Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is John Drastic, otherwise known as five
Speaker 1: for Fighting. John. Why five for Fighting?
Speaker 2: Well? When EMI Records back in the day wanted to
Speaker 2: launch my record, it was the age of lilleth Fair
Speaker 2: boy band's grunge music. The male singer songwriter was dead
Speaker 2: and they said, John, we need a band name. As
Speaker 2: a hockey fan, I had just been to a hockey
Speaker 2: game and there are a couple of fights by a
Speaker 2: guy named Marty McSorley, who was Wayne Gretzky's bodyguard. And
Speaker 2: in hockey, of course, if you get in a fight,
Speaker 2: you get five minutes for fighting a penalty. And so
Speaker 2: when the record company said we need a band name,
Speaker 2: I sarcastically said, well, how about five for Fighting, expecting
Speaker 2: them to hate it, Bob, and of course I said,
Speaker 2: we love it, and here I am twenty years later.
Speaker 2: Five for Fighting sounds like I should be opening for Metallica.
Speaker 2: But I do get a hockey ticket whenever I tend
Speaker 2: to want one, so it has had some fringe benefits.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have the example of Johnny Cougar, John Mellen
Speaker 1: camp Or ultimately evolved into using his own name. Is
Speaker 1: this something that you would like to achieve?
Speaker 2: I think it's way too late for that, And, you know,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, it's been kind of nice
Speaker 2: because it's really been about the music. There's certainly, I
Speaker 2: think a disconnect between some of the songs and the
Speaker 2: five for Fighting brand and the fact that it's not
Speaker 2: a band, it's a guy. It probably cost the record
Speaker 2: company a million records, but it's allowed me to kind
Speaker 2: of just kind of slip under the radar, and frankly,
Speaker 2: as a huge sports fan, I've also been able to
Speaker 2: play you know, Monday night football, all Star games, you know,
Speaker 2: outdoor hockey games, you know baseball, you know, championship games.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't happen with John and Rassic. I think
Speaker 2: Fire for Fighting sounds a little more, you know, you know, cliche,
Speaker 2: to give you some some umph to it. So I'll
Speaker 2: take the name and we'll let someone else sell the records.
Speaker 1: Okay, recently you performed in Israel. How did that happen?
Speaker 2: Boy? It's a long story, really, well tell it.
Speaker 1: We're all here.
Speaker 2: It really started a few years ago. I wrote a
Speaker 2: song about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, a song called Blood
Speaker 2: in my Hands. It was very critical of the withdrawal,
Speaker 2: and it resonated with our Afghan veterans who felt gutted,
Speaker 2: shamed that we abandoned their allies that we swore to protect,
Speaker 2: and it became resonant with many folks in the military
Speaker 2: and internationally. I ended up getting emails from people trapped
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan to the point where I were working with
Speaker 2: many of these NGOs evacuating people and getting people out.
Speaker 2: One called Save our Allies got sixteen thousand people out
Speaker 2: in nine days. And I saw the value of music
Speaker 2: in that effort. And then I said, I hope I
Speaker 2: never have to do this again. Well, then Ukraine comes
Speaker 2: putin invade Ukraine. I write a song called come one Man,
Speaker 2: Save the World, kind of to stand for the Ukrainian people.
Speaker 2: I go to Ukraine. I film a song with Ukrainian
Speaker 2: orchestra and a blown up airport, and again that song
Speaker 2: resonates in a way that I think was significant, and
Speaker 2: I was, Okay, God, I hope I never have to
Speaker 2: do this again. And then October seventh, I think, like
Speaker 2: all of us, we were horrified, we were disgusted, we
Speaker 2: were angry. Reminded me a lot of nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: The atrocity has seen some of the images we just
Speaker 2: can never have imagined. But what really got me was
Speaker 2: the cultural aftermath, the collapse of so many of our
Speaker 2: moral institutions. The mayor of New York City gave a speech,
Speaker 2: I think it was October ninth, and the speech was basically,
Speaker 2: something's really broken in America when we have thousands of
Speaker 2: people in Times Square celebrating the raping of women, the
Speaker 2: beheading of babies, the killing of children in front of
Speaker 2: their parents, uploading it to Facebook for the world to see,
Speaker 2: and that people are out there celebrating that something's really broken.
Speaker 2: And so I had this sense of a song is there?
Speaker 2: A song is there? And then we saw the media
Speaker 2: very quickly become Hamas propagandists. Of course, we saw our
Speaker 2: college campuses inflamed. We saw the Rashida Talibs of the
Speaker 2: world basically spouting Hamas propaganda. Couldn't even say that beheadings
Speaker 2: of babies were bad. And so I wrote the song
Speaker 2: okay with the theme were not Okay? And I made
Speaker 2: a video to it and it was it's just a
Speaker 2: documentary video. It was just images from October seventh, but
Speaker 2: it was more than that. Over the lyrics Evils on
Speaker 2: the march, I had putin next to Hamas, next to
Speaker 2: Iran Frankly, next to the un who has also been
Speaker 2: an ally of Hamas in this and that video went
Speaker 2: viral and Israel ended up sharing it on their social media.
Speaker 2: And when that happened, I got a very small sense
Speaker 2: of what it's like to be Jewish. I'm not Jewish.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be Jewish to condemn Hamas, you
Speaker 2: just have to be saying. But when Israel shared that video,
Speaker 2: I experienced the vitriol. I experience the death threats. I
Speaker 2: experienced what Jewish people are going through every day. And
Speaker 2: when that happened, I got connected with many of the
Speaker 2: Jewish organizations Stand with Us, the American Jewish Committee, the Adel,
Speaker 2: and I started speaking to some college groups and I
Speaker 2: started talking about this and playing my song, and it
Speaker 2: really I got thousands of emails from people in Israel,
Speaker 2: thousands of emails from Jewish people around the world, and
Speaker 2: I started doing press and media. And when I was
Speaker 2: out on my tour last month, I had a week
Speaker 2: off and I'd been asked by folks to go to Israel,
Speaker 2: so I did. I went to Israel initially to meet
Speaker 2: with Israeli artists because of course the American and international
Speaker 2: artists have been deathly silent on Israel and October seventh,
Speaker 2: so I was working with them on some projects. I
Speaker 2: met with some troops. I talked to some hostage families,
Speaker 2: which was just as you can imagine excruciating. But I
Speaker 2: wasn't planning on this. But on Friday, they said, you know,
Speaker 2: we have this hostage rally in Hostage Square every Saturday night.
Speaker 2: They've been doing it since October seventh. Hostage family speak,
Speaker 2: thousands of people come, it's aired on television. It's very
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, moving, sad experience. And they asked
Speaker 2: me to play my song Superman, and they asked me
Speaker 2: to play this song Okay, which I did. It was
Speaker 2: the most surreal experience I could tell you about. I've
Speaker 2: never had a Gigbob where before the gig there's an announcement
Speaker 2: that says an event of missile attack, please lay down,
Speaker 2: put your hands over your head. And the crazy thing
Speaker 2: was nobody left, not one Israeli left. I played my songs,
Speaker 2: I cried with the hostage families. Three hours later I
Speaker 2: ran launched their first drones their attack on Israel. So
Speaker 2: quite a interesting twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack all this because from when you started
Speaker 1: in the last century, the game is completely changed. So Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: you are motivated to write a song. Today, as we speak,
Speaker 1: two rappers are having a rap war. Most people have
Speaker 1: never even heard these songs, might even have heard the
Speaker 1: name of the acts. So you write a song, how
Speaker 1: do you get it heard in the twenty first century
Speaker 1: internet streaming world.
Speaker 2: It's a good question, because, of course we sent Blood
Speaker 2: on My Hands to four hundred music media outlets. One
Speaker 2: of them covered it because it did not fit their
Speaker 2: political worldview. So I go on television, I go on
Speaker 2: Fox News, I go on sometimes CNN. I go on podcasts,
Speaker 2: but went a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: One thing to be on podcasts with people like me.
Speaker 1: It's another thing to be on CNN in Fox Fox
Speaker 1: you know, as you say, might align with the view
Speaker 1: of the song.
Speaker 2: How did that happen? People saw it, People saw it,
Speaker 2: Senators started tweeting it. I have some relationships in media
Speaker 2: and they started calling and asking me to come on.
Speaker 2: And it was very interesting because Blood on my Hands,
Speaker 2: because it was critical of the administration, was kind of
Speaker 2: embraced by the right and shunned by the left, which
Speaker 2: includes the music press. My Ukraine song was different. It
Speaker 2: actually debuted on Good Morning America the video that we shot,
Speaker 2: and many of the mainstream media basically accepted that song
Speaker 2: and appreciated that song because that's a song that kind
Speaker 2: of appeals more to the left, and frankly, some on
Speaker 2: the right did not like that song. So I have
Speaker 2: relationships in the media. It's a fascinating thing that, you know,
Speaker 2: you being kind of an icon on this business, to
Speaker 2: have three songs that have had millions of impressions and
Speaker 2: around the world without once spin on the radio. So
Speaker 2: you know, I think the messages are resonating, frankly, because
Speaker 2: very few artists are even talking about the subjects.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's move on to the Ukraine from Afghanistan. How
Speaker 1: long after the attack did you write and go on
Speaker 1: Good Morning America?
Speaker 2: So basically I wrote the song literally in twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: because as you remember, at the outset of the war,
Speaker 2: the mercenaries were hunting Zelenski. We didn't think he even
Speaker 2: came out and said I probably won't be alive at
Speaker 2: the end of the week, So I wrote can One
Speaker 2: Man Save of the World? I recorded it, I put
Speaker 2: it out piano vocal, which I've never done, expecting him
Speaker 2: to basically not survive, but of course he did, and
Speaker 2: the song resonated. And the plan really was to go
Speaker 2: to Poland because Poland has been so amazing taking four
Speaker 2: million refugees, so I wanted to shine the light on Poland.
Speaker 2: So I reached out to a friend who had relationships
Speaker 2: in Poland and she said, this is a great idea,
Speaker 2: let me call you back. And a few weeks later
Speaker 2: she called me back and said, how would you like
Speaker 2: to go to Ukraine and perform the song with the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian Orchestra? And this is not a woman who jokes around.
Speaker 2: I'm like, do they even exist? Does the orchestra exist?
Speaker 2: And she said, they're scattered around Ukraine. We can get
Speaker 2: them into ki for two days. A million things have
Speaker 2: to happen, but be prepared, you know, right, an arrangement.
Speaker 2: So I was driving around the country touring with my
Speaker 2: string quartet and in the back of the van we
Speaker 2: were scoring out the an orchestra arrangement for can One
Speaker 2: Man Save the World? And then my last show, I
Speaker 2: got an email with a plane ticket to Krakau the
Speaker 2: next morning. I had a very long talk with my
Speaker 2: wife that night, but she let me go and two
Speaker 2: days later, after playing trains and automobiles getting to Kiev,
Speaker 2: we were allowed to play and what is hollow ground
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. Typically when you go to Ukraine you play
Speaker 2: in the subways because when Russia launches missiles and the
Speaker 2: air raids go off, everybody runs in the subways. But
Speaker 2: we were able to perform at the Antonoff Airport, which
Speaker 2: basically is the hang or for the symbol of Ukrainian independence,
Speaker 2: which is an airplane. It's called the Maria. It's the
Speaker 2: largest cargo plane in the world. It's the symbol that's
Speaker 2: on their army patch. And at the outset of the war,
Speaker 2: Putin sent his troops to the Antonoff Airport and blew
Speaker 2: it up. He basically blew the nose cone off, so
Speaker 2: it's this wreckage of a plane. And we were able
Speaker 2: to put the orchestra and myself in front of this
Speaker 2: plane and perform. And a little antidote that really kind
Speaker 2: of brought it home for me. As we were running takes,
Speaker 2: I noticed that out of the corner of my eye
Speaker 2: an entourage of military folks coming over. It turned out
Speaker 2: it was the general who had approved us shooting there.
Speaker 2: He's kind of their schwartz cough. He's kind of very
Speaker 2: well known. He's the face of the war. And through
Speaker 2: a translator, he said, you know, thank you for coming.
Speaker 2: You know, President Zelensky's glad you're here. And then he
Speaker 2: said something I'll never forget. He said, let me hear
Speaker 2: the song. And you could see the orchestra kind of
Speaker 2: sit up in their seats and because very emotional, and
Speaker 2: they started playing with this vigor and passion. What I
Speaker 2: found out later is every member of that orchestra had
Speaker 2: either had a family member killed, missing, or on the
Speaker 2: front lines. So to play this song in front of
Speaker 2: this general was a big deal for them. And if
Speaker 2: you see the Kimbo Man Say of the World video,
Speaker 2: this is the take. And at the end of the performance,
Speaker 2: I was in tears. Some of his Rambo guards were
Speaker 2: like putting on stunglasses because they were in tears. And
Speaker 2: there was this silence that probably was four or five
Speaker 2: seconds but felt like a week. But you could really
Speaker 2: feel the weight of that moment, these people fighting for
Speaker 2: their survival. The seventy two year old violin player teaching
Speaker 2: me curse words to yell at Putin. And I realized
Speaker 2: it later, Bob, that they didn't know any of the words,
Speaker 2: they didn't know the lyrics. It was just music, the
Speaker 2: universal nature of music that brought us together and were
Speaker 2: able to have this American from thousands of miles away
Speaker 2: singing with these people under siege. And I wish every
Speaker 2: American could have stood in my shoes. I think we
Speaker 2: would have a different sense of the of how fortunate
Speaker 2: we are to have the freedoms we do have.
