Peter Wolf

Peter Wolf has a new book, "Waiting on the Moon," and we dive into the tales of the artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses he writes about.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Search Podcast.
My guest today is Peter Woolf, who's got a new
book reading on the movie. Peter, why now, why finally
run in memoir?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, Bob, first of all, thank you for having me on.
And I've you know, followed you heard about your newsletter
for years, all the UH controversies that you've started and
UH people have followed. So I am glad to be
sharing some time with you and meeting you. But the

(00:45):
reason for your question why now? What would happen was
I would always be backstage or invited to a dinner
or something, and you know, you'd have a glass or
two and start telling worries and people would always say, Peter,
you should write a book. And I was about to

(01:08):
release the new CD. It was about eighty percent done.
Now I thought, you know, if I released this now
in about two weeks, it will be in the ether.
And what could I do that might have some resonance
and bring some exposure to maybe broaden my awareness of

(01:34):
the solo work I've done. And the idea came, this
might be the right time where things are at right
now to actually write the book. And so in designing
that I decided, you know, there's a lot every musician
seems to be writing a book, and you know a
lot of them, not all of them, but a lot

(01:54):
of them are that cookie cutter type where I was,
you know, when I was born and blah blah blah blah,
I start got my first guitar, and then when I
saw either Elvis or depending on the age, the Beatles
on Ed Sullivan, blah blah blah blah, and I joined
my first band, and then it just goes on like that,
which is okay if you're interested in that person. But

(02:16):
there are a few musicians books that are musicians wrote
that I found that were special, and I tried for
myself to create a special style of book, and by
that is I have each chapter that I wrote is

(02:39):
like a short story. It has the beginning, middle, and
an end each chapter. So I think there's about thirty
something chapters in the book, and you can go from
the first chapter or you can read the fourteenth chapter
or the twenty seventh chapter. And they don't necessarily they
connect time wise, because the early chapters start in a

(03:01):
time span, but each one is individual, so they're more
like short stories. And so I guess that's the reason
why I decided to spend two years. I called up
my great independent agent, Frank Riley, and said, Frank, I'm
going to take a step back to hopefully take two

(03:21):
steps forward. And he understood. And I was privileged to
meet a book agent whose name was Andrew Wiley. And
Andrew Wiley in the book world is quite a notable figure.
And as a book agent he handled people like Salomon
Rushdie and Martin Amos. And he handles the Philip Ross

(03:44):
estate and Saul Bellow's estate and Robert Lowell estate. So
he was well known, came from Boston, and so it
all seemed to align up together.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, have you achieved your goal? Are you happy with
the results in terms of impact?

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Well, yes and no. Yes, I finished the book and
that you know, it's sort of like one. Well, the
people that I admire work on a recording or work
on a project, and the first thing they want to
do is artistically satisfy themselves, you know, and if they
feel they achieve something that they're excited about, that's the

(04:31):
first step. So yes, I feel I I did that.
And again, I spent many years avoiding doing a book,
and so that I achieved. And what happened, Bob, and

(04:51):
you might understand this more than most, is that I
signed to Little Brown because they published some of the
books that I really love, Peter Gerlnick who's written some
of the great music books, the great Elvis Presley books,
Last Trained to Memphis, and Caroless Love and Nick Tosh,
who was a great writer critic. He wrote his books

(05:14):
for Little Brown, and Keith Richards and et cetera. Besides,
you know, they were a Boston based publishing company and
they had a lot of their stable had a lot
of great writers in it. So I wanted to be
with Lil Brown, just like in the early days when
I was starting with the Guiles Band, my dream was

(05:34):
to be on Atlantic Records. And so once I got
to Little Brown, they were very excited and I started writing,
you know, the chapters and writing the outlines, and there
were people there that had been there for you know,
twenty five thirty years. And then what happened hashet which

(05:58):
is the corporation kind of what happened in the music
industry when universals started gobbling up all the different companies,
all the people that I signed on to to be
with Little Brown were all fired, and so all of
a sudden I went through I think four editors, and

(06:23):
it was quite difficult because the people that were passionate
about your project were no longer there. And so the
book came out, and there's this thing that I was
unaware of called a Kirkus review, and that's for publishers
and bookstores and if you get a Circus review, but

