Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob must Ne's Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only John Sebastian. John,
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Terrific to be
Speaker 1: hit Robert. Okay, so for a minute there, your first
Speaker 1: solo album with Rapriez was John b Sebastian. What was
Speaker 1: that all about? Well, I didn't want people to be
Speaker 1: confused between me and my actual classical virtuoso father. I
Speaker 1: just knew there were occasions. These were more before I
Speaker 1: was putting out a solo album where people would see
Speaker 1: that name and think, oh, gee, Mr Sebastian is sort
Speaker 1: of slumming now, isn't he? And and you know, so
Speaker 1: that was really the stimulus. And what is the B
Speaker 1: stand for Benson Benson? Yes, if your father was John
Speaker 1: and you were John, what did they refer to you
Speaker 1: growing up? As I would be John Benson, John Benson, yes,
Speaker 1: or I'd be j b or Giovannino in Italy because
Speaker 1: I have a kind of a checkered past. Uh. And
Speaker 1: when I was in Italy, I'd be Giovannino. Okay, A
Speaker 1: couple of questions. There is the Benson Benson your mother's
Speaker 1: maiden name, you know ben No, No, the her maiden
Speaker 1: name is Bisher b I s h I R. And
Speaker 1: I was only recently, uh explained to me before my
Speaker 1: mom passed that she didn't know why my grandfather had
Speaker 1: that middle name, except that there had been an Ohio
Speaker 1: senator of that name that she thought maybe the folks
Speaker 1: were nam me after. I really don't know. It's it's
Speaker 1: a little mysterious. And you mentioned spending time in Italy.
Speaker 1: What was going on there? Well, my dad had a
Speaker 1: career that started in the United States. Uh, and as
Speaker 1: time went on, he began to be able to travel,
Speaker 1: uh and tour. He was a classical harmonica virtuoso. I
Speaker 1: can only tell you that, Uh there's been nobody since
Speaker 1: uh maybe Buon Fido a little bit, but this guy
Speaker 1: really had a remarkable uh sphere of abilities, and people
Speaker 1: like Villa Lobos were writing for him. Cherubin N wrote
Speaker 1: for him. Uh. So this wasn't just a you know,
Speaker 1: peg of my heart type harmonica player. So okay, but
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten to it, have I. Uh So, what
Speaker 1: what happen is that most summers, as time went on
Speaker 1: and my dad started to get a reputation in Europe
Speaker 1: that became a primary a primary source of income for him,
Speaker 1: so that he would go to Europe most summers, and
Speaker 1: his solution for not being an absent dad was he
Speaker 1: would take the family and parked us in this beautiful
Speaker 1: little red towered villa outside of Fez. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you were gonna have an ideal place, it's ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: should be ashamed of myself. At what a good age,
Speaker 1: five to about eleven. And so every summer we would
Speaker 1: go there after my schooling was done for the year.
Speaker 1: That was the queue, and uh we would go and
Speaker 1: sometimes Dad would go before us, but most of the
Speaker 1: time we'd get on the boat and go to Geneva.
Speaker 1: You would go by boat, not by plane. Correct. Wow,
Speaker 1: I was a little kid. You know. Good experience, bad
Speaker 1: experience on the boat, fantastic experience. All the Italian guys
Speaker 1: love you. I mean, it's it was it was too
Speaker 1: it was great fun. Uh yes, seven days. And you
Speaker 1: know the larcenous quality of the Italians was so evident
Speaker 1: because uh, I would go up to the first class
Speaker 1: movie and try to get in and inevitably, the the
Speaker 1: Italian guys that that we're working at would go okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they get in there, and and so I had really
Speaker 1: full run of the boat. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: was that my dad spoke fluent Italian, uh the kind
Speaker 1: that you really can't detect as an American. So uh
Speaker 1: so he just really had carte blaunch on the boat
Speaker 1: and really in Italy and in those remember it's in Italy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, everybody looks like Anita expert. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: only you know, you're less than ten years old. But
Speaker 1: it's as right. But it's also five years after the
Speaker 1: Second World War? Correct? You know we saw movies they
Speaker 1: were made there in black and white about the aftermath.
Speaker 1: Did you experience that or you were just a kid
Speaker 1: you didn't know. Okay, I was just a kid and
Speaker 1: didn't know. But my friendships were all with people of
Speaker 1: lower Uh how can I say this? They were It
Speaker 1: was a lower class background that I was immersed in.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with farmers. I was hanging out
Speaker 1: with the cooks and the cleaning ladies, because that's what
Speaker 1: children of that era did. So I did have this
Speaker 1: this experience of understanding a certain sorrow that I that
Speaker 1: I couldn't really uh, I couldn't define. But I was
Speaker 1: aware that Paolo and Paula, the two the two farmers,
Speaker 1: the farmer and his wife were experiencing hardships. Okay, did
Speaker 1: you learn a tow in fluently fluently just by going
Speaker 1: every summer? Oh? Yes, see, don't call me so no
Speaker 1: Borgino Medicant's saying. I have some flatterers who tell me
Speaker 1: that I'm fairly undetectable as a Florentine, but not everybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, I need to say a lot of
Speaker 1: years have gone by. How do you keep up your
Speaker 1: Retalian or once you have you can't lose it? Well,
Speaker 1: it does stay with you, but I do occasionally. I
Speaker 1: mean I've been over there for these week and a
Speaker 1: half visits, not nearly enough, but I would always feel
Speaker 1: like I was struggling my way up a ladder with
Speaker 1: missing rungs, and I was trying to get all the
Speaker 1: way up the sentence, you know. And then did you
Speaker 1: have the experience of going back years later after you
Speaker 1: had a certain amount of fame and success and interacting
Speaker 1: with the same people. Yes, I did manage to uh
Speaker 1: go back to um adjoining. The little vila that we
Speaker 1: were living in is a hotel. The pension Benshista and uh,
Speaker 1: it's been there forever and it's all ex pats and
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's a little slice of the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties that's just sort of still there. And uh, that
Speaker 1: experience of of of being there was it was amazing. Okay,
Speaker 1: where was your father born? My father was born in Philadelphia? Okay?
Speaker 1: And how many how many generations is he removed from
Speaker 1: the old country? His father was born in Italy? So yeah,
Speaker 1: we were all Abrutzes, uh by background, and how does
Speaker 1: it become Sebastian or that what it was? Okay, here's
Speaker 1: how it goes. Uh. We we start my father Giovanni
Speaker 1: bot now, so he's going to have Herford. He's Magna
Speaker 1: cum laud. But they keep calling him Puggles. Now you know,
Speaker 1: a guy can be patient about that for a while,
Speaker 1: but after a while you start to go, is it
Speaker 1: so far off that you couldn't pronounce this? So there
Speaker 1: was a point and he tells the story. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: actually I had made the inquiry at one point because
Speaker 1: I saw, uh, you know, uh his name on a
Speaker 1: billboard or something, and I said, Dad, you know, how
Speaker 1: come our name is different than Grandpa? And he said, son, Here,
Speaker 1: here's what it is. Polis is a name that Americans
Speaker 1: have a lot of trouble with. And uh so that's
Speaker 1: uh one strike. Then I'm a classical harmonica player. That's
Speaker 1: two more strikes. So at that point I decided that
Speaker 1: Polis could go. Because John Sebastian looks real good on
Speaker 1: a on a marquee. You know what an amazing story.
Speaker 1: Well how about your mother? Where what's her background? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: and this is the one that nobody gets to. I'm
Speaker 1: very glad because my mom at sixteen, uh, became an
Speaker 1: amazing writer for radio. It's it's really it's Tina Fey story.
Speaker 1: It really is. It's the same story where this young
Speaker 1: woman comes in and just kills it. She writes funny
Speaker 1: and she makes up crazy stuff. Uh. You know, there's
Speaker 1: an Amos and Andy show, so she does and just
Speaker 1: an amy and it's about stupid white people. Uh, and
Speaker 1: she does a show uh uh, father is an Idiot
Speaker 1: was another thing that she did. So she's always punning
Speaker 1: on existing radio material. But what happened was then she
Speaker 1: got the job at at the big the big station,
Speaker 1: the big town. She went to Cincinnata. So she works
Speaker 1: there for a while at NBC, and NBC finds out
Speaker 1: about her and they go, oh, you're going to New York.
Speaker 1: So at the end of her sixteenth year she is
Speaker 1: she comes home and goes, so, uh, they're gonna hire me,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go to New York. And her father,
Speaker 1: my grandfather, says, that's wonderful, honey, And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: coming right along with you because I'm gonna be your roommate.
Speaker 1: And that's what he did. For the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: Uh was sort of zip back and forth between Dayton,
Speaker 1: uh and UH and and New York. And then eventually, uh,
Speaker 1: the grandparents on my mother's side moved to Florida. So
Speaker 1: that was another wonderful little visit that I could make
Speaker 1: in the winter usually. Okay, so how did your parents meet. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd say that they probably met um in in New
Speaker 1: York society. Uh, in the life of professional artists. They
Speaker 1: crossed paths. Um mom had a couple of dear friends
Speaker 1: who met dad and said, oh, you have to meet
Speaker 1: this guy, and uh, people like Vivian Vance who were
Speaker 1: just like blood sisters, Jane and and she and people
Speaker 1: like Oh, there were a few great sculptors and people
Speaker 1: like Garth Williams who were sort of pals with them,
Speaker 1: and somehow or another they all met through those channels. Okay,
Speaker 1: you say your father was magna come loud. So he
Speaker 1: was educated, man, He graduated magna cum laud from Haverford.
Speaker 1: So then he goes then he gets a scholarship to
Speaker 1: the in the Versadroma, and now, uh, what about twenty
Speaker 1: he's living in Rome and he's living there with the cats.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Casals and Picasso and and Garth
Speaker 1: Williams and all these cool guys who I would later meet,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just such a wonderful, uh
Speaker 1: a little mini society that I was dropped into. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I hadn't done something constructive, it would have been
Speaker 1: a real mess. Okay, So how does one become harmonica
Speaker 1: player on that classical level? And where was he traded?
Speaker 1: So it starts in Philadelphia. Um, he gets a job, Well,
Speaker 1: he becomes the soul list for um, the composer of
Speaker 1: every damn march we we use? And yes, okay, so
Speaker 1: Dad was a uh a player in that harmonica orchestra,
Speaker 1: and then he became the soloist. So by sixteen he
Speaker 1: was the main soloist for that band. It was his
Speaker 1: Philadelphia group, and they toured quite quite a lot and
Speaker 1: and quite far in there. Well, you know, in the
Speaker 1: rock era, most harmonica players herself taught. Did your father
Speaker 1: have formal lessons? You know, I really don't know some
Speaker 1: of this because Dad was the guy that was giving
Speaker 1: people formal lessons. You know. We'd have Johnny Palo over
Speaker 1: at our house and you know, two or three harmonicats,
Speaker 1: and they were all trying to learn, you know, tongue
Speaker 1: blocking and and some of the advanced techniques that my
Speaker 1: father really had under control. So how did your father
Speaker 1: feel that you didn't graduate from college? You know, it
Speaker 1: was a great disappointment to him and all the pouliasis.
