Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftnet's podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Patrick Leonard, who has a brand new album.
Speaker 1: It all comes down to move Patrick. Why that title?
Speaker 2: Why the title? Let me get this mic a little
Speaker 2: bit lower so I can see my face. How are
Speaker 2: you doing, Bob.
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty well. Good to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen you in a long time. Last time
Speaker 2: we were outside the hotel cafe exactly, good men, Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a good night. It was fun. Why the title?
Speaker 2: The hotel cafe was Leonard Cohen's son Adam was playing
Speaker 2: exactly and I was there with Leonard. And the title
Speaker 2: of the record is something that Leonard said to me
Speaker 2: when we first met, and it's from a song that's
Speaker 2: really about little anecdotal leonardisms. And we were talking on
Speaker 2: a very first meeting and he said, you know what
Speaker 2: it's all about, And I said what he said, mood?
Speaker 2: He said, your good mood, good life, bad mood, bad
Speaker 2: life is really that simple and uh, and it really
Speaker 2: stuck and I really saw him kind of live that
Speaker 2: as the philosophy of like you just got to be
Speaker 2: in a good mood if you want to be it
Speaker 2: to be okay, and as silly as it sounds, it
Speaker 2: resonates with me. So the song is called It's All
Speaker 2: come down. The song is called at the end of
Speaker 2: the Day, and the line is at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, it all comes down to mood. So that's
Speaker 2: that's what it is. It's something Leonard said to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking also a different interpretation of the
Speaker 1: mood of the music. Am I totally out of space here?
Speaker 1: Is there a factor that I would say? I'd say
Speaker 1: outer space isn't good? That's about right? Yeah, No, you
Speaker 1: know the that's a nice interpretation. I hadn't thought of that,
Speaker 1: and I like that one because it's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot of moods in there, that's for sure. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the issue the album, why'd you decide to do it?
Speaker 2: Well, I suppose we need to tell the truth.
Speaker 1: Here, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So, my wife and I had relocated to the East
Speaker 2: Coast where we are now. We're in Connecticut on a farm,
Speaker 2: and at that time I've been doing some work with
Speaker 2: Roger Waters on a solo project, and then he at
Speaker 2: one point said, we're going to put that on hold
Speaker 2: because I want to redo Dark Side of the Moon.
Speaker 2: So I started working on that with him and worked
Speaker 2: for a couple of months on it, and then I
Speaker 2: then it was time to kind of get his band involved,
Speaker 2: and I didn't feel like I wanted to do that
Speaker 2: for some reason, so I backed out. And I you know,
Speaker 2: he's I'm sure furiously pissed at me, but you know
Speaker 2: that's what I did. And then, ironically and completely coincidentally,
Speaker 2: at that same time, his ex bandmate Gilmore called me.
Speaker 2: David called me and said, I want to make a
Speaker 2: solo record. This is true. You know you can't make
Speaker 2: this shit up. And he said I want to make
Speaker 2: a solo record, and I said okay, and he started
Speaker 2: sending me music and I started working on it and
Speaker 2: sending him back and after a while, I felt like
Speaker 2: I can't really help him. You know, this isn't working,
Speaker 2: so I quit doing that too.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, let's get a touch, let's get a time
Speaker 1: right here. What year were you originally starting with Roger
Speaker 1: Waters on this project.
Speaker 2: On I would say probably Roger and I started in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: One, Okay, so it's during COVID.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly during COVID, And at the time I was
Speaker 2: living in LA when we started.
Speaker 1: And you abandoned that project because you didn't want to
Speaker 1: go on the road.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't the road it was. It was it
Speaker 2: was the dark Side project that Roger did, and I
Speaker 2: think he did a lovely job on it. But it
Speaker 2: came to this time when it was I was going
Speaker 2: to just we were going to bring his band into
Speaker 2: start doing this, and I felt like I didn't. I
Speaker 2: didn't really feel that I didn't. It's not how I
Speaker 2: wanted to do it, and it wasn't my record, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't my project. It was his. But I think
Speaker 2: it was partly Bob because after Leonard passed away and
Speaker 2: people would say, what are you going to do? I
Speaker 2: would my stock answer was I'm pretty sure Leonard Cohen's
Speaker 2: the last house on the block in terms of collaborations,
Speaker 2: and I really felt that I really did so, And
Speaker 2: to this day, I have yet to write a song
Speaker 2: with anyone else, you know, since twenty sixteen, and I
Speaker 2: probably I might, but I don't see why I would.
Speaker 2: And so this idea of working on things as a
Speaker 2: producer and an arranger and a keyboard player and contributing
Speaker 2: to other people's work, I really felt like it was
Speaker 2: behind me, but hard to say no to, you know, Roger,
Speaker 2: and hard to say no to David.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, wait, let's stop with David. What was your
Speaker 1: history with David such as David knew.
Speaker 2: You when I was when I made a Brian Ferry
Speaker 2: record called Bete Noir, I think around nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: eighty six, something like that, And while we were doing it,
Speaker 2: there was a song called Limbo that I had written
Speaker 2: with Brian, and I said it would be great to
Speaker 2: get Gilmour on this. It just felt like he would
Speaker 2: be great on it, and Brian said, well, let me
Speaker 2: call him. And the other thing is Guy Pratt was
Speaker 2: playing bass on Brian's album, so there was easy ways
Speaker 2: to get to David. And so the next thing we
Speaker 2: found ourselves in England recording David's some guitars of David
Speaker 2: on a couple songs, and then after a couple of days,
Speaker 2: David invited me to lunch at his house and after
Speaker 2: lunch we went to the boat where a studio was
Speaker 2: and he had a dad player or a cassette player
Speaker 2: or something and there was a little synthesizer and I
Speaker 2: think he played bass and we just jammed for a
Speaker 2: little while you know, and I think it all got recorded.
Speaker 2: I didn't even realize it was being recorded, but we
Speaker 2: were just jamming. And then sometime later, and I can't
Speaker 2: remember exactly the timeline, I get a call and it's
Speaker 2: David and he said, I'm in la and we're finishing
Speaker 2: up the new record, which was Momentary Lapse of Reason,
Speaker 2: and would you like to come up to the house
Speaker 2: and hear where we are? And I said, of course.
Speaker 2: So I come up and I'm sitting in this house
Speaker 2: and listening to this playback and the song goes by
Speaker 2: it and he says, do you recognize that? And I
Speaker 2: said no, and he said, well, you wrote it. So
Speaker 2: what he had done is he had taken this thing
Speaker 2: that we did and made made a song out of it.
Speaker 2: And so and then and then at that point he
Speaker 2: would come to the house with you know, multi track
Speaker 2: tapes and I put some synthesizers on some other songs
Speaker 2: on the record, and so, you know, we kind of
Speaker 2: kept we kept in touch after that, you know what,
Speaker 2: in little ways, you know. And and then in fact,
Speaker 2: the years later that I was working with Roger on
Speaker 2: Amused to Death in and we were in England and
Speaker 2: I was going out to you know, to see David,
Speaker 2: or going to dinner or something just to see David,
Speaker 2: or meeting him at a bar or go to his
Speaker 2: house or whatever. Roger say, you know, go ahead, but
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear about it. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, this weird tense thing. But anyway, that's how
Speaker 2: that came about. And I think part of why the
Speaker 2: relationship stayed as long as it has is, you know, guy,
Speaker 2: we have Guy Pratt in common who's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite bass players, and he's on Toy Mattnee and third
Speaker 2: Matt Nane and like a prayer, it's all Guy Pratt,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So David says he wants to collaborate, you're
Speaker 1: working on the tracks. What makes you decide this isn't
Speaker 1: going to work?
Speaker 2: Well? I think what in reality that you know, the
Speaker 2: simple thing of it was that if somebody sends me
Speaker 2: something and I listened to it, and I feel like
Speaker 2: I can make it better, and this is the contribution
Speaker 2: that I think I can make that will make it better,
Speaker 2: and I make those contributions and it doesn't resonate, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't. It's far from taking any of it personally.
Speaker 2: It's like you can do a few of those and
Speaker 2: then go, I'm not the guy who can help you.
Speaker 2: You're looking for some other help. This is the help
Speaker 2: that I know how to give.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 2: Know. I can take your progression that you sent me,
Speaker 2: or your track that you sent me, and I can
Speaker 2: do some edits on it, and I can rework it,
Speaker 2: and I can add the section that I think it adds,
Speaker 2: and I can do some things to the chord progressions
Speaker 2: to broaden them in certain places, just things that my
Speaker 2: ears and my musical gut tells me I need to do.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't what he wanted, and so it was
Speaker 2: like it was really simple. It's like, I just don't
Speaker 2: think I can help on this.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, you did it and it was working
Speaker 1: for you, but not working for him. That's right, that's fair. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back another step. Tell me about leaving La
Speaker 1: for Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, like I said earlier, after after Leonard passed,
Speaker 2: and even before Leonard passed, I wasn't working in LA
Speaker 2: the way I used to work in LA because the
Speaker 2: business had changed so much and it wasn't very it
Speaker 2: wasn't as attractive to me as it a.
Speaker 1: Little bit slower. Is that because opportunities were not well
Speaker 1: put it bluntly had dried up? Or was it because
Speaker 1: everybody was recording it home and people weren't using extra people.
Speaker 1: What exactly change?
Speaker 2: Well, I think everybody kind of well people in the
Speaker 2: music business know what changed, but everyone has their own
Speaker 2: personalized experience of what, you know, their version is. I
Speaker 2: think for me, it was mostly about a lack of collaborators,
Speaker 2: people that I wanted to work with, so I'd get
Speaker 2: something would come up and it would be you know,
Speaker 2: like I think one of the last records that I
Speaker 2: did that I felt had any real purpose and meaning
Speaker 2: and was good was a solo record that Pat Monaghan
Speaker 2: did that he and I co wrote and I produced,
Speaker 2: of Train Yeah, of Train Right. And it was a
Speaker 2: tremendous record, and no one ever heard it because you know,
Speaker 2: in the music business, the guy who's in a popular
Speaker 2: band does a solo album, his record company and his
Speaker 2: manager go, no one's ever going to know about this,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of an unwritten law. So that happened,
Speaker 2: and after that there was some things that would come,
Speaker 2: you know, and even well known artists, you know, and
Speaker 2: I just thought, no I'm not feeling this anymore. And
Speaker 2: then Leonard came along and we spent those years together
Speaker 2: and it was just you know, fun and a great
Speaker 2: experience and learning experience, and for excuse me, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 2: and and then after that, I didn't. I just wasn't
Speaker 2: feeling it, you know, I really wasn't.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to something you said earlier. After Leonard,
Speaker 1: you reached a point where you felt you no longer
Speaker 1: wanted to collaborate. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing of you know, creating music with an
Speaker 2: artist who's the lyricist is primarily what I did, you know,
Speaker 2: my in my career, with exceptions, a couple exceptions. And
Speaker 2: the exceptions were because I thought this would be fun
Speaker 2: just to be in a room while this happens, like
Speaker 2: Elton or Roger or you know, like I don't need
Speaker 2: to write any of this. I just want to be
Speaker 2: in the room helping if I can. And so I think, uh,
Speaker 2: I think it just it just didn't interest me anymore,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So would there be any situation, hypothetically where a
Speaker 1: collaboration would look good again to you? I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about changing your mind in the future everybody to change,
Speaker 1: But is there any way it could be constructed, whether
Speaker 1: you have input on the lyrics or something, or have
Speaker 1: you pretty much been there, done that.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of ways for me to look at that,
Speaker 2: you know. One is that I do have interest in
Speaker 2: doing other projects, but not necessarily record projects, and not
Speaker 2: necessarily with a singer songwriter or another musician. The thing
Speaker 2: of what I'm doing and what I've been focused on,
Speaker 2: and how terribly satisfying I find it, is that this
Speaker 2: is the first time I've ever done anything like what
Speaker 2: I'm doing now where I didn't have to negotiate anything,
Speaker 2: and that has shown me something that I like. I
Speaker 2: like what I see when I'm not compromising anything, because
Speaker 2: every record you make with another person in the room,
Speaker 2: you compromise, and if there's five people in there is
Speaker 2: five compromise. And I find that this feels more direct
Speaker 2: and more focused, and also gives me something more to
Speaker 2: build on as I'm doing more, you know, as I'm
Speaker 2: writing more songs and doing more coming up with more
Speaker 2: ideas and where I want to go and what i
Speaker 2: want to do, I've found a little bit of a
Speaker 2: path that feels good even in its you know, solo
Speaker 2: aspect and it's you know, lonely aspect.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's close a gap. I interrupted. You tell me
Speaker 1: again about moving to Connecticut.
Speaker 2: We were in La Covid hit we moved to the
Speaker 2: house in Michigan. We have a house in the Upper Peninsula,
Speaker 2: Michigan that's an old family house that you know, has
Speaker 2: been there for a long time, and we sat out
Speaker 2: Covid there and then we really started talking about the
Speaker 2: idea of maybe changing coasts, you know, just to do it.
Speaker 2: And that also, you know, I'd been in La a
Speaker 2: long time and really kind of you know, like you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: they've done that. I felt like there wasn't anything that
Speaker 2: was going to happen there that was going to surprise me.
Speaker 2: And so we were looking in upstate New York and
Speaker 2: we actually ended up here just because at the time
Speaker 2: it was close to the Long Island Sound and Rogers
Speaker 2: over there, and we have a little airplane that my
Speaker 2: wife can fly, and so we were just gonna have
Speaker 2: it be convenient for that and and that's really what
Speaker 2: brought us where we are right here.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't want your address, but I'm from Connecticut myself.
Speaker 1: What town do you presently live in.
Speaker 2: We live in Killingworth and it is it is nowhere,
Speaker 2: but it's great.
Speaker 1: What's the next recognizable town.
Speaker 2: Well, we're between Hartford and New Haven. Okay, if you
Speaker 2: just go a line right up, we're right. We're somewhere
Speaker 2: right in the middle off to.
Speaker 1: The okay west little but you can see Long Island
Speaker 1: Sound from where you are.
Speaker 2: Well, no, but we, like I said, we have a
Speaker 2: little airplane that we keep about nine miles from here,
Speaker 2: and my wife is a pilot, and we take off
Speaker 2: and one minute you're looking at the sound and in
Speaker 2: ten minutes you're having lunch there. So that's the beauty
Speaker 2: of what we have.
Speaker 1: Okay, how long has your wife been a pilot?
Speaker 2: Going on twenty years?
Speaker 1: And this was before or after she met you. She
Speaker 1: started before and do you know what motivated her.
Speaker 2: She was on a ranch in northern California and they
Speaker 2: had a little airplane and somebody stuck her in it
Speaker 2: and said you turn this and you pull this and
Speaker 2: it goes up, and she's you know, she learned to
Speaker 2: fly and now she's quite a serious pilot. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's a freedom, you know, we can go to
Speaker 2: Boston for lunch, dixs an hour.
Speaker 1: And how big a plane do you own?
Speaker 2: It's just a force eater.
Speaker 1: And one engine, two engines, one engine. Is she instrument rated?
Speaker 2: She is and commercial rated.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get scared in the air with her?
Speaker 2: No? No?
Speaker 1: What about if there's weather? Certainly living on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: is that a more of a judgment whether to go
Speaker 1: up or not? It is?
Speaker 2: It is, yeah, And that's what separates the men from
Speaker 2: the boys right there. If you know, if you're going
Speaker 2: to go, you better know you can make it.
Speaker 1: And how often does she go up in the plane?
Speaker 2: A lot? A lot? I mean right now we're going
Speaker 2: down to North Carolina and a little bit for her
Speaker 2: to work with her teacher down there, and so she's
Speaker 2: been flying some mad maneuvers, you know, and she couldn't
Speaker 2: today because of the clouds, but you know, she she's
Speaker 2: I mean, we won't go to breakfast in Poughkeepsie two
Speaker 2: days ago.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's that it's good fun. I'm really spoilt.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you you do have the access to
Speaker 1: the plane, but you can certainly get to Boston. But
Speaker 1: in terms of the epicenter of the culture in that area,
Speaker 1: it's really New York and you're like maybe an hour
Speaker 1: and a half a little bit longer from New York.
Speaker 1: Do you care whatsoever?
Speaker 2: No, Well, we're you know what we've done when we
Speaker 2: needed to go into the city, or we wanted to
Speaker 2: go into the city as we flying to Teeterborough, right
Speaker 2: and forty five minutes where a Teeterborough And twenty minutes
Speaker 2: later we're in town. And for even in New York
Speaker 2: or that's quick.
Speaker 1: And how often would you go to the city.
Speaker 2: You know, we we've done it a half a dozen times,
Speaker 2: you know, for various reasons. And I had some a
Speaker 2: little thing I did for CNN a few months ago
Speaker 2: regarding a Madonna thing, and we drove and once we drove,
Speaker 2: we said we should have you know, it would have
Speaker 2: been so much easier to fly.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're living in Killingworth, do you know anybody there?
Speaker 2: Well? Now we do, we do.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I mean we've been here three years and so we've
Speaker 2: made some friends, and we found some restaurants, and we
Speaker 2: got a good tailor and you know, yeah, even a
Speaker 2: good sushi bar. We're good.
Speaker 1: If I drop you anywhere, are you going to make
Speaker 1: friends or is that your wife?
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's kind of neither of us. I think
Speaker 2: that what we have here, what really spawned a lot
Speaker 2: of this is just the airport. So because we're at
Speaker 2: a little airport, and little airports are like little campuses,
Speaker 2: and so you immediately meet people who you have something
Speaker 2: in common with, you know, and pilots do less drugs
Speaker 2: than musicians, so you know, the reason to get to know.
Speaker 1: So what kind of people hang out at the airports pilots?
Speaker 1: I have realized that do they tend to be flying
Speaker 1: fanatics or wealthy people or what kind of interest in
Speaker 1: what kind of socioeconomic status are these people.
Speaker 2: We're at a small airport and the runway is not
Speaker 2: long enough to land a jet, so the the extreme
Speaker 2: wealth is not there, which is you know, I think
Speaker 2: it's nice because it's just people that love to fly,
Speaker 2: and they you know, they go from twenty to eighty,
Speaker 2: you know, in age. They're all over the place. And
Speaker 2: so we've you know, when we got here, we started
Speaker 2: having some parties and we would just get a list
Speaker 2: of people from the airport and invite them to the house.
