Dean Torrence

Not only will you hear the story of Jan & Dean, but you'll get previously untold insights into Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Dean talks about pairing up with Jan, making records with Lou Adler, going to college with folkies when he was on the pop chart...you'll be riveted!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
It's a thrill to have my guest on the podcast
today because he had such a huge impact on my life.
I remember being at the beach, which was something you
really did in Connecticut, going up to the pavilion and
hearing the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. I remember buying

(00:33):
the single, or my mother bought the single for me,
and then buying one of my favorite albums of all time,
Command Performance, Jan and Dean live in concert, and Dean
wore these blue sneakers. I made my mother run all
over town just so I could have those blue sneakers.
My guest today on the podcast is Dean Torrance, and

(00:56):
I still have those sneakers, by the way, really probably Okay,
now you email me that today is uh Jan's birthday.
Yes he would have been he passed as you know,
two thousand four, but he would have been seventy. Okay,

(01:20):
And how did you meet Jan? We met in high
school just up the street, well down a couple of
miles in West Los Angeles. High school, uh called University
high school? You do, And you know I've been with this,
wondering this for decades you know why it's called University
High School? Yes, I do. Oh really you're gonna yeah,

(01:42):
I can finally, you know, you know more about this
than I do. Actually UM University High School was called
University because it was the closest high school to U C.
L A. Oh, okay, other than the name was or
any connection you know now, you know as simple as that.

(02:03):
You know, it's a simple I just always wondered you.
I thingured there must be some connection, but I didn't know.
So you grew up in what part of l A
um East West l a Which meant I was right
around Beverly Glen and Olympic A couple more miles east

(02:23):
or a mile further east, and I would have had
to gone to Beverly Hills High School. But there was
a certain line there that you weren't supposed to go
over if you weren't living in Beverly Hills, you see.
So I wasn't cut out to be a Beverly Hills
High school student, I don't think. And what did your

(02:44):
father do for a living? Uh? He was in the
oil business. He right out of college. He got hired
by a little l A based Actually they were from Texas,
but they moved all their offices to l A. A
little company called Wilshire Oil, which you may remember, what

(03:11):
when did you get here? I got in the mid seventies. No,
you wouldn't remember. Those of us that like antiques. There
there was a brand called poly Gas that was part
of Wilshire Oil, really, and then they sold all of
that stuff off, probably in the fifties, forties or fifties,

(03:31):
and then he went to work for the guy who
owned the company. Okay, so one has to ask, even
in the time that I've been here, l A has
changed so much. Traffic is so bad. I remember living
on the West Side, you go to the valley for
a movie on a whib. You would never do that today.
So what was it like growing up in the forties

(03:51):
and fifties in l A? Beautiful? It was so simple.
The beach was always ten minutes away, ten or fifteen
the most um And we just thought, honestly, we thought
that most young people did the same thing as we did.
We didn't quite grasp anything, you know, outside of what

(04:13):
we could see, so we figured everybody mostly lived like this,
I mean, so we didn't really even know it was
all that special, particularly okay, and you have brothers or sisters?
Had a younger sister, yes, And what did her life
turn out to be? Um? Pretty interesting for a while,
but unfortunately she got Parkinson's past. She passed away like

(04:36):
about six years ago. But I ended up with a
house that we owned together. It's just up the street
here and I just went by there. We were renting
it to some guys from France or Okay, do you
still hold the house? Yes? And so how did you
end up with that house? Um? We bought my sister

(04:58):
and I bought the house in the seventies just because
she liked restoring older, older homes mostly, and it was
a nineteen o six craftsman house just off of Franklin
and uh I love the neighborhood, always like craftsman. Uh.
So we bought it together as she was going to

(05:20):
live in it for a while, restore it and then
move out and rent it, then move on to another house. Okay,
so it's the only one you ended up boating together. Yes,
I owned a house up the street, up underneath the
Hollywood sign and probably see that right from your beautiful
office here. I bought an old Bogart house that was

(05:44):
built nineteen twenty four, So I I had been restoring
that one for years. I still own that too. Okay,
so you're going to university high school. First, you know
there was a surf culture. You mentioned the beach. There
was also a car coal. Was that something that was
amped up on the records or was really a big

(06:04):
car culture? Um? Quite Frankly, we didn't really grafts that
that that kind of subculture was really that important. And
for lack of having any other ideas of subject matter

(06:24):
about songs, because you know, twenty we don't know much
about relationship songs. All those teenisles were singing all those
relationship songs, you know, I'm falling in love and breaking
up and all that. None of that going out in
our lives. But we did drive hot rods, so we

(06:45):
thought we we know pretty much all there is to
know about hot rods. Like, maybe maybe that'll interest the
you know, the record lovers out there. We didn't know.
We found out, yes, that was important that in the
serf culture, of course, the beach culture. Okay. Now, the

(07:05):
first I remember going to the record story. You'd always
looked through the catalog and there was an album Jane
Deine's greatest hits with a gold cover. Okay, with baby Talk,
et cetera. When were those tracks? Hits? Late fifties? Late
included Barbaraane by the way, Okay, but who did the

(07:28):
original Barbarianne their regions? Okay, did your Barbarianne hit the chart? No,
it was just just for an album, just an album fillers. Okay.
So you're going to university high how do you meet Jen?
We're on the We're on the football team together. Just

(07:50):
so happened we had lockers right next to one another,
so I was forced to talk to him. I didn't.
I didn't think I liked him. Well, he was he
was Chan, you know, everybody, everybody knew who he was,
and he kind of did whatever he wanted to do
whenever he wanted to do it. And I came from

(08:11):
a family that you don't break rules, and all that
rules were nothing to him. So I just kind of
figured he was stuck up, and I didn't even think
he would last very long on a football team. So
I tried to avoid him, but he kept offering me
candy and I turned it down at first because I

(08:33):
was going out. I can't eat candy before you go,
you know, work out and practice. That's really stupid. But
he won me over with the first with the chocolate
and all that kind of stuff. And then we we
collectively as as a football team realized we were very,

(08:53):
very blessed to have these old locker rooms that were
probably built with thirties with that real nice tile, and
we had a natural echo chamber. You know, we're where
our sports lockers were and the shower room was all
at tile. So man, we all sound when we got

(09:13):
around and saying do wop as we were, you know,
showering off and heading home. We want Man, we sound good.
This is really fun. And of course do wop was
pretty much made for vocal groups, so more the better.
So we were in a always band you know of

(09:36):
vocalists doing doo wop. Now you're living in there. Well, first,
let's go back to the football team. Did you guys
were you starters? Did you play? Oh? Yeah? And what
position did you have? Um? I played, uh, probably what
would be called a wide receiver wing back they called
them those days. So I was a wide receiver. My

(09:58):
dad was, He played at Stanford and he was a
probably tight end ish type player. Um. So you know,
when when we would go play ball. He would just
keep throwing me passes because he didn't learn anything else
just by being thrown a ball. So it's pretty good
at catching stuff. Jan it's also really really had good hands.

(10:23):
He could catch two. So we kind of competed somewhat
for the same position. Then I ended up playing a
lot of defense, and so the defensive back or safety
or something. Now, going back to the candy, do you
think he saw something in you or you just happened
to have the locker next to him, just happened to
have the locker next to him. And then when you

(10:45):
start doing doo wop in the locker room, who starts that?
It was probably just totally spontaneous because that's what we
listened to, you know, in our cars driving to school
and drive home from school, listen to du wop. So
of course somebody is going to start humming or singing

(11:05):
a doop song. And I swear that it was just
so spontaneous, and nobody sat down and said, hey, let's
sing a song. Somebody just starts singing. Lord, I don't
remember who, but everybody's always kind of humming or singing
or whistling. And then because it's doo wop. That's one vocal,
so somebody else would add in the second vocal. And

(11:27):
then all of a sudden you have five or six
or seven or eight people all singing stuff, picking different
parts because there's plenty of parts. And I noticed nobody
was doing a falsetto, so I put that falsetto party
and he went, oh, now we have a full, full

(11:47):
on vocal group here. And who has just started had
innocently who decided okay, because you know, you're living in
Los Angeles. The whole of the recording industry is supposed
to be an omaha or something who decides, well, maybe
we should go professional. Oh that was all Jane. See.
Jane had an IQ about one seventy in arrange mensa

(12:10):
type of stuff, and we were just all hoping to,
you know, get passing grades. So he didn't have to
study very much. And he was way ahead of us
in visualizing and thinking and in his mind which where
he was going to go. And we had no idea
except we're going home after practice and doing our homework.

