Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is keyboardist extraordinaire.
Speaker 2: Bill Payn Bill, good to have you on the podcast. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 1: Okay. Sometimes you're referred to his Bill. Sometimes you're referred
Speaker 1: to his Billy. Do you care what's going on there?
Speaker 2: Not often? I mean my mother finally called me Billy
Speaker 2: for a while when that was the rage. I normally
Speaker 2: would people ask I say it's Bill. But if they
Speaker 2: want to say Billy, just don't call me late for dinner.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you're out with Little Feet now, you were
Speaker 1: out with the Doobie Brothers. What's your relationship between the
Speaker 1: two acts.
Speaker 2: Now Little Fat I'm the leader of the band. We've
Speaker 2: got a couple of new members, scotch Are, Tonny Leoni
Speaker 2: on drums and guitars. Tony plays drums also sings, which
Speaker 2: I didn't realize he did. We have Fred Tackett, Kenny Grandy,
Speaker 2: Sam Clayton from the original band Fred, although came in
Speaker 2: a little later. But we've known I've known friend since
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine. So that relationship is that it's family,
Speaker 2: the Doobie Brothers. I started work on their second album
Speaker 2: and began that process with them. I played on a
Speaker 2: lot of their stuff, including when Mike McDonald joined the
Speaker 2: group and he had two songs what a Fool Believes,
Speaker 2: and minute by minute I said, you play play those songs.
Speaker 2: I'll play some high strings or whatever. But I'm not
Speaker 2: Tommy Johnson and Patrick probably since seventy one seventy two,
Speaker 2: I think, so we all go back a long way.
Speaker 2: I spent up until a year and a half half ago.
Speaker 2: I was touring with the DeBie Brothers for two years
Speaker 2: excuse me, seven years, and then Michael joined and we
Speaker 2: were all out one big, happy family. And I still
Speaker 2: stay in touch with the guys. So it's I have
Speaker 2: two sets of family.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, I guess the question would be, would
Speaker 1: you ever go on the road with the Doobie Brothers
Speaker 1: again or is that in your past?
Speaker 2: I'd go out with them again if the inclination hit
Speaker 2: and all systems will go, and it was something I
Speaker 2: could do to help and vice versa. Yeah, I got
Speaker 2: to keep a Leisa fair attitude towards that. That's that thing,
Speaker 2: Bob with whom ever I'm working with. To be honest,
Speaker 2: it's I don't try and cut people off, but you know, uh,
Speaker 2: there's only so many hours in the day too. Just
Speaker 2: wait out like like you do. I'm sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it appears from the outside that you decided
Speaker 1: because the Doobies are still on tour, that you decided
Speaker 1: to leave that to get back with Little Feet. Would
Speaker 1: that be an accurate description?
Speaker 2: An absolute accurate description. And the reason I did it
Speaker 2: was Little Feet came upon some pretty good management in
Speaker 2: a form of Bob excuse me, Ken Levitan and Vector
Speaker 2: out of Nashville. In fact, when I when I spoke
Speaker 2: to the duties, they said, well, when we heard you
Speaker 2: went to Vector Management, we kind of figured your time
Speaker 2: with us would be limited. So I said, well, you
Speaker 2: guys figured it out before I did. But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: So how'd you end up with Ken? Oh? I got
Speaker 2: a call from a person that said, if you're making
Speaker 2: a switch, because I told him what we were, you
Speaker 2: might want to check these guys out. So that morphing
Speaker 2: into the Vector's system. And with Ken Levittan, who's a
Speaker 2: great guy. I know kid for a number of years
Speaker 2: because of Emmy Lou Harris and other people, but I
Speaker 2: thought they took about two weeks or work to decide
Speaker 2: whether they would handle a Little Feet, And I said
Speaker 2: the entire time, I said, look, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: If I want to, you have no obligation to us.
Speaker 2: So if you're going to work with us, let's make
Speaker 2: sure that you feel comfortable with it. We would love
Speaker 2: to have it happen, but I'm a realist at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, So let's let's see where this
Speaker 2: flows with with how you're dividing to make this choice.
Speaker 2: All I can tell you is that I feel with
Speaker 2: with doing an interview with with you, for example. That's
Speaker 2: part of Levitan and Vector and the visibility we have
Speaker 2: these days is why you and I are having a conversation.
Speaker 2: I don't discount Little Feet in my career with Little
Speaker 2: Feet or what we represent the musical world out there.
Speaker 2: But you need people to help in this business, and
Speaker 2: these guys have done nothing but great things for us.
Speaker 1: Well, since you've been in the game for a long time,
Speaker 1: what have you learned about management?
Speaker 2: Well, I actually managed a Little Feet myself with Paul Breyer.
Speaker 2: It's a thankless job. First and foremost you get blamed
Speaker 2: for things that maybe you shouldn't be blamed for. You
Speaker 2: get credit for things that maybe you did some minimal
Speaker 2: research into and it paid off. But I do know
Speaker 2: that that management with the right people can open doors
Speaker 2: that are normally closed. It's about perception at the end
Speaker 2: of the day. It's also about who you have speaking
Speaker 2: on your behalf. It's about connections. Unlike music, which is
Speaker 2: I think about Igor Stravinsky earlier today, you know, with
Speaker 2: AI and all the the stuff that's going on there
Speaker 2: with regard to writing letters, to composing songs on up
Speaker 2: and down. I told this frind of mind, I said, look,
Speaker 2: you know we're not going to stop AI. But you
Speaker 2: know you're also not going to stop musicians and composers
Speaker 2: and creative people. They don't compose and write and are
Speaker 2: creative because they want to. They actually have to. That's
Speaker 2: the way Stravinsky put it. He whatever is in your
Speaker 2: head and it needs to come out, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 2: And I feel that. Look, I've seventy four years old,
Speaker 2: so I mean, I hope I can do this for
Speaker 2: a while longer. Knock on what's so far, so good?
Speaker 2: But I don't pretend to know much about anything. About AI,
Speaker 2: but I know a lot about human beings, and those
Speaker 2: that are creative are going to create, not because the
Speaker 2: body is there necessarily or that the path to scoring
Speaker 2: the next Brad Pitt movies there. They're going to do
Speaker 2: it because they have the ability to and it needs
Speaker 2: to come out.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how much runway is there for Little Feet?
Speaker 1: Little Feet had Lowell George, and then Lowell George unfortunately
Speaker 1: passed away. You continued under vary incarnations. As you said,
Speaker 1: you're seventy four, but you do have hope to do
Speaker 1: this for a while. You're hooked up with Ken and Vector.
Speaker 1: What's the dream at this point in time.
Speaker 2: I'd like to get some new songs recorded as a
Speaker 2: part of the dream. I've written twenty songs with Robert Hunter,
Speaker 2: of which four have been recorded by the Little Feet,
Speaker 2: which leaves sixteen that haven't, and not all sixteen of
Speaker 2: them are should be recorded with Little Feet, by the way,
Speaker 2: eight or nine songs with Paul maul Dune, who's a poser,
Speaker 2: prize winning poet, poet and teaches it back East. Let's
Speaker 2: see whatever the big university is in New Jersey. At
Speaker 2: any rate, the dream for me is nothing substantial along
Speaker 2: the lines of of getting out in front of people
Speaker 2: and taking vows. It's it's having the ability to create music.
Speaker 2: New Old continued the conversation of playing with people that
Speaker 2: are extraordinary musicians little feet, Bob has always had the attitude.
Speaker 2: Let's say that John Coltrane and his band had I
Speaker 2: assume that it's more of a jazz uh thought process
Speaker 2: than rock and roll. It it figures more on on
Speaker 2: musicianship than than uh was you know, the visual. I
Speaker 2: think the music actually is more important to us. And
Speaker 2: I'm not knocking. I'm not knocking rock and roll. I
Speaker 2: love rock and roll. Uh, but I I uh, I
Speaker 2: think they get out and play the type of music
Speaker 2: that Little Feet plays. A song that Don was at
Speaker 2: one point and he had he had, uh they were
Speaker 2: playing with this uh one of the theaters down New Orleans.
Speaker 2: I think, uh, Stanford Theater. I can't, I can't think
Speaker 2: of the theater. But he said they were doing Waiting
Speaker 2: for Columbus. And he said, and it was. And I
Speaker 2: said harder than you thought. He said, yeah. I said,
Speaker 2: we didn't do it to trip you up. It was
Speaker 2: just that it was the type of music that we
Speaker 2: would write, would be inclusive of hopefully for our standpoint
Speaker 2: of good songs, the great resitionship as well, and twisted
Speaker 2: turns within the arrangements, not unlike what the Grateful Dad
Speaker 2: or took another group to Steely dand for example, those
Speaker 2: are tough arrangements to learn. So it's not like Oh Atlanta,
Speaker 2: which which I wrote, Lolah. I said, you can't write
Speaker 2: a here record. I go, can can't? Can't? You know?
Speaker 2: We're back and forth on that. As my idea of
Speaker 2: a hair record was having a chorus come up at
Speaker 2: you know, a minute in twenty four seconds, I guess.
Speaker 2: So it was not a hare record, but it's been
Speaker 2: something that people really like and and still respond to,
Speaker 2: and it's it fits in the age group. Another song
Speaker 2: like Voices on the Wind. Our engineer and producer co
Speaker 2: producer with me, George Messenberg, once said, what does that
Speaker 2: song mean? I said, well, in a feisty mood, I said,
Speaker 2: I don't know that it matters what it means. I
Speaker 2: want people to read into it. The Laker organization read
Speaker 2: it with caream up Jewel Dabbar went into retirement and
Speaker 2: he said it is his theme song. So that was
Speaker 2: kind of proof of the pudding there playing in little feats,
Speaker 2: like playing in ten different bands. You'd have to be
Speaker 2: in ten different bands to do the breath of material
Speaker 2: that we write and conceive and and push through, and
Speaker 2: it's not always easy to do that.
Speaker 1: By the way, let's bought a couple of interesting things.
Speaker 1: Let's stop for a second on Robert Hunter. How did
Speaker 1: you meet Robert Hunter? How do you end up writing
Speaker 1: with him? And what was the process?
Speaker 2: Like? I met Robert Hunter through Cameron Sears. Cameron was
Speaker 2: was co managing with John Cher from New York and
Speaker 2: we were coming up to another record and Cameron said,
Speaker 2: would you like to write with with with Bob? So
Speaker 2: I said, you know, let's let's see what happened. So
Speaker 2: Hunter sent me some lyrics and that took us a
Speaker 2: second or two first, because I thought, oh, let me
Speaker 2: talk to him. He doesn't want to talk, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: Well if he doesn't want to talk, then what what
Speaker 2: the hell are we doing? So Bob circumvented everything and
Speaker 2: just sent me some lyrics and I wrote to them.
Speaker 2: I sent him back and goes, this sounds great, and
Speaker 2: we just kept going and then about i'd say five
Speaker 2: or six songs into it, I'll get to the process
Speaker 2: in a second. But about five or six songs into it,
Speaker 2: he says, why don't you send me the music first
Speaker 2: and then I'll write lyrics to that. I go, okay.
Speaker 2: So we did a bunch like that. The point was,
Speaker 2: we never met, we never spoke on the phone, we
Speaker 2: didn't do zoom meetings, we didn't do anything. We just
Speaker 2: we just you would send me music and I would
Speaker 2: right to it. I mean, he sent me lyrics, excuse me,
Speaker 2: and I set melody and chords and whatnot to it,
Speaker 2: or we do it the other way around. And we
Speaker 2: did twenty songs like that, probably over about i'd say
Speaker 2: two hundred plus emails. So I said, at what point,
Speaker 2: I go, Bob, I'm sure you're a very nice man,
Speaker 2: but this is kind of like a Guatemala and Internet
Speaker 2: bride feeling to it. But we never met. We were
Speaker 2: going to get together for a picnic up in his
Speaker 2: place in northern California, and he fell ill, so we
Speaker 2: canceled that. And I think he also thought, we're maybe
Speaker 2: such good progress the way we're doing it, why don't
Speaker 2: we just leave it the way it is rather than
Speaker 2: not the way he would write with other people where
Speaker 2: he'd actually get together with him. And I live in Montana,
Speaker 2: by the way, so I'm sort of in a remote area.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's just assume he sent you the lyrics.
Speaker 1: What is your process in terms of coming up with
Speaker 1: the music?
Speaker 2: I would do what I'm recording on now our conversation
Speaker 2: is a zoom recorder. The Tom Guarnsey, who's another friend
Speaker 2: of mine that we write music together. He gave it
Speaker 2: to me. He says, why don't you use this to
Speaker 2: write music? And I said, oh, okay, that way what
Speaker 2: I could be doing is sitting there playing Mary had
Speaker 2: a little lamb, let's say. And then five minutes later
Speaker 2: ago what was I playing? Was I going down? Or
Speaker 2: was I got dada? And then that was going to
Speaker 2: take me off and do another direction. The zoom recorder
Speaker 2: was my lifelong, my lifeline to the path I was
Speaker 2: going to take to write these songs. It made it
Speaker 2: a lot easier. When I'm out of that twenty songs.
Speaker 2: One song, he says, you know, I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Just sounds I hate to use the word, but sounds pedestrian.
Speaker 2: What you wrote, I said, Okay, I was trying to
Speaker 2: take it to an Irish Pub. I'll get back to
Speaker 2: you two days. Two days later I sent it to him.
Speaker 2: He goes, oh my god, what what is this?
Speaker 1: This is?
Speaker 2: This is great? Uh. I emailed it back. I said,
Speaker 2: I took it out of Ireland and I took it
Speaker 2: down to South America and I said, and he says,
Speaker 2: you know what I like about you. You don't let
Speaker 2: anything stand in the way of of anything. You just
Speaker 2: do what the hell you want. I said, well, what
Speaker 2: else do we have, man? I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: lyrics are superb. It was about a dragon, and I
Speaker 2: just opened it up to more changes, more of a
Speaker 2: h I say, magic realism within the lyrics that I
Speaker 2: want to to apply rather than to put the pendles
Speaker 2: at the uh uh the Irish pub on top of it.
