Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the barth Websites podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today was the one and only Meal Sah we
Speaker 1: are good day approprim nice to be here. Bub. You
Speaker 1: in Australia. Why astral h good question. Well, after I
Speaker 1: had made my first record and silver Bird my first
Speaker 1: album in I went straight to America on tour because
Speaker 1: things were happening on a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in America, and you know, we signed up with
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers for the USA and Canada at that time,
Speaker 1: and South America, I guess, and the rest of the
Speaker 1: world was Chrysalis Records in England. Um. And after the
Speaker 1: American tour which went fantastic, um, it was just a
Speaker 1: huge success. Uh, there was a call for me to
Speaker 1: come to US Astralia. So I came down to Australia.
Speaker 1: And when I came, it was by this time and
Speaker 1: a buzz had already really started. So I arrived in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: I think it was arrived in Melbourne to absolute well,
Speaker 1: it was like Beatlemania. You know, the airport was jammed
Speaker 1: with people. There were people waving at the plane as
Speaker 1: we came in from the observation deck of the airport.
Speaker 1: And journalists were immediately, you know, beseeching me, and I
Speaker 1: had lots of stupid questions asked at the airport, you know,
Speaker 1: like why did you come to Australia, what do you
Speaker 1: or even what do you think of Australia. Well he
Speaker 1: hasn't even got it yet, you know, so it was crazy.
Speaker 1: And but this tour was just amazing and I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the place. And we had a a sponsor,
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy called redg and Set who ran an
Speaker 1: airline which is now defunct called and Set Airlines. And
Speaker 1: Bob had his own private plane. So he said to me, Um,
Speaker 1: do you want to what places would you like to
Speaker 1: go to in Australia Because we'd had an incredibly successful
Speaker 1: to us sold out everywhere, so he wanted to give
Speaker 1: me a gift and he just said, look, I'll fly
Speaker 1: you to six places you choose. Just put a pear
Speaker 1: on the map and we can get there. There's air
Speaker 1: there's air fields everywhere. So yeah, I went to the
Speaker 1: famous airs Rock you know, which is now Ulura Uluru
Speaker 1: as it's called the area you Laura, um. And we
Speaker 1: went to Northern Cans and we went to Broom where
Speaker 1: they shot the you know, Chariots of Fire movie, and
Speaker 1: you see those guys, you know the Endless sands. That's
Speaker 1: that's this incredible place. And we went down to Tasmania.
Speaker 1: We we flew to all these places, and I made
Speaker 1: myself a vow that one day I was going to
Speaker 1: come and live in Australia. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: made it, It was just an instinctive thought. But when
Speaker 1: you see the beauty of this place and you feel
Speaker 1: the space and you feel the you know you can
Speaker 1: be lonely here and yet happy. How can I describe that?
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's solitude that you can reach in
Speaker 1: this place. Um and and a little bit less bs
Speaker 1: than the rest of the world, you know, they're a
Speaker 1: bit less hype. So I kind of over the years,
Speaker 1: I started coming back and coming back and coming back,
Speaker 1: And when I finally moved in here in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five with my lovely partner Donna Teller, who was
Speaker 1: also a man my manager at the time as well. UM.
Speaker 1: When we moved in, they asked me how many times
Speaker 1: you have been to Australia then, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the immigration standard question. I said forty five, which was
Speaker 1: the absolute God's truth, you know. So so hey, it's
Speaker 1: my it was my second hand home, you know. But
Speaker 1: but let me say as well, I've always loved working
Speaker 1: in exile. I mean when I lived in when I
Speaker 1: lived in the States, in in California, and in briefly
Speaker 1: in New York, made all those albums during the seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt really good at being away from home. My
Speaker 1: father was a merchant seaman, so basically he sailed around
Speaker 1: the world as a ship's engineer, and I suppose I
Speaker 1: followed in his footsteps. I always loved traveling, and I
Speaker 1: love being away from home. It pushed me more, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think being here it pushes me to prove
Speaker 1: myself all the time. Even though I'm seventy four in May,
Speaker 1: I still feel I've got a lot to prove. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've been to Australia a couple of times. I know
Speaker 1: most of the people in the industry there, and they
Speaker 1: talk about how far it is from everything. They are
Speaker 1: thrilled when you actually go there, kind of like what
Speaker 1: you're saying your first time in nine Oh. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but they also talk about the distance. It's certainly well
Speaker 1: known in terms of bands Australia has the best live
Speaker 1: bands because they're limited number of markets they have to
Speaker 1: play all this time. But do you feel somewhat disconnected
Speaker 1: from the business, from the news, from anything. No, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. And I think that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: look at here, we are talking on zoom and we're
Speaker 1: able to reach the world from wherever we are. I
Speaker 1: mean I follow Formula one, you know, Grand pre Racing,
Speaker 1: and most of the journalists who work on that, um
Speaker 1: that business was always centered around England, around Britain, rather
Speaker 1: like my version of the music business was always centered
Speaker 1: around Britain. You know, it had to be Britain first.
Speaker 1: That was the where you know, you've got the best
Speaker 1: equipment for the studio, and that was where you kind
Speaker 1: of that was where you worked. If that was your
Speaker 1: that was your field, your place. Now, all these guys
Speaker 1: in Formula one, they all live in Spain, they all
Speaker 1: live in Italy, they all live in Germany because they
Speaker 1: don't need to be in in Britain to do their work.
Speaker 1: So just like that, I mean, I think I've talked
Speaker 1: to a few rock journalists who live in the Demonic
Speaker 1: American rock journalists who live in Dominican Republic or Mexico,
Speaker 1: you know, or Canada, because we now have linked the
Speaker 1: world by technology. So I think you don't and I
Speaker 1: think you know if you if you follow some of
Speaker 1: the the news media to find out about what's happening
Speaker 1: in the business. Like this morning, I was looking at
Speaker 1: Mixed Magazine, and you know, they're they're blog and finding
Speaker 1: out about some new studio gear that I'm interested in,
Speaker 1: and I feel like, yeah, at that moment I'm reading
Speaker 1: Mixed Magazine, I'm I'm in California, you know. So so
Speaker 1: I I think the world has got small and got closer.
Speaker 1: Air travel is easier as well, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: COVID's put a spike into a lot of what we do,
Speaker 1: traveling wise and international wise. But I think that I
Speaker 1: don't feel disconnected, and I wake up every morning feeling
Speaker 1: at home. You know. Let's start at Formula one. They
Speaker 1: were just in Melbourne, did you go no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a bit off it at the moment, although
Speaker 1: I talked to about six different friends who are down there,
Speaker 1: you know, so I get the inside track, you know. So,
Speaker 1: so yeah, and I over the years, I've just become
Speaker 1: a little bit less of a racing guy and a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a more of a chronicler. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm writing my book at the moment, Bob.
Speaker 1: So I'm one thousand, four hundred words into the book
Speaker 1: and chasing my chronicling my life. And I've got a
Speaker 1: vast amount of material here. I'm working on everyday research,
Speaker 1: you know, research, research, research, find out what I was
Speaker 1: doing on June the eleven. You know, You've got a
Speaker 1: couple of things. Let me ask. Yeah, George Harrison was
Speaker 1: famously into Formula one. He was a good friend. You
Speaker 1: were into Formula one? But what was the appeal back then?
Speaker 1: I think that we all grew up. You know. Look,
Speaker 1: boys grow up to either want to be racing drivers
Speaker 1: or fighter pilots. It's the fantasy when you're at school.
Speaker 1: Maybe soccer players or American football players, or baseball players
Speaker 1: or tennis players. But mostly I think boys, you know,
Speaker 1: like that dare devil sport. You know that that that
Speaker 1: devil may care kind of dangerous thing that you do.
Speaker 1: You know. So I grew up with motor racing. I
Speaker 1: used to follow Phil Hill and Sterling Moss. My father
Speaker 1: raced motorcycles, so you know, just as a spare time
Speaker 1: kind of thing until his mom, until my mom stopped
Speaker 1: him because it was too dangerous. Um And I remember
Speaker 1: him taking me to the Goodwood Race Course, which is
Speaker 1: very famous now for historic events. Um And we went
Speaker 1: there and Sterling Moss crashed and right in front of us,
Speaker 1: and it was a crash that nearly finished his career.
Speaker 1: And I it was just one of those moments when
Speaker 1: I just I thought that the smell of the petrol,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole kind of screeching of tires, the
Speaker 1: whole dangerous excitement of it, I just found very compelling.
Speaker 1: And you know the most beautiful part of that story
Speaker 1: is that Sterling Moss became a friend many years later
Speaker 1: because I met him through you know, Formula one. Of course,
Speaker 1: now he knows I'm Leo say I'm not Jerry Sarah
Speaker 1: any longer. Um And and we became pals and I
Speaker 1: used to go to dinner with him all the time.
Speaker 1: So it isn't incredible that you meet your heroes and
Speaker 1: they become your friends. Okay, staying with Fromula one just
Speaker 1: for another second. Yeah, why are you off it now?
Speaker 1: And what do you think of the Netflix series? If
Speaker 1: you've seen it? Can I say the word crap. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you can use if you want to. It's fucking crap. No. Um,
Speaker 1: I just think it's all become a little bit less Vegas,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Of course, the Americans group, you know,
Speaker 1: big group have taken it over, and of course they
Speaker 1: want you know, you know, lots of lots of bodies
Speaker 1: at the track, and they want to appeal to young
Speaker 1: kids and girls and all of this stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: not as pure as it used to be and the
Speaker 1: rules are starting to get fudged around to kind of
Speaker 1: make the best, uh, you know, the best result and
Speaker 1: netflix the series. Although it's very well done, of course
Speaker 1: you can't say it's not. Um. It tends to kind
Speaker 1: of bring up kind of you know, it makes it
Speaker 1: makes stories that aren't really true, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: fictionalizes it and sort of dramatizes it. And I think
Speaker 1: over dramatization, life's exciting enough, isn't it, Bob? You know,
Speaker 1: do we need to have a dramatist kind of rescript everything?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a bit like when you watch
Speaker 1: a biopic movie. I can't watch the Queen movie or
Speaker 1: the Rod Stewart movie, whatever they are. You know, I
Speaker 1: just can't watch them because you know, they're just kind
Speaker 1: of you know, enhancing all the details to to cry
Speaker 1: and try and create something that somebody who's just not
Speaker 1: interested in the subject of, say Jim Morrison, will be
Speaker 1: attracted to. But I mean, anybody following the life of
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison, boy, that's exciting enough as it is, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I agree totally. Let me just ask you one,
Speaker 1: why dramatized Janice Joplin When Janice Jock it was Janis Joplin. Man. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that we've lost. Of course,
Speaker 1: when you went to go see these acts before YouTube, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and you experienced it live, it was something transcended. They
Speaker 1: cannot be replicated today. Just the final note on Formula one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got into it. But the final result last year
Speaker 1: with Verse stopping taking over Hamilton's in the rules, I'm
Speaker 1: eating out dreadful. Well, that's that's what's kind of that's
Speaker 1: what's led me to this position. I mean, I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really a shame when you get your
Speaker 1: best protagonists a bit a little bit like you know, um,
Speaker 1: some fights are coming in in Muhammad Ali's Prime and
Speaker 1: with four hands, you know, and you know, four arms,
Speaker 1: and they let him box and he beats Ali of
Speaker 1: course because he's got four arms. Um, and you're going
Speaker 1: to call that legitimate, you know, it's the same thing. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just I think it's kind of cheating. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think that guy had that race one. He driven brilliantly.
Speaker 1: His story is the story of the greatest of all time.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to be controversial here and I'm saying,
Speaker 1: is it because he's black? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a really it's a really difficult one
Speaker 1: to get into. But they wanted the young, the Stapend
Speaker 1: to win. They got for Stappen. I mean, the first
Speaker 1: thing he did was put number one on his car,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of gratuitous, you know, to
Speaker 1: say the least, because they all have their numbers and
Speaker 1: their logos going with that. And of course you've got
Speaker 1: the right if you win the championship to put number
Speaker 1: one on your on your team, but on your car.
Speaker 1: But I mean mostly those drivers, they don't race on
Speaker 1: those kind of ego principles. And and here you've got
Speaker 1: an ego guy. Well you know, well, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: The best news of all with to close on Formula
Speaker 1: one is the Ferrari now looked like they're they're wrapping
Speaker 1: it up. So that's fantastic that the oldest team, the
Speaker 1: most traditional team. UM it's too young, wonderful young drivers.
Speaker 1: UM is doing what it says on the packet, and
Speaker 1: I think that's beautiful. If the Red Car wins, I'll
Speaker 1: be very happy. Okay, let's go back to what you
Speaker 1: said being in exile. Now, let's just talk about recording music.
Speaker 1: So do you find it's easier to do in isolation
Speaker 1: and exile? Yeah, well, I I've developed a way of
Speaker 1: making records completely by myself, and I'm very proud of it.
Speaker 1: I'm It's taken me a while to get there. But
Speaker 1: you know, if I go back, I started as all
Speaker 1: I wanted to be as a painter, an artist. I
Speaker 1: was into you know, people as various as as as
Speaker 1: Marcel Duchamp and Mark Rothko and and and Henri Russo
Speaker 1: and and Van Gogh. But I mean I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a painter. I at school, I was great at art.
Speaker 1: That was my great ability. I was a dyslexic kid,
Speaker 1: so I leaned towards the creative side because I was
Speaker 1: no good at the practical. My father was an engineer.
Speaker 1: He was ashamed of me because I couldn't add put
Speaker 1: two and two together. And I mean until I was nineteen,
Speaker 1: I couldn't even tie my shoelaces. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: left and right worth? Could you really not tie your shoelaces?
Speaker 1: I really couldn't. I really couldn't. I was I was.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd bulk at anything technical like that because
Speaker 1: the laces would go in different positions. So my brain
Speaker 1: told me, you know, left and right position, all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still can't play drums. I can't coordinate
Speaker 1: one hand on the other, so going you know, having
Speaker 1: those disabilities leads to incredible mind and creative abilities. You know.
Speaker 1: So I could imagine things. I could I could see things.
Speaker 1: I could work out perspective and distance in my head.
Speaker 1: So I was born to be an artist. Now I
Speaker 1: went to art school. Um, my parents argued with the
Speaker 1: the art school uh burses when we got in, you know,
Speaker 1: so to say, he said, I don't want him be
Speaker 1: in a bohemian and get him a job in commercial arts.
Speaker 1: So you know, I went into a commercial art course,
Speaker 1: you know, to do that, which was very frustrating. But
Speaker 1: I would bunk off all the time and go to
Speaker 1: the life drawing classes and go to the art classes
Speaker 1: and hang out with all the fine artists. You know.
Speaker 1: So I was already a rebel in that time. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I just had this creative brain.
Speaker 1: I've always had that, and that that I mean, I
Speaker 1: could sing. I sang in the church choir. I had
Speaker 1: a wonderful priest who taught me to sing, so I
Speaker 1: always had that in the background. And apparently I have
Speaker 1: perfect pitch, so you know, that gave me the gift
Speaker 1: of always been able to know what note I was
Speaker 1: singing and tune into the sound of birds or whatever
Speaker 1: in the background, you know, So I could find those things.
Speaker 1: So when I actually got to the studio and I
Speaker 1: did working, of course, nobody would let me near the
Speaker 1: control desk and that they just put me on the microphone.
Speaker 1: But I mean they were amazed that I could walk,
Speaker 1: I could go out and have a sandwich and come
Speaker 1: back and sing in exactly the same key as I
Speaker 1: had left the room singing in you know. So I
Speaker 1: had those gifts. I had those abilities and I was
Speaker 1: a quick learner a good observer as well. So all
Speaker 1: the years that say, from seventy four, seventy three, maybe
Speaker 1: seventy two, all the way until um, I was working
Speaker 1: with other writers and other producers and learning their craft
Speaker 1: by just observing them. So now I've got to this
Speaker 1: finite point where I can do the lot myself. And
Speaker 1: so I believe, going back to the art theory, that
Speaker 1: if Van Gogh and Picasso and all those guys didn't
Speaker 1: need somebody in the room to do the blues and
Speaker 1: the reds for them, why can't I do the lot?
Speaker 1: If I call myself an artist, I should be to
Speaker 1: make the whole thing, so I should be able to
Speaker 1: learn the technology to make it. Slave to me absolutely, So,
Speaker 1: you know, based on our discussions and preparations, it seems
Speaker 1: like you're very technologically savvy intuitively, so I think I
Speaker 1: think it's an intuitive thing. You know that I honestly
Speaker 1: I read manuals and I don't know what the hell
Speaker 1: I'm reading. And sometimes my engineer, live engineer, Damian Young,
Speaker 1: great guy in Melbourne, sometimes has to do a screen
Speaker 1: time thing with me, you know, with team viewer and
Speaker 1: come onto the screen and sort out what I can't do.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Leo, you do it like oh, I'm going,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a klutz. But but we get there,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm determined, my determination, and I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm seventy four in May and I'm still this ambitious,
Speaker 1: determined guy who's got to prove all these things to himself.
