Chris Stein

Chris Stein is the co-founder and guitarist and songwriter for the band Blondie. Chris talks about growing up in Brooklyn, school, trips to San Francisco, Andy Warhol and drugs, as well as Blondie's career. Listen to an intellectual tell the story of the New York scene.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, welcome, brocome back to the Bob left Nets podcast.
My yesterday it's Chris Stein and Blonde Chris so that
taft bond always and the fan you know, it's whether
you know. I guess you gathered over the years, but
I appreciate your missives. So when we were setting this up,
you had a busy schedule. So what was going on there?

(00:30):
We've had just been the last three days working up
new music, so that's we're very slow. The Blondie situation
is glacial in its forward motion, and uh, we were
you know, we're starting to get it going down. Let's
break it down. What's the process? How do you decide

(00:52):
to record? What do you do before you get in
the room. We are collect material people, you know, it's
a bit them all take stuff from outside sources wherever
it's coming from. Uh, then the the this time me
and the keyboard player and the other guitar player and

(01:14):
Debbie get together. Do you started home alone other people
started home alone, and then just bring it to the
rehearsal room, or do you send it to other members
and then they give their feedback. Yes, the latter I
not necessarily feedback. Everybody just kind of knows what's good.
But I do demos on my home equipment and then

(01:38):
send it around and we wind it. We wind up
with a big online list. This time we had like
twenty five or so pieces that we pick and choose
from and those are finished songs, no demos, stuff that
might finish. I don't mean the recordings, but the songs themselves. No, No,
definitely not. Debbie does a lot of the a lot
of I don't write a lot of lyrics. For example, Debbie.

(02:02):
I give Debbie of unfinished lyrical ideas with melodies, with
melody lines that are suggestions of melodies, and she develops
the lyrical ideas. Okay, when you gathered physically, what happens?
Then we get together we have by then we have
a few of these things chosen and we just go

(02:25):
over them. So we went into these last three days
we had seven things that we picked out and we
just learned them and go over the chords and like that. Okay,
need let's just say the music business has changed radically
from your late seventies early eighties heyday, and a lot
of as they say, I hate this term, but I'll

(02:46):
use it any way. Heritage acts don't even record new music.
What's the motivation to record new music today? For us,
it's just what we do. And it's just like the
shark moving forward. And uh, you know, I enjoy it.
I hear so much modern stuff that I like. I

(03:09):
you know, my what I've all I've said over the
years is that of the stuff you here is always crap,
but nobody remembers the bad stuff. You know, people are
only familiar with the good material. Maybe it's a different ratio,
I'm not sure, but I hear a lot of modern

(03:30):
stuff inspirationally, hear things that inspire me, styles, whatever, and
it's just, you know, it's what we'd like to try
to stay fresh in that respect. So what are you
hearing that's turning now? All kinds of all kinds of stuff.
I mean, it's it's gratifying. There are all these female

(03:51):
fronted bands that I like. You know, there's you know,
Surfboard and sun Slower Being and Churches and all these
girls are out there doing their thing. Um. I personally
have been a huge fan of modern Latin music for
over fifteen years. I've been a reggaeton and could be

(04:11):
a fan, and I knew that stuff was going to
cross over, and now it's ubiquitous. Those grooves are very
sexy to be the dembo beat. You know, dembo beat
is don't want to explain to the audience what it is.
It's just a boom boom. It's the reggaetone beat is
very specific form. It's almost like a twelve bar blues

(04:33):
in its specificity. And I just as soon as I
started hearing that stuff years ago, I was really turned on.
It really took a long time to cross over, and then,
you know, and then we had finally we have things
like lean On and some of these great tracks that
are dipping into that groove a little bit. Okay, when

(04:55):
we were growing up, music was driving the culture and
if you were interested in new music, you could just
turn on the FM radio station. Certainly am before that.
How do you discover all this stuff? Or you make
it actively? Are you doing it me? I? I pick
up from the weirdest online sources, just you know, looking

(05:16):
at TikTok videos or people's Instagram stories, and I'll hear
two bars is something that really gets to me, and
then I will shazam it and find out what it is.
So for an old fucker, I am very adept and
all this stuff. I've been doing computers for a very
long time. I started in the eighties, so I have

(05:37):
good skills with the software and hardware. Well, let's buy
for kat here and leave the skills aside for a second.
You talk about TikTok irrelevant of knowing how to work
the machine or the phone. Do you spend a lot
of time on TikTok, Instagram, etcetera. Instagram, on Instagram and Twitter? Yeah,
it's my main Well, I certainly see on Twitter all

(05:57):
the time, and you have a sense of humor, and
you about your photographs, But what is the inspiration You're
expressing yourself on Twitter? But in TikTok and Instagram? Do
you want to take the pulse of the nation or
you just really interested Instagram. I just like the graphic
aspect of it, and it was a great place to
start doing the photographs. And I'm not like a huge

(06:20):
influence or any of that kind of nonsense, but I
like TikTok how it works with all these kids, you know,
sharing audios and often sharing original audios. And my daughters
get into it and they're always coming up to me
and showing me some crazy little bit and that's fun.
And I foresee I was just telling the guys in

(06:42):
the rehearsal yesterday, I'm for seeing nine second songs. Now
that's probably the new frontier. I don't know that we'll
be doing any but it's probably coming, you know, And
I think I guess you gotta blame blame fucking mine
for all this short attention has been right right right?

(07:04):
Have you actively tried to get any of Blondie's music
past or present used on TikTok? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, heart
a glasses all over the place for that was trending
several times with whatever, you know, kind of visuals that
was evoking in little kids. But it's out there. Okay.

(07:26):
So you participate on Twitter? Do you follow a lot
of people on Twitter too? And do you spend time
reading Twitter? Yeah? Yeah, sure? What kind of people you follow?
What are you looking for? A lot of left wing
political people, but I pay attention to what the right
wing maniacs are on about also, and you know a
lot of the artists and film people, directors, writers, etcetera. Uh,

(07:51):
it's a long list. I have really great people following
me to them, you know, I'm not gonna flex about
But I have followers that I'm proud of. So what
motivates you to tweet? It's kind of this high of mind.
I mean, it's not it's not a real hie of mine,
but it's I call it the false hive of mind.
But I like the fact that whatever you're thinking now,

(08:15):
somebody else's gonna be writing the same goddamn thing somewhere.
If there's almost no individual commentary, and you know the
fact that it's so all over the place too. But
I mean, you know, I thought one in the morning
following the Ukrainian situation, and the immediacy of it is

(08:37):
really fucking you know, intense. Also, uh, you know, you
have people they're commenting on what's going on, and that's
you know, it's every duty. It's not. It's changed a
lot of things in the culture, the immediacy of the internet. Okay,

(08:58):
so you follow a lot of left wing when you
check in with the right, what's your hope for democracy
or autocracy in the world today? Yeah, I don't know.
It's a really it's a rough time and it's a
rough call. And I didn't you know, you and I
have been through a lot of all that stuff back
then uh, you know, I was right at the when

(09:21):
the fugs tried to levitate the Pentagon without Alan Ginsberg.
I was like right there sitting by the stage and
got tear gased and all this stuff. So I don't know,
it doesn't it's it's I've never seen it so fifty
fifty before with such a balance of maybe it's all

(09:42):
going to go to ship or maybe it's gonna be okay.
It's usually there's usually a little bit more of a
pendulum swing to one side or the other generally that
things will be okay. You know, we all lived through
Martin Luther King a lot of positivity, you know, so
to see the stuff that's going on now is it's frustrating.

