Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Gets Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Stevie van zand he's got a
Speaker 1: new autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations. Stephen, glad to have you here.
Speaker 1: I'm good to be with you, man. Okay, let's start
Speaker 1: from the beginning. Your friends, what do they call you? Miami?
Speaker 1: Little Steven, Steve, Stephen ste is fine, No, but what
Speaker 1: do they call you? Thank? Call me? Yeah, okay, Steve
Speaker 1: or Stevie or Stephen, Stevie mostly Stevie mostly growing up?
Speaker 1: Were you always Stevie? Yeah? Okay. So one thing you
Speaker 1: mentioned in the book is an offend comment that if
Speaker 1: your finances were better then maybe you could have afforded children.
Speaker 1: Is this something you consciously thought of? Well? Yeah, to
Speaker 1: an extent, I never felt really stable enough to have children.
Speaker 1: I never gave it a serious thought as to, um,
Speaker 1: you know, should I should I find a way to
Speaker 1: do that or not? But as my life has unfolded,
Speaker 1: it's been rather unstable, and I really do feel one
Speaker 1: should feel some stability before one has some children. You
Speaker 1: know my own feeling. Any regrets that you didn't have them?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, not really? You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't in the cards. This this life,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe next life. I don't know. Okay, do
Speaker 1: you believe in reincarnation or you religious person or just
Speaker 1: saying that, I'm just saying that I'm not a religious person. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I really, I really don't have
Speaker 1: any thoughts about it. I Um, I think it's probably
Speaker 1: because of my own arrested development that I never felt
Speaker 1: like I quite grew up myself. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I would never be qualified two uh for that for
Speaker 1: that very important role in life. Okay, you wrote the book,
Speaker 1: it's now out. How are you dealing with the reception?
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you the truth. It's been amazing, amazingly
Speaker 1: well received, um, more than any album and I and
Speaker 1: I've always gotten good album reviews, you know, I got
Speaker 1: no complaints, but uh, this is something I mean, the
Speaker 1: response has been remarkable, to be honest, I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't expect that, you know, New York Times best seller
Speaker 1: List and uh, London Times and l A and every
Speaker 1: everywhere is doing well and uh and the reviews been spectacular.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things that I didn't really
Speaker 1: think about. I just did it. But but the results
Speaker 1: have been amazing so far. Great, And now that the
Speaker 1: book is finalized, is there anything that you would want
Speaker 1: to go back and change? Um? No, I caught a
Speaker 1: couple of errors when I did the audio book, you know,
Speaker 1: which uh makes me wonder if if if those things
Speaker 1: are done in the wrong order, you know, I think
Speaker 1: most most books have done that way. You know, you
Speaker 1: do the audiobook last. I wonder though, if I do
Speaker 1: another book, I think I'll do the audiobook first, because
Speaker 1: if you find I mean, we've been through this thing
Speaker 1: seven eight nine times, me and my editor and my
Speaker 1: publisher and so many and others, and there was still
Speaker 1: like a dozen mistakes left in it, you know. But
Speaker 1: so that was nothing nothing major, nothing making it was
Speaker 1: a grammatical mistake. It's just through a stupid stupid things. Yeah, nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, there was there was one serious thing where
Speaker 1: like the wrong album. Uh what was it? Uh? Uh
Speaker 1: you know somebody, some some bands album was was the
Speaker 1: wrong album which uh, which wasn't my mistake, it was
Speaker 1: it was made by once. I mean, you you know
Speaker 1: the process. But once you go through your own process,
Speaker 1: it goes through an editorial process with the publisher, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they will change things thinking that they're correcting something
Speaker 1: when they're not. So it's all very very The book
Speaker 1: world is a trip, and I gotta tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: It's a different it's a different world, and it takes
Speaker 1: some it takes some adjusting. You know, you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta give up some of the usual total control that
Speaker 1: that I usually demand. I mean, I just I just
Speaker 1: did eight days in Europe and the book is different
Speaker 1: in every country. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: and collect them all because you know, I mean, there
Speaker 1: are there are countries that change the title without mentioning
Speaker 1: it to you, like damn, that's that's different. You know.
Speaker 1: So you know, you work very hard to get everything
Speaker 1: exactly right. You know, when you're making albums, you know
Speaker 1: that everything from the art to the graphics to you know,
Speaker 1: you name it, and to go from country to country
Speaker 1: and having it would be different every single time has
Speaker 1: been pretty pret remarkable. And you know, one country left
Speaker 1: off the Dylan blurb, you know, one country left off
Speaker 1: the McCartney blurb. You know, you know it'll just change
Speaker 1: the title. Okay, you have all those blurbs in the
Speaker 1: book are you self conscious about asking for those or
Speaker 1: you have no problem. I didn't ask. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it, you know, Um, I don't. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask anybody. I think the publisher, the publisher mostly
Speaker 1: did it. UM trying to think of either a publisher
Speaker 1: or my managers would uh would you know, talk to
Speaker 1: talk to people? And uh, my publishers said, have been
Speaker 1: you know, uh friendly with Bob Dylan's manager, and they
Speaker 1: you know, they sent every single book to him. And
Speaker 1: it's the first time he's ever actually done a blurb
Speaker 1: that they can remember. Nobody can remember another Bob Dylan blurb.
Speaker 1: Somebody says there might have been one forty or fifty
Speaker 1: years ago for Alan Ginsberg or somebody. Uh. So that
Speaker 1: was that was beyond beyond belief. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: that was so so so nice of him to do.
Speaker 1: And I didn't ask, um, but I did send him
Speaker 1: the book right away, I said, I sent the book
Speaker 1: to Bruce. So I sent the book to Bob because
Speaker 1: I didn't want it to be one of those books
Speaker 1: that you know, any kind of gossip or or I
Speaker 1: didn't want to make any Bruce news at all. And uh,
Speaker 1: some of the conversations with Bruce and Bob were intimate,
Speaker 1: private conversations. I wanted to make sure they were cool,
Speaker 1: you know, with those um and that has been the
Speaker 1: challenge in the book because I I know a little
Speaker 1: bit too much, you know, So it's a matter of
Speaker 1: what do you leave in? You know, what do you
Speaker 1: leave out? And it's a little bit, it's a little bit.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be a little bit careful about that. So
Speaker 1: in those two cases, I thought, I want to try,
Speaker 1: I want to check with them, and they neither one
Speaker 1: of them changed one single word, which which was which
Speaker 1: was nice? Well, there's the code of the road, as
Speaker 1: we know. And speaking of the road, that's where you
Speaker 1: seem to run into Dylan in the book. It seems
Speaker 1: like you don't have that extensive and interaction with him
Speaker 1: in your life. What is the truth now that we're talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just sort of a fantastic acquaintance. You know. It's
Speaker 1: not I wouldn't I wouldn't be so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: changress to say, you know, we're best friends, but uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just think we we just had
Speaker 1: to like each other and run into each other every
Speaker 1: couple of years. Um, you know, we don't talk every day,
Speaker 1: like like me and me and Bruce do you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much. But but Bob is just every time I
Speaker 1: see him, it's an adventure. And uh, I just I
Speaker 1: just thought that they're just kind of fun, this kind
Speaker 1: of fun encounters because he's just a fun guy. I mean, he's, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's in some ways he's very very normal,
Speaker 1: and in some ways he's just uh, he's just always
Speaker 1: surprising you with something, you know. So it's uh, I
Speaker 1: just I just love the guy. I mean, aside from
Speaker 1: being so extraordinarily important to my work and everybody else's,
Speaker 1: uh and his place in history, but he uh, he's
Speaker 1: just one of those fascinating kick cats that that very proud,
Speaker 1: very proud to know him. And uh, but I don't
Speaker 1: see him nearly as often as as as I as
Speaker 1: I wish, I wish I could. What's your favorite Dylan album? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be Blonde. I'm Blonde in the end.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I like a lot of them,
Speaker 1: but mind I'm Blonde was the one that just, h
Speaker 1: you know, it's it was just the the ultimate, the
Speaker 1: ultimate Dylan album. I think a lot of people agree
Speaker 1: with you that's really the number one true fans. But
Speaker 1: I'm really bringing it all back home guy, because you
Speaker 1: know it's all right, ma, it is transcendent. And of course,
Speaker 1: at this led, at this late date, subterranean Homesick Blues
Speaker 1: is a big deal. Everyone talks about Highway sixty one,
Speaker 1: but I prefer bringing it all back home. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: was that's the half electric catholic acoustic one, right, right, exactly? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I mean, you know, maybe maybe skipping the
Speaker 1: first one, but you know, other than that, the first seven, uh,
Speaker 1: just remarkable. I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't argue with anybody.
Speaker 1: I mean, free wheeling, you know, times they were changing,
Speaker 1: you you, you know, extraordinary things on these records. I
Speaker 1: mean complete completely. I mean, I know the words used
Speaker 1: too often, but they are game changers for the folk world.
Speaker 1: They completely changed the folk world overnight. And uh and
Speaker 1: then as soon as as soon as they you know,
Speaker 1: they were kind of reluctant to accept him because he
Speaker 1: was kind of radical, and then the truth they accept them.
Speaker 1: They kind of walked away and plugged in because but
Speaker 1: but but no. I talked about Subtorian Homestay Blues in
Speaker 1: the book as the single most important, you know, two
Speaker 1: sentences in history of rock and roll. I think I
Speaker 1: certainly know the record. For those people who don't know
Speaker 1: the record, why don't you just give us the two lines? Well,
Speaker 1: the first the first line he's you know, he because
Speaker 1: Bob is a mixture of you know, playfulness and fun
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he always he's always wanted to make you think a
Speaker 1: little a little bit and has you know, coming from
Speaker 1: the beat, poetry, the metaphor and symbolism type stuff, but
Speaker 1: also just sometimes just stream of consciousness. And and he
Speaker 1: doesn't even he doesn't even intend to say anything. He
Speaker 1: just likes putting the words together. I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: loves English language as much as Bob Dylan. He just
Speaker 1: loves the language and loves to play with it. So
Speaker 1: the first line is is this kind of that a
Speaker 1: little provocative, a little little you know, which is Johnny's
Speaker 1: in the basement mixing up the medicine. You know, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? I go through like five or six
Speaker 1: things it could mean in the book, but you know,
Speaker 1: And then the second line is the is the one
Speaker 1: I'm on the pavement think about the government well, what
Speaker 1: a weird thing to say to us thirteen fifteen year olds.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you mean? They're thinking about the government.
Speaker 1: Who would want to do that? Why? Why would you
Speaker 1: do that? You know? Uh, that was a remarkable thing
Speaker 1: to say in a pop song, you know, basically, and
Speaker 1: uh it really made you think. And I've been thinking
Speaker 1: ever since. You know, Okay, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: book for a second. Your name is on the cover,
Speaker 1: but when you go inside the book as an editor,
Speaker 1: to what degree was the editor involved in the writing
Speaker 1: of the book, and to or to what degree it's
Speaker 1: all yours? I wrote every single word. And I try
Speaker 1: to think in the beginning because I read so many
Speaker 1: biographies and they all seemed felt similar because the co
Speaker 1: writer is doing the writing, and it's just they all
Speaker 1: become very homogenized. And I just decided, I'm not it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be me. Um. So I um, I try
Speaker 1: to figure out how how can I how can I
Speaker 1: make sure that this is in my own voice? And
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, I'm a picture doing the
Speaker 1: audio book, you know, and uh, if I can, if
Speaker 1: I can write it the way I you know that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna speak it um, it might work. And so
Speaker 1: I explained to the publisher and to the uh, to
Speaker 1: my editor, I said, listen, this is not gonna look right.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be not correct grammatically, it's not gonna uh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be sentenced fragments all over the place. But
Speaker 1: if you if you read it the way I'm writing it,
Speaker 1: it'll sound like me, you know. And that's what I
Speaker 1: ended up doing. Uh, And um, I think it really
Speaker 1: worked because everybody the first thing everybody says to me, boy,
Speaker 1: I can really hear you. I hear your voice in
Speaker 1: this and uh, that was very important to me. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was hard for my editor because he's
Speaker 1: a co writer and he had done some great books
Speaker 1: for George for George Clinton and Brian Wilson and Quest
Speaker 1: Love and I forget who else. But he's really a
Speaker 1: terrific writer himself, and uh, you know, and he did
Speaker 1: me a favorite really by by not by not co writing,
Speaker 1: and uh, but he was very very helpful in terms
Speaker 1: of the editing because I can digress, you know, with
Speaker 1: the best of them. Man. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to make it hard for me to make it
Speaker 1: through a page without one story turning into another story,
Speaker 1: turning into another story, you know. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: keep it somewhat on the on the right path. And
Speaker 1: most importantly, I wanted to maintain a balance of the
Speaker 1: history because I witnessed every day except the first decade
Speaker 1: of rock and roll, and uh, and I got some
Speaker 1: thoughts on that subject, um and and I've been a
Speaker 1: lot involved a lot of craft. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure the craft made it into the book because
Speaker 1: I thought that might be useful, you know. And and
Speaker 1: then in the middle, it was the narrative, you know,
Speaker 1: So that balance of those three things was important. And
Speaker 1: that's that's what I told the editor to keep an
Speaker 1: eye on. I want to make sure that balanced between
Speaker 1: history and narrative and craft, uh, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: stuck together throughout the book. I want to wander too
Speaker 1: far from from any of those three things. And and
Speaker 1: then and then, you know, when it came to whatever
Speaker 1: the whatever I was talking about at that moment, whatever
Speaker 1: the event was, or you know, you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: provide a little context, you gotta provide some environment, you
Speaker 1: you know, provide what you're thinking in that moment. And
Speaker 1: it was a question of how much, you know, for
Speaker 1: each for each incident. That that's that's real tricky because
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta provide some for us. The book
Speaker 1: becomes a list, you know, I did this, and I
Speaker 1: did that, and I did this and I did that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's boring, So you know you want to
Speaker 1: you want to make it. You know, I was hoping
Speaker 1: that would end up being more like a detective novel
Speaker 1: or Dan Brown book where they don't know what's coming next,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what was coming next, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first half it's been a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: linear you know, local kids from Jersey makes it to
Speaker 1: the top and rock and roll, which is a great
Speaker 1: story myself, and you know, I'm not I don't want
Speaker 1: to sound ungrateful about that. That's wonderful, you know. But
Speaker 1: the second half, when I leave the street band and
Speaker 1: my life has ended literally, uh, and there's no plan
Speaker 1: and now I'm just wandering in the wilderness, I think
Speaker 1: it's becomes more interesting. And now that the more universal
Speaker 1: themes start to emerge, I think, you know, the the
Speaker 1: search for identity and the search for purpose in life
Speaker 1: and spiritual you know, spiritual enlightenment and those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: um that everybody can relate to, right, I just want
Speaker 1: it to be a music book for music people exclusively. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you had a book deal and you gave the
Speaker 1: money back. Right now you have another book deal. How
Speaker 1: did you decide to actually do it? Was it has
Speaker 1: something to do with the time of the uh uh
Speaker 1: you know shutdown of America the world? Actually and what
Speaker 1: was your process and how long did it take to do?
