Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Supreme So Supremo, Roll Call Supremo Supremo Roll Call Supreme
Speaker 2: Supremo Roll Call Supreme Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll This is the brother. Yeah, no one asked Quest Lover.
Speaker 1: Yeah and I may.
Speaker 3: Yeah Supremo roll Call Supreme So Supreme roll Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I want a new drug Yeah, I want old drugs too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just give me all your drugs.
Speaker 6: Supreme Supreme Roll Supreme Supremo roll Call.
Speaker 7: I'm on pay bill Yeah, and I can't complain. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't need no credit card to ride this fucking.
Speaker 6: Supremo Supremo roll Call Suprema Supremo roll call.
Speaker 8: Steals my name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's my role called rhyme.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Oh man, I'm off beat. Yeah, I gotta get back
Speaker 8: in time.
Speaker 6: Oh, Car Suprema s Supremo roll Call Supremo sun Supremo
Speaker 6: roll Call.
Speaker 10: It's like Leah Yeah with h Lewis.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this is it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I'm cool with it.
Speaker 6: What Supprimo Supremo Role Car Supremo Supremo roll Call.
Speaker 9: My name is Huie. Yeah, I'm six feet tall. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I'm president the count for at the Suprema Row.
Speaker 6: Supremo Supremo, roll call Suprema Son Son Supremo, roll Call
Speaker 6: Supremo Supremo Supremo.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's cool. Yes, absolutely, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, Oh yeah, welcome.
Speaker 11: That's what I welcome to another episode of course Love Supreme.
Speaker 11: I am your host, uh quest Love, and we thank
Speaker 11: you for joining us. Joining us is a team Supreme.
Speaker 11: We got a boss Bill in the house. Hello, and
Speaker 11: unpaid Bill in the house.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we have Sugar Steve that's correct. Yeah, and we have.
Speaker 10: K God.
Speaker 1: You got it right.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll never get your name wrong, that's true.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will say that our guest today is one of
Speaker 1: my personal favorites.
Speaker 11: He's a fine singer, steeped in the tradition of what
Speaker 11: I What I'll say is blue eyed lose with a
Speaker 11: tinge of raspy soul on the side, A hell of
Speaker 11: a blues heart man, definitely hell of that. He's fronted
Speaker 11: one of the in my opinion, one of the sharpest
Speaker 11: units in music. Over twenty top ten singles sold plenty
Speaker 11: of thirty million account of thirty million albums in the
Speaker 11: past thirty plus years.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound forty years. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 9: I'm embarrassing.
Speaker 12: No, we've just begun.
Speaker 1: Not to mention. I'd like to say that, you know
Speaker 1: what can't be ignored is their foray into really effective
Speaker 1: music videos and using humor and personality during the age
Speaker 1: of the dawning of MTV's rise, really captured our hearts
Speaker 1: of millions. I'm trying my hardest to not sound like
Speaker 1: Patrick Bateman of American Psycho.
Speaker 11: He is fronted one of my favorite favorite favorite units.
Speaker 11: I'll say that their their live performance kicks ass. Their
Speaker 11: harmonies are bar none, the music everything's in there. Ladies
Speaker 11: and gentlemen, please welcome to quest Lop Supreme. Sir Hugh
Speaker 11: Anthony Craig.
Speaker 12: The Third, No, Mas, Hugh Lewis test.
Speaker 9: Up Supreme, Thank you, thank you, thank you. Great to
Speaker 9: be here.
Speaker 1: How goes it?
Speaker 9: Good? Good good. I've had a little trouble getting here.
Speaker 9: You know, I'm I live in Montana. Really yeah, so
Speaker 9: more cheese, less rats.
Speaker 11: So you're you're you're just a lifetime nomad kind of
Speaker 11: really well, I've been on the road for you know, forever.
Speaker 9: We you know, I have a driver who reminded me
Speaker 9: that I you know, I lost my hearing here a
Speaker 9: year and nine months ago and haven't been able to
Speaker 9: work because I can't hear music well enough. But so
Speaker 9: I've been in one place sometimes more than My driver
Speaker 9: reminded me that after forty years of driving me, he
Speaker 9: can't ever remember me being in one place for more
Speaker 9: than three weeks.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like, I know of your
Speaker 1: history of traveling since your youth. Where do you.
Speaker 11: I won't say where do you consider home? But what's
Speaker 11: your sentimental that's home?
Speaker 9: San Francisco? Okay.
Speaker 1: More importantly, when all is said and done, where would
Speaker 1: you like to rest?
Speaker 9: Probably Montana? Really probably Montana. It's beautiful, air is clean,
Speaker 9: you got animals, got tons of animals, all kinds of wildlife.
Speaker 9: We got horses.
Speaker 1: And so you lived on you live on a ranch.
Speaker 9: I do a little ranches. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you and Kanye know something that none of us see,
Speaker 1: none of us sentence before. So this is the thing.
Speaker 11: I never start this show on at the end, but
Speaker 11: sell me on Montana, Like, tell me why because you
Speaker 11: know something?
Speaker 1: Kanye knows something. I'm hearing a few other celebrities sort of.
Speaker 9: Unspoiled, not too many people, more critters, you know, it's
Speaker 9: just out if you like the outdoors. And I love
Speaker 9: the outdoors, it's a it's it's a great place.
Speaker 12: Just Kanye love the outdoors.
Speaker 1: Well, he loves Montana.
Speaker 8: I mean we've mentioned Kanye way too much on this episode.
Speaker 1: Can we can?
Speaker 13: We?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 10: And he's why Wyoming anyway?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Wyoming not Montana. Oh damn, I thought it
Speaker 8: was Montana.
Speaker 10: Either way, they don't want no more select.
Speaker 1: I take that back. Okay, Kanye does not different, deal.
Speaker 9: Different.
Speaker 12: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just think of like a home on the ranch.
Speaker 9: The deer different down there. It's way different.
Speaker 1: Really okay?
Speaker 9: Really?
Speaker 1: So where were you born?
Speaker 9: New York City? Manhattan? You a port? What part right there?
Speaker 9: French hospital?
Speaker 1: But I mean what part of Manhattan were you?
Speaker 9: I don't know. Where was the French Hospital? Midtown? Maybe?
Speaker 9: So I don't know. Okay.
Speaker 1: How how long did you stay in Manhattan?
Speaker 9: About a year? Oh as a baby, I got tired
Speaker 9: of the.
Speaker 12: More than three weeks.
Speaker 1: How when did music enter your life?
Speaker 9: Real early on? My dad was a was a drummer.
Speaker 9: My dad was a was a radiologist by trade, but
Speaker 9: a jazz drummer bye by hobby. Okay, and he loved
Speaker 9: and he played piano as well, and he played with
Speaker 9: a jam band and it was a with a jazz band,
Speaker 9: and it was always a set of drums set up
Speaker 9: in our in our living room, and he taught me
Speaker 9: played drums. Initially he would play jazz music that with
Speaker 9: no singers. He hated singers. You knows, just kind of
Speaker 9: gotten the way that I gravitated.
Speaker 1: Toward the vocals the side of things, you know. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So what did your mom do?
Speaker 9: My mom was an artist and she was born in
Speaker 9: Poland and escaped during the war, lived in Brazil for
Speaker 9: about four or five years, moved to New York City,
Speaker 9: was a commercial artist here in New York City. Her
Speaker 9: parents finally got out of Poland and arrived and he
Speaker 9: was a die chemist and knew about and they were
Speaker 9: pretty wealthy and so on. It moved to Lawrence, mass
Speaker 9: and then tragically, my grandparents, my mother's parents committed suicide together,
Speaker 9: which was a real tough deal on my mom, and
Speaker 9: she switched and kind of dropped out at that point.
Speaker 9: She was an artist and so she my dad realized
Speaker 9: he had to get her out of here. When moved
Speaker 9: to California, moved to San Francisco when I was five,
Speaker 9: and my mom fell in with the hippies and became
Speaker 9: like the very first hippie my mom.
Speaker 11: So she was part of that Timothy Leary generation all
Speaker 11: that tunant What does that entail? Like I always you know,
Speaker 11: I hear of like tune in, drop out And is
Speaker 11: it just like stop trying to perform to what society
Speaker 11: wants us.
Speaker 9: To do and just like live by the moment? And
Speaker 9: I think so, I think that's initially what it was.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So you grew up in out there and there
Speaker 11: was some LSD involved, Okay, okay, so that made.
Speaker 9: Everything a little easier.
Speaker 12: Told me about it, drum. So in San francis a
Speaker 12: fist book between Hwet and Steve for those that missed that.
Speaker 1: So in San Francisco, were you kind of in a
Speaker 1: commune community.
Speaker 9: Like no, no, because my my my mom my dad
Speaker 9: had sort of resisted all that and they just divorced
Speaker 9: when I was eleven. And when I was twelve, I
Speaker 9: skipped second grade, so I went away to school and
Speaker 9: in New Jersey and.
Speaker 1: The prep school in New Jersey, I don't even Yeah,
Speaker 1: So how did that make you feel the insight? Like
Speaker 1: just this consistent, going back and forth.
Speaker 9: It was a little crazy, to be honest, My did
Speaker 9: you met friends easily? Or I didn't because I was
Speaker 9: moving so much, you know, so I had to kind
Speaker 9: of rely on myself. I grew up pretty fast that way.
Speaker 9: I actually went to prep school in New Jersey with
Speaker 9: coat and tie, all boys, and neither one of my
Speaker 9: parents has ever been there, so they just kind of
Speaker 9: set me off. And I was I was thirteen.
Speaker 1: Were you the only child?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 9: I had a brother, a younger brother, five years younger, okay,
Speaker 9: and he stayed with my mom. My mother had custody,
Speaker 9: but my father petitioned the court to allow me to
Speaker 9: go to this prep school, saying this was a smart
Speaker 9: kid or something, you know, whatever, whatever he told them.
Speaker 10: But how were you away?
Speaker 9: Well, I'd go back on summertime, you know, Christmas, Christmas
Speaker 9: in summer. But I was away for four years for
Speaker 9: the most part.
Speaker 1: Sounds like it.
Speaker 10: I It depends he was independent, though, because what was
Speaker 10: that like?
Speaker 4: As a boy in prep school, you have freedom in
Speaker 4: a different way than most kids doing away because you're like,
Speaker 4: it's like college but kids.
Speaker 9: I mean, I was horribly homesick when I first left. Obviously, Uh,
Speaker 9: but you know, you can get used to pretty much anything.
Speaker 9: And uh, after a while it was fine.
Speaker 4: I'm sure I was a girls school down the street.
Speaker 4: You went to a girl I'm sure it was a
Speaker 4: girls school down the street.
Speaker 12: Not everything is dead, poets decided, just clear, that's a movie.
Speaker 1: So what was your.
Speaker 11: Described? Well, wait, before you do that, do you remember
Speaker 11: the first record you purchased?
Speaker 9: Yep? What was it? A quarter to three?
Speaker 1: Here are us? There are U s bines okay.
Speaker 9: And then or might have been wild one Bobby right now, okay,
Speaker 9: a little bitty pretty one. Those are the first three
Speaker 9: I remember.
Speaker 1: So you're post you wops early British rocking.
Speaker 9: Start, but immediately became an R and B snob and
Speaker 9: I started play harmonica and became a blues R and
Speaker 9: B snob. Hated contemporary stuff, just all of that until
Speaker 9: I joined my first band, which was after prep school. Uh. Well,
Speaker 9: I took a year off and bummed around Europe. I
Speaker 9: took my harmonica and my old man made me do that.
Speaker 9: I graduated from from prep school a year young because
Speaker 9: I'd skip second grade. And he said to me, I
Speaker 9: was sixteen. He said, look, you're sixteen years old. As
Speaker 9: far as I'm concerned, all the decisions of yours. You
Speaker 9: do whatever you want. Only one more thing I want
Speaker 9: to make you do. I said, what's that? I said,
Speaker 9: don't go to college yet. I said, really, well, I
Speaker 9: want to go to school and I'm going. You know,
Speaker 9: I was accepted at Cornell. I said, I really want
Speaker 9: to go to He says, no, no, take a year
Speaker 9: off and bum around your I said, but dad, I
Speaker 9: was going to play ball, and it's the last thing
Speaker 9: I'm like. So I did it.
Speaker 1: It was like a tester, like what happened when you
Speaker 1: father puts your son in the woods to see if
Speaker 1: you can survive the way black folks?
Speaker 12: That doesn't black folks get sent away to Europe.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he just threw me away to Europe.
Speaker 1: I was told my father, our challenge was just escaping bullets.
Speaker 10: Or in college tuition. And I'm gonna soften that a
Speaker 10: little bit, you know.
Speaker 9: Oh that.
Speaker 1: No, I couldn't afford it. So I just got a
Speaker 1: record deal. So but to wait sixteen in Europe? How
Speaker 1: does that work? Did was missing?
Speaker 9: It was nineteen sixty six, sixty second, there was no TSA.
Speaker 9: So wasn't that one big deal?
Speaker 14: No?
Speaker 12: No, no, LSD, no TSA to walk us through.
Speaker 10: This, like, was it a hostile situation?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 10: You didn't stay at a hostel? No, no, No, Hughey
Speaker 10: Lewis didn't stay at well.
Speaker 9: I stayed. I stayed at a buddy. I had a
Speaker 9: power from prep school, English exchange student. I stayed at
Speaker 9: his house in London for a few days, and then
Speaker 9: I met a guy from South Africa, Michael Jefferson. Together
Speaker 9: we hitchicked all the way through Europe and all that stuff,
Speaker 9: and I would go every night, we'd go to the
Speaker 9: youth hostel and I just play harp in the in
Speaker 9: the Square.
Speaker 13: Not only bust are rich, not every single one of them,
Speaker 13: just the ones Some play harp in the Square for money,
Speaker 13: say at the hostel.
Speaker 1: Okay, So all right, as a fellow busker, I got
Speaker 1: to ask you what what were the what were the
Speaker 1: going what were the going rates for it? I'm assuming
Speaker 1: this is uh sixty eight sixty seven?
Speaker 9: Yeah, what was a all right?
Speaker 4: For me?
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, sixty to eighty dollars was like
Speaker 1: date night?
Speaker 9: That was.
Speaker 1: You know, like, I mean, there's four of us, so
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 9: Thirty you know you were killing that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: No, that's a sandwich at wah wah. And you know
Speaker 9: after do movie? That's a date?
Speaker 1: Was it was it at a not Do or Die.
Speaker 9: Survival? What? Yeah? Like what for you? What was like?
Speaker 1: Okay I made it through the day or it was
Speaker 1: it day to day?
Speaker 9: Like what am I going?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 9: I remember in Africa in.
Speaker 1: Europe Europe?
Speaker 9: But I got to North Africa. We went down to
Speaker 9: North Africa, Italy I went. I went to Marrakesh in
Speaker 9: Morocco for just to see it, and then I got
Speaker 9: so stone. I couldn't leave for three months. We're going
Speaker 9: to leave every day. But then we'd wake up and
Speaker 9: Steve wish.
Speaker 10: Is it seventeen? Are you how old are you?
Speaker 9: Yeah? I say I was seventeen.
Speaker 11: That's right, Oh my god, Like, hey, you want to
Speaker 11: go just was it a boat from Italy that just
Speaker 11: right across the water or do you get there?
Speaker 10: Why did you shoes Morocco?
Speaker 9: So I flew to London right and then and that's
Speaker 9: another long story. But then I hitchhiked all the way
Speaker 9: from London, all the way through France down through Spain,
Speaker 9: took the little storry to that's what do that see?
Speaker 9: He hitchhike?
Speaker 5: He didn't have a limousine, hitchhike hitchhike, but there.
Speaker 10: Was a stowaway story.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I wanted to get back to that. I heard
Speaker 8: that you stowed away on a plane to the That's.
Speaker 9: An interesting story. Actually, as I was.
Speaker 12: Do that's that's what I wanted to know.
Speaker 9: I didn't really stow away. I thought I could stow away.
Speaker 9: But this was remember nineteen sixty seven or sixty eight,
Speaker 9: probably sixty seven or sixty eight, right in there. And
Speaker 9: I hitchiked across the country first and to go to Europe,
Speaker 9: and then I stayed with my buddies at Harvard who
Speaker 9: were at school there for a minute.
Speaker 12: Didn't see that coming.
