Joel Selvin

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's podcast.
My guest today is legendary music writer Joel Selder. Great
to be here, Bob, Good to see you. Okay, let's
start with you did the Sammy Hagar book. It was
a huge bestseller, number one. Did you have any anticipation
was going to be that successful. I knew that I

(00:31):
could get a very generous book deal with Sammy just
based on his name. Uh, I think sam this interesting.
Sammy had to do with the Van Halen thing. But
I knew that that he would be likely candidate for
a good sized book deal. And I just quit the

(00:51):
paper after thirty six years. So on San Francisco, chronic right,
I was there as there pop music critic, and and uh,
Sammy had mentioned something years before, but I didn't think
it was a really good idea yet. And then you know,
like suddenly I thought it was a good idea. No,
I had no idea that it was a number one bestseller.
And I got a credit the one and only, the

(01:12):
late great John Carter. Did you know Carter? Of course,
Carter the writer of the lyrics of Incense and Pepper,
amongst so many I mean private Dancer. He brought Tina
Turner back, just an unbelievable list of things, and he
was managing Sammy and yes, I do that. And he
marshalled Sammy's fan club and cut him a deal for
pre orders. And the day that book came out, we

(01:34):
were already in the forties on Amazon, and by the
end of that day we were in the top five. Wow.
I didn't know that. To what degree was Sammy's appearance
on Howard Stern a factor. So we sat that day
and he did Howard Stern and he did Good Morning America,
and we watched the things squirret up the charts, and

(01:55):
every time it hit the new time section, you know,
at time zone, and it was hilarious. And and and
then like I'm walking home back to my cousin's apartment
on the Upper West Side, and my agent calls and
they've already gone into the third printing, and he calls
up to tell me that Walmart just ordered twenty books.

(02:17):
And I'm at the Columbus Circle and standing in front
of some shoe store I can't afford. So I went
in and bought a pair of shoes and expensive. With
those shoes, they tell I mean more I'd spend on shoes,
and these are my best seller shoes. Okay, Now the
book is fascinating because you wrote it in Sammy's voice.

(02:40):
How did you decide? How did you perfect that experience? Oh?
That was the whole mission, right, because that's what the
readers want. They want to sit down and feel like
Sammy's telling them the story. Right. So I had Sammy
tell me the story. I tape recorded it, and then
I sat there and fussed around with it until like
red like sentences and stuff like that. A lot of

(03:00):
it is straight out of Sammy's mouth, and all I
had to do was put a period and a capital
letter in the middle. Uh, there's very little of me
in there, and what it is is transparent. Right. You
can't see me because you can't see you at all. Certainly,
having read your brother books, I didn't realize that much
was actually straight from Sammy. So wonderful. Uh, it really

(03:23):
feels like him, and he's he was. He did such
an incredible job at telling his story. He he's in
charge of his own narrative and a great degree. That's
not always true of people. So how did you meet Sammy?
Oh Man? So I I had a brief swing through
college at Riverside. You see Riverside, and I hung and

(03:44):
swung in the musicians down there. Uh, Sammy is from Fontana,
and I didn't know Sammy wasas from Riverside, but he
joined a band with a bunch of guys that I
did know, and they started coming up to San Francisco.
They were the Justice Brothers. Okay, but what brothers? Justice Brothers? Okay?
And you bet? And you knew the band from having
been briefly in Riverside. Yeah, I knew the bass player

(04:04):
and the guitar player, and the drummer was Sammy's friend.
He's still playing with Sammy, David Louser, but really yeah yeah,
and uh Bobby Anglin was an unbelievable guitar player, and
and Jeff Nicholson was off selling uh Turner Burne Christian
T shirts. But the Justice Brothers used to play this
real sort of top forty dump in San Francisco, and

(04:27):
I saw them there several times before Ronnie Montrose did.
But I was there the night Ronnie Montrose came tell
us that story Montrose had been in. Uh, Sammy had
been in touch with Ronnie Montrose, who had just forming
his own band after leaving Van Morrison's band. So, you know,
I'm not sure I know all that history. So Ronnie's
originally from where to the degree you remember, you know,

(04:49):
he showed up in San Francisco with a band called
Sawbuck that made a lot of noise at a Tuesday
night audition in the last weeks of the film war
and got signed to Bill Graham Management. But I believe
they ever really recorded. And he's and he was bumping
around as a freelance guitarist when Van picked him up.
And I think he'd also done at Edgar Winterstant Okay,

(05:10):
how how long was he with Van? Oh? Just the
blink of an eye? So then one album and then
did he already have his deal with Warner Brothers. I
believe the deal was in place and he was looking
to put together this band and Sammy went over to
his house and they wrote space Station number six or whatever,
number nine. Yeah, well Sammy is a big number guy. Okay,

(05:32):
I gotta stop you. That means what, Oh he's all
about numerology? Oh really? Yeah? Okay, so that's when you
met Sammy? Yeah, Justice Brother's days. Oh you know the
famous Sammy's story about the van Halen review keep going.
So he joins van Halen and does this tour in

(05:52):
his final date is at the Cow Palace in San Francisco,
and I go out to review it. And essentially this
is before he's a van Halen or what he's Well,
he's in van Halen, first tour of van Halen and
there he is at the end of the tour at
his hometown and he's got four shows. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
big deal and I'm there. Uh, and I write the

(06:13):
review and essentially the review says, too bad, they ruined
two perfectly decent bands, great line and uh the uh.
Sammy gets on stage Monday night and it's just raging
at the audience and he and and using his typical
sort of profanity, he hands out what he thinks is
my home phone number, tells him to call me. So

(06:36):
I come home one morning, Uh and uh there's a
bunch of messages on the machine, remember message machine? And uh.
The first one is some very halting voicing. H Mr Sylvan,
I have your former home phone number in Oakland. Would
you please have your friends and business associates on you?
And I'm like, what you know. And on the next

(06:57):
one is, uh, Joel Roger from Bill Graham Presents and
Sammy Haygar gave every number out of the cow Palace
night chaste. You might get a few calls. The next
one is hey, fuck you. And that went on for
weeks and and Herb Kane, the gossip columnist in San Francisco,
picked up on it. He asked me about it. I said, oh, no, no,

(07:19):
for Sammy, that's what passes for wit. So how did
you make it up with Sammy? I don't know. Oh
so next time I see Sammy, use it's this Barry
and Music Awards, which is just a complete, you know,
cluster bang. And when there used to be the BAM
newspaper used to read that religious Oh yeah, Well they
had this big awards where all the leaguers showed up

(07:40):
and they had this big suite of people that got
into you know, the semi v I p uh and uh.
There it's real crowded, real gril crowded, and they're Sammy
sees me, goes Joel Joel, and man, I'm out of here.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, Joel. And just as
I hit the door, he goes Joel, I need your
new home now. That is funny. No, Sammy's funny. There's

(08:05):
no you know, he's obnoxious, but he's funny. Okay, at
this late date, do you still think that it was
a great life? Did they ruin ruin two good bands? Well,
Sammy grew into van Halen, no question, and and I've
come to really appreciate a lot of it that I
didn't quite get at the same time. But I love
the David Lee Roth van Halen, and I agree with

(08:27):
you give Sammy's a better singer. But they completely lost
their sense of view where I was a big band
talking about Carter because Carter signed Sammy to Capitol and
they did that album Rid. That's how I first got
into it. But uh, before I can't drive fifty five,
he was almost becoming a caricature of himself. Thank god

(08:49):
van Halen picked him up. So you're in Los Angeles,
we are today? What brought you down here from the
Bay Area? So I'm doing some research for a book
that's forthcoming in like two years. I'm just starting out.
Uh it Um revolves around a number of people who
graduated from um University High School over in West l

(09:10):
A in ninety just one specific year. It's this class
was pretty rich with with interesting people, and it's where
Jan and Dean started. And in fact, before they were
out of high school. In the last semester, Jan and
Arnie were on the charts. They had a hit record
and they were walking around the school hallways. You can

(09:32):
only imagine, right and uh. But then I was also
this girl going around the hallway named Kathy Cohoner, who
Sandra d was portraying in a movie called Gidget. Uh.
And the last Jan it was Dean kim Fowley. Kim Fowley.
You know, I knew Kim a little bit towards the end.

(09:52):
One time I'm talking to him and he told me
he had twin sons with some woman that he had
no care and he gave me all the description. Then
he died. I heard from PRESI wests. He totally made
that up. So since he's gone, I don't know what
the truth is. Do you remember his uh going to
hospitals and and getting in a hospital gown and and

(10:14):
and putting Facebook posts up about how he's dying. No, yeah,
he was. I was totally bogus too. Bally was not
a good guy though everybody said that, and by this
point he was running on fumes. I think I met
him at Tony Wilson's conference in Manchester, England. So he

(10:34):
was more about telling the old stories as opposed to
ruining people's lives and careers. Shall we say, Well, people
who remember him from high school, uh loathe him from
day one. So I mean this guy is uh is
kind of a fagan in this book, right. So it's
the book concentrating It's like, you know, whatever happened to

(10:55):
the class of written forty years ago. So there's other
characters involved. Nancy Sinatras in there, and I'm gonna like
put an ensemble together and it's gonna come to an
extraordinary climax. Um but um eight years later in June

(11:15):
of nineteen sixty six. Okay, without ruining. That is the
book about the class, or is the book about Jan
and Dean. It's about a group of people in that
class and they how they interact over that as years
and yes, Jan and Dean and central to that, the
Beach Boys will turn up real early. Lou Adler and
Herb Alpert turn up real early. Uh. The foulis in

(11:36):
it all throughout. Uh, there's other people involved. Bruce Johnston.
Bruce Johnston was a neighbor of Jan Berry's. Really, I
had a conversation with the mid length. Actually I asked
him to do a podcast and he said, I said,
he says, how much does it pay? Oh that's my man,
But he thought I said, doesn't pay anything. Then I said,

(11:57):
you don't have to do it. We were backstage at
the Beach Boys show and then I said, you know,
just get your story down. He was my stories out there.
I said, okay again, I want to press you. He.
I saw him backstage to Tahoe back in the mid
eighties and you know, he said, say, what are you driving?
I could get you a good price on a new Chevy.

