Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is songwriter Holly Knight. She has a
Speaker 1: new book entitled I Am the Warrior, My crazy life
Speaker 1: writing the Hits and rocking the MTV Eighties. So, Holly,
Speaker 1: why did you write the book? Why did I write
Speaker 1: the book? I guess I wrote it for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. I tried to actually write it a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and I took it to a person that
Speaker 1: represents writers, and she came back and she said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really well written. I really like it,
Speaker 1: but you're not a household name and I probably won't
Speaker 1: be able to get you a deal. So I went, oh,
Speaker 1: and I put it aside for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half, and then people kept bugging me and going,
Speaker 1: why aren't you know? I'd be in the kitchen at
Speaker 1: some party or something and they don't you have to
Speaker 1: write a book. You have so many stories and they're
Speaker 1: so very there's so many different artists. So I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, uh fuck it, I'm doing it, and
Speaker 1: so I put together a book proposal. I've learned how
Speaker 1: to do it the proper way, you know. I got
Speaker 1: an agent and I got a deal and that's how
Speaker 1: it started, really, and then you know, the pandemic was
Speaker 1: going on, so I was home all the time anyway,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, I really need a break
Speaker 1: from songwriting, which happens to me during different so periodically
Speaker 1: I just have to stop writing and I need something
Speaker 1: else to put my creative juice into. So I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Actually, I had a lot of fun writing
Speaker 1: this book. Okay, what's the reaction been from some of
Speaker 1: the people you mentioned. You're very honest, you say who
Speaker 1: you have sex with. Some people you're not so charitable too.
Speaker 1: Have you gotten any feedback you mean the people in
Speaker 1: the book? Yeah, I got. I got feedback from Kathy
Speaker 1: Valentine and Cassandra Peterson, my two buddies, and they loved it.
Speaker 1: I mean, Cassandra was so sweet and she said I
Speaker 1: had no idea you loved me so much, which is
Speaker 1: pretty funny. But and Kathy as well, and they both
Speaker 1: said that they were really impressed with the fact that
Speaker 1: it was actually really well written. It wasn't just like
Speaker 1: schlocked down. They're like, here, this happened, and this happened.
Speaker 1: I tried to be you know, tried to be sort
Speaker 1: of artistic and as far as the guys, let's see,
Speaker 1: I had everybody has been just freaking out over it
Speaker 1: and telling me they love it. But the people that
Speaker 1: are in it, I haven't gone out of my way
Speaker 1: to tell too many of them that they're in the book.
Speaker 1: And a lot of them I sent the book to, like,
Speaker 1: I sent it to Jean Gene Simmons, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if he reads books, but he put a really
Speaker 1: nice blurb on it, which was fantastic. And what was
Speaker 1: great about it was his blurb totally mirrored the story
Speaker 1: that I wrote about in the book, which kind of
Speaker 1: was validating. You know. I sent a copy to Paul Stanley.
Speaker 1: I doubt he'll read it. Stephen. I didn't send it
Speaker 1: to Steven Tyler. He's got a lot of stuff going
Speaker 1: on right now. What about Rod Stewart, You know, you
Speaker 1: take a few swings into him, not vicious, but he
Speaker 1: comes over to write a song and you never write right. Well,
Speaker 1: well that's his fault. You know. He was too busy
Speaker 1: being mischievous and horsing around. And it was really important
Speaker 1: to me to write something good. I mean, look, these
Speaker 1: people call me to write something that you know, they've
Speaker 1: run out of either juice or steam, or they've been
Speaker 1: doing it too long, or they want fresh blood. And
Speaker 1: so I can't just write an ordinary track, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to write something that's really, really good. And
Speaker 1: it was just frustrating. I mean I talked about it
Speaker 1: in the book, and I don't think I put him
Speaker 1: down it all. I just sort of told the facts
Speaker 1: and said that I was, you know, all the different
Speaker 1: things that happened, and honestly, when I saw him, I
Speaker 1: mean that happened what twenty years ago, no more like
Speaker 1: thirty five years ago when I wrote Love Touch. But
Speaker 1: he had made a remark, you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: he made a remark in the book about how it
Speaker 1: was sorry, not in the book, he made a remark
Speaker 1: on an anthology record that he did, and he said
Speaker 1: that this song love Touch was one of the silliest
Speaker 1: songs or embarrassing songs he'd ever recorded, which was a shocker,
Speaker 1: because that's not how it went down at all. He
Speaker 1: absolutely loved it, and he got me to come in
Speaker 1: and sing it, and I played all the instruments on it,
Speaker 1: and he sent me flowers afterwards telling them how he
Speaker 1: loved it. So it was like a complete about face.
Speaker 1: And I think that had a lot to do with,
Speaker 1: you know, the Man's club and everything that the rest
Speaker 1: of his band and people whispering in his ear. But
Speaker 1: the funny thing is I saw him at the Tina
Speaker 1: Turner premier in London and the West End and he
Speaker 1: was like, my best friend. I don't even I've seen
Speaker 1: him before that he doesn't remember any of that. He
Speaker 1: turned once to someone and it was his family. I
Speaker 1: ran into him in Central Park in New York at
Speaker 1: a restaurant and he turned to his family and said,
Speaker 1: Holly and I wrote this hit song, this great song together,
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, well, wow, no you didn't write it
Speaker 1: with me, But now you think it's a hit song again,
Speaker 1: So you know what the fuck it's you know, getting older?
Speaker 1: What can I if you get paid anyway? I love touch?
Speaker 1: Does it bug you when he says the song is
Speaker 1: sillier doesn't like it? Yeah, I think it does bet
Speaker 1: me because you know, I'm still I still have feelings,
Speaker 1: and if it were true, I would even say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not one of the best songs I've written. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I've written a lot of songs with or you know,
Speaker 1: for kiss and I wouldn't go walking down suns and
Speaker 1: saying this is the best song I've ever written. I mean,
Speaker 1: water seats its own level, and they're great kiss songs,
Speaker 1: but they're not the level of some of the songs
Speaker 1: I write where I put a lot of effort into
Speaker 1: lyrics and things like that. And that's why I said
Speaker 1: in the book, I said, you know, I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: the lyrics I felt to love touch were fucking poetry.
Speaker 1: And I said it because I really feel that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some really a lot of thought went into that tune.
Speaker 1: I think he missed the whole point of it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm not. I mean, I'm not upset about
Speaker 1: it now. I got it out in the book. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how cathartic this book has been, because there were
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I was kind of walking around,
Speaker 1: you know, chewing on it like a bone, and it
Speaker 1: just this somehow helped me to let it go. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier the boys club men's influence. What's it
Speaker 1: like being a woman, or has been being a woman
Speaker 1: in a guy's world. It's been interesting. I was always
Speaker 1: a tomboy growing up, and also I kind of grew
Speaker 1: up with a bit of a chip on my shoulder
Speaker 1: based on my upbringing, and I also took music very
Speaker 1: very seriously. I mean I started playing piano when I
Speaker 1: was four, and I was playing Mozart sonatas in you know,
Speaker 1: Mendelssohn at a ridiculously young age. So I was very confident.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of things I'm not confident about,
Speaker 1: or weren't I wasn't confident about, but music was definitely
Speaker 1: not one of them. So when I walked into those rooms,
Speaker 1: I just felt like, let's get to work. I have
Speaker 1: every right. I have as much right to be here
Speaker 1: as you do. And the minute we would start working
Speaker 1: or I would start playing something, they would shut up,
Speaker 1: you know, they would actually you could actually see the change.
Speaker 1: It was really quite amazing to watch. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: my name started getting around and I think people just
Speaker 1: accepted me. There was a lot of respect. It was
Speaker 1: kind of unbelievable in a way that they just sort
Speaker 1: of opened their doors and treated me like an cool
Speaker 1: to be honest, except for the few times, and one
Speaker 1: of them was the Rod Stewart story. That's probably the
Speaker 1: probably the I don't want to say dark, but it's
Speaker 1: probably the most revealing one as far as you know,
Speaker 1: being around guys, because I mean, to walk into the room.
Speaker 1: I had been asked to do a tour by the
Speaker 1: management and by Rod, and it was a short tour.
Speaker 1: It was three weeks and their keyboard player couldn't make it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, it's just be so much fun. And
Speaker 1: when I walked in, Rod wasn't there, and I went
Speaker 1: up to the guitarist and yeah, I definitely I had
Speaker 1: something to say about him in the book, for sure,
Speaker 1: But you know, he looked at me like, well, who
Speaker 1: are you? We didn't order any pizza, but let's go.
Speaker 1: You know, we're living in the me too era and
Speaker 1: not all men, but some men are very forward and
Speaker 1: it can be tough being a woman. Did you have
Speaker 1: any of those experiences? No, not really. I had one
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the book when I was about eighteen,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, going sneaking backstage to like
Speaker 1: Madison's Square Garden to sort of I mean, we didn't
Speaker 1: call it networking then, but that's basically what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And I really described the backstage areas like another like
Speaker 1: the other side of the looking glass, like just such
Speaker 1: a strange alternate reality. And there was a band one
Speaker 1: night who they were the opening act to the bigger band,
Speaker 1: and this guy came up to me. I think he
Speaker 1: was a bass player or something, and he said follow me,
Speaker 1: and I followed him into a room and then he
Speaker 1: just turned around and grinned and said, I really would
Speaker 1: like a blowjob. And I just like I looked at
Speaker 1: him like I was. I wasn't scared. I was more
Speaker 1: like disgusted, like ill, and I ran at her there
Speaker 1: as fast as I could. And after that, I just
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, this is not to take away
Speaker 1: from people that have been constantly you know, these stories
Speaker 1: of women that have been abused and raped by men.
Speaker 1: I mean that it's disgusting how that goes on, but
Speaker 1: that's not my story. My story was more like, don't
Speaker 1: fuck with me. You know, if you if you want
Speaker 1: the best to me, let's work together. And then there
Speaker 1: were times, like I said in the book, there was
Speaker 1: plenty of ass grabbing, but that was on both sides.
Speaker 1: You know, if I wanted to be with someone, I
Speaker 1: was flirting back. So you know, the me too movement
Speaker 1: wasn't really sort of happening for me. And I know
Speaker 1: there are there's so many women that that story is true,
Speaker 1: and for them, I think it's wonderful if they have
Speaker 1: the courage to speak up, you know. But I really
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people. Like this book is not
Speaker 1: about you know, who tried to rape me or how
Speaker 1: I went into rehab. I talked about that too. You know.
Speaker 1: I did smoke pot and I did do blow, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't addicted and I stopped doing it thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: And this is not a story about all the drugs
Speaker 1: that nearly killed me. I So, in other words, not
Speaker 1: everybody that drinks alcohol is an alcoholic, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Sure, okay, but you do delineate having sex
Speaker 1: with some of these people you're working with, and that
Speaker 1: is not in most people's books written by women. Do
Speaker 1: you think you're the same and they just don't write
Speaker 1: about it or are you different? Well, I can't speak
Speaker 1: for anybody else's experiences, but I imagined, well I know
Speaker 1: some of them, okay, and I'm not going to name names,
Speaker 1: but yeah, of course, you know, you think if it's different,
Speaker 1: it's not like you pick up a guy like, for instance,
Speaker 1: kiss They would pick up someone in the hallway of
Speaker 1: like you know, the place they were playing in or
Speaker 1: they would probably they would boast about just meeting someone
Speaker 1: and asking them to give them, you know, head or something.
Speaker 1: That was never the case with them. I mean I
Speaker 1: was a little classier than that. These were people that
Speaker 1: I worked with. I mean, look, if you look at
Speaker 1: an actor, he ends up sleeping with the actress that
Speaker 1: he's doing the movie with. It just happens. You spend
Speaker 1: all the time with him. They're charismatic, you're attracted to
Speaker 1: each other, and stuff happens. But I went I never
Speaker 1: picked up people and did one night's stance. Even when
Speaker 1: I was in my bands like Spider and Device, I
Speaker 1: never picked up ever someone on the road. So that's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a difference, you know. But some
Speaker 1: of the guys that I worked with I slept with, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm still friends with him or some of them
Speaker 1: I dated, and some I married. How many times you've
Speaker 1: been married three and are you presently married? No, I've
Speaker 1: been married and divorced three times. So what did you learn?
Speaker 1: I learned that I have to value myself more and
Speaker 1: reach for the higher hanging fruit on the tree, and
Speaker 1: that I well, the second time I got married, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to have children, and you know, my biological
Speaker 1: clock was ticking in and I fell in love with someone,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was a great wife in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I just ended up leading them because I never I
Speaker 1: wasn't very prudent with the choices I made, you know.
Speaker 1: So what I've learned is just to value myself and
Speaker 1: realize that if I'm going to enter in into a series,
Speaker 1: I'll never get married again, that's for sure. But now
Speaker 1: I'm dedicating love as a battlefield when I play. I
Speaker 1: dedicated to my ex husbands, you know. But um, okay,
Speaker 1: if someone who's been married and divorced myself, people just
Speaker 1: once I live with I live just one's been married, Okay,
Speaker 1: and people always say, oh, you know it was equal.
Speaker 1: We agreed, it's never equal. Somebody wants it more than
Speaker 1: the other person. Were you the personally and how was
Speaker 1: it with your three marriages? Um? I would say that, Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, at the end of it, I had
Speaker 1: to kick all three of them out. Um, but I
Speaker 1: would say that, let me think, I have to think
Speaker 1: individually here for a second. Um, I think they needed
Speaker 1: me more than I needed them. Okay, they needed me
Speaker 1: for different reasons than I needed them. What they needed
Speaker 1: me for was, um, a free ride. You know, I
Speaker 1: was the breadwinner, and we could do a whole podcast
Speaker 1: on that. But I think that's that's a little different subject.
Speaker 1: But when one reads the book, if one is Hollywood fluent,
Speaker 1: shit doesn't just happen. So I'm reading the book and
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, this woman had to be
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive in order to be in these situations. Would
Speaker 1: you agree with it? How would you characterize your own behavior?
Speaker 1: I would say more than aggressive. I would say confident
Speaker 1: and sort of creative with how I went about getting
Speaker 1: their attention sometimes or you know, and sometimes yes, aggressive.
Speaker 1: You know. For instance, when I was working with Tina Turner,
Speaker 1: I really wanted her to cut a certain song. She's
Speaker 1: cut none in my but I wrote this one song
Speaker 1: and I said, you called up her manager said you
Speaker 1: have to get her to cut this tune. I know
Speaker 1: this is the perfect tune for And I did that
Speaker 1: whole thing and she ended up cutting it. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because Roger did a BBC interview where he talked
Speaker 1: about it. You know, but um, are you talking about
Speaker 1: my work or my personal life? I'm talking about your work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say I was confident, and I think my
Speaker 1: work spoke for itself. I didn't have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of selling once my name got around. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm more talking about you know, before you had a
Speaker 1: hit with Obsession, and you know with Pat Benatar thereafter,
Speaker 1: when you're scrapping, even when you're a teenager in New
Speaker 1: York City, you know, everyone talks about getting backstage. It
Speaker 1: is not easy to get backstage, it is. I was tenacious, Okay,
Speaker 1: I was absolutely tenacious. I was relentless. Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: If if maybe we're talking about semantics here, if that's
Speaker 1: what you mean by aggressive. Absolutely I was very clever,
Speaker 1: and you know I talked about it in the book.
