Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is singer songwriter Jack Tempchin. Jack. Good
Speaker 1: to have you on the podcast. Let's start right at
Speaker 1: the beginning. How'd you write peaceful, easy feeling?
Speaker 2: Well? Do you want the truth or the story that
Speaker 2: I always tell?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Tell both? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. The truth is I
Speaker 2: don't actually remember, but I remember part of it. I
Speaker 2: had a buddy of mine made a poster advertising me
Speaker 2: when I played in coffeehouses in San Diego, where where
Speaker 2: I've always lived, and the poster had quotes from people
Speaker 2: like Joni Mitchell said a real man and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: which he just made up. He made up this poster.
Speaker 2: So a guy in El Centro had a coffee house
Speaker 2: and he hired me to play. I went out to
Speaker 2: El Centro, and you know, like Warren Zevon's song says,
Speaker 2: I went home with the waitress the way I always
Speaker 2: do well, I always tried to go home with a waitress,
Speaker 2: and this one said, yeah, okay, I'll come back later
Speaker 2: and get you and take you to my place. So
Speaker 2: I told the people I was with I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to need a ride or a place to stay. Well,
Speaker 2: she never came back, and I ended up in this
Speaker 2: little It was in a little strip mall. It was
Speaker 2: this coffee house called the Aquarius, and I just ended
Speaker 2: up sleeping on the linoleum floor all night and no girl.
Speaker 2: But I had the guitar and so I started writing
Speaker 2: on the back of this poster and I wrote a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff. And you know when you start writing
Speaker 2: a song, which stops most people, the fact is that
Speaker 2: you had a bunch of stuff that's no good and
Speaker 2: it's really stupid. Then all of a sudden, you look
Speaker 2: back and you go, hey, that was a good phrase,
Speaker 2: and you kind of start from there. So the phrase peaceful,
Speaker 2: easy feeling popped out, and I guess it was kind
Speaker 2: of about my friend at the time was into zen
Speaker 2: and this is kind of really early, and there was
Speaker 2: these concepts like, you know, if you let go of something,
Speaker 2: that gives your hand free to get something else, and
Speaker 2: it's only when you stop looking for stuff that you
Speaker 2: can find it, and so that was kind of the
Speaker 2: ideas like, yeah, the girl didn't show up, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be in love with her, but I'm fine,
Speaker 2: everything's going to be fine. So I got back to
Speaker 2: San Diego, and I went to a street fair and
Speaker 2: I was walking around and I saw this beautiful girl
Speaker 2: with these turquoise earrings, so I put her in the song.
Speaker 2: And then later I was on in San Diego and
Speaker 2: Washington Boulevard at a place called the Der Wiener Schnitzel.
Speaker 2: It changed now to Wiener Schnitzel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they changed it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can understand it. Originally it was Wiener Schnitzel, but we
Speaker 1: were all accustomed to Der Wiener Schnitzel. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other funny thing is, forty years later they
Speaker 2: had a celebration for me there because I wrote the
Speaker 2: last verse of the song sitting there waiting for the
Speaker 2: Polish Dog. And I was amazed, of all the things
Speaker 2: in San Diego that that place was still there forty
Speaker 2: years later, the Der Wiener Snitzel, you know, which was
Speaker 2: now Wiener Schnitzel. And by the way, they gave me
Speaker 2: that day, they presented me with a solid gold Wiener.
Speaker 1: Literally solid gold, just not painted gold.
Speaker 2: Well, there's at least gold plated. I have it out
Speaker 2: in my studio.
Speaker 1: And well, I was to say, you know, if we
Speaker 1: hit the apocalypse and it's solid gold old.
Speaker 2: You could live off that. I could use that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, continue, So you go back to San Diela,
Speaker 1: go to the street fair. You're waiting for your Polish dog.
Speaker 1: It's der wiener Stitzel.
Speaker 2: And then I saw another girl and I wrote the
Speaker 2: last verse sitting there at that table. And they put
Speaker 2: a plaque that day in the table, and I was
Speaker 2: very happy to learn later somebody stole the plaque wow table,
Speaker 2: so they must have cared. And I guess I was
Speaker 2: ten years ago, because now it's been fifty years. But
Speaker 2: I always say, you know, if you were a young
Speaker 2: woman walking around forty years ago by the Dreweener Snitzl,
Speaker 2: the song could be about you and you'll never even know.
Speaker 2: And so basically that's the story of how I wrote it.
Speaker 2: And then I I was up in La Well, before
Speaker 2: you get up in La Yeaka, you talk about the
Speaker 2: song being written over a period of time, three different verses.
Speaker 1: The question is what were you eking it out or
Speaker 1: did all three come from inspiration or did you do
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, were you just pick and chows
Speaker 1: what actually worked from what you'd done previously.
Speaker 2: Well, so in those days I had a Stella guitar
Speaker 2: that I bought in a pawn shop in San Diego
Speaker 2: for thirteen bucks and came with the string for the strap.
Speaker 2: And I walked around all the time. I always had
Speaker 2: that thing with me, and I'd walk around and sing.
Speaker 2: And so I wrote the song continuously over about three
Speaker 2: or four days. So I was just kept singing it
Speaker 2: and adding things, you know, to answer your question, until
Speaker 2: I got the last verse, and then I had it.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, just a couple of things. Is that
Speaker 1: typical of you that the song evolves? I know you're
Speaker 1: doing your Beach series now, which is similar to that.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. Or is it a bolt of
Speaker 1: inspiration or is it sitting down I have to write
Speaker 1: a song or is it all of it?
Speaker 2: It's all of it. I guess it's different with every
Speaker 2: song now. I did try putting myself on a schedule.
Speaker 2: At one point, I'm gonna go out every day and
Speaker 2: write songs for two weeks, and I'm gonna it's not
Speaker 2: the same. I did song a day and that was different.
Speaker 2: But I just thought I'll do it on a schedule,
Speaker 2: and I did it for a couple of weeks. I
Speaker 2: looked at all the songs. I didn't like them, so
Speaker 2: threw away that idea. But the songs, you just get
Speaker 2: an idea. Sometimes I'm writing with people, but you just
Speaker 2: get an idea and you just follow it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, well we'll get a little deeper as we
Speaker 1: go on. But peaceful, easy Feeling is now done. Is
Speaker 1: it just another song you wrote or do you say, no,
Speaker 1: this one's special.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm playing it for my buddy and I'm I'm
Speaker 2: finger I'm flat picking it, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I finger pick it, you know, and he goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: now you got something that's really cool, you know. And
Speaker 2: then later, of course, after Glenn Fry heard it, he
Speaker 2: went back to flat picking it, you know. But those
Speaker 2: were just the changes. And no, I did not know
Speaker 2: that everyone in the world was going to like the song.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was positive was never going to be
Speaker 2: a hit song. It didn't have the love chorus. I
Speaker 2: just I liked it, but I did not. But the
Speaker 2: other point is, in those days I was in folk
Speaker 2: music and one of my buddies said, you know, Jack,
Speaker 2: there's hundreds of dollars to be made in this folk music.
Speaker 2: So and I thought of it. Recently, the fact that
Speaker 2: the idea that you were ever going to have a
Speaker 2: song on the radio or make money from a song
Speaker 2: was completely foreign to us at that point. You know,
Speaker 2: I just wrote the song because I was playing in
Speaker 2: these coffee houses and they all closed in nineteen seventy two. So,
Speaker 2: just to clarify, a coffee house was a place where
Speaker 2: they played folk music and they had no alcohol. You know,
Speaker 2: it was apple cider, and I was playing it three
Speaker 2: or four of those. So it was just to have
Speaker 2: songs to sing that I wrote them, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I was just into writing them.
Speaker 2: And okay, but I cut you off. So you went
Speaker 2: up to La the troubadour Tell me about that. Well, first,
Speaker 2: I was going to say that, to follow the thread
Speaker 2: of that song. At some point, I was staying at
Speaker 2: Jackson Brown's house. He oh that way too fast. Okay,
Speaker 2: way too fast. You're in San Diego.
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown from Orange County moves to LA just because
Speaker 1: people traveled. How did you know Jackson Brown? Was it
Speaker 1: a community at this point or was he just the
Speaker 1: one guy you knew?
Speaker 2: Well? I played at a place called the Candy Company Folk,
Speaker 2: a folk house, and Jackson came to play there. And also,
Speaker 2: this is before quite a while before he recorded anything,
Speaker 2: but I already had heard his songs. I knew. I
Speaker 2: actually played a song for Adam, and I played these Days,
Speaker 2: and I didn't ever play anyone else's songs. So I
Speaker 2: heard those and thought they were great. So I met John.
Speaker 1: I'm interested because I how did you hear a song
Speaker 1: for Adam? You know?
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know anymore. It wasn't when he
Speaker 2: came down. I already knew the song. So I think
Speaker 2: people just had heard these songs on the folk circuit
Speaker 2: and had learned them and were just doing him. And
Speaker 2: now that's how I heard.
Speaker 1: Them, because these Days had covers. I don't remember a
Speaker 1: cover of songs for aut him. But continue he comes
Speaker 1: down to the club, you already know these songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's where I met him.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: And the same thing happened with the duo Long Branch
Speaker 2: Penny Whistle. They came to that club and played, and
Speaker 2: I asked them if they were really good? And I
Speaker 2: like those guys. And the place they were going to
Speaker 2: stay was a place where the lady liked to have
Speaker 2: what we used to call in counter groups in that
Speaker 2: era where you'd sit around and they'd pick your brains
Speaker 2: and try to destabilize you so they could take over
Speaker 2: your mind. And then the facilitator would sleep with all
Speaker 2: the women in the in the group, you know. So
Speaker 2: that was I said, you guys, don't want to go
Speaker 2: do that, and they go, now, we really don't. So
Speaker 2: I had a large house had rented with five bedrooms,
Speaker 2: and there was a hippie pad, we had washed up
Speaker 2: base in the living room, and my brother and I
Speaker 2: had a candle shop in the garage, and so they
Speaker 2: came to stay with us, and every time they came
Speaker 2: to San Diego, it was Glenn Fry and JD Souther
Speaker 2: who were in this long Bench Penny Whistle, and so
Speaker 2: we became really good friends over time, and so that's
Speaker 2: how I met Jackson, and also Glenn and j D.
Speaker 2: And then at some point Glenn and JD were living
Speaker 2: in Silver Lake and Jackson was living right below them,
Speaker 2: so I stayed up there several times.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you get to that point, Yeah, people don't
Speaker 1: know how hard it is to make it, and generally
Speaker 1: the people who make it least on the way up
Speaker 1: are networking. Did you say, while these people are coming
Speaker 1: through the club, I need to know them. How did
Speaker 1: you make the connection?
Speaker 2: Hm? Well, like I always say as a joke, people go,
Speaker 2: how do you make it? And I go, well, just
Speaker 2: find some guy. I get to know him and work
Speaker 2: with him about five or ten years before he gets
Speaker 2: really famous. It's not that hard, you know. But the
Speaker 2: real uh, the reality is I was drawn to these
Speaker 2: people because of my passion for the music, and I
Speaker 2: just they had it, you know. And uh and I
Speaker 2: was just drawn to them and anybody else who I
Speaker 2: thought was great, you know, So you just naturally fall
Speaker 2: in with those people.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were doing you were on that circuit. Anybody
Speaker 1: who was great who didn't make it?
Speaker 2: Uh, well that's yes, yes, of course there's always people
Speaker 2: like that because there's so much more to making it
Speaker 2: than just your talent. There's a guy, Ray Burrow, you know.
Speaker 2: So I played at a coffeehouse called the Heritage. The
Speaker 2: doorman was Tom Waits, and he was not a player.