Speaker 1: You one of those guys you know you sharpen your
Speaker 1: pencil every day at noon or whatever you started, So
Speaker 1: give us some of the story. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: the survey of quarantine thing was the biggest factor. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it would have ever been done without that, honestly. Um,
Speaker 1: it just was a perfect opportunity. Um. A big factor
Speaker 1: was the previous three years. Two that the seventeen eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen happened to be the most productive years of my
Speaker 1: entire life. Unexpectedly got back into the music business, said
Speaker 1: that no plans to do that, Like most of my
Speaker 1: life was just not planned. I got back in, I
Speaker 1: put out two two albums which I didn't expect to
Speaker 1: do so Fire in Summer of Sorcery. I ended up
Speaker 1: releasing six album packages in those three years, which is
Speaker 1: about as productive as you can be, you know. And
Speaker 1: and so suddenly I reconnected with my life's work, which I,
Speaker 1: you know, unconsciously abandoned for thirty years. Um, suddenly I was,
Speaker 1: you know, back playing my own songs again, and uh,
Speaker 1: I kind of appreciating them, I must say, for the
Speaker 1: first time, maybe uh the first time in a long time,
Speaker 1: appreciating them in a new kind of way. I just felt,
Speaker 1: you know, jeezus, stuff was interesting. It has a value
Speaker 1: to it that, uh, I've never really considered. It's something
Speaker 1: about the you know, the genre I created, this rock
Speaker 1: meat soul thing that it kind of holds up in
Speaker 1: a funny way because it was never fashionable. You know,
Speaker 1: it was never trendy. When I did it the first time,
Speaker 1: it wasn't fashionable. So when something's never been fashionable, it
Speaker 1: kind of makes it timeless, you know, it gives it
Speaker 1: a timeless quality. And uh, and I just was a
Speaker 1: little bit, a little bit struck by by the by
Speaker 1: the nature of the music. And I put together this
Speaker 1: amazing band, actually put together by my friend Mark Ribbler,
Speaker 1: put a couple of my old friends in it, and
Speaker 1: and and they just performed the stuff so well that
Speaker 1: uh uh, I said, well, it sounds so good. I
Speaker 1: mean it all. It all started with with with this
Speaker 1: promoter in London at the end of the street tour
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. He said, when you come back to
Speaker 1: London And I said, well, I usually me and my
Speaker 1: wife's come back every Thanksgiving for her birthday because she
Speaker 1: loves London so much, but this year coming earlier for
Speaker 1: Bill Wyman's eightieth birthday, and he said, well, that's that's
Speaker 1: the week of my blues festival. Put a band together
Speaker 1: and and and headline one of the night. And I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I haven't done that in thirty years.
Speaker 1: But more I thought about it, the more it sounded
Speaker 1: like fun. I said, you know what, I'll bring back
Speaker 1: the horns and I'll be able to do some like
Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield stuff with the horns that nobody's nobody ever
Speaker 1: hears that stuff. I'll do some electric flag nobody ever
Speaker 1: hears that stuff. You know, I'll do some blue stuff,
Speaker 1: and then I'll do some of my own songs. And
Speaker 1: when I started playing my own, my own music, I
Speaker 1: was really really struck by it. So so we ended
Speaker 1: up well, let's let's let's make an album and and
Speaker 1: the soul FA. I wasn't ready to write a whole
Speaker 1: new albums, so we did so fire h an album
Speaker 1: of songs I've written for other people. And by accident
Speaker 1: again somebody came by and gave us a sponsorship to tour.
Speaker 1: I had a TV show that I was going of
Speaker 1: fell through. Bruce decided to do Broadway. I had nothing
Speaker 1: better to do. Um, all right, let's let's tour it.
Speaker 1: And we start touring, and then ideas start coming to me,
Speaker 1: and uh and Summer sorcery Man, a whole new album
Speaker 1: came out of a gift from the gods, you know,
Speaker 1: and and uh you know, and so suddenly, uh, here
Speaker 1: comes the Quarantine and I felt some closure because of that,
Speaker 1: I felt the mute musically, I had a little closure
Speaker 1: on that part of my life. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I had new managers. First time I've ever had managers, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, which is many of the problems I run
Speaker 1: into in the book, because I never had managers or
Speaker 1: manager and U and one of the managers actually suggested
Speaker 1: at the end of the book, which helped me formulate.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, I know the beginning, I know the end.
Speaker 1: You know, let's just tell a story and try and
Speaker 1: keep it to uh, try and keep it somewhat coherent,
Speaker 1: because my life, uh, pretty pretty crazy. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: talked about reading all the biographies, you know, Ray Davies
Speaker 1: says Ray Davously saying, England. Give me two good reasons
Speaker 1: why I ought to stay. Tell me too. Music biographies
Speaker 1: that you think are great, Well, Bob Dylan's Chronicles has
Speaker 1: to be number one. Um. I thought Bruce's book were great. Um,
Speaker 1: and I liked um, I like Robbie Robertson and uh
Speaker 1: and I like Levi on Helms too. Well. One book
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the book which I love is the
Speaker 1: Tommy James book. Oh, I think it's great, really great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Uh he's uh, he's lucky to be alive.
Speaker 1: But I mean you know that that was that wasn't
Speaker 1: great when Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So how long did it take you to write your
Speaker 1: book and what was the process? About a year? You know,
Speaker 1: about about a year of the quarantine. I would say,
Speaker 1: um we um, we decided, you know, I wanted I
Speaker 1: wanted to treat this thing a little bit like therapy,
Speaker 1: which which really was. So I I spoke with the
Speaker 1: editor I think three times a week for an hour
Speaker 1: or two, like Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So I would
Speaker 1: write over the weekend. Um, you know, I would write
Speaker 1: and and then and then we would discuss it and
Speaker 1: I would write. You know, uh, just do that, you know,
Speaker 1: writing constantly and discussing it, like two or three times
Speaker 1: a week. Uh, for various reasons, you know, just to
Speaker 1: make sure again I was maintaining this balance I wanted, um,
Speaker 1: but he was. He also was a good sounding board
Speaker 1: for what people might want to know about you know, um,
Speaker 1: because I gotta I go. There's a lot I kind
Speaker 1: of got a little bit too much in my head. So, um,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you're you're not boring people
Speaker 1: or spending too much time on one subject, making sure
Speaker 1: you're spending enough time on the subject. Um, those kinds
Speaker 1: of basic you know, limitations that you want to You
Speaker 1: want to have somebody you know saying you know, you're
Speaker 1: going a little too far here or not far enough there.
Speaker 1: So um, there was a almost a constant conversation with
Speaker 1: the editor and I really uh, so you know it
Speaker 1: was really a collaborator in a true sense of the word. Okay,
Speaker 1: how come you never had a manager till now? Well
Speaker 1: asked a big question. I wish, I wish, I wish
Speaker 1: I knew. You know, I spoke to a lot of
Speaker 1: guys when I was looking for a manager for Jukes,
Speaker 1: because I was managing the Jukes in the beginning and
Speaker 1: I desperately wanted to find a manager for them before
Speaker 1: I left uh to join the Easter Band. And uh
Speaker 1: I got, I got I'm the greatest agent in the world.
Speaker 1: That was big, you know, getting him Frank Barcelona. But
Speaker 1: you know, our manager represents you, and uh, I was
Speaker 1: having trouble finding somebody that I felt, okay representing me
Speaker 1: if I'm not in the room, you know. Um And
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with my aversion to
Speaker 1: money frankly and uh and people who's job it is
Speaker 1: to make money. I sometimes have trouble finding a common
Speaker 1: ground with with with people like that, and and and
Speaker 1: in the manager's case, that's kind of that's one of
Speaker 1: their main jobs is to make money. And you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, if I get if I get that
Speaker 1: sense that money is their priority. I uh I don't
Speaker 1: trust it. I don't trust it, uh because for me, uh, integrity, dignity. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly the art, the work comes first, has to come first.
Speaker 1: And I realized, you know, we're always trying to the
Speaker 1: great dilemmas, trying to find a balance between art and commerce.
Speaker 1: I understand that, and I you know, and I never
Speaker 1: found it. I mean, if anything, my life is the
Speaker 1: triumph of art overcommerce. Uh. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: when I when I sense that somebody is just you know,
Speaker 1: in it for the money, you know, to some extent,
Speaker 1: it just turns me off. So I think that was
Speaker 1: part of it. You know. I just never they were
Speaker 1: quite fast somebody. I mean, looking back, that was that
Speaker 1: was a mistake I should have I should have I
Speaker 1: should have just picked somebody and had them do it,
Speaker 1: because a whole lot of opportunities were lost because because
Speaker 1: of that and uh, not having a buffer. People people
Speaker 1: like the artist to have a buffer. They don't want
Speaker 1: to talk directly to you, you know, they just don't.
Speaker 1: That's just how the business works. They want they wanted
Speaker 1: they want an intermedia, you know, that's why you know,
Speaker 1: the networks. The other thing is, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been through this with deals where they say insulting things.
Speaker 1: They're just negotiating, but hit me emotionally. So since you
Speaker 1: made all your own deals, how good a negotiator are you?
Speaker 1: Certainly in retrospect, Well that's the problem. I'm very good. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it was hard to find managers that were as good. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't the negotiating of the deals that was
Speaker 1: the problem so much. In fact, there's advantages. There's advantages
Speaker 1: to the artist if you if you can get somebody
Speaker 1: to actually do the deal with you. Uh, there's advantages
Speaker 1: to being the artist. And in that case because they
Speaker 1: don't want to say no to you, you know, so
Speaker 1: sometimes it actually is an advantage. Um. What's the biggest
Speaker 1: problem is there's not the negotiations as much as just
Speaker 1: not having an advocate. I mean, the gig of a
Speaker 1: manager is is advocate. You know. Uh, I can sell
Speaker 1: you all day long, Man, I can't sell me, you know,
Speaker 1: and you need somebody selling you. And asked that that's
Speaker 1: just the truth, man, And I never had that, So
Speaker 1: why do you have it now? Well? I got lucky.
Speaker 1: First of all, I didn't I wasn't looking for a
Speaker 1: manager at this stage of the game and my agent,
Speaker 1: my music agent, one day just said, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to lunch with these guys. You know, why don't you
Speaker 1: come along. I didn't even tell me who they were.
Speaker 1: And they were just having a conversation. And at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, they revealed that they were you know, they
Speaker 1: were managers and and uh, at some point I said
Speaker 1: they were interested in managing me. I said, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, about forty years too late, but hey, let's
Speaker 1: let's you know, and I just I just liked them.
Speaker 1: I like, I just liked them both as two guys,
Speaker 1: and I liked them personally, you know, I got I
Speaker 1: kind of kind of got to know. I mean that
Speaker 1: one conversation before you know, before they became my managers.
Speaker 1: But I just kind of like them. And uh, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, let's see, let's see what
Speaker 1: happens here. Let's see what we can do. Because I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to have a manager, So let's give it
Speaker 1: a try. Let's go back to the beginning. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: you start Massachusetts, but you really grow up in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: What kind of kid were you? Were you the leader
Speaker 1: of the gang? You remember the gang? You're a guy
Speaker 1: off to the side, you have friends, you didn't have friends.
Speaker 1: I was a small kid. Um um, yeah, I wouldn't, wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say as the leader of a gang. I
Speaker 1: probably UH had that inclination right from you know, birth,
Speaker 1: to be more of the sideman or the guy you know,
Speaker 1: off the side or behind the guy. You know. I
Speaker 1: don't remember very often, uh being the leader of the gang.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, I find myself in that position.
Speaker 1: I remember after seeing the West Side Story movie. Uh,
Speaker 1: we started having gangs in in suburban junior high school.
Speaker 1: I guess it was let we see one of that
Speaker 1: fifty seven fifty nine when that movie was like six one,
Speaker 1: early sixties, right, Yeah, So I'm like cannon whatever whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever grade you're in, the ten eleven and I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember I did start that gang. And and and
Speaker 1: and during a lunchtime or whenever people went outside recessed, Uh,
Speaker 1: we would we would have knife fights with with pens,
Speaker 1: and we would write on each other, you know, whoever
Speaker 1: wrote the most on each other, you know one and uh,
Speaker 1: and I was. I was the leader of that one.
Speaker 1: And of course we got busted and getting that a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble, Uh, but other than that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was kind of one of the guys. You know,
Speaker 1: my my neighbors were older. My one of my best
Speaker 1: friends lived behind me was a year older. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, the older guys always would be the more
Speaker 1: of the leaders in any situation. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just was like a lost little kid, kind of
Speaker 1: just waiting for destiny to speak. I remember hating being
Speaker 1: a kid. I do remember that distinctly. I wanted to
Speaker 1: grow up and get on with it. And and then,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, thirteen years old and uh, Kennedy gets
Speaker 1: shot on my thirteenth birthday, your birthday, November, And uh okay,
Speaker 1: well let's go back to November, your thirteen. I certainly
Speaker 1: remember that day. Did you have plans to have a
Speaker 1: celebration party? Yeah? Yeah, and uh, you know, to show
Speaker 1: you how politically where I was back then, that's all
Speaker 1: I was concerned with. It was like, you know, the
Speaker 1: party gonna happen or not, you know, yeah, but soon
Speaker 1: just after that, right, just four months later, you know,
Speaker 1: the big bang. Okay, wait, wait, wait, let's not get
Speaker 1: there for a seconds. Hey, good student, mediocre student, bad student.