(12:33):
So he was a visionary um. He also his dad
had made him a music room out of her garage
because my girlfriend went to high school with you know,
one of his sisters. He came from a huge family
of like kids, you're right. And then what did his

(12:54):
father do for a living that he could afford to
build a music room? He worked for Howard Queues. Wow.
He was one of Howard Hughes's right hand men. Uh.
There's quite a famous picture of Howard Hughes in the
Spruce Goose airplane that he built all out of wood,
and he's sitting Howard the picture well that there's like

(13:18):
four or five six guys behind him. He's in the
cockpit and one of those guys as Jan's dad. Wow.
So who let me? Years years or later after he retired,
they pulled him out of retirement to help them disassemble
the airplane because somebody up in the Oregan wanted it
or something right, right, they from story right, So he

(13:41):
he was involved in making that all happen. Okay, So
he built Janet music room. And what we inspired there, well,
one of the most important parts was Howard Hughes. And
of course you know he wanted to be in and
show biz. As you know, he happened to be an

(14:05):
audio file of at least you know, fifties version of it.
He had a couple of home Ampex home tape recorders
and he was getting rid of them because he was
upgrading all of us his U electrical stuff. So he
gave and he thought about it, and I guess because

(14:27):
he came up to Jan's dad, Bill Perry, and said, hey,
I got these two tape recorders. I don't know what
to do with him. I was just gonna jump him
or something, but I heard your son is you know,
likes music, and maybe he could get some use out
of these that I'll take those. Ub Bill took him,

(14:50):
took him home, bought Jan a microphone, or I don't
think a microphone came from Howard Hughes. So we cut
our very first top tune record on those on those
two home im pexas okay, and that record was baby Talk. Okay.
So your guys are still in high school, they have

(15:11):
the music room, So how does it ultimately come together
and record and be professional. Well, the football season ended,
so we needed we needed to go someplace else to
sing our songs after school because now the baseball team's
plan or the track team, so we're out of those

(15:34):
locker rooms. And Jan said, well, I got some tape
recorders up at the house, and he had figured out
how to uh do some wiring tricks one machine to
the other and be able to cause nice little delay echo.
It wasn't as good as the shower room, but it worked,

(15:56):
you know, as as an echo because once we heard
ourselves with that an echo. So luckily he had two
machines and he was able to create that echo and
made you feel like it was more like like a
real recording. And he knew enough chords on the pianos,
so we had a piano and one of these microphones

(16:18):
sitting right in between all of us and channel bang
out the chords and we'd sing live. And how many
guys were there at that point it fluctuated. It went
from you know, six or eight guys down to four,
back up to six, back down to three, backup to five.

(16:41):
It fluctuated depending on who had a new girlfriend or
who you know had a job after school all of
a sudden, because they don't have to have an income
to spend on a girlfriend and or on a car
and getting something chromed. And after a while I assumed
a certain guys went, you know, this has been fun,

(17:03):
but it's time we move on, and graduation did come along,
and everybody just kind of went off like blowing leaves,
all in different tractions. All of a sudden, we looked
around and it's just to us. So at that point
we didn't want to be a duo, but we were

(17:24):
forced to be a duo because nobody else seemed to
be interested. What was the first track you tried to shop? Um?
We were working on a song, a doop song at
one of our buddies, his name is Arnie, Arnie Ginsburg.
He had come up with this idea and we toyed

(17:46):
around with it and finished it and then saying about
fifty different versions of it. Um. And then one one weekend,
Jan decides that he had heard about a recording studio
and that you could go get a demo made so
you could take it off of it because not that

(18:08):
many people out of real to real machines sitting around.
So he said, you know, you can go to recording studio.
We can take our our tape in and then they'll
transfer the tape onto a disk and it'll look like
a real record. Well that was pretty exciting. Well how
much does that say? Like twenty bucks? I go home? Well,

(18:31):
I'm really busy that actually I was. I was sure.
I told him I was a half a semester ahead
of him. So I was going to go right out
of high school going to the army because some recruiter
came to our high school and told us about the

(18:53):
reserve program that you only had to go in active
duty for six months. That sounded like good deal. Draft
was going on. Yeah, there was a draft, so we
had to we had to think about that. Although we
were eighteen years old. You'll catch up with you sooner

(19:14):
or later. So luckily I had very smart Asian friends,
and they all thought that was a good idea and
kind of talked me into it, and so we kind
of all went in a buddy system. Probably ten or
fifteen of us we missed a summer, and that was

(19:34):
probably a great summer too. In the fifties, we missed
the summer, but we got out right in time to,
you know, either go to Most of them were all
going to college in September, so I missed that summer,
got out in September, and we'd be home free at
thest for a while. We're still in the army, but

(19:57):
you didn't have to do active duty, and you had
to go to meetings, so that's what I was going
to do. So Janne calls me the night before he's
going to the recording studio because it was on a weekend,
and I said, well, no, you remember I told you
I'm going in the army and I'm never heack Sunday,
I got to get on that bus and go to

(20:17):
Ford Org. So I'm not going to be able to,
you know, go to the recording studio. I just didn't
want to come up with the twenty bucks. I figured
he probably had it, but but I did have a
new girlfriend and my last day, so I'm going to
do this. So he just couldn't understand what I was

(20:37):
going to do it. And then he said, well wait
a minute, he said army. I said, chan, I told
you just for six months. I'll be back in September.
Well okay, So he goes to the recording studio. I'm
off in the snow someplace with a new girlfriend and
a couple other guys. Come back and I'm getting my

(20:58):
stuff ready, packing my stuff, and he calls up and
he says, I want to recordian studio and I'm making,
you know, making that demo thing, and some guy some
stranger just comes into that little booth that they had
for the thing, you know, and this guy comes in.

(21:18):
He says, he's you know, he's an A R man
with Darwin Records and what is that song? And Jan said, well,
I told him that, you know, that was just a
song that we were just kind of working on and
that actually the only place where we were going to
play it's at our next party. And this guy here's

(21:38):
that and he wants to hear it again. And then
he said, you know, I want it. I want that,
I want that. I'll put that out. I'll make you
bigger than the Everly Brothers. Nobody could be. So Jan's
telling me that we're going to be bigger than the
Everly Brothers and and and you're doing what you're leaving tomorrow.
I said, yeah, you call him up and tell him

(22:01):
that that you're going to be you know, we're going
to be bigger than the Brothers. I said, am I
going to call? Do you figure out who to call?
I'm going how do you call up the army? And
tom one? I said, maybe, you know, I don't know,
Eisenhower might still be there or somebody. I really don't
know him. One of its pins. But other than that snay,

(22:22):
I just thought he was full of it. Nothing's going
to happen in six months. Nothing ever happened when you're eighteen,
seventeen or eighteen. So I go off into the army alone.
Behold that record gets finished. They overdubbed some real instruments
on it, and it's a top ten record. And that

(22:43):
record was Jinny Lee By Jan when I heard it
on her. A buddy of mine heard it up in
the army and came arounding up to me with a
little portable radio because he was familiar with the songs. Listen,
I'm listening to it. Sure sounds like the little demo
we did up with a saxophone a few other instruments

(23:03):
that you could hear. I'm going, oh my god. When
I left, we were called the Barons. So at the
end of it, the guy says, that's a big hit,
you know, out of l A. This is a smash
and blah blah blah, and that's Jinny Lee By. I'm
waiting to hear the Barons Jan and Arnie what. I

(23:28):
really thought it blown? It just um, there's nothing I
could do about it that particularly, So I found a
pay phone. Of course I tried, and in those days
you only had had a house phone. And um, I
finally did reach him and I said, you know, I listen,
was listening to the radio up here in four Ord

(23:51):
I heard and I heard our hour song. He said,
oh yeah, yeah, I said to yeah, yeah, Well you
know they said Jane and Arnie. Well he said, you
weren't here. Oh but didn't I sing? He said, now
we took your part off. Okay um, And and basically

(24:15):
that was They did another two that was a top
ten record, and they had two other singles that didn't
do it quite as well, but didn't done to Clark
and they had a lot of exposure and stuff. Now
tell my audience the derivation of the song, Jennie Lee,
Can we say that on their radio? Yes, on a podcast.

(24:37):
Any language is possible. She was a topless dancer, exotic dancer.
I guess you would say, um, you know, first she
was the first topless dancer we'd ever seen. You know,
that was an adult type. Um, and so we should

(25:00):
go downtown l A to to see her dance. I
do have her little at someplace in my and that
collection of stuff. Because parking was free as I remember,
So it was down in l a And and somehow
it came up with the bumps, the bump bump bump

(25:20):
stuff and and just through in her name. Basically we
didn't really talk about what she did, right, but the
inspiration did come from from Ginnie Lee, who was what
was pretty famous at the time. So you're out of

(25:41):
the army in September, that's what happens. Well, you know,
I'm thinking, um, I had come home for on leave once,
and of course I went right up to Jan's house
and and he and Arnie and others. Now there's an entourage,
guys smoking cigars, the suits, guys and it I could

(26:07):
tell it was strained by this time because they're looking
for a follow up single. And I spent maybe ten
or fifteen minutes there and I said, you know, let's
see you guys later. I left, but I had it
just didn't have the same vibe. It was so much fun,

(26:28):
just the guys just singing around a piano. And now
this was now this was business, so I didn't feel
too badly about it, but still it would have been fun.
That would have liked to have at the time thought
that experience. What's probably pretty neat. But anyway, I just

(26:49):
chalked it up to, you know, they already have a career,
and I had no idea when or not he would
last or not. So I went back, finished the service,
came back. Uh, our same old buddies called me up
one night and said, we're playing sam Lot football back
at UNI High and like we used to do on Sundays,

(27:13):
you know when it comes that sure got there. I
didn't think Jan would be there because I mean, he's
he's now, he's now our records star, you know, rock
and roll star, and lo and behold he was there,
and so you know, everybody's friends and it was just

(27:34):
like get ever it was after that game he approached
me and said, I want to work on some music. Yeah. Man.
I tried not to look too excited because I was going, why,
you know, don't don't you have another partner? And I probably,

(27:58):
as I remember, I did, to ask, well, where's Arnie?
Because I just didn't want to go up and fool
around them, you know, get interested and then not have
any part of it. Really, he said, I don't know, Arnie,
just he just isn't interested. He isn't interested. Who the

(28:18):
hell would not be interested in being on the Dick
Clark Show and hanging out with the Nette Funicello and
Frankie Avalon and owns. People are just so I said,
hell yeah, man, I'm let's go. Followed him up to
his house and it was just back to the normal,

(28:38):
right to the football game. He went way to his house. Yeah,
it was Sunday, you know, nothing else to do. He
was at u c l A by this time, so
he did have classes the next day, and I was
at City College in Santa Monica, and so we did
have classes on Mondays. So hell yeah, Sunday night we

(29:00):
worked on some songs. I didn't really have very much,
but um, I mean songs are as you know. I mean,
if you don't have the material, it doesn't matter what
what you know, how well you sing or don't sing,
or or your arrangements or any of that stuff, or
what label you're on. If you don't have that piece

(29:22):
of material, you really don't have a career. And since
we are full time students, didn't really have a lot
of kid to sit around and and write songs. I
mean that takes some effort and some time to do.
So normally we would just try and find songs that
were on on small indie labels and cover songs. Now,

(29:51):
Jan had a beautiful scam. I don't know if you
knew about this one. He had print shop at University
High School. Mr Fukuzawa, by the way, you remember him,
of course, Mr Fukuzawa taught Jan very well how to
print a letter head and a business card and all that.
So Jan printed himself a letter head with a little logo.

