Mike Garson

David Bowie's piano player...and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftzett's podcast. My
guest today is pianist Mike Garson. Mike, who were just
involved with a video Heroes Ukraine, tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well. I got a call from the director Rupert Winwright
and he had done this song of David Bowie's Heroes
with a rewrite of some of the lyrics, and then
he gathered these Ukrainian female talented women singers and guitarists

(00:46):
and at the very end he thought it might be
nice because I had the connection with David to maybe
aired piano and he'd been working on months and as
you know, it would have been nice if it came
out six or eight months ago. Climbing it is hard
for it now, but in any case, it was heart
felt by everyone who delivered it. And it's hard to
even watch the video. You know, musically it sounds cool,

(01:09):
but it's just suffering, you know, a lot of pain.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Can you tell us a little bit more about the
music and the visuals.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
You know, I like the way it's sounded, you know,
these young women were great, you know, and their fears.
It was loud and they found some motif for me
on the piano and I was just banging away. It

(01:39):
just kept going and it was a long video, but
it was a fun shoot that came over to my studio,
which my big piano is downstairs here. I just have
like a mini piano, so that's here on this piano,
and I could have you seen my fingers. Keep your
interested if I play for you. But to glee, yeah,

(02:01):
this is a nice setup I have up here. It's
nice to acquiet and I'm upstairs and I'm in Calabasta,
so it's all working fine.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
So is being associated with David Bowie all positive or
is it a little bit of an albatross too?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
It's a double edged sword, you know. And one way
I owe my career to him because every rock star
that's called called me in the last thirty years with
fans of him and my playing on those early records
like Diamond Dorg's Young Americans, especially Aladdin Sane. But so
that's that's the plus. I've made a living instead of
where I was prior as a starving jazz musician, which

(02:41):
I still do, and that was good. The downside of
his everyone always wants to talk about Bowie and my
standard line is I played good before I got the gig,
and he just happened to like my playing. So I
was the fucking whipped cream on the cake and let
him do what he want with what I'm mean. I
know nothing, Bob about rock and roll. I mean, you're

(03:04):
an almanac, and I didn't know who Bowie.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Was what he called me, Bob. Okay, so what year
were you born in?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I was born in nineteen forty five, and I waited
just for the war to be done.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Okay, so you're born in nineteen forty five, Elvis Presley,
you're aware when Elvis breaks, You're certainly aware when the
beatles break. You don't care, or you don't pay attention.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I didn't pay attention. I was practicing the piano, and
I was a little bit of a classical in jazz snob,
which life humbled me out. And when I recognized that
Joni Mitchell's and the Bob Dylan's and the Bowies of
the world, it was a little late because it had
to be fancy and virtuostic. And I grew up with
Vladimir Harwitz and Rubinstein and Glenn Gould and Bach and

(03:57):
Chopin and Liszt and Oscar in a Tatum and Bill Evans,
And where am I? I thought to myself, because I
go to this audition and jeans and a T shirt
on a Tuesday night at RCA in New York City
and they're decked out like they're going on stage in
Madison Square going. I was, where the fuck am I?
You know?

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Okay, you're born in forty five? Yeah, what do your
parents do for a living? My dad was a liquor
salesman and he turned me on to jazz because he
sold liquor to the Half Note, which was on Spring
and Hudston and Manhattan Great Jazz Club. He brought me
down to see Lenny Tristano, who was a blind pianist

(04:39):
who had played with Charlie Parker introduced me to him.
I audition on a break when the band was on
a break for Lenny. I played take five. I was
just a budding jazz pianist, and he accepted me as
a student. Studied with him three years and then the
rest is kind of history from that viewpoint, But it
was my dad was the culprit.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
My mom.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Oh, medical school. I was a pre med student at
Brooklyn College. But I dissected the fucking pig and it
just was a mess. I made chopped liver and spare
ribs and I was done, and he'd given me an
f on the test. And I said, come to the
window here. I point to the music a building. I said,
if you give me a d I'll get the fuck
out of your face, you know, And that's what?

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Okay? How many kids in the family. I have two daughters. No, no, no, no, no.
On your level, you have brothers or sisters.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
One sister she just passed a few months ago, and
she was ten years older than me. So she passed
and at eight eighty nine, I'll be out. I'll be
eighty in a few months. And she was ten years
older than me.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Were you close to her?

Speaker 2 (05:54):
She got out of the house when I was seven
years old. My mom screamed so much she had to
get out. And she got married and I haven't seen
her since.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
And how did her life turn out?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
She married a gentleman who also died four months ago.
My brother in law who I knew for seventy years,
and he was in real estate syndication. He was a lawyer,
but he owned two Park Avenue which shown thirty third
in Park. So they were fine. They were fine, and
then they moved out of New York. They got burnt
out and they went to Sedona and they owned Enchantment,

(06:28):
which was a nice hotel there, and they did that,
and then he got dementia, so we moved him out
there us here in Woodland Hills, and then my sister
stayed with him for thirteen years of dementia. Then and
then my sister got cancer a few months before he died,
but she wouldn't leave till he died. He died, and

(06:51):
a month later she was gone.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Wow, Okay, how many generations was your family in America?
My dad was.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
From the Bronx, myms from the Bronx, and all the
grandparents were Russian somewhere probably Ukraine and some of those
places over there.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
I had the idental situation Russia and Ukraine. So you
grow up exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Where Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, between Prosper Park and Nathan's
Coney Island Ocean Parkway. I still dream about those hot
dogs fifteen cents. The French fries were ten cents.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
You know what people don't remember about Coney Island was
the steeplechase, which was really something else.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
There you go, there, you go Where did you grow up?

Speaker 3 (07:36):
I grew up in Connecticut, about fifty miles from New
York City.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Got it, got it, got it. But you got the
Coney Island though.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Absolutely got on the steeple chase. They wouldn't have the
steeple chase today because there was no safety belt. But
those people don't know. You got on this horse and
it was on a rail, started inside, then went outside.
It was kind of a race, and it was you
know that in the roller coaster. You were like the
two famous rides in Cody Island. You got it? Okay,

(08:05):
So you grew up? Is there a piano in the house.
There's a piano in the house. My mom played and
my sister played. Both played classical, and at seven I
started with a wonderful teacher and I never looked back.
So that's all I've ever done for I've been playing
professionally since I'm fourteen. But I started learning the instrument

(08:27):
at seven. Okay, so you were seven. What was the
motivation to finally take lessons?

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Peer pressure? Drew and Brooklyn With a piano in the house,
What the fuck are you gonna do? You know?

Speaker 3 (08:39):
So?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
I but then I started to like it. But we
had a little telephone in those days in a closet,
and I was a little lazy at practicing. But I
loved it. But I didn't want to practice that much.
So anytime I didn't practice, my mom would run into
the little closet to the telephone to call for faking it.
So she's gonna call the piano teacher and canceled the lessons.

(09:02):
So I run to the piano and start playing.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know, Okay, you didn't like to practice, but were
You know a lot of people begin by playing by
ear and they leave out the reading and all the basics.
You had a lot of training. How did it work
for you?

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I was had perfect pitch, so I could play by you.
But I was playing classical. I didn't know what jazz was.
I heard by the time I was nine, a little
about Elvis and those kind of songs from those days.
But I was playing Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and
chopin I was. I was playing, you know, say, you

(09:45):
know that kind of stuff in Beetho, and I was
doing all that, and then at fourteen, I got the
jazz bug. What could I say? And that's that's when
I heard Dave and Errol Ganna, but I had now
pretty good chomps. And then I started doing gigs my

(10:06):
first kid at fourteen, I made five bucks playing at
sweet sixteen. I thought I was Elon musk By at
five dollars there.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Okay, let's go back though. What kind of kid were you?
Were you a good student, bad student? Were you a loaner?
Did you have friends? It's a great question.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I was a loner. I had a few friends, but
I was not understood. I hated school all through public
school or high school and college, and I just couldn't
wait to get out. And when I was in college,
even I was playing gigs and I was the only
one working and applying it, and they were talking like

(10:46):
what year was Beethoven born?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Do I give a fuck? You know?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I want to know?

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Do I like this piece?

Speaker 2 (10:57):
So I was always about the music, and I stuff
through learning. But all my great lessons were from great
piano teachers and Julia teacher, Leonard Tristano, Herbie Hancock's Torkorea,
Bill Evans.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
I was blessed.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
I was in New York in the sixties.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Okay, so you're playing the piano, your father takes you
to the jazz Club, the Sweet sixteen gigs after that.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
The Sweet Thing actually was first. It was more like
a club debt. I played a lot of weddings in
ball Misfits, so it wasn't really jazz. It was like
the Shadowy a Smile or more, or some of the
songs that were the hips way you know, or rumbas
like best of mag Muco. It was all that and

(11:49):
I had to learn a song today at that time.
Within three years, I knew a thousand songs by heart.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Chris.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
When you played these weddings at Ball Misterers, you weren't
allowed to read the music.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
So it was always solo. You were never a member
of the group.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh those weddings and Babs was I would play at
the beginning for the ceremonies. But we always had a band.
I mean one was worse than the next, but it
was a band.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
But did you play in the band? Oh? Yeah, So
you were always like the special star coming out of
performing on your instrument. So how did you get all
these gigs in New York?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Did you ever hear of the Roseland? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Every Wednesday at two o'clock it turned into the local
eight or two musicians place where we all gathered, thousands
of musicians will being there and somebody be at the
microphone piano gig at the Concorde Hotel. I raised my hand,
Groszegger's Hotel, Bob, it's first Saturday night at Lenon's and
great the thirty bucks and we'd be all rushing for

(12:53):
the gigs and we need someone in the castle for
the summer fifteen bucks a week, my first game, you know.
And then they would still little Sheep music for fifteen
cents and we'd learn the latest song. And it was
great training. But at a certain point I wanted to
kill myself because I didn't want to play music while
people ate, you know, I wanted them to hear me.

(13:16):
So I made a serious decision.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Like fuck that.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
But I did a thousand gigs before I had the
balls to do that.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Okay, little bit slower, you're playing the Sweet sixteen? Are
you getting the gigs by going to roseland or is
your now word of mouth? Little Mikey is the guy
you want?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
He instead of Mikey likes it. And it was just
so simple, Oh he plays, you know, the girl in
school likes you.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
He plays.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Oh, my friend's having a sweet sixteen where you put
the band together. So I put a band together. It
was called the impromptu quartet, which is for telling, because
my whole life is improvisation. I came from the same
let's say, mindset as Keith Jarret is just the wider
viewpoint of music. But I always liked improvising. So that

(14:03):
was we had a nice quartet, and we did hundreds
of gigs.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
You know, hundreds, And what kind of money were you making?

Speaker 2 (14:12):
The gigs would pay around sixty dollars seventy dollars for
an individual bomments for a wedding. When I was working
in the castles, it was a weekly pay. It started
at fifteen dollars at fifteen a week, and then it
went for forty dollars to eighty to ninety. The highest
was ever one hundred and seventy dollars.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Well, if you're a teenager, that's kind of good money, right,
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And what did you spend the
money on?

