Don Was

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lefts That's podcast.
My guest today is the one and only Don was Don,
what did your parents say when you dropped out of college?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
You know something? They were remarkably cool. They were. They
were incredibly supportive, both of them. And I didn't just
drop out to uh, you know, to to go to
the beach. I knew what I wanted to do, and
they supported me both in spirit and uh uh from

(00:45):
their wallet. And it took a while to get on
my feet. And my dad was always there to loane
me some bread if I needed it. They were great.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Okay, how many kids in the family?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Is my sister and myself and your sister older, younger
younger sister. When she retired, she was a chief Statistician
of the United States of America.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
And that sounds very impressive, but I have no idea
what that is.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
It's extremely well, she ran the Census Bureau, Okay for
a number of years. Well how did she get there?
She understood management, She had a degree in management, and
I think she had like fifty thousand people reporting to
her at the Census.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Well, I guess I'm more interested you and your sister
are both very successful. What was in the water, what
was going in your house that you're both successful?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, it probably goes back to my parents just understanding
that you can you can do just as well doing
something you love something you don't love to do, and
so they encourage us to, you know, follow our hearts

(02:02):
and back to sup And Yeah, I went to my
fifty second high school reunion bah way Way just because
to cousin Covid, I.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Got roped in to go to my college region. That
was the first reunion I ever went to. How did
you decide? How'd you been to previous reunion?

Speaker 2 (02:22):
The Okay, what motivates you to go? There's nothing like
you know, touch and base with these people that you've
known for sixty years, seventy years, You can't. You only
get that opportunity once to build relationships that last that long.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, But in the old days when we grew up,
if you left your hometown moved to the West coast,
unless you made a big effort, you lost touch. Whereas
today today's kids will never lose touch with anybody.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's all available.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
So when you go back, if you maintain relationships with
these people or you just check it in on the reunion.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
It depends, you know, that a lot of people. There's
three hundred people in my class, and some are still
my closest friends. I see, I got a place in
Detroit on Mairland.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, so I interrupted. You just came back from your
fifty second What was that like?

Speaker 2 (03:22):
It was beautiful, man, you know, it's a wonderful experience,
and I love going to them. But one thing I
did notice was that, you know, everybody was seventy and
some of them looked ninety, and some of them are
pretty much the same as they were when they were
in their forties and fifties. And the difference seemed to

(03:42):
be that people who pursued a line of work that
they loved looked much better, you know, and that people
who found meaning in their work in and then it's
got nothing to do with fame, right or really or revenue.

(04:02):
It's got to do with you. You can pump gas
and think, man, I'm keeping America moving. There's a point
to this. People who found meaning and did something they
loved looked a lot healthier and happier. You know.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
There's the famous story of Jani's Joblin going back to
Port Arthur to her reunion. It's sort of a victory lap.
The whole thing didn't work out well and she was
derided in high school. Where was your role amongst the
three hundred and when you went to one of these
reunions after having success, how did people treat you?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
People have been really nice. They're supportive. I think when
you come from a little village and you go out
in the world and you do well, you do well
on behalf of everybody else. I think they feel some
ownership of the success of people from our high school class.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So if there were three hundred in the class, were
you the art guy known as the musician? We're a
good student in class? Did you play sports? Were you unknown?
Where were you in the landscape?

Speaker 2 (05:12):
David wasn't I We were hippie kids, you know, and
we well, I'll be honest with you, man, It's why
I relate to what you do so well, because we
were provocateurs. Oh yeah, and game recognized game.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
That's something that's totally lost his day. You know, this
is about you. I can tell you things we did
in high school, pranks, et cetera, just try to get people.
It wasn't purely for fun. You wanted to make them think, yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Exactly, you're trying to stimulate a real discussion, and it's
actually the provocateur. It's a Youngian art type, you know.
And the people like us, we were valued. Kings would
invite us to dinners and see us at a table

(06:06):
with people who didn't know each other to get conversation going.
Just say something that's provocative and you get a lively discussion.
And when you have that, people have a good time.
They walk away feeling refreshed.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, since we're having a conversation as opposed to just
making it about you. I find in today's group think
world a lot of times if you don't say and
follow the accepted norm or whatever, there's trouble.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
What kind of trouble?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Okay, you know, I'm inter interacting with people. When I
write something, people responding, which is you know, there's a
direct communication, which is different. But let's say there's a
political issue, okay, and I go to somewhere. Everybody's got
an opinion. Most of the people are getting their opinion
from television. Who are our demo? And you say, well, no,

(07:02):
that's not true.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
They say, you know who the fuck is this guy?
What the fuck does he know? So just to stay
on the same topic. One thing I've noticed in the
music business the very top person at all these enterprises,
the labels ag live nation, they can hear something contrary.
They're open, whereas the people below have drunk the kool aid.

(07:28):
And it's very weird for me in the environment because
I like to be stimulated, which is the flip side
of being a profocateur. And we grew up when there
was a huge middle class. No one ever wanted their
kid to be a musician, but there were always the
kids in school were artists, musicians. Who knows what would

(07:49):
happen to them in life? Where today money trumps everything
and that is the answer to everything. And it makes
me be alone a lot of time, because when I
interact with people, it's like, no, you know, that person
makes money, they're good, just be with the program.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Well, I'll look at it from a slightly different skew.
I think every one of us has got Trump and them,
and every one of us has got mother Teresa, you know,
And that's the that's the great human conflict, is altruism
versus greed.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
It's probably going to be the undoing species. But that
conflict is it's just part of life. So when people
are reacting emotionally to things that they see, whether whether

(08:53):
it's AOC or Trump, you know, it's because they see
part of themselves in that, and it's reprehensible. They don't
want that to be whichever side you're on the argument,
they don't want that to be part of it. I
think we all it's in our DNA man, you know,
like altruism and community action. DNA knows that that's better

(09:21):
for survival. And you can find if you should go
through all there like seventeen eighteen species that have been
identified as being altruistic and they survive. They do well.
But a certain amount of self interest is necessary for

(09:41):
survival too. It's a constant battle. I think It's what
I think that's what's really making people crazy, is that
the conflict you see in the society is really an
inner conflict all of us. That's why that's why these

(10:01):
times which are really polarized, driving us nuts.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Okay, let's compare them to fifty five years ago. So
the late sixties, huge anti Vietnam movement. I went to
unlike University of Michigan, I went to a small college.
You could literally pick out the Republicans on campus.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Same thing.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
The music was identified with left wing causes, etc.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
So how do you.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Compare what was going on then to what's going on now?

Speaker 2 (10:34):
But i's see happening right now. Yesterday they basically passed
a tax package that gave breaks to the very wealthy
at the expense of the medical care of the average people.
I see. I see altruism and empathy being cast in

(10:59):
a negative light, and that that's that's the big difference.
Altruism wasn't held in the negative. It was a virtue.
And now I still think it is a virtue, and
a lot of people think it's still We've yet to
see what the reaction to everything that's going on in
the last few months is going to be. But I

(11:24):
think I think we all have it in us to
be altruistic.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Now, you have children, I don't have children, so we're
both in our seventies. Do you detach and say there's
just too much I'm gonna do what I'm doing or
do you get involved?

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well that's the million dollar question man there, And also
how you what you consider to be involved. I believe
making music that helps helps you deal with this conflict
is vital and I see that as activism, And honestly,

(12:13):
that was the thing that made me want to get
into music. Seriously, it was to it was to make
music that would help people deal with the chaos and
confusion and uncertainty of being a human being. It's rough,
It's really rough. Man. We don't know. We don't know
if we're going to die in the next ten seconds,

(12:34):
if our loved ones are going to drop in the
next ten seconds. Everybody gets fired, everybody gets divorced. What
do you hang your hat on? Man? You know, it's
it's it's tough, and music can really help you deal
with that and bring great comfort and open and openness to,

(12:55):
you know, to the situation. So I see making music
being a form of activism and it transcends individual issues,
you know that that people argue about. You know, it's it,
It goes beyond that. There is a there's a human politic.

(13:16):
That's that's more ah, more soulful.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Okay, So, when done right, what does it look like?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Well, when done right, it looks a little bit like
the Rolling Stones. If you want to know my feeling
about it, I spent thirty years working with them, and
in that band you have really different different mindsets, you know,

(13:59):
sometimes one hundred eighty degree opposite mindset, which is where
the beauty in that band comes from. Because when they
find a place in the middle where all sides are represented,
the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
And that's a just by going out and being that,

(14:21):
having having their own personal conflicts public, and having the
having people come to a stadium, one hundred thousand of
them at night. Looking at these guys not only coexisting
on stage, despite you know, any differences they may have artistically,
but actually being great together. That's inspirational. But there's one point. Well,

(14:48):
We're working on an album called A Bigger Bang around
two thousand and four, and I was reading Phil Jackson's
book Sacred Hoops, and I caught the parallels between a
rock and roll band and a five man basketball team.

(15:08):
And this was, you know, maybe a couple of years
after seeing Kobe score eighty points and the Lakers lose
the game, I started quoting from the book about passing
and teamwork and being aware of where the other people
are on the court at all times. I started reading

(15:29):
passages during dinner to Mick and Keith, who like they
fucking hated it, but they hated it because they knew it.
They're aware of it already. They know that when they
passed the ball musically to each other and when they
work together as a unit, did the greatest band in

(15:52):
the history of the world, and that it means something
to everybody who listens to the music and sees them
play together. They understand that, and they understand that they
got a responsibility that comes with that, and to me,
that's activism.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Let's just go back one step before we go back
to the stones. You talked about, Hey, a society, we
don't know if we're going to die in ten seconds whatever.
You don't know if you're going to get divorced. How
many times you been married?

Speaker 2 (16:29):
They're married twice.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
How old were you when you were married the first time.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
I'm not sure if i'd actually marriaged, but we moved
in together when I was nineteen, lasted eleven years, probably
should have lasted, you know, eleven minutes, but a lot
of good things came from that. And my second wife
been with her now forty some years.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
And your kids are with your second wife.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
My oldest kid is with my first wife? Is with
the younger the first wife, Yeah, the the oldest one, Tony.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Okay, I know about the second wife. I don't know
about the first wife. You moved in together when you
were nineteen. How did you know her?

Speaker 2 (17:12):
She's my neighbor. Yeah, I was going to University of Michigan.
She lived downstairs from me.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
You know, at a state university. Of all these socioeconomic classes,
what was her background relative to yours?

Speaker 2 (17:31):
There wasn't a whole lot in common except where we're
horny kids. Oh okay, so, which is a pretty good
common ground.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
We've all lived in it whatever, at least in our generation. Okay,
so you drop out to play music. Does she stay
in school or does she go with you? What does
she do? She?

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Uh, she was a month she's older than me. She
was like a month from graduating. Oh really yeah, but
then she's in nursing school. Didn't want to be a nurse,
so so we moved to Detroit from an arbor. But
she did graduate. No, I she strapped out.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, where's she todaym Skeig in Michigan. Okay, if we
go to the end the eleven years, how did you
finally blow the whistle.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, you know, the details are kind of personal and
I wouldn't go into them other than to just say,
eventually you have enough, then there's enough. And when you
have kids in the picture, you you gotta do what's

(18:57):
maybe best for them, best for them meetings split up
in this case. Yes, okay, So going back to the Stones,
how'd you get to work with Stones in the first place. Well,
I'm not exactly sure. You know, I started. I went
from being a bum to having hits and we wait.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
You're a bomb. There was not was walk the Dinosaur.
You have success, you expand it. Actually, I want to
get into that a little bit. You have the big
breakthrough with Bonnie Raid was the Stones thing. As a
result of your success, they were looking around.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
I think actually the record company was looking around. My
first meeting with them was I'll tell you a story, man.
I went to meet them at essay hour because they
were auditioning bass players to replace Bill Want So I
got to sit there and watch a set of The
Rolling Stones with a different bass player, like from two

(20:05):
feet away. And it was mind blown because, as a
lifelong fan Sam for the first time in nineteen sixty four,
went to every show about every album. Now I'm in
a room watching him play on my mind. Then Mick
and Keith come and sit down on the sofa next
to me, at their face and me. They're on either

(20:26):
side of me, and they both start talking at the
same time, and Keith was, from what I could get,
very hard to follow. I was going back and forth,
like you know, like watching a tennis stern. Keith was
telling me all the reasons that they didn't need a producer,
and Mick was suggesting reasons why they did need a producer.
But they weren't yielding to the other guy. For about

(20:50):
two minutes, which is an excruciatingly long time to be
sitting there. In the middle of that, they both kept talking,
trying to talk over the other guy, and then they paused,
and then Keith said, you sure you won't be the
meat sandwich. I walked out of there, thinking, well, I

(21:12):
got a good story from my grandchildren, but I'm never
going to hear from them again. And and then I've
been trying to think of what actually happened, you know.
Then then Keith called me up about a week later
and he said, maybe I was a little rough on
the idea of a producer. He said, I got an
issue here. He said, I'd like to use Don Smith

(21:36):
as the engineer. And I'd been working with Don Smith.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
But Don did the new Barbarians records.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
That the expensive Winos records, the Solo records, which I
thought was a really good sonic template for a rolling
Stone celt And I thought Don was just a wonderful engineer. Man.
He's gone now, but he had a real gift, so

(22:04):
he said, but he said, doesn't want me to use
them because he doesn't he wants an impartial guy. And
I said, wow, he's he's my guy too, you know.
I said, I'll call Mick, and I said, and Mix said,
all right, if you're saying he's your guy and that
he'll be impartial, I'll go with it. So I call him.
Keith Backer said, all right, we got Don Smith and

(22:26):
he said, all right, your name's not was it's his
or some Well.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Let's go back to the original meeting. During the audition,
they have their conflicting stories. You had to sell yourself
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
What did you say? I don't remember, well, do you
honestly do you remember selling yourself? My memory of it
is seeing them play and like not being able to
believes in a room with them and then having the
two of them talking at me. Okay, same time.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Most people don't realize that what most people say is
complete horseshit. Things don't happen by accident.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
In that you have to have.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
The right personality. You have to put yourself in the
right situations, and frequently you have to ask, Okay, what
do I know you're in?

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Was not? Was?

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I go to the VMA sometimes in the nineties you're
running the house band. I remember you played that song
from Extreme Wholehearted, which crack me up. Okay, that doesn't
happen by accident. Okay, you don't sit at home, especially
someone like where you were at the time and the

(23:43):
phone rings. You have to work it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
So what's your style of working? Well, I'll probably stems
from my dad, you know, who is a guidance counselor
counselor and very cool headed guy, didn't get worked up,
and he listened to people, and he was empathetic and

(24:10):
a diplomat. I guess that's my style. I don't really,
it's really hard for me to identify that kind of thing.
I can tell you this to get to the point
where I was in a meeting with the Rolling Stones.
That took some doing for a number of years, and
it wasn't easy getting over. There was a point in

(24:33):
the somewhere around in nineteen seventy nine, bad inflation, remember
whipping plation. Now it was tough. I was playing five
nights a week in a bar and Detroit. I loved
the gig, but I was taking home one hundred and
twenty five bucks a week and I had a wife

(24:53):
and a kid. Couldn't get by on that. My goal
in life had been to be able to play music
and never have a job that was just a job
that I didn't care about. But it became pretty clear
that I was going to have to do something. I
was falling deeper in debt every month. I was making

(25:15):
up fake resumes and still couldn't get a call back
for anything. And I was unqualified for anything except really
playing bass and bars, and I knew a little bit
about making records. So I had to get a job,
and finally I found one where there was a I
can't think what the program is called now, but it

(25:35):
was like a domestic peace corps where the government Vista
the Vista Vistorship and the government would pay half your
salary for six months if an employer would teach you
a trade. So I was able to get a job
preparing copy machines. But after about two days in the
gig and by the way man, I thought my life

(25:55):
was over. I was so depressed. I used to drive
to work mad Maverick without a passenger door. A cassette
like a realistic is a radiosop that I had to
duct tape to the seat because I couldn't afford to
put one in the dashboard right. I didn't want to

(26:16):
slide on and I made a cassette that I'm front
and back, just had the song satisfaction. I can't get
no sense, and I drove to work Mad. I can't
get no thing. My life was over. Two days in
it got worse. The boss said, you know, when you're
out there repairing copy machines, we want you to also

(26:37):
sell some paper and toner to the clients. And we
don't think you know anything about selling, so we've enrolled
you in the Dale Carnegie sales course. And I was like,
oh God, the thing I had to go to at night.
I walked in. You've read Death of a Salesman. It's
me and five Willie Lowman's right, like older guys trying

(26:59):
to onto their gigs and refresh their sales technique. Oh man,
I thought i'd hit rock bottom. The first assignment you
had to write down where in your wildest dreams you
wanted to be in one year, five years, and ten years.
Then you had to get up and read it to
the read your list to the room. And man, that's

(27:23):
a hard thing to do, to admit what your wildest
dreams are and then tell a bunch of strangers. You know.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
One of the things you know Bob doing obfuscates all
the time, but he also does a little bit of
hypher his records. One time on sixty minutes sometime the
last twenty five years ago, he goes, I won't tell
my hopes in dreams because people just laugh at me
and give me a hard time. You got to keep
them interior.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah that's interesting. Well that's that's I think that's a
very human response. It was really hard for me to
do this. But if you've bottomed out right far ago, right,
So I did it. I really thought about it, and
I wrote this down a little piece of paper and
I got up. I was the first guy, and in

(28:10):
one year I said I want to be out of
this fucking job. And I got the big laugh of
the night for that, because everyone was there to try
to keep their job. In five years, i'd like to
produce a record that comes out, and ten years, i'd
like to produce an artist who some big artist. And
after I said it to everybody, I looked at the

(28:31):
piece of paper, How hard can this be? Man, here's
an orderly list. Man. So within a month I had
a record deal for it was and I was We
got our first deal, and I used by the way,
I used the techniques that I learned in the Dale
Carnegie course to get the deal, you know. And within

(28:57):
a year and a half Carly I was producing Harley
Simon and that was my poy.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
We went a little bit slower. What were the lessons
they taught you?

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Oh, it's just like, uh, you know, don't just if
you're if you're doing a sales pitch, you got to
keep people saying yes. So if you're if you're the
fuller brush man going door to door, if I could
show you away that you wouldn't have to work so hard,
scrub and your sink you'd want to know about it, right, Yeah, sure,

(29:28):
and you just keep saying yes and then you go
for the kill after about twenty yeses. So I'll say
I used that technique, David wasn't. I. We knew we
wanted to be on a label named Z called Z
Record Ze, which was doing They were doing really cool

(29:48):
dance music, subversive dance music at that at that point
in time that people were still doing these remixes that
had all the strings and it was a very studio
fifty four the worst things you can imagine when you
say the word disco, which does that doesn't bring up
bad feelings for me. I love dance music and I

(30:10):
love those records. Some of them were cheesy in formulated,
so there was something in the in the zeitgeist at
the time. The remixes like franzoisk of Orkian, they were
adopting like dub techniques basically Lee Scratch Perry techniques and
applying it to dance music and not just doing an

(30:32):
instrumental verse and sticking and that in the middle and
bringing the bass drama. So we started messing with that
and we thought, how can we Trojan Horse a meaningful
message on top of a dance beat that was that
was kind of the goal and uh and it seemed

(30:53):
like Sea Records was doing that. It was headed by
a guy named Michael Zilka. Very bright guy, cool guy,
and I'm grateful for life to this cat.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Okay, way a little bit slower. While you're working in
the copy or repair of business, is there a band
or just you and David with a fantasy?

