Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sutch podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only legendary Mitch Wider,
Speaker 1: who has a brand new album with Love produced by
Speaker 1: Don Was. Mitch. How did this album come to be?
Speaker 1: I called Don and he agreed.
Speaker 2: As a result of I signed a new recording contract
Speaker 2: with a German label, which we'll get into probably a
Speaker 2: little bit deeper as we talk. But I signed the
Speaker 2: contract and I had choice of producer.
Speaker 1: So when did you meet Don?
Speaker 2: Oh? Gosh, I want to say seventy eight. He hired
Speaker 2: me to do a voice for something and then we
Speaker 2: established a relationship and I ended up being a guest
Speaker 2: on one of his albums called Was and that Was
Speaker 2: and then we cut a dance single and then I
Speaker 2: did two tracks for one of my German albums with
Speaker 2: him as producing. So we're entrenched in LA and recorded
Speaker 2: a really nice album out there called The Promise.
Speaker 1: Okay, what makes Don the producer he is? How is
Speaker 1: he different from the other people you've worked with.
Speaker 2: We have the same sensibilities regional with regard to music
Speaker 2: and our exposure to him and the cultural differences inside
Speaker 2: the community. And I mean the guy he's produced the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. He got Grammys for for People.
Speaker 2: He's just very, very talented man.
Speaker 1: So on this album, you wrote all the songs. Did
Speaker 1: you write them for the album or did you have
Speaker 1: them ready?
Speaker 2: I wrote them for the album, and it's kind of
Speaker 2: either autobiographical because of the actual experience or the observation,
Speaker 2: but it is what it's about, is my life really,
Speaker 2: and segments of it little visual you can imagine you
Speaker 2: know what they were by the lyrics. But I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it. I think it's a beautiful album, and
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of it. I think it's really really
Speaker 2: high on my chart of expectations for myself as a
Speaker 2: writer and a singer.
Speaker 1: Now we're doing this podcast, but we live in an
Speaker 1: internet world. It's hard to get the message out to people.
Speaker 1: What are you doing to make people aware of the record?
Speaker 2: Pretty much leaving that up to the record company. It's
Speaker 2: their responsibility. I put out quite a few albums on
Speaker 2: my own label, but I never did have the funding
Speaker 2: or the budget to go out and do it the
Speaker 2: way it's supposed to be done today. And that was
Speaker 2: frustrating because there was some remarkable music that went unnoticed.
Speaker 2: So I'm doing what I can. I'm doing every interview
Speaker 2: I can get, and I'm honored to be on your show.
Speaker 2: But that's what we're doing, and we're doing just interviews, interviews,
Speaker 2: and we're making Last night we were we got home
Speaker 2: about four o'clock am. We had done a shoot, a
Speaker 2: video shoot for the the existing album, the new one,
Speaker 2: and we've got a couple more of those planned. We've
Speaker 2: already released two, so we're doing that the right way.
Speaker 2: But you can't really there's a whole bunch of issues
Speaker 2: that would explain why we're having a problem breaking through.
Speaker 2: And since you're the guy with the questions, I'll just
Speaker 2: wait for you to ask the right one.
Speaker 1: Who is the record company Roof Records RUF? But do
Speaker 1: you tell me more about them? It's a small label,
Speaker 1: but not the smallest I've ever signed to, but they're very,
Speaker 1: very good at well, here's what they did with my
Speaker 1: live recording with double Vinyl that debut at number three,
Speaker 1: I believe, on the Billboard charts, on the Blues charts,
Speaker 1: and the existing album, the one we're promoting now, that debuted
Speaker 1: at number one. So he clearly knows his business with
Speaker 1: regards to the Billboard Blues charts. What I need is
Speaker 1: to make that transfer over into the we used to
Speaker 1: call the hot one hundred if you remember that, of course,
Speaker 1: And you know what was beautiful about that.
Speaker 2: You really had a microscopic picture of the nation's needs
Speaker 2: for music and what made them feel good. Because the
Speaker 2: way they formulated it was they would take every week
Speaker 2: the existing amount of radio play rotations and sales numbers,
Speaker 2: combine them and you end up with a top ten
Speaker 2: where you could have a country Western song be number one,
Speaker 2: a polk on number nine, and Mitch Ryer is somewhere
Speaker 2: in the middle there. And that was a reflection based
Speaker 2: on that week's activities in the business. But we don't
Speaker 2: have that today. We have a million different categories.
Speaker 1: Well, the other difference is you knew every song in
Speaker 1: the top ten, whether you liked it or not, because
Speaker 1: you were listening to the radio and you heard it.
Speaker 2: Oh, you could turn volume down if you wanted to,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, better than the news, the monitor news on NBC.
Speaker 1: My father would want to listen to that in the car.
Speaker 1: So what kind of budget did they give you for
Speaker 1: the record?
Speaker 2: I don't know that there was a contract developed between
Speaker 2: Don Was and Thomas Roof, the owner of the Roof
Speaker 2: Record Company. So I'm not privy to that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about Don Was also being from Michigan.
Speaker 1: Does everybody in Michigan in the music business know each other?
Speaker 2: We know enough to not step on each other's toes.
Speaker 2: You know, this is an interesting musical city, Detroit, and
Speaker 2: the talent comes from all over Michigan. Really, when you
Speaker 2: think about it, I'm not sure why it's that way,
Speaker 2: but I know that there are a few cities that,
Speaker 2: over the decades have established themselves in one way or
Speaker 2: another for being a musical city. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you remember the Chicago blues wave, or if you remember
Speaker 2: the Boston the music that came out of Boston for
Speaker 2: a while, or the music that came out of Atlanta
Speaker 2: in New Orleans that goes way back to New Orleans thing,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's like example, the group Nirvana,
Speaker 2: I mean they brought to life Seattle. You know, it's
Speaker 2: and once that happens, once somebody breaks through in any city,
Speaker 2: the record companies, it's like watching a carcass on the
Speaker 2: desert floor being descended upon by all the creatures that
Speaker 2: are to eat it. They just milk it dry, sign
Speaker 2: up everything that can move or pluck a string, and
Speaker 2: then go on to the next fortune. De choice less
Speaker 2: because we had Motown, which was just a hit factory,
Speaker 2: and we had it that way, but we were frustrated
Speaker 2: as young white rock and rollers. There was no outlet
Speaker 2: for us. Nobody had broken through nationally. It was just
Speaker 2: totally controlled by Motown. But my personal experience in music
Speaker 2: never went into that rock and roll cave. I kind
Speaker 2: of nurtured myself, fed myself and gave myself what I
Speaker 2: loved and needed out of the black community, sort of
Speaker 2: an urban setting. At at a very young age, I started
Speaker 2: to transporting myself down into the forbidden areas of Detroit,
Speaker 2: working a lot of places I wasn't supposed to be.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was even hitchhiking down. I wasn't old
Speaker 2: enough to drive when I started going downtown. Yeah, it's beautiful,
Speaker 2: that experience. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I couldn't trade anything
Speaker 2: for it. It has too much value. It's priceless. It
Speaker 2: formed what I learned about music. Originally, I had a
Speaker 2: vocal instructor in high school and he was putting me
Speaker 2: in classical tournaments at Tri County competitions, and I was
Speaker 2: winning a lot, and he was very sad. And in fact,
Speaker 2: he's still alive. His name is Dell Towers. He's about
Speaker 2: ninety four. I just speak to him every once in
Speaker 2: a while on the phone because I love what he
Speaker 2: taught me. He taught me how to read and write music,
Speaker 2: and he helped me develop my singing. But when I
Speaker 2: broke away from the classical the journey that he was
Speaker 2: leading me on and started. It was a real slow
Speaker 2: sort of transition in the beginning, because then I fell
Speaker 2: in love with the voice of Johnny Mathis. But after
Speaker 2: that I began looking for something with a little more energy.
Speaker 2: And it occurred to me one day. I was listening
Speaker 2: to the radio, of course, and I hear Pat Boone
Speaker 2: white shoelaces or something like that. I'm not sure he
Speaker 2: did white shoelaces, but it was some sort of moody, mellow,
Speaker 2: really milky, watered down thing. And right after that they
Speaker 2: put on a little Richard and I just about lost
Speaker 2: my mind. I mean the energy, uh yeah, the energy
Speaker 2: and the attack and the and the little Richard saying
Speaker 2: I want to be here. I am here. You know,
Speaker 2: I am the best, and he would say things. It
Speaker 2: was like a young Muhammad Ali, you know, whom I
Speaker 2: had the good fortune of getting to know over the years.
Speaker 2: So it was easy for me then to make that
Speaker 2: transition from classical into rhythm and blues. I had the
Speaker 2: ability to do it. And it's just simple. It's basically,
Speaker 2: as a singer, what you're doing is less breathing from
Speaker 2: the stomach and more meddling with the vocal cords. It's
Speaker 2: not a sound, it's just it gives you a better
Speaker 2: command over the over the words in my mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a step. When did you first
Speaker 1: become aware of botown?
Speaker 2: Jeez, I don't think I was. I might have been
Speaker 2: a freshman in high school. But Smokey Robinson was the
Speaker 2: very first one I heard. Or no, I'm sorry, Jackie
Speaker 2: Wilson did reap Petite before he signed with the label
Speaker 2: he signed with in New Jersey. But Smokey came out
Speaker 2: with a a song called way over There and that
Speaker 2: was the first motown record I heard. And his voice
Speaker 2: was so beautiful. You know, there's I identify other artists
Speaker 2: by they become timeless to me, not for what words
Speaker 2: they sang, but their voices. I fall in love with
Speaker 2: that immediately. First. You can go a lot of places
Speaker 2: in the world and you know you'll be hearing the
Speaker 2: Wreatha Franklin. It's the same as listening to Nat King Cole.
Speaker 2: Those are very distinctive voices. They they have longevity, they're
Speaker 2: they're different from other voices. It's frustrating because a lot
Speaker 2: of the young new singers that try to get to
Speaker 2: where Aretha was, they may have the talent, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like they have the passion for it. So
Speaker 2: you know, you run into that. You hear that as
Speaker 2: you listen. And I listen to everything. I love all
Speaker 2: kinds of music, and I've made a career out of
Speaker 2: cherry picking. If I go to write music for an album,
Speaker 2: I really do explore. I want to touch everything I
Speaker 2: ever heard, and I want to own it for a
Speaker 2: little while, and then I want to move on to
Speaker 2: something different, something new. It's just an amazing world. This
Speaker 2: lifetime dedication to music, what it's done to me, I'm thankful.
Speaker 2: I'm very thankful for it.
Speaker 1: So you know, those of us who did not grow
Speaker 1: up in that area, there was the Motown House and
Speaker 1: there were all these acts. Were they accessible? Was out
Speaker 1: someplace you would drive by, or they were people you
Speaker 1: just saw on stage and hurt on the radio.
Speaker 2: No, I worked with him. I worked on the stage
Speaker 2: with a lot of them.
Speaker 1: But when you first before you became a star, or
Speaker 1: did you work with them before you became a star?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. There was a dance hall near Detroit, and
Speaker 2: that's where the kids would come to to really party
Speaker 2: and dance. And what it was was all the lonely people.
Speaker 2: They sat against the wall in this big circle, and
Speaker 2: then the dance floor, of course, was in the middle,
Speaker 2: and you'd make that long sort of journey very slowly
Speaker 2: to the other side and asked a lady or a
Speaker 2: man if they wanted to dance. And that's how it was.
Speaker 2: But we had developed a show. We are jumping ahead
Speaker 2: of my career at this point.
Speaker 1: Let's not jump ahead, let's go back.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I started recording when I was sixteen, but
Speaker 2: my first single out.
Speaker 1: Let's go back even before that. So who were your parents?
