Michael Feinstein

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
My guest today is performer Arkipass, singer the ambassador to
the Great American Songbook, Michael find Scott. I go on,
so you said you were just performing last night at
the Pasadena Pops. Tell me about that. This is the

(00:30):
this is the end of my seventh season. I've been
working for seven years conducting and it's something I've never
done before. I was asked to do it at the Pops,
and I primarily programmed classic American musical arrangements, ones that
often are not heard for decades, or some that have
never been publicly played before. We played for the first
time live the original orchestration of Over the Rainbow, which

(00:52):
was recorded October seven at MGM and has not been
performed in its entirety since that time because the orchestration
was lost and I just recently found it. Okay, what
is different from that than the well known version? The
version that Serta in the movie is wonderful, but it
was recorded with one microphone. There were different well, there
were I should say one input. There were a few microphones,

(01:16):
but it was recorded on one channel, so you don't
hear a lot of things that are in the arrangement,
and every time it's been transcribed, people have left out, uh,
what what I think are essential parts of the arrangement.
But you literally couldn't hear it. So it was a
revelation for people. People went crazy just being able to
hear this iconic piece of music in this iconic arrangement

(01:37):
that they thought they knew. But I've never really heard
that way. Okay, you're really an expert. So let's go
back at that time. Do they even have multi track recording? Yes,
yes they did. They recorded on separate strips of film.
It was optical film, so yeah, you get like the
Silver Street on the side. Yeah, and MGM was doing
it as early as there's a there's a recording of

(01:59):
a ballet by Dmitri Tiomkin that was written for an
unreleased MGM film called The March of Time, and it
exists in multi channel. And they usually would only record
multi channel when they did a choir, when they needed
a separate voice channel, or where there was something complex,
and oddly, with a Wizard of Oz which is a
very complex score with a lot going on, there are

(02:21):
only two cues that they recorded multi channel which was
the overture and the cyclone music. The rest of it
was recorded one channel, which I find a mystery because
b movies, lesser films with lower budgets were recorded multi
channel at that time. Okay, So how many channels could
they ultimately have as many strips of film as they
wanted they could line them up? I mean, I don't
literally know if there's but but but there are some

(02:44):
that there are six channels, seven channels. And of course
Fantasia was released in Fantas Sound in l A and
at Radio City, which was a six channel process, and
that's what they labeled fantas Sound. Yes, And was there
any other movie in fantas Sound? Just just one? Okay?
So if it was six if the theaters at that
time did they have multi channel exhibition rooms, they had

(03:06):
to fit them specially for that, and which is why
it wasn't, which is why they needs yet right, okay,
So what else did you play last night? What else
did I play? It was a salute to MGM, So
I played the Barn Dance from seven Rights for Seven Brothers,
the overture from High Society, which was orchestrated by Conrad Salinger.

(03:28):
The greatest Hollywood arranger, and Skip Martin. I played Love
Is Where You Find It, which was an aria for
Katherine Grayson because I found that original MGM chart. The
MGM library was thrown away in the late nineteen sixties
by a guy named James Aubrey, who was head of
the studio, because it was a cost cutting measure. So
every single MGM arrangement was destroyed. They were all put
into a dumpster, or they were used as landfill for

(03:49):
the four oh five Freeway. The entire MGM library was destroyed,
so all the musical greats that worked for MGM, their
work was was destroyed unless somebody happened to keep a
copy themselves, and so this entire legacy was lost. So
whenever you hear an MGM arrangement like Singing in the
Rain or or any of those iconic things that they'll play,
and they're always reconstructed, and Over the Rainbow is a

(04:11):
chart that well, they saved the Conductor books, which is
which is a rudimentary reduction of the full scores, and
so they reconstruct from the Conductor books. But in the
case of Over the Rainbow, nothing survived. There was not
even a Conductor part for the original arrangement, and so
when I found it it was it was one of
those Eureka moments. Well, once again, how did you find it?
I found it at the offices of David Rose Music.

(04:34):
Angela Rose White, who is David Rose's daughter, had been
moving some things in our office and I went over
there and I saw a folder that said over the Rainbow,
and I assumed it would be an arrangement that her
father did in the nineteen fifties and instrumental thing because
he wrote these incredible He did these famous mostly for
the stripper. Yes, and um. I opened up the folder

(04:56):
and it said Loos Incorporated Production ten sixty and I
lest I was looking at a set of original parts
for the Over the Rainbow, which if David Rose had returned,
would have been destroyed. So the fact that he didn't
return it is why it survived. And he was married
to Judy Garland from so it must have been borrowed
for something and never returned. Did you find anything else

(05:17):
in Angela's trove? I found other charts that he created
for for Judy Garland, and he worked so ubiquitously in Hollywood.
There were charts for many other singers and he was
married to Martha Ray and got he did some wonderful
records with Martha Ray. And so this is the stuff
that I spent my lift looking for. You know, I
know we talked about this all the time, but let's
go stay with the Pasadena Pops. Had you ever conducted

(05:39):
before you got this gig? No, And you'd think that,
having worked with so many orchestras, that I would have
turned around and paid attention to a conductor. I always
took it for granted, you know. And when I started
doing about Jesus Christ, this is hard. So what was
the learning curve? Like? Tell us, Well, it's kind of
like the actor's nightmare, you know, like being on a
stage and not knowing your lines. Because that first time,

(06:01):
well they asked, what happened was I had done an
appearance with the Past Lena Pops with Marvin Hamlets, who
was their principal Pops conductor, a Cole Porter show, and
two weeks later he died. That turned out to be
his last concert, and it was shocking to everybody and
in terrible and about two weeks after his passing, somebody
from the Past La Pops called and said, would you

(06:24):
consider taking over Marvin's post, and I said, well, why
don't you get somebody who's a conductor, And they said, well,
we need somebody that has some sort of name value,
and we we think that you'd be great. I said, well,
I love pops music. I said, but I don't conduct.
And I said no, and they kept after me, and

(06:45):
they contacted me again, say well, we've already asked her
season and we're gonna we could possibly go under if
we don't have someone to It was that, you know,
no guilt trip. So I said, well, I'm willing to
try it, but you have to understand I have never
done this and I don't know how to do it.
They said, well, we're willing to take that chance. I said, okay.
So I hired an orchestra to practice. I went to

(07:07):
Seattle and Larry Blank, who's an amazing conductor, coached me.
I went to Seattle and for three days I worked
with an orchestra and had the musicians give me notes.
And then I worked and worked and worked. And then
June of next year whatever that was seven years ago
or eight years ago. Uh and uh i uh. I

(07:30):
raised my hands and they came in and they played
and they really saved me, you know, they really were
very kind and and uh, and it worked and now
I can do it. Now I know what I'm doing.
But then I was what is the key? What? What
do you have to learn to conduct? Of course, the
rudimentary um signals UH, of of giving a clear downbeat,

(07:53):
of having your arms raised high enough that everybody can see.
It's it's clear communication when there are what we call corners,
when there's a change in tempo, or when there's two
things going on in the orchestra and you have to
cut them off on the left and keep going on
the ride. And and so it's all about communicating um,
a sense of the music and it's um. It looks

(08:17):
easy and parts of it are easy, but the parts
that are not easy can be fiendishly difficult. And one
of the hardest parts for me is that there is
always a slight time delay from the time you physically
give the down beat and the orchestra plays the down beat.
When I play the piano, it's instantaneous, but with an orchestra,

(08:39):
depending on which orchestra it is, there is a time delay.
And in Europe there are even longer time delays, and
the the conductors are accustomed to it, but it's maddening
because you have to conduct ahead of the beat, and
if you're accompanying a singer, you have to conduct ahead
of the beat, so you will hit the down beat
when they hit their downbeat in next bar. And it's

(09:01):
It was one of the most difficult things I'd ever
had to do. And I was talking to Andre Preven
about it, who of course was one of the most
magnificent conductors, and he said, it's just conditioning. You just
have to keep moving ahead because if you actually start
to follow the orchestra, you'll get behind the beat. Let's
just assume you were not on the podium and the band,

(09:22):
the orchestra had all the music in front of them.
With that work at any level, to what degree is
the conductor necessary? To what degree does the conductor add?
It's easy if it's a thing that just counts off
and it stays at the same tempo. Uh. It's very
difficult if it's a maller symphony, because somebody has to
give all of the cues. Uh. And there have been

(09:44):
times where an orchestra has continued to conduct. Famously, when
Tuscanini in his waning years I was conducting a Wagner
piece and he was very proud of his Uh. I
don't know if it was a photographic memory, but he
memorized the music. And he is in the midst of
this Wagner piece and he forgot the music and he
was so humiliated that he hung his head and he

(10:07):
walked off the podium. And the NBC Symphony kept playing
because they weren't going to stop, but they they knew
to keep playing. And the default is the concert master.
The first violinist is the one that that you follow.
But if it's a piece that the orchestra has played before,
they have the muscle memory and the potential to keep playing. Okay,

(10:30):
So when you have a great night, how much is
the responsibility of the conductor as opposed to the players.
It's both, It's really both, because there are still times
when they will save my ass and uh, where I'll
miss a cue here or there, and there are times
where I will bring them up because one of the

(10:51):
other things that's hard without if it's a piece that
doesn't have a drummer, keeping the pulse of the orchestra
because it's a lot of people playing, and especially this
is an outdoor vent so the acoustics are different from
the back of the place to the front, and so
there's gonna be a delay with the trombone, so you
have to tell them to play ahead of the beat.
So one has to communicate the pulse. You have to
keep the po I have to keep the pulse going.