(12:17):
Honest to god, what what was that about? He had
a friend, you know, I was kicking back some money.
I I don't know what the deal was, but you know,
rock stars. I love him right well, though I reminded me,
didn't remember they used you know all these like gas stations,
car washings have disappeared. And the seventies there was a

(12:38):
car washing Brentwood and I recognized him and I talked
about his new solo out and he gave me one
just like they're out of the back of his volvo.
And when I told him, they started reminiscing about cars.
Now you're also doing a book about Dave Mustain, right,
I'm working with Dave on on a book about um
his album Rust in Peace and the making of it.

(12:59):
It's it's it's pretty dramatic stuff and and and uh,
you know, loaded with sex, drugs and rock and roll.
And is there any of the being kicked out of
metallic or that's just released covered that in his previous
best selling memoir. So he had a big hit memoir
almost twenty years ago. So he wants to come back

(13:19):
into the book world and he's like focused on this
particular album, which is some kind of landmark heavy metal album,
and uh, his story around it is just, you know,
it's chaos and uh, hectic in insanity. And that was
that his idea, and he found you or vice person,
it was his ideas. Sammy Hagar, you have a string

(13:44):
of successes as a book writer. To what degree people
come looking to you to write books with Well, it's
always the wrong person, you know. And uh, but I
had some really great experiences like that the book I
did with the tattoo artist at Hardy. That's just a
wonderful book and an important social document. It didn't really

(14:05):
sell a lot of copies because the ed Hardy brand
was so poisoned that nobody really realized that this was
the guy who started American because it had been sold,
would have been sold, they'd been no, you know what
killed the you'll love this. What killed the brand and
it went out like a light switch. Was John Gosselin.
You remember him, of course, so uh, he splits from

(14:27):
his wife, ok, plus eight, right, goes to the south
of France with his new girlfriend, hooks up with Christian Audagier,
who's the running the ed Hardy brand, and he puts
this guy head to toe in ed Hardy gear. So
all the pictures of the world's most famous deadbeat dad
is him in ed Hardy gear. And that it was
over instantly, like Macy's pulled the line. It was just

(14:49):
like that. And yeah, they sold it for a couple
of bucks. But those people, they couldn't even come awake
for the autobiography. They had eleven million dollars worth the inventory,
saying a warehouse, Yeah, I mean know, this is what
rag business is. Crazier than the record business. Okay, so
uh okay, so it's always the wrong people. But how

(15:11):
many people are looking for you? Is it something happens
once a year, once a month, yeah, once twice three
times a year somebody comes up and you know, uh,
there's some inquiries at either the agency level or get
an email from somebody. And you know, I'm always interested
in taking meetings, right, you know, I can't tell I
ended up doing a book with l A. Read and

(15:32):
that's an unlikely thing. Um, I'm trying to think of
who are Buddy and the trades? Is that Roy Tracan?
Of course Roy interviewed l A for when the book
came out. In the first question is what are you
doing with Selvin? That sounds like Roy, you know, and
and and l I said, all we bonded over sly Stone,
you know. So that was But that L. A. Read

(15:53):
book was fantastic experience. I loved working with l A.
And it was fantastic because well, first of all, uh,
just the experience of working with l A. Read and
spending all that time in the Sony executive suites and
being in New York and out in the Hampton's and
and just l A. L a was just a magnanimous, warm,

(16:15):
great guy. Uh. And the book is one of the
great stories of of of nineties R and B. I mean,
he created so much of the of the new pop
black pop music of that era in baby Face, and
their story is not really well known. It's pretty great.
I mean, he brought himself up out of Cincinnati's pop
funk scene. Did you know there was a Cincinnati func scene?

(16:38):
Actually I did, But don't quiz me any deeper. Midnight
Star they were the kings of it. Okay, So which
of your books are you proudest of relevant of what
it's sold? So no question about that, no question. Uh.
Here comes the Night, the burn, dark soul of Burns
and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues. Okay, what

(17:00):
inspired you to write that book? I first read about
Burt Burns in Charlie Gillett's book called The Sound of
the City back about nine Yes, yes, I owned that book.
I don't think I've ever made it all the way through.
But okay, what was really the first history we had?
And I devoured it. But he cites Burns and and
there's a little collection of records that he mentioned. Those

(17:22):
records were all sort of an intense little cluster of
of of hysterical soul records, you know, Garnett, Mims, Solomon, Burke,
Isley Brothers and went being So from that point on,
I just sort of like kept my eye out and
and the more I learned about Burns, more I've found fascinating.
I found early about the Damaged Heart, I found out

(17:44):
early about the gangster associations. I talked to Wexler about it,
and he was forthcoming to a degree. At that point,
Tony Orlando told me about him. Tony knew him really well.
And did you know Tony before I went to do
a Tony Orlando store when he came back from being nuts,
and uh, he was there in Brooks. Arthur was there

(18:04):
with him that day. And Brooks was an engineer on
Brown Eyed Grow and and so Brooks was telling me
all about him too. So over the years that and
and there came a point when I met his kids, uh,
and they really filled in the cracks and encouraged me
to do this. And that's like I bailed on the
chronicle and went to New York. And if I hadn't

(18:27):
done it, then so many of the key figures wouldn't
have been alive to tell the story, and they told it,
and I collected it, and I had to put the
book down for many years, and when I picked it
back up to finish it, it was like an intense
uh and an unexpected gift to be able to finish

(18:48):
this book that I had started and spent so many
hours thinking about, so much time working on. And it worked.
We brought Burns back to life as absolutely. You know,
his articles in the New York Times about him an
NPR and and then the next year, boom, He's inducted
in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So yeah,
I'm pretty proud of that. Absolutely. So they had a

(19:10):
play that I went to see, a musical that you know,
they say it's going to be revived, but that seems
Then they did the documentary, which was really quite good
from a viewer standpoint. Have we seen the end of
the promotion or is there anything I think that musical
is gonna have new life next year in London? Really? Yeah?
I think I think it's going to open on West

(19:31):
End and with a new first act. That was my question. Yeah, No,
that first act didn't make it. I saw that show
like ten fifteen times. And of course I loved it.
But the second act was flawless, and and to have
them end uh with twist and shout. The audience went
nuts every night, every night. But the first act was convoluted,

(19:51):
slow and bumpy, and it didn't really set anything up.
And there are a couple of great songs missing. And
the opening number in the first act, what was that
that Gene Pittney thing about put a diamond the juke
bo pe? You? Okay, so let's go back to the beginning.
You grow up where that's a strange word us about

(20:11):
my youth growing up? So I was raised, my parents
had the best intentions for me in Berkeley. I was
supposed to have graduated from Berkeley High in June of
nineteen sixty seven, and it fell short, like a few weeks,
never made the finish line. Okay, what was going on there?

(20:32):
Why did you saying L S D. Rock and No, no, no, no,
no no. Why did you not as a nice Jewish boy,
why did you not finish high school? L? S D?
Rock and roll? Everything? And how many kids were in
the family. I'm the youngest of three and were the others?
Did they fly straight? Or yeah, yeah, they're geniuses and
and and corporate heroes. Uh. My oldest brother uh is

(20:56):
one of the major heroes of the cancer curing. He's
in public health. And my other brother was a big
deal at Bechdel uh for years and years and years,
huge construction, biggest in the world. And my parents always
looked upon me as the failure in the family. So
you're the only one will be remembered. What did your
father do for a living? My father was you'll love this.