Speaker 1: I must say, yeah, I was fighting an uphill battle
Speaker 1: for for respect because as dyslexic as I am, I
Speaker 1: just could not pass an ancient history course and so
Speaker 1: so really I was a poor student. Um. But luckily
Speaker 1: my dad started to see it somewhere around eighteen. And
Speaker 1: my brother, my little brother, always quotes him because he
Speaker 1: loves the quote. Because people would say, you know, your
Speaker 1: son has a number six record on the billboard, Sharks,
Speaker 1: and Dad would look into the near distance and say,
Speaker 1: I can't understand it. He always lands on his feet. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how many kids in how many kids in the family?
Speaker 1: Just to me and my brother Mark, he's seven years
Speaker 1: my junior. Okay, you grow up in Greenwich Village, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: you were literally there and it started and long before
Speaker 1: it became penetrated to the rest of society, late fifties
Speaker 1: and early sixties. What was it like being a city
Speaker 1: kid in the village. It was so great. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it was that this was the this wonderful
Speaker 1: neighborhood where there's like multi culty couples and every LGBT
Speaker 1: undeclared person at that point. Uh. They also all my
Speaker 1: dad's friends and and and so we were experiencing you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: Burl Lives is over at the house one one evening,
Speaker 1: and he's the one who gets Dad talked into the
Speaker 1: idea of you gotta let this songwriter guy from Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: you gotta let him stay with you for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. He's kind of out of sorts, and it
Speaker 1: turns out to be Woody Guthrie. Uh. You know, this
Speaker 1: was going on. This was going on pretty regularly. I
Speaker 1: remember and I do remember distinctly lying in my bed
Speaker 1: and remember it's practically a crib. I may have been
Speaker 1: four or five. And uh and uh, there's this guy
Speaker 1: in the other room. He's have ye seen that virgility? Man?
Speaker 1: And I'm listening and I'm going not not as good
Speaker 1: as Dad. That was my conclusion. Okay, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of kids grow up in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: They have sports center. But you're living in the city.
Speaker 1: Are you playing any sports or you're entertaining yourself? What
Speaker 1: is your passion growing up? Well, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: guitar started to be important by about thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 1: and then I spent five years where all summer I
Speaker 1: would be at a really great comedy summer camp, and
Speaker 1: then all winter I would be at conservative old Blair
Speaker 1: Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey. So I was having this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a great contrast, but it was
Speaker 1: very difficult because I had very little patience for you know,
Speaker 1: I mean Blair Academy at the time. Their their main
Speaker 1: concern was that I cut my hair because when I
Speaker 1: came from Italy, I had an Italian haircut. That's called
Speaker 1: a good haircut. But no, Yeah, I had to go
Speaker 1: and know be a have butch haircuts and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. You're growing up, Are you a member of
Speaker 1: the group with a million friends or you're more of
Speaker 1: a loner. What kind of kid are you? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not the guy with a million friends. But
Speaker 1: what did start to happen was that it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a miniature fan base over the five years.
Speaker 1: Remember I've got a lot of years at that place,
Speaker 1: so they had time to like, see me bomb and
Speaker 1: then actually do something good and then play with the
Speaker 1: Fearsome Foursome. Wow, the do wop group. The Fearsome Foursome
Speaker 1: needed a guitar player, and I became one, even though
Speaker 1: I was a freshman. Okay, wait, let's go back a
Speaker 1: few chapters. One, what greed? Do you go to New
Speaker 1: Jersey to Blair Academy eighth grade? Eighth grade? So before
Speaker 1: that you're living in the city, going to public school.
Speaker 1: Coupley uh well no, uh friends seminary Okay, and what
Speaker 1: do you have to say when your parents said you
Speaker 1: got to go to boarding school? You know, it seemed
Speaker 1: like a natural transition. My uncle had gone to Blair
Speaker 1: Uh and I also was watching my parents marriage fall apart,
Speaker 1: and I could see the logic of getting me out
Speaker 1: of the house. So there was a sort of a yeah,
Speaker 1: I could be good to do this. And the other
Speaker 1: thing was, boy, it could really be good for my
Speaker 1: parents to be because I knew it wasn't gonna you know,
Speaker 1: it was gonna take a dive. But but you know,
Speaker 1: if they could do it with as little screaming as possible,
Speaker 1: that would be great. So like that. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: old were you when your parents got divorced? Uh? For
Speaker 1: did my fourteen? About fourteen? Okay? You usually that fox
Speaker 1: people up? How how was it for you? Uh? You know, uh,
Speaker 1: for one thing at a time when nobody was smart
Speaker 1: about divorce, my parents were kind of smart about divorce.
Speaker 1: Dad took an apartment up at sixty seven Street. I'm
Speaker 1: living on Washington Square West. I can walk up to
Speaker 1: see him if I have the impulse, and so I
Speaker 1: must save it. I suffered less than than a lot
Speaker 1: of folks. Okay, So how old are you when you
Speaker 1: pick up the guitar? About about twelve or thirteen? Okay,
Speaker 1: before you go to Blair Academy, or when you were
Speaker 1: a Blair Academy slightly before. Okay. Now I'm of a
Speaker 1: slightly younger generation where the Beatles were on TV, everybody
Speaker 1: picked up the guitar, and there was the Folk movie
Speaker 1: before that, so maybe we played with nylon string guitars.
Speaker 1: What inspired you to play the guitar? Um, That'll be
Speaker 1: the Day by Buddy Holly. It's little things, you know. Rumble.
Speaker 1: I heard rumble, and I went out of my mind.
Speaker 1: I said, what are those chords? Uh? And in years,
Speaker 1: in later years, when I got a chance to talk
Speaker 1: to Pete Townsend about this, we found that we totally
Speaker 1: agreed and it had the same exact experience where we
Speaker 1: heard it one night in the evening on the channel
Speaker 1: and just stayed on that channel until three or four
Speaker 1: in the morning on the off chance that it might
Speaker 1: play again. And it did. Okay, so you were definitely
Speaker 1: a did you pick up? That's I don't want to
Speaker 1: make an incomplete impression here, because the other thing, remember
Speaker 1: these same five summers, I'm going to this summer camp
Speaker 1: where Pete Seeger comes and visits, where all the cool
Speaker 1: girls know every damn folk song in the world. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's two sisters there and they both know how to
Speaker 1: carter pick, so I'm learning folk music there. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other thing is that the woman that ran the camp
Speaker 1: quickly put me in a little sugar house and said,
Speaker 1: your job is to teach the kids folk songs and
Speaker 1: maybe make up little plays. And that's that's the thing
Speaker 1: that I did for five summers, and Matt really honed
Speaker 1: my uh whatever craft I have, uh more than almost
Speaker 1: anything I think to be to try to hold eight
Speaker 1: to fifteen year old's attention for forty five minutes. Okay,
Speaker 1: ever take any guitar lessons? Uh? You know it was no.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the answer because I um. I had
Speaker 1: a friend who had a beautiful sister with a classical
Speaker 1: guitar who I talked into borrowing for a week, And
Speaker 1: I started off with an E minor chord and by
Speaker 1: the end of the week I had invented d Okay,
Speaker 1: needlet's just say, when we first see you on television,
Speaker 1: you're playing an auto harp. So your father is a
Speaker 1: musician music. Did your father teach you the harmonica the
Speaker 1: auto harp? Was he too deep into his own stuff?
Speaker 1: What was going on in the house? You know? I
Speaker 1: think fit part of my father's Ethos came from going
Speaker 1: to school with a tremendous number of lawyers, guys studying law,
Speaker 1: and he he explained it years later when he would
Speaker 1: visit these guys and there'd be their son, and the
Speaker 1: son is already in school to be a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: doesn't seem that motivated, you know, And so he said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that with music or the
Speaker 1: harmonica or any of that. Uh. You know, you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna fly your own your own ship. You know it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna be uh, your your impulse. So although how
Speaker 1: could I not listening to a man rehearsed for six
Speaker 1: to eight hours a day, and that's a real number. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of these buccarini can share those that go far
Speaker 1: and by so fast you have to practice for years
Speaker 1: to be able to do it. My dad started adapting
Speaker 1: a technique with vassoline that horrified the owner company completely.
Speaker 1: But you know this is this is what some of
Speaker 1: these uh disciplines demanded. Okay, so your father never taught
Speaker 1: you how to play harmonica, never gave you any tips. Correct.
Speaker 1: However he did he did a better thing. He came
Speaker 1: home with a sunny terry silver acetate and I put
Speaker 1: that thing on, and I was mystified because I had
Speaker 1: never heard the instrument that way, And it actually was
Speaker 1: a good half a year of trying to figure out
Speaker 1: and then I suddenly realized, oh my god, the time
Speaker 1: that court is on the inhale. How could I have
Speaker 1: missed this? So so then really from then on, a
Speaker 1: part part of the my background at that point is
Speaker 1: that I start meeting Sunny Terry fairly regularly in these
Speaker 1: folk clubs, and I'd go in there, and by the
Speaker 1: second time I went, I go, Sonny, Hey, go is
Speaker 1: that Johnny's son? So it was very fast. Uh and
Speaker 1: he and Sonny in many ways was sort of a
Speaker 1: conduit into what would become really a focus, which was
Speaker 1: Sam Hopkins in years later. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: Blair Academy. You said there were five years there that
Speaker 1: you were the musician. You're kind of playing in bands,
Speaker 1: So tell me more about that. Well, Uh, there there
Speaker 1: was a great incentive to play in those bands because
Speaker 1: those bands would go to dances, and dances required women,
Speaker 1: and there would be, you know, your loan opportunity to
Speaker 1: actually hold a woman in your arms. And so uh,
Speaker 1: me and one of my roommates caught onto this very fast,
Speaker 1: and he was a piano player or sort of learning,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, playing straight aids on the guitar,
Speaker 1: and so that really was really all about that, uh,
Speaker 1: that that those band things would form. And then there
Speaker 1: was this even dozen thing um and said there was
Speaker 1: this uh fearsome forsomething and that was a a do
Speaker 1: op group, fairly tame, but but you know, it was
Speaker 1: the perfect moment because that's when all of those da
Speaker 1: da da da da da da da da da da
Speaker 1: da da da, all of those tunes were on the
Speaker 1: air and we learned everyone. So did it work for you?
Speaker 1: You were in the band, the girls were there? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I got kicked out once because of that. Okay, what
Speaker 1: happened there? Hey, I'm not going to tell you no no,
Speaker 1: I you know, it was so innocent that it's really
Speaker 1: it's a sorry tale because uh what happened was, uh,
Speaker 1: I went to a dance. It was a younger classman's
Speaker 1: dance and they had asked me to come and play,
Speaker 1: and I did, and I pulled a very nice girl
Speaker 1: who was very happy to go out and see what
Speaker 1: the golf course really looked like. In the evening, and
Speaker 1: so we did, and we were caught by a history teacher.
Speaker 1: And you know what's really tragic is I was suspended
Speaker 1: for two weeks and that girl was kicked out of
Speaker 1: her school. Wow, that's talk about you know that difference,
Speaker 1: Well that sexism. Okay, you graduate from high school, then
Speaker 1: what I go to n YU for a year because
Speaker 1: it's across the park. Okay, I had no other reason.
Speaker 1: And and my dad, uh, he took me up there
Speaker 1: at Washington Square North and we we we go up
Speaker 1: and get to the door, and I said, well, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be great. Dad, come on in and we'll
Speaker 1: check in. And he goes, no, no, no. From this
Speaker 1: step you take by yourself because I can lead a
Speaker 1: horse to water, but that's all I can do. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty real. And uh, I was
Speaker 1: a bad student for a good three quarters of a year. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I think I came back the next year
Speaker 1: for maybe a couple of weeks before I just see
Speaker 1: at the same time, there's all this other stuff going on.