Speaker 1: Where did they come from? My dad was an only
Speaker 1: child and he sang on the radio. That's back in
Speaker 1: the day, you know, right before the war. The second
Speaker 1: World War, big band music was the thing even through
Speaker 1: the war. It was the bit of the thing, and
Speaker 1: you had all these all and he sang and the
Speaker 1: band was hired by the radio station to back the performers.
Speaker 1: And he told me stories about like Danny Thomas before
Speaker 1: he was Danny Thomas. He came through and he sang
Speaker 1: at that studio was in downtown Detroit, and so that
Speaker 1: was what he was going for. He was going to
Speaker 1: be a singer. And then the my mom, she was
Speaker 1: from Tennessee. She made the journey up to Detroit near
Speaker 1: the end of the depression, right, you know, when the
Speaker 1: war was starting, and because she needed they needed work,
Speaker 1: they needed to live, and there were jobs of plenty
Speaker 1: up here, you know, in the arsenal of democracy. In fact,
Speaker 1: we grew up by a tank plant where they manufactured tanks.
Speaker 1: And my mom heard him on the radio and she
Speaker 1: wondered what face was attached to that that voice that
Speaker 1: she was attracted to. So her and one of her
Speaker 1: girlfriends went down to the studio to be in the
Speaker 1: audience one night, and that's how they met a little bit.
Speaker 1: Do you know the story, Specifically, she's in the audience,
Speaker 1: he's on stage, how did they actually meet.
Speaker 2: Well, nobody's ever told me, but it was in the studio.
Speaker 2: That's the place where they met. I don't know what
Speaker 2: kind of communications they were and what kind of what
Speaker 2: kind of pickup lines she might have had her he
Speaker 2: might have had. You know, that's even too old for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, the earliest part of my life that I remember.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's really funny was when Dwight
Speaker 2: Eisenhoer was running for president, they gave out swag and
Speaker 2: he was given out lucky strikes which had the red
Speaker 2: circle in the white riding, but the package itself was
Speaker 2: military green, and that was a promotional item for his
Speaker 2: election campaign. And my father was like bringing stuff like
Speaker 2: that home. Stuff. Anyway, she had to leave the South
Speaker 2: to get a job. But before she left the South,
Speaker 2: it was only her and my uncle Paul at that point,
Speaker 2: and she had to put school in the sixth grade
Speaker 2: to go pick cotton to help the family because my
Speaker 2: grandfather was just a drunk and he was a horse trader.
Speaker 2: That's what he did for a living. When they finally
Speaker 2: moved up to Detroit, he became an automobile salesman. I
Speaker 2: guess it's the same kind of deal, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was rough for her because she had
Speaker 2: to witness her original mom died right in front of
Speaker 2: her eyes and my uncle's eyes. She got caught on
Speaker 2: fire from this weird stove they had down there, and
Speaker 2: nobody could help her put it out. She was a
Speaker 2: frail lady, and that had to be tough. And when
Speaker 2: I think about my mom and what I know about
Speaker 2: her history, it wasn't pretty at all. You know. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of poverty, a lot of tragic accidents. And
Speaker 2: then finally my drunk grandpa remarried, had two more children,
Speaker 2: or three actually, and then the whole bunch of them
Speaker 2: were living now in Detroit, I think on Third Avenue,
Speaker 2: and I went I went there to visit a couple
Speaker 2: of times, and it was a time when they let
Speaker 2: you behind your apartments or your whatever you were living,
Speaker 2: and you were able to burn leaves. They allowed you
Speaker 2: to do that, so they even provided you with little
Speaker 2: ovens to do that. I'm trying to remember because I
Speaker 2: was young, there were so many images that were flashing
Speaker 2: in front of me, like my uncle George, who ended
Speaker 2: up marrying a woman from Germany when he was in
Speaker 2: the military. During the Korean War. He was an MP
Speaker 2: and she was a farm girl and they met and
Speaker 2: married and brought her back to America, and it was
Speaker 2: my first dose of German, you know, I guess you
Speaker 2: can put it that way. And she was sort of
Speaker 2: a little bit timid and shy, because of course you
Speaker 2: and I both would be if it was a foreign
Speaker 2: country for the first time. If not shy, I'm afraid
Speaker 2: at least really amazed. You're going to have to help
Speaker 2: me walk through this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, you're telling such great stories. I don't want
Speaker 1: to interrupt you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're not connected to you.
Speaker 1: Know, they are connected in my brain. We're starting the meeting.
Speaker 1: So your parents get married, Then when does your father
Speaker 1: stop singing?
Speaker 2: When he got drafted? And when he got drafted. They're
Speaker 2: out in Lincoln, Nebraska at an airfield there, and he
Speaker 2: was his assignment at that time, was a tail gunner
Speaker 2: and they be twenty sevens seven it sounds right to me.
Speaker 2: And he was feeding his machine gun and it tore
Speaker 2: off two of his fingers and so it was bye bye.
Speaker 2: You know. He had no more military career, but he
Speaker 2: thought he could get back into the radio thing and
Speaker 2: Unfortunately this country moves so fast, always has that wasn't
Speaker 2: available anymore. That wasn't what was necessary, that wasn't what
Speaker 2: was rock and roll. Was just starting to kick his heels.
Speaker 2: You could feel it down south and you could hear
Speaker 2: it up north. Yeah, so for him it became really
Speaker 2: really crazy and frustrating because he knew then that he couldn't,
Speaker 2: especially with the physical missing two fingers. He felt a
Speaker 2: little bad about that, but he's it was a beautiful singer.
Speaker 2: You would keep us little kids awake at nights, singing
Speaker 2: love songs to my mom in bed. Yeah. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to give it up, you know, but he did
Speaker 2: eventually when I succeeded, he started living vicariously through me.
Speaker 2: So I had done what he started to do. What
Speaker 2: did he do for a living? How did he provide
Speaker 2: a tool and die maker? Working over time whenever he
Speaker 2: could get it? Never really home. I remember many occasions
Speaker 2: where there was they had called Grandma so we'd get
Speaker 2: the lights turned back on. It wasn't enough. I mean,
Speaker 2: we ended up having eight kids in that family. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's a challenge for sure, especially if you're
Speaker 2: Catholic and you don't want to if you're deep into it,
Speaker 2: you know the Catholic Church has changed. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: excited about this new pope from Chicago.
Speaker 1: So with area of Detroit did to grow up in?
Speaker 2: Well? I was born in ham Trammick, which is a
Speaker 2: Polish enclave almost one hundred percent so not today it's
Speaker 2: heavily populated by a lot of different ethnic cultures, but
Speaker 2: back then it was totally Polish. And it's curiously enough,
Speaker 2: it's one of the popes visited there. All the places
Speaker 2: in America you could go to, he went to ham Trammick, Michigan.
Speaker 2: I have no idea it was okay, but we were
Speaker 2: Italian and we were surrounded by Polish people, so we
Speaker 2: moved pretty quick. After I was born. I pretty much
Speaker 2: think that's when that doctor made that mistake with my circumcision.
Speaker 2: That was a joke.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. You never know, but yeah, not till
Speaker 1: you look. So you're going to school, What was school like.
Speaker 2: School? Well, I tested out my wings early. When I
Speaker 2: was three years old. I ran away from home on
Speaker 2: my tricycle. I remember going past the tank plant and
Speaker 2: I got about a mile away from home and a
Speaker 2: cop car pulled up and took my tricycle and put
Speaker 2: it in a trunk and discorded me back to my
Speaker 2: crying mother, who was desperate to know why things were
Speaker 2: so miserable that I had to run away at three.
Speaker 2: So I waited a while, and then when I was
Speaker 2: in kindergarten, I did it again. I just started walking home,
Speaker 2: remembering the route the bus had taken as best I could,
Speaker 2: and my uncle Bobby Joe come scouting for me and
Speaker 2: found me and then took me home and I had
Speaker 2: to face my crying mother again. Tried to enlist in
Speaker 2: the Marines twice before I was seventeen. That didn't work
Speaker 2: because my Actually it was funny for me to watch.
Speaker 2: But in the beginning they called me to tell me
Speaker 2: when to report to Fort Wayne for induction in the
Speaker 2: morning to sign up. And he said, who are you calling?
Speaker 2: And they said WILLIAMS Levice. Is that you? He said yes,
Speaker 2: and then he stops for saying, looks at me. He
Speaker 2: says yeah. He said that's also my son's name, and
Speaker 2: so he had figured out that I had the Marines
Speaker 2: were calling for. He said, I fought in a way
Speaker 2: he needs to say it fought. He said, I served
Speaker 2: and I was discharged with honorable discharge, and I think
Speaker 2: I know what's going on here, and so I was grounded.
Speaker 2: You know, I couldn't go anywhere because I tried to
Speaker 2: run away from home again, just how it was, and
Speaker 2: it was never I never felt fear out of running away.
Speaker 2: It was more like an adventure. But I have to
Speaker 2: say my parents, they weren't the most intelligent people in
Speaker 2: the world. They were smart. My mom was smart enough
Speaker 2: to teach me some things that I should never never forget,
Speaker 2: and one is, do not talk about politics, do not
Speaker 2: talk about religion, and you'll get along fine.
Speaker 1: Okay. What kind of kid were you growing up? Were
Speaker 1: you good in school? Did you play sports? Did you
Speaker 1: have friends?
Speaker 2: At the age of four, I had rheumatic fever, which
Speaker 2: left me with a heart murmur for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life, even today I have it. So in the
Speaker 2: early grades one, two, and three, they wouldn't allow me
Speaker 2: to play sports with the boys because of the heart thing,
Speaker 2: and I ended up learning how to play jacks and
Speaker 2: babble about nothing forever, just sitting with the girls, you know,
Speaker 2: and trying to understand what they were talking about, why
Speaker 2: they were talking about it. And so I had a
Speaker 2: preview of what makes little girls turned into women. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about personality wise, and yeah, I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to describe women is anything less than we certainly were equal,
Speaker 2: especially when it came to marbles. So that went on
Speaker 2: for some years and then the doctor finally said, okay,
Speaker 2: you can play sports. And when I got to high school,
Speaker 2: that's exactly what I did. I tried football, but I
Speaker 2: was skinny and I was My assignment was the running back,
Speaker 2: so they hand the hand off the ball to me
Speaker 2: and I tried to cut through the slot that was
Speaker 2: supposed to have been open for me, and I came
Speaker 2: through in my pants, swear on it anymore. I was
Speaker 2: standing there in the football field in my jock strap
Speaker 2: and no cheerleaders are going what you So I chose
Speaker 2: track and field and that was my pursuit. But I
Speaker 2: didn't really excel at anything. I did get a medal
Speaker 2: for cross country, but my love. The things I gravitated
Speaker 2: to in high school were essentially music, and thank god
Speaker 2: we had a music program and art. Mister van Zant
Speaker 2: was my art teacher in Dell Towers. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: in the opening, he was the music teacher and I
Speaker 2: was like a straight a student in those I guess
Speaker 2: my next best thing that I did was grammar. I
Speaker 2: love the written word. I'm very very passionate about it.
Speaker 2: And when I write songs, it's so tempting to play,
Speaker 2: to play with the words, to look for the ambiguities,
Speaker 2: to look at how many ways can you use this language?
Speaker 2: But that didn't. That disappeared just recently because I have
Speaker 2: learned this as well. When you start speaking legal language,
Speaker 2: you don't you just stop trusting the English language. You
Speaker 2: absolutely lose your trust for it. And you've got all
Speaker 2: these right boys that went to schools to learn how
Speaker 2: to twist words. And in a way, I guess we're similar.
Speaker 2: But I don't lie, and I'm not calling attorney's liars.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it. You know, if you come to
Speaker 2: a signpost and it shows I got three under my
Speaker 2: this way one hundred and fifty, if you go that way,
Speaker 2: you know, they just parse words and just clog up
Speaker 2: the court system and get it's like getting away with murder.