(21:17):
It was a publicist for labor unions press agent. Okay,
I have to ask any influence upon you? Oh? Hell yeah. Uh.
First of all, I'm a great believer in the union movement.
I certainly have myself. It's just you know, out of
bounds in this day and age. It's ridiculous. It makes

(21:39):
me nuts and things like uber just like fill me
with fury. But just you know, all of a sudden,
you as a result of Reagan and said a union
is a bad name. And certainly there were some excesses,
but now we have these oligarchs and these giant corporations
that their excesses ever matched the excesses of the other side.
That's my point. But it's been spun up of watch. Okay,

(22:00):
so he got your love of the union, son. My
father was a pain in the ass. Who who who?
You know? Forged my character in uh you know, like
a matrix, you know what I mean? Yeah, And I'm
grateful to him for it. Uh. And and I cared
for him way beyond the point where he evaporated as

(22:21):
reservoir of good will with me. But do you care
for him financially? No? No, you know I'd go take
make sure he had company and take him. Okay. And
your mother went when she had passed, she had gone,
she and she had an endless reservoir good will with me.
So you know how old was she when she passed?
I was she about eighty four. But she lost her
she'd lost it to dementia, a long slope thing. And

(22:42):
he'd been great about it, he really had it was okay.
So usually I don't think of a union publicist as
being a job that reams down a lot of cash
or am I miss? No? No, No, he was definitely
you know, a middle class uh, living and back when
there still was a middle and they had and they
had a house in the Berkeley Hills that they bought

(23:04):
for five thousand dollars, which was an extraordinary sum to them.
Um and uh he was constantly being given awards by
the International Labor Press Association, which I don't know if
that even still exists, probably not. Um and he got
he caught a big time moment, uh, sort of in
the late sixties when one of the guys that he

(23:25):
had been working with became the head of the national
on the SEIU. So he was banging back and forth
between here in Washington for a while. And there is
a picture of him in the White House shaking hands
with President Johnson. That's hilarious. Okay, So you grow up there,
and of course this is a different eraw it's a
free reign kid. What kind of kid were? You have
a lot of friends? Do So? I was a weird kid.

(23:48):
Uh had lots of friends, but I wasn't popular. Uh.
I spent a lot of time in the library. I
would cut school and go there. Uh and um my
whole um high school. A lot of park cards were
all these NEPs. I just did not attend school. And Uh.
If I wasn't in the pool hall, I was in
the library. And my favorite thing doing the library, by

(24:09):
the way, was to pull old newspapers off the rack
and like followed, say the Polar explanations of nineteen o
nine or the UH presidential election of nineteen thirty two. So,
like I said, weird kid, Okay, So to what degree?
Because certainly rock and roll started in the fifty but
when the Beatles came along really blew it up. And

(24:31):
then of course there was a San Francisco scene, arguably
the first scene after the English scene. You're growing up,
you're a teenager, that impacts you. You're a music fan.
What's going on? A huge So you know, my lifespan
is pretty perfectly timed. All this because of vivid, vivid
memories of coming in on Sunday night to see Elvis

(24:53):
Presley on Ed Sullivan. Wow. Right, so this whole thing
was like very exciting. My older brother were fully you know,
fifties rock and rollers. My brother used to rub the
Dixie peach into his levies every night because you wanted
them to like hang straight. This is something I never heard.
Dixie peach me, like a regular peach was for your hair.

(25:15):
It was like broke cream, vitalist, and it was a
cream and you rubbed it into your levies so they'd
be like stiff hang in these circles. Never heard that. Yeah, no,
that was a very cool thing. Uh and uh so
they were all into that. And I was like, you
know on the am radio and radio was a teenager
and and a and a pre teen's uh gate to

(25:39):
a different world. And if you ever remember the movie
Putney Swoke? Did you ever see that's Robert Downey seen
here And it's a crazy movie. I'm not sure it
really holds up because I talked about for years. Then
I saw it again. But there's always they have big question, okay,
and they said they it out what they now called

(26:01):
Native American, but it was an Indian and he would
give him the answer. And he said, how do you know?
He says the drum? And I always said radio was
the tribal drum. You listen to you totally what was
going on? Had the news that applied to had the records?
Definitely a club. It spelled out our culture. And you
know when when the newsboys get together on the corner,

(26:24):
all the ten year olds was sitting there talking about
what have you heard? Running bear? Who is that cool?
Or what you know? And and a new record was
an event and that got only heightened. We got into
that post Beatles sing where a news single by the
Beatles or the Rolling Stones was. You know, the entire
world stopped for that moment. So when you talk about
the newsboys, did you uh distribute or sell newspapers? Ye? Yeah?

(26:47):
I was a newspaper boy okay, yea on my little
swin bike. And you know the what what was the
maximum number of the whole houses you have? I think
I had ninety papers at one point and it was
just deep Berkeley Hill route. Now, my father at some
point got p oed my the guy that was running
the I don't know if people use that turned out

(27:08):
that's pistol off. Yeah I didn't. I know it was stock,
but I'm the old school as hell. Um. And uh
he called up this guy, Mr Westfall. Why do you
remember these people's names from? You know? And and he
went all labor negotiator on him. Right. You know you
didn't give my my son the route you promised him,
and now you've stuck him with his horrible route. You

(27:29):
need to double his hill bonus from three dollars to
six dollars, and you need to split his bundle and
deliver the second half down the hill. Wow. And I
didn't even know there was a hill bundle. Okay, if
we go back to that era, you're delivering newspapers, you're
making money. What are you doing with that money? Well?

(27:52):
I had my bicycle, that was a big deal. There
was like car h a a few forty five, you know,
a jar candy went to the movies. You know, it
was it was pocket money. Uh So you were always
into periodicals, the newspapers. Yeah, yeah, when we all mad
magazine you know, I like the song hits things with

(28:15):
uh lyrics and yeah, I forgot completely about that. Yeah,
I love those was that was the name of the
magazine song. Wow. There are two or three versions of
it too. Okay, now you you hit puberty, you're out there.
To what degree and at what age can you palpably
feel something is going on in San Francisco? Oh man?

(28:38):
Uh so? Uh. I entered Berkeley High School in the
fall in nineteen sixty four, and uh the Birds played
a concert on the steps of our high school auditorium
after school one day. Wow, we didn't get that where
I went to high school. Okay. There was a band
that was rehearsing across the street with the next year,

(29:02):
so high ten. Uh. That became Country Joe in the
Fish and that park across the street became like a
place where bands would show up and and just rehearse.
And that's the first time I saw Steve Miller was
in that in that park. So it was just blowing
up right around the corner. And if you didn't, I mean,
it was impossible to avoid, but if you wanted to
seek it out, it was just flowing through the streets.

(29:24):
There are clubs everywhere. There were new bands everywhere. There
was a grapevine. Hey, have you seen this new band
Credence clear Water? No where are they? There are Gino
and Carlos. Okay man, I'm gonna check that out Monday night,
you know. Uh. And and every week there seemed like
a new band and Fillmore and the Avalon. Uh the
three bands a week and the three nights a week.

(29:47):
And they're booking an acts besides the local bands. So
you could catch up on Howling Wolf or Chuck Berry
or Bow Didley. Bow Didley was huge with the hippies.
He could really, you know, make it work with it
at the Avalon. And he was dirty. It was funny.
He could play guitar forever and uh, yeah, the hippies

(30:07):
loved Bo Didley. Okay, from your house to the film war?
How far? And how did you get there? Oh jove?
You know, so it's Berkeley to San Francisco. It was
a half hour. There was no traffic, but you had
a car. You use your somebody had a car. Okay,
So you talked about being in high school doing LSD, etcetera.
How does that start into what degree? Or you remember

(30:28):
that community. I first took LSD when it was still legal.
I had a course cap of Owsley Purple, which costs
five bucks. And you don't, well, I'm we're talking about
the stuff made by Alsley. Uh and uh. The first
time I've ever seen stereo headphones, Bob and somebody put

(30:52):
on the New Rolling Stones album. Okay, are you kidding?
It's embedded in my DNA now and the common nation
of the New Rolling Stones album and the stereo headphones.
It blew me out? How much did that experience change
my life? The next day I went out and bought
a record player. Okay, what do you mean a stereo
or you literally didn't have a record player, didn't have

(31:14):
a record player. I was always a radio guy. Until then,
why would I want records? Everything was on the radio,
so you didn't have any singles. You didn't that it
was over singles by the time I was twelve. Okay,
so you went out, got a record player. Let's go sideways.
Because you mentioned it, you know, San Francisco was known
as the land of the hippies. If you were actually

(31:34):
there was that palpable oh oh yeah, and and uh
it was huge. It was big. It was it was
in our consciousness in a very strong and powerful way
that it was a subject of discussion amongst the peers.
And it created a division. Right, there was what I
called the archie divide. Right, these kids belong archie. Comic

(31:58):
books were the hip, the hip new thing. Uh and
and I typically I was so berkeley about this that
I chewed the identity as a hippie, although there is
no way I didn't look like one. You know, I
had the hair, I had the clothes. But I was like,

(32:18):
you know, that's that's for conformists. I'm a non right
al right, right, god, you're bringing it back. I remember
cutting my hair when everybody had it long said your
parents make you doing No, I just don't want to
be like everybody else. Right now, I'm not gonna identify
with that. Those guys don't get it right exactly off
the bus, off the bus. But very exciting times in

(32:39):
Berkeley and San Francisco. Okay, so of course you know
I'm three thousand miles away. They talk about hate Ashbury.
Was that an actual scene you were aware of? Man,
you wouldn't have believed hate Ashbury. N tell me. The
streets were just throbbing with energy and not bad energy.

