Holly Knight

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
My guest today is songwriter Holly Knight. She has a
new book entitled I Am the Warrior, My crazy life
writing the Hits and rocking the MTV Eighties. So, Holly,
why did you write the book? Why did I write
the book? I guess I wrote it for a number

(00:31):
of reasons. I tried to actually write it a few
years ago, and I took it to a person that
represents writers, and she came back and she said, well,
you know, it's really well written. I really like it,
but you're not a household name and I probably won't

(00:52):
be able to get you a deal. So I went, oh,
and I put it aside for about a year and
a half, and then people kept bugging me and going,
why aren't you know? I'd be in the kitchen at
some party or something and they don't you have to
write a book. You have so many stories and they're
so very there's so many different artists. So I thought,
you know what, uh fuck it, I'm doing it, and

(01:14):
so I put together a book proposal. I've learned how
to do it the proper way, you know. I got
an agent and I got a deal and that's how
it started, really, and then you know, the pandemic was
going on, so I was home all the time anyway,
and I thought, you know, I really need a break
from songwriting, which happens to me during different so periodically

(01:39):
I just have to stop writing and I need something
else to put my creative juice into. So I really
enjoyed it. Actually, I had a lot of fun writing
this book. Okay, what's the reaction been from some of
the people you mentioned. You're very honest, you say who
you have sex with. Some people you're not so charitable too.

(01:59):
Have you gotten any feedback you mean the people in
the book? Yeah, I got. I got feedback from Kathy
Valentine and Cassandra Peterson, my two buddies, and they loved it.
I mean, Cassandra was so sweet and she said I
had no idea you loved me so much, which is

(02:19):
pretty funny. But and Kathy as well, and they both
said that they were really impressed with the fact that
it was actually really well written. It wasn't just like
schlocked down. They're like, here, this happened, and this happened.
I tried to be you know, tried to be sort
of artistic and as far as the guys, let's see,
I had everybody has been just freaking out over it

(02:42):
and telling me they love it. But the people that
are in it, I haven't gone out of my way
to tell too many of them that they're in the book.
And a lot of them I sent the book to, like,
I sent it to Jean Gene Simmons, and I don't
know if he reads books, but he put a really
nice blurb on it, which was fantastic. And what was
great about it was his blurb totally mirrored the story

(03:05):
that I wrote about in the book, which kind of
was validating. You know. I sent a copy to Paul Stanley.
I doubt he'll read it. Stephen. I didn't send it
to Steven Tyler. He's got a lot of stuff going
on right now. What about Rod Stewart, You know, you
take a few swings into him, not vicious, but he

(03:26):
comes over to write a song and you never write right. Well,
well that's his fault. You know. He was too busy
being mischievous and horsing around. And it was really important
to me to write something good. I mean, look, these
people call me to write something that you know, they've
run out of either juice or steam, or they've been

(03:47):
doing it too long, or they want fresh blood. And
so I can't just write an ordinary track, you know,
I have to write something that's really, really good. And
it was just frustrating. I mean I talked about it
in the book, and I don't think I put him
down it all. I just sort of told the facts
and said that I was, you know, all the different
things that happened, and honestly, when I saw him, I

(04:09):
mean that happened what twenty years ago, no more like
thirty five years ago when I wrote Love Touch. But
he had made a remark, you know, as you know,
he made a remark in the book about how it
was sorry, not in the book, he made a remark
on an anthology record that he did, and he said
that this song love Touch was one of the silliest

(04:31):
songs or embarrassing songs he'd ever recorded, which was a shocker,
because that's not how it went down at all. He
absolutely loved it, and he got me to come in
and sing it, and I played all the instruments on it,
and he sent me flowers afterwards telling them how he
loved it. So it was like a complete about face.
And I think that had a lot to do with,

(04:51):
you know, the Man's club and everything that the rest
of his band and people whispering in his ear. But
the funny thing is I saw him at the Tina
Turner premier in London and the West End and he
was like, my best friend. I don't even I've seen
him before that he doesn't remember any of that. He
turned once to someone and it was his family. I
ran into him in Central Park in New York at

(05:15):
a restaurant and he turned to his family and said,
Holly and I wrote this hit song, this great song together,
And I'm thinking, well, wow, no you didn't write it
with me, But now you think it's a hit song again,
So you know what the fuck it's you know, getting older?
What can I if you get paid anyway? I love touch?

(05:37):
Does it bug you when he says the song is
sillier doesn't like it? Yeah, I think it does bet
me because you know, I'm still I still have feelings,
and if it were true, I would even say, yeah,
that's not one of the best songs I've written. I mean, look,
I've written a lot of songs with or you know,
for kiss and I wouldn't go walking down suns and

(05:59):
saying this is the best song I've ever written. I mean,
water seats its own level, and they're great kiss songs,
but they're not the level of some of the songs
I write where I put a lot of effort into
lyrics and things like that. And that's why I said
in the book, I said, you know, I'm sorry, but
the lyrics I felt to love touch were fucking poetry.

(06:20):
And I said it because I really feel that, you know,
there's some really a lot of thought went into that tune.
I think he missed the whole point of it. I
don't know, I'm not. I mean, I'm not upset about
it now. I got it out in the book. It's
amazing how cathartic this book has been, because there were
a lot of things that I was kind of walking around,
you know, chewing on it like a bone, and it
just this somehow helped me to let it go. So

(06:43):
you mentioned earlier the boys club men's influence. What's it
like being a woman, or has been being a woman
in a guy's world. It's been interesting. I was always
a tomboy growing up, and also I kind of grew
up with a bit of a chip on my shoulder

(07:04):
based on my upbringing, and I also took music very
very seriously. I mean I started playing piano when I
was four, and I was playing Mozart sonatas in you know,
Mendelssohn at a ridiculously young age. So I was very confident.
I mean, there's a lot of things I'm not confident about,

(07:25):
or weren't I wasn't confident about, but music was definitely
not one of them. So when I walked into those rooms,
I just felt like, let's get to work. I have
every right. I have as much right to be here
as you do. And the minute we would start working
or I would start playing something, they would shut up,
you know, they would actually you could actually see the change.
It was really quite amazing to watch. And then, you know,

(07:48):
my name started getting around and I think people just
accepted me. There was a lot of respect. It was
kind of unbelievable in a way that they just sort
of opened their doors and treated me like an cool
to be honest, except for the few times, and one
of them was the Rod Stewart story. That's probably the
probably the I don't want to say dark, but it's
probably the most revealing one as far as you know,

(08:11):
being around guys, because I mean, to walk into the room.
I had been asked to do a tour by the
management and by Rod, and it was a short tour.
It was three weeks and their keyboard player couldn't make it,
and I thought, it's just be so much fun. And
when I walked in, Rod wasn't there, and I went
up to the guitarist and yeah, I definitely I had

(08:32):
something to say about him in the book, for sure,
But you know, he looked at me like, well, who
are you? We didn't order any pizza, but let's go.
You know, we're living in the me too era and
not all men, but some men are very forward and
it can be tough being a woman. Did you have
any of those experiences? No, not really. I had one

(08:56):
I mentioned in the book when I was about eighteen,
and I was, you know, going sneaking backstage to like
Madison's Square Garden to sort of I mean, we didn't
call it networking then, but that's basically what I was doing.
And I really described the backstage areas like another like
the other side of the looking glass, like just such

(09:17):
a strange alternate reality. And there was a band one
night who they were the opening act to the bigger band,
and this guy came up to me. I think he
was a bass player or something, and he said follow me,
and I followed him into a room and then he
just turned around and grinned and said, I really would

(09:38):
like a blowjob. And I just like I looked at
him like I was. I wasn't scared. I was more
like disgusted, like ill, and I ran at her there
as fast as I could. And after that, I just
you know, I mean, this is not to take away
from people that have been constantly you know, these stories

(09:59):
of women that have been abused and raped by men.
I mean that it's disgusting how that goes on, but
that's not my story. My story was more like, don't
fuck with me. You know, if you if you want
the best to me, let's work together. And then there
were times, like I said in the book, there was
plenty of ass grabbing, but that was on both sides.
You know, if I wanted to be with someone, I

(10:23):
was flirting back. So you know, the me too movement
wasn't really sort of happening for me. And I know
there are there's so many women that that story is true,
and for them, I think it's wonderful if they have
the courage to speak up, you know. But I really
I'm one of those people. Like this book is not
about you know, who tried to rape me or how

(10:45):
I went into rehab. I talked about that too. You know.
I did smoke pot and I did do blow, but
I wasn't addicted and I stopped doing it thirty years ago.
And this is not a story about all the drugs
that nearly killed me. I So, in other words, not
everybody that drinks alcohol is an alcoholic, you know what
I mean? Sure, okay, but you do delineate having sex

(11:11):
with some of these people you're working with, and that
is not in most people's books written by women. Do
you think you're the same and they just don't write
about it or are you different? Well, I can't speak
for anybody else's experiences, but I imagined, well I know

(11:31):
some of them, okay, and I'm not going to name names,
but yeah, of course, you know, you think if it's different,
it's not like you pick up a guy like, for instance,
kiss They would pick up someone in the hallway of
like you know, the place they were playing in or
they would probably they would boast about just meeting someone
and asking them to give them, you know, head or something.

(11:53):
That was never the case with them. I mean I
was a little classier than that. These were people that
I worked with. I mean, look, if you look at
an actor, he ends up sleeping with the actress that
he's doing the movie with. It just happens. You spend
all the time with him. They're charismatic, you're attracted to
each other, and stuff happens. But I went I never
picked up people and did one night's stance. Even when

(12:15):
I was in my bands like Spider and Device, I
never picked up ever someone on the road. So that's
a little bit of a difference, you know. But some
of the guys that I worked with I slept with, Yeah,
and I'm still friends with him or some of them
I dated, and some I married. How many times you've
been married three and are you presently married? No, I've

(12:41):
been married and divorced three times. So what did you learn?
I learned that I have to value myself more and
reach for the higher hanging fruit on the tree, and
that I well, the second time I got married, I
really wanted to have children, and you know, my biological

(13:02):
clock was ticking in and I fell in love with someone,
and you know, I was a great wife in my opinion.
I just ended up leading them because I never I
wasn't very prudent with the choices I made, you know.
So what I've learned is just to value myself and
realize that if I'm going to enter in into a series,

(13:22):
I'll never get married again, that's for sure. But now
I'm dedicating love as a battlefield when I play. I
dedicated to my ex husbands, you know. But um, okay,
if someone who's been married and divorced myself, people just
once I live with I live just one's been married, Okay,

(13:44):
and people always say, oh, you know it was equal.
We agreed, it's never equal. Somebody wants it more than
the other person. Were you the personally and how was
it with your three marriages? Um? I would say that, Well,
like I said, at the end of it, I had

(14:05):
to kick all three of them out. Um, but I
would say that, let me think, I have to think
individually here for a second. Um, I think they needed
me more than I needed them. Okay, they needed me
for different reasons than I needed them. What they needed

(14:27):
me for was, um, a free ride. You know, I
was the breadwinner, and we could do a whole podcast
on that. But I think that's that's a little different subject.
But when one reads the book, if one is Hollywood fluent,
shit doesn't just happen. So I'm reading the book and

(14:49):
I said, well, you know, this woman had to be
pretty aggressive in order to be in these situations. Would
you agree with it? How would you characterize your own behavior?
I would say more than aggressive. I would say confident
and sort of creative with how I went about getting

(15:09):
their attention sometimes or you know, and sometimes yes, aggressive.
You know. For instance, when I was working with Tina Turner,
I really wanted her to cut a certain song. She's
cut none in my but I wrote this one song
and I said, you called up her manager said you
have to get her to cut this tune. I know
this is the perfect tune for And I did that

(15:30):
whole thing and she ended up cutting it. And it's
funny because Roger did a BBC interview where he talked
about it. You know, but um, are you talking about
my work or my personal life? I'm talking about your work. Yeah,
I would say I was confident, and I think my
work spoke for itself. I didn't have to do a