(10:07):
But I am continually amused. My general outlook on life
is amusement, and there's a lot of it's funny what
goes on to in the world. You know, you have children,
so some of it's not that funny. I don't have
children all die, you know. Yeah, I know. I talked
to them about that stuff about you know, potential for

(10:31):
bleak future. I don't know how much they get of that,
but they're they're aware of current events certainly, like I'm
really you know, I'm really amused now that all these
right wing guys who are anti Marxists and calling you know,
Alc a Marxist, letting this whatever, you know, socialist monster

(10:55):
are now sort of supporting this Russian invasion, which is
it's it's crazy, but it's also very funny on a
certain level. I agree, But I was thinking about it
just before we started. Is it literally black and white?
Since Biden is taking one side, they have to take
the other. What do you think philosophically that's the side

(11:18):
They're wrong? No, no, no, for sure, It's just all
partisan politics. It has nothing to do with the fucking
I mean, do you think. I don't think Bill O'Reilly
believes any fucking thing he ever said. I think he's
just doing it for the bucks. I think maybe some
of the other ones, you know, believe it. Maybe Carlson
is genuinely that. But there's just as you know, I
briefly met Ann Coulter, I think a lot of these

(11:41):
guys are just doing it for effect and for uh
the check. Okay, Bill Maher goes on that he's friends
within Coulter. You know, with Tucker Carlson, I'd just like
to get him alone, and Lauren would say, off the record,
you really believe this ship. So you're talking to Ann Coulter,
did you think she was just throwing, you know, bombs

(12:03):
to have a career. I saw her in a very
show busy situation that was and it was very obvious
that she was part of the show bizmail you. So,
I mean I could say that, Well, I guess for me.
You know, I remember the sixties and seventies. I remember
going to college. You could literally point out the Republicans
on campus. You literally knew who they were, and they

(12:25):
were a handful. And I hear from all day long
the fact that a very significant part of the youth
are Republicans and supporting the Fox News agenda. It's just
mind blowing to me. Well, because that's what they're exposed to, though,
It's just it's just indoctrination and not being supposed to
another side. You know, I was lucky. I was when

(12:48):
I was a kid. I was you know, my parents
were red as the FBI famously came to my house
when I was maybe and talked to my old man
C and so forth. M I was. I had both sides.
The FBI came to your house. You remember that actually happening. No,
I don't remember, I remember my father being really creeped
out though, and telling me, you know, he gave them

(13:09):
the name of some guy who was dead and they
were happy that he was forthcoming and left. Okay, So
you know, they're those famous stories of the Eagles raising
money for Jerry Brown for president and Irving as Jerry
wanted to come on stage, and Irving said, no, okay,
the acts were bigger than the politicians. A lot of

(13:32):
years since then. So where is the place, if any,
for music in today's topsy turvy political world? Um, yeah, no,
I don't you know. There's just so much of it.
What have you know, ten thousand songs an hour, go
on to the sixty a day they say on Spotify,
whatever the hell that's supposed to be. Yeah, so, uh,

(13:55):
it's it's difficult plus everybody, plus with the with the
society being so split down the middle and pulling into directions,
people are scared to alienate their fan bases. I think
with heavy political statements, um, you know, it's just the

(14:17):
obvious stuff I'd like to see. And then also making
a political statement, you know, be it on Twitter or
whatever by an artist just immediately gets shut down by
the opposing group. It doesn't matter, you know. I mean,
you come out and you say something that's meaningful to

(14:39):
your fan base or your political affiliation, but the other
guys are just gonna say, yeah, that's that guy, you know,
or whatever. My guy is better. So it's kind of
it almost, it's just blowing into the wind. I don't
know how to make a meaningful impact on the culture

(15:00):
politically really, except in little increments, you know. That's why
I go on Twitter and say stuff. But again, I
most of my stuff is is in a humorous vein.
Are you worried at all about going on record about
anything and alienating your audience? No, not really. I don't
think so, because I I you know, I think I mean,

(15:22):
Blondie fans are not going to be surprised how we
stand on I'll be q T rights, you know, or etcetera,
um or international politics. I don't think it's gonna nobody's
gonna be surprised by how well what we think. What

(15:45):
did you do for the two years of the pandemic?
I wrote a memoir. I wrote a lot of a
memoir and which I'm pitching now this that was nice.
It didn't do a hell of a lot of music.
I only did a little bit, but the writing was
of full on project that's a year or more. But um,
you know, I'm just finishing that up now and where

(16:05):
we are pitching it? And did you write it yourself
or do you have a ghost writer co writer? Now?
I write it myself, and when we got a publisher,
I'll start dealing with an editor. So usually when you
start to write, you remember stuff that you didn't think
of until you start to write. So were there any
interesting things that came to you as you're writing that
you forgot? Maybe? I, you know, I had to research

(16:25):
a lot of it. I was referring to other Blondie
books that had the bones and the chronology people who
did that work for me, which was good. And I
kept having to refer to the Blondie gig list, which
is online list of all the shows we've done. Stuff
like that was very helpful. I don't know how much

(16:47):
stuff I didn't remember that, but I, you know, I
talked to people and got some anecdotes and things that
were unique. It is it more of a straightforward tale
or does it have the sense of humor you employ
on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, no, I've tried to make it
white hearted. But it didn't have to, you know, I did.
I didn't realize how much you would have to delve

(17:09):
into addiction, um specifically that became it became a theme
in there, because you know, we got we all got
really fucked up for a certain period. There were a
lot of ups and downs. So how did you become addicted?
Just from doing drugs always and from not having much
information about it in that period in the seventies and uh,

(17:34):
you know, emulating our heroes be it you know, Burrows
or lou Reed or whatever, and only seeing the cool
side of it somehow and not the downside. Okay, well
we all smoked marijuana hash. What was your progression from there? Well,
we just did a lot of coke, which was kind
of okay with the powers that be, and then start

(18:00):
to dabbling and smoked dragons, you know how you do
that on tinfron smoking heroin, and that led into just
regular heroin usage. Didn't last too long a couple of years.
But then you know, and that's what how I wind
up with that weird protect protracted illness because I, uh
screwed my immune system really badly from doing this stuff. Okay,

(18:23):
so you're smoking heroin whatever, you start injecting heroin in
your mind, don't you somewhere say, wait a second, what
am I doing? After a while, what am I doing?
Came from going through withdrawals and from walking on the
street and seeing everybody around me being normal and feeling

(18:47):
so alienated from the normalcy of the rest of the world. Okay,
so you know, being a rock star is tough. You
play to, you know, twenty thousand adoring fans, you get
on bust with the same five actors that you've known
your whole life. Takes you hours to come down from
the hit. A lot of people start taking drugs to

(19:07):
cope with the road. What drove you to heroin? Well, yeah, no,
I mean there was a premenous amount of pressure we
You know, you have to remember what the fucking period
was like in the seventies. It was still a wild
West out there. It wasn't like, there wasn't the smoothness
that we have today when we were doing shows. It

(19:27):
was it was rugged and we had a lot of
bad representation and etcetera, etcetera. Again, with a lot of
ups and downs. Financially, I wasn't trust trusted a lot
of people I shouldn't have trusted necessarily, and um should
have been bed. That was probably the I do blame

(19:48):
my endless weed smoking on my lack of attention to business. Possibly,
but I don't have any kind of ahead for mathematics.
But I didn't pay a lot of I didn't pay
a lot of attention to the business stuff. I just
left it with people. So the year plus that you

(20:15):
were a heroin addict. You know, people talk about scoring
by the same token. You have a certain amount of money,
your rock star. How did you get your dope which
you need, you know, multiple times a day. Yeah, you know,
initially we had people delivering, but as things declined generally
and we ran out of money and sold our fancy

(20:39):
living quarters. Um, you know, I was crawling around. And
then I went you know, after after even after that,
even after I got off being a junkie and went
on to I was on a method on program for
many years, and I then I became a full on
cocaine addict once again, but much more so than I

(21:02):
had been in the early days. So that was another
thing I have to fight off. Okay, So how did
you stop taking the methodon and you said in the
past tense were you still taking it? No? No, yeah,
I finally just I just tampered it off on my own,
very gradually over a long period. It's kind of a
city of stuff. But the Methodon is also a great

(21:23):
cushion for for cocaine youth and many people I knew
on the method and program. We're all using coke all
the time because I had a doctor, had a really
great doctor method On doctor who swore that Methodon was
an antipsychotic, and that she was aware of lifelong schizophrenics

(21:45):
who were cured cured by Methodon. But that, of course
it can't. You know, it's too restricted to be experimented
with in these psychiatric situations, as you know are many
drugs in America. But so in that respect, the anti
psychotic properties are kind of obvious for people doing cocaine.