Speaker 1: I was a good student, very good. Ever thought of
Speaker 1: you know, going through college, what your parents say, did
Speaker 1: you miss you know what we are your thoughts there?
Speaker 1: It was, it was a thought. My parents wanted me
Speaker 1: very much to go to college. Um. I had a
Speaker 1: couple of advanced classes in fact heading that way, like calculus,
Speaker 1: believe it, and physics and the certain kinds of physics
Speaker 1: classes and a couple of couple of different things. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh so at that point, you know, you're trying to
Speaker 1: find in the normal route into society. I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be college. Yeah. Okay, but let's go back
Speaker 1: to the earlier days. Beatles are in sixty four. Did
Speaker 1: you have a transistor? Were you a sports kid? Listened
Speaker 1: to the sports? Um, not big on sports, No, but
Speaker 1: you had a transistory, remember getting a transistory? Yeah yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I heard the Beatles. Okay, you listening Were
Speaker 1: you listening to you know, this is all New York radio,
Speaker 1: w m C A, w ABC Tentendons. Were you listening
Speaker 1: to those before the Beatles? Oh? Yeah. We had great
Speaker 1: radio all along, all along, uh fifties into the early sixties. Uh.
Speaker 1: The radio was was terrific. We were much luckier than
Speaker 1: our than our British brothers and sisters who uh literally
Speaker 1: had nothing until until until Pirates, you know until okay,
Speaker 1: but when but you were listening, you were an active
Speaker 1: music listener before the Beatles. Yeah, I I bought a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen singles. You know, I remember what some
Speaker 1: of those were? Oh yeah, yeah, first was Tears on
Speaker 1: My Pillow, Little Anthony, the imperials um Uh. Poison Ivy
Speaker 1: was given to me by my aunt because I had
Speaker 1: poison ivy. I bought, you know, uh Sherry. Uh. Mid
Speaker 1: four Seasons were huge, Twist and Shop by the Isley Brothers,
Speaker 1: Palisades Park, A Little Prittle, Angelis, Duke of Earl, you
Speaker 1: know you casting down? Uh you know those those were
Speaker 1: those were just uh really really great great singles. Willie
Speaker 1: Still Love Me Tomorrow, the Rills? How about the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys in any West Coast stuff? You know, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't really like the Beach Boys for
Speaker 1: the West Coast stuff. Now, No, I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: get that whole thing. There's something, uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what it was. The college,
Speaker 1: even though I thought of going to college, but the
Speaker 1: whole fraternity vibe of them with the letters on the sweater,
Speaker 1: and there was something that was just to turn off
Speaker 1: to make that at that stage, you know. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean that's why the Beatles was so shocking. It was
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was shockingly contemporary, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, and even the Four Seasons, which is the
Speaker 1: other group that survived the Beatles, and then the only
Speaker 1: two that did, you know, is the Beach Toys in
Speaker 1: the fourth Theasters, and of course the Motown and Soul stuff.
Speaker 1: But but the Four Seasons you know again, you know,
Speaker 1: they looked like your Italian uncles. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you love them. You love the records, I mean various records,
Speaker 1: among the greatest records of ad. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: one one phenomenal thing after the other. Sherry Big Girls
Speaker 1: will Cry, walked like a man, big man in town,
Speaker 1: Ronnie rag Dolls, rag Dolls, I get it, you know,
Speaker 1: Marlena Candy Girl. Let mean, you know, phenomenal stuff, phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, you didn't really, you know, you didn't wanna.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be them, you know whatever, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you know, And and it was it was
Speaker 1: the British invasion that just okay, you know, So when
Speaker 1: did you personally first hear the Beatles. I was in
Speaker 1: bed under the coverage with my transistor radio, and I
Speaker 1: remember my brother would listen also, he was in the
Speaker 1: next bed. We're both in the same room and older, younger, younger.
Speaker 1: He's seven years younger. Uh because uh, you know, my
Speaker 1: mother remarried when I was seven, and that's how I
Speaker 1: got and that's how an Italian kid gets a Dutch name.
Speaker 1: And so I had a I had a brother and
Speaker 1: sister that came along at that point. But I remember,
Speaker 1: like it was yesterday. They you know, you're digging whatever's
Speaker 1: on the radio, and that's all great. I want to
Speaker 1: hold your hand. Comes on and they hit the high
Speaker 1: note and me and my brother burst out laughing just spontaneously,
Speaker 1: you know, and I and I you know, and I've
Speaker 1: been analyzing that ever since, you know, which it comes
Speaker 1: down to. The Bells had just hit on something remarkable
Speaker 1: that obviously came from the fifties, came from all the
Speaker 1: the do Op and certainly Everly Brothers and and everybody
Speaker 1: else and Roy Orbison and all all of them. But
Speaker 1: but but they had taken it to some new level
Speaker 1: and communicated just unbridled joy somehow there was some something
Speaker 1: joyous in in that in in their music that was
Speaker 1: uh new. It was just new and unexplainable really uh
Speaker 1: and man, it was just like, uh, just a you know,
Speaker 1: just a volcano. You know. The culture was just transformed
Speaker 1: overnight completely. Okay, So the record I Want to Hold
Speaker 1: Your Hand forget the stuff on VJ before because we
Speaker 1: didn't know about it then. So I Want to Hold
Speaker 1: You And it's actually released at the end of December,
Speaker 1: but literally after the first of the year. It's gigantic.
Speaker 1: Beatles are not on until February. Did you buy the single?
Speaker 1: And then there was She Loves You Would All Get You.
Speaker 1: On the end there was Meet the Beatles. How active
Speaker 1: were you before they were on? Ed Sullivan? Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: uh very Uh. That was the first. That was the
Speaker 1: first album I ever bought, which we thought was the first.
Speaker 1: We thought was their first album. Of course it turns
Speaker 1: out to be their second, right, Um, but but that
Speaker 1: was my album buying, you know. That was the beginning
Speaker 1: of album buying for me. Uh. And then and then yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever you could find at that point, they you know, VJ,
Speaker 1: the Swan something was on Swan you know uh and
Speaker 1: uh and actually their first album kind of snuck out
Speaker 1: there and on some maybe on DJ, also on j
Speaker 1: R introducing the Beatles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. We couldn't
Speaker 1: get enough. We couldn't we could not get enough. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's never been a sonic takeover like like that, like that,
Speaker 1: I mean, as everybody knows. I'm sure you know, by
Speaker 1: April they had the top five singles, uh, and another
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty on the charts at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, but the top five singles, uh yeah, nobody
Speaker 1: want to hear anything else. I mean, but you know,
Speaker 1: but soon there would be other British invaders that would
Speaker 1: do quite well. They've five We're right on their heels,
Speaker 1: and and and and glad all over with would replace
Speaker 1: uh uh one of one of them on one of
Speaker 1: the Beatles songs, and then you know it's just one
Speaker 1: one after the other. Hermit's, Hermits, the animals, and then
Speaker 1: you know, stones, yard birds. Okay, so I certainly remember
Speaker 1: this era before the Beatles was a folk era. Every
Speaker 1: household had a nylon string guitar. People would play a
Speaker 1: few chords. The Beatles hit overnight, people are growing there
Speaker 1: here and getting guitars. What was going on with you? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're not exaggerating. I mean literally, February eight, nobody had
Speaker 1: a band. You didn't see band. You know, the four
Speaker 1: or five guys singing and playing didn't exist. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: you went to your high school dance. It was an
Speaker 1: instrumental band, alright. So February nine, they played this variety
Speaker 1: show that the whole family watched on Sunday nights. February
Speaker 1: tent everybody had a band in the garage, and I
Speaker 1: am telling you everybody you know it. It changed the
Speaker 1: culture overnight and it would continue really throughout the entire sixties.
Speaker 1: When you went out at night and had to have fun.
Speaker 1: I mean you might go to driving Okay, to see
Speaker 1: a movie. Other than that, you went out to see
Speaker 1: a band, or in my case, you will actually be
Speaker 1: playing in a band. But bands took over the culture
Speaker 1: after that, Uh, in a really you know, fun positive way.
Speaker 1: That was all you did. I mean there was no
Speaker 1: one through remind your younger younger listeners. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: no internet or cell phones or video games or you know,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of distractions. We did have a
Speaker 1: good six seven, eight, fantastic rock and roll TV shows
Speaker 1: on in those days for about a year and a half,
Speaker 1: which I think looking back was quite remarkable. But mostly,
Speaker 1: you know, it was radio and going out and seeing
Speaker 1: bands and so um the the you know you. We
Speaker 1: were just so lucky to be that generation because that
Speaker 1: meant there were lots of places to play. And I
Speaker 1: mean right through high school we were booked all the time.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, how did you did you have play
Speaker 1: any instrument prior to the Beatles? How did you pick
Speaker 1: up the guitar? And how did you form a band? No,
Speaker 1: my first two bands I was I was the lead singer,
Speaker 1: so I didn't learn how to play guitar for about
Speaker 1: a year or two. But I started early, just before
Speaker 1: the Beatles hit. My grandfather, from my Italian grand father
Speaker 1: from from you know, my mother's father, who was from Calabria,
Speaker 1: showed me the song of his village, a little melody
Speaker 1: that was just uh. I guess every every town had
Speaker 1: their little theme song. I guess. Uh, So he he
Speaker 1: was showing me that. I and I wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: crazy about playing guitar as much as I wanted to
Speaker 1: spend time with my grandfather. Tell you truth, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It was that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but I got like a I don't know, six month
Speaker 1: head start before everybody else but guitars, and then UM
Speaker 1: sixty four, you know, right in the sixty five. I
Speaker 1: didn't really UM start for my my my, my main band,
Speaker 1: the Source, uh started in sixties six, at which point
Speaker 1: I'm playing lead guitar. So it took me. Uh, it
Speaker 1: took me a couple of years, I guess to get there. Okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of people from that era, and you've certainly
Speaker 1: met all of them. I've certainly met some of them.
Speaker 1: They're not really that talkative. Their personality is so much,
Speaker 1: but they get on stage, they light up, the music
Speaker 1: speaks through them, and their whole life opens up. The
Speaker 1: girls all on them. So you're now the lead singer
Speaker 1: of a band, then the lead guitarist of band. How
Speaker 1: does your life change? You know? What was really uh funny, ironic?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, we're watching Hard Day's Night,
Speaker 1: you know, which is just the uh you know, primer, primer.
Speaker 1: How do you say that for how to be in
Speaker 1: a rock and roll you know? You you hope UM
Speaker 1: and the girls did not like us who were in
Speaker 1: a band. It was first of all, the whole rock
Speaker 1: star concept at that point was English. You know you
Speaker 1: if you weren't English, you were kind of irrelevant. And
Speaker 1: and in our in our area, in our school, the
Speaker 1: girls still like the football players, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: you were just kind of freaky. To be honest, it
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't like you were cool to be in
Speaker 1: a band in the sixties. It was more freaking a
Speaker 1: freakiness about you, uh, because it was it wasn't a
Speaker 1: business phill seventies, first of all. And before that, like
Speaker 1: I said, it was this kind of a British thing.
Speaker 1: They just kind of owned it. So you were just,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some kind of want to be I guess,
Speaker 1: or something but not considered cool or something that girls
Speaker 1: desired certainly, you know. Uh, you know, so your life
Speaker 1: doesn't really change other than my life taking on a
Speaker 1: bit of a purpose, which which was a big, you know,
Speaker 1: a big thing for a kid. Man. You know, you're looking,
Speaker 1: You're looking, You're wondering, you know, where are you going
Speaker 1: in this world? Man? And I'm telling you right now,
Speaker 1: I was having a lot of problems trying to sit
Speaker 1: in trying to think of where I fit in before
Speaker 1: the Beatles hit, and then I always tie it together.
Speaker 1: And then four months later the Wronging Stones came. So
Speaker 1: it's always have been a fifty fifty thing for me. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because the Beatles were just you know, yes,
Speaker 1: they revealed the new world, but they were just way
Speaker 1: too good to think that you could do it, you know,
Speaker 1: and they this were we caught them halfway through the career.
Speaker 1: You know, they're singing together since fifty seven. They were
Speaker 1: going to sixty nine. You know, here we are there,
Speaker 1: there's phenomenal. Okay, the harmony is ridiculously perfect. The hair
Speaker 1: is perfect, the clothes, every everything's perfect. And four months
Speaker 1: later it comes to the Wrong Stones. A little more casual,
Speaker 1: a lot more casual. Uh the hair is not perfect
Speaker 1: except for Brian Jones. Uh low harmony whatsoever. You know,
Speaker 1: they made it look easier than it was. They really
Speaker 1: were at the first punk band in every sense of
Speaker 1: the word. But they made they made it may they
Speaker 1: made it look easier than it was. And uh so
Speaker 1: you know, I always say that the Beatles revealed this
Speaker 1: new world and they're only Stones invited us. And okay,
Speaker 1: now the music change versus a British invasion then, and
Speaker 1: these are not strict demarcations, but I'll throw them out
Speaker 1: there anyway. You have the folk rock of the Birds,
Speaker 1: then you have this sixties seven coming in with Jefferson Airplane, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Did you like all kinds of music? Because you remember
Speaker 1: this was on Saturday night on w ABC, they'd have
Speaker 1: wars between the Beatles and the Stones. You know, were
Speaker 1: you a fan of everything or was there certain stuff? No,
Speaker 1: I like this and I don't like that. Well, you
Speaker 1: had some of that going on. But but we were
Speaker 1: surprisingly a model culture at that point. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: not strictly but but but very much so in a
Speaker 1: country that you know, it was the only country ever
Speaker 1: created that was not a model culture. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we were a culture of ideas, many of which were
Speaker 1: still trying to implement um but we but musically we
Speaker 1: were very much a model culture. And and like you say,
Speaker 1: the trends went year by year in those days and
Speaker 1: pretty much followed by everybody, you know, which was a
Speaker 1: great education because you know, you pick up a little
Speaker 1: bit of this, pick up a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: Some people stayed in that in that certain mode. I
Speaker 1: mean sixty four British of Rage, sixty five folk rock,
Speaker 1: sixty six, Blues rock sixty seven, Psychedelics, sixty eight country Rocks,
Speaker 1: and then sixty nine the Southern the Southern white gospel
Speaker 1: blues thing with Glania Bonni and all the rest. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you kind of went from trend to trend, and
Speaker 1: everybody did um right up until seventies, at which point
Speaker 1: it did fragment and uh and become hybrids after that. Um.
