Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left SUTs podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Todd run
Speaker 1: Gray Todd good dap Here, Hi, Bob, how goes? It? Goes?
Speaker 1: Pretty well? And then being locked up in this COVID era.
Speaker 1: So you're going on this virtual tour this winter? Can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about that? Well? I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be out this year in May and
Speaker 1: June as part of my regular touring schedule, and then
Speaker 1: that got moved to July and August. Then I got
Speaker 1: moved to October November, then I got moved to next February,
Speaker 1: and then when they moved it from February, I said,
Speaker 1: all right, enough enough that would have been by the
Speaker 1: time I go out on the road, it will be
Speaker 1: two years since I've done a tour, and that's too
Speaker 1: long a time for me. If I don't do it
Speaker 1: with some regularity, I start to wonder if I can
Speaker 1: do it. So I decided that I would uh do
Speaker 1: this experiment, which is actually something that I've had in
Speaker 1: mind for a while. The impetus for the idea has
Speaker 1: to do with um with global climate change and how
Speaker 1: it's affecting a transportation system, and I had already made
Speaker 1: some um, pretty major adjustments in the way that I travel.
Speaker 1: Instead of doing the usual major markets, a couple of
Speaker 1: minor markets, major market, driving the whole way, we started
Speaker 1: playing multiple nights in major markets and kind of encouraging
Speaker 1: people from the minor markets to travel, and I would
Speaker 1: travel less. As a matter of fact, we travel maximum
Speaker 1: under that schedule, probably two days a week, but it
Speaker 1: involves flying instead of driving. And I was finding myself, um,
Speaker 1: evermore often on panic mode with my travel agent because
Speaker 1: a flight got canceled or or fatally delayed or something
Speaker 1: like that. And that would usually be due to an
Speaker 1: airport being shut down because of a weather event. And
Speaker 1: that's when I started to think, Um, this is going
Speaker 1: to happen more often. How, what's the backup? You know,
Speaker 1: how can you deliver a show? Uh if the physical
Speaker 1: world won't allow you to do that? Uh? And that's
Speaker 1: when I first started thinking about it. But I had
Speaker 1: not at the time considered the possibility that the audience
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to make it to the show. So
Speaker 1: that's how we wound up with this full virtual tour.
Speaker 1: The fact that nobody can actually come come out and
Speaker 1: so instead of me, um, hitting uh the places that
Speaker 1: I would have played, but maybe presenting it in a
Speaker 1: way that's still resembled a live show. In other words,
Speaker 1: do it in a club or a theater that has
Speaker 1: video projection. Now the audience can't go to that club
Speaker 1: or that video theater. The whole thing has to be
Speaker 1: home delivered. And so that's what we're doing. We're doing shows,
Speaker 1: each localized to a market that we would have played,
Speaker 1: and uh allowing well pretty much allowing anyone to go
Speaker 1: to any of those shows, but for the markets that
Speaker 1: are locked out because prior agreements, and each show will
Speaker 1: have the flavor of the place that we would have played. Wait. Wait,
Speaker 1: just so I understand. So the shows are geo fenced,
Speaker 1: is what the original publicity say? Are you saying if
Speaker 1: the show is in San Francisco, someone from New York
Speaker 1: can go? Uh? Yes, the geo in sing We had
Speaker 1: the paradigm a little upside down at first. Um we thought, okay,
Speaker 1: geo fencing will involve determining all of the you know,
Speaker 1: the IP addresses that fall within a certain municipality, let's say,
Speaker 1: and then only allow people who had corresponding IP address.
Speaker 1: Is to buy a ticket to those particular markets. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who might be just on the other line of
Speaker 1: the other side of the fence, and it's a hard fence,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like uh not like a fence
Speaker 1: that you can see through. Put it that way, you
Speaker 1: either get it or you don't get the show. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people who might have driven to a
Speaker 1: show in a particular town suddenly couldn't get to the
Speaker 1: show via the geo fencing. And we realized the only
Speaker 1: use of it at this particular point is to protect
Speaker 1: those markets that I've made prior agreements not to play in.
Speaker 1: So uh, you can be in one of those markets
Speaker 1: that I didn't agree to play in, and then pick
Speaker 1: any city that you would like to be in, with
Speaker 1: the caveat that we will be as performers. We will
Speaker 1: be pretending we're in that city. Okay, certainly fans are
Speaker 1: they just want to hear they can go into any
Speaker 1: market and watch the show. In many cases, fans would
Speaker 1: watch multiple shows. Let's go back to something you said earlier.
Speaker 1: You said, well, you don't know if you still can
Speaker 1: do it. Is that emotionally is that physically is that
Speaker 1: musical ability. Well, you know, there is a controversy about
Speaker 1: mask wearing and social distancing and all that, and we're
Speaker 1: kind of on the side of playing its safe. We're
Speaker 1: creating our own bubble when we go um to actually
Speaker 1: do this show, and we fortunately, because we're doing it
Speaker 1: this way, don't have to get into the controversy about
Speaker 1: wearing or not wearing a mask at a certain gig.
Speaker 1: The I think the thing is that in most cities
Speaker 1: they have relatively stricter gathering policies as opposed to rural
Speaker 1: areas that may have much more relaxed gathering policies. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, we were operating on the assumption, because we're
Speaker 1: we'll be doing the shows in Chicago, we're operating on
Speaker 1: the assumption originally that we could have up to people
Speaker 1: live people in an audience, and of course they would
Speaker 1: all have to be masked and isolated and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing or distance not necessarily isolated, but six ft
Speaker 1: apart at least. And then there was a surge and
Speaker 1: that got reduced to like ten people. Uh So we
Speaker 1: don't know actually, by the time we get to doing
Speaker 1: the shows exactly how many live bodies will be allowed
Speaker 1: to have in the space in our performance space. UH.
Speaker 1: And that would be the same probably in any major city.
Speaker 1: We would have no idea until you until the day
Speaker 1: of the show exactly how many people would be allowed
Speaker 1: in the venue. So there is that, and then there
Speaker 1: is the fact that we are, uh, we are proactive
Speaker 1: about about continuing to use suppressive strategies while we're still
Speaker 1: in a pandemic, even though it will be a February
Speaker 1: you are in March for us, We're not counting on
Speaker 1: the fact that vaccines would be available to us or
Speaker 1: the major part of the audience. Okay, but earlier you
Speaker 1: said if you don't go out that regularly on tour,
Speaker 1: irrelevant of COVID, you're not sure you can still do it.
Speaker 1: What exactly did you mean by that? I don't go
Speaker 1: out and just stand in front of a microphone with
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar and strum and sing all the ballots. My
Speaker 1: shows are even nowadays as much physical work as I've
Speaker 1: ever done in a two hours span. Uh. If not
Speaker 1: only requires um, the singing, and the movement. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: shows require extracurricular above and beyond things like when I
Speaker 1: do uh A wizard, A true Star, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to be half of the show that we were going
Speaker 1: to do this year. Uh. I go through how many
Speaker 1: was it? It was twelve costume changes in an hour.
Speaker 1: It was like every ten minutes, I had a different
Speaker 1: costume change. Yeah, I've seen that show, right, and that's
Speaker 1: the ship, you know, that's the show that hopefully next October,
Speaker 1: half the show will be that and half the show
Speaker 1: will be the Individualists tour, which uh, which I did
Speaker 1: uh in Okay, So there's a lot of physical activity.
Speaker 1: Do you like performing live or is it more for
Speaker 1: the revenue or what what's driving these tours? I really
Speaker 1: like it. I enjoy it. I always feel, you know,
Speaker 1: worn out, a little bit beat up after a show,
Speaker 1: but very satisfied. It's two hours of aerobics. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all because you're singing the whole time. So it's
Speaker 1: all about you know, you're how much wind you have,
Speaker 1: you know, and utilizing uh, especially when you're singing and
Speaker 1: run around the stage at the same time. I just
Speaker 1: feel like more fit afterwards, and I enjoy I enjoy singing.
Speaker 1: There was a time in my life where I was
Speaker 1: terrified to sing, and as time has gone on, my
Speaker 1: voice has actually kind of aged well and in some
Speaker 1: ways gotten a little bit better, and my stamina has
Speaker 1: gotten better. I understand my voice a little better, so
Speaker 1: I can use it more effectively. So I really enjoy
Speaker 1: the singing. I enjoy the singing. I enjoy the interactions
Speaker 1: with the audience. And to what degree does the audience
Speaker 1: affect that particular performance. Would you change anything, whether it
Speaker 1: be song selection or delivery? Uh, as a result of
Speaker 1: where the audiences at visa VU. Well, this is not
Speaker 1: that kind of show in that um sort of a
Speaker 1: review and it's got to flow to it. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are shows that I've done where I will just call
Speaker 1: the songs out to the band. You know, we won't
Speaker 1: have a set list, and I'll see how I feel
Speaker 1: and see what the audience response is like, and then
Speaker 1: you know, figure out where to go from there. We
Speaker 1: have a virtual audience as well. There will be a
Speaker 1: number of these video panels with people's faces on them.
Speaker 1: You may have seen such a thing at the NBA
Speaker 1: Games or America's Got Talent, where the any TV show
Speaker 1: where they think the audience is a significant part of
Speaker 1: the of the process. So we'll have that. We'll be
Speaker 1: able to see people's faces, and people can buy essentially
Speaker 1: one of those seats, which will be the equivalent of
Speaker 1: like the first three or four rows of the gig,
Speaker 1: and that will be interspersed with any with the number
Speaker 1: or of live bodies that we're allowed to have in
Speaker 1: the venue at the time. Uh, you can figure that.
Speaker 1: You can assume that in a in a multicast thing
Speaker 1: like we're doing, there'll be a certain amount of round
Speaker 1: trip time we do an event like I say, move,
Speaker 1: and it takes some number of milliseconds to get to
Speaker 1: the audience who are out there somewhere, and then any
Speaker 1: response they have to that, we'll take some number of
Speaker 1: milliseconds to get back, and it may not be the
Speaker 1: same for everybody. So, uh, there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: lag in the audience response, uh, in the virtual audience response,
Speaker 1: which is why it's good to have live bodies there
Speaker 1: because they respond instantaneously to whatever you're doing. And also
Speaker 1: it's you know, in a certain sense maybe easier to
Speaker 1: hear them because the people in the virtual audience, while
Speaker 1: they have a screen to themselves, you know, with their
Speaker 1: head on it, all the audio from the audience is
Speaker 1: being mixed into one feet and so you know, we
Speaker 1: couldn't pick out you know, if someone has yelling at
Speaker 1: woo or something like that, we wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: actually pick out who it is. UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: it's great always to have some at least some live
Speaker 1: bodies in the audience. I mean, we we enjoy playing
Speaker 1: a sound check and having the people who worked the
Speaker 1: bar applaud for us. That's good. Okay, you live in
Speaker 1: Hawaii and when this was set up, your manager said, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's two hours behind or ahead, depending on how you
Speaker 1: want to look at it. And Todd doesn't start until noon.
Speaker 1: Are you a late night person? Is that basically your schedule? Um?
Speaker 1: It is. Uh. The daytime can be full of various
Speaker 1: activities and interactions and the coming in and out of
Speaker 1: the house all the time, and it's often not until
Speaker 1: very late at night that UM when all of the
Speaker 1: external distractions subside, I get a chance to really think
Speaker 1: hard about all of the things that I've involved in
Speaker 1: what it involves from me uh boring down into the
Speaker 1: further details of of things like UH like me just
Speaker 1: realizing the other night that I needed a musical director
Speaker 1: because the one who usually UH is in the band
Speaker 1: is not able to travel with us. And that's a
Speaker 1: significant thing to slip my mind, because I have so
Speaker 1: many things to worry about, so many details in terms
Speaker 1: of the show. I can't be attending to everyone's issues
Speaker 1: regarding their own particular part. That's just one of the
Speaker 1: things that occurs to me when everything gets a little quieter.