Speaker 2: And now we have, you know, people to hang out with.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting. Now, did you sell your house in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Yes, so presently you just have the family
Speaker 1: place in Michigan on the up and the place in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have a condo in Valencia as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're now living not completely in the Boonies,
Speaker 1: but not directly in the city. In terms of musical collaboration,
Speaker 1: you want somebody to play on your with on a record,
Speaker 1: I realize you're now in control. Is everything done digitally?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter where you are or did you ever
Speaker 1: want to have people in your studio? Well, the.
Speaker 2: Like this record Like Mood, some people came here and
Speaker 2: some people worked remotely. And it was still during COVID,
Speaker 2: so you know, we still had that factor. But the
Speaker 2: musicians that were in New York were close by. Like
Speaker 2: Tony Levin is in Is. He's upstate and he came
Speaker 2: and a couple of times we flew to him because
Speaker 2: that was really easy. We just fly to Kingston. Jerry
Speaker 2: Leonard came here. Kevin who engineered and mixed, he was
Speaker 2: you know, he could come here because he's from the city,
Speaker 2: and we have a guest house and we have a
Speaker 2: guest room, and so we were able to accommodate people
Speaker 2: that way. John Pettitucci came here and the rest was
Speaker 2: done remotely just because it was COVID time. You know,
Speaker 2: the idea of having musicians here is really something I
Speaker 2: will do in the future. And the building that I'm in,
Speaker 2: that's the student radio, can accommodate. You know. We can
Speaker 2: set up a band in here with a little bit
Speaker 2: of adjustment, and I would love to do that, and
Speaker 2: I think the on next record I'll do that. I
Speaker 2: will have at least a small rhythm section and record
Speaker 2: it to record together. You know, on this record it
Speaker 2: wasn't done like that.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the status quality size of your studio.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the room I'm in right now has ten
Speaker 2: foot ceilings and it's twenty by thirty five. And there's
Speaker 2: another room on the other side of this with double
Speaker 2: doors that's the same size with higher ceilings. And so
Speaker 2: this is the studio where in this room I have
Speaker 2: all my keyboards and my concert grant and my spinnet
Speaker 2: and my B three and all that stuff is here.
Speaker 2: And the next room would be the tracking room and
Speaker 2: will be the tracking room. But we didn't track anything here.
Speaker 1: And the physical building existed when you bought it, or
Speaker 1: do you build it.
Speaker 2: No, it was here. It was here. It was a workshop.
Speaker 1: And you talked about the engineer on your record. But
Speaker 1: to what degree are you an engineer or techi yourself?
Speaker 2: Well, uh, once you're kind of set up, you know,
Speaker 2: I have I have a lot of great pre amps
Speaker 2: and a lot of great microphones. And once you're set up,
Speaker 2: it's just a matter of pressing record and making sure
Speaker 2: it's not too hot, and in terms of being able
Speaker 2: to balance things, and you know that the idea of
Speaker 2: mixing a record. I can mix a record, you know,
Speaker 2: but I'm fairly independent. I can I can do this
Speaker 2: by myself, except for you know, playing the drums and
Speaker 2: the bass and the guitars. I'm fairly I'm good, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You wake up and you realize
Speaker 1: LA is not working for you. At what point in
Speaker 1: this process do you say, I want to make my
Speaker 1: own record.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what That's what occurred after I realized I
Speaker 2: really didn't want to make any other, anybody else's record.
Speaker 2: And at first, when I looked at it, I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of stuff. Let me listen to
Speaker 2: what I have. Look at what I have, and it
Speaker 2: just didn't feel like it was the beginning of any
Speaker 2: kind of artistic you know piece. So I just started
Speaker 2: from scratch. I just started writing songs and and that's
Speaker 2: really just what happened, you know. And from there, as
Speaker 2: soon as I had demos, I found the right drummer
Speaker 2: to do what needed to be done, and Kevin came in,
Speaker 2: and you know, I had Patti John Pattatucci's an old
Speaker 2: friend from New York and he knew Tony and Jerry
Speaker 2: Leonard played guitar. He's an old friend from New York
Speaker 2: and Kevin new him as well. So you know, that
Speaker 2: part came together pretty quick. And my old guitar people
Speaker 2: from l A. Wendy Melvoy and Tim Pearce and James Harrah,
Speaker 2: you know who. I've worked with all of them for
Speaker 2: three four decades. They're all on it. And then and
Speaker 2: then the the guest guitar players Martin Barr on one song.
Speaker 1: Now, how do you know Martin Barr?
Speaker 2: I don't. It was a cold call.
Speaker 1: It was a cold call, okay, let's be very specific,
Speaker 1: call or email.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who made the introduction.
Speaker 1: But okay, so there was a mutual.
Speaker 2: Friend somebody, somebody found something. Yeah, somebody knew a way
Speaker 2: to get a way to eat mail. I think it
Speaker 2: was I have to think about this, but I think
Speaker 2: somebody got me an email address, and I just emailed
Speaker 2: and went, here's what here is who I am, Here's
Speaker 2: what I'm doing. Would you be interested? And and he
Speaker 2: said he would be interested. And I sent him the
Speaker 2: song which is the song sad ass World on the record,
Speaker 2: that's Martin and he killed it.
Speaker 1: In the email. How much did you reference him his
Speaker 1: work in? Jeff wrote tolls. Were you a fanboy to
Speaker 1: a certain degree or were you bore? Like I'm Patrick Leonard.
Speaker 1: You know who I am?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I mean I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: remember if we even got into that sort of conversation.
Speaker 2: But the truth is, between me and you, there was
Speaker 2: no band for me better than Jethro Toll in the
Speaker 2: mid seventies, you know, from like seventy three to seventy six.
Speaker 2: Forget it.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, big kady. These might be two different things,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk best and favorite. What is the best
Speaker 1: Jethro Toll?
Speaker 2: Well, I would say thick as a brick, and I
Speaker 2: would say the second best, which Ian Anderson hates his
Speaker 2: Passion Play just because the second side of Passion Play
Speaker 2: is some of the most spectacular playing and arranging that
Speaker 2: I think it must ever put on vinyl.
Speaker 1: Okay, I love Thick as a brick, But tell me
Speaker 1: why you think it's number one.
Speaker 2: I think it's because of how old I was and
Speaker 2: seeing it performed four times and seeing comparing it, you know,
Speaker 2: to what I just seen the night before or the
Speaker 2: week before, because in those days, it was concerts every
Speaker 2: week everybody, you know, and we'd go and go and
Speaker 2: go and go, and that was just was that was unreal, unreal.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about starting becoming a fan in seventy three,
Speaker 1: If you talk Jethro Tull, you have a bifurcation between
Speaker 1: the this was people and everybody else. Right, So, Mick abrahams,
Speaker 1: although does that mean anything to you or that's just
Speaker 1: its old thing?
Speaker 2: Well, I was because I played in bands with people
Speaker 2: a lot older than me. When I was a kid
Speaker 2: in Chicago at twelve, I went to the Kinetic Playground
Speaker 2: and saw the first Zeppelin shows and the first Toll
Speaker 2: shows ever that anybody saw in America. And I saw
Speaker 2: him at the same time, you know, that night at
Speaker 2: the Kinetic where you know, it's a famous night. I
Speaker 2: was there. I was twelve years old. Somebody's mother had
Speaker 2: to drive us.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So the the obsession possession, you know, laying on the
Speaker 2: floor or with the headphones on a little bit stoned
Speaker 2: listening to vinyls at nauseum was kind of that was
Speaker 2: my life, you know, from very young until I went
Speaker 2: on the road at sixteen years old with show bands,
Speaker 2: you know, to buy, make money to buy keep Let's.
Speaker 1: Stay, Let's stay with Tall. Okay, I dropped out at
Speaker 1: a certain point. You still interested in what Ian does?
Speaker 2: I'm not And I try to listen, and I really do.
Speaker 2: And Ian's on the album as well, by the way,
Speaker 2: he's playing flute on Bishops of Fright, and he doesn't
Speaker 2: know Martin's on the record. They'll they'll find out, you know,
Speaker 2: that they just made an album together. But and those
Speaker 2: are the two guests, those are my two guests. And
Speaker 2: that's who I wanted. I wanted I wanted Tall because
Speaker 2: to me, that's what motivated me more than anything to
Speaker 2: try to create something unique. Was Tall more than Yes,
Speaker 2: more than Elp, more than Crimson, more than Floyd. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was this was my you know, I'm that age.
Speaker 2: This was the sauce, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to that famous night at the
Speaker 1: Kinetic Playground. Did you go to see Tall?
Speaker 2: No, we went to see Zeppelin. We didn't even know
Speaker 2: till we're playing. I mean we heard their name on
Speaker 2: the bill, but I didn't know who they were yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, this was sixty nine, sixty eight, sixty sixty eight. No,
Speaker 1: if it was Zeppelin had to be sixty to nine.
Speaker 1: But in any event, having seen Zepplin a few times,
Speaker 1: how were Zeppelin that night?
Speaker 2: I think they were extraordinary because it was all new
Speaker 2: and raw. And what I remember is Aaron what's his name?
Speaker 1: He?
Speaker 2: I think he ended up producing films.
Speaker 1: Oh, Aaron Russo.
Speaker 2: Aaron Russo. It was his place. It was called Aaron
Speaker 2: Russo's Kinetic Playground, And there was the litter, Savoy Brown,
Speaker 2: Jethra Tol and Zeppelin, and Zeppelin came out and played
Speaker 2: a set, and then I think Tall played a set,
Speaker 2: and then Zeppelin came back and Robert Planter, Jimmy Pager,
Speaker 2: one of them said, you know, Aaron Russo just said
Speaker 2: we can play do we drop? And I think it
Speaker 2: was two in the morning or three in the morning,
Speaker 2: that somebody's calling somebody's mom to see you can come
Speaker 2: get us now, you know, for real, And so I
Speaker 2: think it was that religious experience thing, you know, of
Speaker 2: this thing that you've never seen anything like it in
Speaker 2: a little tiny place for hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 2: You know that said, I remember Tall more than I
Speaker 2: remember zeb them from that night.
Speaker 1: Okay, you had never heard Tall when you saw that show.
Speaker 2: I think somebody had played me boret and I think
Speaker 2: they were it was the stand Up. It was right
Speaker 2: at stand Up because this was tour. They didn't tour,
Speaker 2: so I think it was Martin.
Speaker 1: I personally think this stand Up is the best album.
Speaker 1: And I certainly remember when the Inside stuffed and another
Speaker 1: one I love, which was, you know, really slagged at
Speaker 1: the time. I'm a big fan of Benefit.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge those were it. You know, I always
Speaker 2: say everybody has their three, so I sort of go, well,
Speaker 2: it's it's stand up, Benefit and thick as a brick
Speaker 2: would be my three. But then Passion plays in there
Speaker 2: for numerous reasons, and then there's no more.
Speaker 1: Well, you know the album on Chris Liss that he
Speaker 1: did where they did all the research to decide what
Speaker 1: people liked with Farm on the Freeway whatever. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a good album. You know, that was a
Speaker 1: famous album where he won Metal Album of the Year,
Speaker 1: but that's not his fault. But I thought that was
Speaker 1: a return to four.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know I wasn't. I wasn't listening anymore.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you were a big brog rock guy.
Speaker 2: Big. So if Channel Giant was really the you know
Speaker 2: that was I was.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I scared many a teenager out of my house with
Speaker 2: Channel Giant. You know, I said, you gotta hear this,
Speaker 2: and they go, what are you listening to? This is nothing?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm good friends, Eric Schulman. But General Giant
Speaker 1: never really broke in America. How did you know General Giant.
Speaker 2: From seeing them open for Tall? They opened for Toll
Speaker 2: and I bought the first record, and I have every
Speaker 2: other record since I have them all finals. You know,
Speaker 2: you're just exposing me completely here.
Speaker 1: If we have a hierarchy of Prague, although I would
Speaker 1: not call Jethro Toll Prague, but I don't want to quibble.
Speaker 1: Paul is at the top, then General Giant, who comes
Speaker 1: after that?
Speaker 2: We're talking about that era?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, if there's somebody from a
Speaker 1: later era you want to put in, that's fine.
Speaker 2: No, I would I would say that. I would say
Speaker 2: that Toll ruled it, and Giant was something that I loved,
Speaker 2: but they weren't the same kind of live band that
Speaker 2: Tull was, and they're kind of it's it sounds weird,
Speaker 2: but there kind of almost wasn't to anybody else. The
Speaker 2: Floyd shows at the Auditorium Theater before Dark Side came out,
Speaker 2: which I saw them a couple of times there, those
Speaker 2: were things that were life changing. And then I saw
Speaker 2: them do Dark Side at the Chicago Stadium and Rogers
Speaker 2: Amp broke and it just didn't feel like that thing anymore.
Speaker 2: And is as glorious as it was, it just wasn't
Speaker 2: that tiny theater thing where you couldn't believe what was
Speaker 2: going on. You know, A big Crimson fan, I was
Speaker 2: a big Crimson fan. I was a Yes fan, though
Speaker 2: I never felt that Yes was as good live as
Speaker 2: their records and some of these other bands. I felt
Speaker 2: like they were better live than their records. And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know slidle over.
Speaker 1: Staying with Floyd. Were you in on the Amagama Adam
Speaker 1: Hart mother level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, right at the beginning, Piper's at the
Speaker 2: gates are done.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to growing up. You grew up
Speaker 1: where exactly.
Speaker 2: I was born in Upper Michigan, and at six years
Speaker 2: old we moved to Displains, Illinois, which is just outside
Speaker 2: of o'haa airport in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Speaker 1: And your father and mother did what for a living.
Speaker 2: My mom was a journalist, ran a newspaper in Michigan,
Speaker 2: and then when we got to Chicago, there was a
Speaker 2: company that she worked at and she ran the newspaper
Speaker 2: for the company. It's all she ever did. And dad
Speaker 2: was a musician who did whatever else he did so
Speaker 2: that he could go play gigs on the weekend.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's where it's going. So there was music
Speaker 1: in the house for minute one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And my sister was a concert pianist and
Speaker 2: eighteen years old in nineteen sixty eight, So I was
Speaker 2: at the Grand Park sly Stone thing. I was nine
Speaker 2: years old. She brought me. I was there, Okay, so
Speaker 2: I saw Hendrick. She brought me to see Hendrick. She
Speaker 2: brought me. She's turned me onto all that stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: Dylan and all of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so only two kids in the family.
Speaker 2: Three my younger, but my younger sisters. She was just
Speaker 2: too young to have any effect on what was going
Speaker 2: on artistically or musically.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, you're talking about Hendricks, you talk about
Speaker 1: all this era, three best shows you've ever seen. We're
Speaker 1: not locking in an amber, so relatively off the top
Speaker 1: of your head.
Speaker 2: Okay. So so I would say, and I actually have
Speaker 2: a tape of this show. Here that a front. We
Speaker 2: used to sneak a Nagra into these.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait a second. How did you have a.
Speaker 2: Nagara in under a coat?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, no, no that way.
Speaker 2: It wasn't me that did it.
Speaker 1: No, the Nagra until digital recording was the peak.
Speaker 2: Yes it was.
Speaker 1: The average kid did not have a vograa. They had
Speaker 1: a little moroaco. How did you have a bagraa?
Speaker 2: It was one of the kids in high school's father's
Speaker 2: thing and he had it. And we have I have
Speaker 2: all kinds of shows, but I'm telling you I have
Speaker 2: stuff for freak out. I have like Tarcas, you know,
Speaker 2: Crimson stuff, Jeff Beck stuff. But what we have is Eclipse,
Speaker 2: which is them touring Floyd touring metal and then experimenting
Speaker 2: with Dark Side before they recorded it, and that show
Speaker 2: was a life changer. The thickest a brick show was
Speaker 2: a life changer. And I'd say the third show I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't put my finger on it. I mean Leon
Speaker 2: Russell maybe you know, or Elton, those those early Elton
Speaker 2: gigs or the early I mean, I was a huge
Speaker 2: Leon fan and it's on the other side of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: But well, Leon could just you know, he was crazy,
Speaker 2: big influence on me too, both of them.
Speaker 1: How did you get into Leon?
Speaker 2: I'm a piano player.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, when I remember Leon the second Joe
Speaker 1: Cocker album, he had the credit for writing Delta Lady Okay.
Speaker 1: And then I went back and bought the first solo
Speaker 1: album Ben Mad Dogs and Englishman happened, and then Leon
Speaker 1: Russell and the Shelter People.
Speaker 2: Leon became gigantic, right. However, I think that.
Speaker 1: I burned out on Leon. I'm the Triple Leon Live album.
Speaker 1: I found that was one step too far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I was the first album and then
Speaker 2: Shelter People, those two albums which would which would parallel
Speaker 2: the Elton John and Tumbleweed connection. They were you know,
Speaker 2: they were cousins at the same time. And then for
Speaker 2: me it was Mad Dogs and so those three those
Speaker 2: were those are my three leons.
Speaker 1: Did you see Mad Dogs live?
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 1: I did see that one.
Speaker 2: I wish I had. Let's go back, I wish I had.
Speaker 1: So your father's musician. Do your parents make you take
Speaker 1: piano lessons? Like at age five six?
Speaker 2: No, behind me here sitting right there.
Speaker 1: This is not video, but you're showing to me, so
Speaker 1: describe it.
Speaker 2: There's a nineteen fifty nine chickering sitting behind me that
Speaker 2: my parents bought a nineteen fifty nine for my sister Mary.
Speaker 2: I was three, and at that point she started teaching
Speaker 2: me songs from the sound of music, and at five
Speaker 2: I accompanied the High School of v show. I was
Speaker 2: the accompanist in first grade. So it's I've never done
Speaker 2: anything else, and I don't. I don't what am I
Speaker 2: I'm just obsessive, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't have that kind of crazy brain where I
Speaker 2: can just hear things and know them. I don't have
Speaker 2: that at all. I just I'm just a bit obsessive,
Speaker 2: and I have a deep Midwestern work ethic that keeps
Speaker 2: me at it no matter what.
Speaker 1: Okay, so did you ever take lessons? I did?
Speaker 2: I took. I took piano lessons. There's a there's a
Speaker 2: family story. In fact, the book is still in that
Speaker 2: piano bench where the teacher said he doesn't know the alphabet,
Speaker 2: so I can't teach him this yet. And so I
Speaker 2: did take piano lessons, and I took classical lessons as
Speaker 2: well as jazz lessons, probably till I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
Speaker 2: and then you know, I was just playing bands all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: And how good a reader are you?