Speaker 1: I'm in Greenwich Village, my god, six blocks away. John
Speaker 1: Dangelico was making arch top guitars. Uh, and a much
Speaker 1: more modest endeavor is uh Tom Fincy making classical guitars.
Speaker 1: At the time, I wanted a classical guitar. I went
Speaker 1: to this little shop on Broadway, and UH realized that
Speaker 1: they're all up rutzes. So I quickly start speaking Italian
Speaker 1: with my grandmother's accent, and in an hour or two,
Speaker 1: I'm sweeping up. So that became the next thing that
Speaker 1: I did, really was sweeping up at the shop and
Speaker 1: standing down guitars and tuning. They found that I could
Speaker 1: tune a lot of guitars and in a short amount
Speaker 1: of time, and so it was. It was completely absorbing.
Speaker 1: I was meeting some of the great guitarists of the era.
Speaker 1: Um uh Raimo Palmierti, uh the guitarists who played for
Speaker 1: Arthur Godfrey and was the number one call at the
Speaker 1: NBC Orchestra, a remarkable guitarist, and his brother Paul Palmieri,
Speaker 1: who was the If you ever wanted to say, this
Speaker 1: is why I should be a musician, it was because
Speaker 1: every week Paul Pomierti would show up with the beautiful
Speaker 1: Japanese girl. Next week it's some kind of multiculty who
Speaker 1: knows what girl and he just had He was say, uh,
Speaker 1: what do they call that a sequential whatever? Uh? But
Speaker 1: I just said, Wow, you can have this many girl
Speaker 1: friends if you can play guitar. Well. So, so I
Speaker 1: was watching all of this and that really was the
Speaker 1: end of UH of n y U. But I had
Speaker 1: met a key person in David Grisman, who still tells
Speaker 1: the story of seeing me in the n y U
Speaker 1: elevator with this uh twelve harmonicas on a Holster arrangement
Speaker 1: that I had had made at Tandy leather U because
Speaker 1: I realized I needed more than two or three harmonicas. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there that that became a real, a real focus. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're like sixty two sixty three. The folks scene
Speaker 1: is big. You talk about going to a club, you're
Speaker 1: working in the guitar shop. Yeah, but what is going
Speaker 1: on in the culture at that point. Were you're going
Speaker 1: to clubs every night? We're going occasionally? Were you playing
Speaker 1: with other musicians you'd played in groups in high school
Speaker 1: where you're trying to for Max? What was happening? I
Speaker 1: was beginning to haunt Bleaker and McDougal, And it happened
Speaker 1: for two reasons. One was my own uh desires, but
Speaker 1: also I had become a mini me for one Paul Rothschild.
Speaker 1: Rothschild and I became very tight in the process of
Speaker 1: making a Fred Neil album. Uh, and I suddenly was
Speaker 1: getting work as a studio musician as a result of Rothschild.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait a little bit slower. You meet Rothchild?
Speaker 1: How ow and you get? And how does he realize
Speaker 1: your guitar player? And he says, come to my sessions?
Speaker 1: You know a little bit. How does this happen? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: I was hanging around with David Grisman a little bit
Speaker 1: and Uh. At one summer I came back from summer
Speaker 1: camp and my mother is holding the phone as I
Speaker 1: walk in the door. She says, it's Stephen. She says
Speaker 1: it really bored because Stephen and I are haunting each
Speaker 1: other's houses all the time trying to figure out these
Speaker 1: various finger picking things. And Stephen gets on the phone
Speaker 1: and says, so, uh, we're forming a jug band and
Speaker 1: it's gonna rehearse on fourteenth Street and oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're the harmonica player. And so I say, what is
Speaker 1: a jug band? And Stephen says, just come to four
Speaker 1: Street and and uh, we're gonna We're gonna rehearse and
Speaker 1: will show you. So I go to that rehearsal and
Speaker 1: one of the people that's there is Paul Rothschild, who
Speaker 1: I don't know, but Rothschild and I begin a kind
Speaker 1: of we're jabbing at each other in a very New
Speaker 1: York way. You know what this is, of course, and
Speaker 1: and so, but it's very friendly, and the conversation turns
Speaker 1: to marijuana, and it is quickly clear that both of
Speaker 1: us are fans and uh, and Paul is now trying
Speaker 1: to make this group of kind of random blues kids
Speaker 1: into a jug band, his logic being this Jim question
Speaker 1: jug band thing is taking off and and there's room
Speaker 1: for a New York jug band and and why don't
Speaker 1: you guys do it? And uh, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we're working Carnegie Hall. This was what parenthetically, I would say.
Speaker 1: I go up to sixty seven Street to visit dad. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: what you're doing us? And blah blah blah, Yeah, trying
Speaker 1: to work and so and said, what we do have
Speaker 1: a couple of gigs? Really really, where are you working? Well,
Speaker 1: we've got a gig at Town Hall and then we
Speaker 1: play Carnegie. This was another time when my dad was
Speaker 1: I think the reaction was, I don't know how he
Speaker 1: doesn't he always lands on his feet. Okay, but whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, we know you get to Carnegie Hall by practicing,
Speaker 1: but we also know there's more than luck involved. So
Speaker 1: Rothchild puts together the band. How does it all come
Speaker 1: together that you end up playing Carnegie Hall? Well, because
Speaker 1: we had begun to play together in earnest and we
Speaker 1: had a couple of wonderful people in the band. We
Speaker 1: had David grismand we had Maria Muldor, we had Stephen Grossman.
Speaker 1: You know, these are folks who in this little world
Speaker 1: of of fingerpicking and guitar and acoustic playing in general. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was our it was becoming our our
Speaker 1: home base. Okay. Rothchild was a record producer, so there
Speaker 1: were the recordings of this act. So yes, So what
Speaker 1: happened was Rothschild uh puts us into the studio and
Speaker 1: we record uh an even dozen jug band album, uh,
Speaker 1: which was nicely received. You know, remember the scale for
Speaker 1: success is so small. If you sell more records than
Speaker 1: Billy Fair, you're you're really rocking. So uh. So that
Speaker 1: was the process of making the record, I think is
Speaker 1: what tightened us up to where we could play some
Speaker 1: actual venues, and for a short time we were managed
Speaker 1: by Israel young. Is The Young's Folklore Center was the
Speaker 1: Greenwich Village home of of this dawning folk music obsession.
Speaker 1: How does it work economically in making any money at
Speaker 1: the guitar store? Are you still living at home? How
Speaker 1: does it add up? Okay? Uh, A recording session is
Speaker 1: fifty one dollars. I can get at an apartment for
Speaker 1: less than that at that moment in time, because I
Speaker 1: speak Italian, and remember I'm living two blocks from the
Speaker 1: center of Little Italy, and I quickly realized that so
Speaker 1: many uh Italian widows are in control of these apartments there.
Speaker 1: You know, Pops has passed and the it's her thing.
Speaker 1: And I would go to these various addresses and I
Speaker 1: would listen as the woman spoke first, and if I
Speaker 1: could catch the accent, I would imitate that accent. Because
Speaker 1: I had spent a winter in Rome, so I knew
Speaker 1: how to turn it into a little more guttural Italian.
Speaker 1: I knew how to do brutz from my grandparents, so
Speaker 1: you at the idea I was being. I was able
Speaker 1: to get apartments for very cheap because I would do
Speaker 1: whatever the lady wanted me to do, and she could
Speaker 1: explain stuff to me that she couldn't explain in English.
Speaker 1: So uh, these things were tremendous advantages. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: the other thing is that the answer for the the
Speaker 1: the even dozen jug band was no, no money at all.
Speaker 1: My The entire thing really was uh these uh recording sessions.
Speaker 1: And that was what was keeping me able to be
Speaker 1: a little bit independent from my parents. I remember independent
Speaker 1: like your twelve blocks away, Wow, stop by to do
Speaker 1: your laundry, get a meal? Oh exactly exactly. So what
Speaker 1: happens after Carnegie Hall? What's your next move? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: I had been doing these various sessions, and uh, I
Speaker 1: start to wow, this is hard to encapsulate. All Right,
Speaker 1: my father got a television show, Sunday afternoon television show.
Speaker 1: It's sort of before there was really uh public television,
Speaker 1: but it's very much that flavor. And there was a
Speaker 1: show called Robert Harridge Presents, and uh this show. UH
Speaker 1: engaged my dad to play on this show. And I
Speaker 1: get there and the people doing the show is an
Speaker 1: Englishman reciting Shakespeare. There's Lightning Hopkins, there's my father, and
Speaker 1: there's a girl that I have met before. She's barefoot,
Speaker 1: she's about seventeen, and when she opens her mouth, you
Speaker 1: cannot believe what's coming out. And of course it's Joan Bias. Well.
Speaker 1: I watched this entire afternoon unfold, and to me, the
Speaker 1: thing that was most impressive. I mean, Joan is of
Speaker 1: herself just really impressive because she really has control of
Speaker 1: her guitar now and and and plus this remarkable voice.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, wow, this is really one of the
Speaker 1: coolest women I've ever run into. And then Lightning Sam
Speaker 1: gets on and he starts tapping his foot and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, he's singing something about did you keep
Speaker 1: on but be that that they ain't bound? And she
Speaker 1: starts laughing, and I go, wow, you can make this
Speaker 1: woman laugh because she's so serious, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: a big surprise, and and so, uh, I was so
Speaker 1: impressed with Lightning and Sam. So the television show ends
Speaker 1: and I'm standing there and Dad is talking to Lightning Sam.
Speaker 1: Sam likes Dad because you know, it's like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy does something weird and unconventional and he's kind of
Speaker 1: on my side. And so they're they're talking, and uh,
Speaker 1: while they're talking, I walk up to Lightning's guitar case,
Speaker 1: and I think to myself, as a fifty percent I
Speaker 1: won't get hit. So I reached down and I pick
Speaker 1: up the case. Enlightening turns to me and I say,
Speaker 1: Mr Hopkins, I know the subway system, and I can
Speaker 1: get us downtown to within a block of the club
Speaker 1: that you're gonna play. Uh and uh uh you know
Speaker 1: we we and if you need a spot, uh, we
Speaker 1: live four blocks from there. So Sam as I suddenly
Speaker 1: become like a lead boy for somebody that isn't blind
Speaker 1: because Sam of course understands the value of having a
Speaker 1: little white kid too I don't know, uh talk to
Speaker 1: the club owner or whatever, and and so he likes that.