Speaker 1: But but you kind of kind of you tended to
Speaker 1: like everything. I mean, there any moments where yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it might have a Beatles versus Stones discussion or um,
Speaker 1: you know, Jeff Beck group versus led Zeppelin discussion you know,
Speaker 1: later on. Uh, but you tended to kind of like everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, those those those who's better than who we
Speaker 1: were kind of phony arguments to begin with. Okay, you
Speaker 1: bring up a couple of things. Who's the best guitarist
Speaker 1: to ever according to you? Well, there's two, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: sort of two errors of guitar. Uh. There's the sixties era,
Speaker 1: which there's no doubt about. I don't think anybody would
Speaker 1: disagree that Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitar player that
Speaker 1: ever lived. Um, the sixties guy that ended up still
Speaker 1: blowing minds is Jeff Beck. Now you go see Jeff
Speaker 1: Beck right now, and he will blow your mind right now,
Speaker 1: you know, And and and and never Clapton will say
Speaker 1: the same thing, and Jimmy Page will say the same thing.
Speaker 1: Last time I saw Jeff back, Jimmy Page was standing
Speaker 1: next to me and just as awestruck as I was,
Speaker 1: you know. But they all pay homage to Jimi Hendrix.
Speaker 1: He just was from another planet, you know. And then
Speaker 1: then there's a whole second era of modern guitar styles
Speaker 1: coming from the Eddie van Halen, you know, hammering. It's
Speaker 1: a whole different, whole different style which I never got into.
Speaker 1: But there's a whole there's dozens of modern show called
Speaker 1: the modern arrow guitar players that are you know, Steve
Speaker 1: I and those guys that are remarkable technically, just just
Speaker 1: beyond belief technically. But that's a whole different style that
Speaker 1: I never, I never got into. So it was for me,
Speaker 1: it was just the four amount rushmore pretty much was
Speaker 1: was was was clapped in uh back Page and Hendrix
Speaker 1: and and and in a very special place in my
Speaker 1: heart for Mike Bloomfield, who was important to me, you know,
Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield's guitar player and later form the Electric Flag. Um,
Speaker 1: but he Uh, but you know those are guys, you know,
Speaker 1: for for me. Okay, favorite Beatles album, Favorite Stones album.
Speaker 1: You know that changes every day, Um, no, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. The most important Beatles album obviously was Sergeant
Speaker 1: Pepper's only last club band, which, Uh, I don't care
Speaker 1: how much revisionism there goes on. Yes, Revolver it was
Speaker 1: more innovative. Revolver has better songs song by song, Yes,
Speaker 1: we all agree with that. But Sergeant Pepper was the
Speaker 1: most important cultural moment that I can remember. Uh, every
Speaker 1: every story walked down the street that wherever it was
Speaker 1: June one, sixty seven, every single store was playing it,
Speaker 1: you know, every restaurant, every clothing story. You know, this
Speaker 1: is an amazing, amazing moment when all of Western culture
Speaker 1: was celebrating the same, the same piece of work. Um. Favorite,
Speaker 1: you know, my favorite Beatles album probably it's probably Helped Um. Um,
Speaker 1: that's my favorite. Seven seven Beatles songs in a row. Uh.
Speaker 1: But Harriday's Night was terrific. Beatles for Sale, terrific, you
Speaker 1: know they I like the I like the early stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, I liked it from pretty much those you know,
Speaker 1: from Hortidays night beals for sale. Help. I love that
Speaker 1: period the most Stones, Uh for me, twelve by five
Speaker 1: two of my favorite Stones albums don't exist in England,
Speaker 1: which is twelve by five and uh December children. Um
Speaker 1: that's why you know, we we we used the American
Speaker 1: Stones albums as the real thing, and of course the
Speaker 1: British Beatles albums as as the real configurations. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know the record company actually did the did
Speaker 1: the right thing with Stones, uh, twelve by five for me,
Speaker 1: you know, and then then you have the second Stones,
Speaker 1: the second great Stones evera of course is the four
Speaker 1: remarkable you know, Beggar's Banquet, Let it Bleed, sticky Fingers
Speaker 1: and Exile. You know, you know, the two errors are
Speaker 1: are both amazing to me. But I but I actually
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the early stuff. I love I love the covers.
Speaker 1: I love the covers, you know, Beatles and Stones, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's a real true measurement of greatness. And
Speaker 1: and usually it's the it's the guys who went up
Speaker 1: go on to write the best songs, just do the
Speaker 1: best cover version, and uh, I have a great respect
Speaker 1: for cover versions, and I think it's an extremely important
Speaker 1: part of rock education that many many people are skipping
Speaker 1: these days. I think two best covers who by those
Speaker 1: two bands? No, No, two best covers period. Oh jeez,
Speaker 1: that's the whole get the whole radio show on that.
Speaker 1: Um well there's you know. I I in the book,
Speaker 1: I talked about the various rules for how to make
Speaker 1: a cover song on your own and the one the
Speaker 1: one that the one to check all the boxes? Uh
Speaker 1: as the middle of Fudge you keep me hanging on,
Speaker 1: but certainly close to that is you know, Jimmy Hendricks
Speaker 1: so along to watch Tower, you know, one of the greatest.
Speaker 1: And Joe Cocker is a little health with my friends. Um,
Speaker 1: those three I think probably stand out as three and
Speaker 1: three the greatest. Let's go look. Decade later, Soft Cell
Speaker 1: read does Tainted Love and matches it with where Did
Speaker 1: Our Love Go? And I did not know the original
Speaker 1: Tainted Love? Did you? And what do you think of
Speaker 1: those two songs put together by Soft Cell? No? I
Speaker 1: I didn't know it either. Um um, I wasn't really
Speaker 1: into them that whole uh you know whatever that was
Speaker 1: called the New wave. I wasn't a big new waiver,
Speaker 1: so I didn't like the whole synthesizer MTV thing. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: they make an exception or two to the rule, but
Speaker 1: they weren't it. Okay. So one thing you say in
Speaker 1: the book, which blows my mind because I use it
Speaker 1: all the time, is we lived through the Renaissance, okay.
Speaker 1: And I tell people today when people say, oh, music
Speaker 1: today is just as good as it ever was, they said, no,
Speaker 1: we lived through the Renaissance. They had a Renaissance and
Speaker 1: painting and sculpture in England. They've been painting and sculptor since.
Speaker 1: But there was only one Renaissance. Okay. But in your
Speaker 1: book I get the impression. Well, let me just ask
Speaker 1: you straight. The Renaissance starts with the Beatles. When does
Speaker 1: it end? It's a good question, um, and arguably, uh,
Speaker 1: you could you could clock it. I mean, the full
Speaker 1: Naissance and Renaissance was you know, about twenty years, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty one to about seventy one. But you can go
Speaker 1: into the mid seventies if you you know, and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't argue too much about that, especially if you're including
Speaker 1: other arts. You know, if you're including movies, um and
Speaker 1: other you know other other other, you know, other important books,
Speaker 1: film paintings. You know, you may want to go into
Speaker 1: the seventies. The high the high point would be this
Speaker 1: sixty four to seventy one, seventy two from you know
Speaker 1: the Beatles to um either Exile on Main Street or
Speaker 1: or or the who uh what's it called? Who's Next?
Speaker 1: With the Who's Next is in seventy one, Quadraphenia in
Speaker 1: seventy three. Yeah, I see, you want to you want
Speaker 1: to include that, so you know, somewhere in there, somewhere
Speaker 1: in there, you know, um different than the rock era,
Speaker 1: which I clocked from like a rolling stone, the Kirt
Speaker 1: Coby's death almost exactly thirty years. But the renaissance for
Speaker 1: for for me was was that. Yeah, sixties into the
Speaker 1: into the seventies. Okay. Conventional wisdom is rock is dead.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that? Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: true in the industry sense of the word. However, we're
Speaker 1: still the biggest thing live and I think that that
Speaker 1: will continue to be true. It's a very important part
Speaker 1: of of the of the rock art form is live performance.
Speaker 1: It's uh, unlike any other art form in that sense.
Speaker 1: I think and we still remain I think, the biggest
Speaker 1: thing live and always will at least while while our
Speaker 1: generation is still going. Uh, we're not being replaced, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to make up for that with my
Speaker 1: radio format and my music education program and and my
Speaker 1: record company and everything else I've been doing. For the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years, I've been trying to trying to
Speaker 1: preserve this endangered species called rock. Um. But it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not part of the industry anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't, you know, and I really piste off that
Speaker 1: they don't even bother to broadcasted on the Grammys anymore.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's really really uh enraging. You know, when
Speaker 1: we ran the world. You know, when rock ran the world,
Speaker 1: we included everybody, you know, we didn't pick them off
Speaker 1: the telecast and say, by the way, the Rock Awards
Speaker 1: went to so and so. You know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's this that's really wrong. But but anyway, that's
Speaker 1: just an example of how how dead it is. They
Speaker 1: don't even bother showing them under Grammys anymore. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, the last time with rock and roll song
Speaker 1: gonna in top forty I don't even remember. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no more hit singles that are that are rocking. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about rock, because there is rock and there's
Speaker 1: the active rock format. I have a theory about this.
Speaker 1: I remember when led Zeppelin was considered heavy metal and
Speaker 1: Black Sabbath was too far out. Now after Black I
Speaker 1: forget the number of years, but in terms of sound,
Speaker 1: from Black Sabbath you go to Metallica, and then from
Speaker 1: metalli you can go even further off, such that if
Speaker 1: you want to listen to what they call active rock,
Speaker 1: you have to have an education encyclopedia to get that far,
Speaker 1: because it's not really the year appealing from the beginning,
Speaker 1: whereas we grew up in in her Of course, the
Speaker 1: Beatles are definitive. They all had good voices, They wrote
Speaker 1: songs with melodies, they had choruses, their bridges. Is this
Speaker 1: just a lost art like the Mayans. Couldn't we just
Speaker 1: put that together and have hit songs again? I think, truthfully,
Speaker 1: I think all that went to Nashville, you know it
Speaker 1: kind of it still exists there, right, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta I got a second format on serious satellite
Speaker 1: called well Country, and that resembles the old rock world
Speaker 1: more than the modern rock world resembles the old rock world.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think all that went to
Speaker 1: went the country music. Uh, you know, so I'm glad
Speaker 1: it exists somewhere. But other than that, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very different Uh, it's a very different pop
Speaker 1: war now. And uh and uh, I'm not sure there
Speaker 1: is a rock world really, you know. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: heavy a heart, the hard stuff. Yeah, the hard stuff
Speaker 1: still exists, but they they've gotten that's become almost an
Speaker 1: intellectual part of the art form, you know, in a
Speaker 1: funny way. Uh. My friend, uh, my friend Max Weinberg's
Speaker 1: son Jay wasn't one of those bands. And and uh
Speaker 1: and then early and one of his early heavy metal bands.
Speaker 1: I went to see them and and and it was
Speaker 1: extraordinarily complex. I mean it was it was like Bebop
Speaker 1: times on steroids. I mean, very complex musically, a very
Speaker 1: high level of of of technical proficiency. They go all
Speaker 1: over the place, and they all stopped together. And I
Speaker 1: was like, how did they possibly stopped together at that moment?
Speaker 1: I can't, I couldn't. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't
Speaker 1: analyze it. It was so complicated, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: become almost uh an intellectual uh you know, in a
Speaker 1: funny way, an intellectual pursuit. You know, it appeals to
Speaker 1: an intellect as much as the venting of frustration, which
Speaker 1: is how we mostly associate with with with hard rock.
Speaker 1: There's something there's a whole another level of technical uh
Speaker 1: you know, expertise going on with that, with that world.
Speaker 1: But I don't, you know, I don't of course I
Speaker 1: don't relate to it directly. But you know, those rooms
Speaker 1: for everybody, and you know, God blessed. But but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but as far as the stuff that we
Speaker 1: grew up with, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you
Speaker 1: gotta listen to my radio station if you want to
Speaker 1: hear that. Okay, was it in your book where you
Speaker 1: pooh pooed Americana? Um? No um they started. I think
Speaker 1: that that format started um trying to copy an idea
Speaker 1: I had. I didn't really, I didn't put it down.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's fine. But I was discussing what became
Speaker 1: out Wall Country with somebody in Nashville who had a
Speaker 1: discussion with the guy who started Americana. It was very
Speaker 1: either extraordinarily coincidental or I think it came from that discussion.
Speaker 1: And he didn't do exactly my format. He didn't do this,
Speaker 1: He didn't do the format exactly as I described it.
Speaker 1: But it was closed, and so I didn't. I don't
Speaker 1: think I put it down, you know. Okay, you know
Speaker 1: I read so much as I said. It wasn't abviously sure, Okay.
Speaker 1: One of the times I saw Tom Petty before he died,
Speaker 1: he played a week at the fond Uh and he
Speaker 1: played I won a couple of nights. They played different
Speaker 1: songs and he played an old country song he called
Speaker 1: country music today rock of the seventies. Okay. Now, on
Speaker 1: one hand, we have those people. Another hand, the most
Speaker 1: respected artist in Nashville is Chris Stapleton, who is great
Speaker 1: on Eddie front. So do you pay attention to that scene?
Speaker 1: Do you have thoughts about that scene? Yeah? They You know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't pay as much attention as I
Speaker 1: should because it is it is one of my formats.
