Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is singer, songwriter musician Willie Nile. Willie,
Speaker 1: you had an adventure at the end of the year
Speaker 1: your home town of Buffalo. Tell us the story. Hello, Bob,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I was born in Buffalo, raised there,
Speaker 1: and I live in New York. I've lived in New
Speaker 1: York off and on for about fifty years. And my dad,
Speaker 1: I have a father's one hundred and five years old,
Speaker 1: lives at home outside of Buffalo. One of my brothers
Speaker 1: lives with him. In the last four years and he's
Speaker 1: one hundred and five. But he's doing great. He goes
Speaker 1: to church every day. He's like he just takes no medication.
Speaker 1: You'd think that he was in early eighties. So I
Speaker 1: went up to Buffalo for Christmas and staying at his home.
Speaker 1: He's a great storyteller and funny guy. And after a
Speaker 1: couple of days, we saw this big storm was coming in,
Speaker 1: you know, the Buffalo blizzard, and I read about it
Speaker 1: ahead of time about how high winds, really high winds
Speaker 1: and cold weather it can cause frostbite. Anyway, So I
Speaker 1: wake up on Friday morning, two days before Christmas twenty
Speaker 1: third of December, and I, you know, eleven fifteen, I
Speaker 1: wake up. My brother says we're on a power no heat,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you're kidding me, right. Apparently someone in
Speaker 1: a truck ran into a utility pol and with a
Speaker 1: driving band on. I wanted them to put that person's
Speaker 1: picture on the front of the Buffalo newspaper so that
Speaker 1: everyone know who ran into the pole. They caused eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty some homes to be without power. So
Speaker 1: there was no power, Okay. I got up, got dressed,
Speaker 1: and Dad was doing Crossford puzzles like all this. You know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't complain, it's really great. So we were without
Speaker 1: power for three days and three nights. It was eighty
Speaker 1: mile in our winds. It was eight degrees outside and
Speaker 1: it was freezing. It was so cool. I grew up
Speaker 1: in Buffalo, you know, I know the winner there's eighty
Speaker 1: five words for snow, and buff there's not. But it
Speaker 1: was so cold. I had we had a fireplace, but
Speaker 1: no wood, had you know, gas fireplace. We turned it on,
Speaker 1: lit it all the way up, but it doesn't emanate
Speaker 1: much heat. I would put my hands at the top
Speaker 1: of the you know, the fireplace just to hole. You know,
Speaker 1: the stones had warmth that it didn't emanate heat. Long
Speaker 1: story short, there was a neighbor next door who was
Speaker 1: really great x marine. In the middle of this blizzard.
Speaker 1: There was four feet of snow in the driveway. It
Speaker 1: was beautiful. Everything was going sideways because the wind was
Speaker 1: so hard, and so I thought, my phone's dying, you know,
Speaker 1: like later in the day on Friday, and we had
Speaker 1: no contact. We were we were everyone was stranded in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Everywhere there was so much snow. So I
Speaker 1: made me It took about ten minutes to go just
Speaker 1: right next door. I used to shovel as an anchor
Speaker 1: to get through the snow. Was I just to pull
Speaker 1: myself up. Knocked on their door and they that they
Speaker 1: hesitated to open the door. There was some figure in
Speaker 1: black outside their door. They didn't know who it was.
Speaker 1: The guy answered and said, Hi, you know I lived
Speaker 1: next door. My dad's one hundred and five and my
Speaker 1: phone is dying. Can I use your car, you know,
Speaker 1: to charge the phone. He goes, oh, we'll do it inside.
Speaker 1: So I took my phone. He charged my phone like
Speaker 1: six or seven times over the course of three days.
Speaker 1: Sunday morning. The third day, they couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: And the second when I went back Saturday morning to
Speaker 1: get my phone one time, I said what's your phone number?
Speaker 1: And he said, I'll give it to you later. Go No,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. I'll take it now. I took my
Speaker 1: glove off for thirty seconds. How long does this take?
Speaker 1: The type of number the phone? I typed it in
Speaker 1: and you know, my hands were really cold, put it
Speaker 1: back on, went home and my fingers, my three fingers
Speaker 1: on my right hand are still a little numb. It's
Speaker 1: gotten better, but it's not one hundred percent. And this
Speaker 1: was well whatever. It was a twenty fourth of December.
Speaker 1: Long story short, we had We were freezing. Getting in
Speaker 1: bed on Friday night was brutal. Dressed we might have
Speaker 1: been going skiing in the Alps. We were dressed that
Speaker 1: that much on multiple coats, hat, socks, all kinds of clothes,
Speaker 1: and it didn't help much. Woke up early early six
Speaker 1: o'clock because it was so cold you couldn't sleep. And
Speaker 1: Dad was great. My brother he took the grill off
Speaker 1: his grill and put it on the fireplace and on
Speaker 1: the great and he made some eggs and some coffee
Speaker 1: for Dad, but it was still so cold, and Dad
Speaker 1: never complained. Once I had we had wine, you know.
Speaker 1: So I opened up bottle of wine. We were drinking
Speaker 1: and I made a couple of video clips and put
Speaker 1: them on Facebook. Next thing I know, on Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: Inside Edition goes meanwhile in Buffalo, this guy cuts to me,
Speaker 1: this guy, So I'm changing my name officially to this guy.
Speaker 1: And they did edits my clip of Dad, and the
Speaker 1: thing about the clip was and so many people responded, oh,
Speaker 1: your father. I love your dad. You know, he's a
Speaker 1: really good guy. But people, here's one hundred and five.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'm looking at my phone, you know, selfie, Hey, Dad,
Speaker 1: say hello everybody, Hi, everybody. We're having a blast. He
Speaker 1: holds up his glass of red wine. And it was
Speaker 1: really cold, and I did another clip where I said,
Speaker 1: just so you know how cold it is, and I
Speaker 1: would just breathe out and you could see my breath
Speaker 1: three feet away, you know. And it was pretty rough
Speaker 1: and brutal. On the third day, in the morning, I
Speaker 1: woke up with chills and low fever, and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is going downhill, you know, So I called there's
Speaker 1: a plow service we have for my dad. And I
Speaker 1: called the guy and say, I'll give you five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars if you can get my dad out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, Max's wife lived a mile and a half away,
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm trying to get there. I hope
Speaker 1: you in two hours. He called me up. Two hours later,
Speaker 1: he goes, I'm at the six houses away and I'm
Speaker 1: stuck in ten feet of snow. But i can get out,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go to the local fire hall. Because
Speaker 1: I called nine one one, I called the National Guard.
Speaker 1: I got put on lists. I called the fire hall. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he went to the fire hall and said there's one
Speaker 1: hundred and five year old man in a house that
Speaker 1: they're stranded. We weren't the only one stranded, but you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't eighty five, he wasn't ninety five. He was
Speaker 1: one hundred and five. And he didn't say a word. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: it's say, you know that born name is Robert Bob. Bob,
Speaker 1: turn on the Christmas tree lights. I go, dad, there's
Speaker 1: no power, Oh yeah, yeah right, you know, God bless him.
Speaker 1: He never complained once I did. I complained. My brother says,
Speaker 1: it's not going to help the complain. I go, well,
Speaker 1: it's helping me. The police and fire rescued us on
Speaker 1: the third day at three o'clock and there was a
Speaker 1: I didn't know what you call him, a snow cat
Speaker 1: or something, one of those a snow removal thing with
Speaker 1: not wheels, but like a tank, snow cat, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It went over everything, got down our street, went in
Speaker 1: a driveway, backed out and took snow out enough for
Speaker 1: another emergency vehicle to back end and we got in
Speaker 1: the car. That was the first heat we had in
Speaker 1: three days, and I thought, wow, And I was thinking
Speaker 1: about the people in Ukraine during that I thought, you
Speaker 1: know what we have. At least we have gas, we
Speaker 1: could cook, you know, whatever we have. I could put
Speaker 1: my hands on the stones. You know, my hands are
Speaker 1: really you know, I'm extra sensitive now to the cold,
Speaker 1: and there's still numb in these fingers in the tree.
Speaker 1: But I thought about the poor people in Ukraine. They're
Speaker 1: getting bombed to hell, you know, just absolute savagery, and
Speaker 1: they don't have gas, fireplaces I can turn on. So
Speaker 1: I just really my heart went out to them. And
Speaker 1: they took us to a warming center and it was
Speaker 1: a junior high school. And you know when one hundred
Speaker 1: and five years old, sitting on a little stool, dad
Speaker 1: said I need something at my back, and someone heard
Speaker 1: them and went and got a real chair. And I
Speaker 1: must say this, there's a silver lining to us, the
Speaker 1: way that neighbors treated neighbors, like I believe in this country.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's obviously a lot of a lot wrong,
Speaker 1: a lot wrong in the history, there's so much wrong.
Speaker 1: But when you know people are shoveling each other's driveways out.
Speaker 1: I saw a neighbor across the street go into the
Speaker 1: next two houses checking on people. The guy next door
Speaker 1: on Saturday morning, he comes over and brings a bag
Speaker 1: of handwarmers. Those handwarmers saved our butts, they really did.
Speaker 1: I carry one of my in my pocket now, just because.
Speaker 1: And the volunteers, the cops, the firemen, the people volunteering
Speaker 1: in the vehicle that rescue. We were in a car.
Speaker 1: We were five different cars that day, and because we
Speaker 1: went to two warming centers, went to a hotel, whatever,
Speaker 1: three hotels, finally got in. But the way people pitched
Speaker 1: in to help each other, it was really I thought,
Speaker 1: this is really encouraging to me. People are there is
Speaker 1: good in a lot of people. So it was really
Speaker 1: a brutal experience. Dad was fine. I mean he I've
Speaker 1: heard of going to bed Saturday night. Second night. I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to go back in that bed. I moved
Speaker 1: the couch in front of the fireplace. Even though it
Speaker 1: didn't give much heat, it was light the illusion of heat,
Speaker 1: and I heard Dad get into the bed. Oh he's
Speaker 1: a hundred and five, were crying out loud. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: silver lining was that I'm with his man. There's some
Speaker 1: really good people. People pitched him to help each other,
Speaker 1: and it was heartening to see. Anyway, that was my Christmas. Okay,
Speaker 1: you say your father called out to Bob. Your real
Speaker 1: name is Bob Noonan. Yes, how did you become Willie dile?
Speaker 1: So I moved. I graduated from the University of Buffalo
Speaker 1: in seventy two, and I know I was. I was
Speaker 1: writing poetry in high school and college. I started writing songs.
Speaker 1: I played to classical piano lessons. My grandfather ran an
Speaker 1: orchestra for twenty plus years in Vaudeville when he died
Speaker 1: in fifty three. Eddie Cantor had a nationwide TV show,
Speaker 1: and does It Come up Camaradie with musicians, and my
Speaker 1: dad has talked about it for years. And when he died,
Speaker 1: figured Eddie Cantor's got a live TV show across the
Speaker 1: nation half an hour. He's probably on the air for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or twenty two minutes. And he took time
Speaker 1: out to say, my good friend Dick Noonan passed away
Speaker 1: this week, and Condole insisted the family that he would
Speaker 1: do that from New York City. I thought, man, those
Speaker 1: guys must have been close. Both Angles. Robinson used to
Speaker 1: send him Christmas car every year and he also carried
Speaker 1: a gun, you know, a black man with money. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's just fascinating stories growing up. So I'm in high
Speaker 1: school as we started studying the poets, and I become
Speaker 1: I think maybe I'm a poet because I stare at
Speaker 1: sunlight when it's coming into classroom and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So I started writing songs. So in my college years,
Speaker 1: I was writing songs, and then when I graduated, I
Speaker 1: went to New York City to try to make a living,
Speaker 1: you know, making trying to get my songs recorded. You know,
Speaker 1: I was never I didn't. I don't care about fame.
Speaker 1: It's not stinking rich. I'll take that. Give me on
Speaker 1: the minute, I'll be stinking. I could be stinking rich.
Speaker 1: But fame didn't do a lot for Michael Jackson. That's
Speaker 1: not why I do what I do. And anyway, So
Speaker 1: I used to play open mics. I'm writing rock and
Speaker 1: roll songs, and but I couldn't afford a band. I
Speaker 1: was broke, did not want to join a group, no
Speaker 1: curiosity whatsoever for that. I just wanted to sing the
Speaker 1: songs I wrote. So just acoustic guitar open mics, and
Speaker 1: I used to the Bitter End, had one every week
Speaker 1: on Bleaker Street, Folks City, whatever, a few different ones.
Speaker 1: So one night, when I was at the Cafe a
Speaker 1: Go Go, I went on stage. This is why I
Speaker 1: changed my name. Let's to answer your question. I'm on
Speaker 1: stage at the Cafe Go Go, and I played three songs,
Speaker 1: you know, and I would very expressive when I play.
Speaker 1: They were rock and roll songs. And I jumped off
Speaker 1: the stage when I was done or whatever. So I'm
Speaker 1: clouding around and introducing imaginary characters playing behind me. There's
Speaker 1: little bit event Beethoven on bass. Whatever. Anyway, So when
Speaker 1: I was done with my three songs, set. I'm walking
Speaker 1: off the stage. The guy announcing goes, we'll have some
Speaker 1: more gorilla music for you in because it was suddenly two.
Speaker 1: It was like sensitive singer song at a time. You know,
Speaker 1: no offense to James Taylor, but he was like a
Speaker 1: successful guy at the time, and there were all these sensitive,
Speaker 1: oh so sensitive people, and this guy said, we'll have
Speaker 1: some moret guerrilla music. I wanted to take my guitar
Speaker 1: and smash him over the head, and my wife said, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, we can't afford a new one. Don't and
Speaker 1: I didn't. The following week, I'm in line at the
Speaker 1: Bitter End. I put my name on a list, stand
Speaker 1: in line for forty five minutes because back then there
Speaker 1: were long lines. I'm in line and I can in line.
Speaker 1: And the comedian who was taking the names it just
Speaker 1: didn't care anything about music. And I put my name
Speaker 1: down and he didn't get until three or three in
Speaker 1: the morning. He would put his friends on ahead of
Speaker 1: the people on the list. Very disrespectful. Whatever. I take
Speaker 1: it as it comes. Next week, I go there and
Speaker 1: I'm in line waiting in the rain. I said, I go, hey,
Speaker 1: my name is Bob Noonan. He goes, I'm sorry what
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear you? What? I go, It doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: you can make one up. He goes, Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: he goes, it's very important. It gives me the thirty
Speaker 1: second lecture about how important is what your name is?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it makes a big difference. Oh really, says I. Well,
Speaker 1: in that case, my name is Huey Rosenbag and he
Speaker 1: goes Rosenberg. No, no, Rosenberg like the pictures mound. You know,
Speaker 1: I refused. I refused to play that game. To this day,
Speaker 1: I do not. I will not. So the next week
Speaker 1: I I was I was uh. First week I was
Speaker 1: Huey Rosenback. Next week I was osgod pe Quad. I
Speaker 1: gave the guy different every name Modown's umberto snorts. I
Speaker 1: just gave this guy a different name every week. He
Speaker 1: didn't know the difference. He did not care. So my
Speaker 1: wife and I would sit in the back waiting for
Speaker 1: this clown to say this ridiculous name. And I was
Speaker 1: watching Uh, It's great PBS documentary documentary but series search
Speaker 1: for the Nile Terrific Series. And one night I woke
Speaker 1: up Willie Nile. I'm a philosophy major to say something's
Speaker 1: nihilistic made me laugh to say, Willie Nilly is kind
Speaker 1: of selfie facing, which I thought, you know, if they're
Speaker 1: going to praise me, they can use their name I
Speaker 1: made up. If they're going to slam me in the press,
Speaker 1: go ahead, use my made up name. So it's and
Speaker 1: it's I thought it was a good rock and roll
Speaker 1: name and it served me well. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: how I changed my name and why it did it. Okay,
Speaker 1: In your private life, people call your boss, how do
Speaker 1: they call you? Willie? Everybody since seventy two, it's Willie.
Speaker 1: When I'm back with family, cousins, you know, or brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters on one of a it's a very large family,
Speaker 1: and we have one hundred and five. When we all
Speaker 1: go on vacation every year, it's Bob or Bobby. But
Speaker 1: everybody else on the planet's Willie. Okay. So you grew
Speaker 1: up in Buffalo. How many generations was your fabily at Buffalo?