Speaker 1: But that's how I am, That's how I'm built. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how much equipment do you have in the studio?
Speaker 1: How professional is it? It's pretty pro I mean I
Speaker 1: work with a computer which is kind of highly boosted.
Speaker 1: I've got a whole server system in here, about twenty
Speaker 1: one terror bytes of memory, and it's a whole radio
Speaker 1: system with backups. If the power goes off here, which
Speaker 1: it often does because we're in the country, um, I've
Speaker 1: got a twenty four hour backup, so everything just clicks
Speaker 1: in and works. I've got accelerated Internet as well, which
Speaker 1: which helps me stay on touch with it all. I
Speaker 1: have a necessar desk, some beautiful mics. I've got a
Speaker 1: new mic by a guy called Lowton who's built this
Speaker 1: incredible mic which David Crosby as well uses, and Dave
Speaker 1: Crosby's engineer was a guy that I knew, so I
Speaker 1: quizzed him about mikes and he said, throughout your name,
Speaker 1: throughout you annoymans, get this one. So I've got this
Speaker 1: amazing mic that just makes my voice sound really sweet.
Speaker 1: I've built a booth in my studio all on wheels
Speaker 1: where I sing in. So i have a big open
Speaker 1: space barn here. I'm speaking to you from one side
Speaker 1: of the barn, and I'd say it's about a thousand
Speaker 1: square feet and it's all open. But I've got these
Speaker 1: things called clouds, which you know, basically give you acoustic
Speaker 1: treatment over where the monitors are and everything. I use
Speaker 1: Miller and Cries or monitors. I use Crane Song, which
Speaker 1: is Dave Hill who created the Summit brand, and then
Speaker 1: Crane's song. I use his mike PRIs which are fantastic.
Speaker 1: And I've got a lot of expensive equipment, um incredible
Speaker 1: electrostatic headphones and these these Planar Dan Clark Audio. I'll
Speaker 1: give him a plug from California. And you know, I've
Speaker 1: got all the toys, Tina Turner's old Newhiman microphone and
Speaker 1: some beautiful A kg s. I've got all the toys
Speaker 1: and I can basically, you know, start a project by
Speaker 1: myself and not bother to call anybody, which is great
Speaker 1: and that's what I love. Okay, So you have a
Speaker 1: new record, Northern Songs, which are covers of Beatle records.
Speaker 1: Did you play all the instruments, do everything yourself? Yeah? Everything?
Speaker 1: So how did you do it? I mean with the Beatles,
Speaker 1: I always imagined how I would treat those songs, being
Speaker 1: very cheeky, you know. So it's a kind of it's
Speaker 1: an interpretation first off. So you know when people hear it,
Speaker 1: they won't hear direct covers, you know, they'll hear um
Speaker 1: leo leo phid versions, you know. So we've changed the
Speaker 1: beats and we've changed the field and all sorts of
Speaker 1: things like that. So that's the first point. So I
Speaker 1: heard these songs in my head, and I hear things
Speaker 1: in my head sometimes from dreams as well. I've write
Speaker 1: songs in dreams. And then I just I mean, I
Speaker 1: have seven studio here, let's say, because basically I've designed
Speaker 1: it so that if it's the winter, you can instantly
Speaker 1: turn the it's it's hot here in five minutes. Big
Speaker 1: radiator hydroponic system in here. Great air conditioning for the summer.
Speaker 1: So I'll get up in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: straight from a dream or straight from some imagination, run
Speaker 1: and immediately come in and just start working on something.
Speaker 1: The fact that I'm not using another studio really helps
Speaker 1: because everything is ready to go all the time. So
Speaker 1: wherever you were last into a song, say working on
Speaker 1: the base, if you leave it alone and you go
Speaker 1: away for a few hours, you can come back and
Speaker 1: just carry on. And I just hear all the lines
Speaker 1: in my head. I've I can dissect all the parts
Speaker 1: of a song in my memory and just work on
Speaker 1: them and put it all together. Um, I've just got this,
Speaker 1: found this ability. And I suppose the dyslexia has helped
Speaker 1: in a way because I'm able to kind of really
Speaker 1: dig into my imagination or my mind and and use
Speaker 1: that for all my work. You know. So I start
Speaker 1: with a basic template. I'll put down a drum beat
Speaker 1: a keyboard. Go. Okay, just to be clear, you said earlier,
Speaker 1: because you're slexic, you couldn't play the drums. So these
Speaker 1: are electronic drums you're putting on the record. Everything is
Speaker 1: played from a keyboard into the computer. So every note
Speaker 1: relates to a keyboard. I don't really use pads. Some
Speaker 1: people use pads, you know for drums and everything. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't do that, and I tend to cut and
Speaker 1: paste a lot of stuff, so I tend to I
Speaker 1: have a vast sampler library, you know. My my, my,
Speaker 1: my computer is relying on about eight terror bytes of memory,
Speaker 1: slaving to it from various things and from various other
Speaker 1: outboard uh memory units, you know. So I've got all
Speaker 1: these samples, and somehow my head always manages to find
Speaker 1: the right sounds and the right um, the right grooves
Speaker 1: as it were, you know, on the drums, to to
Speaker 1: give me the field. So I'll use lots of different
Speaker 1: elements to get there. Sometimes some loops as well, so
Speaker 1: I mean get back on the record. Is just the
Speaker 1: drum loop that I found from some guys that work
Speaker 1: with in Denmark, and he gave me a CD of
Speaker 1: all of his drums, and bang, I'll put it all
Speaker 1: together from there. Um just added some symbols in the
Speaker 1: right places, you know. But I just love that feeling
Speaker 1: of control. You know, you can do things yourself. It
Speaker 1: is possible. You start off with the drums, told us
Speaker 1: how you built the track from there. Yeah, build a
Speaker 1: track basically, put down a keyboard. It's it's it can
Speaker 1: be a tiss in process because you're writing a song
Speaker 1: at the same time. So I'm I'm writing lyrics at
Speaker 1: that moment um and and you know, working on a
Speaker 1: vocal line. Um, I don't know, it's it's it's just
Speaker 1: it just comes, and it comes fairly easily. I have
Speaker 1: to say, it's hard to describe the process. I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to do something soon for I think it's Mixed magazine actually,
Speaker 1: um where they're going to look at my studio and
Speaker 1: the way that I work, and and they said, they
Speaker 1: don't know anybody who works like me. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: Todd Rundgren did when he was doing his a cappella
Speaker 1: record and a few things like that, but they don't
Speaker 1: know anybody. Stevie Wonder of course does everything himself, and
Speaker 1: Prince did as well. But at the same time, Prince
Speaker 1: would bring in musicians to work with an engineers, he
Speaker 1: would always have around. I have nobody. So I think
Speaker 1: what I'm doing is pretty unique, you know. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about acoustic instruments. Do you play guitar? Do you play
Speaker 1: all these other No? But they're all available as samples now,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean wonderful program called Native Instruments. UM.
Speaker 1: Just to name one of them. They can give you
Speaker 1: strummed guitars. So basically you can get a guitar which
Speaker 1: will go ding ding ding ding ding. Now, you might
Speaker 1: not like one of those beats, so immediately you go
Speaker 1: onto the screen and cut that up and then get
Speaker 1: it to work in the way that you want it
Speaker 1: to work. I mean, when I'm working, I often start
Speaker 1: off a song. I'll be completely in the wrong key,
Speaker 1: so I'll have to move everything, so it becomes an
Speaker 1: extraneous process, you know. Um, But that's that's okay. I
Speaker 1: mean anything to get there. And I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: I mean Northern Songs. It's the second album that I've
Speaker 1: made like this. So I made an album called Selfie, UM,
Speaker 1: and I called it Selfie because I was doing it
Speaker 1: all myself. UM and I that came out a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago or so. UM. And they can be
Speaker 1: a long process. I mean, I don't care how long
Speaker 1: it takes. The Beatles projects started ten years ago, so um.
Speaker 1: And I have an engineer, an amazing engineer that I
Speaker 1: use for mixing and and also, you know we he
Speaker 1: does the market mastering as well. He's called John Hudson
Speaker 1: and he used to be an Olympic Studios who ran
Speaker 1: Olympic Studios, a very famous studio in London. And he's
Speaker 1: the guy who recorded that brought all the Bryan Adams songs.
Speaker 1: You know, um he recorded Tina Turner, he recorded He's
Speaker 1: got Grammys for Tina turn What's love got to do
Speaker 1: with it? All those tracks? We don't need another hero.
Speaker 1: John is probably one of the best mixing engineers in
Speaker 1: the world and he started mixing me way back in UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I was working with this guy
Speaker 1: Alan Tani, we did more than I can say, and
Speaker 1: Richard Road and a few other songs, and John was
Speaker 1: the mixing engineer and I always got on well with John.
Speaker 1: And one day I moved in here to as I say,
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and in two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: I got a call out of the blue. Hey, it's
Speaker 1: John no Going, what what are you doing? And I
Speaker 1: noticed it was an Australian number, and of course his
Speaker 1: wife is Australian. He said, well, I packed up the studio,
Speaker 1: I got out of there, got fed up with it.
Speaker 1: There are a few complications. I'm here in Australia, so
Speaker 1: I said great. He said, look, I'm looking for a
Speaker 1: studio to work in. I said, well, I know there's
Speaker 1: a studio here called three or one Studios, which is
Speaker 1: linked with Abbey Road. It's my studio down here, is
Speaker 1: quite beautifully equipped and everything. And On is the genius
Speaker 1: with SSL as well, you know, always has been one
Speaker 1: of the best mixing engineers. I mean, I mean he
Speaker 1: did he did the the the Live Aid song, you know,
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. You know, so he's he's
Speaker 1: the genius with SSL. So when I told them John
Speaker 1: Hudson was down, they said, oh, bring him down, bring
Speaker 1: him down, and they gave us a room in there,
Speaker 1: and with we only had computers in there and a
Speaker 1: little mixing desk. But that's how the project started. Just
Speaker 1: literally he was off the plane but a jet lag
Speaker 1: and I played him these songs I was working on,
Speaker 1: these Beatles songs. I played him Strawberry Fills, Forever Um
Speaker 1: and Norwegian would eleanor Rigby with the Michael Jackson kind
Speaker 1: of beat to it, and and he said, great, let's
Speaker 1: let's mix them. He mixed them straight away, and those
Speaker 1: are the mixes that are on the album there from
Speaker 1: ten years ago. Okay, let's talk about the Beatles. When
Speaker 1: did you first hear the Beatles. I think I think
Speaker 1: give Us Love Me Do, which was the first really
Speaker 1: real proper single that they made, and I was at school,
Speaker 1: I must have been about fifteen sixteen something like that,
Speaker 1: and this song came over, and I've got to say
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty cool because, um, I like
Speaker 1: the way that the guy John Lennon was I'm just
Speaker 1: checking the time I had thirty two minutes. Um, I
Speaker 1: liked the way that the guy it was playing harmonica
Speaker 1: because I was playing harmonica at the time and I
Speaker 1: was playing, you know, I was just learning the harmonica,
Speaker 1: and hey, this guy with the Beatles was playing the harmonica.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. So that's what made me listen to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was much more into Buddy Holly and
Speaker 1: Elvis and and blues music basically, and folk music, you know,
Speaker 1: Woody Guthrie and things like that. I hadn't quite discovered
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan yet, which was going to be the big
Speaker 1: one for me, but but yeah, I was. I was intrigued.
Speaker 1: I loved Lonnie Donnie Gun and you know, and skiffle
Speaker 1: and and pure music, you know, Sunny Terry and Brandon McGee,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and here comes this guy making this
Speaker 1: pop song but he's playing a harmonica, so it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I think that was the first time I noticed them.
Speaker 1: So what was it like experiencing the Beatles in the UK?
Speaker 1: We know ed Sullivan Beatlemania and the United States. What
Speaker 1: was it like in the UK? Well, I think that
Speaker 1: we were watching them develop, you know, and that was
Speaker 1: what's interesting because they were based here and you see
Speaker 1: them on the streets. I mean. I used to work
Speaker 1: in the design studio when I was about eighteen and
Speaker 1: left art school. Um and I was in a design
Speaker 1: studio in London and John Lennon used to visit Yoko
Speaker 1: ownA who had an apartment on the top. That was
Speaker 1: when they were first dating. Um Well, she was in
Speaker 1: the apartment with her then boyfriend, so John would come
Speaker 1: and visit. Now, the the art gallery guy that Yoko
Speaker 1: was with didn't like anybody smoking upstairs. John smoked like
Speaker 1: a chimney, so he had to smoke down in the
Speaker 1: yard where I had to smoke as well. Because basically
Speaker 1: we had a lot of chemicals in the in the
Speaker 1: art room, and you know, you couldn't smoke there. So
Speaker 1: I would go down to the backyard and there's this
Speaker 1: guy was turned up with the white suit and I
Speaker 1: knew who he was, um, but I couldn't really sort
Speaker 1: of say hey, Mr lenn and I just couldn't bring
Speaker 1: myself to Oh I'm a big fan, you know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't bring myself to do that. So I just said,
Speaker 1: had I mate? And uh? And he said hello, mate, back,
Speaker 1: you know, and we shared Siggi's together, and sometimes he'd
Speaker 1: roll a joint and with our smoker joint together, and
Speaker 1: you know, we were smoking companions and it's really kind
Speaker 1: of funny because you know, you know, he said, what's
Speaker 1: your name? I said Jerry, And I said, yeah, what's yours? Oh,
Speaker 1: John John? And I think he kind of got a
Speaker 1: kick out of the fact that I wasn't John Lennon
Speaker 1: and him or beatling him, you know. So so we
Speaker 1: we became hey, how are you today? Yeah, good mate?
Speaker 1: What's up to? I'm just visiting Yoka up stairs. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll be here for a few hours anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: tell me what you're working on today. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: cover for this band, you know, and he said yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, I know a bit about music, you know,
Speaker 1: and we'd we'd play this kind of decoy game where
Speaker 1: you know, we just wouldn't admit who he was, which
Speaker 1: was very cool. Years later, Okay, spin years forward, I'm
Speaker 1: making my first album, silver Bird, Um and Adam Faith
Speaker 1: who's managing me and producing it with David Courtney, my
Speaker 1: co writer as well, but co producer with Adam. They
Speaker 1: decide that we've got to go to Apple Studios. I mean,
Speaker 1: Adam is a complete beat or nut, you know, so
Speaker 1: we've got to go to not Abbey Road, sorry, so
Speaker 1: to Savile Row the Beatles, the Apple Studios to master
Speaker 1: the record. And there's this great guy there called Porky Peckham,
Speaker 1: George Peckham, who's probably one of the great mastering engineers.
Speaker 1: He was used to He's known as Porky and he
Speaker 1: you'd always his ascetates back. I've got a couple of them,
Speaker 1: and he'd always scratched Porky into that, you know, or
Speaker 1: else a pig sign so that, you know, very collectible
Speaker 1: items now they go from thousands hundreds of thousands. But anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: we went down there to see to see George and
Speaker 1: you know, get on with the master and you know.
Speaker 1: And I was allowed to come along that day to
Speaker 1: have a listen in. And I walked through the door
Speaker 1: and this burly guy kind of well I thought he
Speaker 1: was burly anyway, sort of pushes me out the way
Speaker 1: as he's coming, rushing out the door, and then turns
Speaker 1: around and apologize and said, I'm sorry, man coming just
Speaker 1: a clash of two people coming in the same door.
Speaker 1: And it's Lennon and he told me and said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's you. He said it's my smoking buddy.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, Leo and he said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you're. Leo says, said you're you're down in the
Speaker 1: cutting room today he said, He said, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: things happened to you. He said, can we finally can
Speaker 1: we finally face up? He said, I'm a beatle, you know.
Speaker 1: I said I know. And he said, good to see you. Man.
Speaker 1: He gave me a big hug and went on his way.
Speaker 1: People rushing him out the door and come on, John,
Speaker 1: come on, and he's saying shut up and turning around
Speaker 1: to give me a hug. It was quite sweet. You
Speaker 1: talk about how influential Bob Dylan was to you told
Speaker 1: us that, Yeah, I think I think. You know, I
Speaker 1: had a cousin, an older cousin. Um, I'd never experienced
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan before, but I loved Woody Guthrie and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: all these people that you know, Bob loved, you know,
Speaker 1: the folk musicians. Um, I love what they were all doing,
Speaker 1: rambling Jack Elliott, I'm I'm remembering all people like that
Speaker 1: who were in Dylan's Psyche phil Oaks. You know, I
Speaker 1: love what they were doing separately. And then my cousin,
Speaker 1: my older cousin, went to stay with him in the Midlands,
Speaker 1: in England, and he pulled out two records and he said,
Speaker 1: because he had a record player and he was collecting stuff,
Speaker 1: and I'd heard Bill Hailey and Elvis Presley with him,
Speaker 1: you know, okay that was great, but I could hear
Speaker 1: them anyway on the radio. And he he just bought
Speaker 1: this record and it was Bob Dylan, the first Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan record. So this is three well, I think sixty
Speaker 1: two was the first one in America that was mostly
Speaker 1: cover sixty two. Yeah, yeah, no, that's it's sixty two.
