Fee Waybill

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Seth Podcast.
My guest today is feed Way Bill of two Fee.
Good to have you here, Bob, thank you for having me.
I appreciate it. That's great. Okay, let's start right from
the beginning. In your everyday life, are you Fee or
are you John? Well, it depends on who you're talking to.

(00:30):
I guess my wife calls me Fee, Elizabeth, and everybody
in my family calls me Fee, but then uh. I
at the tennis club they tell me Fee. But at
the polo club, I played polo and uh. When I
first started playing polo, I tried to disguise the fact
that I was some rock guy, and I told him

(00:53):
my name was John, so they all call me John. Okay.
Polo is known as the sport of kings. How does
a row star end up playing polo? Well? I was
raised on a horse. My brother and I have been
horsemen our whole lives. My dad was a riding instructor
and a horse show judge. So we grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona,

(01:14):
and we're on a horse from the time I was
about five years old until I bailed out at eighteen
I was on a horse, and uh, and my brother.
I moved to California and obviously got into music, and
my brother stayed and he still lives in Scottsdale, Arizona,

(01:34):
and he would always and he has horses, and he
was the one that I mean, he's done everything. He's
done roping and herding and every kind of discipline on
a horse. And he would always ask people, well, how
come you don't get a horse, And I said, you know, well,
I live in San Francisco. Okay, there's not a lot
of horses around here. And and then he he uh.

(01:57):
He got into polo in Scottsdale, and he was, Okay,
now I found something that really is fun and really great.
And and by that time I had moved to l
A and there's you know, he says, you gotta try this.
You gotta get back on the horse and try this.
You're gonna love it. And so I said, okay, I did.
And I went to the California Polo Club and they said, uh,

(02:19):
I said, I want to learn. It's an arena club.
It's arena is like arena football. It's a smaller version
of outdoor polo. And they said, okay. First lessons free
and uh and I said okay, and I just immediately
I loved it. I loved to be back on a
horse again. And so I've been playing for twenty years. Okay,

(02:40):
So how extensive is the polo scene in southern California. Well,
it's not. I mean, there's there's the Santa Barbara Polo Club,
which is pretty high end, and we have an arena
club here in in in l A. And there's also
the Will Rogers Polo Club in l A. And then
in California, there's one in San Diego, there's one in uh,

(03:03):
Orange County, there's one on San Louis Obispo. There's one
in Temecula. Yeah, there's a bunch of them. There's a
bunch of clubs all around this and they and in
the winter in out in the desert in Indio. That's
big time polo. They have people come from all over
the USA to play polo out there. How good a
polo player are you and how often do you play?

(03:24):
I play usually? Well, right now, my horses are out
at pasture. You have to let them rest. And actually
next Monday I'm going up to get them and bring
them back to the club and then I'll play through
the spring and summer. I'm a one or a two.
They they handicap you from minus to to ten being best.

(03:47):
And so I started as a minus two and I
got better and they raised me to minus one and
then zero and then one and then too. And so i'm,
you know, I'm I'm just a recreational player. I'm you know,
I ah. I really try to protect myself and protect
my horses and never never get to, you know, to

(04:09):
ultra competitive, you know, where I'm going to hurt myself
or or or injuring one of my horses. So how
often do you play? I play? Uh, usually I play
Saturday and Sunday morning, and then sometimes I play Thursday
night under the lights, So two to three times a week.
And how many people in arena polo as opposed to
regular polo. Regular polo is four on the four, four

(04:32):
on four. Arena polo is three on three. And how
dangerous is it? Really? Has certainly seen a number of
polo matches and it looks dangerous for those who are
not horse savvic. Yeah, it's dangerous. And you know, my
wife keeps My wife is really you know, if she
really worries about me, and I mean people die. You know,

(04:54):
if you're riding down the field full blast on a
horse and it stumbles and you hit the deck, you
could break your neck really easily and die. But in
arena polo you don't ever really it's only a hundred
yards by fifty yards, so you don't really get to
full speed in that shorter distance and it's not as dangerous.

(05:15):
But people fall off and they you know, they break
their leg and break their elbow and break their wrist.
And I've I've had a couple of injuries, but nothing serious,
you know, just I like cracked a rib once, but
you know, nothing, nothing too serious. And we play with girls, right,
and so it's a co ed sport and nobody wants

(05:38):
to slam the girls into the wall. It's our club
is very recreational. Nobody is trying to you know, win
money or trophies or anything like that. It's just fun.
We just have fun. What's the key to being a
great polo player? Number One? You can't think about writing.
You have to be a good writer. You can't think

(05:59):
about following off the horse and you have to uh,
you know, it's just hand to eye, you know, I
played baseball my whole life, and and a ball a
polo balls about the size of the softball. It's about
that big around arena ball, and you know, you have
a mallet and you hit the ball, and you know
there's a lot of rules and you just have to

(06:22):
you have to. You have to be aware, be aware
of the horse and the arena and all the other people,
and it's just and then be able to hit the ball.
You know, I never had a problem hitting the ball,
so and once I learned to ride again, you know,
it's it's easy, it's fun. So you're saying, an arena

(06:43):
ball as opposed to four or four is a different
size ball. The arena ball is about the size of
the softball. It's like a soccer ball inflated leather and
in an outdoor ball is about the size of the baseball.
And it's solid plastic, really hard, solid plastic. So yeah,

(07:04):
at the ArenaBall, you can use the wall to bounce
it off the wall. It's it's more it's it's it bounces.
You know. Historically polo is seen as expensive. Is it expensive? Well,
it depends on what level of polo you play. If
you're if you're going to India or for your going.

(07:26):
I mean, polo is a big time in Florida. And
if you travel to Florida and if you have you know,
if you have really expensive horses, it can be really expensive.
But but then again it can be recently inexpensive. You know,
my horses. I think the most expensive horse I I had,
I bought ever bought, was like five thousand dollars. And

(07:49):
but people pay a hundred thousand dollars for a polo horse.
It's just all depends on how high a level you
want to play and how much does it cost to
keep a horse for a year for a well, the
board at my club is seven and fifty dollars a
month per horse, and that includes feed and lodging, and

(08:11):
that also includes a groom to tack up your horse
and to wash your horse and basically exercise your horse.
They exercise six days a week to stay you know,
they they're athletic and so it's not that expensive. Our club,
we have a great club, California Polo Club is a
great club and it's not that expensive to play. People

(08:33):
can start and you know, you can take a lesson
for like hundred bucks. You can take a lesson and
and learn to play. And then of course then you
have to get a horse, and you have to get
a saddle, and you have to get a bridle, and
you have to pay the board, and you have you know,
it adds up. So since you know this so so
much about horses, what is going on with all the

(08:55):
horses dying and horse racing, especially in southern California. I know,
I know it's terrible. Well, no one really knows. I've
read a lot about it. Uh, and some people say
it's a bad track. Uh you know, Uh sometimes they
use artificial uh instead of just a dirt track. It's

(09:19):
it's some kind of artificial composite. And people say that's bad.
But uh, the ones in Santa Anita where the horses,
so many horses died, Uh, they don't know. I mean,
horse racing is a bad sport. You know. People spend
millions of dollars on race horses and then when they

(09:42):
don't win, they tell their trainer, you know, I spent
a million dollars on this horse. It needs to win.
Do whatever the hell you have to do to get
it to win. So what do they do? They give
them drugs, they give them. It's that simple. It's they
they load these horses up with ugs and sometimes and
you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they bleed.

(10:06):
Sometimes they push them too hard. The other thing I
don't like about horse racing is they start them when
they're two years old. That's too young for a horse
to start racing full speed. They're not grown yet, their
bones are not fully formed. Uh. In polo, you know
in Argentina, which is polo is the national sport in Argentina,

(10:29):
they don't even start training a horse untill they're five
or six years old. So two years old or three
years old is just too young to force a horse
to run as fast as it could go. And that's
what happens. You know, they all kinds of things happen,
and you know they it's it's about money. That's what

(10:50):
it's about, Bob. It's about money. And they don't want
to say that, Oh no, it's it's you know, because
it's money and it's all about money. And they don't
want to close down Santa Anita because they're making a
ton of money. And you know, the people who are
the people want to race and they want to win money,

(11:13):
and that's you know, it's that's what it's about. So
you also said you play tennis. Are you a good
athlete in general and doing a million things or these
are just your two sports? No, I I I've always
been athletic, and of course being the lead singer of
the Tubes was all always pretty athletic. When I'm doing
ten or fifteen costume changes in the show, you know. Uh,

(11:37):
but uh, I played. My dad started little league in Scottsdale, Arizona,
back in gosh, she was nineteen fifty six, And uh,
I started playing baseball from the time I was eight
years old and played baseball all, you know, all the
way through school through high school and then and then

(12:00):
even even continued playing fast pitch softball until you know,
until about two thousand three or two thousand four, and
then fat men's fast pitch softball kind of disappeared and
it became a women's sport, and that's when I switched
to polo. But I've always been athletic. I've always had
some kind of sport. And my wife is a unbelievable

(12:23):
tennis player. She's played her whole life through high school
and college and and uh, she is a great player,
and she's she convinced me to start taking polo lessons,
you know, at seventy years old. And uh, because basically
she would love me to stop playing polo and start

(12:43):
playing tennis instead. Okay, so she convinced you to play
take tennis lesson, Yes, yes she did. Okay, because you said,
I want to make clearify, let's go back to the
very beginning. I always thought your name was completely made up.
Way Bill is your real last name? Yeah, oh yeah,
that's my real last name. And he give us any
history of that because I always think of shipping in
way bill. Do you know where it comes from? Yeah? Yeah,

(13:05):
A way bill is the list of stuff they've they're
hauling in the back of the truck. Yeah. And uh,
well it's my father's father. His name was Jail. Came
from England and uh. Names that end in two l's
are usually an English name. And uh, that was their

(13:29):
name back in England that they it wasn't changed. That
was you know, before they had the term way bill.
There was way bills. There was the history of the
family of way Bills. They were from, uh, Brighton, bright
Bristol or Brighton. I think Brighton, England is where my

(13:50):
family came from okay, and why fee for the uh
lesson knowledgeable? Ah, that's um well was shortened from Fiji
and one. Back in the old days when we were
all living in San Francisco, living together in a two
bedroom condemned house on Noriega Street. The the the bass player,

(14:18):
UH thought that I looked like the King of Fiji,
which I could never understand. The King of Fiji was
a black band with an Afro about that day, and
they started calling me Fiji and I. You know, you
can't pick your own nicknames, that's for sure. Back in

(14:40):
our area, they had nicknames them. So I was Fiji
and I was Fiji up until the time. Uh. The
our our bass player Rick Anderson, still calls me feed
because we feed fee j fej uh. And when we
made our first record in ninet for n M Records, UH,

(15:04):
they wanted us to put They said, okay, well, what's
your name and and and I thought feed. I didn't
want to say. I shortened it then from Fieg. I
took the j off from feedg to fee and I
thought the fee for the way bill, Oh yeah, it's
kind of like terry cloth or you know, probably very good. Okay,

(15:27):
you mentioned your wife. How long you've been married. I
have been married, well, on and off for thirty years.
Thirty years to the same woman, to the same woman.
What's the on and off part. Well, we got married
and then and we got We met in nine at
a Mayan temple in Guatemala on a solar eclipse January

