Patrick Leonard

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftnet's podcast. My guest
today is Patrick Leonard, who has a brand new album.
It all comes down to move Patrick. Why that title?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Why the title? Let me get this mic a little
bit lower so I can see my face. How are
you doing, Bob.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I'm doing pretty well. Good to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I haven't seen you in a long time. Last time
we were outside the hotel cafe exactly, good men, Los Angeles. Yeah,
it was a good night. It was fun. Why the title?
The hotel cafe was Leonard Cohen's son Adam was playing
exactly and I was there with Leonard. And the title

(00:51):
of the record is something that Leonard said to me
when we first met, and it's from a song that's
really about little anecdotal leonardisms. And we were talking on
a very first meeting and he said, you know what
it's all about, And I said what he said, mood?
He said, your good mood, good life, bad mood, bad
life is really that simple and uh, and it really

(01:13):
stuck and I really saw him kind of live that
as the philosophy of like you just got to be
in a good mood if you want to be it
to be okay, and as silly as it sounds, it
resonates with me. So the song is called It's All
come down. The song is called at the end of
the Day, and the line is at the end of
the day, it all comes down to mood. So that's

(01:34):
that's what it is. It's something Leonard said to me.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, I was thinking also a different interpretation of the
mood of the music. Am I totally out of space here?
Is there a factor that I would say? I'd say
outer space isn't good? That's about right? Yeah, No, you
know the that's a nice interpretation. I hadn't thought of that,
and I like that one because it's a there's a
lot of moods in there, that's for sure. Tell me

(01:59):
about the issue the album, why'd you decide to do it?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, I suppose we need to tell the truth.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Here, right, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
So, my wife and I had relocated to the East
Coast where we are now. We're in Connecticut on a farm,
and at that time I've been doing some work with
Roger Waters on a solo project, and then he at
one point said, we're going to put that on hold
because I want to redo Dark Side of the Moon.

(02:28):
So I started working on that with him and worked
for a couple of months on it, and then I
then it was time to kind of get his band involved,
and I didn't feel like I wanted to do that
for some reason, so I backed out. And I you know,
he's I'm sure furiously pissed at me, but you know
that's what I did. And then, ironically and completely coincidentally,

(02:54):
at that same time, his ex bandmate Gilmore called me.
David called me and said, I want to make a
solo record. This is true. You know you can't make
this shit up. And he said I want to make
a solo record, and I said okay, and he started
sending me music and I started working on it and
sending him back and after a while, I felt like
I can't really help him. You know, this isn't working,

(03:17):
so I quit doing that too.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, okay, let's get a touch, let's get a time
right here. What year were you originally starting with Roger
Waters on this project.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
On I would say probably Roger and I started in
twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
One, Okay, so it's during COVID.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, exactly during COVID, And at the time I was
living in LA when we started.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
And you abandoned that project because you didn't want to
go on the road.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
No, it wasn't the road it was. It was it
was the dark Side project that Roger did, and I
think he did a lovely job on it. But it
came to this time when it was I was going
to just we were going to bring his band into
start doing this, and I felt like I didn't. I
didn't really feel that I didn't. It's not how I

(04:06):
wanted to do it, and it wasn't my record, and
it wasn't my project. It was his. But I think
it was partly Bob because after Leonard passed away and
people would say, what are you going to do? I
would my stock answer was I'm pretty sure Leonard Cohen's
the last house on the block in terms of collaborations,
and I really felt that I really did so, And

(04:27):
to this day, I have yet to write a song
with anyone else, you know, since twenty sixteen, and I
probably I might, but I don't see why I would.
And so this idea of working on things as a
producer and an arranger and a keyboard player and contributing
to other people's work, I really felt like it was
behind me, but hard to say no to, you know, Roger,

(04:48):
and hard to say no to David.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Okay, wait, wait, let's stop with David. What was your
history with David such as David knew.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
You when I was when I made a Brian Ferry
record called Bete Noir, I think around nineteen eighty five
eighty six, something like that, And while we were doing it,
there was a song called Limbo that I had written
with Brian, and I said it would be great to
get Gilmour on this. It just felt like he would

(05:17):
be great on it, and Brian said, well, let me
call him. And the other thing is Guy Pratt was
playing bass on Brian's album, so there was easy ways
to get to David. And so the next thing we
found ourselves in England recording David's some guitars of David
on a couple songs, and then after a couple of days,

(05:37):
David invited me to lunch at his house and after
lunch we went to the boat where a studio was
and he had a dad player or a cassette player
or something and there was a little synthesizer and I
think he played bass and we just jammed for a
little while you know, and I think it all got recorded.

(05:58):
I didn't even realize it was being recorded, but we
were just jamming. And then sometime later, and I can't
remember exactly the timeline, I get a call and it's
David and he said, I'm in la and we're finishing
up the new record, which was Momentary Lapse of Reason,
and would you like to come up to the house
and hear where we are? And I said, of course.
So I come up and I'm sitting in this house

(06:18):
and listening to this playback and the song goes by
it and he says, do you recognize that? And I
said no, and he said, well, you wrote it. So
what he had done is he had taken this thing
that we did and made made a song out of it.
And so and then and then at that point he
would come to the house with you know, multi track

(06:39):
tapes and I put some synthesizers on some other songs
on the record, and so, you know, we kind of
kept we kept in touch after that, you know what,
in little ways, you know. And and then in fact,
the years later that I was working with Roger on
Amused to Death in and we were in England and

(07:01):
I was going out to you know, to see David,
or going to dinner or something just to see David,
or meeting him at a bar or go to his
house or whatever. Roger say, you know, go ahead, but
I don't want to hear about it. It was like,
you know, this weird tense thing. But anyway, that's how
that came about. And I think part of why the
relationship stayed as long as it has is, you know, guy,

(07:24):
we have Guy Pratt in common who's one of my
favorite bass players, and he's on Toy Mattnee and third
Matt Nane and like a prayer, it's all Guy Pratt,
you know.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, Okay, So David says he wants to collaborate, you're
working on the tracks. What makes you decide this isn't
going to work?

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well? I think what in reality that you know, the
simple thing of it was that if somebody sends me
something and I listened to it, and I feel like
I can make it better, and this is the contribution
that I think I can make that will make it better,
and I make those contributions and it doesn't resonate, you know,

(08:08):
you don't. It's far from taking any of it personally.
It's like you can do a few of those and
then go, I'm not the guy who can help you.
You're looking for some other help. This is the help
that I know how to give.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
You.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Know. I can take your progression that you sent me,
or your track that you sent me, and I can
do some edits on it, and I can rework it,
and I can add the section that I think it adds,
and I can do some things to the chord progressions
to broaden them in certain places, just things that my
ears and my musical gut tells me I need to do.

(08:41):
And it wasn't what he wanted, and so it was
like it was really simple. It's like, I just don't
think I can help on this.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
You know. Okay, you did it and it was working
for you, but not working for him. That's right, that's fair. Okay,
let's go back another step. Tell me about leaving La
for Connecticut.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Well, I think, like I said earlier, after after Leonard passed,
and even before Leonard passed, I wasn't working in LA
the way I used to work in LA because the
business had changed so much and it wasn't very it
wasn't as attractive to me as it a.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Little bit slower. Is that because opportunities were not well
put it bluntly had dried up? Or was it because
everybody was recording it home and people weren't using extra people.
What exactly change?

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, I think everybody kind of well people in the
music business know what changed, but everyone has their own
personalized experience of what, you know, their version is. I
think for me, it was mostly about a lack of collaborators,
people that I wanted to work with, so I'd get

(09:54):
something would come up and it would be you know,
like I think one of the last records that I
did that I felt had any real purpose and meaning
and was good was a solo record that Pat Monaghan
did that he and I co wrote and I produced,
of Train Yeah, of Train Right. And it was a
tremendous record, and no one ever heard it because you know,

(10:17):
in the music business, the guy who's in a popular
band does a solo album, his record company and his
manager go, no one's ever going to know about this,
you know, it's kind of an unwritten law. So that happened,
and after that there was some things that would come,
you know, and even well known artists, you know, and
I just thought, no I'm not feeling this anymore. And

(10:38):
then Leonard came along and we spent those years together
and it was just you know, fun and a great
experience and learning experience, and for excuse me, for obvious reasons,
and and then after that, I didn't. I just wasn't
feeling it, you know, I really wasn't.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Okay, let's go back to something you said earlier. After Leonard,
you reached a point where you felt you no longer
wanted to collaborate. Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, the thing of you know, creating music with an
artist who's the lyricist is primarily what I did, you know,
my in my career, with exceptions, a couple exceptions. And
the exceptions were because I thought this would be fun
just to be in a room while this happens, like

(11:29):
Elton or Roger or you know, like I don't need
to write any of this. I just want to be
in the room helping if I can. And so I think, uh,
I think it just it just didn't interest me anymore,
you know.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, So would there be any situation, hypothetically where a
collaboration would look good again to you? I'm not talking
about changing your mind in the future everybody to change,
But is there any way it could be constructed, whether
you have input on the lyrics or something, or have
you pretty much been there, done that.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
There's a couple of ways for me to look at that,
you know. One is that I do have interest in
doing other projects, but not necessarily record projects, and not
necessarily with a singer songwriter or another musician. The thing
of what I'm doing and what I've been focused on,

(12:34):
and how terribly satisfying I find it, is that this
is the first time I've ever done anything like what
I'm doing now where I didn't have to negotiate anything,
and that has shown me something that I like. I
like what I see when I'm not compromising anything, because

(12:55):
every record you make with another person in the room,
you compromise, and if there's five people in there is
five compromise. And I find that this feels more direct
and more focused, and also gives me something more to
build on as I'm doing more, you know, as I'm
writing more songs and doing more coming up with more
ideas and where I want to go and what i
want to do, I've found a little bit of a

(13:19):
path that feels good even in its you know, solo
aspect and it's you know, lonely aspect.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Okay, let's close a gap. I interrupted. You tell me
again about moving to Connecticut.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
We were in La Covid hit we moved to the
house in Michigan. We have a house in the Upper Peninsula,
Michigan that's an old family house that you know, has
been there for a long time, and we sat out
Covid there and then we really started talking about the
idea of maybe changing coasts, you know, just to do it.

(13:56):
And that also, you know, I'd been in La a
long time and really kind of you know, like you said, Ben,
they've done that. I felt like there wasn't anything that
was going to happen there that was going to surprise me.
And so we were looking in upstate New York and
we actually ended up here just because at the time

(14:17):
it was close to the Long Island Sound and Rogers
over there, and we have a little airplane that my
wife can fly, and so we were just gonna have
it be convenient for that and and that's really what
brought us where we are right here.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay, I don't want your address, but I'm from Connecticut myself.
What town do you presently live in.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
We live in Killingworth and it is it is nowhere,
but it's great.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
What's the next recognizable town.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, we're between Hartford and New Haven. Okay, if you
just go a line right up, we're right. We're somewhere
right in the middle off to.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
The okay west little but you can see Long Island
Sound from where you are.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well, no, but we, like I said, we have a
little airplane that we keep about nine miles from here,
and my wife is a pilot, and we take off
and one minute you're looking at the sound and in
ten minutes you're having lunch there. So that's the beauty
of what we have.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Okay, how long has your wife been a pilot?

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Going on twenty years?

Speaker 1 (15:26):
And this was before or after she met you. She
started before and do you know what motivated her.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
She was on a ranch in northern California and they
had a little airplane and somebody stuck her in it
and said you turn this and you pull this and
it goes up, and she's you know, she learned to
fly and now she's quite a serious pilot. So yeah,
and it's a freedom, you know, we can go to
Boston for lunch, dixs an hour.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
And how big a plane do you own?

Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's just a force eater.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
And one engine, two engines, one engine. Is she instrument rated?

Speaker 2 (16:03):
She is and commercial rated.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Do you ever get scared in the air with her?

Speaker 2 (16:10):
No? No?

Speaker 1 (16:12):
What about if there's weather? Certainly living on the East Coast,
is that a more of a judgment whether to go
up or not? It is?

Speaker 2 (16:19):
It is, yeah, And that's what separates the men from
the boys right there. If you know, if you're going
to go, you better know you can make it.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
And how often does she go up in the plane?

Speaker 2 (16:31):
A lot? A lot? I mean right now we're going
down to North Carolina and a little bit for her
to work with her teacher down there, and so she's
been flying some mad maneuvers, you know, and she couldn't
today because of the clouds, but you know, she she's
I mean, we won't go to breakfast in Poughkeepsie two
days ago.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
It's that it's good fun. I'm really spoilt.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay, So if you you do have the access to
the plane, but you can certainly get to Boston. But
in terms of the epicenter of the culture in that area,
it's really New York and you're like maybe an hour
and a half a little bit longer from New York.
Do you care whatsoever?

Speaker 2 (17:15):
No, Well, we're you know what we've done when we
needed to go into the city, or we wanted to
go into the city as we flying to Teeterborough, right
and forty five minutes where a Teeterborough And twenty minutes
later we're in town. And for even in New York
or that's quick.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
And how often would you go to the city.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
You know, we we've done it a half a dozen times,
you know, for various reasons. And I had some a
little thing I did for CNN a few months ago
regarding a Madonna thing, and we drove and once we drove,
we said we should have you know, it would have
been so much easier to fly.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Okay, you're living in Killingworth, do you know anybody there?

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Well? Now we do, we do.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Now.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I mean we've been here three years and so we've
made some friends, and we found some restaurants, and we
got a good tailor and you know, yeah, even a
good sushi bar. We're good.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
If I drop you anywhere, are you going to make
friends or is that your wife?

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well, it's it's kind of neither of us. I think
that what we have here, what really spawned a lot
of this is just the airport. So because we're at
a little airport, and little airports are like little campuses,
and so you immediately meet people who you have something
in common with, you know, and pilots do less drugs

(18:36):
than musicians, so you know, the reason to get to know.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
So what kind of people hang out at the airports pilots?
I have realized that do they tend to be flying
fanatics or wealthy people or what kind of interest in
what kind of socioeconomic status are these people.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
We're at a small airport and the runway is not
long enough to land a jet, so the the extreme
wealth is not there, which is you know, I think
it's nice because it's just people that love to fly,
and they you know, they go from twenty to eighty,
you know, in age. They're all over the place. And

(19:14):
so we've you know, when we got here, we started
having some parties and we would just get a list
of people from the airport and invite them to the house.
And now we have, you know, people to hang out with.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
That's very interesting. Now, did you sell your house in
Los Angeles. Yes, so presently you just have the family
place in Michigan on the up and the place in Connecticut.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, and we have a condo in Valencia as well.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay, so you're now living not completely in the Boonies,
but not directly in the city. In terms of musical collaboration,
you want somebody to play on your with on a record,
I realize you're now in control. Is everything done digitally?
It doesn't matter where you are or did you ever

(20:00):
want to have people in your studio? Well, the.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Like this record Like Mood, some people came here and
some people worked remotely. And it was still during COVID,
so you know, we still had that factor. But the
musicians that were in New York were close by. Like
Tony Levin is in Is. He's upstate and he came
and a couple of times we flew to him because

(20:28):
that was really easy. We just fly to Kingston. Jerry
Leonard came here. Kevin who engineered and mixed, he was
you know, he could come here because he's from the city,
and we have a guest house and we have a
guest room, and so we were able to accommodate people
that way. John Pettitucci came here and the rest was

(20:49):
done remotely just because it was COVID time. You know,
the idea of having musicians here is really something I
will do in the future. And the building that I'm in,
that's the student radio, can accommodate. You know. We can
set up a band in here with a little bit
of adjustment, and I would love to do that, and
I think the on next record I'll do that. I

(21:12):
will have at least a small rhythm section and record
it to record together. You know, on this record it
wasn't done like that.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
So tell me about the status quality size of your studio.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Well, it's the room I'm in right now has ten
foot ceilings and it's twenty by thirty five. And there's
another room on the other side of this with double
doors that's the same size with higher ceilings. And so
this is the studio where in this room I have
all my keyboards and my concert grant and my spinnet
and my B three and all that stuff is here.

