Gary Katz

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex Podcast.
My guest today is music producer Gary Katz. You known
from the Steely Dana albums. He did the first Gaucho,
We work with Tensee Ce so many other greats. Gary.
Good to have you here, Nice to be hippo. Nice
to meet you. So how did you meet the guys

(00:29):
in Steely Dan in front of Us? I was in
New York and my best friends were a singing group
called Jay and the Americans who are having hit after
hip hop singles. And I was sort of like the
fifth wheel. Wherever they went, I went, And they were
going into places you know that I wanted to be

(00:52):
in in studios with Lieber and Stoller, and I was
close friends with all of them, and one of them,
can he Vans. I was working with Donald and Walter,
and I had gotten a job at Africa Embassy with
Joseph e Levine and I was actually producing my first record.
We both lived in Brooklyn and we would drive in together.

(01:14):
And I got done early one night and I called
and I said ready, and he said, now come on here.
I'm still I'm still working. And when I worked in
I met Donald and Walter and they Kenny was doing
what I guess they considered demos to be able to
uh have people here and get a deal. And so

(01:37):
I from the moment I heard their music, which is
very much different than what you know is Steely Dan,
I was a fan. So how was there music different?
It was it just structurally in the way they went
about creating, you know, songs and structure and hooks, and

(02:00):
it was, you know, it was a fabulous form that
evolved into what you know to be Steely Dan. So
how did they ultimately become Steely Dan? And what was
your role in that? I who was out of work
in Brooklyn. I was hanging around the music business, mainly

(02:22):
through my Jane Americans friends, and I got a call
one night from a friend at Dunhill Records who said,
somebody got fired here. Why don't you write the presidential letter?
And I said, you want me to write a cold letter? Ready?
He said, just write him a letter and I'll talk
to him. I wasn't in the best frames of mind.

(02:45):
I was being able to get work and through the
cost of the evening, my wife at the time just
kept saying, write the guy a letter, Write the guy
a letter, so I did, and I wrote, Dear j
writing this letter to you right now is a much
bigger pain in the ask for me than it is
for you sitting in your chair reading it. Uh, this

(03:07):
is my name. I've worked with Bobby Darren if you
have any interest at all. And so j Laska called
me and said he thought he was still laughing, and
there was a ticket at the airport. And fifteen hours
later I had a career, and having just having the
ability to move to California and have a job, opportunities

(03:29):
opened up. Okay, so did you sign Steely Dan at
ABC Records? There was no Steely Dan at ABC Records.
There was, which continues and I sort of read about
it this week and my ex partner Richard Perry's book.
But Donald Walter was signed with Jay in the Americans
production company, and they and I became good friends over

(03:55):
the time because they didn't really have work except they
were writing on their own and they were part of
the backup band for Jami the Americans for fifty dollars
a night, um, And so you know, I would see
Donald and Walter most every day, one way or another.
I would bike right up and we'd sit around just

(04:17):
hanging out, listening to music and whatever. And Donald was
working in Miami and called me and said, so, what's
going on. How the meeting go? I said, I got
a job. He said, please get me out of here.
So over time they had to negotiate a away out

(04:42):
from the contract that they had, which they did, and
they came to ABC as staff writers, not a band.
There was no band. Steve Barry, who's a well known
pitmaker and the my mentors, was pushing the grassroots in

(05:03):
Hamilton Joe Frank and he thought he loved their music
and thought they could write songs for him, which they
did try to do, but it just wasn't a really
good marriage between what they wrote and what they were
looking for. And I went to Stephen. I said, Steve,
let me put a band together. Let me make a

(05:24):
band with these guys, and so we piece by piece.
Steve said good. They supported us. Uh, A fabulous guy
named Lee Young Senor who's Lester Young's brother. I was
a fan of the band. It was the you know
VP of A and R. And he found ways to

(05:45):
help us out with gear that we didn't have money for,
and he was he really supported us and we created
a band, and then ultimately how did they get signed?
They were signed as writers? How did you become a band?
They became a end by Steve and and I going
to Jay last and saying it's now going to be
a band, and they negotiated the deal as a group. Okay,

(06:08):
let's go back a couple of chapters. How do you
know Jay in the Americans? We went to high school
together Rasmuss in Brooklyn. Uh well, some of them weren't
fit in uh Bell Harbor and by the Beach, and
Howie and I and then Sandy. We became good friends.
And there's still my some of my closest friends. We

(06:30):
have lunch once a week or two. Okay. So legendarily
J Black, the original singer in the singer of all
the hits of J and the Americans, ultimately got in
financial trouble and he no longer owns the name. Can
you tell us anything about that? Yeah, there was a
well for one thing, Jay Black as you call him David, Okay,

(06:53):
So J Black's real name is David Dave Black. How
did Dave Black become J Black? Because Jay he was
not the original singer. And when they had their first
hits She Cried, which was a huge hit. That was
a singer named Ja Trainer, and soon thereafter which I've

(07:18):
still never quite understood. We still laugh about it. They
made a change and they he brought in the new
J and they just kept having hits, big hits. Okay,
you have members in the band. How did it end
with between them and that J? Probably not as well

(07:39):
as everyone one might have liked. So what happened to
your friends in music subsequent to that? Jay Black leaving
nothing that continue to work as J and the Americans.
Last week they were in I think Springfield, Massachusetts. They
just work. They have a new J. I'm sorry whose

(08:00):
name is really Jay as it turns out, but they
have a new Ja has been there with them, might
say maybe ten twelve years now, something like that, and
they continue to play. And have they ever had to
have day jobs or they've been daying the Americans from
high school day jobs? No, they don't have day jobs.

(08:22):
They oh Jay and the Americans. Okay, so you were
in high school in Brooklyn. What was the music scene
like there and how did you get hooked on the music? Well?
I was you know, you could only hear what they
played so I heard music. You know, it was how
much is that dog in the window? And that's a more?

(08:42):
And you know, you just got to appreciate whatever that was.
And one and I used to go up on my
roof with a pack of New Kent's cigarettes. I was
about thirteen, and the transistor radio and I turned it
on one day and they was this guy named Alan Freed,
and I heard, uh, maybe Leen, and I thought I

(09:07):
was sweating, but it was actually the blood running out
of the side of my ear. I just freaked out.
It just took one piece of music. And then I'd
go on the roof every day and I listened to
Alan Freed from the moment he signed on until off
and I cut to your bow. Diddley and Ruth Brown
and Little Richard and my favorite part of that. Alan

(09:30):
Freed used to do these holiday shows at the Brooklyn
Powamount Theater. They became just extravagant as block. You could
do it in Christmas and there'd be a block, you know,
block long lines in four degree weather. And I would
go and I'd see on one bill Um, you know,
Little Richard and Fats Domino and Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley,

(09:53):
and a bunch of platters and all these groups, and
I was just mesmerized. The manager of the of the
Brooklyn Paramount was a friend of my dad's and his
name was Eugene Plashette, and his daughter is Susan Pischett,
who became a well known actress, not the least of

(10:14):
which was Bob Nuhaut's wife. And so we were in
the same age. And there were seven shows a day.
So they would the show would take maybe an hour
and a half, whatever it was, they would empty the
theater twenty minutes later the next bunch would come in.
So Susan and I would go to her dad's office

(10:36):
like twenty ft away and when the show started again.
So I saw that show eight times a day for
six days and things like that. There were other shows,
and I just, you know, that's what I wanted to do. Well,
I wanted to play ball, but I stopped growing and
the other passion I had was music. How good a

(10:58):
ball player were you? I was pretty okay. So what
did your parents do for a living? My dad owned
a hot, very high end men's clothing store adjacent to
the Well eventually adjacent to the St. Regis in New York. Okay.
And your mother was at home always with my dad Okay,

(11:20):
in the in the shop, inseparable yep. And how many
kids in the family, me and my sister, and which
one is older? I am? Okay. So growing up if
your parents with the shop, was it relatively hands off?
You could do what you wanted. I only wanted to
play balls, so she always knew was and you know,

(11:41):
she might go in the shop in the store at
eight and come home maybe three thirty or whatever it was.
But I was in the street playing ball, well, across
the street in the temple in the winter, in the gym. Okay,
what kind of student were you? Terrible? Not? Well? I was,
And I was an okay student up to a point,

(12:02):
and then I just really look. I didn't go to
school for a semester. There was a pool hall to
two blocks down called Spinelli's that I frequented daily. I
would stand at the corner to go into school and
then I walked by schooling down the stairs into the
pool room for semester, and I would have graduated. I

(12:25):
graduated with Bob Streisan and a bunch of other well
known people, but I hadn't Mono and I was in
the hospital and graduation day. But I did graduate, and
I went to n y U thereafter, although first I
went to Illinois College where I played ball for a while,
and then I didn't like it there at all and

(12:49):
came home and Thanksgiving and then how long did you
stay at U? Two and a half years. It was
during the Vietnam War. I never took a student deferment
because if you took a student deferment, the army had
right to grab you up to you with thirty six.
If you didn't take a student deferment, they only had

(13:10):
you till twenty six. So I never did. And I
got drafted in one thing led to another, and I didn't.
I wasn't in school after that. Okay, you got drafted.
Did you go into the army? No? How did you
get out? You found ways those days? Okay, so you
get drafted, you stopped going to school, You get out?