Speaker 1: My father was born in Buffalo in nineteen seventeen. His
Speaker 1: father was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and his mother in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four. Their parents were born in Ireland, and
Speaker 1: so and my mom's parents something similar. Her parents were
Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty nine and eighteen I'm sorry, eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nineteen hundred, and her father's grandfather was born in
Speaker 1: French Indian Territory. I remember seeing, you know, I thought,
Speaker 1: and I looked at a picture of him when he
Speaker 1: was I used to work at Showtime TV Networks as
Speaker 1: a proofreader when I got broke. I was a proof
Speaker 1: reader for not a bunch of years, and I was
Speaker 1: running my little record label out of my little cubicle,
Speaker 1: and I put I would print out these old family
Speaker 1: portraits and put them all over the queue, at least,
Speaker 1: you know, old school stuff. One day, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: my grandfather's picture when he was three, my mother's father,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to wait a minute. He was from
Speaker 1: Attica in New York and his great great his great grandfather,
Speaker 1: now his grandfather was born in French Indian Territory. I
Speaker 1: look at his face, and he was He died at
Speaker 1: sixty from smoking since he was twelve. Check black hair,
Speaker 1: really dark skin. I go, there's Indian blood in this guy.
Speaker 1: You know, you could see the photograph. So anyway, that's
Speaker 1: where they go back, mid mid three generations, something like that,
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds of all came over here. The Irish famine,
Speaker 1: you know, kicked a lot of people out of Ireland.
Speaker 1: Why Buffalo, So? Why Buffalo? So in the mills and
Speaker 1: a low Massachusett started closing, you know, and there was
Speaker 1: no work. So my father, my grandfather, Dick Noonan, and
Speaker 1: his brother John Noonan were musicians. You know. Dad tells
Speaker 1: the story of at one point the local pastor of
Speaker 1: the priest, the priest from the local church, came to
Speaker 1: the house to talk to my mother, my grandmother's father
Speaker 1: this waiting, saying, your daughters shouldn't be going out with
Speaker 1: a musician. That's not a good thing. You know. I
Speaker 1: can't disagree. He was a sweetheart, but they were. John
Speaker 1: noon and the older brother son, I'm gonna go to Buffalo,
Speaker 1: see if there's worked there. So he moved to Buffalo,
Speaker 1: was there a few months, called his brother and said
Speaker 1: there's tons of work here. Because Buffalo was like the
Speaker 1: gateway to the west, you know, to northern Canada and
Speaker 1: the west. If you left New yorkle outs that you
Speaker 1: went Buffalo as a main And I often wonder because
Speaker 1: my brother, my uncle, my great uncle, John Noonan, was
Speaker 1: the orchestra leader for Cha's Buffalo great, great old theater.
Speaker 1: I saw in excess there. That's an amazing place, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the Marx brothers passed through there. I'd
Speaker 1: love to talk to both those guys. Go tell me
Speaker 1: about the Marx brothers, you know whatever. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how that's how they got to Buffalo. So what did
Speaker 1: your one hundred and five year old father do for
Speaker 1: a living. My father, when he got out of the
Speaker 1: army in h forty five, my father was an accountant.
Speaker 1: He was a CPA, took the CPA exam, had a
Speaker 1: couple of kids, and so he was a certified public
Speaker 1: accountant for some years and early fifties fifty three or four,
Speaker 1: he had a beer distributorship, which was awesome for us
Speaker 1: kids because in nineteen sixty one, Elston Howard, the Yankees
Speaker 1: catcher MVP that year, of course, I mean, came to
Speaker 1: our house. We were like, if you're back then the
Speaker 1: only TV was two stations. There was Channel two and
Speaker 1: Channel four. This is before Channel seven. Think where we
Speaker 1: are now and think what my father has seen since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. So Elston Howard during the day weren't making
Speaker 1: much money. So in the wintertime. They had other jobs
Speaker 1: and he was a pr whatever for I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was Lobat's Beer or Valentine Ale or what paps
Speaker 1: blue Ribbon, one of those. And my dad was the
Speaker 1: distributor in Buffalo. We weren't rich, you know, we weren't poor,
Speaker 1: but we were, you know, somewhere in the middle. And
Speaker 1: Elston Howard came to our house. We were on the moon.
Speaker 1: What was I in nineteen sixty one, I was born
Speaker 1: or forty eight, so you know, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was just a kid, thirteen years old or whatever.
Speaker 1: Elston Howard come on, you know, and yeah, it was
Speaker 1: it was priceless and he was really nice. His hands
Speaker 1: were huge and I couldn't believe my eyes. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: he went back. My father went back to be in
Speaker 1: a CPA and we had no money. He lost the business.
Speaker 1: It was it was bad. Business was bad. He lost it,
Speaker 1: and really, you know, he had to say. He took
Speaker 1: a job teaching accounting, so he was fine. He was
Speaker 1: an accountant, taught for a few years, paid back his debts,
Speaker 1: and then he worked till he was seventy eight as
Speaker 1: an accountant. Hard working guy to this day, he wakes up,
Speaker 1: goes to church, comes home, has breakfast, hits the crossword puzzles,
Speaker 1: gets his pencil out, has got his e racers, got
Speaker 1: his pencil sharpener. He has crossor puzzles for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. Then you'll read for an hour or two
Speaker 1: and read books. He loves history. Then you go back
Speaker 1: to doing more crossword puzzles. So the accountant in him
Speaker 1: is still there. When Mom died seventeen years ago at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty seven, he just he says, you
Speaker 1: got to just get up. I said, how do you
Speaker 1: How are you doing it? How are you feeling? You know?
Speaker 1: Like some months later he goes, I'm all right. He says,
Speaker 1: you got to pick yourself up. Life will hit you hard,
Speaker 1: it'll hit all of us. Hit don't getting around at
Speaker 1: And he said, you gotta just pick yourself up and
Speaker 1: get on with it, you know. And he he sure
Speaker 1: did it. So accounting in him I still see at
Speaker 1: the kitchen table when he's doing his crossword puzzles. A
Speaker 1: dear guy. He went to the doctor this week. My
Speaker 1: sister took him for a check up. Doctor looks at
Speaker 1: his hands. He's got a lot of bruises. Doctor says,
Speaker 1: what happened to your hands? I was checked by a chicken. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I've been writing down things he's been saying. I've got
Speaker 1: like thirty pages, and I have hours of him. When
Speaker 1: he starts telling stories when I was a boy, I
Speaker 1: get out my phone and hit voice memo. I got hours.
Speaker 1: I love the guy. We're all lucky having still So
Speaker 1: your parents stayed married all that time? Oh did they ever?
Speaker 1: They would wake up in the morning, you know they
Speaker 1: were They went there very devout Catholics, and they would
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, you know, get cleaned up,
Speaker 1: get dressed, and go to church. Before the church, Good morning, Bob,
Speaker 1: Good morning Joe. And they kiss each other on the
Speaker 1: lips and they go, what planet are you people from?
Speaker 1: They're like eighty five years old. They just loved each other.
Speaker 1: It was so beautiful to see. We're a lucky bunch
Speaker 1: of kids having parents like that. How many kids in
Speaker 1: the family. There were eight children in the family, six boys,
Speaker 1: two girls, and we had nineteen fifty six. We always
Speaker 1: saw that dad was the center of the family until
Speaker 1: mom died and we realized, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's just
Speaker 1: sweet woman, gentle kind. Never had a bad word about anybody.
Speaker 1: I remember in nineteen seventy two, I'm watching TV and
Speaker 1: Richard Nixons on I'm sitting there with Magoon and point,
Speaker 1: this is a bad guy. This is a bad Oh, Bobby,
Speaker 1: there's good and everyone. And I went, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: so sure about this guy. And she she wouldn't hear it.
Speaker 1: She was a sweet woman, and they had the greatest relationship.
Speaker 1: But in fifty six Mom decides they were part of
Speaker 1: this thing called the Christian family movement. We said more
Speaker 1: prayers growing up than I don't know. And she said,
Speaker 1: I think we should get a foreign exchange student to
Speaker 1: my father. Okay, Joe, And so we got eight kids.
Speaker 1: A cousin who was a lost sheet, you know. He
Speaker 1: joined a Trappist monastery and he was suicidal and the
Speaker 1: head of the monastery called my dad. He was like nineteen.
Speaker 1: He called my dad, he goes, this guy's in really
Speaker 1: bad shape. You should come and get him. So that
Speaker 1: one and got him, took him back home, and I
Speaker 1: thought he lived with us for two or three years.
Speaker 1: It turns out it was ten. And mother, with her
Speaker 1: love and her kindness, you know, the guy did great.
Speaker 1: Graduated from Kinesius College, got a master's you know. And anyway,
Speaker 1: so with nine people in the house and two parents,
Speaker 1: my mom thinks it's a great idea to get a
Speaker 1: foreign exchange student. So Elena Segatti from Bueno Cyres, sixteen
Speaker 1: year old comes to our house. Boy did we love her.
Speaker 1: She stayed a year. When she left, we cried for
Speaker 1: two days, every one of us, balling our eyes out
Speaker 1: like a little baby. I'm serious. And the next year
Speaker 1: we had Francis Kuggenheim from Dunkirk, France, and again we
Speaker 1: just all hit it off. Was so a year. And
Speaker 1: the year after that was Ronado zenenga banker's son from Milan, Italy.
Speaker 1: And you know, they came and went. My parents eventually
Speaker 1: start every year we had some foreign exchange student. And
Speaker 1: because we lived in Buffalo near and I Falls, where
Speaker 1: foreign visitors would come all the time, they would go
Speaker 1: to this Christian family we want to go to a
Speaker 1: normal American family came to our house and we knew
Speaker 1: it was not a normal American family. There was no
Speaker 1: house around our neighborhood that was going All this stuff
Speaker 1: was going on. We had a governor from India, we
Speaker 1: had the head of the education thing in Vietnam. Who
Speaker 1: or red robes, who my mother couldn't speak to because
Speaker 1: she was female, or wait on, my father had to
Speaker 1: I didn't dig that anyway. There was so much name
Speaker 1: a country in this world. They came to our house.
Speaker 1: So it was us kids from what was I eight
Speaker 1: years old? Seven eight years old? Had foreign visitors, priests
Speaker 1: was priest was in jail for twenty years in China.
Speaker 1: Taught people our family how to use chopsticks. We had
Speaker 1: a guy from Hungry in fifty seven or eight whenever
Speaker 1: they had the revolution fifty six without a thumb. They
Speaker 1: tortured him, cut his thumb off. Nice guy. We just
Speaker 1: name So growing up with different people, different language, is,
Speaker 1: different dress, different smells, and it was fascinating experience. It
Speaker 1: was not normal. So we had eight kids in the family,
Speaker 1: Long West cousin and everybody from around the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if the eight kids, where are you in the
Speaker 1: hierarchy of what kind of kid were you growing up? Well,
Speaker 1: in the hierarchy, I was fourth, and my brother Richard,
Speaker 1: Tom Nancy, then myself Teresa, Joey friend and John and
Speaker 1: I was fourth. So they were ahead of me, three
Speaker 1: of them and behind me. So I saw him coming
Speaker 1: and going, and I was kind of like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say the wise guy the group, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: with that many kids, you could you could run wild,
Speaker 1: which we did, and I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I love my brothers and sisters very much, and we're
Speaker 1: all really close to this day. And I was inquisitive.
Speaker 1: I would walk into a room like at two or
Speaker 1: three years old. I remember, I remember seeing a two
Speaker 1: years old I'm what, I was just about to go
Speaker 1: to bed. And my grandfather, the piano player, boy he played.
Speaker 1: He would throw at a white sheet over the piano,
Speaker 1: play the sheet. That was a parlor trick, I was told.
Speaker 1: And he would play a song like in the Shade
Speaker 1: of the Old Apple Tree. Well hit the word tree.
Speaker 1: He was the most the wrongest note you could hit
Speaker 1: in the piano in the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.
Speaker 1: And the women he had him laughing and crying. I
Speaker 1: saw that, and I saw and I heard all kinds
Speaker 1: of stories about the early part of the last century.
Speaker 1: So I really my grandparents on my mom's I lived upstairs,
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of neighborliness. And you know,
Speaker 1: my grandma, Grandma said, if everybody pitches in the job,
Speaker 1: will get done quicker. Just really good people, shirt off
Speaker 1: your back kind of people, you know. So we were
Speaker 1: really blessed because not everybody gets so lucky. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: so did you have a lot of friends. Did you
Speaker 1: do well in school? Yeah, I had a fair amount
Speaker 1: of friend I had so many brothers and sisters, but
Speaker 1: I had friends at school. School was easy for me.
Speaker 1: I just would clown around. I didn't have to study,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was very small. I'm small now,
Speaker 1: but I was really small. I have I'm celiac now
Speaker 1: fifty eight years old. All of a sudden, couldn't eat gluten.
Speaker 1: But I ate everything up to then. But I must
Speaker 1: not have digested everything because I just didn't grow much
Speaker 1: in high school. I grow a little bit. One of
Speaker 1: my five four now a towering five four, I might say,
Speaker 1: and I would. I had a great time in school,
Speaker 1: I mean with it was friends. It was boring as hell,
Speaker 1: like great school is. But my older brothers brought home
Speaker 1: rock and roll records. They would have the radio on.
Speaker 1: I saw Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan because they had
Speaker 1: the TV on. So I was exposed. At the very beginning.
Speaker 1: We went to camp. I'll never forget this. Camp Turner
Speaker 1: was one of those summer camps for kids, and I
Speaker 1: went one year, and my brothers would go, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of kids in the wild, animals in
Speaker 1: the country, in the woods, whatever. And on the way home,
Speaker 1: on the bus, they had a radio and Rock around
Speaker 1: the Clock came on and the kids on the bus
Speaker 1: started going crazy. And that beat. I went, oh, I
Speaker 1: like this. It was rock and roll, you know, And
Speaker 1: that was and Elvis, a little Richard, Chuck Barry, give
Speaker 1: me a break, you know, and Buddy Holly Everly brothers.
Speaker 1: So that stuff hit me a red square and I went.
Speaker 1: It changed my life. And I met some years ago.
Speaker 1: I think it was two thousand and nine. I was.
Speaker 1: I went to south By Southwest. I went there about
Speaker 1: four to five times, and this lawyer friend I played
Speaker 1: at like twelve thirty in the morning or towel thirty
Speaker 1: in the afternoon some gigs, Willy came here as somebody
Speaker 1: I want you to meet. And the way he said,
Speaker 1: I thought this sounds interesting. He takes me over near
Speaker 1: the merchship because Willy, this is Marie Elena Holly and
Speaker 1: I almost fell off the floor. I went no, Marie
Speaker 1: Elena Holly, Buddy Holly. The first record I ever bought
Speaker 1: was Peggy Sue. I had two quarters. I went to Cabbage,
Speaker 1: just walked by myself. I've never been in a record store.
Speaker 1: I walked in. Uh, hi, sir, I want to can
Speaker 1: I buy? I want to buy get Peggy sup By.
Speaker 1: Buddy Holley gives me the forty five. I gave him
Speaker 1: my quarter, two quarters, and I had a little plastic
Speaker 1: white record player and I played a thousand times then
Speaker 1: didn't didn't, didn't pay. Suit changed my life. And here
Speaker 1: I am meeting Marie Helena Holley, who lived a fleet
Speaker 1: blocks for me. They lived with a six months before
Speaker 1: Buddy died on Fifth Avenue in ninth Street in the village.
Speaker 1: And I said, I mean, I love her. She's such
Speaker 1: a sweetheart. She's in Dallas now and uh it was
Speaker 1: an honor to meet her. And she said she want
Speaker 1: me to sign a CD. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, No, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, how about I get your autograph? She was
Speaker 1: so nice. I remember I saw her a couple of
Speaker 1: years later in then I played. She signed with us,
Speaker 1: you know, south By Southwest, so I'm there two years
Speaker 1: later and they have a had a Buddy Holly Educational
Speaker 1: Foundation party. I am an official ambassador to the Buddy
Speaker 1: Holly Educational Fund Foundation, which I still can't believe. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like a who's who a rock and role, you know,
Speaker 1: like this Mick and Keith, you know, everybody you know.
Speaker 1: And I got to get what's wrong with this picture?