(21:49):
And the next room would be the tracking room and
will be the tracking room. But we didn't track anything here.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
And the physical building existed when you bought it, or
do you build it.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
No, it was here. It was here. It was a workshop.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
And you talked about the engineer on your record. But
to what degree are you an engineer or techi yourself?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Well, uh, once you're kind of set up, you know,
I have I have a lot of great pre amps
and a lot of great microphones. And once you're set up,
it's just a matter of pressing record and making sure
it's not too hot, and in terms of being able
to balance things, and you know that the idea of
mixing a record. I can mix a record, you know,
but I'm fairly independent. I can I can do this

(22:33):
by myself, except for you know, playing the drums and
the bass and the guitars. I'm fairly I'm good, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Okay, let's go back. You wake up and you realize
LA is not working for you. At what point in
this process do you say, I want to make my
own record.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, that's what That's what occurred after I realized I
really didn't want to make any other, anybody else's record.
And at first, when I looked at it, I thought, well,
I've got a bunch of stuff. Let me listen to
what I have. Look at what I have, and it
just didn't feel like it was the beginning of any
kind of artistic you know piece. So I just started
from scratch. I just started writing songs and and that's

(23:18):
really just what happened, you know. And from there, as
soon as I had demos, I found the right drummer
to do what needed to be done, and Kevin came in,
and you know, I had Patti John Pattatucci's an old
friend from New York and he knew Tony and Jerry
Leonard played guitar. He's an old friend from New York
and Kevin new him as well. So you know, that

(23:40):
part came together pretty quick. And my old guitar people
from l A. Wendy Melvoy and Tim Pearce and James Harrah,
you know who. I've worked with all of them for
three four decades. They're all on it. And then and
then the the guest guitar players Martin Barr on one song.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Now, how do you know Martin Barr?

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I don't. It was a cold call.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
It was a cold call, okay, let's be very specific,
call or email.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
I don't remember who made the introduction.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
But okay, so there was a mutual.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Friend somebody, somebody found something. Yeah, somebody knew a way
to get a way to eat mail. I think it
was I have to think about this, but I think
somebody got me an email address, and I just emailed
and went, here's what here is who I am, Here's
what I'm doing. Would you be interested? And and he
said he would be interested. And I sent him the
song which is the song sad ass World on the record,

(24:40):
that's Martin and he killed it.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
In the email. How much did you reference him his
work in? Jeff wrote tolls. Were you a fanboy to
a certain degree or were you bore? Like I'm Patrick Leonard.
You know who I am?

Speaker 2 (24:56):
No, no, no, no, I mean I don't. I don't
remember if we even got into that sort of conversation.
But the truth is, between me and you, there was
no band for me better than Jethro Toll in the
mid seventies, you know, from like seventy three to seventy six.
Forget it.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, okay, big kady. These might be two different things,
but we'll talk best and favorite. What is the best
Jethro Toll?

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Well, I would say thick as a brick, and I
would say the second best, which Ian Anderson hates his
Passion Play just because the second side of Passion Play
is some of the most spectacular playing and arranging that
I think it must ever put on vinyl.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Okay, I love Thick as a brick, But tell me
why you think it's number one.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
I think it's because of how old I was and
seeing it performed four times and seeing comparing it, you know,
to what I just seen the night before or the
week before, because in those days, it was concerts every
week everybody, you know, and we'd go and go and
go and go, and that was just was that was unreal, unreal.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Okay, you talk about starting becoming a fan in seventy three,
If you talk Jethro Tull, you have a bifurcation between
the this was people and everybody else. Right, So, Mick abrahams,
although does that mean anything to you or that's just
its old thing?

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Well, I was because I played in bands with people
a lot older than me. When I was a kid
in Chicago at twelve, I went to the Kinetic Playground
and saw the first Zeppelin shows and the first Toll
shows ever that anybody saw in America. And I saw
him at the same time, you know, that night at
the Kinetic where you know, it's a famous night. I

(26:48):
was there. I was twelve years old. Somebody's mother had
to drive us.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
So the the obsession possession, you know, laying on the
floor or with the headphones on a little bit stoned
listening to vinyls at nauseum was kind of that was
my life, you know, from very young until I went
on the road at sixteen years old with show bands,
you know, to buy, make money to buy keep Let's.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Stay, Let's stay with Tall. Okay, I dropped out at
a certain point. You still interested in what Ian does?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
I'm not And I try to listen, and I really do.
And Ian's on the album as well, by the way,
he's playing flute on Bishops of Fright, and he doesn't
know Martin's on the record. They'll they'll find out, you know,
that they just made an album together. But and those
are the two guests, those are my two guests. And
that's who I wanted. I wanted I wanted Tall because
to me, that's what motivated me more than anything to

(27:50):
try to create something unique. Was Tall more than Yes,
more than Elp, more than Crimson, more than Floyd. I mean,
this was this was my you know, I'm that age.
This was the sauce, you know.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Okay, let's go back to that famous night at the
Kinetic Playground. Did you go to see Tall?

Speaker 2 (28:10):
No, we went to see Zeppelin. We didn't even know
till we're playing. I mean we heard their name on
the bill, but I didn't know who they were yet.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Okay, this was sixty nine, sixty eight, sixty sixty eight. No,
if it was Zeppelin had to be sixty to nine.
But in any event, having seen Zepplin a few times,
how were Zeppelin that night?

Speaker 2 (28:32):
I think they were extraordinary because it was all new
and raw. And what I remember is Aaron what's his name?

Speaker 1 (28:40):
He?

Speaker 2 (28:40):
I think he ended up producing films.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Oh, Aaron Russo.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Aaron Russo. It was his place. It was called Aaron
Russo's Kinetic Playground, And there was the litter, Savoy Brown,
Jethra Tol and Zeppelin, and Zeppelin came out and played
a set, and then I think Tall played a set,
and then Zeppelin came back and Robert Planter, Jimmy Pager,
one of them said, you know, Aaron Russo just said

(29:04):
we can play do we drop? And I think it
was two in the morning or three in the morning,
that somebody's calling somebody's mom to see you can come
get us now, you know, for real, And so I
think it was that religious experience thing, you know, of
this thing that you've never seen anything like it in
a little tiny place for hours and hours and hours.

(29:25):
You know that said, I remember Tall more than I
remember zeb them from that night.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Okay, you had never heard Tall when you saw that show.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
I think somebody had played me boret and I think
they were it was the stand Up. It was right
at stand Up because this was tour. They didn't tour,
so I think it was Martin.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
I personally think this stand Up is the best album.
And I certainly remember when the Inside stuffed and another
one I love, which was, you know, really slagged at
the time. I'm a big fan of Benefit.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
I'm a huge those were it. You know, I always
say everybody has their three, so I sort of go, well,
it's it's stand up, Benefit and thick as a brick
would be my three. But then Passion plays in there
for numerous reasons, and then there's no more.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Well, you know the album on Chris Liss that he
did where they did all the research to decide what
people liked with Farm on the Freeway whatever. I thought
that was a good album. You know, that was a
famous album where he won Metal Album of the Year,
but that's not his fault. But I thought that was
a return to four.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Yeah. Well, you know I wasn't. I wasn't listening anymore.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Okay, So you were a big brog rock guy.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Big. So if Channel Giant was really the you know
that was I was.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
I scared many a teenager out of my house with
Channel Giant. You know, I said, you gotta hear this,
and they go, what are you listening to? This is nothing?

Speaker 1 (30:57):
I mean, I'm good friends, Eric Schulman. But General Giant
never really broke in America. How did you know General Giant.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
From seeing them open for Tall? They opened for Toll
and I bought the first record, and I have every
other record since I have them all finals. You know,
you're just exposing me completely here.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
If we have a hierarchy of Prague, although I would
not call Jethro Toll Prague, but I don't want to quibble.
Paul is at the top, then General Giant, who comes
after that?

Speaker 2 (31:38):
We're talking about that era?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, if there's somebody from a
later era you want to put in, that's fine.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
No, I would I would say that. I would say
that Toll ruled it, and Giant was something that I loved,
but they weren't the same kind of live band that
Tull was, and they're kind of it's it sounds weird,
but there kind of almost wasn't to anybody else. The
Floyd shows at the Auditorium Theater before Dark Side came out,

(32:06):
which I saw them a couple of times there, those
were things that were life changing. And then I saw
them do Dark Side at the Chicago Stadium and Rogers
Amp broke and it just didn't feel like that thing anymore.
And is as glorious as it was, it just wasn't
that tiny theater thing where you couldn't believe what was

(32:26):
going on. You know, A big Crimson fan, I was
a big Crimson fan. I was a Yes fan, though
I never felt that Yes was as good live as
their records and some of these other bands. I felt
like they were better live than their records. And you know,
I don't know slidle over.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Staying with Floyd. Were you in on the Amagama Adam
Hart mother level.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, oh yeah, right at the beginning, Piper's at the
gates are done.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Okay, let's go back to growing up. You grew up
where exactly.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I was born in Upper Michigan, and at six years
old we moved to Displains, Illinois, which is just outside
of o'haa airport in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
And your father and mother did what for a living.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
My mom was a journalist, ran a newspaper in Michigan,
and then when we got to Chicago, there was a
company that she worked at and she ran the newspaper
for the company. It's all she ever did. And dad
was a musician who did whatever else he did so
that he could go play gigs on the weekend.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Okay, so that's where it's going. So there was music
in the house for minute one.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, yeah. And my sister was a concert pianist and
eighteen years old in nineteen sixty eight, So I was
at the Grand Park sly Stone thing. I was nine
years old. She brought me. I was there, Okay, so
I saw Hendrick. She brought me to see Hendrick. She
brought me. She's turned me onto all that stuff. You know,
Dylan and all of it.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Okay, so only two kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Three my younger, but my younger sisters. She was just
too young to have any effect on what was going
on artistically or musically.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
You know. Okay, you're talking about Hendricks, you talk about
all this era, three best shows you've ever seen. We're
not locking in an amber, so relatively off the top
of your head.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Okay. So so I would say, and I actually have
a tape of this show. Here that a front. We
used to sneak a Nagra into these.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Wait wait, wait, wait a second. How did you have a.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Nagara in under a coat?

Speaker 1 (34:29):
No? No, no, no, no that way.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
It wasn't me that did it.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
No, the Nagra until digital recording was the peak.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yes it was.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
The average kid did not have a vograa. They had
a little moroaco. How did you have a bagraa?

Speaker 2 (34:43):
It was one of the kids in high school's father's
thing and he had it. And we have I have
all kinds of shows, but I'm telling you I have
stuff for freak out. I have like Tarcas, you know,
Crimson stuff, Jeff Beck stuff. But what we have is Eclipse,
which is them touring Floyd touring metal and then experimenting

(35:04):
with Dark Side before they recorded it, and that show
was a life changer. The thickest a brick show was
a life changer. And I'd say the third show I wouldn't.
I couldn't put my finger on it. I mean Leon
Russell maybe you know, or Elton, those those early Elton
gigs or the early I mean, I was a huge
Leon fan and it's on the other side of the spectrum.

(35:26):
But well, Leon could just you know, he was crazy,
big influence on me too, both of them.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
How did you get into Leon?

Speaker 2 (35:34):
I'm a piano player.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, I mean, when I remember Leon the second Joe
Cocker album, he had the credit for writing Delta Lady Okay.
And then I went back and bought the first solo
album Ben Mad Dogs and Englishman happened, and then Leon
Russell and the Shelter People.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Leon became gigantic, right. However, I think that.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
I burned out on Leon. I'm the Triple Leon Live album.
I found that was one step too far.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, I think I was the first album and then
Shelter People, those two albums which would which would parallel
the Elton John and Tumbleweed connection. They were you know,
they were cousins at the same time. And then for
me it was Mad Dogs and so those three those
were those are my three leons.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Did you see Mad Dogs live?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
I did see that one.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I wish I had. Let's go back, I wish I had.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
So your father's musician. Do your parents make you take
piano lessons? Like at age five six?

Speaker 2 (36:38):
No, behind me here sitting right there.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
This is not video, but you're showing to me, so
describe it.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
There's a nineteen fifty nine chickering sitting behind me that
my parents bought a nineteen fifty nine for my sister Mary.
I was three, and at that point she started teaching
me songs from the sound of music, and at five
I accompanied the High School of v show. I was
the accompanist in first grade. So it's I've never done

(37:06):
anything else, and I don't. I don't what am I
I'm just obsessive, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not.
I don't have that kind of crazy brain where I
can just hear things and know them. I don't have
that at all. I just I'm just a bit obsessive,
and I have a deep Midwestern work ethic that keeps
me at it no matter what.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Okay, so did you ever take lessons? I did?

Speaker 2 (37:30):
I took. I took piano lessons. There's a there's a
family story. In fact, the book is still in that
piano bench where the teacher said he doesn't know the alphabet,
so I can't teach him this yet. And so I
did take piano lessons, and I took classical lessons as
well as jazz lessons, probably till I was about twelve, thirteen, fourteen,

(37:57):
and then you know, I was just playing bands all
the time.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
And how good a reader are you?

Speaker 2 (38:02):
I suck at it. I suck at it. And the
reason I suck at reading is that I've always been
reluctant to learn other people's music. I never wanted to,
and I still don't. I don't really study other people's work,
you know, in listening to bands when I was a kid.
The one thing that I remember doing just because I

(38:24):
was I felt I needed to, is I spent a
year learning tarcas, you know, because I wanted to be
able to play it. But that's that's as far as
it went. I to this day, I couldn't play any
of those songs and I couldn't play targets anymore either.
That takes younger hands.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Okay, you're almost date your seven Oh when the Beatles
are on at Sullivan, does that mean anything to you
at the time?