Speaker 1: And so here's this record and I'm about fifteen sixteen
Speaker 1: and something like that, maybe even younger. And he had
Speaker 1: that record and he put it on and the voice
Speaker 1: and the whole kind of I don't know almost the
Speaker 1: anarchy of the whole thing. I mean, the guy couldn't
Speaker 1: really sing great, but the voice was obviously put only
Speaker 1: trying to sound like an old guy of sixty. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's something gripping about it. And the songs, I mean,
Speaker 1: fixing to die, Please see that my grave is kept clean,
Speaker 1: the House of the Rising Sun. The songs were amazing,
Speaker 1: and his songs as well, about you know about Woody Guthrie. UM.
Speaker 1: So this this record just kind of stayed with me,
Speaker 1: and I asked him if I could borrow it, and
Speaker 1: he let me borrow it, and I take it back
Speaker 1: and play it on Dad's radiogram, you know, those old
Speaker 1: kind of systems that we had, and and listen to
Speaker 1: it and listen to it, and it got into my bloodstream.
Speaker 1: And then when the second record came out, which was
Speaker 1: Free Wheeling, I was straight to the record store, you know,
Speaker 1: using all my pocket money, all the money that I
Speaker 1: I gained by getting paid for delivering church leaflets from
Speaker 1: from the church, all that sort of stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I I um, I went and put all my hard
Speaker 1: earned into buying that record. And it wasn't a disappointment.
Speaker 1: He was even better because now he's writing more songs,
Speaker 1: and or at least that you know, he's putting more
Speaker 1: of his own songs on there, and he's got a
Speaker 1: story to tell, and he's writting about Hattie Carroll and
Speaker 1: people like that, and you know there's the protest songs.
Speaker 1: Times were changing blind in the wind Man. This next
Speaker 1: series of records that I had, every single one, brought
Speaker 1: them all on the first day. I was absolutely totally
Speaker 1: gluten and I thought, that's the man I want to be,
Speaker 1: you know, when I finally grow up, that's who I'm
Speaker 1: going to be. I'm going to get on the road.
Speaker 1: Through him. I found Jack, Carol Akin and Alan Ginsberg
Speaker 1: and you know all these great writers Steinberg, Steinbeck, you know,
Speaker 1: John Steinbeck and Cannery Row. You know you're reading all
Speaker 1: these things, Albert Camu, the outsiders. You know. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I I just it opened up a whole world for me.
Speaker 1: It opened up the world as well. That told me
Speaker 1: that the spoken word, the poetry could be great as music.
Speaker 1: You know, That's what it opened up for me. And
Speaker 1: and I was trying to be a poet at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, I was always writing down, you know, everything
Speaker 1: that I thought of and trying to kind of wax
Speaker 1: lyrical into these lines and on the page. And suddenly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some time later on, I think maybe
Speaker 1: even when I was first working with David Courtney, come
Speaker 1: right there. I would look at these old old lyric books,
Speaker 1: these old poetry books, and David would say, hey, I've
Speaker 1: got an idea for a tune, you know, and and
Speaker 1: he'd be playing away, you know, dump dumped, the dump dumped,
Speaker 1: and don't don't don't on a piano, and I go,
Speaker 1: I'm a one man band, you know, so and that
Speaker 1: would come straight off the lyric sheet, you know, or
Speaker 1: the poetry sheet. So I was using what I've written
Speaker 1: between twelve and sixteen. That's was the first album that
Speaker 1: was all of my poetry from those days, the basis
Speaker 1: of those songs, the basis of the lyrics. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. Where did you grow up? Shore
Speaker 1: on My Sea a little town between Worthing and Brighton
Speaker 1: in Sussex, right on the English Channel, fifty miles south
Speaker 1: of London. Yeah, on the coast. How far from Brighton?
Speaker 1: It was in between, I say, about seven miles from
Speaker 1: Brighton and about six miles from Worthy. The whole Branton
Speaker 1: Mods and Rockers thing. Was that amplified in the media
Speaker 1: or was that real and something you were aware of? Oh?
Speaker 1: That was truly real? Yeah, yeah, I mean we England
Speaker 1: basically had had of you know, after the war, which
Speaker 1: costs England all its economy, you know, because it puts
Speaker 1: so much into it. Even though your Yanks came over
Speaker 1: and helped us out, we still had to pay for
Speaker 1: so much ourselves. So I mean I grew up when
Speaker 1: when I was fourteen years old, I still had a
Speaker 1: ration car really, so there was still rationing of some things.
Speaker 1: You know. I grew up without sugar. I've never had
Speaker 1: very much for sweet tooth, so I think I'm getting
Speaker 1: one hour's I'm getting older. But we didn't have candy
Speaker 1: bars and things like that, you know, so it was
Speaker 1: all very basic, rough stuff, and our our politics became
Speaker 1: very safe, you know, very authoritarian. This is where the
Speaker 1: Conservative Party came in um and basically you know, trying
Speaker 1: to tell everybody we're so lucky to be free from war. Uh,
Speaker 1: that we must kind of be prepared to do it hard.
Speaker 1: So you've got a youth that came up in the
Speaker 1: in the fifties, i'd say, and then into the sixties
Speaker 1: that was very disgruntled. You know. They didn't understand why
Speaker 1: when all the American kids had drive ins and and
Speaker 1: rock music and and you know, girls were allowed to
Speaker 1: wear bikinis, we didn't have that, you know, so they
Speaker 1: they kind of, I don't know, they felt that they
Speaker 1: were left out, you know. I mean when Rock around
Speaker 1: the Clock with Bill Haley came out in England, it
Speaker 1: was this phenomenon, you know that all the kids would
Speaker 1: go to the cinema to watch it. Now, wow, can
Speaker 1: they really get away with that? You know, so everybody's
Speaker 1: dancing and jiving. Nobody would dance and jive in a
Speaker 1: in a concert or anything in England. You know. It
Speaker 1: took a little while and visits by Bill Halian, Eddie
Speaker 1: Cochrane and gene of Vincent before that happened. Um, and
Speaker 1: that was into the sixties, you know, fifties, the fifties,
Speaker 1: none of that happened. So the early sixties descent in
Speaker 1: the youth was growing in England and I suppose the
Speaker 1: Mods grew out of that. I mean I was on
Speaker 1: mod um at school. Uh, and then the slightly older
Speaker 1: guys would be the Rockers. They had all the motorbikes,
Speaker 1: you know, the Mods took on the scooters just to
Speaker 1: be different than than the rockers. And in Brighton, you know,
Speaker 1: as the Mods came into being bands like the Small Faces,
Speaker 1: the Kinks, um, you know, them playing the music that
Speaker 1: the Mods liked, Um, the the there came a clash
Speaker 1: of culture with use. You know. The rockers were teddy boys,
Speaker 1: you know. They they kind of like live life, loud
Speaker 1: and rough and very leathery, and the Mods were kind
Speaker 1: of really stylish and bespoke, a little quieter spoken. I mean,
Speaker 1: later we got skin heads out of Mods, but that's
Speaker 1: a kind of different thing because that kind of almost
Speaker 1: leads you to punk. But basically us Mods, I mean
Speaker 1: we went to great tailors and had fabulous looking suits,
Speaker 1: you know, in silky material and really cool shoes. We
Speaker 1: wanted to look clean and bespoke, you know, rather than
Speaker 1: the rockers who looked like they were covered in oil
Speaker 1: from their motorbikes. So you had this clash going on,
Speaker 1: and it all happened in Brighton, and the who I
Speaker 1: suppose was the big mod band that I left out there,
Speaker 1: and and and the who are kind of you know
Speaker 1: with my talk about my generation describes it all. Really,
Speaker 1: you know. I hope I die before I get old.
Speaker 1: Did you have a scooter? No? No, I couldn't have
Speaker 1: had one. I mean we had no money. That was
Speaker 1: for rich mods. I had a bicycle. You're singing in church? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Yet you want to be a fine artist. How do
Speaker 1: you ultimately get into the music business? Happened really by accident.
Speaker 1: I had a pretty good career as a graphic designer,
Speaker 1: commercial artist, illustrator, even designed type typography. UM. I had
Speaker 1: a pretty good career. I left art school after only
Speaker 1: one year of a two year course. UM. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to Uh, I was supposed to do longer and
Speaker 1: I didn't, um I I. Um yeah. I cracked out
Speaker 1: of that and got a job straight away. And all
Speaker 1: of my friends at art school, UM were They was
Speaker 1: still working around a very boring what I thought were
Speaker 1: very boring graphics scores. Uh. And I had a job amazing.
Speaker 1: I'll probably digress for a moment here, because I've worked
Speaker 1: in a studio in Brighton. I had this gorgeous girl
Speaker 1: that I fancied like mad in the studio who came
Speaker 1: from Detroit and one day said her American boyfriend was
Speaker 1: coming in to town. So she said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: London and I said, what can I come with you?
Speaker 1: And she said, yeah, I was looking for some companies,
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking I'm in here. Of course I wasn't.
Speaker 1: So we went up to the Strand Palace Hotel um
Speaker 1: in Covent Garden and a big wooly head guy, tall
Speaker 1: wooly head guy opened the door and immediately hustled her
Speaker 1: into bedroom. I just sat on the sofa, I got
Speaker 1: my harmonica out and started playing. And he stopped what
Speaker 1: he was doing and rushed into the room, picked up
Speaker 1: a guitar and started playing with me. And that was
Speaker 1: Jimi Hendrix, who's just a little bit. What was Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hendrix's girlfriend doing working with you in the art studio,
Speaker 1: I don't know. She'd kind of come on some bad
Speaker 1: times with the family and decided to move to England
Speaker 1: and she was working very studios. She was pretty good,
Speaker 1: good designer, good good illustrator as well, and we did
Speaker 1: a couple of projects together, so you know, we got
Speaker 1: on very well, and she just said, yeah, I used
Speaker 1: to go with this guy as a rock as a
Speaker 1: rock guitarist, but he had no money, so I gave up,
Speaker 1: you know. But he was a good lover, so you know,
Speaker 1: that was that was why she wanted to see him again.
Speaker 1: And and so anyway, so me and James Marshall Hendrix
Speaker 1: as he announced himself to me, or James Marshall, I
Speaker 1: think he just called himself. Um, I didn't know who
Speaker 1: he was, but we were we were playing. He's a
Speaker 1: really good guitarists, great blues field and you know, and
Speaker 1: we just play some blues together and he reckoned. I
Speaker 1: could play the harmonica pretty good as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: so we jammed away while she sat frustratedly sat by
Speaker 1: the door until she dragged him back in the in
Speaker 1: the bedroom. And then we we went back down to
Speaker 1: to to Brighton, where we worked and where I was
Speaker 1: living at the time, and she said cheerio, and I
Speaker 1: didn't even get a kiss. And and and about four
Speaker 1: weeks later, because he told me he'd come into London
Speaker 1: on the invite to make a record by this guy
Speaker 1: who was the bass player of the Animals who have
Speaker 1: seen him play and all that, you know the story,
Speaker 1: and so he made this record and I went to
Speaker 1: my favorite records store in the in the in Brighton,
Speaker 1: in the this area called the Lanes where she's just
Speaker 1: walking streets and record shop called Fine Records. I remember
Speaker 1: it so well because that's where I picked up most
Speaker 1: of my material, you know. Um. I and there's this
Speaker 1: massive poster on the on the on the wall, and
Speaker 1: you know, and the record cover. I'm going, that's that guy,
Speaker 1: and there he is, Jimi Hendrix. And about a week later,
Speaker 1: I'm in London and I go with some friends to
Speaker 1: a club called the Speakeasy because i've I've just done
Speaker 1: the record cover for a group called Humble Pie, which
Speaker 1: was Peter Frampton and and uh Steve Marriott from Faces
Speaker 1: from the Small Faces and I think it was Greg Ridley,
Speaker 1: the bass player. When I've done the you know, did
Speaker 1: the cover and the photos of the cover, I kind
Speaker 1: of got chatting to him and he gave me his
Speaker 1: his we didn't have mobiles in those days, his home number,
Speaker 1: and I phoned him and he said, oh, if you
Speaker 1: in London, you know, let's hook up. And and then
Speaker 1: he said to me said he you know, we all
Speaker 1: go into the speakeasy. Do you want to come? And
Speaker 1: so I said, yeah, yeah. So I went down there
Speaker 1: and walking onto the stage, there's all these guitarists, They're
Speaker 1: all the major guitarists are in the room at the time,
Speaker 1: I'm going, wow, you know, that's Sarah Clapton over there,
Speaker 1: that's Jeff Beck, and that's Steve how from Yes and
Speaker 1: all these guys are there, you know, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: just constract. I think it's Harry Nilson who was doing
Speaker 1: the Big U. But halfway through Harry's set, on walks
Speaker 1: Jimmy and I'm in the front row, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm feeling kind of embarrassed. And I look up at
Speaker 1: him and he recognized me, and he jumped off the
Speaker 1: stage and gave me a hug. And all these guys,
Speaker 1: I look at me, who's he And I just say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know him, Yeah, yeah. I remember Jeff Beck sidling
Speaker 1: up to me and said, hey, do you know And
Speaker 1: I told him the story. He said, you lucky bastard,
Speaker 1: and that was it. You know. There you go, being
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: digressed and digressions digressions of the space of life. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. I'm a famous digressor. You played the
Speaker 1: Harmonic with Jimmy Hendrix. Ya. How do you ultimately start
Speaker 1: a music career? I was, as I say, doing commercial art.
Speaker 1: I was in London. Um, I took on a studio
Speaker 1: in in Hammersmith and and you know, we rented it
Speaker 1: big studio space, and I had a lot of artist friends,
Speaker 1: mostly illustrators. You know. I should say that I did
Speaker 1: some record covers in this time. I did uh, Bob
Speaker 1: Marley covers, clubs, scar covers, yeah again for Humble Pie
Speaker 1: and people like that. You know, a lot of Ireland
Speaker 1: Records traffic a lot of those bands at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, so I kind of and every now and then,
Speaker 1: like with Greg, I'd get to meet some of the
Speaker 1: guys in the band, you know. So, so I was
Speaker 1: kind of close to that. But anyway, I booked this.
Speaker 1: I had this huge studio and I had a lot
Speaker 1: of artists who were working with me. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: very good at collecting money. I've never been a good
Speaker 1: businessman in my whole life, which comes to another part
Speaker 1: of the story later. But uh, and I ran out
Speaker 1: of money and I couldn't pay for the studio and
Speaker 1: I couldn't pay the rent, and it was up to
Speaker 1: me to do that. So I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: kind of I left the keys on the doorset one
Speaker 1: day and I just I left. I left it of
Speaker 1: the guys left them a long note saying, you know,
Speaker 1: if you really want to carry on with this place,
Speaker 1: you've got to come up with the rent, and up
Speaker 1: to you. You know. I think that they they caved
Speaker 1: in and didn't bother when they found out how much
Speaker 1: the rent was, you know, because they've been all there
Speaker 1: on the cheap. They were just paying me, you know,
Speaker 1: a smidge in to be in there. And I was
Speaker 1: just gladly giving them a space because it was a
Speaker 1: creative hub. And I got work out of it as well,
Speaker 1: you know, some work. But as it was drying up,
Speaker 1: you know, there was no option and no money, so
Speaker 1: I had to leave and I packed up my flat.
Speaker 1: I went back to my hometown. I had some friends
Speaker 1: who had a houseboat. They lived on a houseboat um
Speaker 1: on the River Raida, the river that went through Shoreham
Speaker 1: and just near the sea the mouth of the river.
Speaker 1: This is lovely houseboat. And I stayed on the houseboat
Speaker 1: for a year. I had a nervous breakdown. Really I
Speaker 1: I couldn't draw and paint any longer. My graphic abilities
Speaker 1: just passed me by. But luckily, at the same time
Speaker 1: as He's marvelous cusps in one's life happened a bunch
Speaker 1: of friends came to see me on the houseboat. One
Speaker 1: of them we lived on a houseboat a little bit
Speaker 1: further way of the mate of mind from school, and
Speaker 1: he was now long haired and planning guitar, and so
Speaker 1: he said, oh, I've got a blues group. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great. I play harmonica, and so he said, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: why don't get together for a jam next week, you know?
Speaker 1: So we did and we started a band immediately, and
Speaker 1: because I had its loud voice, I was the singer.
Speaker 1: And we went from band to band to band to band,
Speaker 1: and eventually a guitarist who I really liked working with,
Speaker 1: who was top notch in the local musicians um, who
Speaker 1: also wrote songs, came and lived on the houseboat with me.