Speaker 2: He was the doorman and he collected the tickets and anyway,
Speaker 2: this an aside. He was a photographer and liked to
Speaker 2: take pictures of the homeless guys downtown. Great photographs, but
Speaker 2: they got a piano in the club, so he would
Speaker 2: stay after hours and practice the piano, and one by
Speaker 2: one he sold his cameras to pay for piano lessons,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden he was doing these
Speaker 2: songs like Hope that I Don't Fall in Love with
Speaker 2: You and Martha and But there was a guy, Ray Burrow,
Speaker 2: and he used to play there all the time, and
Speaker 2: Tom and I both would steal any song he came
Speaker 2: up with. He didn't write, but he he had fantastic
Speaker 2: songs he would find, so I guess just didn't have
Speaker 2: the ambition. He's still around, He's made maybe one album.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly great. But you know, Tom and I stayed
Speaker 2: in the music, but he didn't. And then I've known
Speaker 2: a lot of guys who were super talented. They're in
Speaker 2: every town, everywhere, but they don't have they don't have
Speaker 2: the personality. A lot of people are just as soon
Speaker 2: as they get close to the flame of fame, they
Speaker 2: run away, you know what I mean. They can't handle it,
Speaker 2: and it takes a huge collection of talents to really
Speaker 2: make it happen. Ambition, you know, dealing with people, aligning
Speaker 2: yourself with other great people to make the music and
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, so let's go back to Peaceful Easy Feeling.
Speaker 1: You went up to stay with Jackson in silver Lake.
Speaker 2: Well, I stay with Glenn and j D and Silverlake.
Speaker 2: But then later they had run into David Geffen, and
Speaker 2: these guys were always helping me, and they helped me
Speaker 2: all the way through, and so they were going to
Speaker 2: introduce me to Geffen. So that's why later after they
Speaker 2: moved from silver Lake, I was staying at Jackson's house
Speaker 2: and Glenn came over and I was in Jackson's piano
Speaker 2: room where he had the curtains closed all the time
Speaker 2: because he didn't want anybody seeing or hearing while he practiced.
Speaker 2: And I was in there playing Peaceful Easy Feeling, and
Speaker 2: Glenn came in and he said, what's that? So he
Speaker 2: recorded the song on a cassette recorder, which let's just
Speaker 2: pretend that people know what that is, you know, And
Speaker 2: then he said, jack I got a new band, and
Speaker 2: we've been together about eight days, so so let me
Speaker 2: work this song up. I go.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he came back the next day with the cassette
Speaker 2: recorder and played me the Eagles doing a Peaceful Easy
Speaker 2: feeling on this cassette recorder, you know. And then I
Speaker 2: about a week later, I went and I saw them
Speaker 2: rehearse in this tiny little room and I saw Don
Speaker 2: Henley saying, you don't miss your water to your well
Speaker 2: runs dry as he's playing the drums, and I'm just going, map,
Speaker 2: who is this guy? This is like incredible. But that's
Speaker 2: how the Eagles got the song.
Speaker 1: And Okay, how long before the record came out? And
Speaker 1: how'd you find out it was going to be on
Speaker 1: the record.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it all happened pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: And Glenn said, we're gonna get all these record execs
Speaker 2: in here in the room. We're going to put them
Speaker 2: right in front of us and play. And then I
Speaker 2: guess they got a deal. And I don't know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't It didn't seem like it was that long. And
Speaker 2: then Glenn, Uh, I'm still living in San Diego. So
Speaker 2: then Glenn came back from recording the record, and he
Speaker 2: had a two track tape, you know, And I was
Speaker 2: the only guy in San Diego who had a tape recorder.
Speaker 2: I had a Revox and so that was the standard
Speaker 2: back then. Revox was the that was the King of
Speaker 2: the Hill and just two tracks one mic boom and uh.
Speaker 2: So he came over my house and a bunch of
Speaker 2: the people from uh that were my roommates at the
Speaker 2: hippie Pad, you know, we all sat around and he
Speaker 2: played the two track tape of the first Eagles record.
Speaker 2: So the first I'm sitting there and the first song
Speaker 2: is take It easy Going.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is the best thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Then the next song is Witchy Woman and I wing oh, man,
Speaker 2: that is the best thing I ever heard. And then
Speaker 2: the third song is Peaceful, easy Feeling, and I'm going
Speaker 2: this is the best album I've ever heard already, you know.
Speaker 2: So so there it was boom. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's dig a little deeper. Did anybody try to
Speaker 1: get your publishing or did you remain the owner of
Speaker 1: the song.
Speaker 2: Well, so what happened was they introduced me to David
Speaker 2: Geffen and he was going to take care of me.
Speaker 1: You know, so those were here quotes.
Speaker 2: This is an audio thing. Yeah, yeah, he's taking care
Speaker 2: of me. So he put all of us into Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers Publishing, and so all my songs that time went
Speaker 2: into Warner Brothers and they're still there now. When Azof
Speaker 2: started working with the Eagles, he got all their publishing
Speaker 2: back from Warner Brothers, so they own it. But he
Speaker 2: didn't get my publishing or JD's or Jackson's publishing back
Speaker 2: for those songs. So yeah, so they still owe those songs.
Speaker 2: And so in.
Speaker 1: A typical publishing deal, there's one hundred cents on the dollar,
Speaker 1: they get fifty cents. You get fifty cents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they get fifteen percent of my fifty
Speaker 2: cents for administering. And they never placed anything or did anything,
Speaker 2: you know. And then other people have gotten their copyrights
Speaker 2: back right since I wrote it prior to nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: For some ridiculous reason I don't understand. I have to
Speaker 2: wait five ten more years before I can get my
Speaker 2: song back, and they'll probably not want to give it back,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So usually what they do is you come up with
Speaker 1: a number for them to keep it. But we aren't
Speaker 1: there yet. So is the revenue for peaceful easy feeling?
Speaker 1: Even though you get thirty five percent out of one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, is that enough to pay your bills?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It has kept me going all these years. And
Speaker 2: in the first few years I made a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but Reagan was the president and the taxes were about,
Speaker 2: I think over eighty percent, you know. And I went
Speaker 2: to the accountants that I had now, I said, well,
Speaker 2: rich people, when they get a lot of money, they
Speaker 2: don't have to pay all these taxes, do they? And
Speaker 2: they go, yeah, you do. There's no way to get
Speaker 2: out of it. And other people did these oil futures
Speaker 2: and cattle ranches, you know, designed to who avoid the
Speaker 2: taxes that I didn't do that. My philosophy has always been,
Speaker 2: now you just pay all the tax and move on.
Speaker 2: But those people years later, they caught up with them
Speaker 2: and took back all that money. So but yes, and
Speaker 2: I don't think the same thing. Maybe the same thing
Speaker 2: could happen today. I don't know what people how people
Speaker 2: can do today.
Speaker 1: Let's go back a little bit. Whatever happens, the album
Speaker 1: comes out, this is the spring A seventy two or three? Whatever?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how long.
Speaker 1: Until you see a check let spring A seventy two.
Speaker 2: I don't know, might have been Oh well, let's see.
Speaker 2: So in seventy two, David Geffen was paying me two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty bucks a month as a as a songwriter, somehow,
Speaker 2: and so I, my girlfriend and I were traveling in
Speaker 2: our Volkswagen bus and we go to general delivery at
Speaker 2: each town and pick up my check. So that went on.
Speaker 2: We traveled for about a year, and so I think
Speaker 2: it was about a year before I saw the first
Speaker 2: first check.
Speaker 1: And was the money coming in the inspiration for the
Speaker 1: trip or the trip would have happened?
Speaker 2: No, No, Well, the money, the two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: a month was a big deal because it was like, hey,
Speaker 2: and the other thing. I was just singing on the
Speaker 2: street where we stopped somewhere to get some money for
Speaker 2: food stuff. So that two hundred and fifty was important.
Speaker 2: But then when we got back, I remember, I think
Speaker 2: the first check I ever got was something like eight
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and it was just like staggering, you know.
Speaker 2: I just thought, this has to be a mistake, you know,
Speaker 2: So that so let's go wild till I got it.
Speaker 1: And when you got to check for eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: you treat yourself to anything.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think I think I just put
Speaker 2: in the bank and I had borrowed money from my
Speaker 2: folks to buy a piano, so I probably paid them
Speaker 2: back at seven and forty bucks, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, on the second album, I think it's second album
Speaker 1: or a third album. All fifty five is on there.
Speaker 1: Did Glenn Fry meet Tom Waits as a result of
Speaker 1: him being the doorman in the club.
Speaker 2: No, no, don't. I don't think so. I don't think
Speaker 2: he ever met Tom. He certainly didn't meet him there
Speaker 2: because Glenn Fry wasn't around the Heritage Club. So but
Speaker 2: I guess they just liked the song. They'd heard that
Speaker 2: song and loved it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then everyone talks about this personality that he,
Speaker 1: Glenn Fry had, that he was the most the coolest guy,
Speaker 1: the popular guy, the guy who made things happen. What
Speaker 1: was your experience of.
Speaker 2: Him all that and more, you know, especially looking back,
Speaker 2: you know, and most of the time that I spent
Speaker 2: with him, we were we were the best of friends,
Speaker 2: you know, for about forty seven years, so from from
Speaker 2: way before he was famous, and and he was all
Speaker 2: of that, you know, and and a stand up guy
Speaker 2: you know, who would be true to his words, show
Speaker 2: up for you. It was kind of weird because to me,
Speaker 2: most of the time I spent with him, it was
Speaker 2: just me and Glenn because we were writing or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know. So it wasn't like and I never worked
Speaker 2: for him. Some people worked for him, They go, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I was just partners. We were
Speaker 2: just partners with the writing and who I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, looking back, he was just an incredible person.
Speaker 2: He had this huge amount of skills that you don't
Speaker 2: see when you look at a person. You know, he
Speaker 2: was like a sports guy who could put together a
Speaker 2: team and motivate everybody and pick the right players to
Speaker 2: the right positions, have him to do the right things,
Speaker 2: as well as being an incredible musician and azof said
Speaker 2: Glenn Fry taught him a lot about business. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's amazing. I just saw him as a guy like me,
Speaker 2: a folky guy like me. And when I met him,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that he played bass, that he
Speaker 2: sang harmony, that he did all these others. So you
Speaker 2: don't see the depth of people. And plus he was
Speaker 2: an incredibly fun loving guy and the funniest guy that
Speaker 2: I ever knew. He was incredibly funny all the time.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, there it is. I was lucky
Speaker 2: to know him.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're born in Ohio, before you're really conscious.
Speaker 1: In a matter of months, you moved to San Diego.
Speaker 1: Why'd you move to San Diego? Why'd your parents moved
Speaker 1: to San Diego?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure. I don't know. It was after
Speaker 2: the war. My dad was on track before the war
Speaker 2: to be a baseball player and he was doing really well.
Speaker 2: Then the war happened and that was over. So they
Speaker 2: moved to San Diego and he got a job as
Speaker 2: a milkman and did that the whole time I was
Speaker 2: growing up. And that was a tough job. You had
Speaker 2: to get up at four in the morning and they
Speaker 2: delivered milk to your house. And this is before refrigerated trucks,
Speaker 2: so it was ice. You had to load physically load
Speaker 2: in all the ice and all the stuff. And you know,
Speaker 2: he pretty soon had three kids, and so there was
Speaker 2: no way out of that. He had to just keep
Speaker 2: doing that, you know. And my mom, once we were
Speaker 2: all in school, she went back to school, got a
Speaker 2: master's and became a high school teacher. But he didn't
Speaker 2: have the opportunity. And I just looked at that and said,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get stuck in a job for
Speaker 2: my whole life. I got to find some way of
Speaker 2: not doing that myself and every other hippie on the planet.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, I think I'm correct. You don't have
Speaker 1: any children.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, I do. I have a son.
Speaker 1: Oh how old is your son?