(33:00):
You know. That came the next year when all the
so called street people showed up. But these were the
original hippies and and they were out there to create
a new community and they meant well, they meant to
h They were given out free food in the park
every afternoon. Now supposedly Emmett Grogan of the Diggers said
that he stole all that food. I was stolen, It

(33:22):
was donated. It was you know, they they didn't have
the same kind of like ritual boundaries that the conventional
people did. That was out um there was. They had
a free store where everything was free and was there
something worth taking? It was like a thrift store, you know,
it was cast off stuff. But I'm in there and

(33:42):
you gotta go to the free store, of course. And
I'm in there and there's a couple of older black
ladies in there, you know, like maybe like church type
of ladies and the and they're walking around with this
look on their face like, well, what the heck is this,
you know, And then one of them see something that
she wants I think was pair of shoes, maybe a handbag,
I can't remember, and she picks it up and she
looks at her friend like well, and friends nag yeah,

(34:05):
and she still puts it away under arm and sneaks
out with it. So the whole thing was like a
social laboratory, right and and and and everybody was in
it for a giggle and uh no harm. Yeah. So
sixty six and the bands were everywhere, Okay, not that

(34:26):
you would know. But the hippies in the street before
the street people came, did they have jobs? I don't
remember much jobs r That's why I ask some of
them would like The job that I remember people having
was throwing mail at the post office because they had
no Um, you could have long hair and work at

(34:46):
the post Most places in the nineteen sixty six made
you cut your hair, Okay, let's talk about the some
of these legendary people. Emmic Rogan, did you ever meet him?
What was he like? You wrote that great book, Rina
Leave You ring Leavia was a classic parts of it
or true? Well, definitely even reading that you could you
can see. How about Ken Kesey. I met Kiss once

(35:10):
and and uh, well I actually I was around him
a bunch at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Uh in his louder years. He was a drunk. Wow.
Yeah it was a little bit of a drag. But
Cantoner introduced me at one point, so I had, like,
you know, a good ten minute chat with once at
the film wore But then the rock and Roll Hall

(35:30):
of Fame thing, they'd hired him to pay him a
lot of money and that just earned his complete contempt.
So he didn't show up sober for anything. Okay, who
from that theme either didn't make it or didn't make
it as big as you thought they should. You know,
I wouldn't even know where to to to end uh
with that? Um so uh the first thing comes to

(35:54):
mind is Bruce Stevenson Fillmore Shuffle. I don't know why
that wasn't a hit. Uh, he was in some version
of Blue Cheek her. But I mean nobody, nobody ever
heard either of those. Uh and uh golly, what about
the Flame and Groovies? I mean, shouldn't have been like
a big band at some point. Well, I bought the
one record what was the famous record where they really
tried to push it over teenage head? Yeah, that was

(36:16):
a counter you know the times, right, that was exactly
he was trying to be, you know, retro to a degree, etcetera.
They two of the code, though, you gotta give them
that they're still doing it and there's still true to
the code. Okay, how about some people who made it
and then then could never replicate it, like Salve Valentino. Man,
Sal Valentino, I think about fifteen years ago, maybe a

(36:42):
little more. He was homeless, he was couch surfing and
and you mentioned Sal Valentino. That's the lead singer of
the bou Bramos. It really San Francisco's first hit rock group.
Sly Stone produced their records and sal Valentino, to me,
has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. Me
but what lost career? Right? So, uh, Sal, what's the

(37:04):
most money you ever made in the record business? He
goes Oh, I got five thousand dollars once from Warner Brothers.
Is a finder's fee for bringing Ricky Lee Jones to him.
I mean, this is the guy who did the guide
vocals on Randy Newman's first album because Randy had to
play piano and conduct. Oh I didn't know that. Oh man,
do I like to hear it that? Wow? Okay, so

(37:27):
you kind of don't finish high school. Then where do
you go from there? Well, I went to work at
the Chronicle as a copy boy. Okay, let's a lot
of these jobs don't exist anymore. I want to tell
my audience what a copy boy was. Fifty five dollars
a week, whatever they want me to do. And while
I'm sitting there, I fold carbon paper between sheets of

(37:49):
newsprints so the reporters don't get their fingers dirty. Is
that a hard job to get? Yeah? Very hard job.
You have to have be nepotically connected, right, because you know,
like you could even get a job on its sunset
of tower records in the seventies. You know things that
people don't think. Hey, there are low wage jobs, So
how did you actually get the job. So my parents

(38:09):
and my older brothers were family friends of the UH
editor Scott new All And and uh so I was
paved in from the top, and uh Scott's wife, Ruth
was you know, all concerned about me for being a
high school dropout and thought that this would like be
a corrective and in fact it was. I mean, I
met my tribe. You know. I walked in there the

(38:29):
first day and I had on a necktie. I was
super uptight. And uh, I looked around this room and
I realized that, you know, after having been told my
whole life that I don't fit in and I always
wandered fit into what uh, I was in a room
full of people who have been told the same thing. Really, Yeah,

(38:51):
that's one thing. I know it instinctively and instantly. You know.
When I went to I was college, I was the
one person going to Vermont. You felt like an outcast
came to l a. There are a million people to
like me. So uh and so was this a dream
or was it just that this was the connection you had?
I like newspapers. I printed the newspaper in high school

(39:11):
because I'd been counseled into vocational studies and uh, I'd
run a newspaper in junior high. You know, a little.
You know, so I sort of had a thing for newspapers.
Like I said, I used to read them in the library.
It seemed like it would be a cool place to work,
but I tell you it turned it just suited me
right away, just like my character was built to stand outside,

(39:34):
observe and and scrawled down the observations. Okay, now, how
long after you started there did you go for your
short tenure Riverside. I was at the Chronicle as a
copyboy for a year, and then I cycled into Riverside.
I spent one year in Riverside trying really hard to
do college, which I found to be high school with

(39:55):
ash trays and there was good lives. The second year
I just did the student newspaper and I was an
hour outside of Los Angeles. It was nine. You would
be surprised at how much access I could get. I
spent five days doing a story with Little Richard while
he was at the Whiskey A Go Go. I'll go
back to his hotel room with him afterwards and listened

(40:16):
to him talk story for hours. I've had interviews with
sly Stone, with with Alvin Lee, big pieces in the
college newspaper. Look a little bit slower. How did you
actually make that happen? Are publicists okay? Were you reaching
out to them or did you have a name? And
some people started to call him up and tell him

(40:36):
I was a college newspapers. They loved college newspapers because
there wasn't any coverage in mainstream media and the underground
press was a kind of bizarre, sort of marginal thing.
But college newspapers they knew that that was something they
could get into. So, I mean there are guys like
grayland Landon at r C, a victor who was just
so glad to hear from somebody at a college newspaper.

(40:56):
And I was right on the service list immediately. I
mean I started getting free records in the mail in
a moment. And you know that was like getting a
shot of morphine in your stomach. Okay, for we all
feel that felt that way. That was currency. Now, needless
to say, you ended up with more records than you
wanted because they would send you everything. What did you
do with the excess? Oh? You know, over the years,

(41:17):
I developed very strategies. You know, I didn't keep them all.
I kept all the books though, Bob, you know I'm
going through that right now literally all the books are
just all the music books, all the music books. I mean,
I didn't you know, they didn't send me review copies.
I'm just trying to say in general, because I'm moving
right now. My god, I'm dealing with the uh you know,

(41:37):
I gotta I gotta downsize a little bit. So I
was looking at the books because of course and everything
is eventually digital. And then I said, well, I get
it like you to this day. I get a lot
of books. Not a week goes by that I don't
get at least one. And uh, you say, well should
I throw out the self published one? Because that's one
thing about rock and roll. When person is done, they

(41:59):
write a book and they wanted me to read it.
So then I said, well, where's where's the cut off point?
They said? And then I was watching the Rick Rubin
documentary on Showtime and he's got an archivist and he
has all the books. I said, Fuck, if I ever
get rich, I want to do that. So I'm saving
all the music books. I have an enormous library of

(42:20):
music books, enormous and they're never going back in print.
I mean you haven't. It's an artifact. And the ones
that are hard to find, are already super expensive, right,
So uh, let's go back to being a copy boy.
So you're a copy boy, and how far do you
move up in that year? Ah, there's no moving up
from copy boy. But I'll tell you what UH did

(42:42):
get out of that is free tickets to the film War,
So a little bit slower. You're the copy boy. How
did you get the free tickets? I'd go back to
uh John Wasserman, who was the junior drama critic, and say,
can you get me on the guest list this week?
And he'd called Vicky Cunningham, who's Bill Graham's secretary, and say,
but you Selvin on the list? So I went to
I Want nine seven and sixty first half sixty eight.

