Speaker 1: All right, Welcome to episode forty two of the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Blue Apron for sponsoring the Bobby Cast and
Speaker 1: with John Oates from Hall and Oates, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: you have a book called Change of Seasons, and I
Speaker 1: want to get into the book in a second, and
Speaker 1: why I liked the book, how it's written, and some
Speaker 1: stuff in the book. But first, like, I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of of you guys. I never knew until I read
Speaker 1: the book that you weren't really Hall and Oates. I
Speaker 1: never knew that. And now I feel ridiculous because I've
Speaker 1: been saying it from my whole life. Everybody says that
Speaker 1: everybody you know, come on, you gotta put you gotta
Speaker 1: put things in a convenient box. But if you look
Speaker 1: on every album we've ever made, it says Darryl Hall
Speaker 1: and John Oates, and we we were very adamant about that.
Speaker 1: And I know it seems kind of a silly thing
Speaker 1: to be a stickler about, but you know what, we
Speaker 1: we always have seen ourselves as two guys who worked together,
Speaker 1: and we made a point of that. And even though
Speaker 1: knowing everyone ignores it doesn't matter, but it's it's a
Speaker 1: thing when I say Hey, guess who's here from hauling otes?
Speaker 1: Do you cringe a little bit or anymore? Did you did?
Speaker 1: And we used to we used to try to fight
Speaker 1: it back in the day, you know. We we try
Speaker 1: to like, you know, it's there a hole in John notes,
Speaker 1: you know, and we make a point of it with
Speaker 1: our ads and things like that. When you hear the
Speaker 1: like the concert advertisements and things, it says Darryl hole
Speaker 1: on John Notes, you know. So we make a point
Speaker 1: of it when we can. But you know, hey, man,
Speaker 1: people are gonna always, you know, truncate whatever they want to.
Speaker 1: That blew my mind. John I was I was reading.
Speaker 1: I was like, and I've had you on my radio
Speaker 1: show before, and I was like, yeah, John from Hall.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, if I hated me, he
Speaker 1: probably left him. Was like, no, no, no, no, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: the last night on the TV show, at the radio
Speaker 1: show that we did, the fella called me John Hall twice.
Speaker 1: So does that happen a lot because you're it's two
Speaker 1: people and you guys have pretty generic first and hand, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a number of things that happened. First of all, um,
Speaker 1: do you remember Group Orleans? Remember John Hall? Well, he
Speaker 1: used to go around wearing a T shirt and said
Speaker 1: I'm not Darryl Oates. Okay. And then one one time
Speaker 1: years ago, I remember I was sitting in a dressing
Speaker 1: room by myself and a guy poked his head in
Speaker 1: and he went, which one of you guys is Hall
Speaker 1: of Notes? And I looked around. I was the only
Speaker 1: one in the room, so I went, I guess that's
Speaker 1: to me. The guy and one of the guy on
Speaker 1: my radio show, like he does nothing about music, right,
Speaker 1: And so he was like, oh, cool, you're having Holland
Speaker 1: Oats up and I was like, no, no, not even
Speaker 1: he thought your first name was Holland. Holland. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a lot of that. Another really funny one was
Speaker 1: years ago we were playing with Dot. We played on
Speaker 1: double bill with Dr John at a Chicago theater and
Speaker 1: as we pulled up to the theater, it said if
Speaker 1: you look at the marquee, it said doctor John across
Speaker 1: the top and underneath it it said Halling Notes. So
Speaker 1: it looked like doctor Hall and John Oates. So we
Speaker 1: called Darryl doctor Hall for quite a while. Yeah. This book,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say I'm I was already a fan.
Speaker 1: And the book is called change of seasons and it's
Speaker 1: a memoir. How long take you to write this thing?
Speaker 1: Almost two years? So you write the book and as
Speaker 1: I'm reading through it, first of all, I like out
Speaker 1: it's written because for me, I'm a d D. And
Speaker 1: it's like it was quick. It was quick. It was
Speaker 1: like it was like like every three three or four
Speaker 1: pages or so like boom. Well, it was designed that way.
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be designed so that it was.
Speaker 1: It read like a series of short stories, so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to flip it open, and also in a way,
Speaker 1: you don't have to read it from stem to stern,
Speaker 1: so to speak. You can just pick it up anywhere.
Speaker 1: And there's a story that stands on its own. So
Speaker 1: and I want to go and how we do this.
Speaker 1: We kind of start in the now and then we
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning and then make our way
Speaker 1: back up to the now. And so the good thing
Speaker 1: is all in the book, so we can talk about whatever. Which,
Speaker 1: By the way, the book you can preorder it now,
Speaker 1: depending on when you hear that, you can pre order
Speaker 1: it right now Amazon, Amazon, that's right, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: the universal place. But the book comes out in March,
Speaker 1: so that's when you go to the bookstores or you
Speaker 1: can come by my house because I have a copy
Speaker 1: and if you swing by you can get it. You've
Speaker 1: got the advanced reader's copy, so it's got worts, warts
Speaker 1: and all on that one. There's a a few things
Speaker 1: about the on the final copy that change, but not much.
Speaker 1: I was blown away, like I said, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to start with that that you were never called Halt
Speaker 1: and notes, and I like, I mean, my whole head
Speaker 1: was because that's like, I know the catalog, I know
Speaker 1: the songs, and it makes sense because like, let's go
Speaker 1: to the Silver Album, which was just your names, Daryl
Speaker 1: Hall and Johnes, which wasn't your first album. It was
Speaker 1: your first album that really popped, would you Is that
Speaker 1: fair to say? Yes? It was. It was the first
Speaker 1: album that had a hit single. Okay, So, and it's
Speaker 1: called the Silver Album because that was the color of
Speaker 1: the album and it didn't have a title other than
Speaker 1: our name than your name's on him and so on that.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting thing for me as someone
Speaker 1: who likes to break music. Um, the first you had
Speaker 1: on that record was Sarah Smiles. Okay, now, Sarah Smile,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play this song here because and if I
Speaker 1: started singing along, just let just let me go for
Speaker 1: a second. I love himself. So here's Sarah Smile. Oh damn,
Speaker 1: babies are made to this. Oh my god, come on,
Speaker 1: if you feel like leaving, you know you can go.
Speaker 1: So how did this song become the singles in the
Speaker 1: most weird way? We had released two singles from this album.
Speaker 1: We released Camellia and another one I can't remember which one.
Speaker 1: They both went into the top forty. So it wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't like panic time. It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And we were on tour in Europe for the first time.
Speaker 1: We were touring England and in Toledo, Ohio, at an
Speaker 1: R and B station, a DJ played Sarah Smile as
Speaker 1: an album cut was not released as a single, and
Speaker 1: as they said in the old radio days, the phones
Speaker 1: lit up and we got this call that this DJ
Speaker 1: called our c A Records in New York and said,
Speaker 1: people are going nuts over this song. You got to
Speaker 1: release it as a single. And we had almost given
Speaker 1: up on the album after two singles. You know, we're
Speaker 1: kind of ready to move on, and we got a
Speaker 1: call from our manager saying, hey, we got some action
Speaker 1: on this song Sarah Smile, So let's we're gonna release it,
Speaker 1: and sure enough it hits again. Do you hear age
Speaker 1: and voice? He sounds young good so some some random DJ. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually got to meet him, uh years years later
Speaker 1: and uh we gave him, give him a bunch of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And you know it was it was a
Speaker 1: cool thing. That's awesome. It was a cool thing that
Speaker 1: he would just go out on a limb and just
Speaker 1: give it, give an album track a shot. Listen to this, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is the first hit. Now that correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, because party, I'm going from the book and
Speaker 1: partly I'm going from from knowledge. She's gone Now. That
Speaker 1: song actually was released before Sarah Smile, but didn't do
Speaker 1: anything really a little bit. But again, as you said,
Speaker 1: there were two singles that were put out that didn't
Speaker 1: do a whole lot. But then you re released it
Speaker 1: after Sarah Smiles. That right, Well, it's even more convoluted.
Speaker 1: It came out on an album we did in It
Speaker 1: wasn't the same album, no different. It came out on
Speaker 1: an album and seventy three called Abandoned Luncheonett and it
Speaker 1: was the lead single on that album, and it went
Speaker 1: into the top forty and here again we moved on quickly,
Speaker 1: and two albums later, a group called Varus copy cut this.
Speaker 1: They covered She's Gone and had a number one R
Speaker 1: and B record with it. It's a number one on
Speaker 1: the R and B chart. So did you make money
Speaker 1: off a songwriter? A songwriter did, so that was a
Speaker 1: big deal and that was a cool thing for us
Speaker 1: because you know, we always been basically an R and
Speaker 1: B act anyway. So, uh, then after Sarah Smile I'll
Speaker 1: hit Atlantic, Atlantic Records said, wait a minute, we've got
Speaker 1: to rerelease She's Gone. And they released She's Gone and
Speaker 1: went to number two. I believe, man, what a crazy
Speaker 1: story here it is She's Gone. But how did they
Speaker 1: rerelease it because it was already on a previous album.
Speaker 1: Did they put it out as just a single? Well,
Speaker 1: we had already changed labels to Our c A, so
Speaker 1: Atlantic still had the rights to that song and that record,
Speaker 1: so they just released it as a single. They said,
Speaker 1: want to capitalize on their on their success. So you
Speaker 1: were Gone, but your old labeled put it out well
Speaker 1: a little bit where you like, come on, guys, we
Speaker 1: were thrilled. We always believed in this song. We thought
Speaker 1: this was the song that would really put us on
Speaker 1: the map. And to be honest with you, it is
Speaker 1: the song that that kind of introduced us to the world.
Speaker 1: What do you hear when you hear this right now?
Speaker 1: I hear the perfect confluence of the right song, the
Speaker 1: right production, the right players, the right producer, in the
Speaker 1: right room at the right time. You talk about players
Speaker 1: in a room. It was just recorded so much differently
Speaker 1: than right. Well, you know the records I'm making right
Speaker 1: now in Nashville, I make exactly like I made that one.
Speaker 1: You make them with people, with real people all around
Speaker 1: in the looking at each other and play. I do
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. And what I learned from Reef Martin,
Speaker 1: who produced that, was surround yourself with great players and
Speaker 1: let them do what they do and just guide them.
