Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Such podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is full of Rapaport, who has a
Speaker 1: new autobiography, Glider's Over Hollywood. Why that title.
Speaker 2: That title came from the editor's suggestion. I was having
Speaker 2: trouble coming up with a title for the book all
Speaker 2: the years I was writing it, which was like six years.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't grab a tight I just couldn't come
Speaker 2: up with a title that would capture it. And he said,
Speaker 2: you know, let's look inside the book. Maybe you have
Speaker 2: something there that already is a title. And he liked
Speaker 2: my original chapter. It was called Gliders Over Hollywood. And
Speaker 2: he liked it because it connoted, you know, the fun
Speaker 2: that we had, you know, back in the day, and
Speaker 2: and and in some ways, you know, in an odd way,
Speaker 2: all of us in the business were maybe sort of
Speaker 2: like Gliders over Hollywood, like you know, dropping our little
Speaker 2: promotion bombs or music or whatever. He said, Look, he
Speaker 2: just was enamored with it, and he said, I would
Speaker 2: love to make this the title of the book, and
Speaker 2: then we'll give it a subtitle. So, you know, the
Speaker 2: subtitle says Airship's Airplay and the Art of Rock promotion,
Speaker 2: maybe you get a better idea of what the book
Speaker 2: is about. But he said, look, I really want you
Speaker 2: to think about this title. And the more I thought
Speaker 2: about it, I really liked it because you know, if
Speaker 2: you look at it, you kind of go, huh, what
Speaker 2: is that? Like? What is that about? Right? And then
Speaker 2: if you look at the book cover, those guys did
Speaker 2: an amazing job at that at this company's job on press.
Speaker 2: And you know the guy that did the cover, Paul
Speaker 2: Palmer Edwards, you know, put an airship coming. It looks
Speaker 2: like it's coming over the Hollywood sign. It's perfect. Whole
Speaker 2: thing worked out great. I'm pleased as punch, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, why did you write the book and why did
Speaker 1: it take six years to write it?
Speaker 2: I wrote the book because I I loved this time
Speaker 2: that yeah, and you were there, Bob. I mean this
Speaker 2: time the seventies, the eighties and the rock music business
Speaker 2: was the most amazing, incredible, unbelievable, glorious time when it
Speaker 2: was like the wild West and there were no rules
Speaker 2: and we were making it up as we went along,
Speaker 2: and there were all these characters, right, we were all characters.
Speaker 2: You're a character, I'm a character. Forget the artist, the
Speaker 2: fucking manager. We can we're cursing, right, that's okay, right,
Speaker 2: the fucking man. I mean you're talking about a business.
Speaker 2: This is business right where Okay? The manager of Journey
Speaker 2: big band. Okay, Herbie Herbert. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: ever met Herbert. Okay, Okry, I know them, Okay, okay, fine, okay,
Speaker 2: gets on a Yiddish kick. You read about it right
Speaker 2: in the book. You know he's not even Jewish. He
Speaker 2: gets on a Yiddish kick, sends Yiddish for Dummies books
Speaker 2: to the whole industry, and says, if you want to
Speaker 2: talk to me or they had a famous road manager
Speaker 2: still with us, pat Bubba Moro, because if you want
Speaker 2: to talk to me or Bubba, you have to speak
Speaker 2: a couple of lines of Yiddish. So I get the book.
Speaker 2: It's cute, great, fine, I'll never forget this. It's a Thursday. Okay.
Speaker 2: I get a call Herbie Herbert, Herbie, how you doing?
Speaker 2: Voshmachs too? You know, how are you? He's talking to
Speaker 2: me in Yiddish. I'm saying, Herbie, I got the book.
Speaker 2: It's cute, it's great, it's Thursday. You and I have
Speaker 2: to decide this new single for this Journey record. We're
Speaker 2: selling fifty thousand albums a week, and Bob, as you
Speaker 2: well know, it's all about momentum and your timely releases
Speaker 2: of singles. I have to tell the rock stations one
Speaker 2: is coming out. We have to put the single in production.
Speaker 2: We're down to a deadline, and I'm telling him we
Speaker 2: got to do this now. He keeps talking Yiddish. He
Speaker 2: doesn't stop for two minutes. Finally stops and he goes
Speaker 2: rap raps my nickname because I'm lost him to rap
Speaker 2: aport right, so Rap, What the fuck? A nice Jewish
Speaker 2: boy like you ken't learn a couple of lines of Yiddish.
Speaker 2: I'm like Hermie, I got it. I got the book.
Speaker 2: It's cute, it's great, but this is important. We're selling
Speaker 2: fifty thousand homes a week. We're on a deadline. I know.
Speaker 2: Learn your Yiddish and call me back. Click ock, Bob.
Speaker 2: This is rock and roll business in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: I have to get the YIDDI if I want a
Speaker 2: Journey single, I have to get a Yiddish book and
Speaker 2: learn two lines of fucking Yiddish before I can talk
Speaker 2: to him. This is real. This is not made up shit. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's just a tip of the iceberg of all this
Speaker 2: stuff you and I experienced. And I just somebody. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy that got the call. Great. Thanks. Somebody
Speaker 2: had to write it, somebody had to capture all of
Speaker 2: this because it's totally unbelievable. I don't know if it
Speaker 2: could ever happen again. It's this magic time. Uh. And
Speaker 2: it took six years because I wanted to get it right.
Speaker 2: And look, you're a writer, You're a natural writer. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not you. I had to learn how to write.
Speaker 2: I wrote a blog for ten years for a website.
Speaker 2: It was a promotion company that my friend Judy Lebaux owns,
Speaker 2: which you probably know her ex Atlantic exec Rights, Yes,
Speaker 2: Right Classics d jor So we work together for ten
Speaker 2: years and there's a website that goes along with the
Speaker 2: promotion we do. And I did a blog called Backstage
Speaker 2: Access for ten years. And I learned how to write
Speaker 2: in those ten years. And finally when I got to
Speaker 2: the end, it was like, I think I'm good enough.
Speaker 2: I found my voice. I found a writer's voice. I said,
Speaker 2: I think I'm good enough. And the book had been
Speaker 2: calling out to me to be written for years because
Speaker 2: I love telling stories and I'm a natural at that.
Speaker 2: I think I got it from my dad, but I'm
Speaker 2: not a natural writer, so I had to learn that craft.
Speaker 2: And then, lucky for me, there's a big time ghostwriter
Speaker 2: in my town as a list guy, writes for presidents
Speaker 2: and you know, movie stars. And he looked over my
Speaker 2: shoulder and I would send him stuff and he'd say, hmm,
Speaker 2: that's serviceable. And I'd say okay, and then you know,
Speaker 2: another year, lext year, I'd send something else. He goes,
Speaker 2: this is getting better. Finally, I think by the third year,
Speaker 2: he goes, this is actually entertaining and enlightening. He says,
Speaker 2: I think you're good to go, but I just wanted
Speaker 2: to make it great. And in order to do that
Speaker 2: it takes time. Writing is rewriting and rewriting and reworking
Speaker 2: and throwing stuff out and putting stuff back in. I
Speaker 2: went through four editors that helped me. The last one, well,
Speaker 2: the last one was Tom Seabrook from Jobbone, who's like
Speaker 2: professional and he got this and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: this writing's great. He goes, But they're like producers, right,
Speaker 2: He goes, like a producer. Hey, you got fifteen tracks,
Speaker 2: let's cut it down to twelve. I'm going to re
Speaker 2: sequence your album. And here's a better baseline, like for
Speaker 2: this track. Right. So he's like that guy. So he
Speaker 2: suggested all these things, and all I could do was say.
Speaker 2: All I could do was listen and say thank you, yes,
Speaker 2: thank you. Yes. This is not chapter one, this is
Speaker 2: the prologue. This is books top heavy. I want to
Speaker 2: move some of these chapters around. He goes, hey, look,
Speaker 2: it's your book, but this is my suggestion. Okay. I
Speaker 2: know from being a professional, I wished some of my
Speaker 2: younger bands would have listened to me. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm smart enough to understand this is what this guy
Speaker 2: does for a living. And it took a second because
Speaker 2: the book was a little different, but I digested it
Speaker 2: and I went, oh my god, this guy's made a
Speaker 2: good book into a great book. I know I'm the
Speaker 2: guy that wrote it, but it doesn't matter who wrote it.
Speaker 2: This guy did this, you know, and so, but that's
Speaker 2: why it took so long. And you know what, and
Speaker 2: you know, Jim McKeon, right, of course, good friend, Look mack. Okay,
Speaker 2: turns out the guy's an editor who knew the guy's
Speaker 2: been one of my best friends my whole life. I'm
Speaker 2: writing this way. He goes, oh, you should work with me.
Speaker 2: I'm an editor. I was like, since when he goes, no, no,
Speaker 2: I was in Catholic school, I learned from he's not
Speaker 2: not at it. See, this guy is an editor, he bob.
Speaker 2: This guy worked with me, I mean painstakingly, paragraph by paragraph,
Speaker 2: line by line, word by word. You know, it was
Speaker 2: like fucking Bruce Springsteen making a record. I mean, the
Speaker 2: guy so cerebral. Right, this is what it felt like.
Speaker 2: It was like, crap, there's a better word. This is
Speaker 2: not the right word. You know, this is not you know,
Speaker 2: it's not if you walk Paul McCartney down the street,
Speaker 2: it's not a it's not a dangerous crowd. It's it's
Speaker 2: going to be a challenging crowd. That's a better word.
Speaker 2: So then I'd go ask my wife, Sharon, Max says, challenging,
Speaker 2: What do you think? Yes, listen to Mac. You knows
Speaker 2: what he's talking about. So it took a long time,
Speaker 2: but it's I think. You know. I worked for a
Speaker 2: lot of presidents and one of them was Don Einer.
Speaker 2: And Don had a lot of wisdom. And he used
Speaker 2: to tell artists, new artists who wanted to get their
Speaker 2: records out right away. He'd say, listen, I want you
Speaker 2: to go back and work on this. I want you
Speaker 2: to make it right. Nobody is waiting for your album,
Speaker 2: but once it's out, that's it, and you're not going
Speaker 2: to have a second chance. And he would tell all
Speaker 2: these young artists, you know, you know, nobody's waiting for her.
Speaker 2: I'm just wait, wait, and and that was kind of
Speaker 2: reverberating in my head, honestly, because I knew that and
Speaker 2: I needed it. I needed it to be great. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just look, you read my book. I'm competitive, and
Speaker 2: I wanted you know what I wanted. This is going
Speaker 2: to sound like an ego thing, but I wanted it
Speaker 2: to be the best. I wanted to be the best
Speaker 2: fucking book you could read about our times. And then
Speaker 2: some guy named Bob lefts Sets actually wrote that like,
Speaker 2: I was scared to death when you sent me there email,
Speaker 2: because you're an opinionated fellow, so you know I was.
Speaker 2: I was, I was frightened. And so then I clicked
Speaker 2: on it and I read this line, this is the
Speaker 2: best book about how it used to be and I
Speaker 2: read that three times in a row and then I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm done. I can retire now because it's you right,
Speaker 2: It's like, it's do people know you?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do people actually know what a Bob Blust that says?
Speaker 2: Do you think your listeners are all the people that
Speaker 2: read the letter? Do they know who you are? Or not?
Speaker 1: You know, they think they know who I am?
Speaker 2: But they okay, okay, well, okay, just you know what, Bob,
Speaker 2: You're no bullshit guy. I'm not going to play Kate.
Speaker 2: I'm not smoking. I'm not I'm not going to blow
Speaker 2: smoking up. He's just just for anybody who doesn't know. Okay,
Speaker 2: there's the Left Sets Letter. Okay, it's this give and
Speaker 2: take you know, online thing. If there wasn't a Left
Speaker 2: Sets Letter when our industry went south, as we knew it,
Speaker 2: none of us that we're in this giant family would
Speaker 2: be communicating with each other. We'd be lost. We'd be
Speaker 2: in the fucking desert. But there's a guy, Bob Blust
Speaker 2: that's has this Left Sets Letter, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden we can talk to each other, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the letter gets even bigger, and now it's
Speaker 2: about politics. And now it's about all this stuff and
Speaker 2: and and now there's a podcast. You know, I'm one
Speaker 2: of your biggest fans, but it's not it's people need
Speaker 2: to know, Like how do I say this? I mean,
Speaker 2: just like how important you have been for the music industry,
Speaker 2: you know, and just in general. You know, God knows
Speaker 2: how many people read the Left That's letter now, And
Speaker 2: I don't know if everybody listens to this podcast reads it,
Speaker 2: but you should read it because there's no nonsense, there's
Speaker 2: no bullshit. You say exactly what you want to say,
Speaker 2: and you take a lot of heat sometimes, but it's glorious.
Speaker 2: That's what you want. I don't I don't want people
Speaker 2: pulling punches. Tell me how you feel. You know, you've
Speaker 2: been able to make this yourself.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like certain artists have the ability to make any
Speaker 2: album they want, and and and it's okay, and you've
Speaker 2: made that for yourself, so you know, congratulations to you,
Speaker 2: and people just know how fucking important you are. If
Speaker 2: you don't mind my saying.
Speaker 1: So, well, I'm smiling. This is audio only, I can't
Speaker 1: you know. That's as good as it gets. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to respond. I will just say thank you,
Speaker 1: continuing with the narrative, since you had to slim things down,
Speaker 1: anything worth mentioning that was left on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know if it's worth mentioning or not,
Speaker 2: because you don't really know. In my special in my
Speaker 2: special thanks, uh, I wrote this, I should actually get
Speaker 2: this right. Hang on, give me a second here, crab
Speaker 2: one of these things. I still don't believe I'm holding
Speaker 2: this thing. Uh. There were three people that help me
Speaker 2: in the beginning. So one of them was Bob Wilcox,
Speaker 2: who's a you know, one of my colleagues marketing maven
Speaker 2: from Columbia. He was like my first Slash and Burn editor,
Speaker 2: if you will. So in my thanks to him, I said,
Speaker 2: if you wish you could have read about my romantic
Speaker 2: world when drug induced five days text marathon with a
Speaker 2: renowned La rock DJ. Blame Bob, who ditched the entire
Speaker 2: chapter rap nobody cares So.
Speaker 1: I read that?
Speaker 2: He said, So I ditched it?
Speaker 1: Is that a true story?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I had a whole chapter, and he said, You've got
Speaker 2: better things to talk about. Nobody cares about your you know,
Speaker 2: five day sex marathon with the rock DJ. So I
Speaker 2: ditched it so so I don't stop. First, wait a second,
Speaker 2: but wait, wait, But the reason the only reason I
Speaker 2: bring it up is because I was doing a podcast
Speaker 2: with some guy who was in sense that it wasn't
Speaker 2: in there. He goes, well, wait a minute, you can't
Speaker 2: leave that out. I said, I'm the guy that wants
Speaker 2: to know about that. And then I said, well, I
Speaker 2: can't tell you about that because it's bribe. But you know,
Speaker 2: so I don't know if anybody else gives a shit
Speaker 2: about that. But but you know, look, you can't shoehorn
Speaker 2: all the stories you want to tell in thirty plus
Speaker 2: years of working for Columbia Records. You can't put it
Speaker 2: all in a book. You got to pick and choose.
Speaker 2: There's so much, so many more stories, and they're wonderful stories,
Speaker 2: but you just you can't put them all in. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, you know what, you want a good one.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you one that that that I wished I
Speaker 2: would have put in. Okay, you know, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: one that I wish I would have put in. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty easy going guy. I mean, my whole way of
Speaker 2: promotion is is just learning people, learning how they think,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to to you know, make them understand,
Speaker 2: you know, how open their minds to listening to to
Speaker 2: new music, you know, and in a certain way. Like
Speaker 2: you know, if you have somebody who's who loves the blues,
Speaker 2: right and you want to get them to listen to
Speaker 2: some music, you don't you just never send anybody like
Speaker 2: a file or you know, play somebody a record, what
Speaker 2: do you think, because that's you don't really want their opinion,
Speaker 2: you know, you're trying to you want the opinion that
Speaker 2: you're going to try to shape. So if there's you know,
Speaker 2: somebody's into the blues or whatever, you might say, oh, look,
Speaker 2: I've got this new artist. Chris Whitley's not right down
Speaker 2: the pike rock. But this guy is the real deal.
Speaker 2: This guy's playing resonator guitars. This guy is a real
Speaker 2: job blues guy. No, So all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: this guy already knows you know that he's going to
Speaker 2: maybe like this music. Or you are taking somebody to
Speaker 2: see a band, or you're just being friends with people
Speaker 2: and you're just you know, playing music for people. That's
Speaker 2: that's the style of promotion, you know, person that I am.
Speaker 2: But sometimes you have to wield a hammer. It's only
Speaker 2: a couple of times in my career where I had
Speaker 2: to get heavy, and one was during Springsteen's Nebraska record
Speaker 2: because it was different and it was sparse. And I
Speaker 2: remember specifically, excuse me, because I was taking three radio consultants,
Speaker 2: three of the biggest radio consultants. One was in charge
Speaker 2: of sixty stations, one was in charge of thirty, one
Speaker 2: was in charge of twenty. I was taking them one
Speaker 2: was a week. It was like three nights during a
Speaker 2: week that I was taking them to Billy Joel's house
Speaker 2: because I wanted to introduce them to Billy, because in
Speaker 2: their minds they thought Billy was just this balladeer, lightweight guy.
Speaker 2: And I got on, this guy's a rocker. You gotta
Speaker 2: go see this guy's You need to meet this guy.
Speaker 2: So Billy, Billy actually made dinner. He said, I'm going
Speaker 2: to make dinner for these three guys. I was like, well,
Speaker 2: that's nice of you. It was funny because Billy's part Jewish,
Speaker 2: but Billy's all his bands are Italian. Billy likes to
Speaker 2: think of himself as Italian, so he would tell me, rap,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make a the pasta like Bill, come on,
Speaker 2: But anyway. So he was me. So I figured, this
Speaker 2: is great. I'm gonna put him in a limousine. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take him to Lloyd Neck where you know, Lloyd's neckwork,
Speaker 2: where where Bill used to live at a nice house.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's a long ride and we're in
Speaker 2: a dark limousine. I'm going to play in Nebraska. There's like,
Speaker 2: there's no better place you could play this music for someone.
Speaker 2: And I played it for each of them and they
Speaker 2: all said the same thing. As soon as soon they
Speaker 2: heard it. They went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wa
Speaker 2: wall wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, rap rap.
Speaker 2: You know this is different. This is we're gonna have.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to like spoon feed this to our listeners.
Speaker 2: You know this is not you know, this is not
Speaker 2: born in the USA. This is not darkness. This is
Speaker 2: something very different. And I and I and I and
Speaker 2: I said the same thing to all three of them. Uh,
Speaker 2: I said you, I said, you're kidding me, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 2: at this point, Bruce Springsteen hasn't hasn't earned your respect
Speaker 2: to give him the benefit of the doubt, Like, are
Speaker 2: you kidding me? Uh? And they were like, well, well,
Speaker 2: you know, oh it's it's very different and I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about it, and I'm going to have to spoon
Speaker 2: for this. And I said the same thing to all
Speaker 2: three of them. I said, look, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: make you put it in heavy rotation because I know
Speaker 2: that's not real. I said, but you're going to give
Speaker 2: this record a good shot, and you're going to let
Speaker 2: the people decide. You're going to put this record in
Speaker 2: medium rotation at least three times a day. And if
Speaker 2: you don't, you're going to lose my phone number. And
Speaker 2: that means if you lose my phone number, that means
Speaker 2: you're using losing Bob Dylan's phone number, Big Floyd's phone number,
Speaker 2: the wronging Stone's phone number, Elvis gos Stella, you name it,
Speaker 2: because that's you know, I'm the guy. They need to
Speaker 2: give them tickets and promotions and backstage meet and greets.
