Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That's Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary producer and rock and tour
Speaker 1: Jack Douglas. Whenever I hear that legendary, I feel like
Speaker 1: Bigfoot or the lock Ness Monster. Well, the point is,
Speaker 1: you know, no one's going to be legendary anymore because
Speaker 1: no one reaches as many people. I guess that's true.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been in New York for a while,
Speaker 1: back in New York working and and um, and we've
Speaker 1: had some very interesting dinners like the dinner you attended ago.
Speaker 1: You know, that mix of mafio so actors and musicians.
Speaker 1: You were really missed. I was. I was tempted to
Speaker 1: call you up and say, Bob, well, next time definitely
Speaker 1: ring me. It sounds good. Well, you know, the last
Speaker 1: time we went, Jeff Emrick was there, who's now past
Speaker 1: and that is very sad. Yes, And of course what's
Speaker 1: his role av on the TV show? H He told
Speaker 1: me some really crazy story And of course Richard Lewis
Speaker 1: the only funny thing about Richard Lewis is I always
Speaker 1: thought it was an act. But that's who he really is.
Speaker 1: He really is that exactly. It's perfect and you guys
Speaker 1: you have had uh, you know, a kerfuffle exactly at Terry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want Yeah, it was great and he was like,
Speaker 1: so I said, I said, you know, Bob is going
Speaker 1: to be there, and he got really paranoid, and you know,
Speaker 1: he went into his complete character. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't he mad at me? I What am I gonna
Speaker 1: say to him? Me? It was great? Well at end
Speaker 1: we that night at Ago we had a long discussion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you're just in from Vegas. You were involved in the
Speaker 1: Erroo Smith residency and in addition, your son is playing
Speaker 1: with Erro Smith. Okay, what do you tell us more
Speaker 1: about that? Um? I mean, what's I don't know what
Speaker 1: to say about. Well, this is a live show. People
Speaker 1: tend to think of you as a record producers, So
Speaker 1: what was your role? Don't know. All I did was
Speaker 1: go up to Boston and do the last two days
Speaker 1: of rehearsal with the band so and talk the m
Speaker 1: d uh into not us right into not using click
Speaker 1: tracks on the songs that there's no click that you
Speaker 1: know can identify the groove that they sustained on some
Speaker 1: of those old songs. It's like you know, same old
Speaker 1: song and Dancer Mama Can or back in the Saddle
Speaker 1: that they The whole idea of those songs is that
Speaker 1: they're gonna move. They're gonna move up in the chorus
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna go back down and sinking for
Speaker 1: the verse. You can't put a click on them. And
Speaker 1: when he tried to, it was very uncomfortable and the
Speaker 1: band sounded kind of, you know, like look like they
Speaker 1: were laboring through the songs. So I got that done. Um,
Speaker 1: because Stephen will, I mean, he'll great people, but he
Speaker 1: won't get anything done because of that. So he might
Speaker 1: be attacking the empty but he won't be You want
Speaker 1: to get it done. You're the negotiator. I'm a politician. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's nature of being a record producer. So and my
Speaker 1: son my son, but quite by accident, when we were
Speaker 1: up at Johnny Depp studio doing Joe's solo album, my
Speaker 1: son stopped in to see me and and Joseph, doesn't
Speaker 1: your son play like a lot of percussion and stuff.
Speaker 1: But he's actually he's actually a jazz drummer. He's been
Speaker 1: nominated twice for Grammys with the Wayne Wallace Quintet Jazz
Speaker 1: quintet and and he also is a Latin percussionist and
Speaker 1: a world music guy. So um I said, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: So he played on Joe's album. And then I said
Speaker 1: to Joe, you know he he is one of the
Speaker 1: only young white men who actually play at Santa Ria.
Speaker 1: Um when they when they bring someone into Santoia, they had, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you tell my audience what that is. Santoria
Speaker 1: is an Afro Cuban form of Catholicism with which combines
Speaker 1: Catholicism and voodoo and um and it is in Haiti.
Speaker 1: And so um my son studied with some of those
Speaker 1: drummers they play. They play these amazing drums, and he
Speaker 1: learned to play him and he got into the whole scene,
Speaker 1: though he's not a member of Santoria, got into the
Speaker 1: whole scene up in the Bay Area, and then he
Speaker 1: was invited to play. And in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to learn hundreds of chance, these chants that
Speaker 1: go with so you chant as you're playing drums. And
Speaker 1: I told Joe, I said, you know, you know, it's
Speaker 1: all these really odd sounding chance and Joe was like,
Speaker 1: he's got to do one on the record. And so
Speaker 1: Joe Perry's last solo record starts with my son chanting
Speaker 1: at the beginning of it, and then Joe called me up.
Speaker 1: He said, listen, we want to expand the band for Vegas.
Speaker 1: Maybe a horn, maybe some strings. Of course, we have
Speaker 1: a keyboard player, having another background singer, and we'd like percussionist.
Speaker 1: Do you think uh Colin would do it? And and
Speaker 1: I couldn't reach Colin. He was in Ethiopia. He was
Speaker 1: gigging in Ethiopia. But when he got back he said,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a good change. Okay. Traditionally the drummer
Speaker 1: in the band is the business person. Would you put
Speaker 1: your son in that category? Yes, he is the go
Speaker 1: to guy. He he holds it all together in these
Speaker 1: jazz groups and world music groups. But Um, but he
Speaker 1: was very uncomfortable with the situation. And Arrowsmith and that
Speaker 1: he felt guilty because all he had to do was play.
Speaker 1: I don't have to do anything else to show up
Speaker 1: and play, which is cool. So and the rehearsals, um
Speaker 1: rehearsals were really good. Up and balls to and um
Speaker 1: and now the band is They moved to Vegas and
Speaker 1: they rehearsed in a facility outside of the theater. H
Speaker 1: and it went pretty Actually, they rehearsed more for this
Speaker 1: show than they ever did for any live gig they
Speaker 1: ever did, because when they sometimes they don't even rehearse.
Speaker 1: I mean, after almost fifty years, what do you need
Speaker 1: to rehearse? So um, there was more rehearsal for this
Speaker 1: than ever and um, and so the first show was
Speaker 1: slightly fucked up because there was just I think they
Speaker 1: were overrehearsed, and Stephen was more thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: what could go wrong with all this production and the
Speaker 1: and the you should see it really definitely. I saw
Speaker 1: some of the clips online. The clip of season of
Speaker 1: Wither with Joe playing the guitar and the two in
Speaker 1: the cheers definitely made my body vibrate. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: it's it is really good. The production is so amazing.
Speaker 1: And there's a film in the beginning of it, which
Speaker 1: is the history of Aerosmith, which goes on a little
Speaker 1: bit too long, so I don't think you'll ever see
Speaker 1: that whole film again, which runs a little over forty minutes.
Speaker 1: I think people were complaining too much film, not enough music,
Speaker 1: but it's very good. The productionist out of this world.
Speaker 1: That's th h X sound so that's like seventeen points
Speaker 1: of sound and things are just swirling around you and
Speaker 1: the lights are in credits Vegas. Baby, Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: a couple of Aerosmith questions. You know. Legendarily, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Mick and Keith of the Stones are the glimmer twins
Speaker 1: and Joe and Stephen are the toxic twins. Now, it's
Speaker 1: certainly been proven, especially in light of Keith Richard's book,
Speaker 1: that they don't completely get along. Now since you're in
Speaker 1: the belly of the beast, do Joe and Stephen get along?
Speaker 1: Not really? You know, I've often thought about what keeps
Speaker 1: a band together? Um for fifty years, because how many
Speaker 1: of your left that are still the actual original players.
Speaker 1: That's the only one I can think. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: know what keeps them together? They're all having the back
Speaker 1: of their heads that one day they're going to get Stephen,
Speaker 1: but they never do. They're all like, one day, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna get them. Well I didn't get them today,
Speaker 1: I'll get them tomorrow. And this has gone. So I
Speaker 1: mean they're a family, u uh, you know, slightly dysfunctional
Speaker 1: family and um, and they're all still there's still some
Speaker 1: humility and and gratefulness that you know, these are working
Speaker 1: class class guys. Um. Not the greatest musicians, certainly, Uh,
Speaker 1: Brad is a really good musician. The rest of them
Speaker 1: are okay musicians. But it's that whole story where you
Speaker 1: take okay people with a lot of character and you
Speaker 1: put them together and they make a special noise together
Speaker 1: that they don't make if you take one of them
Speaker 1: out of it. It's just, um, you know, they're amateurs
Speaker 1: and they just make a really cool noise together. Stephen
Speaker 1: is exceptional. He's he's brilliant. Well, the funny thing about
Speaker 1: Stephen is he can be that guy completely off Mike spontaneously.
Speaker 1: He can like spout lyrics you know that he's making up.
Speaker 1: You can't believe that he can continue to do it
Speaker 1: just when you run into him. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: He's brilliant. He's one of the few rock stars who
Speaker 1: live up to the building. I mean, I've met many
Speaker 1: legendary people, and this always comes up because people tend
Speaker 1: to be disappointed, said, but not Steven Tyler. Oh no,
Speaker 1: and he's and he's uh and open and two strangers first,
Speaker 1: I think firstly, I'm not sure which came first, whether
Speaker 1: that somebody told them, keep your fan base. Always been
Speaker 1: good to your fans and they will stick with you,
Speaker 1: or whether it was just his natural thing where he
Speaker 1: just loves people. I mean, he loves being with people.