Speaker 2 (14:42):
I don't know, I don't even remember. It wasn't that
much money, you know, probably candy or something, you know.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
I was I was a.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Little different as a musician in that, for one reason
or another, I didn't drink or use drugs. So I
never did my whole life. Maybe that's why I'm here
telling the story and feeling younger, almost turning eighty than
when I was twenty. I don't know that's the exact reason,
because I'm not judgmental. I understand what the good and
the band of drugs, but it just wasn't my cup

(15:13):
of tea sushi, Yes, a little addicted.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
What could I say? Okay, you're working in the cat Skills.
I've been to the cat Skills. They made movies about it.
Was that a good experience, you know, where you're running
with the other people working there and you're having sexual

(15:38):
adventures or was it like a drag just playing the piano.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
So the first three four years I loved it. I
loved it. You're a young kid fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and
it just was wonderful. Plus I got a lot of experience.
Every night you had a comedian, Jackie Mason, you had Heinz,

(16:03):
Heinz and Dad. I played for mel to May over
those five years. Every summer I played for almost eight
hundred seniors before I met David Bowie. So I had
a lot of experiences of company and I loved the company,
but then the quality wasn't high enough for me. The
better I got, so I had to get out of

(16:24):
there sooner then later.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Okay, let's go back to the lessons. So you start
with the guy Lenny from the club. How long do
you study with him?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Let me Trestano was three years and I lived in Brooklyn.
He lived in Jamaica, Queens. It took me two hours
each way to get there. I had to take a
train to New York City, another train to Queens, and
then a bus, and then I had to walk a
half a mile for a ten minute lesson for eight dollars.

(16:55):
He tore eighty students in two days and the rest
of the week. He practic and he was blind, he
was dark, he was bitter, and he was a fucking genius.
And he taught me three thousand left hand chord voicings
or harmonies or however you want to call it, just

(17:16):
in left hand over the first two years, three thousand.
I think I used thirty of them. You know, well,
you think of you think of imagine, it's four chords,
you know, and he's teaching me these chords that sound
like this, I mean, just just an instant. It probably
worked for his head, and he had a whole mathematical

(17:38):
way of laying out. So I had to memorize all
these chords in all twelve keys. It was torture. If
I had to do it now, I'd call you up,
asked you to shoot me.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
The lessons were only ten minutes long. Do you believe that?

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Sometimes nine minutes?

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Well, tell me a little bit about the lesson. Could
sit down and then.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
What So it was four hours round trip in getting there, right,
And I'd sit down and let's say these chords that
I had to learn, Let's say I had learned at
home two hundred that week. When I'd come in, he'd say,
play it in one particular key, so that might be

(18:19):
twenty to thirty chords, So that took two minutes. Then
i'd have to do some scales stuff like this, then
do that, and then different fingering to get all sorts
of coordination and strength. So then I would do that.
Then he'd have me listen to Leslie Young or Billy
Holiday or Bud Powell, and I have to sing and

(18:43):
imitate their phrasing. And then he would let me improvise
a little bit. And that was the lesson because ten minutes.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Goes right right, and what would be the assignment for
the following week?

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Now you did it in the key doing in the
key of D flat next week. It's not like the
guitar or the fucking capo.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Right right right right right right right right right. Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
So I love your questions. Nobody asked me this shit.
You know what I mean, kids, but you do what
I listen.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
I stayed out to a Jewish family with a piano
with the house. I started taking lessons at five. It's
like I never I hated to practice. So when did
it change?

Speaker 2 (19:28):
It was piano was your first instrument. Oh yeah, then
I really love you keeping going?

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Okay? So at what point did you get the bug
such that you wanted to practice.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
You're not going to believe this, but it was during
Vietnam and I was at Brooklyn College. I was still
only doing an hour or two a day, and I
was very good. But I wasn't great. But I was
very good, and my marks were terrible because as you
asked before, I was not a good student. They were

(20:02):
not paralleling my mind.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
I needed.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Freedom, I needed rebellion, I needed innovatives, not fucking machines
and regurgitating Beethoven. There was a million people that could
do that and better than me, although I was pretty
good at it, but it's not me. I wanted express
what was in there, and so my marks went to

(20:31):
a d and if they dropped below C I got
a call to be drafted because it was during Vietnam,
and then the rubber or whatever when it hits the ground,
I said, oh fuck, I'm not going to go shoot people.
So what happened was I found out if I put

(20:52):
an extra year of DOS in three years instead of
two and I passed the test, I could be in
the band. So I auditioned, I got one hundred on
the test, and I joined the band. So I knew
I'd have to pay some serious dues for the first

(21:13):
eight week school based of training. Then the next three
years I'm playing the fucking Glockaspiel down Fifth Avenue and
marching and you know, then we played for the Generals.
But basically I was in the fort I was stationed
in Staten Island. I told everybody I was overseas from

(21:35):
Brooklyn over the Arizona Bridge, and I would practice eight
hours a day because there was nothing to do we
do a parade on Fifth Avenue every three months, and
we had a big band, so we practiced there and
all the generals I would play for their parties, so
I made extra money. They paid for two piano lesters.
I go into the city. After basic training. I was

(21:56):
living home and eating a steak in the morning the
sixth of the morning going to the fort and I
was home by five o'clock. And I did all the
shopping and the PX so everything was one third the price.
And I did that for those three years, and that's
when I got good.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
I ended up.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
There was a drummer in the band who ended up
with Woody Herman and Man at Ferguson. There was a
trumpet player ended up in Bloodswort and Tears. So we
had a great band. And all I did is go
every morning and practice. So it was like that pressure
was needed because I didn't have that discipline. I'm kind

(22:34):
of lazy and intuitive and I play from my heart.
But there I had to do hard work and I
did it.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Okay, the Army is after you. Brooklyn College right in
the middle. After I finished, I went back and finished
Brooklyn College. Okay, so you figure you'll join, So you
won't be drafted in extent to Vietnam. I won that game. Okay,
So what's it like being a Jewish guy in the army? Okay?

Speaker 2 (23:09):
I was not going to share this story, but I
think it's an important story. I was in basic training
in Fort Dixon, New Jersey, and I was the only
Jewish fella there, and I felt very isolated, and I
had a German sergeant. I was not the most athletic person.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
In the world. And when you learn how to take a.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Bayonet and you're supposed to stab it into the dummies, right,
and you're supposed to do it like you're going to
kill somebody. Everybody was stabbing it hard. And I took
the knife and I was just like touching it because
I was picturing I can't hurt another human being. And
all of a sudden, this German sergeant said, in front

(24:03):
of the whole barracks, if you're an example of a Jew,
it's no wonder what Hitler did to those people. My
body's still shivering saying it and thinking, shouldn't have I
done something about that? What could have I done that?
I mean, do I report it? I mean I still

(24:26):
play it in my head that was a pretty big
chump symptism. It lasted me for a long time. You know,
I got a free pass when I started playing music.
Nobody cared if I was white, black, green, Italian. You
know you're Jewish, Catholic. You know it was different, Okay.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
You know, forgetting a pianist, a lot of people said, oh,
I'm going to send my kid to the army for discipline.
To set them straight. Was there any lesson that you
learned in the army that was good.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
I learned how to practice. I shine my shoes pretty good.
I learned that appeal potatoes. But really what I did
and I could run a mile, which now I barely
could get up to the studio, you know, from the downstairs.
But I mean basically, what I learned is to practice
the piano and get good. Because eight hours a day

(25:18):
for three years, even if I had no talent, at
least you could mechanically play. Might not have gotten good gigs.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah. Were you practicing eight hours because you were personally
inspired at or had nothing better to do, or were
the generals saying, hey, Mike, you know you gotta get better.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
No. Within weeks, I fell in love with it, and
I saw a progress.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Okay, let's go back. How does it end with Lenny?
And who's your next teacher?

Speaker 2 (25:47):
So simultaneously to Lenny Trestado, there was a gentleman named
hal overton O ve Rtn how twar did Julia? But
he also was a great jazz player, and he stard
at the piano on twenty third Street and sixth Avenue.
The cigarette would be hanging out of his mouth and
he loved to bebop guys and Butt Powell. And he

(26:10):
did the Felonious Monk big band arrangements for a jazz
album at town Hall that came out around nineteen sixty three.
So he had a treasure chest of Monk song Selonious Monk,
and none of them were available at that time, and
he would teach me these. It was the most fantastic
experience because he knew how to teach properly, and he

(26:33):
prepared me for life for music for gigs up until
but all with jazz. And one day I came in
and I was mixing classical in jazz. So there's a
chopin song that goes it's full of revolutionary town and

(26:53):
it's a crazy left tandpo so I took the Gershwin
song Summertime, and I went.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Something like that.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I remember the left hand point. So he says to me,
that's the colectic. And the way he said it, Bob,
it was like I had leprosy and I was just
hearing all my influences and they started to come out.
I might sit there and play a jazz thing for him,
but then I might be going then and then that

(27:29):
sounds mixed the classical in jazz, and then I might
be starting like a classical thing. Didn't like it because
he only liked one of the straight be box that
sounded like this, and I was much more of a penis.

(27:52):
I wanted to do other things. I wanted to play
two hands like he stole me like that, and I
wanted to be to play like Arldonna that kind of
a thing, and he wanted to keep me in a
small box.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
I mean, you've heard that story before.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
And I had a Julia teacher, just dropping back to
when I was thirteen, and he showed me some mozart,
that beautiful sonata, and I came in the next week
and I went.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
And he said, you.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Have delusion as a grandeur. I should have said, I
am possibly a budding composer and improviser. But I got
intimidated and kind of stepped me back twenty or thirty years.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Okay, how
did you last with that guy? How long?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
That was about a year? And how Overton? That is
the Julian teacher, how Overton jumping? A few years later,
when studying with Lennyd Tristano, that was two years. Tony
Williams Miles Davis, drummer, came for a lesson right after me.
He was seventeen, you know, and so he was studying
composition even though he was a great drummer. So I

(29:20):
was in good company. And I got to play with
Felonious Monk rhythm section at the New School in New York.
So it was great, great training. And then there were
these miscellaneous teachers who would pop up, like Herbie Hancock
came up to visit the drummer I was with in
the Catskills, and he stat in and played old stand

(29:41):
that Don't Blame Me, and it just said, oh my god,
this guy couldn't really play. So I asked him for
some piano lessons and he gave me three lessons but
life changing. And then Bill Evans, who was pretty serious
heroin addict. I went to see him at the Village

(30:02):
Vanguard about twenty times. One time I got the enough
balls and I said to them Bill could have a lesson.
He said, come up to my house and he spends
six hours with me. Didn't charge me a penny.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Okay, to the degree you can speak it in terms
of layman can understand what did Herbie and what did
Bill Evans teach you?

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Someone asked me that today in some interview, and I
only remember the transmission and the energy from Bill Evans. Oh,
it's like you're being with an idol, the way you
know people love Bowie or a Dylan, you know, a
Paul or John you know. I was that way to him.
He showed me what's called some jazz voice ss, like

(30:53):
maybe you played this way. You want to see the piano?
Would that help you? No?