Speaker 2: And all three of them said the same thing. They're
Speaker 2: going rap. This isn't like you like, are you going
Speaker 2: to hold me up? And I and I said, for
Speaker 2: Bruce Brinstein, I will not for everybody, but for this guy.
Speaker 2: Right now, in this guy's career, this guy's becoming the
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley of our times. He's a exploding Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna hold you up for this guy. And they understood
Speaker 2: it and they complied. And that's not in the book,
Speaker 2: but it happened, and I didn't write that part of me.
Speaker 2: I don't think in the book that heavy handed approach
Speaker 2: to It's not I don't like it, uh, but uh,
Speaker 2: you know that was a case where I had to
Speaker 2: be different.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to herby her Sure Journey is an
Speaker 1: offshoot of Santana. The first albums are I don't want
Speaker 1: to say prog rock, but they're moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: Greg Rawley is the lead singer, who was the original
Speaker 1: lead singer in Santana. Then they get Steve Perry and
Speaker 1: it turns into a juggernaut. Tell me from the inside side,
Speaker 1: what was going on? To what degree was Herbie involved?
Speaker 1: To what degree did you guys have to push to
Speaker 1: make this? To what degree did you even think it
Speaker 1: would be successful?
Speaker 2: There would be no Journey without Herbie Herbert Herbie after
Speaker 2: after the I think it was the Caravans or Eye album,
Speaker 2: after that band broke up and Herbie was was on
Speaker 2: tour as a as a as he was either the
Speaker 2: road manager of Santana I believe he was at that time,
Speaker 2: or he was way into that camp m m hm.
Speaker 2: And he approached Neil and said, I want to build
Speaker 2: a band around you. And Neil was like, okay. So
Speaker 2: they got Greg Rawley, who you know from the original
Speaker 2: Santana band, and they said, let's let's build a band.
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to remember who the original players were.
Speaker 2: I think I think Prairie Prince from the Tubes might
Speaker 2: have been the original drummer. I think Rossvillong was the
Speaker 2: original bass player. And he said, I want to build
Speaker 2: a band around you. Now the original oh no, it
Speaker 2: was prey print but no, it's no. When I met
Speaker 2: up with him was Ainsley Dunbar. Ainsley was already the drummer.
Speaker 2: But they, you know, and I would call them progressive.
Speaker 2: They were progressed. I mean they were progressive rock, if
Speaker 2: you want to call it that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: long jams, and Roley was seeing the vocals like he
Speaker 2: did for Santana, and we were doing okay. Uh And
Speaker 2: I promoted both those records and we were doing okay,
Speaker 2: but the label wasn't quite sure if they wanted to continue,
Speaker 2: and Herbie told me this story over lunch before the
Speaker 2: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Uh lunch when when
Speaker 2: when uh? When Journey got inducted, and he said he
Speaker 2: went to New York and he wanted to up the
Speaker 2: uh they're contracting. They had two albums, they were getting
Speaker 2: ready to do a third album and and he was
Speaker 2: told they weren't sure they wanted to continue. They had
Speaker 2: seen the band and they they I think it was
Speaker 2: Bruce Lunvall at the time, was the president and a
Speaker 2: guy named Armaanden who was the heead of marketing, and
Speaker 2: they said something's missing and at the the and they
Speaker 2: they wanted something more, and they suggested to Herbie then
Speaker 2: maybe the band needed a frontman, a traditional front person,
Speaker 2: traditional front man. And Herbie said, okay, well, let me
Speaker 2: listen to what you're saying. And at the time, Arma
Speaker 2: was working with a guy I got to come up
Speaker 2: with his name, very good singer, you'd know him, and
Speaker 2: his name escapes me at the moment, but they were
Speaker 2: working with him, and Arma was working with him and suggested,
Speaker 2: let's try this guy. And they did for a little
Speaker 2: while and that didn't work out. Then they had another
Speaker 2: guy and didn't work out, and somebody had given Herbie
Speaker 2: a tape of Steve. Steve had been trying to make
Speaker 2: it in the industry and he was having a hard time.
Speaker 2: He just gave up, so he was he was working
Speaker 2: on his I think it's I think it's a step dad.
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken. His dad had a turkey ranch and
Speaker 2: Steve was literally shoving turkey shit like and the dad's ranch.
Speaker 2: And Herbie heard this and he called and he and
Speaker 2: Steve's mom was on the line, and he goes, I
Speaker 2: really want to talk to your son, and she said, Nah,
Speaker 2: he's done. He's his heart's broken, he's done. He's not
Speaker 2: going to do this. Herbie had to beg his mom
Speaker 2: to get Steve on the phone, you know. Finally Steve
Speaker 2: gets on the phone and Herbie's like, I'm Herbie Herbert,
Speaker 2: and you know I've heard your tape. I know you
Speaker 2: had a rough time that just would you go with
Speaker 2: me on this? Just come, you know, come out to
Speaker 2: San Francisco wherever you wanted to come, He said, just,
Speaker 2: you know, just just be with me, be with the
Speaker 2: band for a little while. You know, you can come
Speaker 2: as a guest, you can come to help on the road.
Speaker 2: You can come as a sound man whatever you want
Speaker 2: and just be part of this. I think there's something here.
Speaker 2: I just just please, please please. And so Steve did,
Speaker 2: and Steve went with the band on tour. And this
Speaker 2: the one lead singer who wasn't was really not getting
Speaker 2: along with Herbie. And as the story goes, and again,
Speaker 2: this is a story told to me by Herbie. So
Speaker 2: you know, in case anybody has any bones to pick this,
Speaker 2: you know, Herbie told me the story. The singer that
Speaker 2: they had was getting a big ego and it was
Speaker 2: just driving Hervey crazy. And finally he just had it
Speaker 2: and he told Pat Morow. You know, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you ever meet Pat Morrow, Bubba, you ever meet
Speaker 2: his famous road manager, said, Bubba got to take this
Speaker 2: guy somewhere. I want him to miss soundcheck. He said,
Speaker 2: I just just have him miss soundcheck. So Bubba said, fine,
Speaker 2: so soundcheck comes, no lead singer. Herbie's you know, looking
Speaker 2: at the band and goes, hey, well, you know, Steve
Speaker 2: knows all the songs he's been he's been touring with us. Okay,
Speaker 2: now here's a little backstory. I got to tell you this. Okay,
Speaker 2: Bob left. That's exclusive so okay. Because Herbie liked the
Speaker 2: tape so much, he'd sent the cassette to Neil, Sean's
Speaker 2: wife at the time. And this is a beautiful story.
Speaker 2: He said, Listen, don't play this for me. Ill just
Speaker 2: put it on in the background. I just want him
Speaker 2: to hear it in the background. Don't even tell him
Speaker 2: who it is. Do not say this is a guy.
Speaker 2: He just play it. She'd been playing this tape for
Speaker 2: Neil's just in the house, right, okay, fast forward back
Speaker 2: know the singer. Herbie talks to the band. He goes, look,
Speaker 2: Steve's here. You know, he's been traveling with us. He
Speaker 2: knows all the songs. Let him just do the soundcheck.
Speaker 2: Perry gets up to the sound check. Okay, boss, everybody's mine.
Speaker 2: Sean knows it's vaguely familiar. He doesn't know why. He
Speaker 2: just know he loves it. He doesn't know why he
Speaker 2: loves it, but it's already in his head. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like McCartney writing yesterday, Like who wrote this? I
Speaker 2: don't know? Well, somebody tell me who wrote this same thing?
Speaker 2: So Sean likes it. They like it. Lead singer comes back.
Speaker 2: Herbie says, a lot of explatives to him and says,
Speaker 2: you're fired. And that's how Steve Ferry got into Journey.
Speaker 1: And not.
Speaker 2: Too long later they you know, I can't remember. I
Speaker 2: think it was at the Old Water Off in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: And shortly after that they come to La and Herbie
Speaker 2: grabs me. He goes, you gotta see this new guy.
Speaker 2: You gotta see this new guy. And he goes sitting
Speaker 2: next to me, sitting next to me. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you know Herbie, he's like amped twenty four to seven, right,
Speaker 2: there's thirty seconds of the song. Steve maybe has sung
Speaker 2: three notes. Herbie is a big guy, He's a big man. Right.
Speaker 2: He shoves me off my seat. Boom rap rap. What
Speaker 2: do you think? What do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 2: Is Herbie give me a fucking second?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: They've only been playing for thirty seconds, right, But I
Speaker 2: see it, you see it. It's just is it just is.
Speaker 2: It's just one of those things is meant to happen, right,
Speaker 2: it just is? And uh, you know, and and the
Speaker 2: rest is history. It was the perfect voice for the
Speaker 2: perfect band, and with Greg Rawley, who here's another one
Speaker 2: that people don't know. Neil Sean used to play like
Speaker 2: a thous notes a bar. That was this thing right,
Speaker 2: And Greg Raley told him, he said, Neil, nobody cares
Speaker 2: how many notes you can play in a bar in music?
Speaker 2: Do you want to be remembered as a guitar player?
Speaker 2: Play songs within songs, play melodies, playing notes that people
Speaker 2: will remember, and then you're going to be meaningful. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is Greg talking to Neil, and Neil listened to him.
Speaker 2: And that's why you can sing all the Journey solos
Speaker 2: right because Neil, you know, serves the song right that
Speaker 2: this is this is you know, first of all, Neil
Speaker 2: Sean is one of the greatest guitar players on the planet.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people don't know what they should
Speaker 2: but he's he's never leaves the mother ship or rarely,
Speaker 2: but he has solo records. You know, if you want
Speaker 2: to hear some great records, get Neil Sean solos. This
Speaker 2: guy's an amazing guitar player. But you listen to Greg
Speaker 2: and what do you get. You get you get people
Speaker 2: that are are working for the same you know, they're
Speaker 2: working for the same goal. So now everybody's working to
Speaker 2: make great music, great records, great everything. You got the
Speaker 2: best players, the best producers, and one of the best
Speaker 2: managers in the business, Herbie Herbert, just you know, to
Speaker 2: put it all together to make this and it was
Speaker 2: it was. It was a marriage made in heaven. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, these songs are in everybody's head. We're still
Speaker 2: singing them. It's you know, it's it's you know. They
Speaker 2: would consistently sell more catalog than anybody. It just is right.
Speaker 2: It's like queen, It's like, come on.
Speaker 1: They got the earlier prog rock records. The first record
Speaker 1: was Steve Has Lights and Wheel in the Sky. Those
Speaker 1: are hits. You go to radio, you know, you know
Speaker 1: how radio is. They're looking for reasons not to play
Speaker 1: a record. They say, we already know this act. How
Speaker 1: did you close them?
Speaker 2: Honestly, it was the music because I didn't. You know,
Speaker 2: all you'd have to do is say, hey, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's new, it's different, it's a new band. Just listened
Speaker 2: to this. Mean that music is so good it's undeniable.
Speaker 2: So there wasn't much selling there because they were familiar
Speaker 2: with the band. And look, rock radio had played Journey.
Speaker 2: It's not like they didn't play them, it's just that
Speaker 2: they didn't have hits. You know, there's great music for
Speaker 2: music people. If you're a music person, you go listen
Speaker 2: to those first two Journey albums, right uh, and I
Speaker 2: can't remember that the titles of some of the songs,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, but it's great music. It just
Speaker 2: didn't you know, it just they weren't hit records. It
Speaker 2: wasn't going to resonate with the masses. But if you
Speaker 2: you know, go to somebody and just say, hey, this'sten
Speaker 2: a Wheel in the sky man, are you kidding? It's
Speaker 2: like so, you know, that was easy peasy, and then
Speaker 2: and and you know, and and and then you know,
Speaker 2: after that is doing promotions and the things that you do.
Speaker 2: You get people to meet the band, and you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're on a different level. But it was the music.
Speaker 2: The music was just the music being so good.
Speaker 1: You write a certain amount about the first Boston album.
Speaker 1: Tell us about first hearing that album and then ultimately
Speaker 1: getting it on the radio.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, ultimately getting it on the radio. You gonna
Speaker 2: have to do a podcast with Jim mckeeon because it
Speaker 2: was on Epic. He was he was in charge of that,
Speaker 2: but we had ah, it's now a famous meeting at
Speaker 2: Caribou Ranch with the first beginnings of the regional album
Speaker 2: promotion teams. I had started as a local promotion man
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles in seventy one, I guess seventy seventy one,
Speaker 2: and I was promoting all formats. But FM radio was building,
Speaker 2: and as it built, the record label understood they were
Speaker 2: going to need people that were just going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, experts at promoting rock radio. You know, this
Speaker 2: was going to be a specialty. So I got the
Speaker 2: nod to try it, to be an experiment. So I
Speaker 2: believe I was the first FM promotion man in the
Speaker 2: country that solely promoted that format. So literally, I don't
Speaker 2: even know if it was. A year went by and
Speaker 2: they went, oh my god, we need more of these people.
Speaker 2: So we need a regional you know people. We needed
Speaker 2: somebody in the East coast, somebody you know, and it
Speaker 2: grew exponentially, but it began with me on the West coast,
Speaker 2: somebody on the East coast ahead of album promotion. Mike
Speaker 2: Plott and Epic had the same thing. McKeon was working
Speaker 2: at k West Radio. He had started k West in
Speaker 2: LA and he was going toe to toe with k MET.
Speaker 2: He had made such a great rock station. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: owners were starting to give him trouble and he didn't
Speaker 2: want his art messed with. So I asked him if
Speaker 2: he wanted to join the Dark Side because I thought
Speaker 2: he'd be a great record guy. And he did, and
Speaker 2: it turned out he was. So he became my epic counterpart. Okay,
Speaker 2: so now we're in La working together. So we shared
Speaker 2: an office. Actually, I have a great story to tell
Speaker 2: you about that too. Anyway, so we shared an office
Speaker 2: and so we go to the Cariboo Meetings, which is
Speaker 2: a ranch up in Colorado where James William Gercio had
Speaker 2: built a recording studio with the money he'd made from
Speaker 2: producing Chicago. And everybody recorded there because there were no unions,
Speaker 2: you didn't have to worry about shutting down at a
Speaker 2: certain time. You could work twenty four to seven. The
Speaker 2: studio was state of the art and it's beautiful up
Speaker 2: in Colorado. Meetre up up in the mountains and everything
Speaker 2: and everybody, I mean, you know, Michael Jackson recorded there,
Speaker 2: Joe wallaceh Edgar Winner, I mean, everybody. So we went
Speaker 2: up there to have meetings and you know, look, meetings
Speaker 2: were fun, you know, in those days. What are you
Speaker 2: going to do. You're going to listen to music, talk
Speaker 2: about music, and then you're going to talk about how
Speaker 2: you're going to go out and shout about it. That's
Speaker 2: what promotion people do, right. I love this music. I
Speaker 2: need the world to know about it. Get ready, world,
Speaker 2: because this is coming at Okay. That's what we do.
Speaker 2: And then we have to get through the gatekeepers, which
Speaker 2: are the radio people and the press people of you know,
Speaker 2: we need to get the music to the public because
Speaker 2: the public has to decide. Right. A lot of people think, oh,
Speaker 2: the record business decides everything. We have priorities, we think
Speaker 2: we know some stuff. But your job as a promotion
Speaker 2: person is get the music on the air and let
Speaker 2: the people decide if they like it. And if they
Speaker 2: like it, then your job is to put the pedal
Speaker 2: to the metal and go make it happen. And I
Speaker 2: don't you know, you read my book. I don't hear everything.
Speaker 2: None of us hear everything. But your job is to
Speaker 2: make that happen and then we'll all know. And if
Speaker 2: listeners respond, great, that's the one and they're you know,
Speaker 2: a handful of bands that I thought we're going to
Speaker 2: go all the way and Bob, I don't know why
Speaker 2: it didn't happen, just couldn't, just didn't resonate, you know,
Speaker 2: So I don't know. But anyway, so we're so we're
Speaker 2: at this famous meeting and we're having a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we're a bunch of hippies, were
Speaker 2: smoking dope. But you know, I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 2: in Colorado. What could be better? So we're all playing
Speaker 2: music because the idea was, Okay, whether you were Epic
Speaker 2: or Columbia, the idea was, let's all get together and
Speaker 2: play music for each other, and we'll cross pollinate because
Speaker 2: we all were creative people, we'll have different ideas on
Speaker 2: how to get this music done right. So, you know,
Speaker 2: Colombia's playing Columbia stuff, and this guy Mike Shavelson, who
Speaker 2: was the head of a promotion for Epic, was playing
Speaker 2: his stuff. So he plays us a band called Mother's
Speaker 2: Finest Great Band out out of Atlanta, Georgia. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was Atlanta, was Georgia. And he goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I got this new thing called Boston puts it on,
Speaker 2: plays more than a feeling. Okay, A lot of us
Speaker 2: in the music business heavy ears like like we know shit, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, we here, Okay, he plays more than a feeling.
Speaker 2: We're like stunned. We're like, we're like what why are
Speaker 2: these guys? Like, we'll play it again. So he plays
Speaker 2: it again, right, and we're like, holy fuck. So because
Speaker 2: he has to toe the line, right, he's you know,
Speaker 2: there's got to be priorities going, oh, don't get excited,
Speaker 2: don't get excited. You know, you know, the priority is
Speaker 2: mother's finest. You know, they're blowing people off the stage.
Speaker 2: The priorities mother's finest, you know, So let's not get
Speaker 2: too excited. So like I'm sitting next to McKeon, right, Well,
Speaker 2: look at that Harvey Lee's was there, you know Harvey, Right,
Speaker 2: So Harvey's there, Harvey's at this meeting, right, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a whole there's a bunch of paragraphs just about
Speaker 2: Harvey Lea's in my book because people have to know
Speaker 2: these characters, like they got to know these people existed.
Speaker 2: So so Harvey's there, he's smiling near to ear And
Speaker 2: now I can't get in trouble because I'm the Columbia guy, right,
Speaker 2: So I raised my hand, right, Mike, with all due respect, Okay,
Speaker 2: and I and I'm aware of Mother's finest and I
Speaker 2: and I know they're blowing people off the stage, Mike,
Speaker 2: I said, but really, Mike, we've just heard one of
Speaker 2: the greatest things we've ever heard ever. Okay, somebody has
Speaker 2: reshuffled the deck of riffs, guitar, riffs, and vocals to
Speaker 2: make this thing and we haven't even heard another track.
Speaker 2: We only heard one track. I said, when this thing
Speaker 2: gets played for radio people, Okay, Mike, it's it's going
Speaker 2: to be a forest fire. It's gonna explode, and overnight,
Speaker 2: your priority is going to change. Right, It's just gonna happen. Right,
Speaker 2: It's gonna go bonkers. So you can decide now whether
Speaker 2: you wanted to make the number one priority or not.
Speaker 2: But I am just telling you, as a guy that
Speaker 2: does this for a living, watch the fuck out because
Speaker 2: this thing's gonna go nuts.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Uh So, you know, he said, I got it, I
Speaker 2: get it, I get it. He's just you know, look,
Speaker 2: he's doing his job, right, which is what, you know,
Speaker 2: what a guy has to do. And who knows, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd like to think he knew in himself. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's great so me and Mac go
Speaker 2: back to La Right, so he's with his music director. Well,
Speaker 2: his former music director is David Perry is still on
Speaker 2: K West, right, got, he's got an apartment on Larrabie.
Speaker 2: It's great, is the music director. Okay, this is how
Speaker 2: it used to be. Right, guy's got a small apartment.
Speaker 2: In the apartment are two giant JBL's, giant fucking jbls. Right,
Speaker 2: so you know, it overtakes the apartment. But that's how
Speaker 2: things were then, right. So we go, hey, we want
Speaker 2: you to listen to something. Sit down in a chair. Right.
Speaker 2: If there was ever a record made for JBL speakers,
Speaker 2: it's Boston. Okay, it's the perfect fucking record. We put
Speaker 2: on more than a feeling. We crank it to fucking ten.