(06:44):
if you get a Kirkus review and a star, that's
apparently a real good achievement. So we got that and
then reviews started coming in, and in a very quick
time the book ended up number five on the New
York Times bestseller List, which to me was, you know,

(07:09):
a great accomplishment. But then what happened is the company
ran out of books, and in book world, I think
books are like printed now in the Far East or something,
and so it took a good long almost a month
to maybe less, to get you know, books back in

(07:31):
the big boxes and independent bookstores. So I was working
very hard on promoting. And so when you get people
coming into the bookstore, and I would go into bookstores,
there were no books or maybe one copy. And then
there's always Amazon that has books but Amazon doesn't report

(07:54):
to people like the New York Times or the Boston
Globe or the Washington Post. So there was a great
lag period. And not unlike a record when you're you
know on you say, like getting on a Stephen Colbert
or fallon or you know, doing beyond Howard Stern or

(08:20):
your podcast, and you create a certain excitement. In the
old days, people go in the record store if they
didn't have the record, uh, you know they you know,
you kind of lose that moment and then there are
new records coming along. So I did achieve what I

(08:41):
wanted to achieve, but now it's been very hard to
kind of keep the book, the momentum of the book continuing.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Okay, are there books in the stores now? Is the
window passed or can you regain momentum.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
That's something that I'm still trying to figure out, Bob.
There are books now in the stores. But what happens
is that in the independent bookstores so many new books
come out. There's different not unlike in the record period.
You have you know, your September release, early September release,

(09:21):
then it's followed by end of September, and then comes
your October release. So there's only a certain amount of
premium space. Like in the old record stores, if you'd
walk into say like Tower or Sam Goodie and you'd
see the cutouts and the you know, the the advertisements
for the recording, they last only for a certain time

(09:43):
until something new comes along. So I think losing momentum
in the book world is far harder to regain than
in the music world.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Okay, in the music world, as you referenced earlier about
putting a new album out and being in the ether
very quickly, it's totally different now. It used to be
some famous musician Elvis died, there was a limited amount
of product in the stories immediately sold out and you
couldn't we fulfill it for a couple of months, I
mean a couple of weeks ultimately, whereas now everything is

(10:20):
streaming an instant access. We have kindle in e books.
In the book world, print publishers have done their best
to sort of kill that, but without making that any issue.
How do you feel about the digital world in music
and the changes in the music world of distribution.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, that's a very complicated question because the uh, there's
a lot of segments to it. They're not to sound
generic or avoiding the question. But in reality, for me,

(11:03):
there's many positives and there's many negatives. And the positives
is that it's available, it's there now someone like myself,
who I wouldn't say I'm an audio file, but I

(11:24):
really enjoy hearing music at a certain quality, and the
compressed music does disturb me. That happens a lot in digital.
I have lots and lots of my records. I'm not
a record collector, but I have thousands of LPs because

(11:45):
you know, all through my life, I've never let my
records dwindle. I have the first you know, Frankie Lyman
and the Teenagers album. I have the first Elevis album.
I have the first Chuck Berry album, first Buddy Holly
album you know that I bought when I was eleven
years old. So I do listen to an awful lot
of analog. But I also have, you know, hundreds and

(12:09):
hundreds of CDs which I also enjoyed. So I'd say
they answer the question, there's the negative.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Okay, just going to one element at the point, the
book has got a lot of interactions with legendary blues
musicians and in the sixties, discovering these people was a
scene unto itself, somewhere in the phone books. Some were
working street jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Today literally everything

(12:39):
is available like it used to be a record collector,
you go and for years you look for record. Now
I you go online. It's either available or not. These
blues musicians in their music because now it is available
to anybody who wants to hear it. Can the blues
in these people come back?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
I don't know what you mean by comeback, Bob.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Okay, let me be more specific. The roots of rock
and roll are blues. In the present moment, a snapshot
of the landscape of music is hip hop, pop in
country rock and roll were the Gules band those roots,
they're not primary in the market today. However, there have

(13:22):
been bands that have been rediscovered the doors decades ago,
led Zeppelin. Can we see a blues based revival the
influence of this music or is it, like jazz more,
a thing of the past.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
No. I don't think it's a thing of the past.
And I think you know, Bob, there's many many bands
that still searching out and learning about blues. I know
in the book when I write about Muddy Waters and
how I got to know money, and he would, you know,
stay at my apartment, and we became, you know, quite

(13:58):
good friends. They're young people come up to me and say, man,
you know you brought Muddy Waters to life for me,
and they're they're in bands that are just starting out now.
It's true where I am based in Boston. Boston has
a great folk heritage and also has a great roots heritage.
I've never, uh, the term Americana seemed to have come out.