Speaker 1: Who's this little guy at the end of the line.
Speaker 1: And Marie Lena said, I want willing to be an ambassador,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I got a Buddy Holly guitar
Speaker 1: with one of his frats on the inside for a
Speaker 1: two year loan. Dion's got it now, I think, permanently.
Speaker 1: And they gave me a really nice people. And I
Speaker 1: said to Maria Elena we were having dinner in Nashville once.
Speaker 1: I said, Marie Lena, you live a couple of blocks
Speaker 1: some where I live now I've lived for fifty years.
Speaker 1: What did you do for dinner? Where did you go?
Speaker 1: What did you and Buddy do? And she said, Buddy
Speaker 1: loved New York. Buddy, would they live in the fourth
Speaker 1: floor of this you know, I don't know how many
Speaker 1: fifteenth floor apartment building? Right on Fifth Avenue in Ninth Street.
Speaker 1: I walked back many a time. I give people tours
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood and say, you know, Buddy Holly lived there.
Speaker 1: She said. He used to stand on the balcony all
Speaker 1: the time and just in wonder, watching New York Goodbye.
Speaker 1: She said he would take his acoustic guitar into Washington
Speaker 1: Square Park one block away and play it. He just
Speaker 1: loved to play it. Kids would come up to him,
Speaker 1: not knowing his Buddy Holly, and asked him about chords,
Speaker 1: and he would show him stuff. And so they said,
Speaker 1: when we get older, let's have an educational foundation for
Speaker 1: teenagers kids who want to learn music. And so to
Speaker 1: this day there's a Buddy Hall Educational Foundation, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm an ambassador anyway, asking Marie, oh, I said to
Speaker 1: Marie Lena, I go, Marie Lena, did Buddy like Elvis?
Speaker 1: Because like this, you're talking to the horse's mouth here.
Speaker 1: You know, I love history and I love right and
Speaker 1: you know I can ask her things that nobody else knows.
Speaker 1: Marie did he like Elvis? She goes, oh, he loved Elvis.
Speaker 1: Elvis came to Let's you're talking love at Texas. You know,
Speaker 1: and she said, one day Alvis came to town. They
Speaker 1: went to a movie together. He loved Elvis and they're
Speaker 1: both kids basically. And I said, what about Little Richard?
Speaker 1: Did Buddy like I got a story for you? Did?
Speaker 1: But did Buddy like little Richard? She was, Oh, boy,
Speaker 1: he loved little Richard. One day he brought out. He
Speaker 1: brought little Richard back to the house. This is Lumpock, Texas,
Speaker 1: the Deep South. And he comes to the front door
Speaker 1: with little Richard, this little tall black guy and his
Speaker 1: father comes to the door and he says, this, so
Speaker 1: and so is nut coming in this house. So Buddy
Speaker 1: took himround in the backyard and they did they had
Speaker 1: a cook out or whatever. But he couldn't go in
Speaker 1: the house. So Buddy Holly had this is, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're Buddy died about fifty eight, so I
Speaker 1: figured fifty seven eight he you know, and he married
Speaker 1: a Puerto Rican woman. You know, Buddy Holly. I really
Speaker 1: wonder what Buddy would have done like James Dean, you know,
Speaker 1: people gone too soon. But Buddy Holly, yeah, I forget
Speaker 1: how I got on that story about Buddy Holly. But uh,
Speaker 1: oh okay, But let's go back. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: all the music and buying the record, etc. Were the
Speaker 1: Beatles that they broke a big impact upon you? Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah. So I used to listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: Gary Gary Us Bonds is a friend of mine. I
Speaker 1: used to listen to the radio waiting to hear quarter
Speaker 1: to three. I transistor. I had a green, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of puke green transistor radio under my pillow and I
Speaker 1: go to bed at night and I turn it on.
Speaker 1: I just put it to my ear and listen. I mean,
Speaker 1: and it was magic. You heard these songs. I got
Speaker 1: to sing it with him with Springsteen at Chase Stadium
Speaker 1: years later. I mean, it's so funny. I tell these stories.
Speaker 1: You can't make this stuff up. So much of this
Speaker 1: stuff is like that that really happened. Well yeah, and
Speaker 1: it goes on and on. So I listened to the
Speaker 1: radio all the time. I loved rock and roll. And
Speaker 1: you know I heard at school I saw I think
Speaker 1: it was I'm and Steve Allen. One night there was
Speaker 1: a clip about this sensation in the in England called
Speaker 1: the Beatles. And I saw the clip and I went, wow,
Speaker 1: that looks like fun So, yeah, I saw him out
Speaker 1: as Sullivan and just changed my life, like so many
Speaker 1: people of our generation to see. And the thing about
Speaker 1: it was four guys like a gang, clearly drusted the same,
Speaker 1: the way, the way they interacted each other. They they
Speaker 1: were a little club, a little gang they had. They
Speaker 1: were self sustainable. They were the joy. That's what amazes me.
Speaker 1: You know. You and I could go to fifty fifty
Speaker 1: different venues and see people play music and that could
Speaker 1: be good, bad and ugly, yeah, like always, and then
Speaker 1: if you walk in this other club and there's this
Speaker 1: guy's having the time of their life, just emanating joy,
Speaker 1: emanating like you know, irony, sarcasm, passion. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just to this day watch those clips that are
Speaker 1: like the energy. That was something beautiful. I've been to
Speaker 1: their boy I went to John Lennon's boyhood and Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney's boyhood. Holme my private tours of those places, you know,
Speaker 1: the curator and his wife, this great guy, Colin Hall.
Speaker 1: I saw a National Geographic Hours show about the fixing
Speaker 1: up of Mendips John Lennon's boyhood home and how they
Speaker 1: tried to find a curator and Colin got it and
Speaker 1: I get there this. A friend of mine was taking
Speaker 1: us for a private tour, a few of us in
Speaker 1: my band, and Colin comes to the gate and he's
Speaker 1: holding my first Vinyl LP. I thought, oh, we're in.
Speaker 1: He's a fan, and we had to I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been there, Bob, but to go
Speaker 1: to John's because like that. He took us for a
Speaker 1: walking tour around what's it called Woolton, which is like
Speaker 1: seven houses down the little village where John they showed
Speaker 1: the movie theater John used to go to where they
Speaker 1: show John Wayne movies, the graveyard where they got eleanor
Speaker 1: Rigby's name on it. Wherever that came from, who knows,
Speaker 1: But we just it's like history coming to life. Fascinating
Speaker 1: and I forgot what question by the Beatles I mean
Speaker 1: changed my life and to see them grow and to
Speaker 1: see it was the same time like Dylan hit you know,
Speaker 1: I think the first song on Dylan's I heard was
Speaker 1: I Shall Be Free number ten. I'm just average, common too,
Speaker 1: just like him, the same as you. I'm every buddy's
Speaker 1: brother and son. I ain't different than anyone. And they
Speaker 1: used to talk to me it's just the same as
Speaker 1: talking to you. And the next song was Chimes of
Speaker 1: Freedom and the dichotomy. The contrast was not lost on me.
Speaker 1: I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait a minute, something's going
Speaker 1: on here. And at the same time you had these
Speaker 1: four guys from Liverpool starting a real revolution, the combany
Speaker 1: and everybody and the Stones give me a break. The
Speaker 1: whole British invasion hit me like a wave. And as
Speaker 1: a kid back then, as you know, Motown, Hello, Memphis,
Speaker 1: Stacks come on the wide Range. You had like Walter Brennan.
Speaker 1: You had Jimmy Deane singing about whatever, and you had
Speaker 1: rock and roll, you had Little Richard, you had all
Speaker 1: this great stuff, you know, a surf music. So the Beatles,
Speaker 1: absolutely it was a major force that helped change my life.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of reasons why, but the energy,
Speaker 1: the purity. It was something wild, something innocent, something play
Speaker 1: so much playful. I mean, look at the movie, look
Speaker 1: at Hard Day's Night. What a riot? Is there anybody
Speaker 1: around at all making music now with that kind of vibe? Maybe,
Speaker 1: but it's it's that was pretty special and I loved it.
Speaker 1: And then the Stones come, these the Stones, the rolling
Speaker 1: up these whatever the us to call them, and they
Speaker 1: were so gray. I'm not gonna smile. You know, watch
Speaker 1: them on TV carrying on, Come my Satisfaction. Best song ever,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw television and we'll talk about it
Speaker 1: in a minute. CBGB's I Got Stories and I'm so
Speaker 1: sad about Tom Verlaine's passing. And one night I'm on
Speaker 1: the side of the stage I went every time they played.
Speaker 1: They would open for Patti Smith, and one night, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, at his encore, Tom was Dad, Dad,
Speaker 1: got what they're playing to it? Anyway? I love the Beatles.
Speaker 1: To answer question, yeah, changed my life. Okay, what point
Speaker 1: did you pick up a guitar and become a wannabe
Speaker 1: rock star? Um? I played eight years old. I took
Speaker 1: classical piano, and my older brothers played. We always had
Speaker 1: a piano in the house. We had a you know,
Speaker 1: stereo like a you know, a piece of furniture. Mom
Speaker 1: played classical music, big band music. My brothers play. My
Speaker 1: uncle's one of my uncles, Uncle Ray, was an incredible
Speaker 1: ragtime player. Incredible. I mean, I've seen you know, the
Speaker 1: clips of famous ragtime players, and this guy played the
Speaker 1: lightside of the piano. His father, my grandfather, took him
Speaker 1: to a piano the best piano teacher in Buffalo. And
Speaker 1: the guy said, to Ray, my uncle is. The teacher
Speaker 1: said to Ray, Ray play something. And Ray we started
Speaker 1: playing boogie woogie and Ray think, okay, that's enough, and
Speaker 1: he said to his father, he said, you're wasting your money.
Speaker 1: He already knows too much. He played by side and
Speaker 1: the guy, you know, so he didn't teach him. He
Speaker 1: taught his other brother, Rich, who was a fantastic piano player.
Speaker 1: But that was always music. So when I was eight
Speaker 1: years old and I loved music, I took piano, classical piano,
Speaker 1: but I also wanted to play the drums. I remember
Speaker 1: having a real angsty one fall. I go, I don't
Speaker 1: want to play the piano. I'll play the drums, and
Speaker 1: they said, no, you got you can take both, but
Speaker 1: you can't. You know, you gotta play the piano, which
Speaker 1: was I'm so grateful they did that. And I took
Speaker 1: piano lessons until I was about sixteen. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know when you begin in high school and you're looking
Speaker 1: to party and chase girls and you know, play sports,
Speaker 1: listen to rock and roll, sitting out the piano for
Speaker 1: half an hour practice and nah, so I played the
Speaker 1: piano and I quit. And when I went away to college, um,
Speaker 1: I didn't play any guitar then. I never even thought
Speaker 1: about being a musician. I was writing poetry in high school,
Speaker 1: went to college and my room. I went one year
Speaker 1: in Canton, Ohio, to Walsh College. I clowned around in
Speaker 1: high school, and when I tried to apply to colleges,
Speaker 1: I couldn't get in. I was I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I had like eighty six average or something, and it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is not looking good. And so
Speaker 1: one day the guidance counselor said, well, there's a school
Speaker 1: in Ohio that just built a dorm and they need
Speaker 1: out of state students. You might want to apply there.
Speaker 1: So me and all the other losers from the northeast whatever.
Speaker 1: And so that dormitory was full of wise guys, losers,
Speaker 1: you name it, crazy's And my roommate, one of my roommates,
Speaker 1: Denny Wentz from Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh, had a guitar. And
Speaker 1: it was boring. I mean, you're you're in three miles
Speaker 1: north of Canton. It's flat, there's nothing, there's cows. There's
Speaker 1: a Hoover factory three miles down we're talking nothing. So
Speaker 1: I said, well, can you teach me? And he goes, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: The funny thing but he was a writing and I
Speaker 1: threw things with both hands. But I was a lefty
Speaker 1: guitar player, and I played pool left handed at bow
Speaker 1: and arrow. If I shot a gun, it's left handed.
Speaker 1: And I suspect when I was a kid, and I said,
Speaker 1: put the pen in your right hand and start writing.
Speaker 1: At first grade, I can do things with both hands.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit of both. So I washed myself
Speaker 1: to learn to play the guitar right handed. And so
Speaker 1: I learned to play the guitar, just simple chords. My
Speaker 1: first song I learned was Love and Spoonful. God, I
Speaker 1: love Love and Spoonful. It was darling be home soon,
Speaker 1: d G A easy and even an idiot like me
Speaker 1: could do that. And I met John John Sebastian years
Speaker 1: later and told him, hey, I learned. He goes, my
Speaker 1: wife plays your records at our dinner table. I go,
Speaker 1: what get out of here? You know? Anyway? So I
Speaker 1: learned to play guitar at school. And what that did
Speaker 1: for me because I was still writing poems. I just
Speaker 1: stream of consciousness. I love the beat poets, just whatever
Speaker 1: comes to mind. You know, there's no right and wrong,
Speaker 1: there's no nobody looking over your shoulder. Oh that's not right. No,
Speaker 1: it's like you can write whatever you want. So I did.
Speaker 1: So I started putting songs together, and then all my
Speaker 1: writing went into writing songs and just simple stuff. My
Speaker 1: stuff is quite simple. And I came home from Buffalo
Speaker 1: that Chris that that you know, that bread semester break.
Speaker 1: I sat at the piano, which I hadn't played in
Speaker 1: a while, and I started playing chords on the piano,
Speaker 1: g E minor ce, the just chords, and I started
Speaker 1: playing songs, and I stride like the left hand when
Speaker 1: you like this, the left hand back and forth. My
Speaker 1: uncles did all that, so I taught my I re
Speaker 1: taught myself to play the piano. And I could teach
Speaker 1: a kid now in ten minutes to play Twinkle Twinkle,
Speaker 1: Little Star or jingle bells. Real simple, you know, it's
Speaker 1: easy chords. There's a guy anybody listening and wants to
Speaker 1: learn the piano for real. His name is Scott Houston,
Speaker 1: and he's the PBS piano guy. I was in Sweden
Speaker 1: one time. I landed in Sweden and it was four
Speaker 1: in the morning and I was wide awake. I'm watching
Speaker 1: television and this guy comes on TV, you know, pitching
Speaker 1: his videos and stuff. And I watched him and I go,
Speaker 1: that's what I do. I just play chords so he
Speaker 1: can teach adults. There's no end to when you can learn,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter how old you are. My uncle John broad
Speaker 1: RECUISO sergeant and the police force in Low Massachusetts, after
Speaker 1: watching me play for half an hour one summer, said, oh,
Speaker 1: I give anything to be able to play the piano. Well,
Speaker 1: now had I known that back then? I go, you know, Juny,
Speaker 1: this guy you don't need to read music. It's chords,
Speaker 1: you know, and you can learn your favorite songs. And
Speaker 1: it's easy. I'm telling you. If you google the piano
Speaker 1: guy PBS Scott Houston, look at some of his videos,
Speaker 1: and it's you can learn by the piano in no time.
Speaker 1: And I did that. I thought myself that style. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you're going to school in Ohio. Then what happens
Speaker 1: you end up switching from there to Buffalo. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: went to school in Ohio, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: a time of experimentation. You know, drugs made their way
Speaker 1: into our into our circle, you know, smoking weed took
Speaker 1: LSD a few times, but it was not it was
Speaker 1: just no, it was nothing. You know, I go, I'm
Speaker 1: not feeling nothing, what about you now? Nothing? And it
Speaker 1: was it was just beyond boring. Although I will say
Speaker 1: the silver lining there it was there were two great professors.
Speaker 1: That was a great philosophy professor and a great English teacher.
Speaker 1: You know, you get a great teacher who can open
Speaker 1: up things to you, whether it's history or language. So
Speaker 1: I transferred. I got. You know, the night before final exams,
Speaker 1: we were growing our hair and it was a Catholic college,
Speaker 1: and so the night before final exams we were called
Speaker 1: the Haystack Crew because of our hair, and we were
Speaker 1: getting in trouble a lot. If you got to the
Speaker 1: dorm after midnight, you had to do fifty push ups.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, why don't we babies here? We basically
Speaker 1: were babies anyway, So the night before exams, the Prefective
Speaker 1: Discipline calls us into his office. He goes, you can't
Speaker 1: take exams unless you get a haircut. And I said
Speaker 1: to him, you're kidney right, this is united serious. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm serious, brother, James, brother. We had to get our
Speaker 1: hair cut. I mean really, it wasn't even nearly as
Speaker 1: long as this, and uh so I got, I got,
Speaker 1: you know, Dean's list, you know, and uh I did
Speaker 1: good grades, and so I transferred University Buffalo Night School.
