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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is but one and only Jimmy Webb. Jimmy,

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Speaker 1: you've been playing live. Someone who comes to your show,

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Speaker 1: what might they expect?

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Speaker 2: Well, they shouldn't expect an orchestra, because it's just me

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Speaker 2: and my you know, trustee piano. But I think they

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Speaker 2: will get a sort of a lightly polished show, not

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Speaker 2: not a not a slick show at all. It's anecdotal.

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Speaker 2: It's quite quite a lot of it is funny, and

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Speaker 2: then it's interspersed with some hit songs, some that are

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Speaker 2: not quite so well known, and it's just kind of

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Speaker 2: a you know, my father was a Baptist preacher. It's

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Speaker 2: just kind of my version of a revival meeting. And

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Speaker 2: occasionally I go off on a diatribe about uh, streaming

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Speaker 2: and all that political stuff, but I'm not going there today.

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Speaker 1: Well we could go there. When you say streaming and

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Speaker 1: political stuff if you're talking about music business, are also

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Speaker 1: political stuff in the naty.

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Speaker 2: Oh no no no, not not the presidential race. I'm

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Speaker 2: really talking about the kind of shoddy treatment that I

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Speaker 2: feel that songwriters are still getting after decades and decades

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Speaker 2: and decades of sort of being on the bottom of

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Speaker 2: the totem pole where we I think some of us

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Speaker 2: had anticipated that the whole digital revolution would end up

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Speaker 2: being well, let me tell you a small anecdote. Doug

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Speaker 2: would and I, who sit on the ASCAT board before

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Speaker 2: this whole thing started, there was a small company here

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Speaker 2: in New York that claimed that they had a program

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Speaker 2: that would recognize any song. It would recognize any song

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Speaker 2: in any record within x seconds. And I said, Doug,

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Speaker 2: that sounds great. You know, if we had that every

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Speaker 2: we could really follow every performance out there, so we

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Speaker 2: would be getting rich. And I said, so this is

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Speaker 2: a good thing. Let's go tell the board if it

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Speaker 2: works right. If it works well, the damn thing worked,

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Speaker 2: it could tell you. It would pop up and say

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Speaker 2: Evergreen by Andy Williams, and so it could hear the

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Speaker 2: music and identify it, which I saw as a pretty

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Speaker 2: good long run, because we as songwriters always felt maybe

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Speaker 2: the count wasn't right, maybe something was amiss somewhere along

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Speaker 2: the way in getting paid, and this would cure all.

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Speaker 2: But when the deals were made, a lot of them

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Speaker 2: were made without us being at the table, and sadly,

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Speaker 2: you know, we end up The only statistic I have

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Speaker 2: that I know, at least once it was accurate, is

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Speaker 2: that we were making point zero or zero seven to

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Speaker 2: eight cents per stream. And that's when Adele did her

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Speaker 2: famous kind of publicisty shot where she came out and

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Speaker 2: said she had had the largest selling album in history,

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Speaker 2: and she got a check for twenty thousand make that

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Speaker 2: single the largest selling single in history. And I think

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Speaker 2: she got about twenty thousand dollars, so that that is

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Speaker 2: not even on a par with what I was getting

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Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven when I was a journeyman beginning songwriter.

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Speaker 2: So in that realm, I'm kind of an activist. I

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Speaker 2: get a little angry about it sometimes that the song,

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Speaker 2: which is really the basic building block of all entertainment enterprise,

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Speaker 2: depends on these songs, and yet we're sort of taken

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Speaker 2: for granted a lot of times. Specifically, now we're being

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Speaker 2: sampled a lot without our permission. There's something that we

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Speaker 2: have to watch every day. I mean, I could tell

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Speaker 2: that's what I mean. That's where I didn't want to go.

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Speaker 1: No no, no, no no. People are definitely interested in this.

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Speaker 1: So pre internet, post Internet, how has that affected your

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Speaker 1: songwriting royalties.

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Speaker 2: Well, they're down a little bit, for sure. They haven't.

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Speaker 2: It hasn't been the bonanza that you know, Doug and

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Speaker 2: I were fantasizing about, Oh wow, now all our problems

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Speaker 2: are solved. You know, it's streaming doesn't pay us, pay

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Speaker 2: us enough. And I think that you would see most

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Speaker 2: people in my position, young or old, agreeing with the

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Speaker 2: fact that we've in terms of the way it's affected us.

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Speaker 2: The sort of fallout has been that I feel like

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Speaker 2: I have to play live to augment my income and

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Speaker 2: make sure that, you know, the big house gets built

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Speaker 2: and that I can take care of my children. I

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Speaker 2: have five boys and a girl, and they're spread all

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Speaker 2: over the world, so I never know when I get

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Speaker 2: the midnight phone call, you know that. So there's some

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Speaker 2: dire thing that needs to be addressed. We really are

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Speaker 2: depending on live performance, and that's one of the reasons

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Speaker 2: I'm out there and I'm embarking on this. This is

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Speaker 2: kind of a you know, there's a colorful expression I

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Speaker 2: could use, but let's just say this is going to

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Speaker 2: be a really tough tour. I'm seventy seven. I'll be

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Speaker 2: seventy eight on August fifteenth, and I don't know how

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Speaker 2: much longer I can tour the way I'm touring, So

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Speaker 2: I think it's affected us all that way.

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Speaker 1: Okay, this brings up a lot of issues. Ay, who

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Speaker 1: owns your songs?

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Speaker 2: Well, I I own first of all. You know that

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Speaker 2: the ownership of a copyright is split in two, so

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Speaker 2: it's the publishing half and it's the songwriter half. So

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Speaker 2: on a lot of my songs in my company Jimmy

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Speaker 2: Webb Music, or the newer songs, I own them outright.

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Speaker 2: A lot of my songs are being returned as a

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Speaker 2: result of this copyright window that was provided by the

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Speaker 2: Copyright Office for US. Teenagers basically were then who signed

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Speaker 2: contracts without a lawyer present, which I was doing all

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Speaker 2: the time. I was always I'd sign anything to get

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Speaker 2: into a studio for an hour. I'd sign my life

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Speaker 2: away because studios. It's hard to explain the zeitgeist of

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Speaker 2: all of this, really, but the studio used to be

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Speaker 2: the holy of holies. It was like a temple where

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Speaker 2: you sort of wanted to have the password to gain entry,

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Speaker 2: the aberkadab or to get into that room and record,

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Speaker 2: because they were special rooms and not everybody had one.

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Speaker 2: So I ended up trading a lot of publishing for

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Speaker 2: studio time. That sort of an arrangement.

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Speaker 1: You have this incredible catalog. I'm sure you've been approached

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Speaker 1: by the third party company's primary wave hypnosis about purchasing

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Speaker 1: your catalog. Would you ever do that?

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Speaker 2: Do it? I? You know, I'm aware that it looks

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Speaker 2: like easy money, so why not let's get, you know,

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Speaker 2: on the money train. On the other hand, I sort

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Speaker 2: of come from the the the the well the methodist

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Speaker 2: side of the record business, where holding up onto your

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Speaker 2: public publishing as a kin to a religion. It's it's

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Speaker 2: been drummed into me to hold on in my publishing.

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Speaker 2: And the only publishing I relinquish I was was because

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Speaker 2: of events beyond my control. But for now I'm happy

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Speaker 2: to hang on to it. I I don't need the money,

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Speaker 2: so I yeah, I don't know. I can. You know,

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Speaker 2: there are some publishers out there who are offering some

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Speaker 2: very interesting deals where they're coming in and saying, well,

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Speaker 2: what we'll do is we'll advance X dollars to you

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Speaker 2: the you know, the this is the bait that's wiggling

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Speaker 2: on the hook, and maybe we'd do this, and maybe

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Speaker 2: we'll do that and you know, maybe I'll give you

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Speaker 2: my rare Southsea shell collection. They're offering a lot of

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Speaker 2: different things to different people and really trying to appeal

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Speaker 2: to individuals on that basis. And the deal would be

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Speaker 2: that you become partners with the publisher and now you're

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Speaker 2: both owners of the publishing company, and the theory behind

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Speaker 2: that being that the publishing company has a vested interest

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Speaker 2: then in promoting your catalog and seeking out sync rights

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Speaker 2: and what have you, and that their heart is more

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Speaker 2: in the game, their dog is more in the fight

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Speaker 2: if they have a partnership with you as opposed to

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Speaker 2: an administration deal. Now, you know, I can see that,

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Speaker 2: I can see that in theory that ought of work.

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Speaker 2: But things are changing so fast I cannot believe. In

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Speaker 2: the twenty for twenty three years that I've been on

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Speaker 2: the ASCAT board, we went from Napster to Spotify, and

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Speaker 2: there was all kinds of there were there were little

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Speaker 2: there were little conflicts ongoing throughout. Some of them were

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Speaker 2: pretty strange where we had I know that one of

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Speaker 2: them was that I'm a major I'm not talking, I'm

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Speaker 2: talking a giant company was sitting on the board and

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Speaker 2: taking the position that Napster was illegal, and at the

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Speaker 2: same time they were investing in Napster, and so that

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Speaker 2: at one point they ended up in court suing themselves.

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Speaker 2: So it's been so fused that I'm wary. I'm I'm

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Speaker 2: standing off. I want to see where this is going

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Speaker 2: and what's happening. I have an obligation to my family

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Speaker 2: and uh, I believe in the copyrights. I believe there's

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Speaker 2: special there's a special catalog, and I would, you know,

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Speaker 2: want special treatment for that for those songs.

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Speaker 1: Let's go back to the ASCAP board. In ASCAP, With

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Speaker 1: the Internet, satellite radio, other means of distribution, there are

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Speaker 1: more ways for performing rights organizations to collect. Have you

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Speaker 1: seen your performing rights royalties go up down steady?

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Speaker 2: Well, uh, I think that. Uh without revealing information that

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Speaker 2: I'm just that I'm not permitted to reveal. But uh,

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Speaker 2: I can say that, I can say that ASCAP's never

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Speaker 2: been doing any better than they are. So it hasn't effected.

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Speaker 2: It hasn't effected the gross it's in a negative way.

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Speaker 2: It's been It's the volume is so tremendous that the

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Speaker 2: overall effect is positive. If you look at the at

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Speaker 2: the end of the year, and the money that's left

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Speaker 2: to distribute. So the overfall all effect is positive, positive,

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Speaker 2: But for guys like me who had their biggest hits

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Speaker 2: years ago and are not like, you know, a red

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Speaker 2: hot Rapper act or something, clearly the the line share

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Speaker 2: is going to the to the top, uh to the

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Speaker 2: top artists, the artists of the week. Uh So, And

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Speaker 2: that's internal stuff that you know, I'm not really at

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Speaker 2: liberty to discuss, but yeah, it's ironic. Overall, I think

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Speaker 2: that we're doing better, but it's not trickling down to

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Speaker 2: the to the what I would call the standards.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, prior to Napster,

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Speaker 1: your publishing income today, what percent is your published income

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Speaker 1: to that? Leaving out just we're talking mechanicals. Let's not

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Speaker 1: talk performing rights, which is its own thing unto itself.

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Speaker 2: Well, mechanicals are they've been through a particularly critical period

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Speaker 2: because there are no more or mechanicals. By definition, there

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Speaker 2: aren't any records, There aren't any CDs. Sheet music is

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Speaker 2: not a big deal anymore. Folios, things of that nature.

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Speaker 2: Any physical objects are like out there, they're you know,

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Speaker 2: if you're holding a CD in your hand, that's the

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Speaker 2: last physical object you're ever going to have that has

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Speaker 2: music on it for sale. We're I. I had envisioned

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Speaker 2: at world where there would be an intermediary between the

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Speaker 2: CD and the and the cloud. But it looks like

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Speaker 2: that we skipped over that one, and there's an acceleration

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Speaker 2: in work here. I don't know that, frankly makes me nervous,

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Speaker 2: But could we go back to the gist of that question.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let let me let me put it a different way.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: In the old days of physical there were acts that

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Speaker 1: were not hit, acts that were selling product generating royalties.

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Speaker 1: What many people forget is a lot of those acts

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Speaker 1: were in upside down positions with their labels in it,

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Speaker 1: so they never got royalties beyond the advance. And today

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Speaker 1: anybody can make music and put it up on Spotify.

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Speaker 1: So we have a number of people on the losing

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Speaker 1: end of Spotify and the other streaming outlets. We have

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Speaker 1: people who were propped up by the record industry of

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Speaker 1: your and now they're competing with all these wannabes that

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Speaker 1: they didn't used to have to compete with. A lot

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Speaker 1: of these acts sold x number of physical records, generating income, etc.

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Speaker 1: Now we are in the streaming world. The streaming world

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Speaker 1: is one of consumption as opposed to sale.

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Speaker 2: What do we know?

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Speaker 1: The song writers got screwed on streaming in terms of

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Speaker 1: the overall percentage they get. If there's one hundred pennies

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Speaker 1: in let's just you know, there literally is no per

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Speaker 1: stream rate. It's a division, etc. Changes And of course

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Speaker 1: there are different rates for on demand as opposed to radio,

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Speaker 1: but approximately sixty cents on the dollar goes to the recording,

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Speaker 1: and the song should get more. But the records were

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Speaker 1: needed by Spotify at all, and they ended up making

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Speaker 1: deals where the songwriters did not get as much.

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Speaker 2: They made their deals with the artists first. It was

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Speaker 2: a very shrewd tactical move on their part. Is that

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Speaker 2: the songwriter deals were already in place, and in my

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Speaker 2: mind I feel that those were And again these aren't figures,

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Speaker 2: but I believe that the song that the the actual

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Speaker 2: artists who and by the way, who only recently in

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Speaker 2: cosmic time recently gained the right of royalty over the

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Speaker 2: performance on the record, and they slipped in there and

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Speaker 2: negotiated their deal, their streaming deal with Spotify. Specifically, before

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Speaker 2: we we were kind of left. We didn't have a

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Speaker 2: seat at that table. So they're roughly where they were before.

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Speaker 2: They're in the seven seven to eight territory of the

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Speaker 2: of the gross and we we ended up I think

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Speaker 2: a little worse than we were before.

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Speaker 1: I agree with that, but let me get to my

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Speaker 1: ultimate point. Okay, in streaming, it's winners and losers. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the Taylor swifts the weekends, there's a ton of money

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Speaker 1: generated there. A lot of people who used to rely

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Speaker 1: on physical sale income are not doing well on streaming. However,

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Speaker 1: you are not like many people in that. You know,

244
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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people saying, well, I had

245
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Speaker 1: an album, there weren't really hits on it. You have

246
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Speaker 1: written standards, household name standards. So at this late date,

247
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Speaker 1: ten odd years into streaming, do those standards to what

248
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Speaker 1: degree do they generate income for you as opposed to

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Speaker 1: the physical era.

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Speaker 2: You know, look, I think we've all taken a hit.

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Speaker 2: We've all taken a hit, and you know, I feel

252
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Speaker 2: a little self conscious about revealing, you know, exact figures,

253
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Speaker 2: but I think I may as well say it. And

254
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Speaker 2: I'll say I'll say it because regardless of any regardless

255
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Speaker 2: of the way it may affect the way people perceive me,

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Speaker 2: or my or my my standing in the ranks, my

257
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Speaker 2: level of success. I'm disregarding that for a moment. I

258
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Speaker 2: would say that it's I'm getting about half of what

259
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Speaker 2: I used to get on my standards.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that's what I wanted to know before we leave ASCAP. Well,

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Speaker 1: do let one other thing. You said you're going on

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Speaker 1: the road to pay your bills. Is that a figure

263
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Speaker 1: a speech or economically do you literally have to go

264
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Speaker 1: on the road.

265
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Speaker 2: Well, you know, if I if I want to retire

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Speaker 2: right now and button everything up and and and have

267
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Speaker 2: no expenses, you know, the road is expensive. Devote myself

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Speaker 2: to you know, maybe some other musical projects that uh

269
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Speaker 2: with with less chance of success. Uh and and sort

270
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Speaker 2: of work out of my house. And and I have

271
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Speaker 2: a very nice house. Uh, I drive a very nice

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Speaker 2: automobile in my lifestyle. I'm sure it would be the

273
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Speaker 2: envy but a lot of people. So I'm not gonna

274
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Speaker 2: I'm not gonna equivocate about that. And I and I

275
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Speaker 2: can maintain that. But I can't dream. I can't I

276
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Speaker 2: can't dream of of having a ranch in Montana, or

277
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Speaker 2: I can't dream of building a recording studio in in Mexico,

278
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Speaker 2: and and in other words, I'm the road to advancement

279
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Speaker 2: in terms of the money I can make is now

280
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Speaker 2: pretty much dictated by what I can make on the road.

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Speaker 2: That's the money that I would use to invest in

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Speaker 2: a recording studio, or invest in a label, or or

283
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Speaker 2: in a maybe select a young artist and say this

284
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Speaker 2: is this kid is going to be tremendous. I'm gonna

285
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Speaker 2: invest some money here. So it's about it's about it's

286
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Speaker 2: a it's not just about a comfort level. It's it's about, uh,

287
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Speaker 2: in a world where you know, I mean, it's silly

288
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Speaker 2: how much money there is. And I would like to

289
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 2: have some of that because I think I could use

290
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Speaker 2: it in a very positive way. I I'm not know,

291
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Speaker 2: I'm not so desperate that I have to go out

292
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Speaker 2: on the road and play. I play because I enjoy

293
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Speaker 2: the audience. I get a lot of energy. It's making

294
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Speaker 2: me live longer, I'm sure of it. Uh I. It's

295
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:16,960
Speaker 2: a very joyful experience for me. Even though I've never really,

296
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Speaker 2: you know, quote made it big as a performer. I

297
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Speaker 2: have a following. I have people who will show up

298
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Speaker 2: every damn time. I you know, every time I go

299
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Speaker 2: to that venue, they're there, uh, and I'm doing I'm

300
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Speaker 2: doing very very well at it. And so suddenly to

301
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Speaker 2: be doing well at performing is really ironic at this

302
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Speaker 2: point after cutting ten albums that you know haven't been

303
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Speaker 2: well let's see, not top of the pops.

304
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Speaker 3: But.

305
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a mixed emotions. I uh, it's

306
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,920
Speaker 2: it's ready cash and it's tempting to go out there

307
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Speaker 2: and get it. You know. I think that the people

308
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:07,879
Speaker 2: that are that have been really hardest hit, sadly enough,

309
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Speaker 2: are the are the people who are who are older

310
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Speaker 2: or have physical impediments. Sudden, sudden things occur. Let's say,

311
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Speaker 2: just for instance, Parkinson's sets in and you lose your

312
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Speaker 2: voice and you can't perform anymore. Now you're now you

313
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Speaker 2: really have to depend on those royalties. You can't you

314
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Speaker 2: can't augment who doesn't want to augment their income? Bob,

315
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 2: you know in some way.

316
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Speaker 1: Okay, you say that your live business is on the

317
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Speaker 1: upswing without a hit album in the past. What do

318
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Speaker 1: you think is driving that upsling?

319
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Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe there's a bit, maybe there's a

320
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:08,160
Speaker 2: healthy curiosity, or maybe there's a I don't know, maybe

321
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Speaker 2: there's there maybe I have achieved that, I don't know,

322
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 2: elevator music status, where you know, it's a name that

323
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Speaker 2: people finally, after all these years, they recognize and they

324
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Speaker 2: they say, this guy can't be he can't be doing

325
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Speaker 2: a very good show. Let's go see. The first time

326
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Speaker 2: I went to see Elvis, I was a cynic. I

327
00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:34,800
Speaker 2: was like twenty years old, and I went up to

328
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Speaker 2: Vegas to see Elvis, and it was like sort of shown.

329
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Speaker 2: I was shown for it. I sort of wanted to

330
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Speaker 2: see him paul on his butt, and instead I became

331
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Speaker 2: like number one Elvis fan in the world. So I

332
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 2: think maybe some people come out of curiosity and they say,

333
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Speaker 2: you know what, this guy seems pretty good. He's been improving,

334
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 2: and I give them insight into the workings of the

335
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:06,720
Speaker 2: song and the meaning of the song and the way

336
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:11,880
Speaker 2: the craft of songwriting works, which is something that I'm

337
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 2: really concerned about because I don't think that that's being

338
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 2: passed down, it's not being mentored down sufficiently to this

339
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 2: coming generation or these generations now that are on our heels.

340
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of these young writers don't

341
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 2: pay much attention to, for instance, the Great American Songbook

342
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 2: and the classic methodology of songwriting. So that's why we

343
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:52,439
Speaker 2: have We have like a monotonous, almost dreary like repetition

344
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:56,919
Speaker 2: of the same little melodic phrases over and over again,

345
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 2: and almost everything is the same tempo. Forget dynamics. There's

346
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,879
Speaker 2: no loud, there's no soft. It's not you've lost that

347
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 2: loving feeling, which is majestic masterpiece of the sixties Barry Man,

348
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:18,679
Speaker 2: isn't the a while and there doesn't. I don't know.

349
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 2: I think we may have failed in not taking more

350
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 2: of these young people under our wing and saying, you know,

351
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:32,600
Speaker 2: here's here's how to write it, here's how to write

352
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 2: a verse, here's a verse, here's the chorus, here's a bridge,

353
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 2: you know, here's a lead in, here's a you know,

354
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 2: on the fade. You want to work on the fade.

355
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: You know. We used to work harder on the fade

356
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,399
Speaker 2: than we did on any part of the record. That's

357
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 2: out the window. We don't we don't really have fades anymore.

358
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:50,199
Speaker 2: You just go to the next record like this.

359
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: So it's.

360
00:27:56,119 --> 00:28:01,159
Speaker 2: It's a big it's it's there is going to be

361
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 2: a tremendous change in the next ten years, and I

362
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 2: hope that I'm around just because I want to see

363
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 2: what happens. I really want to see if the digital

364
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 2: promise is fulfilled, which is that it would benefit all

365
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 2: of us, that we would all benefit from this technology,

366
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,360
Speaker 2: and I would like to see if that dream comes true.

367
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:37,919
Speaker 2: I'm very, very curious, and in the meantime, I'm sitting

368
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 2: on my standards, and it may be my children that

369
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 2: make the final decision on what happens to the catalog.

370
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I want to say, you've all progressed

371
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: their losses. It used to be prior to the lead

372
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: six these little later than that every car didn't come

373
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: with air conditioning, had a vent window. Vent windows were great.