Speaker 1: Let's say hypothetically everybody in your house was out of town,
Speaker 1: you had no assistance whatever, and you had to start
Speaker 1: you during the day, would you be as productive or
Speaker 1: is there something about later in the day and the
Speaker 1: darkness that loosens things up it maybe, uh, it may
Speaker 1: be the darkness. We have a rare moment of quiet here,
Speaker 1: as you may be able to detect because living out
Speaker 1: here in the in the countryside as I do, it
Speaker 1: seems to be NonStop landscaping. Somebody is running a lawnmower
Speaker 1: or a weed whacker somewhere, and and the noise doesn't
Speaker 1: abate until like until sundown, you know, until it is
Speaker 1: actually dark. So even if the house was empty, there's
Speaker 1: likely some sort of droning noise or something that disturbs
Speaker 1: the quiet. As a matter of fact, it isn't even
Speaker 1: that quiet at night because like TOAs and frogs in
Speaker 1: the pond out here. They'll go off, but eventually I
Speaker 1: can tune them out, you know, and just kind of
Speaker 1: think about the things that I need to think about. Okay,
Speaker 1: why Hawaii. I live on the island of Kauai. And
Speaker 1: I started coming here and like the mid seventies just
Speaker 1: to get some peace and quiet for myself, and all
Speaker 1: through the seventies and eighties kept coming here. And in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, I had a video animation studio that
Speaker 1: I was running, and we had a big deliverable and
Speaker 1: I took everyone two out here to Kauai after that
Speaker 1: deliverable was made, and it was about eight months after
Speaker 1: Hurricane Hurricane called Hurricane and Nikki, which was like a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty mile and our winds and the I
Speaker 1: went right over the island and completely flattened it. And
Speaker 1: we were out are staying in a condo because none
Speaker 1: of the hotels were open. And I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: had always fantasized about living out here. If if there's
Speaker 1: gonna be any affordable real estate opportunities, this would be
Speaker 1: the time, you know, because everyone's been blown off the island.
Speaker 1: So looked around and looked around and was about to
Speaker 1: give up, and then found the property that I'm living
Speaker 1: on now. And it took uh moving mountains essentially to
Speaker 1: get it. A couple of things had to coincide, and
Speaker 1: did finally get it, but didn't build on it. And
Speaker 1: then it was the mid nineties and we were living
Speaker 1: in Saucelito and we're pondering on it because life and
Speaker 1: sauce Lito is getting less idyllic. For one thing, Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: which you know, I moved out in the mid eighties
Speaker 1: and it was still like huge fund the whole hacker
Speaker 1: scene and stuff like you would I would go to hackers,
Speaker 1: hackers conventions and hacking. It meant, you know, just doing
Speaker 1: the most you know, balls out uh computer coding and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It wasn't necessarily about breaking into other
Speaker 1: people's systems. As a matter of fact, there was no
Speaker 1: Internet yet so or at least nobody was using it.
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of fun. And then you know,
Speaker 1: it became a gold mine and all of those engineers,
Speaker 1: all those fun people got replaced by investment bankers, and
Speaker 1: all the musicians and artists and stuff. They used to
Speaker 1: live in Mill Valley, they all got pushed out by
Speaker 1: investment bankers, you know, who would you know, be on
Speaker 1: their cell phones driving ninety miles an hour through the
Speaker 1: Waldh Grade and so. And at the same time, this
Speaker 1: is when some series is gangster wrap is happening, uh,
Speaker 1: the kind where people get get killed. Right next to
Speaker 1: Saucelito is a town called uh Marine City. Not a town,
Speaker 1: it's a development actually, and that's where Tupac Shakur came from.
Speaker 1: And we're living in Saucelito right next door, and my uh,
Speaker 1: my adolescent son, you know, my fourteen year old son
Speaker 1: is telling everyone that he's in Tupacs Posse, you know,
Speaker 1: and there we hear about gang shooting and stuff in
Speaker 1: Oakland is happening all the time, his gang rivalries. But
Speaker 1: we fortunately find out at the same time that my
Speaker 1: oldest son is something of a baseball prodigy, and we say, okay,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. We're gonna find a baseball school
Speaker 1: and Honolulu for him to go to and get him
Speaker 1: out of this gangster scene, you know, and we'll moved
Speaker 1: to Kauaii and get away from essentially, you know, the
Speaker 1: investment bankers and the gangsters and and start again. And
Speaker 1: that's essentially what we did. Okay, I'm sure your kids
Speaker 1: weren't happy about that, while somewhere and somewheren't. Um younger
Speaker 1: kids weren't so old as you know, as to be
Speaker 1: as bothered by it. Okay, So do you ever get
Speaker 1: island fever? Up until now, never like, I've never spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time like dreaming about going to other places.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, I spent so much time on the road.
Speaker 1: I mean in the past couple of years, especially since
Speaker 1: about two thousand and ten, when I started touring with
Speaker 1: the All Star Band, and that became like half of
Speaker 1: my touring life, and then my own thing was the
Speaker 1: other half of my touring life. And then other sorts
Speaker 1: of events like appearing with the Metropole Orchestra and Amsterdam
Speaker 1: or other a little one off things, I might find
Speaker 1: myself on the road as long as ten months a year.
Speaker 1: And at that point, when I realized I had been
Speaker 1: on the road ten months a year, I said, this
Speaker 1: has got to stop. We have to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: reverse this. Eventually, my stint with the All Star Band ended,
Speaker 1: so that gave me back more time. But through all
Speaker 1: of that, I, you know, I was always pining to
Speaker 1: be home. You know, it's like I don't get enough
Speaker 1: time at home. I don't get enough time to forget
Speaker 1: that I've got another flight to take off island again.
Speaker 1: So when I got back home in February from a
Speaker 1: rock cruise that we did, sounds scary, doesn't it. It
Speaker 1: was in the Caribbean, so I hadn't hit there yet.
Speaker 1: But I got home and was expecting to be back
Speaker 1: in uh, back on the mainland in April, rehearsing for
Speaker 1: my show that would have started in May and gone
Speaker 1: through June. And suddenly that wasn't happening. That got moved,
Speaker 1: and then I realized, Okay, I'll be home until July
Speaker 1: at least. And then I realized I'll be home until
Speaker 1: the fall. And then I realized I'll be home until
Speaker 1: next year. So that's when I started getting more serious
Speaker 1: about this virtual tourt thing. You know. Yeah, now I
Speaker 1: have like in my head a whole list of places
Speaker 1: where I'd like to go as soon as I can,
Speaker 1: as soon as I can go there, and as they'll
Speaker 1: soon as they'll allow. Americans, they're okay, are you the
Speaker 1: type of person who's been around the world and see
Speaker 1: nothing other than hotel rooms or stages or when you
Speaker 1: go to places, do you seek out the cultural elements
Speaker 1: you know, food, friends. That's the reason why we're localizing
Speaker 1: all of these shows. Uh. We the traveling is the
Speaker 1: worst part, you know, that's trying to get there is
Speaker 1: the worst part. Being there is usually pretty great, whether aside.
Speaker 1: You know, but you know all of these places that
Speaker 1: were about to play virtually we you know, we know
Speaker 1: them in a sense. We know fans and those cities
Speaker 1: who show up to every show. Uh. There are walks
Speaker 1: that you like to take, landmarks that you know, restaurants
Speaker 1: you like to eat at. It's great at being in
Speaker 1: some of these cities. It's great having a day off
Speaker 1: in some of these cities. And uh that's part of
Speaker 1: why we're you know, working on this self hypnosis exercise
Speaker 1: so that we actually believe when we do the show
Speaker 1: that we're in that city, that we're in Buffalo or
Speaker 1: Baltimore or wherever it is that we're playing. I don't
Speaker 1: have all the dates in my ahead. Okay. Now, as
Speaker 1: you say you were working on the road up to
Speaker 1: ten months a year, you're someone has had a lot
Speaker 1: of recording success. Not only is yourself as an act
Speaker 1: but producing other records at this point, if I told
Speaker 1: you you couldn't go on the road ever again, economically,
Speaker 1: does it work for you or do you need to
Speaker 1: work to you know, pay the bills? Probably at some
Speaker 1: point I'd have to work. But I'm not in relative
Speaker 1: to like me, which is like, I have this weird
Speaker 1: thing about money, and so I never and never have
Speaker 1: known how much I have unless it's all in my pocket,
Speaker 1: you know, and I can count it. But I have
Speaker 1: had since the time I had any money at all,
Speaker 1: I've had an accountant or a or a business manager
Speaker 1: who worries about all that, And I said, don't tell
Speaker 1: me how much money I have. Just tell me how
Speaker 1: hard I have to work, or tell me that I
Speaker 1: can take some time off, you know, whatever that's I
Speaker 1: need to know. And there have been points in which
Speaker 1: I've been well underwater because of various circumstances, like after
Speaker 1: the um, after the mortgage collapse in this house that
Speaker 1: I'm living in, we finished it in and then suddenly
Speaker 1: all of the equity and it disappeared, and I was
Speaker 1: holding a mortgage and in a world of collapsed finances
Speaker 1: that was like three times the actual value of the house.
Speaker 1: At that point. So I've had you know, I've had
Speaker 1: ups and downs. At this particular point in my life,
Speaker 1: I'm actually doing pretty well, ironically enough. And a lot
Speaker 1: of that has to do with um, uh, with regression
Speaker 1: of rights. Um. You know there's some found in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the freaking frog, and I will shoot him. It's a frog,
Speaker 1: then we can leave. It's part of living in Hawaii. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a frog in my not in my throat, in
Speaker 1: my pond over here. Okay, tell us about your situational
Speaker 1: reversion of rights by some act of Congress or multiple
Speaker 1: acts of Congress. It used to be that, um, if
Speaker 1: you recorded for a record label, the masters would belong
Speaker 1: to them in perpetuity. You know, you would have them
Speaker 1: for infinity. Uh. Same thing with certain publishing rights and
Speaker 1: things like that, and oft an artists. If they didn't
Speaker 1: feel like those rights were being handled properly or they
Speaker 1: felt that they should rightfully own them, they would have
Speaker 1: to sue whoever owned them. It was a big ongoing mess.
Speaker 1: So by an act of Congress, uh, they made a
Speaker 1: statutory that after a certain number of years, like thirty
Speaker 1: thirty five years or something like that. Uh, the masters
Speaker 1: could revert to you, and all you have to do
Speaker 1: is make a request to the master owner, uh and
Speaker 1: tell them, like in a like a year before, say
Speaker 1: I am going to get I'd like to get my
Speaker 1: masters back. And what often happens, especially if you have
Speaker 1: a big catalog like me, a deep catalog, is they
Speaker 1: will say, well, we'd rather not um give up those rights.
Speaker 1: We'd rather keep those rights. We think there's value in
Speaker 1: them that we can realize, and so we will advance you.
Speaker 1: An I've seen amount of money to retain the master
Speaker 1: rights or retain the publishing rights or whatever. And a
Speaker 1: bunch of those deals because I started in the sixties,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of that stuff UH came do
Speaker 1: and continues do we come do with every year? Because
Speaker 1: I continue to make records every year? So uh, these
Speaker 1: things would have been minor annuities or me off setting
Speaker 1: advances that I had previously taken. And now they are
Speaker 1: all giant. Now it's my retirement. You know. Now I
Speaker 1: have more money in the bank than I've ever had
Speaker 1: all because of these uh reversions did I say regressions? Reversions?