Speaker 2 (38:49):
It does, because I had a sister who was obsessed
with it, and so I had beatle boots and a
beatlewig when I was seven years old. Like no shit,
I was right there with it. It was cool. And
because Dad was a musician and we had a record
player in the house, all those records were there too,
So it was everything Mary brought home from Maretha to
all the Smoky Robinson and all the R and B

(39:11):
stuff and whatever rock and roll she was listening to.
And Dad was listening to George sheringhen Stan Getz and
Oscar Peterson and Charlie Parker and Joe Beam, you know,
and it was all in the house at the same time.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Okay, you're obsessive about playing the piano, but you're going
to school at the same time. So how well were
you doing in school? How socialized were you at school? No? Good?

Speaker 2 (39:35):
You know, little cluster of friends that hung out in
our rooms and listen to records and bad grades all
the time, and out at sixteen years old, I went
on the road. I never finished any of it.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Okay, you're young. When the Beatles break and people were
a little older, you immediately bought guitars and formed bands.
When did you start forming bands?

Speaker 2 (40:01):
When I was nine, my dad and I were taking
lessons from a brilliant man in Chicago, Naed Vince Duresi.
He was a jazz court of box player, which is
like an accordion, but it makes it sounds like an organ,
and he was an amazing player. And Dad was taking
lessons from him as a sax player, but so it
was just theory. And then I was taking lessons from

(40:23):
him as a pianist, and so he taught me to
walking basslines and chords and chorden versions, you know, jazz
chord in versions. And this is a crazy thing. But
my dad would play on weekends all the time. He's
played on weekends, and they had a supper club gig
that was ongoing, and the quarterbox player, his quarterbox player

(40:44):
worked at J. C. Penny in the shoe department and
didn't end till nine o'clock on Friday. So I had
to play the first two sets so dad bought me
a far fees of mini compact really nine, yeah, so
I could play this trio gig with my dad drums,
him and me. And now I'm a nine year old
or a ten year old who can play the intro
to light my fire and I've got my own organ.

(41:06):
So I was in every band in the neighborhood with
guys that were many, you know, much my senior, because
I could go at nine or ten. I think it
was about ten when that came up.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
And then was there a dream at that point?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I don't know if I don't remember. And this is
somebody asked me this recently and I said, I don't
remember ever thinking about anything else. You know, it was
about getting the equipment, and then getting a Hammond organ,
and then getting a Leslie and then getting a Wurlitzer piano,
and you know, that was it. I played in a
band that played at the Aragon when I was thirteen
years old, and we had a melotron that we bought

(41:50):
from Rick Nielsen at Nielsen Music in Rockford, Illinois. When
he was in a band called Firecracker. He just worked
at his dad's music store and the mother of the
guitar player and the band had to take a second
on the Cadillac to pay for the thing. And I
have pictures of me sitting at this thing, you know,
playing a melotron and whatever else I had at the time,
at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. I was twelve or

(42:12):
thirteen years old.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Okay, your father was what we call a working musician.
But music took over the world. Not that there was
music before and not that there's not music today, but
people who lived through that era, No, it was different.
Along with playing music, these people were very famous, very rich.
Did you have any desire to be a star or

(42:36):
you always said, I'm just playing music and who knows?

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah, no, no, none of that. For me, it was
just think. I think I was always more obsessed with
the actual playing and the notes and the writing, and
the writing was probably the most important. I mean, one
of my favorite parts of being a musician is the
ability to improvise, to just sit down at the piano
and play and improvise. And I have thousands of hours

(43:02):
of improvisation with no intention of anyone ever hearing it,
just because it serves me. And that's where I find things.
So the themes and things that I've come up with
over the years that for songs, they're just a matter
of sitting down and improvising and go, oh, that's cool,
and I write it on a piece of manuscript paper
and becomes a song.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Okay, assuming your home on a regular basis and is
supposed to traveling for whatever reason, do you play the
piano every day? Yeah, every day, and every day is different.
How many hours might you play the piano?

Speaker 2 (43:36):
It depends, I mean my work. It depends on what
I'm on and right now, because I'm starting to promote
this record, and it's a little bit new territory for
me just to be so occupied with these things and
these performances and interviews and things that I've had to

(43:57):
just stop my work process. My normal thing goes from
waking up at one in the morning with a lyric
idea and dictating it into my phone and then sending
it to my computer down here and coming down and
writing the music for it, and coming back to the
house about two in the afternoon to have something to eat,

(44:17):
and then go back in the studio to pass out,
you know. And that's not uncommon for me, and I
like it that way. It's you know, I have sometimes,
you know, sixteen seventeen hours in the studio just by myself.
And if it's not writing, its recording something I've already written.

(44:42):
I tend not to write lyrics in the studio. I
don't like to. I tend to write them away from
the instrument. I don't see it at the piano and
write lyrics. I write lyrics elsewhere, usually just in the
house in the dark, you know, at night. And so yeah,

(45:03):
the answer to how much do I play right now?
Not as much as normal because I'm doing this, you know,
but if we weren't doing this, I'd be playing right now.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Okay, do you write the lyrics first or the music first?
Or it's different in every case?

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Well, there's those two. There's those two cases, right, And
the what I would say about it is that I
prefer the lyric first songs. So where I would normally
just sit at the piano or come up with something
or wherever I'm sitting, whatever instrument I'm sitting at, even
if it's the computer here behind me, because I have

(45:48):
it's not on right now, but I have, you know,
I can sit down and play things here too, and
that that way they get recorded, right it's so much
harder to get a shape, and my tendency, or I
think it's probably a lot of people do it this
way is you put the music down, and then you

(46:08):
put a melody down, because you have a melody, you know,
if you're writing a song, there's a melody, and so
I sing the melody down, and then I spend however long,
agonizing over trying to make those syllables that came out
of my mouth, the nonsense that came out of my mouth,
to fill in that melody into words, and it's no

(46:28):
fun and it makes bad lyrics. So the best way
for me is to write something from a thought, from
a feeling, from a concept and flush it out as
best I can before there's music, and then put music
to it. There's songs on this record, like it all
comes down to mood. I think I wrote three versions
of it, and I could write another one right now

(46:50):
because I can just look at the lyric and sing
something else. You know, it's fairly simple to do, and
so that's what I prefer. You know, it's a long answer,
but that I prefer lyrics first.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Okay, this was to say Elton doesn't write the lyrics,
but it's the same thing. Bernie delivers lyrics, he writes
the music. You ever discussed it with Elton?

Speaker 2 (47:10):
I made an album where the wit he did it.
I mean, I produced songs on the West Coast. I
watched him do it.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
I Chosemoke Up Your Ass. That is the best certain
you know, the best later period Elton album by far.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
And while we were doing it, he said, we're making
Tumbleweed Connection, aren't we. I said, yeah, we are, you know,
because that was my obsession, you know.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
You know, well the birds is on that album. Yep, Birds,
I love that. So that's a real go back to
what once was.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Okay, I'll tell you a little story about Birds. Well,
the the the method of that thing. When we when
we started doing it, he said, Bernie's up and sanyonez
go up and see him. He's got two hundred lyrics.
Pick your favorite ones. So I went up to spend
a couple of days with Bernie. Picked my favorites. I
think there was ninety of them out of the two hundred.

(48:02):
Elton picked his favorites. We took the ones that were
the same and we made a notebook that I think
had seventy or five or eighty lyrics and I still
have the notebook. I love this thing. And studios, set
up drums, set up two or three drum kits, couple
grand pianos, guitar ramps, players, my keyboard, shit, everything there,
no songs. Day one, everyone's there and Elton comes in

(48:25):
and he goes to the piano and he opens a
book and it takes him less than a minute, and
he goes bat and he comes in. He shows me
it's done. I mean I want to say it's done.
I mean, it's done. He's done it. And I never
saw anything like it. And we had the whole albums
done that way. So Birds was one of those. When
he wrote Birds and we started putting down this track.

(48:48):
We finished it that day. It was like that one.
We just finished. We never did another thing to it
except mix it. It was one day written and recorded.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Okay, let's go a little bit deeper. Does he ever
sit down and play you go? No? I think you
should try something else, Elton, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
No, too much of a groupie. I mean Elton, Elton's
you know, Elton's the highest bar for me in terms
of just a creative spirit. He really is. He's absolutely
breathtaking when you watch him find these things so naturally
and so quickly and so humbly. We just share something
with you. We just last October recorded Leon's a Song

(49:25):
for you, and I asked Elton if you would do it,
because I want to make a little commemorative Leon record.
And I asked him if he would do it, and
he city would, but I don't want to play the
piano part. So I played the piano part and Elton
sang it. So I have this thing of these two
artists that I couldn't get enough of when I was
twelve years old. And we did it at Sunset Sounds.

(49:48):
So the piano that I played on the session was
Leon's piano. It was the same piano that he did
the original in the same room, all coincidental. And then
I came home and played it on my piano here
because it was a one hundred and twenty year old
piano and it didn't quite have the life in it,
so I replayed it. But anyway, so that aside Elton,

(50:10):
there's nobody like Elton, and all you have to do
is watch him do this thing.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Oh okay, okay, why did Elton not want to play
the piano part? On a song for you.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
It's not it's a tricky part. It's a tricky thing
to play that, especially if you're going to do it
true to form. A lot of people haven't done it,
you know. They just played the chords and they put
their own intro and whatever. But that little intro.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Like yeah, yeah, one in the middle.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
It's not easy. It's it's a very strange thing. And
it's for Leon, you know. He he talked about it
after a couple of times. He said, I didn't I
didn't plan that. It's just what I did. And it
has that in it. It has some sense of like
this is just a linear thought. It's not. It's not
worked out at all, and so it makes it a
little tricky, you know, And it was. It took me

(50:56):
to me a long time to get it.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Elton works fast, work with a lot of people. Do
you have an opinion, I'm fast and slow.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Uh, I don't think. I don't think it matters. I
think that although slow can sometimes be an indication of
an uncertainty, and I think you have to know you know,
the person that second guesses and that's why they're slow.
Got no time for that.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Okay, let's go back. So you play with your father
and then he got all these keyboards. You drop out
of high school.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
To go on the road, Yeah, I had. Actually, I
drop out is the wrong thing. I was thrown out
of high school because I was incorrigible and didn't have
the grades I was going to need to graduate. And
all I was doing was playing piano all day. I
would go to home room in the morning, and that
meant that they felt you were they thought you were there,
and then I would my folks were both at work.

(51:56):
I'd go home, play the piano all day and come
back at the end for me classes at the end
of the day. And that a couple of years of that,
and you're not going to get you to Bloma. So
I was out and I was sixteen, and there was
a kid in one of my classes who knew me,
and his mother was associated with a show band and

(52:17):
they needed a keyboard player. And he just said, I
know this guy and maybe he can do it, and
they called me, and his mother drove me to Traverse City, Michigan,
where I joined this show band and played with him
for a couple of years. And you know, the guy
was a pianist and I played keyboards behind him, so
and there was no charts, so he'd do some version

(52:39):
of rhapsody and blew and I had a chord chart,
so I'd have to kind of create orchestrations. And I
think it did me a lot of good because it
was flying by the seat of your pants sort of thing,
you know.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Okay, when you went on the road with the show band,
did you have a band that was playing parties and
shows at the same time. Were you giving anything up
to go on the road with the show band?

Speaker 2 (52:58):
No, no, no, no no. I was giving up getting
away from my parents being disappointed me from being thrown
out high school. I don't think my dad was, but
I think my mom was a little bit put off.
And also I think they both thought, you've really chosen
a crazy path, man, you really have, because it was
clear I wasn't going to do anything else. But you know,
it's a Midwestern family with a lot of musicians in

(53:20):
the family, and none of them have ever made a
dime from it, you know, enough to buy a couple
of beers, So I think they were, you know, nervous.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Okay, looking back fifty odd years later in your career,
have you ever had a moment where you were broken
out of money.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Sure, yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
So let's go back. You're playing with the show bad.
Is that like a fifty week a year job or
is that interbidden?

Speaker 2 (53:49):
No, it's there. They're out all the time. They're just out.
This is these people live in their motor homes and
their you know whatever hotels and go to a club
and you're there for a month, and it's six nights
a week, you know, and there's a show, and then
there's dance sets.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
That's the way that stuff worked back in those days.
So there would be like two shows that were an
hour long or fifty minutes or whatever they were with
whoever the band belonged to, and then he wouldn't be there,
and there'd be dance sets to fill the time in
between in these clubs, and sometimes that went to three
in the morning, and oftentimes just for candles. You know,
you're just excuse me, you're just playing for candles.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Okay, you're a teenager on the road. Sex drugs. Were
those a part of the lifestyle?

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Not in this case, no, because it was it wasn't
rock and roll, you know, and you need that third
one to get those first two. You know what I mean.
You don't get sex and drugs in a show band,
you know.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Okay, so you're doing the show, you're playing music, you're
getting paid. Are you saying to yourself this is great?
Or I got to move on from this?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Well, what I was doing is I was I was
obsessively practicing during the day. So because and this was
just the twist of fate, because this first gig was
with a pianist and they brought a real piano. I
could go into the club and the day and practice.
And so I did, and I practiced, and I practiced
and I practiced, and with the intention that I'm going

(55:27):
to buy keyboards. I'm going to get my own keyboards,
and I'm going to get my chops even better, and
then I'm going to go start a band or you know,
you know, somebody's gonna hire me or whatever it was,
you know, whatever it was. So what was it? It
was a bunch of little things along the way. I
think when I was I was fourteen, and there was

(55:50):
a guy in Chicago named Paul Bogus Junior, and he
got a record deal. Larry Carlton signed him to a
record deal. And I had played on the demos, and
I was thirteen, and Larry said to Paul he wanted
to do the record in Chicago with the same guys
that had done the demo. And so the first day
in the studio, Larry came and put his hand on

(56:11):
my shoulder. I was sitting at a Fender Roads and
he said, tell me, I didn't just hire a high
school freshman record. I think you did, so, Larry, and
I you know, I knew Larry from back then.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
And wait, wait, wait, you knew Larry personally?

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah? How yeah, from that record because I.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Played, oh you met him on the record.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
You didn't know you met him on the record?

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Right?

Speaker 2 (56:33):
And then? And then a couple of years after that,
I think I was sixteen or seventeen. It was actually
what it was is it was after a year of
the show band. I came to La. I think I
was seventeen.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Whoa, wha, wha, wha, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's wait,
let's let up. You're playing in the show band.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
I haven't strung this together in a long time.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
You're playing in a show band. You just said. In
addition to moving in La, you moved with your band.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
No no, no, no, no, what what what? What? I
had a van?

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah? Oh business.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
So what I did was I had my keyboards and
I thought, I'm going to go to LA and I'm
going to see what I can do. Now I'm seventeen and.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. How
many keyboards do you put in the van?

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Uh? Well, it was one of those four d'conoline vans, right,
And so I think I had a Fender Rhodes and
a clavinet and uh Mini Mogue. Maybe I think that's
what I had, and I don't I had a Hammond,
but I don't think I tried to stick it in
the van, you know, because I couldn't get it in
and out myself. So I think that's about what it was.

(57:41):
And I and I came out and uh and Larry.
I visited with Larry and had insane experiences going.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Whoa you get to LA? Where do you stay?

