 1: the clouds. In that moment, I was practically trembling, and
Speaker 1: I kept listening over and over again to that, to
Speaker 1: that voicemail Peter Asher wants to make a record with me.
Speaker 1: I could hardly believe my ears. So then then the
Speaker 1: communication started, and um, you know, we we connected. I
Speaker 1: drove out to Peter's home in Malibu and was welcomed
Speaker 1: in by his family. I at that point I gave him,
Speaker 1: like I think, I mentioned a manuscript printed out and
Speaker 1: from my computer printer, m from I should say, my printer,
Speaker 1: and for him to read of the book. He read
Speaker 1: it really quickly. There was an instant bond. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, in awe of him as a producer and
Speaker 1: and but then got to know him as a dear friend.
Speaker 1: And I just cherished that relationship so much. Well, if
Speaker 1: you've got to make a record, it costs money. Where
Speaker 1: did the money come from? Well, I'm I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know what what happened in my life, but I just
Speaker 1: hit a point where I realized that the indie spirit
Speaker 1: that fueled everything that had come in, starting with the Bengals,
Speaker 1: or even the attempt set a band with David Roebak
Speaker 1: that didn't necessarily come to fruition. I remember going I'm
Speaker 1: digressing for one second here. I remember going to a
Speaker 1: night of the women of Berkeley, an event at a
Speaker 1: dear friend's house to get everybody together, and everybody was
Speaker 1: reminiscing about graduating and how they came upon their careers,
Speaker 1: and many of them had gone to the jobs office
Speaker 1: at Berkeley to talk about ways to start a career.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking when they came around the circle
Speaker 1: of everyone telling those stories to about how they got
Speaker 1: their jobs, I was like, they're what. I couldn't exactly
Speaker 1: work walk into the Job's office at Berkeley and say,
Speaker 1: I want to start a band? What what what do
Speaker 1: you got for me? You know? So so yeah, I've
Speaker 1: always I've always done all these things on sheer will
Speaker 1: and maybe a little bit of insanity, but um, I
Speaker 1: was possessed with the idea of starting a band. I'll
Speaker 1: just say it. I was. I was impassioned at the
Speaker 1: thought of it, and I just had to go out
Speaker 1: there and keep knocking on doors, you know, so to
Speaker 1: speak to find people. So that's why I made the Flyers.
Speaker 1: I I looked at ads in the newspaper pre internet,
Speaker 1: so there was recycler I was looking for. And then
Speaker 1: I called one of the ads and lo and behold
Speaker 1: Vicki Peterson answered it was an ad, not from her,
Speaker 1: it was their roommate. And that's how that started. Okay,
Speaker 1: And in this interim graduating from college, did you have
Speaker 1: a day job? Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: So my uncle Carmy Simon, my mother's youngest brother. He
Speaker 1: was an incredible musician who was the first person who
Speaker 1: gave me that guitar that I'm holding in the picture
Speaker 1: of myself. When I was eight or seven. I was
Speaker 1: either finishing up year seven or just eight, because it
Speaker 1: says January nineteen sixty seven on the picture. He offered
Speaker 1: me a job out of college. It was kind of
Speaker 1: it was like a factory girl job, if you can imagine.
Speaker 1: It was in a warehouse in Santa Monica where he
Speaker 1: had a little ceramics company, and it was all the
Speaker 1: rage at that time to make these like little hand
Speaker 1: painted ceramic buttons and jewelry and stuff and not exactly
Speaker 1: like pottery. So I sat in the basement room alone
Speaker 1: with a transistor radio which I had tuned to k
Speaker 1: Earth one oh one, which in the eighties was playing
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties music, and that's what how I spent my
Speaker 1: time for the most part during my day job. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while i'd go upstairs where there was sunshine,
Speaker 1: but most of the time I was in the dark
Speaker 1: with the radio. And I heard that song. I had
Speaker 1: already met Vicking Debbi through the recycler. They'd come over.
Speaker 1: We'd had that fateful testing out of the waters where
Speaker 1: we determined we should be a band that night, and
Speaker 1: I heard I heard Hazy Shaded Winter. I know that
Speaker 1: when I was still at the I was that that
Speaker 1: day job for a while. It wasn't until things started
Speaker 1: kicking off for the Bengals, because I remember hearing Hazy
Speaker 1: Shaded Winter and not knowing that Simon and garfuncle Fan
Speaker 1: and I thought I knew all their music, and I
Speaker 1: pitched it at rehearsal, and then we didn't record it
Speaker 1: for years. And Robert Hilburn, the local journalist, gave it
Speaker 1: a really crap review. Specifically, he said it was plotting
Speaker 1: and listless or something like that. That's okay, he's entitled
Speaker 1: to his opinion. How did you ultimately give up the
Speaker 1: day job? Oh well, that was m let's see what
Speaker 1: got me past the day job? Oh? You know what,
Speaker 1: I think we finally got some action on the record
Speaker 1: company front. We finally had it all. It takes as one,
Speaker 1: as I like to say, there was crickets and then
Speaker 1: there was one, and that was Peter Fulben bringing Bruce
Speaker 1: Springsteen to see the Bengals play The Scrappy, the Scrappy
Speaker 1: early iteration of the Bengals play at Magic Mountain? Am
Speaker 1: I repeating? Or have I have I not? No? No
Speaker 1: no no, keep no yeah. Yeah. So we had a
Speaker 1: gig at Magic Mountain. It was a very spinal tap
Speaker 1: sort of atmosphere. It was just sort of a band
Speaker 1: shell and a kind of a cement stage as I recall,
Speaker 1: and sort of rising up seats, and we met Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: Peter had dragged him all the way from wherever he lived.