Speaker 1: So I become a regular. I'm carrying his guitar most
Speaker 1: of the time. And then me and a layer roommate
Speaker 1: get a little apartment over on the extremely side, which
Speaker 1: we pretty much turned over to Lightning Sam because there's
Speaker 1: only one bedroom, and we go, I ain't going that
Speaker 1: bedroom now, SAP's here. We're gonna sleep on the couches.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we did. And we get up
Speaker 1: in the morning and get sam Is two eggs and
Speaker 1: a jelly glass full of gin and be ready for
Speaker 1: the day. And that was a remarkable period. And Sam
Speaker 1: would sing at night or he would just wrap. It
Speaker 1: was essentially wrap that was happening, and it all rhymed
Speaker 1: and we would go, how does he do this? You know,
Speaker 1: it was a real miracle to see it happen in
Speaker 1: front of you. But so I take Sam down to
Speaker 1: the club pretty pretty frequently. One day, when I ache lightning,
Speaker 1: Sam down to do his gig. There's an opening act
Speaker 1: uh called Valentine Pringle, and Valentine is a protege of
Speaker 1: Harry bellefantas and he is trying to get with this
Speaker 1: uh kind of a folk program because he's a guy
Speaker 1: from Washington. He's an enormous baritone singer. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: his voice is marvelous. But you know, I think his
Speaker 1: main experience had been uh in, uh in, uh in
Speaker 1: in musicals and plays and things. So uh, Harry Belafani
Speaker 1: starts coaching him, and so all of a sudden he
Speaker 1: knows a whole bunch of chain Gang songs and he's
Speaker 1: got a whole act. And uh, I watched this act,
Speaker 1: and I start to watch it pretty regularly because I'm
Speaker 1: bringing Sam in. So then on this particular evening he
Speaker 1: gets up there and he's got a different accompanist. Now
Speaker 1: I happen to know that this guy, his name is
Speaker 1: John Pankin. He uh sometimes masquerades as one Sastre or
Speaker 1: one somebody and pretends to be a Flamenco guitarist, which
Speaker 1: I don't care about that. But when he plays with Valentine,
Speaker 1: he makes a few crucial mistakes, and the big one
Speaker 1: being he starts the battle him of the Republic, which
Speaker 1: is Valentine's killer you are not going to be able
Speaker 1: to survive, and he starts it in the wrong key. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there was another thing where he started a
Speaker 1: tempo completely wrong. So and and this is the only time, Robert,
Speaker 1: that I've ever done anything like this. I went backstage,
Speaker 1: attend to lightening, say hi to Valentine and say, you know,
Speaker 1: val if I was your guitarist, I wouldn't be starting
Speaker 1: Battality of the Republic in the wrong key. And if
Speaker 1: you you know, I just I did the list of
Speaker 1: the mistakes the guy had made. So Valentine is trying
Speaker 1: to assess this who is this kid, you know? And
Speaker 1: so he then actually moves over to the other dressing room.
Speaker 1: Enlightening is reading the paper and he says, Mr Hopkins,
Speaker 1: I just interested in this, uh young man, uh guitar player.
Speaker 1: Do you know? Do you know how how he plays?
Speaker 1: Lightning looks up from his newspaper and goes, well, he's bad,
Speaker 1: He's bad that. And he went back to the newspaper
Speaker 1: and and so Valle is left going is that bad good?
Speaker 1: He's trying to assess what he's hearing, and uh, well,
Speaker 1: what did happen? Was within a day or two I
Speaker 1: was his accompanist. Now this is a long way around,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad we have a lot of time because
Speaker 1: this is where my professional life really begins, because I
Speaker 1: get a gig with Valentine out of town, unbelievable. We
Speaker 1: go to Washington, d C. And we play a place
Speaker 1: called The Shadows, and uh the Shadows. Uh. He goes
Speaker 1: out there and he's a pretty good opening act. And
Speaker 1: then oncome the Big Three. And the Big Three is
Speaker 1: cass Elliott, James not Jimmy Hendrix, and Tim Rose, the
Speaker 1: guy that wrote Hey Joe, Yeah, Hey Joe yeah. So
Speaker 1: this group is, you know, a real conventional commercial folk
Speaker 1: group and they're playing for pretty much Washington Upper Crust. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a fancy club. It isn't really folky, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh but as we finished the show, and uh
Speaker 1: uh I think I was coming downstairs as Cass was
Speaker 1: coming up, and she's doing Valentine's act, all the slave songs,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so uh un pc that I just
Speaker 1: I just was. I was laughing for the next twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Well that was all that Cass needed, and so she
Speaker 1: starts engaging me. We become friends. By the end of
Speaker 1: the week, she's saying, oh, man, you gotta meet my
Speaker 1: pal Denny, and you gotta meet Zally. Uh we gotta
Speaker 1: hook you up. And so I go back to New
Speaker 1: York and I'm doing you know, I actually got a
Speaker 1: gig in Toronto with Valentine. A couple of other things happened.
Speaker 1: Then I get a call from Cass. She says, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: this thing is working out. We've actually got uh you know,
Speaker 1: like a nice hotel rooms for each one of us
Speaker 1: and everything, and uh, we're thinking about changing our thing.
Speaker 1: Well a little while later, and I really can't go
Speaker 1: into too much detail because we'll be here all night.
Speaker 1: But essentially a friendship that forms both in Washington and
Speaker 1: at the Albert Hotel becomes uh a new focus for Cass.
Speaker 1: And then she invites me to come to Washington to
Speaker 1: a company, this new group, the Mugwumps. Okay, and would
Speaker 1: you please bring a kilo of pot? I say, thank you,
Speaker 1: I will, and so that's what I did, and uh
Speaker 1: we had about two weeks of gigs at this same club,
Speaker 1: at the end of which I get called by the
Speaker 1: assistant manager who says, I'm afraid that you know are
Speaker 1: the manager? Uh doesn't want you to continue with the group.
Speaker 1: I said no, I certainly could understand. He says, because
Speaker 1: you know you're a You're a bad influence on your
Speaker 1: nasi And I said, I know, I am. He says, like,
Speaker 1: every time you play something, Yanovski echoes it on across
Speaker 1: the stage, and you know, we want to stick to
Speaker 1: these arrangements. Well, of course this was exactly what was
Speaker 1: wrong with this group was that it had an arranger,
Speaker 1: and it had musicians to play with it, and it
Speaker 1: had people like Timmy Harden and Freddy Neil and even
Speaker 1: me writing songs that they were doing. So uh it
Speaker 1: it was this Uh it was a dinosaur and it
Speaker 1: would eventually die when it tried to play a real
Speaker 1: rock and roll club. They came to New York, they
Speaker 1: tried to play the Peppermint Lounge. People didn't even turn around.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is followed by Joey d
Speaker 1: on the Starliner Bad but you can imagine. So they
Speaker 1: that was sort of the end of that group. But
Speaker 1: as a direct result, me and Yonowsky start poling around
Speaker 1: in New York City. Uh and we're all living at
Speaker 1: the Albert Hotel, and so is Cass and so is Denny,
Speaker 1: and we're all trying to figure out what's gonna happen next.
Speaker 1: I remember we were thinking, ge, now Cass is gonna
Speaker 1: she's gonna find, you know, a solo career, but we're
Speaker 1: worried about Denny. You know, you would make more money
Speaker 1: than me and zall put together. So uh so it
Speaker 1: was a wonderful close bond that we all had. Uh. Eventually,
Speaker 1: zol and I start to concentrate along with an important
Speaker 1: and important person in this equation is Eric Jacobson, the
Speaker 1: the producer for The Spoonful, who really had a very
Speaker 1: clear vision of what the Spoonful could be. It was.
Speaker 1: It was quite remarkable. I mean, he really had an idea,
Speaker 1: and my ideas ran similarly enough that that we were
Speaker 1: suddenly making toy records. Uh. And that was what we
Speaker 1: were calling them, because they're One would be a a
Speaker 1: like a surf wreckord, then another would be uh, lady goodive,
Speaker 1: I got a thirty eight Ford now powered by a
Speaker 1: Chrysler that's stroked and board now and you know all
Speaker 1: these funny things that they weren't New York City Norwegian
Speaker 1: American guy. You know, it was this wonderful, funny attempt
Speaker 1: to get into pop music somehow. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: Eric saw what I saw, which was me and Yanovsky.
Speaker 1: We're starting to be joined at the hip because we have,
Speaker 1: you know, enough ideas that are similar. And uh, after
Speaker 1: a little bit, uh, we find out that guitarists that
Speaker 1: worked in an adjacent band had a younger brother who
Speaker 1: was coming back from a motorcycle trip in Europe. And
Speaker 1: I remember me and Yanovsky kind of looked at each other, going, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be good. Yeah, Uh, let's let's see what
Speaker 1: this guy's like. Well, of course, Steve Boon shows up
Speaker 1: and he looks like Fritz Richmond, who was one of
Speaker 1: our heroes the jug and washtub player for the question
Speaker 1: jug band and Uh. But also he's a real bass player.
Speaker 1: He isn't a folky guitar player attempting to get around
Speaker 1: on a fender and so that really made a big difference.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't very long before Uh we had Joe Butler,
Speaker 1: who was also had worked with Steve before, so it
Speaker 1: didn't require too much jostling to get this love and
Speaker 1: spoonful thing going. Okay, how many bites you got the
Speaker 1: four members together? You're making the Toy records. When do
Speaker 1: you make a real record and how do you get
Speaker 1: a record deal? Etcetera. Well, we got turned down by
Speaker 1: every record company in New York City and Robert, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of companies, and we really did go to everybody.
Speaker 1: And it was only after we hooked up with these
Speaker 1: guys that were essentially mainly concerned with ripping off our
Speaker 1: publishing uh, and they said, oh, well we'll be a
Speaker 1: record company. Yes it will be uh Stallion Records, that'll
Speaker 1: be it. Well that lasted about a week and a
Speaker 1: half and they connect up with the guys down the hallway.
Speaker 1: You know, this is when the record business was like this,
Speaker 1: and the guys down the Hallway are already rip and
Speaker 1: uh Karma Sutra, and Karma Sutra is the only record
Speaker 1: the only company that genuinely went nuts. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: most of these guys have like a Voice of God
Speaker 1: speaker under their desk, so when they're demoing stuff, it's remarkable.
Speaker 1: And remember when they started playing our records on this system,
Speaker 1: I go, my god, we're giants. So so uh. Really
Speaker 1: that became our record company, really to our our disservice,
Speaker 1: because we had been offered uh Electra because you know,
Speaker 1: as I said, I had been Paul Rothschild's mini me,
Speaker 1: and part of what that involved was going up to
Speaker 1: electrac Records almost every night. Uh. And as we began
Speaker 1: to work together and he began to mix the first
Speaker 1: Fred Neil and Vince Martin record, this was it was
Speaker 1: just increasing the amount of time I was spending in
Speaker 1: Electric records. But as it turned out, when Jack Coltsman
Speaker 1: offered us, we said, no, now, these this is a
Speaker 1: folk label. This is Ceo Bickel. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: we're we're trying to get into the dirty business. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if we even used the term
Speaker 1: you know that like no no, we're not fake pop
Speaker 1: were we want to be pop music, you know? So
Speaker 1: that was okay. So let's let's stop here for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the songs and you wrote some big ones. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: owned them? That? And then? And who owns them? Now? Okay?
Speaker 1: Uh I still own them and BMG owns them and
Speaker 1: they publish and I write and that that's okay. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the spring. You make this deal with Stallion
Speaker 1: Records when you write these hits, who owns the publishing then?
Speaker 1: At that point, Uh, it was a compliman in Reuben. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did you ultimately get full ownership? I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Was it part of a really the reversion a handful
Speaker 1: of years ago, or did some transaction happen decades ago? So? Boy,
Speaker 1: I I was running too fast to be paying any
Speaker 1: attention to the to the the mechanics of the business deals.
Speaker 1: And I have suffered proportionately for that mistake. But yes,
Speaker 1: I I really all of this stuff. We didn't and
Speaker 1: and our manager has since said I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was doing. You know, he's so apologetic. Because this
Speaker 1: Bob Cavallo, he becomes the president of Warner Brothers and
Speaker 1: Walt Disney records and all of this stuff, and and
Speaker 1: he I still talked to him frequently, and he his
Speaker 1: first thing is always Johnny. How could I be so
Speaker 1: stupid as to not understand what I didn't understand back then? Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm very touched by his reaction. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: can't say that I was unhappy with any step of
Speaker 1: that process, because what was happening was what we wanted.