(43:06):
I went out to music six nights a week. Wow.
And you were living where I lived, in the ghetto
in Oakland, right near where uh Eldridge Cleaver got shot
and arrested. I heard the gunfire that night. Wow. So
once you dropped out of high school, you were left
your parents house, you were out on your own. Oh yeah, okay,

(43:28):
So if you're going out six nights a week, I
mean that was when it was really happening. Totally and
late shows. Okay, now you're having established your identity. You
were going for the show, not to hang. No, I
was just in the audience, right, and and I hadn't
really started writing articles, so I'll just get in. I

(43:50):
got slid in and just sit there and go oh wow,
and just soaking this stuff. Well, I mean, but you
were not part of a group. You didn't go there
to talk to people or whatever. You would just taking
it all out. I was on a mission. I wanted
to absorb with most of this as I could. Okay,
you have a memory, and obviously things start to blur,
But from that era, do you remember any specific performances

(44:10):
that blew your minds? Many? How about Albert Collins, Elvin
Bishop and Johnny Winter playing in the Matrix, a club
with about fifty people sitting in the room. Okay, I
did see Albert Collins and the Iceman you know album era,
and he had that really long guitar corner dark. He

(44:32):
was badass, and you know, he was fantastic. And that
was Johnny Winter before the first album. Uh. This guy
named Henry Carr brought him out from Texas and Henry
had been part of the Mother Earth thing which had
a big Texas connection, and Alvin was always around. I
mean Alvin was out six nights a week too. I
used to see Alvin three nights a week. Okay, the
guy always looks like he's done too many drugs. Is

(44:55):
he on the planet or not? Alvin? Yeah, Elvin Um
sobered up a long time ago. And Uh, I think
that he is probably one of the greatest bluesmen of
our time. Uh. And he has taken to doing performances occasionally,
just the two of them with Charlie Mussell White, and
Charlie is another person who just keeps getting better on

(45:15):
his instrument. I mean, it's amazing. He's like the Horowitz
of the harmonica. Uh. And these guys are in their
seventies now, they're they're really getting soulful. I haven't seen
the Elvin Charlie show. I'm dying to see it. Those
two guys blow me away. And how about some of
the bands from that scene, What was your experience, Like Quicksilver,

(45:36):
Cooksilver could be great and they could be horrible. Uh.
And the thing that I love about Cooksilver because they
were a five piece band in sixty six and then
sixties seven, like everything got a little bit more serious
and professional and stuff like that. And and they moved
back from their their dairy farm and Randa the hate
and they were gonna like start rehearsing. And the lead
singer is guy named Jimmy Murray said rehearsing, Oh man,

(45:59):
I'm out of here. So he quit the band over rehearsals.
I mean that is that a fantastically that's the sixties.
That's about hippie moment. Rehearse So any given night, you know,
on the Bill of the Dead, Quicksilver could hand him
their butts. Uh And uh, it's Duncan. You know, because

(46:22):
Trippolina played the same solo every night, it got a
little bit better, I suppose. But you know, he was
not improvisationalist. And Duncan if he if he was on,
it was gonna tear ass um. And he just died
a couple of weeks ago. Man. And I gotta tell you,
Gary Duncan was the real deal, Bob. I mean, I
don't think the guy wore shoes the last forty years
of his life. Yeah yeah, And uh he was like, uh,

(46:46):
absolutely incorrupted by success. Well he didn't have any. He
was broken. He lived like quite trash, but it was
a lovely guy. Worked on cars, played guitar and somehow
managed make that work. I don't know what he lived
on because Quicksilver, Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they didn't

(47:07):
even pay him. I don't know, but you know, the
manager of Quicksilver was also such a story. Ron Poulty.
Paulty was another total hippie UM who came out to
San Francisco after accidentally killing his best friend. And that's
incredible story. But he never got caught. Oh they everybody
knew he was acquitted by the coroner's jury, but it

(47:30):
was his friends friends he was worried about. So he
got out of town. He was a full scale criminal
into Chicago. You know, he had a twenty four hour
locksmith shop. Imagine that, right? Uh? And Poulty turned into
this fantastic hippie who was totally believed in the whole
thing and and screwed up every career he handled. Uh.
The recently, um one of his groups has gotten back

(47:53):
together and recorded their first album is of Copps. Right,
have you have you heard the record? I have her,
but I run into which one is the yoga? Exactly?
I went to a couple of vents you there. They
were telling me the whole story. So, uh, Denise Kaufman,
Madonna's yoga teacher. I mean she's amazing, clear uh, creative personality,

(48:15):
just amazing. And these girls all got back together. They
spent two years, they had some angel paying for it,
recording the album they always wanted to record. And it
is gorgeous. It is just a fantastic album. It's like
being in nine seven all over again. Right, And so
we're talking about this, you know, and uh, I told him,
I said, you know, I talked to a lawyer that

(48:37):
had a big money record deal for you, but Palty
wouldn't take it. And and and they go, oh no,
that's not true. And I go, my god, and and
and so I said, let me check because I know
the guy he was talking to. So I called the
guy from Columbia that made the offer. He goes, oh yeah, man,
I I wanted that band really bad, but Palty wouldn't
let us. And then that was what happened to Quicksover too.

(48:59):
It's Booksover didn't put out an album until light six years, right,
and and they're pretty fizzled by then. Uh, if that
album come out in sixty seven good GOLLI right, well, paulty.
Uh was backstage at Monterey Pop Festival and Krik Silver
played and Albert Goldman told him you hauled out for
a million dollars and he did, gush, darn't it? And

(49:22):
you know, nobody wanted to pay a million dollars, so
like you're a half later he goes, okay, we'll take
the hundred thousand. Okay, what about Bloomfield? I love Michael Bloomfield.
He was a reader. Hey Michael, what are you reading?
I mean, I'm reading the letters of Evelyn Waugh is
so fascinating. Wow. Okay, then the other Okay, Dan Hicks,

(49:45):
Oh god, I love Dan to god miss him. Uh.
He was dry sardonic for real. He used to send
out postcard Did you get him with the jumbles on him? Man?
I mean you know who does that? And nobody? Uh?
And uh yeah, so I mean his memorial And and

(50:06):
Ria Maldaur speaking and she's talking about how she went
by his garage sale one weekend and the gold record
that she gave him was out for sale. That was
a mistake, I'm okay. And what was the viewpoint of
the dead from you know, were they the house band

(50:29):
or were they seen as something special in San Francisco.
So the Dead were just a part of the firmament.
And and very early on there was a contingency known
as deadheads, and they were the sort of stinky hippies
over on the side doing the kelp dancing with their
hands over their head, right. Uh. And they're a part
of every show the Dead were on. Um. So you know,

(50:50):
they weren't really Uh, they were a factor from the
very beginning. But the Dead didn't have an audience outside
of San Francisco and in New York for years. For
years they were just didn't have me took took him
to like nineteen seventy to make it in New York. Yeah. Um.
One of the whole things about around Altamont was they

(51:12):
were all so pro Uh. Mountain Girl told me that
they were still she was stealing baskets of strawberries for
her kids from the supermarket. Wow. Okay, so let's go
back to you. How does it end at Riverside for you? Yeah,
I'm taking this three hour um art appreciation class where

(51:35):
they draw the shades and uh, well I'm out called
sleeping and uh I wake up and my friend Michael
is in the seat in front of me. He's turned around.
He looks at me with this incredible look of frustration,
and he says, uh, what are we doing here? And

(51:57):
I said, I just woke up. And he goes just
discussed turns away from me and then like sort of
tick tick tick tick tick ding. Oh I get it,
and I tap him on the shoulder. I said, let's split.
So we walked out of that class. That's the last
class I went to. But you know it's pretty s
much short of the semester. So I paid Mike a
few bucks to go take my final for me, so

(52:19):
you know he could pass it because I knew I
wasn't going to And uh, he split in the middle
because the teacher collected the paper road by row and
she he saw her like look down the road after
she looked at the names on the paper and double checked.
So he figured we've been had, and indeed we had.
They called me in and they were very very upset
with me, and they said, well, why did you hire

(52:41):
someone who flunked? And I said, well, he had a chance.
So they suggested that I withdraw from the university for
a while and they would let it go, and I
said that was a very generous offer. So they didn't
actually kick me out, but you know, I went out

(53:01):
through misadventure, that's for sure. And you when you were out,
any intention idea that you would ever return. No, Okay,
so it ends that way. How do you get back
working at the Chronicle? So I went back up to
San Francisco and I started like knocking on doors writing

(53:23):
this article right in that article, and the Chronicle was
one of those places, and I've been there. I knew
who to talk to. So I was in the pink
section the Sunday date book, uh, the calendar of the Chronicle. UH,
and I was UH in and out of Rolling Stone
a little. There was a thing called Earth Magazine that
was very good to me. UH. Jim Good from Playboys

(53:47):
started that it was supposed to be a big slick
counter culture think didn't last that long, and UH I
got involved in a lot of interesting stories like UH,
I was following Creden's Clear Waters recording a pen Jelan.
I watched them rehearse it. I watched them record it.
UH interviewed them extensionally for a while. UH. That year
seventy and seventy one uhcod was like a cottage industry

(54:11):
for me. They were like the biggest band in the
world and here they were right in the East Bay. Okay, Alex,
since you mentioned it, what was the perspective on Rolling
Stone which started in sixty seven? Was it God had
ry or another rag or did people hate Winner or
what was going on? Oh? No, they eve't. Nobody hated
Winner right away that he had to work up to that.

(54:33):
I remember reading the first issue. I remember where I was.
Uh it was November sixty seven. I bought it at
this bookstore called UC Corner, which catered to the college crowd,
and I walked up to a diner called Size Child Broider,
and I remember being spellbound by I believe that John
Landau wrote an article about Sam and Dave in that
first issue. That just stunned me that there would be

(54:55):
uh literate journalism about soul music, which was a current
obsession with me. And uh the rest of it was
right up my alley. I mean, I just the it
was not a national magazine that first issue. The front
page story was Tom Rowns quits his k f r

(55:16):
C program director, and that was the local top forty station,
so he sort of like stumbled into that whole national
international thing, but it stumbled into itself rolling stone. I
mean they stepped into a vortex and they managed to
hold on and ride that to the bell. Okay, a
couple of people. Ralph Gleeson. Ralph Gleason was a hero.

