Love & Affection with Nelson!!

90s Rock band 'Nelson' gave us hits like (Can't Live Without Your) Love & Affection and After the Rain, decades later they're still rockin' and rollin'. In this episode, twin brothers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson tell us what it was really like being born into Hollywood royalty. What do they remember about their grandparents Ozzie & Harriet?What was it like to be the sons of American heartthrob Ricky Nelson?How did Mama Cass Elliot become their babysitter?And how have they honored their family name by leaning on the music and each other?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey Dude the Nineties Called, with Christine Taylor and David Lasher. Hey, everybody,
welcome back to Hey Dude the Nineties Called. I am Christine,
one of your.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Co hosts, and I'm David, your other co host. Hi David,
Hello Christine.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
So this episode will have aired after we go to
Nineties Cone, but we're technically going to Nineties Con this weekend,
so it's going to be you know, it's all like
this is. We're always like one week behind when things
are happening in real time, but.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
We will I you know.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Melissa Joanhart texted our Sabrina cast saying, let's everybody like
take some videos of the experience here and all share them.
And there's like there's a new video editing software for
short form content.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'll talk to you.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
About it later, but it allows we can get ten, fifteen,
twenty people to upload a few videos to the same
platform and we'll give them notes and they'll ma c
like a mom toss for us from some giant superpost.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh that would be so fun. I look like I
know how any of it works and or what you
even just said, but it does sound like fun. How
many people make videos and send them to we should
be doing we should do that too. We should we
should film each other in all of those things too,
Like I mean, we gotta we gotta have it all recorded.

(01:25):
What else?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
I'm a little nervous to be in a room with
that many people, are you.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
A little bit. I'm not nervous about like the crowds.
I think I'm more nervous about like how it all
gets organized and are we going to get to you know,
does everybody get their turn? I know they've had it
worked out before since they've they've done many of these,
and they're not very well well run and there's panels

(01:52):
at certain times. I saw that and so so No,
I'm just excited. I'm you know, I feel like we
just have to keep these Russo's coming.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, it'll all be fine.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
I get nervous about things like that until i'm there,
and once I'm there, it's all good.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
And we're going to see so many guests that we've
had on over the last year or so, which is
also going to just be a lot of fun. And
you know, maybe we'll do some networking. We'll you know,
go up to people and we'll say hey, when are
you coming on our show?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
And it's I want to get on the show.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
You're a friends with them.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Heather Macomb said.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, Well when we get puppy dog faces and puppy
dog eyes to people we've known and really, come on,
you can do it. You can give us an hour
of your time. Then they say absolutely, I'll do it.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
So we're going to we'll hook it up.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
We have our guests in the waiting room, and I'm
very excited because their story is incredible and they are
the They're an iconic family is in nineties though, these brothers,
Gunner and Matthew. So let's invite them in, all.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Right, Matthew and Gunner Nelson welcome, Well, hey guys, welcome.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
Much for having us on your podcast. We're so excited
to talk to you guys about.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
We have no idea.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
It's sky's the limit, all right. So tell us where
you both are right now, because you both have amazing backgrounds.
I'm just setting it up for our listeners.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
We're here in Franklin, Tennessee, and I'm lucky enough to
have a recording studio in my house in a live
room as well, so I'm in the rehearsal room. I'm
in the live room right now, and I think Matthews
in his recording studio.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, I am.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
It's Gunnar and I live about five minutes away from
each other for a while.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's awesome.

Speaker 5 (03:46):
Settled on our careers, we went to our separate corners.
We still worked on, you know, on shows. But I
was living in LA for what Gunner fifteen years longer
than you. Yeah, I've only been here for about fourteen
years or so, so he'd been here a long time.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
So after fifteen years, what you saw that Gunner was
having such a great life in Nashville.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
The year it was this simple.

Speaker 5 (04:07):
We would go out and meet up to do shows
somewhere in America or elsewhere, and Gunner was always home,
hanging out, chilling with his girlfriend, his friends, then his wife.
You know, he was at home honestly half a day
before I was. At the earliest. I would always have
to connect if we went anywhere East coast, I'd have
to connect through Phoenix or Dallas or something to make

(04:29):
it back to Los Angeles. And then I had that
wonderful three hour drive back to the valley. So he
was really cool about it, though he didn't laugh at
me too much. He was just saying, are you moving out?
When any moving out? When are you moving out? And
that's what did it for me pretty much that in
Hollywood divorce. So I came out here and I have
been very happy ever since.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
Great, so many people. I was just telling Gunner. You
know our good friend Melissa Joan Hart, Hell yeah, her
family there, Jason Priestley is there. There's a lot of
LA people that I know have moved to Nashville.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Well, on the.

Speaker 5 (05:02):
Biz side of things and especially being in entertainment like
you guys are. There's no state tax here.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh yeah, that was so just.

Speaker 5 (05:10):
Add thirteen percent to your gross non adjusted income every year.
And that's why so many entertainers are living either here
born in Florida. They're like five states that don't have
state tax and we're one of them. And the best
way to describe Nashville it's kind of like, well word
is out now. Last four years, there's been just a
dramatic influx of people.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
We don't blame them.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
It's pretty awesome, but it's kind of like LA was
thirty years ago before it started believing it's.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Own press releases.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
It's pretty you know, and as I was mentioning when
we were on hold the difference that I've found. Actually,
there's a lot to love about La. The weather's amazing,
we're rarity. We actually were born in LA. We didn't
migrate to La.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
To have a career.

Speaker 5 (05:53):
We actually it was kind of in reverse and out
here people really the human connection is the most important thing.
Like when someone asked how your day is, they really
genuinely want to know how your day is. They're not
asking you what do you do for a living and
how can you help me?

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yeah, and when they say right, how are you? You
actually moved through respond how you are, not what you're
working on, what you have coming out? You don't list
your credits. It's an actual real conversation. Right in La,
it's how you are. It was dependent on what you
were currently had you know in the can, or what

(06:27):
was being right you ask.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
Someone how are you in LA? They tell you immediately
what they're working on.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
Who they're studying with, what they're up for. I get it, Well,
the difference is to out in LA or in Nashville
here going back thirty years, I learned really quickly when
I moved here that okay, obviously TV and film. That's
the industry, the primary industry in La and here it's
always really been.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Music music, yea.

Speaker 5 (06:50):
So the humbling thing is if you're trying to make
your fortune out here and you're getting your table waited
on by somebody, you find out in no small time
that that person has just written and cut the last
Timic gross single, and he's got three number one with
Garth Brooks, and he plays nine instruments. And everybody is
so talented out here that it forces you to not

(07:12):
only improve your game, but to really be very humble
about what you do and how you do it.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Yes, well, you guys come from talented, I mean iconic family.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Let's go legacy, your legacy, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Matthew does anyways, you know.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah, So Ozzie and Harriet tell me about your grandparents and.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Well, well they had the long okay, going way back.