Speaker 1: The only people he doesn't really love being with are
Speaker 1: the ones that, oh yeah, that's hilarious. So you know,
Speaker 1: look at the it's it's a great thing and you
Speaker 1: can't expect guys to be together. Okay, So the first
Speaker 1: Aerosmith album you did was the second Get Your win Rings. Okay,
Speaker 1: the first album, which I certainly bought after hearing dream On,
Speaker 1: had dream On and Walking the Dog, but it was uneven.
Speaker 1: I will say, how did you get the gig to
Speaker 1: do Get Your Wings? Well, um, two, it came at
Speaker 1: me two ways. The first way was through liber Crebs.
Speaker 1: There were managers, right, because that was Aerosmith was the
Speaker 1: baby band. The their hot band at the time was
Speaker 1: the New York Dolls. And I had engineered that first
Speaker 1: album really working with Todd Rundgren. Well, yeah, and Todd
Speaker 1: really didn't care for the band very much. And so
Speaker 1: um Todd was he didn't show up all that. That's
Speaker 1: what the legend is. Yeah, he didn't show up all
Speaker 1: the time, So I mean there's a you know, there
Speaker 1: was a moment when he said something to David about, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna sound great when you put some harmony on it.
Speaker 1: It was a live vocal. David said, harmony, you accused
Speaker 1: of me having melody, so he wasn't. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was a great match, but any it worked,
Speaker 1: but we were left alone quite often, and um, and
Speaker 1: we got the record and Todd came in and we
Speaker 1: mixed it in three days maybe but the faders up basically,
Speaker 1: but um, and of course I got an engineering crowd
Speaker 1: on it. But Crup said to me, look, we knew,
Speaker 1: you know, you were kind of holding some of that
Speaker 1: together because they were tended to be pretty nuts, especially
Speaker 1: Johnny Thunders. So uh so their prize for me was Aerosmith.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Colombia had asked Ezerin to produce
Speaker 1: the next album, and Ezin listened to the first album
Speaker 1: and he wasn't really interested in the band and so um,
Speaker 1: but he and I had a partnership at the time
Speaker 1: at Nimbus. We were doing a lot of stuff together
Speaker 1: and he said, why don't you just ask Jack Douglas,
Speaker 1: and in doing that he made the call to me,
Speaker 1: not not Krebs. He made the call, but they were
Speaker 1: already into it. But he made the call to me
Speaker 1: and got himself an executive producer and a chunk of
Speaker 1: dough out of it, which he still gets, which is
Speaker 1: God bless him right now. That album was a quantumly
Speaker 1: forward from the first album, and that is my favorite album.
Speaker 1: And I still talked to Crabs, who always brings up
Speaker 1: because he knows my favorite song off that album is
Speaker 1: Lord of the Thighs, and he says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you couldn't have that today in the me
Speaker 1: Too era. It's really kind of funny. I suppose I
Speaker 1: suppose you could. I mean, I don't hear rap records
Speaker 1: changing their lyrics all that much. You'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: of That's an excellent point, But to what degree were
Speaker 1: you the shaper of the material or other things? I'll
Speaker 1: get your wigs. You know, that's the one album where
Speaker 1: they came in with a good amount of material and
Speaker 1: we weren't in the pre production period for two or
Speaker 1: three months, so they had some material for it because
Speaker 1: they hadn't started that hardcore touring where they couldn't write
Speaker 1: any right so um I came in with material and
Speaker 1: with and pretty much with lyrics and UM and you
Speaker 1: know you probably noticused that that cat. This cat has
Speaker 1: been led out of the bag a long time ago.
Speaker 1: That I use different guitar players for the solos. For
Speaker 1: the big solos, it was you know, Steve Hunter and
Speaker 1: Dick Wagner, one guy who were Evan's guys when Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and with Alice as well of course, so so I,
Speaker 1: you know, having engineered Alice records and UM, I had
Speaker 1: a good relationship with both those guys. So I made
Speaker 1: a deal with them. I said, look, these guys are
Speaker 1: very sensitive about being players. You can't ever have your
Speaker 1: name on the record. You can't ever Please don't talk
Speaker 1: about it. You'll be paid well. And after you play
Speaker 1: the solos, you have to teach them line by line
Speaker 1: how to play them themselves, so when they go on
Speaker 1: there old So basically the band is getting great players
Speaker 1: for a number of songs, not all of them, and
Speaker 1: they're also getting free guitar lessons. So, uh, to what
Speaker 1: degree did use did those guys play on the subsequent records?
Speaker 1: I never had to use them again. When they put
Speaker 1: the guys on the right course, yes. And when they
Speaker 1: came off the road touring, um that record they were
Speaker 1: they had been playing those solos that you know, they
Speaker 1: learned how to finger and I mean Brad was already
Speaker 1: pretty good, but believe me, they were amateur and um
Speaker 1: and and they wanted to make that step up. And
Speaker 1: I know that Joe was you know, Joe was what
Speaker 1: I'm not going to play on my own records, said
Speaker 1: not everything, but you know, train kept a Roland was
Speaker 1: like their thing. You know, It's like, but um, I
Speaker 1: think the only person I let play that played poorly
Speaker 1: on a record was Patti Smith on Radio Ethiopia. Because
Speaker 1: I knew that it being just whatever was going to
Speaker 1: be played was gonna work. It's like I once told Yoko,
Speaker 1: I don't care if you get in the piano and
Speaker 1: play it or you sit at the school, It'll all work,
Speaker 1: will make it work. But this what Stephen had in
Speaker 1: mind for this record was that big leap. And so
Speaker 1: when I said to Stephen, we're going to use these
Speaker 1: two players, he was like, absolutely, it's great. Okay, I know,
Speaker 1: but from my audience, tell us, you know, let's go
Speaker 1: to the back story. Where are you from? Originally from
Speaker 1: the Bronx, New York. And your parents did Your father
Speaker 1: did what for a living? He worked in a freight yard.
Speaker 1: He um, he was a brakeman, and which meant that everything,
Speaker 1: not only everything in our apartment had fallen off a
Speaker 1: freight car, but everything in the neighborhood. Like if I
Speaker 1: went down the street, they had the same radio as
Speaker 1: we did, because my father would have a carton of
Speaker 1: them somewhere. And this was, you know, the way it
Speaker 1: worked in New York. My father once told me, excuse me,
Speaker 1: he was reading a new Space bern. He looked up
Speaker 1: at me and he said, he said, John, do you
Speaker 1: know how much money passes through the city every day?
Speaker 1: If money is important to you? And I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know. He said, some trillion dollars in retail, in
Speaker 1: Wall Street and everything else. He said, I want you
Speaker 1: to imagine it as a great river running through New
Speaker 1: York City. All you have to do is stick your
Speaker 1: hand in it, let enough build up, pull it in,
Speaker 1: and you're on your way. That was his philosophy. And
Speaker 1: now were you the only child? I was the only child? Yes,
Speaker 1: And I lived in a and I lived in a
Speaker 1: a tenement building that was in the in the East
Speaker 1: Bronx that was filled with nothing but family who looked
Speaker 1: or acted or was it there were nothing like me whatsoever?
Speaker 1: That was the odd ball. And in school and the
Speaker 1: neighborhood did you fit in? Were you an odd ball there?
Speaker 1: I went to Catholic school. Uh, she's strange to think that.
Speaker 1: Even from first grade we took a subway. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: The first day of first grade, I just walked out
Speaker 1: of the house. Yeah that's it, you know, and walked
Speaker 1: to walk to the subway. At subway passed, it went
Speaker 1: two stops, got off and and no one. It just
Speaker 1: didn't matter. And then I would walk home if the
Speaker 1: weather was nice. But no, I wasn't an odd ball
Speaker 1: um in school until I got to high school. Then
Speaker 1: I was really an oddball. And what caused that? I
Speaker 1: think I was bored with school? So I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. I wasn't too um. A lot of bad
Speaker 1: things organized a a group of young men who could
Speaker 1: who would rob pet stores. We would uh, we would
Speaker 1: actually drop through the roofs. We and it wasn't like
Speaker 1: we were going to steal money. We were liberty, liberty,
Speaker 1: liberating the animals. So we would take an order for
Speaker 1: an animal. Say, say someone wanted, uh, some rare fish,
Speaker 1: and we would write down the name of it, be
Speaker 1: in Latin, whatever, and then we would find a store
Speaker 1: in New York that had an aquarium with rare fish
Speaker 1: and we would go to the oh, is that a
Speaker 1: laplos galypus, And then it's very interesting for you. Then
Speaker 1: the guy I would say yeah. The next day it
Speaker 1: was gone cats dogs, and we knew how to separate,
Speaker 1: you know, hamsters from kitty cats, and that's what we
Speaker 1: did that for a while. And then I got into um,
Speaker 1: I got into heaving, into stealing cars and um, and
Speaker 1: it got busted quite often. And then back then, when
Speaker 1: you got busted, you took a beating because it was
Speaker 1: too much paperwork to put you in the system. So
Speaker 1: you would take a beating from the police who loved
Speaker 1: to beat you with phone books because the left no
Speaker 1: left no marks. Yeah, it was pretty brutal, but at
Speaker 1: least they were like, I deserve it. I've been bad
Speaker 1: and so um. And so finally I stole a school
Speaker 1: bus and uh, and this time I was really in trouble,
Speaker 1: and um, the judge said, you know, listen, this we
Speaker 1: see way too often and you're always in the lock up.