Speaker 1: You know, things reverting back in the deals that you
Speaker 1: make around them. So I would not be in dire
Speaker 1: straight right away, but I still feel the need to
Speaker 1: remain involved in uh, in making records for myself and
Speaker 1: for others, in the sense that I haven't learned everything
Speaker 1: there is, and as long as there's still something for
Speaker 1: me to learn, I am going to continue to UM
Speaker 1: to explore the medium. Okay, now, you've produced a lot
Speaker 1: of very successful records, the biggest being Out of Hell
Speaker 1: is one of the most successful records of all time.
Speaker 1: But you sold your producer royalties, right, so ay, why
Speaker 1: did you do that? And be do you regret it?
Speaker 1: And see if you sold your other producer royalties. That's
Speaker 1: the only instance when in which I, you know, had
Speaker 1: someone buy me out. Uh. When sometime around when when
Speaker 1: Columbia became Sony, Sony brought out Columbia Records, Uh, Bad
Speaker 1: out of Hell was on a subsidiary of Epic, which
Speaker 1: was a part of the Columbia Records umbrella. UM, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of people talking fast and loose about
Speaker 1: how many Bad Out of Hell records have been sold,
Speaker 1: and uh, Meatloaf and Stimon and their management or their
Speaker 1: accountants or whatever thought, well, these brags don't equal, you know,
Speaker 1: the amount of money that we've got and paid, so
Speaker 1: we want to audit the label. Auditing is a thing
Speaker 1: that um. Auditing is a thing that artists do when
Speaker 1: they think that they hadn't been paid all the money
Speaker 1: that they wrote from a label, and it involves lawyers
Speaker 1: and accountants, and you have to spend money to make money,
Speaker 1: and you don't know whether you actually will because maybe
Speaker 1: the audit turns out that, yeah, you have been paid
Speaker 1: all the royalties you wrote. But um. They wanted to
Speaker 1: meet Loaf and Stemon and their management wanted to have
Speaker 1: Sony audited and asked if I wanted to participate in it,
Speaker 1: which meant that I would be also be playing lawyer's fees,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You know, for however long that dragged out,
Speaker 1: and quite obviously we'll be talking about a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So I said, I don't want to be involved in
Speaker 1: this UM. So I offered meat Loaf, uh my points
Speaker 1: on the record, I said, do you want to buy
Speaker 1: me out? And he demurred, And so then I went
Speaker 1: to Sony and said, do you want to buy me out?
Speaker 1: Because they'd have to pay me the the producer's royalties,
Speaker 1: and they said, sure, we'll buy you out, and what
Speaker 1: did I do with that money? I bought the property
Speaker 1: I'm living on today. Do I regret that? Not for
Speaker 1: a second. Okay, all your other records usually a producers
Speaker 1: paid from record one. Do you think you're being accounted
Speaker 1: to properly? Um? I got to the point because after
Speaker 1: after something anything, I always had a studio of my own.
Speaker 1: Verson was Secret Sound in New York, and then I
Speaker 1: had a studio when I moved up state. So I
Speaker 1: always had access to a studio, or I could get
Speaker 1: a studio UM for a pretty good rate, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the costs for making a record would go
Speaker 1: and go into studio costs, the hourly cost of of
Speaker 1: renting a studio, and the longer that an artist will
Speaker 1: work on the record, the more the cost might soar.
Speaker 1: So the deal that I would make is it with
Speaker 1: the label would be give me all the money for
Speaker 1: the record, all the money the budget for the record,
Speaker 1: including my producers advance, and it would be the six
Speaker 1: figure lump sum of money, and so whatever I didn't
Speaker 1: spend on making the record was my producer's advance. But
Speaker 1: all of that would be you know, would be uh
Speaker 1: taken off the tip that all of that had to
Speaker 1: be amortized before anybody would see further royalties. The only
Speaker 1: way you get royalties from record one is if is
Speaker 1: if you never took an advance on anything. You know,
Speaker 1: at first have to defray the advance and then you
Speaker 1: start making royalties. And because I had this kind of
Speaker 1: control over the process, it turned out to be uh,
Speaker 1: very desirable for a lot of labels, especially if they
Speaker 1: thought the artist was going to go into the studio
Speaker 1: and start ditthering away, you know and running up the
Speaker 1: tab you know, because nobody was actually you know, keeping
Speaker 1: a firm hand on the tiller. And I always had
Speaker 1: impetus to do that because I knew it was coming
Speaker 1: out of whatever would be my producer's advance. So it
Speaker 1: kind of worked out for everybody in that sense. Um.
Speaker 1: But that that was in the old days. That's the
Speaker 1: old record label days. That doesn't exist anymore that much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But as I see some of these records, you did
Speaker 1: obviously earned out. We're an American man. We can go
Speaker 1: on and not do you get paid on those records today?
Speaker 1: Only if they ever sold anything? Uh well, some of
Speaker 1: these records sold a lot. Yeah, so probably no, I
Speaker 1: did not get paid, But that was. That was the
Speaker 1: very first. That was the first time that I found
Speaker 1: a band and produced their records for bears Will Records.
Speaker 1: And yes, quite obviously it uh, it didn't sell a lot.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait what what what record? What record? Are
Speaker 1: we talking about? American Dream? I'm sorry, the American Dream
Speaker 1: record that was the first got my Americans mixed up.
Speaker 1: My manager was Albert Grossman and it was Albert Grossman's label, Bearsville,
Speaker 1: So I had no idea what I was getting paid. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, my manager negotiating with the label and they're
Speaker 1: both the same person. So I had no idea what,
Speaker 1: you know, what I would be paid for it, no
Speaker 1: idea what the budget for it was, what they spent
Speaker 1: for it. But we did it the old fashioned way.
Speaker 1: We went into into a commercial studio and paid the
Speaker 1: hourly rate, came up with a record, and didn't take
Speaker 1: awful long. Then you didn't spend months making records in
Speaker 1: those days unless you were the bands. But eventually I
Speaker 1: began to figure out, you know, when I have my
Speaker 1: own studio that you know, I could take over you
Speaker 1: know a greater part of the process. Relieve everybody of
Speaker 1: worrying about how much time we were spending in the studio. Indeed,
Speaker 1: once I moved to act into the studio, we more
Speaker 1: or less owned it. No one else could come in.
Speaker 1: And that was a rarity as well, you know, to
Speaker 1: have your own studio and to completely occupy it twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day. So tell us about Albert Grossman
Speaker 1: thumbs upper, thumbs down, and what was his personality like that?
Speaker 1: You saw the legend in the business. Albert um did
Speaker 1: a lot for me. I mean he sort of made me,
Speaker 1: made me what I am in some ways, and then
Speaker 1: in the end he screwed me. And that's Albert Grossman,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean asked Bob Dylan. So tell us
Speaker 1: how he screwed you in the end. It was it
Speaker 1: says he was notorious for this kind of stuff. He
Speaker 1: really valued more than anything publishing, uh, ownership or control
Speaker 1: of the songs, even more than the actual recordings themselves.
Speaker 1: And uh it was my last contractual album for bears
Speaker 1: Full Records, and he only participated the publishing as long
Speaker 1: as I was making records for Bearsville. So if my
Speaker 1: relationship with bears Will ended, it also ended my publishing relationship.
Speaker 1: And so I did the last contractual album it was
Speaker 1: called Acapella, and delivered it to Bearsville and I heard
Speaker 1: nothing back. And then eventually I started to say, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Have you have you set a release date
Speaker 1: for this record? And then no, we haven't said a
Speaker 1: release date, and Albert said, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: release this record, and I thought, what's what in particular
Speaker 1: is wrong with this record? Uh? And then he eyed
Speaker 1: to me and said Warner Brothers didn't want to release it.
Speaker 1: And it took me a couple of weeks to get
Speaker 1: ahold of MO Austin, and then I finally got him
Speaker 1: on the phone. He said, I've never heard this record.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know you had a record, you know,
Speaker 1: so uh And so the jig was up at that point.
Speaker 1: And realized that, you know, he was sticking it to
Speaker 1: me to get uh more publishing. So we did is
Speaker 1: he negotiated a three album deal with Warner Brothers, and
Speaker 1: he got a publishing for those three albums, and then
Speaker 1: he agreed to release Acapella. And I never spoke to
Speaker 1: him again after that. Do you think you would have
Speaker 1: been successful as you are if you hadn't met Albert Grossman?
Speaker 1: Possibly not. I was just living at that at the time,
Speaker 1: I was living with cloth Ears in the East Village,
Speaker 1: and I was making no music at all. I was
Speaker 1: designing lights in a in a little disc get tech.
Speaker 1: I was doing anything I could to make any kind
Speaker 1: of money or or just stay alive. And I was
Speaker 1: living off the kindness of others. And I was hanging
Speaker 1: out as Steve Paul's the scene, hoping something musical might happen.
Speaker 1: I would go all all the jam sessions, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a band would happen, something like that. And then
Speaker 1: I got contacted by the partner of the of the
Speaker 1: guy who managed the NAZ. He was he and the
Speaker 1: guy John Curland who managed the NAZ. They sort of
Speaker 1: discovered us. But before the NAZ broke up, he quit,
Speaker 1: you know, he split up with with our manager and
Speaker 1: went to work for Albert Grossman. And Albert Grossman said, my, uh,
Speaker 1: my roster here is pretty gray. They're all like artists
Speaker 1: who you know, they're like folk artists, and here it
Speaker 1: is like, so I need somebody, We need some young
Speaker 1: blood in here, and you know, any young blood. And
Speaker 1: he had watched me sort of take over the production
Speaker 1: of the NAZ albums and thought, well, that's pretty impressive
Speaker 1: for a young guy. Let's see what he can do.
Speaker 1: So I was invited to start working for the Grossman organization,
Speaker 1: and at first I was just doing engineering and a
Speaker 1: little production, and I was very successful at it. And
Speaker 1: then after I had done a few projects, I asked
Speaker 1: for a budget to do a vanity record on my
Speaker 1: own because I was still writing music. And that turned
Speaker 1: out to be run, the first solo record that I did,
Speaker 1: and it accidentally had a hit record on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: why are there multiple iteration of that record? Uh? We
Speaker 1: did a test pressing and it became apparent that the
Speaker 1: sound was much louder on one side than the other,
Speaker 1: because the volume of of an LP had to do
Speaker 1: with how much content was actually on it, which is
Speaker 1: why I like led Zeppelin records only lasted minutes. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd have three songs on the side and the whole
Speaker 1: side would last, you know, sixteen minutes or something like that.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted your records to sound loud, you
Speaker 1: had to put less music on them. But I had
Speaker 1: put too much music on the B side, and so
Speaker 1: we realized I had to edit it, and we took
Speaker 1: three songs and edited them down to a Medley and
Speaker 1: then remassed the record, but some confusion in there UH
Speaker 1: caused them to press a run of like about five
Speaker 1: thousand of the rejected masters, the ones that sounded louder
Speaker 1: on one side than the other, And so there are
Speaker 1: a few of those out there still extent, but most
Speaker 1: of the records, any of the re issues, are all
Speaker 1: of the one with the Medley instead of the three
Speaker 1: full songs. Okay, now, those initial records were via Ampex
Speaker 1: before they we uh went to Warner Brothers, and then
Speaker 1: the market was flooded with cutouts. Was that something you
Speaker 1: were aware of on your end? No, I didn't pay
Speaker 1: much attention to that, but it seems logical. Uh. The
Speaker 1: deal with Ampex was kind of weird. UM. When Albert
Speaker 1: decided he wanted his own label, Theresbul Records, instead of
Speaker 1: going to another you know label for distribution or real
Speaker 1: record label, he went to Ampex, who only ever did
Speaker 1: tapes up until that point. They would do real to
Speaker 1: real versions of LPs and in which case the volume
Speaker 1: was uniformed throughout. But and hired a guy I don't
Speaker 1: know whether he worked at Ampex or whether it was
Speaker 1: just another guy, but made essentially a tape company, record
Speaker 1: distribution company, and they didn't realize what the difference was,
Speaker 1: you know. So that relationship only lasted about a year,
Speaker 1: and they took Bearsville and made a sensible deal with
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers distributed them until the label folded. Essentially. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: the first record has a hit with shitty distribution. In
Speaker 1: terms of the album itself, the second album, in my mind,
Speaker 1: is a masterpiece. I prefer that to something anything, To
Speaker 1: put your heart and soul into that album and have
Speaker 1: limited commercial success and to not fly above the radar.