Speaker 1: What a difference. People smoking in class, dressed the way
Speaker 1: you want hair growing. Timothy Leary walking through that, it
Speaker 1: was so fast. The University of Buffalo was a great
Speaker 1: place in nineteen sixty seven, sixty eight, nine, seventy it
Speaker 1: was really seven. I think I went there from sixty
Speaker 1: seven to seventy one, something like that. Ginsburg, Gregory Carso
Speaker 1: came to read. Oh was he good? I met him,
Speaker 1: I met, I've been did a couple of gigs with
Speaker 1: with Alan Ginsburg. Always fascinating. I saw all the great
Speaker 1: poets come through you University of Buffalo. It was inspiring.
Speaker 1: Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin came. Many times. Abby would
Speaker 1: go on stage, do a handstand, walking around on his hands,
Speaker 1: and then talk revolution. It was just like fascinating times.
Speaker 1: Remember seeing Timothy Leary walking through the student center out
Speaker 1: of his mind. He was just looking up at the
Speaker 1: going oh oh yeah, staring at the ceiling. He spoke
Speaker 1: that night, but he didn't say two words. It was
Speaker 1: just a fascinating time of change. And there were marches,
Speaker 1: there was protests. I got gassed one day. They were
Speaker 1: marching on one side of the campus and they tear
Speaker 1: gassed everybody. And these poor people across the campus waiting
Speaker 1: for bus home from work. You know, they weren't doing
Speaker 1: nothing and they're getting gassed, you know. And anyway, I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: crazy world. So I went to University of Buffalo, graduated
Speaker 1: with a philosophy degree. I just took classes that I liked.
Speaker 1: So how did you end up moving to the city,
Speaker 1: and what was the plan I graduated? I went in
Speaker 1: my senior year, I went to see my guidance counselor
Speaker 1: for the first time. I had no plan. Now, when
Speaker 1: kids go to school smartly, so they go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to become an engineer, I'm gonna be a doctor,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a whatever, and you take courses. I
Speaker 1: just took what I liked. Philosophy of art and beauty.
Speaker 1: I took that. It was lousy, you know, Walt Whitman,
Speaker 1: you know, the beat poets. So in my senior year,
Speaker 1: I went to my I got good grades. It was
Speaker 1: easy for me you know. I just came easily four
Speaker 1: point er a couple of times, and classical quik mythology fascinating.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I had all these songs, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, these songs aren't bad. They're not much
Speaker 1: worse than anything i'm hear on the radio. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to New York. So I said to George Boger,
Speaker 1: my philosophy teacher, my guidance counselor how am I doing?
Speaker 1: He goes, You're doing really good. You got a three
Speaker 1: point five average and you're a philosophy major. And I thought, oh, philosophy.
Speaker 1: Well that sounds heavy. What can I do with the
Speaker 1: philosophy degree? He goes, you can go to graduate school.
Speaker 1: I went, no, no, no, no, I'm out. I'm going
Speaker 1: to New York City to make records, thanks George. Which
Speaker 1: I graduated, you know, And I went down to New York,
Speaker 1: got an apartment, got married, moved to New York and
Speaker 1: got a little apartment. When the village just stopped, stopped
Speaker 1: for a second. How many times have you been married?
Speaker 1: I've been married twice. I got married in seventy two,
Speaker 1: moved to New York the day after we got married,
Speaker 1: and lived in New York. I've been there fifty years
Speaker 1: right now, and same apartment. And I got married two
Speaker 1: years ago October in Italy and the Italian Alps. I metam.
Speaker 1: I got divorced the ninety one and while touring, I've
Speaker 1: been to Italy a lot. I've been to Europe a
Speaker 1: lot over the year's touring. And one time, the promoter
Speaker 1: in Italy was almost thirteen years ago. Hired a photographer
Speaker 1: to come shoot me Christina, and we started. We hit
Speaker 1: it off right away, you know, And it was the
Speaker 1: year that the volcano in Iceland was stopping all flights,
Speaker 1: so we did some shows. All of a sudden volcano
Speaker 1: happens and I couldn't get me or my band back
Speaker 1: to the States. So they're on my dime and I'm
Speaker 1: not making big money. I'm not a big rock star.
Speaker 1: I never was this then, it was never my plan anyway.
Speaker 1: So I ended up my UH road manager called Christina.
Speaker 1: We met, we had we just met that night. We
Speaker 1: just really hit it off, and she wonder why I
Speaker 1: went mine. But a few days later my road manager
Speaker 1: calls her up and said, you know, we're trying to
Speaker 1: find places for Willie and his band can wham state
Speaker 1: at your place. She goes, yeah, I'll take Willie. I
Speaker 1: went there and it's spend ever since, you know, or
Speaker 1: just really I got really lucky, you know, and we
Speaker 1: we got married. We were apart for six months in Covid,
Speaker 1: you know, we couldn't get in each other's country, and
Speaker 1: we finally met in Edinburgh, Scotland at a friends because
Speaker 1: we a friend's house, dear friend Jonas, so we could
Speaker 1: see each other. And she said, you know, they just
Speaker 1: changed the laws in Italy for long term relationship can
Speaker 1: get in. And she said, if we were married, we
Speaker 1: could get in each other. Like, let's do it. I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not moving, I'm in love with you. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. So we got married in a small town
Speaker 1: in the Italian Alps, at this little city hall, it's
Speaker 1: like a medieval building, fifty yards from a waterfall. Da
Speaker 1: Vinci drew in the fifteen hundreds. She decided she wants
Speaker 1: to ride a horse. It's a beautiful fall to day
Speaker 1: as fifteen people. This is twenty twenty October, the middle
Speaker 1: of Covid, you know, and like fifteen people, her male person,
Speaker 1: the male woman came. It was just she was our
Speaker 1: one of our witnesses in front of the the a
Speaker 1: notary public. It's just you can't make this up. So
Speaker 1: she so she gets she's had a horse. She rides
Speaker 1: a horse onto the property and I said to her, after,
Speaker 1: why did you want to? Why did you ride a horse?
Speaker 1: When was the last time you rode a horse? He
Speaker 1: goes that was five? I got, well, why did you
Speaker 1: want to? She's a very independent woman and one of
Speaker 1: the great photographers in the world. Jackson Brown fleor to
Speaker 1: uh Scotland to shoot him. You know, he hasn't let
Speaker 1: photogot photographer is on stage. But she's great, all the
Speaker 1: album covers since twenty thirteen American Ride. She shot. Just
Speaker 1: a brilliant photographer. And we've been We've had a great
Speaker 1: thing going. I'm very lucky. Okay, So why did the
Speaker 1: first marriage break up? I think in the long run
Speaker 1: it was the hardship. You know, we were married for
Speaker 1: eighteen years together, twenty three. We were like sixteen and fourteen.
Speaker 1: We were childhood sweethearts, great woman, you know, dear dear woman,
Speaker 1: love he her pieces, you know, and I think that
Speaker 1: I would say over the years, you know, like I
Speaker 1: got mono nucleosis, and I think seventy four whatever something. Now,
Speaker 1: Luke was born in seventy three. We moved on seventy two,
Speaker 1: and I was writing songs at night, working in a
Speaker 1: mail room during the day, and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: working too hard. And I got a really wicked case
Speaker 1: of hYP pneumonia that winter, and I had to go
Speaker 1: back to New York get a job because my son
Speaker 1: was about to be born. Love story short. I got
Speaker 1: a really bad case of mono, like eight months in bed.
Speaker 1: It's probably upstein Bar back then. And it was a
Speaker 1: struggle for years, you know. And I think that the
Speaker 1: struggle and she was she stuck with me all those years.
Speaker 1: I would say to her, No, woman would be staying
Speaker 1: with me all these years? Are you crazy? You know,
Speaker 1: I go, she goes, No. She hung in there so long,
Speaker 1: and I think it just took its toll, you know.
Speaker 1: And and there was medical issues at her end where
Speaker 1: she thought she might be on the way out, you know,
Speaker 1: and that caused like a fight and flight whatever. But
Speaker 1: we had a great run, you know, And it was
Speaker 1: a difficult break up. But I love her dearly, you know,
Speaker 1: and she's a great grandmother, dear friend, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I met Christina and Italy and I basically married Italy.
Speaker 1: How how many kids do you have? I have four children,
Speaker 1: four great children, you know, Luke, Josephine, Mary and Bob.
Speaker 1: They're great. We're all close, you know, given my parents
Speaker 1: close relationship, and they're always encouraging family. It's about family,
Speaker 1: you know, take care of each other. You know. We
Speaker 1: grew up with that, and to this date, the whole
Speaker 1: family goes on vacation on the coast of New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: One hundred and five, we ran a bunch of beach houses,
Speaker 1: you know, and one hundred and five people. We used
Speaker 1: to all go to one house for dinner. But once
Speaker 1: it got over it eighty five people couldn't do one house.
Speaker 1: So the last few years it's been it's glorious. It's
Speaker 1: just a really close family. And yeah, and I have
Speaker 1: four children, have four grandchildren who I'm crazy about. My
Speaker 1: sister and Nancy said to me when Jason was born,
Speaker 1: he's no Lilian. Lilian's fourteen now, she said, that's a secret.
Speaker 1: Witting down the road, you know, grandchildren now, granted, kids
Speaker 1: can be a nightmare, you know. It's the people who
Speaker 1: don't have children. It's some people have a rough time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not always easy, you know, And when it's
Speaker 1: when it's good, it's really good. And I've been blessed,
Speaker 1: four kids, four grandchildren. I'm on the moon. I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: To dude, I've been. I must be still dreaming, Bob.
Speaker 1: It must be that I must have taken some at
Speaker 1: the LSD must have kicked in in nineteen sixties. I'm
Speaker 1: still dreaming. Okay. You talk about the struggle. Did the
Speaker 1: struggle ever stop or you still struggle? You what kept
Speaker 1: you going? Well? I think I don't. I didn't didn't
Speaker 1: know what else to do. But I'm so driven. I
Speaker 1: so love what I do. I get to express myself
Speaker 1: in words and music. At still, the fire still burns
Speaker 1: in me big time when I play the original songs
Speaker 1: back from nineteen eighty. I still plan with the same
Speaker 1: passion and vigor. I think I'm too dumb to know better.
Speaker 1: That's probably the first answer to I don't know what
Speaker 1: what else would I do? You know, I could be
Speaker 1: a delivery man, I could you know, Liverpool point A
Speaker 1: to point B. But I kept writing songs that I
Speaker 1: believed in. I thought this doesn't suck, you know. I
Speaker 1: remember I was in Buffalo. I walked away my music business.
Speaker 1: I made two records on ariston. I got signed. That's
Speaker 1: another story about getting signed by Robert Palmer saw me
Speaker 1: play at Kenny's Castaways on Bleaker Street nineteen seven eight
Speaker 1: July twenty ninth, and he wrote an incredible review. I
Speaker 1: was the opening act, you know. And Don Hill, who
Speaker 1: was a manager at the time, great club owner for years.
Speaker 1: It's gone now and miss him. Robert Palmer, great New
Speaker 1: York Times reviewer, was coming called and some I'm a
Speaker 1: coming to see the headliner. And Don said to him,
Speaker 1: I didn't know about any of this till later. You
Speaker 1: might want to come early to see the opening act.
Speaker 1: He's real good. So Robert came early and wrote this
Speaker 1: incredible review. You know, it's like if if my mom
Speaker 1: sat down to write a review about how Sweller Kid was.
Speaker 1: It just was a really great review, you know, compared
Speaker 1: me to Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, whatever, and it was
Speaker 1: really and that guy means I'll tell you what. I
Speaker 1: learned a major lesson with that because I knew people
Speaker 1: in the village for years, you know, and I was
Speaker 1: opening shows. It was six nights a week, you'd played
Speaker 1: Kenny's Castaways in two sets, and I get written up
Speaker 1: in New York Times, and you know, this guy's declaring me,
Speaker 1: you know something special. And I liked what I did.
Speaker 1: But I never never went to my head, not a minute.
Speaker 1: All that great press that first record got. I knew
Speaker 1: that it was just whatever. Anyway, that night when I
Speaker 1: when a paper came out that day, when I walked
Speaker 1: into Kenny's Castaways, you could barely get in. People hanging
Speaker 1: off the balcony areas areas. You know, people that knew
Speaker 1: me for years looked at me completely different. Something about
Speaker 1: being in writing gives it a certain kind of validation
Speaker 1: that the music on that song might not. And so
Speaker 1: I was on stage and I did my set. I
Speaker 1: didn't know Robert was in the audience at night, and
Speaker 1: I was introduced to him later. And I'm on stage
Speaker 1: doing my thing, planning my song, was introducing the maginary
Speaker 1: on drums tonight We've got William Shakespeare whatever. And I'm
Speaker 1: jumping off the stage, telling stories, carrying on, having a
Speaker 1: good time, having fun with it, you know. And before
Speaker 1: I got off the stage that night, this guy comes up,
Speaker 1: steps up because Hi, I'm Paul Rothschild, I managed the
Speaker 1: doors or whatever. I want to talk. I want to
Speaker 1: work with you. And it was that Clive Davis came
Speaker 1: out different record labels. The coolest thing for me that
Speaker 1: night was that Clive Davis wasn't like the fourth table
Speaker 1: and behind him was Luck sin Terrior and Ivy Roorschok
Speaker 1: at the Cramps who who I knew? The Cramps at
Speaker 1: Clive Dave are like, oh this, you can't make this up.
Speaker 1: It was so cool. And four days later on Clive's
Speaker 1: office doing a show and tell in his office in
Speaker 1: front of forty five whenever the top people on the label,
Speaker 1: and you know that that was terrible. The sound in
Speaker 1: the room was dead. But I did it and I
Speaker 1: got signed that day. Okay, you know Clive, he's got
Speaker 1: his self promotion machine going, but a lot of artists
Speaker 1: complained that he meddles with the music. How was your experience?
Speaker 1: I was very lucky. Um well I was. You know
Speaker 1: when I when I told him what eleven songs I
Speaker 1: wanted to put on the record, you know, he so
Speaker 1: this is great. I played when I played Across the
Speaker 1: River on the piano, a song I wrote about the
Speaker 1: people starving in Ethiopian Chad and seventy eight. He thought
Speaker 1: that was our hit, you know, so I went in.
Speaker 1: I made the record, no interference whatsoever. The next year
Speaker 1: I made and that year I was at the label
Speaker 1: in this early spring, and my A and R guys said,
Speaker 1: product manager said, oh, I hear Pete Townsen loves your record.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, these great reviews were coming in, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's great, you know, I mean I was insulated
Speaker 1: enough as a guy who wrote poetry and libraries and
Speaker 1: college and just wrote his heart out. I was writing
Speaker 1: for that. I was just trying to express myself, not
Speaker 1: trying to prove anything, convince anybody, how swallow. It was
Speaker 1: none of that. I was just expressing myself. And I
Speaker 1: can call up by the chorus, make a song out
Speaker 1: of it, you know, entertain So all the great press,
Speaker 1: I was grateful because I was just hoping after such
Speaker 1: a struggle, and I was you know, I was broke
Speaker 1: for years, and I thought, well, maybe this could help
Speaker 1: change things, you know, And when I heard Pete towns
Speaker 1: and loves your record, I just thought, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't believe it. I thought, yeah, sure he does. And
Speaker 1: then we took the last tour. We did that that
Speaker 1: uh for that. The last show we did was in La,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles at the Roxy in nineteen eighty and uh,
Speaker 1: we just they just did it. Look the records over,
Speaker 1: but we're going to have you go out and play
Speaker 1: in LA just because you know, it's for the it's
Speaker 1: for the cameras. I didn't care. I'll go. Let's go.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go. I've never played in LA and
Speaker 1: went there played the Roxy. Freddie Mercury came to the show.
Speaker 1: Graham Parker came out and unbeknownst to me, Bill Kurbishly
Speaker 1: from the Who in a bunch of the whose management
Speaker 1: were there, came backstage and you know, he came up
Speaker 1: to me and said, how well much you liked the performance?