(15:53):
July eleven, we met and we were on separate vacations.
She was on a occation with some English school teacher
from Santa Monica and I was on a vacation with
my best friend. And we we were Mayan iss we
were we went there to look at Mayan temples and
we were put both into Mayan history. And we met

(16:14):
at the Mayan ruin of Tikal on July eleven, and uh,
the guy that she was with recognized me, and you know,
came walking out of the jungle and said, hey, you're
fee Waybill from the tubes. And I just went and
then I immediately fell in love with his girlfriend, and

(16:36):
and so we spent the day together and then they
at the end of the day, we're going back to
Belize where we were staying, and they're going back to
Santa Monica. And I said, you know, I didn't know.
I was desperate to try to reach this person, and
you know, so it's funny, I asked. The guy said
he had a video camera, one of those giant video

(16:59):
cameras that the whole day was taken video. And so
at the end of the day, I said, Randy, you know,
could I get a copy of the video? Which was
a ruse, and he goes, oh, sure it called me
when we get back to Santa Monica and I said okay,
and so I did, and then I said, yeah, I
need a copy of the video. Yeah. I said, oh,
what a what about Liz? What about that girl you

(17:21):
were with? Liz? He goes, oh, nothing, Na, nothing, would
give me, no information at all. And so I went
and got the video and I said, we asked again.
He goes, na, Na, She's no, it's not happening, and
uh so I kind of gave up on that. And
then eight that was July. Eight months later, in February

(17:45):
of two, I'm working out at the Santa Monica Athletic
Club and she walks in the door of the club
and she was she wasn't even a member, she was
the guest of a member. And I saw her and
she saw me and I just kind of went, oh
my god, I can't believe it. And then we started
dating and live and then we got married in We

(18:09):
got married in ninety seven, got divorced in two thousand one,
went separate ways uh and and then we got back
together in two thousand eight, like six seven years later,
we got back together. And then we got married a
second time on the anniversary of the day we met,

(18:34):
which was July eleven, uh nineteen. What set en we
got married a second time? Okay? A couple of questions.
Have you been married before? No? Okay? Have any children? No? Okay?

(18:57):
What happened in those seven odd years when we're separated?
Why did you get divorced? And why did you get
back together? And when you divorced just on paper see
each other or were you really separate in those eras? No,
we didn't. We you know, I was living in a
little house in Sherman Oaks. You know, we just you
warn n to the truth. I was back then when

(19:18):
marijuana was not legal. I was growing pot in the
backyard and with smoke pottle day long. And finally she says, God,
I can't handle it. You're just smoke poddle day long.
And then we got divorced, and then you know, I
went out, no, and we didn't see each other for
seven six seven years. I you know, the tubes reformed.

(19:40):
I went back on the road. She uh uh went
to work and and became a commercial real estate agent
and then invested in commercial property and and took over
her dad's business. Of so she went to work and
I went to work, and and then, uh, it's funny,

(20:01):
you know my dad, uh, my dad, besides being a
writing instructor, my dad was a chief engineer of one
of the very first resort hotels in Scottsdale, called the
Valley ho And so he knew how he knew everything.
My dad knew plumbing and electrical and carpentry, and he

(20:24):
could do anything. And he taught my brother and I
to do that. He he taught us everything. He taught
us plumbing, he taught us electrical, he taught us carpentry.
So I can fix anything pretty much. And Elizabeth was
was reading this business and getting screwed by various vendors,

(20:46):
by the plumber, by the electrician. But she didn't know,
you know, if they were in a good or she
didn't know if they were charging her too much. She
just you know, that wasn't something that she really understood.
And so one day she called, she goes, you know,
I don't know if this is a good plumber or not,
you know all about plumbing. Can you help me with this?

(21:07):
Can you can you check this guy out and find
out if he's just you know, overcharging me or you know,
And I said, okay, And so, uh so I did it.
So I helped her out, and I you know, I
got her a new plumber, and I got her a
new new electrician and a new eric. You know, I
pretty much fired everybody she had and got somebody better.

(21:31):
And you know, we started working together and on commercial property,
and uh and then that kind of rekindled the romance.
And uh, but I had never you know, I wrote
a I used to I used to live in a
little house in Venice, and I would like I would

(21:51):
sit up all night and I get hammered and smoke
pot or or drink and write poetry for her to
her and and then I send a texture poetry and
I finally put a book together, a poetry book, and
but it was all too and it worked. It kind
of she kind of went, God, you still Anyway, we

(22:13):
got back together because of the poetry book, and uh,
and then you know, we started living together and and
uh we got married again. So and we still were together.
I'm sitting in She's an artist. She loves art, and
she's very besides being a great tennis player, she's a
wonderful artist. And so we turned our garage into an

(22:34):
arts studio. So we've got this. You know, the cars
are parked on the street, but we have this. That's
where I'm sitting now. We have this gorgeous studio downstairs
that used to be the garage and now we have
a little kitchen and a little bathroom. And she comes
down here and just is in heaven and has a
great big wall. I'm looking at this gigantic wall where

(22:57):
she's working on a piece that's got she's it's got
to be ten ft by eight by ten or something giant.
And so you know, so I'm just happy as a
clam and so lucky, you know. And so you're about
to play some live dates. What's the thinking about playing

(23:19):
those live dates? Why with the tombs she's been her
with my solo I was about to play. In fact,
it was the first gig was supposed to be tomorrow.
I did the solo album My fee Way Bill Rides
Again and which I said to you, by the way,

(23:39):
and and I put together with my best friend Richard Marks.
I put Richard. Richard wrote the songs and produced it
with me. And he's the guy's beyond brilliant and has
been my best friend for gosh since we met in

(24:02):
in the studio with David Foster back in and we've
written songs all these years. And so we made this
record and uh, and I've never done a solo show ever.
And he said, why let's do a solo show is
that you can use my band. I'll help you. We
can put it together and you can use my band
and do let's do some gigs. We've never done it.

(24:25):
And so we were supposed to have done gigs this weekend,
a gig in Phoenix in the Troubadour in l A
and then a gig in Orange County at the Coach House,
and uh, but that you know, we had it all
set up and then O Macron happened and then the

(24:50):
whole thing, you know, collapsed, and people are afraid to
go out still, and you know, so so we've postponed it,
We've post spooned the gigs till the end of the summer.
But then we've got tubes gigs we've got We're playing
in March, uh in Chicago and Minneapolis and Omaha, and
then we've got gigs coming up throughout the year. And uh,

(25:15):
you know why am I doing it? Why? Because that's
what I do and I live for the stage. And
I mean it's I mean, you saw me. You you
went to that David Bowie gig right in at Water Village. Yeah,
I I absolutely did. I've seen you and I saw

(25:35):
in the Rosy and seventy five. I totally get it.
But let's let's go a couple of different angles. Hey,
Usually the life of a rock star who is not
commercially mega successful is very challenging financially, How have you
made it through all these decades? I guess I've just
watched my money, watched my life. I've invested. I've invested

(25:59):
in our commercial properties, you know, thanks to Elizabeth uh
helping me, and so I've invested in that. And uh,
you know, I'm not extravagant. I don't drive a Lamborghini
SUV and you know I just uh. Uh, I just

(26:20):
created life for myself that that I could I could
deal with, that I could afford, you know, And and
uh it's been challenging. It has been challenging, you know,
but uh, uptil the point of the pandemic, you know,

(26:42):
we were we the Tube signed with the management company.
Just like in the beginning of for for years and
years we had no manager and I was the manager
and I did everything, and but we signed with Jonathan Wolfson. Uh.
And Jonathan also manages Hall of Notes and Lover Boy

(27:03):
and the Tubes and and well once again, a friend
of Elizabeth's thanks to her, got us an introduction with him,
and he came to see us out at the Canyon
Club in Agora Hills and he took us on and
it's kind of changed everything. We we worked a ton
in two thou nine. We made a lot of money,

(27:27):
and uh, Jonathan has really really helped us and really
kind of changed everything for us. And uh and then
of course the pandemic hits, so it's been challenging to
deal with that and you know, make it through that.
But uh, you know, uh, it's it's amazing and I

(27:53):
never thought this would happen, but people, people just our
songs have endured and people come and people come back
to see us again and again and again, and it's
it's uh, like I said, I never would have thought that,
but uh and I think also that you know, we're

(28:17):
very visual, unlike most bands, and we constantly change our show,
and like right now we're doing this complete we're doing
the completion Backward Principle album and we're kind of visually
recreating it with the business suits and the whole kind
of sarcasm and corporate uh parody that created the record.

(28:41):
And and then you know, next year we'll change it
completely and we'll do a completely different show and there'll
be different costume changes and well, you know, and it's
just every time you come to see the tubes, it's different.
And we're doing a visual uh visual you know, portrayal

(29:04):
of of what a record or a song or whatever.
And uh, I don't know, it's just we've we were
so lucky to have endured this many years and to
be this healthy and you know, everybody in the band
is really healthy and that everybody really wants to play,
and so it's just been it's just been wonderful. You know,

(29:27):
A couple of decades back. Bill Spooner, who was one
of the creative forces in the band, separates from the band.
What happened there. I don't know how to couch this,
but drugs, drugs happened. That's pretty definitive explanation. Let's also
talk about the era in terms of the Tubes and

(29:47):
also your songwriting with Richard Marks and with Toto. Do
you have a royalty stream or is that stuff pretty
much in the weird view mirror if there ever was no, no,
I do. I still that I do, and that also helps.
I never sold my publishing or my writer's royalties, so
I do have a publishing stream. And also, the strangest

(30:12):
it may seem, after forty years, we actually recouped with
Universal because you know, Universal owns everything. They bought a
a M and they bought Capital where all of our
product originated. And so we get royalty checks hard as

(30:32):
it maybe to believe from Universal twice a year. So yeah,
we do have a royalty stream. I mean, it's not massive.
It's not like Richard Marx's royalty stream, where you know
he sold forty million records and and owns it all.
You know, every record was a license so, uh, it's

(30:52):
not like that, but uh, it's really it really helps,
you know. And and I'm the you know, I've I do.
I pretty much do everything. I'm the publisher, administrator, I'm
the you know, I'm I kind of. I do the merch.
I booked the tour, I booked the hotels, I booked

(31:15):
the cars, I booked the air. Uh. And lately Elizabeth,
Elizabeth has taken over some of the uh, some of
the work with me. And she helps with the merch
and helps with the v I P beaten greet and
she's kind of become my my mentor and road manager,

(31:39):
personal assistant, and and nurse. She's the she's the sexy
nurse in the show. Now, So that's all a plus, okay,
And do you charge the other guys for doing all
that work? No? Okay, let's go back to the beginning. So, yeah,
you grew up in the fifties and early sixties, short haircuts, raw, rod, cetera.