Speaker 2: He's forty? And I have two granddaughters.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if your son was born in the eighties,
Speaker 1: to what degree did you consciously not have children, because
Speaker 1: it would have you'd want to get locked in like
Speaker 1: your father.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. We didn't have kids for ten years
Speaker 2: and then and then we decided to so, which was
Speaker 2: only people in our general. We were the first generation
Speaker 2: that could make that choice, really, you know. And then
Speaker 2: we turned out we can only have one or I
Speaker 2: would have had more. So, but I want to announce
Speaker 2: that my two granddaughters, who are four and six years old,
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago wrote their first song. And
Speaker 2: I haven't heard it yet. But you know, Neil Young,
Speaker 2: I read an interview they said what's the most important
Speaker 2: thing about a song? And he said, oh, the location
Speaker 2: where you write it. Now, I had never heard that before.
Speaker 2: That was an intriguing idea. Well, so my granddaughters wrote
Speaker 2: this song that I haven't heard yet. They went under
Speaker 2: the bed under the bed where the adults can't go,
Speaker 2: and that's where they were the song. So we'll see
Speaker 2: see what happened.
Speaker 1: What does your son do for a living.
Speaker 2: He's an accountant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So there are three kids in the family.
Speaker 1: How many boys, how many girls? And where are you
Speaker 1: in the hierarchy?
Speaker 2: I'm the oldest, and then I have a younger brother
Speaker 2: and then an even younger sister.
Speaker 1: And what are your brother and sister up to?
Speaker 2: Well, they're kind of retired. My sister counsel's people. And
Speaker 2: my brother was physical plant manager for a hospital and
Speaker 2: a school, and that's a person who takes care of
Speaker 2: every physical item on the campus, all the houses, the
Speaker 2: steamlines with a hospital, all the wiring everything, So he
Speaker 2: can do all that and I do none of that,
Speaker 2: but he can fix anything, build a city. And they're
Speaker 2: both incredible people. So I'm very lucky.
Speaker 1: So what kind of student?
Speaker 2: Were you?
Speaker 1: Good or bad? With grades? And were you popular? Were
Speaker 1: the shy kid? What we like?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I was a nerd before nerd was
Speaker 2: a word, and I was in the advanced class. You know,
Speaker 2: they had these you took a test and you were
Speaker 2: advanced or not. And then so I was in a
Speaker 2: group of other kids that were supposed to be smart,
Speaker 2: and I was not good at any sports. So I
Speaker 2: didn't have that going for me. But I still had
Speaker 2: a good I had a good thing at in school.
Speaker 2: It was okay, I don't know. So one day, one
Speaker 2: day in high school, about senior year, one kid started
Speaker 2: growing his hair really long, and this big, giant football
Speaker 2: guy came up to him and said, Hey, how come
Speaker 2: your hair's so long? You looked like a girl. And
Speaker 2: the guy, Wayne McCracken, said, Hey, I'm expressing my individuality.
Speaker 2: And so the big guy John said, oh, oh you are.
Speaker 2: And then like the next week he started growing his hair,
Speaker 2: and then and then that was my gang and we
Speaker 2: were long haired hippies from then on, you know.
Speaker 1: So, okay, was this a result of the Beatles you
Speaker 1: were growing your hair?
Speaker 2: No, I had nothing to do, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So when did you graduate from high school?
Speaker 2: Sixty five?
Speaker 1: Sixty five? Okay, here's that book. Whatever happened to the
Speaker 1: class of sixty five? What turned you on to music?
Speaker 2: Well? I was just into it because but my parents
Speaker 2: had a record player and there was Oklahoma, you know,
Speaker 2: the music. There was Harry Belafonte. Most people in the country,
Speaker 2: a third of the people in the country had Harry
Speaker 2: Belafonte albums, and we would dance and sing around to that.
Speaker 2: So I was into it, and I would walk up
Speaker 2: and down the street whistling every song I could think of.
Speaker 2: But then I was at a party in high school
Speaker 2: somebody played the first Bob Dylan record and everybody goes,
Speaker 2: I don't know, and I was going, yes, yes, that's it,
Speaker 2: that's really cool. But I didn't play guitar until I
Speaker 2: was about eighteen or nineteen because other people were doing it,
Speaker 2: and so most all the other musicians I know, by
Speaker 2: the time they were eighteen, they'd already been in bands,
Speaker 2: you know. So I started really late. And then I
Speaker 2: went to the coffee house and I would play a song,
Speaker 2: like try to play a blue song I heard, and
Speaker 2: my friends would go, what did you do to that song?
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: So I'm just saying. I met this guy, Joe Faulkner,
Speaker 2: and we'd get stone and sit on the beach and
Speaker 2: he would start playing a little pattern and he would
Speaker 2: just make up songs for an hour. You go, look,
Speaker 2: there's a city in the burning clouds, and we're watching
Speaker 2: the sunset, and he would just go on and on
Speaker 2: and they were incredible songs. And one day I said, Joe,
Speaker 2: maybe we ought to write one of these down or something,
Speaker 2: you know, and he just looked at me and said, man,
Speaker 2: that would ruin it.
Speaker 1: That would ruin it.
Speaker 2: So I kind of got the idea from him, so
Speaker 2: I started writing. I just started making up my own songs.
Speaker 2: Nobody could tell if I screwed him up or not.
Speaker 2: So okay.
Speaker 1: You know, living on the East Coast in that era,
Speaker 1: California was a dream and this was before you now,
Speaker 1: this is when you could be localized as opposed to
Speaker 1: everybody knowing everything. So what was San Diego like in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: Well, it was an outlier. There wasn't a fifties and sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was a the fifties life. I mean,
Speaker 2: they built the first shopping mall right down by my house.
Speaker 2: Of course I didn't know. It was the first college
Speaker 2: grove and then the whole shopping mall thing that became,
Speaker 2: you know, the United States culture, and it was just
Speaker 2: like you're in the fifties. We had it so good
Speaker 2: because only one of your parents had to work, and
Speaker 2: we just thought all that was normal. And then later
Speaker 2: on and then you could be a hippie. When I
Speaker 2: moved out, we could just go to the back of
Speaker 2: the grocery store and they were throwing away tons of
Speaker 2: food and we would just get it, bring it to
Speaker 2: the hippie pad and cook it up. But that was
Speaker 2: the beginning of the sixties. But the fifties was just
Speaker 2: like kind of like Ozzie and Harriet or you know,
Speaker 2: just a whole different thing.
Speaker 1: Was there any doubt you were going to go to college.
Speaker 2: Well, not so much.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I went on a fast track to UCSD because Sputnick
Speaker 2: had gone up and I was into science and I
Speaker 2: had good grades, and I dropped out in a quarter
Speaker 2: because guess what, it was really a lot of work.
Speaker 2: I just was not into that work. You know. You
Speaker 2: had to go to the class. You know, you're supposed
Speaker 2: to learn French in one year at the same time
Speaker 2: as you're doing calculus, and then in the social sciences
Speaker 2: class you only have three classes in that when you
Speaker 2: had to read a book a week and write a
Speaker 2: report on it. One a book by young you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. And I was going no, I was
Speaker 2: used to just skating by. So I dropped out in
Speaker 2: a hitchhike to Texas to see a girl.
Speaker 1: And how did you know a girl in Texas?
Speaker 2: Well, she had been in San Diego and then she
Speaker 2: moved to Texas.
Speaker 1: Okay, well we all hitchhiked back in that era. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much was lonely? You were on the side of
Speaker 1: street waiting for ride. You went Texas with your different
Speaker 1: San Diego. What was it like hitch hiking to Texas?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, it was quite an adventure. And I did
Speaker 2: quite a bit of hitch hiking. But this was by myself,
Speaker 2: and it was lonely and it was cold. And then
Speaker 2: I got to I got to her place. She lived
Speaker 2: in Far Texas p H A R R. And I
Speaker 2: checked in this little hotel and and it was Christmas.
Speaker 2: It was Christmas night, so I said, she said, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we're doing Christmas over here. So so I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll be by myself, and so I just took some
Speaker 2: LSD and and then about an hour later she called said,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, my mom says come over. So I come
Speaker 2: over and I'm just like anyway, that was a memorable moment.
Speaker 2: And then hitchhiking back I don't know. I just remember
Speaker 2: being freezy cold and you meet a lot of people
Speaker 2: and I guess you can't do it now, but it
Speaker 2: was You're right.
Speaker 1: We all did this actually, I you know, because you
Speaker 1: also you had to pick people up and return. And
Speaker 1: I remember in nineteen seventy four I picked up these
Speaker 1: guys with their skateboarders skateboards and they started telling me
Speaker 1: where to drive and they went on and there were
Speaker 1: three of them in one of me. That was the
Speaker 1: last time I picked people up. Yeah, man, it's there, okay.
Speaker 1: But you also talked about drugs. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people across America really didn't mean to marijuana till
Speaker 1: the late sixties. So how did you get turned onto
Speaker 1: marijuana and LSD.
Speaker 2: H Well, my friend who was a who was into zend,
Speaker 2: he had he had researched drugs on the Internet and
Speaker 2: things like PAOD and stuff, and we had found out
Speaker 2: that that there was this stuff called LSD which was
Speaker 2: contained in morning glory seeds. So there'd be like if
Speaker 2: you take the three and seventy four morning glory seeds
Speaker 2: and they have to be heavenly blue morning glories. They
Speaker 2: can't be pearly white they have to be the right color,
Speaker 2: and you grind them up then you can get them.
Speaker 2: You get them down and you're going to throw them
Speaker 2: up later. But if you hold them down long enough,
Speaker 2: they have LSD. And that was my first experience with
Speaker 2: any drug, was taken those and having this full on
Speaker 2: LSD trip.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: About two weeks later at the park besides the high school,
Speaker 2: that was the first time I smoked a joint. So
Speaker 2: I actually had LSD first before anything else.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to Texas, so you show up figuring
Speaker 1: this is going to be great. Yeah, how was it
Speaker 1: between you and the girl?
Speaker 2: Well, nothing much. It was a nice little visit, but nothing.
Speaker 2: Nothing materialized there. So I came back and then I
Speaker 2: started going to a junior college and then worked my
Speaker 2: way up to San Diego State College, which is now
Speaker 2: a university.
Speaker 1: So did you graduate?
Speaker 2: I did. I went in. I had so many units
Speaker 2: of different kinds they gave me a triple major and
Speaker 2: said you can get out of here now. So that's
Speaker 2: and by the way, as far as drugs, I want
Speaker 2: to mention that I did. I did get busted and
Speaker 2: had a had a large jury trial and you know,
Speaker 2: and all that which is amazing considering now I can
Speaker 2: go into a supermarket size dispensary and just buy some pot.
Speaker 2: And I've got my own brand of pot coming out
Speaker 2: in January. Peaceful, easy feeling cannabis is going to be
Speaker 2: for sale in Dreams dispensaries in New Mexico. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's just kind of an amazing turnaround.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can't know fifty years ago, six not quite
Speaker 1: sixty to talk about legalizing dope, the fact that it
Speaker 1: happened in our lifetime. Black Man was president.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, but it took way longer, way longer
Speaker 2: than we thought it was going to be any year,
Speaker 2: and then it was like forty to fifty years.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about getting busted in. What you felt
Speaker 1: and what your parents thought.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was horrible. And after the gig, my
Speaker 2: friend and I went and sat on a park bench.
Speaker 2: We're smoking some weed and I'm going We're just sitting there, going, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: this is in the middle of the park. Nothing can
Speaker 2: happen here. And all of a sudden, this police car
Speaker 2: swoops down and boom, they got us. And I took
Speaker 2: the little bag leading through it on the ground, you know,
Speaker 2: so they arrested us spent a couple of nights in jail.
Speaker 2: I finally my parents found out. And then one of
Speaker 2: my relatives was married to an assemblyman who recommended an
Speaker 2: attorney for me, and so I got this attorney. And
Speaker 2: my friend, who was from Canada, he just he had
Speaker 2: a public defender, but then he later hired the guy
Speaker 2: for the same amount of money. But my attorney was great,
Speaker 2: his attorney was not, and so I got off and
Speaker 2: then he got found guilty and sent back to Canada.
Speaker 2: So there that ended his music career in the US.
Speaker 2: But my attorney was a guy named Peter Hughes, and
Speaker 2: he was a prosecutor who had never lost the case.