(22:09):
You'd get less paranoid and less insane, doo and cope
when you're on method on. Both the high was still
as good. Yeah, you know then, but then cocaine addiction.
You know, it's when we were starting out and we're
in the midst of the cocaine of the late seventies
and early eighties, Nobody thought it was addictive, but you know,

(22:32):
of course it is. And you feel horrible if you're
using daily and then you stop your crashing and feeling
slugged out and unhappy. So it's that. But yeah, with
method on, it's uh, it's more a lot of aspects
of it are tolerable. So how long did you do cocaine?

(22:55):
What period was this and how did you get off
the cocaine this time? After we stopped doing the blondie situation,
which really just kind of fizzled out, then I was
doing coke for I don't know, you know, four or
five years, probably maybe even longer. And then we started
putting the Banta back together. Then I met my great

(23:16):
wife and she was instrumental in me so bring up
and that was it, and we were on tour somewhere
and I this is just there was the point where
I stopped doing the method on and I had gotten
it down to five milligrams a day, and then I
just stopped. And I felt a little weird for about

(23:36):
a week and then I was okay. And now now
i've been I've been relatively sober for uh twenty years
or so, but you smoked marijuana on a regular basis.
Still no, don you're essentially clean. It gets me too, Stone,
I can't do it. I would like to. I feel
like I'm missing something now that's everywhere, but I just
don't do it. What do I know? Every drug I've

(23:58):
ever taken has never lived up to the building everybody
says it's so great. Maybe so you know, I think
I think you know. I think Pott interfaces well with
being a teenager, and in your twenties there's a different interface. Yeah,
we're gonna go down this path. I certainly think, you know,
but it makes me wonder. You know, if marijuana was

(24:20):
legal everywhere, would everybody still talk about it in the
same insider way. I mean, people talk about being drunk,
but you know, being drunk, you're active. Although there's different
strands of mariwater as they say canabis. Now you know
it's relatively pacifying and you retreat you I don't know.
So I you know, my kids, I've I tell them,

(24:43):
you know, if you're gonna get stone, smoke weed and
don't get drunk, don't drink alcohol. So there's that. How
did you meet your wife, Um just through the New
York scene. She met her at a she was doing
some stage work with Penny Arcade. You know, Penny Arcade
is m great individual, very insightful person Um just so

(25:06):
in a in a performance situation. And then you know,
we were friends for a while. She's terrific. She says,
she's an actor a couple of films and more theater.
And you have kids. Did you want to have kids
or did she say this is something she wants to do.
So it just happened. But I kind of always had
it in the back of my head. I was close

(25:27):
to my father and mother. I was really close to
my old man and I you know, I had dreams
of taking care of small living creatures. Uh. For it
was kind of a recurrent theme in my dreams. And

(25:47):
it's just always there. How old your kids to sixteen
and eighteen? And what have you learned having kids? Forget
about just you know, just all this stuff that one learns.
It's a lot of stuff, just how to negotiated to Uh.
You know, I'm pretty lenient with them. My wife is

(26:09):
more of the discipline area. But they listen to me.
It's good. But you know, there's a lot of ups
and downs with that too. So to what degree are
you concerned about the future of your two girls. Yeah, considerably,
you know, because they're still seeking for what they're gonna
do in life. There's that, Then there's the climate. I mean,

(26:32):
we're you know, okay, financially, I'm lucky in that respect,
but things are weird. It's a weird time. Well, I
guess you were an artist. If your two daughters said
they want to be artists, that's fine with you. Or
you want them to like to go to college and
get all that they can do whatever the hell they want,
you know, that's that's that's it. Yeah, my younger daughter

(26:55):
has overnights become a real fashionista and this fashion but
she's always been a graphic artist, and the older one
had it's done a bunch of filmmaking and know this
how to work final cut really well and that kind
of stuff. Okay, you talked about the ups and downs
of the money, you know, having to sell your apartment,
et cetera. So how's the money today We're doing okay?

(27:17):
You know, we did a deal with merk with Hypnosis,
so we sold some aspects and got a you know,
immediate payback for that, not like Bob Dylan money necessarily,
but it's okay. Um, you know, I'm not complaining. I'm lucky.
I mean a fucking privileged situation here, which is weird.

(27:41):
I mean I never came from any money. My parents
were just lower middle class. But all this stuff, after
all this time, I mean, it's quite a while to
pay off financially for us. So I gotta say I
go into a little more det tale in my book.
But you know, we got screwed over in your very

(28:03):
standard show biz way. So when did you start finally
seeing the money? Least ten fifteen years? Less ten years maybe? Wow?
So why did you sell the murk? What was that
decision about? We were you know, prompted, Uh, he got it,
gave us a really great multiple, et cetera. That kind

(28:24):
of not says But I don't know, I probably should
have held that for more money at this point. It
was very early on in this um uh moments of
people selling, you know, but we we held on to
aspects of the of the catalog of the songs. So

(28:48):
you know, we're still getting licensing fees and that kind
of stuff. And what do you do with the money.
Nothing just sitting there. Um. And we have a nice
apartment in Manhattan now, and we've got a house up
in Woodstock. We've always Actually the house of Woodstock was
financed by Andy Warhol skull paintings that I sold under

(29:09):
market also, But that's what happens, you know. Okay, how
did you end up with it? And how did you
decide to sell it? Wish the paintings. The painting I
had like four Warhole skulls, you know, I just bought
him from Andy. Um, probably really cheap. I could have
brought all that fucking stuff, you know, I could have
brought all the Maryland's and Elvis's, but I just didn't

(29:30):
have the foresight. I took it for granted because I
was around it all the time. And uh I so
I bought four from Andy. I sold two really cheap.
Early on when I was broke. I mean I was.
I was broke really a lot. Because I'm not gonna
go into all the details. It's in the book. You'll
read all the details in the book. But I was

(29:52):
didn't you know, I was in financial distress for quite
a while. And then in later years I sold the
in two of the skull paintings, and that helped finance
the house up in Woodstock. But I what I do
have still is the actual skull that Andy painted. I
have the actual physical human skull in my collection of

(30:15):
weird stuff. So did you sell those other two primarily
to buy the house? Yeah? Just yes, But yeah, because
who was that. We were very close to nine eleven
when that happened, and you know, I probably should have
looked around the city for a cheap town house at
that point, but because there everybody was, you know, running

(30:37):
for it. But we did want to. We had made
a bunch of trips up to Woodstock, and we knew
people from the film community up there, and I have
have old friends up there, you know a lot of
the community. Um, So we just kind of wanted to

(30:57):
get the country life thing out of our system. So
we did that. We were up there for like ten years,
pretty much straight straight through. Okay, so you say you
have the original skull? Are you a collector? I'm not
talking about collector like going to art basil. I'm talking
about do you have all this stuff? Do you have
all the memorabilia from Blondie? I have a lot of stuff. Yes,
I have a lot of stuff. I have a really

(31:17):
great knife collection. I collect knives, military, American custom knives,
and very knowledgeable in the knife world. And I know
a lot of the old knife makers. It's a very
niche fucking thing. I write about it in the book.
Um it's what it is. How did you get into knives? Well,

(31:37):
my old man took me to army and Navy stories
when as a kid, and I think that's where it
started out. He put me a couple of knives early on. Um,
it just it just went from there. And then in
the early in the seventies, not the early seventies, but
in the you know, mid late seventies when we were
doing the band thing, I started seeing the American custom knife,

(32:00):
which was in its infancy at that point. But I
just found it fascinating and all these things connected up,
and I started going to the knife shows in New
York all the time, and I met all the guys,
all these great makers. Um, it's it's still going on.
It's a it's a it's a pretty big scene. Still.
How many knowledge do you think you have? And where

(32:21):
are they? Thousands there? You know, put away, Some of
them are put away, some out on display, but not
a lot, A lot of them are just in storage. Okay,
So where do you grow up Brooklyn and your parents
their parents were from the Old Country or how long
was your family here. My old man came from Russia
when he was probably, um, you know, five six years old.