Speaker 2: So it was it was the freedom we gave each
Speaker 2: other was, look, I won't mess with your lyrics. I
Speaker 2: will tell you, Bob, if there's something that I I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have said, or have a tough time singing. And
Speaker 2: every time I made those suggestions, He's like, try this,
Speaker 2: and we were right in there. So it was a
Speaker 2: fascinating way too. It taught me how to write music,
Speaker 2: even though I'd been writing songs for many, many years,
Speaker 2: but it opened me up. When I was writing with
Speaker 2: Paul Muldoon with other people, I had something where I
Speaker 2: had confidence that I could do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you're also a lyricist. So when you're working
Speaker 1: with Hunter, did you ever feel like, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to put in some words here, I want to change something.
Speaker 2: I might have tried it once and I got shut
Speaker 2: down pretty quickly, so I said, Okay, I understand the rules,
Speaker 2: let's do let's do it that way. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a much better lyricist than I am, but I'm not
Speaker 2: a bad I'm not bad at it either, but I'm
Speaker 2: not Robert Hunter. So but he's not me. Uh. I
Speaker 2: think the biggest compliment we gave each other was was
Speaker 2: just I said something like, you know what I write
Speaker 2: and compose what I'm doing to your lyrics. The music
Speaker 2: is already there, and he says, yeah, but it takes
Speaker 2: a composer to draw it out. And we kind of
Speaker 2: left it at that.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned th Atlanta. You were saying, well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a hit. Well, in reality, it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four it was all about FM and
Speaker 1: that was the first time that Little Feet got any
Speaker 1: significant rock radio airplay, and it was funny because it
Speaker 1: was seen as more of Lowell's being. But you're the
Speaker 1: one who had the successful track. So what was going
Speaker 1: on on the inside.
Speaker 2: Well, the inside is like a lot of bads. You'll
Speaker 2: usually have two maybe three people that are vine for
Speaker 2: the the cotton candy or whatever it is you're going after,
Speaker 2: and loll As in the beginning was my mentor. Essentially,
Speaker 2: I'm writing a memoir called Carnival Ghosts. I've taken an
Speaker 2: inordinarily long time to get to meeting law, probably thirty
Speaker 2: thirty five thousand words to describe what it is like
Speaker 2: to come out of a solitary sitting at the piano playing,
Speaker 2: you know, six years later after starting at age five,
Speaker 2: maybe playing a little bit of Mozart, certainly eight years
Speaker 2: later playing some rock mononoff et cetera, and all the
Speaker 2: while being encouraged by a teacher that allowed me to improvise.
Speaker 2: So when you get into a band, you come from
Speaker 2: that solitary existence to now there's a platter on the
Speaker 2: table full of food and you got anywhere from five
Speaker 2: to six guys that want It's like a boarding house
Speaker 2: reach kind of thing. How do you maneuver within that category,
Speaker 2: which is really what you're asking. It's it can be
Speaker 2: a fight and often turns into a fight. George Harrison
Speaker 2: certainly knew about that fight, so did Brian Jones. With
Speaker 2: Keith and Mick, uh, you know, this strong prevail is
Speaker 2: what happens, and so you have to really have a
Speaker 2: commitment to what you're asking. The first time I played
Speaker 2: Atlanta for the band, which is when we were doing
Speaker 2: a session for Little Feet where we were doing rock
Speaker 2: and roll Doctor and Alan Jusaint and was putting horns
Speaker 2: to it. The band looked like looked at me like yes,
Speaker 2: so what? I went, h you know what, we're playing
Speaker 2: a song, where do you like it or not? I
Speaker 2: kind of pushed it through And it's not the only
Speaker 2: song that that happened that way. And I'm sure Lowell
Speaker 2: came into us with a few things. We go, eh, yeah, cool,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do? And would people listen
Speaker 2: to the record? Hoy HOI? For example, it starts off
Speaker 2: with rocket in my pocket. It's it's with low playing
Speaker 2: acoustic guitar. I want the purity of Lowell's voice, his
Speaker 2: guitar playing acoustic guitar to ring through, and then I
Speaker 2: followed it up with the band to show what happens
Speaker 2: when the band gets ahold of it. It turns into
Speaker 2: not necessarily something different, but it can oftentimes be vastly
Speaker 2: different because of the rhythm, because of certain chre changes,
Speaker 2: maybe dropped or included, Uh, fat man in the bathtub, dude,
Speaker 2: bump bump, that's just an arrangemental thing, as is about it.
Speaker 2: And Dixie Chicken from the piano in both cases, or
Speaker 2: keyboards in both cases. But they add to what the
Speaker 2: song is and how it registers in your mind when
Speaker 2: you hear it. It's not it doesn't make me a
Speaker 2: writer on the song, but it adds life and provides
Speaker 2: a background to hear the song. So Lowell George was
Speaker 2: all so one of the very first to include band
Speaker 2: members that didn't write, like Richie Hayward, Sam Clayton, you know,
Speaker 2: Uh Kindergarten, Ny. We split the publishing. We did split writers,
Speaker 2: but we split the publishing just for that type of thing.
Speaker 2: So if somebody came in and threw in some LECs
Speaker 2: or or whatnot, they would be covered. I mean, trying
Speaker 2: to sustain a band is a very difficult thing because
Speaker 2: of egos, and you know, we did our best to
Speaker 2: try and circumvent that. But human beings or such as
Speaker 2: they are, it's a it's a delicate process.
Speaker 1: So it was Lowell jealous that you had the hit.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I uh, I think what Lowell
Speaker 2: wanted and any proved at least initially with Warner Brothers
Speaker 2: on Sale and Shoes, which is our second album, that
Speaker 2: was his territory. He was carving out his own wrote
Speaker 2: the first album had songs that we co wrote, etc.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we wrote anything on the second album.
Speaker 2: We might have co written one or two songs. But
Speaker 2: but he decided to draw a line to say here's
Speaker 2: who I am. And I think he did in a
Speaker 2: very brilliant fashion, and that he he had a song
Speaker 2: like easy to Slip, Let's say and uh that was
Speaker 2: quitetessential lows It was great lyrics, great melody of the
Speaker 2: phrasing was impeccable. And I was still kind of sitting
Speaker 2: on the sidelines of plotting the guy and then but
Speaker 2: thinking maybe as we grew as a group that we
Speaker 2: would we would write more. That a group is not
Speaker 2: like backing up James Taylor or Bob Seeger or Jackson Brown.
Speaker 2: You you walk in there with a eyed eye, not
Speaker 2: like hey can I may I. It's eyed I. And
Speaker 2: that's what the advantage of being at a band is.
Speaker 2: It's also an extreme disadvantage if you don't agree with
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. So you said you
Speaker 1: were taking piano lessons since age five. What was the
Speaker 1: incentive for that.
Speaker 2: A little girl across the street was playing piano and
Speaker 2: I thought if she could do it, I should do it.
Speaker 2: Her name was Marilyn Newell. It was a venture California,
Speaker 2: and I lived up on a hill with a gorgeous view.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting here in Montana with a gorgeous view. And
Speaker 2: when I finally found the right teacher, I marched into
Speaker 2: her piano room where I was gonna take the lessons.
Speaker 2: Her living room, I guess, and it was the theme
Speaker 2: of Davy Crockett and I I played it for it.
Speaker 2: She said, when you come back for your lesson next week,
Speaker 2: all write down what you played for me, so you
Speaker 2: see what it is, and we're going to start your
Speaker 2: first lesson. Well she did, and I still have it,
Speaker 2: and there's a multitude of notes. But my first lesson
Speaker 2: was C D followed throw thereafter by C B A
Speaker 2: with my left hand, and I got to say Bobby
Speaker 2: when I hit the left hand. You liked the miner
Speaker 2: as opposed to major tonality was like entering into exotic,
Speaker 2: an exotic world for a five year old. It it
Speaker 2: connoteded different images to me than or of a major
Speaker 2: field or as a major. Oh, the miner was or
Speaker 2: as I said, more exotic. It was it opened up
Speaker 2: a world that I wasn't really familiar with, but I
Speaker 2: want to know a lot better. And so that was
Speaker 2: what music does, at least it does for me and
Speaker 2: probably for a lot of people, especially musicians, but not always.
Speaker 2: It opens up those avenues that you had that connect
Speaker 2: the dots between things, between other art, between food, but
Speaker 2: between everything. It's a circuitry that's plugged into to who
Speaker 2: you are as a human being and what you want
Speaker 2: to say ultimately. And the trick as you're growing through
Speaker 2: the process of learning music and applying it to who
Speaker 2: and whom you are is how do you want to
Speaker 2: represent it? And what you write be it lyrics, what
Speaker 2: you compose is musical interluds within those lyrics or maybe
Speaker 2: just as instrumental music. How do you fit in with
Speaker 2: James Taylor, Bob Seeger, Barbie Benton, Body Rate, whoever I'm
Speaker 2: playing in the studio with. How do I take that
Speaker 2: musical background that I have and apply it to two
Speaker 2: different forms of music? And fortunately, because of my upbringing
Speaker 2: of playing, let's say back, I play a bock fugue
Speaker 2: for a little bit, and then I would zoom off
Speaker 2: into something else and play just strictly what was in
Speaker 2: my heart and head. Then I would come back to
Speaker 2: the music and play that. So I kind of had
Speaker 2: an open dialogue with with the more formal aspects of
Speaker 2: music and attach it to the world of the mind,
Speaker 2: which can take anywhere. It's like a dream.
Speaker 1: Okay, your in venturer at California. What are your parents
Speaker 1: doing for a living? How many kids in the family.
Speaker 2: I have a brother three and a half years younger
Speaker 2: than I am, who at one point tried to take
Speaker 2: piano lessons to work. I had a sister that was
Speaker 2: nine years older, born in nineteen forty. She had taken
Speaker 2: piano lessons and did work for her either. For whatever reason,
Speaker 2: it stuck with me. My dad worked as a mechanical engineer,
Speaker 2: over at point Ago. He was a civilian, but within
Speaker 2: the context of working for the Navy. I guess my
Speaker 2: mother was a state home bomb. My family was from Texas.
Speaker 2: My brother at that time was the only person in
Speaker 2: the family not born in Texas. He was born in California.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in California. Based on what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: You fiddled around on the piano and you made some
Speaker 1: progress before you even win for lessons.
Speaker 2: Yes, the first song by my mother taught me and
Speaker 2: watched her play, but I couldn't play like her was
Speaker 2: via condos and it was Mary Ford and uh less
Speaker 2: uh less Paul. I still have the album cover for it.
Speaker 2: While I did solo shows, I showed him that album cover.
Speaker 2: Is this just a deep rich uh excuse me, not
Speaker 2: album cover, but but sheet music and uh yeah, the
Speaker 2: wharf is you know your mother's lap. You're in a
Speaker 2: basement that's cold, a little scary. You're you're in a
Speaker 2: piano with the keyser chipped a little bit, and she's
Speaker 2: shown you where to place your fingers to play the melody.
Speaker 2: Uh to me that that that submitted a great bond
Speaker 2: at that age to my mom. Uh and it introduced
Speaker 2: me to an instrument that to this day I still
Speaker 2: provides and provokes, uh by by by muse what what
Speaker 2: I what? I sit down, I don't often sit down
Speaker 2: with an agenda. Aist sit down and play a little bit.
Speaker 2: And uh so I'm reacting, reacting on I want a
Speaker 2: tactle information from what the way my fingers hit the keys,
Speaker 2: and importantly what I'm hearing. And I'm in full recognition
Speaker 2: that Beethoven, who is deaf, uh was not provided that.
Speaker 2: But I also know that a trick that my teacher
Speaker 2: taught me, which was when you're you're not always going
Speaker 2: to have a piano in front of you, but you
Speaker 2: will have a desk, your knees the air, and you
Speaker 2: can sit there and play. And when I do that
Speaker 2: right now, I'm playing in mid air. Here, I'm in
Speaker 2: a key of F F A C. I can hear
Speaker 2: it in my head. I go up to the B
Speaker 2: flat who play that. I can hit an F with
Speaker 2: an E in the base, which is not what you
Speaker 2: normally play. That would maybe a passing time to the F.
Speaker 2: So these are things that that whether you can hear
Speaker 2: the music or not, you can at least hear it
Speaker 2: in your head. And then go to arrangements. I've made
Speaker 2: ample use of that over the years, with little feet
Speaker 2: for arrangements. When I wasn't sitting next to a piano,
Speaker 2: I could still figure out what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, for some people it comes easy, for some people,
Speaker 1: it comes hard.
Speaker 2: What was your experience, It was a combination of both
Speaker 2: everything that you attack in earnest comes with difficulty and
Speaker 2: having a great teacher that's your mode of either have
Speaker 2: I got to crawl under the fence, dig under it?
Speaker 2: Am I going to go through it? Or am I
Speaker 2: going to pull vault over it? And the teacher is
Speaker 2: there to give you options and guidance on how to
Speaker 2: do that because you're going to hit the wall at
Speaker 2: some point. And she also gave me one important lesson too, Bob,
Speaker 2: which was at some point when I was given her recital,
Speaker 2: I was going to blank out, and she said, don't
Speaker 2: let that freak you outtion just that terminology. Don't let
Speaker 2: that panic you. It happens to most people. And she
Speaker 2: mentioned a couple of her older students where it had
Speaker 2: happened to them, and it didn't happen under her watch,
Speaker 2: but it did take place, and it was on a
Speaker 2: Mozart D major sonata and I completely forgot where I
Speaker 2: wasn't a piece, and it about destroyed me. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was like, and I looked at it later, I go,
Speaker 2: she told you not to let it get you under
Speaker 2: your skin, and I did, but not for long.
Speaker 1: Well, just to continue the lesson. If she told you
Speaker 1: not to panic, what did she tell you to do
Speaker 1: under those circumstances.