Speaker 1: Was that something you felt and you were disappointed about? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, not for myself. I'm always disappointed, you know
Speaker 1: when radio gets conservative and just starts playing the same
Speaker 1: music over and over. Um. But this is in the
Speaker 1: midst of me being one of the most successful producers
Speaker 1: in the world at this point, and I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the economics of my own records. That
Speaker 1: was the point, the realization that I had during something anything, Uh,
Speaker 1: when people were comparing me to Carol King, is it
Speaker 1: always the madle Carol King. And as much as I
Speaker 1: was a Carol King fan, I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: compared to anybody, and I started to realize, what's the
Speaker 1: point of doing music that other people are doing. I
Speaker 1: have to do music that only I would do. And
Speaker 1: that's when I built a studio for the purposes of
Speaker 1: doing the music that only I would do. And you know,
Speaker 1: the the market be deiled. You know how how commercial
Speaker 1: it was never even occurred to me. But the irony is, uh, well,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of irony. Is One irony is
Speaker 1: that it completely bifurcated my audience. Anyone who was like
Speaker 1: you know, a fan up until something anything uh and
Speaker 1: didn't make that leap, never bought another record again, and
Speaker 1: for some reason think I retired from the music business
Speaker 1: and never record another song after that. And they come
Speaker 1: to the shows and on they want to hear is solo.
Speaker 1: It's me and I saw the light. And then there
Speaker 1: are those fans who endured a wizit, a true star
Speaker 1: and realized there was something in there, something unique in there,
Speaker 1: and and continued on the journey, realizing that the unexpected
Speaker 1: was part of the reward. You know that most audience
Speaker 1: members want more of the same. My audience wants wants
Speaker 1: to know what weird hairs up my bum at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, so uh, and that's lasted mostly to this day,
Speaker 1: and it became a generational thing. About ten years ago
Speaker 1: or so ago, a whole generation of younger artists started
Speaker 1: to discover, in particular A Wizard a True Star. The
Speaker 1: first instance of that was Taman Palea. Kevin Parker asked
Speaker 1: me to do a remix and said that, you know,
Speaker 1: it was one of the most influential albums. You know
Speaker 1: that his album that he was putting out was his
Speaker 1: version of A Wizard a True Star. I did a
Speaker 1: remix for Trent Resider and he said that he listened
Speaker 1: to A Wizard a True Star once a month. So
Speaker 1: it opened up posthumously. It opened up all this whole
Speaker 1: window to a younger generation of artists who got tired
Speaker 1: of doing the same music that everybody does nowadays and
Speaker 1: do the same thing that I do, which is go
Speaker 1: back and see what has been done, uh, even like
Speaker 1: prior to your generation. Uh, and see if there's anything
Speaker 1: to learn in it. See if there's something something that
Speaker 1: will inspire you to to change what you're doing or
Speaker 1: somehow give you license to do something that's out of
Speaker 1: the ordinary. And what have you gone back and been
Speaker 1: inspired by Oh. I have several instances of that. Maybe
Speaker 1: the most obvious is UH with a Twist, where I
Speaker 1: was approached to to do new versions of my old
Speaker 1: classics or standards or whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: and Uh, most people would just get out an acoustic
Speaker 1: guitar and you know, do a new version. And I
Speaker 1: had been listening to Bossanova music of the of the
Speaker 1: of the early sixties, like pre Beatles. You know, we're
Speaker 1: talking before the Beatles. There was a whole era m
Speaker 1: in the late eighties and early nineties when everyone was well,
Speaker 1: when not everyone but certain people were transitioning from vinyl
Speaker 1: to c ds, and the Japanese in particular just got
Speaker 1: really mental about it and they started going back and
Speaker 1: finding any obscure vinyl they could find and doing CD
Speaker 1: re re releases. And we were touring Japan a lot
Speaker 1: in those days, and we would go to this record
Speaker 1: store called Wave was just a multi story place with
Speaker 1: they had had LPs once floor, but most all of
Speaker 1: it was CDs, a lot of special releases and weird
Speaker 1: packaging and stuff like that. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that they started started rereleasing where for instance, UH, Frank Sinatra,
Speaker 1: the Capitol years, uh uh, and this whole genre that
Speaker 1: they called bachelor pad music or cocktail music, you know,
Speaker 1: which included Boston Nova, included uh all kinds of like
Speaker 1: freaky like esquivel, you know, Martin Denny, exoticam music, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And I got way into that. And
Speaker 1: so when they asked me to do a new album
Speaker 1: of of my standards, I said, I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: Bossonova album. So we did a whole Bossonova album, and
Speaker 1: then we went out and did a tour in which
Speaker 1: the stage was a small like tiki club tiki bar.
Speaker 1: Every night that, you know, wherever we were, we were
Speaker 1: in the same tiki bar. And we did three acts.
Speaker 1: You know. We started out with the Boston Nova act,
Speaker 1: and then we do a sort of a more exotic act,
Speaker 1: and then we do an after hours act. And we
Speaker 1: had tables and a bar and a bouncer, and we
Speaker 1: would invite people from the audience to come sit in
Speaker 1: like they were on a tour bus and came to
Speaker 1: our little Honolulu club to watch us play a set.
Speaker 1: We would turn them out everyone to bring in a
Speaker 1: new audience for each set, and by the time we
Speaker 1: got to the very end of the set, there would
Speaker 1: be nothing but one girl and one drunk at the
Speaker 1: bar and he would hit on the girl. We would
Speaker 1: tell them what they were supposed to do, and he
Speaker 1: would hit on the girl on the bouncer would kick
Speaker 1: him out and that would be the end of the show. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: since you put out a lot of records and not
Speaker 1: all of them were expected by the labels, you ever
Speaker 1: deliver one and they said, we don't want to put
Speaker 1: it out, or it's gonna be different. There was an
Speaker 1: instance where I made it an actually beautiful, magnificent record, uh,
Speaker 1: with a girl named Julie. Oh gosh, she's gonna hate
Speaker 1: me because I can't remember her name, but really a
Speaker 1: really terrific record. She was had long been a background
Speaker 1: singer for Leonard Cohen, but she had an incredible voice,
Speaker 1: an incredible material, and great arrangements. It was a terrific
Speaker 1: record that has never seen the light of day because, um,
Speaker 1: I don't want to grind any access here but a
Speaker 1: certain person. But it was for Mercury Records, and a
Speaker 1: certain person came in and took over the presidency of
Speaker 1: Mercury Records and said any project that was started before
Speaker 1: I got here is in the dumpster and it didn't
Speaker 1: matter what the quality of it was. And historically you could,
Speaker 1: if you do the math, you can probably figure out
Speaker 1: who this prick was, but uh, I'm not gonna name him.
Speaker 1: I think I do know who it is, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, that was that was a heartbreaking, you know,
Speaker 1: because I had nothing to do with the quality of
Speaker 1: the record. You know, it was a completely political decision
Speaker 1: and uh, and I think that discouraged her so much
Speaker 1: that she never went to find another label to pick
Speaker 1: up the record, so that I really regret because I
Speaker 1: thought it was a beautiful piece of work. Julie Christensen,
Speaker 1: Julie Christensen, thank you, thank you. How did you end
Speaker 1: up as the engineer on stage? Right? Well, that was
Speaker 1: kind of what they brought me in for, uh, to
Speaker 1: take these older acts and uh and sort of update them.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what the very very first session
Speaker 1: I did was. It might they might have put me
Speaker 1: on some demo sections or something like that. See if
Speaker 1: you can, you know, just come up with a song
Speaker 1: out of this artist. Um, then uh, I guess they decided, okay,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna hired this guy. We got to give
Speaker 1: him some kind of definitive test. So they hired me
Speaker 1: to um engineer Jesse Winchester's first album. Robbie Robertson was
Speaker 1: producing it, and the and the backup was essentially the band,
Speaker 1: and I was was the producer in other words, the producer.
Speaker 1: And that we had to record it in Toronto because, uh,
Speaker 1: Jesse Winchester was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: and then he was living in Montreal, so we had
Speaker 1: a studio in Toronto. Kicked the engineer out of the studio,
Speaker 1: maybe kept a tape off or something like that. And
Speaker 1: it was the first time I had a big, serious,
Speaker 1: you know session, and I just winged it. I winged
Speaker 1: it through the whole thing. I winged it through. I
Speaker 1: knew a little bit about Mike play been his stuff
Speaker 1: from doing the NAS records. Uh yeah, winged my way
Speaker 1: through the session. And in the end they were happy
Speaker 1: with how I did it and what it sounded like,
Speaker 1: and so they said, Okay, you're doing stage fright now.
Speaker 1: That was pretty much the very next thing that happened
Speaker 1: the Jesse Winchester record was Robbie in the studio were
Speaker 1: you the de facto producer. No, No, Robbie. Robbie was
Speaker 1: the producer. Okay, And now on that record there was
Speaker 1: a song that came part of he became legendary, but
Speaker 1: never was he hit Yankee Lady? Did you know that
Speaker 1: that would be? You know, when you're in the studio
Speaker 1: and you're hearing these tracks, that would be the first
Speaker 1: of them. Do you wait? There's something about this one
Speaker 1: and this one is gonna go No. Actually, Albert, before
Speaker 1: I went up to do the project, played it for me.
Speaker 1: He played Yankee Lady. He didn't play any other song.
Speaker 1: He said, this is the song that has sold this
Speaker 1: record to me. So so he was. He was really
Speaker 1: high on it and played it for me. He played
Speaker 1: it for anybody who would listen to it. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, he thought there was something especially in Trigue,
Speaker 1: not just about the song and the way that he's
Speaker 1: saying it, but something intriguing about the story because it
Speaker 1: was Jesse Winchester's story, going from Arkansas or wherever he
Speaker 1: grew up to as far north as he could get.
Speaker 1: So even beyond Yankee he went canok So, what was
Speaker 1: the first project that bb beyond the stage Right record?
Speaker 1: That was outside of the Beersville stable. Um. Well, as
Speaker 1: I said, the first project, the first band I managed
Speaker 1: to get signed was the American Dream and and that
Speaker 1: was on that was on Bearsville. But I think the uh,
Speaker 1: the first significant one I was doing stuff for the
Speaker 1: Bearsville stable. It wasn't always on Bearsville records. Like I
Speaker 1: went to Nashville and did an Ian and Sylvia record,
Speaker 1: you know, or two UH went back to l A
Speaker 1: and did a James Cotton record, but they would have
Speaker 1: been for their own labels, whatever those labels were. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the first big, you know, the big signature
Speaker 1: project outside of the immediate stable was Bad Finger was
Speaker 1: straight up. Now that was a whole troubled project. Never
Speaker 1: mind the ultimate credit and trouble till I got there. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, these records have been released with
Speaker 1: your additions and the other people's mixes and productions, and
Speaker 1: it's black and white. You can see what yours were
Speaker 1: relevantive emotional things. Yours were the the ones that were
Speaker 1: the successful artistically an commercial way. Well, when I got there,
Speaker 1: of course they had been through to producers already. Jeff Emrick,
Speaker 1: who was had been the Beatles engineer. I had done
Speaker 1: a whole record and for some reason it got rejected
Speaker 1: and I read later that the American label didn't hear
Speaker 1: a hit song on it, so they said, no, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna put this out. It might have been fined
Speaker 1: by Apple in England, but apparently the American distributors said no.