(32:45):
My mom was born here. I think her. Maybe my grandfather,
my maternal grandfather, may have been born out of the country,
but I think my grandmother was born here. I you know,
I traced a bunch of this lineage recently. I just
very recently had a guy from Germany and cousin get

(33:07):
in touch with me through one of the DNA things
that I had done, and he had a bunch of
facts that I didn't have any had a copy of
my old man's birth certificate, which um, I don't know
when it was made, and interesting stuff. My old my
father had the same birthday as my older daughter, which

(33:27):
we were all taken back by. Right. So it's unusual
for a Jewish boy to be named Chris. I had
kids coming up to me when I was a kid
and saying, it's a weird name for a jew boy
ivan back then, you know, but I think it may
have my parents may have been trying to bypass some

(33:47):
aspects of anti Semitism that they may have been confronted with.
And on your birth certificate is it Christopher or Christopher?
And you grow up and once again, what are your
parents do all day? My father was a salesman and
a frustrated writer. Um. He had been a labor organizer briefly.
I think that's part of the FBI story. You know,

(34:10):
I know those guys they told me. My mom told
me that they met in the party in Syracuse, New York.
So you know, uh, it's kind of all. I wish
I had questioned them more about it, but I didn't.
You know, again, I took it all for granted when
I was a kid. But my mother was a really
great painter, and I just don't have a lot of

(34:33):
her stuff left. I have a handful of her work.
Most of it got, you know, as we got booted
out of different environments. That got the discarded all by
the wayside. But during her heyday, was this just a
passion or did she actually sell someone her work? No,
I don't think she ever sold. She was a window
designer in the forties. She told me she knew decooning

(34:56):
a little in downtown. Um, She used to do some
of the Lord and Taylors and some of those big
windows right around the around the same period that Dolly
was doing windows in Manhattan too, So I mean she
was successful with that. And she was a really great
abstract impressionist painter, but you know, picasso Esque in some places,

(35:18):
but also experimental and others. But I have a handful
of her things. Do you think that her identity and
her you know, the things around, is that what Drew
drove you to be an artist? Yeah? I mean, you know,
she was my dad. My dad died when I was fifteen,

(35:40):
so that was early on the dramatic and um, she
was very permissive and she let all my friends gather
at my house and hang around and jam and smoke
weed and it was, you know, nice period. But I
was called up in the sixties and moved gravitated towards

(36:05):
the music culture. You said you were very close to
your father. What did that look like. It must have
been very painful when he passed. Yeah, yeah, no, it
took me a while too. I like, I can you know,
I just kind of complete breakdown when I was nineteen.
That was probably spurred on as it was part of that,
you know, processing his death, which I probably hadn't reacted to,

(36:31):
and taking acid in all the general you know, melt
down to the sixties. What did the breakdown look like?
I want? I wanted up in a nuthouse for you know,
in a Beth Israel for three months. Did but I
got a lot of benefits out of it, so I was, Okay,
we've got welfare. I got, uh, the remainder might stay
in art school, paid for by the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation,

(36:55):
so you know, it wasn't total loss. So what kind
of kids were you in school? Good student, student, popular, unpopular? No,
I was just kind of fringe nerd kid. I don't
think I was. I certainly wasn't a good student. Um.
I was indifferent to school. I didn't like school at all.
I fight and then getting this is my whole biography here.

(37:21):
Um I got thrown out of Midwood High School for
having long hair in nineteen The fucking dean rounded up
me and my two or three friends and he said,
you guys are gonna be a crossing the street and
your hair is gonna blow in front of your eyes
and you get hit by a car and you have
to get a hair cut before you come back. And
I was really happy and felt very liberated to leave.

(37:44):
And I, um, they did, somebody from the school, but
right at that moment, all those civil rights cases were
coming up about long hair. So somebody actually called me
from the school and said, okay, you can come back
and you won't have to take jim and everything's okay.
But meanwhile, my mother found a very cheap private school

(38:05):
uptown in Manhattan. So I wound up finishing high school there,
which was great. And you graduate from high school and
then one then I went to San Francisco, played music
with my friends, started a little later dabbling in photography,
all this stuff, A lot of a lot of stuff.
You mentioned art school. How does that fit in. I

(38:26):
was in the School of Visual Arts. Well, that was
that that was financed by the city as a results
of my being insane, which was great, and um my
last year, I guess there I last year. At two years,
you know, I started seeing flyers in the lobby for

(38:48):
this thing called the New York Dolls, which I initially
thought was a drag act. But then when I finally
saw something in the Village Voice about these guys are
really great and the singers like Mick Jagger. I went
to see them. I fell in with this other band
called the Magic Tramps, who got a shout out in
that Miserable Vinyl TV show. And oddly enough, because they're

(39:10):
very unknown and never really recorded, Eric Emerson was the
lead singer. He was a Warhol superstar. I fell in
with those guys. I played with them, was part of
their entourage, and did a roadies situation with them, on
and on, and then that led into meeting Debbie and
then then well that happened. Okay, a little bit slower.

(39:30):
You graduate from high school, you know, your father has passed.
What are you doing for money? My mom had whatever
insurance or security stuff. Uh, but you know, I don't
know how the hell we got by. She managed to
pull together enough income. We moved out of our ancestral
home and moved to an apartment in Brooklyn that was smaller.

(39:50):
That's when we lost a lot of her paintings. Uh,
but you know, we managed to get by and still
enough money to financed a couple of trips to California
for me. Okay, so the first trip that was when
and what was going on there? Went to streets somewhere loved. Okay,

(40:11):
so you saw something love and you said I gotta go. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. I heard the song you know flowers in
your Hair like, yeah, I remember. So did you hitchhike there? No? No,
I uh. The first time I drove out with buddies
with older guys from my Brooklyn neighborhood, which was a
nice road trip with some anecdotes and around that. Um.

(40:37):
Then I got to l A the weekend of Monterey Pop. Well,
I was so horny to go to San Francisco. I
didn't fucking go, and I always regretted that going to
Battery Pop. But I did go right up. I went
up to h I went to Saronisco at a reasonably
good time there for a bunch of weeks, and I

(40:58):
went back to Brooklyn. I think, Um, I don't know
if I started up art school in that year in between,
but I went to I probably I may have been
my first year at art school in that year in between.
I went back to San Francisco and summer nine, they

(41:21):
cracked up completely from taking acid too much, all this
kind of stuff. Heard weird things in the White album,
the same as a lot of other people. All of
you know, it was I was microcosmo of the macrocosm,
as they say, what were you doing in San Francisco?

(41:42):
And where were you sleeping? With friends who had were
had inhabited a big house there, people I knew and
people I was. I mean, I got off the I
got off the bus the first time I was there
in sixty seven, got off the bus, walked across the
street into a party. People were dancing to Lucy and
the Sky with Diamonds true story. Walked into the kitchen.

(42:06):
I had a joint. I started smoking with some kid.
He said, who are you? I said to me, you know,
blah blah blah. I wound up. He said, oh, you
can stay at my house, you know, any place to stay.
It was like that, very easy. Okay, well, you know
the summer of love and then everybody goes in sixty
eight and the media portrays it is negative. What was
your experience like once in a lifetime great or you know,

(42:27):
I just happened to be there. So so it got
dark later on, you know, I mean I started seeing
elements of darkness and predatory people surrounding all this stuff,
even even probably in sixty seven. But yeah, there was
it was by by by sixty eight, it was on
the way, you know, it was the flood gates had opened.