Speaker 1: He was he had the next the next room on
Speaker 1: the boat, big old boat it was, and we started
Speaker 1: writing songs together and we decided to go. We had
Speaker 1: a band and we decided to go to an audition,
Speaker 1: and we went to the audition. It was for the
Speaker 1: you'd have heard of the Melody Maker of course in England,
Speaker 1: the famous newspaper. So they had a battle of the
Speaker 1: bands going on. So they did it as areas and
Speaker 1: so southwest. I think we were called that area, which
Speaker 1: was Kent and Surrey and Sussex um and we won.
Speaker 1: We won our heat. But the thing was so badly
Speaker 1: organized that in the end I think that they they
Speaker 1: press gained a couple of bands from London and forgot
Speaker 1: about our heat that winners, you know, and we got
Speaker 1: to have pushed out. We never even went to the
Speaker 1: final show. So frustrated with that, we saw another ad.
Speaker 1: We saw an advertisement um in the local paper, the
Speaker 1: Evening Arcuts, and it was saying, you know bands, bands, acts, artists, comedians, conjurers, whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, a new talent agency is starting. There will
Speaker 1: be a big audition at the Pavilion Theater on Saturday
Speaker 1: that da da da da da dah. This is in.
Speaker 1: And we turned up at the audition and we went
Speaker 1: on stage, probably the last people to go on. There
Speaker 1: were lots of bands, uh, no audience in the theater
Speaker 1: you know, just all the bands watching each other, and
Speaker 1: we went on last, and the guy was holding the
Speaker 1: audition ran over and just said, you're it. And we
Speaker 1: sang a song I remember called Gypsy Dancer that me
Speaker 1: and Max Chetwynd, the guitarists, wrote together, and he stopped
Speaker 1: us halfway through and just said start that again. And
Speaker 1: we started again, and then he stopped us halfway through
Speaker 1: and he said start there again. And I think he
Speaker 1: was checking that we could play it, you know, and
Speaker 1: he just turned around he said, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a job straight away. I want to manage you.
Speaker 1: Your voice is amazing, you know, And all of the
Speaker 1: other people just sidled out the room and it was
Speaker 1: left with us, and there we were, and Patches was
Speaker 1: the name of the band, and I don't know started
Speaker 1: getting talking to David's and he told me he didn't
Speaker 1: really want to manage a band. It was just his
Speaker 1: dad's idea. You know. His dad was fairly wealthy, and
Speaker 1: his dad wanted him to do something legitimate. And he'd
Speaker 1: played drums before for this guy called Adam Faith. It
Speaker 1: was a pop singer. So one day he said, after
Speaker 1: we'd tried a few different avenues, and David and I
Speaker 1: had started writing songs together, me all based as I
Speaker 1: said before, on those old lyric books, those old poetry books,
Speaker 1: you know, putting my lyrics in there. And he had
Speaker 1: these kind of beach boys kind of come Beatles kind
Speaker 1: of pop uh melodies that I would put my acerbic
Speaker 1: lyrics to, and and we had something. And I was
Speaker 1: a ying and yang kind of thing. It was very interesting.
Speaker 1: There was these kind of very almost sad autobiographical lyrics
Speaker 1: going with these bright kind of um but very dramatic
Speaker 1: kind of melodies. So we had something I think that
Speaker 1: was quite unique. It was a bit like I suppose
Speaker 1: Bernie Taupin and Elton John could be. Because again you're
Speaker 1: meeting I suppose I had some eloquence to me, and
Speaker 1: David was had this kind of pop musicality, you know,
Speaker 1: which is very much Elson and Bernie, you know. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we went to see Adam and I thought he wasn't
Speaker 1: very interested. I was left to sit in the car
Speaker 1: while he and David pow world. And then he came
Speaker 1: running out to the car and he said, right, I've
Speaker 1: booked you in the studio tomorrow. That's it. Get the
Speaker 1: band together. So I went straight back, got all the
Speaker 1: guys together, said come on, we've got to get the van.
Speaker 1: Mike the drummer, had to take a day off work
Speaker 1: and get the van kind of filled up with petrol,
Speaker 1: which was quite a job in those days because we
Speaker 1: didn't have any money. Throw all the gear in the
Speaker 1: back of the van and straight up to uh, straight
Speaker 1: up to Olympic studios and yeah, and then we were
Speaker 1: making a record. You know, we're not knowing what we
Speaker 1: were doing. I think the drummer turned out to be
Speaker 1: pretty app And in the next room the Who were recording,
Speaker 1: and I don't think Daughtry was there or Towns was there,
Speaker 1: but Entwhistle and Who and Moon were there, and Adam
Speaker 1: called Mooney in during a break and he actually played
Speaker 1: the drums on that first single while So and Meet
Speaker 1: the drummer came in and listened to it. You know,
Speaker 1: Keith wasn't there, but he's listening to a Playbank going yeah,
Speaker 1: I did pretty well there. It was the same part,
Speaker 1: but it was much better played, you know. So um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's kind of it's funny when
Speaker 1: you look back at those times. We really didn't know
Speaker 1: what we were doing. I mean David and I. We
Speaker 1: sang a song on the B I sang a song
Speaker 1: on the B side that we've both written together. The
Speaker 1: A side was David's song Living in America. I think
Speaker 1: the folks in America they got it good in America.
Speaker 1: Not my lyric, you know, but it was it was fun.
Speaker 1: You know, here we were suddenly you're looking at another
Speaker 1: career because Adam. You know, one of the powerful things
Speaker 1: about Adam was that if he said something was going
Speaker 1: to happen, he had the ability to make it happen.
Speaker 1: He had incredible contacts in the in the in the business,
Speaker 1: in the whole world of show business, and in the media.
Speaker 1: You know, he could just open doors. Remember once with him,
Speaker 1: just after Patches had been a single, Living in America
Speaker 1: had been released, we strode up to Radio one. Radio
Speaker 1: one was the big sort of you know, the big
Speaker 1: real McCoy BBC. Radio one was was the biggest broadcast broadcaster,
Speaker 1: biggest station. And on Sunday they used to read out
Speaker 1: the charts. Everybody would tune in the whole country. The
Speaker 1: audience ratings were off the wall, you know. So Alan
Speaker 1: Freeman is upstairs halfway through the charts, when Adam turns
Speaker 1: up with this young aick um and and his new
Speaker 1: album and his new single sorry and meets the job's
Speaker 1: worth at the door. We called him job's worth, it's
Speaker 1: more than my jobs will to let you in here, Mr.
Speaker 1: But but no they actually Adam faith and well, I'm
Speaker 1: going up to see Alan Freeman and said, well, of course,
Speaker 1: of course, go on up, so he knew where to go.
Speaker 1: We walked straight in the red lighters on on the
Speaker 1: door outside and his producer is kind of looking at
Speaker 1: us rather alarmed, but we breathe in and Adams says,
Speaker 1: take that rubbish off and put this on. This is
Speaker 1: your next and that was it. We get our first airing,
Speaker 1: you know, on on the Alan Freeman Show Sunday night
Speaker 1: with the biggest audience in England watching. Okay, that's relieve
Speaker 1: the fantastic. But then the record stiff, the record still stiff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think fifty copies. I think my mom
Speaker 1: brought twenty. Um, yeah, fifty copies were sold. I think fifty.
Speaker 1: It was on the Warner label, um, Warner Brothers label. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but Adam wasn't daunted. I mean, the whole thing
Speaker 1: was not happening, but he just said, let's go on
Speaker 1: and make the album. So he'd met Richard Branson, you know,
Speaker 1: the Virgin guy of course. Um, of course was just
Speaker 1: I mean Richard just had a record store in those
Speaker 1: days and a record label that he just started, and
Speaker 1: he bought this crazy studio, this manor house with a
Speaker 1: barn next to it in Oxfordshire called the Manor, and
Speaker 1: lots of people recording up there, you know, Van Morrison,
Speaker 1: the Grand Bond Organization. Uh. And he had an engineer,
Speaker 1: Tom Newman there who was working on a little project
Speaker 1: by this unknown guy called Mike Oldfield and it was
Speaker 1: she ended up being called Tubular Bells, and that was
Speaker 1: going on at the same time, and you know, Mike
Speaker 1: was in the studio when we weren't in the studio,
Speaker 1: and me and Patches were in the studio most days
Speaker 1: and then Michael take over and do the Witching Hour
Speaker 1: at night. We were all staying at the place. You know,
Speaker 1: Michael was very friendly. Um, I didn't really understand his record.
Speaker 1: It sounded very a bit silly to me at that stage,
Speaker 1: but of course, you know, when it was finally finished,
Speaker 1: it was awesome, you know, changed the world kind of
Speaker 1: thing um. But you know, sometimes when the records being made,
Speaker 1: you don't understand it. Likewise, Michael would kind of come
Speaker 1: into our sessions and say, said, your band is not
Speaker 1: very good, are they I say, yeah, I know, but
Speaker 1: I mean we we're learning, you know, we're learning, and
Speaker 1: Adam's going to sort it out. Well. About four or
Speaker 1: five days in Adams sacked the band and broad in
Speaker 1: session players. And this was awful for me because my
Speaker 1: friends were leaving out the door and you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there on my own with David. Of course,
Speaker 1: David's my friend, but these are all new people. You know, Leo,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And I'm trying to be Leo
Speaker 1: Sarah at the same time, because we've come up with
Speaker 1: the name Leo. So Jerry has become Leo Sarah And
Speaker 1: okay a little bit slower. Why not Jerry because I
Speaker 1: as known as Jerry the harmonica player. I used to
Speaker 1: sit in with bands with Georgie Fame and you know,
Speaker 1: and I play with people like Ginger Baker and in
Speaker 1: in in Alexis Corner's blues band, and I used to
Speaker 1: see Bill Wyman a lot. I sat in with so
Speaker 1: many bands, you know, Um, there were the you know,
Speaker 1: in the rhythm and blues time. I once got up
Speaker 1: with John Mayle. I played with Muddy Waters and a
Speaker 1: folk club, you know, um, and everybody, oh, there's Jerry
Speaker 1: the harmonica player. And I thought, oh god, I can't
Speaker 1: be known as Jerry the harmonica player. And I was
Speaker 1: and I was going into a new world, you know.
Speaker 1: Here I was suddenly with this guy who was a
Speaker 1: bloody pop star, you know, a huge star. I was
Speaker 1: doing television series at the time, Adam Faith. Everybody knew
Speaker 1: Adam Faith, and already there was an article in the
Speaker 1: press about this Adam Faith that discovered this new talent.
Speaker 1: And of course, a few weeks later, you know, the
Speaker 1: Roger Daughtry album is released. So but that's a very
Speaker 1: significant but that's later. Yeah, that's later. I'll get into
Speaker 1: that later. And of course, you know what I was
Speaker 1: gonna say is, eventually Daltry will be selling Leo Saya
Speaker 1: as his coat, as his songwriter. You see. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of relevant in a way to mention that. Now.
Speaker 1: But I had all these people around me that were
Speaker 1: really believing in me. So here we are at the Manor,
Speaker 1: I've got all these session guys come in, they play amazing.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the songs are soaring. Suddenly we're really doing well.
Speaker 1: And then Adam Face just turned around and said, look,
Speaker 1: I can't afford to do any more recording. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I just don't have the budget. So we stopped. And
Speaker 1: then we were down in Brighton. I think I put
Speaker 1: on a gig and and and Adam brought a guy
Speaker 1: along called Keith Altham and very famous music writer and
Speaker 1: publicists later publicists for the Beatles, the Stones, the Trogs,
Speaker 1: Jimi Hendrix, of course famous for being the guy that
Speaker 1: persuaded Hendrix to set light to his guitar. Um. Keith
Speaker 1: came down to see the band. He was writing an
Speaker 1: article about me in the New Musical Express and which
Speaker 1: was a fabulous article, which again it was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a thing to live up to. But he
Speaker 1: saw the band and he said, look, Roger Daughtry, he
Speaker 1: was looking after the who at the time. He said,
Speaker 1: Rogers built a studio and he needs a guinea pick
Speaker 1: to try it out. You're looking for a place to work.
Speaker 1: Let me give Roger a call. So he gave Roger
Speaker 1: a call and he came back and said, yeah, Roger says,
Speaker 1: you guys come up to the studio, you don't have
Speaker 1: to pay, you know, It's like you can have it
Speaker 1: for free. He'd just be delighted to have someone try
Speaker 1: out the room. So and you can stay next door.
Speaker 1: There's a little pub called the Kicking Donkey, and you
Speaker 1: can stay at the Kicking Donkey, which we did, and
Speaker 1: we went up then started recording, and the second part
Speaker 1: of silver Bird was made in that way without Adam
Speaker 1: having to shell out any more money. And you know,
Speaker 1: everything was kind of he's and breezy and and it
Speaker 1: was lovely working at Roger's. And it was also great
Speaker 1: spending time with this rock icon who turned out to
Speaker 1: be the nicest guy, you know. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a connection you see, with Adam, which was very good
Speaker 1: because Adam Faith and Roger Daltrey were born on the
Speaker 1: same street in acting. You know, Adam a few years
Speaker 1: older of course, so these guys will be had lots
Speaker 1: to talk about. They talked the same language, they had
Speaker 1: the same accent, you know, so that the connection was
Speaker 1: a dream connection, you know. And then one day Roger
Speaker 1: just turned around and said, look I love these songs.
Speaker 1: You know, um, before you finish it all up. Have
Speaker 1: you got any more songs that you haven't put on
Speaker 1: the album? And and David and I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've cut loads. You know, we're we're even writing for
Speaker 1: the next album. He said, could you give me some
Speaker 1: of the songs? And we said what, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to make a solo album. Roger Peter has
Speaker 1: made a solo album. Big Townsend has made a solo album,
Speaker 1: So I want to do one. I want to show
Speaker 1: him he's not the only one who can go solo.
Speaker 1: So he said yeah, right. So David and I looked
Speaker 1: at the list of songs we had and we got
Speaker 1: the tapes out, the old Grundig tapes that we've made
Speaker 1: of these things, and yeah, we we decided we had
Speaker 1: quite enough and we talked to Adam about the idea
Speaker 1: and he said, it's great, it's a good idea. I'll
Speaker 1: produce it Roger. Roger wanted Adam and David to produce it,
Speaker 1: do it in the same style, and do it there
Speaker 1: in the studio. So that's how they started off, and
Speaker 1: they made the Daughtry album. Decided to hold up my album.
Speaker 1: So my album is already a year old when the
Speaker 1: Daughtry album came out, decided to hold it up because,
Speaker 1: as Adams said, and Roger agreed, Look, you know you
Speaker 1: can do more good for Leo by telling everybody about
Speaker 1: this songwriter. He said, yeah, if it's a hit, everybody
Speaker 1: will want to know anyway, and Giving It All Away
Speaker 1: hit the top twenty I think on top forty or
Speaker 1: something in America, went into the chart there and when
Speaker 1: is the charts in England? The album went into the
Speaker 1: charts in England. So everybody was talking about Roger Daltrey's
Speaker 1: solo album when it came out, and and everybody was
Speaker 1: talking about this song right, and so was Roger. And
Speaker 1: every interview said, wait, do you meet this guy. He's fantastic,
Speaker 1: what a talent, great voice as well. His songs are fantastic.
Speaker 1: I just had to do them, you know this, This
Speaker 1: was it. So I had Roger Daltrey, the lead singer
Speaker 1: of the Who, probably the biggest band in the world
Speaker 1: at that time, you know, as my publicist. Not Bad
Speaker 1: Ain't That's how I found out about you. I bought
Speaker 1: that album Giving It All Away one and bad That's
Speaker 1: why I don't buy your record, absolutely really yeah, So
Speaker 1: so that all kind of opened up the doors. And
Speaker 1: then when we released my record, the reaction was fantastic.
Speaker 1: So you could say it all happened overnight. I mean
Speaker 1: he didn't, as he's can tell from the album being
Speaker 1: held up a year the longest station took towards it.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't all that simple, but when it
Speaker 1: was released, it all happened so quick. You know. I
Speaker 1: went on tour with Roxy Music supporting them. We want
Speaker 1: to tour in England? Who put that bill together? Because
Speaker 1: I don't see the music as being in the same spectrum,
Speaker 1: well in a way, you know in England, Um, you
Speaker 1: had let's take it. I always use that term rack jobbing,
Speaker 1: you know, when every everybody's in the same I mean
Speaker 1: we live in a rack jobbing world, now, don't we.
Speaker 1: I mean your radio show would should not appeal to
Speaker 1: someone doing heavy metal and vice versa. But in the
Speaker 1: seventies in England, if everything went together, you know, there
Speaker 1: was no categorization. Um, people wanted variety. You know, England
Speaker 1: had grown up and think as well. And it's an
Speaker 1: important thing to say this, we've grown up. All of
Speaker 1: our American acts that came over came over in package
Speaker 1: to us. So you know, you'd get Freddie and the
Speaker 1: Dreamers on the same bill as Eddie Cochrane and Buddy Holly,
Speaker 1: and you'd get Desert Connor, who was basically a crooner,
Speaker 1: on the same bill as as Buddy Holly. You know,
Speaker 1: Daz has got Buddy's last guitar. Um des sadly has died.