Speaker 1: I would I would spend most of the time talking
Speaker 1: to the photographers because they always got invited to the
Speaker 1: best parties, and they were the nicest ones. They weren't
Speaker 1: as pretentious as you know, the other uber, trendy cool
Speaker 1: people backstage. They were more down to earth and um,
Speaker 1: I mean I never had a business card or anything,
Speaker 1: but I was always trying to weasel my way into
Speaker 1: some sort of conversation or or you know, and it
Speaker 1: took a while. And like I said that, we didn't
Speaker 1: have the word networking, but that's what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and one thing led to another, to another to another.
Speaker 1: But I think it was more confidence. And I also
Speaker 1: talk about in the book the fact that it was
Speaker 1: kind of crazy the way. I know you're finding it
Speaker 1: hard to believe, Bob, But a lot of things fell
Speaker 1: in my lap. You know, I'm not I wasn't in
Speaker 1: a band where we had a struggle for two three
Speaker 1: years and things just happen. And I really believe in
Speaker 1: a spiritual way that when the universe wants things for you,
Speaker 1: it gets out of your way. And not only that,
Speaker 1: it aid and it bets the process. And these things
Speaker 1: just kept coming in. That's not to say I haven't
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't had to eat shit and I
Speaker 1: haven't had to be turned down all the time. I
Speaker 1: mean even now, you know, I've been in the Songwriters
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. But sometimes it's just degrading the way
Speaker 1: people treat you. The songwriters get treated pretty much like shit.
Speaker 1: So tell me about this chip on your shoulder, be
Speaker 1: a little deeper. What are you talking about. Well, when
Speaker 1: I was growing up and my parents divorced, my mother
Speaker 1: was physically abusive, and you know, I didn't really get it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get into it too much, but
Speaker 1: I told one story just so it would sort of
Speaker 1: show how something inside of me, that the fire in
Speaker 1: my belly was ignited, so to speak, where I got
Speaker 1: tired of it and I learned to fight back. In
Speaker 1: the beginning, I didn't fight back. And when I learned
Speaker 1: to fight back, it's like anything, when you give someone power,
Speaker 1: it's you giving them the power the minute you take
Speaker 1: it away. That it's like, you know, that's seen in
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz where the horrible mean Wizard you
Speaker 1: put back the curtain. You see he's just a little
Speaker 1: old man and he's yeah. So it's sort of like that.
Speaker 1: And so what came with that was a chip on
Speaker 1: the shoulder, you know, talking back to my mother getting
Speaker 1: smack some more. And I just sort of carried that
Speaker 1: on with me as I was sort of out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I talk about it in the book. I
Speaker 1: don't get into it too much, but I was out
Speaker 1: there for about four years, just traveling. I lived everywhere.
Speaker 1: I lived in Seattle fore year, I lived in Boston
Speaker 1: for two years. I was doing everything from food stamps too.
Speaker 1: I'd work long enough to qualify for unemployment, and then
Speaker 1: I'd get the unemployment and then when that would run out,
Speaker 1: you know, I would do all of those things, and
Speaker 1: I had lots of you know, straight jobs those were.
Speaker 1: That was probably the last time I ever had, like
Speaker 1: us a real job, like working for someone else, was
Speaker 1: when I was in Spider and that lasted I think
Speaker 1: about a week, and then we got a record deal.
Speaker 1: And that's why I talked about these things. I kind
Speaker 1: of fall inside into your lap seemingly. But what'd your
Speaker 1: father say when you told him about the abuse? Well
Speaker 1: that was also difficult because my father was in total
Speaker 1: denial and he wouldn't he wouldn't validate anything I was saying.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't call her up and tell her to cut
Speaker 1: it out. And it took about fifty years. I went
Speaker 1: into a therapist's office with him and finally found out
Speaker 1: what was what that was all about, which I don't
Speaker 1: really need to I wouldn't want to, as disrespect to him,
Speaker 1: get into it now. But that also made me angry,
Speaker 1: like why aren't you protecting me? You know? He would
Speaker 1: always sort of like say, oh, she's like one of
Speaker 1: those European women like Gina Lola Bridget as she likes
Speaker 1: to pick up plates and throw him, you know, and
Speaker 1: I would say, no, that's why are you glamorizing that?
Speaker 1: So that that also added to the chip on my shoulder,
Speaker 1: you know, and also the fact that you look, my
Speaker 1: book is dedicated to anyone who ever had a dream
Speaker 1: and was told no, And that was me because I
Speaker 1: was this sort of blossoming classical pianist. My mother really
Speaker 1: wanted to groom me for that, and she said, you're this,
Speaker 1: You're not this. So then there was this angst once
Speaker 1: I discovered rock music, and the louder the better, you know,
Speaker 1: that's where the rebelliousness started to grow, and the chip
Speaker 1: on my shoulder and all that, and you know, that's
Speaker 1: all part of It's so funny how so many things
Speaker 1: in my life have led up to, you know, the
Speaker 1: fact that I wrote The Warrior, that I write songs
Speaker 1: that are about fighting and all that. It's like none
Speaker 1: of it was premeditated. It just kind of unfolded that way.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of times, so when I
Speaker 1: was writing the book, I would come to these sort
Speaker 1: of realizations. I never really analyzed it before until someone says,
Speaker 1: explain it to me. And then you have to put
Speaker 1: it into words, you know, so you ultimately run away
Speaker 1: from home and go on this ajira for years. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that. I left home when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, and it was right before my sixteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I didn't like the abuse that
Speaker 1: was going on at home. My father wasn't listening to me.
Speaker 1: And then one day I went up to my school,
Speaker 1: which was music and art that was at the time.
Speaker 1: It was in a really rough neighborhood, which I don't
Speaker 1: even know the neighborhood is so rough now, but it
Speaker 1: was one hundred and thirty fifth Street in Convent Avenue
Speaker 1: and now this school is next door to Juliard. I
Speaker 1: so wished should have been that way when I went there,
Speaker 1: But again that's my journey. So I remember one day
Speaker 1: I walked up to school and there was like police
Speaker 1: tape everywhere and they were pulling a body out of
Speaker 1: this garbage cam that was chopped up in pieces. They
Speaker 1: just pulled the head out and I looked and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. I'm getting out of here. And I
Speaker 1: had met I already had a boyfriend at that point
Speaker 1: who was twenty. He was a drummer, and we had
Speaker 1: sort of been talking about doing the what IF's, like
Speaker 1: what and I'm thinking, what if I play a house.
Speaker 1: I'm fifteen, What if I go out there and just
Speaker 1: grow up really fast and playhouse? And I was sort
Speaker 1: of entertaining the idea, but I never thought it would happen.
Speaker 1: And then one day I was working at sam Ash.
Speaker 1: I had got a job there, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I loved. I loved working. I loved that feeling of
Speaker 1: making my own money, and to this day that is
Speaker 1: so important to me, not to be dependent on someone else. Okay,
Speaker 1: a little bit, a little bit slower, so you're on
Speaker 1: forty eight Street, but be Mannis and all these things,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was sort of an intense buying experience.
Speaker 1: You just walked in and said, you gotta hire me.
Speaker 1: How did you actually get the job? It's like the
Speaker 1: things that fall into my left I walked in there
Speaker 1: and I remember the manager's name was Herb and I
Speaker 1: said to him, I'm looking for a job. I'm still
Speaker 1: in school, so I can only work part time. I'm
Speaker 1: a musician. Are you hiring? And he just took my number,
Speaker 1: kind of looked at me there like whatever, because everybody
Speaker 1: that worked there. They were all men, and I got
Speaker 1: a call at home that night and asking if I
Speaker 1: could come in the next day. So I guess they
Speaker 1: must have fired someone like unexpectedly, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was in the right place at the right time, and
Speaker 1: he called me in and I loved working there because
Speaker 1: it was sort of with Then this happens a lot
Speaker 1: with musicians that get jobs at all these places like
Speaker 1: Guitar Center or whatever. At least you're around music, and
Speaker 1: it puts you one step closer to being in the
Speaker 1: music business, even if it's a fantasy. But then also
Speaker 1: the fact that so many people come into these stories
Speaker 1: that are legendary. I mean they have to buy equipment,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how it is now, but in
Speaker 1: that day they wanted to come in and check out
Speaker 1: the equipment themselves. Now they maybe they send someone I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I did all the like really crappy
Speaker 1: little jobs that no one else wanted to deal with.
Speaker 1: Like if he wanted to sell like an amphead at
Speaker 1: new and it had some knicks on it, he would
Speaker 1: give me a sharpie and I'd have to color it
Speaker 1: in and make it look new. Or he sent me
Speaker 1: in the back where all the cables were. I mean
Speaker 1: to this day, when a roadie sees me take a
Speaker 1: guitar cable and wrap it up there, they're like, where'd
Speaker 1: you learn that? It's like after doing hundreds in the
Speaker 1: backup over and over and over, just like a giscop boom,
Speaker 1: it got really I got good at it, but they
Speaker 1: were kind of crappy things. And then one day on
Speaker 1: my break, I was in the back and I was
Speaker 1: playing keyboards and then I hear someone clapping and I
Speaker 1: turned around and it's heard of the manager and he said,
Speaker 1: where did you learn to play like that? And then
Speaker 1: I told him more about me, and then from that
Speaker 1: point on he used to have me demonstrate keyboards to buyers,
Speaker 1: like I couldn't actually make the sale because I wasn't
Speaker 1: legally old enough or I didn't have a so I
Speaker 1: don't remember what it was, social Security or something, but
Speaker 1: he just sort of would call me out and I
Speaker 1: haven't just go play and you know, and make it sound,
Speaker 1: and I try and make it look like it was easy,
Speaker 1: like if you press this, but you get this sound
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah, and so it was. It was.
Speaker 1: It was cool and a lot of you know, my God,
Speaker 1: A lot of really big artists came in, and I
Speaker 1: would just sort of like poker face to stare, like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, it's Jimmy Page, Holy shit, it's Frank Zappa,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it was like, you know, It's
Speaker 1: one thing when you see something I said in the
Speaker 1: Book of you start to believe that you know people
Speaker 1: when you see them all the time on TV or
Speaker 1: in magazines and stuff. But then when they walk in
Speaker 1: and you realize it's sim and you think, I don't
Speaker 1: really know them at all, but I know that face
Speaker 1: and I know what they've done, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I did that a lot in the book, and I
Speaker 1: still do that. I'm a fan, girl. I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: I'm a music fan, especially that era, you know, the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. There's really nothing like it right now,
Speaker 1: you know, that's for sure. Okay, So tell me about
Speaker 1: actually leaving New York. You mean when I ran away
Speaker 1: the first time? Or yes, because I ran away a
Speaker 1: few times. Okay, So I was fifteen and I lied
Speaker 1: to my mother. I had found out that, oh right.
Speaker 1: I started to tell you about sam Ash I saw
Speaker 1: brochure and it was a summer school program up in
Speaker 1: Boston called the Electronic Boston School of Electronic Music, and
Speaker 1: they were teaching electronic music on synthesizers like ARP twenty
Speaker 1: six hundreds and the Mogue, not just the Mini because
Speaker 1: they had the big mugs like with you know, you
Speaker 1: had to be practically a phone operator to learn how
Speaker 1: to use those because you had to plug all these
Speaker 1: cables in and everything. I was really fascinated with all that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like Emerson, like a Palmer geek,
Speaker 1: and I sort of saw myself as a female version
Speaker 1: of him. You know. I wanted to perform. I didn't
Speaker 1: know I wanted to be a songwriter. I just want
Speaker 1: to be a rock star, you know. And I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be a rock star because I cared about
Speaker 1: so much about being famous. I didn't even think about
Speaker 1: the money part. I just wanted to play the music
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be played, to be playing, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to play to an audience. So that's really
Speaker 1: how it started. The songwriting thing sort of came after
Speaker 1: the fact, after I'm probably getting ahead of myself again,
Speaker 1: but um so I left home pretending that I was
Speaker 1: going to come home on such and such a date,
Speaker 1: like it was labor weekend. I'll see you, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I was just glad to be away from
Speaker 1: my mother, and I think she was probably glad to
Speaker 1: get than me too, So I told her i'd be back.
Speaker 1: And then about a week or so before I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be back, I'd been plotting this all summer.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was like the great escape to me,
Speaker 1: and we'd saved money. I went with the boyfriend, Danny
Speaker 1: the drummer, and somehow I felt safe. And the funny
Speaker 1: part is like it wasn't like I was going out
Speaker 1: on the road with a twenty year old that was
Speaker 1: taking care of me. It was kind of the other
Speaker 1: way around. He was the child and I was taking
Speaker 1: care of him, you know. But at least I felt
Speaker 1: more protected, and I felt that was my first love.
Speaker 1: I fell in love with him, and I had this
Speaker 1: fantasy that we would form a band, and that never happened,
Speaker 1: and we just we went on these crazy adventures that
Speaker 1: you know, when I originally wrote the book, I wrote
Speaker 1: about one hundred pages more and I wrote about some
Speaker 1: of these escapades we went on on the road, because
Speaker 1: that's even more like unbelievable, some of those stories. But
Speaker 1: I decided that this book had to have some sort
Speaker 1: of hook. So the hook for me was the MTV era,
Speaker 1: which was unlike any other to me. You know, that's
Speaker 1: when I had started really having a lot of hits
Speaker 1: and stuff. But so before that, yeah, so we traveled
Speaker 1: around and eventually I ended up back in New York
Speaker 1: and you graduate from high school. I did. What I
Speaker 1: did was I went to Bourns and Noble and I
Speaker 1: got and they were around back then, and I got
Speaker 1: the you know, like when you're studying for college, you're
Speaker 1: studying for certain exams, you have these practice books. So
Speaker 1: I got some practice books for the GED And the
Speaker 1: thing that was amazing was I always had really really
Speaker 1: good reading skills. Like when I was in fourth grade,
Speaker 1: I was reading on a ninth or tenth grade level.