(32:00):
The Beatles come along. Were you into music where you transformed?
Did you want to be into what happened then? And
I've done I've done this interview. The Beatles. Just Beatles
changed my life. The Beatles made me want to be
a rock and roll singer. And it changed everything when

(32:20):
the Beatles came out. Uh uh I was. I was
a freshman in high school and uh when the Beatles
came out, that's all I could think about. And I
actually I you know, I wanted to be a baseball player,
and you know, and it all, it all became. I
went to this high school, Scottsdale High and back then

(32:43):
we had an unbelievable theatrical department. We had a whole
building that was dedicated to theater arts, and we had
a shop, and we had a giant auditorium. We had
a three thousand seat auditorium where we could do plays.
I did, like from the time way just to be clear,

(33:04):
you mean three thousand seats right, yeah? I thought you
said no, no, no, three thousand seed auditorium. And we
would do plays, you know, I did. I did plays
all the way through high school. I did Sound of
Music and the Music Man and Little I played Little
Abner as a ninety pound weekly and we did dramatic.

(33:26):
We did Syranodo Bergerac and we did student We did
I just did plays and we and I was in this.
We had a vocal group what's called the Scotts Still Singers,
And it was a group of about forty people, you know, uh, soprano,
alto tenor bass, about ten of each. And we would

(33:48):
perform I mean we would go to like state competitions
of choral competitions and we would perform like Baroque to
Bach and handles Messiah and all these really complicated pieces,
uh and uh. And so I spent all that time

(34:09):
singing these classical type stuff, wanting to be a rock singer,
and listening to the Beatles all day long and letting
my hair grow. We used to have a rule if
your hair touched the collar of your shirt, you got expelled.
And I mean back then, you know you had you

(34:31):
couldn't wear jeans. Believe me, I remember you had to
wear a colored shirt. You know you couldn't. And you know,
I think, you know, I was gonna say my I
think I I got it. And and you know today
I still I still have the voice I had when
I was a kid. I can sing all these songs still,

(34:53):
and I love it. And but I think, uh, my
mother was a singer before my mother. I was born
in Omaha, Nebraska, and my mother lived in Omaha and
my mother's family. My mother's mother immigrated from Sicily. She

(35:14):
couldn't speak English. I'm half Sicilian and half English and
uh and my mother and back then, you know, if
you were Italian, it was kind of second class citizen.
You know. It's like you know, uh if it's funny.
I just read the uh, the Caaplan book on Sinatra. Uh,

(35:39):
the two books he wrote, The Voice and the Chairman,
and when he was young. That's the way they treated Italians.
They were they were second class citizens. If you were
an Italian, you were either a mob guy or you know,
you were so anyway, she but she was a singer
and before she got married, she used to sing with

(36:02):
big bands that came through town and they would they
would she was like the one they hired to sing,
you know, begin the beginning and the standards that the
big bands would play. Tommy Dorsey, She's played with Tommy
Dorsey and uh, so I think I kind of got
that gene. And we my house was when I was

(36:25):
a kid, we sang all the time before the Beatles.
We all you know, she my mom loved Broadway musicals
and we would always get uh Broadway soundtrack albums, And
we had a great big record player, one of those
giant SEV cabinet record player things, and we would sing
all day long. And we're always singing. She was singing,

(36:49):
I was singing. My brother really wasn't much of a singer,
but I really just you know, dove in and uh,
West Side Story. When West Side Story came out, I
flipped out and I learned all of the songs on
West Side Story. And actually, I have have you seen
the movie, the new movie lately? I have not seen

(37:10):
the new movie. I have not seen it either. I
don't know how Stephen Sondheim is gonna work. You know
that some of the lyrics in When You're a Jet
are not exactly politically correct anymore. Yeah. Uh, And the
Scuttal singers were famous. We used to win the state
competitions for choral groups and so every you know, everybody

(37:34):
knew about the singers and they had like special jackets
with with with you know, of emblems, and you know,
it was it was a big deal in scotch Dale.
It was a small town. And uh, I mean there
was when I moved to scutt Deal, there was still
hitching posts in front of the grocery store and you
could ride your horse to town and hitch it up

(37:56):
in front of the grocery store and get your groceries
for your family, put him in your saddle bag, ride
back home. Uh. But anyway, so when I was before
my freshman year of high school, uh, they held auditions

(38:16):
for you know, there was the Scots Chiel Singer was
like a varsity group. It was mostly all juniors and seniors,
but there was a freshman version of it that you know,
you could get in the freshman version and then after
a couple of years move up to the to the singers.
And so I wanted, you know, you had to audition

(38:39):
for for the for the the two directors, the freshman
director was his name was Deb's Valentine. And the the
senior director was Joe Esley. His name was Joe Estley.
And they got Joe sli changed my life too. And uh,

(39:00):
so I auditioned and I signed up and I sang
Maria from West Side Story Acapella and they were and
so Joe Esley was so impressed that he said, look,

(39:21):
Deb's this, I want this guy. So I was the
first guy ever to be put straight into the senior
to the varsity Scottsdale Singers and didn't have to go
through the freshman route and in the freshman group, so
I went straight to the singers as a freshman. And

(39:43):
you know, after a year or two, he started giving
me the solos, the arias in and handles Messiah and
various things, and he would just it's funny. He would
just you know, he would constantly go to, you know, no,
do this, do this, do this. He was always you know,

(40:04):
trying to help or and you know, I was an idiot.
I was a fucking idiot. So I you know, I
would say, you're you know, you're on my case and
I would oh. I used to always think he's on
he's why is he on me? On me? On me
all the time. And so one day I went into
his office and I said, you know, Mr Esley, why

(40:25):
why are you it's always me? Why are you always
on me? And he goes, you know, and he sat
me down in his desk and he goes, you have
got something special. You know, you've you've got a great voice,
and you've got something special. And he was also the
director of all the plays too, and he says, you

(40:48):
and I'm not gonna let you just slough it off.
I'm not gonna let you ignore it. You've got it.
You've got to to develop, you've got to do You've
got to do this. You can't. I just let it slide.
And so I kind of went, oh wow, really? And so,
I mean, he was the one that cast me as
Little Abner as a ninety powder weekly, and I'm like,

(41:11):
Mr Asley, am I you know, Little Abner is a
big stud. You know, he's a big muscle bound guy.
I said, do I wear a big muscle suit or
You're gonna make me a big muscle suit to wear?
And he said, no, you just have to think big,
I said. He says, when Peppi Yokum jumps off the

(41:31):
roof into your arms, you better be thinking big. Okay, Okay,
So you graduate from high school, you go to college,
and you drop out. Why do you drop out? Oh? God?
I started being an anthropology major. I still love anthropology.

(41:54):
I love I love the whole genre. And then I
switched to oceanography, right, I mean in Arizona, and I'm
obsessed with the ocean and I want to go to
Script's Institute. I want to transfer this. Well, you know
that's not gonna happen. And you know, we Arizona. Uh
we did. My family didn't have a lot of money.
My both my mom and dad worked and I was

(42:16):
a latch key kid. Me and my brother, and uh
we went to Arizona. I went to Arizona State because
if you were a resident, you know, the tuition was minimal.
And uh and uh so and also I decided, well,
I'm going to be a serious actor. Now, no more
of this musical comedy stuff. I'm gonna do Ibocident and

(42:38):
check Off and Macbeth. And so I went straight to
the drama department and and I started doing those kinds
of plays. And then finally I went I I finished
my freshman year, and then kind of halfway through my
sophomore year, I flipped out and I just went, this

(43:01):
is boring. Oh my god, you know, god, I don't
want to do this. And uh and you know, I
had a group of friends that we used and we
were all into music and we used to go one
of the one of the guys in the group had
this trailer He lived in a trailer way outside of

(43:24):
town on Baseline Road, and so we would all go
out there, you know, five or six of us would
go out to his trailer. His name was Terry, Terry molloy,
and and we would play music and and smoke pot Okay,
we play music and smoke pot all all night long.

(43:46):
And uh you know, and I had moved This is
when I was. I had moved out of out of
I mean, I moved out of my parents house the
day I turned eighteen. And I had a job, and
I got an apartment in Tempee near the college. And
I had a job. And I worked at this pottery store,
which is kind of ironic because my my wife is

(44:06):
now totally into pottery and we have a we have
a wheel, and we have a kiln and she's making
stuff all day long. So but I worked in this
pottery store and I used to pack cactus, little baby
cactuses in boxes to send to like Minnesota, where it

(44:34):
would instantly die because there's you know, it's too cold
for cactus. That's why they're not growing in Minnesota, is it.
And uh so, so Terry found out, you know, and
and we were all kind of of the same, you know,

(44:54):
tune in, turn on, drop out, it was kind of
and we took a LSD. You know, it was the
world of kind of Timothy Leary world, Ah, and he
found out about this town in northern Arizona. There's a
town called Jerome on the very it's it's on the

(45:18):
side of a mountain called Mingus Mountain, and it's in
the Verde Valley. It's about midway in the middle of
the state of Arizona. And there used to be a
gigantic copper mine there run by a company called Felps
Dodge Mining. And they they they dug all. I mean,

(45:43):
the whole town was full of tunnels and caves where
copper mines where they would mind the copper. And so
they eventually they sucked out all the copper in the
mountain and they said, okay, well that's were done. And
they left and they left, and they had a whole

(46:04):
lot of people working for them, these miners and the
minders all had little shacks on the side in the
town of Jerome. And Jerome was pretty much a ghost town.
It was abandoned. There was nobody there left. And once
the mind left and all the minders left, it was
a major ghost town. There was nothing. There was like

(46:26):
one bar, there was no gas station, there was one
there wasn't a hotel, there was nothing. There was just
a few people really, you know, seniors, seniors that had
lived there the whole life, and they didn't leave. So
Terry says, you know, we can, we can move to
this ghost town. And there's all these miners shacks and

(46:48):
nobody gives us, they don't care. So you could just
have one. You can just squat in one. You can
just homestead one. We used to stay homestead and we went,
oh really okay, So like eight of us moved to Jerome.
We just we said that's it and I quit school.

(47:09):
My parents freaked out, I mean completely freaked out, and
we moved to this little town and I had my
own minors shock. Everybody got their own minors shack. And
there's no this was you know, there's no indoor plumbing. Okay,
so we had an outhouse. There was h The electricity

(47:30):
had all been turned off, so there was no electricity either.
So you had like like hurricane lamps for for light.
And we all just we had we had nothing. I
had no money. I remember I had eight cents in
my jeans and I had eight cents in there for

(47:51):
a long long time. And we used to go from
various people would have would have dinners, you know. They
would they would say, okay, well dinners at my house tonight,
and we'd all go there. And my dad used to
bring me a twenty five pound bag of brown rice
from Phoenix, and so I when I got a bag
of brown rice, I'd have dinners. Okay, well we have

(48:13):
a big dinner of brown rice. And I I mean, gosh,
I lived there for probably this was January of n
and I lived there for about four or five months,
maybe with absolutely nothing, no money, no nothing, and just

(48:36):
you know, we're a bunch of hippies were surviving and
we loved We had a great time. You know. People
would come up from the city and they would bring drugs,
you know. Okay, so how do you make it from
the booties to being a roadie for what it becomes
the tubes. Well, I'm gonna tell you. I finally got
sick of having no money. So, uh, I heard about

(49:00):
this rancher who was looking for cowboys. He's looking to
hire a couple of cowboys. He needed help. His name
was Dave Perkins, and so I went to Dave Perkins
and he was, Uh, there's a town in Arizona called Perkinsville, Uh.

(49:22):
His father was this patriarch of Perkinsville. And his father
drove a herd of hundred longhorn cows from Texas all
the way to Arizona. You know, when he was a kid.
And he had five sons, and he owned all this property.