Speaker 5 (07:39):
This family's been doing entertainment for well over one hundred years.
We actually originally came to America's circus performers, and then
we have an issue in vaudeville big band radio. Our
grandpa Ozzie had a big band and his own number
one in nineteen thirty four with a song called and
then some and she she was doing his big band

(08:01):
bit and heard about a shawn TuS named Harriet Hilliard,
and he saw her at the Cotton Club kind of
substituting for somebody called in sick. And she was witty
and and she was really intelligent and a great singer,
and he fell in love instantly in.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Los Angeles or this was actually in New York.

Speaker 5 (08:18):
Okay, okay, yeah, we're originally a Jersey family. Grandpa Ozzie
actually grew up in tenafly t Neck, Ridgefield Park, that area.
That's why when the Wedding Singer was set in Ridgefield,
it's like, who would want to leave Ridgefield?

Speaker 3 (08:32):
I don't know, because and.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
So they actually met doing that, and the legend was
that they're really talented and had a number one song,
like I said, but their banter was so natural and
so funny in between songs that the songs got shorter
and shorter, and the shtick got longer and longer.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
And they got.

Speaker 5 (08:52):
Seen by the biggest radio guy at the time, which
was Red Skelton, and he thought they were hilarious and
introduced them to ABC, which was a fledgling network work
at the time.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Wait this is before TV, right, this is only long.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Yeah, the Nelson's have gone through all the formats including
smoke signals.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
Man, I mean amazing.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
There were four hundred and thirty five episodes of Ozzie
and Harriet on television. There were four hundred and eighty
three I think radio shows with a completely different script
that they did. It overlapped the first years of the show.
But Ozzie wrote, produced, edited, directed, and starred in all
four hundred and thirty five episodes of the TV show.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
He was wow.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
So they brought their show through the transition of radio
to TV correct and how.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
They did it back then, which was really interesting because
you know, Grandpa always thought the Irony as the longest
running live action sitcom in television history. He thought the
television was going to be a fad. It was something
to do when they were off season, and he thought
he was going to be able to get right back
out with the band. But the show kept on getting renewed.
But they started out on radio. That they did their

(09:57):
bit on ABC Radio and it was very very popular.
So what they did back in that day, because the
format was so new, they actually made a feature film
that was their pilot it was called Here Come the
Nelson's and was Rob Hudson that too, who was in
The Rock. Hudson and Barbara Lawrence were in it, and
I remember too Gunner at the time when they started dating.

(10:20):
They didn't date right away when they were working. Ozzie
wanted that she didn't. She was a very she grew
up in entertainment. The thing was, Harriet had a contract
and I believe it was r KAO. I'm not sure.
She was in a film called Follow the Fleet with
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. She was a leader, and
so the problem that they had was between the radio

(10:40):
show their brand new family. Our uncle David was the
firstborn in nineteen thirty six. I believe they basically lived
completely separate for two years because of Ozzie's contracts in
Manhattan with his big band and Harriet in Hollywood making
motion pictures. So for David's first year of his life.
I think you all know how it is being in entertainment.

(11:02):
Sometimes you that's what you give up. But Ozzie raised
David by himself for almost two years, and of course
they communicate as much as they could. He would films.
I think part of the reason that Ozzie and Harriet
thing worked out was he would film tiny little films
of the baby growing up and put him in comedy sketches.
You know, there was one I think called kind of
What was that about David's hair? He put a wig

(11:23):
on the baby. Yeah, you know, yeah, I think it's
new hair for David. I think it was called they
called a doctor in and then he did this reveal
at the end, and there was a fright wig on
David and Harriet was It became a very funny thing.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
Like the original icons of that sort of couple, you know,
Variety show where you know, you could think back to
like George and Gracie, you could think of Jesse and Lucy,
or even Sonny and Chair.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
Right, here's the difference.

Speaker 5 (11:51):
I love this little this little bit too. They were
the first television family to sleep in the same bed.
The censors wouldn't allow it. If you listen to if
you look at all those early films, even with the
with Desi and and.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Lucy, Yeah, Lucy and and Desi, they had twin beds.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
Yeah, right, well because the and now we got the Kardashians,
but the censors wouldn't pass it. Back in the day,
you know, so basically, Oz, no one knew this. He
was an amazing person. He still holds a record as
a youngest Eagle Scout in history at twelve.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
And you were yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:23):
We were seven when he passed. He was you know,
we knew him as much as seven year olds could
know their grandfa. He was really really sweet. But he
he was actually one of these guys that just he
had that big band. He didn't read or write a
lick of music, and and he didn't let that stop him.
You know when when truly when doors would close, he

(12:44):
he would just do.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
His own thing.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
And that's why the family owns that television show to
this day. He graduated and graduated with a law degree
from Rutgers and no one knows that. So when he
would walk into meetings in Hollywood, I mean he totally
put them to sleep. And before anybody knew the family
owned the show, he was just one of those guys.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Sure, Grid and Street Smarts.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Totally pretty impressive.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
During a time where no one would even know to
ask for that or to want that, right, it was
so new that who would have even known that that was.

Speaker 5 (13:16):
Something Old West totally, It's a lot like it is
right now if you think about it, you guys, with
what's going on with the digital entertainment, digital economy, there
are no rules at this point.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Everybody's trying to make their way. So why we have
podcasts and stuff.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
But it's a good thing for artists because we can
finally take a little bit more control of the distribution
to get the connection with the fans and stuff were
before you had to go through the gatekeeper's like when
we started our music career.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
It's just that was the paradigm. You had to get
a record deal if you wanted to go national or international,
and then you had to play their game. And we
actually kind of went through that whole thing where we
started our own label after we left Geffen in the
early nineties and things independently, just basically by calling the
same people on the business cards that we kept and

(14:04):
all of the travels when we met all the local
record company guys, and so, well, we're not with with
Geffen anymore, would you guys like to work with us directly?

Speaker 3 (14:12):
And that worked really well for definitely.

Speaker 5 (14:14):
As a bloodline of Ozzie Nelson, he was, you know,
you make your own luck really, And what I was
thinking was today, how amazing it was that he and
Harriet had a wonderfully successful career relatively in the middle
of the depression. I mean, if you think about being
able to you guys live in Are you both still

(14:35):
in New York?

Speaker 3 (14:35):
I know, Christine, you are right.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, David's La Studio city where you grew up.

Speaker 5 (14:41):
Yeah. You know what, when we were on hold, you
mentioned the Frieman Overlook where everybody walks there, you know,
their dogs, And now that was our backyard growing up.
That was a fire trail with nothing but poison oak
and ticks, and it was awesome.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Phill is awesome. It's just a little bit more cleaned up. Well,
I'll tell you this.