Speaker 1: So that's always gotten me through life because I'm so
Speaker 1: self taught on so many levels and the fact that
Speaker 1: I liked to read. And then the Internet came along
Speaker 1: and it was just like this explosion of like available
Speaker 1: knowledge right at your finger tips. Um. So anyway, I
Speaker 1: studied from the book and I took the test and
Speaker 1: got my diploma, and I thought, well, that's funny. I've
Speaker 1: just spent three years out on the road, and I
Speaker 1: got my diploma like everybody else my age, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to wait till I was eighteen to qualify,
Speaker 1: and then I sent it to my dad because I
Speaker 1: know he was really ashamed, but I was kind of
Speaker 1: ashamed too that I hadn't graduated. But I knew I
Speaker 1: was going to work it out, you know. And as
Speaker 1: it turned out, I scored really high and I could
Speaker 1: have gone to college, but I didn't have to because
Speaker 1: then my career things happen. You know, So what did
Speaker 1: what did your mother ever say about your success when
Speaker 1: you had it? It took her a long time to
Speaker 1: actually come out and say I'm proud of you. And
Speaker 1: she's probably said that to be in baby three or
Speaker 1: four times my entire life. So hence that's another another
Speaker 1: part of the chip on the shoulder, you know. Um
Speaker 1: she's she's passed away now, so right, that's another thing
Speaker 1: that I thought, now I can write the book because
Speaker 1: both my parents aren't around anymore. Because I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hurt make it worse, or hurt
Speaker 1: their feelings or anything. But um, I always sort of
Speaker 1: when I tell these stories, I placed the story more
Speaker 1: on me as opposed to them, you know what my
Speaker 1: interpretation of that is. But um, like, for instance, I
Speaker 1: would give her, I would give her like a bunch
Speaker 1: of CDs and to listen to and enjoy different ones,
Speaker 1: like like different bands, like one would be bon Jovi
Speaker 1: and one would be Aerosmith and one would be Kissed.
Speaker 1: And I knew she hated that kind of music, so
Speaker 1: she just gave them away. She kind of used it
Speaker 1: to make herself look like, look look at my daughter,
Speaker 1: Look what she did. But she didn't she didn't really
Speaker 1: listen to them herself. And and I wasn't surprised at
Speaker 1: that point, but it still bothered me. You know, it's
Speaker 1: funny when you have this relationship with your parents, no
Speaker 1: matter how fucked up they are, and maybe when they're
Speaker 1: even when they're fucked up, you want you still care
Speaker 1: what they think, even though they've talked and treated you
Speaker 1: badly or whatever. You still want more than anybody else's approval,
Speaker 1: or you want them to say I'm proud of you
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's very important because it's part of who
Speaker 1: you are. Okay, you ultimately join what becomes Spider. Tell
Speaker 1: us how you get into that band, which very interestingly
Speaker 1: includes Anton fig of course, was the drummer for David
Speaker 1: Letterman forever. Yeah, I was friends with someone who you know,
Speaker 1: he was just he was great at hooking people up.
Speaker 1: And he invited me to go see a band one night,
Speaker 1: and I went and band had a couple of members
Speaker 1: that were just filling in because they wanted to do
Speaker 1: their own band. And I met them and one of
Speaker 1: them was Aunton and the other one was Keith, and
Speaker 1: I just immediately like him. And I remember thinking Keith
Speaker 1: had said something about wanting to do his own music
Speaker 1: and wanted to get a record deal and wanted to
Speaker 1: be in a band, and that they were just doing
Speaker 1: this as if you know, a temporary gid to make money,
Speaker 1: and that just really that was like. When he said that,
Speaker 1: I thought, this is the one, This is the one
Speaker 1: if I'm going to give him my number, and he
Speaker 1: seemed interested in me, and I thought, if he calls me,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely going to go check it out. And I
Speaker 1: figured if he doesn't call me in the next couple
Speaker 1: of days, I'm going to call him. I don't care.
Speaker 1: So the next day he called me after I had
Speaker 1: met him, and it was about eleven or eleven thirty
Speaker 1: at night, and he said, we you know, I talked
Speaker 1: to Amanda who was the singer, and Keith and Anton
Speaker 1: and we'd love for you to come down and have
Speaker 1: a listen to our music. And I said, I'd love to.
Speaker 1: When when are you thinking? And he said right now,
Speaker 1: I'm like ready for bed. It was like one of
Speaker 1: the few nights I've taken a bath and already tucked
Speaker 1: in like thinking. And I thought, get your ass up,
Speaker 1: this is it, this is the one. This is what
Speaker 1: you've been waiting for for four years. See when I
Speaker 1: was when I had run away with Danny, we would jam,
Speaker 1: you know, but we were always like a basement band,
Speaker 1: and it usually was just me on keyboards and him
Speaker 1: on drums, and it just I always had the stream,
Speaker 1: and it bothered me that he wasn't. He he didn't
Speaker 1: have sort of the same ambitions. So I was very
Speaker 1: much focused on wanting to make it. At that point,
Speaker 1: I wasn't half asked about it at all. I was
Speaker 1: going out every night, I was sneaking backstage. I was
Speaker 1: networking and going to tracks and to clubs and talking
Speaker 1: to people. And you know, I got a job in
Speaker 1: a music store, so it was all moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: So it's not like I was, you know, a waitress
Speaker 1: in like a in a bar restaurant, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I decided I wanted to be in music.
Speaker 1: This was started when I was four. You know, music
Speaker 1: was my first language and it still is. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: invited me down and we ended up jamming, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really funny because Amanda said something like it
Speaker 1: was too late to go back uptown. I lived up
Speaker 1: on seventieth and on the West Side, and they were
Speaker 1: down in Soho in a loft and Amanda said, you
Speaker 1: should just stay spend the night. You can sleep with
Speaker 1: antone in his room, and we went okay. So I
Speaker 1: went in the room and slept with him and he
Speaker 1: became my boyfriend. I mean, that's how funny it is
Speaker 1: when you're young. It's just you're just young and stupid,
Speaker 1: and it's like it doesn't take much if you're attracted
Speaker 1: to someone to go, you know, okay, let's give this
Speaker 1: a shot. So he was my boyfriend in the band
Speaker 1: for about two and a half years. He's still a
Speaker 1: very good friend of mine, as is Keith. We're all buddies. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Hey, what happened to Keith and Amanda? Ultimately?
Speaker 1: And then a man has a baby with Keith when
Speaker 1: you get there. Then she ends up being involved with
Speaker 1: the Anton as they say, where are all these people today? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, people talk about the social sort of incestuous
Speaker 1: stuff that went on in Fleetwood Mac. But we have
Speaker 1: him beat because when I broke up with Anton, it
Speaker 1: was just too much, you know, like as we were
Speaker 1: trying to get a deal, it was just twenty four
Speaker 1: seven too much. And I knew that being in the band,
Speaker 1: that that was the more important of the two. So
Speaker 1: I moved out of I had moved in the lot,
Speaker 1: and we were all living in this lot together except
Speaker 1: the bass player, and so I decided that I was
Speaker 1: going to move into my own place. And then about
Speaker 1: a year later, things started to deteriorate between Amanda and
Speaker 1: I for reasons that I write about in the book.
Speaker 1: She's the only one I don't talk to. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't talk to Jimmy, but it's not because I'm not
Speaker 1: talking to him. It's it's more like I just don't
Speaker 1: know where he is. He was an amazing bass player.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so after I think was going on while
Speaker 1: I was in the band. I still don't know it.
Speaker 1: I've never really asked them. But Amanda divorced Keith. They
Speaker 1: still had the child Shay together, and then she started
Speaker 1: seeing Anton. At this point I had left the band,
Speaker 1: so but I knew something was going on. I told
Speaker 1: him I'd finished out the tour. She just made a
Speaker 1: switch and went from and they were best friends. They
Speaker 1: had grown up together in South Africa, and Amanda's also African,
Speaker 1: and I think Keith was more like you could have
Speaker 1: her take her. She's always take her off my hands,
Speaker 1: but you'd have to ask him. But that's the story
Speaker 1: that I got. And then they got married and they
Speaker 1: had a child together. So now the lead singers had
Speaker 1: gotten married to two different members at different times and
Speaker 1: had children with both of them. And Keith and Anton
Speaker 1: are still like best friends. That's the best part. They
Speaker 1: don't talk to her, but they're like boys stick together,
Speaker 1: you know. I think the whole thing's actually pretty funny
Speaker 1: when I think about it now. So tell us about
Speaker 1: changing your name. So we all we were so focused
Speaker 1: on getting a record deal, and you know, we wrote
Speaker 1: original material, and I changed my name because my original name,
Speaker 1: which is German Jewish, which I meant, you know, I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book. It just didn't nobody ever
Speaker 1: pronounced it correctly in the first place. And I was
Speaker 1: just trying to think of a name that would be cool.
Speaker 1: And I had a dream one night, and in the
Speaker 1: dream I was Holly Night. So Holly has always been
Speaker 1: my name, but the Night came to me in a
Speaker 1: dream and I never questioned it. It It just seemed so
Speaker 1: normal in the dream. I loved it, and I when
Speaker 1: I woke up, I thought that's it. And I didn't
Speaker 1: really read into it until much later is my life
Speaker 1: started unfolding the significance of the word night because the
Speaker 1: Nights are warriors and they're fighters, you know, and they
Speaker 1: protect people. I just liked it because it was British.
Speaker 1: I was sort of without knowing what an Anglo file was.
Speaker 1: I was a total Anglo file. You all started with
Speaker 1: James Bond and then I'm just to this day, it's
Speaker 1: like English accent just melts me. And it's a very
Speaker 1: common name in England. It's like akin to what Smith
Speaker 1: is here, you know, But also just the rhythm of it,
Speaker 1: because I now I look back and I go Okay,
Speaker 1: the rhythm of lyrics and the rhythm of things Holy Knight.
Speaker 1: I have a son, Tristan Knight, Dylan Knight. It's all
Speaker 1: the same sort of you know, rhythm to it. And
Speaker 1: that's It's funny because all these years I've had different
Speaker 1: publishing companies and I always sort of play around with
Speaker 1: the word nights. So I've had My first publishing company
Speaker 1: was Ninty Night. Of course these are all with k's okay,
Speaker 1: ninety Night. Then I had night Club. Then I had
Speaker 1: um Nightlife Music. My Instagram is night Vision. Then I
Speaker 1: had another publishing company because every time you change your
Speaker 1: publishing deal, you have to change your publishing name, at
Speaker 1: least I did. And then I had good Night like
Speaker 1: good Night Songs, and the one that I have now
Speaker 1: is Knighted Knighted Songs. Okay, you wit. You end up
Speaker 1: connecting with Bill alcoyne. Tell us about that and what
Speaker 1: Bill was really like. Bill was like no other manager
Speaker 1: that I've met, and I've met a lot of them,
Speaker 1: worked with a lot of them over the years. He
Speaker 1: was very unique. He was very charismatic from manager he
Speaker 1: managed kiss and what happened was I'll try and make
Speaker 1: this really short. There were three South Africans in the
Speaker 1: group and they befriended Eddie Kramer, who was also you know,
Speaker 1: they had that expatriot think of another South African. And
Speaker 1: for those that are listening, if you don't know, you
Speaker 1: know he did Hendrix in Zeppelins as a producer. He
Speaker 1: wanted to produce the band when we got our record deal,
Speaker 1: and so Bill A. Coyne was managing Kiss and they
Speaker 1: each were about to do a solo record. Eddie Kramer
Speaker 1: was doing Ace Freeley's record, and Keith thought, oh, I
Speaker 1: have the song and he said to Eddie, can you
Speaker 1: give this to Ace? Maybe he'll cut it. Well. Ace
Speaker 1: heard the song and didn't really care for it, but
Speaker 1: he loved the drummer and that was Anton, so he said,
Speaker 1: do you think he would come and play on the record,
Speaker 1: So he did. Then they became friends, Party Animal friends,
Speaker 1: and and Kiss heard Anton play on Ace's record and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh my god, we should get him
Speaker 1: to play on the Kiss records because Peter Chris was
Speaker 1: you know, he was a mess at the time and
Speaker 1: wasn't really in any condition to play on any record.
Speaker 1: So Anton ended up playing on Dynasty as well. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: It's all in the book. There's a great chapter on
Speaker 1: the Spider and Kiss Sing and anyway, that's how we
Speaker 1: met the band. We met Kiss and we started to
Speaker 1: get to know them because I was Anton's girlfriend. Every
Speaker 1: time Anton would go out shrinking or parting, I was
Speaker 1: invited because I was the girlfriend, you know, So I
Speaker 1: got to know Ace, and you know, eventually they got
Speaker 1: to Bill, who came down to see us play. We
Speaker 1: were the house band at a club called Tracks, and
Speaker 1: he came back to the little dressing arms the size
Speaker 1: of a bathroom. We were all practically naked standing there
Speaker 1: changing and he's just talking, like doesn't care at all
Speaker 1: that we're changing in the same room. He goes, I
Speaker 1: want to manage you, and we were like what. We
Speaker 1: looked at each other, did we really hear him say that?
Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, I want to manage you, and
Speaker 1: we all screamed like holy fuck, you know, or some
Speaker 1: form of it. Because everybody wanted Bill a coin. He
Speaker 1: was like the superstar. There were a few of them,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely one of them. And then that's
Speaker 1: how we ended up going about trying to get our
Speaker 1: deal and we signed to rock Steady, which was you know,
Speaker 1: the aduction company. But going back to what was Bill like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: Bill was totally out with being gay at a time
Speaker 1: that nobody who's really being out with it. He just
Speaker 1: didn't care. He just wore like a badge on his coat.
Speaker 1: And speaking of coats, he didn't look anything like a
Speaker 1: rock and roll This guy wore like suits, business suits
Speaker 1: in a tie, you know, so we really kind of
Speaker 1: elegant or whatever. And even though he looked really straight,
Speaker 1: he's probably one of the most rock and roll trashy
Speaker 1: people like when it came to you know, his own
Speaker 1: personal lifestyle and stuff. But yeah, I liked him immensely.
Speaker 1: But you know, he favored the boys in the band,
Speaker 1: so he would try and if we would go over
Speaker 1: to his fancy apartment in the Olympic Powers, which was
Speaker 1: really sort of a fabulous place. You know, disco music
Speaker 1: would be playing and he'd be giving the guys like
Speaker 1: something that would keep them up and erected. He was
Speaker 1: giving us something that would just make us pass out
Speaker 1: so that he could have his way with the boys.
Speaker 1: And again, if you think of the me too, you
Speaker 1: know what and even me, like we just looked at
Speaker 1: him like fuck off. If we would laugh about it,
Speaker 1: and then he would laugh and that was it, you know.
Speaker 1: He never he never actually tried to like do suddenly
Speaker 1: with the guys unless they were willing at that time,
Speaker 1: That's my take on it. And we never took any
Speaker 1: of his drugs. We were like, I'm not taking that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to go to sleep in
Speaker 1: your apartment. So um, I don't know. I look at
Speaker 1: it as all part of the whole sex drugs in
Speaker 1: rock and roll territory, and it was really good fun,
Speaker 1: you know. And I really liked Bill a lot, So
Speaker 1: tell us about getting hooked up with the Commander Mike Chapman, right.