Speaker 9: And then I went back down to New York here
Speaker 9: and I went to and while I was hitchiking across
Speaker 9: the country, a guy picked me up and told me.
Speaker 9: I said, I'm trying to get to Europe. He says, well,
Speaker 9: you know, but I you know, I don't have that
Speaker 9: much money I had. I think I started off with
Speaker 9: three hundred dollars and then plane tickets were like two
Speaker 9: fifty in those days, and so I said, I don't
Speaker 9: have that much money. We can't spend all on a ticket,
Speaker 9: and he said, well, you know, you can stow away,
Speaker 9: and he showed me. He told me about this idea
Speaker 9: where you get this, you know, the jacket the ticket
Speaker 9: goes in. In the old days used to take a
Speaker 9: special silver pen and write on the jacket, and all
Speaker 9: they looked at was the jacket. They never actually took
Speaker 9: the ticket. This is before you know, uh, the computer, yeah,
Speaker 9: and all that stuff. So he says he or he says,
Speaker 9: you can stow away on this freight airline too. So
Speaker 9: I hitch like back down to the Muppet. Well then
Speaker 9: was idle Wild Wow Idlewild Airport which is now Kennedy Airport,
Speaker 9: and out answers there and I went to the freight
Speaker 9: place and I couldn't get across. They couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 9: So I went back to the terminal the TWA place,
Speaker 9: and I just laid there for you know, just kind
Speaker 9: of stay there for till midnight. And I befriended this
Speaker 9: agent TWA ticket agent said, you know, buddy, I just
Speaker 9: hit you out and tells me there's a way you
Speaker 9: can kind of sneak in. And always said, I'll tell
Speaker 9: you what. If you wait till I get off, I'll
Speaker 9: show you. I wait till you go collective jar drop
Speaker 9: in this room right now. Like so he explained to
Speaker 9: me that you get the jacket. He got a jacket,
Speaker 9: a jacket out of the you know, those envelopes, out
Speaker 9: of the drawer, and he had a special silver pant.
Speaker 9: He says, you need this. And then he says, you're
Speaker 9: right on the outside London l HR fight seven o two.
Speaker 9: And then he says, and then go into the gate
Speaker 9: really and just kind of make yourself invisible and it'll
Speaker 9: fill up. And then when you get on the airplane,
Speaker 9: all they're gonna do is look at your jacket and
Speaker 9: then go take the seat, middle seat over the wing.
Speaker 9: And then he said, and then but not yours, right
Speaker 9: the middle seat over the wing, and take another terrible
Speaker 9: seat in case they say, oh, you're not in someone
Speaker 9: else takes your seat, you say, oh, my seat's up there,
Speaker 9: and then you go. But but none of these flights
Speaker 9: were fulling these days, so the middle seat over the
Speaker 9: wing was like the last one to go. So he says,
Speaker 9: I said, wow, that what happens if I get caught?
Speaker 9: He said, the only way you're gonna get caught is
Speaker 9: at the end of the deal. She's going to count
Speaker 9: all the people on the airplane and it's not going
Speaker 9: to jibe with all the people they had the checked
Speaker 9: in at the podium, he says, But you're only gonna
Speaker 9: be one off, and she's gonna They're not gonna hold
Speaker 9: the flight up. They're just gonna go said. He says.
Speaker 9: If you want to be really safe, he says, you
Speaker 9: can buy a ticket and then just put it in
Speaker 9: the jacket, but don't give them the ticket. And when
Speaker 9: you keep the keep the ticket and if you if
Speaker 9: it works, you get over. When you get to London,
Speaker 9: you refund the ticket and if they find you out,
Speaker 9: you give them the ticket. And that's what I did,
Speaker 9: Stay Cassole. Game is.
Speaker 12: Pens and refund ticket. It's ship Huey Lewis.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, I'm just curious when does this finesse game?
Speaker 1: Like when what year do you think it was stopped?
Speaker 9: Like you couldn't computers, computer computers, damn computer stopped everything,
Speaker 9: ruined everything.
Speaker 10: You can't even get the t s A with the
Speaker 10: ticket now sucked up.
Speaker 9: No ts A, no, no ts A. Hey, there were
Speaker 9: not only were there no security, you just walked right
Speaker 9: on the airplane, but they gave you a little packet
Speaker 9: of cigarettes that you could smoke on the airplane.
Speaker 12: Cigarettes little tiny four packed cigarette smoking.
Speaker 5: Like so cool man on airplanes.
Speaker 9: Can you imagine every every armist had a little ash
Speaker 9: tree in it.
Speaker 10: I remember everything on the on the wall.
Speaker 5: What's scared to me is when you get on an
Speaker 5: airplane now and you still see the ash plane.
Speaker 12: The hell off this thing?
Speaker 11: Remember one I embarrassed the living crap out. Then my
Speaker 11: mom's listening to the story. One of my very first
Speaker 11: plane trips, went to the bathroom and there were you know,
Speaker 11: they would have napkins there and whatnot and like feminine
Speaker 11: uh napkins as well, and so I thought pads. So
Speaker 11: it took like about tim pads. And I was in
Speaker 11: the front row there in the back and said.
Speaker 12: Mom, dog, you don't worry about I got you.
Speaker 9: That's all, you know.
Speaker 5: That should be like an advertising like, came on, I got.
Speaker 13: You, tamppas backcuff loft, don't worry, I got you.
Speaker 1: So do you remember the first concert you went to?
Speaker 9: Good that's a good question. That's a really good question.
Speaker 1: A very memorable content.
Speaker 9: It might be with Paul Butterfield at here in New
Speaker 9: York at.
Speaker 1: The film wore East.
Speaker 9: No, it went over four way before Filmore. We're talking
Speaker 9: nineteen sixty four, sixty five town Hall.
Speaker 1: Oh, the town Hall nineteen and.
Speaker 9: It was so it was so crowded that I got
Speaker 9: a seat, as I remember it, I mean, I know
Speaker 9: I got the seat. I don't know how on the stage.
Speaker 9: They put seats on the stage and I sat on
Speaker 9: the stage and saw Bob Butterfield with Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop,
Speaker 9: Jerome Marnold on bays, Sam Lay on drums. They were awesome.
Speaker 9: They took that was it and this is pre well
Speaker 9: sixty four was like cond pre probably six psychedelic, might
Speaker 9: be sixty five, okay, like that pre psychedelic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So was that a moment for you where you're
Speaker 1: like maybe I could do this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely, I want to do this. I don't know
Speaker 9: if I can or not, But that's happened.
Speaker 1: So how did that?
Speaker 9: Was already playing harmonica a little bit, you know, how.
Speaker 1: Did that lead you to Clover? Go into how Clover
Speaker 1: came in?
Speaker 9: Well? Then, well I took a year off, bummed around
Speaker 9: Europe after after high school, like dad said, played harmonica
Speaker 9: all the time, went back went to Cornell, I was
Speaker 9: an engineering student at Cornell. As you do, I all
Speaker 9: before in prep school, so I got I didn't even
Speaker 9: hardly have to go to class my freshman year and
Speaker 9: I got a four point zero. Was no problem because
Speaker 9: I literally had it all before. You were you were
Speaker 9: a meth was right, kind of you.
Speaker 10: Know, perfect score on the skin like that.
Speaker 14: Kind of okay, Dwayne Wayne, Dwayne, Dwayne Wayne, different world,
Speaker 14: a fictional character that's quarter perfect going in Memphis.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but I and so after that year off, I
Speaker 9: went back to Cornell and I went to engineering school
Speaker 9: and I went in and that was not near as
Speaker 9: much fun as bumming around Europe with harmonica, and so
Speaker 9: I joined the bands and I didn't really have to
Speaker 9: go to class much. So I played in fraternity bands
Speaker 9: until my sophomore year started catching up with me.
Speaker 14: You know.
Speaker 9: So about halfway through the sophomore year, and that was
Speaker 9: the year at Cornell where the Afro American Student Society
Speaker 9: took over the Wild Straight Hall and it was all
Speaker 9: that stuff in the SDS and all that stuff. So
Speaker 9: you could take pass fail, was the good news. So
Speaker 9: we took pass fail. That was another semester I got
Speaker 9: under my belt. I was like then I was dead
Speaker 9: and it caught up with me. So I called my
Speaker 9: own man. I said, Pops, I'm dropping out. I'm gonna
Speaker 9: be uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna try and be a musician.
Speaker 9: He went, whatever he said, go for it. You know
Speaker 9: you did what you did your bum around Europe. I
Speaker 9: told you I wasn't going to tell you what to do.
Speaker 9: Your life is your own.
Speaker 12: Good luck, good parenting.
Speaker 9: Fuck well, it looked like pretty bad parenting for the
Speaker 9: first ten years or fifteen years.
Speaker 12: Let me tell you as a parent, good for your
Speaker 12: father for just being like, do what you want.
Speaker 1: During the formative years before you formed Clover, did you
Speaker 1: have any interaction with any notable future singer songwriter, like
Speaker 1: anyone that.
Speaker 9: That's a good question. Let me think not really, I mean,
Speaker 9: I'm trying out. Why did that take me so long?
Speaker 14: Like?
Speaker 1: No, no, running into Springsteen during the days of bar banding.
Speaker 9: Oh, I didn't see that, you know. I mean, Butterfield
Speaker 9: was a was a thing for me. And then I
Speaker 9: dropped out. I went back to San Francisco, and then
Speaker 9: I started going to uh, you know, the film more
Speaker 9: and and seeing that stuff and seeing uh, you know,
Speaker 9: Aretha with King Curtis at the film or Auditorium. Yo,
Speaker 9: you were there those recordings right, well once one night.
Speaker 1: Well they eventually since then released all of.
Speaker 12: Them eight nights.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was unbelievable. Wow.
Speaker 8: You know this video of that online too, right, I
Speaker 8: did not know.
Speaker 9: Ye, okay, that was unbelievable. You know that Filmore holds
Speaker 9: about eight hundred people. People don't write the film original
Speaker 9: Filmore Auditorium, it's like eight hundred to one thousand people.
Speaker 1: Oh so the one that I play at has been
Speaker 1: expanded and where this one over here or the one
Speaker 1: the one.
Speaker 9: In that was? That was that was a huge film
Speaker 9: winter Land, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh you're talking about film More easy.
Speaker 9: Written on the original Filmore Auditorium right in San Francisco.
Speaker 9: Still there's still a gig still there, but it only
Speaker 9: holds eight hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. In my mind, I thought it
Speaker 1: was like a three thousand.
Speaker 9: It seems like that. Go there again. We just worked there.
Speaker 9: It's it's this tiny, little place, tiny and you don't
Speaker 9: realize that at Hendrix in this place like here you
Speaker 9: had cream in this place back here. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 7: Okay, when did you consider yourself a hard player or
Speaker 7: vocalist or were both at the same time, or when
Speaker 7: did you switch to it from one to the other,
Speaker 7: because you talk a lot about being a harpist, right,
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 9: Mostly playing harmonic until I did my busking thing, and
Speaker 9: then I sang, and then I then I joined the band.
Speaker 9: When when I get when I joined Clover, I sang
Speaker 9: like a song or two, you know, But my voice,
Speaker 9: rough as it is, was not a seventies hair band,
Speaker 9: you know, Journey Boston, it wasn't happening. So I was
Speaker 9: an R and B guy and so I just played
Speaker 9: harmonica and the Clover thing. So vocal wise, who did
Speaker 9: you Ray Charles to get the question?
Speaker 12: No hesitation?
Speaker 1: Do you want to take questions?
Speaker 5: And Johnny Taylor, I mean, yeah, I'm a costello freak,
Speaker 5: So who is every everybody knows your connection to Well
Speaker 5: Clover connection to Miam is true.
Speaker 8: They were the backing band on that album. For those
Speaker 8: that don't know, Bill.
Speaker 5: Right right, Sorry, So yes, Clover was was high Well.
Speaker 5: Clover was first discovered by Nick Lowe in l A.
Speaker 9: Right, and actually by uh It's a kind of a
Speaker 9: funny story because our Clover had made a record before
Speaker 9: I joined them, there was a kind of vintage uh
Speaker 9: country rock. In fact, Clover had a record in the
Speaker 9: sixties where the on the cover there was John McPhee
Speaker 9: had hair down to had he had overalls on with
Speaker 9: hairdown to his waist and they and they're all standing,
Speaker 9: they all had long hair and they're standing in front
Speaker 9: of six foot high marijuana planets. Well, this was like
Speaker 9: sixty eight. Is Willie Nelson had a coat and tye
Speaker 9: on at this point?
Speaker 1: Seriously, it was.
Speaker 9: It was and the Dolly Porton Porter Wagner show was
Speaker 9: on and Willie was on it, and there was no
Speaker 9: and this was Clover. They were really ahead of their time.
Speaker 9: And so when I joined that band, uh we we
Speaker 9: we labored for a while. And then Jake Rivere, who
Speaker 9: managed Elvis and at the time was helping out with
Speaker 9: a group called Doctor Feel Good and feel Good was
Speaker 9: a and he was good. They asked Jake to road
Speaker 9: manage their trip to set to La. They were going
Speaker 9: to play at the CBS Convention in La and so,
Speaker 9: and they brought Nick Lowe along as a guitar roadie,
Speaker 9: just for a free trip to for a free trip
Speaker 9: to America. So it is the Doctor Feel Goods, Jake
Speaker 9: and Nick Low. So we're playing the Palomino Club in
Speaker 9: La clover Is. It's a country club, you know, country
Speaker 9: western club. We're playing the Palomino and in want these
Speaker 9: six guys in like gray suits and short hair. You
Speaker 9: know who were these guys And turned it was Nick
Speaker 9: and Jake because they'd seen that we were there and
Speaker 9: they knew about Over's first record and they were big.
Speaker 5: Because they love country rock, that's it.
Speaker 9: They thought they thought country rock pub rock was going
Speaker 9: to be the next big thing. So they signed us
Speaker 9: to Phonogram Records and we came to and we and
Speaker 9: brought us over to England. We're gonna do it for
Speaker 9: the British side from London. Well, the day we landed,
Speaker 9: Johnny Rotten spit in the face of the first enemy
Speaker 9: reporter and the game was on and we were in
Speaker 9: the wrong place at the wrong time. But we did
Speaker 9: a lot of sessions and the band, the core band
Speaker 9: back started.
Speaker 5: And what he means is punk rock has just started
Speaker 5: for people listening, Yeah, right, and country rock was not
Speaker 5: necessarily gonna happen in London right at that moment. So then,
Speaker 5: uh so they were starting stiff Records.
Speaker 9: They started Stiff Records. Jake and Dave together they managed
Speaker 9: Delvis Costello and Nick Love, Graham, Parker, Rat Scabies, the Damned,
Speaker 9: and then they created Stiff Records. And then unfortunately they
Speaker 9: had already signed us, so they stuck us. They realized
Speaker 9: that we were more kind of an American band, so they,
Speaker 9: uh they got mud Langer to produce our records in Wales.
Speaker 9: Uh and the Mutt Langer. All right, this is before
Speaker 9: he ever had a hit, before his magic period. He
Speaker 9: was a staff producer at Phonogram, and he did like
Speaker 9: some amazing amount of records a year, some like six
Speaker 9: or seven records a year, and and you know City
Speaker 9: Boy and all these acts that never happened. And uh,
Speaker 9: until you know, until he kind of moved over here,
Speaker 9: what was his what were his work habits?
Speaker 14: Like?
Speaker 9: Brilliant, still the same, I mean, it was consistent on
Speaker 9: just an unbelievable work ethic. And you know he's brilliant.
Speaker 9: I mean he's just that's all he does. He's just
Speaker 9: he's of one mind. He just loves just lays in
Speaker 9: the studio. Man loves loves it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So.
Speaker 5: Just to continue where where you left off. So you
Speaker 5: Clover wasn't on Diff.
Speaker 9: They were on Clover's on the Phonogram records. Did they
Speaker 9: move to Stiff They didn't because Stiff There was no
Speaker 9: Stiff when we first signed a Phonograph, right, Jake and Dave.
Speaker 9: And then simultaneously when punk hit, they started Stiff Records.
Speaker 9: They signed all these bands and we were still on Phonograph,
Speaker 9: and then they uh, yeah, so then I guess then
Speaker 9: they signed Elvis. They found Elvis. Uh, Jake gave him
Speaker 9: his name. I think Declin McManus gave him Elvis Costello
Speaker 9: and they what was.