Speaker 1: Now I think the guitars belonged to somebody else, but
Speaker 1: you know, Buddy gave him the guitar. They were on
Speaker 1: tour together and you'd get these package acts, you know,
Speaker 1: so we saw everybody together. So I think England was
Speaker 1: really into you know, a variety show kind of you know,
Speaker 1: live thing very much. Comedians on with the Beatles were
Speaker 1: always opened up by comedians, you know, and the Beatles
Speaker 1: would open up for comedians or classic singers like Shirley Bassie,
Speaker 1: you know, people like that. So our radio wasn't so
Speaker 1: uh kind of programmed out to kind of think that
Speaker 1: a novelty song would be played right next to Status
Speaker 1: Quo or something like that, you know. And so I
Speaker 1: think in the English audience is wanted to be surprised
Speaker 1: on stage and we were. That bill was put together
Speaker 1: by a chrysalists agency. We were with Chrysalis Records, and
Speaker 1: the Chrysalists agency looked after Roxy music and me, so
Speaker 1: they put they put it together. After after one show
Speaker 1: where I wasn't getting really much reaction, I decided to
Speaker 1: dress like the record cover, the Piero, the white face.
Speaker 1: So we had the same team who had helped me
Speaker 1: get that image together for the record cover. The back
Speaker 1: of the record cover inspired by this amazing movie called
Speaker 1: Les Enfante Parody, which I had loved as a as
Speaker 1: an art student, where this guy, director Marcel Khan, had
Speaker 1: got John Louis Baptiste, this amazing French actor, to portray
Speaker 1: himself as the Piero, like Piero and and Harlequin, the
Speaker 1: famous French stories in this movie made during the last
Speaker 1: year of the German occupation of Paris of France, and
Speaker 1: it's an amazing movie. Um, and I love this character
Speaker 1: and when I I'm digressing again. But I'll give you
Speaker 1: the background to how it no no keep going, I
Speaker 1: keep going, and how that came about. Roger Daughtry had
Speaker 1: a cousin, Graham Hughes, wonderful photographer who shot the Daughtry cover. UM,
Speaker 1: and Roger suggested I went to see Graham, which I
Speaker 1: did in London, and I went to a studio and
Speaker 1: he'd just been doing a photo shoot, a fashion photo
Speaker 1: shoot for Vogue magazine. And in the background, well, there
Speaker 1: was a girl that remember the Rocky Horror Show. There
Speaker 1: was a girl called Little Little Nell who was this
Speaker 1: amazing actress and character in the Rocky Horror Show. She
Speaker 1: was in the shoot. And that guy played Frank and
Speaker 1: Furter Um he was in the current member his name
Speaker 1: of the actor, you know. He was in the shoot
Speaker 1: with these models, and in the background was a piero.
Speaker 1: And Graham's straightaway. For those in America, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a clown, a clown, yeah, but but the French piero
Speaker 1: is different than the happens for those out of the loop.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, yeah, Well, if we talk about clowns, you've
Speaker 1: got two different clowns. You've got three clowns. Really that
Speaker 1: you've got Ill Paliarchi, okay, is the white faced, sad
Speaker 1: narrator of most of those operas. Ill Paliarci is kind
Speaker 1: of he's a fool, but as well, he's a wise fool.
Speaker 1: In France, Piero is the moralizer, he's the teller, of
Speaker 1: the story. Harlequin is the bad, mischievous guy in England.
Speaker 1: You've got Coco, the clown as famous for all the circuits.
Speaker 1: So he's just there to entertain the kids. He's a
Speaker 1: guy with makeup on, basically, not much more than that.
Speaker 1: Um but Piero is a very serious character. He'll tell
Speaker 1: you a story and you you're inclined to believe him
Speaker 1: because he's he's expressionless in his face and he usually
Speaker 1: tells the story and mine ala Marcel Marcel. You know,
Speaker 1: Marcel Marceau took on the Piero character and basically told
Speaker 1: his story and mime. He was a mime artist. Um so,
Speaker 1: so I loved Piero for this kind of blank faced
Speaker 1: guy that you would listen to what he'd say. He
Speaker 1: would the storyteller, and I was a storyteller. In my songs,
Speaker 1: they were all about me, you know at that time,
Speaker 1: they're all about my life. Um silver Bird and Just
Speaker 1: a Boy are basically autobiographical albums. Yeah, they were all
Speaker 1: Leo telling you his story. Okay, so you got to
Speaker 1: the photo shoot and you see the Piero in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see this picture, and Graham says, at the same moment,
Speaker 1: So how do you see yourself then? Because he knows
Speaker 1: all about me from roger Um And I said, like that,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just instantly reaction and point to
Speaker 1: the piero and he said, great, that's Julian. He said,
Speaker 1: he's from Belgium. He's a street clown and basically he's
Speaker 1: here for a few days. Why don't I bring him
Speaker 1: in tomorrow? And he said you could try on his
Speaker 1: outfit and I went, well, okay, yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a fad of company, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You know. I wish I had my big mouth. But
Speaker 1: and he's got this makeup girl called Kirsty Climo, who was, Ah,
Speaker 1: she's one of the best theatrical makeup girls in the world.
Speaker 1: And she was a friend of his, and he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring Kirsty. And I knew of Kirsty
Speaker 1: already because of friends of mine who were actors, and
Speaker 1: I went for Kirsty client he said, yeah, yeah, she's great,
Speaker 1: I'll get her in. She can do the makeup. She
Speaker 1: she knows how to do Piro because she'd done Pally
Speaker 1: Archie for the opera, you know, so hey, come on,
Speaker 1: you know, so I had her, and I had this
Speaker 1: wonderful beautiful guy, Julian with his with his suit. The
Speaker 1: only glitch was he was about six ft tall or so.
Speaker 1: So basically most of them. You see the gatefold inside
Speaker 1: cover if anybody's got that of Silver Bird, and you'll
Speaker 1: see me kind of crouching down, and that's because the
Speaker 1: trousers are pinned up, you know. You can't see the
Speaker 1: pinning for the sort of like the bodice over the
Speaker 1: top covering it, you know. But but that was it. Um,
Speaker 1: and I was in his suit and they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me look in the mirror, okay, until it was all done.
Speaker 1: Kirsty was about an hour putting the makeup together, and
Speaker 1: Julian was kind of fussing with the suit and getting
Speaker 1: it right, and they found me that somebody went out
Speaker 1: and found some white dance shoes from Cabizio and they
Speaker 1: put on me and Um, Kirstie had developed this black
Speaker 1: bathing cap and cut with the little pointed bit in
Speaker 1: the middle, you know, perfectly to fit. So all this
Speaker 1: is I think they brought a hairstylist to make sure
Speaker 1: that the hair was all pinned in because I had
Speaker 1: a huge hair at that time, you know. So finally
Speaker 1: Graham is all a jumping up and down. He says,
Speaker 1: this is incredible. You look at me. I can't see myself.
Speaker 1: All I can do is feel this awful white Lechner
Speaker 1: panstick makeup all across my face, and I know my
Speaker 1: hands are in gloves. I feel like my body has
Speaker 1: been taken away somewhere. You know. It's like weird, weird,
Speaker 1: weird weird, but it's exciting at the same time. And
Speaker 1: I've literally metamorphosized. I mean, you're talking about Jerry becoming
Speaker 1: Leo Sayah, he became Leo Saya at that moment, you see,
Speaker 1: because there's no way that Jerry could ever be recognized again.
Speaker 1: So I walk out. They right, Grahams has finished, and
Speaker 1: I walk out, and I walk out in front of
Speaker 1: this full length mirror, a whole huge, great, big mirrored
Speaker 1: glass plane pain and I see myself and I just said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's it. I can go on like this. And it
Speaker 1: was just incredible that we did the photo shoot, and
Speaker 1: you know, afterwards, took off the makeup and Cursty said,
Speaker 1: he looked amazing. She said, when when you decide to
Speaker 1: do it for real, I'll be there. I said, for real,
Speaker 1: I thought we were just doing the photo and it
Speaker 1: was clicking with me that I was, yeah, becoming somebody else.
Speaker 1: So we did the first Roxy show and I was
Speaker 1: just went on in jeans and nice shirt, you know,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Nobody really noticed. They all talked and
Speaker 1: waited for Roxy to come on. You know, Brian Eno
Speaker 1: had left the band, by the way, at that time,
Speaker 1: he was the very much I suppose in a way,
Speaker 1: Brian used to dress up in a similar kind of
Speaker 1: over the top way. So the so the glam rock
Speaker 1: crowd would like to come for him, you know, um,
Speaker 1: but Roxy would being a bit more serious. Now. You know,
Speaker 1: Brian was in a white tuxedo. They're all looking very sophisticated. Um.
Speaker 1: And the second gig, I'm in my dressing room, I'm
Speaker 1: making up and we're putting in the outfit. My wife,
Speaker 1: Janice now has made the suit for me, um, and
Speaker 1: she's a really good seamstress. So I had this fabulous
Speaker 1: kind of satin silk suit with the little you know,
Speaker 1: the three velcro stuck on bobbles, you know that you've
Speaker 1: got on the front, the red spots for the cheeks.
Speaker 1: The eyes were dramatically done, the black bathing cap in place,
Speaker 1: well pinned, and the gloves on and the white shoes
Speaker 1: and I walk out in front of the band and
Speaker 1: there's this reaction from the audience. We're playing Sheffield City Hall.
Speaker 1: I think it absolutely packed because Roxy are a big band.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't know who LEAs Sarah is really.
Speaker 1: But the moment I woke up, there's and someone shouted
Speaker 1: he knows back and the I played five songs in silence.
Speaker 1: There wasn't applause, there wasn't anything, and there wasn't a
Speaker 1: murmur anybody. Nobody was talking in the room. Everybody was
Speaker 1: just craning their eyes to see. And I didn't say
Speaker 1: a word. I just sang five songs and with the
Speaker 1: mime and the hands going all over the place, just
Speaker 1: like you've seen in the videos. And then I said
Speaker 1: thank you very much, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: place broke out into applause. All of Roxy music or
Speaker 1: on the side of the stage watching this, by the way,
Speaker 1: and the chance started. They started shouting Leo, Leo, Leo.
Speaker 1: This is all on the first night of the clown.
Speaker 1: It was just incredible. And they were still shouting Leo
Speaker 1: when Roxy went on, so they weren't very happy with me,
Speaker 1: but I carried on the tour. Brian actually thought it
Speaker 1: was great. He kept coming up to me and saying,
Speaker 1: fabulous image, fabulous image. So we we went on the
Speaker 1: tour and we went, you know, we completed the tour
Speaker 1: almost we gone into France. I think we played a
Speaker 1: couple of gigs in France, we played some in Germany,
Speaker 1: and then the management just turned around said you've got
Speaker 1: to get him off the tour. He's getting too much applause.
Speaker 1: And my record was rocketing up the charts. The show
Speaker 1: must go on, and their record was not doing so well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but that was my That was how it started. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you finished the tour with Roxy Music. What's the
Speaker 1: next step. Well, we went on a tour. You know,
Speaker 1: now we're now we're appearing as the Piero and everything's
Speaker 1: going well. The records are hit, the album's are hit.
Speaker 1: So I toured England and then we just got this
Speaker 1: invite from already we were we were with Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: in America, so we just got this invite from I
Speaker 1: think it was I can't remember the agency, but to
Speaker 1: come and do do the States and arrived in Los Angeles. Um,
Speaker 1: we had all the makeup and the outfits of course
Speaker 1: ready to go. And Terry O. Neil is my photographer
Speaker 1: by this time. So the first thing we did was
Speaker 1: go down to Santa Monica Pia and do lots of show,
Speaker 1: lots of shots of the piero and and I think
Speaker 1: that they used that as publicity because nobody knew what
Speaker 1: I really who, what I really looked like, which was
Speaker 1: quite interesting. In America, they'd never seen Leo Saya apart
Speaker 1: from the record cover and and and of course the
Speaker 1: piero on the back. And I went straight to Memphis
Speaker 1: where we started playing in a club supporting jjkle. Um.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was called the Mississippi something alright,
Speaker 1: just outside Memphis. And again the reaction just started went
Speaker 1: through the roof. You know, it's just incredible. Everybody's loving
Speaker 1: this thing. J. J kle didn't know what to make
Speaker 1: of me. He used to perform with hardly any lights on,
Speaker 1: you know, and we had to bring in lights for
Speaker 1: my show because he just didn't have enough. Um, but
Speaker 1: it just went mad. We had a week in Memphis,
Speaker 1: then it was a week in Boston. And then it
Speaker 1: was just all over the country. We ended up going
Speaker 1: to the bottom Line in New York um and hit
Speaker 1: all the papers there. You know, the record started to
Speaker 1: be a success. At the same time, Three Dog Night
Speaker 1: have recorded The Show Must Go On and that's higher
Speaker 1: up in the charts. Oh, they decided just not to
Speaker 1: release my single, I think because the Three Dog Night
Speaker 1: was version of The Show Must Go On, which still
Speaker 1: annoys me, because they were singing we must let the
Speaker 1: show go on, whereas the song is I won't let
Speaker 1: the show go on, you know in the chorus, you know.
Speaker 1: But there and they had circus clowns, you know, going
Speaker 1: back to Cocoa the clown. You know, they've seen me
Speaker 1: performing in in London. I think at Top of the
Speaker 1: Pops they're probably on the same show and or else
Speaker 1: watched it on the TV and thought, hey, let's cover
Speaker 1: that song. So that's what they did, and you know, um, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's they just didn't quite get it, I
Speaker 1: don't think. But it didn't matter. There was a hit,
Speaker 1: you know, and that was the American tour. We just
Speaker 1: everywhere we went. By the time we got to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and Robert Hillban was writing about us, and then
Speaker 1: San Francisco where Ben Fong Torres was writing and rolling
Speaker 1: Stone about me. You know, you couldn't climb any higher,
Speaker 1: really it was. It was quite an incredible um. I
Speaker 1: began a friendship with with with Ben actually at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, which followed me all the way through my career.
Speaker 1: So har does Long Talk Glasses end up becoming a
Speaker 1: huge check While we were there on that first tour,
Speaker 1: I think we recorded one man band. I do believe
Speaker 1: that's Rykuda playing acoustic guitar on that Wow. Because Adam
Speaker 1: tried to do some recording out there, didn't tell me
Speaker 1: about it. Of course, this is typically what he'd do.
Speaker 1: He just went into a studio, here's this song. I'll
Speaker 1: play it to you and see what you can make
Speaker 1: of it, you know. So so, but we eventually came
Speaker 1: back and started recording the album. Uh, straight after that
Speaker 1: American tour. The rest of four was spent in the studio,
Speaker 1: I think mostly recording just a boy. So and I
Speaker 1: Long Till Glasses were really me writing lyrics inspired by
Speaker 1: my favorite movie, The gold Rush Charlie Chaplin. What a
Speaker 1: great movie. Yeah, and you know the scene, the scene
Speaker 1: where he goes into the bar and he's got to dance.
Speaker 1: He's not really dressed for the part, but he kind
Speaker 1: of pretends he is, you know, And and I thought
Speaker 1: about me. I was thinking about me in America. I
Speaker 1: was just I was shell shocked over the reaction in
Speaker 1: America because everybody said, you know, why do you need
Speaker 1: to dress as a clown? You can sing, You've got
Speaker 1: all the you're really talent. I'm going yet, really, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I'm never going to be as good
Speaker 1: as my heroes, my American heroes, Otis Redding and Ah,
Speaker 1: you know, Wilson Picket and even Bob Dylan and you
Speaker 1: know all of the great American artists, Sam Cook, Wow,
Speaker 1: you know Elvis. I just thought I was going to
Speaker 1: be a bit player, you know, in the music scene.