Speaker 1: I really liked some of the things I've read that
Speaker 1: you've written about him, by the way, and things where
Speaker 1: I wanted to chime in because you were interested in
Speaker 1: all that. Mike was again very much like Bill a
Speaker 1: coin and as much as he was one of the
Speaker 1: straightest looking guys, like he would always wear white polo
Speaker 1: shirts and white tennis shorts and sneakers. He just looked
Speaker 1: so straight, you know, and he is probably one to
Speaker 1: this day, I could say one of the most rock
Speaker 1: and roll guys I know, because it's a mindset, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not about what you're wearing. And I was going
Speaker 1: out with a guy named Gray who worked at the
Speaker 1: Record Plan and he had done quite a lot of
Speaker 1: records with Mike. He did the Blindee records, and he
Speaker 1: did a lot of stuff before that, during this sort
Speaker 1: of CBGB's period, and he told me that I should
Speaker 1: check out Mike Chapman. And he said, you know what's
Speaker 1: different about him is he's he's a really good songwriter.
Speaker 1: So you don't just get someone that's pushing the faders.
Speaker 1: You're going to get someone that really knows how to
Speaker 1: write tunes and knows good tunes. And he said, And
Speaker 1: I thought that was really important because I always thought
Speaker 1: the only way you're gonna get on the radios is
Speaker 1: to have like great songs, you know. You know, I
Speaker 1: mean the word pop we all know comes from the
Speaker 1: word popular, but that doesn't mean what it means now
Speaker 1: in today's world that pop sometimes is looked down upon
Speaker 1: as cheesy or lightweight. Pop. To me, back then just
Speaker 1: meant it was popular because it was weird. It was
Speaker 1: so so good that everybody wanted to hear it, you know,
Speaker 1: So I sort of made up my business. While they
Speaker 1: were trying to get Eddie, I was trying to get Mike.
Speaker 1: And at this point I had discovered that I could
Speaker 1: write songs. And I say this in the book. I
Speaker 1: just started writing because they were writing and their songs
Speaker 1: kind of were pretty mediocre and they weren't the kind
Speaker 1: of songs that we're going to get us on the radio.
Speaker 1: So I just started thinking, well, if they have the
Speaker 1: confidence to do it, I'm going to have the confidence
Speaker 1: to do And that's really how I became initially how
Speaker 1: I started writing. And so by the time my friend
Speaker 1: Gray had told me about Chapman, I thought, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very very important to have good songs, you know. So
Speaker 1: I we didn't have the Internet in that day, so
Speaker 1: and I kept saying to Bill, Bill, can you try
Speaker 1: and get ahold of Mike Chapman? And Bill was busy
Speaker 1: with Kiss. That was the other thing, like we always,
Speaker 1: everybody else came second because Kiss was the moneymaker. So
Speaker 1: we a lot of times we were left to our
Speaker 1: own devices to figure these things out. And I think
Speaker 1: maybe he thought it was premature anyway, But anyway, as
Speaker 1: Seren deputy would have it. I met him at a
Speaker 1: club at Tracks. I met him at the club Tracks
Speaker 1: where we were the house band, and I was talking
Speaker 1: to the Knack who he had just produced. He had
Speaker 1: done my Sharona and and we were talking to him.
Speaker 1: Someone had introduced us, and Mike walked over and they
Speaker 1: introduced us and you know Australian slang kind of now.
Speaker 1: I look back at and I thought he looked like
Speaker 1: Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee. And we had a nice
Speaker 1: enough chat. It was nothing or whatever, and then he
Speaker 1: excused himself to go to the bar and get a
Speaker 1: drink in and Prescott, the bass player, said, that's my chat.
Speaker 1: He produced our record. He didn't even say Mike Chatman.
Speaker 1: He said he was the one that produced our record.
Speaker 1: And I said, was that Mike Chapman, Because when they
Speaker 1: introduced me, they just said Mike, not knowing that I'm
Speaker 1: looking everywhere for this guy. So the minute I found
Speaker 1: out it was, they said, yeah, it's Mike Chapman. So
Speaker 1: I went. I found Anton who was wandering that around
Speaker 1: the club and I had to beat it out of
Speaker 1: him to get the tape. We just done a bunch
Speaker 1: of songs demos to try and get a record deal,
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to give it to me because
Speaker 1: he said it was my own copy. And I I
Speaker 1: didn't beat it out of him, but close to it,
Speaker 1: and he gave it to me, and I kissed him
Speaker 1: on the cheek and ran away and gave it to
Speaker 1: Mike and I said, I didn't know you were the
Speaker 1: Mike Chapman. I'm so sorry because I've been looking for you.
Speaker 1: I've been hunting you down and I need. I'm going
Speaker 1: to court you because I want you to produce you.
Speaker 1: I said all these things, like, there's a really long speech.
Speaker 1: And finally, so did you listen to the tape? You know?
Speaker 1: And he remember he stuck it in his pocket and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget He pat it and he said, yep,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna listen to this tape. He said, but I
Speaker 1: have to tell you a bit of an asshole when
Speaker 1: it comes to calling people back. He said, just keep
Speaker 1: calling me. I'm at the record plan. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: Blondie record. He was working on Auto American, which had
Speaker 1: all those huge hits on it, like a rapture and
Speaker 1: the tide is high tide kind of thing. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so he would never take my call. And I
Speaker 1: called him for two weeks straight and I could hear
Speaker 1: in the background he's going, oh shit, it's said, Holly
Speaker 1: night check again. I told her to call me, and
Speaker 1: because I remember I heard Debbie once saying like, who
Speaker 1: is she? Is that your girlfriend? Erstanding? You know, I
Speaker 1: was like no, no, no, yeah. So um, he didn't
Speaker 1: call me back. And I guess when you asked me
Speaker 1: the question before, was I aggressive? I guess the answer
Speaker 1: is yes. Um. See, to me, I'm normal, so I
Speaker 1: don't think of it in terms of aggressive. But he
Speaker 1: told me I could. He told me to be relentless.
Speaker 1: So I took him up on it, and that's to me,
Speaker 1: that's what it takes. You know, you just try and
Speaker 1: hope that you're not being obnoxious. You know, there comes
Speaker 1: a point there's a fine line between obnoxious and just
Speaker 1: you know, um for two you know just I can't
Speaker 1: think of the word right now, but tenacious. Yeah. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so he called me up and he said I'm leaving today,
Speaker 1: I'm done with the record. I'm getting on the plane
Speaker 1: going back home to LA And my heart sunk. I
Speaker 1: thought he's not We lost that chance, and he goes no.
Speaker 1: He says, I'm going to listen to your tape on
Speaker 1: the plane. I have nowhere to go. I'm a cap
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm not going in. I'm a captive listener.
Speaker 1: So I will call you in a few weeks. And
Speaker 1: I was like subscited and I hung up, and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh God, I can't I can't wait to tell the
Speaker 1: guys in the band. And eight hours later he called
Speaker 1: me and he said, I listened to your tape three
Speaker 1: times on the plane. He says, you guys are fabulous.
Speaker 1: I have a record label and I want to sign you. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a complicated thing. Mike was the guy with
Speaker 1: the O'china chap with his partner in uh Nikki Chin
Speaker 1: in the UK, and he moves to LA and forms
Speaker 1: Dreamland Records. Ultimately he's too busy to record your record.
Speaker 1: You work with Peter Coleman. It has got a pretty
Speaker 1: good track record himself, certainly, you know with Pat bennettar
Speaker 1: on the first album, etc. In retrospect, was that a misstep?
Speaker 1: Forget that it led to your songwriting career. Do you
Speaker 1: think that Spider would have broken through if you signed
Speaker 1: with a regular major record company. It's possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: things happen there. You know, at any at any given point,
Speaker 1: you can take this road to the left or this
Speaker 1: row to the right, and it changes the trajector of everything.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to say. Maybe if we'd have been
Speaker 1: in a major label, we would have gone on to
Speaker 1: make well, I mean, we made two records, but we
Speaker 1: would have gone on to make a third record, and
Speaker 1: it would have been in the director of a song
Speaker 1: that I wrote on a second record with Mike Chapman,
Speaker 1: which was better be Good to Me and became the
Speaker 1: second single on Tina Turner's Private Dancer. But I'm getting
Speaker 1: ahead of myself. I just really wanted I wanted to
Speaker 1: work with Mike. I wasn't. I mean, it was nice
Speaker 1: that he owned the label, and it's great because we
Speaker 1: got a deal, and who knows if we would have
Speaker 1: gotten another deal. You know, we had a couple of
Speaker 1: labels that had passed on us, or we had one
Speaker 1: I think it was Sony. They liked us a lot,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to see us live and we were
Speaker 1: getting ready to do that when this all happened, and
Speaker 1: we just let's just go for this, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought he was so cool and the kind of records
Speaker 1: that he was doing were so artsy. You know. He
Speaker 1: just had this reputation for doing things that were artsy
Speaker 1: but commercial, and to do both is very hard. Okay.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to be able to write something that's
Speaker 1: super artsy, but people can't relate to or latch their
Speaker 1: their hooks into. And it's very easy to write something
Speaker 1: that's commercial fluff, which is an artsy But to meet
Speaker 1: in the middle and do both, that's that's the that's
Speaker 1: the key to writing for me, writing great songs, um,
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean even when when I was
Speaker 1: writing Loves a Battlefield with him, that to me is
Speaker 1: a little bit more daring, an archie title. It's not
Speaker 1: your normal title, like you know, like a lot of songs.
Speaker 1: So I just I like that. I like the fact
Speaker 1: that he was successful. I like the fact that he
Speaker 1: lived in London and had done all the glamor stuff
Speaker 1: like you know, um, The Sweet and and um some
Speaker 1: of those other bands, even Susie Quatroo. I mean, there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of women doing rock and so when
Speaker 1: when he said he loved the band, um, that meant
Speaker 1: a lot. And what meant even more was when I
Speaker 1: decided to leave the band, because what happened was, as
Speaker 1: we were doing a couple of records, we would never
Speaker 1: tell the label who wrote what. We would just turn
Speaker 1: in the songs because we wanted them to be, you know, unbiased.
Speaker 1: Just pick the songs you like, and they would always
Speaker 1: pick mine and they would always end up being the single.
Speaker 1: And that just created a lot of animosity in the band.
Speaker 1: And what's weird was it wasn't from the guys as
Speaker 1: much as much as it was from the singer, who
Speaker 1: was a girl like I was. More I was, my
Speaker 1: alliance was more with the guys, and it kind of
Speaker 1: shifted with her. But I'm not sure if some of
Speaker 1: the personal stuff that was going on probably had something
Speaker 1: to do with it too, although I never really talked
Speaker 1: to her about it. But I decided to leave the band,
Speaker 1: and Mike became my future. He became my mentor, you know,
Speaker 1: more than anybody that I can think of in my life,
Speaker 1: with all the people that I've written in my entire career,
Speaker 1: I think, to this day my favorite person to write
Speaker 1: with as Mike because he's the real thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's got that thing that I try to have
Speaker 1: as well, which I think I do, is to be
Speaker 1: artsy but also to be a commercially successful. Okay, to
Speaker 1: what degree every single act Sandy Cinnamon everything stiffed on
Speaker 1: his level? To what degree did that affect him? Well?
Speaker 1: He ended up breaking up the label and just sort
Speaker 1: of ending that whole relationship with Nikki Chen. I think
Speaker 1: there was a lot of stuff that was going on
Speaker 1: also that between them that he was just he just
Speaker 1: reached the end of his rope. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they had this famous Chinny Chap alliance, you know, the
Speaker 1: great songwriters, and you think, oh, it's like Lennon McCartney, right,
Speaker 1: But in Lennon McCartney's case, they actually both contributed and
Speaker 1: we're both geniuses. In Mike's case, Nikki was the business
Speaker 1: partner and Mike was the artist and the writer, and
Speaker 1: Nick he was he could call himself a writer. Anybody
Speaker 1: can call himself a writer. But I've written with a
Speaker 1: Nikki and I can tell you that he's not a writer,
Speaker 1: and Mike is. And Mike, for some stupid reason, just
Speaker 1: kept giving up income and credit credit, sorry, kept giving
Speaker 1: up credit to Nikki for songs that basically he sat
Speaker 1: there with a yellow pad. And I know this because
Speaker 1: Mike we've talked about it, and I said, are you
Speaker 1: okay with me talking about this? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he said, I want you to talk about it. I
Speaker 1: am so sick of it. I want people to know
Speaker 1: what really happened. But you know, all those great songs
Speaker 1: that came out of them and stuff, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much it was Mike and I write about it in
Speaker 1: the book because the first song I ever wrote with
Speaker 1: Mike was better be Good to Me, and that became
Speaker 1: our was going to be our second single on the
Speaker 1: Spider record, and a few weeks later after we had
Speaker 1: recorded it. Oh, by the way, he ended up producing that. See.
Speaker 1: That was part of my little scheme, as I thought,
Speaker 1: if I could get him to write with me, maybe
Speaker 1: I can just get him to produce it. And because
Speaker 1: he was such a I mean, he was a great producer,
Speaker 1: just got great performances out of the band, like so
Speaker 1: much more than Peter ever did. I mean, Peter was
Speaker 1: a sweetheart, but Mike was. Mike was like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was like a supernova. He really had that skill.
Speaker 1: And we didn't sound the same on that track. There's
Speaker 1: actually a version of it out there on YouTube where
Speaker 1: we played that song in Germany and you can air
Speaker 1: our version, and it's much more kind of druggy. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like Lou Reed's take a Walk on the
Speaker 1: wild Side, you know. And I love Tina Turner's version,
Speaker 1: but it's very very fast, upbeating and all that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I walked into the office and Nicki's name was on
Speaker 1: the song on the lyrics, and I said to Mike,
Speaker 1: I think there's a mistake. Nicki's name is on the lyrics,
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I know, and I kind of
Speaker 1: looked at him. I was so young, and I was
Speaker 1: star struck at that point with Mike, just the fact
Speaker 1: that he was working with me, because everybody was always
Speaker 1: approaching him, wanting him to do their next record. You know.
Speaker 1: He just had number one after one after one, and
Speaker 1: so I was very careful. I didn't want to I
Speaker 1: didn't want to piss him off, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: him to think that I was being an ingrate. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy about it. And he said, I tell
Speaker 1: you what, he said, just agree to this. It'll never
Speaker 1: happen again. And I said, why's that and he said, well,
Speaker 1: because he's been doing this for years, and I'm done
Speaker 1: with that. We have a partnership agreement that whenever one
Speaker 1: of us writes, we both share in it. Of course,
Speaker 1: Nikki never really wrote anything significant without Mike or with Mike. Actually,
Speaker 1: he said, just agree to it and you'll never have
Speaker 1: to do it again. So I did so to this day,
Speaker 1: I just like I get you know, I get angry
Speaker 1: when I see his name there. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. I mean, it happens all
Speaker 1: the time to songwriters. You know, we're a publisher or
Speaker 1: not a publisher, a producer will just add their well,
Speaker 1: they won't add their name, but they'll give you an ultimatum.
Speaker 1: If you don't put me on as a songwriter, we're
Speaker 1: not cutting your song. So you know, after that happened,
Speaker 1: I just I found I would never agree to that again.