(14:23):
I don't quite understand it, but I mean, I do
understand it, but I don't understand how one gets defined
in it. But Boston is, you know, because of the
Club forty seven. It was the starting place for Joan
Baez and many of the bluegrass bands. And it also
had an amazing place a showcase for the great jazz artists.

(14:48):
So Coltrane, Miles Davis would always love to come to Boston,
and even people like Artie Sure would come to Boston.
And you had Berkeley School of Music, you had several conservatories,
Conservatory of Music more for classical but different you know,
uh horn players, classical horn players that all became jazz men.

(15:09):
And so uh, I got to see in small clubs
uh in Boston, Felonious Monk, Miles Davis, you know, Ama Jamal,
you know some of the some of the greats. And
in these same clubs later on it was Van Morrison
and uh John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Otis Rush.
So Uh, Boston was a rich place. Uh. And I

(15:33):
think that if one is interested in a certain type
of music, uh, they will discover it. And the digital
world makes it a lot easier to discover it. You know,
there's that famous story of you know, uh, Keith Richards
and Mick Jagger knew each other as kids, but then

(15:54):
one day either Mick or Keith I forget, we're carrying
a record and they were on the train and one
spotted the best of Muddy Waters under one's arm and
then goes, wow, man, you like that, and boom that
rekindled their friendship because they were both blues fanatics. But
you and I both know that there was a time

(16:16):
when rock and roll in itself became outdated. And by
that I mean a rock band like the Jay Giles band,
a rock band even like you know, so many rock
bands were considered antiquated or dinosaurs, and then came this
music called disco, and disco took over the entire Billboard

(16:42):
Top forty basically, and there was no rock and roll
on Billboard, So one could have said back then, is
rock and roll dead? Is anyone interested in blues? Is
anyone interested in country blues? Is anyone interested in you know,
Carl Perkins, for instance, I was a late night DJ.

(17:03):
I helped start a radio station, WBCNU, and it was
a classical music station and an easy listening music station
before it was bought out and turned into a rock
and roll station. And it was one of the first
important FM AO R ALBAM oriented radio stations and had

(17:29):
a big, big following. There was one in San Francisco,
down in New York an he w, but we kind
of really hit the mark early on. And I remember
coming in one day because I did the I had
the wolf of Goop of Mama Tooth the show making
a niece Freezer bladlat Vithenian's got to come out, because
that's a rock and roll is all about Yamagama Guma

(17:49):
and I would do that from twelve o'clock at night
to six in the morning. And I remember coming in
one day for a meeting and they were carrying out
all the great Sinatra records. They're all the great, even
Roy Orbison's, and they were just dumping them. And I said,
what are you doing with these? He goes, well, we're
getting rid of them. I said, why. I said, we

(18:11):
got to build, you know, room in the library for
Country Joe and the Fish and this and that, and
you know, so there were to them. Uh, Carl Perkins
was antiquated, you know, Roy Orbison was considered old time music.
And the Beach Boys even you know, had a kind

(18:32):
of some did, some didn't. So the point I'm making
is that there has been so many transformations in music,
and disco was dominant. It was the biggest seller. You know,
labels were hunting after disco artists and acts, and you

(18:53):
know Atlantic with Chic and all of that, and Nile
and you know, the the Phillies, Gamble and Huff and
you know Columbia and it's just didn't it was, you know,
even motown. And then Slide came along and was one
of the few black artists on ao R radio, and uh,

(19:13):
you know, slowly disco faded and rock and roll came back.
Bob Seger came back, Joan Jet came back, Ario speed
Wagon came back, and you know, the Guiles band came back.
We didn't go away, but on the charts we found
a new placement because uh disco finally had its uh

(19:36):
you know time, and rock and roll prevailed again. So
with blues artists, they're there.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
To me.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think of them as the classics, like Dickens or
like even Faulkner, you know, the artists. You know, if
you're interested in books, if you're interested in reading, you'd
go to the classics. And if you're interested in new
in a serious way, not, you know. And I have
nothing against pop music, it's coming from a different place.

