Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftzett's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is pianist Mike Garson. Mike, who were just
Speaker 1: involved with a video Heroes Ukraine, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Well. I got a call from the director Rupert Winwright
Speaker 2: and he had done this song of David Bowie's Heroes
Speaker 2: with a rewrite of some of the lyrics, and then
Speaker 2: he gathered these Ukrainian female talented women singers and guitarists
Speaker 2: and at the very end he thought it might be
Speaker 2: nice because I had the connection with David to maybe
Speaker 2: aired piano and he'd been working on months and as
Speaker 2: you know, it would have been nice if it came
Speaker 2: out six or eight months ago. Climbing it is hard
Speaker 2: for it now, but in any case, it was heart
Speaker 2: felt by everyone who delivered it. And it's hard to
Speaker 2: even watch the video. You know, musically it sounds cool,
Speaker 2: but it's just suffering, you know, a lot of pain.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 3: music and the visuals.
Speaker 2: You know, I like the way it's sounded, you know,
Speaker 2: these young women were great, you know, and their fears.
Speaker 2: It was loud and they found some motif for me
Speaker 2: on the piano and I was just banging away. It
Speaker 2: just kept going and it was a long video, but
Speaker 2: it was a fun shoot that came over to my studio,
Speaker 2: which my big piano is downstairs here. I just have
Speaker 2: like a mini piano, so that's here on this piano,
Speaker 2: and I could have you seen my fingers. Keep your
Speaker 2: interested if I play for you. But to glee, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a nice setup I have up here. It's
Speaker 2: nice to acquiet and I'm upstairs and I'm in Calabasta,
Speaker 2: so it's all working fine.
Speaker 3: So is being associated with David Bowie all positive or
Speaker 3: is it a little bit of an albatross too?
Speaker 2: It's a double edged sword, you know. And one way
Speaker 2: I owe my career to him because every rock star
Speaker 2: that's called called me in the last thirty years with
Speaker 2: fans of him and my playing on those early records
Speaker 2: like Diamond Dorg's Young Americans, especially Aladdin Sane. But so
Speaker 2: that's that's the plus. I've made a living instead of
Speaker 2: where I was prior as a starving jazz musician, which
Speaker 2: I still do, and that was good. The downside of
Speaker 2: his everyone always wants to talk about Bowie and my
Speaker 2: standard line is I played good before I got the gig,
Speaker 2: and he just happened to like my playing. So I
Speaker 2: was the fucking whipped cream on the cake and let
Speaker 2: him do what he want with what I'm mean. I
Speaker 2: know nothing, Bob about rock and roll. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: an almanac, and I didn't know who Bowie.
Speaker 3: Was what he called me, Bob. Okay, so what year
Speaker 3: were you born in?
Speaker 2: I was born in nineteen forty five, and I waited
Speaker 2: just for the war to be done.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're born in nineteen forty five, Elvis Presley,
Speaker 3: you're aware when Elvis breaks, You're certainly aware when the
Speaker 3: beatles break. You don't care, or you don't pay attention.
Speaker 2: I didn't pay attention. I was practicing the piano, and
Speaker 2: I was a little bit of a classical in jazz snob,
Speaker 2: which life humbled me out. And when I recognized that
Speaker 2: Joni Mitchell's and the Bob Dylan's and the Bowies of
Speaker 2: the world, it was a little late because it had
Speaker 2: to be fancy and virtuostic. And I grew up with
Speaker 2: Vladimir Harwitz and Rubinstein and Glenn Gould and Bach and
Speaker 2: Chopin and Liszt and Oscar in a Tatum and Bill Evans,
Speaker 2: And where am I? I thought to myself, because I
Speaker 2: go to this audition and jeans and a T shirt
Speaker 2: on a Tuesday night at RCA in New York City
Speaker 2: and they're decked out like they're going on stage in
Speaker 2: Madison Square going. I was, where the fuck am I?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: Okay, you're born in forty five? Yeah, what do your
Speaker 4: parents do for a living? My dad was a liquor
Speaker 4: salesman and he turned me on to jazz because he
Speaker 4: sold liquor to the Half Note, which was on Spring
Speaker 4: and Hudston and Manhattan Great Jazz Club. He brought me
Speaker 4: down to see Lenny Tristano, who was a blind pianist
Speaker 4: who had played with Charlie Parker introduced me to him.
Speaker 4: I audition on a break when the band was on
Speaker 4: a break for Lenny. I played take five. I was
Speaker 4: just a budding jazz pianist, and he accepted me as
Speaker 4: a student. Studied with him three years and then the
Speaker 4: rest is kind of history from that viewpoint, But it
Speaker 4: was my dad was the culprit.
Speaker 3: My mom.
Speaker 2: Oh, medical school. I was a pre med student at
Speaker 2: Brooklyn College. But I dissected the fucking pig and it
Speaker 2: just was a mess. I made chopped liver and spare
Speaker 2: ribs and I was done, and he'd given me an
Speaker 2: f on the test. And I said, come to the
Speaker 2: window here. I point to the music a building. I said,
Speaker 2: if you give me a d I'll get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of your face, you know, And that's what?
Speaker 3: Okay? How many kids in the family. I have two daughters. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: On your level, you have brothers or sisters.
Speaker 2: One sister she just passed a few months ago, and
Speaker 2: she was ten years older than me. So she passed
Speaker 2: and at eight eighty nine, I'll be out. I'll be
Speaker 2: eighty in a few months. And she was ten years
Speaker 2: older than me.
Speaker 3: Were you close to her?
Speaker 2: She got out of the house when I was seven
Speaker 2: years old. My mom screamed so much she had to
Speaker 2: get out. And she got married and I haven't seen
Speaker 2: her since.
Speaker 3: And how did her life turn out?
Speaker 2: She married a gentleman who also died four months ago.
Speaker 2: My brother in law who I knew for seventy years,
Speaker 2: and he was in real estate syndication. He was a lawyer,
Speaker 2: but he owned two Park Avenue which shown thirty third
Speaker 2: in Park. So they were fine. They were fine, and
Speaker 2: then they moved out of New York. They got burnt
Speaker 2: out and they went to Sedona and they owned Enchantment,
Speaker 2: which was a nice hotel there, and they did that,
Speaker 2: and then he got dementia, so we moved him out
Speaker 2: there us here in Woodland Hills, and then my sister
Speaker 2: stayed with him for thirteen years of dementia. Then and
Speaker 2: then my sister got cancer a few months before he died,
Speaker 2: but she wouldn't leave till he died. He died, and
Speaker 2: a month later she was gone.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, how many generations was your family in America?
Speaker 3: My dad was.
Speaker 2: From the Bronx, myms from the Bronx, and all the
Speaker 2: grandparents were Russian somewhere probably Ukraine and some of those
Speaker 2: places over there.
Speaker 3: I had the idental situation Russia and Ukraine. So you
Speaker 3: grow up exactly.
Speaker 2: Where Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, between Prosper Park and Nathan's
Speaker 2: Coney Island Ocean Parkway. I still dream about those hot
Speaker 2: dogs fifteen cents. The French fries were ten cents.
Speaker 3: You know what people don't remember about Coney Island was
Speaker 3: the steeplechase, which was really something else.
Speaker 2: There you go, there, you go Where did you grow up?
Speaker 3: I grew up in Connecticut, about fifty miles from New
Speaker 3: York City.
Speaker 2: Got it, got it, got it. But you got the
Speaker 2: Coney Island though.
Speaker 3: Absolutely got on the steeple chase. They wouldn't have the
Speaker 3: steeple chase today because there was no safety belt. But
Speaker 3: those people don't know. You got on this horse and
Speaker 3: it was on a rail, started inside, then went outside.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a race, and it was you
Speaker 3: know that in the roller coaster. You were like the
Speaker 3: two famous rides in Cody Island. You got it? Okay,
Speaker 3: So you grew up? Is there a piano in the house.
Speaker 3: There's a piano in the house. My mom played and
Speaker 3: my sister played. Both played classical, and at seven I
Speaker 3: started with a wonderful teacher and I never looked back.
Speaker 3: So that's all I've ever done for I've been playing
Speaker 3: professionally since I'm fourteen. But I started learning the instrument
Speaker 3: at seven. Okay, so you were seven. What was the
Speaker 3: motivation to finally take lessons?
Speaker 2: Peer pressure? Drew and Brooklyn With a piano in the house,
Speaker 2: What the fuck are you gonna do? You know?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I but then I started to like it. But we
Speaker 2: had a little telephone in those days in a closet,
Speaker 2: and I was a little lazy at practicing. But I
Speaker 2: loved it. But I didn't want to practice that much.
Speaker 2: So anytime I didn't practice, my mom would run into
Speaker 2: the little closet to the telephone to call for faking it.
Speaker 2: So she's gonna call the piano teacher and canceled the lessons.
Speaker 2: So I run to the piano and start playing.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, you didn't like to practice, but were
Speaker 3: You know a lot of people begin by playing by
Speaker 3: ear and they leave out the reading and all the basics.
Speaker 3: You had a lot of training. How did it work
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 2: I was had perfect pitch, so I could play by you.
Speaker 2: But I was playing classical. I didn't know what jazz was.
Speaker 2: I heard by the time I was nine, a little
Speaker 2: about Elvis and those kind of songs from those days.
Speaker 2: But I was playing Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and
Speaker 2: chopin I was. I was playing, you know, say, you
Speaker 2: know that kind of stuff in Beetho, and I was
Speaker 2: doing all that, and then at fourteen, I got the
Speaker 2: jazz bug. What could I say? And that's that's when
Speaker 2: I heard Dave and Errol Ganna, but I had now
Speaker 2: pretty good chomps. And then I started doing gigs my
Speaker 2: first kid at fourteen, I made five bucks playing at
Speaker 2: sweet sixteen. I thought I was Elon musk By at
Speaker 2: five dollars there.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back though. What kind of kid were you?
Speaker 3: Were you a good student, bad student? Were you a loaner?
Speaker 3: Did you have friends? It's a great question.
Speaker 2: I was a loner. I had a few friends, but
Speaker 2: I was not understood. I hated school all through public
Speaker 2: school or high school and college, and I just couldn't
Speaker 2: wait to get out. And when I was in college,
Speaker 2: even I was playing gigs and I was the only
Speaker 2: one working and applying it, and they were talking like
Speaker 2: what year was Beethoven born?
Speaker 3: Do I give a fuck? You know?
Speaker 2: I want to know?
Speaker 3: Do I like this piece?
Speaker 2: So I was always about the music, and I stuff
Speaker 2: through learning. But all my great lessons were from great
Speaker 2: piano teachers and Julia teacher, Leonard Tristano, Herbie Hancock's Torkorea,
Speaker 2: Bill Evans.
Speaker 3: I was blessed.
Speaker 2: I was in New York in the sixties.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're playing the piano, your father takes you
Speaker 3: to the jazz Club, the Sweet sixteen gigs after that.
Speaker 2: The Sweet Thing actually was first. It was more like
Speaker 2: a club debt. I played a lot of weddings in
Speaker 2: ball Misfits, so it wasn't really jazz. It was like
Speaker 2: the Shadowy a Smile or more, or some of the
Speaker 2: songs that were the hips way you know, or rumbas
Speaker 2: like best of mag Muco. It was all that and
Speaker 2: I had to learn a song today at that time.
Speaker 2: Within three years, I knew a thousand songs by heart.
Speaker 3: Chris.
Speaker 2: When you played these weddings at Ball Misterers, you weren't
Speaker 2: allowed to read the music.
Speaker 3: So it was always solo. You were never a member
Speaker 3: of the group.
Speaker 2: Oh those weddings and Babs was I would play at
Speaker 2: the beginning for the ceremonies. But we always had a band.
Speaker 2: I mean one was worse than the next, but it
Speaker 2: was a band.
Speaker 3: But did you play in the band? Oh? Yeah, So
Speaker 3: you were always like the special star coming out of
Speaker 3: performing on your instrument. So how did you get all
Speaker 3: these gigs in New York?
Speaker 2: Did you ever hear of the Roseland? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Every Wednesday at two o'clock it turned into the local
Speaker 2: eight or two musicians place where we all gathered, thousands
Speaker 2: of musicians will being there and somebody be at the
Speaker 2: microphone piano gig at the Concorde Hotel. I raised my hand,
Speaker 2: Groszegger's Hotel, Bob, it's first Saturday night at Lenon's and
Speaker 2: great the thirty bucks and we'd be all rushing for
Speaker 2: the gigs and we need someone in the castle for
Speaker 2: the summer fifteen bucks a week, my first game, you know.
Speaker 2: And then they would still little Sheep music for fifteen
Speaker 2: cents and we'd learn the latest song. And it was
Speaker 2: great training. But at a certain point I wanted to
Speaker 2: kill myself because I didn't want to play music while
Speaker 2: people ate, you know, I wanted them to hear me.
Speaker 2: So I made a serious decision.
Speaker 3: Like fuck that.
Speaker 2: But I did a thousand gigs before I had the
Speaker 2: balls to do that.
Speaker 3: Okay, little bit slower, you're playing the Sweet sixteen? Are
Speaker 3: you getting the gigs by going to roseland or is
Speaker 3: your now word of mouth? Little Mikey is the guy
Speaker 3: you want?
Speaker 2: He instead of Mikey likes it. And it was just
Speaker 2: so simple, Oh he plays, you know, the girl in
Speaker 2: school likes you.
Speaker 3: He plays.
Speaker 2: Oh, my friend's having a sweet sixteen where you put
Speaker 2: the band together. So I put a band together. It
Speaker 2: was called the impromptu quartet, which is for telling, because
Speaker 2: my whole life is improvisation. I came from the same
Speaker 2: let's say, mindset as Keith Jarret is just the wider
Speaker 2: viewpoint of music. But I always liked improvising. So that
Speaker 2: was we had a nice quartet, and we did hundreds
Speaker 2: of gigs.
Speaker 3: You know, hundreds, And what kind of money were you making?
Speaker 2: The gigs would pay around sixty dollars seventy dollars for
Speaker 2: an individual bomments for a wedding. When I was working
Speaker 2: in the castles, it was a weekly pay. It started
Speaker 2: at fifteen dollars at fifteen a week, and then it
Speaker 2: went for forty dollars to eighty to ninety. The highest
Speaker 2: was ever one hundred and seventy dollars.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're a teenager, that's kind of good money, right,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And what did you spend the
Speaker 3: money on?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't even remember. It wasn't that
Speaker 2: much money, you know, probably candy or something, you know.