Speaker 1: I gotta I've took so many notes from this book.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you like Hall and Oates or
Speaker 1: is they like to call themselves Dard, I have so
Speaker 1: many notes that took from this book because I was
Speaker 1: running through it and I was just like, I didn't
Speaker 1: know this. I didn't know this, So bear with me
Speaker 1: as I go through some of this stuff, go go,
Speaker 1: go right on. So let's try to go somewhat in order.
Speaker 1: So let's go linear. So you're born raised in Pennsylvania. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I was born New York, raised in Pennsylvania. When
Speaker 1: did you make the move? When I was were years old,
Speaker 1: my parents moved to from New York City to Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: small town called North Wales, Pennsylvania. Do you remember, I
Speaker 1: don't have any memory before five. I do. I remember
Speaker 1: the day we left New York City and that's one
Speaker 1: of my first memories. Some of my friends and like
Speaker 1: Kenny John, they think they can remember coming out of
Speaker 1: the womb. They tell me that, like, do you belive
Speaker 1: do you like? Do you believe that? Okay? I don't.
Speaker 1: I think that three is like the earliest. So you
Speaker 1: moved to Pennsylvania and you grew up. What kind of family?
Speaker 1: How would you describe the family? Um? Lower middle class
Speaker 1: to middle class family uprooted from My parents were city people.
Speaker 1: They were New York City natives and ethnic you know, Italian,
Speaker 1: and my father was Spanish and English and uh. We
Speaker 1: moved into a little Pennsylvania Dutch town where they didn't
Speaker 1: know anybody and my dad had moved because of his
Speaker 1: his his work transferred to Pennsylvania, so he went along
Speaker 1: with the job. And Um, they were lonely. And we
Speaker 1: lived in a little rented house near the railroad tracks.
Speaker 1: And it was a small town. And every weekend we
Speaker 1: drove to New York City to visit with the with
Speaker 1: the family, an extended Italian family, and that was that
Speaker 1: was kind of my experience growing up. Then they became,
Speaker 1: of course more comfortable in that little town, and we
Speaker 1: moved into a uh, they bought a house and with
Speaker 1: a g I bill and all that, And I grew
Speaker 1: up in Pennsylvania, a small town. There was a sheep
Speaker 1: farm right behind the house, woods and fields, and I
Speaker 1: went from being born in a city to being a
Speaker 1: country kid. Basically, So, as you grow up, what kind
Speaker 1: of music is surrounding you in your house? Big band
Speaker 1: music most for the most part, Um, early early mostly
Speaker 1: big band and very very early rock and roll Johnny Ray, Um,
Speaker 1: Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, um, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And your parents were okay with you listening to rock
Speaker 1: and roll? Yeah, they were kind of really supportive. I
Speaker 1: began to sing when I was four years old. I
Speaker 1: made my first record when I was four and at
Speaker 1: Coney Island in a little phone like a booth recording booth,
Speaker 1: and I sang, I sang, here comes Peter Cotton Tale.
Speaker 1: And about two or three years later I went back
Speaker 1: and sang all shook up the Elvis tun and people
Speaker 1: don't know, but here Comes Peter Cotton Tell was rereleased.
Speaker 1: I went number one right after She's gone. For you guys,
Speaker 1: it's an amazing story. I might re release it again.
Speaker 1: Atlantic had it and they put it out and it
Speaker 1: was the whole thing. So you grow up and your
Speaker 1: parents and the musical at all, like did they play No,
Speaker 1: not at all. But I just sang. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I just naturally sang. And my mother became a bit
Speaker 1: of a stage mother. So they really supported me in
Speaker 1: every way. Uh gave me vocal lessons when I was five,
Speaker 1: guitar lessons when I was six, and um, I never
Speaker 1: looked back. How much school did you get done? I
Speaker 1: was okay in school. I wasn't a great student, but
Speaker 1: I was okay high school. I went to a public
Speaker 1: high school. Um, you know, and it was it was
Speaker 1: the days before you know, drugs, and revolution and long hair.
Speaker 1: It was very quiet and conservative, and the moment I
Speaker 1: graduated from high school, I went straight to Philadelphia. And
Speaker 1: so for you, it was you knew, you always knew
Speaker 1: what you wanted to do. I never you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Someone asked me about this today in an interview about
Speaker 1: why they think I became a musician, and I, first
Speaker 1: of all, I think I was just somehow born to
Speaker 1: do it. But every time I did something musical, people
Speaker 1: seem to like it, and it never There was never
Speaker 1: a time when I feel like if they kept clapping,
Speaker 1: I kept singing and playing. If they ever stopped, I
Speaker 1: might have reconsidered, but I never did. Was there some
Speaker 1: affirmation that you're missing in your life that you think
Speaker 1: you got from an audience that made you continue to
Speaker 1: go back? No, because playing live is not necessarily my
Speaker 1: favorite thing to do. I enjoy it and I'm good
Speaker 1: at it because I've done it for like my whole life,
Speaker 1: literally so, but I like the songwriting process, and I
Speaker 1: like the playing, and I like recording. To me, that's
Speaker 1: where it all comes together. The playing live is is
Speaker 1: really fun, and it's there's something in the immediacy of
Speaker 1: it you know, musicians are one of the few artists
Speaker 1: UH categories that does something and gets an immediate response.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're an actor, you might work on
Speaker 1: a film for six months or a year, and then
Speaker 1: it goes into editing, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it comes out a year later, and you're you don't
Speaker 1: have a really response from the audience other than the
Speaker 1: fact that you might walk down a red carpet someday
Speaker 1: and you know, at the Oscars or something like that.
Speaker 1: If you're a painter, you you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: live in solitude and you paint your paintings and eventually
Speaker 1: maybe they go up in a gallery, but there's there's
Speaker 1: not that immediate feedback. And even in writing the book,
Speaker 1: I found it a little frustrating writing the book because
Speaker 1: I was so used to instant gratification. You write a song,
Speaker 1: you pick up your guitar, you play it. People you
Speaker 1: can tell if they like it or if they don't
Speaker 1: like it. So it's kind of a little bit spoiled
Speaker 1: on the instant graviication part of the deal. And writing
Speaker 1: the book was such a long to year process that
Speaker 1: I never did get feedback along the way. It's not
Speaker 1: until right now when people are fine only reading it
Speaker 1: that I'm like starting to feel this amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: satisfaction that maybe I did something good here? Did you
Speaker 1: feel like? Because I wrote a book by a year
Speaker 1: and a half ago, and when I turned it in
Speaker 1: it was really And I'm someone who's very vulnerable on
Speaker 1: the air and on stage joined stand up, but when
Speaker 1: I turned the book in it was such a vulnerable
Speaker 1: thing because I had worked so long on it and
Speaker 1: it was time to get opinions on something. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had put so much time into I was nervous about it.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I'm never nervous about my
Speaker 1: music because I kind of have I'm pretty good self editor.
Speaker 1: I know if it's happening or not, and if it's
Speaker 1: not happening, I'm not gonna play it or you know,
Speaker 1: get an exposure. But the book, I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: really didn't know. I felt good about it. I know,
Speaker 1: I worked really hard on it. UM had a great collaborator,
Speaker 1: as fellow named Price Epting, who really guided me through
Speaker 1: the process. Um, but boy, I was I was nervous.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what it's like to to bury soul
Speaker 1: in a book that's there forever and and to put
Speaker 1: it all out there. I felt like, as you talk
Speaker 1: and you say, you know, you don't performed for the
Speaker 1: love of the crowd and the immediate love that were you,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you were loved as a kid. Would
Speaker 1: you say that's fair? Yeah? I had a very I
Speaker 1: had a really really nice, solid upbringing. My parents my
Speaker 1: parents are still together. Um, you know my mom My
Speaker 1: dad's ninety four, my mom's ninety two. Um, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a good it was a good upbringing. They
Speaker 1: were They were very supportive. So you're a small town
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. You had to filly with what on your
Speaker 1: mind getting out of that small town. Just like a
Speaker 1: million other kids, you know, and a million other musicians
Speaker 1: get into the city, find out what what what? What
Speaker 1: was there? Um? You know, spread my wings getting into
Speaker 1: a more professional music scene. What do you want to find?
Speaker 1: I wanted to find someone who uh maybe could be
Speaker 1: my equal take me someplace new, and I did. Which
Speaker 1: is an interesting story too, and I've heard it before,
Speaker 1: but when I read it in the book, there was
Speaker 1: a little more detail because I don't aways heard that
Speaker 1: you and Darryl were at a radio station together or
Speaker 1: you know, at an event in someone in some shots
Speaker 1: were fired and all of a sudden, the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, here they are there band. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite that. No, no, no, no, talk about
Speaker 1: that for a second, because you moved to Philly and
Speaker 1: we're you're at a radio station in nineties sixty seven.
Speaker 1: My high school band had been together some oh for
Speaker 1: about four years, and we had various names, as most
Speaker 1: high school bands do, and we we saved up our money.
Speaker 1: We went down to Philly and we made a record.
Speaker 1: We went to Virtue Recording Studio on North broad Street
Speaker 1: where um a guy named Frank Virtue owned the studio.
Speaker 1: He had a he had a big hit in the
Speaker 1: fifties cold Guitar Boogie Shuffle with his own group called
Speaker 1: the Virtues. It was an instrumental record, and we basically
Speaker 1: paid him a few hundred dollars. We hired a guy
Speaker 1: named Bobby Martin who was a brand young arranger who
Speaker 1: I found in the Yellow Pages, and he went on
Speaker 1: to arrange and co produce stuff for gamblin Huff like
Speaker 1: uh backstabbers and you know, a bunch of for the
Speaker 1: love of Money with the o Js, you know, incredible guy,
Speaker 1: but he was just starting out as well. He was
Speaker 1: probably a few years older. And we went to front
Speaker 1: to Virtue Sound and we uh, you know, we we
Speaker 1: didn't have have a clue what we were doing, and
Speaker 1: he helped us make our first record. After we we
Speaker 1: put the record out independently with a little label from
Speaker 1: Philadelphia called Crimson. At the same time, not I didn't
Speaker 1: know this, of course, but Darryl Hall's group called the
Speaker 1: Temp Tones was doing the exact same thing in a
Speaker 1: different studio, and our records were being played on w
Speaker 1: h A T and w D A S, which were
Speaker 1: the two R and B stations in Philadelphia at the
Speaker 1: same time. So we were both aware of each other
Speaker 1: and this, you know, Philly was a pretty small music scene.