Speaker 12: His name previously McManus.
Speaker 8: We've known him forever. How come you you know you
Speaker 8: did a record with the man? You didn't know what
Speaker 8: his real name was.
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 9: I thought, let me get name, get through this.
Speaker 5: I need to know things. Okay, No, it's just this
Speaker 5: notorious thing with Clover and Miami is true. So my
Speaker 5: question really comes down to, so how did how did
Speaker 5: Clover get that gig? So, and they have a follow
Speaker 5: up question.
Speaker 9: Jake signed Elvis Costell and they got Nick Low to
Speaker 9: produce it, and Nick used us not me, not me,
Speaker 9: and not my singer out, not our singer I was called,
Speaker 9: but the other four guys as a rhythm section for
Speaker 9: that that record, and they cut that record at pathway
Speaker 9: that my amistry was cutting, really cutting, and the studio
Speaker 9: was was literally the studio and control room were as
Speaker 9: big as this room right here, and we're in a
Speaker 9: small studio and the control room was like a four
Speaker 9: by four thing with a board eight trackie or maybe
Speaker 9: maybe it was sixteen. I don't even know, but it was.
Speaker 9: And they cut that record, and in fact, here's a
Speaker 9: great story for it, because the first thing they did
Speaker 9: was rehearse obviously for before they went into cut, and
Speaker 9: we were we were living in a place called Nigel
Speaker 9: Grange and Surrey down. They rented a house that same
Speaker 9: house that led Zeppelin cut all them big records and
Speaker 9: where they mike the drummers in the big So that
Speaker 9: was our house called Headley Grange. So they when Elvis rehearsed,
Speaker 9: we set up. We are set up in the in
Speaker 9: the living room and Elvis came down, took the train
Speaker 9: down and rehearsed with the band for the first time. Well,
Speaker 9: I went to London because you know, a harmonica player
Speaker 9: and he was just going to rehearse with them. And
Speaker 9: when I came back that night, we had dinner there
Speaker 9: and we all had dinner and Elvis was gone. I said, so,
Speaker 9: how was it today, and everybody's kind Oh it was good,
Speaker 9: it was good good. And my keyboard player Sean Hopper went,
Speaker 9: I'm telling you what this. This guy's lyrics are unbelievable.
Speaker 9: He's really a genius, I'm telling you. And Sean Hopper
Speaker 9: was the first guy to know how great Elvis Costello was.
Speaker 9: I think even before Jake and Dave and all these
Speaker 9: before the management was in. Sean was a was a fanatic.
Speaker 5: Okay, So as you just said, you were a singer
Speaker 5: and harmonica player, and I guess weren't needed. There's no
Speaker 5: harmonica on the on the record.
Speaker 9: When they got ready to do it, Elvis said to me,
Speaker 9: I got a couple of songs that you could play
Speaker 9: on if you want to.
Speaker 5: I said, great, Yeah, it seems like there's a couple
Speaker 5: that could have had harm on.
Speaker 9: But he's but they were cutting this this week and
Speaker 9: it was we they had were They had worked us
Speaker 9: like crazy, the management because you know, they would make money.
Speaker 9: So we're working all the time. Uh, And so I
Speaker 9: took the week off I said, it's okay, But I
Speaker 9: went to Amsterdam.
Speaker 12: It was okay.
Speaker 9: My girlfriend flew over and we had we We saw
Speaker 9: it as a vacation week for the other two of us,
Speaker 9: so I didn't plan the record.
Speaker 5: But you and you weren't at the sessions.
Speaker 13: I was.
Speaker 9: I was at one session briefly, but no, I guess
Speaker 9: maybe it was a mixed session. I don't think. I
Speaker 9: can't remember if I recorded at that studio a lot
Speaker 9: and with the band, so I know what it was like.
Speaker 5: But okay, Ultimately the question was I knew you weren't
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 12: I just wanted to you at the session.
Speaker 9: I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 5: You might have been one mixed session, you're saying, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's the piece of information. I'm trying to mind.
Speaker 9: I'm sure I was there. And then of course we
Speaker 9: had the same management, you know, so we would bump
Speaker 9: they were happening, and we we went to a lot
Speaker 9: of Elvis' early shows when he played the Nashville Pub
Speaker 9: and all that stuff, and I watched him ascend, you know,
Speaker 9: and he's he's a wonderful guy and smart as you can,
Speaker 9: as you imagine, and so is Jake. By the way,
Speaker 9: and so is Nick Low and those three guys were
Speaker 9: so smart.
Speaker 5: It was I have one more question about this was
Speaker 5: Clover Uh upset that they didn't get the permanent gig
Speaker 5: with him and that he got the attractions starting with
Speaker 5: the next album the next year.
Speaker 9: No, no, we we we. You know there's that band thing.
Speaker 9: We thought we were going to make it any minute,
Speaker 9: and just you always think you're gonna make it any minute.
Speaker 9: You know. Failure never breaks up bands. It success that
Speaker 9: breaks up.
Speaker 1: Write that down down.
Speaker 12: Ship.
Speaker 1: All right? So when when the bill.
Speaker 9: We can come back to?
Speaker 10: Steve doesn't know lcause you know they're very close.
Speaker 5: I'm a huge I'm also a huge Huey Lewis fan.
Speaker 5: The band imploded in seventy eight, correct, you guys broke up.
Speaker 9: We broke up.
Speaker 1: It was amicable or just.
Speaker 9: Well kind of we lost our record deal and we
Speaker 9: came back and uh and then McPhee and uh joined
Speaker 9: Adobie Brothers. Sort of that's kind of what happened. I mean,
Speaker 9: but yeah, it was pretty amicable.
Speaker 1: So what leads to the development of Huey Lewis and
Speaker 1: the News.
Speaker 9: Well, let's see, I was so now we had always
Speaker 9: played Monday Night was a fun night for us in
Speaker 9: in Marin because it was I don't know, it was
Speaker 9: just a night that we always used to have jam
Speaker 9: sessions and stuff. And one of the local studios asked me,
Speaker 9: I wanted local clubs, said do you want to resident?
Speaker 9: He so residency yourself. I said, look, I'll give me
Speaker 9: Monday nights. And so I did a think on Monday
Speaker 9: Night Live that I invited all these different musicians and
Speaker 9: we had a Monday Night Live band and that we
Speaker 9: had a theme song and all that and comedians and
Speaker 9: and it was kind of fun. And with the band,
Speaker 9: we would slowly I was singing, I got I got
Speaker 9: to sing all the songs for the first time.
Speaker 1: We're either reluctant leader by this point exactly.
Speaker 9: I wasn't that reluctant I had, but I wasn't sure
Speaker 9: it was going to work, you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: I was trying it out a little bit. So but
Speaker 9: that's that. And that's we developed that in Monday Night Live.
Speaker 9: And this studio owner saw us and made it and
Speaker 9: and said, hey, would you like some demo time?
Speaker 12: Was it original stuff?
Speaker 9: And I said covers, Well, we didn't have mostly covers
Speaker 9: we'd written three songs. Uh. And then I said, do
Speaker 9: you want some free studio time? I said sure, huh,
Speaker 9: And they gave us like a day, so I thought.
Speaker 9: And we were doing funny stuff in our Monday night live.
Speaker 9: We did a discover at of Exodus exo disco we
Speaker 9: called it. It was pretty funny and it's actually not bad.
Speaker 9: I've heard it. Yeah. And the horn player on it
Speaker 9: we got. We got pee Wee Yellis to play horns
Speaker 9: on it. Really yeah, pee Wee.
Speaker 1: He was good. He will do anything like after his
Speaker 1: James Brownston.
Speaker 9: He yeah, he can play though, man, pee Wee can
Speaker 9: flat play, I know, man. Wow. And so we we
Speaker 9: we cut this disco version of Exus for a laugh
Speaker 9: and it was very funny. We had a nice day. Well,
Speaker 9: now I get a call from Nick Low and saying, look,
Speaker 9: I've just written this song and I think I think
Speaker 9: I swiped it from you. I said, what do you mean?
Speaker 9: He says, it's called what looks the best on you
Speaker 9: is me? And I told him that joke, you know,
Speaker 9: So I said no, no, I said, don't worry abot,
Speaker 9: it's no. Seriously, I feel like I owe you something.
Speaker 9: I said, No, I said to you what give me
Speaker 9: a ticket to London and back and I'll visit. He says, okay,
Speaker 9: I'll do that. Sometimes calls me. He says, I got
Speaker 9: an idea, come to London and play on my record
Speaker 9: and Edmonds wants to cut bad as Bad one of
Speaker 9: my songs, and we'll do both of those things and
Speaker 9: we'll do them in loun I said great, so he
Speaker 9: flew me to London. We went straight to the studio
Speaker 9: those days and cut Bad as Bad with Dave Emons
Speaker 9: and rock Pile, and then cut Born Fighter with Nick
Speaker 9: Lowe played harmonica on that and we were done. And
Speaker 9: it was like two or three in the afternoon. Now
Speaker 9: come to the record company to hear the tracks. And
Speaker 9: they come down. They come to the thing and they
Speaker 9: listened to the couple songs. They go, oh, man, that
Speaker 9: sounds great, and there was a lull in the moment.
Speaker 9: I said, you guys want to hear something funny. They
Speaker 9: said yeah, and I put on Exa Diisco. Well they
Speaker 9: loved it and they said, man, that could be a hit.
Speaker 9: I said whatever. They said, come see us tomorrow. We'll
Speaker 9: make a deal. And they left. So I said to
Speaker 9: Jake that they leave the room and I go, Jake,
Speaker 9: what do I do? He says, you go in there, yes,
Speaker 9: for thirteen points. You want three thousand pounds advance, and
Speaker 9: there you go. And if they want anything to be
Speaker 9: a remix or in that stuff, as long as they
Speaker 9: pay for it, that's good. But make sure you get
Speaker 9: the three thousand pounds and don't leave without the check.
Speaker 9: And I said, So I went there and made a
Speaker 9: singles deal, and I came home to San Francisco. I said, boys,
Speaker 9: we got a singles deal. And then I cut with
Speaker 9: the three thousand pounds. I've got the studio time. Actually,
Speaker 9: it's a funny. It's a funny story because they wanted
Speaker 9: more vocal on exodisco. It's all I'd said is come on, baby,
Speaker 9: come on down that kind of thing, you know. So
Speaker 9: they wanted me to a little more vocal on it.
Speaker 9: I said, no problem, give me the three thousand. They
Speaker 9: gave me the check.
Speaker 1: You were your own manager and negotiated and everything.
Speaker 9: So now I get back and I go to the studio.
Speaker 9: I said, man, we got a deal for it. I
Speaker 9: got to put some vocal, some more vocal on it.
Speaker 9: We go to the multi track tape and it was
Speaker 9: also had tones on that reel, and while they aligned
Speaker 9: the machine, they erased thirty seconds of the master tape
Speaker 9: that we had Recordedd go on, this is you know.
Speaker 9: So I went, oh my god, what what I said?
Speaker 1: That's a great engineer scream.
Speaker 9: So now I told him. I said, look, I'm gonna
Speaker 9: have to replicate this record. You got to give me
Speaker 9: a week. They said, we'll give it whatever you want.
Speaker 9: I said, well, give me five days. Okay, fine, you're
Speaker 9: so good. So I took the exit disco funk around.
Speaker 9: I took the two track that we had and I
Speaker 9: put it on two of the twenty four track, and
Speaker 9: I sang on another track, and I mixed it down
Speaker 9: to a two track and that took like four hours
Speaker 9: and we were done, and then cut these three other
Speaker 9: songs with the.
Speaker 12: Hustle Hustle, This the Best.
Speaker 1: Hustle One Congratulated sixteen, and those.
Speaker 9: Three tunes got us our manager and eventually our record.
Speaker 7: You, Louis, I know there's a guy documenting your every life,
Speaker 7: but do you have like a book deal where you
Speaker 7: tell everybody how to make it in the music business.
Speaker 1: Because I'm in the music business and I would totally
Speaker 1: buy that ship. In the sand like, I mean ship,
Speaker 1: So I kind of want to skip over, not skip
Speaker 1: over the eighties. No, no, no, no, dude, Like this
Speaker 1: is the education first of all?
Speaker 11: Can I assume that the baddest bad that you cover
Speaker 11: Nicholas is also the badest bad?
Speaker 5: Was Dave Edmonds born Nicholas.
Speaker 9: Blue shuffle the way he did? But then it's God?
Speaker 9: But then what we repraised it as the a cappella
Speaker 9: thing on sports?
Speaker 1: Okay, so still the same song, that same song, I
Speaker 1: don't want to know.
Speaker 9: But a completely different version.
Speaker 11: Yeah, okay, okay, So what what I do want to
Speaker 11: know is how was Bill Snee being a skilly dan
Speaker 11: head that I am?
Speaker 1: How is Bill Snee?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: How did he get involved with the very first Huey
Speaker 1: Lewis record? His his engineering you.
Speaker 9: Know your stuff? Well, see this is the thing your stuff?
Speaker 1: I want to because the thing is is.
Speaker 9: That well Shnave's done a lot of stuff, right.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but most of them, Like he was the engineer
Speaker 11: of the classic steely stuff, And really I feel like
Speaker 11: his sound was the proprietor of I don't know if
Speaker 11: you consider that the four letter word of the perfection
Speaker 11: of yacht rock sounds.
Speaker 1: That clean sine.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I see that.
Speaker 1: So what was it did you have reservations with? Like
Speaker 1: what was your view?
Speaker 11: Because the thing is, you expressed a lot of opinions,
Speaker 11: especially on sports, were bad as bad and also the
Speaker 11: heart of rock and roll about what I assume your
Speaker 11: criticism of you know what, what is raw and true
Speaker 11: to the music versus you know, the scene of whatever's
Speaker 11: commercial today. So I'm as I'm assuming that you're coming
Speaker 11: from a purest standpoint to work with.
Speaker 5: They sound like American psycho.
Speaker 1: I know where you're going at, But I wasn't. Was
Speaker 1: it the fact that I mean, what made Was he
Speaker 1: chosen for you?
Speaker 9: Or yeah? He was chosen for us because they even
Speaker 9: though we'd had you know, we were more experienced than
Speaker 9: most new bands. I was twenty but I was twenty
Speaker 9: nine years old at that point, which is and so
Speaker 9: he was, you know, he worked with he did boss
Speaker 9: boss silk degree, and he was low down and he's
Speaker 9: a great's a famous engineer. He's a great engineer. And
Speaker 9: so yeah, we worked with we worked together, and we
Speaker 9: have this joke because we worked together a couple of
Speaker 9: times over the year and we don't work together. Well,
Speaker 9: I mean, how was the conflict idea what you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Yes, what was the was their conflict in?
Speaker 9: Musically? It never worked. I love Bill Shnee, He's a
Speaker 9: good friend of mine, right, but it just we just
Speaker 9: never I guess our tastes maybe didn't match or I
Speaker 9: don't know why. And he's a brilliant engineer. It just
Speaker 9: we just never could hit it. You know, we never
Speaker 9: got anything we ever did together just didn't happen. So
Speaker 9: second record, Now we get a secondment. And I told
Speaker 9: the manager, my manager, I said, look, we can do
Speaker 9: this ourselves. You know, by this point we'd had we
Speaker 9: auditioned producers and you know, gone through a zillion of them.
Speaker 5: And why weren't you using Nick Lowe as a producer.
Speaker 9: Well, let's see, we were now here, but Nick, I
Speaker 9: don't know, he hadn't.
Speaker 5: Gone while you were on crystals at this point or
Speaker 5: we're on chrystals okay, so and just a different label.
Speaker 9: But at this point we felt like we could do
Speaker 9: it ourselves. And our manager went to fight, went to
Speaker 9: bat for us, and so then we started making our
Speaker 9: own records.
Speaker 1: I also want you to discuss uh Phil from Thin
Speaker 1: Lizzie Phil Uh filling it? Yeah, and you played on
Speaker 1: a records as well, Like what was the relationship there
Speaker 1: and how well we When I.
Speaker 9: Was in Clover, we toured with Thin Lizzie and Philip
Speaker 9: was an unbelievable guy, an unbelievable performer first of all
Speaker 9: hard rock band with soul, you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: They were just great. And Brian Downey he's back up now,
Speaker 9: but he could play and he can shuffle, you know,
Speaker 9: which didn't used to happen in London in England. You know,
Speaker 9: there were guys, there's certain beats that just the British just.