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Where did I stay? I don't remember where I stayed.
I think I might have stayed in somebody's apartment. Yeah,
I stayed in an apartment and I kind of don't
remember that part. Oh wait, I remember something. Maybe I
stayed with Hawk. Do you know Hawk?

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Wilensky, No I know who he is.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I don't know, Okay, So Hawk, I go back with
Hawk because Banger Flying Circus, which was his first band,
was one of my favorite bands. So I met Hawk
when I was ten years old, going to his concerts
and you know, at a place called the Cellar in
Arlington Heights. And so I came out and that yet's right.

(58:37):
And so aside from Larry, Hawk had lent let me
get this right, Hawk had lent one of l De
Carlo's guitars. He was the guitar player and Banger, which
became Madua. It's a long story there, Chicago boys. He
had lent it to El because Al was going to

(58:59):
audition for Frank zapA and we needed to go pick
up the guitar. El's guitar at Zappa's rehearsals. So we
went to the rehearsals and somebody asked Hawk if he
was interested in auditioning for Frank, and he said, no,
but Pat will. So so I did. And I was

(59:20):
around for a couple of months. You know, I didn't
I couldn't stay with it because my reading was no good.
But I was like two months of doing rehearsals for
the what was the Zodaaluur's period for Zappa, And after
that there was nothing except selling my Clavenet to have
enough gas money to drive back to Chicago.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
So how long were you in La m?

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Five months? Four months? I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Okay, okay, you mentioned connecting with Larry Carlton there and
I cut you off. What happened with Larry?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Yeah, well, it's just there's just a beautiful story because
I went up to his house which was on Mohomes
at the time, and just to visit, and he had
we hung out a little bit and then he said, look,
I have a con. I have a session today and
a concert tonight. You just want to join me for them?
And I said, of course, And so he said, I'm

(01:00:22):
gonna take a shower, play the piano if you want.
And so I sat at the piano and on the
piano was a cassette player and charts and it was
Fagan because Larry did the arrangements for Royal Scam right
and he was working on him at the time, So
it was the charts for Royal Scam sitting on the
piano and there from there he threw a n amp
in the back of his guitar in his car and

(01:00:43):
a couple of guitars, and we drove down to an
M studios. I had no idea where we were going.
And we walked in to Studio B and it was
his Eira, and it was Jony and Jocko and Henry
Lewis Wow and Larry and I sat on the couchway.
He did all his guitar overdubs on his ear right
next right. So then we go have some dinner, and

(01:01:03):
then after dinner he sit as a concert. I said, okay,
let's go. It was Santa Monica, Civic Weather Report. Choko
was coming out for heavy weather. It was that night, right,
So that was kind of my l experience. You know,
I was a little boy, really, I really was. But
it gave me a taste of something that I think.
I thought, you know, this is pretty bad ass to

(01:01:24):
be able to play on records like this and do
this this stuff. And of course you know Tony Man,
Hazira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus. Those are
my three, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Hisira is one of my three. The other two no,
But when you go back to Chicago with your tail
between your legs or how hard a decision.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Is that, Well, it was there was no there was
no money, you know, there was no money. So I
came back and got in another show man, this time
with a drummer friend of mine, and we did it
with the intention of making enough money to start a band,
and we started a band called Trillion, and Trillion got
signed to Sony and we did two albums.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Wow, those are big steps. Who you know connected to CBS?
Who was the business person who made that connection? That's
such a you got signed.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
We were we were a Chicago club band and at
that time we were kind of the Chicago club band,
and we were a progressive rock band, and we were
packing the clubs doing these forty minute weird concept pieces
and uh and you know, the their their, The interest
came and a manager came and we did showcases and

(01:02:46):
there was a little bit of a bidding war, even
if I recall, and we ended up signing with Lenny
Petzi at Epic Portrait right yeah, and made the first
Trillion album at Cariboo Wow with Gary Lyons. And I
had been up to Caribou when I was a kid
too because of Hawk, because Hawk was there, because Madua

(01:03:08):
was one of Jimmy Gricio's bands and a friend of mine,
and I drove out to visit Hawk and we stayed
up with Caribou.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
I was, you know, fourteen, Okay, just to be clear,
If you're fourteen, how did you drive.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
My friend Petro, he was seventeen or eighteen. You know,
always older musicians, always hanging out with older musicians. Okay,
until now there are no older musicians.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
You're in Trillia. This is the big leagues. Are you
telling yourself? Man, I've made it?

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
No, No, I have. I had the same problem then
as I do now. If we were to start talking
about records, I would tell you about the one I've written,
not about the one I'm about to release. And it
was my it was my nature. Then it's like, well
that record's done. And you know, also it was we

(01:03:57):
were a prog band and the label wasn't going to
have that. So whatever songs were the poppyist were the
ones we did, and the ones that had some elements
of pop in them that they could take everything proggy
out of it. That's what happened. And I sort of
felt like, well, the record sounds good and we played
well because we were a good band, but this isn't

(01:04:20):
where I wanted to be. It really wasn't, you know.
So then we changed singers and made another record that
just didn't sound good. It just wasn't even a good
sounding record, and some of the prog elements got left.
But at that point it was just kind of it
wasn't gonna work for me, you know. And obviously in

(01:04:41):
this stuff there's agonizing moments. There are really brutal moments
in this stuff, because you put your life into this
stuff and you wanted to work. But I'm pretty quick
about feeling like if the music isn't what I wanted
to be, I don't belong here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Wait, well, there are two eends ine there. You put
your heart and soul into the music. You were mentioning
this isn't the right place for me. But the other
side of it is you put your heart and soul
to the music and it doesn't break through commercially. That's got
to be disappointing too. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
I don't know, I don't know what I even expected,
but I knew we were a good band, and I
knew that if people could go to see King Crimson
in Philly, Auditorium theater. Maybe we could get there. I
didn't you know, I didn't want to be on I
didn't want to be the cow Sills. I wanted to
be Channel giants.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Okay, so you make two records, you say this isn't
where I want to be at. Then what.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Then hanging around Chicago and played started doing some jingles
to make money. Friend of mine got me into doing,
you know, playing on jingles, and I made the first
kind of real money that I ever made and started
a little fusion band, a jazz fusion band, instrumental band

(01:05:58):
with some great players. And we called it software. And ironically,
when the name came up, somebody, as we were trying
to think of a name, said hardware. As somebody said,
what about just flip it and call it software? There
was no such thing as softway yet. And then some
years later someone said, you still own that name? Like
I don't think so. But anyway, that was that was fun.

(01:06:21):
But it was you know, uh, I can't remember the
name of the label. It was Ross Trout's father, the
guitar player Ross Trout. It was his father, and it
was like a it was for M C. A. But
it was a little jazz label, and we made this
simple record in in uh a garage studio that was
owned by Larry Millis, who was the bass player in

(01:06:42):
the Eyes of March, you know, up the street from Peterick,
you know, Chicago Boys and UH. And it was a
nice record. And then and then after a couple of
years of jingles, UH, the weather killed me. And that's
that's how I ended up calling Hawk again, saying, Hawk,
I got to get out of here. And he said,

(01:07:03):
I'm on the phone with one of the Jackson's about
some tour. I'll call you back. And he called me back.
He said, you want to audition for a tour and
it was the Victory Tour. And that's what got me
to LA.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
So now, okay, just a couple of fill in moments, yep,
you have all these ups and downs ever, any middle
of the night moments like what am I doing? You know,
this isn't working? Or was it always? This isn't working today?
But I'm staying on the path.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Well, you know, in this stuff, there was a there
was another little moment that I that I've forgott until
you mentioned this, where I had in Larry Millis's garage.
I had somebody was working with Greg Almond in Larry
Millers's garage, and I came down and played on some
some record of Greg Almonds, some solo record he was making.
I don't even remember which one it was. And then

(01:07:54):
a couple of years later, Chuck Levelle was with the
Stones and the Brothers needed a keyboard player, so I
went to Sarasota, Tallahassee, I can't remember which one of
these towns in Florida, Jacksonville. Yeah, it spent a few
a few months playing with the Almond brothers.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Wait, wait, wait, yeah, Greg Alman had remembered.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Yeah he did. You know Greg?

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
I know him a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Yeah, oh he What a beautiful cat, and what a
great sense of humor, and what a great talent. But ultimately,
the most fun thing that came out of that was
at one point I was back in Chicago and that
didn't work out because I won't even go into the reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Now, ony, wait, give you one reason, or at least.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
The one reason was Oh, I can't even say it.
I can't.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Well, let me just ask you this. You're living this
parapatetic lifestyle. Is there ever any romance in these things?
Or is it music. Music. Music.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Yeah, there's there's romance, but the music was I'd say,
you know, music is what got me out of bed
in the morning.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
So there wasn't an issue of making a career choice
based on romance.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
No, never, no.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
And was there ever an issue of drugs or alcohol. No? Okay,
So you're back at Chicago and these couple of things happen.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
Yeah, And then I get a call from Dickie's manager
saying Dickie's playing at the Park West tonight and his
keyboard player got sick. Can you come play? And I said,
what what it's the music? I said, it's a solo record.
I said, I don't know any of the songs. I
don't know any songs of this, so we will be
a couple Allman Brothers songs as well. And this was
a CP seventy electric Grand with a synthesizer on top

(01:09:46):
of it, and I was going to play the double
guitar lines on the synthesizer, and I thought, okay, this
could be fun little and it was just a little
tour for you know, I don't remember how many dates
through the Upper Midwest, and so I said, you know,
it's the gigs tonight. You know, how do we do
this is a four piece band in the gigs tonight?

(01:10:07):
And he said, there'll be plenty of time. You know,
they're flying in at four o'clock, they'll meet hit the place. Well,
their flight got held up, and so what I got
was a set list with the first chord of every
song and then on we go, and there was never
any more beyond that because I kind of knew the
Almen Brothers stuff a little bit, and so, you know,
we did that for a while, but that was that

(01:10:27):
was one of the more fun things I remember doing
because it was just a four piece band hit it
really hard, you know, and really an opportunity to play
some great legendary stuff. I mean, I found a cassette
a couple of years ago that I've yet to be
able to rEFInd, but you know, you can hear those
those double solos and I'm playing the second part near

(01:10:50):
the low part on a synth in comping piano underneath,
and I thought, that's that's pretty cool, you know, to
have done that with with with those guys, you know.
So yeah, that was another little stop along the way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Okay, so Hawk says, you interested in working with the
Jackson's that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Was it was auditioning adition.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
That was an interesting tour, but no matter what, Michael
already had a success. He was going to work with
the Jacksons again. Right, this is top tier. How do
you get the gig and become the music direct?

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Audition? Cold audition?

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Tell me about the audition.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Okay, The audition was Leeds rehearsal in North Hollywood. And
I showed up and there's a d X seven synthesizer,
Yamaha keyboard, and a drum set and the drummer was
Jonathan Moffatt, who I'd never met, and it was Marlon
and Tito and Jackie came and they said, you know,

(01:11:55):
do you know any of the songs? And I said nope,
not a one. And they said, what do you want
to I said, well, just jam so Jonathan and I
just improvise and they talk about the DX seven and
they said, do you know anything about this the city?
I do because I had worked on programming it for
Jingles and stuff, so I actually knew how to program
a DX seven, which is a little bit like knowing

(01:12:16):
how to get to the moon in a paper bag.
It's an impossible thing to deal with but I knew
how So that was that, and I went back to
Chicago and everybody went how to go? And I said,
it's not going to happen. A lot of chance. So
then a couple of weeks later they call and say,
we want you to come back.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Wait wait, wait, wait wait, are you flying on your
own dime or their dives?

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Flying on my own dime? But I have jingle money.
Now I have jingle money, so you know we're not
doing bad. So they call me back. I go back
for the second audition, and it's the same keyboard, same
drum set, but now there's a guitar amp and it's
David Williams, you know, a guitar and a guitar player.
And it was the same thing, you know, except I

(01:12:57):
think this time maybe Germaine was there, but I don't
really remember completely, and so we just jammed again. And
then I go home and everybody goes how it goes.
I goes, it's not going to happen, and I have
to add this that that time. Now they're auditioning a
lot of people, and I get there and there's people
waiting with their road crew to set up their rigs,

(01:13:18):
and I'm listening through the door and I hear you know,
click click click click bit, you know, the whole bass part,
all the horn sounds, and I'm like, I'm going home,
you know, me tinkering out of DX seven Inc. Going
to make this happen. So I go back home. A
couple weeks later, somebody calls says, you got the gig.
I'm like, okay, okay. So I go back and we

(01:13:42):
start working on it. We start, you know, rehearsals and
whatever else. And it was fairly clear from the beginning
that there was a lot of stuff needed in terms
of the programming and the arranging and running the rehearsals,
and there was nobody to do it. So I sort
of became the musical director just because there was no
one else there to do that. So obviously there's a

(01:14:07):
lot of experiences there, and there's enough stories there to fill,
you know, a nice Scorsesey film. I mean, it's the
craziest thing I've ever experienced in my life. Was at
that up to that point was that tour. It was madness.
But anyway, it was good fun.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Okay, wait, it was an adventure. Needless to say, the
tour financially for varying reasons did not work out. They
were playing big places. You had experiences that many people
in life never have. But was it you've been on
the road since was it fun and good or was

(01:14:41):
it really like this is like the middle of you know, chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Well, what I tell you, it's interesting because of the
size of the stage and there were two complete setups.
It took so long to set it up and transport
it that we only played Friday and Saturday nights, and
we were off during the week and you could either
fly back t La or you could stay on the road.
Most of the time stayed on the road, and that

(01:15:11):
part was difficult because you were only playing two nights.
But honestly, when the band was very good and very
tight and great players and certainly the best players I'd
ever played with, And when Jonathan would count off Billy
Jean and start playing the beat, and I'd play the
bassline and the right hand part because that was what

(01:15:31):
I was doing, and I'd watch Michael dance that dance,
it was like it was unreal to be part of that.
And also I think the thing with Michael is when
you actually got to experience what it was like to
do rehearsals and do this and do that, and then
show time and see just how powerful he was and
how amazing and how brilliant. You know, that stuck with me,

(01:15:55):
you know, because that was really something, so you know,
it was a great experience.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
It was chaos and a lot of funny anecdotal moments
and a lot of weird stuff. But you know, that
was my first big tour, and then I did two
other tours and that's all I've ever done for tours.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Okay, wait, Victory tour ends at what's the next?

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
Who's the first Madonna tour? Virgin two?

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
How do you get that gig?

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Her manager at the time called my managers and said,
Madonna wants Pat to do her tour because of the
Victory tour.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
And it was just that simple. No one had ever
met anybody. Had she seen the Victory Tour.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
She must have or or at least, you know, knew
enough about it to know that it was probably probably good.
And my first reaction was, you mean the girl who
rolls around on the floor in her underwear, And I said,
I'm gonna pass. You know, I was hoping at this
point to get into making records. You know in La,
and then the idea was would you just meet with her?