(11:13):
And when it's a piece of music that's difficult, the
orchestra sometimes will will slow down. And the other thing
that you learn as a conductor that I learned, and
it's sort of counterintuitive, is that the beat has to
get smaller. And the tendency is when you want it
to be faster, is to flail your arms more and
move your arms more. But it actually you have to
do the opposite. You have to become more economic with
the beat and you have to bring it in uh, smaller,

(11:36):
so they pay. I don't know what it is, but
that's the way it's done. Okay, that's done so that
the orchestra is not over loud. So let's play faster.
So okay, the beat is smaller. Okay, let's go back
to the trombones. When you say the timing is different,
you're talking about for the audience or for the conductor,
the front of the house the back of the house.
The timing is different in that for the sound to

(11:57):
travel from the trumbo section to the front of the podium,
it's a little bit of a delay, and I, well,
that's what I found. Okay, So how many gigs a
year at the Pasadena Pops? We do five concerts every
every summer, three of which I conduct, one I just sing,
and then there's a fifth one that I that I

(12:19):
don't conduct, and then I conduct another orchestra in in
Palm Beach, Florida in the winter January, February, and March,
which which I do. Uh. Another three. So the other
thing that's hard for me is that I'm not conducting
all the time, so I have to get my chops
up before I returned to the podium, and I have
to practice, and I have to practice and get it's
And mainly the practice is wrapping my brain around it.

(12:39):
Then the physical movement, it's the visualization. Do you like it?
I love it now, But when I first was doing it,
it was so terrifying that I just would pray that
I would get through it. And now I love it
because it's the ultimate to cut. Okay, you know where
you can program anything you want. And I, because of
who I am, collected music and orchestrations for decades, and

(13:02):
now I have charts that I never dreamt I would
have the opportunity to conduct. I mean, charts for for
ladies that are not in my key vocally and things
that I would just find and now I can play them.
And the amazing thing is that the response of the
audience is so over the top for this music, which
is so gratifying because most other orchestras are skewing younger.

(13:25):
They're doing Elton John and Billy Joel and a lot
of pop stuff, which is great, but but very few
orchestras are playing classic pop music. So it's it's it
shows that there is an audience out there, Okay for
that at audience. You know, let's assume you go to
see one of the classic rock acts. They have their hits,
they know there's going to get a huge response. Okay,

(13:47):
do you have your tricks? Do you had to make
up the so called set list the program and say, oh,
I know this will get a big response or this won't,
or how do you deal with that putting a setlence
together for an orchestra as just the same as what
I did when I started playing in piano bars. It's
all about thinking of an opening number. It's sort of
like like a musical, where you program each piece of

(14:10):
music that tells a story. That's a musical journey. There's
a fast paced thing, there's an overture, there's a ballad,
there's a medium tempo thing. Uh, different styles of music.
Uh so Uh. It's very carefully programmed. And I probably
agonized more over the order of the pieces than choosing them,
because once I've chosen them, I have to to project

(14:32):
what kind of response it's going to get, and partially
that response is predicated on how I introduced the piece
of music, telling people what they're going to be hearing.
Like when I played over the Rainbow, I told the
story of this piece and it hadn't been heard in
eighty years, and it got a huge hand at the end.
If I if they just were listening to Over the Rainbow,
they would say that's nice, but they wouldn't know that
this was something special. So that's part of it. Okay,

(14:56):
you got the Palm Beach gig as a result of
the Pasadena gig. Yes, and so we you see more
of these in your future. Well, yes, the short answers, yes,
even though the economics are such that it doesn't pay
what what I make as a singer. So I'm doing
it out of passion. And the money that I've spent
restoring these orchestrations has has been much more than I've

(15:19):
than my salary has supplied. So okay. So when the
players in these various orchestra like in Pasadena, you're nearer
or Arcadia, literally you're near a big city. Who are
the players in the orchestra, it's an incredible orchestra. They
are uh players who often do Hollywood scoring sessions, like

(15:39):
Jim Thatcher, who's our principal French horn player. He is
John Williams favorite. He does all the John Williams sessions.
These are players that that play all kinds of music
because they work in Hollywood. So it is a dedicated
orchestra that it is usually the same faces, not always
because there always are subs, but they are, but they

(16:02):
are they are a savvy group. And yet with every orchestra,
the goal is to bring the music that will be
fun and challenging, and pops concerts are often so dumbed
down for the orchestra that they're bored, and so my
goal is to bring arrangements that are exciting, that are

(16:23):
fresh and will be challenging for the orchestra, so they're
not just what they call sawing footballs, you know, playing
whole notes that our company with someone singing yesterday, you know.
I mean, there could be a great arrangement yesterday by
Johnny Mandel or Henry Mancini, or there could be one
that's just boring as I'll get out. So I have
to make sure that every chart is something that has

(16:44):
some kind of substance. And how much rehearsal is there.
We have two two and a half hour rehearsals, which
isn't enough. But they're so great that that they always
write to the occasion and it always is amazing to
me how they do it. Okay, can you just find
the Great American Sound Great American song Book? From my audience,

(17:06):
to me, the Great American Songbook is a body of
work that essentially begins in the teens of the twentieth century,
and it has no cut off point. Perhaps the golden
age of the Great American Songbook was the nineties, thirties
and forties, and that it was a period when we
had an amazing group of songwriters including George Gershwin, called Porter,
Jogi Carmichael, Duke Gallington, Fats Waller. I mean, you go

(17:28):
down the list that wrote classic songs that have survived.
But I think we had another amazing influx of amazing
of great writers in the sixties and seventies, you know,
with with Carol King and Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams
and Joni Mitchell and and uh Harry Nilsen, And I

(17:50):
mean they are to me just as significant, but to
me the great. For a song to qualify being part
of the Great American Songbook, it has to be a
piece of music that transcends the time in which it
was written, that it survives through the decades, and it
is known to everybody and survives from various recordings. And
so to me, uh, it's a song like over the

(18:13):
Rainbow or Singing in the Rain or God Bless America,
or There's No Business like Show Business, or maybe it's
We Will Rock You. You You know what I mean. There's
songs that are universe universally known, that that survived the
test of time and continually are reinvented and rerecorded and
are known. And so I think there are songs written
today that that will become part of the American songbook
because I think it's ever evolving. There's no cut off

(18:35):
for me, however we live, you know, in terms of
a lot of these songs made their fame or got
their fame as a result of being in films or
being on the hit so called hip parade. But in
the Internet era, where everything is so dispersed and h
the popular chart is dominated by hip hop music, you
still think that there are songs being written that will

(18:55):
be part of the song book. I do only because
history has shown that songs from every era somehow survive,
even though to me I couldn't tell you what they are.
And uh, I think I think Frozen from Let It
Go It's probably gonna be around for a long time,
unfortunately because the songwrives me crazy. But that's not the point, yeh.

(19:17):
And it's true that many songs from the Golden Era
came from films and came from uh other places. So
I don't really know the answer, but just looking at history,
I have to believe that there have to be things
that that will survive. Name the two songs that are
your favorites from the Great American Songbook. Oh well, that's

(19:38):
that's almost like Sophie's choice, you know, but look the name.
More than that, name a handful that you just your
top tier. Well, things that pop into my brain. Love
is Here to Stay is a song that I never
get tired of singing, And for me, songs that constantly
stay fresh are ones that that our favorites. So I'm

(20:00):
king one Gershwin song. It would be Love is Here
to Stay. If it's a Manstine, it's two for the Road. Uh,
Jerome kern Um, probably the way you look tonight. I
mean there are obscure songs that I love that nobody
knows that our favorites of mine, like, uh, the theme
from The Bad and the Beautiful, which has a beautiful

(20:20):
lyric by Dorry Prevn. It's one of my favorite pieces,
but it's completely obscure. Yeah yeah, but I was asking
answer the question appropriately. We're not reading the bell of
the audience today. It's all about you. Oh well, thanks, Okay,
I'm Jewish. I'm not used to that unless it's my
mother scolding me. But at least your Jewish you have
something to say. I remember going to college the first
time I was involved when I went to a melting

(20:40):
about high school. But you know, when I went to college,
there were very few Jews, and I encounter people who
didn't talk. Whereas you know the scene in uh, the
Woody Allen movie where they're sitting around the table and
everybody's talking over each other radio days. That's certainly how
I grew up. But you talk about being let me
go before that. You're obviously both an ex spred in
this field and very knowledgeable. Is there anybody on your

(21:05):
level that you're aware of? Everybody has their niche, if
you will, Uh, I don't know that there's anybody that
knows as much about certain aspects of of orchestrations, of
pop orchestrations, and there are people out there, but I
think the conflagration of all the different things I know

(21:27):
about American popular song is perhaps unique. But Will Friedwald,
for example, as a guy who knows a hell of
a lot, and Vince Giordano, who is a specialist in
in vintage big band music, has devoted his life to it,
So they are certainly uh as knowledgeable or more knowledgeable

(21:48):
than I am. About different aspects of American popular song.
But each of us have unique corners of our brain
that that are specialized, if you will, and how often
is your expertise called upon by third parties? Pretty often,
because people will contact me almost every day asking about

(22:10):
a song or arrangement. Are looking for something, especially other conductors.
Are people working on projects that that want to find
something because it's not easy these days. In spite of
the fact that we have the Internet and we have
so much access, it's sometimes not easy to find an
arrangement or where something went through the years. Uh, even

(22:30):
a piece of sheet music now can be problematic because
if you download something from the internet, it might not
be the original because now we have all these iterations
of different things. You know, it's like recordings where things
are remixed and what you're what you're feeling on remixing, Well,

(22:51):
they're so dangerous, exactly. We got the originals, like remixing
Sergeant Pepper I got into this, the guy who did
originally and Giles who and remixed it. That's like sacrilegious.
I mean, you got the one, you know, that's the
one they put out. You can't change that. Well, it's
like Capitol Records UH put out c D s issued
c ds of several original cast albums the Music Man, Um,

(23:16):
Funny Girl, Um, Somendheim's Follies, and I forget the other one.
They did a bunch of them, but those cast albums
were all mixed as if you were watching that from
the audience. They had the microphone panning like Robert Preston
in the music Trouble My Friends. You hear his voice
panning from left channel to right channel. Whoever produced that

(23:36):
album sat in the audience and made notes and produced
that where you hear the voices moving around. Well, the
first CD releases the Capital put out, We're from the
album masters, so they were the same as the album's
transcribed to c D but they had a lot of hits,
so someone said, oh, we gotta remix this. Well, whoever
remixed all those The voices panned absolute everything is pan center,

(24:00):
and they are desecrations of those original UH productions, And
people say, oh, well the CD is better. Well, no,
it's not. Okay, not necessarily unless the original producer goes back.
But sometimes even the original producers don't remember or you know,
because it's in the moment and there's a lot of
other things going on. Okay, have you gotten any of

(24:22):
these people to go back and do the best version
of the original? Have I personally? I mean because I mean,
obviously you're a person in the field, you and you care.
Does that backlash, so to speak, have any effect? Or
these multinational corporations don't care. Well for the most part,
they don't care. I mean, I'm like you. You you
complain because you care and you want and you want
people to pay attention. And sometimes they do and they say,

(24:44):
oh god, that's great, I'm sorry. But then it comes
down to the bottom line. You know, it comes down
to how much is it going to cost to do this?
And and and it's uh, it's sometimes heart sinking, but
you know, it's the way of the world now. Well,
the worst thing is that becomes the default version. Yeah.
It makes me crazy, Like there are certain songs on
the radio all here or the alternate takes. Someone got

(25:06):
it from the box set and they put that up
that's that has a different change in it. How can
you do that? Yeah, and it's like it's the alternate
take because they didn't choose it exactly. Well, put okay,
let's go back you talk about your digging, your archivist,
uh side of your world, tell us more about that.