Speaker 1: So British weren't too cool and you.
Speaker 9: Know what I mean, it couldn't couldn't swing somehow. And
Speaker 9: but but Brian Downey was great and thin as he
Speaker 9: were unbelievable, and uh, Philip just kind of took me
Speaker 9: under his wing man and said he I played on
Speaker 9: a few of his things, and I lived with him
Speaker 9: for a minute and he would dress me out of
Speaker 9: his closet, you know, and uh, he was just a
Speaker 9: He taught me more than anybody how to run a
Speaker 9: band and how to you know, just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 9: I've learned everything everything nothing thiss sorry musically, but everything
Speaker 9: other than music.
Speaker 11: Okay, so on your second album, based on where the
Speaker 11: placement of do You Believe in Love is on that album,
Speaker 11: which is like kind of the middle side too, can
Speaker 11: I assume that was the last song recorded for the record?
Speaker 9: Yeah, damn, I'm good. You are good and not according
Speaker 9: to Yeah, because they, you know, we needed a hit
Speaker 9: kind of thing and they thought this was a single.
Speaker 11: That said Okay, the thing is what makes that song
Speaker 11: stand out so much to me. So how did you
Speaker 11: guys as well? First of all, as a unit, how
Speaker 11: long were you guys together in the gelling process and
Speaker 11: the practice process and to get that good because you
Speaker 11: guys play like you like each other.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well we were, we were right now Yeah, what
Speaker 9: are you saying?
Speaker 1: Years for the roots to like each other? And wow
Speaker 1: we love each other now because we're old ass men,
Speaker 1: we all we got wow.
Speaker 12: But ship just got real therapy.
Speaker 9: I will say in it that.
Speaker 11: Yes, the chemistry and the gelling of course comes together
Speaker 11: on that record. But I based on the tightness of
Speaker 11: the harmonies. That's where I feel like you guys really
Speaker 11: shine where most groups don't, like you know, occasionally Eagles
Speaker 11: with that level too.
Speaker 9: Yeah, how we have the secret is good singers and
Speaker 9: Johnny Cola are our saxophone and guitar is a great singer,
Speaker 9: and and and also and a great arranger. And Bill
Speaker 9: our drummer, sings, and Sean sings bass, and and and
Speaker 9: we have a kind of an okay, blend. We're just
Speaker 9: lucky that way. You know, you never know, you never
Speaker 9: know about it's a little bit better. A blend is
Speaker 9: a blend, you know what. It either works for a
Speaker 9: dozen or it is what it is. But uh, but
Speaker 9: that's what that is. And Johnny Colea gets most of
Speaker 9: the credit for that, for the vocals, arrangements and stuff. Okay,
Speaker 9: he's great.
Speaker 1: So how did you wrestle that song from Mutt without
Speaker 1: him producing it?
Speaker 9: Well, how do we get the song?
Speaker 1: Or did he demo it perfectly?
Speaker 9: And you guys, and I rewrote it a little bit.
Speaker 9: It was he had it. We both believe in love,
Speaker 9: we both believe it's ours. You really give enough? Yeah,
Speaker 9: you really make me see the stars. I went on, wait,
Speaker 9: did you just ask him for a throwaway?
Speaker 1: Like, do you have anything that you asked.
Speaker 9: Him for a song? I said, but you got a song,
Speaker 9: We got a record. You know, we need a song.
Speaker 11: And this is post a c d C. Because yeah,
Speaker 11: now oh so now he's on fire and yeah that
Speaker 11: sort of thing. Well, yeah, I think it's post. Yeah
Speaker 11: it has to be eight two. Okay, you're right. Well,
Speaker 11: so how did you wrestle it from him? How'd I
Speaker 11: wrestle it from him? No, he was he was happy.
Speaker 11: It was great.
Speaker 9: He just said it right away.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 9: He's a good friend, Mutt, and he's a brilliant you know,
Speaker 9: you know, I mean he's a CDC and foreigner and
Speaker 9: all the.
Speaker 1: So can you tell me? I mean, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean Beaver missed to not say that. We have to
Speaker 1: announce that.
Speaker 11: Of course, the rise of MTV was very instrumental in
Speaker 11: the millions of records you sold that you know, for
Speaker 11: the Sports album, your third album. But could you tell
Speaker 11: me what was the touring environment like before Sports as
Speaker 11: opposed to afterwards? As far as right, what was what
Speaker 11: was what was rock?
Speaker 1: What was touring like for.
Speaker 11: Pre MTV kind of like what was were you guys
Speaker 11: Chitlin circuit? You know, you had one top ten hit? Like,
Speaker 11: what was the environment like that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 9: We had we had one tour were called working for
Speaker 9: a Living tour where we had all of us on
Speaker 9: one bus, right, and the crew and the thing, and
Speaker 9: we went out for ten weeks. We held our record
Speaker 9: back because we were just finished with sports record and
Speaker 9: we basically just finished it, and then, uh, the record
Speaker 9: label we hadn't mixed it yet, and the record label
Speaker 9: went belly up Christmas and sold out to CBS. Christmas
Speaker 9: sold out to down Christmas, went shut down their whole
Speaker 9: distribution and all their stuff and went with CBS Distribution.
Speaker 9: They fired about most of their employees and a lot
Speaker 9: of a lot of their independent stuff they got rid
Speaker 9: of and just became a label then, and CBS was
Speaker 9: going to distribute. Well, we weren't sure how that was
Speaker 9: going to work out. So manager decided we just hit
Speaker 9: the road and try and pay for ourselves. So we
Speaker 9: did a ten week working for a living tour. We
Speaker 9: did all the clubs and all the all that sort
Speaker 9: of stuff.
Speaker 1: You guys alone with other acts.
Speaker 9: But as soon as the record hit, well, you know,
Speaker 9: we got a tour. We toured with Well thirty eight Special,
Speaker 9: toured with Toto, a little bit turned with and you
Speaker 9: could feel the record happening, you know, are you could
Speaker 9: just feel people showing up for the record now.
Speaker 1: I mean there are different types of audiences for pop music,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean, have you ever encountered or
Speaker 1: toured with an act whose fan base was different than
Speaker 1: what you desired? I mean.
Speaker 9: Clover Clover reopened for Alice Cooper at the Nasau Coliseum.
Speaker 9: We got bombed Long Island, landing here and here and
Speaker 9: boom and guys, damn sheep Gordon then protect you, guys.
Speaker 1: Say still there on the show.
Speaker 12: Not known for its security, the Clovers.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is is that.
Speaker 11: You know what what what audience do you feel is
Speaker 11: specifically your audience as opposed to like, was was there
Speaker 11: any worry, any worries about pairing with another acting?
Speaker 9: Yeah? Yeah, I mean we are first Huey Lewis and
Speaker 9: the News. First tour was with the Doobie Brothers because
Speaker 9: they were pals. Var makes sense and McPhee our Clover's
Speaker 9: old guitar player was now playing with the Doobies, so
Speaker 9: that we we got that tour. We had the same
Speaker 9: agency and all that. So we went out with Adobies
Speaker 9: for a national tour and we got basically booed off,
Speaker 9: not quite bowed up, because we knew enough to go
Speaker 9: from song to song before they could book. But if
Speaker 9: you if you you would, if you just wait, just
Speaker 9: be quiet, it would go whit.
Speaker 11: I remember, where's your all, right, what's the worst. Let's
Speaker 11: stay in North America in your mind? What's your favorite
Speaker 11: territory where they're open mind? Like I got my spots,
Speaker 11: Like I know where they're open minded and where I
Speaker 11: can stretch with the stuff, and then I know where
Speaker 11: it's going to be a cell even twenty years in
Speaker 11: the game, where I got to hit them with the
Speaker 11: hits and get out. For you, what are you rolling
Speaker 11: your eyes at? Like, oh god, we got to go
Speaker 11: back to like what territories were not to LA's stuff.
Speaker 9: LA has always been tough for us, a San Francisco band,
Speaker 9: and we've always you know, well the and the I
Speaker 9: mean we'd go down there and you know, there was
Speaker 9: X and then there was the who are the other bands?
Speaker 9: There's zillion bands that rock acts and who all did great,
Speaker 9: But we never they never reckoned us down there. We
Speaker 9: could never never get over, never get until and then
Speaker 9: once I remember, we finally years later, we played we
Speaker 9: played three forms three LA forums and you know, and
Speaker 9: now we're back in l A again and we had
Speaker 9: three forums. First night, everybody's there, you know, all the music,
Speaker 9: all the total guys, all the all the musicians are there,
Speaker 9: snaves there, you know, all the all. I'm nervous, you know,
Speaker 9: you know, yeah, all that stuff. And then it sold
Speaker 9: out and all. So I remember thinking, be just don't
Speaker 9: press relax, Just don't press relax, you know. And it's like,
Speaker 9: I'm a kind of a veteran now. So I go
Speaker 9: out the first night and I play what I think
Speaker 9: is a great show. We have a great show. Finally,
Speaker 9: I wasn't nervous. I feel great anytime I get I
Speaker 9: before that, when I would get a bad review, we
Speaker 9: actually got great reviews starting up. But whenever I get
Speaker 9: a bad review, it was always from a bad show,
Speaker 9: and I could always think to myself, you know what,
Speaker 9: he's right, I could have been better. That's right, it's
Speaker 9: no problem. So this time LA for him. First night,
Speaker 9: I think it is a great show. We go back
Speaker 9: to the hotel, we go to bed. I wake up
Speaker 9: in the morning, I want to see the paper. Everybody
Speaker 9: in this room knows where this is going on. And
Speaker 9: my manager's having breakfast and he goes, hey, here, he says,
Speaker 9: everybody who had got a great review in the La
Speaker 9: Times come on down and eat breakfast. Not so fast,
Speaker 9: Robert Hilbert had just tore me up. You know, I thought,
Speaker 9: damn it, what's that about. Well, here's here's you guys
Speaker 9: will appreciate this, I think, I hope. But so I
Speaker 9: struggled with that because I know we were good that
Speaker 9: night and I wasn't nervous, and I knew we were good,
Speaker 9: and it just bothered me for years. Now I'm recording
Speaker 9: another record at Lucas Uh Lucas's studio, Skywalker Ranch and
Speaker 9: George Lucas and they just opened it. This is amazing studio,
Speaker 9: and George is giving me a personal tour and we
Speaker 9: go around. He shows me everything. It's really great, and
Speaker 9: he says, now, at first the house and they have
Speaker 9: this unbelievable where they give you lunch and all. Now
Speaker 9: the ranch and all that. He says, Now, let's go look,
Speaker 9: let's go. Let me show you the studio. I said great.
Speaker 9: He says, Linda's in there now, Linda Ronstad. That's when
Speaker 9: he was dating. She was dating George. I said, oh great, great.
Speaker 9: We go in the studio and there's Linda and then
Speaker 9: she goes, oh man, Hi, Huey got I love your stuff.
Speaker 9: Both She's just funny. Should be here because Brian Wilson's
Speaker 9: showing up in a minute to do some vocals. I said,
Speaker 9: you're kidding me. No, I said, wow, do you mind
Speaker 9: if I just hang out? She just no, no problem. Great,
Speaker 9: So I finished, I said, I'm hanging around. But it's
Speaker 9: like lunch. They're taking a break. Boom, here's Brian. I said, well,
Speaker 9: I do myself, Mike, Brian, this is Huey. Lucy goes,
Speaker 9: oh man, you know there's funny ways. Yeah, I know
Speaker 9: who you are. I know you are just I saw
Speaker 9: your show. I've seen the show. He's just my top
Speaker 9: ten might have been top three, top three shows I've
Speaker 9: ever seen ever ever, top three, top three shows. I said, whoa,
Speaker 9: thank you really great? You mind if I share that
Speaker 9: with my guys? Yeah, no, no problem. I said, wow,
Speaker 9: that's going to make our whole day. I said, where
Speaker 9: was it? He said, l A four? I said, I said,
Speaker 9: I said, which night? Which night? He says, first night.
Speaker 9: I said, Brian Wilson, wilcuse me wrong, ran true story.
Speaker 12: The look and discussed there's three quarters.
Speaker 11: No, well that's funny he mentioned Wilson because I didn't
Speaker 11: want to go superquest lovel hyper bowl when.
Speaker 9: I hyper bowl.
Speaker 1: Yes I am hyper bowl. That's my favorite sport.
Speaker 12: Hyper Bowl, no happen.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go full.
Speaker 11: Quest love hyperbole when I wanted to compare their harmony
Speaker 11: game close to that of Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: But that's how tight.
Speaker 12: You gave it an email and they were a big
Speaker 12: influence on and you can clearly that ship.
Speaker 9: You can hear it.
Speaker 1: That's why you know.
Speaker 9: I agree.
Speaker 11: Okay, I won't embarrass myself, but sorry about Robert Man.
Speaker 11: But I mean, uh, now that you say it, yeah,
Speaker 11: l A is not being kind to a lot of greats.
Speaker 11: There's the infamous uh Prince Rolling Rolling Stone uh show
Speaker 11: where he got mercilessly boot. I mean, there's plenty of others.
Speaker 11: So that's weird that you say that l A is.
Speaker 11: I can I can imagine. I can imagine that.
Speaker 1: I think for you, it's probably easy to do a
Speaker 1: spot outside of LA where there's not the pressure here
Speaker 1: is watching you.
Speaker 9: Tulsa, Oklahoma, these are good towns for us. It's it's
Speaker 9: it's I don't want to.
Speaker 12: Lewis Camp.
Speaker 1: Make it pounds LSD.
Speaker 12: You can't stop outing with you. What the fuck is happening?
Speaker 9: Like mind meld, we're getting the contact.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean it's magic.
Speaker 9: No, I mean it's it's it's like a sports sports towns,
Speaker 9: the great sports town also great rock and roll towns,
Speaker 9: and the towns were you know, I mean, l A
Speaker 9: is the worst baseball town in the world. To this place.
Speaker 9: We had heard for years the Cleveland was was the
Speaker 9: was the best rock and roll town in America. And
Speaker 9: I thought, really, Cleveland, how can Cleveland be? I had
Speaker 9: no clol So we played the Agora there and had
Speaker 9: this amazing gig. And afterwards we're driving out of town
Speaker 9: in the bus and it and it's a gray, kind
Speaker 9: of a dismal day and the skyline of Cleveland is
Speaker 9: its not every day, pretty rough looking. And I said,
Speaker 9: I said to the guys that we'd had this. I went, wow, guys,
Speaker 9: you know what the harder rock and roll really is
Speaker 9: in Cleveland. I said, Oh my god, that's a song,
Speaker 9: the harder rock and rolls in Cleveland. And my that's
Speaker 9: the genesis of it, John, the harder rock and rolls
Speaker 9: in Cleveland. Oh my god, I'll work on it. I'll
Speaker 9: work on it and so but.
Speaker 10: That was the inspry.
Speaker 8: Because I've been saying the harder rock and roll is
Speaker 8: the beat still beating.
Speaker 7: That initially that I just thought it was the beat
Speaker 7: still beating, like still beaten, still beating.
Speaker 9: The old boy might be barely breathing. Okay, Harder rock
Speaker 9: and roll would still be, thank you. And really what
Speaker 9: it's about is about you know, the rock and roll
Speaker 9: business is in l A and New York, but you
Speaker 9: find good bands everywhere, and good music is everywhere, and
Speaker 9: that's what that's That was how vindicated?
Speaker 11: How vindicated did you feel when they announced in eighty
Speaker 11: seven that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was
Speaker 11: going to be well still be because we were all
Speaker 11: like what And then once they gave their reasons, I
Speaker 11: was like, okay, okay, So were you at all shocked
Speaker 11: at the.
Speaker 1: Reception of sports at all?
Speaker 9: Well? Yeah, I mean, you know the thing is when
Speaker 9: I listened to sports right as I realized then we
Speaker 9: were making on records and this is eighty We made
Speaker 9: the record in eighty two, released.
Speaker 5: In eighty three, So I'm sorry what studio.
Speaker 9: We cut mostly at the record plant and at Fantasy
Speaker 9: Records and a place called Studio D in Saucelito did
Speaker 9: some overdubs Era and Bob Cleer Mountain mixed it here
Speaker 9: at the power station right here in New York. But
Speaker 9: if you think about it, eighty three radio was king.