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, we're on tour and out
Speaker 1: turn across the US, and we'd love to have you
Speaker 1: opened the tour. I mean, I think the Pretty Things
Speaker 1: were already opening. They did eight shows in the West Coast.
Speaker 1: And I thought he was kid and I just laughed,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, And then I thought, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: he means it. You know, I go. I'd love to assure.
Speaker 1: Let me call Clive, you know, And so I got
Speaker 1: word from the label that they weren't going to support it,
Speaker 1: the reason being I was driven around LA in a
Speaker 1: fancy car and fancy streets, explaining, look, when Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 1: played opened up for Chicago at the Garden, they booed.
Speaker 1: They didn't know he was and it left a bead
Speaker 1: taste in his mouth. We didn't want that to happen
Speaker 1: to you. I figured, well, whatever, you're not going to
Speaker 1: support it, I can't. What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: So I went backed up Bill Kurbishly and this is Bill,
Speaker 1: they won't I can't do it, and he says, what
Speaker 1: do you need? Have your tour manager make up a budget,
Speaker 1: and you know that's seven. Got five guys in the band,
Speaker 1: a roady and a road manager. Flights, pay, hotels, cars, meals,
Speaker 1: They paid the WHO paid for everything, you know, and
Speaker 1: I toured. I went across the United States. It was
Speaker 1: time of you know, you couldn't make that up. And
Speaker 1: I'm friends with the WHO to this day, you know.
Speaker 1: So we toured across the US. I made another album
Speaker 1: next year, and we've gotten a legal problems former manager lawyer,
Speaker 1: and I thought when it became more about business than music,
Speaker 1: I just came home one day, I was I was
Speaker 1: going to arbitration in the morning, playing at night. It
Speaker 1: was such a bad taste in my mouth. You know,
Speaker 1: I got in this for I wanted to have to
Speaker 1: be a joyful thing. And obviously I'm not. I'm a
Speaker 1: bit of an idiot. But they're killing my buzz. I
Speaker 1: said to my wife, let's get out of here. They're
Speaker 1: killing my buzz for music. I didn't want that, so
Speaker 1: we moved back to Buffalo. Not the smartest thing to
Speaker 1: do a little a little bit slower. What was the
Speaker 1: legal issue specifically, Well, uh, there was complaints coming from
Speaker 1: the number two guy at Arista call me on the
Speaker 1: phone and said, you know, this record not going to
Speaker 1: come out at the moment because your representation is not
Speaker 1: to par. And so it was problems with the management
Speaker 1: and a lawyer, and uh, you know, I tried to settle.
Speaker 1: I said, look, you know, I don't want to hurt you.
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, you could stay part of the team,
Speaker 1: but let's let's bring in somebody who could help make
Speaker 1: the most of this. You know, I love you. You're
Speaker 1: trying to help me, but you're I'm I'm getting told
Speaker 1: that you're you know that I might not put the
Speaker 1: record out. So long story short. Um, I had to
Speaker 1: fire a couple of people, you know, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: any fun. I didn't get in this business to fire people.
Speaker 1: That's that's hurtful to me, you know. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that anyway. And I back at a family,
Speaker 1: had two I had three kids at the time and
Speaker 1: another one to come in, you know. And and the money,
Speaker 1: whatever money we got, was twinland. And so we walked
Speaker 1: away from the I walked back from a business and
Speaker 1: lived in the you know, Siberia Buffalo snow. But I
Speaker 1: kept writing songs, you know, just that's what I do.
Speaker 1: I write the right songs. I'd expressed myself. Wait wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait a little bit slower. The second record does come out. Sure,
Speaker 1: Golden Down came out right. And then after the second
Speaker 1: record comes out, what is Darris to say? Are they
Speaker 1: willing to make another record or they're saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: don't like this or we don't like that. Well, no,
Speaker 1: they were, they were willing. But um, let me think,
Speaker 1: scratch my memory. Um, it wasn't. It wasn't them that
Speaker 1: I had. Clive was always good to me, I must say,
Speaker 1: you know, two albums. Second album, same thing, by the way,
Speaker 1: to answer your question, never meddled. I played that whatever
Speaker 1: how many songs are on that rec panim for Clive?
Speaker 1: He goes, great, good. You know Mark Knopfler back then,
Speaker 1: God bless him. Jimmy Ivin called me one day, Hey, Willie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in a power station with Mark Knaffler. It must
Speaker 1: to meet you. Come on down. So, you know, up,
Speaker 1: I go to the power the power station in New York.
Speaker 1: Mark's in the back of the studio barefeet doing the
Speaker 1: solo for Tunnel of Love. You know, just a magical moment.
Speaker 1: And Mark we hung out talking. He said, what do
Speaker 1: you what are you doing? I'm looking for a producer,
Speaker 1: He said, I'd love to do that, you know, and
Speaker 1: I go, oh, I'll tough live. You know. But the
Speaker 1: time when I told Clive, he said, well, what's he done?
Speaker 1: You know, he had produced. He didn't have a name
Speaker 1: then as a producer. Who was the nineteen eighty eighty
Speaker 1: I made that album. I was in the studio and
Speaker 1: night John Lennon was killed in the same studio, and
Speaker 1: that's another story. But so you know, Mark had not
Speaker 1: enough credibility, so I ended up Tompizi and I co
Speaker 1: produced it with Jimmy Iveen executive producing it. You know,
Speaker 1: I love the way because the night sounded, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, who didn't like that record? So you put
Speaker 1: the second? Second record comes out? Yeah, told me about
Speaker 1: going back to Buffalo because you have to earn a
Speaker 1: living too. I had some money saved up. I just
Speaker 1: was like impulsive, and I said, they're killing my buzz.
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of here. And oh you know, Um
Speaker 1: I had new management who a really good guy, Fret
Speaker 1: Kuley's going now and UH and Bert Block who started ICM,
Speaker 1: and Uh, I got out of my record company. I went,
Speaker 1: I have a filed bankruptcy, you know, and got out
Speaker 1: of my ars to contract. You know, it's a long story.
Speaker 1: And UH signed with Geffen for ten minutes. I made
Speaker 1: some demos from Buffalo. They didn't like him, drop me.
Speaker 1: You know. So I had some money saved and uh,
Speaker 1: it just I thought I was already I had already.
Speaker 1: It was a on that I forget the timing. I
Speaker 1: walked away somewhere and then I got you know what
Speaker 1: I didn't this is this is turning into a business nightmare.
Speaker 1: What fun is that? That's not. That's not like listening
Speaker 1: to the Beatles on that sold. And that's not like
Speaker 1: hearing Bob Dylan saying like a rolling stone, driving around
Speaker 1: with your buddies, hanging out the window, yelling at people.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't any fun. So I thought, to
Speaker 1: hell with this business. And then two years later, living
Speaker 1: up in Buffalo, I had all these songs, so trying
Speaker 1: I couldn't get arrested. I made phone calls calling people up, Hey,
Speaker 1: I got some songs, couldn't get couldn't get a phone
Speaker 1: called answered. You know, you know it better than I do.
Speaker 1: You've seen them much more of the business, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they dropped it like a hot potato, and
Speaker 1: I don't. I never had. When I first moved to
Speaker 1: New York, I saw so many musicians with chips on
Speaker 1: their shoulder. Another reason I changed my name. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be like that. You know, to this day,
Speaker 1: I don't have any hard feelings none. You know, nothing's
Speaker 1: handed to you on a platter. Oh yeah, you're good,
Speaker 1: we like your hair. Here's a lot of money. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about the rest of your life. It doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way, you know. And so I was realistic enough
Speaker 1: to know, you know that dozen things don't always work out.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of good people who tried
Speaker 1: to help me for real, tried hard, believed in it,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't get arrested, and I stopped touring. I
Speaker 1: think the last show I did was in eighty one,
Speaker 1: and uh then tour again and eighty seven. So anyway,
Speaker 1: during that period, I read out of money, brought a
Speaker 1: bunch of money and worked in a post office briefly.
Speaker 1: I was too inept, couldn't cut it. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a lousy postman. You know. I'd be delivered mail
Speaker 1: at four or thirty, people coming up to me and
Speaker 1: I under rote, where's my mail? Where's my check? And
Speaker 1: I didn't last and I got a publishing deal in
Speaker 1: eighty seven that really helped a few years. And then
Speaker 1: in eighty seven I went to maybe it was eighty
Speaker 1: five I went to I got a phone call one
Speaker 1: day from a promoter in Oslo who said Greg Trooper
Speaker 1: was touring here, and he said he knows you, and
Speaker 1: there was a famous writer there. His name might come
Speaker 1: to me in a minute. He was like the godfather
Speaker 1: of writers in Norway. I hope it comes to me anyway.
Speaker 1: He died in some kind of a car accident coming
Speaker 1: back from on a Sunday visiting of the magazine Whatever.
Speaker 1: Really good guy championed me big time. So I get
Speaker 1: this phone call. They're doing a benefit for his wife
Speaker 1: and kids. Would I come over and play? And I
Speaker 1: hadn't played since you know eighty one The Greg Trooper's
Speaker 1: Band will back You. Larry Campbell, a Bob Dylan's guitarist,
Speaker 1: was in the band. I knew all those guys. God
Speaker 1: bless Gregg. He's gone now. Great guy, a little talented cat.
Speaker 1: So I went to Oslo and did a twenty five
Speaker 1: minute set that was filmed, and I carried on like
Speaker 1: I usually do, had a good time, and I got that.
Speaker 1: I took that film to Rick Chardoff at Columbia Records
Speaker 1: in eighty seven and eighty eight. Eighty seven, I guess
Speaker 1: at the end of the year, and I had just
Speaker 1: written a song called Renegades, and I played it for
Speaker 1: him and he didn't tell me at the time, but
Speaker 1: that's all he needed to hear, and then he saw it.
Speaker 1: He was at arrist in nineteen seventy eight and wanted
Speaker 1: to produce my first record, but he had not he
Speaker 1: didn't have enough credibility. I didn't know what he could do.
Speaker 1: And by then he had had a lot of hits.
Speaker 1: And a good guy, good dear friend, signed me to
Speaker 1: Columbia for peanuts. You have no idea how a little
Speaker 1: bunch of money I got. I got a family of
Speaker 1: four with a wife, you know, and anyway, they took
Speaker 1: a chance on me, which I'm very grateful for. And
Speaker 1: I made a record. I love like places places I've
Speaker 1: never been. You know, Roger mcgwins on that record. Richard
Speaker 1: Thompson's on that record. Tebone Woke co produced it. You know.
Speaker 1: Two guys from McCartney's band, Wicks, the keyboard player Robbie
Speaker 1: McIntosh Stewart Smith. I mean he's with the Eagles, but
Speaker 1: he played. I was so blessed with some of the musicians.
Speaker 1: I've always been lucky that way, and made that record
Speaker 1: and that you know, it turned out to be a
Speaker 1: wrong time, wrong place. You know, the business, Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: right time, sometimes it's a wrong time. Won that record fight.
Speaker 1: It took two years to get it made because Rick
Speaker 1: was appointed head of an R and they didn't want
Speaker 1: it in the studio. We were looking for a producer. Now,
Speaker 1: I waited for two years while I finished a Patty
Speaker 1: Smith Smith's record and our Hooters record Tommy Conwell, And
Speaker 1: when it came time, no, We've done six months searching
Speaker 1: for a producer. By the time it came out, he
Speaker 1: was on the way out of Columbia. So it was
Speaker 1: just my champion there was was not able to help.
Speaker 1: Had it been a year earlier, he could have pushed
Speaker 1: the buttons. I could have opened up for Tom Petty
Speaker 1: and blah blah. But at the time, I was just
Speaker 1: genuinely grateful that I got to make that record. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the music that I care about. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not the smartest cat on the planet. I loved the
Speaker 1: record and I go, well, too bad, bad luck, bad
Speaker 1: timing for me, and so I was back out again,
Speaker 1: you know, out of the you know done. You know,
Speaker 1: Ron Fierstein was managing me at the time. Time, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's right time and right place. But I
Speaker 1: kept writing. I've always been written. I'll do that. If
Speaker 1: I was a plumber new in Alaska, I would still
Speaker 1: write songs. That's what I do. You know, it's meaningful
Speaker 1: to me. You know, what do you do in your life.
Speaker 1: It's meaningful. Some people coming to watch the sun and
Speaker 1: chant home. Some people shoot guns at a gun range
Speaker 1: and imagine them in their teachers. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I like the right songs. And I've been blessed looking back,
Speaker 1: and there's more than a million stars I can tell
Speaker 1: you, you you know. The first day I went to see
Speaker 1: BGBS before television, played before it became the punk me
Speaker 1: Guy played there, and through the hard times in the seventies,
Speaker 1: the hard times, because you earlier it asked about the struggle.
Speaker 1: The hard times in the eighties, very hard, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to kids go to go to school in September,
Speaker 1: needing to new shoes, they need new clothes, they need books,
Speaker 1: you know, and the money's like running out. A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of a lot of years like that.
Speaker 1: But got through it, you know, and persisted. I was
Speaker 1: never very good at making a living, and just stayed
Speaker 1: with it, you know, made the Columbia Record. A year
Speaker 1: later there was an election and I had a song
Speaker 1: called hard Times in America. So I put a little
Speaker 1: ep out because I wanted to get the song out,
Speaker 1: you know, and small label didn't didn't make a ripple,
Speaker 1: and you know, remember Friday Morning Quarterback. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's still around, but on ninety one, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was on the cover of that in the February of
Speaker 1: ninety one. You know, God bless Paul Hine. And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I'm not feeling
Speaker 1: that I'm old or anything, you know, but I must
Speaker 1: say my father said this when I first started out,
Speaker 1: when I moved to New York struggling. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy these Enjoy this hard climb, which says, because if
Speaker 1: you become successful, it'll just taste all the sweeter. Well,
Speaker 1: I never gave up. You know, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: guy making a documentary about me now, and I met
Speaker 1: him to say, no, I didn't know it was guy
Speaker 1: wants to make a movie about you. We've been doing
Speaker 1: it five years now, on and off. So I spent
Speaker 1: forty five years, you know, struggling, trying to have quality,
Speaker 1: the highest quality, trying to make masterpieces, you know, and
Speaker 1: somebody come along make a lousy movie about all that. No,
Speaker 1: thank you. So he flew from Vienna, Austria. I met
Speaker 1: him as a courtesy because he flew over. I got
Speaker 1: a bunch of letters, I'll meet you, but I meant
Speaker 1: I want to say no, you know. We so we
Speaker 1: met at Cafe Reggio on McDougall Street, and how nice
Speaker 1: to meet you. Thanks for coming, thanks for wanting to
Speaker 1: do it. But why do you want to make a
Speaker 1: movie about me? I'm not a rock star. I don't
Speaker 1: have its songs, you know. And he says, because he
Speaker 1: says right away, you never gave up. You're doing your
Speaker 1: best work now and with New York City as a backdrop,
Speaker 1: it's the story of inspiration and okay, because I love
Speaker 1: New York City, madhouse that it is. And we talked
Speaker 1: for two hours and every single thing picked up on.
Speaker 1: We were just you know, talking about our lives, telling
Speaker 1: the stories, you know. Being in Paris, I did an
Speaker 1: interview tour with JD Doherty, my drummer. We just drank
Speaker 1: our way across Europe, you know, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Munich.
Speaker 1: We drove through the Italian We drove through the Alps,
Speaker 1: throwing stop every half an hour to throw snowballs. In
Speaker 1: June and the Alps, it was like talking to God.
Speaker 1: End up in Hamburg, you know where the Beatles played.
Speaker 1: We went to the Reaper Bomb, fascinating, the red the
Speaker 1: Red Light District, the most unsexty place you'll ever see,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was magical. But everything he picked
Speaker 1: up on this director Lucas was like really smart. Like
Speaker 1: if we talked a few things, everything he picked up
Speaker 1: and I go, this guy's pretty smart, you know. And anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, maybe I'm wrong about this. No,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, well let's try it. And so that
Speaker 1: was like five years ago. So Phil, we filmed in Italy,
Speaker 1: in London at the BBC with the great Johnny Walker,
Speaker 1: around London, around I was Buffalo, in the northeast New
Speaker 1: York City, a ton of New York. You know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fun. You should do it sometime. Put has somebody
Speaker 1: put a microphone on you in a camera and follow
Speaker 1: you walking the streets in New York. Within ten minutes,
Speaker 1: something's going to happen. That's peculiar. It's happened time and
Speaker 1: time again, and it's really fun and interesting. You know.