(20:07):
But for the musicians that I tend to admire, and
the musicians that tend to go the distance, they study
the art. And even as a painter, one went back
as far as the Renaissance painters, and then you went
into Breugel and you you know da Vinci, and you

(20:28):
went all the way up to Jiado Delacroix, and walk
your way up into the Impressionist post Impressionists, then into
Matisse and Picasso, Cubis, and you know, futurists, and it
just you studied all that just as if you were
a filmmaker. You don't just start making films. You have
to study the history of the art. So I think

(20:50):
it's a complicated question, and I'm probably don't stop me talking,
as Sunny Boy Williamson said, don't stop me talking, Bob,
I'll tell you everything I know.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
You've been living in Boston for decades. However, you grew
up in New York and are quite New York savvy.
Boston is a college town scene as somewhat provincial. Okay,
why do you stay in Boston? And tell me the
difference from your eyes of Boston and New York.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
The difference between Boston and New York. Well, first of all,
I grew up in New York and I went I
think what saved my life was I lived in the
Bronx and the Bronx if anyone knows about well, Dion
came from the Bronx, and Bobby Darren came from the Bronx.
Stanley Kuber came from the Bronx. The Bronx is a

(21:50):
special kind of place and to itself, and when I
grew up it was kind of rough and tough. I
grew up in a half Jewish, half Italian neighborhood. There
was you know, territorial aspects to it. If you were
in the wrong neighborhood, you got into trouble. And but

(22:11):
it was very rich in characters. And my sister, who
was older than me, danced frequently on a TV show
called Alan Freed's Big Beat. And Alan Freed started these
rock and roll shows called rock and Roll Calvalcade, and

(22:35):
he had him at the Brooklyn Fox, of the Brooklyn Paramount,
then at the in Manhattan, and also in the Bronx.
It came up to the Bronx Paradise and so I
would go and as a ten year old in a
matter of several months, and in one concert I had

(22:57):
as a ten year old who loved music and you know,
had to buy certain records. In one concert, I saw
Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard Screaming, Jay Hawkins,
the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Chantelle's,
the Charell's, Ed Townsend and joe Ane Campbell the Blonde Bombshell,

(23:22):
and I know I'm forgetting one or two others, but
it was just amazing and to see, you know, Chuck Berry,
whose records. I had all of a sudden, they're live
on stage doing the duck walk and Jerry Lee Lewis
jumping on top of the piano, and you know, the
Chantelle's singing maybe and you know, coming out of the

(23:46):
coffin was screaming Jay. I mean, as a ten year
old kid, I was baptized into rock and roll. I
became a fanatic. And you know, seeing these characters were
just amazing, and the talent and just young Frankie Lyman
who was a young twelve year old but must have

(24:06):
had the body of a young kid but was an
aged The things he did musically, how he could have
learned them at such an early age was astonishing. I
mean people talk about Michael Jackson, who was a phenomenal talent,
but Frankie, you know, as as great and maybe even

(24:28):
greater as a young voice than even Michael's. But there's
no sense to compare them. They were just both great.
So having that experience and then you know, getting to
see jazz artists at Birdland at the original Birdland early on,
and even as important as that, and maybe even more

(24:49):
important was growing up in New York when they had
some of the most incredible DJs. You had Alan Freed,
followed by Jock O Henderson who infected me with you know,
things like hop pop ba doo, how do you do?
This is the jock and his record Machene Man Hey,

(25:10):
Dadda d how boo, and he would just go on
like that and do all these rhymes and patter and
played great music. And followed by him was the magnificent
Montague and he would talk real low for lovers, and
he'd play things like Sam Cook and just all these
beautiful romantic soul ballads. And he was followed by Symphony

(25:35):
Sid and Baba Do Babe, Babe Babe Bobba Doo doo,
and Symphony Sid live from Birdland and Syphany Sid would
play and interview some of the greatest jazz artists in
the world. So as a ten year old eleven year old,
I was absorbing, you know. At night, I you know,
had right by my bed this big telefunk and radio

(25:57):
I had really low. I was just you know bond
I must have you know, fell asleep every night listening
to it. And I would even on Thursdays and certain
nights because of the difference between the AM radio band
and the f M radio band AM would bounce and trowl.