Speaker 1: So before you move all we keep talking about R
Speaker 1: and B stations. So it was the mostly white artists
Speaker 1: on R and B stations and we were the only ones.
Speaker 1: You just had a lot of soul, but you two
Speaker 1: white guys had a lot of souls, I guess. So hey, listen,
Speaker 1: they played us on their station. So whatever that means,
Speaker 1: it is what it means. Um, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: All I know is it got on the radio and
Speaker 1: that was enough for me. It's at eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I was thrilled, you know, beyond and uh then um,
Speaker 1: we both got asked to do a record hop for
Speaker 1: this guy named Jimmy Bishop who was a big DJ
Speaker 1: on w D A S. And he had a Sunday
Speaker 1: afternoon teenage dance at a place called the Adelphi Ballroom
Speaker 1: in West Philadelphia, a pretty bad neighborhood. So here's these
Speaker 1: you know, two little white groups, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: cruising up to this place and backstage was was the
Speaker 1: five stair Steps. Um. They had a song called in
Speaker 1: My World Fantasy and a guy named Howard Tate who
Speaker 1: had a single call look at Grandy Run Run, which
Speaker 1: is a really cool tune. And so we're back there
Speaker 1: and I was I was a bit intimidated, and uh
Speaker 1: a gang fight broke out in the audience and we
Speaker 1: got into the service elevator went down and we were like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I dig your song. Yeah. Gang fight like literally shots
Speaker 1: were five yeah yeah in the in the audience. We
Speaker 1: were backstage and we we split. The guys who were
Speaker 1: with from the record company just took us out and
Speaker 1: so you and Darrell end up in the same place. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so basically our entire relationships based on fear and a
Speaker 1: little bit agreed. Do you okay, now, let me let
Speaker 1: me ask you this. I guess it'll go a little
Speaker 1: more philosophical. Do you think that you and Darrel were
Speaker 1: supposed to meet right there? I guess so I have.
Speaker 1: I don't think of it that way. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: something happened. I mean, we were there in the same
Speaker 1: place at the same time, making the same kind of music,
Speaker 1: and we met. So you meet and you say, what
Speaker 1: because you didn't join I knew that. I knew that
Speaker 1: his group and the guys in his group, they were
Speaker 1: a vocal group, like a doo wop street corner harmony group.
Speaker 1: I knew they went to Temple University and I was
Speaker 1: going to Temple University, and I knew that. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what we said to each other more was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I'll see you it around, you know,
Speaker 1: on the street or in campus or whatever. And we did.
Speaker 1: We kind of ran into each other at the student
Speaker 1: union or something, and we just started talking and hanging out.
Speaker 1: And what had what had happened was Darryl's group, since
Speaker 1: it was a vocal doo wop group. They didn't out
Speaker 1: they needed a backup band, and they lost their backup band.
Speaker 1: So I plucked um my drummer and my bass player
Speaker 1: from my band, which was kind of they were basically,
Speaker 1: you know, falling apart, uh, and we backed Darryl's vocal
Speaker 1: group up for a very short period of time. Then
Speaker 1: my bass player got drafted into Vietnam and Uh, Darryl's
Speaker 1: group broke up, and he and I just gravitated towards
Speaker 1: each other and we started hanging out, sharing apartments and
Speaker 1: that was it. So you get together, but and you're
Speaker 1: out performing together, do you just go out? We're not performing,
Speaker 1: you were you were just hanging out there. So it
Speaker 1: didn't start with you too, like we were. No, we
Speaker 1: weren't writing songs. Were Darryl had a Darryl had a
Speaker 1: job with a with a bar band in New Jersey
Speaker 1: called Pale and the Prophets, and he worked from like
Speaker 1: ten o'clock at night to like three in the morning. UM.
Speaker 1: I was playing folk music and teaching folk guitar lessons
Speaker 1: and playing blues and jamming with some blues bands, but
Speaker 1: mostly playing in coffee houses. A lot of traditional Delta
Speaker 1: blues and stuff like that. So at what point into
Speaker 1: you guys relationship, was it we actually kind of click musically,
Speaker 1: we should well forward think we hung out a lot
Speaker 1: and we had a lot of laughs and did a
Speaker 1: lot of crazy stuff which you've probably read in the
Speaker 1: book or will read. Um. But I went to Europe
Speaker 1: when I graduated from college nine in the in the
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen seventy, and I took all the money
Speaker 1: I had saved it up. I had about four or
Speaker 1: five and I sub let my apartment to Daryl's sister
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend, and I took off for for Europe.
Speaker 1: And I spent four months in Europe with a backpack
Speaker 1: and a guitar. And when I came back from Europe
Speaker 1: in October of nineteen seventy, I went to my apartment
Speaker 1: and it was a padlock on the door, and um,
Speaker 1: they had been evicted because they didn't pay the rent.
Speaker 1: And I had nowhere to go, and I had no money,
Speaker 1: and I had a backpack and a guitar. So I
Speaker 1: walked over to where Daryl was living in this little
Speaker 1: tiny place down near South Philadelphia, and I OpEd on
Speaker 1: the door and I said, hey, man, your sister kind
Speaker 1: of screwed me here. I'm like, I'm on the street.
Speaker 1: He goes, come on, want you to stay here? And
Speaker 1: I moved into the third floor, little room in the
Speaker 1: third floor of that little tiny house, and uh, that's
Speaker 1: where his piano was and books in a fireplace, and
Speaker 1: we started writing songs. First of all, you guys ever
Speaker 1: wrote it was, it was? It was pretty bad ter.
Speaker 1: In fact, the first song we wrote, we went up
Speaker 1: to Temple University and we snuck into the radio television
Speaker 1: film department and we put it on tape and it
Speaker 1: sounded so bid. We sounded so bad together that we said,
Speaker 1: you know what, well, let's just hang out. This is
Speaker 1: not never gonna work. But we just kind of kept
Speaker 1: chipping away, and really one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: was we almost from that experience. We we didn't sing together,
Speaker 1: but what we decided to do instead was accompanying each other.
Speaker 1: And that's best. That's the basis of our relationship. He
Speaker 1: would play a song and I'd play guitar and I'd
Speaker 1: sing some backgrounds. I would sing a song. He'd played piano,
Speaker 1: and he'd sing with me. And that's kind of how
Speaker 1: it really was. And that's really exactly how it always is.
Speaker 1: So then what triggered the Okay, we should really try
Speaker 1: this then, because so far sounds like a lot of
Speaker 1: hanging out and I was successful, noise. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, a lot of fun, but you gotta
Speaker 1: pay the bill. Well, we didn't have any money. We
Speaker 1: I never had any money. I got if I could
Speaker 1: scraunge together a cheese steak, kogi or or a soft
Speaker 1: pretzels or tasty cake, you know, the the the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: food staples at those times and those days, that was
Speaker 1: a big deal. So it was tough. I played in
Speaker 1: some blues bands, you know, and I scraped together some money,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was always a little bit of
Speaker 1: hash and stuff that you could, you know, sell a
Speaker 1: dime here and there. Did you make good money? No
Speaker 1: doing that, because I have a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of friends and they make good money doing I've never
Speaker 1: been a successful salesman on any level. Had some friends
Speaker 1: are really a good salesman growing up? Well not me. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna The book is called Change of Seasons, and man,
Speaker 1: it's so good. I mean, if you're a music fan,
Speaker 1: if you're can I just say hold on note to
Speaker 1: that you being mad, whatever you feeling, not at all.
Speaker 1: Hey man, we got a limited amount of time. We've
Speaker 1: got a lot of ground cover. Hold notes is good.
Speaker 1: Let go Taryll haul and John notates. Let me talk
Speaker 1: about Blue Apron for one second. You know, not all
Speaker 1: ingredients are equal, so not all food is equal, and fresh,
Speaker 1: high quality ingredients make a real difference. So it's important
Speaker 1: to know where your food comes from. For me, I
Speaker 1: love Blue Apron for a lot of reasons. One because
Speaker 1: it gets delivered right to my door. Too, because it's
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Speaker 1: you love how good it feels. I get a taste
Speaker 1: Blue Apron dot com slash Bobby casts. I love Blue Apron.
Speaker 1: It is a better way to cook. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're back. Um, okay, let's talk about some other stuff here.
Speaker 1: So you you guys go out, what's the first What
Speaker 1: was the first time where you thought, okay, well this
Speaker 1: could actually be something. We'll we're together and we can
Speaker 1: do this, and let's go and try this together. Well,
Speaker 1: what would we do is we would? Um. I started.
Speaker 1: I started sitting on the steps in front of the house,
Speaker 1: and I would have my guitar and I'd be playing.
Speaker 1: I played a lot of Doc Watson in that Mississippi
Speaker 1: genre and that kind of stuff. And Darryl was like
Speaker 1: first because his piano was up on the third floor
Speaker 1: and he couldn't very well carry it downstairs, so he
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to play mandolin. And he's such
Speaker 1: a good musician he kind of picked it up pretty quick,
Speaker 1: just you know, basic stuff. So we'd sit on the
Speaker 1: steps and we like just play and I would teach
Speaker 1: him these traditional American you know, country and blue grass
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and then we somehow started to
Speaker 1: meld it into this weird thing and people would stop
Speaker 1: and listen, and we were literally sitting on the steps
Speaker 1: in front of our house. And then we went to
Speaker 1: a place called the World Control Studio, which was kind
Speaker 1: of a tongue in cheek thing because it was this
Speaker 1: little hovel, this little tiny room with about four people
Speaker 1: or fifteen people could sit there, and um, we booked
Speaker 1: a gig and we said, let's just go and play.
Speaker 1: So we dragged his piano out, we carried it down
Speaker 1: the street, literally set it up and and carried it,
Speaker 1: like physically carried it. And then we had excused the
Speaker 1: guitar and we said we're going to play a gig,
Speaker 1: and we kind of spread the word through our neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And when the night came through the gig, all the
Speaker 1: people and who we would see on street during day,
Speaker 1: we're just sitting there. So it was a really weird thing.