Speaker 1: So then George got involved. But he hadn't gotten halfway
Speaker 1: through the record before he got distracted by the concert
Speaker 1: for Bangladesh and just didn't have the time. But the
Speaker 1: other issues with George's thing was that they were sonic
Speaker 1: in that he was kind of in the thrall of
Speaker 1: Phil Specter at the time. And Phil Specter doesn't think
Speaker 1: about a band, you know. A matter of fact, when
Speaker 1: Phil Specter produced the beat was the first thing he
Speaker 1: did was slap an orchestra on it, you know, so
Speaker 1: he didn't think in terms of bands, you know. But
Speaker 1: Bad Finger was a band and they needed to sound
Speaker 1: like a band. And uh so a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff that I got from George I just had too
Speaker 1: much on it. You know. It had like triple track
Speaker 1: acoustic guitars, the drums were back in the soup, you know,
Speaker 1: all Phil Specter um and it sounded nothing like the
Speaker 1: Jeff Emricks stuff. Uh. I didn't tackle it right away.
Speaker 1: The first thing I did was, like, let's pretend we're
Speaker 1: doing a new record, you know, before I get into
Speaker 1: like recovering any of the old stuff. Let's let's start
Speaker 1: over and pretend we're doing a new record. So we
Speaker 1: went into the studio and I think the very first
Speaker 1: thing we did was baby Blue. Uh. And we did
Speaker 1: a few more things, and gradually in the process we
Speaker 1: started looking back at the old material and thinking what
Speaker 1: should we try and keep here. And we knew that
Speaker 1: day after day should be a keeper. But it didn't
Speaker 1: sound right. Um. So I rerecorded the drums, uh rerecord
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff throughout some of the sounds so
Speaker 1: that it sounded more like a band, that the drums
Speaker 1: were less soupy. Uh. And on any of the George
Speaker 1: Harrison tracks that we used. That was more or less
Speaker 1: the process get get it out of the specter zone
Speaker 1: a little more into the bad finger zone that Jeff
Speaker 1: Emrick stuff was. That was the opposite almost too bare,
Speaker 1: you know, it was almost a little too raw, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't any effort to to, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: dress up the details. Um, so a combination of those
Speaker 1: three things eventually went into the record, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had to somehow try and mix it like it
Speaker 1: sounded like it all happened at the same time instead
Speaker 1: of over the course of like a year and a
Speaker 1: half or something. Now, two members of that being committed suicide.
Speaker 1: The story is over a lack of royalties, lack of payment.
Speaker 1: Was that something you saw in those two band members
Speaker 1: while making this record, that maybe they were on the
Speaker 1: line or frustrated where they just upbeat when you dealt
Speaker 1: with them. No, it didn't get into any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I was supposed to produce
Speaker 1: the second record, the record after that, and came in
Speaker 1: and did uh. We were We moved into Apple Studios,
Speaker 1: which had been completed and vacated and UH and set
Speaker 1: up on the first night and did a little bit
Speaker 1: of I think we tried to lay down a track
Speaker 1: the first night, and I came in the second night
Speaker 1: and they fired me without explanation. They just said, we
Speaker 1: don't want you to work on the record anymore. See you.
Speaker 1: And so from that point on, I knew there was
Speaker 1: something going on the bay, but I had no idea
Speaker 1: what it was, and they didn't inform me, and I
Speaker 1: had to make the assumption that, you know, the the
Speaker 1: reason why I was kind of like on the outside
Speaker 1: was that I didn't go out drinking at the pub
Speaker 1: with them or something like that. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: pal around with them. I just wanted to get their
Speaker 1: damn records done, so uh, and so I think that
Speaker 1: they just felt that there was something that wasn't meshing
Speaker 1: between us or whatever, or that I was too dictatorial
Speaker 1: because of what had happened on the last record, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want this one to start drifting like the
Speaker 1: last one had. So that was it. And I didn't
Speaker 1: hear anything from anybody in the band four years, years,
Speaker 1: years and years until almost more recently, Uh, when we
Speaker 1: did you know a beat one of them Beatle tribute shows,
Speaker 1: and me and Joey Mullins were on stage together for
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and we were we were fine with
Speaker 1: each other, probably because we both rather forget that that episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: but your reputation, I don't know the reality. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm asking you. Only you were there was that you
Speaker 1: were kind of dictatorial in general as a producer. Would
Speaker 1: that be? Is that how you saw it well. I
Speaker 1: was never into the idea of someone come into the
Speaker 1: studio unprepared, just on the assumption that they're gonna make
Speaker 1: a record or get something done. As I mentioned, I
Speaker 1: this we're in the seventies now, but I came up
Speaker 1: in that kind of like mid late sixties are my
Speaker 1: first studio experiences. And you didn't waste time in the studio,
Speaker 1: you know, when uh, we were trying to get signed,
Speaker 1: when the NASA is trying to get signed, and you
Speaker 1: would get some demo time and uh uh and probably
Speaker 1: a studio that the that the label owned, and they
Speaker 1: say you get a half an hour an hour, play
Speaker 1: as many songs as you can, you know, and that
Speaker 1: was it. And you know overdubbing. We don't have the
Speaker 1: time for overdubbing, you know, just keep let's play songs
Speaker 1: and until you get you know, and of course you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get the first take. You would play until you
Speaker 1: got takes that you wanted them to listen to. And
Speaker 1: but before you knew it, you've got two or three
Speaker 1: songs and a half hour is gone. So going into
Speaker 1: the studio without being prepared as kind of an athema
Speaker 1: to me. You know, you go into your row. You
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna do. Um and uh, sometimes it
Speaker 1: will be projects in which the reputation of the band
Speaker 1: might be on the line. I never had any friction
Speaker 1: with Grand Funk Railroad, but it was pretty much understood
Speaker 1: that this was a reinvention and that I was more
Speaker 1: or less in charge of it, so uh or I
Speaker 1: was more or less uh in charge of making sure
Speaker 1: that it succeeded. You know, they already knew what they
Speaker 1: wanted to do, but everything was brand new for them.
Speaker 1: They had new management, new record producer me um, and
Speaker 1: they did a you know, pretty spectacular job of adapting
Speaker 1: to all that and to reinventing themselves in a way.
Speaker 1: Let's say with Grand Funk raill Roads, didn't you like
Speaker 1: people to be prepared and they were American band? Album?
Speaker 1: Did they come in with all those songs? Exactly? As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, you know, they before we did
Speaker 1: the album, I went out to their you know, I
Speaker 1: went out to Flint and sat with the band and
Speaker 1: listen to them and do their rehearsals. And they were
Speaker 1: tight when they came in. I mean, they were a
Speaker 1: live band. Their whole thing was you know that their
Speaker 1: biggest problem in the studio was they kept trying to
Speaker 1: be a live band in the studio, so they do
Speaker 1: these long jams. You know, it's not that might be
Speaker 1: entertaining live, but they weren't cream so they weren't so
Speaker 1: much entertaining on record. And so they managed to reinvent
Speaker 1: themselves as a songwriting unit. You know, you write songs,
Speaker 1: you don't write wrong jams, You write songs with versuscorus, bridges,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And they set themselves to that and
Speaker 1: did a good job of it. And they came in
Speaker 1: and it was all rehearsed. I mean, the story of
Speaker 1: of the single were American Band, not just the album
Speaker 1: is is truly phenomenal because they had the entire project
Speaker 1: timed from the first moment we went into the studio
Speaker 1: until the release of the record. The first thing we
Speaker 1: did the first day we recorded the track to We're
Speaker 1: an American Band. The next the first thing next day,
Speaker 1: we finished the vocals and overdubs, mixed it, and went
Speaker 1: right into mastering on the second day and mastered the single.
Speaker 1: We didn't even have a B side yet because we
Speaker 1: hadn't recorded anything else yet, and essentially mastered it, sent
Speaker 1: it out to be pressed. And in those days, you
Speaker 1: could uh charter record not based on actual sales, but
Speaker 1: based on pre orders and and and also based on
Speaker 1: ads on radio ads. You know how many people add
Speaker 1: the record? A week after we master the record is
Speaker 1: when it's scheduled to be released, So they goes, it
Speaker 1: goes immediately that plant they're pressing uh singles like mad
Speaker 1: and sending them out to all the radio stations. The
Speaker 1: next week, the record charts in the top forty. Week
Speaker 1: after we recorded it, it's charted in the top forty,
Speaker 1: and it's on the radio in a week. Okay, Grand
Speaker 1: Funk was a reviled band. You work with them. They
Speaker 1: have this monstrous single which everyone liked. So two things.
Speaker 1: Did you understand it would be such a monstrous single?
Speaker 1: And after this success, either you're or Albert's phone must
Speaker 1: have been ringing off the hook? Uh Part B yes,
Speaker 1: Part B exactly. Um. I had no idea what to
Speaker 1: expect when I was going into it except what had
Speaker 1: happened previously with Grand Funk Railroad. And they had, you know,
Speaker 1: two issues. So previously mentioned issue was that they were
Speaker 1: too jam oriented and not song oriented enough. And I
Speaker 1: think they were aware of that had to do that.
Speaker 1: But they were also you know, the issues with their
Speaker 1: management were was also an issue with their production because
Speaker 1: their manager was also their producer and he was a
Speaker 1: terrible producer, right, Terry Knight. Yeah, that records didn't sound
Speaker 1: good and he let all this flab go by. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, they were there, just not good records. Okay.
Speaker 1: The only thing about it from the outside, it looks
Speaker 1: like you were the genies that made it happen. You're
Speaker 1: telling the story like you were like just the mason
Speaker 1: putting the ship together. No, they had the whole They
Speaker 1: had a whole plan, a whole scheme for their reinvent
Speaker 1: complete scheme for their reinvention when I got involved with them.
Speaker 1: But if they had a different producer, since the song
Speaker 1: was already written, were it was there must have been demos.
Speaker 1: Was your version similar to the demo or was it
Speaker 1: your spin that put it over the top? Possibly my spin.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of complaints in the Keyboard Player
Speaker 1: because I said do this, think think think, think, think, think, think, think,
Speaker 1: think Think In the cores, he said, but I sound
Speaker 1: like as I sounds stupid, But I dink think, think, think, think,
Speaker 1: I said, just do it, all right. It's a little
Speaker 1: subliminal thing in there, you know, have you paid too
Speaker 1: much attention to It doesn't work, but it's just a
Speaker 1: little thing in there that gives a chorus a little
Speaker 1: I know that sound absolutely, and I don't know that
Speaker 1: another producer would have suggested that or forced the keyboard
Speaker 1: player to do that. Okay, so now Albert's fielding all
Speaker 1: these offers. How do you decide who to work with?