374
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: Now all cars come with air conditioning, which is even better,

375
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 1: but there are no more vent windows. But you mentioned

376
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff I want to get into. How

377
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: do you feel, being on the ASCAP board, that these

378
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 1: other performing rights agencies have changed into for profit models?

379
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 2: Well, certainly I think that when this idea first sort

380
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 2: of surfaced, you know, like a from the murky depths

381
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 2: of the South. When this being my thing hit the news,

382
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 2: I had a moment of panic because I thought, well,

383
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 2: it's over, this is it. We're going to be taken

384
00:29:55,600 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 2: it's all going to be like this, But ASCAP is

385
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 2: never going to be that. In fact, I think you're

386
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 2: probably aware of the fact that we've we've we've consolidated,

387
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 2: consolidated our position really on supporting human songwriters, uh and

388
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 2: protecting legacy catalogs and and things of that nature. I

389
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 2: know that a lot of B and my writers are

390
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 2: very very nervous, uh, that that situation is still teetering.

391
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 2: In my opinion, I don't think that that all the

392
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 2: shoes have hit the floor over there, and I don't

393
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 2: think that there's ever been a I might be wrong,

394
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 2: and and you know, I don't mind being called out

395
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong, but I think that this is the

396
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 2: first time that a p r O has been being

397
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 2: has been owned by moneymen, I'll just put it that way,

398
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 2: by hedge funds, by banks, by cartels investors. We know

399
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 2: at ASCAP that we don't want those people sitting on

400
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 2: our board because they don't know anything about music, and

401
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 2: they don't we don't know that they love songs the

402
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 2: way we love songs. You know. This is this is

403
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 2: the part of it that is so hard to express

404
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 2: because it's not in our modern vernacular to talk in

405
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 2: a romantic way or a sentimental way about anything. You know,

406
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 2: we're so hard nosed, but I think that ASCAP we're

407
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 2: still rather sentimental about our songs. They mean a lot

408
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 2: to us. The songs of Harold Arland mean a lot

409
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 2: of Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart. I mean, when I

410
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 2: hear the name David Rason, my head reverberates with Laura.

411
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: Now.

412
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 2: I remember the little story that David told me about

413
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 2: how he wrote it, and I'm not going to tell

414
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 2: the story. But we are much more personally at ASCAP,

415
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 2: which is a fraternal organization, We are much more concerned

416
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 2: with the actual preservation of the music and the dignity

417
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 2: of the music, which just as maybe as a slight digression,

418
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:54,000
Speaker 2: you know. The use of these standards now in these

419
00:32:54,200 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 2: rap records is something that everybody's watching very keenly, and

420
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:09,719
Speaker 2: I have had unbelievable requests come in to use. Well,

421
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name the song because

422
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 2: I don't want to identify any particular individuals. But if

423
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 2: I was approached, let's say, by a rapper who wants

424
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 2: to just play the first verse of Up Up in

425
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 2: a way, just the way it was in nineteen sixty seven,

426
00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 2: and then except speed it up a little bit because

427
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 2: it's not in the tempo that he wants it, so

428
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:41,840
Speaker 2: you have to speed it up, and it kind of

429
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 2: makes the fifty minutes mention sound like chipmunks. But you

430
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 2: put a whole verse of that before his record starts.

431
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:59,719
Speaker 2: Now that's a substantial that's a substantial use of a

432
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 2: cop be right. That's that's akin to making it a

433
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 2: closing titles in a film. It's it's really on the

434
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:16,760
Speaker 2: same basis. So the uses we're only beginning to see

435
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 2: how they they And I don't want to say how

436
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 2: we are going to use these standards and what links

437
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: we're going to go to to exploit something that is

438
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 2: so much a part of the American psyche that we

439
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 2: automatically respond to it because it's buried so deeply in

440
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:41,280
Speaker 2: us that the advertisers now and it's clear, it's as

441
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 2: clear as the nose on your face, have explored the

442
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 2: idea of not using pop hits from the sixties, seventies

443
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 2: and even before, and they've they've tried doing commercials without

444
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 2: those songs and they don't work. So now they're going

445
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 2: back to the sixties. They're going back and they love

446
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 2: to get their hands on a Jackson Brown song. Uh,

447
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 2: some of them are are just they're out of reach.

448
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 2: Sometimes they don't bother to ask for your permission, by

449
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 2: the way, and the use they they put, they put

450
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 2: let's say, a two or three bar phrase in a

451
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 2: record and put a lot of echo in it, and

452
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 2: it's just an orchestral thing, and it goes on and

453
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 2: on and on and on. So essentially, about three or

454
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 2: four bars of one of my songs is being repeated

455
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 2: in deep echo over and over and over and over again,

456
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 2: and that and and and the gentleman wraps on top

457
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:55,240
Speaker 2: of that. So I'm his, I'm his, I'm his rhythm track,

458
00:35:56,160 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 2: you know, like piece of something that I've done. Yet

459
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 2: they don't want to list us as creative contributors to that.

460
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 2: We're not eligible for Song of the Year over NARS

461
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 2: because we because in my song do what you Gotta Do,

462
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 2: which Kanye West did called it famous, but musicologists said

463
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 2: sixty percent of it was do what you Gotta Do.

464
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 2: And we came to an agreement because they had already

465
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:32,880
Speaker 2: put it out. It was number one, and when it

466
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 2: went to Nares. It was nominated for Song of the Year,

467
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:41,800
Speaker 2: and they listed thirteen writers as eligible for Grammy Award

468
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 2: for Song of the Year. There were thirteen writers nominated

469
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:53,439
Speaker 2: for Song of the Year, and I was omitted they're

470
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 2: going to use our music. I think they should give

471
00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 2: us credit. I mean, that's just to just say, you know, look,

472
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 2: songs aren't like it's not like doing a collage out

473
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 2: of a bunch of old people magazines with a pair

474
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 2: of scissors. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be that way.

475
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:18,359
Speaker 2: And so I think we're waiting. Wait. You know, look,

476
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 2: a lot of people are really depending on sync rights

477
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 2: and sampling rights. That is the hot sector right now

478
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 2: in publishing is to get these old songs rehabilitated somehow.

479
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 2: And one way that you can do that is to

480
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,279
Speaker 2: put them in a commercial or put them on a

481
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 2: wrap record. So it's really strange because that's become the

482
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:50,320
Speaker 2: way we promote our music is by sort of allowing

483
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 2: it to be infringed on.

484
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: Now you talk about all these opportunities, you talk about ripoffs.

485
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: Who is managing this? Do you have a manager? Do

486
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 1: you have an attorney? Or is your phone ringing off

487
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: the hook or is your email coming in? Who's on

488
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: top of.

489
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 2: This for you? Well, I have a guy, uh and

490
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 2: I'll mention him because he's a lovely guy, John Leno,

491
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 2: who's handled all my returns, my returns on my copyrights,

492
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:27,319
Speaker 2: which is a byzantine process. It is so complicated and

493
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,720
Speaker 2: you have to be so determined to stay the course

494
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 2: and fill out the forms and make the windows. If

495
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:36,960
Speaker 2: you miss your window too bad, you don't get your

496
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 2: you don't you don't get your publishing back. So you

497
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 2: do need someone at the controls. And we we we

498
00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:47,760
Speaker 2: have a good a good guy there. Uh. My wife

499
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 2: Laura is ex officio, you know, manages me because nobody

500
00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 2: else could take nobody else can stand me. Uh, but yeah,

501
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 2: I have the phone is ringing. In fact, yesterday we

502
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:11,840
Speaker 2: had two requests for I don't know what it calls

503
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 2: these sampling, sampling or sync because one of the requests

504
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 2: was to use a complete verse of a record, I

505
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 2: mean just cold a verse of another record and then

506
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 2: the rap song starts, so this standard becomes the intro

507
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 2: to this rap. I don't know how I feel about that.

508
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:41,399
Speaker 2: Is that devaluing my copyright or is that promoting my copyright?

509
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 3: And and.

510
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:47,799
Speaker 2: Do I know? Do I know the answer to the question. No,

511
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 2: I don't, so I'm kind of like standing there with

512
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 2: my sucking on my thumb, going h I wonder you

513
00:39:55,440 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 2: know is that is it? Will? Will I one day

514
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:06,640
Speaker 2: regret not taking advantage of more of these opportunities to

515
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 2: let these songs be heard, even in sometimes not the

516
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 2: most flattering surroundings, but at least the melodies are getting

517
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 2: out there and a sense of what the record was.

518
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 2: And does that over time inspire some sort of curiosity

519
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 2: about the song that lies deeply buried behind all of

520
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 2: that rapping, And I'm not sure that it does. I

521
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 2: think there's an argument that it could devalue that sync

522
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 2: rites could in the long run, devalue a song, except

523
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,240
Speaker 2: when they're used in movies. When they're used in movies,

524
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 2: I see that as a clear when when some of

525
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 2: the sampling stuff, it still worries me. I'm not sure

526
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 2: what role it plays in the future of the copyright.

527
00:40:55,840 --> 00:41:00,800
Speaker 1: You talk about younger generations in their ability or lack thereof,

528
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:05,240
Speaker 1: to write songs. When you do live shows, do younger

529
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: generations come and to what degree are you approached or

530
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,360
Speaker 1: interact with younger generations about songwriting.

531
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:17,279
Speaker 2: Well, I have an intern wonderful young guy named Pete

532
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:22,279
Speaker 2: Mancini who's one of the best songwriters, young songwriters I've

533
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:27,799
Speaker 2: ever heard. And he's he's he's under my wing. I

534
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 2: can't take care of the whole world, but this kid

535
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 2: is talented, and I take him out with me and

536
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 2: I let him open for me, do his songs, which

537
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 2: are good. He always the audience always laps it up.

538
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 2: He's very good looking, which I'm not. He he's young.

539
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:54,320
Speaker 2: He loves the old music. He loves the old tracks.

540
00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 2: You know, did you ever hear you know, like Royal Scam?

541
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 2: You know, you know, we talk about it and it's like, yeah, now, yeah,

542
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 2: I knew Jeff Carroll, Oh you knew Jeff Pi, Carol

543
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 2: oh Man.

544
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:08,640
Speaker 4: You know.

545
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 2: So there's a group out there who are all over this.

546
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 2: I mean it's a small it's right now, it's a

547
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 2: small group. But I believe it's growing. I believe the

548
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:29,400
Speaker 2: interest in the sixties and seventies catalogs to some degree

549
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 2: is growing. I think less there's less less growth in

550
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:38,879
Speaker 2: the in the Great American Songbook. I see the Great

551
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 2: American Songbook to me fading from public memory now I've

552
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,360
Speaker 2: lived long enough to see these things, which scares me.

553
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 2: It scares me to death that I have actually seen

554
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 2: these things happen. But I know that if I went

555
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:02,359
Speaker 2: outside here and I had a remote unit of some kind,

556
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 2: and I stopped a fifteen year old girl outside and

557
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:07,279
Speaker 2: I said, I'm going to sing this song and tell you,

558
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:13,760
Speaker 2: tell me you have a song, my funny Valentine, sweet

559
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:18,400
Speaker 2: comic Valentine. What does that mean you? I don't know.

560
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't mean anything to her. And so

561
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 2: we're I think that when the boomers go down, and

562
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:33,879
Speaker 2: we're going down making no mistake and very swiftly, there's

563
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 2: a change of scenery and cast members on the entertainment

564
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 2: stage is taking place. Even as we speak. Each day,

565
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 2: one of our brethren, one of our colleagues, most of

566
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:55,359
Speaker 2: them beloved and irreplaceable in our mind, passes the bar,

567
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 2: and I feel that maybe some of the respect and

568
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 2: love that we have for the Great American Songbook may

569
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 2: go with us. So I don't know what sort of

570
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 2: I would love to have a peek into the future

571
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: if I had, like if I could go like Boom

572
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 2: fifty years fifty years in the future. I just want

573
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 2: to listen to the radio. Just take me somewhere and

574
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 2: let me listen to the radio. Well, we don't have

575
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 2: radio anymore. It's all implanted in your skull, and we

576
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 2: sort of play what we play, what we want you

577
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 2: to hear. You know. Sometimes I kind of feel like

578
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:42,719
Speaker 2: that's what they're doing. They're playing what they want us

579
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:50,480
Speaker 2: to hear at, you know. And I think that record

580
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 2: it shook it. It's really shaken up record promotion. I'm very,

581
00:44:55,320 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 2: very very concerned that this great American art form has

582
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:09,279
Speaker 2: been our number one export for decades, American music. I've

583
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:13,360
Speaker 2: traveled all over the world. They are listening to American

584
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 2: music in Copenhagen and Hamburg. In Santiago and Waynas areas

585
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 2: they're listening to American music. And Moscow right now in

586
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:31,840
Speaker 2: China they're listening. They're watching without paying royalties. Of course,

587
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 2: they're watching American movies and listening to our music. It's

588
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 2: still so profoundly influential that it ranks as one of

589
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 2: our more significant exports, and I think, much more significant

590
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 2: than our missiles and our howitzers and our grenades. I

591
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 2: sort of feel like Billy Joel when he went over

592
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 2: and toured the Union. I think he kind of brought up,

593
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 2: brought last knows, you know, to its full majority there.

594
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:15,479
Speaker 2: And some people say that Levi's won the Cold War

595
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 2: because the Russians wanted Levi's so badly. But American music

596
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:32,239
Speaker 2: is a treasure, that's being that's not being careful, carefully

597
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 2: husband husband did or cultivated right now, right now, in

598
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 2: this particular moment, with the exception of a few major

599
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 2: artists at the very top who have the influence, like

600
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:54,000
Speaker 2: a Taylor Swift, for instance, when she was fourteen years old.

601
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 2: Fifteen years old, I heard her and I heard her songs,

602
00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, she's going to be successful.

603
00:46:59,160 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 2: She knows how to do all the parts. She knows

604
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 2: like the intro, she knows the verses, she knows the

605
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:11,359
Speaker 2: bridge that Nashville training. You know, in Nashville is the

606
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:19,239
Speaker 2: citadel of songwriting. It's the last you know, It's Ford Apache,

607
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 2: It's you know, It's where you make your last stand.

608
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 2: I guess as a songwriter. But it's been disturbing recently

609
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:34,239
Speaker 2: to see people like Don Schlitz, who wrote The Gambler,

610
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 2: which is in my view, a veritable perfect song. People

611
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,279
Speaker 2: are always talking about the perfect song. Well, there are

612
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 2: a lot of perfect songs, but certainly the Gambler and

613
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 2: the way that story is told, and that o Henry

614
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:57,840
Speaker 2: has twist at the end, and just the brilliance of

615
00:47:57,880 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 2: that chorus. You got to know when to hold them, no,

616
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:02,360
Speaker 2: when to fold them, no, when to walk away, no

617
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 2: one to run And the fact that this is happening

618
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 2: on a darkened train. There's such drama in this. And

619
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:15,359
Speaker 2: the man who wrote that, who I Knew is kind

620
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 2: of a good time. You're out there down you know,

621
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 2: I love you, you know, as a guy who had

622
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 2: entirely too much fun all the time. He last time

623
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 2: I met him face to face that I'm done. He said,

624
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 2: I don't see any point in writing anymore.

625
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Taylor Swift, since you seem to

626
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,799
Speaker 1: pay attention to the scene. The country albums were co

627
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: written with Liz Rose. Then she moved into a pop sphere,

628
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: tends to work with the a level town in the

629
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 1: pops sphere. Do you have any thoughts about her modern.

630
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 2: Work, You know only that it's you know, extremely well produced,

631
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 2: and and there's there's a there's there. There are there

632
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 2: are a few songs that I that I that I like, I,

633
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 2: I still haven't heard you've lost that love and feeling.

634
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 2: I you know, I think that might be a forlorn

635
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:36,759
Speaker 2: hope at this point. But I you know, I I

636
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:43,879
Speaker 2: thought I think that Adele, Lady Gaga, Taylor. I think

637
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 2: they're trying. I really think they're trying to write songs,

638
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 2: and that's encouraging. That's encouraging, whether anyone would I I've

639
00:49:55,719 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 2: actually heard melody creeping back into some of this hip

640
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 2: hop music. H And I remember Paul Simon saying to me.

641
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 2: We were talking one day and I said, you know, Paul,

642
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 2: it's just really disturbing, like chords are disappearing. You know,

643
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 2: there's I don't and I love. I love chords. You know,

644
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 2: chords are anyway, that's that's life to me, that's life,

645
00:50:56,480 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 2: that's that nurtures my soul. So I said, Paul, I

646
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 2: think we're losing chords. He said, Jimmy, he said, we're

647
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 2: going to lose melody. I said, Paul, I said, you

648
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 2: must be wrong. You can't be right about that. He said,

649
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:16,719
Speaker 2: he says we're going to lose it. We're going to

650
00:51:16,760 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 2: lose it all. And this is ten, this is ten

651
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 2: or twelve years ago.

652
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:24,839
Speaker 1: Well that way, he was very pressured because a lot

653
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: of modern songs don't have melody. Let's go back to

654
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: the beginning to Oklahoma. You know, we used to talk

655
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 1: about flyover country in the sixties and seventies. There is

656
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 1: no flyover country. Everybody has the Internet, everybody has mobile phones,

657
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: cable TV. What was it like growing up in Oklahoma

658
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties.

659
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:53,239
Speaker 2: It was pretty stark. I lived in western Texas and

660
00:51:53,400 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 2: western Oklahoma, which you know, you don't you don't to

661
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 2: see any difference when you cross that sign it says

662
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:07,719
Speaker 2: welcome to Texas. Texas doesn't look any different than Oklahoma.

663
00:52:07,960 --> 00:52:12,840
Speaker 2: It's all the same. It's flat. And they had little

664
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 2: hills out there in the old timers, and say, you know,

665
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 2: if you go out there and stand on top of

666
00:52:17,040 --> 00:52:20,320
Speaker 2: that hill, you could see New Mexico from here fifty

667
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 2: miles and I tried it, and by golly, they were

668
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 2: pretty close to the truth. And that's kind of the

669
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 2: landscape that I grew up in. My father was a

670
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:37,279
Speaker 2: Baptist minister. He was also an ex marine. It was

671
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 2: a strict Protestant upbringing that put us as children. That

672
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:47,560
Speaker 2: were five of us. My siblings, my brother Tommy, and

673
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:53,439
Speaker 2: my three sisters, Janice, Susan, and Sylvia, and it put

674
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 2: us constantly in the public eye. So I grew up

675
00:52:57,280 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 2: knowing that I was being watched, that every action was

676
00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 2: going to be reported back to my dad. And my

677
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 2: dad hated rock and roll. He had the crazy idea

678
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 2: somewhere along the way that rock and roll was about sex.

679
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know who gave him that idea,

680
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 2: but he got his stuck in his head and I

681
00:53:19,040 --> 00:53:24,080
Speaker 2: couldn't get it out, and so I was climbing out

682
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 2: the rear window and sneaking out to go to dances,

683
00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 2: and dancing is not allowed in the in the Southern

684
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,319
Speaker 2: Baptist religion. And I used to look at my sisters

685
00:53:36,360 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 2: with this deep sense of pity as they would sit

686
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 2: on the front porch and listen to the music coming

687
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 2: from teen Town and imagine what's going through their heads

688
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:49,920
Speaker 2: because they can't go there and fraternize and be with

689
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 2: So I think that that Southern Baptist made a tremendous

690
00:53:53,600 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 2: mistake when they disallowed when we went to camp, we

691
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 2: had to swim separately from the from the girls. There

692
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 2: was this sort of just non proportional response to the

693
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:20,239
Speaker 2: sexual question that emphasized the difference that sort of I

694
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:27,640
Speaker 2: think titillated the whole idea of maybe being naughty, whereas

695
00:54:27,760 --> 00:54:32,480
Speaker 2: the Methodists, who I always envied, could go to dances

696
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:36,759
Speaker 2: and they had a much more relaxed And I think

697
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:40,680
Speaker 2: later in life that it affects relationships. I really do.

698
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:45,440
Speaker 2: I know it for fact, it sets up some psychological

699
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:49,240
Speaker 2: barriers that are never going to be taken down. So anyway,

700
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 2: get off of that subject. But I was church pianist,

701
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 2: and I learned pretty early to improvise on Hymn's one

702
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 2: Suitisan Goddard was a wonderful teacher in Oklahoma City, and

703
00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 2: she would teach me well what Leonard Bernstein called transformational elements,

704
00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:17,520
Speaker 2: and she just called piano arranging. But it would be

705
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 2: like playing playing amazing grace like this, Let me try

706
00:55:27,600 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 2: that again, you know something in that vein. So I

707
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:09,800
Speaker 2: learned like a lot of improvisation. Dad played a little guitar,

708
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 2: my mom played a little accordion. We would do our

709
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 2: family thing at church on Sunday, sing parts. I grew

710
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 2: up singing three parts. Dad always wanted me to sing tenor,

711
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:30,080
Speaker 2: and I really ended up being a baritone, but eventually

712
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 2: I made it to church pianist, which my mother thought

713
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:36,439
Speaker 2: was the pinnacle of show business. You couldn't like get

714
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:41,839
Speaker 2: me higher than that. And then alas we lost her

715
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:50,360
Speaker 2: and it was my senior year in high school. I

716
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 2: was sixteen, she was thirty six, and that sort of

717
00:56:57,080 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 2: dropped a nuclear bomb on us as a family. I

718
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:05,800
Speaker 2: don't think my father ever got over it. It affected

719
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:10,880
Speaker 2: his relationship whatever that was, with God, which is a

720
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:16,680
Speaker 2: very weighty subject. But you have to believe in what

721
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 2: you're preaching. You can't, just like you have to believe

722
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 2: in what you're performing. It has to be coming from

723
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 2: somewhere because people know when it's not. They know they

724
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 2: they can detect that thin nasal wine of the of

725
00:57:36,320 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 2: the not completely sure of himself performer, just as they

726
00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 2: can a Baptist preacher who he told me one night,

727
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:50,280
Speaker 2: he says, Jimmy, I don't believe anything that's coming out

728
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 2: of my mouth. So I put him to work in

729
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 2: the record business and he did very well. Discovered a

730
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 2: group called Five Man Electrical Band and had a hit

731
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:05,439
Speaker 2: record and went to work for Mike Curve for a while.