Speaker 3 (30:57):
No, no, So.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So Lendy Bernstein tune and instead of playing a simple
triad like CEG maybe it's like a stem major seven so,
but just voice it, or you spread out the notes
like BCE and then you play it. So I learned

(31:29):
that from him. From Herbie Hancock he taught me what's
called a diminished scale. Because I knew major scales, I
knew minor scales, he taught me a diminish scale, which
sounds like this. It's a different scale. Instead of seven notes,
is eight notes. And it's a half step whole step,
half step, whole step. It's symmetrical. So if you're playing

(31:50):
jazz and I'm playing a song and I'm playing a
ste steven chord in the left hand, I could play
a seed a diminished scale over it. So you build
up a vocabulary. It's like learning English or Chinese or whatever.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Okay, you're in the army that you finish your term,
what's the vision? How do you decide to go back
to Brooklyn College.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I only had a few months left, and I got
a call to audition for Buddy Rich. So I figured
I'll drop out of college if I could work with Buddies.
So I went to see his band and they played
a song. They sounded fantastic. He sounded fantastic on drums,
and then he stood up after the song and screamed

(32:37):
at the saxophone player, just like bullying, an invalidation beyond,
and I thought, oh oh, So then I stopped there,
and then I heard another song, and then he stood
up and screamed at the trumpet player, at which point
I went to my car and said, fuck him. I'm

(32:57):
going home finishing college, because if I'm that abuse, I
may as well go home to my house.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Okay, but let's go back before that. You finished with
the Army. Did you always plan to go back to college. Yeah,
and I just got the bachelor degree. I didn't want
to go for my masters. I put in three and
a half years, so I may as well knock it off.

(33:25):
And I knocked it off. I graduated maybe a little
early in January, and then I was right into the
music world. Okay, your music education at Brooklyn College? Was
that worth something?

Speaker 2 (33:40):
You know? At the time, I thought not. When I
look back there, I'm sort of a sponge and if
there's something valuable, I have pretty distant discernment and differentiation.
I learned a few things, but could have I spent
better time. Yes, but you're in a Jewish middle class family.
You finishing up? Oh yeah, you know that. Boy, you

(34:02):
have to have a backup plan. Well, I got the degree.
My mind who was in education? I swear to you,
I never went into the school system except as masterclasses
and that kind of thing, because I didn't want to
be trapped in that world. It was bad enough playing
weddings and bomsters. I knew as early as very young
that I had my own voice, my style. I knew

(34:24):
I wanted to say something. But I wasn't a singer
and I wasn't a performer. But I could play the
shit out of the piano.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
You know. So that's the story. Okay, so you graduate,
what's the next step.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
I graduated. I got married Susan Uh and I met
in the Catskills. She was fourteen. I was sixteen, and
I was playing Rhapsody in Blue. You know that one.

(34:58):
I was playing raps in Blue. She comes from a
little bungalow colony. Some girls in a bungalow colony went
to my hospital. Let's go see the band over there
at Cherry Hullo Hotel. I'm making forty dollars a week
in the dumb There's fucking bats flying around in this room.
It wasn't like a gorgeous room. It was horrible. And
a lot of folks would go up there like dirty dancing,

(35:19):
that kind of a thing, like the movie and she
comes with these friends and I'm playing Rhapsody in Blue
and a little old lady taps her on the shoulder
and says, you're gonna marry him. Six years later, we
got married. Last week we celebrated fifty seven years. Go
figure it, because fifty seven days is long in la

(35:39):
and you know that.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Okay, what happens for the time she hears you play
Rhapsody in Blue to the time you get married. Was
it a continuous connection or she go back to high
school and you ran into her again? How did this
relationship play out? We were together the whole six years
before we got married.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
When I was in the army, I only saw her
right the times that I get some time off, and
she come to see me at four Dicks, and when
I was a basic training she actually walked right by
me because they shaved my head when at that time
I had a lot of here and she couldn't believe
what she saw. She actually passed by me, says this

(36:18):
is your future husband, you know. So anyway, that's that's
what happened. Then, Okay, you're a musician. Hey, she's young,
you're a musician. What did her parents say about this?

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Wedding.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
They loved me because they thought I was gonna be
a doctor. Yes, yes, yes, okay, so Dad, you got
you gotta hear this. Bob her dad owned a trucking
company in Manhattan. The mafia was on him every day
with guns, payoffs. He was a tough guy. Grew up

(36:54):
with no money with three brothers in Manhattan eating bread
stiffs is all they got, sharing a room that was
thirty feet you know. And he made it. All brothers,
they all made it. He owned the trucking company.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
He made it.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
He worked six days a week and the seventh day
he was in the garage. All he wanted to do
was give me the trucking company and come to work
with him. I would have been dead, like fifty years ago.
I said, Dad, I can't do that. He said, make
the music a hobby. I said, I'm serious about that.
I had a jazz trio. We already sounded good playing

(37:32):
local gigs in New York. So we go to a
wedding one day, some family member and as an eight
piece band, but kind of horrible, like a bomb. It's
for band, wedding band. And he said, hey, Michael, now
that's the band. Because it was eight pieces and I
had a trio. He didn't couldn't differentiate quality from quantity,

(37:54):
and so he finally stopped bothering about the trucking business.
When I turned forty. He said, Okay, Mike, I know
what we're gonna do. I'm going to put you through
medical school and by fifty you'll be a doctor. So
he never gave it up, but so so he look
it was his daughter. He stare.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
It was an up and down life.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I was getting five dollars a night on jazz gigs
and all this before Bowie and then after David. There
were times I wasn't working with David and then he'd
come to the house and I wasn't working it, and
then Susan would say, well he's practicing. What is he
practicing for he's in the house. Well, he's writing a piece,

(38:36):
and I don't understand, you know. So he's looking around
and trying to snoop around and see my royalty checks.
So Susan was hiding them. So I said, you got
to put these checks out to shut them up. So
she didn't put out the two stend ones and the
thirty sen ones from being She put out a few
that were five thousand tenth outs and then he was

(38:57):
quiet after that. But by that time I was like
fifty five years old.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Okay, you graduate from college, you get married, what are
the next steps in your musical career. I worked.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
A lot of miscellaneous gigs, backing up different people like
Martha Reeves from Author and their Van dellaz I did
music director at Madison Square Garden with them. There was
a very famous jazz big band called mel Lewis Thad
Jones Big Band. They played every Monday night at the
Village Vanguard. I did a few gigs with them. I

(39:35):
worked with the jazz student Nancy Wilson with them. She
was fantastic and I was getting calls. While I was
doing that, I was also teaching, because I love teaching.
I started teaching nineteen sixty three and I've had only
private one on ones now it's a lot of it
is zoom all around the world, but about ten thousand

(39:56):
students since over the last sixty two years. So I
made extra money teaching and then I pick up miscellaneous gigs.
And then one fine day, someone named David Bowie called
to I didn't know who he was, and the rest
of his history.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Okay, So when do you graduate from college? How old
are you after the all main graduated was probably about
twenty okay, so we're in the late sixties. First, let's
talk about jazz. The heyday of jazz was the thirties

(40:36):
and forties. Okay, So are you aware that somehow your
passion is a little lot of time or do you
think jazz is forever? What was going through your head?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
I had known business mind. I only knew the music,
and somehow I got by because I was teaching. If
I didn't do some teaching, I couldn't have survived because
a five dollar jazz gig going to it. In fact,
the way I got the bowie gig, I was practicing,
as I told you, eight hours a day. And then

(41:10):
I get on this jazz gig with Dave Leebman, who
I went to high school, was a sax player, with
Miles Davis and other great musicians were in a club.
I waited my whole life to get to this jazz gig.
Five people in the club five bucks. So I said
to myself, this is not going to work. The rent
was one hundred and fifty dollars. I'd have to do
thirty of those gigs a month and then I still

(41:32):
don't pay for the phone and gas. So I said,
you gotta watch what you wish for, and I said,
I think I better go out with a rock band.
Two days later David Cole, Okay, before we get to David. Yeah,
there's things like take five that anybody can understand. There
are a lot of people say jazz I don't get it.

(41:55):
Explain it to those people. They're partially right because it's
heady and it's its own little cult, you know, and
we're better than them because they're playing just three chords
and look what we're doing, you know, well no one
and they don't get it, you know, they just want

(42:17):
a little groove.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
They just want to feel.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
I could do both, but I naturally was a songwriter
at fourteen, but it was so simple for me that
I made a silly mistake and I said, I think
I don't understand the code of jazz ceode. I think
I'm going to figure it out. And I went on
this Cecuitish trip for a lot of years and it

(42:43):
ultimately helped me, but it certainly didn't financially or commercially, because,
like you said, nobody understood the music. I mean, Miles
Davis is great culture and is great, you know, or
Tata Muscapediston, but they are few and far between. Stan
gets out a hit for the Boston over you know
erl Gone, who was a bit of a showman. You know,

(43:04):
you had people like Victor Borgier who used comedy and classical.
I didn't think like my father in law thought, you
need to work and have a gig and make some money.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
I got by.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
I was somewhat blessed in a way, and I had talent,
and I was willing to do a wedding involvement. So
I would do five on the weekend Friday night, Saturday afternoon,
Saturday night, Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, and then I wouldn't
work all week, and I teach on Tuesday, but not
like ten minutes like Lennard Tristana, an hour or less
than I would give. And I teach eight ten students

(43:38):
and then have enough money to just get by and survive.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
And that was it. Okay. Nineteen seventy Miles goes electric
in a silent way and bitches brew Joe Zonal's in
the band, then informs weather report. Is this something you
like or is it too far from tradition.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
I liked it, but I was a little more earlier miles.
But I did end up working with Stanley Clark and
played fusion, but that was in seventy eight, and I
did that kind of music. So the thing with me is,
I don't see divisions in music. I think I have
the same mindset as Duke Ellington. He said, this is

(44:22):
he the good music or bad music. So if it's
a great rock song, I will gravitate to it, and
if it's a great jazz song, I'll gravitate. It's not
that all jazz, good old rock, or all poper or
all fusion, so you know, and art is and opinion.
So I went to things that resonated with me. But

(44:43):
I never was one of these people. I only liked rock,
or I only like Popper, I only liked Beboper, only
liked fusion. I liked what I liked and just because
it's music, and it's certainly better than war, certainly better
than politics. It's like maybe the only same thing left
on the planet. So I'm happy that I'm doing it.

(45:03):
Mind you, if I was a pre med student, you know,
you can help people that way. But it wasn't my calling,
and when I was twelve, I wanted to be a rabbi,
but I didn't like the separation. I just wanted to
be a person of the world, and music was the
closest I could get to it.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Not that it was.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
I hate the music business, don't get me wrong, but
I love the music.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
So what's the status of jazz today.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
There are some great talent out there, that's all I know.
I know nothing about the specifics in the business. There's
some great piadists like Brad maldu who's really really good,
and he does some rock things and interpretations of a
lot of Beatles, and he did a boie soul, So
there's some big talent out there.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
I don't think jazz has ever been close to mainstream.
When I grew up, it was always rock was the mainstream.
Rock is small now it's hip hop. So you know,
who knows I'm the wrong person to ask that. You
probably know better than me. It doesn't look that good
to me. From the friends I have that are starting
that I could only base it on. Oh, I better

(46:25):
give this guy fifty bucks. He's fucked.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Okay, let's go back to this transitional moment. How long
after you graduate from college do you audition for Buwie?
About seven years and before you have that break in
your mind you say I'm gonna be an itinerant musician

(46:48):
and all work out in the end, or in the
back of your mind you say, you know I'm gonna
have a big break. People are gonna know who I am.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
I never thought of break or fame or anything. You know,
Fame is probably the most unstatem drug there is. It
never impressed me. I just wanted to play the piano. Okay,
So how do you get the call from Bowie? Do
you ever hear of Anette Peacock?

