December 12, 2025 • 26 mins
The legendary saxophonist Kenny G joins Scott to chat about his prolific jazz career.
He may have been insulted by Paris in Season 3, but his career is nothing to be burned by. Kenny reveals what he does daily to stay on top of his game.
Plus, Kenny shares plenty of memories over his 50 year career! Including how he almost didn’t make it in the music business because he made a world renowned producer upset.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am all in.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Let's you.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
This isn't old man music with Scott Patterson everything You've
ever wanted to know about the music of Gilmore Girls.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am al and Podcast one
to eleven productions. Iheartradiomedia, iHeart Podcast. This is an old
man music with the one and only. You know him,
you love him. Kenny G. Let me tell you something
(00:36):
a little bit about Kenny G. Kenny G is a
jazz saxophonist, composer, and record producer. Nineteen eighty six album
duo Tones bottom commercial success. Kenny G is one of
the best selling artists Ready for This of all time,
with global sales totally more than seventy five million records,
(00:58):
making him also the best selling instrumentalist in history. So
season three, episode nineteen, Gilmore Girls teg Max Paris shows
up at the boosters club meeting, tells all the moms
how moronic it is to host grad night on a yacht.
This is when we first hear your music in the show.
(01:25):
Also season seven, episode five, The Great Stink We Hear Songbird,
Great Lorelized car. You began at a very young age
and you played in Barry White's Orchestra, Barry White's Orchestra.
At seventeen, you're a prodigy. Yeah, how did you first
(01:46):
find it in saxophone? And when did you personally decide
you sounded good?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh? Well, you know, I just like every you know,
other student in US the school system. At fourth grade,
it's like that's your year to get an instrument. And
at least it was in the seventies when I went
to school. I'm not sure if it's exactly that way today.
I think it is. And I was always attracted to
(02:14):
the sacks. I don't know why exactly. I just saw
someone on TV playing it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
You know that. I didn't even have any idea what
was going on. I just saw this guy stand up
to you a sax solo, and I thought, well, that's cool.
I'd like to I play that instrument. So after one
I picked and I started and I just loved it.
I loved it in the fourth grade. And you know
(02:36):
how many fifties, sixty years later or whatever how many
years that is, I still love it. I practiced this
morning like they do every morning. I put my three
hours in. I'm excited to wake up tomorrow and do
the same thing. I've been feeling the same way since
I was a kid. So when did I thought I
sounded good? God man, I'm seriously you know today, Like
(03:00):
I'll tell you, out of the seventy shows that I
play a year, I might say two or three I
thought I sounded really good, and the rest I'm just
struggling to try to get better. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It's the same way.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So your album Duotones marked a major breakthrough with the
track Songbird featuring Seed seven.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
How did your music career and your personal life change
after that?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
After the success of that big time, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Everything changed. Everything changed. Well, the successive Songbird happened in
a great way for me personally because I went against
all of the wishes of my record company, who was
headed by Clive Davis, who was adamant that there was
going to be this other song that was going to
be the song that was going to be promoted. When
(03:53):
I got the chance to do the Tonight Show, which
was basically my manager at the time strong arming the
people of Tonight's Show to make them have a sax
player on the show because they had no interest in
having me on the show. But he just he leveraged
George Benson to get me to be on the on
the Tonight Show.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Is this Johnny Carson is Johnny Carson?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So hey, you want George Benson? You got to let
the sax kid have a shot. We don't. We could
care less about it, I know, but so he made
it happen. Now going on the show, Clyde Davis, everybody
at Arista Records, oh my man, hey, well you're going
to play the single. The single was a vocal song
because in nineteen whatever year it was eighty five, there
(04:36):
were no stations that would play the kind of music
that you know that I play. There was no stations
that would play that. So what they would play would
be a vocal which we had an R and B
sound song with the black singer and I'm playing the
sax solo. And the philosophy was that's going to be
a hit. They will find out that you're the sax
(04:56):
player and not the singer. And I kept trying to think,
how are they going to find that? When you say
here's a song from Kenny g and there's a singer,
think that's me. But when you go on the Tonight
Show and you got to play the single, and the
Tonight show people said, we're only booking you to play
the single. And when the curtain went up in nineteen
eighty five, it's a live show, so this is before
(05:19):
we tape things and edited, and I just looked at
the guys in my group. I said, hit play and
play songbird.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Wow, right that last time, that's like risking it all
right there.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It was all, yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Myke, you're pissing off.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Five days everybody was oh. The guys at the show,
or they screamed at me when I was done. Johnny Carson,
of course, he was over in this corner. He gave me,
you know, one of these hey, good job. He didn't
know anything that was going on. But I got back
in the dress room and the guy that booked me
just came and he yelled at me like I'm some
kid that just like broke his favorite dish or something,
(05:57):
and he's just yelling like I've ruined his life and
he's super mad. But the thing that everybody forgot was
that actually the whole country saw this. Forget about why
I was on the show or what you thought I
should do. The country saw it, and everybody loved it.