732
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 2: So it all turned out it all turned out in

733
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 2: the end. But I lived in an agrarian environment. I

734
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 2: got these hands dirty picking cotton, poe and cotton doing

735
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 2: essentially it's you know, look, I don't want to get

736
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 2: into anything cultural here, but my grandfather did not use

737
00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:43,160
Speaker 2: migrant labor. There were enough cousins and uncles and aunts

738
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:46,960
Speaker 2: in our family that we could go out like a

739
00:58:47,080 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 2: swarm of locusts and clear up, you know, forty acres

740
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 2: of cotton in a couple of days, three days. I

741
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,600
Speaker 2: remember one day, my father pulled five hundred pounds of

742
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 2: cotton that day. And uh, that's uh, that's a lot

743
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:09,439
Speaker 2: of cotton. Because cotton doesn't weigh very much, so five

744
00:59:09,520 --> 00:59:13,160
Speaker 2: hundred pounds of it would probably fill this this room

745
00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 2: pretty much. Uh. I always admired him. He was a

746
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:28,120
Speaker 2: he was a magnetic tall, very handsome. As an orator,

747
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 2: he was you know, he was persuasive. Uh, he was difficult.

748
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 2: He believed in corporal punishment. We got whacked around a

749
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 2: lot with good cause. With good cause, you know, I

750
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 2: mean it wasn't nice to turn the heat off in

751
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:53,960
Speaker 2: the babistery so that the back water in the babistery

752
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:58,640
Speaker 2: was ice cold, so that when the When the portly

753
00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:02,439
Speaker 2: lady started coming down the steps into the babistry, She's going,

754
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:07,600
Speaker 2: oh my God, oh Jesus, oh oh. Everybody thought she's

755
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 2: having a transcendental experience. But the water in the babbisty

756
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 2: is below zero, you know, so fun in games. The

757
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 2: the thing I remember most about growing up was always

758
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,840
Speaker 2: feeling as though I was on the outside looking in.

759
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 2: I was not sports minded, particularly even though I went out.

760
01:00:36,600 --> 01:00:39,960
Speaker 2: I played football because my dad wanted me to the

761
01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:43,080
Speaker 2: violence I didn't like. But I played and played hard.

762
01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:46,600
Speaker 2: But I was a second stringer. I was in the band,

763
01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:52,200
Speaker 2: so I grew, so I got a little bit of

764
01:00:55,040 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 2: experience on other instruments, and I floated on the outside

765
01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 2: edge of every party I ever was ever attended. I

766
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 2: would be I would be in a corner somewhere, leaned up,

767
01:01:09,600 --> 01:01:14,000
Speaker 2: hopefully where I couldn't be seen, just watching, just watching

768
01:01:14,240 --> 01:01:19,000
Speaker 2: and feeling clumsy. And at one point my act and

769
01:01:19,080 --> 01:01:22,920
Speaker 2: he was out of control, and I just I just

770
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:28,439
Speaker 2: had that awful teenage, teenage angst that you go through

771
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:33,320
Speaker 2: when you're just ugly. You just there's just a time

772
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:35,960
Speaker 2: in your life when you're ugly. You look in the

773
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 2: mirror and you go, I'm ugly, you know, and you

774
01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 2: get through it. You get through it. And then I

775
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 2: got through it by writing songs, by h doing my

776
01:01:50,520 --> 01:01:56,280
Speaker 2: own therapy and exercising my demons, you know, at the piano,

777
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:59,320
Speaker 2: and particularly when I when I finally got the podium

778
01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 2: and I was writing, and I I wrote, Uh, I wrote,

779
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 2: I wrote a song called good Evening, mister critic. And

780
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:14,440
Speaker 2: it was for some reason I had it in. I

781
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 2: had it in for critics. It turns out that critics

782
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 2: have been my best friends in this life. They have

783
01:02:22,200 --> 01:02:26,160
Speaker 2: literally literally been my best friends. Stephen Holden was one

784
01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:27,080
Speaker 2: of my best friends.

785
01:02:28,840 --> 01:02:28,960
Speaker 3: Uh.

786
01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:33,200
Speaker 2: But my very first concert at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, I

787
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 2: went out and I sung about the critics, you know,

788
01:02:35,480 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 2: and it was a very very taunting you know, how

789
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:45,200
Speaker 2: many how many shows did you close all by yourself,

790
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:52,400
Speaker 2: mister critic? Uh? It castigated the critics, it really uh.

791
01:02:53,000 --> 01:02:56,800
Speaker 2: And this is what I chose to open my first

792
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:02,840
Speaker 2: concert with. So one can only imagine what followed. Leonard Feather,

793
01:03:04,040 --> 01:03:12,200
Speaker 2: who was an eloquent writer, music critic for the La

794
01:03:12,400 --> 01:03:19,240
Speaker 2: Times and well known in the jazz world, wrote mister

795
01:03:19,400 --> 01:03:29,040
Speaker 2: Webb's theory that songs are best heard when performed by

796
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 2: the writer. Was definitively unproven. Last night, that's a Dorothy

797
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 2: cha in pavilion. And for years, for years, he raked

798
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:49,080
Speaker 2: me over the colds. But the truth is that by

799
01:03:49,240 --> 01:03:52,720
Speaker 2: and large, if you look at the critical response to

800
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:57,960
Speaker 2: my albums, my second album all I Know, excuse me.

801
01:03:58,160 --> 01:03:59,600
Speaker 2: Second second album.

802
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:01,000
Speaker 4: Was and so on.

803
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:06,919
Speaker 2: Was selected by Stereo Review magazine, which in those days

804
01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:10,720
Speaker 2: was a pretty big deal. Stereo Review that was for

805
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 2: the high fid nuts. They gave me Album of the Year.

806
01:04:16,280 --> 01:04:21,720
Speaker 2: You know, I probably sold like for forty five fifty records,

807
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:26,480
Speaker 2: and they gave me their Album of the Year award

808
01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:32,360
Speaker 2: for outstanding recording achievement, and they printed the full color

809
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 2: cover inside magazine. It was a very prestigious, but could

810
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:43,800
Speaker 2: never It's interesting because now I can look at it

811
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 2: and I can say I spent my whole life pounding

812
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:53,960
Speaker 2: my head up against that wall. Maybe it's time to stop.

813
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:59,360
Speaker 2: But I think I'm going to do one more album.

814
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:02,439
Speaker 2: I think I have a few songs that I would

815
01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:08,520
Speaker 2: like to leave before I leave the room. I'd like

816
01:05:08,600 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 2: to play a few more songs. And I've had fantastic

817
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:18,440
Speaker 2: luck with other artists covering my songs on my albums.

818
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 2: For instance, Judy Collins picking up the Moon as a

819
01:05:23,240 --> 01:05:28,000
Speaker 2: Harsh Mistress in my minor standard recorded by a lot

820
01:05:28,040 --> 01:05:33,360
Speaker 2: of people. Highwayman was on one of my albums. It

821
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:35,720
Speaker 2: was actually the album that I did with George Martin.

822
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:37,680
Speaker 2: I've done an album with everybody.

823
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:40,080
Speaker 1: I was on all.

824
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:45,640
Speaker 2: All the Warner Late I was all the time Warner Labels,

825
01:05:45,680 --> 01:05:48,880
Speaker 2: I was on them, I was on Reprise, I was

826
01:05:49,000 --> 01:05:52,280
Speaker 2: on Warner Brothers, and then they kicked me over to

827
01:05:54,560 --> 01:06:00,000
Speaker 2: Asylum and then I made an album. Linda Ronstat produced

828
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:02,560
Speaker 2: me and we made an album with Jack Holtzman at

829
01:06:02,800 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 2: Elektra and uh I'm at Ergon used to come to

830
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:14,480
Speaker 2: well not every every studio, but every every session. He

831
01:06:14,520 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 2: would come to sessions quite often. He would come in

832
01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 2: with his with his gold tip cane, and he come

833
01:06:21,160 --> 01:06:24,400
Speaker 2: in with the dapper little goatee, and he was a

834
01:06:24,480 --> 01:06:28,960
Speaker 2: wonderful cat. And he walked in and and he listened

835
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 2: to me and he'd go, you know, kid, he said,

836
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,360
Speaker 2: it's part. He said, you've got the heart, you know,

837
01:06:37,520 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 2: and so I that's I don't know when you've got

838
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 2: that kind of backing and you can't somehow pull up,

839
01:06:44,280 --> 01:06:48,800
Speaker 2: pull up, you know, some kind of a record out

840
01:06:48,840 --> 01:06:50,520
Speaker 2: of it. I don't. I don't know what kind of

841
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 2: a curse is on you. But I did pray at

842
01:06:54,320 --> 01:06:57,919
Speaker 2: one point when I was young, and I prayed to God,

843
01:06:58,120 --> 01:07:00,920
Speaker 2: please let me grow up, and please let me write

844
01:07:00,920 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 2: a song for Glenn Campbell, because I loved Glenn Campbell.

845
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:07,520
Speaker 2: He had a record because turn around, look at me,

846
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 2: turn it around, looking at me. Oh, I've wait, but

847
01:07:32,280 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 2: I'll wait for uh. And it was a it was

848
01:07:42,080 --> 01:07:44,520
Speaker 2: a regional hit, and I heard this beautiful voice, and

849
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:46,960
Speaker 2: I just want to write songs for him. So when

850
01:07:47,040 --> 01:07:49,200
Speaker 2: I met him, finally I met him in the flesh,

851
01:07:49,600 --> 01:07:51,920
Speaker 2: I actually had a bunch of songs that i'd written

852
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 2: form Uh. It's it's like a cinderellative story. Really, a

853
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 2: lot of it is so fantastic that people don't believe

854
01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:06,160
Speaker 2: me when I tell them what happened to me. I mean,

855
01:08:06,760 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 2: all my dreams came true.

856
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:08,560
Speaker 4: Man.

857
01:08:09,040 --> 01:08:20,600
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you talk about being in Oklahoma but

858
01:08:20,720 --> 01:08:25,680
Speaker 1: being a teenager feeling like you're outside. Did you continue

859
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 1: to feel that in your life to this day that

860
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:33,280
Speaker 1: you were outside observing or alienated or did that change?

861
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:40,240
Speaker 2: No? I'm exactly the same kid, I'm exactly the same guy,

862
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:45,479
Speaker 2: and I just transferred, you know, the alienation that I

863
01:08:45,560 --> 01:08:50,639
Speaker 2: felt in the classroom, I transferred it to Hollywood because

864
01:08:50,880 --> 01:08:54,280
Speaker 2: I couldn't. I felt like I was being banished from

865
01:08:54,439 --> 01:08:59,320
Speaker 2: rock and roll and put with the old people, old

866
01:08:59,520 --> 01:09:05,879
Speaker 2: people who were like forty, people like mister Sinatra, Tony Bennett.

867
01:09:09,520 --> 01:09:11,839
Speaker 2: You know, I actually wrote a song for Rosemary Clooney.

868
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:19,760
Speaker 2: So in the middle of the road, the middle of

869
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:24,320
Speaker 2: the road, which was Glenn in the fifth dimension and

870
01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:29,360
Speaker 2: Richard Harris. People could not comprehend Richard Harris at all,

871
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:35,080
Speaker 2: and so there was a lot of confusion about where

872
01:09:35,120 --> 01:09:40,439
Speaker 2: the pigeon, where my pigeon hole was. And I already

873
01:09:40,560 --> 01:09:44,360
Speaker 2: knew that there wasn't a hole for me. I learned

874
01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:48,719
Speaker 2: that in school, so I knew there wasn't already made

875
01:09:49,400 --> 01:09:52,559
Speaker 2: slot for me to slip into because I know I'm

876
01:09:52,640 --> 01:10:00,080
Speaker 2: too egocentric and eccentric and eclectic, if you will, if

877
01:10:00,080 --> 01:10:02,679
Speaker 2: you could put all those in one word, that would

878
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,360
Speaker 2: be me. And I know there's no real home for

879
01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:10,000
Speaker 2: me in this business. But I yearn I yearned to be,

880
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 2: you know, to have dinner with Paul Simon, and Ardie

881
01:10:14,360 --> 01:10:18,200
Speaker 2: Garfunkland eventually already asked me for a song, which was

882
01:10:18,280 --> 01:10:57,080
Speaker 2: all I know and answer, oh oh, anyway, uh. When

883
01:10:57,120 --> 01:10:59,600
Speaker 2: I after I worked with Artie and we that was

884
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:04,400
Speaker 2: his first record coming back from the split with Paul Simon,

885
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:08,400
Speaker 2: which I'm not going to go into that drama because

886
01:11:08,439 --> 01:11:12,320
Speaker 2: I think people know a lot about that, and if

887
01:11:12,360 --> 01:11:15,720
Speaker 2: you don't know, you can find out easily. But you know,

888
01:11:15,840 --> 01:11:19,160
Speaker 2: they were in the first grade together, and it's been

889
01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 2: a rough relationship all the way for them. I've seen

890
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:26,760
Speaker 2: a lot of it because I've known already now since

891
01:11:26,880 --> 01:11:32,640
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, and I've been through several ups and

892
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:40,519
Speaker 2: downs between him and Paul. But I did eventually, you know,

893
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:42,519
Speaker 2: sit down and have dinner with him, and then I

894
01:11:42,680 --> 01:11:50,040
Speaker 2: was invited to kind of hang out with Crosby, Dave

895
01:11:50,160 --> 01:11:53,120
Speaker 2: Crosby and Graham Nash. We got to be pretty good friends.

896
01:11:53,800 --> 01:11:56,719
Speaker 2: And then a very good friend of mine was Joni Mitchell,

897
01:11:56,840 --> 01:12:00,800
Speaker 2: and she changed the way I write songs. I would

898
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:05,080
Speaker 2: say she was one of the she was one of

899
01:12:05,160 --> 01:12:07,760
Speaker 2: the epiphanes that I when I When I was I

900
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:10,679
Speaker 2: was cruising along there, I was making pretty good money

901
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:13,320
Speaker 2: and I thought, damn I know everything there is to

902
01:12:13,439 --> 01:12:17,080
Speaker 2: know about this. I can write one of these anytime.

903
01:12:18,479 --> 01:12:24,760
Speaker 2: And I ran across Joni's work saw actually saw live

904
01:12:25,280 --> 01:12:29,560
Speaker 2: at the Troubadour one night, sent her a letter and

905
01:12:29,640 --> 01:12:32,640
Speaker 2: said I want to take you out for tea and

906
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:35,320
Speaker 2: I said, you were you know, you're a golden child.

907
01:12:35,560 --> 01:12:40,880
Speaker 2: And I loved what she did and everything. She found

908
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 2: the letter like fifteen seventeen years later, it was behind

909
01:12:47,080 --> 01:12:53,600
Speaker 2: her couch. She never opened it. It's true story. But

910
01:12:53,800 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 2: she and I became pretty really pretty close friends, and

911
01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:03,360
Speaker 2: I watched her a lot, and she would I loved

912
01:13:03,439 --> 01:13:06,040
Speaker 2: her voicings on the guitar. I love these kind of

913
01:13:08,640 --> 01:13:43,439
Speaker 2: just kind of to me, that's that's her world. It's

914
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:46,840
Speaker 2: kind of a it's a D tuning or you know

915
01:13:46,960 --> 01:13:49,680
Speaker 2: these used to call it a lot of times, called

916
01:13:49,720 --> 01:13:53,719
Speaker 2: it the Joni Mitchell tooning. And I played on guitar

917
01:13:53,840 --> 01:13:55,640
Speaker 2: for a while. I wrote a couple of songs on that,

918
01:13:57,080 --> 01:14:01,679
Speaker 2: and but her conversational style all really changed my riding.

919
01:14:02,439 --> 01:14:04,400
Speaker 2: There was no more Witch Tall Lineman. There was no

920
01:14:04,560 --> 01:14:12,639
Speaker 2: more I was riding. You know, I was writing put

921
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:16,400
Speaker 2: it down here right. It's kind of early for vocalizability.

922
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:26,400
Speaker 5: See her how she flopped old and sail across this

923
01:14:26,680 --> 01:14:39,400
Speaker 5: guy lose enough to tell about that airful if future,

924
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 5: Oh ship looks as warm as go.

925
01:14:50,479 --> 01:14:54,719
Speaker 2: Uh it just it became I think deeper and more

926
01:14:56,360 --> 01:15:01,360
Speaker 2: uh uh Joan. She was the first to open her

927
01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:06,920
Speaker 2: chest up completely and say, okay, look, this is really

928
01:15:07,120 --> 01:15:11,560
Speaker 2: what's going on here? I am not happy sometimes and

929
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:17,760
Speaker 2: and she would expose things that entertainment has always been.

930
01:15:17,920 --> 01:15:21,680
Speaker 2: Yet aren't we all happy? And they we're gonna go

931
01:15:21,920 --> 01:15:29,360
Speaker 2: home now? Yeah? And here here, suddenly is is a

932
01:15:29,560 --> 01:15:33,559
Speaker 2: voice that is profound up in the sterilized room where

933
01:15:33,600 --> 01:15:43,000
Speaker 2: they let you be lazy. You know, stories about Freudian

934
01:15:43,120 --> 01:15:51,200
Speaker 2: with Freudian overtones, and some of them so inspirational that

935
01:15:51,280 --> 01:15:52,720
Speaker 2: I would cry listening to them.

936
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:58,200
Speaker 1: Like m.

937
01:16:01,240 --> 01:16:08,000
Speaker 2: Just before you, just before our love got lost, you said,

938
01:16:09,160 --> 01:16:10,599
Speaker 2: my love is constant.

939
01:16:11,200 --> 01:16:13,920
Speaker 1: You told me it was constant. Is I love was constant?

940
01:16:14,000 --> 01:16:14,880
Speaker 1: Is a northern star?

941
01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:16,559
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where's that at?

942
01:16:16,960 --> 01:16:17,840
Speaker 1: I'll meet you in the bar.

943
01:16:18,800 --> 01:16:22,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want me, I'll be in the bar. Well.

944
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:24,920
Speaker 2: She had me there, She had me. It was like,

945
01:16:25,640 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 2: I don't know how to write like that. She's I

946
01:16:28,880 --> 01:16:33,760
Speaker 2: call it conversational tone. And another guy who does it

947
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:36,400
Speaker 2: and does it in a very humorous ways, randing him.

948
01:16:39,360 --> 01:16:44,320
Speaker 2: The lines aren't so formalized as Moon, June and Spoon.

949
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:48,080
Speaker 2: You know, there are things that people might actually say.

950
01:16:48,640 --> 01:16:50,719
Speaker 2: So I thought, well, this is the wave of the future,

951
01:16:51,240 --> 01:16:56,000
Speaker 2: and my songs became more elaborate. I wrote a song

952
01:16:56,080 --> 01:16:58,799
Speaker 2: called Paul Gogan in the South Seas that was almost

953
01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:03,360
Speaker 2: impossible to form. It was like the Surf's Up. You know,

954
01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:06,760
Speaker 2: nobody could cover Surfs Up because nobody could play it.

955
01:17:08,160 --> 01:17:12,719
Speaker 1: But let's go back. You talk about being feeling separate,

956
01:17:13,439 --> 01:17:17,640
Speaker 1: feeling alienated. You talk about opening your concert with the

957
01:17:17,680 --> 01:17:21,759
Speaker 1: critic songs of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. To what degree

958
01:17:22,280 --> 01:17:25,600
Speaker 1: are you angry? I think he's got a bad connotation,

959
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:29,400
Speaker 1: but you know, a frustration of feeling that you're not

960
01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:33,040
Speaker 1: a member of the group, You're not part of the center.

961
01:17:33,560 --> 01:17:35,120
Speaker 1: There's somewhere you want to be.

962
01:17:35,439 --> 01:17:40,080
Speaker 2: Was that an element, Well, it would have been until recently.

963
01:17:40,240 --> 01:17:44,200
Speaker 2: But I'm at peace with where I am, who I am,

964
01:17:44,560 --> 01:17:49,640
Speaker 2: what I am. When I step back and look at it,

965
01:17:51,040 --> 01:17:55,720
Speaker 2: it's an unbelievable story. I mean, in anybody's book, it's

966
01:17:55,800 --> 01:18:04,400
Speaker 2: a fantastic Horatio Alger story. If you will rags for riches.

967
01:18:06,080 --> 01:18:08,639
Speaker 2: On the surface, it's that simple, but in a more

968
01:18:09,920 --> 01:18:15,960
Speaker 2: profound sense, it was a journey into into the art

969
01:18:16,040 --> 01:18:20,439
Speaker 2: of songwriting and to come to be influenced by this

970
01:18:20,960 --> 01:18:24,880
Speaker 2: wonderful group of people who eventually really did embrace me.

971
01:18:25,400 --> 01:18:31,599
Speaker 2: The rock and roll crowd. You know, Guns and Roses

972
01:18:31,720 --> 01:18:35,479
Speaker 2: are playing which tall Lineman every night on the show.

973
01:18:35,720 --> 01:18:41,000
Speaker 2: So and I think I got when I got invited

974
01:18:41,120 --> 01:18:44,080
Speaker 2: to play MacArthur Park at the Rainforest, Well, when James

975
01:18:44,160 --> 01:18:48,559
Speaker 2: Taylor cut which tall Linman? He covered which Tall Liman,

976
01:18:49,120 --> 01:18:51,439
Speaker 2: and I thought, I think I'm going to put some

977
01:18:51,600 --> 01:18:55,720
Speaker 2: of this to bed. I don't think there's a conspiracy.

978
01:18:55,800 --> 01:19:00,360
Speaker 2: I don't think they're out to get me anymore. You know,

979
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:02,400
Speaker 2: there may may have been a time when there were

980
01:19:02,600 --> 01:19:05,600
Speaker 2: when when I was looked on with some degree of suspicion,

981
01:19:07,240 --> 01:19:10,839
Speaker 2: But frankly I laugh at that now because I shouldn't

982
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:13,840
Speaker 2: have cared about that. I should have been here on

983
01:19:13,960 --> 01:19:19,600
Speaker 2: the piano doing doing what God, exercising the gift that

984
01:19:19,680 --> 01:19:24,120
Speaker 2: he gave me, uh and not not being so self conscious.