Speaker 1: And what is Since they're looking to you, what are
Speaker 1: you saying back? What are your requirements? I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about cash, Like how much time would I need? Does
Speaker 1: do the songs have to be done? Well? I think
Speaker 1: that a a signature production that came sometime after that
Speaker 1: that actually sort of characterized my production style and changed
Speaker 1: my whole approach. And that was the New York Dolls.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, they were kind of like half
Speaker 1: the problem I had. I had other issues which I
Speaker 1: incorporated into my slout, but it all came down to
Speaker 1: the mixing for the on that record in a way,
Speaker 1: you know, because uh, capturing the performances was kind of
Speaker 1: like uh wild life, like if you're a wildlife photographer,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're just trying to get that perfect moment,
Speaker 1: because it's only a moment. There's so much chaos going
Speaker 1: on all the time that you're never sure when that
Speaker 1: moment is gonna be there. There are all kinds of
Speaker 1: people hanging around the studio all the time, groupies and
Speaker 1: journalists and stuff, and the band isn't the most disciplined
Speaker 1: band in the world. In other words, it's you get
Speaker 1: a couple of takes done and then somebody or a
Speaker 1: couple of people just won't wander off. They're probably consuming
Speaker 1: something somewhere in the shadows. It's uh a bit of
Speaker 1: a carnival atmosphere for the whole thing. But then it
Speaker 1: comes down to the mix, integrating everything you've got into
Speaker 1: something that sounds like a record. And there were two
Speaker 1: issues with that. One is the band all wanted to
Speaker 1: be there while I was mixing. And I've had this
Speaker 1: experience before where the band is all there when you're
Speaker 1: mixing stage right, hands all there and you're mixing. It
Speaker 1: takes forever, you know, and sometimes it's a completely futile
Speaker 1: exercise because everybody only hears themselves when you're building a mix.
Speaker 1: The guitar player only hears the guitar. You know, I
Speaker 1: think you only here's his boys, the drummer. Only here's
Speaker 1: the drums, and they're all whispering in my air. Could
Speaker 1: you push me up a little bit please, you know,
Speaker 1: push push the vocal up just a little bit more.
Speaker 1: You know. After a couple of run throughs, you look
Speaker 1: down at the console and all of the faders are
Speaker 1: pinned at the top and you have to start all
Speaker 1: over again. So I realized after that that, you know,
Speaker 1: having the band in there, having the act at all
Speaker 1: in the room while you're building a mix is a
Speaker 1: mistake because they don't hear the whole mix. They only
Speaker 1: hear like the little bits in the mix, and they
Speaker 1: can't pull back far enough to hear the whole thing
Speaker 1: and it, you know, and that didn't make the record
Speaker 1: any better than all being there for the mixes, because
Speaker 1: half the time they were in too much of a
Speaker 1: hurry to really do it properly, Like they have a
Speaker 1: gig somewhere in Long Island to get to and say, okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta wrap session up. Let's you know, we gotta
Speaker 1: go to Long Island. And then worst of all, uh,
Speaker 1: they mastered it on what at the time was a
Speaker 1: relatively antiquated lade uh a non uh. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get this is a little bit
Speaker 1: too technical, but it used to be when you cut
Speaker 1: a record, the the what they call the pitch how
Speaker 1: far into the into the lacquer, the the needle goes
Speaker 1: was fixed, and it had to be fixed to not
Speaker 1: create a groove that was so wide that it bumped
Speaker 1: into the next group. So the loudest moment in your
Speaker 1: whole record determined exactly where everything would be, you know,
Speaker 1: and and you couldn't compress any more sound than that.
Speaker 1: After a while, they got smart and they developed what
Speaker 1: they call a variable pitch blade, which means you've got
Speaker 1: as the tape is running through, you've got what you
Speaker 1: would call look ahead. You've got ahead that's reading the
Speaker 1: sound that's about to come and measuring the volume in it.
Speaker 1: And so if there's not a lot of volume, then
Speaker 1: you don't have to dig so deep with the blade.
Speaker 1: Then you can pack more sound into a record by
Speaker 1: doing that. So essentially the record could have been could
Speaker 1: have had a much better sound if they had done
Speaker 1: it like a sterling sound, but instead they did it
Speaker 1: in on the lay that was in the next room
Speaker 1: to the mixer. That was like that some label had
Speaker 1: essentially sold to them because it was obsolete. So the
Speaker 1: very first releases of the record, the sound it wasn't
Speaker 1: what it could have been. Probably later releases sounded better.
Speaker 1: So why do you call this a signature production? Because
Speaker 1: that's when I learned never allowed the artists in the
Speaker 1: room while you're setting the mix up. You set up
Speaker 1: the mix, and then you vide them and say what
Speaker 1: do you think of this? And they say, okay, fix this,
Speaker 1: this and this. I say, okay, go away, I'll fix this,
Speaker 1: this and this. Then come back and listen to it,
Speaker 1: because it's hard enough for me to retain my objectivity
Speaker 1: listening to this dozens of times. You're not going to
Speaker 1: do a better job than I. It's like when you
Speaker 1: know this is a minor version, when Tom says I
Speaker 1: need you to hear this record, and they want to
Speaker 1: sit there while you listen to it, It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I gotta listen to it alone, you know, on my
Speaker 1: own time. Well, it's partly that, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want people, you know, yelling, chattering and it back to
Speaker 1: me about what's going on while I'm trying to focus
Speaker 1: on the sound. Yeah, you gotta get in the zone.
Speaker 1: But did you also mean that that record open more
Speaker 1: production doors? Oh? Not really, yeah, because I mean that
Speaker 1: record I have the early version I saw the band
Speaker 1: because there was a lot of hype on the record.
Speaker 1: You know, I might say, and you might disagree, that
Speaker 1: a lot of your records are known for a lot
Speaker 1: of high end, which you know, more of an am
Speaker 1: record sound that as opposed to the stereo UH sound,
Speaker 1: more of a compressed sound. Is that something that rings
Speaker 1: a bell or you say, no fucking way. I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's it's the same for all records, but
Speaker 1: I do like to make records that are full spectrum. UH.
Speaker 1: There's also the question of what are people actually listening
Speaker 1: to the music on UH? And nowadays it's like there
Speaker 1: is no target. You know, there's no actual target anymore.
Speaker 1: People be listening on the crappiest earbuds they can find,
Speaker 1: or they might be listening with you know, new five
Speaker 1: fifty dollar Apple phones, which mystifies me. But the audience
Speaker 1: doesn't care about the sound for the most part. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe some audiophiles and the audience might care about
Speaker 1: the sound. But you know, ever since beats by Dr
Speaker 1: Dre you know, uh, branded distortion as a product. You know,
Speaker 1: you completely blow out the low end and suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: people are like, wow, you know, I'm hearing something that
Speaker 1: I've never heard before, that's not supposed to be there,
Speaker 1: you know. And so there is no actual target anymore
Speaker 1: for sound. You know, it's whatever you're mixing on to
Speaker 1: make it sound as good as it can on the
Speaker 1: on the stuff that you've depended on all this time.
Speaker 1: But you know, as far as the high or low end,
Speaker 1: it probably has to do with the equipment that I
Speaker 1: prefer to mix on, but also that I like to
Speaker 1: hear those sounds, you know, I like to I like
Speaker 1: to hear that really high ting on the bells, you know,
Speaker 1: if there are bells in there, you know. Uh, I
Speaker 1: like to hear the low end as well. And the
Speaker 1: biggest problem with my records historically has been when we
Speaker 1: go to master them, they're too long, and that means
Speaker 1: that the very low end has to get rolled off,
Speaker 1: and that's why they sound more toppy than a lot
Speaker 1: of records. It has mostly to do with you know,
Speaker 1: the LP raw when we had to get them onto
Speaker 1: vinyl and the things that we had to do in
Speaker 1: order to fit them. So we usually have to add
Speaker 1: comp scian during the mastering to keep peaks from uh uh,
Speaker 1: essentially determining you know, the maximum top end and then
Speaker 1: everything I'm gonna be lower than that, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of that variable pitch thing, if you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, absolutely. Now are you a fan
Speaker 1: of digital or you more of an analog guy? And
Speaker 1: you talk about equipment, what type of equipment do you
Speaker 1: like to use? Well, I'm you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan either way. I just have to say that everything
Speaker 1: has becomes so much easier, and we have so many
Speaker 1: more possibilities in the digital realm than we ever did
Speaker 1: in the analog realm. Uh. Just a very simple process
Speaker 1: of making a backup of something, you know, which was
Speaker 1: a rare thing. You know, not many studios actually made
Speaker 1: backups of the tapes that you made, particularly full twenty
Speaker 1: four track backups. Um, It's expensive and time consuming, and
Speaker 1: so people didn't do it that often. And then you
Speaker 1: have some accident that's completely ruined your master you know,
Speaker 1: because it's analog, you know, uh, anything that was mastered
Speaker 1: on a certain kind of tape previous to a certain
Speaker 1: date suffers from this disease called sticky shed, which is
Speaker 1: if you went back to the original tapes, all of
Speaker 1: the oxide starts falling off of them, you know. Whereas digitally, whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever Neil Young finds wrong with it, at
Speaker 1: least you can make a carbon copy of whatever you've got.
Speaker 1: You know, you can make infinite carbon copies, and they
Speaker 1: don't take a fraction of the time that it takes
Speaker 1: to make an analog copy. So in terms of the convenience,
Speaker 1: you know, this laptop that I'm talking to you on now,
Speaker 1: that's my studio, and everything that I've ever needed is
Speaker 1: inside is inside it right now. And there's a MacBook Pro,
Speaker 1: yes it is. Oh okay. How did you get so
Speaker 1: into computers when I was very young? Well, I guess
Speaker 1: there's two reasons. One is I grew up in a
Speaker 1: household that was my dad was an engineer at DuPont,
Speaker 1: and so I was tech comfy. Uh. My dad knew
Speaker 1: how to do all those things, so I expected that
Speaker 1: that was a realm of knowledge that I should eventually inherit.
Speaker 1: You know. He had the big tool bench and the
Speaker 1: craftsman LAIDs, you know, and all the tools and he
Speaker 1: knew how to do schematic circuits and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: So there was a comfort level with technology. Uh. And
Speaker 1: also I had, you know, a particular interest, and it
Speaker 1: kind of started and might have started when I saw
Speaker 1: Forbidden Planet and Robbie the robot, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: want one of those. Kids are bullying me all the time,
Speaker 1: and I want one of those. Yeah, and so uh,
Speaker 1: I realized eventually, well, if you build one of those,
Speaker 1: who's got to have a brain, some kind of a brain,
Speaker 1: and computers are electronic brains. And so about at the
Speaker 1: age of nine or ten, I'm started studying uh digital
Speaker 1: electronics or you know, uh logic essentially logic gates and
Speaker 1: things like that. I don't know if you know about this,
Speaker 1: but they've got hands and oars and all the stuff.
Speaker 1: Things at the bit left, things at the one bit level.
Speaker 1: And I started studying at them when I was really young.
Speaker 1: Realized that a lot of it ran on alternate number systems.
Speaker 1: So I began to all understand, you know, base eight,
Speaker 1: you know, Base sixteen, based twelve, whatever the odd you know,
Speaker 1: different number systems might be. So when I got to
Speaker 1: the new math in high school, I was a Senate.
Speaker 1: You know, none of the other kids knew what they
Speaker 1: were talking about when they said, okay, eight nine A, B, C,
Speaker 1: D E F. Wait a minute with how does that work?
Speaker 1: I totally rocked it. So when I got to high school,
Speaker 1: I was either going to be I was either going
Speaker 1: to go to tech school and learn to be a
Speaker 1: computer programmer, or go to no school at all and
Speaker 1: be a musician. Unfortunately for me, I got into a
Speaker 1: band and became a musician, and that later in life
Speaker 1: afforded me the time to learn how to program computers. Okay,
Speaker 1: when do you know the personal computer era really starts turning?