(01:17:14):
And I did, and she said, never done this. You're
in charge, There'll be no pushback. Hire who you want.
And I went, okay, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
Oh okay. Just to be very clear, this is or
before the like a virgin tour.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
This is the virgin tour. Okay, this is the virgin tour.
This is her first tour. And this is before she
and I had written a note.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
And the Beastie Boys are opening and it's a whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yes, yes, And every night we'd get back to our
room and the shrimp and the champagne, he'd be gone
and they'd be sleeping in the couch in our dressing room.
I love those guys. This hysterical. Like every night they'd
eat all our food and drink all our booze.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
Okay, she was she was the cats me out. I mean,
so there were a lot of dates on that tour.
Were you just in the band or did you have
some sort of some potico talking about collaboration.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Well, I was. I mean I was the musical director
for it, so I put it together. And then what
happened is during during the tour, I think or I
can't remember exactly what it was. I think it might
have been after the tour, before we did Oh, it
was after the tour, before we did Live AID. I

(01:18:35):
had a party at my house and I invited her
and my parents were there, you know, and all this stuff.
And she came and I showed her the little studio
and I had this little track that I was recorded,
and I played it for and she said, can I
write to it? And I said okay, And she wrote
the song that we did at Live Aid, which is
called Love Mix the World Ground, and that became the

(01:18:57):
first thing we wrote. And that's where the writing started.
And then there's another page to that that got got
us into making True Blue.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
What's the other page?

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
The other page is I wanted to see if I
could get into scoring films because I like making up
music and I thought me, I'd like to do this,
and I always felt I should, and I did enough
of it to know I shouldn't, but I had. There
There was a movie that my managers got me affiliated
with because a friend of theirs was directing it. His

(01:19:33):
name was Duncan Gibbons, and the movie was called Fire
with Fire, I think, and it was Virginia Madson was
starring in it, and I met with him and I
watched some I watched the movie, I think, the whole thing,
and then he gave me VHS cassettes to write music
for it, and I wrote, let me see if I

(01:19:54):
can get this to play unless year what I wrote, No,
it's not going to play as it Wait, maybe it is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
This.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
So that was my movie theme, and I asked her
if she would write and the rest of the song,
the rest of that song, which was live to Tell,
and I asked her as a favor, she'd write the
lyrics for it, because then it would really help me
get this movie. And she said yes. So she was
on her way to the house and my manager called

(01:20:31):
and said they've hired somebody else. So no cell phones.
I can't call her and turn her around. So she
gets to the house and I say, sorry you ways,
you know, sorry to have you drive all this way,
but it's not going to happen. She said, well, Shawn's
making a movie. Let me hear it. So I play
it for and she writes these lyrics and she sings
this vocal and we record it and she takes a

(01:20:53):
cassette and I had to go to Michael's house because
I was going to help Michael get some of his
songs together for the Bad album. So I went to
Michael's and it's Michael and Quincy, and Michael's singing to me,
and I'm trying to note, going around trying to find
some music, and somebody comes in and said, Sean Penn's
on the phone. So I get on the phone and

(01:21:15):
he says, you got to come here right now. I say, well,
I can't leave right this minute, but I'll get out
of here in a little while. So when I did,
I went to the director's house, Jamie Foley. I think
he was living in Bennett Canyon. I can't remember what canyon.
And I walk in the door and Madonna's on the
couch and Sean's there and Jamie's there, and Jamie said,
we love the song and we want to use it

(01:21:36):
in the movie. And Madonna said, who's going to sing it?
We all went you're going to sing it? She goes, no,
it's not right for me. It's too low. It's this,
it's this, And then Jamie looked at me and said,
and Madonna said, you can score my movie as well.
I said, yeah, I can so, and that's this is
I swear this is true. This was the same day.
And here's another thing about it is that that version

(01:21:57):
that we did of Live to Tell was the record.
We just added to it. We never did it again.
She never sang it again ever. That was it. So well,
the only thing about it I like that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
I love that. I just love it the way it
goes down. I know. No, dude, it's funny to hear
the story so accidental because I okay, so that goes
into the album. Continue, how what's the next step with Madonna's.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Well, the at this point there wasn't really talk of
an album. That was just this song for the movie.
And then Quincy, this is also strange, Quincy asked. He said,
I'd like to do something with kind of a little
bit of a Shadet feel for Michael, and maybe you
could write something and send it. So I said, okay,

(01:22:49):
So I wrote and I sent it to Quincy. He said, no,
Michael doesn't like it. So I showed it to Madonna
and we sit there and write Liaisla Bonita. So now
we've got two songs. And then another crazy thing happened

(01:23:13):
is my friend Hawk, who Hawk is in all of this.
Somehow was playing on a Ted Nugent record at a
little studio in Burbank and he got stung by a bee.
So he called me and he said, I can't make
the session because I'm all swelled up from this beasting.
Can you go do the session for me? So I said, okay.

(01:23:34):
So I went down and I played on whatever, I
don't remember what it was, for Ted with in this
little studio in Burbank with this engineer named Michael Verdict.
And I walk in the room and I think, what's
where's the sound coming from? It was just unbelievable sounding, right,
So that's done. Now, that's gone. And then Madonna said

(01:23:56):
maybe we could record these songs somewhere and I said, well,
I know where, and it just we got in there
and it just turned into writing another song and writing
another song and writing another song, and pretty soon we
were done, and it was true blue and a little
tiny shithole in Burbank, and you know one of the

(01:24:18):
greatest sets of yours ever, which is Michael Verdict, And
it just happened that way. And the songs were written
very quickly, like always, and recorded just as quick and.

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):
Okay, what headspace are you at this point. You've been playing,
you're doing jingles. Now you're out with Michael Jackson and
the Jacksons, you're out with Madonna, you're with Q. You
feel like a part of this or you feel like
an impostor.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
No, I don't think I felt like an impostor. I
mean the other part of it is in those days,
part of this was Yamaha, who sponsored the Victory Tour.
A man named Doug Buttleman, who's a deer man, was
deeply supportive of me in those days. Also then got
Yamaha to supply the Virgin Tour, and the other group

(01:25:11):
of people that were being supported by Yamaha were the
Toto guys. So through all the stuff that happens, the
network that was kind of the network, you know. I
got invited to a couple of parties and was later
told stories where someone when who was this kid, like,
what was this kid doing it? You know, and it
was Jeff. Jeff said no, he's all right. Jeff Pica

(01:25:31):
said no, he's all right, and it was he was.
Jeff was kind of in those days certainly kind of
the godfather of the session scene. And I think, you know,
for whatever reason, Jeff felt like I could hang and
I think that was a big part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
How'd you know Butterman?

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Buttleman was the Jackson Tour, the Victory Tour because Yamaha
supported the Victory Tour and it was all d X seven's.
There was twenty seven ors, I mean DX seven's on
stage and Grandam and so you know that made me
I'm hardest and a lot of those sounds ended up,
you know, all the DX sevens from then on. They

(01:26:09):
were just part of the patches. But like the horn
sounds and bass sounds and some of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
I don't know that part of his career, but that's interesting, Okay, yea.
What is Madonna's attitude when you're doing True Blue? Is
it like I'm on top of the world. I can
do no wrong, or like, you know, holy fuck, we
better get this right, or I'm just doing this today.
I could be doing something else tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
It's good. It's good. It's good to think about. I
think the the one thing amongst many things that I
would say about Madonna and her work, ethic and her
abilities is there was never a second guess, never was it.
Like I don't know about this. I don't know about this.
It either was or it wasn't, and we were just
moving forward. And I could say that with a clear conscience.

(01:26:58):
It was never any know nothing about I don't know
about this. I don't know about this. If we were
doing it, we were doing it, and it was the
same for all the work we did. It was just done,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Okay, so the record is finished, the record comes out.
What is your experience of the record coming out?

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Remember what I said earlier. It's like my experience was
way to hear the next one. That's how I felt
about it. Oh okay. The other thing that happened is
I had done a close range so I had this
movie score that I had done from the song, and
I think there was some there was a little bit
of fun in that. There was a little bit of
fun that there was a movie with this theme. But

(01:27:47):
you know, honestly, really it's really the truth. I'm just
getting up in the morning and writing music, and I
always feel like it's going to be better than the
last thing I wrote. Oh Okay, it's terrible, isn't it.
It's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
You said you did big tours, so you went out
on true Blue.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Yes, I was musical director for for the what was
called Who's That Girl to her right, which was True
Blue and Who's That Girl?

Speaker 1 (01:28:13):
Okay, the next album. You know, my favorite song on
the next album is Cherish. Can you tell me anything
about Cherish?

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
Yes, that she didn't like it, that's the only one.
She didn't like it. But we did it. We did it,
and she and she she did. She went along with it.
But you know, for some of the promo and stuff
I'm doing now, I've been learning some of these songs
again just so I can play them and sing them
and kind of get through them. And Cherish is Cherish
is deep. Cherish is like it's deep harmonically, and it

(01:28:47):
was a shuffle and it was all these things that
were I think me sneaking shit, you know, in there.
But yeah, I think Cherish is a monster. And Cherish
was done. The way we cut Cherish was the bass part.
I put the piano part down and then the bass
part and the guitar part and the drums, which were myself,
David Williams, and Jeff Karr. We played live, so we

(01:29:09):
did the rhythm section to that degree live And when
I listened to that, I think It's just some of
the best playing I've ever done. And I'm just playing bass.
But it was like what a track man. And to
sit in the room with those two guys, I mean
there was more rhythm between those two guys than kind
of the rest of the world put together, you know.
So it is a real joy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
Okay, the previous album was a little bit of a lark,
you know, it started a different thing. Now when it
comes to make another record, the like a prayer record, Yeah,
is it more planned out? Does she call you and say, hey,
we're gonna write, We're gonna do this. How do you
write the songs for that?

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
At that point, I had the studio, the True Bil
True Blue Bilt. So I had owned studio which was
Johnny Eumer Recording down on Hollywood Way and in Burbank
and very set up. My stuff was very set up,
and so I I had an MPC sequencer, which was
the first Akai sequencer, and a bunch of synthesizers. And

(01:30:11):
I would go down there very early in the morning
because I had a little gym in there, and I
was at that point taking way better care of myself
than I am now. And I would go in and
meet with a trainer and work out, and then at
about nine I'd go into the studio and write, and
I'd write from nine till eleven when she would show
up and I would show her what I'd written and

(01:30:31):
she would write the lyrics and sing it. And we
did it the next day and the next day and
the next day, and in two weeks we'd written like
a prayer the whole album.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
Okay, was it like Elton? Once she committed to the melody,
that was it. There was no second guessing.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
No second guessing. I mean, I'll tell you something that
most people won't really believe, but I swear it's true
every one of those songs, everyone except oh Father, because
we did it a different way when she wrote it
that morning, when she wrote those lyrics and I had
written that music, and she went in and sang it.
She never sang them again, just like Live to Tell

(01:31:09):
It's the only time she sang it. Those were her
lead vocals, and they were done.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Well. How many puncheons in that type of stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
Uh huh uh huh No sing it twice. That's it.
I'm telling you. So people could say whatever they want. Man,
you know, this chick could really nail it. She really
could nail it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Okay, needless to say, there's a lot of money being generated.
Who's making your deals? And are they giving you like
are they letting you have half the publishing or do
they just want to give you the writer's share? I mean,
who's looking after you? And how fair is all this?

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
Mark Hartley and Larry Fitzgerald were my manager and nobody
took anything. I got it. I got everything, you know, like,
no one took any publishing, no one, no, there was
no there was not ever even any talk of any
of that because I think the the value of the
cap collaboration proved itself on True Blue, you know, it

(01:32:18):
really did.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
And then in terms of production usually it's four, it
could be three, it could be five. Did you get
half of the production money credit to Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
Yeah, okay, you know there was there was There was
like four points and I think I got two and
a half.

Speaker 1 (01:32:33):
Wow. You know, So the money comes in, what do
you do with the money?

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
Buy shit?

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Bob? You buy shit? What shit? Did you buy?

Speaker 2 (01:32:44):
Frivolution stuff? No studio stuff? I mean I bought a
sports car and I you know, I bought a sports car.
It wasn't my thing, you know, still isn't okay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
So that's a lot of money. Where did you spend
the money? Do you invest? You buy real estate? What'd
you do with it?

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Well, there was business, there was business managers at the time,
and you know, it just it just most of it
just got saved. I guess, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:33:10):
Okay, So the like of prayer is done. Does she
want you to go back on the road? And you
say no.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
Exactly, and and so what happened was I, uh mo,
Austin called me and said, you earned Warner Brothers like
a half a billion dollars in the last year. Would
you would you like anything? You know, he said, like,
do you want an office in the building? Do you want?
I said, I'd like to make my own record, which

(01:33:39):
was Toy Matinee. And so I started writing that music
and putting that together for myself. And then she wanted
to do that tour and I said I wouldn't. She
asked me if I would help her audition the musicians.
So I did so. When I was doing the Toy
Mattanee Wreck, I was kind of going in the mornings

(01:34:02):
or afternoons or whatever it was. I don't remember it
wasn't long. It was a couple of weeks, just to
help her with auditions, and you know that was that
was that?

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
Okay, the fact that you did not go on the
road with her, did that affect your relationship with her
creatively in working with her?

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Well, I think you know after and I don't really
remember the chronology, but the other record that we did
around that time was Breathless was I'm Breathless for the
Dick Tracy movie. And that was a record where they said,
you know, Sondheim's written three songs and we want a
whole album, and we got three weeks. So we basically

(01:34:44):
wrote all those songs and recorded them all with big
bands and everything else in just a few weeks. And
then after that, there was I scored a movie called
with Honors and Richard Page, and I started a song
called I Remember, I'll Remember, and I think Madonna came

(01:35:06):
in and finished it up and sang it, which was
just another thing that I just asked her, Oh, I
know why because the director was a friend of hers.
The guy who directed with Honors was a friend of her,
So that's why she did it. And you know that
that was one of those another one of those things.
It was done in an afternoon and was a number
one record, and then after that we didn't work again

(01:35:30):
until real light.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
Okay, let's pause that. Now we're on Toy Bat. They
good experience, bad experience? What was it?

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Well, it was it was. It was a great experience.
You know, I got I got to pick my musicians
and make the record I wanted to make. You know,
no one's going to say a word, and truthfully, I
leave this out of this, but in all of this work,
there was nobody ever saying a word. There was never
a record company coming in saying nothing. No one ever

(01:36:02):
said a word ever, not one occasion. There was fear,
you know, when we wanted when she wanted to release
Live to tell Us, the first single from True Blue,
there was fear, and the same when she wanted to
reach like a prayer, because it stopped and it started,
and it was such a strange piece of work, you know,
as the first single, everybody was a little bit worried,
but they weren't didn't have to worry for that long,

(01:36:25):
you know, so there was never any second guessing about
any of it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:30):
Well, how long did it take you to make the
toy mattin a record and when you delivered it, what
did they say?