Speaker 3: I was I was a.
Speaker 2: Little different as a musician in that, for one reason
Speaker 2: or another, I didn't drink or use drugs. So I
Speaker 2: never did my whole life. Maybe that's why I'm here
Speaker 2: telling the story and feeling younger, almost turning eighty than
Speaker 2: when I was twenty. I don't know that's the exact reason,
Speaker 2: because I'm not judgmental. I understand what the good and
Speaker 2: the band of drugs, but it just wasn't my cup
Speaker 2: of tea sushi, Yes, a little addicted.
Speaker 3: What could I say? Okay, you're working in the cat Skills.
Speaker 3: I've been to the cat Skills. They made movies about it.
Speaker 3: Was that a good experience, you know, where you're running
Speaker 3: with the other people working there and you're having sexual
Speaker 3: adventures or was it like a drag just playing the piano.
Speaker 2: So the first three four years I loved it. I
Speaker 2: loved it. You're a young kid fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and
Speaker 2: it just was wonderful. Plus I got a lot of experience.
Speaker 2: Every night you had a comedian, Jackie Mason, you had Heinz,
Speaker 2: Heinz and Dad. I played for mel to May over
Speaker 2: those five years. Every summer I played for almost eight
Speaker 2: hundred seniors before I met David Bowie. So I had
Speaker 2: a lot of experiences of company and I loved the company,
Speaker 2: but then the quality wasn't high enough for me. The
Speaker 2: better I got, so I had to get out of
Speaker 2: there sooner then later.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back to the lessons. So you start
Speaker 3: with the guy Lenny from the club. How long do
Speaker 3: you study with him?
Speaker 2: Let me Trestano was three years and I lived in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: He lived in Jamaica, Queens. It took me two hours
Speaker 2: each way to get there. I had to take a
Speaker 2: train to New York City, another train to Queens, and
Speaker 2: then a bus, and then I had to walk a
Speaker 2: half a mile for a ten minute lesson for eight dollars.
Speaker 2: He tore eighty students in two days and the rest
Speaker 2: of the week. He practic and he was blind, he
Speaker 2: was dark, he was bitter, and he was a fucking genius.
Speaker 2: And he taught me three thousand left hand chord voicings
Speaker 2: or harmonies or however you want to call it, just
Speaker 2: in left hand over the first two years, three thousand.
Speaker 2: I think I used thirty of them. You know, well,
Speaker 2: you think of you think of imagine, it's four chords,
Speaker 2: you know, and he's teaching me these chords that sound
Speaker 2: like this, I mean, just just an instant. It probably
Speaker 2: worked for his head, and he had a whole mathematical
Speaker 2: way of laying out. So I had to memorize all
Speaker 2: these chords in all twelve keys. It was torture. If
Speaker 2: I had to do it now, I'd call you up,
Speaker 2: asked you to shoot me.
Speaker 3: The lessons were only ten minutes long. Do you believe that?
Speaker 2: Sometimes nine minutes?
Speaker 3: Well, tell me a little bit about the lesson. Could
Speaker 3: sit down and then.
Speaker 2: What So it was four hours round trip in getting there, right,
Speaker 2: And I'd sit down and let's say these chords that
Speaker 2: I had to learn, Let's say I had learned at
Speaker 2: home two hundred that week. When I'd come in, he'd say,
Speaker 2: play it in one particular key, so that might be
Speaker 2: twenty to thirty chords, So that took two minutes. Then
Speaker 2: i'd have to do some scales stuff like this, then
Speaker 2: do that, and then different fingering to get all sorts
Speaker 2: of coordination and strength. So then I would do that.
Speaker 2: Then he'd have me listen to Leslie Young or Billy
Speaker 2: Holiday or Bud Powell, and I have to sing and
Speaker 2: imitate their phrasing. And then he would let me improvise
Speaker 2: a little bit. And that was the lesson because ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Goes right right, and what would be the assignment for
Speaker 3: the following week?
Speaker 2: Now you did it in the key doing in the
Speaker 2: key of D flat next week. It's not like the
Speaker 2: guitar or the fucking capo.
Speaker 3: Right right right right right right right right right. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I love your questions. Nobody asked me this shit.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, kids, but you do what
Speaker 2: I listen.
Speaker 3: I stayed out to a Jewish family with a piano
Speaker 3: with the house. I started taking lessons at five. It's
Speaker 3: like I never I hated to practice. So when did
Speaker 3: it change?
Speaker 2: It was piano was your first instrument. Oh yeah, then
Speaker 2: I really love you keeping going?
Speaker 3: Okay? So at what point did you get the bug
Speaker 3: such that you wanted to practice.
Speaker 2: You're not going to believe this, but it was during
Speaker 2: Vietnam and I was at Brooklyn College. I was still
Speaker 2: only doing an hour or two a day, and I
Speaker 2: was very good. But I wasn't great. But I was
Speaker 2: very good, and my marks were terrible because as you
Speaker 2: asked before, I was not a good student. They were
Speaker 2: not paralleling my mind.
Speaker 3: I needed.
Speaker 2: Freedom, I needed rebellion, I needed innovatives, not fucking machines
Speaker 2: and regurgitating Beethoven. There was a million people that could
Speaker 2: do that and better than me, although I was pretty
Speaker 2: good at it, but it's not me. I wanted express
Speaker 2: what was in there, and so my marks went to
Speaker 2: a d and if they dropped below C I got
Speaker 2: a call to be drafted because it was during Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and then the rubber or whatever when it hits the ground,
Speaker 2: I said, oh fuck, I'm not going to go shoot people.
Speaker 2: So what happened was I found out if I put
Speaker 2: an extra year of DOS in three years instead of
Speaker 2: two and I passed the test, I could be in
Speaker 2: the band. So I auditioned, I got one hundred on
Speaker 2: the test, and I joined the band. So I knew
Speaker 2: I'd have to pay some serious dues for the first
Speaker 2: eight week school based of training. Then the next three
Speaker 2: years I'm playing the fucking Glockaspiel down Fifth Avenue and
Speaker 2: marching and you know, then we played for the Generals.
Speaker 2: But basically I was in the fort I was stationed
Speaker 2: in Staten Island. I told everybody I was overseas from
Speaker 2: Brooklyn over the Arizona Bridge, and I would practice eight
Speaker 2: hours a day because there was nothing to do we
Speaker 2: do a parade on Fifth Avenue every three months, and
Speaker 2: we had a big band, so we practiced there and
Speaker 2: all the generals I would play for their parties, so
Speaker 2: I made extra money. They paid for two piano lesters.
Speaker 2: I go into the city. After basic training. I was
Speaker 2: living home and eating a steak in the morning the
Speaker 2: sixth of the morning going to the fort and I
Speaker 2: was home by five o'clock. And I did all the
Speaker 2: shopping and the PX so everything was one third the price.
Speaker 2: And I did that for those three years, and that's
Speaker 2: when I got good.
Speaker 3: I ended up.
Speaker 2: There was a drummer in the band who ended up
Speaker 2: with Woody Herman and Man at Ferguson. There was a
Speaker 2: trumpet player ended up in Bloodswort and Tears. So we
Speaker 2: had a great band. And all I did is go
Speaker 2: every morning and practice. So it was like that pressure
Speaker 2: was needed because I didn't have that discipline. I'm kind
Speaker 2: of lazy and intuitive and I play from my heart.
Speaker 2: But there I had to do hard work and I
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 3: Okay, the Army is after you. Brooklyn College right in
Speaker 3: the middle. After I finished, I went back and finished
Speaker 3: Brooklyn College. Okay, so you figure you'll join, So you
Speaker 3: won't be drafted in extent to Vietnam. I won that game. Okay,
Speaker 3: So what's it like being a Jewish guy in the army? Okay?
Speaker 2: I was not going to share this story, but I
Speaker 2: think it's an important story. I was in basic training
Speaker 2: in Fort Dixon, New Jersey, and I was the only
Speaker 2: Jewish fella there, and I felt very isolated, and I
Speaker 2: had a German sergeant. I was not the most athletic person.
Speaker 3: In the world. And when you learn how to take a.
Speaker 2: Bayonet and you're supposed to stab it into the dummies, right,
Speaker 2: and you're supposed to do it like you're going to
Speaker 2: kill somebody. Everybody was stabbing it hard. And I took
Speaker 2: the knife and I was just like touching it because
Speaker 2: I was picturing I can't hurt another human being. And
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this German sergeant said, in front
Speaker 2: of the whole barracks, if you're an example of a Jew,
Speaker 2: it's no wonder what Hitler did to those people. My
Speaker 2: body's still shivering saying it and thinking, shouldn't have I
Speaker 2: done something about that? What could have I done that?
Speaker 2: I mean, do I report it? I mean I still
Speaker 2: play it in my head that was a pretty big
Speaker 2: chump symptism. It lasted me for a long time. You know,
Speaker 2: I got a free pass when I started playing music.
Speaker 2: Nobody cared if I was white, black, green, Italian. You
Speaker 2: know you're Jewish, Catholic. You know it was different, Okay.
Speaker 3: You know, forgetting a pianist, a lot of people said, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to send my kid to the army for discipline.
Speaker 3: To set them straight. Was there any lesson that you
Speaker 3: learned in the army that was good.
Speaker 2: I learned how to practice. I shine my shoes pretty good.
Speaker 2: I learned that appeal potatoes. But really what I did
Speaker 2: and I could run a mile, which now I barely
Speaker 2: could get up to the studio, you know, from the downstairs.
Speaker 2: But I mean basically, what I learned is to practice
Speaker 2: the piano and get good. Because eight hours a day
Speaker 2: for three years, even if I had no talent, at
Speaker 2: least you could mechanically play. Might not have gotten good gigs.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Were you practicing eight hours because you were personally
Speaker 3: inspired at or had nothing better to do, or were
Speaker 3: the generals saying, hey, Mike, you know you gotta get better.
Speaker 2: No. Within weeks, I fell in love with it, and
Speaker 2: I saw a progress.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back. How does it end with Lenny?
Speaker 3: And who's your next teacher?
Speaker 2: So simultaneously to Lenny Trestado, there was a gentleman named
Speaker 2: hal overton O ve Rtn how twar did Julia? But
Speaker 2: he also was a great jazz player, and he stard
Speaker 2: at the piano on twenty third Street and sixth Avenue.
Speaker 2: The cigarette would be hanging out of his mouth and
Speaker 2: he loved to bebop guys and Butt Powell. And he
Speaker 2: did the Felonious Monk big band arrangements for a jazz
Speaker 2: album at town Hall that came out around nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: So he had a treasure chest of Monk song Selonious Monk,
Speaker 2: and none of them were available at that time, and
Speaker 2: he would teach me these. It was the most fantastic
Speaker 2: experience because he knew how to teach properly, and he
Speaker 2: prepared me for life for music for gigs up until
Speaker 2: but all with jazz. And one day I came in
Speaker 2: and I was mixing classical in jazz. So there's a
Speaker 2: chopin song that goes it's full of revolutionary town and
Speaker 2: it's a crazy left tandpo so I took the Gershwin
Speaker 2: song Summertime, and I went.
Speaker 3: Something like that.
Speaker 2: I remember the left hand point. So he says to me,
Speaker 2: that's the colectic. And the way he said it, Bob,
Speaker 2: it was like I had leprosy and I was just
Speaker 2: hearing all my influences and they started to come out.
Speaker 2: I might sit there and play a jazz thing for him,
Speaker 2: but then I might be going then and then that
Speaker 2: sounds mixed the classical in jazz, and then I might
Speaker 2: be starting like a classical thing. Didn't like it because
Speaker 2: he only liked one of the straight be box that
Speaker 2: sounded like this, and I was much more of a penis.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do other things. I wanted to play
Speaker 2: two hands like he stole me like that, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to be to play like Arldonna that kind of
Speaker 2: a thing, and he wanted to keep me in a
Speaker 2: small box.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've heard that story before.
Speaker 2: And I had a Julia teacher, just dropping back to
Speaker 2: when I was thirteen, and he showed me some mozart,
Speaker 2: that beautiful sonata, and I came in the next week
Speaker 2: and I went.
Speaker 3: And he said, you.
Speaker 2: Have delusion as a grandeur. I should have said, I
Speaker 2: am possibly a budding composer and improviser. But I got
Speaker 2: intimidated and kind of stepped me back twenty or thirty years.
Speaker 3: But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Okay, how
Speaker 3: did you last with that guy? How long?
Speaker 2: That was about a year? And how Overton? That is
Speaker 2: the Julian teacher, how Overton jumping? A few years later,
Speaker 2: when studying with Lennyd Tristano, that was two years. Tony
Speaker 2: Williams Miles Davis, drummer, came for a lesson right after me.
Speaker 2: He was seventeen, you know, and so he was studying
Speaker 2: composition even though he was a great drummer. So I
Speaker 2: was in good company. And I got to play with
Speaker 2: Felonious Monk rhythm section at the New School in New York.
Speaker 2: So it was great, great training. And then there were
Speaker 2: these miscellaneous teachers who would pop up, like Herbie Hancock
Speaker 2: came up to visit the drummer I was with in
Speaker 2: the Catskills, and he stat in and played old stand
Speaker 2: that Don't Blame Me, and it just said, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this guy couldn't really play. So I asked him for
Speaker 2: some piano lessons and he gave me three lessons but
Speaker 2: life changing. And then Bill Evans, who was pretty serious
Speaker 2: heroin addict. I went to see him at the Village
Speaker 2: Vanguard about twenty times. One time I got the enough
Speaker 2: balls and I said to them Bill could have a lesson.
Speaker 2: He said, come up to my house and he spends
Speaker 2: six hours with me. Didn't charge me a penny.
Speaker 3: Okay, to the degree you can speak it in terms
Speaker 3: of layman can understand what did Herbie and what did
Speaker 3: Bill Evans teach you?
Speaker 2: Someone asked me that today in some interview, and I
Speaker 2: only remember the transmission and the energy from Bill Evans. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's like you're being with an idol, the way you
Speaker 2: know people love Bowie or a Dylan, you know, a
Speaker 2: Paul or John you know. I was that way to him.
Speaker 2: He showed me what's called some jazz voice ss, like
Speaker 2: maybe you played this way. You want to see the piano?