Speaker 2: She said, just to if you need to get the
Speaker 2: music up there to reorient, do that, or try and
Speaker 2: find a place where you could could stop and start
Speaker 2: again and continue. But in any case, if you had
Speaker 2: to just throw up your hands and say you know,
Speaker 2: enough is enough, then that's okay too. It's it's a part.
Speaker 2: It was like the Terrible Twos. Is the way I
Speaker 2: gathered it. It was gonna happen. At some point I
Speaker 2: was playing a gig with a solo show at the
Speaker 2: Where was it, Maryland? I guess Annapolis, And the audience
Speaker 2: is there and they go, hey, sing Dixie Chicken, and
Speaker 2: I go, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm like
Speaker 2: driving Miss Daisy in the back of the car. I've
Speaker 2: never sun Dixie Chicken. I know I could do it.
Speaker 2: But I don't know the lyrics. So I said, why
Speaker 2: don't we sing the song together, just a chorus, and
Speaker 2: so I started playing with it. Let's do a couple
Speaker 2: of rounds. So we did that. Yeah, I've had to
Speaker 2: stop and start with I was on stage with James
Speaker 2: Taylor in front of twenty thousand people, and I had
Speaker 2: a I was hooked up to a a synth helper,
Speaker 2: you know, like a I'd recorded some stuff in there,
Speaker 2: and I hit the button laid or I didn't hit
Speaker 2: it or whatever happened, and it screwed it up, and
Speaker 2: I had to stop the song, and I said to
Speaker 2: the audience, I said, we're going to try this again,
Speaker 2: but without the alert James, without the recorded music. Take one.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I just think, you know, there are times when you
Speaker 2: can let the audience in on what's behind the curtain,
Speaker 2: and you always have full access to keeping that curtain
Speaker 2: where it is too. It's a matter of style, and
Speaker 2: I try not to take myself too seriously. The only
Speaker 2: thing I take seriously is is having fun while doing it,
Speaker 2: but being serious to the to the approach of the
Speaker 2: music itself. I call that serious fun. So there's a
Speaker 2: reason we have arrangements within little feed or that I've
Speaker 2: been able to play on other people's songs and I'm
Speaker 2: very quick at what I do generally speaking. Or if
Speaker 2: I have a more complex idea and people go, hey,
Speaker 2: can we stop it there, and I go, allow me
Speaker 2: to do two more things before we stop it. I
Speaker 2: want to add another instrument and then this tell me
Speaker 2: fore like it or not? They go okay, and then oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that sounds great or whatever. I mean. I've rarely hit
Speaker 2: a brick wall to use that terminology again with people
Speaker 2: in the studio, but occasionally it's happened. And what it does,
Speaker 2: I just say, you know, I think we are just
Speaker 2: calling is We're not going to get much further. It's
Speaker 2: not an immediate hey, I give up. I don't give up,
Speaker 2: but there are just times when you have to know
Speaker 2: when enough is enough and say, I'm not communicating with
Speaker 2: this person, with this artist, I don't really have much
Speaker 2: to add to this song, and that's okay. Other songs
Speaker 2: will take it place, okay.
Speaker 1: One of the other big issues taking piano lessons is
Speaker 1: a kid is practice. Did you practice?
Speaker 2: I did practice, to the point were years later. Terry Katz,
Speaker 2: who was a kind of a Malliete, a bad guy
Speaker 2: that lived beneath me, adventurer. He came up to me
Speaker 2: at the venture A theater years later with little feet,
Speaker 2: he says. Then he apologized. He says, you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't know why you had to practice all those years,
Speaker 2: but I get it. I get it down. And so
Speaker 2: a part of what I'm writing about my book is
Speaker 2: this notion of people thought the other kids thought maybe
Speaker 2: I was Liberaci or something. So I would prove I
Speaker 2: wasn't a Liberachi by stealing their girlfriends, by hitting a
Speaker 2: home run, by making a basket at the center court,
Speaker 2: or whatever the hell I do skateboarding later feet. By
Speaker 2: that time people knew I was a regular guy, and
Speaker 2: what is regular these days anyway, But in the fifties, yeah,
Speaker 2: there was like you were either el not Elton John.
Speaker 2: El Elton John took his cue from Liberaci. You were
Speaker 2: either Liberaci or you were you know, Jerry Lee on
Speaker 2: the piano, putting your foot on the keyboard. So I
Speaker 2: was more of Jerry Lee. But I was also I
Speaker 2: had the active to play more of the style that
Speaker 2: Liberaci would play, which was classical music. So it was
Speaker 2: the practices what allows you to do that, but it
Speaker 2: is also something that disengages you or can between you
Speaker 2: and the audience. And I've had kind of fun with
Speaker 2: in writing this book to describe a little more in
Speaker 2: detail what is involved in that, which is not a
Speaker 2: heck of a lot more than what I've just told you,
Speaker 2: but it's a I could share one more story with
Speaker 2: you if you if you'd like sure with with I
Speaker 2: was playing with the Doomie Brothers and was on a
Speaker 2: particular song and what what I would normally do is
Speaker 2: I'd go, this is my second album with them, and
Speaker 2: they had a certain kind of kind of eighth notes
Speaker 2: feel on the top part of the keyboard. Is the
Speaker 2: last song I was playing that day, and I was
Speaker 2: a little tired, but I thought, you know, and I
Speaker 2: threw in this stupid lick in the bridge and I
Speaker 2: stopped the tape. And John Landy was the engineer, Ted
Speaker 2: Tipple was producing. Tom Johnson was behind the could draw
Speaker 2: aboard as well. I said, fellas, let me do, let
Speaker 2: me do that lick again. I was just goofing around
Speaker 2: there go no, no, no, Bill, we like it. I said, no,
Speaker 2: I don't like it. It's I was, I don't want
Speaker 2: it in there. I was screwing off. Okay, I had
Speaker 2: to go inside the con I said when I said
Speaker 2: fifth grade, maybe sixth I get called Bill Payne, will
Speaker 2: now play the Pianoties assemblies Washington Elementary School Adventure. I'd
Speaker 2: get a standing ovation. I would walk up to the keyboard.
Speaker 2: I'd play a little Chinese Diddy D d D kind
Speaker 2: of song, rock and roll type of thing, and I'd
Speaker 2: walk back standing ovation to my chair. I'd go on
Speaker 2: the playground and get beat up like everybody else. Twenty
Speaker 2: two years later, I get a call from Tom Johnson.
Speaker 2: He says, not like, hello, Bill, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: It was like, you know that lick that you didn't like?
Speaker 2: I go, yeah, Tom, what about it? He says, was
Speaker 2: a result of the lick that you didn't want on
Speaker 2: the record that we kept in the story you told.
Speaker 2: I went home that that evening and called that song
Speaker 2: China Grove. I go, you're welcome. Where's my publishing? Hey?
Speaker 2: We fact that over that there we are, so.
Speaker 1: The intro to China grow. That's you. You came up
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a lick in the middle
Speaker 2: of the brit that lick there. I didn't mean, I
Speaker 2: did it because I'd meant to do it, but it
Speaker 2: was I was kidding around. It was a joke, and
Speaker 2: that's why I had explained the joke of the Chinese
Speaker 2: songs I played in the other kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: not the Chinese music as a joke. Far from it,
Speaker 2: but in the context it was so yeah, things like that.
Speaker 2: I I uh, I thought that was pretty interesting. And
Speaker 2: it might have been twenty four years later as opposed
Speaker 2: to twenty two, but it was. It was a long
Speaker 2: time later. Tell me and I knew each other for
Speaker 2: a long time, so that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the early days. You said,
Speaker 1: on one hand, kids perceived you as Liberachi. On another kid,
Speaker 1: you know, you were out on a playground getting beaten
Speaker 1: up and hitting home runs. So what kind of kid
Speaker 1: were you? Good student? Bad student? Did you fit in?
Speaker 1: Were you a loner?
Speaker 2: I'd say not a great student? Uh, But people recognized
Speaker 2: I had musical talent, and that talent was represented in
Speaker 2: a couple of fashions. One was there was a a
Speaker 2: room that was that was out. It was indoors, but
Speaker 2: it was it had an open ceiling, so it was
Speaker 2: in the middle of school. Uh. I think I was
Speaker 2: probably in third grade. Missus Julie was our principal there
Speaker 2: at Washington Elementary, and they put me in this class
Speaker 2: with probably four or five other kids, and they said,
Speaker 2: you can literally do anything you want to do. And
Speaker 2: I looked at them. I did the one or two
Speaker 2: teachers what they had there. I said, can I break
Speaker 2: these windows? And they said, well, we wouldn't recommend it,
Speaker 2: but if that's what you want to do, go ahead.
Speaker 2: So we arely these little test subjects as to what
Speaker 2: would children do given the opportunity to paint, to work
Speaker 2: with clay, you know you wanted to draw, if you
Speaker 2: asked for something they didn't have, they provided for you.
Speaker 2: What I found out from that was that I was
Speaker 2: much better at something if I was given direction to
Speaker 2: do it, and then I could augment from there. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't a strict hey do it our way to
Speaker 2: the highway. Here's what we suggest you do. We'd like
Speaker 2: you to paint us a picture of you and the
Speaker 2: little girl that lives across the street from you. And
Speaker 2: I would have tried to have done that, but just
Speaker 2: open that blank canvas, Bob. It stopped me dead in
Speaker 2: my tracks. I didn't know what to do. I had
Speaker 2: too many options.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in school, do you have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends. Are you into sports?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I love sports. I I did have a lot
Speaker 2: of friends, mainly on the street I grew up. It
Speaker 2: was all girls. There was one guy there, excuse me,
Speaker 2: but the rest were girls. So I learned very early
Speaker 2: that don't mess with the girls. There are repercussions to that.
Speaker 2: And it took me a couple of three times to
Speaker 2: learn that lesson, which I forgot later in life, but
Speaker 2: it was it centinly hammered into me, almost literally when
Speaker 2: I was a kid that you know, girls are tough.
Speaker 2: If you want to play the Alamo with them, fine,
Speaker 2: if you hit him with a Katie stab, or the
Speaker 2: girls running across the field, you leader with the dirt
Speaker 2: clod and hit her in the head, other repercussions to that.
Speaker 2: What's their work? But in school, in general, I was
Speaker 2: not super shy. I went to the in sixth grade
Speaker 2: there was a track meet and I asked the school
Speaker 2: if we could take I was a program chairman was
Speaker 2: voted in for that. Could we take half a day
Speaker 2: off to hold the track meet? And we couldn't hold
Speaker 2: the track meet with Doctor Coffee, which are the people
Speaker 2: they held it before because they had issues with insurance
Speaker 2: and with I guess kids got injured or something somehow
Speaker 2: or another. I, because I really wanted it, I convinced
Speaker 2: him to do exactly that, give us a half day off.
Speaker 2: We had pole vault, we had high jump, we were
Speaker 2: doing races, We're doing all kinds of things. So when
Speaker 2: pressed to the wall again with something I really want
Speaker 2: to do, I was capable of craying out of my
Speaker 2: shell and making sure it happened. So I felt I
Speaker 2: was sort of an anomaly in a certain sense and
Speaker 2: that I possessed enough moxie to step up when I
Speaker 2: needed to. But in general, if I walked into a
Speaker 2: restaurant and somebody singing Happy Birthday to me when they
Speaker 2: knew it wasn't my birthday, I was embarrassed. Now, I
Speaker 2: haven't been embarrassed in a long long time. But I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't come out of the box that way. I
Speaker 2: came out like, hey, is is it safe? That kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And I didn't even know as a musician
Speaker 2: that I wanted to be in a band. The first
Speaker 2: band I auditioned for was after I lost my teacher
Speaker 2: at age fifteen, and I auditioned not to play piano
Speaker 2: on this band, but I play. I auditioned to play drums.
Speaker 2: So what does that tell you?
Speaker 1: You know, it leaves a lot of open questions.
Speaker 2: It does, which which is the reason I'm writing this book,
Speaker 2: because I you would think with the way I played
Speaker 2: piano and with the activeum I played Donald with a
Speaker 2: little beat with everybody else I've had the privilege of
Speaker 2: playing with. Uh, I'm not shy about it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I take it unless I'm asked to hit a hold
Speaker 2: out or in the case of playing with with with
Speaker 2: Bob Asron and oh Man, I did every think of
Speaker 2: the band name the guys that did the wall Pink
Speaker 2: Floyd wouldn't played Pink Floyd. Bob Asward told me every
Speaker 2: note to play, so I went, okay. Jeff Ricarr was there, Uh,
Speaker 2: the guitar player David was there, and I just if
Speaker 2: those guys don't care, now, I'll just play in an
Speaker 2: A C JRB. You know. Uh, when Jackson Brown did
Speaker 2: that to me, I said, why don't you come out
Speaker 2: here and play the song? Jackson because on his I
Speaker 2: think it was his second album, and I played on
Speaker 2: one song already, but every time i'd play a chord,
Speaker 2: you go play like this, and I'd play in a
Speaker 2: couple of bars, no play instead of D F sharp
Speaker 2: A play F sharp a D. I finally said, would
Speaker 2: you come in the room play this for me? So
Speaker 2: he did, and I said, is there any earthly reason
Speaker 2: you're getting me to play like you when you can
Speaker 2: play it just fine and you're wasting your time and
Speaker 2: money getting me to do that. And so he was.
Speaker 2: That year that we had that conversation, the Playboy magazine
Speaker 2: had him and so I think Rock Piano Player of
Speaker 2: the Year. And I said, well, you call me back.
Speaker 2: If you called me back, I will take direction, but
Speaker 2: I want to be able to put some of myself
Speaker 2: into it as well. So the song was here come
Speaker 2: those Tears again on the Pretender album, and I played
Speaker 2: on more than a couple songs on that record. I
Speaker 2: was able to kind of do what I wanted. The Pretender,
Speaker 2: by the way, is Fred Tackett, who plays a little
Speaker 2: feet which I never knew or didn't know it a
Speaker 2: few years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Pretender is Fred Tackett. Yes, explain a
Speaker 1: little bit, since you know Fred I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: it means. I mean, Fred is he's just he's from Arkansas.