(30:16):
I don't know where he came up with that, and
I had a little microphones on it and stuff and
it the title on the letter half was k JAN
Radio k J A n the Voice of bel Air.
So he's a smart guy. So he would get all

(30:39):
the addresses of all the labels that he could find,
all the major most of the majors weren't real interested
in rock and roll particularly, but he would find all
the names of all the little indie labels. And then
he would tell him that he was a DJ on

(30:59):
Cage and Radio and that he would appreciate them sending
their new releases to him at this one one one one, Linda,
Flora Drive and bell Air and he has five DJs
come fall five and I was one of them. And

(31:19):
so he needed five copies of every of every single
We will go to his house, you know, on weekdays
and mailed already come and there would be hundreds of records, hundreds.
We'd open them up and he had a turntable, of course,
a couple of turntables, and we'd listen and if there

(31:41):
weren't any good, that was thrown into no good pile
and then saved our our favorites. So we got a
lot of um, a lot of good ideas, and a
lot of songs that were on such small labels they
were never gonna make it to the radio. And that's
how you found It's like dumb Moost more or less.

(32:02):
Then we take the turkeys that we didn't want and
we would um. We had this little spot above the
bell Air Country Club and they had a very nice
golf course, so we were up above maybe a couple
hundred yards, and we would take those four fives and

(32:27):
just frisbee them out and see how far on the
green we could get them, for a good half an
hour until we ran out of somewhere. There's a lot
of buried up there, exact worth probably a lot of money.
So how do you end up you're going to school.
He's going to school. What is the next step, Well,

(32:51):
the next step is, yeah, we we just didn't really
have any material, particularly that that was very inspiring. We
knew that we had, you know, he already had a
top ten record in his portfolio, you know, so we
had to at least have something as good as that song.
It was a pretty good song. So we we we tried,

(33:15):
we tried to come up with something um and then
he went to the Arwin. Irwin, by the way, was
owned by Doris Day and it was pretty much attack shelter.
I don't think she expected to have any hits on
that level. Now her son became Terry Melt. We gave

(33:35):
a famous producer, very ironic, So Terry, that's probably so.
We were nineteen twenty, so he was probably fifteen. So
Jan wanted to take me into to Beverly Hills to
meet the Arwin staff and the A and R guy

(34:00):
and explained that Arnie was no longer in the picture
and that I was the new guy. So I thought, okay,
you know, it should be cool and still have a
record deal. And uh, we showed up for the meeting
and got introduced to everybody. And uh, almost in front
of me. I think they said, you know, to Jan,

(34:22):
get Arnie back, because that was already it was already
a name, you know, with it was recognizable names. So
you know, now you're starting all over with somebody else,
you know. Well, sticking to this one, Jan said, up,
I can't reach him. He's not interested. We pretty much

(34:44):
left there with without them saying that that they would
release anything promise. A few weeks later they bounce us
off the label. Jan remembered meeting two young guys that
were for Sam Cook, and he said, matter of fact,
these guys wrote, um, wrote a hit for Sam called

(35:09):
Wonderful World. It's a it's a ballady. We weren't looking
for ballads. But at least they're songwriters and that they
had something to do with, you know, they were kind
of gophers actually, um, but at least they wrote a
hit song for Sam. And I guess Jan and Arnie

(35:31):
had cross paths with Sam Cooke. They were on a
bill together a couple of times, and these guys would
always be in the entourage and Jan for some reason
liked them, respected him and thought they were pretty cool guy.
They dressed well too, they looked they licked the part
and we didn't dressed like they did, but they were sharp,

(35:53):
you know. So Jan said, I'm going to call these guys.
We need managers, that's what we need. I'm going but
I don't know what a manager does. That's how they managed.
They somehow they manage. So I'm going to call these
guys and just see if they have any interest in

(36:13):
working with us. So okay, So he says, I'm gonna
call let's see. I got their card and it uh
was Lou Adler. He said, I'm gonna call this guy Lou.
And then he has the guy who works with Herb,
Herb Alberton, I think his name was Herb Alberton. He

(36:33):
calls him up, tells him that he has a new
new partner. He wants to see if they have any
interest at all. Of course they were interested coming a
meeting with us. He gave him the address and directions
how to get to this beautiful bell Air home with

(36:56):
a beautiful view and all that. So when they got there,
they were pretty pressed with him. So they were in
their shoot unit editors neat suits and their little thin
ties and had a little type buttons, little pins. I mean,
they were they were dressed to kill man. Their first

(37:17):
recollection of the two of us was we weren't wearing
any shoes and you know, very Californian, and that being
went off with both of those guys. This is a
whole now that become because obviously Arnie Ginsberg was dark

(37:40):
and he was a Jewish kid, olive skinned, and Jan
was the blonde, blue eyed, you know, great looking guy.
And then they saw two blondes, they went, this is
very unusual because we'll be going up against Frankie and
Fabian and Bobby Rydell, all those guys. Because still most

(38:01):
of the industry was on the East coast. They thought
just even the look was very very interesting to them
and could could really work. Then of course, then it
came to finding the song. Well, they were getting demos
all the time too, you know for Sam stuff, and

(38:23):
some of it wasn't suited for Sam. So they went
through all their demos and they came up with baby Talk.
So it's Leu and Herbert came up with baby Talk
and thought that would fit our style perfectly. Don't shoot.
The four of us worked on baby Talk, Don't We
finished it, but it was cut in Jan's music room. Yes,

(38:44):
we we would make make the records exactly the opposite
from how you're supposed to do it. We do the
vocals and the piano first, and then take it to
the studio guys that put on earphones the studio eyes
and try and play. Now you think, you know, to

(39:05):
the normal ear you'd think, yeah, that that's not that
hard to do. But to a real trained musician studio guy,
they would say, man, this thing, it's just the meters
all over the place. I didn't sound that bad to us,
but again to a real good posisition, so it's very

(39:25):
hard for them to play to it. But you know,
they make it work, and you don't throw on the
yaketyak saxophones. And you had yourself, had yourself a record,
someone's up to Lou and herb to go shop at,
which they did. Found it a little indie label called Dora.

(39:46):
Now Deray had just had the Teddy Bears hit, so
they had had a that was a big that was
the number one recording. So they were flush and cash
man because they had had this big record and they
liked Baby Talk, and we're willing to put it out
and make a deal like three at least three singles

(40:08):
and an LP. Jan and Arnie never had enough material
to make an LP. I was pretty exciting. We get
to do an LP too. Wow. Anyway, I'm sory short.
They put it out and it was another top ten record,
and of course we did go on Dick Clark and
we realized that, or probably Lou realized that we needed

(40:33):
to stand out and be totally different. So he dressed
us up pretty pretty good, but we wore some kind
of you know, brighter colors or something that was not
what the normal guys were wearing. And from there just
kept getting more and more casual, and pretty soon we
were showing up and you know, bathing suits and stuff.

(40:57):
But in surfboards, okay, you cut baby talk, how does
it roll out? From there? Then it's just the grind
and then from there it's like, okay, that's neat. You
got a top ten ver. Yeah, you're right. The interesting
part about that was all I ever wanted to do

(41:19):
is see my name on a record. And if I
saw my name, it was Jan and Dean that army,
and I could show it to my friends. That's single
my name. That's all I ever need, right right? I
saw that look pretty good, you know, two to three

(41:42):
days later, going if I could only hear it on
the radio at least once or twice, I think that
would be pretty cool too. So Lou told us that
kf w B, which was within blocks of you, is

(42:02):
as I remember, um, kf w B was going to
be Mitchell read it was one of the top DJs
is going to play it and then have a challenge
of other new records and then you're to call in
and vote for you for the winner. And so he's

(42:27):
going to be playing it tonight at round seven o'clock.
So we're all to listen. We're to tell our friends
to get on the phone and call. So we did.
We let all our friends know and we I don't
remember who we went up against, and maybe it was
like maybe three singles and then then they would tally

(42:48):
the votes. So the first time I heard it on
the radio, I nearly threw up. I mean, it was
it was really really something. I mean, it was pretty
I'm exciting. So okay, now we've heard it, and then
we heard our competition. Competition was okay, and then here

(43:08):
waiting and we're calling and our parents are calling, and
so when the announcement comes who won? Uh baby talk one?
Oh man? You could have just then he got played
again because it won. We were just ecstatic. We were
so excited. Then the second night, now the winner of

(43:32):
course goes against the you know, two more new singles
that we won again, you know, like three or four
times in a row. Funny. And I remember telling, we told,
that's just so excited. Well, I don't know whether maybe
Jan new, but I didn't. I'm talking to Lou on
the phone, and I was so excited Luco's you know,
we her and I managed b Mitchell read, oh I

(44:04):
see so again that's a kind of the the awakening
that nothing is really what you think it is. There's
always something going on. But I mean they ended up
being top ten records, so despite but that helped that
we were on the charts in l A because Las

(44:27):
big market, because Dick Clark would not play a record
unless you were on on a regional chart from hopefully
from a major city, because you know, because of all
that Paola stuff that was going on, and we were
able to show him this is from kf to to
be the number one rock and roll station in l A.