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Sure? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
I had played on one of her albums, a very
avant gard and there was a song she could call
on the one and the piano solo was a little
similar to Aladin say.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
It was out there and she was.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
An avant garde singer. She would sing through the move
through the microphone, the mini move back in the not
even the mini one, the big one. And I played
on her album. Bowie comes to do the first American
Ziggy Startles tour. He doesn't bring a piano player. Rick Weightman,

(47:45):
who'd done Hunky during those things great pianists he was
doing sessions or I don't know if yes was formed
or I don't know the sequence, but he steadily couldn't come.
So he comes with just Mick Ronson and Woody and
Trevors the Spiders from All but he needs a piano.
He's doing life. How do you do it without a piano?

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Or changes?

Speaker 2 (48:08):
You need a piano, you know. So he being very
tuned into avant garde musicians, he knew a net and
he was a fan of her music. And so is
Mick Ronson to lead guitarist in the band. And he
goes to visit her and he said, would you like
to be in my band? She said, Now, I have

(48:29):
my own career. But Mike Garson, he just played on
my album. He said, you're in. So I got hired
for eight weeks only and I then ended up I
think the longest standing musician and probably did four hundred
shows with him in twenty albums and things are still
coming out.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Okay, do you audition? My audition for.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Seven seconds and you're gonna hear it right now. Nick
Ronson said, you got the game. I said, Mick, I
didn't start the play. Yet as he was sitting at
the piano, he said, I know, I played piano two.

(49:17):
It's the gig. You got it, And David was in
the control room about thirty feet away. That was it, okay.
I saw that tour in Boston at the Music Hall.
I did not know who you were at that point
in time, but that album was gigantic in England and

(49:37):
it was just the beginning of the success of Bowie
in the US. What was it like being on the
road for those eight weeks. It was a shock, you know,
at the jazz clubs and having to go on a
back entrance. I was treated like the way black musicians
were treated in the forties.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
It was a and all of a sudden with the
Plaza Hotel and we're at the Beverly Hills Hotel here,
not even in the hotel, in the bungalows and Elton
John's on the left and Perry Como's on the right,
and we're eating eighty dollars meals and they're paying for everything.
And I think we're the ones responsible for everybody having
to leave their credit card now because then incidentals were

(50:22):
all covered by RCA. I remember the band the tech
guys bringing in like ten cases of champagne and just
putting on the bill, and the band buying cameras and
for a coach. So you know, it was those days
and it was shocking. But again the music was fascinating

(50:44):
because they were doing about twenty two storms on the
Ziggi tour, and some storms don't need piano at all,
like hang on to yourself and this and that. So
I would sneak out into the audience and watch David,
and I thought to myself, this guy's a fucking genius.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
I like this guy.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I want to stay longer than eight weeks. He's the
Miles Davis, a rock, and he's changing. He's a chameleon.
He paralleled my mind because that's what I did. I
changed one hundred times. It's just that it didn't matter
because I was doing the jazz of classical. Who gives
a fuck? But he was doing it brilliantly in the

(51:27):
commercial of the pop world, and to his credit, he
was able to still stick with his integrity except for
the eighties, when he told me he felt that he
lost it to record companies and the pressure got to him.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Well, since we're there, you're talking about when he does
the dance records and that type of stuff. Yes, he
feels felt like he sold out. I mean he.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Felt like doing Let's dance and that felt good. But
then they like that, let's milk that shit. And that's
exactly when the integrity gets fucked. And as I like
to say, you compromise your integrity, your improvised drops.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
Okay, so you're in the band. You know there are
people who play in a band and essentially never talk
to the leader of the band. So to what degree
did you interact with the other three and Bowie and
did they treat you as a member of the band
or oh, this guy just plays piano on some of
the songs.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Initially the Spiders were a little reluctant, except for Mick
Ronson because he loved me. And then I ended up
playing on his two solo albums, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
and played Home or but I became friends with all
of them. But to take a few weeks because what
does that sound? One of those jam squads just supposed
to be playing and then they're hearing Bowie's eating it

(52:58):
up because we lost the beat. It was just enhancing
the harmonic vocabulary. Which has to do with chords, you know,
and David loved it. They accepted me, and I made
a decision after the eight weeks, I want to stay
for two years, and we finished Young Americans. That's when

(53:22):
I was the musical director because Nick Ronson he fired
the whole band in that last show when they did
the Ziggy movie, which is pretty well known, and David
had told me, you're the only one I'm keeping, but
everyone is being fired. And in that first two years
most people don't know that he fired five different bands.

(53:44):
We were friends, but that's not why he took me.
I was able to change styles with him, so I
could do Young.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Americans or play a gospel face.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
I could do that, or I could play you know,
I could do all of that. Well the song he

(54:21):
never sang once live and I love that record. Ah
me too? Yeah, good says.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Okay, let's just focus for a second on Mick Ronson.
Oh supposedly, you know, he was, you know, not equal
to Bowie, but he was a main part of those
shows and he worked with other people. He did the
two solo records and died of alcoholism. So who was

(54:51):
the real Mick Ronson? Who was alcohol really is demon.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Mick was an unstung hero. He was very close from
He also smoked a lot, so between the alcohol and smoke.
He died of liver cancer and started Bowie. So they
both smoked and drank, so they both died from that.
But Mick was a sweetheart. He made it safe for

(55:16):
me to be in the band. I was uncomfortable. I
didn't know about popularity and fame and autographs.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Where am I?

Speaker 2 (55:23):
You know when we did the very first show, I
think it was in Cleveland in seventy two. After the encore,
I see these skies, the spiders and Bowie running to
a back entrance, zooming down to the basement to get
in a limo, and I'm folding my music on stuff
it was, and all of a sudden, thousand the people

(55:46):
are coming at me because I'm the next best target.
And I learned very fast, be careful, get out of there.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Okay. That show started with a classical piece from Clockwork Orange,
which was hot at that particular moment. Do you know
why that was chosen?

Speaker 2 (56:06):
I don't know why, but it makes sense that someone
like David would choose this Beethoven thing that was twisted.
You know, I don't know anything other than my relationship
with him, but I'm sure in the books that's available.
But I actually only had this musical. He only went

(56:27):
liked to see me as of his pianist. He didn't
want to know me as anything else.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
Okay, so how do you feel what he fires the band? Terrible?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Because they were my friends and now I'm having to
be on a stage with them for two nights and
I know they're going and they went into shock, And
there might have been reasons for it on a let's say,
a mundane bullshit level. The real truth is this guy

(57:02):
couldn't stop. He was hearing the next thing, and he's
hearing Diamond Dogs, and he's hearing young Americans, and he's
hearing pin Ups, which were all English covers, and he
just couldn't help himself. And I think that's the real reason.
But there were probably financial things and stupid shit that

(57:22):
musicians do. You know, So that's okay.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
You're on the road for eight weeks. Was this the
first time you were on the road that long and
away from your new wife?

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Interestingly enough, in nineteen seventy I was out for a
year or two on and off with a band called Brethren,
Rick Murata, the drummer he played in the band, and
a guy named Tommy Cosgrove, and we had a manager
named Sid Bernstein who brought the shea Stadium and he
thought we were next Beatles.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
I didn't. He did.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
We sounded like Stevie Windward band, and I thought, how
can we be the next Binals if we're doing even
though they were originals, It distinger sounded too much like
Stevie Woodenwock. I was original. I took over doctor John's job.
He did the first album with Brethren, and I did
the second album, and I toured with him and in

(58:17):
one fine day we didn't make it. And we played
a lot of shows. We opened up all those Joe
Cocker shows with the mad Doorgs and it. I used
to watch Lee and Russell ferociously. And two Drummers was
fantastic playing at the Capitol.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Theater in news. I saw that show too, said hello
right at the Capitol. Okay, so you say, you know
he fires the spiders from Mars and he's gonna do it.
Ladd Insane. Tell me about trying out all these new
musicians at all these bands that don't work.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
He had fantastic drummers, Ainsley Dunbar, Andy Newmore, Dennis Davis,
Tony Newman Wood. He would mint See Sterling, Campbell, z Acholford.
They were all fantastic drummers. Some just didn't fit for
a project he was doing. He never put the friendship

(59:14):
above the integrity of their music. It would sing when
there was an album he didn't use me, but I
understood it wasn't personally. He heard something else, maybe as
synthesize it, maybe Brian Eno. So there's plenty of albums
I'm not on and I got it, you know, And
you got to love somebody who has integrity, and I

(59:34):
learned that from him. I had it in me because
I was disciplined and I only played what I loved.
But I learned even more about holding the A position
because I went most of the time when I wasn't
with him, and you know, most rock artists they take
months and months of sometimes years. So I was composing
classical music and doing all sorts of other things.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
So tell me about the recording of the Laddin scene.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
You couldn't play a wrong note well, because we were
a Trident studio where they did Hey, Jude and queen
and all these things. The piano was this Bechstein. It
was like sent from God to tried. The studio he
had Ken Scott, who had worked with the Beatles, an
amazing engineer, producer, and David I think was tired of

(01:00:25):
the guitars from the Ziggy album, you know, and we
did it. I mean that tour could have gone on
for five years and he could have short after eighteen months.
So now he I'm the flavor of the month, so
it's going to be piano centric and I show up
on these sessions and it was like forensically he went

(01:00:49):
into my brain. Let's get that romantic part of Mike
where it was like this, let's get that, and let's
get the nineteen twenty jazz. But twisted, I'm getting the

(01:01:16):
chance to practice when I got two gigs coming in
next week, so thanks for adultery me.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
So that was time.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
And then Aladdin's say, which was my avante garde's side.
So he was able to get the best out of
whatever had practiced the prior years, almost like a prophet
who could no Every musician he ever had was the
perfect one at the perfect time, whether it was Carlos
Alamar or the guitarist, great blues player who died in

(01:01:46):
the Plain accident.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
I forgot his name.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Great guitars, and of course Nick Ronson and then the
later albums were Donnie mcclasten on Sacks. He always found
the perfect musicians for what he wanted and he the
best thing about him is he never micromanaged. I've been
on projects with directors and singers. Do this, play this chord?

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Here?

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Do and I go from the potential of giving all
of myself, which is one hundred and ten percent, to
probably minus twenty because they take the life out of
me and the music. I see it as flowing through me.
So if someone's fucking yaking at me, do this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
It's over.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Because I'm not a true studio musician. I'm a I'm
an artist. I'll do some studio work, but only if
I want to do it. Okay, Latin saying comes out
at this point. He's a known quantity in America. From

(01:02:51):
the outside, it does not look it's as if it's
commercially successful, as the hate to use the word hype,
as the expectations. What was it like on the other
side of the curtain.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
It wasn't easy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
It wasn't easy, and the part of him that wants
to reach and be famous and all that and was hurt,
you know, because he was torn between his artistic integrity
and he has to do this because he traveled. I

(01:03:27):
was with him in the limos when he's listening to
a wreath of Franklin and absorbing getting ready for young
Americans before we did a lot insane and America every
town was affecting him. So he had to do it.
But success wise, I don't think it was anywhere near

(01:03:48):
the ziggy thing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Okay, and what was your experience of pit ups?