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Me and David with a fantasy and a couple of songs.
And I knew a lot of musicians because I and
I'd been i'd been working in studios. I would go
to the studio. I'd play in the bar till two
o'clock in the morning. Then from two to like eight,
I'd go to the studio. And there's a there's a
great studio in Detroit called Sound Sweet Studios. And they

(31:38):
were just extremely kind to me and generous. They gave
me the key and if no one was in there
after midnight, I could go in and work till someone
else came in. So we started cutting two songs, and
you know, and I was playing all the time, So
I knew great studio musicians. And we had Marcus bell

(31:59):
Grave come in we had Mark S. Belgrave was a
great jazz trumpeter, kind of the dean of Detroit jazz musicians,
played with Charles Minger's toured for years with Ray Charles,
but chose to stay in Detroit and play and teach WAYN.
Kramer from the MC five, who I didn't know at
that time. He became one of my dearest friends. But

(32:21):
we just called him cold and asked him to come
in and play. He ended up going on tour with
us on our first version, and Sweet p Atkinson and
Harry Bowenes, who I just knew from hanging around the studio,
so I knew the players, and we started. We made
these records on a shoe string, and then I had

(32:44):
to sort of abandon it to take this job.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Well a little bit slower, a little bit so, so
you have X number of tracks and you personally go
to the record company get the deal. There's no manager,
no lawyer, no anybody.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
We didn't have a manager or lawyer. But here's what
we did to David was it was the jazz critic
for the now defunct La Herald Examiner. So we concocted
the scheme where David called Michael Silka under the guys
of doing an interview, but I don't even think he
was rolling tape. He got forty five minutes into the

(33:20):
interview and then he said, you know, as I'm thinking
about it and talking to you, there's this band in
Detroit that you got to hear. He said, Okay, if
I have the guy call you after we do the interview, Michaels, Yeah,
of course, I'm cute a fed Ex cassette but wheel
me out and Hello Operator on our first two songs.

(33:43):
Sent it to Michael and he happened to play it
while August Darnell from Kid Krill and the coconutsu was
a big artist. He was in the office and August
just loved the record and reinforced the thing a Michael
that it was great and they signed us.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Okay, a little clean up work. If David is the
jazz critic for the Herald Examiners, he living in l A. Yeah,
he's living living okay. And how long did you actually
work in the copy repair of business?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Six weeks? Okay.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
I can't imagine there was a ton of money in
this record deal, was there?

Speaker 2 (34:25):
No? But I learned a lesson previously we'd cut a
twelve inch on Sweetpea, a dance record of him covering
Bob Seekers heavy music. Okay, it was good man, and
Sweetpea was like the voice I always wished I had,
you know, he was, he was my vocal hero. I
was just thrilled to meet him and know him. Such

(34:45):
a character, such a you know, an intimidating character at first,
but huge heart of gold underneath. Tough guy. You know,
no one, no one ever wants to mess with sweepy.
But we got this record and we sent it off

(35:06):
to Oh it was an offshoot label that Epic Records had,
Lenny Pets Portrait Portrait Records. Yeah, Lenny Pezzi was the
head and he and he loved it. So then we
got an attorney, big guy in New York. Oh, simple,

(35:27):
simple deal man, you know. So twelve inches the deal
from nobody's man. Just we should have paid them to
put it at. But this guy negotiated for six months,
ran his bill up to where we couldn't afford it,
and then they closed Portrait Records. We took so long
to make the deal. Well, I'm never going to do
that again, right right, right, So there's no lawyer I called,

(35:53):
you know, I talked to Michael Silka. I said, just
take it, take the record, put it out. I guarantee
you if you put it out, you'll come back to
us and we'll do an album deal. I guarantee you
get I'm confident enough that you get a response. Just
take it, you own it. We want nothing. Put whatever

(36:13):
you want in the contract. So we did that and
he put it right out and turned into an album deal.
We actually had a plan. I got the list of
stores that reported to the Billboard Dance Charts his presound
scam right, So I knew the R and B DJs

(36:35):
in Detroit, and I knew the promo guys, independent guys,
and I knew to hire them and get us some airplay.
And then I knew the stores that reported, and so
if they ordered six records, I just went in and
bought up to six. And all anybody saw was reorders.

(36:57):
And that's what stood out. It's getting on the on
radio somehow and people are reordering it. That probably wouldn't
have been enough, but as it happened in England, people
just dug it. It was. It was alternative dance music,
alternative club music, which was a cool thing at that moment.

(37:19):
In time and Z Records was highly respected. So based
really on the reaction we got in England, Chris Blackwell
was into it and Michael was distributing his records through Chris,
so he signed us to our first album deal.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Okay, you're nobody in Detroit, you get a little buzz,
you end up on the island. When does it start
to coalesce that you're on the landscape and you're outside
of Detroit and you get to know people.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
It's hard to say. It seems like it seems like
a there was a lot of struggle, is the way
I feel. But really it's just a couple of years
between between putting that first record out and working with Bonnie.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Okay, it's like friends of mine managed one direction. They
have no people have no idea how hard they worked.
You know, they're working all day long. You're just seeing
the end results now. You know, there were the day,
the heyday, the pre internet days. Yeah, the label supported you,
But when you were struggling, how much were you on

(38:34):
the road. How much were you trying to make something
great in the studio? What were you doing when you
were struggling.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
It's trying to figure out how to make great records.
I could hear what other people were doing. I'll listened
to everything. I had the advantage of someone just before.
You couldn't make records in your laptops, right, there were
no laptops, right, There was no pro tools and none
of that. So you had someone had to invest in
at least half a million dollars you know worth of stuff,

(39:05):
and more than that. Usually I had the advantage of
someone letting us use the studio. The hard part about
doing it and the provinces like that was that there
were a couple of great engineers in Detroit, and they
were very guarded with the knowledge. There wasn't this culture
that there was with the musicians, like with guys like

(39:26):
Marcus Belgrave who were there to pass the knowledge on.
No one wanted to lose the work. We just had
to figure out how to do it on our own,
which I think is what makes our first record probably
our best record, because we had no idea what the
fuck we were doing, and we had no money really,

(39:47):
so you know, you know, now, if I'm working on
a record and we need something to build the bridge
of the song up, yeah, called David Campbell. Have them
write some strings. Have people come in. But we didn't
have that kind of bread or know those kind of people.
So we had to go out in the room and figure,
all right, if we slowed the tape down a little

(40:08):
bit so that this anvil is when you bang on it,
it hits a note that rings that's in tune with
the song. We'd bso it down so we were in
tune with the anvil and then bam, hit it with
a hammer and that note would be the sound. That
was basically the orchestra and the bridge. Much cooler way

(40:30):
to make records, so, uh, you know, necessity is the
mother of invention. We made. We made some cool records
because we because we couldn't afford to do it the
standard way and we had no knowledge about how to
do it the standard way.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Let's go back, where exactly do you grow up in Michigan?

Speaker 2 (40:50):
I grew up in Oak Park, Michigan, which is just
across eight mile from the Detroit city limits.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Okay, Detroit was no own is its own scene very
early there was New York, LA, eventually San Francisco. You're
growing up, are you aware of Motown? Are you ware
there's a house you drive by? Do you feel some ownership,
or it could be in Timbuctoo.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
It's the samely we felt about the Detroit Tigers winning
the World Series in nineteen sixty That's how we felt
about Motown. That was victory for all of us. And
there's a lot of local pride and even for yeah
whatever in seventh eighth grade when those records started coming out,
but I still felt tremendous pride it was coming from

(41:40):
our town. And also there is a Detroit sound. There's
a thing to the music that comes out of there.
It has to do with a couple of factors. I
think one is that, you know, post World War Two,
people came from all over the world to work in
the factory, and they all brought their cultures with them.

(42:01):
So we grew up in the middle of this incredible
cultural John Balaya, you know, it's just beautiful. And eventually
the generation goes by and the lines start to blur
and there's a regional sound that starts to starts to form.

(42:22):
Another characteristic of Detroit music, which is probably best personified
by John Lee Hooker, is incredible, honest rawness. I think
that's because in a one industry town like that, everybody's
in the same boat. You. You know, everyone's fate was

(42:44):
tied to the success of the Big three automakers or
success or failure, and if they were failing, they'd lay
off workers, workers would move away. My parents are both
in teachers, so if kids moved out of the district,
they'd lay off teachers, they'd lay off barbers, waitresses, a
get laid up. So everybody in town was in the

(43:04):
same boat, and there really wasn't much point in putting
on any errors because you weren't fooling everybody. I didn't
know one person who liked least a Mercedes to impress
their friends. They just call you on your bullshit immediately
with backfire. So you get a really honest population there,
and the music reflects that. It's raw and honest. John

(43:28):
Lee Hooker, Mitch Ryder, Stooges, Empty Five, George Clinton, White Stripes,
all the same thing. Really raw, edged, but very real
and very and deeply emotional. So I forgot why we
started talking about Believe. It's a great but I'm going
to ask more questions. Do feel him?

Speaker 1 (43:49):
So when do you first play a musical instrument?

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Oh? Yeah, I think I started playing piano when I
was eight seminary eight.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Okay, your seven or eight when you're eleven twelve when
the Beatles hit, was that the transitional moment in You're
getting deeper or it was something before.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
I was into it, and then folk music was actually right,
Like there was a summer when Peter Palm and Mary
was alternative rock and roll and so and hoot Nanny.
It was a big show.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Well that's what I told you that you have no
idea even had its own TV show.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, yeah, no, there was.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Everybody had a nylon string guitar. You when everybody was
singing the songs.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
So I was in sixth grade and we had a
band called the Saturns and we did basically Peter Palm,
Mary's first album, and then Tom Dooley, some Kingston trio
and the first gig, actually my first gig sixth grade,
hoot Nanny. The headliner was a guy named moish Last
who talked guitar at the Jewish Center. The second on

(44:59):
the and somewhere I got I still have the mimeograph.
Flyer is Chuck Mitchell and wife. That's hysterical.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
That's Joni Mitchell.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
And then my band, our band.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Okay, you're playing the piano. Does a piano migrate to
the bass?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
What is thing? No, what happened was my dad went
to I don't know, he was someplace, but there was
a rock and roll band and he came back with
a guitar that he bought for five bucks, which I
still have, the old Harmony acoustic guitar. So he tried
to he took some lessons and it didn't click for him,

(45:42):
so he gave me the guitar and gave me all
the chord charts and I started just learning on my own.
But there was a turning point in February in nineteen
sixty four. That's that's a life changing moment and up
for a lot of guys age born in nineteen fifty two.

(46:02):
I know an inordinate number of musicians born that year
because we were tuned into Ed Sullivan. We saw the Beatles,
we saw the girls screaming, we saw them having fun,
we saw them making great music. And at twelve years old,
you're just dumb enough to think I'm going to do that. Right.
If you're older, I'd like to do that. But maybe

(46:23):
I should get that teaching certification just to have something
to fall back on. I think it must be the phrase,
and if you're eight, it didn't register. So seeing that,
we went out the next day and the guys my man,
we all put pickups on our acoustic guitars and about amplifiers,
and we got a drummer and there's no turning back

(46:46):
from that.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Okay, you talk about being on that bill with Mitchell
and wife. Was that an anomaly or were you guys
doing gigs?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
No, it's our It was our elementary school.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
It's a funas so once you once the beatles and
you get motivated, and you know, we all live through that.
Everybody's playing, everybody's forming bands, although we're certain people were
more serious than others. At what point do you have
a band and they play a gig?

Speaker 2 (47:18):
That band played gigs. We used to work in fact,
where was that someplace? And I ran into like the
grandson or the grand nephew of a guy who used
to be a band. What used to happen was the
adult bands that would play weddings and bar mitzvahs. They'd

(47:39):
hire us to play in their breaks because we could
play the kids stuff, especially at thirteen year olds. Want
they didn't want to hear hovin ne Guila. So we
play Beatles songs. So we were twelve thirteen and we'd
have forty bucks in our pocket every week.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
You were rich, right, What were you playing guitar in
those bands?

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah? Well the first band we didn't know about bass.
I didn't know what bass was, and then we so
we didn't have a bass player. One day we're looking
at some pictures the Beatles studying it and we see
McCartney's only got four strings. Fck that. I auditioned. I

(48:21):
think I was in sixth grade, seventh grade. I auditioned
for a band some guys who were older than us
actually went out called the Shy Guys. They actually had
a big hit, regional hit in Detroit, We Gotta Go.
It was the number one record in Detroit, and they
needed a bass player. So the leader of the group
came over, came up to my bedroom and he said,

(48:42):
all right, let's play something. So I grabbed my regular
guitar and he said, let's do walk, don't run. So
I play play the chords, but I'm very careful to
only play on the lower four strings, thinking that's what
bass guitar. He said, oh cool, He said, now play
the bass part, and I said, well, I was Yeah,
you see, I didn't play the be er these ron leftko.

(49:07):
Guess he was kind enough to explain what bass was. Now, No,
it's an octave blow, and so then I learned about
it and they were There are four or five guitar
players in my high school class who are better than me,
and a couple of keyboard players who were better, and
there were no bass players.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Bingo, Okay, I don't understand the bass. I played guitar, guitar,
Still have a guitar or whatever. The bass seems to
be a calling. Okay, you know you have a guitar
to play the rhythm, you can play the lead. There
are people like McCarty plays very melodic notes, but historically
most of the rock players do not. So is it

(49:50):
something that you just it resonates go, oh, I know
where this is in the record, I know how to
do this? Or was it more of a chore?

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Oh, it's not a chore, man, I was wonderful. The
beautiful thing about the bass is that if you wanted to,
if you really wanted to play the bass, I could
sit here with you for ten minutes and show you
enough of the geometry of the neck to play any
four chord rock and roll song you ever heard in

(50:22):
your life. It's the easiest instrument to get by on,
but if you want to really get deep and dig
into it, it's beautiful. Look I'm seventy three and I'm
just feeling like I'm getting the hang of it. And
I had some lessons from Ron Carter in the last

(50:46):
couple of years, and he showed me some things that
blew my mind. Just Michelle and Daviocello, who's a artist
sheet we talked about some stuff that Ron had showed me,
and she showed me another approach to it. And it's
the nuance. Something that seems tiny, the change of just

(51:10):
the angle of a one millimeter with your fingers opens
up a whole universe. I know that that sounds hyperbolic,
but it's actually not. Well, here, I can actually tell
you the story Ron Carter. I was playing with Bob
Weir and we played a radio city musical. Ron Carter,
who's my hero for life, the greatest bass player around ever. Right,

(51:34):
he came and sat in with us and he played
my bass, which I always wondered, what would this sound
like if Ron Carter was playing this thing? So I
got to find he played through my rig. The only
difference was our fingers right, and Bobby records everything. So
the next day I say, will get the tape, isolate
the tracks for ron Carter playing a song, and then

(51:55):
me playing the next song. Called ron Carter up, I said,
all right, So, how come when I hear you play
in the space it's the note It's just round and
warm and perfectly symmetrical. And by comparison, my note sounds
like it's made out of Swiss cheese with like holes
in the note. And Ron Carter, who really doesn't suffer fools,

(52:19):
you know, he said, well, you know, I can tell
you what you're doing wrong if you want me to. Yeah,
tell me. He said, you're not releasing the previous note
before you play the next note. And he gave me
some exercises to practice for releasing notes, and he was
one hundred percent right. Something I just I'd have stayed
in college I had learned it. That was probably a

(52:42):
dumb move, that dropping out.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Business you were studying music and going.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
I snuck in. Yeah, I couldn't get into the music college,
but but no one wanted to be in the school
in natural resources. Ecology was yet the word was yet
to be coined. I think. So it's easy to get
in there. And once I was in then I could
start taking music classes and transfer.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Okay, let's go back to bass players. You know, even
at this laid date, people Rivera Jocko Pastorio, Are you
one of those people's.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
He's not my favorite bass player, but I'm in awe
of what he does.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
He's Oh, okay, so your favorite would be Ron Carter
my favorite? Yeah, anybody else in his league?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Sure? I mean there are people today who who are
blow my mind. You may not know their names, like
Larry Grenadier is just an incredible bassis. Willie Dixon was
a big hero of mine. I thought he I like
the guys who don't play a million notes right, but
hold the thing down and keep it swinging and choose

(53:48):
interesting notes, but can groove like crazy and keep swinging
and propel this thing forward. So Willie Dixon, James Jamison is,
you know, for a myriad of reasons, just he's I
think he's the greatest genius pick for the instrument up.
He'd what Robert Johnson did on the guitar, he did

(54:11):
on the bass. He it takes a whole band to
cover all the turf that Jamison covered. He was melodic,
he was playing counterpoint. It's like a percussionist, and he
was holding down the low end all at once. People
weren't really doing that. I like the ego free, supportive

(54:35):
bass players who play minimal amount of notes, but they
all mean something. The choice of notes. You don't have
to play if you're in C. You don't have to
play a C in the bass, play a G in
the bass. A whole other emotional palette. It's opened up,

(54:55):
So choosing the right notes to play is a big deal.
Ron cardigtal tell I think that's the title of his biography.
It's something to do with searching for the right notes.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Okay, the obvious dumb question, you place the end up bass.
There are bass electric bassed guitars with no frets. Is
it feel or do you sort of memorize where the
threts would be. What's the trick?

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Yes, it's feel. You can actually even if you don't
hear it yourself, because especially you know when you have
a really good bass that resonates as one piece of wood,
even though it's a couple pieces of wood put together,
you feel it on your body. It's very physical on
the bass, and you can tell from the vibration whether

(55:47):
you're in tune and you're just and you don't necessarily
want to be perfectly in tune, you know. Brian Wilson
once told me, he said, when when studio musicians when
they started buying these personal tuners, when that came out
and you didn't tune by ear right, he said, record's

(56:08):
got all thin. He said, it doesn't sound good when
everybody's perfectly in tune. And if you think about an orchestra,
that's why an eighty piece orchestra is so huge sound
because everybody's a little bit out, but among the eighty people,
they fill in the gap and it turns into one note.
But it's a warmer, fuller sound when you're not perfectly into.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Okay, let's set the stage. It's sixty four. You hear
the Beatles. In terms of what comes out of Detroit,
we have Motown breaks around the same time where did
Our Love go goes top forty goes big? Then in
terms of what comes out of Detroit, it's big, is
pretty much Mitch Ryder Okay, Stugents sixty nine seventy, same

(57:02):
thing with the MC five. They don't make big commercial impacts.
Bob Seekers on independent labels. You keep hearing about them.
Was this something we live in Los Angeles, a giant
suburban city. There's shit going on all the time that
we have no access about we might hear about. Was

(57:24):
it like that you're young or was there any pollination,
any cross pollination intersection with that bigger scene.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
You mean a cross between like.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
You, Oh me, yeah, little DoD Well. You know it's like, oh,
Bob Seeker his bass player lives down the street. I
go to somebody's house, I listen. Oh yeah, I sat
in on the studio or as they could have been
in you know, Seattle for all you knew.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Well, there's a there's a local consciousness that permeates that music,
that makes it feel more personal, I think. But to me,
there was effectively no difference in Detroit between Bob Seeger
or the Beatles, or really John Sinclair, who was quite

(58:14):
a heroic figure to me.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Okay, John Sinclair, what do we know? You bought the
original MC five record that wasn't uncentried. You open it up,
you had a whole squeed. What we knew was John
Sinclair was the manager with Air quotes and they arrested
him for two joints. You know, this is not like
today we could go deep into somebody. So what did

(58:38):
John Sinclair represent for you?