Speaker 1: And I've always thought Bruce vetted the band, because you know, somehow,
Speaker 1: some way, I'm going to give him credit for that
Speaker 1: and Peter Philbinum, but it's kind of amazing to think
Speaker 1: that he dragged Bruce out to a theme park to
Speaker 1: see this all girl band. I don't know, how did
Speaker 1: you get him? How did you get a manager? Um? Okay,
Speaker 1: so how did we meet Miles Copeland and Mike Gormley.
Speaker 1: We had a lawyer, Candice Hanson, who was really advocating
Speaker 1: for us. Oh I remember now, Sorry, it took me
Speaker 1: a second. We were part of the Paisley underground scene
Speaker 1: and we were playing at like the Cathay de Grand
Speaker 1: or are one of the ones that kind of downtown
Speaker 1: LA or Hollywood. It was one of the ones in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and I remember post show, I was sitting at the
Speaker 1: bar or someone said there's a there's this god. No,
Speaker 1: I must have sat. I somehow managed to sit next
Speaker 1: to him. I had no idea who he was. I
Speaker 1: didn't really know that much about the police because of
Speaker 1: my obsession with sixties music. I wasn't really like up
Speaker 1: on the bands of the eighties at that time period.
Speaker 1: This would have been eighty two, nineteen eighty two or yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing eighty two. I'd go up to him, he
Speaker 1: starts to make conversation with me. I have no idea
Speaker 1: who he is. No one told me that I had
Speaker 1: no clue that he was this iconic manager. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of, you know, kind of sassy and scrappy.
Speaker 1: I don't know I don't remember really like treating him
Speaker 1: like he was some important person. And so that's my
Speaker 1: memory of first meeting Miles. Okay, now let's switch back.
Speaker 1: You said you were talked about what it would cost
Speaker 1: to make this record, and then you talked about doing
Speaker 1: things in an indie way. Yeah, what it would cost
Speaker 1: to make the one I made with Peter? Right? Where
Speaker 1: the money would come from? Well, the money I took
Speaker 1: the money from that I'd made over the years in
Speaker 1: my life, and I invested in myself. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to ask, under today's circumstances, how much did it cost
Speaker 1: to make the record? Oh, I don't like talking about
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Well, let me put it a
Speaker 1: different way. Maybe Peter can give it to you. It
Speaker 1: was it cost enough to let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: He hired the best people, a great studio. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'll I don't know if a person
Speaker 1: can make money unless they get song placements anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know about the music business. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm asking. You're investing X somewhere between thirty
Speaker 1: and one hundred K, and are you thinking about return
Speaker 1: on investment? Not at the moment, I'm just helping people
Speaker 1: connect with the music. I don't. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: that that I'm in a lucky position that all these
Speaker 1: many decades of being a hard working gal doing her thing,
Speaker 1: and the great fortune of having songs like Eternal Flame
Speaker 1: click with audiences and remain something that people dream or
Speaker 1: want a license for movie and television placements, that I've
Speaker 1: continued to receive enough royalties to fund my own indie record. Okay,
Speaker 1: so just going on, Peter tracks you down, but you're
Speaker 1: paying well? Sure, and Peter did not. The fee to
Speaker 1: produce the record was extraordinarily reasonable. If not, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think both Peter and I are in a place
Speaker 1: in our journeys on this planet we call Earth that um,
Speaker 1: we were doing it for love. I mean, really, he
Speaker 1: was very reasonable. And I wanted to pay these hard
Speaker 1: working musicians what what felt right to them, so, you know,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to the young man who runs the
Speaker 1: studio as a dear friend, and I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that I was paying everybody what felt comfortable. They
Speaker 1: all knew that I was self financing this record, so people,
Speaker 1: you know, were cognizant of that. But I also wanted
Speaker 1: people to be happy. I didn't. I never want to
Speaker 1: take advantage of everyone's doing the best job that they can.
Speaker 1: And I'm so fortunate to be in the company of
Speaker 1: these extraordinary human beings who work so hard to help
Speaker 1: me create something, hopefully that's beautiful and connects. But one
Speaker 1: never knows. Every time you throw yourself out there to
Speaker 1: make something, you just hope for the best that some
Speaker 1: connection will be made and somebody will somewhere somewhere around
Speaker 1: the world will click on a song and go, ah,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I needed to hear. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: he brought in his usual suspects, like walk tell all
Speaker 1: great players. Were you intimidated it all? Yes, at first,
Speaker 1: until I met them, and then they were like family.