Speaker 1: Okay, one of the obvious questions you mentioned your wife
Speaker 1: in discussing whether you could go, did you have any
Speaker 1: sense of fear there?
Speaker 2: I did. I did. I wrote letters to my family.
Speaker 2: They didn't even know it in case I didn't come back.
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly, you know the odds are with you
Speaker 2: when you go, but it is a war zone and
Speaker 2: people are getting killed, and unlike Israel, there was no
Speaker 2: iron dome to protect us. So yeah, I didn't sleep
Speaker 2: much there. When we finally got back to Poland after
Speaker 2: five days, I think I slept for thirty hours. Because
Speaker 2: you're always anxious and you're scared and you also get
Speaker 2: a sense of the fortitude of the Ukrainian people, of
Speaker 2: Israeli people who basically every day they have to ask
Speaker 2: is this my last day? Because they're being attacked relentlessly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was certainly anxious. We had one air
Speaker 2: raid that kind of drove us to the basements. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a war zone. I mean, I'm human, and I
Speaker 2: think if you're not a little scared, something's probably wrong
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, you took a stance with Afghanistan. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: we pulled out. Ukrainian war is still going on. Was
Speaker 1: just recently the government said we're going to give funds
Speaker 1: and weapons to Ukraine. Having been there, being a student
Speaker 1: of the situation, what would you tell people about the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine?
Speaker 2: I would say that I understand. Also people say, well,
Speaker 2: are we waste the money? Is their corruption? There is?
Speaker 2: There's corruption there. Frankly, if you want to get something done,
Speaker 2: it's probably easier to do it with the mob than
Speaker 2: the government. At the same time, the cost I think
Speaker 2: of abandoning Ukraine to Putin could be catastrophic. Certainly he
Speaker 2: would not stop there, and certainly if he moves into Poland,
Speaker 2: it's a NATO country, and then we have American soldiers
Speaker 2: fighting this war, so I think we have to stop him. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: I think the administration has been giving just enough to
Speaker 2: Ukraine to kind of maybe not have them lose right now.
Speaker 2: But the fact that I think many of our republicans,
Speaker 2: some of my I rode with some Republicans on a
Speaker 2: train from Leviv to Kiev and some of them were
Speaker 2: not open to funding Ukraine for political reasons. I thought
Speaker 2: that was a huge mistake, and I'm very glad that
Speaker 2: the House came to their senses and funded Ukraine. There
Speaker 2: is waste, and we need to have people on the ground,
Speaker 2: But a lot of the expense that those funding goes
Speaker 2: to is to American companies actually making warheads, making missiles,
Speaker 2: making military supplies for Ukraine. So it just doesn't they
Speaker 2: don't write a check for sixty billion dollars to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: But I understand that because I did see the waste,
Speaker 2: and I think if we had a little more savvy
Speaker 2: we would have people on there. I saw miles of
Speaker 2: trucks outside of the border, and I'm like, what are
Speaker 2: in those trucks? And I think we really need people
Speaker 2: on the ground. To hold some accountability. But I think
Speaker 2: a lot of times in politics, you know, for political reasons,
Speaker 2: people write at check and they say, Okay, we've done
Speaker 2: our job. No, you just started to do your job.
Speaker 2: But I do think the consequence of allowing Putin to
Speaker 2: take Ukraine could be catastrophic geopolitically for US and and
Speaker 2: and Frankly, I think one reason why we had October
Speaker 2: seventh was because when you abandon your citizens to the Taliban,
Speaker 2: when you basically tell Putin that, well, a little invasion's okay.
Speaker 2: I think the bad actors Iran Hamas they sense weakness.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure Putin greenlit October seventh because what was
Speaker 2: his goal? To take the focus off Ukraine, which it
Speaker 2: has done. So I understand the concerns about Ukraine, but
Speaker 2: in my opinion, to allow Putin to to take Ukraine
Speaker 2: and to basically annihilate Ukrainians would be historically catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Now, your wife, who you've been married to for decades,
Speaker 1: has a Jewish last name. I don't know to what
Speaker 1: degree she was brought up or considers yourself a practicing Jew.
Speaker 1: But did that inform your take on October seventh?
Speaker 2: No, it didn't it's to me, this is not a
Speaker 2: Jewish thing. A lot of people say, why are you
Speaker 2: doing this, You're not Jewish, and I'm like, well, when
Speaker 2: we were rescuing Muslims from Afghanistan, people didn't say why
Speaker 2: are you Muslim? Why are you doing this? I just
Speaker 2: think it's the right thing to do. I was just
Speaker 2: frankly shocked, and to this day, I'm ashamed of our
Speaker 2: industry where so many folks who've made their kind of
Speaker 2: brand is caring about human rights, standing up for good
Speaker 2: and all that is good, have been deathly silent on
Speaker 2: October seventh. I mean, of course, we all remember the
Speaker 2: concert for New York. I was a little kid and
Speaker 2: I was honored to play my little song. But every
Speaker 2: icon in music was on that stage in Madison Square Garden,
Speaker 2: condemning Osama bin Laden, supporting America, supporting New York. October seventh,
Speaker 2: nothing nothing, So for me, this is not about Jewish, Christian, atheist, Martian.
Speaker 2: This is about those who want to destroy civilization against
Speaker 2: those who want to save it. Because at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, and that's what my song's about. It's
Speaker 2: not about Israel Palestine. It's about good versus evil. It
Speaker 2: really is. And so for me, it's not about Jewish,
Speaker 2: it's about sanity. And for me, yes, my wife has
Speaker 2: she's a Berkowitz, she's not a practicing Jewish person. But yeah,
Speaker 2: to me, it's as simple as that. It's it's just
Speaker 2: doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, where were you and how did you find out
Speaker 1: about the October seventh invasion slash massacre.
Speaker 2: I was at home like everybody else, and I kind
Speaker 2: of heard what was going on, and we didn't see
Speaker 2: some of the images, you know, for hours, but I
Speaker 2: kept saying, like, where's the idea? Half where like everybody else,
Speaker 2: where's where's the good guys? How is this happening? And
Speaker 2: you know, certainly the Nova concert was was kind of
Speaker 2: one of the first things that kind of we saw.
Speaker 2: And I again, I was six to sick to my stomach.
Speaker 2: I was you know, I was horrified. And as the
Speaker 2: days went by and you heard the stories and it
Speaker 2: just you just didn't understand. Number one, how could this evil?
Speaker 2: How could this evil happen? And number two how Israel
Speaker 2: allowed it to happen? And when I was in Israel,
Speaker 2: I asked many kind of leaders that question, and they
Speaker 2: just shake their heads because there is no good answer
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, getting a little bit deeper into the conflict, which,
Speaker 1: as you say, is to place Ukraine in the news
Speaker 1: and is upfront and center because of the protests. What
Speaker 1: would you say to the Jews, never mind the non
Speaker 1: Jews who say put all the blame on Net and Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Got to get rid of net Yah.
Speaker 2: I think there's a time for politics, but that's probably
Speaker 2: not now. I think Israel needs to get rid of
Speaker 2: Hamas because the cycle has been going on and on
Speaker 2: for decades. Hamask commits atrocities, they run back their high
Speaker 2: they commit they take terrorists, they use human shields to
Speaker 2: guarantee that as many Palaestinian civilizations are killed, the world
Speaker 2: comes down on Israel, pressures them to where they stop,
Speaker 2: and then the whole thing starts over. So again, I think,
Speaker 2: to me, it's not so much about the politicians, the
Speaker 2: net and Yahoo. You love him, you hate him. There'll
Speaker 2: be a time for reckoning. I think for net and
Speaker 2: Yahoo because he was in charge when the massive failure
Speaker 2: to protect his own people on October seventh occurred. But
Speaker 2: I think right now, when I talk to folks in Israel,
Speaker 2: certainly many of the hostage families are angry with him,
Speaker 2: and you understand that. I mean, they just want their
Speaker 2: loved ones home. But I think right now it's really
Speaker 2: about taking out Hamas and then the chips will probably
Speaker 2: fall soon after that.
Speaker 1: Let's be specific. As we were recording this, Israel has
Speaker 1: entered Rafa. Our US government says we are not going
Speaker 1: to help them with materiel. What's your take on that.
Speaker 2: I think it's disgusting by our government. Some of the
Speaker 2: statements that come out from our administration have been despicable.
Speaker 2: In the beginning, I think President Biden his rhetoric was
Speaker 2: very good. We're going to stand with Israel shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2: But when you hear things from Anthony Blincoln statements such
Speaker 2: as if Israel doesn't change their ways, they may become indistinguishable,
Speaker 2: indistinguishable from Hamas, that is disgusting. He knows better. This
Speaker 2: is a guy who called Afghanistan an incredible success. This
Speaker 2: is a guy who presided over when America accidentally droned
Speaker 2: and killed ten Afghans, and he's calling out Israel after
Speaker 2: the mistake of killing the human Aid workers. So I
Speaker 2: think to withhold armaments from Israel at this point, I
Speaker 2: just don't understand it. I don't understand it morally, I
Speaker 2: don't understand it politically. I haven't understood it from day
Speaker 2: one now. As far as moving into Rafa on the border,
Speaker 2: that doesn't surprise me because many folks I talk to
Speaker 2: and Israel assumed that that would probably be the first step,
Speaker 2: because the lifeblood of Hamas or the tunnels from Egypt
Speaker 2: into Gaza. So I think what Israel will do, and
Speaker 2: I think you'll probably see over the next few days
Speaker 2: when they start kind of going down and extivating hundreds
Speaker 2: of tunnels under the border there, so they'll cut off
Speaker 2: the life blood of Hamas and hopefully, you know, they'll
Speaker 2: try to move as many civilians as possible. But it's
Speaker 2: going to be terrible. All war is terrible. But this
Speaker 2: is kind of what I was told what happened, and
Speaker 2: it seems to be playing out that way.
Speaker 1: And what do you say to the people who say,
Speaker 1: thirty odd thousand people have perished, The war has to stop.
Speaker 2: Nobody likes war. I care about a Palestinian child as
Speaker 2: much as an Israeli child, as much as an Afghan child,
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian child, an American child. But I would have
Speaker 2: to ask some of these people who use the ceasefire argument,
Speaker 2: certain we all would love a ceasefire and spout the
Speaker 2: thirty thousand Palestinians killed. I think, first of all, that
Speaker 2: number is given to you by Hamas. It includes hama's members.
Speaker 2: And the fact that many in the media parrot the
Speaker 2: Hamas propaganda is a huge problem. The AP, the BBC,
Speaker 2: sky News, they're not journalists, they are Hamas propagandists. The
Speaker 2: fact that President Biden used that number in his State
Speaker 2: of the Union, it's very unfortunate. Hamas is very good
Speaker 2: at propaganda. Because there's many people who don't like Israel.
Speaker 2: I haven't I didn't expect I didn't. I always thought
Speaker 2: that anti Semitism was some crazy people on the right
Speaker 2: and some crazy people on the left. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot of anti Semitism out there. And I would just
Speaker 2: say to the ceasefire people and the people who claim
Speaker 2: to care about Palestinians. In my mind, if you truly
Speaker 2: cared about Palestinians, would you not be saying release the hostages.
Speaker 2: Would you not be saying lay down your weapons and
Speaker 2: not one more civilian will die? Would you not be
Speaker 2: saying stop using Palestinian children? And women as human shields
Speaker 2: and trying to create as many Palestinian deaths as possible.
Speaker 2: Would you not be saying, how come the Arab nations
Speaker 2: Egypt will not take one refugee? Would you not be
Speaker 2: calling out Hamas as the agent of Palestinian death? And
Speaker 2: if you don't understand the death culture of Hamas where
Speaker 2: they train children at five years old to kill Jewish people.
Speaker 2: Only hope for Palestinians truly is to free Gaza from Hamas.
Speaker 2: There's no hope. And what people don't like to talk
Speaker 2: about too is the IDF numbers. By a objective people,
Speaker 2: the civilian to combatant casualty rate is basically one to one,
Speaker 2: which has never happened in history. Israel does more than
Speaker 2: any army to protect to protect civilians. If you cared
Speaker 2: about Palestinians, these crazy folks on their campuses, why weren't
Speaker 2: you protesting when Syria killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Speaker 2: So at the end of the day, I think many
Speaker 2: of the ceasefire folks they have a good heart. They
Speaker 2: just wanted to stop and I understand that. But what
Speaker 2: it's not doing, what the ceasefire will not do, is
Speaker 2: stop this from happening again, and I never hear let
Speaker 2: me say that again. I rarely hear people calling for
Speaker 2: a ceasefire make those arguments about releasing the hostages and
Speaker 2: all these other things I'm talking about. So that's what
Speaker 2: I would say to people. If you truly care about
Speaker 2: the Palestinian people, Hamas has to go. If you care
Speaker 2: about gay people, Hummas has to go, because they kill them.