Speaker 2: He's uh uh. He's probably done as many or more
Speaker 2: session session work than I have. There was a session
Speaker 2: in which we were playing for Abraham L. Boreal and
Speaker 2: I've had his son, of course, who's playing right with
Speaker 2: Sir Paul McCartney anyway, Ale Boil, Jeff Pacar on drums,
Speaker 2: Fred Tackett on guitar acoustic guitar, and I played keyboards.
Speaker 2: The producer calls me into the room says, what's Fred
Speaker 2: Tackett doing? I said, what tracksy on? Yes seventeen and eighteen.
Speaker 2: I went on to the board as Richard Perry Studio
Speaker 2: Studio fifty four in Hollywood. I pulled both faders down
Speaker 2: and the track even with Jeff and Abe and myself
Speaker 2: almost visibly sagged. I said, he's your glue. And I
Speaker 2: pushed the tracks back up and walked out of the room.
Speaker 2: So what he could have been the pretender about is
Speaker 2: beyond me. He was more like a glass of water,
Speaker 2: which may maybe kind of the same thing, which is
Speaker 2: who is he? Is? He really who we think he is? There?
Speaker 2: He's the pretender. I don't know the lyrics to Jackson's song.
Speaker 1: Well, I certainly do. But well, let me go back
Speaker 1: a chapter. I was talking about being in high school
Speaker 1: and you talked about stealing the girl friend. And it's
Speaker 1: funny that you mentioned that, because that would imply a
Speaker 1: strong inner confidence. In addition, I know how hard it
Speaker 1: is to make it. Could you amplify what you were
Speaker 1: talking about about there or why you mentioned that.
Speaker 2: I mentioned that because it was Hey, it was true.
Speaker 2: It was it was a step of of of showing
Speaker 2: those that they might have thought because I played piano
Speaker 2: and was not always at the practice field to play
Speaker 2: softball or wherever, Uh, that maybe I wasn't as manly
Speaker 2: as they thought and it wasn't a competition along those lines,
Speaker 2: or was I supposed to be. But I kind of
Speaker 2: took it as such. And I do have that passive
Speaker 2: aggressive nature of I could be very competitive with people
Speaker 2: when put to the test, but I don't like doing it.
Speaker 2: But but if it's there, I'll go for it. And
Speaker 2: so if it was because I grew up with a
Speaker 2: block full of girls, I wasn't intimidated by them or
Speaker 2: off foot by the fact that they were different than us,
Speaker 2: I used it as a way just to to act
Speaker 2: as a cool guy until I got older and then
Speaker 2: got flustered by it in a couple of times in
Speaker 2: my life, but in general, I just thought, yeah, I
Speaker 2: feel confident in being a guy. And did I think
Speaker 2: Marilyn Monroe in the seven year itch was beautiful and
Speaker 2: would have loved to kissed her and whatever? And I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: she's gorgeous. I liked women. I like girls, so there's
Speaker 2: one way, one way to do it, or to be involved.
Speaker 2: And later, much later, the cliche is, yeah, I started
Speaker 2: playing rock and roll so I could meet girls. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's part of it, but it certainly wasn't the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stay there. Your first band, you say you're
Speaker 1: gonna play drums. At what point do you want to
Speaker 1: play with other people? And music is changing while you're
Speaker 1: doing this. You know, rock comes in in the early fifties,
Speaker 1: then we have Elvis in the mid fifty then we
Speaker 1: have the crap pop acts of Fabian Bobby ry Dell,
Speaker 1: and then the Beatles come in in sixty four. So
Speaker 1: what was going on in your life is all these
Speaker 1: things were happening in music.
Speaker 2: Having a sister that was nine years older than me.
Speaker 2: She introduced me to Elvis Presley by virtue of the
Speaker 2: fact she went down to the record store to buy
Speaker 2: a hound dog, and I was as enamored with the
Speaker 2: music as I was the visual of the RCA label
Speaker 2: with the dog listening to the phonograph, so I liked
Speaker 2: both a lot. I also, like most kids, grew up
Speaker 2: listening to radio, and there was a guy named Dick
Speaker 2: Shipley who was one of the DJs Adventura, and we
Speaker 2: had the rotary fronts. So the first caller to call
Speaker 2: in will win a record. So I'd have my second
Speaker 2: finger on a first finger on the last the dial,
Speaker 2: I'd be the first caller. Well, the record I won
Speaker 2: was The Ghost of Billy Mloo by Dorsey Burnett, and
Speaker 2: Dorsey's son was Billy. He had a brother too, I guess.
Speaker 2: So music was magic to me. Okay, great, but what
Speaker 2: is the application the application of of of music and
Speaker 2: rock and roll and where I would fit into it
Speaker 2: was a more arduous and long process. So by the
Speaker 2: time I got to the point of auditioning to play drums,
Speaker 2: I was aware of a lot of different music. I
Speaker 2: liked a lot of different styles. I liked everything from
Speaker 2: Alley Oop by the Hollywood Argyles to uh, you know
Speaker 2: the Brtie Robins song, you know al Paso with a
Speaker 2: cool guitar and all that. I fell in love with
Speaker 2: the Beatles, but I also fell in love with the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones. Oh you can't love them both? I go, well,
Speaker 2: I bloody well, kine mate, it's alright. So that kind
Speaker 2: of thing I just taking and choosing battles is a
Speaker 2: part of I've spent a whole lifetime going well, why
Speaker 2: did you do that? Why are you doing it this way?
Speaker 2: Why would you do this? You know? I hadn't written.
Speaker 2: I wrote one song called Tripping Out in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: The label was Psychedelic Records, Acid Ad Productions that it
Speaker 2: was a group called Something Wild. Okay, well something Wild.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty six we had our photograph taken with
Speaker 2: Peter Asher. Peter Gordon sixty six, I would have been
Speaker 2: seventeen years old age. If it were February, I would
Speaker 2: have been sixteen. So I've got a pretty good photo
Speaker 2: of and I standing next to each other at least
Speaker 2: ted twelve years before we actually met each other. Later.
Speaker 2: It's a Dickinson tale in other words, which is the
Speaker 2: reason I'm writing this book. But the obvious for me
Speaker 2: has not always been obvious. And I'm not slow, Bob,
Speaker 2: but I just sometimes the application is something that takes
Speaker 2: me a little while longer to figure out.
Speaker 1: Okay, living in Ventura, which is a beach community, although
Speaker 1: somewhat of a city there, how big a deal were
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys, Gen and Dean surf music for you.
Speaker 2: It was a real big deal. And I just had
Speaker 2: a nice shout out from one of the guys on
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys the other day. There were I didn't
Speaker 2: really know the cats, but I mean my brother knew.
Speaker 2: Carl and Van Dyke, Parks and Brian and I were
Speaker 2: out of piano at Sunset Sound. Van Dyke ushered me
Speaker 2: into the Rimses play the song with us, so myself, Brian,
Speaker 2: you know, Brian and Van Dyke, we're playing this tune.
Speaker 2: But at Janadine, I love the music. I love I
Speaker 2: was a surfer. Other than getting invited by Jackie Stewart
Speaker 2: to play with the Rolling Stones in nineteen I think
Speaker 2: it was nineteen eighty eighty one, must been eighty one.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest thrills of my life was to
Speaker 2: be asked to join a surf club because the guy
Speaker 2: saw me surfing at C Street in Ventura, and I go,
Speaker 2: you want to join this club, which I did, And
Speaker 2: about a week later, down in wind and Sea, I
Speaker 2: got run over by somebody else surfing out there, and
Speaker 2: I had nine stitches put into my hand. And the
Speaker 2: doctor saw me. I go, where can I go surfing again?
Speaker 2: I would say two weeks? Yes. So I went over
Speaker 2: to my parents and they said, what did doctor say?
Speaker 2: They didn't even go with me to the and they said,
Speaker 2: he said, I go surfing immediately. So I went went
Speaker 2: out surf for a couple of weeks, came back and go, oh,
Speaker 2: this looks remarkably well. It's it's dry, it's it's looking fine.
Speaker 2: You came within a millimeter of losing the use of
Speaker 2: your left hand, by the way, I go, okay, doc, hey,
Speaker 2: when can I go surfing again? Oh? I'd waited another
Speaker 2: two weeks and I why at the door and went
Speaker 2: down the beach went surfing. So I have a problem
Speaker 2: with authority right, which is another place where musicians and
Speaker 2: people with creative inpulses kind of coalesced. Sometimes not always,
Speaker 2: but a good percentage of the time we do it.
Speaker 2: Counts for all kinds of mischief and for being particularly
Speaker 2: thrown into that that that uh not that many years
Speaker 2: after we got out of school, like in the late
Speaker 2: sixties with LSD and everything else that was coming into vogue.
Speaker 2: It it was like a fire burning through a forest.
Speaker 2: It took out a lot of people, you know, it
Speaker 2: was just it was just something we had to do.
Speaker 2: It's it's a historic point in time, as something like
Speaker 2: yourself knows rather well. I look at myself as a survivor,
Speaker 2: but I also found out pretty early that I couldn't
Speaker 2: keep up with people that had a different bent towards
Speaker 2: towards that type of thing. So uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: I think of myself as fortunate. I also think of
Speaker 2: myself as fortunate of being a little feet where the
Speaker 2: emphasis to put little feet together between Law and I was,
Speaker 2: let's have a vehicle that is expandable, that fits whatever
Speaker 2: music we're trying to play. Do we need horns, do
Speaker 2: we need another guitar player? Should we contemplate another keyboard player?
Speaker 2: What do we need? Let's come to it based on
Speaker 2: the music that we're playing and what we think we
Speaker 2: need at the time. And so rather than the first
Speaker 2: set of music that we played for Ahmed Erdigon, which
Speaker 2: were essentially all instrumentals and more like Frank Zappa esque
Speaker 2: type of music. We rather shortly after Ahmed said, boys,
Speaker 2: it's too diverse. So we went back to the drawing
Speaker 2: board and went, oh, okay, so we put the songs
Speaker 2: that Brides of Jesus, Hamburger, Midnight, Strawberry Flats, I've been
Speaker 2: to One, taking my Time. All these songs that were
Speaker 2: the titles themselves display Captain Gunbow willing display a diversity
Speaker 2: and eclecticism. You can imagine this type of music we
Speaker 2: played for amedt Erdgon. It must have been off the charts.
Speaker 2: And much later when I found out who Erdigand was
Speaker 2: and his association with Ray Charles, I go, oh my god.
Speaker 2: If I'd known who he was, I would have been
Speaker 2: too embarrassed to play it for him.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. So you try out for being
Speaker 1: the drums. Do you play in Being's in high school?
Speaker 1: Do you stop your education after high school? You go
Speaker 1: to community college or college? And at what point do
Speaker 1: you say, yeah, I want to play music for a living.
Speaker 2: The drum instance only took place during the audition for
Speaker 2: this particular band, and I'd had a bad go of
Speaker 2: a venture where I drank too much and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to kill myself, but it almost happened. My parents
Speaker 2: picked me up. They go, there's a kid. There's her mother,
Speaker 2: I mean his mother called and watched an audition for
Speaker 2: a band. That was them saying we want to try
Speaker 2: and help you out. Here. During the audition, there's a
Speaker 2: piano setup in that we're playing in. I ambled over
Speaker 2: to it and with the lifted the top up, didn't
Speaker 2: sit down to stood there and play. They go, hey, wait,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, here, you play the piano. I go,
Speaker 2: I guess I've been playing the piano for ten years.
Speaker 2: At that point, they said, forget this band. Here. We've
Speaker 2: got a band down the street. It's called the Debonairs.
Speaker 2: You're gonna play keyboards. Forget the drums. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: played drums. I played keyboards far Fisa, Oregon, which is
Speaker 2: like an earwing buzzing into your head and drawing your
Speaker 2: brain full of holes. I know there was a horrible sound,
Speaker 2: but everybody and the brother was using it. So I
Speaker 2: played that instrument through high school. I went to a
Speaker 2: year and a half of junior college, which included let's
Speaker 2: see Alan Handcock Junior College, which is in Santa Maria,
Speaker 2: which is where I was going to high school. So
Speaker 2: I moved from venture to Santa Maria and I school
Speaker 2: and I went back to a half semester Adventure Junior College.
Speaker 2: And I might add that my volleyball coach at Alan
Speaker 2: Hancock was John Matton, who was running a football team there,
Speaker 2: and a year later was down in San Diego and
Speaker 2: they went up to Tolkland. I go, I like that guy. Oh,
Speaker 2: that was my volleyball teacher. But he never taught us anything.
Speaker 2: He says, show up, you make this grade, show up
Speaker 2: to this thing, you make this grade, etc. I got
Speaker 2: a football team and walked away from us.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's the motivation to stop your education and
Speaker 1: what's going on with your professional musical career at that time.
Speaker 2: Frank Salazar, who was my counselor and he was also
Speaker 2: the conductor of the orchestra Adventurer Junior College, I had
Speaker 2: a one on one with him toward the end of
Speaker 2: that first semester. This is in sixty eight. The world
Speaker 2: was on fire literally and figuratively in sixty eight with
Speaker 2: the assassination of Martin Luther King of Robert Kennedy, the
Speaker 2: continuation of the riots throughout the United States in the
Speaker 2: black communities of Detroit, La. Etc. It was just a
Speaker 2: rough time, and the Vietnam War was in full swing,
Speaker 2: and I was bound and determined to join a band
Speaker 2: that would bring me up to some sort of value
Speaker 2: musically that I felt I deserved. I wasn't much for
Speaker 2: jamming in the ky of a for twenty thirty minutes
Speaker 2: at a time and then jamming in the KIVD for another
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. It didn't speak to me. I could do it,
Speaker 2: but I didn't like it. So he said, look, if
Speaker 2: you want to get out of here, I don't blame you.