Speaker 1: My grades were still good. UM, and my parents got
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and the lawyer said that you've got to
Speaker 1: plead insanity that you can't help you Steve. If it
Speaker 1: has wheels, you have to take it. I mean, who
Speaker 1: would take up school bus? And so I did, and
Speaker 1: I did UM, and I got ninety days in a
Speaker 1: state and nuthouse and UM and that changed my life
Speaker 1: because people I met in there that were very When
Speaker 1: I finally worked my way up to other people who
Speaker 1: were avoiding raps, I met a guy who was UM,
Speaker 1: who was in was avoiding a attempted murder rap and
Speaker 1: he was very interesting. He was in the theater, he
Speaker 1: was in the film business, and he had some friends
Speaker 1: that were that were amazing at Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton,
Speaker 1: and I started hanging out with those people and they
Speaker 1: changed my life. And in New York at the Beresford
Speaker 1: where they were, and and not only did that nuthhouse
Speaker 1: change my life, but when I got drafted and I
Speaker 1: finally got to the shrink, which is at the end
Speaker 1: of when you're doing your thing at Center Street there
Speaker 1: and the last person you see is the shrink. The
Speaker 1: shrink said to me, so, John, um, could you kill?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I think I could. I could kill.
Speaker 1: I could kill in self defense. And he kind of
Speaker 1: smiled and he wrote something in his book and then
Speaker 1: I said, and that's why I would kill my commanding officer.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, have you to have any
Speaker 1: mental problems? And I said, I'm sir fied. And so
Speaker 1: having done that ninety days in a nuthhouse, in a
Speaker 1: state nunhouse, which was not nice for a good bit
Speaker 1: of time. It was violent and terrible, it saved It
Speaker 1: saved my career and which you know had been criminal,
Speaker 1: and it saved my life because I would have gone
Speaker 1: to Vietnam and probably been blown up or shot. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we've talked that's my back story. We've talked before
Speaker 1: about this legendary trip to England. Why don't you tell
Speaker 1: my audience. So at some point, Um, I was doing
Speaker 1: theater and and because of my friends, and I was
Speaker 1: playing guitar but folk guitar, and I was playing in
Speaker 1: the village and I'm doing the whole coffee thing. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the Beatles sixty three I heard it and it just
Speaker 1: changed everything I was like because music and rock music
Speaker 1: in sixty three was awful. You had Fabian and Frankie
Speaker 1: Avalon and what happened to where Chuck Berry go? Where
Speaker 1: did all these good people going? It's like the fifties
Speaker 1: were cool, then suddenly it was awful. So I talked,
Speaker 1: I've started a rock band, and with my friend Eddie Lionetti,
Speaker 1: and we played around and finally by at night and
Speaker 1: we were emulating all English rock bands and and I
Speaker 1: said to him, why don't we go to Liverpool because
Speaker 1: that's where it's happening. This is summer of so um
Speaker 1: we got we got jobs in this uh factory that
Speaker 1: sand blasted used airplane parts. I was always like eight sandpaper.
Speaker 1: It was terrible, but it was cool when we made
Speaker 1: enough money. Hardly anything but the trip I had planned
Speaker 1: for us was a tramp steamer and it was a
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve dollars to Liverpool. You didn't know what
Speaker 1: stops you were going to make on the way because
Speaker 1: the tramp scheme, wherever they can get pulled in anyway,
Speaker 1: they we get on this ship in late November. Um,
Speaker 1: we crossed the North Atlantic. That the worst I mean,
Speaker 1: people told me, are you out of your mind? What
Speaker 1: did I know, across the North Atlantic, so what fort
Speaker 1: your foot seas? You know you're covered in ice if
Speaker 1: you walk outside. It's just it's terribly We went to
Speaker 1: all these different countries. It took forever to get to Liverpool.
Speaker 1: We finally uh after I think we docked in Aberdeen
Speaker 1: and then we went down the Irish Sea and I
Speaker 1: heard Pirate radio for the first time Radio Caroline, and
Speaker 1: there was one other one Luxembourg. Now that was in Luxembourg,
Speaker 1: but there were two Pirate chips. Anyway, it was fantastic
Speaker 1: to hear this at a little transistor radio. We had
Speaker 1: her guitars. I had a nineteen fift less Paul Black
Speaker 1: Custom with a stock Bigsby. Fantastic thing. My friend had
Speaker 1: a mos right, we had little champions. I was just
Speaker 1: yeah and so um. We frequently had to play for
Speaker 1: a very drunken crew that because we're the only passengers
Speaker 1: and it seemed like if we didn't play, we would
Speaker 1: be walking the plank or something really bad. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we get there and immigration comes on board and we're
Speaker 1: young and we're very naive. So what are you two
Speaker 1: doing here because we're the only pastors. Uh, well, we've
Speaker 1: come here to play. Uh huh, okay play? So you
Speaker 1: have worked per maths? No, no we don't. Do you
Speaker 1: have a visa? No you have a return trip ticket? No, no,
Speaker 1: none of that. So they said, well you cannot land
Speaker 1: you or now when this ship leaves, see you're on it.
Speaker 1: Which point my friend Eddie said, did you realize that
Speaker 1: the rest of our lives we're just gonna go? And
Speaker 1: so um so I um, I said, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I got us into this mess and I'll get us
Speaker 1: out of it somehow. So that night I escaped from
Speaker 1: the ship, which was I actually put on the disguise.
Speaker 1: I got a semen's big coat and a cat and
Speaker 1: I put some black from a pencil over like I
Speaker 1: had a beard, like I needed to shave. I didn't
Speaker 1: need any of that because as I walked down, I'm
Speaker 1: looking to the left and right, looking for the police
Speaker 1: or somebody to be guarding me. And I saw from
Speaker 1: another ship these two semen walking down the dock and
Speaker 1: they just walked out of gate. Obviously they're going to
Speaker 1: go get drunk snow terrors. There's no you didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry. There was a science admigration that was a
Speaker 1: shack way far away. So I just walked out and
Speaker 1: got on a bus the central Liverpool had a few
Speaker 1: pounds sterling and got off in the middle of the
Speaker 1: city and there was a record store for place I went,
Speaker 1: and that week they released Rubber Soul, and I went
Speaker 1: right into a listening booth to listen to the record,
Speaker 1: and I was just astonished. It's of course, it's an
Speaker 1: amazing revolutionary record. Yeah, and so at this point I'm like,
Speaker 1: I have to stay here. This is like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is where it is happening. Look what this would
Speaker 1: never happen in America, that this kind of music would
Speaker 1: be made, and so um. I walked out of the
Speaker 1: record store and across the street was a newspaper office,
Speaker 1: a big one, the Liverpool Echo, which is the biggest
Speaker 1: newspaper in Liverpool. And I went in there and I
Speaker 1: told the receptionist I thought these almis like sensational stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try this. I said, I'm an American musician.
Speaker 1: I'm being held captive on a ship in the port,
Speaker 1: which she looked at me like really, what you're standing
Speaker 1: in front of me, And I said, why I escaped
Speaker 1: from the ship. So she said wait here, and she
Speaker 1: went and got an editor and I told the whole
Speaker 1: story to the editor. He said, I liked this, he said,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna drive you back to the ship to
Speaker 1: make sure you get on it. If you get on
Speaker 1: that ship, we'll have all the newspapers in England. And
Speaker 1: there's a good story. American musicians come on. So I
Speaker 1: went back with my Rubber Soul album and walked back
Speaker 1: onto the ship. My friend Eddie was pretty surprised to
Speaker 1: surprised to see me with this album, and we listened
Speaker 1: to it all night and I told him it was
Speaker 1: going to be okay. And the next day they were.
Speaker 1: They woke us up in the morning and then the
Speaker 1: ship was full of newspapers and we were on the
Speaker 1: front page uh later that day in the in the
Speaker 1: afternoon or evening edition, we were on the front page
Speaker 1: of the Liverpool EC. On the next day we were
Speaker 1: all over even the mirror in England, big pictures of
Speaker 1: us on the front page of the Liverpool papers and
Speaker 1: the the radio. The a newspaper had some kind of
Speaker 1: affiliation with the television station. And what they did was
Speaker 1: they hired these girls. These girls marched up and down
Speaker 1: in front of the ship with placards that said free
Speaker 1: the Yanks, and we go to the front of the
Speaker 1: ship and wave to them. We have our guitars on.
Speaker 1: We had long hair and they'd scream was of a setup.
Speaker 1: But and then that was televised, and then Immigration came
Speaker 1: on board the day before the ship was supposed to leave,
Speaker 1: when they said, how we can't figure out how you
Speaker 1: did this, but you like our phones are ringing off
Speaker 1: the hook, these poor two Americans. We have to let
Speaker 1: you go. We're giving you a sixty day student visa.
Speaker 1: Have fun, stay out of trouble. Send the guitars back,
Speaker 1: you can't bring them in, which we did. We sent
Speaker 1: the guitarist back, but the newspaper had it they had
Speaker 1: a better idea. Follow the adventures of the Yanks as
Speaker 1: they get into another band, and so we did. And
Speaker 1: about three weeks later, uh, we're after a gig. We
Speaker 1: were sitting at a little cafe and this guy came
Speaker 1: up and said, aren't you the two Yanks? And we
Speaker 1: said yea. He said, my friends parked around the corner.