(25:26):
For whatever reason, from the time I was a kid,
I was intrigued by the history of the music that
I listened to. When I was five and six years
old and I discovered there was something called sheet music
where a song was written down. I was fascinated by
the covers and the information, the names, even though I
was just learning to read. And so I've always had
an interest in where the music came from. And then

(25:49):
I became interested in the songwriters and the process. And
so as a performer, when I performed music, I always
tried to go back to the original sources, being the
sheet music, a copy of the of the manuscript of
the first recordings, because they all give me keys to
how to interpret a piece of music. And there are

(26:12):
so many parts of popular music that are oral traditions.
For example, Summertime from Poor Game invest which is one
of the best known pieces of music. A lot of
people think it's a folk song. They don't know that
it was actually composed by George Gershwin. He wrote it
in for an opera called Poor Game Best, and it's
been recorded by everyone from Lantine Price to Janis Joplin,

(26:33):
and the original sheet music of Summertime does not have
a high note that every soprano and every production of
Poor invest is sung since the beginning of time because
it's Husha, little baby, don't you cry? And then in
the opera the soprano sayings this high note that goes
on forever and it's this melting moment. It's not in

(26:53):
the music, So the question is when did that start?
When when did that go? When did that become part
of poor game best. It's not notated there. So if
you didn't know that, and you just go from the score,
you wouldn't sing the high note, and people would say,
where's the high note? You know? Or um? If I
only had a brain, I could while away the hours

(27:14):
confirmed with flowers, consultant with the rain. People are saying,
and my head I'd be scratched. That's not the way
the music is notated, and my head I'd be The
entire song is notated differently from the way everyone sings it.
I can't help loving that man um the bridge of
that as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.
That's again, those high notes are not in it. The

(27:36):
music as if he goes away, that's my rainy day.
But anyone that sings that song always goes up because
that's okay. Well, some of these songs, they were written
and they were conducted. Couldn't they have been changed on
the fly in the original recording? Absolutely okay. Well, in
the case of can't help loving that Man, I found
a manuscript of Jerome Kern where he was demonstrating for

(27:58):
some writer the way his songs are sung, and it
says original the way I wrote it, and it has
without the high notes, and under that it says way
Morgan sang it, referring to Helen Morgan who introduced it
in Showbout. So there is an acknowledgement of how it
was changed. Now. I don't know how jer own Current
felt about that. Now. Julie Stein told me that when

(28:19):
he was working on Funny Girl with Barbara streisand he
wrote the song people with Bob Merrill, one of the
great American standards. Now streisand when she sang it on
stage and Funny Girl, she sang instead of people, people
who people who people, she was sanging people people who
need pupils. And Julie said, Barbara for the first recording,

(28:40):
would you please sing it the way I wrote it
because everyone will copy you and I want people to
hear just for the recording. And she said okay, and
she went into the session and she sang the high
note and sang the way she wanted and it drove
Julie crazy. So now everyone says people people or the
song at Last, you know, everybody does the edit James
of Vision at Last and I Love has Come Along

(29:03):
and Live Live. It's a song. That's not how the
songs written. At Last, My Love has Come along, My
lonely Days are over in life is just a song.
That's how it's notated. But every Wednesdays and Live is
just the song. Everybody is copying the Edda James record.
Thousands of people copying it. And she died only a
few years ago, and boy was she pissed about that. Okay,

(29:28):
So as you dig one thing that's been well known
at this point is a lot of these films were trashed. Okay,
to what degree are the scores or the original song,
uh pages extant? It depends on the studio. MGM threw
away everything, I mean, music wise, paramount saved a lot

(29:50):
of stuff. Universal. It's very spotty, a lot of stuff missing,
but they do have some stuff. Um r k oh.
Because they went under so many years ago, a lot
of the stuff went into storage and a good chunk
of that survives. Sam Goldwyn, most of their scores are gone.
Twenty Century Fox has a lot, but not everything, because

(30:14):
people would borrow things and not return them. I was
trying to find the original Glenn Miller orchestration from the
movie of the song Chattanooga Cho. They didn't have it
because somebody borrowed it along the way. So it's a
case by case basis. And in some cases, as you said,
some films are lost and are gone and that now
finally well known Universal Fire. Nobody talks about all the

(30:35):
films that were gone on all the television shows that
were lost, and so there's a lot. There's a lot
that still is uh not spoken about with that thing. Okay,
how about songs like you know what the original versions
Gershwinds Rome Current in terms of their original writing, does

(30:56):
that tend to survive? Uh? There are almost there were
almost no Jerome current manuscripts. It was one of the like,
why don't they survive? And then in uh, I was
happily involved with it. They're turned up at the Warner
Brothers Music Warehouse, which became sort of a whole clearinghouse
of many different publishers that had gone, that had been

(31:17):
by succession become part of Warner Brothers Music Um. It
turns out that there was kind of like the the Um,
the Lost Arc of missing music manuscripts, and eighty seven
Gershwin manuscripts turned up, and a bunch of current manuscripts
turned up, much to the shock of the music world.
But the short answer is that a lot of a

(31:39):
lot is lost, and there are certain songs for which
we don't have the original manuscripts. And then in the
case of some songwriters, there's a lot because they saved everything.
Like Irving Berlin saved everything even though he couldn't write music,
so his man his original manuscripts are in the hand
of a copyist. Richard Rogers saved almost everything. But in
the case of many other songwriters, they're they're just gone.

(32:01):
You know, Fats Waller would sell his songs for for
the price of a couple of beers, or for twenty
bucks for pocket money, so his his manuscripts are gone.
There's a lot of Ellington stuff. Uh, and and things
also morph. There's not always that aha moment like the
Way You Look Tonight Jerome Kerrn, which was an Oscar

(32:21):
winning song sung by so many people. I discovered quite
by accident that originally the germ of that was a
piece of underscore for a nine Jean Harlem movie called Reckless,
where the in the background of one seeing the orcasts
playing duh uh just a little phrase. And a year
later Jerome Current turned that into the way You Look tonight.

(32:43):
Let's assume you go to Let's so it exists and
you go to the archive. Is this stuff easily findable
or is it like going down a rabbit hole and
you know it's somewhere. Uh, it depends, Like everything, it depends. Uh.
The Library of Congress is in many ways the premier
repository for this stuff, and their collections of Gershwin, of
Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern are very well tended, and

(33:06):
yet it's not always easy to gain access. Uh. If
you can gain access, and if you have a legitimate reason,
you can get in there. And they're a wonderful scholarly
archivists who can help. Aren't they years behind? Though? Well
everybody is because it's a problem of economics, and they
catalog things by demand. It's like I wanted to find

(33:27):
a David Rexon piece because David Rexon's collection is there,
and he's best known for writing Laura and was a
wonderful guy and a good friend. They had never cataloged
his collection, which had been there for many years. And
I asked why and they said, because Michael, you're the
first person to ever asked for anything from the collection.
And then there's the situation of a place like Harvard,
which was one of the worst experiences I've ever had

(33:50):
as a person trying to do musical research. I was
treated very nicely by the archival employees there, and by
the higher ups. They treated in the most humiliating way.
And it was because of the Johnny Green collection, which
I knew Johnny Green quite well and was looking for

(34:10):
something and I went to somebody and said, there's stuff missing,
there's stuff that's not here, and they treat me like
I was an idiot, and they said, well, it's just
not there, and I said, I was at Johnny's house
when the stuff was being packed up and sent to
you guys, and it's a lot of stuff. They said, well,
then it maybe disappeared through the years. I said, it
can't have there's too much stuff. And I called the

(34:33):
acting head of the Department of the Special Collections. His
name was Tom Horricks, and he essentially hung up on me,
and one of the people who was one of the
catalogers there sent me an email and said, I hope
you're sitting down, And he said, I took to heart
what you said, and he said, I started going through

(34:54):
with my colleague and we started looking at bar bar
code numbers and stuff. It turns out that there were
two hundred boxes of Johnny Green material that had been
received at the at the loading dock that had sat
there since like nineteen eighty nine or nine, and they
were never cataloged and nobody knew they were there. Do
you think I ever got an acknowledgement or an apology

(35:16):
or anything from Harvard nothing except for my this wonderful
So there's wonderful people on the staff there. It's just
the fact that they were arrogant about it and treated
me like I was an idiot. That story stands alone.
I don't need to uh make a comment about it, Okay. Now,
in the Great era of the twenties thirties forties, the

(35:38):
first people who wrote the songs tend to be different
from the people who performed the songs. Then in the
rock era, starting with the Beatles, they tended to be
the same people. Once again, we're an era where they're separate. Uh.
Do you believe that the people who did it solely
as an advocation were better or dad had a different
insight or a different way of doing it. That must

(35:58):
be noted. I think there were all kinds of motives
for writing songs then as there are now. Some people
write out of inspiration and some people write for commerce. Certainly,
even the great songwriters were mindful of trying to write
a hit song. But uh, the Gershwin's, for example, are

(36:19):
the guys that write for Broadway musicals wrote for Broadway
musicals back in the day. I had to write for
plot and for character. They had to write for certain things. Uh.
I think that music always reflects the time in which
it's written. It's it is our history. Irving Berlin once
that history makes music, and music makes history. And regardless

(36:41):
of the reason that the music for which the reason
is written, or if it's inspired or not, it still
is certainly a doc at historical document of what's going
on in the times. I don't know if I've answered
your questions. Are you kind of did as I say?
I'm just wondering whether you think people who solely right
are inherently better or different from the people reform in
their own music. Well, Michelle Grand wrote every single day,

(37:05):
you know, I mean, regardless of where he was in
the world. I mean, that was his thing. He just
loved to write. Marilyn allen bergman, the favorite thing in
the world. We're writing. You know that they love it
and it's part of their blood. They have to write.
And there's a difference between songwriters who have to write
because it's an expression of something that they have to
get out and someone that writes to order, even though

(37:26):
they can be one and the same. How about someone
who is a performer primarily and insists on using their
own material. Do you think that's inherently better or worse
than the people who soli are songwriters. I don't think
it's better or worse, because sometimes the people who are
encouraged by producer, Hey kid, you could write your own songs,
so you get all the royalties and we'll split the publishing.