Speaker 2 (58:41):
John Sinclair was the leader of the alternative culture in Detroit.
He was a political activist. His role with the MC
five was really in grasping the idea that you could
have a guitar army, which is a phrase that he pined,

(59:01):
and that you could change the hearts and minds of
young people and open them up to bigger ideas through
rock and roll. But he was a beat poet and
an advocate for jazz, and he was just everywhere I knew,

(59:22):
more as an anti war activist than as the manager
of the MC five. And that was a minor part
of his life, I would say, But he was He
was local, but what he had to say was as
influential as maybe John Lennon would have said, or what
Bob Dylan would say. He was so that that was

(59:44):
part of the beauty of having local cultures. It's something
that's kind of gone now because everything's so global. You'd
have regional hit records. You don't have regional hit you
don't even have you know, you put a record up
to stream. It's all over the world. Now you know
that you can't I have a regional hit. It just
doesn't work like that. But there you to answer your

(01:00:09):
bigger question. I think when things were local, you could
feel more a part of it. I felt a part
of that culture in Detroit. I had friends who were
more deeply enmeshed in it. There's a guy named Joel
Landy who became quite an activist in Detroit. Body of mine.
He ran the print shop for the alternative paper, the

(01:00:32):
Fifth of State, which was next to Sinclair's Enterprises, right,
And I remember he called me up and said, you
got to come down here, man, And I got my car,
drove downtown and the members of the MC five were
jamming with members of Pharaoh Saunders band. Fuck man. I

(01:00:55):
never heard anything like that in my life, and I
actually I've never heard anything like it. Subsequent that became
like a virtue, you know, that was something that could
only happen in Detroit, and uh, it felt. It awakened
a part of me, I felt, but I felt connected
to it because because it just spoke to me as

(01:01:21):
a as someone who lived in that familiar you know, Okay,
you gained success. Eventually, John Sinclair comes out of jail.
Did you have any personal contact with him later in life?
We became really good friends. He's on a couple of
us and I was records and I played on his albums,

(01:01:41):
you know. And I played gigs with him too when
I could.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
But did you know the times it changed he was
in jail. I should know that he worked with you,
but obviously I didn't. Was he the same guy with
the same charisma?

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
He never faltered man, you know, he passed man, but
to this last breath. Man he was rebellious and a
little crotchety about it, you know, but he did. He
never surrendered when everybody else did, when everyone else said,
he never gave up the fight. And it was it

(01:02:19):
was an admirable quality. It represented real conviction. Most people
he could have cashed out. It was several junctions.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
That's the story of our generation. You know, we protested
in the sixties seventies, back to the Land movement. We're
licking the wounds. Reagan legitimized greed. All of a sudden,
everybody's values flipped. Yeah, you know, they wanted to make money.
It was really very strange. You get some success with
was Not was so Bonnie Rate he loses her record deal. Ultimately,

(01:02:52):
the guy worked at Warners, working at Capital, they sign her.
Where do you come in in that process?

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Before they signed her, what happened was there's a guy
named Hal Wilner who was a very dear friend aside
from COVID. From COVID early on, you know, the first
couple of weeks of it. I think beautiful Cat just
loved music. Earned a living by being the the music

(01:03:22):
supervisor maybe of Saturday Night Live. I'm not sure what
the title was, but any kind of music you heard
in the things. He was responsible for that. But he
invented the tribute record, and as opposed to getting all
the superstars together, he put he would put together the
most eclectic lens of people and and encourage you to

(01:03:45):
stretch out, so he called us. Was Not was when
we were still not No one knew who he were,
and came to Detroit and had us cut something for
a flneous a Monk tribute record. We had Sheila Jordan's
singing with us, and we thought, great, freed from the
constraints of making pop records, we can get out here
and well, you know, it's like Carla Blaye was on

(01:04:11):
the record. You can't out Carlo Blade right right right.
So we just got lost in the shuffle because everyone
was trying to stretch out. So I said, all right,
next time, we're going to stand out by going inside
and touching people's hearts. So the next album he had
was a Disney tribute album. So we did an arrangement

(01:04:34):
of baby Mine, which a very sad song in the
movie Mother Elephant gets, you know, locked up in the
cage and the baby comes and they touched trunks through
the bars. If you don't cry in the scene, there's
you need help. So we did like a real nice
three four maybe six eight feel, but it was like

(01:04:58):
an R and B kind of thing. And and from
the arrangement, I just heard Bonnie singing because I've been
a fan of hers since since she can't I bought,
I got her first record, and so I played live
at the ann Arbert Blues and Jazz Festival. So I
always loved her, and Hell put us together. So we
worked on that song and we clicked. We clicked musically

(01:05:22):
and personally. She felt like a like a long lost
sister to me. You know, I could just well, you
can't help but love her, man, She's just one of
the best people, biggest heart. H you did a wonderful
moview with her, Oh thank you, and uh so we

(01:05:43):
just clicked and it was like, well, let's do more stuff.
Well I don't have a record deal, that's okay, just
come on. I got a little I had a little
eight track things set up in my house and we
we started. We started doing demos for what would become
Nicked Time. And it took some time to make that

(01:06:05):
deal happen. She was managed by Danny Goldberg and Ron
Stone at gold Ma and she'd been dropped by Warners
and there was a stigma attached to that and took it.
It took a minute to overcome that and find it
is Joe Smith, who was part of letting her go

(01:06:26):
at Warner Brothers and not happy about it, who gave
her the shot that capitol. So you know, we made
Nicked Time. We made it real fast, but we were prepared.
We did something before we started the record. She came
over to my place a number of times and we
cut just demos with her either playing guitar alone or

(01:06:49):
playing piano and singing, and we figured you know, if
the song doesn't work with you playing it alone, whatever
other layers stuff we put on, it's not going to
make it work. So let's find you know, ten that
and and so we're ready.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Okay, So all the stuff you cut before the deal,
none of those were masters. It was after the deal
you recut everything.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
We recut everything, and we cut it pretty quickly. We
didn't have a lot of bread. We had one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, which now actually seems like a
big boat, right, but that was like that was minimal
kind of budget in those days.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Did you bring any of the songs or did she
bring all the songs?

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
I'm sure she brought all the songs. She's a great musicologist.
People would send She always had boxes cassettes of demos.
In fact, on the second album, Luck of the Draw,
we'd cut most of the album. We were ready, but

(01:07:57):
we didn't have the up tempost single that we thought
it was gonna require. And she was going through every
box and way at the bottom of like the last box,
she found Shirty Elkhart's song something to Talk About Me.
She said, I found it. But the thing about Bonnie

(01:08:18):
is that she won't sing anything that she couldn't have
written herself. That she didn't want to have to act.
She wanted to draw from personal experience. So everything that
we cut, if she wasn't a writer, it was something
that she felt and was experiencing and was experiencing at
that moment, which is the one reason her vocals are

(01:08:39):
so great, because she means it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Okay, niked, time is done. You know, it has success
that no one could foresee. But when it was done,
how do you feel about it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
I mean she'd been up and down.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
She cut, you know, records on FOD track at a
summer camp she worked with Paul Roth, a Jerry raggvoy.
Everything had been tried and nothing really worked. So you're there,
I mean the record is done. You say, wait a second,
there's something specially. He said, Well, you know, we gave
it our all.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
We'll see what happens. We never considered that kind of success,
the kind of success we enjoyed, never considered that to
be in the cards. We just were trying to make
something we'd be proud of in twenty five years. That
was something that we have actually said, let's not compromise
for the marketplace, don't imitate what's out now, because what

(01:09:35):
was out then was like flock of seagulls, and you know,
it was just the opposite, the antithesis of what she
was about. Don't try to be eighteen. I mean that
was another thing too. You know, it was such such
a brave thing to write and record a song like
nick of Time, because at that point, the conventional wisdom

(01:09:55):
was that, even if you were closing it I'm forty,
you had to pretend to be eighteen, right, And she
just dropped that pretense, and she wrote to her age
and not everyone thought that was a great idea, but
no one considered that her audience was going through that

(01:10:16):
exact same thing. Plus, I mean, plus it's time, it's
nick of time? Is it that happened? That song is
relevant to every generation somewhere in their forties, right, So
it's a timeless song. But she was gutsy about it,
and we hoped we'd get to the next record and

(01:10:36):
make something that we'd be proud of. At one point
someone came back to us and said, you know, we
need a Motown cover, We need a single for this,
And thankfully we were both on tour and couldn't get
back together to do it me, because if we'd have
done that, it would have ruined the album, I think,
and everything that it stood for. So we just had

(01:10:59):
to put it out the way it was. I remember
Tim Divine was the anarch guy, and Tim came to
the studio. We played it for him and he said
to me, he said, you got a tux. No, I
don't have a tux. He said, we'll get when you're
going to the Grammys. My first instinct was to punch
him right now, you know you like it, to just
say you like that. You don't have to come in

(01:11:20):
here and be all hyperbolic. But he was right, he
heard it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:24):
Okay, it's a very interesting thing with Bonnie. For a
long time. My favorite record was the second record give
it Up. Then she works with you. After a little
bit of hiatus, having no label deal, you put on
Nick of Time, very successful. Luck of the Draw is
a peak that's actually for me and I told everybody

(01:11:47):
involved except maybe you, that better than give it Up.
So now you have the pressure of having had success.
So what was the mental state of going in to
record Luck of the Draw?

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Uh? I think we were remarkably cool about it, to
be I think we were uh. I think it gave
us confidence to follow our instincts. And by the way,
when I talk about us, I can't talk about us.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Yeah, you are you going to break down? You're going
to mention the engineer here, very sad story.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Ah, I can't talk about us without mentioning Ed Shirney
Ship Bobby.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Well, you know, I became close. I mean I knew
Ed Brobab probably ten or fifteen years before. Body became
close just before he died. And I didn't really think
he was going to die.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
I guess I spoke with him, you know, one time,
just before you because he used to talk to Al
Schmidt every day they used to wake up. And then
they both died.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
But you know, I.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
Guess he died before his time. And it's not like
he died in his twenties. It's and he was such
a you know, upbeat, fun guy. Not that he didn't
have his darkness whatever, It's just not the type of
guy you expect not to be here. It's hard to
explain if you didn't know him.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Yeah. No, He's a wonderful guy and just had this
great spirit about him and he he changed the energy
of the sessions. So much. He made it such a
positive thing and relaxed people. And but in addition to
all his human characteristics, he uh, he was a genius

(01:13:49):
engineer and nick ad time and lucky to draw on.
Those records are as much his design. Because we were torn.
We didn't know how this record should sound. I wanted
it to sound like Joshua Tree. I wanted dark and dry,
and Bonnie wanted it natural like her other records have been.

(01:14:13):
And Ed was coming from working with Quincy Jones on
something and was putting long echoes on things. Long you know,
long delays, long reverbs, and somehow we had to find
a middle ground, and Ed came up with a way
to use really short delays and really short reverbs that

(01:14:34):
are imperceptible. You don't hear it as reverb. They sound
very natural. They sound very dry, like you could have
put one really great mic up in the room and
balanced it in the room. Sounds very natural, but it's
actually there's a lot of work that went into that sound.

(01:14:56):
And people started imitating him. After that, everything got away
from the long reverbs and people were going for some
kind of intimacy again, and Ed was the architect of
that thing. That's why I think of engineers and mixers.
I think of them as architects because when you put
on headphones, put your head right between the speakers, you

(01:15:17):
can hear the you can picture a room. You can
hear reflections off of walls, but those walls don't actually exist.
It's not actually a photograph of the room it was
recorded in. You create the illusion of a wall by
putting a delay in there, and then a signal is
bouncing off of this thing the same way you perceive

(01:15:39):
like sonar, the same way sonar works, so you perceive walls.
And the great mixers are beautiful architects. They build these
imaginary rooms that compliment the music, don't overshadow the music.
They compliment the thing and help the storytelling. And Ed
built this beautiful space for Bonnie to sing these songs,

(01:16:03):
and the intimacy of those records allowed her to communicate
directly with people. Our goal is to make it feel
like like you were driving your car and Bonnie was
in the in the passenger seat next to you, leaning
in and singing to you in your ear. That was

(01:16:24):
when we when we talked about it at the beginning.
That's what we're going for. And I think we achieved
that and that's in you know, large part due to Dad.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
So how did you meet Ed and start working with him.

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
Over that record? I didn't know him before that, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
So how did you end up with him?

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
He had done Right Cooter's It is a bop to
your draft. I'm trying to remember.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
Which I was earlier. Well, he did a Right Cooder record.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
He did a Right Cooter record right around the time.
Bonnie liked the sound of it, so she said, let's
let's get together with that. We went to move Sewing
Franks and it was like it is like the three
of us had known each other forever.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
Okay, Bonnie, after a number of records you no longer
work with. This has happened with other acts. Why does
it run out? And how do you feel about it?

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
I don't know the answer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
Well, you got to know the answer to how it
feels when they don't call you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
Well, we talked about making the next record, and she liked, ah,
what's the the Lost Lobos record? How well the worst
will survive? That one after that? The one that's very experimental,
that that Mitchell Prum did, Mitchell Fruman, Chad Blake. She

(01:18:08):
I just can't think of the name of the alright,
but it's a great, incredible record. She wanted to go
for more of those kind of sounds, and it wasn't
really what Ed and I did, and there's no no
value judgment on it. I said, well, yeah, you know,
maybe you should go with Mitchell if you want, if

(01:18:29):
you want that thing to do that. It was never
We talked about it, and it wasn't. It was most
amicable and and she made some great records too. So people,
you can't keep you doing the same things, and you
got to shake things up. I think that's just part

(01:18:52):
of the nature of making records. We couldn't keep going
with that sound. We did three records with that sound,
and a live album that covered all the material and
brought it together. And you want artists want to grow.
I didn't take it personally. I hope. I don't think
she took it personally. If we you know, we we're

(01:19:14):
still wonderful friends to this day. That's just how it goes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
Okay, you mentioned Pharaoh, Saunders and all these other people.
Where does this jazz influence come from.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
Well, tell your story. I was I was fourteen years
old in Detroit, my mom was making me drive around
with her on Sunday running errands, right, and I just
wanted to be at Northland Mall with my friends and
to hang out with my mom. So it was a
pretty crabby, obnoxious kid that afternoon. She was disgusted. She

(01:19:54):
left me in the car, gave me the keys. He said,
just play with the radio. I'll be right back. I
remember were sitting outside of the Park Library. I'm messing
with the tile, and I just randomly landed on a
station that I didn't know it existed, because we didn't
have FM radio in the house, right, And it was WHD,
which was the jazz station. It was a very highly

(01:20:18):
regarded DJ who's still on the air in Detroit in
his nineties, by the way, a guy named ed Love
who used to back announce records and was a jazz
dis job. I came in on the station just as
a song, which I later learned was Mode for Joe
by Joe Henderson, which is a Blue Note record. And
I didn't know anything about jazz. I'd probably heard it

(01:20:39):
in the background and movies and stuff, but I didn't
think about it ever. And right where I hit is
where he starts as solo and you can check it.
It happens about forty six seconds in the song. He's
making these kind of anguish cries with the sacks. I'd
never heard of saxophone and grabbed my attention because whatever

(01:21:06):
Joe Henderson was going through that the sound he was
making sounded like exactly how I felt being stuck driving
around with my mom all day, so that it got
my ears. And then I don't know ten fifteen seconds
in the drummer, guy named Joe Chambers starts swinging on
his ride symbol. And Joe Chambers stops howling and starts grooving,

(01:21:32):
and I thought he was talking to me. I picked
up a nonverbal message from there. I thought he was saying,
don you got to groove in the face of adversity.
And I thought about it, and he had just showed
me how to do that. He started, no matter how
how much angst he was experiencing, he couldn't resist the

(01:21:54):
ride symbol and he started swinging. And I took the
message to heart, and by the time my mom got
back in the car, I was relaxed and a nice
kid again, and I understood that there was something about
this music that was highly communicative on another level than

(01:22:15):
what I was experiencing with, you know, the Cherrell's or
whatever at the same time. So I got an FM
radio and started listening to this jazz station and just
totally became enamored of this one company that was putting
out all these great records. And then I saw the artwork.

(01:22:37):
There was Blue Note Records, the little independent company out
of New York. The covers were incredible, photography was amazing.
It's black and white photography with these guys and cigarettes,
smoke and saxophones and cool clothes and whatever. It was
about that familiar I wanted to be part of it.

(01:22:57):
I knew then wherever I can't figure out what room
they're in the walls are black, I couldn't duck and
dump it. This is the coolest stuff. Subsequently, I learned
the roots of this music, which is that it comes
from extreme oppression from the African the aspora, people who

(01:23:21):
are here against their will and being forced to give
up their culture or at least hide their culture. And
they were able to hide it musically keep it alive.
And that's where this music comes from. So it's popular
all over the world because anyone who's oppressed, and there's
oppression all over the world with all different kinds of people.

(01:23:46):
This is the music that you should comfort and understanding
of the situation. So I just became like a huge man.
This music really spoke to me, and I collected the records.
We used to get on a bus man we'd call

(01:24:08):
around it. This goes back to the days before there
were chain record stores. Every record store was a mom
and pop store and reflected the taste of the owner
a little bit too, So we'd have to call ten
stores to find out, oh, you've got a copulary, young Unity.
We'd get on the bus ride forty five minutes to
the east side of Detroit just to hold the thing.
It was four ninety eight or three ninety eight for

(01:24:30):
the two ninety eight for the mono, right, three ninety
eight for the stereo. Couldn't afford either one. But I
could hold it and look at it, look at the pictures,
and read the liner notes, and maybe you could con
the store owner into breaking the seal and playing some
of the record for you. I started collecting them. Never
gone to me that fifty some years later, I didn't

(01:24:51):
being president that label.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
Okay, A couple of questions, jazz had a peek conventional wisdom.
Don't argue with me. I'm just putting it out. Pejorative
jazz is dead, just like rock and roll is dead.
Now now, there have been so many iterations of jazz,
there's been smooth jazz, et cetera. How does someone who

(01:25:16):
is not a jazz fan, where is the entry point?