Speaker 2: It was like a fantasy. And he had just turned
Speaker 2: decided to be a defense attorney, and he came he
Speaker 2: came up with this thing where the pot was on
Speaker 2: the ground. So he went to the judge. He said,
Speaker 2: you have to split these two cases. You can't try
Speaker 2: these guys together. And once he split it, he said, well,
Speaker 2: you can't prove that the pot was his. It could
Speaker 2: have been the other guys. So the judge instructed the
Speaker 2: jury that they had to find me not guilty. It
Speaker 2: was like a Perry Mason or something.
Speaker 1: Okay, how much did the attorney cost and who paid him?
Speaker 2: I think my folks paid him. It was seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: Well that's relatively cheap even back then. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: you're in college, to what degree? Are you playing out?
Speaker 2: Really a lot every chance I could? Yeah, So I had.
Speaker 2: There was about four or five places, and they each
Speaker 2: had what they called a hoot night, which was open
Speaker 2: mic night, and eventually I would run the hoop night
Speaker 2: and get you know, I get paid a fortune light,
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen bucks. And so I did three or
Speaker 2: four of those a week, and that's how I amassed
Speaker 2: the amount of money to pay my rent stuff. So
Speaker 2: I was doing that a lot.
Speaker 1: You graduate across that hurdle than what.
Speaker 2: Gee, I'm trying to think what happened? I just oh, yes,
Speaker 2: So I went back to Right before I graduated, San
Speaker 2: Diego State College had built a student center and they
Speaker 2: had a bowling alley in the bottom, but they didn't
Speaker 2: have enough money to finish it. So I turned it
Speaker 2: into a folk club and my brother and I built
Speaker 2: a big sound booth. It was a huge room, and
Speaker 2: I started booking that and doing that and At one
Speaker 2: point we decided to carpet the whole place. So I
Speaker 2: found that when they take the carpet out of people's
Speaker 2: houses at the carpet place, they take the old carpet out,
Speaker 2: and what they were doing was that they just piled
Speaker 2: it up in the backyard. It was like a fifty
Speaker 2: foot pile. So I thought, oh, they let me have it.
Speaker 2: So I took all these carpet, these carpets to the place,
Speaker 2: and I needed help, and Glenn Fry was staying with me,
Speaker 2: so he came with me, and he and I hauled
Speaker 2: all these carpets over to the over to this place
Speaker 2: which was called the back Door. So I ran that
Speaker 2: for about a year, and that convinced me that I'd
Speaker 2: rather be the player than the guy that runs the club.
Speaker 1: And so there was no issue of going straight after college.
Speaker 1: This is what you were going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as long as I could keep making a living
Speaker 2: at it, I guess it was my plan. And what
Speaker 2: about the candle shop, Oh, that just did that for
Speaker 2: a few years, sold candles at the Delmar Fair. It
Speaker 2: was really a lot of fun. But then that let
Speaker 2: that go. You know, where'd you get the candles from? Oh? Well,
Speaker 2: we made them, you know, that's the whole deal. We
Speaker 2: got the wax and we hauled sand from the beach
Speaker 2: and have these big pits. And we went to Alcohola
Speaker 2: and found a huge old wax melting machine and we
Speaker 2: made sand candles and they were gloriously cool and sold out.
Speaker 2: So that was a good adventure.
Speaker 1: Okay, just before we leave San Diego behind, to what
Speaker 1: degreed did beach culture affect you and affect the town
Speaker 1: in general? To what degree was the navy something palpable?
Speaker 2: Well, the Navy thing was very strong, and it made
Speaker 2: the whole city was super conservative, you know. And the
Speaker 2: beach culture. Yeah, I mean I fell in love with
Speaker 2: with the beach culture, but the Navy. So when I
Speaker 2: grew my hair long one month, I wrote a remember
Speaker 2: because I wrote a song about it. One month, I
Speaker 2: got stopped by the cops twenty seven times in one
Speaker 2: month just for walking down the street everywhere I went,
Speaker 2: you know, because there were police everywhere and they went
Speaker 2: to curfews and they you know, it was. It was
Speaker 2: that kind of thing San Diego. Then when the first
Speaker 2: loven took place in San Diego, it was a major shock.
Speaker 2: I went to the park and all these people with
Speaker 2: rainbow clothes and bubble and they were you know, I
Speaker 2: just couldn't believe it was happening in San Diego.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you ever think of giving up?
Speaker 2: Not? Well, not too seriously. I I remember kind of
Speaker 2: moving up to North County and walking on the beach
Speaker 2: all the time, figuring out what I was going to do. Now.
Speaker 2: At some point I had always passed through Los Angeles
Speaker 2: with my parents driving, and in those days it was
Speaker 2: incredibly smoggy, and so you're driving you could sort of
Speaker 2: see the Capitol Building, you know, the Tower of Records,
Speaker 2: but you couldn't really see anything.
Speaker 1: That was horrible.
Speaker 2: I said, I'm never going there. I'm never going to LA.
Speaker 2: So instead I said, I got to get into the
Speaker 2: music business. So I moved to San Francisco for about
Speaker 2: a year, and I went to Berkeley and lived there.
Speaker 2: And after about a year, jack there's no music business here,
Speaker 2: You're just like So finally I walked on the beach
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I'm just going to have to
Speaker 2: move up to LA for a while and try it.
Speaker 2: And and so at some point Jackson had turned me
Speaker 2: on to this place in Sant Clement he called the
Speaker 2: Four Muses and he was playing there and I played
Speaker 2: there a bit. I saw this band called Hank, and
Speaker 2: they're a fantastic band. In fact, they're having a reunion
Speaker 2: August fifth at the Coach House and uh, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to put open for him there. And they're all
Speaker 2: good friends of mine, So this band. So I moved
Speaker 2: up to LA and I'm walking around. I see one
Speaker 2: of the guitar player from Hank, Richard Steckel, and I go,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? He said, we both had moved
Speaker 2: up there to make it, you know, to do so
Speaker 2: what people.
Speaker 1: Don't know, although this is probably I don't know what's
Speaker 1: before I didn't realize I moved to California. The movie
Speaker 1: Five Summer Stories was considered to be the surf movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: the soundtrack was by Honk. Yes, you know Blue of
Speaker 1: your Backdrop and everything and everybody do it. I own
Speaker 1: the copy. It was like it never moved out of California.
Speaker 1: But Phenom then they got to deal with CBS. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to tell that story, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of the end. But that first album, Five Summer Stories, unvolved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they are all incredibly, incredibly talented. So I'm
Speaker 2: walking around, and Richard says, well, let's go see this guy.
Speaker 2: He's cool at the ice house, Jewels Shear. So we
Speaker 2: went over there and the guy was just as a
Speaker 2: solo performer. He was funny, his songs were amazing as singing,
Speaker 2: and Juels Sear plays the guitar in a certain way
Speaker 2: that no one else in the world does. He only
Speaker 2: plays he has his left thumb hooked over the top
Speaker 2: of the guitar and he tunes the guitar in a
Speaker 2: completely unique way that he invented. And he plays lead
Speaker 2: and everything if he has to. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: if he covers all the strings, it's a major chord,
Speaker 2: and if he only does four, it's a minor. And
Speaker 2: then you know, he can do everything and he hears everything.
Speaker 2: So he was incredible, and so we set up a
Speaker 2: thing to play together. We went over to let's see,
Speaker 2: I guess it was Doug Haywood's house, who was the
Speaker 2: bass player for Jackson Brown, and Jackson was there and
Speaker 2: we all sat down. So Richard Steckel played a song
Speaker 2: called mild Pals, an incredible song's it's so amazing that
Speaker 2: at Glenn's memorial service, I think Jackson and Don played
Speaker 2: that song instead of one of their songs, It's so great.
Speaker 2: And then I had my song slow Dancing, I played
Speaker 2: Jules Sheer played a song called It's So Easy to
Speaker 2: Begin then and the harmony bland and everything was so magical.
Speaker 2: Just that moment, that first day, I just knew we
Speaker 2: had to do it. We had to do that somehow.
Speaker 2: So we got a gig at Quackingham's and we did
Speaker 2: one gig and a manager came in and said, you're
Speaker 2: you're too good for this, and then that was the beginning.
Speaker 2: Within a couple of months, we had this band called
Speaker 2: the Funky Kings.
Speaker 1: Okay, why were they called the Funky Kings?
Speaker 2: It was just crazy because we were all nuts and
Speaker 2: we just thought, yeah, we're kings and we're funky. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe an unfortunate choice of name, but that's the way
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Okay. And how long thereafter? And how did you end
Speaker 1: up on Arista? Well, so I was.
Speaker 2: So David Geffen was was sort of taking care of me,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So let's just's go back one second. For the two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars you got a month, what'd you
Speaker 1: have to deliver? Oh? Nothing?
Speaker 2: It was just like a publisher advance and Peaceful Easy
Speaker 2: Feeling had already been recorded Warner Brothers, so I didn't
Speaker 2: have to really do anything for that. So but Glenn
Speaker 2: made an appointment for me to go see Clive Davis
Speaker 2: at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You know, it was big time.
Speaker 2: So I go in, I play him a couple of songs,
Speaker 2: and Glenn said, I just wanted you to meet Clive.
Speaker 2: You know, he's a real record guy. So I get
Speaker 2: home and I get a call in my little apartment
Speaker 2: there and it's it's David Geffen. It's going Toeah. I
Speaker 2: heard you went to see Clive. I go, yeah, Glenn
Speaker 2: took me over there, and he goes, okay, well we're through.
Speaker 2: As we're through, I go, what do you mean we're through?
Speaker 2: I you know, I just went to see him. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't understand, because yeah, that's it. We're through. So
Speaker 2: apparently there was a huge feud between Clive and David
Speaker 2: Geffen about Laura Nero or something. You know, they were enemies,
Speaker 2: and I had no idea about that. So that was
Speaker 2: kind of a shock.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: I had the band The Funky Kings of Three of
Speaker 2: Us Jewels, sheer, Richard Steckel and myself and we had
Speaker 2: a rehearsal studio. We went in there and and the
Speaker 2: other two guys said, instead of being a trio, we
Speaker 2: need a band. So Richard said, look, I'll call some
Speaker 2: guys I know from Laguna. And it was Bill Bodine
Speaker 2: on bass, Frank Coach and Nolan drums, and Greg Leese
Speaker 2: on on pedal steel and guitars and stuff. So he
Speaker 2: said they they're gonna come up tomorrow and we're going
Speaker 2: to go over a couple of songs with them. So
Speaker 2: that night I get a call from Clive Davis and
Speaker 2: he says, I'm coming to town and what are you
Speaker 2: up to? You got anything? I go, well, I got
Speaker 2: this new band, and you know we're rehearsing tomorrow. He goes,
Speaker 2: I'll be there. So he comes in. So in the
Speaker 2: morning I come I've never even met these other guys.
Speaker 2: We play our three songs with these guys who I
Speaker 2: don't even know as a band, and then I say, well,
Speaker 2: Clive's coming in. So he comes in with one or
Speaker 2: two guys and he sits there. We play the three
Speaker 2: songs and Clive says.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: So I go oh, okay, cool. Should Should I get
Speaker 2: an attorney? And you know, should we talk to you?
Speaker 2: Do you want to hear some demos or something? Clive
Speaker 2: goes no, I like it. You got a deal. And
Speaker 2: I always loved and respected him for that, you know,
Speaker 2: he didn't have to ask everybody and run around. And
Speaker 2: then he set us up and we recorded with Paul Rothschild,
Speaker 2: and then we got to make our album, and then
Speaker 2: we went on tour with Holland. Oh.
Speaker 1: We went a little bit slower because Paul Rothschild, I
Speaker 1: knew a little bit, was kind of the autocrat, you know,
Speaker 1: it was sort of his way or the highway. So
Speaker 1: what was it like making the record?