Speaker 1: I mean I was so intimidated at first, and but
Speaker 1: they're not intimidating human beings. They're warm, and they're a
Speaker 1: family and they've played together forever and Peter knows them
Speaker 1: so well. I was like in the best club, and
Speaker 1: they invited me to be a member of their club,
Speaker 1: you know, like I was rather like pinching myself, like wait,
Speaker 1: is this happening? Yes? And then they made me step up,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to be my best in front
Speaker 1: of them. I just wanted to give my all and
Speaker 1: be my best because they're masters. They're all masters, every
Speaker 1: single one of those guys you just mentioned. Okay, So
Speaker 1: from the moment you got to mast Alibu and you
Speaker 1: meet Peter, how long after that till you go into
Speaker 1: the studio? Okay? That was I want to say. In
Speaker 1: the in the spring, so maybe April ish, beginning of May.
Speaker 1: I'm going to Malibu regularly and playing around and trying
Speaker 1: songs on for size, like you know, does it do
Speaker 1: they fit? Can I sing it? What are the keys?
Speaker 1: And then I believe we started recording, and Peter can
Speaker 1: give you this if I'm wrong, but I believe we
Speaker 1: started recording. The first batch was in September, and like
Speaker 1: I said, we tracked I don't know a whole all
Speaker 1: the songs with with that crew in four days, maybe three,
Speaker 1: three to four days. That's how good they are. And
Speaker 1: how much longer did it take for you to lay
Speaker 1: your vocals down and finished recording process? M Well, so
Speaker 1: I had they had all the live vocals, and then
Speaker 1: it took another series of recording sessions to do all
Speaker 1: the harmonies and to sing, taking another crack at the vocals.
Speaker 1: In some times you can use the live vocal. I
Speaker 1: think in certain cases sometimes you can mix and match
Speaker 1: between days and takes. And I mean, this is how
Speaker 1: it's done these days, as opposed to like Elvis Presley days,
Speaker 1: probably everything was recorded on a few tracks in one take,
Speaker 1: but some vocals are virtually one take vocals. I think
Speaker 1: it was so enjoyable to sing these great songs. It's
Speaker 1: like the pleasure of a of a of for a
Speaker 1: singer is to sing a great song. Okay, these are
Speaker 1: covers but mostly modern songs. Was the concept originally covers?
Speaker 1: And how did you end up up with these particular songs?
Speaker 1: And was always thought, yes, we want to do contemporary songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved the idea that early on in my conversations
Speaker 1: with Peter, the idea of doing contemporary songs was like
Speaker 1: lit us both both up. We were very in tune
Speaker 1: with each other on that and in agreement. And because
Speaker 1: when I did the Matthew Sweet records, it kind of
Speaker 1: set this record apart from that because in those cases
Speaker 1: we drilled down on a decade. So it's the sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: and eighties we've done and maybe some day in nineties.
Speaker 1: But with Peter, I liked the idea. I loved. I
Speaker 1: so worshiped his work with Linda you know and so
Speaker 1: and the other wonderful female artists that he produced, but
Speaker 1: that those particular as I said, Heart Like a Wheel
Speaker 1: and Prisoner and Disguise were so impactful in my life.
Speaker 1: So I loved the idea that even on those records
Speaker 1: there were the curation of the songs was something I'm
Speaker 1: sure they did together, as Peter and I did. But
Speaker 1: Peter has such a gift for having ideas and inspirations
Speaker 1: and what might work. So the album was done. When
Speaker 1: so the album was done, the tracking was done quickly.
Speaker 1: Throughout the rest of that fall. We would grab like
Speaker 1: three days here a week there would we would we
Speaker 1: cobbled together a really nice schedule with you know, you
Speaker 1: could probably get that from him. I probably have it.
Speaker 1: If I went through my we usually would book like
Speaker 1: a streak of days like it would be, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to work Thursday through Sunday this week. You know,
Speaker 1: we wasn't every day. I guess what I'm asking is,
Speaker 1: if it is now essentially April twenty three, when was
Speaker 1: the album done completed. Oh, it was done in the fall.
Speaker 1: It was done in the fall of twenty It was completed,
Speaker 1: i'd say with all the mastering, I mean the mixing
Speaker 1: part of it, because then there's that, there's the recording part,
Speaker 1: and then there's the mixing part. And there were dates
Speaker 1: book to have the string quartet because suddenly we wanted
Speaker 1: string quartet on everything. It started with one song and
Speaker 1: then it just spiraled out of control. Not out of
Speaker 1: control in a bad way, kids, in a candy storeway,
Speaker 1: is what I mean with that. We just couldn't resist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we had to be careful because everybody had certain commitments.
Speaker 1: I had to juggle with between book and music, you know,
Speaker 1: so and Peter had things. Yeah, but it worked out.