Speaker 1: But we we championed the new artists, just like we
Speaker 1: do on the rock side. And so I think there
Speaker 1: was a very very healthy scene there and and uh
Speaker 1: and I agree, and I like I we talked about
Speaker 1: this in a minute ago. I think I think most
Speaker 1: of what you were describing as as melodic, interesting chord
Speaker 1: changes and melodies and and and artists expressing themselves now
Speaker 1: lives in country music and initial you know, the you
Speaker 1: know Staple or the Jason Is Bells and whoever else
Speaker 1: you know, the uh they you know, and and I
Speaker 1: think that's that's a healthy thing, you know. We you know,
Speaker 1: the outlaw country format is all three generations of Hank Williams,
Speaker 1: you know, because uh, you know, once once, uh, a
Speaker 1: friend of mine told me that they weren't playing Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash in country radio anymore. I'm like, well, then it's
Speaker 1: time for a new format. I'm sorry. You know. That's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I started it, to make
Speaker 1: sure that were you aware of country music in that period? Yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, not again not living it, but aware of it,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, and I just I liked a
Speaker 1: lot of that generation, you know. I like Merl Haggard,
Speaker 1: you know, in spite of his you know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: me being a hippie, you know exactly. I love Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash and and uh, you know, and and a back
Speaker 1: way back to Hank Williams and and uh and uh
Speaker 1: you know the Outlaws, you know, Christis Stofferson and Willan
Speaker 1: and Willie Jennings. You know. Uh I like that generation
Speaker 1: a lot. They just uh there was just something cool
Speaker 1: about them. Okay, So Crossby Stools and Nash comes out
Speaker 1: in sixty nine, we have the Eagles. In seventy two,
Speaker 1: we have Sweetheart of the Rodeo and sixty eight. Was
Speaker 1: that a sound that appealed to you not? Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: We Well, like I said, we were, we were. We
Speaker 1: were following the trends in those days. And I think,
Speaker 1: and I say we, I think that's true about everybody.
Speaker 1: We were all following those trends. And uh, country rock,
Speaker 1: Um it was big man, I was. I was. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm still huge fan of Young Bloods, Buffalo Springfield, Uh Birds,
Speaker 1: Find Burrito Brothers. Uh, we'll be great. You know these
Speaker 1: are country. This is country music for you know, country rock,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I'm a big, big fan of it. Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about turning this decade sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: You're out of high school, You're playing what do I know,
Speaker 1: like everybody else, I had a guitar, I had played
Speaker 1: I'm to my friend Mark's house. We're playing our guitars
Speaker 1: because now we're going to change keys, and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm out. You know, did you ever what has it
Speaker 1: always been hard work for you? Or did you ever
Speaker 1: fall in this side and say, wait a second, this
Speaker 1: is my groove. I can do this. I live here.
Speaker 1: I'm as good as anybody, I think. You know, you're
Speaker 1: always you're always kind of improving, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I ever. I mean, once you start writing
Speaker 1: your own shows, you know, your your own records, in
Speaker 1: your own shows, obviously it's got to be. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a comfort zone because you've created it, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But other than other than that, you're always they're always
Speaker 1: I don't know, learning looking to improve. Right, does anybody
Speaker 1: intimidate you a musician just in terms of how good
Speaker 1: they are? Um? Oh, man, there's a there's a whole
Speaker 1: you know, kar Yeah, yeah, uh, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's glorious. It's just a glorious thing to witness a
Speaker 1: great greatness in any form. You know, I'm I'm attractive
Speaker 1: to greatness in anything. I agree with you. It's like
Speaker 1: when you have a great sport, guy, great guy on
Speaker 1: any of the dominance and to see them walk that
Speaker 1: line Louis Hamilton and car racing the guy on Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: So one of the big points in the book. And
Speaker 1: you really describe it well, the whole period that Bruce
Speaker 1: gets a record deal and said, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: it with John Hammond and they think it's a folk record.
Speaker 1: I remember for a long time the second album was
Speaker 1: my favorite. Second Bruce Wilde The Innocent, Okay, especially this.
Speaker 1: I saw him in the bottom line the year before
Speaker 1: and seventy three, I mean seventy four, the year before, uh,
Speaker 1: the born to run shows. But you say a couple
Speaker 1: of things. You say he was sold sold to John
Speaker 1: Hammond as a folk act, and certainly on that record
Speaker 1: the band is mixed way down. But I realized the
Speaker 1: book is about you. But hey, were you very conscious
Speaker 1: of Bruce trying to get a deal record deal of
Speaker 1: the Stravails And tell me exactly how you felt when
Speaker 1: you were left out in the initial recording situation. Um,
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Uh, I wasn't following it day day to day.
Speaker 1: But but we were very very conscious of trying to
Speaker 1: get a record deal. That's where you that's you know,
Speaker 1: that was the whole idea to get into the business. Uh. Um.
Speaker 1: And and we were, you know, we had a different
Speaker 1: band every three months, uh, you know, in that late sixties.
Speaker 1: And at some point we realized, no matter what we did,
Speaker 1: nobody's coming down from New York to discover us. And
Speaker 1: add great Park, I mean, even though it's only an
Speaker 1: hour and hour and a half away, might as well
Speaker 1: being I've been on the moon. So Bruce, being you know, smart,
Speaker 1: I saw the singer songwriter trend coming. It was happening
Speaker 1: at that moment, which was the beginning of the fragmentation
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, like I said, it was
Speaker 1: it went from singer songwriter on the left to heavy
Speaker 1: metal on the right, everything in between, um, singer songwriters.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, when I analyzed it, you know, I realized
Speaker 1: the difference between them and folk singers, you know, um,
Speaker 1: which is pretty much semantics. But but but but the
Speaker 1: interesting thing additionally was all the singer songwriters had hit
Speaker 1: you know, which was not the case with all the
Speaker 1: folks that you know. Uh. And I that struck me
Speaker 1: when I realized that. But anyway, Bruce kind of gets
Speaker 1: in the trojan horse of singer songwriters, and then immediately,
Speaker 1: you know, pisses everybody off by saying, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make an acoustic record, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to do a band record. And John Hammond
Speaker 1: was not happy about that. His managers were not happy
Speaker 1: about that, nobody and so, um, we didn't have an
Speaker 1: existing band exactly at that moment. So he just kind
Speaker 1: of started drawing in guys from different bands and we
Speaker 1: played with and of course I was one of them,
Speaker 1: and I turned out to be just you know, one
Speaker 1: guitar player too many. I mean, they weren't happy about
Speaker 1: having a band at all, and they certainly didn't see
Speaker 1: any need for a second guitar. So I was rejected.
Speaker 1: And and uh, I guess it hit me pretty hard.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, pretty disappointed about it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I kind of at that point I felt we had
Speaker 1: missed the boat anyway, I really did. I felt like
Speaker 1: the great stuff has all been done, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of over. And I wasn't that
Speaker 1: far wrong, by the way, but uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: just kind of felt like, you know, it's redundant from
Speaker 1: now on. And so I wasn't I wasn't you know
Speaker 1: too too depressed about it? But it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was depressing and disappointing, and I quit. I quit
Speaker 1: the business at that point, and we're construction for two years. Okay,
Speaker 1: to what degree are those two things connected? Was the
Speaker 1: fact that you weren't included in the band? Was that
Speaker 1: really what drove you to go to construction? Yeah? Because
Speaker 1: I was in debt from a previous couple of bands.
Speaker 1: We were, and we thought we were gonna be big,
Speaker 1: and I bought a big amp uh and a van
Speaker 1: to carry it around in, you know, because I thought
Speaker 1: we were gonna that was our big break, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of bands earlier. So I was in debt
Speaker 1: and had to pay, you know how to get a
Speaker 1: straight job the first time in my life. How much
Speaker 1: did you hate it? Well? I I hated it, um,
Speaker 1: but I but I started my mind immediately began to
Speaker 1: adjust to uh, accepting this as you know, this is it, man,
Speaker 1: this is this is your life now, so adjust to it.
Speaker 1: And that was pretty good at doing that, I guess, um.
Speaker 1: But after two seasons going from you know, uh flagman
Speaker 1: on on on through two seven at six in the morning,
Speaker 1: and you know, five degree weather, go all the way
Speaker 1: to the jackhammer in a hot ninety degree summer. Um.
Speaker 1: I was playing football on the weekends and and uh,
Speaker 1: flag football, and I broke my finger, still bent and
Speaker 1: uh and to exercise my finger, I couldn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: I couldn't pick up a jackhammer. So I went to
Speaker 1: exercise my finger by joining the band playing piano. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's how I got back into music, just by
Speaker 1: just by that weird circumstance, which is a story of
Speaker 1: my life. I mean weird circumstances definitely the story of
Speaker 1: my life, as you see in the book. And I
Speaker 1: got back anyway, So I you know, I I appreciated
Speaker 1: show business a lot more after working instruction than I
Speaker 1: did before. Let's put it that way, Okay. In the book,
Speaker 1: you ultimately go to Vegas, you go to Miami, you're
Speaker 1: working with Oldiezacs, and there's a lot of sex talk
Speaker 1: at this way, you know, and then you talk about
Speaker 1: going down south below the Mason Dixon line and having girls. Whatever.
Speaker 1: Were these things that the older musicians taught you being
Speaker 1: on the road or how did this develop? Well, it
Speaker 1: was just I wanted to give a little bit of
Speaker 1: flavor of that of that era, you know, and the
Speaker 1: seventies was just uh wide open. I mean, uh, you
Speaker 1: know this is before aids and uh and and and
Speaker 1: post women's liberation. I mean this was real women's liberation,
Speaker 1: like they would come and ask you for sex liberation,
Speaker 1: and uh, I want to give people a little bit
Speaker 1: of a flavor of that. I don't think. I don't
Speaker 1: think I overdid anything. I overdid it whatsoever. You are
Speaker 1: realistic and nobody is ever realistic. I want to hear.
Speaker 1: We have the heavy metal bands where you know it's
Speaker 1: happening seven, you know, then we have Linda Ronstad's book
Speaker 1: that's so sanitized it's like it's unreadable. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: was surprised that you were honest about it, and you
Speaker 1: know that was why it's good. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: certain people who are uh you know, Elvis iconic, looking
Speaker 1: in their stars whatever, and one knows it goes with
Speaker 1: the territory there. I mean, I know, listen, I know
Speaker 1: these people don't know. You go on the road with
Speaker 1: these people, there's always somebody much more experienced than you
Speaker 1: are who teaches you the ways of the road and
Speaker 1: what goes on and kind of coaches you along and
Speaker 1: then you ultimately pass these lessons down to the level.
Speaker 1: But if you're not a member that group, you have
Speaker 1: no idea. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And you know,
Speaker 1: so you got some of that on on the oldies circuit. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are the needs of the guys who admited it, Okay,
Speaker 1: exactly mean it doesn't invent rock and roll. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that was and that was just fun, man, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you the truth. You know, I was the only
Speaker 1: one having fun there because they all hated being called oldies.
Speaker 1: They put out the past there in the primary lives. Okay,
Speaker 1: these guys are you know, late thirties, early forties. If
Speaker 1: they had four hits when the Beatles hit, they did
Speaker 1: those four hits the rest of their life, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was just tragic. One of the just odd
Speaker 1: odd phenomena of our of the history of rock and roll.
Speaker 1: That first generation who invented it got put out the
Speaker 1: pasture and and and did not have a chance to evolve,
Speaker 1: uh with an audience the way every other generation did,
Speaker 1: starting with the second generation of British invasion. You know,
Speaker 1: who are the biggest acts and sixty four the Beatles
Speaker 1: and Stones who the biggest acts now the Beatles and Stones,
Speaker 1: you know, as there should be, because as they evolved,
Speaker 1: the audience evolved with them. Uh some reason that first
Speaker 1: generation just kind of got left out. And uh, and
Speaker 1: that's why one of the reasons why the minute I
Speaker 1: got in the studio, I started bringing them back, you know,
Speaker 1: out of just out of gratitude and and and wanted
Speaker 1: to show people that they're still great. Got Ronny Specter
Speaker 1: and Lee Dorsey out of retirement, Second Duke's album, We
Speaker 1: United the Coasters, Drifters and five Staturns, you know, um
Speaker 1: uh me and Bruce, Gary West Bonds, put Benny King
Speaker 1: and Chuck Jackson on that record. And uh, and of
Speaker 1: course I worked with Ronny Specter and just did Darlene
Speaker 1: Love album you know, some years a few years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, at first of all, it's great to work
Speaker 1: with those people. They're different, There are different species of people.
Speaker 1: These were talented people, the real talent, you know, not tuning,
Speaker 1: the vocal talent, not editing or the vocal together talent.
Speaker 1: They had it right, got it right the first time
Speaker 1: every time. You know, They're a real thing. And so
Speaker 1: they were a joy to produce. But anyway, I was
Speaker 1: the only one. I'm really having a good time on
Speaker 1: that on the on that meeting, meeting all of those guys,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's a shame the way that worked out. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you all do we come back to Asbury Park.
Speaker 1: You formed the Jukes. First question, tell me how you
Speaker 1: played Monopoly during the set? That was? That was a
Speaker 1: different band. That's Dr Zoom in the Sonic Moom at
Speaker 1: a certain point, like I said, we had a different
Speaker 1: band every three months before the Jukes. This is quite
Speaker 1: a bit before the Jukes. Um, this is more and
Speaker 1: more like the early seventies. Uh. We became the go
Speaker 1: to opening act at our local Hullabalu club, uh Hullablue
Speaker 1: coming from the PV show. Um. And we didn't really
Speaker 1: have a band at that time, and we you know,
Speaker 1: we just kind of floundering around. So we decided to
Speaker 1: put everybody in town in the band so to get
Speaker 1: a paycheck of some kind. And that include people who
Speaker 1: didn't play instruments, so we hadn't play monopoly. We haven't
Speaker 1: play monopoly. Instead and they got there whatever ten bucks
Speaker 1: or whatever whatever whoever it was. Uh, Okay, how come
Speaker 1: when the pop gives you a deal for the Jukes,
Speaker 1: And how come you just don't stay with the Jukes?