(13:34):
What's your next step? I got a job as an
insurance salesman for Frudential. I can't believe I did that,
but they paid you not to sell insurance, but just
to get people to sign an application that they would
talk to you about insurance. That was easy. Enough, and I, uh,

(13:54):
I did that for a little while. Actually the last
day I did that, Kenny Vance, old friend from Jay
and the Americans. You asked about day jobs, that I
have day jobs, right. Kenny was concerned, and so he
was saying, so what are you doing, and you know,
he knew what I was doing. And I said, and
they pay you, you know, just for guys signing an

(14:14):
app He said, ookay, I'll go with you. This is
actually he was only a block from the Fool Hall.
So um. We went to this gentleman's house. He was
seventy ish. I'm pitching the life insurance and he kept

(14:35):
telling me that he had been turned down frequently for
a heart condition. And I said, that's okay, signed here.
And that was the last day I did that. Kenny
and I left and I was too something to do
that again. Okay, so you quit that in the next

(14:58):
step nothing. I was hanging around six fifty Broadway because
Jay and the Americans were, and they were you know,
they were just involved in stuff going on, and so
I had access through them two places I wanted to be.
It wasn't premeditated, you know, if they were going somewhere else,

(15:21):
I probably would have been somewhere else, but I was.
That's where they were, and I was doing and I
was really fortunate to be in that, uh scene at
the time. It was just fabulous. And where were you
living at this point in Brooklyn? At home with your parents? No,

(15:41):
I got married. What age were you when you got married? Three?
And when you get married, usually someone says, hey, you
gotta start supporting the family. I got a job. We
hadn't apart. We got an apartment on Eastern Parkway, a
neighborhood right where I grew up. And I got a job.

(16:04):
So this is the same insurance job or is this? Yeah? Okay?
So but then you stop working, you're just hanging out
with Jay and the Americans? What is your? Dad helped
me out there was unemployment. I found odd jobs here
and there to do, most of them legal, and I
just kept My dad wanted me to take over the store.

(16:26):
He was wanting to retire, and I just never had
any interest. I don't dress the way the clothes. I
never dressed in the style of his store. Um, and
I just didn't care. And I remember I said to him,
dead when a guy comes in here and you think
he's gonna walk out and look really well, I know

(16:49):
you like that. I don't give a ship, So I
just I struggled until I wrote that letter to Jay Alaska.
And I'm telling honestly, I had I didn't know how
it was going to turn out. I was hoping. Okay,
what'd your parents say about your quitting college? Nice Jewish boy?
My My parents were remarkably support him. And how did

(17:16):
you know this woman to marry her? She was my
girlfriend from high school? Okay, so you get married? Who?
Actually Richard Perry dated before I even knew her. Okay,
how wo did she say about going to California? She
was all for it. We were all for them. Mean,
it was an opportunity for one journ a living, a
real living, and you know California. I had been to

(17:40):
California once because Kenny was going there and staying at
Richard's house, and so I went along, and um, I
liked it. You know. It was in Laurel Canyon, lived
up on wonder Land. It's a nice place and it

(18:03):
was Okay. I wasn't head over heels, but it was nice.
And when I had an opportunity to come back with
a job, it wasn't the worst thing I had heard. Okay,
go back, how did you know Richard? You said you
were partners. Well, Richard just wrote a book, and actually

(18:26):
I know Richard's not feeling well these days, which I
feel really badly about. But either he didn't have a
really clear memory, or maybe Kenny and he is still friends.
But he wrote that Kenny introduced us, which he did,

(18:47):
saying Richard had just gotten out of graduated Michigan and
I was in the place. I was two of us
wanting to be in the music business. And what happened
was we talked a few times. I went to his house,
we talked. My mother gave me four thousand dollars, his

(19:10):
mother gave him four thousand dollars, and we went to
six fifty Broadway and we opened an office. Somehow, Richard
recollected it as I came to him and said, you
don't need any money. I have ten thousand dollars, but
I don't have any talent. So I didn't expect you

(19:32):
to ask me that. But I appreciate being able to
correct the record. So what did you and Richard do
together in this office? We we opened a company. Oddly enough,
be course, it's the title of his book called Cloud
nine Productions, and we we're looking for talent. We you know,

(19:54):
we just thought we could do it. We you know,
we'd open an office and people would come to us.
You know, sixteen fifty there was you know, well we
literally shared a role next door with Kama Sutra, which
I know lots of people won't know, but they were
the pinnacle of production companies in the late sixties early

(20:16):
seventies between you know, they just had hit after they
had Loving Spoonful and John Sebastian, and they befriended us
Hardy Ripped, who's a well known music business person and
who definitely was a benefactor at the time, uh Bert Burns.
The building was full of people, you know that were fabulous.

(20:39):
So we thought we'd just go in and read make
a go of it. And it wasn't so easy. Um.
We found an act and and made a single. They
were all singles, and made a single with this one act.
Audi called one day and said, I have a group
called the Vast Cells. Why don't you guys go in

(21:01):
and do a track? Richard and I went in. Did
Bob Dylan song Crawl through this Window? Um? And we struggled.
You know, financially and trying to find that artist or
writer that we wanted. And it a couple of years
didn't pan out, and Richard went to California and I

(21:21):
stayed in New York. Now, you told Jay Lasker you'd
worked with Bobby Darren, So what's that story? I um,
I applied for a job I heard about through to
the people. At sixteen fifty. Bobby owned a publishing company,
a successful publishing company called t M Music. It had

(21:43):
Buffy St Marie Catalog, a very successful writer and artist
named Van McCoy. At the time he was a wonderful
artist and various songs. And as it turned out, there
were two job openings and one of my really close
friends in high school who remained my friend and until
he sadly passed away a year and a half ago,

(22:05):
Eddie Lambert. Um. There were two job openings at TAM Music,
and we got on both independently of each other. Um.
Bobby was a fabulous guy. I mean I loved working there.
Companies run by a music business veteran named Ed Burton,
and we all got along. It was great. And Robert

(22:29):
Kennedy got killed and Bobby was one of the main
figures in New York State for the election, and he
freaked out, sold the company, got in a van, drove
to Big Sir and wrote, my favorite Bobby Down in music.

(22:51):
He put out an album under his real name called
Robert Walden Cassado, which is available online somewhere, and if
you're a Bobby Down fan, you want to find that
record and listen to Who's just He played most everything.
He was so much more gifted than the Las Vegas

(23:11):
Bobby Down that he was. And when he sold the company,
he sold it to some people. I knew, m hmm
what he allowed us to do. I wanted to produce.
Bobby knew I wanted to produce, and he would say, hey, listen,
if you can get a deal with the company and
you can use the catalog to promote, you know, the company,

(23:33):
go ahead and do it. So I did. We I
found a really nice guy, great singer. I went to
Larry Utall at Amy Malla. He said, yeah, go in
and you know, cut a single or two. So I did.
One other artist somebody would we did? Uh. Petty wasn't
as interested in that as I was, but we did
it collaboratively. Um. When he sold the company somebody I

(23:57):
knew pretty well. Uh that person installed someone who came
in in the morning and said, okay, guys, so right now,
all we are is a publishing company. Just get these
songs plugged. I'm not interested in you going in the studio.
That's not the business we're in. And I went to

(24:18):
lunch it with my friend and Jack Dempsey's doing lunch
and I went up and I quit, And I know
it wasn't the right thing to do, but as it
turns out, it worked out. Okay. Now, in your tenure
with Bobby Darren, did you actually work with Bobby on

(24:40):
any of his music? No? Okay. Whatever happened to the
clothing store, my dad so well, he was. He was
in that business for forty or five years. He ran
a store called Nat Lewis and the forties and fifties
when it was the store in New York, and then
when that Lewis, Didy opened the store of his own

(25:01):
on Seventh and he ran it till he sold it
to someone um about five years before it closed, and
for many years thereafter the sign of the store was
still up called De Lasi. I would go to Sony,
for instance, which was on Madison and fifty six, and

(25:24):
the store was on fifty five between Fifth and six,
and I'd often walked down the block and I'd look
up and I would every time I worked by take
a picture and I'd send it to my mom and say, Mom,
the store still up. Where are you? He was a
twelve to four in the morning guy. That was his life.
The day he retired, he was done, moved to Florida.