Speaker 2: Would that help you? No?
Speaker 3: No, no, So.
Speaker 2: So Lendy Bernstein tune and instead of playing a simple
Speaker 2: triad like CEG maybe it's like a stem major seven so,
Speaker 2: but just voice it, or you spread out the notes
Speaker 2: like BCE and then you play it. So I learned
Speaker 2: that from him. From Herbie Hancock he taught me what's
Speaker 2: called a diminished scale. Because I knew major scales, I
Speaker 2: knew minor scales, he taught me a diminish scale, which
Speaker 2: sounds like this. It's a different scale. Instead of seven notes,
Speaker 2: is eight notes. And it's a half step whole step,
Speaker 2: half step, whole step. It's symmetrical. So if you're playing
Speaker 2: jazz and I'm playing a song and I'm playing a
Speaker 2: ste steven chord in the left hand, I could play
Speaker 2: a seed a diminished scale over it. So you build
Speaker 2: up a vocabulary. It's like learning English or Chinese or whatever.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're in the army that you finish your term,
Speaker 3: what's the vision? How do you decide to go back
Speaker 3: to Brooklyn College.
Speaker 2: I only had a few months left, and I got
Speaker 2: a call to audition for Buddy Rich. So I figured
Speaker 2: I'll drop out of college if I could work with Buddies.
Speaker 2: So I went to see his band and they played
Speaker 2: a song. They sounded fantastic. He sounded fantastic on drums,
Speaker 2: and then he stood up after the song and screamed
Speaker 2: at the saxophone player, just like bullying, an invalidation beyond,
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh oh, So then I stopped there,
Speaker 2: and then I heard another song, and then he stood
Speaker 2: up and screamed at the trumpet player, at which point
Speaker 2: I went to my car and said, fuck him. I'm
Speaker 2: going home finishing college, because if I'm that abuse, I
Speaker 2: may as well go home to my house.
Speaker 3: Okay, but let's go back before that. You finished with
Speaker 3: the Army. Did you always plan to go back to college. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I just got the bachelor degree. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to go for my masters. I put in three and
Speaker 3: a half years, so I may as well knock it off.
Speaker 3: And I knocked it off. I graduated maybe a little
Speaker 3: early in January, and then I was right into the
Speaker 3: music world. Okay, your music education at Brooklyn College? Was
Speaker 3: that worth something?
Speaker 2: You know? At the time, I thought not. When I
Speaker 2: look back there, I'm sort of a sponge and if
Speaker 2: there's something valuable, I have pretty distant discernment and differentiation.
Speaker 2: I learned a few things, but could have I spent
Speaker 2: better time. Yes, but you're in a Jewish middle class family.
Speaker 2: You finishing up? Oh yeah, you know that. Boy, you
Speaker 2: have to have a backup plan. Well, I got the degree.
Speaker 2: My mind who was in education? I swear to you,
Speaker 2: I never went into the school system except as masterclasses
Speaker 2: and that kind of thing, because I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be trapped in that world. It was bad enough playing
Speaker 2: weddings and bomsters. I knew as early as very young
Speaker 2: that I had my own voice, my style. I knew
Speaker 2: I wanted to say something. But I wasn't a singer
Speaker 2: and I wasn't a performer. But I could play the
Speaker 2: shit out of the piano.
Speaker 3: You know. So that's the story. Okay, so you graduate,
Speaker 3: what's the next step.
Speaker 2: I graduated. I got married Susan Uh and I met
Speaker 2: in the Catskills. She was fourteen. I was sixteen, and
Speaker 2: I was playing Rhapsody in Blue. You know that one.
Speaker 2: I was playing raps in Blue. She comes from a
Speaker 2: little bungalow colony. Some girls in a bungalow colony went
Speaker 2: to my hospital. Let's go see the band over there
Speaker 2: at Cherry Hullo Hotel. I'm making forty dollars a week
Speaker 2: in the dumb There's fucking bats flying around in this room.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a gorgeous room. It was horrible. And
Speaker 2: a lot of folks would go up there like dirty dancing,
Speaker 2: that kind of a thing, like the movie and she
Speaker 2: comes with these friends and I'm playing Rhapsody in Blue
Speaker 2: and a little old lady taps her on the shoulder
Speaker 2: and says, you're gonna marry him. Six years later, we
Speaker 2: got married. Last week we celebrated fifty seven years. Go
Speaker 2: figure it, because fifty seven days is long in la
Speaker 2: and you know that.
Speaker 3: Okay, what happens for the time she hears you play
Speaker 3: Rhapsody in Blue to the time you get married. Was
Speaker 3: it a continuous connection or she go back to high
Speaker 3: school and you ran into her again? How did this
Speaker 3: relationship play out? We were together the whole six years
Speaker 3: before we got married.
Speaker 2: When I was in the army, I only saw her
Speaker 2: right the times that I get some time off, and
Speaker 2: she come to see me at four Dicks, and when
Speaker 2: I was a basic training she actually walked right by
Speaker 2: me because they shaved my head when at that time
Speaker 2: I had a lot of here and she couldn't believe
Speaker 2: what she saw. She actually passed by me, says this
Speaker 2: is your future husband, you know. So anyway, that's that's
Speaker 2: what happened. Then, Okay, you're a musician. Hey, she's young,
Speaker 2: you're a musician. What did her parents say about this?
Speaker 3: Wedding.
Speaker 2: They loved me because they thought I was gonna be
Speaker 2: a doctor. Yes, yes, yes, okay, so Dad, you got
Speaker 2: you gotta hear this. Bob her dad owned a trucking
Speaker 2: company in Manhattan. The mafia was on him every day
Speaker 2: with guns, payoffs. He was a tough guy. Grew up
Speaker 2: with no money with three brothers in Manhattan eating bread
Speaker 2: stiffs is all they got, sharing a room that was
Speaker 2: thirty feet you know. And he made it. All brothers,
Speaker 2: they all made it. He owned the trucking company.
Speaker 3: He made it.
Speaker 2: He worked six days a week and the seventh day
Speaker 2: he was in the garage. All he wanted to do
Speaker 2: was give me the trucking company and come to work
Speaker 2: with him. I would have been dead, like fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: I said, Dad, I can't do that. He said, make
Speaker 2: the music a hobby. I said, I'm serious about that.
Speaker 2: I had a jazz trio. We already sounded good playing
Speaker 2: local gigs in New York. So we go to a
Speaker 2: wedding one day, some family member and as an eight
Speaker 2: piece band, but kind of horrible, like a bomb. It's
Speaker 2: for band, wedding band. And he said, hey, Michael, now
Speaker 2: that's the band. Because it was eight pieces and I
Speaker 2: had a trio. He didn't couldn't differentiate quality from quantity,
Speaker 2: and so he finally stopped bothering about the trucking business.
Speaker 2: When I turned forty. He said, Okay, Mike, I know
Speaker 2: what we're gonna do. I'm going to put you through
Speaker 2: medical school and by fifty you'll be a doctor. So
Speaker 2: he never gave it up, but so so he look
Speaker 2: it was his daughter. He stare.
Speaker 3: It was an up and down life.
Speaker 2: I was getting five dollars a night on jazz gigs
Speaker 2: and all this before Bowie and then after David. There
Speaker 2: were times I wasn't working with David and then he'd
Speaker 2: come to the house and I wasn't working it, and
Speaker 2: then Susan would say, well he's practicing. What is he
Speaker 2: practicing for he's in the house. Well, he's writing a piece,
Speaker 2: and I don't understand, you know. So he's looking around
Speaker 2: and trying to snoop around and see my royalty checks.
Speaker 2: So Susan was hiding them. So I said, you got
Speaker 2: to put these checks out to shut them up. So
Speaker 2: she didn't put out the two stend ones and the
Speaker 2: thirty sen ones from being She put out a few
Speaker 2: that were five thousand tenth outs and then he was
Speaker 2: quiet after that. But by that time I was like
Speaker 2: fifty five years old.
Speaker 3: Okay, you graduate from college, you get married, what are
Speaker 3: the next steps in your musical career. I worked.
Speaker 2: A lot of miscellaneous gigs, backing up different people like
Speaker 2: Martha Reeves from Author and their Van dellaz I did
Speaker 2: music director at Madison Square Garden with them. There was
Speaker 2: a very famous jazz big band called mel Lewis Thad
Speaker 2: Jones Big Band. They played every Monday night at the
Speaker 2: Village Vanguard. I did a few gigs with them. I
Speaker 2: worked with the jazz student Nancy Wilson with them. She
Speaker 2: was fantastic and I was getting calls. While I was
Speaker 2: doing that, I was also teaching, because I love teaching.
Speaker 2: I started teaching nineteen sixty three and I've had only
Speaker 2: private one on ones now it's a lot of it
Speaker 2: is zoom all around the world, but about ten thousand
Speaker 2: students since over the last sixty two years. So I
Speaker 2: made extra money teaching and then I pick up miscellaneous gigs.
Speaker 2: And then one fine day, someone named David Bowie called
Speaker 2: to I didn't know who he was, and the rest
Speaker 2: of his history.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when do you graduate from college? How old
Speaker 3: are you after the all main graduated was probably about
Speaker 3: twenty okay, so we're in the late sixties. First, let's
Speaker 3: talk about jazz. The heyday of jazz was the thirties
Speaker 3: and forties. Okay, So are you aware that somehow your
Speaker 3: passion is a little lot of time or do you
Speaker 3: think jazz is forever? What was going through your head?
Speaker 2: I had known business mind. I only knew the music,
Speaker 2: and somehow I got by because I was teaching. If
Speaker 2: I didn't do some teaching, I couldn't have survived because
Speaker 2: a five dollar jazz gig going to it. In fact,
Speaker 2: the way I got the bowie gig, I was practicing,
Speaker 2: as I told you, eight hours a day. And then
Speaker 2: I get on this jazz gig with Dave Leebman, who
Speaker 2: I went to high school, was a sax player, with
Speaker 2: Miles Davis and other great musicians were in a club.
Speaker 2: I waited my whole life to get to this jazz gig.
Speaker 2: Five people in the club five bucks. So I said
Speaker 2: to myself, this is not going to work. The rent
Speaker 2: was one hundred and fifty dollars. I'd have to do
Speaker 2: thirty of those gigs a month and then I still
Speaker 2: don't pay for the phone and gas. So I said,
Speaker 2: you gotta watch what you wish for, and I said,
Speaker 2: I think I better go out with a rock band.
Speaker 2: Two days later David Cole, Okay, before we get to David. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's things like take five that anybody can understand. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of people say jazz I don't get it.
Speaker 2: Explain it to those people. They're partially right because it's
Speaker 2: heady and it's its own little cult, you know, and
Speaker 2: we're better than them because they're playing just three chords
Speaker 2: and look what we're doing, you know, well no one
Speaker 2: and they don't get it, you know, they just want
Speaker 2: a little groove.
Speaker 3: They just want to feel.
Speaker 2: I could do both, but I naturally was a songwriter
Speaker 2: at fourteen, but it was so simple for me that
Speaker 2: I made a silly mistake and I said, I think
Speaker 2: I don't understand the code of jazz ceode. I think
Speaker 2: I'm going to figure it out. And I went on
Speaker 2: this Cecuitish trip for a lot of years and it
Speaker 2: ultimately helped me, but it certainly didn't financially or commercially, because,
Speaker 2: like you said, nobody understood the music. I mean, Miles
Speaker 2: Davis is great culture and is great, you know, or
Speaker 2: Tata Muscapediston, but they are few and far between. Stan
Speaker 2: gets out a hit for the Boston over you know
Speaker 2: erl Gone, who was a bit of a showman. You know,
Speaker 2: you had people like Victor Borgier who used comedy and classical.
Speaker 2: I didn't think like my father in law thought, you
Speaker 2: need to work and have a gig and make some money.
Speaker 3: I got by.
Speaker 2: I was somewhat blessed in a way, and I had talent,
Speaker 2: and I was willing to do a wedding involvement. So
Speaker 2: I would do five on the weekend Friday night, Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 2: Saturday night, Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, and then I wouldn't
Speaker 2: work all week, and I teach on Tuesday, but not
Speaker 2: like ten minutes like Lennard Tristana, an hour or less
Speaker 2: than I would give. And I teach eight ten students
Speaker 2: and then have enough money to just get by and survive.
Speaker 3: And that was it. Okay. Nineteen seventy Miles goes electric
Speaker 3: in a silent way and bitches brew Joe Zonal's in
Speaker 3: the band, then informs weather report. Is this something you
Speaker 3: like or is it too far from tradition.
Speaker 2: I liked it, but I was a little more earlier miles.
Speaker 2: But I did end up working with Stanley Clark and
Speaker 2: played fusion, but that was in seventy eight, and I
Speaker 2: did that kind of music. So the thing with me is,
Speaker 2: I don't see divisions in music. I think I have
Speaker 2: the same mindset as Duke Ellington. He said, this is
Speaker 2: he the good music or bad music. So if it's
Speaker 2: a great rock song, I will gravitate to it, and
Speaker 2: if it's a great jazz song, I'll gravitate. It's not
Speaker 2: that all jazz, good old rock, or all poper or
Speaker 2: all fusion, so you know, and art is and opinion.
Speaker 2: So I went to things that resonated with me. But
Speaker 2: I never was one of these people. I only liked rock,
Speaker 2: or I only like Popper, I only liked Beboper, only
Speaker 2: liked fusion. I liked what I liked and just because
Speaker 2: it's music, and it's certainly better than war, certainly better
Speaker 2: than politics. It's like maybe the only same thing left
Speaker 2: on the planet. So I'm happy that I'm doing it.
Speaker 2: Mind you, if I was a pre med student, you know,
Speaker 2: you can help people that way. But it wasn't my calling,
Speaker 2: and when I was twelve, I wanted to be a rabbi,
Speaker 2: but I didn't like the separation. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: be a person of the world, and music was the
Speaker 2: closest I could get to it.
Speaker 3: Not that it was.
Speaker 2: I hate the music business, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 2: I love the music.
Speaker 3: So what's the status of jazz today.
Speaker 2: There are some great talent out there, that's all I know.
Speaker 2: I know nothing about the specifics in the business. There's
Speaker 2: some great piadists like Brad maldu who's really really good,
Speaker 2: and he does some rock things and interpretations of a
Speaker 2: lot of Beatles, and he did a boie soul, So
Speaker 2: there's some big talent out there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think jazz has ever been close to mainstream.