Speaker 2: I suck at it. I suck at it. And the
Speaker 2: reason I suck at reading is that I've always been
Speaker 2: reluctant to learn other people's music. I never wanted to,
Speaker 2: and I still don't. I don't really study other people's work,
Speaker 2: you know, in listening to bands when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: The one thing that I remember doing just because I
Speaker 2: was I felt I needed to, is I spent a
Speaker 2: year learning tarcas, you know, because I wanted to be
Speaker 2: able to play it. But that's that's as far as
Speaker 2: it went. I to this day, I couldn't play any
Speaker 2: of those songs and I couldn't play targets anymore either.
Speaker 2: That takes younger hands.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're almost date your seven Oh when the Beatles
Speaker 1: are on at Sullivan, does that mean anything to you
Speaker 1: at the time?
Speaker 2: It does, because I had a sister who was obsessed
Speaker 2: with it, and so I had beatle boots and a
Speaker 2: beatlewig when I was seven years old. Like no shit,
Speaker 2: I was right there with it. It was cool. And
Speaker 2: because Dad was a musician and we had a record
Speaker 2: player in the house, all those records were there too,
Speaker 2: So it was everything Mary brought home from Maretha to
Speaker 2: all the Smoky Robinson and all the R and B
Speaker 2: stuff and whatever rock and roll she was listening to.
Speaker 2: And Dad was listening to George sheringhen Stan Getz and
Speaker 2: Oscar Peterson and Charlie Parker and Joe Beam, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was all in the house at the same time.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're obsessive about playing the piano, but you're going
Speaker 1: to school at the same time. So how well were
Speaker 1: you doing in school? How socialized were you at school? No? Good?
Speaker 2: You know, little cluster of friends that hung out in
Speaker 2: our rooms and listen to records and bad grades all
Speaker 2: the time, and out at sixteen years old, I went
Speaker 2: on the road. I never finished any of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're young. When the Beatles break and people were
Speaker 1: a little older, you immediately bought guitars and formed bands.
Speaker 1: When did you start forming bands?
Speaker 2: When I was nine, my dad and I were taking
Speaker 2: lessons from a brilliant man in Chicago, Naed Vince Duresi.
Speaker 2: He was a jazz court of box player, which is
Speaker 2: like an accordion, but it makes it sounds like an organ,
Speaker 2: and he was an amazing player. And Dad was taking
Speaker 2: lessons from him as a sax player, but so it
Speaker 2: was just theory. And then I was taking lessons from
Speaker 2: him as a pianist, and so he taught me to
Speaker 2: walking basslines and chords and chorden versions, you know, jazz
Speaker 2: chord in versions. And this is a crazy thing. But
Speaker 2: my dad would play on weekends all the time. He's
Speaker 2: played on weekends, and they had a supper club gig
Speaker 2: that was ongoing, and the quarterbox player, his quarterbox player
Speaker 2: worked at J. C. Penny in the shoe department and
Speaker 2: didn't end till nine o'clock on Friday. So I had
Speaker 2: to play the first two sets so dad bought me
Speaker 2: a far fees of mini compact really nine, yeah, so
Speaker 2: I could play this trio gig with my dad drums,
Speaker 2: him and me. And now I'm a nine year old
Speaker 2: or a ten year old who can play the intro
Speaker 2: to light my fire and I've got my own organ.
Speaker 2: So I was in every band in the neighborhood with
Speaker 2: guys that were many, you know, much my senior, because
Speaker 2: I could go at nine or ten. I think it
Speaker 2: was about ten when that came up.
Speaker 1: And then was there a dream at that point?
Speaker 2: I don't know if I don't remember. And this is
Speaker 2: somebody asked me this recently and I said, I don't
Speaker 2: remember ever thinking about anything else. You know, it was
Speaker 2: about getting the equipment, and then getting a Hammond organ,
Speaker 2: and then getting a Leslie and then getting a Wurlitzer piano,
Speaker 2: and you know, that was it. I played in a
Speaker 2: band that played at the Aragon when I was thirteen
Speaker 2: years old, and we had a melotron that we bought
Speaker 2: from Rick Nielsen at Nielsen Music in Rockford, Illinois. When
Speaker 2: he was in a band called Firecracker. He just worked
Speaker 2: at his dad's music store and the mother of the
Speaker 2: guitar player and the band had to take a second
Speaker 2: on the Cadillac to pay for the thing. And I
Speaker 2: have pictures of me sitting at this thing, you know,
Speaker 2: playing a melotron and whatever else I had at the time,
Speaker 2: at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. I was twelve or
Speaker 2: thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: Okay, your father was what we call a working musician.
Speaker 1: But music took over the world. Not that there was
Speaker 1: music before and not that there's not music today, but
Speaker 1: people who lived through that era, No, it was different.
Speaker 1: Along with playing music, these people were very famous, very rich.
Speaker 1: Did you have any desire to be a star or
Speaker 1: you always said, I'm just playing music and who knows?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, none of that. For me, it was
Speaker 2: just think. I think I was always more obsessed with
Speaker 2: the actual playing and the notes and the writing, and
Speaker 2: the writing was probably the most important. I mean, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite parts of being a musician is the
Speaker 2: ability to improvise, to just sit down at the piano
Speaker 2: and play and improvise. And I have thousands of hours
Speaker 2: of improvisation with no intention of anyone ever hearing it,
Speaker 2: just because it serves me. And that's where I find things.
Speaker 2: So the themes and things that I've come up with
Speaker 2: over the years that for songs, they're just a matter
Speaker 2: of sitting down and improvising and go, oh, that's cool,
Speaker 2: and I write it on a piece of manuscript paper
Speaker 2: and becomes a song.
Speaker 1: Okay, assuming your home on a regular basis and is
Speaker 1: supposed to traveling for whatever reason, do you play the
Speaker 1: piano every day? Yeah, every day, and every day is different.
Speaker 1: How many hours might you play the piano?
Speaker 2: It depends, I mean my work. It depends on what
Speaker 2: I'm on and right now, because I'm starting to promote
Speaker 2: this record, and it's a little bit new territory for
Speaker 2: me just to be so occupied with these things and
Speaker 2: these performances and interviews and things that I've had to
Speaker 2: just stop my work process. My normal thing goes from
Speaker 2: waking up at one in the morning with a lyric
Speaker 2: idea and dictating it into my phone and then sending
Speaker 2: it to my computer down here and coming down and
Speaker 2: writing the music for it, and coming back to the
Speaker 2: house about two in the afternoon to have something to eat,
Speaker 2: and then go back in the studio to pass out,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's not uncommon for me, and I
Speaker 2: like it that way. It's you know, I have sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, sixteen seventeen hours in the studio just by myself.
Speaker 2: And if it's not writing, its recording something I've already written.
Speaker 2: I tend not to write lyrics in the studio. I
Speaker 2: don't like to. I tend to write them away from
Speaker 2: the instrument. I don't see it at the piano and
Speaker 2: write lyrics. I write lyrics elsewhere, usually just in the
Speaker 2: house in the dark, you know, at night. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: the answer to how much do I play right now?
Speaker 2: Not as much as normal because I'm doing this, you know,
Speaker 2: but if we weren't doing this, I'd be playing right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you write the lyrics first or the music first?
Speaker 1: Or it's different in every case?
Speaker 2: Well, there's those two. There's those two cases, right, And
Speaker 2: the what I would say about it is that I
Speaker 2: prefer the lyric first songs. So where I would normally
Speaker 2: just sit at the piano or come up with something
Speaker 2: or wherever I'm sitting, whatever instrument I'm sitting at, even
Speaker 2: if it's the computer here behind me, because I have
Speaker 2: it's not on right now, but I have, you know,
Speaker 2: I can sit down and play things here too, and
Speaker 2: that that way they get recorded, right it's so much
Speaker 2: harder to get a shape, and my tendency, or I
Speaker 2: think it's probably a lot of people do it this
Speaker 2: way is you put the music down, and then you
Speaker 2: put a melody down, because you have a melody, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're writing a song, there's a melody, and so
Speaker 2: I sing the melody down, and then I spend however long,
Speaker 2: agonizing over trying to make those syllables that came out
Speaker 2: of my mouth, the nonsense that came out of my mouth,
Speaker 2: to fill in that melody into words, and it's no
Speaker 2: fun and it makes bad lyrics. So the best way
Speaker 2: for me is to write something from a thought, from
Speaker 2: a feeling, from a concept and flush it out as
Speaker 2: best I can before there's music, and then put music
Speaker 2: to it. There's songs on this record, like it all
Speaker 2: comes down to mood. I think I wrote three versions
Speaker 2: of it, and I could write another one right now
Speaker 2: because I can just look at the lyric and sing
Speaker 2: something else. You know, it's fairly simple to do, and
Speaker 2: so that's what I prefer. You know, it's a long answer,
Speaker 2: but that I prefer lyrics first.
Speaker 1: Okay, this was to say Elton doesn't write the lyrics,
Speaker 1: but it's the same thing. Bernie delivers lyrics, he writes
Speaker 1: the music. You ever discussed it with Elton?
Speaker 2: I made an album where the wit he did it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I produced songs on the West Coast. I
Speaker 2: watched him do it.
Speaker 1: I Chosemoke Up Your Ass. That is the best certain
Speaker 1: you know, the best later period Elton album by far.
Speaker 2: And while we were doing it, he said, we're making
Speaker 2: Tumbleweed Connection, aren't we. I said, yeah, we are, you know,
Speaker 2: because that was my obsession, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, well the birds is on that album. Yep, Birds,
Speaker 1: I love that. So that's a real go back to
Speaker 1: what once was.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll tell you a little story about Birds. Well,
Speaker 2: the the the method of that thing. When we when
Speaker 2: we started doing it, he said, Bernie's up and sanyonez
Speaker 2: go up and see him. He's got two hundred lyrics.
Speaker 2: Pick your favorite ones. So I went up to spend
Speaker 2: a couple of days with Bernie. Picked my favorites. I
Speaker 2: think there was ninety of them out of the two hundred.
Speaker 2: Elton picked his favorites. We took the ones that were
Speaker 2: the same and we made a notebook that I think
Speaker 2: had seventy or five or eighty lyrics and I still
Speaker 2: have the notebook. I love this thing. And studios, set
Speaker 2: up drums, set up two or three drum kits, couple
Speaker 2: grand pianos, guitar ramps, players, my keyboard, shit, everything there,
Speaker 2: no songs. Day one, everyone's there and Elton comes in
Speaker 2: and he goes to the piano and he opens a
Speaker 2: book and it takes him less than a minute, and
Speaker 2: he goes bat and he comes in. He shows me
Speaker 2: it's done. I mean I want to say it's done.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's done. He's done it. And I never
Speaker 2: saw anything like it. And we had the whole albums
Speaker 2: done that way. So Birds was one of those. When
Speaker 2: he wrote Birds and we started putting down this track.
Speaker 2: We finished it that day. It was like that one.
Speaker 2: We just finished. We never did another thing to it
Speaker 2: except mix it. It was one day written and recorded.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go a little bit deeper. Does he ever
Speaker 1: sit down and play you go? No? I think you
Speaker 1: should try something else, Elton, Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, too much of a groupie. I mean Elton, Elton's
Speaker 2: you know, Elton's the highest bar for me in terms
Speaker 2: of just a creative spirit. He really is. He's absolutely
Speaker 2: breathtaking when you watch him find these things so naturally
Speaker 2: and so quickly and so humbly. We just share something
Speaker 2: with you. We just last October recorded Leon's a Song
Speaker 2: for you, and I asked Elton if you would do it,
Speaker 2: because I want to make a little commemorative Leon record.
Speaker 2: And I asked him if he would do it, and
Speaker 2: he city would, but I don't want to play the
Speaker 2: piano part. So I played the piano part and Elton
Speaker 2: sang it. So I have this thing of these two
Speaker 2: artists that I couldn't get enough of when I was
Speaker 2: twelve years old. And we did it at Sunset Sounds.
Speaker 2: So the piano that I played on the session was
Speaker 2: Leon's piano. It was the same piano that he did
Speaker 2: the original in the same room, all coincidental. And then
Speaker 2: I came home and played it on my piano here
Speaker 2: because it was a one hundred and twenty year old
Speaker 2: piano and it didn't quite have the life in it,
Speaker 2: so I replayed it. But anyway, so that aside Elton,
Speaker 2: there's nobody like Elton, and all you have to do
Speaker 2: is watch him do this thing.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, why did Elton not want to play
Speaker 1: the piano part? On a song for you.
Speaker 2: It's not it's a tricky part. It's a tricky thing
Speaker 2: to play that, especially if you're going to do it
Speaker 2: true to form. A lot of people haven't done it,
Speaker 2: you know. They just played the chords and they put
Speaker 2: their own intro and whatever. But that little intro.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, one in the middle.
Speaker 2: It's not easy. It's it's a very strange thing. And
Speaker 2: it's for Leon, you know. He he talked about it
Speaker 2: after a couple of times. He said, I didn't I
Speaker 2: didn't plan that. It's just what I did. And it
Speaker 2: has that in it. It has some sense of like
Speaker 2: this is just a linear thought. It's not. It's not
Speaker 2: worked out at all, and so it makes it a
Speaker 2: little tricky, you know, And it was. It took me
Speaker 2: to me a long time to get it.
Speaker 1: Elton works fast, work with a lot of people. Do
Speaker 1: you have an opinion, I'm fast and slow.
Speaker 2: Uh, I don't think. I don't think it matters. I
Speaker 2: think that although slow can sometimes be an indication of
Speaker 2: an uncertainty, and I think you have to know you know,
Speaker 2: the person that second guesses and that's why they're slow.
Speaker 2: Got no time for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. So you play with your father
Speaker 1: and then he got all these keyboards. You drop out
Speaker 1: of high school.
Speaker 2: To go on the road, Yeah, I had. Actually, I
Speaker 2: drop out is the wrong thing. I was thrown out
Speaker 2: of high school because I was incorrigible and didn't have
Speaker 2: the grades I was going to need to graduate. And
Speaker 2: all I was doing was playing piano all day. I
Speaker 2: would go to home room in the morning, and that
Speaker 2: meant that they felt you were they thought you were there,
Speaker 2: and then I would my folks were both at work.
Speaker 2: I'd go home, play the piano all day and come
Speaker 2: back at the end for me classes at the end
Speaker 2: of the day. And that a couple of years of that,
Speaker 2: and you're not going to get you to Bloma. So
Speaker 2: I was out and I was sixteen, and there was
Speaker 2: a kid in one of my classes who knew me,
Speaker 2: and his mother was associated with a show band and
Speaker 2: they needed a keyboard player. And he just said, I
Speaker 2: know this guy and maybe he can do it, and
Speaker 2: they called me, and his mother drove me to Traverse City, Michigan,
Speaker 2: where I joined this show band and played with him
Speaker 2: for a couple of years. And you know, the guy
Speaker 2: was a pianist and I played keyboards behind him, so
Speaker 2: and there was no charts, so he'd do some version
Speaker 2: of rhapsody and blew and I had a chord chart,
Speaker 2: so I'd have to kind of create orchestrations. And I
Speaker 2: think it did me a lot of good because it
Speaker 2: was flying by the seat of your pants sort of thing,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you went on the road with the show band,
Speaker 1: did you have a band that was playing parties and
Speaker 1: shows at the same time. Were you giving anything up
Speaker 1: to go on the road with the show band?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no no. I was giving up getting
Speaker 2: away from my parents being disappointed me from being thrown
Speaker 2: out high school. I don't think my dad was, but
Speaker 2: I think my mom was a little bit put off.
Speaker 2: And also I think they both thought, you've really chosen
Speaker 2: a crazy path, man, you really have, because it was
Speaker 2: clear I wasn't going to do anything else. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's a Midwestern family with a lot of musicians in
Speaker 2: the family, and none of them have ever made a
Speaker 2: dime from it, you know, enough to buy a couple
Speaker 2: of beers, So I think they were, you know, nervous.
Speaker 1: Okay, looking back fifty odd years later in your career,
Speaker 1: have you ever had a moment where you were broken
Speaker 1: out of money.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So let's go back. You're playing with the show bad.
Speaker 1: Is that like a fifty week a year job or
Speaker 1: is that interbidden?
Speaker 2: No, it's there. They're out all the time. They're just out.
Speaker 2: This is these people live in their motor homes and
Speaker 2: their you know whatever hotels and go to a club
Speaker 2: and you're there for a month, and it's six nights
Speaker 2: a week, you know, and there's a show, and then
Speaker 2: there's dance sets.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's the way that stuff worked back in those days.
Speaker 2: So there would be like two shows that were an
Speaker 2: hour long or fifty minutes or whatever they were with
Speaker 2: whoever the band belonged to, and then he wouldn't be there,
Speaker 2: and there'd be dance sets to fill the time in
Speaker 2: between in these clubs, and sometimes that went to three
Speaker 2: in the morning, and oftentimes just for candles. You know,
Speaker 2: you're just excuse me, you're just playing for candles.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a teenager on the road. Sex drugs. Were
Speaker 1: those a part of the lifestyle?
Speaker 2: Not in this case, no, because it was it wasn't
Speaker 2: rock and roll, you know, and you need that third
Speaker 2: one to get those first two. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: You don't get sex and drugs in a show band,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're doing the show, you're playing music, you're
Speaker 1: getting paid. Are you saying to yourself this is great?
Speaker 1: Or I got to move on from this?
Speaker 2: Well, what I was doing is I was I was
Speaker 2: obsessively practicing during the day. So because and this was
Speaker 2: just the twist of fate, because this first gig was
Speaker 2: with a pianist and they brought a real piano. I
Speaker 2: could go into the club and the day and practice.
Speaker 2: And so I did, and I practiced, and I practiced
Speaker 2: and I practiced, and with the intention that I'm going
Speaker 2: to buy keyboards. I'm going to get my own keyboards,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to get my chops even better, and
Speaker 2: then I'm going to go start a band or you know,
Speaker 2: you know, somebody's gonna hire me or whatever it was,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it was. So what was it? It
Speaker 2: was a bunch of little things along the way. I
Speaker 2: think when I was I was fourteen, and there was
Speaker 2: a guy in Chicago named Paul Bogus Junior, and he
Speaker 2: got a record deal. Larry Carlton signed him to a
Speaker 2: record deal. And I had played on the demos, and
Speaker 2: I was thirteen, and Larry said to Paul he wanted
Speaker 2: to do the record in Chicago with the same guys
Speaker 2: that had done the demo. And so the first day
Speaker 2: in the studio, Larry came and put his hand on
Speaker 2: my shoulder. I was sitting at a Fender Roads and
Speaker 2: he said, tell me, I didn't just hire a high
Speaker 2: school freshman record. I think you did, so, Larry, and
Speaker 2: I you know, I knew Larry from back then.