985
01:19:24,320 --> 01:19:27,639
Speaker 2: But again I go back to being the bat babbitist,

986
01:19:28,080 --> 01:19:31,880
Speaker 2: the Baptist preacher's kid, and being watched all the time,

987
01:19:32,080 --> 01:19:39,200
Speaker 2: and having and being rejected a lot, uh, being called

988
01:19:39,320 --> 01:19:43,000
Speaker 2: four eyes, being called preach, having four or five kids

989
01:19:43,120 --> 01:19:44,920
Speaker 2: just jump on me and beat the crap out of

990
01:19:44,960 --> 01:19:48,880
Speaker 2: me after school. You know, because I work glasses and

991
01:19:49,040 --> 01:19:53,759
Speaker 2: I it has it has. Yes, I have an anger

992
01:19:54,040 --> 01:19:58,920
Speaker 2: in me. My anger is is for the bullies of

993
01:19:59,040 --> 01:20:04,760
Speaker 2: this world. It's it's it's for the the unfair, the

994
01:20:05,000 --> 01:20:12,200
Speaker 2: unfairly treated. Uh majority of people in the world who

995
01:20:12,360 --> 01:20:18,639
Speaker 2: lived in some abject poverty and terror. Sometimes while another

996
01:20:18,760 --> 01:20:23,120
Speaker 2: segment of society lives on Mount Olympus and wear golden

997
01:20:23,240 --> 01:20:28,679
Speaker 2: crowns and float around in togas making decisions that affect

998
01:20:28,760 --> 01:20:32,920
Speaker 2: the lives of that cause cause or do not cause

999
01:20:33,120 --> 01:20:36,720
Speaker 2: wars and things of that nature to occur in other

1000
01:20:36,800 --> 01:20:40,120
Speaker 2: people's country. That kind of stuff makes me angry. I

1001
01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:44,679
Speaker 2: was incredibly angry about Vietnam. I knew in my gut

1002
01:20:45,600 --> 01:20:48,840
Speaker 2: that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag.

1003
01:20:49,040 --> 01:20:53,040
Speaker 2: I knew it. I knew we need I knew I

1004
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:59,840
Speaker 2: knew that. I just feel it, and I think that

1005
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:04,880
Speaker 2: they're gonna have it's going to become harder and harder

1006
01:21:05,160 --> 01:21:09,080
Speaker 2: for administrations to put through these mil to go on

1007
01:21:09,200 --> 01:21:15,760
Speaker 2: these military adventures after after our generation and after Vietnam. Uh.

1008
01:21:16,320 --> 01:21:20,519
Speaker 2: Now it hasn't dissuaded them because they've been now wherever

1009
01:21:20,600 --> 01:21:25,519
Speaker 2: they've been to the Gulf War uh uh they've went,

1010
01:21:25,640 --> 01:21:30,519
Speaker 2: They've been to they've gone over and erecked Iraq, and

1011
01:21:30,720 --> 01:21:34,880
Speaker 2: they've wrecked Afghanistan. I mean, what, what are what actually

1012
01:21:35,000 --> 01:21:39,719
Speaker 2: are we doing as a country to make life better

1013
01:21:40,360 --> 01:21:45,160
Speaker 2: on this world for more people, for our own people

1014
01:21:46,000 --> 01:21:50,120
Speaker 2: when we don't have elder care for even a half

1015
01:21:51,400 --> 01:21:53,720
Speaker 2: of the of the people who need it in this country. So,

1016
01:21:53,960 --> 01:21:57,680
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, those things. I'm I'm an activist. I'm

1017
01:21:57,720 --> 01:22:00,479
Speaker 2: a leftist if you want, you want to all me that.

1018
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:12,080
Speaker 2: I've always been aligned politically with with with a liberal society.

1019
01:22:13,040 --> 01:22:16,120
Speaker 2: And I don't see anything wrong with national health. They

1020
01:22:16,200 --> 01:22:19,400
Speaker 2: have it in Australia, they have it in England, and

1021
01:22:19,479 --> 01:22:21,200
Speaker 2: it takes care of a lot of people who would

1022
01:22:21,200 --> 01:22:24,719
Speaker 2: normally if they only if they only had to depend

1023
01:22:24,800 --> 01:22:28,479
Speaker 2: on money, they wouldn't get medical care. And I think

1024
01:22:29,280 --> 01:22:33,200
Speaker 2: when you keep seriously injured people sitting in the waiting

1025
01:22:33,320 --> 01:22:37,320
Speaker 2: room while people with the money are like going past

1026
01:22:37,400 --> 01:22:39,600
Speaker 2: them and going to get care. So you know what,

1027
01:22:39,680 --> 01:22:42,960
Speaker 2: I'm saying I think there's a lot of injustice. I'm

1028
01:22:43,040 --> 01:22:52,320
Speaker 2: angry about that. I'm angry about people causing other people's deaths, uh,

1029
01:22:53,439 --> 01:22:59,880
Speaker 2: needlessly spending human lives in pursuit of some I don't know,

1030
01:23:00,680 --> 01:23:10,280
Speaker 2: some reactionary, borderline fascist like dream of a society. Well,

1031
01:23:10,439 --> 01:23:15,360
Speaker 2: in our case, I'm very nervous because I was raised

1032
01:23:15,640 --> 01:23:26,000
Speaker 2: and rigorous religious framework, where if you got outside across

1033
01:23:26,080 --> 01:23:28,640
Speaker 2: the laser beam, a buzzer sounded, and you got an

1034
01:23:28,720 --> 01:23:38,639
Speaker 2: electric shop. I'm afraid of religion being too close to government.

1035
01:23:39,360 --> 01:23:41,920
Speaker 2: I think that the founding fathers knew exactly what they

1036
01:23:41,960 --> 01:23:46,519
Speaker 2: were doing when they separated church in state, and the

1037
01:23:46,720 --> 01:23:49,280
Speaker 2: idea that well, no, I was a long time ago,

1038
01:23:49,479 --> 01:23:52,280
Speaker 2: and now we need to we need to get them

1039
01:23:52,360 --> 01:23:57,000
Speaker 2: closer together, you know, to get America back on its path.

1040
01:24:00,200 --> 01:24:08,479
Speaker 2: I'm not persuaded that religion ever did anything to help government.

1041
01:24:16,640 --> 01:24:21,800
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Oklahoma, your Baptist minister's son. How

1042
01:24:21,880 --> 01:24:26,120
Speaker 1: do you hear rock and roll? How do you hear Elvis?

1043
01:24:26,920 --> 01:24:29,120
Speaker 1: To what degree does it change you? To what degree

1044
01:24:29,120 --> 01:24:29,800
Speaker 1: does it affect you?

1045
01:24:31,479 --> 01:24:38,800
Speaker 2: Well, my father made a critical mistake at one point

1046
01:24:38,880 --> 01:24:42,400
Speaker 2: because he was also kind of left minded, believe it

1047
01:24:42,520 --> 01:24:46,160
Speaker 2: or not. And during the Civil rights movement, he would

1048
01:24:46,280 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 2: have black congregations come to our church. And when they came,

1049
01:24:50,160 --> 01:24:53,680
Speaker 2: they brought their drums and their electric guitars, and they,

1050
01:24:56,120 --> 01:25:00,240
Speaker 2: you know, sang the gospel. And Elvis was up to

1051
01:25:00,320 --> 01:25:01,920
Speaker 2: his neck in the gospel music.

1052
01:25:03,160 --> 01:25:06,160
Speaker 6: So he was.

1053
01:25:06,439 --> 01:25:09,920
Speaker 2: And so my father was really I was proud of

1054
01:25:10,000 --> 01:25:14,320
Speaker 2: his stand. He let he he was inclusive. He he

1055
01:25:14,400 --> 01:25:19,160
Speaker 2: knew perfectly well there were two gay guys who came

1056
01:25:19,240 --> 01:25:25,120
Speaker 2: to service, and they were there every Sunday, and he

1057
01:25:27,240 --> 01:25:29,680
Speaker 2: never said a word about it until his deacons came

1058
01:25:29,720 --> 01:25:32,080
Speaker 2: in and said, you've got to stop those guys from coming,

1059
01:25:32,120 --> 01:25:36,679
Speaker 2: because you know that's not in the Bibles. And he said, well,

1060
01:25:36,880 --> 01:25:40,639
Speaker 2: he said, I'm not going to say anything to them,

1061
01:25:41,800 --> 01:25:46,240
Speaker 2: but you're no longer my deacons. So he fired the deacons.

1062
01:25:47,080 --> 01:25:55,840
Speaker 2: His stand was impeccable. And I don't know, I don't know,

1063
01:25:56,000 --> 01:25:58,519
Speaker 2: I honestly, Bob, I don't know where I was leading

1064
01:25:58,640 --> 01:25:58,840
Speaker 2: with that.

1065
01:25:59,120 --> 01:26:02,880
Speaker 1: But well, tell me about hearing rock music curing Elvis.

1066
01:26:03,680 --> 01:26:07,960
Speaker 2: Well, when these when these black congregations would come in

1067
01:26:08,080 --> 01:26:11,720
Speaker 2: and play service, we the gospel was like a rock

1068
01:26:11,800 --> 01:26:14,920
Speaker 2: and roll. There was drums, they had drums up there,

1069
01:26:15,000 --> 01:26:18,920
Speaker 2: you know, in the front of the church. I would

1070
01:26:19,439 --> 01:26:23,000
Speaker 2: as I as I said, I would sometimes absent myself

1071
01:26:23,040 --> 01:26:26,880
Speaker 2: from the house to go to various functions where people

1072
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:34,519
Speaker 2: work dancing. You know. Glenn Campbell said, you know why

1073
01:26:34,680 --> 01:26:39,280
Speaker 2: Southern Baptists don't make love standing up? And I said, no, Glenn,

1074
01:26:39,360 --> 01:26:42,479
Speaker 2: why not? He said, because people will think they're dancing.

1075
01:26:46,520 --> 01:26:46,640
Speaker 3: Uh.

1076
01:26:48,000 --> 01:26:51,519
Speaker 2: He used to control the radio, and you know, so

1077
01:26:52,200 --> 01:26:54,240
Speaker 2: we would like try to get on a station where

1078
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:58,320
Speaker 2: we could hear Elvis or you know, Buddy Holly or

1079
01:26:58,400 --> 01:27:02,760
Speaker 2: somebody else, and he would like slap our hands, you know,

1080
01:27:03,680 --> 01:27:08,000
Speaker 2: he'd get back on that. All those preachers who used

1081
01:27:08,000 --> 01:27:13,880
Speaker 2: to preach out of Del Rio, Texas. I don't know.

1082
01:27:14,160 --> 01:27:18,519
Speaker 2: I found my when my mother passed. As I said,

1083
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:22,360
Speaker 2: I was a senior in high school, so I was

1084
01:27:23,120 --> 01:27:27,280
Speaker 2: out from under the family umbrella very early on my

1085
01:27:27,520 --> 01:27:31,200
Speaker 2: own in Los Angeles, sleeping on an air mattress with

1086
01:27:31,280 --> 01:27:33,760
Speaker 2: some girls I knew who had like they let me

1087
01:27:33,880 --> 01:27:39,960
Speaker 2: use their dining room. And I had a little portfolio

1088
01:27:40,000 --> 01:27:43,000
Speaker 2: of songs. And I was an independent human being and

1089
01:27:43,080 --> 01:27:45,760
Speaker 2: I've never been so happy in my life. And I

1090
01:27:45,920 --> 01:27:52,960
Speaker 2: had nothing. I had nothing, and I walked around Hollywood

1091
01:27:53,040 --> 01:27:55,479
Speaker 2: with my songs, and if somebody asked me what I did,

1092
01:27:55,720 --> 01:27:58,160
Speaker 2: I'd say, I'm a songwriter and I was proud of it.

1093
01:27:59,240 --> 01:28:05,679
Speaker 2: And I got a couple of everly brother cuts. Everly

1094
01:28:05,760 --> 01:28:07,080
Speaker 2: brothers always worship.

1095
01:28:07,600 --> 01:28:09,479
Speaker 1: Well, l wait, wait, wait, let's slow down a little bit.

1096
01:28:10,040 --> 01:28:13,120
Speaker 1: At what point and how and why do you side

1097
01:28:13,520 --> 01:28:15,599
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a songwriter as a profession.

1098
01:28:20,120 --> 01:28:24,400
Speaker 2: Well, I'm at sam Bernardino of Ali College, and I'm wait, wait, wait.

1099
01:28:24,320 --> 01:28:26,280
Speaker 1: Before you go there? How did the family end up

1100
01:28:26,360 --> 01:28:28,520
Speaker 1: moving from Oklahoma to California?

1101
01:28:29,000 --> 01:28:30,960
Speaker 2: That was always my father's dream.

1102
01:28:31,720 --> 01:28:32,040
Speaker 6: He was.

1103
01:28:33,600 --> 01:28:35,519
Speaker 2: He was always going to go there. It was just

1104
01:28:35,640 --> 01:28:39,120
Speaker 2: a matter of times. So when he got a call

1105
01:28:39,600 --> 01:28:45,200
Speaker 2: from this church in Colton, which is famous mostly for Wyatt,

1106
01:28:45,280 --> 01:28:51,040
Speaker 2: for roy Erp. Wyatt's brother was buried there. So that's

1107
01:28:52,000 --> 01:28:54,120
Speaker 2: that was one of the That was the tourist attraction.

1108
01:28:54,280 --> 01:29:00,560
Speaker 2: It was roy ERP's gravestone, it was he you know.

1109
01:29:00,800 --> 01:29:05,720
Speaker 2: So we're in California, which was a complete makeover for

1110
01:29:05,920 --> 01:29:08,120
Speaker 2: me in terms of one of the first thing I

1111
01:29:08,320 --> 01:29:13,880
Speaker 2: heard that summer that we moved in u there was

1112
01:29:13,960 --> 01:29:21,840
Speaker 2: a there was a consciousness, a consciousness changing event, and

1113
01:29:22,000 --> 01:29:26,800
Speaker 2: it was the Beach Boys singing on the radio station

1114
01:29:27,000 --> 01:29:33,320
Speaker 2: The Look. I came in, k me in and they

1115
01:29:33,360 --> 01:29:36,600
Speaker 2: were they were singing in my room. And I was

1116
01:29:37,040 --> 01:29:39,880
Speaker 2: moving into my new bedroom in California, and all the

1117
01:29:39,960 --> 01:29:44,400
Speaker 2: windows were up, and I hear the same song on

1118
01:29:44,520 --> 01:29:48,559
Speaker 2: all the radios, all two or three different houses. They're

1119
01:29:48,600 --> 01:29:51,240
Speaker 2: all tuned in to. Came in and they're listening to

1120
01:29:51,320 --> 01:29:55,280
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys. And all this bogun villa's dripping down

1121
01:29:55,439 --> 01:30:01,120
Speaker 2: and it's warm and everything is green. And I see

1122
01:30:01,200 --> 01:30:07,439
Speaker 2: this kid in his backyard abutting our property and he's

1123
01:30:07,520 --> 01:30:10,000
Speaker 2: got on a Volkswagen bus and he's got a surfboard

1124
01:30:10,120 --> 01:30:12,719
Speaker 2: up on top of it and he's washing it all down.

1125
01:30:12,920 --> 01:30:15,040
Speaker 2: He's come back, he just got back from the beach.

1126
01:30:15,200 --> 01:30:19,840
Speaker 2: He's washing his rig down. I looked over there and

1127
01:30:20,680 --> 01:30:24,479
Speaker 2: I said, what's that? He said, what's what? I said,

1128
01:30:24,520 --> 01:30:26,160
Speaker 2: That is thing on top of your car. He says,

1129
01:30:26,200 --> 01:30:31,519
Speaker 2: that's my surfboard. Man, Hey dude, you know. I said, well,

1130
01:30:31,560 --> 01:30:34,360
Speaker 2: what's that music you're playing? You know in my room?

1131
01:30:35,479 --> 01:30:38,960
Speaker 2: He said, hey, dude, he said, you don't know who

1132
01:30:39,040 --> 01:30:42,680
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys are. I said, well, I sort of

1133
01:30:42,920 --> 01:30:45,920
Speaker 2: like I know. I heard Jan and Dean record about

1134
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:49,360
Speaker 2: Surf City, but I don't know much about it. He said,

1135
01:30:49,400 --> 01:30:52,200
Speaker 2: come in here, and I went into his room and

1136
01:30:52,360 --> 01:30:57,200
Speaker 2: he played me everything the beach boys had done up

1137
01:30:57,320 --> 01:31:02,360
Speaker 2: until then. And I walked that and I felt like

1138
01:31:02,439 --> 01:31:05,960
Speaker 2: a changed person that I can't explain the vibration of

1139
01:31:06,080 --> 01:31:12,280
Speaker 2: it was so strong that I was that I was

1140
01:31:12,479 --> 01:31:22,479
Speaker 2: now in a different environment, uh, emotionally. And it was

1141
01:31:22,560 --> 01:31:27,920
Speaker 2: shortly after that my mother passed. She she uh, she

1142
01:31:28,080 --> 01:31:30,160
Speaker 2: tripped over a piece of furniture in the living room

1143
01:31:30,200 --> 01:31:37,000
Speaker 2: one afternoon, and five weeks later she died of a

1144
01:31:37,040 --> 01:31:37,679
Speaker 2: brain tumor.

1145
01:31:40,240 --> 01:31:40,360
Speaker 3: Uh.

1146
01:31:42,920 --> 01:31:46,400
Speaker 2: So I was, I was free, I was I was broken,

1147
01:31:47,000 --> 01:31:50,640
Speaker 2: and my father was destroyed. So all the rules we

1148
01:31:50,720 --> 01:31:54,280
Speaker 2: had no rules now. All my whole life had been

1149
01:31:54,320 --> 01:31:58,200
Speaker 2: about rules, and now all of a sudden, there's no rules.

1150
01:31:58,280 --> 01:32:01,439
Speaker 2: And walking into the house at one or two in

1151
01:32:01,479 --> 01:32:06,160
Speaker 2: the morning, drunk as a skunk and stepping over my

1152
01:32:06,360 --> 01:32:09,040
Speaker 2: father who's already passed out on the living room floor.

1153
01:32:10,040 --> 01:32:14,600
Speaker 2: That's when I found out that Native American blood is

1154
01:32:14,680 --> 01:32:22,160
Speaker 2: susceptible to alcohol. Because I'm a sixteenth and my father

1155
01:32:22,360 --> 01:32:26,719
Speaker 2: was an eighth. And once he stopped preaching and started drinking,

1156
01:32:26,880 --> 01:32:32,880
Speaker 2: he he sort of proved that he was you know,

1157
01:32:33,000 --> 01:32:37,400
Speaker 2: he could, he could, he could, uh, he could drink

1158
01:32:37,479 --> 01:32:41,439
Speaker 2: with the best of them, and he had a lot

1159
01:32:41,479 --> 01:32:49,640
Speaker 2: of girlfriends. The whole temperature changed there pretty soon. He

1160
01:32:49,920 --> 01:32:52,360
Speaker 2: was he was he was fed up and wanted to

1161
01:32:52,439 --> 01:32:56,920
Speaker 2: go back to Oklahoma. So they went and I stayed,

1162
01:32:58,439 --> 01:33:02,400
Speaker 2: and I was trying to go to sam Rindino Valley

1163
01:33:02,479 --> 01:33:05,599
Speaker 2: College and I'm not a very good student, and I'm

1164
01:33:05,640 --> 01:33:09,639
Speaker 2: skipping classes and I'm going. In the den of music

1165
01:33:09,760 --> 01:33:13,920
Speaker 2: was a guy named Russell C. Baldwin, you know, fantastic,

1166
01:33:14,920 --> 01:33:20,479
Speaker 2: a concert pianist who had damaged one of his hands

1167
01:33:20,560 --> 01:33:23,479
Speaker 2: in a car wreck and it had cost him his career.

1168
01:33:23,640 --> 01:33:28,000
Speaker 2: So now he's teaching. He wasn't bitter, but my favorite

1169
01:33:28,040 --> 01:33:32,040
Speaker 2: parts of the class would be when he would say,

1170
01:33:32,200 --> 01:33:35,600
Speaker 2: I think today I'm just going to play some Beethoven

1171
01:33:35,680 --> 01:33:38,720
Speaker 2: piano sonatus for your kids. And he would sit there

1172
01:33:38,720 --> 01:33:44,600
Speaker 2: and he would play Beethoven, just spellbinding, and then he

1173
01:33:44,640 --> 01:33:47,880
Speaker 2: would say, okay, now for your semester final we're going

1174
01:33:47,960 --> 01:33:51,120
Speaker 2: to do We're gonna set He said, you each pick

1175
01:33:51,160 --> 01:33:54,680
Speaker 2: a poem, and you and you write a choral arrangement

1176
01:33:55,400 --> 01:33:58,800
Speaker 2: and a piano accompaniment. And he said that'll be your

1177
01:33:58,840 --> 01:34:03,120
Speaker 2: final grade. So I went in, and I'd been to

1178
01:34:03,240 --> 01:34:09,320
Speaker 2: class about three times. I wrote this arrangement for choir,

1179
01:34:10,880 --> 01:34:14,360
Speaker 2: and I think the text was when I am old

1180
01:34:14,439 --> 01:34:17,200
Speaker 2: and gray, and when you were old and gray and

1181
01:34:17,320 --> 01:34:19,599
Speaker 2: full of sleep and sitting by the fire, take down

1182
01:34:19,640 --> 01:34:25,559
Speaker 2: this book, slowly read and dream, John Keats. I think

1183
01:34:25,600 --> 01:34:29,640
Speaker 2: that's what it was. And he called me into his

1184
01:34:29,800 --> 01:34:33,439
Speaker 2: office that afternoon and I went, uh, oh, you know Russell,

1185
01:34:35,479 --> 01:34:38,160
Speaker 2: the dean of music. And I walked in and he said,

1186
01:34:38,240 --> 01:34:41,960
Speaker 2: sit down, mister Webb, and he said, I see this

1187
01:34:42,160 --> 01:34:46,679
Speaker 2: morning that you were late for class. You were recalcitrant. Again.