Speaker 2: We can't teach you anything. Here gonna be drafted if
Speaker 2: if you get out of the out of school. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'll take that chance. So there's the impetus and the
Speaker 2: pretty real roadblock that was in front of me just
Speaker 2: to search out who. Not that long after would be
Speaker 2: Lowell George. And this was in sixty nine. The my
Speaker 2: semester Inventure Junior College was in sixty eight. So by
Speaker 2: sixty nine, I'm out there, done with the dog paddling.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start swimming and see where it takes me.
Speaker 2: I went first in northern California to a band up there,
Speaker 2: and I met a couple of people there, but I
Speaker 2: didn't I wasn't confident enough in who I was and
Speaker 2: my abilities to know the avenue or to choose a
Speaker 2: path on how to present myself to people. I heard
Speaker 2: the album Uncle Meat after turning down a couple of
Speaker 2: bands up there, and this is Frank Zappa's record. I went, man,
Speaker 2: that's a kind of music I want to play. So
Speaker 2: I went back to a La Vista, which is kind
Speaker 2: of a home base about an hour south of Santa Maria,
Speaker 2: next to UCSB, the University at Santa Barbara, and with
Speaker 2: a phony calling card. There are two people I could
Speaker 2: call two labels. One of the Straight Records, the other
Speaker 2: was Bizarre. They were both Frank Zappa's label. I chose
Speaker 2: Bizarre and I called to the lady there, and not
Speaker 2: with one conversation, with maybe four or five, perhaps I
Speaker 2: convinced her that I was an okay kid. I was
Speaker 2: new to all this. I wasn't sure how to do anything,
Speaker 2: but I needed her help, and not initially, but shortly thereafter,
Speaker 2: she put me in touch with Loel George, who had
Speaker 2: been asked to start his own band by Frank Zappa.
Speaker 2: Ti I met Lowell.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going sideways for a second. Whatever happened with.
Speaker 2: The draft, I was drafted shortly after I got in
Speaker 2: uh in Little Vee and Uh. I will keep this
Speaker 2: trunk caded because it's a it's a long and involved story,
Speaker 2: but the gist of it was I got the shrink
Speaker 2: to at l A. You know, before you can say oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gay, I'm I'm this, I'm mad, they go, well, hey,
Speaker 2: now come on in. We don't care what you are.
Speaker 2: You're going to the army and you're gonna go down
Speaker 2: to Vietnam fight. Uh. A dear friend of mine, Gar
Speaker 2: Huffman Uh he and his brother Duh. Gar was older
Speaker 2: than d and I and he was a medic in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: He said, whatever you guys do, do not come down here.
Speaker 2: It's it is a free for all and in a
Speaker 2: good way. And if you've got to go to Canada,
Speaker 2: do it whatever you have to do. Don't don't come
Speaker 2: to don't get drafted. So I took that as a
Speaker 2: means of I'm going to do whatever it takes not
Speaker 2: to get drafted, which is why I made the shrink
Speaker 2: after several maneuvers, cut down three flights of stairs at
Speaker 2: LA at the LA draft board to order me out
Speaker 2: of there and send me to a hospital. We'll draft
Speaker 2: him later. And a nurse saw me at the hospital
Speaker 2: as this young doctor was walking in. She goes, doctor,
Speaker 2: he's nothing but an animal, and I go, yeah, lady,
Speaker 2: and you're the one who wants me to go off
Speaker 2: and kill people I don't know, and I have no
Speaker 2: business having a rifle or I don't believe in this
Speaker 2: war period. And not long after that needed Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 2: So it was. It was that kind of world. Bob
Speaker 2: as she as. You know, we're about the same age.
Speaker 2: I'm a little older than you, but we were. Faith
Speaker 2: was something that was just kind of like where we
Speaker 2: are now, insurmountable in terms of where does the truth lie,
Speaker 2: what does truth mean? Does it mean anything?
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, you talk to the shrink
Speaker 1: and he put you in the hospital after you told
Speaker 1: them what.
Speaker 2: I didn't say a word. I was lying there at
Speaker 2: a fetal position, and I made them make the action
Speaker 2: of physically picking me up and putting me on a bus.
Speaker 2: To ford ord or ordering people to send me to
Speaker 2: a hospital, which is what the guy did. But that
Speaker 2: was probably my fourth time, certain my second or third note,
Speaker 2: I want to but what my third time at that
Speaker 2: draft board. What's the first time I went through? I
Speaker 2: signed everything they put in front of me, saying that
Speaker 2: I wouldn't and I realized rather early on there was
Speaker 2: call of the book First Circle by soultsanitsa where you're
Speaker 2: in a holding tank someplace and you don't know if
Speaker 2: it's day or night, so hours don't mean anything. Time
Speaker 2: doesn't mean anything. And later on I went, oh, that's
Speaker 2: like being in a recording studio you kind of divorced from.
Speaker 2: If they don't have windows in there, you can be
Speaker 2: in there for ten hours. And it's like the theory
Speaker 2: of relativity. According to Einstein, if you have a beautiful
Speaker 2: woman on your lap for a minute, it seems like
Speaker 2: an hour. If you have a person maybe not so
Speaker 2: beautiful on your lab for or excuse me for anyway,
Speaker 2: I got it reverse time. It's a sexist tale. I
Speaker 2: shouldn't tell it anyway, But I just thought, I've got
Speaker 2: to take the chance on not being drafted so I
Speaker 2: can play with little feet and that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 1: Okay, what did you tell this woman in herb Cohne's office? Bizarre?
Speaker 1: That would have vated her to put you together with Lowell.
Speaker 2: I told her that I had taken piano lessons for
Speaker 2: a long time. I played locally with several bands as
Speaker 2: I got older. I wanted to keep it short, and
Speaker 2: I told her that I love Frank's music. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to meet Lowell. I want to meet Frank. Frank
Speaker 2: was over in Europe. He wouldn't be back for a month,
Speaker 2: so that month interim. Would you be okay with meeting
Speaker 2: Lowell George? This is after introduced me to Jeffrey Simmons,
Speaker 2: who was with a group called Eureka. Would Jeff heard
Speaker 2: me play at the Tropicana Hotel? Which is in his room?
Speaker 2: He had a keyboard setup. He then goes, well, I
Speaker 2: played keyboards too, and I'm going, well, that's great. Why'd
Speaker 2: you have me come down here? But I didn't say that.
Speaker 2: I go, Okay, call this person back and there's a
Speaker 2: guy named Lowell George you might want to meet. So
Speaker 2: it's like a lot of things is very secuitous route
Speaker 2: to meeting Lowell and Indeed when I when I went
Speaker 2: to his house, I had it set up and there
Speaker 2: was this beautiful blonde girl sitting cross legged on the floor,
Speaker 2: doors open his summertime. She's listening to Eric's satti. She goes, oh,
Speaker 2: you must be built. Lowell's expected you. He will be
Speaker 2: back in four or five hours. I said, well, what
Speaker 2: does he do when he's not expected you? So so
Speaker 2: continue the story.
Speaker 1: So we'll tell us about ultimately meeting him.
Speaker 2: So when he came in, I spent a because she
Speaker 2: left not too long after that, I had a long
Speaker 2: time to, like, you know, steady his house. He had
Speaker 2: a sitar on the back corner, right down corner of
Speaker 2: the wall in this rustic house in the LUs Felis
Speaker 2: area off a in Lamont Drive, and he uh he
Speaker 2: had a samurai sword on the on the very back wall.
Speaker 2: Next to that was a kitchen, very rustic in nature. Uh.
Speaker 2: His record collection included uh oh by John Coltrane. He
Speaker 2: had an album that that Frank Szapp had released on
Speaker 2: Lenny Bruce uh, and he so he had Lenny Bruce
Speaker 2: an album of Lenny's Uh. He had a couple of
Speaker 2: albums with Oh the Blues collection that the Smithsonian Blues Collection,
Speaker 2: of which one of the songs on there was joined
Speaker 2: the band Hey, Lordy John, the band which we put
Speaker 2: on the top of Waiting for Columbus. Uh. He had
Speaker 2: music with with Chester Burnett, uh hold Wolf and with
Speaker 2: Muddy Waters. So he had He was a very collectic guy,
Speaker 2: and I kind of his book collection was everything from uh,
Speaker 2: I'm looking on my book collections that still the same thing,
Speaker 2: to a collection of poems by Carl Sandberg. Probably I
Speaker 2: think he might have had the Carl Sandberg of Lincoln
Speaker 2: books that he wrote as well. He had Last Exit
Speaker 2: to Brooklyn, which is a brutal book uh poetry by
Speaker 2: Alan Alan Ginsburg Howl. So rather a collect e sensive.
Speaker 2: The time Lowell showed up and we began conversing one
Speaker 2: on one, it was like Jaygovara and Fidel Castro meeting
Speaker 2: the first time from what I've read, where they conversed
Speaker 2: about everything under the sun. And that's kind of the
Speaker 2: way we hit it off. So by the time I
Speaker 2: left there, we decided, well, hey, come back in a week,
Speaker 2: let's let's continue this. And we did. And this is
Speaker 2: the detail I'm trying to tell, which is it's deep.
Speaker 2: I only knew Low for ten years, but it might
Speaker 2: as well have been one hundred years. It was. That's
Speaker 2: that kind of relationship.
Speaker 1: So you're talking, at what point do you end up
Speaker 1: playing some music.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was that long after. I utilize
Speaker 2: a piano like most people utilize their voice. If I
Speaker 2: need to illustrate something, I sit down and play it.
Speaker 2: You know, It's a part of my vocabulary is playing
Speaker 2: the piano. So he had an achistic guitar available, and
Speaker 2: I think we just started playing a few things. There
Speaker 2: might have been a little snippets of music that he had.
Speaker 2: As I said, I hadn't written anything out of some
Speaker 2: psychedelic tripping out that elliot Ingbert from The Mother's Invention,
Speaker 2: about a month later, came through the door with that
Speaker 2: particular single. Said did you play on this? I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: I go where'd you find? He says, in a band
Speaker 2: at a record store? And I got it because I
Speaker 2: said psychedelic music. Acid had productions from nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: This is one of the first of those kind of records.
Speaker 2: I go, oh. I didn't know that. In fact, I
Speaker 2: didn't know what any of it meant at that time.
Speaker 2: But shortly thereafter I did. So there we were okay.
Speaker 1: So you say that ultimately you auditioned for Ahmit, you
Speaker 1: go back to workshop, you're wood shedding. You ultimately a
Speaker 1: deal with Warner Brothers. How long a period of time
Speaker 1: is this and is there a manager involved?
Speaker 2: It was about a It was off the course of
Speaker 2: a roughly a year, maybe a little less than that. Actually,
Speaker 2: I just said with Russ's title in New York a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago, and Russ reminded me that we
Speaker 2: were going to go to Lizard Records Slow and I
Speaker 2: and I think Meckler Mickler was at the head of that.
Speaker 2: I can't remember his first name, but Russ insisted that
Speaker 2: we go to Warner Bros. Then at least we tag
Speaker 2: up at Lenny Warderker's office, which is what we did.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, we went out there just Laul and I.
Speaker 2: Lenny had a piano in his office. We sat there
Speaker 2: and we played anywhere from seven to nine songs, as
Speaker 2: kind of like going to Schwab's drug store and being
Speaker 2: recognized that the counter, and he asked to be in
Speaker 2: a movie. I mean, we didn't really have a band yet.
Speaker 2: Richie Hayward was with us, but we weren't in sync.
Speaker 2: We didn't have Roy Strada was on our band. We
Speaker 2: auditioned probably seventeen bass players the first six months or whatever.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of whom. One of them was Paul Breyer.
Speaker 2: We didn't play bass. He played guitar, and LOL goes, well,
Speaker 2: it's two less strings, go for it, you know. So
Speaker 2: I mean that that kind. I mean, I wish it
Speaker 2: was loose. The only manager we had for about a
Speaker 2: nana second was a business manager, uh, mister Kibbi. Martin
Speaker 2: Kibby wrote co wrote Dixie Chicken with Low et cetera.
Speaker 2: And so his dad, Martin was a good uh what
Speaker 2: wasn't he of that group? Richie was as a fraternity
Speaker 2: of man. Martin was a different group, and they are.
Speaker 2: His father said boys don't spend it all in one place.
Speaker 2: That was his advice, and I thought, you know what,
Speaker 2: that's very good advice. So I kind of adhere to
Speaker 2: that for for quite a while.
Speaker 1: So what were you surviving on at that point?
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, that's a very good question. I mean,
Speaker 2: I would alternately live in my parents' house. I was
Speaker 2: hanging out in a La Vista, which didn't bring in money,
Speaker 2: but at least I knew people. I could sleep a
Speaker 2: took place, rash on the floor or whatever. I slept
Speaker 2: at Lowell's for the first month or two, and then
Speaker 2: the la Bianca family was murdered less than a half
Speaker 2: mile from Lowell's house. We had just met with Terry
Speaker 2: Melcher a night or two before. Terry was going over
Speaker 2: to Europe. He said, when I get back, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about a record deal. Well, purportedly Manson, although this is
Speaker 2: up in the air too historically whether Melcher was being
Speaker 2: sought out or not by Manson for not giving him
Speaker 2: a record deal. But for a long time that was
Speaker 2: the story. But I wound up sleeping in Lowell's van
Speaker 2: because he brought in these cats with Patricia, one of
Speaker 2: the Price sisters, of which there were three sisters. One
Speaker 2: was married to Richie. Yeah, it was married to Rick Harper,
Speaker 2: our road manager, and Lowell was married to Patty and
Speaker 2: she I might add that their mother was Lula Belle,
Speaker 2: who sang the high part on the Lion Sleeps Tonight
Speaker 2: for Telstar, and she said the high part on a
Speaker 2: that Star trek. So that was a family the girls
Speaker 2: came from. And so we had our own Hollywood history
Speaker 2: going on there. But I eventually got out of Loll's
Speaker 2: place and found a place and the lady got me
Speaker 2: a She said, I have an acoustic piano in my house.
Speaker 2: It was a baby grant, and U you know, I
Speaker 2: was lucky in a lot of respects about of being
Speaker 2: able to search for something and tell people like the
Speaker 2: gallon the phone and warners or straight records, excuse me
Speaker 2: a bizarre what I did, and they go, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's try this.