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
A lot of fun. We were at that chateau where
Elton did one of his albums in France, and it
was so much fun. Lulu came and she sang man
whole Soul of the World for fun. That became a
number one single when he recorded it was not on
the charts, so that was fun. Ainsley Dunball played drums
and I thought, because I know nothing about rock, I

(01:04:15):
thought they were all Bowie songs. He didn't care. I
had Hammond organ that I had connected to the piano
on Sorrow, one of those great songs, very short, and
I was getting this down you could hear it on
the record what the piano sounds a little different, so
we were experimenting. Then it was an easy album, was fun.

(01:04:36):
I think it was good for his head because he
was separating from the spiders. And more about Mick ronson.
When they sang together, it was magical, Bob the blend.
Sometimes I couldn't tell who was who, and the way
they performed on stage together, it was unreal. Now, when

(01:04:57):
Mick went off on his solo album and then his
solo tour which I played on, they were not successful
at all, and while it was a great band, some
nice tunes, it didn't have the Bowie magic. So some
people are meant to be that person right under.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Okay, just a couple of things. Many people are keyboardists
and they'll play the piano, they'll play the sin, they'll
play the organ. In your particular case, you view yourself
just as a piano player.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Yes, but I can play all those and I'm very
good at them, but I'm not known for it. And
my default is the piano because I love it, and
that's people know my sounds on any album and when
I play synths or electric piano or organ, I sound good.
But it could be any great player, because that's not

(01:05:58):
where I live. I just do it as a convenience
as somebody wants. Oh give me a little electric piano,
but I love the piano.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
You went on the road Ziggy started. Did they take
a piano or was there a piano in every market?

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
They would have a nine foot grand on every show.
I'll tell you remember the story with the M and ms,
with the rock guys and the Green and the Blue.
I was in Madison Square, Go in the seventy three
and I had a black nine foot Steinway. I was
like a pig and shit, the happiest guy in the world,
real piano. And I made a joke after the concert,

(01:06:40):
and the piano technician was there. I said that being
nice to have a white Steinway. And the next night
there's this fifteen hundred pounds nine foot white Steinway. I mean,
I'm lucky if I get a stupid keyboard cassio with
a kid. You know these days, so that those were
those times with unbelievable money being spent.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
And was the deal that they had to deliver the
piano and they had to be tuned that day exactly,
And did somebody ever fuck up. No, okay, So now
it comes to Diamond Dogs. Diamond Dogs has Rebel Rebel.

(01:07:21):
It's an arena tour. Some people say, wait, this is
a commercial compromise. What was it like from your side,
from your viewpoint, you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Know, I was only I was one of the only
musicians on that album because there was no more Spiders,
and there was Tony Bisconti was involved in production, an engineer,
and there was a bass player named Herbie Flowers who
passed this this year. He's the one who played on
the lou Reed Walk on the wild Side Great. I
toured with him with Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour.

(01:07:54):
But that album, David was into William Burrows and the
cutups and he would take newspapers and cut it up
and form lyrics from it. It was a style of writing.
They ended up in some of those lyrics. But like
a song like sweet Thing Candidate is, I think it's
a genius song. Rebel is what everybody knows, Rebel Rebel.

(01:08:16):
But there's some good music on there. But it's a
hard album to digest. But I think it has for
me to test the time. But not everybody feels that way,
you know. So it's a music his opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
So could you tell that David was satisfied that he
had this level of success in America?

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Then I could tell it was breaking. I could feel it.
I could feel it. They created a little bit of
a vacuum around him to cause that kind of kernel
stuff that they did with Elvis and all that, and.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
You know, okay, so that's seventy four, there's a huge success.
He disappears for about a year, comes packed with something
completely different, young Americans to what did we? Were you
up front in all the Philadelphia you know Elements and

(01:09:11):
Luther Van Rose and you say, Carlos Alomar shows up,
what was your viewpoint? What was your participation?

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
So actually in that album, I was the understarted hero
because it was me who set the stage for a
loadst look for the young Americans by going.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
And it starts with.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
It laid the vaud But Luther was the new star
coming up and I knew it, and I was the
music director. I had no problem. You tell the singers
what to do, you do this, you do that, and
that music. It was American music. So it was actually
closer to my heart than the English music because I
didn't know the English music. I just played on it,

(01:09:59):
but I didn't know it. But I knew the sounds
he was looking for, and I knew the ojs, and
I knew all that those kind of music and arefa
now Luther vandros By the way, he's a great documentary
on him on CNN that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
I saw last month.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
It's tested and you see me in it with hair.
That's what nobody knows. But anyway, he's sitting right behind
David Bowie and I'm playing the Young Americans and he
starts singing some harmony stuff. He's not in the band,
and David doesn't know him. Carlos brought him there. He
was just hanging and David said, oh, come up to

(01:10:39):
the mic and the rest of his history. So that
was a big help to Luther's career, you know, because
what people don't know is during that tour we were
the opening act for David. It was called the Garson Band,
but the manager was a prick, and he wouldn't put
my name on the you know, until he and when

(01:11:00):
he saw I was successful, but then it was too late.
And then he's one of those guys. He was taking
fifty percent of the royalties fifty percent of gross of David,
and that's what he wanted, what he wanted to manage
me and goodbye. But we opened the show for David,
and there were towns we got a better review than David,
But there were towns they were also throwing raw eggs

(01:11:21):
coming on the stage because they didn't want to black
lives singing soul music when they're waiting for David Bowie.
So I experienced the good and bad and the ugly
of that. But I knew Luther was a big talent.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Okay, Stylistically it was a big change from certainly Diamond Dogs. Yeah,
how did you find out that Bowie was going in
that direction? He told me.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
You could hear it a little bit on nineteen eighty
four on one of the early albums. You could feel
America influenced them for better or worse, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
Okay, favorite songs on that album, or somebody's up there
likes me in Fascination, you got good taste, so yes,
so tell me about certainly the clavinet on Fascination and
instead do I play keyboards? That's me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
And I just you know, I heard a little Stevie Wonder.
I said that sounds like fun, maybe I'll try it.
We have all these jams, maybe these tapes will someday
come out there hitting tapes. We're just jamming. David be
just smiling listening to us playing, because we have an
amazing band. We had Willie Weeks on bass, Oh my god,

(01:12:37):
you know, maybe the best electric bass player I played
with for that kind of music. We had Andy Nwmalk,
who's fantastic trauma. He's in London. He's crazy, is anything,
but he's he's great, and he played drums and columns,
you know, and earl Slick was starting to emerge, you know,
and because there was no Mick ronson but David was

(01:13:02):
fascinated with Stigma sound and Philly and that sound. But
he did it his way, you know. They kind of
called it a plastics or whatever they named it, but
it was authentic for him. Whatever he did, he always
sounded like David Bowie. I didn't rehearsals. He'd fucked with
us and sound like Elder saw Johnny Cash for fun

(01:13:23):
because he had that kind of ear and he could imitate,
but he really had his own voice, didn't he.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
So then he starts working with Eno, going to Germany
and you're not called well, how did you find out?
And how'd you feel? Terrible?

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
I still feel terrible because I know just what I
would have played on every album.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
I wasn't on.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
I just know. But you know, you have to respect
a guy. Here's another direction, and God bless him. And
it's not like I wasn't working. I started working with
fusion music, like at Stanley Clark, I played with Freddie Hubbard,
Elvin Jones. I mean it was on and on. I
was doing great, but I started to miss him and

(01:14:12):
he started to miss me, and we reconvened, believe it
or not, in eighteen years after the Young Americans for
Black Tie, White Noise, and then I did everything through
two thousand and five or something like that. So I
was very appreciative to be creating again. And I'll never forget.

(01:14:36):
We're sitting in the studio, you know, the outside album
by any chance. So so yeah, it's pretty out there.
And here's what he said to me. He said, Mike,
I really I suffered with the record companies. I feel

(01:14:57):
I compromised my integrity. I'm doing now is gathering all
my favorite musicians, Carlos said, Brian Eno and me and
we're gonna go to montrou and we're just gonna improvise
with two Sony tape records forty eight connected and we're
gonna just improvise two three four hours a day for

(01:15:18):
two weeks, and you're gonna go home and me and
Brian turn him into songs.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
Well, this is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Right up my alley. Right, That's all I did is improvised.
They didn't even tell us keys. Sometimes they played us
Marvin Gay in the headphones and they told us to
play against it, and then they took off Marvin Gay
and you had some crazy collagio sound and then it
turns out to be a song called I'm Deranged or
this and that. So it was a fantastic musical experience.

(01:15:46):
But he said, I need to go in with you
guys to get back to myself. So this is gonna
be a very avant god album. People are not gonna
like it. Then when we toured his manager A bil Zie,
he runs to State. He came to me said, can
you talk to him about doing the hits? I said, Bill,
you talk to him. You're the manager. This is I'm

(01:16:07):
happy here. You're rich, he's rich. Let him do what
he has to do I promise you will end up
doing hits again whenever that comes. It happened a year
or two later, so he had to do it for
Saul and I haven't delight the album, but it's not commercial.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
You work with Eno for the first time. What does
he add? Picture this.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
I'm on this nine foot steinway and right behind me
there's a DX seven Yamaha keyboard. And every day there
was a little music store right next to montro where
they had the jazz festival, and right next to the
studio where Queen recorded, there's a little music store. He
would buy this little box, did crazy sounds like the

(01:16:54):
tall players buy boxes. And he connect us to the
DX seven keyboard and I'm playing all this, I'm all
over the piano and I'm hearing in my head of
peep peep, peep, peep peep like and that turned out
to be on Space Boy or something. But he had

(01:17:16):
a lot of taste. He told me his instrument was
the studio. So he took me Alpha dinner, and he
wanted to know about Bill Evans and jazz, and he
respected my playing, and he in his book he calls
it the garsthonic style. So there was a deep respect
and of course he's kind of a whack o genius,

(01:17:36):
you know, in a whole different way, which just shows
you how deep art can be if you're not sucked
into the you know, the bullshit, you know. And it
was fun working with him, and he had a nice vision,
and he played jokes on David every day and crazy
stuff we go on in the studio, you know, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
Ultimately you go on the road. That's David's a little
bit of an underplay. I saw it at the will
Turn and that's his last tour.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
You saw that one.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Oh, I was there absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Yeah, that was a fun gig actually, and well he
was very loose.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
And without all the airs, and that's why we made
it cool.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was a breath of fresh air,
you know, right. That was that was the last to
sadly we had. Look, we had been on the road
thirteen months ball and we did one hundred and thirteen
shows and he gets a heart attack in Hamburg, Germany,
and I'm playing for him on the stage and I
see him holding his heart and I could feel my

(01:18:43):
fingers tightened up because we have this spiritual, telepathic connection
from so many years of playing together and I said
something was wrong, and he managed to get through the
show and they zoomed him over in hospital. He had
thence put in and never after that. I did one
or two shows with him and me alone with Alicia Keys,

(01:19:06):
like some Benefits, and that was the last shows he
ever done. He did two more albums later. He wanted
me to move to New York that I had my
whole family settled here. Had I have a regret because
had I moved, which I couldn't was impractical when my
kids were in school and all that. But had I moved,
I would have been on those last two albums because
he used everyone from New York and he told me so.