(42:57):
So obviously music is everything in that era. When did
you start playing an instrument when that I had been
playing guitar for when I was twelves before the Beatles.
What motivated to folk music? Yes, and just being attracted
to it. The electric guitar, The essence of the electric
guitar was fascinating to me, and I, you know, I

(43:18):
would see occasionally one in Brooklyn and looking a basement
window and there will be some guy with playing a
fancy electric guitar, and that was very interesting to me.
And then you know, I was aware of some of
those twiny songs that were on the radio and that
kind of stuff. Um uh. I always West Side Story

(43:42):
was such a huge influence on me and everybody, and
I feel like it pumped up a lot of people
for the British invasion later on. People don't get what
a big deal West Side Story was for the kids
back then. Well, so all you know the original soundtrack,
original Broadway soundtrack. Did you see the new West Side Story? No, I,

(44:05):
you know, I was really kind of hyped for it.
But then it sort of gradually fizzled out, and now
I'm not I don't know if I give you ship
at this point. Yeah, I don't really feel that way.
And I'm not a huge Spielberg fan anyway. So did
you play in bands in high school? Were you any
good playing with bands and playing My friends, we've famously
opened up for the Velvet Underground in the nineteen sixty

(44:26):
seven at a place called the Gymnasium. I had a buddy.
I had a buddy, this guy, Joey Freeman, who I
grew up with. I knew him for me. He was
he was maybe a year younger than me, but I've
known him for you know, fifty odd years. He worked

(44:46):
for Andy, for the factory. And he showed up my house.
I mean, we all knew he was associated with Andy,
and he showed up my house one day in Brooklyn
and he said, listen, there was an opening act for
the Velvets, and we all know who they were, of course,
and they open the act, didn't show up, would you
guys do it? So we brought our guitars on the
subway and went up uptown. I think it's in the

(45:08):
East seventies. This old Polish Hall, and we opened up
for the Velvets and Marine Tucker let us turn her
bass drum right side up, you know, because she played
it like a like a timpany, you know. And we
did a little set and it was hardly anybody there.
After this set, you know, somebody came up and said, oh,

(45:30):
Andy thinks you're really great, and that was nice. And
Velvets were great. They were awesome and powerful. That was it,
you know, hanging with famous people as a thing unto itself,
which most people never experience. When they experience, they either
become tongue tied or become fan boys or fan girls.

(45:52):
And that doesn't work. You know. You talk about, you know,
I meeting Andy, you know, are you just kind of
an artist? You just kind of go with the flow
and it fits. I mean where you say, hey, this
he was already Andy Warhol when your battle. Well, no,
I mean I had been seeing Andy since I was
a little kid on TV. I mean I saw him
on David Suskind or whatever that was. So I mean

(46:13):
I was aware that always. And Andy was you know,
very high up there in the ether, but he was
also close to the streets. So there was this He
managed to negotiate this position that he was in. Everybody
in New York who was in any kind of the
arts had some connection to Andy one way or the others,

(46:36):
and that started out. That whole thing started out earlier
for me, I think, I mean later on. Yeah, I
frequently star struck. Um. I met Peter Dinklage in a
gas station and he was charming and really nice and
and being in my position is great. It's like being
a Mason or something because I can just go up

(46:57):
to anybody in show business and go high, it's me
from Blondie and they Okay, yeah, it's you. That's a
really great thing. Debbie and me met Liz Taylor when
she was on Broadway for the first time. Our buddy
Dennis Christopher was in The Little Foxes with her. That
was memorable. Um, Milton Burrow gave me a big kiss.

(47:21):
We were at a George Burns. We met George Burns
several times and we were at some uh toasting situation
for him, and Milton Burrow was the MC and we
got dragged out on stage and he grabbed my head
and give me a big kiss on the lifts in
front of the whole audience, which is pretty nice. There's
not many people can say that. So if you talk

(47:42):
about all the characters in the Factory, Joe Dallassandro, Dy whatever,
did you know all that? No, not a lot. No,
because we were We didn't hook up early on with Andy.
He was in the third Factory by the time. We
were seeing him frequently more in the eighties, right from
around on. Um, I know Joe Moore from online and

(48:06):
talking to him online in this period. So how do
you meet Debby? I went, I went to a show
that they were doing with her girl trio thing called
the Stilettos, and I went to their first show at
a bar on twenty four Street, I think, and uh,
that was it. And I was very taken with her
because she was very magnetic and beautiful. And um, I

(48:32):
they had they only had rotating musicians in their band,
and I as soon as I would say well, I
signed up with the band and became the first permanent member.
You remember what year? That was? Seventy three. So seventy three,
the Dolls get their deal, They make their first record
for Mercury, gets a lot of hype. Doesn't happen the
Ramons albums the first one, Yeah, maybe I'm I can't

(48:57):
maybe say Clive or six? Yeah, maybe said five. So
what was the scene like? You know, you went to
see Debbie's bean Stiletto, But what other acts were going
in seventy three? By the late seventies, the whole different world.
But what's the scene like in the early seventies teenage
lust here, teenage lust. There was three Girls and the sky.
Harold Um. I knew Tommy Ramon from Mercer Arts Center,

(49:23):
from a band called Butch, And when we started playing
a cb GEVs, he approached me and said, I heard
you found a place to play downtown. He meant cb
g VS, and I have this band called the Ramons,
and we played with their owns at their first gig
at CBGVS, which I've only figured out recently because all

(49:47):
these dates are out there in the world. But that happened, Um,
you know, and but early on, you know, Eric Emerson,
Magic Trams, teenage lust bands. I'm not forgetting. I'm not remembering. Rather,
loth are in the hand people of silver apples, right,

(50:08):
silver apples. Those guys were around a little earlier. Um.
Suicide was around for a long time that you know
all day I think even pre date the Dolts a
little bit. So what were you living on? Then? Welfare
was very helpful. That was pretty much it. Occasional odd jobs,
but mostly welfare. Okay, so you go to see stiletto

(50:28):
you're struck by Debbie. How do you introduce yourself and
what do you say? Well? I knew one of the
other girls, One of the other girls in Stilettos was
one of Eric Emerson's girlfriends, and they had a kid together,
and it was all very incestuous actually, so you know,

(50:49):
I I don't know how much I spoke to her
that first night, but soon after I joined up as
their guitar player. Well you how to sell yourself, right?
What was your pitch? Well, we were working together at
that point and we just you see them. You know,
you're a peripheral character. How do you say, no, you
need me in the band? I was probably more of

(51:09):
the two elder the other girl, Eric's girlfriend that because
she was kind of the leader, the default leader, because
she had the loft that they were rehearsed again. Um,
but Debbie's claims to have been had some notice of
me and some attraction early on too, because I had

(51:31):
really long hair and I where I make up of
the whole fucking other image. I might have been more striking,
I don't know. And how long after you met her
to turn into a romance? A few months? We were
friends here, a couple of months, maybe maybe a month,
maybe one month, two months somewhere in there. Now she's
spent five years older than you. That that's unusual. Back,

(51:52):
did you notice that or you know you're in the
downtown SENI who cares, No, she looked like she was
a little kid when she was thirty. She looked like
she was nineteen. Yeah, believe me, I know. I just
want to know what was going through your head. Okay,
So now you're part of the group which has got
free flowed. When do you start having a plan or
is there never a plan? No? It was I mean,
you know, the dolls going out in the world and

(52:14):
not succeeding, or at least going out in America and
not succeeding, made everybody sort of step back, pull it back.
So the whole New York music scene for several years
was just done for each other and the only people
in the audience were other band members and their entourages,
and there was you know, a peripheral group of friends.

(52:37):
But generally it was again pretty incestuous. But it was
there a plan. I don't know if there was a plan.
We just worked. I mean the plan was to maybe
get a record deal, but that was pretty nebulous. I
don't know if you know how anybody thought that was
really going to happen. And what were you using for material?

(52:59):
Even wrote songs that did cover songs, all kinds of stuff,
but everybody wrote songs. Had you been writing songs previously
or when did you start to blossom? Now? Most of
that was done because there was a need for it.
With the early songs we wrote with the Stilettos, I
think the only man the big song that we wrote

(53:20):
in the Stilettos period that carried carried over was in
the Flesh, that one that was a hit in Australia run.
So how did it more fit from the Stilettos to Blondie. Well,
the girls, you know, it was hard to keep maintaining
a three girls situation where they were all taking turn
singing leads and stuff like that, and there was you know,
there was a certain amount of competition involved, and eventually

(53:42):
we just split off and the band followed Debbie into
the next incarnation. How did it become the name blondie?
Debbie died or air blonde one day and and we
didn't really have a name for a while. And came
home him and said, all these guys are yelling a
blondie at me. That really was That was really it? Now,

(54:06):
how do you end up working at CBGB's. That was
pretty early? I remember, Um, that was with the Stilettos.
That was earlier. Um, it was just there, and I
remember distinctly. I was in the backroom in Maxis, Kansas City,
which is where people played, and you know, we people

(54:27):
played at mercer ars. I never I never the Spilettos
never played at mercer Arts. But we did gigs with
the dolls and played the eighty two Club. You know
what the two Club was? Two Club? I don't know.
The two Club was an old uh not really a
drag bar. It was a mafia owned transvestide bar. Um.