Speaker 1: I didn't care who it was. They were either going
Speaker 1: to write this song with me, but I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: even if it was something like Madonna, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to let them put their name there just so I
Speaker 1: could get the cut. Okay, where is Mike today? And
Speaker 1: you said he said you could tell his story? Where
Speaker 1: is he today? Is he working in how much contact
Speaker 1: you have with him. He lives in London. He is
Speaker 1: working sort of in the trendy Shoreditch sort of musicians.
Speaker 1: He's working with a lot of young people. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what he's put out. I mean, I don't really,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's I don't know. He's always busy
Speaker 1: working on something. But you know, I have to say, like,
Speaker 1: this happens to everybody. It happened to me, it hap
Speaker 1: to him, It's happened to you too, It's happened to everyone.
Speaker 1: You have some point in your career where it's just explosive,
Speaker 1: and then you're sort of established and you go on
Speaker 1: and you continue, but you're not always on the top forever,
Speaker 1: you know, even if your talent is still the same,
Speaker 1: even if you've gotten better or whatever. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of like a rite of passage that goes on to
Speaker 1: the next person or whatever. I mean, even groups like
Speaker 1: the Stones, it just happens, you know. So I think
Speaker 1: his last you know, the really big period was also
Speaker 1: during the eighties, you know. I mean I've since then,
Speaker 1: I've had a you know, I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff happening. I've written songs for movies and TV themes
Speaker 1: and all that. But the eighties was really what this
Speaker 1: book is about. That it was just crazy, the amount
Speaker 1: of success and how well it was going and everything.
Speaker 1: And fortunately it was such a significant time period that is,
Speaker 1: it's bigger now than ever. I get more covers now
Speaker 1: on those songs than I did back then, you know.
Speaker 1: But going back to Mike, we're on very good terms.
Speaker 1: We go through a love hay period where sometimes I
Speaker 1: want to kill him, where sometimes he wants to kill me.
Speaker 1: He's still as rude as as ever when it comes
Speaker 1: to returning calls. He's kind of an asshole that way,
Speaker 1: probably by his own admission, and he just he disappears
Speaker 1: he's very eccentric. But then when we see each other,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like we never stopped talking, and it's
Speaker 1: there's there's a very strong bond and love there, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because in the beginning, like I said,
Speaker 1: I was so starstruck to be working with him that
Speaker 1: like I just sponged up stuff and I never talked
Speaker 1: back to him. And then as I started getting older
Speaker 1: and started having success without him and things like that,
Speaker 1: where he would challenge me on something, or I would
Speaker 1: end up calling him a prick, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really is that classic thing of you know, the
Speaker 1: mentor protege, and then the protege matures, and it can
Speaker 1: never be the same for the mentor. You can never
Speaker 1: catch up. The protege is never allowed to catch up
Speaker 1: with the mentor, even if that person has or has
Speaker 1: surpassed them. You know. But I think he's immensely talented,
Speaker 1: immensely eccentric, and he's still alive in kicking. That's all
Speaker 1: I pretty much I can say about him. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the process a little bit. You co wrote
Speaker 1: with Mike. Do you like to co wrote? Would rather
Speaker 1: do it yourself? Do you see it as a job
Speaker 1: I wake up, I got to put something down? Or
Speaker 1: do you wait for inspiration? Tell me about all that? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: those are good questions. I do like to collaborate. I
Speaker 1: always have if it is the right match. If it's
Speaker 1: not the right match, you really end up babysitting the writer.
Speaker 1: And I've gone through that where the record label has me,
Speaker 1: has sent me people to work with, and it's like
Speaker 1: songwriters one oh one, where they're sitting there on their
Speaker 1: phone and they're texting and I'm doing all the heavy
Speaker 1: lifting and going, do you like this? Is this like
Speaker 1: something you would do? I mean, I need some feedback here,
Speaker 1: you know, And what happens. It's kind of like, look,
Speaker 1: you could be the world's greatest tennis player, and if
Speaker 1: you're playing a game on someone that doesn't hit the
Speaker 1: balls back, you can play the worst game of your life.
Speaker 1: So if I don't like the person I'm running with,
Speaker 1: I'm too nice to say now that's got to go
Speaker 1: or whatever, I just can't do it. So I don't
Speaker 1: really like those kind of collaborations. I've only had maybe
Speaker 1: five people in my entire career that I've just absolutely
Speaker 1: loved working with and felt that's what collaboration is supposed
Speaker 1: to be about, Like you're both sort of supertools and
Speaker 1: you both bring something that maybe on your own you
Speaker 1: wouldn't create, or a lot of times I'll be running
Speaker 1: on my own and I'll think this is great, and
Speaker 1: then the more I play it, I start to think
Speaker 1: this sucks. But if you're collaborating with someone and they go, no,
Speaker 1: that part's the best part, Like, well, why don't we
Speaker 1: try this? And then they put it in a different
Speaker 1: slant and then all of a sudden, that's when collaboration
Speaker 1: is great, you know, But that doesn't happen that often.
Speaker 1: So I these days, I like to write a lot
Speaker 1: on my own because I'm older, and I just I
Speaker 1: guess I've been doing it long enough. I you know,
Speaker 1: I just have plenty to say and write about. But
Speaker 1: I don't like collaborating with a lot of people at
Speaker 1: the same time. The first time I sort of experienced
Speaker 1: that was in Nashville, and you know, of course, of course,
Speaker 1: now you know, you see a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of people listed on one song or whatever. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I don't write like that. I'm very old school, you know.
Speaker 1: Even though I know a lot about programming, and I
Speaker 1: do all my own pro tools stuff and programming, I
Speaker 1: saved that for after. I'm very old school where I
Speaker 1: like to sit down with a guitar or guitar or
Speaker 1: obviously keyboards and and write. And um, doing songs by
Speaker 1: committee just seems like a free ride to me. For
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that you know, they end
Speaker 1: up being called songwriters, but that I think their gigs
Speaker 1: are a little bit different, you know. Um, for instance,
Speaker 1: a programer, right a programmer. To me, that's like coming
Speaker 1: and playing guitar or whatever. That's your job. But if
Speaker 1: someone can sit down and play the song without your
Speaker 1: program drums or whatever, that's you didn't write the song.
Speaker 1: You know the song. It's like all the parts that
Speaker 1: if you miss them, if you take those out, that's
Speaker 1: what That's what to me. Songwriting is about um. But
Speaker 1: there are different levels of it and styles, and I
Speaker 1: acknowledge that. I mean, there are different art forms of
Speaker 1: the way people go about writing songs. But for me,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about anybody else, for me, it's
Speaker 1: old school, okay. You know in Nashville they literally have
Speaker 1: a ointments. Let's say you're going to collaborate. Do you
Speaker 1: want to bring something into the session? When the session
Speaker 1: is over, you want to work on it? How do
Speaker 1: you do it? I prefer to bring in something, And
Speaker 1: I talk about this in the book. When I was writing,
Speaker 1: either if I was asked to write with Heart for instance,
Speaker 1: which I was, or bon Jovi or you know, whoever
Speaker 1: I was working with. I liked Rod Stewart for instance.
Speaker 1: I like to walk in with something and so before
Speaker 1: I would get together, if I had the luxury that
Speaker 1: it wasn't the next day, I would just wipe everything
Speaker 1: off on my schedule and to sit down and jam
Speaker 1: in the studio alone so that I could walk in
Speaker 1: and this is going to date me, that I would
Speaker 1: walk in with a cassette and a walkman and start
Speaker 1: to play something. So the same thing in Nashville. I
Speaker 1: was actually flown down by Winona Judd to write with her,
Speaker 1: and I remember looking online and realizing that she wasn't
Speaker 1: a songwriter, and so I thought I had better go
Speaker 1: prepared with like a whole bunch of ideas. So I
Speaker 1: remember I went to I was I had to go
Speaker 1: to Hawaii. I was vacationing, and I had to take
Speaker 1: my kids because school was out and it was only
Speaker 1: a time to do it. So I brought a guitar
Speaker 1: with man. I just recorded all the starts of these
Speaker 1: ideas so that when I went down to Nashville, I
Speaker 1: would have something to sort of bring to the party.
Speaker 1: I don't really like sort of being I like being
Speaker 1: on the front end, not the back end, and I've
Speaker 1: done that and I don't really like it. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: us the story of writing better be good to me
Speaker 1: with Mike and how it's ultimately recorded by Tina. I
Speaker 1: walked in. I had an idea for a song. I
Speaker 1: had something like be good to Me? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we make it a little bit more, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit more empowering, like better be good to me?
Speaker 1: And I went, oh, I like that, you know. And
Speaker 1: then as Mike and I were wont to do, we
Speaker 1: would just start jamming, like he would pick up a
Speaker 1: guitar and I would play keywords, but usually I'd be
Speaker 1: playing a bassline or something, not because I can't play
Speaker 1: all that stuff, but to me, you know, basslines are
Speaker 1: so important, and that's sort of I've learned since then,
Speaker 1: that's sort of my forte. I start a lot of
Speaker 1: times with a cool bassline. And we wrote that song
Speaker 1: in one day, and then we went and cut it
Speaker 1: a few days later, and then by the time I
Speaker 1: left Spider, there's a whole I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to hear the whole story of why didn't get released,
Speaker 1: but the music business, which you can read in the book,
Speaker 1: but the music business went in the crapper when they
Speaker 1: had that whole payola scheme got exposed and all that.
Speaker 1: So everybody that put out a record during that time,
Speaker 1: their record didn't do anything unless they were so big
Speaker 1: like Zappelin or something, didn't matter. They didn't need the
Speaker 1: radio play. But for a new band, you had to
Speaker 1: have the radio play to get you heard. That was
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, it's funny. It's like, I think
Speaker 1: that's sort of what our social media was back then,
Speaker 1: was getting a single on the radio. That's how you
Speaker 1: advertise the record. Very different now, but so, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was about a year later, and at this point
Speaker 1: I had already written I think it'd already. It was
Speaker 1: right around the same time that I had been working
Speaker 1: with Mike on Love as the Battlefield and Tina Turner
Speaker 1: was doing Private Dancer, and someone the publishers just played
Speaker 1: the song to someone that brought it into one of
Speaker 1: those you know, A and R meetings where they all
Speaker 1: sit around and they play back all these different songs.
Speaker 1: And Tina was there and I wasn't in the room.
Speaker 1: But the urban legend is is that she got up
Speaker 1: and started like doing her thing, walking around the room
Speaker 1: and doing her little stomping those little things she does
Speaker 1: with her legs, and saying, this is perfect, this is
Speaker 1: exactly what I want to say, because she had just left,
Speaker 1: well not just but a few years before, she had
Speaker 1: finally gotten up the nerve to leave Ike. And before
Speaker 1: this record, you know, she was playing hotels and Vegas things.
Speaker 1: You know, nobody had any idea that what was about
Speaker 1: to happen to her. And Better Be Good to Me
Speaker 1: was the second single, so that was amazing. That put
Speaker 1: me on the map right around the same time as
Speaker 1: Love's Battlefield was becoming a hit. So I had two
Speaker 1: hits at once, and that that's I didn't meet her
Speaker 1: or anything. I mean, you don't always meet You usually
Speaker 1: don't meet the artists when you're When you write a
Speaker 1: song and you hand it over that set, it's like
Speaker 1: putting your kid up for adoption. As I said in
Speaker 1: the book, it's like you just hope that they don't
Speaker 1: fuck the kid up, you know. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: really kind of when my career started happening. When I
Speaker 1: hadn't mentioned this before, but when I left Spider, I
Speaker 1: went to Mike and I said, what should I do?
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in this band anymore. And
Speaker 1: I was really afraid of what he was going to say,
Speaker 1: because I thought he'd tried to assume me because they
Speaker 1: put all this money in and I signed a contract
Speaker 1: and he said leave. He said, move out to California.
Speaker 1: Come out and we'll write together. If we're not writing together,
Speaker 1: I will turn you on to writers that you should
Speaker 1: be working with. I'll sign you to a new publishing deal.
Speaker 1: If I have a record and they need a song,
Speaker 1: he said, of course, we wanted to come from their camp,
Speaker 1: but if they can't, I'll go and ask you to
Speaker 1: write them a song, which he did that also, he
Speaker 1: did that with Patti Smithe when I wrote The Warrior.
Speaker 1: So I packed up my stuff and my cat and
Speaker 1: I got on a plane and I moved to California.
Speaker 1: And it's really funny because I kind of describe all
Speaker 1: that time before that as film noir, you know, New
Speaker 1: York City, gritty, cool edgy, dark. Get to California, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like Fuji color cotton candy.
Speaker 1: You know, this completely different. I mean, if people think
Speaker 1: that they know how to party in New York, forget it,
Speaker 1: because at least back then in the eighties, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And so then I started to talk about those escapades
Speaker 1: and things, and you could just sort of like a flower.
Speaker 1: You could see it unfolding as I started to have
Speaker 1: more hits and things like that. And for a long time,
Speaker 1: Mike was a big part of that. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of the best songs I've written and biggest songs I've
Speaker 1: written or with him. But I also had a lot
Speaker 1: of success without him, you know, working with when I
Speaker 1: worked with Aero Smith, when I worked with Hart. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Okay, you
Speaker 1: do love as a battlefield. You write that with Mike,
Speaker 1: and in the book you say the ultimate version produced
Speaker 1: by her husband is completely different from how you envisioned it,
Speaker 1: and you're not happy. Yeah. Well, when we first got it,
Speaker 1: we just looked at each other, like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: happened to our song. We didn't have a big, fancy demo,
Speaker 1: which was nice. We just put you know, we put
Speaker 1: the whole essence of that song out there, and Neil
Speaker 1: decided that he was just going to put his stamp
Speaker 1: on it and change it. So we sent them like
Speaker 1: a real I say that book, like a real meat
Speaker 1: in potatoes, a Game of Thrones kind of anthem for
Speaker 1: the masses, and they sent us back a dance track
Speaker 1: with all these crazy synthesizers in it and everything, and
Speaker 1: Neil likes to say that we sent them a ballot.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a demo. It was a typical type of
Speaker 1: tempo that I would write, which is sort of like
Speaker 1: an eighth note mid tempo rocker, you know. But her
Speaker 1: vocal was sensational, and as time went on we learned
Speaker 1: to love it. As it went up the charts, that
Speaker 1: he left it more and more, you know. But there
Speaker 1: have been all kinds of versions of it that are
Speaker 1: actually closer to what we did. You know. Also, I
Speaker 1: did an audio book and I narrated it. It's out
Speaker 1: now too, and it has demos of some of those songs.