(25:47):
They played golf and he never did it again. Okay,
you talked about going to high school Rasmus, and you say,
Barbara Stris, did you know all these people you know?
To this minute, even sharing the building with her on
multiple occasions in l A Studios, I never met her
to this minute, I have never met her. Okay, So

(26:09):
now you're in l A. You're working with uh David
and Donald and Walter. What else are you doing at ABC?
Just general A and R work, you know, the A
and R department. Well, there was a guy named Ed
Michelle who's just a wonderful jazz producer and oversaw all

(26:32):
the jazz collection. Um he was in. He was one
in one room at the end of the hall. They
hid him. I was the other. I was sort of
in New York. You know, they were used to Steve Barry.
You know, Steve is one of my closest friends still
to this day. And I would have nothing, no career

(26:55):
at all despite JA if Steve didn't here the potential
of Donald and Walter and Steve. So Steve, Steve and
myself with the A and R Department and Michelle had
nothing to do with that. He just went to the
village and set in the room with John Coltrane tapes,
which I totally admired and followed him there. Um, so

(27:20):
I did regular hang our work. People would send tapes
or I basically waited to go to the studio. And
were you responsible for signing any of the other acts
or on ABC records? Well, it was collaborative. But yeah,
let's say we signed Rufus, which turned out to be TRACKIC.

(27:43):
I have to think about it for a minute. We
signed Buffett. Tell me, I mean, I know Jimmy, how
will tell me the story of signing Jimmy. Jimmy used
to play at the Troubador at night and I would
go there and sit upstairs, who had a seating upstairs,
and he'd stand on the stage alone and he would

(28:06):
talk to the Carl Reefs who didn't exist every night,
and I was a fan. Um, I just liked what
he did, and I would go I'd leave the studio
and I would go over there and see a set.
And Steve Barry had heard him and we signed him.
It was a good signing. Do you have any idea

(28:28):
he would turn into what he was? What he is Juggernaut?
No as a guy standing on stage, you know, wearing
a beach outfit, talking to guys who aren't there. But
he didn't come Monday pretty fast, right, Yes, Cooch, we
signed Crochy and they'll come to me as we talk.

(28:49):
But we had a very good ruster. Okay, so they're
at ABC Records. You finally get a deal for what
turns into Steely Dan. You have Donald and Walter. How
do you who? How do you form the band? Tell
me the process of leading up and then going in
the studio. Well, we would you know, we were not

(29:11):
any uh priority at the company, any of us. I
don't mean that they weren't very respectful and nice. But
for instance, uh, I knew Skunk Baxter from in New

(29:32):
York because he played on something on the first thing.
Donald Walter and I ever did with a girl named
Linda Hoover. And when when we needed a band, I said,
you know, I know this guy in in Boston. And
so Skunk came down and played this record with us,

(29:52):
and I told him I knew a drummer in Boston
who I loved. I had just made a record with
him when I was at AFCO and see and he
was the drummer of that band. And they knew Denny Diaz,
and I got to know Denny. Denny was a friend
of theirs in New York. So when they were doing

(30:13):
their work with Kenny or just doing work alone, Danny
was a part of Donald and Walter, and so I
got to meet No Denny through them m hm. And
so I said to you know, I played Jimmy's music
for Donald, and uh. They they knew Jeff because he
played on this record we did. So they came out

(30:34):
and it was a band. We had Denny. We flew
Denny out Jeff and how it came out thereafter they
liked it. Okay, was it called Steely Dan at that point?
I can't tell you if it was at that point,
but the point it became Steely Dan was a ride

(30:58):
up going over Laurel Canyon at night, and we were
trying to think of names, and somebody said, I think
Donald or said back seat manipulation, but they were sitting
in the back and that didn't fly. But Walter said

(31:22):
steely Dan and then elaborated on its significance, and that
was that. Okay. The first album had another singer, David Palmer.
How did that come to be? So we did the
first record. I went to the village with which became
and still is my home in l A. Nobody heard

(31:45):
the record, not a soul. Steve Barry never came to studios,
too busy doing his own records. This is a nice,
a funny little anecdote that you might appreciate. So we
finished the record. J Lesker was saying, so am I
gonna hear this record? And I O this record and
we went into the We were ever in the ABC
studios at Dunhill. No, I wasn't. There was a small

(32:07):
room that Steve used every day. It was a wonderful
wound with little room, and so we said we'd you know,
we played them this record. So j came in with
Howard Stock as vice president and Marv Helfer who was
marketing my very good friend Dennis Lavinthal, who did hear
the record as we were doing it, because Dennis and

(32:28):
I became very close friends and he became a fan
of the music. As we went by, Donald Walter, myself
and Roger Nichols, there were like eight people in a
four person room, and we first track we played was
do It Again. When the track was over, Jay, who

(32:49):
smoked very long cigars and was sort of a loud,
voiceterous kind of guy, started banging on the command then
fucking Jack, fucking back Jack, and Donald, who was standing
directly behind me, so we're in the middle of the speakers.

(33:09):
He pokes his finger in my back and says, tell
him it's called do it Again. I said, Jay, you
know that's uh, let's do it again. Fuck do it again,
back Jack, back Jack, Donald, who's getting nervous, now points
me in the back. He said, tell me to do

(33:31):
it again. The I won't repeat it. But the same
sequence of events occurred. And if you can never find
the forty five copy of do It Again, you'll see
that the only way he would put it out was
if we said do it again under a parenthesis. Back
Jack and that that's set up our relationship with Jay.

(33:55):
We played the record and they were excited, put out
do it again. Honestly, not one of us I thought
these were hit records. I was the biggest fan. I
stole him. You know, I worked not as a producer,
but as a fan. I got to hear the music
before anyone else. But we didn't think they were hits.

(34:17):
It was six minutes long. It was you know, it
was a hit really quick. And Jay says, so they're
gonna get ready to go on the road, right, ready
to go on the road. Go on the road. So
I go to Donald, I said, so this is what happened.
He said, I don't go on the road. I I
I'm not at I miss I'm a writer, I write songs.

(34:38):
I'm just telling you Jay is gonna he said, go
and tell him that Stravinsky didn't tour. I knew my
I knew better than to say that. And as you
could imagine, Jay got his way and down said, what
what are we gonna do. I'm not going to be
in front of a band. I mean, I don't do that.

(34:59):
So you found a singer? Well, Donald said, we can't
have an album and not have somebody on who's then
going to be the front of the band. So and
I do really, really really appreciate and like David. He
was a very nice guy. He couldn't have been more

(35:21):
cooperative and part of what we were doing than he was.
But I'm sorry that when I hear dirty Work, I
don't hear Donald. That's just the truth. Dirty Work and Brooklyn.
We always had a track called Midnight Cruiser that Jimmy
Harder was going to sing, but we had to put

(35:42):
David on some tracks so that it wasn't who's that
strange guy singing the front of the band. That's how
David Palmer came aback. When the when the when that
was over again, I say thank you David for everything.
I said to Donald, no more, you have to sing
all the songs. So, contrary to the legend, ABC didn't

(36:07):
say to get David Palmer. That was between you and Donald. Absolutely, Okay,
they they they didn't care. Okay. So just so I understand,
you made a whole album, but you only put out
do it again, and then when back in the studio,
you just didn't do it again. You know, I'm cloudy

(36:29):
on the chronological order of those events. I remember the
conversations about Donald saying I can't be the front man,
and my conversation with Donald saying this can't be anymore. Um,
we might have put through it. You know, in those

(36:50):
days you would drop singles. It is possible we put
out that to like K M. E. T at the
time and some other states, and then it just blew
up because we did put David on for those two
tracks for that reason. Okay, so let's talk about the
first album, Can't Buy a Thrill. You're in the studio.

(37:13):
What is your role? What do you do? I can't
put you know, designated roles. They weren't designated roles. Donald was.
Donald was the We called him mother, and there was
a reason for it. We all knew this. Donald's last

(37:34):
word was the last word. Even Walter knew that. But
the three of us worked. I know. I didn't do
anything Donald did, And when it came to listening and doing,
we did it collectively from day one until the end
of the Nightfly. Okay, so you'll be sitting in the studio.
What might you say, I like that, I don't like it.

(37:56):
Can we do these two bars again? Uh? When it
got to vocals, I did the vocals with Donald. I
had a I created a way to do vocals that Donald,
it was comfortable with and was was productive, and um,
so I did the did I created the vocals with Donald.