Speaker 1: You know, did you ever have a street job?
Speaker 2: Uh? The only job I did other than play music
Speaker 2: was I was a paper boy adventure. I had the
Speaker 2: most customers that are route in the city, and I
Speaker 2: had a good aim.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Russ says, you got to sign with Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: Tell me the experience of making that record which you
Speaker 1: make with Russ. And I was living on the East
Speaker 1: Coast at that time. It was like it didn't even
Speaker 1: come out. What was the experience for you? The experience
Speaker 1: was a.
Speaker 2: Nightmare, and that I thought that they were Lord, hey, Russ,
Speaker 2: we're very good friends. And as it turns out, they
Speaker 2: became disenchanted with each other over all. Manner of things
Speaker 2: be it, arrangements, the music there's been chosen, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: just everything. So that made it a nightmare because two
Speaker 2: guys that I thought were dear friends were now dear enemies,
Speaker 2: and it made it very, very uncomfortable. First album I
Speaker 2: had never played on, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I hadn't been doing sessions at that time. I might
Speaker 2: have just started doing it, but I was. I was
Speaker 2: completely a newbie at what was involved in any of it.
Speaker 2: So it was a difficult record to put together. It
Speaker 2: didn't sell any I sawd eleven thousand copies. The first
Speaker 2: tour was I felt when we played New Year's even
Speaker 2: I don't know, wasn't New Ye's Eve New Year's Day
Speaker 2: in New York City at Club of Gano. We had
Speaker 2: two painting customers and the rest were from Warner Bros.
Speaker 2: That probably eight or nine people were there, and I
Speaker 2: was so out of it in terms of the angst
Speaker 2: of being where I thought, we're gonna be doing great
Speaker 2: because we're on started giving the you know, the record
Speaker 2: a good review, great review effect on Strawberry Flats, maybe
Speaker 2: Hamburg at midnight, and I but we're out there and
Speaker 2: We're like, we're no nothing, no one knows this. Uh.
Speaker 2: We're up in Cleveland and we're playing with the Vanilla Figs.
Speaker 2: The audience bring on the fudge and we're just like,
Speaker 2: what the hell are we doing? And we got to
Speaker 2: Texas and there's a couple of girls there and I went, oh,
Speaker 2: I get it. I think I like touring. So touring's okay,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, forget what I said. I'm back. I'll
Speaker 2: be back on the road any time you want. Uh
Speaker 2: So yeah, thinking like a musician, like a dope. And
Speaker 2: there it was, and we went in to make sale Juice,
Speaker 2: which was a different proposition but sold three thousand more So.
Speaker 2: Another way to put it is is the humility of
Speaker 2: it and having to be humble. At some point you
Speaker 2: got to face facts. But also taught me a great
Speaker 2: deal about Moe, Austin and Warner Brothers, which is they
Speaker 2: were willing to stick it out with something that was
Speaker 2: not viable, but we were a cachet for them as
Speaker 2: well to people they're trying to bring in, saying, look,
Speaker 2: we've got a little feet. We know they don't sell,
Speaker 2: but they they've got a great uh you know, their
Speaker 2: thought of glowing terms in terms of who they are,
Speaker 2: which is musicians, uh, composers, et cetera. It felt like
Speaker 2: a home to me with with with them and uh,
Speaker 2: it was so so in that regard. There were there
Speaker 2: were a lot of lessons available. But but but they're
Speaker 2: all bunched in as lessons often are with you know,
Speaker 2: in layers.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to bring up Willing, which is on
Speaker 1: both the first and second albums. Do you remember Lowell
Speaker 1: writing it? Did you have any idea the iconic song
Speaker 1: would become what's your remembrance of that?
Speaker 2: The song Willan is I wasn't there when he wrote it.
Speaker 2: They put it on the record is not an afterthought.
Speaker 2: It was a good song. But when I heard I
Speaker 2: had brought down with me from Santa Maria some country
Speaker 2: music by you know, Conway Twitty for example. Those are cats.
Speaker 2: I was listening to COMG Truitty, George Jones. What Willin
Speaker 2: sounded like to me, Bob was was a caricature of
Speaker 2: not only a truck driver, but of country music. So
Speaker 2: the reason we re recorded it for Sailing Shoes was
Speaker 2: we when we got together and we had the piano
Speaker 2: on it, well, it took us for serious approach, the
Speaker 2: way he was singing the vocal. That's why that song
Speaker 2: is iconic, not because of that first iteration. That's my
Speaker 2: opinion anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the experience of making the record with Ted Templeman.
Speaker 2: Well, I took a little bit of a backseat on
Speaker 2: that record in terms of letting Lowell, you know, like
Speaker 2: his statement hurt Richie and I. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: when we were rehearsing for it, I said that we
Speaker 2: were like two two tornadoes criss crossing each other in
Speaker 2: a room, you know. On the songs that allowed, which
Speaker 2: hardly any of them did. But for the lead up
Speaker 2: to that record, we were able to jam certain songs,
Speaker 2: but they weren't one note jams. They were songs with
Speaker 2: chord changes. But we would play him with a complete
Speaker 2: and underdoor abandonment, and we laughed about because, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: being paid to do this. It was our little our
Speaker 2: little clubhouse. You know. I might have driven Battle a
Speaker 2: little crazy, but but not all that much because we
Speaker 2: would have got time to play the actual tunes. We
Speaker 2: would we would settle down and try and adopt a
Speaker 2: more studio approach, which is the same, more conservative approach,
Speaker 2: but we we took every opportunity we could to put
Speaker 2: the pedal to the metal, as they say, and open
Speaker 2: up the car and drive it as fast as we
Speaker 2: could when we could. So it was a it was
Speaker 2: it was an experience where by the time the thing
Speaker 2: was over, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't
Speaker 2: remember Teddy in the studio at all. He must have
Speaker 2: been there. But if he was, and I apologized ted
Speaker 2: but I don't remember seeing him there.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that album comes out that also is unknown.
Speaker 1: When I first came to Little Feet, a track was
Speaker 1: included in one of the two disc sampler albums that
Speaker 1: Warner put out, and there was amazing buzz on the
Speaker 1: third album, Dixie Chicken, which I then bought. So tell
Speaker 1: me the transition from Sale and Choose to Dixie Chicken.
Speaker 2: The man transition between those two albums, Sales Choose and
Speaker 2: Dixie Chicken was losing Roy Strada on bass. We had
Speaker 2: played at Cincinnati at a gig with Captain Beefheart, and
Speaker 2: the sound sister broke down and Lowell was told it
Speaker 2: could take fifteen minutes to fix it or an hour
Speaker 2: and a half. We don't know what he says. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go ice skating. I go ice skating. Well, I
Speaker 2: better go with him, so I did. I'm watching you
Speaker 2: do all the loops and stuff. I said, we got
Speaker 2: to get back to the gig. Loll come on, so
Speaker 2: jumping a cab. Well, I don't know who the gig is,
Speaker 2: and there it is, throw the money at him, running
Speaker 2: into the hall and they are lined up. I don't
Speaker 2: know the Don van Vliet, Captain Beefhart was lined up,
Speaker 2: but virtually everybody else was. Artie Tripp was the drummer.
Speaker 2: He had family in town. They'd fixed it fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: after we left, and we're going for over an hour.
Speaker 2: Y Rostrada was also in that line, and he basically
Speaker 2: told us to jump in jumping a lake. And by
Speaker 2: that time we went really okay, we will best of
Speaker 2: luck to you too, and we we were actually very
Speaker 2: pleased to get rid of him. Is He threatened to
Speaker 2: leave us at every juncture he could, and we'd have
Speaker 2: to talk him back into it and this and that.
Speaker 2: So I don't think Lowell did that to make anybody angry.
Speaker 2: It was just the way Lowell was. If Loul wanted
Speaker 2: to do something here to do it. But that opened
Speaker 2: the doors to Kenny Gradny was the first one to
Speaker 2: walk through the open door of the two guys that
Speaker 2: would come in from De Lady and Bonnie that's coming
Speaker 2: to the base in Congress. Paul Barrera was brought in
Speaker 2: earlier because Richie and I felt like Lowell needed some
Speaker 2: help on the guitar because he's trying to do too much.
Speaker 2: He needed something to help rhythmically, not literally help, but
Speaker 2: so he could play. He was just starting an experiment
Speaker 2: with slide guitar and we thought, well, he can play
Speaker 2: rhythm and slide, but boy, wouldn't be nice to have
Speaker 2: some cushion for him to react to Paul and his
Speaker 2: brothers they all went to Hollywood High with each other,
Speaker 2: so they knew each other. Ah. So that was a
Speaker 2: transition and a major one for us. It also gave
Speaker 2: another partner to write with as well. But having Kenny
Speaker 2: Grandy step in from Delany and Bonnie. Rick Harper knew
Speaker 2: the guys, what was it a studio instrument metals, Canon
Speaker 2: Barry there down there and they brought Kenny and he
Speaker 2: said he just just got out of Delaney and Bonnie.
Speaker 2: We had a game coming up in uh Hawaii at
Speaker 2: the Creator Festival. He says, I want to bring my
Speaker 2: partner in and his partner with Sam play. This was
Speaker 2: the sure. So we all go to Hawaii playing Creative Festival,
Speaker 2: Greater Festival for forty thousand people. Uh it was. It
Speaker 2: was a dream come true. And so Sam Clayton right
Speaker 2: then and there was like, yeah, I love the band
Speaker 2: and he was in. So that's that's how that transition
Speaker 2: took place. But also introduced which we had We had
Speaker 2: been familiar with New Orleans music before either of those
Speaker 2: guys got in the band. I mean I I came
Speaker 2: down to uh uh just see Lord sixty nine, knowing
Speaker 2: fully well who Professor long Hair was, what his influence
Speaker 2: would might be at some point. Uh and also uh
Speaker 2: Clifton Shinier and the stuff that he was doing so
Speaker 2: wide open was was the word. So when we got
Speaker 2: those two guys they knew about New Orleans music, that
Speaker 2: was just a handshake and a slap on the ass
Speaker 2: and we're we're off and running.
Speaker 1: Okay, Dixie Chicken comes out. The title track is now iconic,
Speaker 1: and it took me a few plays to get into it. Actually,
Speaker 1: I first started with Juliet and then Lafe Att Railroad
Speaker 1: and then kind of worked my way backward. What was
Speaker 1: going on inside? Did you feel like you were finally
Speaker 1: getting some momentum or same as it ever was?
Speaker 2: I felt we were getting momentum. That's a great questions.
Speaker 2: Oh I've been Yeah, we were getting momentum, and there
Speaker 2: wasn't any of the acts before. We're trying new things.
Speaker 2: I tried playing synthesizer for the first time on Fatman
Speaker 2: at the basketeb which I believe was also on that record.
Speaker 2: I tried a melotron or some additional answer which had
Speaker 2: drunken Mexican trumpets, which they wouldn't call them these days,
Speaker 2: but there they were on the That's what the sound
Speaker 2: was called. So I came with Bup. It was about
Speaker 2: East La. It was there was just a lot of
Speaker 2: inventiveness going on with those songs and how we were
Speaker 2: going to play them and attack them, and that openness
Speaker 2: I think on that record in particular, transformed in a
Speaker 2: nice handshake to that album. The interesting thing though, was
Speaker 2: it sold a few more copies because of the notoriety
Speaker 2: of the record, But some of the reviews, while glowing
Speaker 2: before on the first two albums, every song sounds the
Speaker 2: same that kind of thing. So in other words, when
Speaker 2: you put your head up where you're visible above ground,
Speaker 2: that's when people start taking shots at you, which is
Speaker 2: another thing I learned, and I went, Oh, I thought
Speaker 2: we were the darlings of the press. Hardly, but in
Speaker 2: general we were, and we were certainly well thought of
Speaker 2: in Europe and in England in particular. So a lot
Speaker 2: of doors were even at that time unbeknownst to us,
Speaker 2: but they were starting to slowly open, which would vote
Speaker 2: well for the future, except that we were a band,
Speaker 2: and like a lot of bands, and the just preperency
Speaker 2: between our personalities didn't let itself to always shaking hands
Speaker 2: with one another.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the album after that is the breakthrough because
Speaker 1: it has your song with Lianta. However, being honest, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite as enamored of that as I am of
Speaker 1: Dixie Chicken. But it does have the original version of
Speaker 1: Spanish Moon too, which is iconic in the double live
Speaker 1: album which comes out in seventy eight. So tell me
Speaker 1: about the experience of feats Don't Fail.
Speaker 2: Me Now, Peace Don't Failed Me Now followed a breakup
Speaker 2: of the band. There are a couple of iterations on
Speaker 2: how to try to get the band back together. Water
Speaker 2: was putting Low and myself into what Warner thought of
Speaker 2: as a supergroup with John Sebastian and I believe was
Speaker 2: Phil Everley, so one of the Everly Brothers, which we
Speaker 2: had a meeting about it at Mussa Frank's restaurant. I
Speaker 2: met Fay Ray that evening, who flirted with each and
Speaker 2: every one of us. I reminded John Sebastian of that
Speaker 2: a few years ago. He goes, I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: I said, well, yep, she was there, not at our meeting,
Speaker 2: but at the at the main bar. As you walk
Speaker 2: in through the through the doors, particularly come through the
Speaker 2: back door. There's two entrances into the dining room. One
Speaker 2: is you take take a right, the other one you
Speaker 2: take a left, and that's where they film most things
Speaker 2: for movies, is when you turn left and were the
Speaker 2: formal part of the dining room. Uh. Phil's wife said,
Speaker 2: you're not going to do it, it's ridiculous, and we
Speaker 2: did so. Then Bob Gavala stepped in. He says, there's
Speaker 2: a guy, Steve Boone from the Love and Spoonful, which
Speaker 2: is the band that John Sebastian he's got a studio
Speaker 2: in Baltimore, Maryland. Mike, we take a shot at recording there.