1188
01:34:46,840 --> 01:34:50,559
Speaker 2: I didn't even know what recalcitrant meant, but he said

1189
01:34:50,600 --> 01:34:55,679
Speaker 2: I was recalcitrant. And he said, you know, he said,

1190
01:34:56,160 --> 01:34:58,200
Speaker 2: I know that you spend most of your time down

1191
01:34:58,280 --> 01:35:03,120
Speaker 2: in the practice rooms writing. I don't know how he

1192
01:35:03,280 --> 01:35:07,519
Speaker 2: knew that, but he said, you know something, He said,

1193
01:35:07,600 --> 01:35:11,200
Speaker 2: we here at the college, we don't enjoy having you

1194
01:35:11,360 --> 01:35:17,040
Speaker 2: here any more than you enjoy being here. So he said,

1195
01:35:17,840 --> 01:35:21,120
Speaker 2: if you want to be a songwriter, why don't you

1196
01:35:21,240 --> 01:35:26,960
Speaker 2: go to Los Angeles and be a goddamn songwriter And

1197
01:35:27,200 --> 01:35:30,800
Speaker 2: kicked me out of his office. And it was like

1198
01:35:31,760 --> 01:35:37,559
Speaker 2: an epiphody. It was like God spoke to me through

1199
01:35:37,640 --> 01:35:42,040
Speaker 2: my you know, through my dean of music. And when

1200
01:35:42,080 --> 01:35:46,160
Speaker 2: I think back on it, that was probably the thing

1201
01:35:46,320 --> 01:35:49,920
Speaker 2: that propelled me out of that mindset that I had

1202
01:35:49,960 --> 01:35:54,040
Speaker 2: to somehow get this musical education. He said, you know

1203
01:35:54,320 --> 01:35:59,840
Speaker 2: everything he handed He handed me my my test score,

1204
01:36:00,000 --> 01:36:04,600
Speaker 2: and I had an A plus on my original composition

1205
01:36:05,080 --> 01:36:09,000
Speaker 2: and my arranging. And I had an F for the

1206
01:36:09,120 --> 01:36:18,920
Speaker 2: class because of incomplete assignments and absenteeism. So I had

1207
01:36:18,920 --> 01:36:22,000
Speaker 2: an eight plus in the music, but I failed the

1208
01:36:22,560 --> 01:36:31,439
Speaker 2: mechanical demands of being a student. So I was out

1209
01:36:31,520 --> 01:36:36,760
Speaker 2: of there, and I borrowed some money from friends in

1210
01:36:37,000 --> 01:36:41,240
Speaker 2: Newport Beach who had a little extra, bought a Volkswagen

1211
01:36:42,800 --> 01:36:47,160
Speaker 2: and went up to Hollywood and started walking around with

1212
01:36:47,280 --> 01:36:52,400
Speaker 2: a battered portfolio of these songs that I've been writing

1213
01:36:52,520 --> 01:36:57,759
Speaker 2: since age twelve, certainly since I heard that wonderful Jerry

1214
01:36:57,880 --> 01:37:02,200
Speaker 2: k Parts song around look at Me with Glenn Campbell,

1215
01:37:03,240 --> 01:37:07,120
Speaker 2: And I'm looking at Hollywood, and I'm thinking, somewhere in

1216
01:37:07,320 --> 01:37:13,240
Speaker 2: Hollywood Glenn Campbell is right now. I could probably see him.

1217
01:37:13,320 --> 01:37:16,479
Speaker 2: I just knew which building he's in. I could go

1218
01:37:16,640 --> 01:37:19,760
Speaker 2: to it and I could walk in and I would

1219
01:37:19,880 --> 01:37:23,600
Speaker 2: see Glenn Campbell and there was a magic to that.

1220
01:37:25,240 --> 01:37:28,760
Speaker 2: And so I went everywhere, and like I said, I

1221
01:37:28,840 --> 01:37:32,680
Speaker 2: went over to Warner Brothers Music and actually got a

1222
01:37:32,720 --> 01:37:37,160
Speaker 2: couple of cuts with the Everly Brothers through a guy

1223
01:37:37,240 --> 01:37:41,040
Speaker 2: named Dick Blasser. And I thought, well, I'm I'm gonna,

1224
01:37:41,560 --> 01:37:45,000
Speaker 2: I'm gonna, you know, tear this place to pieces. Man,

1225
01:37:46,000 --> 01:37:49,000
Speaker 2: I'm on my way. And then it was weeks and

1226
01:37:49,120 --> 01:37:53,799
Speaker 2: weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks where nothing happened.

1227
01:37:53,800 --> 01:37:56,800
Speaker 2: And finally a friend of mine, Jimmy Stotler, who was

1228
01:37:56,840 --> 01:38:00,559
Speaker 2: a drummer, he said, you know, he said, his label

1229
01:38:00,600 --> 01:38:03,760
Speaker 2: in America. I said, what he says, it's Motown. He said,

1230
01:38:03,880 --> 01:38:06,519
Speaker 2: why don't you go over to Motown? I said, well,

1231
01:38:07,160 --> 01:38:11,360
Speaker 2: Motown is it's he says.

1232
01:38:11,520 --> 01:38:11,760
Speaker 3: I know.

1233
01:38:12,200 --> 01:38:16,080
Speaker 2: I know, he said, but you've done everything else. He said,

1234
01:38:17,479 --> 01:38:21,439
Speaker 2: try it. So I went over there. I went over

1235
01:38:21,520 --> 01:38:25,320
Speaker 2: to Motown, went into the office, these two big doors opened,

1236
01:38:25,800 --> 01:38:29,080
Speaker 2: very fancy office. I sat down with this kind of

1237
01:38:29,240 --> 01:38:33,400
Speaker 2: ratty sort of it was almost like a paper bag

1238
01:38:33,560 --> 01:38:38,519
Speaker 2: full of songs, and talked to the receptionist for a while,

1239
01:38:38,600 --> 01:38:41,080
Speaker 2: and I said, I'd really like to have somebody to

1240
01:38:41,200 --> 01:38:47,280
Speaker 2: get listen to one of my songs. And she's just

1241
01:38:47,400 --> 01:38:49,920
Speaker 2: having lunch, and it was Vicky. She and I got

1242
01:38:49,960 --> 01:38:53,639
Speaker 2: to be really close, and she said, why you poor

1243
01:38:53,760 --> 01:38:57,040
Speaker 2: little sprawling things. She said, We're gonna have to fatten

1244
01:38:57,080 --> 01:39:00,160
Speaker 2: you up. Said, are you going to fade away? She

1245
01:39:00,320 --> 01:39:03,400
Speaker 2: talked to me for a while, and then she said listen.

1246
01:39:03,520 --> 01:39:06,080
Speaker 2: She said, you got a song you really like. I said, yeah,

1247
01:39:07,120 --> 01:39:13,400
Speaker 2: I had one call this time last summer and I said,

1248
01:39:13,600 --> 01:39:16,519
Speaker 2: this one right here, and I had it on a cassette.

1249
01:39:16,840 --> 01:39:19,120
Speaker 2: I actually I had it on a rough reel to reel.

1250
01:39:19,560 --> 01:39:23,120
Speaker 2: We used to have real to reel then. And she

1251
01:39:23,320 --> 01:39:26,400
Speaker 2: went into the office, this big door. She went the

1252
01:39:26,520 --> 01:39:30,960
Speaker 2: inner office. She came right back out and closed the door.

1253
01:39:31,400 --> 01:39:34,559
Speaker 2: A few beats passed, and I hear.

1254
01:39:37,280 --> 01:39:47,400
Speaker 3: This this time less ceremony you need bet the sky

1255
01:39:47,600 --> 01:39:48,880
Speaker 3: would events blue.

1256
01:39:50,720 --> 01:39:54,600
Speaker 2: And I hear my song coming through the door. And

1257
01:39:54,680 --> 01:39:57,360
Speaker 2: then there's a pause, and then the door opens and

1258
01:39:57,439 --> 01:40:00,919
Speaker 2: I see this angelic face. It was a guy, Frank Wilson,

1259
01:40:01,000 --> 01:40:04,280
Speaker 2: and people who are familiar with the town will know

1260
01:40:04,360 --> 01:40:06,960
Speaker 2: who he is. He had a very soft voice and

1261
01:40:07,040 --> 01:40:11,040
Speaker 2: he said which I said, what he said, Well, you

1262
01:40:11,160 --> 01:40:13,960
Speaker 2: come in here please, and I said, I said I'm sorry.

1263
01:40:14,080 --> 01:40:19,720
Speaker 2: He said, would you come in here please? And I

1264
01:40:19,880 --> 01:40:24,800
Speaker 2: said okay, And that was it. The door opened and

1265
01:40:24,960 --> 01:40:29,040
Speaker 2: I walked in and life. Life was never the same

1266
01:40:29,120 --> 01:40:32,920
Speaker 2: after that. I worked there. I was under contract for

1267
01:40:33,040 --> 01:40:36,840
Speaker 2: two years. I got a cut on a Supremes album.

1268
01:40:36,920 --> 01:40:41,440
Speaker 2: It was a Christmas album called Merry Christmas from the Supremes.

1269
01:40:43,240 --> 01:40:52,360
Speaker 2: I worked with Brenda Holloway, I worked with Tony Martin.

1270
01:40:52,439 --> 01:40:54,240
Speaker 2: They had signed they would they would send all the

1271
01:40:54,360 --> 01:40:57,080
Speaker 2: white artists to me, and I have to tell you,

1272
01:40:57,200 --> 01:41:00,680
Speaker 2: they treated me like a prince. They really gave me

1273
01:41:00,760 --> 01:41:02,840
Speaker 2: the keys to the kingdom there. They gave me the

1274
01:41:03,200 --> 01:41:07,439
Speaker 2: education that I really needed. I got it motown. I

1275
01:41:07,600 --> 01:41:11,200
Speaker 2: learned to work a board, I learned the parts of

1276
01:41:11,280 --> 01:41:17,360
Speaker 2: the song that were important, the hook, and they were

1277
01:41:17,520 --> 01:41:22,160
Speaker 2: endlessly patient with me. And I wrote a lot of

1278
01:41:22,240 --> 01:41:25,280
Speaker 2: songs there. I walked out. When I left two years later,

1279
01:41:26,280 --> 01:41:29,519
Speaker 2: they said, listen, you've tried hard here, but we don't

1280
01:41:29,520 --> 01:41:31,759
Speaker 2: think we're ever going to be able to use these songs.

1281
01:41:31,760 --> 01:41:34,679
Speaker 2: And I said, here, take this song up, up and away.

1282
01:41:34,800 --> 01:41:37,760
Speaker 2: We're not going to use that. They said, take this.

1283
01:41:37,920 --> 01:41:40,040
Speaker 2: By the time we get to Phoenix. I'd written for

1284
01:41:40,240 --> 01:41:44,240
Speaker 2: Paul Peterson, who's like a kid who appeared on the

1285
01:41:44,360 --> 01:41:49,000
Speaker 2: Donner Egio, but apparently he didn't like it, so they

1286
01:41:49,120 --> 01:41:51,720
Speaker 2: gave me Up, Up and Away. By the time I

1287
01:41:51,760 --> 01:41:59,599
Speaker 2: get to Phoenix Galveston, didn't we all the early songs,

1288
01:42:00,240 --> 01:42:04,880
Speaker 2: not Wichita because I wrote that for Glant. So I

1289
01:42:05,000 --> 01:42:08,240
Speaker 2: walked out of there with four or five hit records

1290
01:42:08,240 --> 01:42:12,439
Speaker 2: in my knapsack, didn't know it at the time, and

1291
01:42:12,600 --> 01:42:14,679
Speaker 2: went to work for Johnny Rivers Music.

1292
01:42:22,479 --> 01:42:24,120
Speaker 1: How'd you meet Johnny Rivers.

1293
01:42:25,520 --> 01:42:28,760
Speaker 2: Through Mark Gordon who was the president of Motown at

1294
01:42:28,800 --> 01:42:30,519
Speaker 2: that time, and he knew I was looking for a

1295
01:42:30,640 --> 01:42:42,360
Speaker 2: gig and he bought out my contract. You know, it's

1296
01:42:42,479 --> 01:42:47,800
Speaker 2: crazy they he bought those songs. I was just telling

1297
01:42:47,880 --> 01:42:51,040
Speaker 2: you about all those hits. He bought those songs. There

1298
01:42:51,040 --> 01:42:55,120
Speaker 2: were about ten of them, and he bought my contract

1299
01:42:55,240 --> 01:43:00,920
Speaker 2: for fifteen thousand dollars. And the fifteenth thousand dollars I

1300
01:43:01,120 --> 01:43:06,080
Speaker 2: had to pay back out of my royalties, and the first,

1301
01:43:06,760 --> 01:43:09,719
Speaker 2: the first hit I ever had, was Up, Up and Away,

1302
01:43:10,520 --> 01:43:13,719
Speaker 2: and my royalties paid back. I paid back my fifteen

1303
01:43:13,800 --> 01:43:18,360
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and I bought a grand piano and that

1304
01:43:18,640 --> 01:43:23,040
Speaker 2: was my furniture. I had a little house in Laurel Canyon.

1305
01:43:23,120 --> 01:43:26,240
Speaker 2: Now there's a lot of to do about Laurel Canyon,

1306
01:43:26,320 --> 01:43:28,479
Speaker 2: and this one was there, and this one lived there,

1307
01:43:28,479 --> 01:43:31,160
Speaker 2: and I lived there too. I mean quietly. I'm not

1308
01:43:31,280 --> 01:43:33,400
Speaker 2: in the documentary, I'm not in the book. I'm not

1309
01:43:33,640 --> 01:43:35,720
Speaker 2: the thing. But I used to walk down to the

1310
01:43:35,800 --> 01:43:38,559
Speaker 2: country store, get my groceries and walk back up there,

1311
01:43:39,439 --> 01:43:43,200
Speaker 2: wrote things like I wrote MacArthur Park there and the

1312
01:43:43,320 --> 01:43:46,080
Speaker 2: only furniture I had was a bunch of mind you

1313
01:43:46,200 --> 01:43:50,800
Speaker 2: we were hippies. But I had a bunch of cushions,

1314
01:43:51,160 --> 01:43:54,840
Speaker 2: different sized cushions pushed up underneath the piano, and I

1315
01:43:55,000 --> 01:43:58,759
Speaker 2: slept under there. So I was sleeping under my piano.

1316
01:43:58,880 --> 01:44:02,080
Speaker 2: And I just roll out in the morning, sometimes take

1317
01:44:02,120 --> 01:44:05,280
Speaker 2: a shower, and sit down and start writing music.

1318
01:44:05,520 --> 01:44:05,920
Speaker 1: And I was.

1319
01:44:07,520 --> 01:44:11,400
Speaker 2: I was probably writing at least I'm gonna say I

1320
01:44:11,439 --> 01:44:13,800
Speaker 2: would say three songs a week, but I'll say two

1321
01:44:13,880 --> 01:44:17,400
Speaker 2: to three. At least two or three songs a week

1322
01:44:17,720 --> 01:44:21,840
Speaker 2: I would write. And they weren't written for anybody. They

1323
01:44:21,880 --> 01:44:26,839
Speaker 2: had no destination. They were just it was just pouring

1324
01:44:26,960 --> 01:44:30,560
Speaker 2: out my feelings for this girl or that girl. I

1325
01:44:30,680 --> 01:44:34,160
Speaker 2: had all these tragic romances, that whole row of them.

1326
01:44:35,240 --> 01:44:40,560
Speaker 2: And it was a very very you know, like a

1327
01:44:40,720 --> 01:44:44,759
Speaker 2: difficult relationship or a disappointing relationship is a gold mine

1328
01:44:45,680 --> 01:44:49,680
Speaker 2: for a songwriter. They'll all tell you, you know, you

1329
01:44:49,760 --> 01:44:52,360
Speaker 2: don't you're not gonna make it until some chick really

1330
01:44:52,600 --> 01:44:56,320
Speaker 2: busts you up, man, and then then you're gonna then

1331
01:44:56,400 --> 01:44:59,360
Speaker 2: you're gonna be fine, you know. But you know, you

1332
01:44:59,479 --> 01:45:05,479
Speaker 2: got some you gotta do some living. So Johnny and

1333
01:45:05,600 --> 01:45:08,720
Speaker 2: I I moved into his house and stayed in the

1334
01:45:08,800 --> 01:45:12,560
Speaker 2: back room, and we used to get on his motorcycle

1335
01:45:12,560 --> 01:45:16,000
Speaker 2: and go down to the Whiskey of Go Go and, uh,

1336
01:45:17,600 --> 01:45:23,759
Speaker 2: listen to John Lee Hooker listened to Smoky Smokey Robinson

1337
01:45:23,760 --> 01:45:26,120
Speaker 2: and the Miracles. Can you imagine that in the Whiskey

1338
01:45:26,200 --> 01:45:29,599
Speaker 2: of Go Go, it's probably about as big as this studio.

1339
01:45:30,840 --> 01:45:34,080
Speaker 2: And uh, there they were, you know, and with all

1340
01:45:34,200 --> 01:45:36,960
Speaker 2: the moves and the you know, all the motown stuff

1341
01:45:37,040 --> 01:45:41,320
Speaker 2: and the and the outfits and and uh the go

1342
01:45:41,479 --> 01:45:44,840
Speaker 2: go go girls in the Cages, which were really originated

1343
01:45:45,120 --> 01:45:48,320
Speaker 2: at Whisky at the Whiskey, That's where that came from.

1344
01:45:49,040 --> 01:45:53,120
Speaker 2: The Girls in the Cages and psychedelic light shows all

1345
01:45:53,160 --> 01:45:58,400
Speaker 2: over the wall and stuff, and uh, we we've got

1346
01:45:58,479 --> 01:46:04,360
Speaker 2: we've got to be good friends. And uh he had

1347
01:46:04,479 --> 01:46:08,879
Speaker 2: me working with this group, Fifth Dimension, And Johnny Rivers

1348
01:46:10,960 --> 01:46:14,680
Speaker 2: remembered a relationship he had with Glenn Campbell. They had

1349
01:46:14,760 --> 01:46:19,959
Speaker 2: done an album called The Long Black Veil for Mercury Records,

1350
01:46:20,640 --> 01:46:22,880
Speaker 2: and he remembered that Glenn was such a great guy,

1351
01:46:23,120 --> 01:46:26,840
Speaker 2: such beautiful person, and such an accomplished musician. He said,

1352
01:46:26,880 --> 01:46:29,479
Speaker 2: you should have a hit record, and Glenn said, I

1353
01:46:29,600 --> 01:46:33,960
Speaker 2: just can't find the right song. And Johnny, after he

1354
01:46:34,080 --> 01:46:37,240
Speaker 2: signed me, one of the first things he did is

1355
01:46:37,280 --> 01:46:39,880
Speaker 2: cut by the time I get to Phoenix. And he

1356
01:46:40,160 --> 01:46:44,880
Speaker 2: called Glenn, and Glenn and Al Delorie came over to

1357
01:46:45,040 --> 01:46:51,040
Speaker 2: his house and heard his that they used to call it.

1358
01:46:53,040 --> 01:46:55,120
Speaker 2: It was a it was a rough master, is what

1359
01:46:55,240 --> 01:46:55,600
Speaker 2: it was.

1360
01:46:55,800 --> 01:46:56,000
Speaker 1: It was.

1361
01:46:56,200 --> 01:46:59,679
Speaker 2: It was a it was a record. It was a record.

1362
01:46:59,720 --> 01:47:02,640
Speaker 2: You know, you put it. So he put it on there, Uh,

1363
01:47:03,120 --> 01:47:07,080
Speaker 2: test pressing, and he put it on the thing and

1364
01:47:07,200 --> 01:47:09,519
Speaker 2: he and third song image like by the time we

1365
01:47:09,600 --> 01:47:11,519
Speaker 2: get to Phoenix. He lined it up and played it

1366
01:47:12,160 --> 01:47:14,000
Speaker 2: and that both of them just sat there with their

1367
01:47:14,080 --> 01:47:17,720
Speaker 2: mouths open. And this is the way the story was

1368
01:47:17,800 --> 01:47:20,240
Speaker 2: told me that Al de Laurie said, I don't get it.

1369
01:47:20,320 --> 01:47:23,240
Speaker 2: He says, you know you've got a hit. You know,

1370
01:47:23,400 --> 01:47:29,840
Speaker 2: Johnny had this. Can you tell me how much you

1371
01:47:30,000 --> 01:47:36,360
Speaker 2: missed me? Beautiful, beautiful thing, poor side of Town? And

1372
01:47:36,680 --> 01:47:39,840
Speaker 2: I think it was number one? And Ali said, I

1373
01:47:39,920 --> 01:47:42,600
Speaker 2: don't get it. He said, you know this is a hit.

1374
01:47:42,720 --> 01:47:44,880
Speaker 2: He said, this is a hit, isn't it?

1375
01:47:45,120 --> 01:47:45,320
Speaker 4: You know?

1376
01:47:46,400 --> 01:47:51,080
Speaker 2: And Glenn said yeah. He said, it feels pretty good.

1377
01:47:51,120 --> 01:47:57,679
Speaker 2: But why are you giving it to us? And he said, guys,

1378
01:47:57,920 --> 01:48:01,080
Speaker 2: He said, you can only have one number one record

1379
01:48:01,120 --> 01:48:04,759
Speaker 2: at a time. He said, but what he was really

1380
01:48:04,920 --> 01:48:10,160
Speaker 2: doing was doing something for me. He was doing doing

1381
01:48:10,240 --> 01:48:13,120
Speaker 2: it well. Of course he's helping himself as well, but

1382
01:48:13,320 --> 01:48:17,240
Speaker 2: he did care about me, and he put me in

1383
01:48:17,400 --> 01:48:20,040
Speaker 2: charge of the fifth dimension. He put me in charge

1384
01:48:20,080 --> 01:48:28,840
Speaker 2: of kind of their day to day rehearsing. And it

1385
01:48:28,960 --> 01:48:31,280
Speaker 2: turned out that they recorded up up in a week.