Speaker 2: If these kids were protesting in Gaza and calling out
Speaker 2: the government there, they would be dead. Unfortunately, that narrative
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to stick with many people, especially in the
Speaker 2: music business. But that's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have all these pro Palestinian encampments and rallies
Speaker 1: and protests on college campuses. Now, as a writer in
Speaker 1: the Free Press pointed out, if they were sporting or
Speaker 1: using Confederate flags, they would be uh stopped immediately. If
Speaker 1: they were protesting and saying things about black people, they
Speaker 1: would stopped immediately. Why do you think these people are
Speaker 1: protesting and why do you think they've been allowed to protest?
Speaker 1: In addition, you have both the administrations of these schools
Speaker 1: and many Democrats afraid to stand up to these people.
Speaker 2: I gave a speech at UCLA last week basically saying
Speaker 2: the same thing that if twelve hundred Muslims are massacred
Speaker 2: and there were Muslim hostages and Muslim women were raped,
Speaker 2: and we had five Muslim American hostages as we speak,
Speaker 2: and our university set up students and faculties set up
Speaker 2: illegal accountments on their campuses calling for death to all Muslims,
Speaker 2: attacking Muslims at UCLA literally creating checkpoints where students are asked,
Speaker 2: what is your religion? And if they say, in this case, Muslim,
Speaker 2: they would be banned from moving across campus. If that
Speaker 2: was happening, it wouldn't be happening because we know that
Speaker 2: the administrations would stop that in two seconds. I think
Speaker 2: there's a few reasons why this has grown on some
Speaker 2: of our college campuses. Let's be honest. It's in our
Speaker 2: supposed elite Ivy League campuses and the coastal campuses. This
Speaker 2: is not happening in the SEC. This is not happening
Speaker 2: in Florida. But many of those institutions for decades have
Speaker 2: been teaching this oppressor versus a press e kind of
Speaker 2: Marxist woke dogma, and many of those students ten for
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago. Are now presidents of MIT, presidents of Harvard,
Speaker 2: presidents of UCLA, running the New York Times, running business.
Speaker 2: So this whole woke ideology. I was talking to Naton Seransky,
Speaker 2: the freedom fighter in Israel, the iconic Naton Seranski, and
Speaker 2: he said, you know, twenty years ago, somebody asked me
Speaker 2: what is the biggest threat to freedom in the Western world?
Speaker 2: And he said, twenty years ago American academic institutions. And
Speaker 2: I think we've seen that. You know, Katar has funded
Speaker 2: three billion dollars to the northwesterns, to NYU, to Colombia
Speaker 2: to basically kind of teach this anti Semitic you know,
Speaker 2: oppressor versus a press e dogma. So between the faculty
Speaker 2: who believes this, between the president's and administration who appease this,
Speaker 2: and the radicals who have kind of come into these
Speaker 2: college campuses to indoctrinate these kids, to brainwash them. I
Speaker 2: don't think we should be surprised. The difference between UCLA
Speaker 2: and NYU and Colombia and MIT is the administrations are
Speaker 2: so cowardly afraid to basically enforce their own codes of conduct.
Speaker 2: They negotiate with the students and they kind of they
Speaker 2: kind of allow them to run rabid versus some of
Speaker 2: the schools in the South where and to the encampments,
Speaker 2: you know, taken out, these students are suspended and sanity rains.
Speaker 2: But I think this has been coming for a long time.
Speaker 2: We've just kind of turned over the rock and it's
Speaker 2: clear for everybody to see now.
Speaker 1: No one is a strict party member, but and the
Speaker 1: continuum of left to right, Republican or Democrat generally speaking,
Speaker 1: where would you put yourself?
Speaker 2: I would say I'm a centrist. Maybe I lean a
Speaker 2: little right, you know, on financial and foreign policy issues,
Speaker 2: and I lean a little left on social issues. But
Speaker 2: I've always kind of been a misfit toy. I really
Speaker 2: don't fit into either party. And certain times the left
Speaker 2: is mad at me, and certain times the right is
Speaker 2: mad at me, And so be it. I think that's
Speaker 2: what America is all about. I think over the last
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years we become very polarized that the
Speaker 2: left has moved further left, some on the right has
Speaker 2: moved farther right. I don't think if you kind of
Speaker 2: woke up from a coma after fifteen years, you probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't recognize the Democratic left and you wouldn't recognize the
Speaker 2: Republican right. The center has kind of been washed out.
Speaker 2: And you know the theme of my song, you know
Speaker 2: we are not okay. I think that applies to our
Speaker 2: politics right now too. We've become so tribal and the media,
Speaker 2: I think has become so tribal, and I think that's
Speaker 2: one reason we're here and we are struggling. Certain things
Speaker 2: like supporting Israel should not be political, and you know
Speaker 2: what it's really not. If you look at the polls, No,
Speaker 2: eighty percent of Americans support Israel. If they support Israel
Speaker 2: going into Rafa, you wouldn't know that by the media
Speaker 2: and by the college campuses. But at the same time
Speaker 2: you know that that's the so called silent majority. But
Speaker 2: the problem is if you're silent long enough, that silent
Speaker 2: majority becomes a silent minority. So that's why I think
Speaker 2: it's very important for people to speak up. The first
Speaker 2: lyric of my song Okay is this is a time
Speaker 2: for choosing, and I think we have to choose. We
Speaker 2: can't put our heads in the sand anymore. We're losing
Speaker 2: a generation of children. And I just wish more artists
Speaker 2: would say that. And that's the thing that really breaks
Speaker 2: my heart.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the sixties, it was believed that music could
Speaker 1: change the world. Graham Nash literally had a song where
Speaker 1: you sang that, having had this experience with these three
Speaker 1: spiky political songs, to what degree do you believe that
Speaker 1: music can have an impact?
Speaker 2: Look? I saw it at a very young age and
Speaker 2: a very surreal experience when Superman became one of the
Speaker 2: songs that recognized the heroes of nine to eleven, became
Speaker 2: a song for the firefighters who ran into those buildings,
Speaker 2: and I saw how music can provide solid in ways
Speaker 2: nothing else can. How, you know, we talk about fame,
Speaker 2: fortune charts, how many tickets can you sell? Celebrity? That
Speaker 2: night at the concert for New York, I think changed me.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't my performance. It was watching the Who
Speaker 2: blow the roof off Madison Square Garden and watching two
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people who'd been down at ground zero crying
Speaker 2: and singing and screaming and been able to release, you know,
Speaker 2: to get the thousands of emails from Israelis who feel
Speaker 2: abandoned by the arts because they have been and they say,
Speaker 2: we thought we were crazy. Why is nobody speaking enough
Speaker 2: for us? We've marched for civil rights, we've done all
Speaker 2: the right things, and we get hit with these atrocities,
Speaker 2: and even Jewish artists can't say release the hostages. So
Speaker 2: I think again, I just wish, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: I wish I had a bigger platform. I wish some
Speaker 2: of the more artists had written this song. They should
Speaker 2: have written this song, and then I think we'd be
Speaker 2: in a better place, because nothing, nothing moves the needle
Speaker 2: more than the arts, especially for the kids. The kids
Speaker 2: don't watch the news. The kids don't care about speeches
Speaker 2: by politicians. What do they care about. They care about music.
Speaker 2: That's how you cross borders, that's how you change Live
Speaker 2: Sun City Live Aid concert for New York, go down
Speaker 2: the list. That's who we're supposed to be, but that's
Speaker 2: not who we are now. And I think the shame
Speaker 2: is a historical shame on the music business that will
Speaker 2: never be washed clean. But there's still time. There's a
Speaker 2: few folks David Draymond from Disturbed, he's been very brave
Speaker 2: out there. There's been some a few folks in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: Deborah Messing, Patricia Heaton who've been very vocal fighting the
Speaker 2: good fight. But man. The music industry has a lot,
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The last image of my video is Martin Luther King
Speaker 2: with his statement silence in the face of evil is complicity,
Speaker 2: and the music business is complicit.
Speaker 1: So with over a number of years these big political
Speaker 1: moments in your career, standing up for what you think
Speaker 1: is right and writing and performing these songs, has it
Speaker 1: helped your career or hurt your career? I know that's
Speaker 1: not why you did it, but with hindsight.
Speaker 2: I think I think it's probably the margins and probably
Speaker 2: hurt more than helped. Certainly, you never know because nobody says, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to license your song because I hate
Speaker 2: that you criticize the administration over Afghanistan. They just don't
Speaker 2: license your song. And I have there are folks in
Speaker 2: the music industry that used to take my call that
Speaker 2: won't take my call. I'm also you know, look, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be sixty years old. I've had my run,
Speaker 2: and I'm on the backside of my career, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of folks are very I know for
Speaker 2: a fact that there are folks unhappy with me within
Speaker 2: the music industry. On the other hand, there are some
Speaker 2: folks who are very grateful. I hear from music executives
Speaker 2: who are Jewish and some who are not, who sometimes
Speaker 2: are in tears because they also are very frustrated and
Speaker 2: upset by the fact that the music industry has remained silent.
Speaker 2: There's a group out here called the Creative Coalition for
Speaker 2: Peace with many music executives, managers, you know, the Scooter
Speaker 2: Braun folks like that, who who have been speaking up
Speaker 2: and in my mind, fighting the good fight. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, at this point in my career, to be
Speaker 2: honest with you, it's you know, I really don't even
Speaker 2: think about it. You know, when you talk to hostage families,
Speaker 2: you look them in the eye and you hear their stories.
Speaker 2: Like anybody who doesn't buy a ticket, or buy a record,
Speaker 2: or you know, license a song of mine, It seems
Speaker 2: so silly and trivial. But I don't think it's had
Speaker 2: a huge impact either way.
Speaker 1: Really, Okay, talking about your fellow artists, why do you
Speaker 1: think they will not go on record? And what would
Speaker 1: you tell them?
Speaker 2: I would tell them this. I understand that you're scared.
Speaker 2: I understand that you're scared for your families. I understand
Speaker 2: that you don't want your concerts protested. I understand that
Speaker 2: because I'm living some of that. But I'd also say
Speaker 2: to you is the same arguments were used in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight. Good people were quiet when they should have
Speaker 2: spoken out. You don't have to love Israel. You don't
Speaker 2: have to. You could it's not even about Israel. But
Speaker 2: how hard is it to say, release the hostages Hamas
Speaker 2: is evil and stand for good against what is happening,
Speaker 2: to support Jewish people in their time of need. That
Speaker 2: should not be a political calculation. It should be a
Speaker 2: moral calculation. And if it was any other group, like
Speaker 2: you said, Bob, pretty much all of the artists that
Speaker 2: we know who like to get out on their soapboxes,
Speaker 2: we'll be out there screaming, you know, speaking for Muslim,
Speaker 2: speaking for African Americans, speaking for gain inlisting people as
Speaker 2: they should be. But for some reason, because it's Jewish people,
Speaker 2: we have to ask ourselves and really look in our
Speaker 2: hearts and look in the mirror and say who are we?
Speaker 2: Are we the people we thought we were? And if
Speaker 2: we are, shouldn't we should we not be speaking out
Speaker 2: standing up, using our platforms, moving the needle. Whether you
Speaker 2: care about Israeli Palestinian people are not. It's the best
Speaker 2: thing for them, and it's the best thing for us,
Speaker 2: because the Jewish people are always on the front tip
Speaker 2: of the spear, and the people trying to bring the
Speaker 2: world down are not going to stop there. They're going
Speaker 2: to come for all of us, all of us who
Speaker 2: value freedom, democracy, and us songwriters the ability to write
Speaker 2: and say what we want to say.
Speaker 1: Okay, I found out about your song via a large
Speaker 1: piece prominently placed in the Wall Street Journal. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how that happened, but I'm more interested since that
Speaker 1: was published, what effect have you felt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was surreal, I'll tell you that much. It's
Speaker 2: certainly given me a bigger platform. People have reached out
Speaker 2: to me, and people have found the song. They have
Speaker 2: found the Hasta Square performance. More recently, they have found
Speaker 2: the speech at UCLA. So I think it has given
Speaker 2: me a little more capital to basically spread my message.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of the Wall Street Journal. It
Speaker 2: was very surreal seeing myself on that page. When Matthew
Speaker 2: Hennessy reached out to me. He actually reached out to
Speaker 2: me a month or so ago, and and we were
Speaker 2: going to talk early. But when he found out I
Speaker 2: was going to Israel. He wanted to wait to see
Speaker 2: what happened, and I'm glad he did. He flew to Seattle.
Speaker 2: He flew across the country to Seattle, and we sat
Speaker 2: in a hotel room and talked for three hours. But
Speaker 2: you know, the whole lone Voice for Israel thing has resonated,
Speaker 2: and I think it has. It has. It has annoyed
Speaker 2: some people in the music business. I know for a
Speaker 2: fact it has, because I've heard about that it has.
Speaker 2: It has some people put some people on notes. So again,
Speaker 2: hopefully you know some of these these articles and some
Speaker 2: of these speeches, and in our conversation here this is
Speaker 2: we'll reach more people in the music business in this
Speaker 2: two hours with you than seven months of press. I
Speaker 2: hope folks that are listening to this podcast are open
Speaker 2: minded enough to maybe think twice and maybe join some
Speaker 2: of these efforts I'm doing collaborating with international artists, Ukrainian artists,
Speaker 2: Iranian artists. Is rarely artists to really speak for freedom,
Speaker 2: human rights, because that is who we are as an industry.
Speaker 2: And I think there's still time to speak for that
Speaker 2: because if we don't, as I said, history will judge us,
Speaker 2: and right now, it's not a good judgment.