Speaker 1: So I have the demo to Love as a Battlefield,
Speaker 1: or the demo to the Bass and the Warrior with
Speaker 1: Nick Gilder singing on it. And I've never played them
Speaker 1: to anyone. So what I like about it is when
Speaker 1: you hear those demos, you can go, yeah, it's all there,
Speaker 1: It's all there, you know, maybe the tempo is different,
Speaker 1: bells and whistles or whatever. I would have to say that,
Speaker 1: out of all the songs that we did, I think his,
Speaker 1: you know, their interpretation was more of a departure than
Speaker 1: other songs that I've had out there, So I kind
Speaker 1: of go into it in the book, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell us about The Warrior and how it ends
Speaker 1: up getting to Patty smythe Mike was doing a record
Speaker 1: with Patty and Scandal, and he felt that they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough singles, or any singles. Maybe they had. They
Speaker 1: had some good songs though they thought that I liked,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have the one that was really going
Speaker 1: to put them on the map. So he said, I
Speaker 1: want you to write a song for them on producing
Speaker 1: the record, and they need something I don't have the time.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm going to introduce you to Nick Gilder,
Speaker 1: and he had had a number one hit with Nick
Speaker 1: with Hot Child in the City, and I loved his
Speaker 1: quirkiness is his voice. You know, I thought for the
Speaker 1: longest time Nick Gilder was a woman because of the voice,
Speaker 1: you know, it was so high and everything. Anyway, we met,
Speaker 1: we talked about the fact I played him some stuff
Speaker 1: that that Patty had done, like Goodbye to You, and
Speaker 1: that was another song they had that I liked m
Speaker 1: and so we wrote. We ended up writing The Warrior,
Speaker 1: but then I sent it to I sent it to
Speaker 1: Mike and maybe he was in a shitty mood that
Speaker 1: day or something, but he didn't really respond. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like going to the oracle. It's like when
Speaker 1: he loved something, you know, i'd be walking on air,
Speaker 1: and if he didn't like something, I'd be like, like
Speaker 1: so depressed, like I wanted to kill myself, you know,
Speaker 1: And I thought, but this is a really good song,
Speaker 1: Like how can you not hear this? Like what's wrong
Speaker 1: with him? But I didn't really say anything or whatever.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Nick was really happy that he didn't
Speaker 1: love it, because Nick wanted to record it. He wanted
Speaker 1: to to be a single for him. And then like
Speaker 1: a day or so later, maybe a week, I don't know,
Speaker 1: he might called up. He said, you know that song,
Speaker 1: that that warrior song that you sent me? He said,
Speaker 1: I can't find He said, could you send me a
Speaker 1: copy of it? And I thought, I said sure, I'll
Speaker 1: drop it off, and I remember hanging up going you know,
Speaker 1: he's been he's been walking around singing that motherfucking song
Speaker 1: for the last few days and realizes it's just that good.
Speaker 1: So and that's exactly what happened, and so he said,
Speaker 1: he calls me up after you least, because this song
Speaker 1: is a fucking hit. We're cutting it. It's going to
Speaker 1: be their single. And so he went in the studio
Speaker 1: with him. In the meantime, Nick said I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want her to cut it, and and Mike had
Speaker 1: to get like really tough on him and say, look,
Speaker 1: I'm the publisher of Lise of Holly's Share, and I
Speaker 1: won't let you release the song. I will not. This
Speaker 1: is because there's a there's a rule that says, or
Speaker 1: a law that says, when you write a song, you
Speaker 1: get to say who cuts it as the songwriter the
Speaker 1: first time. Once it's out there, anybody can cut it
Speaker 1: as long as they pay you, you know, and they
Speaker 1: have to license it and they go through something like
Speaker 1: a Harry Fox agency. But and the reason that's very
Speaker 1: relevant to today is because so many times I don't
Speaker 1: even know that the song's getting cut, and then I
Speaker 1: find out by going to a movie or watching a
Speaker 1: TV show, or someone texting me and saying, oh, I
Speaker 1: love that song. It's the theme song, you know that
Speaker 1: one on on Glee or something. This happens all the time.
Speaker 1: It even happened when when when Biden did the victory speech.
Speaker 1: I didn't know until I was watching them accept the
Speaker 1: speech and the best came came on. But again I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. I'm very add that way. Going
Speaker 1: back to what you were asking, Um, Mike just got
Speaker 1: really tough with him and so Nikki had to back
Speaker 1: off and he did. I think he's really happy now that.
Speaker 1: I think it's the biggest aside from Hot Chama City,
Speaker 1: probably bigger. It's funny because I just spoke to Patty
Speaker 1: yesterday because we've we've stayed friends and stuff, and we
Speaker 1: were just talking about it because the Warrior is coming
Speaker 1: out in two really big movies. Um. I think one
Speaker 1: is that movie eighty for Brady. It's in that that's out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's out. Yeah. And then what's coming out is Cocaine Bear,
Speaker 1: So the Warrior is in that movie as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the licensing is just crazy. And she was asking me
Speaker 1: questions about the licensing is just Um, it's the gift
Speaker 1: that keeps on giving. Now, of course you've been in
Speaker 1: which anybody who knows the song would remember that video.
Speaker 1: That video help her hurt the track. I don't think
Speaker 1: it helped well. I thought that it was so sort
Speaker 1: of stupid and jaw dropping that it almost worked on
Speaker 1: that level. It's like, can you watch can you believe this? Right?
Speaker 1: And let me tell you that what you just said
Speaker 1: is the gospel for so many videos during that period
Speaker 1: of the MTV. I mean some of those things like Obsession,
Speaker 1: for instance, when I saw the video to Obsessions Obsession,
Speaker 1: and you see these guys walking around in togas serving
Speaker 1: or dirves, You're thinking, like, what has that got to
Speaker 1: do with the song? But did we really care? No?
Speaker 1: You know some of them. I mean, the Love is
Speaker 1: a Battlefield one was also a shocker for me. But
Speaker 1: I thought Patty was really cool looking, and I just
Speaker 1: pictured her as being like a rock check and somehow
Speaker 1: the megap artists, I guess, she wanted her to look
Speaker 1: like a ninja, so she it looked like she had
Speaker 1: been ruck across the face with a lightning bolt, if
Speaker 1: you remember that, And then they had her hair swept
Speaker 1: up in like a bride of Frankenstein kind of do.
Speaker 1: And the whole video was just ridiculous. And I never
Speaker 1: really talked to Patty about it. And then I saw
Speaker 1: her when I when I got inducted in the Songwriting
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. She inducted me. So she came and
Speaker 1: she sung the Warrior. So we got together before that
Speaker 1: just to catch up, and we're sitting in this diner
Speaker 1: and I I just kind of summoned the courage and
Speaker 1: I said, tell me something, what did you think of
Speaker 1: the video to the Warrior? She probably sprayed her soda
Speaker 1: like she goes, I hated it, you know, she's I
Speaker 1: don't know what the fuck they were thinking. It was ridiculous,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. But then at the same time, you
Speaker 1: look back, it's like it's a part of that time
Speaker 1: period that you know, it's funny like at the time
Speaker 1: you see and you go, oh, god like, but then
Speaker 1: you look back at it now and it's sort of
Speaker 1: like there was no time period like that. You know,
Speaker 1: you got cow's walking through the room like well, PAMs
Speaker 1: are forming and you know, okay, let's stay with the
Speaker 1: concept of hits. Professionals know you can't write an eleven
Speaker 1: every day. My experience has been if you create eleven,
Speaker 1: you know, then there are people like William Goldman said,
Speaker 1: no one knows anything. What's your experience? Can you explain?
Speaker 1: So I'm accurate when I answer this. It's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I mean, better than ten eleven is like iconic where
Speaker 1: in your catalog the warrior better be good to Me
Speaker 1: or something like that. When you write something of that caliber,
Speaker 1: do you know it's a hit? That's the first question. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: good question. Um, we knew when we wrote Love as
Speaker 1: a Battlefield that it was a hit. We weren't sure
Speaker 1: when you heard their version it was a hit. But
Speaker 1: we knew when we wrote it was a hit. And
Speaker 1: as it turned out, it was an iconic. It it's
Speaker 1: an evergreen, even their production of it. But to get
Speaker 1: to an eleven, I don't think you know, I think
Speaker 1: that that just you've hit the lottery. You didn't mean to.
Speaker 1: I mean, the minute you start thinking I'm going to
Speaker 1: write something like that, there's no way you're going to
Speaker 1: do it authentically. There's just no way. So you have
Speaker 1: to keep it real. So I have to say, and
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote about it in the book. When
Speaker 1: we wrote the Best we had no idea how big
Speaker 1: it was going to be, and it wasn't big in
Speaker 1: the beginning. It's gotten big over forty years. It's just
Speaker 1: like a monster that just keeps growing and growing. And
Speaker 1: growing and tapping into something. You know, in order to
Speaker 1: have those kind of songs, it has to sort of
Speaker 1: gell with what's going on in the world, you know,
Speaker 1: because you've got to tap into a collector of consciousness
Speaker 1: of pop h you know, pop culture and society and
Speaker 1: what's needed at any given time. And I think that
Speaker 1: the Best has done that. I mean, it gets licensed
Speaker 1: so much. It was just on the Super Bowl. It
Speaker 1: was licensed for with Pringles, so it was on the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. You know, it's been the use of it
Speaker 1: has just been like so insane that people just keep
Speaker 1: relating to it. And when we wrote it, we knew
Speaker 1: we had written a very good song. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we even thought it was as strong as like
Speaker 1: love as a battlefield, you know, because it was straighter.
Speaker 1: It was just so simple and it was so you know,
Speaker 1: love is a battlefield the way we wrote it, just
Speaker 1: the title with kind of quirky and stuff, but the
Speaker 1: Best was just straight ahead, wholesome, simple, something that people
Speaker 1: just love to sing. I mean when it then it
Speaker 1: got on Ship's Creek and it was on three episodes
Speaker 1: and it became like the wedding theme for the LBGT community.
Speaker 1: I mean you can't plan those things, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about the other thing you said earlier
Speaker 1: that you're usually brought in as a first class utility player.
Speaker 1: Someone has a project, but they don't have that little
Speaker 1: something extra. How do you create that little something extra?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about as a musician or as a songwriter? Songwriter? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just know that I like to
Speaker 1: I think I'm good at at hooks, you know, and
Speaker 1: getting things that are simple enough that people they're quirky
Speaker 1: enough that they don't It doesn't sound like I'm selling
Speaker 1: out and deliberately trying to write a hit song. I
Speaker 1: just try and write a really great song. And I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not just a fan of of you know,
Speaker 1: straight ahead bands like Leeds Appelin or the Beatles. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm a fan of bird Back rat you know.
Speaker 1: I love jazz. I grew up with all different kinds
Speaker 1: of music and classical which I still love, and I
Speaker 1: implement a lot of that in my songs. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: I'm really into writing bass lines, and they're the relationship
Speaker 1: of the bass lines to the chords are different than
Speaker 1: the normal Like I don't always play the root. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to get too technical of the music stuff,
Speaker 1: but I do these things kind of deliberately. You know.
Speaker 1: I was influenced by people besides bird Backer, Todd Rundgren,
Speaker 1: and I think I bring all that stuff into the music.
Speaker 1: But I think also simpler is better. I try and
Speaker 1: keep things simple, like it's not about quantity, it's about quality.
Speaker 1: I've even been that way in my songwriting. I don't
Speaker 1: write a lot of songs these days, you know. I
Speaker 1: think the busiest ever was was in the eighties. I
Speaker 1: write when I feel like it. I don't, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't go in at nine and say I'm going
Speaker 1: to be at five. I mean, they do that in Nashville,
Speaker 1: like it's unbelievable. They go, Okay, we're gonna write from
Speaker 1: nine to three. The song is going to be written
Speaker 1: by three, and then we have another session, so we
Speaker 1: have to go. And I don't write like that, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean even when we wrote Loves the Battlefield, we
Speaker 1: wrote the whole thing on one day, but then we
Speaker 1: spent another week coming up with the one line, and
Speaker 1: we came up with hundreds. We just didn't like them,
Speaker 1: you know. So I don't really think like a business person.
Speaker 1: When I write, I think like an artist. I you know,
Speaker 1: anytime I've tried to do that, I've written the worst
Speaker 1: piece of shitka years ago. So do you have any
Speaker 1: hits in your suitcase? Stuff you've written that people that
Speaker 1: even people have not cut her, they've cut in a
Speaker 1: bad way, or haven't been promoted that way, all of
Speaker 1: the above, and I have you. I call it my
Speaker 1: bone yard, and some of the best stuff I've written
Speaker 1: is in that bone yard. And I now it's like
Speaker 1: because it's forty years later, I think of it as
Speaker 1: vintage Hallowey Night, but it's still like ready to be,
Speaker 1: you know, birthed out there. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: songs like that. It's crazy. Okay, let's talk about working
Speaker 1: with Aero Smith. Errol Smith comes back there on have
Speaker 1: a first record done with Mirrors, completely stiff. They're doing
Speaker 1: the second album they call you in what ends up
Speaker 1: resulting as Ragnall, which is the biggest track off that album.
Speaker 1: To tell us how that came to be, Well, my
Speaker 1: friend John Claudner called me up and he was sort
Speaker 1: of before I had met him during the Heart Sessions
Speaker 1: and we just became friends and he thought I was
Speaker 1: a badass. So he called me up and he said, listen,
Speaker 1: I got this song, and he kind of talks like that,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, well wait wait wait, when is the
Speaker 1: last time you spoke with Klaudner. It's been decades, but
Speaker 1: when my book came out, he was writing me on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn saying that's great. I get wait to read in everything.
Speaker 1: But he had mind. At that point, he was with
Speaker 1: Deafin Records. He was the president of Define Records, and
Speaker 1: what I liked about him was like he really honored
Speaker 1: a lot of bands that still had a lot of
Speaker 1: life in them and maybe even new life that they
Speaker 1: had never even had before that they weren't quite ready
Speaker 1: to be put out the pasture, which everybody else was doing,
Speaker 1: you know. So he signed quite a few bands, you know,
Speaker 1: Aerosmith was one of them, and he said to them,
Speaker 1: this is a make or break record. And at that
Speaker 1: point they had gotten really, really clean. So there were
Speaker 1: a lot of things going on. And he matched me
Speaker 1: up with Steven. He said, I'm going to send you
Speaker 1: a song. Would you have a listen to? He said,
Speaker 1: I think it's a really good song. Potentially, he says,
Speaker 1: it's not a hit. I don't know if it's going
Speaker 1: to be a hit, but if you could take a
Speaker 1: look at it and tell me what you think, if
Speaker 1: you want to work on it. And so that's what
Speaker 1: he did, and he sent it to me and I said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how does Steven feel about this? And
Speaker 1: Joe Perry? I mean, I don't want to be shoved
Speaker 1: down their throat. Which is really funny because when I
Speaker 1: did talk to Steve and I actually said that to him,
Speaker 1: and of course that provoked a really you know, flirtatious
Speaker 1: comment when I said, oh, I don't want it to
Speaker 1: be shoved down your throat. But no, he was all
Speaker 1: for it. He had talked to John, and I think
Speaker 1: they were just sort of like they were so clean
Speaker 1: and so excited to be given a new life of
Speaker 1: a lease on life, that they were open to this stuff.