Speaker 1: You want to say, what's an autograph? No problem. We
Speaker 1: walked around the corner with Immigration. They said, you motherfucker's
Speaker 1: you're not kidding, you're making fools of us. You know
Speaker 1: in the papers say handcuffed us, put us in the car,
Speaker 1: took us to a train right away, chained us to
Speaker 1: the seats. Train went from There was no hearing, there
Speaker 1: was nothing. We were out, We were trouble. Train went
Speaker 1: from Liverpool to London. In London, they changed trains, shackled again.
Speaker 1: That train went to Southampton and they threw us on
Speaker 1: the first ship back to New York that day, which
Speaker 1: was the s S United States largest ship and fastest
Speaker 1: and fastest. So three days we're back in New York.
Speaker 1: Probably been sending back clippings of like, you know, we
Speaker 1: were a big deal. We were the only American musicians
Speaker 1: from locally New York guys that had been to Liverpool
Speaker 1: had actually hung out in the Cavern Club and made
Speaker 1: the scene. So when we got back we were able
Speaker 1: to get in pretty much any band we wanted to.
Speaker 1: So first band I joined was the Angels, my boyfriend
Speaker 1: and and and then I just played in a series
Speaker 1: of bands that I ended up on the road, which
Speaker 1: Barry being his bass player, just a series of bands
Speaker 1: always had labels, were always signed to labels. At one
Speaker 1: point I was signed to two labels under two different names.
Speaker 1: Was signed to Bell Records and to Columbia and um,
Speaker 1: we're signed. We did a deal with Epic Swamp Seeds,
Speaker 1: on and on and on, UM and um. By the
Speaker 1: time I know, this is a long story, Okay. So
Speaker 1: my friend was in a band called the Soul Survivors
Speaker 1: that sprush act. Yeah, so he was in at a
Speaker 1: Philly and so we both came back to New York
Speaker 1: and he was finished with the Soulservirus and I was
Speaker 1: pretty much finished with wherever I was working with. And
Speaker 1: he said, this is ninete. He said, have you heard
Speaker 1: this band led Zeppelin? I said, yeah, I love them.
Speaker 1: They weren't big yet. The record had just come out
Speaker 1: until led Zeppelin too. Yeah. It was a little bit
Speaker 1: of an underground so we were very aware of them.
Speaker 1: They and we said, basically, they're just doing blues, but
Speaker 1: like you know, like really heavy blues. So why don't
Speaker 1: we do that, but we'll do it in New York style.
Speaker 1: We'll put a Hammond organ in a band. So we did.
Speaker 1: We added a Hammond organ and we were doing kind
Speaker 1: of blues based, very heavy. I had two sons two
Speaker 1: thousand amps. Shes like four fifteen and like four. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just and he had a capital, a couple of
Speaker 1: Marshall stacks that he'd used while he was in the Soulservirs.
Speaker 1: So and we we we set up shop at set
Speaker 1: up shop at a club that was across the street
Speaker 1: from Palace Staates Amusement Park. And the deal was they
Speaker 1: let us rehearse there anytime we wanted, and but at
Speaker 1: night we had to give them Wednesday Thursday Friday or Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: Friday and Saturday nights for free. Otherwise the place was ours.
Speaker 1: So we rehearsed there and we worked up an act.
Speaker 1: And and about two weeks into this thing, the Isay brothers,
Speaker 1: who lived in Tea Neck not very far away, they
Speaker 1: rolled into this club and they saw us after the
Speaker 1: gig and they said, listen, we just started a labeled
Speaker 1: te Neck Records. We're just coming off this huge success.
Speaker 1: Was it not for the love of money? No? No,
Speaker 1: the big one anyway, that was on buddha Um. So
Speaker 1: they were coming off a giant success and they had
Speaker 1: now had their own label and wanted to fill the
Speaker 1: label with more than just R and B. They wanted
Speaker 1: to have a rock act and would we be the
Speaker 1: rock act, and um, we said yes, and they signed
Speaker 1: us and they put us in A and R Studios,
Speaker 1: Phil Ramon, beautiful incredible studio with an engineer, a black engineer,
Speaker 1: their engineer, Tony May, who was incredibly talented. Um, and
Speaker 1: in in like a week we cut ten tracks because
Speaker 1: it was very basic and it was very ambient. The
Speaker 1: room was big and so if you it just rang,
Speaker 1: the rooms was singing and and so you know, after
Speaker 1: two weeks we were done. Very basic. Eddie sang lead,
Speaker 1: I sang harmony. The name of the album was Privileged
Speaker 1: still available by the way. Then the name of the
Speaker 1: band was your Privilege and oh it's your thing, that's
Speaker 1: to what's want to do? Yeah, that was their huge,
Speaker 1: huge so um so now the Ice brothers are in
Speaker 1: there and they're listening to this very basic, empty sounding
Speaker 1: record in there, like you know, maybe if they told
Speaker 1: us come back in ten days after the mix, and
Speaker 1: they said, maybe if we put some congas on it,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we put our girls singers on.
Speaker 1: There's only two guys girls singers. How about if horns on?
Speaker 1: This could be a single, fat horns. Yeah, and while
Speaker 1: we're at it, the ballad needs strings. And so they
Speaker 1: loaded the thing up and when we you know time,
Speaker 1: it was passing. We were wondering what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on? So we finally went in and um and
Speaker 1: we sat down for a playback, and we thought they
Speaker 1: put up the wrong record and so um, the big
Speaker 1: ambient sound was gone and was filled with its kind
Speaker 1: of an R and B rock. Then maybe be cool
Speaker 1: now I don't know, I don't know, uh, but anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: being the politician said the eddie said to me, you
Speaker 1: have to say something. This isn't good, like all wrong,
Speaker 1: and so um, I said, I started identifying the players
Speaker 1: that because I could tell that Jimmy Maillen on congo
Speaker 1: And finally, uh, um, Kelly Easley said, there do we
Speaker 1: have a problem And I said, well, remember when you
Speaker 1: signed us? He said, you wanted that rock, big rock band,
Speaker 1: you know that for your label. Well that's not it.
Speaker 1: You know you had it and he said, yea, how
Speaker 1: much all that cost? But we didn't ask for that,
Speaker 1: and uh and he stood up and he said and
Speaker 1: he said, well fuck you, and he got up in
Speaker 1: the Kelly and Rudolph and I can't remember the other
Speaker 1: guys that they got up and they started to walk out.
Speaker 1: Rudolph was the oldest guy, and he was also the
Speaker 1: more serious and he ran the business of icy pros.
Speaker 1: And he came back in the room and he looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, you know like it, you
Speaker 1: mix it? And I knew nothing whatsoever about being on
Speaker 1: that side of the I played plenty of sessions, but
Speaker 1: I know much about it. So with the engineers, I
Speaker 1: told the engineer, I said, the rough mixes that you
Speaker 1: made were perfect. Whyn't we put those out? He said
Speaker 1: there were seven and a half we gotta go. So
Speaker 1: two days I had to mix it with him, and basically, um,
Speaker 1: I would just be a terror if I did anything
Speaker 1: on the board. So I just kind of cheered him
Speaker 1: on and it was done, and the group came in
Speaker 1: and congratulated me. But the experience of doing that was
Speaker 1: so amazing that I quit the band and I said, really,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the first time I've had control
Speaker 1: over anything, and and uh, it feels good, and so
Speaker 1: I'll do whatever promotional tour you want to do, but
Speaker 1: after that, I'm going into the studios. And so I
Speaker 1: went to record Plant that Tony told me. He said,
Speaker 1: down the street they're building a rebuilding and building new
Speaker 1: rooms to this record plant. You might go down there,
Speaker 1: and he said a lot of guys have left A
Speaker 1: and R to go down there. Of course, Race Ofcale
Speaker 1: and Shelley As had already left. So I went down
Speaker 1: there and I got it. I walked in and this guy,
Speaker 1: Paul Prestopino, it was kind of famous maintenance man and musician,
Speaker 1: was sitting at the receptionist desk and I walked in
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm looking for a job. He's sitting
Speaker 1: there in cover rolls and he said, uh, we need
Speaker 1: a janitor and I said, I'm your man. And I
Speaker 1: was in Now. Um, that was in sixty nine and
Speaker 1: the first gigs that I was kind of working on
Speaker 1: where they were recording woodstock and mixing it. So I
Speaker 1: got to bring the tapes into the rooms where the
Speaker 1: guys were fixing up there individual tracks from and I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, this is this is amazing. These vocalis
Speaker 1: people are here, Jimmy Andndricks is here for good. He's incredible.
Speaker 1: So I, you know, I I was very aggressive and
Speaker 1: working my way up and got to cut cutting people's demos.
Speaker 1: I cut the Billie Joel's demos when Alreadie RiPP was
Speaker 1: paying for the you probably know, so I was the
Speaker 1: guy cutting his demos. You know, I always thought this
Speaker 1: guy is kind of cool. It's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: but it already would be like, yeah, let's get it
Speaker 1: all the way in there. You know, already was amazing.
Speaker 1: He's still year ago. Yeah, yeah, he's great. That's old
Speaker 1: school man. So I would cut those demos. I cut
Speaker 1: Patty of the Bells demos and U and I actually
Speaker 1: had a chance to work with the who on Who's Next,
Speaker 1: which was amazing. Uh. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: I could really do well was hit it. I mean
Speaker 1: I would get calls to go on these big Ford
Speaker 1: commercial roles and airline commercials and and when you know
Speaker 1: they needed to do splices and edits for TV or
Speaker 1: this and that, I would get the gig and I
Speaker 1: would go in this editing room and do all their editing.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is when you're using razor blades. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a good, really good ear for editing, and
Speaker 1: I knew a few tricks that Jamisina had taught me.