They loved this song, and that's why I became a hit.
(06:18):
So when that happened, I went from playing from for
three four or five hundred people to like five thousand
and six thousand. Well, and the success of it was
because I did what I wanted to do, which was
super great. So that really was a great moment.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
There's nothing like a talk show to launch you man,
I tell you and.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Johnny Carson, and by the way, the guy that told
me I'll never work in this town again, they'll never
have me on Johnny Carson again six months later called
me requesting that I played Songbird and I got to
sit on the couch next to Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Man, when you know you know right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
But the thing is, I wasn't scared about it because
all the gigs that I was playing at that time,
I would be playing my songs at the little clubs
that I was playing. But when I played Songbird, my
little songbird that I did wrote and played all the instruments.
When I played that, everybody just seemed to really love it.
So I wasn't afraid that people wouldn't like it. But
(07:24):
it was risky to go against everybody's wishes. Knowing. By
the way, that was the first time I was ever
on television. I've never even been on a TV show before,
so I took I just went, you know, whatever happens happens.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh that's such a great story. Yeah, well you got
to have a pair if you want to make it, and.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Got to you.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I mean really, I mean it's like be bold and
mighty forces will come to your age, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And the same thing happened when I put my first
Christmas record out. You know, you talked about all these
record sales that I've had. One of the big ones
was my Christmas record. That is literally the most most
successful Christmas record of any Christmas record that's been released ever,
more than maybe Elvis. They say Elvis would have sold
(08:09):
more than me, but it wasn't accounted for like sound
scam does today.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
So it's non official. Sorry, Elvis is not official. Not official.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And Clive Davis and I thought over that record. I said,
it has to be all instrumental. He goes, Nope, it
has to have vocals. You are ruining your career if
you don't listen to me. Your career is in jeopardy.
But you decide, he says, I said, Okay, Clive, I'm
good at decide all instrumental. He goes, you're making a
big mistake. And then he goes on to be the
(08:37):
best selling record Christmas record. Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Isn't it amazing a guy like Clive Davis who has
such a great year, right yeah? And he you know,
his particular talent was was matching songs with artists, right,
like great songs. Like he'd have this library of songs
that he'd have in his office or whatever, and he'd
think of artists to match them with. I guess he
(09:03):
was just he just liked singers. He just wanted to
hear singing, right. He was great though he was no
genius guy, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Now, No, to his credit, like even when I tell
him that I was right and he was drown he says, no, no,
it would have more me. It did good, but it don't.
And to his credit, also on some of my records,
he would he would get like a Tony Braxton and
he would have a song from Diane Warren and they
(09:36):
would put that on my record and it would it
really boosted my record sales. So I have to say
to him a lot of a lot of accolades, but
he didn't always know what the right thing to do
with me was. And he was the first to admit
that sombird. He didn't see it at first, but then
he got right on board and really put that whole
(09:57):
Arister Records machine behind me, and we did think that
nobody's ever done before as an instrumentalist.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Beautiful. You knew you wanted to carve out your own lane,
and you did it.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Good for you, Lucky.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
When you sit down to compose, what usually, because I'm
a songwriter as well, I've been writing songs my whole life,
but what usually comes first A melody, a feeling, a story.
How do you do it? You just sit down and
start playing.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, I don start playing. I play my sacks, and
you know, because I'll practice every day. So during my
little three hour session, as I'm playing, I might play
something that go I go, hey, I like the way
those notes. Maybe that's the start of a melody. And
then I might fool around with something and that could
lead to something. Every now and then I'm sitting at
(10:57):
a piano or not that I'm a good piano player,
and it might noodle on something and then I go,
that's going to be the basis of something really cool.
I'll just remember that, and that's kind of how it works.
I don't it's hard for me to go I'm going
to write a song today. But you know, sometimes I try,
and I get together with a keyboard player or something
and I go, you know, let's try to write something,
(11:18):
and sometimes it works and sometimes not.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It's really hard to write really good songs. I could,
by the way, I could write an album of instrumental
music's in the next twenty five minutes, but it would
just be okay, right, okay, you know, you go way
that those are nice. But I don't want to do
something that sounds nice. I want to do something that
means something to me that I feel like I could
go to bat for and go against the whole world
(11:44):
and say, hey, this is what This is good whether
somebody believes it or not. You know, so I have
to take my time.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So right, there's different levels. There's there's okay, there's good,
there's really good, and then there's like, this is a hit.