(26:18):
So on Thursday nights I would get things like w
w V a wheeling West Virginia. And I always love
to tell the story. Being a huge Evely Brothers fan,
I was listening one night to these gals, you know,
imitating the sounded like they were imitating the Eavely Brother's harmony,
and you know, I wanted to know who, you know,

(26:40):
these girls were that sounded like the Everly Brothers. And
when the DJ, who was coffee drinking, DJ Lee Moore,
he said, those were thus Stanley Brothers. I said, brothers.
I said, that sounded like girls. And that was my
first introduction to bluegrass, and so New York culturally was

(27:05):
quite amazing. And then my high school was located in Harlem.
I went to the High School of Music and Art
because I was, you know, really since all I don't know,
since three four, I was always interested in art and
painting and drawing, and I went to the High School
of Music and Art was located on one hundred and

(27:27):
thirty fifth Street in Manhattan, and the Great Apollo Theater
was on one hundred and twenty fifth Street. So every
Wednesday I made a journey a Mecca down to the Apollo,
where I saw a movie, a travelogue, the Amateur Show,
and then the entire Apollo Show, where I saw people

(27:51):
like Jackie Wilson, Billy Stewart, Eda, James Muddy Waters, BB King,
you did just you know, the Moonglows, I mean just
I can't even wreak James Brown, Wreatha Franklin or it
just the list is. And so being a young kid

(28:12):
seeing these amazing performers interact with an audience that was
alive and connected with the artists like being in church.
I mean, because I would say ninety nine percent of
the artists that appeared at the Apollo all came out
of the church background. So the artists were like the preachers,

(28:37):
and the audience was the congregation, and so their job
was to, you know, get that congregation worked up. And man,
you know when you see the Olympics jumping around on stage,
or Jackie Wilson, you know, doing his splits, and just
the you know, talents, it it was unforgettable and stayed

(28:57):
with me throughout my life. And so New York and
then also in New York, there was this amazing place
at the time Greenwich Village, which was like the Left
Bank in Paris. There was no commercial neon signs. It

(29:18):
was a gathering place for many musicians, folk musicians, jazz musicians.
There was great folk clubs, great jazz clubs. People would
play out in Washington Square Park on the weekends and
from all over the city would bring their guitars. There
was a place called the Folklore Center where people hung out.
There was the gas Light, and there was you know,

(29:41):
the Cafe of Go Go, and there was places like
where bands I'm trying to think Leslie West's first band.
I can't remember the night out where they appeared and
where the rascals and all these different people. So New
York was an incredibly cultural place. But Boston, being a

(30:02):
guy that didn't finish high school, I spent a good
year hitchhiking around the country seeing my friends at college,
pretending I was a college an art student, because in
those days, if you look like a student, you walked
around at university. There was no ideas there, you know,
there's just you know, they just assumed you were a student.

(30:23):
So I spent a good deal of time traveling from
college to college. But Boston had so many colleges, so
I ended up attending. I was a student at BU,
I was a student at Harvard, and then I was
a student at Brand. I was just pretending so I
could use their art supplies and you know, sleep in
the student dorm or outside. And then eventually I was

(30:50):
accepted to an art school in Boston. I got a
scholarship to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, which
was quite an incredible, very conservative school where it was
six days a week. We started at eight thirty in
the morning and sometimes went to five o'clock at night.