(54:48):
I guess, you know, I don't want to be politically incorrect,
but but I don't know if it really was dragged
as such, but it was female impersonator. So I don't
know if this is you know, I don't being too, kid,
We'll let you off the hook to offend anybody by
this terminology. But but it was a great situation there

(55:12):
were It was downstairs in a basement. It was this
old mafia run club. There were photos in there. There
was a photo of Abbott and Costello with a drag
queen that I was I thought it was the greatest
fucking art effect that I had seen at that point.
So we played. We used to play there. There's very
little information out in the world about the eighties two club.

(55:34):
It was number eighty two I think Third Street, East
third Street. Uh, but Seabees. So we were in the
back room at back to Kansas City and Elda, one
of the girls from Selettos, showed up and she said,
I just was downtown in this bar and I saw
a bunch of guys playing in a band and they
were all dressed like old men, and she meant television,

(55:56):
and so we went down to see them, and you know,
and then we just got in there and started playing.
We we played at cbt VS every weekend for seven
months in a row. At one point. Now, the sound
of Blondie was different from the other acts downtown. I
mean a lot of them were really punk. Television was
thinking to itself, was it notable or you're just another

(56:19):
band doing your thing. It was really diverse musically, I
mean the bands the out of all the big bands,
you know, us and the Ramans and talking heads and
television and that was that's a real big spread of
sound and styles. And how do you end up with
Private Stock? Um? Private Stock? I guess right, I guess

(56:44):
we had gotten our manager at that point and we
just wound up there. It was early on, you know,
I don't know. We might have got picked up by
Sire a little later, I don't know. But Private Stock
was a weird sort of vanity label for this guy,
Larry Utall, who used to be with Bell Records, I believe,

(57:06):
with Marty Thaou and uh Seymour. I think they were
those guys and open partners. Um. He didn't really have
a clue as to what to do with the allegedly
punk act. He you know, they had they had the
Fifth of Beethoven, remember that, absolutely, that was one of

(57:28):
their big hits. They had Ship and they had oh god,
I can't remember now I'm blanket, but they had a
couple had Peter Lemon, Jello. You know, Peter Lemon Jello
was absolutely MLR guy. You know, so, I mean that
was what was on Private Stuck and you know, so

(57:50):
we were there and then who got bought by chrystalis
after the first album? They wait wait wait wait wait,
so slow down a little bit. Who is the manage
of them leaves? This guy? Peter Leeds? All right, now,
Peter Leeds was not a good experience or baddocks. No,
it was terrible. But you know because he continued to
be a manager. So it was terrible because he just

(58:11):
didn't have good people skills. He had good ideas and
he but he was just you know, it was just belligerent.
He would have been better as a CEO, cranky ce
CEO of something. I think. Okay, so you make these
two records for Private Stock. Private Stock is there in
the middle of recording the second one when the negotiations

(58:33):
commenced with crystalis how do you get hooked up with
Richard Godderay? He was just around he Um Craig Leon
was responsible for recording, doing live recordings and CBGBs. At
one point there was a cbg VS live album done,

(58:55):
but by that time none of the big bands wanted
to be on this because everybody it was dealing with
their own contracts and record labels. So allegedly there are
all these lost tapes somewhere of you know us in
television and whatever that we're done with the twenty four
track truck. So Craig at some point during that was

(59:18):
approached by Debbie May. I think maybe that's the connection
with Goda. Craig was hooked up with Gadara. Uh, I
think that's it. So how did you feel about the
capturing of your sound? Feel good about it? Bad about it?
It was good? It was great, you know, I mean,
just got her ahead. A tremendously different approach than Mike Chapman.

(59:38):
You know, he was you know, he was just very
old school. We go in and do the do for
takes of something and then pick the best one. It
was kind of like that. Okay, how does it get
started with crystalis? Then Christmas bought us from private stock.
You know, that just doesn't happen, you know, Blondie looked
like it was not going anywhere. How did Crystals even

(01:00:01):
get interested? Well, we had that. We had a hit
within the flesh in Australia. It was a weird. It's
own weird fluke. Um. You know the story. You know
the story of that is that Molly Meldrum allegedly played
in the Flesh, which was the B side of Ex Offender.

(01:00:22):
He allegedly played it by mistake on his show. I
asked him. I don't think it was a mistake. I
think he knew his audience and that's just the story.
We also had a video that went with it too,
which was very early on. So you think that it
was the action in Australia that got Crystal was interested.
It was it was encouraging to them that we had

(01:00:45):
a number one hit somewhere in the world. I think
it was part of the package. So you make this switch.
At some point you switched to ship. Where is that? Um?
That was pretty much after we had been a established
I guess it was after Hearted Glass was right. Okay,

(01:01:07):
then let's go back. You make this deal with Chris Salis.
Obviously private stock has to be paid off. Are they
also paid off out of your own money or theoretical money?
I don't know, yes, probably, yeah. I mean, you know
we were we were contracted to Chrysalists to do three
albums in a year. So we were always in fucking

(01:01:30):
arrears with this ship. We never we were always in
breach of contract with those guys, and that led to
a lot of stress. Two. I mean, that's partly why
we're all doing drugs all the time. Elton seems to
be the only person who actually delivered on those contracts.
You know, you're having big success, and were they really

(01:01:50):
pushing you, Hey, we want three albums a year. No,
it wasn't pushing, but it was just it was the
fact that we were always always in default. You know, Oh, okay,
how do you get hooked up with Mike Chopman. Chapman
was probably Terry Ellis also leads, but Terry ellis a
lot and he came to see us at the Whiskey

(01:02:12):
and he thought we were funny and amusing, and when
we met with him, and that was it just you know, well,
you know that was when he was the Commander. He
did hit It, Hit It a little later. The Commander
was a little bit later. But yeah, that was right.
But I've been trying to say, yeah, it starts then
and he ends up having Dreamland Records. He really build
his own reputation on top of Blondie. You said his
style of working in the studio was different from god Erers.

(01:02:35):
What was his style? Well, it was very regimented, you know.
The um Parallel Lines record was. He was you know,
quite the taskmaster, which we weren't prepared for, but it was.
We got great results with that. So how many of
those songs were either chosen or written when you started

(01:02:55):
in the studio There was a probably a budge. I
don't think any of them were two worked up in
the studio. Uh, some of them, you know, but the
like you know, the Heart of Glass demo was floating
around for forever. There were very various versions of that
out in the world. So how did it turn into
the Heart of Glass that we all know? Well, we

(01:03:16):
had this, we had the rolland rhythm machine that synchronized
with this rolland sin. So they went and then had
this was the days before MIDI. But there was you know,
trigger electorbal trigger with each other. They spoke to each other.

(01:03:38):
So that was part of the putting it together aspect.
And did you realize it was did you hear in
the studio and say this is gonna go No, it's
not really you know, you know, the Parallel Lines was
on the charts for six months before that was released
as a single. So I don't know if anybody got

(01:03:58):
the idea right away, and who the idea was it
to get hanging on the telephone. That was me and Debbie.
Jeffrey Lee Parris right from the Gun Club right had
given me a mixtape and that's that was on this mixtape.
And famously we were in Tokyo in a taxi cab
and I had playing it on a boom box and

(01:04:19):
the old cab driver started tapping his fingers on the
steering wheel and I, okay, this is this is making
a connection with this guy. There's something to it, But
I was I just really loved the original version, the
nerves or and then you know, the vocal on that
is unbelievable, the way it's shouting it. Was that something
that Chapman got out of you or did you say,

(01:04:40):
this is why we want to do it? Don't know.
I Chapman with Debbie was I don't think Debbie was
forced into as much repetition as the band was. I think,
you know, he tried to get a spontaneous emotional content
out of her. And how does Fripp end up on
Fadeaway and radiate. Well, Frippen approached us I think after

(01:05:01):
a Palladium gig in New York and we had gotten
friendly with him. We did and he we did a
bunch of shows with him, off beat things, so it
just seemed like a no brainer to ask him. And
that was that song was kind of weird and experimental anyway,
phenomenal song. The song I played most still from that album. Okay,

(01:05:25):
old history. But to go through that crazy lawsuit with
Frank and Fante, what the hell's up there? That was
much later, and that was you know, they just wanted
to uh, well it was Nigel. Also, they wanted to
be paid on us moving forward. They got they were
always paid on their historical connection. They're they're no when

(01:05:50):
he's trying to not pay them on this stuff that
they were they worked on. But we just thought that,
you know, moving forward, touring whatever, we weren't obliged to
pay them for uh, just having worked with us in
the past. It hinged on some very weird legal little point.