(44:48):
And if we're in the top ten. There he said,
you guys are on my show. You know, once you're
on Dick Clark, you were home free. That was hundreds
of thousands of recor it's just for one appearance, one
and if he brought you back, it would double the
numbers again. And then that was his regular daytime show.

(45:11):
Then he had that nighttime show. You made the nighttime show.
That was huge, huge, So we did it all in
all over the years. I think we did something like
Clark shows. I mean, he loved us, We loved him,
and he's a great guy, very much a professional and

(45:34):
obviously had super talent. So what follows up Baby Talk
Herb and Lewis song, which was just a valid um.
I think it charted most of our records at least charted,
but it wasn't the top ten record. And then we

(45:56):
did a couple more that weren't weren't They were on
the charts, but still were not top ten records, and
then our contract kind of ran out. Um. There was
another indie label that started right up the street, Liberty
Records s Home Lenny's Dad, Um. So they were the

(46:24):
new breed of indie level. They weren't old guys that
were left over from from you know, the Capitals and
Columbia's and stuff. Uh, this was really kind of younger
rock and roll guys. UM, so we wanted to be
on Liberty. We worked on a version of Heart and Soul.

(46:48):
I don't know why. I don't remember whose idea it was,
but it wasn't a very good idea. But Jan liked it,
Blue liked HERB thought it was it it stunk, and
I didn't particularly like it. It was always the you
know two and two um that usually Jan and Blue

(47:12):
usually won, so we at least we recorded it. Everybody
was not interested in that song. That too was a
doo wopper, but we were. For some reason, Blue and
Jan liked it, so they weren't getting off that that
that song. So they made a two record deal with

(47:34):
Gene Autrey's label, which was called Challenge. Now they had boy.
It was a Challenge was absolutely named um but he
had Tequila. It was a great song, of course, so
he had had a hit on that small little label
of his. He was multifaceted. He was into everything from

(47:56):
real estate too, you name it. He was, don't I
think he had? He owned the baseball team for a
while so a fascinating guy, but the label was still
not where we wanted to be. Anyway, we released that,
it was like a top thirty or twenty record. It

(48:17):
just okay. And in the follow up, we just wanted
to get out of the deal, so we gave him
just something filler song and we were gone. And then
we went to Liberty. So what what convinced Liberty did
go with? You know that we didn't have anything to
start clean because they had their own producers and stuff,

(48:38):
so they were thinking if if if we struggled, that
they could step in, and they had some of the people,
you know, younger people working for them. Um. And by
this time Herb had moved on because he didn't think
we were going to do much after that. He really
didn't like I didn't like that song. So they broke

(49:01):
up and Lou Lou Lou and Herb were standing in
their little office on sunset over a Chinese laundry and
they had two assets and when was the tape recorder
and one was Jan and Deine. So Herb said, well,
would you mind if I took the tape recording listen?

(49:24):
Oh no, no, okay, that's yours. You know, good luck
Herbert had gone off and recorded with harm with our money,
used our money to record a song that he thought
Lou would like and that Lou would realize that we
probably didn't have much future, and that Lou would go

(49:44):
with herb. It was some trumpet record, and louis gonna,
who's gonna buy a record with the guy playing some
stupid trumpet, and so that's okay. When okay, you can
keep your demo and and the recorder that plays it,
and you know, good luck, and off he went, ended

(50:08):
up with Lonely Bull and all of that. The Tijuana
Brass so um. We struggled in the beginning, and then
we came upon a do opera and we knew that
that was going to be one of our last two operas,
which was called It was an old fifties forties, late

(50:29):
forties fifties classics song called Linda and Us, so it
was kind of our style, and yet it was all
sung in falsetto. We had not done one of those before,
so I sang it all in falsetto. And now we're
double tracking for the first time. We're starting to get

(50:51):
that little bit fatter sound, and we're liking it and
at that time we did I think we did Barbaran
again with fattening the vocals, so we're pretty excited about
now we're back in the vocal group. Even though it's
just all us um, it's fun to sing harmonies. So

(51:12):
we do Lynda on Liberty and it's it's a top
twenty song, so exactly. So that meant that we would
get to do uh an LP. Of course, only took
one hit to make make you to eleven songs, which

(51:35):
is not that As you know, it's not that easy
to do. It's hard enough to do one, let alone
eleven more, and you don't want to give up too
many real good ones on that because you want to
save them for singles. So anyway, we do Linda m hmm.
About that time, we didn't have our own band, but

(51:55):
we used studio guys um. So when we played live,
usually the person that that booked us would have to
hire an opening act that we're self contained, they would
play all their own instruments. And this one particular time,
right around the lended time, we had an offer to

(52:17):
go play and remember Hermosa Beach and we said, okay,
so who's the band. They're like a local local band.
They've had a couple of records out. They're called the
Beach Boys, so okay, and they'll learn your stuff. That
we only had like three hits, so they had to

(52:38):
just learn three hits of ours, and in filler songs,
we just do you know, classic rock stuff. That was
easy enough. We got to the high school gymnasium type
thing and they were in addressing room waiting for us,
and they had already, of course been practicing. So now

(53:02):
we're all together practicing. These songs sounded great. We were
happy with it, they were happy with it. We had
heard their songs they had at a picture time, they
had surfing and surfings so far. A Servant Safari was
the first time they were on the national charts. I
don't know how how successful it was, but it was

(53:23):
least it was on the national charts. So we um.
They go do their opening set and we're called out,
uh introduced, and then they do our songs plus a
couple of things that we kind of just worked out together,
you know, Chuck Berry, just classics, and we closed with

(53:47):
maybe Linda probably as being our newest hit. We wave
goodbye to the audience and we go off stage. Well,
the buyer runs up, goes, you know, hey, you're supposed
to play, you know, till ten o'clock. It's nine fifty.

(54:10):
You owe me, you know me, ten more minutes. So
we we did all the songs we know, well, you
know you owe me ten more minutes. So what we're
gonna do? So we told the beach Boys, we've got
to go back on and fill for you know, ten
minutes or something. And it's said, it sounded stupid to

(54:32):
redo your songs, and we didn't want to do that,
so I said, what about. We said, let's do your songs.
We'll do that. We know surfing and surfants safari. Well enough,
let's just do yours again, because now it's been a
couple of hours since you did them. We just left stage.
I said, you'll sing our songs. Why don't we know them?

(54:53):
They're not that hard to sing, and it'll be kind
of fun. Will be a vocal group, all right, So
two extra vocals in there, and we did surfing and
surfings so far, and we strung him out long enough
to do our ten minutes, and then we said goodbye,
and everybody was happy and we went that was fun.

(55:13):
That was really fun to seeing all those four part
harmonies and doubling the falsettos and man, this was pretty cool.
So we exchange phone numbers and now we were thinking
about this LP we had to do, and we're also
thinking that this kind of beach culture thing, I mean

(55:38):
that we lived at the beach too as well. We
should start thinking about doing stuff about California instead of
the duop stuff and move on. So, yeah, that was
a good idea. So we have their phone numbers and
we decide, okay, standard operating procedure was you had to

(55:59):
hit sing going you'd put that title on your LP,
so Linda had to be in the title. So just
to have a Linda sound a kind of dopey. So
he said, what about if we say Jan and Dean
take Linda surfing, they would tie in the surfing. Um

(56:21):
call up that guy Brian and see if I'm sure
he won't mind. He's a songwriter, they have those songs
have already been out once. They're not gonna make any
more money off with the shelf life is you know
sixty days that the most so as a songwriter, and
he could keep the publishing, he should be excited. We
call him. Of course he's excited, and we said, well,

(56:44):
you could play the tracks too, if you wanted to
get the extra extra money. They were all for that.
They all showed up. We did uh Surfing Surfing Safari
with our extra two vocals, and unfortunately there was only
to surf songs ever written. It's hard to fill a

(57:07):
whole album with two surf songs, so but we to
be you know, Hamburger help her some way through in there.
I don't know, but we really liked that whole surf thing.
So Brian said, do you want to hear our next single?
I said, oh sure, We're still all sit in the
studio together, and he plays surf in USA. We went

(57:32):
it's really good, obviously, really really good. But we said, Brian,
you know, um, that melody is Chuck Berry's melody, because
we all love Chuck Berry, so that's his melody, sweet
little sixteen. Don't you know he can't just take somebody

(57:53):
else's melody and just change the words. Yeah, it's not
not legal, and he's gonna sue you for that and
will end up not being your publishing or anything. You're
just gonna have to give that money to him. And
Brian says, well, my dad said it was okay, said, well,

(58:14):
your dad works in the machine shot. You know, I'm
not sure he really knows, you know, what's legal and
what's not. But we're telling you. You know you're gonna
get sued. So he said, wow, you know really because
oh I we jumped in and said, well we know Chuck,

(58:37):
which we did, and we can call him up, negotiate
and get the song and then you know, we can
do the song. He goes, no, nope, I'm I'm gonna
do Surfin Sad. But I do have another song. Let
me show you this one. Maybe you'll like this one.

(58:59):
Two Girls for a Free Boy. Yeah, that's pretty good.
But Brian, that doesn't make any sense. You wrote this
surf City song, So why don't you you finish surf City,
will finish surf in USA and get the deal from Chuck.