Speaker 4 (14:57):
There's a line of fifty cars trying to get in
that parking lot every morning, but we can.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Walk there for every one of those.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
Well, we'll talk about some connections we have. I found
that out before we did the podcast. But what I
was thinking was Harriet was again she was kind of
a bigger deal than Ozzy and the way that they
teamed up way back when, and it transitioned into that
television thing even to the day she died. We were
very close with Harriet. She she made it all the
way through our successes. She used to come out on
the road with us from time to time. She thought
it was stop incredible and so we had. She was

(15:31):
just so funny and so classy. And it's funny you
mentioned Lucy. She basically had two best friends. She hung
out with Lucy Oball and and let me see, I
think it was uh.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
And it was Ginger.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
So those were Rogers, Yeah, Ginger Rogers. You guys grew
up really like in Hollywood Royalty, right in the middle
of Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
I mean, it's that must have been crazy.

Speaker 5 (15:57):
Well, they were just Grandpa and Grandma to us, right
and with our I mean, then our dad comes along
and kind of like changes everything. He was so freakishly
good looking, but he was also really humble and very
sweet and very normal around our house. Like to us,
we grew up in well at the top of Mulholland

(16:20):
and that kind of area when the whole Laurel Canyon
sound thing was going on.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Matt and I were born in sixty seven.

Speaker 5 (16:25):
When we were growing they literally pushed our cribs out
of the way to form a band he put together
called the Stone Canyon Band, which is credited as the
first true country rock band, And it was all born
out of that whole troubadour club scene that was going
on where you could see Joni Mitchell and Jackson Brown
and Linda Ronstadt and the Buffalo Springfield and stuff. That's
where the Stone Canyon Band was put together. So for

(16:46):
us growing up, you know, we had there are people
harmonizing in the hallways.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Everyone could write songs.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
It was a weekend for you just listening to it.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
It was normal.

Speaker 5 (16:57):
And we didn't know that pop was really special until
the first time they did a parent teacher meeting and
uh and it was the first time we saw our
teachers putting on their makeup because they heard that Ricky
was going to be coming down to the PTA.

Speaker 4 (17:09):
Right, just for our listeners, Gunner and Matthew's father is
Ricky Nelson. So this is now Ozzy and Harriet's where
did he fall in the age group?

Speaker 3 (17:20):
He was their son. He was their son. So the fourteen.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
David then Ricky, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
Right right, it was Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky and
they were on the radio show and then the TV
show and then when our dad was sixteen he started
singing on the show as a response to some really
went out on a date with that he wanted forever
because he grew up a famous TV guy and he wasn't.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Oh your father was a TV actor before.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
He was on Ozzy and Harriet. Oh god, yes, that's
where his music career.

Speaker 5 (17:50):
So he was a full on teen idol, right, yeah,
he was. Can you guys relate to that at all?
Maybe just a little bit, a little bit.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, he was.

Speaker 5 (18:01):
Actually like, like you mentioned in one of the first
well that the big difference was, remember, this was a
real family playing a real family. And the reason why
Ozzie was able to get past the censors and be
in the same bed is he went in front of
the censor board and told them, Hey, we're actually really married.
We're unlike those other people were just acting. We're actually
really married.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's probably why people loved it so much. Dude, they
did it was authentic.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Oh yeah, but that did happen, And you're right, Gunner.

Speaker 5 (18:28):
Just on a side note where you mentioned the teen
idol thing, Life Magazine came out to see our dad
in nineteen fifty eight on the set of his picture
Rio Bravo that he was making and they sent a
photographer and nobody could figure out the phenomenon that was
Ricky Nelson. At that point, he had the number one
TV show, the number one song in the country with
Poor Little Fool, and the number one picture, and it

(18:50):
never happened before or since, I don't think.

Speaker 4 (18:54):
Number one movie, number one song, number one TV show,
all at the same.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Time, all the same time.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
And they coined the phrase teen idol to describe him,
and it became to be to mean something else. But
on the cover of that Life magazine it says Ricky
Nelson teenage idol, and he actually had a song written
for him that went number one called teenage idol after that.
But the thing about our pop was he was under
an awful lot of pressure. You guys know that as
actors the show was so popular, and his music career

(19:22):
exploded because at the time you had to kind of
Ozzie Nelson knew what he had on the show if
you wanted to see Ricky singing turned into the end
of the show. And at the time it was unheard
of really to have that much happening on a weekly
television show. So ABC and we have the letter on
the wall sent a letter after that initial meteoric success saying,

(19:47):
if Ricky leaves the show, then we're going to cancel it.
So they did it in their way, you know, congratulating
singing and it's fantastic. We're all rooting for him just
a lot. And let you know, though, if he does
leave to do this full time, we're canceling the show.
So our dad was i think at the time seventeen
years old and had to make that decision to basically

(20:08):
keep his family on the air until nineteen sixty six,
and he did. So. That was one of the biggest
things that he had to deal with, is being such
a phenomenal star in his own right, having the burden
really of keeping the thirty five crew members and their
families employed, and even his own family.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
You know, hey, we're gonna fire a moment.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
That's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah, those those kinds of things.

Speaker 5 (20:29):
And you know, we respected him greatly because we never
saw him a celebrity moment. You know, we were very
close with our father, and he was such a sweet
man and he had that I don't even know what
to say. He had charisma on a level that you
didn't have to see him. You could feel him in
the room.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
It was that kind of Oh, I love that.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
Just a little backup of background for the viewers and
the listeners out there who are not familiar. There were
only two artists in the fifties, two rock and roll
artists ever to have number one albums.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
It was Elvis and Rickey. He sold half a billion
with a b singles.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
And the level of the success at the time, again,
the media was pretty new. Like when the world tuned
into The Family Show, no joke, the whole world. There
weren't a thousand channels there were. There were basically three
networks in a local wherever you lived at the time.
Literally America tuned in to watch that show and to
see if Ricky was going to sing. And it was

(21:27):
like success on the level with Brad Pitt and Justin
Bieber at their peaks combined.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
It was kind of like.

Speaker 5 (21:32):
That, Okay, and this this was him back in the day.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
That's a star.

Speaker 5 (21:43):
I don't know what the hell happened to me and Matt,
but you know he was a good looking guy.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
Yeah, well yes, no one, no one in our generation
can understand that type of fame.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
It doesn't exist really anymore.