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Yeah, but that's a that's a very good question to me.
The essence of jazz or even improvisational music. I extend
that to like The Grateful Dead and Goose and bands
like that. They're conversations. They're there are people listening to

(01:25:44):
each other and reacting. The best musicians are the ones
who listen to what everyone else is playing and not
only react, but suggests something new that advances the conversation further.
Not every if you go to a party, not every
conversation is for you. Right, you stand with some group

(01:26:05):
of people and they're talking about some bullshit. You sort
of back up quietly and find some other people to
talk to. But you can always find something to sink
your teeth into. And it's very much the same with jazz.
I recommend going Easy kind of Blue by Miles Davis
is a pretty safe entry point for people. Blue Trained

(01:26:27):
by John Coltrane, which is the most popular catalog album
that Blue Note's got. That's just it makes you feel good.
You put those records on, you feel good. And the
greatest misconception about jazz is that you have to study,
you know, two years of music theory at the university

(01:26:49):
level to qualify it to listen to it. And that's
just not true. You shouldn't even be aware of the seams.
You shouldn't know what these guys study to play like that.
You should. It either speaks to you or it doesn't.
And I don't love all jazz. You know that A

(01:27:13):
lot of it doesn't speak to me. I don't like
it when it gets too cerebral, when people are sometimes
you can hear people. It reads almost like an application
for a grant from a foundation. It's all in the head.
I like it when it comes from the heart. It
doesn't matter jazz or blues or anything. You know, any

(01:27:34):
kind of music you want some well, at least I
favor the non acrobatic, soulful, oh types of expression.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
Okay, what do we say to the people who know
nothing but say jazz is discordant?

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
When you're playing something else. When I first started Blue Notte,
we started, we did some some research. We have focus
groups come in of people, just every type of person.
And what do you think of jazz? I hate jazz man,
it's all discord It's terrible, all right, I understand that.
Then we put on a Sidewinder by Lee Morgan. I say, oh,

(01:28:18):
I love that. What do you call that music? If
someone says it's all discordant, I don't dig it. I said, well,
you're not listening to the right stuff. You know, it's understandable.
How do you find it's hard to find your way in?
That's that's That's one of the biggest things we've tried
to do that Blue Note is to provide a nice

(01:28:38):
pathway in, you know, to put out a welcome matt
and let people come in. And of course it changes too,
you know, the times change. When I when I started,
the first meeting I had with an artist was with
Robert Glasper, who played a very early version, rough mixes
of Black Radio. I could tell them already, you know,

(01:29:03):
I'd heard other people. Roy Hargrove was experimenting with hip
hop ten years before that, but no one had quite
put it together the way Robert did, and I was transfixed.
I never heard anything like it, but I knew it
would speak to a whole other generation of people, because

(01:29:26):
the best jazz musicians take everything that they've absorbed and
and incorporate that into the flow of their music. So Robert,
you know, certainly that he grew up, you know, when
hip hop music was popular, so that that's part of
his thing. But here, I've heard him quote McDonald's commercials.

(01:29:49):
I've heard him quote Bonnie Rait records. I've heard him
quote Bruce Hornsby. Uh, you know, he's we're all musicians.
You're you're you are the sum total of what you
absorb in life and what you've listened to, and if
you don't keep updating what you do to reflect who

(01:30:09):
you are in that moment, then you're just basically a museum.
You don't want to be a museum. That was one
of the things when I first started a Blue Note.
I wanted to know, why is it music that was
recorded fifty sixty years ago relevant today? You know, why
does it sound fresh and vibrant today? And what I

(01:30:30):
found was that in every period of the company's existence,
they always signed artist who had absorbed the fundamentals of
everything that came before him, but then use that knowledge
to create something brand new, whether that was The Loneliest
Monk in the forties, or Art Blakey and Horace silver
Invent and Hard Bob in the fifties, or Wayne Shorter,

(01:30:51):
Herbie Hancock or Ntte Coleman, Eric Dolphie in the sixties,
or glassper in two thousand and eleven. You have to
it's got to be self expression, not you just copying
someone else's self expression.

Speaker 1 (01:31:11):
Okay, let's just stay on that topic for a minute, people,
Let's just talk rock music for a minutes. Yesha, very rare,
extremely rare for someone to create something unlest we're talking
about Bonnie Raid of the quality of their initial period
decades later, especially today with recording revenues for most of

(01:31:33):
these acts small. They make the money on the road,
and the people want to wear, they hear, they hits.
There's an occasional being like the Doobie Brothers puts out
a record every couple of years, but most acts have stopped. Okay,
do you think you're a record producer, Do you think
it's a state of mind that you got them in

(01:31:53):
the studio and you get two hundred thousand dollars, you
can make something as good as they made in their
legendary era. Is something in that quality or is it
spent whatever headspace they were in, whatever that ship sailed.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
I don't think that there's like a singular cutoff point
at which point you're doomed to just repeat what you
did in your glory years. The artists that I admire
most have it's it's cicular, you know, cyclical that you
ride these waves of you're inspired. You ride a wave

(01:32:33):
of an inspired time, and then then the trough of
the waves when you're not inspired, and if you stay
in it for forty fifty years, you get a couple
of crests.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
Well, well, let's put it out differently.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:49):
Certainly, if you were a rock fan and you're buying
records in the sixties, the interest leaves would have pictures
of every album that whatever you bought Atlantic records, there
were a lot of jobs, less McCann whatever. What do
we know? Those records were never million sellers. This was
a business. We like your music, we're making a record.
We're not going to lose money because then we're going

(01:33:11):
to stop. So when you're making records at Blue Note today,
is that pretty much the goal we're documenting. These people
are artists. We are not even looking at you know,
the Spotify top fifty whatever in that. This is the
modern world.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
I see albums. I still make albums, still believe in
the album is a statement, but I see it I
seem as postcards. You know, hey, Bo'm in Minnesota today. Man,
it's great here heading to you know, we'll be in
Saint Louis tomorrow night. Just dropping the mailbox picture. You're

(01:33:55):
standing by the Paul Bunyan statue, right right right. That's
what the albums are. This is where I am at
this moment in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
Well, this is very different from the pre Internet era,
where the goal was to sell tonnage on every record
on a major label.

Speaker 2 (01:34:20):
Ony. Yeah, well, I believe the best business plan is
to make great records. If you make great records, you'll
the revenue will find you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Okay, Blue Note, how many records you put out a year?

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
We do around twenty Frontline albums, and last year we
did fifty high quality audio, file quality vinyl reissues of.

Speaker 1 (01:34:50):
The catalog Frontline product. What's the budget for one of
those records.

Speaker 2 (01:34:55):
It depends, could be Norah Jones, or it could be
if it's a new jazz artist, it might be fifteen
thousand dollars. Okay, how'd you get this gig?

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
Good question.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):
I was in New York City. I was producing a
John Mayer record. Born and Raised twenty eleven, were recording
an Electric Lady, and we took a night off. So
I looked in the village voice just thought, oh God,
and here's some music clear my head. And I saw
that an artist named Gregory Porter was appearing at a

(01:35:29):
little club called Smoke Up near Harlem. And I'd heard
Gregory on the local jazz station, and I was blown away.
I didn't know anything about him, but I heard a
song called Illusion that he put out on a little
independent label called Motima. I thought, man, you wrote this song,

(01:35:49):
and he just sings it so beautifully, which is great poetry.
And listen to his voice. Man. So I was thrilled
to see that he was there. I didn't know anything
about him, so I went up to catch a show
there for three sets. Wasn't there on business. I just
drank coffee, ate ribs and enjoyed all three sets. The
next morning, I had breakfast with an old buddy of mine,

(01:36:11):
guy named Dan McCarroll. I knew Dan when he was
a Sheryl Crow's drummer, played Lloyd Cole Emotions, and he
was married to Jane Oppenheimer, who was my assistant in
the nineties, and that's when Dan came into the picture.
I met him then, but over the years, his savvy
as a musician of taste had gotten him to the

(01:36:36):
point where he'd become the president of Capitol Records. And
we weren't even talking about the music business, records or anything.
But at the end of the breakfast, I said to him,
Blue Not it's still a part of Capitol, right, you
really should sign this guy. I saw last night Greg Reporter.
He's quiet for about ten seconds. He said, now you

(01:37:00):
should sign him. And completely unbeknownst to me, I don't
know anything about the inner workings of Blue Note at
that point. But Bruce Lonval, who'd run the company for
thirty years, one of the great recordmen of all time,
maybe one of maybe the most beloved executive among musicians.
Even Bruce was ill. He had Parkinson's and he wasn't

(01:37:23):
going to be able to continue, and they were looking
for someone who could, who had an understanding of the
ethos of Blue Note Records, but would continue to move
it forward, not just remake the old nineteen sixties records.
So he offered me the gig. And and my goal

(01:37:46):
in life had been to not have a job or
something that I considered to be a job. I never
thought a guitar player or being in a band or
making records as work. You know, it was fun. This
is going to be something. Plus, I also knew that
I was going to have to learn to understand a
profit and loss statement. I never used excel.

Speaker 1 (01:38:12):
I haven't used it to this day, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:38:14):
And so I also know that you have a finite
number of synoptic pathways that you can keep open at
any given time, and when you don't use them, you
shut them down to make room for the things you're
currently using. So I thought, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna.
I may learn how to do this, but I may

(01:38:35):
never write a song. I can live with that. It
seemed like a high high adventure to try to learn,
but I was woefully unprepared. I don't know anything.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
About okay, but you know, it's not like the old
days where it labels. Every five years, it would be turnover,
get a new president. They wipe everybody out. You've had
this gig for a long time. I would assume you
don't listen. Everyone likes to get paid. But I assume
you don't need the money.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
I don't need the Braain.

Speaker 1 (01:39:10):
Do you actually have an office? Do you actually go in?

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
Well, all I know is you're always out on the
road with somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
Well I learned, Well, here's the deal. OK. It took
about five years to figure out how to do the
job as myself. I couldn't be Bruce Man. Bruce was
so good. If you wrote him an email, if you
send him an email, he'd answer you within like thirty seconds.

(01:39:42):
You'd get a reply. He always returned calls. He could
do all these things. Now we have a living refutation
of astrology, Bruce and myself, because we have the same birthday,
September thirteenth.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
He was a time out timeout you believe in astrology.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
No, we refuted astrology because we are so different. But
we were really different. And they were huge footprints, you know,
to walk in possible to fill the shoes. But I

(01:40:23):
couldn't be him, he couldn't be me. So how can
I be myself and do this? And that may not
be going into an office and sitting there and you know,
just sitting there on the phone punching in and out
from eight in the morning to five or whatever. That
that wasn't my style. I found a style, do it?

(01:40:44):
So what is the style? Get out in the world, man,
and and and keep making music because someone's got to understand.
But the artists are really going through someone's got to
understand it. It's a it's a different mentality. You start

(01:41:05):
talking to an artist about a deadline. We need we need,
we need the credits handed in by October twenty eighth
and the photos done by the November two. That just
goes in one ear and out the other. Especially if
someone's trying to portray life in the recording studio at
the same time that you got to be in a
completely different headspace. Someone's got to understand that that headspace.

(01:41:28):
Someone's got to understand the relationship with the audience. You know,
you're if you're running a business of getting music to
an audience, you got to understand what the relationship is
between musicians and the audience. Going out and tour with
Bob We're was the best thing I ever did for

(01:41:49):
Blue Note Records, because that's that you go in there
night after night, the grateful that audience is such a
great audience. Man, they're so tuned in man, sometimes with
a little help, sometimes just on their own. But there's

(01:42:11):
a real psychic connection between everybody in the room and
between the band and the audience. We never play anything
the same way twice. That's the wond room or whatever
you played last night, don't do it because it's not
going to work tonight. Everyone else is going to be
in a different place. So just start fresh every night.

(01:42:34):
And there will be some failures. There'll be some real
train wrecks in the band. A song may fall apart.
Audience doesn't mind that as long as you were doing
it in the service of trying to achieve something great.
And a couple times a night we will connect with
the audience and you get this energy. You can feel

(01:42:55):
it flowing from the stage into the audience and you
can feel and see them responding to it, and it
comes back to you and it becomes cyclical. It elevates
the game and you can blow the rough off the
motherfucker like that, you know, And and I don't know
anything that's more exhilarating than that feeling when it's happening.

(01:43:17):
And record companies need to understand that and that and
that that's the kind of relationship you're They're not just
you know, it's not like you're selling horn flakes to somebody.
You know, this is you're dealing with high levels of
consciousness and and and you're impacting people on uh, some

(01:43:40):
really deep levels. And you got to understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:45):
Okay, how much administrative work do you do.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Enough?

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
Okay, you're on the you're on the road with Bob Weird.
You know you're only on stage a very small portion
of the day. Are you working on Blue Note every day?

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
Absolutely? Man? You know I'm up at eight o'clock in
the morning on calls. And also you know, if you
you know how people you put the names on the
dressing rooms right mine's they's a Blue Note World headquarters.
We're just a full time gig. Man. I go to
bed thinking about it. I'm talking to the musicians. I

(01:44:25):
can have better conversations with the musicians because I'm playing
improvisational music.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
I'm not like, Okay, you're out with Bob Weir, but
you're out all the fucking time. You're out with a band,
you Last Waltz Tour, it seems like you're working all
the time.

Speaker 2 (01:44:42):
It just seems that way. You don't see every day
I'm there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
Well, no, I'm not justifying your work, and I'm more
interested in what is driving you to go on the road.
It's got to be more than you know. Gives me
insight and not every and you know, the electricity talk
about a moment with the dead is different from a

(01:45:08):
regular concert that is not improvisational. Not that the audience
can't connect to a certain degree. There must be somebody,
you know, is this type of thing where okay a month, okay, okay,
I'll do it, or you really want to go on
the road.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
I love I love play. But here I'll give you
an example this because this isn't like a grateful dead
improvisational thing. When you mentioned the Last Waltz Tour, which
we do heavy so often with Warren Haynes and Jamie
Johnson and John Medeski and a rotating cast to other
characters too. One year I was positioned behind Warren Samp

(01:45:50):
clocked it in at about one hundred and thirteen decibels.
The sound coming out of it had the back cover off,
and it was just hurt in my ears and I
don't like to use in yours. I want to be
in the thing. But it was really loud. We got
to I should be Released, which was like kind of

(01:46:12):
a climactic moment in the show, and I look at
this audience. We're playing theaters twenty five hundred, three thousand
people every night, and we light it up a little
bit in it. You see everybody standing up, you see
people crying, hugging each other. That song means so much
to him. It's such a great song. I should be released.

(01:46:32):
I mean something different to everybody. Everybody, but everybody's got
something that they need to be released from. And I thought,
all right, man, if I got to damage my hearing,
I can't think of a better way to do it
than bringing this kind of feeling to three thousand people tonight.
If I'm I'm willing to lose my hearing this, how

(01:46:55):
is your hearing? It's good?

Speaker 1 (01:46:59):
Get older? Yeah, okay, I'm gonna jump. What was going
through your mind? And how did you make cap in
the Brian Wilson movie.

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
I was producing my old school buddy Doug Figer in
his group The Knack right around the corner from here.
In fact, and Doug and Burton Averar the guitar player,
had laid the Smile bootlegs on me. I was unaware

(01:47:31):
of I knew about it, but I didn't really know
the story. Holy cow, man, I got so deep into
listening to these things it just blew me away. And
then the mystique about them being unfinished and fragmented like that,
probably to the detriment of the Knack record. That's all
I was listening to. And sometime we were still making

(01:47:54):
the record, I got invited to remember it was Red
Hot and Blue. Was that with this album? Are Gone
Pediatric Aids or AIDS benefit? Yeah? Yeah, So Elizabeth Taylor
was hosting a party. I thought, well to Jim, and
I went and I get into theffet line. There is

(01:48:18):
Brian Wilson and doctor Landy standing right next to me,
so I couldn't contain myself. I was so steeped in
all of his music at that point, and I was
just rantic about how brilliant it was, and I think
he appreciated it. The invite.

Speaker 1 (01:48:37):
Wait wait, wait, I've had my interactions with Brian from
going back forty years to more recent stuff on the
bus whatever. It's not a regular conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:48:50):
So you testify. When you testify to the average household
name musician, yeah, most of them just say thank you.
That's not the way to connect with people and say
you know that's not you. But you can't hold back
at certain points. But occasionally get someone and.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Said oh yeah, blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (01:49:09):
So normally Brian most of the time blank, other times
sort of enthusiastic, over amped. I mean, what was his
reaction to you testify?

Speaker 2 (01:49:22):
I think it meant something to him that someone had
listened that closely and heard what he was trying to do.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
So you were talking about the smile, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:49:31):
How much smile stuff and being very specific in my references,
more specific than I could be today. I was steeped
in it, and I guess I heard what he was
going for and it meant something to him, and just

(01:49:55):
you know, finish your shrimp and you come come to
the studios. So they invited me to the studio. I
went over there and we became pretty friendly.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
Do you have any idea who you were when he
met you?

Speaker 2 (01:50:08):
I don't know, but yeah, he knew I was a producer.
I guess yeah. But we became friendly and then I
played some gigs with him, would just be me and him.
He played piano and sing. I played bass. It just
one off charity things. One Sunday we played something. It

(01:50:32):
was something for the Elizabeth Glazer Foundation. She was still alive.
Then it was somehouse up in Benedic Canyon in place, big,
big place for a huge backyard. Ronald Reagan was there,
Paul Buls, a bunch of people there, and Brian and
Jackson Brown were the entertainment. His families in the afternoon.

(01:50:56):
So Jackson was brilliant. And then then we played and
we just made a mess out of California girls. It
was terrible, and Brian said to them like, oh man,
we really fucked that one up. And then everyone came
and got their kids, and then we did some damage
to another song, and then we got to Love Mercy,

(01:51:18):
and the sun was going down on the mountain in
front of us, so it was just a beautiful scene.
And he connected on such a profound level to that
song that I think I stopped playing at one point. WHOA,
I didn't know he still had that in him, and
it was just sublime. Man. It was just a beautiful

(01:51:40):
version of that beautiful song and a beautiful message. And
I thought, oh man, people could only see this part
of them. So al Teller was running a MCA at
the time, and he offered me a label deal. I said,
you know, man, I don't do these little pop records.

(01:52:00):
He said, no, no, no, just be yourself. So I signed
Chris Christofferson, Felix Cavaliery and then Brian Wilson, and I
had first job here is to clean up at this point.
Now by the time I'd made a deal with him,
by the time we got around to that show, in fact,
Elizabeth Glazier's thing Landy was gone. He was an obstacle

(01:52:23):
to progress. And I signed him to signed him to
our label, and I thought, the first thing is, let's
get all the unsavory stuff, the National Inquirer kind of
twenty four hour shrink stuff. Let's get that out of

(01:52:44):
the way. Let's get the focus back on why this
is probably the greatest record maker of all times. So
I thought, well, let's make a documentary film. And I
could see it in my head. I knew what it
was supposed to be, and I started taking all these
meetings and anyone who's going to kick in money had

(01:53:05):
some opinion about what it should be, and just fucket, man,
I'll pay for this myself and I'll direct it. I
didn't know anything about directing doctor, but I knew what
story to tell, and I was able to surround myself
with the great people. I had a lot of help,
great DP, great editor, great producer, and we made this

(01:53:26):
little thing that was really supposed to be kind of
an infomercial just to change people's minds and get the
focus back on. Submitted it to Sundance. I got accepted
at Sundance. So now Brian and I we're going to
go to Sundance. We'll show the movie and play afterwards.