Speaker 1: You tell the story of the book, how you tell
Speaker 1: Johnny he's got to be the front man. Why don't
Speaker 1: you say this is my thing, let me ride this
Speaker 1: all the way. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good question. It's a good question. Um. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I felt it was limited in some ways. You know.
Speaker 1: Johnny was great in his own way and had surprised
Speaker 1: everybody by being as great as he was. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he just really really rose to the occasion, you know.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't Rod Stewart, you know, let's face it, anyway,
Speaker 1: he wasn't you know, Stevie Tyler or you know, Roger Daltrey. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't. He wasn't he was. He was
Speaker 1: like a blues you know, blues guy and great in
Speaker 1: that particular sub genre. Um. But but that there's built
Speaker 1: in limitations to that. And I and I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to be limited. I wanted to go all the way,
Speaker 1: you know. And so the horse side bet on was
Speaker 1: was Bruce Springsteen because I felt he was the one guy,
Speaker 1: the local, one local guy that could go all the way,
Speaker 1: and I just, um, I felt that about you know,
Speaker 1: we were friends a long time and uh, and that
Speaker 1: was probably the first one to think that about him,
Speaker 1: because he was extremely shy and uh, and nobody predicted
Speaker 1: him to be a success. But I saw something special
Speaker 1: in him very early that nobody else particularly saw. Um.
Speaker 1: But by that point of course, it had come kind
Speaker 1: of a roller coaster ey because he he was the
Speaker 1: first guy signed in our town, but his first two
Speaker 1: records were complete failures. He was about to be the
Speaker 1: first guy dropped in our town. Uh, you know, so, um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't that final a decision. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like I'm leaving the Jukes and joining the East paying
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. He only had seven
Speaker 1: gigs books, so I thought, you know, the seven gigs
Speaker 1: and probably come back to the Jukes and then let's
Speaker 1: see what we can do. You know. UH may have
Speaker 1: recorded the first album by then, but that's it's about it.
Speaker 1: So I would really start to uh become a much
Speaker 1: better songwriter, and on their second and third albums, Uh,
Speaker 1: so so they're they're future artistically wasn't really clear at
Speaker 1: that point. I just was using them to learn the
Speaker 1: craft of a record production because I really felt like
Speaker 1: I was a record producer and I wanted to learn
Speaker 1: how to do it. You know. Okay, another thing you
Speaker 1: talk about throughout the book is writing songs. How do
Speaker 1: you write a song? Well? I think what I tell
Speaker 1: people now, you know, and I do these masterclasses on songwriting,
Speaker 1: and you know, I try to say, the first of all,
Speaker 1: there's no rules. Okay, so let's keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: But I said, you know, the thing you want to
Speaker 1: try and overcome is is being stuck. You want you
Speaker 1: want to try and be want to have some momentum,
Speaker 1: and you want to try and be moving forward whether
Speaker 1: whatever you're doing, all right, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: sitting there staring at a blank piece of paper if
Speaker 1: you can help it, you know, waiting for your muse,
Speaker 1: you know, to to visit. Uh. You know, now this
Speaker 1: may be just me and my A D D. Which,
Speaker 1: as I say, I've had long before it was fashionable.
Speaker 1: So you know, I don't have any patience. So so
Speaker 1: so um I tell people, you know, first of all, right,
Speaker 1: with purpose. You should also live with purpose, by the way,
Speaker 1: but but certainly you should write with purpose. What do
Speaker 1: you want the song to do. You know, Uh, you
Speaker 1: want to make people cry and make them last and
Speaker 1: make them dance. Uh, you gonna have a hit record.
Speaker 1: You want to confess your sins, you know, decide what
Speaker 1: what do you want to the stone to do? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, um, and then you know you can work
Speaker 1: out how how literally you want it to be. Uh,
Speaker 1: but right right down some reference lyrics saying exactly what
Speaker 1: you want to say. Don't worry about being poetic, don't
Speaker 1: worry about being cleverly metaphorical at first. Just write it
Speaker 1: straight out, and then you can go back and you
Speaker 1: can add all those things you want to disguise it.
Speaker 1: You want to, you know, make it more poetic, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do, make it more artistically interesting. You
Speaker 1: can do that later. But the idea is to get
Speaker 1: some momentum going come up with a purpose right out.
Speaker 1: What that purpose is is clearly as as as you
Speaker 1: can you know. UM. And the other thing I use
Speaker 1: also and I teach it and I and I use
Speaker 1: it myself and I used it very much on my
Speaker 1: latest album, Summer Sorcery. Uh is you're stuck. You're writing
Speaker 1: a song for yourself right one for somebody else. Um,
Speaker 1: it's A. It's a it's the best way to to
Speaker 1: break that break up that you know, that log jam,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, because it's always more difficult to see yourself. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to write a write a beach
Speaker 1: boy song, you know, write a song you can you
Speaker 1: can see the beach boys doing it. Write a wrong
Speaker 1: Stone song, or you know, whenever your favorite artist is
Speaker 1: write and write a door song. You know. You know
Speaker 1: now when you do that, um, you're not really gonna
Speaker 1: be impersonating them most likely. Uh so it's gonna come
Speaker 1: out you. It's gonna end up being you. But it's
Speaker 1: just so it's just a way of getting some momentum going,
Speaker 1: because that's the hardest thing when it comes to writing.
Speaker 1: And once in a while you get a great melloy
Speaker 1: you'll come into your head, or a phrase. You'll catch
Speaker 1: a phrase in a book or somebody's saying something. You know,
Speaker 1: and I and I and I keep notes. I mean,
Speaker 1: the reason why Summer Sorcery was was such a miracle
Speaker 1: was my radar had been down for thirty years. So
Speaker 1: before that, in the eighties, when you're in that cycle,
Speaker 1: you know, record tour, record to our record to a
Speaker 1: record tour Um, you're always your radar is always up.
Speaker 1: You're always making little notes, you know, a little melodies things.
Speaker 1: You know, you record the little bits of melody that
Speaker 1: come to you, or a chord change. You know, you
Speaker 1: record it. Words you know you'll jot down, you know somewhere. Uh, phrases,
Speaker 1: you always looking for. Titles are always important. The most
Speaker 1: important things to title, you know. The second most important
Speaker 1: thing is a chorus. Very most important thing is the
Speaker 1: opening line. You know. So you're always looking for those.
Speaker 1: The rest right itself. Um, and you're you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and you're always compiling all these notes, and then when
Speaker 1: you go to make a record, you have all this
Speaker 1: stuff you can then you can, you know, put it
Speaker 1: all together. I got to make summar sorcery. I have
Speaker 1: none of that. There's no notes, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: not one bit of melody recorded anywhere, or not one
Speaker 1: single phrase. You know. That's why it was such a
Speaker 1: remarkable miracle that records happened. But but I did, But
Speaker 1: I did. Right there, I sat down said, okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a new record. Um, first of all,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a new idea. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want it to be order biographical, because all my
Speaker 1: records are autobiographical. And I don't want it to be
Speaker 1: political alright, because there's no reason to be political during
Speaker 1: the Trump years. It's completely redundant. So so I said,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna write ten or twilve little fictional movies,
Speaker 1: be a different guy in each, and have some fun
Speaker 1: and I and I said, you know, so, who who
Speaker 1: do I want to represented on this record? And I
Speaker 1: wrote down a list. I wanted to fly in the
Speaker 1: family stone because that's how I'm picturing my new disciples,
Speaker 1: the soul in that, in that sort of uh you
Speaker 1: know frame. I want some Sam Cooke, I want some
Speaker 1: Tito Quente, you know, I want from James Brown, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm may a list and there and and
Speaker 1: then and then I wrote the songs, and uh and none.
Speaker 1: None of those songs sound like those people exactly. They
Speaker 1: sound like me. And that's how it works, man. You know,
Speaker 1: how about collaboration, believe it or not believing it? Well,
Speaker 1: I you know, I love the idea of it, um,
Speaker 1: but I never figured out how to do it. I could.
Speaker 1: All my collaborations, uh, you know, usually somebody's riff, you know,
Speaker 1: Bruce Bruce. Bruce came up with a riff on a
Speaker 1: love on the wrong side of town, you know John
Speaker 1: John John Johnnah Johannah and I wrote the rest. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like, give me, give me a
Speaker 1: piece of a song and then I'll finish it. You know.
Speaker 1: But two guys in the same room writing, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that, and I and
Speaker 1: I envy it, you know, I'd like to do that.
Speaker 1: I'd like to be in that, you know, winning in
Speaker 1: McCartney mode when they started, you know, Mick and Keith
Speaker 1: when they started UM or any of the any of
Speaker 1: the great songwriting teams, you know, Lieber and Stoller, you
Speaker 1: know Barry Greenwich, you know a lot of great ones. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do so. Ultimately, Gary Gersh tracks you down. You
Speaker 1: make these records for E M I America. Commercially, they
Speaker 1: are not successful. You talk in the book about the
Speaker 1: label not taking advantage of television appearance in Europe, based
Speaker 1: in Germany, etcetera. What was your internal experience, Hey, did
Speaker 1: you feel an obligation to try to have hits for
Speaker 1: them or you thought you were doing the right thing
Speaker 1: and the label wasn't coming through for you. What was
Speaker 1: your experience there? Yeah, I really, uh, I like those
Speaker 1: records and I went back and really really re examined
Speaker 1: them writing this book. Um, I really believe it was
Speaker 1: a case of having no manager to to be that advocate.
Speaker 1: And my records were not actually the most commercial and
Speaker 1: the most uh the songs that really fit in necessarily,
Speaker 1: so it would have been difficult no matter who it was. Um,
Speaker 1: they were just the way I heard them. You know,
Speaker 1: my records are completely uncompromising. Um. And I don't know
Speaker 1: where that comes from. I don't know why. I mean,
Speaker 1: I grew up with pop music, you know, and I
Speaker 1: love pop music and I love sixties pop music. Um,
Speaker 1: but I just I was off on some artistic trip
Speaker 1: that I I just couldn't resist because it felt like
Speaker 1: I was justifying my existence. You know. It wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to have pop hits in my mind, even if I
Speaker 1: could have done that. Um, they needed to be hits
Speaker 1: with substance. I just I had that need to to
Speaker 1: to communicate substance. I don't know why, but I did,
Speaker 1: and and and and the songs. You know, we're not uncommercial.
Speaker 1: You know, when you'll go back and look at you know,
Speaker 1: out of the darkness or or bitter fruit or or
Speaker 1: or you know, uh whatever, they were not they were
Speaker 1: not you know, they're not jazz. You know they're they're
Speaker 1: not They're not you know, something difficult to comprehend. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I think it would have needed
Speaker 1: some an advocate to to to really to really help
Speaker 1: promote promote the stuff at the time. I think with
Speaker 1: the manager, I think I would have stayed in Europe
Speaker 1: at that moment and broken through. We played the sixteen
Speaker 1: countries and and blew to boot, blew the house down,
Speaker 1: and and and you know, like I said, a group
Speaker 1: that was not nearly as good state and broke to
Speaker 1: in Europe. That might have been my breakthrough moment. Who knows,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, I don't know. I I think
Speaker 1: lack of management was a big factor. I think my
Speaker 1: own lack of lack of of making it a priority
Speaker 1: was probably a factor. I I did not see having
Speaker 1: having a hit single at that point being a priority
Speaker 1: to me, and I should have. I should have. Man,
Speaker 1: I made sure bru spraising and a hit record. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that because we needed it. We needed on
Speaker 1: that that fifth album that you know that was the
Speaker 1: last chance. Man. We needed it, and just to stop
Speaker 1: at that point for a second, it was fascinating to
Speaker 1: get your viewpoint on that. I know there's a big
Speaker 1: economic component on the other side of the stage, but
Speaker 1: from the audience, if you had been there before, everybody
Speaker 1: came aboard on board to run. Certain people came aboard
Speaker 1: on board run Darkness was a return. It was a
Speaker 1: gift to the people who had always been there. And
Speaker 1: in addition, amongst fans in Los Angeles, you played the Rock,
Speaker 1: they played the Roxy. There were boo legs, I own
Speaker 1: the bootleg, et cetera. So the fact that you felt
Speaker 1: on the inside that you needed Hungry Heart and you
Speaker 1: needed to put it over the top. My feeling the
Speaker 1: vibe in l A was Bruce and the Eastree being
Speaker 1: were part of the firmament, well being a part of
Speaker 1: the firmament, part of the FIRMAMENTI of the Roxy. That
Speaker 1: wasn't underplay. I mean that was a radio show or
Speaker 1: even the palladium. What was the intermediate? Uh, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure on the Darkness tour Bruce played the Forum. Now
Speaker 1: granted that's l A. Well maybe and maybe, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't full. If we did, it wasn't full. Okay.
Speaker 1: So and yes, and that was l a you know,
Speaker 1: you go to Kansas, you know. Uh, we were struggling,
Speaker 1: believing me, believe me, we were struggling. We were in
Speaker 1: some ways less popular. I mean, to run made a
Speaker 1: lot of noise that that particular song. People think it
Speaker 1: was a hit. It wasn't really a hit, but but
Speaker 1: certainly yeah, and it got more airplay than anything on
Speaker 1: Darkness Darkness absolutely, you know. So we were kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, in some ways on a on a on
Speaker 1: a down slide, kind of um saved by Frank Barcelona,
Speaker 1: who kept us going regardless, and it just felt like
Speaker 1: we need we need to get over his hump here,
Speaker 1: you know. So I think that single came wrong with
Speaker 1: throw at the right time. Okay, let's jump forward for you.
Speaker 1: When did you realize the Sopranos was the Sopranos um
Speaker 1: About three weeks after it was on Um. Uh, suddenly
Speaker 1: everybody is stopping me on the street. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: they don't want to discuss rock and roll anymore. And
Speaker 1: I had been a you know, a so called rock
Speaker 1: star at that point twenty five years. Just to show
Speaker 1: the power of TV three weeks. Forget those twenty five
Speaker 1: years and they're they're gone. I'm telling you know, and
Speaker 1: and I and I did not. I was not not
Speaker 1: easily recognized. You know, I looked pretty different in the show.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you fish you may see it
Speaker 1: that way? People knew you were in the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think, Oh, I know, there was you know, that
Speaker 1: was one of the big stories. Not everybody walking down
Speaker 1: the street in New York City is gonna know you're
Speaker 1: in these three be gonna know who you are anyway,
Speaker 1: But if you were a music fan and you were
Speaker 1: watching that show, you knew it was you. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: But to my mind, I looked pretty damn different. But
Speaker 1: but anyway, it didn't matter because everybody is stopping me.