(31:11):
And they had the same program that they the same
technique and program that artists were taught in the late,
you know, at the end of the nineteenth century. So
we had to study perspective, anatomy, sculpting, how to make
our own paints, how to just saw our own canvases,

(31:33):
all the traditional aspects of painting. And once I was
there and became engulfed in that world, I also somehow
on one night, the art students were performing at this
art loft, and that's how I got into becoming a

(31:56):
performer from that one night and so from that pointing on,
Boston remained home because of school and then the bands
that I became involved with, and Boston was I think
artistically a healthier place because there were so many colleges

(32:18):
and so many clubs and so many opportunities for a musician,
and as an artist, you didn't have the severe competition
that New York had, So Boston seemed to be a
more comfortable place to live, cheaper place to live. You know,

(32:39):
I was living in Harvard Square for next to nothing,
and so it just at that time was a healthier
environment for me to survive and artistically.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Okay, In the book, you talk about signing to Atlantic
Records without an URN and putting out all these records
and not making any money. A few things there. You
do have a hit single and seventy three Give it
to Me. You say that Atlantic takes half of the publishing.
You say that you hire d he Anthony as your manager,

(33:19):
so d never renegotiated. You really never made any money
from Atlantic, and Atlantic says they've wiped the books clean
and they're starting to pay from dollar one. Give me
your assessment here.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Well, Uh, I was sort of representing the band. You
could say I was managing the Jay Giles band. Uh
and uh a funny story if I nate, because someone
who I think deserves the place on your podcast is
a fellow by the name of Mario Medeas known in

(33:53):
the music industry as the Big M. May I tell
a little funny story about the Big m we have.
The Big Am was he worked, was in the Air Force.
He was came from Mississippi. Uh. He moved to Chicago
with his father. Big Am was you know, this young

(34:14):
black you know, lover of music. His father loved blues,
became very close with Muddy Waters. And his father, as
the Big Am would say, was a gambler, and he
would have played craps and start card games and all
the great blues artists would be part of his card games.
And so at an early age, the Big Am got

(34:34):
to hear and see Muddy Waters, Hallan Wolfs Sonny Boy Williamson,
Little Walter and became emphatic. And then when he was
in the Air Force, he got so into Miles Davis
and especially John Coltrane. And he was a photographer for
the Air Force too, and he started taking pictures for

(34:55):
an English magazine that was the equivalent I can't think
of the name right now, but the English equivalent of Downbeat,
and when he got out of the Air Force, he
would hang out at the clubs and especially go every
night went to see Miles Davis. And there was this
very attractive Swedish woman that Mario became friends with because

(35:18):
they both loved the music. And Mario was working as
a bookkeeper in a meatpacking place and she said to Mario,
you know, I work at this company, Atlantic Records. Atlantic Records,
that's where drawn Coltrane's on. Are you kidding me? He said, yeah,
I can get you a job there, Mario, he said,

(35:40):
he said, I don't care how much they pay. If
I can get three records, I'm in. And so Mario
becomes the bookkeeper in the bookkeeping department at Atlantic Records. Now,
Mario is this, you know, black fellow that's working in Atlantic.
And at that point, Jerry Wexler had all these great

(36:00):
you know, Wilson Picket, Joe text, Reefa Franklin, Don Kove,
you know, all these incredible blues artists, and Mario was
signing all the checks, even amite checks, Jerry Wexler's checks,
all the checks uh for the entire Atlantic company and
their artists. But when the artists would come in Mario

(36:23):
would say to somebody like Salomon Burke with the picket,
you know, man, these guys are not really paying you
as much as they should be because blah blah blah blah,
and they're charging you for breakage and blah blah blah blah.
And then your European sales abouz is not showing up here,
so you know, actually they owe you X thousands of

(36:43):
more dollars than blah blah blah. Well, Wilson Picket would
hear this and he'd go down, Jarrett, I gotta tell
you, you know, man, you guys are cheating me out of
my you know, European royalties, that this and that that
you're charging me breakage. Your albums don't break they're not
seventy eighth blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well, then

(37:05):
would come Salomon Burke, and then would come this artist
and that artist, Joe Tech, and finally, you know, what's
where the hell are these guys getting this information from.
So he has a meeting with Ahmed and they uh
find out that it's this guy up and bookkeeping on
the upper floor. This Mario Medeaz is telling his artist

(37:28):
that he admires. You know what they're faird is. So
everybody loved Mario and they didn't want to fire Mario
because people would be upset. So they brought Mario down
into Ahmed's office with Jerry and they said, you know,
Amici didn't maybe you know, uh we love it, but
see you know we got to take you out of accounting.