Speaker 5 (21:56):
It doesn't, and it sucks because, like back in that day,
and it just is the new paradigm, but you were
celebrated for doing something worth. Celebrating your talent well, I mean,
think about it, with what you guys do. You had
to act, you had to be able to sing, you
had to be able to dance, you had to be
a triple threat. You just had to That's just the
way it was. And then they started going away from

(22:18):
that a little bit. And now with the currently what's
going on, it's kind of one of those things. If
everybody's special, then no one special, you know, and every
now and again, but every now and again. You know,
it's crazy when you have people my kids age, and
they see somebody sitting down with an acoustic guitar and
really rip it and sing and stuff. They're so not

(22:41):
used to things that aren't cut and pasted together and
tuned and tacked that it's special. And I think even
with the whole AI thing that's going on right now,
I think that it's going to revert back to a
little more of that triple threat talent standard. I think
we're going through a phase right now where you know,
basically it's kind of dumbing down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
But every now and again someone.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Pokes through is like, Wow, that person just gave a
scene that changed my life, or they came up with
a song that I needed to hear at this point
in my life right now as I'm fighting cancer, you know,
and it changes them and I don't know, I just
think that's what has kind of kept this family going
for all of these years is knowing. Like in Oz

(23:24):
and Harriet's time, they knew that the family they created
on television for people was a surrogate family to millions
of people who did not have.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
A good family at home.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
They always knew that they could rely on the Nelson
family every single week. Not to be preachy, you know,
Grandpa never was proselytizing like the other shows like Father
Knows Best. You know, things just tended to work out.
And the real difference was the archetype. For shows like
Seinfeld and all that. Back then, the standard at that
point was the father was the guy who always had
it together. Ozzy was the first guy that made Harriet

(23:57):
the one that had it together, and he was the
guy falling off the latter nice yeah, and so there
were a lot of firsts there wouldn't have been a
Cosby show. There wouldn't have been The Brady's or the
Partridges or any of that stuff. It was really the
first show that really did that.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
I have to just mention another show that was groundbreaking,
A real family with Ozzy as the father and Sharon
as the one who.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Had it together.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
I mean, The Osbourne was really the first family reality show.
But it sounds like almost like a mirror of what
Ozzie and Harriet was.

Speaker 5 (24:31):
It was. It came to us when they actually put
that show on the air for the first time, and
I don't know why it fell through. I thought it
would be hilarious to do like a split screen difference
between then and now. Yeah, like the only difference was where,
you know, where Ozzie or Ozzie could write, produced, direct, editing,
star in all four hundred and thirty five episodes and
run a family like a real family at the same
time the other Ozzie can't find his car keys.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Right, Yeah, that was the comedy though.

Speaker 5 (24:57):
To pitch that show, the working title for it was
the New Ozzie and Harriet.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
So oh yeah, it sounds exactly what you just described
about your grandparents show.

Speaker 5 (25:08):
Sure, they did all those pitches and that's what it was.
And you know that show, by the way, so many
people were on that show that wound up being huge stars.
I mean Mary Tyler Moore was the hot point girl,
so she would do the commercials between the episodes. Our
dad's best friend, the Kent McCord, was the lead in
Adam twelve and the seventies. So of course our uncle

(25:29):
Mark I believe, got his Screen Actors Guild card working
with Ozzie on set and became Gibbs on NCIS.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
So yes, Mark Harmon is our uncle. That's our mom's brother.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
So we have idea, no idea.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Your entertainment tentacles in your family just go on forever.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
I'm glad if you used the n I'm glad you
put the end in the middle of that word. David Berg,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
We're talking about all of this talent that was around
you and when, at what moment in time, like it
was for you in your blood like you said it
was those weekends and the band in your home, and
were you always picking up instruments, were you two singing together?
When did when did it click? And when did you
both know? This is something we have to do like

(26:26):
this is our calling.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
It's a great question.

Speaker 5 (26:28):
I think Matthew and I both have the moment when
that when we made that connection. For me, I talked
to my mom about it before she passed, and she
asked me what my first memory was, and I said, well,
I remember sitting on like an apple crate on the
side of the stage at a theater they.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Had at Knotsbury Farm in Buena Park.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
It was called the Good Time Theater back in the
day and stuff, and our dad was performing and I
made this connection like the audience was excited, he was
having a great time. I just thought, man, this is
something that I want to do. And I asked my
mom about that, and she goes, Gunner, you were one
and a half. Yeah, yeah, And I thought I was

(27:08):
like three or four because you were one and a half.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
I remember that show.

Speaker 5 (27:12):
And from that point on I was banging on pots
and pans in the kitchen and I wanted to be
a drummer and do that whole thing. And fortunately for me,
they got tired of that and they went down to
a Ventura Boulevard and they bought a beat to crap
old drum set and from a pawn shop.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
And they put us out.

Speaker 5 (27:28):
We lived actually on a little gentleman farm there where
you live, David in the valley, and they had a
hayloft over the barn, so they put us out in
the barn so we wouldn't disturb anybody. And then Matthew
got his first base right after that. We were five
when that happened, and then we just yeah, I was six.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, we just really never looked back.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
We did, like a lot of kids did, playing along
to records and stuff, and our dad would come back
off the road every now and again and check in
on us, and sure enough we were still doing it.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
How did Ricky Nelson feel about you guys following into
into the music business.

Speaker 5 (28:04):
Well, I'm sure the same way his father felt about
him getting into the music business too, because remember, you know,
Oz had his own big band right and his success
and loved music more than anything. That was his first love,
more than TV radio anything. He just loved singing and performing.
And then when our dad started doing it, it was
a real boond it to Ozzy because he had been forced,

(28:26):
for better or worse, to quarterback the television show and
he'd been denied going on the road and playing his music.
So when Pop started to record, he got to be like,
there was no such thing as a producer in the
studio back then rock and roll was brand new. But
he got to kind of live vicariously through our dad
and be at the sessions and that, and that was wonderful.
And our dad, you know, he was man. He was

(28:47):
the hardest working guy. He was doing shows up into
three hundred days a year up until the day he died.
So we didn't see him as much as we would
have loved to. We always knew that he loved us,
and he was out working to support the family as
a lot lot of parents have to do.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
And we really bonded on the music. That was a
really great thing.

Speaker 5 (29:05):
That was the common language, was that excitement for creating
and writing songs and performing songs was something that we love.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
We all shared, we did, and we really knew how
deep it was.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
You know, we talked to his manager quite a bit
about what you were asking about how he felt about
us getting into it.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
We'd never really knew until he told us.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
Your dad was so pumped about it, and he was
so happily surprised that you stuck with it and for
Gunner and I. It wasn't like a hobby. It was like,
this is what we're going to do. So we worked
very hard at it. Wrote our first song around the
age of eleven ourselves and our dad surprised us on
our twelfth birthday.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
He punked us first.

Speaker 5 (29:46):
He said, you guys have a dentist appointment, so you
got some feelings to take care of and they only
could get you in on your birthday.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
It picked us up late.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
Our mother showed up in the station wagon, which was unusual,
and Gonna and I were so pissed off about having
to go to the dentist. We didn't even put it together.
We had a bad attitude all the way to the
Quote Dentis office and walked in arguing over who was
going to get filled first, and there was our dad
waving from behind some control room glass. It was a
little recording studio in the valley, and we recorded our

(30:20):
first song with him producing Oh wow, and so all
the family came into the studio.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
We had cake.

Speaker 5 (30:26):
These great ladies came and sang backup vocals, and we
found out later it was the Pointer sisters. You know,
we had a totally normal childer though Gunner and I
absolutely wore out that cassette tape of that one song
and we actually put it on one of our albums.
We've released seventeen so far, and we put it on
one of our albums as a hidden track, a bonus track.

(30:47):
About the a minute into the end of the last song,
it comes up, Matthew sounds like Alvin, I sound like Theodore.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Can you tell us which album it's on and what track?