Speaker 1: We were becoming a rock and roll group that people knew. Okay,
Speaker 1: some of these hits are in excess of most of
Speaker 1: them are in excess of fifty years old. Have they
Speaker 1: sustained you over the fifty years? Strangely enough? The uh, Well,
Speaker 1: I'd have to say that the record that for the
Speaker 1: Spoonful that was the most effective, of course, was somewhere
Speaker 1: in the City, and that certainly did very good things
Speaker 1: for me, my brother and Steve Boon, because all three
Speaker 1: of us contributed to the composing of Summer in the City.
Speaker 1: But the big one who could have predicted that a
Speaker 1: little television theme that I got involved in when I
Speaker 1: was wildly unpopular in the nine seventy six would be
Speaker 1: It's like, that's the one right now? And of course
Speaker 1: unfortunately I know part of this to COVID. Uh, you
Speaker 1: never know how things are gonna play out, Okay, just
Speaker 1: to put a cap on it, the original songs, you
Speaker 1: ended up owning a percent of Yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: sold part to be MG or you still own them,
Speaker 1: or you sold all of it. So I eventually sold
Speaker 1: all of it to be MG. And did you keep
Speaker 1: your writer's share or you can? They gave you a check. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you sold the publishing, but you still you still
Speaker 1: get the writer's share. Okay. Did you ever get a
Speaker 1: record royalty? Do you still get record royalties? You know,
Speaker 1: I probably do somewhere. I mean I do have an
Speaker 1: accountant to it kind of supervises this stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: a it's a quantity that's been halved so many times
Speaker 1: by our modern way of listening to music that it's
Speaker 1: almost nothing. Well that's why I mentioned. And if it's
Speaker 1: not nothing, they say you're in the hole. So you
Speaker 1: make this deal with Kama Sutra. Tell me about making
Speaker 1: the record and making the hit, Well, uh, we had
Speaker 1: made Do You Believe In Magic? Going into a studio
Speaker 1: independently and Eric Jacobson foot of the bill, and that
Speaker 1: was the record that got turned down all over And
Speaker 1: every time it got turned down, Yanovsky and I would go,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd think we'd be discouraged. We go. Of course,
Speaker 1: they didn't understand that they're they're they're looking for Fabian,
Speaker 1: They're they're not gonna find it in us. And so
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a bizarre twist that we
Speaker 1: saw every turn down as yeah, we are that cool.
Speaker 1: We're just that cool. So you make a deal with
Speaker 1: Kama Sutra, what's the first thing you make an album?
Speaker 1: Where they put out do you Believe in Magic? I
Speaker 1: think we were on about making the album. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember whether Magic got out. I think Magic
Speaker 1: got out before the do you Believe In Magic? Album?
Speaker 1: I believe this is summer sixty five. How long after
Speaker 1: they put it out does it become such a big smash? Uh,
Speaker 1: it didn't take long. It was amazing once it got
Speaker 1: out there, Really how fast it did happen? Um? And
Speaker 1: and also it didn't exactly happen on the East coast
Speaker 1: for us. Uh, we sort of had to go play
Speaker 1: the Trip and the Tiger Tail. Uh, those are all
Speaker 1: the same club and uh and UH find a little
Speaker 1: success with the California disc jockeys. They were probably more
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about it. I mean, except for cousin Brucie, who's
Speaker 1: been our ally forever. Uh, it was really it was,
Speaker 1: It was like that. Okay, so it becomes a hit.
Speaker 1: What's it like for you when you have a hit
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're playing these clubs, but
Speaker 1: ultimately there's television, there's recognition, you hear the song on
Speaker 1: the radio. What was your in tonal experience, mm hmm, Well,
Speaker 1: of course it was joyous when we actually landed in
Speaker 1: California and we turn on the radio in the rent
Speaker 1: a car and we here uh California Girls, followed by
Speaker 1: do you Believe in Magic? At which point Yanovski starts
Speaker 1: hitting me all over my body. We're both in the
Speaker 1: back seat, and then we start hitting each other, and
Speaker 1: then Steve and Joe start hitting us, and so all
Speaker 1: four we have to pull over so that we can
Speaker 1: more thoroughly hit each other. And and so it was
Speaker 1: absolutely a wonderful moment. And uh, nothing, nothing's gonna compared
Speaker 1: to that. Okay, you have the hit, right even at
Speaker 1: that era, following up the hit is very, very difficult
Speaker 1: and very important, and there was a thing that the
Speaker 1: Spoonful was really driven to pursue, and that was, we
Speaker 1: want to sound like a different band every single because
Speaker 1: the same old way of having it be the same
Speaker 1: thing for three or four singles that that era is
Speaker 1: gone now and so we have to make sure that
Speaker 1: it sounds different. And uh, I probably couldn't have come
Speaker 1: up with you didn't have to be so nice by myself.
Speaker 1: That was a fragment that Steve Boon brought in one evening.
Speaker 1: We're playing a kind of a topless club and and
Speaker 1: he shows up in my dressing room, in my in
Speaker 1: my uh uh, in my hotel room with this fragment,
Speaker 1: and that became our second single, and uh, things really
Speaker 1: did go that way. You know, I forget what the sequences,
Speaker 1: but daydream and make up your mind or right in there,
Speaker 1: and and uh, these are all different enough that that
Speaker 1: or at least we think, you know. The funny thing
Speaker 1: was we're saying, hey, man, they'll never guess. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is so different, jays man, you didn't even play
Speaker 1: your guitar. You played my guitar for that, they'll never guess.
Speaker 1: And then it goes on the air and the DJ goes, well,
Speaker 1: here's another example of that great spoonful sound, and we
Speaker 1: go damn it. Okay, what was driving you at this
Speaker 1: point you talked about earlier it was girls. Then you
Speaker 1: have the excitement of meeting and playing with Zal. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, you make it, their money comes in. What
Speaker 1: was pushing you forward? Well, some of it was just
Speaker 1: the fact that we were such underdogs, even though we
Speaker 1: had the approval of several of our English contemporaries, rolling
Speaker 1: Stone for whatever, one was not on the case for us.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh so we had to kind of inch
Speaker 1: our way up. And uh, I think that that was
Speaker 1: its own its own driver. Yes, but you have hit
Speaker 1: after hit after hit in an era where there's still
Speaker 1: a ton of one hit wonders. I mean, at some
Speaker 1: point you must have felt good about what you were
Speaker 1: doing success wives. No, no, I certainly I was feeling
Speaker 1: very good about it, No, no doubt out about it.
Speaker 1: I probably got a real swelled head right around then.
Speaker 1: But the only thing was that you had to keep
Speaker 1: at it. Uh. You couldn't stop and think. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm very glad that I had the partners that I had,
Speaker 1: somebody like Yanovsky who would crack up when I wrote
Speaker 1: Nashville Cats and think that, uh, pal, the thing I
Speaker 1: wrote for Woody Allen was the funniest thing in the world. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that was also driving me the approval of Yanovsky,
Speaker 1: who was really important to me. Okay, you have all
Speaker 1: these hits in the sixties, and you have Welcome Back
Speaker 1: Hotter in the seventies. He dries up. Why were there hits?
Speaker 1: Needle to say, music is constantly evolving, and you had
Speaker 1: an incredible success. But was it you were working with
Speaker 1: those specific partners, or the sound changed or somehow you
Speaker 1: couldn't do it anymore. Well, I had a wonderful time
Speaker 1: working with those partners right up until it was gonna
Speaker 1: be impossible because after Zali got busted, he started, uh
Speaker 1: drinking a lot, a lot more, and that was really disappointing.
Speaker 1: And uh you know, uh, also we we were starting
Speaker 1: to have our own separate lives and and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously Stephen was entering into a kind of a dark
Speaker 1: period where he wasn't really available. Uh And uh so
Speaker 1: there was a point when it was obvious to me
Speaker 1: that and I was afraid to do this for the
Speaker 1: longest time because I believed that people could not just
Speaker 1: transition from a group and suddenly be a solo artist.
Speaker 1: That that seemed like a real far stretch. Well, as
Speaker 1: I say, the hits dried up. Do you believe if
Speaker 1: you were still in the band the hits would have continued?
Speaker 1: Or everything runs its course? I? I I think it probably
Speaker 1: I'd go for the everything runs its course theory, because again,
Speaker 1: surrounded by all of that approval and surrounded by a
Speaker 1: good band that that had provided a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: But it was also obvious now that you know, the
Speaker 1: grooves were different. They were more complicated grooves that our
Speaker 1: rhythm section didn't really have facility with UH and and
Speaker 1: they're really I was busy enough because I started recording
Speaker 1: with Paul Rothschild UH to make a solo album. Okay,
Speaker 1: before you get there, I vividly remember you being on
Speaker 1: TV playing that auto harp. We're talking about it in
Speaker 1: high school the next day. What was it like being
Speaker 1: on Ed Sullivan? I mean, this is when those shows
Speaker 1: had reached nothing has that reached today, Absolutely absolutely, And
Speaker 1: it was remarkable and we were all ready to diss
Speaker 1: it because we're Greenwich Village puppies and we want. We
Speaker 1: just want to be counterculture every chance we get. And
Speaker 1: so we're going, oh, you know Ed, you know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have any idea what we're about. It's great that
Speaker 1: we're on the show. We'll play the thing. And like that,
Speaker 1: Ed Sullivan comes out and does the introduction for The
Speaker 1: Love and Spoonful, in which he pretty much says, this
Speaker 1: is the American answer to the English invasion. And here
Speaker 1: they are and they write their own songs and they
Speaker 1: do their own ship. And you know I'm paraphrasing, but
Speaker 1: we we were standing there about to play, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether my mouth was still wide open
Speaker 1: when the cameras came on us, but I was still
Speaker 1: recovering from oh man, we're gonna have to We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to reassess our our assessment of of Ed, you know.
Speaker 1: And he persisted every time we'd come on, he'd he'd
Speaker 1: be that same guy. Um. I heard that that later
Speaker 1: from Denny Doharty that he seemed like he wasn't as
Speaker 1: able when the Mamas and Papas played it, but boy,
Speaker 1: when The Spoonful played it, he was right on top
Speaker 1: of it. So what is it like being on national
Speaker 1: television and then walking on the street. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: don't think you're gonna get recognized right away, because for
Speaker 1: one thing, Yanovski is gonna get recognized several hours before
Speaker 1: you are noticed. And and so I'm I'm used to
Speaker 1: that because Ali's he's got the Borcellino hat and the
Speaker 1: whole rig, and you know, he's obviously a rock star.