Speaker 2: Well, it was fantastic. And I didn't get that from
Speaker 2: him because I was a highly uneducated musician. And when
Speaker 2: he had tried to sing a vocal, I had, you know,
Speaker 2: I had no concept. I was always a solo guy.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know about your trying to stay in time,
Speaker 2: much less phrasing. So I would sing the thing differently
Speaker 2: every time and they couldn't punch me in. And finally
Speaker 2: I remember Paul hitting the button going up, Oh, I
Speaker 2: see Jack, I see you are what we call a
Speaker 2: natural singer, so he was extremely kind and helpful, you know,
Speaker 2: and we were a lot of trouble Richard and Jules.
Speaker 2: We didn't believe in producers, and we were a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble for him and drove them nuts. But he
Speaker 2: was extremely nice to us and did an incredible job.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He brought Barry Beckett in to play keyboard. It was great.
Speaker 2: So the album is done. Are you happy with the album? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we loved it. And then I remember we go to
Speaker 2: the Beverly Hills Hotel, we play it, playing it for
Speaker 2: Clive right, and he goes, well, I just hope you
Speaker 2: guys are going to be able to handle the incredible success.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So who doesn't want to hear that there's a key
Speaker 2: of the music business going yeah, it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: And then you know, and then it didn't happen. And
Speaker 2: many years later, Clive's given a speech in Sandy Diego goes, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: of all the things I signed and thought we're going
Speaker 2: to really do good, there's only two that I really
Speaker 2: believed in that didn't happen, you know, and the Funky
Speaker 2: Kings was one of them. So we're famous.
Speaker 1: I bought it. But in any event, so you finished
Speaker 1: the record, you go on the road. When does it
Speaker 1: become clear it's not working financially. Well, we started doing
Speaker 1: a second record.
Speaker 2: And the band just kind of imploded, you know, we
Speaker 2: weren't I wasn't as happy with the songs and just
Speaker 2: the way it was going. And I kept defending, you know,
Speaker 2: because the record company is going, Jack, we want you
Speaker 2: to write most of the songs, and I was going, no, No,
Speaker 2: these guys are great writers, we're a band and all that,
Speaker 2: you know. But by the time we got into recording
Speaker 2: the second record, it just wasn't work. Came out, so
Speaker 2: we split up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've been spending this. You just tell Caul
Speaker 1: Clive say the group broke up. End a story. Nice
Speaker 1: to know you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he he still had me under contract.
Speaker 2: So I made another record, a solo record. I went
Speaker 2: to Muscle Sholes and lived there for three months. And
Speaker 2: one of the Muscle Sholes rhythm section guy's Pete Carr,
Speaker 2: the guitar player. He produced my record. But it was
Speaker 2: kind of cool because I did it at Fame Studio
Speaker 2: and I got to hear all the stories about that
Speaker 2: and I got to be in muscle Sholes. So but
Speaker 2: that record, it seemed really good right until the end,
Speaker 2: and then it got a little too sweet for me
Speaker 2: with mandolins and stuff, so I don't know, it's okay,
Speaker 2: But and then it didn't Clive didn't respond to it
Speaker 2: didn't have a hit. So so that was at the
Speaker 2: end of me an airest Okay.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the Funky Kings. So the ben
Speaker 1: breaks up, you still talk to those guys.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I remained friends with the fact the
Speaker 2: Jewels went on and moved back to New York State,
Speaker 2: wrote some hits, but Richard and I remained in bands together.
Speaker 2: He was in my bands for many years and Greg
Speaker 2: Lease as well, played with me in my bands for
Speaker 2: sixteen years, and we played like usually like once a
Speaker 2: week at some club in Laguna or something. I've always
Speaker 2: had a gig once or twice a week with my
Speaker 2: own band, despite whatever else I was doing. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and I have tremendous respect for the writing and the
Speaker 2: musicianship of those guys.
Speaker 1: So it ends with Arista. What's going on in your head?
Speaker 1: Do you think, man, this is the end of my
Speaker 1: solo career, my recording career. You say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get another deal. I'm still going to become big.
Speaker 2: Let's see. So yeah, I mean I didn't know what
Speaker 2: was going to happen. And we had some I had
Speaker 2: a manager, Larry Larson, and he managed Kenny Loggins and
Speaker 2: some other people. Later he managed Michael Jackson with a
Speaker 2: Victory tour and he was a great guy. So I
Speaker 2: started going on the road doing opening act for people,
Speaker 2: which I did for years, and I opened, I opened
Speaker 2: tours for all kinds of people. So I did that,
Speaker 2: and meanwhile, I don't know, nothing happened with the record deal.
Speaker 2: I guess I was expecting maybe something might. But so
Speaker 2: I opened for let's see, yeah, Dave Mason, Poko, Dolly Parton,
Speaker 2: I opened the Christopher Cross his whole first tour, Carla
Speaker 2: bon Off, Emmy Lou Harris tour, Joe Walts tour. So
Speaker 2: I did that for a long time. That was what
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: Was what was that experience?
Speaker 2: Like? Incredible?
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 2: And I was always solo. So I go out and
Speaker 2: do a solo show before they came on, and I
Speaker 2: got to meet all those people.
Speaker 1: It was great. Okay, But you know, back then, I
Speaker 1: think people came for the opening act more than they
Speaker 1: do today. But it's tough being the opening act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And it was funny because, uh, every act
Speaker 2: turns out has a different audience, and so the same
Speaker 2: thing night after night, the same thing works for that
Speaker 2: for Christopher Cross's audience, which was all couples, whereas Joe
Speaker 2: Walsh's audience was all young guys. And in order to
Speaker 2: get their attention, one night I figured out, I just
Speaker 2: went on and said, Hey, what did all these petals?
Speaker 2: What did all Joe Walsh's pedals down here that he's
Speaker 2: using and play guitar? Want me to tell you how
Speaker 2: they're set? You know, And everybody's all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I got their attention. He's got this because that they
Speaker 2: were just there, you know, to see the magic of
Speaker 2: how he played guitar and stuff. So uh, but yeah,
Speaker 2: they weren't coming to see me because the they were
Speaker 2: already just coming to see the other act. But it
Speaker 2: was a challenge and I had funny songs and I
Speaker 2: had serious songs, So I don't know, I just learned
Speaker 2: how to do it and I love doing it and.
Speaker 1: It was great. Okay, so tell me the story of
Speaker 1: Already Gone yeah.
Speaker 2: So back when I was running the back door at
Speaker 2: San Diego State the coffeehouse, I really had heard a
Speaker 2: lot of country music. Like we all listened to the
Speaker 2: Japanese transistor radio, right we were supposed to be sleeping,
Speaker 2: and we under the covers we could hear and the
Speaker 2: country station. So it was really cool and I wanted
Speaker 2: to write a country song, but I really didn't have
Speaker 2: a clue. So my friend Rob Strandlin, we had a
Speaker 2: gig together at the back door, and his parents had
Speaker 2: been country singers, and he had an old a Martin
Speaker 2: that belonged to his mom, and he lived, you know,
Speaker 2: way out in the country and had a cowboy boots
Speaker 2: and a dog and a horse, you know. And I'm going, yeah,
Speaker 2: he lived way out there. Well, actually lived about five
Speaker 2: miles from me, but it was out in the country,
Speaker 2: you know. And of course, so anyway, we're at the
Speaker 2: back door and the back room it was the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and so we're in there kind of warming up, and
Speaker 2: there's this huge refrigerators and so I opened one and
Speaker 2: there's a white jug. So I took this white jug
Speaker 2: out and this is before I never had a drink
Speaker 2: or anything. So we started drinking out of this jug.
Speaker 2: We thought it was okay, and it turned out it
Speaker 2: was hard cider in there, and we got kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, feeling really excellent, and wrote Already Gone in
Speaker 2: just about twenty minutes, and then we went up on stage.
Speaker 2: There's a tape somebody taped us. Well, let's do it,
Speaker 2: you know, and we did it, and then the part
Speaker 2: the chorus I always go woooo, which is like the
Speaker 2: I wrote it, you know, because I was feeling so great.
Speaker 2: So and then somehow Glenn Fry heard it. And because
Speaker 2: I don't think I did it much after it, I
Speaker 2: did it. One other time. I went was playing in
Speaker 2: Escondido a place called in the Alley, and Jackson Brown
Speaker 2: was playing. So I was there and opening for him,
Speaker 2: and I didn't really know him that well, but I said, Jackson,
Speaker 2: I just wrote this new song. I want you. You got
Speaker 2: to come on and play it with me. So I
Speaker 2: made him come on and sing Already Gone with me
Speaker 2: and do woo and everything. And then somebody had recorded that,
Speaker 2: and just about two years ago they sent me a
Speaker 2: tape and here's me and Jackson doing it, you know.
Speaker 2: But then I kind of forgot about it. And then
Speaker 2: A few years later, Glenn calls me and he says, man,
Speaker 2: you know that country song you wrote?
Speaker 1: And go, yeah, you know that one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he goes, I think that would make a great
Speaker 2: rock and roll song. So I go, well, sure, you
Speaker 2: know sure, And then he called me back the next
Speaker 2: day and he said, held the phone up to the
Speaker 2: speakers in the studio and there was like the Eagles
Speaker 2: doing Already Gone and that was on their third record.
Speaker 1: So okay, by this time, did you own your publishing? No?
Speaker 2: I think Already Gone and Peaceful, Easy Feeling and Slow
Speaker 2: Dancing are all owned still owned by Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: So tell me about writing Slow Dancing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's see. So I had a friend who
Speaker 2: was an incredible entertainer, one of those guys who could
Speaker 2: easily have been a superstar, but he didn't. He didn't
Speaker 2: have the desire or whatever, David Bradley, and he called himself.
Speaker 2: He had a band called Joe Bummer and the ass
Speaker 2: Bites from Hell, and I wrote recently wrote a song
Speaker 2: about him called who Wants to Be Famous? Like the
Speaker 2: record company came and they said, Joe and this band
Speaker 2: was going, yes, we're going to make a record, and
Speaker 2: he goes guys who wants to be famous, I don't
Speaker 2: want to do it. But he played at a club
Speaker 2: called the Iron Horse, and I watched him. Everybody loved it,
Speaker 2: but they didn't get out on the floor to dance
Speaker 2: until they played a slow song. So I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, there should be a song called slow dancing,
Speaker 2: you know. So then I started working on it. And basically,
Speaker 2: the girl who I traveled with in the Volkswagen bus
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two, you know, I was falling in love.
Speaker 2: We were falling in love, and so that the song
Speaker 2: was about about that. And in just a couple of days,
Speaker 2: I remember driving back from la and the car. Of course,
Speaker 2: you didn't have a cassette record or anything like that,
Speaker 2: so you just had to keep singing things over. No,
Speaker 2: I couldn't write it down, so I just had to
Speaker 2: like remember it and then and then later she and
Speaker 2: I got married and were still together. So that's the
Speaker 2: that's how that song came about.
Speaker 1: Okay, I remember buying the Funky Kings album that was
Speaker 1: an obvious hit, so ultimately it was a hit for
Speaker 1: Johnny Rivers. Tell us what you know? Were you disappointed?
Speaker 1: Wasn't when it wasn't successful the first time around, and
Speaker 1: tell me about Johnny Rivers covering it.
Speaker 2: Well, it got up to number sixty on the Billboard chart.
Speaker 2: That's the only time I was ever singing on the
Speaker 2: Billboard chart. And I don't know what. I don't know
Speaker 2: what happened after that, you know, I don't know why
Speaker 2: it didn't continue. But what I later learned was Johnny
Speaker 2: Rivers heard it and he said, man, if that wasn't
Speaker 2: a hit, I would cut that. And somebody said, it's
Speaker 2: not a hit, you know, So he cut it. And
Speaker 2: then I think he spent quite a bit of time
Speaker 2: traveling through the South going to radio stations and promoting it,
Speaker 2: and so he made it hit. So I was thrilled
Speaker 2: because it wasn't going to be a hit for me,
Speaker 2: and his thing became a huge it. And then I
Speaker 2: got to meet him and work with him, so that
Speaker 2: was really cool.