Speaker 2: His hair blows back like in the Maxell commercial. Right,
Speaker 2: his brain explodes. He's like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 2: When can I play this? Who is this? He's out
Speaker 2: of his fucking mind, right, So, and we tell him
Speaker 2: who it is, and we tell him, you know, he
Speaker 2: can play it tomorrow whenever the fuck it was, you know.
Speaker 2: And and that's what happened, I mean overnight, you know,
Speaker 2: fucking pow, you know, and then it just went on
Speaker 2: from there. You know, Bob listened to Boston. You tell
Speaker 2: me what's better the guitar, of the vocals, the Brad
Speaker 2: Delt Come on, I don't even know. It's the fucking Boston.
Speaker 2: You know, it's the fucking hit machine. It's rock, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's messages. I mean, you know, it's piece of
Speaker 2: bond me and it's everything you know, you know, the
Speaker 2: people living in competition. All I want is peace of mind.
Speaker 2: What the fuck? I mean, it's everything you'd ever want.
Speaker 2: You know, let's go back.
Speaker 1: What happens when there's a priority and you don't believe
Speaker 1: in the record.
Speaker 2: You promote it. I learned a lesson a long time ago,
Speaker 2: which I wrote in my book. A famous record guy
Speaker 2: Steve Popovich, beautiful human being, one of the greatest promotion
Speaker 2: men that ever lived, and he and I were talking
Speaker 2: my nine. He said, Steve, you know all the records
Speaker 2: that we put out, they're all not great. You know,
Speaker 2: we're lucky, we're Columbia. Most of our stuff is really good,
Speaker 2: but sometimes there's like not how do you handle that, Steve? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you I have to have credibility, I have
Speaker 2: to go to these radio people, they have to you know,
Speaker 2: they believe in me. I have to have credibility. And
Speaker 2: he said, you know what he said, rap, he said,
Speaker 2: You'll always find one thing. It might not be the song.
Speaker 2: It might be the production, or it might be the vocal,
Speaker 2: or it might be the song. There'll always be one
Speaker 2: good thing. Just talk about that, just you know, just
Speaker 2: go in and say, hey, look, you got the other
Speaker 2: production on this. You don't have to lie. You don't
Speaker 2: have to. You can't because no one's going to believe you.
Speaker 2: Said you need your credibility, he said, just talk about
Speaker 2: about one thing. Sometimes it was what we would call
Speaker 2: a fire drill, and I'll never forget one of them. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: this is a good example. Steve O'Rourke, who is a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine, managed Pink Floyd, great manager and
Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of the band, but he
Speaker 2: decided he was going to try something else and the
Speaker 2: record was terrible and uh but we knew with Steve's
Speaker 2: uh and uh, so I wanted to do it for him,
Speaker 2: and and the and the and the big priority came down.
Speaker 2: It's like, you're gonna do this, and it's okay, we
Speaker 2: know how to do it. So what you do You
Speaker 2: go to all your friends or rock radio and go
Speaker 2: da da. You know this is important for us. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure I hear it. Do me a favor, have
Speaker 2: your night, guys, just spin it once or twice, like,
Speaker 2: don't don't even have to add the record, just just
Speaker 2: just put it on the edge it just so we know.
Speaker 2: I need to know because we don't know everything and
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong and who knows. So was a fire drill, right,
Speaker 2: that's what we called it. And you'd go out to
Speaker 2: your friends because they were This is a family. We
Speaker 2: work together, you know, even though it's always this uh
Speaker 2: thing about the you know, the radio people and and
Speaker 2: you know and and you know and the record people,
Speaker 2: and we're trying to get our music played and they're
Speaker 2: trying to tell us why they don't want to play it,
Speaker 2: and there's this give and take. But but there is, uh,
Speaker 2: there's a relationship there in this beautiful relationship. Uh. And
Speaker 2: and people help each other, you know, someone does me
Speaker 2: a turn, and it's like, hey, listen, man, I really
Speaker 2: appreciate the times when you were there for me when
Speaker 2: I needed you. So you know, I'm gonna go borrow
Speaker 2: the Pink Floyd Pink from Pink Floyd and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: fight over your radio station. I'm gonna put two Kleig
Speaker 2: lights on it and paint your radio station pink. And
Speaker 2: it's going to stop traffic, you know, in front of
Speaker 2: your radio station as a thank you for that. That's
Speaker 2: the kind of relationship it was. So that's how you
Speaker 2: did it. So you so, because we need to know.
Speaker 2: I can't know everything. You read my book, I'd love herboy.
Speaker 2: I didn't get it right away. She didn't get it.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. It's a great record. I put
Speaker 2: it on, you know, I sent it out. I did
Speaker 2: what I was supposed to do, and lo and behold.
Speaker 2: You know Gloria Johnson from you know cagu And in Portland.
Speaker 2: Great just jockey calls me up. So did you have
Speaker 2: a hit on your hands? You know with turn Me Loose?
Speaker 2: You don't hear them all, but you need as a professional,
Speaker 2: it's your job to let the people decide, and that's
Speaker 2: what you do. One of my favorite stories is is
Speaker 2: it a great promotion? Man in New York guy named
Speaker 2: Maddie Matthews. Did you hear about Maddie Matthews? Maddie Matthews.
Speaker 2: You know, it is completely out of his mind in
Speaker 2: the best of ways. Maddy Matthews had his own glossary. Okay,
Speaker 2: if you wanted to talk to Mattie, you had to
Speaker 2: understand how he was speaking, because it was you know,
Speaker 2: all these people, they had nicknames. You know. It was
Speaker 2: in Jiva, in Jinkeda, you know the people. You know,
Speaker 2: the weather's on a wing. I mean it was. It's
Speaker 2: a complete glossary. And everybody loved him. This guy was
Speaker 2: all the time New York guy. Uh and uh. He
Speaker 2: had an incredible, incredible relationship with Richard Near at w
Speaker 2: W and he and this is a famous story in
Speaker 2: New York. And he brought this record into Richard and
Speaker 2: this you don't talk about the give and take relationship
Speaker 2: between you know, you know, record people and radio people.
Speaker 2: Gives the record Richard and he goes to leave, and
Speaker 2: Richard looks at him like Maddie, and he looks at
Speaker 2: he says, Maddie, are you kidding me? And Maddie turns
Speaker 2: around and looked at Richard and said you'll find something.
Speaker 2: And then he left. And that's all that Maddie had
Speaker 2: to say. Because Richard Near loved Maddie Matthews so much.
Speaker 2: We all did. Right that he knew that it was
Speaker 2: a fire drill, and he knew that Maddie needed it. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: you know, he's going to get shipped from his bosses.
Speaker 2: And so he took care of Maddie. And you know
Speaker 2: a couple of nights, you know, somebody's going to tune
Speaker 2: out at ten o'clock at night. No, So that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's how you do.
Speaker 1: It, okay, Unlike today, in the pre internet era, they
Speaker 1: used to shuffle the decade record companies on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: They get a new president, he would wipe out all
Speaker 1: the old people because you wanted loyalists, et cetera. How
Speaker 1: did you maintain your job so long?
Speaker 2: Because I'm malleable, you know, I'm I surprised myself because
Speaker 2: I'm a sensitive person. I mean, I took a lot
Speaker 2: of heat sometimes because I would I was a rebel.
Speaker 2: That's speak my mind. I would do it different the
Speaker 2: next time. You know. It's like, you have to learn
Speaker 2: how to work the president.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's an art form to it. It's called managing upwards.
Speaker 2: You know, I finally learned it. I wish I would
Speaker 2: have learned it earlier, you know, But I think I'm
Speaker 2: pretty I'm pretty malleable, and and my only agenda. A
Speaker 2: lot of people have agendas in our business. A lot
Speaker 2: of people are trying to get a heah, a lot
Speaker 2: of people trying to do this, trying to do that.
Speaker 2: My only agenda ever was just the music. I just
Speaker 2: loved the music so much that my agenda was just that.
Speaker 2: And they saw, even if they just agreed with me,
Speaker 2: or if I pissed them off, they saw my work ethic.
Speaker 2: They watched me do what I could do. I got
Speaker 2: big compliments from record company presidents, even the ones that
Speaker 2: I was, you know that would be upset with me
Speaker 2: from time to time because they saw my work ethic.
Speaker 2: It's one hundred and ten percent, it's tenacious, don't stop.
Speaker 2: They saw my creativity. I think I had a different
Speaker 2: vision honestly than a lot of my peers. The way
Speaker 2: I approached things, the way I approached artists, the way
Speaker 2: I approached music, the way I approached promotion. And then
Speaker 2: there's little tricks. I had a president, I had my
Speaker 2: boss at one time was having a problem with album Network,
Speaker 2: which is a tip sheet in town of local tip
Speaker 2: sheet nice people. Steve Smith telt me to ask and asked,
Speaker 2: you know, they're nice folks. For some reason, you had
Speaker 2: a bug I was asked with them or whatever. He said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to do a power play. I go, what's that?
Speaker 2: He goes, you don't call them, you don't talk to them,
Speaker 2: and they're going to wonder where you are? Got it?
Speaker 2: And I said yeah. I don't want to say his name,
Speaker 2: so I don't want embarrass him. I said yeah, but
Speaker 2: I said, with they're friends of mine, they're gonna They're
Speaker 2: not gonna it's gonna be weird like they don't They're not.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna work, right. He goes, He goes, you
Speaker 2: work for me, and I'm telling you this is what
Speaker 2: you're going to do. I said, okay. Uh So the
Speaker 2: first thing I do is I call Steve Smith from
Speaker 2: the Album Network and I say, Steve, it's rap. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to call you for a while because my
Speaker 2: boss just told me blah blah blah. I don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on with you two guys, but I need
Speaker 2: you to know that I'm not going to be calling
Speaker 2: for a while because I've been told not to. And
Speaker 2: then you know, whenever you want, you'll call me and go, gee, rap,
Speaker 2: what's up. I haven't heard from you, And then you
Speaker 2: guys make up and they'll all get better. Right, I
Speaker 2: would get calls, you know, you have to be a
Speaker 2: good soldier, but you have to you have to work
Speaker 2: in between the lines, like I would get calls at
Speaker 2: home from the Rolling Stones. Right, they're telling us all
Speaker 2: this shit, like okay, listen, listen, listen, listen. Just they're
Speaker 2: just telling you this stuff because they're telling you this
Speaker 2: stuff because listen to me. Okay, they're going to tell
Speaker 2: you this. It doesn't mean anything. Okay, you say this,
Speaker 2: this and this, and then you'll get what you want
Speaker 2: and it'll all be fine. And so you Sometimes I'm
Speaker 2: a good soldier, but i'm you know, it's it's like,
Speaker 2: what do they call it, back politicsne yeah, back channeling.
Speaker 2: So I'm I'm working for everybody. I'm working for the artist,
Speaker 2: I'm working for the manager, I'm working for the label.
Speaker 2: But I need to make sure it all comes together,
Speaker 2: like I'm in charge of making sure everyone understands each other.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, if someone tells you
Speaker 2: to do something, you I mean and you know you
Speaker 2: want to keep your job. Yeah, I mean you have
Speaker 2: to do it. But there's like so I explained, there's
Speaker 2: one way that you can do that, but I some
Speaker 2: people couldn't handle the heat. Some people left, certain presidents,
Speaker 2: people are people that you know, big time record business is.
Speaker 2: I'm not staying. I can't take this. I'm out of here,
Speaker 2: and I'm more resilient I think than I knew. I
Speaker 2: have mental scars because of it.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Okay, two things people who are not in this world.
Speaker 1: And it was a different era in the pre Spotify era,
Speaker 1: the radio promotion people had so much pressure to deliver
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. What was it like living with that pressure?
Speaker 2: Difficult? If you're you know, I mean, if you have
Speaker 2: any feelings at all, things have to happen. It's a
Speaker 2: timely business. Not only do records have to get added
Speaker 2: in a timely way. If you're working rock promotion like me,
Speaker 2: you could be working eight or ten albums at a time.
Speaker 2: They all have to go up the charts. That all
Speaker 2: depends on airplay. How many new additions that you get
Speaker 2: each week at each station? How many upward movements do
Speaker 2: you get? You're in charge of these people's careers, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's you. And you have to make sure that this
Speaker 2: music stays on the air and goes up the charts,
Speaker 2: and that in any given week you need x amount
Speaker 2: of new stations, you know, adding a record, and there's
Speaker 2: lots of unknowns, and at most promotion people will tell
Speaker 2: you if they're telling you of the truth, have a
Speaker 2: lot of Sunday night, sleepless nights, because Monday's is your
Speaker 2: last day to get done what you need to do,
Speaker 2: get done, you know, whether you're prepared or not. And
Speaker 2: it's like taking the hill. I mean, it's like the Marines.
Speaker 2: I mean, at Columbia Records, there's no number two. There's
Speaker 2: only number one. Okay, just tell me how you get
Speaker 2: into number one because number two isn't good enough here. Okay.
Speaker 2: I never told anybody this, well, I have told some people.
Speaker 2: I didn't write it in my book because I didn't
Speaker 2: want to dwell on this part of it. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to celebrate the shit that nobody will believe. I mean,
Speaker 2: for a good easily eight years after I left Columbia,
Speaker 2: I could wake up in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: with a nightmare, like freaked out of my mind that
Speaker 2: I wasn't prepared, or I just wasn't Eddie, or you know,
Speaker 2: a record I needed to go to one wasn't getting there,
Speaker 2: and I'd have nightmares. If you want to know honestly,
Speaker 2: how the pressure was I withstood it. I didn't. Some
Speaker 2: some people turned to alcohol and other things. I didn't.
Speaker 2: Thankfully lucky to have a good life's partner, my wife Sharon.
Speaker 2: I could talk things out too what you read about
Speaker 2: in the book. But but but you know the man
Speaker 2: you're talking about. You're in charge of the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and on and on
Speaker 2: and on. It's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: What would you say? You know? Sposes have different styles
Speaker 1: summer screamers, some are not, but you can't always deliver
Speaker 1: what they want. What would you say? And how would
Speaker 1: it play out?
Speaker 2: It would play out different in different ways. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you a funny one. Then I'll tell you a heavy one,
Speaker 2: which I did not write in my book because I
Speaker 2: just didn't want to go there. Probably shouldn't even go
Speaker 2: there on a podcast. But it's you, so so if
Speaker 2: you here's gonna if you work for Donnie einor Okay,
Speaker 2: here's how it works. Got into a record. Okay, I
Speaker 2: know that you know exactly what you're doing. Okay, you're
Speaker 2: the Babe Ruth of rock promotion. Man, you're my guy.
Speaker 2: I know that you know how to do this, But
Speaker 2: if I were you, I would do it this way.
Speaker 2: Meaning there's two ways to promote a record. You can
Speaker 2: get everybody on board and blow it out, or you
Speaker 2: can build a record little by little by little with credibility. Right,
Speaker 2: you can blow it out if you've got the goods,
Speaker 2: especially you know, you know, obviously a band that's already established.
Speaker 2: You can try to get everybody in one week. But
Speaker 2: it's a mistake if you do that trying to build something,
Speaker 2: because say you get sixty stations the first week, and
Speaker 2: the next week people are still trying to figure outf
Speaker 2: they want it, and now you've only got five and
Speaker 2: then the next week you only got five more and
Speaker 2: it doesn't look good, right, you don't want to do
Speaker 2: it that way, So and I'll you know, And so
Speaker 2: if you work for Donnie as it looks like that.
Speaker 2: If you do it your way because you know how
Speaker 2: to do it, and you get the record top five, right,
Speaker 2: top five, number three, whatever, but it doesn't go to
Speaker 2: number one, Donnie will call you into the office and go, see,
Speaker 2: I told you should have done it my way. Now
Speaker 2: if you do it Donnie's way. And this is true story, guys.
Speaker 2: I had a record that you know, I don't need
Speaker 2: to say the name of the band. And it stops
Speaker 2: at twenty two. Donnie will call you in news office
Speaker 2: and go, s rap, how did you fuck this thing?
Speaker 2: And you can't tell him I did it your way, right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like you can't you can't win. But
Speaker 2: I will tell you. I'll tell you one very heavy
Speaker 2: story and it's and it's also a Don Einer story.
Speaker 2: And you don't need to know the president's name. But
Speaker 2: I became known. I wanted to be the best, Okay.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be the Michael Jordan of rock promotion.
Speaker 2: You know, I need it to be. That's just that's
Speaker 2: how I am. I just wanted to be it, and
Speaker 2: I tried to be it. And as you read in
Speaker 2: the book, there's a lot of things I do that
Speaker 2: no one ever did because I wanted to make headlines.
Speaker 2: I wanted, I wanted that's just me. I just you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an ego thing or probably think.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is, it's just how I am. So So
Speaker 2: I was known in the business as this guy. I
Speaker 2: was known by managers and my peers and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I got voted that once by my peers. It was
Speaker 2: very heartwarming. This but this particular president and I were
Speaker 2: just it was like oil and water. And I did
Speaker 2: not quite understand how to just just manage upwards with
Speaker 2: this particular guy. And I was doing great things that
Speaker 2: he was more of a numbers guys, not a music guy.
Speaker 2: And he was signing a lot of acts that just
Speaker 2: you know, you could put him on rock radio, but
Speaker 2: they just they wouldn't stay. It's they're not they're not
Speaker 2: made for you, you know. And he signed some acts
Speaker 2: that he thought were cool and they were just posers
Speaker 2: and whatnot. But you know, for the acts that were working,
Speaker 2: it was fantastic. So, but I would be in meetings
Speaker 2: with him and I'd say the wrong thing because I
Speaker 2: you know, I was as a rebel and I didn't
Speaker 2: know there were two truths. Okay, there's the real truth,
Speaker 2: because he'd always say, no, tell me the truth. I
Speaker 2: want to know the truth. What I finally learned was
Speaker 2: there's two truths. There's the real truth and the truth
Speaker 2: that he'd like to hear. There's a way of telling
Speaker 2: a truth. But you can be artful, and you know, well,
Speaker 2: at that time, I wasn't artful, so I would just
Speaker 2: tell him the truth and it could be painful. Sometimes
Speaker 2: he didn't want to hear the truth, so then he
Speaker 2: would explode and then you know, I could feel this
Speaker 2: pressure and you know, you don't give me a hard time.
Speaker 2: So one day things weren't kind of going his way
Speaker 2: and he goes, come here. He goes, I need to
Speaker 2: talk to you in the head of promotion, and I'm
Speaker 2: not going to mention names because it doesn't move the
Speaker 2: story forward. It's just I don't need to embarrass people's families.
Speaker 2: Head of promotion walks in, Just me down, he goes, listen.
Speaker 2: He goes, I just want you know some of these
Speaker 2: records aren't happening, and I just I want you to
Speaker 2: know something. And he also used the babe ruth analogy. Okay,
Speaker 2: I know you're the bab ruth of rock promotion. You know,
Speaker 2: I know that you're the greatest blah blah blah. He said, well,
Speaker 2: you know what, rap, sometimes the greats have to be traded, like,
Speaker 2: Babe Ruth, they had a trade, Babe Ruth, I didn't
Speaker 2: want you to think about that. And I'd had it
Speaker 2: with this guy, right, And I'm telling you, Bob, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm not. If I get well, if I
Speaker 2: get mad, you don't want to see it. I mean,
Speaker 2: but it takes a lot right to get me excited.
Speaker 2: And I finally had it with this guy and I
Speaker 2: just exploded in his fucking face. It's just me and
Speaker 2: him and had a promotion sitting across the table, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the fuck you like, are you fucking
Speaker 2: kidding me? I go, I do this and I do that,
Speaker 2: and okay, so you signed this partner's effront. Could it
Speaker 2: be the fucking records? Is it possible? It could be
Speaker 2: the fucking record? And I'm screaming at him. I mean like,
Speaker 2: I'm in his face. Right, I'm done, I'm gonna quit.