Speaker 2: And you know you need them. You certainly need them
Speaker 2: when you need to be defended. And things are changing,
Speaker 2: Bob so quickly that I really don't have time to
Speaker 2: ponder on that. What I do is I continue to
Speaker 2: dream about tomorrow and what I want to do tomorrow,
Speaker 2: what I want to create new things that I've not
Speaker 2: experienced yet. And I've done this. I've completed in my home.
Speaker 2: I have a completed album that's never been released. I
Speaker 2: have two books that have been authored by me and
Speaker 2: never been published. I have a musical stage play and
Speaker 2: I have to find right now. I'm looking for an accomplice,
Speaker 2: if you will, to help me set this for the stage,
Speaker 2: because not like the movies where you can get a
Speaker 2: different image every two seconds and still understand what's going on.
Speaker 2: On live stages, you have to have sets and you
Speaker 2: can only have so many set changes in a play.
Speaker 2: And it's things like that that I'm not used to
Speaker 2: because I didn't take drama. And I'm looking for an accomplice.
Speaker 2: I'll call them an accomplice. At this point, we don't
Speaker 2: know what we're capable of.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to school. Did you graduate?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Of course. It was really cool because the principals
Speaker 2: pull me when you're handed me in my diploma. He
Speaker 2: pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear.
Speaker 2: The only reason you're getting this is because I don't
Speaker 2: want to see you here and this that's what he
Speaker 2: told me. I took him to heart, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when did you start going to clubs and
Speaker 1: when did you start performing in clubs?
Speaker 2: In clubs at fifteen years old?
Speaker 1: Didn't tell me how that ended up happening.
Speaker 2: Well, I kind of did. It was the radio. I
Speaker 2: wanted to go where that music was emanating from, and
Speaker 2: of course I couldn't go to New York at the
Speaker 2: time anyway, and so I just sought out Detroit. That
Speaker 2: was where the music that I loved was. And I
Speaker 2: ended up making a lot of friends. And I was
Speaker 2: surprised because I never felt racially intimidated by by my
Speaker 2: black friends. They just didn't do that. And I remember
Speaker 2: also as well, neither of my parents ever said anything
Speaker 2: that would come close to being bigoted or racist at
Speaker 2: all at our home, and so there was no foundation
Speaker 2: for preconceived notions of what the urban life was like.
Speaker 2: I walked in, people greeted me, I made friends, we
Speaker 2: started working together, and it was like just living everyday life.
Speaker 2: There was nothing about skin and that's another thing that
Speaker 2: I loved music about. There aren't really color barriers there.
Speaker 2: It's all about the music. And I think the world
Speaker 2: cannot live without music. In fact, I'm sure of it.
Speaker 2: But I would be interested in me witnessing what the
Speaker 2: first drummer used. I would like and I'd like to
Speaker 2: know what he was beating it on. You know.
Speaker 1: So when you started performing, what were the circumstances did
Speaker 1: you form a band? Were you singing soul music?
Speaker 2: I was solo and my father wasn't in some ways
Speaker 2: trying to still tried to make a comeback. I remember
Speaker 2: him there was a casting call in Detroit for a showboat,
Speaker 2: and he got dressed up and went downtown and auditioned
Speaker 2: for it. But he didn't make it. But he had
Speaker 2: a friend at his tool and die factory where he worked,
Speaker 2: a black gentleman whose wife played keyboard and a choir
Speaker 2: at this black church. And the church was run by
Speaker 2: the reverend James Hendricks, and he owned a record label
Speaker 2: called Kerrie and my father wanted to get signed to
Speaker 2: that label. But I'll be darn I stole I tole
Speaker 2: his I stole his job away from Kelly. I just
Speaker 2: thought of it that way. Yeah, the reverend wanted he
Speaker 2: looked around him and saw what was happening in the
Speaker 2: music world and figured with a Okay, I got a
Speaker 2: white kid here, but if you listen to him, he
Speaker 2: doesn't sound white. I think I better sign this kid.
Speaker 2: And he did, you know, And and we put out
Speaker 2: that first single, but it was a nickel and dime operation.
Speaker 1: How successful was that?
Speaker 2: How successful was it? I lost my interest in it
Speaker 2: because it was my very first time into a radio station.
Speaker 2: And as we were leaving and this jockey, I think
Speaker 2: it was popcornwile it was his name, he took the record,
Speaker 2: said turn on the radio when you get in the car,
Speaker 2: I want to be playing it. And then when they
Speaker 2: shook hands, I just happened to see the palming of
Speaker 2: the money, and every bit of joy I was feeling
Speaker 2: fell to the floor into a muddle of tears. I
Speaker 2: guess because I so new to that that industry, seeing
Speaker 2: that happened that you had to pay somebody to play
Speaker 2: your record. But it didn't stop me, because you know,
Speaker 2: the sun will come up tomorrow. And so I'm working
Speaker 2: at the village it was called on Woodward Avenue in Alexandria,
Speaker 2: and I'm performing with acapella with the PEPs the black
Speaker 2: group I was a part member of. And every week
Speaker 2: the Glands Brothers owned the building and they would hire
Speaker 2: a house band. You would audition to be a houseman,
Speaker 2: and so it was difficult because you got new guys
Speaker 2: coming in. They have to learn your songs and they
Speaker 2: have to learn them in like a day, two days,
Speaker 2: so you could get ready for the shows. And what
Speaker 2: they would do the Glands Brothers would then tell the
Speaker 2: band after the week's performance, nah, we don't think you're
Speaker 2: what we need, because nobody paid them to audition, right,
Speaker 2: And that's how they would get their bands in there.
Speaker 2: They just would keep rejecting people and having auditions for
Speaker 2: new ones. And so on one given weekend, these three
Speaker 2: young white boys come in and they consisted of Earl Elliott,
Speaker 2: Jimmy McCarty and Johnny Badangic extremely talented guys for sure.
Speaker 2: So they backed me and we liked what we heard
Speaker 2: because they're like they were like a rock and roll
Speaker 2: group and that's what they did best. And I was
Speaker 2: strictly into the rhythm and blues thing. And we found
Speaker 2: out that when we put those two together on our
Speaker 2: song list, it was a new it was a different sound.
Speaker 2: It wasn't what was out there, and we were right,
Speaker 2: but we didn't know it yet. So we put out
Speaker 2: a single in the Detroit area on Hireland Records and
Speaker 2: we were called Billy Lee and the Rivieras, and it
Speaker 2: didn't really do anything except for our live performances were
Speaker 2: so so crazy. At that time, you had the beginning
Speaker 2: of the British invasion. And this one radio station paid
Speaker 2: a lot of money to hire this dic jockey just
Speaker 2: because he had an English accent. I thought that was stupid.
Speaker 2: But this this jockey that was there, his name was
Speaker 2: Dave Prince. He said, you know, you guys are different.
Speaker 2: And I got a friend in New York and would
Speaker 2: you make it like a tape? Can you guys make
Speaker 2: a little tape that I can play for him, you know,
Speaker 2: so he can hear the band? And we did, and
Speaker 2: he took it to New York and a producer named
Speaker 2: Bob Crewe, who is most famous, I guess, doing the
Speaker 2: Four Seasons songs. He loved it and they called us
Speaker 2: to New York and we took a really cheap hotel
Speaker 2: there called the Colisseum House. I had the occasion to
Speaker 2: be there a few years ago and revisit. It's not.
Speaker 2: The structure is still there, but it's it doesn't have
Speaker 2: any more cockroaches, cleaned up and you know, it's been
Speaker 2: sanitized and gentrified. And so that's where we stayed. And
Speaker 2: there were only two bedrooms and there were five of us,
Speaker 2: so somebody had to sleep on the couch and we
Speaker 2: take turns doing that. It was really boring is waiting
Speaker 2: around for the producer to get his himself in a
Speaker 2: position where we could go in and record. So we
Speaker 2: started working at some of the local clubs in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: In the village, there was a joint called Trudy Heller's,
Speaker 2: which wasn't a folk club, but we did work some
Speaker 2: folk clubs too, and didn't go over too well with
Speaker 2: the folkies. That you know, hard electric pounding beat. That
Speaker 2: rhythm we were using. We spent our time doing that
Speaker 2: and guy came in one night and he came to
Speaker 2: me because at that point I had been married and
Speaker 2: left my pregnant wife in Detroit while I ventured out
Speaker 2: into New York to await my fate. And he comes
Speaker 2: up to me and says, hey, do you want to
Speaker 2: make fifty bucks? I said, well, yeah, of course, he
Speaker 2: said Okay, can you play hobn Neguila. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I need to do that because my first wife was
Speaker 2: Jewish and so our children were Jewish as well. Oh man,
Speaker 2: this just popped into my mind. My legal name is
Speaker 2: Levice L E V I S E. But Nay Briath
Speaker 2: didn't think so they thought my name was Levine. So
Speaker 2: I started getting all these male for contributions to all
Speaker 2: these different causes. And so the kids were going to school,
Speaker 2: I was learning Hebrew, I was wearing the Azusa. I
Speaker 2: was thinking of converting. And then it happened success, And
Speaker 2: it happened in a very strange way. The producer when
Speaker 2: we all arrived in New York. First of all, nobody
Speaker 2: was old enough to sign. Our parents had to sign
Speaker 2: our contracts for us. And we sense that Bob Crue
Speaker 2: didn't want to accept the whole group because the very
Speaker 2: first single that he put out was one of me
Speaker 2: alone singing an R and B, a very good R
Speaker 2: and B classic, but you know, it appeared on the
Speaker 2: Rhythm and Blues charts, but nowhere else, and he had
Speaker 2: a failure with it using studio musicians. So he said, okay,
Speaker 2: get the band together. We're going in the studio. I
Speaker 2: want you to play every song you know. So he
Speaker 2: had also at that very same time acquired the publishing
Speaker 2: rights for the Rolling Stones catalog, and so subsequently we're
Speaker 2: doing this session, one of only three studio sessions we
Speaker 2: ever did for him. He called all of the music
Speaker 2: for all the five albums he put out on me
Speaker 2: from those two sessions except for what Now I Love
Speaker 2: album and two of the Rolling Stones, and they were hot.
Speaker 2: They had made it already. We hadn't. They were in
Speaker 2: the studio because they they love music too. And I
Speaker 2: think Keith told Bob Crue, if you want a hit
Speaker 2: out of what you've got going on out there, you
Speaker 2: might want to bet on that, Jenny take a ride,
Speaker 2: And when he did, you didn't have the dismal failure
Speaker 2: of that single by Mitch Wrider, but you had a
Speaker 2: hare record by Mitchwriter and Detroit Wheels, which was full
Speaker 2: of energy and that special sound I tried to describe
Speaker 2: to you earlier, that sort of cocktail, that rhythm and
Speaker 2: blues mixed with rock and roll. At that point in time,
Speaker 2: it was different. It was very different. I kind of
Speaker 2: have an understanding of why people liked it. I heard
Speaker 2: it really hurt it because we had an alarm clock
Speaker 2: that would wake you up with music and Darren, it
Speaker 2: goes off and they're playing Jenny Take a Ride, and
Speaker 2: I'm listening to it laid in bed like it's foreign
Speaker 2: to me, like I heard it for the first time.
Speaker 2: I'm saying, damn, that's a really good song. You know.
Speaker 2: It was churchy. It had a gospel feel to it,
Speaker 2: but it had those hard electric guitars going, kind of
Speaker 2: like drunken people that staggered musicians that stagger into a
Speaker 2: Salvation Army band. But it was cool. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: We're in Messina, New York, working a club six days
Speaker 2: a week, three shows a day, seventy five minutes, and
Speaker 2: we're just waiting and waiting and waiting, and we get
Speaker 2: a phone call and said to simply, all right, you guys,
Speaker 2: you're all done there, pack up your bag. You're going
Speaker 2: on tour tomorrow. And that's exactly what happened. And the
Speaker 2: money we were making for an entire week, we made
Speaker 2: double that in one show for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: And we worked all those weeks to get that money.