Speaker 1: And wait, wait, wait, you knew Larry personally?
Speaker 2: Yeah? How yeah, from that record because I.
Speaker 1: Played, oh you met him on the record.
Speaker 2: You didn't know you met him on the record?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And then? And then a couple of years after that,
Speaker 2: I think I was sixteen or seventeen. It was actually
Speaker 2: what it was is it was after a year of
Speaker 2: the show band. I came to La. I think I
Speaker 2: was seventeen.
Speaker 1: Whoa, wha, wha, wha, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's wait,
Speaker 1: let's let up. You're playing in the show band.
Speaker 2: I haven't strung this together in a long time.
Speaker 1: You're playing in a show band. You just said. In
Speaker 1: addition to moving in La, you moved with your band.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, what what what? What? I
Speaker 2: had a van?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh business.
Speaker 2: So what I did was I had my keyboards and
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm going to go to LA and I'm
Speaker 2: going to see what I can do. Now I'm seventeen and.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. How
Speaker 1: many keyboards do you put in the van?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, it was one of those four d'conoline vans, right,
Speaker 2: And so I think I had a Fender Rhodes and
Speaker 2: a clavinet and uh Mini Mogue. Maybe I think that's
Speaker 2: what I had, and I don't I had a Hammond,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I tried to stick it in
Speaker 2: the van, you know, because I couldn't get it in
Speaker 2: and out myself. So I think that's about what it was.
Speaker 2: And I and I came out and uh and Larry.
Speaker 2: I visited with Larry and had insane experiences going.
Speaker 1: Whoa you get to LA? Where do you stay?
Speaker 2: Where did I stay? I don't remember where I stayed.
Speaker 2: I think I might have stayed in somebody's apartment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I stayed in an apartment and I kind of don't
Speaker 2: remember that part. Oh wait, I remember something. Maybe I
Speaker 2: stayed with Hawk. Do you know Hawk?
Speaker 1: Wilensky, No I know who he is.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, So Hawk, I go back with
Speaker 2: Hawk because Banger Flying Circus, which was his first band,
Speaker 2: was one of my favorite bands. So I met Hawk
Speaker 2: when I was ten years old, going to his concerts
Speaker 2: and you know, at a place called the Cellar in
Speaker 2: Arlington Heights. And so I came out and that yet's right.
Speaker 2: And so aside from Larry, Hawk had lent let me
Speaker 2: get this right, Hawk had lent one of l De
Speaker 2: Carlo's guitars. He was the guitar player and Banger, which
Speaker 2: became Madua. It's a long story there, Chicago boys. He
Speaker 2: had lent it to El because Al was going to
Speaker 2: audition for Frank zapA and we needed to go pick
Speaker 2: up the guitar. El's guitar at Zappa's rehearsals. So we
Speaker 2: went to the rehearsals and somebody asked Hawk if he
Speaker 2: was interested in auditioning for Frank, and he said, no,
Speaker 2: but Pat will. So so I did. And I was
Speaker 2: around for a couple of months. You know, I didn't
Speaker 2: I couldn't stay with it because my reading was no good.
Speaker 2: But I was like two months of doing rehearsals for
Speaker 2: the what was the Zodaaluur's period for Zappa, And after
Speaker 2: that there was nothing except selling my Clavenet to have
Speaker 2: enough gas money to drive back to Chicago.
Speaker 1: So how long were you in La m?
Speaker 2: Five months? Four months? I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you mentioned connecting with Larry Carlton there and
Speaker 1: I cut you off. What happened with Larry?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's just there's just a beautiful story because
Speaker 2: I went up to his house which was on Mohomes
Speaker 2: at the time, and just to visit, and he had
Speaker 2: we hung out a little bit and then he said, look,
Speaker 2: I have a con. I have a session today and
Speaker 2: a concert tonight. You just want to join me for them?
Speaker 2: And I said, of course, And so he said, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take a shower, play the piano if you want.
Speaker 2: And so I sat at the piano and on the
Speaker 2: piano was a cassette player and charts and it was
Speaker 2: Fagan because Larry did the arrangements for Royal Scam right
Speaker 2: and he was working on him at the time, So
Speaker 2: it was the charts for Royal Scam sitting on the
Speaker 2: piano and there from there he threw a n amp
Speaker 2: in the back of his guitar in his car and
Speaker 2: a couple of guitars, and we drove down to an
Speaker 2: M studios. I had no idea where we were going.
Speaker 2: And we walked in to Studio B and it was
Speaker 2: his Eira, and it was Jony and Jocko and Henry
Speaker 2: Lewis Wow and Larry and I sat on the couchway.
Speaker 2: He did all his guitar overdubs on his ear right
Speaker 2: next right. So then we go have some dinner, and
Speaker 2: then after dinner he sit as a concert. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: let's go. It was Santa Monica, Civic Weather Report. Choko
Speaker 2: was coming out for heavy weather. It was that night, right,
Speaker 2: So that was kind of my l experience. You know,
Speaker 2: I was a little boy, really, I really was. But
Speaker 2: it gave me a taste of something that I think.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, this is pretty bad ass to
Speaker 2: be able to play on records like this and do
Speaker 2: this this stuff. And of course you know Tony Man,
Speaker 2: Hazira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus. Those are
Speaker 2: my three, you know.
Speaker 1: Hisira is one of my three. The other two no,
Speaker 1: But when you go back to Chicago with your tail
Speaker 1: between your legs or how hard a decision.
Speaker 2: Is that, Well, it was there was no there was
Speaker 2: no money, you know, there was no money. So I
Speaker 2: came back and got in another show man, this time
Speaker 2: with a drummer friend of mine, and we did it
Speaker 2: with the intention of making enough money to start a band,
Speaker 2: and we started a band called Trillion, and Trillion got
Speaker 2: signed to Sony and we did two albums.
Speaker 1: Wow, those are big steps. Who you know connected to CBS?
Speaker 1: Who was the business person who made that connection? That's
Speaker 1: such a you got signed.
Speaker 2: We were we were a Chicago club band and at
Speaker 2: that time we were kind of the Chicago club band,
Speaker 2: and we were a progressive rock band, and we were
Speaker 2: packing the clubs doing these forty minute weird concept pieces
Speaker 2: and uh and you know, the their their, The interest
Speaker 2: came and a manager came and we did showcases and
Speaker 2: there was a little bit of a bidding war, even
Speaker 2: if I recall, and we ended up signing with Lenny
Speaker 2: Petzi at Epic Portrait right yeah, and made the first
Speaker 2: Trillion album at Cariboo Wow with Gary Lyons. And I
Speaker 2: had been up to Caribou when I was a kid
Speaker 2: too because of Hawk, because Hawk was there, because Madua
Speaker 2: was one of Jimmy Gricio's bands and a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: and I drove out to visit Hawk and we stayed
Speaker 2: up with Caribou.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, fourteen, Okay, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: If you're fourteen, how did you drive.
Speaker 2: My friend Petro, he was seventeen or eighteen. You know,
Speaker 2: always older musicians, always hanging out with older musicians. Okay,
Speaker 2: until now there are no older musicians.
Speaker 1: You're in Trillia. This is the big leagues. Are you
Speaker 1: telling yourself? Man, I've made it?
Speaker 2: No, No, I have. I had the same problem then
Speaker 2: as I do now. If we were to start talking
Speaker 2: about records, I would tell you about the one I've written,
Speaker 2: not about the one I'm about to release. And it
Speaker 2: was my it was my nature. Then it's like, well
Speaker 2: that record's done. And you know, also it was we
Speaker 2: were a prog band and the label wasn't going to
Speaker 2: have that. So whatever songs were the poppyist were the
Speaker 2: ones we did, and the ones that had some elements
Speaker 2: of pop in them that they could take everything proggy
Speaker 2: out of it. That's what happened. And I sort of
Speaker 2: felt like, well, the record sounds good and we played
Speaker 2: well because we were a good band, but this isn't
Speaker 2: where I wanted to be. It really wasn't, you know.
Speaker 2: So then we changed singers and made another record that
Speaker 2: just didn't sound good. It just wasn't even a good
Speaker 2: sounding record, and some of the prog elements got left.
Speaker 2: But at that point it was just kind of it
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna work for me, you know. And obviously in
Speaker 2: this stuff there's agonizing moments. There are really brutal moments
Speaker 2: in this stuff, because you put your life into this
Speaker 2: stuff and you wanted to work. But I'm pretty quick
Speaker 2: about feeling like if the music isn't what I wanted
Speaker 2: to be, I don't belong here.
Speaker 1: Wait, well, there are two eends ine there. You put
Speaker 1: your heart and soul into the music. You were mentioning
Speaker 1: this isn't the right place for me. But the other
Speaker 1: side of it is you put your heart and soul
Speaker 1: to the music and it doesn't break through commercially. That's got
Speaker 1: to be disappointing too. Well.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know what I even expected,
Speaker 2: but I knew we were a good band, and I
Speaker 2: knew that if people could go to see King Crimson
Speaker 2: in Philly, Auditorium theater. Maybe we could get there. I
Speaker 2: didn't you know, I didn't want to be on I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be the cow Sills. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be Channel giants.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you make two records, you say this isn't
Speaker 1: where I want to be at. Then what.
Speaker 2: Then hanging around Chicago and played started doing some jingles
Speaker 2: to make money. Friend of mine got me into doing,
Speaker 2: you know, playing on jingles, and I made the first
Speaker 2: kind of real money that I ever made and started
Speaker 2: a little fusion band, a jazz fusion band, instrumental band
Speaker 2: with some great players. And we called it software. And ironically,
Speaker 2: when the name came up, somebody, as we were trying
Speaker 2: to think of a name, said hardware. As somebody said,
Speaker 2: what about just flip it and call it software? There
Speaker 2: was no such thing as softway yet. And then some
Speaker 2: years later someone said, you still own that name? Like
Speaker 2: I don't think so. But anyway, that was that was fun.
Speaker 2: But it was you know, uh, I can't remember the
Speaker 2: name of the label. It was Ross Trout's father, the
Speaker 2: guitar player Ross Trout. It was his father, and it
Speaker 2: was like a it was for M C. A. But
Speaker 2: it was a little jazz label, and we made this
Speaker 2: simple record in in uh a garage studio that was
Speaker 2: owned by Larry Millis, who was the bass player in
Speaker 2: the Eyes of March, you know, up the street from Peterick,
Speaker 2: you know, Chicago Boys and UH. And it was a
Speaker 2: nice record. And then and then after a couple of
Speaker 2: years of jingles, UH, the weather killed me. And that's
Speaker 2: that's how I ended up calling Hawk again, saying, Hawk,
Speaker 2: I got to get out of here. And he said,
Speaker 2: I'm on the phone with one of the Jackson's about
Speaker 2: some tour. I'll call you back. And he called me back.
Speaker 2: He said, you want to audition for a tour and
Speaker 2: it was the Victory Tour. And that's what got me
Speaker 2: to LA.
Speaker 1: So now, okay, just a couple of fill in moments, yep,
Speaker 1: you have all these ups and downs ever, any middle
Speaker 1: of the night moments like what am I doing? You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't working? Or was it always? This isn't working today?
Speaker 1: But I'm staying on the path.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, in this stuff, there was a there
Speaker 2: was another little moment that I that I've forgott until
Speaker 2: you mentioned this, where I had in Larry Millis's garage.
Speaker 2: I had somebody was working with Greg Almond in Larry
Speaker 2: Millers's garage, and I came down and played on some
Speaker 2: some record of Greg Almonds, some solo record he was making.
Speaker 2: I don't even remember which one it was. And then
Speaker 2: a couple of years later, Chuck Levelle was with the
Speaker 2: Stones and the Brothers needed a keyboard player, so I
Speaker 2: went to Sarasota, Tallahassee, I can't remember which one of
Speaker 2: these towns in Florida, Jacksonville. Yeah, it spent a few
Speaker 2: a few months playing with the Almond brothers.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, yeah, Greg Alman had remembered.
Speaker 2: Yeah he did. You know Greg?
Speaker 1: I know him a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh he What a beautiful cat, and what a
Speaker 2: great sense of humor, and what a great talent. But ultimately,
Speaker 2: the most fun thing that came out of that was
Speaker 2: at one point I was back in Chicago and that
Speaker 2: didn't work out because I won't even go into the reasons.
Speaker 1: Now, ony, wait, give you one reason, or at least.
Speaker 2: The one reason was Oh, I can't even say it.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just ask you this. You're living this
Speaker 1: parapatetic lifestyle. Is there ever any romance in these things?
Speaker 1: Or is it music. Music. Music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's romance, but the music was I'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, music is what got me out of bed
Speaker 2: in the morning.
Speaker 1: So there wasn't an issue of making a career choice
Speaker 1: based on romance.
Speaker 2: No, never, no.
Speaker 1: And was there ever an issue of drugs or alcohol. No? Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're back at Chicago and these couple of things happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I get a call from Dickie's manager
Speaker 2: saying Dickie's playing at the Park West tonight and his
Speaker 2: keyboard player got sick. Can you come play? And I said,
Speaker 2: what what it's the music? I said, it's a solo record.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know any of the songs. I
Speaker 2: don't know any songs of this, so we will be
Speaker 2: a couple Allman Brothers songs as well. And this was
Speaker 2: a CP seventy electric Grand with a synthesizer on top
Speaker 2: of it, and I was going to play the double
Speaker 2: guitar lines on the synthesizer, and I thought, okay, this
Speaker 2: could be fun little and it was just a little
Speaker 2: tour for you know, I don't remember how many dates
Speaker 2: through the Upper Midwest, and so I said, you know,
Speaker 2: it's the gigs tonight. You know, how do we do
Speaker 2: this is a four piece band in the gigs tonight?
Speaker 2: And he said, there'll be plenty of time. You know,
Speaker 2: they're flying in at four o'clock, they'll meet hit the place. Well,
Speaker 2: their flight got held up, and so what I got
Speaker 2: was a set list with the first chord of every
Speaker 2: song and then on we go, and there was never
Speaker 2: any more beyond that because I kind of knew the
Speaker 2: Almen Brothers stuff a little bit, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: we did that for a while, but that was that
Speaker 2: was one of the more fun things I remember doing
Speaker 2: because it was just a four piece band hit it
Speaker 2: really hard, you know, and really an opportunity to play
Speaker 2: some great legendary stuff. I mean, I found a cassette
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago that I've yet to be
Speaker 2: able to rEFInd, but you know, you can hear those
Speaker 2: those double solos and I'm playing the second part near
Speaker 2: the low part on a synth in comping piano underneath,
Speaker 2: and I thought, that's that's pretty cool, you know, to
Speaker 2: have done that with with with those guys, you know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that was another little stop along the way.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Hawk says, you interested in working with the
Speaker 1: Jackson's that.
Speaker 2: Was it was auditioning adition.
Speaker 1: That was an interesting tour, but no matter what, Michael
Speaker 1: already had a success. He was going to work with
Speaker 1: the Jacksons again. Right, this is top tier. How do
Speaker 1: you get the gig and become the music direct?
Speaker 2: Audition? Cold audition?
Speaker 1: Tell me about the audition.
Speaker 2: Okay, The audition was Leeds rehearsal in North Hollywood. And
Speaker 2: I showed up and there's a d X seven synthesizer,
Speaker 2: Yamaha keyboard, and a drum set and the drummer was
Speaker 2: Jonathan Moffatt, who I'd never met, and it was Marlon
Speaker 2: and Tito and Jackie came and they said, you know,
Speaker 2: do you know any of the songs? And I said nope,
Speaker 2: not a one. And they said, what do you want
Speaker 2: to I said, well, just jam so Jonathan and I
Speaker 2: just improvise and they talk about the DX seven and
Speaker 2: they said, do you know anything about this the city?
Speaker 2: I do because I had worked on programming it for
Speaker 2: Jingles and stuff, so I actually knew how to program
Speaker 2: a DX seven, which is a little bit like knowing
Speaker 2: how to get to the moon in a paper bag.
Speaker 2: It's an impossible thing to deal with but I knew
Speaker 2: how So that was that, and I went back to
Speaker 2: Chicago and everybody went how to go? And I said,
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen. A lot of chance. So
Speaker 2: then a couple of weeks later they call and say,
Speaker 2: we want you to come back.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait wait, are you flying on your
Speaker 1: own dime or their dives?
Speaker 2: Flying on my own dime? But I have jingle money.
Speaker 2: Now I have jingle money, so you know we're not
Speaker 2: doing bad. So they call me back. I go back
Speaker 2: for the second audition, and it's the same keyboard, same
Speaker 2: drum set, but now there's a guitar amp and it's
Speaker 2: David Williams, you know, a guitar and a guitar player.
Speaker 2: And it was the same thing, you know, except I
Speaker 2: think this time maybe Germaine was there, but I don't
Speaker 2: really remember completely, and so we just jammed again. And
Speaker 2: then I go home and everybody goes how it goes.
Speaker 2: I goes, it's not going to happen, and I have
Speaker 2: to add this that that time. Now they're auditioning a
Speaker 2: lot of people, and I get there and there's people
Speaker 2: waiting with their road crew to set up their rigs,
Speaker 2: and I'm listening through the door and I hear you know,
Speaker 2: click click click click bit, you know, the whole bass part,
Speaker 2: all the horn sounds, and I'm like, I'm going home,
Speaker 2: you know, me tinkering out of DX seven Inc. Going
Speaker 2: to make this happen. So I go back home. A
Speaker 2: couple weeks later, somebody calls says, you got the gig.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, okay. So I go back and we
Speaker 2: start working on it. We start, you know, rehearsals and
Speaker 2: whatever else. And it was fairly clear from the beginning
Speaker 2: that there was a lot of stuff needed in terms
Speaker 2: of the programming and the arranging and running the rehearsals,
Speaker 2: and there was nobody to do it. So I sort
Speaker 2: of became the musical director just because there was no
Speaker 2: one else there to do that. So obviously there's a
Speaker 2: lot of experiences there, and there's enough stories there to fill,
Speaker 2: you know, a nice Scorsesey film. I mean, it's the
Speaker 2: craziest thing I've ever experienced in my life. Was at
Speaker 2: that up to that point was that tour. It was madness.
Speaker 2: But anyway, it was good fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, it was an adventure. Needless to say, the
Speaker 1: tour financially for varying reasons did not work out. They
Speaker 1: were playing big places. You had experiences that many people
Speaker 1: in life never have. But was it you've been on
Speaker 1: the road since was it fun and good or was
Speaker 1: it really like this is like the middle of you know, chaos.