(15:52):
lot of selling once my name got around. Yeah, well,
I'm more talking about you know, before you had a
hit with Obsession, and you know with Pat Benatar thereafter,
when you're scrapping, even when you're a teenager in New
York City, you know, everyone talks about getting backstage. It
is not easy to get backstage, it is. I was tenacious, Okay,

(16:15):
I was absolutely tenacious. I was relentless. Are you kidding?
If if maybe we're talking about semantics here, if that's
what you mean by aggressive. Absolutely I was very clever,
and you know I talked about it in the book.
I would I would spend most of the time talking
to the photographers because they always got invited to the

(16:37):
best parties, and they were the nicest ones. They weren't
as pretentious as you know, the other uber, trendy cool
people backstage. They were more down to earth and um,
I mean I never had a business card or anything,
but I was always trying to weasel my way into
some sort of conversation or or you know, and it
took a while. And like I said that, we didn't

(16:58):
have the word networking, but that's what I was doing,
and one thing led to another, to another to another.
But I think it was more confidence. And I also
talk about in the book the fact that it was
kind of crazy the way. I know you're finding it
hard to believe, Bob, But a lot of things fell
in my lap. You know, I'm not I wasn't in

(17:19):
a band where we had a struggle for two three
years and things just happen. And I really believe in
a spiritual way that when the universe wants things for you,
it gets out of your way. And not only that,
it aid and it bets the process. And these things
just kept coming in. That's not to say I haven't
you know, I haven't had to eat shit and I
haven't had to be turned down all the time. I

(17:40):
mean even now, you know, I've been in the Songwriters
Hall of Fame. But sometimes it's just degrading the way
people treat you. The songwriters get treated pretty much like shit.
So tell me about this chip on your shoulder, be
a little deeper. What are you talking about. Well, when
I was growing up and my parents divorced, my mother

(18:03):
was physically abusive, and you know, I didn't really get it.
I didn't want to get into it too much, but
I told one story just so it would sort of
show how something inside of me, that the fire in
my belly was ignited, so to speak, where I got
tired of it and I learned to fight back. In
the beginning, I didn't fight back. And when I learned

(18:25):
to fight back, it's like anything, when you give someone power,
it's you giving them the power the minute you take
it away. That it's like, you know, that's seen in
the Wizard of Oz where the horrible mean Wizard you
put back the curtain. You see he's just a little
old man and he's yeah. So it's sort of like that.
And so what came with that was a chip on

(18:46):
the shoulder, you know, talking back to my mother getting
smack some more. And I just sort of carried that
on with me as I was sort of out there.
I mean, I talk about it in the book. I
don't get into it too much, but I was out
there for about four years, just traveling. I lived everywhere.
I lived in Seattle fore year, I lived in Boston

(19:06):
for two years. I was doing everything from food stamps too.
I'd work long enough to qualify for unemployment, and then
I'd get the unemployment and then when that would run out,
you know, I would do all of those things, and
I had lots of you know, straight jobs those were.
That was probably the last time I ever had, like
us a real job, like working for someone else, was

(19:28):
when I was in Spider and that lasted I think
about a week, and then we got a record deal.
And that's why I talked about these things. I kind
of fall inside into your lap seemingly. But what'd your
father say when you told him about the abuse? Well
that was also difficult because my father was in total

(19:49):
denial and he wouldn't he wouldn't validate anything I was saying.
He wouldn't call her up and tell her to cut
it out. And it took about fifty years. I went
into a therapist's office with him and finally found out
what was what that was all about, which I don't
really need to I wouldn't want to, as disrespect to him,
get into it now. But that also made me angry,

(20:13):
like why aren't you protecting me? You know? He would
always sort of like say, oh, she's like one of
those European women like Gina Lola Bridget as she likes
to pick up plates and throw him, you know, and
I would say, no, that's why are you glamorizing that?
So that that also added to the chip on my shoulder,
you know, and also the fact that you look, my

(20:34):
book is dedicated to anyone who ever had a dream
and was told no, And that was me because I
was this sort of blossoming classical pianist. My mother really
wanted to groom me for that, and she said, you're this,
You're not this. So then there was this angst once
I discovered rock music, and the louder the better, you know,
that's where the rebelliousness started to grow, and the chip

(20:54):
on my shoulder and all that, and you know, that's
all part of It's so funny how so many things
in my life have led up to, you know, the
fact that I wrote The Warrior, that I write songs
that are about fighting and all that. It's like none
of it was premeditated. It just kind of unfolded that way.

(21:16):
And you know a lot of times, so when I
was writing the book, I would come to these sort
of realizations. I never really analyzed it before until someone says,
explain it to me. And then you have to put
it into words, you know, so you ultimately run away

(21:37):
from home and go on this ajira for years. Tell
us a little bit about that. I left home when
I was fifteen, and it was right before my sixteenth birthday.
I just, you know, I didn't like the abuse that
was going on at home. My father wasn't listening to me.

(21:58):
And then one day I went up to my school,
which was music and art that was at the time.
It was in a really rough neighborhood, which I don't
even know the neighborhood is so rough now, but it
was one hundred and thirty fifth Street in Convent Avenue
and now this school is next door to Juliard. I
so wished should have been that way when I went there,
But again that's my journey. So I remember one day

(22:18):
I walked up to school and there was like police
tape everywhere and they were pulling a body out of
this garbage cam that was chopped up in pieces. They
just pulled the head out and I looked and I thought,
this is crazy. I'm getting out of here. And I
had met I already had a boyfriend at that point
who was twenty. He was a drummer, and we had
sort of been talking about doing the what IF's, like

(22:41):
what and I'm thinking, what if I play a house.
I'm fifteen, What if I go out there and just
grow up really fast and playhouse? And I was sort
of entertaining the idea, but I never thought it would happen.
And then one day I was working at sam Ash.
I had got a job there, which, by the way,
I loved. I loved working. I loved that feeling of
making my own money, and to this day that is
so important to me, not to be dependent on someone else. Okay,

(23:05):
a little bit, a little bit slower, so you're on
forty eight Street, but be Mannis and all these things,
you know, and it was sort of an intense buying experience.
You just walked in and said, you gotta hire me.
How did you actually get the job? It's like the
things that fall into my left I walked in there
and I remember the manager's name was Herb and I

(23:29):
said to him, I'm looking for a job. I'm still
in school, so I can only work part time. I'm
a musician. Are you hiring? And he just took my number,
kind of looked at me there like whatever, because everybody
that worked there. They were all men, and I got
a call at home that night and asking if I

(23:51):
could come in the next day. So I guess they
must have fired someone like unexpectedly, and you know, I
was in the right place at the right time, and
he called me in and I loved working there because
it was sort of with Then this happens a lot
with musicians that get jobs at all these places like
Guitar Center or whatever. At least you're around music, and

(24:11):
it puts you one step closer to being in the
music business, even if it's a fantasy. But then also
the fact that so many people come into these stories
that are legendary. I mean they have to buy equipment,
and I don't know how it is now, but in
that day they wanted to come in and check out
the equipment themselves. Now they maybe they send someone I
don't know, but I did all the like really crappy

(24:34):
little jobs that no one else wanted to deal with.
Like if he wanted to sell like an amphead at
new and it had some knicks on it, he would
give me a sharpie and I'd have to color it
in and make it look new. Or he sent me
in the back where all the cables were. I mean
to this day, when a roadie sees me take a
guitar cable and wrap it up there, they're like, where'd
you learn that? It's like after doing hundreds in the

(24:57):
backup over and over and over, just like a giscop boom,
it got really I got good at it, but they
were kind of crappy things. And then one day on
my break, I was in the back and I was
playing keyboards and then I hear someone clapping and I
turned around and it's heard of the manager and he said,
where did you learn to play like that? And then
I told him more about me, and then from that
point on he used to have me demonstrate keyboards to buyers,

(25:20):
like I couldn't actually make the sale because I wasn't
legally old enough or I didn't have a so I
don't remember what it was, social Security or something, but
he just sort of would call me out and I
haven't just go play and you know, and make it sound,
and I try and make it look like it was easy,
like if you press this, but you get this sound
and blah blah blah, and so it was. It was.
It was cool and a lot of you know, my God,

(25:42):
A lot of really big artists came in, and I
would just sort of like poker face to stare, like,
holy shit, it's Jimmy Page, Holy shit, it's Frank Zappa,
you know. I mean it was like, you know, It's
one thing when you see something I said in the
Book of you start to believe that you know people
when you see them all the time on TV or
in magazines and stuff. But then when they walk in

(26:05):
and you realize it's sim and you think, I don't
really know them at all, but I know that face
and I know what they've done, and I you know,
I did that a lot in the book, and I
still do that. I'm a fan, girl. I'm a fan.
I'm a music fan, especially that era, you know, the
seventies and eighties. There's really nothing like it right now,
you know, that's for sure. Okay, So tell me about

(26:28):
actually leaving New York. You mean when I ran away
the first time? Or yes, because I ran away a
few times. Okay, So I was fifteen and I lied
to my mother. I had found out that, oh right.
I started to tell you about sam Ash I saw
brochure and it was a summer school program up in
Boston called the Electronic Boston School of Electronic Music, and

(26:52):
they were teaching electronic music on synthesizers like ARP twenty
six hundreds and the Mogue, not just the Mini because
they had the big mugs like with you know, you
had to be practically a phone operator to learn how
to use those because you had to plug all these
cables in and everything. I was really fascinated with all that.

(27:12):
I mean, I was like Emerson, like a Palmer geek,
and I sort of saw myself as a female version
of him. You know. I wanted to perform. I didn't
know I wanted to be a songwriter. I just want
to be a rock star, you know. And I didn't
want to be a rock star because I cared about
so much about being famous. I didn't even think about
the money part. I just wanted to play the music

(27:34):
that I wanted to be played, to be playing, and
I wanted to play to an audience. So that's really
how it started. The songwriting thing sort of came after
the fact, after I'm probably getting ahead of myself again,
but um so I left home pretending that I was
going to come home on such and such a date,
like it was labor weekend. I'll see you, you know,

(27:55):
I said, I was just glad to be away from
my mother, and I think she was probably glad to
get than me too, So I told her i'd be back.
And then about a week or so before I was
supposed to be back, I'd been plotting this all summer.
I mean, this was like the great escape to me,
and we'd saved money. I went with the boyfriend, Danny

(28:15):
the drummer, and somehow I felt safe. And the funny
part is like it wasn't like I was going out
on the road with a twenty year old that was
taking care of me. It was kind of the other
way around. He was the child and I was taking
care of him, you know. But at least I felt
more protected, and I felt that was my first love.

(28:36):
I fell in love with him, and I had this
fantasy that we would form a band, and that never happened,
and we just we went on these crazy adventures that
you know, when I originally wrote the book, I wrote
about one hundred pages more and I wrote about some
of these escapades we went on on the road, because
that's even more like unbelievable, some of those stories. But

(28:57):
I decided that this book had to have some sort
of hook. So the hook for me was the MTV era,
which was unlike any other to me. You know, that's
when I had started really having a lot of hits
and stuff. But so before that, yeah, so we traveled
around and eventually I ended up back in New York
and you graduate from high school. I did. What I

(29:21):
did was I went to Bourns and Noble and I
got and they were around back then, and I got
the you know, like when you're studying for college, you're
studying for certain exams, you have these practice books. So
I got some practice books for the GED And the
thing that was amazing was I always had really really

(29:42):
good reading skills. Like when I was in fourth grade,
I was reading on a ninth or tenth grade level.
So that's always gotten me through life because I'm so
self taught on so many levels and the fact that
I liked to read. And then the Internet came along
and it was just like this explosion of like available
knowledge right at your finger tips. Um. So anyway, I

(30:02):
studied from the book and I took the test and
got my diploma, and I thought, well, that's funny. I've
just spent three years out on the road, and I
got my diploma like everybody else my age, you know,
I had to wait till I was eighteen to qualify,
and then I sent it to my dad because I
know he was really ashamed, but I was kind of
ashamed too that I hadn't graduated. But I knew I

(30:23):
was going to work it out, you know. And as
it turned out, I scored really high and I could
have gone to college, but I didn't have to because
then my career things happen. You know, So what did
what did your mother ever say about your success when
you had it? It took her a long time to

(30:43):
actually come out and say I'm proud of you. And
she's probably said that to be in baby three or
four times my entire life. So hence that's another another
part of the chip on the shoulder, you know. Um
she's she's passed away now, so right, that's another thing
that I thought, now I can write the book because
both my parents aren't around anymore. Because I didn't want to.