(01:53:48):
And we got all these offers all of a sudden,
I was a documentary director and we were in profit
before we started. All the money came back and we
made TV deal, some home distribution deals, and it was
a nice glimpse into who Brian was. It still holds
up to this day. I think is a nice portrait

(01:54:09):
of him. And people got to see him singing his
songs with the degree of musicality that he was capable
of bringing. To the songs, and it got his confidence
up and he started going out on tour after that.
I never thought he could get to We made it
because I didn't think he could get through a show.

(01:54:31):
But he certainly could, and he went on to do
some incredible things that pet sounds to it and smile
to it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
Okay, I'm a huge Beach Boys fan. I mean gigantic.
I tell people all the time. I've been tell him
for fifty years to I live in California because of
the Beach Boys. There are some very surprising moments, most
of them in the seventies. Marcella carl and the Passions
not mediocre record. That track is unbelievable. Of course, there's

(01:55:08):
selon Sailor on holland good.

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):
Time in on La the Light album.

Speaker 1 (01:55:15):
But as he goes back on tour, because you and
me both know he sang all the high parts on
all those original records, it seemed to me a little
bit of the Emperor's new clothes. I saw him many times.
Was evolved on a very oblique level with the redoers.

Speaker 2 (01:55:35):
Smile, and.

Speaker 1 (01:55:39):
His voice was far from perfect. Let's not talk about
his psychological state, which always wasn't the best and I
had inside information. Did he still really have it those
last thirty odd years?

Speaker 2 (01:55:56):
Yes, Yes, And I remember when we were we were
recording something and had a studio full of guys Waddie
Ben montench Keltner. We were cutting some song for him
and he was sitting at it. He walked in and
sat down at the piano, put his head down, and

(01:56:16):
I thought he was asleep, right, But we just kept
cutting the song and we get to like the third verse.
All of a sudden, we're here in piano and his
head still down. I thought he was Gone's bilt man.
And he played the most exquisite part, and he obviously
was just waiting for that to roll around, and he

(01:56:38):
was just listening and he had that absolutely had that spark.
And I'd seen him. There's a group of folks who
we used to get together with him some you know,
not that long ago, maybe six months ago. We'd have

(01:56:58):
outings at Moose on Frank's and he still has unfinished
material that he wanted me to work on, and you know,
talked a little bit about that. I think he Yeah,
I think he was enigmatic. You never knew how present

(01:57:22):
he was, but he'd always surprise.

Speaker 1 (01:57:24):
You Okay, forget you go to sundance. Yeah, that means
you've got to spend a good amount of time with
him not working.

Speaker 2 (01:57:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:34):
Could you have a conversation like a regular personager?

Speaker 2 (01:57:38):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean, well there's nothing regular about him. Okay,
but could I have a conversation yes, And he lived
a really interesting life and you know, remembered everything, even
towards the end. He remembered everything from the past and
could tell you great stories. And also, sometimes it's just

(01:58:05):
not necessary to make aimless chatter small talk. You know,
sometimes you can have an artistic relationship with someone that
transcends that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
Okay, then let's switch gears back to the Stones. They
agreed to make a record. Stones they legendarily would make records.
They'd bring in a piece that was recorded years before,
they would write the songs in the studio. People did
that after, but they were one of the first people.

(01:58:42):
So what is your role. Now, Let's say you're finally
working with the Stones. Certainly, as time went on, they
made some records that were not as good as the
early records. So your goal is to get beyond that.
So what do you do?

Speaker 2 (01:59:00):
Well, the first thing is just start with songs, which,
by the way, is something peculiar to the Rolling Stones.
It's for everybody. If you don't have great songs, you're
not going to make a great record. So it was
to try to encourage them to write to the level

(01:59:21):
of greatness that they.

Speaker 1 (01:59:23):
Ok, let's be clear, you make a deal. Do you
have the studio time booked? Are they writing these songs
before you go to the studio or are you waiting
for them to write songs for you do go in
the studio.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
They were working on songs before I got together with them,
and then I went to Ireland. They're the rehearse in
at Ronnie Woods Place, and both Mick and Keith were
incredibly prolific. In that period of time. There were probably
forty to fifty songs really parts of songs that could

(01:59:57):
be developed. Yeah, they had a lot of stuff. Ah,
and so it was narrowing it down and I tried
to I remember muh trying to get them to agree
to write the lyrics before we got to the studio,
so that we could shape the tracks to the molder

(02:00:18):
of the lyrics. And I thought I remembered Keith saying,
all right, great, we'll do that. I came home from
Dublin and I get a fact from him. A couple
of days later. He said, all right, we're starting Tuesday.
B Uh, you know, get back on a plane, be here.
We're gonna cut it. Wind Mill Lane backed them back, said, wait,

(02:00:42):
I thought you were going to write lyrics to the songs.
He said, just remember when you get here, improvise adapt
overcome and pe fuckings don't paint yourself into a quarner.
I thought, shit, I lost them before we even stopped.
But it was great advice. I ended up making shirts

(02:01:04):
of it from his facts improvised adapt overcome on the
back pe fucking s don't paint yourself into a corner.
And it became kind of a mantra like just open
up your mind and.

Speaker 1 (02:01:16):
Okay, you show up next Tuesday. Where are you working.

Speaker 2 (02:01:21):
We're working at Windmill Lane. Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:01:24):
Is there a thought that you're going to finish something
or is it we're going to be here for month?
Lord only knows.

Speaker 2 (02:01:30):
I think we had a finite timebook and you thought
you were going to finish an album in that time.
Now we're just going to get basic tracks cut. Okay, Yeah,
and so we did. I think food Launch is a
really good record. Every album I did with them, there

(02:01:52):
was a we did a version that was thirty six
minutes long. I was aware that there's a legacy that
you had to keep up with. But albums like Beggars
Banquet and Let It Bleed, those those records are short,
you know, and the songs because you because you have
a finite amount of real estate on a vinyl disc,

(02:02:15):
which was the main medium for it them right, so
you really thought about do we need eight bars between
the first chorus and the second verse. No, man, you'd
probably do it with four, do it with two. Let's
you know. You did a lot of self editing. And
then in the CD era there was I think a

(02:02:37):
myth that people would be willing to pay twenty bucks
for this if you give them seventy two minutes of
music instead of thirty six, which I think was one
of the most damaging things that ever happened in the
music business. That was a really bill informed strategy, because

(02:03:02):
that means you just fill up the space.

Speaker 1 (02:03:04):
Well, it was worse than that because on a vinyl record,
you knew the first track on both sides and the
last track on both sides were the best tracks, so
you would know where to start, whereas on a CD
it ran all the way through where the fuck do
you start?

Speaker 2 (02:03:17):
And that's a real thing. Also, each side would have
a mood to it too, and it was it was
very difficult to find seventy two minutes to listen to
something as a whole, almost insane. Yeah, but Evan could
find fifteen to twenty minutes to listen to a side.

(02:03:40):
So we did versions that were tight edits and left
out a bunch of songs, and it was really good,
which stood the test of time against what's considered to
be their classic period. I think there's some great stuff.

(02:04:01):
I think there's great stuff on all the records we did.
There's just maybe too much stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:04:06):
Okay, these are very experienced people on every level, experience
in the studio, experience stars. They know what their image is, whatever,
what's the special sauce, because they proved a lot of
records themselves, because the Glimmer Twins. So are you basically saying, well,
you know, I gotta be low key and know when

(02:04:28):
to hold them, when to fold them. What did you
actually do?

Speaker 2 (02:04:34):
Well, there's a lot, you know, it's hard to just
overgeneralize the thing. But it was first of all, keeping
the vibe in the room conducive to making music, making
good music and stressing. I wasn't Keith's guy. I wasn't

(02:04:58):
mixed guy, a Rolling Stones guy. I love the Rolling
Stones and I believe that they're at their best when
they cooperate, and when you get both, you get everybody's
essence on there. And I don't, by the way, I
don't underestimate the power Charlie Watts or Ronnie would in

(02:05:24):
this equation as well. Charlie was as important as anybody
in that pill.

Speaker 1 (02:05:31):
You know, the stuff sends him and you know, on
record and live it's like we were talking about ron Carter.
They're playing, but if you're a student, you could hear
the difference.

Speaker 2 (02:05:43):
Yeah, oh yeah, they I got to play with them
a lot, you know. If Daryl Jones couldn't make it
to a rehearsal, something I play, and that really gave
me a great understanding of what they were about, because
it was and being on the interior of the conversation,

(02:06:04):
I realized that all that, all the tension that everybody
reports on and everything like that, which is based in reality,
it vanishes the minute they start playing. The conversation is
so jocular man, and they're they're tossing, they're lobbing beautiful
soft balls right in the gloves. It reminds me what's

(02:06:25):
it called in baseball before the inning starts, when they
they're like four or five different balls being past.

Speaker 1 (02:06:31):
I don't know what you're talking about in a in
a in.

Speaker 2 (02:06:34):
A baseball game before the inning starts, the infield or
just toss balls around. Yeah, I think that's just the
warm up. So that's what the Rolling Stones are like.
They're playing musical. Charlie plays something on his high hat
to Keith to pick up on and play off of it.
That would affect how mcphrased. And it was jocular and

(02:06:55):
they were having fun and it was super relaxed. It
was beautiful. When Darryl Jones was a comeback, it broke
my heart because I enjoyed being in that space with
them so much.

Speaker 1 (02:07:06):
You know, I've seen the Stones a million times. It's
kind of like The Grateful Dead. They'd say they don't
play that long Grateful Dead do. I saw plenty of
times they played for four hours. I only saw him
be consistently good from beginning to end. Once other times
play for four hours, one hour unlistenable, one hour great,
two hours sort of. So until this last tour at

(02:07:29):
so far was it two summers ago, maybe maybe last summer.
I've never seen him be good from beginning ten stonesh
you tell them, yeah, I mean I remember in seventy
five day Pleader. That was when the petal opening whatever
I played basically an hour and a half wasn't until
like there was like a half hour they played Tumbling Dice.

(02:07:52):
You know this is one of these Now we're gonna
start telling rock and roll stories. There are certain Eggs
All on main Street came out. Seventy two tour was
the biggest tour ever up until this Taylor Swift tour.
The amount of coverage of the seventy two tour is unreal.
Eggs All on Mainstream is release, immediately goes to number one,
tours over immediately falls off, rocks off, not a huge shit.

(02:08:16):
Tumbling Dice. They're playing for a short period of time, Okay,
I'm talking about radio, and all of a sudden I
go on this tour. This is three years later. I've
seen him in between. It's tell them the seventy two
and they lock on Okay, I mean, you can just
feel it. But I found remember seeing the funniest two
funny things about the Stones. They don't go out with

(02:08:38):
any hard drives. They don't go out with anybody off stage.
What you see is what you get. So you get
a bar band at the rose Ball. Everybody else too
afraid to do that. And before they lock on, it's
a little weird.

Speaker 2 (02:08:56):
Any band, it's kind of like that. Takes a minute
to get going, I think, But that's just part of
the thing. The audience needs to sink into it too,
a little bit, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:09:05):
Yeah, but the game has changed. Okay, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
You would.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
I'm sure you saw a million acts. Forget the acts
that are headline acts like the Stones. You would go
because you have the record, you love this band. You
go to seem at someplace, a whole a few thousand
people had an experience and came home and then tell
your buddy's got to come the next time.

Speaker 2 (02:09:29):
Through it.

Speaker 1 (02:09:30):
Today a lot of arena shows that's like an MTV
video Come Alive. Yeah, I agree, it's not really the
same thing, which brings me to the question of where
is it going.

Speaker 2 (02:09:47):
Well, that's a good question, man. I don't know, I
think there are some underpinnings to music that can't be
You can't get rid of these things. And that's has
to do with making an emotional connection to the listeners.
You gotta touch them, you gotta make them feel something.

(02:10:12):
Hopefully it's not just a random feeling. Hopefully it's helpful.
You know, it helps them make sense out of their
life somehow. You know, life is crazy. Music helps him
make sense of it. That's why it's so important.

Speaker 1 (02:10:29):
Okay, let's be very specific. Lou Christie recently died. Whatever
is in Lightning Strikes and I'm not I say, there
is something in that record that is just undeniable.

Speaker 2 (02:10:42):
What was it?

Speaker 1 (02:10:43):
Narls Barkley Crazy.

Speaker 2 (02:10:45):
That's a more modern.

Speaker 1 (02:10:46):
Record where there's something, you know what. The New York
I never do this, but they had, like they put
out a weekly playlist of, you know, ten tracks, and
this was the Women, all of them except one was terrible,
the Sabrina Carpenter track, which and I've got no time
for her. I said, I hear this as a hit,

(02:11:07):
but it's nothing like Lightning Strikes whatever. So it's got
these changes. Whatever, it does not communicate on that emotional
level that you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):
Yeah, it might, it might go deep.

Speaker 1 (02:11:22):
I don't think so, because this is ridiculous. I remember
buying Disraeli gears and not many people talk about this track,
but it's the opening on the second side is Tales
of Brave Ulysses. We're telling my mother had no interest
in rock and roll. I gotta play this for you. Yeah,
this shit has sound wheel, it goes. There was a

(02:11:44):
thought that lat Winter. It's like there was a feeling
in that record.

Speaker 2 (02:11:51):
I'll tell you something, man, if you can get seventy
thousand people, fifty thousand people into us to come to
a state him to sit in traffic, pay for parking,
pay for babysitters, whatever you know, and to come there,

(02:12:12):
it's speaking to you in a in some kind of way.
You don't go. If it's not.

Speaker 1 (02:12:26):
Okay, I'm just gonna fuck with you. Then what do
you say about new kids.

Speaker 2 (02:12:29):
On the block. I think they spoke to somebody.

Speaker 1 (02:12:32):
Wait, wait, so the question is I'm not arguing with
people deciding to go pay their money now more than ever,
there's a penumber, You shoot selfies, you post on social media.
Things are hot. Yeah, okay, we both I mean the
biggest thing you live in Los Angeles because you see
these people. People who could leave the hotel room now

(02:12:54):
you see them at Ralph's. It's hysterical. Nobody's making a
big deal about them where they're where other people go,
like Brian Wilson, it's just to be in this Prince.
Holy fuck, that is the guy. It's in there somewhere.

Speaker 2 (02:13:09):
Well, I see it. Yeah, I'll tell you a story. Man.
In nineteen ninety, not was got booked on the Club
MTV tour. So we were out with a tone low
Paula Abdul, Millie Vanilli Us and the Information Society. We're

(02:13:36):
the only ones playing live and we were bombing every night.
That required the extreme generosity and kind spirit of downtown
Julie Brown to come out with her dancers and rescue
our set every night because because the people wanted to
hear the records, like the records, and we didn't sound

(02:13:58):
like Well, one night we get to move. It's the
Riverfront Festival. It's like fifteen thousand people and it's on
a very steep incline, so you could see the whole audience.
Milli Vanilli comes out and something was technically wrong Sinclavia.
It wasn't connected to the direct box or something, so

(02:14:20):
you could hear drums and they come out and they're
dancing for about a minute and a half. There's no music.
They storm off stage, go back in the bus, they
fix whatever was wrong, to find what's unplugged downtown. Julie
Brown goes out to convince him to come back in
and to be honest with you, my band and I

(02:14:41):
was standing on the side of the stage just gloating,
you know, I think, finally some justice, right. So Millie
Vanilli came back out after going through all that, after
everyone saw that nothing was real, and they started over
and nobody cared. So what does that tell us that

(02:15:06):
What it told me was that we were the idiots
we were. I think we were trying to enforce some
musical aesthetic on an audience that wasn't there for that.
They were there for something else, and they were paying
money to see the videos come to life, and we
didn't provide that. Milli Vanilli did, And I came to

(02:15:29):
respect the fact that it's not just a meritocracy based
on what we value. It's their ability to communicate with
the audience. So there's a lot of music that's out
now that young people are listening to that. That leaves
me cold. But I see the reaction, you know, and
I see people going night wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait. Fine.

Speaker 1 (02:15:53):
Yeah, it is not like it was in the sixties
and seventhes. Not for you and me.

Speaker 2 (02:15:58):
But it's not It would.

Speaker 1 (02:16:00):
Have been seventy in the sixties.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):
We'd have we are seventy. Well.

Speaker 1 (02:16:05):
I always say, there's a renaissance. Okay, they painted and sculptured, Retaissance.
They've painted and sculpted hundreds of years since. There's never
been another renaissance. There've been great painters and great sculptors,
but was in the you know, a lot of things
had to come together, the radio without all this stuff
like that. And also the other thing is today middle

(02:16:28):
class people know the reality of society. You talk to someone,
they don't want to be broke. I remember I graduated
from college. I was a skee bump for a couple
of years. People don't do that anymore. I got to
have a career otherwise I'm going to be a loser.
It's too expensive to live your life. So you got
middle class people. I mean, the famous thing was when
Bill Graham managed Jefferson airplane for a while, sod As

(02:16:52):
soon as they made any money, I couldn't get them
to work. Want to stay home and smoke dope. That's
what it is. I mean, that's not what's going on today.
Makes me crazy when people say, oh yeah, you know,
you're just too old and it's the same as it
ever was. It's not the same, is it ever?

Speaker 2 (02:17:08):
With? It might be strong? Look at all the people
the Taylor Swift drass to the shows. Man, you know
you know she's speaking directly.

Speaker 1 (02:17:15):
Wait, I'm gonna let's get since you're a pro dangerous
subject because she wrote a song about me. But the
first two albums that she wrote, the songs with Liz Rose,
it was like teenage Joni Mitchell, phenomenal. Okay, whatever she's

(02:17:35):
selling now, it is not the same thing. This is
a business proposition because the previous tour did not go clean. Okay,
if I put all the tickets on sale, it wance,
it'll be such mania. And then you there's fomo et cetera.
It's it's you know, there are these subtle things. It's

(02:17:56):
like you two, you two went out and did the
Joshua Tree done for new music. It's like a nostalgia play.
They're all these certain subtle things. People are not going
to be singing. We will never ever get back together
fifteen years from now like they were singing Beatles songs
to this day.

Speaker 2 (02:18:13):
I don't know that that's true. I don't think I
agree with you. I was in a played in Tronto.
We've played a two thousand seater the same night that
Taylor Swift was doing one of several nights in the stadium,
and I, you know, I went out for a walk
in all these women with the sparkles and the bracelets

(02:18:36):
and dressed a certain way. It means as much to
them as give piece of Chance meant to you.