Right do you have to be when you have when
you present something like that to the record company, do
you know what's going to be a hit. Have you
been surprised shocked that, Oh, this one I thought was
(12:11):
really gonna be big, but the record company didn't think
it was so great. We're not going to record it,
or it's going to be, like, you know, not a
major song. Have you been surprised?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
No, I'm always I'm always right. I'm not surprised when
it comes to when it comes to my saxophone, I
don't know what's it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Don't mess with me and my saxophone.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Man, this sing though, I go, no, it's going to
be the song. No, we don't think so it's going
to be the song and I'm not gonna that's it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And discussion is it because you know it because when
you play it, you feel it more than other songs,
and you just know that this melody, this tune. I
seen what it does to an audience. And this is
why I'm sticking to my guns. It's just a got right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, it's not always that because a lot of times
some of the songs I record I've never played for
an audience, So I don't okay, it's really almost once
I record it, when I hit play, that's when I
know it's right, right. I have to hear it and
I listened to it. Honestly, I think I'm pretty objective,
Like I pretend I didn't even play it, Like, well, well,
(13:23):
how good is this thing? Well this is really good,
or someone's missing and then I just have to figure
well with what that is?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Right right?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
A ten minutes. It could take a month to figure
out what's missing in a song.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
You any did songbird come immediately? Did it download to media? Okay?
Just it was just like suddenly you were fishing in
the lake and you caught the big one.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I just noodled around on the keyboard. Okay, what happened?
This is nineteen eighty five, eighty six, So the world
had just invented the first synthesizer. Okay, no sympathizer. So
now a hack piano player can sit down and I
can play a little melody hit replay and it just
(14:07):
keeps playing it and I can fix the notes. So
all of a sudden you have this perfect, sequential, beautiful
little music bed that I think is beautiful. But you
can never have had that before because no person could
ever play it like that. Yeah, so this machine was
playing this whoa, let me see if I put my
saxophone on top of that, what would that sound like?
(14:28):
And then I just played this melody. I'm like, wow,
I really love it. I love the way this sounds.
And in an hour I was done with Songbird. I
just played all the instruments of myself, a little drum machine,
a little bass part on the keyboard, string parts on
the synthesizer. It's like, whoa this is? And I recorded
it on my eight track recording machine. And that was
and that was the state in.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The art, right, yeah, right. And then once you have
something recorded, you send it off to the record company.
You send it off to your A and R guy, and.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And they could not care less. They couldn't care less
about this instrumentals. They go, yeah, no, we need a
vocal song that the kids in the ghetto can groove to.
They told me, they told me, and so I said, okay,
I'm in and I said, hey, I want to talk
to you. So I got on a plane and flew
to New York and talked to the A and R guy,
(15:22):
and I said, you told me yesterday that what you
think for me is songs that the fifteen year old
kids in the ghetto can grove to. From a Jewish
sex player that's what you think I can do. I
can't do that. I said, you know what, let's do.
Let's let's just end our relationship now, it'll be better.
(15:43):
Just unsign me, let me take my instrumentals, and I'll
just have a I'll just do whatever I'm going to
do with it. And they said no, no, let's let's
try to figure it out. And so we worked it out.
But I literally went there and and like, I'm not
an actor like you, but I acted like I'm done.
I quit, right.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
What's the sense of banging your head against the wall
of these people if they don't get it right? It's like,
I know, it gets absurd. How do you know when
a song is finished?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh? Good question, really good question. Yeah, And that's tough.
That's tough for me because I okay, nowadays we don't
have eight tracks with tape. We've got pro tools with
endless disk space, and I can if I don't like
the vibrato at the end of one note, I can
(16:36):
fix that and it will sound. So when does it fixed?
I mean when is it finished? It's like I go
through it with a meticulous comb and it's finished when
I listened to it, and I don't I don't hate
myself at the end of the song. Then it's finished,
it's like, okay, you know what, I didn't really cringe
that time. We can move on and that's what happens, right. Yeah,
(17:01):
So not easy for me to let something go because
I already know I could play that note more in tune,
or I could play that vibrato better, or I could
make that maybe I should make that note come from
above rather than below. So I try a million of
them and then it's like I can't, I can't do
it anymore. I gotta let it go. So it's kind
(17:21):
of like that. It's kind of like I gotta let
it go.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
But that's your that's your pattern. Every morning you wake up,
you play your sacks three hours. And this has been
going on every day for year after year after year,
decades and decades decades, and yeah, it's it's yeah, that's
what you do. That's what you have to do if
(17:45):
you want, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I I heard Steve Martin. I don't know Steve Martin.
I've met Steve Martin because he's ANANGOI player. It's got
a lot better. I remember when he first picked up
that bangel I thought bro, come on, just you know,
you're so funny and you're so good. Why am I
trying to be? You? Am I trying to be a
comedic actor? Can you just? That's what I thought. But
(18:08):
he's gotten very, very good. He's an excellent, excellent band. Yes,
not that I know, but I've seen some things that
he's But he said something that I just think is
one of the things that I don't know a lot
of people don't say this, like, how do you how
do you make it? How do you make it? He said,
you know, this is what nobody really wants to hear.