Speaker 3 (30:58):
We have to find?

Speaker 5 (30:59):
A album called Life. Gundry gonna put on the End
of Life.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
It's on the End of Life. It's a hidden track.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
Yeah, and song is called Feelings of Love and they
were protean at the time, but I had them and
that was it. It was a little pop song. And
we were already starting to play clubs in La by
the time we were twelve and thirteen years old.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
There was the big club was Madam Wong's.

Speaker 5 (31:22):
Madam Wong's was a big LA club West and they
had one in Chinatown and one on the West side
off of Wiltshire, and that's where you wanted to play
if you wanted to do anything. And a lot of
people lumped us in later on because we had long
hair into that whole La metal thing, which we had
no part of at all. We actually grew up in
punk rock, psychobilly new wave clubs in Los Angeles, playing

(31:47):
with people that were much older than us. We were
too young to actually get into the front door, but
we could play the shows and then leave immediately and
it was it was wonderful. We still meet people that
remembered us from back then. We had a conversation with
Pat Smeir from the Foo Fighters, who said, Hey, man,
I really wanted to come to your band, The Strange Agents.
You guys were twelve and we all knew about you
and the Germs, which was like a seminal punk band.

(32:09):
It was one of those moments ago, Wow, that's cool.
We've done a lot, but that was a cool one.

Speaker 4 (32:17):
What a unique experience about So then, yeah, growing up
and now playing clubs at twelve and thirteen, yep.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yeah, yeah's to us. Remember it was our normal.

Speaker 5 (32:28):
I mean people don't believe this, but you don't know
any differently when you're a kid, you know, you're in
your environment and stuff. We thought everybody should know how
to harmonize, like for real, Like it's like breathing, right,
it was always around us at all times.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Someone was always writing a song.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
Our next door neighbor was George Harrison who would come
over for breakfast and listen to records and stuff. And
Bob Dylan was always in the living room writing that
check this out. Our babysitter was Mama Cass Elliott from
the Mom was in a pub.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
Okay, stop, have you written in a book yet? You
need to document all these stories.

Speaker 5 (33:04):
I'm telling you people that I know. Gunner that kind
of had even more of that going on. We're our
friends the Zappa's because Frank Zappa's house up on mohone.
I think Lady Gaga owns it now unless she sold it.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
That place.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
When we started hanging out with Dweezel, Moon Moon found
a toy store on Ventura Boulevard said you got to
meet my brother we you know, he was on MTV
as a VJ at the time.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
We really hit it off. We wrote some songs. So
we wrote a.

Speaker 5 (33:28):
Song for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure that became the
title cut called Two Heads Are Better Than One with
him and we were hanging out there and on a
given day, well there was that one day, Gunner, it
was River Phoenix jammed with us, Beverly D'Angelo, Beverly D'Angelo
flirted with us, and Alyssa Milano ignored us.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
So that was in one day. The Zappa House a.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Great It's so funny that you talk about the Zappa House.
Our son went to preschool with Moon's kid and for
a field trip. This is so la. For a field trip,
we got to bust the kids. I went because Moon
is a friend also and I was a chaperone, and

(34:13):
we got these little preschool kids getting a tour of
the Zappa House like it's the most la preschool experience.
And the kids, of course had no idea. It just
was a cool house, like it's just but the parents
and the teachers were like taking photos and yeah, a
lot went on and Moon was just would point things

(34:34):
out and say that's where, that's where that happened to
me there, and that's where this is. And it sounds
like your house was very similar.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, we spent a lot of time with Moon and
Weasel up at that place. But you know, when your
sons and daughters of and all that, I mean, we're
really tight with Carnie and Wendy as well of the
Wilson family, and I mean we used to Matthew and
I used to do swim class with those girls when
we were toddlers. You know, it's just, you know, folks
are there in la and and they're working, and that's
your normal, and you know, everybody's on their own path

(35:05):
and all that kind of stuff. But it's not beyond
reason to have been either training in acting since you
were a little kid and being on Cereal commercials and
all that kind of stuffed working your way up. And
it's the same thing in music. But our path was
a little tougher. As matt mentioned, we started so young
that we actually had to get escorted into the clubs
with an adult and escorted out, and we did that

(35:28):
all the way from twelve to eighteen, and then our
father passed away.

Speaker 4 (35:33):
I was going to say, it sounds so idyllic up
until that. If you guys are able to talk about it,
I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
We aren't. Trategy well, we were living with them at
the times.

Speaker 5 (35:45):
Our parents had a really rough Hollywood divorce and it
went on forever and it was really paint all the
way through the end of grade school for us, through
high school and back then the courts were always putting
the kids with the mom no matter what, and respectfully,
we never really got along with our mother because we

(36:05):
reminded her of our father and she always played the
music industry and him being gone all the time for
the demise of the marriage, and hear me and Matthew
paying high school seniors because we couldn't drive yet to
drive us to and from rehearsals and our club dates
and stuff, and I guess it triggered her in a sense,
and she was.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Pretty difficult on us.

Speaker 5 (36:25):
She had a few problems with substances and all that,
and we actually found our solace in our relationship with
each other and playing music.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
That's what really saved us, you know.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
And it was just kind of like one of those
things for us. Is all the kids of pretty much
have very similar stories, Like Carney and Wendy had a
really complex relationship with their own father as well, because
when you're creative, you know how it is. I mean,
the toughest thing for all of us is trying to

(36:55):
be open to inspiration and still be a fully functioning,
same human being in the real world. It's a very
fine line between the two, and that's kind of always
been my challenge. Matthew's been a lot more grounded than
I've been, you know, through the years. But a lot
of the grounding and motivation for me comes with the
fact that if we go in and play a theater
gig to this day, it's still to this day the

(37:17):
theaters that go back one hundred years. I'll find playbills
of when the Ozzy and Harriet Orchestra were there in
nineteen thirty, and then our father played there with both incarnations,
both his teen idol phase when he was doing the
rockabilly thing and the country rock thing ten years later,
and then Matthew and I are playing it. It makes
me feel like our ancestors are still around and we're

(37:39):
still representing, and we're still doing what the family's always done,
and it's what's always been normal.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
That's so beautiful. I read something that you, one of
you said that you'll stay your connection to your fans,
and this makes sense just hearing the sort of reverence
you have for your family's history, but that you'll stay
for and shake hands with fans for whoever stays. You'll
stay as long as there are people, and sometimes that's

(38:04):
longer than the show itself.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
What's the record, Matt fourteen and a half hours?

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Come on.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
It was back in the day, of course, it was
back in the day when Matt looked like Cheryl Tigus
and I looked like Farah Fawcet.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
For the well had similar hair.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
For sure.

Speaker 5 (38:24):
Yeah, I know that back in the day that would
have been considered short, Christine.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Does you know, But yeah, that was true. We did.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
We did the promotion stuff, and it was when MTV
was actually really playing videos and it was a different time,
of course, but there were some some instances where so
many people showed up and the cops were really really
concerned about it, and we just let everybody know, Hey,
we're going to stay as long as it takes to
meet everybody who wants to meet us.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
And that was really kind of a stupid thing to say.
We we live, but.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
It's a beautiful sentiment. Yeah, you wanted to respect people
that showed up as a fan.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
You know.