(38:19):
And other than that, I was a third voice in
the room when somebody was playing, and I liked it
as much or less than anybody else. And I'd say, so, okay,
did you have any you say you're talking about two
bars two seconds, or did you have any musical training
or just picked it up along in the book. When
I was younger, my mother, who had the perfect pitch

(38:41):
and could play by ear, had me taking piano lessons.
And this was just before Alan freed, and I said, Mom,
I don't want to play Mali Gray. Now. I don't
care about this. And so the last lesson I had
was I was pitching for the Police as Letic League
and the baseball field behind the Brooklyn Museum, and my

(39:05):
mother drove up onto the field in her car and
yelled out the window that I was going to be
late from my pianos. And that was my last lesson. Okay,
so you complete the first album, you know that you
have reeling in the years. The opening track on the
other side. The album is mega successful, So where does

(39:29):
that leave you in the band? You know, one day
turned into the next day, and there were no like
you know this day this happened. It just wasn't like that.
It wasn't a touring band as such, like lots of
bands were. So Donald is always writing. That's what he

(39:51):
does to this day. I'm sure he write songs. When
we weren't recording. Donald was home, Walter was home. I
was in the office. I was making other records. We
were just living. What's your relationship with any with Donald today?

(40:11):
We spoke a while ago. His mom passed away, which
I oh really badly about, and spoke to him, and
we don't speak much anymore. Okay, So the second album
is Countdown to Ecstasy. Many fans, although I'm not one
of them, consider this to be the best record yet
there were no hits on it. The band went on

(40:31):
the road and stopped touring. So tell me what was
happening with Countdown to Extacy? Countdown to Ecstasy was actually
no different than Camped by a Thrill. The process of
making the records never really changed until maybe after Pretzel,
when we started doing Pretologic and we had other musicians

(40:52):
that were involved in in the process, but the record
making really never was my different from one record to
the next. UM, I don't know why I can't Countdown
didn't have hits on it. I think we thought Showbiz
Kids was was going to be a hit, which it wasn't. Um,

(41:18):
I don't I have no explanation for it. Like I said,
we didn't think the first record was going to be hits.
So did you get any pushback from the label that
there weren't hits and to make a hit on the
next record. No, okay, never got pushed back one time.
I will say that for all of the reputations and
such of you know j who was this very boisterous,

(41:42):
I never once heard pushback musically he did some some
couple other things that would just mind bending. But I'll
share with you if you'd like, actually about his Countdown
to Ecstasy. So if you know the cover, the first
cover was by somebody he assigned, and you know it

(42:04):
was what it was. And when it got to a
second record, Donald's girlfriend, Dorothy, who's a very good friend
of all of us, was a fabulous artist, fabulous creative person,
and so she drew did he countdown to Ecstasy drawing

(42:26):
which we loved, and it was JD. Jay was Donald
was scared of Jack sort of, but he said, you
talked to him. I don't want to talk to him. You.
So I was the lasers on between Donald and Walter
and Jay all the time. So he said he has
showed it to Jay. So I did. And if you

(42:48):
know the drawing, it has these aliens sitting on chairs
at the bottom in space. So I went to Jay,
had a cigar in his mouth. I put the drawing
in front of him and he looked at it for

(43:10):
three or four minutes. He said, so, how many guys
are there? And steely? Then I said, there are five guys?
You know there are only three guys on the bottom.
You Jay, you see this guy that's not Donald? You

(43:32):
see this guy that's not Walter. Well he was. It
wasn't quite beside himself, but when he dug his heels
and there was nothing you could say. So he made
Dorothy I had, by the way, I then had to
go back to Donald and Dorothy and repeat this nonsense. Thankfully,

(43:55):
everyone had a good sense of humor. And Jay said,
if she just puts two white dots on the top
on the left. I'll count those is two Morgan and
if you look at the cover you will find two
more dots at the top and the left of the corner.

(44:17):
By the way, kras Now, I think bought it from
Dorothy and it was in his home for years. Okay,
so that album comes out, you know, that's the period
of time where the band says they're not going. Donald's
is not going on the road anymore. No, he didn't
quite a say. He says, I don't want to go,

(44:39):
and nobody bothered us. Jay didn't. Honestly, Jay was hands off. Okay,
but you got a whole band. What is the rest
of the band living on? Ah? There you go. Well,
one of the band, Jeffrey Skunk, was a very outgoing

(45:00):
kind of guy and made lots of friends and he
would play with this guy or that guy, or he
would find ways to do things. Denny, Denny and Jimmy
waited for us to record again. Denny's a very high

(45:21):
end um creates apps and he always did that, so
he was always working tech work. He was. He was
extremely tech. Donald and I never did anything that had
to do with tech. It was all Walter, Denny and
Roger Okay, how did you end up working with Roger

(45:43):
Nichols as the engineer? So when we got you know,
when Steve said, yeah you can, you know, put the
band together. When we did, the only place to rehearse
we had an empty out the accountants office at six o'clock.
We'd have to carry all the files. And Roger Nichols

(46:05):
was the midnight to six am lacquer cutter. He was
the only available person who could turn on anything for us,
and he turned into Roger Nichols. Yeah, I mean that's amazing,
even known for pristine sounds. So let's get to the

(46:29):
third album, Pretzel Logic, another monster success, Ricky, don't lose
the number. But from a fan's perspective, that's where the
jazz elements start to creep in. Was this We did
East St. Louis to Okay, but the sound changed a
little bit. So you're saying, on that record it was

(46:52):
all the original five members plus uh, Jim Gordon. There
was some exterior are your members people who came in
and added to that record? And that record was recorded
in a barn with an oak tree in the middle
of the studio. And where's that Cherokee studios? Do you

(47:14):
know who they are, of course. Well, Cherokee studios used
to be out in like where Manson was, literally out
that way. We were only a few minutes from wherever
that place was. And the Robs a bunch of broad
a couple of brothers, three brothers, they had a studio.

(47:35):
Roger was friendly with them. I went out there, I
made a I made a fabulous deal with the Robs.
I paid them six thousand dollars for four months of
work every day, which obviously was not even the penny

(47:57):
on the dollar, not even. And in turn, the day
the record came out, they took the coverage to the
bank and they opened up on Fairfax. That's how it happened.
I only knew fair of facts. Okay, now you have
another hit. Does that change the vibe or the energy

(48:18):
in the room amongst the grass? No, it was, it
was a constant. It wasn't it was always what it was,
not high nor lower of it. Um everybody, I mean,
we no doubt everybody's excited that, you know, the records
are hit, but not the demeanor of of any of

(48:40):
the guys. We were different, you know, some of the
guys were one way, some were were different and but
it was generally even level. Okay. So Keatie Lied is
the album the legend is and if I remember, if
I have the right album, were you cut it at

(49:01):
something pristine level? And then something happened to the tapes
that certainly did so what happened so because we were always,
when I say we, Roger, Walter, Dan always pushing to
how much technically better can we get this? Or what

(49:21):
can we do to make it sound even better? Um,
They because we spent so much money in the studio,
ABC wanted a piece of it. And so they allowed
us us, meaning Roger and collectively to build a studio

(49:43):
down the hall from Steve Studio. And so we built
a room that we really liked, Roger Roger Bille. They
allowed us to buy this remarkably expensive bosondof a piano
Chris Donald I wanted to use that. They basically gave
us caught blunt to build a studio, and in the

(50:06):
course of it, Walter and Danny Roger whatever, they didn't
love that. They said, I don't love the way Dolby sounding.
There's a new system. It's called DBX. Let's try that, Okay,
So they went out down Walter and Denny and Roger

(50:29):
went to West l A Music and they bought these
speakers called Magna players, which were just Incredi electro magnetic,
you know, like infinities. They bought eight of them and
they lined them up in front of the behind the console,
in front of the windows. It was like, you couldn't
hear anything better than that in the in the ways

(50:54):
we were working. It was fabulous and I love that record.
It also was the first time we were able to
use more than one machine because Roger said, you know,
I can hook up two machines with this thing called

(51:15):
Adam Smith and Fagan, you could have thirty two tracks. Well,
you couldn't say anything better than Donald than that, So
we did, and we would work on a master and
a slave. When it came to mixing. We didn't realize

(51:38):
what the process was going to be until we actually
did it. So what you would have to do is
the the You'd run one of the machines and the
other would catch up to it and they'd sink together.
It wasn't like just pushing a button. They all worked together.
What the master ran and the slave would follow it.