Speaker 1: You referenced earlier some of the blowback. This is something
Speaker 1: I experience every day. But what has it been, like
Speaker 1: everybody's reachable on social media, etc. What has been the
Speaker 1: character and volume of the negative feedback?
Speaker 2: You know, it's mostly just social media, probably many of
Speaker 2: its are bots, and you know, you'll never be okay again.
Speaker 2: And I know where you live, and you know, kind
Speaker 2: of just the the typical victory all you get on
Speaker 2: social media. You know, I've had a few emails from
Speaker 2: from people that are kind of off the rocker, but
Speaker 2: so far I haven't had like what modis Modist Yahu
Speaker 2: has had or Michael Rappinport just had to have his
Speaker 2: show's canceled. I haven't experienced kind of mobs showing up
Speaker 2: at my shows, you know, trying to shut us down.
Speaker 2: So we'll see what happens. I'm going to start doing
Speaker 2: some concert tours on on campuses and speaking on campus
Speaker 2: and supporting the Jewish kids. And I do think the
Speaker 2: tides turning a little bit. You see you see students
Speaker 2: standing up to the mobs, you see Americans. Just the
Speaker 2: response to my UCLA speech has been overwhelming. So I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people are are standing up and say, Okay,
Speaker 2: we have to push back on this, not just for
Speaker 2: the sake of us, but for the sake of those kids,
Speaker 2: those college kids who have been indoctrinated, who've been brainwashed,
Speaker 2: who've been indoctrinated into this cult. We need to we
Speaker 2: need to save them too. So so we'll see what happens,
Speaker 2: you know, I I I imagine at some point there'll
Speaker 2: be some you know, pushback, but uh, as I said,
Speaker 2: it's it's the right thing to do. And if you're
Speaker 2: not pissing someone off, you're probably not doing anything to
Speaker 2: begin with.
Speaker 1: You are an alumnus of UCLA. How did your speech
Speaker 1: there happen and what was the experience in terms of
Speaker 1: attendance protest?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well after you know, kind of the antarcrete anarchy
Speaker 2: we saw on that Tuesday night. Uh, the American Jewish Committee, Uh,
Speaker 2: the ADL, we're planning to do a press conference on
Speaker 2: campus the friday after they finally cleared the encampment, and
Speaker 2: they asked me to come play my song and to
Speaker 2: speak a little bit. Because of the security risk, we
Speaker 2: were not allowed on campus. So at the HELLL across
Speaker 2: the street from UCLA. We held a press conference and
Speaker 2: a few people spoke, and I spoke, and along with
Speaker 2: the UCLA professor, a Jewish professor who talked about his
Speaker 2: horrible experience, Jonah Platt, spoke and I basically said what
Speaker 2: we've been talking about, that if this was this was
Speaker 2: Muslims under attack, it would not be happening. So why
Speaker 2: why is it with with Jewish people? Why do you
Speaker 2: allow this? And I also gave a message to the
Speaker 2: kids and let them know that you know, they're not
Speaker 2: alone in this, and they have support and and my
Speaker 2: heart breaks for them. So that's kind of how it
Speaker 2: came to be. I didn't expect it to go viral
Speaker 2: on social media, but again I think we have to
Speaker 2: go on offense. We can't just sit back and go, oh,
Speaker 2: this is terrible. Look what's happening to our campus is
Speaker 2: what's happening to our kids. A lot of these folks
Speaker 2: are just bullies. You need to confront them. You need
Speaker 2: to confront them. You need to teach the kids facts.
Speaker 2: You need to have debates, you need to stand in
Speaker 2: front of the bullies and speak your piece. You need
Speaker 2: to go to MIT. I may go to mit next week,
Speaker 2: and you need to perform. You need to sing songs,
Speaker 2: you need to stand with people. I'll be performing in
Speaker 2: a synagogue here in Los Angeles on Monday, so I
Speaker 2: think we need to keep singing, standing together. You know,
Speaker 2: we're the ones who don't wear masks. You know why,
Speaker 2: because we're not ashamed. I think the folks that do
Speaker 2: wear masks, they know deep down that what they're doing
Speaker 2: is wrong. So we need to address that. And as
Speaker 2: I said from the beginning, nobody does that better than
Speaker 2: artists with music. So I'm asking, who's ever listening to this,
Speaker 2: you know, reach out to me, join my cause, join
Speaker 2: this cause. It's not my cause, it's our cause, and
Speaker 2: lend your voice to speaking up for good versus this
Speaker 2: kind of moral rot that's infected our kids on campus.
Speaker 1: Okay. In the Wall Street Journal, there was something that
Speaker 1: I did not know previously that you're involved with the
Speaker 1: family business. Can you tell us about the family business
Speaker 1: and your involvement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you for asking. I have a very
Speaker 2: strange life. As a kid, I worked at our family business,
Speaker 2: Precision Wire Products, at fourteen on the line. Are claim
Speaker 2: to fame as we make the best shopping cart in
Speaker 2: the world, Bob. If you shop at Costco, you use
Speaker 2: our shopping cart. And I've worked there my whole life.
Speaker 2: My dad still ucla graduate astrophysicist. He still runs Precision
Speaker 2: Wire eighty five years old. My son works there. Even
Speaker 2: when I had the number one song hot a C
Speaker 2: song in the country, I was working at Precision Wire.
Speaker 2: And the great thing about it is a couple things.
Speaker 2: One It keeps you grounded. You know, this celebrity world
Speaker 2: we live in can be prey shallow. Sometimes it can
Speaker 2: be a shallow pool. But when you go when you
Speaker 2: see people sweating and making things, and you see the
Speaker 2: American dream where people start at minimum wage and twenty
Speaker 2: years later they're putting their kids through Stanford and Princeton.
Speaker 2: When you make things and you have to make a payroll,
Speaker 2: I think it grounds you. And I think it's been
Speaker 2: very helpful for me. And maybe that's why I have
Speaker 2: a little different world view and many of my friends
Speaker 2: in the music business, because I have this other life.
Speaker 2: You know. Sometimes I'll go into a town and I'll
Speaker 2: have a meeting with Albertson's at two o'clock, and I'll
Speaker 2: be playing a gig at seven o'clock. You know, at
Speaker 2: the local theater. So it's very strange. But I love
Speaker 2: working with my dad. He's my hero, and I think
Speaker 2: it gives me a different kind of look at the world.
Speaker 2: And if you ever need a shopping car, Bob, you
Speaker 2: know a guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the world of shopping carts, your family business
Speaker 1: has what percentage of the nash market?
Speaker 2: That's a question I did not expect on this podcast.
Speaker 2: We're there's three domestic manufacturers we're we're the third. Well,
Speaker 2: we make about four hundred thousand to a half a
Speaker 2: million shopping carts a year. We just opened a new
Speaker 2: facility in Texas to expand our capacity. But we also
Speaker 2: make things like the racks in a seven eleven where
Speaker 2: you buy the sodas behind the refrigerator doors. So but
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's just it's really American small family
Speaker 2: business and we have four hundred employees, many of them
Speaker 2: have been with us. We had a lunch a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago where we had thirty people who'd been with
Speaker 2: us over thirty years and we realized we had one
Speaker 2: thousand hours of folks at that table. So it's really
Speaker 2: truly a family business, not just me, my dad, my son,
Speaker 2: my sister. It's it's everybody who works there, and it's
Speaker 2: a beautiful thing. And as I said, my dad at
Speaker 2: eighty five, he works seventy hours a week. He goes
Speaker 2: in every day, and it's just, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: easy to run a business in California, but we're really
Speaker 2: proud of it.
Speaker 1: What's the lifespan of a shopping cart?
Speaker 2: Typically five to six years. If you left one in
Speaker 2: a store, they'd probably last forever. Usually what happens is
Speaker 2: they get out in the parking lots and the parking
Speaker 2: lots aren't great. Everybody complains about shopping cart wheels. They're
Speaker 2: actually pretty good wheels, they just get abused. Our carts
Speaker 2: last longer. My dad was an astrophysicist. He worked at NASA.
Speaker 2: He's an engineer, so he was able to redesign the
Speaker 2: shopping cart and the machines that make them. He was
Speaker 2: building computers on our dinner table forty years ago to
Speaker 2: run his machines, and I often think if he just
Speaker 2: marketed those computers, our conversation would be much different right now.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's typically five to seven years. Is a
Speaker 2: shopping cart?
Speaker 1: How much time do you dedicate to the company at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 2: During COVID, basically my whole, my whole kind of bandwidth
Speaker 2: was Precision Wire. My dad had to quant quarantine. We Uh,
Speaker 2: we had many people very sick. We were kind of
Speaker 2: ground zero for COVID in Los Angeles, East LA. And uh,
Speaker 2: my dad couldn't come in for a couple of years. Certainly,
Speaker 2: our sales went down. We were an essential business, so
Speaker 2: we never stopped so so those couple of years were
Speaker 2: really tough, really tough, you know, driving in at five
Speaker 2: in the morning, taking temperatures, trying to get people through it.
Speaker 2: It was hard on me. I finally got some help.
Speaker 2: I got got therapist to help me, got a little
Speaker 2: medicine so I could sleep. It was. It was the
Speaker 2: most challenging thing that's happened in my life. And we
Speaker 2: got through that. These days, I talked to my dad
Speaker 2: and I talked to our GM four or five times
Speaker 2: a day. I probably do half of my zooms or
Speaker 2: music related and certainly now kind of Israel related, and
Speaker 2: half our Precision Wire. It's very strange, but but it's great.
Speaker 2: I love it. I go to Texas often because of
Speaker 2: our new plant. But yeah, yesterday I was there having
Speaker 2: lunch with my dad and I'll be there tomorrow. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of two worlds colliding.
Speaker 1: And could you survive financially just on your music.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've been very fortunate. Both one hundred Years and
Speaker 2: Superman have stood the test of time, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: you know, people still want to buy a ticket. I
Speaker 2: had the greatest time in my life touring with the
Speaker 2: Bare Naked Ladies last year. It was basically rock star
Speaker 2: dad Camp. We had so much fun, you know, playing,
Speaker 2: and ever since the pandemic, I've I've really treasured performing
Speaker 2: with my string quartet with the rock band. And fortunately
Speaker 2: I've I've had a lot of licenses in my day,
Speaker 2: and I've I've also been pretty frugal too. I think
Speaker 2: it was helpful for me that I had success late.
Speaker 2: You know, Superman didn't become a hit till I was
Speaker 2: in my late twenties, so I knew that it wasn't
Speaker 2: about me and that this could be very fleeting, so
Speaker 2: you know, save your money and invest wisely. And also
Speaker 2: because Fire for Fighting is not a band too, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't have to deal with the dynamic of other songwriters,
Speaker 2: other musicians. But yes, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 2: I could afford living California for the next thirty years,
Speaker 2: but I'd be all right.
Speaker 1: And no one lives forever. When your father ultimately goes
Speaker 1: into the sunset, does that mean you run the business.
Speaker 2: For better or worse? My friend? Yeah, Now, as I said,
Speaker 2: I think I don't really have the skill set or
Speaker 2: the bandwidth to run the day to day. I think
Speaker 2: I would certainly kind of oversee things. We have an
Speaker 2: amazing young GM his name's Paul Nova, thirty years old,
Speaker 2: who would be a great president. We're putting management in place.
Speaker 2: We're certainly going to run Precision Wire for as long
Speaker 2: as we can, for hopefully decades, and that legacy will
Speaker 2: con you. But I think it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: only fair to myself that I should still be able
Speaker 2: to do what I love to write to perform, especially
Speaker 2: seeing how these songs are resonated. I feel invigorated. I'm
Speaker 2: excited about songwriting. I love performing more now than I
Speaker 2: have in twenty years. So hopefully I'll find a balance
Speaker 2: where I can do both. But yeah, I will be
Speaker 2: that guy, and I do have a son, so hopefully
Speaker 2: I can pass that baton off to him as soon
Speaker 2: as possible.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's go to your musical history. At what
Speaker 1: point do you start playing an instrument and is there
Speaker 1: music in the house. What were the musical influences and input.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mom was a music teacher USC graduate. She started me.
Speaker 2: She started me at the piano at very young two
Speaker 2: years old, and when music funding was cut in our
Speaker 2: local schools, she took over and started putting on full musicals.
Speaker 2: I was Tony in West Side Story. Whether that was
Speaker 2: because I was my mom's son or I was any good,
Speaker 2: we don't know. But and then she was wise. When
Speaker 2: I was thirteen, she let me quit, but by then
Speaker 2: I had the fundamentals and I started writing songs because
Speaker 2: I loved writing songs. And I bought a all you
Speaker 2: know at the time, a new TC half inch reel
Speaker 2: to reel and a little mixing board, and I started
Speaker 2: writing songs. And when I was sixteen, I had a
Speaker 2: mission to go find Steve Perry's voice teacher, which I did,
Speaker 2: a guy named Ron Anderson, and I started training classically
Speaker 2: as a vocalist. And it was funny all the rock
Speaker 2: stars would be coming through his through his you know
Speaker 2: teaching studio. Axel rose Don Dawkin. I met Rudy Sarzo
Speaker 2: believe it or not, at a at a at a
Speaker 2: pool one day, Rudy Sarzo of Azzy Fame, Quiet Riot,
Speaker 2: White Snake. At the time, he was in White Snake
Speaker 2: and he became a mentor of mine, and I started
Speaker 2: going to the studio recording songs. I met a guy
Speaker 2: named Scott Sheets, who was Pat Benatar's guitar player, and
Speaker 2: we formed a band called John Scott And it was
Speaker 2: me and all the ex members of Pat Benatar's band.