Speaker 2: I don't care. I had it, Okay, nobody's ever seen
Speaker 2: the head of motion was freaking out. He was. I'm
Speaker 2: looking at him. He's turning green purple. He's like he's
Speaker 2: never seen anything like it. And I'm in this guy's face,
Speaker 2: I'm like, fuck you you have no fucking idea. Is
Speaker 2: it possible? Is it possible? And and it's more animated
Speaker 2: than I'm telling you now. I don't want to get
Speaker 2: there because it's it's it's you would think you would
Speaker 2: put me in a rubber room. Okay, I've exploded at
Speaker 2: this guy. It's insane. Okay. And the guy I just
Speaker 2: had it and he looks at me, he goes, oh, whoa,
Speaker 2: come down. I think he thought I was gonna have
Speaker 2: a heart attack. I was that that was that fucking
Speaker 2: nuts and he and and he said, who whoa whoa
Speaker 2: whoa wrap rap rap whoa whoa whoa whoa. Just hang on.
Speaker 2: I got to think about what you're saying. Just just
Speaker 2: hang on, like I gotta think about what you're saying.
Speaker 2: And he and he and he looked at me, wrap,
Speaker 2: please just take it easy and let me think about
Speaker 2: what you're saying. He left, and the head of promotion said,
Speaker 2: I want to shake your hand, and I go why
Speaker 2: And he says, because I never seen anybody go at
Speaker 2: that guy like that, and I've never seen that guy
Speaker 2: back down. So he said, I want to shake your hand,
Speaker 2: and I was like, fuck shaking my hand. I'm out
Speaker 2: of here. Fuck you, fuck him. I quit. He's chasing
Speaker 2: me down holiday. You can't quit rap, listen to me,
Speaker 2: he goes, you can't quit. He goes, it's three o'clock.
Speaker 2: Go home. Trust me, there's what you need to do.
Speaker 2: Go home, talk to Sharon, have a drink, report back
Speaker 2: the next thing in the morning. And this guy was
Speaker 2: a really good guy. Wasn't the great promotion met of
Speaker 2: all time? And he said, look, just just just do
Speaker 2: me a favor, like calm down, go home. And he
Speaker 2: was right. I went home, talked to Sharon, had a drink,
Speaker 2: came back and it was fine, and the president was
Speaker 2: better towards me. And in a million years, I never
Speaker 2: thought I'd go off at anybody like that, especially a
Speaker 2: record company president. So he could get to I mean,
Speaker 2: so if you asked me, did it ever get to me? Okay,
Speaker 2: that's the that's the one time where you know, God,
Speaker 2: he could get to you in a different way it
Speaker 2: would frustrate you. But I but I never was that
Speaker 2: so upset. Was like I've had it, you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, like you said, how did
Speaker 2: I survive? I don't know, By the grace of God,
Speaker 2: because that guy could have left right away and wrote
Speaker 2: me off. You could have. He could have. He could
Speaker 2: have went back and said, you know what, just just
Speaker 2: give wrap his papers. But he didn't. And I think
Speaker 2: he didn't because he knew I was a winner. And
Speaker 2: here's something else. My wife asked me, why do you
Speaker 2: want to stay there? And I said, because even though
Speaker 2: this guy is breaking my balls daily, he is a winner,
Speaker 2: and I have to be with a winner and I
Speaker 2: and that's why I didn't leave. I said, I'll take it,
Speaker 2: I'll take the heat. I'll have this leapless night. I
Speaker 2: need to be with a winner. I would tell her, Sharon,
Speaker 2: he's that, So I'm going to stay, and I didn't.
Speaker 2: He left, you know, so not gone to the next president.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were going to quit at that time? Were
Speaker 1: you fearful? Oh?
Speaker 2: Not really. I was just sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm going in the opposite direction. Were you ever fearful
Speaker 1: you were going to get fired?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, not really.
Speaker 1: Okay, then let me give it one other thing. You
Speaker 1: literally start, as you say at the beginning of rock promotion, seventies,
Speaker 1: great era you have, you know, CBS records crashes seventy
Speaker 1: nine eighty. But let's move past that. MTV comes along.
Speaker 2: Seventy nine. Herbie Herbert came into my office. Okay, you're
Speaker 2: gonna love this. He was bummed out because Journey had
Speaker 2: only sold two million records. He was trestphoning. I was not, Herbie,
Speaker 2: you know how fucking lucky you are? You so too million.
Speaker 2: But we still formally and I go, I know we're
Speaker 2: in trouble. It's gonna pass. It's a fucking phase. Herbie
Speaker 2: Herbert's upset because he's to only so too much.
Speaker 1: I just remember Breakfast in America was number one for
Speaker 1: some amazing number of weeks and sold like less than
Speaker 1: fifty percent of what records normally had. But we get
Speaker 1: to the MTV era, and concomminantly with the MTV era,
Speaker 1: we have the CD. The CD they tell all the
Speaker 1: acts take a half rate. I know the people who
Speaker 1: ran those labels they made not only did the labels
Speaker 1: make so much money, the executives you know, I know,
Speaker 1: they're friends of mine. I know be personal stories. So
Speaker 1: my question is, as this is going on, and once
Speaker 1: you hit the eighties and especially the nineties, promotion people
Speaker 1: everybody at the record company has a lawyer. To what
Speaker 1: degree did you negotiate your salary and what were those
Speaker 1: experiences like.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I had an attorney and he saw
Speaker 2: what I did for the label and he was This
Speaker 2: guy is known's Gary B. Baker. He was very amped guy.
Speaker 2: When I first met him. He said, look, there's two
Speaker 2: kinds of lawyers. There's nice lawyers and there's really, you know,
Speaker 2: rough and tough lawyers. You got to decide which one
Speaker 2: you want. Him the rough and tough lawyer. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'll just moved to New York. Gary, I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to take the rough and tough lawyer. The guy
Speaker 2: was amazing. He beat the Bank of New York for
Speaker 2: sharing in me. I mean, the guy beat the Bank
Speaker 2: of New York on the situation we had. So so
Speaker 2: he would negotiate for me, and it got so amped
Speaker 2: that the people in business affairs would call me and
Speaker 2: they say, look, rap, we got the message. You got
Speaker 2: to ask Gary to back off, you know, just because
Speaker 2: he knew what I did and he wanted me to
Speaker 2: make more money. He said, rather, they're not paying you
Speaker 2: what you're what you're you know what you deserve that
Speaker 2: I know what you do, I see what you're doing.
Speaker 2: You know for all these acts you know, and I said, Gary, great,
Speaker 2: you know, And then what would happen is then you'd
Speaker 2: walk in and then you would see Donnie okay, you know,
Speaker 2: and Donnie would and Donnie would say, look, Rap, it's
Speaker 2: a corporation. It's a it's a it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: a grid. You're not the head of promotion. You're ahead
Speaker 2: of rock promotion, you know, which is even one step
Speaker 2: down from the head of top forty promotion. Because, as
Speaker 2: you know, most of the music, most of the money
Speaker 2: is made with you know, big hit records. Even though
Speaker 2: we're making a shitload of money on rock radio. I
Speaker 2: can't give you what Gary is asking. I can't, but
Speaker 2: I'll give you this. If I give you this, will
Speaker 2: you be okay? Or are we going to have a problem?
Speaker 2: And then I'd look at at you know, you know,
Speaker 2: at Donnie, and I'd say, Donnie, thanks very much. That'd
Speaker 2: be great. I appreciate it, thanks, and we don't have
Speaker 2: a problem. I was always about longevity when I would
Speaker 2: be asked every once in a while to leave, you know,
Speaker 2: for another company or some new company that wanted to
Speaker 2: sort of poached me from the label for a lot
Speaker 2: of more money, because that's how it was like, if
Speaker 2: they wanted to get you, they'd have to give you
Speaker 2: tons of more money. And I got offered tons of money.
Speaker 2: But I never wanted to leave, because how do you
Speaker 2: leave this roster? Right? They're all there. I became friends
Speaker 2: with all these people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go work
Speaker 2: for a new company and I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: lot of money. But it's just money, right, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be working Jake the Snake in the midgets when
Speaker 2: I could be talking to Bob Dylan like, well, there's
Speaker 2: no brainer. Like I just I just wanted to stay
Speaker 2: there as long as I could. And I stayed there
Speaker 2: as long as I stayed there till they just started
Speaker 2: downsizing as the business change, and you know they were
Speaker 2: giving you know, early retirement packages. You know, I just
Speaker 2: stayed there as long as I could. You know, in fact,
Speaker 2: I told him, I said, you guys are nuts. I said,
Speaker 2: right now, in my life, if you want to, they didn't.
Speaker 2: They just couldn't pay us the salaries that we were
Speaker 2: making anymore. I said, you should go to people like
Speaker 2: me and Don de Vito, who was Springsteen's and Bob
Speaker 2: Dylan's and really Joel's A and R got famous an R.
Speaker 2: I said, you should go to people like Don and
Speaker 2: me and say, look, we can't pay you this money anymore,
Speaker 2: but you know what, we'll give you a contract expansion,
Speaker 2: a contract, you know, extension. We'll pay you this but
Speaker 2: for longer, just because we want you guys to stay here.
Speaker 2: I said, you guys are making a mistake. I said,
Speaker 2: I've had the right of my life. I'm ready to go.
Speaker 2: It's okay, I said, but you're making a mistake because
Speaker 2: what's going to happen is all these bands that come in,
Speaker 2: because every band that ever came in, they wanted to
Speaker 2: hang out with me and Don because they wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to the guys who worked with Bob Dylan and
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd. You're going to be left
Speaker 2: with kids and you're gonna have an imprint, it's gonna
Speaker 2: be a red label, but your heart's going to be gone, Like,
Speaker 2: don't you get it? And they told me they My
Speaker 2: boss at the time said, you know what, we even
Speaker 2: know it and you know Midst the corporation and we
Speaker 2: work for them. And I said, fine, you know, you
Speaker 2: know it's up to you. I said, I've had the
Speaker 2: right of my life. I said, but you know it's
Speaker 2: I wouldn't do it this way.
Speaker 1: So you meet your wife Sharon at summer camp. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of bumps. Ultimately you get married. This
Speaker 1: is a twenty four to seven business, like Jeffrey Katzenberg
Speaker 1: said it Disney when he was there. If you're not
Speaker 1: coming in on Saturday, don't even think about coming in
Speaker 1: on Sunday. So how did that work? Is she just
Speaker 1: a special person who could deal with the fact that
Speaker 1: you were gone and working or your mind was elsewhere
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: I will say she's a special person and that she's
Speaker 2: very strong. I tried to walk a fine line because
Speaker 2: I didn't I saw some of the pitfalls that people
Speaker 2: you know, that were around me, that were falling into
Speaker 2: and marriages were falling apart. And because it is a
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven business, you could be out every
Speaker 2: night of the week. If not for your own act,
Speaker 2: somebody else calls and goes, hey, man, I've got the
Speaker 2: next big thing. You got to come down and see
Speaker 2: it a lot of hours. And it's a lifestyle. There
Speaker 2: is no Saturday Sunday. It's just it never ends. They're
Speaker 2: all the same, you know, except for obviously Tuesday's air
Speaker 2: play Day and you know the business week. But you're
Speaker 2: without people. You're out with people all the time. So
Speaker 2: I am. I tried to walk a fine line, and
Speaker 2: we made a deal. I said, look, there are certain
Speaker 2: nights I have to be out. There's certain nights that
Speaker 2: I'm going to want to be out, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to because I remember when someone had called
Speaker 2: me to the Troubadour to say, hey, there's this new
Speaker 2: guy out in John, I have a seat for you.
Speaker 2: You need to see this. You know, those kinds of
Speaker 2: things you'd want to be at. So I said, look,
Speaker 2: it was easier before we had kids, of course, because
Speaker 2: she could go everywhere with me. So we went to
Speaker 2: all the parties together, we went to all the shows together.
Speaker 2: So she was part of the life style. Even though
Speaker 2: if I had to work late some nights, she didn't
Speaker 2: want to go. When we start to have kids, it's different, okay.
Speaker 2: So I worked twelve years on the West coast for Columbia,
Speaker 2: and then we move east in eighty for me to
Speaker 2: run the rock department. So now you know, I told her,
Speaker 2: I said, look, this this obviously, this gig is more
Speaker 2: amped up, and I don't know if I'm going to
Speaker 2: be home. Well, I know I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: home in time to put the kids to bed. I'm
Speaker 2: going to see him in the morning. I said, tell
Speaker 2: you what, though, you take care of them all week,
Speaker 2: on the weekends, I'm going to take over. You do
Speaker 2: whatever you want. I will completely take over. And it
Speaker 2: would be kind of comical sometimes because you know, i'd
Speaker 2: be on the road for you know, four days, four
Speaker 2: nights without any little sleep. I'd come home, I'm totally trashed.
Speaker 2: Open the door. She's got these two little you know boys.
Speaker 2: She holds them out to me. She goes here, I've
Speaker 2: had them all week. I'm like, Ahi, guys, it's your
Speaker 2: rock and roll dad. Just I just need a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. Just give me a second and I'll be
Speaker 2: with you. So and then they didn't understand. So on
Speaker 2: the weekends, i'd be with them. But but but then
Speaker 2: i'd take a cat nap, you know, every so often,
Speaker 2: like we'd be in the basement playing or you know,
Speaker 2: whenever in the front line. They'd see me take it.
Speaker 2: Catch cat nap Dad. And they're they're three years apart.
Speaker 2: Two boys, right, why are you? Why are you always sleeping?
Speaker 2: We don't understand why you're sleeping. I go, well, it's
Speaker 2: because I work really really hard. Well, we don't understand it.
Speaker 2: I go, like, come to work with me one day
Speaker 2: and then you'll you'll get it. Okay, Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: So I take them. They're little, like Amra all they were,
Speaker 2: but they're you know, I don't know, they're like eight,
Speaker 2: and you know, they're three years apart. So they're eight
Speaker 2: and five or whatever they are, I don't know, six
Speaker 2: and nine. I take them to work, I go home.
Speaker 2: I go, okay, so do you get it? Nah? Dad,
Speaker 2: we don't get it. All you do is play listen
Speaker 2: to They said all you do is listen to records
Speaker 2: all day, and then you get on the phone and
Speaker 2: yell at people. And I go, no, no, I don't
Speaker 2: yell at people. I'm not that guy. That's our vase off.
Speaker 2: He's the yeller. I'm not the yeller. I'm not that guy.
Speaker 2: Oh no, Dade yellow people. Oh no, no, I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: I'm not that guy. Yeah. So no, we don't get it.
Speaker 2: You you you you you play records, you dance around
Speaker 2: and then you get on the phone and yellow people
Speaker 2: and so there was no you know, and then what
Speaker 2: am I gonna do? Take them to shows? Which I did?
Speaker 2: Does is that helpful? Not really? You know, Hey, look
Speaker 2: you know yeah this is Pink Floyd. Yeah, you're backstage
Speaker 2: eating the ReBs. Cool. Right, It's like you know, but
Speaker 2: it was, it's it's it is very hard. Uh and uh,
Speaker 2: I to be honest, I would say that there was
Speaker 2: a time that it took its toll on our marriage.
Speaker 2: It's just it's just it's it's it's just got so big.
Speaker 2: But if you know that, you'll sit down, like you know,
Speaker 2: if you have a really great life's partner like I do,
Speaker 2: you'll sit down and go, look, since we're messed up
Speaker 2: and we got to fix this, you know, and if
Speaker 2: we can't fix it, let's go talk to somebody that'll
Speaker 2: help us fix it. But I think if your priorities
Speaker 2: are correct, you know, and my porties were always my
Speaker 2: life and my wife and my kids, that's reality, right.
Speaker 2: This other thing is Disneyland. I'm having fun in Disneyland,
Speaker 2: but I saw too many people live in Disneyland and
Speaker 2: then when their job was over and they lost their
Speaker 2: job for whatever reason. They try to go back home,
Speaker 2: but home's ruined. They try to call their friends and
Speaker 2: nobody picks up the phone. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: in this business, a lot of people think, you know,
Speaker 2: your colleagues are your close friends. It's not always the case.
Speaker 2: So I think from the get go, my priorities were correct,
Speaker 2: and I tried really hard, you know. And yeah, and
Speaker 2: when it came to that time where I knew it
Speaker 2: wasn't right, you know, we said on and had a
Speaker 2: long talk about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, we talked a little bit about Herbie Herbert. What
Speaker 1: makes a good manager, and let's be realistic, Okay. In there,
Speaker 1: there's some managers. They come in the building, they work
Speaker 1: the halls. Some people are nice, some people yell. In addition,
Speaker 1: some people represent more commercially successful acts than others. So
Speaker 1: in addition to that, there are people who you know,
Speaker 1: you want to get off your back and therefore you
Speaker 1: do the work for them. So tell me about managers.
Speaker 2: Everybody has their own style for me, and I would say,
Speaker 2: having worked with so many managers, that I think the
Speaker 2: ones that actually get the most out of people. And
Speaker 2: I would say that Irving Azof is the exception, because
Speaker 2: I was, you know, a notorious yeller screamer. But IRV
Speaker 2: was also You could talk to him, but it was
Speaker 2: just his style, you know. I mean, I already wound
Speaker 2: up doing some really great things for me and I
Speaker 2: have the big respect for him. But you know, early
Speaker 2: on him, he called me up. Yeah, it's in my book, right,
Speaker 2: I want klos and I want to know, right, that's
Speaker 2: all he said. That's five times lear up the fun,
Speaker 2: you know. But I understood his His MO was he's
Speaker 2: going to just get everything he can out out of you,
Speaker 2: and he can go back to his artists and say,
Speaker 2: look I got everything at him. But you don't have
Speaker 2: to be that way. But I would say that the
Speaker 2: best managers were the managers that brought you into their world,
Speaker 2: made you a part of their family, made you a
Speaker 2: part of the gang. Okay, Herbie Herbert, whenever you went
Speaker 2: me and the guys are doing this. You come here,
Speaker 2: we're in Hawaii at a convention. Come to our house.
Speaker 2: Steve Ororke, Pink Floyd made me feel like part of
Speaker 2: the family. And I got to know David Gilmour and
Speaker 2: Nick Mason and Roger Waters in intimate ways. Right. That
Speaker 2: wouldn't happen if they didn't open the door. And I'm
Speaker 2: sure he told him, this is going to be good
Speaker 2: for you to get to know this guy, right, Bruce Allen,
Speaker 2: tough guy, but but great guy, right. Great makes you
Speaker 2: a part of that, makes you a part of his team,
Speaker 2: makes you want to kill for him because he's just
Speaker 2: a great fucking guy. Right. If you're a manager that
Speaker 2: would come into my office, and I had some big
Speaker 2: time managers who didn't have the gravitas of IRV as
Speaker 2: off or the respect from me because I saw they
Speaker 2: stepped in shit or whatever that you know, you know,
Speaker 2: IRV has always had my biggest respect. So yeah, ever
Speaker 2: you want to call up and let's go at it, fine,
Speaker 2: I don't care, because you know I have respect. But
Speaker 2: these people would come into my office and we'd come
Speaker 2: out of a meeting and you know, everybody said, we're
Speaker 2: did this, this and this, and I'll never forget this.
Speaker 2: One guy in particular, big, big, big uh, you know,
Speaker 2: English man came into my office and said, so you
Speaker 2: wanted to pin me, so you're gonna do all this right?
Speaker 2: Like got it? It's like this is what you have
Speaker 2: to do. You got it right? And then he walked
Speaker 2: out of my office and literally out loud, I said
Speaker 2: to the walls because I knew he was walking by.