(37:51):
Uh so you know where else in the company. Uh
do you think he could be of you know, valuable?
And Mario said, hey, man, let me be a promotion man.
Let me go out with the band. Let me go
out with the young rock band and they don't know
shit from Shaniola. Let me take them all around the comming.
I'll walk to the radio station with him. Man, I'll

(38:12):
get him played. Man. And this was you know, music
to Amit's and Jerry's ears and plus a lot of
the bands that he was talking about were bands like
Rolling Stones, led Zeppelin, who were blues lovers that really
never came into contact with many of the black blues artists.

(38:34):
And so here was Mario that was, you know, friendly
with Muddy, friendly with Hell and Wolf Freddie and friendly
with Otis reading. You know, we'd write checks out with
Otis tells a great story of how Otis wanted something
like twenty five thousand dollars in cash so he can
go up to the Apollo and flash all this money
around and pay his band and cash to show all

(38:56):
the other bands that he's rolling in the dough. But
the bank wouldn't cash check. Mario had to go down
to certify that yes, this this you know, young guy
is Otis reading, it's his money, et cetera. So Mario
becomes beloved, and he's uh taking artists all around the country.
And there's this new artist called Doctor John who's coming

(39:17):
out with this album called Greegree, and he's taking Doctor
John up to Boston to w b C and the
radio station where I was working, and he was taking
him to the Boston tea party, which was the equivalent
of the Filmore in New York. It was Boston's Fillmore
equivalent or you know, uh the Agora or you know

(39:40):
Philly Larry Maggott had And so he heard these blues,
this blue stuff, and uh, Mary said, man, who are
these brothers? And I came into the dress room. He
asked me, who are those guys out there playing the blues?
I said that was us, you guys. He said, Holy

(40:02):
damn man. He said, what label you guys on? So
we're not on any label. You gotta be shitting me.
Hold on, and he calls up Jerry. Wesley said, Jerry,
I got these guys here. Man, they're going to be hot.
They're hot on the pistol. Man. They places this Chicago
blue shit.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Man.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
I heard him. I thought it was like a blues
band from Chicago. You got to sign these guys. So
Jerry calls up a fellow that was big writer and
Rolling Stone and also producing Livingston Taylor and some albums
for Atlantic, and his name was John Landau. And he
calls up John and says, John, you know about this band,

(40:38):
that Jay Giles band. And John said yeah, Peter Wolf's
a really good friend of mine. And three days later,
John Landau and I are sitting in the office of
Jerry Wexler, no lawyer, and you know, Jerry's talking to us.
Never heard us, but you know, bound the word of
Landau and uh, I guess made so some calls around Boston.

(41:03):
He said, I'd like to sign you to Atgo Records.
I said at Go, I said, man, Jerry, we got
to be on Atlantic, and so I don't know if
I could do that. So we called in a lawyer
and the lawyer said, Jerry, you know, this was all
a big bluff. I don't think we can put him
on Atlantic. You know we we can't, you know, And

(41:23):
Jerry said, please see what you can do.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Please.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Anyway, they handed us a contract that was very, to
be polite, very antiquated, and you know, we were a
band of five six guys and it had limited you know,
they were doing, you know, charging us for breakage. You

(41:46):
know that came from the days of seventy eights, you know,
when you know there was a certain amount of shipping
seventy eights that would break and so, uh you the
record company it was it was very antiquated, and the
band was simon Atlantic, and we started touring. And in
those years it was touring, and I'm talking about nineteen seventy.

(42:13):
In nineteen seventy, rock and roll touring was not unlike vaudeville,
where you had an opening act, a middle act, and
then the headliner. And like in vaudeville, you'd had you know,
five or six acts or seven or eight acts, and
then you'd have the headliner closing the show and it
would travel from city city and so we were the

(42:34):
opening act for almost two years, and I was able
to get the band signed to I went down and
had a meeting with a gentleman by the name of
Frank Barcelona, who was the who started Premier Talent. And
I can go on for an hour about the importance

(42:54):
of Premier Talent, but it was the most important rock
agency at the time and had probably the most definitive
rock artists signed to its roster. And Frank started with
Brian Epstein and then signed Jimmy Hendrix, and he had
the Who and led Zeppelin and Springsteen and U two

(43:16):
and you know, uh, just you know, everybody in all
the eras, and uh, after our second record, we kind
of felt that we're still staying in the first slot.
And we were traveling all around the country opening up
for bands like Black Sabbath, and you know, just Black