Speaker 2: So that's how quickly things change, how they can change.
Speaker 1: So they put out Jenny takes a ride. You have success,
Speaker 1: stay on the road. How long until there's another record?
Speaker 2: Wow? Everything was done within a two and a half
Speaker 2: year period, everything the recording, as far as recordings go.
Speaker 2: And then you had the lack of their what now
Speaker 2: my love, which I sang on because I was contracted to.
Speaker 2: You know, I came from an age where my parents
Speaker 2: were good parents. You know, they did teach me right
Speaker 2: from wrong. But at that time in our American history,
Speaker 2: if you got a girl pregnant, he had to marry her.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't have say in it if you
Speaker 2: were a righteous kid. But that's one of the tragedies
Speaker 2: of my first marriage because the kids were wonderful success
Speaker 2: coming at that very moment when I'm needed to be
Speaker 2: a father and you can't say enough about that. I
Speaker 2: know what it was like to not know my dad
Speaker 2: because he had to work so hard, and I just
Speaker 2: didn't want that to be for my kids. So I
Speaker 2: had a pretty hard choice to make. But we didn't
Speaker 2: get you know, we got married when we were eighteen,
Speaker 2: so we didn't know what love was. I mean, the
Speaker 2: underpinning is what it really took to be in love,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the reasons the marriage didn't work out.
Speaker 2: We were just and so much was happening so fast,
Speaker 2: and the demand of my time and that machine that
Speaker 2: wanted to make as much money as it could. They
Speaker 2: didn't leave me a second to spare. I was lucky
Speaker 2: to get home and see my kids. I was if
Speaker 2: you're going to be a musician, think about it deeply,
Speaker 2: if you want to have a family as well, because
Speaker 2: I've seen it cause wreckage wherever it goes.
Speaker 1: So how did it end with your first marriage?
Speaker 2: Well, she was a very good woman. She allowed me
Speaker 2: to be with my kids and have my kids with
Speaker 2: me when I wanted them, because I hardly got home
Speaker 2: anyway at all. I mean one year, we did two
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty nine performances and I ended up being sick.
Speaker 2: I had to go to hospital. After that, I was
Speaker 2: just playing more out. I was working for Premier Talent
Speaker 2: in New York, ran by Frank Barcelona, and they were
Speaker 2: just starting to bring over English acts to help the
Speaker 2: English breakthrough. The Beatles had already done that, so had
Speaker 2: the Rolling Stones, but there were a million others to follow,
Speaker 2: like the Dave Clark five and anybody you can name
Speaker 2: that was from that sixties period that were British. A
Speaker 2: lot of great groups, but in the beginning, for almost
Speaker 2: every one of them, they did cover songs of black
Speaker 2: urban music. Listened to their early stuff by the Stones
Speaker 2: or anybody else for that matter that wanted to break through.
Speaker 2: Early on, they were cover songs of black American artists.
Speaker 2: And I was a headliner at that point. We had
Speaker 2: already had a couple gold records of the top tens,
Speaker 2: and I was headlining a theater. And because I was
Speaker 2: a headliner, my contract said that I could pick the
Speaker 2: artists that were on the show. So I picked the
Speaker 2: Who and the Cream, and damn if I didn't cut
Speaker 2: my own throat. They are amazing. But Peter Town said,
Speaker 2: when I went to England for the first time to
Speaker 2: be introduced socially and publicly as an artist, he sponsored me.
Speaker 2: The British were obsessed with this notion and they just
Speaker 2: almost everyone to a man came up with the same question,
Speaker 2: how do you sound so black? And I was offended
Speaker 2: by it. I almost lost it on one I just
Speaker 2: wanted to call them an ignorant asshole, but I didn't,
Speaker 2: and I mean their view see that's how you go
Speaker 2: about colonizing a world. You don't care. You know, they're
Speaker 2: nothing if they're not white and bright, they're not shiny
Speaker 2: and fun to be with. That's why it was easy
Speaker 2: for the Brits to conquer the world. They just simply
Speaker 2: didn't care. But they were the only colonials expansionist country.
Speaker 2: You know what. The history of the world is just
Speaker 2: like I do, and it's cyclical, and it just keeps
Speaker 2: repeating itself. I think currently we're headed for another Gilded Age,
Speaker 2: only one hundred million times worse in terms of the
Speaker 2: divide between they have and have not.
Speaker 1: So tell me about Bob Crue.
Speaker 2: Okay, he was overtly gay. He didn't mind that at all.
Speaker 2: And he was a showman, he was a seller. He
Speaker 2: was a star in his mind. And what he had
Speaker 2: in mind for me, though, is different from what was
Speaker 2: going on in America at that time. He thought that
Speaker 2: working seven months stays at a Las Vegas hotel was
Speaker 2: the top of the world. Went all around me, It wasn't.
Speaker 2: All the other artists were trying to conquer the entire country.
Speaker 2: And he's trying to get me to get us stay
Speaker 2: in Vegas for God, knows how long, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: going to work, so I sued to break the management
Speaker 2: contract and he sold my contract to Paramount, which wasn't
Speaker 2: so bad in the beginning because we had artists like
Speaker 2: Billy Joel was at that time on Paramount before he
Speaker 2: made his moves. He also stole my drummer. People keep
Speaker 2: stealing my drummers. It's crazy. They just offer them a
Speaker 2: little more, you know what, I can't pay them. They'll
Speaker 2: just pay them a little more. And then these guys
Speaker 2: go and they go with my blessing because they gave
Speaker 2: me what they had when they were with me and I.
Speaker 2: It gets complicated, Bob.
Speaker 1: Well, that seems there's a story there. It gets complicated.
Speaker 1: To tell me a little bit more about that. Well,
Speaker 1: which aspect of it, Well, you're saying keeping a band together,
Speaker 1: that must be a really hard effort.
Speaker 2: Not if you're having hits. Because I've seen bands that
Speaker 2: actually hate each other. They'll perform. They don't even talk
Speaker 2: to each other off stage, but they'll perform. Because that's
Speaker 2: it's all about money. That's if we wanted to, you know,
Speaker 2: say good night, that's all we have to say. It's
Speaker 2: all about money. So that's in everything we do.
Speaker 1: When do you realize the hits have dried up and
Speaker 1: it's not going to be so easy to have a
Speaker 1: new one.
Speaker 2: When he put out the What Now My Love? Album,
Speaker 2: I was calling radio stations asking him not to play
Speaker 2: it because I just didn't believe in it. It wasn't
Speaker 2: I did it because I had to contractually, but I
Speaker 2: didn't like it. And well, Dell Towers, the guy I
Speaker 2: was telling you about Taughty Classical, he loves. He loves
Speaker 2: that album. It's like a bunch of French ballads like
Speaker 2: what Now My Love? I don't know if it's French
Speaker 2: of it strings. Utch Davies was the musical director. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you know Hutch, but he did a
Speaker 2: marvelous job with those string arrangements. I can see where
Speaker 2: a certain part. Well the record got. The single got
Speaker 2: to number thirty seven, which would be hard to believe
Speaker 2: if you were a hardcore Mitch writer Detroit Wheel fan fan.
Speaker 2: And yet it's just a very uncomfortable place to be
Speaker 2: because no, that's not what I wanted. I loved the
Speaker 2: idea of a big band, but you know, Bob Cruise
Speaker 2: mission was to separate me immediately. With that first record,
Speaker 2: we spoke of from the group and make me into
Speaker 2: a soul entity. Each of us had our own individual
Speaker 2: contracts What Now My Love? And then the pursuant lawsuit
Speaker 2: that I filed to break my management was the a
Speaker 2: downward spin for me. But Pure Amount knew how much,
Speaker 2: the exorbitant amount of money they had paid for my
Speaker 2: contract because at that time, when you count them all up,
Speaker 2: we've had like seventeen or eighteen songs totally in the
Speaker 2: top one hundred, I guess four and top ten, and
Speaker 2: then you go to five, you go the top twenty,
Speaker 2: you get another five, and so it was well in
Speaker 2: such a short period of time because it's from those
Speaker 2: three sessions. Play everything you know, Bob cru said, and
Speaker 2: we did, and he taped everything we knew, and that's
Speaker 2: where he do. Look, you had all the Great Hits
Speaker 2: by Mitch Ryder, which was just a repeat of everything
Speaker 2: that was a hit. You have Mitch Wrider Sings the Hits.
Speaker 2: That was another album he put out, which was the
Speaker 2: same material with different packaging. You had the What Now
Speaker 2: My Love? Album, and you had Genny Take a Ride,
Speaker 2: and you had Breakout, and you had Socker to Me baby,
Speaker 2: which was incredible because I'm with my wife, still married
Speaker 2: to my little Jewish princess, and we're shopping and we
Speaker 2: go buy this cart and they're selling little Mitch Ryder dolls.
Speaker 2: Who has bro is selling Mitch writer dolls right next
Speaker 2: the mamas and the papas and crazy crazy stuff. I didn't.
Speaker 2: I guess my wife bought a couple and stuck them
Speaker 2: away because my daughter still has hers. But I went
Speaker 2: looking for him one day, and not too long ago,
Speaker 2: I maybe five years ago, and I found one. But
Speaker 2: they wanted a lot of money, and they had taken
Speaker 2: this stage costume off the doll. It was just a
Speaker 2: nude little doll, and and and in my private parts
Speaker 2: it was just plastic. And I had a lot of
Speaker 2: mental problems over that. For a while, I didn't know
Speaker 2: what what gender I was, you know, I was a
Speaker 2: little confused.
Speaker 1: So emotionally, how do you cope when you realize, man,
Speaker 1: the hits are no longer coming.
Speaker 2: Oh that wasn't a problem because I was always just
Speaker 2: about being able to sing and write. It didn't bother me.
Speaker 2: But you're asking how did you stay alive?
Speaker 1: I think well that too. I was going to go
Speaker 1: there next Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well I took whatever they gave me. I
Speaker 2: didn't have a manager, I didn't have a br association.
Speaker 2: I didn't have at that time, they didn't have such
Speaker 2: a thing as influencers. You know. It was a different
Speaker 2: time and it was hard, and I went through so
Speaker 2: many different booking people that promised me they could get
Speaker 2: me work and stuff, and I ended up with one
Speaker 2: group that got me worked for a while. When I
Speaker 2: say work, I'm talking about good work. It was middle
Speaker 2: class at least. And then they started putting me on
Speaker 2: these package tours, which were lucrative for the promoters because
Speaker 2: you had all these stars with all these hits. But
Speaker 2: that's all they do is come out and sing the
Speaker 2: hits and nothing else. They wouldn't do a show. So
Speaker 2: I was tied up in that for well over a decade,
Speaker 2: maybe two. But every year that passed and you're getting
Speaker 2: further and further from your core audience and there was
Speaker 2: no new music being made. But Polygrim did manage to
Speaker 2: get me a dream come true, and they arrange it
Speaker 2: so I could make a record called the Detroit Memphis
Speaker 2: Experiment with Burger T and the MGS, with the original
Speaker 2: band and the Memphis Horns, and that was thrilling in
Speaker 2: so many ways. Started a relationship and knowledge of Otis Redding,
Speaker 2: for example, was one of their stars. Interesting label. There's
Speaker 2: some stuff on TV I saw about it, how they
Speaker 2: got ripped off by Atlantic Records and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth. I'm not saying anything liable. I'm just telling
Speaker 2: you what I saw on TV. Gosh, that was fun.
Speaker 2: That was fun. But after that I got a new manager.