Speaker 1 (02:18:44):
And I'll leave it here because I don't agree with you,
but I'm gonna whip out a bad analogy. Okay, television
today compared to what it was when we were growing up, Yeah, okay,
we would have said Banana's a phenomenal show. Yeah my
mother the Car maybe I watched it and not great.
The sopranos, I mean, holy fuck, better than any movie

(02:19:08):
in the theater.

Speaker 2 (02:19:09):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:19:10):
There are people, you know, you go somewhere. They can
sing all the theme song, they can talk about mash whatever,
mash was in the league of What's on TV today crap.
I will agree that these people like it by all,
just to go one step for this was everything for us.
People don't understand, just like I was talking about. You

(02:19:33):
can pick out the Republicans on campus. Okay. I remember
being at the New York World's Fair the second year,
getting off the mono rail close to midnight and the
speaker system is playing Satisfaction.

Speaker 2 (02:19:45):
That's sixty five.

Speaker 1 (02:19:46):
There was not a soul alive on the planet who
had not heard Satisfaction, not a single person. Doesn't mean
they liked it, but they heard it the same way.
I can sing every lick of Hello Dolly by Louis
Armstrong because I had to sit through it to hear
the beat song. Things do change, you know, there is
and there are different eras. So the question would become,

(02:20:09):
if we circle back forget the reissues. That's something different.
You're making these records on blue note. You call them postcards,
good analogy, but you're just basically sending.

Speaker 2 (02:20:22):
Him to the ether.

Speaker 1 (02:20:24):
There's not enough promotion, marketing dollars to reach even a
fraction of people to make it work. You're just putting
it out their audience knows it. You could get lucky,
just like Mom Dommie. I don't want to talk about
the politics whatever, blah blah blah. Big story in the
paper today saying that on social media it was embraced

(02:20:47):
by all these people who made their own videos. So
you don't know nothing is going to be as big
because we don't live in a monoculture anymore. But you
don't know if the records are as good as you say.
And I truly believe one could connect it. George Benson.
George Benson was just a fucking jazz musician. Wait a minute, No,

(02:21:09):
what I'm trying to say is he did that album
with on Broadway. He became a phenomenon. It's not like
the label said, oh we got a big plan, this
is going to happen.

Speaker 2 (02:21:19):
Song can take off. Yeah, it's I don't think it's
all that complicated. Man. You know, you try to try
to make records for soulful people, communicative people. They have
more choice today. You can hear everything all the time.

(02:21:39):
You have millions of songs we couldn't before. You know,
I was just I just found my copy of I
Get Around, which I had Brian sign and for me
in the nineties, and I still got the jacket them
walking up the steps. It was two sides, man. I
played it to death because I paid a dollar for it.
I didn't have a second dollar. Yeah, so I got

(02:22:02):
into that. Well, it's different. People have a choice, But
you can't deny if someone connects the way Taylor Swift connects.
You just can't deny that there's artistry in place, and
that there's art is about communication. Great artists communicate, and
she's a great communicator. She's not communicating. It's not speaking

(02:22:25):
to me, but it's not supposed to speak to me.
It's the same way that satisfaction was not meant to
speak to my grandfather. You know that it was a
secret language. That's what made it Special's.

Speaker 1 (02:22:36):
Let's leave Taylor Swift in her career out in terms
of identity for a second. But she made records with
Max Martin unbelievably talented. Yeah, okay, Mutt Lang didn't make
as many records, but he can make the records himself.

Speaker 2 (02:22:53):
In his day.

Speaker 1 (02:22:54):
But in today's mainstream record business, there's a lot of
writing by committee remixing. What is your philosophy on those processes?

Speaker 2 (02:23:09):
If it touches people who cares how you came up
with it, Man, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (02:23:14):
You don't think you can squeeze out the essence.

Speaker 2 (02:23:19):
I can show you shitty records that were made in
every era, any any golden period. You want a sight,
probably probably the week that like a rolling Stone was
number one, Probably like they're coming to take me away?
That was probably right. There's always great stuff, there's always

(02:23:41):
bad stuff. Just try to make stuff that you believe in.
It's it's so uncomplicated. It's so simple, man. Just make
real stuff, work with people who can who can tap
into their heart and and and and that's what an
artist does. An artist feels something, puts it into another
and the hope that someone who's observing it, a listener

(02:24:05):
or a viewer, will decode it and it'll convert back
into language again and an emotion. And that's I just
try to make records with people who can communicate.

Speaker 1 (02:24:20):
Okay, going on the road, running blue note. Are you
still available to produce albums?

Speaker 2 (02:24:26):
I am? What does it take?

Speaker 1 (02:24:30):
You have a limited amount of time or an unlimited
amount of time if it's the right stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:24:35):
I got a limited amount of time. I couldn't I
couldn't do another Stones album if they wanted me to,
you know, I mean, I don't have that kind of time.
Try it. You know, my favorite album, man, one of
my favorite albums I was Blue and Lonesome, which is
the last finished record that was three days.

Speaker 1 (02:24:58):
I like those kind of records, but you know there's
something you can capture in three days to boot.

Speaker 2 (02:25:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):
Okay, So you're a musician. You talk about going on
the road, going on to make these Stones records.

Speaker 2 (02:25:14):
How do you have a.

Speaker 1 (02:25:15):
Family and raise your kids and have them be reasonable?

Speaker 2 (02:25:19):
How do you balance that out? Well? You do it.
You make the effort. When when my youngest kids, Solomon
sal was produced Beyonce, really, all my kids are musicians
and they're all I'll produce and I'll play. So when

(02:25:40):
I dropped them at USC, which when all three of
my kids went to USC and they all graduated, only
Henry graduated. Uh, family tradition, right, rights. But dropping them
off is maybe one of the worst days you're gonna
have and you're your life. It's like you've lost your kid.

(02:26:02):
It's dark for a parent. And I remember tearfully saying
to him, I said, look, man, it was always my
intention to be around more, and I'm sorry I wasn't
and soals just such a sweet guy man, He said, Well,

(02:26:24):
there's any consolation to you, He said, I remember about
twenty things from when I was twelve and under and
you were there for all of them. Wow, And so yeah,
I missed stuff, but I guess I was there. Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:26:45):
Just a couple more questions. Hey, do you ever go
on a traditional vacation?

Speaker 2 (02:26:53):
Ah? No, okay?

Speaker 1 (02:27:01):
Is music all consuming? Or do you have other passions?
Or do you watch streaming TV? Read books? What your
everyday life look like?

Speaker 2 (02:27:13):
I'm pretty much in it all the time. I got
three or four things going on. Last night at midnight
I was I do two radio shows. You know, you
gotta like you prepared for this. There's research that goes on.
It takes it takes time. I did a I do
a two hour live radio show every Friday night on
a station called wd E T, the NPR station in Detroit.

(02:27:37):
And it's work. You know, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (02:27:39):
So if someone is not in Detroit, how can they
hear it?

Speaker 2 (02:27:43):
A streams on wd et dot org.

Speaker 1 (02:27:45):
And is it available after you do it?

Speaker 2 (02:27:47):
Yeah, for a couple of weeks and then I do
them every f so what is the show. It's pretty
free for him. I play everything from Albert Eiler to
you know her Hermits.

Speaker 1 (02:28:03):
What's your favorite Herman's Hermits song?

Speaker 2 (02:28:05):
I like, can't you Hear My Heartbeat? It's pretty great. Uh,
I just I was just watching him the other night.
He was at some so on some kind of cruise.
He's a badass.

Speaker 1 (02:28:16):
Oh yeah, he knows what he's doing and he's got
a sense that you were about himself. Somewhat it works.

Speaker 2 (02:28:21):
He's a good guy. Yeah, I really I thought he
was quite good. He's hitting all the notes and yeah,
can't you hear my heartbeat? Listen to people? Pretty great song.

Speaker 1 (02:28:30):
Phenomenal, Yeah, phenomenal. I was going to say, you know
when first it was Missus Brown, but really it's listened
to people. Just the sound of that record came out
in the winter. Just to go back a step, the
best Stones record is other than the ones you made.
You're taking those off the board?

Speaker 2 (02:28:51):
Well late come around more to Between the Buttons. I
think Between the button's pretty great. But I you know,
you got a rank. I don't know that anyone's made
a better record than Beggars Banquet. Or let it bleed.
You know, I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (02:29:06):
People talk about sticky fingers. I don't want to say
anything negative about sticky fingers, but let it bleed unbelievable
and at dis laid date. I don't want to sound
like a hipster, but Eggs on Main Street is really
really something.

Speaker 2 (02:29:18):
It's pretty cool. I'll go through different phases with it.
And it's cool because I've been able to listen to
it with them, you know, and I've played records. Keith
once gave me a verbal tour through Exile and Okay
Street just.

Speaker 1 (02:29:31):
To hang in there. Just want to see his face
what he say about that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:36):
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (02:29:38):
That is such an eerie record. I think one of
the other problems is, you know, they sent me these
really great genial X speakers.

Speaker 2 (02:29:48):
No one would have speakers like this for your computer.

Speaker 1 (02:29:50):
I think it's retail, like sixteen hundred dollars or something.
So those are really good. And if you're listening in
high res, you know whatever, that's great. But I fired
up the big rig the other day, which is not
far away. They sound different when you play these records.
They take up the whole room. The experience is different

(02:30:12):
from listening on headphones or earbuds.

Speaker 2 (02:30:14):
Oh yeah, and listening to vinyl too. It's a great
In the last few years, we cracked the code on
pressing good vinyl.

Speaker 1 (02:30:24):
Just just just with this deep Okay. If a record
is cut digitally, yeah, does it make any sense to
press it on vinyl. I'm talking about I don't an
audio level forget.

Speaker 2 (02:30:38):
Yeah, yes, yeah, uh it does. It's not gonna sound
the same as it does coming from analog tape.

Speaker 1 (02:30:45):
Well, it's gonna you know, as you talk to the experts,
you say, well, vinyl has a sound.

Speaker 2 (02:30:50):
Vinyl has a sound. By the way, it's the sound
of it. You could call it distortion. I'm gonna yeah,
it's just a distortion. Is great, right, Jimmy Hendrix, Right, great,
you said MC five great use of distortion. So the
distortion is not a bad thing, But as far as
it being an accurate reflection of what the thing sounds like, no,

(02:31:11):
But I love vinyl and there are ways to make
great vinyl. You know, I grew up producing vinyl records.
That's where I started, right, So when I first started
a Blue Note it's our seventy fifth anniversary picked one
hundred records to remaster and get out on vinyl, which
I thought would be wildly appreciated. I was wildly criticized

(02:31:34):
because they didn't sound great to audio files. I'm not
really an audio file.

Speaker 1 (02:31:40):
Wait, wait, just break it down a little bit. But
forget the audio fields, which is a world done to itself.
Did they prefer the original pressings?

Speaker 2 (02:31:50):
I don't know. I just know we got a lot
of criticism over it. And then what happened was we
had been licensing the masters out to a company called
Music Matters who were doing audio file vinyl, and so
I started listening to those and I'm like, Wow, in
the world do they make this happen? And I finally
met the guy, a guy named Joe Hurley masters with

(02:32:12):
Kevin Gray, and I was just in awe of him.
I really couldn't figure out what he was doing. But
I said, instead of licensing from why don't you come
to work with us and and we'll do audio file ersion.
So we started doing that. It's called the Tone Poet series.
It's been immensely popular, and Joe knows how to press vinyl,

(02:32:38):
and the audio file is happy. They're thrilled. Yeah, I
haven't seen a.

Speaker 1 (02:32:41):
Bad word so do you have any idea with the
secret sauces?

Speaker 2 (02:32:45):
It's no one thing. But I can tell you one
thing he taught me I never considered I don't think
anyone considered this before. He believes that individual presses have
a sound, so it could be by the same manufacturer.
And if you apply it to like musical instruments, every
fender strat sounds different. It's an individual piece of wood. Man,

(02:33:07):
two pieces of wood, They're all going to have a
different characteristic, even if you put the same pickups. And
by the way, if human beings winding the pickups, each
pickup's going to sound a little different too. So why
wouldn't a press. And he's found a press that he
thinks is the most conducive in the world too. Is
that something you can reveal RTI in Oh huh. And

(02:33:33):
they do an incredible job of plating two plating You
can change everything that Have you ever been to a
pressing plan? You see the plating process. It's alchemy, man,
it's mind blowing. You take this lacquer that's that you've
carved on a lathe, you spray it perfectly with the silver,
you dip it overnight in a bath of liquid nickel.

(02:33:56):
That's got to be a two hundred eight degrees, not
two hundred and nine, that two hundred and seven, and
the nickel gravitates to the to the silver plated lacquer
and forms a perfect mirror image, and that becomes you know,
your mother of the stamper. It's alchemy, it's incredible and

(02:34:17):
and there's so many variables in that. So every step
of the way, you got to have someone who's willing
to make sure that the nickel bath is two hundred
and eight degrees exactly and it stays there. You have
to have a plant that's willing to throw out a
batch of records if they don't sound right and just
eat the cost. That's that's one of the main differences
between a great plant who's going to be a hack

(02:34:40):
and just make you pay for any garbage, or who's
going to have quality control. RTI is one of the
best plants on the face of the earth.

Speaker 1 (02:34:55):
So on these records, catalog records, Yeah, how much vinyl
do you press?

Speaker 2 (02:35:01):
We can do twenty thousand of them.

Speaker 1 (02:35:04):
And you know there's much more capacity than there used
to be. Is your relationship and volumes such that you
can get all the stuff pressed in time.

Speaker 2 (02:35:15):
The delay times are coming down, and you build relationships
with plants where that they'll help you. Artier has been
real good to us. A few other plants have been
good to us. But we do all the all the
all the all the tone poet stuff. It's mastered by
Kevin Gray at his place and manufactured at Artier.

Speaker 1 (02:35:39):
Okay, do you have a great stereo at.

Speaker 2 (02:35:41):
Home, not like Joe Harley, who's got you know, like
the Wilsons whatever table? Yeah, but okay, you don't have
a boom box either. I go to your house. Yeah,
you're going to play me two records to say, the
sound on these is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (02:35:58):
Yeah, other than Blue Note, what would you play?

Speaker 2 (02:36:03):
You remember everyone used to play The Night Fly by
Donald Fagan that that's still a pretty great sound record. Uh. Well,
I don't really show off the things. But for my
own reference, uh, I play Born and Raised, the John
Mayer record. I play something I know you know I'll play.

(02:36:26):
I'm proud of that record. Born and Raised. John Mayer
is a bad motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (02:36:29):
Okay, just to stay on John Mayer. You made one
record with him, I made three records. Okay, what was
was that the first born and.

Speaker 2 (02:36:37):
Raised, Born and raised the first one. Then we did
Paradise Valley and we did Sad Rock during COVID.

Speaker 1 (02:36:44):
So who have you not produced that you have a
hankrey for it? Mean you've been to the mountaintop with
the Stones. But if I said, forget about Blue note
your schedule, we're dreaming here, you know, who would you want?

Speaker 2 (02:36:57):
Who?

Speaker 1 (02:36:57):
I think my point is clear, who would you want
to work with?

Speaker 2 (02:37:01):
Well, I've pretty much been to my bucket list of
living people. You know. I wish Muddy Waters to come back.
I wish John Lennon would come back, but they're not
coming back. I like people who are really expressive. I
played live with Miley Cyrus. I thought she was awesome.
I'd make a record with her in a minute. Yeah,

(02:37:23):
that's something I think it's great.

Speaker 1 (02:37:24):
Let's just assume you make a record with Miley Cris.
She brings her talent. Is your goal to get that talent?
Or do you say I have a vision where I
can take my Lee Cris.

Speaker 2 (02:37:35):
I don't do that to anybody. I wouldn't do that
to a new artist that no one's ever heard of.
That's not my style of producing. My style producing very specific.
I try to sit with an artist and figure out
what they're hearing in their head, and I try to
help them get there.

Speaker 1 (02:37:50):
Just how would you uncover what they're hearing in their head?

Speaker 2 (02:37:55):
You talk, you play records, What do you think of
this sound like? You like the way this record sounds?
You just spend time and talk about things. I worked
with Waylon Jennings, and I know what his records sound like.
But what do you want to do? He said he

(02:38:17):
wanted he liked Mercy Bob Dylan record Daniel Daniel, and
it's it's Bob with some great songs, singing beautifully and
uh and the atmospheric things that Daniel specializes in. All right,
I get that, all right? So we make of Waylon

(02:38:39):
Jennings record with with atmosphere and and we did that.
It's a pretty cool record, and he was thrilled with it.
And if I have to be the one to provide
the vibe and the vision, I don't do the record.
I'm not interested that. I like working with artists who
have vision and an idea, and I like helping them

(02:39:00):
realize that there's no right or wrong way to make
a record. I don't judge any producers. Man, You know
some people are a tour producers. You know. They they
can play all the instruments, they lay down a guide vocals,
and then you come in. They have you imitate that
vocal and they have hits doing that. That's a that's
a perfectly legitimate means of doing business. If that, If

(02:39:23):
you can do that, it's just not it's not my
strong suit. My strong suit is working with with great
artists and helping them. They'll go k interesting they want.

Speaker 1 (02:39:37):
You know, back when the business was more comprehensible, there
were legendary producers, and then there were engineers. Then a
lot of the engineers became producers. Well, there are a
lot of things the old traditional producers might do that
an engineer doesn't.

Speaker 2 (02:39:54):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:39:54):
First it might be well we need a bridge here
or something like that. To what degree might you rear
change or change the song in what degree? Why you
actually participate, say well, let me play this for you,
not writing the whole song, but let me play you
this part, or why don't we change this line instead
of this?

Speaker 2 (02:40:11):
How about this? Will you do that? Sure? Yeah, I
won't write it for them without invitation. I think that's
a bit presumptuous, and it's become suspect. It looks like
a publishing grab. And I told the Stones when we
first started, I said, I'm going to suggest things that
have to do with songwriting. And I don't want you

(02:40:32):
to think that I'm it's a money grab. It's because
I think it'll make a better record. So consider me
an editor, not a co writer, even if I do
things that might be considered co writing. And yeah, I
think it was a co writer on Love Shack, really,
you know, but I said the same thing to be

(02:40:53):
fifty two said. They gave me like this really long,
twelve minute thing. They said, see if you can it's
nothing the hook, There was no chorus, but all the
parts were in there, and I went through and cut
it up and made it a three and a half
minute song. And that was just part of producing. I
didn't think it. You know, I'd have a better car today. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (02:41:17):
Okay, you have interests in a lot of records that
have sold records, so they're in the blacks something. Usually producers,
they're paid from record one. What are you finding that
you're accounted to accurately?