Speaker 9: MTV had just started. There was a big beef about
Speaker 9: how MTV wasn't playing any diverse artists and that stuff.
Speaker 9: But what they were doing is they were following radio
Speaker 9: and Records's playlist exactly. That's why some of the tunes
Speaker 9: which your hits had those horrible videos that they kept
Speaker 9: showing over and over again, and then we have those.
Speaker 9: But it was a radio world and there was no internet.
Speaker 9: There was no you know, no no pop radio, no,
Speaker 9: no computers, no, none of that stuff. So you we
Speaker 9: had and by then CHR radio was the only format.
Speaker 9: You know. Radio Top forty started with a guy in
Speaker 9: Fresno with the advent of push button radio. A program
Speaker 9: in Fesno figured out that if with push button radios,
Speaker 9: if people heard something they didn't like, they'd switch the channel.
Speaker 9: So the idea was narrow your playlist. Top forty, play
Speaker 9: the hits over and over again so they never leave.
Speaker 9: And then FM came as an alternative to that. With
Speaker 9: all the.
Speaker 1: Album cuts.
Speaker 9: But within eight years it was programmed and CHR was
Speaker 9: the format contemporary hit radio on f radio, and so
Speaker 9: we all competed for that format, which was a hit single.
Speaker 9: And if you did not have a hit single, you
Speaker 9: didn't exist. So our job making our record was to
Speaker 9: have a hit. And so we well, that's it. We
Speaker 9: aimed everything we are looking at, but we aimed every
Speaker 9: song at radio and different. One was kind of a rocker,
Speaker 9: one was kind of not a rocker. One was kind
Speaker 9: of a little more R and B. But we knew
Speaker 9: we needed a hit. We didn't know we were gonna
Speaker 9: have six album, but we knew we needed one. And beginning,
Speaker 9: what did you aim for, Like, let's just have three
Speaker 9: top ten hits in a single a hit. I tried
Speaker 9: to make everything I hit and and now that I
Speaker 9: listened back to sports, it is an album of its time.
Speaker 9: It's a collection of singles album. The greatest one song
Speaker 9: doesn't have anything to do with the other song. I
Speaker 9: mean finally found a Home and bad as bad these
Speaker 9: are these are like different genres of music entirely in
Speaker 9: a way. Our subsequent albums hold together much better as albums, and.
Speaker 12: You didn't clearly didn't think about that as you were
Speaker 12: making this. It was just like it was just a hit.
Speaker 12: It was just make a hit.
Speaker 9: It wasn't like make.
Speaker 11: And make and hit hey as a song. I'll go
Speaker 11: one above MTV and ask you, did you ever fathom
Speaker 11: in your life that one day your song, uh, specifically
Speaker 11: the harder rock and roll would ever be utilized in
Speaker 11: a soul trained dance line?
Speaker 1: Are you where the fact that you guys have rotation
Speaker 1: on Soul Trained for one year?
Speaker 9: We would?
Speaker 1: So here's the deal.
Speaker 9: So Cornelius had had taste, here's the.
Speaker 1: So good confirmed the deal was in eighty four.
Speaker 11: Okay, So Black People's relationship with MTV's is rather strange
Speaker 11: because of course, you know, Rick Rick James had legitimate
Speaker 11: be like, well, I've sold out stadiums.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm not on TV. So the thing
Speaker 1: is to watch Michael Jackson videos. Especially that most cable
Speaker 1: networks weren't in the actual inner city. They were more
Speaker 1: of a suburbia thing. So we would have to plan weekends.
Speaker 1: So I would spend like a weekend a youth bill.
Speaker 8: I just remembered, like going to my aunt's house in
Speaker 8: Kentucky and she had MTV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the thing.
Speaker 11: Most of my weekends in nineteen eighty three eighty four, Yo,
Speaker 11: can I spend the night Aunts Sheer and Uncle Junie's house.
Speaker 1: So I would go to the suburbs, the Philly out
Speaker 1: in Yayden, back when Jayden was a.
Speaker 11: Suburb, and I would sit in front of MTV seventeen
Speaker 11: hours now, yes, to wait for those five rotations of
Speaker 11: beat It to come on and Billy Jean.
Speaker 1: However, all that other stuff's coming to me too. You
Speaker 1: guys are coming to each.
Speaker 9: I remember the Pat bennettar one where the Nazis are doing.
Speaker 1: This, yes, yes, yeah, Hells for Children.
Speaker 11: It's literally like all this Thomas Dobie and Nina ninety
Speaker 11: nine lef yes, everything, everything that defines MTV. I'm I'm
Speaker 11: absorbing just so I can wait for the Michael Jackson videos.
Speaker 11: But I'm you know, after nine nine rotations of this
Speaker 11: now I'm fans of them too.
Speaker 4: And just think a moment a mirror. I just want
Speaker 4: to think the whole audience is went. That's why I
Speaker 4: know all this ship.
Speaker 11: We were waiting for beat It to come on every
Speaker 11: hour and a half. Because so the thing is is
Speaker 11: that in eighty four, I think Don Cornelius saw the
Speaker 11: paradigm shift. So the first sign of it was during
Speaker 11: the during the Tina Marie episode of eighty four, he showed.
Speaker 1: Everyone remembers where they were.
Speaker 11: It was like that time that no, no, no, well
Speaker 11: I'm saying they showed the rap around your finger thing,
Speaker 11: and that was weird to say. And now from the
Speaker 11: video world, one of the rock greats, the police are
Speaker 11: wrapped around your finger.
Speaker 1: We're like, we look at each other like huh. White
Speaker 1: people assault like this.
Speaker 11: So during the run DMC episode of Soul Training, white
Speaker 11: people were never on jazz band, well, no they were,
Speaker 11: I mean, Bowie down.
Speaker 12: John breathing breathing black people. I get it.
Speaker 11: So the point is that during the run dem Se
Speaker 11: dazz Band episode, they showed the Hard Rock.
Speaker 12: And Roll Video Award.
Speaker 11: No it was I mean then it was like, you know,
Speaker 11: I realized that Don realized he had to play the
Speaker 11: game of the day, and the thing was you had
Speaker 11: to amalgamate.
Speaker 1: Modern pop inside your format.
Speaker 11: I mean, some things were weird, like I think once
Speaker 11: he tried to make uh Genesis illegal alien work. But
Speaker 11: the songs like one hundred and fifty DPMs. It's too
Speaker 11: song to dance, it's too fast to dance to.
Speaker 12: You can't do the whole line thing with that ship.
Speaker 11: So no harder rock and roll got three for you
Speaker 11: guys to be placed on the souldiering dance line, which
Speaker 11: is like, no, that's prime real estate spot.
Speaker 1: That is some major ship.
Speaker 10: You know about the dance line? Did you watch Train?
Speaker 10: I said, do you know about the dance line?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 12: So you know that's like soul Train a cultural final
Speaker 12: about it.
Speaker 9: I know I never saw a harder rock and roll
Speaker 9: on Soultree.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a thing, trust me, it's a major thing.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Can you describe the night of USA for Africa?
Speaker 12: Jesus?
Speaker 1: Was it just a routine stop for you? Was it not?
Speaker 9: It was unbelievable. I mean, you mean we are the
Speaker 9: world right, yes, I mean you know you can imagine.
Speaker 9: Just you don't get to meet all those people in
Speaker 9: a lifetime or a career. And I mean, and Ray
Speaker 9: Charles was there. I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't even
Speaker 9: introduce myself to Ray Charles. I just I just hung
Speaker 9: back and watched him a lot of time. I totally
Speaker 9: understand it was I was just I'm just totally in
Speaker 9: all of Ray Charles. And then did you bomb with
Speaker 9: anyone there? Like, yeah, Paul Simon was was crazy? Okay, Paul?
Speaker 8: Was there anybody you were nervous to be besides Ray Charles?
Speaker 12: Everybody?
Speaker 9: Well, Bruce, we hung out with Bruce told jokes for
Speaker 9: a long time. It was they let nobody in there
Speaker 9: but the artists for a long time and it was
Speaker 9: really amazing.
Speaker 1: So all your people at to stay in the green
Speaker 1: room or a green.
Speaker 9: Room there with a thing and they were just it
Speaker 9: was just us and man, it was. It was an
Speaker 9: amazing evening.
Speaker 11: How long did general background vocals take to do for
Speaker 11: that session, the whole because I know that you're one
Speaker 11: of the leads, but all the background not long. How
Speaker 11: long did it take the record in general?
Speaker 9: Well, we started after to the American Music Awards, so
Speaker 9: that was probably eleven, well early in LA so six
Speaker 9: to nine, so we're there at ten o'clock, I bet,
Speaker 9: and we went all night and then the Dylan's thing
Speaker 9: that he sang was in the morning was like six
Speaker 9: seven in the morning.
Speaker 1: We can tell it looks it looks it he looks
Speaker 1: six am oh my goodness, so.
Speaker 12: He looks like six am six.
Speaker 1: So okay, here's the thing.
Speaker 9: I mean, background balls have probably done ten I bet
Speaker 9: they were done by midnight or twelve thirty. We all
Speaker 9: sang the same part, right, he did all the parts,
Speaker 9: and then we all sang the same part unison, and
Speaker 9: then they put him together.
Speaker 11: So I would almost say that your A game has
Speaker 11: to be on point because I would assume that it
Speaker 11: could be very intimidating to sing in front of all
Speaker 11: these people. So the ways we're like, look, okay, you
Speaker 11: got me singing right after Michael Jackson. Can I just
Speaker 11: punch in, like punch it.
Speaker 9: In or like it's funny, because I you know, I'm nervous.
Speaker 9: My legs my leg was shaken like this. I couldn't
Speaker 9: I couldn't stop my leg from shaking. I was so nervous.
Speaker 9: And of course we start and Hamburdo Gatica was the
Speaker 9: was the engineer, and so they start boom, and they
Speaker 9: wanted to go one full pass all the way around
Speaker 9: because they had to bleed the microphones one down, one
Speaker 9: up and like that, and with the ambience and everything,
Speaker 9: so they didn't want to punch and all that they
Speaker 9: want to get one full performance. So they started with
Speaker 9: Lionel and then Stevie Wonder and Stevie's messed this thing
Speaker 9: up kind of almost on purpose, just being cute and funny.
Speaker 9: So they stopped the tape and then they go back
Speaker 9: and they started again, and they get about halfway and
Speaker 9: Algerol messes up. They stop and they go back and
Speaker 9: now he comes out to a just bike. I said,
Speaker 9: can you run the whole piece so we can have
Speaker 9: a shot at her bed. You know, I just Quincy
Speaker 9: just sang me the line. No, he had Michael sing
Speaker 9: me the line. Quincy says, sing it for me. I
Speaker 9: sang it. He says, great, go again, So I want
Speaker 9: to try it right and and he keeps stopping, and
Speaker 9: he keeps stubbing, but finding we went all the way
Speaker 9: through and uh then we finished and and now Quincy says,
Speaker 9: it's good. But I'll tell you, let's do one more
Speaker 9: anding Hue, why don't you sing a harmony with with
Speaker 9: uh Cindy? Oh, he comes in.
Speaker 1: I was staying together.
Speaker 9: Okay, okay, well that's a creative choice. Single harmony was
Speaker 9: one am I gonna and I got look I'm looking
Speaker 9: at Stevie wonder right, and you know what, forget about it.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna make up this thing. And you know, so,
Speaker 9: you know, it worked out. I don't even know what
Speaker 9: I did.
Speaker 1: I was so that vocal was a concurrent, no point.
Speaker 9: All the way through. And when we cut it, you know,
Speaker 9: Michael was right next to me and and he was
Speaker 9: h he didn't miss a trick, man. I mean, he,
Speaker 9: in his kind of little spacey way, did not miss
Speaker 9: a trick. He knew exactly what was going on. And
Speaker 9: so when I asked Humberto, I said, can you let
Speaker 9: it run it through this weekend? Run our lines? You went, good, idea,
Speaker 9: that's good. So now now running head and finally we
Speaker 9: do this one pass that's really good. And now he
Speaker 9: goes and humber and Quincy goes, all right, good, let's
Speaker 9: do one more. And we go back to one more
Speaker 9: and he goes and Michael urgently grabs the shirts. They're
Speaker 9: going to save that, aren't they. I said, yeah, they're
Speaker 9: going to save that one. He goes, that was one.
Speaker 9: I said, I know it. It was the one.
Speaker 1: Look, yeah, I got anxiety just listening to the I need.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Michael did not miss a trick man was on it.
Speaker 12: How did you get how were you picked as one
Speaker 12: of the solo people?
Speaker 9: Got? No years, no, no, yeah. Other than that the group,
Speaker 9: I got princes line welcome, Oh.
Speaker 1: Siren, I did a siren. Wait you now, I gotta
Speaker 1: imagine Prince singing right before Michael, that little dirty Michael
Speaker 1: tried to set Prince up like I'm gonna go first
Speaker 1: and then you you followed me up.
Speaker 9: Wow. Yeah. Remember Prince didn't show on the whole deal.
Speaker 8: I think he was just too nervous to be around
Speaker 8: all those people. And plus he's the type of person
Speaker 8: that has to have a complete control over everything when
Speaker 8: he records.
Speaker 1: So he wasn't about to give.
Speaker 10: Michael had way too much.
Speaker 9: But so last minute I didn't know. I thought it
Speaker 9: was done and I'm over there, Well we finished the vote. Great,
Speaker 9: come guy. Some guy gives says, Quincy wants to see it,
Speaker 9: and I can walk back into the studio. He goes
Speaker 9: smelly singing the line he called Michael, just singing the line.
Speaker 9: Michael sings a line.
Speaker 1: I sing it.
Speaker 9: He goes, good, you got it, And it was Prince's
Speaker 9: line that I got.
Speaker 7: But also that line is fairly high in your range.
Speaker 7: If I'm not mistaken. Were you afraid of that line
Speaker 7: or were you just you felt it?
Speaker 9: What's that now?
Speaker 12: Were you afraid of the line because it's it's higher
Speaker 12: in your range?
Speaker 9: I think, Yeah, he sang it. I sang it back.
Speaker 9: That's awesome, you know. I was so I mean, that
Speaker 9: is kind of like a fog for me. I was
Speaker 9: so nervous. You can imagine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 9: there's your Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan raising under ray, Charles
Speaker 9: Danroyd forget about it.
Speaker 11: Yeah yeahh wait was this Stephen Bishop there too? No,
Speaker 11: it was someone somebody like really odd was just like
Speaker 11: Dan Akroyd. He was the odd one out because it
Speaker 11: was USA for Africa and he's Canadian.
Speaker 9: Whalen Jennings Wal Jennings. He did not have a good time,
Speaker 9: really he was. He was upset. He was upset, and
Speaker 9: he walked in the middle of the deal. He split.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, serious.
Speaker 9: Well, Stevie at some point wanted to the background vocals
Speaker 9: to be in Swahili.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, hearing about that.
Speaker 9: So we he got we sent out for two African
Speaker 9: gals who knew could speak Swahil. You could translate the
Speaker 9: background votes. And when they came into the studio and
Speaker 9: they and we're all standing around, they stand there, Okay,
Speaker 9: now what is this? Say this in swa anyway.
Speaker 12: Something like that.
Speaker 9: At this point, At this point, Ray Ray Charles goes,
Speaker 9: raise over here, Wrigles rang the bell, Quincy, is that
Speaker 9: any good?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 9: You know there was a break.
Speaker 12: That's awesome.
Speaker 9: There was a break. There was a break in the action.
Speaker 9: And now we're taking a break. And I'm just shadowing,
Speaker 9: Ray Charles. This is what I did, though, I just
Speaker 9: staying three feet away from.
Speaker 10: Just checking them out, talking.
Speaker 1: Shadowing.
Speaker 9: But he now sits down at the piano and starts
Speaker 9: playing this kind of blues thing and he goes a
Speaker 9: cute remember this one. And he's playing like that, and
Speaker 9: Quincy looks at me and he goes, you know, Alana,
Speaker 9: Richie wasn't even born when we cut that song. Really,
Speaker 9: you know they did in Seattle. Pretty cool. Now I'm
Speaker 9: now I'm talking to Willie Nelson over there, and he's going,
Speaker 9: he's going, hey, I hear you play golf. I said, yeah,
Speaker 9: I just started. It's fun to do on the road.