Speaker 2: You'll you'll live back there. You'll have free access to
Speaker 2: this studio, do anything you want. I bought a lot
Speaker 2: of great things happened that I met Robert Palmer, I
Speaker 2: met uh through Emmy Lou Harris, my first wife, fran
Speaker 2: fran Tate. George Masterberg came in from Barclay Studios in
Speaker 2: Paris to work with us, So we knew each other
Speaker 2: or met each other at that time. And then uh
Speaker 2: our George Lowell's daughter was born at that time. So
Speaker 2: a lot of great things were taking place for us,
Speaker 2: and it really felt like a reunion of of of
Speaker 2: of good magnitude and and UH we were able to
Speaker 2: pour a lot of good energy into it, and we've
Speaker 2: recorded several different records. We also became quite famous in
Speaker 2: Washington as a result of living back there. So there
Speaker 2: was a perfect storm of good things happening for us.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the being breaking up before.
Speaker 2: That, I think what was going on it was it
Speaker 2: was this was primarily financial in regard. We just couldn't
Speaker 2: We're having a tough time making ends meet. It created
Speaker 2: attention what you would do in any kind of marriage,
Speaker 2: and I'm certainly being in a band as a form
Speaker 2: of marriage. And Bob Cavallo came to one of our band,
Speaker 2: like the night before we go on tour. He came in.
Speaker 2: He was like laughing and kind of you know, jovial
Speaker 2: about a few things, and he said, I got I
Speaker 2: got some news for you. We just canceled the tour.
Speaker 2: We don't have enough money to get out there and
Speaker 2: do this, and we're like kind of stune. And I
Speaker 2: walked up to him, I said, well, why we why
Speaker 2: we like? Why we laughing when you came in? He says.
Speaker 2: I was so upset about it. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: else to do. I said, God, look, you know a
Speaker 2: real human response, and I went, you know what, I
Speaker 2: completely get it. I always thought Bob was a wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful guy on that level. I trusted him. I said, okay, fine, Well,
Speaker 2: but the decision was made to try the superman. It
Speaker 2: was also what was else which they wouldn't have helped
Speaker 2: Richie or Kenny or Sam or anybody, at least not initially.
Speaker 2: But then Lowell also there was another thing that he
Speaker 2: did that I Beleeve proceeded going back to work in
Speaker 2: Maryland and record there, and that was a Robert Palmer record,
Speaker 2: sneaking Sally through the alley, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: thought it was us. It was the Meters, we're playing it.
Speaker 2: Or if you're going to get confused with a band,
Speaker 2: you can choose a lot worse bands than the Meters
Speaker 2: to get confused with. So uh and by the way,
Speaker 2: we got to sit in with those guys, you know,
Speaker 2: the Neville Brothers, et cetera. Uh, there's there's a there's.
Speaker 2: I had one guy at one point was going, well,
Speaker 2: what are you playing? He didn't say it to me directly,
Speaker 2: came in through another person. What are you doing playing
Speaker 2: New Orleans music? You're not from there? I said, Well,
Speaker 2: tell your friend that I played Mozart. I'm not from
Speaker 2: vienn Austria. I'm not from Germany. I play Bach and Beethoven.
Speaker 2: Is that okay with him? Oh? And my parents were
Speaker 2: married and you were also maybe through osmosis, I got
Speaker 2: some of the the juju. I don't know. You tell
Speaker 2: me there against that competitive thing. You know. I'm not
Speaker 2: a purist when it comes to music. I I uh,
Speaker 2: and I adore some people that are. Don Grolnik was
Speaker 2: a purist, played piano with with James Tader with Lynn
Speaker 2: Ron's stat beautiful jazz guy. You and I discussed this
Speaker 2: a few times. His approach was, if this is the
Speaker 2: way Bill Evans did it, then I'm gonna play it
Speaker 2: like that. You know that that kind of thing. Don
Speaker 2: had the chops. Excuse me to play it any way
Speaker 2: he wanted. I said, I don't bastardize it on purpose, Don,
Speaker 2: I just what I'm doing is I'm taken segments of
Speaker 2: things and appropriating it to music and to my writing
Speaker 2: and to my sense of what ought to be there,
Speaker 2: not as a an affront to anything.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then we have the Last Record album, which
Speaker 1: for me is a return to form, and you're you're
Speaker 1: writing more on that album. So what's going on there?
Speaker 2: Well, well, I had a pretty substantial battle. We're going
Speaker 2: into make No the last record. Excuse me, I'm dyving
Speaker 2: my head a little too too early. Uh. That that
Speaker 2: album was made in Hollywood, which is why we have
Speaker 2: that Hollywood drawing a Neon Park so beautifully hated. It
Speaker 2: was not one of my favorite records, although it had
Speaker 2: some great songs on it, but I just felt it
Speaker 2: was very stiff, uh, disjointed even, and that could have
Speaker 2: been just for me. You know. Perspective is a lot
Speaker 2: that rolls into us. We've we've been accused through the years,
Speaker 2: and I think rightfully so that our records aren't as
Speaker 2: good as the way we play live. And I think
Speaker 2: just you know, it's subjective, but for me, I think
Speaker 2: there's some truth in that. This is one of those
Speaker 2: albums that I thought was h let me just put
Speaker 2: it this way. We want the German Album of the
Speaker 2: Year of the Year award. And when I heard that
Speaker 2: we'd want I won that award. A couple of people
Speaker 2: in the band, I said, I told you it was
Speaker 2: Germanic and stiff, and that's that's the result of all that,
Speaker 2: and they went, there you go. So it was one
Speaker 2: of those I mean, it's it's it's silly to say it,
Speaker 2: but it was. It's kind of the way I felt
Speaker 2: about that album. And I don't I rarely listened to
Speaker 2: our records. I do on occasion, uh, and I actually
Speaker 2: sound pretty good. I gotta I gotta admit.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the next album, Time Loves a Hero, I
Speaker 1: bought it. It seemed like something completely different, and Lowell
Speaker 1: was barely on it saw that tour. What was going
Speaker 1: on there Lowell was Uh.
Speaker 2: I think that the tailspin Lowell was going through was
Speaker 2: healthy health wise. Uh he we not he we We
Speaker 2: made it difficult to work with one another. In general,
Speaker 2: he would be there, he wouldn't be there. I kind
Speaker 2: of like what Jerry Garcia doing with The Grateful Dead.
Speaker 2: He would disappear at times, and then when he shop you,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, hey Loel, Hey Jerry, welcome back. You know
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. But we had a very real
Speaker 2: proposition of not being able to make an album with
Speaker 2: him or without him. And Paul and I got together
Speaker 2: and I thought, look, I don't know what to do here,
Speaker 2: but we had to go. Let's let's talk to Ted
Speaker 2: teentleman about doing a recordless playing the songs we have.
Speaker 2: See if he'll do a record with Lowell in there.
Speaker 2: But maybe Lowell is not as present as he should be.
Speaker 2: Let's let Lowell figure out who he is. I know
Speaker 2: he wants to do a solo record. Let's let him
Speaker 2: sort some of that out. See if he's amenable to
Speaker 2: letting us take more of a stand in this. And
Speaker 2: that's what we did.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then Lowell ultimately does make a solo album
Speaker 1: which comes out two years leader and was the band
Speaker 1: really together at that point?
Speaker 2: It was? Paul and I took a lot of flak
Speaker 2: for having taken over the band from people on the outside,
Speaker 2: and I later when it when I was able to
Speaker 2: articulate it in this fashion, I said, look, let me
Speaker 2: explain something to you. Tell me if you think I'm
Speaker 2: a right or wrong or I'm just whatever you think,
Speaker 2: here are the facts. We didn't. It was fine that
Speaker 2: Lowell made a solo record, but if we were keeping
Speaker 2: Lowell from writing music for Little Feet, why did why
Speaker 2: are there hey, why are there so few Lowell George's
Speaker 2: songs on his solo record? And why did it take
Speaker 2: in five years to make it? So, I said, that's
Speaker 2: a good question to ask yourself. He was in a
Speaker 2: tailspin of his own making not ours. This is what
Speaker 2: I was getting at, and it didn't to me, It
Speaker 2: didn't ever detegrate his talent. Uh Uh. I thought Richie
Speaker 2: Hayward and Prop and Paul BarreR were probably going to
Speaker 2: be the first guys to uh, you know, leave this world.
Speaker 2: That's the right they were. They were gone. Uh So
Speaker 2: discuss the show. Were you know, we don't know what's
Speaker 2: going to happen.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about where Lowell was
Speaker 1: at this tailspin. Was purely drugs or what was going on.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it was was was uh lifestyle,
Speaker 2: but it was also just trying to figure out uh
Speaker 2: I think he was he was battling some health issues.
Speaker 2: He was overweighted obviously, and uh so that so that
Speaker 2: was coming into play a little bit. It had to be.
Speaker 2: He had trouble maintaining his his vocals out on the road.
Speaker 2: We had to play a couple of shows with with
Speaker 2: him there, but he couldn't sing. Uh, that's that's just
Speaker 2: you know, that's just losing your voice, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But I think things were, you know, because I wasn't
Speaker 2: inside his head. I just thought that that he was
Speaker 2: he was disturbed by a lot of what he was
Speaker 2: going through internally, and that these things because the pressure
Speaker 2: of being thought of as a leader of the group,
Speaker 2: and even with a guy like myself that took over
Speaker 2: the reins from time to time, like when we did
Speaker 2: the record of the TV show uh bit I Special.
Speaker 2: Bob was the guy that produced that show. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: producer of that show got touched with me. He said,
Speaker 2: did you would you put a list of people together
Speaker 2: for us to do the show with? I said, but
Speaker 2: why don't you have loll to it? He says, because
Speaker 2: you want to make sure it gets done. Uh airlic
Speaker 2: I think air one anyway, Bob Airlock? Uh so, ken
Speaker 2: Airlinck you mean can't yeah, ken Ic excuse me, there's
Speaker 2: a kN airlic So I brought into the weather report.
Speaker 2: I brought in you know, the Bonnie whomever was on
Speaker 2: stage with us take let Larson and uh emmy little
Speaker 2: Harris might have been there too, I can't remember, but yeah,
Speaker 2: there there there was an increasingly more of of that
Speaker 2: where Lode was burying, kind of what Jerry Garcia was
Speaker 2: going through, where a lot of the emphasis was from
Speaker 2: the press was on both Law with Little Feet Jerry
Speaker 2: with with the Grateful Dead. But neither one of them
Speaker 2: really wanted the mantle of being a leader. They didn't
Speaker 2: want the pressure of it. They they wanted to be
Speaker 2: the artists play compose. Give him room for that, not
Speaker 2: like the king that sits there every day and has
Speaker 2: to go through. Should I do my launch to be
Speaker 2: with this kind of detergent You're you're your worship or this.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just no, I want to be
Speaker 2: left alone. I want to do what I do. Play
Speaker 2: some of your songs, just do some of mine. It
Speaker 2: just was just convoluted, and the side of the times
Speaker 2: was the drug thing hovering out there, which was never
Speaker 2: that far away from from what we were all going
Speaker 2: through or what's up we're going through. I should say
Speaker 2: I'd give it up on it a few years before. Uh.
Speaker 2: It made it harder, harder to uh, to deal with
Speaker 2: one another, to deal with life. Plus we're young guys.
Speaker 1: So so Lowell is on the road promoting his solo album,
Speaker 1: He Dies. Was that a shock to you or did
Speaker 1: you expect it? Or did you figure if it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be this, it was going to be something else.
Speaker 2: I thought it was. It was a shock to me,
Speaker 2: and then in the U in my ability to come
Speaker 2: to grips with it, it's like when you're in a
Speaker 2: car accident or getting close to a car accident. And
Speaker 2: at least for me, the few times I've been close
Speaker 2: to something like that, my mind is like kind of clear,
Speaker 2: it doesn't like fog up. I'm like, I've got this
Speaker 2: way to do this. Or this way to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do one or two and make a
Speaker 2: decision to do it later. It hit you like a
Speaker 2: ton of breakfast to what actually happened. So what hit
Speaker 2: me initially was a shock of his death, but I'd
Speaker 2: rather quickly elevated to does he have insurance for his family?
Speaker 2: I don't think he did, So I said, we're going
Speaker 2: to put a concert on at the Forum, which we did,
Speaker 2: and we raised money for his family, and we tried
Speaker 2: to put and we did put Lawell in good light,
Speaker 2: because that's what we should have done. I think the
Speaker 2: story of loll George is one that not unlike Beatnick
Speaker 2: poetry if you just talk about his death and whatever
Speaker 2: cost is, because there's a lot of stories surrounding that too.
Speaker 2: But I kind of look at it like Beatnick poetry.
Speaker 2: You throw Jimmy Hendrick's name into the hat, along with
Speaker 2: Jim Morrison, Garcia, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, do you name him?
Speaker 2: And John Beluci. They all have very similar avenues in
Speaker 2: which they went out, and there's discrepancies too on how
Speaker 2: they died. The fact is it was a culture and
Speaker 2: an overload system that brought him to that early demise
Speaker 2: in their hearts were the things that gave out. So
Speaker 2: I don't and what I'm writing, what I'm talking about now,
Speaker 2: my focus is more on Yeah, we'll passed away. He
Speaker 2: left this legacy with us. We're intertwined with one another.
Speaker 2: I was quoted and People Magazine is saying greater People Magazine,
Speaker 2: not the you know, foreign press as saying that without Lowl,
Speaker 2: Georgia would not be Little Feet. And it was reminded
Speaker 2: of that when we put out Let It Roll, And
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I did say that, and that's
Speaker 2: the way I felt at that time, and I morphed
Speaker 2: and gravitated to a different way of thinking about it, which,
Speaker 2: ironically enough, was more to the way low and I
Speaker 2: thought about the band when we put it together in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, which it should be an open vessel
Speaker 2: as to who's in it and when, what material should
Speaker 2: be included and how? And does it sound like Little
Speaker 2: Feet at the end of the day, if we play
Speaker 2: Happy Birthday, does it still sound like Little Feet? You know?