(37:47):
They may start out that way, but sometimes amazing writers
have come from that. I'm trying to think of an example,
but I'm sure there are many people who didn't really
know that they could write The Rolling Stones. One of
them that okay originally and then they wrote Okay. We're
in era where people are suing for copyright infringement at
a much greater quantity and velocity than they ever did.

(38:07):
What's your opinion on things are still copyrighted, People still
pay attention. Well, if you want it, you wrote it,
they seem to, Yeah, I know, I'm just it's just,
you know, copyright is such a ross. It's such a
tremendous miss. Okay, but let's stop there for a second.
In a perfect world, what would it look like. Well,
for one thing, in the world of songwriting, there is

(38:30):
this crazy divide where things written after January one or
in copyright much longer than anything written before that. And
I think there should be a universal copyright for music.
So it's all the same because right now Rapsody in
Blue goes p D January one, two thousand, Yeah, public
domain two thousand and twenty, And um, I think that

(38:54):
eventually things should go public domain. I think that there
is a time when they absolutely belonged to the world.
So I'm not hard nosed about it, but uh, there
should be a uniform copyright law. And around the world
it's different. You know, it's twenty years is it twenty years?
In Japan and Germany, they're all different. And until recently

(39:16):
in the in Europe there was not joint nous, which
meant that the music of a song could go public domain,
but the lyric would still be in copyright, so you
could write new music for the lyrics. I mean, it's
so crazy, and so it needs to be uniform. Uh.
But as far as um people sampling and using a
piece of it, absolutely there should be payment for it.
And I don't understand why there would be any question

(39:37):
about I think to a great degree that's the case.
Even if talking about hip hop music, where it's famous
for sampling, they used to sample stuff. Now they write
their own beats because they don't want to even get
into that. They don't want to an issue of infringement.
They also don't want to pay. But we had the um,
the Blurred Lines case. We have all these cases where
people are suing today where there are a lot of

(39:58):
similarities and saw it's in the past, and the people
never sued. Yeah. Well, there was a famous case in
nineteen twenty with Jerome Kern and Fred Fisher, and this
is pertinent because Fred Fisher wrote a piece called darden Ella,
and Jerome Kurn copied the baseline. It was an astana
bum bum bum bum bum um um um bum bum

(40:21):
bum bum and he just took that bassline and put
it in another song, and Fred Fisher sued Jerome Kern.
The current song was called Kolua and the Fred Fisher
song was called darden Ella. And the judge ruled that
technically it was a plagiarism, but he did not He's
felt that Kern did not do it on purpose, because

(40:41):
a man so eminent as Jerome Kern would not have
needed to plagiarize, and Kern assumed that it was fair game,
and so the award was one dollar to Fred Fisher.
So he acknowledged it was a plagiarism, but felt that
it was not on purpose. But he acknowledged that that
it was indeed a plagiarism just using that baseline. Well,
of course, the opposite verdict would be the my sweet

(41:04):
Lord she right, he's so fine. Yeah, but okay, let's
go back to you originally from Ohio. Yes, we're in Ohio. Columbus. Okay,
when you grew up, what was Columbus like? Well, it
wasn't a cultural hotbed because everything was about football and
at my high my high school, Woody Hayes would come,
you know and look for the next famous recruiting Archie

(41:26):
Griffin went to my high school, won the Heisman Trophy
and all that, and so, uh, we had a symphony,
Columbus Symphony, which was always in danger of going under.
My great uncle lived in New York. It was in
the music in theater, not musical theater, and he said
that anytime the show played Columbus it was the death
town because culturally nobody went. And I went to see
Vladimir Horowitz, who played Columbus when I was in my teens,

(41:49):
and it was the only city on the tour that
was not sold out. So culturally it was not um fabulous.
But my parents loved music, and I grew up, you know,
with music by music. Would your father at that time
most women did not work outside the home. Was that
the case with your mother? It was? Would your father
do for a living. My father was He worked for

(42:12):
cons Meats. Cons Meats was a company centered in Cincinnati,
headquartered in Cincinnati. Their slogan was the Weiner the world awaited.
Was it a kosher weiner? It wasn't kosher. And he
eventually went to work for another meat company, and when
it was absorbed by Sarah Lee, became a vice president
of Sarah Lee. And when I was twenty years old,

(42:33):
I I stopped eating meat. But did he bring home
a lot of weaers before that? Boy? Yes, And he
always warned us, explained to us the difference between all
be frightened, you know. And he explained as very taught
us very early, I'd be careful with those hot dogs kids, right.
I just remember my parents were only the Hebrew national
That's right, because those were safe. Yeah. So okay. How

(42:54):
many generations were your parents families in America? My grant,
my four grand parents all emigrated from Russia Lithuania. If
you going back to check out where they grew up
or their upbringing situation, I haven't. I haven't. I had
an offer to go to Russia and then it was postponed.
But I would love to go on to to do

(43:17):
some concerts and that's what I will go there. And
also right before she died, my father's mother mentioned in
passing that she had a sibling whom she from whom
she was separated when she came to America. So there
was a sibling that went somewhere else that I never
knew about. So I may have relatives there that I mean,
I may never find them. But it's that whole thing

(43:38):
that there's people out there that It's funny because on
my mother's side, Uh, both her parents came from very
large families, one of nine, one of thirteen. And after
the war, you know, all these people re emerged. A
lot went to what was then Palestine eventually Israel, and
then they'd have the Jewish newspaper where you would advertise,

(43:59):
like with one of our uncle, Saul, he came to
America after being in the Russian Army, and he would
advertise the Jewish paper, Hey, I have these relative does
anybody know them? And that's how they found each other.
So was your family in Ohio and your father go
to there for work? Well, my parents were born in
in in Columbus. Uh, why so why did your grandparents

(44:21):
go to Ohio? I asked my mother that not too
long ago, and there was some job opportunity for one
of them, and then others sort of followed suit. My grandmother,
my mother's mother, came to New York and worked in
the sweat shops, you know, in the garment industry. And uh,

(44:43):
I don't remember exactly how she got to Columbus, but
sometimes one would go and then the rest would follow,
and then a community would be formed. Okay, so you
grow up? Uh? Are you accute as a member of
the group and outsider just one of the great masses?
How did you fit into a society? I did not
fit into society. When did you realize that? From the beginning,

(45:06):
I stayed in the basement of our house um reading
books and drawing, and and listening to music and listening
to old records. My grandmother had some seventy eight rpm
records that she gave me, and I listened to them
in the basement, and and my mother would say, honey,
please go outside, go outside. I was always pale. I

(45:27):
didn't relate to any of my friends because I didn't
listen to any of the music they listened to. I
didn't like kids my age because I thought they were
dumb because I was all around adults all the time,
so I was it was very solitary. In high school,
I got involved with theater and then I had friends,
and then it sort of changed. But prior to that time,

(45:49):
I was I was a lonely kid. And you had
a sibling. I had two siblings, an older brother and
have an older brother and an older sister, and they
were quote normal. My parents knew how to do with him,
but they didn't know how to deal with me because
I was the sensitive one. Okay, so they were half
brothers and sisters. No, they're they're full okay. So at
what point do you pick up a musical instrument five

(46:12):
years old? When I was five, my parents moved into
a new home. They cobbled together enough money to buy
a new house, and and they had an empty living
room and they had enough money left to buy a
little furniture. And my dad said, let's buy a piano.
And my mother said, nobody's gonna play the piano. Uh.
I was five years old at the time. My sister
was nine and my brother was eleven, and my dad

(46:34):
just loved music. He said, let's buy piano. Maybe one
of the kids will play, and my mom said, let's
get furniture. And I remember they took me to the
piano dealer in downtown Columbus. I don't know why they
took me and not my brother and sister. And they
they picked picked out a spin At piano, the cheapest
piano they could buy. It was five dollars and they

(46:56):
brought it home. And the next day when it was delivered,
my dad was off at work, and I sat down
and played dough a dear a thing I played with
both hands, and my mother came in from the kitchen
and said, who taught you that? And I said, nobody
taught me that. She said, well, someone had to teach
your your your father must have shown you, because my
dad could play like chop sticks or whatever. I said, no,

(47:18):
I made it up. She sent me to my room
for lying to her because she was sure that somebody
had to teach me. And when my father came home later,
they realized that I was playing the piano by ear.
So I started playing immediately. Just from the get go,
I could play the piano, and then you had lessons.
I had lessons. Briefly, I had a piano teacher at

(47:40):
Capitol University and she would always play the lesson for me,
and then she put the put the book on the piano,
play the lessons, and I would just listen to her
play the lesson and copy her. So after about two months,
she put the book on the piano first and didn't
play the lesson, and she said, okay, play this. I
said I can't. She said why not. I said, well,
I don't know what it says. She said, You've been

(48:01):
playing this for two months. I said no, I've been
listening to you. And she got this look of rage
on her face and she went out in the hall
where my mother was waiting for me. She said, Mrs Feinstein,
do you know your son has been playing by ear
as if it was the dirtiest you know, expletive. And
my mother said, yeah, yeah, I knew that, didn't you.
She said no, so and I said to my mom
I said I don't like piano lessons. So they said okay,

(48:23):
and I just learned to play just on my own.
I just kept so, when did you learn to read music? Well,
I still don't reading music very well. And that was
like the biggest sticking point with conducting, because I have
to work laboriously on a score to really learn it
before I conducted, and Andre prevn when when I told