Speaker 1: And I said, man, this show, We're onto something because
Speaker 1: it was it. This wasn't that obvious League commercial. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean the pilot, uh was was downright weird? You know.
Speaker 1: Extent is the pilot the first episode, Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: mean a mob boss has ducks flying to with pool,
Speaker 1: they fly away, he has a nervous breakdown. That the
Speaker 1: makings of a hit show, you know, And then and
Speaker 1: and David Chase, no compromise, this is gonna be his
Speaker 1: last show. He didn't care, all right, he'd been he'd
Speaker 1: been a good TV soldier his whole life since Rockford's Files,
Speaker 1: you know, like what early seventies or something. Um, and
Speaker 1: and and he's ready to go onto movies and he's
Speaker 1: just gonna break every rule in the book. He just
Speaker 1: doesn't care anymore. So so so um, he has no
Speaker 1: The Lightning is like practically should have a very tay
Speaker 1: you know, it's practically a documentary. And the camera doesn't
Speaker 1: move at all, no seductive camera moves. Uh. Uh. I
Speaker 1: had to talk him in adding like four songs to
Speaker 1: the pilot because there was there was no music. It
Speaker 1: was just like it was the most uncompromising and too
Speaker 1: many characters, you know, no stars. A couple of people
Speaker 1: might have known me, and a couple of people knew
Speaker 1: well then new Lorraine from good Fellas, But here she
Speaker 1: is doing the opposite roles from good Fellas, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's it. So, I mean, every rule was it
Speaker 1: was being broken. Uh. And I thought, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna take at least one season for
Speaker 1: people to kind of get used to the idea of it,
Speaker 1: because it was pretty bizarre, you know, no two or
Speaker 1: three weeks boom, I mean it was, it was on
Speaker 1: and uh it just kept building from there. How did
Speaker 1: the Alabama three songs get chosen? They David chose all
Speaker 1: all the music. Uh, I don't watch so much. Sure
Speaker 1: who who turned him onto that? I never asked him? Uh,
Speaker 1: but he but he you know, he had a guy
Speaker 1: that did some music supervision for him. But but mostly
Speaker 1: he liked That's the thing he liked doing most. He
Speaker 1: liked doing the music more than anything. Okay, the landscape
Speaker 1: is littered with hit shows to get worse every season. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're doing the show now, there was a delight
Speaker 1: he first you wanted to yearly schedule and then they
Speaker 1: you know, for script real, I'm on the outside script resil.
Speaker 1: To what degree was their pressure and to what degree
Speaker 1: did you feel the attention? Now as the show started
Speaker 1: to play out, well, okay, the pressure was on David
Speaker 1: Chase and uh after the first season, Uh, he was
Speaker 1: a little bit stuck because in his mind it was
Speaker 1: just the third teen part movie and and and the
Speaker 1: movie in his head was you know, mother was to
Speaker 1: kill kill her own son. And uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: so he was kind of he wasn't really sure what
Speaker 1: to do after the first season. Uh, but we did.
Speaker 1: We did a second season, right according according to the schedule,
Speaker 1: I think, you know. And then we were at the
Speaker 1: Rath party for the second season and at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, we're doing really really well and uh and
Speaker 1: and and everybody's kind of celebrating, and David Jason's looked
Speaker 1: completely wasted, you know, just really drained. And I said, damn,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, come on, you gotta have some
Speaker 1: fun here, man. And he's like, I got, I got
Speaker 1: like whatever it is, three or four more months of
Speaker 1: post production and then it's like maybe a month off
Speaker 1: and then I gotta started writing a third season, he says.
Speaker 1: And I'm just I'm exhausted. And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking myself, h is HBO. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: before we got there, there's a football show and seven right,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, And I said, Dave, you know
Speaker 1: who says you gotta follow that schedule, and you know,
Speaker 1: and he had been such a good soldier his whole life,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, well, that's the way we've always
Speaker 1: done it. I'm like, yeah, So what it's HBO, you know, new,
Speaker 1: a new idea. We are so hot right now. What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Fire you? If you say I
Speaker 1: want three months off, I want six months or whatever.
Speaker 1: When we come back six months later, will the show
Speaker 1: have been forgotten and and and go down to drain?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, you know, Well they fire you.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, you know, I said, fuck then,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more important to us and to them
Speaker 1: that you are in good shape mentally. You know that
Speaker 1: you are not exhausted. You you need you need to read,
Speaker 1: you know, refuel here man, take take whatever time you
Speaker 1: fucking need, you know. And uh and he did and
Speaker 1: he did, and that changed the entire It changed cable
Speaker 1: TV forever because everybody started doing it later, you know,
Speaker 1: taking you know, extra time here, you know, coming back
Speaker 1: fourteen months later than sixteen months later. But you know,
Speaker 1: but it was important at that time that I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy is gonna just kill himself here
Speaker 1: and what good is he gonna be for anybody? And
Speaker 1: burned out like that. What are a couple of your
Speaker 1: favorite episodes? Well, you know, I never watched the whole
Speaker 1: thing from the beginning, but but I watched some of
Speaker 1: the first season. Uh, they were doing a marathon and
Speaker 1: I and I had seen the you know, the new one,
Speaker 1: the new Many Saints, you know, so I kind of
Speaker 1: put me in that soprano's moods I watched. I watched
Speaker 1: the first season and and uh, it's amazing how well
Speaker 1: it holds up. Honestly, it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: pretty unique show. Um. I mean, thinking back, my favorite
Speaker 1: scenes were two things. You know what we're working with Jimmy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I just love working with him. Uh. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing that you know where I come in. I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta give him bad news and it pisces
Speaker 1: them off. And you know, I like that scene a lot.
Speaker 1: And then uh, very rare scene with my wife because uh,
Speaker 1: mostly of the guys with the guy, the girls with
Speaker 1: the girls. And uh we had one scene when when
Speaker 1: the tony sopranos in the hospital and Sylvia has to
Speaker 1: take over and uh, and he's getting dressed and then
Speaker 1: she is there, you know a little bit of the
Speaker 1: Macbeth thank but it was it was that was that
Speaker 1: was are the two scenes to stand out in my mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: you talk about your political awakening, being in Europe being
Speaker 1: asked questions about America, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: vivid scenes about that, democracies in crisis. What do you
Speaker 1: think of the political world today and what you or
Speaker 1: anybody in the music business or music and anything can
Speaker 1: do about it? Well, that's uh, that's a good question. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we're in big trouble. I think we're in
Speaker 1: the biggest trouble, uh, possibly of our history, certainly since
Speaker 1: uh eighteen sixty. I think we are very much on
Speaker 1: the verge of a second civil war. On he my
Speaker 1: dog waking up. We are in a huge trouble right now.
Speaker 1: And I keep asking where are the tough good guys.
Speaker 1: That's uh, because we're in a war and uh and
Speaker 1: only one size fighting it. And I felt this way
Speaker 1: for a long long time. And arguably this board goes
Speaker 1: back to our founding. Um, you don't like it or
Speaker 1: not admit it or not, we were founded as a
Speaker 1: male dominant, white supremacist, um Christian nationalist oligarchy. That's how
Speaker 1: we re formed, as what most of our constitution said,
Speaker 1: and um, luckily we had a few more enlightened founders
Speaker 1: who snuck in there. The liberty injustice for all bits
Speaker 1: and pieces that we've been trying to live up to
Speaker 1: ever since. But at this point Republican Party has completely
Speaker 1: returned to that same position. Um, and even even more
Speaker 1: anti American and un American than that. You know, they
Speaker 1: just have lost all interest in democracy, in uh, in equality,
Speaker 1: uh and even in science. So it's uh, we become
Speaker 1: we've become this this dangerous uh, dangerously close to civil war.
Speaker 1: And I see it's not just us, it's it's the
Speaker 1: problem is all around the world. I just did two
Speaker 1: tours around the world and gets a mess all over
Speaker 1: the place. You've got a problems from Australia to Indonesia
Speaker 1: to Hungary. You know, either it's either it's fascism or
Speaker 1: it's religious extremism, and uh we got both going on here.
Speaker 1: So so so you know, um, I'm hoping the Democrats
Speaker 1: wake up. Uh if they're the only game in town,
Speaker 1: it's left. But what they're doing to this show Biden,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you got love the guy and
Speaker 1: I root for him every day, but he's not getting
Speaker 1: you know, it's been one unforced era after the other.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the concept of bi partisanship. It's just uh,
Speaker 1: a tragic sort of frame of mind when there is
Speaker 1: no by by means too, because we don't have to
Speaker 1: legitimate political parties anymore. I mean, if people were trying
Speaker 1: to make him sound and act like a senile old man,
Speaker 1: they couldn't do a better job of it. Okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is no bi partisanship possibility now. Uh, that was
Speaker 1: the first unforced Sarah Merrick Garland. I mean really, Uh,
Speaker 1: what was don knots not available? You know? I mean
Speaker 1: an attorney general. It should be Malcolm Nance, it should
Speaker 1: be you know, and people, well, you're not an attorney.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. We don't need an attorney, We
Speaker 1: need a general. You know. Uh. Afghanistan an absolute disaster.
Speaker 1: I don't care what anybody says. I'll argue this all
Speaker 1: day long. Okay. All we had to do was keep Kab,
Speaker 1: keep one town. Was they had at least a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty thousand soldiers that people are saying three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Let's cut that in half with a hundred fifty thousand
Speaker 1: creating an impenetrable perimeter. We could have kept the two
Speaker 1: air for the two bases and Kabul and I think
Speaker 1: a few more cities as well. Now, where is that accomplished,
Speaker 1: That accomplishes the main goal of all of our fun policy,
Speaker 1: which should be don't allow anymore Islamic states. All right,
Speaker 1: there's only four, you know, and and and they are
Speaker 1: the epitome. And the ultimate example of human rights violations
Speaker 1: by definition, is the problem with Palestine. Right now. I've
Speaker 1: been fighting for a Palestine homeland my whole life. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do it while Hamaz is in charge, forget it,
Speaker 1: all right, not gonna happen, man, al Right, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in human rights violations. And that's what surial law is,
Speaker 1: that's what Alamic state is. And we just gave it
Speaker 1: to him. Man, And what does that mean? That means
Speaker 1: those hundred cats died in Vain, they died for nothing,
Speaker 1: just like the fifty died in Vietnam. It's exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing. Okay, when you when you you know, in
Speaker 1: this case, they had a really good reason to die.
Speaker 1: If we had kept Afghanistan, you know, at least a
Speaker 1: city or two kept it from becoming Islamic state. There's
Speaker 1: plan to justify then, just for the women, the women's
Speaker 1: rights along justifies that, you know, then those hundred died
Speaker 1: for good reason. Fighting Islamic extremism. That's something that's that's
Speaker 1: a war worth fighting every day of the week, you know,
Speaker 1: any religious extremism, but certainly Islamic, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and instead, you know, we I mean, how
Speaker 1: could he follow Trump's plan that didn't alarm bells go off?
Speaker 1: If you're doing something you Trump suggested? What the hell's
Speaker 1: the matter with you? And the incline and all the
Speaker 1: guys around them, What were they thinking? You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get out of the forever war? What about the
Speaker 1: forever war in Japan and Germany and Korea? What about that?
Speaker 1: We're there for a reason, and it's a good reason,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's called keeping an eye on things
Speaker 1: so we can maintain some freedom and democracy and all
Speaker 1: those good things. Man. You know, instead it bandons Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: you know, and God knows we're not going to go.
Speaker 1: It ain't gonna be good. It's one unforced ver after
Speaker 1: the other. Cuba is another one. Yeah, follow Trump's plan
Speaker 1: on Cuba? What a good idea? You know. Cuban right
Speaker 1: wing have been this to me off ever since they
Speaker 1: got here. You know, they hate for they hate the
Speaker 1: Castro brothers, so much that they want to vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Huh, you know, come on, man, I mean,
Speaker 1: these people don't give a ship about their own brothers
Speaker 1: and sisters in Cuba. That's what pisces be off. You know,
Speaker 1: they think a boycott hurts the fucking Castro brothers. What
Speaker 1: what planet do you want? You know, the idiots, they're idiots,
Speaker 1: you know, And you know, of course we should normalize
Speaker 1: relations with Cuba. Of course we should. You know, anyway
Speaker 1: you want unforced that after the other man, and and
Speaker 1: you know, and right now, uh, you know, these two,
Speaker 1: these two fucking little life bene Edictonald Twins, Mission and Cinema,
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill the Democratic Party and they kill Biden's
Speaker 1: presidency and they may be killing democracy. That's how bad
Speaker 1: things are right now. I mean, twenty states are already
Speaker 1: passing laws. Twenty states, all right, they're already passing laws.
Speaker 1: Not just voter suppression. That's what everybody talks about. It's
Speaker 1: a voter nullification. Everybody needs to learn the word nullification.
Speaker 1: That's what's going on. And that means it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: who we vote for. Suppression can be overcome. It shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: But it should, but it can be overcome like like
Speaker 1: you know, Stacy Abels didn't in Georgia, so overcame it.