(31:06):
I didn't want to hurt make it worse, or hurt
their feelings or anything. But um, I always sort of
when I tell these stories, I placed the story more
on me as opposed to them, you know what my
interpretation of that is. But um, like, for instance, I
would give her, I would give her like a bunch
of CDs and to listen to and enjoy different ones,

(31:30):
like like different bands, like one would be bon Jovi
and one would be Aerosmith and one would be Kissed.
And I knew she hated that kind of music, so
she just gave them away. She kind of used it
to make herself look like, look look at my daughter,
Look what she did. But she didn't she didn't really
listen to them herself. And and I wasn't surprised at
that point, but it still bothered me. You know, it's

(31:50):
funny when you have this relationship with your parents, no
matter how fucked up they are, and maybe when they're
even when they're fucked up, you want you still care
what they think, even though they've talked and treated you
badly or whatever. You still want more than anybody else's approval,
or you want them to say I'm proud of you
or whatever. It's very important because it's part of who

(32:14):
you are. Okay, you ultimately join what becomes Spider. Tell
us how you get into that band, which very interestingly
includes Anton fig of course, was the drummer for David
Letterman forever. Yeah, I was friends with someone who you know,

(32:37):
he was just he was great at hooking people up.
And he invited me to go see a band one night,
and I went and band had a couple of members
that were just filling in because they wanted to do
their own band. And I met them and one of
them was Aunton and the other one was Keith, and

(32:58):
I just immediately like him. And I remember thinking Keith
had said something about wanting to do his own music
and wanted to get a record deal and wanted to
be in a band, and that they were just doing
this as if you know, a temporary gid to make money,
and that just really that was like. When he said that,
I thought, this is the one, This is the one

(33:21):
if I'm going to give him my number, and he
seemed interested in me, and I thought, if he calls me,
I'm definitely going to go check it out. And I
figured if he doesn't call me in the next couple
of days, I'm going to call him. I don't care.
So the next day he called me after I had
met him, and it was about eleven or eleven thirty

(33:44):
at night, and he said, we you know, I talked
to Amanda who was the singer, and Keith and Anton
and we'd love for you to come down and have
a listen to our music. And I said, I'd love to.
When when are you thinking? And he said right now,
I'm like ready for bed. It was like one of
the few nights I've taken a bath and already tucked

(34:04):
in like thinking. And I thought, get your ass up,
this is it, this is the one. This is what
you've been waiting for for four years. See when I
was when I had run away with Danny, we would jam,
you know, but we were always like a basement band,
and it usually was just me on keyboards and him
on drums, and it just I always had the stream,

(34:25):
and it bothered me that he wasn't. He he didn't
have sort of the same ambitions. So I was very
much focused on wanting to make it. At that point,
I wasn't half asked about it at all. I was
going out every night, I was sneaking backstage. I was
networking and going to tracks and to clubs and talking
to people. And you know, I got a job in

(34:45):
a music store, so it was all moving in that direction.
So it's not like I was, you know, a waitress
in like a in a bar restaurant, and then all
of a sudden I decided I wanted to be in music.
This was started when I was four. You know, music
was my first language and it still is. Anyway, they
invited me down and we ended up jamming, and yeah,

(35:10):
it was really funny because Amanda said something like it
was too late to go back uptown. I lived up
on seventieth and on the West Side, and they were
down in Soho in a loft and Amanda said, you
should just stay spend the night. You can sleep with
antone in his room, and we went okay. So I
went in the room and slept with him and he
became my boyfriend. I mean, that's how funny it is

(35:32):
when you're young. It's just you're just young and stupid,
and it's like it doesn't take much if you're attracted
to someone to go, you know, okay, let's give this
a shot. So he was my boyfriend in the band
for about two and a half years. He's still a
very good friend of mine, as is Keith. We're all buddies. Okay,
a couple of things. Hey, what happened to Keith and Amanda? Ultimately?

(35:56):
And then a man has a baby with Keith when
you get there. Then she ends up being involved with
the Anton as they say, where are all these people today? Yeah,
you know, people talk about the social sort of incestuous
stuff that went on in Fleetwood Mac. But we have
him beat because when I broke up with Anton, it

(36:17):
was just too much, you know, like as we were
trying to get a deal, it was just twenty four
seven too much. And I knew that being in the band,
that that was the more important of the two. So
I moved out of I had moved in the lot,
and we were all living in this lot together except
the bass player, and so I decided that I was
going to move into my own place. And then about

(36:38):
a year later, things started to deteriorate between Amanda and
I for reasons that I write about in the book.
She's the only one I don't talk to. Well, I
don't talk to Jimmy, but it's not because I'm not
talking to him. It's it's more like I just don't
know where he is. He was an amazing bass player.
But anyway, so after I think was going on while

(37:00):
I was in the band. I still don't know it.
I've never really asked them. But Amanda divorced Keith. They
still had the child Shay together, and then she started
seeing Anton. At this point I had left the band,
so but I knew something was going on. I told
him I'd finished out the tour. She just made a
switch and went from and they were best friends. They

(37:22):
had grown up together in South Africa, and Amanda's also African,
and I think Keith was more like you could have
her take her. She's always take her off my hands,
but you'd have to ask him. But that's the story
that I got. And then they got married and they
had a child together. So now the lead singers had

(37:45):
gotten married to two different members at different times and
had children with both of them. And Keith and Anton
are still like best friends. That's the best part. They
don't talk to her, but they're like boys stick together,
you know. I think the whole thing's actually pretty funny
when I think about it now. So tell us about

(38:07):
changing your name. So we all we were so focused
on getting a record deal, and you know, we wrote
original material, and I changed my name because my original name,
which is German Jewish, which I meant, you know, I
talked about in the book. It just didn't nobody ever
pronounced it correctly in the first place. And I was

(38:31):
just trying to think of a name that would be cool.
And I had a dream one night, and in the
dream I was Holly Night. So Holly has always been
my name, but the Night came to me in a
dream and I never questioned it. It It just seemed so
normal in the dream. I loved it, and I when
I woke up, I thought that's it. And I didn't
really read into it until much later is my life

(38:54):
started unfolding the significance of the word night because the
Nights are warriors and they're fighters, you know, and they
protect people. I just liked it because it was British.
I was sort of without knowing what an Anglo file was.
I was a total Anglo file. You all started with
James Bond and then I'm just to this day, it's
like English accent just melts me. And it's a very

(39:16):
common name in England. It's like akin to what Smith
is here, you know, But also just the rhythm of it,
because I now I look back and I go Okay,
the rhythm of lyrics and the rhythm of things Holy Knight.
I have a son, Tristan Knight, Dylan Knight. It's all
the same sort of you know, rhythm to it. And
that's It's funny because all these years I've had different

(39:39):
publishing companies and I always sort of play around with
the word nights. So I've had My first publishing company
was Ninty Night. Of course these are all with k's okay,
ninety Night. Then I had night Club. Then I had
um Nightlife Music. My Instagram is night Vision. Then I

(40:00):
had another publishing company because every time you change your
publishing deal, you have to change your publishing name, at
least I did. And then I had good Night like
good Night Songs, and the one that I have now
is Knighted Knighted Songs. Okay, you wit. You end up

(40:23):
connecting with Bill alcoyne. Tell us about that and what
Bill was really like. Bill was like no other manager
that I've met, and I've met a lot of them,
worked with a lot of them over the years. He
was very unique. He was very charismatic from manager he
managed kiss and what happened was I'll try and make

(40:45):
this really short. There were three South Africans in the
group and they befriended Eddie Kramer, who was also you know,
they had that expatriot think of another South African. And
for those that are listening, if you don't know, you
know he did Hendrix in Zeppelins as a producer. He
wanted to produce the band when we got our record deal,
and so Bill A. Coyne was managing Kiss and they

(41:10):
each were about to do a solo record. Eddie Kramer
was doing Ace Freeley's record, and Keith thought, oh, I
have the song and he said to Eddie, can you
give this to Ace? Maybe he'll cut it. Well. Ace
heard the song and didn't really care for it, but
he loved the drummer and that was Anton, so he said,
do you think he would come and play on the record,
So he did. Then they became friends, Party Animal friends,

(41:32):
and and Kiss heard Anton play on Ace's record and
they were like, oh my god, we should get him
to play on the Kiss records because Peter Chris was
you know, he was a mess at the time and
wasn't really in any condition to play on any record.
So Anton ended up playing on Dynasty as well. But
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

(41:54):
It's all in the book. There's a great chapter on
the Spider and Kiss Sing and anyway, that's how we
met the band. We met Kiss and we started to
get to know them because I was Anton's girlfriend. Every
time Anton would go out shrinking or parting, I was
invited because I was the girlfriend, you know, So I
got to know Ace, and you know, eventually they got

(42:17):
to Bill, who came down to see us play. We
were the house band at a club called Tracks, and
he came back to the little dressing arms the size
of a bathroom. We were all practically naked standing there
changing and he's just talking, like doesn't care at all
that we're changing in the same room. He goes, I
want to manage you, and we were like what. We
looked at each other, did we really hear him say that?

(42:39):
And he says, yeah, I want to manage you, and
we all screamed like holy fuck, you know, or some
form of it. Because everybody wanted Bill a coin. He
was like the superstar. There were a few of them,
but he was definitely one of them. And then that's
how we ended up going about trying to get our
deal and we signed to rock Steady, which was you know,
the aduction company. But going back to what was Bill like, Okay, well,

(43:03):
Bill was totally out with being gay at a time
that nobody who's really being out with it. He just
didn't care. He just wore like a badge on his coat.
And speaking of coats, he didn't look anything like a
rock and roll This guy wore like suits, business suits
in a tie, you know, so we really kind of
elegant or whatever. And even though he looked really straight,

(43:27):
he's probably one of the most rock and roll trashy
people like when it came to you know, his own
personal lifestyle and stuff. But yeah, I liked him immensely.
But you know, he favored the boys in the band,
so he would try and if we would go over
to his fancy apartment in the Olympic Powers, which was
really sort of a fabulous place. You know, disco music

(43:49):
would be playing and he'd be giving the guys like
something that would keep them up and erected. He was
giving us something that would just make us pass out
so that he could have his way with the boys.
And again, if you think of the me too, you
know what and even me, like we just looked at
him like fuck off. If we would laugh about it,
and then he would laugh and that was it, you know.

(44:10):
He never he never actually tried to like do suddenly
with the guys unless they were willing at that time,
That's my take on it. And we never took any
of his drugs. We were like, I'm not taking that,
you know, I'm not going to go to sleep in
your apartment. So um, I don't know. I look at
it as all part of the whole sex drugs in
rock and roll territory, and it was really good fun,

(44:32):
you know. And I really liked Bill a lot, So
tell us about getting hooked up with the Commander Mike Chapman, right.
I really liked some of the things I've read that
you've written about him, by the way, and things where
I wanted to chime in because you were interested in
all that. Mike was again very much like Bill a

(44:55):
coin and as much as he was one of the
straightest looking guys, like he would always wear white polo
shirts and white tennis shorts and sneakers. He just looked
so straight, you know, and he is probably one to
this day, I could say one of the most rock
and roll guys I know, because it's a mindset, you know,
it's not about what you're wearing. And I was going

(45:18):
out with a guy named Gray who worked at the
Record Plan and he had done quite a lot of
records with Mike. He did the Blindee records, and he
did a lot of stuff before that, during this sort
of CBGB's period, and he told me that I should
check out Mike Chapman. And he said, you know what's
different about him is he's he's a really good songwriter.