Speaker 1: So you're saying the album was done in the fall
Speaker 1: of completed in the fall of twenty twenty two. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So was it a conscious decision to release the book
Speaker 1: in the album simultaneously. I hadn't thought of it, but
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the conversations as we were nearing
Speaker 1: my book release, I mean inching towards it, and I
Speaker 1: was already starting to promote the book and work on
Speaker 1: the game plan for that Russell Carter and let's see
Speaker 1: it would have been. I ended up having two publicists,
Speaker 1: Carla and Nicole, Nicole More coming from book World and
Speaker 1: Carla from Music World. Everybody put their heads together and
Speaker 1: we had I think we had a zoom or something
Speaker 1: to discuss what the how the rollout would go with
Speaker 1: these two big projects that I've been working on for
Speaker 1: so long, and it was deemed that maybe we put
Speaker 1: them out on the same day. Here we are, what
Speaker 1: the hell? Going back to the album, how'd you pick
Speaker 1: Black Coffee in Bed? Well, I love that song. You know,
Speaker 1: as a person who loves music, you know, I can't
Speaker 1: help us sing along to certain songs, and that was
Speaker 1: one of them. And also Squeeze were really important to
Speaker 1: me in the eighties because I discovered them. It was
Speaker 1: right when the Bengals were happening, and so there were
Speaker 1: certain bands that you would be very aware of because
Speaker 1: you were all putting out records at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I just have always had a passion for the
Speaker 1: music of Squeeze. Well, it's just funny because that was
Speaker 1: the subsequent album to the one with Tempted and Paul
Speaker 1: Carrick had already gone and I love that song, but
Speaker 1: nobody ever talks about it. Tempted. I love it. You
Speaker 1: talking about black No, no, I'm talking about black coffee
Speaker 1: and bids. Oh no, I love it. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: love it too. I just love it. And how about
Speaker 1: only you? How did only you the well? I so
Speaker 1: I always whenever I love that song so much, and
Speaker 1: again it brings me back to the decade when the
Speaker 1: Bengals were here, there and everywhere. But I whenever that
Speaker 1: song comes on, I always sang the high harmony to it.
Speaker 1: I just made up a harmony, and I always wanted to.
Speaker 1: When I used to do shows at Largo in La
Speaker 1: I always wanted to cover that song and sing a
Speaker 1: high harmony on it. And then it's just I think
Speaker 1: I just mentioned it to Peter that I loved it.
Speaker 1: I think it was that was one that was my idea,
Speaker 1: and I told him about my idea of just having
Speaker 1: it be like sort of a duet with myself, and
Speaker 1: that's how that happened. Have you met Alison Moye? No,
Speaker 1: I want to. She's cool. She's a very regular person.
Speaker 1: And how about you don't own me? Well? Well, you
Speaker 1: know that is one of the early examples of a
Speaker 1: kind of feminist and I met Leslie Gorett some something
Speaker 1: once there was like a convention or something, or some
Speaker 1: music business thing. But I've always liked the music again,
Speaker 1: of all of that whole period, and I just always
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of a badass little number that song.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mean to say really little number.
Speaker 1: It's a big number. It's a it's a defiant song,
Speaker 1: and I just really it really spoke to me, and
Speaker 1: I think this may be the case for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Perhaps a lot of women in particular, would
Speaker 1: would find that song meaningful. So it was fun to
Speaker 1: take it on. Okay, dee Le's just say, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three is very different from nineteen eighty three. And back
Speaker 1: in those days, the hardest thing was to get a
Speaker 1: major label deal. If you did, they promoted you a
Speaker 1: certain amount. You hit or you didn't hit, whereas today
Speaker 1: it's a vast cornucopia of all kinds of music. How
Speaker 1: do you get people to listen to this music become
Speaker 1: aware of it? I don't know. I'm doing everything that
Speaker 1: I can. I worry about it. It keeps me up
Speaker 1: at night. I'm doing my best. There's this thing called
Speaker 1: social media, and I've discovered that it is very useful,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's work, you know, it's work in
Speaker 1: a sense because you have to create a lot of content.
Speaker 1: So it's this it's a new fun job. But it's
Speaker 1: again because everything is fueled by kind of an indie
Speaker 1: spirit and zeitgeist and how I approach all these things.
Speaker 1: No record company, you know, just doing everything as a
Speaker 1: just waking up in the morning and going, okay, let's
Speaker 1: make some art. What we're going to do here, and
Speaker 1: how do we promote these things? So it's really just
Speaker 1: making little videos. I mean the days that I can
Speaker 1: remember of the big video shoots that being on Columbia
Speaker 1: Records and all of what that was. I mean, at
Speaker 1: least especially during a pandemic, I've been able to just
Speaker 1: go around it with this little thing and make a
Speaker 1: little movie and send it to someone who can help
Speaker 1: me edit it. I have a partner that helps me
Speaker 1: with that because I'm no good with the editing with tech.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what we're doing. TikTok kind of changed things.
Speaker 1: Instagram changed things. There's loads of indie creators just putting
Speaker 1: their stuff on there and spreading it. That way well
Speaker 1: before we booked this on TikTok, I came across you
Speaker 1: singing some of my ear quotes here greatest hits a cappella.