(52:02):
I'm only repeating what they said. Please don't ask me
what that means, except when he when you were saying, okay,
you know that's good, let's want it again. Here's what
would occur every time er er er h h h h,

(52:25):
and then you could push play. It was maddening. The
record was done, we make copies, We go home. Fagin
calls me around three in the morning. He said, something's broken.
What's the matter? He said, in the middle of I'm

(52:46):
pretty sure bad sneakers, where I hit a chord instead
of the piano decay, it's crescender ing. I'll save you
all the between. But they all agreed that the dB
X noise reduction did not decode the programming as it

(53:09):
encoded it. I was really upsetting, so we took the modules.
Roger Walter and I got on a late night flight,
went to Boston. We were picked up. It was like midnight.
They drove us to the dB X factory. There was
a guy there with like a jeweler's glass. He took

(53:33):
the module. He took the module, he opened it up.
Roger handed him the tape he was playing it and
there were eight sensors that made up this piece of gear.
And he took a little greenie and as it was
playing he would tweak the screws in it and look
at us and say, is that any better? And we

(53:54):
knew we were fill in the blink. Went home, told
Fagan what happened because he could he couldn't. He wasn't
comfortable having to deal with all this bad news. Tell
me what the story is, and we did, and yes

(54:16):
there was a decoding issue. We had three options. Fagan said,
we could scrap the album. I said, that's not in it.
That's not a possibility. We could we mix it, that's

(54:37):
not a possibility. Or we could put the fucking thing out.
And that's what we did. So the imperfections are in
the final record. There was no alternative. YEP, Okay, great
record because I always love that record. That your gold
teeth too, etcetera. Okay, at what point band members wake

(55:01):
up and say, wait a second, this isn't a band anymore.
One day in the village recorder, Donald and Walter was
sitting or standing behind the console and Jeffrey and Jimmy
came in while they were there, and Jeffrey said, you know, O'donald,

(55:24):
Jimmy and I've been writing songs and Donald said, this
is not a democracy. That's the answer to your question. Well,
do the other guys literally take a high cott it in?
It was, it was gradual. We hot we we Donald

(55:47):
and Walter wanted to be able to at this point
have the ability to expand what they were doing and
have additional people add to what we wore the records
we were making. Jeffrey over time got very friendly with

(56:12):
the Doobies, who were friends of Donald that they had
toured together. Don't I think we opened for them? They
got friendly. Jeffrey was playing with them, and honestly, it
was gradual and then a phone call and Jeffrey had
the ability to become part of the Doobie Brothers that
were playing three hundred and forty two nights a year.

(56:35):
Jeffrey likes playing, okay, and Danny and the drummer, well Danny,
it was always you know, and he was always part
of the with Donald and Walter. He he came with
them and um, he played where it was appropriate, and

(56:57):
he was always very supportive of Donald and Walter and
Jimmy looks for work here and there. He's a very
good drummer. Okay, So the next album, the Royal Scam,
all of a sudden, their lines like you know, uh,
the you know turned up, the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.
You always think of these guys being isolated. So to

(57:19):
what degree were you now part of the front line
camp with Irving A's off and the Eagles and all
these people do what degree were you part of a
scene at that time? I'm I can safe for myself
and I think without any problems. Talk for Donald and Walter.

(57:41):
We were never part of a scene just we would
Nor were we as news Week said, eclusive we were
all the time. We just worn out at the places
where people get seen, and no we were. I wasn't
at least, and again I feel safe saying it's just not.

(58:02):
Wasn't our interest um and the Eagles that So here's
how that started. We finished our record. We were new
in l A. I had no idea what to do
to Master. So I went to Steve and I said,
so where do I Where do I go to Master?

(58:23):
He said, go to this guy Doug Sex up in
Mastering Lab. You know, he's the guy in town. So
I made an appointment and we got there and there
were these plastic chairs in the hallway. We were sitting
and the girl came out and she said, the client
who has been here is running a few minutes late.

(58:43):
Do you mind will just be another ten fifty minutes?
She said, no, it's okay. It was Donald Walter, myself
and Denny and Roger. So she opened the door to
go back into tell Doug that we were out there.
And as she opened the door, you could hear take
it easy, and Fagan, thankfully, who wasn't that big, hit

(59:08):
me as hard as he could in the arm and
said we stink. So that was how Eagles and Steely
sort of meshed. It was that first day. I think
we put our records out the same week our first records.
We had no idea. I didn't know who they were.

(59:28):
I don't even think I knew who Irving was at
the time. And so you know, over the years, you know,
we were a popular band in that city. The Eagles
were a popular band in that city. They had the
same manager. Just it was you know, there was a

(59:52):
sympatico regarding just for those reasons. Okay, So the Royal scam,
that's really when you start getting a lot of other
studio musicians. Got Bernard Purdy, you got Larry Carlton, How
did that all happen? Let's call some guys we really
like driving in the car, you know, we heard rock

(01:00:14):
Steady and said, why don't we hire that Ben? And
we did. I love those guys. They're still my really
close friends. The only other podcast I've done, not that
it matters that I did him, but Chuck Rayney does
one for Inner City Youth in Dallas, and I worked
with him on some things there. But these they're still

(01:00:37):
my friends. They were great musicians. They were they were
the other camp. There was a camp of at least
Claw and Kuncle and Andrew Gold and Warren Zevon and
Linda and and there was that set of musicians. And
we worked with you know, Rainey and Purdy and Paul

(01:01:00):
Griffin and Victor Feldman and it's just a different bunch
of musicians. But it was all cold quality. Had no
previously say I like that song, I'm gonna call that person. No,
I became friendly with Well, I knew Rainy and Uh.

(01:01:20):
I can't remember how I met Paul Griffin and Purty,
but I feel like I've known them my whole life. Okay,
this is when, or maybe it's on Asia thereafter the
band starts getting reputation recording a million things but only
using a limited number. That's not true. So what is

(01:01:41):
the treatment? But there were there were a few, and
I say a few handful of tracks we didn't use,
but just a handful we didn't pursue tracks at some
point that Donald didn't feel good about. Okay, you're saying

(01:02:04):
it's sort of a dictatorship with Donald? What was Walter's rule?
It's not a dictatorship. We just all knew. The best
thing I can say is one time I came to
l A. I stated at a sort of uh you know,
um no frills hotel there. When I came in, they said,
you know, Walter's upstairs. I went, wow, okay, I checked in.

(01:02:27):
He was on in three eighteen. I was in three sixteen.
I called said, hey, what's going on. We talked for
three hours on the phone. I never saw him on
the trip, And during the conversation he said, so listen,
you and I both know will never work with anyone
more talented than Fagan again. And that's the best answer
I can give you. Oh, I just knew he wasn't

(01:02:50):
a dictatorship. Just for one. It's not his style Okay,
so then comes easier and there's a you know, it
takes a little bit more time. To the audience, it
seems somewhat in a different direction. Is this conscious or
you're just making another Steely Dan record. We're making another

(01:03:11):
Steely Dan record. And those are the songs Donald number
all they came with. There was always another Steely Dan record.
We may have done some things in in making the
record that we're not exactly like if they were, but
when we when we came to the studio every day,
it was the same as when we did Camp bire

(01:03:31):
a thrill. Okay, So these are the songs. We'll get
the appropriate people to play on them, exactly exactly. The
album comes out and literally becomes legendary. What was it
like being on the other side of the glass in
the making of it or and in hearing about it both, Well,

(01:03:54):
the songs were just spectacle pilla as a whole, As
a whole unit individually, they were. They were as good
as Donald and Walter ever wrote. And we were confident
so that for instance, one day we're doing thinking about

(01:04:18):
the solo of Asia and Donald or one of them said, well,
called Wayne Shorter, and that's what they would say to
me at times, call so much as if you know,
it was like right, right, But that's what it was like.
I would call. I called Wayne Shorter. He said, when
do you want me there? What do you want me

(01:04:38):
to do? I know your work? So he came in.
For instance, I remember in the back room at the village, Um,
we ran the track of I Don't Know two three times.
He played every time he blows. You know it's something great,
but he said, he said, hold on, you guys, go

(01:04:58):
get lunch and give me a half hour and let
me write something. And there you go. And were you
overwhelmed by the reception? What I mean the fact that
the album was so big beloved, you know. To say
I wasn't overwhelmed, you know, makes me sound you know,

(01:05:20):
blase about it all. And honestly, as I said, I
worked as the number one fan every day. Um, but
it was like making the next record I did. Like
when people said fabulous work or whatever. They would say, yeah,
it's nice to hear. Who wouldn't want to hear that?