(01:19:28):
But whatever, I'm happy that where I contributed is where
I contributed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
You know, Okay, when did you know he was sick?

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
I heard it only through rumors and he never told
anyone except one or two people. And there was a
biography being done by me at the time, by some
English guy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
I think it was called Bowie's Piano Man or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
And the author said to me, can you listen to
these sixty songs or eighty songs that you played with
through David's career? And critique to all of them, and
now I had never done that. I had to step
for hours and go through every single song. I was

(01:20:14):
overwhelmed because it was good him and me and it
was magical. And so I wrote David and I said,
I'm in shock here. This ship was better than I thought.
And within three seconds I got an email Mike. We
did a great body of work. And I got off

(01:20:35):
the phone and I said, Susan, I said, that's the
last time I'm going to hear from him. He said
something very final. We did a great body of work
and three months later he was dead.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
So he's such a big part of your life. Is
it like a death of a member of a family. Yes. Yes,
Just to go back to put a rap on it,
you say that he treated you as his piano player.
It was a musical connection. To what degree did you

(01:21:13):
have experiences or a relationship like two people might be
a member of a band but might talk about, you know,
what they had for dinner or some movie. Was he
that kind of guy or did he keep you at
arm's length?

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
No, he was very sociable and he considered his band
close friends. Now we were in a bus together right
for years and so we talked philosophy. He was going
to be a Buddhist. He told me the Buddhist guy
said you better go sting, You'll have a bigger effect,
and he was smart. We'd be going from one city
to another, and by the time we got the next

(01:21:50):
city had read three books I mean kind of like
You and that were just like absorbing, absorbing. And sometimes
we wouldn't see him, but many times after a show
we'd be sitting in He used to like to watch
The Office, the original one, the English version would really rissed,

(01:22:12):
and we would watch that after while we're in the
bus going to another country a city.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
And he was.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
Very warm person. He had a lot of feeling. When
my dad died in the mid nineties, I had to
be at the funeral, and my dad made sure. He
asked me when I'm going to Finland and when the
tour was over, and he worked out his death right
in between those two things. It was unbelievable. My dad said,

(01:22:43):
I want you to play these three songs, and I'm
getting a Steinway. It was all planned, and then you
go back on tour and I go to the funeral
and I go to rehearsal right after, and David gave
me the biggest hug and sincere condolences.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
That was David Bowie, that was David Jones, or that
was the real person, that was not a persona. And
I think that's where his love and the music was
underneath whatever crap they might have been on the crust
on the top. You know, it's just a horrible business.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
Okay. Your father and mother, your father in law, were
they proud of your success or with your father in
law was always you know, it's like Bruce Springsteen mother
saying go back to college when he's talk about the
trucking company. Or were they thrilled about Could they even
understand your success?

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
The only one who understood was my dad. He was
put on the planet to support me, and no matter
what I played. He was on his dying in bed
one time and I said, Dad, I'm playing in Arizona
discosta with Dox Everson and a symphony orchestra. He had

(01:23:56):
just told me two hours earlier you couldn't go down
to the delicatest and he loved his pastrowomy sandwiches. And
he got on the plane and he was at the
gig handing out Champagne to do Stevenson and the Band,
totally alert and happy in his mid eighties. The show
was over. Back in the wheelchair, flumped over, looked like

(01:24:18):
he was gonna die.

Speaker 3 (01:24:21):
So he was. He was the one who got it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
My mom medical doctor, my mother law medical doctor, my
bad in law, trucking business.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
It was unfortunately, I can understand this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
What makes you say that?

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
That's my own story going back to Okay, So those
seventeen years when Bowie is doing his thing without you,
what are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
I played a lot of jazz, did a lot of teaching,
and I became part of a group called Free Flight.
It was a flute player who played in the La
Philharmonic that loved jazz and classical. Was Ralph Humphrey on
drums who played with Zappa and Algio, and a great
studio musician and a bass player named Jim Lacefield and

(01:25:05):
myself and we mixed classical and jazz. We had a
lovely career. Played on Johnny Carson three times. We played
at the Hollywood Bowl. We played at Lincoln Center for
a jazz jazz classical group. We did pretty good. We
had an agent and we played those performing art centers
of whole two thousand people. So they have built in,
they still out and we had a good ten to
fifteen year room. I was totally happy. And then David

(01:25:27):
Cole I got a sub for those other gigs after
and so I was good at Stanley Clark was a
great bass player. I played on piano and a lot
of his movies Boys in the Hood. That's me playing
piano and a.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
Woaho a little bit slower. Hey, let's go back to
Bowie for a second. Do you have a royalty interest
from Bowie at all?

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
You know the number zero?

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
Yes? Okay, next, that's what I thought it was. But
just making sure, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
So in London in nineteen seventy three, the union scale
for three hours was eighteen pounds, which was thirty three dollars.
So I'm pretty fast in the studio. So on Aladdin's Staine,
I made one hundred and fifty dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:26:14):
How long are we there? Well, I did you know?

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Maybe three sessions over a few days, three three.

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
Hour sessions, six hour sessions. Okay, let's let's see it.
I don't I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
I don't want to upset you too much because you've
heard it a few times, and you know, David's viewpoint
is use my name. And he probably didn't know what
I was even getting paid, because he himself was being
ripped off by the manager at fifty percent, as I
told you, and he was bankrupt in the eighties, so
I don't know that he knew. All I knew was

(01:26:50):
in the later years when we said, can't we get
a million dollars for this tour? We're giving our life
away from He said, just use my name. You'll be
busy and you'll be working the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Some truth to that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
But the English guys Nick and David Sheep passed legendarily.
What's the word just then?

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
Is it legendarily? Okay? You talk about working with Stanley Clark,
working on movie scores, et cetera. Are you just sitting
at home and the phone range or today it's an
email or are you working it networking? How does all
this should happen?

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
I never did anything. The phone would bring christ you know,
I tended to deliver, and I love music and I
love communicating, co creating with people, so I didn't really
do anything. And sometimes there would periods no work would
come in, but all of a sudden, The movie Stigmata
comes out twenty five years ago, and actually the same

(01:27:56):
director who did the Ukrainian thing. But that movie comes
out and I do the score with Billy Corgan and
then Billy Corgan says, you want to go out with
the Smashing Pumpkins. Things would always come in, but there
would be those very rough times where I'd have to
just refinance my house just to.

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):
Buy Tell me a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
I should bring my wife in on that one. She's
the one who suffers because she's paying the bills every Monday.
And it was not easy, you know. And several times,
over many years, we had to refinance our house and
never get us going for six months for a year,
and then you're paying more mortgage. Sometimes, grace of God,
I would get another gig, and sometimes I didn't, and

(01:28:44):
sometimes we're gonna have to sell the house. And then
all of a sudden, Bowie calls, you know. I mean,
it's a rollercoaster. Would I recommend that kind of a career.
You just have to love the music so much that
you don't care what the fuck happened to you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:00):
Did you ever get so frustrated that you contemplated giving up,
not for a second.

Speaker 2 (01:29:06):
B I would just go play the piano for ten hours,
and I got better. When I had no work, I'd.

Speaker 3 (01:29:14):
Compose, Okay, to what degree? You know? It's one thing
if Stanley Clark is calling, Billy Corgan whatever, But to
what degree could you work on your own when no
one was calling.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
I always had solo gigs and trio gigs. I'd go
to Israel, I'd go to Japan, go to the Blue Notes.
I always worked. There was small clubs called two dollars
Bills that was on Franklin and Bronson. I worked there
for years, maybe forty six to eighty dollars, and did
a Friday and a Saturday. I played in San Diego

(01:29:46):
and another jazz club for six years. I played there
six nights a week, sometimes over six months. So I
was always working. And I love anything I played because
it was jazz or it was a great rock band.
And then, like I said, I was smart enough to
add the income through my piano lessons that I taught,

(01:30:10):
and that was steady because students came, you know every week.

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
Okay, how did you build that business? Word of mouth?
Word of mouth? Okay, there are a lot of people
who are great players and shitty teachers. So what's the
key to being a good teacher.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
I might be a better teacher than player. If I'm
going to be really honest, If I've done five thousand concerts,
I'd say two thousand were great and three thousand okay,
phoned it in or whatever I've thought. Ten thousand students
nine nine hundred and ninety were great, a few didn't
go right, And it's it's getting out of your own

(01:30:51):
way wanting to answer the question. The problem with classical
teachers and chanced you must do this, you mustn't do that.
My viewpoint is what do you want to learn? Why
am I going to put you on an excursion of class?
But if you want to be a singer songwriter? I
taught Vonda Shephard. She did the Ali McBeal show. All

(01:31:11):
I certainly, oh good, Yeah, she was my student at fourteen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
Wow. So how skilled does someone have to be for
you to teach them?

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
In the seventies, I was like a tyrant in New York,
and they had to be willing to do eight hours
a day and be very advanced. But now, so many
years later, all I require is desire, they don't have
to play. I teach doctors and lawyers on Zoom all
around the world and they just love it. And that's

(01:31:45):
all I need. And I did all the virtual also
class and stuff I taught the jazz people. I taught
people who worked with Miles Davis. I won that game
a long time ago. I actually like teaching simple songwriting
and simple cause I'm playing simpler now that I ever did.
And I was always had to be jazz for was
now simple pop cause, but getting the magic out of them,

(01:32:09):
whether it's solo. I played a cancer benefit. That's when
I met your nephew right two weeks ago. And you know,
I do a lot of that stuff and I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
You know. So when you're playing two dollars bills, is
it depressing at all?

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):
No, it's always filmed. I get two dollars each person.

Speaker 3 (01:32:28):
I'll leave it at that. Okay, how do you meet
Billy Corgan? And ended up working with Billy Corgan.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
So we're in France and one of these television shows
and there's several bands in a circle and Bowie was
one of them. And I'm in the dressing room and
bolways have a new discussion with Billy Corgan about God,
and he says tells his bodyguard called Mike, he'll want
to discuss this, and he said, what do you think
about God?

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
It's not a guy sitting up there waving a hand
striking people. There may be all that is. I don't know,
infinite intelligence something. I know it's bigger than just the body,
but I didn't know much more to stay other than that.
And then we became friends. And then he's auditioning. I'm
in a jazz gig in Wisconsin or something, and I

(01:33:16):
see he's auditioning paddle players because there was a mess
with Smashing Pumpkins and the drummer and the terrible and
they needed a keyboard play and it was auditioning people.
So I called him. He said, well, I never thought
you would want to work with me. I said, you're interesting,
and I'd like to. And that's how I got that gig.
You know, we have about one hundred and eighty hours

(01:33:38):
of DVDs and never released with Kenny Aronoff and oh
my god, it wasn't a Pumpkins band. It was a
Billy Corgan tour. I did a Pumpkins tour that one
of their final ones. These bands always have final gigs
and then they do ten more final gigs.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
Okay, Billy Corgan has a reputation as being somewhat mercurial
and difficult. Is that a misperception or what is the
insight into that? It's not a misperception. But for better

(01:34:13):
or worse, he knows what he wants and he doesn't
stop till he gets it. He maybe could get out
some soft sandpaper and refinement a little. Maybe he has
now because he's married and got some kids. I think
he's changed because I sat him with him at the
Hollywood Bowl about a year or two ago and it
was different. I also, he got married last year. I

(01:34:34):
played his wedding, So he's cool. But I saw him
pretty rough on the guitar players and bass players in
the band, you know, James and Darcy. It was painful.
He respected me so much. We never had an issue
with him. But one time he came into the bus
after a constant in Japan and he went around to

(01:34:54):
each person in the band and must have a photograph
of memory, but told each one what they did wrong,
and it really hurt me. So I went to him
and I said, Billy couldn't you wait till tomorrow? Everyone's
coming off the stage. The audience was happy. We played good,
he said, these people are coming to see me, Mike,

(01:35:14):
and my job is to give the best I could give.
And when I hear something wrong, I wanted fixed.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
So how could I fault that?