Speaker 2: When I grew up, it was always rock was the mainstream.
Speaker 2: Rock is small now it's hip hop. So you know,
Speaker 2: who knows I'm the wrong person to ask that. You
Speaker 2: probably know better than me. It doesn't look that good
Speaker 2: to me. From the friends I have that are starting
Speaker 2: that I could only base it on. Oh, I better
Speaker 2: give this guy fifty bucks. He's fucked.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go back to this transitional moment. How long
Speaker 3: after you graduate from college do you audition for Buwie?
Speaker 3: About seven years and before you have that break in
Speaker 3: your mind you say I'm gonna be an itinerant musician
Speaker 3: and all work out in the end, or in the
Speaker 3: back of your mind you say, you know I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have a big break. People are gonna know who I am.
Speaker 2: I never thought of break or fame or anything. You know,
Speaker 2: Fame is probably the most unstatem drug there is. It
Speaker 2: never impressed me. I just wanted to play the piano. Okay,
Speaker 2: So how do you get the call from Bowie? Do
Speaker 2: you ever hear of Anette Peacock?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had played on one of her albums, a very
Speaker 2: avant gard and there was a song she could call
Speaker 2: on the one and the piano solo was a little
Speaker 2: similar to Aladin say.
Speaker 3: It was out there and she was.
Speaker 2: An avant garde singer. She would sing through the move
Speaker 2: through the microphone, the mini move back in the not
Speaker 2: even the mini one, the big one. And I played
Speaker 2: on her album. Bowie comes to do the first American
Speaker 2: Ziggy Startles tour. He doesn't bring a piano player. Rick Weightman,
Speaker 2: who'd done Hunky during those things great pianists he was
Speaker 2: doing sessions or I don't know if yes was formed
Speaker 2: or I don't know the sequence, but he steadily couldn't come.
Speaker 2: So he comes with just Mick Ronson and Woody and
Speaker 2: Trevors the Spiders from All but he needs a piano.
Speaker 2: He's doing life. How do you do it without a piano?
Speaker 3: Or changes?
Speaker 2: You need a piano, you know. So he being very
Speaker 2: tuned into avant garde musicians, he knew a net and
Speaker 2: he was a fan of her music. And so is
Speaker 2: Mick Ronson to lead guitarist in the band. And he
Speaker 2: goes to visit her and he said, would you like
Speaker 2: to be in my band? She said, Now, I have
Speaker 2: my own career. But Mike Garson, he just played on
Speaker 2: my album. He said, you're in. So I got hired
Speaker 2: for eight weeks only and I then ended up I
Speaker 2: think the longest standing musician and probably did four hundred
Speaker 2: shows with him in twenty albums and things are still
Speaker 2: coming out.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you audition? My audition for.
Speaker 2: Seven seconds and you're gonna hear it right now. Nick
Speaker 2: Ronson said, you got the game. I said, Mick, I
Speaker 2: didn't start the play. Yet as he was sitting at
Speaker 2: the piano, he said, I know, I played piano two.
Speaker 2: It's the gig. You got it, And David was in
Speaker 2: the control room about thirty feet away. That was it, okay.
Speaker 2: I saw that tour in Boston at the Music Hall.
Speaker 2: I did not know who you were at that point
Speaker 2: in time, but that album was gigantic in England and
Speaker 2: it was just the beginning of the success of Bowie
Speaker 2: in the US. What was it like being on the
Speaker 2: road for those eight weeks. It was a shock, you know,
Speaker 2: at the jazz clubs and having to go on a
Speaker 2: back entrance. I was treated like the way black musicians
Speaker 2: were treated in the forties.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a and all of a sudden with the
Speaker 2: Plaza Hotel and we're at the Beverly Hills Hotel here,
Speaker 2: not even in the hotel, in the bungalows and Elton
Speaker 2: John's on the left and Perry Como's on the right,
Speaker 2: and we're eating eighty dollars meals and they're paying for everything.
Speaker 2: And I think we're the ones responsible for everybody having
Speaker 2: to leave their credit card now because then incidentals were
Speaker 2: all covered by RCA. I remember the band the tech
Speaker 2: guys bringing in like ten cases of champagne and just
Speaker 2: putting on the bill, and the band buying cameras and
Speaker 2: for a coach. So you know, it was those days
Speaker 2: and it was shocking. But again the music was fascinating
Speaker 2: because they were doing about twenty two storms on the
Speaker 2: Ziggi tour, and some storms don't need piano at all,
Speaker 2: like hang on to yourself and this and that. So
Speaker 2: I would sneak out into the audience and watch David,
Speaker 2: and I thought to myself, this guy's a fucking genius.
Speaker 3: I like this guy.
Speaker 2: I want to stay longer than eight weeks. He's the
Speaker 2: Miles Davis, a rock, and he's changing. He's a chameleon.
Speaker 2: He paralleled my mind because that's what I did. I
Speaker 2: changed one hundred times. It's just that it didn't matter
Speaker 2: because I was doing the jazz of classical. Who gives
Speaker 2: a fuck? But he was doing it brilliantly in the
Speaker 2: commercial of the pop world, and to his credit, he
Speaker 2: was able to still stick with his integrity except for
Speaker 2: the eighties, when he told me he felt that he
Speaker 2: lost it to record companies and the pressure got to him.
Speaker 3: Well, since we're there, you're talking about when he does
Speaker 3: the dance records and that type of stuff. Yes, he
Speaker 3: feels felt like he sold out. I mean he.
Speaker 2: Felt like doing Let's dance and that felt good. But
Speaker 2: then they like that, let's milk that shit. And that's
Speaker 2: exactly when the integrity gets fucked. And as I like
Speaker 2: to say, you compromise your integrity, your improvised drops.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're in the band. You know there are
Speaker 3: people who play in a band and essentially never talk
Speaker 3: to the leader of the band. So to what degree
Speaker 3: did you interact with the other three and Bowie and
Speaker 3: did they treat you as a member of the band
Speaker 3: or oh, this guy just plays piano on some of
Speaker 3: the songs.
Speaker 2: Initially the Spiders were a little reluctant, except for Mick
Speaker 2: Ronson because he loved me. And then I ended up
Speaker 2: playing on his two solo albums, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
Speaker 2: and played Home or but I became friends with all
Speaker 2: of them. But to take a few weeks because what
Speaker 2: does that sound? One of those jam squads just supposed
Speaker 2: to be playing and then they're hearing Bowie's eating it
Speaker 2: up because we lost the beat. It was just enhancing
Speaker 2: the harmonic vocabulary. Which has to do with chords, you know,
Speaker 2: and David loved it. They accepted me, and I made
Speaker 2: a decision after the eight weeks, I want to stay
Speaker 2: for two years, and we finished Young Americans. That's when
Speaker 2: I was the musical director because Nick Ronson he fired
Speaker 2: the whole band in that last show when they did
Speaker 2: the Ziggy movie, which is pretty well known, and David
Speaker 2: had told me, you're the only one I'm keeping, but
Speaker 2: everyone is being fired. And in that first two years
Speaker 2: most people don't know that he fired five different bands.
Speaker 2: We were friends, but that's not why he took me.
Speaker 2: I was able to change styles with him, so I
Speaker 2: could do Young.
Speaker 3: Americans or play a gospel face.
Speaker 2: I could do that, or I could play you know,
Speaker 2: I could do all of that. Well the song he
Speaker 2: never sang once live and I love that record. Ah
Speaker 2: me too? Yeah, good says.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's just focus for a second on Mick Ronson.
Speaker 3: Oh supposedly, you know, he was, you know, not equal
Speaker 3: to Bowie, but he was a main part of those
Speaker 3: shows and he worked with other people. He did the
Speaker 3: two solo records and died of alcoholism. So who was
Speaker 3: the real Mick Ronson? Who was alcohol really is demon.
Speaker 2: Mick was an unstung hero. He was very close from
Speaker 2: He also smoked a lot, so between the alcohol and smoke.
Speaker 2: He died of liver cancer and started Bowie. So they
Speaker 2: both smoked and drank, so they both died from that.
Speaker 2: But Mick was a sweetheart. He made it safe for
Speaker 2: me to be in the band. I was uncomfortable. I
Speaker 2: didn't know about popularity and fame and autographs.
Speaker 3: Where am I?
Speaker 2: You know when we did the very first show, I
Speaker 2: think it was in Cleveland in seventy two. After the encore,
Speaker 2: I see these skies, the spiders and Bowie running to
Speaker 2: a back entrance, zooming down to the basement to get
Speaker 2: in a limo, and I'm folding my music on stuff
Speaker 2: it was, and all of a sudden, thousand the people
Speaker 2: are coming at me because I'm the next best target.
Speaker 2: And I learned very fast, be careful, get out of there.
Speaker 3: Okay. That show started with a classical piece from Clockwork Orange,
Speaker 3: which was hot at that particular moment. Do you know
Speaker 3: why that was chosen?
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but it makes sense that someone
Speaker 2: like David would choose this Beethoven thing that was twisted.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know anything other than my relationship
Speaker 2: with him, but I'm sure in the books that's available.
Speaker 2: But I actually only had this musical. He only went
Speaker 2: liked to see me as of his pianist. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to know me as anything else.
Speaker 3: Okay, so how do you feel what he fires the band? Terrible?
Speaker 2: Because they were my friends and now I'm having to
Speaker 2: be on a stage with them for two nights and
Speaker 2: I know they're going and they went into shock, And
Speaker 2: there might have been reasons for it on a let's say,
Speaker 2: a mundane bullshit level. The real truth is this guy
Speaker 2: couldn't stop. He was hearing the next thing, and he's
Speaker 2: hearing Diamond Dogs, and he's hearing young Americans, and he's
Speaker 2: hearing pin Ups, which were all English covers, and he
Speaker 2: just couldn't help himself. And I think that's the real reason.
Speaker 2: But there were probably financial things and stupid shit that
Speaker 2: musicians do. You know, So that's okay.
Speaker 3: You're on the road for eight weeks. Was this the
Speaker 3: first time you were on the road that long and
Speaker 3: away from your new wife?
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, in nineteen seventy I was out for a
Speaker 2: year or two on and off with a band called Brethren,
Speaker 2: Rick Murata, the drummer he played in the band, and
Speaker 2: a guy named Tommy Cosgrove, and we had a manager
Speaker 2: named Sid Bernstein who brought the shea Stadium and he
Speaker 2: thought we were next Beatles.
Speaker 3: I didn't. He did.
Speaker 2: We sounded like Stevie Windward band, and I thought, how
Speaker 2: can we be the next Binals if we're doing even
Speaker 2: though they were originals, It distinger sounded too much like
Speaker 2: Stevie Woodenwock. I was original. I took over doctor John's job.
Speaker 2: He did the first album with Brethren, and I did
Speaker 2: the second album, and I toured with him and in
Speaker 2: one fine day we didn't make it. And we played
Speaker 2: a lot of shows. We opened up all those Joe
Speaker 2: Cocker shows with the mad Doorgs and it. I used
Speaker 2: to watch Lee and Russell ferociously. And two Drummers was
Speaker 2: fantastic playing at the Capitol.
Speaker 3: Theater in news. I saw that show too, said hello
Speaker 3: right at the Capitol. Okay, so you say, you know
Speaker 3: he fires the spiders from Mars and he's gonna do it.
Speaker 3: Ladd Insane. Tell me about trying out all these new
Speaker 3: musicians at all these bands that don't work.
Speaker 2: He had fantastic drummers, Ainsley Dunbar, Andy Newmore, Dennis Davis,
Speaker 2: Tony Newman Wood. He would mint See Sterling, Campbell, z Acholford.
Speaker 2: They were all fantastic drummers. Some just didn't fit for
Speaker 2: a project he was doing. He never put the friendship
Speaker 2: above the integrity of their music. It would sing when
Speaker 2: there was an album he didn't use me, but I
Speaker 2: understood it wasn't personally. He heard something else, maybe as
Speaker 2: synthesize it, maybe Brian Eno. So there's plenty of albums
Speaker 2: I'm not on and I got it, you know, And
Speaker 2: you got to love somebody who has integrity, and I
Speaker 2: learned that from him. I had it in me because
Speaker 2: I was disciplined and I only played what I loved.
Speaker 2: But I learned even more about holding the A position
Speaker 2: because I went most of the time when I wasn't
Speaker 2: with him, and you know, most rock artists they take
Speaker 2: months and months of sometimes years. So I was composing
Speaker 2: classical music and doing all sorts of other things.
Speaker 3: So tell me about the recording of the Laddin scene.
Speaker 2: You couldn't play a wrong note well, because we were
Speaker 2: a Trident studio where they did Hey, Jude and queen
Speaker 2: and all these things. The piano was this Bechstein. It
Speaker 2: was like sent from God to tried. The studio he
Speaker 2: had Ken Scott, who had worked with the Beatles, an
Speaker 2: amazing engineer, producer, and David I think was tired of
Speaker 2: the guitars from the Ziggy album, you know, and we
Speaker 2: did it. I mean that tour could have gone on
Speaker 2: for five years and he could have short after eighteen months.
Speaker 2: So now he I'm the flavor of the month, so
Speaker 2: it's going to be piano centric and I show up
Speaker 2: on these sessions and it was like forensically he went
Speaker 2: into my brain. Let's get that romantic part of Mike
Speaker 2: where it was like this, let's get that, and let's
Speaker 2: get the nineteen twenty jazz. But twisted, I'm getting the
Speaker 2: chance to practice when I got two gigs coming in
Speaker 2: next week, so thanks for adultery me.
Speaker 3: So that was time.
Speaker 2: And then Aladdin's say, which was my avante garde's side.
Speaker 2: So he was able to get the best out of
Speaker 2: whatever had practiced the prior years, almost like a prophet
Speaker 2: who could no Every musician he ever had was the
Speaker 2: perfect one at the perfect time, whether it was Carlos
Speaker 2: Alamar or the guitarist, great blues player who died in
Speaker 2: the Plain accident.
Speaker 3: I forgot his name.