Speaker 5 (38:59):
We did one thing in Framingham, mass that one that
went fourteen and a half hours, and we had to
calm the crown the crowd down back then, and they
took advantage of it. Everybody went home, took a shower,
got a meal, then they came back again. It just
was I think we hit some people three times, so
it was like, here's the trade off. I think I've

(39:19):
thought about this a lot because with what you do,
what's beautiful is the work that you do is forever,
Especially when you do a film, it's forever.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Right.

Speaker 5 (39:29):
A new generation is going to come up and they're
going to watch a movie and you're going to be
a part of their lives forever. And the thing that
we get that I don't think you get a lot
is that we get. Grandma Harriet always said, the family
has never been here's a secret. The family's never been
in the entertainment business. We've never been in the music business.
We've never been in the acting business. We've been in

(39:50):
the connection business. So I always keep that in mind,
and being musicians first, we have the unfair advantage of
being able to one on one connect with our fans,
which I don't think you get the blessing to do
a lot unless you run into somebody in a grocery
store or something, or like what you're doing right now
is what we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Well, we're about to go to nineties con in Hartford, Connecticut, tomorrow,
I think one hundred thousand people we've never done anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
Then you're going to get a taste of our lives.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
We won't be fourteen hours though in one day. But
you guys were so recognizable too at a certain time.
There was a number of years where I'm sure you
could not walk down the street. What was Christine and
I always ask people that experience that kind of fame,
you know, not quickly, but in an intense period of time,

(40:41):
what was it like at that peak to live your life?

Speaker 5 (40:45):
Wowtt I think Math's perception is going to be different
than mine. It it was honestly here here. You can
never prepare yourself for that type of explosion. Gunn and
I always thought we were in the farm club, kind
of growing up in the family that we had and
working on it since we were younger. And I remember

(41:06):
we had done a couple of months of pre release promotion,
going out to small markets and playing live and singing
acoustic because I remember at that time Milli Vanilli was a
big deal and it was actually raised to have anything
on tape. So Gunner and I come looking like Milli
Vanilla about to release a record, and we had to
prove vanilla. So we went all over the country, worked

(41:29):
very hard for about three months before that. I mean,
it really wore us out. And I remember we got
a phone call about doing a guest hosting thing on
a television well it was called dial MTV on MTV.
Daisy Plantez was the host. She was taking a vacation
for a week and could we host, And of course
you say yes to everything.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah, of course we could do that. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (41:48):
We've never done that before. We've done other things. But
Gunner and I went to the Sherman Oaks Galleria which
was there at the time. Actually Moon sang about it
in Valley Girl and got some Gunner underwear socks and.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Went on a plane before this, before we.

Speaker 5 (42:02):
Went from La to film at Roby Fellers and do
the whole week of MTV thing. We were just local
boys there in Studio City, going to the local mall,
getting on underwear and stocks and everything was fine and
no one cared. Yeah, filmed help us kind of thing.
And the week after we were coming back, we said, hey,
we're going to be back here in about a week
to do a record signing thing. Was the first one

(42:24):
that we had scheduled as our record was dropping, and
Gunnar and I went and we did that one week
on MTV and it started. We were completely wooden at
the beginning and really stilted, and then we just kind
of began owning the place and we were playing acoustic
versions of our songs between the bumps, and it was
really fun and it kind of kind of game a
really cool hang and at the end of the show,

(42:46):
you know, you count down ten to one the most
popular videos or requested videos, i should say in America
and kids back then had to actually use an actual
telephone with a cord attached to it.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
And it was a very popular.

Speaker 5 (42:57):
Show was before TRL And on the Friday show they
had us announced the number one song and they didn't
show us what it was, but we debuted at number
one with our first song, Love and Affection, and it
kind of like our dad's thing did when he sang
on Aussie and Hair the first time. Everybody couldn't believe
how it just exploded. We didn't expect that because we

(43:18):
went home to do that in store thing and we
hadn't really seen anybody. They picked us up in a
car and got us to the Sherman Oaks Galleria our
record person that worked with the label was there talking
to the record store owner, and the record store owner
was visibly sweating and nervous, and I said, what's going on?

Speaker 3 (43:36):
I said, just trust us. We're not going to say anything.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
And we took the elevator up to the top floor
of the record store was you know, the back the
back room the record store, and they opened up the
elevator and it sounded like a jet engine. It was
nothing but teenage girls screaming, just screaming, and when the
under and eye this wave hit us and we just
really you never expect that. We think it's going to

(44:00):
build into something or whatever. But it was kind of
like Donna, look at me, I look at It was like, well,
and here it is, let's go. And the police actually
closed that one down. It was all three levels of
the mall were filled with people there for an instore
and it kind of it was like we called it
the world's longest overnight success. There's so much more to
it than this, but in a nutshell, that's kind of

(44:21):
what it was. It was. For me, it was kind
of like a be careful what you wish for, yeah,
sort of thing, because in the beginning Oh, of course
it's Look, fandom is awesome, it's wonderful, it's great, and
we're appreciative, sincerely for it. But you're right, the image
was so strong of the two guys with the long
blonde hair thing that it got to the point when

(44:42):
we were out on there you go, beau beautiful hair
like yours, Christine. Yeah, but it got to the point
where when we were on tour, especially going across the Midwest,
where we really caught our lick or kind of our people.
You know, we always struggled with New York and LA
just in general because we've never been cool enough for

(45:03):
New York or LA. We basically couldn't go out on
days off ever together without creating a situation, right, And
that was really matter moment. Well, it was kind of
lonely because you know, Matt's my best friend. We just
kind of wanted to, you know, hang out and decompress.
It was just a lot of pressure. You know, you're,

(45:23):
as Matt mentioned, you're employing forty five people on a
tour and you're twenty years old and you're trying to
keep it all together. And so we were playing six
nights a week all across the country, we're really on
a tear and it does catch.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
Up with you, caught up with me.

Speaker 5 (45:38):
I mean, I had in the middle of the tour
a massive anxiety attack. And you know, neither one of
us have ever been drinkers or druggers and all that,
so you know, we never relied on chemical help because
of our mom's issues, so we just had to kind
of ride it all out. And again when we when
we saw the backside of that whole thing, we were
really like the last band and you do a show
about the nineties, we were the last confidence rock band

(46:01):
before Gruns hit. As a matter of fact, they signed
a little band out of Seattle called Nirvana on our
own late when we're in the middle of our tour,
and the paradigm shift was as extreme, if not more extreme,
than the death of disco.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
When that happened like.