Speaker 1: And so um next thing, I know, I look on
Speaker 1: this schedule board, and um, John Lennon is coming into
Speaker 1: the studio. I nearly pated my pants just looking at
Speaker 1: the schedule, like, oh my god, I can't believe this
Speaker 1: because he was coming into to imagine and continue imagine. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: and so I got this gig my part. I'm now
Speaker 1: I'm on it. I see my name on there. Well,
Speaker 1: you're like the second engineer. I'm the editor, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing editing and trans and transferring so that they can
Speaker 1: so that they can do overdubs on uff that they
Speaker 1: already have but needs some of it needs to be edited.
Speaker 1: There's all these handwritten notes, there's mostly by John. And
Speaker 1: I'm in a room doing transferring and editing, and about
Speaker 1: a week into the end, they're often another whole place,
Speaker 1: you know, overdubbing, retracking everything. And one day John walked
Speaker 1: into the room that I was in and um, he said,
Speaker 1: he said, okay, if I sit in here. It's looking
Speaker 1: for a place to escape phil and so I said sure, Sure,
Speaker 1: I said, I'm the guy. Yeah, I said, I'm the
Speaker 1: guy that's editing your transferring. And he said, oh it's
Speaker 1: very good, thank you. Thinking he sat down. I can
Speaker 1: only see his feet because he was on a couch
Speaker 1: below the console, at his feet up on the window,
Speaker 1: and obviously with a cigarette smoke. And finally, after for
Speaker 1: just a few minutes, I got the nerves to speak
Speaker 1: up and I said, I've been to Liverpool. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me and he said he got up. It
Speaker 1: caught his attention. He looked at me. He said really,
Speaker 1: he said, it's a dirty, terrible place. Everyone there wants
Speaker 1: to be here. Um. In fact, he said, we just
Speaker 1: moved here. Why on and why would you want to
Speaker 1: go to Liverpool? And where are you from? I said,
Speaker 1: I'm born and raised here in New York City. I
Speaker 1: don't get that. I said, well, I was a musician
Speaker 1: and I wanted to go and just you know, immerse
Speaker 1: myself in the mersey and just you know, understand how
Speaker 1: you guys were doing. But it was basically American music,
Speaker 1: everyone there but doing something special to it, and I
Speaker 1: really wanted to know what it was, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn to do it. Oh. I said, okay, So
Speaker 1: how did that work out for you? I said, good?
Speaker 1: In bad, bad, I get supported, but good. I made
Speaker 1: a lot of noise before I did, And he looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, are you one of those
Speaker 1: crazy Yanks We're all over the newspaper. Is that you?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, that's me. He said, there we re
Speaker 1: release an album. Should be just us on the front
Speaker 1: page of the fucking home newspaper. But no, there's these
Speaker 1: too crazy yanks on the front page. Young Americans band,
Speaker 1: I mean, he said, I can't. But then he was
Speaker 1: like excited, So I can't believe of all the places
Speaker 1: I come in, I run into you. We were laughing
Speaker 1: about you so much. And by the way, you still
Speaker 1: have that less Paul which he was in the picture
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah. And I said no, no, so long gone.
Speaker 1: And he said, this is just amazing. He said, Yoko
Speaker 1: is not gonna believe. This is so cool. So he
Speaker 1: was excited about meeting me, and he said what are
Speaker 1: you you know, what are you doing? I said, well,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm editing and transferring. He said, come down.
Speaker 1: You should be working with us on the on the album.
Speaker 1: So I said okay, So he said, come on down.
Speaker 1: We went down to the studio and I walked in
Speaker 1: the room with the nemrois. Kelly gave me a look
Speaker 1: that you normally I would never want to get that
Speaker 1: look like, what the funk are you doing in this room?
Speaker 1: And and I said, I'm with him, you know, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, and so um he said, I have
Speaker 1: a seat. He said, uh, he said, broy, can we
Speaker 1: get Jack working on this record? And this was early,
Speaker 1: this a weekend and I worked on the rest of
Speaker 1: the record and you know my pictures on that inner sleeve,
Speaker 1: and um, and it started a relationship him. I mean.
Speaker 1: One of the things was I lived in the village.
Speaker 1: He did too, and he asked me if if I
Speaker 1: knew any restaurants that they could go to on their
Speaker 1: way back to Bank Street, and I did. I knew
Speaker 1: people along places you get them in a back door.
Speaker 1: So I would leave and jump in the limit with
Speaker 1: and then and and take them into a restaurant in
Speaker 1: the back. And then I became a regular thing. And
Speaker 1: then he asked me from my phone number, which I
Speaker 1: gave him any called me up and he said, you
Speaker 1: want to go to a party? Said listen, So I
Speaker 1: have to go to this party. It was the usual
Speaker 1: radicals down there, you know, And he said, just watch
Speaker 1: my back. I don't know these people. And I said, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy to go to him. I went on
Speaker 1: to the party with him, UM, which turned into quite
Speaker 1: a scene. They were all screaming off the peg and
Speaker 1: he was very anti violence and so UM it turned
Speaker 1: into quite a scene there and we got out. UM.
Speaker 1: But it became we became friends and UM. And then
Speaker 1: he said, listen, we want to work with Yoko on
Speaker 1: her stuff. And I just did that series of Yoko records,
Speaker 1: some of which he would kind of produce hang out
Speaker 1: with me, and some you would just stop by. But
Speaker 1: and then we just became a very good friends Yoko.
Speaker 1: And so when he um, I mean when he went
Speaker 1: to Kellifornia. Um, by this time I was producing and
Speaker 1: I was producing Alice Cooper Muscle of Love. And I
Speaker 1: told him myself, I'm going I'm gonna be producing Muscle Love.
Speaker 1: He said to me, what are you doing it? I said,
Speaker 1: wherever Warner Brothers tells me. Because no, no, no no, he says,
Speaker 1: the other producer. You tell them where you want to produce.
Speaker 1: That that's how it works, he said, produce it in California.
Speaker 1: He said, firstly, you'll be close to Warners, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to be there and you can come hang out
Speaker 1: and have a place in belly Air. So I so
Speaker 1: I did. I booked Sunset Sound and uh, and we
Speaker 1: went out there and every night was I drove the
Speaker 1: getaway car. Late after the sessions. I would look up
Speaker 1: with them the original Hollywood Vampires. Alice was part of
Speaker 1: it too, and um, then he disappeared. He was finished,
Speaker 1: and he came back. He you know, they had a
Speaker 1: bad shawn h I ran into him once at a
Speaker 1: across the street from the nine Street. Why there was
Speaker 1: a health food store and my wife and I were
Speaker 1: having luncheon there and he walked in with John. He
Speaker 1: had been giving him swimming lessons and he was so
Speaker 1: surprised to see me and he and he sat down
Speaker 1: with us. Um, you can imagine my wife John Lynton
Speaker 1: suddenly sits down with you and and and he said,
Speaker 1: look at here's my he I said to He asked
Speaker 1: me where I was living, and I was living four
Speaker 1: blocks from him, and he said, well, here's my phone number.
Speaker 1: This is a personal private number. He said, call me
Speaker 1: and just come down. Well, come down to the Dakota
Speaker 1: and just hang out. And I didn't for a year.
Speaker 1: I didn't because in my head I was like his
Speaker 1: house husband and that you know, he he's not interested
Speaker 1: in this bullshit anymore that I do. And so um
Speaker 1: A year later, I got that phone call and uh,
Speaker 1: which was very funny because it was it was it
Speaker 1: was the phone. It was the most mysterious phone call
Speaker 1: you could ever get. It was I don't even know
Speaker 1: who may have been Fred Seaman, I always asked. I
Speaker 1: never found out exactly who made that phone call, but
Speaker 1: it was if you want to do something really cool.
Speaker 1: And that phone rang forever and I was on the
Speaker 1: street listening to it ring, and it didn't stop, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, slowly made my way into the brown stone
Speaker 1: we had and picked up the phone and it was,
Speaker 1: if you want to do something that's very exciting, and
Speaker 1: I did want to do something exciting at that time.
Speaker 1: They said, you will go to them to thirty thirty
Speaker 1: fourth Street Pier where the seaplanes land, and at noon
Speaker 1: a seaplane will land and you'll get in it. Could
Speaker 1: you resist that? I know, not at all? So I did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't yeah, well I didn't know who it was.
Speaker 1: Really no, I didn't know what it was. I had
Speaker 1: no idea what it was. Not not the slightest so
Speaker 1: I went to It was just that, you know, And
Speaker 1: so I went to the pier, and sure enough a
Speaker 1: seaplane landed and I got in it and it took
Speaker 1: off and it went over to the glen cove over
Speaker 1: there where the mansion was pulled up right onto the beach,
Speaker 1: and Uh and Toshi, well I know his name was
Speaker 1: Toshi then, but Toshi was Uh. Yoko's house servant came
Speaker 1: in and greeted me and said, come, come, come and
Speaker 1: into the house. And Yoko was there, would open arms,
Speaker 1: come in, she said. And I was then, you know,
Speaker 1: quite surprised. And she said, John wants to do a record,
Speaker 1: to come back record. He wants to go back into
Speaker 1: the studio make a record, but no one can know
Speaker 1: about it, not a soul, no one, not your wife.