(48:44):
him I was conducting, he said, well, can you read
the transposed instruments on a score? And I said no.
He said, well don't you think I had to do that?
I said yeah, I said, that's why I'm so embarrassed
even discussing this with you. So I'm still learning a lot. Okay,
so you get rid of lessons you continue to play,
like every day. I don't play every day, but I'm

(49:06):
working so much. No, no, no, when you're at that oh,
at that age, at that age, yeah, I was playing
every day. I was listening to songs and listening to
things on the radio, and at that time there was
the the contemporary pop stations that my sister and brother
were listening to me. So I was hearing Carol King
and the Beatles and all that. And then my parents
listened to w BNS, the easy listening, so I would

(49:27):
listen to all the standards and they would play all
the standard singers from Sinatra to Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Pegley,
Nat Call. So I heard all that, and then my parents, um,
like all households at that time, bought all the cast
albums of all the music. Of course, that was before
only gay people boughdcast albums enough and uh so I
learned My Fair Lady and the Sound of Music and

(49:50):
all those Everybody bought those albums. When Mary Poppins came out,
you know we did too, absolutely so. Uh So you're
playing and you get the high school, well, and you
say you become part of the theater group. What does
that look like. Well, it was one of the places
where I could I could fit in the music. I

(50:10):
was kicked out of choir because, um, I talked back
to the teacher too much. It was a real smart ass.
I thought, I knew more than Are you still a
smart ass? No, not anymore. I've I've I've learned that
it's important to fake humility and business. Now it was
George Burns said, when you can fake sincerity, you've made
it in show business. But the truth is that I'm

(50:31):
not a smart ass anymore. But I was. I was.
So you got kicked out for being a smart as? Yeah, okay,
that was the choir. What about the theater theater? Um,
no problem. I became the head of the Maskers Club,
which was out of the theater group, and I also
did all the public address announcements you know in high school,

(50:53):
you know, the I would I would put together these little, uh,
little dramas, you know, these one minute sort of commercial
and play old music and stuff. And it was this
would be for the whole school before school started. They
play over the speakers during home room. Okay, were you
in the plays once in a while, Once in a while,

(51:13):
I was. You were responsible for the music and the
I would sometimes put the music together for the players.
I played the piano for the show. Uh. When we
did Fiddler on the Roof, they cast me as the Rabbi,
which was because I guess I was acting in many
ways like an old man. So I wasn't a particularly
good performer. But for some reason that year in my

(51:33):
senior year, I was named best Actor, which was a
sad commentary. Okay, did everybody know you were this uh
prodigy and piano? Yes? So that was where? Okay, were
you a good student? Bad student? I was a terrible student,
terrible more kind of grades um sees d s. In

(51:54):
my senior year fs, I just barely graduated because I
hated school. I didn't care about it. I didn't understand
why we had to study mathematics, and I mean, it
just it was incomprehensible to me. I just thought it
was a waste of time. But what did your parents
say about that? Well, my parents, I didn't know how
to deal with me, and I had them wrapped around
my finger. My mother. My dad was traveling, and my mom,

(52:15):
she she just she was so exasperated. If she got
a call from me in the middle of the day.
She know I did something wrong in school, I could say,
and I'd say, moms, she said, what did you do?
And I was kicked out of school at one point,
and I wasn't allowed to return until I went to
a therapist. Well, you kicked out for for talking back
to one of the teachers. They told me I had
to do something and I said, well why. They said,

(52:36):
I don't have to tell you why. I said, yes,
you do. And they kicked me out for questioning authority.
And then did you go to the therapist. I went
to the therapist and we were dealing with anger issues
and he helped me a lot, actually, And then I
went back to school and I was allowed back after
I had the note from the therapist, and and then

(52:56):
everyone who was in their senior year and taking their
S A T S and you know all that. At
and and UH, I decided I wasn't going to go
to go to college because the guidance counselor who was
who didn't like me at all. She said, you are
not college material. You should not go to college. Really. Yeah,
So I didn't go to college, and my parents never
said anything about it to me. And one day I

(53:18):
went to my mom and said, aren't you gonna ask
me if I'm going to college? And she said, well,
you never said anything about it, so we assumed you're not.
So then you knew it was cool. At what point
did you know you wanted to make music your life? Well,
in high school I had started working uh in a
in a in a restaurant, and I was making good money,
like at a piano bar, well playing I wasn't singing

(53:42):
yet playing the piano, and I people started hiring me
when I was fifteen and sixteen to play for weddings,
and that was amazing. I never thought you could get
money for for making music. But after high school I
didn't know what I was gonna do, so by default
I was playing in in a piano bar, excuse me,
and I was asked by somebody to sing, and I

(54:03):
had sun in choir, but before I got kick and
the hardest thing in the world was trying to play
the piano and sing at the same time. So over
about a year, I, while I was playing in the
piano bar the restaurant called the Dell, I kind of
figured out how to accompany myself, and that was one
of the most valuable things I could have done because

(54:24):
but no teaching. You were self taught. Self taught, yes, okay,
and so okay, you graduate from high school, you're still
living in your family home. How long before you then move?
I this is in Ohio. I played for about three
years in piano bars, and I still didn't know what
I was going to really do for my life because

(54:45):
I was convinced that I couldn't possibly have a life
making music and I was playing in piano bars, so
what what chance did I have of advancing? But I
decided to move to California at the age of twenty
because from the time I was very young, I had
this insistent voice telling me to move to California myself.
Same thing, okay, it just used to beg my mother

(55:06):
when are we gonna move to California? And you heard
those beach Boy records? Mom, we got to move to California.
And then I did, uh huh, yeah, I mean it
was just it was it was a fad to complete
that I was going to go. And my father, right
around the same time, had had started traveling into California
and he said, let's he said to my mom, let's
move to l A. So independently of me, they decided

(55:27):
to move to l A. But I traveled for a while.
I went to New York and moved traveled around. And
then when I came to California, my parents had moved
there before they but you traveled around working or just
I went. I was in New York for a while,
just sort of taking time and staying with relatives and
just trying to figure out the music business. No, no,

(55:49):
I knew I couldn't figure that out. Okay, so now
you come to California. Your parents have moved here. Yes,
I stayed with my parents, which was weird, uh in
in uh Canoga Park, Okay, which was actually the fringe
of l A County. Yeah. Yeah, And I stayed with
him for a couple of months and then I started

(56:09):
playing in piano bars, and I moved to an apartment
in Hollywood, the studio apartment. No goal, This is just
what you're doing, just doing that, just trying to figure
things out. What kind of piano bars and where. The
first one was in Panorama City, in the San Fernando
Valley called Mother's A good place to be was the
Slogan and it was run by a guy, owned by
a guy who thought he was Humphrey Bogart playing that

(56:33):
playing that song. I mean, I was terrified of this man,
and uh. I played there for a bit, and then
I got a job as a piano salesman because I
thought I can't possibly make a living playing the piano.
And there was a piano dealership called Finnigan's owned by
this guy, Bill Finnigan. He at four different stores, and
again in the San Fernando Valley. I was a piano
salesman at Finnigan's. And this guy was such a shyster.

(56:56):
He had an old uh Steinway piano from the eighteen hundreds,
and these people came in and said, it's a beautiful piano.
He said. Richard Wagner wrote The Bulkyry on this piano.
I mean, he would make up these stories. Liveracchi first
played chopsticks on this piano, and he would tell this
pian and I would say that's not true. And he
fired me because I challenged his authority, and and so

(57:18):
I was out of that shop. But before you were fired,
could you sell piano? I sold a few. I wasn't
a good salesman because I knew what the wholesale price was,
and I felt so guilty, you know, charging in the
retail price. I mean, it was, it was. It was
just like that's another similarity between you and me. It's
like I could tell you a few stories, but at
your podcast. So you get fired from there? Yeah, I
got fired. And then something very strange happened. I was

(57:43):
collecting records. I had always been a record collector of
seventy eighths and just different stuff. And at this point,
people believe seventy eight have the best sound because of
the speed in the deeper groove and their direct disc right. Yeah,
oh there. I have a huge collection of seventy eights
going back to the church. Okay, so you're collecting record
are you buying them all over the place? Because in

(58:03):
seventies six and seventy seven. When I came to California,
there were a lot of places where you could find
all kinds of records. It was amazing. And Uh, I
went to a place in Hollywood, uh looking for records
by Oscar Levant, because I discovered Oscar Levant and Gershwin
and was looking for a rare Oscar Levant recording. And
he was the greatest interpreter of the music of George
Gershwin and an amazing classical pianist. And I went to

(58:27):
the store in Hollywood called the record collector, and I said,
do you have this Columbia album Oscar Levan at the
piano And he said no, but we have some records
that belonged to him. And he had this box of
of acetates and air checks and test pressings all of
Oscar Levant, the dated back to n four. I said,
where did you get these and he said, We've got

(58:48):
them from an auction of the Levant to state. Well,
I had to I put down fifty dollars on the
box of records, and I had to borrow a hundred
and fifty dollars from my parents to buy these records.
And it was an amazing cash of all these studio
rehearsal recordings of Levant from MGM and radio show with

(59:10):
him and being Crosby and Gershwin recordings. It was incredible.
And I had met this lady at the piano store
who knew agents William Morris, and I told her about
finding these records and she said, well, you should call
Levant's widow, June Levant, and asked her why she got
rid of these records. I said, well, I would if

(59:30):
I knew her, but I don't know her. And she
got me June Levant's phone number and I called up
June Levant out of the blue. I said, Hi, my
name is Mike Feinstein. I just moved here from Columbus, Ohio,
and I bought these records that belonged to your husband.
She said, well, I have on my husband's records. Where
did you get those? I said, from such such a
piano star. She said, well, I have them all and

(59:51):
I said, well, this one has a letter tucked in
the sleeve that's addressed to him. And I read her
the letter. She said, oh my god, that's Skyler and
she said call me back into our and she hung up.
I called her back. She's well, I think I have
Oscars records. I just look, but can you come over
and bring the records with you. I said, well, they're
very fragile, but I'll come over. So I went over
to see her, and she was visibly surprised to see