(45:38):
So you don't just get someone that's pushing the faders.
You're going to get someone that really knows how to
write tunes and knows good tunes. And he said, And
I thought that was really important because I always thought
the only way you're gonna get on the radios is
to have like great songs, you know. You know, I
mean the word pop we all know comes from the
word popular, but that doesn't mean what it means now

(46:00):
in today's world that pop sometimes is looked down upon
as cheesy or lightweight. Pop. To me, back then just
meant it was popular because it was weird. It was
so so good that everybody wanted to hear it, you know,
So I sort of made up my business. While they
were trying to get Eddie, I was trying to get Mike.
And at this point I had discovered that I could

(46:20):
write songs. And I say this in the book. I
just started writing because they were writing and their songs
kind of were pretty mediocre and they weren't the kind
of songs that we're going to get us on the radio.
So I just started thinking, well, if they have the
confidence to do it, I'm going to have the confidence
to do And that's really how I became initially how
I started writing. And so by the time my friend

(46:41):
Gray had told me about Chapman, I thought, yeah, it's
very very important to have good songs, you know. So
I we didn't have the Internet in that day, so
and I kept saying to Bill, Bill, can you try
and get ahold of Mike Chapman? And Bill was busy
with Kiss. That was the other thing, like we always,
everybody else came second because Kiss was the moneymaker. So
we a lot of times we were left to our

(47:03):
own devices to figure these things out. And I think
maybe he thought it was premature anyway, But anyway, as
Seren deputy would have it. I met him at a
club at Tracks. I met him at the club Tracks
where we were the house band, and I was talking
to the Knack who he had just produced. He had
done my Sharona and and we were talking to him.

(47:26):
Someone had introduced us, and Mike walked over and they
introduced us and you know Australian slang kind of now.
I look back at and I thought he looked like
Paul Hogan from Crocodile Dundee. And we had a nice
enough chat. It was nothing or whatever, and then he
excused himself to go to the bar and get a
drink in and Prescott, the bass player, said, that's my chat.

(47:49):
He produced our record. He didn't even say Mike Chatman.
He said he was the one that produced our record.
And I said, was that Mike Chapman, Because when they
introduced me, they just said Mike, not knowing that I'm
looking everywhere for this guy. So the minute I found
out it was, they said, yeah, it's Mike Chapman. So
I went. I found Anton who was wandering that around
the club and I had to beat it out of
him to get the tape. We just done a bunch

(48:11):
of songs demos to try and get a record deal,
and he didn't want to give it to me because
he said it was my own copy. And I I
didn't beat it out of him, but close to it,
and he gave it to me, and I kissed him
on the cheek and ran away and gave it to
Mike and I said, I didn't know you were the
Mike Chapman. I'm so sorry because I've been looking for you.

(48:35):
I've been hunting you down and I need. I'm going
to court you because I want you to produce you.
I said all these things, like, there's a really long speech.
And finally, so did you listen to the tape? You know?
And he remember he stuck it in his pocket and
I'll never forget He pat it and he said, yep,
I'm gonna listen to this tape. He said, but I

(48:56):
have to tell you a bit of an asshole when
it comes to calling people back. He said, just keep
calling me. I'm at the record plan. I'm doing a
Blondie record. He was working on Auto American, which had
all those huge hits on it, like a rapture and
the tide is high tide kind of thing. Anyway, Yeah,
and so he would never take my call. And I

(49:19):
called him for two weeks straight and I could hear
in the background he's going, oh shit, it's said, Holly
night check again. I told her to call me, and
because I remember I heard Debbie once saying like, who
is she? Is that your girlfriend? Erstanding? You know, I
was like no, no, no, yeah. So um, he didn't
call me back. And I guess when you asked me
the question before, was I aggressive? I guess the answer

(49:40):
is yes. Um. See, to me, I'm normal, so I
don't think of it in terms of aggressive. But he
told me I could. He told me to be relentless.
So I took him up on it, and that's to me,
that's what it takes. You know, you just try and
hope that you're not being obnoxious. You know, there comes
a point there's a fine line between obnoxious and just

(50:00):
you know, um for two you know just I can't
think of the word right now, but tenacious. Yeah. Um. Anyway,
so he called me up and he said I'm leaving today,
I'm done with the record. I'm getting on the plane
going back home to LA And my heart sunk. I
thought he's not We lost that chance, and he goes no.

(50:21):
He says, I'm going to listen to your tape on
the plane. I have nowhere to go. I'm a cap
I'm a I'm not going in. I'm a captive listener.
So I will call you in a few weeks. And
I was like subscited and I hung up, and it's like,
oh God, I can't I can't wait to tell the
guys in the band. And eight hours later he called
me and he said, I listened to your tape three

(50:41):
times on the plane. He says, you guys are fabulous.
I have a record label and I want to sign you. Okay,
this is a complicated thing. Mike was the guy with
the O'china chap with his partner in uh Nikki Chin
in the UK, and he moves to LA and forms

(51:04):
Dreamland Records. Ultimately he's too busy to record your record.
You work with Peter Coleman. It has got a pretty
good track record himself, certainly, you know with Pat bennettar
on the first album, etc. In retrospect, was that a misstep?
Forget that it led to your songwriting career. Do you
think that Spider would have broken through if you signed

(51:26):
with a regular major record company. It's possible. I mean,
things happen there. You know, at any at any given point,
you can take this road to the left or this
row to the right, and it changes the trajector of everything.
So it's hard to say. Maybe if we'd have been

(51:48):
in a major label, we would have gone on to
make well, I mean, we made two records, but we
would have gone on to make a third record, and
it would have been in the director of a song
that I wrote on a second record with Mike Chapman,
which was better be Good to Me and became the

(52:10):
second single on Tina Turner's Private Dancer. But I'm getting
ahead of myself. I just really wanted I wanted to
work with Mike. I wasn't. I mean, it was nice
that he owned the label, and it's great because we
got a deal, and who knows if we would have
gotten another deal. You know, we had a couple of

(52:30):
labels that had passed on us, or we had one
I think it was Sony. They liked us a lot,
but they wanted to see us live and we were
getting ready to do that when this all happened, and
we just let's just go for this, you know, I
thought he was so cool and the kind of records
that he was doing were so artsy. You know. He
just had this reputation for doing things that were artsy

(52:52):
but commercial, and to do both is very hard. Okay.
It's one thing to be able to write something that's
super artsy, but people can't relate to or latch their
their hooks into. And it's very easy to write something
that's commercial fluff, which is an artsy But to meet
in the middle and do both, that's that's the that's

(53:12):
the key to writing for me, writing great songs, um,
so you know, I mean even when when I was
writing Loves a Battlefield with him, that to me is
a little bit more daring, an archie title. It's not
your normal title, like you know, like a lot of songs.
So I just I like that. I like the fact
that he was successful. I like the fact that he

(53:35):
lived in London and had done all the glamor stuff
like you know, um, The Sweet and and um some
of those other bands, even Susie Quatroo. I mean, there
weren't a lot of women doing rock and so when
when he said he loved the band, um, that meant
a lot. And what meant even more was when I

(53:56):
decided to leave the band, because what happened was, as
we were doing a couple of records, we would never
tell the label who wrote what. We would just turn
in the songs because we wanted them to be, you know, unbiased.
Just pick the songs you like, and they would always
pick mine and they would always end up being the single.
And that just created a lot of animosity in the band.

(54:18):
And what's weird was it wasn't from the guys as
much as much as it was from the singer, who
was a girl like I was. More I was, my
alliance was more with the guys, and it kind of
shifted with her. But I'm not sure if some of
the personal stuff that was going on probably had something
to do with it too, although I never really talked

(54:41):
to her about it. But I decided to leave the band,
and Mike became my future. He became my mentor, you know,
more than anybody that I can think of in my life,
with all the people that I've written in my entire career,
I think, to this day my favorite person to write
with as Mike because he's the real thing, you know,

(55:02):
and he's got that thing that I try to have
as well, which I think I do, is to be
artsy but also to be a commercially successful. Okay, to
what degree every single act Sandy Cinnamon everything stiffed on
his level? To what degree did that affect him? Well?

(55:26):
He ended up breaking up the label and just sort
of ending that whole relationship with Nikki Chen. I think
there was a lot of stuff that was going on
also that between them that he was just he just
reached the end of his rope. I mean, you know,
they had this famous Chinny Chap alliance, you know, the
great songwriters, and you think, oh, it's like Lennon McCartney, right,

(55:49):
But in Lennon McCartney's case, they actually both contributed and
we're both geniuses. In Mike's case, Nikki was the business
partner and Mike was the artist and the writer, and
Nick he was he could call himself a writer. Anybody
can call himself a writer. But I've written with a
Nikki and I can tell you that he's not a writer,
and Mike is. And Mike, for some stupid reason, just

(56:13):
kept giving up income and credit credit, sorry, kept giving
up credit to Nikki for songs that basically he sat
there with a yellow pad. And I know this because
Mike we've talked about it, and I said, are you
okay with me talking about this? I mean, you know,
he said, I want you to talk about it. I
am so sick of it. I want people to know

(56:35):
what really happened. But you know, all those great songs
that came out of them and stuff, it was pretty
much it was Mike and I write about it in
the book because the first song I ever wrote with
Mike was better be Good to Me, and that became
our was going to be our second single on the
Spider record, and a few weeks later after we had
recorded it. Oh, by the way, he ended up producing that. See.

(56:58):
That was part of my little scheme, as I thought,
if I could get him to write with me, maybe
I can just get him to produce it. And because
he was such a I mean, he was a great producer,
just got great performances out of the band, like so
much more than Peter ever did. I mean, Peter was
a sweetheart, but Mike was. Mike was like, you know,

(57:19):
he was like a supernova. He really had that skill.
And we didn't sound the same on that track. There's
actually a version of it out there on YouTube where
we played that song in Germany and you can air
our version, and it's much more kind of druggy. It's
like it's like Lou Reed's take a Walk on the
wild Side, you know. And I love Tina Turner's version,
but it's very very fast, upbeating and all that. But anyway,

(57:43):
I walked into the office and Nicki's name was on
the song on the lyrics, and I said to Mike,
I think there's a mistake. Nicki's name is on the lyrics,
and he said, yeah, I know, and I kind of
looked at him. I was so young, and I was
star struck at that point with Mike, just the fact
that he was working with me, because everybody was always

(58:05):
approaching him, wanting him to do their next record. You know.
He just had number one after one after one, and
so I was very careful. I didn't want to I
didn't want to piss him off, and I didn't want
him to think that I was being an ingrate. But
I wasn't happy about it. And he said, I tell
you what, he said, just agree to this. It'll never
happen again. And I said, why's that and he said, well,

(58:26):
because he's been doing this for years, and I'm done
with that. We have a partnership agreement that whenever one
of us writes, we both share in it. Of course,
Nikki never really wrote anything significant without Mike or with Mike. Actually,
he said, just agree to it and you'll never have
to do it again. So I did so to this day,

(58:46):
I just like I get you know, I get angry
when I see his name there. And the thing is,
I'm not the only one. I mean, it happens all
the time to songwriters. You know, we're a publisher or
not a publisher, a producer will just add their well,
they won't add their name, but they'll give you an ultimatum.
If you don't put me on as a songwriter, we're
not cutting your song. So you know, after that happened,

(59:11):
I just I found I would never agree to that again.
I didn't care who it was. They were either going
to write this song with me, but I wasn't gonna
even if it was something like Madonna, I wasn't going
to let them put their name there just so I
could get the cut. Okay, where is Mike today? And
you said he said you could tell his story? Where
is he today? Is he working in how much contact

(59:32):
you have with him. He lives in London. He is
working sort of in the trendy Shoreditch sort of musicians.
He's working with a lot of young people. I have
no idea what he's put out. I mean, I don't really,
I don't think he's I don't know. He's always busy
working on something. But you know, I have to say, like,