Speaker 1: Remember again, it's it's Greenwich Village. Everybody's being cool. So
Speaker 1: it isn't the same thing as returning to your high
Speaker 1: school and coming in with a hit record, you know,
Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, the cheerleader likes you. You know,
Speaker 1: it was different, Okay, and in that era because shortly
Speaker 1: thereafter there's the rock star lifestyle. Are you partaking of
Speaker 1: the drugs, the women? What is your life? Like? I
Speaker 1: got lucky a few times, but I was not an
Speaker 1: abusive rock star. Uh. And so like I say, uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was not going to be my incentive,
Speaker 1: uh to try to engage a underage girl or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: Luckily we had our girlfriends by that time and they
Speaker 1: were appropriate ages. Uh. But you know, as time went
Speaker 1: on and a few years went by, then those temptations
Speaker 1: became a little stronger. Uh, the girls became impossibly good
Speaker 1: looking and uh uh so so yeah to that extent. Uh,
Speaker 1: like I say, but it was it was good luck,
Speaker 1: wasn't force. You know, you gotta make the distinction between
Speaker 1: that period and you know what would you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, led zepp. Uh. You know that era where
Speaker 1: girls who were like klean x and and life was
Speaker 1: beautiful and the champagne was flowing. We we didn't really
Speaker 1: get there. We were too busy doing gigs. Sometime, for
Speaker 1: your own amusement, I'll send you the Loving Spoonfuls schedule.
Speaker 1: It was documented by an Englishman who's a nut for
Speaker 1: the Spoonful and I look at that and it's unbelievable
Speaker 1: how many gigs we did. You know, Hey, it still
Speaker 1: doesn't compare with Fats Domino, but it was pretty good
Speaker 1: for some white guys. Okay, let me talk about a
Speaker 1: couple of my favorite Spoonful tracks. Give me the backstory.
Speaker 1: Six o'clock. Six o'clock came about because I was mourning
Speaker 1: the loss of a beautiful redheaded girlfriend. The tune itself, uh,
Speaker 1: somehow evolved from hammering on a new instrument from Honer
Speaker 1: called the clavinett Uh. And there are people on websites
Speaker 1: still trying to decide whether six o'clock is the first
Speaker 1: use of the electric harpsichord, UH, which we have no idea,
Speaker 1: But that was, that was the way that that UH emerged. Now,
Speaker 1: remember we're in transition now, Zali UH will occasionally visit
Speaker 1: our sessions. It's not like, you know, we This is
Speaker 1: the other thing that was so different for with our band.
Speaker 1: You know, we took eight by ten glosses with the
Speaker 1: new band member. But if you look closely at the
Speaker 1: glossy and you looked in the trees behind where we
Speaker 1: were standing, you'd see Zali looking forlorn and it's sad,
Speaker 1: and you know it was it was Yanovski all the way.
Speaker 1: But I mean, in some ways it's it's separated us
Speaker 1: from ever being that perfect. I don't know, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: money making band that UH does no wrong, Darling be
Speaker 1: home soon. It came about because I was listening to
Speaker 1: a lot of songs on the radio that went, oh
Speaker 1: my honey, I love you so much and now I
Speaker 1: have to go on the road and it's so hard
Speaker 1: and it makes me so unhappy. And I was going,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and maybe this is partially having a
Speaker 1: musician as a father. I said, well, this you got
Speaker 1: this wrong. When you get this going, that's that's what
Speaker 1: you want to have happened. Keep it going. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh So I thought maybe it would be I could
Speaker 1: sort of write that song. Only what if I took
Speaker 1: it from the other partners side? What if you know
Speaker 1: the song was really being sung by whoever stays at home? Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you think when you heard Joe Cocker's version?
Speaker 1: I loved it. I went nuts. Uh And in fact
Speaker 1: I would see him occasionally because we'd get paired in
Speaker 1: these various uh sorry, yes, Woodstock imitation shows in in
Speaker 1: subsequent years. But I loved that man, and he and
Speaker 1: I spent a considerable time in in in dressing rooms
Speaker 1: not talking because he was glad to have somebody that
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk to it, and I was glad
Speaker 1: to provide that. He was a delightful guy. Okay, I
Speaker 1: have to ask about Summer in the City. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was an iconic record, came out during the summer of
Speaker 1: the late spring. Had had that sound? How is that created?
Speaker 1: And what is it? That's a staple that has never
Speaker 1: gone away? So tell me about your experience there. Well,
Speaker 1: the song really began with Mark Sebastian, my younger brother,
Speaker 1: who had come up with an idea of you know,
Speaker 1: summer in the city, you know it's gonna get hot,
Speaker 1: the shadows of the buildings will be the only show
Speaker 1: shade spot. But at night it's a different world going.
Speaker 1: I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that? And what are
Speaker 1: those chords? And my brother showed him to me, and
Speaker 1: I said, man, that is a fabulous chorus, and that
Speaker 1: it made me want to create tension because it was
Speaker 1: such a good release. It goes to the sub dominant chord,
Speaker 1: then it goes to the sub dominant chord of that
Speaker 1: and it's like a double wall. You don't know where
Speaker 1: you are for a minute. And and and to me
Speaker 1: that that had this wonderful quality of release, that it
Speaker 1: made me want to, uh increase the tension in the beginning.
Speaker 1: So I, instead of what Mark had written on that beginning,
Speaker 1: I started. I started with an idea. I said, I
Speaker 1: wanted to have tension. I wanted to be like Night
Speaker 1: on Bald Mountain. Okay, one of the things that scared
Speaker 1: the living p out of me as a kid was
Speaker 1: Night on bald Mountain and to me, that thing in
Speaker 1: the beginning where you you hear the strings come in
Speaker 1: very quietly at first, donn bah pap pap pa papa,
Speaker 1: And you know that that remarkable piece of writing. And
Speaker 1: so I want to imitate that somehow. And that was
Speaker 1: all it was. Was bad, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: kind of underachieving there, but that was the goal, and
Speaker 1: that was you were the producer. That was me. Okay,
Speaker 1: just jumping forward one song from your soul. Oh wait now,
Speaker 1: but but there is there is production detail here worth mentioning,
Speaker 1: Which was that? Again? It's Yanovsky starts the trouble. He goes,
Speaker 1: I don't want the drums to sound like drums. I
Speaker 1: wanted to sound like a garbage can fall down an
Speaker 1: eight story stairwell, metal stairwell. So we're working with Roy
Speaker 1: Haley for the first time. Uh, he's a guy in
Speaker 1: a white lab coat. You got to remember the era.
Speaker 1: And once Sally says the thing about the stairwell, he goes, well,
Speaker 1: you know we have an eight story metal stairwell. Really well,
Speaker 1: in no time, we are pushing a voice of the
Speaker 1: theater speaker on onto the ground floor of this stairwell
Speaker 1: taking a microphone up eight floors, and it's recording this
Speaker 1: enormous echo of the of the snare, But of course
Speaker 1: it's decay is way too long, so Roy ends up
Speaker 1: wowing the cap stand that controls that echo so that
Speaker 1: it will go and then disappear. Well, of course you
Speaker 1: know that that same stairwell was then used twice more
Speaker 1: for the Boxer and for Bridge over Troubled Water. It's
Speaker 1: that stairwell. Wow. You ever tire of you? Ever tire
Speaker 1: of hearing Summer in the City? No? Really, not, Okay.
Speaker 1: I want to mention one other song that not everybody knows,
Speaker 1: but it's a big favorite of mine. It's after Tarzana
Speaker 1: Kid album, but that's not where I discovered it. Valerie
Speaker 1: Carter does a great version of Face of Appalachia. Oh
Speaker 1: She Kills. And of course that song You're Tarzana King
Speaker 1: is now available Tarzana Kid is available online. Tell me
Speaker 1: the backstory on that record? Well, Um, I had become
Speaker 1: friends with Lowell George and we found each other very amusing, uh,
Speaker 1: And we started to spend a lot of time together
Speaker 1: and we started to just call each other with hey,
Speaker 1: listen to this kind of phone calls. Well, one day,
Speaker 1: Lowell calls me up and says, hey, listen to this,
Speaker 1: And what I hear is it's an acoustic guitar, but
Speaker 1: it's so smeared with compression that it almost doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like uh that that instrument. Well, I say, man, that
Speaker 1: is so cool. That sounds like, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: the face of Appalachia or something. And he goes that, yep,
Speaker 1: that do that? Yeah right that. Uh So I started
Speaker 1: working on it, and uh it took me the whole summer, Robert.
Speaker 1: It's the only song that took me a long time.
Speaker 1: Uh and it really uh it. I just kept working
Speaker 1: on it all summer. It's a song, as you can tell,
Speaker 1: about my grandfather and how he had dreamed of making
Speaker 1: this trip with me, of walking the Appalachian Trail. And
Speaker 1: so it was the combination of the nostalgia of the
Speaker 1: contrast between my background, you know, being born in blocks
Speaker 1: of buildings, and and his vision that he wanted me
Speaker 1: to see, of the Coltrane's wailing banjos, frailing and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So so that really that was it.
Speaker 1: And I would have to mention that Lowell, George and
Speaker 1: Ry Cooter both played on that record, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: get you couldn't get slide here, that's for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: you end up working on Francis Ford Coppola's first movie,
Speaker 1: You're a Big Boy. Now. How does come together? You know?
Speaker 1: It was fairly fairly mechanical in that my manager, Bob Cavallo,
Speaker 1: nw uh, the the team that was making that movie,
Speaker 1: and somehow or another, I really don't know how Coppola
Speaker 1: came up with our name as the guys that should
Speaker 1: do the movie. But we got the call that, you know,
Speaker 1: go over to path A Labs or something and and
Speaker 1: talk to this guy. So we go over there, and
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know from Francis Coppola. Nobody does.
Speaker 1: But one thing was obvious. This guy's he's got this
Speaker 1: New York Italian thing that I'm immediately drawn in by
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh and and he has a wonderful funny
Speaker 1: way of presenting stuff. And uh, there were things that
Speaker 1: he would say like, Okay, so I need I need
Speaker 1: a song for this, uh, this couple. And they're there.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a kind of a a strange pairing
Speaker 1: now and they're gonna be a couple though soon and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play a song that's sort of like the
Speaker 1: vibe by one, and he plays Monday Monday. Well, all
Speaker 1: I took from Monday Monday was the tempo. But but
Speaker 1: it was an obvious Oh yeah, I can see how
Speaker 1: this kind of a mood would be good. Uh. Other things,
Speaker 1: like he'd say, Okay, now I need a song for
Speaker 1: Amy the girl. And she's the good girl. But you know, John,
Speaker 1: she's not quite as attractive as my bad girl. So
Speaker 1: I need a song to kind of kind of inflate
Speaker 1: her a little bit, make her more important. So I
Speaker 1: write a tune called Amy's Theme. And uh, as soon
Speaker 1: as he hears that, he goes, oh yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a thing here. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: when the guy is wandering around New York City by himself,
Speaker 1: Now we've heard Amy's Theme with Amy in the picture,
Speaker 1: but now I'm gonna use that theme with her out
Speaker 1: of the picture. It's gonna be just him, and you
Speaker 1: know what the audience is gonna be thinking. And all
Speaker 1: of us gotta go, no, we don't know. He says,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be saying he's thinking about that girl, And
Speaker 1: I go, wow, you know this is, you know, writing
Speaker 1: for movies, and I did it by accident. So it
Speaker 1: was that was the experience. It was really informative. I
Speaker 1: learned so much and just disappointed he never called again.
Speaker 1: What do you think where the Godfather came out? I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, I can write you in Italian. No, now
Speaker 1: he's got his dad. The dad kills it. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not going to improve on on Mr Couple, I'm afraid. Okay,
Speaker 1: of course you Then you get huge exposure a year
Speaker 1: after it happens in August sixty nine, is Woodstock gets
Speaker 1: a lot of press, not that it's focused on you.