Speaker 1: But they kind of thought I was really special, and
Speaker 1: they persuaded me, you know, take off the makeup, show
Speaker 1: your real self. You're a good looking guy, you know,
Speaker 1: come on, you can be a big star. So I
Speaker 1: was kind of a bit embarrassed by all of this,
Speaker 1: and I felt like the guy in the gold Rush
Speaker 1: who goes into the bar. You know. I was traveling
Speaker 1: down the road feeling hungry, and cold so or a
Speaker 1: science saying food and drinks for everyone. Food and drinks
Speaker 1: is like, you know, the American riches. You know, all
Speaker 1: of this can be yours, girls partying, fast cars, clubs,
Speaker 1: you know, best hotels, fame, um, groupies, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I didn't really know how to handle it,
Speaker 1: you know, so I I was very shy. Um. So
Speaker 1: the song is all about, you know, he says, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't dance, like I'm saying I can't sing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not really no, I'm not that good. And and
Speaker 1: the song kind of gets to a point where he
Speaker 1: just says, oh, he's just so fed up with this
Speaker 1: barracking going on from everybody, and he just turns out
Speaker 1: and said, oh all right, okay, hang on, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know I can dance, you know.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's America. You see, if you
Speaker 1: believe you can do something, and you show the confidence,
Speaker 1: then you can do something. You know, all you have
Speaker 1: to do is bullshit everybody into saying you're brilliant, and
Speaker 1: they all think it brilliant. So that's how it seemed
Speaker 1: to me. It was an easy ticket. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: what that song is about. It's about the metamorphosis to
Speaker 1: where you can actually think, why not give people what
Speaker 1: they want and stop being so petulant about it? You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So ultimately you break up with David Courtney and you
Speaker 1: end up working with Richard Perry. How does that happen? Well,
Speaker 1: Adam was always very crafty, he claimed. When we went
Speaker 1: for the third album another year, which I'm very very
Speaker 1: proud of. Um, he claimed that David wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: working with me any longer because basically wanted to do
Speaker 1: his own project, which actually was patently not true. I mean,
Speaker 1: David wanted to do his home and album, but there
Speaker 1: was always going to be time for that because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't been away on a se x month American tour
Speaker 1: very soon anyway, second tour, and David had plenty of
Speaker 1: time to do that, you know. Um. And when I
Speaker 1: phoned David well, I found he changed his number. But
Speaker 1: Adam had set all this up, you know. He said
Speaker 1: to David, you shouldn't be working with him. You're good
Speaker 1: enough to do it on your own, you know. He
Speaker 1: split us up basically, so I had a bass player
Speaker 1: I was working with as a wonderful guy. It was
Speaker 1: in you remember the band super Tramps. Well, Frank was
Speaker 1: a founding member of super Tramp, but he left because
Speaker 1: basically the band had no money. They weren't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: So Frank had to get jobs as a as a
Speaker 1: jobbing session musician, you know, and work with other bands
Speaker 1: to to you know, to make a living. So he
Speaker 1: turned up in one of my roadies houses, um staying
Speaker 1: in a flat there, and there was a piano there
Speaker 1: and Frank was always playing piano and I thought it
Speaker 1: was great pianist. He was a bass player, and I
Speaker 1: asked him to join my band, and he joined the band.
Speaker 1: But it turned out he was really talented, and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I was frustrated with David. But I was
Speaker 1: coming up with all these songs, um and ideas for songs,
Speaker 1: and I'd start singing melodies to them, you know, and
Speaker 1: I and I played some to Frank and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: got onto the piano and started fleshing them out. You know.
Speaker 1: So I had a new writer, and he was taking
Speaker 1: my mellow melody, you know, my melody ideas and then
Speaker 1: taking them further. And then eventually, of course he would
Speaker 1: come up with some melody ideas but basically I was
Speaker 1: much more in control. So even though I had lost David,
Speaker 1: I was very happy because I could actually kind of
Speaker 1: make the words fit the music, you know, because I
Speaker 1: can imagine what the music was going to be. I
Speaker 1: didn't have to wait for a for a songwriter to
Speaker 1: give me a melody to sing to. So the whole
Speaker 1: process became closer, you know. With Frank. So we made
Speaker 1: this record another year and I thought was great, but
Speaker 1: Adam was patently getting less interested in being my producer.
Speaker 1: He brought in Russ Ballard. Russ Ballard was, oh god,
Speaker 1: I can't remember all the bands Argent there you go
Speaker 1: at that time. But in an earlier version, Russ was
Speaker 1: Adams guitarist and on silver Bird. Going back to Silverbird,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who plays the banjo on The Show
Speaker 1: Must Go On and most of the guitars on that record.
Speaker 1: Um So, Russ came in with Adam as co producer
Speaker 1: and Russ is brilliant, great producer and a fantastic pianist.
Speaker 1: You have no idea how a guitarist could be. I
Speaker 1: think it was trained on piano. Um So, he's playing
Speaker 1: piano on the album. Didn't play any guitar. Frank's playing
Speaker 1: piano on the album as well, and we've got a
Speaker 1: great bunch of in the band, some of the guys
Speaker 1: that have been on the first album. We you know,
Speaker 1: we we we made another year so quickly because Adam
Speaker 1: he said, I just want to do it in two
Speaker 1: weeks because I'm busy. So we made the whole album
Speaker 1: start to finish in two weeks and no chance for
Speaker 1: retakes and anything. So I kind of I suppose a
Speaker 1: rough and ready approach, and the mix isn't perfect, but
Speaker 1: we did get some great strings on there, and I
Speaker 1: think it's one of my finest albums personally, So okay,
Speaker 1: close that out. Um. For some reason, I think I
Speaker 1: had wisdom tooth operation. I failed to make the American
Speaker 1: tour so we couldn't promote it, and Adam I think
Speaker 1: influence warners to kind of like go quiet on the
Speaker 1: album dot spend much money. I think at this time
Speaker 1: he was discovering that he could actually get them to
Speaker 1: pay a lot of money out and put it in
Speaker 1: his pocket and not give most of it to me.
Speaker 1: So that was basically the most opera endi that he
Speaker 1: discovered he could make money out of an artist you know,
Speaker 1: so that's what he started to do. He's a bit
Speaker 1: of a rogue like that. So um, so there we were.
Speaker 1: We went to America to talk to producers because he
Speaker 1: was wanted a new producer. I I wanted Jerry Wexler
Speaker 1: or Ralph Warnaker. Those two were the guys that I liked,
Speaker 1: or maybe even Tom Dowd. Although Tom Dowd's record of
Speaker 1: Atlantic Crossing was a little bit too mainstream for me,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't although I'd heard, of course what
Speaker 1: he'd done with A. Wretha and all of those, you know,
Speaker 1: those great acts that the Allman Brothers and everything Tom
Speaker 1: had done, you know. Um, but Adam just came back
Speaker 1: and he went and did all the meetings, and he
Speaker 1: came back and said, look, I don't nobody's interested, only
Speaker 1: Richard Perry. When Richard Perry, Um, okay. Richard Perry is
Speaker 1: a very glossy producer. You know, he makes very sophisticated records.
Speaker 1: He makes records are almost a pedantic And the only
Speaker 1: one I really like is the Neilson Schmilsen album Schmilsen
Speaker 1: in the Night, you know, the orchestral one which is
Speaker 1: which is glorious, which they made a movie off, you know,
Speaker 1: and the video is fabulous, and I don't know something
Speaker 1: about that record, and of course Harry's great talent, you know.
Speaker 1: I thought that that was pretty good. But I didn't
Speaker 1: like his record without Gulf Uncle, and I didn't like
Speaker 1: his record with Barbara Streisand and Martha and Martha reeves
Speaker 1: Na not very much. So I went in there kind
Speaker 1: of thinking is this all there is? But Adam had
Speaker 1: very carefully shoehorned me into working with Richard. Richard had
Speaker 1: seen me apparently play at the Trouper Door when I
Speaker 1: went there in and fell in love with the act
Speaker 1: and just wanted to produce me. So he'd been badgering
Speaker 1: Adam to get to get get me together with him.
Speaker 1: So we met up and I didn't take to Richard
Speaker 1: very well at first. He was a crazy guy. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of drugs around. It wasn't my kind
Speaker 1: of scene, you know. And I wanted to do my
Speaker 1: own songs. I mean, that's all I did was I
Speaker 1: was a singer songwriter. And he turned around me and said,
Speaker 1: I don't completely hear I don't like your last album,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't hear you just as a songwriter.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think your voice is the best quality
Speaker 1: you've got. I went, what so he said, let's find
Speaker 1: some covers. And I'm in this situation where I'm kind
Speaker 1: of thinking this is I'm going to pack this all
Speaker 1: up and go home. This isn't working. But we both
Speaker 1: agreed that we like motown and soul music. So we
Speaker 1: ended up going into the studio and cutting Tears of
Speaker 1: a Clown Um Reflections the Supremes Um what becomes the
Speaker 1: broken Hearted? I believe um. And it was a fantastic
Speaker 1: session because he brought in the best musicians. Wow, the
Speaker 1: a team, you know, I mean really Larry Carleton and
Speaker 1: all this great Mike o'mardian on piano, Wow, you know,
Speaker 1: Jeff Picaro on drums, Will he Weeks on bass. You know,
Speaker 1: there's an incredible band. The vibe was great. All the
Speaker 1: guys loved me, and I loved working with the band,
Speaker 1: so you know, jamming with them was was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: And then every now and then we just had to
Speaker 1: serious up and do a song for Richard uh And
Speaker 1: I think there was potential, you know, I saw the
Speaker 1: potential like I saw that I could hold my own
Speaker 1: with great musicians. You know, afterwards, I'm out drinking with
Speaker 1: all the guys, and Willie's coming around to my house.
Speaker 1: Come on, car let's just do some Hendricks. Let's jam,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking ship. These guys are now
Speaker 1: my friends. So the whole project kind of took me over,
Speaker 1: as it were, and we started off. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: semi happy because I want to do my own songs.
Speaker 1: I keep playing songs are Richard when he keeps nah,
Speaker 1: I don't see that. A bit too British, you know,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And one day we're jamming in the
Speaker 1: studio in between takes for When I Need You, which
Speaker 1: we've been working on, you know, to get this song
Speaker 1: good by Albert Hammond and Carol Baya saga, lovely song.
Speaker 1: Um And and I'm I don't know, I'm just having
Speaker 1: fun because Jeff Picaro and I used to we lived
Speaker 1: just around the corner. He was in Kirkwood Avenue and
Speaker 1: I was on the corner of Kirkwood and Laurel, opposite
Speaker 1: the County Store. You know that that spot, of course,
Speaker 1: um and I was renting this house right on the corner,
Speaker 1: and and he and I used to He used to
Speaker 1: pass my house and he took his horn as he
Speaker 1: came by in his corvette. And then I didn't drive
Speaker 1: at the time. My driver, David would be ready driving me.
Speaker 1: And we're traveling together, you know, pretty much in convoy
Speaker 1: down the Melrose Avenue to Studio fifty five o five
Speaker 1: on Melrose. Now now, now, um, what do you call it? Um? Uh?
Speaker 1: What's that studio? Paramounts Now, Paramounts parking lot. Unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: not a studio any longer. And and on the way,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd listened to music and Jeff turned around
Speaker 1: it to me and said, hey, did you hear that's
Speaker 1: song today? I said, you want that? That one with
Speaker 1: that high singer. I said, yes, things just like you.
Speaker 1: Shame shame, shame by Shirley and Company. And I started
Speaker 1: singing it in the studio and just playing the drums
Speaker 1: and shame, shame, shame, shame on you because you can't
Speaker 1: dance too, you know, with the falsetto, which I always
Speaker 1: had this great falsetto from being a choir boy, you know.
Speaker 1: And and we start jamming. Now the rest of guys
Speaker 1: pick up on it. Dump dump the Ray Parker Jr.
Speaker 1: Is playing guitar. Groovy guy groovy guy. He's playing this
Speaker 1: incredible rhythm guitar and I start, you get acute way
Speaker 1: of talking, and it's just a jam. It's going on
Speaker 1: for about fifteen minutes, and I'm unknown to us. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Richard, it was a change tapes moment in
Speaker 1: the studio, track real to real. So you know you've
Speaker 1: got to wait till the next tape is on. Line
Speaker 1: it up and then you can carry on recording. But
Speaker 1: Richard had kind of I was I was thinking, he's
Speaker 1: letting us go a long time, you know, before he
Speaker 1: come on, guys, let's go back to the track. He's
Speaker 1: going on a long time before this this eventuality. And
Speaker 1: of course in the studio, meanwhile, Howard Steele the engineers
Speaker 1: telling me, He's saying, this is great. Get that tape off,
Speaker 1: put a fresh one on, you know, start recording now
Speaker 1: now now get this. Don't lose it. Don't lose it.
Speaker 1: And we didn't know all this because in the end
Speaker 1: he just turned around to us. Okay, guys, very nice,
Speaker 1: but let's get on. We've got to cut this track today.
Speaker 1: Come on, time as money, guys, you know, we carry
Speaker 1: on with recording when I need you. About two weeks later,
Speaker 1: he calls me up to his office and he's made
Speaker 1: put it onto a cassette and this jam session. He said,
Speaker 1: that is your hit, he said, on my life. I say,
Speaker 1: it's one of the biggest things I've ever heard. That
Speaker 1: is your hit. You know how we got to get
Speaker 1: a chorus, We've got to finish this thing. But that,
Speaker 1: he said, is a crossover hit. He said. And the
Speaker 1: year before we've had Staying Alive, you know, the oh
Speaker 1: no no jive talking, the bigs jive talking and you
Speaker 1: know which a Reef Martine record produced, you know, with
Speaker 1: the bags, and he said, that is your jive talking.
Speaker 1: He said, that thing is gonna It's incredible. I can
Speaker 1: really do something with this. So there was a guy
Speaker 1: called Vinnie Pancier who was producer and co writer with
Speaker 1: a lot of people work with Ringo Star on the
Speaker 1: records that Richard did with Ringo Star and and we
Speaker 1: called Richard called him in. He had a bad back.
Speaker 1: I remember he had some major problem where I've got
Speaker 1: to go and see my car practical Leo. You know
Speaker 1: all this American stuff that I didn't admit. This little
Speaker 1: British guy didn't understand the pedantry of it all. You know,
Speaker 1: Richard's got to get his joints rolled just so you know,
Speaker 1: And and everybody's got these, you know, the chair and
Speaker 1: the studio is not right. I'm we have to take
Speaker 1: a day off so I can go shopping for chairs.
Speaker 1: These are the guys I'm working well. I just want
Speaker 1: to get on with this fucking record that I've has,
Speaker 1: costing me a fortune. So we have five minutes to work,
Speaker 1: and we managed to kind of take it up to
Speaker 1: another key and we have the chorus, put it on
Speaker 1: the cassette, joined the two together and we've got a song.
Speaker 1: So next thing that happens is, I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: a call from Donald Fagan, who we both knew pretty well.
Speaker 1: He's got a great band that's come down from New York,
Speaker 1: but he's got a rights block. He's got nothing to record.
Speaker 1: And Bill Schnay, his engineer who's sometimes engineered with us,
Speaker 1: has got producers workshop his own boutique studio up there
Speaker 1: with Chuck Rainey in town and Michael and Mardian and
Speaker 1: Larry Carlton and Steve Gadd has come down with Chuck
Speaker 1: Rainey from New York and he says, you've got this
Speaker 1: band is incredible. Donald's got nothing to record today? Do
Speaker 1: you want to come in? And Richard said, I think
Speaker 1: I've got the tune for that. So we went in
Speaker 1: and he brought it, brought in his reel to reel.
Speaker 1: There were two machines going and they were spinning the
Speaker 1: two two reels together and dubbing onto Steve Gad's drums
Speaker 1: onto that. You know, I don't know how that worked,
Speaker 1: but the band is all, you know, playing and I
Speaker 1: don't know somehow out of it. We just Steve had
Speaker 1: this incredible drag drag snare field which is famous for
Speaker 1: you know, He's playing away um and Bills recording it
Speaker 1: all and Richard's over the moon and and I'm singing
Speaker 1: next door to to Steve, and Steve and I are
Speaker 1: getting on like an absolute house on fire with all
Speaker 1: the musicians, you know, and and we come out of it.
Speaker 1: We've got you made me feel like dancing, And there's
Speaker 1: still a little bit more time to go. So Richard says,
Speaker 1: can we do another track? And Bill says, he, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, what do you got? They play
Speaker 1: how Much Love? And the guys just say yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: Richard t was was came down from New York and
Speaker 1: he hears it and it said, I was complete, bang
Speaker 1: out gospel tune, you know for for piano. Anyway, I've
Speaker 1: written it with Barry Mann who wrote he Lost that
Speaker 1: love and feeling, you know. So it was a fantastic
Speaker 1: little tune. Um. So Richard's on piano, and yeah, we
Speaker 1: got that done in an hour or half an hour.
Speaker 1: So we came out of that studio with a three
Speaker 1: hour session with two songs, two hits. So you have
Speaker 1: this great success with Richard, you continue to work with Richard,
Speaker 1: how do you break off with Richard? They didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it any longer. I mean, he just he
Speaker 1: wanted to move on. Also, he was very expensive. I
Speaker 1: think that that was a you know a problem with
Speaker 1: for Adam. Although we were getting great success all around
Speaker 1: the world. That you know, when you've got records and
Speaker 1: the producers taking twelve percent of the record as well,
Speaker 1: that was his fee. You know, he would take a
Speaker 1: long time to make records, a lot of editing. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's just it's something that we couldn't sustain. I think
Speaker 1: either side, he wanted to move on to other things
Speaker 1: as well. You know, he had a chance to um
Speaker 1: Make Records, also started his own label. I think he
Speaker 1: started recording the Point of Sisters and he had his
Speaker 1: own label. He had his He moved to two Planet Records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he moved. He put an office in Hollywood Sunset Boulevard,
Speaker 1: and you know, he wanted to go in a different direction.
Speaker 1: I think he wanted I think when maybe we couldn't
Speaker 1: pay him enough, you know, so he wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, get people who would pay him more.