Speaker 2: They were forty. I was twenty two, and we were
Speaker 2: writing songs and I was living the dream. And I
Speaker 2: was kind of trailing around White Snake like almost famous.
Speaker 2: I was a little kid, and r Rudy would say, well,
Speaker 2: you can go in that room, but don't go in
Speaker 2: that room. And and and then this little band came,
Speaker 2: you know, called Nirvana came out, and as you know, let's.
Speaker 1: Slow down in the beginning. So you're in school. Are
Speaker 1: you the known as the kid who plays the piano
Speaker 1: or are you playing sports? You're popular? You're not popular?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I did play sports. I played basketball, wasn't very good,
Speaker 2: but I also was the guy, you know, when at
Speaker 2: the party that would sing Somebody to Love just to
Speaker 2: get a girl to talk to me, you know, just
Speaker 2: you know, I'd bring my guitar and sing, you know, peaceful,
Speaker 2: easy feeling or you know, Ebony and Ivory or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever song it was those days. And you
Speaker 2: know when I went to college, when I went to UCLA,
Speaker 2: I wasn't a music major. I was a applied mathematics major.
Speaker 2: I kind of had my dad's you know, kind of
Speaker 2: genes for that because I wanted a job, you know,
Speaker 2: when this whole music thing imploded. And I still may
Speaker 2: need that music in that math degree one day, but
Speaker 2: I was writing in my apartment. I was just recording
Speaker 2: songs again, working with Rudy and some of the other guys,
Speaker 2: and and my life really was music, even though I
Speaker 2: was kind of going and trying to get that that
Speaker 2: you know, that plan B.
Speaker 1: Before U c l A. What was the town you
Speaker 1: grew up in?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, you know,
Speaker 2: Valley boy, went to Kennedy High scho cool in the valley.
Speaker 2: You know, still live out here, you know, in Thousand Oaks,
Speaker 2: and but yeah, all through that, all through those there
Speaker 2: was a moment there when I was eighteen, because a
Speaker 2: lot of these rock stars, as you know, they trained classically,
Speaker 2: so we would train operatically. You know, we'd be singing Mozart.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be singing you know, I don't know Queen.
Speaker 2: And there's a there was a moment there that I
Speaker 2: had an opportunity to go pursue opera. But you know,
Speaker 2: I was listening to Peter Frampton, I was listening to
Speaker 2: the Beatles, I was listening to led Zeppelin, and I
Speaker 2: knew I wanted to go kind of the pop world.
Speaker 2: But that's that was kind of my trajectory. And but again,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I'm a fifteen year overnight success. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't have the dream coming true until
Speaker 2: I was my late twenties.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you play in bands in high school?
Speaker 2: Not really. You know, I would sing at the talent
Speaker 2: shows and I had a couple of little bands. I
Speaker 2: was really more focused on writing hundreds of songs and
Speaker 2: learning how to produce. And when I got out of college,
Speaker 2: I started playing around La you know, the eighty one
Speaker 2: twenty one room below, the Coconut teaser. It would be
Speaker 2: me and you know five people, and I was playing
Speaker 2: a little piano bar on Melrose when I got whatever
Speaker 2: discovered means it was. It was a piano bar and
Speaker 2: I play there every Wednesday and again it would be
Speaker 2: me the person making coffee, and two or three people
Speaker 2: I paid to be there, and one night a woman
Speaker 2: in a black jacket walked in. Turns out she was
Speaker 2: a very successful publisher working at Zomba. At the time,
Speaker 2: she had signed No Doubt, she had signed Incubus, and
Speaker 2: she said, hey, you know I helped get people record deals.
Speaker 2: I'd heard that before, but she was very attractive. So
Speaker 2: we started working together and two or three years later
Speaker 2: she saw the light. We've been married now twenty six years.
Speaker 2: Carla Berkowitz, you know, vice president of MI Publishing. So
Speaker 2: but yeah, I literally was discovered on a piano bar
Speaker 2: in Melrose, and it actually happens. So that's just and
Speaker 2: my songs. Actually she heard me at Motown. I had
Speaker 2: a girlfriend working at Motown who was a secretary for
Speaker 2: a guy named Guy Abraham, who was an A and
Speaker 2: R guy for Motown who also was an Olympic finalist
Speaker 2: in the hundred yard dash. And that's how crazy this
Speaker 2: business is. You know, all these things had to connect.
Speaker 2: But Carla, my wife, you know, she's been my force
Speaker 2: of nature through this. We were very fortunate that when
Speaker 2: we had my son, Johnny, she was able to quit
Speaker 2: her job in the music business to become a full
Speaker 2: time mom. But but boy, yeah, she's been my partner
Speaker 2: in this and and it's been everybody has a wild ride,
Speaker 2: but boy, we've had a good one.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in college. Are you playing in bands in college?
Speaker 2: Nope? No, because I was really kind of you know,
Speaker 2: doing the math degree took a lot of time, and
Speaker 2: any excess time I had I was kind of recording
Speaker 2: and write. I never really had a band band. I
Speaker 2: had musicians that I would play with, I had producers
Speaker 2: that I would work with, and only when I had
Speaker 2: kind of some success, I had to put a band together.
Speaker 2: So I think it took me a while to learn
Speaker 2: how to perform. I wasn't, you know, a great performer
Speaker 2: early on, because I didn't have any experience. You know,
Speaker 2: the crazy thing is is when you have a hit
Speaker 2: song for the first time and you've never been touring
Speaker 2: for ten years, you know, your first show is like
Speaker 2: the Tonight Show. And that's usually why it doesn't go
Speaker 2: too well. But I've also been blessed, you know, to
Speaker 2: just have incredible musicians play with me throughout my whole career,
Speaker 2: so that's been amazing too. But yeah, I never played
Speaker 2: in many bands. If it was anything, it was me
Speaker 2: kind of at a piano bar doing the piano man thing,
Speaker 2: and I did quite a bit of those.
Speaker 1: Okay, you start writing songs when you're a teenager. You're
Speaker 1: a math major. You're right, so what's the dream?
Speaker 2: Then? The dream was always to be Billy Joel, to
Speaker 2: be Elton John, to make a living at this, to
Speaker 2: have people sing songs back to me, to be able
Speaker 2: to live my childhood passion. And Billy Joel was my
Speaker 2: first concert fifteen years old, fabulous Forum, Glasshouses tour.
Speaker 1: I was there, Yes, I could even tell you where
Speaker 1: I was sitting, but keep going.
Speaker 2: Well, a funny story about that. When I played the
Speaker 2: concert for New York, you know, before Paul McCartney did
Speaker 2: let it beyond core of the encore, I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to go out there because I'm like, I don't belong
Speaker 2: and bon Jovi and Melissa Etheridge literally grabbed me by
Speaker 2: the shirt and pulled me backstage and backstage was every
Speaker 2: living icon in the world, and I knew I couldn't
Speaker 2: go up to everybody because I'd be a total geek fanboy.
Speaker 2: But I went up to Eric Clapton, said mister Clapton,
Speaker 2: thank you. I went up to Pete Townsend and I said,
Speaker 2: mister Townsend, Tommy's been in my CD player for twenty years.
Speaker 2: He's like, row, thanks Rot. And then I went up
Speaker 2: to Billy Joel because he really was my guy, and
Speaker 2: I said, you know, mister Joel, thank you. You know
Speaker 2: I saw you Faba's Forum Glasshouses tour. It changed my life.
Speaker 2: And he's like, hey, I remember that Liberty de Vito
Speaker 2: missed the phil that night. Goddamn it. I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: that was my Hey. But I also did a CD
Speaker 2: for the Troops project, and Billy Joel for free gave
Speaker 2: me my favorite Billy Joel song, scenes from Italian restaurant
Speaker 2: for my project, so I always will be grateful to him.
Speaker 2: I love his new song that he put out this year.
Speaker 2: I hope he puts out more songs.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to drive this home, you're writing and you're
Speaker 1: learning how to make records while you're in college. Are
Speaker 1: you playing piano? Bars.
Speaker 2: When you're in college, not so much note just writing
Speaker 2: songs and you know, sending them out to publish and
Speaker 2: a and our people and kind of getting the yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a pretty good singer, but not a great songwriter,
Speaker 2: or yeah, he's a good songwriter, not a great singer.
Speaker 2: And then when I did graduate, I really kind of
Speaker 2: full time started making demos and writing songs and working
Speaker 2: with various producers, and when I started working with Carla,
Speaker 2: who became my wife, you know, meeting with with record
Speaker 2: executives and and doing a few showcases, and everybody eventually
Speaker 2: had passed on me except for one person, Brian Koppleman.
Speaker 2: Brian Koppleman, I'm sure you know Brian.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know. Brian at the time was working at Emi Records,
Speaker 2: and he had signed Tracy Chapman, and he had a
Speaker 2: guy named Joshua Cattison, and he heard a song of
Speaker 2: mine called love Song, which was about divorce from the
Speaker 2: perspective of a child. And to Brian's credit, it was
Speaker 2: a song that would never be on the radio. It's
Speaker 2: not a hit song, but I think it's it's a song.
Speaker 2: It's a song that I think maybe shows some potential
Speaker 2: and Brian loved that song, and at the time, the
Speaker 2: president of EMI Records, as I'm sure you know, was
Speaker 2: David Segerson, who produced Tory Jamis's Little Earthquakes. So Brian
Speaker 2: liked the song. He said, I have to fly to
Speaker 2: New York. You have to play for David, and I
Speaker 2: can't promise you anything, but I did. I went to
Speaker 2: New York. I played for David. They're like, all right,
Speaker 2: you want to make a record, And of course, you know,
Speaker 2: all the bells went out, all the balloons popped, and
Speaker 2: the most exciting moment of my life. And a year
Speaker 2: or two later after them putting me through the songwriter ringer,
Speaker 2: David actually produced my record and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: It's like, could it be any better? The president of
Speaker 2: the label is this producer of great piano music. He's
Speaker 2: running the label and this is going to be amazing.
Speaker 2: All my dreams are going to come true. And then
Speaker 2: the week my first single comes out, E my Records
Speaker 2: closes and and Virgin and Capital had opportunity to pick
Speaker 2: up E and my bands, they both uh, they both
Speaker 2: passed on me. So I was back to uh, like
Speaker 2: so many artists, back to square one. But I kept
Speaker 2: writing and and and my wife kept sending out my demos,
Speaker 2: and there was a guy let's go back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after you graduate from college.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you have a day job Precision Wire? Precision Wire?
Speaker 2: Putting on a suit, going to Precision Wire. And the
Speaker 2: blessing was my dad got a guy really cheap uh
Speaker 2: to do a lot of work there to set up
Speaker 2: the financing for the new building. And I got the
Speaker 2: ability to go on any audition or to a studio.
Speaker 2: I actually built a studio. They're still there a Precision Wire.
Speaker 2: When you come, you know, if you ever want a tour,
Speaker 2: I'll show you how to make a shopping cart and
Speaker 2: and you can see my old studio. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: Precision Wire and my parents really gave me the freedom
Speaker 2: and ability to pursue music like so many people can't
Speaker 2: because they have to get a job, they have to
Speaker 2: pay their rent. So I was able to pay my
Speaker 2: rent and pursue my dream for years until I was
Speaker 2: in my mid to late twenties, still sending out demos,
Speaker 2: still grinding, you know, after EMI closed, still reaching out
Speaker 2: to other las.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, before before we get to ABI, when your
Speaker 1: wife sees you at Melrose and vine. How many years
Speaker 1: have you been doing it? How many years after college?
Speaker 2: That was probably a couple of years, So I was
Speaker 2: probably twenty four, twenty five years old.
Speaker 1: Okay, with Rudy Sarzo and John Scott. When does that start?
Speaker 1: When does that end?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That ended pretty pretty pretty quickly, as I said,
Speaker 2: kind of when Nirvana came out and all the hairbands.
Speaker 2: Kind of that era ended that. We had a management,
Speaker 2: a manager who was actually managing bad company, and we
Speaker 2: had a couple record folks interested. But when that came out,
Speaker 2: when Nirvana came out, the whole thing collapsed. It went away.
Speaker 2: And again it was a blessing in disguise because I
Speaker 2: went back to the piano. You know, we were writing
Speaker 2: kind of nice pop rock songs. I think they were good.
Speaker 2: I don't think there are anything special, but it put
Speaker 2: me back at the piano and I really started kind
Speaker 2: of writing what I would be, you know, the style
Speaker 2: that I would become.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how old are you when you start with
Speaker 1: Rudy Sarzo till we hit nineteen ninety one when Nirvana hits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, m yes, so yeah, I am like
Speaker 2: I'm like twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Are you doing this because of the opportunity
Speaker 1: or did you like that sound?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did like it, you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the kind of the pop rock band. I
Speaker 2: love Journey, you know, I love Steve Perry, you know,
Speaker 2: I love Queen. They were all my favorite singers and
Speaker 2: and idols and and I love Pat bennettar you know,
Speaker 2: so these kind of pop rock songs. I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: doing that. It really wasn't I think my you know,
Speaker 2: my high fastball, uh, because I think, really the piano
Speaker 2: the piano songs are But it was a great experience.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot from these guys. I learned a
Speaker 2: lot about production, I learned a lot about musicianship. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, I think Nirvana probably did me a favor.