(49:44):
He was the big deal. And each of the five
sons had a ranch. He gave each of them their
own cattle ranch. So Dave was the youngest son and
he had his own cattle ranch. And the other guys
were pretty much rednecked cowboys, you know they were. They were,
shall we say, a conservative group and except for Dave.

(50:09):
And Dave was a little forward thinking. And you know,
he had some kids, and he divorced his wife, and
then he had a lady living with him and helping
him run his ranch. And so I came up to him,
and I had long hair, and you know, not Fiji hair,
but uh, I said, Dave, you know I grew up

(50:31):
on a horse. I can ride. I can help you,
because he needs somebody to go out. He had two
hundred and fifty thousand acres of forest service least land. Okay,
he did known it. He leased it from the Forest Service.
And on this and the Forest Service based on how

(50:52):
much feed there was, and there was no feed because
of the desert. They would tell you how many cows
as you could run on this land, and so the
number was one hundred and fifty. He could have a
hundred and fifty mother cows on this two hundred and
fifty thousand acres, And twice a year you had to

(51:14):
go out and round up these hundred fifty cows and
bring him back and breed them to the bulls so
that they would make babies to make you know, Hamburger
out of And so that was the way it worked.
And so every twice a year you got to go
out and round up the cows and bring in the

(51:35):
bringing the babies and bringing brand. And I was a cowboy.
I was a cowboy, just like in the movies. And
I always wanted to be a cowboy. You know, when
I was a kid, all I did was watch westerns.
And you know, I watched all those westerns and all
those big stars started as you know, Steve McQueen wanted
dead or alive or they all cowboys, John Wayne and

(51:59):
every Clint and now I mean they all. I wanted
to be a cowboy, and so I got to be
a cowboy, and so I would ride out on my horse.
He gave me a horse, and I'd ride out. And
it wasn't as hard as it sounds to find cows
because there was no water, so the cows would always
be near the water. And so you'd go to wherever

(52:20):
the river was and you'd round up cows because they
would be there drinking water, So round them up and
bring them back to the ranch. And then you'd separate
out the boys from the girls. And then the boys were,
you know, castrated. This is fascinating, But how do we
get from here to rock and roll? Oh? Sorry? Well,

(52:40):
when I was a kid, before I left, I used
to go watch bands in Phoenix. I mean, you know Alice.
Alice started in Phoenix Cooper and he had a band
called the Ear Wings and I used to go watch them,
and Roger Steen and Prairie Prince and a guy David
had a trio in Phoenix called the Red, White and

(53:04):
Blues Band and they used to play at a little
club called the v I P in downtown Phoenix. And
I used to go to this club all the time
to listen to music, live music, and they were great.
They were a great band, and they you know, they
did all this original material. And Roger used to play
Jimmy Hendricks songs because he loved Hendricks. And so I

(53:26):
would go see them, and I became friends with them,
and I was, you know, kind of just a hanger
on her, and I, you know, I was looking for
some way, you know, to get into music somehow. And so, uh,
when I moved to the mountains, when I moved to
the Verde Valley, uh, uh, you know, I everyone, you know,

(53:51):
I go back to town to get whatever, get asked
my parents for money or something, and I would say,
you know, this is so great up here. And and
they every once in a while they would drive their
truck up there. Uh. They had a big they had
a milk truck that was converted into their equipment truck,
and they would they had a generator and they would

(54:13):
drive up to the mountains and set their gear up
out in the desert and just play to the cactus right.
And uh. The guy that I worked with, his name
was Michael Walker. He met a girl and they wanted
to get married, and they wanted a band for the

(54:35):
wedding at the at the Perkins Place. And I asked Roger,
I said, you want to You know, these guys have
like a two hundred bucks or something and they need
a band to play for the wedding and and so
you want to come up and do it? And they
said yes. So they came up and they played at
Michael Walker's wedding. Okay, and when they did they what

(54:59):
happened us When Prairie Prince graduated from high school, he
was an artist. He's still an artist. He's he's the
one that does all of our album covers and everything. Uh.
Prairie got a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute
to begin school in the fall of nineteen and Uh.

(55:24):
Up until that point, they had no roadie that the band,
they didn't have anybody. And so when they came up
to play for the wedding, they said, hey, do you
want to do you want to be? Actually, actually the
bass player asked me if I wanted to be in
the band and play logs African logs, and I said logs.

(55:47):
He goes, yeah, you know, we'll get these big logs
that are like hollow down and you can play him
it's kind of a I went, but also, we need
you to drive the truck to San Francisco. Uh went, oh,
I see, okay. And I by that time, by that time,
after being on the ranch for about a year and
a half being a cowboy, I made fifty dollars a

(56:09):
month plus room and board to be the cowboy. And
I said, I kind of got I kind of said, well,
you know, I kind of done this whole cowboy thing, okay,
And so I said, okay, So I drove the truck
in the in the summer of sixty nine, I drove
the truck to San Francisco and uh. And that's how

(56:33):
it all started. That's how I became a roady to
the band. And you know, we got a little house
and in the Sunset District and we would do little
gigs here and there, and I was the road he
and I. I had no idea at all about any
kind of electronic knowledge. I had no knowledge. I knew

(56:58):
too put the O N switch in the O N position.
And that was the extent of my knowledge. And so
how do you end up in the band? Well, I'll
tell you. They had a manager. Okay. We had a
guy named John Spear who was the manager. And he
was also there like high school friend. He had no idea,

(57:20):
but he was a hustler and he was you know
he uh uh. He got us a gig to play
at this nine seventy Expo seventy in Osaka, Japan. Okay.
It was an ex exposition World Exposition in Osaka. And

(57:43):
he got us a gig to play at the San
Francisco Pavilion. Okay, like five sets of a day and
the and the wet. It's funny because at the time
we had changed the name Rogers band was called the
White Blues Band, right the trio, and they had they

(58:04):
for some reason, I don't know why. Actually they had
changed the name to Arizona, okay. And John got them
to hire us at the San Francisco Pavilion. But the
guy goes, you know, you really can't. It's not gonna
work for a band to be called Arizona representing San Francisco.
And so he goes, how about They went, well, how

(58:26):
about if you just take the A off the end,
you could be Arizon Okay, great, okay, So we went
wheat and and he also got us the transportation there
back and back then there was a shipping company called
the American President Lines. It was a it was a

(58:49):
It wasn't like a princess cruisers or celebrity cruises. It
was a company that actually just it was a a
ship that transported you to Japan. It was a big
passenger liner, right, And he got us a gig to
play on the ship for our passage. You could go

(59:11):
for free. All you have to do is play to
two concerts on the ship and then and so that
was actually the first time I actually performed in front
of an audience. I became the opening act for the
for Arizon, and I had my because I used to
play guitar and I used to sit out there in

(59:32):
the desert and play Roy Orbison songs to the cactus
and just sing like Bob Dylan songs and folk songs.
And so I knew a couple of songs, and they said,
will you be the opening act? You can play your
folks songs, And so I would play Roy Orbison song
or a Bob Dylan song and play a couple of
songs and I'd be the opening act. Well, what happened

(59:54):
on the trip on the way over there, we got
caught smoking pot in our in our state room, and
they kicked us off the ship. In Hawaii, and so
then we had to wait for the next one to come.
There was they had about five or six. They had
the President Wilson and the President Roosevelt, and they got

(01:00:18):
all these ships named after presidents. And so we got
on the second one and we made it to Japan
and then uh we did that. We played for six
weeks at this at Explo seventy at the San Francisco Pavilion,
and you know, we we you know, it was great. God,

(01:00:40):
I never it was wonderful and uh, you know, we
met Japanese girls and we had such a great time.
And on the way back, same thing. We got caught
smoking pot in the ship and so they didn't kick
us off the ship, but they stuck us in the
steerage compartment where there was all these bunk beds, you know,

(01:01:05):
with Filipinos smoking cigars, which was pretty hurting. And but
then David the bass player, he there's there's like a
preacher on board. This is I mean, you couldn't you
have to write a book coming this is ridiculous. He
gets caught having sex with the preacher's daughter. Okay, I

(01:01:28):
know this is I mean, I'm being honest, this is true,
and so they kicked us off the boat again in Hawaii,
and so uh and we met some hippies in Hawaii
and we went and stayed at their place and you know,
smoke pot all day long. And so then we got
the next boat back to the next President line back

(01:01:52):
to San Francisco. So when we got back, they were
so mad at this guy David, that they kicked him
out of the band. Okay, they kicked him out of
the band. And so then there's just Roger and Prairie
and and I used to sing his he was the

(01:02:15):
lead singer of the band, David, And so they still
we still practice in our garage in the house on
Oreega and I would go down and sing his parts,
and you know, we just screw around playing singing. And
they tried to find another bass player, and we put
an ad in they hate Ashbury Free Press bass player

(01:02:38):
wanted and we they auditioned all these guys and and
they didn't like it. They were none of them were
good enough to be in the band. And so another band,
Bill Spooner's band, based on our recommendation, they had a
band called the Beans okay, and the and Bill moved

(01:03:01):
his band from Arizona to San Francisco also, and they
they were a four piece band, the Beans. They had
a drummer, keyboard, bass, guitar and uh and the and
they had a manager named Lauren, and Lauren and John
were good friends. And after a while they kind of

(01:03:23):
gave up trying to find the bass player, and John
talked Lauren into letting Roger and Prairie joined Bill's band,
so there would be two drummers, two guitar players, and
and and I talked my I actually talked myself into
being the background singer. And Roger said, yeah, you know,

(01:03:46):
he's a pretty good singer. He's been singing in the
garage with us, and and you know, nobody was getting paid,
so it really didn't mean anything. And uh, there was
not like another mouth to pay. So I became the
background singer for the Bill's band, the Beans, and we
were the Beans, and I didn't we didn't have many gigs,

(01:04:07):
but you know, we we got a few gigs here
and there. And I was the background singer and I'd
sing background vocals and uh, I sang too loud. That's
what they kept saying, Dude, you're the background singer. Okay,
you sing too loud. You're just supposed to blend in.
You're not blending your tooth. And then finally, instead of

(01:04:28):
kicking me out of the band, they said, well, why
don't you sing the lead? Why don't you sing this?
And then you know, we used to we we did
a few cover songs and and I said, you know,
I used to. I used to do this. Uh, when
I was in in elementary school at Loloma, at Scot's

(01:04:49):
the Loloma Elementary School, they would have an assembly where
you would do, uh, you would do you'd perform, you know,
you could do some kind of act and if you
you know, it was a competition. It was like, you know,
the Battle of the Bands, only only there weren't any bands.
And I I one time, uh, I my bit was uh.