1386
01:48:31,400 --> 01:48:33,960
Speaker 2: Glenn recorded by the time we get to Phoenix, all

1387
01:48:34,000 --> 01:48:39,280
Speaker 2: of this happened really fast. And so in nineteen sixty seven,

1388
01:48:39,400 --> 01:48:43,879
Speaker 2: that's all you heard. And we went to the Monterey

1389
01:48:43,960 --> 01:48:46,200
Speaker 2: Pop Festival and we played up there. I played up

1390
01:48:46,200 --> 01:48:50,960
Speaker 2: there with a wrecking crew. Hal Blaine, Larry Necktel Joe Osborne,

1391
01:48:54,040 --> 01:48:56,639
Speaker 2: and there was very little. It's not you know, Johnny

1392
01:48:56,760 --> 01:48:59,519
Speaker 2: wasn't even in the film, and he put up twenty

1393
01:48:59,560 --> 01:49:03,040
Speaker 2: five percent of the money and he kind of got

1394
01:49:03,120 --> 01:49:09,439
Speaker 2: screwed on that deal. But I was I was just

1395
01:49:09,840 --> 01:49:15,840
Speaker 2: coming back from the Monterey Pop Festival and hearing two

1396
01:49:16,360 --> 01:49:19,800
Speaker 2: of my songs on the radio at you know, in

1397
01:49:20,000 --> 01:49:25,320
Speaker 2: constant rotation all the time. They were both nominated for

1398
01:49:25,479 --> 01:49:31,200
Speaker 2: Song of the Year by the NARIS Board, and I thought, well,

1399
01:49:32,120 --> 01:49:36,080
Speaker 2: that's unbelievable. First of all, is heart stopping. I mean,

1400
01:49:36,160 --> 01:49:39,519
Speaker 2: I was moving so fast that I was, I was

1401
01:49:39,600 --> 01:49:42,439
Speaker 2: out in front of my airstream. I felt I was

1402
01:49:42,560 --> 01:49:46,240
Speaker 2: like lightheaded, like I could couldn't breathe because I was moving.

1403
01:49:46,880 --> 01:49:52,600
Speaker 2: My career was moving faster than I was, and so

1404
01:49:53,160 --> 01:49:56,439
Speaker 2: I didn't fully grasp what was going on. But I thought,

1405
01:49:57,280 --> 01:50:01,519
Speaker 2: if I'm nominated twice the same category for Song of

1406
01:50:01,600 --> 01:50:07,000
Speaker 2: the Year, I'm gonna lose because the competition was general

1407
01:50:07,080 --> 01:50:11,880
Speaker 2: on my mind by Glenn Campbell that John Hartford song,

1408
01:50:11,920 --> 01:50:16,040
Speaker 2: which is a poem, which is an absolute masterpiece. I

1409
01:50:16,080 --> 01:50:24,400
Speaker 2: would have stole that song a second so and owed

1410
01:50:24,520 --> 01:50:29,800
Speaker 2: to Billy Joe, which was the Jimmy Haskell Spooky String

1411
01:50:29,960 --> 01:50:33,400
Speaker 2: Arrangement and what did Billy Joe McAllister throw off the

1412
01:50:33,479 --> 01:50:40,200
Speaker 2: Tallahassee Bridge, Remember that? And so Bobby was pretty hot.

1413
01:50:40,479 --> 01:50:45,759
Speaker 2: I thought she was that that was a very original record,

1414
01:50:46,680 --> 01:50:48,919
Speaker 2: and I think he got a Grammy for that arrangement.

1415
01:50:49,160 --> 01:50:56,280
Speaker 2: He should have. So I figured one of those songs

1416
01:50:56,320 --> 01:50:59,639
Speaker 2: will win. Half of my people are going to vote

1417
01:50:59,640 --> 01:51:01,439
Speaker 2: for a up in a way, half of my people

1418
01:51:01,479 --> 01:51:04,839
Speaker 2: are going to vote for Glenn. It's clearly two different

1419
01:51:05,320 --> 01:51:11,320
Speaker 2: groups of people, and so I won't win, but I'm

1420
01:51:11,320 --> 01:51:13,840
Speaker 2: going to go to the ceremony anyway because all my

1421
01:51:13,920 --> 01:51:19,320
Speaker 2: friends are going. And I put on my blue Knahru

1422
01:51:19,520 --> 01:51:24,880
Speaker 2: jacket with a silk with a Irish lace shirt underneath

1423
01:51:25,720 --> 01:51:28,400
Speaker 2: and went down there like I was gonna win a

1424
01:51:28,479 --> 01:51:31,519
Speaker 2: Grammy Award, but really didn't think I was. And I

1425
01:51:31,600 --> 01:51:35,960
Speaker 2: kind of leaned up on the back of the auditorium

1426
01:51:36,200 --> 01:51:39,120
Speaker 2: that's where you'll usually find me, like on the fringe,

1427
01:51:40,320 --> 01:51:42,719
Speaker 2: leaned up on the back wall, and just watch things

1428
01:51:42,800 --> 01:51:47,800
Speaker 2: going around, watch what people were doing, and all of

1429
01:51:47,840 --> 01:51:54,680
Speaker 2: a sudden, the Fifth Dimension starts winning Grammy Awards. They

1430
01:51:54,760 --> 01:51:58,920
Speaker 2: won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist Record of

1431
01:51:59,000 --> 01:52:08,240
Speaker 2: the Year Album of the Year, Best Album Cover, Best

1432
01:52:08,360 --> 01:52:11,800
Speaker 2: Choral Arrangement for a Group, on and on and on,

1433
01:52:14,080 --> 01:52:17,880
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, God, bless them, you know, I

1434
01:52:17,960 --> 01:52:21,360
Speaker 2: mean we worked there, I mean we worked hard together

1435
01:52:22,120 --> 01:52:27,639
Speaker 2: to get that, to get that album done. And then

1436
01:52:27,840 --> 01:52:33,080
Speaker 2: also Glenn won a Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance

1437
01:52:33,200 --> 01:52:37,880
Speaker 2: for By the time we get to Phoenix and I'm going, wow,

1438
01:52:37,960 --> 01:52:39,960
Speaker 2: this is shit going to be a pretty good night,

1439
01:52:40,160 --> 01:52:43,439
Speaker 2: even if. But now I'm starting to feel a little

1440
01:52:43,520 --> 01:52:47,040
Speaker 2: left out because everybody has a Grammy except me. And

1441
01:52:47,160 --> 01:52:52,120
Speaker 2: the woman lady stepped up to the microphone and said,

1442
01:52:54,280 --> 01:52:56,360
Speaker 2: and now she said for Song of the Year, which

1443
01:52:56,479 --> 01:53:01,599
Speaker 2: was one of the big awards. She said, Jimmy Webb

1444
01:53:01,760 --> 01:53:04,800
Speaker 2: for Up, Up and Away, And the place just went

1445
01:53:05,160 --> 01:53:13,439
Speaker 2: crazy and I was drunk and Larry nectl hal Blaine

1446
01:53:14,080 --> 01:53:16,680
Speaker 2: both had a hold of me and they escorted me

1447
01:53:16,840 --> 01:53:19,840
Speaker 2: up to the stage, thank god. And I got up

1448
01:53:19,920 --> 01:53:23,439
Speaker 2: there and I got worded, I'm looking around and the

1449
01:53:23,600 --> 01:53:30,080
Speaker 2: flash bulbs are popping it. I mean, I finally got

1450
01:53:30,160 --> 01:53:38,800
Speaker 2: off and on my way back to my ideo, I

1451
01:53:38,960 --> 01:53:46,760
Speaker 2: passed Glenn's table quite by accident. He reached up and

1452
01:53:47,000 --> 01:53:51,639
Speaker 2: grabbed my hand. That was the first time that i'd

1453
01:53:51,680 --> 01:53:57,280
Speaker 2: ever seen him face to face. It was like the

1454
01:53:57,439 --> 01:54:02,679
Speaker 2: Panhandle of Oklahoma, like like just passed before my eyes,

1455
01:54:03,640 --> 01:54:07,320
Speaker 2: you know, the tractor I was driving that day when

1456
01:54:07,360 --> 01:54:10,560
Speaker 2: I heard that Glenn Campbell's song, and it was like,

1457
01:54:10,760 --> 01:54:16,160
Speaker 2: how could this be happening? How could this actually be happening,

1458
01:54:17,960 --> 01:54:23,840
Speaker 2: because it's something that I only imagined could. I thought

1459
01:54:23,960 --> 01:54:27,160
Speaker 2: maybe I would get a couple of songs recorded, you know,

1460
01:54:27,439 --> 01:54:31,200
Speaker 2: I thought some of them were pretty good, But all

1461
01:54:31,240 --> 01:54:33,360
Speaker 2: of a sudden they were They were giving me the

1462
01:54:33,480 --> 01:54:44,240
Speaker 2: keys to Hollywood, and it was it was heady, overpowering experience,

1463
01:54:44,320 --> 01:54:48,400
Speaker 2: and and I lost over the fun. In the following

1464
01:54:48,480 --> 01:54:50,520
Speaker 2: months and years for a while, I think I may

1465
01:54:50,560 --> 01:54:56,280
Speaker 2: have lost some of my equilibrium. I I remember being

1466
01:54:57,080 --> 01:55:09,040
Speaker 2: just outraged that I wasn't sort of recognized as a

1467
01:55:09,160 --> 01:55:14,040
Speaker 2: California songwriter like Jerry Beckley and Dewy Ban all in America,

1468
01:55:14,720 --> 01:55:20,840
Speaker 2: like the Eagles, like like all those guys who you

1469
01:55:20,960 --> 01:55:26,640
Speaker 2: know live we all lived in the same place. That's

1470
01:55:27,160 --> 01:55:29,680
Speaker 2: that's that's that's where the anger came from that I

1471
01:55:30,120 --> 01:55:36,040
Speaker 2: was talking about earlier. But I certainly wasn't ashamed of

1472
01:55:36,120 --> 01:55:41,120
Speaker 2: my association with Glenn or the Fifth Dimension still hold

1473
01:55:41,200 --> 01:55:44,920
Speaker 2: him in the highest regard of probably the top one

1474
01:55:45,040 --> 01:55:50,000
Speaker 2: percent performers that I ever worked with. But I almost

1475
01:55:50,080 --> 01:56:00,360
Speaker 2: immediately had access to mister Satra, and you know, country

1476
01:56:00,400 --> 01:56:06,240
Speaker 2: boy makes good. I moved into the Philippine Embassy, which

1477
01:56:06,400 --> 01:56:10,800
Speaker 2: was temporarily vacant. It was on a street called Comino

1478
01:56:10,880 --> 01:56:14,400
Speaker 2: Paul Merrow, and it's a huge mansion. I never even

1479
01:56:14,640 --> 01:56:18,440
Speaker 2: seen a mansion like this, but it was for rent

1480
01:56:18,520 --> 01:56:20,600
Speaker 2: and I rented it, and I had a bunch of people,

1481
01:56:20,720 --> 01:56:24,200
Speaker 2: a bunch of friends, and so there were a lot

1482
01:56:24,280 --> 01:56:26,280
Speaker 2: of rooms in there, and I think I had about

1483
01:56:26,360 --> 01:56:30,720
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five people living with me because I embraced

1484
01:56:30,800 --> 01:56:38,760
Speaker 2: the whole hippie the whole ideology of love is all

1485
01:56:38,840 --> 01:56:42,880
Speaker 2: we need. All we need is love, as proposed by

1486
01:56:43,440 --> 01:56:49,480
Speaker 2: mister Lennan McCartney. It turned out that we didn't need

1487
01:56:49,520 --> 01:56:53,840
Speaker 2: a few other things besides love. But at that time

1488
01:56:54,200 --> 01:56:56,440
Speaker 2: I was spreading the wealth and I had a lot

1489
01:56:56,480 --> 01:56:59,040
Speaker 2: of friends. I've gone to college, I'd been to choir

1490
01:57:00,040 --> 01:57:09,280
Speaker 2: and inquire with and some resolved set in that I

1491
01:57:09,400 --> 01:57:11,720
Speaker 2: was gonna and I wasn't going to leave any of

1492
01:57:11,800 --> 01:57:16,000
Speaker 2: these people behind. I was going to bring them along.

1493
01:57:16,200 --> 01:57:18,720
Speaker 2: I didn't know where I was going, but wherever I

1494
01:57:18,920 --> 01:57:20,720
Speaker 2: was going, I was going to bring them with me.

1495
01:57:22,000 --> 01:57:25,920
Speaker 2: So I had them all in this big mansion and

1496
01:57:26,040 --> 01:57:30,640
Speaker 2: I'm doing my best to get them record deals, get

1497
01:57:30,680 --> 01:57:34,360
Speaker 2: them signed. I signed some of them to my own label.

1498
01:57:35,720 --> 01:57:38,400
Speaker 2: I actually put out a Christmas record with the choir,

1499
01:57:38,800 --> 01:57:42,880
Speaker 2: but the San Bernino Valley College Choir, and I just

1500
01:57:43,040 --> 01:57:48,920
Speaker 2: had this feeling that I should bring everyone else along,

1501
01:57:49,720 --> 01:57:53,800
Speaker 2: like the closest thing to it is we all live

1502
01:57:53,880 --> 01:57:59,680
Speaker 2: in the yellow submarine and yellows submarine submarine, all my

1503
01:57:59,800 --> 01:58:10,600
Speaker 2: friend friends will be aboard. And it didn't work. I couldn't.

1504
01:58:10,720 --> 01:58:15,960
Speaker 2: I couldn't do it. I was able to do get

1505
01:58:16,000 --> 01:58:18,600
Speaker 2: some records out for people. I got a couple of

1506
01:58:18,680 --> 01:58:24,080
Speaker 2: people signed, and I maintained some of the friendships that

1507
01:58:25,200 --> 01:58:26,120
Speaker 2: that I made there.

1508
01:58:26,320 --> 01:58:26,520
Speaker 1: I was.

1509
01:58:26,680 --> 01:58:30,840
Speaker 2: I was instrumental in getting Freddie Tackett started in LA

1510
01:58:31,440 --> 01:58:34,520
Speaker 2: who eventually joined Little Feet, still still in a little fat.

1511
01:58:36,480 --> 01:58:41,440
Speaker 2: I was able to do some things, but at some

1512
01:58:41,720 --> 01:58:46,879
Speaker 2: point I began to feel I suppose, well, I don't suppose,

1513
01:58:46,960 --> 01:58:50,720
Speaker 2: I know, I know that I felt guilty about my success.

1514
01:58:52,360 --> 01:58:55,600
Speaker 2: I felt there's a lot of people out there who,

1515
01:58:57,120 --> 01:58:59,800
Speaker 2: you know, really did go ahead and get their degrees

1516
01:59:00,080 --> 01:59:05,640
Speaker 2: and music, and there's people who can play piano better

1517
01:59:05,720 --> 01:59:09,120
Speaker 2: than me and can sing better than me, and there's

1518
01:59:09,160 --> 01:59:13,120
Speaker 2: people who write songs better than me. And it was

1519
01:59:13,280 --> 01:59:16,080
Speaker 2: just my turn. It was just somehow or other money.

1520
01:59:16,600 --> 01:59:23,760
Speaker 2: My number came up, and I think I'm I think

1521
01:59:23,840 --> 01:59:28,080
Speaker 2: I'm all. I had enough adversity in my life that

1522
01:59:28,240 --> 01:59:31,760
Speaker 2: I think I'm over the feeling guilty about it part.

1523
01:59:39,840 --> 01:59:42,680
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this incredible success.

1524
01:59:43,680 --> 01:59:52,040
Speaker 2: What about writing thereafter? You inhibited? Well, not particularly. I

1525
01:59:52,120 --> 01:59:58,720
Speaker 2: wrote to MacArthur Park afterwards, and I wrote it at

1526
01:59:58,760 --> 02:00:07,400
Speaker 2: the behest of Bones, how who was a legend and

1527
02:00:08,000 --> 02:00:11,040
Speaker 2: as the best tape cutter in Hollywood. That's why they

1528
02:00:11,080 --> 02:00:14,360
Speaker 2: call him Bones. He's a really good producer as well,

1529
02:00:16,200 --> 02:00:19,720
Speaker 2: and he was producing the Association. They were on my

1530
02:00:20,520 --> 02:00:25,080
Speaker 2: list of favorite bands because of they were they they

1531
02:00:25,320 --> 02:00:34,120
Speaker 2: like chords. I have this thing about chords, he said,

1532
02:00:34,880 --> 02:00:37,520
Speaker 2: Do you think called me? He said, do you think

1533
02:00:37,600 --> 02:00:41,840
Speaker 2: that you could do like something like with a classical bent?

1534
02:00:42,000 --> 02:00:42,160
Speaker 6: You know?

1535
02:00:42,240 --> 02:00:44,240
Speaker 2: He said, I want it to be rock and roll.

1536
02:00:45,080 --> 02:00:47,800
Speaker 2: I want it to be contemporary, but I wanted to

1537
02:00:47,880 --> 02:00:50,920
Speaker 2: have movements like a symphony, you know, like slow fast, slow,

1538
02:00:52,560 --> 02:00:56,160
Speaker 2: He says, and I really wanted to build like a

1539
02:00:56,720 --> 02:01:06,040
Speaker 2: like a symphony again. And I just laughed and I said, doctor,

1540
02:01:06,200 --> 02:01:09,000
Speaker 2: you came to the right place. I said, I'm the

1541
02:01:09,080 --> 02:01:15,080
Speaker 2: guy who can do this. And I wrote it on

1542
02:01:15,240 --> 02:01:19,000
Speaker 2: that on that piano that I bought with with the

1543
02:01:19,560 --> 02:01:23,520
Speaker 2: up up and away royalties, and I still have it,

1544
02:01:23,640 --> 02:01:25,640
Speaker 2: by the way. It's in storage right now, but I

1545
02:01:25,760 --> 02:01:31,360
Speaker 2: have that act and I uh. I sat there for

1546
02:01:31,440 --> 02:01:33,760
Speaker 2: about two or three days working on MacArthur Park.

1547
02:01:35,480 --> 02:01:35,720
Speaker 6: I was.

1548
02:01:35,880 --> 02:01:37,560
Speaker 2: I was really kind of proud of it.

1549
02:01:38,320 --> 02:01:38,640
Speaker 6: Mm hm.

1550
02:01:40,120 --> 02:01:44,640
Speaker 2: And I took it down at the studio to play

1551
02:01:44,680 --> 02:01:48,160
Speaker 2: it for the association and I go and I spread

1552
02:01:48,200 --> 02:01:50,680
Speaker 2: it out and it looks like it's it looks like

1553
02:01:50,960 --> 02:01:55,040
Speaker 2: an albatross. This music is like all over this big

1554
02:01:55,720 --> 02:02:00,600
Speaker 2: sheet with wings and they're going, oh who and I

1555
02:02:01,320 --> 02:02:04,520
Speaker 2: and I sat down to start playing this thing. When

1556
02:02:04,560 --> 02:02:09,280
Speaker 2: I did, my clothes were wretched, the clothes I had.

1557
02:02:11,800 --> 02:02:14,920
Speaker 2: When I sat down, I ripped the bottom out of

1558
02:02:15,000 --> 02:02:18,280
Speaker 2: my jeans and you could hear it. It was like

1559
02:02:18,400 --> 02:02:22,360
Speaker 2: Douglas Fairbanks sticking a dagger into a sail and then

1560
02:02:22,520 --> 02:02:30,040
Speaker 2: sliding down the sail. It was this long, ripping, embarrassing sound.

1561
02:02:30,320 --> 02:02:33,520
Speaker 2: And they all cracked it up and laughed and then

1562
02:02:33,560 --> 02:02:48,200
Speaker 2: I started playing it and I sang, I recall the

1563
02:02:48,360 --> 02:02:54,960
Speaker 2: yellow cotton dress. It was phoning like a way on

1564
02:02:55,160 --> 02:03:06,120
Speaker 2: the ground round and they turned me down. They turned

1565
02:03:06,160 --> 02:03:12,280
Speaker 2: it down. One reason they turned me down is I

1566
02:03:12,360 --> 02:03:14,919
Speaker 2: think it was just too much for them to grasp

1567
02:03:15,440 --> 02:03:19,960
Speaker 2: as to learn it in one bite, that it was

1568
02:03:20,040 --> 02:03:22,560
Speaker 2: going to take. They were at the end of an album,

1569
02:03:22,680 --> 02:03:25,240
Speaker 2: not the beginning. They were at the end. They just

1570
02:03:25,360 --> 02:03:28,080
Speaker 2: needed a song to nail down the end of this album.

1571
02:03:28,600 --> 02:03:31,240
Speaker 2: And Boone's house said that you guys ought to cut it.

1572
02:03:31,960 --> 02:03:36,200
Speaker 2: He said, well, you don't think so, and they did

1573
02:03:36,280 --> 02:03:42,920
Speaker 2: something else. And the story, which this is a true story,

1574
02:03:43,000 --> 02:03:47,000
Speaker 2: he told them. He said, the day that MacArthur Park

1575
02:03:47,440 --> 02:03:50,880
Speaker 2: goes into the top ten, he said, I'm resigning as

1576
02:03:50,960 --> 02:03:54,880
Speaker 2: your producer. Now, this is not a made up story.

1577
02:03:55,560 --> 02:04:01,000
Speaker 2: This is what he told the band. And months went

1578
02:04:01,120 --> 02:04:07,280
Speaker 2: by and somehow there's you know, stories endless. But I

1579
02:04:07,560 --> 02:04:10,800
Speaker 2: hooked up with this crazy Irish actor and Richard Eiris

1580
02:04:11,840 --> 02:04:20,840
Speaker 2: who taught me Olympic class professional drinking, and invited me

1581
02:04:20,960 --> 02:04:22,360
Speaker 2: over to London and said.

1582
02:04:22,280 --> 02:04:25,880
Speaker 6: Oh, I'll make a record. We'll make a record and

1583
02:04:26,360 --> 02:04:30,720
Speaker 6: it'll be a hit and I'll be a rock star, you.

1584
02:04:30,760 --> 02:04:33,680
Speaker 2: Know, And I'm going, yeah, right, But I don't care.

1585
02:04:34,120 --> 02:04:37,840
Speaker 2: I love the guy. He's a he's a blast to

1586
02:04:37,920 --> 02:04:42,440
Speaker 2: be around. We're always in a Phantom five that he

1587
02:04:42,560 --> 02:04:46,360
Speaker 2: bought from Princess Margaret. And he's still got the emblems

1588
02:04:46,440 --> 02:04:49,200
Speaker 2: on the Royal of the Royal Household on the radiator.

1589
02:04:49,680 --> 02:04:53,480
Speaker 2: So every gate opens everywhere we go. They just opened

1590
02:04:53,520 --> 02:04:58,360
Speaker 2: the gate, you know, it's and so it was hysterical

1591
02:04:58,520 --> 02:05:02,960
Speaker 2: fun for a long time. We went to Ireland to

1592
02:05:03,120 --> 02:05:11,680
Speaker 2: kill Key Limerick, which is his own hometown, and meanwhile,

1593
02:05:11,840 --> 02:05:17,720
Speaker 2: as a hobby, were working on this record. And I remember.