Speaker 2: Great guitars, and of course Nick Ronson and then the
Speaker 2: later albums were Donnie mcclasten on Sacks. He always found
Speaker 2: the perfect musicians for what he wanted and he the
Speaker 2: best thing about him is he never micromanaged. I've been
Speaker 2: on projects with directors and singers. Do this, play this chord?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 2: Do and I go from the potential of giving all
Speaker 2: of myself, which is one hundred and ten percent, to
Speaker 2: probably minus twenty because they take the life out of
Speaker 2: me and the music. I see it as flowing through me.
Speaker 2: So if someone's fucking yaking at me, do this.
Speaker 3: It's over.
Speaker 2: Because I'm not a true studio musician. I'm a I'm
Speaker 2: an artist. I'll do some studio work, but only if
Speaker 2: I want to do it. Okay, Latin saying comes out
Speaker 2: at this point. He's a known quantity in America. From
Speaker 2: the outside, it does not look it's as if it's
Speaker 2: commercially successful, as the hate to use the word hype,
Speaker 2: as the expectations. What was it like on the other
Speaker 2: side of the curtain.
Speaker 3: It wasn't easy.
Speaker 2: It wasn't easy, and the part of him that wants
Speaker 2: to reach and be famous and all that and was hurt,
Speaker 2: you know, because he was torn between his artistic integrity
Speaker 2: and he has to do this because he traveled. I
Speaker 2: was with him in the limos when he's listening to
Speaker 2: a wreath of Franklin and absorbing getting ready for young
Speaker 2: Americans before we did a lot insane and America every
Speaker 2: town was affecting him. So he had to do it.
Speaker 2: But success wise, I don't think it was anywhere near
Speaker 2: the ziggy thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, and what was your experience of pit ups?
Speaker 2: A lot of fun. We were at that chateau where
Speaker 2: Elton did one of his albums in France, and it
Speaker 2: was so much fun. Lulu came and she sang man
Speaker 2: whole Soul of the World for fun. That became a
Speaker 2: number one single when he recorded it was not on
Speaker 2: the charts, so that was fun. Ainsley Dunball played drums
Speaker 2: and I thought, because I know nothing about rock, I
Speaker 2: thought they were all Bowie songs. He didn't care. I
Speaker 2: had Hammond organ that I had connected to the piano
Speaker 2: on Sorrow, one of those great songs, very short, and
Speaker 2: I was getting this down you could hear it on
Speaker 2: the record what the piano sounds a little different, so
Speaker 2: we were experimenting. Then it was an easy album, was fun.
Speaker 2: I think it was good for his head because he
Speaker 2: was separating from the spiders. And more about Mick ronson.
Speaker 2: When they sang together, it was magical, Bob the blend.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I couldn't tell who was who, and the way
Speaker 2: they performed on stage together, it was unreal. Now, when
Speaker 2: Mick went off on his solo album and then his
Speaker 2: solo tour which I played on, they were not successful
Speaker 2: at all, and while it was a great band, some
Speaker 2: nice tunes, it didn't have the Bowie magic. So some
Speaker 2: people are meant to be that person right under.
Speaker 3: Okay, just a couple of things. Many people are keyboardists
Speaker 3: and they'll play the piano, they'll play the sin, they'll
Speaker 3: play the organ. In your particular case, you view yourself
Speaker 3: just as a piano player.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I can play all those and I'm very
Speaker 2: good at them, but I'm not known for it. And
Speaker 2: my default is the piano because I love it, and
Speaker 2: that's people know my sounds on any album and when
Speaker 2: I play synths or electric piano or organ, I sound good.
Speaker 2: But it could be any great player, because that's not
Speaker 2: where I live. I just do it as a convenience
Speaker 2: as somebody wants. Oh give me a little electric piano,
Speaker 2: but I love the piano.
Speaker 3: You went on the road Ziggy started. Did they take
Speaker 3: a piano or was there a piano in every market?
Speaker 2: They would have a nine foot grand on every show.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you remember the story with the M and ms,
Speaker 2: with the rock guys and the Green and the Blue.
Speaker 2: I was in Madison Square, Go in the seventy three
Speaker 2: and I had a black nine foot Steinway. I was
Speaker 2: like a pig and shit, the happiest guy in the world,
Speaker 2: real piano. And I made a joke after the concert,
Speaker 2: and the piano technician was there. I said that being
Speaker 2: nice to have a white Steinway. And the next night
Speaker 2: there's this fifteen hundred pounds nine foot white Steinway. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm lucky if I get a stupid keyboard cassio with
Speaker 2: a kid. You know these days, so that those were
Speaker 2: those times with unbelievable money being spent.
Speaker 3: And was the deal that they had to deliver the
Speaker 3: piano and they had to be tuned that day exactly,
Speaker 3: And did somebody ever fuck up. No, okay, So now
Speaker 3: it comes to Diamond Dogs. Diamond Dogs has Rebel Rebel.
Speaker 3: It's an arena tour. Some people say, wait, this is
Speaker 3: a commercial compromise. What was it like from your side,
Speaker 3: from your viewpoint, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I was only I was one of the only
Speaker 2: musicians on that album because there was no more Spiders,
Speaker 2: and there was Tony Bisconti was involved in production, an engineer,
Speaker 2: and there was a bass player named Herbie Flowers who
Speaker 2: passed this this year. He's the one who played on
Speaker 2: the lou Reed Walk on the wild Side Great. I
Speaker 2: toured with him with Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour.
Speaker 2: But that album, David was into William Burrows and the
Speaker 2: cutups and he would take newspapers and cut it up
Speaker 2: and form lyrics from it. It was a style of writing.
Speaker 2: They ended up in some of those lyrics. But like
Speaker 2: a song like sweet Thing Candidate is, I think it's
Speaker 2: a genius song. Rebel is what everybody knows, Rebel Rebel.
Speaker 2: But there's some good music on there. But it's a
Speaker 2: hard album to digest. But I think it has for
Speaker 2: me to test the time. But not everybody feels that way,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's a music his opinion.
Speaker 3: So could you tell that David was satisfied that he
Speaker 3: had this level of success in America?
Speaker 2: Then I could tell it was breaking. I could feel it.
Speaker 2: I could feel it. They created a little bit of
Speaker 2: a vacuum around him to cause that kind of kernel
Speaker 2: stuff that they did with Elvis and all that, and.
Speaker 3: You know, okay, so that's seventy four, there's a huge success.
Speaker 3: He disappears for about a year, comes packed with something
Speaker 3: completely different, young Americans to what did we? Were you
Speaker 3: up front in all the Philadelphia you know Elements and
Speaker 3: Luther Van Rose and you say, Carlos Alomar shows up,
Speaker 3: what was your viewpoint? What was your participation?
Speaker 2: So actually in that album, I was the understarted hero
Speaker 2: because it was me who set the stage for a
Speaker 2: loadst look for the young Americans by going.
Speaker 3: And it starts with.
Speaker 2: It laid the vaud But Luther was the new star
Speaker 2: coming up and I knew it, and I was the
Speaker 2: music director. I had no problem. You tell the singers
Speaker 2: what to do, you do this, you do that, and
Speaker 2: that music. It was American music. So it was actually
Speaker 2: closer to my heart than the English music because I
Speaker 2: didn't know the English music. I just played on it,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know it. But I knew the sounds
Speaker 2: he was looking for, and I knew the ojs, and
Speaker 2: I knew all that those kind of music and arefa
Speaker 2: now Luther vandros By the way, he's a great documentary
Speaker 2: on him on CNN that.
Speaker 3: I saw last month.
Speaker 2: It's tested and you see me in it with hair.
Speaker 2: That's what nobody knows. But anyway, he's sitting right behind
Speaker 2: David Bowie and I'm playing the Young Americans and he
Speaker 2: starts singing some harmony stuff. He's not in the band,
Speaker 2: and David doesn't know him. Carlos brought him there. He
Speaker 2: was just hanging and David said, oh, come up to
Speaker 2: the mic and the rest of his history. So that
Speaker 2: was a big help to Luther's career, you know, because
Speaker 2: what people don't know is during that tour we were
Speaker 2: the opening act for David. It was called the Garson Band,
Speaker 2: but the manager was a prick, and he wouldn't put
Speaker 2: my name on the you know, until he and when
Speaker 2: he saw I was successful, but then it was too late.
Speaker 2: And then he's one of those guys. He was taking
Speaker 2: fifty percent of the royalties fifty percent of gross of David,
Speaker 2: and that's what he wanted, what he wanted to manage
Speaker 2: me and goodbye. But we opened the show for David,
Speaker 2: and there were towns we got a better review than David,
Speaker 2: But there were towns they were also throwing raw eggs
Speaker 2: coming on the stage because they didn't want to black
Speaker 2: lives singing soul music when they're waiting for David Bowie.
Speaker 2: So I experienced the good and bad and the ugly
Speaker 2: of that. But I knew Luther was a big talent.
Speaker 3: Okay, Stylistically it was a big change from certainly Diamond Dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: how did you find out that Bowie was going in
Speaker 3: that direction? He told me.
Speaker 2: You could hear it a little bit on nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four on one of the early albums. You could feel
Speaker 2: America influenced them for better or worse, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, favorite songs on that album, or somebody's up there
Speaker 3: likes me in Fascination, you got good taste, so yes,
Speaker 3: so tell me about certainly the clavinet on Fascination and
Speaker 3: instead do I play keyboards? That's me.
Speaker 2: And I just you know, I heard a little Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 2: I said that sounds like fun, maybe I'll try it.
Speaker 2: We have all these jams, maybe these tapes will someday
Speaker 2: come out there hitting tapes. We're just jamming. David be
Speaker 2: just smiling listening to us playing, because we have an
Speaker 2: amazing band. We had Willie Weeks on bass, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the best electric bass player I played
Speaker 2: with for that kind of music. We had Andy Nwmalk,
Speaker 2: who's fantastic trauma. He's in London. He's crazy, is anything,
Speaker 2: but he's he's great, and he played drums and columns,
Speaker 2: you know, and earl Slick was starting to emerge, you know,
Speaker 2: and because there was no Mick ronson but David was
Speaker 2: fascinated with Stigma sound and Philly and that sound. But
Speaker 2: he did it his way, you know. They kind of
Speaker 2: called it a plastics or whatever they named it, but
Speaker 2: it was authentic for him. Whatever he did, he always
Speaker 2: sounded like David Bowie. I didn't rehearsals. He'd fucked with
Speaker 2: us and sound like Elder saw Johnny Cash for fun
Speaker 2: because he had that kind of ear and he could imitate,
Speaker 2: but he really had his own voice, didn't he.
Speaker 3: So then he starts working with Eno, going to Germany
Speaker 3: and you're not called well, how did you find out?
Speaker 3: And how'd you feel? Terrible?
Speaker 2: I still feel terrible because I know just what I
Speaker 2: would have played on every album.
Speaker 3: I wasn't on.
Speaker 2: I just know. But you know, you have to respect
Speaker 2: a guy. Here's another direction, and God bless him. And
Speaker 2: it's not like I wasn't working. I started working with
Speaker 2: fusion music, like at Stanley Clark, I played with Freddie Hubbard,
Speaker 2: Elvin Jones. I mean it was on and on. I
Speaker 2: was doing great, but I started to miss him and
Speaker 2: he started to miss me, and we reconvened, believe it
Speaker 2: or not, in eighteen years after the Young Americans for
Speaker 2: Black Tie, White Noise, and then I did everything through
Speaker 2: two thousand and five or something like that. So I
Speaker 2: was very appreciative to be creating again. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: We're sitting in the studio, you know, the outside album
Speaker 2: by any chance. So so yeah, it's pretty out there.
Speaker 2: And here's what he said to me. He said, Mike,
Speaker 2: I really I suffered with the record companies. I feel
Speaker 2: I compromised my integrity. I'm doing now is gathering all
Speaker 2: my favorite musicians, Carlos said, Brian Eno and me and
Speaker 2: we're gonna go to montrou and we're just gonna improvise
Speaker 2: with two Sony tape records forty eight connected and we're
Speaker 2: gonna just improvise two three four hours a day for
Speaker 2: two weeks, and you're gonna go home and me and
Speaker 2: Brian turn him into songs.
Speaker 3: Well, this is.
Speaker 2: Right up my alley. Right, That's all I did is improvised.
Speaker 2: They didn't even tell us keys. Sometimes they played us
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay in the headphones and they told us to
Speaker 2: play against it, and then they took off Marvin Gay
Speaker 2: and you had some crazy collagio sound and then it
Speaker 2: turns out to be a song called I'm Deranged or
Speaker 2: this and that. So it was a fantastic musical experience.
Speaker 2: But he said, I need to go in with you
Speaker 2: guys to get back to myself. So this is gonna
Speaker 2: be a very avant god album. People are not gonna
Speaker 2: like it. Then when we toured his manager A bil Zie,
Speaker 2: he runs to State. He came to me said, can
Speaker 2: you talk to him about doing the hits? I said, Bill,
Speaker 2: you talk to him. You're the manager. This is I'm
Speaker 2: happy here. You're rich, he's rich. Let him do what
Speaker 2: he has to do I promise you will end up
Speaker 2: doing hits again whenever that comes. It happened a year
Speaker 2: or two later, so he had to do it for
Speaker 2: Saul and I haven't delight the album, but it's not commercial.
Speaker 3: You work with Eno for the first time. What does
Speaker 3: he add? Picture this.
Speaker 2: I'm on this nine foot steinway and right behind me
Speaker 2: there's a DX seven Yamaha keyboard. And every day there
Speaker 2: was a little music store right next to montro where
Speaker 2: they had the jazz festival, and right next to the
Speaker 2: studio where Queen recorded, there's a little music store. He
Speaker 2: would buy this little box, did crazy sounds like the
Speaker 2: tall players buy boxes. And he connect us to the
Speaker 2: DX seven keyboard and I'm playing all this, I'm all
Speaker 2: over the piano and I'm hearing in my head of
Speaker 2: peep peep, peep, peep peep like and that turned out
Speaker 2: to be on Space Boy or something. But he had
Speaker 2: a lot of taste. He told me his instrument was
Speaker 2: the studio. So he took me Alpha dinner, and he
Speaker 2: wanted to know about Bill Evans and jazz, and he
Speaker 2: respected my playing, and he in his book he calls
Speaker 2: it the garsthonic style. So there was a deep respect
Speaker 2: and of course he's kind of a whack o genius,
Speaker 2: you know, in a whole different way, which just shows
Speaker 2: you how deep art can be if you're not sucked
Speaker 2: into the you know, the bullshit, you know. And it
Speaker 2: was fun working with him, and he had a nice vision,
Speaker 2: and he played jokes on David every day and crazy
Speaker 2: stuff we go on in the studio, you know, Okay.