(01:05:19):
I would dress up like a soldier and I would
sing this song. I actually lip sing this song called
please Mr Custer. Remember that song? Actually I don't please
Mr Custer. I don't want to go and and in
the song, the guy gets shot by the Indians and

(01:05:40):
he goes and the arrow would come sorry and he
would die. And I would take up a baggie, a
ziplock baggie and put stage blood in it. And when
the art in the song came for the guy to

(01:06:01):
get killed and the arrow, the arrow sound was on
the record, I would slap the baggie and blood would come.
I wear a white shirt and the blood was squirt
out and I would fall and I would die. And
so I said, you know, I have this I could
I could do this cowboy. I have this funny cowboy

(01:06:22):
bit I could do. And that's kind of kind of
we kind of started with the theatrics with that kind
of thing. And I said, and so I would dress
up like a cowboy and I where I'd made these
furrey those hop along Cassidy furrey shaps I made out
of carpet, and I would put wear a white cowboy

(01:06:43):
shirt and put the baggy underneath my shirt with blood
in it. And we used to do this song by
Marty Robbins called El Paso. Remember He'll Passo out in
the West Texas town of the l Passo and anyway,
in the same in the song, the guy gets shot
and he would get shot and then I slapped the

(01:07:04):
bud and the blood would go all over and I
would die, and oh my god. They thought that was
just the greatest thing, and so that's how it started.
And then we started doing, okay, well let's do this
kind of bit, and let's do it. I used to
do Carmen Miranda and we would sing Brazil and I would,

(01:07:25):
you know, Carmen Miranda had a big head dress of fruit,
and so I would make all the heros with a
fake and I would wear platforms and I would put
real fruit on my head and then I would like
eat the grapes as I was singing, and we sang Brazil,
Brazil and in Portuguese. I would sing it in Portuguese,
all Brazil, Brazilio and uh and do carben rent And

(01:07:49):
so we started developing these characters and and uh and
then Quelude and then you know, it's just and then
what the rest is history? I guess. So, how do

(01:08:09):
you get a record deal with A and M? We did.
We started with the traditional method of sending cassettes out,
you know, sending a little cassette out to everybody. We
sent cassettes out there all the couple nothing. We got nothing.
And uh. At that point, we we had met this
guy named Kenny Ortega, and Kenny Ortega was uh. At

(01:08:37):
that point, he was just a he was a dancer
and he he had just come back from a regional
tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, and he was like a
dancer and he wanted to become a choreographer. And he
saw us playing in a little club in San Francisco
and and trying to do this theatrical stuff, and he

(01:08:58):
came to us and he said, you know, uh, I
can I can refine this. I can I can do this.
I can do this. I can help you guys. So
he said okay, and so we brought him on and
I think it was Kenney's idea. Actually, he said, let's
do a Let's do a video of of the of

(01:09:19):
of you doing your theatrics and doing k lude and
doing all these and send the video out. So that's
how we got signed. We sent A and M a
video tape of us performing live and doing lude. And
this guy at A and M. His name was Kip Cohen.
He was A and our guy, and he thought it

(01:09:43):
was great. He went, oh my god, these guys are
so fucking weird and you know, and and they're good,
they can play, and they've got this other whole theatrical
thing going. So they signed us, and uh, and and
was so great. And back when they it was at
the Charlie Chaplin Studios on Libreya and uh, and it's

(01:10:07):
in Herb and Jerry, I mean Herb used just I
mean yeah, Herb used to sit around and it was
kind of like a little enclave. It was like the
parking lot was in the middle and all the buildings
around the outside. It was like at a big square
and uh and Jerry's office and they had the on

(01:10:29):
one side was the recording studio. They had a recording
studio and we'd go there and and Herb was just
Herb had his own office and he just sat there
and played his horn all day long. So it's just
her played his horn. And we were you know, if
we went to do like do an interview or do
or record in their studio or paint we painted flying

(01:10:52):
records on the side of the wall and you know,
just to get get a little extra money. And it
was great, it was and it was so great. So
how does the name get changed from the Beans to
the Tubes? Good story there? Another band from New Jersey

(01:11:12):
came out with the record on I can't remember what
label was on, but they were called Beans, just Beans, no,
the uh just beads. Uh, and they came out with
an album, and I mean I remember calling the record

(01:11:33):
we had the album, went oh my god, there's somebody
and another band called the Beans. What you know? And
I even called the record company. I said, dude, we're
the Beans. We're in San Francisco, We're the Beans. You
can't beat the Beans anyway. Yeah, well, tough ship. We
published you know that. You're dad. Sorry. So we had

(01:11:53):
to pick a new name, and uh we we we went,
we sat down and went, look, we got to change
the name. Okay, So every every your assignment is to
uh come up with ten names and we're gonna put
them all in a hat and then we're gonna pick

(01:12:15):
out a name and that's going to be it. And
everybody and everybody put in came up the gas Men.
The another was another Larry and Mary. I mean, there
was all kinds of weird names. And uh, Mike Cotton

(01:12:37):
the since actually he wasn't even in the band at
the time. He wasn't. He was a synthesizer player and
uh he had this gear, but he really didn't know
how to use it at that point, and uh, but
he was a friend and he was from Arizona and
he was living with us and helping, and so he
put in, uh, tubes, rods and bulbs, tubes, rods and bulbs,

(01:13:06):
and which which are different kinds of cells of the eyeball. Okay,
and he thought, this is perfectly. We're a visual so
why not, you know, have a name that refers to
some kind of visual reference. And but what happened was

(01:13:27):
we we decided to let our dog pick the name.
We had a prairie had a dog named Sandwich. It
was like a ridge back mixed. It's a great dog.
Sandwich was a great dog. And they put mayonnaise on
the slip of paper that said tubes, rods and bulbs,

(01:13:48):
and Sandwich went right for the mayonnaise and picked out tubes,
rods and balls, and we went, okay, tubes, rods and bulbs. Boy,
but it's it's a kind of a tongue twister, you know, tubes,
rods and bulbs, and they're gonna end up shortening it
to like TRB or something. So he said, let's just
make it the tubes. You know, the tubes, and it's

(01:14:10):
you know, the boob tube and you know cathode ray tube,
laser tubes, fallopian tubes. We tried. We were at one
point we're going to, well, let's make it the like
a real reference, a TV reference because we're visual, and

(01:14:31):
we'll make it the boob tubes, and nah, boobs. That's
not gonna work. You can't just say boobs in your band.
So we just shortened the tubes. Okay, how do you
end up working with Al Cooper on the first album?
It was a record company's choice. Al was just, you know,
l was you know, I really didn't understand, you know why,

(01:14:55):
but they thought we were kind of bluesy and he
was a blues guy and I don't I don't know,
but you know, he was. He was. He was a
piece of work. I'll tell you. Al was great. And
uh uh uh he actually and we had and we

(01:15:15):
we went through all the songs and we finally picked
the songs that we were going to be on the record.
Al wanted to, you know, when we had this one song,
white Books on Dope, and Al said, you know, there's
a long there was a long instrumental part. And we
also had this other song called Mala Gania salar Rosa,
which is a you know, a Mexican song and we

(01:15:38):
kind of actually we there was a band at in
Japan at the Mexican Pavilion, and they were incredible mariachi
band and they played we got that song, but we
recorded them playing Mala Gania salar Rosa and we made
our own version of it. And actually that came from Japan.

(01:15:59):
But Alt wanted to stick that in the middle of
White Punks. He said, as we fade down and before
we come back up, we'll go right to malan and
stick it in the no al. No, we can't, so
we didn't. Anyway, we didn't do that. And but we

(01:16:19):
were at the we were at Sunset Sound back when
it was on Third Street, and and when we were
doing White Punks on Dope, we wanted, you know, we
wanted a big uh. We wanted a big group to

(01:16:39):
sing the big chorus White Punks on Dope. And so
we went down there was another band UH playing down
the hall and and we didn't know who they were,
and we just said, can you guys come and help us,
and can you all sing this big chorus with us
and white so Dope? Yeah, sure? Coming out. What turns

(01:17:02):
out it was the Eagles, and but they wouldn't let
us put their name on the record, and they said, oh,
we can't do that because that's you know, that's okay.
So the album comes out or is the band happy
with the album? I wasn't happy. I mean I I
loved you know, I was so thrilled to be to
make it, actually make our first record. I mean, I

(01:17:23):
was overjoyed. I was so thrilled and as was everyone
we you know, it was really a lot of fun
and uh, but we had created this song what do
you Want from Life? And they the record company said,
well this, I think this is the first single, what
do you Want from Life? And uh, uh, you know,

(01:17:49):
and it has the the kind of the the end
part when you know, if you're an American citizen, you're
entitled to He didn't get in his shape goal of
microwave eleven, don't watch the cood diet to jam, I'll
personally illustrate in the privacy, on on and on and
on and on. How about a new car? You know,

(01:18:09):
Winnibego heard of winnebegos word giving him away and that
was from cal Worthington, And uh, cal Worthington used to
be in Arizona. Before California, and we had all these
references to well they cut the first what the first
thing they did was cut all that out and edited

(01:18:30):
the song without that. They went, oh, well if we
I said, but that's the that's what makes it so
hilarious and unique. And you know they want, yeah, but
you're gonna you'll be you'll be earmarked as a novelty
band if you leave this in soh So they cut

(01:18:50):
it out and it's you know, it didn't really do
anything as a as a first single. Okay, so you
make the record without, which I believe is your best
work and certainly classic some of VAL's best work. The
next record has don't Touch Me there, but it's done
with Ken Scott. But what what was the band's view

(01:19:11):
on the final product there? Kin Scott probably didn't say
ten words the whole time we made that record, you know,
and we made it at at Studio A on the
lot at A and M, and uh, you know, we
we'd go out and and play and we'd come back

(01:19:32):
in and okay, how was it Kennon. Ken would just
sit there and to kind of go wasn't perfect and
that's it and nothing else, and you know he was
I guess a brilliant engineer, you know, and you know, Okay,
well let's go back out and do it again. And

(01:19:53):
but Don't Touch Me There actually charted. That was our
first our first charted single, uh and uh, which actually
was not written by us. It was written by Jane
Jane Dornacker, who was one of the two bets, and

(01:20:14):
a guy named Ron Nagel. And uh, you know, we
were thrilled. I mean, we gotta we were. We made
the top forty, you know, so uh and that was
that song was a great visually, really great. We we
used to uh, we'd go into a town and we uh,

(01:20:38):
we'd get somebody to loan us there Harley Davidson, Harley
Davidson motorcycle because we we used to do this. It
was like a you know, the bad boy Marlon Brando
from the Wild One and the Girl and we do
the song on a motorcycle and I would ride the
thing onto the stage, you know, and rev it up

(01:21:01):
and get smoked, you know, really loud, and and then
we would sing don't touch Me there and uh and uh.
And the funny thing was with I mean, the bit
with the song was the there was her knee, you know,
and I would be trying to touch her knee and no, no, no,

(01:21:23):
no to as a preparoity. And so you know we
used to every time we you know, and for a while,
I mean for a while, we uh uh we had
a we had Well, eventually they wouldn't let us bring

(01:21:43):
a combustible Indian engine machine into the gig, into the venue.
You couldn't bring a motorcycle on stage, you know, to
fire hazard. So we would we kind of built this
fake motorcycle out of a frame and tin cans and
ship and we would have Mike on his our synthesizer

(01:22:09):
fake the noise of a of a of an engine
and uh so that was you know, okay, And how
did re Styles end up in the band doing that
duet with you? Well, really was a prairieous girlfriend, okay.
And she was gorgeous, and you know she was not shy, okay,

(01:22:31):
she was willing to you know, show her breasts and
and just she kind of started as a you know, uh,
she started as just one of the dancers. You know,
we had five dancers. We had Leland and the Snakes.
We had Leland, this this this troop of of uh