Speaker 2 (02:41:34):
Yeah, it seems about right. You know, I've worked. I've
been part of the Universal Music Group for fifteen years.
I've never ever encountered a situation where someone was deliberately
trying to steal an artists money. It's mythology I've never

(02:41:57):
once had. I've only had a positive experience of Blue Note.
Lucian Grange has never said to me, don you need
to do this or do that. He's always supported stuff.
You're doing a great job with Blue Note. You keep
doing it and call me if you need help. You
know that all the stuff that I used to fear

(02:42:19):
about record companies. I used to hate record company. I thought,
but the record company was the enemy until I started
working there, and then I thought, wait a minute, the enemy.
This is mostly kids in their twenties who love music
and are willing to stay here till eleven o'clock at night.
Maybe they haven't even met the artists, but they love
the music so much they're willing to, you know, to

(02:42:42):
fall on the sword to get this music heard. That's
what a record company actually is. It's just the young
people who are working there. That's the majority of what
you encounter. So I've really had to change my thinking
about it. Up until that point, I thought they're the
people who come to the session give you terrible notes
that ruin the record, and if it doesn't ruin the

(02:43:04):
record and you have a hit, they steal your money.
That's that was what I thought a record company was,
and I really had to re examine that.

Speaker 1 (02:43:12):
Would you sell your rights?

Speaker 2 (02:43:17):
Yeah? I think so. Yeah. I don't have any sentimental
attachment to it.

Speaker 1 (02:43:21):
I mean at this point, I must believe you've gotten offers. Yeah,
I've had offers, So what would it take?

Speaker 2 (02:43:26):
Just the right number? Uh? Yeah, I mean I'm not
opposed to it at all. A feel I feel a
little bit weird. As a producer, your deals are sometimes

(02:43:50):
with the artists directly, So like if I were to
do a deal like that for what the Rolling Stones catalog,
then they're going to have some people who are going
to come in and audit all the time and not
be as genial as I am about it. And I
don't know that I love this guy, So I'm grateful
to them or what they did. I'm not sure I

(02:44:11):
would want to. Well, that's what happened with Hall and Oates.

Speaker 1 (02:44:16):
And.

Speaker 2 (02:44:17):
I get that and I understand how he felt. So
that's really been my hesitation. You know, I'm going to
bring some people going to come in and audit Bonnie.
I never audited Bonnie right ever? Man, never is your
deal with her? Yeah? Yeah? Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:44:34):
Final question, Gregory Porter?

Speaker 2 (02:44:36):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (02:44:38):
First time I heard him, saw it, you know, face
to face. I didn't know anything about him other than
his name.

Speaker 2 (02:44:45):
Mind blowing? Yeah. Is there any way I thought you
had to think of capital right time? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (02:44:52):
I thought this guy was on the verge of superstardom.
Is there any way or what is holding back?

Speaker 2 (02:44:59):
Or where are the stars? Not a line? Why is
this guy not a household name in the United States?
Because he had huge success in He sold a million records.
The first album that came out in Blue Note sold
a million.

Speaker 1 (02:45:12):
Records, So how many domestic how many for him.

Speaker 2 (02:45:15):
Forty thousand domestic rest forms? So he concentrated on where
that audience was, and he spends most of his time.
He lives in Bakersfield. I know he spends most of
his time overseas. And if he really decided to focus
a grass roots campaign over a long period of time

(02:45:37):
on this country, I think you would be better now.
But he's got you know, like four or five Grammys,
and he can sell out the well turned theater. I
just went to see mc Carnegie Hall this year. Sold
that out. He does a Valentine's Day show there every year.
I think he's pretty successful.

Speaker 1 (02:45:59):
Okay, then I'll add one more question once again, records.
You haven't worked with a couple of records that these
should have been giant hits and they fell through the cracks.

Speaker 2 (02:46:17):
Some of I love Buddy Miller's records. Yeah, Buddy should
have more recognition. Buddy and Julie his wife, great lyricists. Man.
You know, they're great songwriters and they're both incredibly soulful
singers and musicians. Play a lot with Buddy. I've done
a lot of kicks them. I play with them every

(02:46:39):
year at the Americana Awards. I've done it, Yeah, fifteen
sixteen years, I've gone and been in the house band.
Mainly is I want to play with Buddy, and that's
that's one guy deserving a wider recognition.

Speaker 1 (02:46:57):
Okay, keep adding more questions your every day life. Are
people looking to get we put the right connotation here,
not so much to get something from you, but are
they looking for something, whether it be free work or whatever. Yeah,
are you having to fend that often do you do
that yourself? You don't have somebody else, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:47:21):
I remember, like it was yesterday, being in the position
of needing someone to help me, right, I remember taking
that before, Yeah, I remember taking that was and I
was thing with the two songs to a public image
show and Corner and John Lyden with it. Here's what
we're doing. I think you'll dig it. It breaks my

(02:47:44):
heart thinking of the desperation it takes to do that,
to subject a guide to that, you know. So my
heart breaks for people who've chosen a career like this.
And I don't know why I've been so lucky, you know.
And I know that in La, at any given moment

(02:48:11):
in La, there's someone within one square mile of you
who's great, who hasn't gotten the breaks for whatever reason.
So I try to be as attentive as I can.
I really sympathize with people in the position I have,
and to present this thing. It's not a comfortable thing

(02:48:31):
to do. And I hate saying no. That's that's the
only I love the job. Man. Everybody has been great
to me. I really enjoy doing it. I hate saying
no to people. I've had to drop artists. A couple
of times I haven't been able to do it with
a crying and it's just.

Speaker 1 (02:48:52):
You drop them for purely economical reasons.

Speaker 2 (02:48:56):
Uh, well it it's not purely. It manifests itself in economically.
I mean.

Speaker 1 (02:49:08):
What people also don't realize about this business is people
don't want to work with assholes. So a lot of
people don't know because they don't actually interact with these people. Hey,
I don't care how talent you are, I just.

Speaker 2 (02:49:18):
Don't want to work with you. Whether it's stubborn or whatever.
They hard to work with. I'm also luly that too,
because I've been warned off of so many people about
producing them. It's going to be a nightmare for you.
And it was never a nightmare.

Speaker 1 (02:49:33):
I just had to have people said, oh, you know,
I just mentioned one Ricky Lee Jones. Everybody said, oh
yeah to her, she was the greatest. It was like,
you know, we went to school together. So you try
to tell yourself, but usually most of these people, it's
not a one on one thing. Anyway, I was in
the studio, I was the assistant engineer or something like that.

Speaker 2 (02:49:56):
It's if you treat people with respect, they usually return
the favor. You know, you know, it's just simple basic stuff.
Treat musicians the way you want to be treated in
the like. One of the things is I was explaining

(02:50:17):
to there was this kid who came with Ron Carter
to the studio and I let him produce the overdub,
sit there and talk to him on the talkback, just
to get some experience doing it and understand what was involved.
And I kept saying, keep your finger on the talkback button. Man,
don't make the guy think he's here alone, that you're

(02:50:38):
not listening to. Just be up. Just keep your finger
on the button all the time and let him know
what's going on all the time. That's just a common
courtesy because I've been on the other side of it.
I've been produced, I've been a session musician. You play
something you think is great, and then there's silence for
twenty seconds and you're just sitting there and limbo, like

(02:51:02):
what And then they come back and say, let's try
another one. Well those are all with that one. Give
me some direction here. That felt pretty good to me.
You sure you were paying attention, and you can you
can lose people really easily. Uh, but yet you got

(02:51:23):
to be empathetic and pay attention, and if you do that,
they'll reward you.

Speaker 1 (02:51:36):
Well, you've certainly been empathetic and kept everybody's attention this afternoon.
Don I want to thank you for taking this time
with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:51:43):
It's a pleasure, man, It's really good to talk to you.
I think you're a great interviewer. We've we've talked about
this before. I've actually, you know, I do a lot
of interview viewing of other people, and I've studied your technique.
You're you're, you're, you're really good.

Speaker 1 (02:52:00):
Well, two things I remember vividly doing that gig grammy
time sixteen months ago, and you came up to me
and he goes, I see what you're doing. That meant
so much, right, I told my psychiatrist said, I gotta
tell you this story now. Oh absolutely. I mean, first
and foremost, being a writer is I don't want to

(02:52:24):
say it's a lonely jump. First of all, I don't
want don't put me in the camp of people who
are normally right. I'm hearing from people all day long,
but it's not the same as interacting, and most people
are giving the audience what they want.

Speaker 2 (02:52:41):
There's way if you.

Speaker 1 (02:52:42):
Go out, you find forget the point. You don't always
do it great yourself. I mean, if I do something
that's eleven, I know. Can I do something that's eleven
every day? No fucking way. But you know when you
reach it. So when someone you know, this is back point,
I mean talking more. I remember I was in a
really bad spot thirty years ago. That's an understatement, really

(02:53:06):
bad spot. First, since you mentioned the psychiatrist says, well,
what's a fallback position? They go, there is no fallback position.
This is it is.

Speaker 2 (02:53:17):
Nothing. Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:53:19):
The other thing is, well, what are you doing you
know to sell this that I said. Listen, Whenever I
tried to advance my career never works because the people.

Speaker 2 (02:53:27):
Don't get it.

Speaker 1 (02:53:29):
It's like someone says, come speak at my conference for
you know, Yeah, you pay me, I'll go. Is it'll
be good for you, good for me? If I stay
home and write something phenomenal, that will be good for
me and all the benefits have come from that. So
you're a smart guy, very smart and I'm not saying

(02:53:49):
that to stroke you. So you got it because it's
like I don't come with a list of questions. It's like,
where are you going? To go and where are you
gonna go?

Speaker 2 (02:54:01):
By? Save Doug?

Speaker 1 (02:54:02):
And I know shit, I want to cover. I got
a circle in my brain. I'm coming back because you know,
some of these people are friends of mine.

Speaker 2 (02:54:10):
But two things.

Speaker 1 (02:54:12):
We've had conversation only for one reason. I was talking
to Peter Wolf. Peter Wolf, fascinating character, because gin me,
your guys, what the fuck was going on with you
that they done away wanted you?

Speaker 2 (02:54:28):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (02:54:29):
Some people, you know, you just got to take one
look at him. That's not Peter Wolf. Not that he's
an unattractive guy, okay, and your talk. I couldn't figure
it out for a really long time. Is he's actually
empathetic and interested, which almost I was at a party
last night. I got somebody's life story. You know how

(02:54:50):
much they asked me about me? Zero didn't even occur
to them. Okay, not that I have to tell my story,
but okay, I got your story. It's not like I'm
dying to talk to you again. So those moments are
few and far between when somebody gets it, and that's
what you live for. There aren't enough of those moments.

(02:55:11):
I think maybe in conventional work, you get paid, you
get a big payday. That's good, but in creative work,
you're waiting.

Speaker 2 (02:55:17):
For that moment.

Speaker 1 (02:55:19):
The other thing that I loved that you said was
talked about getting the job and the copy repair. Everybody
who's made it big time, they were all on the verge.
You're giving up at some point. It's just really desperate.
So in any event, circled back to the Peter Wolf thing.
At the end, he's opening up you.

Speaker 2 (02:55:37):
He wrote a.

Speaker 1 (02:55:38):
Book and got a lot of press. It's a fucking
book business, so we antiquate it, and they didn't press
enough copies, so for like six weeks there are no
books in the story. He's doing press and I'm talking
to him about it. I didn't think twice I was
gonna cut it off. All the emails and oh when
you were talking to him about that. So when we
started off, I mean, even like on these you know,

(02:56:00):
i'd also think these philosophical points, like you're talking about
the altruism, et cetera. I mean, there's right and left,
red and blue. But if you're not invested. Most people
are invested to the point where they can't stand back
and see what it's really going on here, And you know,

(02:56:21):
to get into that those are the topics that are interesting,
whereas most people are how much money you make in
where we going to dinner? And that's a great thing
about music because it transcends that. What I always say is,
you know, you could put a five year old in
front of the TV watch a program. Did you like
it to dinner?

Speaker 2 (02:56:39):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:56:40):
It wasn't believable, the acting was bad. You put somebody
listen to record about it? As most they can say
is had a good beat and I could dance to it.
I love it right, But it has that power.

Speaker 2 (02:56:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's the greatest, man, It's absolutely essential.

Speaker 1 (02:56:56):
Do you have a go to track like when you're
in a bad mood or something?

Speaker 2 (02:56:59):
I do. It's actually a Blue Note album. I've been
going to it since it came out in sixty six.
I think I bought it like sixty eight sixty nine
Speak No Evil by Way in Shorter, which I think
is my favorite record in the catalog side too. When
I was nineteen, man, I was, I was, I dropped

(02:57:20):
out of school, movedan I wanted to be in a
band like the Stooges or the MC five. Only gig
I could get was playing at a bowling alley in Ipsilanti, Michigan,
with the band that was doing Carpenter's covers and things.
I just felt like all my plans had gotten derailed.
I get pretty lost. When I was feeling lost, I

(02:57:43):
go back and I put on this album side to
Speak No Evil, and I could relate to the players
as individuals. Elvin Jones playing drums, Detroit guy, right, so
I appreciated his energy. He's just a little too exuberant,
and I thought, yeah, all right, I get that. Herbie Hancock,
even in his twenties, probably knew more about harmony than

(02:58:06):
any anybody around, you know. And I listen to what
he's playing and think, all right, be smart. I'm a
smart guy. I can relate to Herbie. But it was
really Wayne. I'd hear a saxophone and didn't sound like saxophone. Didn't.
I didn't hear reads or keys or technique or anything.
I heard conversation. He was like he was speaking to me.
And I imagine walking down Main Street in ann Arbor

(02:58:29):
with Wayne Short and he's saying, like watch out for
that guy, Like let's cross the street here and just
keep walking. Don't look this cat and eye and like
he was giving me directions. I had a duck and
dive in life, and somehow all of that combined with
this beautiful soul touch in music. By the time I

(02:58:50):
get to the end of the side, I remembered who
I was, who who I set out to be, and
I knew how to get back on track, at least
till the next time I got derailed right, and that
was that was powerful, you know, And by the way,
it still works. Man.

Speaker 1 (02:59:11):
Oh yeah, if I.

Speaker 2 (02:59:11):
Have a rough day, I'll put on that record. By
the time I get from Hollywood to Santa Monica, I'm good.
And thankfully, you know, we got to sign Wayne. We
re signed him the Blue Note first year I was
there and I made a couple of records, but him,
I got to know him, beautiful guy. I got to

(02:59:32):
tell him that.

Speaker 1 (02:59:33):
And really, well, it sounds like you got to tell
the number of your heroes, got to tell Brian Wilson.
Did you ever tell the Stones you were a fan? Sure?

Speaker 2 (02:59:42):
Yeah, they knew. I think fans make the best producers.
I would find that reassuring.

Speaker 1 (02:59:47):
Are you trying to create a bond that that sort
of separates you?

Speaker 2 (02:59:52):
I think that if you try to make the record
that you would buy. That's that's that's that's good producing.
You just got to assume that other people share your taste.

Speaker 1 (03:00:06):
Okay, but you're a very soulful guy who is warm.
Is it important to make the musicians of the room
feel that they're connecting with you.

Speaker 2 (03:00:16):
It's important to make them feel comfortable. They don't. I
don't care whether they feel that they're connected. They're not
making a record for me, they but I want them
to feel is safe enough that if they take a
chance on something and it fails and they fall off
the cliff musically, that it's okay, get no, mad man,

(03:00:37):
We'll do another take, you know, like but to feel
comfortable to take the chance, so you don't just get
you know, the biggest enemy making a record is good
making a good record. There's no point in making a
good record. Make it fucking great or don't make it.
You know. Sometimes people have to always, man, you got

(03:01:04):
to go the extra mile, put that little bit of
extra something in there. And sometimes it takes a while
to draw that out. And people have to be comfortable
and feel that they're not going to be judged or
look foolish. Shift if they try something and it doesn't work,
So that's what I care about.

Speaker 1 (03:01:21):
Well, do you have a technique to push them to
get into grate?

Speaker 2 (03:01:24):
You know, it's really weird. I've been told that this happens,
but it's nothing I do deliberately. I don't know what
I do, but something puts people at ease. I'm aware
of the phenomena, but I don't know. I don't know
why it happens. There's nothing deliberate.

Speaker 1 (03:01:42):
It's like Mick.

Speaker 2 (03:01:43):
I remember telling him he's got something in his voice.
He's audiogenic. I don't know what that word means. Well,
you know what photogenic is Claudia Schiffer on an ad
and she jumps out, catches your eye because she just
got this quality. And that's why she's a popular model,
because it draws your attention to the genes they're trying

(03:02:04):
to sell. That's photogenic. Audiogenic means your voice leaps out
of the speakers. And some people just have this thing.
It's a gift. It's not something you can't eq it in.
It's got something to do with the EQ curve of
the voice, but it's got to do also with some
invisible kind of magical charisma. Some people just have it.

(03:02:26):
Mick Jagger. Listen, you mentioned Tumblin Dice earlier in the discussion.
Listen how low his vocal is. No one in the
right minds would ever put out a record with the
vocal mix that low. But it doesn't matter because he
leaps out of the speakers. Garth Brooks leaps out of
the speakers. I was a stun man when I work with him.
He left out of the speakers so far as like

(03:02:49):
he was standing behind me man. And that's why I knew.
I was understood why he was the most successful artists
in the world at that time, because he had this
incredible gift of audio charisma. Aretha Franklin and Bonnie's Got It.

Speaker 1 (03:03:09):
Yeah, those are two good examples. But you're working with
Mick is if they are one hundred percent of the timer.
You have to get him in the zone.

Speaker 2 (03:03:18):
He warms up into the character and you can see
the physical transformation and it's just it's it's so awesome,
especially if you're a fan. Right, so comes in, he's
got a sweater and a dress shirt, you know, and
he stands there and he's singing It's Mick Jagger, but
he's he's not the guy and you gotta go four

(03:03:38):
or five takes in and then sweater comes off, the
dress shirt comes off. Now he's in a T shirt
and the lips start, they transform. He becomes the character.
And then he'll give you two or three passes of
it where he's the thing, and then he knows he's
done it. He knows when he's there and when he's not. Hey,

(03:04:09):
he's just phenomenal, man, he's just so's you know, he's
the greatest front man ever, right, greatest front man of
the banned.

Speaker 1 (03:04:19):
Well, they just to stay on the stones for a minute,
especially at glaston very recently with all the controversies with
villains and the kneecap. The stones were dangerous back in
their era. And then of course in the sixty nine
to seventy two era, I mean there were no cell

(03:04:39):
phone cameras. They were in the south of France. There's
been some footage town. It was almost as fucked up
as they said it was okay, whereas now it's fifty
years later. I mean, Joe Walls had a great line
about this because I'm too old to die young, and
it's like, you know, it's not their fault at all,
and it's got nothing to eat.

Speaker 2 (03:05:00):
Just weird.

Speaker 1 (03:05:02):
I mean, it's really weird if something. This is why
I got to give Keith Richards much credit. He's not
trying to look young. It's like when these guys get
plastic surgery and they look forty years younger than the
audience it's coming to see them. But as they say,
it's not the Stones, I guess it's the same thing
in the show. There's always a moment where it locks

(03:05:22):
on and you go, that is it.