Speaker 2: Well, what I tell you, it's interesting because of the
Speaker 2: size of the stage and there were two complete setups.
Speaker 2: It took so long to set it up and transport
Speaker 2: it that we only played Friday and Saturday nights, and
Speaker 2: we were off during the week and you could either
Speaker 2: fly back t La or you could stay on the road.
Speaker 2: Most of the time stayed on the road, and that
Speaker 2: part was difficult because you were only playing two nights.
Speaker 2: But honestly, when the band was very good and very
Speaker 2: tight and great players and certainly the best players I'd
Speaker 2: ever played with, And when Jonathan would count off Billy
Speaker 2: Jean and start playing the beat, and I'd play the
Speaker 2: bassline and the right hand part because that was what
Speaker 2: I was doing, and I'd watch Michael dance that dance,
Speaker 2: it was like it was unreal to be part of that.
Speaker 2: And also I think the thing with Michael is when
Speaker 2: you actually got to experience what it was like to
Speaker 2: do rehearsals and do this and do that, and then
Speaker 2: show time and see just how powerful he was and
Speaker 2: how amazing and how brilliant. You know, that stuck with me,
Speaker 2: you know, because that was really something, so you know,
Speaker 2: it was a great experience.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was chaos and a lot of funny anecdotal moments
Speaker 2: and a lot of weird stuff. But you know, that
Speaker 2: was my first big tour, and then I did two
Speaker 2: other tours and that's all I've ever done for tours.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, Victory tour ends at what's the next?
Speaker 2: Who's the first Madonna tour? Virgin two?
Speaker 1: How do you get that gig?
Speaker 2: Her manager at the time called my managers and said,
Speaker 2: Madonna wants Pat to do her tour because of the
Speaker 2: Victory tour.
Speaker 1: And it was just that simple. No one had ever
Speaker 1: met anybody. Had she seen the Victory Tour.
Speaker 2: She must have or or at least, you know, knew
Speaker 2: enough about it to know that it was probably probably good.
Speaker 2: And my first reaction was, you mean the girl who
Speaker 2: rolls around on the floor in her underwear, And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pass. You know, I was hoping at this
Speaker 2: point to get into making records. You know in La,
Speaker 2: and then the idea was would you just meet with her?
Speaker 2: And I did, and she said, never done this. You're
Speaker 2: in charge, There'll be no pushback. Hire who you want.
Speaker 2: And I went, okay, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. Just to be very clear, this is or
Speaker 1: before the like a virgin tour.
Speaker 2: This is the virgin tour. Okay, this is the virgin tour.
Speaker 2: This is her first tour. And this is before she
Speaker 2: and I had written a note.
Speaker 1: And the Beastie Boys are opening and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And every night we'd get back to our
Speaker 2: room and the shrimp and the champagne, he'd be gone
Speaker 2: and they'd be sleeping in the couch in our dressing room.
Speaker 2: I love those guys. This hysterical. Like every night they'd
Speaker 2: eat all our food and drink all our booze.
Speaker 1: Okay, she was she was the cats me out. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there were a lot of dates on that tour.
Speaker 1: Were you just in the band or did you have
Speaker 1: some sort of some potico talking about collaboration.
Speaker 2: Well, I was. I mean I was the musical director
Speaker 2: for it, so I put it together. And then what
Speaker 2: happened is during during the tour, I think or I
Speaker 2: can't remember exactly what it was. I think it might
Speaker 2: have been after the tour, before we did Oh, it
Speaker 2: was after the tour, before we did Live AID. I
Speaker 2: had a party at my house and I invited her
Speaker 2: and my parents were there, you know, and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And she came and I showed her the little studio
Speaker 2: and I had this little track that I was recorded,
Speaker 2: and I played it for and she said, can I
Speaker 2: write to it? And I said okay, And she wrote
Speaker 2: the song that we did at Live Aid, which is
Speaker 2: called Love Mix the World Ground, and that became the
Speaker 2: first thing we wrote. And that's where the writing started.
Speaker 2: And then there's another page to that that got got
Speaker 2: us into making True Blue.
Speaker 1: What's the other page?
Speaker 2: The other page is I wanted to see if I
Speaker 2: could get into scoring films because I like making up
Speaker 2: music and I thought me, I'd like to do this,
Speaker 2: and I always felt I should, and I did enough
Speaker 2: of it to know I shouldn't, but I had. There
Speaker 2: There was a movie that my managers got me affiliated
Speaker 2: with because a friend of theirs was directing it. His
Speaker 2: name was Duncan Gibbons, and the movie was called Fire
Speaker 2: with Fire, I think, and it was Virginia Madson was
Speaker 2: starring in it, and I met with him and I
Speaker 2: watched some I watched the movie, I think, the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and then he gave me VHS cassettes to write music
Speaker 2: for it, and I wrote, let me see if I
Speaker 2: can get this to play unless year what I wrote, No,
Speaker 2: it's not going to play as it Wait, maybe it is.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: So that was my movie theme, and I asked her
Speaker 2: if she would write and the rest of the song,
Speaker 2: the rest of that song, which was live to Tell,
Speaker 2: and I asked her as a favor, she'd write the
Speaker 2: lyrics for it, because then it would really help me
Speaker 2: get this movie. And she said yes. So she was
Speaker 2: on her way to the house and my manager called
Speaker 2: and said they've hired somebody else. So no cell phones.
Speaker 2: I can't call her and turn her around. So she
Speaker 2: gets to the house and I say, sorry you ways,
Speaker 2: you know, sorry to have you drive all this way,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to happen. She said, well, Shawn's
Speaker 2: making a movie. Let me hear it. So I play
Speaker 2: it for and she writes these lyrics and she sings
Speaker 2: this vocal and we record it and she takes a
Speaker 2: cassette and I had to go to Michael's house because
Speaker 2: I was going to help Michael get some of his
Speaker 2: songs together for the Bad album. So I went to
Speaker 2: Michael's and it's Michael and Quincy, and Michael's singing to me,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to note, going around trying to find
Speaker 2: some music, and somebody comes in and said, Sean Penn's
Speaker 2: on the phone. So I get on the phone and
Speaker 2: he says, you got to come here right now. I say, well,
Speaker 2: I can't leave right this minute, but I'll get out
Speaker 2: of here in a little while. So when I did,
Speaker 2: I went to the director's house, Jamie Foley. I think
Speaker 2: he was living in Bennett Canyon. I can't remember what canyon.
Speaker 2: And I walk in the door and Madonna's on the
Speaker 2: couch and Sean's there and Jamie's there, and Jamie said,
Speaker 2: we love the song and we want to use it
Speaker 2: in the movie. And Madonna said, who's going to sing it?
Speaker 2: We all went you're going to sing it? She goes, no,
Speaker 2: it's not right for me. It's too low. It's this,
Speaker 2: it's this, And then Jamie looked at me and said,
Speaker 2: and Madonna said, you can score my movie as well.
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I can so, and that's this is
Speaker 2: I swear this is true. This was the same day.
Speaker 2: And here's another thing about it is that that version
Speaker 2: that we did of Live to Tell was the record.
Speaker 2: We just added to it. We never did it again.
Speaker 2: She never sang it again ever. That was it. So well,
Speaker 2: the only thing about it I like that.
Speaker 1: I love that. I just love it the way it
Speaker 1: goes down. I know. No, dude, it's funny to hear
Speaker 1: the story so accidental because I okay, so that goes
Speaker 1: into the album. Continue, how what's the next step with Madonna's.
Speaker 2: Well, the at this point there wasn't really talk of
Speaker 2: an album. That was just this song for the movie.
Speaker 2: And then Quincy, this is also strange, Quincy asked. He said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to do something with kind of a little
Speaker 2: bit of a Shadet feel for Michael, and maybe you
Speaker 2: could write something and send it. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: So I wrote and I sent it to Quincy. He said, no,
Speaker 2: Michael doesn't like it. So I showed it to Madonna
Speaker 2: and we sit there and write Liaisla Bonita. So now
Speaker 2: we've got two songs. And then another crazy thing happened
Speaker 2: is my friend Hawk, who Hawk is in all of this.
Speaker 2: Somehow was playing on a Ted Nugent record at a
Speaker 2: little studio in Burbank and he got stung by a bee.
Speaker 2: So he called me and he said, I can't make
Speaker 2: the session because I'm all swelled up from this beasting.
Speaker 2: Can you go do the session for me? So I said, okay.
Speaker 2: So I went down and I played on whatever, I
Speaker 2: don't remember what it was, for Ted with in this
Speaker 2: little studio in Burbank with this engineer named Michael Verdict.
Speaker 2: And I walk in the room and I think, what's
Speaker 2: where's the sound coming from? It was just unbelievable sounding, right,
Speaker 2: So that's done. Now, that's gone. And then Madonna said
Speaker 2: maybe we could record these songs somewhere and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I know where, and it just we got in there
Speaker 2: and it just turned into writing another song and writing
Speaker 2: another song and writing another song, and pretty soon we
Speaker 2: were done, and it was true blue and a little
Speaker 2: tiny shithole in Burbank, and you know one of the
Speaker 2: greatest sets of yours ever, which is Michael Verdict, And
Speaker 2: it just happened that way. And the songs were written
Speaker 2: very quickly, like always, and recorded just as quick and.
Speaker 1: Okay, what headspace are you at this point. You've been playing,
Speaker 1: you're doing jingles. Now you're out with Michael Jackson and
Speaker 1: the Jacksons, you're out with Madonna, you're with Q. You
Speaker 1: feel like a part of this or you feel like
Speaker 1: an impostor.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I felt like an impostor. I
Speaker 2: mean the other part of it is in those days,
Speaker 2: part of this was Yamaha, who sponsored the Victory Tour.
Speaker 2: A man named Doug Buttleman, who's a deer man, was
Speaker 2: deeply supportive of me in those days. Also then got
Speaker 2: Yamaha to supply the Virgin Tour, and the other group
Speaker 2: of people that were being supported by Yamaha were the
Speaker 2: Toto guys. So through all the stuff that happens, the
Speaker 2: network that was kind of the network, you know. I
Speaker 2: got invited to a couple of parties and was later
Speaker 2: told stories where someone when who was this kid, like,
Speaker 2: what was this kid doing it? You know, and it
Speaker 2: was Jeff. Jeff said no, he's all right. Jeff Pica
Speaker 2: said no, he's all right, and it was he was.
Speaker 2: Jeff was kind of in those days certainly kind of
Speaker 2: the godfather of the session scene. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, Jeff felt like I could hang and
Speaker 2: I think that was a big part of it.
Speaker 1: How'd you know Butterman?
Speaker 2: Buttleman was the Jackson Tour, the Victory Tour because Yamaha
Speaker 2: supported the Victory Tour and it was all d X seven's.
Speaker 2: There was twenty seven ors, I mean DX seven's on
Speaker 2: stage and Grandam and so you know that made me
Speaker 2: I'm hardest and a lot of those sounds ended up,
Speaker 2: you know, all the DX sevens from then on. They
Speaker 2: were just part of the patches. But like the horn
Speaker 2: sounds and bass sounds and some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know that part of his career, but that's interesting, Okay, yea.
Speaker 1: What is Madonna's attitude when you're doing True Blue? Is
Speaker 1: it like I'm on top of the world. I can
Speaker 1: do no wrong, or like, you know, holy fuck, we
Speaker 1: better get this right, or I'm just doing this today.
Speaker 1: I could be doing something else tomorrow.
Speaker 2: It's good. It's good. It's good to think about. I
Speaker 2: think the the one thing amongst many things that I
Speaker 2: would say about Madonna and her work, ethic and her
Speaker 2: abilities is there was never a second guess, never was it.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know about this. I don't know about this.
Speaker 2: It either was or it wasn't, and we were just
Speaker 2: moving forward. And I could say that with a clear conscience.
Speaker 2: It was never any know nothing about I don't know
Speaker 2: about this. I don't know about this. If we were
Speaker 2: doing it, we were doing it, and it was the
Speaker 2: same for all the work we did. It was just done,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the record is finished, the record comes out.
Speaker 1: What is your experience of the record coming out?
Speaker 2: Remember what I said earlier. It's like my experience was
Speaker 2: way to hear the next one. That's how I felt
Speaker 2: about it. Oh okay. The other thing that happened is
Speaker 2: I had done a close range so I had this
Speaker 2: movie score that I had done from the song, and
Speaker 2: I think there was some there was a little bit
Speaker 2: of fun in that. There was a little bit of
Speaker 2: fun that there was a movie with this theme. But
Speaker 2: you know, honestly, really it's really the truth. I'm just
Speaker 2: getting up in the morning and writing music, and I
Speaker 2: always feel like it's going to be better than the
Speaker 2: last thing I wrote. Oh Okay, it's terrible, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's terrible.
Speaker 1: You said you did big tours, so you went out
Speaker 1: on true Blue.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was musical director for for the what was
Speaker 2: called Who's That Girl to her right, which was True
Speaker 2: Blue and Who's That Girl?
Speaker 1: Okay, the next album. You know, my favorite song on
Speaker 1: the next album is Cherish. Can you tell me anything
Speaker 1: about Cherish?
Speaker 2: Yes, that she didn't like it, that's the only one.
Speaker 2: She didn't like it. But we did it. We did it,
Speaker 2: and she and she she did. She went along with it.
Speaker 2: But you know, for some of the promo and stuff
Speaker 2: I'm doing now, I've been learning some of these songs
Speaker 2: again just so I can play them and sing them
Speaker 2: and kind of get through them. And Cherish is Cherish
Speaker 2: is deep. Cherish is like it's deep harmonically, and it
Speaker 2: was a shuffle and it was all these things that
Speaker 2: were I think me sneaking shit, you know, in there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think Cherish is a monster. And Cherish
Speaker 2: was done. The way we cut Cherish was the bass part.
Speaker 2: I put the piano part down and then the bass
Speaker 2: part and the guitar part and the drums, which were myself,
Speaker 2: David Williams, and Jeff Karr. We played live, so we
Speaker 2: did the rhythm section to that degree live And when
Speaker 2: I listened to that, I think It's just some of
Speaker 2: the best playing I've ever done. And I'm just playing bass.
Speaker 2: But it was like what a track man. And to
Speaker 2: sit in the room with those two guys, I mean
Speaker 2: there was more rhythm between those two guys than kind
Speaker 2: of the rest of the world put together, you know.
Speaker 2: So it is a real joy.
Speaker 1: Okay, the previous album was a little bit of a lark,
Speaker 1: you know, it started a different thing. Now when it
Speaker 1: comes to make another record, the like a prayer record, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it more planned out? Does she call you and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna write, We're gonna do this. How do you
Speaker 1: write the songs for that?
Speaker 2: At that point, I had the studio, the True Bil
Speaker 2: True Blue Bilt. So I had owned studio which was
Speaker 2: Johnny Eumer Recording down on Hollywood Way and in Burbank
Speaker 2: and very set up. My stuff was very set up,
Speaker 2: and so I I had an MPC sequencer, which was
Speaker 2: the first Akai sequencer, and a bunch of synthesizers. And
Speaker 2: I would go down there very early in the morning
Speaker 2: because I had a little gym in there, and I
Speaker 2: was at that point taking way better care of myself
Speaker 2: than I am now. And I would go in and
Speaker 2: meet with a trainer and work out, and then at
Speaker 2: about nine I'd go into the studio and write, and
Speaker 2: I'd write from nine till eleven when she would show
Speaker 2: up and I would show her what I'd written and
Speaker 2: she would write the lyrics and sing it. And we
Speaker 2: did it the next day and the next day and
Speaker 2: the next day, and in two weeks we'd written like
Speaker 2: a prayer the whole album.
Speaker 1: Okay, was it like Elton? Once she committed to the melody,
Speaker 1: that was it. There was no second guessing.
Speaker 2: No second guessing. I mean, I'll tell you something that
Speaker 2: most people won't really believe, but I swear it's true
Speaker 2: every one of those songs, everyone except oh Father, because
Speaker 2: we did it a different way when she wrote it
Speaker 2: that morning, when she wrote those lyrics and I had
Speaker 2: written that music, and she went in and sang it.
Speaker 2: She never sang them again, just like Live to Tell
Speaker 2: It's the only time she sang it. Those were her
Speaker 2: lead vocals, and they were done.
Speaker 1: Well. How many puncheons in that type of stuff?
Speaker 2: Uh huh uh huh No sing it twice. That's it.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you. So people could say whatever they want. Man,
Speaker 2: you know, this chick could really nail it. She really
Speaker 2: could nail it, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, needless to say, there's a lot of money being generated.
Speaker 1: Who's making your deals? And are they giving you like
Speaker 1: are they letting you have half the publishing or do
Speaker 1: they just want to give you the writer's share? I mean,
Speaker 1: who's looking after you? And how fair is all this?
Speaker 2: Mark Hartley and Larry Fitzgerald were my manager and nobody
Speaker 2: took anything. I got it. I got everything, you know, like,
Speaker 2: no one took any publishing, no one, no, there was
Speaker 2: no there was not ever even any talk of any
Speaker 2: of that because I think the the value of the
Speaker 2: cap collaboration proved itself on True Blue, you know, it
Speaker 2: really did.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of production usually it's four, it
Speaker 1: could be three, it could be five. Did you get
Speaker 1: half of the production money credit to Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, you know there was there was There was
Speaker 2: like four points and I think I got two and
Speaker 2: a half.
Speaker 1: Wow. You know, So the money comes in, what do
Speaker 1: you do with the money?
Speaker 2: Buy shit?
Speaker 1: Bob? You buy shit? What shit? Did you buy?
Speaker 2: Frivolution stuff? No studio stuff? I mean I bought a
Speaker 2: sports car and I you know, I bought a sports car.
Speaker 2: It wasn't my thing, you know, still isn't okay.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of money. Where did you spend
Speaker 1: the money? Do you invest? You buy real estate? What'd
Speaker 1: you do with it?
Speaker 2: Well, there was business, there was business managers at the time,
Speaker 2: and you know, it just it just most of it
Speaker 2: just got saved. I guess, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the like of prayer is done. Does she
Speaker 1: want you to go back on the road? And you
Speaker 1: say no.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and and so what happened was I, uh mo,
Speaker 2: Austin called me and said, you earned Warner Brothers like
Speaker 2: a half a billion dollars in the last year. Would
Speaker 2: you would you like anything? You know, he said, like,
Speaker 2: do you want an office in the building? Do you want?
Speaker 2: I said, I'd like to make my own record, which
Speaker 2: was Toy Matinee. And so I started writing that music
Speaker 2: and putting that together for myself. And then she wanted
Speaker 2: to do that tour and I said I wouldn't. She
Speaker 2: asked me if I would help her audition the musicians.