Speaker 1: Did that just start or you said, oh man, I
Speaker 1: have to do promote my book in my album, let
Speaker 1: me do something. Well. The first ones that I did
Speaker 1: was just really in the deep dark pandemic days when
Speaker 1: people were not even and leaving their house. And I
Speaker 1: thought I'd already had a little social media on Twitter,
Speaker 1: maybe I just started Instagram. I was pretty late to
Speaker 1: the TikTok party, but I'm there now and I just
Speaker 1: put put the old version of this thing. I set
Speaker 1: it on my piano over there, and I just I thought,
Speaker 1: what should I do? How can I express myself? And
Speaker 1: I just did this one clip of me singing man Monday,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea it would connect so much
Speaker 1: with people, just me alone in my house, not with
Speaker 1: the band, not with anybody, but just solo. And I
Speaker 1: realized that I had this opportunity not only to explore
Speaker 1: the concept of being the folk seatinger that I started
Speaker 1: out as when I was that little girl and my
Speaker 1: uncle Carmy gave me that first giant guitar when I
Speaker 1: was eight. Like, I'm actually been asked on the book
Speaker 1: tour will I bring a guitar or will I sing
Speaker 1: a little bit? I'm honestly terrified because it's one thing
Speaker 1: to do it in your living room, and it's another
Speaker 1: thing to do it in front of people. But I'm
Speaker 1: bringing the guitar tomorrow when I get on the plane,
Speaker 1: and I have all these notes here. I just I'm
Speaker 1: making these little little notes because I've gotten myself so
Speaker 1: nervous about it. Here's my under my thumb. It says, oh,
Speaker 1: different drum in case I do that Capo four. This
Speaker 1: is me scribbling, scribbling it out, like I'm really just
Speaker 1: after this call. That's what I gotta do is figure
Speaker 1: out you know, I know I can do it in
Speaker 1: my living room, but can I do it in front
Speaker 1: of people at a at a bookstore? I think, So,
Speaker 1: what do you think, Bob? Well, you know, different people,
Speaker 1: without mentioning some famous names, they really need to warm
Speaker 1: up to produce the sound that they're famous for, Whereas
Speaker 1: it seemed very very natural with you. So I have
Speaker 1: to ask, can you just okay if I ask you
Speaker 1: sing a couple of bars a different drum right now.
Speaker 1: Could you do it? Absolutely? Yeah, I could do it.
Speaker 1: So the anxiety is just that other people will be there. No,
Speaker 1: the anxiety is just this natural anxiety that I feel
Speaker 1: before I opened my mouth and let the sound come out.
Speaker 1: But then when I do it, I go, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of like a two personalities. It's like
Speaker 1: a split personality. It's like than me that might overthink
Speaker 1: or freak out and being it's just like my character
Speaker 1: in the book. Actually, I was able to write that
Speaker 1: because I know what that's like. I do have to
Speaker 1: kind of flip a switch and just go, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not chattering and schmoozing and talking with someone. I have
Speaker 1: to like produce this sound out of my throat and
Speaker 1: also stop my brain from subtitling, subtitling some other inner monologue.
Speaker 1: I just have to be in a singular focus with it.
Speaker 1: And so that'll be a little bit tricky because well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens when I get to the strand
Speaker 1: in New York City, you know, because the ideas like
Speaker 1: we're Q and ang and then there's like an idea
Speaker 1: will trigger well, here's a little bit of something that
Speaker 1: goes with that so I told Jay's the thing I'm
Speaker 1: most nervous about because I haven't really ever sung like
Speaker 1: this this way, like completely alone with my guitar, though
Speaker 1: he hears me do it in the house and you've
Speaker 1: heard me do it in the house when I think, oh,
Speaker 1: put the camera on myself. This is something for social
Speaker 1: media to share. Do you normally have stage fright when
Speaker 1: you're on with a band or this is unique? I
Speaker 1: do have stage right. I have to overcome my stage right.
Speaker 1: I do, I do, okay, And obviously the goal of
Speaker 1: social media is to have a viral moment. Obviously, you
Speaker 1: go on these platforms, although your usual audience is going
Speaker 1: to be an older demo, you reach those people. Have
Speaker 1: you found yourself reaching new people? Well, that's the goal,
Speaker 1: And just as of recently, I'm starting to see the
Speaker 1: scales change in a way, in a positive way. I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful for anyone who wants to find me there
Speaker 1: and for long time fans. But I've been hoping, really
Speaker 1: hoping to connect with a new audience and also with women,
Speaker 1: young women too because for whatever reason, and I think
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I don't have statistics here, Bob,
Speaker 1: but the go Gos had a very big, big, big
Speaker 1: female fan base, as did I think Madonna. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of our eighties selves, and weirdly, the Bengals had the
Speaker 1: scales were tipped more heavily towards a male audience, and
Speaker 1: I never really understood it, but I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: connect with, you know, have the balance be a little
Speaker 1: bit more equal. So I'm feeling that now. Interestingly, I
Speaker 1: think the book because the character is a female, that
Speaker 1: the protagonist is a female woman, a female woman. Obviously
Speaker 1: this is me. I need more coffee. Do you edit
Speaker 1: this thing or do you just use it? Oh, we
Speaker 1: don't add. Everything you're saying is great, But let me
Speaker 1: switch to a couple of gears here. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: made these couple of albums with Matthew Sweet. Yeah. Are
Speaker 1: you the networker or is it more like Peter Rasher
Speaker 1: you're just fielding phone calls? Oh, networker in terms of
Speaker 1: making it happen to reaching out to do it. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty staunch in my you know, sort of work
Speaker 1: ethic to kind of like not hesitate to reach out
Speaker 1: to people. I can be the one to instigate in
Speaker 1: the process of working with Matthew Sweet, it was quite interesting.