Gets so good that no one can say no.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
To you, right, they can't deny you.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So if you practice something three hours a day for
fifty year, sixty years, you know you're going to be
pretty great, and you're going to be you might be
so great that people can't go you know, he's not
good enough. No, the door's open. So just get great. Yeah, yeah,
but he thinks, but it takes a long time, takes
a lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It does, it does? All right, let's talk about your
global reach, your your global dominance. In a song going Home,
and that became an unofficial closing song in China for malls,
(19:15):
train stations, et cetera. Were you aware of that phenomenon
at the time, And when was that?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
By the way, Okay, that was God. That was in
the early eighties. Okay you no, let's say wait ant no,
I went. I went to China for the first time
in the early eighties, but that song came out I
think in like eighty nine, so I just bec I didn't.
I didn't know and until I went to China back
in the nineties. Then and then I just heard it everywhere.
(19:44):
I heard it in the stores, I heard it in
the loudspeakers, in the middle of tenement square. I heard
my song. I was in a bathroom in the middle
of some little town in middle of China, in the going,
playing around the golf, and I just went into the
ends room, like in the between the first front nine
and the bat then I heard my song like this,
(20:07):
but that song, yeah, seriously, Now, I make a joke
that the first time I played in China, I played
that song in the middle of my set and I
looked up and the audience was gone. But that's just
a joke. It's not true. We saved that for the
end because literally people just their their natural instinct when
they hear that song is like they need to whatever
they're doing, they pack up and they go home. So
(20:28):
I gotta I gotta time that song properly. It's amazing.
It's like five hundred million people hear that song every
single day.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
No royalties on that song, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
For what I know, And you gotta get a lawyer
on that.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I have tried. I've told anybody and everybody, look, get
the royalties, will split it. We'll split it. You know
how much royalties you can get for like like I've
literally sold one hundred fifty million records in China, So
I said, you know, I get some royalties on that
and let's split it. Broke them on it's just fa.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Wait wait wait, how is it possible that? I mean,
you were selling physical copies right in China when they
had real records. So I don't understand how they could
be available on a wholesale basis and then sold retail. How.
(21:26):
I don't know where are they getting the albums from?
And why aren't their royalties They're just making them. Oh
they're just printing them over there.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They was making them. Yeah, they get they get one
album and they just copy it and print it and.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
It sounds, oh my god, as per usual.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that's you know what. And when you go to
China enough times I probably I've been there like maybe
twenty times, twenty trips to China in my trip in
my career, you just realize, you know what, to them,
that is entrepreneurial. And I go, you know what, Okay,
I get it. I don't like it, but that's it.
To them, they're not They're not doing anything. That's do
(22:02):
they think that's smart. I think he's pretty smart too.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Actually, all right, but but did you ever send a
cease and desist to the Communist party? To your Communist party,
stop playing my record? Sign Kenny. And then they have
meetings they go, look, we got a letter from Kennedy.
We better stop playing this song.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
We're going to change our whole policy. Because he was no,
here's what happens. Here's so in China because I'm so
popular there. So here's what happens. I go. I was
asked to go in two thousand and eight to China
to celebrate one hundred days before the two thousand eight Olympics,
and they were so proud they invited all of the
(22:48):
top Chinese actors, producers, models, musicians, and one Western artist
to be part of the semi meet. So I get there,
fight all the way to Beijing. As I'm walking up
the ramp to the stage, they stop me and they go,
I'm sorry, the government has decided only Chinese artists can
(23:08):
what can do any think? But you can walk on
stage and wave and then walk right off. I said,
you got it, Happy to do it all the way
to Beijing. So as I'm walking up the alley walking
walking up this ramp on the right side. On the
left side is the down ramp, Jackie Chan's walking down
(23:31):
and I look over it to him. He looks over
it and he goes, oh, He goes, you are so famous.
This is jack Man. And I said, I said, and
you're Jackie Chan. He goes, meet me at my cigar
club at the Ritz Carlton. Later, I okay, it's going
to remember what he said. So I go do my wave.
Thirty seconds later, I'm walking down the ramp and I say,
(23:53):
does anybody know that where Jackie Chan's cigar club is
at the Ritz Carton Hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said,
take me there. So I go there and I walk
in and it's a little bar and Jackie Chan is
on stage with a microphone and his backup band of
these beautiful Chinese girls. Like the was Robert Plant that
(24:14):
did that? That that video with the girls behind him?
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Robert Palmer, Yeah, Robert Palmer, Robert Palmer, yeah, the same look.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And Jackie Chan is up there singing and I walk
in and he looks at me and he stops and
he goes, oh, can you can you come up and play?
I said, what do you want me to play? Can
you play your song? Going Home from Me? Does it?
I said? Does your band know what these? Of course
they know it. So he puts a chair on this
little stage and he sits down and I'm sitting there
(24:44):
playing going Home to Jackie Chan and he starts to cry.
Tears are rolling down the stage like it's like, what
the heck is going on here? And I mean this,
this is the power of this. I didn't get royalties,
(25:04):
but man, this this is like and ever since then
we're like super good friends.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Like that's great, that's awesome, you know, Oh that's so funny,
that's really funny.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
So that's China. That's China.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
All right, Well that's all the time. But we are
having so much fun with Kenny G. We're gonna make
this a two parter, So tune into the next episode
because there's a lot more to unpacked with Kenny G. Everybody,
(26:00):
and don't forget follow us on Instagram at i Am
all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio
dot com.