Speaker 1: You see, a lot of bands were never would never
Speaker 1: have been open to this. To them is like selling out.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you can't write your own songs, you're
Speaker 1: not worth you know, anything. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: bit sad that they think that way, because it's like
Speaker 1: if you're a great actor, it doesn't mean you can
Speaker 1: write a great screenplay, you know. And some look at
Speaker 1: Tina Turner. She doesn't write around things. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's something to be ashamed of. And I think
Speaker 1: enough people started doing it that there was a group
Speaker 1: of songwriters that was kind of referred to as the
Speaker 1: songwriter elite, and they would go out and write with
Speaker 1: these people. And I was one of them, you know.
Speaker 1: Desmond Child was another, Billy Steinberg was another, and so
Speaker 1: and I think the fact that I was a woman
Speaker 1: a woman definitely interested Stephen, you know. So he called
Speaker 1: me up and we ended up talking for two weeks
Speaker 1: on the phone before I actually not two weeks solid.
Speaker 1: I mean like every day you call me up like clockwork, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing, how's your David? And you know,
Speaker 1: and we just kind of talked for sometimes two hours,
Speaker 1: four hours and became friends before we ever met each other.
Speaker 1: And you know, eventually the conversation got around to, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to nail this, we got to hit this
Speaker 1: out of the park. And I said to him, look,
Speaker 1: I don't think it needs a lot of changes. See,
Speaker 1: unlike some people, they hear something and they just want
Speaker 1: to change it just so they their ego can be satisfied.
Speaker 1: Like they changed it and put their stamp on it.
Speaker 1: I'm more like I don't really have a big ego
Speaker 1: when it comes to my career. I always think, like
Speaker 1: what's best for the song, Just like when I was
Speaker 1: writing the book. Does it serve the book? If it's
Speaker 1: if it's you know, trimm the fat off, or if
Speaker 1: it's something that you have a personal thing going on
Speaker 1: with someone, but it really doesn't need to be in
Speaker 1: the book, then it doesn't need to be in the book.
Speaker 1: So I said to Stephen anyway, Um, I don't think
Speaker 1: it needs to be rewritten. I think the track is beautiful.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it's good. But the song
Speaker 1: means nothing to me. And it was called ragtime, you know,
Speaker 1: so I was able to I felt like I was
Speaker 1: the doctor that came into it, like you know, tighten
Speaker 1: the screw or whatever, the specialist. And it worked. You know.
Speaker 1: We changed the lyrics as some of the lyrics to
Speaker 1: match with I came up with ragdollum. But it is
Speaker 1: not the way I like to write, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: As I said before, you said, well you know, like
Speaker 1: how do you like. I like to be the initiator.
Speaker 1: I like to bring in a new, fresh idea, or
Speaker 1: be jamming in the room, you know, uh together. But
Speaker 1: I don't like being brought in to change something that's
Speaker 1: already I feel like I'm tramp on like a like
Speaker 1: a you know, hallowed ground, like a gravyheart or something.
Speaker 1: So it worked out in this case, but I sort
Speaker 1: of made it a point after that not to do that.
Speaker 1: I also did it because I wanted to work with Aerosmith.
Speaker 1: I was just such a huge fan, and at that
Speaker 1: point they were kind of over. I mean they'd been
Speaker 1: doing so many drugs, and the record they had put
Speaker 1: up before that it was not a good record. You know.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be able to say that I
Speaker 1: had worked with him. I didn't even care if they
Speaker 1: sold another record or not. I just was a big fan.
Speaker 1: You know, talk about rejuvenation, you also rejuvenate heart. Now
Speaker 1: you say they're very happy about that, But did you
Speaker 1: ever work with one of these people? Say then they said,
Speaker 1: we'll pay you, but we're not putting your name on
Speaker 1: the record, not as a songwriter. I mean I did
Speaker 1: that with Kiss when I played on a Kiss on Mass,
Speaker 1: I played on the whole record and or most of it,
Speaker 1: and they told me you were not giving you credit,
Speaker 1: you can't have credit, and I knew that Anton had
Speaker 1: also had to agree to the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: we're going to pay you, and they paid them very well,
Speaker 1: but we're not. We can't tell people that you're that.
Speaker 1: Peter Chriss is out and you're in. Although they did
Speaker 1: offer him the job, they actually after a few records.
Speaker 1: I actually asked him if he would join Kiss and
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, in a in an
Speaker 1: amazing feat of loyalty, he turned them down. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he regrets in Nail, but you know, because
Speaker 1: they're still out there killing it. But that never happened
Speaker 1: as a writer, and I never would have worked with anyone.
Speaker 1: If they said I wasn't going to get a credit
Speaker 1: and I was going to gos right, I would told
Speaker 1: him to fuck off. Okay, so you have all these hits,
Speaker 1: originally you're signed to Mike's publishing company. How much of
Speaker 1: this stuff do you own out right? And how hard
Speaker 1: has it been to get paid? It's never hard to
Speaker 1: get paid. I've been I get paid because I have
Speaker 1: the right people surrounding me that make sure I get paid,
Speaker 1: and I have deals with people that I considered to
Speaker 1: be honest and ethical, which is almost unheard of. Right.
Speaker 1: That's like my business manager I've been her name's Tina Fastbender.
Speaker 1: I've been with her thirty five years. And you hear
Speaker 1: all these nightmare stories. It's like the me too thing.
Speaker 1: Somehow I've just managed to always I mean again, not
Speaker 1: to say that I haven't had a lot of crappy
Speaker 1: things happen, but when it comes to those kind of
Speaker 1: horror stories that you are about, I've been really fortunate
Speaker 1: not to get ripped off. And here's the other part
Speaker 1: that's great. I'll be honest. I did sell a big
Speaker 1: part of my catalog for a lot of money to
Speaker 1: accompany a primary Wave, which is now you know, they're
Speaker 1: buying up so many any catalogs. But I have a
Speaker 1: very good relationship with them. I mean the CEO, Larry Mistell.
Speaker 1: If I if I texted him, he texts me back immediately.
Speaker 1: It's not like my experience in the past. You know,
Speaker 1: I've signed an EMI Publishing for many years, is like
Speaker 1: just to get a response or respect or anything was
Speaker 1: always so hard. So I have these good relationships with
Speaker 1: these people and they're out there killing it for me
Speaker 1: getting all these covers now I mean, I have so
Speaker 1: many amazing covers because I have someone actually working like
Speaker 1: we're all it's a win win for everybody, you know.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I was going to say was,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this law that after you've written a
Speaker 1: song for thirty five and you've written a song and
Speaker 1: thirty five years go by, and you approach the person
Speaker 1: that has the publishing on whatever songs you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and you get a lawyer and you say I want
Speaker 1: the songs back, they have to give him back to you.
Speaker 1: So I've gotten back copyrights for songs that I rig
Speaker 1: only gave away. Didn't know I was giving it away,
Speaker 1: But it turned out to be a blessing because if
Speaker 1: I hadn't given them away and I owned them, they
Speaker 1: would have been part of the catalog sale. But because
Speaker 1: I didn't own them, I couldn't sell them. And then
Speaker 1: after the catalog sale had happened, I knew I was
Speaker 1: getting these songs back, and so I did. I got
Speaker 1: back all my publishing to songs like the Warrior Love
Speaker 1: is a Battlefield Obsession, better be good to me. So
Speaker 1: that was a really nice that's only been in the
Speaker 1: last few years. It's had them because you know, like
Speaker 1: if you write a song, it has to be thirty
Speaker 1: five years from the date. And I ended up telling
Speaker 1: a lot of songwriters that that didn't know that. Then
Speaker 1: in fact, I told Steven Tyler that he didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about that, and hopefully he listened to me and
Speaker 1: he got, you know, some of his publishing back. Okay,
Speaker 1: you all those songs you just mentioned are not part
Speaker 1: of primary wave deal love is a Battlefield Warrior are
Speaker 1: separate right right? Okay? No, well no, if they own it,
Speaker 1: they own a piece of it. But um, they could
Speaker 1: only buy what I had available, so some of it
Speaker 1: would have would have been other things which I can't
Speaker 1: really like get into the details in the interview. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I wishing wasn't wasn't one of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I know Larry pretty well. He usually likes to
Speaker 1: buy fifty percent before a hundred percent. Does he own
Speaker 1: a hundred percent or just fifty percent? Um? I can't
Speaker 1: really I'm not really comfortable talking, okay, Okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: what you do with the money? What do I What
Speaker 1: did I do with the money? Yeah? This always intrigues me, Okay,
Speaker 1: because musicians are not known for being good for the money.
Speaker 1: If you sold your catalog within the last year and
Speaker 1: invested in the stock market, immediately took a thirty percent haircut.
Speaker 1: So I'm always interesting. Peace oh sell Sell says, well,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do with the money? I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, you get this big chunk of change. Where
Speaker 1: do you put it? Well, first of all, I'm not
Speaker 1: selling my publishing. That's like that, you know, that's for
Speaker 1: my kids, and that's very valuable. As far as the
Speaker 1: other things, like, like I said up the I'm with
Speaker 1: the same business manager for thirty five years. I'm Jewish.
Speaker 1: I'm not the kind of person that you know, I
Speaker 1: don't like taking risks because i feel like I've worked
Speaker 1: so hard to get that money. It's like I'm not
Speaker 1: just going to throw it at the stock market. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, you can't just leave
Speaker 1: it in the bank between inflation or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to see, you have to decide what kind
Speaker 1: of things you're going to invest in. And I'm always
Speaker 1: very conservative, and I've only taken a chunk of it
Speaker 1: and the rest of it, I've invested in different things.
Speaker 1: You know, I've invested in real estate and I mean Basically,
Speaker 1: the theory is if you're in it and you just
Speaker 1: let it sit and pretend it doesn't you know, just
Speaker 1: leave it alone, it's going to come back. It's going
Speaker 1: to come back around. So maybe a lot of people
Speaker 1: lost thirty percent, but I think, what the small amount
Speaker 1: what I compare my empire that I invested in stock
Speaker 1: was a small amount. I didn't take all the moneyges
Speaker 1: invest it because that's just stupid to me, that's not smart.
Speaker 1: But I took about a nineteen percent hits. I have
Speaker 1: good people working for me. It was last year was brittle,
Speaker 1: you know. But also real estate. You know, I bought
Speaker 1: a house that like has like quadrupled in value and
Speaker 1: it was expensive to begin with. So I'm doing all right,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so the book is focused on the eighties,
Speaker 1: and then it totally cracks me up. You moved to Fearfield, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: where I grew up, So really, yes, So where did
Speaker 1: you live in Fearfield? Spring Failed Hell? Sorry? Greenfield? Hell's
Speaker 1: just beautiful. I mean that's like you know that when
Speaker 1: I farmers, Yeah, when I grew up there were no
Speaker 1: Jews there. But that's okay, But did you consciously decide
Speaker 1: to extract yourself from the scene, or you just sort
Speaker 1: of found yourself moving away from it. Well, I'll explain
Speaker 1: to you what happened. I had I had already had
Speaker 1: one child, and I thought, you know, the year that
Speaker 1: I moved to Connecticut, I that was the year the
Speaker 1: Rodney King beatings, the big earthquake, the mudslides. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was that horrible year. I think it was nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four or something like that, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: have another child, and I thought, I don't want to
Speaker 1: really raise them here because it's like the earthquake was
Speaker 1: really scary. That alone was scary. So I thought I
Speaker 1: would move to Connecticut because it was outside of New
Speaker 1: York and everybody would just cop on a train and
Speaker 1: come up to the Bucolic countryside and work in my studio.
Speaker 1: The reason I picked Connecticut also is because Mike Chapman
Speaker 1: had moved there and he bought this estate. It was
Speaker 1: like the vom Trapp family. There's a long driveway and
Speaker 1: this big, big house, and it was in Easton, which
Speaker 1: was just down the road from Weston, where Keith Richard
Speaker 1: live and meet Loaf. There were some other musicians there,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to work with him again. I wanted
Speaker 1: to recapture. I wanted to go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: where it was just writing great songs. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to be closer to the Only thing is is that
Speaker 1: we had changed now. I mean, he had children, I
Speaker 1: had children. We had other responsibilities, and we wrote stuff.
Speaker 1: But I think we needed to be in LA to
Speaker 1: write the kind of songs that we wrote. Like if
Speaker 1: I were to write with them now, I'd still I'd
Speaker 1: want to work here. I want to want to work
Speaker 1: anywhere else, you know, just something that contributed, if you're
Speaker 1: going to try and recapture what was magical or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I still write agy songs. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: a song I just put together with it. I produced
Speaker 1: a band that I've put together of women, and it's
Speaker 1: the first song we did that I'm putting out is
Speaker 1: it's an acronym. It's AMFOO, which stands for Adios motherfucker
Speaker 1: Year on your own. So it's not like I've lost
Speaker 1: the bite or anything or of who I am. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's relevant with what I do necessarily
Speaker 1: as far as production and stuff. What's out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the music business has just changed so much it's like
Speaker 1: it just blows my mind, you know. And I'm still
Speaker 1: a rocker, and it's rock. It's not really it's sort
Speaker 1: of coming back or not sort of it is coming back.
Speaker 1: But so I moved there and I liked it the
Speaker 1: first year or the you know, having dar was so
Speaker 1: quaint and charming, and then all of a sudden you realize, well,
Speaker 1: no deer or in quaint and charming because they carry
Speaker 1: line disease, which is from Kinnecticut, you know, and all
Speaker 1: these things that seem so glamorous and beautiful. I hated
Speaker 1: the weather. I hated living there, And I came back
Speaker 1: to California one day for a business thing, like four
Speaker 1: years had gone by, and in that four years, because
Speaker 1: I wanted to spend time being a mother and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like what happened to Holly Night? Where did she go?
Speaker 1: I laughed? You know, when I came back, it was
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like you know, while you were gone,
Speaker 1: a new breeds just came up and took over. And
Speaker 1: so I had to spend a lot of time sort
Speaker 1: of clawing my way back in there, and I did.
Speaker 1: I always I've always had songs in movies and TV shows.