Speaker 9: He goes, yeah, that's what we do. I said, I
Speaker 9: just you put your clubs on the bus. I said, yeah,
Speaker 9: we put our clubs on the bus and we played.
Speaker 9: He said, yeah, that's what we're doing too. And we're
Speaker 9: talking and Bob Dylan comes over, walks over and he goes,
Speaker 9: are you guys talking about golf? He said yeah. He goes, wow,
Speaker 9: that's outrageous. I said no, Bob, phil Skyline was outraged.
Speaker 9: This is just golf.
Speaker 11: Is this officially the first time that you're meeting your
Speaker 11: peers or so? Was there any bonding in your career
Speaker 11: to that point with notable celebs like you.
Speaker 1: Weren't BFFs with the guys from Toto or Low.
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, but Dylan wrote me a really
Speaker 9: nice note man at the end of the deal, wrote me,
Speaker 9: sent me and he sent me a song. Really, he
Speaker 9: sent me a song that I didn't cut, which is
Speaker 9: a complete mistake. Bob Dylan sends you a song, you do.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 5: Did somebody else end up cutting it?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 9: I never heard it. I never heard it. So but
Speaker 9: he also sent me a Junior Parker song. He was great.
Speaker 9: He WoT me a really nice note. He's smart, you know, Bob,
Speaker 9: Bob Dylan is smart.
Speaker 1: So okay, I have a question now having joined uh
Speaker 1: Columbia House, I always always say that. Also my education
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that I never sent the records
Speaker 1: back when I got them at Columbia House. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't want something, you have thirty days,
Speaker 1: you have thirty days if just never pay for them,
Speaker 1: that's what the that's what oh that of the scam. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't have hustle in me.
Speaker 11: So that said, and having having all all of your
Speaker 11: your your your records, I'm now noticing that with the
Speaker 11: massive amount of units sold for sports, usually people figure out, Okay,
Speaker 11: I'm gonna do the departure record like the opposite of it.
Speaker 1: Which I'm gonna say for small world. But you guys
Speaker 1: actually decided to keep up the stamina with four So
Speaker 1: how hard was it to.
Speaker 11: Live up to that pressure? Like, Okay, now we're in
Speaker 11: the machine, like I feel like breaking in his heart,
Speaker 11: but staying there is even harder.
Speaker 9: Very very perceptive, man, you're very perceptive.
Speaker 5: Really, I actually told him to Steve that might be true.
Speaker 9: No, it isn't it.
Speaker 1: No, No, because it's rare. It's I can name few instances.
Speaker 11: I mean, someone Richie tried to follow with with with
Speaker 11: we cancelo down and dancing on the ceiling with thriller
Speaker 11: and bad Sports for anyone else does the departure record next?
Speaker 11: So what what was your mind state of Okay, we
Speaker 11: gotta come back the same or.
Speaker 9: Well this is because this is economics here, because in
Speaker 9: back in those days, you know, it wasn't it was
Speaker 9: wasn't Internet and all that stuff. So if you sold
Speaker 9: a big if you had a big record, your next
Speaker 9: record was gonna ship you know, a million units right
Speaker 9: out of the box. So the idea was, hit them
Speaker 9: while they're hot, make your next record as soon as
Speaker 9: you can, and no matter what. And that's and that's
Speaker 9: how you make it. But you know, so we sold
Speaker 9: you know, ten million copies of Sports, Well four was
Speaker 9: already going to go four million, no matter what it
Speaker 9: was like. So that was the problem, you know, because
Speaker 9: we we had to and they were on est for
Speaker 9: deadline one of them, and you know, you got to
Speaker 9: write the songs. It's hard to write, and so that
Speaker 9: was a tough record to make for us. We were struggling,
Speaker 9: and we wound up over here and in the power station,
Speaker 9: fishing off under deadlines with two studios going and singing
Speaker 9: in one and playing guitar and the other and mixing
Speaker 9: in a third. And it wasn't it wasn't a fun
Speaker 9: record to make, because you're right, we did it really
Speaker 9: to just capitalize on our success, you know.
Speaker 1: But I think there's an art to not overthinking it.
Speaker 1: And that's why.
Speaker 11: Now the thing is, do you with with the with
Speaker 11: the words that Brett Ellis wrote for American Psycho, did
Speaker 11: you feel as though they were being sarcastic or do
Speaker 11: you feel I feel as though he wrote that in truth?
Speaker 11: As far as for being your most accomplished records in
Speaker 11: the in the.
Speaker 9: I thought he did it was amazing. I read I
Speaker 9: heard about it. I read the book and he had
Speaker 9: these little dissertations not only on us but Phil Collins
Speaker 9: and Tina and he nailed it. I thought. I mean,
Speaker 9: he was clearly a fan and he was he understo
Speaker 9: you know. I mean, I thought he did a pretty
Speaker 9: critical job. And then they asked this for the film.
Speaker 9: Would would he would we could use the tune? And
Speaker 9: I knew the book, I knew the story and all that.
Speaker 9: I said, Sure, what's William Dafoe right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 9: I love William Dafoe and it's an art Christian smale,
Speaker 9: and so I said, no problem, you got it, and
Speaker 9: they paid us and they got the song. Then what
Speaker 9: happened was maybe a month before the song, before the
Speaker 9: movie was released, they said to the Knoe manager said,
Speaker 9: they want to do a soundtrack and he said, well, great,
Speaker 9: what that's gonna what's that gonna look like? And it
Speaker 9: was it was hip to be square. I think there
Speaker 9: was a Phil Collins tune and the rest was like
Speaker 9: source music. It was like a kind of a crappy record.
Speaker 9: You know. It wasn't gonna be a great album, the album,
Speaker 9: and so my manager just to.
Speaker 1: Buy your record too. Huh, It's probably best to just
Speaker 1: buy your album.
Speaker 9: So my manager said to me, he says, what do
Speaker 9: you think about this? They want to do a soundtrack album.
Speaker 9: I said, well, that's not going to be fair to
Speaker 9: our fans. I mean, fans are going to buy that
Speaker 9: for what? For one song? I mean, that's just do
Speaker 9: we have to do this? He says, no, no, well
Speaker 9: it's not a part of the deal. They just they
Speaker 9: just mentioned it. I said, yeah, let's politely decline, which
Speaker 9: he did.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 9: Now on the eve of the release of the movie,
Speaker 9: literally they send out a press release that says that
Speaker 9: Huey Lewis has pulled his tune from the soundtrack because
Speaker 9: the movie is too violent, trying to gin up attention
Speaker 9: for the movie. Really, and I thought, come on, fellas,
Speaker 9: please not cool, you know, not cool? Show this check.
Speaker 8: Well, let's go back to Back to the Future, which,
Speaker 8: by the way, can I say that I did not
Speaker 8: realize that you had a cameo in that movie until
Speaker 8: like a week ago.
Speaker 9: You know know, he was the guys.
Speaker 8: I did not realize that was you.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that was the idea. Really, it just kind of
Speaker 9: disguised me and it was the Mecca's Well it worked.
Speaker 9: It took thirty years for me to realize it worked.
Speaker 8: This guy was pretty good, so well, I just wasn't
Speaker 8: expecting it to.
Speaker 9: Be you, you know.
Speaker 11: Yeah, with how you treated music videos and your your
Speaker 11: Hollywood looks, you could have been the clooney of videos.
Speaker 11: Well the wa why did you not explore acting further?
Speaker 11: They're in or were you loyal to the guys? And
Speaker 11: I don't want to leave them out there? And yeah,
Speaker 11: we were doing what we wanted to do. We were
Speaker 11: writing our songs and selling out venues everywhere. Everything was great,
Speaker 11: you know. And the video thing is funny because we actually.
Speaker 9: Did our own We did it. There was an outfit
Speaker 9: called Video West in San Francisco. First video camera, ever, videotape.
Speaker 9: This is brand new. This was seventy eight, brand new.
Speaker 9: And so she said, we'll video a couple of year songs.
Speaker 9: Are a song if we can show it on our
Speaker 9: Video West program. That and a cable cable was all
Speaker 9: this stuff was new. I said, sure, so we and
Speaker 9: you can have the video. So we we shut the video.
Speaker 9: They showed it, and the video helped us get a
Speaker 9: record deal. And when we got the record deal, we
Speaker 9: had Do You Believe in Love was our second single.
Speaker 9: And now the record label decided the first single off
Speaker 9: the off that record of second album that we and
Speaker 9: we by this point we were making our own rep.
Speaker 9: We're producing on records. We produced our second record picture
Speaker 9: this ourselves and so but they decided that we needed
Speaker 9: a professional video and so they hired an ad agency
Speaker 9: guy to do the do You Believe in Love? Video?
Speaker 9: And the set was all in pastels and Matt we
Speaker 9: had kind of pastel shirts that they were kind of
Speaker 9: matching with makeup, you know, and little rouge on our
Speaker 9: cheeks and stuff. This is the video where the five
Speaker 9: of us are in bed with the girl and all
Speaker 9: this stuff. And so they shot this video all day
Speaker 9: and night. And now we go home. And now two
Speaker 9: weeks later we go back for the playback, and we
Speaker 9: go back in and at Christmas Records, and a bunch
Speaker 9: of people from the record company, a bunch of people
Speaker 9: from the video company, my band, a bunch of our guys.
Speaker 9: There were probably thirty people in the room. And so
Speaker 9: they say, okay, here's the new video, and they share
Speaker 9: off lights and they play the video and I just
Speaker 9: sank my heart, just said I was so terrible. I
Speaker 9: believe it was just horrible. I just thought there was
Speaker 9: no direction. The guy wasn't singing to the case lose,
Speaker 9: He's singing to what's going on here. The whole thing
Speaker 9: was a mess, I thought. And we looked silly with
Speaker 9: a rouge on her cheeks and all that stuff. I said,
Speaker 9: this is horrible, almost a billy squire out And I
Speaker 9: remember thinking, oh, this is this is terrible. This is horrible.
Speaker 9: And the video ends and everybody stands up and applaud.
Speaker 9: It's kind of standing on this. So I thought to myself.
Speaker 9: Anybody can do this. We're doing our own records, we
Speaker 9: need to do our own videos. So from then on
Speaker 9: we did our own videos. And the idea was, don't
Speaker 9: ape the song, don't have anything to do with the song.
Speaker 9: If the song ziggs, make the video zag, don't tell,
Speaker 9: don't retell the story, and just goof. And we did
Speaker 9: him in San Francisco on different sides of Portreal Hill,
Speaker 9: almost just to let the let the seagulls and the ocean,
Speaker 9: let that be the be the production stuff. Let chew
Speaker 9: the scenery, and that was the theory. And we did
Speaker 9: a bunch of them that way. We did one New Drug.
Speaker 9: If this is it, h stuck with you? That is bad.
Speaker 9: All these were done in the same manner, in the
Speaker 9: same place.
Speaker 11: I got to interrupt you because I just thought about
Speaker 11: something I can't I can't count the amount of times
Speaker 11: I filled the kitchen sink with water.
Speaker 1: One of the opening scenes about want a New Drug, is,
Speaker 1: you know, filling up the.
Speaker 9: Sink with.
Speaker 1: Water and ice water.
Speaker 9: I swipe that right. I starn't wear Paul Newman Harper.
Speaker 9: The opening scene of Harper and Paul Newman, he wakes
Speaker 9: up hungover. It's ice in the sink, but it's his
Speaker 9: head of the ice.
Speaker 1: I never was.
Speaker 9: Unbelievably cold.
Speaker 1: This is what people want to trust me.
Speaker 9: It was unbelievably cold.
Speaker 8: It really was.
Speaker 9: It was cold.
Speaker 11: He I really wish I knew you back early in
Speaker 11: my career, because this is the second thing that I
Speaker 11: never thought about until right now, that sometimes you should
Speaker 11: just make a video for a song that has nothing
Speaker 11: to do.
Speaker 1: I never thought of that. Whatsoever.
Speaker 9: We want to stay out of the way of the song.
Speaker 9: I was always were I always thought, you know, why
Speaker 9: do we have to retell this story? Songs tell a story?
Speaker 9: And I always say, munch in the way. A good
Speaker 9: book is better than the movie. A good song is
Speaker 9: always better than the video for the same reason.
Speaker 1: Damn, I never thought of that, And it's now way
Speaker 1: too late. So I can I why er Smith dar videos?
Speaker 1: We just never appear in our videos now.
Speaker 5: So can I follow up?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 12: So Nick, love with that back to the future.
Speaker 5: So with with with with that theory of yours with
Speaker 5: the videos, and now you're supplying songs to a movie.
Speaker 5: Did you use that same theory like power of love
Speaker 5: is not necessarily telling the same story exactly?
Speaker 9: Yeah, real Steve. What happened was Steve Spielberg, Bob Zamechas
Speaker 9: and Bob Gail asked to take a meeting with us
Speaker 9: at Amblin at Amblin in La and we went there
Speaker 9: and took a meeting and Zameca said, look, we've just
Speaker 9: written this film called Back to the Future, and our hero,
Speaker 9: our lead character, guy called Marty McFly, and his favorite
Speaker 9: band would be Huey lewis in the news. So we thought,
Speaker 9: how would you like to write a song for the film.
Speaker 9: And I said, wow, I'm flattered. I don't know how
Speaker 9: what writing for film means. I said, you know, I've
Speaker 9: never written for film. Don't have any idea. I said, besides,
Speaker 9: I'm not too keen on writing a song called back
Speaker 9: to the Future. And they said, oh, we don't care
Speaker 9: what you call it, do We just want one of
Speaker 9: your songs. So I said, okay, I'll send you the
Speaker 9: next thing we write, wow, which was power Love.
Speaker 8: It was literally the next thing he wrote after that
Speaker 8: phone call.
Speaker 9: That was the next thing we wrote, wow.
Speaker 5: Really, But then Back in Time was written specifically.
Speaker 9: They wanted another song for the credits, and by then
Speaker 9: I'd seen the film. I hadn't seen it, and so
Speaker 9: I wrote that as you know, specifically for that.
Speaker 5: All right, so my my overriding question with regards to
Speaker 5: those songs, No, I mean, so we we understand that
Speaker 5: that they they You got the cameo in the movie
Speaker 5: based on your probably your video acting and your Hollywood
Speaker 5: good looks. As Questla pointed out, he is an attractive
Speaker 5: dude man, and and you can correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 5: but probably got the gig for the songs because you
Speaker 5: were like the biggest band happening at that moment. And
Speaker 5: and yes, I guess Martin McFly would be a fan.
Speaker 5: But but there's something else going on. There's something that
Speaker 5: makes you like super perfect and those songs, like it
Speaker 5: seems like it's meshing in a way that's more than
Speaker 5: just a regular match. Like it seems like like interesting,
Speaker 5: that's very interesting for the film. But you didn't just
Speaker 5: like the combination of you and Michael J. Fox and
Speaker 5: whatever they did in that movie just seems like it's perfect.
Speaker 9: You know, I have a theory about that, and I'm
Speaker 9: not I'm not. Uh, it's interesting in that, you know.
Speaker 9: And Zamechas always said that he always credited you know,
Speaker 9: Power Love. The song was released before the film, and
Speaker 9: they released a song and it went to number one.
Speaker 9: It takes like nine weeks or something to get to
Speaker 9: number one. And then and so that they released the
Speaker 9: movie when Power Love was number one, and Zamechas already
Speaker 9: to this day we have a reunion sort of every
Speaker 9: five years, and he says it was the best marketing
Speaker 9: come out ever. You know, you got a number one song.
Speaker 9: But and and the interesting part about it is for
Speaker 9: me is that the fact that it had when I
Speaker 9: when I wrote the song, when we wrote the song,
Speaker 9: and and and I sent it to Zamecchas, I didn't
Speaker 9: think it was gonna work for them because there was
Speaker 9: no love object in the film by that point. I'd
Speaker 9: read the script. At least I hadn't seen it, but
Speaker 9: I read the script and there was no I didn't
Speaker 9: think it was gonna work, but they used it in
Speaker 9: the chase scene. And I think, and I've I've I've
Speaker 9: thought about this subsequently. When when a song is is
Speaker 9: not when you don't retell the story, it's it's it's
Speaker 9: its own story, and it only it only is relevant
Speaker 9: tangentially to the thing, Yet it it becomes another leg
Speaker 9: for that whole thing to stand on. In other words,
Speaker 9: it's better to have a song that stands on its own.