Speaker 3 (01:35:22):
I might say? Can you do it with a soft touch?
That's all? Okay, you're a jazz guy. Smashing Pumpkins certainly
had an arrow where they make it commercially successful. But
is that music to the lady enough interesting enough for you?

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
My challenge when I play with any of these rock bands,
even Bowie, what can I find that contributes and ads?
Sometimes it's minimal and sometimes it's a long and Billy
is a funny guy. We'd be doing and he'd stop
the band playing for twenty thousand people and asked me
to play Summertime by myself.

Speaker 3 (01:36:09):
Okay, how did you hook up with Trent Reznor?

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
He uh opened with us for Bowie in ninety five.

Speaker 3 (01:36:17):
I remember being at the Forum. Were you at that show?
By anyhow? That show I was not at? Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:36:21):
So we were on tour together, not in Europe but
in America, and they would play the first half of
the show, and then there would be some dovetailing where
David would sing a trend song and TRP would singer
David Saw and he would be always listening to me
in rehearsal.

Speaker 3 (01:36:39):
I couldn't understand why I didn't even know him, and
we'd walk in the hall to the dressing rooms and
we sort of not never was introduced, and one time
in Keyboard magazine or Downby, somebody asked him in the nineties,
who would you like the next recovers and he said me,
and I was felt flattered, And then that didn't occur

(01:37:00):
for another two years. Then I did the Fragile album,
which was a great double album, and and then a
few years later he invited me. I think it might
have been at the Wilton again nine in Shales. They
were it was their last. Do you remember seeing me
at that one? Because there's so many last shows, No,
I Jim Garrino was the manager. I certainly remember that

(01:37:22):
last show, all the things about the ticketing. Unfortunately I
do not remember you being there. I'm not sure it
would have have been maybe in two thousand and six. Yeah, yeah, anyway,
I played two Stars at matt As, not but he
said something that was hard for me to grasp or
or absorb. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I like to

(01:37:45):
bring up friend of mine and he's been my biggest inspiration.
And then he announced me, and I'm thinking, I hardly
know you, and we come from different universes. And then
I remembered when we were in the studio. I played
on fifteen tracks on the Fragile album, but he only
put me on three. I said, Trent, what happened? And

(01:38:07):
he said, your influence was so strong and so connected
with Bowie, I was losing my voice, so I picked
the three that I felt with work. I said, this
is exactly what I said to him. I said, I.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
Really respect that, but I also said fuck you, and
I said, please put them out instrumental someday because it
was amazing and he was a great producer. He had
sixty keyboards in the studio in New Orleans is the
place that burned down, and then he had three pianos
for me. Pick your choice. I mean, so what is

(01:38:40):
his magic?

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):
What does he bring?

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
What I could tell you is in nineteen ninety five,
David Bowie said to me, watch out for this guy.
He's going to be the one, and you ended up.

Speaker 3 (01:38:54):
Working with him on the Social Network soundtrack, which was
his first big success.

Speaker 2 (01:38:58):
I think gone girl, I think I remember. And there
was Watchmen, which was an eight part series on HBO.
He would always call me for anything he couldn't play
because he plays the piano, right, but anything that he wanted,
something a little fancier. But I don't know if I
did Social Networks to say I did that on Wikipedia,

(01:39:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:39:22):
Twenty ten, Okay, how do you get hooked up with
the Dillinger escape player? I have seen that act.

Speaker 2 (01:39:30):
Those guys were on the same trend show and they
were wilder than nine ers now. They were hanging from
the speakers. Well maybe that's where I saw them. Okay, okay,
I was on that show and that's where they heard me.
And they thought, oh, this motherfucker is as crazy as
us in a different way. So they called me to
play on that. It was so much fun, and the

(01:39:52):
Stinger was actually directing me. It was a hard song.
It was in hard meters and I had a lot
of fun. It was just one of these little magic moments.
You meet somebody in the elevator and you connect, but
you never see him again, you know, And then what
about pretty reckless? When I was doing all these COVID
things through streaming, I had every singer who loved David

(01:40:16):
Stingwood made from Adam Lambert to Boy George and Duran
Durant to Joe Elliot, and she was one of them.
She said, let's do a quickstand, so we met on that.
I mean, I'm pretty lucky because over those years there
must have been one hundred Stoners. The only ones who
came anywhere close to David when they worked with me were.

Speaker 3 (01:40:38):
Steel and Sting. When did you work with Sting.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
At the Wilton? One of those shows, he did Lazarus
in Blackstar, which two of the songs from that last album,
and it was breathtaking what he did. And they weren't
friends or connected, but the love was still there.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
Okay, if one does a little research about you online,
they find for a while you were remember of scientology.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:07):
Chick Korea turned me on to scientology in nineteen seventy
and something didn't feel kosher, but I respected him, so
I thought maybe he said there's some good communication skills
and bloody blah blah blah. So I did it from
seventy to eighty two. But I couldn't take the structure
and the hierarchy. It just wasn't who I was.

Speaker 3 (01:41:28):
So I left.

Speaker 2 (01:41:29):
But Stanley, at the time, my wife was managing chick
Corea and she fired him and he disconnected from me,
and I never saw him again to the day he died.
But yet he had been the godfather of my kids
and who were best friends, and we played shows together,
him on synthesized me on piano and this kind of stuff,
and we went to Israel together in Japan. But that's

(01:41:54):
what occult mentality can do to people. And I guess
I had a vulnerability and I had the ability to
find what's right in things, but there were things that
just didn't feel right. So I had to leave, and
I left. And so when I left, I had no

(01:42:16):
friends because everyone in the Church of Scientology canceled by me,
and I was like a heretic. And then everyone wasn't
a scientologist still thought I was in scientology. So I
had a lonely, lonely ten years. But that's when I
found a lot of my own classical music. I had
a movement of music that I put together in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:42:35):
And I still do it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:36):
It's called now music, and I used the concept of
improv that we do in jazz, but I did it
in classical, so I could sit at the piano and
improvise a sonata and it sounds written. But I developed
it over thousands of pieces. I actually have over five
thousand pieces of music i'd written. Had I written that
out by hand, it would take three hundred years, but

(01:42:57):
it would just come. I would sit there and all
of a sudden, I mean, I could do this ten
thousand years and not stuff moments. There's a bathroom nearby

(01:43:19):
and some food, so that's still. I developed a lot
of music that way, and I have a copyist who
not tates it all. I don't play them. I do
them once and give them to classical piatus who can't improvise.
So just like there was Baroque music, Renaissance music, classical
romantic minimalists, this is called now music. But I've been
doing it for thirty years and nobody knows about it,

(01:43:41):
because they'll take another one hundred and fifty years before
my music was discovered. Because people are happy that I
did a lot understanding God bless them, you know, I'm
not gonna reject that and say it's below makers. I
write symphonies and this bullshit. You know, I love people,
I love music, and I love creating. With people, magic happens.

(01:44:02):
It's that old saying when tool more gathered in my
name and something magic happens. When you're by yourself, it's fine,
you get with somebody. It's something with Brandy Carlin last
month song and I played the simplest piano possibly play,
and I loved it, you know. So you know, I
get the strangest calls. Just when everything is falling apart,

(01:44:25):
I get a call, okay, just to go back to scientology.
Was there anything positive about that experience. I liked some
of the communication skills where you learn to listen, where
you learn to ask the right questions. They had a
drug program, not as good as AA, but I helped
a few people get off drugs who were heroin addicts

(01:44:47):
that worked. There was some processing where you could remove
some traumatic incidents. But for the most part, I'm not
a person that works well within structure or hierarchy, and
I'm not just kind of a free spirit. So I
knew even in nineteen seventy the day would come, I'd
have to leave. But it took me a little longer

(01:45:10):
than it should have. But Chick stayed to the day died,
died a travolter and Tom Cruise, So there's something that's there,
but it didn't I needed my freedom. I was finding
I was giving my power away to l Ron Hudbrid
instead of to myself.

Speaker 3 (01:45:28):
That's not good. And when you went to leave, to
what degree was that process difficult in terms of them
forget the emotional decision to leave. You know, from the outside,
they don't seem to like people leaving.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
Oh, forget about it, you know. And because I was
a celebrity and I had played many scientology organizations around
the world, this was a shock. So they for ten years,
I got a call every week trying to get me
back in and I never did.

Speaker 3 (01:46:03):
Okay, But other than the calls, did they haunt you
me some stories they say they come to the house, etc.
Did you have those experiences?

Speaker 2 (01:46:11):
I had one or two of those. They didn't want
to mess with me because I have a big mouth
and I go to the press. But so and also
the people who were in certain positions who would be
nasty to others like you would describe me. They liked me,
and they they just thought I was ignorant and misinformed,

(01:46:33):
or somebody was in my ear. They didn't know that
I smelled bullshit. You know, I have a bullshit to
Tepta somewhere in my brain. Did you say your wife
was managing Chick COREA, Yeah, and she really put she
put return to forever back when they couldn't whoa wait, wait.

Speaker 3 (01:46:50):
Wait you marry this girl? She's from the bungalow colony?
How did she become a manager?

Speaker 2 (01:46:57):
Chick came up to me in nineteen seventy nineties, said,
my something about Susan that she knows to know the business,
but I think she could be a good manager for me.

Speaker 3 (01:47:08):
Can you will you allow that? And I said yeah?
And she was great, but she knew nothing. But she's bright,
she's smart, she's lovely, she's warm, and she knows how
to talk to people. But she told me just the
other day, she go all these meetings with my Worston
and all these cool people and and she just wouldn't
say a word. So they thought she was like this

(01:47:30):
silent genius. But she was just trying to learn the business.
She took a few classes at UCLA, and she did
great things for your because returned to forever. They were
fighting at that time, and they were offered like a
million dollars a guide to go on this tour for
a few months. She got them together, so she used
some of her skills and all was good until I

(01:47:52):
left the church. Chick wanted her to divorce me. Go
think about that. Of course she was loyal. And just
to be clear, you joined the church. Did she join
her church?

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
She didn't want to, but she thought she would lose
her marriage if she didn't join with me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:08):
She never liked it. So how long did she manage Chick?
For maybe three years? And she had any other music
business adventures.

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):
She did Billy Chiles, who was a great pianist and composer,
and then she did film composers for a few years.
And for the most part, she prefers being a grandma,
and she keeps an eye on my ship. But she
doesn't want to. She hates the business, but she will
give me advice when I do some stupid shit, you
know which, Yeah, I'll take that gig and I'll be

(01:48:41):
away three months and make forty dollars. Well think about that,
But about your two year old grandkids. You know that
kind of shit, you know, normal women thing.