(59:57):
this happens to everybody. It happened to me, it hap
to him, It's happened to you too, It's happened to everyone.
You have some point in your career where it's just explosive,
and then you're sort of established and you go on
and you continue, but you're not always on the top forever,
you know, even if your talent is still the same,
even if you've gotten better or whatever. It's just sort

(01:00:17):
of like a rite of passage that goes on to
the next person or whatever. I mean, even groups like
the Stones, it just happens, you know. So I think
his last you know, the really big period was also
during the eighties, you know. I mean I've since then,
I've had a you know, I've had a lot of

(01:00:37):
stuff happening. I've written songs for movies and TV themes
and all that. But the eighties was really what this
book is about. That it was just crazy, the amount
of success and how well it was going and everything.
And fortunately it was such a significant time period that is,
it's bigger now than ever. I get more covers now

(01:00:58):
on those songs than I did back then, you know.
But going back to Mike, we're on very good terms.
We go through a love hay period where sometimes I
want to kill him, where sometimes he wants to kill me.
He's still as rude as as ever when it comes
to returning calls. He's kind of an asshole that way,
probably by his own admission, and he just he disappears

(01:01:20):
he's very eccentric. But then when we see each other,
it's like it's like we never stopped talking, and it's
there's there's a very strong bond and love there, you know.
And it's interesting because in the beginning, like I said,
I was so starstruck to be working with him that
like I just sponged up stuff and I never talked
back to him. And then as I started getting older

(01:01:42):
and started having success without him and things like that,
where he would challenge me on something, or I would
end up calling him a prick, you know. I mean,
it's really is that classic thing of you know, the
mentor protege, and then the protege matures, and it can
never be the same for the mentor. You can never
catch up. The protege is never allowed to catch up
with the mentor, even if that person has or has

(01:02:05):
surpassed them. You know. But I think he's immensely talented,
immensely eccentric, and he's still alive in kicking. That's all
I pretty much I can say about him. Okay, let's
talk about the process a little bit. You co wrote

(01:02:28):
with Mike. Do you like to co wrote? Would rather
do it yourself? Do you see it as a job
I wake up, I got to put something down? Or
do you wait for inspiration? Tell me about all that? Okay, yeah,
those are good questions. I do like to collaborate. I
always have if it is the right match. If it's

(01:02:53):
not the right match, you really end up babysitting the writer.
And I've gone through that where the record label has me,
has sent me people to work with, and it's like
songwriters one oh one, where they're sitting there on their
phone and they're texting and I'm doing all the heavy
lifting and going, do you like this? Is this like

(01:03:13):
something you would do? I mean, I need some feedback here,
you know, And what happens. It's kind of like, look,
you could be the world's greatest tennis player, and if
you're playing a game on someone that doesn't hit the
balls back, you can play the worst game of your life.
So if I don't like the person I'm running with,
I'm too nice to say now that's got to go
or whatever, I just can't do it. So I don't

(01:03:35):
really like those kind of collaborations. I've only had maybe
five people in my entire career that I've just absolutely
loved working with and felt that's what collaboration is supposed
to be about, Like you're both sort of supertools and
you both bring something that maybe on your own you
wouldn't create, or a lot of times I'll be running

(01:03:57):
on my own and I'll think this is great, and
then the more I play it, I start to think
this sucks. But if you're collaborating with someone and they go, no,
that part's the best part, Like, well, why don't we
try this? And then they put it in a different
slant and then all of a sudden, that's when collaboration
is great, you know, But that doesn't happen that often.

(01:04:18):
So I these days, I like to write a lot
on my own because I'm older, and I just I
guess I've been doing it long enough. I you know,
I just have plenty to say and write about. But
I don't like collaborating with a lot of people at
the same time. The first time I sort of experienced
that was in Nashville, and you know, of course, of course,

(01:04:41):
now you know, you see a lot of a lot
of people listed on one song or whatever. I'm I'm
I don't write like that. I'm very old school, you know.
Even though I know a lot about programming, and I
do all my own pro tools stuff and programming, I
saved that for after. I'm very old school where I
like to sit down with a guitar or guitar or

(01:05:01):
obviously keyboards and and write. And um, doing songs by
committee just seems like a free ride to me. For
for a lot of people that you know, they end
up being called songwriters, but that I think their gigs
are a little bit different, you know. Um, for instance,
a programer, right a programmer. To me, that's like coming

(01:05:25):
and playing guitar or whatever. That's your job. But if
someone can sit down and play the song without your
program drums or whatever, that's you didn't write the song.
You know the song. It's like all the parts that
if you miss them, if you take those out, that's
what That's what to me. Songwriting is about um. But
there are different levels of it and styles, and I

(01:05:46):
acknowledge that. I mean, there are different art forms of
the way people go about writing songs. But for me,
and I'm not talking about anybody else, for me, it's
old school, okay. You know in Nashville they literally have
a ointments. Let's say you're going to collaborate. Do you
want to bring something into the session? When the session

(01:06:07):
is over, you want to work on it? How do
you do it? I prefer to bring in something, And
I talk about this in the book. When I was writing,
either if I was asked to write with Heart for instance,
which I was, or bon Jovi or you know, whoever
I was working with. I liked Rod Stewart for instance.

(01:06:29):
I like to walk in with something and so before
I would get together, if I had the luxury that
it wasn't the next day, I would just wipe everything
off on my schedule and to sit down and jam
in the studio alone so that I could walk in
and this is going to date me, that I would
walk in with a cassette and a walkman and start
to play something. So the same thing in Nashville. I

(01:06:50):
was actually flown down by Winona Judd to write with her,
and I remember looking online and realizing that she wasn't
a songwriter, and so I thought I had better go
prepared with like a whole bunch of ideas. So I
remember I went to I was I had to go
to Hawaii. I was vacationing, and I had to take
my kids because school was out and it was only

(01:07:10):
a time to do it. So I brought a guitar
with man. I just recorded all the starts of these
ideas so that when I went down to Nashville, I
would have something to sort of bring to the party.
I don't really like sort of being I like being
on the front end, not the back end, and I've
done that and I don't really like it. Okay, tell

(01:07:31):
us the story of writing better be good to me
with Mike and how it's ultimately recorded by Tina. I
walked in. I had an idea for a song. I
had something like be good to Me? And he said, well,
why don't we make it a little bit more, you know,
a little bit more empowering, like better be good to me?

(01:07:52):
And I went, oh, I like that, you know. And
then as Mike and I were wont to do, we
would just start jamming, like he would pick up a
guitar and I would play keywords, but usually I'd be
playing a bassline or something, not because I can't play
all that stuff, but to me, you know, basslines are
so important, and that's sort of I've learned since then,

(01:08:14):
that's sort of my forte. I start a lot of
times with a cool bassline. And we wrote that song
in one day, and then we went and cut it
a few days later, and then by the time I
left Spider, there's a whole I don't know if you
want to hear the whole story of why didn't get released,
but the music business, which you can read in the book,
but the music business went in the crapper when they

(01:08:35):
had that whole payola scheme got exposed and all that.
So everybody that put out a record during that time,
their record didn't do anything unless they were so big
like Zappelin or something, didn't matter. They didn't need the
radio play. But for a new band, you had to
have the radio play to get you heard. That was
I guess, you know, it's funny. It's like, I think

(01:08:56):
that's sort of what our social media was back then,
was getting a single on the radio. That's how you
advertise the record. Very different now, but so, I don't know.
It was about a year later, and at this point
I had already written I think it'd already. It was
right around the same time that I had been working
with Mike on Love as the Battlefield and Tina Turner

(01:09:19):
was doing Private Dancer, and someone the publishers just played
the song to someone that brought it into one of
those you know, A and R meetings where they all
sit around and they play back all these different songs.
And Tina was there and I wasn't in the room.
But the urban legend is is that she got up
and started like doing her thing, walking around the room

(01:09:39):
and doing her little stomping those little things she does
with her legs, and saying, this is perfect, this is
exactly what I want to say, because she had just left,
well not just but a few years before, she had
finally gotten up the nerve to leave Ike. And before
this record, you know, she was playing hotels and Vegas things.

(01:10:01):
You know, nobody had any idea that what was about
to happen to her. And Better Be Good to Me
was the second single, so that was amazing. That put
me on the map right around the same time as
Love's Battlefield was becoming a hit. So I had two
hits at once, and that that's I didn't meet her

(01:10:24):
or anything. I mean, you don't always meet You usually
don't meet the artists when you're When you write a
song and you hand it over that set, it's like
putting your kid up for adoption. As I said in
the book, it's like you just hope that they don't
fuck the kid up, you know. And you know, that's

(01:10:46):
really kind of when my career started happening. When I
hadn't mentioned this before, but when I left Spider, I
went to Mike and I said, what should I do?
I don't want to be in this band anymore. And
I was really afraid of what he was going to say,
because I thought he'd tried to assume me because they
put all this money in and I signed a contract
and he said leave. He said, move out to California.

(01:11:06):
Come out and we'll write together. If we're not writing together,
I will turn you on to writers that you should
be working with. I'll sign you to a new publishing deal.
If I have a record and they need a song,
he said, of course, we wanted to come from their camp,
but if they can't, I'll go and ask you to
write them a song, which he did that also, he

(01:11:28):
did that with Patti Smithe when I wrote The Warrior.
So I packed up my stuff and my cat and
I got on a plane and I moved to California.
And it's really funny because I kind of describe all
that time before that as film noir, you know, New
York City, gritty, cool edgy, dark. Get to California, and

(01:11:49):
all of a sudden, it's like Fuji color cotton candy.
You know, this completely different. I mean, if people think
that they know how to party in New York, forget it,
because at least back then in the eighties, it was ridiculous.
And so then I started to talk about those escapades
and things, and you could just sort of like a flower.

(01:12:10):
You could see it unfolding as I started to have
more hits and things like that. And for a long time,
Mike was a big part of that. I mean, some
of the best songs I've written and biggest songs I've
written or with him. But I also had a lot
of success without him, you know, working with when I
worked with Aero Smith, when I worked with Hart. But

(01:12:33):
you know, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Okay, you
do love as a battlefield. You write that with Mike,
and in the book you say the ultimate version produced
by her husband is completely different from how you envisioned it,
and you're not happy. Yeah. Well, when we first got it,
we just looked at each other, like, what the fuck

(01:12:58):
happened to our song. We didn't have a big, fancy demo,
which was nice. We just put you know, we put
the whole essence of that song out there, and Neil
decided that he was just going to put his stamp
on it and change it. So we sent them like
a real I say that book, like a real meat
in potatoes, a Game of Thrones kind of anthem for

(01:13:22):
the masses, and they sent us back a dance track
with all these crazy synthesizers in it and everything, and
Neil likes to say that we sent them a ballot.
It wasn't a demo. It was a typical type of
tempo that I would write, which is sort of like
an eighth note mid tempo rocker, you know. But her

(01:13:44):
vocal was sensational, and as time went on we learned
to love it. As it went up the charts, that
he left it more and more, you know. But there
have been all kinds of versions of it that are
actually closer to what we did. You know. Also, I
did an audio book and I narrated it. It's out

(01:14:05):
now too, and it has demos of some of those songs.
So I have the demo to Love as a Battlefield,
or the demo to the Bass and the Warrior with
Nick Gilder singing on it. And I've never played them
to anyone. So what I like about it is when
you hear those demos, you can go, yeah, it's all there,
It's all there, you know, maybe the tempo is different,

(01:14:25):
bells and whistles or whatever. I would have to say that,
out of all the songs that we did, I think his,
you know, their interpretation was more of a departure than
other songs that I've had out there, So I kind
of go into it in the book, you know. Okay,
So tell us about The Warrior and how it ends

(01:14:46):
up getting to Patty smythe Mike was doing a record
with Patty and Scandal, and he felt that they didn't
have enough singles, or any singles. Maybe they had. They
had some good songs though they thought that I liked,
but they didn't have the one that was really going
to put them on the map. So he said, I

(01:15:08):
want you to write a song for them on producing
the record, and they need something I don't have the time.
He said, I'm going to introduce you to Nick Gilder,
and he had had a number one hit with Nick
with Hot Child in the City, and I loved his
quirkiness is his voice. You know, I thought for the
longest time Nick Gilder was a woman because of the voice,

(01:15:29):
you know, it was so high and everything. Anyway, we met,
we talked about the fact I played him some stuff
that that Patty had done, like Goodbye to You, and
that was another song they had that I liked m
and so we wrote. We ended up writing The Warrior,
but then I sent it to I sent it to
Mike and maybe he was in a shitty mood that

(01:15:51):
day or something, but he didn't really respond. And it's
sort of like going to the oracle. It's like when
he loved something, you know, i'd be walking on air,
and if he didn't like something, I'd be like, like
so depressed, like I wanted to kill myself, you know,
And I thought, but this is a really good song,
Like how can you not hear this? Like what's wrong
with him? But I didn't really say anything or whatever.