1594
02:05:17,800 --> 02:05:20,400
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about Richard was that when we first

1595
02:05:20,480 --> 02:05:25,800
Speaker 2: started out, we'd bring Roughs in from the studio and

1596
02:05:25,960 --> 02:05:27,920
Speaker 2: we'd be listening and he'd say, haw.

1597
02:05:27,920 --> 02:05:33,400
Speaker 6: Tom, see, I think the voice is too loud. It's

1598
02:05:33,440 --> 02:05:36,240
Speaker 6: too loud. We need to turn up the orchestra.

1599
02:05:36,800 --> 02:05:42,080
Speaker 2: And this was because he was insecure about his voice. Obviously,

1600
02:05:42,600 --> 02:05:47,800
Speaker 2: even though you just start in Camelot, that Alan J.

1601
02:05:47,960 --> 02:05:52,680
Speaker 2: Lerner score, he got through that pretty well, I thought.

1602
02:05:54,160 --> 02:06:00,920
Speaker 2: And then as the record progressed, his personality became to change,

1603
02:06:02,280 --> 02:06:04,240
Speaker 2: and finally towards the end he was saying.

1604
02:06:04,280 --> 02:06:07,360
Speaker 4: Ah, Jimmy Webb, he said, you've done it again. You've

1605
02:06:07,400 --> 02:06:10,840
Speaker 4: got the orchestra too loud. He said, you're covering up

1606
02:06:10,920 --> 02:06:14,680
Speaker 4: my voice. He said, why are you covering up my voice? Said,

1607
02:06:14,720 --> 02:06:17,000
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not covering up your voice. I'm just

1608
02:06:17,240 --> 02:06:20,920
Speaker 4: mixing the record. He said, well, my voice, you know,

1609
02:06:21,280 --> 02:06:25,120
Speaker 4: my mighty voice. It needs to be louder, you know,

1610
02:06:25,320 --> 02:06:26,640
Speaker 4: if I'm going to be a pop star.

1611
02:06:28,360 --> 02:06:35,120
Speaker 2: So he went from no confidence to way too much confidence.

1612
02:06:36,120 --> 02:06:39,840
Speaker 2: And I'm doing the record kind of tongue in cheek

1613
02:06:39,920 --> 02:06:43,040
Speaker 2: and thinking, well, this is going to be a fun

1614
02:06:43,600 --> 02:06:46,720
Speaker 2: thing to do, and then I'll get back to Hollywood

1615
02:06:46,720 --> 02:06:50,520
Speaker 2: and I'll get back to the real, to the real

1616
02:06:50,640 --> 02:06:55,680
Speaker 2: thing that I do. And I'm telling you, when that

1617
02:06:55,920 --> 02:07:00,520
Speaker 2: thing came out, it was like a UFO, nobody doing

1618
02:07:00,600 --> 02:07:03,560
Speaker 2: what to think about it. But we back in those days,

1619
02:07:03,720 --> 02:07:07,760
Speaker 2: we had and I'm sure you'll remember what we called

1620
02:07:07,960 --> 02:07:13,720
Speaker 2: underground radio or FM radio sometimes and they would play anything.

1621
02:07:14,000 --> 02:07:17,560
Speaker 2: They didn't care. I mean they the disc jockeys actually

1622
02:07:18,480 --> 02:07:22,800
Speaker 2: could play what they wanted. This was before the playlist

1623
02:07:23,000 --> 02:07:28,600
Speaker 2: became iron bound, you know, law that you couldn't break,

1624
02:07:28,680 --> 02:07:32,240
Speaker 2: you couldn't put any you couldn't you know how it

1625
02:07:33,200 --> 02:07:36,440
Speaker 2: came to be that disc jockeys could no longer play

1626
02:07:36,520 --> 02:07:39,120
Speaker 2: the records they wanted to play. They had to play

1627
02:07:39,200 --> 02:07:42,760
Speaker 2: the list. Well, that's what they were doing. They were

1628
02:07:42,760 --> 02:07:46,480
Speaker 2: playing the list and they weren't going to play MacArthur Park.

1629
02:07:46,560 --> 02:07:50,240
Speaker 2: But underground they were playing it because they were playing

1630
02:07:50,280 --> 02:07:52,840
Speaker 2: the Long Doors version of Light My Fire, and they

1631
02:07:52,880 --> 02:07:56,560
Speaker 2: were playing the long Bob Dylan version of All Along

1632
02:07:56,680 --> 02:07:58,840
Speaker 2: the watch Tower. And there were several records out there

1633
02:07:58,880 --> 02:08:04,680
Speaker 2: that were six and it's sixties touching seven, and so

1634
02:08:04,840 --> 02:08:11,800
Speaker 2: they decide they'll play MacArthur Park. And some somewhere up

1635
02:08:12,040 --> 02:08:16,600
Speaker 2: somewhere in heaven, somebody punched a button and a station

1636
02:08:16,760 --> 02:08:19,360
Speaker 2: in the Midwest went on it in the in the

1637
02:08:19,520 --> 02:08:23,800
Speaker 2: afternoon and played a played the whole record in the

1638
02:08:24,240 --> 02:08:28,840
Speaker 2: switchboard lit up. People said, what was that? Play that again?

1639
02:08:30,400 --> 02:08:32,440
Speaker 2: And the next thing, you know, you have you know

1640
02:08:32,800 --> 02:08:36,760
Speaker 2: we used to call a breakout where you have it

1641
02:08:36,880 --> 02:08:40,960
Speaker 2: goes viral, like stations are picking it up. They're beginning

1642
02:08:41,040 --> 02:08:44,120
Speaker 2: to pick it up. It's fine, it's not it's not

1643
02:08:44,280 --> 02:08:47,360
Speaker 2: a sure thing, but it's like, well this is interesting.

1644
02:08:48,040 --> 02:08:52,720
Speaker 2: We've got like five top forty stations in the Midwest

1645
02:08:52,840 --> 02:08:57,960
Speaker 2: on MacArthur park the whole version, and they're altering their

1646
02:08:58,880 --> 02:09:02,280
Speaker 2: commercial schedule and they're changing all kinds of stuff that

1647
02:09:03,640 --> 02:09:07,520
Speaker 2: these stations don't do this. They don't they don't change

1648
02:09:07,600 --> 02:09:12,640
Speaker 2: their whole way of playing records. But it was seven

1649
02:09:12,760 --> 02:09:20,040
Speaker 2: minutes twenty one seconds long the original. Now you could

1650
02:09:20,120 --> 02:09:24,800
Speaker 2: not predict what was going to happen next because I'll

1651
02:09:24,920 --> 02:09:27,520
Speaker 2: just jump to the day that Ron Jacobs, who used

1652
02:09:27,520 --> 02:09:30,240
Speaker 2: to be a director, came in in sam Rendino, where

1653
02:09:30,280 --> 02:09:34,000
Speaker 2: I went to college. When Ron Jacobs called me at

1654
02:09:34,080 --> 02:09:39,720
Speaker 2: home instead, Hey, Jimmy, he said, we've got this MacArthur

1655
02:09:39,840 --> 02:09:42,200
Speaker 2: Parker record over here, and he said we'd like to

1656
02:09:42,280 --> 02:09:44,240
Speaker 2: go on it. And I said, well, have you got

1657
02:09:45,320 --> 02:09:50,680
Speaker 2: cag J was the hottest top forty radio station in

1658
02:09:50,840 --> 02:10:01,160
Speaker 2: the country, and the real Don Steele was their top

1659
02:10:01,280 --> 02:10:07,960
Speaker 2: jock over there. And they said, the only thing is

1660
02:10:08,320 --> 02:10:10,680
Speaker 2: we want you to edit it because we can't play

1661
02:10:10,760 --> 02:10:13,880
Speaker 2: seven minutes twenty We can't play seven minutes and twenty

1662
02:10:13,960 --> 02:10:18,520
Speaker 2: one seconds on cage J. We can't do it. You know,

1663
02:10:18,640 --> 02:10:22,080
Speaker 2: they won't let us do it. Bill Drake won't let

1664
02:10:22,200 --> 02:10:24,560
Speaker 2: us do it. Bill Drake was like doing all the

1665
02:10:24,640 --> 02:10:34,360
Speaker 2: playlist and Bill Drake was was programming fifteen hundred radio stations.

1666
02:10:35,520 --> 02:10:41,320
Speaker 2: The fifteen hundred radio stations were playing his list, and

1667
02:10:41,520 --> 02:10:44,520
Speaker 2: so I said, well, I'll have to think about it. Ron,

1668
02:10:44,600 --> 02:10:48,800
Speaker 2: and I talked to my partner in crime, his fellow

1669
02:10:48,880 --> 02:10:52,840
Speaker 2: name William F. Williams, and I said, what do you

1670
02:10:52,880 --> 02:10:57,920
Speaker 2: think I ought to do? And he said a four

1671
02:10:58,120 --> 02:11:05,360
Speaker 2: letter expletive. Expedit them. They can like play it like

1672
02:11:05,480 --> 02:11:14,440
Speaker 2: it is or piss off. Right. So when Ron called back,

1673
02:11:14,480 --> 02:11:18,160
Speaker 2: I said, Ron, I've thought about it, and for artistic reasons,

1674
02:11:18,200 --> 02:11:20,240
Speaker 2: and I said, it would be nice to have the

1675
02:11:20,320 --> 02:11:22,400
Speaker 2: record on cag J, but I can't. I'm not going

1676
02:11:22,480 --> 02:11:24,680
Speaker 2: to edit it. I said, I don't think it makes

1677
02:11:24,720 --> 02:11:28,480
Speaker 2: any sense when you edit it. It doesn't. It only

1678
02:11:28,760 --> 02:11:31,440
Speaker 2: sounds like something when it's all put together the way

1679
02:11:31,480 --> 02:11:34,800
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be put together. Otherwise it's just it's

1680
02:11:34,920 --> 02:11:38,120
Speaker 2: fragmentary and you don't know what you're listening. He said, okay, okay, okay,

1681
02:11:40,120 --> 02:11:42,200
Speaker 2: he said all right, He said, I'll get back to you.

1682
02:11:42,320 --> 02:11:45,320
Speaker 2: The next day. Case J went on MacArthur Park the

1683
02:11:45,480 --> 02:11:48,640
Speaker 2: full length version, and from then on d it was

1684
02:11:50,000 --> 02:11:53,720
Speaker 2: it was a stone cold hit. It went to number

1685
02:11:53,760 --> 02:11:57,880
Speaker 2: two in America, went to number one in the United

1686
02:11:58,000 --> 02:12:01,080
Speaker 2: Kingdom twice. In other words, it went up to number one,

1687
02:12:01,960 --> 02:12:07,240
Speaker 2: came down, then went back up to number one, and

1688
02:12:08,160 --> 02:12:13,480
Speaker 2: roughly ten years later was number one in the United

1689
02:12:13,480 --> 02:12:21,600
Speaker 2: States with Donna Summers disco version, and so the the

1690
02:12:21,840 --> 02:12:26,760
Speaker 2: you know, this little, this unlikely project with this eye,

1691
02:12:26,840 --> 02:12:28,920
Speaker 2: and he had a big career off of that. He

1692
02:12:29,080 --> 02:12:35,240
Speaker 2: played everywhere, He made several albums, he he did Okay

1693
02:12:35,520 --> 02:12:35,960
Speaker 2: behind it.

1694
02:12:37,920 --> 02:12:40,360
Speaker 1: Tell us the story of wichital alignment.

1695
02:12:43,040 --> 02:12:52,520
Speaker 2: Well, which till i'mann came fairly fairly in close proximity

1696
02:12:52,720 --> 02:12:57,000
Speaker 2: to the other events that I've been describing. But like

1697
02:12:57,160 --> 02:13:04,320
Speaker 2: I said, it was all happening so fast. Glenn called

1698
02:13:04,480 --> 02:13:09,360
Speaker 2: me one day at home and said, you know, I

1699
02:13:09,480 --> 02:13:11,120
Speaker 2: need to follow up for by the time I get

1700
02:13:11,160 --> 02:13:13,440
Speaker 2: to Phoenix. Now, I don't know, there may be people

1701
02:13:13,520 --> 02:13:16,160
Speaker 2: out there who don't know what a follow up is,

1702
02:13:16,280 --> 02:13:19,520
Speaker 2: but I think you know what one is, and uh,

1703
02:13:21,760 --> 02:13:24,560
Speaker 2: just in case there are there are those out there

1704
02:13:24,560 --> 02:13:26,640
Speaker 2: who don't realize the way the record business used to

1705
02:13:26,720 --> 02:13:29,720
Speaker 2: be is if you had a hit record, you would

1706
02:13:29,920 --> 02:13:36,720
Speaker 2: put out another one that had a similar orchestration, similar characteristics,

1707
02:13:37,920 --> 02:13:42,360
Speaker 2: same artist, and it wasn't supposed to be the same song,

1708
02:13:42,520 --> 02:13:47,720
Speaker 2: but it was supposed to evoke the first song, so

1709
02:13:47,880 --> 02:13:53,120
Speaker 2: that you were borrowing from the popularity of the first record,

1710
02:13:53,200 --> 02:13:55,520
Speaker 2: and some of it was supposed to rub off on

1711
02:13:55,640 --> 02:14:00,720
Speaker 2: the second record, but it had to be a different thing. Uh,

1712
02:14:01,360 --> 02:14:04,640
Speaker 2: but similarities built in, and that's what a follow up was.

1713
02:14:06,160 --> 02:14:06,800
Speaker 3: And uh.

1714
02:14:07,200 --> 02:14:09,280
Speaker 2: In fact, when I was learning to write songs, so

1715
02:14:09,400 --> 02:14:11,800
Speaker 2: that's all I listened to was follow ups because I

1716
02:14:12,000 --> 02:14:15,600
Speaker 2: was comparing my follow ups to theirs, And at one

1717
02:14:15,680 --> 02:14:18,040
Speaker 2: point I decided my follow ups were as good as

1718
02:14:18,120 --> 02:14:23,080
Speaker 2: theirs are better, and so I really, they don't do

1719
02:14:23,280 --> 02:14:26,200
Speaker 2: that anymore. I don't think. I don't think it per

1720
02:14:26,360 --> 02:14:30,240
Speaker 2: se that they do that anymore. But then they they did.

1721
02:14:30,480 --> 02:14:33,720
Speaker 2: And Glenn said, I really need this follow up. He said,

1722
02:14:33,760 --> 02:14:38,520
Speaker 2: can you write me something about a town? And I'm thinking, oh, Lord,

1723
02:14:39,120 --> 02:14:41,080
Speaker 2: and I and I and I said, Glenn, I said,

1724
02:14:41,080 --> 02:14:44,680
Speaker 2: I think I think I'm just about finishing with my

1725
02:14:44,840 --> 02:14:49,920
Speaker 2: rand McNally phase. I'm you know, drowning in towns over here.

1726
02:14:50,000 --> 02:14:54,560
Speaker 2: And I he said, oh, well, that's too bad. He said, well,

1727
02:14:56,520 --> 02:15:00,480
Speaker 2: he said, how about could you make it geographical? And

1728
02:15:01,800 --> 02:15:04,720
Speaker 2: I said, well, I guess yeah. Let me think about

1729
02:15:04,720 --> 02:15:08,240
Speaker 2: that for a minute, hung up the phone, sat there,

1730
02:15:08,320 --> 02:15:11,280
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I know you'll think I'm

1731
02:15:11,320 --> 02:15:17,800
Speaker 2: making this up, But West Texas and Oklahoma, Panana drifts

1732
02:15:17,880 --> 02:15:24,240
Speaker 2: in front of my eyes, that big flat slab of prairie,

1733
02:15:26,040 --> 02:15:32,040
Speaker 2: and the fact that you could drive for fifty miles

1734
02:15:32,160 --> 02:15:36,400
Speaker 2: over into Mexico, New Mexico and not see anything. Maybe

1735
02:15:36,480 --> 02:15:39,960
Speaker 2: a pig farm here, pig farm there, but nothing, not

1736
02:15:40,120 --> 02:15:45,120
Speaker 2: a business. Some old, maybe ramshackle farmhouses that were already

1737
02:15:45,280 --> 02:15:53,120
Speaker 2: laying down, very in a way desolate. But I loved it.

1738
02:15:53,880 --> 02:15:57,760
Speaker 2: I loved it. I love it still, especially the at

1739
02:15:57,920 --> 02:16:03,040
Speaker 2: night the stars. But I'm driving along in my mind

1740
02:16:03,280 --> 02:16:05,400
Speaker 2: and I see the man up on the telephone pole

1741
02:16:05,520 --> 02:16:08,880
Speaker 2: on the phone, and I thought that guy there was

1742
02:16:08,960 --> 02:16:11,320
Speaker 2: always a guy up there talking on the phone. Who

1743
02:16:11,440 --> 02:16:15,640
Speaker 2: was he talking to? And I remember our dad. You

1744
02:16:15,920 --> 02:16:18,040
Speaker 2: stopped the car and say now, because it was real

1745
02:16:18,240 --> 02:16:21,680
Speaker 2: quiet out there, there was nobody else out there. And

1746
02:16:21,880 --> 02:16:24,600
Speaker 2: Dad would say, okay, now, but he still he says,

1747
02:16:24,600 --> 02:16:26,800
Speaker 2: we're going to walk up on these telephone wires and

1748
02:16:26,800 --> 02:16:30,040
Speaker 2: I want you to listen. And we'd walk up close

1749
02:16:30,080 --> 02:16:33,800
Speaker 2: to the to the pole and just being really quiet

1750
02:16:33,840 --> 02:16:37,200
Speaker 2: and listening and you could hear the wire, you could

1751
02:16:37,240 --> 02:16:47,320
Speaker 2: hear the wires. You could hear them like you could

1752
02:16:47,360 --> 02:16:57,680
Speaker 2: hear them doing that. Hence the line, I hear you

1753
02:16:57,800 --> 02:17:04,760
Speaker 2: singing in the wires. So I thought, I'm going to

1754
02:17:04,800 --> 02:17:08,400
Speaker 2: write it about the man on the pole because I

1755
02:17:08,560 --> 02:17:12,760
Speaker 2: wanted to write her out blue collar heroes. They were

1756
02:17:12,840 --> 02:17:18,520
Speaker 2: my heroes, like in Galveston. He's why is he from Galveston? Well,

1757
02:17:18,560 --> 02:17:22,800
Speaker 2: he's from Galveston because it's a damn hard town to

1758
02:17:22,840 --> 02:17:28,080
Speaker 2: grow up in. It was no Riviera, and I wanted

1759
02:17:28,080 --> 02:17:32,200
Speaker 2: an ordinary guy. And so here's an ordinary guy up

1760
02:17:32,240 --> 02:17:36,600
Speaker 2: on a telephone pole and what is he thinking. He's

1761
02:17:36,680 --> 02:17:44,160
Speaker 2: thinking that he's in love with this girl, and it

1762
02:17:44,400 --> 02:18:06,200
Speaker 2: just began to unroll. I got the melody and a

1763
02:18:06,320 --> 02:18:18,760
Speaker 2: few chords. I start off on this, you know, journey.

1764
02:18:18,920 --> 02:18:22,600
Speaker 2: Every song is a journey. It's taking you somewhere. Sometimes

1765
02:18:23,080 --> 02:18:24,680
Speaker 2: it takes you to the end of the road where

1766
02:18:24,720 --> 02:18:30,480
Speaker 2: all the burnout cars aren't. You got a bummer. But

1767
02:18:30,640 --> 02:18:34,040
Speaker 2: this one wanted to be written. So when a song

1768
02:18:34,120 --> 02:18:36,680
Speaker 2: wants to be written, it will help you. It will

1769
02:18:36,720 --> 02:18:40,720
Speaker 2: help you. It will write with you and not against you.

1770
02:18:44,120 --> 02:18:48,480
Speaker 2: And that's that's what I call being connected. And for

1771
02:18:48,600 --> 02:18:52,800
Speaker 2: those unbelievers out there, you know, who feel sorry for me,

1772
02:18:53,360 --> 02:18:55,600
Speaker 2: I feel just as sorry for you. But I know

1773
02:18:56,720 --> 02:18:59,640
Speaker 2: that there is this connection. I know it because I've

1774
02:19:01,120 --> 02:19:04,680
Speaker 2: used it in many, many, many times in my life

1775
02:19:04,840 --> 02:19:07,119
Speaker 2: when I was in trouble, when I needed help, when

1776
02:19:07,120 --> 02:19:10,040
Speaker 2: I was unhappy. When I was writing a song and

1777
02:19:10,080 --> 02:19:13,280
Speaker 2: I said, please God, you know, give me a give

1778
02:19:13,320 --> 02:19:15,520
Speaker 2: me an idea, he give me a line, give me

1779
02:19:15,640 --> 02:19:21,440
Speaker 2: something I gotta So I wrote these two verses, and

1780
02:19:22,640 --> 02:19:25,880
Speaker 2: he was calling me like every five minutes from western

1781
02:19:26,000 --> 02:19:30,080
Speaker 2: three and saying is it done yet? Is it done yet?

1782
02:19:31,360 --> 02:19:33,320
Speaker 2: And what I wanted to say was that go on,

1783
02:19:33,440 --> 02:19:36,240
Speaker 2: you know, if you guys would stop calling me up here,

1784
02:19:36,400 --> 02:19:40,640
Speaker 2: you know I got this thing done, you know. So

1785
02:19:41,080 --> 02:19:44,400
Speaker 2: from like eleven in the morning to like about five

1786
02:19:44,640 --> 02:19:47,840
Speaker 2: five point thirty took me to like bang out a

1787
02:19:47,920 --> 02:19:51,600
Speaker 2: couple of verses pretty much what you know when you

1788
02:19:51,879 --> 02:19:56,480
Speaker 2: when you think of the song. But I was wondering

1789
02:19:56,760 --> 02:20:00,440
Speaker 2: at the time, is this enough? See where getting to

1790
02:20:00,560 --> 02:21:01,840
Speaker 2: the it's the first verse, I'm gonta do it again. Okay,

1791
02:21:02,000 --> 02:21:07,080
Speaker 2: so two verses. Now I'm as a songwriter and a

1792
02:21:07,400 --> 02:21:10,520
Speaker 2: professional songwriter, I'm sitting I'm going to Okay, now do

1793
02:21:10,680 --> 02:21:12,800
Speaker 2: I need to now do? And I need to go?