Speaker 9: That's not exactly about the film. It's better for the
Speaker 9: film because it gives us you get a good, strong
Speaker 9: song out of it. So many times we write songs
Speaker 9: just for the film and they're not that's all they do.
Speaker 12: The knowledge he's dropping, it's like it makes no sense,
Speaker 12: but all the sense.
Speaker 8: It makes perfect. It makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 1: I've learned three I've learned more like from this episode
Speaker 1: of question like supreme, like when not have any other
Speaker 1: one hundred place what.
Speaker 9: He just said.
Speaker 8: It almost it seems so obvious that you just kind
Speaker 8: of like want to ignore it because it just seems
Speaker 8: obvious that it can't be right.
Speaker 9: But you've proven that it's yeah, because it's another's contrast,
Speaker 9: it's another leg of that. If you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: There's it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 7: So if someone asked you to write a song for
Speaker 7: a film, Now, what would you.
Speaker 9: Do if I had to write a song for a film? Now, well,
Speaker 9: I probably do the same thing just writing a song.
Speaker 9: I mean, we have we have a musical that we're
Speaker 9: trying to get to Broadway. We just put it up
Speaker 9: in San Diego and I wrote a new song for that,
Speaker 9: and it was really kind of fun because it's really
Speaker 9: fun to write for other situations than your own right
Speaker 9: another voice. It's it's really creative and easy as opposed
Speaker 9: to writing for something that you want to say.
Speaker 7: But speaking of musicals, how do you feel watching people
Speaker 7: taking yourself songs that they are more or less the
Speaker 7: same songs but in a totally different genre and watching
Speaker 7: like this, what has to make you feel as a songwriter?
Speaker 9: Very interesting? Good question.
Speaker 12: I I.
Speaker 9: That's why I that's why I engaged in this music musical.
Speaker 9: I had a friend of mine, long story, they they
Speaker 9: they wrote the script and uh and we got it
Speaker 9: all up and then and I'm just I was worried
Speaker 9: about how the songs were going to be handled, and
Speaker 9: so you know, I was very careful about that because
Speaker 9: but our our musical director is a guy called Brian
Speaker 9: Yusifer who worked on Kicky Boots and a bunch of
Speaker 9: other stuff. Well, he's absolutely brilliant. He again went against
Speaker 9: type with a song with a song was like like, uh,
Speaker 9: you know, uh uh, well hit me like a hammer,
Speaker 9: which is a male. He had a girls girls, girls
Speaker 9: singing and all this, So how they're handled is super important,
Speaker 9: right and uh, and you gotta be careful that because
Speaker 9: it can be a little silly sometimes.
Speaker 12: Sure, so do you okay, do you worry about do
Speaker 12: you worry about that?
Speaker 7: Because I'm coming from I just got back from London
Speaker 7: two days ago, but working on a jukebox musical of
Speaker 7: similar ilk And you worry about songs that were totally
Speaker 7: masculine based, are totally male based, switching them over or
Speaker 7: a song that was a fast I think that's a
Speaker 7: good idea to be honest, right, is to totally avoid
Speaker 7: them or whatever?
Speaker 9: When when the when the original zagged? Seriously, I think.
Speaker 7: Here's what I learned from Hugh Lewis, zig fuck it
Speaker 7: goes zag. That's a lesson number. Okay, keep going, sorry
Speaker 7: that your name on the show you.
Speaker 9: Talk infiltrate then double gross.
Speaker 1: That mic dropping.
Speaker 11: Okay, So I know how how attached you were h
Speaker 11: to based on your press the Small World album?
Speaker 9: Right, did you feel by the way Rolling Stones worst
Speaker 9: album of the year, Small World, worst album of the year.
Speaker 5: I read that Rolling Stone, How does that sound?
Speaker 11: Did you did you feel as though it was like,
Speaker 11: is there a fear of riding too high, and you wonder, okay,
Speaker 11: is this overkill?
Speaker 1: Is this overkill?
Speaker 9: Is this overkill?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 9: No, you know, honestly, four you called you got me
Speaker 9: on four. You know, four was an economic thing. We
Speaker 9: just rushed it out and tried to get capitalized on
Speaker 9: our momentum. But the win is a win. They're still
Speaker 9: hit there at least, But because we had a couple
Speaker 9: we had left art. But after that we honestly and
Speaker 9: even that even four, to a certain extent, since that time,
Speaker 9: I have never done anything for commercial reasons period. That's
Speaker 9: a deal I made with myself. I said, look, you
Speaker 9: you know, you gotta stay pure to your just do
Speaker 9: stuff that matters to you and that and then you
Speaker 9: can't go wrong just you know, integrity. And so that's
Speaker 9: what Small World was. We were trying to do expand
Speaker 9: and do some other stuff. And you know the best
Speaker 9: part of that one is Stan gets his song. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I mean, he just killed that thing. And that's a
Speaker 9: kind of a funny story because my dad was a jazzer,
Speaker 9: you know, and so u Zoot Sims died and and
Speaker 9: so they had a tribute to him at at Kimball's.
Speaker 9: I think or somewhere in San Francisco, right, And it
Speaker 9: wasn't Kimballs. It was the old Jazz Cup. I can't
Speaker 9: remember it, but now those three sixty five yeah maybe maybe. Anyway,
Speaker 9: my old man loved all that stuff. So I secretly
Speaker 9: I got tickets for him, and I said, Pops, I
Speaker 9: got two tickets for the for the Zoot Sims benefit
Speaker 9: and Stan Gatz and and uh all they had all
Speaker 9: these guys. So now Jimmy Jones what So now we
Speaker 9: go and we and they showed me too, and I
Speaker 9: go in and go, oh my god, here we look.
Speaker 9: And my dad, you know, he didn't know anything from me.
Speaker 9: He hard hardcore jazzer. You know, he thought what I
Speaker 9: do is comic book stuff.
Speaker 1: He loved the house, though, didn't he.
Speaker 9: In the car at first he paid no attention. So
Speaker 9: now we go and we get the two seats, and
Speaker 9: they put us down there right on the aisle. And
Speaker 9: who's sitting right next but next next to where I'm
Speaker 9: sitting is Phil Elwood, the critic from the from the
Speaker 9: San Francisco Examiner, who's a jazz critic. And my old
Speaker 9: man knows all kinds of it. I mean, he knows
Speaker 9: he can tell you Jimmy Lunsford's band. He knows every
Speaker 9: musician in Chick Webb's band. I mean, my old man
Speaker 9: knows jazz, you know, and he loves it. And so
Speaker 9: he sees Phil Elwood, and Phil Elwood goes, oh my god,
Speaker 9: Huey lewis right me. And my old man goes, oh
Speaker 9: my god, that's Phil Elwood. And he's recogniz I said,
Speaker 9: he knows who my kid is. So now he and
Speaker 9: Phil Elwood are talking and they're going about this and
Speaker 9: Jimmy Lunsford and this that and and then I feel
Speaker 9: the tap of my shoulder and I turn around and
Speaker 9: it's gets and he's wearing his horn and he's tapped.
Speaker 9: It's the Houses, which kind of early. He's wearing his horn,
Speaker 9: and he taps me on the shoulder and he and
Speaker 9: I go. I look up. He goes, hey, Yoie lewis
Speaker 9: stan getz. He says, my girlfriend wants to eat your shorts.
Speaker 9: What do you say to that? Right? So I say, well,
Speaker 9: he says he, why don't you let me play on
Speaker 9: some of your ship? You know what? I can play
Speaker 9: that ship too. Oh my gosh, sure of course. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Do you have a yeah, let me give you my card,
Speaker 9: he wrote on he wrote stan Getz wrote his phone
Speaker 9: number and but have sacks will traveler and gave me
Speaker 9: the card. But on the ride home, my ole man
Speaker 9: says to me, you know he's got cancer and he's
Speaker 9: not going to be around very long and if you
Speaker 9: don't take him up on that, I will never ever
Speaker 9: forgive you. I away to.
Speaker 1: The record man.
Speaker 9: That ship.
Speaker 7: Was What kind of dad are you at this point?
Speaker 7: With your dad giving so much ship happening like your
Speaker 7: dad has been like go to Europe and fun off.
Speaker 7: You don't forget to get stan Getz on your record,
Speaker 7: because that's a real statement that people say, my kids,
Speaker 7: can we get them on the next question?
Speaker 1: Girl and a boy.
Speaker 7: My son, Well, Stan gets in my head. Stan Getz
Speaker 7: is the most laid back cat ever because all his
Speaker 7: playing is like that, Like if Stan gets on a.
Speaker 12: Huey Lewis record, you'd be like rocking. You get to
Speaker 12: the sax solo and it be like that's fine.
Speaker 9: Power horns on this record as well. We had to
Speaker 9: stand yet, we had to find out. We had to
Speaker 9: find a song. And Chris Hayes, our guitar player, wrote
Speaker 9: this little jam and I thought this would be great.
Speaker 9: And first, so we we did a demo of it,
Speaker 9: and I talked it at first. I went all around
Speaker 9: the world, there are people like you and me, from
Speaker 9: the poorest beggar in the street to the richest king
Speaker 9: and queen. Well the boom things whiling, and I was
Speaker 9: just kind of talking against it, which is kind of cool,
Speaker 9: I thought. And then and then and that's all we had,
Speaker 9: and we and I sent it to Gets and he said, great,
Speaker 9: I'll do it. So we made an appointment to do it.
Speaker 9: And then meanwhile we put tower power on it, and
Speaker 9: we had all the tower power horns on it, and
Speaker 9: I sang it, I you know, sang it instead of
Speaker 9: spoken it. So he comes up to do it at
Speaker 9: the session, comes to studio DD. He just drive them.
Speaker 9: He comes out, he puts on it, gets his horn out,
Speaker 9: he goes out and think he starts playing. He goes,
Speaker 9: oh my god, it's in C sharp. I'm it's you
Speaker 9: know C sharp for for a for a tenor for you? Yeah?
Speaker 12: No, is it the concert?
Speaker 9: Okay? So B concert? Really? Was it a B concert?
Speaker 12: It's a whole step it's tenor. I was a tenor
Speaker 12: play growing up.
Speaker 9: I wonder if we were real whatever. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 9: it's a funny key or something like that, and you.
Speaker 12: Can't see sharp is not a tenor key at all.
Speaker 12: It sucks.
Speaker 9: So and I said, wow, I didn't think of that.
Speaker 9: What I guess we could train v s o it
Speaker 9: or something. He says, really, what does that mean? I said, well,
Speaker 9: we can slow the tape down you play the way speech.
Speaker 9: So he says, okay, let's try it. So we tried
Speaker 9: to do that and it sounded like kazoos and so
Speaker 9: he was going, he's just don't worry about I'll just
Speaker 9: do it. He says, what I said, you sure? He says, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's just a challenge for super due. It goes out.
Speaker 12: We say that all the time, and now all the time.
Speaker 9: Now now gets goes out. And then and he starts
Speaker 9: the thing, and oh my god, clearly he had shedded
Speaker 9: it and he was he was just fooling. He had
Speaker 9: he had to shed it because he played it. And
Speaker 9: and what was amazing is he starts his solo and
Speaker 9: he's playing along real nice and all, and here comes
Speaker 9: tower power Bump bump it butter, No, butter, that butter,
Speaker 9: that butter that you know, these kind of lifts and
Speaker 9: and I and the big one they goes but but Butter,
Speaker 9: no no, And so in his headphones he's playing along
Speaker 9: and then then years but he goes, Buddy. I mean,
Speaker 9: it was such a musical lesson watching him react to
Speaker 9: when when stuff got busy, he went. He went when
Speaker 9: stuff was low, he got busy when it was It
Speaker 9: was unbelievable watching him like one of the great experiences
Speaker 9: of my life.
Speaker 7: I mean, those are the most polar opposite things IVE
Speaker 7: ever heard of. Tower of Power and stan Getz.
Speaker 9: It's it's still and it was a seven minute track,
Speaker 9: and I got the idea of splitting it up and
Speaker 9: making it the first cut and last cut, which was
Speaker 9: a complete mistake. Should have kept the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 9: because his solo on there, which is part two, is
Speaker 9: the best musical moment on that record by a long shot.
Speaker 9: I mean, wow, it's just really cool. He just such
Speaker 9: a great player.
Speaker 1: I just thought about something, and I know we gott
Speaker 1: to wrap it up, so well, I have one more question.
Speaker 12: What do you mean you know you're the boss?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No, because I'm about to go to movies. Okay, I forgot.
Speaker 1: You're in a Robert Altman film, Sir, I love.
Speaker 9: Robert No, no, no, I was like, you don't act. No,
Speaker 9: that's what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 12: You're before that bullshit.
Speaker 7: And mister Lewis or uh, did you ever fuck with
Speaker 7: the chromatic harp because you're such a diatonic carp player.
Speaker 12: You're known for that like that. You always carry on
Speaker 12: like eight different harps and different keys and shit. Sorry
Speaker 12: sorry with the chromatic car Yeah, but I what I.
Speaker 9: Do is playing C chromatic in D minor in your
Speaker 9: third position.
Speaker 10: Why is that funny?
Speaker 9: Bill?
Speaker 10: Can you explain it to the dummi? Because I don't
Speaker 10: know what you're laughing at.
Speaker 12: Oh okay, that was because no one would do that.
Speaker 9: That's why it's interesting the old blues guys sometimes so.
Speaker 7: Like, okay, so here's what you know. So like the
Speaker 7: average I'll explain this in front of Huey Lewis and
Speaker 7: I'll feel real fucked up about it, but I'll try.
Speaker 12: So.
Speaker 7: So Harmonica has blah blah blah holes, it's and it
Speaker 7: specific key and it's diatonic means it's in a scale,
Speaker 7: so it's like C or D or E or F.
Speaker 7: So most so let's take for a bad example, like
Speaker 7: John Popper of Blues Travelers carrying around eight hundred different
Speaker 7: harmonicas and different keys so they can play in different keys.
Speaker 7: A chromatic harmonica is like something that Stevie Wonder plays,
Speaker 7: which has a little button on the side so you
Speaker 7: can go, but you can always you can play all
Speaker 7: different notes, whereas the other ones are just eight notes.
Speaker 9: Although unless you're Howard Levy, right.
Speaker 7: Unless you're Wow that wow cut, unless you're Howard Levy
Speaker 7: a great great or toots are like one of these
Speaker 7: guys all right on.
Speaker 12: The original sysme theme would go real deep right anyway.
Speaker 10: Such a great music.
Speaker 7: So so so so Hughey is known as not a
Speaker 7: chromatic player, but a guy who would did you carry
Speaker 7: around a bunch of different harves?
Speaker 9: Is that? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Okay, so so so uh h would lose the news
Speaker 7: tunes are written in A and E and so are
Speaker 7: in C minor, like there's some weird ship, so you'd
Speaker 7: have to adjust the harmonica you're playing for the song
Speaker 7: you're playing in. So he would carry around tell me
Speaker 7: if I'm wrong, I'm gonna tell Huey Lewis's business while
Speaker 7: he's betting right here that like he would play He's
Speaker 7: had a bunch of different harmonicas in different keys, and
Speaker 7: so if you have a chromatic harmonica, the idea is
Speaker 7: that you only would have one exactly right now, you
Speaker 7: should talk, But.
Speaker 9: You have to be a much better player than I.
Speaker 9: I mean, you're it.
Speaker 12: Did it matter at that point?
Speaker 9: I mean like, no, you know, all you need is
Speaker 9: the chops to say what you need to say. And
Speaker 9: and what is it that you want to say? You
Speaker 9: don't which they said, there's there's there's hamburgers, and there's
Speaker 9: fois gras.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, so what really?
Speaker 9: Whatever? I mean? You know, it's it's it's all creative.
Speaker 12: Yeah, dude, man, man is my spirit?
Speaker 1: And can we have you? We all time?
Speaker 9: Love you? Wait? Did I just say that?
Speaker 1: Oh God?
Speaker 11: All right, wait, I just want to get to movies
Speaker 11: while we have a couple of minutes left.
Speaker 10: Don't forget he's got he's a miracle to because we
Speaker 10: have to get to that.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll get to that.
Speaker 10: Okay, So with you?