(01:16:13):
In the meantime, Nick was really happy that he didn't
love it, because Nick wanted to record it. He wanted
to to be a single for him. And then like
a day or so later, maybe a week, I don't know,
he might called up. He said, you know that song,
that that warrior song that you sent me? He said,
I can't find He said, could you send me a
copy of it? And I thought, I said sure, I'll

(01:16:37):
drop it off, and I remember hanging up going you know,
he's been he's been walking around singing that motherfucking song
for the last few days and realizes it's just that good.
So and that's exactly what happened, and so he said,
he calls me up after you least, because this song
is a fucking hit. We're cutting it. It's going to
be their single. And so he went in the studio

(01:17:00):
with him. In the meantime, Nick said I don't I
don't want her to cut it, and and Mike had
to get like really tough on him and say, look,
I'm the publisher of Lise of Holly's Share, and I
won't let you release the song. I will not. This
is because there's a there's a rule that says, or
a law that says, when you write a song, you

(01:17:21):
get to say who cuts it as the songwriter the
first time. Once it's out there, anybody can cut it
as long as they pay you, you know, and they
have to license it and they go through something like
a Harry Fox agency. But and the reason that's very
relevant to today is because so many times I don't
even know that the song's getting cut, and then I
find out by going to a movie or watching a

(01:17:42):
TV show, or someone texting me and saying, oh, I
love that song. It's the theme song, you know that
one on on Glee or something. This happens all the time.
It even happened when when when Biden did the victory speech.
I didn't know until I was watching them accept the
speech and the best came came on. But again I'm
getting ahead of myself. I'm very add that way. Going

(01:18:05):
back to what you were asking, Um, Mike just got
really tough with him and so Nikki had to back
off and he did. I think he's really happy now that.
I think it's the biggest aside from Hot Chama City,
probably bigger. It's funny because I just spoke to Patty
yesterday because we've we've stayed friends and stuff, and we

(01:18:28):
were just talking about it because the Warrior is coming
out in two really big movies. Um. I think one
is that movie eighty for Brady. It's in that that's out, Yeah,
that's out. Yeah. And then what's coming out is Cocaine Bear,
So the Warrior is in that movie as well. So yeah,
the licensing is just crazy. And she was asking me

(01:18:50):
questions about the licensing is just Um, it's the gift
that keeps on giving. Now, of course you've been in
which anybody who knows the song would remember that video.
That video help her hurt the track. I don't think
it helped well. I thought that it was so sort

(01:19:14):
of stupid and jaw dropping that it almost worked on
that level. It's like, can you watch can you believe this? Right?
And let me tell you that what you just said
is the gospel for so many videos during that period
of the MTV. I mean some of those things like Obsession,
for instance, when I saw the video to Obsessions Obsession,
and you see these guys walking around in togas serving

(01:19:37):
or dirves, You're thinking, like, what has that got to
do with the song? But did we really care? No?
You know some of them. I mean, the Love is
a Battlefield one was also a shocker for me. But
I thought Patty was really cool looking, and I just
pictured her as being like a rock check and somehow
the megap artists, I guess, she wanted her to look
like a ninja, so she it looked like she had

(01:19:59):
been ruck across the face with a lightning bolt, if
you remember that, And then they had her hair swept
up in like a bride of Frankenstein kind of do.
And the whole video was just ridiculous. And I never
really talked to Patty about it. And then I saw
her when I when I got inducted in the Songwriting
Hall of Fame. She inducted me. So she came and
she sung the Warrior. So we got together before that

(01:20:21):
just to catch up, and we're sitting in this diner
and I I just kind of summoned the courage and
I said, tell me something, what did you think of
the video to the Warrior? She probably sprayed her soda
like she goes, I hated it, you know, she's I
don't know what the fuck they were thinking. It was ridiculous,
you know. Um. But then at the same time, you

(01:20:44):
look back, it's like it's a part of that time
period that you know, it's funny like at the time
you see and you go, oh, god like, but then
you look back at it now and it's sort of
like there was no time period like that. You know,
you got cow's walking through the room like well, PAMs
are forming and you know, okay, let's stay with the

(01:21:10):
concept of hits. Professionals know you can't write an eleven
every day. My experience has been if you create eleven,
you know, then there are people like William Goldman said,
no one knows anything. What's your experience? Can you explain?

(01:21:31):
So I'm accurate when I answer this. It's an interesting question.
I mean, better than ten eleven is like iconic where
in your catalog the warrior better be good to Me
or something like that. When you write something of that caliber,
do you know it's a hit? That's the first question. Okay, yeah,

(01:21:56):
good question. Um, we knew when we wrote Love as
a Battlefield that it was a hit. We weren't sure
when you heard their version it was a hit. But
we knew when we wrote it was a hit. And
as it turned out, it was an iconic. It it's
an evergreen, even their production of it. But to get
to an eleven, I don't think you know, I think

(01:22:18):
that that just you've hit the lottery. You didn't mean to.
I mean, the minute you start thinking I'm going to
write something like that, there's no way you're going to
do it authentically. There's just no way. So you have
to keep it real. So I have to say, and
you know, I wrote about it in the book. When
we wrote the Best we had no idea how big

(01:22:40):
it was going to be, and it wasn't big in
the beginning. It's gotten big over forty years. It's just
like a monster that just keeps growing and growing. And
growing and tapping into something. You know, in order to
have those kind of songs, it has to sort of
gell with what's going on in the world, you know,
because you've got to tap into a collector of consciousness

(01:23:01):
of pop h you know, pop culture and society and
what's needed at any given time. And I think that
the Best has done that. I mean, it gets licensed
so much. It was just on the Super Bowl. It
was licensed for with Pringles, so it was on the
Super Bowl. You know, it's been the use of it

(01:23:22):
has just been like so insane that people just keep
relating to it. And when we wrote it, we knew
we had written a very good song. I don't know
if we even thought it was as strong as like
love as a battlefield, you know, because it was straighter.
It was just so simple and it was so you know,
love is a battlefield the way we wrote it, just

(01:23:42):
the title with kind of quirky and stuff, but the
Best was just straight ahead, wholesome, simple, something that people
just love to sing. I mean when it then it
got on Ship's Creek and it was on three episodes
and it became like the wedding theme for the LBGT community.
I mean you can't plan those things, you know. Okay,

(01:24:04):
but let's talk about the other thing you said earlier
that you're usually brought in as a first class utility player.
Someone has a project, but they don't have that little
something extra. How do you create that little something extra?
Are you talking about as a musician or as a songwriter? Songwriter? Yeah, Um,

(01:24:31):
I don't know. I just know that I like to
I think I'm good at at hooks, you know, and
getting things that are simple enough that people they're quirky
enough that they don't It doesn't sound like I'm selling
out and deliberately trying to write a hit song. I
just try and write a really great song. And I

(01:24:54):
you know, I'm not just a fan of of you know,
straight ahead bands like Leeds Appelin or the Beatles. I
mean I'm a fan of bird Back rat you know.
I love jazz. I grew up with all different kinds
of music and classical which I still love, and I
implement a lot of that in my songs. So, for instance,

(01:25:16):
I'm really into writing bass lines, and they're the relationship
of the bass lines to the chords are different than
the normal Like I don't always play the root. I
don't mean to get too technical of the music stuff,
but I do these things kind of deliberately. You know.
I was influenced by people besides bird Backer, Todd Rundgren,
and I think I bring all that stuff into the music.

(01:25:39):
But I think also simpler is better. I try and
keep things simple, like it's not about quantity, it's about quality.
I've even been that way in my songwriting. I don't
write a lot of songs these days, you know. I
think the busiest ever was was in the eighties. I
write when I feel like it. I don't, you know.
I don't go in at nine and say I'm going

(01:25:59):
to be at five. I mean, they do that in Nashville,
like it's unbelievable. They go, Okay, we're gonna write from
nine to three. The song is going to be written
by three, and then we have another session, so we
have to go. And I don't write like that, you know.
I mean even when we wrote Loves the Battlefield, we
wrote the whole thing on one day, but then we
spent another week coming up with the one line, and
we came up with hundreds. We just didn't like them,

(01:26:20):
you know. So I don't really think like a business person.
When I write, I think like an artist. I you know,
anytime I've tried to do that, I've written the worst
piece of shitka years ago. So do you have any
hits in your suitcase? Stuff you've written that people that
even people have not cut her, they've cut in a

(01:26:40):
bad way, or haven't been promoted that way, all of
the above, and I have you. I call it my
bone yard, and some of the best stuff I've written
is in that bone yard. And I now it's like
because it's forty years later, I think of it as
vintage Hallowey Night, but it's still like ready to be,
you know, birthed out there. I have a lot of
songs like that. It's crazy. Okay, let's talk about working

(01:27:03):
with Aero Smith. Errol Smith comes back there on have
a first record done with Mirrors, completely stiff. They're doing
the second album they call you in what ends up
resulting as Ragnall, which is the biggest track off that album.
To tell us how that came to be, Well, my

(01:27:23):
friend John Claudner called me up and he was sort
of before I had met him during the Heart Sessions
and we just became friends and he thought I was
a badass. So he called me up and he said, listen,
I got this song, and he kind of talks like that,
you know, yes, well wait wait wait, when is the

(01:27:44):
last time you spoke with Klaudner. It's been decades, but
when my book came out, he was writing me on
LinkedIn saying that's great. I get wait to read in everything.
But he had mind. At that point, he was with
Deafin Records. He was the president of Define Records, and
what I liked about him was like he really honored

(01:28:07):
a lot of bands that still had a lot of
life in them and maybe even new life that they
had never even had before that they weren't quite ready
to be put out the pasture, which everybody else was doing,
you know. So he signed quite a few bands, you know,
Aerosmith was one of them, and he said to them,
this is a make or break record. And at that
point they had gotten really, really clean. So there were

(01:28:28):
a lot of things going on. And he matched me
up with Steven. He said, I'm going to send you
a song. Would you have a listen to? He said,
I think it's a really good song. Potentially, he says,
it's not a hit. I don't know if it's going
to be a hit, but if you could take a
look at it and tell me what you think, if
you want to work on it. And so that's what

(01:28:49):
he did, and he sent it to me and I said, well,
wait a minute, how does Steven feel about this? And
Joe Perry? I mean, I don't want to be shoved
down their throat. Which is really funny because when I
did talk to Steve and I actually said that to him,
and of course that provoked a really you know, flirtatious
comment when I said, oh, I don't want it to

(01:29:09):
be shoved down your throat. But no, he was all
for it. He had talked to John, and I think
they were just sort of like they were so clean
and so excited to be given a new life of
a lease on life, that they were open to this stuff.
You see, a lot of bands were never would never
have been open to this. To them is like selling out.