Speaker 5 (46:16):
Overnight, like on a Tuesday, you're living on a prayer
and on a Wednesday, everyone was smelling like teen spirit
and it was that was it.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
You know, the fashion was already in the gap.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Dependsulum swings hard. You know, you guys are very you know.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
And it's tough, but you know, we come from a
long line of people who have persevered through every form
of media, every societal changed. A matter of fact, I mean,
the Famili's in the Smithsonian for that reason. It's been
kind of a barometer for America for the last hundred
years in a subtle way. But we've always tried. Each
generation has tried to do something that was relevant for

(46:53):
their time, you know, and in doing I mean the
things we have no saying what our ancestors, but we
are the only family in history with three generations and
number one hit makers in it. It's yeah, big band rockabilly,
arena rock and stuff. So everybody's done something different, but

(47:13):
you know, I think the best way to explain.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
That would be the same way.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
It's like if we grew up wanting to play football
and we were Manning's right, it was always around or
like we were a member of the Force family and
we wanted to be drag racers. It's just always your normal,
and it's been your normal for your father, for your
father's father.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
It's just what the family's always done.

Speaker 5 (47:37):
So for us it was just like truly not only normal,
but the blessing in that, I mean nepotism has really
not helped us.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Actually kind of hindered us.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
You know, we've always had to overprove ourselves, which is fine.
We wouldn't have it any other way.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
But Harriet always said, your name can get you in
the door, but your talent keeps you in the room.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
You've got to be able to throw down man you've
got when the camera goes, you've got to be able
to really bring it right.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
But at one and a half, you remember seeing your
father perform and that sparked something in you.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
And it's great social proof. Think about it, David.

Speaker 5 (48:12):
It's just great proof with your own eyes, in your
own environment that it's possible to do that at the
highest of levels right because you're seeing it in front
of you. You don't have any excuses anymore. You know,
you've got to be able to but you have to
put in the work. There's no substitute for that, at least,
at least back then, there was no substitute for the work.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
You know.

Speaker 5 (48:32):
Now you can fudge a lot of things. But we've
had the greatest job in the world sincerely our entire lives,
and we feel so blessed to do what we do,
and we've met millions of people We've literally toured the
world and elsewhere and the only thing in common was
the bond we have with each other, the songs we
write and the acoustic guitars we play. You know, it's
been a passport to an amazing life. And here we

(48:55):
are at the end of the world and we're fiddling
while Rome is burning, and we're doing our part to
be those guys on the deck of the Titanic while
it's going down, you know, but just doing the best
we can do.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
If I can put my little journalist cap on for
a second, because I was very excited to meet you guys,
and I did a little research. So I was looking
at videos and reading articles, and you know, because your face,
it's just your family. It's you know, my husband Ben come.
You know, his parents were still are and Mirra and
so the Ozzie and Harriet has always been sort of
referenced in there comedy act and all of those things.

(49:35):
I saw something that you guys said, and it speaks
to everything you just talked about. First of all, that nepotism, Yes,
it helped get you in the door. You could get
your handheld going into clubs, but you guys really did
have the talent to back it up. And then when
exactly what you just talked about with Nirvana and that
like mid nineties that I'm going to use. I wrote

(49:58):
this down because I love this so great. This was
about your follow up album. I think this was ninety five,
because they can't do that.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Because they can't. I'll tell you the best review we've
ever gotten was from that record. You tell what you're
gonna tell, and I'll tell you what. Well.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
I was just going to say, well this quote, first
of all, because you said you were never cool enough
to be in New York and I let you said
we've always been treated like guilty until proven innocent, which
I thought was so powerful to say, like people had
an opinion, they had something to say. And then you
followed it up talking about this record saying this record
represented hope, positivity, personal empowerment to an entire generation. The

(50:38):
timeless message has continued to resonate with generations since. And
like that is so beautiful to me. I was like,
that is what it's all about. Like you just you stayed,
you stayed, you endured, you did the work, and you're
here like you're still doing it well.

Speaker 5 (50:57):
Well, the perception and the reality were different. Here's what
made it so easy for us. The perception is we
were a couple of trust fund kids were doing this
as a hobby, grew up with millions of dollars in
a silver spoon and open doors and all that. Now,
that's the perception. No one's ever going to not look
at us that way. The truth was completely the opposite.
The only thing we really had was each other and

(51:18):
our money. We were because of the divorce, we were
the poorest kids in a wealthy neighborhood, and that sucks because.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
I'd rather be a poor kid in a poor neighborhood.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
You know. We've spent a lot of time doing that too,
you know, so that part of it was difficult. But
the reality was Matthew and I've always had our music
to get us through all of that stuff, and we
really focused on what we felt was important, which was
catering to the same nerds that Matthew and I are
and always have been. We were never the popular kids.

(51:48):
Matthew and I were the kids playing in punk bands
when we were kids. We had blue hair, and we
were not the popular kids at school, and we.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Were the guys like they have terms for it now,
simp as a good one.

Speaker 5 (52:02):
But we were the guys that, like all the hot
chicks used to come to and talk to about all
their problems with their dirt bad boyfriends that would treat
them like crap.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
I would make them.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Feel better about themselves and they go right back to
that boy.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
We were those guys. So we started writing music and
playing music with that in mind.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
But I think about this though.

Speaker 5 (52:22):
Hunnard, your misery became platinum because then I can't live
without your love and affection. Voted the number two stalker
song by MTV of all time, of all time. The
trusted friend you were, you were now the other only
beaten by every breath you take by the police.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
This is true. That's a good fact, Matthew.

Speaker 5 (52:42):
But you know the quote that you just said, Christine
was really based on that.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
That's the way Matthew and I really felt. Yeah, we
were never We never.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
Wanted to cater to the eighty five percent of the
people at the time that were rocking guns n' roses.
We were We were trying to cater to the fifteen
percent of people who are always the one pulling up
the back wall at the dance and not dancing the
people who who grew up with if they were lucky

(53:10):
one equally quirky friend. The fact was that Ozzy, of
course a band leader, then becomes a television pioneer because
he directed the show. He invented a whole bunch of
camera techniques like the over the shoulder, all this kind
of stuff that they still use today. Never even nominated
for one Emmy in that run, not one. Our father
sold half a billion records in his career, had a
career lasting thirty plus years in multiple formats. Not a

(53:34):
single Grammy. Gunner and I never nominated for anything either,
And that's because and I see this when Gunner's saying
that LA and New York, well, we know that's kind
of where the business has been historically run from.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
Those aren't really our peeps.

Speaker 5 (53:49):
Ironic. Now we know all those people, they hang with us,
but it's they've never really let us in that gate.
And to be honest with you, looking at things happening now,
we've talked about this odd you know, there's a lot
of we knew there was a lot of weird stuff
around us when we were growing up or whatever, but
we didn't identify with those people. We as Gunner said,

(54:09):
we were. To us, our career has kind of been
revenge of the Nerds, and we love that.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
But Grandma said, you guys, your family's in the connection business,
connection with the audience, not the Grammy voters.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
You know.