Speaker 2 (03:05:25):
They're fucking great man. I've seen him. I've seen him
as a I started the first time I went to
see him as in sixty four, they played for two
hundred people at Olympia Stadium, which is an arena in Detroit,
two hundred people in an eighteen thousand seat places. Before
they were on that Cellivant show, I saw him three
or four times with Brian Jones, so I'm gonna gimme

(03:05:48):
shelter tour. I've seen him, you know, throughout, and then
once I started working with him, I saw him another
fifty times, and I'm always blown away. I've never seen
a shitty Stone show.

Speaker 1 (03:06:01):
Okay, did you go to the show with Fonda? Okay,
they were great but it's the stones in a room
with under two thousand people. Song ends all the rabble rousing.
You know, you think it's the fucking stones. They don't
do a lot of pattern between the numbers anyway. It

(03:06:22):
was just it was disrespectful. But I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 (03:06:26):
It was a weird It was an industry audience, I
think you could call it, and that's a that's a
tough audience to play for. I thought they were great.
I saw them at the Echoplex too, and I didn't
see that show. That was just the most surreal thing.
To be in a bar with the rolling stones.

Speaker 1 (03:06:45):
Well, the great thing about them is they are a
bar band.

Speaker 2 (03:06:49):
Well they can be the roots.

Speaker 1 (03:06:53):
We go into the production era of let it bleed whatever,
But at the core, it's guys who listened to a
lot of blues records and want it to be and
that's out is supposed to someone who, you know, other
than satanic majesties, maybe supposed to someone who blew with
the wind. It's pure to what it is and very
few things are that long.

Speaker 2 (03:07:13):
That's why I love the Blue and Lonesome record, because
I think that was utterly not only was it made
utterly without self consciousness or thinking they've adjust themselves. And
because it was all in one room and the drum
sound was coming primarily from mixed vocal mic, there was

(03:07:33):
no overdubbing, no punching, no fixing, nothing. That's just listen
out what a great band they are.

Speaker 1 (03:07:41):
The problem is, you'll remember in the seventies, you know,
bands put out live albums to get out of their contracts,
and they change the contracts, doesn't count as an album.

Speaker 2 (03:07:50):
Et cetera. Live music was so weird.

Speaker 1 (03:07:53):
I remember it was in a bar in Aspen, Colorado
in nineteen seventy They taped the concert off the radio
and they had it.

Speaker 2 (03:08:00):
You could listen to it.

Speaker 1 (03:08:00):
Then there was a King Biscuit flower arm. This ship
was so rare. If the Stones had got nothing to
do with the record. But if the Stones are put
low down on whatever the hell the name of the
track is that if they put it out in nineteen
seventy three, it would have been like everybody would have
known it.

Speaker 2 (03:08:17):
Times changed, yeah, times changed. But what I love is
that they you know, Keith Richard's man, he's just he's
such a great soulful musician. You know, he's one hundred
percent for real. And I've gone to see them live
and I've seen him like walk past on the runway there.

(03:08:42):
He's like transfixed. Man, he's in a trance, and I've
had eye contact with him, and but he's he's somewhere else.
He's so deep into what he's playing. And he said,
night after night after night, he goes there every night.
He doesn't he changes his position the guitar. So if
it's a g chord, you'll play it down here one night,

(03:09:03):
you'll play it up here another night. And that leads
to a whole other thing. He's he's improvising in a
very narrow framework. There's not a whole lot of room
for it. But nothing's ever on autopilot with him. He's
for real and he's so sold.

Speaker 1 (03:09:25):
Well, you know, I don't know whether you went to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then it was the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whatever they called it,
with everybody's guitars and you saw his less Paul with
four strings. That's when it all came out. And then
I remember being on stage talking to his guitar deck.
I said, you know what the deal was, We let

(03:09:46):
it do we go on the road, we have to
have it. It's like the came But you know, it's
the same thing with Eddie van Halen's Frankenstein guitar, because
if it was my guitar, I wouldn't take it out
of my bedroom. I'd be afraid that it fall apart.
But we all grew.

Speaker 2 (03:10:02):
Up in there. The factor.

Speaker 1 (03:10:02):
You know you only gonna play on four strings.

Speaker 2 (03:10:05):
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 1 (03:10:07):
What do you think of the Mick Taylor era?

Speaker 2 (03:10:09):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (03:10:12):
I can talk because I didn't work with him. Although
Ronnie Wood, you know, bass player with Jeff Beck, the
ship that he did with Rod Stewart unbelievable. Okay, the
only problem I have with Ronnie Wood is his sound
is somewhat similar to Keith's, whereas Mick Taylor was came
from a completely different place.

Speaker 2 (03:10:34):
Well, Ronnie is one of these guys man. You could
put anything in his hands. One time I ordered there's
like an oil can dulcimer. There's like someone put a neck,
a dulcimer neck on an oil can and strung it
up and they brought it to the studio for me. Right,

(03:10:55):
I sound like a jerk. Playing It just gonna take
some time. And to Ronnie, he just made something spectacular
happen almost instantly on this thing, and just found a
way to be expressive. He's a super talented guy. And

(03:11:18):
because he's got to share responsibilities with Keith, he's accepted
somewhat of a shadow role in the Rolling Stones. But
he's world class. I just remember another thing. There was this.

Speaker 1 (03:11:33):
Now there are tons of stadium shows. There weren't shows
for a couple of decades. People don't know in the
seventies all these stadium shows. I've already living in la
and it was Fleetwood Mac with Stevie and Lindsay Loggins
in the scene in the headline were the faces, okay.
And that was just when rumors were seventy five, just

(03:11:56):
when rumors were coming out that he was going to
be the Stones guitarist. Well now it's fifty years later,
he's been the Stones guitarist. You know, Brian Jone isn't
even making a decade. He's like the new guy. It's
a strange thing.

Speaker 2 (03:12:11):
Strangely, but when you live the phenomenon you're talking about,
it's tougher for him. On songs that Mick Taylor originally played.
He's better on the songs where he initiated the part,
like Beast of Burden. Those are the guitar weaving that

(03:12:31):
goes on. It's a different relationship Keith and Ronnie. You
have a different relationship than Keith and Brian Head. I'm
talking about musically, and they do this guitar weaving thing
for which you do have to be like minded. You
can't be one hundred and eighty right.

Speaker 1 (03:12:46):
It's like when Mick Taylor or whatever it was supposed
to be the fifty at the anniversary too, I think
it was the fifty first, and he would sit in
for a couple of songs. Yeah, whatever he was playing
was nothing like what they were playing.

Speaker 2 (03:12:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well and it was great. You know, yeah,
they've been at it for a while. Well.

Speaker 1 (03:13:03):
The only other thing we know is for years we've
been hearing it. I mean, you and me go under
different circumstances here.

Speaker 2 (03:13:11):
You know, you gotta go. It could be the last time.

Speaker 1 (03:13:14):
Now we're getting to the point where, fuck, everybody's dying.
You don't know, it could be the last time.

Speaker 2 (03:13:20):
I remember that we cut one song right over here
in Hollywood. It's now called East West we're in studio too,
and it was meant to be the last song on
for Just a Babylon Well, how can I stop? It
was one of Keith's songs and we were all set
up in a circle and there were other people playing.

(03:13:40):
Jim Keltner was there with Charlie and Wayne Shorter is
playing on it. Blondie Chaplin was playing the grand piano.
Keith was singing live, the backgrounds were live. I was
playing a Wurlitzer piano and at the end of the song, Charlie,

(03:14:01):
who had a car waiting in the alley, It's like
five in the morning. He had a flight back to
London that day. Charlie hits this flourish on the symbols.
When the song was done, then it goes into the
whole other thing. It's like Wayne's playing soprano sacks. It
sounds like it's Coltrane, sounds like Love Supreme, kind of right,
this whole other thing. And as we were doing it,

(03:14:22):
I started crying because I thought, Oh my god, this
is this is the last song the Stones are ever
gonna cut. This is their coda. What a spectacular way
to take it out. It's the last song. I'm Bridges
to Babylon. Check it out and check out the end.
Ding and Charlie. We finished, Charlie got in the car
drove off. I thought, wow, I was there for the
last session of the Stones.

Speaker 1 (03:14:45):
Well, since you're talking the Bridges to Babylon, my favorite
song on that track is not unknown, not that it
was a huge hit, sane of.

Speaker 2 (03:14:54):
Me, Oh, you never mixed saying to me, yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:14:57):
Yeah, it's just got to feel that it's just great.

Speaker 2 (03:15:00):
Yeah, it's a cool track. Yeah, yeah, they're good moments.

Speaker 1 (03:15:04):
There are great.

Speaker 2 (03:15:04):
Moments on all all those records. I think that it's
a it's a tough thing to live up to. Man.
You know, when when when people have so much of
their own personal memories intertwined with certain music, it takes

(03:15:26):
twenty It's only now are people starting to tell me
how good Voodoo Lounge is. It takes it takes decades
to attach your own sensory triggers to these songs and
then it becomes something special. But to have to compete
with with, you know, like memories of you make it

(03:15:48):
out in the car in high school.

Speaker 1 (03:15:50):
Man, you know how the interesting thing not at this level,
but Todd Rungren, who's really incredibly successful. He goes on
the road, no matter how much he till people, I'm
gonna do my electronic stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:16:02):
They come.

Speaker 1 (03:16:02):
They want to hear the hits. They want to hear
more than Hello, it's me, and they can't believe it.
I give them credit for doing it, but it's got
to be tough.

Speaker 2 (03:16:14):
You just do it because that's what you do. Man.
Musicians play, you just want to play. I think it's
it's really most of the.

Speaker 1 (03:16:20):
People from our era, not the ones on the oldies tours,
who can sell out areenas whatever they've sailed far beyond that,
because a it is about the money, because they have
lifestyles that they you know, they're not keeping every one
of these dollars. And then the other thing is they
need the adulation, and many will not take that risk.

Speaker 2 (03:16:45):
Well, the people I know, Bob Dylan stones, that's not
what they don't need the bread, They don't really need
the adulation. It's what you do, man, Dylan.

Speaker 1 (03:16:56):
Dylan wrote the fucking book. I mean you look at
the Beatles. They didn't do any endorsements whatever, which influencer,
but they didn't really know what they were doing. Bob
Dylan was conscious of all this stuff that he was doing.
And then you know, you remember Self Portrait came out
first of his records to get negative reviews. That came

(03:17:18):
out in June, comes out with New Morning in October,
and it's phenomenal. Okay, and there's some recor. I mean,
now you just never know. Listen. He gets number one
credit in my book because he's doing it his way
on stage. Yeah, okay, I have seen it. I will

(03:17:39):
be honest with you. Not always eager to see it.
Somebody says friend of mine's the agent, but whatever, but
he's making it interesting for himself. Otherwise, how can you
do it?

Speaker 2 (03:17:49):
You can't. He has an adventure every night if you
listen closely, because I follow him on YouTube and Minched,
I watch all the shows. Man, he's he digs in real,
he doesn't throw away syllables. He's a great singer, and
he's really he's not walking through it. He's really trying
to interpret the songs and do it fresh every night.

(03:18:12):
Bob Wear does the same thing.

Speaker 1 (03:18:14):
But Bob weare that's the roots. Yeah yeah, But with Dylan,
as I say, I agree with everything you said here.

Speaker 2 (03:18:22):
Him with Barbi straisand I haven't heard yet it's fucking great,
and he sounds awesome, and he cuts closer to the
emotional core of that song than just about anybody, and
he does it without historyonics, without showing off. He does
it through understatement. It's a brilliant reading of that song.

(03:18:44):
And he sounds wonderful too.

Speaker 1 (03:18:47):
I mean, I could talk about so many Dylan things,
but you talk about the go to tracks. This is
not number one, but it's in the top five. I
and I from Infidels. You know, I literally can picture
of place when the song wasn't even out yet. Is
it just resonates. It's just so incredible.

Speaker 2 (03:19:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:19:09):
The other thing about DM, I remember he was he
was hyping some album he works too, and he was
in he said, you know, they talked about the earlier records,
goes can't do that anymore. And then you get old
enough you realize it's not that you lose something.

Speaker 2 (03:19:22):
You have to get to the next thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I think he's been as consistently great over a sixty
seventy sixty year period as anybody.

Speaker 1 (03:19:38):
So if you want to compare him with somebody, absolutely well,
he's the only person who's making different records as time
goes by everybody else if they're making them. I mean,
it's like the movie. I had a problem with the
movie because A it was not always accurate and B
it's hot giography. The guy is fucking from Hibbing, Minnesota

(03:20:03):
comes to New York. People have no idea how hard
it is to make it, no idea sticking to his
vision and any of the other thing, you know, no
matter what budgets were. Then he got these records fast,
but he knew what he was doing and nobody else did.

Speaker 2 (03:20:23):
Yeah. True. Well, you know, one time I asked him
how come you can write Gates of Eden and I can't, which,
actually it's a line in the movie, right everyone wants
but I was unaware. This is probably nineteen ninety or
something like that, and he said, well, look, man, if
it makes you feel any better, I didn't actually write it,

(03:20:46):
he said, I remember moving the pencil of old Age,
but it came from without. And at the time I
thought I was very sweet of him. He's just trying
to make me feel better about this. Then I started
hearing the same You're in the same thing, Keith Richards.
He's riches, by the way, in a session he didn't say, uh,
hold a hold, I got an idea. He says, hold

(03:21:07):
a whole incoming income or or Willie or Chris and
any writer's work this on Brian Wilson, I'll tell you
the same thing. I don't know where it came from
him through me and Okay.

Speaker 1 (03:21:21):
I don't want to compare myself to those people. But
when done right, you are channeling.

Speaker 2 (03:21:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:21:27):
And the worst thing is when you realize you're channeling.

Speaker 2 (03:21:31):
And then it goes left.

Speaker 1 (03:21:32):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's like you're just so there's always
an inspiration and motivation, but it comes out. I mean,
I have my tricks. One I won't mention, the other
one to take a shower. It's like you have no
idea what will come to try to get you in
the zone.

Speaker 2 (03:21:49):
Yeah, but it's hard, man. You don't you don't control it.
You know. It's like surfing. You can you can learn
how to stay up on the board, but you don't
control the fucking ocean. Man. You know, it's like the ocean.
You're gonna get the waves you get and you can't
make him bigger. You can't change him. Okay.

Speaker 1 (03:22:09):
One of my favorite stories, al Cooper is not doing
great now, good friend of mine. He's getting inducted.

Speaker 2 (03:22:15):
To the Rock Walk.

Speaker 1 (03:22:16):
You know whatever the guitar said, I'm talking to him backstage.
I guess he was telling the story of Sweet Home Alabama,
how the first album Leonard Skinnard had just come out
and he got a call from Ronnie van Zen, like
very shortly thereafter, I got a new song got to
come up. And that was on a Friday. They came
in and they cut it on Monday. Sweet Home Alabama

(03:22:38):
did not come out for a year.

Speaker 4 (03:22:41):
Okay, I said, al did you know he goes it
was Sweet Home Alabama.

Speaker 1 (03:22:52):
You know it's like that thing. Yeah, you know when
you know when people I mean yeah, things can be
hits not hits. It's like we connected in your movie.
You made a big bit about till I Die off
surfs Up, which I never heard anybody talk about whatever's
in that record, and whenever read, you know, they don't

(03:23:13):
have to play it on the radio every twenty minutes,
et cetera. And when you do something like that, you
absolutely know. The only thing I'm interested in is people.
I mean, I know all these people, but I haven't
gotten this discussion. The Eagles, who work very slowly put
put things together. But some of the lines of you know,

(03:23:36):
wasted time. You know, you can go on with your
life and I can go on with mine, and maybe
someday we will find it wasn't just wasted time. If
you work that slowly, how you can mean it? Because
all you're talking about the flash of brilliance. One day
I got you know, Gates even came out complete and
I just don't know. I mean, he's steely. Dan's another
one works slow. How do they maintain because people are hacks,

(03:24:01):
they've never been there, so they don't get it.

Speaker 2 (03:24:03):
Well, how about I'll go step further. How about Bob
still rewrites his lyrics. We were with Weird we do
when I paint my masterpiece right, and Bob Dylan must
have heard it, and he said, tell Bob we are
he's singing the wrong lyrics. What do you mean? He said, no,
I changed him and he and he and he typed

(03:24:25):
him out for me to give to the Weird to
sing And okay, this is, you know, on an amateur level,
but starting I think it was a seventy four.

Speaker 1 (03:24:33):
He put out a big lyric book. Okay, yeah, the
lyrics are not the same as they are on the record.
If you on the website now, they're not necessarily the same.
I don't know if you continue sin, but they're not
the same as they are on the record.

Speaker 2 (03:24:45):
He's updating constantly, so yes, it might have come from
a flash in the moment, but he's still refining it. Well.

Speaker 1 (03:24:54):
It's interesting because Joni Mitchell has no time for him,
and she's pretty crazy, but when she was at her peak,
as good as any of them.

Speaker 2 (03:25:06):
Yeah, I don't know what Joni's issues, but he's he's
a superhero as far as i'm Yeah, but you know,
you don't want to be these people.

Speaker 1 (03:25:20):
Because you can't go anywhere. I mean, he could talk
to you. There's a lot of So are you ever starstruck?

Speaker 2 (03:25:29):
Yeah? Sure, I try. If I'm working with someone, I
try to be professional. There's no place for that. That's
not why you're there. But yeah, always, I'm always starting.

(03:25:49):
It'll be, it'll be. It looks like you're talking about
it's a flash. I'll be sitting in the control room
and I go, oh my god, that's wait short, Oh
my god. Last week iding with bron Carter. Bron Carter
is a lifetime here. It comes from Detroit, grew up
about a mile and a half from where I did.
He's fifteen years older than me, but so when I
was a teenager, he was making what I still considered

(03:26:12):
to be the greatest records ever made. Which of those
Miles Davis Quintet records from esp through Miles in the Sky,
you know, than that era. And I couldn't believe I
was watching him play bass, you know, you know, a
couple of feet away in the studio this last week recording.

Speaker 1 (03:26:35):
I've had those moments, and I know exactly what you're
talking about. I'm talking about a slightly different moment, somewhat
similar to your initial Brian Wilson thing where you're so
starstruck either you can't say anything or you can't shut
up as you're saying.

Speaker 2 (03:26:53):
Oh, yeah, it happens. I mean the other thing.

Speaker 1 (03:27:00):
You know, people say most of these people are tortured, okay,
ian most don't live up to who you want them
to be. But then they're occasionally people to do like
Steven Tyler. I say, no, he's that guy. He lives
up to the rep So I guess, you know, going
back to our earlier conversation, these people they were not entertainment.

(03:27:25):
They were then they were not only successful, what they
were saying was so important. Even some of the penumbra.
Remember when you you you lived a slightly different world.
The Beatles were on drugs. No Beatles aren't taking drugs.
And then you know it's legitimized. Everybody's taking drugs. You

(03:27:49):
know you got the messages. Okay, don enough of your time,
Thanks so much for doing this until next time.

Speaker 4 (03:27:56):
This is Bob Left, says sh