Speaker 1: I like character, whether it's you know, a medieval city
Speaker 1: hall and the Italian Alps, or whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: some grungy club in Lower Manhattan on a Bowerie. You know,
Speaker 1: things with meaning a character. I love that. That inspires me.
Speaker 1: That's why I keep doing it. Anyway, this thing's coming
Speaker 1: along pretty good, this film. You know, we did a
Speaker 1: show so I tore it to who in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: across the US, right, And I've kept good, great relations
Speaker 1: with Bill Kurbish, Lee and Roger Daltrey and Pete Towns
Speaker 1: and they've been really good to me. You know, I
Speaker 1: played a few years ago, five years or so, the
Speaker 1: Music Cares was honoring Pete Townsend and Bill Kurbishly. I
Speaker 1: get a call one day early May and it's my
Speaker 1: book an agent and he says it a few years ago, Hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing May twenty eighth? I remember that date.
Speaker 1: I go, i'mre in New York because we just got
Speaker 1: a call from the Grammys. They want they're honoring Bill
Speaker 1: Kurbishly and Pete Townsend. They want to get five artists
Speaker 1: to sing two Pete Townsend songs, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Daltrey
Speaker 1: joint you at Billy Idol and you I'm thinking, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with this picture? What's wrong with this picture? Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, there's anyway. That's that's how nice these guys
Speaker 1: have been to me, and sure enough whatever the Danocchia
Speaker 1: Theater or whatever it was called, what a blast. You know.
Speaker 1: I got to play with the Who, I mean, give
Speaker 1: me a break again. It can't make it up. And
Speaker 1: I sang substitute and the kids are all right, two
Speaker 1: of the best songs ever. And and then so we're
Speaker 1: sound checking. Here you go, you can't make this. We're
Speaker 1: sound checking. And I did my sound check electric guitar,
Speaker 1: signed my songs, you know, with the Who band. I mean,
Speaker 1: Pete wasn't playing when I played so great. And then
Speaker 1: Bruce sound checked, and then we all went out to
Speaker 1: do the encore run through. I won't get fooled again.
Speaker 1: And I'm at the very end of the stage microphone,
Speaker 1: says Willie Nile. At the bottom of it. I go
Speaker 1: so proud to be here. Won't get fooled again. I
Speaker 1: never played on guitar, but I know I tip my
Speaker 1: hat to the new constitute. I'll send the chorus. So
Speaker 1: Pete comes with this acoustic guitar and he's looking down
Speaker 1: to all the people that goes, we need another electric guitar,
Speaker 1: and he's looking at me. I'm going, we need another
Speaker 1: electric guitar. He's looking right up and go ah, I'll
Speaker 1: get bye. So I turned around. I walked back again.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, what are you doing, you idiot. I'm not
Speaker 1: Richard Thompson. I cannot I don't know where how to
Speaker 1: play it. So get my guitar. I'm thinking, jeez, now
Speaker 1: you did it. And I get back to this front
Speaker 1: of the stage and then moved my microphone right next
Speaker 1: to Pete and uh and Roger and Bruce. I'm going,
Speaker 1: this is this is not work. This is gonna be trouble.
Speaker 1: And so I'm so they started playing the song. I'm going, oh,
Speaker 1: this is fun, but I'm petrified. I knew two of
Speaker 1: the chords I hit him and then the rest. I'm
Speaker 1: just going I was just chinking away. I didn't know
Speaker 1: the chords. You know, if I was Richard Thompson, I
Speaker 1: could have pulled it off. So Pete goes, oh, that
Speaker 1: was pretty bad. Looks around him. He goes, will he
Speaker 1: loosen up? It's like right out of a Bill Murray movie,
Speaker 1: right and and uh. So we did it again, and
Speaker 1: I did the same thing, you know, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: Bruce will be really allowed, you know, he'll cover it.
Speaker 1: He was you couldn't hear him. And he goes, ah,
Speaker 1: well we'll be okay. Pete left, you know, and and
Speaker 1: Bill Bill Kurbers and God blessed him goes, well if
Speaker 1: there's not even if there's no mistakes, it won't be
Speaker 1: a who show, you know. So so we go in
Speaker 1: the dressing room. I'm walking by Bruce. I go, I'm
Speaker 1: taking this to the dressing room. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this song goes. So I get in the dressing room
Speaker 1: sitting down. Bruce comes back with his guitar and the
Speaker 1: lyrics are spread out in front of us by Kevin
Speaker 1: dear guitar tech. And so Bruce and I picture this
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes on a couch like like teenagers, like high
Speaker 1: school kids, learn it. Won't get fooled again. He didn't
Speaker 1: know it either, and I go, I think that's a
Speaker 1: being minor. He goes, I don't know, like yeah, yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: After about ten minutes, he goes, I got it. I go,
Speaker 1: I don't. So I took the lyrics, went in the
Speaker 1: corner for other twenty minutes and learned it, and we
Speaker 1: played it that night and it was so much fun.
Speaker 1: You know, this clip of the clips of it on
Speaker 1: if you Google, Won't can Fool Again? With a Who
Speaker 1: and Bruce and me. It was just glorious. You know,
Speaker 1: when you've got nothing to lose and you go on
Speaker 1: stage and you're not trying to show off, and you're
Speaker 1: there because you love the music. I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: you like it, you know, you you you you persist
Speaker 1: because you love it, you know, and because you care.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's mostly crap, but there's some great stuff. And
Speaker 1: growing up the way we did with all that music,
Speaker 1: that's so much inspiring music, Soul music, Won't R and B, Blues,
Speaker 1: British and Fade Dylan, you know, the whole revolution that happened.
Speaker 1: You know, it's meaningful, you know, and music still means
Speaker 1: something to me, it really does. You can tell. I'm
Speaker 1: I mean it, you know, and I make these I
Speaker 1: made nine albums in the last twelve years on my
Speaker 1: own label, you know, House of a Thousand Guitars, The
Speaker 1: Innocent Ones, American Ride ten years ago. I made an
Speaker 1: American Ride. Last week we did a tenth out of
Speaker 1: anniversary and played a top to bottom. I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: half of those songs and years that was so much fun,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm gonna do Streets in New York
Speaker 1: next month at the City Winery in March. Nine albums
Speaker 1: in the twelve years and two thousand and six, when
Speaker 1: I put out Here's the sixth, Here's the positive side
Speaker 1: of this story. In two thousand and six, I put
Speaker 1: out an album called Streets of New York Again. You know,
Speaker 1: I waited for Andy York, the great guitarist who helped
Speaker 1: co produce the records Rich Pogano and my band and
Speaker 1: made this. I waited for Andy. He's worth waiting for
Speaker 1: his melancamp's lead guitar play, and he was busy. Finally
Speaker 1: had some time. We made this record and I love it.
Speaker 1: It's about the streets in New York. It's a picture
Speaker 1: on the back of my feet, you know, on the
Speaker 1: stones my son took and a great photographer, and it
Speaker 1: came out and it put men, put me back in
Speaker 1: the map. You know. It made the charts in Billboard whatever.
Speaker 1: It didn't make me rich. You know, nothing's made me
Speaker 1: rich that's coming anyway. I thought, then, you know what,
Speaker 1: I can't control the business. I can't control radio. All
Speaker 1: I can control is the songs I write and the
Speaker 1: records I make and the shows I put on live.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to try to make a masterpiece
Speaker 1: every time out. I'm just gonna try to make the
Speaker 1: best records I can make. Why wouldn't I. You know,
Speaker 1: when I make a record, I don't make them in
Speaker 1: the studio. I got the songs written, you know, and
Speaker 1: I have it picked out. I sometimes sequenced before we
Speaker 1: record them, and I won't go in. I won't record
Speaker 1: a song if I don't think it's special. I don't
Speaker 1: want anybody to subject anybody to that. There's enough crap
Speaker 1: out there with I me ed to it. So I've
Speaker 1: made these records and I try to make everyone and
Speaker 1: there's a now that I said I'm gonna build a catalog.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about fame anyway. Money, Yeah, I'm open
Speaker 1: to that. But now I have, you know, fourteen records
Speaker 1: I put out and our thirteen whatever, and I'm proud
Speaker 1: of them, and you know, I feel really good about that.
Speaker 1: So the journey, the struggle which continues. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: still working hard. I'm not rich. I still live five
Speaker 1: flights up. You know, we got it in the documentary.
Speaker 1: There's film footage to me walking up. You know, you
Speaker 1: shoot somebody's feet from the back walking up five flights
Speaker 1: carrying a guitar in a bag at two in the morning,
Speaker 1: with wet socks, damp underwear, wet pants. You know, you're
Speaker 1: still close from the show. And over the years I
Speaker 1: used to hate those stairs. Now I thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, because it's kept me fit, you know, three
Speaker 1: times a day walking up five floods, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's been fascinating. The characters I've seen that I've met,
Speaker 1: but many of gone now, you know, George Girty's many people.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was hard on my family. All They will say
Speaker 1: this if in nineteen eighty when I made that first
Speaker 1: record and there was a double page spread in Billboard,
Speaker 1: page seven and eight Willie Nile's first album, Isn't He Swell? Whatever?
Speaker 1: Whatever it said, you know, New York Times, La Times,
Speaker 1: Terry Review, glowing reviews. I was deeply grateful for I
Speaker 1: really was, for the people who wrote those for Aris
Speaker 1: to try and for me, you know. And from then,
Speaker 1: if I'd become really, really rich and really famous, who
Speaker 1: knows what destruction that could have wrought. Would my four
Speaker 1: kids be as good people as they are now being
Speaker 1: able to have anything they want. I need a new
Speaker 1: car dead, oh you know what I need. You know,
Speaker 1: my kids are really good people, you know, and we
Speaker 1: all love each other, and my grandchildren because there's a
Speaker 1: sense of family. Had fame and riches entered into that equation,
Speaker 1: might it be the same, I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: certainly a hard road and it continues. I'm seventy four
Speaker 1: years old now, you know. And there's a gig at
Speaker 1: this June Willie and Ail's seventy fifth birthday. That's funny.
Speaker 1: I don't feel it, you know, And I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 1: And I got one of the best bands in the world,
Speaker 1: and it's never been better, actually, so I live to
Speaker 1: tell the tale to this point. Okay, if you go back,
Speaker 1: those of us were there when the first Erast album
Speaker 1: came out, which I certainly bought. There was a huge buzz.
Speaker 1: So from the outside it looks like it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: So from the inside all of this, you're, you know,
Speaker 1: your very level, but I have to believe you were
Speaker 1: really distraught or maybe temporarily bitter when you have these
Speaker 1: setbacks before you equalized. Oh my god, Yes, it was
Speaker 1: so hardn't I don't know if bitter is the word.
Speaker 1: Distraught absolutely, you know, just terrified, absolutely, and it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it was a lot of hype.
Speaker 1: It was overhyped, but they were trying. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a work. Sometimes it doesn't. But it was really difficult.
Speaker 1: The strain on my family was really immense. So it
Speaker 1: was a very difficult times. I mean mostly really hard years.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not not trying to put a rosy
Speaker 1: picture on it. You know, it was tough and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to make a living as a musician not the
Speaker 1: easiest thing, you know, and sometimes you can be deserving
Speaker 1: of it and doesn't happen. You know, there's no deserves
Speaker 1: in this world. It is what it is. But I
Speaker 1: was I absolutely brewed blue and distraught and dismayed and heartbroken.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely absolutely. But like my dad says, you got
Speaker 1: to pick yourself up and get on with it, you know.
Speaker 1: You know it's funny. This is a pretty good example.
Speaker 1: Last December a year ago, I was in Buffalo for
Speaker 1: the holidays, stand at the dad's house and it was
Speaker 1: four degrees out and it's the morning Dad's waking up.
Speaker 1: He's going to go to church. My brother's gonna take
Speaker 1: him to church. And I'm waking up to you know,
Speaker 1: wash my face and you know, hit the men's room
Speaker 1: and go back to bed. And I'm coming out of
Speaker 1: the bathroom and Dad's about, you know, in the shirt,
Speaker 1: you're getting ready. I go, it's like four degrees out there.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cold. And he goes outside the door to
Speaker 1: get the newspaper, comes back and he goes, yeah, he says,
Speaker 1: that's cold, and he goes he pauses for a minute.
Speaker 1: He said, bring it on. The guy's one hundred and three,
Speaker 1: one hundred and three years old, and he goes, bring
Speaker 1: it on. I mean that kind of spit that, you
Speaker 1: know what. Yeah, I'm knocked down, but I'm getting back up.
Speaker 1: What's that great band movie where Levan says New York City,
Speaker 1: He'll kick you, kick your ass, you know, and you
Speaker 1: run out of you leave town with the tail between
Speaker 1: your legs, and you get back up again, you go
Speaker 1: head back into the fight. I ain't never given up.
Speaker 1: I'll drop before that. But was I blew? Was I
Speaker 1: just maye? Was I broken hearted? Absolutely? Oh my god? Yeah,
Speaker 1: trying to support a family and there's no you know,
Speaker 1: there's no ways. Everybody's got a tough story to tell.
Speaker 1: Mine's no different than anybody else. Everybody's got it hard.
Speaker 1: That's why that's what music offers us. Okay, Gay, go back.
Speaker 1: You said it earlier that you were a proof feeder
Speaker 1: for showtime. When was that? Yeah, it was a proof
Speaker 1: feeder for showtime. So in nineteen ninety nine, I had
Speaker 1: a ninety seven eighty nine, I had a band in
Speaker 1: New York, Willie All and the Worried Dolls and New
Speaker 1: York Rich Bergano Bread I'll Better great, scrappy little band,
Speaker 1: My god. We made a We went in to cut
Speaker 1: some demos and came out with I thought, this is
Speaker 1: an album called beautiful record the world, you know, and
Speaker 1: it holds up to this day and I love it.
Speaker 1: And at ninety nine, I'm running out of money again
Speaker 1: and I go and yeah, I'm getting broken. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of sucks, but you can always proof read.
Speaker 1: I go, what's that and he goes, well, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: It's probably boring, but like you know, you can survive.
Speaker 1: So I found this place. He gave me this number
Speaker 1: you could call, and this guy gave a three day,
Speaker 1: two hour class what it was about, and he brought
Speaker 1: up a fake resume, and so I take this fake resume,
Speaker 1: you know, and I would go into a you know,
Speaker 1: employee places, and I guess they sent me out for
Speaker 1: a job. I go to a law firm I didn't
Speaker 1: even know. I remember the first I get that showtime.
Speaker 1: I had a job I was doing legal proof reading.
Speaker 1: And it was easy because on the left side you
Speaker 1: had a pile of paper, on the right side had
Speaker 1: a pile of paper. He said, to make sure that
Speaker 1: they were they were the changes were correctly made. So
Speaker 1: so I did that and a financial proof reading midnight
Speaker 1: to eight. Oh my god, I'm drinking coffee all night.
Speaker 1: I get home at eight in the morning. I laid
Speaker 1: down to go to sleep, and my eyes are wide open.
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep anyway. I got to offer part time
Speaker 1: job at showtime. A dear friend said, they're looking for
Speaker 1: a part time proof reader. This is like June or
Speaker 1: July of two thousand, I think it was something like that.
Speaker 1: And I went up and I applied. Yeah, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: it was easy. The boss there at Paul was so great.
Speaker 1: I get this part time job and I'm there in
Speaker 1: the summer and it was easy worked. It wasn't much work.
Speaker 1: And one day I hear my boss playing beautiful reck
Speaker 1: of the World in his office and he calls me in. Willie,
Speaker 1: get in here, Yeah, he goes, He holds on my record.
Speaker 1: He goes, this is really good. I got thanks. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is really good. He says, I know music. I
Speaker 1: used to play saxon a band. This is really good.
Speaker 1: And I was, well, thank you, and he says, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm looking for, a full time proof read
Speaker 1: you want the job. Just like that, I went, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I got a day job at Showtime in the
Speaker 1: creative department. Great, great people. The CEO of Showtime, Matt Blank,
Speaker 1: huge fan, the president less mmm wait less, Oh, come on,
Speaker 1: might come to me Les Moonves, who's not not Moonves?