Speaker 1: And there are multiple covers of that song. Is that
Speaker 1: song still generate income?
Speaker 2: I think so, I mean, yeah, I think it does,
Speaker 2: and Johnny's version and some of the others. I mean,
Speaker 2: I get these big thick things. And I used to
Speaker 2: look at him with all the where each penny came
Speaker 2: in but I don't even look anymore. I just kind
Speaker 2: of go yeah. And then it got real complicated with
Speaker 2: streaming and all that.
Speaker 1: So did you have you ever audited to see whether
Speaker 1: you were paid accurately?
Speaker 2: Well, many years ago one of the guys who was
Speaker 2: a manager, Nick phil Ames, he became an auditor, so
Speaker 2: he audited Warner Brothers for me, and it turned out
Speaker 2: that's the only time I did it. It turned out
Speaker 2: they were paying two cents for each record, but the
Speaker 2: statutory rate had gone up and I said, look, you guys,
Speaker 2: you're still paying two cents. It's a seventh cents now
Speaker 2: or whatever, and they said, so, you know, so I went, oh, man,
Speaker 2: So I I thought, I'm going to have to sue
Speaker 2: these guys. I just, I mean, I don't want to,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get involved, but I just can't,
Speaker 2: you know, let them. And I was getting nowhere. So
Speaker 2: I went to Lucy's l Adobe restaurant and invited j
Speaker 2: D and Jackson Brown JD Salther because they both had
Speaker 2: songs on the same record, and they also were under
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers, and they also were only getting paid two cents,
Speaker 2: which they didn't know, and so together we sued and
Speaker 2: then we went into mediation, and then there's this non
Speaker 2: disclosure agreement, which you know what I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think why should there ever be a non disclosure agreement? Bob?
Speaker 1: What do you think? Well, that just means I mean,
Speaker 1: I could go on about this, but it just means
Speaker 1: they don't have to admit fault. So there's no record
Speaker 1: of it and there's no negative words. But you have
Speaker 1: these two covers on these Eagles record, and as the
Speaker 1: band goes on Hotel California in the long run, they're
Speaker 1: right in all the material. Do you say, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get any covers anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see, I mean, but from the Eagles, although
Speaker 2: I've actually I eventually they got more covers.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know, but I'm talking about that time
Speaker 1: before they booke up the first time. I guess, so
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't thinking about it, and I was
Speaker 1: writing with other people and get and by myself, and
Speaker 1: I was getting other songs cut, you know. So I
Speaker 1: mean at some point George Jones did one of my songs,
Speaker 1: and I toured with Emmy Lou Harris and she eventually
Speaker 1: did one of my songs. So I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was over, but of course.
Speaker 2: The case hits.
Speaker 1: And then how did they get I mean, you were
Speaker 1: on the road with Emmy Lou Harris, but George Jones,
Speaker 1: how did these people who covered their records? Was your
Speaker 1: publisher being active? How did they find out about them?
Speaker 2: I never got a cover of anything from a publisher.
Speaker 2: So and George Jones, it took me years to find out.
Speaker 2: I wrote that song with Bobby Whitlock and he did
Speaker 2: such a killer demo because he's an amazing singer, and
Speaker 2: and I go, how did ever get to George Jones?
Speaker 2: And then years later my friend Ralph Murphy at ASCAP
Speaker 2: told me that he's the one who sent it to
Speaker 2: George Jones. So I finally found out how that happened.
Speaker 2: But other things, I think I was playing and people
Speaker 2: heard somehow they heard the songs, and that's that's how
Speaker 2: it happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the Eagles break up. Glenn Fry is the
Speaker 1: first to put out a solo album, No Fun Allowed.
Speaker 1: How did you end up getting involved in that project?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Glenn and I had of course, we'd known
Speaker 2: each other a long time. I didn't see him that
Speaker 2: much when the Eagles were happening. He was incredibly busy,
Speaker 2: but he called me and said, yeah, I think we're
Speaker 2: gonna stop doing the Eagles once. Come over and see
Speaker 2: if we can write some songs because he needed, you know,
Speaker 2: he needed a new songwriting partner. So I came over
Speaker 2: to his place on I think it was Lookout Mountain
Speaker 2: Court or something. He had this a frame house that
Speaker 2: James Cagney had rented, and I came in and I
Speaker 2: just got a video of him playing with the Spreckles
Speaker 2: theater where he talks about this stuff. But I came
Speaker 2: in and he had one hundred candles burning and he
Speaker 2: had two bottles of red wine. I said, Glenn, I
Speaker 2: don't drink wine. He goes, well, this is songwriter wine
Speaker 2: and you have to have some of this. And I go, so,
Speaker 2: what about the candles? You had a date Later? He goes, no, man,
Speaker 2: there's a muse and we're not the only guys trying
Speaker 2: to write a song tonight. So we've got to make
Speaker 2: this really cool so she'll come down and hang with us,
Speaker 2: you know. And so that night we wrote the One
Speaker 2: You Love. Because I had been trying to learn some
Speaker 2: chords out of the Mickey Baker jazz guitar book, and
Speaker 2: in order to learn that I could learn him. So
Speaker 2: I made up a little song with him, and I
Speaker 2: showed him the chords, and of course Glenn just looked
Speaker 2: at me doing it once and he had it, and
Speaker 2: then so we wrote that song. We also wrote I
Speaker 2: Found Somebody same night, and so according to what he
Speaker 2: said at the Spreckles Theater gig, he said, so I
Speaker 2: didn't look anymore and we just you know, and we
Speaker 2: had never written before together, but that was it. And
Speaker 2: then I wrote with him for fourteen years and when
Speaker 2: he made the albums, I was always there because he
Speaker 2: just allowed me to be there and I was learning
Speaker 2: how to do it and being part of the adventure
Speaker 2: and stuff. So that was a glorious time. I guess
Speaker 2: we wrote about fifteen songs that were in the top
Speaker 2: one hundred, you know, I thought that was and then
Speaker 2: the Eagles got back together. So but it was unbelievably cool.
Speaker 1: Tell me, my favorite song was the opening I Found Somebody.
Speaker 1: To remember how that came together?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to remember who we we eddie something.
Speaker 2: We listened to some other record and it was the
Speaker 2: groove on that record, you know. And then so we
Speaker 2: sort of grabbed that groove and then uh, geez, beyond that,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, you know, it just fell together real quickly.
Speaker 2: It was the first night or first night we did that.
Speaker 1: And how about Smugglers Blues?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Smugglers Blues. Well, I have had a little house
Speaker 2: in Hollywood for many years. That's where we wrote most
Speaker 2: of our stuff. And then Glenn came down to Ensinnita's
Speaker 2: and I had a studio room and he had purchased
Speaker 2: with irving A's off the rights the movie writes to
Speaker 2: a book called Snowblind about the cocaine trade all ready. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so uh and then the movie never happened, but we
Speaker 2: were going to write a song for the movie, which
Speaker 2: we did, and I just remember we had my I
Speaker 2: think I had eight track tape recorder, but I'm talking tape,
Speaker 2: you know. And and Glenn's going, I think I should
Speaker 2: have some cool slide, you know, And and then you know,
Speaker 2: you just started telling the story trouble on the street tonight.
Speaker 2: You know, the blood began to spill that. You know,
Speaker 2: here's your ticket suitcase in your hand. So it's cool
Speaker 2: having the story. And then he had the cool slide,
Speaker 2: and and also we got to say things about the
Speaker 2: war on drugs, so called war on drugs. You know,
Speaker 2: we got to say things. And then it turned out that,
Speaker 2: you know, Glenn always wore the hippie clothes, but then
Speaker 2: when he got big, he'd say, well, I gotta He
Speaker 2: had a phrase for it, I gotta I got put
Speaker 2: on some suits for the man or something. So he said,
Speaker 2: you know, I think when I fly first class, I
Speaker 2: should wear a suit because you never know who you're
Speaker 2: going to be sitting next to. So he sat next
Speaker 2: to Michael Mann and who was planning to do Miami
Speaker 2: Vice TV show. And then our two songs ended up
Speaker 2: on the soundtrack, and the Smugglers Blues song they used
Speaker 2: it in an episode where Glenn was acting and he
Speaker 2: got to be the pilot who flies the stuff in.
Speaker 2: So it was just incredible.
Speaker 1: What about the other song that was on the album,
Speaker 1: You Belonged to the City.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just remember, I think, oh, I know,
Speaker 2: we were writing that because they sent us a script
Speaker 2: to one of the episodes where one of the guys
Speaker 2: goes back to New York where he's from and he's
Speaker 2: walking the streets and they wanted a song for right there.
Speaker 2: So I remember Glenn's got these chords and then he's going,
Speaker 2: you belong to the city, and I go, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's it. Boom, and then we just we just put
Speaker 2: it together for that scene, right, you know, right from
Speaker 2: the story and of course Glenn, you know. And then
Speaker 2: I was using a thing called the Lynn nine thousand
Speaker 2: drum machine, and it was the first thing where you
Speaker 2: could sequence other instruments, you could plug in and sequence.
Speaker 2: So we sequenced the whole thing in my little room
Speaker 2: and that's when Glenn started calling me nine thousand, and
Speaker 2: that's how I got my moniker Jack nine k you know.
Speaker 2: And then he gave me production credit on the thing
Speaker 2: because we just took that sequence and took it up
Speaker 2: the Hawkwelinsky studio where he hooked up all these machines
Speaker 2: and we had a horn player come in and Glenn
Speaker 2: sang it, and then that was it. Because Glenn could
Speaker 2: hear the whole record in his head when he was
Speaker 2: writing a song. You can just hear all the parts,
Speaker 2: everything he wanted. And that's why they called him the
Speaker 2: loan arranger.
Speaker 1: So right, right, well, that's great, and I know he's
Speaker 1: called the loan arrangeer. I didn't know why, so what's
Speaker 1: it like? Okay, In those particular cases, there was an incentive,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a potential movie, et cetera. Do
Speaker 1: you ever write with someone We walk in and it's
Speaker 1: pretty much cold.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Most of the time, and even with Glenn,
Speaker 2: he'd have an idea about let's write an album about
Speaker 2: this or something. But most of the time, A lot
Speaker 2: of times it's not good to bring your own idea.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a million ideas, but it's better
Speaker 2: to let the other guy come. So one day I
Speaker 2: got a call and it was turned out to be
Speaker 2: Bobby Whitlock. He was right down the street, and I
Speaker 2: had no idea who Bobby Whitlock was. Of course he
Speaker 2: had played with Derek and the Dominoes and with Eric
Speaker 2: Clapton and all that. But he just said hey. He had,
Speaker 2: you know, this southern accent and said, I'm right down
Speaker 2: the street. I want to write some songs. So I
Speaker 2: later found out what he did was he came to
Speaker 2: la he looked at the billboard chart. He called he
Speaker 2: called the number one songwriter people had the number one
Speaker 2: song just called them. They weren't home, and you belonged
Speaker 2: to the city. Was number two. So he called and
Speaker 2: he had my number. He called me somehow, and I said,
Speaker 2: come on over. So he came over and we just
Speaker 2: sat there at the kitchen table and and I looked around.
Speaker 2: I said, he said, what are we going to write about?
Speaker 2: I go, well, we got four walls, two chairs in
Speaker 2: a doorway and and that's the first line of the
Speaker 2: song called someone that I Used to know. And that
Speaker 2: song was eventually cut by George Jones. So it's just
Speaker 2: kind of songs are just there in the air. Everybody's
Speaker 2: mind is so full of billions of things coming in
Speaker 2: all the time and being processed that it's always just
Speaker 2: sitting there, you know what I mean, if you're willing
Speaker 2: to just get out of the way.
Speaker 1: So if you're sitting with another person in the room,
Speaker 1: you have inspiration, to what degree do you let the
Speaker 1: other person say what you you know? Let's say you
Speaker 1: come up with some of the other prinsons, it goes
Speaker 1: that sucks you then defend and go no, no, I
Speaker 1: really think I have something here, or you just okay,
Speaker 1: I got another idea.