Speaker 2: But if we write a great song, does it sound
Speaker 2: like Little Feet? I think the answer was debatable for
Speaker 2: a lot of people. Some ardis and said without Lowell.
Speaker 2: It's not Little Feet without Richie, it's not Little Feet
Speaker 2: without Paul Breer, it's not Little Feet and a lot
Speaker 2: of other people, and I mean a lot more go.
Speaker 2: You know what just ties me to something that reminds
Speaker 2: me of what was great about you guys, and guess
Speaker 2: what it still is. Because you can't walk up on
Speaker 2: that stage, Bob and play in full people. You either
Speaker 2: have them by the throat and they come along with
Speaker 2: you or you're sitting there going we aren't what we
Speaker 2: thought we were, which brings you back to the very
Speaker 2: first album with Little Feet, thinking we were going to
Speaker 2: be the Beatles.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in these ensuing decades where you've continued with
Speaker 1: Little feed Little Feeds, membership has morphed, you've worked with
Speaker 1: all these other artists. Has there been any plane or
Speaker 1: you're just bumping into stuff? How did this all play out?
Speaker 2: Well? There is a there is a sense of jumping
Speaker 2: from log to log just in terms of, hey, what
Speaker 2: am I gonna do? Well? Little Feet's not there. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna play with Linnerasset for for a year, a
Speaker 2: year and a half, for a year or less. I'm
Speaker 2: playing with James Taylor. That goes on for six years. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm playing with Bob Seeger. Then I say I want
Speaker 2: to put Little Feet back together, which puts not at wrong.
Speaker 2: That's life in general. You know, we we we can
Speaker 2: only plan so far the best plans of men et cetera.
Speaker 2: But but having the ability, I mean at the age
Speaker 2: I am now of. I mean, honestly, if I didn't
Speaker 2: or couldn't play with Little Feet anymore, I think I
Speaker 2: would probably enjoy it that much. But could I do it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not financially hanging onto a thread necessarily,
Speaker 2: but it's I love playing music as much more than
Speaker 2: I ever have in life, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: mislabel something that that isn't something. But as I said,
Speaker 2: when you walk out on stage, uh and you look
Speaker 2: into people's eyes out there and judge from the looks
Speaker 2: on their faces as to whether you're connecting with them.
Speaker 2: Little Feet is one of those bands that people either
Speaker 2: go who or they go oh my god, the the
Speaker 2: little feet that kind of that's special to them they have.
Speaker 2: They don't care. They're like the grateful dead on you
Speaker 2: is if if Jerry Garcia looks sideways at Bobby Ware
Speaker 2: or Vice versa. They were the first to bring it
Speaker 2: up right, Uh, within little feet. It's the same way,
Speaker 2: if not, everybody that we've we've played our music for
Speaker 2: has liked the iteration of the band that we have.
Speaker 2: But the group is it stands with Tony Leoni, with
Speaker 2: Scott Gerard, Fred Tackett, Sam Clayton, Kenny Grady, myself. They
Speaker 2: are like doing handstands over this group, and so are we.
Speaker 2: I think let's let's you know that. I mentioned John
Speaker 2: Coltrane earlier, the last iteration of the band he had,
Speaker 2: and he played with some great people over the years.
Speaker 2: He felt like, you know, this group, it's not a
Speaker 2: matter whether it's the best one I've ever worked with,
Speaker 2: but it certainly holds with the best that I've worked with.
Speaker 2: That's the way I feel about this band. Is it
Speaker 2: better than with Lowell and at his height of powers
Speaker 2: and whatnot, Well, certain respects, it's not better, but it's
Speaker 2: just as good. It doesn't have low You can't replace Lowell.
Speaker 2: Maybe with AI we can, and they will. I don't know,
Speaker 2: they'll They'll have to cross that bridge when they come
Speaker 2: to it. But for right now, if live music is
Speaker 2: such and recording as such, and you're gonna write a song.
Speaker 2: Those songs come from the heart. They come from a
Speaker 2: place that AI doesn't possess. It has an intellect, which
Speaker 2: is it's not a bad thing to have sometimes, but
Speaker 2: it's not everything. You have to have heart and an
Speaker 2: acumen to know when to play, when to lay out,
Speaker 2: when to say, you know what. Maybe that acoustic piano
Speaker 2: is not to write instruments for this, I'm gonna play
Speaker 2: a wordlesser. I'm gonna just lay out of this section
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have. I'm gonna ask Linda Ronstadt to sing
Speaker 2: softer on this duet she's doing with the Craig Fuller
Speaker 2: on the song that the Laker Organization tapped as a
Speaker 2: song as a goodbye song to Kareem Abdul Jabbar voices
Speaker 2: on the wind. I defy a I to come up
Speaker 2: with any of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm certainly with young. Now let me just a
Speaker 1: little clean up work. You talked about the finances, So
Speaker 1: how has it been financially.
Speaker 2: We started from ground zero about a year and a half,
Speaker 2: almost two years ago, and it took some doing to
Speaker 2: UH to build the coffers up to where we could
Speaker 2: actually begin to breathe a little easier.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: That's from good management. It's from good planning. Uh, it's
Speaker 2: from from us doing what we're supposed to do when
Speaker 2: we when we hit the stage, which is just deliver.
Speaker 2: Uh the old adage as you well now it's you're
Speaker 2: all as good as you were last week, right, or
Speaker 2: how you were thought of last week. So Uh, some
Speaker 2: people cannot handle that pressure. I welcome it, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: We marched on stage with Letter Roll in South London
Speaker 2: with Bonnie Raid and man, woman and child that we're
Speaker 2: in that audience, Bob. We were about six feet up
Speaker 2: looking out over them. Their arms were crossed across the
Speaker 2: chest looking at us in a defiant mode of prove it,
Speaker 2: and as a war on the hands dropped it their sides.
Speaker 2: By the end of the set, their hands were in
Speaker 2: the air and they were like that for twenty five
Speaker 2: minutes after we left the stage. That's what I want.
Speaker 2: I'm there to prove that what we're doing. What I
Speaker 2: do when every time I walk into to play music
Speaker 2: with somebody or to hold a conversation with somebody, I've
Speaker 2: lived it. I've lived a life. I'm still living it
Speaker 2: and hopefully I'll know when to relinquish center fields. If
Speaker 2: I've dropped fly balls like Willie Mays was in center field,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll call it. Then. Right now I'm catching everything
Speaker 2: has hit to me, so I'm gonna keep playing, but just.
Speaker 1: Drooling down on the money for a little bit. Second,
Speaker 1: you were in a bend, had multiple members forgetting today
Speaker 1: throughout your career. I mean, I'll be very specific. You
Speaker 1: end up playing with Leftover seam And, which hadn't deal
Speaker 1: with Hollywood Records, but really is more of an indie
Speaker 1: jam band, more of a localized Colorado scene. Are you
Speaker 1: taking those gigs because you say, hey, I like them,
Speaker 1: or you say, listen, I need to work, I need
Speaker 1: to pay the bills.
Speaker 2: I start, what do I like who I'm working with?
Speaker 2: And at one point I had to say to them,
Speaker 2: to the Leftover Salmon, I got an offer from the
Speaker 2: Davy Brothers, which came about in a securest way, but
Speaker 2: I pressed the issue and I'm going to do it
Speaker 2: very well financed with us, guys I've done for a
Speaker 2: long time, and I'm not going to be able to
Speaker 2: play music with you any longer. And I'd always upsetting
Speaker 2: it to them at first, and I said, remember I
Speaker 2: was the old man in the sea for a long
Speaker 2: time with you guys, I'm not with them, and I
Speaker 2: don't feel like I played any worse or less than
Speaker 2: I played with anybody. I come in as a team player.
Speaker 2: I come in as a I don't have to be
Speaker 2: in the band in order to play as if I'm
Speaker 2: in the band. So that's that's my attitude. I've turned down.
Speaker 2: I've turned down Madi. I was offered a chance to
Speaker 2: the the to write the theme song for a Cops
Speaker 2: and for Baywatch. I turned them both down. My agent
Speaker 2: about hit the wall. He said, are you out of
Speaker 2: your mind? I said, yeah, I guess I am. Well,
Speaker 2: you call yourself something different, I said, I would still
Speaker 2: know it was me. I've worked around enough. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what musicians are from time to time
Speaker 2: for prostitutes. But you choose who you want to lay with,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to lay with this, okay.
Speaker 1: Are there any royalties of significance from the Little Feet
Speaker 1: era and from the songs you've written?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did pretty well. The eraror that we live
Speaker 2: in now, as you know as well as anybody the
Speaker 2: the streaming, it's an outrage, it's it's it's that right.
Speaker 2: I don't think much of what is going on within
Speaker 2: the rule of so called rule of law these days,
Speaker 2: or what what masquerades is law is right on any level,
Speaker 2: personal or otherwise, as to what to do about it. Again,
Speaker 2: like most things in life, you can choose your battles.
Speaker 2: If it's something you think you can can now to
Speaker 2: a campaign and make it work us, then more power
Speaker 2: to you. Generally speaking, these things that do not people
Speaker 2: with power and wealth do not relinquish it easily and
Speaker 2: are not about to do so with the streaming services.
Speaker 2: But we'll see where it goes.
Speaker 1: And you're going on the road now and you're playing
Speaker 1: complete albums. Concurrent with that, you're releasing repackaged versions of
Speaker 1: the second and third album Sailing Juice and Dixie Chicken
Speaker 1: with additional stuff. Tell me about the decisions to do that.
Speaker 2: Our management came in. They thought with the notion of
Speaker 2: doing Waiting for Columbus, which we did UH, that it
Speaker 2: would be good of UH Wars had a desire to
Speaker 2: possibly re release a couple of records maybe more, And
Speaker 2: I had just played with the dav Brothers on a
Speaker 2: couple of UH. I think we played in New York
Speaker 2: at the what a big theater New York is the
Speaker 2: Reacon big a theater? Uh? We played a couple of there.
Speaker 2: I know that Steely Dan you know Don Don's done it.
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, I like the idea of it. And
Speaker 2: then what we will do that's maybe a little different
Speaker 2: than at least what the Doomie Brothers did to a degree.
Speaker 2: If we're playing Juliet, maybe we'll lengthen it a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, we nothing's written in stone with us. We
Speaker 2: can We're not going to disguise a song like maybe
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan would. We'll make it where they know that
Speaker 2: it's Juliet if they're familiar with the team like you were, Uh,
Speaker 2: and play it. But but I want to have the
Speaker 2: ability to mess around with tempo's a little bit from
Speaker 2: time to time. Let's let's see what the arrangement is.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Do I play it? Uh? Piano with strings? Do I
Speaker 2: play it just rose? Do we have a a man
Speaker 2: delendas opposed to a guitar playing some parts to it?
Speaker 2: Leave in our improvisational style, intact to play the album
Speaker 2: but not replicated. And it's a you know, as the
Speaker 2: Eagles have done. You go to an Eagles concert. I've
Speaker 2: been to one, I guess, and they'll play the record.
Speaker 2: By God, it sounds like the record. That's the style.
Speaker 2: I don't knock it at all. It's it's not our style.
Speaker 1: And why do you live in Montana?
Speaker 2: I live here because of the beauty of it, the solitude,
Speaker 2: the fact that he gets fifty below zero during the winter.
Speaker 2: He keeps the riff raff out, he keeps the riff
Speaker 2: raff in. It's It's just one of those places where
Speaker 2: because I travel all the time, I wanted to come
Speaker 2: back to someplace that felt like, you know, where people
Speaker 2: aren't you know, I'm just another guy up here. I mean,
Speaker 2: people know who I am. It's not that the the
Speaker 2: it's I'm not I'm not afraid of celebrity. I'm not
Speaker 2: Loel George. I'm not you know, I'm not a celebrity.
Speaker 2: But I kind of am in a certain sense, and
Speaker 2: become more so as people know more about me. But
Speaker 2: what they quickly learn about me is, look, I'm still
Speaker 2: the same guy gets beat up on the playground like
Speaker 2: everybody else. I just happen to have a talent to
Speaker 2: play piano, and I've utilized it in a pretty grand
Speaker 2: fashion throughout my career to do just that so I
Speaker 2: can be the I told somebody on TV Ruters tour,
Speaker 2: they're driving a bus. Andy, Yeah, but you're a rock star.
Speaker 2: I said, well, if you want to think of me
Speaker 2: as a rock star, go ahead. What I am in
Speaker 2: fact as a musician, and I hold that to be
Speaker 2: I played with a lot of rock stars. I met
Speaker 2: a bunch and I admire you know, I admire those people.
Speaker 2: Have I one of them. If you want to think
Speaker 2: of me as one, go ahead, I don't really think
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: And on that note, I think we're going to stop
Speaker 1: it for now.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time with my audience, very thoughtful responses. You never really
Speaker 1: know until you talk to somebody who they are, but
Speaker 1: you're obviously a thinker.
Speaker 2: So thanks again a pleasure, Bove, and I've enjoyed breathing
Speaker 2: your work over the years. I haven't always agreed with it,
Speaker 2: but I got to say that for the same thing.
Speaker 2: You know, you get them as you see them, and
Speaker 2: I think there's you obviously are a thinking person as well.
Speaker 2: I respect that in people that can actually think. It
Speaker 2: gives them the latitude and the respect to do so.
Speaker 2: So I have a lot of respect for you, and
Speaker 2: I actually have to agree with you a lot a
Speaker 2: lot of things you write about as well.
Speaker 1: Right, I wouldn't expect you to agree with everything, but
Speaker 1: you know, in a world where everybody just makes it
Speaker 1: about the dollar, and I'm not saying the dollar is
Speaker 1: not important, you know, it's the the number of what's
Speaker 1: around the dollar, I'm thinking about it. And the way
Speaker 1: you describe music that you know it was certainly very
Speaker 1: insightful and not what you get from the average person.
Speaker 1: You certainly said things you don't normally hear and I
Speaker 1: think will be helpful for musician's I hope.
Speaker 2: So again, thanks for the thanks for the conversation. Honestly,
Speaker 2: it's a pleasure talking to you and me with you.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left six