Speaker 2: So I did so. When I was doing the Toy
Speaker 2: Mattanee Wreck, I was kind of going in the mornings
Speaker 2: or afternoons or whatever it was. I don't remember it
Speaker 2: wasn't long. It was a couple of weeks, just to
Speaker 2: help her with auditions, and you know that was that
Speaker 2: was that?
Speaker 1: Okay, the fact that you did not go on the
Speaker 1: road with her, did that affect your relationship with her
Speaker 1: creatively in working with her?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you know after and I don't really
Speaker 2: remember the chronology, but the other record that we did
Speaker 2: around that time was Breathless was I'm Breathless for the
Speaker 2: Dick Tracy movie. And that was a record where they said,
Speaker 2: you know, Sondheim's written three songs and we want a
Speaker 2: whole album, and we got three weeks. So we basically
Speaker 2: wrote all those songs and recorded them all with big
Speaker 2: bands and everything else in just a few weeks. And
Speaker 2: then after that, there was I scored a movie called
Speaker 2: with Honors and Richard Page, and I started a song
Speaker 2: called I Remember, I'll Remember, and I think Madonna came
Speaker 2: in and finished it up and sang it, which was
Speaker 2: just another thing that I just asked her, Oh, I
Speaker 2: know why because the director was a friend of hers.
Speaker 2: The guy who directed with Honors was a friend of her,
Speaker 2: So that's why she did it. And you know that
Speaker 2: that was one of those another one of those things.
Speaker 2: It was done in an afternoon and was a number
Speaker 2: one record, and then after that we didn't work again
Speaker 2: until real light.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pause that. Now we're on Toy Bat. They
Speaker 1: good experience, bad experience? What was it?
Speaker 2: Well, it was it was. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2: You know, I got I got to pick my musicians
Speaker 2: and make the record I wanted to make. You know,
Speaker 2: no one's going to say a word, and truthfully, I
Speaker 2: leave this out of this, but in all of this work,
Speaker 2: there was nobody ever saying a word. There was never
Speaker 2: a record company coming in saying nothing. No one ever
Speaker 2: said a word ever, not one occasion. There was fear,
Speaker 2: you know, when we wanted when she wanted to release
Speaker 2: Live to tell Us, the first single from True Blue,
Speaker 2: there was fear, and the same when she wanted to
Speaker 2: reach like a prayer, because it stopped and it started,
Speaker 2: and it was such a strange piece of work, you know,
Speaker 2: as the first single, everybody was a little bit worried,
Speaker 2: but they weren't didn't have to worry for that long,
Speaker 2: you know, so there was never any second guessing about
Speaker 2: any of it.
Speaker 1: Well, how long did it take you to make the
Speaker 1: toy mattin a record and when you delivered it, what
Speaker 1: did they say?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, in those days, records took three months,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was one of those things where
Speaker 2: it was a little there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: a for me what I always called just a Midwestern
Speaker 2: work ethic, you know, because you had a budget and
Speaker 2: you had a delivery date, so you knew what you're
Speaker 2: you knew what you were where you were shooting, you know,
Speaker 2: unlike this record I just made, which stuck forerever so,
Speaker 2: but you knew. And I'm pretty sure if I were
Speaker 2: to go back and look, and I have a bunch
Speaker 2: of dats here with you know, these old things, you know,
Speaker 2: you know these we're not gonna no one else can
Speaker 2: see them, but these little digital audio tapes, right, and
Speaker 2: that they were They were what we were, you know,
Speaker 2: keeping rough mixes on. And if I go back and
Speaker 2: look at dates, you can kind of see when these
Speaker 2: things happened. And there was probably three months, maybe four,
Speaker 2: and then and then after that, I didn't plan on
Speaker 2: touring in or doing anything like that. I went to
Speaker 2: I went to do Amuse to Death with Roger Waters,
Speaker 2: and the singer put his own band together and went
Speaker 2: out and called the toy Mattine even though it kind
Speaker 2: of really wasn't, and bless his heart, I'm glad he
Speaker 2: promoted it, but that wasn't the idea.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you feel that Warner Brothers gave the record
Speaker 1: a good enough shot?
Speaker 2: I'll say something really weird. It didn't matter to me.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make the record. I really just
Speaker 2: wanted to make the record. I don't think it got
Speaker 2: that good of a shot. And I think part of
Speaker 2: that is because the entity that was my idea of
Speaker 2: having a band, when it got to the actual like Okay,
Speaker 2: now we're going to have to do a contract and
Speaker 2: be a band, people didn't want to do that. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to commit to it. So the band ended
Speaker 2: up being me and Kevin, and that really wasn't what
Speaker 2: the band was. And so the idea of this being
Speaker 2: what I do for a year and now or two
Speaker 2: years or however long it's going to be, it didn't
Speaker 2: have an appeal to me. I was kind of like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to go back in the studio. And
Speaker 2: then I met with Roger and had this opportunity to
Speaker 2: do amused to death and couldn't say no to that?
Speaker 1: And how did you meet Bill Patrell?
Speaker 2: How did I meet Bill? I don't remember how I
Speaker 2: met him, but you know, I know that I think
Speaker 2: the first time we worked together was when he engineered
Speaker 2: like a prayer and I would say with a clear
Speaker 2: conscience that he's the best that's ever done it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Bill has the best years of anybody
Speaker 2: that's ever done it. And I really mean that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you finish with Roger Waters and used to Death,
Speaker 1: then what.
Speaker 2: Let me see where are we? I think Third Matinee,
Speaker 2: which was another one of those semi vanity projects, and
Speaker 2: this one was with Richard.
Speaker 1: Page and was this with Warner Brothers again?
Speaker 2: It was yeah, less of a band thing.
Speaker 1: Were they as he hands off as they were the
Speaker 1: first on?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay. How do you end up working with Brian Ferry?
Speaker 2: I don't remember how that started or how it came,
Speaker 2: but it was right after True Blue. I had just
Speaker 2: finished True Blue, I think it had just come out,
Speaker 2: and I don't remember how it turned up, but I
Speaker 2: remember that, you know, Bryan and I worked in the
Speaker 2: family room of the house, just like we weren't on
Speaker 2: True Blue. You know, it was just a little tape
Speaker 2: machine and a little board in the in the house,
Speaker 2: and we did a lot of it in the house
Speaker 2: and some of it in you know, in studios. And
Speaker 2: then like I say that little you know, the Gilmore
Speaker 2: thing to England, but Lion's share of that was in
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 1: Okay. I have to bring up a track that I
Speaker 1: happened to love. It was unknown for a long time,
Speaker 1: but then it was released again in the initial Fleetwood
Speaker 1: Mac box set, the original song love Shines. I adore
Speaker 1: that track. Tell me the backstory there?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Did I do that? Yes?
Speaker 2: Does it say I did that?
Speaker 1: So maybe if you can't remember, there's no story.
Speaker 2: Well, this this the Fleetwood Mac moment in the studio,
Speaker 2: and that time period was absolutely mad. I mean they were,
Speaker 2: they were mad. I think Lindsay was not there, and uh,
Speaker 2: Christine was solid and beautiful and they were all beautiful.
Speaker 2: It was just it was. It wasn't easy, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't hard either and there and they're they're lovely folks
Speaker 2: and so it had its challenges, I remember them. But
Speaker 2: we did it. We got there, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you've had all this huge success, are you
Speaker 1: saying no to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Not no, no, there's no one's asking, which I'm grateful for.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, then no, no, I'm talking about that
Speaker 1: in the eighties.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, I think when when I was doing
Speaker 2: Amused to Death, which took me almost two years. When
Speaker 2: I say we, I mean me, I mean us. We
Speaker 2: worked on it for a long time. I think I
Speaker 2: probably turned down is the wrong word, because I don't
Speaker 2: think I ever did that. But I remember my manager
Speaker 2: saying that I was being offered just about every record
Speaker 2: that was being made at the time, you know, mostly
Speaker 2: just because of like a prayer, you know. I think
Speaker 2: most of those people would have not been good fits
Speaker 2: for me. I'm a little odd, but yeah, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of work that I didn't do, and and
Speaker 2: it's always been my nature. I don't I don't have
Speaker 2: one of these, you know, seventy five album discographies, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you does Madonna get you involved in
Speaker 1: Ray of Light?
Speaker 2: I think she, I think she, you know, at the
Speaker 2: time of faxing was big and I got a fax
Speaker 2: from her saying, you know, it's been a lot of years,
Speaker 2: but I think it'd be nice to work together again.
Speaker 2: And she asked me she said, I'm trying to I
Speaker 2: want to write a song that's nine inch Nails meets
Speaker 2: the English Patient, And I wrote Frozen and sent it
Speaker 2: to her and she went, great, let's go. So we
Speaker 2: went to Florida to some studio in Florida, Gloya Estavs
Speaker 2: Stefanse Studio and wrote you know, the line's share of
Speaker 2: the songs on that record in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and then she met William Orbit or heard his stuff
Speaker 2: or something and asked if I would be okay with
Speaker 2: him doing this and I could, you could just kind
Speaker 2: of oversee it and be there to make sure everything
Speaker 2: was okay, and you know, what was I going to say?
Speaker 2: And I think it was a right decision. She made
Speaker 2: a great decision. Though. I've recently found the demos that
Speaker 2: we did, and they had their own thing, just like
Speaker 2: all our stuff did, because basically all the records were
Speaker 2: essentially demos.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, how did you get hooked up with Elton?
Speaker 2: I think Elton was through dream Works for the Road
Speaker 2: Del Dorado, and I don't really remember how that came about.
Speaker 2: I think it might have been the Austins, you know,
Speaker 2: Michael Austin, because DreamWorks was associated with them, and so
Speaker 2: I think I was hired to produce the soundtrack for
Speaker 2: that movie, for the animated Road del Dorado that Elton
Speaker 2: was writing with Tim Rice, if I remember correctly, and
Speaker 2: that's how we got hooked up. And I produced that
Speaker 2: with him and it was amazing, but there was no
Speaker 2: writing in it other than Somewhere out of the Blue,
Speaker 2: which I think was the single. I had written the
Speaker 2: music for that, and Tim wrote a lyric and and
Speaker 2: wrote the melody, and I don't remember if I don't
Speaker 2: remember if it went if I saw the lyric and
Speaker 2: I wrote to the lyric, I don't think so I did.
Speaker 2: I think I just wrote something and showed it Delton
Speaker 2: and it became that song. And then after that, you know,
Speaker 2: he asked me to do songs on the West Coast.
Speaker 1: And did you feel left out when he moved on
Speaker 1: from you? No?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I mean, I you know, we're still
Speaker 2: in touch, and I did, like I said, we did
Speaker 2: this thing last October, and I just I love him,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm grateful that he's in my life
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: You know. So, how did you hook up with Leonard Cullen? Uh?
Speaker 2: His son Adam and I. Adam had asked me to
Speaker 2: work on a band project that he was that he
Speaker 2: was in called Low Millions, and I don't know how
Speaker 2: that happened, but I think I worked on a few
Speaker 2: songs for the Low Millions project, and then some time
Speaker 2: after that, I think it might have been even a
Speaker 2: couple of years after that, I don't remember exactly, Adam
Speaker 2: asked me if I would produce an album for him,
Speaker 2: and we made an album called Like a Man, and
Speaker 2: it was that my my deal with the record is yes,
Speaker 2: I will, but it's my way completely, no pushback, zero,
Speaker 2: It's just my way. And he agreed to it, and
Speaker 2: he was good for his word. So I had him
Speaker 2: in very uncomfortable you know places, tapping the time on
Speaker 2: his mic stand while he played the guitar and sang
Speaker 2: the vocal live, whether he likes it or not, you know,
Speaker 2: until he could get it, and I think it was
Speaker 2: it was a very strong piece of work as a
Speaker 2: result of the torture. And his dad heard it and said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to meet this guy, and we did. We met,
Speaker 2: and then we you know, we started writing songs. He
Speaker 2: gave me lyrics and I'd write to it, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's how that started. And then we spent a
Speaker 2: lot of years together.
Speaker 1: Okay, Leonard went through varying periods in his career. This
Speaker 1: is the time when all of a sudden he's booked
Speaker 1: on a tour and he comes back and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of attention paid. So what can you tell us
Speaker 1: about Leonard?
Speaker 2: Well, there's there's only one. I can tell you that
Speaker 2: like no one I've ever met, and many many many
Speaker 2: in many many ways. I don't know. Like I said,
Speaker 2: when we started talking after Leonard passed, I didn't really
Speaker 2: feel like writing anybody with anybody else.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I mean, when the when, the when the email would
Speaker 2: ding and I'd see that it was from him, and
Speaker 2: I'd open it up and it was a lyric, which meant,
Speaker 2: here's another lyric. Write a song, and you read these lyrics,
Speaker 2: you know, I could choke up right now. No one
Speaker 2: could write like Leonard Cohen. Sorry, not in my book,
Speaker 2: not anything I ever experienced. I mean Roger, you know,
Speaker 2: Roger Waters is a genius lyricist, but it's a different thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Leonard could write quatrains and just blow your mind, you know,
Speaker 2: with what he would find in these simple little rhymes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was That was one of my favorite times of
Speaker 2: making music. And part of it is that was a
Speaker 2: little strange is that there was no Leonard didn't want
Speaker 2: any musicians. He was fine with, you know, us in
Speaker 2: his guest house room with a laptop and a keyboard
Speaker 2: and a microphone and a pair of speakers. And so
Speaker 2: the records themselves, I never got to really realize any
Speaker 2: record making. But if they're they're still beautiful, I think
Speaker 2: in their own little way, you know, because the the
Speaker 2: simplicity of it allowed Leonard to have nothing else to
Speaker 2: deal with, and he was real quite clear about that,
Speaker 2: you know, And and I learned. I learned something, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's it's interesting to make that many records and
Speaker 2: then learn something fairly big about when what occurs when
Speaker 2: someone steps out even a little bit, when they're playing
Speaker 2: a bass part or a guitar, pety or drums, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, when they bring themselves into it, what happens.
Speaker 2: There was none of that, you know, there was nothing
Speaker 2: got brought into it, and so Leonard and the poetry
Speaker 2: could just hang in the air with no other egos
Speaker 2: at all. And you know, I would say that I
Speaker 2: was certainly there, but disciplining, you know, what is it?
Speaker 2: Just to stay out of the way all the time.
Speaker 2: So interesting, I mean, beautiful exercise. And you know, and
Speaker 2: I think, I think I learned more about the creative
Speaker 2: process then everything else put together from Leonard.
Speaker 1: And did he ever talk about how he did it
Speaker 1: previously in terms of him writing the lyrics and somebody
Speaker 1: else doing the music or what.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't talk about it, but I you know,
Speaker 2: I I love sharing the anecdote about Leonard had a
Speaker 2: room in his house with a bunch of shelves and
Speaker 2: these little office boxes, you know, the ones with the
Speaker 2: metal corners, the small ones that fit little notebooks, and
Speaker 2: on the end of the box would be the name
Speaker 2: of a song. And there was shelves, full floor of
Speaker 2: ceiling on a whole wall. And he would go in
Speaker 2: there in the morning in a suit and tie by
Speaker 2: the way every day and he would take one of
Speaker 2: those little office boxes and he'd go sit on a
Speaker 2: picnic table in his front yard in his house, in
Speaker 2: this little humble house he only lived upstairs, and this
Speaker 2: green painted thing with his fedora and his suit and
Speaker 2: a dollar bill tucked under his glasses. So son wouldn't
Speaker 2: burn his nose and la and he'd write in these
Speaker 2: little notebooks. He'd write another couple verses, and then he
Speaker 2: put the notebook back in the box, and he put
Speaker 2: the box back on the shelf. And when one of
Speaker 2: these boxes came out and he felt that there was
Speaker 2: enough in there that could possibly a song, you'd take
Speaker 2: all these verses and put them up in the computer.
Speaker 2: And sometimes, honestly, it was three columns of three pages
Speaker 2: of quatrains, you know, four lines it's or six lines,
Speaker 2: whatever the form was, and he's just looking for six
Speaker 2: or seven of them to make the song. And if
Speaker 2: he felt he had him, we'd record something, and if
Speaker 2: he didn't, the box would go back on the shelf.
Speaker 2: And it was every song was kind of like that,
Speaker 2: except somewhere he would just you know, there were songs
Speaker 2: that he'd just write him, you know. But I never
Speaker 2: saw that kind of discipline, and I never saw the
Speaker 2: focus of what this thing is and what it needs.
Speaker 2: And there was a song called Treaty that ended up
Speaker 2: on the last record that you know, we used to
Speaker 2: call it Treaty the movie. I think there was a
Speaker 2: line in the chorus and it was five years he
Speaker 2: couldn't find the line, but every once in a while
Speaker 2: he'd find it and we'd record another version of treaty.
Speaker 2: You know. I don't know how many versions of the
Speaker 2: treaty I have, but it happened a lot. But he
Speaker 2: wasn't it wasn't there yet, and every one of them,
Speaker 2: M'd go, great, we're finally done, you know, and then
Speaker 2: he'd go, no, no, that's not it. And it was
Speaker 2: literally one line, you know. So that to me, I learned.
Speaker 2: I learned something about what makes this hole that I
Speaker 2: didn't know before.
Speaker 1: Okay, did he want you to go on the road?
Speaker 2: Nope, never, No, he didn't once. Once we started making records,
Speaker 2: I think there was one little piece of a tour
Speaker 2: and that was it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We just we just made records from when we started
Speaker 2: to any past.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have ray of light in the nineties. Once
Speaker 1: we hit the twenty first century, is there as much
Speaker 1: work as there used to be?
Speaker 2: No, there isn't. And also, I I around that time
Speaker 2: the technology had really really crept in and the writing
Speaker 2: the what is it? Just the songs, the types of songs,
Speaker 2: the type of chord progressions, the type of change so
Speaker 2: dramatically that I just didn't feel that much for it.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have it. I just didn't feel that
Speaker 2: symbiotic with it. You know, I'm not interested in four chords,
Speaker 2: and I'm not interested in everything being tuned, and I'm
Speaker 2: not interested in everything being quantized. I'm not And so
Speaker 2: once those records started being kind of the norm, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to do it just to do it, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay. And in that period, like we discussed earlier, were
Speaker 1: you still playing the piano every day? Were you still
Speaker 1: as disciplined?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, maybe more so because the focus was just trying
Speaker 2: to find my own you know. Search of the Lost
Speaker 2: Chord is how we used.