Speaker 11: How did you get the role in short I'm such
Speaker 11: a Robert Altman fan. I forgot you're in Shortcuts? How
Speaker 11: did you get that role?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 12: And good looks? Quest love? What's that he's amazing. Good looks.
Speaker 12: It's Hollywood good looks.
Speaker 9: We they you know. I don't know how I got
Speaker 9: the I think it was I think it was my eight.
Speaker 9: Bill Robinson was is an agent, and I think he was.
Speaker 9: He was Almand's agent, and then he was a fan
Speaker 9: of mine, and he said, look, I'll be your agent.
Speaker 9: I said, well, I don't need an agent. I don't
Speaker 9: do anything. He said, well, let me just be your agent,
Speaker 9: just in cases. So then he got me the gig
Speaker 9: or the audition or whatever it was. And so what
Speaker 9: I did is I went out to Santa Monica and
Speaker 9: just talked to Robert Altman and he invited me and
Speaker 9: he sat me down. He said, you fisherman, right, you
Speaker 9: fly fish? I said yeah, He says, cool. He said, look,
Speaker 9: let me give you a scenario. He says, two guys,
Speaker 9: three guys are going to go on a fishing trip.
Speaker 9: He says, and they go on a fishing trip. And
Speaker 9: they've been worried about it for like a year. They've
Speaker 9: been planning for this trip. It's a big deal. And
Speaker 9: they got to pack in all the way, and they
Speaker 9: pack in all the way and they get in there
Speaker 9: in the evening, and they set up camp and one
Speaker 9: of the guy goes to take a leak. I was
Speaker 9: going to say, he goes to take a leak in
Speaker 9: the river and she's a dead body, right, he says, uh?
Speaker 9: And so what what are you going to do? He says,
Speaker 9: And meanwhile the fish a rising like crazy and it's nighttime.
Speaker 9: What are you going to do? I said, probably fish?
Speaker 9: You got the gate.
Speaker 1: It's been a minute since I've seen shortcut. Wasn't that
Speaker 1: full frontal?
Speaker 9: Who I remember one of you taking a piss?
Speaker 14: Me?
Speaker 1: Was it full frontal?
Speaker 9: Full front I was going to say, there's something.
Speaker 1: Only for all only Wait, there was something very unusual.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. You definitely have to face the cameras
Speaker 1: you're taking a piss? Are you serious? She's really get No,
Speaker 1: she's getting on pornhob right now. Anyway, but he would
Speaker 1: do yeah, and.
Speaker 4: His favorite Well, you know, I was telling them earlier
Speaker 4: that you were the only reason that I saw duets.
Speaker 9: I was.
Speaker 10: I was a big Hueye fan. Yeah, sweet yeah, because
Speaker 10: I was like he was going to be the star
Speaker 10: of a whole movie. Fuck yeah, because that was your
Speaker 10: first like biggest was my support?
Speaker 9: How did you how did you. How did the same
Speaker 9: thing I read for the part with with Bruce Paltrow.
Speaker 9: You know. Gwenni's dad directed it. And then they they
Speaker 9: had apparently tried to make it earlier with but they
Speaker 9: couldn't find the right Ricky Dean, so with the not Lewis,
Speaker 9: and so they they pro in the game he uh,
Speaker 9: you know, he cast me. And then they said we
Speaker 9: want you to sing a song. I said, great, he
Speaker 9: says the song. The song in the script was song
Speaker 9: few Leon Russell and uh, and they changed She's but
Speaker 9: Gwenna's going to change the song. I said, no problem.
Speaker 9: So now I get the part. We're gonna film it
Speaker 9: in Vancouver in like five months. But I get a
Speaker 9: call that Gwyneth has chosen the song. Uh, cruising, just
Speaker 9: chosen a song. It's a smokey Robinson tune. I went, great,
Speaker 9: what's smoking Robinson Cruising? I never I didn't know. I
Speaker 9: didn't know the song right, So I said, well, send
Speaker 9: it to me and we'll check it out. They send
Speaker 9: it to me. I said, okay, I got it. Let's
Speaker 9: I called him back. I said, it sounds great. Let's
Speaker 9: let's get we need to get together around a piano
Speaker 9: and pick a key, and oh no, we already cut it.
Speaker 8: I said, really another we are in the world since
Speaker 8: you went what key did you cut it in?
Speaker 9: They said original key? I said, okay, So I listened
Speaker 9: to it and it's super high, you know. So so
Speaker 9: I fashioned this other part together and then we went
Speaker 9: down there and now we got into the studio, Gwyneth
Speaker 9: and me and forty five other people, like we've made
Speaker 9: up people and camera people and then record comings and
Speaker 9: blah blah, and Larry Klein reduced it and he did
Speaker 9: a great job. And she just sang her butt off. Man,
Speaker 9: she can really sing that girl.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised with number one?
Speaker 9: Yeah? You know what they did is they messed up
Speaker 9: on the film. What they should have done is the
Speaker 9: power power love, release it, let it go, but then
Speaker 9: release the movie. They released the movie in the song
Speaker 9: at the same time, and the movie went right, and
Speaker 9: then two months later the song was number one.
Speaker 4: So his cruising did better than d'angelo's cruising. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: very okay, Well, you know it's Dangels was great.
Speaker 8: You just look at that Simpsons placement.
Speaker 9: So he's cool.
Speaker 1: He did.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, when there there's a I think like margin Homer
Speaker 8: riding around the car and cruising.
Speaker 1: Is on the radio?
Speaker 8: Really, kid, how do you know that it's the Simpsons?
Speaker 1: Okay, Paul, Phil it makes sense. So okay, I do
Speaker 1: have to ask you.
Speaker 11: With with having trouble with your your hearing right now,
Speaker 11: when was the beginning of you? This is weird because
Speaker 11: I just got my ears cleaned out today? How does
Speaker 11: that happen? Was it just years of abuse on your ear?
Speaker 9: Drums or the answers?
Speaker 7: They don't know for my recent right this is like
Speaker 7: the last year change. It's not like year nine months,
Speaker 7: nine months.
Speaker 9: I actually diagnosed with something called Miniere's disease. It's first
Speaker 9: for me. It started thirty five years ago. I got
Speaker 9: vertigo so bad I couldn't do a gig one time.
Speaker 9: I had to go to the hospital and then they
Speaker 9: gave me a thorozine it's appository, and then I was fine.
Speaker 9: And then five years later had another vertigo about then
Speaker 9: suddenly I lost my hearing in my right ear, like
Speaker 9: maybe twenty five years ago. Twenty years ago. Went to
Speaker 9: see my e in t guy. He says, get used
Speaker 9: to it. I said, what whoa it happens? You only
Speaker 9: need one ear. I said, what do you mean, I'm
Speaker 9: a musician. He said, Jimmy Hendricks had one ear. Wait
Speaker 9: what Bryan Wilson had one ear? He says, I have
Speaker 9: one ear and I'm in a barbershop quartet. I said,
Speaker 9: really yeah, he says, you only need one. I said,
Speaker 9: all right. So I went home, told my wife that
Speaker 9: I he said to get used to it. She says,
Speaker 9: you can't do that. You got to go to UCSF
Speaker 9: get second opinion. I went and got tested up and down.
Speaker 9: They couldn't. Nobody knows anything about this. So now a
Speaker 9: year and nine months ago, I lost my other ear
Speaker 9: before a gig, just went deaf, and I have a
Speaker 9: particularly acute case of Menyere's disease. Meneir's disease is a
Speaker 9: is a syndrome based on symptoms, which means they really
Speaker 9: don't know what it is. It's you know, if you
Speaker 9: have vertigo, hearing loss, fullness in your ears, and tinaitous.
Speaker 9: They call it many airs disease, but they don't know
Speaker 9: what it is. I've been everywhere from Stanford are Institute
Speaker 9: House here, Institute, Mayo Clinic, UCSF, Mass General ironeer no help.
Speaker 9: I've had chiropractic. I've had acupuncture. I've had low salt,
Speaker 9: all organic diet, no caffeine, no chocolate, sentral oils. You know,
Speaker 9: I've tried everything. I've been to, the been to all
Speaker 9: the holistically I've nobody knows that. And yet my hearing
Speaker 9: fluctuates still, but it's episodic. It's weird. It'll be okay
Speaker 9: for like for eight days, it'll okay, still crappy, but
Speaker 9: it's and then I'll then I'll go a week almost
Speaker 9: completely deaf, almost entirely deaf. What is that like? Especially
Speaker 9: when music is your well, forget music. I don't even
Speaker 9: think about music. It's worse than that. I think about
Speaker 9: being able to exist, because when I can't hear speed
Speaker 9: each when i'm bad right now, i'm one to ten,
Speaker 9: I'm a four. I've only been as good as six
Speaker 9: ever and and i'm a four, which is good. But
Speaker 9: I can be one or one and a half. When
Speaker 9: I'm one and a half or two, I can't hear anything,
Speaker 9: and so I exist in a cocoon and it's it's
Speaker 9: it's it's okay, but you're better off by yourself, so
Speaker 9: there's nobody not to hear, and I read and I write.
Speaker 9: You know, I'm writing some stuff and and that's all.
Speaker 9: That's that's what I do. I haven't watched television in
Speaker 9: a year and nine months. I haven't listened to music
Speaker 9: in almost two years.
Speaker 7: Like the performance thing must be clearly an issue then.
Speaker 7: But like when you're at like a six, I was,
Speaker 7: I was, we were watching your The teaser for your
Speaker 7: documentary is is singing versus harp playing different because because
Speaker 7: of the of the vibrations of the harp, can you
Speaker 7: feel it in your head? Versus singing is different?
Speaker 9: No, it's all the same. And in fact, instrument playing
Speaker 9: an instrument in many ways, like harmonica is almost worse
Speaker 9: because you know, when you bend a note, you need
Speaker 9: pitch and you can't find pitch. When when I have
Speaker 9: a bass part, which would sound bow bow bow bow
Speaker 9: bow goes to me it sounds everything's what you're through
Speaker 9: a blown speaker, and you have to fight for pitch.
Speaker 9: You can't find pitch. Forget fun, you know, like what
Speaker 9: song is fun? You're in the middle of it. It's
Speaker 9: just playing itself, you know what I mean. You're singing
Speaker 9: or playing and it's playing itself. That never happens once.
Speaker 9: If I'm a six and somebody plays quiet cocktail piano
Speaker 9: kind of thing, I can almost sing, but the points
Speaker 9: moot because I can't book a gig.
Speaker 10: I had a month because I.
Speaker 1: Don't know what I'm going to be like, got it ship?
Speaker 9: Oh that's your.
Speaker 10: You got a brand new so you got that done.
Speaker 4: That wasn't felt good to make that happen, right, I said,
Speaker 4: you got a brand new record, and you got that done,
Speaker 4: so it felt good I had.
Speaker 9: We had. These were seven tunes on our new record
Speaker 9: that we had cut before this happened. And what we
Speaker 9: were just taking our own sweet time. We're doing seventy
Speaker 9: five to eighty shows a year and trying to stay
Speaker 9: out of the limelight while we make another record, just
Speaker 9: keeping everybody alive fingering. The longer we stay away, the
Speaker 9: better if we're good when we come back. And my band,
Speaker 9: we were as good as we've ever been two years ago.
Speaker 9: We were still improving. And but now that this happened,
Speaker 9: you know, we figured what and we were recording songs
Speaker 9: along with I mean, some of these songs we've been
Speaker 9: playing for ten years, you know, but we record them
Speaker 9: a little bit as we went because we have lives
Speaker 9: as well, you know, and doing seventy five shows, you
Speaker 9: don't have a lot of time to get in the studio.
Speaker 9: But we had these seven songs done. So now when
Speaker 9: this happened, we said, what the hell, let's release this song.
Speaker 9: So well.
Speaker 11: I was going to say, are you big on vacations?
Speaker 11: But I guess living in Montana, that's sort.
Speaker 1: Of like you your quiet place here.
Speaker 9: I mean, now, how does it feel to slow down
Speaker 9: and just well, you know, I miss I don't miss
Speaker 9: doing five shows a week, you know, but I miss
Speaker 9: doing one and I miss my guys, you know, the
Speaker 9: camaraderie of all that we did together. I miss that.
Speaker 9: And I feel bad for my twenty five guys who
Speaker 9: you know are gone. And the fans have been great.
Speaker 9: I mean the letters and stuff, the support I get.
Speaker 9: You know, it's funny because you do this stuff, you know,
Speaker 9: just day to day, and you don't think about your
Speaker 9: impact or any of that crap. I don't. You don't
Speaker 9: think about it at all. And now that I'm not
Speaker 9: doing it day to day and I get these letters
Speaker 9: and stuff. Wow, you know, it's really moving to say.
Speaker 9: I mean, people with cancer, people who have you know,
Speaker 9: we've lost people and all that stuff, how your music
Speaker 9: consoles them and so on. So it's really a wonderful thing.
Speaker 9: So I try to remind myself that I have, in
Speaker 9: spite of this, lots to be thankful for. You know,
Speaker 9: there's always somebody up worse off.
Speaker 1: So amen.
Speaker 10: Amen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't know.
Speaker 10: You was a joy bringer, Hugh Lewis.
Speaker 9: You heard what I said.
Speaker 10: I said you didn't You didn't know you were a
Speaker 10: joy bringer.
Speaker 4: It's funny because I'm sitting here listening to you for
Speaker 4: the last two hours, and I was like, Hugh really
Speaker 4: doesn't understand the impact of his music and how certainly.
Speaker 10: It's a select amount of bands or artists who can
Speaker 10: evoke such joy that whatever.
Speaker 4: You're doing at that moment when their song comes on happiness,
Speaker 4: everything just stops.
Speaker 10: And that's y'all.
Speaker 8: Wait and prepping for this interview, you know, you go
Speaker 8: through the go through the catalog, you know, and I'm
Speaker 8: listening to songs and I'm like, damn, I haven't heard
Speaker 8: this song in a long time. And then like, you know,
Speaker 8: like Heart and Soul came on and.
Speaker 1: Happiest moments in my life.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm like, I like I the song came on
Speaker 8: and I vividly remembered, like I used to sleep with
Speaker 8: the radio on when I was a kid, and I
Speaker 8: remember that song coming on and it was two o'clock
Speaker 8: in the morning when the song came on, and the
Speaker 8: first lyric and yeah it's two o'clock, and then like
Speaker 8: all that ship just came rushing back, and then like
Speaker 8: Jacob's Ladder comes on, Like fuck, I remember driving down
Speaker 8: this riding down this street. You know, it's just like
Speaker 8: you're the soundtrack of my.
Speaker 9: Like you're very sweet to say that, you're very very
Speaker 9: sweet and that means a lot, really mean it. Thank
Speaker 9: you very much.
Speaker 1: Thanks well on behalf of the U the Supreme team.
Speaker 11: While on pay Bill Boss Bill, the audience can see it.
Speaker 11: Sugar Steve, we would like to thank you so much
Speaker 11: for coming on the show. There's been a major education.
Speaker 9: It's been wonderful and it seemed like went by like that.
Speaker 9: It seemed like five minutes.
Speaker 7: You never boarded Montana. You want to come hang out
Speaker 7: with us? You just come hang out with us?
Speaker 9: Yes, yeah, what's that?
Speaker 7: Sorry, anytime you're in Montana you're bored because there's a
Speaker 7: lot the wildlife, you can come hang out with us.
Speaker 10: Anytime you want, or if you're lonely, you just want
Speaker 10: us to come over your hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 9: Here we go.
Speaker 1: All well, thank you very much and we appreciate it
Speaker 1: to this gang.
Speaker 8: Before we before we log off, I just want to
Speaker 8: ask you, as as the the the boss of all
Speaker 8: of us, can we have a couple of shows off?
Speaker 8: That was a Huey Lewis reference.
Speaker 12: And horribly and I won't edit that out.
Speaker 1: No, you won't be keeping that. No, we will see
Speaker 1: you on the next go around, y'all. This is the supreme.
Speaker 9: That one wasn't as big a hit as.
Speaker 1: I will say.
Speaker 8: That is one of my favorite who loosened to the
Speaker 8: new songs?
Speaker 9: I thought it was a good one too. A couple
Speaker 9: of days off.
Speaker 10: We're gonna have to pay for that, I know we.
Speaker 1: Don't anyway set around. Thank you very much. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: M