Speaker 2: I wanted to take another chance at a manager. And
Speaker 2: his name was Barry Kramer, and he had created a
Speaker 2: magazine out of Detroit called Cream Magazine, which he wholly
Speaker 2: intended to go head to head and compete against Rolling Stone,
Speaker 2: and he signed a deal with Curtis Publishing in New York,
Speaker 2: which brought up is you can find his book everywhere
Speaker 2: because prior to that, we were taking his magazines on
Speaker 2: tour with us in big black garbage bags and dumping
Speaker 2: them off at different bookstores and newsstands that he said
Speaker 2: were important to do that. So we were kind of
Speaker 2: like doing our tour and selling his publication at the
Speaker 2: same time. So Barry became my manager, and he drafted
Speaker 2: a new contract with Paramount and we birthed the album
Speaker 2: called Detroit, which was produced by Bob Ezrin out of Toronto.
Speaker 2: For those of you who don't know too much of
Speaker 2: his work, he was, uh, the group, well, the guy
Speaker 2: that did taking care of business, for example, the guitar player.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember his names with Burton coming, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Randy and then Burton was a singer and.
Speaker 1: Golly we did Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd the Wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's a I don't know what he's doing now.
Speaker 1: He's living back in Toronto. He's producing records, produced Fish record,
Speaker 1: Andrea Bocelli still working.
Speaker 2: Good good. I wonder if he still has the same
Speaker 2: publishing company Nimbus nine.
Speaker 1: Nimbus nine. I think Nimbus nine was Jack Richardson's. He
Speaker 1: used to work for Jack Richardson in New York, that's right,
Speaker 1: I mean in Toronto. I don't know who owns Nimbus sign.
Speaker 2: Well, they own some of my songs. I can tell
Speaker 2: you that.
Speaker 1: Well, let's okay, you sit at home now this lead date.
Speaker 1: You get any royalties.
Speaker 2: We're having to fight that very issue as we speak.
Speaker 2: We're getting some today. I got three different checks from
Speaker 2: three different collection agencies, so it helped, but those weren't ours.
Speaker 2: In the beginning. Crew never intended to paying anybody anything.
Speaker 2: In fact, he bragged publicly. I don't know how high
Speaker 2: he had to be able to say this, but he
Speaker 2: bragged about spending about seven million dollars just on cocaine,
Speaker 2: and it made us wonder why we weren't getting any royalties. Kelly,
Speaker 2: you know, it's really hard, Bob, because when you people say, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: you got screwed, but that was how they did the
Speaker 2: business back then. You were lucky if you didn't get screwed,
Speaker 2: and we just you can't complain too much because at
Speaker 2: some point, if it wasn't for Bob Crue, there wouldn't
Speaker 2: be a Mitch Rider. So I can respect that, but
Speaker 2: I can tell you this as well. I'm sure it
Speaker 2: would be under a different name, but I still would
Speaker 2: have made it because I was determined to become a star,
Speaker 2: and whatever circumstances I found myself in, I'm absolutely certain
Speaker 2: I would have done that. That was the easy part.
Speaker 2: That's not the hard part of my struggle. The hard
Speaker 2: part of my struggle is to establish myself and keep
Speaker 2: chasing the dream. I love all these kinds of music,
Speaker 2: but I want to go deeper into them and bring
Speaker 2: more of myself into it. The new album that we're
Speaker 2: creating to be recorded next year is probably as close
Speaker 2: to my inner self as I've ever allowed myself to be.
Speaker 2: This one the latest Woman we're promoting now. It's a
Speaker 2: good album, but we're striving for something a little different
Speaker 2: than that, and new and a new experience and some
Speaker 2: you know, beautiful music. And when I say beautiful, I
Speaker 2: mean stuff that you just want to listen to over
Speaker 2: and over again. And last night we did a shoot
Speaker 2: for a music video for the new album, and I
Speaker 2: mentioned it to Josh. Anyway, we were up till four
Speaker 2: a m. This morning, and we're deeply involved in it.
Speaker 2: You know. At some point, I want to talk about
Speaker 2: why we feel a need to sort of cast raise
Speaker 2: an eyebrow when we ask ourselves, how are we going
Speaker 2: to deal with our aging population, How are we going
Speaker 2: to deal with our elders? How are we treating them
Speaker 2: in this country? And I'm here to tell you that
Speaker 2: it's a big difference in cultures. It is not this
Speaker 2: way around the world, the way we treat older people here.
Speaker 2: But I want to table that for a minute to
Speaker 2: try to keep this trade on, to make every stop
Speaker 2: that we can make.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, you no. Tell me, tell
Speaker 1: me more about the aging people, the aging population.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a lot of ways to look at it,
Speaker 2: Like if you can afford to put mom in a home,
Speaker 2: you know, it really depends on what kind she needs.
Speaker 2: Do you need assisted living? That happens sometimes they just
Speaker 2: send them to like a morphine house, where when they
Speaker 2: decide they can't handle it anymore, they just they're allowed,
Speaker 2: without much discovery, to in their lives the way they
Speaker 2: want to. And I think they should be allowed to
Speaker 2: do that. They've spent their whole life. You know, life
Speaker 2: is not easy. That's the first thing you want to
Speaker 2: teach your kids. It's not going to be easy, kid,
Speaker 2: but you know you'll end up loving it. So what
Speaker 2: do you do in a family that doesn't have the
Speaker 2: money to put mom in assisted living or into a
Speaker 2: morphine house or take care of her? You know, then
Speaker 2: you take on We used to have in this gun
Speaker 2: what we call generational homes. Nobody can I don't know
Speaker 2: if they can't afford to have a generational home. Because
Speaker 2: both of the principal, the daughter and son of this
Speaker 2: woman or man. They both have to work. There's so
Speaker 2: many different interchangeable parts in the financial situation that it
Speaker 2: directs you to what your choices can be and what
Speaker 2: they will be. I don't know. If you start taking
Speaker 2: away safety nets, then that raises another problem because you've
Speaker 2: got people now, not now, but gosh, fifty years ago
Speaker 2: started learning how to game the system, you know, and
Speaker 2: raise families on government money instead of doing work for
Speaker 2: it if there was a job to be had. And
Speaker 2: that's what's so frustrating about everything is happening today. But
Speaker 2: you know what, it's cyclical. It's been done before. It's
Speaker 2: coming back again, only this time it feels like it's
Speaker 2: coming back a little harder. But we're all going to
Speaker 2: live through it, you know, unless something, Unless God wants
Speaker 2: to call you in. So I wouldn't be afraid of
Speaker 2: what's happening now. I know that's easy to say because
Speaker 2: I'm still being productive. I'm still hiring lighting people and
Speaker 2: audio people and gaffers and humpers and putting people to
Speaker 2: work contributing to society paying taxes. So I'm still viable.
Speaker 2: But what do you do with people that can't and
Speaker 2: they're suffering a lot of them are suffering. They can't
Speaker 2: they can't work because they can't physically do it. They'd
Speaker 2: love to work if they could. And eighty years old
Speaker 2: or whatever age you want to put it at, where
Speaker 2: you think they're they're no good for society. You need
Speaker 2: to relook at that and see where you can find
Speaker 2: the value that these people are still willing to give
Speaker 2: but have no opportunity to do it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: it's messy. It's messy to describe. It's messy for me
Speaker 2: to even dissect it in front of you because there's
Speaker 2: so much emotion involved in it. But I do know
Speaker 2: that if you've done done it the right way and
Speaker 2: you played by the rules and you did what you
Speaker 2: thought was right, only to find out that it didn't
Speaker 2: matter one bit what you were doing right or wrong,
Speaker 2: because in the end, there's so much greed in business,
Speaker 2: in capitalism, there's so much greed tied up there to
Speaker 2: very few that you can't really it's hard to fight
Speaker 2: the machine. And what do we do. We're living through,
Speaker 2: like I said, another Gilded Age, which was interesting following
Speaker 2: the reconstruction period in the American history, and that fell apart,
Speaker 2: and then you go, you know, into the roaring twenties,
Speaker 2: all this while the Industrial Revolution is just making itself
Speaker 2: more viable and more and more and buying up things
Speaker 2: and consolidating and looking for a bigger check for everybody
Speaker 2: that's lucky enough to be employed by them. And I'm
Speaker 2: sitting here wondering about what happens if they start to
Speaker 2: privatize our social security? And what happens when they hook
Speaker 2: you ira and you're for ones? What if they hook
Speaker 2: them irrevocably to the stock market? I mean, is that
Speaker 2: how it's going to turn out? Who knows? Seems like
Speaker 2: right now we're capable of doing anything.
Speaker 1: So how's your financial situation? And what's your plan going forward?
Speaker 1: Assuming you know, let's say you live another ten twenty years.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be something to witness? I can't. Even when
Speaker 2: I close my eyes, I can still see it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you when it's too late. If you're a
Speaker 2: man is loose skin, if you sit down on a toilet,
Speaker 2: your gonads are floating, you've got problems anyway, you know
Speaker 2: what the heck? My financial situation right now, we're rolling
Speaker 2: with the wind. It's not easy because there's very little
Speaker 2: work in America. For me at this moment, and that's
Speaker 2: what we're trying to do with this latest recording. We
Speaker 2: feel it's a worthy record. It needs to be heard.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was passionate, not as passionate as
Speaker 2: I am now, but when I started really liking music,
Speaker 2: I just when I heard something on the radio and
Speaker 2: it sounded good, and I like the way it sounded,
Speaker 2: I didn't care. I didn't think about age, I didn't
Speaker 2: think about color, I didn't think about those things. I've
Speaker 2: thought about how much I liked that song, and I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think maybe that's some kind of mentality
Speaker 2: we should at least give another chance to because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people, elders that are quite capable of
Speaker 2: still contributing valuable and entertaining things into our culture, but
Speaker 2: we don't do that. We're like a fast food restaurant,
Speaker 2: you know, give me the next thing that's going to sell.
Speaker 2: And I had a conversation a couple of years ago
Speaker 2: with a record company and they were quite honest with
Speaker 2: me that we love you, we love your music, we
Speaker 2: love the music we just heard that you did. But
Speaker 2: it would cost us, starting at half a million dollars
Speaker 2: to re establish you in the in the consciousness of
Speaker 2: the of the country, to to to get that much
Speaker 2: information out there, to get you set up on social media,
Speaker 2: to get you all the things you're going to need
Speaker 2: to return as a star. I said, well, what about
Speaker 2: if I don't want to be a star. I just
Speaker 2: want my records to be played, you know. That's that's
Speaker 2: kind of what we're facing right now. We've got a
Speaker 2: great record. I love it so much, and I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to come home. I've been recording in foreign countries
Speaker 2: for so long now that and people don't even know
Speaker 2: I'm alive. I mean, I've had nothing for them to hear.
Speaker 2: But it's not because I wasn't producing. It's not because
Speaker 2: I wasn't creating. It's because I never had the power
Speaker 2: or the push to open the doors I needed to open.
Speaker 2: I did have a very interesting management agreement with a
Speaker 2: wonderful man. His name is Brett Steele. He's a manager,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately that had to fall apart. I think for
Speaker 2: a couple of reasons, but it doesn't matter. He's talented.
Speaker 2: I thought the roster was a little too full. I
Speaker 2: felt like I needed somebody to give most of their
Speaker 2: attention to trying to resurrect me, and so when you
Speaker 2: had a larger roster as he did, it was difficult
Speaker 2: to want to stay with him. And besides, it was
Speaker 2: one of those situations where, you know, we talked about
Speaker 2: management contracts and he said a handshake will do well.