(55:38):
I went to high school with his kids. Uh he.
When I got the job at the Chronicle, I was
hired by his complete nemesis, so I was like immediately
blacklisted by him while he was in Fantasy. At one
point I ran into him over at Fantasy and we
had a complete, uh you know, um conciliation. In fact,

(56:00):
he called my boss that night and they had a
conciliation and he sat on a filing cabinet that night
that afternoon and Fantasy and gave me a two hour
lecture and how to do my job. That stayed with
me for the next thirty four years. And he was
an amazing guy. And when I had a point in
two thousand and one where the management decided that I
was holding in the way, and uh, I took him

(56:20):
down on an aged discrimination beef and I came back
to the newsroom and I was like radioactive. You know,
nobody wanted to tell me to do anything, uh, And
I had a bad attitude about my job as a
matter of fact. So I went downstairs to where they
keep the micro fiche, and I went and I read
every single Ralph Gleason article that he ever wrote for
the Chronicle in order, starting in nineteen fifty. Wow. And

(56:45):
I'm not sure why I did this, A little bit
like the guy in Close Encounters, right, But by the
end of it, I had uh decided to write a
major article, and I had kind of reconnected with my bliss,
and I'd also become credibly uh familiar with Ralph's work.
I mean, covering Hank Williams out in San Pablo in

(57:06):
nineteen fifty two, and covering Fats Domino at the Oakland
Auditorium in fifty four, and calling out Pat Boone as
a phony in nineteen fifty six. I mean, he was
known as a jazz guy, and indeed, like Louis Armstrong
and Duke Ellington couldn't believe that they were getting written
about in a white newspaper in California, and they thought
he was their close friend for the rest of their lives.

(57:28):
But he was also on the rock and roll stuff
all the way and then Dylan blew him out and
he became like the first guy to really endorse Dylan
and major way, uh even ahead of handoff. And then
he caught the San Francisco thing right away from the
very first concert at the Family Dog concert at the
Long Sharman's Hall. He was there. He was on the scene.

(57:49):
And you know, if people made fun of him, they
said that he was either uh uh to uh sixteen
year olds. He was forty eight, and he's either two
twenty four year olds, three sixteen year olds, or four
twelve year olds. But uh, you know, Garcia loved him,
the Airplane loved him. The Santana guys all admired him.
I mean, he was the dude nobody will ever have

(58:10):
that career again. He was the first guy to write
about pop music on a regular basis for um daily newspaper,
you know, like the Gilbert Seldis of pop music. Covering
a couple other legends. How about Tom Donahue, huge, huge guy,
God Bob. I'm not surprised, but these are the right
people to be asking about. Donahue was a father of

(58:35):
FM rating. He was a mental giant. It wasn't just radio.
He knew what life was about. He got it in
that really supreme way, and he had these enormous appetites.
He was six five and four fifty pounds, his wife
was pounds, and he just was this incredibly penetrating intellect.

(58:57):
When I called Carl Scott, you know, call from Warner Others, right,
and he worked for Tom way way way back, and
all the other people are gone, and I'm writing this
book about sly Stone and I need somebody like sort
of like qualify Tom and Carlson. I think of a
young Orson Welles and that's right, and and uh yeah,
he took over kmp X when it was midnight to

(59:19):
six am operation and turned it into a twenty four
hour and no time, and he figured out the whole
underground rock radio thing. He was doing Los Angeles and
San Francisco radio every night, and uh, you know, he
just had vision and intellect way beyond a Bill Graham,
who was really kind of a narrow minded sort of
capitalist who didn't get it. I mean Bill didn't take LSD.

(59:43):
Tom gobbled it. Okay, So how do you get back
into the chronicle? How did I get back in while
I was doing all this pink section work then uh
uh Gleason took the job with Fantasy, and Wasserman became
the Oh yeah, okay, this is good. Uh. Wasserman became

(01:00:05):
the guy. And John had this goofy idea that to
hire a jazz musician to be a jazz critic. So
I hired John Hendrix, the jazz singer two halftime job,
to be a jazz critic. And Hendricks thought this was
cool as hell, and he would go sit in with
the acts and write about it. And it just wasn't
quite clear to him what the distant journalistic distance was, right,

(01:00:28):
and he and so John tried to explain to him, no,
you can't do that. So he would do it and
not tell about it, right, so the last and and
then he had a gig in London for six weeks.
So I had his gig for six weeks, and I
knew where the paper clips were, That's what Wasserman said,
you know, And I answered the mail and I answered
the phone. So I did all this stuff that jazz

(01:00:49):
criticks can't do. And then Hendricks came back and they
started like, well, you know, you have six hours this week,
he'll have ten. And then he there's this famous Giants
of Jazz Concert Big Deal Concert at the Masonic Auditory
and Felonious Monks, Sonny Rowland's Art Blakey blah blah blah,
and Hendrix appeared the entire second half on stage and

(01:01:11):
then wrote the review Monday for getting to mention that part.
So that was it. I got the job, and uh
many many many years later he was ninety one years old.
They had a sort of tribute to John Hendricks over
Marin County and I got to go out in front
of an audience that, like y'all, you know, that is
the Chronicles guying. I have to go to no man,
I'm like Bill Cosby. I'm just another guy that John

(01:01:31):
Hendrix put in the business. Okay, So Hendrix was covering
jazz when you got the job. Was a jazz, roll,
pop music whatever, you know. John Wasserman, he was like
a kind of a Playboy magazine, hi fi kind of guy,
you know what I mean. He wasn't hippie. He liked
al Jaro and uh Diadado and and that was his

(01:01:55):
idea of music. And so he was really anxious to
have the rock scene covered us. He knew that it
was on. Okay, I mean, you were one of a
pretty small fraternity. What was it like being on your end?
It was weird for a long time because, uh, the
until like the late seventies, there was no infrastructure for

(01:02:17):
for publicity and and and you know, photo passes and
that kind of stuff. I mean, I remember like taking photographers.
It was hard to get the newspaper to give me
a photographer, you know, like they didn't think it was important.
The first two years, all my reviews ran between the
adult theater ads in the edge of the paper. And
and I remember the first article that had a one

(01:02:39):
column mugshot was the review of the Bob Marley and
the Whalers first show in in uh the United States. Uh,
they that they had gotten uh Blackwell thought they were
going to get over with American blacks. So he booked
him on a tour with slying the family Stone. Lasted
one date and they threw him out, Uh in Las Vegas,
and some nightclub owner named Scot Peering ended up at

(01:03:01):
Rough Trade Records in London calls me up and says,
you know, if I booked this group called the Whalers,
would anybody come? And I remember saying, Scott, if it's
just you and me do it. And not only did
anybody come, the place was packed both nights, and it
was packed with the scene. You know. Grateful Dead was there,
the airplane was there, That Steve Miller band was there.

(01:03:24):
It was on you know, and uh, Donnihue was there,
and Donnie came backstage and told him if they stayed
over and played next week at this club, he put
them on the radio live in between and helped drive
up business. And this was the real whalers. This is
Neville Livingston, Bunny versus Peter McIntosh, Tosh and Bob and uh,

(01:03:45):
you know, no I threees no rita. They hired some
girl to wear a watch because they were so incapable
of telling time. Her whole job was to stand by
the side of the stage and tell them it's an
hour now, you know. They were amazing and the uh
the show which is that that that live show is
on an album called Talking Blues. That that case on broadcast. Whoa,

(01:04:11):
that was amazing and okay. So then in the set
late seventies, you're saying, the record companies get their publicity
infrastructure down, So how is it for you? Uh? You know, uh,
it just meant everything was getting amped up, and the
service was better, and you got a lot more interviews.

(01:04:31):
I mean that was sort of new. You know, Hey,
do you want to interview Bonnie Rate? She just put
out her first album. You might like her, you know
you like blues. Oh yeah, I told Bonnie that, you know,
uh did uh interview with her twenty five years ago
when I was like at the paper for a couple
of months and she just put out her first album
And she said yeah, and we both still got our
same jobs. So did you end up burning up because

(01:04:54):
the music went through a lot of changes from when
you started until you left the chronicles? You ever burned
out on the music have burn outs and reefrethings. I
mean like I got really sick of the Rio Speedwagon
sticks here, but then a new wave of revitalized me.
I think that happened to a lot of people. I
got really sick of the uh turn of the century

(01:05:14):
stuff because there was so much interest upstairs and me
covering things like the Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears. I
went to three Britney Spears concerts, and each time I
sat there and my life flash before my eyes. I
could not think bom I couldn't think what I could
contribute to the conversation about this. Right, making fun of
it doesn't make any sense, right, and and there's no

(01:05:35):
serious criticism associated here, and the cultural movement is like
almost non existent. So you know, what do I have
to say about this? I wanted to like die uh
and and so somewhere around like two thousand and two,
when I got back after the uh IS discrimination, I
really steered myself into an entirely different type of coverage.