Speaker 1: It was I'll come to me, great guy, he was
Speaker 1: a president. They'd stopped me in the hall. How are
Speaker 1: you doing you making another record? Meanwhile, I'm in my
Speaker 1: little cubicle running my little label, river House Records, and
Speaker 1: doing the work or here comes the work, no problem,
Speaker 1: ba ba blah booh, okay, okay, next what about you know?
Speaker 1: And uh we filmed it for the for the documentary,
Speaker 1: we got footage of me in that cubicle. And one
Speaker 1: day I leave the cubicle. You know, I got a
Speaker 1: call from Terry who was somebody called me a Springsteen people.
Speaker 1: Bruce wants you to come to Giant Stadium when they
Speaker 1: were closing the last five shows at Giant Stadium. Bruce
Speaker 1: has been really good to me. I mean, he's invited
Speaker 1: me on stage many times. He's joined my band on
Speaker 1: stage many times. You know, he's just he's been really
Speaker 1: good to me. And so I'm it's I'm a cubicle
Speaker 1: doing this, you know, this job. And it was I was,
Speaker 1: it's steadied my boat after all those years of wolf
Speaker 1: at the door, you know, fear and worry and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that was clowning around in there, of course. But
Speaker 1: so next thing, and so I got out of work,
Speaker 1: I get a boss. I go to Giant Stadium. I'm
Speaker 1: in Bruce's dressing room and he goes, We're gonna play
Speaker 1: American Land. It goes like this, it plays me and
Speaker 1: I got it. So I'm on seventy thousand people going
Speaker 1: nuts at Giant Stadium. It's loud, and I'm laughing at
Speaker 1: because I know the Eastreet band, I'll play with him
Speaker 1: before they got it covered. So I figured this is easy.
Speaker 1: So I go up and I'll play with Bruce. And
Speaker 1: because I'd played with him at schae Stadium in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, and this was the last five shows
Speaker 1: at Giant Stadium. And uh, I go from my cubicle,
Speaker 1: you know, and near Time Square too, you know, in
Speaker 1: front of seventy thousand people going nuts. And I finished
Speaker 1: the song, left the stage and next time you here,
Speaker 1: they're going, well, he wants it back. He's going get well,
Speaker 1: I'll back up here. I go back up. We do
Speaker 1: two more songs and do you know how at the
Speaker 1: end this shows Bruce so the band will all go
Speaker 1: to the front of the stage. Well it was that
Speaker 1: moment when they all went to the front of the stage,
Speaker 1: you know, the very front. So I go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going too, So I followed him at the front of
Speaker 1: the stage. I remember looking down. This woman's looking up, going,
Speaker 1: who the hell is that guy? I just looked at
Speaker 1: I went I looked like, I don't know, I'm just here,
Speaker 1: you know. And God bless him. Generosity is that spirit
Speaker 1: of He's got that spirit of loving the play, you know,
Speaker 1: loving the music. That makes a difference. Anyway, I forget
Speaker 1: where I started off on that tale. But how many years?
Speaker 1: How long did you work for Showtime? Twelve years? I
Speaker 1: worked at twelve years, and they were so good to me.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. I never minded going, you know, And
Speaker 1: because it was not hard work, I wasn't thinking ditches,
Speaker 1: you know. And I had I had. I had healthcare.
Speaker 1: My brother, my youngest brother, John, had a heart attack
Speaker 1: at fifty years old because he had no healthcare. For
Speaker 1: four years, he managed a club restaurant of our restaurant
Speaker 1: that went that he had that went under, and for
Speaker 1: four years he was doing the apartment fix ups. So
Speaker 1: I didn't go to a doctor. I asked a woman
Speaker 1: to do the autopsy. I found his body an apartment
Speaker 1: right next to mine. Then I have two days. I
Speaker 1: found his body and it was just dreadful, and I
Speaker 1: asked a woman to do the autopsy. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: if he went to a doctor, she goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd still be here, you know. But he couldn't afford it.
Speaker 1: So Showtime I got. I had a regular salary, I
Speaker 1: could pay my bills, I had healthcare, and I could
Speaker 1: run my record label, make records, and Showtime was nice
Speaker 1: enough to let me get unpaid leave to go to
Speaker 1: Europe to tour two weeks here, two weeks there, until
Speaker 1: one time they said to me, a boss, Paul, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't do that anymore. This people are saying, well,
Speaker 1: why can't If will he can do it, why can't
Speaker 1: I get unpaid leave? And I understand that, and so
Speaker 1: I really had to make a decision. It was a
Speaker 1: real fork in the road for me. Do I quit?
Speaker 1: You know, I was doing gigs? Do I really take
Speaker 1: that jump off the deep end? Well? The deep end
Speaker 1: must be my home. Because I took the leap. I figured,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm leaving this job and I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to get gigs on my own and no book an agent,
Speaker 1: no manager, and buddy my always managing me. No, I
Speaker 1: think it stopped at that point. Anyway, I worked a
Speaker 1: show down twelve years and met Christina around that time,
Speaker 1: and then I've been making records and touring as much
Speaker 1: as I can since then. You know, Oh, okay, so
Speaker 1: let's start with that. How many gigs a year do
Speaker 1: you do? What are the economics? You have a band?
Speaker 1: How does this all work over there. It varies. Before COVID,
Speaker 1: I was doing maybe fifty sixty shows a year or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, i didn't have a book
Speaker 1: an agent for a while, but I've had one for
Speaker 1: some years now. So sometimes i play solo, sometimes duo,
Speaker 1: sometimes full band, depends on my I'm getting paid, you know,
Speaker 1: and I've been blessed with a great great players who
Speaker 1: if you see the band play every single song, they
Speaker 1: give everything they got every night. Nobody phones it in like, yeah,
Speaker 1: pay me, none of that. They are passionate about it
Speaker 1: as as I'm i and economically I'm going to the
Speaker 1: UK for some shows in April. Four shows Edinburgh, Leicester,
Speaker 1: Chichester and London. We're playing one hundred Club. I'll played
Speaker 1: there before, The Who played there in the sixties, The
Speaker 1: Sex Pistols played there, a great venue. The great Johnny
Speaker 1: Walker is going to come to the show that night,
Speaker 1: you know, the great legendary DJ from the UK. And
Speaker 1: I was going to get a couple of guys from
Speaker 1: the two there's a guitar player, drummer. I'm taking my
Speaker 1: bass player. That was original plan. There's two guys would
Speaker 1: join us in Edinburgh and Joe Strummer's old drummer in
Speaker 1: the mescal Aros Smiley, Bernard Barnard and James Stevenson from
Speaker 1: The Alarm the Cult. We're going to join me in
Speaker 1: two of the gigs, and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: couldn't do one of the gigs because they had to
Speaker 1: rehearsal all day with the Alarm. And I wasn't bringing
Speaker 1: my band because it didn't pay for itself. You know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to bring them flights, pay band, pay hotels,
Speaker 1: van rental backline. So taking going to Europe having instruments
Speaker 1: or not instruments, but amplifiers, drums, and transportation. That adds up.
Speaker 1: If you were in a group, you could split it three,
Speaker 1: four ways, five ways. But when you're a solo artist,
Speaker 1: you pay. You have to pay people. So I've done
Speaker 1: play tour with a Spanish band in Spain, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spands great players there in Italy. I got I'm
Speaker 1: doing dates in Italy the February duo show with a
Speaker 1: great blues guitarist. So it depends where I go, how
Speaker 1: much money is being paid, if I could take the
Speaker 1: full band or not. A great friend and fan has
Speaker 1: come up with some money to allow me now to
Speaker 1: bring my New York City band to the UK. So
Speaker 1: uh for three shows. Three of those four shows, I'll
Speaker 1: so in London. I'll have my guys, my New York
Speaker 1: City bad Boys. It's gonna be fun. So it varies, Bob,
Speaker 1: from from how much you're making but you can't afford.
Speaker 1: And I've been, I mean I've I've been. I've played
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, uh arenas, I've played dentist's office. I've
Speaker 1: played no Kid in south By, Southwest. It was a
Speaker 1: dentist's office. You know, this guy did gigs for He
Speaker 1: would do work for musicians who couldn't afford it. So
Speaker 1: they were doing a concert in his dentist office. We've
Speaker 1: done everything. We've played, closets, played, uh you know, arenas, whatever, it's,
Speaker 1: it's all of the above. And I find that pretty
Speaker 1: looking back fascinating. You know, it hasn't. It hasn't. There's
Speaker 1: no chip on my shoulder and hasn't knocked me down yet. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you stop today, do you have any money?
Speaker 1: Not enough to live on? Nope, Nope, not no nest egg.
Speaker 1: It was doing all right before COVID hit. You know
Speaker 1: when Covid hit. There was a lot of gigs and
Speaker 1: I was doing all right, you know, starting to save money,
Speaker 1: you know, and but COVID came in. The gigs went
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twenty. After I had a gig
Speaker 1: with the band February twenty ninth, and then we had
Speaker 1: one gig the rest of the year. One gig. I
Speaker 1: did a series of online once a month online shows,
Speaker 1: you know, through veeps dot com, and they're fascinating. One
Speaker 1: of them we went, I went with my bass player
Speaker 1: on the streets of New York and we went to
Speaker 1: the Bowery Mission through a song we went to outside
Speaker 1: the the Dakota where John Lennon was murdered, you know,
Speaker 1: and just did songs around New York, told stories about
Speaker 1: the city. I had my band in Bowery Electric Great Club,
Speaker 1: in the Manhattan Punk Club, Jesse Mallen's Club. So I
Speaker 1: got through that year by doing online shows. Well after
Speaker 1: that year that people don't care about seeing online shows anymore,
Speaker 1: and there's gigs enough to survive. But it's the last year.
Speaker 1: It's been thinner, you know, it's been thin. So COVID
Speaker 1: has been thin, and this year we'll probably finished the
Speaker 1: movie this year. I've got gigs lined up, you know,
Speaker 1: different parts of North America and Italy, UK, you know, England, Scotland.
Speaker 1: So I'm working away. I'm a working musician, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful to be. You know, I never thought
Speaker 1: I would. I mean, the Kidney, I never dreamed. I
Speaker 1: never dreamed, you know, this kid in college writing poems
Speaker 1: in a library, that I would be, you know, standing
Speaker 1: on a giant statium with Bruce Briegstein, that I would be,
Speaker 1: you know, playing with Lucin to Williams, you know, Richard
Speaker 1: Thompson singing. The last time I opened for Richard. He's
Speaker 1: a dear guy. And I said, he said, what do
Speaker 1: you want to do for a cover? Let's do the
Speaker 1: last time by the Stones listen to what do you
Speaker 1: want to do for a cover? I go, let's do.
Speaker 1: I want to be sedated? So lousten to this, this
Speaker 1: great show, and I got to do it. I want
Speaker 1: to be sedated. That's fun. And so it has up
Speaker 1: been hard? Hell yeah, oh my god. Would I advise
Speaker 1: anybody else to do it? No? But having been through
Speaker 1: it and survived it so far, you know, and I
Speaker 1: must say it tastes sweet. I got to places I
Speaker 1: never thought I would get ever never. I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: I mean the who I played with, the who I
Speaker 1: played with, Springsteen, Ringo start two. I put an EP out.
Speaker 1: I get a phone call. I met Ringo on Friday night.
Speaker 1: Somebody I was just a friend of sometimes took me there.
Speaker 1: I shook his hand at Radio City. I get a
Speaker 1: call the next day the person opening up and Monday
Speaker 1: night at Jones Beach is sick. Can you and your
Speaker 1: band play the show? And we did and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm backstage. Check it out. You asked me about the Beatles.
Speaker 1: I'm a beatle freak. Love the Beatles, love the Stones.
Speaker 1: So Ringo star. So we get Monday, a June hot night,
Speaker 1: Jones Beach, outside of New York City on Long Island.
Speaker 1: We get there and me and the guys are standing
Speaker 1: back behind the stage, and incomes this bus was Ringo,
Speaker 1: Dave Edmunds, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmidt, Zack's Darky Um,
Speaker 1: Dave Edmonds, Uh, Todd what's his name? Todd Rundgren. I
Speaker 1: mean it was a pretty pretty rocking band. And Um
Speaker 1: Ringo walcome back stage, sees me, comes right over to
Speaker 1: us and I mean old school too. Here's two great stories.
Speaker 1: Ringo comes over to me, Are you willie? Then I'll
Speaker 1: go yeah. He goes, thank you for doing it. We're
Speaker 1: happy to have you. You know. He looks, right, are
Speaker 1: these the lads? Then? You know we were all just dying,
Speaker 1: you know? So he goes, so we're sound checking. He
Speaker 1: walks on stage standing like right, you know, ten feet
Speaker 1: looking like what's what's He cared about what the audience
Speaker 1: was gonna hear. And so my bass player wasn't there,
Speaker 1: so I had my roadie who didn't play bass. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he probably goes, we'll see we did great. We rocked
Speaker 1: at night, and they said they want us to do
Speaker 1: another half a dozen show. So these are like out
Speaker 1: indoor outdoors, six twenty thousand and sixteen thousand capacity places
Speaker 1: and it's it's Ringo for crying out loud. And so
Speaker 1: the last night of the tour, and this just goes
Speaker 1: to show you this is old school. I went out there,
Speaker 1: did my half an hour set, you know, twenty two
Speaker 1: thousand people what twenty thousand, and ring goes up planning.
Speaker 1: I saw him before I went downstairs. Two of my
Speaker 1: kids were there, and I said, Ring you know. I
Speaker 1: got a couple of photographs with Ringo and he's on stage.
Speaker 1: He finishes a set with photograph. But all I've got
Speaker 1: is a photograph, and I really, you know, I'm tears
Speaker 1: of my eyes. He comes off before the encores and
Speaker 1: he sees me, and I'm about thirty feet away. I'm
Speaker 1: not near him. Does a bee line, walks right over
Speaker 1: to me. He shakes my hand, he goes he's thank you, Willie,
Speaker 1: big hug. He says, I want to thank you did
Speaker 1: a great job. I want to thank you. He hugged.
Speaker 1: I get a big hug, and he's all wet and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking beetles sweat. I'm covered in beetles web sweat.
Speaker 1: I'm not washing it for another of a month. And
Speaker 1: he says, do you want to you want to come
Speaker 1: and sing? I get by with the help of my friends.
Speaker 1: This all happened, Bob. I'm telling you this happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: I must be still dreaming. So wake me up. When no,
Speaker 1: don't wake me. So I go. Let me get my coat.
Speaker 1: So I run backstage get some ridiculous polka dot jacket
Speaker 1: that I was wearing. I walk on stage and Rick
Speaker 1: Danko's on stage, who's Rick was a friend? And Ricos Willie,
Speaker 1: how are you nice? You know? And I'm on mike
Speaker 1: with Nils Lofgren again like I had been with Bruce,
Speaker 1: and Ringo goes and you all know who this is
Speaker 1: and he gives me one of these hand gestures alluding
Speaker 1: to me, and we sang. I get by with little
Speaker 1: help from my friends, which was really bitter sweet for
Speaker 1: me because this was nineteen ninety two and in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty I was making my second album for arist at
Speaker 1: the Record Plant. Started the album on December fifth. John
Speaker 1: Lennon and Yoko were. I was in Studio B and
Speaker 1: they were in the mix room upstairs doing Walking up
Speaker 1: Walking on thin Ice and on a Sunday night. We
Speaker 1: started on a Friday and Tom Ponenzio, my co producer,
Speaker 1: new John, and he said, when do you want to
Speaker 1: meet John? I said, well, let's you know, Monday was
Speaker 1: being spent fast, so I said, let's let's do a
Speaker 1: couple of days and maybe you have some tracks and
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe playing something, or let's let's get some
Speaker 1: work done first Tuesday night. I'll meet him Tuesday. So
Speaker 1: we record Friday night Saturday, Sunday night. It's midnight. Phone
Speaker 1: rings and it's John Lennon's engineer, and he said, John's
Speaker 1: out of strings. Does any you have any guitar strings?
Speaker 1: He's tell him my tomponenzio and we go, yeah, we
Speaker 1: got strings. So I got some strings, my lead guitar
Speaker 1: games and strings. And I was going to put a
Speaker 1: note to John thanks for the music. I love you.