I am all in.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Let's you.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
This isn't old man music with Scott Patterson everything You've
ever wanted to know about the music of Gilmore Girls.
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am al and Podcast one
to eleven productions. Iheartradiomedia, iHeart Podcast. This is an old
man music with the one and only. You know him,
you love him. Kenny G. Let me tell you something
(00:36):
a little bit about Kenny G. Kenny G is a
jazz saxophonist, composer, and record producer. Nineteen eighty six album
duo Tones bottom commercial success. Kenny G is one of
the best selling artists Ready for This of all time,
with global sales totally more than seventy five million records,
(00:58):
making him also the best selling instrumentalist in history. So
season three, episode nineteen, Gilmore Girls teg Max Paris shows
up at the boosters club meeting, tells all the moms
how moronic it is to host grad night on a yacht.
This is when we first hear your music in the show.
(01:25):
Also season seven, episode five, The Great Stink We Hear Songbird,
Great Lorelized car. You began at a very young age
and you played in Barry White's Orchestra, Barry White's Orchestra.
At seventeen, you're a prodigy. Yeah, how did you first
(01:46):
find it in saxophone? And when did you personally decide
you sounded good?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Oh? Well, you know, I just like every you know,
other student in US the school system. At fourth grade,
it's like that's your year to get an instrument. And
at least it was in the seventies when I went
to school. I'm not sure if it's exactly that way today.
I think it is. And I was always attracted to
(02:14):
the sacks. I don't know why exactly. I just saw
someone on TV playing it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
You know that. I didn't even have any idea what
was going on. I just saw this guy stand up
to you a sax solo, and I thought, well, that's cool.
I'd like to I play that instrument. So after one
I picked and I started and I just loved it.
I loved it in the fourth grade. And you know
(02:36):
how many fifties, sixty years later or whatever how many
years that is, I still love it. I practiced this
morning like they do every morning. I put my three
hours in. I'm excited to wake up tomorrow and do
the same thing. I've been feeling the same way since
I was a kid. So when did I thought I
sounded good? God man, I'm seriously you know today, Like
(03:00):
I'll tell you, out of the seventy shows that I
play a year, I might say two or three I
thought I sounded really good, and the rest I'm just
struggling to try to get better. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It's the same way.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
So your album Duotones marked a major breakthrough with the
track Songbird featuring Seed seven.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
How did your music career and your personal life change
after that?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:27):
After the success of that big time, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Everything changed. Everything changed. Well, the successive Songbird happened in
a great way for me personally because I went against
all of the wishes of my record company, who was
headed by Clive Davis, who was adamant that there was
going to be this other song that was going to
be the song that was going to be promoted. When
(03:53):
I got the chance to do the Tonight Show, which
was basically my manager at the time strong arming the
people of Tonight's Show to make them have a sax
player on the show because they had no interest in
having me on the show. But he just he leveraged
George Benson to get me to be on the on
the Tonight Show.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Is this Johnny Carson is Johnny Carson?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So hey, you want George Benson? You got to let
the sax kid have a shot. We don't. We could
care less about it, I know, but so he made
it happen. Now going on the show, Clyde Davis, everybody
at Arista Records, oh my man, hey, well you're going
to play the single. The single was a vocal song
because in nineteen whatever year it was eighty five, there
(04:36):
were no stations that would play the kind of music
that you know that I play. There was no stations
that would play that. So what they would play would
be a vocal which we had an R and B
sound song with the black singer and I'm playing the
sax solo. And the philosophy was that's going to be
a hit. They will find out that you're the sax
(04:56):
player and not the singer. And I kept trying to think,
how are they going to find that? When you say
here's a song from Kenny g and there's a singer,
think that's me. But when you go on the Tonight
Show and you got to play the single, and the
Tonight show people said, we're only booking you to play
the single. And when the curtain went up in nineteen
eighty five, it's a live show, so this is before
(05:19):
we tape things and edited, and I just looked at
the guys in my group. I said, hit play and
play songbird.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Wow, right that last time, that's like risking it all
right there.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It was all, yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Myke, you're pissing off.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Five days everybody was oh. The guys at the show,
or they screamed at me when I was done. Johnny Carson,
of course, he was over in this corner. He gave me,
you know, one of these hey, good job. He didn't
know anything that was going on. But I got back
in the dress room and the guy that booked me
just came and he yelled at me like I'm some
kid that just like broke his favorite dish or something,
(05:57):
and he's just yelling like I've ruined his life and
he's super mad. But the thing that everybody forgot was
that actually the whole country saw this. Forget about why
I was on the show or what you thought I
should do. The country saw it, and everybody loved it.
They loved this song, and that's why I became a hit.