(01:05:56):
You know, I stopped doing concerts. I stopped you know,
I had a younger guy working for me, uh, work
for the paper, not for me. What am I thinking? Like?
UH named Iden Wazirian. And you know, if we needed
to cover one of these uh Aaron Carter shows, a
Den was the man for that. I think I'll do
the interview with Taj Mahal about his Caribbean seed business

(01:06:18):
and how he's helping farmers all over the Caribbean. UM
or do some public health stuff about UH earbuds and
the dangers of audio. Yeah. I just moved into trying
to find other ways to reach the audience. For a
bit there, I was doing MP three's because you could

(01:06:38):
post MP three, right of course. And I was like,
oh man, you know, and I'd clear the publishing with people.
It was like as a dream come true for a
music cricket. Through the music three, through the pages go here,
the fact you can write about something that they can
listen right then now they don't even have the time
to listen to anything, never mind read. There's this Japanese

(01:06:59):
guy around San Francisco doing all the hipster clubs as
an opening act. His name was Toshio Harano and he
was a huge Jimmy Rogers fan. He would go and
do Jimmy Rogers songs and nothing. But it was just
hilarious because he hadn't lost his accent, right, so he'd
as peach picking time in Georgia at pick a girl

(01:07:19):
for me all all. And I mean I took him
down to my basement and I recorded him, and I
recorded him over three or four times, and I said,
you want to do it again, and goes no, that's
as good as I can do it. And then I
sent it to the publisher, Ralph Piers, the publisher, right,
and he lives up in Nevada and I know him,
and I sent him an MP three and said, you know,

(01:07:40):
can I get a clearance for this? And and he
wrote back, he said, you know, I can feel this
guy's sincerity. Yes, Okay, So how does it end with
a Chronicle? Oh? That was uh to UH nineteen, uh
two thousand and and and UM nine and the new

(01:08:02):
union contract. And we come in to look at the
eight and a half by eleven bullet points to the
new contract. And I'm going down one draconian thing after another.
Now in truth that Hurst people are losing a million
dollars a week. So I'm in there in trouble and
they've got to take some actions. And I get about
halfway down and it says, uh, no more early retirement,

(01:08:23):
and I want I'm fifty nine. I wonder is this
paper even gonna be here six years from now? I'm
out of here? And did you get a check from
the Chronicle since before the next day, Okay, I was
gone and uh I was one of editorial players to
leave their jobs that year. I mean, it was just
like it was sinking shift. Okay. So let's go through

(01:08:45):
a few things. What do you think about today's music?
Very little. I don't think about it much at all.
Since I left the paper. I don't have to watch
the rookies play baseball. You have a lot of good lives. Okay,
what the future of newspapers? Wow, my crystal ball is
pretty foggy. I've been reading The Times this week while

(01:09:07):
I've been down. Boy, it's gone to hell again someone
who reads it every day. There was a period before
they were talking about the l A Times, when they
had Michael kins leaves headed irrelevant? What you think about
Michael Kinsley? How do the opinion page? They were covering
Washington whatever. Then they sold it out to Tribune and

(01:09:27):
it's been downhill ever since. I mean, it's had a
slight return that well, but I don't know what they
have a right turn. But I will tell you this,
since uh it was sold to the new owner, I
can feel, even though pearl Stein is the editor, you
expected some big change. They just redid the app which
I gotta give him some credit for. There's a little

(01:09:48):
more coverage because I used to call it a toy newspaper.
Everybody I know canceled it, but I said, I'm not,
you know, I gotta know what's going on. But the
business actually would be two pages now it can be
three or four. So if you're coming from a real paper,
it still looks like a toy paper. But if you're looking,
you know, as someone who's here every day, I would
say that it's got a chance. But the bleeding has

(01:10:09):
been stanched. Yes, I think that's true of the chronicle too.
And I don't know that they're reaching new people. They're
definitely not reaching new people. What are They're just serving
their old audience. You know, what are the amazing things?
You know, having lived through this digital disruption, If you
go back twenty years ago, if it was in the
newspaper l A Times, New York Times, you assumes everybody

(01:10:33):
who cared had seen it, knew the story today. No, No,
I mean it's like it could be anywhere. Most people
have not heard the story. They're hearing it from you first,
which is really strange. Well, so this is one of
the themes of your of your your newsletter, which I
still think of, by the way, as a newsletter when
it came to mail. Uh is the sources of information

(01:10:56):
are so fragment of this day that you can't really
reach a consensus of media at all. Well, it's very
strange for someone like me, you know, the original dream
is to reach a point where you can reach everybody. Now,
like you, I'm an outside guy. They're never gonna hire
me from the New York Times whatever, blah blah blah.
But it used to be, well, if you're in the
New York Times, or if you're a comedian, if you

(01:11:17):
had a network television show, you were at the pinnacle.
Everybody knew your name yesterday. I mean, why would you
want to sitcom today? I mean, what is Mark Marin?
Who does podcast? He had his own show on I
s C. Did anybody see it? So now, I mean,
things are written in the New York Times, so the
goal is a little obscured. And now because there's so

(01:11:38):
many messages, it's the virality has become harder. But without
making a personal going back to music again, a couple
more questions, What did you feel about writing negative reviews?
I felt like I was an advocate for the arts
and that uh, I could say whatever I wanted as
long as I stayed true to my core beliefs and

(01:12:02):
represented those openly. Uh uh. And I was uh, you know,
I don't want to say I was fearless as a
shifty word to say about yourself, but but I was
unafraid to write terrible reviews of people I knew. You know,
you saw Grace the other day, right, absolutely, God, Grace
is the greatest. You know what else I got her

(01:12:22):
out of that band I did? I went to see
a starship show at a ship, a little disco called Dreamland,
and there were twenty thirty people there and they were
doing a fortnight run, and and I just said that
this thing was a complete embarrassment, just a complete embarrassing
this is what you wrote in the band the paper

(01:12:44):
and it ran on Saturday, and Grace picked up the
phone and called Bill Thompson, the manager, and she said,
Selvan is right, I'm not coming tonight. And that was
the end. That was the end. Okay, Well, that just
goes to one of my final questions. Maybe the final
question is you look back at this era, hey, will
anything survive? And certainly in your location, will any of

(01:13:08):
that survive? And does it deserve to survive? This era? No,
the era when the king, the era from sixty five
to let's call it seventy five whatever, it's like, uh,
the uh English novels of the Victorian era, of course
they're gonna stay. Really, it's a class it's a classic
art form. It uh, it's the peak of the classic

(01:13:31):
art form. I mean you can see it rise, you
can see it fall and just disappears in the nineties.
And but all that stuff is going to be an
important part of American culture for as long as as.
I mean, the Grateful Dead are just gonna be here.
Bruce Springsteen is gonna be here, Michael Jackson despite all
the Woody Allen, No, this is going to be around.

(01:13:52):
This is what America was. This was like blue jeans
and Coca Cola. It's embedded in our fabric. But I
got one for you on because I played this game
quite a lot. I want to want to play this
with you and you could be a podcaster or whatever.
But so here's my question. You know, listening around late
at night with music business people and that man, you know,
let me ask you a question. What are the classic

(01:14:15):
songs of the twenty one century? What are the songs
the people are gonna be singing fifty years from now,
like the motown stuff, of the Beatles, stuff of the
back rock stuff that we're saying still using. I mean,
is it gonna be single ladies? Put a ring on it?
Is it gonna be crazy? Is it gonna be? Since
you've been gone? Are there any what do you think?
What songs? Okay, let's be really honest. Although I'm not

(01:14:37):
that much younger than you, my listening starts, you know,
early sixties, so anything before early sixties, I'm just gonna say,
I'm not an We get Michael Einstein in here, he'll
talk about the American Songbook. So let's go after my
I listened intently to what you just had to say.
But I believe unless you're a student of the game,

(01:15:00):
hundred years from now, the only thing that survives is
the Beatles. Oh uh, you know um Thackeray and Trollip survived,
so the Stones will be there, Queen will be there.
Well well, well let's put it this way. I will
write about records, and some of these bands are somewhat pejoratives,

(01:15:20):
but they did some good material, like Loggins and Messina. Okay,
when Loggins went solo, became totally Sacharin. But with Jimmy,
I could play you stuff. Anybody would say it was great,
but almost completely forgotten. I'll give you another one. See trains.
Remember the man c train. Uh Andy Cahlberg was a
good friend, Yeah, I mean forgotten. Okay, you even remembered them?

(01:15:44):
They were never hit to begin with. They did they
did Song at Joe, but they did the first version
of exactly first version they got introduced one of their
albums too right, that was already but then no nobody
remembered them then, okay, but let's go on, let's go
one step deeper. Do they remember Mike Bloomfield and Supersession?

(01:16:05):
So Airplanes gone, Quicksilver's gone, uh, stop with Camel? I
mean no, those bands have lost tremendous amount of their
cache and their and their presence and their catalog is dimmed.
But you know, how do you explain to Steve Miller band? Okay, Steve,
let's go back if you trapped or Steve Miller's sort

(01:16:28):
of unique. But what does survive, I believe are songs,
not records. And that's one of the reasons why today's
music is not going to survive. They don't. Is it
that they don't have songs that they're no melody, there's
nothing for future generations to hook on. Okay, and but
when you go back so ironically, it's the sauce stuff

(01:16:51):
like Michelle and other Beatles songs as opposed to just
a bad example helter skelter. If you look at these Stones,
and I'm a Stones fan, okay, it will be seen
as a great degree a rip off of Mississippi Mississippi
Delta Blues. Now those are those recordings are poor, but

(01:17:13):
and they certainly survived. But I'm not a big believer,
and let me be I'm not cynical about this. I
would like it to survive, but I see how much
has been forgotten. And also certain few points of the
people who were there, Like if you mentioned Culture Club,
they're negative. Culture Club did a couple of Stones, Church
of the Poison Mind. It was like Culture Club was there, right,

(01:17:35):
But the point is right, and he could still deliver it.
But the point is that people who are there, you
need a consensus to move it forward. So the people
who are there who feel negative are helping keep this music.
Someone underground. I I asked a different question. Okay, this

(01:17:55):
guy is pretty successful at the label, This guy Mike Karen,
and he was talking at his kid, like five years ago,
two year old kids playing with his iPad and says,
this will be the instrument of the future. Now, what
do we know. You've had a lot of close up experience.
Most of these guys all they could do was play.