(59:22):
That way you you'll do something that you totally wrote
that can stay in your publishing company. No, I don't
want to do that. I'm tired of surf City here.
So it was half finished, so either take it or
leave it, so we'll take it. So obviously it was
a great song. Um, so luckily we we got that

(59:46):
song from Brian, and both songs came out around the
same time. They were both top been records. Virus was
number one. We were the first surf song to ever
ever hit that number one Now isn't be credited to

(01:00:07):
both Brian and Jan Yeah did you What did you do?
Win the record? If anything, That's what I was trying
to figure out. I actually have the handwritten lyrics in
my files. I've been offered by some Japanese guy offered
me like twenty grand for it, but I'm keeping it anyways,

(01:00:30):
it's handwritten, it's Brian's writing. I cross out a couple
of lines and with my very distinct I didn't write
in cursive. I printed because I was in the school
of architecture, so I only knew how to print. So
I wrote in a couple of lines were all mine

(01:00:50):
that I changed because Brian called the woody a thirty
three woody and they didn't make a woody, and he
called it a truck. I have a panel truck at
call of Witty, and a panel trucks, not a woody.
Panel trucks is a pound truck, solid metal side. So Brian,
you know, panel trucks are not a Woody, but the

(01:01:11):
station wagon is a woddy. So I got a wagon
that call of wood Okay, that's okay. So I crossed
all that how he said it in the original lyrics
it doesn't have a radio, and I said, Brian, we're
young people. For for a car that we're driving to
not have a radio, that's just not right. So it

(01:01:32):
should be I ain't got I came up a back
seat or a rear window. That rhymes, because that's where
the surfboard goes. So you take out the back seat
back window, because it's a longboard, it's going to go
out the back So is that okay? Oh yeah, okay,
that'll be fun. And a few other things we tweaked,

(01:01:54):
so I probably ended up writing probably more in jam
don't remember what he wrote. And we didn't get an
arguments about stuff like that. But technically I should have
been one of those writers. But you know, I didn't
think of it. And again we thought in terms of
shelf life being sixty ninety days, and you didn't want

(01:02:16):
to get in a fight over you know, something like that,
because you're moving on to the next thing, you know,
a month and a half later. Two So anyway, it
came out great. We discovered at that point we'd put
together the Wrecking Crew guys. Jam was hand picking some
of these guys and the original Wrecking Crew was Phil

(01:02:42):
Spector's band, and then we took the guys we really
liked and then added in Glenn Campbell, Leon Russell, if You,
and Larry Nick Doll I few really really good guys,
and that became our version of the Wrecking Crew and
that track that it was a real breakthrough for us

(01:03:03):
because it just was so damn good. And even Brian
heard that Brian was still using his guys in the studio.
We pointed out, Brian, you know, you can pay these
guys three hundred bucks. They'll get it in two takes,
and you can probably do three or four songs in
a session instead of waiting for your guys to get
off the road. He'd retired from the road. He didn't

(01:03:26):
much like the road. He loved creating the records, and
there was no nothing special about singing live. To him,
it was tedious and it was time traveling all that
where he could be producing and writing. So it's a
perfect deal. The genius is at home writing and arranging

(01:03:49):
the tunes, and when you get off the road the
other guys, and being on the road, you're promoting your
your music. You have to do that part of it too,
that's part of the whole package. So it was great.
They'll be out singing live, Brian will be home writing
and arranging. So Brian heard the track two to Surf

(01:04:13):
City and he said, how'd you do that? You know,
we gave him hal Blaine's numbers. They call him. You know,
they'll bring all the same guys you just heard there
and they'll do your tracks. Leave open guitar stuff for Carl,
because Carl had very distinctive he had that surf guitar thing. Now,
so you just you guys, your records are vocal records.

(01:04:37):
You don't need to waste a bunch of time on,
you know, drum tracks. And Dennis sometimes shows up and
he's been drinking, and these guys make it that much
easier for you. And all you have to do is
worry about the vocals, a few signature um instruments, and

(01:04:59):
your music. So the next big hit after Surf City
is Honolulululu, right, another top ten record. I don't know why,
but it was cute and had a little surf that
that surf guitar. A lot of our records didn't have

(01:05:22):
guitars as much as we should have had um, but
that had a little slide guitar which was kind of neat,
had a little Hawaiian field to it, so as the
top ten. Then we had Drag City after that, and
we're switching over from the beach stuff into the car stuff,

(01:05:44):
and Drag City was it was a natural and Brian
helped help write that one too as well. And from there,
I don't remember, a dead Man's Curve is thrown in there,
and a New Girl in School New on School was
a song that Brian had written many many years before
called when Summer Comes Gonna Hustle You, and our record

(01:06:07):
company told us you can't say hustle you radio. It's
okay say it on your show, of course. Okay, when
Summer Comes Gonna Hustle You. Um, I don't know, so
we rewrote it. I mean we knew that the tune
was right and that the whole the whole arrangement was perfect.

(01:06:29):
It didn't really matter what what the subject matter was.
Particularly so New Girl in School that became, and that
was the top twenty record. So and dead man's skirts
thrown in and right, well, sir, and a few others.
I don't know. I can't remember. I can't remember. Okay,
how do you get the little old lady from Pasadena?

(01:06:50):
So I going to Pasadena? You know last time I
saw your You remember, um? One of chance buddies, Jam
by this time is in Actually he was premed at
u C. I. Now he's actually in med school or

(01:07:11):
just about being med school. So one of our old
high school buddies that also was going through med school
with Jan. They were in some class together. Obviously they
weren't listening because they had Our friend Don had told
us that he had seen on television a commercial for

(01:07:35):
the Southern California Dodge dealership where there is a character
a little old lady sitting behind the wheel of a
superstock Dodge, because Dodge was trying to appeal to you know,
hot rods and two younger people and rebranding themselves at

(01:07:59):
least muscle cars. So it was a pretty clever commercial.
So this little old person is is driving this car
and there, I mean we all used to in those days,
every young person at a car any time, every time
you'd stop for a signal there would be a race. Yeah,

(01:08:24):
almost always. There's always some car around that that you
know that that these guys and they're just there. Always
was a race. So she does a little street race
was some some other car, don't remember what the car was,
and of course she blows him off and then comes

(01:08:44):
to a screeching halt, and the camera comes around by
the side and and she turns right to the camera,
the smoke still coming up from from her skidding to
a stop, and she says, put a dodge in your girl, Juney. Yeah,
that was a really clever We like that. We were

(01:09:05):
also starting to mix in a little humor and our stuff,
so this was this was perfect. So the juxtaposition of
the old person, you know, in a street rod was
interesting to us. So we thought Jim and Don thought

(01:09:28):
this would be a great thing. So they started started
writing it coming up, and we also thought somewhere in
there that once we finished, I mean, we've had at
this point maybe four or five Top ten reactors in
a row. That you go to dodge. You say, by
the way, you have the character, you can throw in

(01:09:50):
a tailor made song and this will be a top
ten song easily. So anyway, we finished it, knew it
was a hit, Um sent it off to Dodge. They
never even answered us. I think we tried to reach
him a couple of times before it came out and
never responded. So we put it out and that also

(01:10:14):
was a top ten record. How did you end up
being the host of the Tabby Show? By default? I
think we're the only local guys. We were the closest.
We were the closest guys group that to the Santa
Monicacific auditor. I was about ten minutes away. Jan was

(01:10:38):
probably eighteen minutes a way to twenty minutes away. Everybody
else was, even the Beach Boys. They don't have to
drive up from Hawthorne. So um. We also were in
school so they could work with us on the show.
Where the other guys are out out working, we could

(01:10:59):
meet them after school or yeah, cut to school. So
we we were just were in the right place at
the right time. Um, so it just made sense. I
think we talked the Peach Boys into doing it. They
also wanted the Beach Boys, and we were the only
ones that Beach Boys will listen to it at the time.

(01:11:19):
So that film has become legendary legendary, legendary. What was
the experience of actually being there? Well, at the time,
you know, he didn't know it was legendary, and we
knew most of them, not most of the people. We
knew at least half the people worked with, so including

(01:11:39):
James Brown. We knew what James did, so it wasn't
so you know, we were alown away. Uh. We had
a joining dressing rooms with the Stones, and of course
they didn't talk to anybody, so I think we nodded
to one another. Since we were the hosts, we didn't
have time to hang around. Most of those other people

(01:12:01):
just probably hung around and then eventually all talked to
one another, kissing, because we did it in two nights,
just in case we screwed up something. Um. So we
we were you know, we had lines to do. Plus
we were I think we were changing costumes for each

(01:12:24):
each person that we introduced, we wore something different, So
we're kind of busy. Didn't really have time to hang
with these people too much. Um So, just being busy,
I didn't really have time to absorb it. Um. But
once we saw it, we knew it was We knew
it was special. I love the titles. I think the

(01:12:46):
titles are so classic. Um and then when Dick Clark
dug it out of the vaults and bought it from
dusted it off, um M. He always knew that was
a very classic piece of film. And then it deserved
to now be redigitized, and it needed to be properly marketed,

(01:13:13):
and and it had to be seen, which it ultimately
has been. So meanwhile, you're the two of you are
going to school. How much you're working live weekends summer
so we do spring break and summers. Were you making
any money? Yeah? And what do you do with the

(01:13:35):
money to save it? To spend it? Bought stock? Really,
we did a Coca Cola commercial and they would either
pay us cash or in stock. And Jan took cash
he was buying a house. I took stock and it doubled.

(01:13:58):
It doubled and split and doubled and split, so it
dip pretty well. Now we were pretty pretty good with
our money. So let's just assume without you had ultimately
had a second career. But if you just had your
music career, did it generate enough money to live for
the rest of your life? No? Not not like today,

(01:14:18):
Not like today. Okay, so you're in school. You're going
to City College and then you transfer to usc IS
and you say, you're in the architecture school. Did you
want to become an architect? I thought I did, But
once I got there and they kept telling me I
wasn't cut out for that, I finally believed him. Um.