Speaker 1: The decade leaksa these early eighties. When did you get
Speaker 1: a personal computer? I got every personal computer that was
Speaker 1: ever offered, got very little out of most of them,
Speaker 1: but I got everyone. I got an out I got
Speaker 1: an outre kit, an Alter E O eight kit, which
Speaker 1: you had to build, you know, side of the board
Speaker 1: and everything. The only way you could communicate with it
Speaker 1: was through a teletype with a tape reader, the paper
Speaker 1: tape reader on it, paper tape with a bunch of
Speaker 1: little holes. To program it, you had to boot it up,
Speaker 1: you powered it, and then you went through this hole,
Speaker 1: little sequence of switching these micro switches on and off
Speaker 1: in a very particular sequence, which was the bootstrap, and
Speaker 1: that would make it able to read the tape reader,
Speaker 1: the paper tape reader, which would then reading a whole
Speaker 1: program which would allow you to have a really blocky
Speaker 1: picture of what looks like liquid going into a Martini
Speaker 1: glass and super low risk, and that whole process to
Speaker 1: take you like fift twenty minutes to do that. Then
Speaker 1: I got, you know, I remember I got a pet computer,
Speaker 1: which was a thing that looked like you know it,
Speaker 1: It looked like kind of like almost like an Apple
Speaker 1: two on the bottom. But then I had a head
Speaker 1: on it, like a little head, and I imagined teaching
Speaker 1: it to roll around, you know, programming, so we could
Speaker 1: roll around on wheels. I never quite got that far,
Speaker 1: and things never got really productive until the Apple two plus,
Speaker 1: because then you had a real programming language. All you
Speaker 1: had did was turn it on and it came up
Speaker 1: ready to take your commands. Uh. It had color of
Speaker 1: a sort. It was a really bizarre way to put
Speaker 1: color on the screen. Um. And when I got it,
Speaker 1: I took a year off from touring and learned how
Speaker 1: to program and then the end of it, I knew
Speaker 1: how to program what they call a simpler language, which
Speaker 1: is talking to the computer. And the only language is
Speaker 1: understands two fifty six commands and that's it. Okay, the
Speaker 1: number two fifty six is that based on the chip.
Speaker 1: And then they became more commands. That's sixteen six team
Speaker 1: bit number. Each number with be like this number might
Speaker 1: you know, might be oh one or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it means put the next eight bits into the accumulator.
Speaker 1: The next one would be add these eight bits to
Speaker 1: the accumulator. The next one would be put the accumulator
Speaker 1: into the address specified by the next two bits. It's
Speaker 1: the lowest level that you can possibly get to, well
Speaker 1: practically get to. Then you became yeah, you became a
Speaker 1: big Amiga guy with a toaster, right. Ah. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was never into the Amigo much until I got into
Speaker 1: the video toaster. And that was really not a relationship
Speaker 1: with the machine. It was a relationship with the company
Speaker 1: that made the video toaster. And uh, there's a uh.
Speaker 1: I was always into the video graphics, always wanted to
Speaker 1: do a video that was all computer graphics, but it
Speaker 1: was not practical financially for me. At the time. And
Speaker 1: then I went to the biggest computer graphics show in
Speaker 1: the world. It's called cigarette Special Interest Group for Graphics
Speaker 1: of the International Engineering whatever it is Society, and I
Speaker 1: saw the video toaster for the first time, running inside
Speaker 1: and Amiga, and I thought, wow, I could afford that.
Speaker 1: So I bought three, thinking, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: enough for me to do my computer video. And I
Speaker 1: realized that, you know, once I got a start event,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take me a year to do with three computers.
Speaker 1: So I sent what I had to new Tech, the
Speaker 1: company that made the video toaster, and they said, wow,
Speaker 1: this is good. If you can make it finish, the
Speaker 1: whole thing would be a great demo for the video toaster.
Speaker 1: So they sent me thirty video toasters and I rented
Speaker 1: it off the space and saw Celito and send them
Speaker 1: all up and set them to work, and sneaker netted
Speaker 1: them because there was no networking at the time for them.
Speaker 1: Sneaker net in other words, put a big fat hard
Speaker 1: drive connected up to the computer, fill it up, take
Speaker 1: it off, and put another computer hard drive on there.
Speaker 1: Take the hard drive that you filled up, and write
Speaker 1: all those frames out to a video disc recorder. Then
Speaker 1: wiped the drive and start all over again. And then
Speaker 1: it only took me a month to do Well, a
Speaker 1: month is better than a year. But you said you
Speaker 1: you said you had an actual business. What did that
Speaker 1: business look like with deliverables, etcetera. Well, it never turned
Speaker 1: into a real business. Who was a partnership with new Tech.
Speaker 1: Once I've finished, Once I've finished, changed myself, which was
Speaker 1: the song that I did the video for. They flew
Speaker 1: me out to which I saw Kansas, which is where
Speaker 1: they were centered at the time, no longer and uh
Speaker 1: showed me around the place everything, and they and the
Speaker 1: next morning I was gonna fly home, they took me
Speaker 1: out to a dinner for breakfast and said, would you
Speaker 1: like to start a studio and we'll bankroll the studio,
Speaker 1: and what you'll do with the studio is help us
Speaker 1: develop the software, you know, help us push it along
Speaker 1: and create demos for the software, and hopefully ultimately become
Speaker 1: a business. So we did a lot of the former,
Speaker 1: button it was never able to do the latter because
Speaker 1: we were in Sausalito. We were not in l A
Speaker 1: or New York, you know, and most people were doing
Speaker 1: their business in those hubs. Okay, So you talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, leaving Saucelito for Hawaii, and about all the
Speaker 1: investment bankers as opposed to the engineers. Did you also
Speaker 1: burn out on the scene. I mean, for those of
Speaker 1: us who lived through it, the Beatles and what came
Speaker 1: after was a huge left turner right, depending on which
Speaker 1: direction you want to view it from. What had come
Speaker 1: before the computer revolution which started for people like you
Speaker 1: and around, you know, just before nine eighty and then
Speaker 1: the average person caught on in or six with a
Speaker 1: O L the Internet, And then it ended like five
Speaker 1: or seven years ago. Do you are you still as
Speaker 1: addicted or at one point you say, I'm not as
Speaker 1: excited about it anymore. Well, it certainly has morphed into
Speaker 1: a different thing. Uh. For one thing, in those days,
Speaker 1: connectivity was almost always point to point. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like you had a modem and someone else had a
Speaker 1: modem and somehow you could manage to get them connected
Speaker 1: and to send some sort of sort of data. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it was way before the world of
Speaker 1: like user interface philosophy, and uh, there certainly was no
Speaker 1: social media as we know it now. It was a
Speaker 1: O L kind of you know, pretty tame by comparison. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Internet was not really a thing yet, um, and
Speaker 1: I kind of went through the whole evolution of all
Speaker 1: those things. And I recall going to some of the
Speaker 1: very first conferences about monetizing the Internet, and it's where
Speaker 1: I came up with the idea for Patronet. I was
Speaker 1: at a conference and they're thinking about all the possible
Speaker 1: ways that we could do commerce, uh using internet technology,
Speaker 1: and I had proposed the idea of eliminating the middleman
Speaker 1: that the record label represented. In other words, traditionally, you
Speaker 1: would get money from the label to make your records,
Speaker 1: but the label expects to get the money from the
Speaker 1: people who buy your records. And the people who buy
Speaker 1: your records don't feel they have a relationship with the label.
Speaker 1: They feel they have a relationship with you. So the
Speaker 1: label is the middleman, and the Internet would allow you
Speaker 1: to eliminate the middleman, go directly to your fans and
Speaker 1: have them underwrite the production of your records by getting
Speaker 1: involved in a subscription service. It all seems so obvious now,
Speaker 1: but no one had thought of that in the old
Speaker 1: days of the nineties. And so uh, that was when
Speaker 1: I said about to you know, create this thing to
Speaker 1: be able to uh build something that was a combination
Speaker 1: service delivery and social media sort of platform all in one,
Speaker 1: and ran it for a while and again went up
Speaker 1: and down. Turned out to be technologically just almost too
Speaker 1: much to deal with because of lack of standards. Apple
Speaker 1: and Microsoft we're still battling it out, you know, who's
Speaker 1: gonna dominate here, Like one would wipe out the other,
Speaker 1: you know, And so there was always you had to
Speaker 1: do things twice. Everything had to be done at least twice,
Speaker 1: one for Microsoft and one for Apple. But worse than that,
Speaker 1: you only had to do it once for Apple, but
Speaker 1: you'd probably have to do it a dozen times for Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Because Microsoft didn't make the machines. People built their own machines,
Speaker 1: and people didn't half the time even on how to
Speaker 1: work their damn machines. You wind up doing Microsoft's customer service.
Speaker 1: It was just it was a nightmare. And then you
Speaker 1: had to say social media component on top of it,
Speaker 1: and you know, knowing what we know now about people
Speaker 1: and what they'll say when you can't poke them in
Speaker 1: the face after saying it, you know, it's just eventually
Speaker 1: I sort of like gave it up. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it couldn't work, but you'd have to you don't
Speaker 1: have to know what you're dealing with upfront and to have,
Speaker 1: you know, real solutions for them. They can't turn into
Speaker 1: the cess pool that Facebook has become. Okay, you talk
Speaker 1: about that, Tess. Well, you've actually the last few years
Speaker 1: have evidence, uh some political views. What is your political
Speaker 1: view in the country at this point in time and
Speaker 1: what responsibility or action do you want to take or
Speaker 1: not take. Well, I never make an assumptions that I'm
Speaker 1: a celebrity. I know that I have my fan base,
Speaker 1: and I've been dealing with these issues amongst my fan base.
Speaker 1: My feeling is that anyone who does anyone who gets
Speaker 1: upset listening to Tinfoil Hat not really fan anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't understand the greater move of what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: They just came to hear, Hello, it's me. So if
Speaker 1: I lose those people, I always lose them. I always
Speaker 1: lose them if they don't show up for thirty years
Speaker 1: and I realize I'm not gonna do Hello it's me,
Speaker 1: And then they said, I'll never buy to take it
Speaker 1: to this guy again. It's you know, it's just part
Speaker 1: of you know, it's part of life. I make up
Speaker 1: for it, as I say, by like gaining younger audience,
Speaker 1: which you have to do anyway. You know, your old
Speaker 1: audience is checking out in so many ways, so you
Speaker 1: always have to refresh your audience. How how do you
Speaker 1: do that? You do it by showing interest, you know,
Speaker 1: and the things that the younger audience is interested in,
Speaker 1: and being involved with artists at the younger audience is
Speaker 1: interested in. That's why my last record and the record
Speaker 1: that I'm working now are aggressive collaborations. It's me introducing
Speaker 1: myself to new audience with the full realization that my
Speaker 1: own audience, my own audience is bound to thin out
Speaker 1: just by natural attrition. So um yeah, just you know,
Speaker 1: I've been self consciously sort of taking every opportunity I
Speaker 1: can to work with younger artists and inherit in some
Speaker 1: small way. They're audience. And you never know nowadays how
Speaker 1: how these things spread. You know that how a meme
Speaker 1: gets spread in you know, in any particular way. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the science of a promotion nowadays. You know,
Speaker 1: That's why there are Facebook promotion departments trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how your meme gets spread, What the things that
Speaker 1: you have to do, you know, to maximize that. Okay.
Speaker 1: In terms of younger audience, you can work with younger acts.