(06:18):
So when that happened, I went from playing from for
three four or five hundred people to like five thousand
and six thousand. Well, and the success of it was
because I did what I wanted to do, which was
super great. So that really was a great moment.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
There's nothing like a talk show to launch you man,
I tell you and.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Johnny Carson, and by the way, the guy that told
me I'll never work in this town again, they'll never
have me on Johnny Carson again six months later called
me requesting that I played Songbird and I got to
sit on the couch next to Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Man, when you know you know right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
But the thing is, I wasn't scared about it because
all the gigs that I was playing at that time,
I would be playing my songs at the little clubs
that I was playing. But when I played Songbird, my
little songbird that I did wrote and played all the instruments.
When I played that, everybody just seemed to really love it.
So I wasn't afraid that people wouldn't like it. But
(07:24):
it was risky to go against everybody's wishes. Knowing. By
the way, that was the first time I was ever
on television. I've never even been on a TV show before,
so I took I just went, you know, whatever happens happens.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh that's such a great story. Yeah, well you got
to have a pair if you want to make it, and.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Got to you.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I mean really, I mean it's like be bold and
mighty forces will come to your age, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And the same thing happened when I put my first
Christmas record out. You know, you talked about all these
record sales that I've had. One of the big ones
was my Christmas record. That is literally the most most
successful Christmas record of any Christmas record that's been released ever,
more than maybe Elvis. They say Elvis would have sold
(08:09):
more than me, but it wasn't accounted for like sound
scam does today.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
So it's non official. Sorry, Elvis is not official. Not official.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
And Clive Davis and I thought over that record. I said,
it has to be all instrumental. He goes, Nope, it
has to have vocals. You are ruining your career if
you don't listen to me. Your career is in jeopardy.
But you decide, he says, I said, Okay, Clive, I'm
good at decide all instrumental. He goes, you're making a
big mistake. And then he goes on to be the
(08:37):
best selling record Christmas record. Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Isn't it amazing a guy like Clive Davis who has
such a great year, right yeah? And he you know,
his particular talent was was matching songs with artists, right,
like great songs. Like he'd have this library of songs
that he'd have in his office or whatever, and he'd
think of artists to match them with. I guess he
(09:03):
was just he just liked singers. He just wanted to
hear singing, right. He was great though he was no
genius guy, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Now, No, to his credit, like even when I tell
him that I was right and he was drown he says, no, no,
it would have more me. It did good, but it don't.
And to his credit, also on some of my records,
he would he would get like a Tony Braxton and
he would have a song from Diane Warren and they
(09:36):
would put that on my record and it would it
really boosted my record sales. So I have to say
to him a lot of a lot of accolades, but
he didn't always know what the right thing to do
with me was. And he was the first to admit
that sombird. He didn't see it at first, but then
he got right on board and really put that whole
(09:57):
Arister Records machine behind me, and we did think that
nobody's ever done before as an instrumentalist.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Beautiful. You knew you wanted to carve out your own lane,
and you did it.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Good for you, Lucky.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
When you sit down to compose, what usually, because I'm
a songwriter as well, I've been writing songs my whole life,
but what usually comes first A melody, a feeling, a story.
How do you do it? You just sit down and
start playing.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, I don start playing. I play my sacks, and
you know, because I'll practice every day. So during my
little three hour session, as I'm playing, I might play
something that go I go, hey, I like the way
those notes. Maybe that's the start of a melody. And
then I might fool around with something and that could
lead to something. Every now and then I'm sitting at
(10:57):
a piano or not that I'm a good piano player,
and it might noodle on something and then I go,
that's going to be the basis of something really cool.
I'll just remember that, and that's kind of how it works.
I don't it's hard for me to go I'm going
to write a song today. But you know, sometimes I try,
and I get together with a keyboard player or something
and I go, you know, let's try to write something,
(11:18):
and sometimes it works and sometimes not.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It's really hard to write really good songs. I could,
by the way, I could write an album of instrumental
music's in the next twenty five minutes, but it would
just be okay, right, okay, you know, you go way
that those are nice. But I don't want to do
something that sounds nice. I want to do something that
means something to me that I feel like I could
go to bat for and go against the whole world
(11:44):
and say, hey, this is what This is good whether
somebody believes it or not. You know, so I have
to take my time.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So right, there's different levels. There's there's okay, there's good,
there's really good, and then there's like, this is a hit.
Right do you have to be when you have when
you present something like that to the record company, do
you know what's going to be a hit. Have you
been surprised shocked that, Oh, this one I thought was
(12:11):
really gonna be big, but the record company didn't think
it was so great. We're not going to record it,
or it's going to be, like, you know, not a
major song. Have you been surprised?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
No, I'm always I'm always right. I'm not surprised when
it comes to when it comes to my saxophone, I
don't know what's it.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Don't mess with me and my saxophone.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Man, this sing though, I go, no, it's going to
be the song. No, we don't think so it's going
to be the song and I'm not gonna that's it.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
And discussion is it because you know it because when
you play it, you feel it more than other songs,
and you just know that this melody, this tune. I
seen what it does to an audience. And this is
why I'm sticking to my guns. It's just a got right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, it's not always that because a lot of times
some of the songs I record I've never played for
an audience, So I don't okay, it's really almost once
I record it, when I hit play, that's when I
know it's right, right. I have to hear it and
I listened to it. Honestly, I think I'm pretty objective,
Like I pretend I didn't even play it, Like, well, well,
(13:23):
how good is this thing? Well this is really good,
or someone's missing and then I just have to figure
well with what that is?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Right right?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
A ten minutes. It could take a month to figure
out what's missing in a song.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
You any did songbird come immediately? Did it download to media? Okay?