(01:14:42):
So they did have fine arts too as well, and
advertising arts, so I went into more advertising art. I
think my degree was advertising design or something like that,
which would include marketing and branding and all of those things.
And that's all stuff I was kind of doing for us,
So it made sense when all of a sudden, I said, yeah,

(01:15:04):
that makes a lot more sense because I could be
creating our own packaging because I knew that was going
to be important. Knew the visuals were going to be important.
The Beatles, when when they hit everything changed, I mean
it became serious and we could see how how much
attention to detail that that that they were spending the

(01:15:29):
time really thinking every little piece of their career. And
we said, we, you know, to keep up, we have
to do that, and most acts are going to have
to do that. You're gonna have to think of the
big picture, all of it, and not just focus on
I gotta have that hit song, you know, you have

(01:15:50):
to have that, but you got to have all the
other pieces in place too, and branding. Branding was a
huge thing, and I don't ever remember the word being
used in the sixties. Nobody really got it. I saw
Peter Paul and Mary album once and then I saw

(01:16:10):
how there it was stylized print for Peter, Paul and Mary,
and I remember thinking then that type never changed, and
I thought that is really cool too, to think of
it as a product and to tie the visuals into

(01:16:33):
what you're doing. Is remember that was kind of kind
of hippie hippie folk type, and the pretty much when
you saw it, you thought Peter, Paul, Mary, and then
they could just use the P, P and M because
it was so recognizable. I thought, you know, that's really
really neat how all that ties in, and of course

(01:16:54):
the written word ties in. I had Tom Hanks once
tell me how much love to read our liner notes
because there was so much in there. And he got
the whole, you know, the whole big picture, and appreciated
that kind of humor thing that that strung through it all.

(01:17:16):
I certainly got that too. So let's get to the accident. Now,
when the accident happens, it seems that your careers cooled
off a little bit. Would you say that it's true? Well, yeah,
but it was somewhat by design because we knew we
had a television series that we were going to be doing.

(01:17:39):
It was bought by ABC. We were going to be
on debut the same season that the Monkeys debut, and
screen gems and all that. They were all intertwined with
them and us, and we would have probably been on
each other's shows and helped cross promote things, um in

(01:18:04):
separate channels. I think they were in NBC. I remember
we were in ABC. So we knew that being on
TV once a week, I'm gonna yes. So we knew
that that exposure was just going to be way above
anything we'd ever done. We were looking at Ricky Nelson

(01:18:26):
ocousely dude sing that damn song and that and each
one of his little shows and it was a gold record,
So we weren't really worried about that end of it.
We also understood that we needed to keep our a
material from We weren't going to resign with Liberty. We're

(01:18:47):
going to have our own label or not have our
own label and justorated by some warners or even done
you'll want to do to do um distribution deal. Wey
not have our I mean, we're getting all this exposure.
We don't need a label to do the exposure. We're
going to be doing it on TV. And louis still

(01:19:10):
managing you with this and uh hal Blane had a
part that he would play recurring part in the show.
It was it was neat. It's like a little road show.
But we would get lost and and all sorts of
other things outside of the music of somehow getting to

(01:19:31):
that concert. There were storylines, you know, so and then later,
you know, years later, looked back and a lot of
little side things that we were going to do became
like we were gonna do a little parody of Rout
sixty only ours is gonna be Routed sixty nine. But

(01:19:52):
we had corvettes, we had sting rights, and we often
drove them to two concert dates if there was within
a hundred fifty miles. We thought it was fun. But
all those little side adventures of getting arrested, a couple
of homes, getting lost, and all those things. We would

(01:20:12):
make make a show out of it. But we'd kind
of parody some of these other television shows two at
the time, long story short. When I look back many
years later and looked at some of the rough ideas
of where it was going to go, it was almost
Saturday Night Live. Kinds of skidding that we would do.

(01:20:33):
But anyway, so we do the pilot. The pilot seals
we don't want to give any of our A list
songs to Liberty. You were kind of winding it down. Um,
we didn't want to leave them with anything, and made
sure that once we left, the cupboard was bare and
we weren't prolific m hm master makers because we would

(01:20:59):
cut just what we needed and that was it. So
it wasn't going to be all a lot of stuff
floating around. We didn't want them to have any stuff
to compete, and so it was more or less thought
out that, at least record wise, So we cut back
because it didn't matter. We knew what was the future

(01:21:19):
was going to be. But unfortunately Jan had that automobile
accident and all went away. So how did you find
out he had the accident? Uh? Just school met n
SC came up to me. You know, I was just
walking across the campus and somebody came up to me,
an old friend and said, hey, I heard on the news.

(01:21:43):
Uh that just he just got into school, so he
had the car radio and I've been there for a
couple of hours, so I just heard it. Jan had
a bad automobile accident and Beverly Hills. Is he okay?
I know had this first, I've heard of it, and
how to go to the pay phone, you know, there

(01:22:04):
were no phones, and I'm called lose office and I
found out that it was. It was pretty serious at
that point, so nobody knew how whether or not he
would ever recover or not. He was in a coma
he had, Yeah, he did have permanent brain damage. So

(01:22:25):
he had permanent brain damage. Uh do you immediately realize
that this is over? Yeah? Yeah, it was pretty pretty obvious. Um,
but you know I triggered. There was a reason I
was going to school, But there's a reason he was

(01:22:46):
going to school. Is that we knew that this rock
a room never gonna last forever, at least for us
or for about anybody. You know. It does have a
shelf like too, So this is I guess this is
what I planned for and I just graduated. Any when

(01:23:07):
I was in in into my master's program. I don't
know why as a graduate student, and it didn't really
need to go, but I went just in case. I thought,
I've maybe going to law school because a USC had
a good law school. I thought, if we really do
make this show work, I should probably know a little

(01:23:27):
bit about about the law. I guess why not? And
I figured if Chan was still in mid school, I
didn't know how this was all going to work. But
just you know, I thought maybe we could do both.
But I was pretty sure it couldn't. But I don't know. Okay,
just go back to chapter. You must you know you're

(01:23:48):
a hit act on USC campus. She must have been
a big star. You would think you would have thunk. Um.
I think I've been there so long and I was
just one of the guys. Because it didn't really feel
like it. It wouldn't pay much attention to me. I
don't think. I think had we done the television show

(01:24:12):
have been much different. Um. When I first got to USC,
most of the most college kids didn't particularly like rock
and roll. Really, they liked folk music. You see relevant music, uh, jazz,

(01:24:33):
anything about that rock and roll is for fourteen year olds.
And I actually literally had friends with Tony. Are you
still making that music for the fourteen fifty year old girls? Yeah?
Well off campus? Were there perks of having this success? Um?
A little bit? Yeah, what do you mean, Well, first,

(01:24:57):
let's be obvious chick wise, right, Um, yeah, kind of,
but it was still, uh, you know, when you're actually
on the road. It was a lot easier being away
from home obviously, so I had to be careful around home.

(01:25:19):
So um, we we were pretty careful. We didn't get
any troll in town. Are you invited to things forget? Yeah,
but we don't don't have time. Literally, don't have time
either you're in school or you're recording, and that that's
about all the time I had. Luckily, we didn't have time,
So I imagine we could have gotten a lot more

(01:25:41):
trouble had had we, you know, had some free time.
Drugs are not an issue. Jan what he was in
med school. You know, they had their uppers and stuff
that for studying. So other than that, yeah, we again,
it really didn't have time for drugs either. So ultimately,

(01:26:04):
after the accident, you had a second career being a
graphic designer. How long after the accident do you start
to build that business? Well, I had relatively started it
before the accident, maybe a good year before the accident.
I was already starting to playing out, you know, our

(01:26:28):
or some of our marketing stuff that we would want
to do. A lot had to do with the television show.
I knew clothing was going to be important. So I
had learned silk screening at USC so I knew how
to make the screens and how to do multiple colors

(01:26:49):
and all that kind of stuff. And I knew that
I had a feeling that this whole beach attire was
going to be important. This is way before you know
o P or any of the any of the surf
brands came along. I kind of knew that that that
was going to be important, and that that stuff we

(01:27:11):
could wear on television show. We used to do the
Little Lloyd Saxton Show right here, right just down the street,
as I remember, um, and we wear just I had
I made up part. We sponsored a adult flag football

(01:27:33):
team and Jan played on it occasionally. I played on
it all the time because I owned it so pretty well,
I could pretty well right myself whatever whatever I wanted
to do. You see that I paid for the jerseys
and the pants and all the entry fees and all
of that, so I I would wear every once in

(01:27:55):
a while the Jan and Deane's bell Are bandits foot
cultures and an amount of mail that we would get
after that. We're gonna get that, you know. So I
went to sc and I and I got out the
screening and the stuff and and copied pretty much all

(01:28:17):
the these did have stripes and piping and stuff. But
in one color, I created the actual football jersey. We
sold thousands and thousands of those shirts. And I'm going
if that comes off of Lloyd Taxton show, think about
a national show that has twenty to thirty million people

(01:28:40):
seeing it once a week and you wear a shirt
like that, or you the skateboards. We had a sidebox
surfing skateboards that we were going to work a deal
with Makaha or one of those big board manufacturers at
the time, and so all the ska pouring, all the

(01:29:01):
surfing stuff, all the beat stuff. When we had little
medallions or surfer medallions made. He was going to be
a slam could have been just amazing. So when Jane
crashed and still had all those ideas. So since all
of my friends were in the music industry. My good

(01:29:23):
friends of Beach Boys. I went to them and said,
this is what I'm doing. Now, I could be doing
that for you. I could be your art director. You know,
you don't have to deal with the art department. Um.
I was learning how to get around our art department
in the Jam and Deine days. I said, it can

(01:29:43):
be done. The artists can demand certain things about their
their own packaging and on merchandising and all that kind
of stuff. So each artist that I would pick, I'm
just saying I will be your advocate and I will
be the one that speaks for you out go in
and talk to the record company and or to the

(01:30:06):
art department and just demand that this is what the
artist wants, okay, And that becomes a successful business and
you end up doing the logo for Chicago. And then
of course in there's a TV movie. To what degree
did you see that coming? Um, well there was a