1794
02:21:16,920 --> 02:21:25,760
Speaker 2: You know I need to go. Why don't you come

1795
02:21:25,800 --> 02:21:53,720
Speaker 2: along with me? So I'm gonna bridge and go back

1796
02:21:53,800 --> 02:21:59,960
Speaker 2: into that melody or or do I And then I'm

1797
02:22:00,120 --> 02:22:03,279
Speaker 2: gonna have to write a last verse, you know. I exhausted.

1798
02:22:03,360 --> 02:22:06,879
Speaker 2: I put it in a Manila envelope and I put

1799
02:22:06,920 --> 02:22:09,600
Speaker 2: my cassette in there, and I wrote a note, dear Glenn,

1800
02:22:12,840 --> 02:22:16,200
Speaker 2: this song isn't finished. But I thought I would run

1801
02:22:16,240 --> 02:22:18,800
Speaker 2: it past you guys, and if you want me to

1802
02:22:18,920 --> 02:22:21,960
Speaker 2: keep right and all right, if you don't want it,

1803
02:22:22,120 --> 02:22:27,040
Speaker 2: let me know, and put a smiley face on it,

1804
02:22:27,360 --> 02:22:30,040
Speaker 2: and called a messenger and sent it down to Western Three.

1805
02:22:30,720 --> 02:22:35,240
Speaker 2: Didn't hear anything about it for a long time. It

1806
02:22:35,360 --> 02:22:38,360
Speaker 2: was probably three weeks later. I'd say that I walked

1807
02:22:38,400 --> 02:22:44,960
Speaker 2: into Armnsteiner's sound recorders and Glenn was there with the

1808
02:22:45,120 --> 02:22:51,120
Speaker 2: boys with the with the gang and working. Apparently he

1809
02:22:51,280 --> 02:22:54,199
Speaker 2: was because he was still sitting in with the recon crew,

1810
02:22:55,360 --> 02:22:58,080
Speaker 2: even though he was becoming a star. He was sitting

1811
02:22:58,120 --> 02:23:02,040
Speaker 2: in with the record group. And I walked in and

1812
02:23:02,200 --> 02:23:04,959
Speaker 2: I said, so, how you doing. Go ahead, I'm doing fine,

1813
02:23:05,400 --> 02:23:09,000
Speaker 2: said well, I said, you know, listen, I don't want

1814
02:23:09,000 --> 02:23:11,960
Speaker 2: you to feel bad about that tune I wrote. I said,

1815
02:23:12,000 --> 02:23:13,440
Speaker 2: you know, I wrote it in kind of a hurry,

1816
02:23:13,520 --> 02:23:18,959
Speaker 2: and I realized it's it's kind of outside and I said,

1817
02:23:19,040 --> 02:23:22,120
Speaker 2: you know, don't worry about it, because I'm really used

1818
02:23:22,200 --> 02:23:29,360
Speaker 2: to rejection, you know, because writing songs is ninety percent rejection.

1819
02:23:31,280 --> 02:23:37,320
Speaker 2: So we get unless unless if you don't, if you

1820
02:23:37,440 --> 02:23:45,160
Speaker 2: can't digest rejection and judgment, sometimes a false judgment, but

1821
02:23:46,560 --> 02:23:50,640
Speaker 2: a harsh judgment from somebody else, you should get in

1822
02:23:50,720 --> 02:23:52,800
Speaker 2: another line of work because you're going to have a

1823
02:23:52,879 --> 02:23:57,879
Speaker 2: steady diet of disappointment and rejection. So I was hardened

1824
02:23:58,920 --> 02:24:02,840
Speaker 2: by then. I'd been to my town, I'd done my thing,

1825
02:24:03,720 --> 02:24:06,680
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, I'll write another one. He says,

1826
02:24:07,400 --> 02:24:11,320
Speaker 2: you're talking about which to lineman and I said yeah,

1827
02:24:11,400 --> 02:24:17,040
Speaker 2: and he said we cut that And I said, well,

1828
02:24:17,360 --> 02:24:19,800
Speaker 2: didn't you see the note. Didn't you see where it

1829
02:24:19,920 --> 02:24:26,360
Speaker 2: said this is not finished. Call me in let me

1830
02:24:26,480 --> 02:24:30,959
Speaker 2: know what you think. He said. I said, because Glenn,

1831
02:24:31,000 --> 02:24:35,160
Speaker 2: it really wasn't finished. And he said it is now,

1832
02:24:39,400 --> 02:24:44,960
Speaker 2: and they played it for me and it was beautiful.

1833
02:24:45,200 --> 02:24:50,560
Speaker 2: It was beautiful, and I ended up overdubbing an Oregon

1834
02:24:50,680 --> 02:24:53,039
Speaker 2: on it. I had a church organ in my house,

1835
02:24:54,120 --> 02:24:59,800
Speaker 2: gul Branson Series seven hundred, and we didn't have synthesizers,

1836
02:25:01,280 --> 02:25:03,920
Speaker 2: but church organs had a lot of bells and whistles

1837
02:25:03,959 --> 02:25:05,240
Speaker 2: on them. They had a lot of different kind of

1838
02:25:05,360 --> 02:25:11,080
Speaker 2: sounds ethereal angelic kind of things on them. And if

1839
02:25:11,120 --> 02:25:14,040
Speaker 2: you listen to the very beginning of the records, you

1840
02:25:14,120 --> 02:25:17,120
Speaker 2: can hear it clearly. I'm playing these little forests and

1841
02:25:17,200 --> 02:25:26,720
Speaker 2: fist going, but it's in heavy sustain and the organ's going.

1842
02:25:27,160 --> 02:25:33,120
Speaker 2: It's tremologus and it sounds like a satellite. You sort

1843
02:25:33,160 --> 02:25:34,760
Speaker 2: of hear it on the beginning, then you hear it

1844
02:25:36,959 --> 02:25:40,560
Speaker 2: prominently on the fade. So that was my contribution to

1845
02:25:40,720 --> 02:25:41,160
Speaker 2: the record.

1846
02:25:42,240 --> 02:25:44,640
Speaker 1: So how did you feel when the hits dried up?

1847
02:25:47,879 --> 02:25:52,760
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I knew that it was inevitable

1848
02:25:53,400 --> 02:25:58,160
Speaker 2: in a sense, but there was I was always being covered,

1849
02:25:59,440 --> 02:26:06,280
Speaker 2: even when, even when I didn't have hit songs per

1850
02:26:06,360 --> 02:26:10,800
Speaker 2: se on the charts. Was I was getting covers off

1851
02:26:10,879 --> 02:26:21,160
Speaker 2: my own albums of different things. And like I said,

1852
02:26:21,280 --> 02:26:24,160
Speaker 2: in seventy eight, Donna Summer had a number one with

1853
02:26:24,280 --> 02:26:30,040
Speaker 2: MacArthur Park again, and in eighty six ten years later

1854
02:26:30,440 --> 02:26:35,000
Speaker 2: I had Highwaymen with Willie Neilson Whale and Jenny's christ Consasson,

1855
02:26:35,480 --> 02:26:40,200
Speaker 2: Chris Christofferson Johnny Cash, which went to number one, which

1856
02:26:40,280 --> 02:26:44,160
Speaker 2: was a country music video of the Year, and then

1857
02:26:44,240 --> 02:26:47,160
Speaker 2: they named the group The Highwayman, the Highwayman, and they

1858
02:26:47,200 --> 02:26:51,200
Speaker 2: went on the road, and that song is still being covered.

1859
02:26:51,200 --> 02:26:54,200
Speaker 2: The last time it was covered was with Amanda McBride

1860
02:26:54,320 --> 02:26:59,160
Speaker 2: and her the ladies that call themselves the high Women,

1861
02:27:00,600 --> 02:27:03,440
Speaker 2: who I told them just to go write their own

1862
02:27:03,480 --> 02:27:09,000
Speaker 2: words for it. But in that sense, I never I

1863
02:27:09,120 --> 02:27:13,160
Speaker 2: never felt that I wasn't getting things done or that

1864
02:27:13,640 --> 02:27:22,120
Speaker 2: good things weren't happening for me. And I don't know.

1865
02:27:22,360 --> 02:27:29,080
Speaker 2: I I think that you look at everybody in this business,

1866
02:27:29,840 --> 02:27:34,200
Speaker 2: and not only that, but the business that I'm in,

1867
02:27:34,360 --> 02:27:36,680
Speaker 2: and in the business that Cole Porter was in, and

1868
02:27:36,760 --> 02:27:40,080
Speaker 2: then before him, the business that Jerome Kern was in,

1869
02:27:43,040 --> 02:27:48,720
Speaker 2: and you realize that it happens to everybody. It happens

1870
02:27:48,800 --> 02:27:53,000
Speaker 2: to everybody. There's a there's an arc, it goes up,

1871
02:27:54,760 --> 02:27:59,640
Speaker 2: it levels off for a while, and inevitably it begins

1872
02:27:59,760 --> 02:28:04,640
Speaker 2: to client. Unless you do something about that, Unless you

1873
02:28:04,800 --> 02:28:09,000
Speaker 2: do something to change that trajectory. The only thing I

1874
02:28:09,080 --> 02:28:11,920
Speaker 2: could think of doing was cutting a hit album as

1875
02:28:11,959 --> 02:28:15,800
Speaker 2: a singer songwriter. I thought that would change. I thought

1876
02:28:15,840 --> 02:28:19,720
Speaker 2: that would that would be back on the charts, back

1877
02:28:20,160 --> 02:28:24,520
Speaker 2: back at the very center of things. And uh and

1878
02:28:24,800 --> 02:28:27,240
Speaker 2: and that's when I began butting my head against that

1879
02:28:27,360 --> 02:28:34,200
Speaker 2: brick wall. And I made an album. The first one

1880
02:28:34,240 --> 02:28:37,760
Speaker 2: I produced by myself. The second one I cut at

1881
02:28:37,840 --> 02:28:44,320
Speaker 2: my home studio, which is out Ensino. And I stress

1882
02:28:44,400 --> 02:28:48,000
Speaker 2: that I I didn't stop making money because I didn't

1883
02:28:48,040 --> 02:28:52,040
Speaker 2: have records on the charts. I was still you know,

1884
02:28:52,240 --> 02:28:55,680
Speaker 2: my my annual income was pretty much the same, you

1885
02:28:55,760 --> 02:28:59,480
Speaker 2: know it was. It was steady, so there. So there

1886
02:28:59,600 --> 02:29:04,000
Speaker 2: was still a lot of play in those tunes, and

1887
02:29:04,040 --> 02:29:06,119
Speaker 2: there were a lot of sync riots and different things

1888
02:29:06,200 --> 02:29:10,400
Speaker 2: going on. Tried my hand at scoring a couple of films.

1889
02:29:10,440 --> 02:29:14,920
Speaker 2: I didn't really feel like, I I don't know, it

1890
02:29:15,040 --> 02:29:20,840
Speaker 2: didn't click. I made an album with George Martin. I

1891
02:29:20,959 --> 02:29:26,160
Speaker 2: thought that might cure me. We made a lovely album.

1892
02:29:27,800 --> 02:29:36,680
Speaker 2: Not much happened. The album, probably the best album that

1893
02:29:36,760 --> 02:29:40,000
Speaker 2: I ever cut a solo artist, was Suspending Disbelief that

1894
02:29:40,959 --> 02:29:46,039
Speaker 2: I did with Linda Ronstatt and George Messenberg. And another

1895
02:29:46,160 --> 02:29:49,400
Speaker 2: little album called ten Easy Pieces, which is a cult

1896
02:29:49,560 --> 02:29:53,680
Speaker 2: hit that I cut in a basement up in Toronto.

1897
02:29:53,840 --> 02:29:56,120
Speaker 2: Was the first time I ever sung any of those

1898
02:29:56,200 --> 02:30:02,360
Speaker 2: hit songs. And people can call me right now. As

1899
02:30:02,400 --> 02:30:04,600
Speaker 2: soon as and when I get home, there'll be messages

1900
02:30:04,680 --> 02:30:06,920
Speaker 2: for people call me and saying can I get that album?

1901
02:30:07,959 --> 02:30:10,720
Speaker 2: And the fact is that it's not being manufactured anymore,

1902
02:30:10,840 --> 02:30:14,480
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna have to It's a different world. I'm

1903
02:30:14,520 --> 02:30:16,800
Speaker 2: gonna have to trade. I'm gonna have to find that

1904
02:30:17,920 --> 02:30:22,320
Speaker 2: those masters and either get permission from those people to

1905
02:30:25,280 --> 02:30:28,440
Speaker 2: get them to press some records for me to sell.

1906
02:30:30,080 --> 02:30:34,280
Speaker 2: Because we make a lot of money on merchandise as well.

1907
02:30:34,320 --> 02:30:39,320
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where we are today, recording all recording artists, everybody.

1908
02:30:39,959 --> 02:30:46,600
Speaker 2: It's merchandise and live gigs and that's real money that

1909
02:30:46,720 --> 02:30:50,200
Speaker 2: you can and it's substantial if you. I mean this

1910
02:30:50,360 --> 02:30:55,800
Speaker 2: tour I'm doing just to give you, give you some idea.

1911
02:30:58,040 --> 02:31:02,600
Speaker 2: This isn't all of it that I'm I'm starting in

1912
02:31:03,040 --> 02:31:07,039
Speaker 2: except September through December. I'm doing what twenty shows. I'm

1913
02:31:07,080 --> 02:31:12,000
Speaker 2: doing Paramount Hudson Valley. I'm doing the Old Town School

1914
02:31:12,080 --> 02:31:15,800
Speaker 2: of Folk in Chicago. I'm doing the Coach House in

1915
02:31:15,920 --> 02:31:19,160
Speaker 2: San Juan Capistrano, which I said last time I was there,

1916
02:31:19,240 --> 02:31:21,720
Speaker 2: I sold it out. They wanted to do two nights.

1917
02:31:22,600 --> 02:31:26,800
Speaker 2: I'm doing Yoshi's in Oakland. I think I sold that

1918
02:31:26,959 --> 02:31:32,680
Speaker 2: place out. The Vogel many An Apple, Minneapolis. My concerts

1919
02:31:32,720 --> 02:31:37,800
Speaker 2: are always full of there, Kansas City, Saint Louis, same thing, Austin.

1920
02:31:38,000 --> 02:31:42,879
Speaker 2: Austin's a little bit more difficult for me, but that's

1921
02:31:42,920 --> 02:31:44,800
Speaker 2: a few of the places that I'm going to be playing.

1922
02:31:45,600 --> 02:31:50,240
Speaker 2: Just at the end of this year. And before COVID,

1923
02:31:50,360 --> 02:31:54,200
Speaker 2: I was doing like fifty a year, and I was

1924
02:31:54,320 --> 02:31:58,320
Speaker 2: making some decent money, and I thought, well, this is

1925
02:31:58,520 --> 02:32:06,480
Speaker 2: real money, and I'm making the money by doing something

1926
02:32:06,560 --> 02:32:10,760
Speaker 2: that I love to do, and I'm exposing my music

1927
02:32:10,840 --> 02:32:14,680
Speaker 2: to the public. And that's an avenue that's been close

1928
02:32:14,760 --> 02:32:18,880
Speaker 2: to me. By this digital machine thing that they've set

1929
02:32:18,959 --> 02:32:23,200
Speaker 2: up here. They don't, you know, I'm not going to

1930
02:32:23,280 --> 02:32:28,200
Speaker 2: be I don't think breaking a record on Spotify, so

1931
02:32:33,160 --> 02:32:38,720
Speaker 2: you know, I I wish some things could have gone

1932
02:32:39,000 --> 02:32:42,680
Speaker 2: better for me, But by and large, it's just been

1933
02:32:42,720 --> 02:32:49,600
Speaker 2: a great life surrounded by wonderful friends, helpers all along

1934
02:32:49,680 --> 02:32:56,840
Speaker 2: the way, and great personalities and friends for life everywhere

1935
02:33:00,200 --> 02:33:02,200
Speaker 2: and I don't think that my life has been too

1936
02:33:02,280 --> 02:33:05,080
Speaker 2: different from that of the average songwriter. I think that

1937
02:33:05,160 --> 02:33:10,080
Speaker 2: most songwriters will have a red hot moment like a

1938
02:33:10,200 --> 02:33:19,480
Speaker 2: Paul Anka, and then styles change, and and and and

1939
02:33:19,640 --> 02:33:24,760
Speaker 2: the spotlight the spotlight, the spotlight goes, some focuses somewhere else.

1940
02:33:27,800 --> 02:33:32,120
Speaker 2: I watched the same thing happen to film stars, and

1941
02:33:32,240 --> 02:33:34,840
Speaker 2: I see like one of my old favorite actors like

1942
02:33:35,000 --> 02:33:37,960
Speaker 2: doing some cheap movie that I mean really cheap. You

1943
02:33:38,040 --> 02:33:41,560
Speaker 2: can tell that it's it's it's being shot you know

1944
02:33:41,720 --> 02:33:45,520
Speaker 2: on it's you know, it's it's being shot with with

1945
02:33:45,640 --> 02:33:52,880
Speaker 2: the home home cameras and mh. I realized that it

1946
02:33:52,959 --> 02:33:55,840
Speaker 2: must be very disappointing for them not to be commanding

1947
02:33:55,920 --> 02:33:59,600
Speaker 2: the kind of salaries that commanded the kind of respect

1948
02:33:59,680 --> 02:34:02,800
Speaker 2: when they walk into a room. I understand all that,

1949
02:34:04,840 --> 02:34:13,280
Speaker 2: but I cling to the idea that I am one

1950
02:34:13,400 --> 02:34:21,960
Speaker 2: of the best people that do what I do, that

1951
02:34:22,080 --> 02:34:27,400
Speaker 2: I could be better, that all I need is a

1952
02:34:27,480 --> 02:34:30,800
Speaker 2: Broadway show. All I need that anything can happen, and

1953
02:34:30,920 --> 02:34:34,120
Speaker 2: it always has happened for me, and I expect it.

1954
02:34:34,200 --> 02:34:38,600
Speaker 1: Well again, Okay, you know, I don't mean to cut

1955
02:34:38,640 --> 02:34:40,640
Speaker 1: you short, but we've been going on a long time.

1956
02:34:41,240 --> 02:34:44,920
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll come back and visit again. But I think

1957
02:34:45,160 --> 02:34:47,080
Speaker 1: you've been a good case for people to go to

1958
02:34:47,120 --> 02:34:50,040
Speaker 1: see you live. There's a lot of stuff I want

1959
02:34:50,080 --> 02:34:53,520
Speaker 1: to know more like the Linda Ronstad easy for you

1960
02:34:53,680 --> 02:34:57,280
Speaker 1: to say and the lyrics. But I think for now

1961
02:34:57,600 --> 02:34:59,039
Speaker 1: this is a good stopping point.

1962
02:35:00,480 --> 02:35:03,480
Speaker 2: Okay. I mean, I hope I've given you something. Oh

1963
02:35:03,520 --> 02:35:05,119
Speaker 2: you're giving me. You're giving me a lot.

1964
02:35:05,200 --> 02:35:06,560
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot. You know. Listen, when you

1965
02:35:06,640 --> 02:35:10,320
Speaker 1: start telling about your personality and when you start telling

1966
02:35:10,400 --> 02:35:12,680
Speaker 1: about the tales of your I eat that stuff up.

1967
02:35:13,560 --> 02:35:18,240
Speaker 2: Well, you know, listen, Robert, it's tough. It's not a

1968
02:35:18,360 --> 02:35:21,920
Speaker 2: life that I would recommend to anybody, but but it's mine,

1969
02:35:23,560 --> 02:35:28,680
Speaker 2: and I would if I had to do it again,

1970
02:35:30,080 --> 02:35:33,360
Speaker 2: I would do it again. Would I not work with

1971
02:35:33,959 --> 02:35:38,680
Speaker 2: Frank Sinatra because he wasn't because he was a Republican

1972
02:35:38,800 --> 02:35:43,280
Speaker 2: and because you know, the hippies didn't like him, you know,

1973
02:35:45,160 --> 02:35:45,520
Speaker 2: would I?

1974
02:35:46,160 --> 02:35:46,200
Speaker 4: No?

1975
02:35:46,400 --> 02:35:46,920
Speaker 2: I don't think.

1976
02:35:47,040 --> 02:35:47,080
Speaker 1: So.

1977
02:35:47,520 --> 02:35:52,519
Speaker 2: I was privileged to walk with them, to know Lewis Armstrong,

1978
02:35:52,760 --> 02:35:56,960
Speaker 2: to to know rosem Rosemy. It gives me a perspective.

1979
02:35:57,200 --> 02:36:02,680
Speaker 2: It's very unique because I so new intimately, well, I

1980
02:36:02,720 --> 02:36:05,840
Speaker 2: don't want to say antimately, because that that's an inference

1981
02:36:05,920 --> 02:36:08,600
Speaker 2: that I don't want to put on that. But I

1982
02:36:08,840 --> 02:36:14,640
Speaker 2: had fantastic relationship with Share and with with the Supremes

1983
02:36:14,720 --> 02:36:21,160
Speaker 2: and with Linda Ronstadt and and uh Graham Nash and

1984
02:36:21,320 --> 02:36:27,400
Speaker 2: David h who were always like good, good pals of mine.

1985
02:36:30,240 --> 02:36:33,640
Speaker 2: It's enough already, well I could always get more.

1986
02:36:33,800 --> 02:36:35,960
Speaker 1: But Jimmy, I want to thank you for taking this

1987
02:36:36,160 --> 02:36:37,200
Speaker 1: time with my audience.

1988
02:36:38,040 --> 02:36:41,760
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. It's an honor to be on this show.

1989
02:36:41,920 --> 02:36:47,800
Speaker 2: It's it's well known hot spot on the internet, and

1990
02:36:48,400 --> 02:36:53,880
Speaker 2: I congratulate you on that. And I haven't I hope

1991
02:36:53,920 --> 02:36:56,520
Speaker 2: I haven't misled anyone. And if I've made an error,

1992
02:36:57,920 --> 02:37:05,120
Speaker 2: h please the public is invited to point out my

1993
02:37:05,879 --> 02:37:09,560
Speaker 2: shortcomings and honor respond on jimmyweb dot com.

1994
02:37:10,040 --> 02:37:13,360
Speaker 1: Okay, you can reach out to Jimmy there. Until next time.

1995
02:37:13,800 --> 02:37:15,199
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sis