Speaker 1: Then there's the triple album set, and then there's the
Speaker 1: movie becomes a phenomenon. One other thing we know is
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff on the original three record
Speaker 1: set was it actually recorded it Woodstock? So why did
Speaker 1: you go to Woodstock? What was up with the tidy?
Speaker 1: Tell us your experience and then the aftermath of having
Speaker 1: all that visibility. Okay, so by this time, um, I
Speaker 1: have divorced my first wife and moved out to California
Speaker 1: in a kind of I don't know what I'm doing
Speaker 1: kind of a way, and and who but Paul Rothchild
Speaker 1: says man, you've got to be out here. Look all
Speaker 1: of your brothers, they've all moved from Greenwich Village and
Speaker 1: they're all out here. And this whole sensitive singer songwriter
Speaker 1: thing you can dive right in here, So come on out.
Speaker 1: You know that. That was kind of the way it began.
Speaker 1: I moved to California. But while I'm out there, I
Speaker 1: stay at the home of a guy named Cyrus Farrier
Speaker 1: who was in the Modern Folk Quartet. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I learned there from a woman named Annie
Speaker 1: Thomas is tied dyeing. U Uh. You know. It starts
Speaker 1: with underwear and socks and things. But after a while,
Speaker 1: I go, I'm gonna actually buy a white leave jacket
Speaker 1: and actually have it be purposed to be a jacket
Speaker 1: that has all these colors on it. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: between uh, tying and sewing and various things, I get
Speaker 1: this thing. And it takes it takes weeks because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm dipping into these various buckets and the buckets have
Speaker 1: to be hot, so there's a time limit. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so all of this is part of the process. Okay,
Speaker 1: But then I get the jacket and again Rothschild is saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't do this, but this would stock
Speaker 1: festival thing. It's it's sounding like it could really be
Speaker 1: something cool. So maybe you know, if you can take
Speaker 1: get there, you ought to try to make it well.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, I was on the East Coast
Speaker 1: in that general time, and so I made my way
Speaker 1: to the Albany Airport. I'm and I'm standing in the
Speaker 1: Albany Airport looking out the picture window another era of airports,
Speaker 1: and I see a guy loading a helicopter and I
Speaker 1: look closely and it's Walter Gundhi, the original The Love
Speaker 1: and Spoonfuls First road e And so between gesturing and
Speaker 1: so on, I get his attention. He points to a
Speaker 1: staircase that I can come down on the tar Mac with.
Speaker 1: So I do that. I go down on the tar Mac.
Speaker 1: He says, you're trying to get to Woodsuck. I go yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes to get in the helicopter. It's the only
Speaker 1: way you're gonna get there. I'm roadying for the Incredible
Speaker 1: String Band. So uh, that's where I'm going one okay,
Speaker 1: So that's how that's how the trip began. And me
Speaker 1: and a helicopter. I see that same view over the
Speaker 1: site that is so famous in the movie where there's
Speaker 1: there's no ground. You just see sleeping bags and tents
Speaker 1: and and Volkswagen busses and so on. So I pretty
Speaker 1: much I just showed up and U there were things
Speaker 1: that were that were going on that made it easier.
Speaker 1: One of them was that there was a yellow Volkswagen
Speaker 1: bus tent right in front of the stage. Well, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, I had been living in a yellow
Speaker 1: Volkswagen bus tent in Los Angeles because that was what
Speaker 1: was available to me at that at my friend's house.
Speaker 1: Remember me, there's very little security or anything. You can
Speaker 1: go where you want to go. So I've I circled
Speaker 1: the entire site with with David Brown, wonderful bass player
Speaker 1: for the Santana and uh. By the next day, I'm
Speaker 1: on stage uh fairly frequently. And at a certain point
Speaker 1: it begins to rain and I'm standing there with the
Speaker 1: promoters and and Chipmunk and we're sort of talking and
Speaker 1: Michael says, uh, you know, uh, what we need is
Speaker 1: the guy to hold them for long enough for us
Speaker 1: to sweep the stage because we can't put electric instruments,
Speaker 1: so we can't put any electric band on Uh, so
Speaker 1: we gotta have a guy who can hold um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe with some good songs. And I'm I'm staring out
Speaker 1: at the audience at this moment and I'm shaking my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's free. That's what we need. And uh
Speaker 1: then I realized that they're looking at me, and I say, fellas,
Speaker 1: I didn't bring I may have a thumb pick, I
Speaker 1: didn't bring any instruments. I didn't I'm not prepared to play.
Speaker 1: And they say, well, you actually have a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes to go find a guitar. And so I end
Speaker 1: up down in the sort of underground of that hastily
Speaker 1: assembled stage and who's down there relaxing but Timmy Harden,
Speaker 1: who had been a frequent uh you know. I played
Speaker 1: with Timmy a lot in in Greenwich Village. And so
Speaker 1: I said, tim could I borrow your harm any sovereign?
Speaker 1: And he says sure man, and I I'm back up
Speaker 1: on age. I'm tuning as I run up the stairs,
Speaker 1: and uh. From there, I walk on stage and dan
Speaker 1: it was pretty remarkable experience for a guy who played
Speaker 1: mostly to audiences of maybe three hundred, you know, the
Speaker 1: spoonful you gotta remember, this wasn't the scale of rock
Speaker 1: and roll that everybody thinks of when they think of,
Speaker 1: you know, the sixties and rock and roll. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really was a smaller scale operation. So when you suddenly
Speaker 1: have that many people in front of you, it is
Speaker 1: it is startling. But the thing that I rarely get
Speaker 1: around to Robert and I'll tell you is that everybody
Speaker 1: that played there had had success in rooms with forty
Speaker 1: people in the audience, and that's where you learn how
Speaker 1: to do what you do. And really Woodstock was a
Speaker 1: very intimate half a million people. I can't quite describe
Speaker 1: how I I never saw it happen again, but oh
Speaker 1: my god, they were quiet. I mean, who knows how
Speaker 1: to quiet half a million people? So it was as
Speaker 1: much of of a remarkable experience for me as as
Speaker 1: for everybody else that got the opportunity to play. Okay,
Speaker 1: you play, Yeah, When when you're done, what kind of
Speaker 1: high do you have? Pretty pretty strong. I think it'd
Speaker 1: be several days before I can get my head through
Speaker 1: the door. Uh. That was a remarkable feeling, no no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Yeah, how do you end up on
Speaker 1: the record in the movie, Well, that was just because
Speaker 1: they were wording and filming, so they had me, and uh,
Speaker 1: I I wasn't going to turn it down. Uh. I
Speaker 1: felt like, okay, I went up once. I forgot a verse,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't terrible, and uh the audience seemed to
Speaker 1: like it. I guess they be okay. Well, I had
Speaker 1: no idea really the scale of acceptance and what that
Speaker 1: movie became. Um. And one of the things, one of
Speaker 1: the outgrowths of that was that for another three years
Speaker 1: I rarely played inside. One thing, and the other thing
Speaker 1: was that I played every one of those lonely ass
Speaker 1: wanna be Woodstock. Uh we we charge money kind of shows.
Speaker 1: Everybody had the same idea, only this time we have
Speaker 1: an actual ticket booth and they go by the ticket booth.
Speaker 1: And you know, so I did. I played every one
Speaker 1: of them. That's where I got to know Joe uh
Speaker 1: Cocker and a number of folks who were, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty much regulars. Uh. As a result of that movie,
Speaker 1: you became known as the tide guy. I'm happy. Were
Speaker 1: you happy with that? For a while? I was happy?
Speaker 1: But I actually can date it from a television show
Speaker 1: I was watching where Cheech and Chong are the guests
Speaker 1: and they come out and they sit down and and
Speaker 1: Cheech is sitting closest, and he's got a tie dyed
Speaker 1: shirt on. And uh, the the uh announcer says, well, though,
Speaker 1: that's just wonderfully has a fake name, and and tell me,
Speaker 1: uh so, uh did you tie dye that yourself? And
Speaker 1: he says no, I threw up. And that was when
Speaker 1: I knew. Oops, it's the end of the tie dye era.
Speaker 1: Now it's funny. And it wasn't long after that that
Speaker 1: I started wearing black clothes for a couple of years
Speaker 1: just to shake it off. Okay, you have a new
Speaker 1: album where a lot of your classic Love and Spoonful
Speaker 1: songs are re cut. It's an interesting project because it's
Speaker 1: with Arlen Roth, the guitarist. A few of the songs
Speaker 1: were instrumentals. Tell us how this came together, Well, it
Speaker 1: came about completely as uh Arland's idea. Originally. Uh. He
Speaker 1: and I had known each other chiefs me. We probably
Speaker 1: go back thirty five years. Uh. And you know, we
Speaker 1: would cross paths frequently because both of us were accompanists
Speaker 1: before we were you know, the guy under the spotlight
Speaker 1: or whatever, and so so we we had been friends
Speaker 1: a long time, and also we would cross paths. Woodstock
Speaker 1: has frequent uh, small events that are usually benefits or something,
Speaker 1: and and it's a kind of a clotch where everybody
Speaker 1: gets together in place. And I'd end up playing with
Speaker 1: Arland fairly frequently. And so UH came a day when
Speaker 1: I had been listening to Arland's c ds that he
Speaker 1: had cut things like acoustic rolling Stones and uh, instrumental
Speaker 1: Simon and Garfuncle. Of course, he's completely savvy because he
Speaker 1: played with both guys together and separately, so he has
Speaker 1: the background. And he says, so, you ever made one
Speaker 1: of these kind of records, And I said no, I
Speaker 1: I was always afraid to touch any of the material. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, we'd have half of
Speaker 1: the arrangements licked. Was how we put it, so Uh
Speaker 1: that just sort of started it off, mostly in living rooms,
Speaker 1: and uh we began playing the material. And one of
Speaker 1: the remarkable parts of it was that his knowledge of
Speaker 1: Zalmayanovski I really hadn't I really hadn't taken it in,
Speaker 1: but it provided this wonderful framework, and we just started
Speaker 1: doing instrumental versions of tunes. Uh. And in some cases
Speaker 1: they made it in some cases we'd say, now we
Speaker 1: can't touch the original, and in some cases, uh, it
Speaker 1: would become an instrumental that then we'd add vocals to
Speaker 1: and go, hey, it's better with the vocals. Let's let's
Speaker 1: leave it that way. And suddenly we had the fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen tunes that it took. Now, part of our
Speaker 1: goal was not to go nuts and put a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of nonsense on it, because we had been getting
Speaker 1: this very good vibe of the two of us playing together.
Speaker 1: Then we go to our separate studios and maybe add
Speaker 1: one other guy and and that would be the arrangement. Uh.