(01:30:36):
after all these years, so this was after chance accident.
So by the seventies, you know, we've been out of
the business for good ten twelve years. A buddy of
mine that did go to law school, uh at at
usc wrote wrote in a Janine p because he was

(01:31:01):
fascinated about it all. I don't know why, but he'd
written this, Hothy. He liked to write. That was his
way of unwinding from being a lawyer. And I helped
him because you know, he couldn't get information from Jan
and we were buddies, so all he would he would

(01:31:23):
talk to me for hours and write it all down
and record parts of it. And he wrote it. He
was a decent writer. Um. He had a couple of
connections and a couple of magazines and by the time
he finished writing it, uh, and was about to submit it,
those those contacts went away. Then he sent it to

(01:31:48):
others and people turned it down, saying nobody can remember
who Chandine were. Um, so it's you know, it's a
nice piece, but they name recognition is not there. So
they went around around. He even sent it to Playboy
and Playboy turned him down. So he was pretty much

(01:32:09):
had been turned down. Uh. And then I suggested, what
about Rolling Stone. I mean, they will understand that the
brand and understand the story. And it's still an interesting
story about Jan's you know, recovery and stuff, because he
was starting to at least function, and it's an interesting story,

(01:32:33):
you know. So we submitted it to Rolling Stone and
they loved it. Again. This is fourteen years after your
last hit, and they we're going to put us on
the cover of Rolling Stone. Any Leibowitz came and took
my picture at my graphics are office, which is was

(01:32:55):
a sunset and Ogden and she hung around the office
and took pictures of me at the office and stuff,
and then we went down to the beach. She took
shots of both Janet and my song. This is a
big time. I'm gonna be on a cover of Rolling
Stone after all these years and about a five six

(01:33:16):
page article as I remember, and it's just about to
come out, and Nixon Quits bumped us off the cover,
but we still got, you know, our six pages inside,
which was really pretty neat. It's been nice to be
in the cover though, um. And from that we got

(01:33:40):
all sorts of calls from m I think I think
it was actually theatrical calls in the beginning for actually
really nice, big high budgeted films. And then it all
that stuff just went away, and it came down to
television and we finally did make a deal of CBS

(01:34:03):
and it came out on CBS Prime Time a couple
of years after the article was written, and from there
and all held broke loose because I put my love
at the beach boys and Bruce. We all went to
school together, Bruce's and neighbor Jan's Johnstone. I invited all

(01:34:25):
the guys, but only Mike and Bruce decided that that
they wanted to do it, so they did. And then
they work a lot. So right after that airing their
out touring as usual, and Mike calls me from the

(01:34:46):
road maybe a couple of three or four days after
that first airing on on the CBS and says, you
know they do. They do a lot of interviews, a
lot of radio and stuff. And he said, we are
you know, we once a while get questions about Janadeine
and our relationship. He said, ever since that the thing

(01:35:09):
was shown a week ago, it's of what people are
asking about is the relationship with Janadeine. Whether or not
Janadeine will ever be able to perform again. Blah blah blah.
He says, you need to do it. I'm sitting in
my little graphics office, nice and very comfortable, you know,

(01:35:31):
and going like it's taking me ten and twelve years
to build it up to this, and if I love,
I didn't ever leave. I mean, if I was gone
for two or three days, my clients would get piste off.
So I wanted they were. They expected me to be
right there and pick up the phone, so I knew

(01:35:51):
if I strayed from that. There's plenty of other graphic
designers now they're all competing. I was very careful and
I thought, well, it sounds interesting, Mike, but yeah, I'll
think about it. And then two or three weeks later,
I'm telling you, man, it's not going away. And then
about nine months later they showed it again and the

(01:36:14):
numbers were even bigger than they were the first time. Um,
so Mike was all over me. Mike said, look, we're
going out on a tour with our own plane. There's
a seat for you, and Jan's cool. I've never been
in a private jet before. I thought that sounded pretty interesting,

(01:36:35):
so I said yes, and I got Jan up and
around and he was well enough to be able to
sing at least three or four songs, and that's what
we decided to do. We went out on tour with them,
and I've been doing it ever since. So I saw

(01:36:56):
you at the star Woods. I don't know if that
was certain early. Okay, so you're working with jan and
are you is what kind of shape is he in? Um? Well, yeah,
we certainly had some uh. I mean he had about

(01:37:21):
of physical limitations. I think most people that saw him
thought he'd had a had a stroke because his right
side was very slow. His arm was it was very
difficult for him to get his arm up very far. Um.

(01:37:41):
Left side was okay. Um. He had a phasia, which
is a speech problem. Um, so sometimes you get confused
about words and things. But he also still part of
his brain was still operating a hundred and seventy or eighty,

(01:38:06):
and part of his brain was at sixty. So he's
kind of savant in some regards. He could actually write music.
And but if he if if he was writing the
music and let's say it was sir City or something,
and he's writing out apart for a some instrument, and

(01:38:28):
then he'd have to put the title. He'd asked me
how to spell surf serve city. But then he'd go
buttets in a flat and a flat he'd write at
all came from different part of the brains, Like somebody stutters.
You know that if they sing, they don't stutter. This

(01:38:48):
was kind of the same way. So in some regards
he was he still was a genius, and the other parts,
you know, didn't work at all. So it was difficult.
And the shows, what was it like being on stage
with him? Um? In the beginning, it was the first

(01:39:13):
maybe four or five years, it was it was okay,
it was fun. Um, but as his body, you know,
we're all getting older as but his body was deteriorating
faster than the rest of us, so that it became
physically a lot harder and a lot more frustrating for

(01:39:33):
him to get from point A to point B. I
saw the I saw the Glenn Campbell documentary documentary that
reminded me a lot of Jam, especially towards the end
when he was couldn't remember stuff. Um and Glenn went

(01:39:57):
through that for what a couple of months, but during
the film, I mean they did that one tour. I
did that for over twenty years. I'm gonna think, holy cow,
how the hell did I do that? Because the last
maybe good seven years was really really hard. I didn't
know how to how to undo it. If I pulled

(01:40:20):
the plug on it. The fans were going to some
of the fans would be angry that I would do
that to him. Um, he wouldn't. He wouldn't be happy
with it, even though even though it was so physically
hard for him to do, Soli had so I couldn't

(01:40:41):
pull the plug on it. I just I didn't know
how it was going to end. Um And then he
just he just finally just wore out and passed away.
Did you see that coming? Mm hmmm. In some regards,
I thought he was going to outlive all of us,

(01:41:04):
kind of Keith Richards, you know, exactly like Keith Richards.
And but physically at least Keith can stand. And Jan
was at the point where he was having to sit
for almost the whole show. And I told him once once,
it is at the point where you can't stand. It's

(01:41:24):
not fair. It's not fair to the audience and all that. So,
and we're going to damage the brand. And I was
worried about damaging the brand. And there's nothing I could
do about it. So it did damage the brand. We
probably should have pulled the plug maybe five years sooner.

(01:41:48):
I couldn't do it at the time. How many gigs
were you doing a year? Still doing thirty to forty
to fifty at our peak. We were doing nineties throughout
most of the eighties, and he regrets giving up the
graphic design business. No, not really, because that changed too.

(01:42:11):
I didn't I didn't see c ds coming. I just
never thought of that so soon thereafter, I think within
two to three years, because my last my last design
was Steve Martin album cover, so that was her late

(01:42:34):
seventies early eighties, and by the mid eighties it was
all c ds, so there was no no magic and packaging.
It was just a little seven by seven square in
instead of twelve makes a big difference. Twelve it's a
whole foot and if you opened up a gatefold, you

(01:42:55):
have two ft by one ft. Now you're down to
this little teeny package. So I probably I got lucky.
I really got lucky. And I still do a lot
of graphic design now anyway, and it's saw a photoshop
and so much easier um graphic using digital tools. It's

(01:43:19):
kind of fun and I can redo all of my
own stuff. And I did my whole website myself on
every single page, and it was really fun to do.
When I thought about how tedious all that stuff was
in the seventies, to do stuff that I can do
in minutes now that used to take me days to do.

(01:43:40):
So I still dabbling and still enjoy it. And okay,
you still go out too as a touring act and
for the audience you call that now. I usually give
the buyer a couple of different ways, what ever makes

(01:44:00):
them comfortable. But the basic one is the Janitine Beach
Party featuring Dean Torrents, because I don't want to mislead
people with J Deine, but Jandine's got to be in
the title, so it's kind of a tribute to ourselves.

(01:44:21):
How many, how much? How many times you do a year? Now?
Probably do thirty to forty And how long do you
foresee doing this? I have no idea. Okay, so you'll
do it until you dropped it. You can't do it probably,
So I only accept stuff that that intrigues me. You know.