(01:05:41):
But that's not the best story of Asia. Well tell
me the best story. Well, when we got to the
song Asia, you know, it has this significant drum solo.
Most of the drummers we used, which was every drummer
we could think of over the time, I couldn't think

(01:06:01):
of one of them who was going to play those
thirty two bars. And over the years, for some reason inexplicable,
we never worked with Steve Gett. I have no idea.
Every time we'd come to a track and his name
would come up, somebody would say something ridiculous, and we
didn't use him on the track. But we couldn't think

(01:06:24):
of anyone else who could do that. So we did
that actually in the back room called Producers Workshop. It's
the back of Mastering Lab on Hollywood Boulevard and behind
Douck Sex is Bill Schnay, a very famous producer and
engineer owned that studio. So when we got there, it

(01:06:47):
was Rainy and Victor Feldman and Joe Sample and Donald.
It was, you know, an all star, a bunch of
guys and Steve who everybody's feeling good. And Steve set
up a music stand because it was a sixteen page trot,

(01:07:09):
and he said to Victor and Joe, hey, guys, just
run it down so I can mark my rot, which
he did, and Donald went out in the studio where
he would be and he would sing a scratch vocal
low in their phone so they could hear the song.
And Steve sat down and the only time he played
it is what you hear, just played it. So Walter,

(01:07:34):
who's sitting next to me, turned to me and said,
maybe we've made a mistake over the year. You know,
it was remarkable. I mean it was. It's really the
only time he played it. That's not a good part
of the story yet, Okay, I don't know. Months later,
because we took a long time. We're in New York

(01:07:56):
mixing at A and R with Eliott China, and it
was the five of us, Donald Walter, myself, Roger Elliot
and someone works in and says, you know, Gads down
the hall, he's playing with Michael Frank's. So I said,
you know, I'll go tell him. And I went down

(01:08:16):
the hall and when they had a break, I said,
you know, Donald Walter and I down the hall and
you give him minute, come on down. And we were
not only just mixing the song Asia, we were at
the last, you know, thirty seconds of saying we're done.
Wonderful sounding room. So Steve comes down. He's feeling good,
so we want to play you something and he sits

(01:08:39):
in front of the speakers and it was just great.
So it was great, Sonning and he turns and said, wow,
who's playing drums? Uh? You are? And he thinks for
a second and says, I'm a motherfucker. That's my Asian story.

(01:09:07):
True story. Okay, in terms that the songs are credited
to Donald and Walter, did you know who did what?
Or is it really the songs evolved? Good luck? I
never saw them right and not? Okay? So now Asia

(01:09:27):
becomes an ongoing success in the heyday of albums, and
it's years before Gaucho comes out. Why are there years?
Walter had a couple of incidents. He got hit by
a car outside his home like a cab woman he

(01:09:49):
was living with an hour close friend. He went home
one night and she died. It was just a confluence,
a confluence of events. So there was no conscious hangover
after Asia. It's just things got in the way, yeah,

(01:10:12):
and songs getting written. So Gaucho is done in retrospect,
a real triumph. But then the band essentially breaks up.
What happened there, Well, Walter was having you know, was
having these issues for himself, and Donald wanted to make

(01:10:34):
a record, and Walter wasn't in a place to make
a record, so he said, let's let's make a solo record,
and that was Nightline. Okay, and it How did it
end with you? How did it end with you? Working
with these two guys um well as sensibly Couch I

(01:10:56):
ended working with Walter and Gaucho. He didn't participate Hayden
in Knife Flying. And along the way, Roger Nichols created
a computer called Wendell, which, okay, what happened was we

(01:11:20):
were trying to cut Hey nineteen and we just couldn't
get a drum track. And Fagin turned to Roger one
day and he said, can't you build a fucking machine
that will give me steady drum tracks? And he said, yeah,
give me some months and money and I'll do it.
And so he built a machine that's infamous in the

(01:11:44):
studio world called Wendell, and to this day is the
ultimate drum machine. How we collected, what we did was
what happened. What we would do is he Roger would
in today's world sample every great drama, only there was

(01:12:06):
no such thing as sampling. I can't say Roger invented it.
But for the purposes we needed, we did invent it
because Roger had this machine rental that could sample. So
let's say Pretty was in the room and he was
finished recording. Roger would say, so Pretty, hit the druma

(01:12:28):
on the side, or give me a rimshot, hit the symbols.
He would do these thirty different things. Roger was sampling it.
At the time, there was no such word, so none
of the guys cared. They were just Roger was their friend,
and they were just doing stuff with Roger. But at
the end of time, Wendell owned the individual pieces of

(01:12:53):
every great druma we worked with, literally, and Wendell Donald
really liked that the tracks were so steady. And at
some point one of the engineers we worked with, who
became a friend of mine and who built a studio

(01:13:15):
that Donald and I owned together, he created a room
for Donald in his house. You know, it was becoming
where you could work at home. You know, you could
have a console at home and whatever. And Donald writes incessantly,
and so now he wasn't only writing, he was being
able to put it down somehow and recorded. And what

(01:13:38):
what I contributed to those things that became records, he
was doing some of that, are a lot of that
on his own in the house. I didn't love machine
stuff as much. I loved the being in a room
with great musicians and creating uh music with them, and

(01:14:02):
so it and Donald just one day said, you know,
I'm gonna do this by myself and that was that
was fine. Well, you never to the public worked with
them again. Was there a sense of loss on who's
put yours? No, I'm very proud of the work I

(01:14:24):
was involved in. And now there's been a big evolution
in the music business, certainly from the days you started.
Certainly by the seventies, producers tend to be independent. They
tend to get four points from record one, but there

(01:14:47):
are other people who just worked for the company and
didn't get points. Then we evolved to the eighties, weeven
the A and our guys get points. Did you have
Were you just getting a salary from ABC or were
you getting participation on the records? I was any participation
on the records from ABC? And does that last to
this day? Yes? Okay? And you still own all those rights, yes, okay.

(01:15:11):
I've never I've never had a direct contract with Donald
Walter Ostilian. So I just word, we just worked together.
ABC sold m c A. Throughout all that period, they've
been accounting to you. Yes, and you know this is
a business where people forget to write checks if you
had to audit them. No, okay, I think there was

(01:15:34):
a I think fifteen years ago maybe. Uh, they wanted
to do an audit and we were doing an audit collaboratively,
and when the guys were halfway through, they said, you know,
we'll continue, but up to now they may have overpaid you.
So we stopped that. Okay, So at what point do

(01:15:58):
you stop working at ABC? Oh? I got uh. ABC
was sold, The ABC was sold. Dunhill sold to ABC,
and they installed Jay Left became the president of Motown UM,

(01:16:18):
and they installed a person named Jerry Rubinstein to be um.
That's not true. Sorry. A fellow named Steve Deaner became
president and he became my good friend and actually wrote
the liner notes and wonderful liner notes by Asia. He

(01:16:41):
was a big fan and he treated us. You know,
you couldn't ask to be treated by a record company
president any better. Then Steve treated the aggregate members of
the band to the extent. He called one day and
said so would you would you ask Donald if he

(01:17:02):
would tour this is Asian now, and uh Fagin said, uh,
teld Steve, I don't want a tour, but we'll do
an interview tour as long as he sends me to
Monaco to see Napoleon's underwear in the Napoleonic Museum on

(01:17:23):
the palace grounds. I'm writing a song about him, so
see if that's true. So we did. We went to London.
We did these few days of one after the other interviews.
UM where, by the way, you asked the question earlier
when when someone asked Donald how they write songs, The

(01:17:46):
only thing I've ever heard him say about how they
do it is Walter can't start him and I can't
finish him. Wow, that explains it. That was the only
time I've heard that responded to. So we went to London.
We did these bunch of interviews. Donald and I went
to Monaco, UM, spent a few days, came back. Steve

(01:18:12):
Diner was fabulous. Steve left and they brought in a
guy named Jerry Rubinstein. Rubinson Rubinstein, I don't know that
we got along so well. He was of a different
school of you know, do you know not do this,
but this is how it's going to be. That didn't

(01:18:33):
sit well and wasn't what we were used to. And
I had an opportunity at that point to join the
Warner Brothers. He and our team with Lenny and Ted,
and that was very attractive to me. And so when
Jerry Rubinstein called one night in the studio and I

(01:18:57):
put him on the speaker phone and he said to
what's it gonna be? Are we going to sign again
or aren't we? I said, we aren't, and we Donald
and Walter and their people. I brought them. I basically
went to Warner Brothers and they came along. They never

(01:19:17):
got a Steely Dan album, but they got Nightfly. So
you as opposed to Mo, right, but you were the
conduit to get him to Warner Brothers. Oh yeah, Lenny. Well,
you know, Moe is always obviously part of this and
it's extremely supportive of me for all these years. But

(01:19:38):
I was talking with Lenny and Lenny said, you know,
he knew the contract was coming up, and I helped
coordinate the meetings between Donald and Walter's people and Warner
Brothers and they made a deal. Okay, So while you
were making these Steely Dan Records. Were those consuming all
your time or were you doing other projects for ABC? No?

(01:20:00):
I was doing other projects. Okay, So let's go on
to a couple of records. I want to cover. You
ultimately work with Paul Brady being managed by you two's management.
At that point, they have a big push. I mean,
I know Paul, I know, and now I know you,
and that is one of my favorite records of all time.

(01:20:22):
You know, it's just really great, never mind the duet
with Bonnie Ray trick or treat. You know, every song,
but it doesn't sound anything like what Paul has done
before or after to the detriment of his career. So
how did you come up doing that project and what
was that experience? Well, I never doubt with Paul management.