Speaker 1: He was the magical wizard doing all the wizardry with
Speaker 1: the with the technology that that I when you said
Speaker 1: that I missed heard or understood what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: immediately thought about my dynamic with Matthew and that brought
Speaker 1: me to that thought. But no, I'm gonna go get
Speaker 1: them kind of person. I don't wait. I I once
Speaker 1: I have an idea, I throw myself into the deep
Speaker 1: end to plug the album title there. But and I
Speaker 1: just start dog paddling or whatever it takes to sort
Speaker 1: of rally the project, rally the troops, make it happen
Speaker 1: because I just I'm fueled by being in process with
Speaker 1: a creative project. That's what I wake up in the morning, going, okay, what,
Speaker 1: let's let's get in Let's let's get some paint on
Speaker 1: the canvas, let's, you know, tune the guitar, let's you know.
Speaker 1: I just what, I'm so fortunate that I can do this.
Speaker 1: And how did you actually hook up with Matthew Sweet
Speaker 1: to make those records? Um, we had done a show
Speaker 1: at McCabe's together the Bengals and Matthew and I had
Speaker 1: brought Mike Myers to see Matthew that we may have
Speaker 1: talked about that already, and that's ming te Um. We
Speaker 1: had done the band for Austin Powers. We were in
Speaker 1: the band. We created the band with Mike, and Matthew
Speaker 1: was there part of it. Um. I guess at some
Speaker 1: point it came up after the McCabe show that the
Speaker 1: Bengals and Matthew had been at that we should do something.
Speaker 1: And then he brought me up to his house and
Speaker 1: I've met his wonderful wife, who I'd known because she worked.
Speaker 1: She was part of the Austin Powers team. If it's
Speaker 1: very complicated, but it's all good. It's just that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to go back in time and sort of pull
Speaker 1: threads from different eras of my life. But Matthew had
Speaker 1: this incredible space up on up in the hills of
Speaker 1: Hollywood where he had an amazing studio and all this
Speaker 1: crazy art everywhere and all the art that he was making.
Speaker 1: He was just one of the most dedicated artistic souls
Speaker 1: I've ever met. It didn't just stop at music. He
Speaker 1: was making sculpture, he was painting, collecting art. So we
Speaker 1: just started to go up there and I basically, sort
Speaker 1: of like with Peter We basically pitched around song ideas,
Speaker 1: what could we record? And we got very giddy kids
Speaker 1: in a candy store, as how I described it with
Speaker 1: Matthew for sure, I remember the day on the second
Speaker 1: record when we were broaching the idea of doing a
Speaker 1: seventies one in a second record. He we we're on
Speaker 1: a call together and the concept of doing Prague adding
Speaker 1: in Prague rock to what we were intending to do.
Speaker 1: Um and I've seen all good people. Your move was
Speaker 1: the one that we chose. Um and that was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite ones to sing. I remember that moment
Speaker 1: that was that was the life changing moment. Do you
Speaker 1: you have a unique voice? When did you realize that?
Speaker 1: And are you self conscious about the way it sounds?
Speaker 1: You mean like my singing voice? Yes? Um? I and
Speaker 1: my self conscious? Did you ask? Sorry? And yes yeah? Um.
Speaker 1: I think I just have that built in stage fright thing. So,
Speaker 1: but early as a child, it was sort of how
Speaker 1: I lulled myself. It was almost like I've been told
Speaker 1: that I rocked back and forth a lot too. I
Speaker 1: don't know. There's always a rhythm going on and in
Speaker 1: my head a little bit, and I think that it
Speaker 1: was kind of delighting even to myself, when I realized
Speaker 1: I could sing along and mimic records, I could try
Speaker 1: to be like a minor bird. My mom always said,
Speaker 1: you're like a minor bird. I guess minor birds are
Speaker 1: the ones that can learn speech and can mimic speech.
Speaker 1: And I started to get like it was almost like
Speaker 1: a hypnotic meditation to drop the needle on a Jonie
Speaker 1: Mitchell record, for example, and sing a song, for example,
Speaker 1: like you turn me on I'm a Radio, and just
Speaker 1: try to like fit in with what she was singing
Speaker 1: and sing along as perfectly as I could, with that
Speaker 1: fair sort of spontaneous melodizing that she does in her
Speaker 1: songwriting and her performing. And then the same was true
Speaker 1: with all these artists that I would sing to along too,
Speaker 1: And I even sang along to those early Beatles records
Speaker 1: my mom brought home. Yeah, so singing along was kind
Speaker 1: of a meditation, and I guess I realized that my
Speaker 1: voice was complying you if I think about it in
Speaker 1: a certain way, it was doing it. It was able
Speaker 1: to do it. And the more I did it, to
Speaker 1: the chagrin of my family, hearing me over and over
Speaker 1: again singing to certain records, the more I became confident. Oh,
Speaker 1: it is an instrument that I have and I can
Speaker 1: use it, and I just have to learn how to
Speaker 1: keep teaching myself how to use it by mimicking other
Speaker 1: people who do it. Well, that's how the process this was.