Just it was just like suddenly you were fishing in
the lake and you caught the big one.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I just noodled around on the keyboard. Okay, what happened?
This is nineteen eighty five, eighty six, So the world
had just invented the first synthesizer. Okay, no sympathizer. So
now a hack piano player can sit down and I
can play a little melody hit replay and it just
(14:07):
keeps playing it and I can fix the notes. So
all of a sudden you have this perfect, sequential, beautiful
little music bed that I think is beautiful. But you
can never have had that before because no person could
ever play it like that. Yeah, so this machine was
playing this whoa, let me see if I put my
saxophone on top of that, what would that sound like?
(14:28):
And then I just played this melody. I'm like, wow,
I really love it. I love the way this sounds.
And in an hour I was done with Songbird. I
just played all the instruments of myself, a little drum machine,
a little bass part on the keyboard, string parts on
the synthesizer. It's like, whoa this is? And I recorded
it on my eight track recording machine. And that was
and that was the state in.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The art, right, yeah, right. And then once you have
something recorded, you send it off to the record company.
You send it off to your A and R guy, and.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And they could not care less. They couldn't care less
about this instrumentals. They go, yeah, no, we need a
vocal song that the kids in the ghetto can groove to.
They told me, they told me, and so I said, okay,
I'm in and I said, hey, I want to talk
to you. So I got on a plane and flew
to New York and talked to the A and R guy,
(15:22):
and I said, you told me yesterday that what you
think for me is songs that the fifteen year old
kids in the ghetto can grove to. From a Jewish
sex player that's what you think I can do. I
can't do that. I said, you know what, let's do.
Let's let's just end our relationship now, it'll be better.
(15:43):
Just unsign me, let me take my instrumentals, and I'll
just have a I'll just do whatever I'm going to
do with it. And they said no, no, let's let's
try to figure it out. And so we worked it out.
But I literally went there and and like, I'm not
an actor like you, but I acted like I'm done.
I quit, right.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
What's the sense of banging your head against the wall
of these people if they don't get it right? It's like,
I know, it gets absurd. How do you know when
a song is finished?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Oh? Good question, really good question. Yeah, And that's tough.
That's tough for me because I okay, nowadays we don't
have eight tracks with tape. We've got pro tools with
endless disk space, and I can if I don't like
the vibrato at the end of one note, I can
(16:36):
fix that and it will sound. So when does it fixed?
I mean when is it finished? It's like I go
through it with a meticulous comb and it's finished when
I listened to it, and I don't I don't hate
myself at the end of the song. Then it's finished,
it's like, okay, you know what, I didn't really cringe
that time. We can move on and that's what happens, right. Yeah,
(17:01):
So not easy for me to let something go because
I already know I could play that note more in tune,
or I could play that vibrato better, or I could
make that maybe I should make that note come from
above rather than below. So I try a million of
them and then it's like I can't, I can't do
it anymore. I gotta let it go. So it's kind
(17:21):
of like that. It's kind of like I gotta let
it go.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
But that's your that's your pattern. Every morning you wake up,
you play your sacks three hours. And this has been
going on every day for year after year after year,
decades and decades decades, and yeah, it's it's yeah, that's
what you do. That's what you have to do if
(17:45):
you want, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I I heard Steve Martin. I don't know Steve Martin.
I've met Steve Martin because he's ANANGOI player. It's got
a lot better. I remember when he first picked up
that bangel I thought bro, come on, just you know,
you're so funny and you're so good. Why am I
trying to be? You? Am I trying to be a
comedic actor? Can you just? That's what I thought. But
(18:08):
he's gotten very, very good. He's an excellent, excellent band. Yes,
not that I know, but I've seen some things that
he's But he said something that I just think is
one of the things that I don't know a lot
of people don't say this, like, how do you how
do you make it? How do you make it? He said,
you know, this is what nobody really wants to hear.
Gets so good that no one can say no.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
To you, right, they can't deny you.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So if you practice something three hours a day for
fifty year, sixty years, you know you're going to be
pretty great, and you're going to be you might be
so great that people can't go you know, he's not
good enough. No, the door's open. So just get great. Yeah, yeah,
but he thinks, but it takes a long time, takes
a lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
It does, it does? All right, let's talk about your
global reach, your your global dominance. In a song going Home,
and that became an unofficial closing song in China for malls,
(19:15):
train stations, et cetera. Were you aware of that phenomenon
at the time, And when was that?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
By the way, Okay, that was God. That was in
the early eighties. Okay you no, let's say wait ant no,
I went. I went to China for the first time
in the early eighties, but that song came out I
think in like eighty nine, so I just bec I didn't.