(01:29:29):
It's like, if you can't write your own songs, you're
not worth you know, anything. And I think that's a
bit sad that they think that way, because it's like
if you're a great actor, it doesn't mean you can
write a great screenplay, you know. And some look at
Tina Turner. She doesn't write around things. So I don't
think it's something to be ashamed of. And I think
enough people started doing it that there was a group

(01:29:51):
of songwriters that was kind of referred to as the
songwriter elite, and they would go out and write with
these people. And I was one of them, you know.
Desmond Child was another, Billy Steinberg was another, and so
and I think the fact that I was a woman
a woman definitely interested Stephen, you know. So he called

(01:30:13):
me up and we ended up talking for two weeks
on the phone before I actually not two weeks solid.
I mean like every day you call me up like clockwork, Hey,
how are you doing, how's your David? And you know,
and we just kind of talked for sometimes two hours,
four hours and became friends before we ever met each other.
And you know, eventually the conversation got around to, Okay,

(01:30:35):
we got to nail this, we got to hit this
out of the park. And I said to him, look,
I don't think it needs a lot of changes. See,
unlike some people, they hear something and they just want
to change it just so they their ego can be satisfied.
Like they changed it and put their stamp on it.
I'm more like I don't really have a big ego
when it comes to my career. I always think, like

(01:30:55):
what's best for the song, Just like when I was
writing the book. Does it serve the book? If it's
if it's you know, trimm the fat off, or if
it's something that you have a personal thing going on
with someone, but it really doesn't need to be in
the book, then it doesn't need to be in the book.
So I said to Stephen anyway, Um, I don't think
it needs to be rewritten. I think the track is beautiful.

(01:31:16):
I think a lot of it's good. But the song
means nothing to me. And it was called ragtime, you know,
so I was able to I felt like I was
the doctor that came into it, like you know, tighten
the screw or whatever, the specialist. And it worked. You know.
We changed the lyrics as some of the lyrics to

(01:31:36):
match with I came up with ragdollum. But it is
not the way I like to write, you know, I don't.
As I said before, you said, well you know, like
how do you like. I like to be the initiator.
I like to bring in a new, fresh idea, or
be jamming in the room, you know, uh together. But
I don't like being brought in to change something that's

(01:31:58):
already I feel like I'm tramp on like a like
a you know, hallowed ground, like a gravyheart or something.
So it worked out in this case, but I sort
of made it a point after that not to do that.
I also did it because I wanted to work with Aerosmith.
I was just such a huge fan, and at that
point they were kind of over. I mean they'd been

(01:32:18):
doing so many drugs, and the record they had put
up before that it was not a good record. You know.
I just wanted to be able to say that I
had worked with him. I didn't even care if they
sold another record or not. I just was a big fan.
You know, talk about rejuvenation, you also rejuvenate heart. Now
you say they're very happy about that, But did you

(01:32:40):
ever work with one of these people? Say then they said,
we'll pay you, but we're not putting your name on
the record, not as a songwriter. I mean I did
that with Kiss when I played on a Kiss on Mass,
I played on the whole record and or most of it,
and they told me you were not giving you credit,
you can't have credit, and I knew that Anton had

(01:33:03):
also had to agree to the same thing. You know,
we're going to pay you, and they paid them very well,
but we're not. We can't tell people that you're that.
Peter Chriss is out and you're in. Although they did
offer him the job, they actually after a few records.
I actually asked him if he would join Kiss and
I have to say, you know, in a in an

(01:33:24):
amazing feat of loyalty, he turned them down. I don't
know if he regrets in Nail, but you know, because
they're still out there killing it. But that never happened
as a writer, and I never would have worked with anyone.
If they said I wasn't going to get a credit
and I was going to gos right, I would told
him to fuck off. Okay, so you have all these hits,

(01:33:47):
originally you're signed to Mike's publishing company. How much of
this stuff do you own out right? And how hard
has it been to get paid? It's never hard to
get paid. I've been I get paid because I have
the right people surrounding me that make sure I get paid,

(01:34:09):
and I have deals with people that I considered to
be honest and ethical, which is almost unheard of. Right.
That's like my business manager I've been her name's Tina Fastbender.
I've been with her thirty five years. And you hear
all these nightmare stories. It's like the me too thing.
Somehow I've just managed to always I mean again, not

(01:34:33):
to say that I haven't had a lot of crappy
things happen, but when it comes to those kind of
horror stories that you are about, I've been really fortunate
not to get ripped off. And here's the other part
that's great. I'll be honest. I did sell a big
part of my catalog for a lot of money to

(01:34:55):
accompany a primary Wave, which is now you know, they're
buying up so many any catalogs. But I have a
very good relationship with them. I mean the CEO, Larry Mistell.
If I if I texted him, he texts me back immediately.
It's not like my experience in the past. You know,
I've signed an EMI Publishing for many years, is like
just to get a response or respect or anything was

(01:35:18):
always so hard. So I have these good relationships with
these people and they're out there killing it for me
getting all these covers now I mean, I have so
many amazing covers because I have someone actually working like
we're all it's a win win for everybody, you know.
But the other thing I was going to say was,
you know, there's this law that after you've written a

(01:35:38):
song for thirty five and you've written a song and
thirty five years go by, and you approach the person
that has the publishing on whatever songs you're talking about,
and you get a lawyer and you say I want
the songs back, they have to give him back to you.
So I've gotten back copyrights for songs that I rig

(01:36:00):
only gave away. Didn't know I was giving it away,
But it turned out to be a blessing because if
I hadn't given them away and I owned them, they
would have been part of the catalog sale. But because
I didn't own them, I couldn't sell them. And then
after the catalog sale had happened, I knew I was
getting these songs back, and so I did. I got
back all my publishing to songs like the Warrior Love

(01:36:24):
is a Battlefield Obsession, better be good to me. So
that was a really nice that's only been in the
last few years. It's had them because you know, like
if you write a song, it has to be thirty
five years from the date. And I ended up telling
a lot of songwriters that that didn't know that. Then
in fact, I told Steven Tyler that he didn't know

(01:36:44):
anything about that, and hopefully he listened to me and
he got, you know, some of his publishing back. Okay,
you all those songs you just mentioned are not part
of primary wave deal love is a Battlefield Warrior are
separate right right? Okay? No, well no, if they own it,

(01:37:05):
they own a piece of it. But um, they could
only buy what I had available, so some of it
would have would have been other things which I can't
really like get into the details in the interview. I mean,
you know, I wishing wasn't wasn't one of them. Okay,
but I know Larry pretty well. He usually likes to
buy fifty percent before a hundred percent. Does he own

(01:37:29):
a hundred percent or just fifty percent? Um? I can't
really I'm not really comfortable talking, okay, Okay, okay, So
what you do with the money? What do I What
did I do with the money? Yeah? This always intrigues me, Okay,
because musicians are not known for being good for the money.

(01:37:49):
If you sold your catalog within the last year and
invested in the stock market, immediately took a thirty percent haircut.
So I'm always interesting. Peace oh sell Sell says, well,
what are you gonna do with the money? I'm just
you know, you get this big chunk of change. Where
do you put it? Well, first of all, I'm not
selling my publishing. That's like that, you know, that's for

(01:38:09):
my kids, and that's very valuable. As far as the
other things, like, like I said up the I'm with
the same business manager for thirty five years. I'm Jewish.
I'm not the kind of person that you know, I
don't like taking risks because i feel like I've worked
so hard to get that money. It's like I'm not

(01:38:29):
just going to throw it at the stock market. But
at the same time, you know, you can't just leave
it in the bank between inflation or whatever. You know,
you have to see, you have to decide what kind
of things you're going to invest in. And I'm always
very conservative, and I've only taken a chunk of it
and the rest of it, I've invested in different things.
You know, I've invested in real estate and I mean Basically,

(01:38:51):
the theory is if you're in it and you just
let it sit and pretend it doesn't you know, just
leave it alone, it's going to come back. It's going
to come back around. So maybe a lot of people
lost thirty percent, but I think, what the small amount
what I compare my empire that I invested in stock

(01:39:12):
was a small amount. I didn't take all the moneyges
invest it because that's just stupid to me, that's not smart.
But I took about a nineteen percent hits. I have
good people working for me. It was last year was brittle,
you know. But also real estate. You know, I bought
a house that like has like quadrupled in value and

(01:39:34):
it was expensive to begin with. So I'm doing all right,
you know. Okay, so the book is focused on the eighties,
and then it totally cracks me up. You moved to Fearfield, Connecticut,
where I grew up, So really, yes, So where did
you live in Fearfield? Spring Failed Hell? Sorry? Greenfield? Hell's

(01:39:56):
just beautiful. I mean that's like you know that when
I farmers, Yeah, when I grew up there were no
Jews there. But that's okay, But did you consciously decide
to extract yourself from the scene, or you just sort
of found yourself moving away from it. Well, I'll explain

(01:40:16):
to you what happened. I had I had already had
one child, and I thought, you know, the year that
I moved to Connecticut, I that was the year the
Rodney King beatings, the big earthquake, the mudslides. I mean,
that was that horrible year. I think it was nineteen
ninety four or something like that, and I wanted to
have another child, and I thought, I don't want to

(01:40:37):
really raise them here because it's like the earthquake was
really scary. That alone was scary. So I thought I
would move to Connecticut because it was outside of New
York and everybody would just cop on a train and
come up to the Bucolic countryside and work in my studio.
The reason I picked Connecticut also is because Mike Chapman

(01:40:58):
had moved there and he bought this estate. It was
like the vom Trapp family. There's a long driveway and
this big, big house, and it was in Easton, which
was just down the road from Weston, where Keith Richard
live and meet Loaf. There were some other musicians there,
but I wanted to work with him again. I wanted
to recapture. I wanted to go back to the beginning

(01:41:19):
where it was just writing great songs. So I wanted
to be closer to the Only thing is is that
we had changed now. I mean, he had children, I
had children. We had other responsibilities, and we wrote stuff.
But I think we needed to be in LA to
write the kind of songs that we wrote. Like if
I were to write with them now, I'd still I'd
want to work here. I want to want to work
anywhere else, you know, just something that contributed, if you're

(01:41:44):
going to try and recapture what was magical or whatever.
And I still write agy songs. I mean, I have
a song I just put together with it. I produced
a band that I've put together of women, and it's
the first song we did that I'm putting out is
it's an acronym. It's AMFOO, which stands for Adios motherfucker

(01:42:07):
Year on your own. So it's not like I've lost
the bite or anything or of who I am. You know,
I don't know what's relevant with what I do necessarily
as far as production and stuff. What's out there. I mean,
the music business has just changed so much it's like
it just blows my mind, you know. And I'm still
a rocker, and it's rock. It's not really it's sort

(01:42:30):
of coming back or not sort of it is coming back.
But so I moved there and I liked it the
first year or the you know, having dar was so
quaint and charming, and then all of a sudden you realize, well,
no deer or in quaint and charming because they carry
line disease, which is from Kinnecticut, you know, and all

(01:42:53):
these things that seem so glamorous and beautiful. I hated
the weather. I hated living there, And I came back
to California one day for a business thing, like four
years had gone by, and in that four years, because
I wanted to spend time being a mother and stuff.
It's like what happened to Holly Night? Where did she go?
I laughed? You know, when I came back, it was

(01:43:16):
all of a sudden, like you know, while you were gone,
a new breeds just came up and took over. And
so I had to spend a lot of time sort
of clawing my way back in there, and I did.
I always I've always had songs in movies and TV shows.
And written themes, and but I could never quite get
back to that place that I did in the eighties.

(01:43:36):
And that's not to say I'm not going to. I
mean I think it's very easy to have like one
wave and then you take some time off, and then
you have another wave. And I think I'm totally capable
of that. And that's why when you asked me if
I have songs, you know, in a vault somewhere, it's like, God, yes,
it's like I do. And I think a lot of

(01:43:56):
it has to do with how the business has changed now,
don't I don't even feel that inspired to want to
do what I did before because with streaming and all
these things that are going on, you can't really really
carve out. There's a handful of people that are doing it,
but I'm not that interested in it. I sort of
like I feel like I've done that. Like if I'm

(01:44:17):
going to do something, I don't want it to be
contrived or I don't care about getting back on you
being the most famous songwriter or whatever. I just I
have a lot of interests and things that I do,
and writing the book was one of them. Okay, if
someone calls you up to write a song talking about
the economics when we had physical media on an album,

(01:44:39):
a stiff made as much money, or an album track
made as much money as the hit, whereas in streaming
the hit is streamed many multiple times more. If I
called you up and say, write a song on my album,
would you first say are we writing the single? And
if we're not writing the single, I'm not interested. I've
heard that from other songwriters. Um, I don't know if

(01:45:04):
I'd be that sort of blatant at that. That just
seems like, well, you know, you still got to write
for the pleasure and the art of it. But I
would hope that I would write it, just have the
ability to write a song that which is obviously they'd
have to make it a single because it'd be that good.
You know. I try not to write bad songs anymore, honestly.