(01:22:53):
of four girls that we found in a little club
on Polk Street in San Francisco, and we would they
were the dancers, and so Kenny would choreograph them and
they would and then we would do kind of special stuff.
She would do bondage with me and she would do
she would play various parts like the other girls did,

(01:23:14):
and and then we kind of realized, you know, she's
a pretty good singer, and so we started having she
kind of worked her way into being a featured vocalist
with us. So how does Mingo Lewis end up in
the band Mingo Lewis, Well, he was a drummer friend

(01:23:37):
of Prairies, you know in San Francisco, and uh, you know,
he started, you know, he said, oh just let me,
you know, let me sit in with you guys, and
and he would bring his congas and he was just incredible.
I mean, I'm sure he still is. Uh. And he
would play his congas and said, oh god dude, and

(01:23:59):
uh oh. We always loved the idea of two drummers
when we first when we first joined Bill's band, we
had two drummers. There was Bill had a drummer named
Bob McIntosh and and Prairie and Bob would play together,
and Bob was like the really solid, you know, really

(01:24:23):
solid guy, and Prairie was the flourish, you know, ad
lib kind of guy. And they really were great together.
And Bob unfortunately died of cancer in before we ever
got a deal, in I think seventy two. He got
limph node cancer and it just killed him and it

(01:24:46):
was really sad. And so we always kind of liked
the idea of two drummers. And then so when Mingo started,
you know, we said, Okay, that's great, let's go back
to two drummers. And then we did a couple of
tours with him, and uh, he wrote that song god
Bird Change on the third album, and and we you know,

(01:25:07):
we carried two drummers, and he was I was incredible.
He's a great, great player. But you made him a
full member of the band. Okay, the next album, you
end up doing a cover of Captain beef Hearts, My
Head is My Only House and Less It Rains from
Clear Spot, his most commercial work at that point, most successible.

(01:25:28):
How did you end up doing that? How did you
end up meeting beef Heart? We were huge beef Heart fans,
I mean that he was in it. I mean, we
loved beef Heart. We you know, we had seen him
quite a number of times in San Francisco his band play,
and you know Zappa too. We were big Zappa fans.
We loved Frank Zappa and saw Mothers of inventioned quite

(01:25:49):
a few times. And uh, you know, we were just
we We found out that beef Art lived out in Lancaster,
and we ahold of him. You know, we had seen
him a number of times, and we got ahold of
him and we asked he also played his his horn
on Cathy's Clone on that album, and uh, and we

(01:26:13):
told him, yeah, we're gonna do We're gonna do one
of your songs. My head is my only house and
h and we got him into the studio and uh
and let him just I mean, we just said, here's
the song. Just go just freak out, you know. And uh,
he was such a cool guy. I mean, and how strange,

(01:26:36):
how strange was he in real life? He wasn't that strange.
I don't, I don't, you know, he wasn't that strange.
He was a pretty normal guy. I mean, he wasn't
into drugs or anything like that, or alcohol and We
had a fine recording session with him. It was not
a problem. And he was great on his soprano sas
you know on that song Gosh, I think he did

(01:26:57):
it and just one or two takes, you know, he
was so good. And at that point, uh, I don't
know if he was still performing with his band at
that point, but we used to see remember the drummer
drumbo or would would would do a solo with just
his hands. He'd break, he'd throw his sticks down and

(01:27:17):
just start playing this kid with his hands. And and
then and Zorn Rollo would you know, had a a
toaster he had turned into a hat. And oh god,
they I mean they were theatrical. I mean we loved that.
We loved the theater. Anybody theatrical. I mean Alice. I

(01:27:38):
mean we've played with Alice many many times and I
were you know, I've I've I've done his charity's he's
he's a good guy, Alice Is. He has a great
charity foundation in Arizona, the Solid Rock Foundation. And we've
done his Christmas show, and we've in his golf tournament

(01:28:01):
in April, and we've toured with him. And I think
eighteen that we went to the UK with him and
opened for him in big in Wembley. We played Wembley
Arena and all these big thirty thousand theaters with him
and have played a lot of gigs with him over
the years. You know, Shef is Sheep is a good guy.

(01:28:23):
His manager, Chef Gordon, is a good guy. And uh so,
I mean we were always kind of drawn to those
kinds of people, those kind of theat you know, the
Genesis in the early days that would do a visual
type of performance or the plasmatics. Remember Wendy O Williams.
I saw him at the Whiskey, right. Really, I knew

(01:28:45):
Wendy and I always used to kid her because she
she I said, Wendy, you stole my chainsaw bit, right,
you know, I was my bit. And I gotta ask
you because I remember, you know, seeing you at the
Rocks before the album came out. Yeah, and you had
a printed list of the songs and one of them
was rock and Roll Hospital. I believe it was the

(01:29:06):
name of the song. You ran through the audience with
this chainsaw and then said, oh, we're to have to operate.
Whatever happened to that song, well, it never got recorded,
It never got recorded. Rock and Roll Hospital never got
recorded where I would come out as the doctor and
and you know the with the chainsaw stabbing through a

(01:29:27):
table with the and it was a guitar. It was
a pregnant guitar, and then I would pull out the
little baby guitar and ah, I and I and I
don't know, I don't know. We we every was in
a while. We think about, well, I mean, we've brought
it back two or three times over the years and
done it just you know, as a as a show piece.

(01:29:50):
But it never never got recorded. It never got recorded.
So how did you end up working with Todd? Like
you knows as you probably it was Prairie, Prairie New Todd,
and Prairie still plays with Todd. He just went out

(01:30:12):
with him last year. We have to we have to
book way ahead of time in order to get to
book Prairie so that Todd doesn't scoop him up. Uh uh,
But Todd, we I don't know how. I guess I'm
sure I guess it was through Prairie that we met him. Uh.
But that out with the first album we did with him,

(01:30:34):
Remote Control, was I think, I mean it was, you know,
I always I don't. Uh. You know the phrase can't
beat the demo right where you make this great demo

(01:30:54):
and you take it into the studio and then you
can't you know, you try this, and you try that,
and you try and you try fifteen different ways of
of making it better and then and then none of
them work, and then you end up going back to
the demo again. And I've always thought that. Uh. The

(01:31:16):
thing I love about Remote Control is uh, uh we
had no time to second guess ourselves. You know, we
had a we you know, every year we used to
uh we used to make a record in December January
February because the tour would always like started April or

(01:31:41):
March or April, and we would tour all year long
in the United States or go to Europe or go wherever.
But we tour constantly from like April to the end
of the year. Uh So we had a short window
of time two create a new record. And we did
this like over and over and you know whatever, twelve times,

(01:32:04):
and so we had a we had only a month
I think the month of January in that year that
that we did Remote Control, which was I think seventy nine,
and uh, we didn't have any you know, and you know,
after the first two or three albums, you kind of

(01:32:25):
run out of songs, you know that you've created all
those years before you got the record deal, right, So
we didn't have any songs, really, and I had I had, uh, Uh,
I'd read this book. I'm a veracious, voracious reader, and
I had read this book by Jersey Kosinski. And I

(01:32:48):
read all of his books. The Painted Bird was a
great book. And uh one of his books was called
Being There, Okay, And so I had read this book
all Being There about the about the rich kid who
was put in a you know, a boarding school or

(01:33:08):
or daycare and never got to do anything. It was
all he did was watch TV and he had no
real experience of life. It was all virtual experience. And
so I had this idea, and I approached Todd with
I said, you know this. We grew up in Arizona,

(01:33:29):
the band, and we watched TV all day long because
you know, it was a hundred and fifty in this summer,
it was a hundred twenty degrees outside, so you were
you know a lot of time was spent watching TV.
And that's why I you know, watching all those Westerns
Cereals series on TV. And it's kind of where I

(01:33:53):
kind of got the idea that I wanted to be
a cowboy so bad. And I said, let's let's you.
I figured this book is obscure. Nobody has ever heard
of this book. And I'm gonna I'm gonna take this
idea and turn it into remote control with Todd. And
you know about the idea of the kid who just

(01:34:13):
has no real experience. It's all virtual experience. He doesn't
know anything. He doesn't know about love, he doesn't know
about feeling, he doesn't know about anything. It's all TV.
And so, uh we had we had some musical material
and uh so Todd said, he goes, Okay, this is

(01:34:37):
what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're gonna show up
the studio every day and then in the morning, we're
gonna write the lyrics to a song, and then we're
gonna take a lunch break, and then we're gonna come
back and then we're gonna figure out the music and
record the song in the afternoon, and then we're gonna
put on the vocals at night, and by the end

(01:34:59):
of the day we'll have a whole song. And so
that's what we did. We would go in and we'd
all sit down together, all of us, seven of us
with Todd, and say, okay, what's the what do you
what's the first thing you do? Well, turn me on?
Turn it you turn it on? Right, Okay, first song

(01:35:19):
is going to be called turned me On. And so
we'd sit there and we'd all brainstorm turned me on,
turned me onto. And then in the afternoon we go
do the music and then we put the vocals on.
Then the next day we command and tell you now
what okay, uh, TV is King, We love TV. Okay,
TV is Kate. That's the next song. So and we

(01:35:40):
did that for the whole record. And but like I said,
we didn't have any time to go back and second
guess ourselves and go, oh no, well this could be
a little bit better. And though if we do a
little you know, echo on this or delay on this
or that, are just no. Just go with your gut,

(01:36:05):
go with your instinct, go with your first impression and
do it. And then you can't change it because you
don't have the time or the money because the tour
is coming up and the record's got to be released.
So that it all works That's why I kind of
love that album. And uh, you know you're going in
the wrong direction commercially with A and M. Right then

(01:36:28):
you get dropped, right, ultimately picked up by Capital. You
know what was going through the heads of the band
when you're having you know, less and less commercial success
and then you're dropped And how do you get a
deal with Capital? You know? Give us the background on that. Okay,
our live performance just I mean it was always art

(01:36:49):
for art's sake. I mean, you know we're gonna go
out and do a show that it's going to blow
your mind. We're gonna spend money. We don't care if
we're in debt. We don't care. It's all about the show.
It's about the art. And we really were worried about
you know, every every time we did a record for
A and M, they would give us an advance. You know,

(01:37:12):
back then it was peanut money. It was like a
hundred grand or something, and we never recouped. We never
made enough sold enough records to pay off the advance
to make it. But we didn't care because we had
a show that blew people's minds. I mean, we created
a leg a visually, a visual performance legacy that's pretty

(01:37:33):
much unmatched by anyone, I think. But so you know,
we would go out on the road and we would
I mean one whole one time for the completion backward principle.
I mean, we built a set that was all around.
So you can't pack round stuff in a truck very efficiently,

(01:37:58):
you know, so you have to get an another chart.
Oh we don't care. Fuck it, we don't care. It's
so what So, I mean a couple of times, you know,
we ran out of money out on the road and
the manager had to call up A and M and go, hey,
look they're out of you know, they're promoting your record.
They're on the road, they're out of money. We need
to send us some money. So they would send the

(01:38:19):
money and add it to the tab, you know. And
so finally that got to be, you know, as you say,
that got to be. You know, we ended up leaving
ANM just massively in the red. And we you know,
we gave him publishing, we gave him everything. We could
just keep doing the show. It was about the show.