Speaker 1: By the way, I did tell her, and she swore
Speaker 1: that she would never but she that if anyone finds
Speaker 1: out that we're going to make this record, we stopped
Speaker 1: making the record, simple as that. So she said, Johnson Bermuda,
Speaker 1: he's going to call you, um and he wants to
Speaker 1: talk to you about it. And so the phone rang
Speaker 1: shortly afterwards, and she said, yes, he's here and I
Speaker 1: and he said it's Hi John, I mean hi Jackets John.
Speaker 1: You know I want to do something. I want to
Speaker 1: make a record. Yoko has an envelope. She's going to
Speaker 1: give it to you now. I want you to listen.
Speaker 1: There's two toissettes in there with potential material. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it's any good at all. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's that good to tell you the truth, um, but
Speaker 1: you listen to it. If you think there's anything that
Speaker 1: we can do with this material, Um, then I'll call
Speaker 1: you tomorrow. Make sure Yoko has my phone number and
Speaker 1: give her a time. Okay. So I get the envelope
Speaker 1: and I'm ready to leave in Yokos is weight right?
Speaker 1: She said, I'm so on this record. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: have to. Now I've got a start a stack of
Speaker 1: tapes from Yoko like this this high. You know, all
Speaker 1: these tapes that she made demos, and a little envelope
Speaker 1: from back on the seaplane. Get off and take a
Speaker 1: cab back to my house. I listened to John Stuff
Speaker 1: right away, and um and Yoko's later in the day.
Speaker 1: But John Stuff two cassettes. They were wonderful, they were narrated,
Speaker 1: they were um. Most of the most of it it was, oh,
Speaker 1: this one's not for me, this one's for ringo and
Speaker 1: at the end of it, he'd say, that was definitely
Speaker 1: for Richard Starkey, and it was like, here's the same
Speaker 1: old piece of ship. He was just every song was narrated,
Speaker 1: which was wonderful and fun. And when he called me
Speaker 1: up the next day, I said to him, I don't
Speaker 1: think I can beat it. So what do you mean?
Speaker 1: I said, you should just put it out, you should
Speaker 1: just master these cassettes, because there's something you know. They
Speaker 1: were made on a boombox. He sang into a boom
Speaker 1: box and played guitar, and then he took another boom box,
Speaker 1: played it off of that boom box and doubled the vocal.
Speaker 1: And that's how primitive it was. And somebody I think
Speaker 1: was banging pants and pick pots and pants for drums
Speaker 1: and that was it. And it was wonderful, and so
Speaker 1: he took He said, so you like it? I said,
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean it's beautiful. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: then we'll make the record, and and then I went
Speaker 1: through and of course we made two records. It was
Speaker 1: like making four records, two artists and two two albums
Speaker 1: really because Milk and Honey. But I rehearsed the band
Speaker 1: the first thing I did was I charted the songs,
Speaker 1: did actual art arts for them. So you know how
Speaker 1: to read music, yes, and you learn that where my
Speaker 1: theory classes in high school. High school. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: um and I played, you know, of course, So I
Speaker 1: charted the music and I brought the charts to First
Speaker 1: of all, John said to me, I want a band
Speaker 1: that is my contemporaries. So if I say to them,
Speaker 1: let's you know, let's do some some Buddy Holly or
Speaker 1: Everly Brothers, they'll join right in. There will be no
Speaker 1: yeah that. So I put together. He didn't tell me
Speaker 1: who to get. I put together a band of contemporaries,
Speaker 1: which was Andy Newmark, you, McCracken, Tony Levin. Uh that
Speaker 1: that ilk of New York Player, which is also what
Speaker 1: he wanted in New York sounding. And he didn't want
Speaker 1: it to be a hard rock album. And he told
Speaker 1: me that. He said, Look, I know I listened to
Speaker 1: what he produced. That's not what we're doing. And you know,
Speaker 1: and and I got and I got slammed by the
Speaker 1: critics for making him soft. Um, but that's what he wanted.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm forty years old. Well, he was going
Speaker 1: to be forty years old. Least, I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1: I'm not a beatle anymore, and I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a record that is a guy that lived
Speaker 1: through the sixties, has made it into the forties and
Speaker 1: has a family, and hello, I'm I made it? How
Speaker 1: are you? Did you make it? That was his whole thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So I would rehearse the band, but they didn't know
Speaker 1: whose record was. They would just read the music and
Speaker 1: I'd sing the songs just to be clear. Did you
Speaker 1: have Beautiful Boy? And watching didn't have? Starting Over? Had
Speaker 1: all the other songs I rehearsed, and all of Yoko songs.
Speaker 1: This is intense rehearsals for weeks. I'd record the rehearsals.
Speaker 1: They didn't know who, had no idea who who they were,
Speaker 1: whose record they're making, And then I'd run back to
Speaker 1: the Dakota and uh play the tape for him and
Speaker 1: work with him on the arrangements. Now, to work with
Speaker 1: John on the arrangements was very interesting because she went
Speaker 1: to the Dakota. You went upstairs to the to his
Speaker 1: apartment on the seventh floor, their apartment, she had another
Speaker 1: place down on the first floor, and you jump in
Speaker 1: bed with him and that's where he worked, sat cross
Speaker 1: legged in in this big bedroom, in a giant bed.
Speaker 1: The bed was surrounded by various instruments, tape machines, TV monitors.
Speaker 1: The wall behind him was guitars and other instruments that
Speaker 1: were hand drums. The bed was was a virtual studio,
Speaker 1: and so you jumped in bed with him, and he
Speaker 1: put the cassette in and he'd listened to a particular
Speaker 1: song and then he would make comments to me about
Speaker 1: what I'd want to you'd want to change on it,
Speaker 1: and then i'd make notes. The next day I'd go
Speaker 1: back And that's the pros every day. UM and then UM.
Speaker 1: The last day of rehearsal, the day before going into
Speaker 1: the studio, I said, John said, let's do a dry
Speaker 1: rehearsal at the Dakota in the apartment so they don't
Speaker 1: walk into the studio and shipped themselves and they see
Speaker 1: who it is. So I said, okay, So I told
Speaker 1: the band dry rehearsal today. UM, We're gonna meet on
Speaker 1: the corner of seventy in Central Park West. Suspicions confirmed
Speaker 1: for a few of them, and particularly you mccracking and
Speaker 1: Tony Leven. They said this material is too good to
Speaker 1: be anything but here, and you know, being across the
Speaker 1: street from the Dakota, it was then obvious. So we
Speaker 1: went up and we rehearsed, and um, everybody got along.
Speaker 1: It was great. We had a great time rehearsing all
Speaker 1: the songs dry, just going through the arrangements kind of
Speaker 1: and knowing that the next day we're going into the studio.
Speaker 1: Now at the at the door of his apartment, he
Speaker 1: had a Fender Rhodes piano and a cassette recorder sitting
Speaker 1: on top of it, so that when he came into
Speaker 1: the apartment if he had had something in his head,
Speaker 1: he could sit down right away and get it recorded.
Speaker 1: Or if he was leaving, before he left, if he
Speaker 1: had something, he would sit down do it. And so
Speaker 1: we were leaving, almost everyone had left. It was Tony
Speaker 1: Levin was going out the door, you mccrack and followed
Speaker 1: by me John wishing us a good night, see us
Speaker 1: in the morning, and he goes, wait, wait, he said, um,
Speaker 1: I have this one more song. You don't have it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a Roy Orbison feeling thing. And he
Speaker 1: sat down and he played starting over at the piano,
Speaker 1: and I said, why don't we just it's I had
Speaker 1: heard single in my head immediately, and I said, why
Speaker 1: don't we just, you know, rehearse that in the studio
Speaker 1: and record it, make it the first song we do
Speaker 1: this way, everybody gets into the field and and that's
Speaker 1: what we did. And the studio didn't know. Eddie Germano
Speaker 1: at Hit Factory didn't know whose record we were making
Speaker 1: either until we got there. And then you know, when
Speaker 1: you when you tell people that, if you tell anyone
Speaker 1: and the word gets out that we're making this record,
Speaker 1: the record stops. Then they don't tell because they were
Speaker 1: serious the record. The record would have stopped, and no
Speaker 1: one wanted it to stop. And it went on that.
Speaker 1: It was secret for a long time until until the
Speaker 1: vocals on watching the wheels and he listened back to
Speaker 1: you know, after I comped a vocal. Uh, he listened
Speaker 1: back to the vocal and he just shouted out, mother,
Speaker 1: tell them we have a record, And that was what's
Speaker 1: that kind of stretched a long story out. No, No,
Speaker 1: those are things people are dying to hear. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to interrupt you. Uh, we'll leave out the faithful
Speaker 1: event and go back to the beginning. So you're working
Speaker 1: at A and our studios and how do you end
Speaker 1: up being? You know? Was the next step hooking up
Speaker 1: with Ezra uh No. I started working. I was parting
Speaker 1: our record plan studios, and he brought in uh schools
Speaker 1: out and on schools out. I assisted, And during that
Speaker 1: whole period I was working my way up. So by
Speaker 1: the time I got to um billion Dollar Babies, he
Speaker 1: I was engineering and and he and I just hit
Speaker 1: it off. First of all, I had First of all,
Speaker 1: he thought I was a producer. You know, he's he's
Speaker 1: uh he's one of the prime Mary people who made
Speaker 1: me make that change. I was very comfortable. I was.