I didn't know and until I went to China back
in the nineties. Then and then I just heard it everywhere.
(19:44):
I heard it in the stores, I heard it in
the loudspeakers, in the middle of tenement square. I heard
my song. I was in a bathroom in the middle
of some little town in middle of China, in the going,
playing around the golf, and I just went into the
ends room, like in the between the first front nine
and the bat then I heard my song like this,
(20:07):
but that song, yeah, seriously, Now, I make a joke
that the first time I played in China, I played
that song in the middle of my set and I
looked up and the audience was gone. But that's just
a joke. It's not true. We saved that for the
end because literally people just their their natural instinct when
they hear that song is like they need to whatever
they're doing, they pack up and they go home. So
(20:28):
I gotta I gotta time that song properly. It's amazing.
It's like five hundred million people hear that song every
single day.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
I unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
No royalties on that song, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
For what I know, And you gotta get a lawyer
on that.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I have tried. I've told anybody and everybody, look, get
the royalties, will split it. We'll split it. You know
how much royalties you can get for like like I've
literally sold one hundred fifty million records in China, So
I said, you know, I get some royalties on that
and let's split it. Broke them on it's just fa.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Wait wait wait, how is it possible that? I mean,
you were selling physical copies right in China when they
had real records. So I don't understand how they could
be available on a wholesale basis and then sold retail. How.
(21:26):
I don't know where are they getting the albums from?
And why aren't their royalties They're just making them. Oh
they're just printing them over there.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They was making them. Yeah, they get they get one
album and they just copy it and print it and.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
It sounds, oh my god, as per usual.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And that's you know what. And when you go to
China enough times I probably I've been there like maybe
twenty times, twenty trips to China in my trip in
my career, you just realize, you know what, to them,
that is entrepreneurial. And I go, you know what, Okay,
I get it. I don't like it, but that's it.
To them, they're not They're not doing anything. That's do
(22:02):
they think that's smart. I think he's pretty smart too.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Actually, all right, but but did you ever send a
cease and desist to the Communist party? To your Communist party,
stop playing my record? Sign Kenny. And then they have
meetings they go, look, we got a letter from Kennedy.
We better stop playing this song.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
We're going to change our whole policy. Because he was no,
here's what happens. Here's so in China because I'm so
popular there. So here's what happens. I go. I was
asked to go in two thousand and eight to China
to celebrate one hundred days before the two thousand eight Olympics,
and they were so proud they invited all of the
(22:48):
top Chinese actors, producers, models, musicians, and one Western artist
to be part of the semi meet. So I get there,
fight all the way to Beijing. As I'm walking up
the ramp to the stage, they stop me and they go,
I'm sorry, the government has decided only Chinese artists can
(23:08):
what can do any think? But you can walk on
stage and wave and then walk right off. I said,
you got it, Happy to do it all the way
to Beijing. So as I'm walking up the alley walking
walking up this ramp on the right side. On the
left side is the down ramp, Jackie Chan's walking down
(23:31):
and I look over it to him. He looks over
it and he goes, oh, He goes, you are so famous.
This is jack Man. And I said, I said, and
you're Jackie Chan. He goes, meet me at my cigar
club at the Ritz Carlton. Later, I okay, it's going
to remember what he said. So I go do my wave.
Thirty seconds later, I'm walking down the ramp and I say,
(23:53):
does anybody know that where Jackie Chan's cigar club is
at the Ritz Carton Hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said,
take me there. So I go there and I walk
in and it's a little bar and Jackie Chan is
on stage with a microphone and his backup band of
these beautiful Chinese girls. Like the was Robert Plant that
(24:14):
did that? That that video with the girls behind him?
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Robert Palmer, Yeah, Robert Palmer, Robert Palmer, yeah, the same look.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And Jackie Chan is up there singing and I walk
in and he looks at me and he stops and
he goes, oh, can you can you come up and play?
I said, what do you want me to play? Can
you play your song? Going Home from Me? Does it?
I said? Does your band know what these? Of course
they know it. So he puts a chair on this
little stage and he sits down and I'm sitting there
(24:44):
playing going Home to Jackie Chan and he starts to cry.
Tears are rolling down the stage like it's like, what
the heck is going on here? And I mean this,
this is the power of this. I didn't get royalties,
(25:04):
but man, this this is like and ever since then
we're like super good friends.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Like that's great, that's awesome, you know, Oh that's so funny,
that's really funny.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
So that's China. That's China.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
All right, Well that's all the time. But we are
having so much fun with Kenny G. We're gonna make
this a two parter, So tune into the next episode
because there's a lot more to unpacked with Kenny G. Everybody,
(26:00):
and don't forget follow us on Instagram at i Am
all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Sugarman
Danielle Romo
Scott Patterson
Tara Soudbaksh
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