Speaker 1: It was like we were playing for the same people
Speaker 1: that we saw every day, and and um, people seem
Speaker 1: to like it. And then we got a chance to
Speaker 1: do a there was a telethon for a charity in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: It was on local television and they were asking for
Speaker 1: local performers to do it, and we said, let's go
Speaker 1: over and do it. See if we can do it.
Speaker 1: And we went on TV and we played a couple
Speaker 1: of these these kind of new songs that we were
Speaker 1: working on. And the next day it was like everything changed.
Speaker 1: People would stop us on the street. TV the power
Speaker 1: of television and we It literally changed in one day.
Speaker 1: People said, oh my god, we heard you guys, We
Speaker 1: saw you guys on TV. It was really cool. And
Speaker 1: then we started going to a There was a remember
Speaker 1: Underground Radio FM radio when it was called Underground. There
Speaker 1: was a great, great show on Sunday nights. UH fellow
Speaker 1: named Gean Shay who had a folk show on Sunday night,
Speaker 1: a singer songwriter show, and he, you know, it was freewheeling.
Speaker 1: He would play, play anything and h he invited us
Speaker 1: to come and play on his show. So on a
Speaker 1: Sunday night, we went up there at about midnight and
Speaker 1: I think he was on from like eleven to two
Speaker 1: in the morning, and we went and dragged up Darrel's
Speaker 1: piano up there and we sat and played for a
Speaker 1: few hours, and between doing that radio show and that telethon,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we were we were a thing
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. And that's kind of how it started. So
Speaker 1: how do you become a thing in Philadelphia? Turned that
Speaker 1: into a thing? Getting a record deal? Like does someone say, hey,
Speaker 1: you should hear these guys and the guys shows up
Speaker 1: and watches and goes youah, the next a lot of
Speaker 1: hard work. No, no, no, it didn't quite work like that.
Speaker 1: We actually signed to a production company as songwriters in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: a guy named John Madera who had an office on
Speaker 1: the fourth floor of the Super Theater building. On the
Speaker 1: sixth floor, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff had their offices. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were just starting out as well. And um, John
Speaker 1: Madari was known for stuff he did with the Dovel's
Speaker 1: like the Bristol Stomp, Um, Lenn Barry one to three, Um,
Speaker 1: you known't owe me, Leslie Gore, things like that, that
Speaker 1: old you know that kind of sixties early rock and
Speaker 1: roll thing. And he paid he paid us twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars a week to write songs and basically would write
Speaker 1: songs and he would put his name on them and
Speaker 1: that's kind of how it worked. So you wrote the songs,
Speaker 1: but he got the credit. Well he we were credited,
Speaker 1: but Sosie. So you wrote the songs, but he also
Speaker 1: wrote the songs according to this is music Business one
Speaker 1: or one old school style, Philadelphia style. You know you
Speaker 1: talk about that too, and not to dig us too much,
Speaker 1: but in your book you talk about how when you
Speaker 1: would get what's like up front money, they would pay you,
Speaker 1: and the more they would pay you, the more rights
Speaker 1: they would take. That comes way later. But yes, and
Speaker 1: again not anyone I don't want to pull from the
Speaker 1: time on here, but I read that. I was like wow,
Speaker 1: because again, do you take more money and give up
Speaker 1: more of your soul? You have to put yourself in
Speaker 1: the time and the place where you are in your
Speaker 1: life when you don't have any money and you don't
Speaker 1: have anything, and the opportunity to have large amounts of
Speaker 1: cash and to be a pop star and run around
Speaker 1: the world and screw screw off and just be a
Speaker 1: complete irresponsible kid, you pretty much take it. And that's
Speaker 1: what we did. And we should have been more aware,
Speaker 1: we should have been where savvy, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the young performers are today. But we weren't, and we
Speaker 1: in a way we suffered for it, but in a
Speaker 1: way it was the best thing that ever happened because
Speaker 1: it changed me, forced me to become the person I
Speaker 1: am today. But we're jumping away, yeah again. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I read the book and I got so many of
Speaker 1: these thoughts on my head because I like read it
Speaker 1: like three days. Right, So okay, let's go back your filly.
Speaker 1: I want to go to the first record now, because
Speaker 1: you made two before the Silver record, that's three, you
Speaker 1: made three. Yeah. We made an album called Whole Oats,
Speaker 1: which was basically our folky singer songwriter Whole Oats, like
Speaker 1: just like Quaker Oats, you know, but it sounds like whole.
Speaker 1: We actually toured as Whole Notes as a band. We
Speaker 1: called ourselves Whole Notes. We did Run to Um and
Speaker 1: then we made the Abandoned Luncheonette album and we called
Speaker 1: ourselves by our own names. And then when the Abandoned
Speaker 1: Luncheonette album didn't connect, we left our Atlantic Records and
Speaker 1: went to our CIA and we didn't no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We stayed on Atlantic and we did an album with
Speaker 1: Todd Rundgren called war Babies, and that didn't connect. So
Speaker 1: now we had made three albums. They were all distinctly different.
Speaker 1: One was folky, one was kind of an acoustic R
Speaker 1: and B, and one was an experimental rock album. And
Speaker 1: nothing was working at that point. Are you like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just not gonna work. We know, we never gave
Speaker 1: up on ourselves, but we were afraid that the world
Speaker 1: would give up on us. So we went to l
Speaker 1: A with a guy from Philadelphia who worked on who
Speaker 1: was actually in our touring band. He had gone to
Speaker 1: l A and he had become a studio musician and
Speaker 1: he got familiar with the In the mid seventies, l
Speaker 1: A was really the place to be in terms of recording.
Speaker 1: A lot of great players were there. You know, you
Speaker 1: had the singers and writer cult with Jackson Brown and
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell and you know the Eagules and Linda runs
Speaker 1: that we're all starting to happen. Um. So he convinced
Speaker 1: us to go to l A. And we made that
Speaker 1: silver album, the one you refer to that has Sarah
Speaker 1: Smile on it. We made that in l A and
Speaker 1: um that that album connected, and that was really the
Speaker 1: beginning of us kind of coalescing a sound. I think,
Speaker 1: so you make this record, and you know we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier and Sarah Smile gets played by DJ
Speaker 1: and here it is, get your first hit. I'm just
Speaker 1: hearing yourself on the radio. I'm assuming your rate to
Speaker 1: play live goes up a little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 1: I got a little bit of money. You want to
Speaker 1: hear a funny story about John Sposito, I do. And
Speaker 1: by the way, John Esposito right now is the head
Speaker 1: of Warner and Asheville. By the way, he's I love
Speaker 1: John Esposito just at background. He's also run a hip
Speaker 1: hop label and he's very He's just a music guys. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can tell me a story about John. He was
Speaker 1: a student at Indiana State University in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and Darrel and I were set to perform there and
Speaker 1: we had a contract and he was the he was
Speaker 1: the he was the student talent buyer and he uh,
Speaker 1: he loved our band of Lunchinet album and he booked us.
Speaker 1: He booked us for a very low amount of money,
Speaker 1: right before Sarah Smile became a hit. So when the
Speaker 1: date rolled around that we were supposed to play, um,
Speaker 1: I supposed to play this show um. Our manager called
Speaker 1: him and told him that we weren't coming unless he
Speaker 1: like quadrupled the price. And s Spo was just a kid,
Speaker 1: he was a student. And I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know anything about our manager, but he was a guy
Speaker 1: named Tommy Mattola, and he was like, I know, tommytol
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, tom Attolo, sony huge. You know,
Speaker 1: he has a whole other you know, he became something.
Speaker 1: He became. Yes, well he had a tough street kind
Speaker 1: of demeanor, let's put it that way. So he started
Speaker 1: telling Espo John Esposito that he was gonna come brake
Speaker 1: his legs, and Espos stood his ground and he got
Speaker 1: us for the price, the original price, and to this
Speaker 1: day is what I think, it's what spos proudest moments. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, quite an investment. He vote you before and
Speaker 1: then you hit in the middle play the song. So,
Speaker 1: so is this the first song that when you would
Speaker 1: travel out of your comfort zone that people with stinking
Speaker 1: back to you and you were like, wow, it's kind
Speaker 1: of weird. Yes, and no, it was actually She's gone
Speaker 1: because the hardcore fans. We had built this hardcore college
Speaker 1: fan base and they love She's Gone. It was known
Speaker 1: as in those days they called it a turntable bait
Speaker 1: because it didn't connect on radio. But everyone loved it,
Speaker 1: and in colleges across the country, this song was just
Speaker 1: a standard and this was the one that they really like.
Speaker 1: And of course Sarah Smart too on the front of
Speaker 1: the of the silver record. Now, I'm thinking of the
Speaker 1: picture here, right, I know, I know what you're thinking of.
Speaker 1: You guys had makeup on talking about in the book
Speaker 1: to how they made you look like women, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same guy did Bowie So but I'm too,
Speaker 1: and you had facial hair so you could tell you
Speaker 1: were a dude. But if I was looking for the
Speaker 1: first time, I would have thought Darren was a woman. Daryl.
Speaker 1: Daryl makes a joke about it. He said, he said,
Speaker 1: he looks like he looks like the girl which he
Speaker 1: could date. Yeah, like kind of hot. I was like,
Speaker 1: who's the hunch with John. So they come to I'm
Speaker 1: assuming did you I shouldn't assume did you have final
Speaker 1: say over that cover or did the record lable to
Speaker 1: say this is it? We're putting it up. Here's how
Speaker 1: it worked. We were living in Greenwich Village. It was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the glam rock era. We were hanging
Speaker 1: out with Mick Jagger and Todd Rundgren and Bowie and
Speaker 1: all these people, and that's what was happening and everyone
Speaker 1: was doing. If you look at the albums from those days,
Speaker 1: look at Edgar Winner, Rick Derringer, Todd run Green, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone had makeup on. It was that's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: and bisexual era, and especially down in the village, and
Speaker 1: so we got caught up in it. It would seem
Speaker 1: like a cool thing to do. And Pierre Laroche was
Speaker 1: a very flamboyant like guy. He he was in the
Speaker 1: high fashion world, you know, with all the models and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and he said one night over dinner,
Speaker 1: he goes, I will immortalize you. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: he did. Because to this day that's the only album
Speaker 1: covers anyone ever asked us about. So there you go.