Speaker 1: You know, he was very money oriented, Richard. And so
Speaker 1: then you go back with David Courtney while I was
Speaker 1: still in l A, you know, and I was now
Speaker 1: enjoying living in l A. And you know, the lovely
Speaker 1: thing about records is that you always kind of like
Speaker 1: reap the success a year or two years after you've recorded.
Speaker 1: So nineteen seventy nine, I'm still living off it. You know.
Speaker 1: I've got a great last record we made, just called
Speaker 1: Leo said, because nobody could think of a title. But
Speaker 1: we've got Raining in my Heart on there and a
Speaker 1: hit in the UK, I Can't Stop Loving You, a
Speaker 1: song by this lovely guy, Billy Nichols that has really
Speaker 1: been a big hit there. And so we had a
Speaker 1: fine record, you know, to to live off. And I'm
Speaker 1: touring and David turns up again. He's living in l A.
Speaker 1: We're all talking again and becoming friends again. He comes
Speaker 1: to a few shows. He says, look, I'd love to
Speaker 1: produce you again. And I said, well, you know, you'll
Speaker 1: have to square it with Adam. He said, no, Adam
Speaker 1: thinks it's a good idea. And by this time David's
Speaker 1: done quite a few records as a producer, and he's
Speaker 1: very in with Duc Dunn and Steve Cropper and all
Speaker 1: these guys. He knows all the guys I worked with
Speaker 1: as well. He hadn't worked with Jeff Acaro. But I
Speaker 1: brought Jeff in and Steve, Luca Thur and a few
Speaker 1: guys from my sort of side in Michael Amardian as well,
Speaker 1: you know, um uh and and we just we just
Speaker 1: suddenly got recording. We went to Sunset Sound and recorded
Speaker 1: here very quickly. U Umberto Gatica was the engineer who
Speaker 1: famous Engineer later on was one of his first ever
Speaker 1: records he cut. But he was amazing, and you know,
Speaker 1: we had a fantastic team. I brought in Billy Payne
Speaker 1: to play keyboards, who was who I loved working with
Speaker 1: because I used to jam with him and Lowell George
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, up in the canyons. And
Speaker 1: so I asked Billy if he'd be like he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love to man, you know. So David Lindley, we
Speaker 1: brought him pedal steel guitar, you know, and so we
Speaker 1: made a fantastic record. But I don't know why the
Speaker 1: record company wasn't really, I mean, they know. I suppose
Speaker 1: they'd spend a lot of money on the Richard Perry projects,
Speaker 1: you know, because Richard was very demanding producer director type,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, and now David was a bit softer,
Speaker 1: so I think a little bit less money got spent
Speaker 1: pushing that in a um. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: bloody good record really, So then you go to work
Speaker 1: with Alan Tarney. How does that happen? Well, running out
Speaker 1: of money and to live in America, you know, and
Speaker 1: me and my wife Janice were kind of thinking we
Speaker 1: can't keep this up, you know, it's just crazy. So
Speaker 1: Chris Wright of Chris List Records plays me this song
Speaker 1: by this guy Alan Tarni when I was visiting London.
Speaker 1: He says, you should think about working with this guy,
Speaker 1: and the song was we Don't Talk Anymore Cliff Richard,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, the great thing about this
Speaker 1: guy he plays everything himself, just him and the drummer,
Speaker 1: and it's got a unique way of working. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of At this time, I'd started to build my
Speaker 1: own studio and I was going in this direction myself,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, oh, this is interesting, and he'd
Speaker 1: really love to work with you. So I met with
Speaker 1: Alan Tani and he had a couple of great songs
Speaker 1: that we went straight into the studio and recorded R
Speaker 1: G R G Jones Studio in Wimbledon, and they both
Speaker 1: ended up on the record and we decided to make
Speaker 1: an album from there. You know, we got on really great.
Speaker 1: I loved his technique, just him and me in the room.
Speaker 1: Trevor Spencer would then come in and play drums. One
Speaker 1: of the last things after, you know, we worked off
Speaker 1: one of Trevor's drum loops. At the time, technology was
Speaker 1: in its infancy, but Alan was already mastering computers and
Speaker 1: there was this crazy system where you could put in
Speaker 1: one note at a time and it made a very
Speaker 1: interesting kind of sound. Because we were all discovering sequencing
Speaker 1: at the time. You know, there's this way of making
Speaker 1: records lynn drum machines and and and sequences, you know,
Speaker 1: working off computers. And while it was all very metronomic,
Speaker 1: if you put human instruments to it, like guitars and
Speaker 1: bass and vocals, he got a great kind of sweat
Speaker 1: off it. I don't know how to describe it, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating thing, you know, that humanity and
Speaker 1: robots together, virtual AI, early AI, I think. And so
Speaker 1: we made this record and right at the end of it,
Speaker 1: we were we had an extra day of studio time
Speaker 1: and we didn't know what to do with it. So
Speaker 1: we sat around watching TV trying to think of ideas
Speaker 1: we thought would do a cover. You know. First off,
Speaker 1: we had a slowed down version of Don't Be Cruel,
Speaker 1: Don't want to be a Tiger, you know, really slowed
Speaker 1: down like that, you know, Um, no, treat me nice?
Speaker 1: Was it Treat me Nice? And one of those anyway,
Speaker 1: because Tigers played too rough whatever that song is, you know, um,
Speaker 1: so oh, it wasn't going anywhere, you know, And we
Speaker 1: were watching the TV and an ad came on for
Speaker 1: the Greatest Hits of Bobby V and Bobby V made
Speaker 1: an album when Buddy Hollyod died. They were both with
Speaker 1: Coral Records, so the crickets. Coral didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do with the crickets, who are incredibly talented themselves, so
Speaker 1: they put Bobby V Meets the Crickets and made this
Speaker 1: record six and the hit out of that record was
Speaker 1: a song called more Than I Can Say. So, um,
Speaker 1: there it was on the TV. Well, yeah, I loved
Speaker 1: you more Than I Can See, and Alan and I
Speaker 1: both looked at each other. We both loved that song
Speaker 1: in our past, you know, and he said, let's do that.
Speaker 1: So we went in about one o'clock. This one. We
Speaker 1: actually had to rush to a record store to find
Speaker 1: the original record, and those days you couldn't call up
Speaker 1: anything on the internet. Of course, there wasn't an internet.
Speaker 1: So we went to a record store and somebody found
Speaker 1: a shrink rack copy behind the desk and had just
Speaker 1: been reliving only only only just came out Greatest Shits
Speaker 1: of Bobby V. And they're on it. Track eight or
Speaker 1: so is more than I Can Say. So we spin it.
Speaker 1: We kind of get the cords down and you know,
Speaker 1: and we started working on it. We find the right
Speaker 1: key for my voice. Um, and by midnight we've got
Speaker 1: it mixed, finished, ready to go, all the vocals on it, everything,
Speaker 1: and well it wasn't mixed. I mean, we still got
Speaker 1: it mixed, but there it was a great use of
Speaker 1: that extra day that we hadn't calculated. And I ad
Speaker 1: on faith and everybody turned around and said, that is
Speaker 1: your single, you know. So that became the first single,
Speaker 1: more than I can say, the only song on there
Speaker 1: that I didn't write, and there it was. It became
Speaker 1: my comeback hit in America. So that to biget. How
Speaker 1: do you end up working with the Reef? I've made
Speaker 1: a Reef a few times in London and I really
Speaker 1: liked him. I mean we had mutual friends with some
Speaker 1: of the guys with the bigs and and he just
Speaker 1: he was coming into London. I think a Reef was
Speaker 1: trying to find something new, so he was linking up
Speaker 1: with a lot of songwriters there and finding songs, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and I think I think he just kind of I
Speaker 1: was really into British talent at the time, and he
Speaker 1: made a call. I got a call, and so Reef Martin.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'll know him, of course, I
Speaker 1: know you, and he said, Um, I am in London
Speaker 1: and I am staying at the Mayfair Hotel and I'd
Speaker 1: like to meet up and I said, great, come over,
Speaker 1: he said now. So I went straight over and he said, look,
Speaker 1: I want to make a record with you. I love
Speaker 1: living in a fantasy, love all your records with with Richard.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, could we could we talk about a project?
Speaker 1: And I said, great, Well, I'll get onto the record companies.
Speaker 1: He said, I've already talked to them. And I said,
Speaker 1: I'll get onto Adam. He said, I've already talked to him.
Speaker 1: He said, we're starting now. He said, listen to these songs.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, he played me a load of
Speaker 1: songs and I played him a load of songs that
Speaker 1: I had written, um, some with David Courtney that I
Speaker 1: hadn't got round to recording yet. And he said, I
Speaker 1: think we got an album. So we went to New
Speaker 1: York started recording. Then we went to l A and
Speaker 1: recorded some more. But this was a time when a
Speaker 1: few nefarious things were going on with Adam. Unfortunately. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was, like I said, he was trying to sort
Speaker 1: of get money out of the record company and money
Speaker 1: wherever he could and for projects that he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was not really there all the
Speaker 1: time as the manager. I was hanging on to him
Speaker 1: because I didn't know where else to go. Um And
Speaker 1: when it came to we finished the record and I
Speaker 1: was very proud of it. Barry Gibb wrote us a
Speaker 1: song hard Stop Beating in Time, and there was a
Speaker 1: lovely song by a bunch of guys in England called
Speaker 1: have You Ever Been in Love? We had two major
Speaker 1: signal singles on there. The title track was the song
Speaker 1: David and I wrote David Courtney and I wrote yet
Speaker 1: again called World Radio. So the album was called World Radio.
Speaker 1: We took it to warn us and they said, look,
Speaker 1: we don't have any budget for this. I said, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to be on Solid Gold next week with
Speaker 1: Dion Warwick, you know, co hosting, and I can, I can.
Speaker 1: They want me to sing some of the songs. They said, yeah,
Speaker 1: well good luck with that, but we don't have any
Speaker 1: budget for a single. So I go on this show
Speaker 1: and I sing these two songs and the audience goes mad.
Speaker 1: TV goes mad. In America, everybody loves it and they
Speaker 1: can't buy the single. What can you say it's like
Speaker 1: it's a disaster, It's really it was a really sad moment.
Speaker 1: Who do we blame? Do we blame Adam? Do we
Speaker 1: blame the people who Warner Brothers? Well, one is, weren't
Speaker 1: that easy to get on with at that time. I
Speaker 1: mean I signed to Joe Smith. Joe Smith at this
Speaker 1: time had gone. It was Mo Austin. I mean, Moe
Speaker 1: Austin is the guy that in seven when I got
Speaker 1: my Grammy, turned around to me at the Grammy party
Speaker 1: afterwards and say, hey, Leo Seria or later, you're going
Speaker 1: to win one of these things. So, I mean, he
Speaker 1: didn't even know I had won a Grammy because it
Speaker 1: was so you know, in in raptures over all the
Speaker 1: Fleetwood mac Rumors Grammys at that time. So I had
Speaker 1: a company that was a bit disengaged with me, you
Speaker 1: know in America, and you know, and then when I
Speaker 1: deliver something, they're just thinking of how much it's going
Speaker 1: to cost to sell. You know. I don't think there
Speaker 1: was a I don't think there was anybody really listening
Speaker 1: to the record, you know what I mean. Okay, but
Speaker 1: let's go back to Adam. Now, you believe Adam is
Speaker 1: stealing from you. You ultimately sue Adam. What's going on there?
Speaker 1: Well eventually, yeah, it was a little bit later that
Speaker 1: I managed to extricate myself from all of that. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, if I just pack up with Adam, I
Speaker 1: won't get my properties, you know, I won't get my
Speaker 1: my master's, I won't get all the things that I
Speaker 1: should get. Because he had me on a power of
Speaker 1: attorney agreement very early in my career, so I signed
Speaker 1: away everything to him. He could do anything on my
Speaker 1: behalf without me even ever to consult with me. You know.
Speaker 1: So I had my publishing, we had the same accountant,
Speaker 1: we had, he had my record rights, he had everything.
Speaker 1: So to extricate myself from this guy had to be
Speaker 1: done kind of carefully, you know. Um, And eventually I
Speaker 1: think he just gave up. And you know, I I
Speaker 1: got everything back, which was amazing. It's tough, but it
Speaker 1: was I got everything back. Suddenly. I owned my whole catalog,
Speaker 1: owned my all my songs. He just gave me the
Speaker 1: publishing companies. Um, I I owned all the records. He
Speaker 1: gave me the record company that I was signed to,
Speaker 1: I mean production company, record company. You know that. Then
Speaker 1: leases too, of course you know, you know has done
Speaker 1: So I had all those companies. Um, I had all
Speaker 1: those rights, and do you still own them? No? I
Speaker 1: met a guy Hi, I still had a problem with
Speaker 1: Chrysalis Records, where chrys Chrysalis Records in England had paid
Speaker 1: out a very large sum in those days six and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand, who enticed me to do another ten year
Speaker 1: deal with them when ten years ran out in around Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not in three I discovered, even though I extricated
Speaker 1: myself from Adam that I think it was but I
Speaker 1: was still signed to Christlis and under the terms of
Speaker 1: the old deal, which meant I couldn't get anything back
Speaker 1: from them. So I questioned this and I got a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I found a manager in the end who got me
Speaker 1: a lawyer who'd done a lot of great stuff for
Speaker 1: else and John and he he managed to threaten um
Speaker 1: Chris Lis Chris right quite heavily into giving up Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those those rights, um and I got free of them.
Speaker 1: But the guy who introduced me to the lawyer turned
Speaker 1: out to be an even bigger crook than Adam was.
Speaker 1: And he just said, Okay, now you've got all your
Speaker 1: rights back, You're really free, get on with your record.
Speaker 1: So I moved to the country in England. I was
Speaker 1: off far away from London all of a sudden, living
Speaker 1: in this beautiful cottage in seventy acres of land or so,
Speaker 1: you know, with the studio there and everything all going
Speaker 1: really well, planning my next record, writing my songs, not
Speaker 1: kind of knowing exactly you know, who I was going
Speaker 1: to work with, but basically getting on with it, you know.
Speaker 1: And in the meanwhile, he was signing away all my
Speaker 1: rights with a forged signature, back to Warners, back to
Speaker 1: Chrysalis now with a label called the Hit Label, signing
Speaker 1: away my publishing rights. It was an absolute mess. I
Speaker 1: broke into its office one day because he changed the
Speaker 1: locks on the keys my office actually, and found out
Speaker 1: that he'd also managed to drum up about a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thousand UM pounds on credit cards to take
Speaker 1: his wife on holiday all over the world and do
Speaker 1: things like that. So he was stealing money off me
Speaker 1: with credit cards and yeah, and signing me to deals
Speaker 1: that I couldn't get out of. So today, at this
Speaker 1: late date, you own none of your publishing, none of
Speaker 1: your master recordings. It was very interesting. We came to
Speaker 1: you do remember a lovely guy called Bob Emma. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah. Bob and Sue a lovely couple. I
Speaker 1: don't know if Bob's still around, but Bob was a
Speaker 1: beautiful cat and he was with Warner Brothers. Okay, so
Speaker 1: he was one of the old school Warner Brothers guys
Speaker 1: still there. Rusty Ratte and all those guys had long
Speaker 1: long left, you know. Um and Mol Austin's there running
Speaker 1: the show, and his son is there as well. Um
Speaker 1: and Bob is still there, and I don't know. Donna
Speaker 1: Tell a marvelous Donna Teller Pigionetti, my partner, Um, who
Speaker 1: had seen me go through all this rip off. She
Speaker 1: was with me now, the new lady in my life
Speaker 1: as it were. It's starting to get involved in the management.
Speaker 1: She's learning how to manage me, and she's learning how
Speaker 1: to because we're in a ship, you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: almost bankrupt. We had accountants telling us we should far
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy and just give up the business and everything,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking, no, I can't do that.
Speaker 1: So she heard from somebody in the business that Bob
Speaker 1: Emma was coming into London. So she managed to get
Speaker 1: a meeting with him at the hotel. I don't know
Speaker 1: how she did it, but Bob sat down with him
Speaker 1: and she said, well you know Leo say, and he said,
Speaker 1: I love Leo. And Sue was there as well, and
Speaker 1: they said, oh we lovely or whatever happened to Leo. Well,
Speaker 1: Leo signed back with your label. Really they didn't even know. Um.
Speaker 1: And basically he gets no royalties. He's so his catalog
Speaker 1: to you what. I can't believe Leo would ever do that.
Speaker 1: He I saw a poster. Bob said, you know, he's
Speaker 1: playing here in London. So they're in shock. And Bob
Speaker 1: just says, look, Donna, I'm going to get his royalties back.