(01:38:41):
And uh so when we went to I mean and
then and then so they dropped us, and so then
we uh looked every high and low for another company.
And we met this guy at uh Capitol who who

(01:39:02):
uh was? His name was Bobby Columbi. He was an
A and R guy, okay, but he was a drummer.
He used to be in Blood, Sweat and Tears, right
and still owns the name right. Bobby loved Prairie Prince.
He just thought, oh my god, this guy is so so.

(01:39:23):
Bobby Columbia as an an our guy at at Capitol,
convinced them to give us a deal. He gave. They
gave us a three record deal, but each record was
based on the performance of the record before it. They said,
if the first record does nothing, you're not going to

(01:39:45):
get another record the second ring, you know. So anyway,
and and Bobby had this guy David Foster, okay, and
David Foster, and he thought, oh god, you know well,
I mean, the only thing we knew about David Foster

(01:40:05):
was he just did Boogie Wonderland. Okay, that was the
record before us Earth Wind and Fire, Boogie Wonderland. He
had a number one song after the Love Has Gone Okay,
And we were very skeptical. Okay, we went on and
Bobby was saying, when you guys gotta get on the radio.

(01:40:25):
You gotta sell records. You've got it. In order to
get a second record here, you've got to make a name.
You've got to do something commercially. Oh god, we're just
going on, man. And then so David Foster came up
to San Francisco and uh to meet with us and

(01:40:46):
you know, to kind of check out our songs and stuff.
And and I mean, I mean, the guys, guys unbelievable. Okay.
He is a brilliant posician, a brilliant arranger. I mean,
he came up and we said, okay. He goes, okay,

(01:41:07):
we'll play me some songs. I said, okay, well okay,
So we played him this song Amnesia, and he goes, well, okay,
and then he sat down on the piano and he
kind of, you know that, he goes, what if you
kind of did a modulation here and kind of a
big kind of put in this kind of oo part
and kind of and we were just oh, you know he,

(01:41:34):
I mean, he just floored us. He floored us with
his brilliance and we just went, wow, man, this guy,
this guy, this is amazing, you know. And and like
like he said, what about ballads? You know, you have
any ballads. He went, well, you know, we did a

(01:41:57):
ballot on the last record, and you know, it wasn't
a single. And because you know, the company's looking for
a ballad, they're looking for a ballad to be the
first single, because ballads are happening, you know, it's everybody
has got a big rock ballad coming out. Journey R
e O. I mean, all these bands were having huge

(01:42:20):
success with ballots, and we just kind of went, well,
you know, but Vince, our keyboard player, Vince well Nick,
uh he said, well, you know, I have this kind
of progression I've been working on, and so he started playing, Uh,

(01:42:40):
I don't want to wait anymore for David, and David
went wow. And then you know, David sits down and
go again and then and then you put a modulation
and then the big finish and then the chorus out
and the you know, payoff, and and he said, man,

(01:43:00):
this is it, this will this will work. And I
had written the lyrics to it. Uh, he goes, let
me hear the lyrics. I wrote game the lyrics because man,
this is this is what they're looking for, this is
what Capital is looking for a ballad like this. And
so we just kind of went this, Okay, you know,

(01:43:22):
this guy is incredible. Okay, let's we're good with this. Okay,
let's do it. We're good with this. And uh at
the time, we had a manager. His name was Ricky Farr,
and Ricky Farr was a Welshman who had a big
Sounded Lights company. Uh and he used to do the

(01:43:44):
the the Sounding Lights touring for big you know, Rod
Stewart and Stevie Wonder and just you know, he was
a big time company and he had never managed the
band before. And he was the one that first took
us to England. He goes, you guys, with your kind
of sarcasm and your parody, they're gonna love you in

(01:44:06):
the UK. So he took us right away. That the
first thing he did was take us to England and
uh and that was a really smart move. I mean,
we are huge in England and are in the UK,
and so uh, you know, we just we we we

(01:44:28):
we went for it right away. We went for David
Foster and uh and we did that. We did, you know,
I actually uh uh we we you know, we got
towards the end of the recording of the record and
when we still had weird songs. We still had, you know,

(01:44:48):
Mr Hate and Attack of the fifty foot Woman. And
you know it wasn't like you know, it wasn't like
it was all so commercial, and so you know, we
wanted to maintain our weirdness and uh and we got
to the end of the project and he goes, well,
you know, we we I know they want to release

(01:45:11):
a ballad, but uh uh they all they want that.
We need a rock song. We need an A O
R kind of rock song. And we played you know,
he goes, I don't hear it. I don't. I don't
you haven't played it. You don't have that. And so
he was the one that said, you know, I have
a friend, this this studio musician guy who's in a

(01:45:35):
band called Toto. His name is Steve Luca Fur. And
he goes, how about if we meet you and I
and Steve meet and we try to come up with
a rock song. And so we did, and we met
early one morning out in the valley here and and
Steve came up with talked to you later in about

(01:45:56):
ten seconds, and I mean, the guy is brilliant, and
and so you know, we we we recorded talked to
you later and uh, and he's it's okay. I mean
that's what we got it, you know. And I think
you know that I told you before we were doing

(01:46:17):
Completion Backward Principle. I think Completion Backward Principle was our
greatest record. Uh. I mean I love the first album,
but we've been doing Completion Backward live, uh, the whole album,
like top to bottom, starting well, talk to you later,

(01:46:38):
and right on through the whole album, and it's really
gotten a great response. And I love those songs. I
love Amnesia and I love Mr Hayde. I completely go mental.
I mean I I could be a X murderer if
with the straight I love it. I love that. I mean,

(01:47:00):
I love the I love you know, I do these
characters and I lose myself, you know, I just completely
lose myself in the character and in the and I
sometimes I get a little out of control. But uh,
you know it's so great to be able to do that,

(01:47:21):
to have the venue, to be able to do that.
You know. So you make that record, you have a
certain amount of success, then you team up together and
you even have more success. So tell me about outside inside.
You know, we had we had great success, as you say,
and we get ready to do the next record, and
and Faz says, you know, let's let's try it again

(01:47:44):
with you and Luke and I, let's try it again.
And so we got together and we wrote She's Beauty
in about ten minutes, and I mean, once again, Luke's
just you know, crazy, crazy good and uh uh we
had a great time recording that record, and and and

(01:48:06):
you know we would it would have been even a
bigger selling record if it hadn't been for this guy
named Val Garay who was the manager of Martha Davis.
And I had known Martha for a long time, and
we wanted to do we wanted to do a duet
on the record, and and so we we picked this

(01:48:27):
song mony Monkey Time, Curtis Mayfield song, and Martha came
in and we did a duet on Monkey Time, and
uh it was I mean, Fause just said, Okay, this
is great. This is gonna be the second single after
She's a Beauty. And but then when we get ready,

(01:48:49):
you know, She's a Beauty is a big hit, goes
to number two. H h yeah, that's you know, I mean,
I so wanted to number one record, but I mean
it was so good for us and so great and
and uh and you know it's still people go crazy

(01:49:14):
when we played that song, and so we're ready to
follow it up with the second song, second single, Monkey Time.
And her manager, the manager of the Motels, this guy says, no,
you can't release this. Uh, this is We've got a
Motel's record coming out in about six months, and this

(01:49:35):
is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt that it's gonna hurt
the sales of this record. And everybody flipped out. Okay,
I mean at this time, at this point we had uh.
We were with the management company Fitzgerald Hartley and they
also managed Total and Mark and Larry. You know, we

(01:49:57):
went to the record company. No, no, no, this is
only going to help you. This is gonna help your
Motels record. No now and Motels were also on Capitol uh,
and he and jumped at it. He went to the
record company and said, you can't put this out. I
refused to let you. I'm gonna jumped it. I'm gonna

(01:50:21):
sue you, I'm gonna uh and I everyone was just flabbergasted.
We couldn't understand it. And and he did it, and
we couldn't release it. We had to go. You know.
We fought it for you know, I don't know a
long time, and finally we realized, now they're not going
to do it. You've gotta if you want to do it,

(01:50:42):
you have to rerecorded. You have to peel out her
vocal and re recorded. And so we went back in
the studio and we replaced her vocal with h one
of our one of our dances at the time, Michelle
Gray her name is who ends who is now Todd's wife,

(01:51:04):
and and she did a wonderful job. It sounded great.
But it was six months later. The whole month everything
was gone, momentum gone, you know, and so it never happened.
It never it never charted, and you know, the momentum
of the record. That was it. The record was done. Okay,

(01:51:36):
So after all that success with Foster, how do you
decide to then work with Todd Agan, which ultimately kills
the band. I was hoping you wouldn't ask that, But
I don't know how to see this, but I think
it was for the best. As I look back in retrospect,
I think it was time for me to move on.

(01:51:59):
But of course I didn't know that then, did I? Uh,
And everybody flipped out. What happened was David came. You know,
David was booked to the third album, and uh, David
came and sat down with the band and he goes, Okay, look,
we had great success with talk to You Later, even

(01:52:22):
more success with She's a Beauty. So what I want
to do is I want to right four songs with
Fee and Luke and I like we did on talk
to You Later and She's a beauty. And so that

(01:52:42):
way I've got I've got a first, second, and third
and fourth single and you know, one of you know,
a couple of them bound to work, and it's gonna
be you know, it's gonna be huge. It's gonna be
a big, massive record. And uh. And on the B side,

(01:53:05):
you guys can do whatever you want. You can produce it,
you can write it, you can do any songs you want.
You can. I don't care. You can do whatever you want,
and I will let you do whatever you want. And
all I want is side. That was what he proposed

(01:53:25):
to the band, and everyone everyone said and so and
the band said, you know, I don't we don't want
to do that. No, we're a band. You can't tell
us what to do. We're a band. And I was
the only one going, man, guys, you gotta just you know,

(01:53:50):
don't don't, don't let your pride fault, you know, kill
us here. It's it's okay, you know, it'll be okay.
And now they wouldn't do it. I don't know. In retrospect,
I understand, you know, it's they their pride was hurt.
They felt, you know, we're a band, you can't tell
us what to do. Uh And and also they were,

(01:54:15):
you know, they were I think a little miffed that
the two hits that we had we had were written
by me and Steve and David and uh. So they said, no,
we're not going to do it. And the management said,
don't do this. The record company said don't do this.
I said, don't do this, the agency said don't do

(01:54:38):
everyone said don't do this. And they went, no, we're
doing that's what we're doing. And so they got Todd
back on the phone and they said, you know, and
they made and I I I was devastated. I have

(01:54:58):
to say. I went to l A and I said,
I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I made
a record. I made I made my first solo record,
uh with David Foster, because he was there sitting there available,
and I talked the record company into letting me use
him for a solo album, and they said okay, and
then the band went ahead without me in San Francisco

(01:55:20):
and made a record with Todd and and I came
back and you know, I got my record done, and
I came back to San Francisco and they went, well,
you know, our records almost done, and you know, you
can We've got a couple of songs that you can
sing if you want. And you know, up until that point,
I had pretty much sung every record, every song on

(01:55:41):
the record, and so I was pretty much crushed. And
I sang a couple of you know, I brought them
one song, uh that I didn't use on my solo record,
piece by piece, and we recorded that and then I
sang I did another song that I wrote about Marlo
Brando Stella I've written. I loved Marlon Brando, He's the

(01:56:05):
best I've I've written a whole bunch of songs over
the years about Marlin and Brando. I could have been
somebody about the you know, on the waterfront, and I
wrote Stella from street Car named Desire, and uh so, anyway,
I ended up doing just three songs on the record,

(01:56:28):
and it didn't do well. As you know, it didn't
do well. And I at and we without and did
the tour, and the tour didn't do well, and everything
kind of crumbled around us. The management said, well, you know,

(01:56:50):
we're gonna have to release you guys, because this is
a huge mistake. And then you know, the record company
pretty much released us the day the tour began. So
you know, the tour starts at April one, and on
on March one, they release us. And so we go

(01:57:10):
out and we have all this national tour book. We've
got no record company support, no A and R guys,
no promotion, no record play, no radio play, I mean nothing,
we got nothing. So it didn't go well. And so
I got back. We got back and uh I just went,

(01:57:33):
you know, we we the management had left us. I mean,
I was so discouraged and so uh and I thought,
you know, well, I guess this is this is this
is this could be great. I've gotta I've gotta, I've
got to start my own life. You know, I had
been you know, we had been a seven man band

(01:57:57):
for at that point, we had been a seven man
band for about fifteen years, and we did everything together.
We split everything evenly. We were a bunch of hippies. Okay,
we're a bunch of hippies. And whatever it was, everybody
decided together. We did it all together. It was all together.