Speaker 2: Fuck you see you in my rearview mirror. Lose you know,
Speaker 2: I don't even want to talk to you again. And
Speaker 2: I did the minimal, minimal amount because that guy was
Speaker 2: such a fucking asshole. I was like, yeah, okay, well
Speaker 2: you're not a race off, so guess what. You don't
Speaker 2: get to talk to me like that. So h But
Speaker 2: I think that the best ones were the ones because Bob,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the reasons I wrote the book
Speaker 2: I want I wanted people to know the family. We
Speaker 2: were all a family. Oh yeah, we have fights, you know,
Speaker 2: like a family has fights. We'd all get along, but
Speaker 2: this is a family, Okay, you got I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think this is Herbie. I mean, my favorite managers are Herbie, Herbert,
Speaker 2: Bruce Allen, Steve O'Rourke. They're interchangeable in different ways, but
Speaker 2: they all made me feel like, you know, like like okay,
Speaker 2: it's this give and take right. The guys in Pink Floyd.
Speaker 2: By the time I'm working with them, they're elite. They
Speaker 2: don't need to do anything, they don't want to do anything.
Speaker 2: They don't want to do interviews, they don't have to
Speaker 2: do anything. And I'm telling them, guys, listen to me.
Speaker 2: You could be bigger. Believe it or not. You can
Speaker 2: do more, we can reach more people. I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask you to do some things. I know you're not
Speaker 2: gonna want to do them, but I'm just tell just
Speaker 2: take a step my way, you know. Go meet Jim Ladd,
Speaker 2: do an interview, Meet some radio people. They're gonna love you.
Speaker 2: They've been playing your records their whole life. I want
Speaker 2: to borrow you know, your your giant pig and flight
Speaker 2: over radio stations. I want to do these things for
Speaker 2: you because I love your music. I mean, I'm a
Speaker 2: guitar guy. I mean me and Gilmour would spend all
Speaker 2: kinds of hours just talking about guitars. It's a family, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: You tell me you get close to a band like that,
Speaker 2: they know that you're killing for them, right, they know it? Okay? Oh,
Speaker 2: well and you read about it my book. Oh we
Speaker 2: have a Christmas present for you. It's a thank you
Speaker 2: for all you did you know on Momentary Labs or
Speaker 2: a reason and frankly for all the things you've done
Speaker 2: for us over the years. We have a you know,
Speaker 2: a thank you President. You know what's that? Oh, you
Speaker 2: come and play with us one song live with Pink
Speaker 2: Floyd And I'm like, oh, a rehearsal right, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: They go, no, no, proper gig. I'm like, what in front
Speaker 2: of people? Oh yeah, I know in London, proper gig,
Speaker 2: London arena. I'm going to play a song, like you know,
Speaker 2: and I talk to the manager because you know, God,
Speaker 2: don't talking to Gilmore talking to Magic Steve, you know, Like,
Speaker 2: I'm a real guitar player, Like, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: go I'm not a poser. I don't want to go
Speaker 2: up there and pose. It's not that's not my you know, No, no,
Speaker 2: he goes rap. Don't you get it? Yes, Gilmore knows you.
Speaker 2: You guys can talk abot guitars all the time. That's
Speaker 2: the gift, don't you get it? Like, yes, you play
Speaker 2: You're in ping Floyd for seven fucking minutes, don't you
Speaker 2: get it. I'm like, holy shit, Okay, Bob, who does that? Well,
Speaker 2: how's that going to happen? Who does that? Okay, it
Speaker 2: happens because of of the band and the management and
Speaker 2: you know that whole family of people who you get
Speaker 2: to know. You get to know Storm Thorguson the Great
Speaker 2: Graphic Designer, you get to know the roadies, you get
Speaker 2: to know the guitar tech, Phil Taylor, you know everybody.
Speaker 2: You that kind of management. How do you think I
Speaker 2: promoted them after that? I just traded like so with
Speaker 2: David Gilmore in the London Arena. Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 2: Come on? You know that's the best kind of manager
Speaker 2: because you're taking the hill. You know, John Landell, Bruce
Speaker 2: Springsteen Okay, okay, in my top five. Okay, he's in
Speaker 2: my top five. Same thing. Now you're part of Bruce's camp.
Speaker 2: You're taking the hill together. You know, it's beyond celebrity.
Speaker 2: It's it's not about rock star. It's about it's eye
Speaker 2: to eye. It's guys, guys, we're working together, take the hill.
Speaker 2: We're all trying to do the same thing. You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's uh, that's that was the most fulfilling
Speaker 2: part of it, right. These people make you a part
Speaker 2: of the gang. You just you feel like you belong.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you're going to kill for those people, Bob.
Speaker 1: Okay, they do call it show business, not show friends.
Speaker 1: So there are bands that are no longer on the
Speaker 1: label for whatever reason. So then do you maintain any contact?
Speaker 2: You know, I do. It's off and on. I'm so
Speaker 2: used to contacting people, you know, when there's a when
Speaker 2: there's a project, we would see you know, we would
Speaker 2: rekindle a friendship every three years or whenever a record
Speaker 2: would come out. It's not, you know. I mean I
Speaker 2: used to be closer to Gilmore, he used to send
Speaker 2: me Christmas card every year. Elvis Costello, but over the years,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to push it. You know, it's not
Speaker 2: you know, like, if you want to be friends, great,
Speaker 2: I don't you know, I didn't like need to be friends.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed our friendships. One guy who I'm believing or not,
Speaker 2: who I'm probably the closest with right now is Bob Geldolf.
Speaker 2: We remain friends over the years. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: We just would see each other or you know, he
Speaker 2: had some legal stuff then you needed help on and
Speaker 2: we just remained buddies. Got invited to his wedding south
Speaker 2: of France, you know a few years ago. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's he's a he's a he's a he's a crack up,
Speaker 2: you know, but you know the other people. Let me
Speaker 2: just say this because I just want to say this
Speaker 2: about certain artists. Okay, Oh, the Bloyster called guys are
Speaker 2: very close friends of mine. For a year, I live
Speaker 2: in this town because of the lead singer lives here
Speaker 2: and he kept me coming out for barbecue. So I
Speaker 2: live in you know, Port Washington, New York. Okay, so,
Speaker 2: but but I just want to make one point. Okay,
Speaker 2: I write this book, you start to reach out for quotes.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know if I'm going to
Speaker 2: get quotes. Okay, here, Hero, I'll write you, you know,
Speaker 2: if you want, I'll write you what I wrote about you, Like,
Speaker 2: what what do you need? Right? Nothing? Nick Mason two
Speaker 2: days give me the best, most beautiful quote was the
Speaker 2: first one I got. It was like if I stopped
Speaker 2: right there right Elvis Costello, Hey, do you want me
Speaker 2: to send you the book? Do you want me to
Speaker 2: to you know, to to do you need to see
Speaker 2: what I wrote about you? Nothing? Next day quote, Bloyster,
Speaker 2: call it next day quote. You know it's not even
Speaker 2: if we're not friends. There's so much. There's so much,
Speaker 2: you know, brotherhood and sisterhood in all of the stuff
Speaker 2: that we did together. They're there immediately there, you know.
Speaker 2: And for whatever reason, Bob, you know, well.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a big than I know, Bob,
Speaker 1: but that's not the point of my story. Okay, you
Speaker 1: tell the famous story of Bob dissing the radio guys
Speaker 1: when they're in the building the way the story was
Speaker 1: told to me, which was not by you. Was this
Speaker 1: permanently negatively affected the band Boomtown Rat success in America?
Speaker 1: In the book? You say, well, they ended up having
Speaker 1: a hit. Give me your take.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I wasn't permanent at all. I mean,
Speaker 2: if it was permanent, we wouldn't have had They wouldn't
Speaker 2: nobody would have played. I don't like money. It would
Speaker 2: have never happened if it was permanent. No, it wasn't permanent.
Speaker 2: It's just Bob is full of pisson vinegar, and he
Speaker 2: has a way of shooting himself in the foot. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's very you know, he has no filter. If you
Speaker 2: know him, you know he's he's you know, hey, look,
Speaker 2: you guys are a lot alike. You have no filter,
Speaker 2: right right, right, So Bob is the same way, and
Speaker 2: and look Elvis Costello. I would have to pull out
Speaker 2: sometimes say, oh, look, you're not helping yourself if you
Speaker 2: have certain feelings about certain bands, tell me, don't say
Speaker 2: this on the radio. Is not helping your career, okay.
Speaker 2: And I would have the same conversation with Bob Geldoff.
Speaker 2: Talk to me, do not say this ship on the radio.
Speaker 2: But Bob is a rebel, right, and Bob likes to
Speaker 2: push buttons, and I think in his mind, excuse me,
Speaker 2: he was just giving them a head butt, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: So for those who don't know, there was a big
Speaker 2: consultancy run by Lee Abrams. It was called Superstars. Lee
Speaker 2: Everyone's in charge of sixty rock stations, and he had
Speaker 2: a convention, and you know, we thought, as we usually do, Hey,
Speaker 2: first of all, the Boomtown Rats are amazing band live.
Speaker 2: We said, man, all we got to do is have
Speaker 2: these guys play in front of you know, these programmers
Speaker 2: that they're going to go, holy shit, this band's a
Speaker 2: real band. Let's let's go easy peasy. It was the
Speaker 2: days of the satin jackets. Everybody had satin jackets for
Speaker 2: bands and whatever. Bob's playing a great set, and Bob's
Speaker 2: playing a great set, and he looks out and he
Speaker 2: sees he knows why he's there. He sees all the
Speaker 2: radio people. But Bob's you know, I mean, you're talking
Speaker 2: about a guy, you know, who got in a fight
Speaker 2: with fifty thousand people at you know that, you know,
Speaker 2: the World Music Festival was Like Bob, it's like you
Speaker 2: read about it, write in my books, like so he
Speaker 2: once again in my head butt, Hey, what do you
Speaker 2: think of radio today? Where he goes the audience, what
Speaker 2: do you think of rock radio today? Well, what do
Speaker 2: you when a guy like Bob Geldoff, you know, the
Speaker 2: rebel punk guy is saying, what do you think the
Speaker 2: audience is going to go? Yeah, Well, if you have
Speaker 2: a problem with that, all those guys in the back,
Speaker 2: they're the guys that are running your rock stations today.
Speaker 2: And if you want to change it, you go talk
Speaker 2: to him. Well, Bob's always trying to make the world
Speaker 2: a better place, you know, repair the world. Takun alam great, Bob.
Speaker 2: I like it, you know, But I think he just
Speaker 2: thought he was giving him a head butt. I don't
Speaker 2: think he realized what he had done, because he did
Speaker 2: do some damage that night. Because those guys have egos
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, really, you know, we're in charge
Speaker 2: of your career. And there were guys that were grumbling
Speaker 2: as they left, you know, and Lee Abrams himself, you know,
Speaker 2: came up to me and Jonathan Caffino, who's the boomtown
Speaker 2: Rats marketing guy, and going really, and I'm like, Lee,
Speaker 2: you know, it's Bob. It's like, you know, come on,
Speaker 2: you got to expect he's just giving you guys a
Speaker 2: head butt. You know, Lee, smart guy like Lee knows
Speaker 2: what's up. So he goes, I know, but not the
Speaker 2: greatest thing you could have done. I said, I know,
Speaker 2: you know, but I said it'll be okay. And it was.
Speaker 2: And I know, Jonathan, our next stop was in Seattle.
Speaker 2: Never forget it keme to we got to do a
Speaker 2: live broadcast right now. We got to we have to
Speaker 2: counteract what just happened. I said, no, no, no, I said, John,
Speaker 2: just just leave it alone. You know, these guys, I know,
Speaker 2: these guys. Just let some space happen, just let the
Speaker 2: air out. I'll talk to these guys one by one,
Speaker 2: you know, and it'll be okay. And it was. I mean,
Speaker 2: by the time, you know, artist Surfacing came out, It's
Speaker 2: huge so it wasn't you know, it wasn't that. It
Speaker 2: was it was just more or less not having you know,
Speaker 2: the records after that or whatever else was happening with
Speaker 2: them on the road or whatever. No, no, there's no permanent.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to rock stars in general, a
Speaker 1: right personal experiences. If you say how great they are
Speaker 1: and how much you love their music, they shut down.
Speaker 1: Whereas like Joe Walsh I used class example, you want
Speaker 1: to talk cam radio with him, you have a regular conversation.
Speaker 1: You have to treat these people as people. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, can we say this is
Speaker 1: business or would you consider some of these people real friends?
Speaker 2: Oh, real friends without a doubt. No, it's no real
Speaker 2: friends without a doubt, because the business is the business,
Speaker 2: and the celebrity is the celebrity. And as you say,
Speaker 2: you can have real conversations with people. Now, I will
Speaker 2: admit that it took me a second when it when
Speaker 2: it was bands that were ahead of me, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Floyd guys, and you know, Mick and Keith
Speaker 2: and Bob Dylan. I mean because since I'm seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: mean those guys are deep inside me. I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I will admit to being starstruck. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know how you couldn't be. It's you know, But once
Speaker 2: I would get used to it, then you'd have real conversation.
Speaker 2: I mean I used to have love talking to Bob Dylan.
Speaker 2: I mean we we'd have conversations about just being dads.
Speaker 2: You know, how is it being a dad? You know,
Speaker 2: I'm like Bob, and I don't know what to tell
Speaker 2: my kids, Like, you know, guy, I have this whole history,
Speaker 2: you know. And he was like, well, you know, you're lucky,
Speaker 2: you know you can, you know, just don't don't you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to tell them everything rap, just you know,
Speaker 2: just just tell them some stuff. He goes, look at me, man,
Speaker 2: he goes, My whole life's in the press. Man, my
Speaker 2: the you know, the you know, the women, the drugs.
Speaker 2: I'm busted, you know, like but you you know, and
Speaker 2: we'd have these great conversations. I would love to have
Speaker 2: conversations with Keith Richards and David Gilmore about guitars, because
Speaker 2: these guys are guitar guys. They're rock stars. Second, okay,
Speaker 2: they are guitar players. They love the guitar. It's their friend.
Speaker 2: It's their lover used to talk to guitar guys. It's we're
Speaker 2: like this giant family of people. No, you know, Keith
Speaker 2: Richards is a really cool guy. Okay. I have a
Speaker 2: picture of my book of me and Keith, and I
Speaker 2: took out him when he was you know, however, he
Speaker 2: was eight years old or somebody to see the rolling Stones.
Speaker 2: Right backstage, we're meeting the guys who wanted them to
Speaker 2: meet Keith Richards, and I'm like, I need you to
Speaker 2: meet this guy. This is like my all time favorite.
Speaker 2: Like I learned how to play guitar. List into this guy, right,
Speaker 2: So introduce him to Keith. I'm going, this is the
Speaker 2: greatest rock and roll guitar player in the world. And
Speaker 2: he's like going, ah, don't listen, dear old man. Don't
Speaker 2: believe everything he says. So we're gonna take a picture.
Speaker 2: Keith looks over to me, he goes, hey, we should
Speaker 2: kneel down. Your son's like little right, you know, like
Speaker 2: we should kneel down. The reason we're kneeling in that
Speaker 2: picture isn't because of me. It's cause of Keith, because
Speaker 2: he's a sensitive person. Because he knew it meant a
Speaker 2: lot and he you know, we should kneel down to
Speaker 2: take a picture with your son. So you know, not
Speaker 2: everybody is the same, but these people are people, and
Speaker 2: you can have real conversations with them, you know, after
Speaker 2: you get over that starstruck part. And then yeah, because
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: so it's they're overwhelmed with that stuff. You know, it's
Speaker 2: it's okay.
Speaker 1: No one likes to work with an asshole. Did you
Speaker 1: find and some of these musicians were assholes or did
Speaker 1: they get the memo or did the manager keep him
Speaker 1: at the distance because they know where they were difficult people?
Speaker 2: There were I can only remember one guy that I
Speaker 2: thought was a total asshole, and then other people would
Speaker 2: be frustrating. So like, I don't need to say the
Speaker 2: guy's name, but he was a slide guitar player. Was
Speaker 2: in the mid seventies. This guy was terrible. All this
Speaker 2: guy did was give me shit everywhere we went. I
Speaker 2: was I couldn't believe it. I didn't know why I
Speaker 2: introduced him to a friend of mine. Why is this
Speaker 2: guy here? Well, because he runs San Francisco, you should
Speaker 2: know him. Yeah, blah blah blah blah, I'll never forget this.
Speaker 2: I was pouring some wine and we're all learning how to,
Speaker 2: you know, drink fine wine. Then got on an expense
Speaker 2: account and I was pouring some wine and I guess
Speaker 2: I part a little too much, you know, because you
Speaker 2: have to be careful. There's like dregs, you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, what are you doing? What are you doing?
Speaker 2: You're letting the drags out. I mean, when I was
Speaker 2: done with the promo tour with this guy, was like,
Speaker 2: I never want to talk to this guy again. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like, just get me out of his life. But
Speaker 2: most people who are trying to get somewhere, if some
Speaker 2: of them are more stubborn, you know, some are could
Speaker 2: be frustrating, but most of them would listen. They could
Speaker 2: be stubborn, but they would listen. If I was strong
Speaker 2: and said, listen, you can get away with this, but
Speaker 2: this is not going to be good for you, right,
Speaker 2: you know, just please listen to me. So I never
Speaker 2: really I worked with cerebral people that would drive you
Speaker 2: out of your fucking mind, but you it was okay
Speaker 2: because it was like you, they're not us, they think different,
Speaker 2: They're not if they wouldn't be them, right, if if
Speaker 2: they if they saw things like we see things, but
Speaker 2: they don't see things like we see things because it's
Speaker 2: imagine the universe and it's the Sun and all the planets, right,
Speaker 2: so we're the planet's going around the universe, and we
Speaker 2: see the Sun. We have great perspective. We can watch it.
Speaker 2: We can see when there's you know, you know, explosions
Speaker 2: on the Sun and everything. They can't see it because
Speaker 2: they're the Sun. They can't see it. And so if
Speaker 2: they're smart, they listen to people like me, like you,
Speaker 2: like any of us who could help them through certain parts.
Speaker 2: You know, in my book, you know, there's things. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a Roger water story where I had to just say, look, Roger,
Speaker 2: you need to listen to me on this, right, And
Speaker 2: he did. You know, Bob, don't. It's funny, Bob. He
Speaker 2: has no idea about promotion, right, it's not. He's like Percasso.
Speaker 2: He just paints and he would see me from time
Speaker 2: to time and he say, rap. When I started doing marketing.
Speaker 2: After I did the promotion thing, I was doing creative
Speaker 2: marketing stuff, had a radio series, at a TV showt
Speaker 2: all this kind of stuff. He goes man man, he goes,
Speaker 2: you have all this great stuff. Why don't you and
Speaker 2: I ever do anything? He goes, you do all this
Speaker 2: great stuff. I was like, Bob, you know I'm your
Speaker 2: biggest fan. You're this yeah, I mean, you know a guy,
Speaker 2: you're like the Shakespeare of our time. You're fucking Bob Dylan?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? Every time you put a record out,
Speaker 2: I tell you twenty things you don't want to do him.
Speaker 2: He doesn't like to promote himself that way. He's just
Speaker 2: not that's not him. He just you know, you can
Speaker 2: tell him twenty things and he'll say, Okay, I'll do
Speaker 2: this one, you know, and I admire it. I mean,
Speaker 2: here's a guy from the old school, right. How's this
Speaker 2: quote unquote Paul I don't like to push my music
Speaker 2: that way, Bob Dylan, Okay, big respect even for little
Speaker 2: things look unannounced. I'll just take you to Scott Muni
Speaker 2: show at night on n ADW. Just show up. Nah,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing it. How's this. Here's a great one,
Speaker 2: mid mid eighties. He's huge, early eighties right, he's on fire, right, Bob.
Speaker 2: I just got a call from CBS two hour primetime television.
Speaker 2: Oh your show? Do whatever? You want. They're not gonna
Speaker 2: tell you what to play. Which Bob had bad experiences
Speaker 2: in the past with censers and all this shit. Right
Speaker 2: sures done two hours prime time. It's your show. I
Speaker 2: ain't doing that, man, Like, what are you talking about? No? No, no, man,
Speaker 2: you know you nobody's gonna watch that. You know you
Speaker 2: need you need a hook, man, you need like live
Speaker 2: it or farm it. You know nobody nobody's gonna watch it.