Speaker 1: So and he did. He got a deal I couldn't
Speaker 1: get out of Warners. I'm still with Warner in Australia
Speaker 1: and still with Warner in America via Rhino. I'm not
Speaker 1: very happy about it because they never do a damn thing. Um,
Speaker 1: they never released anything. They're just you know, but they're
Speaker 1: just holding onto me. They hold onto those those rights
Speaker 1: over the last records. If I had enough money, i'd
Speaker 1: be out of there. But I'd have to buy my
Speaker 1: way out, you know, so um so. But we managed
Speaker 1: to get royalties again. We got you know, suddenly, we
Speaker 1: didn't get back royalties of course in the time that
Speaker 1: Lynch had stolen them all. But this guy, Michael Lynch,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what his name was, the crook who
Speaker 1: forged my signature. But we managed to we managed to
Speaker 1: kind of get that back, and then gradually, of course
Speaker 1: we got um we got an arrangement with Universal as well,
Speaker 1: where he'd sold the songs to them, and we got
Speaker 1: back publishing rights for them. They sold Universal sold off
Speaker 1: to another company anyway, who look after it now? And
Speaker 1: you know, the royalties are all pretty intact and since then,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the guys I've been approached with
Speaker 1: Pride By, I was approached by Primary Wave, and I
Speaker 1: was approached by quite a few people. I had a
Speaker 1: very good friend down here, a wonderful music business lawyer here,
Speaker 1: a friend who who went to Primary Wave and represented me,
Speaker 1: and and now I share my catalog and royalties um
Speaker 1: with Primary Wave, basically my earnings. Okay, just so I understand,
Speaker 1: you don't own the records, you don't own the publishing,
Speaker 1: but your writer's share and your royalties are now with
Speaker 1: primary works. Yeah, split with me with still of about
Speaker 1: my company. And did you get a good check to
Speaker 1: do that? Very very nice? Thank you. Okay, I've probably
Speaker 1: sworn to secrecy over the over the amount, but it's
Speaker 1: it's made life a little bit easier. You know. We've
Speaker 1: paid off the mortgage of the house and all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. You know. Okay, So now financially, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? Yeah? Very good, very good. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: very good. I mean I'm not in the wealth category
Speaker 1: that I should be in where, you know, along with
Speaker 1: most of our contemporaries for what I've done, and I
Speaker 1: suppose I can't really choose, you know, if I wanted to,
Speaker 1: if I wanted to, say, play Glastonbury, I don't really
Speaker 1: have the kind of people behind me who could push
Speaker 1: that because I can't really afford to hire pr and
Speaker 1: promotion teams. You know, I'd love to be able to,
Speaker 1: but I work very independently because I work within my budget.
Speaker 1: You know. So let's go Bakistan. What happened with your
Speaker 1: first wife? We divorced. She got fed up with being
Speaker 1: Mrs Sayer I think, and she was she was going
Speaker 1: for a tough time, and you know, we we split.
Speaker 1: That was it? And how was that for you? I
Speaker 1: promised never to speak to her again. We promised to,
Speaker 1: you know, to to not contact each other. What was
Speaker 1: the basis, what was the inspiration for that? She wanted
Speaker 1: to go back to her maiden name and have a
Speaker 1: new life and not be Mrs Sarah any longer, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's a tough thing for the women when you know,
Speaker 1: we go to American or business meetings, you know, and
Speaker 1: they say, hey, Leo, nice of me. I said, this
Speaker 1: is Janey's my wife, and they say hi, Hi jan anyway, Leo,
Speaker 1: and you know, you're just She's She was a very
Speaker 1: intelligent girl, and she didn't like that, you know, she
Speaker 1: didn't like that she couldn't get the respect. It's a
Speaker 1: man's world, isn't it, you know, and still very much
Speaker 1: yeah so so so she needed a change, and she'd
Speaker 1: been incredibly supportive of me in the time we were together. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I must say that I had met Donna
Speaker 1: at this time and also was those you know, lining
Speaker 1: myself up for a new life, you know, with with
Speaker 1: Donna teller Um, which happened by chance. I mean, Janis
Speaker 1: and I were going through a bad period you know,
Speaker 1: these things happen, you meet somebody else and there it went.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad to say I'm still with Donna and
Speaker 1: very faithful now, you know. And that's been thirty six
Speaker 1: years or so we've been together. Okay, so you ever
Speaker 1: want to have children or that was something? No, it
Speaker 1: never came into the equation. I mean, Jannis didn't want
Speaker 1: them when we were together, and we would rather travel
Speaker 1: than spend the time to make babies. So that was
Speaker 1: the choice. And I think, you know, leaving that behind
Speaker 1: then and going into now. Um, I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: always been this very unusual operator. I'm very much, you know,
Speaker 1: an insular person working within myself. So I suppose really siblings.
Speaker 1: I never even thought about it. You know. I'm lucky
Speaker 1: that I've had women in my life have been very
Speaker 1: supportive to my lifestyle. Um, but basically I think the
Speaker 1: buck always stops with me, you know. That's so that's it. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back. You're working with Richard than David Courtney
Speaker 1: again and Alan Tarney. You have some success, you're working
Speaker 1: with our reef. You realize you're being ripped off, like
Speaker 1: the story you're telling with Warner brothers where they're not
Speaker 1: going to commit even though you're on solid gold. What's
Speaker 1: it like to all of a sudden realize you had
Speaker 1: your time, but you're not the priority anymore. And it's
Speaker 1: a really good question, but you know how this business works.
Speaker 1: You know, one minute you're thinking about that, going oh God,
Speaker 1: and you're talking to Janis and you said we've got
Speaker 1: to go home. Then the next minute the phone rings
Speaker 1: and you're on Midnight Special. What do you say? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a very g garious guy. Everybody seems
Speaker 1: to like me. All the musicians that have worked with
Speaker 1: still my best friends. I talked to rape Harker, I
Speaker 1: talked to you all these guys all the time, and
Speaker 1: we're all friends and we you know, I'm a guy
Speaker 1: who just looks for the positives so very stupidly. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have put my books in order. I'd have just
Speaker 1: cracked on. I mean, many other people, I think Bob
Speaker 1: would have just stopped and said, right, you've got to
Speaker 1: sort this out now. But I never did. I didn't
Speaker 1: do until it was too late. And then when I
Speaker 1: did sort things out and took on a different mindset
Speaker 1: with it all, I think that I would by this
Speaker 1: time had stated my case enough, you know, recording wise
Speaker 1: and live wise, that I had a real legacy that
Speaker 1: I could take a break from for a bit, you know,
Speaker 1: and sort out the business side. But I think when
Speaker 1: all that was going on, I was still kind of
Speaker 1: like feeling that I was half proven, you know, and
Speaker 1: there was still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're only as good as your records, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're only as good as your last live show.
Speaker 1: So I was feeling at that time that I still
Speaker 1: had to stay on the case and do the job.
Speaker 1: You know. Don't complain about these things. You're living. Well,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So how do you feel about your legacy
Speaker 1: at this moment in time? Proud of all of it,
Speaker 1: even the mistakes. I like the whole way it fits together,
Speaker 1: and I like being this kind of slightly obscure artist
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, I'm not on everybody's lips, and
Speaker 1: I'm not um, you know, I'm not headline in Glassberry
Speaker 1: or Paying Maids and Square Gardens, where I think I
Speaker 1: should be. Part of me thinks I should be. But
Speaker 1: but I've still got a lot to you know, there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of leeway for things to come, and
Speaker 1: I kind of like that. I'm still hungry, I'm still ambitious.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm seventy four in May. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't really be looking at another fifty years, So
Speaker 1: what what where do you go from here? But I'm
Speaker 1: having a ball at the moment. I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker 1: I'm joining the legacy, writing my book and doing all
Speaker 1: the research and finding out that I've I've done more
Speaker 1: than I thought, you know, achieve more because I've always
Speaker 1: been looking at the ball right, you know, in player
Speaker 1: that at the moment rather than looking back very much.
Speaker 1: Can you get a victory lap? Can you get a
Speaker 1: manager or somebody involved who will get you on the
Speaker 1: stage in Glastonbury, will get you one more time around
Speaker 1: because you still have your voice and you have all
Speaker 1: those hits? Well, who knows? Who knows? I mean the
Speaker 1: only problem is that most people in this in this game,
Speaker 1: at this moment, have such a vested interest in everything
Speaker 1: that they do or want to have vested interests. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all about money now, you know, the business has changed.
Speaker 1: So what's the manager going to do with Leo Saya?
Speaker 1: He's going to want to make as much money before
Speaker 1: the guy has a heart attack and kills over. He's
Speaker 1: gonna want because he's used to getting it from young acts.
Speaker 1: He's gonna want everything. He's gonna want total ownership. So
Speaker 1: where do I go? Who do I go to? That's
Speaker 1: not gonna suck me over, because that's the name of
Speaker 1: the game. We funk people over. Now, that's what we do. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a separate conversation, although your points are well taken.
Speaker 1: So you don't have a manager today I do. I
Speaker 1: have a manager in England and a manager in Australia
Speaker 1: and they just get me work and look after the
Speaker 1: business as it were, and Donna Teller oversees everything. Then
Speaker 1: you have an agent. Who's your agent? Do you have
Speaker 1: a worldwide agent? Not? Really? Not really? We um I
Speaker 1: mean when we tour in England, we have an agent
Speaker 1: there that puts all the gigs together and does a
Speaker 1: very good job of that. He does a few other acts,
Speaker 1: but he's not the biggest um. And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I do have. I have an amazing lawyer, an
Speaker 1: incredible accountants, both in England and in here, and I
Speaker 1: split my business North and Southern Hemisphere. So basically, if
Speaker 1: you like, when I play America, it will be with
Speaker 1: the English band and the English team, and when I play,
Speaker 1: say China, it will be China or Asia it will
Speaker 1: be with the Australian team. So I have a band
Speaker 1: in Australia and a band in England. And how many
Speaker 1: gigs a year do you do and how many do
Speaker 1: you want to do? Well, I'm just off to the UK.
Speaker 1: We're finishing an Irish tour that first off that we
Speaker 1: started in but got broken into because of COVID, when suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, you couldn't have more than two hundred people
Speaker 1: um in a venue at one time, So we had
Speaker 1: to scotch those rest of those gigs, postpone them, and
Speaker 1: then I'm doing the rest of those and a few
Speaker 1: more in Ireland in August, and then I'm doing a
Speaker 1: thirty six day British tour um and that's going to
Speaker 1: be from middle of September to November, and then hopefully,
Speaker 1: with conversations going on with Primary Waive as well, at
Speaker 1: the moment, I'll be coming to America next year. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly look forward to seeing you. Are you doing
Speaker 1: these live gigs to stay alive or because you want
Speaker 1: to do it. No, I'm doing it because I wanted
Speaker 1: to it, and also it keeps me young. You know,
Speaker 1: I've still got my hair and I've still got my voice,
Speaker 1: and I think working really sort of is import into that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've we've all gone through a complete change
Speaker 1: of life, haven't we. With the COVID times and everything
Speaker 1: has changed. I mean, you know, every every reliable uh
Speaker 1: let's say, everything that you could rely on was was
Speaker 1: carted away, you know, so you had to kind of
Speaker 1: change a little bit. I mean, I've been doing live
Speaker 1: link ups with my band on Zoom just to keep
Speaker 1: you know, us all kind of working together. I've been
Speaker 1: making internet songs and releasing a lot of stuff on
Speaker 1: Zoom I'm sorry. On on YouTube, I do a song
Speaker 1: called white how did We get here? All about the pandemic,
Speaker 1: you know, because everybody's trying to blame everybody else. You
Speaker 1: can see that one if you like. It's on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And then I did a song from Melbourne because when
Speaker 1: that city did the hardest lockdown that anybody had known, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of completely decimated. And Melbourne
Speaker 1: is my playtown. I live in near Sydne, me but
Speaker 1: Melbourne is the place where all the gigs are. And
Speaker 1: so I was kind of like writing a sympathetic song there,
Speaker 1: you know, almost a rap that was actually and now
Speaker 1: I'm just writing a song at the moment for the
Speaker 1: Ukraine UM, which is basically on the angle of what
Speaker 1: are we going to do with all the refugees, which
Speaker 1: is an important question. So it's done like footsteps, like
Speaker 1: a walk. It's called take a walk with Me. So
Speaker 1: you take somebody through a song which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a very classic kind of UM styled song UM, and
Speaker 1: you're inviting someone to leave the city that's falling apart
Speaker 1: but below them and saying you're always going to look
Speaker 1: after them, never let them down. And I don't know
Speaker 1: where to place the song, but I'll probably just make
Speaker 1: a YouTube of it and put it out there and
Speaker 1: be nice if someone from UNICEF or someone picked it
Speaker 1: up and used it. But we'll see. I mean, I
Speaker 1: work in a vacuum, Bob. I'm a very unusual guy.
Speaker 1: I work. I'm like you know, m yeah, I'm like
Speaker 1: vank gosh, I I work on this staff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually hope that my legacy is bigger when I'm
Speaker 1: dead than it is when I'm alive. Well, you're very optimistic,
Speaker 1: still working. We didn't plumb a lot of topics, like
Speaker 1: your relationships with all of these musicians and stars. But
Speaker 1: I admire your optimism and the fact that you still
Speaker 1: you know, especially in light of the story you've told
Speaker 1: about when you leased the Big Space and then it
Speaker 1: devastated you and you had a nervous breakdown. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been close to that feeling again? Was that one
Speaker 1: and done? I don't know if you've heard of a
Speaker 1: show called Big Brother, absolutely absolutely awful. I after chasing
Speaker 1: a record deal a band about two thousand and five
Speaker 1: or six, I um, I was invited to go on
Speaker 1: Big Brother in England celebrity brig Brother, and I went
Speaker 1: on there and they I just left England at the time,
Speaker 1: and I think I said some things about leaving England
Speaker 1: so glad to get out of here, so happy to
Speaker 1: go to Australia, and they really seized on all of
Speaker 1: that and gave me a rotten hard time. And I
Speaker 1: ended up breaking out of there because I experienced incredible
Speaker 1: claustrophobia and the fact that when you go in there,
Speaker 1: they take your watch away from you, you know, they
Speaker 1: take your your your They don't give you any pens
Speaker 1: to write down with anything with. I was suddenly in
Speaker 1: a creative vacuum, and I can't honestly say that. Many
Speaker 1: of my fellow contestants were the most inspiring people to
Speaker 1: be with as well, so they just gave me a
Speaker 1: hard time. So I did half the show in mine,
Speaker 1: which I thought was quite fun to do. So I
Speaker 1: was just doing hand signals, you know. The rest of
Speaker 1: it I wrote, and my breath on glass panes. Some
Speaker 1: of it I actually found a little piece of metal
Speaker 1: and revealed all the cameras to everybody by taking panels out.
Speaker 1: I went to war with the show basically, and I
Speaker 1: found doing that. You know, I'm such a rebel. I
Speaker 1: just I can't do anything like anybody else does. I
Speaker 1: have to do it my own way. I'm born with
Speaker 1: this gene of having to invent myself and and do that.
Speaker 1: So I would actually say, I mean, my feeling is
Speaker 1: that I'm a true artist, and you know sometimes that
Speaker 1: people say that's very big headed or something you know,
Speaker 1: to say, But I know all the criteria that an
Speaker 1: artist needs to have, and it's not a reliance on corporates, companies,
Speaker 1: other people even it's basically it all comes from me.
Speaker 1: Everything I do is part of this vivid imagination that
Speaker 1: was born with that I've always had. I can dream
Speaker 1: songs into being. I can create things from a blank
Speaker 1: sheet of paper. Um So I just have to follow that,
Speaker 1: and that's that's that's my skill set. My skill set
Speaker 1: is to trust myself, to listen to myself and to
Speaker 1: follow myself. And most of the people in my life
Speaker 1: now appreciate that and let me do it, and let me.
Speaker 1: Let me make a mistake. If I make a mistake,
Speaker 1: let me do something glorious. If I do it glorious.
Speaker 1: But they know the only way to get something good
Speaker 1: out of me is to let me do it. I
Speaker 1: designed my own show. Um I I do everything. I'm
Speaker 1: an autobiographer. I'm writing my book completely by myself. Nobody's helping.
Speaker 1: I'm doing all the research by myself. It's been a
Speaker 1: monstrous task. And to find stuff that I didn't even
Speaker 1: know about. It's a revelation as well, you know. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I'm I think probably when
Speaker 1: that book comes out and people hopefully get to read it,
Speaker 1: if I can find the right publisher, and maybe even
Speaker 1: we can make a biopic of it. I think I've
Speaker 1: got to love a story to tell and the fact
Speaker 1: if I'm a little bit obscure and a little bit
Speaker 1: off the radar because of them, may I mean I'm
Speaker 1: not living I'm not with Live Nation, I'm not with
Speaker 1: Sony Records or anybody like that. You know, Um, I'm
Speaker 1: very much off the radar um. But if people want
Speaker 1: to discover me, they'll find something I think that is
Speaker 1: very different and very unique. Well, certainly your conversation with
Speaker 1: me today has been different, unique and intriguing. Leo. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for taking all this time with me.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bob. And I've always been a big admirer
Speaker 1: of you, and I love the I love the column
Speaker 1: and and the blog, and you're one of the good guys.
Speaker 1: So it's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Barbed Worth Sex