(01:45:25):
You know, like I said before, it's not about the
quantity as much as the quality. So I mean, how
do you say to someone I have to write the
first single or I'm not doing that. It's like, we'll
write the song first and we'll tell you if it's
good enough, and then you know, and how do you
sort of say that, I'm so famous as a writer,
my song has to be I mean, that's pretty nervy,

(01:45:45):
you know, And maybe maybe some writers say that it
is nervy, but there's only twenty four hours in a day.
And other people say, well, I'd rather write a Broadway musical,
or I'd rather do this, or rather do that. I
don't want to take the time because it might be
economically unfruitful in addition to eating up someone my time.

(01:46:07):
I have the perfect answer for that. Actually, if the
way I feel now is I like to write on
my own. If I'm going to write with someone else,
it has to be one of two things for me
to do it now, because I don't need to write anymore,
you know, cash that I'm fine whatever, And that doesn't
mean I don't keep writing, but you know, it's like
for my pleasures different than if I'm going to get
it out there and sell it and all that. It

(01:46:30):
Either it either has to be a new artist that
I think is so talented that I believe in them
and I'll write with them, or I want to write
with like the big artists. You know, I'm good enough.
And if if I can't do that, I don't I
don't want to write with like you know, some label
are going to send over one of like how many,
although they don't even really sign that many fans anymore.

(01:46:50):
I want to I have a list of people that
I want to work with right now that I haven't
worked with, and I know I could write a hit
song with them, and I think they would benefit from
my style of writing. Do you want to know who
some of them are? Surely it is okay. I would
love to work with Lady Gaga. I was really a

(01:47:12):
fan like of her early artsy stuff, you know, and
like even when she was doing Bad Romance. I think
lately she's doing like a lot of ballads and all that,
and she's sort of, you know, she's become so conservative,
like whether it's working with Tony who I love Tony
Bennett or whatever. She's a chameleon. But I like the
artsy side of her and I would love to write

(01:47:33):
with her. I think we'd write some killer songs together.
So she's one I would love to work with. Trent Resner.
I think he's just so talented. I mean he's done
everything from nine inch Nails to doing film scoring, and
you know, I love the record he did with Halsey
just for the sheer pleasure of working with him. I
would love to work with him. I'd love to work
with some of the more commercial artists like Kelly Clarkson

(01:47:57):
and Adele. You know, I feel as a woman, I
have a lot in common with them. We're all like
women raising kids on our own, and we're all like,
you know, when the doors are closed, we're we can
be just as trashy and funny. And you know, I
think they as people we would get along. And because
if we got along as people and we're good at

(01:48:17):
what we do, we would write ahead. That's the soup
that you want to make. And that's what was so
great with heart, you know, and we talked. I you know,
that's one of my favorite chapters in the book, The
Thirty Toes. It's like you have a connection and then
with that connection and that that's what they talk about chemistry,
you know, like when you know people meet and oh
we have chemistry. It's the same exact thing as a writer.

(01:48:40):
And I think, I know, I mean, like I said,
they're still to this day at my age that I'm
vulnerable about, but songwriting is not one of them. It's like,
put me in the room with them, and I'll hit
it out of the park. But those opportunities aren't you
think I'm in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, you know? Um,
I know there are other writers out there that can

(01:49:01):
just pick up the phone and say, you know, I
have blah blah. It's not that easy as you would think,
you know. And even if I go to primary way
for something, just to make it happen to that, I'm
having to do now what I had to do when
I was young and I was hungry. I am having
to come up with different ways to reach out to
an artist and get their attention. And that is also
another reason, which was your very first question, why now,

(01:49:24):
why did you write this book? Because I want to
get the attentions of some of those people, hopefully in
some way, so I can write with them. So your
kids are grown, what's your day to day life like now?
And how often do you sit down to write songs? Well,

(01:49:45):
you know, the last couple of years it was totally
devoted to writing this book. And as I said, I
wrote about one hundred pages more than my editor just said.
You kept trimming it down and trimming it down. And
what I like about that? Some reader wrote some review
and he said, Holly Knight's book is just like her
songs All Killer and no Villa. I thought that was

(01:50:07):
he They're right, you know. It's like I don't know
how many books I've read that are you know, memories
that it's like they start out with a bang, but
then they sort of settle into this sort of like normality.
If this one got to this place on the hits
and gets really boring, it's like I tried to write
that book, so it was like boom boom, boom boom done.
You know. So anyway, in answer to your question, that

(01:50:32):
took up a lot of my time. But a typical day,
I got a dog during the pandemic. I know you're
not a dog person, but this one is sort of
this close to a wolf. And I had this one
thing in my book that says it's at the very beginning,
and it has a sword and it says you've seen it.
It says, you can't throw me to the wolves. They
come when I call. So I have this relationship with

(01:50:54):
this this dog that takes up a lot of time,
and like two hours a day I have to go
hiking or walking with her because if I don't show
she's a husky. She'll destroy my house. So I get
I bike ride a lot. I go. I live in
the Palisades, so I go down to the beach and
I'll ride my bike early in the morning. So that's
one of my rituals, you know, and then I'll come

(01:51:16):
home and I'll answer my emails. And I have a
lot of different projects on the table right now that
are offshoots and what's coming out of the book. So
I'm kind of focusing on that. But I woke up
the other day and I thought, you know what, it's
time to get back to songwriting. Not because I need to,
but just because I miss it, you know, I miss

(01:51:37):
I miss that feeling I get when I tapped into
that ether and stuff. And so I think that I'm
going to focus on that a lot. I love to travel.
I'm really into photography. I have a photography website and
I do fine art photography and I take it pretty seriously.
And you know, as long as it's creative, as long
as I can do things, and it's creative, like always

(01:51:59):
create and doing things, I'm happy, you know. So that's
about it. I mean, I'm getting older and just doing
normal things like everybody else, the little things that you
love to do. Oh okay, as one gets older, Let's
put it this way, the scene of the eighties is gone. Okay,
the Internet era. You can stay home and have connection

(01:52:22):
whereas you used to have to go out. This is
ultimately asking you how social are you today? Part of
it is age, part of it scene being changed. Are
you more of a homebody? In addition or writing is
a relatively private thing. I'm a little bit abouth, you know,
but I am very much a homebody, you know, I

(01:52:44):
think because I left home so young, and I always
lived in you know, I live in one place for
five years, then move on this place I've lived in
for twenty five years, and you know, over time, I've
just like every year I remodel another room and more
and more mine and um during the pandemic, I really
I did that a lot. So everybody that comes to

(01:53:06):
my house is like, yeah, well, why would you leave?
You've got your recording. I have an incredible recording studio,
in a incredible kitchen. I have incredible hikes everywhere. I
can go swimming in my poll I've got so I do.
Because of that, I tend to, you know, get a
little antisocial. But then then I really love to go
out too and and and be social, but I can

(01:53:27):
only do it for so long. Like where when I
was younger, I would do it every night, and I
would be out till five or six in the morning
and then go to the cab breakfast before i'd go home.
Now it's like find the time it gets to be
about like eleven or something. I'm like a wiped out,
you know, but I wake up early. I wake up,
like at six in the morning, not because I want to,
but because my body just is making me, you know.

(01:53:52):
So Um, in that way, I'm pretty normal, you know.
I'm you know, you can't live a life of like
insane this forever. It just doesn't. Your body can't take it,
you know. But I'd say, I'm I'm pretty normal. Okay,
So we're doing this podcast actually at my incentive, I

(01:54:12):
asked you. But getting the word out is almost impossible
these days, and as sophisticated as the music businesses and
all the complaints we have that, the book business is
even more antique. So how have you gotten the word out?
And as it worked, Um, I hired a PR person,

(01:54:33):
and unfortunately I've gotten more podcasts casts than you can imagine,
but they're not I wouldn't say they're the caliber. And
this one and this is a this is a big,
a big one for me. You know. Um, what I
really wanted to do was I wanted them to get
me in things like Rolling Stone with an excert or something.
And it's like, oh my god, it's so it's so hard.

(01:54:56):
It's just it's unbelievable. So, you know, Brick by Brick,
I've doing these podcasts. And the good thing is that
in on Amazon it was listed as number one for
hot New releases in music, so that's good. The same
thing with Audible was number one for hot new releases.
But whether that sells books or not, I don't know.

(01:55:19):
I mean, I could pick your brain about that, because
it's not easy. I mean unless you're a huge household
name or your Prince Harry or something, or Pamela Anderson
trying to you know, it's a slow process trying to
get your book out there and doing the right pieces.
I mean, I'm hoping to get some more reviews on
the book. I've got a lot of reviews, but they're readers,

(01:55:42):
which is actually the most important. But you know, I'm
still working on that. I'm hoping that. I think the
next big search for books book sales is Mother's Day
and I think that would be hopefully, you know, I'll
get more pr and things. I mean, all you can
do is what you can do. I've done the job.

(01:56:03):
I'm doing social media, which I hate, but I'm doing
a lot of it and I'm paying someone to do right.
So you know, I've got Instagram and I've got Twitter,
and you know, the numbers are starting to grow, But
that doesn't mean. Look, it's like anybody to go on
social media and they'll hit like, but to actually follow you,

(01:56:24):
that's a big commitment. And I'm the same way. Like
I can say I like something that someone said, but
to follow them that means now every day their streams
are going to be taking up my time in invading
my life. So do I commit to that or not?
So it's I think it's just tough out there for everybody,
and you just hope it's like the thing with the best.

(01:56:45):
You hope you hit the jog or not of some nerve.
Am I saying that right jug or not? Jug? You
said a little jail, But I wouldn't have stopped you
if you hadn't stopped yourself. Yeah. Yeah, Well it was
funny when I did the audible book and I got
to where I had written albeit, I said I'll bite,
and the producer was like cracking up. I said, I,

(01:57:08):
how do you pronounce it? Tell me please? I knew that,
so I tend to do that. But um, you know,
just hoping that something happens, one thing where just enough
attention happens that people go out and buy it, because
I think the people that are going out and buying
it are loving it, you know, really really loving it.
I've gotten so many great, like you know, fan letters

(01:57:30):
and responses on it. But I don't want it to
just sit there like I want it to be big,
you know. Um. I have like one project that possibly
might happen that's going to come as an offshoot of this,
which would be great that I can't really talk about.
But that might be the thing that then turns around
it sells a book. Do you have any suggestions? Let's

(01:57:52):
put it this way. We can talk off Mike about
all this stuff, but there is no silver bullet, and
selling book is even harder than selling a record, and
selling a record is very difficult at this point in time.
The only thing I know about publishing is it's you.
You have to do everything. Whereas you know when some

(01:58:13):
of these other businesses, the third parties can get action,
but it's very old school. We can get an initial
push and then it's all in your hands. Anyway, Holly,
I want to thank you so much for taking the
time and talking with my audience. Thank you so much
for having me. I was so excited when you invited me.

(01:58:34):
I think you're a badass. I really love reading your
emails you send out and your blogs and somebody I've
read them and going yes, you know, there's been a
few I went no, no, and then yeah, of course
because we're both you know, we're both passionate and smart.

(01:58:55):
So but no, I'm a fan, and thank you so
much for inviting me to do this. Absolutely until next time,
it's Bob left six h

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.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}1. Stuff You Should Know

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Holly Knight

1. Stuff You Should Know