Speaker 1: And do you still paint and draw today? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: don't share much of that, but I do not so
Speaker 1: much painting, but but drawing. Yeah. And then how many
Speaker 1: siblings do you have? I have an older brother named John,
Speaker 1: and Jesse is my younger brother. And what are they
Speaker 1: up to every day? Um? John is a very excellent writer,
Speaker 1: as is Jesse, although Jesse they both didn't really do that,
Speaker 1: you know, as a career. Um, Jesse practices law and
Speaker 1: he works. Both of my brothers. My brother was uh,
Speaker 1: worked for the Tennessee prison system as a as a
Speaker 1: therapist and had group therapy, you know, into that's what
Speaker 1: he did. And Jesse interestingly does a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in the in the LA prisons systems. To league, you know,
Speaker 1: represents people a thing as driven as you are. I
Speaker 1: don't think so not. I mean I think I don't know,
Speaker 1: I can't really say, but I think that that that
Speaker 1: is something that this sort of burning drive that I
Speaker 1: have to do these things. I don't know what accounts
Speaker 1: for it, except I do think my childhood set me
Speaker 1: up for it, or set me up with the idea
Speaker 1: that I've found this kind of bliss of disappearing into
Speaker 1: this kind of process oriented work, and and that it
Speaker 1: allows for my imagination to be triggered and a sense
Speaker 1: of play. And I just I'm very grateful that that
Speaker 1: I've had the opportunity to spend so much time making
Speaker 1: art in all these different forms. And what was it
Speaker 1: like growing up? Is the middle child, the only girl? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the fact that I was the only girl
Speaker 1: gave me a little bit of a special place that
Speaker 1: my brothers may not be resented that I had. That said,
Speaker 1: I think that some of the sassiness in the book,
Speaker 1: and I think having all this boy energy from my
Speaker 1: brothers and being all adolescents together was informative and it
Speaker 1: gave me a hint into, you know, just how to
Speaker 1: write about the human experience. And I just found my
Speaker 1: family to be kind of endlessly entertaining in all their
Speaker 1: function and dysfunction. Dysfunction is very interesting to write about.
Speaker 1: I like to write characters who have dysfunction and because
Speaker 1: otherwise it's boring if everybody's perfect and like a robot,
Speaker 1: you know. So I like idiosyncratic in idiosyncrasies in characters.
Speaker 1: I like characters who behave badly. I like characters that
Speaker 1: we love to dislike. I mean, I just I just like.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It adds interest to things, and I
Speaker 1: think it's it's been fun to write about. Okay, And
Speaker 1: going back to the scene in the eighties, and there
Speaker 1: was a scene Bangals were very successful. There were other
Speaker 1: acts that got some notoriety at the time. What happened
Speaker 1: to all those people and do you have any contact
Speaker 1: with them? Well, some of the Paisley Underground, so called
Speaker 1: scenesters are still around. I still very recently I called
Speaker 1: Lewis Gutierres. We stayed in touch. We dated back then
Speaker 1: he was in UM. It was originally hit the band
Speaker 1: was called Salvation Army, then they were called the Three
Speaker 1: o'clock UM. I've stayed in touch with other members of
Speaker 1: the in quotes basically underground UM. There are there are
Speaker 1: things that have brought us together, sort of concerts, often
Speaker 1: for charitable organizations that you know that raising money for
Speaker 1: really really important causes we've done, We've all reunited for
Speaker 1: those those concerts. Um, what went back to your question
Speaker 1: against specifics. Okay, so you stayed in contact with those people.
Speaker 1: Those people were relatively successful, they brought records. But what
Speaker 1: are they doing all day? You have the luxury of
Speaker 1: having the hits that are licensed, etc. How are all
Speaker 1: these people staying alive? And are these good stories or
Speaker 1: bad stories? Mostly good, I would say, I mean some
Speaker 1: of them have gone onto non music or entertainment related
Speaker 1: jobs like um, some of them have you know, our
Speaker 1: work in businesses and for companies or stockbrokers or educators,
Speaker 1: you know. I but the yeah, so I I everyone
Speaker 1: seems to be doing okay. So so no sad stories,
Speaker 1: no burnouts, no ods, etc. No, I mean I've been
Speaker 1: lucky that way, you know. And I think my partners
Speaker 1: in the Bengals are all ensconced in m and No,
Speaker 1: Vicki's always staying creative. She just went to Europe in fact,
Speaker 1: to do a run of shows that were Paisley Underground.
Speaker 1: People involved with those and performing in Europe. So I
Speaker 1: know that I spoke with her recently and she was
Speaker 1: very thrilled about that. Okay, Susanna. Okay, let me ask you.
Speaker 1: Your name on the records that Susanna. How does your
Speaker 1: family refer to you as well? My parents are quite
Speaker 1: elderly now that I visit them as much as they can,
Speaker 1: and whenever I walk in the house, my dad says,
Speaker 1: Susannah bananas here. So he's been lately calling me Susanna
Speaker 1: Banana and um. He used to call me Zannie. That
Speaker 1: was my nickname. Some people call me Susie Quzi. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They can call me whatever the hell they want.