Speaker 2: You need a hook. No, no, Bob Dylan, No, I
Speaker 2: go Bob. You're Bob Dylan. You know you're the event.
Speaker 2: You get it. You don't need Live It or farm It.
Speaker 2: You're fucking Bob Dylan. It's like it's not what you think.
Speaker 2: It's like you're it. No no, man, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2: Nobody's gonna watch that. So he doesn't some things he
Speaker 2: knows some said, but you know what he has done? Great?
Speaker 2: All right? What are you gonna say, Oh, big mistake,
Speaker 2: you didn't do the television special. Come on, tell me
Speaker 2: you tell me who in their latest years could put
Speaker 2: out Time out of Mind and rough and rowdy ways
Speaker 2: and they still.
Speaker 3: Be really really really great records. Tell me name me
Speaker 3: one artist, name anybody. You can't you can think about it.
Speaker 3: We can't name anyone. And that's how many artists do
Speaker 3: we know. I don't even want to say their names
Speaker 3: because I don't want to miss them. But we can't
Speaker 3: name them. He's the one and only, but him legend dearly.
Speaker 3: He tracked sales and was aware of his business. Was
Speaker 3: he aware of what radio stations were playing his records?
Speaker 3: And even though we wouldn't do stuff. Was he completely
Speaker 3: removed or was he involved in the process?
Speaker 2: I got it. I don't know. I'd say fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: He wanted to know. Look, he's like any artist, right,
Speaker 2: he wanted to know what was going on. I only
Speaker 2: say fifty to fifty because Bob doesn't make music for radio. Right.
Speaker 2: He once had a writing session with Michael Bolton, which
Speaker 2: I find fascinating. And anyway, they're writing a song together
Speaker 2: and Michael adds something and Bob goes, well, why are
Speaker 2: you doing that man? And Michael goes, well, that's for
Speaker 2: the radio. You know. It's just like a hook they'll
Speaker 2: keep going around. Bob goes, I'm not writing it. I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not writing the song for the radio man, Like,
Speaker 2: what are you doing, like what you're like, what are
Speaker 2: you talking about? Bob just paints, right, Bob's Picasso. He
Speaker 2: could care less. That's why he's one of the greatest
Speaker 2: artists they'll ever be. He's just Bob, right, he just
Speaker 2: paints right. But he did ask me once, you know
Speaker 2: I wrote I wrote this in my book. He wanted
Speaker 2: to know. He goes, Look, you got to tell me something, man,
Speaker 2: Why is it no matter what I do, I can
Speaker 2: only sell a million records. Fleetwood Mac they sell like
Speaker 2: six million records, right, No matter what I do, I
Speaker 2: can't only sell a million. And at the time it
Speaker 2: was similar for Bruce Springsteen. He was like known as
Speaker 2: the biggest cult right he could sell a million of
Speaker 2: records on rock radio, but without a hit single. Not right,
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's just the way it is. So
Speaker 2: I would try to explain it to him. I'd say, Bob, look,
Speaker 2: Fleet went back. They go into the craft hit singles.
Speaker 2: They go into a studio for six months, they overdub
Speaker 2: and overdub, and they produce and they edit and their
Speaker 2: crafting hit singles. This is their craft. Okay, you go
Speaker 2: into a dentist office and you pull up you know,
Speaker 2: a remote truck and two weeks later it's roll at
Speaker 2: Bob and that's your album. It's fucking brilliant because it's
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan record. But you see the difference, right, And
Speaker 2: he looks at me and he goes, well, I must
Speaker 2: admit we're off the beaten path. I was like, Bob,
Speaker 2: off the beating fucking path. It's like, you know you're
Speaker 2: in the darkest chungles of Africa, but it's like, you
Speaker 2: know it's nine Days of a Bob. But Bob, you're
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan. It doesn't matter. Because I wanted him to
Speaker 2: understand they can no matter what they do. Don't be
Speaker 2: a numbers guy. You can You're Bob Dylan. You'll they
Speaker 2: can never be Bob Dylan. Saw all the artists I
Speaker 2: work with, they wish they could write one song like you.
Speaker 2: One blown in the Wind, one times they were changing
Speaker 2: one subterranean home, six blues, one hurricane. They all wish
Speaker 2: I could just write one, And you've written hundreds. But Bob,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it's you're a poet. It's an
Speaker 2: acquired taste. Right, This isn't this isn't you know jingles? Right,
Speaker 2: this is poetry. Same with Springsteen. You know, he wasn't
Speaker 2: a fan of it at the time, but you know,
Speaker 2: but I said, Bob, you know, it's just how it is.
Speaker 2: But but and you know, and he walked away and
Speaker 2: he understood it. I don't think it made him really
Speaker 2: happy because he's thinking, well, if I'm Bob Dylan and
Speaker 2: I'm so great, can't I sell you know, one million,
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand, you know, you know, records at least once.
Speaker 2: But look, it's like the Velvet Underground. How many records
Speaker 2: you think the An Underground sold? Right? Not that many?
Speaker 2: Seminal lou Reed, Are you kidding me? These guys change
Speaker 2: the face of rock. Well, who are the important people?
Speaker 2: You know? People? That's part of the eighties downside was
Speaker 2: everybody became numbers people and then in the end of
Speaker 2: the day, that's what ruined our business. The music business
Speaker 2: became the money business, and that's what ruined the record business. Right.
Speaker 2: But you know, you want to talk about art and
Speaker 2: things that matter, things that move the needle. A guy
Speaker 2: that changes a generation, which I know he doesn't like
Speaker 2: that handle. Sorry Bob, but not sorry. You know Bob
Speaker 2: is and Bob Dylan, you changed my life you did
Speaker 2: because I listened to you and I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this guy's telling me there's a new thing
Speaker 2: I can be this. I don't have to live in
Speaker 2: this square world that I'm growing up in the fifties
Speaker 2: because I can't relate and I don't know if I'm
Speaker 2: going to make it. But this guy's coming along and
Speaker 2: he's making it different, and he's changing my life and
Speaker 2: a whole generation's life. And it just happened, you know,
Speaker 2: because you know, the times helped make the man. But
Speaker 2: you know what are you know, civilis rights movement, you know,
Speaker 2: civil civil rights movement, and you know Vietnam and everything else.
Speaker 2: The times do help make the man, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter Bob Dylan, you know Bob Dylan. So you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, let's you talk about things that are important
Speaker 2: and the important things. This is what's fucked up with
Speaker 2: the music business now. The important things aren't always about
Speaker 2: the money. It's like Willie, you know, some people, somebody's
Speaker 2: got to figure this out eventually. The important things that
Speaker 2: things that move the needle aren't always about the money,
Speaker 2: and it's not always about the units, and it's not
Speaker 2: always about oh we sold you know five million, And
Speaker 2: it's not always about that. If the art's good, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can sell that. But that's but the money is
Speaker 2: not where it's at. It's the messages. You know, what
Speaker 2: do you have to say to me as an artist?
Speaker 2: I got the young bands talking to me all the time. Okay,
Speaker 2: oh Paul, you did this all your life. Tell us,
Speaker 2: tell us the secrets. Well, how do you do it today?
Speaker 2: Is it TikTok? Is it schmick talk? Is it this?
Speaker 2: Is it that? No, it's you. Look at yourself. Why
Speaker 2: didn't you get an Encore? I just saw you play.
Speaker 2: Do you ever think about that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Well, that's your job, right, It's like it's like your
Speaker 2: job is to make sure that you have messages that
Speaker 2: talk to me, that they're so important that when you
Speaker 2: come and play again in a month, I need to
Speaker 2: come and hear you because I want to make you
Speaker 2: part of my life. If your people aren't jumping up
Speaker 2: and screaming at the end of your set and demanding
Speaker 2: another song, you've failed. Do you understand they're not here
Speaker 2: so you know it's not you. Oh I'm gonna play
Speaker 2: my songs and they're gonna listen to me. How cool
Speaker 2: I am? No? No, they're not there for you. You
Speaker 2: you have to be there for them. I'm shocked at
Speaker 2: how many people don't understand this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if you can do that and you have
Speaker 2: something real to say, people will want to hear you
Speaker 2: and they want to hear you again, and it's all right,
Speaker 2: then you'll get on TikTok and that's a big amplifier
Speaker 2: for you. But that isn't that is that's not it right,
Speaker 2: that's not the secret sauce. It's you, you know, and
Speaker 2: and it's okay. If you don't get an encore, go
Speaker 2: back and talk about it. Why didn't we get an encore?
Speaker 2: Work on it? Maybe my songs have to be better.
Speaker 2: Work on your songs, work on your material. Your job
Speaker 2: is to be great, and don't stop until you're great,
Speaker 2: otherwise you ain't gonna get there.
Speaker 1: Okay. You work literally with household names. Their music is different.
Speaker 1: Billy Joel, Pink, Floyd, The Stones, Mick Jagger solo, Paul McCartney,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan. Is there a thread through these people? You
Speaker 1: talked about them being myopic, being the sun and can't
Speaker 1: being able to see the universe, But is there's some
Speaker 1: other thread that goes through all these people.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, there is a thread that goes through all
Speaker 2: of them, and it's called work ethic. Gilmour was once
Speaker 2: talking to we're driving around. He goes, you know what,
Speaker 2: because people think we like to just smoke a fat
Speaker 2: one and play, because they have no idea what we do.
Speaker 2: He goes, I go to the office every day, just
Speaker 2: like rap, just like you go to the office with
Speaker 2: your briefcase. My briefcase is my guitar case. I know
Speaker 2: what Pink Floyd is. I have to be the best
Speaker 2: Pink Floyd I can be. Right. Keith Richards rehearses the
Speaker 2: hell out of Rolling Stones. How do you think they're
Speaker 2: so good? They just don't do that right? Bob Dylan's
Speaker 2: touring endlessly. They're driven. These people are driven to do this.
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen, you read in my book, I've never seen
Speaker 2: a guy work as hard as that guy. I have
Speaker 2: never seen anything like it. You go to a rehearsal.
Speaker 2: The guy's got a wire down the center of the arena.
Speaker 2: He's playing his guitar at the sound bowl while he's
Speaker 2: rehearsing the band for two hours and most soundchecks are
Speaker 2: twenty minutes. Does it sound good? Yeah, we're done. He's
Speaker 2: doing he's rehearsing the band endless rehearse, rehearse soundcheck. He's
Speaker 2: twisting the knobs so he gets the best sound that
Speaker 2: he can get. That he wants to know about that, Right.
Speaker 2: I once saw soundcheck that lasted three hours. Then they
Speaker 2: take a break, then they come out, they do a
Speaker 2: four hour show. Then after the four hour show, Bruce
Speaker 2: days and talks to everybody that wants to meet him.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't rush you, he'll talk to you. So
Speaker 2: if you're going to meet him, talk to him. You're
Speaker 2: going to wait in a long line because he's gonna
Speaker 2: take a second. Okay, guy goes home one o'clock, you know,
Speaker 2: not home, but back, you know, back to his hotel room,
Speaker 2: gets up the next day, does the same thing, the
Speaker 2: exact same thing, every single day. Right the work ethic.
Speaker 2: You can't get there and you can't stay there. I
Speaker 2: loved reading Keith's book. My favorite Rolling Stones record is
Speaker 2: Exile on Main Street, and he writes about rip this Joint,
Speaker 2: which is one of my all time favorite songs, and
Speaker 2: he writes about how hard it was to get it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very fast and he had to it
Speaker 2: was really hard to just get it. But I loved
Speaker 2: it because it was like, yeah, it's not easy. If
Speaker 2: it was easy, everyone would do right. This is a
Speaker 2: work ethic, This is a love for the instrument. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to take this instrument to another place. So
Speaker 2: I would say that the thread is being driven and
Speaker 2: the work ethic to be great.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about choosing singles. Traditionally bands are worst
Speaker 1: or act or worst at choosing the singles. Tell me,
Speaker 1: since you did it for so long about choosing singles.
Speaker 2: I think you know, after if you do this enough
Speaker 2: and you love music enough, you get a you just
Speaker 2: get a sense of it. You just no, no, not
Speaker 2: everybody knows for sure. There's singles that we put out
Speaker 2: there we thought we're going to be hits, and they weren't.
Speaker 2: There's album tracks that I picked that I thought we're
Speaker 2: gonna you know, they would they would run out there,
Speaker 2: you know, it would get airplane, they'd do great, but
Speaker 2: they wouldn't sell any records, so they don't do what
Speaker 2: they're supposed to do. But you have ears like you're
Speaker 2: used to it, right, So I mean you can tell
Speaker 2: you can tell him thirty seconds, I can put any
Speaker 2: music on right now. In thirty seconds, I can tell
Speaker 2: you, you know, and maybe maybe I have to listen to
Speaker 2: thirty seconds more, just if it's something different. But you
Speaker 2: can tell in thirty seconds. There are people who know.
Speaker 2: There are people who smart enough when they don't know
Speaker 2: tell you a great story. It's not in my book, Walter,
Speaker 2: you're getting the cough. Great president, right, he had to
Speaker 2: walk the line between being cool with the artists and
Speaker 2: talking to the CBS, you know, corporate people. Okay, get
Speaker 2: a call from him from his office, Walter, Actually I
Speaker 2: think it was him. No, he called me. He goes listen,
Speaker 2: he goes, rap, I need you. I think it was
Speaker 2: John Faggot at the time. Great promotion man. So I
Speaker 2: need you and John to come up here because Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger's up here and we have to pick a single.
Speaker 2: I'm not good at it. He's the president of a
Speaker 2: whole giant CBS. I'm not good at that stuff. But
Speaker 2: you guys are so come up right. I thought that
Speaker 2: was one of the greatest phone calls I ever got.
Speaker 2: This guy is Mega. Okay, this guy is CBS. This
Speaker 2: guy is pick anybody on CBS. He's Michael Jackson. I mean,
Speaker 2: this guy's barbarous straw just like everything. I'm not good
Speaker 2: at picking singles. He knows he's not good at that.
Speaker 2: He knows he's good at negotiating for artists and being
Speaker 2: their buddy and making it right. Fine, Me and John
Speaker 2: go up with Mick. Hey, Mick, how you doing. We
Speaker 2: listen to a few things and we go I think
Speaker 2: it's this one, and Mick goes, yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: so too. I think that's the I think we have
Speaker 2: a chance with that. And notice, Mick Jagger, you want
Speaker 2: to talk about a guy who knows the business. Mick Jagger. Yes,
Speaker 2: I think we have a chance with that quote Mick Jagger,
Speaker 2: I think we have a chance with that because he knows.
Speaker 2: It's all a chance. He knows because he's been doing
Speaker 2: it his whole life. Right. Yeah, you hang around guys
Speaker 2: like that, you'll learn stuff from guys like that. Tony Bennett.
Speaker 2: I learned so much from Tony Bennett. They'll teach you
Speaker 2: things that you don't know because they're older than you,
Speaker 2: and they got there before you, and they've been around
Speaker 2: the block, you know, and you learn from listening to them.
Speaker 1: Okay, some of these acts were already stars before you
Speaker 1: got there, Like Bob Dylan, there are other acts that
Speaker 1: you live through it. Okay, Aerosmith, Billy Joel. If you
Speaker 1: look at Billy Joey, forget the album before starts off
Speaker 1: the piano man, Gigantic Kit kind of goes into the wilderness.
Speaker 1: Worked with Phil Ramone, Gigantic Okay. Bruce Springsteen second album.
Speaker 1: They get the recording right, he's working everywhere. Hasn't quite
Speaker 1: broken through from the inside. Did you just know they
Speaker 1: were going to hit a certain level or do you
Speaker 1: really never know?
Speaker 2: Some you don't know and some you have a feeling for.
Speaker 2: And I think for me, it's always when you see
Speaker 2: the band live. When you see that artist or band live,
Speaker 2: you'll know it's a knowing. I heard Bruce's first record,
Speaker 2: it was I really liked it. I went, hey, this
Speaker 2: guy's really good. He's got something to say. It's a
Speaker 2: little Dylan s but that's okay. He's you know, he's
Speaker 2: not copying Bob, He's I can just tell he's an influence.
Speaker 2: But until I saw Bruce live, I didn't know. When
Speaker 2: I saw Bruce live at the Troubadour, I was like,
Speaker 2: holy fuck, it's the next big thing. When I saw
Speaker 2: Elton John. It's not even on my act or not
Speaker 2: even on my label, right, I saw Elton John. Somebody
Speaker 2: told me this is going to be the next big thing.
Speaker 2: They were right. I went, holy shit. Psychedelic Furs got
Speaker 2: their record. I love their record, But when I saw
Speaker 2: him live, I was like, oh my god. And the
Speaker 2: biggest one was Alis in Chains. Because, as I write
Speaker 2: in the book, that music for me didn't I was discordant.
Speaker 2: I did. I didn't, you know, I'm not ashamed to
Speaker 2: say I just didn't understand it. I mean, I'm used
Speaker 2: to Van Halen, right, I'm used to you know, Eric Clapton.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, these are the records I'm promoting Rolling Stones.
Speaker 2: This is music is so different sounding. But I saw
Speaker 2: him live in New York, Bob. I saw the next
Speaker 2: led Zeppelin, the future, you know. I saw that everything
Speaker 2: that came after them, which is now called grunge. Who
Speaker 2: cares what you call it, but you know you're talking,
Speaker 2: you're talking pearl Jam. Nirvana Alice was the first one
Speaker 2: out of the gate. Not the first one out of
Speaker 2: the gate, because there was the BlimE. There's some other
Speaker 2: really great Seattle bands, but they were the first band,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, with my help to get to
Speaker 2: the main stream, Okay, to to really be to be
Speaker 2: heard by the mainstream public. Okay. I saw them, and
Speaker 2: I mean it rocked me to my core. And as
Speaker 2: you read in the book, I was having a tough
Speaker 2: time because we had some music that just wasn't made
Speaker 2: for rock radio, and I thought I was losing my touch.
Speaker 2: I was. I couldn't sleep all night. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I just saw it and it's ours,
Speaker 2: like we have Alice in chains. I'm going to go
Speaker 2: out and I'm going to do this and I'm going
Speaker 2: to make this happen, and it's going to fucking blow
Speaker 2: people's minds, you know. But from the from the record,
Speaker 2: not because it was new to me, which you read
Speaker 2: in the book, it was new to radio that nobody
Speaker 2: wanted to play it because they didn't it was odd.
Speaker 2: It's an odd sound. The Seattle sound is completely different.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to know about it. So it took
Speaker 2: some really strong effort, you know, to get that off.
Speaker 2: But I think if you see someone live, you'll know,
Speaker 2: you just know, you know, And sometimes you think you
Speaker 2: got one by the tail and it just doesn't happen,
Speaker 2: and you I don't know why. I had a I
Speaker 2: had a band called Human Radio Man. I thought they
Speaker 2: were fantastic, they made a fantastic album. I saw them live.
Speaker 2: Just didn't resonate, just just you know, just just didn't resonate.
Speaker 2: Lover boy. Okay, you're reading the book. I promoted it
Speaker 2: and then as soon as I you know, Galla calms,
Speaker 2: you got to hear it like I'm on fire, you know,
Speaker 2: to make this thing happen. I go see them live,
Speaker 2: same thing, Holy fuck. And you know, I know they're
Speaker 2: like a sort of rock pop act. Doesn't matter their
Speaker 2: rhythm section, okay, their drummer, they're bass player, like you know,
Speaker 2: they were you know, Reno's a great front man and
Speaker 2: you know, you know, and Pauldine's a great guitar players.
Speaker 2: But this was a real band. This was a band
Speaker 2: that was gonna go go long right. It was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, it's the whole band, It's Matt Fornett. It's
Speaker 2: like these guys, like, these guys are making this thing work.
Speaker 2: And then when we saw that, we were like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: we have a tiger by the tail. Okay.
Speaker 1: Historically, the Australian bands are the best live bands. Because
Speaker 1: there's a limited amount of money in the marketplace, they
Speaker 1: have to, you know, hit the same places again and again.