Speaker 3: Ultimately you go on the road. That's David's a little
Speaker 3: bit of an underplay. I saw it at the will
Speaker 3: Turn and that's his last tour.
Speaker 2: You saw that one.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was there absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a fun gig actually, and well he
Speaker 2: was very loose.
Speaker 3: And without all the airs, and that's why we made
Speaker 3: it cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was a breath of fresh air,
Speaker 2: you know, right. That was that was the last to
Speaker 2: sadly we had. Look, we had been on the road
Speaker 2: thirteen months ball and we did one hundred and thirteen
Speaker 2: shows and he gets a heart attack in Hamburg, Germany,
Speaker 2: and I'm playing for him on the stage and I
Speaker 2: see him holding his heart and I could feel my
Speaker 2: fingers tightened up because we have this spiritual, telepathic connection
Speaker 2: from so many years of playing together and I said
Speaker 2: something was wrong, and he managed to get through the
Speaker 2: show and they zoomed him over in hospital. He had
Speaker 2: thence put in and never after that. I did one
Speaker 2: or two shows with him and me alone with Alicia Keys,
Speaker 2: like some Benefits, and that was the last shows he
Speaker 2: ever done. He did two more albums later. He wanted
Speaker 2: me to move to New York that I had my
Speaker 2: whole family settled here. Had I have a regret because
Speaker 2: had I moved, which I couldn't was impractical when my
Speaker 2: kids were in school and all that. But had I moved,
Speaker 2: I would have been on those last two albums because
Speaker 2: he used everyone from New York and he told me so.
Speaker 2: But whatever, I'm happy that where I contributed is where
Speaker 2: I contributed.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, when did you know he was sick?
Speaker 2: I heard it only through rumors and he never told
Speaker 2: anyone except one or two people. And there was a
Speaker 2: biography being done by me at the time, by some
Speaker 2: English guy.
Speaker 3: I think it was called Bowie's Piano Man or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: And the author said to me, can you listen to
Speaker 2: these sixty songs or eighty songs that you played with
Speaker 2: through David's career? And critique to all of them, and
Speaker 2: now I had never done that. I had to step
Speaker 2: for hours and go through every single song. I was
Speaker 2: overwhelmed because it was good him and me and it
Speaker 2: was magical. And so I wrote David and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm in shock here. This ship was better than I thought.
Speaker 2: And within three seconds I got an email Mike. We
Speaker 2: did a great body of work. And I got off
Speaker 2: the phone and I said, Susan, I said, that's the
Speaker 2: last time I'm going to hear from him. He said
Speaker 2: something very final. We did a great body of work
Speaker 2: and three months later he was dead.
Speaker 3: So he's such a big part of your life. Is
Speaker 3: it like a death of a member of a family. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 3: Just to go back to put a rap on it,
Speaker 3: you say that he treated you as his piano player.
Speaker 3: It was a musical connection. To what degree did you
Speaker 3: have experiences or a relationship like two people might be
Speaker 3: a member of a band but might talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: what they had for dinner or some movie. Was he
Speaker 3: that kind of guy or did he keep you at
Speaker 3: arm's length?
Speaker 2: No, he was very sociable and he considered his band
Speaker 2: close friends. Now we were in a bus together right
Speaker 2: for years and so we talked philosophy. He was going
Speaker 2: to be a Buddhist. He told me the Buddhist guy
Speaker 2: said you better go sting, You'll have a bigger effect,
Speaker 2: and he was smart. We'd be going from one city
Speaker 2: to another, and by the time we got the next
Speaker 2: city had read three books I mean kind of like
Speaker 2: You and that were just like absorbing, absorbing. And sometimes
Speaker 2: we wouldn't see him, but many times after a show
Speaker 2: we'd be sitting in He used to like to watch
Speaker 2: The Office, the original one, the English version would really rissed,
Speaker 2: and we would watch that after while we're in the
Speaker 2: bus going to another country a city.
Speaker 3: And he was.
Speaker 2: Very warm person. He had a lot of feeling. When
Speaker 2: my dad died in the mid nineties, I had to
Speaker 2: be at the funeral, and my dad made sure. He
Speaker 2: asked me when I'm going to Finland and when the
Speaker 2: tour was over, and he worked out his death right
Speaker 2: in between those two things. It was unbelievable. My dad said,
Speaker 2: I want you to play these three songs, and I'm
Speaker 2: getting a Steinway. It was all planned, and then you
Speaker 2: go back on tour and I go to the funeral
Speaker 2: and I go to rehearsal right after, and David gave
Speaker 2: me the biggest hug and sincere condolences.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: That was David Bowie, that was David Jones, or that
Speaker 2: was the real person, that was not a persona. And
Speaker 2: I think that's where his love and the music was
Speaker 2: underneath whatever crap they might have been on the crust
Speaker 2: on the top. You know, it's just a horrible business.
Speaker 3: Okay. Your father and mother, your father in law, were
Speaker 3: they proud of your success or with your father in
Speaker 3: law was always you know, it's like Bruce Springsteen mother
Speaker 3: saying go back to college when he's talk about the
Speaker 3: trucking company. Or were they thrilled about Could they even
Speaker 3: understand your success?
Speaker 2: The only one who understood was my dad. He was
Speaker 2: put on the planet to support me, and no matter
Speaker 2: what I played. He was on his dying in bed
Speaker 2: one time and I said, Dad, I'm playing in Arizona
Speaker 2: discosta with Dox Everson and a symphony orchestra. He had
Speaker 2: just told me two hours earlier you couldn't go down
Speaker 2: to the delicatest and he loved his pastrowomy sandwiches. And
Speaker 2: he got on the plane and he was at the
Speaker 2: gig handing out Champagne to do Stevenson and the Band,
Speaker 2: totally alert and happy in his mid eighties. The show
Speaker 2: was over. Back in the wheelchair, flumped over, looked like
Speaker 2: he was gonna die.
Speaker 3: So he was. He was the one who got it.
Speaker 2: My mom medical doctor, my mother law medical doctor, my
Speaker 2: bad in law, trucking business.
Speaker 3: It was unfortunately, I can understand this.
Speaker 2: What makes you say that?
Speaker 3: That's my own story going back to Okay, So those
Speaker 3: seventeen years when Bowie is doing his thing without you,
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
Speaker 2: I played a lot of jazz, did a lot of teaching,
Speaker 2: and I became part of a group called Free Flight.
Speaker 2: It was a flute player who played in the La
Speaker 2: Philharmonic that loved jazz and classical. Was Ralph Humphrey on
Speaker 2: drums who played with Zappa and Algio, and a great
Speaker 2: studio musician and a bass player named Jim Lacefield and
Speaker 2: myself and we mixed classical and jazz. We had a
Speaker 2: lovely career. Played on Johnny Carson three times. We played
Speaker 2: at the Hollywood Bowl. We played at Lincoln Center for
Speaker 2: a jazz jazz classical group. We did pretty good. We
Speaker 2: had an agent and we played those performing art centers
Speaker 2: of whole two thousand people. So they have built in,
Speaker 2: they still out and we had a good ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen year room. I was totally happy. And then David
Speaker 2: Cole I got a sub for those other gigs after
Speaker 2: and so I was good at Stanley Clark was a
Speaker 2: great bass player. I played on piano and a lot
Speaker 2: of his movies Boys in the Hood. That's me playing
Speaker 2: piano and a.
Speaker 3: Woaho a little bit slower. Hey, let's go back to
Speaker 3: Bowie for a second. Do you have a royalty interest
Speaker 3: from Bowie at all?
Speaker 2: You know the number zero?
Speaker 3: Yes? Okay, next, that's what I thought it was. But
Speaker 3: just making sure, okay.
Speaker 2: So in London in nineteen seventy three, the union scale
Speaker 2: for three hours was eighteen pounds, which was thirty three dollars.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty fast in the studio. So on Aladdin's Staine,
Speaker 2: I made one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: How long are we there? Well, I did you know?
Speaker 2: Maybe three sessions over a few days, three three.
Speaker 3: Hour sessions, six hour sessions. Okay, let's let's see it.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I don't want to upset you too much because you've
Speaker 2: heard it a few times, and you know, David's viewpoint
Speaker 2: is use my name. And he probably didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was even getting paid, because he himself was being
Speaker 2: ripped off by the manager at fifty percent, as I
Speaker 2: told you, and he was bankrupt in the eighties, so
Speaker 2: I don't know that he knew. All I knew was
Speaker 2: in the later years when we said, can't we get
Speaker 2: a million dollars for this tour? We're giving our life
Speaker 2: away from He said, just use my name. You'll be
Speaker 2: busy and you'll be working the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: Some truth to that.
Speaker 2: But the English guys Nick and David Sheep passed legendarily.
Speaker 2: What's the word just then?
Speaker 3: Is it legendarily? Okay? You talk about working with Stanley Clark,
Speaker 3: working on movie scores, et cetera. Are you just sitting
Speaker 3: at home and the phone range or today it's an
Speaker 3: email or are you working it networking? How does all
Speaker 3: this should happen?
Speaker 2: I never did anything. The phone would bring christ you know,
Speaker 2: I tended to deliver, and I love music and I
Speaker 2: love communicating, co creating with people, so I didn't really
Speaker 2: do anything. And sometimes there would periods no work would
Speaker 2: come in, but all of a sudden, The movie Stigmata
Speaker 2: comes out twenty five years ago, and actually the same
Speaker 2: director who did the Ukrainian thing. But that movie comes
Speaker 2: out and I do the score with Billy Corgan and
Speaker 2: then Billy Corgan says, you want to go out with
Speaker 2: the Smashing Pumpkins. Things would always come in, but there
Speaker 2: would be those very rough times where I'd have to
Speaker 2: just refinance my house just to.
Speaker 3: Buy Tell me a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: I should bring my wife in on that one. She's
Speaker 2: the one who suffers because she's paying the bills every Monday.
Speaker 2: And it was not easy, you know. And several times,
Speaker 2: over many years, we had to refinance our house and
Speaker 2: never get us going for six months for a year,
Speaker 2: and then you're paying more mortgage. Sometimes, grace of God,
Speaker 2: I would get another gig, and sometimes I didn't, and
Speaker 2: sometimes we're gonna have to sell the house. And then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, Bowie calls, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a rollercoaster. Would I recommend that kind of a career.
Speaker 2: You just have to love the music so much that
Speaker 2: you don't care what the fuck happened to you.
Speaker 3: Did you ever get so frustrated that you contemplated giving up,
Speaker 3: not for a second.
Speaker 2: B I would just go play the piano for ten hours,
Speaker 2: and I got better. When I had no work, I'd.
Speaker 3: Compose, Okay, to what degree? You know? It's one thing
Speaker 3: if Stanley Clark is calling, Billy Corgan whatever, But to
Speaker 3: what degree could you work on your own when no
Speaker 3: one was calling.
Speaker 2: I always had solo gigs and trio gigs. I'd go
Speaker 2: to Israel, I'd go to Japan, go to the Blue Notes.
Speaker 2: I always worked. There was small clubs called two dollars
Speaker 2: Bills that was on Franklin and Bronson. I worked there
Speaker 2: for years, maybe forty six to eighty dollars, and did
Speaker 2: a Friday and a Saturday. I played in San Diego
Speaker 2: and another jazz club for six years. I played there
Speaker 2: six nights a week, sometimes over six months. So I
Speaker 2: was always working. And I love anything I played because
Speaker 2: it was jazz or it was a great rock band.
Speaker 2: And then, like I said, I was smart enough to
Speaker 2: add the income through my piano lessons that I taught,
Speaker 2: and that was steady because students came, you know every week.
Speaker 3: Okay, how did you build that business? Word of mouth?
Speaker 3: Word of mouth? Okay, there are a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are great players and shitty teachers. So what's the
Speaker 3: key to being a good teacher.
Speaker 2: I might be a better teacher than player. If I'm
Speaker 2: going to be really honest, If I've done five thousand concerts,
Speaker 2: I'd say two thousand were great and three thousand okay,
Speaker 2: phoned it in or whatever I've thought. Ten thousand students
Speaker 2: nine nine hundred and ninety were great, a few didn't
Speaker 2: go right, And it's it's getting out of your own
Speaker 2: way wanting to answer the question. The problem with classical
Speaker 2: teachers and chanced you must do this, you mustn't do that.
Speaker 2: My viewpoint is what do you want to learn? Why
Speaker 2: am I going to put you on an excursion of class?
Speaker 2: But if you want to be a singer songwriter? I
Speaker 2: taught Vonda Shephard. She did the Ali McBeal show. All
Speaker 2: I certainly, oh good, Yeah, she was my student at fourteen.
Speaker 3: Wow. So how skilled does someone have to be for
Speaker 3: you to teach them?
Speaker 2: In the seventies, I was like a tyrant in New York,
Speaker 2: and they had to be willing to do eight hours
Speaker 2: a day and be very advanced. But now, so many
Speaker 2: years later, all I require is desire, they don't have
Speaker 2: to play. I teach doctors and lawyers on Zoom all
Speaker 2: around the world and they just love it. And that's
Speaker 2: all I need. And I did all the virtual also
Speaker 2: class and stuff I taught the jazz people. I taught
Speaker 2: people who worked with Miles Davis. I won that game
Speaker 2: a long time ago. I actually like teaching simple songwriting
Speaker 2: and simple cause I'm playing simpler now that I ever did.
Speaker 2: And I was always had to be jazz for was
Speaker 2: now simple pop cause, but getting the magic out of them,
Speaker 2: whether it's solo. I played a cancer benefit. That's when
Speaker 2: I met your nephew right two weeks ago. And you know,
Speaker 2: I do a lot of that stuff and I love it.
Speaker 3: You know. So when you're playing two dollars bills, is
Speaker 3: it depressing at all?
Speaker 2: No, it's always filmed. I get two dollars each person.
Speaker 3: I'll leave it at that. Okay, how do you meet
Speaker 3: Billy Corgan? And ended up working with Billy Corgan.