Speaker 1: I love them, I don't care. But um, yeah, I answered,
Speaker 1: I answer mostly to Sue and Susanna. I've never been
Speaker 1: a Susan. My ballet teacher who's I love and we're
Speaker 1: still in touch after all these years. He used to
Speaker 1: call me Susanne, and I was I was fine with that.
Speaker 1: The only the only one I don't really connect with
Speaker 1: is Susan. I don't feel like a Susan. I'm good,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with a Susanne. Susanna Banana is just fine.
Speaker 1: You're welcome to call me that. Bob. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: sort of the answer to that. And your father was
Speaker 1: a psychoanalyst. What was your experience with therapy. Oh, I
Speaker 1: was heavily into it. I did on the couch psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: you know, Freudian analysis in the eighties, and boy did
Speaker 1: I need it. It was very stressful. The music business.
Speaker 1: I mean, music is one thing, the music business is
Speaker 1: another beast Entirely. I think I just needed, you know,
Speaker 1: to have therapy then. And I'm glad that I was
Speaker 1: kind of early on the tip. I don't think had
Speaker 1: my father not been a psychiatrist psychoanalyst, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would have even known to do it. But
Speaker 1: it was such a part of my childhood knowing that
Speaker 1: my father was helping all these people, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was really good at his job. You know. People
Speaker 1: always used to say, what's it like having a shrink
Speaker 1: for a dad, And I said, usually, he just reminds
Speaker 1: me that everyone's crazy. Everyone's crazy. It's not like you're
Speaker 1: the only one. So I suppose we all sort of
Speaker 1: need something to get us through this thing week called life.
Speaker 1: And so for me, I got, I got that psycho
Speaker 1: analytic treatment. They used to call it treatment in the
Speaker 1: uh just talk therapy, really, um, I got I got
Speaker 1: in early with that. And what about later days, you
Speaker 1: go back for a tune out. I did. I did
Speaker 1: need a tune up once I became a mom and
Speaker 1: just I definitely went back to the same person. I'm
Speaker 1: very fortunate. Yeah. And when it was psychoanalysis on the couch,
Speaker 1: it was multiple days a week, I presume always like
Speaker 1: four days a week, I mean a barring when I
Speaker 1: was on tour, you know, of course. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like traditional like when you watch watch Annie Hall or something,
Speaker 1: and you know, uh, you cut back and forth between
Speaker 1: the the analysis sessions. They're saying the exact opposite thing.
Speaker 1: They never want to have sex. They want to have
Speaker 1: sex all the time. And any word of wisdom you
Speaker 1: can leave us with from therapy. From therapy, um, oh,
Speaker 1: what would I say about it? Thank you to the
Speaker 1: therapists and to all you know, no, no, no, what
Speaker 1: did you learn about yourself? About life? Well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what. I wish I can say this to everybody
Speaker 1: in their twenties. Enjoy your twenties. Enjoy them. You only
Speaker 1: get to be in your twenties then, and you waste
Speaker 1: so much time thinking you're not good enough, you're not
Speaker 1: this enough, you're not bad enough. I wish I could
Speaker 1: give my twenty something self a pep talk and say,
Speaker 1: let it go. You this, You're in your freaking twenties,
Speaker 1: you idiot. That's what I wish I could say, don't
Speaker 1: fritter this time. It's that's oh my gosh, you know,
Speaker 1: and having kids in their twenties. I saw, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a weirdly complex and fraught time. But
Speaker 1: if I had a way to go back and tell
Speaker 1: my my twenties something self, any something, it'd be stop
Speaker 1: beating yourself up, Stop criticizing everything about yourself, Stop worrying
Speaker 1: about all these things. Do everything you can to cope
Speaker 1: with anxiety and healthy ways, in the best ways. But
Speaker 1: you know you're blowing it because you don't get to
Speaker 1: be twenty again. Okay, one final thing, because I've been
Speaker 1: watching you here on the zoom, even though the audience
Speaker 1: doesn't see the zoom. You don't wear a wedding ring
Speaker 1: protect at a moment. You just didn't put it on today,
Speaker 1: or you normally don't wear it. You know, Jay wears
Speaker 1: his every day. I because I played guitar it, I've
Speaker 1: always found it a little bit uncomfortable. I'm so married.
Speaker 1: You're right, but I do. I just I'm lax about
Speaker 1: wearing the ring. But he doesn't hold me. He doesn't
Speaker 1: hold it against me. He knows i'm He can count
Speaker 1: on me, ring or no ring on my left ring finger. Okay,
Speaker 1: Susannah Banana, I think I think we've come to the
Speaker 1: end of the feeling we've known. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for taking this time. It's been very insightful. The
Speaker 1: digressions were the best part. I wish you luck with
Speaker 1: your new projects. You already got a great review of
Speaker 1: the book in the Times, so you're on your way. Bob,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. I've been so looking forward to this
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate you wanting to do this chat
Speaker 1: today with me. It was great. In any event, till
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left Sex