(01:44:45):
I do a lot of corporate party stuff, which is
kind of fun. But if it's a place I haven't
been or haven't been for a while, I'm so used to.
I don't go on vacation myself because it bothers me to. Actually,
I have to pay for the PI and the rooms.
I'm so used to somebody else paying for it makes

(01:45:05):
me nervous to go on vacation. I go, that's just
another two in that room. We're usually buyered? Is that? So?
If if there's something interesting in someplace I've never been,
I really really enjoy it. Okay, this late date and
he regrets, I can't think of any So if you

(01:45:31):
had to do it all over again, you would have
made the same choices. I think I would. Yeah, I
think I would. I had lunch with Lou Adler maybe
a year ago, and he's he's not even really tired. Actually,
you know, he's still does so many stuff and a

(01:45:52):
lot of good things. Heah, he sponsors kids camps and
all that he's done, fabric this job with giving back
to the community and all that stuff. But he's still
a super creative guy. But you know, I told him,
I said, you know, if it weren't for you, I

(01:46:14):
don't think Jan and Dean would have ever had a
career because he really had total vision of the big picture.
And he taught me that. But in the beginning, you know,
we didn't see it, and he did. Um. He looked
at me and he goes, you know, if it weren't

(01:46:34):
for you, guys, maybe I would have never had I said,
all right, right, interest right without that success Um, whatever
happened Arnie Ginsburg, Arnie Arnie. He went to USC he
was in the School of Architecture. UM also became industrial

(01:46:59):
to designer and stuff. He was very talented. He didn't care.
He really didn't had no no love at all for
for the MHM industry. He didn't like any of that.
He was really uncomfortable on stage. He just we hardly ever.
We talked about it briefly and never never talked about

(01:47:20):
it again. I would see him almost every day at
school and see Jane at night and on weekends. And
Arne had no regrets, and he was very successful. It
was very talented, talented, good guy. And you ever get
any royalty checks? I got one yesterday from Universal Pictures

(01:47:47):
or something like that, and said, I made forty three bucks.
That's better. You know. I know people get him in
the sense, but well I have I keep all those
those cracked me up but down. So I was looking
for the check, and then you have to read a
few more pages. And then in this color, this bright

(01:48:07):
pink highlighted, it says we do not write checks for
under fifty bucks back the way till I'll make seven
more dollars. And I got one from Kate ll Um
that wasn't and it was this thing which I'm showing

(01:48:28):
folks podcasts that psychobout an inch thick, you think, and
from all over the world, and it was like thirty
eight dollars, I think. So I gave it to my
daughter's dog, who loves paper, and I have a picture
of him just chewing this thing. It's all in shreds

(01:48:51):
and he's looking at the camera in his paper in
his mouth and you can read part of it. Made
sure it's his royalty state. And I said, obviously he
wasn't happy with the with the check. There, Um, there
is a there are a few people that are good.
Sound exchange is really good. They've done a really, really

(01:49:11):
good job. They called me up a couple of years
ago and I wanted to know they hadn't been able
to give Jan his money. And there was a check
like fifty or sixty grand that they had for him
that was a couple of years worth of stuff. But
I know where where do we send it? So I

(01:49:33):
called Jan's widow on the East coast, found her and
said there's a nice check waiting for you or should
I send it? And she was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. So
there are some people that trit you still pretty well.
And do you find it's only people from our generation,
you know, Jan and Dean. Where do the younger people

(01:49:55):
know the name or the songs? Are both? You just yeah,
it's a whole gamut. It's We flew to um Italy
last August, and for three months I was wondering why
in the world I agreed to do that. And although

(01:50:16):
it intrigued me to go to Europe, I just never
played Europe before and didn't think, you know, like you're
just saying, I mean, I don't remember getting I get
a lot of mail from uk Um. We played in
China of all places in the eighties, and I get
still get mail from China, but I never got anything

(01:50:39):
from Italy. And I'm going so we're gonna fly twenty
five hours over four hour drive from Rome to Sngalia.
Then this beach party. But it was a music festival,
thinking well, it's free, okay, so people will wander by
the kind of go oh yeah, you know it might

(01:51:00):
of the band's good, you know, so the music will
be will be presented very nicely, but at least as
a festival, and there's synergy going on. There's multiple stages,
and it's been going on for ten or fifteen years,
and it was a big tourist thing from people in

(01:51:21):
at least in Italy. The guy had a good track
record and his stuff looked professionals. Okay, remember getting on
that flight going oh my god, Okay, well I gotta
do it. I just gotta do it, just hope it'll work.
Got there, It wasn't a flight, wasn't that bad. Then

(01:51:43):
picked us up. It's dark and getting a van, all
the guys and this guy's speaking Italian. You know, he
doesn't speak any English, so we don't know what they
all you said, but you must be taking us to
the hotel. We tried for four hours and a couple
of times he turns around in the dark and they

(01:52:05):
went on these little streets and I'm going like, now,
my band members are all, you know, on their phone,
and look, they know where we're going, and they keep
telling they keep telling you guy, hey, hey, you know
it's back. You missed there, and he doesn't speak Oh
my god, and I'm going I knew I should have

(01:52:25):
done this. I just knew. I'm calling the wife. I'm
telling her in Huntington Beach. I'm saying, we're driving around
in Italy. It's dark. This guy doesn't speak any English,
and he keeps backing up and making you turns, and
he goes, why did I do this? I knew I
shouldn't have done this. We finally get to a hotel.

(01:52:46):
It wasn't nice, and then that was okay, and the
air con worked. Okay, that's fine. And then next day
we had off and they took us through this festival
been going on for a couple of days. It was
done so well us when I got this shirt from
this is uh cracking cracking room. We played on their
stage and stage was done nice, holographic design. Stuff was great,

(01:53:13):
and it was very organized and there were people all
sorts of ages dancing to the music. Oh this this
is great. So I said, okay, can we see our stage?
And the guy was just producing the whole thing, said, well,
your stages is down at the beach. This was in

(01:53:34):
the middle of town, you know, I mean it's separated
from all this. Yeah, it's it's about quarter mile down,
but it's actually on the sand, and we put up
a nice big stage and just you guys were Now
we're not in the you know, and again in that
synergy going on, I'm going, I guess anybody gonna walk

(01:53:55):
down there? And I like that, Damn, this is going
to be a staff. So I told him I was.
And then he said, oh, and years is not a
free stage. It costs money. It's a hard ticket. I said, oh,
this is a stiff. So I finally had the nerve
to tell him I was very uncomfortable with that. I

(01:54:17):
didn't think it would work. He said, no, we already
saw twelve thousand pre st tickets and they'll be He'll
walk up to and it was like fifteen and sixteen
thousand people on this and they eat. You know, it's
six or seven, right, So we didn't even go on
till nine. And it's a it was a ninety minute show.

(01:54:40):
And there was groupies. Now that's why you asked. They
were actually thirty year olds standing just around where the
backstage here. He was, you know what, you want to
take selfies and stuff? And I went, oh my god,
So yeah, they were the sixty year olds and there
was the thirty year olds. I don't know how they
knew music, but they seemed in order, really really well,

(01:55:04):
and I just I'm glad I did it. And within
hours though, you're back at the hotel's after midnight and
you're checking out and you're doing that four hour drive
back to Rome to catch a seven am flight to
Copenhagen and then Companhagen to l A. But just still okay,

(01:55:24):
you know, well, that's what being a rock star, you
see what I mean? Right in? In addition, though, it
shows that people still remember, still care. I certainly remember
and care. This has been wonderful, actually the longest podcast
ever because we're getting your story. You really got in
the groove. I really have to thank you. Yes, my
guest here has been deemed Torrence Dean of jan and Deep.

(01:55:48):
Thanks so much. Deep. I'm just happy anybody cares about
I really care, and I know my audience will care.
I mean, I won't even recount all the great stories
you told because people have listened to this point and
know them. No, I couldn't shut you down. You were
telling all those great stories which no one ever knew, like, uh,
you know they were playing in Ormosa Beach with the

(01:56:08):
Beach Boys. Story of sir City Lou Adler. I mean,
I read your book, but there's even stuff here that
wasn't in your book. I just again, you know, you
write something you don't know. Is this interesting or not?
I don't know. You've always been super good to us,
and I really appreciate it, so, uh, knowing that that

(01:56:29):
you have this following, I just that's why I'm here.
I don't do this. I think this is the first
podcast I've ever done. I think it's definitive. I think
we've got a lot of history here. That's one of
the reasons I didn't want to jump ahead. You know,
it's like someone's got to get it down just one
step further. What about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

(01:56:50):
You care no good? No I could, I could careless. Um,
you know, it's it's all subjective, but it really like
any other Hall of fame, though, is is numbers metrics.
It's pretty easy to figure out, and we've had more

(01:57:13):
hits than two thirds of those other people that are
in there. And then they want to talk about if
they want to talk about being pioneers and something, well
we just talked about that, right, how many other people
cut to two or three top ten records in a
garage way before anybody else was doing it, you know,
as teenagers. That's the part I'm I'm the most proud of.

(01:57:38):
It's young people figured out how to do it and
did it with just some little, easy, little technology that
that well, that's what's so great about it that all right,
the business was being developed, like the Internet twenty odd
years ago. Just exciting seeing what's going on now it's mature,
not quite the same thing. But we were all in

(01:57:59):
fatuous did with music. We were all playing music, and
you were certainly a pioneer. And as I say, I
played command performance all the way through about two weeks ago.
It sounded so great. And of course I always love
sidewalk surfing, which is a you know, a reworking of
Bryant's Catch a Wave, and uh, I knew your version first.

(01:58:22):
I was stunned when I heard catch Awave. Well, I was,
you know, when I go back and hear some stuff,
just to hear the excitement of the live show, because
you know, we didn't really have that many people following
us around and recording stuff, so it was very limited
in film wise. You know, some of the stuff I
see on YouTube of the beach Boys working on Good Vibrations,

(01:58:47):
and some of that film is really really we didn't
have any of that. We just didn't think of it.
You know, that was going to be later. We'll get
to that later. It's okay, we don't have time to
think about cameras and playing around and capturing that stuff.
So it's all in my head, which I think we've

(01:59:07):
got a lot of it down on. It's good to
hear it on something like Command Performance and they go, yeah,
I was right in the middle of that, all that excitement.
So I'm glad you glad you enjoyed it. Absolutely. As
I say, A huge fan in terms of albums other

(01:59:27):
than cartoon characters, Yours was the first album I bought,
I think, and I still I still have the copy.
I have basking tape on the corners holding the cover together.
I'm not no, thanks so much. Hey, it's absolutely my pleasure,
and again thanks for your support. I listen. I'm a
huge fan. Believe it at that. Until next time, It's

(01:59:51):
the Bob Left Sets podcast.