Speaker 1: I was successfully engineering out and I was young, and
Speaker 1: I was making you make fiftent of the take at
Speaker 1: the studio on everything, you sell the tape, everything. So
Speaker 1: I was doing quite well. And I knew that to
Speaker 1: produce I would have to take a loss right away.
Speaker 1: But Andy but he talked me into it and he
Speaker 1: had me open out of town. That was but to
Speaker 1: go to Canada and produce some Canadian acts at nimbus Um.
Speaker 1: The thing was that I had landed immigrant status in Canada,
Speaker 1: so because one of the bands that I played in
Speaker 1: was Canadian. In fact, it was a pretty successful band
Speaker 1: up there, which was called the Liverpool Set. They were
Speaker 1: they were there were two English guys, a Scottish guy
Speaker 1: and Latvian and a Canadian and me and um. I
Speaker 1: was the only person that had ever been to Liverpool.
Speaker 1: And it was called of course that was the e
Speaker 1: and and so we toured all over Canada. At one
Speaker 1: point going across the border, the the immigration guy said
Speaker 1: to me, why don't you just instead of going through
Speaker 1: all this hassle, you go through Uh. Everybody else in
Speaker 1: the band was a landed immigrant. Why don't you just
Speaker 1: get landed immigrant status? And I did so that was
Speaker 1: very convenient for because it could we could have can
Speaker 1: Con Canadian content. And and in fact I still uh
Speaker 1: do go up to Canada. And for example, there's a
Speaker 1: was I haven't been up in a while, but in
Speaker 1: the in the mid like two thousand ten, around that period,
Speaker 1: there was a very popular band called the Trus hit
Speaker 1: after hit up in Canada Columbia, and I was producing
Speaker 1: them um and continuing that can Con which is means
Speaker 1: they have to play certain percentage of Canadian records. There's
Speaker 1: all these qualifying rules. So I was a Canadian producer
Speaker 1: as far as they were concerned. Um, so that worked great.
Speaker 1: And I went up there and I made There was
Speaker 1: a group called It's not the Crowbar that you think of.
Speaker 1: It was an earlier crowbar also on Columbia. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I produced that record and it went like platinum
Speaker 1: in Canada, was never released in the US. And it
Speaker 1: was pretty good. And he said, okay, you're ready. So
Speaker 1: you're going to produce the next Alice album, which was
Speaker 1: a Muscle of Love with Jack Richardson. And you know
Speaker 1: it wasn't Jack's cup of Tea anyway, so it was
Speaker 1: your baby. Yeah, so that's how that worked out. But um,
Speaker 1: he thought, I he thought because of what I had
Speaker 1: done with the dolls for example, you know, it was
Speaker 1: a different raw was changing. It was like you had
Speaker 1: the old school producers like like Phil and a few
Speaker 1: other people, Phil Specter, who basically their production job was
Speaker 1: like a movie producer. You hire all the right people,
Speaker 1: you put them in the room, you stare the pot,
Speaker 1: and you get a product. Now, there were producers who
Speaker 1: were musicians, they were engineers, and so they had a
Speaker 1: much greater knowledge of what was going on, and so
Speaker 1: they were they were they were easing out the old
Speaker 1: school guys. I think that made for a lot of pills,
Speaker 1: paranoia and craziness. You felt lost at at some point,
Speaker 1: especially in California. But um and so I was one
Speaker 1: of those guys. Now there's another generation that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't feel exactly moved out yet, but certainly I'm
Speaker 1: not in my basement on a computer making hit records.
Speaker 1: And that's where it's at. You know, we're in my bedroom,
Speaker 1: we're on a plane. Um and I, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I totally respect that. Let's go back. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: do the dolls, you do Muscle of Love, you do
Speaker 1: get your wings. That was before a Muscle of Love.
Speaker 1: Then Alice Cooper disintegrates. What happens after that? Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what what order? You know? Then there was
Speaker 1: Patty I had produced which which album Radio Ethiopia. But
Speaker 1: before that, I had produced a record, uh Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: and I produced Alan Ginsburg and that and the real
Speaker 1: I think the reason I did that is because I
Speaker 1: went I read a thing in Rolling Stone where they
Speaker 1: called me heavy metal Maven and uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about this, but before, while I was a janitor,
Speaker 1: I was also a client. I was doing the music
Speaker 1: which I I was writing the music for a television
Speaker 1: series that was the the after school ABC after School
Speaker 1: special specials. It was called over seven and um and
Speaker 1: I was writing all the music for that show. So
Speaker 1: I was not just a yeah no, no, I was
Speaker 1: not just a rock guy. I understood music and for
Speaker 1: you know what it's worth. Um and so I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be heavy metal maven um. So the chance
Speaker 1: I got to do this, Alan Ginsburg my jumped at
Speaker 1: and and that led to Patty and then um and
Speaker 1: I think maybe Cheap Trick came after that, or another
Speaker 1: Arosmith album, probably another Arosmith album, or Rick derring Darrell.
Speaker 1: I was getting loaded up. I was going from one
Speaker 1: to the other, the other Rick Derry injured by the way,
Speaker 1: um funny thing. I love Rick Derringer. And after I
Speaker 1: did that first Cheap Trick album, and we all know,
Speaker 1: I found them in a bowling alley. So everybody knows
Speaker 1: that story, we'll tell for those people who don't. I
Speaker 1: was visiting a relative in Wauka Shaw, Wisconsin who said
Speaker 1: to me, you've got to see this band. Now. I
Speaker 1: was aware of Cheap Trek because they were, you know,
Speaker 1: they had a reputation, but the fact that they were
Speaker 1: playing in the bowling Alley lounge in the town where
Speaker 1: I'd come to see my friend relative. He took me
Speaker 1: to the to see this band and I was knocked out.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how good they were. It was more
Speaker 1: like a carnival act than it was so body um
Speaker 1: and I called up uh Tom Wrman, and I said,
Speaker 1: if you don't sign them in a week, I'm bringing
Speaker 1: them to our c a. They're phenomenon. And Tom came
Speaker 1: to Wisconsin and saw the band and signed them quick
Speaker 1: was done with Ken had a man he was managing,
Speaker 1: and it was all done quickly. And that record I
Speaker 1: think was the last time they really were allowed to
Speaker 1: make political statements, because that's all that record is. It's
Speaker 1: about I don't know if you feel really familiar with it. Well,
Speaker 1: the best track on that is me and d Cello. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that and that's not political. But I mean, certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: um Daddy should have stayed in high school. He's a whore.
Speaker 1: All those songs that are all very socio political songs,
Speaker 1: and that's where the band was, and that's why Epic
Speaker 1: decided to market it to college and nowhere else. So
Speaker 1: now I wanted Now there was the second album calling.
Speaker 1: I was called to do the second album. I'm doing
Speaker 1: draw the line, which is you know, uh, dependent on
Speaker 1: when the dealer can get to So it's taking forever
Speaker 1: to do this record, and I can't I can't leave.
Speaker 1: So I wanted Rick Derringer to produce the route of
Speaker 1: the album. I said, he's the perfect guy to produce
Speaker 1: the next record. But Tom Werman, who you know, he
Speaker 1: loved them dearly and he was ahead of A and
Speaker 1: R for the label, so they really never had it.
Speaker 1: They didn't bandit, never saying it UM, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to give him up, and he softened the band up.
Speaker 1: But um with good results in color brilliant album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with good results. But then they got to do the
Speaker 1: Buddhaicon album, which was harder. I did the bootun album right,
Speaker 1: and then the album after with taking Me Back that Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was they got a little harder, but their career
Speaker 1: got screwed up because they had to hesitate for the
Speaker 1: success of the Yeah. Yeah, okay, so you're working, when
Speaker 1: does it slow down? Slows down? In the eighties, UM
Speaker 1: first of all. After John died, I was devastated, and
Speaker 1: so I tried to just like I wanted to exit
Speaker 1: the whole scene. And and I started using drugs. And
Speaker 1: then I decided to take a real vacation. I got
Speaker 1: myself an apartment on the Lower East Side while I
Speaker 1: had a house, and we go down there for weeks
Speaker 1: and just shoot dope and get really destroyed. And and
Speaker 1: I stayed like that, and I'm you know, and basically
Speaker 1: every time I would stick my head out to listen
Speaker 1: to the music that was going on, I was glad
Speaker 1: I was where I was, because it seemed to me
Speaker 1: that I don't want to be presumped, to us be presumps. Okay,
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that they took that they took
Speaker 1: the worst parts of Arrowsmith and and turn that into
Speaker 1: kind of movement that had a lot of hair. And
Speaker 1: what they lost the production was always kind of good.
Speaker 1: That was, you know, always the same sound on the
Speaker 1: gated echo on the snare, and there was a sound
Speaker 1: and and but what they lost in that period was
Speaker 1: the groove. You know. I think that's why disco was
Speaker 1: so popular. It's because they had had to groove. You know,
Speaker 1: what we were doing the most important thing to us
Speaker 1: was that, you know, you're like, yeah, man, it feels good,
Speaker 1: it feels good and and and suddenly that was gone
Speaker 1: and it was all bomb blast and hair and and
Speaker 1: and the worst parts of arrasson you know, the sexual
Speaker 1: and you were not that that's bad, that's okay. We
Speaker 1: all remember the hair bands were wiped out overnight by
Speaker 1: the seattle sound. Yeah, because it was uck again. It
Speaker 1: was something honest, Um. But anyway, that's that's when it
Speaker 1: got slow and um and I ended up Stephen and
Speaker 1: Joe said hey, if we could. They had straightened their
Speaker 1: act out, and they came to me and they said,
Speaker 1: you know, every time we get a phone call, we
Speaker 1: think we're gonna hear that somebody mentions Jack. We said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hear you're dead. So um, So we went
Speaker 1: to this rehab monitor to go to it, and I
Speaker 1: did and I never looked back from that day. I
Speaker 1: mean it was like, okay, in the rehab days and
Speaker 1: you come out. I was thinking, that's a short period
Speaker 1: of time. It must be hard to come out and function.