Speaker 1: So you're on of college a few years. What keeps
Speaker 1: you going? Why don't you give up?
Speaker 2: I think a lot of keys to success have nothing
Speaker 2: to do with talent. It's really about will. And I
Speaker 2: was going off the cliff. I was right, and and
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, I kind of did. I
Speaker 2: I kind of did. When E and I closed, you know,
Speaker 2: I was again, I was in my kind of mid
Speaker 2: mid to you know, twenty six, twenty seven, and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's probably not going to work at some point, I
Speaker 2: gotta think about long term and a family. But my wife,
Speaker 2: my potential, you know, my future wife, Carla, unbeknownst to me,
Speaker 2: was still standing out demos of old songs and basically
Speaker 2: lying saying, oh, John just wrote this new song, check
Speaker 2: it out. And she sent it to a guy named
Speaker 2: Andy Martin who had a record company called Deep South Records,
Speaker 2: and he liked that. He liked my songs. And a
Speaker 2: competitor of his was a guy named Greg Latterman. Greg
Speaker 2: Latterman with Aware Records, and I think Aware they thought
Speaker 2: I was interesting. A guy named Steve Smith, who worked there,
Speaker 2: I think, was a big fan, and so Greg and
Speaker 2: Steve I think when they heard that Andy Martin might
Speaker 2: do this, they said, all right, we'll make a record
Speaker 2: with you. And and for me, I was just like,
Speaker 2: let me just record these demos so I can have
Speaker 2: an album and I can play for my grandkids. One day,
Speaker 2: we had fifty thousand dollars. We had to go into
Speaker 2: a studio at midnight because we couldn't afford the day rate.
Speaker 2: And Evan Lamberg at Emi Publishing connected me with a
Speaker 2: guitar player, songwriter, up and coming producer named Greg Wattenberg.
Speaker 2: And Greg and I kind of went into the studio
Speaker 2: at midnight, and we had this beautiful experience of just
Speaker 2: making a record that nobody knew who we were and
Speaker 2: nobody was looking over our shoulders. And on that record
Speaker 2: we had a song called easy Tonight and a song
Speaker 2: called Superman, and Easy Tonight had enough success where it
Speaker 2: got us to Superman, and then Superman became Superman.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're with aware, it's got to deal with the CBS. Sony.
Speaker 1: They ultimately had success with train John Mayer. What's the
Speaker 1: timeline here? Latterman says, yes, how long to make the record?
Speaker 1: How long until it comes out? How long till Superman reacts?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we took about a year to make the record,
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, and we took
Speaker 2: Easy Tonight to Triple A Radio and it became a
Speaker 2: number one song at Triple A. But of course we
Speaker 2: sold no records. But what it did was get us
Speaker 2: on Donnie Einer's radar, Charlie Walks radar, and so they
Speaker 2: came and said, all right, you know you can't sell records,
Speaker 2: but we'll give you another song. And I had seen
Speaker 2: kind of in my shows, whatever performances I was doing
Speaker 2: that Superman was reacting. People were moved by that song.
Speaker 2: And I suggested Superman and they were very resistant because again,
Speaker 2: as you know, the piano was not on the radio
Speaker 2: in two thousand, No Billy Joel songs. The piano didn't exist.
Speaker 2: But they kind of said, all right, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: if this is your swan song, so be it. So
Speaker 2: we went out with Superman and of course Greg worked
Speaker 2: very very hard, you know, you know, promoting and and
Speaker 2: and it's initially it was really struggling because it was different.
Speaker 2: And we got a call one day which was very strange,
Speaker 2: and they said, you know, Superman's number one in the
Speaker 2: Philippines and we're like what. I'm like, how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Superman's No. One of the Philippines and uh. But we
Speaker 2: kept grinding, We kept grinding. The song kind of teetered
Speaker 2: and teetered, and of course, you know, I did every
Speaker 2: you know, every conference room for every radio station, I
Speaker 2: kissed every ring, I went to every you know, all
Speaker 2: around the country. And there was a couple promoted you know,
Speaker 2: back in the day, you know, programmers had a little
Speaker 2: more autonomy. And there was this one programmer, Cheris Furje.
Speaker 2: She was in Vegas, ran the big Vegas hot a
Speaker 2: C station, and she really believed in my song. And
Speaker 2: you know, you know, we get to eight hundred spins,
Speaker 2: it's not testing. Thousand spins, it's not testing. And I
Speaker 2: would call Cheressa every week and say, hey, thank you
Speaker 2: for giving it a shot. She says, I'm giving it
Speaker 2: one more week. And then week one week she called
Speaker 2: and she said you're top five. And the next week
Speaker 2: she said you're number one. And she had a big
Speaker 2: mouth and she started talking to all her friends, and
Speaker 2: then the song started testing and it was on its
Speaker 2: way to you know, becoming a very popular song. I
Speaker 2: was in and then they sent me to England because
Speaker 2: they were going to launch Superman in Europe. And I
Speaker 2: was in England, uh when nine to eleven happened.
Speaker 1: So what was that like? I mean, being in California
Speaker 1: was bad enough if you were if you were from
Speaker 1: New York. Being in England, I mean you couldn't fly back.
Speaker 2: It was horrible. I mean, like everybody else, you know,
Speaker 2: I was calling everybody. I knew in New York City
Speaker 2: and getting a busy signal, and and as you said,
Speaker 2: you know, we were stuck there for ten days. It
Speaker 2: was actually me and a couple other artists, you know,
Speaker 2: we were supposed to perform that night, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's no way in hell I'm going to play tonight.
Speaker 2: And we were you know, I sat in my hotel
Speaker 2: room for ten days trying to get back to America.
Speaker 2: And when I landed at o'haa, I literally kissed the
Speaker 2: tarmac because I was so you know, grateful to be home.
Speaker 2: And I didn't realize that Superman had become a song
Speaker 2: that many news organizations were using, you know, CNN to
Speaker 2: as I said, recognize the heroes of nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: And I didn't really understand what it had become. And then,
Speaker 2: you know, a few weeks later, I'm sure somebody, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody I love, Rick Krim, called me. Rick Krim, who
Speaker 2: you know, runs was running VH one at the time,
Speaker 2: and he said, hey, man, you know your song's become
Speaker 2: this song and where Paul McCartney's doing this concert and
Speaker 2: would you want to play? And I didn't even know
Speaker 2: what to say to that, And of course, I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: and but yeah because of Rick. You know, I played
Speaker 2: Superman at the concert for New York and I'll always
Speaker 2: be grateful to him for that.
Speaker 1: So at this point when you're working, are you working
Speaker 1: solo or with a band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this point, you know, we have we have
Speaker 2: a band. As soon as you know Superman took off.
Speaker 2: You know, you have a lot of radio show obligations,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to build your touring, so I put
Speaker 2: together a rock band. You know, for three or four years,
Speaker 2: we were in the van, you know, carrying our gear,
Speaker 2: setting up our gear, selling our own merch, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of paying our dues, you know, through Easy Tonight
Speaker 2: and all that. And then you know, when Superman broke,
Speaker 2: I had the moment every every aspiring musician dreams of.
Speaker 2: I had the moment where we went from the van
Speaker 2: to the bus. I was actually doing Larry King. I
Speaker 2: walked out of the van. I did Larry King in
Speaker 2: New York City, and I walked out of Larry King
Speaker 2: onto our first tour bus. And from then on things
Speaker 2: were a little bit easier.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this success, now you have to make
Speaker 1: another record. Did you feel the pressure.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, it was quite the debacle. I mean, not
Speaker 2: only do you have to follow your first kind of
Speaker 2: popular song, it's a song that has taken on the significance,
Speaker 2: So you know, how do you do that? And I
Speaker 2: got to be honest with you, it was a struggle.
Speaker 2: Because I'd had some success, I was able to actually
Speaker 2: have a budget, and I was able to record much
Speaker 2: of the next record, The Battle for Everything, with Bill Batrell.
Speaker 2: I love Bill Batrell. I loved what he did with
Speaker 2: Sheryl Crow. He had a studio out in Montecito on
Speaker 2: the beach. It was like a dream come true. You
Speaker 2: show up every day, record, you write, people bring you wine.
Speaker 2: You know, his girlfriend makes turkey pot pie. And and
Speaker 2: I did that for like nine months, and the record
Speaker 2: company came up to said listen, and they were not pleased.
Speaker 2: They did not hear the next song. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of panic, a lot of anger, a lot of
Speaker 2: back and forth. And so that was that was, you know,
Speaker 2: not fun. It was, And but I also realized that
Speaker 2: I didn't have the song that could follow Superman, a
Speaker 2: song that was not Superman two, a song that could
Speaker 2: stand on its own. But I'd still to this day
Speaker 2: think the Battle for everything's probably my best record. So
Speaker 2: I kind of went we had that. I went back
Speaker 2: home and for about a year, I just wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote,
Speaker 2: you know, song after song, and I'll never forget. One day,
Speaker 2: I had this little kind of upright in this little
Speaker 2: room in my house, and I would just kind of
Speaker 2: get up at six of the morning, nine pound pound pound,
Speaker 2: and the monkey on my back was growing and the
Speaker 2: pressure was growing, and I had this idea for a song,
Speaker 2: and my wife, you know, kind of came in. I said,
Speaker 2: let me play you something, and so I started playing
Speaker 2: her kind of a sketch of hundred years and I'll
Speaker 2: never forget. I kind of after I played it, I
Speaker 2: turned to see her in the doorway and tears were
Speaker 2: running down her face. And I remember thinking, well, either
Speaker 2: I wrote a hit or my career is over. I
Speaker 2: don't know which one. But but fortunately that that song,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of took out the one hit.
Speaker 1: Wonder Okay, that runs its course. What about the next record?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, the next you know, after those
Speaker 2: two songs, I really never had that level of success.
Speaker 2: I you know, I had songs that you know, there
Speaker 2: were top ten hot AC songs. I had a song
Speaker 2: called the Riddle, which which did well. It's you know,
Speaker 2: I think Columbia thought that it would be you know,
Speaker 2: another Superman hundred years. It wasn't. And but you know,
Speaker 2: we sold enough records to keep making another one, and
Speaker 2: and kind of every subsequent record, I had a song
Speaker 2: that again was a top ten hot acy. So I
Speaker 2: had a song called Chances, which was the entitle of
Speaker 2: the blind Side. And I wasn't a guy who sold
Speaker 2: a ton of records for the label, but I was
Speaker 2: a big licensing guy, so you know, they could license
Speaker 2: the songs. That was back in the day when you know,
Speaker 2: people were spending crazy money to license songs. So that
Speaker 2: kind of kept me afloat at Columbia. And I was,
Speaker 2: you know, I was fortunate to make you know, three
Speaker 2: more records there. None of them kind of had the
Speaker 2: success of Superman one hundred years, but but they were
Speaker 2: enough to you know, to pay the bills for them
Speaker 2: and make it worthwhile. And then and I was able
Speaker 2: to tour and kind of live the dream and and
Speaker 2: write for films and and do side projects and and
Speaker 2: you know, and play hockey games and that stuff. And
Speaker 2: then after five records, you know, they kind of said,
Speaker 2: you know we're done and I understand that, and and
Speaker 2: I went to wind up Records.
Speaker 1: Who whoao? In the hindsight, that's easy to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but when you're told you how did you find out
Speaker 1: you were dropped? Literally? And then how did it feel
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 2: Time, you know, it was it was like any you know,
Speaker 2: it was terrible. It was terrible. You know, Greg told
Speaker 2: me that they're not going to pick me up and
Speaker 2: do another record. I actually, you know, threw a tantrum
Speaker 2: and I said screw you, and I bought the record back.
Speaker 2: I bought the Slice record back, which you know, was
Speaker 2: pretty stupid of me, but it was emotional and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go take this and screw you. But
Speaker 2: I you know, I remember there was there was there
Speaker 2: was a moment I was kind of driving by myself
Speaker 2: through from in middle of Texas to a radio station,
Speaker 2: you know, probably Market two hundred and three to try
Speaker 2: to get five spins for a song, and one hundred
Speaker 2: years came on the radio and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you know, here we are, you know, welcome to the doubt,
Speaker 2: the downslide of the roller coaster. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's very hard. It's you know, you go
Speaker 2: into a funk, you're depressed. But you know, the nice
Speaker 2: thing is I had my wife, and I had Precision Wire,
Speaker 2: and I had things in my life that weren't just
Speaker 2: only music related. My whole kind of self esteem was
Speaker 2: not wrapped up into you know, having another hit song.
Speaker 2: And so many of my you know, my fellow kind
Speaker 2: of musicians of the two thousands, we all kind of
Speaker 2: hit that wall at some point. But yeah, it sucked,
Speaker 2: Yeah it sucked.
Speaker 1: And then what was your experience like it wind up?