Speaker 1: And written themes, and but I could never quite get
Speaker 1: back to that place that I did in the eighties.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say I'm not going to. I
Speaker 1: mean I think it's very easy to have like one
Speaker 1: wave and then you take some time off, and then
Speaker 1: you have another wave. And I think I'm totally capable
Speaker 1: of that. And that's why when you asked me if
Speaker 1: I have songs, you know, in a vault somewhere, it's like, God, yes,
Speaker 1: it's like I do. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it has to do with how the business has changed now,
Speaker 1: don't I don't even feel that inspired to want to
Speaker 1: do what I did before because with streaming and all
Speaker 1: these things that are going on, you can't really really
Speaker 1: carve out. There's a handful of people that are doing it,
Speaker 1: but I'm not that interested in it. I sort of
Speaker 1: like I feel like I've done that. Like if I'm
Speaker 1: going to do something, I don't want it to be
Speaker 1: contrived or I don't care about getting back on you
Speaker 1: being the most famous songwriter or whatever. I just I
Speaker 1: have a lot of interests and things that I do,
Speaker 1: and writing the book was one of them. Okay, if
Speaker 1: someone calls you up to write a song talking about
Speaker 1: the economics when we had physical media on an album,
Speaker 1: a stiff made as much money, or an album track
Speaker 1: made as much money as the hit, whereas in streaming
Speaker 1: the hit is streamed many multiple times more. If I
Speaker 1: called you up and say, write a song on my album,
Speaker 1: would you first say are we writing the single? And
Speaker 1: if we're not writing the single, I'm not interested. I've
Speaker 1: heard that from other songwriters. Um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'd be that sort of blatant at that. That just
Speaker 1: seems like, well, you know, you still got to write
Speaker 1: for the pleasure and the art of it. But I
Speaker 1: would hope that I would write it, just have the
Speaker 1: ability to write a song that which is obviously they'd
Speaker 1: have to make it a single because it'd be that good.
Speaker 1: You know. I try not to write bad songs anymore, honestly.
Speaker 1: You know, like I said before, it's not about the
Speaker 1: quantity as much as the quality. So I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you say to someone I have to write the
Speaker 1: first single or I'm not doing that. It's like, we'll
Speaker 1: write the song first and we'll tell you if it's
Speaker 1: good enough, and then you know, and how do you
Speaker 1: sort of say that, I'm so famous as a writer,
Speaker 1: my song has to be I mean, that's pretty nervy,
Speaker 1: you know, And maybe maybe some writers say that it
Speaker 1: is nervy, but there's only twenty four hours in a day.
Speaker 1: And other people say, well, I'd rather write a Broadway musical,
Speaker 1: or I'd rather do this, or rather do that. I
Speaker 1: don't want to take the time because it might be
Speaker 1: economically unfruitful in addition to eating up someone my time.
Speaker 1: I have the perfect answer for that. Actually, if the
Speaker 1: way I feel now is I like to write on
Speaker 1: my own. If I'm going to write with someone else,
Speaker 1: it has to be one of two things for me
Speaker 1: to do it now, because I don't need to write anymore,
Speaker 1: you know, cash that I'm fine whatever, And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I don't keep writing, but you know, it's like
Speaker 1: for my pleasures different than if I'm going to get
Speaker 1: it out there and sell it and all that. It
Speaker 1: Either it either has to be a new artist that
Speaker 1: I think is so talented that I believe in them
Speaker 1: and I'll write with them, or I want to write
Speaker 1: with like the big artists. You know, I'm good enough.
Speaker 1: And if if I can't do that, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to write with like you know, some label
Speaker 1: are going to send over one of like how many,
Speaker 1: although they don't even really sign that many fans anymore.
Speaker 1: I want to I have a list of people that
Speaker 1: I want to work with right now that I haven't
Speaker 1: worked with, and I know I could write a hit
Speaker 1: song with them, and I think they would benefit from
Speaker 1: my style of writing. Do you want to know who
Speaker 1: some of them are? Surely it is okay. I would
Speaker 1: love to work with Lady Gaga. I was really a
Speaker 1: fan like of her early artsy stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: like even when she was doing Bad Romance. I think
Speaker 1: lately she's doing like a lot of ballads and all that,
Speaker 1: and she's sort of, you know, she's become so conservative,
Speaker 1: like whether it's working with Tony who I love Tony
Speaker 1: Bennett or whatever. She's a chameleon. But I like the
Speaker 1: artsy side of her and I would love to write
Speaker 1: with her. I think we'd write some killer songs together.
Speaker 1: So she's one I would love to work with. Trent Resner.
Speaker 1: I think he's just so talented. I mean he's done
Speaker 1: everything from nine inch Nails to doing film scoring, and
Speaker 1: you know, I love the record he did with Halsey
Speaker 1: just for the sheer pleasure of working with him. I
Speaker 1: would love to work with him. I'd love to work
Speaker 1: with some of the more commercial artists like Kelly Clarkson
Speaker 1: and Adele. You know, I feel as a woman, I
Speaker 1: have a lot in common with them. We're all like
Speaker 1: women raising kids on our own, and we're all like,
Speaker 1: you know, when the doors are closed, we're we can
Speaker 1: be just as trashy and funny. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think they as people we would get along. And because
Speaker 1: if we got along as people and we're good at
Speaker 1: what we do, we would write ahead. That's the soup
Speaker 1: that you want to make. And that's what was so
Speaker 1: great with heart, you know, and we talked. I you know,
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite chapters in the book, The
Speaker 1: Thirty Toes. It's like you have a connection and then
Speaker 1: with that connection and that that's what they talk about chemistry,
Speaker 1: you know, like when you know people meet and oh
Speaker 1: we have chemistry. It's the same exact thing as a writer.
Speaker 1: And I think, I know, I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: they're still to this day at my age that I'm
Speaker 1: vulnerable about, but songwriting is not one of them. It's like,
Speaker 1: put me in the room with them, and I'll hit
Speaker 1: it out of the park. But those opportunities aren't you
Speaker 1: think I'm in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, you know? Um,
Speaker 1: I know there are other writers out there that can
Speaker 1: just pick up the phone and say, you know, I
Speaker 1: have blah blah. It's not that easy as you would think,
Speaker 1: you know. And even if I go to primary way
Speaker 1: for something, just to make it happen to that, I'm
Speaker 1: having to do now what I had to do when
Speaker 1: I was young and I was hungry. I am having
Speaker 1: to come up with different ways to reach out to
Speaker 1: an artist and get their attention. And that is also
Speaker 1: another reason, which was your very first question, why now,
Speaker 1: why did you write this book? Because I want to
Speaker 1: get the attentions of some of those people, hopefully in
Speaker 1: some way, so I can write with them. So your
Speaker 1: kids are grown, what's your day to day life like now?
Speaker 1: And how often do you sit down to write songs? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the last couple of years it was totally
Speaker 1: devoted to writing this book. And as I said, I
Speaker 1: wrote about one hundred pages more than my editor just said.
Speaker 1: You kept trimming it down and trimming it down. And
Speaker 1: what I like about that? Some reader wrote some review
Speaker 1: and he said, Holly Knight's book is just like her
Speaker 1: songs All Killer and no Villa. I thought that was
Speaker 1: he They're right, you know. It's like I don't know
Speaker 1: how many books I've read that are you know, memories
Speaker 1: that it's like they start out with a bang, but
Speaker 1: then they sort of settle into this sort of like normality.
Speaker 1: If this one got to this place on the hits
Speaker 1: and gets really boring, it's like I tried to write
Speaker 1: that book, so it was like boom boom, boom boom done.
Speaker 1: You know. So anyway, in answer to your question, that
Speaker 1: took up a lot of my time. But a typical day,
Speaker 1: I got a dog during the pandemic. I know you're
Speaker 1: not a dog person, but this one is sort of
Speaker 1: this close to a wolf. And I had this one
Speaker 1: thing in my book that says it's at the very beginning,
Speaker 1: and it has a sword and it says you've seen it.
Speaker 1: It says, you can't throw me to the wolves. They
Speaker 1: come when I call. So I have this relationship with
Speaker 1: this this dog that takes up a lot of time,
Speaker 1: and like two hours a day I have to go
Speaker 1: hiking or walking with her because if I don't show
Speaker 1: she's a husky. She'll destroy my house. So I get
Speaker 1: I bike ride a lot. I go. I live in
Speaker 1: the Palisades, so I go down to the beach and
Speaker 1: I'll ride my bike early in the morning. So that's
Speaker 1: one of my rituals, you know, and then I'll come
Speaker 1: home and I'll answer my emails. And I have a
Speaker 1: lot of different projects on the table right now that
Speaker 1: are offshoots and what's coming out of the book. So
Speaker 1: I'm kind of focusing on that. But I woke up
Speaker 1: the other day and I thought, you know what, it's
Speaker 1: time to get back to songwriting. Not because I need to,
Speaker 1: but just because I miss it, you know, I miss
Speaker 1: I miss that feeling I get when I tapped into
Speaker 1: that ether and stuff. And so I think that I'm
Speaker 1: going to focus on that a lot. I love to travel.
Speaker 1: I'm really into photography. I have a photography website and
Speaker 1: I do fine art photography and I take it pretty seriously.
Speaker 1: And you know, as long as it's creative, as long
Speaker 1: as I can do things, and it's creative, like always
Speaker 1: create and doing things, I'm happy, you know. So that's
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, I'm getting older and just doing
Speaker 1: normal things like everybody else, the little things that you
Speaker 1: love to do. Oh okay, as one gets older, Let's
Speaker 1: put it this way, the scene of the eighties is gone. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Internet era. You can stay home and have connection
Speaker 1: whereas you used to have to go out. This is
Speaker 1: ultimately asking you how social are you today? Part of
Speaker 1: it is age, part of it scene being changed. Are
Speaker 1: you more of a homebody? In addition or writing is
Speaker 1: a relatively private thing. I'm a little bit abouth, you know,
Speaker 1: but I am very much a homebody, you know, I
Speaker 1: think because I left home so young, and I always
Speaker 1: lived in you know, I live in one place for
Speaker 1: five years, then move on this place I've lived in
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, and you know, over time, I've
Speaker 1: just like every year I remodel another room and more
Speaker 1: and more mine and um during the pandemic, I really
Speaker 1: I did that a lot. So everybody that comes to
Speaker 1: my house is like, yeah, well, why would you leave?
Speaker 1: You've got your recording. I have an incredible recording studio,
Speaker 1: in a incredible kitchen. I have incredible hikes everywhere. I
Speaker 1: can go swimming in my poll I've got so I do.
Speaker 1: Because of that, I tend to, you know, get a
Speaker 1: little antisocial. But then then I really love to go
Speaker 1: out too and and and be social, but I can
Speaker 1: only do it for so long. Like where when I
Speaker 1: was younger, I would do it every night, and I
Speaker 1: would be out till five or six in the morning
Speaker 1: and then go to the cab breakfast before i'd go home.
Speaker 1: Now it's like find the time it gets to be
Speaker 1: about like eleven or something. I'm like a wiped out,
Speaker 1: you know, but I wake up early. I wake up,
Speaker 1: like at six in the morning, not because I want to,
Speaker 1: but because my body just is making me, you know.
Speaker 1: So Um, in that way, I'm pretty normal, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, you can't live a life of like
Speaker 1: insane this forever. It just doesn't. Your body can't take it,
Speaker 1: you know. But I'd say, I'm I'm pretty normal. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're doing this podcast actually at my incentive, I
Speaker 1: asked you. But getting the word out is almost impossible
Speaker 1: these days, and as sophisticated as the music businesses and
Speaker 1: all the complaints we have that, the book business is
Speaker 1: even more antique. So how have you gotten the word out?
Speaker 1: And as it worked, Um, I hired a PR person,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately I've gotten more podcasts casts than you can imagine,
Speaker 1: but they're not I wouldn't say they're the caliber. And
Speaker 1: this one and this is a this is a big,
Speaker 1: a big one for me. You know. Um, what I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do was I wanted them to get
Speaker 1: me in things like Rolling Stone with an excert or something.
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh my god, it's so it's so hard.
Speaker 1: It's just it's unbelievable. So, you know, Brick by Brick,
Speaker 1: I've doing these podcasts. And the good thing is that
Speaker 1: in on Amazon it was listed as number one for
Speaker 1: hot New releases in music, so that's good. The same
Speaker 1: thing with Audible was number one for hot new releases.
Speaker 1: But whether that sells books or not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could pick your brain about that, because
Speaker 1: it's not easy. I mean unless you're a huge household
Speaker 1: name or your Prince Harry or something, or Pamela Anderson
Speaker 1: trying to you know, it's a slow process trying to
Speaker 1: get your book out there and doing the right pieces.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm hoping to get some more reviews on
Speaker 1: the book. I've got a lot of reviews, but they're readers,
Speaker 1: which is actually the most important. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still working on that. I'm hoping that. I think the
Speaker 1: next big search for books book sales is Mother's Day
Speaker 1: and I think that would be hopefully, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: get more pr and things. I mean, all you can
Speaker 1: do is what you can do. I've done the job.
Speaker 1: I'm doing social media, which I hate, but I'm doing
Speaker 1: a lot of it and I'm paying someone to do right.
Speaker 1: So you know, I've got Instagram and I've got Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you know, the numbers are starting to grow, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean. Look, it's like anybody to go on
Speaker 1: social media and they'll hit like, but to actually follow you,
Speaker 1: that's a big commitment. And I'm the same way. Like
Speaker 1: I can say I like something that someone said, but
Speaker 1: to follow them that means now every day their streams
Speaker 1: are going to be taking up my time in invading
Speaker 1: my life. So do I commit to that or not?
Speaker 1: So it's I think it's just tough out there for everybody,
Speaker 1: and you just hope it's like the thing with the best.
Speaker 1: You hope you hit the jog or not of some nerve.
Speaker 1: Am I saying that right jug or not? Jug? You
Speaker 1: said a little jail, But I wouldn't have stopped you
Speaker 1: if you hadn't stopped yourself. Yeah. Yeah, Well it was
Speaker 1: funny when I did the audible book and I got
Speaker 1: to where I had written albeit, I said I'll bite,
Speaker 1: and the producer was like cracking up. I said, I,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce it? Tell me please? I knew that,
Speaker 1: so I tend to do that. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: just hoping that something happens, one thing where just enough
Speaker 1: attention happens that people go out and buy it, because
Speaker 1: I think the people that are going out and buying
Speaker 1: it are loving it, you know, really really loving it.
Speaker 1: I've gotten so many great, like you know, fan letters
Speaker 1: and responses on it. But I don't want it to
Speaker 1: just sit there like I want it to be big,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. I have like one project that possibly
Speaker 1: might happen that's going to come as an offshoot of this,
Speaker 1: which would be great that I can't really talk about.
Speaker 1: But that might be the thing that then turns around
Speaker 1: it sells a book. Do you have any suggestions? Let's
Speaker 1: put it this way. We can talk off Mike about
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but there is no silver bullet, and
Speaker 1: selling book is even harder than selling a record, and
Speaker 1: selling a record is very difficult at this point in time.
Speaker 1: The only thing I know about publishing is it's you.
Speaker 1: You have to do everything. Whereas you know when some
Speaker 1: of these other businesses, the third parties can get action,
Speaker 1: but it's very old school. We can get an initial
Speaker 1: push and then it's all in your hands. Anyway, Holly,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time and talking with my audience. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me. I was so excited when you invited me.
Speaker 1: I think you're a badass. I really love reading your
Speaker 1: emails you send out and your blogs and somebody I've
Speaker 1: read them and going yes, you know, there's been a
Speaker 1: few I went no, no, and then yeah, of course
Speaker 1: because we're both you know, we're both passionate and smart.
Speaker 1: So but no, I'm a fan, and thank you so
Speaker 1: much for inviting me to do this. Absolutely until next time,
Speaker 1: it's Bob left six h