Speaker 2: Boy. That's a good question, I mean, and it's it's
Speaker 2: a challenge. I mean, you have to co writing is different.
Speaker 2: I love co writing, you know, I love writing by
Speaker 2: myself too, but you have to have a lot of respect,
Speaker 2: you know, for the other person. You might go, this
Speaker 2: is an incredible line, like Glenn and I. You go, well,
Speaker 2: this is an incredible line. But this line does not
Speaker 2: serve the song. So you just have to go, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can use it for something, el whatever, I'll just
Speaker 2: put it aside. And you have to You have to
Speaker 2: let the other person in and have some confidence. Maybe
Speaker 2: it won't work out in the end. But co writing
Speaker 2: is different, and a lot of times you're writing with somebody,
Speaker 2: like if they're an artist and they're going to do
Speaker 2: the song, well, then you have to let them in
Speaker 2: and have a lot to do with it, you know,
Speaker 2: so they can make it their own and relate.
Speaker 1: To it stuff.
Speaker 2: So that's a challenge.
Speaker 1: How do you know when it's finished? And is your
Speaker 1: goal to finish it while the two of you are there? Wow?
Speaker 2: Well, well, the first thing is it's like one of
Speaker 2: them may questions of all art. How do you know
Speaker 2: when it's finished? You know? So now in Nashville, I
Speaker 2: always thought I'd like to do the Nashville Way, which
Speaker 2: was like the real building where they just say, hey,
Speaker 2: write a song for this guy, and you write one.
Speaker 2: I thought that'd be great, But eventually, years later I
Speaker 2: went to Nashville and tried it. And you get in
Speaker 2: the room and yeah, they want that song to be
Speaker 2: done because you have a four hour window. You book
Speaker 2: the room and then and it's going to be done.
Speaker 2: If you're writing with one of those guys, you know
Speaker 2: it's going to be done. And then I've I said, well,
Speaker 2: what happens to all these songs? You must write thirty
Speaker 2: forty songs a month. What happens, Well, one or two
Speaker 2: of them get demoed and then they get pitched. I go,
Speaker 2: what about the other ones? I just wasn't used to that.
Speaker 2: When I write something, you know it's personal, and I
Speaker 2: just so, no, don't. I don't usually try to get
Speaker 2: it done while while I'm sitting there, and then I
Speaker 2: take the words, I look at them later and I go,
Speaker 2: I could throw this out, I could tweak this, I
Speaker 2: could change that, but I guess to really do it.
Speaker 2: The final thing is like I sing it. I sit
Speaker 2: there and play it and sing it, and then some
Speaker 2: little part won't feel right, you know. So ultimately, all
Speaker 2: my first years were spent in the coffee house. Now
Speaker 2: there was almost never anybody in the audience, you know,
Speaker 2: But so I got very comfortable with being up there
Speaker 2: and playing things that were unfinished or but I could
Speaker 2: read even with a few people. You can just read
Speaker 2: what's working and what's not. And I don't think people
Speaker 2: do that now. They don't have that experience, you know,
Speaker 2: playing for people a lot who are listening, and you
Speaker 2: can just so I'm talking about when the song's done,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the ways you tell, you know,
Speaker 2: you kind of just oh, I'm singing it to these people,
Speaker 2: and it feels right all the way through, and it's
Speaker 2: all smooth and working.
Speaker 1: So okay, So how much do you play out now?
Speaker 2: I was doing a touring a bit like going back
Speaker 2: East every weekend before the pandemic, but of course that
Speaker 2: stopped for a couple of years, and I'm still not
Speaker 2: anxious to get on a plane and travel that much
Speaker 2: right now. So I'm playing kind of as much as
Speaker 2: I can around San Diego and La But of course
Speaker 2: there's only about fifteen twenty million people here, so you know,
Speaker 2: it should be enough. And there's a place called Humphreeze
Speaker 2: and seats fifteen hundred people, so I open for American
Speaker 2: Boss Gags and then there's the Belly Up the coach House,
Speaker 2: and so anyway, I'm playing as much as I can.
Speaker 2: And now I think I'm going to go back to
Speaker 2: getting a weekly gig, and because otherwise it's I'm missing
Speaker 2: a lot of the fun which I got into in
Speaker 2: the first place, which is playing live. And you know,
Speaker 2: now you can have a weekly gig and you can
Speaker 2: make it a stage at show or put it on
Speaker 2: the internet, so you don't really have to go all
Speaker 2: over the world. But so the answer is, yeah, as
Speaker 2: much as much as I can.
Speaker 1: So does that work for you? To do it virtually?
Speaker 1: It's one thing if you have no choice because of COVID. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But to what do we doing it virtually? What's that like?
Speaker 1: Playing live live compared.
Speaker 2: It's not It's not the same at all because I
Speaker 2: do the beach jams and I record them, put them
Speaker 2: up there and people respond. But no, it's not the same.
Speaker 2: Playing live is a completely different thing. And I think
Speaker 2: it's going to become more valuable once, you know, once
Speaker 2: my AI hologram is out there playing too, it's going
Speaker 2: to be I think you know, somebody's going to go, hey,
Speaker 2: this stuff is like done by humans, and that's going
Speaker 2: to be a special thing that people want to see.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's something about playing live and it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be a big show. It's just qualitatively different
Speaker 2: than anything else. And bottom line is kind of what
Speaker 2: I got into this for and what I love the most,
Speaker 2: although I love the other parts too.
Speaker 1: You know. So you essentially had an instructional series online
Speaker 1: tell us about that.
Speaker 2: I've done a few things like that. One was called
Speaker 2: go Write One, and I thought, well, I you know,
Speaker 2: Glenn Fry taught songwriting at UCLA and I taught with
Speaker 2: him sometimes and then he did it in New York.
Speaker 2: But I don't know about teaching people songwriting. I've done that.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make me happy. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: you can teach, you know, So just go write one.
Speaker 2: It doesn't tell you how to rhyme or do the
Speaker 2: verses or the struck. Sure, it just tells you how
Speaker 2: to get in the mood. And I did about forty
Speaker 2: of them, you know, And so I did. I put
Speaker 2: that up and not too much happened, and then I
Speaker 2: had some podcasts. Not too much happened with that, so
Speaker 2: I just kind of try everything.
Speaker 1: They'll give me two tips about getting in the mood.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I wish I could remember the brilliant stuff
Speaker 2: I came up with. It was like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: get your stuff, get your batteries working, you know, so
Speaker 2: you can record and oh man, yeah, I'm not thinking
Speaker 2: of it right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well I'll talk about myself and there's certain things
Speaker 1: that happened. I'm immediately inspired. But my best idea is
Speaker 1: cause when I'm doing something else, I'm in the shower,
Speaker 1: I was hiking last night, wasn't thinking about it at all,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden things became clear in my mind.
Speaker 1: To what degree is that your experience were as opposed
Speaker 1: to sitting down and saying I'm going to write something.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And Glenn used to say, we're writing a
Speaker 2: song and some other song gets jealous and wants to
Speaker 2: butt in. You know, it's always like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: when you're doing something else and it triggers some thoughts
Speaker 2: and yes, that's definitely definitely there. You know.
Speaker 1: So when you did those albums with Glenn, how long
Speaker 1: would it take to write the songs? Would they all
Speaker 1: be written at once or multiple times.
Speaker 2: We'd write a lot of them in a clump so
Speaker 2: we could go in and start recording, but then we'd
Speaker 2: you know, take a few days out to write some more. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as we went along.
Speaker 1: So you would go to some club unannounced and work
Speaker 1: out on stage.
Speaker 2: Oh no, me and Glenn. Yeah no, no, Glenn, Glenn,
Speaker 2: that's me. I would always do things like that. But
Speaker 2: Glenn never presents anything unless it's a done deal and
Speaker 2: perfect and great.
Speaker 1: Oh I thought you, I said club, So I misunderstood.
Speaker 1: So tell me about your Beach GM series.
Speaker 2: So I'm so excited about it, and it's so strange
Speaker 2: during the pandemic. Well, it's always been part of my
Speaker 2: process to video when I play, because I always make
Speaker 2: up songs and my idea as well. I'll make them up,
Speaker 2: come home and then I work on, you know, so
Speaker 2: video so I can remember them. So I started doing
Speaker 2: that at the beach during the pandemic. Come home, throw
Speaker 2: the ones away that didn't work, type out the lyrics
Speaker 2: to the other ones, and I have They can't see
Speaker 2: this book, but you know, you know, this huge three
Speaker 2: ring binder is full of song lyrics. You know, so
Speaker 2: like one year, this last year, during the pandemic. I
Speaker 2: made up more songs than I have in my whole life.
Speaker 2: So then I decided started listening to these things and going,
Speaker 2: it's kind of they're great. I started thinking, these are
Speaker 2: great songs even though I just made them up. And
Speaker 2: if it's a beach jam, the way I define that
Speaker 2: is a song that I make it up on the spot.
Speaker 2: I don't think about it ahead of time. I don't
Speaker 2: go back and do it again, I don't edit it.
Speaker 2: It just comes out. So I guess it's like performance art.
Speaker 2: It's performance art, and it kind of goes back to
Speaker 2: the beatnik eraror where they just made up things on stage.
Speaker 2: And I've been posting about one of those a day
Speaker 2: for about a year now.
Speaker 1: So then.
Speaker 2: So I'm at the beach and some guys there's a
Speaker 2: lot of beach people there, some homeless guys, some super
Speaker 2: wealthy guys, all kinds of people from all wah and
Speaker 2: some of them like to like to play drum sticks
Speaker 2: on the sidewalk, or they played the jumbe or something
Speaker 2: that some of them their time isn't very good. There's guitar,
Speaker 2: and I just let everybody play in jam with me sometimes,
Speaker 2: and so I do a lot of that. And then
Speaker 2: my friend I saw a guy in a club Jesse, London,
Speaker 2: and he plays with me a lot, so I sit
Speaker 2: in at his gigs and I started doing this live.
Speaker 2: So I go live to a club and I make up.
Speaker 2: I play for three hours and I make up all
Speaker 2: the songs all night. And I was thinking, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna be able to do it. But as soon as
Speaker 2: I throw the switch, it's kind of like with your column,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, I don't know what I want
Speaker 2: to write about. As soon as I throw the switch, Bob,
Speaker 2: the song comes out, and I don't know where it
Speaker 2: comes from, but hey, I never did know where it
Speaker 2: came from, but it just it just comes out. And
Speaker 2: then when I listen back, I'm thinking, well, at this point,
Speaker 2: I got really confused. I didn't know what the rhyme
Speaker 2: and I didn't want this goes. But then that all
Speaker 2: happened a split second, It turns out and it falls together,
Speaker 2: and I'm just constantly amazed that these things are great.
Speaker 2: The videos, they're interesting. Most things now are not real.
Speaker 2: They're produced, they're put together, they're designed, and maybe this
Speaker 2: is all real. It's more real than anything else now
Speaker 2: it's too much for people. I mean, I know that.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, what if Bob Dylan put out
Speaker 2: one or two songs a day, Jack, would you listen
Speaker 2: to it? He's your favorite guy and probably, But as
Speaker 2: soon as I heard one, I wasn't interested. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just way too much. But I can't help that
Speaker 2: because from my end, I'm doing it and I look
Speaker 2: at this, I go, wow, that's a great song. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to put it up, so I don't know
Speaker 2: if anything can happen. And and Bob, when they advise
Speaker 2: you to get more viewers, they say, look at other
Speaker 2: people doing the same thing, and then see what they did.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't find anybody else doing that. And
Speaker 2: I'm sure other people can do it, they don't want to, maybe,
Speaker 2: but I can't find anybody else doing it. But I
Speaker 2: thought about quitting, but I just can't. I love it,
Speaker 2: I'm into it. It seems to be working. And now
Speaker 2: I'm still writing other songs, making a record and doing
Speaker 2: other stuff the regular way. But this has sort of
Speaker 2: consumed me as this is my work of art. Now.