Speaker 1: I just was looking in the book. Came up again
Speaker 1: and I went and looked at it again because I've
Speaker 1: seen it a hundred times. And then after I heard
Speaker 1: the story, I was like, yeah, Darrel looks like a
Speaker 1: hot chick again. You had the facial hairs, all that
Speaker 1: kind of hard kind of dude, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So uh talking about da have a boy for a second.
Speaker 1: So you had a personal relationship outside of music. Yes,
Speaker 1: we we opened the show for him on his first
Speaker 1: tour because you opened though, and and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of music. Sometimes you don't get to hang with well,
Speaker 1: you didn't hang with David Bowie, especially doing a Laddin
Speaker 1: saying when he was doing Ziggy Stardust. There was no
Speaker 1: hanging involved. It was crazy. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: even describe how crazy the early seventies were, um in
Speaker 1: terms of let's just put it this way, if I
Speaker 1: would have done what I did in the early seventies today,
Speaker 1: I'd be in prison. So there were no cell phones,
Speaker 1: no records of anything happening social media. It was crazy,
Speaker 1: and but it was fun. What was social media say
Speaker 1: about you if it existed then, Like, what would have
Speaker 1: been the big headline? Be in prison? I'm not going
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you got to prison for,
Speaker 1: I know, but I'm not going any further than that.
Speaker 1: Did you, guys whenever did you do the hotel hotel
Speaker 1: trashing thing? Because that seemed to be quite the phace
Speaker 1: for for a minute, No, you never you never just
Speaker 1: trashed the hotel if you if you really want to know,
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd say the only thing we trashed was
Speaker 1: a lot of bed sheets. Let's just leave it at that.
Speaker 1: You don't have to leave it at that. You said
Speaker 1: it all like it Okay, there's interesting a lot of ye.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of questions that follow that that. Mom,
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to ask any more questions
Speaker 1: about that. I think you just let your imagination run.
Speaker 1: Why did you ever get tired of that? It? Was
Speaker 1: there ever a point in your life we're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've just been looking up a lot and I'm tired
Speaker 1: of this because listen, I was like, I've never got girls, right,
Speaker 1: so I never This is like the opposite. I never
Speaker 1: got girls, and I was tired of never getting girls,
Speaker 1: and then finally now I have a good job and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, good did you ever get to
Speaker 1: the point where were like, I'm just tired of this
Speaker 1: and you can say no because that's totally cool because
Speaker 1: I know, okay, good, Okay, So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: yes at a certain point. Yes, I did when I
Speaker 1: finally got married to my wife of today, of twenty
Speaker 1: four years today. Yes, what was it about her though
Speaker 1: that made it different? Because I well, it was a
Speaker 1: combination of meeting her and realizing that not only was
Speaker 1: she a great person and someone I wanted to spend
Speaker 1: more time with and be more responsible with, but it
Speaker 1: was also it coincided with this whole change of life
Speaker 1: that occurred because of what happened to me in New York.
Speaker 1: I got divorced, had a financial collapse, I lost my manager,
Speaker 1: moved to Colorado, and I basically wanted to start over
Speaker 1: and reinvent myself, and I knew that in order to
Speaker 1: do that, I had to become a different person. There
Speaker 1: was no way that I could live the life I
Speaker 1: had been leading for all those years and survive and
Speaker 1: have any kind of meaningful relationship. So really that's what
Speaker 1: changed it for me. On a place that these number
Speaker 1: one for a second, just one here for example, girl
Speaker 1: well Um Darryl's girlfriend Sandy Sarah Allen Sarah Um. I
Speaker 1: had a friend from college who was the heir to
Speaker 1: a fast food fortune, and he was this dude who
Speaker 1: was very irresponsible and completely whacked out of his brain.
Speaker 1: And he came over to the house one day and
Speaker 1: UH was just acting like a complete lunatic. And after
Speaker 1: he left, Darrell literally sat down and wrote that song. Uh,
Speaker 1: Darrell wrote that and he he said, you're a rich boy.
Speaker 1: You've gone too far. You can rely on your old
Speaker 1: man's money because he lived on his on a trust fund.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, after having come up with
Speaker 1: that hook, he went, well, that's ain't I ain't gonna
Speaker 1: cut it. Let's just turn it to rich girl. And
Speaker 1: that was it. Now that I have heard that, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it again. Of all that, and I've got,
Speaker 1: you know, an entire library of music here. But what
Speaker 1: song fell out? You know some artists say, you know
Speaker 1: what a set down, and it's fell out of mean it,
Speaker 1: Mac'm a huge hit. She's gone, she's gone. Absolutely, I'll
Speaker 1: keep going back to that. But there's a reason for it.
Speaker 1: It's this quintisential Homewood songs and it's a it's something
Speaker 1: where we both shared this common experience and we wrote
Speaker 1: the song like in a fever dream. Uh. It literally
Speaker 1: wrote itself. It took about as long to write as
Speaker 1: almost as it took the play. And you and you
Speaker 1: knew something specially, Let's do the opposite then of definitely
Speaker 1: number one. But of your big songs that people know,
Speaker 1: like casual fans will call that, which song just was
Speaker 1: so grueling and you're like, this is it just took forever? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a couple. There was a few that took
Speaker 1: a while to kind of marinate. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: Man Eater was one. Um. I got the idea from
Speaker 1: man Eater um when when I was down in Jamaica
Speaker 1: and uh I came back to New York and uh
Speaker 1: I had this experience with a bunch of my friends
Speaker 1: hanging out at After Hour's restaurant and this woman came
Speaker 1: in and she was just completely gorgeous and so beautiful,
Speaker 1: but she had the fouless mouth that you've ever heard
Speaker 1: in your life. And I just looked at her and
Speaker 1: I went, oh, man, she would shoot you up and
Speaker 1: spit you out. And it stuck in my head. So
Speaker 1: I got home and I wrote chorus for man Eater
Speaker 1: as a reggae song, and then I had a writing
Speaker 1: session with Edgar Winner uptown and he lived on Park
Speaker 1: Avenue and I went up to Edgar Winner's house and
Speaker 1: we started fooling around with some ideas and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I got this one idea, and I played him this
Speaker 1: reggae thing that I was working on. It was, oh,
Speaker 1: here's she comes, watch that brought you to you, but
Speaker 1: in a reggae style. And he wasn't into reggae, you know,
Speaker 1: Edgar Winner was a blues player, and he kind of
Speaker 1: just kind of ignored the idea and said, you know
Speaker 1: that's not for me or whatever, and uh so I
Speaker 1: hear again. I kind of lodged my brain and I
Speaker 1: got together with Darryll and played it for him too,
Speaker 1: and he said, he said, now, man, you gotta just
Speaker 1: change the groove. He goes, it's cool, idea, Let's just
Speaker 1: change the groove. And he was the one that came
Speaker 1: up with the motown groove kind of bom bomp bomp,
Speaker 1: bomp bump, and so being a tough one, it took
Speaker 1: a while. I mean it took like three or four
Speaker 1: different attempts in different styles before we landed on that
Speaker 1: motown groove and then finished the song in that style.
Speaker 1: When you hit the motown group, we're like, all right,
Speaker 1: this one's it. Yeah. Well it felt good right away.
Speaker 1: We didn't know it was it or not, but it
Speaker 1: felt pretty good. What was the biggest surprise that you
Speaker 1: guys had where you were like, I can't believe the
Speaker 1: song is doing so freaking good. Um, I can't go
Speaker 1: for that really jam. But the thing is, there's only
Speaker 1: two inchs three instruments on the song. There's a keyboard,
Speaker 1: a guitar, and sex a drum machine. It's one of
Speaker 1: the first records ever to be a hit on a
Speaker 1: drum machine? Is that right? And you couldn't believe this thanking?
Speaker 1: Was it? We thought? We thought it was just a
Speaker 1: kind of a cool little jam. It is a cool
Speaker 1: little jam. That's why. So who convinces you then that
Speaker 1: that's a great song, because if you guys route it
Speaker 1: into a cool little jam? Like by time that song
Speaker 1: came out, we were on such a role in the
Speaker 1: eighties that it seemed like everything we released turned into
Speaker 1: a hit. It was just one of those things where
Speaker 1: radio was in sync with our sound. Our sound was
Speaker 1: the sound that radio liked, and they just gobbled everything up.
Speaker 1: It was almost too easy in a in a weird way.
Speaker 1: At what age were you able to look at your
Speaker 1: bank account and have a million dollars? Do you remember
Speaker 1: I have a million dollar check set in plexiglass on
Speaker 1: my desk at home. It was my first million dollar check.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing about it is that I've never
Speaker 1: got any of the money, but I had to check. Well,
Speaker 1: it disappeared into this black hole of debt, of crazy
Speaker 1: ship that we were if we were living. I don't
Speaker 1: know where it went. All I know is they gave
Speaker 1: us this check and they said, here's a million dollar check,
Speaker 1: and I went, oh cool. And I had encased in
Speaker 1: plexiglass and I always look at it and I laughed
Speaker 1: because to me, it's just a it's a one with
Speaker 1: six numbers. When did you become a millionaire? At? What age? Um?
Speaker 1: And what you spending? Like crazy? Before you even reached that. No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't spending before, but the moment we started making money,
Speaker 1: I definitely started spending. I started buying cars. That was
Speaker 1: my first thing. That's what everyone does. You buy a car.
Speaker 1: That's like the classic thing. In fact, it's always funny
Speaker 1: when I see when I see young performers and people
Speaker 1: I know here in Nashville, I was I was the
Speaker 1: first thing I always do when I when I see
Speaker 1: them having some success, like I always asking what kind
Speaker 1: of car they're driving because I know it's pretty much
Speaker 1: the first purchase, um and it should be. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of write of passage. I don't know, um Man.