Speaker 2: I don't know about a handshake doing because you know,
Speaker 2: I've gotten stabbed that way before, not that he would
Speaker 2: do it. He's a marvelous guy, and I'm happy for
Speaker 2: the artist that he does manage, but I can't give
Speaker 2: up the power that I'm going to need to reintroduce
Speaker 2: me and somebody say, hey, you know your home kid,
Speaker 2: you did all that stuff, you know, whatever the heck
Speaker 2: way you were doing over there because we didn't hear it,
Speaker 2: but you're home now, and that would make a nice
Speaker 2: ending to that day, and then they you know, then
Speaker 2: you can rest easy when you look forward to what
Speaker 2: are you going to do tomorrow? And my idea what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do tomorrow is continue to write and records.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to do. It's getting harder to
Speaker 2: play because I have severe spinal stenosis with scoliosis, and
Speaker 2: so walking is difficult. And get this is I don't
Speaker 2: know where this woman came from, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: describe it to you now. We were performing on a
Speaker 2: cruise ship and I'm walking around with a cane because
Speaker 2: i have to at this moment. I can walk, but
Speaker 2: I can't. I can walk without a cane, but I
Speaker 2: can't walk far and I can't walk long times. So
Speaker 2: we're out there, we're enjoying the music with all these
Speaker 2: hundreds of other people on the ship, and we leave
Speaker 2: the area where everybody's congregated, and we're going past some
Speaker 2: open hallways, empty hallways, and we turn a corner to
Speaker 2: go around, and there's this woman and I'm struggling at
Speaker 2: this point because I've been in the sun for hours
Speaker 2: in the standing and I'm struggling to walk. And this
Speaker 2: woman just ambushed us, jumped out from behind a pillar
Speaker 2: and started videotaping my struggle to walk. And I'm wondering
Speaker 2: to myself, well, why would you do that? Why would
Speaker 2: you want to have that on tape? You know, what
Speaker 2: is that going to do for you in your social
Speaker 2: media world, showing somebody having a struggle. So maybe she's like,
Speaker 2: maybe she likes those national geographic snuff films where you
Speaker 2: watch the animals kill each other. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a funny world.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your world in Europe and your career
Speaker 1: in Europe.
Speaker 2: Very different, very different. I was this coming year will
Speaker 2: be forty eight years of non stop touring every year
Speaker 2: in Europe, with the exception of one COVID year where
Speaker 2: they wouldn't allow us to travel there. It's a market
Speaker 2: that I built over a long time. The first seventeen
Speaker 2: years were in West Germany before the wall came down,
Speaker 2: and then we slowly got invited by the government in
Speaker 2: the East to perform. And I did a performance on
Speaker 2: a show called The Rock Palace, which was sent out
Speaker 2: to one hundred and thirty million. At that point in
Speaker 2: the morning, they said there was one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: million people probably watching. I was on a bill with
Speaker 2: Nil's laughkra and Southside Johnny, and they had those sons
Speaker 2: of guns. Nobody had told anybody what time the headlining
Speaker 2: was going to go on. I wasn't headlighting, I was opening,
Speaker 2: and nobody had told me that. When Southside found out
Speaker 2: and Neil's found out that the headlining would be going
Speaker 2: on at two in the morning, all of a sudden
Speaker 2: they wanted to Hey, Mitch, listen, man, we love you.
Speaker 2: Would you like to close the show? And I'm going
Speaker 2: what headline the show over you guys? Of course I would,
Speaker 2: and it's because I didn't know about the time. So
Speaker 2: we were going to open. So we were having in
Speaker 2: the early afternoon. We were having a few drinks and
Speaker 2: we thought we'd be going on pretty soon. It wouldn't
Speaker 2: be long. Well, then nobody told us about the change.
Speaker 2: You know, they told me that I would be headlined,
Speaker 2: but nobody told us about the time. So as we're
Speaker 2: sitting there waiting, we're continuing to drink and by the
Speaker 2: time it comes me to be on stage. They had
Speaker 2: a pre interview where the other bands had their interviews
Speaker 2: after their performance. They had a pre interview with a
Speaker 2: drunk who hadn't gotten a chance to put his music
Speaker 2: out there yet. Well, by the way, I haven't had
Speaker 2: anything to drink for over twenty years now, and same
Speaker 2: thing with the dope. What messes it up for me
Speaker 2: with my back is they screwed up to begin with
Speaker 2: with the cervical. They fused the cervical and the medal
Speaker 2: wasn't quite right. Now I kind of see everything from
Speaker 2: my dog's perspective. Whatever, it's on the sidewalk in front
Speaker 2: of me, that's what I'll look at. This show is
Speaker 2: called the Rock Palace. So we go on. In the interview,
Speaker 2: I said some things that the government didn't like, and
Speaker 2: my record company didn't like, and my manager didn't like.
Speaker 2: But the kids loved it. And during the show, my
Speaker 2: show wasn't like anybody else's show. I got off the stage,
Speaker 2: I went down into the audience. I sat next to
Speaker 2: the to the attendees, and I talked to him. I
Speaker 2: sang with him, and I was moving all around, and
Speaker 2: the band was just roaring, and we did this remarkable show,
Speaker 2: which they're calling the best that they've ever seen. For
Speaker 2: that for marketing purposes, maybe, but that drew my fan base,
Speaker 2: and that's what allowed me to continue to go over
Speaker 2: to Germany for all these decades. In the beginning of
Speaker 2: the transition from West to East, where we started going
Speaker 2: into a whole Germany, I continued to bring American players
Speaker 2: over because of the lack of knowledge of not blues
Speaker 2: but sort of rock and roll stylings. Because the East
Speaker 2: Germans were heavy into blues scene. I would too if
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I would be very bluesy in
Speaker 2: a communist country, and we worked it. We worked it,
Speaker 2: we made it into something. We molded it. We dedicated
Speaker 2: our lives to it and did so many great shows,
Speaker 2: but never once having to do any of the American hits,
Speaker 2: and no requests for him wow, doing two hour shows
Speaker 2: with no intermissions, no opening acts, all material that I
Speaker 2: created in Germany or France.
Speaker 1: Tell me about East Germany before the wall came down.
Speaker 2: Well, we happened to go over. There was no neon
Speaker 2: that was immediate once you went through checkpoint Charlie. There
Speaker 2: was no neon at all. And we asked our guide
Speaker 2: we wanted to go to a bar. He said, well,
Speaker 2: let's just keep walking. I said, well, do you know
Speaker 2: where you're going? He said, no, we will. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean we will? He said, when we
Speaker 2: come to the door where you hear music, that's going
Speaker 2: to be a club, Let's just walk in. There was
Speaker 2: no out signage outside or anything. It was all like
Speaker 2: known to the locals, you know what was happening. And
Speaker 2: so I got invited over a couple of times before
Speaker 2: the wall came down. I recorded over there same studio
Speaker 2: that you two and David Boy used beautiful studio. In
Speaker 2: the middle of the studio was an old ballroom where
Speaker 2: the Nazis would have their ballroom dances. But I'm straying,
Speaker 2: as I have been for the whole interview. So we
Speaker 2: do this thing and we get invited to play a
Speaker 2: soccer field. Okay, when's the last time I saw a
Speaker 2: soccer field in America? So considering, you know, my last
Speaker 2: big hit was like sixty nine, and now we're deep
Speaker 2: into the eighties, not deep into the eighties, but we're
Speaker 2: in the eighties and all those years. But things did
Speaker 2: happen in America for me. But let me set that
Speaker 2: aside for a moment and finished this East German story
Speaker 2: because it's cute. They would didn't. They didn't want to
Speaker 2: pay us in the East German marks because of the embarrassment, uh,
Speaker 2: the valuation and they so they wouldn't pay us. I
Speaker 2: remember the marks were green colored to a sort of
Speaker 2: light blimey green. So they paid us in hardware. We
Speaker 2: got two grand pianos. We got a Trebbe, their little
Speaker 2: national car, the East German car. I got a generous tent,
Speaker 2: had like four different rooms to it, a huge tent.
Speaker 2: And so what did we do with this stuff, you know. Well,
Speaker 2: what we did was we took it back and we
Speaker 2: sold it in the West and made our money that way.
Speaker 2: But what we discovered as well is when you're traveling
Speaker 2: between those two borders, they'd make you get off the bus,
Speaker 2: leave all your belongings on the bus, go inside for
Speaker 2: your paperwork, and then say all right, get on the
Speaker 2: bus and leave. And so you did, only to discover
Speaker 2: that your cassettes were gone, your radios were gone, your
Speaker 2: instruments were gone, you know, I mean, they just outright
Speaker 2: stole from you. So it was the culture in East
Speaker 2: Germany was certainly different from West Germany. And that's why
Speaker 2: I was so shocking for the West. When the wall
Speaker 2: did come down. There was a lot of traffic heading
Speaker 2: to the west, a lot of traffic, but the only
Speaker 2: people head into the West that I knew of at
Speaker 2: that time were the banks, and they were going to rebuild.
Speaker 2: The Soviets never gave anything, They just took, took, took.
Speaker 2: So when the wall came down, these cities, famous cities,
Speaker 2: big cities in the East had to be rebuilt, from
Speaker 2: the sewers to the streets, the electrical grids, to everything
Speaker 2: that you could think of that you need to run
Speaker 2: a functioning city, had to be replaced by Western tax
Speaker 2: dollars in Germany, and so that's where that resentment came from.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a saft spoken, thoughtful, intelligent, educated guy. What
Speaker 1: was the twenty something Mitch Ryder like? Same or different?
Speaker 2: I was just watching an interview at some New York club,
Speaker 2: New York City, when I was hot, okay, and I
Speaker 2: was I was polite and respectful. I don't think I
Speaker 2: carried myself. Only later on after I started getting mad,
Speaker 2: angry at myself for choices I had made that sabotaged
Speaker 2: my career. So I started drinking heavily. Only then did
Speaker 2: I realize what a fool I had been. But in
Speaker 2: my twenties, I was, you know, pretty reserved guy. I mean,
Speaker 2: the American Heart Association made me Prince of Hearts for
Speaker 2: a year. Just tons of stuff like that, charitable causes
Speaker 2: doing everything I had learned, you know, being a Catholic.
Speaker 2: Not that they don't teach in goodness anywhere else, but
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church is famous for it. If you can't
Speaker 2: understand them, whip it into you.
Speaker 1: So tell me about getting angry and feeling like a fool.
Speaker 2: You don't know what your age, what that's like.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, but my light history is different from yours.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't have this ubiquitous fame. I wasn't
Speaker 1: ripped off for all this money. I didn't hit a
Speaker 1: peak and then, you know, have a hard time reclaiming
Speaker 1: that peak.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right one point. So which part do you
Speaker 2: want to hear? All of it? All right? My wife's
Speaker 2: turned to poison me, I'm sure of it. The water
Speaker 2: is different today. Well, as I said, the most regrettable
Speaker 2: part of my career is, uh, how I managed to
Speaker 2: hurt myself career wise. I'm simply a dreamer and I
Speaker 2: need leadership that's not going to try to hurt me.
Speaker 2: What would do me, what would serve me best right
Speaker 2: now would be probably a six year old billionaire with
Speaker 2: a devil make air attitude. I just, uh, I think
Speaker 2: what could look? I'm going to end up happy when
Speaker 2: when the end finally comes anyway, because I'm happy. Now.
Speaker 2: We're talking about things that are uncomfortable, but I am
Speaker 2: a happy guy, and I do expect the sun to
Speaker 2: come up tomorrow and I'm working on new projects. Complete
Speaker 2: needed many projects that aren't for sale yet, and I'm
Speaker 2: still ambitious that way. It's not comfortable being disabled slightly,
Speaker 2: But you know, they don't come to see me dance,
Speaker 2: they come to hear me sing. So it's simple.
Speaker 1: Well, how long did it take you to get all
Speaker 1: over being ripped off?
Speaker 2: I think when the Appellate Court in New York State
Speaker 2: ruled against me in my lawsuit, there was a finality
Speaker 2: to that. I didn't feel like appealing to the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court in New York State. And so one of the
Speaker 2: curious things, do you mind if I continue to call
Speaker 2: you Bob?
Speaker 1: No, that's cool, that's my name.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, So Bob Crewe, like I said, was from
Speaker 2: an earlier age. I told you the Vegas thing, which
Speaker 2: was an example. But he also had his own little
Speaker 2: tin panelley right in his offices, and you would go
Speaker 2: in there and he owned everything. You know. He just
Speaker 2: simply hired people to write songs for him and they
Speaker 2: would get credit and a small royalty. And when I
Speaker 2: say small, we're talking about one or two cents a
Speaker 2: record five cents at the most if you're a really
Speaker 2: big deal. So he dissuaded us at a time. See
Speaker 2: I wrote my first record, I wrote my second record.