(01:20:46):
He was signed to Mercury Records. And the person who
ran Mercury name is David Bates, an extraordinarily successful a
and our guy. You know, he invented death Flap food
and dire Straits and blah blah blah. He and I
are very close friends. And he called me one day

(01:21:08):
he said, you know, I think you two guys would
really get along. And Grady and I met, and to
this day I mean I spoke to him not too
many days ago. We've remained very close. I just thought
he was fabulous and he wanted to make a record
with the guys some of the guys I worked with.

(01:21:30):
So I went up to Bearsville and there was Jeff
it was Picaro, and David Paige was for those are
the main parts of Totam. Parts of Tournam Chuck Rainey,
Paul Brady and we made a reckon well these, let say,

(01:21:52):
at the time, Victory was not a great label in
the US. I don't know if I got it to
do and maybe it was out of time. Tell me
about working with Laura Nero on how do you talk
about falling in love and explain it? She was my
I just loved Laura. I've known her for years. How
did you first meet her? When I couldn't get a

(01:22:12):
job in those years and I was at sixteen fifty,
One of my musical idol, so to speak, was a
guy named Thomas Jefferson Kay, who I actually did two
records with on ABC, and he and Laura were living
together at the time, and both of them had significant

(01:22:33):
drug problems at the time, and I was working up
Broadway and they were walking down and Tommy said, where
are you going? I said wherever I was going? He said, no,
come with us. We're doing a background dated mercury. I said,
I'm not. I don't sing. He said it would be cool.
Laurel'll sing the note in Uria, and so I did.

(01:22:53):
Dad I met her. We didn't see each other a
lot over the number of years. I would run into
it once in a while. It was always terrific. And
one night she called me, I'm in extreme night owl,
and so is she. That's because I'm a night owl
to put hours on that and always that way, yeah,

(01:23:23):
my mom was. I'd come home, my mom be sitting
at a bridge table with a piece of chicksaw puzzle
and eight bags of different kind of chocolate around the frame,
and always that way, even last night. And I'm not anymore.
But it doesn't feel any different. Is there a specific reason?

(01:23:45):
Is that your internal clock ors or something you like
about it? Both? I love about it and it is
my intern internal clocks. Well, I love it because once
you get to a certain hour, everything shuts down in
your internal market. You can do your own thing. The
only people who call some is somebody I want to
talk to exactly. There's no interrupt in the internet age,

(01:24:09):
start hearing from Europe whatever, But I don't. I'm not
in that age. I'm I'm watching games or you're watching games.
What else you're doing? I'm reading and watching games, watching
just DV owing things I want to watch. In between
twelve and six, speaking to some friends in London and

(01:24:31):
around four my l a friends are in bed by
what what friends I have left there? So no? I
love that time? Okay? And are you presently married? I
am presently married. And does your wife what scheduled? Does
she keep? Not mine? I have the same situation with
my girlfriend, and you know, the therapist said, what is this?

(01:24:54):
You know, this is the only way I can live
my life, to create you know when everything shots not
only that it might be advantageous. Oh, I'm totally believe.
I mean the fact we don't go to bed at
the same time. What time does your wife go to
bed and wake up on any given night? It can
be from I'm beat, I'm putting my feet up and
that's it. At nine o'clock or not much later than eleven,

(01:25:19):
and my girlfriend's eleven and seven. You know, get a
good a bit of eleven, great up seven like clockwork.
If I got up at seven, I'd have to make
sure there were no small instruments near me. I don't
even want to get up, you know, to get on
an early flight. Even let's I'm on the dying these days,
I am not flying. That's a whole you know. My

(01:25:40):
very very very close friend, Howard Gilman, who used to
be was Dennis leaven Toole's partner and closest friend. His son,
who I was there the day he was born, was
getting married in a very nice place up in Carmel
three weeks ago. I had my flights in my hotel.

(01:26:01):
I just couldn't do it. I'm not willing to make
an unforced error. That's exactly what If I was not
lying in bed and I was dying of COVID and
I did something like that, That's just not the way
I want to go. Okay, So you knew Laura. So
I knew Laura. And she called me in the middle
of the night and said, I'm getting sick again. I

(01:26:23):
have a record in me, please make it with me.
That's what happened. And did her sickness affect the record?
Absolutely not? Does it sounded no? But I will say,
and I'm a huge fan saw her multiple times, did
not know her okay up through uh certainly the first

(01:26:44):
the third album, New York Tenderbury, and then the Christmas
Beads a Sweat. What came thereafter forget production. The songs
were not of the quality of what came before. Laura
had things in her life, and I have no I mean,
I have no idea to put it upon her foot
for why that might be. But Laura was just dealing

(01:27:06):
with a bunch of things and maybe she just wasn't
plugged into that the greatest part of her because she
was the minute she walked in the studio. First of all,
we did it up in my studio that Donald and
I owned, which was an extremely private place that had

(01:27:27):
a window and when you looked out the window, all
you could see was the Tribe or bridge, and at
night it was just it was a very nice, chill
place to be and it was Laura Party, Rainy Elliott, random,

(01:27:49):
everybody who was friendly. They all knew each other. It
was very let's just play. And when she opened her mouth,
it was just magic. I mean, she was a magical singer.
Never sang a bad not ever not, not that I
ever heard. She was just remarkably good. Was she aware

(01:28:12):
of how beloved she was by her fans? If yes,
I'm sure she was. You couldn't be more. This is
who I am. And she was talk about, you know,
not being involved in the scene. She just she was cool.
Although at the end of it, I was a little
I was upset at because I as we were making

(01:28:35):
the record, the studio was up on nine five in
the very very East Side, and Mattola and I would
be on their way to Connecticut at home, and they
were a big fan and friends of mine for a
long time, so they were once in a while, come
by the studio, you know, how's it going, see Laura?

(01:28:56):
And they were when I sent them the final at
that time debt. Donnie called me back in the study.
He said, this is you know, she's just one remarkable singer.
I just hung up from Lawn and she's gonna open
Saturday Night Live this season. I went, wow, that's great. Great.

(01:29:17):
I went into studio because we were still doing some things.
I said, Laura did this, and she said called Donnie back,
I'm not doing that show. I'm not going on TV.
And Donnie called her and Tommy spoke to her and
she just she was so self conscious about her weight

(01:29:40):
she wouldn't go on TV and they dropped her. Wow,
that's what I knew he was excited about the record
because he called me about the record then too. So,
how was your experience at Warner Brothers working in part
of that legendary in our team? How good does it get?
It was magic? Then? Who were you in the studio

(01:30:01):
with at that time? I was we were doing Nightflying.
I had done a record that as a story of
its own that we all loved. That is one of
my two or three favorite records called Rut Boy, Slim
in the Sex, Dare to Be Fat, Fat is where

(01:30:22):
It's at. You know those first two road group boys,
Slim of the Sex, Change Hield he unfortunately died. I
used to talk about those albums all the time. I
have a picture of Roots in my bedroom. I have
two pictures in my bedroom. I have a picture of
Root that no matter where you go, he's looking at you.

(01:30:47):
I mean if you're on the side of the picture,
like literally sitting standing next to the picture, he's looking
at you. And I have a picture of Donald Dusty
Springfield and my friend Thomas Jefferson, Kay, and the a
let's at a piano. That's what I have in my
bedroom A picture of Rude. Wow. So Rude supposedly dropped
out of Yale. I believe what was his And then

(01:31:10):
they said there was mental illness? What was really his story?
I get to talk about Rude. This is good. His
story is. I don't know where to start. I'm in
the village. One night, Fagin's comes by, which he would
do occasionally, you would play on records I was making

(01:31:31):
or come by, and as he left that day, he
dropped a cassette on the console. He says, so check
this out. Well, he would do that occasionally for me
to hear a new song, not often, but occasionally. I
really heard the songs till they came into studio and
we played him. And I got in my car to

(01:31:52):
go home, and I put the cassette in and I
heard put a nickel in the duke and boogie to
your puke, And I went, Fagan, what the funk is this?
I thought it was Fagan joking me. I got home.
You know, it's a ridiculous hour. What the hell? What's this?