Speaker 1: Nullification is the whole another trip. That means it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter who wins. They sort of vote to the garbage
Speaker 1: camp and the state legislators decides who wins, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what Trump was trying to do, you know, last
Speaker 1: last election. Well, now what's happening for real? You know,
Speaker 1: And I mean we are in big trouble and I
Speaker 1: don't see I don't see the good guys rising to
Speaker 1: the occasion here. Man. We'll see, we'll see how they
Speaker 1: if they go after the subpoenas you know, for January,
Speaker 1: the January six to you know, if they actually put
Speaker 1: these suckers in jail, they're all right, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we got a chance here. But I'll see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, look look at the look at the sentences
Speaker 1: are getting. Look at the sentences these guys again, you know,
Speaker 1: for tresh passing, you know, six months for you know,
Speaker 1: violation of some curfew or something. Excis sort of the government. Man,
Speaker 1: what what kind of sentences these people getting? You know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just you know, you keep play cating
Speaker 1: and playcating and playcating, and we've done it all of
Speaker 1: our lives. Man, What what other country puts up statues
Speaker 1: and names army basis after the cats were trying to
Speaker 1: overthrow the government? Only US assholes do that? You known
Speaker 1: to play kate, play k play k don't don't want
Speaker 1: to piss them off too much? You know, then we
Speaker 1: try to end America. You only try to overthrow a government.
Speaker 1: You know. We don't want to piss them off too much.
Speaker 1: I mean, what the fuss are mattering with us? Were
Speaker 1: are the tough, good guys? Man? You know that? So
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I don't know what going here,
Speaker 1: but it ain't looking good. It ain't looking good, Okay.
Speaker 1: I thought that once they got rid of abortion there'd
Speaker 1: be riots in the street. Leaders to say that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: By the same token, we had spontaneous demonstrations around the
Speaker 1: world with George Floyd. What will be the trigger to
Speaker 1: make those on the left wake up and take action? Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a good question, because it should
Speaker 1: have happened by now. It doesn't help when all the
Speaker 1: anchors on TV use the word abortion instead of equal
Speaker 1: women's rights, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking
Speaker 1: about women's equal rights. What they do with those rights
Speaker 1: is their business, you know. And every time we say
Speaker 1: that we're abortion abortion, abortion, it's like we like abortion.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes abortion. Who likes abortion? Nobody? Okay? And if
Speaker 1: you're serious about not liking abortion, there should be a
Speaker 1: lot more sex education. We should condoms everywhere for free
Speaker 1: and a healthy encouragement of oral sex. If you get
Speaker 1: rid of abortion, you get rid of rape. So what's
Speaker 1: the problem right now? In Texas? A father can rape
Speaker 1: his daughter, all right, and then get ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: with the bounty if she goes to she goes and
Speaker 1: tries to have an abortion. He can get paid for
Speaker 1: rape and his daughter in Texas. Okay. I mean we
Speaker 1: are insane, man, We're losing our minds. And I wish
Speaker 1: I could answer that question bile, because that's the question.
Speaker 1: What was it gonna take for these guys to wake up?
Speaker 1: I don't know. But Joe Biden, you know, he's living
Speaker 1: in the past. Man. I'm sorry. You know, he's a
Speaker 1: right guy at the wrong time. And Obama was too.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, you know, as much as
Speaker 1: I just love the fact that we could elect the
Speaker 1: black man in the country this prejudice. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a miracle. But you know again, you know, bringing
Speaker 1: a knife to a gunfight. Now he's not even bringing
Speaker 1: a knife in his gunfight. He's bringing you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you know? And I mean it can't
Speaker 1: go on much longer. I mean two is around the corner. Okay,
Speaker 1: you happen to watch Do you watch Bill Maher? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you watch the new rule last Friday night when
Speaker 1: he played it out? I think I was on the
Speaker 1: show last Friday, was on the you're on the first segment,
Speaker 1: So did you want did you watch what he played
Speaker 1: it out with the legislatures, etcetera. I had to go
Speaker 1: to another event, and it's everything we know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what's going on. Uh w. They have their
Speaker 1: own slate there. You know, they're get they're taking away
Speaker 1: the power of the Secretary of State, the people in
Speaker 1: charge of you know, it's like it's all obvious that
Speaker 1: what's going up now is fighting fighting. The veracity of
Speaker 1: it is not about getting him back at power. It's
Speaker 1: about winning in that's right, and and and and and
Speaker 1: and really is all you need they don't even need
Speaker 1: twenty four All it is three more votes in the
Speaker 1: House and one vote in the Senate and it's over.
Speaker 1: Biden becomes you know, Jimmy Carter. Okay, just a couple
Speaker 1: of things. I'm gonna let you go. So you literally
Speaker 1: talked to Bruce every day. What do you talk about?
Speaker 1: And how long was that period where you were kind
Speaker 1: of on the outs? We um, you know, I I
Speaker 1: talked about our three our three big fights of our lives,
Speaker 1: and and and we were reconciled pretty quickly, you know,
Speaker 1: well from all of them. Uh, we don't we don't
Speaker 1: leave it out there too long, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that comes from our basic bond, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: really pretty solid, coming from when we were kids and
Speaker 1: and we were the only other freaking town man, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, if we're the only freak, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something all with you. But if it's two
Speaker 1: of you, you know, maybe there's hope, and maybe there's
Speaker 1: gonna be maybe around and something, you know. And I
Speaker 1: and we really needed each other at that age, and
Speaker 1: I think that really bonded us forever. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: So when when we fight or you know, we have disagreement.
Speaker 1: They didn't last too long. They really donna last too long.
Speaker 1: But you literally connect with him every day. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: almost almost, you know, you know, might might miss a
Speaker 1: day or two here and there, but we text, you
Speaker 1: know or something. You know, what do you what do
Speaker 1: you talk about? Whatever is going on? You know, it's
Speaker 1: like getting two friends. You know. We were you know,
Speaker 1: rooting for rooting for his daughter in the Olympics, you know,
Speaker 1: and man, that was something that was exciting. Come away
Speaker 1: with a silver metal, you know. Um, and we talked
Speaker 1: about all kinds of different things were um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing a big event. This is this Sunday is
Speaker 1: gonna interview me about the book? And uh, man, no
Speaker 1: whatever and whatever. Okay, So let's say, hypothetically, I waive
Speaker 1: my magic wand you are completely in control of Bruce
Speaker 1: and the Street Band. What should be their next step?
Speaker 1: What should be the direction if you are in charge? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think at this point it's just it's this.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of obvious, isn't it. I mean, we uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully this virus will cooperate and we're a
Speaker 1: little bit of luck to be back on tour next year. Um,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, playing inside might be a little
Speaker 1: bit dodgy for a while, so maybe we'll probably start outside.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be my guests. And I'm guessing
Speaker 1: right now, okay with your magic wand I'm guessing, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but if we do go out, it will
Speaker 1: probably be go out for two years. I would like
Speaker 1: to go to some new places. I always do. I'm
Speaker 1: always arguing for that. Um you know, uh, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit more time in the Far East, but we
Speaker 1: don't spend much time in you know, maybe Dubai, so
Speaker 1: maybe Israel, just to piss off those boycott people, you know,
Speaker 1: I would just like to do that effort for just
Speaker 1: you know, they've been, they've been, you know, as obnoxious
Speaker 1: as humanly possible. And we never even had it on
Speaker 1: the schedule. You know. It was like, how dare you
Speaker 1: think about playing Israel's not gonna hear all these adolescent
Speaker 1: insults to me videos. I'm like, we never even thought
Speaker 1: about it, but I'm thinking about it now, you know,
Speaker 1: So you know I'd like to go. I'd like to
Speaker 1: do with places where we have been. It's always fun
Speaker 1: to break in a new crowd, you know, I mean China, man,
Speaker 1: you know, we gotta get to China soon. I went
Speaker 1: to China for one day. I was trying to get
Speaker 1: my radio show on there, and um, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be the first Western DJ and China to tign them
Speaker 1: off right, you know. And uh. And I talked to
Speaker 1: some people and I said, you know, too many people
Speaker 1: come play here. And they say, well, we don't really
Speaker 1: like live music too much. I was like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean. They said, well, we're so we're they're so
Speaker 1: used to lip syncing, you know that that live music.
Speaker 1: This sounds too sloppy. Was like, oh, man, we gotta
Speaker 1: get to China soon before it's too late, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta start changing those heads around. Man,
Speaker 1: come on, you know too sloppy. We take great pride
Speaker 1: in our sloppy is you know. But the only thing
Speaker 1: in terms of records, you and me both know, the
Speaker 1: landscape has completely changed. The action Spoti type spotify tough.
Speaker 1: If you are nowhere nearer as big as the action
Speaker 1: the sixties, never mind the seventies and eighties. And if
Speaker 1: you are an act, you could put out a record
Speaker 1: and people don't even know. So I was thinking, Max Martin,
Speaker 1: who I barely know, met a few times, talked a
Speaker 1: few times. He started out as a real rock musician.
Speaker 1: How about if Bruce tried to make a record with him.
Speaker 1: You know that This is what Paul McCartney did about
Speaker 1: twenty years ago with Nigel Goodrich. He worked with Radiohead
Speaker 1: and then Nigel said, you know, I think it could
Speaker 1: do better on a song. This is writing a song,
Speaker 1: And Paul McCartney says, I'm Paul McCartney. No, I I
Speaker 1: know it's done. But I think you know that you
Speaker 1: talk about Hungry heart Land, all that dancing in the dark.
Speaker 1: I think there could be another one. Well, I you know,
Speaker 1: you can't rule it out because because there's no there's
Speaker 1: no real rules. Um I think uh, I think, well,
Speaker 1: what happened the first time, it could happen again, which
Speaker 1: was a real ground swell. We were so popular live
Speaker 1: they started to become a problem for radio not playing us.
Speaker 1: You know, there's as a certain point if you can
Speaker 1: actually get that groundswell going. I'm not sure you know
Speaker 1: it could happen exactly the same way, but I think
Speaker 1: it's possible. You know that just in the middle of
Speaker 1: let's say our next tour really just explodes and selling
Speaker 1: out multiple stadiums everywhere. You know, you might have enough
Speaker 1: momentum to just start having radio loosen up a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know why classic rock refuses to
Speaker 1: play new things. I don't get it. I've done speeches
Speaker 1: at their conventions and talk to them. I know them all.
Speaker 1: Half of them are running my my show in syndication,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, why, you know, why would you play
Speaker 1: Hey June every two hours and not play a new
Speaker 1: song by Paul McCartney. Why why would you play Brown
Speaker 1: Sugar every two hours and not play a new song
Speaker 1: by the Stones? You know, I don't get it, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you. But the ship is sailed. Radio
Speaker 1: is nowhere near as powerful as it once was. Both
Speaker 1: that's good because the gatekeeper is not as strong. That's
Speaker 1: bad because the rest of the rule is the tower
Speaker 1: of Babel. Well that's the thing. You say that that,
Speaker 1: but that that. But the point is, let's just assume,
Speaker 1: for the sake of discussion, there was that definitive track,
Speaker 1: which I don't think Bruce has had recently. But we
Speaker 1: we won't argue about that. You have that definitive track.
Speaker 1: Those people at Spotify etcetera. They are dying to make
Speaker 1: their bones on ship like this. They will give it
Speaker 1: a good shot. These alternative sources radio, Yeah, the old
Speaker 1: people who listen to radio, etcetera. But the active buyer
Speaker 1: is online. I'm just it's possible. I'm just not sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that we now exist in, Uh you can
Speaker 1: have that mass shared experience. I don't know. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can have it. It's too fragmented,
Speaker 1: isn't It's too fragmenting. I mean it is. But as
Speaker 1: you stated earlier, rock is it the bottom in terms
Speaker 1: of recordings, not in terms of live So if you
Speaker 1: look at this track that Max Martin did with the
Speaker 1: Weekend and the Cold cold Play, cold Play was never
Speaker 1: gonna have a hit without Max Martin. The song is
Speaker 1: not a one listened smash, okay, but gigantic success. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying Bruce needs to sell out. But you know,
Speaker 1: I had this discussion what the fund is his name?
Speaker 1: You know, the hopper, Dave Cobb. Okay. I was talking
Speaker 1: to the manager's good friend of mine, manages Garth Brooks.
Speaker 1: Garth Brooks very loyal to his people. I said, hey
Speaker 1: should work with Dave Cobb, and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not my choice. Garth is loyal to his people.
Speaker 1: But I think, first of all, Dave Cobb will be
Speaker 1: a perfect match for Bruce. That's what he does. But
Speaker 1: if you want to single, you work with Max Martin
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. It's a learning experience. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: somebody to sell out just to pull you into a
Speaker 1: different space. But I'll get off my soul box and
Speaker 1: I'll go to my final thing here. Okay, you read
Speaker 1: the book. You've had so many experiences that if you
Speaker 1: die tomorrow, you know you've had a great life in
Speaker 1: the anywhere from one minute to twenty five years. You
Speaker 1: have left anything left and left that you want to
Speaker 1: do accomplish personal career wise, well, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: I really have in some ways. I just kind of
Speaker 1: discovered a whole new way of making records and writing songs, uh,
Speaker 1: which sounds funny because it's the way everybody else does it.
Speaker 1: But my last my lowest album is the first fictional
Speaker 1: album I've ever done, you know, and uh and and
Speaker 1: and fiction is fun, you know, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure off U, all this life and death stuff.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that. I wonder where that could go. Um.
Speaker 1: I got five completed scripts and twenty five treatments, uh,
Speaker 1: any of which I think would be really enjoyable TV shows.
Speaker 1: I like to do more of that. Um. Live, I
Speaker 1: love producing live events the most. The Broadway show I did.
Speaker 1: I think it was the high point of my artistic life.
Speaker 1: I I love, you know, writing, directing, producing, and and
Speaker 1: really uh doing something that is entertaining with substance live.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing quite like live. So, you know,
Speaker 1: as as much as I love TV, and I have
Speaker 1: a couple of movie ideas as well. Um, we'll keep
Speaker 1: the Disciples Soul going if I can. But you know,
Speaker 1: I like, I like, I like doing a lot of things.
Speaker 1: So it's just a matter of staying busy and uh
Speaker 1: finding a patron to pay for it. That's my That's
Speaker 1: my goal in life, you know, and then maybe maybe
Speaker 1: I'll achieve my ultimate goal life, which is breaking even. Okay, Stephen,
Speaker 1: this has been fantastic. I want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to talk with me. My
Speaker 1: my my pleasure. I've always get type of liver. Okay,
Speaker 1: until next time, It's Bob Leftstax