Speaker 2: All before I went to New York. My mom used
Speaker 2: to sing around the house all the time. My mom
Speaker 2: used to write music. She'd take me a little preschooler,
Speaker 2: and she'd read and sing her songs to me and
Speaker 2: asked me for my opinion. She valued my talent that much,
Speaker 2: I guess. But it's always been about for me that
Speaker 2: that creative progress, the evolution. I started out being a writer,
Speaker 2: and that's what I wanted to be, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a singer, which of course I'm good at.
Speaker 2: But at a time when everybody around us, their managers
Speaker 2: were pressing them hard, especially the Brits, to write your
Speaker 2: own music so we can establish a catalog. Bob Crew
Speaker 2: was saying that, no, no, no, no, no no no, don't
Speaker 2: you worry about the music. I've got music for you.
Speaker 2: And that's what we ended up doing, or a lot
Speaker 2: of covers. So you know, I wanted to, after that experience,
Speaker 2: at least for myself, get to a position that reflected
Speaker 2: who I really am as a person. And how different
Speaker 2: is that from anybody? If it's different at all, it's
Speaker 2: just part of the discovery process, you know, And to
Speaker 2: become a better writer. And that's been I've been chasing
Speaker 2: that forever and I'll be chasing it tomorrow. I want
Speaker 2: to make another new album, you know. I want to
Speaker 2: write better songs. I've been told that I've written great songs,
Speaker 2: but I have no proof of it because I never
Speaker 2: I haven't been with the machine for a long time.
Speaker 2: Contracts I sign in Europe, multiple contracts are usually with
Speaker 2: smaller companies, have no power, have no push, have no connection.
Speaker 2: At least roof Records is getting me on the American charts,
Speaker 2: but it's just a little glimpse of me, you know.
Speaker 2: So our if we want to be heard, we need
Speaker 2: to What I need is a benefactor, I think, and
Speaker 2: I can together with somebody that's intelligent, that's self made,
Speaker 2: that's comfortable in their lives and wants to dally and
Speaker 2: prove a point about aging Americans and what their value
Speaker 2: is to us. Give me a call, you know, and
Speaker 2: we will make it happen. We'll turn the world upside
Speaker 2: down on his head and say, hey, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: eighty years old and I'm doing music. It's just as
Speaker 2: good as what you're doing. So let's take that argument
Speaker 2: there instead of sending our seniors off to places where
Speaker 2: we'll never see them again, you know, and the ones
Speaker 2: that are suffering, there's no need for that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about life experience. You've been married three times.
Speaker 1: What did you learn and what advice do you have?
Speaker 2: Well, if you're a musician, don't get married. That's what
Speaker 2: I learned. My children are from my first wife. My
Speaker 2: second wife, I woke up one morning with a very
Speaker 2: bad headache, only to come fully conscious and realize that
Speaker 2: she had a loaded handgun pressing against my forehead, and
Speaker 2: it did disturb me a little bit. I talked her
Speaker 2: down by offering her some more drugs, which I didn't have,
Speaker 2: but it was long enough to get that gun out
Speaker 2: of her hand. And then I filed for divorce, and
Speaker 2: I thought I had substantial cause she ended up dying,
Speaker 2: unfortunately as a result of her drug use. And then
Speaker 2: I met my wife, my current wife, who is just
Speaker 2: absolutely my savior. Yeah, she's an incredible woman. I've never
Speaker 2: known a woman like that. When I met her, I
Speaker 2: was still I was coming off the heels of the
Speaker 2: John Mellencamp produced album Never Kick a Sleeping Dog, and
Speaker 2: so I was in Detroit anyway, reborn as a star,
Speaker 2: and not that you would know, but that song we covered,
Speaker 2: the Prince Song, did chart, and it was the first
Speaker 2: time I was.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite song on that album. When you did
Speaker 1: a cover, I woke right up and said, wow, And
Speaker 1: it was a great cover.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, I saw it in
Speaker 2: a movie called Hot Dog or something, A bunch of skiers, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: a nice, nice groove and you know, a great experience.
Speaker 2: And then thanks to John believing in me. So I've
Speaker 2: had help along the way.
Speaker 1: But you were telling me about meeting your third wife.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I'm hot again. And the higher the record
Speaker 2: goes in the charts, the prettier the girls get every week. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's just a fact. She was different because I was
Speaker 2: getting divorced and she had been divorced, and she had
Speaker 2: two little kids in a shopping cart and we're in
Speaker 2: Kmart and we both end up at the flower shop
Speaker 2: together and I'm looking for roses, and I asked, do
Speaker 2: you know anything about roses, kind of offhandedly because I
Speaker 2: saw the kids and I wasn't really ready to mess
Speaker 2: with any of that, And she said, yeah, in fact,
Speaker 2: I'm looking for some stuff from my garden as well.
Speaker 2: I think what you're looking for is over there and whatever.
Speaker 2: But anyway, it sparked a conversation, but not too many
Speaker 2: details were forthcoming from her, and she we ended up
Speaker 2: in line together, and they pushed my stuff through. She's
Speaker 2: behind me, and the lady sees her stuff on the
Speaker 2: counter and thinks her together and starts pushing her stuff
Speaker 2: through as well. And she stops the lady and said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's that's not his. Those are my belongings. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, I'm sorry she did that. If you want,
Speaker 2: you know, I can help help you. Because she didn't
Speaker 2: look like she had much money. In fact, she didn't,
Speaker 2: so she wasn't enjoining, she wasn't getting into that. She
Speaker 2: didn't like to pick up line, she didn't like any
Speaker 2: of that stuff. But one thing I realized about her was,
Speaker 2: and I swear to you this is the truth as
Speaker 2: I know it, I did not want She's beautiful. She's
Speaker 2: a beautiful woman physically, intellectually, morally, she's industrious, intelligent, as
Speaker 2: they say down south, she cleans up well. She if
Speaker 2: it had been any other woman, Because I was out
Speaker 2: of that marriage and I just would have wanted to
Speaker 2: take her to bed, but I didn't want to touch
Speaker 2: the woman. We corresponded, We telephone called, We went on
Speaker 2: dates for a year and a half before the thought
Speaker 2: sex even came into my mind. I mean that was
Speaker 2: something absolutely I had never experienced before. No, she was
Speaker 2: this woman so whole, uh and and honest and industrious
Speaker 2: and you know, I mean she put she changes electrical
Speaker 2: sockets around the house, she runs wiring, and she she
Speaker 2: does all the technical stuff and then she has these
Speaker 2: beautiful gardens. She she makes and designs, and she loves
Speaker 2: a clean house. And she's uh, she plays pickleball every
Speaker 2: day she can, and she's really good, you know. And
Speaker 2: she's see she is seventy seven years old, or not
Speaker 2: seventy seven, sixty seven years old. I'm eighty. So you know,
Speaker 2: the big big drama here is I'm going to be
Speaker 2: leaving probably if things go according to the plan before
Speaker 2: she does. And it's it's brought some deep feelings between us.
Speaker 2: We bonded, I think even closer than we thought was possible.
Speaker 2: And here's the woman that we did get divorced after
Speaker 2: three years, and we took those three years to understand
Speaker 2: that there was nothing out there that satisfying the two
Speaker 2: of us as much as we satisfied ourselves on all
Speaker 2: levels of thought and action. The trick about sex is
Speaker 2: that's usually the first thing that people use as an
Speaker 2: introduction card, and that's no basis for a relationship at all.
Speaker 2: So I think we did it the right way. We
Speaker 2: studied each other for that year and a half before
Speaker 2: I married her, and the divorce came and we realized
Speaker 2: that we couldn't do it without each other, and we
Speaker 2: wanted to be back together. And we've had some hard times,
Speaker 2: but we've had some grand times. And I took her
Speaker 2: to see the world that she wouldn't have been capable
Speaker 2: of seeing. She's got friends all over the country. She's
Speaker 2: been to eighteen year nineteen different countries, and she's got
Speaker 2: friends in all of them. This is a beautiful woman.
Speaker 2: Her name's Megan.
Speaker 1: So tell me about fame.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's one of the most destruct It's one of
Speaker 2: the most misunderstood aspects of American culture. It changes people,
Speaker 2: so normally it changes you know. I had this discussion
Speaker 2: with a high school buddy of mine who's still alive.
Speaker 2: I don't think I changed. I became just something for
Speaker 2: all these different people that needed different work and different jobs,
Speaker 2: a new piece of meat to hang your hat on
Speaker 2: and make some money. And I was following directions and
Speaker 2: orders and stuff, and their perception of me. Well, he's
Speaker 2: a star now he You know, he's got to have changed. No, No,
Speaker 2: if anything, No, my buddy's and kids from high school,
Speaker 2: they've changed with their regard to their attitude towards me.
Speaker 2: I know this because I've sat and talked to the
Speaker 2: old buddy I was telling you about, and his idea
Speaker 2: of what's happened in my life is way different from
Speaker 2: the reality I'm living through. So famous, it was harder
Speaker 2: to get back when I was looking for it. I
Speaker 2: just it's not that I don't understand what's happening now.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I simply am not in a position of power to
Speaker 2: make the moves that have to be made.
Speaker 1: But is it an advantage or a disadvantage of both
Speaker 1: being famous? I mean, if you go out to the
Speaker 1: grocery store, you go people to people recognize you. Do
Speaker 1: you ever trade on your name and say I can't
Speaker 1: get a reservation, but tell them I'm Mitch Ryder stuff
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Well, these days, yeah, that still works in Detroit because
Speaker 2: I'm a Detroit boy. I remember they did a special
Speaker 2: on me with one of the local TV channels and
Speaker 2: they put us in Washington, d C. And they asked
Speaker 2: ten people on the street, have you ever heard of
Speaker 2: Mitch Ryder? And only one person said yes out of
Speaker 2: the ten. So you know, but in Detroit, everybody knows
Speaker 2: the name. If not, they can ask their grandma. She'll
Speaker 2: tell them. It's famous. Corruptive, you know, if you're not careful,
Speaker 2: it can lead you into believing that you're something you're not,
Speaker 2: other than a human. I don't put cabinets together. I
Speaker 2: couldn't build you a chair. I couldn't There's a lot
Speaker 2: of things I can't do. But I do know music
Speaker 2: because it's been the only pursuit I've had.
Speaker 1: And to.
Speaker 2: Understand that these other people I'm talking about, with the
Speaker 2: different occupations, they're no different from me. They're going to
Speaker 2: have success or failure too. And I think essentially all
Speaker 2: a man wants in this world is to be able
Speaker 2: to have his dignity and be able to feed his
Speaker 2: family and keep him in shelter and keep him healthy.
Speaker 2: That's all anybody wants all over the world. But there's
Speaker 2: so many greedy assholes out there that are just making
Speaker 2: it difficult for people to get even a living way.
Speaker 2: And I just like I said in the beginning, this
Speaker 2: is the first time this has happened in our history.
Speaker 2: It won't be the last, But what you're seeing is
Speaker 2: an erosion. The only people I believe when they swear
Speaker 2: an oath to the Constitution are the soldiers, the frontline infantry,
Speaker 2: people of the men and women that are willing to
Speaker 2: give up their lives. I'll believe them when they swear
Speaker 2: to the Constitution. But it seems to me like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people lying about it right now.
Speaker 1: So in your regular life, are you Bill or you Mitch?
Speaker 2: It really depends on how long we get to know
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 1: Well, what does your wife call you.
Speaker 2: Idiot?
Speaker 1: When she's happier with you? Does she use Bill or Mitch?
Speaker 2: Billy?
Speaker 1: And on your passport, what does it say.