Speaker 1: You know, Let's say I went to the gig, would
Speaker 1: I be able to tell that you're making it up
Speaker 1: on the spot.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't
Speaker 2: think so people, nobody unless I mention it. Nobody ever,
Speaker 2: I don't think you'd be able to tell no, no,
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Okay, a lot of people. And you've mentioned earlier writing
Speaker 1: a song, you're playing a chord and you're singing and
Speaker 1: you're going like this, and then maybe you change a chord.
Speaker 1: I mean you just say, okay, he's they flip the switch,
Speaker 1: something will come out? What about changes? What about choruses?
Speaker 1: Stuff like that?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not in a lot of ways. I'm not
Speaker 2: very musically educated, like, but all my life I've tried
Speaker 2: to go, well, how how can I get chords to
Speaker 2: fit together? So that's kind of been my emphasis. How
Speaker 2: do I get the knowledge to just make things up?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And so I don't know a lot of the songs,
Speaker 2: I'll have the same groove. But if I just put
Speaker 2: one other groove and learn one other new chord, or
Speaker 2: learn one little way that Lightning Hopkins played with only
Speaker 2: a thumb and a finger and never used everything else,
Speaker 2: and that gives me some new rhythms. You just learn.
Speaker 2: It's everything in life, you take everything you know and
Speaker 2: you add one new thing and that thing compounds. And
Speaker 2: so that's what I've always tried to do, and somehow
Speaker 2: I can really do it. It's just like I've got
Speaker 2: the idea of the song, and what I'm talking about
Speaker 2: is flowing, and then I got the melody, and then
Speaker 2: I got the chords and the rhythm and the changes,
Speaker 2: and it just it just all flows out. And then
Speaker 2: I got this guy a lot of times, Jesse London,
Speaker 2: who's playing guitar with me, and somehow he's following me,
Speaker 2: and I have no idea where I'm going next, you know, so,
Speaker 2: and i'd like to start doing with the whole band,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, you throw away the ones that
Speaker 2: don't work. Sometimes I miss a rhyme horribly, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, And I would go back and fix it,
Speaker 2: but I go, well, I can just go do five more.
Speaker 2: But the time it takes to fix it. Now, if
Speaker 2: I refine the songs. And I went in and got
Speaker 2: a band and record him took a couple of months.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think anybody's going to hear it anyway,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's one reason I just kind of well,
Speaker 2: this is a new era of the Internet. People just
Speaker 2: going to listen to it once or whatever. I might
Speaker 2: as well just do what I like. I can put
Speaker 2: him out there and hope somebody loves it.
Speaker 1: How do you decide what the subject matter is? Lyrically?
Speaker 2: When I sometimes I have a thought, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sitting at the beach and I see a dog, and
Speaker 2: so I start writing, big dog come in my way,
Speaker 2: Big dog coming my way. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: times when I pick up the guitar, I start playing,
Speaker 2: even at the gig, I have no idea what I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about, and then I'll sing one phrase
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, the whole idea of what
Speaker 2: the song might be about pops into my head and
Speaker 2: I just do it.
Speaker 1: And in terms of your everyday life, what do you
Speaker 1: do other than this?
Speaker 2: You read?
Speaker 1: You said you weren't a sportsman. Do you exercise? What
Speaker 1: do you doing? To what degree does that inform your songwriting?
Speaker 2: Well, the major intellectual pastime for the whole United States
Speaker 2: is watching TV, and I do my share of that,
Speaker 2: you know, And I read. I read quite a bit
Speaker 2: and everything I just reread. Little Sister Raymond Chandler, you know,
Speaker 2: and I read some stuff about the music business and
Speaker 2: biographies of Einstein, and a lot of fiction and science
Speaker 2: fiction William Gibson and all those guys. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I do a lot of reading, watching TV. I swim
Speaker 2: a little in the morning. Then I go over to
Speaker 2: the beach for the sunset, make up some songs, come home,
Speaker 2: have dinner, and then after dinner, I sit there and
Speaker 2: listen to what I made up and type out the
Speaker 2: lyrics and post them. And then you go every day,
Speaker 2: almost every day. It's not like I have to, but
Speaker 2: see I'm in the head. I like to go down
Speaker 2: and watch the sunset. Anyway. If I don't, I feel
Speaker 2: like I somehow missed the day.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, if you go down to the sun set,
Speaker 1: you write one song, or you write multiple songs or
Speaker 1: what does it depend.
Speaker 2: Upon multiple songs? Because basically I get the guitar out
Speaker 2: and set up the set up the iPhone on a
Speaker 2: tripod with my little mic, and then I just played
Speaker 2: till I get tired of it. So I might get
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I might write seven songs a day,
Speaker 2: or eight or three or four, and then I get
Speaker 2: home and I go, Now, these these aren't very good
Speaker 2: and throw them away, and I keep and I'll be going,
Speaker 2: maybe I better stop doing this, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden I'll see one and I'll listen to it and go,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is incredible, this is really good.
Speaker 2: So it keeps me going. So yes, I can write
Speaker 2: multiple songs a day instead of when I started, which
Speaker 2: was like ten songs a year. Oh I don't know
Speaker 2: how that happened.
Speaker 1: But would you you're making a new solo album, you
Speaker 1: send me a couple of tracks, Is that whole different experience?
Speaker 1: Or any of these songs going to be on the album?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of these songs are going to be
Speaker 2: in the album. I've taken a couple and if I
Speaker 2: do work on them, generally, what it is is like
Speaker 2: they have maybe too many verses they don't need, so
Speaker 2: I throw a couple away. But yes, so I'll put
Speaker 2: a couple of those on there. Okay, Now the experience
Speaker 2: is totally different. You referenced this early or how many
Speaker 2: people are actually going to see the video hear the video?
Speaker 2: So you're still making records. A lot of people don't
Speaker 2: even bother anymore. Who are of our evantage? What keeps
Speaker 2: you motivated into what degree? Are you depressed that you're
Speaker 2: an artist? You want people to experience your art, but
Speaker 2: inherently there's so much stuff it's difficult.
Speaker 1: To reach people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a hell of a question, in't it. Boy. Well,
Speaker 2: I keep moving. I'm trying every possible thing. For some reason,
Speaker 2: my wife says, you know, you don't have to do anything,
Speaker 2: you can just do nothing. And sometimes I slump into that,
Speaker 2: but mostly, you know, if I see something on the Instagram, Oh,
Speaker 2: here's a cool guitar. Oh here's a thing you can do,
Speaker 2: I'm just interested. That's what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the flow of creativity and the desire to do
Speaker 2: that and the satisfaction of doing that. And then the
Speaker 2: other end is to complete the circle. You want some
Speaker 2: human beings to see and appreciate and maybe like what
Speaker 2: you did. Those are two different things. I don't know
Speaker 2: what point is. At one point, I say, well, how
Speaker 2: many people? How many people do I need to see
Speaker 2: this song, you know, to feel like it's okay, you know,
Speaker 2: And then I thought, well, it depends, you know. If
Speaker 2: I got one comment saying this is a great song, well,
Speaker 2: if it was James Taylor, I go, Okay, that's all
Speaker 2: I need. But and I guess maybe I don't have
Speaker 2: very many subscribers. But you know, like if I add
Speaker 2: up the Instagram and the Facebook and all that, maybe
Speaker 2: maybe a thousand people. You know, it's hard to tell
Speaker 2: because most of the numbers on the internet. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you how you're doing, are big fat lies. They're just
Speaker 2: big fat lies designed to make you think it's happening.
Speaker 2: But the comments, somebody really usually has to write the comments.
Speaker 2: So it's just it's the dilemma of our time because
Speaker 2: there used to be entertainers or performers or creators, and
Speaker 2: then there used to be people who, you know, we're audience,
Speaker 2: and now everyone is a star. You know, everyone is
Speaker 2: a performer, and the only way to really interest them
Speaker 2: is to get them in on the action and let
Speaker 2: them do part of it. So it's just so different
Speaker 2: than it's ever been, and it's going to become even
Speaker 2: more radically different. So what can we do. We just
Speaker 2: have to roll with the flow.
Speaker 1: Okay. And in terms of your friends, I find a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends. There's a friend of mine calls
Speaker 1: them the civilians. They're retiring, they're done Okay, So to
Speaker 1: what degree does that affect you this stage of life?
Speaker 1: Do you find you're the only person working. What's it
Speaker 1: like amongst your friends and how to impacts you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's a few friends that are frustrated, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and some people are retiring.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't have a hobby that i'd rather do,
Speaker 2: so I'm not going to tire until I'm just too
Speaker 2: tired to do it or something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: My friend's writing a book called The Frustrated Creative, but
Speaker 2: I don't think he's going to be able to solve
Speaker 2: the problem. You know. It's just like you have to,
Speaker 2: you have to adjust your mind and say, oh gee,
Speaker 2: I don't care. But that's kind of a lie, you know,
Speaker 2: especially after having work that so many people are still
Speaker 2: listening to. And yet but then I think, well, I
Speaker 2: can't get anybody to listen to what I'm doing. But
Speaker 2: then again, if you know, if Willie Nelson cut my song,
Speaker 2: or if all these people they're not on the radio either.
Speaker 2: So there, and so I asked an expert what should
Speaker 2: I do to get an audience? And the expert was you,
Speaker 2: And you wrote back very kindly and said maybe you
Speaker 2: can get some songs cut in Nashville, you know. So
Speaker 2: I tried to do that, but that's not really happening
Speaker 2: anymore either. It's so I don't know if people want
Speaker 2: to retire. I just don't think I'll be happy if
Speaker 2: I'm not creating some kind of musical thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's almost like I feel they're like, yeah, I just
Speaker 2: had this breakthrough where I can do stuff way more
Speaker 2: and better than I've ever done it before, you know,
Speaker 2: But I don't have any Eagles to make the song's hits,
Speaker 2: you know, and I don't see that happening.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean, the Eagles album that you had a
Speaker 1: couple of songs on came out, what two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and the world has already changed since then sixteen years.
Speaker 1: Even if the Eagles cut it, yeah, very few people will.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Eagles is a group, but who you know,
Speaker 1: let's not go down that road.
Speaker 2: Other than the when they did Long Road out of
Speaker 2: Eden and then they were going to play and they
Speaker 2: cut a couple of my songs on there, but they
Speaker 2: were going to play and I said, Glenn, how many
Speaker 2: songs are you going to do off your new album? Well,
Speaker 2: we're just going to do two because nobody wants to
Speaker 2: hear them. That's when they get up and go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom when we do the new songs. So and
Speaker 2: then I don't think they're interested in doing another record,
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, Well, the great.
Speaker 1: Thing is you're making music. You've seen the other end
Speaker 1: of it, whereas a lot of the people, you know,
Speaker 1: we're bitching and moaning that things are different. Listen, it's
Speaker 1: frustrating for me too, you know, as I say, used
Speaker 1: to be top down. It's not top down anymore anyway, Jack,
Speaker 1: I think we have come to the feeling, the end
Speaker 1: of the feeling we've known. Just to make sure because
Speaker 1: we went back and forth an email. Is there anything
Speaker 1: I didn't cover that you haven't urge to talk about.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I just have to say, after
Speaker 2: reading you for years and now, it's just been a
Speaker 2: great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well. You know, you have this sense of humor that
Speaker 1: is just so great and I can see why everybody
Speaker 1: wanted you around and in the room. In addition of
Speaker 1: writing these great songs and any of it, and it's
Speaker 1: really you're an inspiration for people. You got to keep
Speaker 1: doing I mean, especially today, when people don't do it
Speaker 1: for the music. They do it to become famous or
Speaker 1: to sell something out else. It's just not enough the music.
Speaker 1: But as you say, it's continuing to evolve. In any event, Jack,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this.
Speaker 2: Thanks Bob, it has been great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You'd bet until next time. This is Bob left sets