(01:32:13):
He tells me about this friend of his in d C.
Who this guy is there and he's like a legend
in town, and so fake and I got on the
plane and we went to the University of Maryland. It
was the Christmas show for whatever the students there. It
was a big room. Ken at the end of the show,

(01:32:36):
well rude, if you know, roots worked. Every night was
a different theme. So he always dressed up one night
as a soldier or a Santa, and this night he
was Santa. And at the end of the show he
sat on a chair and he said, okay, all you
boys and girls your book girls, really you hang up
on their left and you sit on Santa's lap. And

(01:32:57):
when they got up on Santa's lap, when they got
up on his, he popped in amy under their nose,
really really Fagin and I well, I hit my head
on the table, laughing. I thought I saw Fagin's hit
the table as well. It was just beyond shows over whatever,
that's over, and we were going to meet at some

(01:33:18):
little place at a pool table and whatever. As I
told you earlier, I got pretty good at shooting pool.
And he was this larger than life figure, you know,
he was. I think he graduated three from Yale and
green Lee, who was his partner, was rude boy was

(01:33:40):
six five to sixty, green Lee was six nine. He
was a draft choice of the Dolphins offensive lineman mhm.
And we went to this place and you know, there's
a pool table there, and you know, he's etching and
unjust weird. And he said, don't watch the shooting game

(01:34:01):
a pool. So I not only beat him, but I
ended the eight ball game with a bank shot. Literally
he fell to his knees and he went and we
became friends, and they let me sign him at Warner's unbelievably,
and we made a record that just like I wouldn't
even know how to tell you the unbelievable uniqueness of

(01:34:28):
that record. Well, what pisces me off is that whole
attitude is absent, not only in music, and that irreverence.
You know, I'm not too old for you. The second
song on the album, the Mood Ring, he really nailed
these things. They served chicken chassis chicken. I remember saying,

(01:34:51):
chicken chess. Hey, what do you mean the bones of
a chicken? Okay, See how the other thing is they
were autobiographical. That's the other thing. I didn't know that
in jail and Jacksonville too Sick to reggae. Right, those
are autobiographical and so much more than we could sit

(01:35:14):
here talking. If you want to call me at three
in the morning, call me and I'll tell you unbelievable
things that went on doing that. But I will tell
you one and I'll leave it at that. He comes
to me one morning and says, I need to go
see a doctor. I didn't know doctors down there. So
the Eagles were living there at the time, with the

(01:35:35):
Simpson and Coconut Grove, and I called Glenn and I said, I,
you know, I need a doctor for this guy. They
always had doctors to go see, and they gave me
the name and I went down with driving and driving
and I said, so, what are we going for it?
He said, I need to get a shot. I get
a shot. I carry around this paper. I said, what

(01:35:59):
what is it? Mixing? M What does it do? Well?
It lets me feel my left side and my right side. Okay,
m hm, great time, greatest thirty days in my life. Okay.
What did Warner brothers say about the record? I certainly well,

(01:36:21):
I certainly found it through the press, and that's why
I bought it and fell in love with it, but
what was it like being on the inside. Well, this
will be good too. They were wild. I mean everyone
appreciated the things about you know, the musics, like you know,
Lenny and Teddy and all these guys. And because we
got it excited, it translated to Mo and the other people.

(01:36:43):
So we booked out the Roxy one night. They were
terrible drug uses coke. I mean, he was Dicky and
Greenley consumed. They were these huge guys and consumed drugs.
So we booked out the Roxy one night and the

(01:37:06):
morning of the show, I get when my my secretary,
who they really liked but was naive to all of
this scene, went over to the month to you know
where Blush passed when he was staying at the Chateau.

(01:37:26):
Baman Boby said. They called that she was going to
go over there and he was just gone. She called
me in tears. I went over there. We injected coffee
in his veins. Somehow he got it together. Now, you know,
he was a I was you know rather if you
know this song used to be a radical right at

(01:37:48):
the end of that song, like I said, was autobiographical,
climbed over the White House fence took a billy clip
to the head if it weren't for the freaky freaky
doctor who boy Slim long since be dead. So that's
who he was. And at the we packed the roxy,
I mean, you couldn't get in. And Moe is sitting

(01:38:11):
at the front table with who used to be the
guy at Warna time Warna you know the main CEO guy.
Oh you're talking about you know, Bob Morgato. No, the
guy he s ross exactly so Stephen Mower at the table.
Oh god, and they come out. He comes out and

(01:38:35):
opens with two uh boogie to your puke. It was fabulous.
And he looks out he's loaded and he says, I
can see tonight we have some corporate criminals in the house.
That was the end of the record that minute. Mhm

(01:38:59):
did you mean team contact with him? Oh? Absolutely, I'm sorry.
I didn't wear my boy from President T shirt for this.
And what was the real story with him dying? P
O DD and Betty were taught at it. There's no story,
and was there were second every member of the man
has passed away. And there actually was a sex change band.

(01:39:22):
It was not a studio. Oh my god. They were
that band. That you here right. They were great. They
were Ernie Lancaster was as good as swamp blues guitar player.
These guys were great. They played live. So how did
it end with you and Warner Brothers? It didn't really
quote And as much I was living in l A,

(01:39:43):
I had my living in l A in my office
in Burbank, and I had a I get kidney stuntes
often and badly, and I had an operation. I was
in Cedars Side night and Donald told me one day
and he said, you know, I'm standing here on forty
seven and Broadway. Let's come home. And I said I

(01:40:06):
was getting divorced at the time. And I said absolutely,
Let me get out of the hospital recoup, and I
left and I went back home. And then I had
an office at Warners in New York, which they were
very nice about. And I had that for some years,
and then just one thing led to another, and I maintained.

(01:40:29):
I spoke to Lenny yesterday last night. Days and my
friends and Lenny and I have born six hours apart,
and so we have been friends for years. It's been fine.
I mean, some of the best years of my life,
for sure. And what occupies your time today. Other than
that twelve to six am period, we covered every night

(01:40:52):
at nine o'clock or most every night at nine o'clock.
I go online with a close friend of mine in Minneapolis,
a cognitive brain doctor who's a fabulous keyboard player, and
we were talking one day and he told me, how
you know, once a week is so his brother in
law and some couple other guys come down. He has

(01:41:13):
a studio down in the basement of his house where
I've been. He grows wed against the studio. His friends
come over, they have a beer, smoke a joint and
they play covers. I said, oh cool, let me here.
So he played me a track one night. And these
guys are really good musicians, I mean really good musicians.

(01:41:35):
And I said, you know that sex is really cool?
And it turns so I go on every night. There
are many tracks and they're rerecording again because his wife
will let people in the house again. They were all vaccinate,
and I take these tracks and I because what you
can do digitally these days. I am creating tracks with him,

(01:41:58):
thankfully no vocals, and I send him to a good
my friend, Jennifer Lioness, who connected with you to create
this podcast. And she puts him up for licensing. And
I don't care if anyone likes him and not. I
do something for two hours and have fun, okay. And
and I have three fabulous new grandsons. How many children

(01:42:22):
do you have? I have four children, so you've been
married how many times? Twice? And the four children are
from which marriage. I have a son and daughter from
my first marriage and two daughters from my second marriage,
and the daughters have I have a one year old
grandson and three year old identical twins, and I can't

(01:42:45):
get enough. And they all live in the New York
area and they wont Mimi, who has the one year old,
lives a six minute walk from where I grew up
in Brooklyn, and my other one lives ten minutes away.
To what agreed to the music business cause your first
divorce only divorce? Well we you know we we we

(01:43:09):
knew each other and we're still friendly. We knew each
other since we were fourteen. In one place we were
in Brooklyn, we knew the same people, We had the
same friends. When we moved to California. I can't say
that had anything to do with it. It was an
entirely new environment. Meeting up, you know, a whole bunch
of new people in different ways. You know, I was

(01:43:33):
in the studio to a ridiculous hours. It couldn't have helped,
but I can't attribute what part of it was. None
of it helped. Okay, you're talking about rude and the cocaine.
You know, Walter had his own issues. To what degree
were you involved in drugs? I was fortunate. I've always
liked smoking weed forever. I had friends, too, many friends

(01:43:59):
who liked blow. I tried it a couple of times,
but the best way I can describe it is every
once in a while, very not often. It would be
like twelve or one, and Fagin would say, you want
to work late tonight, and uh, I'd say okay. And
we always said, well there was a little vial there,

(01:44:23):
and I can tell you why. But I'd say okay,
and we put out a line, you know, that couldn't
get a cat high, and I'd split it even and
each of us would do you know, it's like a flake,
And one of us would say, now I feel shitty
and nervous, and that's how it made me feel. So
I was lucky. I didn't like it. It was so

(01:44:45):
around you all the time in those days. But I
like smoking weed, which I still do, but I never
liked any of the other drugs. Well, Gary, it's been
great talking to you. There a lot of you know,
important stuff that unfore and he's going to pass with
the people who lived it. I'm glad we got a
lot of this information. Thanks so much for doing this podcast. Thanks,

(01:45:08):
I'm appreciating it. Nice meeting you. Until next time. The
next time I'm here every night, listen, I'll start calling you.
It's like Billy Gibbons, He's another one calls me after midnight.
It's there's a club of those people. There should be more.
Can I join the club? Well, I think we're all
the club. You know, this is this is you know

(01:45:30):
in terms of I'm more. I like to work after midnight,
so I don't really like to talk and interact that much,
which is different. But that's a private conversation. We'll leave
the audience out of this. Thanks again, Thank you. Until
next time. This is Bob left. Ste

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