Speaker 1: That's too corny. Just send him up. I'll tell him
Speaker 1: when I see him. And this is Sunday night. When
Speaker 1: I see him Tuesday. So we come in the studio
Speaker 1: Monday to work, which is December eighth, nineteen eighty, and
Speaker 1: we started a fourth third and we were recording a
Speaker 1: song called I Can't Get You Off of My Mind.
Speaker 1: And I'm playing the piano that John played often in
Speaker 1: the record plant. And seven thirty John came in with Joko.
Speaker 1: I didn't see him. We didn't know anyway. Ten twenty
Speaker 1: the phone, right PM, the phone rings. Tom Panunzo answers
Speaker 1: the phone. Tom's a great guy. I love him to death,
Speaker 1: and he goes, all right, I'll be right out, hangs
Speaker 1: up and he says I'll be right back. We were
Speaker 1: all listening to a playback because we did a couple
Speaker 1: of takes. We were listening back making tweaks talking about
Speaker 1: the arrangement. Tom leaves he didn't say that he was
Speaker 1: going out to meet John by the elevator to get
Speaker 1: an autograph for whoever, the guy that gave him the strings,
Speaker 1: Tom Panuz, who had a buddy in Jersey, Ken was
Speaker 1: his first name, who had bugging him all week to
Speaker 1: get an autograph from John. And so Tom figured, well,
Speaker 1: Tom knew John, he'd worked with them before, you know,
Speaker 1: they were friends, and so he called and says, Hey,
Speaker 1: the guy who gave you the strings, whose name is Ken,
Speaker 1: last night, would to get an autograph of John? Could
Speaker 1: John give an autograph? So the phone call was the engineer,
Speaker 1: Saint John's coming down in five minutes. He'll give you
Speaker 1: the autograph. Then, so Tom goes out to meet him.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell us because we would have all wanted
Speaker 1: to go out to the elevator. He goes out to
Speaker 1: the elevator, sees John a big hug. John signs an
Speaker 1: autograph and says, to Ken, who strung me along? Love piece,
Speaker 1: piece and love John. John Lennon drew a picture of
Speaker 1: his face and Tom. He walked out into it to
Speaker 1: his car, and five minutes later he was murdered. The
Speaker 1: last autograph, the last thing he played was on guitar
Speaker 1: strung strings that we sent up, and all last autograph
Speaker 1: was to the guy who's sent up the strings. And
Speaker 1: we get a phone call and Tom comes walking back
Speaker 1: in the studio fifteen minutes after he walked out, and
Speaker 1: he's goes, somebody just shot John. And the band and
Speaker 1: I were listening to a playback and I said, John,
Speaker 1: John who, Because you know, I didn't know what that
Speaker 1: meant is John Lennon? I go, what what do he
Speaker 1: means somebody? And I thought, well, maybe he got shot
Speaker 1: in the and you know, and sure enough the phone
Speaker 1: rings front desk and David Geffen and he said, John
Speaker 1: Lennon's all right. I just got a call from Yoko's
Speaker 1: best friend who said John's on his way to the hospital.
Speaker 1: And now no he left ten minutes ago or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. In the phone running off the hook, we
Speaker 1: couldn't record. You know, I heard my dear drummer J
Speaker 1: D Dorry. I heard crying in a corner behind the doors,
Speaker 1: crying his eyes out. You know, I'll cry, I I
Speaker 1: gotta stop first, I cry thinking about it. So we
Speaker 1: went we went out to the bar and went to
Speaker 1: a bar and we drank the night away. And the
Speaker 1: next day we'll get to the studio and the record
Speaker 1: Plan had hired uh a bodyguard for John when he
Speaker 1: was there. His name was Bobby, six feet six, three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, big guy, very nice guy. I would I'm
Speaker 1: a little guy, and I would like challenge him to
Speaker 1: a fight, you know, just clown around. We were friends
Speaker 1: even just after a few days, and he was broke
Speaker 1: and hearted. He said what happened was that they had
Speaker 1: just mixed Walking on Thin Ice. He said, John was
Speaker 1: in the greatest mood. I mean, I choked up. You've
Speaker 1: been thinking about this, but he said, John was in
Speaker 1: the greatest mood. You said, they just mixed a song
Speaker 1: him that he thought was going to be a hit
Speaker 1: for Yoko Walking on Thin Ice. And if you listen
Speaker 1: to the guitar plan on that it's the most searing,
Speaker 1: gut ripping guitar and Double Fantasy was number one. The
Speaker 1: press were finally given us and John was getting some
Speaker 1: respect from the press. He was in great spirits, so
Speaker 1: he says to Bobby, Bobby told us the next day, Hey, Bobby,
Speaker 1: let's he put his arm around him. No, he said, Bobby,
Speaker 1: let's go to dinner and celebrate, you know. And Bobby said,
Speaker 1: I'm sick to my stomach. So John put his arm
Speaker 1: around him and says, oh, you go home. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: you go home. We'll go celebrate another night. So instead
Speaker 1: of an agat came downstairs, John got in the car,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, signed the autograph Componenzio down stairs on
Speaker 1: the main floor, walked out in the car, went home,
Speaker 1: got shot, and had he not been sick, they had
Speaker 1: gone to dinner, the car would have taken them to
Speaker 1: the Dakota where Bobby would have gotten out of the
Speaker 1: car with John. Who knows it's it's moot now, but
Speaker 1: that happened. So it's yeah, it makes me choke up.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, if John Lennon was alive, could you imagine? No?
Speaker 1: I can't. But just stopping for one second, you're are
Speaker 1: you died? Intelligent, very verbal person. How come you don't
Speaker 1: do a one man show where you tell all these
Speaker 1: stories starting off Broadway? Well, you know what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: There's this documentary and I've seen a bit of it.
Speaker 1: It could be good. I mean, it could be good.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of well long people in it. But
Speaker 1: that's not enough. You know, you know what my dad
Speaker 1: steals and shot my father. Isn't it us talking telling?
Speaker 1: He's telling stories. We're going to finish it this year,
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping that that can make enough noise. You
Speaker 1: know where you can raise you know, uh, raise the
Speaker 1: level of the kind of places I can play, raise interest,
Speaker 1: you know, let me sell a catalog or whatever. And
Speaker 1: but that's an idea. I didn't think about that. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I could do that night after night.
Speaker 1: I don't think the same I do. I do solo
Speaker 1: shows more often now. You know, it's like Springsteen. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly the same every night. You don't have to
Speaker 1: tell the exactly the same stories. But you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're there. You talk about Buffalo, and you strum a
Speaker 1: few of the songs that you that you heard growing up.
Speaker 1: You do a little satisfaction, do a little last time
Speaker 1: you tell your stories. I could listen to you talk
Speaker 1: all night. Oh well, you know, seriously, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are boring or do self congratulatory. I mean, you've survived,
Speaker 1: I've really struggled myself. I know what this struggle is.
Speaker 1: My ex wife left while I was struggling too. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that was a big part. There's no fucking money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, most people give up. Everybody told you to
Speaker 1: give up. That's the weirdest thing. I'm too done to
Speaker 1: know better to give up, right, you know, it's basically
Speaker 1: an inner strength. So you know, you have all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe just rejuggle it into a different form,
Speaker 1: and I think it would be a success. Listen, you
Speaker 1: started in one of those hotels like Robuster Point extra plays,
Speaker 1: you get a review, you do it. Maybe you do
Speaker 1: it once a week for you know, six months. I
Speaker 1: think the word of mouth and the reviews would be
Speaker 1: it would start to take off. I really do That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I like that idea. That's actually I'm going to think
Speaker 1: about that because I like to play up at a
Speaker 1: piano that main instrument. I could play the piano for
Speaker 1: two hours. I played the guitar. The stories to tell
Speaker 1: I've done thing and seeing things, you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: walking to CBGB's on a summer night, seeing a guy
Speaker 1: on Mulberry and bleaker, homeless guy with his head actually
Speaker 1: on a concrete cinder block as a pillow, and that
Speaker 1: inspired the song Old Men Sleeping on the Bowery on
Speaker 1: my first record, I've seen that. I've seen you Chase Stadium.
Speaker 1: I sung with Little Stephen on Mike singing Twist and
Speaker 1: Shout where the Beatles sang it. You know. I've been
Speaker 1: on Mike at one of Bruce's Christmas shows with Sam
Speaker 1: Moore singing Santa Claus is coming to town. I mean,
Speaker 1: I must be still dreaming from an lst trip in
Speaker 1: the sixties and I just haven't woken up yet, because
Speaker 1: you can't make that stuff up. But I like your idea.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give some thought to that, because I
Speaker 1: love telling stories. You know. I'm not full of myself.
Speaker 1: I love the journey, you know, and I've survived it.
Speaker 1: I'm stronger because of it. How about that? How about that? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you survived that stuff. Absolutely I have a better person
Speaker 1: having been through these things. And I'm too either too
Speaker 1: dumb to know any better, or there's some serious spit
Speaker 1: and grit in my bones. But I want to say
Speaker 1: one thing. I think that my divorce was triggered by
Speaker 1: not by the hardships didn't help, but she had some
Speaker 1: medical issues and thought she was on the way out
Speaker 1: and had they called fight and flight, and just thought
Speaker 1: she was going to die. And you know, she's a doll.
Speaker 1: But she hung in longer than I thought anybody ever would.
Speaker 1: So there was a struggle. Sometimes it's worth it, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't if I had to do it again, would
Speaker 1: I go through? You know how many years? I moved
Speaker 1: in seventy two to New York, signed a record deal
Speaker 1: in seventy eight, record out in eighty eighty one, walked
Speaker 1: away from the business like an idiot, you know, and
Speaker 1: put a record, got signed to Columbia Records, put a
Speaker 1: record out in ninety one, Wrong Time, Wrong place, put
Speaker 1: an EP out the next year. Another few years with nothing,
Speaker 1: and then a buddy of mine convinced me, you should
Speaker 1: make your own put it on your own record. People
Speaker 1: are starting to do on your own label. People are
Speaker 1: starting to do that. So I ray some money, borrowed
Speaker 1: some money from a friend, made beautiful Record of the World,
Speaker 1: paid him back, you know, And I've been making records
Speaker 1: on that little label ever since, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: kept me afloat, and I'm I've got stories to tell.
Speaker 1: That's for sure. And you know, my dad has a
Speaker 1: real gift of storytelling, you know. And and the movie
Speaker 1: you'll see some of it. It's like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't even more to begin. I was kicked by a chicken.
Speaker 1: That guy, he's something else. How is your health? I'm
Speaker 1: knocking on wood. You know, I've been really lucky because
Speaker 1: like when the seventy fifth birthday business this summer, it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't feel my age. I don't feel seventy five.
Speaker 1: You know. I've been very lucky. You know. I had
Speaker 1: some melanoma on my face like about fourteen years ago,
Speaker 1: so I go checked my skin checked everybody's six months
Speaker 1: but buying large. I've been lucky, you know. And you
Speaker 1: know I've never had problems with drugs. I like whine
Speaker 1: with my dinner, you know, but I've never I managed
Speaker 1: to stay afloat from being sidetracked by that's that nonsense,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm small enough and close enough to
Speaker 1: the ground, and I was always pretty well. I was
Speaker 1: always an athlete, you know. So I feel fit. I
Speaker 1: feel still I'm still sharp, you know, well you could
Speaker 1: call it sharp, but I still feel like I'm engaged,
Speaker 1: way engaged to life. And I write these songs because
Speaker 1: they inspire me. They made me I can make sense
Speaker 1: out of something. I put a record out in a
Speaker 1: fall called Wake Up America Steve Earle to do it
Speaker 1: with Steve. You know, I wrote it just I follow
Speaker 1: the news really closely and I care about the world,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's like what a place, my God,
Speaker 1: And there's the good, the bad, and the ugly, and
Speaker 1: my songs inspire me when I plan with the band.
Speaker 1: I gave a show in nineteen ninety one and Providence,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and it's big, huge hall. That capacity was
Speaker 1: twelve hundred. There were twelve people. I'm on Columbia Records.
Speaker 1: There's twelve people. I invited them all on stage at
Speaker 1: the end of It's the same with us. Hey, so
Speaker 1: I've seen the good, bad and ugly, and I must
Speaker 1: say the song's inspire me. And when I play, and
Speaker 1: you could see it on my band, they're inspired. And
Speaker 1: if the audience people leave happier than when they came in.
Speaker 1: How many can't tell you how many times people have
Speaker 1: come up and said, you know, you've signed CDs for
Speaker 1: some people after a show, and oh, somebody my mother
Speaker 1: died six months ago and I've been down. I haven't
Speaker 1: been out. My friends said, oh, you should go to
Speaker 1: a Willie show. You'll feel better. And you know, when
Speaker 1: people that makes me feel good. If I can, if
Speaker 1: my music can inspire me and my guys to feel better,
Speaker 1: be able to pay some bills, and an audience could
Speaker 1: come out and feel better. The experience in Buffalo with
Speaker 1: the blizzard, I must say the silver lining was to
Speaker 1: see the good side of neighbors, how people can be
Speaker 1: good to each other, you know, look out for each other.
Speaker 1: I saw that right in the face because this life threatening.
Speaker 1: You know. My dad's one hundred and five, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm seventy four and my brother's seventy and we're
Speaker 1: a freezing We made it. And anyway, I'm still a believer.
Speaker 1: I guess should say I believe in I always say
Speaker 1: I believe in people. I mean, I know there's some
Speaker 1: nasty customers out there, let's be you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of them, but there's also a lot of really
Speaker 1: good people. You know. My politics start like if there's
Speaker 1: a cul de sac and it's a little seven year
Speaker 1: old kid riding his bike in the cul de sac
Speaker 1: and Tucker Carlson's got a house on one side and
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert on the other side, and the little kid
Speaker 1: gets it back. It's the bike and down he goes.
Speaker 1: I would think that those two guys would come out
Speaker 1: and see what they could do to help. That's where
Speaker 1: my politics start. You know. Call me naive and clearly am,
Speaker 1: but I do believe. I believe in music. I believe
Speaker 1: in the redemptive quality. I really do. I'm on my
Speaker 1: soapbox now, but I do in rock and roll. In music,
Speaker 1: whether it's classical, jazz, blues, swamp boogie woogie, they're salvation
Speaker 1: in it. There can be, you know. So I that's
Speaker 1: the that's the way I've been riding, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's not has been easy. Hell no, oh my god. No.
Speaker 1: You know. When I leave here, I'm gonna go up
Speaker 1: walk up my five flights of stairs. I don't know
Speaker 1: if a gig tonight, so I don't have to carry
Speaker 1: my I have you electric in my bag. But it's
Speaker 1: kept me, it's kept me healthy. Knock on wood anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully you'll be around here for many more years. Willy.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking this time to
Speaker 1: talk to my audience. You've really been a riveting listen.
Speaker 1: It's been my pleasure. Really, I appreciate you taking the
Speaker 1: time to have me on Bob. You know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for the journey that I've had, happy to share it.
Speaker 1: And I believe, and I think people listening, keep the faith,
Speaker 1: do your best. My dad's advice while going through my
Speaker 1: divorce best device I've ever heard, because I didn't need
Speaker 1: for a month. I was really in bad shape back then.
Speaker 1: And he said, look, you can't control with anybody else
Speaker 1: does in this world. The one thing you can't control
Speaker 1: is what you do. Walk a straight line, treat people good,
Speaker 1: you know, right from wrong. And you know he would
Speaker 1: say leave the rest in God's hands because he's a
Speaker 1: very a man of faith and it served him well,
Speaker 1: I must say. But like you know, do the best
Speaker 1: you can really in this world. Just turn pick you
Speaker 1: if your neighbor's down, pick him up if you can.
Speaker 1: But hang in there, do your best and have some
Speaker 1: faith in that. You know, I'm a believer and I'm
Speaker 1: you know, someday I'll drop, you know, And we all
Speaker 1: got what a clinist would say, we all got it coming.
Speaker 1: In that great film unforgiven. Well, I'm alive and i
Speaker 1: want to celebrate it, and that's what I'm I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do my best at so I'm very grateful for
Speaker 1: you to have me on. Thank you for taking the time, Bob. Well,
Speaker 1: you've been great. Till next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 1: sensed