Speaker 2: So we're in France and one of these television shows
Speaker 2: and there's several bands in a circle and Bowie was
Speaker 2: one of them. And I'm in the dressing room and
Speaker 2: bolways have a new discussion with Billy Corgan about God,
Speaker 2: and he says tells his bodyguard called Mike, he'll want
Speaker 2: to discuss this, and he said, what do you think
Speaker 2: about God?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's not a guy sitting up there waving a hand
Speaker 2: striking people. There may be all that is. I don't know,
Speaker 2: infinite intelligence something. I know it's bigger than just the body,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know much more to stay other than that.
Speaker 2: And then we became friends. And then he's auditioning. I'm
Speaker 2: in a jazz gig in Wisconsin or something, and I
Speaker 2: see he's auditioning paddle players because there was a mess
Speaker 2: with Smashing Pumpkins and the drummer and the terrible and
Speaker 2: they needed a keyboard play and it was auditioning people.
Speaker 2: So I called him. He said, well, I never thought
Speaker 2: you would want to work with me. I said, you're interesting,
Speaker 2: and I'd like to. And that's how I got that gig.
Speaker 2: You know, we have about one hundred and eighty hours
Speaker 2: of DVDs and never released with Kenny Aronoff and oh
Speaker 2: my god, it wasn't a Pumpkins band. It was a
Speaker 2: Billy Corgan tour. I did a Pumpkins tour that one
Speaker 2: of their final ones. These bands always have final gigs
Speaker 2: and then they do ten more final gigs.
Speaker 3: Okay, Billy Corgan has a reputation as being somewhat mercurial
Speaker 3: and difficult. Is that a misperception or what is the
Speaker 3: insight into that? It's not a misperception. But for better
Speaker 3: or worse, he knows what he wants and he doesn't
Speaker 3: stop till he gets it. He maybe could get out
Speaker 3: some soft sandpaper and refinement a little. Maybe he has
Speaker 3: now because he's married and got some kids. I think
Speaker 3: he's changed because I sat him with him at the
Speaker 3: Hollywood Bowl about a year or two ago and it
Speaker 3: was different. I also, he got married last year. I
Speaker 3: played his wedding, So he's cool. But I saw him
Speaker 3: pretty rough on the guitar players and bass players in
Speaker 3: the band, you know, James and Darcy. It was painful.
Speaker 3: He respected me so much. We never had an issue
Speaker 3: with him. But one time he came into the bus
Speaker 3: after a constant in Japan and he went around to
Speaker 3: each person in the band and must have a photograph
Speaker 3: of memory, but told each one what they did wrong,
Speaker 3: and it really hurt me. So I went to him
Speaker 3: and I said, Billy couldn't you wait till tomorrow? Everyone's
Speaker 3: coming off the stage. The audience was happy. We played good,
Speaker 3: he said, these people are coming to see me, Mike,
Speaker 3: and my job is to give the best I could give.
Speaker 3: And when I hear something wrong, I wanted fixed.
Speaker 2: So how could I fault that?
Speaker 3: I might say? Can you do it with a soft touch?
Speaker 3: That's all? Okay, you're a jazz guy. Smashing Pumpkins certainly
Speaker 3: had an arrow where they make it commercially successful. But
Speaker 3: is that music to the lady enough interesting enough for you?
Speaker 2: My challenge when I play with any of these rock bands,
Speaker 2: even Bowie, what can I find that contributes and ads?
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's minimal and sometimes it's a long and Billy
Speaker 2: is a funny guy. We'd be doing and he'd stop
Speaker 2: the band playing for twenty thousand people and asked me
Speaker 2: to play Summertime by myself.
Speaker 3: Okay, how did you hook up with Trent Reznor?
Speaker 2: He uh opened with us for Bowie in ninety five.
Speaker 3: I remember being at the Forum. Were you at that show?
Speaker 3: By anyhow? That show I was not at? Okay.
Speaker 2: So we were on tour together, not in Europe but
Speaker 2: in America, and they would play the first half of
Speaker 2: the show, and then there would be some dovetailing where
Speaker 2: David would sing a trend song and TRP would singer
Speaker 2: David Saw and he would be always listening to me
Speaker 2: in rehearsal.
Speaker 3: I couldn't understand why I didn't even know him, and
Speaker 3: we'd walk in the hall to the dressing rooms and
Speaker 3: we sort of not never was introduced, and one time
Speaker 3: in Keyboard magazine or Downby, somebody asked him in the nineties,
Speaker 3: who would you like the next recovers and he said me,
Speaker 3: and I was felt flattered, And then that didn't occur
Speaker 3: for another two years. Then I did the Fragile album,
Speaker 3: which was a great double album, and and then a
Speaker 3: few years later he invited me. I think it might
Speaker 3: have been at the Wilton again nine in Shales. They
Speaker 3: were it was their last. Do you remember seeing me
Speaker 3: at that one? Because there's so many last shows, No,
Speaker 3: I Jim Garrino was the manager. I certainly remember that
Speaker 3: last show, all the things about the ticketing. Unfortunately I
Speaker 3: do not remember you being there. I'm not sure it
Speaker 3: would have have been maybe in two thousand and six. Yeah, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: I played two Stars at matt As, not but he
Speaker 3: said something that was hard for me to grasp or
Speaker 3: or absorb. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I like to
Speaker 3: bring up friend of mine and he's been my biggest inspiration.
Speaker 3: And then he announced me, and I'm thinking, I hardly
Speaker 3: know you, and we come from different universes. And then
Speaker 3: I remembered when we were in the studio. I played
Speaker 3: on fifteen tracks on the Fragile album, but he only
Speaker 3: put me on three. I said, Trent, what happened? And
Speaker 3: he said, your influence was so strong and so connected
Speaker 3: with Bowie, I was losing my voice, so I picked
Speaker 3: the three that I felt with work. I said, this
Speaker 3: is exactly what I said to him. I said, I.
Speaker 2: Really respect that, but I also said fuck you, and
Speaker 2: I said, please put them out instrumental someday because it
Speaker 2: was amazing and he was a great producer. He had
Speaker 2: sixty keyboards in the studio in New Orleans is the
Speaker 2: place that burned down, and then he had three pianos
Speaker 2: for me. Pick your choice. I mean, so what is
Speaker 2: his magic?
Speaker 3: What does he bring?
Speaker 2: What I could tell you is in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: David Bowie said to me, watch out for this guy.
Speaker 2: He's going to be the one, and you ended up.
Speaker 3: Working with him on the Social Network soundtrack, which was
Speaker 3: his first big success.
Speaker 2: I think gone girl, I think I remember. And there
Speaker 2: was Watchmen, which was an eight part series on HBO.
Speaker 2: He would always call me for anything he couldn't play
Speaker 2: because he plays the piano, right, but anything that he wanted,
Speaker 2: something a little fancier. But I don't know if I
Speaker 2: did Social Networks to say I did that on Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Twenty ten, Okay, how do you get hooked up with
Speaker 3: the Dillinger escape player? I have seen that act.
Speaker 2: Those guys were on the same trend show and they
Speaker 2: were wilder than nine ers now. They were hanging from
Speaker 2: the speakers. Well maybe that's where I saw them. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: I was on that show and that's where they heard me.
Speaker 2: And they thought, oh, this motherfucker is as crazy as
Speaker 2: us in a different way. So they called me to
Speaker 2: play on that. It was so much fun, and the
Speaker 2: Stinger was actually directing me. It was a hard song.
Speaker 2: It was in hard meters and I had a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. It was just one of these little magic moments.
Speaker 2: You meet somebody in the elevator and you connect, but
Speaker 2: you never see him again, you know, And then what
Speaker 2: about pretty reckless? When I was doing all these COVID
Speaker 2: things through streaming, I had every singer who loved David
Speaker 2: Stingwood made from Adam Lambert to Boy George and Duran
Speaker 2: Durant to Joe Elliot, and she was one of them.
Speaker 2: She said, let's do a quickstand, so we met on that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm pretty lucky because over those years there
Speaker 2: must have been one hundred Stoners. The only ones who
Speaker 2: came anywhere close to David when they worked with me were.
Speaker 3: Steel and Sting. When did you work with Sting.
Speaker 2: At the Wilton? One of those shows, he did Lazarus
Speaker 2: in Blackstar, which two of the songs from that last album,
Speaker 2: and it was breathtaking what he did. And they weren't
Speaker 2: friends or connected, but the love was still there.
Speaker 3: Okay, if one does a little research about you online,
Speaker 3: they find for a while you were remember of scientology.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Chick Korea turned me on to scientology in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: and something didn't feel kosher, but I respected him, so
Speaker 2: I thought maybe he said there's some good communication skills
Speaker 2: and bloody blah blah blah. So I did it from
Speaker 2: seventy to eighty two. But I couldn't take the structure
Speaker 2: and the hierarchy. It just wasn't who I was.
Speaker 3: So I left.
Speaker 2: But Stanley, at the time, my wife was managing chick
Speaker 2: Corea and she fired him and he disconnected from me,
Speaker 2: and I never saw him again to the day he died.
Speaker 2: But yet he had been the godfather of my kids
Speaker 2: and who were best friends, and we played shows together,
Speaker 2: him on synthesized me on piano and this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and we went to Israel together in Japan. But that's
Speaker 2: what occult mentality can do to people. And I guess
Speaker 2: I had a vulnerability and I had the ability to
Speaker 2: find what's right in things, but there were things that
Speaker 2: just didn't feel right. So I had to leave, and
Speaker 2: I left. And so when I left, I had no
Speaker 2: friends because everyone in the Church of Scientology canceled by me,
Speaker 2: and I was like a heretic. And then everyone wasn't
Speaker 2: a scientologist still thought I was in scientology. So I
Speaker 2: had a lonely, lonely ten years. But that's when I
Speaker 2: found a lot of my own classical music. I had
Speaker 2: a movement of music that I put together in the nineties.
Speaker 3: And I still do it.
Speaker 2: It's called now music, and I used the concept of
Speaker 2: improv that we do in jazz, but I did it
Speaker 2: in classical, so I could sit at the piano and
Speaker 2: improvise a sonata and it sounds written. But I developed
Speaker 2: it over thousands of pieces. I actually have over five
Speaker 2: thousand pieces of music i'd written. Had I written that
Speaker 2: out by hand, it would take three hundred years, but
Speaker 2: it would just come. I would sit there and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I mean, I could do this ten
Speaker 2: thousand years and not stuff moments. There's a bathroom nearby
Speaker 2: and some food, so that's still. I developed a lot
Speaker 2: of music that way, and I have a copyist who
Speaker 2: not tates it all. I don't play them. I do
Speaker 2: them once and give them to classical piatus who can't improvise.
Speaker 2: So just like there was Baroque music, Renaissance music, classical
Speaker 2: romantic minimalists, this is called now music. But I've been
Speaker 2: doing it for thirty years and nobody knows about it,
Speaker 2: because they'll take another one hundred and fifty years before
Speaker 2: my music was discovered. Because people are happy that I
Speaker 2: did a lot understanding God bless them, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna reject that and say it's below makers. I
Speaker 2: write symphonies and this bullshit. You know, I love people,
Speaker 2: I love music, and I love creating. With people, magic happens.
Speaker 2: It's that old saying when tool more gathered in my
Speaker 2: name and something magic happens. When you're by yourself, it's fine,
Speaker 2: you get with somebody. It's something with Brandy Carlin last
Speaker 2: month song and I played the simplest piano possibly play,
Speaker 2: and I loved it, you know. So you know, I
Speaker 2: get the strangest calls. Just when everything is falling apart,
Speaker 2: I get a call, okay, just to go back to scientology.
Speaker 2: Was there anything positive about that experience. I liked some
Speaker 2: of the communication skills where you learn to listen, where
Speaker 2: you learn to ask the right questions. They had a
Speaker 2: drug program, not as good as AA, but I helped
Speaker 2: a few people get off drugs who were heroin addicts
Speaker 2: that worked. There was some processing where you could remove
Speaker 2: some traumatic incidents. But for the most part, I'm not
Speaker 2: a person that works well within structure or hierarchy, and
Speaker 2: I'm not just kind of a free spirit. So I
Speaker 2: knew even in nineteen seventy the day would come, I'd
Speaker 2: have to leave. But it took me a little longer
Speaker 2: than it should have. But Chick stayed to the day died,
Speaker 2: died a travolter and Tom Cruise, So there's something that's there,
Speaker 2: but it didn't I needed my freedom. I was finding
Speaker 2: I was giving my power away to l Ron Hudbrid
Speaker 2: instead of to myself.
Speaker 3: That's not good. And when you went to leave, to
Speaker 3: what degree was that process difficult in terms of them
Speaker 3: forget the emotional decision to leave. You know, from the outside,
Speaker 3: they don't seem to like people leaving.
Speaker 2: Oh, forget about it, you know. And because I was
Speaker 2: a celebrity and I had played many scientology organizations around
Speaker 2: the world, this was a shock. So they for ten years,
Speaker 2: I got a call every week trying to get me
Speaker 2: back in and I never did.
Speaker 3: Okay, But other than the calls, did they haunt you
Speaker 3: me some stories they say they come to the house, etc.
Speaker 3: Did you have those experiences?
Speaker 2: I had one or two of those. They didn't want
Speaker 2: to mess with me because I have a big mouth
Speaker 2: and I go to the press. But so and also
Speaker 2: the people who were in certain positions who would be
Speaker 2: nasty to others like you would describe me. They liked me,
Speaker 2: and they they just thought I was ignorant and misinformed,
Speaker 2: or somebody was in my ear. They didn't know that
Speaker 2: I smelled bullshit. You know, I have a bullshit to
Speaker 2: Tepta somewhere in my brain. Did you say your wife
Speaker 2: was managing Chick COREA, Yeah, and she really put she
Speaker 2: put return to forever back when they couldn't whoa wait, wait.
Speaker 3: Wait you marry this girl? She's from the bungalow colony?
Speaker 3: How did she become a manager?
Speaker 2: Chick came up to me in nineteen seventy nineties, said,
Speaker 2: my something about Susan that she knows to know the business,
Speaker 2: but I think she could be a good manager for me.
Speaker 3: Can you will you allow that? And I said yeah?
Speaker 3: And she was great, but she knew nothing. But she's bright,
Speaker 3: she's smart, she's lovely, she's warm, and she knows how
Speaker 3: to talk to people. But she told me just the
Speaker 3: other day, she go all these meetings with my Worston
Speaker 3: and all these cool people and and she just wouldn't
Speaker 3: say a word. So they thought she was like this
Speaker 3: silent genius. But she was just trying to learn the business.