Speaker 1: In the seventies we started getting these advances and that's
Speaker 1: when this whole house of cards started to get build
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and just pull one joker from the
Speaker 1: bottom and the thing it's gonna fall apart. Tell me
Speaker 1: about Private Eyes. Well, the Private Eyes was actually written
Speaker 1: by a gal named Jane Allen, who was sarah sister,
Speaker 1: younger sister, and she was hanging out with us, and uh,
Speaker 1: she was a great girl and she wanted to she
Speaker 1: was learning to play the tour and she had a
Speaker 1: really cool pop sensibility. She came with that idea and
Speaker 1: she was working with a guy named Warren Pass who
Speaker 1: actually lives here in Nashville. Uh, and uh, they actually
Speaker 1: played it for Darryl, and Darryl kind of took their
Speaker 1: idea and recrafted. So as I was, by the way, again,
Speaker 1: I recommend fully this book if you're a Hall and
Speaker 1: Oates fan, or if you're a Darryl Hall and John
Speaker 1: Oates fan, or if you're just a music fan, one
Speaker 1: of the three any other three. Yeah, because again one,
Speaker 1: it's all it's it's like a history of music, but
Speaker 1: too it's easy to read, especially for someone like me,
Speaker 1: because again I was I was so because when I
Speaker 1: got I was like, man, I want to kind of go.
Speaker 1: Then I was like, oh, this is cool because chapters
Speaker 1: are like four pages and it's like on the next
Speaker 1: story exactly. You can fall asleep in bed, can read
Speaker 1: a chapter and fall and you can move around too.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, you can bounce around exactly. You don't have
Speaker 1: to read it. And you know from beginning then I
Speaker 1: made a lot of notes here, so we knew all
Speaker 1: that from my heart. I made pages I was making.
Speaker 1: It's like, listen, I just appreciate the fact that you
Speaker 1: read it. Made twenty albums, all all all done? Right?
Speaker 1: About twenty albums maybe more with live albums and compilations.
Speaker 1: Does that count to you though? Live albums and compilations
Speaker 1: in your heart? The live out we've made we've made
Speaker 1: to live albums. Uh yeah, you know they're kind of extra,
Speaker 1: kind of extra curricular activity. Over sixty million records sold,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about this. That's a big number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's is it weird to go into countries
Speaker 1: that you've never been before, not even because the cool
Speaker 1: thing for me is I get to go into like places.
Speaker 1: For example, I went into um like Cedar Rapids, never
Speaker 1: been sed Rapids. Before I go up, you stand up.
Speaker 1: And people are a big fans because because my shows
Speaker 1: all over the country, and it's cool for me to
Speaker 1: go into towns and relate to these people that I've
Speaker 1: never met. I've never been to their town, but you
Speaker 1: would go to different parts of the world. How crazy
Speaker 1: to go to a different part of the world and
Speaker 1: they know who you are. It's it's it's pretty heavy.
Speaker 1: It's a heavy experience. It's it's tough not to let
Speaker 1: it go to your head and to let it get
Speaker 1: out of control, and unfortunately it happens to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know. I think Darrel and I were
Speaker 1: very We're not the same in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in our personal lives, but we have the same work
Speaker 1: ethic and we both kind of stay in control enough
Speaker 1: to keep doing what we're doing. I think that was
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a kind of an overriding
Speaker 1: kind of trait that we both seem to have. The
Speaker 1: Voices album for a hundred weeks that changed everything it was,
Speaker 1: it was on It was on the jar for a
Speaker 1: hundred weeks. That's first album we produced ourselves, a hundred weeks.
Speaker 1: I'm telling that you don't know this about hundred weeks.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. Yeah you don't. I'm breaking news
Speaker 1: to you right now. A hundred of weeks. Okay, is
Speaker 1: that a long that's a long time. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you how many weeks during a year and then you
Speaker 1: tell me like basically two years that things on the chart. Wow, well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good record it I would agree with that, Dave,
Speaker 1: talk about that for a second. You know what, that
Speaker 1: that was our That was our rebirth in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That that led that album was the thing that that
Speaker 1: made the eighties happen for us. What had happened was
Speaker 1: all through the seventies. We're still in that mindset of
Speaker 1: in the old record you know, in the old record days, uh,
Speaker 1: an artist had to have a producer. It was just
Speaker 1: you didn't go into recording studio without our producer, kind
Speaker 1: of like your you know, kind of your you know,
Speaker 1: big brother, your dad, your overseer making sure he could
Speaker 1: report back to the record company, make sure everything was right.
Speaker 1: And we had gotten to the point where we just
Speaker 1: we realized we were making our own records. But we
Speaker 1: had record producers sitting in the room and it wasn't
Speaker 1: it didn't feel right, and we just said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's just produce ourselves. And that was the album where
Speaker 1: we decided to produce ourselves. And that record changed everything
Speaker 1: and it really set the tone for the rest of
Speaker 1: the eighties. So again, I'm gonna go from memory. So
Speaker 1: I messed up stop me here, but on that record,
Speaker 1: like this, this was a total fluid flup. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Jane Allen came up with this idea the same Galet
Speaker 1: came up with the idea for Private Eyes, and she
Speaker 1: brought it to Darryl, and Darryl didn't want her um.
Speaker 1: He wanted to help her, just to help her finish
Speaker 1: the song. So he sat down to piano after hours
Speaker 1: after one of our recording sessions, and he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, he said, I gotta do this demo for Jana,
Speaker 1: just so you know, we'll have a little song for her.
Speaker 1: So he turned on the drum machine and he played
Speaker 1: the piano and sang the song. The engineer said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is just a demo, why don't
Speaker 1: we just recorded a fest Now that means inches per
Speaker 1: second In the old days, when you're recording the tape,
Speaker 1: the fast of the tapes speed, the better quality recording
Speaker 1: you tap. Um. So we would normally record a thirty
Speaker 1: i p s. But he said, well, let's save tape.
Speaker 1: You know, tapes expensive, Let's just do it at fifteen.
Speaker 1: So we slowed the tape machine down. Daryl played the
Speaker 1: thing and he took it in and our manager heard
Speaker 1: it and said, what's that. He said, it's a little
Speaker 1: demo made for for Jenna, and that's it. Came a
Speaker 1: huge hit record. So the demo, the demos at ips.
Speaker 1: So it's got this warbly quality to it that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had if we've done it at thirty, or
Speaker 1: if we would have actually thought about it, like in
Speaker 1: terms of recording it as a single. Did this song
Speaker 1: start slower than you guys maybe thought it would. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this kind of it just yeah, we didn't know that
Speaker 1: this would even happen. Um. Yeah, I can't remember if
Speaker 1: it was the first single or the second or third,
Speaker 1: but we had about four singles off that end. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm just going from memory. I think it was the
Speaker 1: first it might have been, because did You Make My
Speaker 1: Dreams Come True? Was the second or third? To me?
Speaker 1: The reason that it sticks out to me because Voices
Speaker 1: was such a big record it was not for two years,
Speaker 1: was that that was such a big record even though
Speaker 1: the song was and again it could have been second.
Speaker 1: Again I'm going from memory, but that it was. It
Speaker 1: took a while, and usually wasn't that takes a while.
Speaker 1: At first you don't see the whole project turned into
Speaker 1: a monster, but it did turn into a monster. Well,
Speaker 1: we had You Make My Dreams Come True? And we
Speaker 1: had um uh, the Righteous we covered the Righteous brothers.
Speaker 1: You lost that love and feeling, which also was a
Speaker 1: total fluke. That was a crazy fluke. Well, we had
Speaker 1: finished the album. We thought we had finished the album,
Speaker 1: and um we had in those days what we would
Speaker 1: do when we finished an album. We never let the
Speaker 1: record company into the recording studio while we were playing
Speaker 1: because we didn't want any interference. We just wanted to
Speaker 1: do what we wanted to do. And um, so we
Speaker 1: had something we always traditionally had something called listening party
Speaker 1: where when we were done the album, we'd bring everyone
Speaker 1: of the recording studio, our friends, you know, hangers on whoever,
Speaker 1: the record company agents, and we would literally have a
Speaker 1: listening party. We'd have some wine and some food and
Speaker 1: we played the record. So we played the record and
Speaker 1: every woe's digging it and we felt really good about it.
Speaker 1: And afterwards we went out to pizza place in the
Speaker 1: village right next to the studio to get a bite
Speaker 1: to eat, and Darren and I would both looked at
Speaker 1: each other. We said, you know, the record is not
Speaker 1: quite done. There's something missing. We didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: And at that very moment, and God's honest truth is
Speaker 1: so weird. The Righteous Brother's original version of you Lost
Speaker 1: that Love and Feeling came on the jukebox and we
Speaker 1: just looked at each other. Let's cut that, and we
Speaker 1: went in the next day we cut we with the band,
Speaker 1: we cut it live, We sang it, and we were
Speaker 1: finished in about three hours. And there you go, you're
Speaker 1: reading hanging out and you heard it. Something was missing.
Speaker 1: We added on the record. On that same record, this
Speaker 1: song comes out. This is one of those songs they
Speaker 1: continue to stay cool. It does, and it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those songs that just seems to everyone. It's just
Speaker 1: a happy, great groove, and you know, it didn't really
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a big hit when it came out.
Speaker 1: I think it was a big hit it came it
Speaker 1: went to number five or four or something like that,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like a huge number one record, but
Speaker 1: it was still a song that people liked. And then
Speaker 1: in the past ten years it's gone nuts and Five
Speaker 1: Days of Summer, you know what. I went to see that.