Speaker 1: If you know what, Fear is a great motivator because
Speaker 1: if you've ever used heroin and and and and had withdrawals.
Speaker 1: You're just like to feel the freedom of never having
Speaker 1: to have withdrawals again, because that's what drives you do
Speaker 1: continue with the habit, because the withdrawals are so terrible.
Speaker 1: So um, I was like, I'm free. Fuck that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm never going back to that. And I don't have to.
Speaker 1: And now I had this a lot of counseling, and
Speaker 1: they said, don't go to work for two years. I
Speaker 1: could afford to go to not go to work for
Speaker 1: two years. Almost two years to the day, I got
Speaker 1: a call from Super Tramp to do this French deal
Speaker 1: they had, but still it was Super Tramp and and
Speaker 1: I came out here. I went to work at their
Speaker 1: studio and Encino and I was back and then Slash
Speaker 1: and Local Age and Clutch and you know, back to
Speaker 1: Arrowsmith again little South of Sanity, and now suddenly I
Speaker 1: was working again, and I got back into doing film score.
Speaker 1: Let's let's jump to today. What you think about the
Speaker 1: music that's popular today? I don't know. I don't listen
Speaker 1: to it. I really don't. Honestly, isn't it terrible? I
Speaker 1: don't listen to music unless it's on by accident. I
Speaker 1: don't look for it. I don't. I listened to classical music.
Speaker 1: I don't subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music. Um, someone says,
Speaker 1: here at track, what do you do? I find it
Speaker 1: somehow or another, or I have somebody else find it
Speaker 1: for me. Um, you know I'm not in touch with
Speaker 1: with I have a label now and I've signed the
Speaker 1: I've just signed yesterday. I signed. She signed the contract yesterday.
Speaker 1: I signed it. She's a great artist out of Savannah,
Speaker 1: Kelly Cloko. She's wonderful of ours. I'm not going to producer.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have Andrew Dawson producer. Um, it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: I can executive produce. But if there's something that is
Speaker 1: in my wheelhouse, I'll do it. But I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to be able to do what but
Speaker 1: these other guys are doing that that has passed by me.
Speaker 1: But I can have all the fun. And we're building
Speaker 1: a studio. It's a beautiful studio. If I want to
Speaker 1: continue to do film scores, I can put an orchestra
Speaker 1: in that studio. So where is it. It's in Guardina
Speaker 1: and it's a massive room and a beautiful control room.
Speaker 1: When we have over a million dollars of analog, outboard, digital,
Speaker 1: the best mixing everything and some having fun doing that
Speaker 1: and have I gave. I gave a ringo recently one
Speaker 1: of the songs that John It wrote that had his
Speaker 1: name one in it, right, and I said, it's time
Speaker 1: you know, so, um, I said, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: he says, you know I produced everything. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'll produce your stuff. I said, but this song needs
Speaker 1: an orchestration, and I'll do your orchestration. So he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll be happy to do the beautiful orchestration stration
Speaker 1: for him. Um, I can produce a rock band, show
Speaker 1: me a rock band exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's I'm not
Speaker 1: fighting an uphill battle here, I understand. Yeah. And but
Speaker 1: I'm having the time of my life. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: people are asking me to do interesting things all the time. Um,
Speaker 1: and and that's that's what I like. Okay, But you
Speaker 1: as a producer, you get a royalty. Do you find
Speaker 1: that you're getting Paige royalties? Getting what rot these? My
Speaker 1: word is a phenomenal Okay. So they're both still great,
Speaker 1: and you don't think the labels cheating you excessively if
Speaker 1: they are, Um, God bless them. Because I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'll let my account in handle that. Some are my
Speaker 1: lawyers to handle that someday in the future. But but
Speaker 1: right now I haven't no complaints whatsoever. The catalog is
Speaker 1: good and deep and and um, I don't know who's
Speaker 1: doing buying these records, and but they're doing it, but
Speaker 1: God bless them. And then, uh, now you've lived on
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp's property in his guesthouse. How'd you establish relationship
Speaker 1: with Johnny Depp? I had a I had a house
Speaker 1: in Fort Laura down eighties, mid eighties before I was
Speaker 1: totally um on the New River, and it was the
Speaker 1: place I go to in the winter UM and I
Speaker 1: interested in doing music. I was interested in sitting in
Speaker 1: the backyard. And Johnny got in touch with me through
Speaker 1: a friend that he because he had a band. He
Speaker 1: wasn't an actor. He had a band and he was
Speaker 1: a big Arrowsmith fan and he was a fan of
Speaker 1: almost everything that I've done, and I was one of
Speaker 1: his zeroes. So Johnny would come over to the house
Speaker 1: and he would hang for days, and my wife would
Speaker 1: cook for him, and he was just so what what
Speaker 1: year we had approximate four um, And he would just
Speaker 1: hang out at my house. I never got to produce
Speaker 1: his band, but we became really good friends and we
Speaker 1: stayed in touch. Ah. He he had just done Nightmare
Speaker 1: in Elm Street, so whatever year that was. He's in
Speaker 1: the movie for two seconds. He gets killed in the
Speaker 1: first scene of the movie, but somebody spotted him and
Speaker 1: they offered him the twenty one Jump Street. And he
Speaker 1: came out here and he made friends with Nick Cage
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other people, and and he's just
Speaker 1: a super talented guy and not a bad guitar player either.
Speaker 1: So uh, we were friends from then and then um,
Speaker 1: when I came out here to do I mean I
Speaker 1: ran into him from time to time. I did a
Speaker 1: couple of when he was on the Letterman Show. He
Speaker 1: would call me up in sam In Town and we
Speaker 1: would go meet and go out to dinner. But when
Speaker 1: I was doing that Music from Another Dimension, Stephen ran
Speaker 1: into him and invited him down to the studio, and
Speaker 1: when he saw me, I said, you can hang anytime
Speaker 1: you want. So then he told Joe and I had
Speaker 1: a couple of houses. Anybody wants to hang out anyway,
Speaker 1: that's you know. Johnny and I just go way back
Speaker 1: and he's he's just like a super generous person and
Speaker 1: a sweet guy. No matter what. The press loves to
Speaker 1: kill him. But right, you know him on the in
Speaker 1: real life. Yeah, I do exactly. Just a couple of
Speaker 1: other things. Uh, if you have to pick your favorite
Speaker 1: record you did, what would that be? Rock? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me tell you why. The thing I like about
Speaker 1: any The thing I like about any piece of art,
Speaker 1: any piece of art is truth, some bit of truth,
Speaker 1: something where it's all coming together. And I don't understand
Speaker 1: a lot about my My daughter is a big wig
Speaker 1: in the art world. She takes me to you know,
Speaker 1: art freeze here she came out. I don't understand a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff. I should tries to explain it
Speaker 1: to me. There's a lot of art I understand. I
Speaker 1: don't understand a to rap music, but I consider it
Speaker 1: art um To me, Rocks is art and because of
Speaker 1: its truth. We created the We created the music in
Speaker 1: a in a warehouse at rehearsal. All of it was
Speaker 1: ground up. Note by not three months. This is pre production.
Speaker 1: As every day that went by in that warehouse, I
Speaker 1: put a rug somewhere, or coultu or a chair to
Speaker 1: change the sound of the room to make it so
Speaker 1: that we could work in it. But even the key
Speaker 1: of the song was dependent on the sound of the room,
Speaker 1: even the lyric was dependent on the field in that room.
Speaker 1: Everything was dependent on the room. And so when it
Speaker 1: came time to record, I said, we're not moving out
Speaker 1: of here. Well, we're all a truck in and we'll
Speaker 1: record the whole thing right in the room was we're Waltham, Massachusetts. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that that album has a truth to it.
Speaker 1: It's all it's like an unmanufactured sounding. It just sounds
Speaker 1: like it's happening. You know, it's not live, but it
Speaker 1: all the I mean, the band members are playing live,
Speaker 1: but has overdubs. UM. But that's my favorite. Has a
Speaker 1: vibe and a feel and a sound. That was also
Speaker 1: the biggest up until maybe you know, Toys in the
Speaker 1: Attic is far bigger, really bigger than Rocks. Have Toys
Speaker 1: in the Attics Now, I weighed in about eighteen million,
Speaker 1: what's Rocks about fifteen and Boudican is over fifteen. My
Speaker 1: catalogs nice okay, And then uh, if you have to
Speaker 1: pick a favorite track, you worked on beautiful Boy. That
Speaker 1: all that almost needs no explanation Okay. On that note,
Speaker 1: unless there's a story where you need to tell Okay.
Speaker 1: This has been wonderful going into the belly of the
Speaker 1: beast with Jack Douglas stories most people are unaware of.
Speaker 1: It's been a great conversation. Thanks so much for coming by. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm always good to see you another dinner soon. Absolutely
Speaker 1: looking forward to him