Speaker 3 (01:48:51):
Okay, when we were talking about setting this up, you
were in Europe. How much do you work now outside
the home and you know, paid gigs? How much am
I out of the country versus no, no, no, How
much are you playing gigs?

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Maybe fifty a year? Fifty shows solo piano?

Speaker 3 (01:49:13):
Yeah, what kind of shows? And who gets you these gigs?

Speaker 2 (01:49:18):
Solo piano gigs are pretty easy promoters because there's no
fuss nor must and I show up and I love
playing solo piano. I've done it in Israel. It tour
through Israel in different places. Sometimes my jazz trio. That's easy.
Sometimes a stinger and pianist. I work with Jane Oliver.
What a long time ago. She was a neighbor in Brooklyn.

(01:49:39):
Her name was Janie Cohne. She's the one who signing
something enchanted evening. Barber streis In and her were both
on Colombia and she told Colombia either she goes or
I go. So that fucked her career up. They let
go of Jane, who work with her studio work would
pop in again. The students were consistent. Just I was

(01:50:00):
playing with symphony orchestra. I actually did an orchestra arrangement
of Aladdin saying which I wanted to bring something fresh,
and I had a sixty piece of orchestra and I
played and there was some Bowie alumni. Then I went
to London played with another rock band, and I went
to New York work with Judith Hill, who used to
work with Prince and Michael Jackson, very good singer, and

(01:50:20):
we would someone producer was doing reimaginations of Pink Floyd
and interesting projects. I get these things out of nowhere.
I'll come home and the phone rings or an email.

Speaker 3 (01:50:44):
Okay, those are the projects. If someone is booking you
or your jazz trio. Do you have an agent who's
getting these gigs.

Speaker 2 (01:50:52):
I used to back in the day. No, Now they
just call on I deal with it. Bowie told me
something funny, he said, London told me this. He said,
don't have a manager, but have the best pr god,
best lawyer, best account and blah blah blah. I don't
know that that's totally true, because he had managers. And
you know as well as I know that the accent
made it needed great.

Speaker 3 (01:51:13):
So I never made it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:14):
I'm just underground. You know, I'm the secret source when
someone needs some help, you know, whether it's Saint Vincent
on her album. I played on some of these people's
first albums and then they launched, and well, fuck Mike,
you know he got.

Speaker 3 (01:51:29):
It's going okay. Someone calls said, Mike, yeah, I want
you to do something, but you're doing something else. You're committed.
Who do you tell him to call? They can't get you.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
Every time I've done that, it's backfire, really terribly. Not
because who I sent wasn't proficient, But that's the difference.
And you know better than me, or as well as
I do, that are and technical expertise in virtuosity two
different things. I'm blessed to have both because I practiced

(01:52:06):
one hundred and fifty thousand hours and still practicing. And
any time in this compensation that I could move my fingers,
I was happy. You know, that's my happy place.

Speaker 3 (01:52:18):
So you know, So why exactly did these circumstances backfire?
Which ones? Do you mean? Will you recommend somebody when
you're unavailable? Ah?

Speaker 2 (01:52:31):
I did it. I did it with a great clarinetis
Eddie Daniels. And I wrote a piece of music and
I sent this pianist. I got a call to work
with the Smashing Pumpkins ninety miles down the road, and
this is some esoteric classical piece I wrote for the
three best clarinet plays in the world, one with the net,
one with the Chicago Symphony, and one with la and

(01:52:52):
they asked me to write a piece for three clarinets
and pianum. So I gave the music to this. The
pianists retorted he was great, but he didn't have my feel,
and they it ruined him because they made fun of him,
and it ruined me my reputation.

Speaker 3 (01:53:09):
They never called me again, So I don't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:12):
If someone wants something that I know somebody could do,
like you know, a piano teacher. But even there people
end up disappointed because my thing is thought very specific,
and if somebody does play like me, and there are
many imitators, it doesn't have the same you know vibe,
you know, because it's this karaoke.

Speaker 3 (01:53:34):
Okay, if we use a different instrument. We talk about guitarists.
People debate the best guitarists I have, but I think
it's Jeff Beck that's not relevant. But there's Jeff Beg,
Jimmy Hendrakes, Eric Clapped and Jimmy Peach. Then there are
people who were stylists who would never go on record
that they're the best guitarist, Keith Richards, Pete Towns In etc.

(01:53:57):
Where do you put yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:53:59):
I'm look I played with Jeff Beck with Stanley Clark
in nineteen seventy nine, so I was at his house
in Tunbridge Wells and if he wasn't fixing his cars,
the guitar was always in his hand. So we shared
that love and Simon Phillips was the drummer and we
had like three or four gigs. You know, that's the

(01:54:20):
funny world, the jazz world. And he wanted to be
with jazz players. He wasn't at my level jazz wise,
but he was Jeff Beck, and he imagined. He sat
in with us on one of the last Bowie shows
with the Spiders, and him and Mick Ronson they played together.

Speaker 3 (01:54:35):
It was unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:54:37):
So I'm with you on Jeff. And you know, Paco
di la Cheer is one of my favorites. He died
at sixty ten years ago. Amazing flamenco player, but he
moved in some jazz circles and with John McLoughlin, Al
Demiola and different people. But how about piano players you

(01:55:00):
in the hierarchy?

Speaker 3 (01:55:02):
I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:55:03):
I can tell you my favorites. I love Nicky Hopkins,
who actually gave some Kano lessons too, because he wanted
to pick my brain about more advanced harmony.

Speaker 3 (01:55:13):
But I loved his Well, well, you gave piano lessons
to Nicky Hopkins. I'll give you one if you want. Hey, okay,
how did you know Nicky Hopkins? The Blue and you
know he died at a young age. What can you
tell us about him?

Speaker 2 (01:55:34):
Sweetheart? Nice documentary on him. Now, yeah, I've seen I
would have preferred his playing, but that's that bullshit world,
you know, with the rights. But look at his credits.
They're ridiculous. So Angie and this he I asked him
in the lesson that I was being paid for to
teach him jazz and this and that. How do you

(01:55:55):
put those songs?

Speaker 3 (01:55:56):
Together? So simple?

Speaker 2 (01:55:58):
I have a very funny story with Nicky Hopkins. I
got called by a famous producer and I'll remember his
name maybe, but anyway, I'm in the studio he's producing
this pop singer and he calls me he said, well,
I want you to play like that Bowie stuff on
these songs, and that's a pop song and I'm trying
to do that and it's wrong and it's wrong. So

(01:56:19):
he micro manages me through every bar and the piece
is done in two hours.

Speaker 3 (01:56:25):
I hated it.

Speaker 2 (01:56:26):
I love where I played, but I hated the process.
And I said, you know, that sounds like a friend
of mine. That sounds like Nicki Hopkins, And he said, oh,
that's who I meant to hire. Oh god, because I'm
with Bowie, he's with the rolling song, He's we beatles.
I'm not el So you know, I don't know how

(01:56:48):
that works. But it was hilarious and pathetic, you know.
But Nicki was special Leon, Oh my god, Leon Russell,
and I watched them every night. Oh yeah, I mean
when I got cool to play in my first rock band,

(01:57:10):
I listened to him and Doctor John for one full
day straight and I was straight for the rest of
my life. So those guys. I love Billy Joel, I
love Elton. None of them are pianist the way I am,
but they don't have to be. I love guys. I
like the way Bowie plays piano, and Billy Corgan and Trent.

(01:57:30):
Some of the things they play are much deeper than
what I play. But I have finance, I have touch,
I have some people just like some of the fancy shit.
But these days, as I said, I'm playing simpler than ever.

Speaker 3 (01:57:43):
Okay, So in the runway you have left, which could
be one minute or twenty years, any specific goals or
you just feeling you know it's going like it's going
away for the phone to ring. I'll practice, I'll write
some jazz stuff. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:58:01):
This might sound insane, but I considered his first seventy
years my apprenticeship. So I'm just beginning my career because
all I did is support all these other motherfucker's my
whole life.

Speaker 3 (01:58:13):
It's my turn, and.

Speaker 2 (01:58:15):
Funny things are happening now, you know. I mean to
get called to Dublin to play with a symphony orchestra
and make good money, and then a rock band, and
I'm getting paid thousands and thousands because they think I'm
gonna die, and they might be right.

Speaker 3 (01:58:30):
I never forget.

Speaker 2 (01:58:31):
I was playing the Blue Notes with Stanley Clark in
the nineties and he said, Mike, just wait till our
seventies would go into legacy. Mode said, what are you
talking about? He said, they'll bust your chops now, but
as soon as they know you're gonna die, they treat
you much differently. You know, poor guy, you have a cane,
you're walking in a wheelchair. You'ren't gonna get a hard
at time because look, let's face that, all all friends

(01:58:52):
they're going. My dad's biggest loss was every day call
me and said another friend died. That's what he suffered
with in his last few years of his life. And
I'm seeing that now, aside from all musicians I lost
who committed suicidal overdose, which are hundreds just the old
age now. And thank god, I'm in good shape.

Speaker 3 (01:59:13):
But who knows.

Speaker 2 (01:59:15):
You know, nobody knows how old was your father when
he died eighty nine. But he didn't have to die.
He had an ulcer and they could have fixed it.
He said, No, he knew I was struggling. He wanted
me to have whatever money he had left, so he died.
He bled to death in the middle of the night
in the hospital. He wouldn't sign the paper. He would

(01:59:36):
have been he could, he would have lift to one hundred.
He had great genes. Well, hopefully you have those genes too.

Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
Somebody told me.

Speaker 2 (01:59:44):
I don't know, but somebody said to me, as long
as you have a purpose in doing what you love
to be okay, when that's over, you'll probably split. And
I'm accepting that. I mean, I know the limitations of
a body, but I also know I feel good when
I'm playing, and I don't feel so good when i'm not.

Speaker 3 (02:00:03):
Okay, you're not on the road, you're at home. You
play every day, and how long you play for.

Speaker 2 (02:00:11):
In the old days it was eight hours, four hours,
two hours. Now, I just compose, improvise, arrange, and I
do sessions right where I am for hundreds of artists
known and unknown, because people can't afford to find me
here and there. Some do, but they send me a
track and I just put piano on it, and they'll
send me a couple of grand and it takes me
an hour. So it's good. I'm fine. I feel bad

(02:00:36):
for other people, I don't feel bad for me. I'm
one of the lucky ones that snuck through. And I
don't know how.

Speaker 3 (02:00:44):
I never did a day game other than the piano.
I wouldn't know how to do anything. Well. We're lucky
to have heard your story, Mike, I want to thank
you so much for taking this time with my audience.
I love your audience, I love your letter, I love
this interview. Been waiting for it for five years because
I know you asked cool questions and it's been a

(02:01:04):
pleasure being with you. You got me smiling.

Speaker 2 (02:01:08):
That's all that matters. If you want to watch something
really stupid, some crazy director from London who used to
make sci fi and movies travel following me around for
a few years, and there's this documentary called Mike Carson
and his eighty eight Friends, because there's eighty eight and
he did a documentary and you can see it on
Amazon and it's it's interesting. It's not a great documentary

(02:01:31):
and it captures thirty percent of me, but another part
that we didn't discuss, so that might be fun.

Speaker 3 (02:01:37):
Food for thought for next time. Until next time, This
is Bob Left SAIDs