(01:06:11):
And do you know who Marty Sulfon is, No, he
was our lawyer. He was. He was great, great character.
He wrote various legal showbiz textbooks that are in place
to this day. Um, he nailed the case. I mean,
none of us really would they had to testify. It
could have just been him. The judge was the judge

(01:06:33):
didn't leave the bench. She just said, Okay, I'm gonna
I can roll down. But supposedly the press was back
then that you didn't want Frank to play on the records.
Is that true? Well, yeah, we all fell out with
those guys, you know, But no, this was much later.
This was going into the no exit period. Okay, at
some point you get hooked up with Sheep. He makes
the movie Roady Wasn't on Eat to the Beat where

(01:06:55):
he made a video for every song, Yes, every song.
I think we were the first bands of do that.
I think they can't in it around the same period,
but I think we were the first one to do
like a specific setup and working. We sat good bad
Otherwise it was good up to a point. You know,
what was the point? Well, we just kind of it

(01:07:15):
just all fell apart. But it was a lot to
do with us being drug addicts. Also, well when you're
hey day before it fell apart. He is big on
promotional stuff and by the same token, you were really
his first step outside after Alice Cooper. So did he
give enough time? And we're a lot of his things
helpful or it's just you know, he was better than

(01:07:37):
Peter Leeds. No, he was good. He was you know,
I mean, I liked him. It just ended up unfortunately.
Uh there we did. We went to a party on
a tank. He gotta he we We've had some party
at some club. It might have been a Parallel Lines
or Auto American release party, and we they rented a
Sherman tank and we pulled up to the club dried

(01:08:00):
a actual tank that was a sheep thing. It was nice. Okay.
On Eat to the Beat, you know, my favorite song
on that is the hardest part. Can you tell me
any backstory there? That was just to do a sort
of metal funk song. I can't really remember the specific
inspiration on that excepts stylistically okay, and then Auto American

(01:08:23):
has the rap on it. That was the thing. I mean, Actually,
the only song I really knew was going to be
a hit even before we recorded it was Tired It's High.
I just was enamored of the original version and I
just had but I was aware of our position at
the time, which was, you know, we were all the

(01:08:44):
way up there, and I knew if we recorded this
well and put it out, it would be successful. By
the same toke at At this point, reggae has very
little traction in the marketplace. One could say that you
broke reggae wide in America. Man, maybe I don't know.
Then there's the Richard dear a movie and call me
his build as a debbie herey solo track? Why and

(01:09:08):
you feel good or bad about that? Because we went
in with Georgio and he just didn't want to. You know,
Georgio was not like Chapman who was willing to um
oversee the band. He just wanted to. He was very
He worked very quickly. So we we did our version
of the stuff. But I'm as far as I know,

(01:09:30):
he replaced a lot of the stuff, and some of
our original parts may have inspired the stuff he replaced
them with, but I think he used his own guys.
He just had, you know, to two assistance who did stuff.
I mean, it's clem clemma is on there for sure. Okay,
can you put out the next album? And it's a
stiff relative to expectations? What was that like? It? You know?

(01:09:52):
It was this dressing. I guess Um, the cover really sucked.
We just couldn't get We couldn't get I couldn't get
it off the ground. The covered. The idea for the
cover was to have everybody be get like Rick Baker
or one of these really great makeup guys and have
everybody be half animal half human and call it The Hunter. Okay,

(01:10:14):
but they just couldn't get that ship together, so it
just wound up being this sort of mediocre photograph. Okay,
At what point do you realize the album isn't going oh?
You know. At the same time, ever, we were dealing
with this drug addiction stuff that was ongoing. We were
uh doing promotion, and we were working constantly. You know,

(01:10:36):
there was a lot of headbutting in the band. I
mean that's somewhere in there is when we parted with Frankie,
you know, towards the end there we the very the
very last tour we did without Frankie. Um, you know,
it was it was a difficult period. You have any
conversation with Frankie and Nigel these days, No, No, I didn't.

(01:10:57):
I Mean that's why the whole you know, the whole
Hall of Fame thing was so fucking weird, because I
hadn't at that point. I hadn't spoken to Frankie for
twenty years or whatever. And you know, if those guys
had really wanted to play with us, I might have
considered it. I mean probably not, but if I had
heard from them, I might have considered it, you know. Okay,

(01:11:20):
So what was it like for the three four years
we were on top of the world. That was nice.
I mean I remember Marty Thou coming to our fancy
house and saying, do you guys realized you can buy
it if you want, And I hadn't really thought of that,
and I bought a Tympani. You know, as as I

(01:11:42):
frequently say now, the model for a rock star has
changed so much. I really wasn't thinking about buying a
Rolls Royce and buying a diamond watch or any of
this kind of nonsense back then, if I you know,
when I thought about spending money was just to buy
more guitars and recording equipment. Did you like being on
the road? Not like being on the road? It was okay,
it was we were on the road, you know, really

(01:12:05):
straight through for several years. I mean, it was just
almost very little let up between with recording and being
on the road. It was just it was it was.
I mean, I'm lucky I was a kid, so I
could put up with that stuff. Well, some people have
been around the world and see nothing. And when you
would travel to these different places, would you take advantage? Yeah,

(01:12:26):
sure we go. Yeah, we would go around. Yeah. I
have a lot of fun memories. All this ship is
going to be covered in my memoir. But okay, so
if you were in Europe and you had a gig
at night, did you say, Okay, this is the first
time I've been to this town. I'm gonna check out
the cultural stuff. Yeah, we would go out. We went
to We went to Liverpool, I think, I don't know
we were playing nearby. I don't know if we actually

(01:12:49):
we're doing a Liverpool game. We saw the remains of
the Cavern Club, which at that point was just an
empty lot that was rubble strewn and all that kind
of stuff. So, what are one or two peaks from
the touring years in the first generation. Bangkok was really great.
We were in we played New Year's even Bangkok, and
there had been like a there had been a coup

(01:13:11):
there and they everybody would have had to be off
the streets from like midnight to five in the morning,
you know, and you weren't allowed out. There was a curfew.
And the New Year's Eve that we played, the curfew
was lifted and Bangkok, needless to say, is a big
party town and everybody went completely fucking nuts and it

(01:13:34):
was a really beautiful moment. Okay, how do you decide
to hang it up first time around? There was it was.
There was no moment there was. It was never addressed
in the media. We just were sucked up on drugs.
I got really sick. I got that weird skin disorder,
you know, as a result of h I mean, my

(01:13:56):
immune system compromised. That was it just went. You know,
we just stopped for a while and then did a
bunch of some of Debbie solo stuff after that, and
then uh put it all together later and whatever year
that was ninety six or something. Okay, So for that,
you know, ten plus years in the interim, were you

(01:14:17):
just so fucked up on drugs or did you feel
like it has been or do you feel like royalty
would you feel like, I mean, we never really made
I always felt like we never made it to the
A lists anyway, you know, regardless of what the public
perception might be. Um, I always felt like we were
just you know, large cult phenomena. Uh, you know, we

(01:14:42):
weren't completely fucked up on drugs. But you know, it's
ups and downs. Um, I don't know what I felt
like necessarily, It's just it was just all, you know,
everything was part of everything else. It just seemed like
an tension. And now you have another career as a photographer.