Speaker 2: William s Leviice jor And let me ask you a question.
Speaker 2: If you're a junior and your dad dies, are you
Speaker 2: no longer a junior?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting Okay, So did you contemplate naming your
Speaker 1: child the third?
Speaker 2: No? But you know one of the original names they
Speaker 2: wanted for me in New York when they were searching
Speaker 2: for one was Michael Rothschild. At least you be rich, right,
Speaker 2: like I'm gonna like, you know, I'm going to diss
Speaker 2: a whole financial establishment in Europe. That was crazy, vincent.
Speaker 1: How did it end up being Mitch Ryder?
Speaker 2: H A finger fell on a name in the phone book,
Speaker 2: and there were five of them, And I felt so
Speaker 2: bad about it that I literally called all those people
Speaker 2: and apologized to him for whatever problems I had brought
Speaker 2: into their life.
Speaker 1: Wow, So there there were five people named Mitch Ryder.
Speaker 2: No, there was like an m writer, there was a miswriter,
Speaker 2: there was a Mitch writer. One Mitch writer. And did
Speaker 2: you know that? There was a rest but he died recently.
Speaker 2: He called himself Mitch Writer too, because he appeared on
Speaker 2: Google once when I punched in my name.
Speaker 1: Okay, Billy, you dropped a lot of wisdom on us.
Speaker 1: It's great to hear that you're so optimistic and driven
Speaker 1: for the future, still dreaming. Too many people get up
Speaker 1: the dreams. I wish you luck, and I wish a
Speaker 1: benefactor find show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not so important. It would be helpful but
Speaker 2: you know, you know how life is.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that you have a smile on your fee.
Speaker 1: You've been through a lot and not all positive, and
Speaker 1: the fact that you have a positive attitude is really
Speaker 1: pretty enlightening and a beacon for those of us who
Speaker 1: can't always stay so positive.
Speaker 2: But you know what, look at what choices we have.
Speaker 2: You only have two choices. Why would anybody want to
Speaker 2: waste their life regretting the experience? We all knew this
Speaker 2: is how it worked. You start dying from the day
Speaker 2: you're born. So life is not easy. And believe me,
Speaker 2: this is not anything to be ashamed of or feel
Speaker 2: sorrow about. Yeah, you don't want to leave the people
Speaker 2: you love, but if you're in a place where you're
Speaker 2: not having a life that is enjoyable and you're suffering,
Speaker 2: there's really why do you want to be here? Why
Speaker 2: do you want to stay in a place where you're
Speaker 2: suffering and you cannot get rid of the suffering? And
Speaker 2: they you know, I've asked myself that question, but fortunately
Speaker 2: there is an answer. You look forward to waking up
Speaker 2: and seeing that sun the next day, and that's all
Speaker 2: you need to know that you can carry on. You
Speaker 2: can realize whatever dream it was that you haven't found,
Speaker 2: and you now found a way to look for it,
Speaker 2: Go for it, you know, just do the positive stuff
Speaker 2: and forget all that. I could talk to you for
Speaker 2: hours about it, but my wife warned me in the beginning.
Speaker 2: No politics, no religion, and those are just like a
Speaker 2: tinder box waiting to be lit. We could expand this
Speaker 2: conversation into some deep intellectual, thoughtful properties and meanings and things,
Speaker 2: but I don't choose to do that. That's not what
Speaker 2: I do. You know, I don't ask myself when my
Speaker 2: audience walks into a venue to see me. I don't
Speaker 2: ask if they're a Republican or Democrat. That's irrelevant. They
Speaker 2: came to hear music that they love or they wouldn't
Speaker 2: be paying, and so why why muddy the waters with
Speaker 2: something that they didn't want. If I feel like grand standing,
Speaker 2: I'll take it off the show stage and put it
Speaker 2: on a street corner. Look at the problem that Bruce
Speaker 2: Springsteen's going to have now when he comes home. Do
Speaker 2: you understand what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: I do, But he's in a slightly different financial and
Speaker 1: career spot than you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, true enough, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, listen, I could go on about this forever myself,
Speaker 1: but if you're trying to please everybody, no one can
Speaker 1: do that. Even if you get on stage and you
Speaker 1: just do your music, they're going to be people who
Speaker 1: dislike you or dislike that style of music. You're right,
Speaker 1: so you make choices. And the artists that we became
Speaker 1: enamored of when you were so successful was because they
Speaker 1: took a stand, whatever that stand might be, and they
Speaker 1: were speaking their truth through the music. It was different
Speaker 1: from you know, as you put it, Tin Pan Alley,
Speaker 1: But you know, I think that's also a difference between
Speaker 1: yesterday and today.
Speaker 2: You know, one of my heroes is I have very
Speaker 2: few of them. I have the greatest love and affection
Speaker 2: for Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: Tell me why he is not.
Speaker 2: Afraid to talk about any subject. He's just simply and
Speaker 2: he does it with such ambiguity that it's it's clever
Speaker 2: because you you, three different people could listen to a
Speaker 2: line from one of his songs and come out with
Speaker 2: three different meanings. You know, That's why he's so damn cool.
Speaker 2: Is he still working? It's something somebody, I mean.
Speaker 1: He's been working. I respect I respect Dylan for everything
Speaker 1: he did in his work. But one thing I respect
Speaker 1: him for is he goes on the road and makes
Speaker 1: it interesting to him. I don't want to go see it.
Speaker 1: I have seen it. But you go to see Dylan,
Speaker 1: he rearranges all the songs to the point of unrecognizability.
Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about because we went through
Speaker 2: that experience. It's my wife and I three years ago,
Speaker 2: I believe. And he had been on the road so
Speaker 2: long that first of all, the first thing you noticed
Speaker 2: was that he had lost his voice. Okay, everything was
Speaker 2: like a growl. And then suddenly you'll put put in
Speaker 2: the name of the song right right where you can
Speaker 2: tell what song it was. But in spite of that,
Speaker 2: he did write those wonderful, wonderful.
Speaker 1: Song No listen, I could quote that stuff ad infinitum.
Speaker 2: Who were your favorites when you were a teenager? Who
Speaker 2: did you like?
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, okay, I mean, if you want to start,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm younger. I'm ten years not ten, but
Speaker 1: eight years younger than you. So the first stuff you heard,
Speaker 1: all that Beatles stuff whatever, I mean, all the eldest
Speaker 1: stuff was really before my time. And then Babying and
Speaker 1: Bobby were aware of the first stuff that resonated in
Speaker 1: the other than the novelty tracks were the Beach Boys
Speaker 1: in the Four Seasons, and then of course the Beatles
Speaker 1: hit and that was everything. And you live in the
Speaker 1: New York market and you had all the FM radio,
Speaker 1: so you know Quem Hendrix, I could go on to
Speaker 1: who all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I knew all those guys. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: And you know what people don't realize is it was
Speaker 3: different if you wanted to know what was going on,
Speaker 3: if you were younger, you turned on the radio. Not
Speaker 3: only did you get the songs, you got news, it
Speaker 3: applied to you, et cetera. And there's always been music.
Speaker 3: There was music before the Beatles. But just like with tech,
Speaker 3: from like nineteen ninety five to like five years ago,
Speaker 3: we were all focused on it. That's what it was
Speaker 3: like with music. It drove everything, just like today it's
Speaker 3: like politics. You opened the paper every day and you
Speaker 3: see a story that causes an emotion, whether you disagree, whatever,
Speaker 3: there's a passion That is not what we're getting from music.
Speaker 3: Music now is more entertainment, more commerce. And I'm talking
Speaker 3: in generalities because there's thousands of acts doing all kinds
Speaker 3: of music. But as you were talking earlier about the
Speaker 3: Hot one hundred, you know, we know those songs by heart.
Speaker 3: And the other thing was, yeah, they talked about turntable
Speaker 3: hits with the reality was it had to be really
Speaker 3: fucking great in order to make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Barry Gordy said, it's what's in the
Speaker 2: grooves that comes absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you know, the other good thing is that you know,
Speaker 1: for a while there it was how you looked and whatever.
Speaker 1: Now it's you know, because you know now it's based
Speaker 1: back to the record. Yeah, people want to be able
Speaker 1: to see what you look whatever, but that's not the
Speaker 1: number one thing you're selling. One more question for you, though,
Speaker 1: because what did you think when you found out Springsteen
Speaker 1: was doing a medley of your songs?
Speaker 2: Well, he invited me and we did perform them together
Speaker 2: here in Detroit, But when was the first one. There
Speaker 2: was a funny part to that though, because I got
Speaker 2: so involved in the show. You know, I hadn't played
Speaker 2: a venue like Cobo Hall where he was in such
Speaker 2: a long time that I was very excited and we
Speaker 2: started doing my songs and I actually just it's so
Speaker 2: insane and embarrassing to talk about Bruce laughed about it,
Speaker 2: but I was so into the show. I turned around
Speaker 2: to Max, the drummer, and I signaled him to turn down,
Speaker 2: and he just he looked at me with these like
Speaker 2: a deer caught in headlights, and then looked at the
Speaker 2: boss and you want to know, what do I do?
Speaker 2: What I do? Oh? You know, it was fun. There was,
Speaker 2: you know, a kick ass performance.
Speaker 1: But when was the first time if you remember, you
Speaker 1: were aware that he was doing that medley.
Speaker 2: When he called me to come and rehearse it. Really,
Speaker 2: we went in a day early and he said, I'm
Speaker 2: coming to Detroit, and I wondered if you'd be kind
Speaker 2: enough to come up and sing your songs. I said, well,
Speaker 2: not all of them. He said, well, no, just too
Speaker 2: in particular.
Speaker 1: Okay, of all of the people you know in your book,
Speaker 1: you list all the musicians you've met, tell me one
Speaker 1: or two that lived up to the image, because they
Speaker 1: usually don't.
Speaker 2: Lived up to the image as projected by them or
Speaker 2: as perceived by the public.
Speaker 1: I would say, it's really a combination of both, but
Speaker 1: it's what in your mind they represented.
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, first of all, one of the most heart
Speaker 2: rendering voices I got fell in love with was Otis reading.
Speaker 2: Did you ever hear cigarettes and coffee by him? I
Speaker 2: don't remember it at the top of my head. No, no, okay,
Speaker 2: but okay. He was very emotive. It was very very
Speaker 2: capable of making you hear him cry if he was crying.
Speaker 2: Just a good natural connect with that voice. And I
Speaker 2: remember doing this TV show. It occurred like the night
Speaker 2: before he flew out of Cleveland and died in Lake, Michigan.
Speaker 2: He was a tall man and at the end, while
Speaker 2: they're rolling the credits, we were closing the show, he
Speaker 2: put his arm around my right shoulder, and he's a
Speaker 2: much taller man than myself, and he started rocking, and
Speaker 2: every time he rocked to the left, my whole right
Speaker 2: leg would come up off the crowd. So I was like,
Speaker 2: it was like he was a puppeteer, you know. I
Speaker 2: just I enjoyed meeting all of these people, hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of all these people that are stars
Speaker 2: that made it. I've spent time with him, I've you know, shared. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been wonderful. It's been a remarkable experience.
Speaker 1: To what degreed did you wrestle with imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2: Imposter syndrome where you say.
Speaker 1: I'm not worthy. They're on a different level. I don't
Speaker 1: deserve the success. Maybe you didn't wrestle with that at all,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people do.
Speaker 2: I'm honored that people think that way. Are you talking
Speaker 2: about people giving me accolades and stuff.
Speaker 1: No, it's like being on stage with another ract and saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: do I deserve to be here? Do I deserve the
Speaker 1: way people are looking at me?
Speaker 2: If I was invited up on that stage by the headliner,
Speaker 2: I'd have to say yes. Why else would you put
Speaker 2: them up there to embarrass him? No?
Speaker 1: No, it's good you have that confidence. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: leave it here. It's been great talking to Mitch Ryder.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob Left said's