(01:58:18):
And I just thought, you know, it's time to grow up.
It's time to be a man and grow up and
and take responsibility for yourself. And so I said, okay, guys,
you know, I'm gonna leave the band. I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna I'm gonna leave town. Pretty much. I had

(01:58:40):
to leave town, and so I did. So I just
packed up and I got my car and I drove
to l A. And I had a girl. I had
a girlfriend at a time at the time that I
was living that was living in l A. And her
her parents owned some apartment buildings in l A. So

(01:59:05):
they gave me an apartment, you know, really cheap, because
I didn't have any money, and you know, we spend
everything on the show, and I didn't have much money,
and so they gave me a cheap apartment. And I
moved here, and and I, you know, I I just
I just you know that. And you know what happened

(01:59:26):
was I started writing songs with Richard Marks, and I thought,
you know, and I just had blind faith. I just said, well,
you know, I gotta I've gotta make my own life.
You know, I've been I've been a part of a
group for so long, and I've got a stand up
for myself and I've got to you know, I've got

(01:59:47):
to get my ship together. And I and you know,
I had known Richard and and I think at the
time we had maybe written a couple of songs together.
I think we wrote had written that Vixen hit. You know,
I've been living on the edge of a Broken Heart,
and we had a big hit with that. And so

(02:00:10):
I said, I said, let's write. He said, I want
to be. This was before he had a record deal,
before he had just at the at that point, he
was just a songwriter and had written songs for a
lot of other people, Kidney Rogers and and uh a
lot of people, and so he said, I want to
be I want to be an artist. I want to perform.

(02:00:33):
So he got a deal at Manhattan subsidiary of Capital,
and he said, let's write some songs from my record,
and I said, okay, great, so we did so I
think we wrote. I wrote four songs for him on
his first record, and you know, he's he is a

(02:00:58):
big hit for record sold three million elbows, I think,
and uh and uh, and then we you know, the
next record, and I wrote more songs with him on
the next record and the next record and the next record,
and and I just, you know, I thought to myself,
you know, this is this is this is the right

(02:01:19):
thing to do, you know, I I I you know
that the way things happened wasn't great, but it was
good for me because I stood up and and you know,
I was a man. I stood up and said, Okay,
I'm good. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna lead my own path,

(02:01:41):
you know, lead my own way. So how did you
meet Roger Richard Marks? I met him. He wrote a
song for in in eighty three. He wrote a song
for Lionel Ritchie and he came to l A to
see him recorded. He got at eighteen years old. He
placed the song when Lionel the Guy's brilliant Okay. His

(02:02:02):
dad was a jingle writer in Chicago. He wrote the
double Mint Gum jing Built. He wrote my dog's better
than your dog, my kennel ration. He wrote all these singles,
so Richard, and he was the keyboard He was a
jazz keyboard player. Dick his name was Dick Marks. He

(02:02:24):
was an incredible guy, really great, and he taught Richard,
you know, music theory and keyboards and writing stuff. I mean. Anyway,
Richard came UH to l A and he wanted to
meet David Foster, and he knew about him, and he

(02:02:46):
asked Lionel, and David's goes, yeah, he's doing the tubes
down the street at Lion's Share uh and and Lionel
set it up where he could Richard could come to
the studio and just watch and and he did. He
showed him one day when we were in the studio recording,

(02:03:06):
and you know, he's just sitting back there. And at
the end of the session he goes, he had no
he knew of me, and he said, Hi, I'm Richard Marks.
He introduced himself and he said, you know, I think
your lyrics are really interesting. Would you write a song
with me? I said, I don't know who. He goes,

(02:03:30):
I'm just a kid from Chicago, and I said, well, okay, okay,
no problem, Let's write a song. And so I did.
We wrote a song. We wrote a song called who
Loves Your Baby, which was the tagline from ko Jack
and which is I put on my first solo record,

(02:03:51):
who Loves Your Baby. And you know, we just kind
of clicked. We just we couldn't be more different. Okay,
we couldn't be are different people. Uh you know, he
but it's just something. I'm the godfather to his sons.
He has got three beautiful sons who are very very

(02:04:11):
talented musicians, and uh, you know, I've just like I said,
for like thirty thirty eight forty years, we've been best friends.
And we still right together all the time. And I
know his son's very well. And uh he lives out here.
He lived in Chicago for years and years and then

(02:04:31):
he divorced his wife and moved recently moved to l
A And uh so we see each other a lot,
and you know, and over the years we've been we've
been working on this record on the my my solo
record of the fee Wave, the Rights Again record. We
started making this record gosh in two thousand thirteen, for

(02:04:53):
like seven years ago, we started making it. The main
the first song I used to go every summer when
he lived in Chicago. I used to go to Chicago
every summer. And his parents had a cabin in Manaqua, Wisconsin,
way up in northern Wisconsin. And we would go with

(02:05:14):
the boys on a boys trip to Wisconsin. And we
drive up there and spend a week at the cabin
and go fishing, and we go first BacT riding, and
we go go kart you know, just have a great time.
And so that summer the boys were getting older, and
the summer of two thousand thirteen, I went up there

(02:05:34):
and I said, well, look and we've done another boys trips.
We went whitewater rafting and with in Wyoming and we
do all some all some kind of a boy's trip
and we went. I went up to the summer and
the boy said, you know, we'd want ago. We want
to hang like hang out with our girlfriends and go
to the movies. We don't want to do a boys trip.

(02:05:57):
I came all the way from Okay, and so Richard said,
and he had a studio at his house, and he said, well,
let's go write a song and let's do and then
he said, let's do a solo record for you yes,
about time he had he hadn't done one since and
which he helped me with also, And so we went

(02:06:19):
to the studio and we wrote, Uh, we wrote four
songs Fake the four songs on the record, Faker we wrote.
Faker was the first song we wrote. And and uh,
and then you know, I got busy, He got busy.
I went on the road. He went on the road,
and you know, it just years and years kept going by,

(02:06:42):
and we we never got, you know, back around to
it until until the summer of two thousand nineteen. He
just he had he was here in California and he goes,
let's do it. It's been too long. It's been five
years since we started. Let's go back and finish it.

(02:07:02):
So we did. So we went back to the studio
and we finished the record. And I'm really proud of it.
And uh, like I said, at the beginning, we were,
you know, he goes, let's do some gigs. Okay, I'll, I'll,
I'll give you my band, okay, and we'll do gigs.

(02:07:23):
And we had it all planned for the for May
of because I you know, I've got the whole month off,
I'm not touring, and well, and we'll do some gigs,
and of course COVID killed it in and then and
then as we thought the whole pandemic was was fading away,

(02:07:45):
we planned, we booked more dates for January of this year,
and and then the whole thing got killed again. So
how did you get back together with the Tubes? I
left the band in like eighty seven something like that
and moved to l A and pretty much had no
contact with them. They went on for a while. It's funny.

(02:08:09):
They they called up the guy the bass player they
had fired, you know, years ago, and and said, you know,
we lost our lead singer. You want to come back
in the band. So he came back, and they went
out for a while as the Tubes without me, and
had this guy as the lead singer. But he he

(02:08:32):
had been in Hawaii smoking pot for twenty five years
and he had no voice. He couldn't sing it. He
couldn't sing, he couldn't hit the high notes, he couldn't
sing She's a beauty. And so they did not go well,
and you know, and finally they gave up and they said, Okay,
that's it, We're done. And then they hadn't worked for

(02:08:54):
a while, and uh, and then I told you we were.
We were popular in Europe. Uh. We had done some
big during the heyday in like in like Uh we
went there first time in seven and then we went

(02:09:15):
back in se you know we we So anyway, a
promoter from Germany, his name was Henning Turgel contacted the
band and said, ah, you guys haven't been here for
a while. You know, we hadn't been there since three

(02:09:37):
This was He said, I am going to offer you
a six show tour of Western Europe and the UK. Uh,
but only if fees in the band. That's the deal.

(02:10:00):
M And so they called me up and they said,
we have this offer, you know. And and I, you know,
I was very skeptical and uh, I said, well you
know what what what is? You know, what's happening with

(02:10:22):
the band? He went, well, you know, Uh, Bill was
not in the band anymore because, like I said, drugs
and Mike the synthesizer. He he left the band when
I left. He moved to New York City and he's
done very well as a graphic designer. And UH and

(02:10:45):
the keyboard player Vince audition for The Grateful Dead in
UH when there other keyboard player died and he got
the gig. So Vince is in The Grateful Dead, Mike's
gone bills battling addiction, and they've got another keyboard player.

(02:11:09):
So there are a four man band with a different
keyboard player. And they said, this is the story, and
nobody's nobody's everyone's grown up. You know, we're not doing
drugs anymore. You know, I thought them for years, I
was the only guy that didn't do drugs. I was
the only guy. And it was really difficult, you know,
to go into a city and and all they thought

(02:11:30):
about who's the coke dealer, you know, and and they said, no,
we're all we've all grown up. We're not doing it.
We're all straight. I said, really, yeah, And okay, I said, okay,
So we did it. So I I went back to
the band and we did this sixty show tour in

(02:11:51):
in in the spring of and and I had so
much fun that I just I said, okay, well, let's
keep doing this. And so here we are, gosh, thirty
years later, almost in almost fifty years from the beginning.

(02:12:14):
So Fee, thanks so much for doing us. You know,
I loved hearing about the polo, and certainly I'm a
huge tubes fan, some of the bottom lines, some of
the rocksy even when one time, Hollywood Bolivard when the
first album came out, I was working in a sporting
goods store and you did an in store it Peaches
Records and came dressed up totally is kulud. Oh God,

(02:12:35):
I remember that I stopped there in my lunch break.
So it's a great honor to do this with you,
so thanks so much for doing that. Thank you for
having me. You know, I read your letter and I just,
you know, I think so. I think you're so great
and it's really a privilege and an honor. A few
year podcast. Thank you so much for having Until next time,

(02:12:57):
This is Bob left Sense

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