(01:00:13):
this twenty year old kid at the door. And she
had a guy with her whom she had introduced as
an attorney because I think she was ready for some
big legal battle. And she started telling me stories about
her husband, and I knew every story because I was
a fan of Oscar Levant. And then she started looking
at me like the dog looking in the gramophone horn,
with her head cocked to one side. And it turned

(01:00:33):
out that the records I had bought were sold at
the Levant State auction, but she didn't know they were
gone because she didn't go to the auction because it
was too emotional for her and she didn't mean to
sell them. She had put the records aside to save.
So part of his collection was sold by accident, and
she had of it, and I had bought the other

(01:00:54):
thirty percent of it that was sold by accident. So
she we realized what had happened, and she said, you
know what you can sold. You can keep those records,
but just don't do anything commercial with him. I said, okay,
and we became friends and she started taking me to
dinner and telling me stories about Oscar Levant and about
the Gershwins and all these people and and um, well,
it's interesting to me for someone who didn't get along

(01:01:17):
in high school and got kicked out all the time,
that you instantly got along with Oscar Levan's widow. Well,
that's because I got along with adults. I mean, authority figures.
You're right, I didn't get along with but June I
was so thrilled to meet her, and she's telling me
stories about this era of music that I love. But

(01:01:41):
you kept the relationship up absolutely. That shows an interesting
aspect about you. That's contrary. I mean, you explained it
by being an adult. But continue, Well, I have a fascination.
For now, I'm not saying your interest. It's one thing
to be one and done. I went, I met this person.
Let me tell my friends. To keep the relationship required

(01:02:04):
a certain amount of effort on your on your behalf.
I understand, yes, yes, well I had no ulterior motive
other than the fact that I know. But it is
that part of your personality. You meet someone in your world,
that you will pick up the phone and say, not
only the first time, but after you met them, you
will continue the relationship. Yes, yes, if I if I
feel something, absolutely okay. So you went, you were continuing

(01:02:26):
to see Oscar Levin's widow. You went to dinner and
and she uh took me around the parties and started
introducing me as a protege. She took me to Sam
Goldwyn Junior's house and I said, meet my protege. And
they asked me to play the piano, and I sat
down and played. Love walked in on the piano that
George Gershwin had demonstrated it for Sam Goldwin Sr. And

(01:02:49):
then she took me to a party at the studio
of Tony Duquette, and I played the piano, and I
met Dolores del Rio and Southern and all these ancient
Hollywood stars. And they liked me because I spoke their language,
their movies and I knew their world. And and Dolores
do Rio made a movie called Ramona. There was a

(01:03:10):
big hit song Ramona. I heard the mission bells above,
and when they asked me to sit down and play
the piano, I said, gee, maybe if I play Ramona
Dolores del Rio will sing. And this one guest at
the party looked at me and said, some dreams do
not come true. So anyway, eventually June Levant introduced me
to Leonard and Ira Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was eighty years old. Okay,

(01:03:34):
just because they wanted work done or this was part
of our circle. June was very friendly with with Lee Gershwin,
uh and uh Oscar Levant was close friends with with
the Gershwin family. He had died in nineteen seventy two.
This is nineteen seventy seven at this point, and June

(01:03:55):
had periodic lunches with Leonard Gershwin. Ira Gershwin was house
bound and she told Lee about me. She said, I
met this young kid and he plays piano and it
and Lee said, oh, well, we need all of our
records cataloged and I need somebody and can you give
me Can you tell him to call me? So she
called me up and she said, Lee Gershwan wants you
to call her. I said why. She said, well, she
and Ira have these records they need cataloged and uh,

(01:04:18):
you should you should call her? And I said, okay, great,
thank you And I said thanks you and she's, well,
you have to be very careful. You have to call
her Mrs Grosher, and she's a very tough, mean lady,
and just don't screw it up. She's so I said, okay, okay, okay.
So I called Lee Gershwin and she and told me
to come over and and she was very tough, but

(01:04:39):
she loved me. She she either loved you or we
were toast. And so she said, come over to the house.
And there was sitting Ira Gershwin, this legend of American
popular song who had written the lyrics to some of
the greatest standards of the twentieth century, and he was
autographing a record album. And I was nervous, and I

(01:05:01):
sat down and leonor his wife and her sister were
in a corner sort of watching, and somebody had issued
an album of demos of Ira Gershwin singing and he
had no voice, and he anyway, I said, Mr gersh
when I have that record, and he looked at me
like I was crazy. He said, why do you have
this work? I said, because I love your working, And

(01:05:21):
he said, you're the first person I met outside of
a relative who has this record. And then to make conversation.
I said, Mr Gershwen, I have a seventy eight record
of gems from La La Lucille. He said, La La Lucille.
That was George's first Broadway musical, nineteen nineteen. And he said, well,
it must have the songs on it, the two hits
Teota Lum Bumbo and nobody but you. I said, that's right,

(01:05:42):
and Lee gersh went turned to her sister and it
isn't that cute? He's telling Ira that's right. So that's
how my relationship with him started. Immediately we sort of
hit it off and and uh, I ended up spending
six years working for I doing what as his amanuensis,
which is a fancy word for student. But I was
cataloging stuff in the house and Lee Gershwin came to

(01:06:04):
me one day and said, look, you've given my husband
a new lease on life, and we need you in
this house. She said, I know you're going to go
off and do other things one day, but um, just
keep yourself busy and most importantly, keep Ira happy. So
I basically was Irish companion, and then I became their
eyes and ears to the outside world, and they would

(01:06:25):
send me out to see a Gershwin production or if
somebody wanted to do something, they would put me in
touch with them to work with them to make sure
it was what the family wanted. And when he died,
I became his literary executor until I had a falling
out with Lee after I was death and they were
able to push me out of that and I was
bereft because I was separated from from them from the estate.

(01:06:46):
And then a few years later we had a rap
Rochemont and Lee and I stayed close till her passing. Okay,
while you were working with the Gershwins, well you still
performing in piano bars. I was okay. So in any
event he died, you're out of the estate. When does
your so called it's not so called, it's when does
your musical career begin. Well after after I was pushed

(01:07:11):
out of Irish estate, I just started playing, dedicated, dedicated
my time to playing in piano bars because I needed
to earn a living and UM. At that point I
got hired to play to place on Las angele Bolevard
called three North that was opened by the same investor
who's who. Investors who had invested in Spago and UM.

(01:07:33):
They were convinced that this was going to be the
next big thing, and I was playing old songs in
the lounge, and after two months they fired me because
they said, you're playing old songs. We need you to
play pop stuff. I said, that's not what I do,
and they gave me two weeks notice. But in the
two weeks, for some reason, a lot of people started
coming in to hear me play, and the my job
was preserved. When that place closed, I was hired to

(01:07:56):
play at the Mandrean Hotel, which had just been opened
in a lounge, and um, it was in that same
period that I became friends with Liza Minnelli. Just before that,
Did you like this experience or you were solely doing
it for the money? Well? I liked it too. Sometimes
I liked it and sometimes I didn't like it. I
was playing five hours a night, and I was playing

(01:08:17):
in gay bars too, because gay bars, in some instances
were the only places that would hire somebody that played
mainly old movie songs and show tunes and such. But
they were very mixed places where a lot of straight,
straight people would come in and wanted to hear uh standards.
Uh so how did you meet Liza Minelli? Well? I
had met her father, Vincent Minnelli, who was the great

(01:08:39):
Hollywood director, because he was close friends with Ira and
Lee Gershwin. Um Ira Gershwe was best man at Vincent
Minnelli and Judy Garland's wedding, and Liza was named after
the Gershwin song Liza. So Ira Gershwan was Liza's godfather.
So I had uh Christmas of whatever? That year was
eight four. I guess I was playing a lot of

(01:09:00):
Christmas parties because people were hiring me to play private parties.
And I played a party that Vincent hired me to
play his his Christmas party, and Liza was there and
Gene Kelly was there. So I'd play Singing in the
Rain and I'd play like I like myself and obscure
songs from their movies, and they look at me like right.
It was so much fun. And eventually everybody left and

(01:09:22):
I was still at the piano, and Liza sat down
next to me. She said, kid, from now when we're
joined at the hip, really And I said, yeah, right,
you know, and and and it was true she so,
but that was the first thing she spoke to She
hadn't been speaking to you during the evening that's correct.
I had actually met her briefly previously at a party
here that but it was that moment and we ended

(01:09:43):
up going out to a place, a nightclub where we
hung out and we stayed up all night and and
played music. And I told her was working at the Mandre.
And the next night she came into the Mandre and
and she came in every single night and brought people
to hear me. She brought Elizabeth Taylor, she brought Gregory Peck,
she brought at all these people. And then she decided
she was going to host a party for me at

(01:10:03):
the Mondrian. She said, at an inaugural party. I said,
but I've been playing there for five months. She said,
nobody knows. This is gonna be your debut party. And
she hosted a party with Elizabeth Taylor, with Henry Mancini,
with greg Rypeck. You know, Jenny Jenny was there, Jenny
Mincy um. It was the kind of party that if
it hadn't been thrown from me, I never would have
been invited to. And and she hired her publicists and

(01:10:24):
it put me on the map. And then I was
invited to be on the MERV Griffin Show, and I
did TV shows, and then I was hired to play
the Algonquin in New York and got made my New
York debut and she hosted my New York debut. Uh.
And then I got an offer, uh to play Broadway.
And then I got an offer from Ernest Fleischmann to
play Raps in Blue at the Hollywood Bowl. Okay, what

(01:10:45):
period of time were we talking about? How long a
period this was? This was a two year period. Okay,
now you meet lies to what degree we were star
struck by these people? Well? I was star struck, but
I also again could speak their language. Okay, So then
you're playing at the Marion. How long after the inaugural
party do you end up on MERV Griffin? Uh? It

(01:11:08):
was let's see, the inaugural party was May of nine
and MERV Griffin was later and it was just like
a month later. Okay, wasn't your mind blown? Yeah? And
at this point did you have any so called people
working for you? Manager, agent, publicist, any of that. I
had a default agent who liked my playing in the

(01:11:30):
piano barns A kid, I'll work you know, I'll represent
you like he's doing me a forever. So he became
my agent and what agency do you work at? It
was a p A and uh I got a gig
in San Francisco doing a show because prior when I
was still playing in piano bars, it was not a show.
I was background. Then in San Francisco, they were opening

(01:11:51):
a new hotel and they needed someone to play in
the show room. They had small show room, and I
was hired by default because they couldn't find anybody else.
And somehow they hired me, and the critic for the
San Francisco Chronicle wrote this rave review and that I
put together a show. I figured out what songs I
was going to sing. I talked to the aufics before
or after MERV Griffin. It was before because MERV happened

(01:12:16):
well I don't know the exactly, I don't remember, but
it was all happened within a couple of months, and
uh I got this of review and suddenly the gig
was sold out, the two gig was sold out, and
they extended me. So my tom My agent flew up
to San Francisco to see me do this show where
he saw me talking and do I put a show together?