Speaker 1: To say, great album. I hate to say it, but
Speaker 1: that is the best one. And I came to that one,
Speaker 1: that's right. So how'd you decide to make a deal
Speaker 1: with Primary Wave?
Speaker 2: Just just uh just made sense at the time, just
Speaker 2: made sense of them. They're good guys, you know, they're
Speaker 2: they're they're they're good guys. They have heart, they've been
Speaker 2: very supportive, they're good.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, okay, was this something you saw everybody else
Speaker 1: making a deal and is like maybe i'll sell too,
Speaker 1: or did you take it to different companies? Or did
Speaker 1: they approach you? How did the process begin?
Speaker 2: Uh? Our business manager has a relationship with them, and
Speaker 2: it was just one of these things that you would
Speaker 2: you like to talk about this. I said sure, and
Speaker 2: we did and it was like, well, yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I don't give a lot of
Speaker 2: thought to these things.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, you sold one hundred percent everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's no further royalty for you. You got a chunk, right,
Speaker 1: What did you do with that money?
Speaker 2: Drugs and girls?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Actually I know somebody who did blows close to
Speaker 1: the money. So I made one of those tens of
Speaker 1: millions deals. No, but you get it. You know you're
Speaker 1: getting royalty checks. Now, you get a big lum sum
Speaker 1: you gotta you know, it gets whacked a few times
Speaker 1: by the government's other profit participants, but then you got
Speaker 1: to do something with it. Do you put it in
Speaker 1: real estate? Do you buy something you always wanted to buy?
Speaker 1: Do you put it in stocks? I mean it requires
Speaker 1: a certain amount of attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not not something I'm very good at. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's never been my forte. But you know,
Speaker 2: we're good, we're happy, and we're still making music and
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to sell a billion vinyls.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. How many kids do you have?
Speaker 2: Three?
Speaker 1: And how old are they.
Speaker 2: Of? Thirty four, thirty seven, thirty nine, and what are
Speaker 2: they up to? I think they're just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of them is doing some real estate stuff,
Speaker 2: the other one's doing some writing, the other one's playing music.
Speaker 2: I think it's I feel for them. I feel for
Speaker 2: that generation. I think they're a lot more lost than
Speaker 2: my generation was. And I love them, and they're bright kids,
Speaker 2: and they're good kids, and they're not kids or grown ups,
Speaker 2: you know, But I think it's it may be difficult
Speaker 2: when you can see a parent do what he loves passionately,
Speaker 2: almost a little bit haphazardly, and have it work so well,
Speaker 2: and and then go at trying to do something and
Speaker 2: find such a different world that meets you. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I think if I were fourteen right now,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be in the studio with somebody, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. I'd be staring at a cell phone
Speaker 2: trying to get the little ball to go, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you know, like trying to get more likes.
Speaker 1: So, how has your work your choice of work affected
Speaker 1: your relationships romantic relationships.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say then I met Anna eight years
Speaker 2: ago and I am truly happy for the first time
Speaker 2: in my life. And I don't think work had much
Speaker 2: to do with any of it along the way. I
Speaker 2: just don't think it was ever really right, and now
Speaker 2: it is, so I got really lucky.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't go on the road that much.
Speaker 1: You say, three big tours, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: you talk to them and say, you know, the relationship
Speaker 1: couldn't last because I was absent a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Now also there's the issue of you know, people are
Speaker 1: working round the clock, whether it be music or anything
Speaker 1: that can impact relationship.
Speaker 2: No, that was never really and I think I think
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know that I would know this.
Speaker 2: I know it now because of Anna. But it's either
Speaker 2: right or it isn't in my life, And now it's right,
Speaker 2: and there's been there's not a bump, not a hiccup,
Speaker 2: not a nothing, no issues, no matter how much I work,
Speaker 2: no matter what we're doing, we are. We are absolutely
Speaker 2: fabulous all the time.
Speaker 1: And how did you meet her?
Speaker 2: Through a friend in la you know, just a mutual
Speaker 2: musician friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, was it a setup romantic or you
Speaker 1: just went somewhere and she was there and it took
Speaker 1: from there.
Speaker 2: No, he said you guys should meet, and we did it.
Speaker 2: And he was right, you know he was, He was
Speaker 2: absolutely right. I mean, it was it was, it was
Speaker 2: right away from day one.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the new record. The record
Speaker 1: you're putting out now is in a very changed landscape
Speaker 1: from the Toy Matinee and Third Matinee world. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people of our vintage who won't even
Speaker 1: make new music because they feel it won't be exposed,
Speaker 1: they won't reach an audience, and even the biggest acts
Speaker 1: in the world don't reach the kind of people that
Speaker 1: Madonna did in the eighties and nineties. So to what
Speaker 1: degree does that affect your outlook in terms of making
Speaker 1: an album?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I don't think I've ever had more
Speaker 2: fun making a record than I had making this one, because,
Speaker 2: as I said earlier, I didn't have to negotiate anything.
Speaker 2: So the freedom that it gave me, I think created
Speaker 2: a result that is it's just in a nice place,
Speaker 2: you know, It's I think that I think the records
Speaker 2: in a nice place and it's and it's I think
Speaker 2: it's a well well done thing. And so for what
Speaker 2: my aspirations have been to at this point, make a
Speaker 2: record that I'm proud of that I think is really
Speaker 2: good and look forward to making another one is a
Speaker 2: big improvement from digging around with children that want to
Speaker 2: quantize their voices and sing to a drum machine. I
Speaker 2: can't do that, and I'm not judging it. I just
Speaker 2: have no interest in it. It's no different than you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to belong either. I don't relate to
Speaker 2: it so that I'm getting to do what I love
Speaker 2: at the level I'm getting to do it at, even
Speaker 2: if it's in a market that doesn't exist, I kind
Speaker 2: of think that it will find its home wherever that is.
Speaker 2: And I think that because I Vinyl focused it, and
Speaker 2: I really did. I mean, I spent more time balancing
Speaker 2: the sides and rearranging the songs and writing songs to
Speaker 2: make a side feel more complete. I mean that was
Speaker 2: really the job. I wrote thirty songs to come up
Speaker 2: with the sixteen, and I don't mean on a napkin.
Speaker 2: I mean I wrote them and finished them and put
Speaker 2: them in a sequence, and you know, I really worked
Speaker 2: hard to make a vinyl, to make a double album,
Speaker 2: and I think that those that are still willing to
Speaker 2: engage that as an art form will really enjoy it
Speaker 2: and find it a really good one. And that's enough
Speaker 2: for me. You know, the the you know, fifty million
Speaker 2: record sale thing, it's been gone for a long time,
Speaker 2: you know, and people buying music has been gone for
Speaker 2: a long time. But it doesn't mean I don't get
Speaker 2: out of bed compelled to write and record music. I
Speaker 2: still do. Call me crazy. So this is the best
Speaker 2: I can come up with right now as a way
Speaker 2: to do it. And I think find a little bit
Speaker 2: of an audience because I think there's few people. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've had the experience of you know, people getting the vinyl,
Speaker 2: Elton being one of them and saying, wow, thank you.
Speaker 2: I mean, this actually really did the thing, and that's
Speaker 2: that was the goal and the goal achieved, and I
Speaker 2: think it's it can probably be self sustaining if enough
Speaker 2: final people find it. And in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: anything else from it, I have no expectations at all. None.
Speaker 2: It hasn't stopped me from writing in thirty more songs
Speaker 2: for another couple albums, you know, because that's what I'm crazy.
Speaker 1: How did you end up working with Michael Fremmer?
Speaker 2: Somebody introduced me to Michael a few years ago when
Speaker 2: we were looking for at the possibility of making a
Speaker 2: vinyl out of something else, and we just hit it off.
Speaker 2: We just started talking and hit it off. And when this,
Speaker 2: when this came up, we kind of stayed in touch.
Speaker 2: And when it came up, I just asked him if
Speaker 2: he'd help shepherd this through, if he would help, you know,
Speaker 2: all all points of it. And he did, and it's
Speaker 2: been very helpful. I mean that, you know, the the
Speaker 2: thing sounds crazy great and it was also Bob Ludwig
Speaker 2: mastered it and it was the last thing he did
Speaker 2: on the last day. Chris Bellman cut the lay, cut
Speaker 2: the vinyl and uh RTI, you know, took great pains
Speaker 2: and it sounds. It's one hundred and eighty grams and
Speaker 2: it's crazy. And Storm Studios did the cover. So it's
Speaker 2: the old hypnosis guys, and that took a year, you know,
Speaker 2: of going around and around the one. You pick it
Speaker 2: up and hold it, it's you know, it's this big
Speaker 2: heavy thing with all this beautiful paper and beautiful color
Speaker 2: and you know, all the lyrics printed out and only
Speaker 2: a couple things that we missed in all the text,
Speaker 2: you know, so you For me, it's laying on the
Speaker 2: floor in my bedroom with thick as a brick open
Speaker 2: or trying to figure out what the hell the lads
Speaker 2: up the four album cover was about and listening to
Speaker 2: music where you got to get up and turn the
Speaker 2: record over, and it feels like it was made specifically
Speaker 2: for you to listen to and enjoy. That's what I love,
Speaker 2: and that's what I think I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, knowing Fremmer, who's the king of
Speaker 1: Vinyl for those people don't know, and takes responsibility and
Speaker 1: deserves responsibility for one of the main drivers, if not
Speaker 1: the main drivers for bringing vinyl back. He's not an engineer.
Speaker 1: How did he help? Well?
Speaker 2: I think in in the specifics of the manufacturing one
Speaker 2: of like how are we going to do this and
Speaker 2: and how is it going to be packaged and what
Speaker 2: materials are getting used and from the printing to the thing,
Speaker 2: just to kind of give it that distinction. And also
Speaker 2: the whole time I was sending in my demos, you know,
Speaker 2: like when I do this stuff, I make a demo
Speaker 2: of everything. So you hear the song, and I would
Speaker 2: sequence it and I'd send it to him and he'd
Speaker 2: play it, and he would either like it or not
Speaker 2: like it. Most of the time he seemed to like it.
Speaker 2: And when we got to the place where these refs
Speaker 2: were cut, the refs went to him, not to me.
Speaker 2: You know, he was the one who said, yep, we
Speaker 2: can approve this ref And the same with the pressings.
Speaker 2: You know, when the pressings were done and test pressings,
Speaker 2: it's like he was checking I'm not me. I mean,
Speaker 2: I got a set, but it was him. And now
Speaker 2: with the press for the you know, vinyl press and
Speaker 2: the magazine's overseas, and he's sending the record to all
Speaker 2: of these people. And he's also carried the test pressings
Speaker 2: around at these conventions and played the test expressing for
Speaker 2: people just to see the reaction, and he tells me
Speaker 2: it was extremely positive, you know. So you know, I
Speaker 2: know that it is not everybody's cup of tea, but
Speaker 2: those that it is, they're a cup of tea. I
Speaker 2: think they like it. And I think Michael had a
Speaker 2: lot to do with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to cover new music, you're talking about starting
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, what people were doing did
Speaker 1: not make you want to be involved. To what degree
Speaker 1: do you keep up with new music? If at all?
Speaker 2: Not at all? Zero?
Speaker 1: So do you have friends who say send you an
Speaker 1: email and say you need to hear this?
Speaker 2: Not anymore?
Speaker 1: Okay? And is there any investigation of music history or
Speaker 1: you're pretty much on your own hagira out into the wilderness.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, when I want to study
Speaker 2: and I do. I go back to, say, a Revel
Speaker 2: piano piece, and I put it up, and I look
Speaker 2: at the lines, and I do this thing we used
Speaker 2: to call standing the lineup on its end. So you
Speaker 2: take the line that Revel plays and something, and you
Speaker 2: stand it up and you look at what chord it is,
Speaker 2: because they weren't really focused on chords in those days.
Speaker 2: And so now you've kind of if you get lucky,
Speaker 2: and you often do, you've kind of found a new
Speaker 2: way of harmonizing something. And if you take that little
Speaker 2: thing and you get it into your vocabulary, as you
Speaker 2: continue to create, those things show up. And I'm interested
Speaker 2: in that showing up much more than a drum sample,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Absolutely, I can't learn anything
Speaker 2: from any of the shit that's going on right now,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to be brutal, like there's nothing I
Speaker 2: can learn from it. So I feel that the learning
Speaker 2: is more important because if I'm going to improvise and
Speaker 2: I'm going to continue to create, the only thing that
Speaker 2: makes it any better is making the palette broader, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's that's I know it sounds crazy because you know,
Speaker 2: I should be going fishing all the time, but I'm
Speaker 2: still obsessive.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've had COVID, you've moved. But is
Speaker 1: your lifestyle that you're pretty much at home? Or do
Speaker 1: you go on vacation?
Speaker 2: Well, because because we have the plane, we can do
Speaker 2: little things. You know, you can. You can you can
Speaker 2: just take off and go somewhere for a day and
Speaker 2: just go sit on a beach that you couldn't possibly
Speaker 2: drive to and then come home and have dinner at
Speaker 2: home if you want, or go stay a couple of nights,
Speaker 2: or you know, I think you know, and I have
Speaker 2: talked about vacations, we just haven't taken one.
Speaker 1: Well, my question is can you be away from the
Speaker 1: keyboard that long?
Speaker 2: Oh sure? Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, I mean back
Speaker 2: in the back in the nineties when Roger and I,
Speaker 2: after we started working together, we also started fishing together.
Speaker 2: So we did a lot of bone fishing trips for
Speaker 2: you know, six seven days and the keys and you know,
Speaker 2: and it was, it was, there's an anecdote or what
Speaker 2: is it? You you fish, you eat, you pretend to sleep,
Speaker 2: you fish, you eat you you know, because it's it's
Speaker 2: it's a really beautiful obsession. So no, I mean easy,
Speaker 2: easy for me to get in a trout streamer out
Speaker 2: chasing bonefish or tarp and with a fly rod, and
Speaker 2: I can do that for a long time.
Speaker 1: They say it's really hard to catch bonefish. Is that true?
Speaker 2: I think it's gotten harder because there's a lot more
Speaker 2: pressure on them. And yes, it is not that simple
Speaker 2: because it's a it's you know, sight fishing. You need
Speaker 2: to see them and obviously if you can see them,
Speaker 2: they can see you. So it's you know, you have
Speaker 2: to be able to present the fly so it doesn't
Speaker 2: spook them. And then you know, it's tricky. It's tricky.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you already working on the next album in
Speaker 1: your mind?
Speaker 2: The next album's already finished in the can demos are done,
Speaker 2: completely written, done, won't change anything. All the lyrics are done,
Speaker 2: all the music's done, and I'll be honest with you,
Speaker 2: there was a whole other album that came before that that,
Speaker 2: and then I got COVID two Christmases ago and we
Speaker 2: both seem to get a little bit of a long COVID,
Speaker 2: and I wrote this entire album that I listened to
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago again because I keep checking
Speaker 2: in to hope that I'm wrong, but there's something missing
Speaker 2: from it. There's something missing. It's there's something that's not there.
Speaker 2: And it was during this kind of long COVID of like,
Speaker 2: you know, I think we're okay, but maybe we're not.
Speaker 2: And then there was suddenly some new songs and I
Speaker 2: could feel that it somehow, whatever that was had passed.
Speaker 2: So there's twenty songs that I'll never do anything with
Speaker 2: and they're finished songs, but they're not. There's something I
Speaker 2: know that sounds weird, but there's something missing from them.
Speaker 1: No, I understand that just when you say finished songs,
Speaker 1: they have to be cut or they're masters. That's it.
Speaker 2: No, the songs are written, the demos are done, the
Speaker 2: keyboard parts are essentially there, and so now it's make
Speaker 2: the record out of it. But when it's in this state,
Speaker 2: it's a couple of weeks of tracking and it's done.
Speaker 2: And in most cases, I think my vocals at least
Speaker 2: are probably pretty done. And you know, there's always that
Speaker 2: line in one song that I can't find, and I'll
Speaker 2: either find it or I'll throw the song out and
Speaker 2: write another one or write another one, you know. But
Speaker 2: the record that's in the can right now is called
Speaker 2: Love and Occasional War, and I think it's really cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't wait to make it. It's way
Speaker 2: to different than this record. And it's also a single album.
Speaker 2: It's not quite so much work, you know, it's forty minutes,
Speaker 2: not eighty four, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this album comes out, we'll feedback affect anything
Speaker 1: you do in the future, or are you immune to feedback?
Speaker 2: It won't affect anything. I don't know if I'm immune.
Speaker 2: I think I'm just stubborn. And also I'm kind of
Speaker 2: a I have a little bit of know it all
Speaker 2: in me, so I don't give a show people say,
Speaker 2: And I've always been like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, You've had a lot of success period, as we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: a lot of success collaboration. Is it purely your talent
Speaker 1: and resume? Was there something about your personality and interaction
Speaker 1: that draws people and opportunities to you.
Speaker 2: I think this is a really interesting question because this
Speaker 2: is something that tortures me a little bit, honestly. Is
Speaker 2: I think that, yes, there is something in my work
Speaker 2: that draws people to me. But I'm also deeply self
Speaker 2: centered musically and deeply stubborn, and so I think it's
Speaker 2: not the most pleasant experience to make a record with
Speaker 2: me because it's like it's kind of my way or
Speaker 2: the highway, and it's not even my picture on the cover,
Speaker 2: you know. So I think that as time went on,
Speaker 2: I found those moments less attractive, like with Elton a Dream,
Speaker 2: because we're not writing once it's my writing. I have
Speaker 2: this possessiveness about it, and I feel also, who's going
Speaker 2: to know better what my music needs than me? Because
Speaker 2: I wrote it. And back to True Blue, we were
Speaker 2: making True Blue and Madonna and I were having one
Speaker 2: of these moments where she wanted to to do something
Speaker 2: and I was saying no, and the cover had just
Speaker 2: come from her Brits, that beautiful photo of her, and
Speaker 2: she held it up and she pointed it at me
Speaker 2: and she said, whose picture's this? And I'll never forget
Speaker 2: it because it's like, yeah, you're right, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it changed me.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, if we put on whatever that track
Speaker 1: is all the years later, will you say, well, maybe
Speaker 1: she was right. Oh you hear go, No, I would
Speaker 1: have done it.
Speaker 2: No, she still sang the wrong note. She still sang
Speaker 2: the wrong note. It's like, you can't sing that note.
Speaker 2: She says, where did all these rules come from? Said,
Speaker 2: I didn't make them, Honeybock made them. Don't look at me.