Speaker 1: Midnight Oil was on Columbia. What was your experience with
Speaker 1: Midnight Oil?
Speaker 2: Fantastic? Let me ask you a question, do you really
Speaker 2: think that's true? You think Australian bounds are the best
Speaker 2: life bounds?
Speaker 1: Because this is like we're talking old stories. I remember
Speaker 1: I went to the Troubadour for an underplay within Excess
Speaker 1: and Sean Coakley said that he was working at Arista. No,
Speaker 1: that was before he's working at arist or whatever, and
Speaker 1: I thought about it, ac DC, et cetera. Listen, if
Speaker 1: you've been to Australia, first and foremost, there's only so
Speaker 1: many people there, so you can't make an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of money living in Australia. And then there are people
Speaker 1: who say, well, you know, I like being a big
Speaker 1: fish in a small pond. And there are a certain
Speaker 1: number of cities there's just we could probably name them
Speaker 1: and we don't even live there. So to stay alive
Speaker 1: you have to play.
Speaker 2: No you speak. But I wonder if it's more like
Speaker 2: the working class thing, like to take Judus priest when
Speaker 2: I met them. Remember talking to Glenn Tipton. He was
Speaker 2: an okay guitar player in the beginning with they're just
Speaker 2: starting out and he got great, right. But I remember
Speaker 2: him talking to me. He said, you know, I think
Speaker 2: it was from Birmingham, so you know, I'm from this
Speaker 2: industrial how's this. I'm from this industrial part of England
Speaker 2: and I'm trying this to see if this works to
Speaker 2: get me out of there. Okay. He was in judis
Speaker 2: Priest by necessity, and I wonder if it's because it
Speaker 2: takes them a hard long time. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's Bruce Springsteen's worth taking because he's a blue collar
Speaker 2: kid from like I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell because he's at certain things he has said.
Speaker 1: But if you go back to the ten thousand hour rule,
Speaker 1: if people don't understand, it's ten thousand hours of hard practice.
Speaker 1: I always using the example he's sky ten thousand hours
Speaker 1: on the bunny slope. You're not going to be a
Speaker 1: world class gear. But one of the examples he uses
Speaker 1: the Beatles in Hamburg. I had not discussed that with
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney, not that he's my best friend, but I
Speaker 1: did discuss Geezer, Butler playing in Switzerland, etc. There was
Speaker 1: no money. They were playing night after night. No one
Speaker 1: was listening. You really learn your chops. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is let's go somewhere else, Sam Smith, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: something we never saw in our business. You're playing arenas
Speaker 1: on the first tour. You know, used to be at
Speaker 1: the record company had a subsidized club tour. Then maybe
Speaker 1: open up for somebody in theaters. Then maybe you headlined
Speaker 1: in theaters. So everybody is so hungry. A lot of
Speaker 1: these bands, you say, they look like he came from nowhere,
Speaker 1: but you went to see him and you're, holy fuck,
Speaker 1: these guys are incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well because of that work ethic, they had to
Speaker 2: play clubs and if it didn't happen, I mean, look
Speaker 2: look at the early Rolling Stones reels and you see
Speaker 2: Mick he's today he's just holding a mic like this, right,
Speaker 2: He's he's not even looking left, he's not even looking right.
Speaker 2: He had to learn how to be a front man.
Speaker 2: He studied, Bruce Springsteen studied who do you think, they
Speaker 2: studied James Brown? Right like they they realized they had
Speaker 2: to be the work to get there. Is is How
Speaker 2: do I be better at this? How can I make
Speaker 2: this happen? This is like this work ethic that I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. You know, look, you know Midnight Oil they
Speaker 2: come from that cloth. I loved min On Oil. We
Speaker 2: were great friends. I'm a surfer right there, surf you
Speaker 2: know rap combed dolls. You know you've got to come.
Speaker 2: You know, don underlon have a surf right They would
Speaker 2: send me wetsuits. I had Midnight Oil wetsuits. They were
Speaker 2: purple with shars whose green Midnight Oil. They're great people.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about the Australian bands. There's no ego.
Speaker 2: Men at work, there's no ego. Doesn't matter how big
Speaker 2: they get. I don't know why. They just don't have
Speaker 2: an ego. They just are thankful. I you know nothing,
Speaker 2: just hey, tell me where to be. We're working hard.
Speaker 2: And the Midnight Oil guys, oh my god, one of
Speaker 2: the greatest, greatest drummers in the world. I mean, what
Speaker 2: a band, you know, and they were great. I had
Speaker 2: so much fun with those guys.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about surfing. We've talked surfing for thirty years.
Speaker 2: You want to talk about something good.
Speaker 1: A surfer? Are you and how often do you go.
Speaker 2: There is a saying and surfing and a lot of
Speaker 2: people take credit for it. And the saying is that
Speaker 2: the best surfer is the person who's having the most fun. Okay,
Speaker 2: because it is. It's a spiritual thing. But people don't
Speaker 2: understand it's not just a sport. Okay, when you ride
Speaker 2: a wave, you because I'm part of I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: sound hipie tipity, but here's it's the truth. When you
Speaker 2: ride a wave, unlike skiing, like you're a big time skier. Okay,
Speaker 2: so you're well, I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna tell you what I feel, and you tell me
Speaker 2: what you feel, Okay, because I because I tried skiing
Speaker 2: once and I almost killed myself. Okay, So so okay.
Speaker 2: So when you're surfing, you are riding a wave, and
Speaker 2: so you begin to feel part of the Earth's energy.
Speaker 2: You you feel part of the planet. Every wave is different,
Speaker 2: it's a dance. You're looking at the wave. How is
Speaker 2: it gonna? Is it gonna hike up? Am I gonna
Speaker 2: have to couple take take a couple of steps on
Speaker 2: the board to gain speed? Am I gonna have to
Speaker 2: do a cutback and do a turn? Left to get around?
Speaker 2: How am I negotiating my dance partner? Okay, if you
Speaker 2: do this for an hour, an hour and a half,
Speaker 2: which is your general surf sessions an hour and a half. Right, Uh,
Speaker 2: when you come in to the beach, you are zend out.
Speaker 2: You are totally zend out. I don't don't know if
Speaker 2: it's from the swoop and glide. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's from all the negative ions because you're in the ocean.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's the sun.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is just sitting on
Speaker 2: the board bob bobbing with the planet, like you're in
Speaker 2: tune to the planet. I was never the greatest surfer
Speaker 2: in the world. I would say, I'm good. I can
Speaker 2: do a cutback, I can walk up the board. I
Speaker 2: can do this. You know. Can I hang ten? No?
Speaker 2: I can hang five. Cheater five. You walk up and
Speaker 2: you I ride longboards. I have to tell people there's
Speaker 2: two kinds of surfboards. There's long boards, which I grew
Speaker 2: up with, and short boards, which is like a little
Speaker 2: potato chip. And those guys are doing aerials right, they're
Speaker 2: doing you shoot out of the way. If you do
Speaker 2: an aerial of three sixty you come back down. It's
Speaker 2: like circus tricks. I tried it. I didn't like it
Speaker 2: wasn't It wasn't for me. So I'm still a longboard writer.
Speaker 2: It's elegant. It's a swoop and glide. I'm a swooping
Speaker 2: glide guy. You know what. I've surfed big waves not
Speaker 2: my thing. Mickey Door one of the greatest surfers in
Speaker 2: the world. In his book, he says, I'm I can.
Speaker 2: I'm a confessed three to four foot swoop and glide guy.
Speaker 2: I surf those big waves in a way because I
Speaker 2: had to turn my stripes. I don't like it, you know.
Speaker 2: You know it's a different kind of thrill ride. You
Speaker 2: ride a twenty foot wave, twenty five foot wave. You
Speaker 2: got to get to point A to point B without
Speaker 2: getting killed. Okay, that's that's it. And it's yeah, it's
Speaker 2: exhilarating your heart's and your chest. I've done it. That's
Speaker 2: not fun for me. Swoop and glide, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's like you're in a jam session.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: You just think you're lost. You just lost. And I
Speaker 2: go as often as I can. I live on the
Speaker 2: East Coast, so I'm not one of these guys that
Speaker 2: serves in the winter. There are people that put on
Speaker 2: seven mil wet suits and gloves, and I'm not that guy.
Speaker 2: You know, that's not fun. You know I tried it once.
Speaker 2: It's like, why am I doing this? I can't even
Speaker 2: feel the ocean. I feel like I'm riding on ball bearings.
Speaker 2: Might as well be on a skateboard, right. But I
Speaker 2: but in the summer, I surf on Long Island, Live
Speaker 2: on Long Island. I surf in Long Beach, go to Montauk,
Speaker 2: which is a reef break, which is kind of like
Speaker 2: a California wave. And I make sure that I go
Speaker 2: to California at least once or twice a year because
Speaker 2: that's where the best surf is. And I have boards
Speaker 2: in California, so that's heaven because those surf breaks. Like
Speaker 2: people always want to talk about Hawaii in this place
Speaker 2: and that I have a friendly traveling well, I'm going
Speaker 2: to Costa Rica. Fine, go to Costa Rica. You ain't
Speaker 2: gonna find better waves than in California. It's the Disneyland
Speaker 2: of surf, and it's every kind of break you want,
Speaker 2: you know, from from up north to down south. Ventura
Speaker 2: County Line, long green, beautiful waves, glassy because there's all
Speaker 2: these culp beds. You're like riding on a mirror Malibu
Speaker 2: Point Break. Go down South Huntington. Forget Huntington, go you know,
Speaker 2: to past Lagoon to beach. I love down South Encinitas.
Speaker 2: There's a place called Swami's Pipes is my favorite break.
Speaker 2: Right below Swami's. You're sitting out in pristine, beautiful water
Speaker 2: and the waves because there's like reefs out there's like
Speaker 2: rock reefs right, so the waves are perfectly shaped so
Speaker 2: they're breaking behind you so you can ride the wave
Speaker 2: and not worry about the waves, like you know, breaking
Speaker 2: in front of you. And all the way up and
Speaker 2: down the coast of California. It's the best surf there is.
Speaker 2: So I plan every year to at least plan a
Speaker 2: surf trip in July, you know, or August. Both of
Speaker 2: my sons surf. I have a granddaughter who surfs. Now
Speaker 2: you want to talk about mind blowing, Bob, I tell
Speaker 2: my kids to surf. I surf this place Swamis when
Speaker 2: I was eighteen. I remember, I'm eighteen years old and
Speaker 2: I'm sitting out at Swami's. I'm going I wonder if
Speaker 2: I'll ever get married. I wonder if I ever get
Speaker 2: married with five kids, And I wonder if I have kids,
Speaker 2: would they ever serf? And so when my kids got
Speaker 2: older and I wanted to take them to all my
Speaker 2: favorite surf breaks, I took them to Swamis Paddle Out.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting in the exact same spot. I'm flashed back
Speaker 2: to eighteen years old. Same cliffs, same waves, same palm trees,
Speaker 2: clientele has changed, but it's all the same. And I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about, man, I was just sitting here and it
Speaker 2: wasn't that long ago, and I wondered, you know, if
Speaker 2: any of this would happen. And as I'm thinking this,
Speaker 2: my oldest son paddles by, Hey Dad, how you doing?
Speaker 2: And then my other son to my right paddles by, Hey, pops,
Speaker 2: what's going on? And I'm having one of those moments,
Speaker 2: you know, like like like like the Field of Dreams moments,
Speaker 2: like the fuck you want to have a cat Like
Speaker 2: every time I watched that movie, I tell myself, you're
Speaker 2: not gonna cry, You're not gonna cry, don't cry, And
Speaker 2: every time I see that scene, I fucking lose it.
Speaker 2: And I was having one of those moments, right, and
Speaker 2: I just looked up. I'm pretty spiritual gym me. I
Speaker 2: just looked up and said thanks, because you know how
Speaker 2: much fun is this with my kids? Okay, Now I
Speaker 2: have a fourteen year old granddaughter and last summer, I'm
Speaker 2: out at my favorite break which is just south of
Speaker 2: Swambia's with just pipes. It's a great wave and she
Speaker 2: and she calls me, well, I'm Jeep. I'm Grandpa Paul,
Speaker 2: so I'm GP, and Jeeps for short, Hey jeeves, start paddling.
Speaker 2: We're taking this one in together and im and I'm going,
Speaker 2: oh my god. Now there's a granddaughter. And she gets it,
Speaker 2: like she gets it's in her, like the surfing thing,
Speaker 2: like it's in her right, and I start paddling, and
Speaker 2: again I look up and I'm just like overwhelmed. I'm
Speaker 2: just like thanks, you know, thanks for her, and thanks
Speaker 2: for letting her understand what surfing is. So I go
Speaker 2: as often, honestly, I go as often as I can.
Speaker 2: And look, Bob, I'm getting older. Every summer I go out,
Speaker 2: I paddle out, see if I can do it, and
Speaker 2: I do it, and I step up, you know, and
Speaker 2: then when I get into the beach. I look up
Speaker 2: to the Evans and I thank the man above. Thanks,
Speaker 2: I got another year. I'm going to do this another year.
Speaker 2: My dream, well, my dream was to surf until eighty
Speaker 2: only because I met a guy who was eighty one
Speaker 2: and he was surfing and he said, you can do it.
Speaker 2: You can do it. But now I have a new grandson.
Speaker 2: He's only a year old, and I'm like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: now I got to push the Now, I gotta push
Speaker 2: the envelope. I need to be there for him, like
Speaker 2: when he's like at least five or six. I just
Speaker 2: want to paddle out with his little dude. Right, So
Speaker 2: I go as often as I can. But let me
Speaker 2: ask you a question. And this because I want to
Speaker 2: know you're an avid skier. I'm always reading about your
Speaker 2: ski trips. When you ski, is it like, okay? I
Speaker 2: just talked to you about like what surfing feels like.
Speaker 3: Okay, the same.
Speaker 1: Let's start from the beginning. You were talking about being
Speaker 1: zen'd out the water wears you out. I remember playing
Speaker 1: Little League and the guy said you can't go swimming
Speaker 1: that day. I remember just running around in like a
Speaker 1: you know, twelve inches of water and it made a difference, okay,
Speaker 1: And there is the zen aspect in terms of skiing.
Speaker 1: The way I put it is, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this, saw my bad company, simple man. It's
Speaker 1: running with the pack and it's great, and you know it.
Speaker 1: Freedom is the only thing that means a damn to me.
Speaker 1: It's relatively slow swall and I remember standing at when
Speaker 1: I used to live in Utah, standing in snowbird. You're
Speaker 1: there in the elements. It's just you in the elements.
Speaker 1: In addition, the terrain is always different, so I ski
Speaker 1: for the sensation. And let's be clear, I skied so
Speaker 1: much this year. I'm almost embarrassed tell you how much.
Speaker 1: There are days I don't want to go out, but
Speaker 1: because you just burnt. Yeah, I mean, how many stays
Speaker 1: in a row of ice skied?
Speaker 2: Now? Oh, I'm surprised you can.
Speaker 1: I think it's sixty eight days in a row right now,
Speaker 1: So there are days Wait wait.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, you skied sixty eight days in a row.
Speaker 1: I'm at ninety eight days days over the year.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You got to give
Speaker 2: me a second to take that in. Okay, let's be honest, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can serve two days in a row, and then
Speaker 2: I got to take a day off. Tell me how
Speaker 2: you ski sixty eight days? I view it as a job,
Speaker 2: and I don't care if it's a job. It's sixty
Speaker 2: eight days. How do you three days row?
Speaker 1: Happen to be tired today?
Speaker 2: But let me really, let me you're tired, Bob.
Speaker 1: The list run two and a half times faster than
Speaker 1: they used to, so you get a lot of skiing
Speaker 1: in okay. But the key is to go out there
Speaker 1: till it clicks, till you're in the zone. It always happens.
Speaker 1: You don't want to leave the house. You're out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I ski so much. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to ski badly. That's not the point. The point is,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it clicks, you make that specific
Speaker 1: turn and goes this is the greatest sensation of all time.
Speaker 3: And you're out that. I understand. I understand that.
Speaker 2: But what I'm asking is about your stamina, like muscles ache.
Speaker 2: I mean you you you have to rest some time.
Speaker 3: I don't believe.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in it. I mean, wow, So today
Speaker 1: is wow. Today's day ninety eight. So barring anything untoward,
Speaker 1: I'll break one hundred days. Listen, you get older, everything
Speaker 1: becomes meaningless and it's only these core things that Okay.
Speaker 1: I was listening to the new Elton John Brandy Carlisle
Speaker 1: record today and the first song is about Laura and Nero,
Speaker 1: and that really set my mind going. I saw a
Speaker 1: Nero number of times, big fan, et cetera. Forgetting when
Speaker 1: she came back with Donnie. I know Donnie's story. She
Speaker 1: wouldn't be on SDL because of her weight, forget all that.
Speaker 1: But it unclicked me in that this crazy political era.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the door opened and I felt
Speaker 1: like myself and I could see where I'm doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all have obligation, so you can't always do what
Speaker 1: you want to do. I mean, listen, I could go
Speaker 1: on about this forever. So what are the important things?
Speaker 1: I don't have any children, You have children, family, whatever, Okay,
Speaker 1: eating sex, that's and reproducing that That's just about it.
Speaker 1: So anything you put on top, I mean, okay, let
Speaker 1: me switch throw it back to you. You take the
Speaker 1: buyout from Columbia, how long does it take you to
Speaker 1: emotionally adjust?
Speaker 2: Honestly, no time, because when I left, I left in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, the business that I knew was gone,
Speaker 2: and so I wasn't leaving. People kept saying, but you're leaving,
Speaker 2: you know this great business, And I said, I'm leaving
Speaker 2: a family of people. And I've and I've got decades,
Speaker 2: like because I've I've stayed there so long. I knew
Speaker 2: people from the seventies, from the eighties, from the nineties,
Speaker 2: from the two thousands, I said. But I said, I
Speaker 2: just had the rock and roll adventure of a lifetime
Speaker 2: and it's gone. The priorities are different. I had to
Speaker 2: produce three DVDs for this TV show I had live
Speaker 2: by request. They just wanted to get them out. I said, no,
Speaker 2: they these have to be special. They have to have
Speaker 2: they have to have extras. I was tell you know,
Speaker 2: I was taking, you know, cues from watching movie DVDs.
Speaker 2: I know, we have to have extras. I want to
Speaker 2: do an interview with the band, or I want to
Speaker 2: do something special. These DVDs have to have extras. And
Speaker 2: they were like, I don't care what you do. Make
Speaker 2: sure you get them out by Christmas. That's what I
Speaker 2: need you to do. It was changing. It was like
Speaker 2: that's I can't like, so no, I I it you know,
Speaker 2: hey man, thanks for thirty three and at theirs years,
Speaker 2: you know, like I did it, I didn't miss it.
Speaker 1: All of us who were around then when you walked
Speaker 1: out the building, it was no longer fun. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about you. So you have a twenty four to
Speaker 1: seven job. How do you adjust after that?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you do. I think you just adjust
Speaker 2: as life, you know, you know, as life demands. Okay,
Speaker 2: the twenty four to seven job changed. I will say
Speaker 2: that changed dramatically in nineteen ninety because when I the
Speaker 2: last thing I did in promotion was Alice in Chains
Speaker 2: and I went to Donnie Heiner and I said, listen,
Speaker 2: I think I'm repeating myself now that I'm been doing
Speaker 2: promotion for twenty two years, I have a lot of
Speaker 2: ideas of how to help artists and promote artists and
Speaker 2: and and you know, breakthrough. Other than just getting records
Speaker 2: played on radio and doing big promotions. I have some
Speaker 2: other ideas. And he was great about it. You know,
Speaker 2: most people would just say, hey, wrap twenty two years. Great,
Speaker 2: you know, here's your out, you know, check and thank you.
Speaker 2: He was wonderful. He knew I had vision, he said.