(01:12:38):
And I remember he came backstage and he was jumping
up and down like a little kid, and he said,
We're going to make a lot of money, and I thought, Wow,
suddenly I'm worth something to somebody. That was you know,
the Blessing and the curse. Okay, so you dur MERV Griffin. Uh?
To what degree does that help your career? Uh? I

(01:13:00):
don't remember any shock waves from it. And I asked
Rosemary Clooney if she would go on the show with
me because I was so scared, and she agreed to
go on the show. And how did you know Rosemary?
She was Ira Gershwin's next door neighbor. So I met
Rosemary during the time I was working for Ira. You
basically knew everybody. Well. I had met a lot of people,
and I played a lot of Hollywood parties, you know,

(01:13:21):
so meet people. Okay, so you do MERV give Griffin,
you play the Algonquin. Continue from there. Well after the
Algonquin again, I got these fantastic reviews and they did
a New York Times Sunday magazine piece on me. That's
a really big deal. How how long after the Mandrean

(01:13:42):
inauguration was that? That was one year? So one year later,
I'm in New York and playing the algon. Okay, but internally,
aren't you like I mean, that's kind of hard to
cope with all that success. Oh, I was. I was
in shock, and I also didn't know how to handle
with it. And I became at one point very arrogant,
and I became I became an asshole a lot of times.

(01:14:03):
That's not good for your career. It wasn't. But somehow
I learned. I learned pretty quickly, and I survived. I
have I'm not gonna name names, but I was friends
with a couple of people that I saw them destroy
their career. The thing is that I, I'm fundamentally a
good person. You know, I mean tolerate idiots, right, I

(01:14:23):
just I mean I I was inappropriate. I was inappropriate
and also when I got scared, I would lash out
of people. And you did this totally by yourself or
at some point your career if you had therapy. Well,
I started therapy. I started therapy in that period. And
also they sent me out on the road and I
didn't have a lighting person, I didn't have a sound person.

(01:14:45):
I was going out doing concerts. I was all by myself.
I don't even have a road manager. No I didn't.
I mean, somebody I had the age they sent me up.
I didn't, so I didn't know what I was doing.
So i'd get scared. And I was trying to figure
out how to light do lighting and it of course,
and you want to be right, and I'm up there
and in there they're saying how's it sound? And I didn't,

(01:15:07):
you know? You know this? So it wasn't until a
couple of years later somebody said, oh, well, you know
you there's people that do that. I said really, So
then I got a road manager, and so I learned
on the job. On the job, okay, And at what
point did you get a recording contract? I was at

(01:15:29):
the Mandrean and a man named Herb Eisenman, who was
I believe the head of publishing a twenty century Fox Music,
came in to hear me and he said, I'd like
to record you doing an album. And I said why
He said, because I think could be a good album.
I said, nobody's going to buy an album me and
he said come on? And I kept saying no, and

(01:15:53):
why wouldn't you say yes? Because I didn't think I
was good enough. I didn't think enough. I was like,
come on I'm playing piano bar and he said, finally
said would you let me worry about that? If who's
gonna buy it? Let me? I said, okay. So we
went into a studio and we started doing a Gershwin

(01:16:14):
recording called Pure Girl. We called a Pure Gerze when
it was Herb's Herb's Little Company again, I asked Rosemary
Clooney if she did a duet with me, and she did,
and uh I recorded this Gershwe album and I was
still at the Mondrian when he had the first copies.
I remember he brought them. This came out on twentieth
Century Fox. Right. No, No, he started a little label
for Parnassis and uh I remember he did cassettes and LPs.

(01:16:39):
We couldn't find a pressing plant that was available to
do CDs because there was such a demand for CDs right,
especially an independent company. We couldn't get pressing, So the
CD didn't come out till much later, until like six
months whenever he could get it. So he had these albums,
he started sending them out to people and a DJ

(01:17:00):
New York named Jonathan Schwartz who was on w n
W who played classic American standards, paid attention to the
album because there was a duet with Rosemary Clooney and
he played that track. So he started playing this record
and the recording started selling, and it started selling several
hundred thousand copies, and I mean suddenly it was selling

(01:17:22):
because it was unusual for a kid my age doing
Gershwin and and uh it it was selling. And then
when I went to New York and did the Algonquin
a year later, he recorded a live album because we
came live at the Algonquin and Al Hirschfeld did the
cover of the so I had a Hirshfeld caricature. And
then the next year, one of my second year at

(01:17:44):
the Algonquin, Sardis did a caricature me. It was there
was a caricature me and Sarties and I said, why
are you doing a caricature of me? I haven't been
on Broadway. I mean, it was crazy. And then I
was invited to play the raps and he blew with
the Hollywood Bowl. And and then in the next year,
in nineteen d eight, Ron Daylsoner produced me on Broadway.
I was in a show called Michael Feinstein, Isn't It Romantic?

(01:18:05):
And I did a Broadway musical and a tour all
over the country. Okay, okay, at this point, you still
have the same agent, yes, And did you have a
manager at that point? Yes? How did you get a manager?
I was playing at the Algonquin and a lovely guy
named Winston Simone came up to me and said, I'd
like to manage you. And I said, I don't need
a manager. And he said, I'll tell you what. I

(01:18:25):
will manage you for free for the next year, and
if you don't like what I do, you can tell
me goodbye. And I said okay. And he managed me
for about six months and I and I'd say, uh no,
it was about four months. And I put him on
salary because he knew what he was doing. Okay. So um,
at this point, what are you feeling internally? Fear fear,

(01:18:50):
afraid you're gonna be exposed? Absolutely? And are you making
any money? I'm making money, like crazy? Okay. What are
your parents say? Well, Jewish parents, you know they were
They're like, oh my god, my son and son. Have
you met my son? You know they were they were
over the moon. Okay, how did this affect your personal life? Well?

(01:19:14):
I was suddenly traveling a lot. I was on the
road and I was very lonely, and I was smoking
a lot of grass. It never affected my performances because
I was very disciplined. When did you start smoking grass?
Sometime after high school? Sometime after high school? So it
was a musician thing, that's how you fell into it. Well, Uh,
it was something that I was dead set against because

(01:19:37):
some of my some some of my extended family had
drug problems. But then I did it, and then I
discovered that it opened music for me in a way
that that was different, and I couldn't get to that
place of connecting with music that deeply without it, which
was of course a dangerous thing. But um, it was
something that I loved and it I have to say

(01:19:59):
that I came up with a lot of arrangements when
I was smoking, and a lot of stuff that I
looked back at and listened to some of his recordings
and they were good, you know, because people always say
it gradually, but the truth is that if it only
fried your brain, people wouldn't do it. Right. But do
you still smoke? Though I stopped for twenty two years,

(01:20:20):
and now I do it maybe like every two months,
I'll do a little bit, maybe just for a week,
and I only do a little bit of it. And
because I had gotten so addicted to it, when I stopped,
I never thought I would touch it again in a
million years. But I don't have a problem with it,
mainly because the thrill is gone. It doesn't do for me.

(01:20:41):
Did you stop years? I was. I was so addicted
to it and and I couldn't stop. I prayed to
God that I could stop. I mean, it was it
was something that was It was becoming debilitating because I
couldn't do without it, and I was because I was
using it to medicate emotionally, you know, my loneliness and

(01:21:04):
all that stuff. And then one day I woke up
and I flushed it down the toilet and I never
touched it again. I didn't go to a program or anything.
But how hard was that period? After you flushed down
the toilet? The next couple of months, it was not
that hard, which was the odd thing. And I still
don't understand it because prior to that, I literally it

(01:21:24):
was like cold turkey. I mean, I just I tried
and tried, and I had to I just like I
would light up. I couldn't help it. Okay, So you're
on the road. Now you ultimately get a manager and
you're touring and you're making a couple of records. What's
the next step after that? What's the next step after that? Well, um,

(01:21:44):
I was doing these touring shows, you know, doing a lot,
did the Ron Delson you do the Broadway show, and
then just doing concerts, touring during concerts and performing arts centers,
and and the recordings they started to wane. Uh, aside
from the first several albums. Well, my fourth album was

(01:22:05):
my fourth album. Electra Records bought my contract and uh,
they did an album with me called Isn't It Romantic?
With the orchestrations by Johnny Mandel, and that was very successful.
It was never a million seller, but cumulatively I ended
up selling a couple of million recordings. But that was
long before sound scan, so it's not documented, but I did.