(01:15:04):
How did that start? I always just always doing it.
I you know, I was even when I was a
little kid. I was screwing around with a little brownie cameras.
Then I had a guy I grew up with him,
Dennis McGuire, and he was brilliant young photographer. He still is.
He's he's master photographer. He apprenticed with Arbis and studied

(01:15:26):
with Gary Winnigrad and all this stuff, and he's he was,
you know, in a big influence on my early photographic days.
And I just started carrying cameras around around or so nine.
And you know, it's one thing having a good eye,
it's another thing being technologically savvy. Are you also technologically

(01:15:49):
chay savvy? Are you more point and shoot? Yeah? No?
I mean, you know I knew your basic stuff. I
never developed my own film. I would just I would
print a lot, but I would never I would always
to send it film out two labs. But you know,
I knew about F stops and I S O and
all that stuff. And is there some greater acknowledgement you're

(01:16:12):
looking for in the photographic world. No, I did good.
I mean the books were very popular. Water really big
show in London at the Sumrset House that was really
terrifically attended. Um, you know, I'm okay with where I stand.
I could use more Instagram followers, but beyond that, you know,

(01:16:32):
it's okay. So how did it in with you and Debbie?
We just kind of ran in a steam. It was
a lot of this drugs stuff. I think we fell
out of synchronization and but a lot of times, I
mean I have a hard time connecting with their excess.
How was it after you were disconnected? I always pissed
off for a week or so, But then we, you know,

(01:16:54):
just formed a new connection. And we've been always been friends.
We were always we always had this uh like, I've
never had a lot of fights with Debbie. You know,
we always are very connected and we have a similar
mindset in a similar sense of humor and we just

(01:17:14):
get along. How do you feel when you got married?
She was okay with that. I mean that was much later.
I mean we both have been dating and doing different
having different relationships. Okay, So where do you see yourself?
You say you see yourself as a B player in
the rock roll but you're in the rock and roll
Hall of Fame. You know, what do you see yourself
and what do you still yearn to achieve? I just,

(01:17:37):
you know, I don't know. I may be nice to
have a little I guess I have a small bit
of influence, you know, I have people that pay attention
to my stupid commentary online. But I just you don't
want to be happy and I have a have a
good time. You know. My energy level is way down now.

(01:18:00):
I don't know if I'm gonna do the touring with
the band going forward. I will definitely do recording, but
I'm not sure I'm gonna go out with the touring situation.
I just have kind of had it with airports and
hotels at this point. But I just want to be
happy and have the family be safe and happy. Okay,

(01:18:22):
but you are touring imminently, right, Yeah, No, I don't
know if I'm gonna do it. I don't think I'm
gonna do it. I missed a few shows here and
there recently. I just I don't have the energy. I
have fucking heart bullshit, you know, murmur of the heart,
all that kind of stuff. I take medications for that
and a little fatigue, and I don't know if I'm

(01:18:42):
going to go out with the guys. They'll have it replacement.
How did you discover you had a heart issue? Um?
And I discover just doubting a couple of like sort
of semurite painting things, low blood pressure check ups. I
do have a fib you know. I mean it's not

(01:19:03):
I don't have any I have never had any kind
of surgery or anything like that. I just if they
just keep it steady with medications, and if you don't
go out, you still get paid. How does everybody else feel?
I mean, you know bon Jovi does without Richie sam
Bora the rest of the band. Fine, if you don't
go out, no, I mean they're you know, it's but
we we the last couple of shows that I didn't do.

(01:19:26):
They we got some kid who's really great and he
just replicates the parts. But yeah, no, I mean I
feel you know, I I don't want to let the
fans down and let the band down. But I am
completely involved with this next bunch of recordings that we're
working on. So and and you know, and I'm again

(01:19:46):
I'm pitching this memoir and I then we have another
I have another photo book coming out in October, I'm told,
which is the our adventures with Geeger. You know when
we did the cuckoo stuff. So I'm still in the mix, okay,
And how often do you play the guitar? Occasionally? It
was it was the last couple of days. It doesn't
go away, this total muscle memory. I'm kind of amazed

(01:20:09):
they could not play for months and then just pick
it up and be the exactly where he left off.
I mean, Johnny Raman told me he never played except
what he was doing shows or recording period. That was it.
Since you saw them from the beginning, was there any
evolution or was that the acht from gig one? Yeah? No, no, yeah,
there was an evolution, and they got tighter and tighter,
and then the whole Joey phenomenon was so great to

(01:20:32):
see him, you know, because he was very awkward and
much more tentative in the beginning, and to see him
become this powerful, dominant rock god by the end of
the whole thing was fucking amazing. You know. Well, the
weird things, so they're all dead. You think there must
have been something in the water in the videos, you know,
I don't know what you're gonna say. I don't know
about that ship, you know. Now, my wife was My

(01:20:53):
wife is from Queen's also, and she had thyroid cancer.
But we I think we also think that it was
from being so close to the towers during nine eleven
because we were living right there, so we were in
the area that is, uh, you know, suggested for that
kind of stuff happening. And how is she now? Yeah,

(01:21:14):
she's okay. I mean she's got to take you know,
the synthroid forever. So in terms of other art forms
like movies and streaming television, you spend a lot of
time there. Really yeah, yeah, well, actually watched Sucking Everything. Well,
can you recommend the new Ben Stiller thing, Severance. It's
really great. I only watched two of those. That's totally great.

(01:21:35):
I love fucking Peacemaker. Peacemaker is the greatest God damned thing. Um.
John Cena is like uh Carrie Grant as a bodybuilder.
I mean, he has got this old world Hollywood charm.
That's just fantastic. I had no idea that that guy was,

(01:21:57):
you know, up to that level. But he's really great.
And you know, James Gunn it's great. All those guys
are great. And then you know, of course Succession. We're
big fans of um a lot of stuff. I really
like Power the Dog. The Dog was great. I love
the Korean movies. You know, I'm watching this series starting

(01:22:17):
last night. Did you watch squid Game? Yea, they say
this is bigger than squid Game In South Korea. The
show called hell Bound. You know this one hell I
can't really remember it though, Well, don't ruin it for me.
I'm only like a third in, but it's like it's
only six episodes, really wild. That's one where they tell
you when you're gonna die. Yeah, yeah, well that's you know.
The original is the anime Death Note. You know Death Note? No,

(01:22:41):
I don't Death Note. It's an old anime manga whereby
the guy gets a notebook from hell or wherever it is,
and if you write somebody's name and it, they die
and it goes from there, right, the same thing. So
I know you're into the modern music, but having seen
the scene for sixty years, what do you think about

(01:23:04):
the music and the music business today relative to yesteryear.
There's just there's a lot of great stuff, you know.
I always hear stuff. I just watched Um House of
Gucci and there was a fucking fantastic song by somebody

(01:23:24):
named Alice, an Italian song, Italian language song and there
that I just have been playing over and over against
since seeing the movie. That was the most that was
my biggest takeaway from the movie was this song. Uh,
there's there's great stuff out there. Well, I guess you know.
The ethos is different now. The music is a step

(01:23:44):
to create a brand to sell and other stuff, and
it's very different than it was during. The model for
the rock star is a completely different thing, you know.
It's now it's all about bling or whatever. I mean.
I'm consistently amused by Kanye A. That thing the other
night was very was amusing. Let's go just a little

(01:24:06):
bit deeper. Yes, it was amusing. But isn't it sad
to see a bipolar guy reported on in the news
at infinite. You know, eventually it's going to turn out
bad if it hasn't already. Yeah, No, it's it's you know,
but the guy has so much influence. Um. Like I say,
it's like, you know, it's like giving an arsonist gallons

(01:24:30):
of gasoline. You know, he putting him in this position.
He Um, it's bizarre. But maybe it was always going on.
It's just a little more in your face now. Maybe
these kinds of things were always happening. Well, what do
you think is drawing everybody to Kanye? He successfully? He does.
He is a genius. He does a lot of great stuff.

(01:24:51):
But people are also absorbed in the drama. And you know,
coming out in front of thirty thousand people and complaining
about your ex's boyfriend and how you're gonna beat him
up is certainly it's on level. You know. Well, it's
the train wreck. I mean, you can't stop paying attention
to the train wreck. But eventually, you know, it hits

(01:25:12):
a wall. Okay, Chris, thanks so much for taking the track. Thanks,
but I really appreciate your message that they say until
next time. This is Bob left SAX