(01:18:17):
They couldn't really have a good conversation, and they would
shed it and they did it to get laid. I
have a theory beyond that, once they realized it didn't
solve other problems, than they couldn't write any hits anymore.
But today, to interact with society, there's so many easier
ways to do it that you don't get these people
off the grid rehearse it. But you know, there's just

(01:18:39):
being greta van fleet that gets a lot of negative blowback.
The first EP, there were a couple of very good
tracks rip off of led Zeppelin, but not like Kingdom Come,
not literally, it's just reminiscent sound. All the old people
say it's just led Zeppa. I said led Zeppin was
fifty years ago. The led Zeppelin were inspired by that

(01:19:03):
wasn't even fifty years ago. So just to finish and sense,
you'll hope that at some point people will wake up
and we'll go back to this music and being inspired.
The funny thing is, all these years later, there really
hasn't been another led Zeppelin. There hasn't been another who
there hasn't been another Bob Marley and and my kids
twenty nine and and she went through the whole teenage

(01:19:25):
years bringing all these guys over, you know, and all
of them we're listening to. Who led Zeppelin had Marley
T shirts on. I'm like, that would be like you
and me having Glenn Miller T shirt. That's what I'd
try to tell people. Let's say, when I was listening
to the Beatles, I was not listening to Frank Sinatra,
whom I still don't like. It's not listening to Perry Como.

(01:19:46):
It's not like they that was wiped off the map,
but it was also I have another theory, which it's funny.
I've seen other people pick up on it. There was
one renaissance. Okay, they painted and sculpted since then, but
there was one renaissance. We lived through the renisend. They'll
make music, but what do we know. You had to

(01:20:08):
get a deal, you had to get on the radio.
We lived for the music. Music was everything. It's amazing
you talk to everybody, So I don't think we can
recreate that. So to me, and looking at music history,
which is what I do now. The corporate control of
the record business. Uh starts in the late seventies, the

(01:20:29):
independent labels like Motown and A and M, who were
run by people that made music, that ran experiments in
the studio personally. Uh, the corporations began absorbing those. And
I think that there was the Fleetwood Mac album and
the enormous profits of fourteen million copies of rumors to
Warner Brothers that really convinced the corporations to well, you

(01:20:52):
know what, people don't realize that was the entertainment division
that was making the most profits the rest of their surprise, right, yeah,
that made more money than television. And the whole Warner
cable system was built on the back of the record
what all happened to? To surprise right back side? What
where's that money coming from? So at the late seventies
and in early ages, start seeing this corporatestation, and then

(01:21:14):
they started playing corporate marketing methods, right, And so I mean,
I don't really want to get to be such an old,
uh you know, growning guy, but I think the last
original American rock band was the Talking Heads, and the
rest have been all I might give you YouTube, but
they're an American that After that, all the bands are
like you say, we got to get a deal. So

(01:21:35):
in order to get a deal, they had to fit
the matrix that the corporate marketing people wanted. And so
there that was the end of imagination. That was the
end of originality, That was the end of of of
any kind of like freethinking or connection. And people like
they have this idea that like, well you know, if
if Fleetwood Mac successful, what they wanted something just like
Fleetwood Mac. No, because people abought Fleetwood Math. The next

(01:21:58):
thing they bought was the clash and people had Catholic
taste first. Well there, you know, you're hitting a lot
of points. First of all, for some reason, with the
crazy world we live in, I've been singing life during
wartime in my head, the talking Head song show this
Ain't no Party, This Ain't no Disco before, and you
realize how far ahead even though the times they were,

(01:22:19):
even though you know he's a difficult guy, David Burn,
and he has now changed, single handedly changing the market.
I remember going in Rock Acoustic Christmas. This was like
the second or third one when it started to become big,
when you couldn't get a ticket, instant sellout, and the
headliner was Duran Duran on their comeback and David Byrne

(01:22:41):
performed and literally the two girls in front of me.
I'm not making this upset. Who's this? Okay? But he
did such a killer show at Coachella, at a live show.
There is an underpinning. Okay, he's gonna open it on Broadway.
It's like a new way to sell what he's doing.
I did not you the show, but I sure heard
about it. That'd be my boy in New Orleans Jazz

(01:23:04):
Fest out right. Okay. So going back to your point,
because this is a lot of questions we have about
the future. I was under the belief, what do we
know now? Theoretically you can reach everybody theoretically, so I
thought there would be a very thin layer of acts
that would reach everybody. That turns out not to be true.

(01:23:24):
You ask anybody to sing to Drake songs, it's a
very small market of people. Not that there aren't even sought.
They are not even same even with Taylor Swift. Okay,
so we have all these other genres. What people thought
that the record major labels were going to be killed
by napster in the Internet, that was not true. Without

(01:23:45):
even talking about why that was not true. They are
now killing themselves because they're only interested in the cream
of the crop, not talent wise, but what is more
instantly marketable and unlike an our era Warner, this electra
they only sign one kind of music. If you go
in to say this is phenomenal on its own terms,

(01:24:05):
forget it. I remember Warner has signed this electronic Beaver
and Krause. I mean it's like, who would get traction
like that again? So so it is left in the
touch with Bernie Krause, by the really and it's like,
so it is now left in the hands of the people.
Just taking it one step further. We've been talking about

(01:24:26):
Gary Duncan, etcetera. When I moved to l A in
the seventies, you could work retail and survive. I did
the Sporting Good story. You work retail, you do any job.
You can't get a roof over your head. So what
we have as a result of income inequality is the
best in the brightest. This is what people don't realize.
These people going to college, etcetera. They know the game.

(01:24:48):
They know if they don't find their place where they're
making a certain mo money, they're immediately going to be
left behind. I mean I graduate college. I was a scheme, bummers.
You know I was not looking for that. So only
the lower classes go in. Grace is a perfect point.
Grace actually the upper middle class, No, no, upper well whatever,
I know where she grew up. Okay, she's got money.

(01:25:11):
Father was an investment baker, but not like an investment
baker today. No, but he was the original, you know,
Silicon Valley thing investment banker in Palo Alto. Well, she
didn't tell me that. I didn't. But in any of them,
if you were middle class in the sixties, never mind
in the seventies, you could say no. No one says
no anymore based on your upbringing. I'm not gonna do that.

(01:25:32):
I'm not gonna make that endorsement. I'm not gonna sing
that song, whereas today the lower classes of the musicians
tell me, I'll do whatever it is, whatever you want,
so there's no credibility. Well, it's not heroic endeavor anymore. Absolutely,
you know it was a heroic deva. To be in
a rock band was like to be Ulysses and to

(01:25:53):
go off on a ground journey and the music. Bob,
you know, you stand up for this stuff all the time.
About like, you know, it's got to be the music.
It's got to be about the music, dude. Uh. That
was when it had something in it. Now music is
just an entertainment. That's why people don't realize. I mean,

(01:26:14):
I'm stunned because I come from that era where you
couldn't even get a job at the record store, never
mind get a job at the label. You were all
high again how much you were being paid. You were
a kingpin, you were on the inside. Now I know
what it's like before the Beatles. Oh, somebody works at
a record company. They're just turning it out. It's another profession,
as opposed to you know, we're selling vacuum cleaners. It

(01:26:35):
doesn't have this aura. That's why rock and roll was different,
is that, you know, Perry Como was entertainment and he
meant nothing. Uh. Rock and roll was a coded message
to an entire generation. And it was an education. It
was called arms. It was an indoctrination. It was it

(01:26:56):
was the culture. Filled those sales with air and that
was what brought us all into it. And that's why
it had such power as an art movement. And it
was corrupted by commercial interests. Uh, corporate interests. Hello, welcome
to America. Well, I you articulated really well, and I
don't have anything specifically that to that, but I remember

(01:27:17):
and you may or may not remember, after Kirk Coban
off himself, uh sixty minutes, who was in the guy's name,
who did the commentary at the end. You know I'm
talking about he beat a can't he? Uh? He beat
Kurt coban up. So the next day I was on

(01:27:38):
the phone with Eddie Rosenbladd, who was the head of
Geffen Records, and he said something I'd quote all the
time now. He said, movies, when done right, are larger
than life. Rock music, when done right, is life itself.
And on that note, it's been wonderful to have you.
We could continue just discussing. That's all the pay Bob

(01:28:01):
you're he wrote to me. Okay, well, we'll talk about
this after bike. That makes me feel good until next time.
It's Bob website

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Bob Lefsetz

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