(01:22:26):
But Isn't It Romantic did really well and it was
a lush orchestral album. And then they could no one
could figure out what the next album was. I said,
let's do an MGM album and they said, great, Well,
nobody wanted an MGM album. But but up to that point,
everything I did, people were it was four albums, but
the people bought them, you know, the Algonquina of this,

(01:22:46):
and they say, I thought everything would work and I
didn't know anything about the music business and and nobody
else knew what to do with me. So then after
the next album didn't do very well, and the next one,
and it was like this is this is kind of tough.
And then it was that whole period for years, and
people are saying, well, you sold a lot of records,
Let's see what we can do with you, and let's

(01:23:07):
try this, let's try that, and and I made a
lot of good records, but none of them really sold much.
You know. I did an album with with Jimmy Webb
that was a great record and we're both proud of it,
but it didn't do much. But you know, the thing
about a record is that it's there for a long time.
People can reevaluate and come back to them. And and uh,
there's a lot of stuff I did that I don't like,

(01:23:27):
and there's things I did that I do And a
station like the you know, seriously Sinatra that will play
my records, they play things that I don't like, and
I was like, god, I wish they played these other things,
But you know, that's life. It's still it's still all
a blessing. Okay. And at this point you're touring, you're
obviously making money. Uh you say you're lonely? Do you
just keep doing it? Yeah, that's what I did. And

(01:23:52):
I did it for a long time, and then I
got to the point where I was so burned out.
I said I'm to take in a year off. And
then all the business people said, oh, you take a
year off. You know they'll forget about you. You did
this is a really done No, no, no, don't do this.
This is the worst thing you can possibly do. And

(01:24:13):
I said, I'm taking a year off, and I did.
And it was in that period that I had stopped
smoking grass. I met my partner and then my husband,
Terence Flannery, whom I never would have met. I met
him at a party. I had nothing to do, and
someone invited me over to watch the Tony Awards telecast.
And I hate Awards shows. I went because I had

(01:24:33):
nothing to do. I had recently stopped smoking the grass,
and and I met Terrence. We just started talking and
and he never would have even spoken to me if
he knew that I did drugs. But I stopped, and uh,
we got to know each other. And prior to that,
I could only if the only way I could get
to know someone is if I paid for them and
brought them on the road with me. So anyone that

(01:24:55):
I was involved with I basically had to support. Okay,
had you had what was your relationship history prior to Terrence? UM?
A lot of fun? Okay, So you dip your toe
in the water, shall to say, but you haven't found
Mr Wright right? Okay? So after that year off? Yeah,
and in that period, UM, I reevaluated, reevaluated and went

(01:25:22):
back to performing with a renewed love for what I
do and with less caring about about success. I mean,
of course I still cared about success, but I really
focused more on the music and started writing a little
bit more. And we're talking about writing music. Were writing

(01:25:43):
music here and there. I worked on a show for
seven years and ultimately it didn't happen, but it showed
me that I could do it, and it's something that
I still want to do more of. Okay, So how
do you ultimately open a club in New York City?
That was when I was working with Alex spirit Off
as a manager and he said, what do you want
to do? And I said, well, I've always had a

(01:26:05):
fantasy of having a nightclub, but a nightclub is a
hard business. And he created the collaboration with the Regency
Hotel and I had played a private party for the
Tische family, the owners of the hotel, prior to that,
and so I had this. Suddenly I had a nightclub,
and uh it was a wonderful fourteen years. And from

(01:26:29):
that came the opportunity to open other clubs. And I
opened a club in San Francisco and one and here
in Los Angeles more recently, and U um uh there's
now we're working actually on we're gonna be opening one
in Indiana and there's going to be one in in Australia. Okay,
As you said, nightclubs very hard business. Why is yours successful?

(01:26:56):
Because I work with people who understand the business. And
you have to watch the numbers so carefully. How much
you spend on food, how much you spend on entertainment?
Have I mean it is. It has to be very
very finely calibrated. And there aren't too many clubs that
have longevity. And there's bird Land in New York because

(01:27:19):
Johnny VALENTI knows how to do that. There's a blue
note and such uh, And you have to understand with
booking talent, the pay scale, how how to to pay
a lesser a person who gets less money a certain
amount so you can afford money to pay someone who
gets more money and amortize it. And it's it's difficult.

(01:27:40):
And what the ticket price can be that is justifiable
for patron and it has to be great. Food has
to be comforted, has to be value for the money,
has to be an incredibly comfortable atmosphere, and it has
to be an atmosphere that has a unique purpose that
somebody will want to go here, somebody in that setting
and it's so wonderful that it's worth it financial to them.
So it's it's tough, but it's it's when it works,

(01:28:03):
it's fantastic. Okay, to what degree are you down in
the weeds in terms of booking, food, etcetera. I'm not
down very far in the ways with with booking, but
I am somewhat involved with it, and my name's on
the room, so the buck stops with me. But I'm
lucky to collaborate with wonderful people who who know how
to do it like Brad Rowan and his partner Whore

(01:28:24):
with with with Vitelos, that's now find Stein at Vitelos.
We have a great relationship and it's a capacity there.
I think it's between one and one forty. And again
with with that, the seating has to be comfortable and
it has to have to be crowded to have a buzz,
but it can't be too crowded so people can can relax.

(01:28:45):
And it's a whole psychological thing. It's and putting a
room together. The components are things that people never think about,
the comfort of the chairs, the spacing of the tables,
the the the the lighting, the sund down, the decoration,
the level of the lights. I mean the stage lining,
but the level of the lights, so people feel like

(01:29:06):
it's intimate. But I mean it in a room either
works or it doesn't work. Okay. In all these cases,
because it teems to be associated with other businesses, who's
at risk you or them? Well, it depends on the
on the partnership. In most cases it's them because in
one case, uh, in two cases, my name is licensed uh.

(01:29:30):
And it's the old joke, how do you go into
the nightclub? Business and have a million dollars. You start
with two million dollars. So but it's it's but it's
but it's ongoing despite all these challenges. Yeah, and how
often do you play in the varying clubs? Um? The
New York club which is now fine Stein's fifty four below.

(01:29:51):
I play twice a year August because it's a tough
month to get people to come into the room. So
I do pretty well there. And then holiday time was
my grandmother was a holiday time. And then uh, find
Science of the Tellers. We're still working out when I'll
work there because I'm on the road a lot of
daring concerts and other venues, large larger venues, and so
I don't normally play nightclubs because economically it's not. But

(01:30:16):
the thing about a nightclub, like playing Fine Science fifty
four in New York, people will play it because of
the attention it gets in the publicity it gets, and
and it sets you up for a lot of other gigs.
So there's great value in doing it right. Okay, how
about other things like radio and television that you've been
involved in. Well, yeah, I had a radio series for

(01:30:38):
three years on NPR that was called song Travels that
I finally had to give up because it was too
hard to do the darn thing with guests and live
music and oh my god, it was. I loved it,
but it just was. It was. It took so much
time to put together that one hour, because the music,
because the music and making live music with with the guest, uh.

(01:31:02):
And television. I've had a number of series on PBS
and beyond and and uh. I want to do more
of those things. And I'm so you found that rewarding. Yeah,
it's fun. It's a lot of fun. Okay. So, at
this point in the game, where your status still exists,
what would you like to do in the future your
own personal career bucket list? Well, I still want to

(01:31:24):
write a musical because I think there's a place for
the kind of show that I have in mind, which
would be an amalga mora uh an homage to the past,
but also is rooted in the contemporary world. Because one
of the things that's interesting about the music world is
that everything is always you know, the next, the next,
the next, the news, the news, the newest, But there
are so many underserved people who care about classic music,

(01:31:47):
and I think that there's a way to combine the two,
because when you get people are judgmental about what people
like and what people listen to. And the truth is
that well illustrated with a store right. Elizam and Ellie
years ago had a hit record with the Pet Shop
Boys called Results. It was more famous in the UK,
more popular, and she had a hit single in the

(01:32:09):
UK of the song losing my Mind, and it was
it was on the top ten, and she did the
TV show Top of the Pops and and so she's
suddenly touring and a lot of people are coming to
hear her and because of her album with the Pet
Shop Boys, so they think it's going to be this
pop techno music. And I said, what are you gonna
do when these people come to your show and they
expect to hear the techno stuff? And she said, Honey,

(01:32:31):
all I have to do is get him in the seats.
And I've never forgotten that, and so like, what's good
is good? Wow? On that note, you're a great rock
and tour We could go on forever, but Michael, amazing
stories more to come. Thanks so much for doing the podcast. Well,
thank you. I admire you so much because I love

(01:32:53):
the fact that you care so deeply about this world,
and you are so smart, and you were so tough
on people that need to hear what you have to say.
So I'm very honored to be on this program. Well,
all that stuff, I'm twelling right now, but the eye,
you know, just conft. I'm astounded, And I did not
expect all the similarities between yourself and me. I remember

(01:33:17):
when I was a freshman in college, I had a
connection where you could get records and electronic goods for wholesale. Okay,
and theoretically it could be a business, but I just
could not charge the people retail okay. And as far
as getting in trouble in school for talking people, I
had that even in law school. It's like, you know,

(01:33:37):
that is definitely I certainly go onto the shrink. My
my opinion of external people has changed with a certain quay.
There's a song Dear Landlord by Bob Dylan. The famous
version is the cover by Joe Cocker, and it goes
each of us has his own special gift, and you
know that was meant to be true. And if you
don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you. And I have

(01:34:00):
found everybody's a genius in some vertical Okay, and I've
learned that, but there's a lot of stuff I'm really
I've got. I've gotten in trouble that happens all the time.
I just can't not tolerate the bs. I always end
up saying something or even I'll get up and leave it.
It was you got up and left. You know what
it is the story and the other thing is, you know,
the passion. I've had the same situation because we just

(01:34:22):
remember first moved to l A. And I was going
to law school. This was a couple of years after
it was in l A. And I took a course
uh U c l A extension. They used to have
these music courses. I remember it was there. Joe Smith
you've probably been from really he lived at Tentelf North Roxbury,
Are Yeah, did you know him back then? I met

(01:34:44):
him a few years after. Okay, Well, I remember going
up to him asking the questions, you know everything, and
it's like it's the same time thing. I'm just thrilled
up talking to the guy, right, you know, and it
could be both good and bad. Some people who feel
inhibited other people it's like, you know, the best thing
that ever happened to them. But you do a better

(01:35:04):
job of I hate to say this, but I'm trying
to say in a way that doesn't have judgment at me.
You take advantage of the situation better than I do.
I become intimidated. This happens. I meet these people saying
let's get together, and I get too uptight. I haven't
got time. I'm gonna know what's gonna happen. I've learned
actually recently, because you know, being a Jewish family, my

(01:35:27):
mother always told me I was a ship head, and
it's like you, you know, the point is you get
older and you realize everybody's got their issues and if
you go, it'll be all right. But I'm still dealing
with that now. Well that's very revealing and intimate. If
you're just revealing that, as I say, you know once
it's a similarity between you and me. But before we

(01:35:49):
have our own private therapy session, I'm gonna end this.
Thank you Michael so much for doing the podcast. Until
next time, it's Bob left Sense

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