Speaker 2: It was wonderful. Ed Vetri just a wonderful guy. I
Speaker 2: loved ed you know, he was all about musicians. They'd
Speaker 2: had so much success and Greg Wattenberg being one of
Speaker 2: the principles there kind of run winds up and we
Speaker 2: got to make one more record, which I'm so glad
Speaker 2: we did because you know what I didn't tell you
Speaker 2: about the Battle for Everything was when the Bill Betrell
Speaker 2: record kind of hit the wall, I had one hundred
Speaker 2: years and I went back to Greg and I said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I really like you to do this with me. And
Speaker 2: to his credit, he was willing to do that because
Speaker 2: you know, he wasn't happy with me going to Bill Betrell.
Speaker 2: He's like, look, man, we just made this hit song
Speaker 2: and you're leaving. And in a sense he was right.
Speaker 2: I I you know, I was maybe feeling my oats,
Speaker 2: and to Greg's credit, he said, yeah, you know, let's
Speaker 2: do it. And Greg, you know, his mastery at creating
Speaker 2: pop song hits not just for me, but for training
Speaker 2: and many other people, he was willing to do that,
Speaker 2: and I'm always be grateful for him. So so to
Speaker 2: go back and make a full record with Greg at
Speaker 2: wind Up and just have those those nights in the
Speaker 2: studio and the jokes and the laughs and the fun,
Speaker 2: I really treasure that and and I'll always be grateful
Speaker 2: to him because he is certainly a master of what
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 1: Now you don't cut another studio album after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was kind of I was kind
Speaker 2: of looking to do other things. I kind of saw
Speaker 2: the writing on the wall of there's so much that
Speaker 2: goes into making a record and promoting a record, and
Speaker 2: what's the real return. I'd always wanted to write a musical,
Speaker 2: so I actually had the opportunity to work with some
Speaker 2: alan Zwibel, Glenn Slater, some great musical writers. We actually
Speaker 2: were hired to write Field of Dreams, which for me
Speaker 2: was a wonderful experience. I grew up on musical theater.
Speaker 2: I'd written some songs with Stephen Schwartz, the amazing Iconic Broadway,
Speaker 2: you know, genius behind Wicked and Godspell. So I had
Speaker 2: a great affy for musical theater. And we actually spent
Speaker 2: a year writing i know, eight or nine songs for
Speaker 2: Field of Dreams, and Alan wrote a great kind of book,
Speaker 2: and like sometimes happens in that world, the thing blew
Speaker 2: up overnight and I learned my lesson. It was it
Speaker 2: was my records all over again. But I was also
Speaker 2: able to write, you know, some songs for film and
Speaker 2: and and also frankly, I did a lot outside of music.
Speaker 2: You know. My dad was getting older, and I started
Speaker 2: putting much more time at Precision Wire, and I started
Speaker 2: doing symphony shows. I started doing keynotes, which to this
Speaker 2: day is something I love to do, you know, Ted
Speaker 2: talks and keynotes and kind of learning about companies and
Speaker 2: speaking to people and trying to share kind of my
Speaker 2: my business acumen with some of my songs. So I
Speaker 2: had these other things going on, but I do regret,
Speaker 2: you know, not kind of making another record, and you know,
Speaker 2: maybe there's still that the future, you know, for folks
Speaker 2: who still remember what records are.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this big hit with Superman. There's publishing
Speaker 1: and then there's record royalties. Do you ever get a
Speaker 1: record royalty?
Speaker 2: No, nope. The budget for the Superman video was four
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's as you know, that's
Speaker 2: what they were spending back there. They you know, however
Speaker 2: they do their accounting. I will never see a penny
Speaker 2: from record sales. I think we've probably sold, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe two and a half million records, which is amazing.
Speaker 2: But they did spend a lot of money because it
Speaker 2: wasn't a band, you know, so there was a lot
Speaker 2: of tour support and so no, I never, I never,
Speaker 2: and I never will receive money from record sales. But
Speaker 2: fortunately for me, you know, I wrote I wrote Superman
Speaker 2: one hundred years myself, and and those songs have been
Speaker 2: very lucrative. And you own those songs, yes, sir.
Speaker 1: And with the insanity of the last handful of years,
Speaker 1: has anybody ever approached you or you ever thought about
Speaker 1: selling them?
Speaker 2: Yes, I get approached a lot. I really like having
Speaker 2: control over my songs I've seen, especially one hundred years
Speaker 2: in Superman, you know, have been very important in many
Speaker 2: causes that are important to me. Als are troops, and
Speaker 2: I like to be able to say I'm going to
Speaker 2: license that for free, and and I like to be
Speaker 2: able to do that. And I've been with Cobalt for
Speaker 2: the last six seven years and they've been great about
Speaker 2: just you know, hey, if it's a gratis license, no problem.
Speaker 2: So and at the same time, you know, I think
Speaker 2: my catalog, it's it's certainly real money. It's it's not like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna lay on a beach for thirty
Speaker 2: years money. So yeah, So I've been approached, but I
Speaker 2: just like having my songs and maybe one day, you know,
Speaker 2: if they're still worth anything, you know, my kids will
Speaker 2: sell them, but I like keeping them.
Speaker 1: How many licenses or sinks do you get in the year.
Speaker 2: Not as many as I used to, maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe five to ten. I also kind of write songs,
Speaker 2: you know, to projects. I wrote a song called All
Speaker 2: for One that was the the one hundredth episode of
Speaker 2: Hawai Fi O and their their their entitle for their
Speaker 2: last their last episode. So every once in a while,
Speaker 2: I'll write a song for a film. I have a
Speaker 2: couple movies kind of that I that I've developed with
Speaker 2: a couple of friends of mine that that have been bought.
Speaker 2: We'll see if they get made. But back in the day, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I probably have you know, two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty three hundred licenses under my belt, which is pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: And generally speaking, has income going down stay or going up?
Speaker 2: No, it's gone down, you know, I think every year.
Speaker 2: But it hasn't gone down as much as you know,
Speaker 2: as I would think the certainly Superman in one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Still you hear within the culture people are still making
Speaker 2: home movies to those songs and graduations, particularly hundred years
Speaker 2: Superman was just used in a big TV use this year.
Speaker 2: So they still kind of you know, are lucrative and
Speaker 2: and the rest of the catgalog too kind of you know,
Speaker 2: still kind of has some interest from folks and so yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, of course, you know, it's gone down, I mean,
Speaker 2: and that's sad. With kind of streaming and Shazam, there's
Speaker 2: a whole new generation of kids finding these songs, you know,
Speaker 2: that have never heard them before. I have kids seventeen
Speaker 2: years old at my concerts who weren't alive when I
Speaker 2: wrote them. So, you know, that's also pretty cool and
Speaker 2: surreal and superman.
Speaker 1: I know you've been asked this question a lot, but
Speaker 1: are you the type of person who hammers the song
Speaker 1: out or there's a burst of inspiration? How did you
Speaker 1: create that song?
Speaker 2: That song was a gift. I basically wrote the whole
Speaker 2: thing in an hour. At the time, I didn't think
Speaker 2: it was for me. I you know, I was fancy
Speaker 2: myself as a rock guy. But when I played it
Speaker 2: for Greg, he kept kept insisting we put it on
Speaker 2: the record. But that's you know, the joke is, I've
Speaker 2: been looking for that you know hour ever since, because
Speaker 2: whatever it was was a gift, and of course you
Speaker 2: write thousands of songs to try to find that hour.
Speaker 2: You know, I wrote thousands of songs before Superman. I've
Speaker 2: probably written a thousand or two since then. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think that sentiment of it's not easy to be
Speaker 2: me when you're kind of a young writer, know, hitting
Speaker 2: the wall of the music business. Like so many who
Speaker 2: listen to your podcast, everybody understands that desire just to
Speaker 2: be heard, and that was me. I just I just
Speaker 2: wanted to be heard. If nobody wanted to hear me
Speaker 2: after that, that's fine, And that was kind of the
Speaker 2: inspiration for Superman. It's certainly not a song I could
Speaker 2: write now. It's certainly easy to be me, It's easy
Speaker 2: to be most of us. But that was the sentiment
Speaker 2: of that song, and I think that's why it resonates.
Speaker 2: You know, a funny story about Superman. When it started
Speaker 2: to become popular, Columbia Records came to me and said,
Speaker 2: you know, John, something really weird is happening with your song.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what are you talking about. They're like,
Speaker 2: adults are buying your song. I'm like, what do you mean,
Speaker 2: adults are buying my song? They like, yeah, people in
Speaker 2: their thirties and forties are buying your song. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the hell are you talking about. But you know,
Speaker 2: in retrospect, you know, it makes sense. You know, who
Speaker 2: buys records teenagers? But why were adults buying Superman? Because
Speaker 2: I think adults, especially men men, never buy music. You know,
Speaker 2: the whole theme of we can't be everything for everyone.
Speaker 2: You know, My Superman is different than all the other
Speaker 2: Superman songs. My Superman is you know, I can't stand
Speaker 2: a fly who wouldn't want to fly? People? Don't you know?
Speaker 2: My song is Superman doesn't want to be Superman because
Speaker 2: we can't be everything for everybody. So I think that
Speaker 2: sentiment really resonated with adults, and the song was different
Speaker 2: in that way. But again, I still love playing it
Speaker 2: every night. I love playing one hundred years every night.
Speaker 2: I don't get sick of it. There's always a reason
Speaker 2: to do it. There's always someone in the audience that's
Speaker 2: going to see it and sing it just one time
Speaker 2: in their life. So it's I am truly grateful for
Speaker 2: both those songs.
Speaker 1: And you have this music challenge tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, it's called the
Speaker 2: Music Matters Challenge, and it's a national music contest to
Speaker 2: raise awareness for music in the schools. We've already talked
Speaker 2: about my mom coming in and kind of being a
Speaker 2: music teacher for our school that lost a music teacher.
Speaker 2: And the challenge was inspired by a song I wrote
Speaker 2: with some Chicago inner city kids last year. They'd lost
Speaker 2: their music teacher. They were not musicians, they were just students,
Speaker 2: and we wrote a song called let music film My world.
Speaker 1: Wait were a little bit slower. How does that come
Speaker 1: to pass that you're writing a song with kids in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, an amazing family in Chicago called the Tallman family
Speaker 2: does a lot of great work with the schools in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and they had helped fund some of my Afghan work,
Speaker 2: some of my Ukraine work, and we were talking about
Speaker 2: how can we do something for music in the schools
Speaker 2: and I told I told Kaylee Tallman about my experience
Speaker 2: with my mom, and I said, you know, let's find
Speaker 2: some kids, let's write a song, and let's fund a
Speaker 2: music teacher for a school in need. And they did.
Speaker 2: We funded a teacher for three years at a quarter
Speaker 2: million dollars, and now Farragut Academy has a music teacher.
Speaker 2: And through that effort, we said, well, let's take this nationally.
Speaker 2: And that's what the Music Matters Challenge is. This is
Speaker 2: where anybody, everybody, you, bob, could make a video talk
Speaker 2: about a music teacher that mattered to you, sing a
Speaker 2: little bit of a let music film my world. People
Speaker 2: upload their videos and then the winner will win ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and will provide a music teacher again for
Speaker 2: a school in need, with the winner for three hundred
Speaker 2: grand and three years. But it's really an effort to
Speaker 2: raise awareness for the four million kids in America who
Speaker 2: do not have a music teacher.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned that the Tolmans helped you financially with
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Afghanistan. How did you meet these people? How
Speaker 1: hard was it to get the money? What did the
Speaker 1: money actually go for? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I actually for many years I've done keynotes for a
Speaker 2: group called the YPO. It's the Young President's Organizations, a
Speaker 2: group with chapters all across the nation with young presidents
Speaker 2: under forty who run big companies. And Glen Tolman was
Speaker 2: one of those folks I met years ago. And when
Speaker 2: I was doing this work for Afghanistan and particularly Ukraine,
Speaker 2: it was very expensive to go to Ukraine. I kind
Speaker 2: of fund all these myself, so the Ukraine, you know,
Speaker 2: going over there, he you know, he gave us a
Speaker 2: little bit of a donation to help with some of
Speaker 2: the funding. They're just an amazing family that do incredible
Speaker 2: things and I'm honored to partner with them on these projects.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about doing these keynotes, is this a business?
Speaker 1: Do you have an agent? Do you do it X
Speaker 1: number of times a year or is it once in
Speaker 1: the blue moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The nice thing about having a music agent Larry Webman,
Speaker 2: you know Ed Wasserman who's incredible and been with me,
Speaker 2: you know, for many years, and his associate Max. The
Speaker 2: nice thing about having a music agent is that you
Speaker 2: can work through all of the speakers bureaus. So there's
Speaker 2: three or four Speeders bureaus that we work with that
Speaker 2: that hire me to come do keynotes. Sometimes it's for companies,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's for organizations, sometimes it's sometimes it's for schools.
Speaker 2: And I probably do you know, six to seven years.
Speaker 2: I was just in New York. Actually I did one
Speaker 2: for all of the federal judges. There was one hundred
Speaker 2: federal judges there and a lot of the the the
Speaker 2: lawyers who handle the trademarks and the intellectual property. Black
Speaker 2: tie event very prestigious in New York City, and uh
Speaker 2: I got to you know, speak and talk to them,
Speaker 2: which meant a lot to me because my aunt is
Speaker 2: a is a Pelli Court judge. So I meet incredible people,
Speaker 2: I learn about these organizations, and I really enjoy doing it.