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
I think, you know, in those days, records took three months,
you know, and it was one of those things where
it was a little there was a little bit of
a for me what I always called just a Midwestern
work ethic, you know, because you had a budget and
you had a delivery date, so you knew what you're
you knew what you were where you were shooting, you know,
unlike this record I just made, which stuck forerever so,

(01:37:02):
but you knew. And I'm pretty sure if I were
to go back and look, and I have a bunch
of dats here with you know, these old things, you know,
you know these we're not gonna no one else can
see them, but these little digital audio tapes, right, and
that they were They were what we were, you know,
keeping rough mixes on. And if I go back and
look at dates, you can kind of see when these
things happened. And there was probably three months, maybe four,

(01:37:26):
and then and then after that, I didn't plan on
touring in or doing anything like that. I went to
I went to do Amuse to Death with Roger Waters,
and the singer put his own band together and went
out and called the toy Mattine even though it kind
of really wasn't, and bless his heart, I'm glad he
promoted it, but that wasn't the idea.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
Okay, do you feel that Warner Brothers gave the record
a good enough shot?

Speaker 2 (01:37:58):
I'll say something really weird. It didn't matter to me.
I just wanted to make the record. I really just
wanted to make the record. I don't think it got
that good of a shot. And I think part of
that is because the entity that was my idea of
having a band, when it got to the actual like Okay,
now we're going to have to do a contract and

(01:38:20):
be a band, people didn't want to do that. They
didn't want to commit to it. So the band ended
up being me and Kevin, and that really wasn't what
the band was. And so the idea of this being
what I do for a year and now or two
years or however long it's going to be, it didn't

(01:38:41):
have an appeal to me. I was kind of like, well,
I'm just going to go back in the studio. And
then I met with Roger and had this opportunity to
do amused to death and couldn't say no to that?

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
And how did you meet Bill Patrell?

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
How did I meet Bill? I don't remember how I
met him, but you know, I know that I think
the first time we worked together was when he engineered
like a prayer and I would say with a clear
conscience that he's the best that's ever done it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
Yeah, I think Bill has the best years of anybody
that's ever done it. And I really mean that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
Okay, So you finish with Roger Waters and used to Death,
then what.

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
Let me see where are we? I think Third Matinee,
which was another one of those semi vanity projects, and
this one was with Richard.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Page and was this with Warner Brothers again?

Speaker 2 (01:39:46):
It was yeah, less of a band thing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:49):
Were they as he hands off as they were the
first on?

Speaker 2 (01:39:52):
Absolutely? Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
Okay. How do you end up working with Brian Ferry?

Speaker 2 (01:40:04):
I don't remember how that started or how it came,
but it was right after True Blue. I had just
finished True Blue, I think it had just come out,
and I don't remember how it turned up, but I
remember that, you know, Bryan and I worked in the
family room of the house, just like we weren't on
True Blue. You know, it was just a little tape

(01:40:26):
machine and a little board in the in the house,
and we did a lot of it in the house
and some of it in you know, in studios. And
then like I say that little you know, the Gilmore
thing to England, but Lion's share of that was in
the house.

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
Okay. I have to bring up a track that I
happened to love. It was unknown for a long time,
but then it was released again in the initial Fleetwood
Mac box set, the original song love Shines. I adore
that track. Tell me the backstory there?

Speaker 2 (01:40:59):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
Did I do that? Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):
Does it say I did that?

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
So maybe if you can't remember, there's no story.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
Well, this this the Fleetwood Mac moment in the studio,
and that time period was absolutely mad. I mean they were,
they were mad. I think Lindsay was not there, and uh,
Christine was solid and beautiful and they were all beautiful.
It was just it was. It wasn't easy, but it

(01:41:30):
wasn't hard either and there and they're they're lovely folks
and so it had its challenges, I remember them. But
we did it. We got there, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
Okay, So you've had all this huge success, are you
saying no to a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
Not no, no, there's no one's asking, which I'm grateful for.

Speaker 1 (01:41:55):
No, no, no, then no, no, I'm talking about that
in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
And then yeah, I think when when I was doing
Amused to Death, which took me almost two years. When
I say we, I mean me, I mean us. We
worked on it for a long time. I think I
probably turned down is the wrong word, because I don't

(01:42:19):
think I ever did that. But I remember my manager
saying that I was being offered just about every record
that was being made at the time, you know, mostly
just because of like a prayer, you know. I think
most of those people would have not been good fits
for me. I'm a little odd, but yeah, there was
a lot of work that I didn't do, and and

(01:42:40):
it's always been my nature. I don't I don't have
one of these, you know, seventy five album discographies, you know,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
Okay, how do you does Madonna get you involved in
Ray of Light?

Speaker 2 (01:42:54):
I think she, I think she, you know, at the
time of faxing was big and I got a fax
from her saying, you know, it's been a lot of years,
but I think it'd be nice to work together again.
And she asked me she said, I'm trying to I
want to write a song that's nine inch Nails meets

(01:43:14):
the English Patient, And I wrote Frozen and sent it
to her and she went, great, let's go. So we
went to Florida to some studio in Florida, Gloya Estavs
Stefanse Studio and wrote you know, the line's share of
the songs on that record in a couple of weeks,

(01:43:37):
and then she met William Orbit or heard his stuff
or something and asked if I would be okay with
him doing this and I could, you could just kind
of oversee it and be there to make sure everything
was okay, and you know, what was I going to say?
And I think it was a right decision. She made
a great decision. Though. I've recently found the demos that

(01:43:58):
we did, and they had their own thing, just like
all our stuff did, because basically all the records were
essentially demos.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
You know. Okay, how did you get hooked up with Elton?

Speaker 2 (01:44:12):
I think Elton was through dream Works for the Road
Del Dorado, and I don't really remember how that came about.
I think it might have been the Austins, you know,
Michael Austin, because DreamWorks was associated with them, and so
I think I was hired to produce the soundtrack for

(01:44:34):
that movie, for the animated Road del Dorado that Elton
was writing with Tim Rice, if I remember correctly, and
that's how we got hooked up. And I produced that
with him and it was amazing, but there was no
writing in it other than Somewhere out of the Blue,
which I think was the single. I had written the

(01:44:55):
music for that, and Tim wrote a lyric and and
wrote the melody, and I don't remember if I don't
remember if it went if I saw the lyric and
I wrote to the lyric, I don't think so I did.
I think I just wrote something and showed it Delton
and it became that song. And then after that, you know,

(01:45:16):
he asked me to do songs on the West Coast.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
And did you feel left out when he moved on
from you? No?

Speaker 2 (01:45:26):
No, I didn't. I mean, I you know, we're still
in touch, and I did, like I said, we did
this thing last October, and I just I love him,
and you know, I'm grateful that he's in my life
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:45:38):
You know. So, how did you hook up with Leonard Cullen? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
His son Adam and I. Adam had asked me to
work on a band project that he was that he
was in called Low Millions, and I don't know how
that happened, but I think I worked on a few
songs for the Low Millions project, and then some time
after that, I think it might have been even a

(01:46:06):
couple of years after that, I don't remember exactly, Adam
asked me if I would produce an album for him,
and we made an album called Like a Man, and
it was that my my deal with the record is yes,
I will, but it's my way completely, no pushback, zero,

(01:46:29):
It's just my way. And he agreed to it, and
he was good for his word. So I had him
in very uncomfortable you know places, tapping the time on
his mic stand while he played the guitar and sang
the vocal live, whether he likes it or not, you know,
until he could get it, and I think it was
it was a very strong piece of work as a
result of the torture. And his dad heard it and said,

(01:46:54):
I'd like to meet this guy, and we did. We met,
and then we you know, we started writing songs. He
gave me lyrics and I'd write to it, you know,
and that's how that started. And then we spent a
lot of years together.

Speaker 1 (01:47:16):
Okay, Leonard went through varying periods in his career. This
is the time when all of a sudden he's booked
on a tour and he comes back and there's a
lot of attention paid. So what can you tell us
about Leonard?

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
Well, there's there's only one. I can tell you that
like no one I've ever met, and many many many
in many many ways. I don't know. Like I said,
when we started talking after Leonard passed, I didn't really

(01:47:56):
feel like writing anybody with anybody else.

Speaker 1 (01:47:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
I mean, when the when, the when the email would
ding and I'd see that it was from him, and
I'd open it up and it was a lyric, which meant,
here's another lyric. Write a song, and you read these lyrics,
you know, I could choke up right now. No one
could write like Leonard Cohen. Sorry, not in my book,

(01:48:21):
not anything I ever experienced. I mean Roger, you know,
Roger Waters is a genius lyricist, but it's a different thing.

Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
Leonard could write quatrains and just blow your mind, you know,
with what he would find in these simple little rhymes. Yeah,
that was That was one of my favorite times of
making music. And part of it is that was a
little strange is that there was no Leonard didn't want

(01:48:51):
any musicians. He was fine with, you know, us in
his guest house room with a laptop and a keyboard
and a microphone and a pair of speakers. And so
the records themselves, I never got to really realize any

(01:49:12):
record making. But if they're they're still beautiful, I think
in their own little way, you know, because the the
simplicity of it allowed Leonard to have nothing else to
deal with, and he was real quite clear about that,
you know, And and I learned. I learned something, you know,

(01:49:35):
and it's it's interesting to make that many records and
then learn something fairly big about when what occurs when
someone steps out even a little bit, when they're playing
a bass part or a guitar, pety or drums, whatever
it is, when they bring themselves into it, what happens.

(01:50:00):
There was none of that, you know, there was nothing
got brought into it, and so Leonard and the poetry
could just hang in the air with no other egos
at all. And you know, I would say that I
was certainly there, but disciplining, you know, what is it?

(01:50:22):
Just to stay out of the way all the time.
So interesting, I mean, beautiful exercise. And you know, and
I think, I think I learned more about the creative
process then everything else put together from Leonard.

Speaker 1 (01:50:42):
And did he ever talk about how he did it
previously in terms of him writing the lyrics and somebody
else doing the music or what.

Speaker 2 (01:50:50):
No, we didn't talk about it, but I you know,
I I love sharing the anecdote about Leonard had a
room in his house with a bunch of shelves and
these little office boxes, you know, the ones with the
metal corners, the small ones that fit little notebooks, and
on the end of the box would be the name
of a song. And there was shelves, full floor of

(01:51:11):
ceiling on a whole wall. And he would go in
there in the morning in a suit and tie by
the way every day and he would take one of
those little office boxes and he'd go sit on a
picnic table in his front yard in his house, in
this little humble house he only lived upstairs, and this
green painted thing with his fedora and his suit and
a dollar bill tucked under his glasses. So son wouldn't

(01:51:34):
burn his nose and la and he'd write in these
little notebooks. He'd write another couple verses, and then he
put the notebook back in the box, and he put
the box back on the shelf. And when one of
these boxes came out and he felt that there was
enough in there that could possibly a song, you'd take
all these verses and put them up in the computer.
And sometimes, honestly, it was three columns of three pages

(01:51:58):
of quatrains, you know, four lines it's or six lines,
whatever the form was, and he's just looking for six
or seven of them to make the song. And if
he felt he had him, we'd record something, and if
he didn't, the box would go back on the shelf.
And it was every song was kind of like that,
except somewhere he would just you know, there were songs
that he'd just write him, you know. But I never

(01:52:19):
saw that kind of discipline, and I never saw the
focus of what this thing is and what it needs.
And there was a song called Treaty that ended up
on the last record that you know, we used to
call it Treaty the movie. I think there was a
line in the chorus and it was five years he

(01:52:42):
couldn't find the line, but every once in a while
he'd find it and we'd record another version of treaty.
You know. I don't know how many versions of the
treaty I have, but it happened a lot. But he
wasn't it wasn't there yet, and every one of them,
M'd go, great, we're finally done, you know, and then
he'd go, no, no, that's not it. And it was
literally one line, you know. So that to me, I learned.

(01:53:07):
I learned something about what makes this hole that I
didn't know before.

Speaker 1 (01:53:14):
Okay, did he want you to go on the road?

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
Nope, never, No, he didn't once. Once we started making records,
I think there was one little piece of a tour
and that was it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
We just we just made records from when we started
to any past.

Speaker 1 (01:53:32):
Okay, you have ray of light in the nineties. Once
we hit the twenty first century, is there as much
work as there used to be?

Speaker 2 (01:53:44):
No, there isn't. And also, I I around that time
the technology had really really crept in and the writing
the what is it? Just the songs, the types of songs,
the type of chord progressions, the type of change so
dramatically that I just didn't feel that much for it.

(01:54:08):
I just didn't have it. I just didn't feel that
symbiotic with it. You know, I'm not interested in four chords,
and I'm not interested in everything being tuned, and I'm
not interested in everything being quantized. I'm not And so
once those records started being kind of the norm, I'm
not going to do it just to do it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:54:28):
Okay. And in that period, like we discussed earlier, were
you still playing the piano every day? Were you still
as disciplined?

Speaker 2 (01:54:37):
Absolutely, maybe more so because the focus was just trying
to find my own you know. Search of the Lost
Chord is how we used.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
To say, great album. I hate to say it, but
that is the best one. And I came to that one,
that's right. So how'd you decide to make a deal
with Primary Wave?

Speaker 2 (01:54:59):
Just just uh just made sense at the time, just
made sense of them. They're good guys, you know, they're
they're they're they're good guys. They have heart, they've been
very supportive, they're good.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
So, yeah, okay, was this something you saw everybody else
making a deal and is like maybe i'll sell too,
or did you take it to different companies? Or did
they approach you? How did the process begin?

Speaker 2 (01:55:28):
Uh? Our business manager has a relationship with them, and
it was just one of these things that you would
you like to talk about this. I said sure, and
we did and it was like, well, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:38):
I mean, you know, I don't give a lot of
thought to these things.

Speaker 1 (01:55:41):
And just to be clear, you sold one hundred percent everything. Yeah,
so there's no further royalty for you. You got a chunk, right,
What did you do with that money?

Speaker 2 (01:55:53):
Drugs and girls?

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
Absolutely? Actually I know somebody who did blows close to
the money. So I made one of those tens of
millions deals. No, but you get it. You know you're
getting royalty checks. Now, you get a big lum sum
you gotta you know, it gets whacked a few times
by the government's other profit participants, but then you got
to do something with it. Do you put it in
real estate? Do you buy something you always wanted to buy?

(01:56:15):
Do you put it in stocks? I mean it requires
a certain amount of attention.

Speaker 2 (01:56:21):
Yeah, and not not something I'm very good at. But
you know, it's never been my forte. But you know,
we're good, we're happy, and we're still making music and
you know, I'm going to sell a billion vinyls.

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
Okay, let's go back. How many kids do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:56:39):
Three?

Speaker 1 (01:56:40):
And how old are they.

Speaker 2 (01:56:42):
Of? Thirty four, thirty seven, thirty nine, and what are
they up to? I think they're just I don't know.
I mean, one of them is doing some real estate stuff,
the other one's doing some writing, the other one's playing music.
I think it's I feel for them. I feel for

(01:57:03):
that generation. I think they're a lot more lost than
my generation was. And I love them, and they're bright kids,
and they're good kids, and they're not kids or grown ups,
you know, But I think it's it may be difficult
when you can see a parent do what he loves passionately,

(01:57:24):
almost a little bit haphazardly, and have it work so well,
and and then go at trying to do something and
find such a different world that meets you. I mean,
you know, I think if I were fourteen right now,
I wouldn't be in the studio with somebody, you know
what I mean. I'd be staring at a cell phone

(01:57:46):
trying to get the little ball to go, you know,
whatever it is, you know, like trying to get more likes.