Speaker 5 (54:23):
We were also pretty We're pretty lucky too. We had
a unique situation where we spent three quarters of the
year in LA in the beginning when there was family
money going to private schools, doing all that, and then
we spent all our summers ten weeks a year every
year at a working cattle ranch in northern California and Susanville, California,
hanging out with people that take two showers a day,
not one. And because of that experience, when we started

(54:47):
touring and started meeting people who actually get up at
four in the morning and provide the life that we
all enjoy on the coasts, we know those people because
we are those people. So that's we stay for so
long after shows and meet everybody.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
That's why we take it so seriously. We know what
that is and it's unfortunate.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
But there's so many people in New York and LA
that turn their nose up at the people that we love,
and we feel that we really feel a kinship too.
But that's really what our whole music career has been about,
was giving a little peak of hope and some inspiration
to some people who actually have some pretty pretty common
dark days, you know, in their lives, and they're dealing

(55:28):
with a lot, especially nowadays.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
I mean, the.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
COVID era has just wiped out so many of the
people that we make music for, where you know, more
fortunate people were able to ride through that a lot
more elegantly. You know, we buying a concert ticket is
a lot for people nowadays. I mean it's expensive and
getting the sitter and doing all that. So it's the
least we can do is really taking that part of it, seriously,

(55:52):
giving folks an escape for a couple of hours in
their week where they don't think about their taxes and
their income and the problems with their kids and all
that stuff. They can kind of escape. That's the way
we've always approached our shows. That's what we've always wanted
to do.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
Amazing attitude.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Yeah, it really is, and I just I'm really just
like looking at you guys and thinking to that I
didn't get to say it because I wanted to keep
hearing the story, but that twelfth birthday moment, and like,
I really started to well up and got goosebumps when
you said you walked in and your dad is standing
there in a sound booth, and everybody like, how amazing?

(56:32):
Just what an incredible, incredible story and the fact that
you're still doing it and you guys are just so normal.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
I love you guys live from each other.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Humble and cool, and you wore the cowboy hat for us.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
And your appreciation for your family and your roots is amazing.
And thank you for walking us through all of those stories,
because honestly, I can see why your family is in
the Smithsonian. Those are historic, amazing stories that now we'll
have on this audio forever.

Speaker 5 (57:06):
Well, David, We're all connected. That's what Gunnar and I
really feel. As a matter of fact, I was kind
of doing my research too, and I listened to a
bit of your podcast. You did a reunion with the
cast of California Dreams and yeah, yeah, my wife lived
with Michael Caide for two years at his house in
Studio City, which they're working their friends and stuff. So

(57:27):
it was you guys were talking about that. It's like,
you know, LA could basically be two degrees of Michael Caide.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Everybody knows that well, he didn't show up. He was
the one.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
He forgot about it or something.

Speaker 5 (57:39):
You know what he probably did. He couldn't figure out
the zoom thing like it took.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Me exactly full circle.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
You guys, tell us are you touring?

Speaker 3 (57:48):
We are.

Speaker 5 (57:49):
We're actually we're going, believe it or not, to Los
Angeles to play three club dates in a row.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Next week we're.

Speaker 5 (57:55):
Playing at the Coach House in San Juan cap Astrano
at the Canyon Clubs.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
One is Gunner was the first show.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
Twenty first is the Canyon Club in Montclair, Montclair, right,
and then the next day we're playing the Canyon Club
in Agra, and then the next day after that, the
twenty third we're playing at the Coach House.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
Was at the San Juean Capistrano Astrano.

Speaker 5 (58:19):
And what makes it special is last summer we got
kind of an emergency call. They really didn't know who
to call.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
Gunner.

Speaker 5 (58:25):
I had kind of mothballed the Nelson, the Big Nelson
Rock show for a long time. We were doing other
things and somebody got sick, they had a heart issue,
and there were sixteen shows on a multi band like
a what do they call that Amphitheater summer tour, and
it was bands like Leada, Ford, Slaughter, Warrant, Winger, Firehouse,

(58:47):
all the hair bands, and they're all friends of ours.
We love them, we've played with them, but we've never
brought Nelson we headlined back in the day.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
We didn't.

Speaker 5 (58:55):
We weren't really think. We went out with Cinderella and
Lynch Mob. Yes, different era, and it was a long time,
but we actually had two and a half weeks and
we put the band back together, did the whole set
that leaned heavily on the first album that everybody had,
the After the Rain album, and in two and a
half weeks we had new scenery, new merchandise, out on

(59:15):
the road with our own sound system, working with these
iconic bands, and we thought, kind of like what we
always do, well, we'll see how this goes and how
they receive us, because we've been away from that for
so long and we got such it was apparent to us.
We got such overwhelmingly positive response from it, probably because
they hadn't seen us in a long time and they
were happy we're still alive. But the other thing, too,
was that all those other bands done nothing but play.

(59:38):
That's the same thing over and over again for all
that time, and we were kind of we were old,
but we were fresh. And so that's what we're bringing
to LA is that band that we did that tour with,
and we're going to continue that because apparently Gunner and
I are now nostalgic so in.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Our own Hey, welcome to our club.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Everybody. We to kill if we can't be killed. We're
like the Erminator.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
It's new blood. It's we're interesting again, right, Who knew you? Guys?

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
This was so awesome, honestly, so nice to talk to
you and meet you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Yeah, I can thank you enough.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
Seriously.

Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
We're really looking forward to this and it's again for
all the joy you guys have given us in your
works over the years. Thank you very much, and I
hope we made some new friends. We'll see you on
the road at some point. I'm sure we'll run in yes, Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Yeah, good luck on the California shows. I'm going to
look up when the Agora one is. That's the closest
one to me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Yeah, well, you guys, I shall never get a call,
all right, you guys, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
You're the best thanks guys, bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Really we're such great guys, right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
That was fascinating. I could have really truly talked to
them for another hour. And I say that a lot
with people, but it was like, genuinely, there was so
so many different hallways we could have gone down because
it just a family alone, and you know, just they
had to deal with a lot, a lot, a lot

(01:01:07):
their dad.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
Yes, I mean also like being you know, almost rock
stars and playing clubs at twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Yeah, then their dad dies in a.

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Car crash after a plane they said, a horrible divorce
that they went through. Yeah, and these guys lived clean
and sober and relied on each other and the music
and look, I mean they're just well adjusted, happy, cool guys.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
Yeah, thank god.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Just amazing, really really cool. And you should go to
see them in Agora. It's not that far.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
GORAA is not that far now, that would be so cool,
not that far.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Just get get, get in your car, get on the
one oh one.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
To the five. I can't live you Love.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
I was listening to their music all morning and I
really want to find that hidden track from their twelfth
birth day. Oh yeah, that's thanks you for life love.
I forget I already forget what they said it was,
but we luckily this is all recorded, so we'll be
able to listen to it. There's so much anyway, Yes,
thanks for listening, everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Yes, all right, have a great week.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Thanks for listening. Make sure to subscribe and give us
five stars

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
And please follow us on Instagram at Hey Dude the
nineties called See you next time.