Speaker 1: Everyone was telling me, hey, you guys got a tune
Speaker 1: in Five Days of Summer, this little kind of indie film, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah. So one day, my my
Speaker 1: son and my wife and I were at the Grove
Speaker 1: in l A on a tour. We had a day off,
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, that movie Five Minute Days of
Speaker 1: Summer is playing. Let's go in, and was in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: There was no one in the theater. There were a
Speaker 1: few girls in the theater and um teenage girls, and
Speaker 1: we sat down and when it came on in that scene,
Speaker 1: the girls started clapping and I was like, oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: they went nuts. And I think, honestly, I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the best marriages of film and music that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. And the Little Bird, everything about it
Speaker 1: is right. The way the director handled it, the fact
Speaker 1: that he chose that song, the fact that he said
Speaker 1: it in that setting, and it's just this little love
Speaker 1: affair in the park and it's just this beautiful summer afternoon.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a perfect compliment. First song, Like, I
Speaker 1: really like the song. Right then when the movie came out,
Speaker 1: I found myself let's like, well, that's the power of
Speaker 1: the filmmaking. I think. I think, like I said that,
Speaker 1: the directors just he he nailed it. Of all of
Speaker 1: your song, which song do you think made you the
Speaker 1: most money? M hmm. I probably say I can't go
Speaker 1: for that or at a touch perhaps, So if you
Speaker 1: go I can't go for that, is it because it's
Speaker 1: being used in a lot of places. Well, add a
Speaker 1: touch and you make my dream I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't go for that, and you make my dreams
Speaker 1: come true. Have done the best in terms of sinks,
Speaker 1: licenses for film commercials and things like that. If your
Speaker 1: song gets picked for a commercial, like that's pretty good
Speaker 1: money right in this day and age, It's really quite
Speaker 1: good considering there's not many income streams left in the
Speaker 1: music business. You know, you guys and I was driving
Speaker 1: down and I saw that you were playing and it
Speaker 1: said you know Daryl Hall and yes, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so they're playing UM the show and again I'm an idiot,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I wonder why they're not a
Speaker 1: constut Hall notes they they changed businesses and now you know,
Speaker 1: trying to um. So from whenever the nineties come around,
Speaker 1: because the eighties, like you guys dominated, the nineties come around,
Speaker 1: but also comes a shift. Just like every generation, a
Speaker 1: shift of music happens, and you go from that eighties
Speaker 1: sound in the eighties look too well grunge will say,
Speaker 1: the grunge moves in the Nirvana's Pearl James, the Seattle
Speaker 1: based music comes in. Does that totally cut your legs
Speaker 1: out from underneath you? You know, it would have if
Speaker 1: we would have tried to compete with it, but we didn't.
Speaker 1: We had we had sense to know that it was
Speaker 1: not our time anymore. We knew that there was a
Speaker 1: seismic shift as you exactly as you just described, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of a shift back to primitive rawness
Speaker 1: that grunge kind of represented. And it was not about melody,
Speaker 1: it was not about chords, and it was not about singing,
Speaker 1: which is what we're all about. And we knew that
Speaker 1: our time it was not our time, and we we
Speaker 1: had the common sense to kind of back off and
Speaker 1: we continued to record, but we we began to think
Speaker 1: of ourselves in a different way. We said, what can
Speaker 1: we do now, Okay, we're not going to be these
Speaker 1: pop stars forever. One way or the other. It's going
Speaker 1: to end, whether you know it ends because we get
Speaker 1: too old, or we don't deliver anymore or whatever, or
Speaker 1: the world just doesn't want to hear the kind of
Speaker 1: music we make. And we knew that, and so what
Speaker 1: we did was we we kind of went back to
Speaker 1: our songwriter roots and we said, let's just write good
Speaker 1: songs and we'll play them for our fans. And that's
Speaker 1: when we became independent artists, when we actually left the
Speaker 1: major label. To our credit and I will you kind
Speaker 1: of blow our collective horn here a little bit um,
Speaker 1: we were one of the first classic artists or a
Speaker 1: big time artists to actually leave the major labels and
Speaker 1: say we don't need a label anymore. And we released
Speaker 1: everything from on as an independent artist. We've never had
Speaker 1: a label since. So did you see as that came in.
Speaker 1: Could you look back and see when you're when you came,
Speaker 1: because you guys were a new sound. When something comes
Speaker 1: in like that on you, then can you look back
Speaker 1: and go, Wow, we did this, And maybe I didn't
Speaker 1: appreciate the fact that we were the new sound and
Speaker 1: we knocked some people out. Interesting, You're right, I know
Speaker 1: when you're when you're kicking ass and taking names and
Speaker 1: trying to make it, you don't think like that. All
Speaker 1: you care about is is the road ahead. As you
Speaker 1: look back though, now, can you see it? And I
Speaker 1: can see it? Yes. In fact, I wrote a song
Speaker 1: about that. I wrote a song. I was coming back
Speaker 1: from New Orleans and I was sitting in first class
Speaker 1: and I was sitting next to Frankie Valley and we
Speaker 1: we talked on the airplane and we had never met before,
Speaker 1: and I was I was a in but he I
Speaker 1: could tell, you know, his error was over. And this
Speaker 1: is way pre Jersey Boys. You know, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: an era of time when he this was the seventies.
Speaker 1: It was in the middle of him being a real
Speaker 1: singing star and Jersey Boys. It wasn't that the middle,
Speaker 1: but there was no Broadway show that that kind of
Speaker 1: you know, elevated, and he was an oldies guy, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of on the way up, you know,
Speaker 1: and I saw myself and him in a little in
Speaker 1: some way, and it wasn't you know. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: sorry for him and anyway. It's just I could see that, Hey,
Speaker 1: you can be a huge star and you can also
Speaker 1: fall down. Maybe your time is over. And I wrote
Speaker 1: a song called back Together Again, and the song was
Speaker 1: about really about him in a way. It was back
Speaker 1: together again, back together again, singing the same old story.
Speaker 1: Back together again, the old songs never end, gives you
Speaker 1: something to believe in, and I kind of got the
Speaker 1: inspiration to write the song about about him. Everyone thinks
Speaker 1: it's about getting back here for your girlfriend or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's about you and Franky validating again. Yes,
Speaker 1: having a date in first class on a on a
Speaker 1: flight from New Orles. Yeah, so you get the call
Speaker 1: to be in the Rock Corroll Hall of Fame again.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go for a memory twenty yes. So, and
Speaker 1: I remember watching it on television and I remember you guys,
Speaker 1: And it's funny now that we're talking here all these things,
Speaker 1: because you guys were in the same class that Nirvana
Speaker 1: was in the same guys, that kind of change the
Speaker 1: sound that you were in. Yeah, you know what, I
Speaker 1: never thought about that, But that's that's very very interesting
Speaker 1: point that you you picked up on. I'm a great
Speaker 1: interview with John. I'm enjoying that. I'm enjoying this thoroughly.
Speaker 1: I'm just such a music fan and I think I
Speaker 1: can sit here and talk to you for four hours
Speaker 1: about every everything and in the book. To me was
Speaker 1: again of everything in the book. And I hope people
Speaker 1: listen to this. And if you're reader, and if you're
Speaker 1: even if you're not a reader and you're like music.
Speaker 1: That's why I say it's easy to read. I want
Speaker 1: people to know that, um is that I do write
Speaker 1: on a sixth grade level. You know, you're a piece
Speaker 1: of music. You're you're a piece of music history, Like
Speaker 1: you're the highest that you can pull. You're in the
Speaker 1: Rock and All Hall of Fame, Like that's the top
Speaker 1: one percent. That's nowhere else to go, right, there's nowhere
Speaker 1: else to go except down. Huh do you ever go down?
Speaker 1: Or do you? Just like I don't you go in
Speaker 1: and you have all these people honor you and talk
Speaker 1: about who inducted you, Um quest love from roots. That's cool.
Speaker 1: I thought that would It made a lot of sense
Speaker 1: because Philly guy, you know you know his father? Do
Speaker 1: you know his father was in a group called Lee
Speaker 1: Andrews and the Hearts. Okay, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I love Lee Andrews and the Hearts. They were a
Speaker 1: doo wop group. And just so amazing that his father
Speaker 1: was actually in a group that I idolized when I
Speaker 1: was a young kid. Wow, it's like everything comes back sleeping,
Speaker 1: Like five things we've talked about that liked here come
Speaker 1: back around life. Someone If someone comes up to you says, hey,
Speaker 1: you have to and I'm sure you get it all
Speaker 1: the time, but it's like, give give me some advice
Speaker 1: because you can give the best advice because you've done
Speaker 1: at all the loaves the super Highs. Don't suck up.
Speaker 1: But that's so wide at what though? Now? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean I can't give people advice. You know, be
Speaker 1: true to your school? How about that one? You know?
Speaker 1: And and by that I mean that symbolically, Um, be
Speaker 1: true to yourself, be find out who you are, find
Speaker 1: out what you have to offer, and and take that
Speaker 1: path and own it and and believe in it. Um,
Speaker 1: learn from your learn from the people you admire, the
Speaker 1: people you and emulate the here your heroes, and try
Speaker 1: to take what you love about them and somehow make
Speaker 1: it your own and and see if something original can
Speaker 1: can come from it. That's the best advice I can give.
Speaker 1: Who did you meet throughout your career that as you're
Speaker 1: a big star, you meet maybe they may be younger
Speaker 1: than you are, just coming up and you were like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, this person is so good and you can
Speaker 1: kind of predict their success. So many, so many I
Speaker 1: do so don't even know where to begin. Who comes
Speaker 1: to mind first? One comes to mind, Um Brittany Howard,
Speaker 1: Jim James, uh Uh, Brett Eldridge, Um, Charlie Worsham. Charlie
Speaker 1: was in here last week, like like the next level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's so fantastic. Um, you know what about And like
Speaker 1: that sand Bush Jerry Douglas an artist that comes up
Speaker 1: when you're like you saw them, You're like, they're about
Speaker 1: to be a megastar before they were a megastar. Um
Speaker 1: in Excess. They opened for us, They opened a tour
Speaker 1: for us, and from the moment they started playing on
Speaker 1: that tour, I knew this was the last time they
Speaker 1: were ever going to open for anybody. They were fantastic.
Speaker 1: It was an amazing tour with the two of us,
Speaker 1: But I knew that they were just they were just
Speaker 1: about to just take off. And what a tragic story. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also we also had a band called Till Tuesday
Speaker 1: opened for us with a girl named Amy Man, and
Speaker 1: she was really talented, and I knew that she had
Speaker 1: a future. And you know, Amy Man is a great
Speaker 1: singer songwriter. She's out there still playing performing to this day.
Speaker 1: How is it that some bands make it the full?
Speaker 1: Like here you are, you're here to talk about you
Speaker 1: wrote a book, you were in the Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: you live in life. You look healthy, everything seems good.
Speaker 1: But it's like either it's it's one way or the other.
Speaker 1: It's like you go down quick and in a flame,
Speaker 1: or you roll all the way through. This is not
Speaker 1: this is not a business for sissy's. Um. You've got
Speaker 1: to have a thick skin, you gotta want it, and
Speaker 1: you've gotta work really hard. UM. I have a I
Speaker 1: have a very UM. I have a good work ethic.