Speaker 2: I told him about some of my ideas. He said,
Speaker 2: if you think you can do this, make up a
Speaker 2: title for yourself. How's this, Bob, make up a title
Speaker 2: for yourself. I'm going to give you three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars budget, give you a year. See what you can do.
Speaker 2: Who does that, Bob? You're any record company presidents that
Speaker 2: do that? Most of them just write you off.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But he knew me, and he's seen what I did.
Speaker 2: I said, thanks. Then my job changed and I still
Speaker 2: had sleepless nights, but not as many because I just
Speaker 2: get amped. I do big, as you read in the book,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy that shoots laser beams off mountain sides
Speaker 2: and fucking makes airships, and you know, when it's big,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of pressure. But I would have but
Speaker 2: but it wasn't the same. It wasn't because I didn't
Speaker 2: have to go to every show then because I'm not
Speaker 2: on the front lines now. I'm doing behind the scenes
Speaker 2: of marketing. So things did change for me in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety and I could be home to see the kids
Speaker 2: at certain times. It didn't have to be out every night,
Speaker 2: and that was a pleasant change. You know, you know,
Speaker 2: I had my fun, Believe me, but that you know,
Speaker 2: that was good and and everything I did past that
Speaker 2: is still if you're in the music business. It's still
Speaker 2: a lifestyle. Even in today's music business. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: still a lifestyle. So it never ceased to become a lifestyle.
Speaker 2: But but the idea of you know that this constant
Speaker 2: you know, Sunday night pressure, this Monday night pressure, this
Speaker 2: every week pressure. That kind of pressure was lifted and
Speaker 2: I would only have pressure like before this next radio show,
Speaker 2: before this next television show. What you know, you do
Speaker 2: a life television show. There's a lot of pressure live
Speaker 2: without a net, right, But it's different because it would
Speaker 2: only last for that project and then it would go
Speaker 2: away and then you'd have like a vacation for a
Speaker 2: few weeks. So my life did change.
Speaker 1: Let me let me put it a different way. Donnie
Speaker 1: worked at Arista. Then he was president of Columbia, had
Speaker 1: a great run. It ended then that was you know,
Speaker 1: the dot com era. He would come to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I would go to see some company he was involved,
Speaker 1: We sign an NDA whatever. Eventually he said I'm done. Okay.
Speaker 1: So after you walked out of the building in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, were you saying you're done then, or
Speaker 1: did you want to have certain business enterprises? How did
Speaker 1: you segue to where you are now? Oh?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. I wasn't done with the music business.
Speaker 2: I was just you know, they were offering these big
Speaker 2: time retirement packages.
Speaker 1: They were yeah, yeah, we covered that. But now you
Speaker 1: get your check and you're totally free.
Speaker 2: Right. No, no, no, But the point I want to
Speaker 2: make is you need to understand this. The year before
Speaker 2: I left, they said, this is what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: We're going to pay you for the next year. You
Speaker 2: don't need to do anything. You can just retire. And
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, who was the controller in the
Speaker 2: controller at the time, said, but if I were you,
Speaker 2: because I know you and you want to start another business,
Speaker 2: you got a free ride because we're going to pay
Speaker 2: you for this entire year. And I had another friend
Speaker 2: of mine, Ron Hartenbaum, who's ran Media America and you
Speaker 2: know it's in the communications industry. He said, rap, you're
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur, somebo are you talking about because all these
Speaker 2: things you do, you're an entrepreneur. I never thought of
Speaker 2: myself as that. He goes, No, you do all these things.
Speaker 2: You come to my office I'm going to give you
Speaker 2: a free office and a telephone. See what you can do.
Speaker 2: Just I know your mind. He goes, just come over here,
Speaker 2: and I began to think, well, maybe Ron is right,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, what can I do now? I
Speaker 2: had done a radio series for Columbia called the Columbia
Speaker 2: Records Radio Hour, which is I'm really proud of it.
Speaker 2: You go find it online. There's some great music on there.
Speaker 2: And I had created a radio series. I'm not the
Speaker 2: retiring kind. I mean, Bob, I wrote this book, but
Speaker 2: after I promote this book, I'll do something else. I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'll never retire. I can't. I need to do stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm just built that way. So so I started immediately.
Speaker 2: I didn't take a break. It was just like, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing this anymore. What can I do? Okay, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to let's I'll do with the Columbia Records
Speaker 2: Radio Hour, but I'll just do a different name. And
Speaker 2: I called all my friends in radio and said, hey, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this, and they said, we're kind
Speaker 2: of over that thing now and we don't want it
Speaker 2: to be at an exact same time. Because I was
Speaker 2: doing live radio that was a live radio show on
Speaker 2: Sunday mornings, a singer song of radio show. You tune
Speaker 2: in live. They said, but if you want to create
Speaker 2: radio specials, we're all about that. And I went, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll create radio specials. And I I took this friend
Speaker 2: of mine who had helped me do all the stuff
Speaker 2: at Columbia, the radio show and the television shows, fabulous engineer,
Speaker 2: producer guy named Mitch Mcatanski, and another friend of mine
Speaker 2: who was a scriptwriter, and I said, we're going to
Speaker 2: We're gonna do radio shows. And I have all these connections,
Speaker 2: so I just go to the record companies and go, hey,
Speaker 2: you want a radio show for a new album coming out?
Speaker 2: And we produced radio shows for three years. The company
Speaker 2: name was Trey Sombres because I'm a big Zzy Top fan.
Speaker 2: And there were three of us and our company was
Speaker 2: Treys Onmbres and we produced radio shows god at least
Speaker 2: six years, if not longer, and it was lucrative enough
Speaker 2: for the three of us to do it. Mitch also
Speaker 2: ran a business. He's like the mobile truck guy. Now,
Speaker 2: if you want a mobile truck, you call three M
Speaker 2: that's him, and he was doing that. But that was
Speaker 2: lucrative enough. And then when that tailed out, I got
Speaker 2: a call from Judy Lebau, who you knows ex Atlantic.
Speaker 2: She wanted to do independent promotion for classic rock. Right.
Speaker 2: There was a guy, Paul Yeskell used to do it.
Speaker 2: He passed away. She bought his business. She said, do
Speaker 2: you want to do this again? I said, I don't
Speaker 2: really know because I'm kind of tapped out, like I
Speaker 2: feel like I did it right. And she says, well,
Speaker 2: just try it with me. We had a really good time.
Speaker 2: First of all, I saw re I got to work
Speaker 2: with all these characters I worked with the first time.
Speaker 2: I'd be on the phone with Journey. Have you on
Speaker 2: the phone with Neil Sean's like rap is that you?
Speaker 2: I go yeah, I go yeah. He was like holy shit, really,
Speaker 2: I go yeah, you know, And so I would, you know,
Speaker 2: and I and I so and again I would. I
Speaker 2: worked really close with David Gilmore and Nick you know,
Speaker 2: for any Pink Floyd box sets, I would go over
Speaker 2: and interview David. I mean again, you go back to
Speaker 2: the family for a second. Right, new manager Steve o'rourck
Speaker 2: passed away, sadly, new manager Apollo's but you got to
Speaker 2: come over here and interview Gilmore for this box set.
Speaker 2: I go, I'm not an interviewer, Like, that's not what
Speaker 2: I do. Like I'm behind the scenes guy. No, no,
Speaker 2: we need you. He is the only guy who wants
Speaker 2: to talk to right, He's just you know, just do it,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, okay, you know, so I did
Speaker 2: the best I could. There's interviews with me on YouTube
Speaker 2: interviewing Dave Gilmore. By the time you get to the
Speaker 2: third one, I'm actually okay, right, but it's not what
Speaker 2: I do. But so these things would happen for me
Speaker 2: just just by reputation, right, And I would do, you know,
Speaker 2: guitar things for you know, the guitars or whatever. So
Speaker 2: I did, Judy, and I did that for ten years.
Speaker 2: And I wrote a blog which I had a blast writing.
Speaker 2: I'd talk about new music. I got to be you man,
Speaker 2: I was dissing everybody. I was like, I didn't care.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't care anymore. It's like, what the
Speaker 2: fuck is this shit? Right? Are you telling me? This
Speaker 2: is you know? I mean, i'd get hate mail, right,
Speaker 2: this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Right, Wait, wait, Bob,
Speaker 2: how's this? I interviewed Gill okay, if we're on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, people fucking comment. Right I interview Gilmore. I
Speaker 2: get one comment, Oh god, this guy rap Ward's great.
Speaker 2: He's asking him every question I ever wanted to ask him. Well,
Speaker 2: of course I'm a fan. I'm asking him those questions. Right,
Speaker 2: next comment, this guy rapping Board is a fucking idiot, Like,
Speaker 2: doesn't he know that Comfortably Numb has been played millions
Speaker 2: of times on radio. It's not three hundred and you know,
Speaker 2: fifty six thousand or whatever. I happen to research, you
Speaker 2: fucking idiot. You know, it's like, do you think I
Speaker 2: come in to interview David gilmert, I don't know what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, you know, so you know, so you
Speaker 2: know it's you know, so I did that for ten
Speaker 2: years and then and then six years ago I told Judy,
Speaker 2: I said, you know that this book has just been
Speaker 2: it's calling out to me, Judy. It's like someone, someone
Speaker 2: has to document this, someone has to talk about these characters,
Speaker 2: the Herbie Herbert's, the fucking Sandy Pearlman's of you know,
Speaker 2: Bloyster called when the fucking flash plots go off with
Speaker 2: too much powder, and I thought we killed the fucking
Speaker 2: band and took out the first three rows of audience,
Speaker 2: and all Sandy's like fucking mister Peabody and Peabody and Sherman,
Speaker 2: and all he does is look out and go positively nuclear. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm Sandy, and we might have killed people. He's, you know,
Speaker 2: like the Bob you know you're talking about. Someone had
Speaker 2: to capture this bob you're talking about, you know, bowling
Speaker 2: in the hallways in the afternoon water gun fire. I
Speaker 2: had a fun fucking fencing duel with with Bruce Dickinson
Speaker 2: from Iron Maiden down the halls of Columbia, you know,
Speaker 2: businest meetings about how we can't set our table on
Speaker 2: fire anymore. Someone had to fucking put this down. Because
Speaker 2: you want to know something, Bob, we are getting older
Speaker 2: and when we're gone, if nobody writes it, it's gonna
Speaker 2: be gone. And you were there, Come on, man, it's
Speaker 2: guys and dolls only it's the record business and we
Speaker 2: have all we have, all these fucking characters. Somebody's got
Speaker 2: to write about these fucking people. Forget the artists. What
Speaker 2: about fucking what Johnny Baggs, right, John Babcock. All this
Speaker 2: guy ever says is get down Hey, John, will you
Speaker 2: approve this? Get down? Okay? Do you smoked a lot
Speaker 2: of dope? Needs to say quaylas, But everybody loved him. Okay,
Speaker 2: it used to be out in John's road manager. Then right,
Speaker 2: if he really wanted to make a point, get down,
Speaker 2: and then oh no, then this one. Get fucking down.
Speaker 2: Somebody asked her, this guy's real. Okay when this book.
Speaker 2: After I promote this book, I'm going to TV Bob
Speaker 2: forget Vinyl. What a horrible show. It's not a fucking documentary.
Speaker 2: This is a fucking sitcom. This book is a sitcom
Speaker 2: and all the characters are already written. They're written. It's
Speaker 2: a great jumping off point for any Hollywood writer. You
Speaker 2: couldn't make this shit up in your wildest dreams. These
Speaker 2: are real people and this is how they really were.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So six years ago I said I gotta
Speaker 2: do this and I just started.
Speaker 1: I just remember you talk about these pag We was
Speaker 1: a a Pollock convention and it was at the Century Plaza.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of crazy things. You Australians drank
Speaker 1: through the bottles into the pool. They had to drain
Speaker 1: the pool big But I was in the Atlantic suite.
Speaker 1: It's six in the morning, and who shows up at
Speaker 1: a suit and tie ricks glore. He goes, I'm on
Speaker 1: New York time. Wow. And then he died within the year,
Speaker 1: which was so weird. But there are many more stories
Speaker 1: in the book. It's a great read. But before you go,
Speaker 1: I have one more subject. I want to discuss Mogan
Speaker 1: David in the Winos. I heard from Harold just before
Speaker 1: we started it. So, okay, in case you don't know,
Speaker 1: Harold Bronson one of the Rhino Brothers, known to a
Speaker 1: great degree for musical comedy and a lot of innovative ideas.
Speaker 1: By time I became friends with Harold, Mogan David and
Speaker 1: the Winos was in the rear view, Mirriort. Not that
Speaker 1: Harold did not talk about it and talk about you.
Speaker 1: I always though it as more of a lark. I mean,
Speaker 1: Harold's got his own sense of humor. But in the
Speaker 1: book you said when the Ramones hit, we could have
Speaker 1: had that slot. So tell me about Mogen David and
Speaker 1: the Winos.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, to be clear, that's what Harold said. Okay,
Speaker 2: Because I thought it was a lark. When I was
Speaker 2: in the band, we had a lot of fun Harold's
Speaker 2: very you know, got a big imagination. He wrote really
Speaker 2: fun songs. We made our own record. We didn't know
Speaker 2: what the hell we were doing. We went to We're
Speaker 2: snugging a recording studio in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: Look e Q, what does that mean? Like? We didn't know. Consequently,
Speaker 2: the record sounds like it sounds I don't know if
Speaker 2: you write record, but okay, sorry, But we were creative,
Speaker 2: I'll give us that, and we were rehearsed, but we
Speaker 2: did wild shit. He wrote a song for Stan Berkowitz,
Speaker 2: who was the editor of The Daily Bruin. We were
Speaker 2: going to college together at UCLA. It's a blue song.
Speaker 2: It's called the Burkowitz Blues. So instead of me playing
Speaker 2: a pentatonic blue scale on guitar, I said, Harold, I'm
Speaker 2: going to play a typewriter. So when you hear the solo,
Speaker 2: you hear like a blues thing, like you hear click
Speaker 2: click click click click click click click, like talking with
Speaker 2: the blues guitar. But it's a typewriter, right. We had
Speaker 2: inserts because we saw our whole album cover is a
Speaker 2: takeoff on Savage Young Winos. It's a takeoff on the
Speaker 2: Savage Young Beatles. The album cover is a knockoff of
Speaker 2: their cover. We had inserts because we saw Who's Live
Speaker 2: at Leads. We loved it the fold out right, so
Speaker 2: we made we copied it full down. There's there's there's
Speaker 2: nine inserts right that you get. Okay, you get my
Speaker 2: flunked music final. I flunked music one at UCLA. Okay,
Speaker 2: because I'm not a math guy. Math and I don't
Speaker 2: get along theory is all math. I fucking flunked music one.
Speaker 2: I almost didn't graduate because I didn't realize I didn't
Speaker 2: have enough credits and they said you don't have enough
Speaker 2: credits and I said, no, I I only have one
Speaker 2: D and that was in logic, and you know, was
Speaker 2: that prepared me for the music business? But you know,
Speaker 2: I said, they said, no, you flund a class. I
Speaker 2: didn't flun the click. I said, you flucked music one.
Speaker 2: I go, no, that was a joke. Well you might
Speaker 2: think as a joke, but you need the X amount
Speaker 2: of credits, right, So you get my f one. You know,
Speaker 2: my flunk music. Finally you get a cartoon. You get
Speaker 2: all these kind of things. The liner notes are hysterical.
Speaker 2: Forget listening to the record. We the liner notes, Harold's
Speaker 2: fucking great writer. Right, So I thought it was fun
Speaker 2: and I but I didn't think we were that good.
Speaker 2: Now here's an important point. Okay, what did we not
Speaker 2: know in the early seventies, Bob, We did not know
Speaker 2: that there was something called the Wrecking Crew? And so
Speaker 2: what I would listen to records and go, Beryld, We're
Speaker 2: just not good in it. We're not good enough. We're
Speaker 2: not those people. Well guess what, Bob. Neither were they.
Speaker 2: You know, they were making it up as they went along.
Speaker 2: But we didn't know. If we would have gotten signed,
Speaker 2: we might have been something because somebody has said, hey,
Speaker 2: rap play it this way, or if you can't, I'll
Speaker 2: get somebody to play it. We didn't know. So I
Speaker 2: told Harold and I'm you know, I'm I'm an adventurer,
Speaker 2: but I like to come home at the end. I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew wouldn't I wouldn't make it on the road.
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to survive. I'd be a road casualty.
Speaker 2: I know me, I couldn't do it, couldn't live on
Speaker 2: the road. So I knew it early on. As much
Speaker 2: as I would like to be a rock star, this
Speaker 2: can't be a vocation for me. But I'm just going
Speaker 2: to keep playing guitar because I love it. But I
Speaker 2: you know, the Columbia job came up. Harold was the
Speaker 2: college rep. I'd hired him when I got the real
Speaker 2: job at Columbia to follow me, and he wanted to
Speaker 2: take the band on the road. And I said, Harold,
Speaker 2: you know, we're having fun. We made a record, we
Speaker 2: made a thousand records, we sold a thousand records. We
Speaker 2: sold records world over. I have reviews from Japan and
Speaker 2: from France. I don't know what they say because I
Speaker 2: don't know if they liked it or not. But Harold
Speaker 2: made a little folder for us. I have reviews from
Speaker 2: all over and we had friends in the press right
Speaker 2: They loved us in La. You know, I got a
Speaker 2: great compliment from you know, Harvey Kopernick about my solo
Speaker 2: and you know, communication breakdown, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So but I did not think it could go past
Speaker 2: that now did Okay? But then he said to me, well,
Speaker 2: if you're going to get a real job at Columbia,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go work with Richard Foz. He wants
Speaker 2: to start a label, which was Rhino right, which he did,
Speaker 2: and he did fine. Right, he's not complaining and I
Speaker 2: did fine, So neither of us are complaining. But then
Speaker 2: when the ramones hit, because Harold and I have been
Speaker 2: friends for years, he called me and he goes, you see,
Speaker 2: he goes, this could have been us, and Bob will
Speaker 2: never know because it could have been We will never
Speaker 2: know because it's not like we didn't have talent, and
Speaker 2: it was not like Harold wasn't writing really good songs.
Speaker 2: He wrote teenage tanks. I mean, this guy's you know,
Speaker 2: he's got it. So I don't know but that. But
Speaker 2: we had a lot of fun, and I just didn't
Speaker 2: think it was going to go that far. And so
Speaker 2: I did what I did, and he went to Rhino.
Speaker 1: And Okay, I think that we've come to the end
Speaker 1: of the feeling we've known. I could talk to you
Speaker 1: all night, you know, about all these things.
Speaker 2: But rap, well, when you stop skiing and I come
Speaker 2: to LA, I'll take you to that. It would be
Speaker 2: my pleasure. I'm one of your biggest fans. I look
Speaker 2: for it. You got to understand, left, that's they don't
Speaker 2: make guys like you anymore. Right, It's a fucking treasure.
Speaker 2: Like the Left Sad's letter is a treasure, the podcasts
Speaker 2: are a treasure. I can't thank you enough for having
Speaker 2: me on really well.
Speaker 1: Just to let it on that note. The book and
Speaker 1: I'm not blowing smoke up your ass does exactly what
Speaker 1: you set out to do. Literally captures an era. Not
Speaker 1: only does it capture an era no one else has.
Speaker 1: You know, you talk about all these movies like Almost Famous.
Speaker 1: That's a fantasy. That's not the way it worked. Because
Speaker 1: there was darkness along with the light, and you know
Speaker 1: people who burned out, and there was it was, you know,
Speaker 1: a free flowing circus. It was great.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a free I say that five times fast.
Speaker 2: It was a free flowing circus. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: Okay, by Rap's book, you're gonna love it. And I
Speaker 1: don't you know, usually boost things, but you know, this
Speaker 1: is what you're looking for. You want to know the
Speaker 1: way it was until next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 1: stets