Speaker 1: Is there a specific type of sound that you would
Speaker 1: employ to reach a younger audience? M No, not really no, okay, No,
Speaker 1: you just want to work with someone who has an audience,
Speaker 1: whatever sound might be, you know, or someone who could
Speaker 1: potentially have an audience. You know, I'm not necessarily picky
Speaker 1: about the size of the of the audience. They could
Speaker 1: be just starting out. Um, that's fine with me. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you had a very active production career then it
Speaker 1: slowed down. What can you tell us about that? And
Speaker 1: do you have any offers at this date or those
Speaker 1: dried up? Well? The the production thing, you know is,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it's I could say that's like cyclical,
Speaker 1: whether the kind of producer that I am would ever
Speaker 1: come back, because it's often reflective of the greater music
Speaker 1: scene and what's happening out there. When we started being
Speaker 1: able to certainly when we started being able to pass
Speaker 1: files around file sharing, you could entertain the possibility of
Speaker 1: working with people that you wouldn't be able to work
Speaker 1: with for it simply because of the physical distance. And
Speaker 1: whatever restrictions that might impose, and so that probably gives
Speaker 1: people ideas in a well in a way, music has
Speaker 1: changed a lot, especially in terms of the artists who
Speaker 1: are uh noteworthy for it. And it isn't necessarily because
Speaker 1: they are selling records. Records as some are are becoming
Speaker 1: a somewhat obsolete form, uh, because music isn't just for musicians.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who want to be
Speaker 1: a personality. My brand is me, you know. It isn't
Speaker 1: any particular thing that I do. I'm the brand, and
Speaker 1: the brand needs a theme song, So I'm gonna record
Speaker 1: my own theme song. But the music doesn't mean a
Speaker 1: whole lot more to me than designing a pair of
Speaker 1: shoes perhaps, or showing up dressed really crazy at a
Speaker 1: red carpet event or something like that. The I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make my money off a merchandise, I'm gonna make my
Speaker 1: money off of a commercial. I'm gonna make my money
Speaker 1: possibly off of a licensing deal for this song. But
Speaker 1: I'm likely not going to make my money trying to
Speaker 1: sell records because that time has kind of passed. Well,
Speaker 1: there are certainly collectors who will buy the vinyl thing,
Speaker 1: you know, but most of the royalties, such as they
Speaker 1: are that are being tracked, are being tracked electronically, you know, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 1: all of the big what are now Apple, all of
Speaker 1: the big music delivery services. That's where the royalties are
Speaker 1: coming from. But they're not the kind of royalties that
Speaker 1: you would get if you were, you know, selling records
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way, because the music is so easy
Speaker 1: to share. It's an advertisement for yourself. It's an advertisement
Speaker 1: for your concert tickets where you will where you have
Speaker 1: always made way more money than you did with a
Speaker 1: recorded artifact. Okay, we grew up in an era where
Speaker 1: music drove the culture was everything, great burst of creativity
Speaker 1: and explosive market share, just like they're subsequently was with
Speaker 1: computers in the internet directly. What do you think of
Speaker 1: today's music? Not much, not a lot. You know, it's
Speaker 1: I don't It's like I don't listen to the radio,
Speaker 1: and I don't listen to you know, popular streams and
Speaker 1: things like that. I'd like to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more targeted and what I listened to. But in terms
Speaker 1: of gauging what is successful in the music business, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's probably no better gauge than who they allowed to
Speaker 1: be musical guests on Saturday Night Live. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, seventy of the time I have to mute it.
Speaker 1: I can't listen to it. It's just it's just exactly
Speaker 1: what I say, is somebody's theme song, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's just as much as soundtrack because they're shaking their
Speaker 1: giant ass and the camera as it is listenable music.
Speaker 1: And so I don't have a lot of hopes at
Speaker 1: this point for the kind of movement that let's say,
Speaker 1: even something like grunge represented, you know, where it was
Speaker 1: more or less a wholesale um rebuke of a way
Speaker 1: of making records, in a way of writing songs and
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Uh, there was I guess
Speaker 1: the E D M movement that came in the in
Speaker 1: the twenties and and in to the early tens, but uh,
Speaker 1: that was something that was kind of always there. That
Speaker 1: kind of music is always lurking around and dance clubs
Speaker 1: and things like that. And it became big when festivals
Speaker 1: became the thing to do, the place to play. Rather
Speaker 1: than doing your own long, laborious tours, you play summer
Speaker 1: festivals for hundreds of thousands of people. So and in
Speaker 1: the end, it's still just marketing, probably for something else
Speaker 1: besides the music. You get paid an obscene amount of
Speaker 1: money to play, you know, a big festival, and uh
Speaker 1: so you don't care so much about making music on
Speaker 1: individual sales of the song. Okay, In the time you
Speaker 1: have left, which could be one minute or twenty five
Speaker 1: years or so, you always say you're learning what would
Speaker 1: you like to accomplish in this time you have left?
Speaker 1: Knowing that you always keep the target a little further
Speaker 1: than achievements. You much have on your mind, things you
Speaker 1: would like to do. Well, I've filled my plate up
Speaker 1: pretty well at this particular moment. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: really have the time to speculate on what I might
Speaker 1: do after. I know what I'm doing in one I'm
Speaker 1: getting this, um, I'm getting this virtual show done. I
Speaker 1: am still working on recording projects. I've got a recording
Speaker 1: project of my own new collaborations was hopefully will be
Speaker 1: finished and released sometime this year. We're releasing singles in
Speaker 1: the meantime. Uh, I've got I'm actually involved in some
Speaker 1: production as well. I'm involved in a fairly major production
Speaker 1: as we speak, which is driving me a little crazy.
Speaker 1: But uh, because of all the other things that I
Speaker 1: have to do, And I don't know exactly what the
Speaker 1: timeline but of that will be, but that's a large
Speaker 1: thing on my plate as well. So I'm my free
Speaker 1: time next year, if I have any and I'm allowed to,
Speaker 1: I'm going to travel to some of those places I
Speaker 1: like to go to, and then by the fall, by
Speaker 1: the end of the year, I'll be out on tour
Speaker 1: again and then home again by next Christmas. Okay, a
Speaker 1: couple of quick questions. Do you play music like we're
Speaker 1: talking now, but if we weren't, would you be playing
Speaker 1: music in the background or generally speaking not? And now
Speaker 1: I'd be working on music in the background. And how
Speaker 1: much in a day are you working on music every day?
Speaker 1: I do work on music every day, but you'd be
Speaker 1: surprised how much of it just goes on up here
Speaker 1: He's pointing to his head. Since we don't have video.
Speaker 1: I preview, pre visualize almost everything that I do. I
Speaker 1: don't just like start doing it. I imagine it in
Speaker 1: as much detail as I can muster before I start
Speaker 1: to do it. Uh So, like let's say I'm working
Speaker 1: on a song, I will work on it very intensely
Speaker 1: for an hour, and then, depending on how I feel,
Speaker 1: I may take a break and come back to it,
Speaker 1: or I may move on to something else, Like my
Speaker 1: brain is too full of that for the moment, and
Speaker 1: I have to clear it out. Uh. It doesn't take
Speaker 1: a lot of time actually in front of the computer
Speaker 1: for me to get a lot done. I have all
Speaker 1: of the tools that I need immediately accessible to me. UM,
Speaker 1: and I tend to make the decisions fairly quickly. UM.
Speaker 1: I tend to you know, if something works for me,
Speaker 1: I I kind of know it, and if it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: I will change it right away. So I don't have
Speaker 1: to spend hours and hours and hours pouring my ears
Speaker 1: with sound. I think about what I'm gonna do. The
Speaker 1: music is in my head, and so when I get
Speaker 1: actually in front of the computer, I'm as productive as
Speaker 1: I can possibly be. And what musical artists are you
Speaker 1: a fan of? I've been fans over the years of
Speaker 1: a lot of musical artists. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: someone you know more recent Vinta. No, I don't need
Speaker 1: I don't need something to while my audience to show
Speaker 1: that you're young and hip. But like, what do you
Speaker 1: what would be your go to records, go to records
Speaker 1: who well, you know, then it sounds like I'm being
Speaker 1: too hip, you know, because I might go back and
Speaker 1: listen to some revel again. You know. Okay, well that's reasonable.
Speaker 1: You know. It's that he, you know, Maurice Orrell was
Speaker 1: such a big influence on the way I hear things harmonically,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm still marvel at, you know, the
Speaker 1: sensibility and the skill behind it. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: a reminder of what real musicianship is for me. We
Speaker 1: get so distracted by the personality aspects of what we
Speaker 1: do because most often, if people know your song, you're
Speaker 1: somehow going to get in front of their face, you know.
Speaker 1: And in the old days, you know, people might never
Speaker 1: know who the genius behind that magnificent performance of of
Speaker 1: La Valse was, you know. And that's uh something that
Speaker 1: I you know, it's not that I long not to
Speaker 1: be in the public eye. I can handle it. I'm
Speaker 1: used to it. But just the idea of thinking of
Speaker 1: yourself as a musician, not as a personality, and trying
Speaker 1: to just get into that head, not think about how
Speaker 1: the audience is going to respond to it, but think
Speaker 1: solely about what you want to create, the moment that,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, the feeling that you want to create. You
Speaker 1: dig into yourself, find something that's real in yourself and
Speaker 1: try and objectivise that and not worry about what the
Speaker 1: reaction is going to be. And are you doing music
Speaker 1: all day or are you also a reader streaming TV?
Speaker 1: I do all kinds of things all day. The reason
Speaker 1: why I don't take interviews early is because I've I
Speaker 1: go through a morning exercise, morning brain exercises. I will
Speaker 1: do as many crossword puzzles as I can find, jigsaw puzzles, sadocus,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff just to work my brain out
Speaker 1: for up to two hours before I do anything serious
Speaker 1: during the day. Every day, every day. What do you
Speaker 1: what's the best crossword puzzle for you? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: the most challenging, the best. I guess it would be
Speaker 1: like Saturday New York Times. And I actually actually have
Speaker 1: fans and friends who are cruciverbalists, so I am somewhat
Speaker 1: into that world. Okay. And then the rest of the day,
Speaker 1: once you're you know, up and running or do you
Speaker 1: watch streaming TV? Do you read books? If it's time
Speaker 1: to do something like this, I'll do this, I'll be
Speaker 1: reading books, I'll be learning something. I have to do graphics,
Speaker 1: I have to do video. I did six hour long
Speaker 1: episodes of a video kind of lifestyle show, and each
Speaker 1: episode of that took me probably at least four days
Speaker 1: to put together. So I'd be doing video. I you know,
Speaker 1: I am learning things. I spent in the first six
Speaker 1: months almost every day doing computer code, so it could
Speaker 1: be anything. You know, It's not not any particular thing.
Speaker 1: And if it's like a Saturday, we have big family
Speaker 1: meals and I'm ex spent half the day just wow.
Speaker 1: You good cook? Yes, I am. And when your go
Speaker 1: to dish or cuisine would be well, I have several
Speaker 1: dishes that I can do. I can cook you a
Speaker 1: mean duck with nice crispy skin. Crab risotto is a
Speaker 1: good one. Uh yeah, I can cook. On that note, Todd,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. We've delved into a lot of topics.
Speaker 1: You're really a thinker and you're analytical. Uh. Your analysis
Speaker 1: of certain things is the most interesting. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: this time my pleasure, Bob, and I'm sure we'll be
Speaker 1: doing this again sometime. Okay, I look forward to it.
Speaker 1: If you're up to it, you know, It's funny because
Speaker 1: I feel some of this stuff you've been asked so
Speaker 1: many times. I'm wary of asking it because you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, oh, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: play your hit. They don't want to do it. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's always new things to be uncovered. If
Speaker 1: you're not tired of talking about these subjects, well, you
Speaker 1: know there is a whole lot new, but you know
Speaker 1: there is what's happening now, and certainly the background helps
Speaker 1: to inform it. So I don't mind doing it. Okay,
Speaker 1: till next time. This is Bob left six