Speaker 1: Maybe I got it from my parents from that generation.
Speaker 1: You know, growing up as a baby boomer, you know,
Speaker 1: right after World War Two. Um, it's I'm I'm of
Speaker 1: that generation where it's just ingrained in me. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just uh, I just hope, I you know, instilled.
Speaker 1: I think I think I've been able to instill that
Speaker 1: in my son, who's just turning twenty one. And in
Speaker 1: a way, he's a he's a hard worker. He's not
Speaker 1: he's not of his millennial generation for some reason. Does
Speaker 1: he get what you have accomplished? Yeah, he does, and
Speaker 1: he specifically has gone in a completely different world and
Speaker 1: a different route. And I'm I'm really actually more proud
Speaker 1: of that fact than almost anything else, because he thought
Speaker 1: for himself and he realized that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: follow in his father's footsteps. He wanted to carve his
Speaker 1: own path. And I'm really actually very proud of that.
Speaker 1: So over the years, I mean, I assume you've met
Speaker 1: just about anybody cool that you wanted to meet. But
Speaker 1: I'll just ask you some some names here. Yeah, Paul McCartney, him, sure,
Speaker 1: give me a word for these guys. Paul McCartney. He
Speaker 1: just like the most bubbly and kind of happy and
Speaker 1: like up kind of guy. Um, I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 1: I saw a set at Bonnaroo in two thirteen when
Speaker 1: we're there to do the super Jam, and he blew
Speaker 1: me away. He did a two and a half hour set.
Speaker 1: He was the band was amazing, the production was amazing.
Speaker 1: Everything was so good, the sound, the lights. Because when
Speaker 1: I see a show, I don't just listen to the
Speaker 1: music and watch the performer and check out what he's wearing.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at everything. I'm looking at the nuts and
Speaker 1: the bolts of the show. I'm looking at the lights,
Speaker 1: the production, the quality of the sound, the mix, the
Speaker 1: performance of the band, UM, the staging, uh, the pattern
Speaker 1: in between the songs. I'm looking at everything and in
Speaker 1: a kind of a you know, in an analytical way,
Speaker 1: but still enjoying it. His show was one of the
Speaker 1: most perfectly well crafted shows. But it didn't feel stiff. UM,
Speaker 1: that's my Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson came at
Speaker 1: backstage when we were playing UM Universal Lampith Theater in
Speaker 1: l a And he came back into our dressing room
Speaker 1: and before Billy Jean, and he said, I love to dance.
Speaker 1: I can't go for that in my bedroom in front
Speaker 1: of my mirror, and if you listen to Billy Jean,
Speaker 1: you can hear the same groove as I can't go
Speaker 1: for that, Um, but I have so much. I had
Speaker 1: so much respect for him. He was just so good
Speaker 1: and I felt sorry. I always felt sorry for him
Speaker 1: because I understood, you know, being a bit of a
Speaker 1: child performer, but not on the level of that he was.
Speaker 1: He was a superstar from the time he was six
Speaker 1: years old. Um, you can't be a superstar from the
Speaker 1: time you're six years old and live in a normal world.
Speaker 1: Your world will never be normal. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he his life path took him where it took him
Speaker 1: to me in a way, I understand it. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't condone it necessarily, but he couldn't possibly be normal,
Speaker 1: and it's a shame in a way. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, he was a supremely talented person. Freddie Mercury
Speaker 1: I never met him. I saw his show at the
Speaker 1: Beacon Theater. I saw Queen play at the Beacon Theater
Speaker 1: in New York one time, and I said, for some
Speaker 1: crazy reason, I was sitting in the front row and
Speaker 1: that was a huge mistake. They were so freaking aloud.
Speaker 1: I actually couldn't stand it. I had to leave and
Speaker 1: go into the back and watch it from the back.
Speaker 1: On the more contemporary guys, how about a guy like
Speaker 1: John Mayer. Have you met John at all? I met him.
Speaker 1: I met him standing out in front of the Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills Hotel. Um. Yeah, he seems really cool guy. Um.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk very much. It was just like kind
Speaker 1: of a quick high and he was on his way.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure I'm missing in my notes, John,
Speaker 1: because I made a lot of notes. Let's say, already
Speaker 1: talked to him and all of that, and most of
Speaker 1: stuff I knew from my mind. But if you leave
Speaker 1: here and I'm like, God didn't, that's gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: punch myself right in the all right, Uh, my day.
Speaker 1: Anything you want? As John, we are going back on
Speaker 1: tour this summer. What song is still fun for you
Speaker 1: to play? You know what? I'll tell you what. I know.
Speaker 1: This is gonna sound stupid, but all of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: we don't play any songs we don't like, and we
Speaker 1: have we are really fortunate. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: hits and we in a way it's kind of a
Speaker 1: ball and chain in the best possible way. It's like
Speaker 1: we're a prisoner of our own success in terms of
Speaker 1: I feel like, I I know I have a professional
Speaker 1: responsibility to play those hits for the people who come
Speaker 1: to see us. But at the same time, we have
Speaker 1: four hundred songs and some of them are really cool,
Speaker 1: and we've got deep album tracks that are so cool,
Speaker 1: but we really almost can't fit them into the set um.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it's a really amazing problem to have.
Speaker 1: And so I honestly, God, if a song starts feelings
Speaker 1: a little stale will drop it. Maybe we're many years
Speaker 1: we we had we never played Private Eyes for about
Speaker 1: five years, and we sometimes drop We're gonna add a
Speaker 1: few songs on this this tour that we're going out
Speaker 1: with this summer with Tears for Fears, and Tears Fears
Speaker 1: are great. You know, they've got a great catalog of hits,
Speaker 1: and I think it's gonna be a really amazing show.
Speaker 1: Do you ever punched on the faith? We've never had
Speaker 1: a fight, like, no, no, you ever never punched in
Speaker 1: the face, never had a fight. We've had disagreements and
Speaker 1: we kind of just walk away. We walk away and
Speaker 1: let it settle. Out and then we figure out a
Speaker 1: way of working it out. Who's your most famous personal
Speaker 1: close friend do you would call once a month? Jim Lauderdale,
Speaker 1: Jim Lauderdale, M from Nashville. Who's your most famous friend
Speaker 1: that people would like to be like, Oh that's cool,
Speaker 1: Jim Lauderdale. Darryl Hall. Now you just messed with with John. Really,
Speaker 1: he's probably my closest personal friend that I actually talked
Speaker 1: to regular. Do you guys have conversations? Can you guys
Speaker 1: go to dinner and just hang out and chat even
Speaker 1: after only only when we're on tour. Yeah, one one
Speaker 1: on tour we do all the time. Yeah. Because you
Speaker 1: don't hate each other. I mean, so many groups we
Speaker 1: don't hate each other. We we just we we know.
Speaker 1: It's like brothers. I mean we met, it's seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: so we grew up together. We experienced the same thing
Speaker 1: from our teenage days through twenties, thirtifties, sixties, so we
Speaker 1: we know each other so well, we know each other's
Speaker 1: families so well. It's like we don't even have to talk.
Speaker 1: We never really need to talk, and we can get
Speaker 1: together and it's like as if time stopped. We just
Speaker 1: carry on right where we left off. It's it's the
Speaker 1: weirdest thing. There's a book it's called Change of Seasons
Speaker 1: by John Oates and it comes out in March March,
Speaker 1: and you can pre order it if it's before Mary
Speaker 1: or I suggest you buy it. And there's there's a
Speaker 1: cover and he's on it and he's holding a guitar.
Speaker 1: He can't miss it. And let me read some of
Speaker 1: the reviews here. Now this is your quote. Never mind,
Speaker 1: I was gonna read them in the back of the boat,
Speaker 1: but you should read my reviews. Is you're pretty good? Uh,
Speaker 1: really great book. Thank you so much. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: for the music. Geek. Great book and for first I've
Speaker 1: said like eight times, but for me, it's just really cool.
Speaker 1: It's man, how many times do you get a rock
Speaker 1: and roll Hall of Famer in your house? Let me
Speaker 1: tell you just one the house. You've got a view,
Speaker 1: thought a cool view. It's a view I've never seen
Speaker 1: him Nashville. I love it. Yeah, pretty cool man. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, thanks for having me. I hope
Speaker 1: everybody gets the book. And uh, you know, when you
Speaker 1: write another one, we'll come back and do that. You know.
Speaker 1: I got to write the second volume about my Nashville experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you live? Why do you live? We're out of
Speaker 1: time here, but give me why do you live Nashville? Now?
Speaker 1: Come on? It's the only place where there's music. It
Speaker 1: is really you know, you're right. It is the only
Speaker 1: place where's music. And when I when I started making
Speaker 1: solo albums and I realized that I was going to
Speaker 1: go back to my earliest influences, which my folk influences,
Speaker 1: I knew this was the place that where I could
Speaker 1: realize that, and that's why I came in. It's been
Speaker 1: a real pleasure. Man, Did you enjoy it? I've got
Speaker 1: an interview in mind. Come on, you bet you just
Speaker 1: want to hear that, right, And I'm telling you that's
Speaker 1: the truth. You know you're good man. Just put me in.
Speaker 1: You know you got me in this chair man. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, now we're gonna ease into this league.
Speaker 1: I get to talk to everybody. And I was most nervous.
Speaker 1: And and I've had you on my radio show before,
Speaker 1: but that's different. That's like, let's do eight minutes. It's
Speaker 1: bam bam babad. But I was I was nervous about
Speaker 1: this because you have such a story to tell, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to and I'll go I'll kick myself
Speaker 1: later for not asking if your questions. I was like,
Speaker 1: how often do I get to sit for an hour
Speaker 1: and talk? John Hoats say, well, you know what, if
Speaker 1: you want to have me back, we got more to
Speaker 1: talk about, or I'll just come to your house. We'll
Speaker 1: just jack all right, Thank you guys for hanging out.
Speaker 1: John notes change of seasons pre order on Amazon Now
Speaker 1: to be out late March. Mary, So thanks John, thank
Speaker 1: you all right. Episode I Have so forty two is
Speaker 1: over all right, Thank you guys,