Speaker 1: So with that as a framework, UM, we got pretty
Speaker 1: close to the end. And I had a couple of
Speaker 1: extra little things in my pocket. One of them was
Speaker 1: that I could call Maria Muldoor to do a uh,
Speaker 1: to do a stories we could tell together. And uh,
Speaker 1: A fairly remarkable thing that had happened, uh starting about
Speaker 1: five years before we started this project, which was that
Speaker 1: I got a call, you know, I got an email
Speaker 1: from a guy who wanted to uh play a little
Speaker 1: what would we call it? A film of two young
Speaker 1: women doing daydream one guitar, one ukulele, it was beautiful
Speaker 1: I and I wrote back and I said, this is
Speaker 1: sibling harmony. You can't imitate this, and and I really
Speaker 1: went nuts on this email. The next email comes back
Speaker 1: from the Mona Lisa twins, who that's who it is,
Speaker 1: and the twin are saying, oh, we're so happy and
Speaker 1: could you maybe uh be on our album? And I said,
Speaker 1: of course they're there. Uh uh they're they're just uh
Speaker 1: remarkable little Austrian people and played and sang and I
Speaker 1: ended up for in two different occasions playing harmonica on
Speaker 1: their records. And then they started a record where they
Speaker 1: were doing their own tunes. This was a first for them,
Speaker 1: and they called me in on that and this is
Speaker 1: all by remote control. I'm working from Woodstock and they're
Speaker 1: in uh they're in England. So another half a year
Speaker 1: or so go by may call again and say, now
Speaker 1: we have trouble figuring out how we're going to do
Speaker 1: a video without you. Would you come to England and
Speaker 1: do a video with us? So I end up on
Speaker 1: a Icelandic flight to Manchester and we end up in
Speaker 1: this three hundred year old bar doing a very cool
Speaker 1: By the way, if you get a chance, go look
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa Twins. Uh. Waiting for the Waiter is the
Speaker 1: title of the tune. But they had me kind of
Speaker 1: be a like a kind of a bad guy or something.
Speaker 1: Uh and and it was lovely fun and uh so
Speaker 1: then they were all ready to pay me, and I
Speaker 1: said no, no, no, no, wait, I said, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing next, but whatever it is, I'm
Speaker 1: going to draft you guys to do background harmonies. And
Speaker 1: so that was the agreement. And so so it is
Speaker 1: that on several two I sent Arlen and my work
Speaker 1: off to Manchester by now I think it was Wales.
Speaker 1: They they're they're a moving group. They uh and uh
Speaker 1: they uh and it was a wonderful uh experience. They
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still in touch and uh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll do something else. Okay. It's fascinating to me that
Speaker 1: both Maria and Jeff Muldaur on the album they've been divorced.
Speaker 1: I know. I consider it one of my great great
Speaker 1: victories as the because I'm I'm the younger brother here,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much for Maria. Were about the same age,
Speaker 1: but Jeff's kind of you know, he was in the
Speaker 1: real jug band and there were things about him I
Speaker 1: was blatantly imitating him on day dream, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to get that honk that he has in his voice,
Speaker 1: and and so uh and I think I called him first.
Speaker 1: And then it's just because he was living in the
Speaker 1: adjoining town at the time. And very shortly thereafter, Maria,
Speaker 1: who makes periodic trips to Woodstock, was nearby, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: come on over to Chris Anderson's studio and let's get
Speaker 1: this thing where you sing, uh, you know with me
Speaker 1: on stories we could tell so uh so it did.
Speaker 1: They weren't in the studio at the same moment, but
Speaker 1: they can be. Uh that era of where they were
Speaker 1: still angry at each other, I actually was. I lived
Speaker 1: through that, and you know, it was made me very
Speaker 1: sad for a couple of years. But they they have
Speaker 1: managed to to get past that and and enjoy each
Speaker 1: other's company and laugh at each other's voibles. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so that it had become nice. Okay, a couple
Speaker 1: of things wrapping up. How do you how do you
Speaker 1: write songs? Do you wait for inspiration or do you
Speaker 1: literally sit down like with a puzzle. How do you
Speaker 1: do it? Well? The puzzle part usually comes after a
Speaker 1: good idea because you know, very often it will be
Speaker 1: something as simple as a title or a chord sequence, uh,
Speaker 1: And maybe the chord sequence makes you feel a certain way,
Speaker 1: and so you might get a line or two out
Speaker 1: of that, or your circumstances that you're living in might
Speaker 1: give you an idea. So it just that's that's the
Speaker 1: way it it happens. Okay, a lot of these hits
Speaker 1: were in the sixties, which were over fifty years. Did
Speaker 1: you do this ever affect you financially or been okay?
Speaker 1: For these fifty years, I've had periods where I was
Speaker 1: struggling a little bit, uh, you know, by making jokes
Speaker 1: about being wildly unpopular in the nineties, and so I
Speaker 1: kind of went sideways, hooked up with a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys and made a jug band and sort of turned
Speaker 1: my fortunes around because I wasn't making money, but I
Speaker 1: was having so much fun playing with Jimmy Vivino and
Speaker 1: James Wormworth and Fritz Richmond and oh Man, Paul Rochelle
Speaker 1: and Annie Rains. I got to really play with some
Speaker 1: remarkable folks, and in fact, this very jug band, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: except for Fritz, who isn't with us, is going to
Speaker 1: reunite in uh month or two and UH have a
Speaker 1: little a little play at the Bearsville Theater. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: very cool. Now you're an upbeat guy, I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1: But you've lived a long on time. Have you always
Speaker 1: been an upbeat guy? Or you're prone to depression? What's
Speaker 1: your mood like? Um? I I think, uh, I probably
Speaker 1: am a pretty upbeat guy, but I can get taken down.
Speaker 1: You know, there are times that that in my life
Speaker 1: that have been really depressing. Where you know, Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: and the whole of the whole world of of reporters
Speaker 1: had a kind of a miss fire on what had
Speaker 1: happened with zol and Stephen and yeah, okay, so now
Speaker 1: they were finks, but everybody piled on two that to
Speaker 1: that uh, and it was virtue signaling. Half of these
Speaker 1: reporters were so anxious to alive themselves with the pot
Speaker 1: smokers and not the guys who busted the guy. But
Speaker 1: what they know, what he reported was the amount of
Speaker 1: effort that the band and the whole team put into
Speaker 1: getting this guy freed. And I won't go into it
Speaker 1: too elaborately, but unfortunately the guy wanted to have his
Speaker 1: own lawyer who wanted to make pot legal in nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: six or whenever it was. And uh so, uh he
Speaker 1: he Actually I think he served some time and it
Speaker 1: was gruesome. And uh this is a selfish me. But
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be associated with this. I was
Speaker 1: not in I wasn't even in the town. Understand, this
Speaker 1: happened in San Francisco. I was in Los Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So if you want to look for a depressing era
Speaker 1: for me, that was it because there was no there
Speaker 1: was no explaining it just it looked bad, no matter
Speaker 1: what attempt you made to explain. And it didn't help
Speaker 1: that there was all of this what I described in
Speaker 1: modern times as virtue signaling. So many reporters were so
Speaker 1: anxious to vilify us and make sure that everybody knew
Speaker 1: that they, the reporter, were the cool guys. So that
Speaker 1: was painful. Okay, are you a social guy? You're living
Speaker 1: in Woodstock, relatively small town. I know when I've lived
Speaker 1: in small towns tend to know more people than the city.
Speaker 1: Do you connect with people from your generation, the music,
Speaker 1: other famous musicians, what's your life like? Well, I am
Speaker 1: very lucky in that regard because there are wonderful venues
Speaker 1: and wonderful musicians in my town, and I do socialize
Speaker 1: with them when possible. Now we have to kind of
Speaker 1: x out a year and a half here because nobody
Speaker 1: was allowed to do anything. But no, uh, we were managing.
Speaker 1: I was wearing a mask and going over to Larry
Speaker 1: Campbell's house and he had COVID and I was bringing
Speaker 1: him chicken soup. There were there were funny things happening.
Speaker 1: Me and Happy Troum playing at twenty five ft away
Speaker 1: because we just said, I can't stand it not playing
Speaker 1: with anybody, and we did get together and just have
Speaker 1: a fun little little plate. Uh. Okay. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of years have gone by, You're at an elder
Speaker 1: age and a lot of this has been written. Are
Speaker 1: you comfortable with what's happened? What would you like? Were
Speaker 1: you wish you had another chance? You don't get a
Speaker 1: chance to do over in life. But you know, looking
Speaker 1: back at this age, how do you feel about all
Speaker 1: of it? I was a very lucky guy, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun, and there was involved in
Speaker 1: that fun a certain amount of tears and a certain
Speaker 1: amount of pain, but it was all part of the package.
Speaker 1: And you couldn't extract one from the other. Okay. And
Speaker 1: in the time you have left, which could be a
Speaker 1: minute or could be twenty years, for thirty years, anything
Speaker 1: that you still want to do, want to accomplish, you know.
Speaker 1: I just still enjoyed the same stuff I always did,
Speaker 1: which is playing with other musicians, learning material that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, Uh, finding out details of jug band tunes.
Speaker 1: I've played for fifty years and suddenly I'm finding out,
Speaker 1: oh that's that was a box factory outside of Memphis
Speaker 1: they're talking about, or you know, things like that, little
Speaker 1: details that that's what's fun. Okay. And you play the
Speaker 1: guitar every day, Uh No, I don't think I do
Speaker 1: play every day. I end up uh maybe every third day. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I've it's kind of I I get favorite
Speaker 1: guitars and so then I'm kind of concentrating on that
Speaker 1: instrument a little bit more so, you know, it's it's ongoing.
Speaker 1: But I am I'm not a player unless there's another
Speaker 1: player or an audience. I'm not a guy who played
Speaker 1: or you know, my grandchildren. Fine, you know, I'll play
Speaker 1: all day. Uh, but it it it does need to
Speaker 1: be something I think by myself I'm I'm more or
Speaker 1: less maybe I'll get some crazy idea and and see
Speaker 1: if I can develop it a little bit. So all
Speaker 1: day you read, you watch TV, you're in front of
Speaker 1: the computer. What's your average day looking like? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: a dog walking saves me from just sitting in front
Speaker 1: of a computer all day, and that that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, I have I have nearby friends
Speaker 1: like Happy Troum and Cindy cash Dollar and uh several Luthier's,
Speaker 1: Harvey Citron and Joe Vayette who are really important friends
Speaker 1: to me and I really enjoy, you know, an occasional
Speaker 1: meal where we go out and and take life in
Speaker 1: hand and go to a restaurant. Uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty normal stuff. Yeah, any significant other, any romance,
Speaker 1: I have, the same romance I had in and Catherine
Speaker 1: Sebastian has been a remarkable creature and uh and still
Speaker 1: a hottie. So well, what are you gonna do? Hey, listen,
Speaker 1: it's all good, John, This is fantastic. You know, I
Speaker 1: think we got some of the history that people don't know.
Speaker 1: We still would need to delve more into your success
Speaker 1: in the sixties and what you've been doing for from
Speaker 1: the seventies until this new album. But I think we've
Speaker 1: come to the end of the feeling we've known. I
Speaker 1: think there's only so much time. So I want to
Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. This is a
Speaker 1: thrill for me because you know, it's funny talking to
Speaker 1: you and you're saying, oh, you know we were doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, we were living in Greenwich Village. Everybody knew
Speaker 1: each other. The gigs weren't that big. I don't think
Speaker 1: you have an idea how iconic these songs are. Like
Speaker 1: maybe some are in the city because it's constantly used,
Speaker 1: and they are like you talked about the Spoonful. You
Speaker 1: talk about doing things unique. Okay, No, they did not
Speaker 1: seem repetitious. And I cannot sit here and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like the Spoonful. It's its own vertical and
Speaker 1: therefore it stands alone. It's not like, oh, it's part
Speaker 1: of the British invasion whatever. And you know therefore I
Speaker 1: was dying to talk to I mean, this stuff is iconic, Robert.
Speaker 1: I love it when you say it. Can I tell you? Okay?
Speaker 1: In any event, until next time, this is Bob left
Speaker 1: Sex