Speaker 3: She took a few classes at UCLA, and she did
Speaker 3: great things for your because returned to forever. They were
Speaker 3: fighting at that time, and they were offered like a
Speaker 3: million dollars a guide to go on this tour for
Speaker 3: a few months. She got them together, so she used
Speaker 3: some of her skills and all was good until I
Speaker 3: left the church. Chick wanted her to divorce me. Go
Speaker 3: think about that. Of course she was loyal. And just
Speaker 3: to be clear, you joined the church. Did she join
Speaker 3: her church?
Speaker 2: She didn't want to, but she thought she would lose
Speaker 2: her marriage if she didn't join with me.
Speaker 3: She never liked it. So how long did she manage Chick?
Speaker 3: For maybe three years? And she had any other music
Speaker 3: business adventures.
Speaker 2: She did Billy Chiles, who was a great pianist and composer,
Speaker 2: and then she did film composers for a few years.
Speaker 2: And for the most part, she prefers being a grandma,
Speaker 2: and she keeps an eye on my ship. But she
Speaker 2: doesn't want to. She hates the business, but she will
Speaker 2: give me advice when I do some stupid shit, you
Speaker 2: know which, Yeah, I'll take that gig and I'll be
Speaker 2: away three months and make forty dollars. Well think about that,
Speaker 2: But about your two year old grandkids. You know that
Speaker 2: kind of shit, you know, normal women thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, when we were talking about setting this up, you
Speaker 3: were in Europe. How much do you work now outside
Speaker 3: the home and you know, paid gigs? How much am
Speaker 3: I out of the country versus no, no, no, How
Speaker 3: much are you playing gigs?
Speaker 2: Maybe fifty a year? Fifty shows solo piano?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what kind of shows? And who gets you these gigs?
Speaker 2: Solo piano gigs are pretty easy promoters because there's no
Speaker 2: fuss nor must and I show up and I love
Speaker 2: playing solo piano. I've done it in Israel. It tour
Speaker 2: through Israel in different places. Sometimes my jazz trio. That's easy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a stinger and pianist. I work with Jane Oliver.
Speaker 2: What a long time ago. She was a neighbor in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: Her name was Janie Cohne. She's the one who signing
Speaker 2: something enchanted evening. Barber streis In and her were both
Speaker 2: on Colombia and she told Colombia either she goes or
Speaker 2: I go. So that fucked her career up. They let
Speaker 2: go of Jane, who work with her studio work would
Speaker 2: pop in again. The students were consistent. Just I was
Speaker 2: playing with symphony orchestra. I actually did an orchestra arrangement
Speaker 2: of Aladdin saying which I wanted to bring something fresh,
Speaker 2: and I had a sixty piece of orchestra and I
Speaker 2: played and there was some Bowie alumni. Then I went
Speaker 2: to London played with another rock band, and I went
Speaker 2: to New York work with Judith Hill, who used to
Speaker 2: work with Prince and Michael Jackson, very good singer, and
Speaker 2: we would someone producer was doing reimaginations of Pink Floyd
Speaker 2: and interesting projects. I get these things out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: I'll come home and the phone rings or an email.
Speaker 3: Okay, those are the projects. If someone is booking you
Speaker 3: or your jazz trio. Do you have an agent who's
Speaker 3: getting these gigs.
Speaker 2: I used to back in the day. No, Now they
Speaker 2: just call on I deal with it. Bowie told me
Speaker 2: something funny, he said, London told me this. He said,
Speaker 2: don't have a manager, but have the best pr god,
Speaker 2: best lawyer, best account and blah blah blah. I don't
Speaker 2: know that that's totally true, because he had managers. And
Speaker 2: you know as well as I know that the accent
Speaker 2: made it needed great.
Speaker 3: So I never made it.
Speaker 2: I'm just underground. You know, I'm the secret source when
Speaker 2: someone needs some help, you know, whether it's Saint Vincent
Speaker 2: on her album. I played on some of these people's
Speaker 2: first albums and then they launched, and well, fuck Mike,
Speaker 2: you know he got.
Speaker 3: It's going okay. Someone calls said, Mike, yeah, I want
Speaker 3: you to do something, but you're doing something else. You're committed.
Speaker 3: Who do you tell him to call? They can't get you.
Speaker 2: Every time I've done that, it's backfire, really terribly. Not
Speaker 2: because who I sent wasn't proficient, But that's the difference.
Speaker 2: And you know better than me, or as well as
Speaker 2: I do, that are and technical expertise in virtuosity two
Speaker 2: different things. I'm blessed to have both because I practiced
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty thousand hours and still practicing. And
Speaker 2: any time in this compensation that I could move my fingers,
Speaker 2: I was happy. You know, that's my happy place.
Speaker 3: So you know, So why exactly did these circumstances backfire?
Speaker 3: Which ones? Do you mean? Will you recommend somebody when
Speaker 3: you're unavailable? Ah?
Speaker 2: I did it. I did it with a great clarinetis
Speaker 2: Eddie Daniels. And I wrote a piece of music and
Speaker 2: I sent this pianist. I got a call to work
Speaker 2: with the Smashing Pumpkins ninety miles down the road, and
Speaker 2: this is some esoteric classical piece I wrote for the
Speaker 2: three best clarinet plays in the world, one with the net,
Speaker 2: one with the Chicago Symphony, and one with la and
Speaker 2: they asked me to write a piece for three clarinets
Speaker 2: and pianum. So I gave the music to this. The
Speaker 2: pianists retorted he was great, but he didn't have my feel,
Speaker 2: and they it ruined him because they made fun of him,
Speaker 2: and it ruined me my reputation.
Speaker 3: They never called me again, So I don't do that.
Speaker 2: If someone wants something that I know somebody could do,
Speaker 2: like you know, a piano teacher. But even there people
Speaker 2: end up disappointed because my thing is thought very specific,
Speaker 2: and if somebody does play like me, and there are
Speaker 2: many imitators, it doesn't have the same you know vibe,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's this karaoke.
Speaker 3: Okay, if we use a different instrument. We talk about guitarists.
Speaker 3: People debate the best guitarists I have, but I think
Speaker 3: it's Jeff Beck that's not relevant. But there's Jeff Beg,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Hendrakes, Eric Clapped and Jimmy Peach. Then there are
Speaker 3: people who were stylists who would never go on record
Speaker 3: that they're the best guitarist, Keith Richards, Pete Towns In etc.
Speaker 3: Where do you put yourself?
Speaker 2: I'm look I played with Jeff Beck with Stanley Clark
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, so I was at his house
Speaker 2: in Tunbridge Wells and if he wasn't fixing his cars,
Speaker 2: the guitar was always in his hand. So we shared
Speaker 2: that love and Simon Phillips was the drummer and we
Speaker 2: had like three or four gigs. You know, that's the
Speaker 2: funny world, the jazz world. And he wanted to be
Speaker 2: with jazz players. He wasn't at my level jazz wise,
Speaker 2: but he was Jeff Beck, and he imagined. He sat
Speaker 2: in with us on one of the last Bowie shows
Speaker 2: with the Spiders, and him and Mick Ronson they played together.
Speaker 3: It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So I'm with you on Jeff. And you know, Paco
Speaker 2: di la Cheer is one of my favorites. He died
Speaker 2: at sixty ten years ago. Amazing flamenco player, but he
Speaker 2: moved in some jazz circles and with John McLoughlin, Al
Speaker 2: Demiola and different people. But how about piano players you
Speaker 2: in the hierarchy?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I can tell you my favorites. I love Nicky Hopkins,
Speaker 2: who actually gave some Kano lessons too, because he wanted
Speaker 2: to pick my brain about more advanced harmony.
Speaker 3: But I loved his Well, well, you gave piano lessons
Speaker 3: to Nicky Hopkins. I'll give you one if you want. Hey, okay,
Speaker 3: how did you know Nicky Hopkins? The Blue and you
Speaker 3: know he died at a young age. What can you
Speaker 3: tell us about him?
Speaker 2: Sweetheart? Nice documentary on him. Now, yeah, I've seen I
Speaker 2: would have preferred his playing, but that's that bullshit world,
Speaker 2: you know, with the rights. But look at his credits.
Speaker 2: They're ridiculous. So Angie and this he I asked him
Speaker 2: in the lesson that I was being paid for to
Speaker 2: teach him jazz and this and that. How do you
Speaker 2: put those songs?
Speaker 3: Together? So simple?
Speaker 2: I have a very funny story with Nicky Hopkins. I
Speaker 2: got called by a famous producer and I'll remember his
Speaker 2: name maybe, but anyway, I'm in the studio he's producing
Speaker 2: this pop singer and he calls me he said, well,
Speaker 2: I want you to play like that Bowie stuff on
Speaker 2: these songs, and that's a pop song and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to do that and it's wrong and it's wrong. So
Speaker 2: he micro manages me through every bar and the piece
Speaker 2: is done in two hours.
Speaker 3: I hated it.
Speaker 2: I love where I played, but I hated the process.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, that sounds like a friend
Speaker 2: of mine. That sounds like Nicki Hopkins, And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: that's who I meant to hire. Oh god, because I'm
Speaker 2: with Bowie, he's with the rolling song, He's we beatles.
Speaker 2: I'm not el So you know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: that works. But it was hilarious and pathetic, you know.
Speaker 2: But Nicki was special Leon, Oh my god, Leon Russell,
Speaker 2: and I watched them every night. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: when I got cool to play in my first rock band,
Speaker 2: I listened to him and Doctor John for one full
Speaker 2: day straight and I was straight for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life. So those guys. I love Billy Joel, I
Speaker 2: love Elton. None of them are pianist the way I am,
Speaker 2: but they don't have to be. I love guys. I
Speaker 2: like the way Bowie plays piano, and Billy Corgan and Trent.
Speaker 2: Some of the things they play are much deeper than
Speaker 2: what I play. But I have finance, I have touch,
Speaker 2: I have some people just like some of the fancy shit.
Speaker 2: But these days, as I said, I'm playing simpler than ever.
Speaker 3: Okay, So in the runway you have left, which could
Speaker 3: be one minute or twenty years, any specific goals or
Speaker 3: you just feeling you know it's going like it's going
Speaker 3: away for the phone to ring. I'll practice, I'll write
Speaker 3: some jazz stuff. You know.
Speaker 2: This might sound insane, but I considered his first seventy
Speaker 2: years my apprenticeship. So I'm just beginning my career because
Speaker 2: all I did is support all these other motherfucker's my
Speaker 2: whole life.
Speaker 3: It's my turn, and.
Speaker 2: Funny things are happening now, you know. I mean to
Speaker 2: get called to Dublin to play with a symphony orchestra
Speaker 2: and make good money, and then a rock band, and
Speaker 2: I'm getting paid thousands and thousands because they think I'm
Speaker 2: gonna die, and they might be right.
Speaker 3: I never forget.
Speaker 2: I was playing the Blue Notes with Stanley Clark in
Speaker 2: the nineties and he said, Mike, just wait till our
Speaker 2: seventies would go into legacy. Mode said, what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? He said, they'll bust your chops now, but
Speaker 2: as soon as they know you're gonna die, they treat
Speaker 2: you much differently. You know, poor guy, you have a cane,
Speaker 2: you're walking in a wheelchair. You'ren't gonna get a hard
Speaker 2: at time because look, let's face that, all all friends
Speaker 2: they're going. My dad's biggest loss was every day call
Speaker 2: me and said another friend died. That's what he suffered
Speaker 2: with in his last few years of his life. And
Speaker 2: I'm seeing that now, aside from all musicians I lost
Speaker 2: who committed suicidal overdose, which are hundreds just the old
Speaker 2: age now. And thank god, I'm in good shape.
Speaker 3: But who knows.
Speaker 2: You know, nobody knows how old was your father when
Speaker 2: he died eighty nine. But he didn't have to die.
Speaker 2: He had an ulcer and they could have fixed it.
Speaker 2: He said, No, he knew I was struggling. He wanted
Speaker 2: me to have whatever money he had left, so he died.
Speaker 2: He bled to death in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: in the hospital. He wouldn't sign the paper. He would
Speaker 2: have been he could, he would have lift to one hundred.
Speaker 2: He had great genes. Well, hopefully you have those genes too.
Speaker 3: Somebody told me.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but somebody said to me, as long
Speaker 2: as you have a purpose in doing what you love
Speaker 2: to be okay, when that's over, you'll probably split. And
Speaker 2: I'm accepting that. I mean, I know the limitations of
Speaker 2: a body, but I also know I feel good when
Speaker 2: I'm playing, and I don't feel so good when i'm not.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're not on the road, you're at home. You
Speaker 3: play every day, and how long you play for.
Speaker 2: In the old days it was eight hours, four hours,
Speaker 2: two hours. Now, I just compose, improvise, arrange, and I
Speaker 2: do sessions right where I am for hundreds of artists
Speaker 2: known and unknown, because people can't afford to find me
Speaker 2: here and there. Some do, but they send me a
Speaker 2: track and I just put piano on it, and they'll
Speaker 2: send me a couple of grand and it takes me
Speaker 2: an hour. So it's good. I'm fine. I feel bad
Speaker 2: for other people, I don't feel bad for me. I'm
Speaker 2: one of the lucky ones that snuck through. And I
Speaker 2: don't know how.
Speaker 3: I never did a day game other than the piano.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't know how to do anything. Well. We're lucky
Speaker 3: to have heard your story, Mike, I want to thank
Speaker 3: you so much for taking this time with my audience.
Speaker 3: I love your audience, I love your letter, I love
Speaker 3: this interview. Been waiting for it for five years because
Speaker 3: I know you asked cool questions and it's been a
Speaker 3: pleasure being with you. You got me smiling.
Speaker 2: That's all that matters. If you want to watch something
Speaker 2: really stupid, some crazy director from London who used to
Speaker 2: make sci fi and movies travel following me around for
Speaker 2: a few years, and there's this documentary called Mike Carson
Speaker 2: and his eighty eight Friends, because there's eighty eight and
Speaker 2: he did a documentary and you can see it on
Speaker 2: Amazon and it's it's interesting. It's not a great documentary
Speaker 2: and it captures thirty percent of me, but another part
Speaker 2: that we didn't discuss, so that might be fun.
Speaker 3: Food for thought for next time. Until next time, This
Speaker 3: is Bob Left SAIDs