Speaker 2: But then you know, you go through these things and
Speaker 2: she says, no, I'm going to do it, and she
Speaker 2: sticks this high harmony in, and you know, anybody with
Speaker 2: a musical air will go what she doing singing the
Speaker 2: major seventh when there's a dominant seventh chord. It's like
Speaker 2: it's a half step away. It couldn't be a worse note.
Speaker 2: But it's like, well, it didn't really seem to matter
Speaker 2: that much, you know, but makes me in the moment
Speaker 2: that you know, I'm a bastard in the moment, I
Speaker 2: can promise.
Speaker 1: You that's on one side of the board. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying is forgetting people whose picture is on the cover.
Speaker 1: Working musicians have to network, have to have a certain
Speaker 1: possibility to get opportunities. Is that part of your personality?
Speaker 2: No, it's not, it's not. No, I think, you know, honestly,
Speaker 2: you're very good at this.
Speaker 1: By the way, thank you.
Speaker 2: You are really really fucking good at this. You are.
Speaker 2: I think that it was always a bit.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: I think, I'm just, I'm just I think me making
Speaker 2: solo records right now is the logical conclusion to this,
Speaker 2: because I think that's what I want to do the
Speaker 2: whole time, anyway, you know, And I think if it was,
Speaker 2: if it was really you know, there were people that
Speaker 2: I worked with that I thought were brilliant and people
Speaker 2: that I admired so much, and I felt so lucky
Speaker 2: to be in a room with Rod Stewart or you know,
Speaker 2: Robbie Robertson or Elton you know, or Roger or Gilmore.
Speaker 2: I mean, wow, you know, these are these are the
Speaker 2: greats of all time, They truly are, and and so
Speaker 2: how lucky for me. And in those cases when we
Speaker 2: would collaborate, I felt lucky to be there. But if
Speaker 2: it wasn't that, it just I always felt a little
Speaker 2: bit like I was wasting time. I really did. The
Speaker 2: people that I was working with probably felt that too.
Speaker 1: You've made a lot of records. There must have been
Speaker 1: a ton of creative choices. When you made the record
Speaker 1: with Adam Cohen, you said, I'm in control, it's going
Speaker 1: to be my way. When you've made records with these
Speaker 1: other people, and you had done part of the writing,
Speaker 1: so you're invested, and their opinion was contrary, how stubborn
Speaker 1: would you be? Would you be worried about the harmony
Speaker 1: or would you just say this is the way it
Speaker 1: should be.
Speaker 2: I think that it's a personality defect. But I think
Speaker 2: I took it personally.
Speaker 1: No no, no no no no no no no, I'm
Speaker 1: saying the other thing. Yes, you took it personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I fought it personally. I fought it like
Speaker 2: it was a personal insult.
Speaker 1: That's my question. To what degree did you stand up?
Speaker 1: You're working with these household name artists and you go,
Speaker 1: you know, you could say very gently, I would do
Speaker 1: it a different way, or let's try it again whatever.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. A lot of engineers
Speaker 1: operate that way. A lot of producers who used to
Speaker 1: be engineers operator that way. There are some diva producers
Speaker 1: I know do the opposite, but they're not musicians like you.
Speaker 1: So would you say, with a stronger tonality, no, we
Speaker 1: need to do it this way, or would you say
Speaker 1: it's their record I'll back.
Speaker 2: It would totally depend on the artist. It would totally
Speaker 2: depend on the artist. And the other part of that
Speaker 2: is that I don't remember Elton never doing anything that
Speaker 2: I questioned, nor did Roger ever do anything I questioned,
Speaker 2: Nor when I was doing stuff with Jeff Beck, Didty
Speaker 2: doing it and I questioned. These people don't do things
Speaker 2: that you question. That's why they are what they are
Speaker 2: and who they are. And the uh, the thing of
Speaker 2: working on a pop song and someone who isn't doesn't
Speaker 2: have the kind of musical palette or whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call it. I could be really okay with it,
Speaker 2: and I think you know in the records that I made,
Speaker 2: it's not like it was a hell hole. But I
Speaker 2: do know that if there was something that I didn't like,
Speaker 2: I could be inappropriately brutal to someone who had hired
Speaker 2: me and was paying me and it was their fucking
Speaker 2: picture on the cover. And I know that, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I could have done it any different because
Speaker 2: it's it's part of what makes my music what it is.
Speaker 2: You know, it is what it is because I'm invested
Speaker 2: in it where I'll have a rock fight with you
Speaker 2: in the parking lot about it. And I think in
Speaker 2: some of those moments, I think people go, man, you know,
Speaker 2: lighten up, you know, or whatever it was. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think some people had found it difficult, found me difficult.
Speaker 2: I know they did.
Speaker 1: Speaking of difficult, how did you end up working with
Speaker 1: Jeff Beck?
Speaker 2: Just through Roger? You know, Jeff played on Amused to
Speaker 2: Death and then Jeff and I spent some time together
Speaker 2: in the studio trying to make a solo record for him,
Speaker 2: and we did a couple pieces that we wrote together
Speaker 2: and recorded them, and it just, you know, the times
Speaker 2: I would bump into Jeff after that, he'd talk about
Speaker 2: the greatest record we never made because we started it,
Speaker 2: but it never it never got focused. We never focused it.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure I could have done it anyway.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I that I could, that I
Speaker 2: could give Jeff what he needed. You know, he's got,
Speaker 2: he's got, so he had so much more authentic real
Speaker 2: rock and roll in his blood than I did.
Speaker 1: You know, well, there's a lot to talk about there,
Speaker 1: but not today. Patrick. I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: taking this time to speak to my audience. I loved it,
Speaker 1: you know, because sometimes you're just getting somebody's story, but
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking about records and references, really
Speaker 1: feel like you're having a conversation. So good luck with
Speaker 1: a new album. Thanks a lot for talking to me.
Speaker 2: Thanks boy, it was a pleasure, man, Thank you.
Speaker 1: You know that was great. A lot of people you
Speaker 1: sit down and you say, well, you know, I gotta
Speaker 1: sit here and I gotta cover this. Not with you.
Speaker 1: It was like certainly, you know, it was like we
Speaker 1: were talking and we could have been anywhere. We could
Speaker 1: have been sitting on the couch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you're you're you're You're really fucking good at
Speaker 2: this man. I mean, you know, like, I'm talking to
Speaker 2: a lot of people these days, and and some of
Speaker 2: them are good, they're good, but you understand what makes
Speaker 2: this tick from from way in the inside, and so
Speaker 2: you're pushing into places that are there's real shit in there,
Speaker 2: there's real stuff buried in there. And you know, I've
Speaker 2: done this for so long. I've done it for over
Speaker 2: sixty years, every fucking day, and I do it all day,
Speaker 2: and I do it for the love of the thing.
Speaker 2: Hate the music business. You used to love the music
Speaker 2: business because it felt like it was about music. Now
Speaker 2: I can't get near it. I don't even you know.
Speaker 2: I got some young people around, engineers and stuff, and
Speaker 2: they come in here to help me out, and they
Speaker 2: go like, this is magic in here. When you're doing
Speaker 2: something completely different. It's like, really, this is that different
Speaker 2: that you know you just sit and play something and
Speaker 2: you record it. It's like, yeah, nobody can even do that.
Speaker 2: And I think, wow, man, what a shame. And so
Speaker 2: I think I'm not doing anything I'm doing to try
Speaker 2: to inspire anybody or show them another way. I'm doing
Speaker 2: it because it's what I know how to do. And
Speaker 2: I actually think I'm better at it than I used
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think I tempered it and I think the work
Speaker 2: is good, and I think that that's what I'm here for.
Speaker 2: I didn't, you know, hide from the other children and
Speaker 2: play piano when it was five years old because I
Speaker 2: wanted to be rich and famous and get blowdrops from
Speaker 2: you know, beach bunnies like, no fucking way. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, it was about it was about this thing.
Speaker 2: And when you and I talked behind the hotel cafe
Speaker 2: that time, I felt the same way about you, Like
Speaker 2: you asked the questions about the work and the and
Speaker 2: you know, because what.
Speaker 1: Else is there, well, just just talking a little bit
Speaker 1: angle when you started off with a hotel cafe. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many people I've met, even had conversations,
Speaker 1: don't remember a thing. So I vividly remember that moment.
Speaker 1: I could probably put my feet in the same place
Speaker 1: on the asphalt behind, so it blew my mind.
Speaker 2: I remember friends that No, I remember it. I remember
Speaker 2: it too.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You were your back was to the building and I
Speaker 2: was facing Yes, let's see it, you know, and the
Speaker 2: door was right behind you. I can see the color.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but there was something about that
Speaker 2: and I think, I think possibly. I don't want to
Speaker 2: get fucking airy fairy here, but I think you have
Speaker 2: a real affinity for what makes this shit real, and
Speaker 2: so do I.
Speaker 1: No, listen, I don't think you can take that to
Speaker 1: the bank. Occasionally you can capture it and it works,
Speaker 1: but that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2: It's nothing there, There is nothing else. I mean, I mean.
Speaker 1: I remember talking. You know too many people in this
Speaker 1: You say anything and they'll say, well, look at the billing,
Speaker 1: look at the grosse. I don't want to say the
Speaker 1: billing and the gross are wrong the great, but that's
Speaker 1: not what it's about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's like you do you remember do
Speaker 2: you know Jeremy Lubbock? Do you remember that name? Jeremy
Speaker 2: was a string arranger.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's probably the probably the greatest string arranger that La
Speaker 2: ever saw. And he abandoned la he couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 2: And he did the string arrangements and the horn arrangements
Speaker 2: for I'm Breathless and Wow could he write? And we
Speaker 2: were in the studio working on that thing, and somebody
Speaker 2: said something about something about the money, and Jeremy said,
Speaker 2: and McDonald sells a lot of hamburgers, it does not
Speaker 2: make it hot cuisine exactly. Like that's right. It doesn't
Speaker 2: fucking matter how much money it makes, it doesn't make
Speaker 2: it good.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing about when you talk about the
Speaker 1: record you're not going to put out Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, when you do great work. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you do it enough, you know you're
Speaker 1: never gonna do something bad. But you can't make it
Speaker 1: eleven every day. But when you make an eleven, you know,
Speaker 1: and you can also you could listen, you could read
Speaker 1: or listen to something, and you go, I don't care
Speaker 1: what anybody else thinks. It's missing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this, all of this work I listened to
Speaker 2: the other night because I keep hoping I'm wrong, because
Speaker 2: there's a lot of work. It was, you know, a
Speaker 2: year's worth of work or something or ten months or
Speaker 2: whatever it was. And again, you know, like I have
Speaker 2: a board behind me on the wall here that I
Speaker 2: put all my song cards on, and there's nine of
Speaker 2: them up there right now, which are the nine songs
Speaker 2: from Love and Occasional War. And I wrote another one
Speaker 2: called the song that you wrote or the story that
Speaker 2: you wrote last week that I think will replace something
Speaker 2: on there. And I don't know what because I like
Speaker 2: them all, but it's it's pretty high bar. And it's
Speaker 2: coming from all of this agitation, of all of this
Speaker 2: promo and talking about career and oh my god, you
Speaker 2: know all this stuff that I just I don't even
Speaker 2: like doing it. You know, I'm just interested and now
Speaker 2: if I can do that. But you know that said
Speaker 2: those nines, there's twenty five that I wrote to get them,
Speaker 2: and the other ones no one will ever hear. They
Speaker 2: will never see the light of day.
Speaker 1: Wait to what degree is your process changed by working
Speaker 1: with Leonard? Wow?
Speaker 2: Did I learn a lot? And I'll tell you where
Speaker 2: I learned a lot? Is the thing of the lyric
Speaker 2: being complete. I think I learned what when complete is?
Speaker 2: I think I know when it's done now, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I knew before. I know I didn't know
Speaker 2: before because I listened to my lyrics from all those
Speaker 2: years ago. It's like, well it's kind of an idea,
Speaker 2: but you didn't really get it, did you.
Speaker 1: Well, well, okay, you have X number of songs on
Speaker 1: the board, and when you replace one with another, it
Speaker 1: is Is it as simple as that? Or is it
Speaker 1: because you worked with Leonard that you say there's something
Speaker 1: beyond and I'm searching for it and therefore I'm willing
Speaker 1: to work with it keep getting there.
Speaker 2: I think I think that the when you do a
Speaker 2: project like this one up on the board, the bar
Speaker 2: sets itself and then you you move it. You move
Speaker 2: it there at that spot, and you go under it
Speaker 2: sometimes and you go above it sometimes. And because I'm
Speaker 2: almost all of those songs with one exception, and the
Speaker 2: fucking song tortured me. Their lyric first, their lyric first songs.
Speaker 2: So you know, here's the lyric, right, this is for,
Speaker 2: this is for at the end of the day, and
Speaker 2: this is the one that's about Leonard. And this lyric
Speaker 2: didn't take me long because there's a narrative that follows
Speaker 2: a story about him that I knew, and I don't
Speaker 2: think I changed almost anything. But then there's those where
Speaker 2: you find yourself changing him to the point where you
Speaker 2: don't recognize him anymore. And then that means you take
Speaker 2: them up back and shoot him in the head and
Speaker 2: they fall in the pond, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 1: I will say. You know, people talk about the process
Speaker 1: where when it comes out just like that, like you're
Speaker 1: channeling it, that's always the best stuff.
Speaker 2: It's always the best. It's right, it really is. And
Speaker 2: it's the same with the music, you know, like the
Speaker 2: the thing of sitting at the piano and writing something
Speaker 2: or playing something or whatever it is. You know you
Speaker 2: know right away when it when it means something. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have a I have a little thing. I'll show
Speaker 2: you this when I when I'm when I teach. I
Speaker 2: used to do some songwriting classes, and I'd like to
Speaker 2: do some more. But one of the things I would
Speaker 2: always do is I'd ask the class. I'd say, do
Speaker 2: you know what this is? And you know, it's like no,
Speaker 2: And people with pitch would say it's for E'SE. I'd say, well, no,
Speaker 2: what is that? I go nothing. I'd say, well, you
Speaker 2: know what, let's try that. Let's change one note. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's Beethoven's fifteen. It's like, so the most famous motif
Speaker 2: in all of fucking human history is made from one note.
Speaker 2: That's it. It's one note that distinguishes it from nothing
Speaker 2: to the most recognizable thing there is. So if you
Speaker 2: know that that's the way this works, you have a
Speaker 2: different quest that you're on, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 2: that's all it takes. It just takes that one thing
Speaker 2: that somehow sets your sets your mind. And I'm fairly
Speaker 2: certain that Beethoven had worked out at that point that
Speaker 2: that's all it took. It just you just need you
Speaker 2: just need that one shift. It just has to be
Speaker 2: the right one.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it reminds me of something my psychiatrist
Speaker 1: says goes, sometimes you change one little thing and it
Speaker 1: changes the whole picture. Yeah, it's like the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's like you feel your stock and you're looking for
Speaker 1: big changes and one little thing it sets it going.
Speaker 2: And you're there. And I mean and sometimes it's especially
Speaker 2: in music, it can be very very very strange what happens.
Speaker 2: Because I'll i'll write something and i'll write a chord
Speaker 2: chart and I'll forget about it, like just something I
Speaker 2: do that didn't mean anything, and I'll write it out
Speaker 2: and I'll come and look at it and I'll start
Speaker 2: playing it, but there's no indication as to what it was.
Speaker 2: There's no tempo, there's no feel, there's no time signature,
Speaker 2: there's no nothing. And I start rolling around with this
Speaker 2: thing that's on a page, sitting on the piano, and
Speaker 2: it's like, wow, this is really interesting. And I realized
Speaker 2: that what I had written, i'd written, say, for example,
Speaker 2: in four to four, right, so just basic four four,
Speaker 2: and now for whatever reason, I'm feeling it in six
Speaker 2: or I'm feeling it in three, and now it has
Speaker 2: something and it's like well, why didn't have something before.
Speaker 2: It's like it didn't have something before because everything was
Speaker 2: one quarter note too long. The interest only happens when
Speaker 2: you condense it, you know, And that kind of discuss
Speaker 2: every is more interesting to me than being famous in
Speaker 2: the music business.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Fuck the music Fuck the music business.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I guess going to an analogous thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they make these records with seventeen
Speaker 1: writers and twenty remixers because you're that acids, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the greatest records of all time have mistakes,
Speaker 1: but they contain something which is indescribable.
Speaker 2: Well, also, this the thing about all of this stuff,
Speaker 2: and I stay away from the subject. But if you
Speaker 2: look at what you're hearing now, and because people aren't musicians,
Speaker 2: they don't know necessarily what they're hearing. There's four chords
Speaker 2: and sometimes three, and that's it. And it's the same
Speaker 2: on every song, same chords, same chord progression, and all
Speaker 2: the drum beats are made by machines, all the parts
Speaker 2: are quantized, made on a computer, all the vocals are
Speaker 2: pitched to the to death. None of these things are
Speaker 2: being sung naturally, So what exactly are you listening to
Speaker 2: what is it that you're hearing? You know? So if
Speaker 2: you're gonna if you're going to just do anything, so
Speaker 2: we just just play a little.
Speaker 3: Bit so little improvised chord progression.
Speaker 2: If you took those chords and you quantize them, and
Speaker 2: you put them all those block chords, and you put
Speaker 2: them right on the beat, it wouldn't mean a fucking thing.
Speaker 2: But if you can put something in it, and I
Speaker 2: can just go and go and go all day like that,
Speaker 2: that's what I do. And that's where the improvisation comes in.
Speaker 2: But if you can't feel it, why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: Well, I I say, I go the other way if
Speaker 1: you could, if you squeeze all the humanity out of
Speaker 1: the record, what have you got?
Speaker 2: That's right, there's nothing left. There's nothing left, nothing, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you take something simple, you know, like the
Speaker 2: chord progression of the day is it's.
Speaker 1: This, that's it.
Speaker 2: It's every song and.
Speaker 3: It's in this order or it's in this order, or
Speaker 3: it's in this order.
Speaker 1: They're all the same chords.
Speaker 2: There's four chords and everybody does them. So if you say,
Speaker 2: well that's all you get, well you can say okay,
Speaker 2: let's use them and go first chord, second chord. So
Speaker 2: that's the same progression everyone's using. But there's harmony in it,
Speaker 2: there's melody in it, and there's a musical knowledge. Without
Speaker 2: musical knowledge, what are you doing? You know, It's like
Speaker 2: it's like a conversation. We only know four words and
Speaker 2: that's what we're hearing it. It's heartbreaking, but it's you.
Speaker 1: Know, until next time. This is Bob Left six m