Speaker 1 (01:57:52):
So, how has your work your choice of work affected
your relationships romantic relationships.

Speaker 2 (01:58:04):
Well, I would say then I met Anna eight years
ago and I am truly happy for the first time
in my life. And I don't think work had much
to do with any of it along the way. I

(01:58:27):
just don't think it was ever really right, and now
it is, so I got really lucky.

Speaker 1 (01:58:33):
You know, you didn't go on the road that much.
You say, three big tours, but a lot of people
you talk to them and say, you know, the relationship
couldn't last because I was absent a lot of time.
Now also there's the issue of you know, people are
working round the clock, whether it be music or anything
that can impact relationship.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):
No, that was never really and I think I think
I don't know. I don't know that I would know this.
I know it now because of Anna. But it's either
right or it isn't in my life, And now it's right,
and there's been there's not a bump, not a hiccup,
not a nothing, no issues, no matter how much I work,

(01:59:13):
no matter what we're doing, we are. We are absolutely
fabulous all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
And how did you meet her?

Speaker 2 (01:59:20):
Through a friend in la you know, just a mutual
musician friend.

Speaker 1 (01:59:26):
Yeah, I mean, was it a setup romantic or you
just went somewhere and she was there and it took
from there.

Speaker 2 (01:59:32):
No, he said you guys should meet, and we did it.
And he was right, you know he was, He was
absolutely right. I mean, it was it was, it was
right away from day one.

Speaker 1 (01:59:42):
Okay, let's go back to the new record. The record
you're putting out now is in a very changed landscape
from the Toy Matinee and Third Matinee world. There are
a lot of people of our vintage who won't even
make new music because they feel it won't be exposed,
they won't reach an audience, and even the biggest acts

(02:00:06):
in the world don't reach the kind of people that
Madonna did in the eighties and nineties. So to what
degree does that affect your outlook in terms of making
an album?

Speaker 2 (02:00:19):
Well, I think I don't think I've ever had more
fun making a record than I had making this one, because,
as I said earlier, I didn't have to negotiate anything.
So the freedom that it gave me, I think created

(02:00:41):
a result that is it's just in a nice place,
you know, It's I think that I think the records
in a nice place and it's and it's I think
it's a well well done thing. And so for what

(02:01:03):
my aspirations have been to at this point, make a
record that I'm proud of that I think is really
good and look forward to making another one is a
big improvement from digging around with children that want to
quantize their voices and sing to a drum machine. I
can't do that, and I'm not judging it. I just

(02:01:25):
have no interest in it. It's no different than you know,
I don't want to belong either. I don't relate to
it so that I'm getting to do what I love
at the level I'm getting to do it at, even
if it's in a market that doesn't exist, I kind
of think that it will find its home wherever that is.

(02:01:49):
And I think that because I Vinyl focused it, and
I really did. I mean, I spent more time balancing
the sides and rearranging the songs and writing songs to
make a side feel more complete. I mean that was
really the job. I wrote thirty songs to come up
with the sixteen, and I don't mean on a napkin.
I mean I wrote them and finished them and put
them in a sequence, and you know, I really worked

(02:02:11):
hard to make a vinyl, to make a double album,
and I think that those that are still willing to
engage that as an art form will really enjoy it
and find it a really good one. And that's enough
for me. You know, the the you know, fifty million

(02:02:32):
record sale thing, it's been gone for a long time,
you know, and people buying music has been gone for
a long time. But it doesn't mean I don't get
out of bed compelled to write and record music. I
still do. Call me crazy. So this is the best
I can come up with right now as a way

(02:02:52):
to do it. And I think find a little bit
of an audience because I think there's few people. I mean,
I've had the experience of you know, people getting the vinyl,
Elton being one of them and saying, wow, thank you.
I mean, this actually really did the thing, and that's
that was the goal and the goal achieved, and I

(02:03:13):
think it's it can probably be self sustaining if enough
final people find it. And in terms of you know,
anything else from it, I have no expectations at all. None.
It hasn't stopped me from writing in thirty more songs
for another couple albums, you know, because that's what I'm crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:03:38):
How did you end up working with Michael Fremmer?

Speaker 2 (02:03:42):
Somebody introduced me to Michael a few years ago when
we were looking for at the possibility of making a
vinyl out of something else, and we just hit it off.
We just started talking and hit it off. And when this,
when this came up, we kind of stayed in touch.
And when it came up, I just asked him if
he'd help shepherd this through, if he would help, you know,

(02:04:05):
all all points of it. And he did, and it's
been very helpful. I mean that, you know, the the
thing sounds crazy great and it was also Bob Ludwig
mastered it and it was the last thing he did
on the last day. Chris Bellman cut the lay, cut
the vinyl and uh RTI, you know, took great pains

(02:04:29):
and it sounds. It's one hundred and eighty grams and
it's crazy. And Storm Studios did the cover. So it's
the old hypnosis guys, and that took a year, you know,
of going around and around the one. You pick it
up and hold it, it's you know, it's this big
heavy thing with all this beautiful paper and beautiful color
and you know, all the lyrics printed out and only

(02:04:51):
a couple things that we missed in all the text,
you know, so you For me, it's laying on the
floor in my bedroom with thick as a brick open
or trying to figure out what the hell the lads
up the four album cover was about and listening to

(02:05:12):
music where you got to get up and turn the
record over, and it feels like it was made specifically
for you to listen to and enjoy. That's what I love,
and that's what I think I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
I guess, you know, knowing Fremmer, who's the king of
Vinyl for those people don't know, and takes responsibility and
deserves responsibility for one of the main drivers, if not
the main drivers for bringing vinyl back. He's not an engineer.
How did he help? Well?

Speaker 2 (02:05:43):
I think in in the specifics of the manufacturing one
of like how are we going to do this and
and how is it going to be packaged and what
materials are getting used and from the printing to the thing,
just to kind of give it that distinction. And also

(02:06:03):
the whole time I was sending in my demos, you know,
like when I do this stuff, I make a demo
of everything. So you hear the song, and I would
sequence it and I'd send it to him and he'd
play it, and he would either like it or not
like it. Most of the time he seemed to like it.
And when we got to the place where these refs

(02:06:26):
were cut, the refs went to him, not to me.
You know, he was the one who said, yep, we
can approve this ref And the same with the pressings.
You know, when the pressings were done and test pressings,
it's like he was checking I'm not me. I mean,
I got a set, but it was him. And now
with the press for the you know, vinyl press and

(02:06:51):
the magazine's overseas, and he's sending the record to all
of these people. And he's also carried the test pressings
around at these conventions and played the test expressing for
people just to see the reaction, and he tells me
it was extremely positive, you know. So you know, I
know that it is not everybody's cup of tea, but

(02:07:12):
those that it is, they're a cup of tea. I
think they like it. And I think Michael had a
lot to do with that.

Speaker 1 (02:07:18):
Okay, just to cover new music, you're talking about starting
the turn of the century, what people were doing did
not make you want to be involved. To what degree
do you keep up with new music? If at all?

Speaker 2 (02:07:32):
Not at all? Zero?

Speaker 1 (02:07:36):
So do you have friends who say send you an
email and say you need to hear this?

Speaker 2 (02:07:42):
Not anymore?

Speaker 1 (02:07:44):
Okay? And is there any investigation of music history or
you're pretty much on your own hagira out into the wilderness.

Speaker 2 (02:07:56):
Well, I think, you know, when I want to study
and I do. I go back to, say, a Revel
piano piece, and I put it up, and I look
at the lines, and I do this thing we used
to call standing the lineup on its end. So you
take the line that Revel plays and something, and you

(02:08:17):
stand it up and you look at what chord it is,
because they weren't really focused on chords in those days.
And so now you've kind of if you get lucky,
and you often do, you've kind of found a new
way of harmonizing something. And if you take that little
thing and you get it into your vocabulary, as you

(02:08:39):
continue to create, those things show up. And I'm interested
in that showing up much more than a drum sample,
you know what I mean? Absolutely, I can't learn anything
from any of the shit that's going on right now,
I'm just going to be brutal, like there's nothing I
can learn from it. So I feel that the learning

(02:09:01):
is more important because if I'm going to improvise and
I'm going to continue to create, the only thing that
makes it any better is making the palette broader, you know,
And that's that's I know it sounds crazy because you know,
I should be going fishing all the time, but I'm
still obsessive.

Speaker 1 (02:09:20):
But you know, we've had COVID, you've moved. But is
your lifestyle that you're pretty much at home? Or do
you go on vacation?

Speaker 2 (02:09:30):
Well, because because we have the plane, we can do
little things. You know, you can. You can you can
just take off and go somewhere for a day and
just go sit on a beach that you couldn't possibly
drive to and then come home and have dinner at
home if you want, or go stay a couple of nights,
or you know, I think you know, and I have

(02:09:55):
talked about vacations, we just haven't taken one.

Speaker 1 (02:09:57):
Well, my question is can you be away from the
keyboard that long?

Speaker 2 (02:10:03):
Oh sure? Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, I mean back
in the back in the nineties when Roger and I,
after we started working together, we also started fishing together.
So we did a lot of bone fishing trips for
you know, six seven days and the keys and you know,
and it was, it was, there's an anecdote or what

(02:10:23):
is it? You you fish, you eat, you pretend to sleep,
you fish, you eat you you know, because it's it's
it's a really beautiful obsession. So no, I mean easy,
easy for me to get in a trout streamer out
chasing bonefish or tarp and with a fly rod, and

(02:10:44):
I can do that for a long time.

Speaker 1 (02:10:46):
They say it's really hard to catch bonefish. Is that true?

Speaker 2 (02:10:51):
I think it's gotten harder because there's a lot more
pressure on them. And yes, it is not that simple
because it's a it's you know, sight fishing. You need
to see them and obviously if you can see them,
they can see you. So it's you know, you have
to be able to present the fly so it doesn't
spook them. And then you know, it's tricky. It's tricky.

Speaker 1 (02:11:12):
Okay, are you already working on the next album in
your mind?

Speaker 2 (02:11:18):
The next album's already finished in the can demos are done,
completely written, done, won't change anything. All the lyrics are done,
all the music's done, and I'll be honest with you,
there was a whole other album that came before that that,
and then I got COVID two Christmases ago and we
both seem to get a little bit of a long COVID,

(02:11:40):
and I wrote this entire album that I listened to
a couple of days ago again because I keep checking
in to hope that I'm wrong, but there's something missing
from it. There's something missing. It's there's something that's not there.
And it was during this kind of long COVID of like,
you know, I think we're okay, but maybe we're not.
And then there was suddenly some new songs and I

(02:12:01):
could feel that it somehow, whatever that was had passed.
So there's twenty songs that I'll never do anything with
and they're finished songs, but they're not. There's something I
know that sounds weird, but there's something missing from them.

Speaker 1 (02:12:13):
No, I understand that just when you say finished songs,
they have to be cut or they're masters. That's it.

Speaker 2 (02:12:21):
No, the songs are written, the demos are done, the
keyboard parts are essentially there, and so now it's make
the record out of it. But when it's in this state,
it's a couple of weeks of tracking and it's done.
And in most cases, I think my vocals at least
are probably pretty done. And you know, there's always that

(02:12:42):
line in one song that I can't find, and I'll
either find it or I'll throw the song out and
write another one or write another one, you know. But
the record that's in the can right now is called
Love and Occasional War, and I think it's really cool.
I mean, I can't wait to make it. It's way
to different than this record. And it's also a single album.

(02:13:03):
It's not quite so much work, you know, it's forty minutes,
not eighty four, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:13:07):
Okay, so this album comes out, we'll feedback affect anything
you do in the future, or are you immune to feedback?

Speaker 2 (02:13:21):
It won't affect anything. I don't know if I'm immune.
I think I'm just stubborn. And also I'm kind of
a I have a little bit of know it all
in me, so I don't give a show people say,
And I've always been like that.

Speaker 1 (02:13:34):
Okay, You've had a lot of success period, as we've mentioned,
a lot of success collaboration. Is it purely your talent
and resume? Was there something about your personality and interaction
that draws people and opportunities to you.

Speaker 2 (02:13:56):
I think this is a really interesting question because this
is something that tortures me a little bit, honestly. Is
I think that, yes, there is something in my work
that draws people to me. But I'm also deeply self

(02:14:16):
centered musically and deeply stubborn, and so I think it's
not the most pleasant experience to make a record with
me because it's like it's kind of my way or
the highway, and it's not even my picture on the cover,
you know. So I think that as time went on,
I found those moments less attractive, like with Elton a Dream,

(02:14:38):
because we're not writing once it's my writing. I have
this possessiveness about it, and I feel also, who's going
to know better what my music needs than me? Because
I wrote it. And back to True Blue, we were
making True Blue and Madonna and I were having one
of these moments where she wanted to to do something

(02:15:00):
and I was saying no, and the cover had just
come from her Brits, that beautiful photo of her, and
she held it up and she pointed it at me
and she said, whose picture's this? And I'll never forget
it because it's like, yeah, you're right, but it doesn't
mean it changed me.

Speaker 1 (02:15:17):
You know. Okay, if we put on whatever that track
is all the years later, will you say, well, maybe
she was right. Oh you hear go, No, I would
have done it.

Speaker 2 (02:15:26):
No, she still sang the wrong note. She still sang
the wrong note. It's like, you can't sing that note.
She says, where did all these rules come from? Said,
I didn't make them, Honeybock made them. Don't look at me.
But then you know, you go through these things and
she says, no, I'm going to do it, and she
sticks this high harmony in, and you know, anybody with
a musical air will go what she doing singing the

(02:15:47):
major seventh when there's a dominant seventh chord. It's like
it's a half step away. It couldn't be a worse note.
But it's like, well, it didn't really seem to matter
that much, you know, but makes me in the moment
that you know, I'm a bastard in the moment, I
can promise.

Speaker 1 (02:16:02):
You that's on one side of the board. What I'm
saying is forgetting people whose picture is on the cover.
Working musicians have to network, have to have a certain
possibility to get opportunities. Is that part of your personality?

Speaker 2 (02:16:20):
No, it's not, it's not. No, I think, you know, honestly,
you're very good at this.

Speaker 1 (02:16:27):
By the way, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:16:29):
You are really really fucking good at this. You are.
I think that it was always a bit.

Speaker 1 (02:16:41):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (02:16:43):
I think, I'm just, I'm just I think me making
solo records right now is the logical conclusion to this,
because I think that's what I want to do the
whole time, anyway, you know, And I think if it was,
if it was really you know, there were people that
I worked with that I thought were brilliant and people
that I admired so much, and I felt so lucky
to be in a room with Rod Stewart or you know,

(02:17:03):
Robbie Robertson or Elton you know, or Roger or Gilmore.
I mean, wow, you know, these are these are the
greats of all time, They truly are, and and so
how lucky for me. And in those cases when we
would collaborate, I felt lucky to be there. But if
it wasn't that, it just I always felt a little

(02:17:26):
bit like I was wasting time. I really did. The
people that I was working with probably felt that too.