Speaker 2: And as I said, I probably do five or six
Speaker 2: a year.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the pitch to hire you.
Speaker 2: What kind of world do you want? How does music
Speaker 2: and inspiration and where do where do songs come from?
Speaker 2: How do you mix creativity with your business acumen? But
Speaker 2: you know, we kind of pitch it more to the
Speaker 2: to the client depending on what they do. But look,
Speaker 2: here's the thing that's cool. Nobody knows who I am,
Speaker 2: but they know Superman, they know hundred Years. So here's
Speaker 2: a guy that can talk about running a family business
Speaker 2: and selling shopping carts and also how do you write
Speaker 2: a song? So I'm certainly not you know Schwartz Cough
Speaker 2: or you know Peyton Manning or the guys who do
Speaker 2: these speeches. But but I think people get something out
Speaker 2: of it because it's interesting to know where do songs
Speaker 2: come from? What is that creative process? What does it
Speaker 2: take to have that you know, spark of inspiration to
Speaker 2: write a song like you know Superman or hundred Years.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had it happen two or three times.
Speaker 2: You know, Paul McCartney has it happened pretty every every Thursday.
Speaker 2: So so you know, for me, I think that's what
Speaker 2: people are interested in the creative process and how can
Speaker 2: that apply to their business?
Speaker 1: Okay, if I see you with the judges last week,
Speaker 1: and I see you at some Companies confab in June.
Speaker 1: Am I going to get the same speech?
Speaker 2: Good question. The middle of it will be the same,
Speaker 2: but the opening will always be different. It will always
Speaker 2: be tailored to the audience, to the business, to what
Speaker 2: we're talking about, and the end will always be different.
Speaker 2: And in the end, I play my song World that
Speaker 2: talks about what kind of world do you want? And
Speaker 2: it has nothing to do with music. It's really talks
Speaker 2: about kind of ourselves, our well being, the world we're
Speaker 2: we're in, and how we take care of ourselves and
Speaker 2: how the how we need to take care of ourselves
Speaker 2: first before we take care of others. So the middle
Speaker 2: of the of the keynote is pretty standard. But I
Speaker 2: always try to learn as much about the people I
Speaker 2: talk to as they learn about me.
Speaker 1: And how much preper we require.
Speaker 2: A certainly more than playing a concert. You know, probably
Speaker 2: probably maybe you know, eight to ten hours of learning
Speaker 2: the count, learn about the content company. I talked to
Speaker 2: the client, we have a phone call, I do my research.
Speaker 2: I kind of prepare my remarks. You know this. You
Speaker 2: need to memorize this stuff. You can't be reading notes.
Speaker 2: So maybe not that much. Maybe you know, maybe you
Speaker 2: know six to eight hours and I've done this enough
Speaker 2: now that that I can kind of I kind of
Speaker 2: got a groove in it. But it is a lot
Speaker 2: of fun.
Speaker 1: Okay. So therefore, are you riffing off the top of
Speaker 1: your head or have you literally memorized it?
Speaker 2: I think you, uh, it's interesting. I kind of went
Speaker 2: through this through my speech at UCLA. I think the
Speaker 2: best way to do it is you you kind of
Speaker 2: know your talking points, you have an outline, you know
Speaker 2: what you want to hit. You don't want to basically
Speaker 2: learn lines because it then it sounds ripped. It So
Speaker 2: you want to be kind of relaxed, You want to
Speaker 2: be in the moment, but you need to hit your marks.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of how it is for me when
Speaker 2: I have my notes that I'm prepping. It's not a
Speaker 2: script that I just read. It's it's an outline. I
Speaker 2: need to start here, I need to hit this point
Speaker 2: at this point, maybe tell this joke. But also, it's
Speaker 2: like performing at a show. You let your audience, you know,
Speaker 2: give you feedback, and you kind of roll with what
Speaker 2: they're doing. And there's not a lot of difference between
Speaker 2: doing a keynote and doing a rock show, frankly, because
Speaker 2: you are feeding off the audience. You're seeing what's working
Speaker 2: in real time, you're seeing what's not working. You adjust
Speaker 2: on the fly. But of course, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: you have your pillars of your set or your speech,
Speaker 2: and you make sure you hit those.
Speaker 1: Okay, you stop making records with wind up and you
Speaker 1: talk about writing a musical, et cetera. Are you playing
Speaker 1: live throughout this or if you stopped for a while.
Speaker 2: No, we're still touring. You know. I started doing a
Speaker 2: lot more string quartet shows.
Speaker 1: I was doing so a little bit slower. How does
Speaker 1: the string quartet come together? How does that idea come
Speaker 1: to you in execution?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I started doing symphony shows kind of i'd say,
Speaker 2: you know a little over ten years ago, which was amazing.
Speaker 2: It was kind of rebirth for me. I've had the
Speaker 2: blessing to work with incredible composers George del Barrio, go
Speaker 2: down the list, and so I have a lot of
Speaker 2: songs that I wouldn't necessarily play in a rock show
Speaker 2: that I can play with the string with the symphony,
Speaker 2: and those went so well. I wanted to take that
Speaker 2: experience to smaller markets. So I formed a string quartet
Speaker 2: amazing Broadway players, just prodigy players, and for a decade
Speaker 2: now I do probably in the spring and the fall,
Speaker 2: I will do a string quartet tour. I just finished
Speaker 2: one last week. So it's just me the string quartet
Speaker 2: and we go to smaller venues. It's an intimate show,
Speaker 2: it's a storytelling show. But they alone are worth the
Speaker 2: price of admission. My violin player Katie just won a
Speaker 2: Tony Award, and they inspire me every night. You know,
Speaker 2: they take they take, I think, the songs to a
Speaker 2: completely new level. So that's kind of been the drill.
Speaker 2: You know, string quartet in the spring, rock band in
Speaker 2: the summer, string quartet during the fall, and maybe you
Speaker 2: know through keynote, few keynotes. So probably fifty shows a year.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have these symphony shows. Are you sitting at
Speaker 1: home or Larry sitting in the office and the phone rings?
Speaker 1: How did they come to pass?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. But there are you know, there
Speaker 2: are symphonies out there that do look for for pop
Speaker 2: artists to come play, and they're few and far between.
Speaker 2: That's kind of why we started doing the Court because
Speaker 2: you may get two symphony shows a year, I'm doing
Speaker 2: one this year, and you know, but with the quartets,
Speaker 2: you can go into pretty much any market and do
Speaker 2: five hundred to one thousand seats, and frankly, for me,
Speaker 2: it's it's my favorite way to perform because it really
Speaker 2: is an intimate show. It's a storytelling show, and you
Speaker 2: can play virtually every song off you know, off your
Speaker 2: your album. So at the same time, I'm stoked to
Speaker 2: go out with my rock band in two weeks, you know,
Speaker 2: and get back in the bus with the boys and
Speaker 2: you know, turn up the amps and you know, close
Speaker 2: with Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, that's fun too.
Speaker 1: And you go out with your band. You obviously are
Speaker 1: the headliner in these smaller quartet shows, but when you
Speaker 1: go out the band, you tend to go alone. You
Speaker 1: you an opening act, closing act.
Speaker 2: Good question. We pretty much alternate. As I said, last
Speaker 2: year we were at with the Baar Naked Ladies, which
Speaker 2: was just amazing because their audiences are fantastic, they are
Speaker 2: wonderful humans, and you get to play for five thousand
Speaker 2: to ten thousand people a night, so you get to,
Speaker 2: you know, play rock star and have that experience. And
Speaker 2: then this year we'll we'll headline, but we'll play smaller venues,
Speaker 2: hopefully follow up some some of the markets we did
Speaker 2: with The Bear Naked Ladies, and I imagine next summer
Speaker 2: we'll probably open again. So we kind of go back
Speaker 2: and forth. You know, we're certainly not at a level
Speaker 2: where we can where we can headline, you know, five
Speaker 2: thousand seat sheds. There's a few markets we can you know,
Speaker 2: do a few thousand people, but we've never really risen
Speaker 2: to that level of a touring act.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you go out with either the quartet or
Speaker 1: with your rock band, the bus picks you up and
Speaker 1: the bus drops you off when the tour is over
Speaker 1: or you're going home in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the quartet, we're just in a sprinter We
Speaker 2: don't you know, we really don't have the bus. We
Speaker 2: really can't afford it. It's kind of a break even
Speaker 2: proposition for me. For the band will definitely you know,
Speaker 2: we'll start in the bus, we'll go, we'll run the
Speaker 2: tour and we'll be done. We don't go out that long.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Bare Naked Ladies for us was a
Speaker 2: long run. We're out for six weeks, which for me
Speaker 2: is a long run. This year will only be out
Speaker 2: three weeks. So yeah, we kind of just pop on
Speaker 2: the bus, get through the tour, hopefully the voice survives,
Speaker 2: and then you know, have my first glass of whiskey
Speaker 2: on the last night after the show.
Speaker 1: Why is it your first glass of whiskey at the
Speaker 1: end of the.
Speaker 2: Tour, Because with my voice, I have to be very
Speaker 2: very careful my voice, the way I kind of sing
Speaker 2: in the falsetto there throughout my whole career. I actually
Speaker 2: had an injury when I was in my twenties. I
Speaker 2: had my tonsils out and I started bleeding to a
Speaker 2: point where they threw me in the emergency room and
Speaker 2: cauterized my throat. So I have a huge scar on
Speaker 2: my throat, which has always been kind of a hamstring
Speaker 2: for me. So when I'm singing, especially you know, when
Speaker 2: I have to do no nine shows in eleven days
Speaker 2: like I did last month, there's no alcohol. I don't
Speaker 2: eat ice cream. I basically don't talk after a show
Speaker 2: till soundcheck the next day. It's really all about vocal maintenance.
Speaker 2: So it's not very rock and roll, but it is
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this other business, you have your royalties
Speaker 1: traveling as hell. What's keeping you on the road.
Speaker 2: Those ninety minutes. Well, two things, those ninety minutes of
Speaker 2: sharing songs and stories with audiences, and especially in the
Speaker 2: last few weeks, you know, being able to play okay
Speaker 2: for audiences and people are literally crying in their seats.
Speaker 2: That tells you you're doing the right thing. The other
Speaker 2: thing is the camaraderie with my bandmates. I love them all.
Speaker 2: They they make me happy, They bring me joy. The
Speaker 2: fun we have running a business can you know, bring
Speaker 2: a lot of problems and headaches and hr and and
Speaker 2: things that aren't a lot of fun. But being you know,
Speaker 2: being with my bandmates and perform with them every night
Speaker 2: and singing for people. It was a gift, you know,
Speaker 2: thirty years ago when I started, and it's it's a
Speaker 2: gift every night. I had a show, the Closed Art
Speaker 2: Tour at the Coach House last Friday night, and it
Speaker 2: was a wild, crazy show, and I spent an hour
Speaker 2: afterwards talking too folks who showed up, and and especially
Speaker 2: after COVID, I think probably all of us who did
Speaker 2: this do this for a living, have a unique and
Speaker 2: new gratitude for for touring and playing, especially when we
Speaker 2: didn't have it for a couple of years, so I'm
Speaker 2: a blessed guy.
Speaker 1: Needless just say, from the time Superman was a hit
Speaker 1: to today, the business has completely changed. No song reaches everybody,
Speaker 1: even though we read about Taylor Swift and aforementioned Drake
Speaker 1: and Kendril Lamar. But in the back of your mind,
Speaker 1: is there a dream? Yeah, I could write that one
Speaker 1: song that everybody would hear again, and I still want
Speaker 1: to do that. Or if you made peace, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: If I told you I'd made peace, I'd be lying.
Speaker 2: We all want to have that song. We all want
Speaker 2: to have that song that the world's singing with us.
Speaker 2: And I always believe my best song is yet to come.
Speaker 2: We all have an ego inside of us, and that's
Speaker 2: why it's so hard when you've had a taste of
Speaker 2: success to face the reality when things aren't the same.
Speaker 2: At the same time, I'm so incredibly grateful to have
Speaker 2: had this career. It was such a fluke. The stars
Speaker 2: had to align from me. When I hear a song
Speaker 2: of mine at home depot, I still can't believe it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I think we all, we all would
Speaker 2: like to have that song. And you know what, in
Speaker 2: some ways, Okay is a song like that, because you know,
Speaker 2: the whole world's not singing it, but a lot of
Speaker 2: the world's hearing it, and it's making some people really
Speaker 2: happy and making some people really angry. And at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, you know, isn't that what rock
Speaker 2: and roll is all about?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And you're making an impact in a world, in
Speaker 1: an era where everybody's just about the benjamins, and it's
Speaker 1: very inspiring. So, in any event, John, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking time with my audience.
Speaker 1: The other thing is I want to take you up
Speaker 1: on your offer to go see how a shopping card
Speaker 1: is built. I literally thin that would be a very
Speaker 1: interesting trip. But in any event, thanks again for doing this.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll take you to lunch at Mayo's, our favorite
Speaker 2: Mexican restaurant. We'll settle we're certainly set it up this summer.
Speaker 2: I look forward to to showing you how to make
Speaker 2: a shopping cart. And again, thank you for you know,
Speaker 2: everything you've done for our business and moral clarity as well.
Speaker 2: You're an icon and you're a hero and your own
Speaker 2: right and it's an honor to be with you.
Speaker 1: Wow, can't say anything to that, So till next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left sets