Speaker 1 (02:17:33):
You've made a lot of records. There must have been
a ton of creative choices. When you made the record
with Adam Cohen, you said, I'm in control, it's going
to be my way. When you've made records with these
other people, and you had done part of the writing,
so you're invested, and their opinion was contrary, how stubborn

(02:17:56):
would you be? Would you be worried about the harmony
or would you just say this is the way it
should be.

Speaker 2 (02:18:04):
I think that it's a personality defect. But I think
I took it personally.

Speaker 1 (02:18:13):
No no, no no no no no no no, I'm
saying the other thing. Yes, you took it personally.

Speaker 2 (02:18:19):
Yeah, And I fought it personally. I fought it like
it was a personal insult.

Speaker 1 (02:18:23):
That's my question. To what degree did you stand up?
You're working with these household name artists and you go,
you know, you could say very gently, I would do
it a different way, or let's try it again whatever.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. A lot of engineers
operate that way. A lot of producers who used to

(02:18:44):
be engineers operator that way. There are some diva producers
I know do the opposite, but they're not musicians like you.
So would you say, with a stronger tonality, no, we
need to do it this way, or would you say
it's their record I'll back.

Speaker 2 (02:19:01):
It would totally depend on the artist. It would totally
depend on the artist. And the other part of that
is that I don't remember Elton never doing anything that
I questioned, nor did Roger ever do anything I questioned,
Nor when I was doing stuff with Jeff Beck, Didty
doing it and I questioned. These people don't do things
that you question. That's why they are what they are
and who they are. And the uh, the thing of

(02:19:25):
working on a pop song and someone who isn't doesn't
have the kind of musical palette or whatever you want
to call it. I could be really okay with it,
and I think you know in the records that I made,
it's not like it was a hell hole. But I
do know that if there was something that I didn't like,
I could be inappropriately brutal to someone who had hired

(02:19:47):
me and was paying me and it was their fucking
picture on the cover. And I know that, and I
don't think I could have done it any different because
it's it's part of what makes my music what it is.
You know, it is what it is because I'm invested
in it where I'll have a rock fight with you
in the parking lot about it. And I think in

(02:20:09):
some of those moments, I think people go, man, you know,
lighten up, you know, or whatever it was. But you know,
I think some people had found it difficult, found me difficult.
I know they did.

Speaker 1 (02:20:23):
Speaking of difficult, how did you end up working with
Jeff Beck?

Speaker 2 (02:20:27):
Just through Roger? You know, Jeff played on Amused to
Death and then Jeff and I spent some time together
in the studio trying to make a solo record for him,
and we did a couple pieces that we wrote together
and recorded them, and it just, you know, the times
I would bump into Jeff after that, he'd talk about
the greatest record we never made because we started it,

(02:20:50):
but it never it never got focused. We never focused it.
And I'm not sure I could have done it anyway.
I don't know that I that I could, that I
could give Jeff what he needed. You know, he's got,
he's got, so he had so much more authentic real
rock and roll in his blood than I did.

Speaker 1 (02:21:12):
You know, well, there's a lot to talk about there,
but not today. Patrick. I want to thank you for
taking this time to speak to my audience. I loved it,
you know, because sometimes you're just getting somebody's story, but
you know, when we're talking about records and references, really
feel like you're having a conversation. So good luck with
a new album. Thanks a lot for talking to me.

Speaker 2 (02:21:35):
Thanks boy, it was a pleasure, man, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:21:38):
You know that was great. A lot of people you
sit down and you say, well, you know, I gotta
sit here and I gotta cover this. Not with you.
It was like certainly, you know, it was like we
were talking and we could have been anywhere. We could
have been sitting on the couch.

Speaker 2 (02:21:52):
Yeah, well you're you're you're You're really fucking good at
this man. I mean, you know, like, I'm talking to
a lot of people these days, and and some of
them are good, they're good, but you understand what makes
this tick from from way in the inside, and so
you're pushing into places that are there's real shit in there,

(02:22:14):
there's real stuff buried in there. And you know, I've
done this for so long. I've done it for over
sixty years, every fucking day, and I do it all day,
and I do it for the love of the thing.
Hate the music business. You used to love the music
business because it felt like it was about music. Now

(02:22:37):
I can't get near it. I don't even you know.
I got some young people around, engineers and stuff, and
they come in here to help me out, and they
go like, this is magic in here. When you're doing
something completely different. It's like, really, this is that different
that you know you just sit and play something and
you record it. It's like, yeah, nobody can even do that.
And I think, wow, man, what a shame. And so

(02:23:00):
I think I'm not doing anything I'm doing to try
to inspire anybody or show them another way. I'm doing
it because it's what I know how to do. And
I actually think I'm better at it than I used
to be.

Speaker 1 (02:23:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:23:12):
I think I tempered it and I think the work
is good, and I think that that's what I'm here for.
I didn't, you know, hide from the other children and
play piano when it was five years old because I
wanted to be rich and famous and get blowdrops from
you know, beach bunnies like, no fucking way. It's like,
you know, it was about it was about this thing.
And when you and I talked behind the hotel cafe

(02:23:36):
that time, I felt the same way about you, Like
you asked the questions about the work and the and
you know, because what.

Speaker 1 (02:23:44):
Else is there, well, just just talking a little bit
angle when you started off with a hotel cafe. I
can't tell you how many people I've met, even had conversations,
don't remember a thing. So I vividly remember that moment.
I could probably put my feet in the same place
on the asphalt behind, so it blew my mind.

Speaker 2 (02:24:05):
I remember friends that No, I remember it. I remember
it too.

Speaker 1 (02:24:09):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:24:09):
You were your back was to the building and I
was facing Yes, let's see it, you know, and the
door was right behind you. I can see the color.
I don't know why, but there was something about that
and I think, I think possibly. I don't want to
get fucking airy fairy here, but I think you have
a real affinity for what makes this shit real, and

(02:24:31):
so do I.

Speaker 1 (02:24:33):
No, listen, I don't think you can take that to
the bank. Occasionally you can capture it and it works,
but that's what it's all about.

Speaker 2 (02:24:42):
It's nothing there, There is nothing else. I mean, I mean.

Speaker 1 (02:24:45):
I remember talking. You know too many people in this
You say anything and they'll say, well, look at the billing,
look at the grosse. I don't want to say the
billing and the gross are wrong the great, but that's
not what it's about.

Speaker 2 (02:25:00):
Yeah, you know, it's like you do you remember do
you know Jeremy Lubbock? Do you remember that name? Jeremy
was a string arranger.

Speaker 1 (02:25:07):
No, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:25:08):
It's probably the probably the greatest string arranger that La
ever saw. And he abandoned la he couldn't do it anymore.
And he did the string arrangements and the horn arrangements
for I'm Breathless and Wow could he write? And we
were in the studio working on that thing, and somebody
said something about something about the money, and Jeremy said,

(02:25:31):
and McDonald sells a lot of hamburgers, it does not
make it hot cuisine exactly. Like that's right. It doesn't
fucking matter how much money it makes, it doesn't make
it good.

Speaker 1 (02:25:39):
Well, the other thing about when you talk about the
record you're not going to put out Yeah, you know,
you know, when you do great work. That doesn't mean
I mean, yeah, you do it enough, you know you're
never gonna do something bad. But you can't make it
eleven every day. But when you make an eleven, you know,
and you can also you could listen, you could read

(02:26:01):
or listen to something, and you go, I don't care
what anybody else thinks. It's missing something.

Speaker 2 (02:26:08):
Yeah, And this, all of this work I listened to
the other night because I keep hoping I'm wrong, because
there's a lot of work. It was, you know, a
year's worth of work or something or ten months or
whatever it was. And again, you know, like I have
a board behind me on the wall here that I
put all my song cards on, and there's nine of
them up there right now, which are the nine songs

(02:26:29):
from Love and Occasional War. And I wrote another one
called the song that you wrote or the story that
you wrote last week that I think will replace something
on there. And I don't know what because I like
them all, but it's it's pretty high bar. And it's
coming from all of this agitation, of all of this
promo and talking about career and oh my god, you
know all this stuff that I just I don't even

(02:26:51):
like doing it. You know, I'm just interested and now
if I can do that. But you know that said
those nines, there's twenty five that I wrote to get them,
and the other ones no one will ever hear. They
will never see the light of day.

Speaker 1 (02:27:06):
Wait to what degree is your process changed by working
with Leonard? Wow?

Speaker 2 (02:27:14):
Did I learn a lot? And I'll tell you where
I learned a lot? Is the thing of the lyric
being complete. I think I learned what when complete is?
I think I know when it's done now, and I
don't think I knew before. I know I didn't know
before because I listened to my lyrics from all those

(02:27:35):
years ago. It's like, well it's kind of an idea,
but you didn't really get it, did you.

Speaker 1 (02:27:39):
Well, well, okay, you have X number of songs on
the board, and when you replace one with another, it
is Is it as simple as that? Or is it
because you worked with Leonard that you say there's something
beyond and I'm searching for it and therefore I'm willing
to work with it keep getting there.

Speaker 2 (02:28:03):
I think I think that the when you do a
project like this one up on the board, the bar
sets itself and then you you move it. You move
it there at that spot, and you go under it
sometimes and you go above it sometimes. And because I'm

(02:28:24):
almost all of those songs with one exception, and the
fucking song tortured me. Their lyric first, their lyric first songs.
So you know, here's the lyric, right, this is for,
this is for at the end of the day, and
this is the one that's about Leonard. And this lyric
didn't take me long because there's a narrative that follows

(02:28:47):
a story about him that I knew, and I don't
think I changed almost anything. But then there's those where
you find yourself changing him to the point where you
don't recognize him anymore. And then that means you take
them up back and shoot him in the head and
they fall in the pond, and that's the end of it.

Speaker 1 (02:29:04):
I will say. You know, people talk about the process
where when it comes out just like that, like you're
channeling it, that's always the best stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:29:14):
It's always the best. It's right, it really is. And
it's the same with the music, you know, like the
the thing of sitting at the piano and writing something
or playing something or whatever it is. You know you
know right away when it when it means something. I mean,
I have a I have a little thing. I'll show
you this when I when I'm when I teach. I

(02:29:36):
used to do some songwriting classes, and I'd like to
do some more. But one of the things I would
always do is I'd ask the class. I'd say, do
you know what this is? And you know, it's like no,
And people with pitch would say it's for E'SE. I'd say, well, no,
what is that? I go nothing. I'd say, well, you
know what, let's try that. Let's change one note. It's like, oh,

(02:30:00):
it's Beethoven's fifteen. It's like, so the most famous motif
in all of fucking human history is made from one note.
That's it. It's one note that distinguishes it from nothing
to the most recognizable thing there is. So if you
know that that's the way this works, you have a

(02:30:21):
different quest that you're on, you know what I mean, Like,
that's all it takes. It just takes that one thing
that somehow sets your sets your mind. And I'm fairly
certain that Beethoven had worked out at that point that
that's all it took. It just you just need you
just need that one shift. It just has to be
the right one.

Speaker 1 (02:30:40):
Well, you know, it reminds me of something my psychiatrist
says goes, sometimes you change one little thing and it
changes the whole picture. Yeah, it's like the same thing.
It's like you feel your stock and you're looking for
big changes and one little thing it sets it going.

Speaker 2 (02:30:58):
And you're there. And I mean and sometimes it's especially
in music, it can be very very very strange what happens.
Because I'll i'll write something and i'll write a chord
chart and I'll forget about it, like just something I
do that didn't mean anything, and I'll write it out
and I'll come and look at it and I'll start
playing it, but there's no indication as to what it was.

(02:31:20):
There's no tempo, there's no feel, there's no time signature,
there's no nothing. And I start rolling around with this
thing that's on a page, sitting on the piano, and
it's like, wow, this is really interesting. And I realized
that what I had written, i'd written, say, for example,
in four to four, right, so just basic four four,

(02:31:41):
and now for whatever reason, I'm feeling it in six
or I'm feeling it in three, and now it has
something and it's like well, why didn't have something before.
It's like it didn't have something before because everything was
one quarter note too long. The interest only happens when
you condense it, you know, And that kind of discuss
every is more interesting to me than being famous in

(02:32:03):
the music business.

Speaker 1 (02:32:05):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:32:06):
Fuck the music Fuck the music business.

Speaker 1 (02:32:07):
You know. Well, I guess going to an analogous thing.
I don't know how they make these records with seventeen
writers and twenty remixers because you're that acids, you know. Yeah,
some of the greatest records of all time have mistakes,
but they contain something which is indescribable.

Speaker 2 (02:32:29):
Well, also, this the thing about all of this stuff,
and I stay away from the subject. But if you
look at what you're hearing now, and because people aren't musicians,
they don't know necessarily what they're hearing. There's four chords
and sometimes three, and that's it. And it's the same

(02:32:50):
on every song, same chords, same chord progression, and all
the drum beats are made by machines, all the parts
are quantized, made on a computer, all the vocals are
pitched to the to death. None of these things are
being sung naturally, So what exactly are you listening to
what is it that you're hearing? You know? So if

(02:33:10):
you're gonna if you're going to just do anything, so
we just just play a little.

Speaker 3 (02:33:14):
Bit so little improvised chord progression.

Speaker 2 (02:33:27):
If you took those chords and you quantize them, and
you put them all those block chords, and you put
them right on the beat, it wouldn't mean a fucking thing.
But if you can put something in it, and I

(02:33:56):
can just go and go and go all day like that,
that's what I do. And that's where the improvisation comes in.
But if you can't feel it, why are you doing it?

Speaker 1 (02:34:07):
Well, I I say, I go the other way if
you could, if you squeeze all the humanity out of
the record, what have you got?

Speaker 2 (02:34:15):
That's right, there's nothing left. There's nothing left, nothing, you know.
And if you take something simple, you know, like the
chord progression of the day is it's.

Speaker 1 (02:34:24):
This, that's it.

Speaker 2 (02:34:28):
It's every song and.

Speaker 3 (02:34:29):
It's in this order or it's in this order, or
it's in this order.

Speaker 1 (02:34:38):
They're all the same chords.

Speaker 2 (02:34:39):
There's four chords and everybody does them. So if you say,
well that's all you get, well you can say okay,
let's use them and go first chord, second chord. So

(02:35:08):
that's the same progression everyone's using. But there's harmony in it,
there's melody in it, and there's a musical knowledge. Without
musical knowledge, what are you doing? You know, It's like
it's like a conversation. We only know four words and
that's what we're hearing it. It's heartbreaking, but it's you.

Speaker 1 (02:35:26):
Know, until next time. This is Bob Left six m

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

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3. Dateline NBC

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Patrick Leonard

1. Stuff You Should Know