(43:38):
Sabbath and Jay Giles had nothing in common, but there
we were. And I remember talking with Frank and Frank
suggested we need to get a manager and maybe that
would help, a real formal manager. And Frank at that
time was close with a gentleman by the name of
De Anthony, and d Anthony was managing humble Pie that

(43:59):
was doing very well, Spooky Tooth. He had just managed
Joe Cocker with the Holy On Russell Mad Dogs and Englishman,
and D came out of the you know, the world
of Tony Bennett in the Copa Cabana and loved the
music world, and he became our manager. And in a

(44:22):
long winded answer to this day, your question about why
he never renegotiated the Atlantic contract is beyond me. Nor
did we ever say, hey, D, you know, can you
renegotiate the contract? Because that's usually the first thing a

(44:44):
manager does. It sits down with the company and says, listen,
I'm on board. Now you know I got this band,
that band, that band. I'm tight with Frank Barcelona. There's
no bullshitting around here. This band needs to get paid
aid fairly. Never happened.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
This late date. A, do you own the publishing for
those songs? And B do you ever get a check
for the recordings of Atlantic.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
In this late They Noah, do not own the songs. Uh,
this late they you know the checks that you know
do come in. Uh, but let me put it this way,
they're not checks that you're going to take a pleasurable
trip on it's you know, the monies are We did not.

(45:42):
We were in debt. The guys band was in debt
from most of our time and we get out of
it and we would work with you know, trucking companies
and you know beg them to hold off sending us
the bills for three or four months. I remember the
Claire Brothers Sound Company when they first started. You know,
they didn't charge us for a long period of time,
and you know we repaid them. We did not actually

(46:04):
start being you know comfortable we're being able to pay
you know, guys would have to take loans and stuff.
We were not comfortable until we actually were signed with
a new label and that was EMI America. And then
the book I explained how that occurrence happened and it
was quite a you know story of chance how that

(46:27):
all came to be. So it wasn't until really EMI
and we had three albums, Sanctuary, Love Stinks and then
Freeze Frame when we really started to be, you know,
have the opportunity in front of us to really be
able to you know pack away some you know monies

(46:48):
for those rainy days.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
So what are you living on today?

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Peanut butter jelly, some cantuna fish and no, I've you know,
through the EMI stuff. There's you know in there. We
kept out publishing and so one uh, you know lives okay,

(47:15):
but not you know, people always think, oh man, you
know they know the Jay Giles band, and you mentioned
the song give It to Me, Well, give It to
Me was on its way to becoming a hit. And
then I forget the f C C And then I
believe it was It wasn't Al Gore's wife, but it

(47:38):
was the very conservative woman that was lobbying Congress that
lyrics and rock were becoming very lewde And there was
a McCartney song, my Girl, she does It? What was
helped me out?

Speaker 1 (47:59):
My girl does a good Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
It does it good. Well, you know that became a
huge controversy. But you couldn't mess so much with Paul McCartney,
but you could mess with the Jay Giles band. And
then you know, we were getting up there, getting up there,
and then boom there was a band on AM radio.
And I think I don't know if Abrams or whoever

(48:21):
was in charge of you know, who was a big
you know name and you had all the guys like
this Scipio, and you know, all the different helped me
out here well.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Tip sheets, consultants, Indie promo.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
All the all the consultants. Everybody put a freeze, no
puns intended on give it to me, and it just
stopped in its tracks, but it was on its way.
It was like next to Paul Simon or Montego Bay.
It was one of the few reggae songs at that time.
You know, most people didn't know what reggae was or
heard it. Paul Simon had Mother's Child, Mother and Child

(49:00):
Reunion that had a reggae feel to it. But other
than that, reggae was pretty unknown to most people. And
this was before the Heart that they come came out
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Okay, d Anthony, you tell some interesting stories about a
rock festival in Pennsylvania. At this late date, the reputation
of d Anthony is connected about the money first making
Joe Cocker go on the road with mad dogs and
english men and a cruk.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
What was your experience, Well, the big m Mario was
riding in a car once and me indeed, and you know,
d s it to me. You know, Mario let me
tell you about management. The first job. There's three jobs
that a manager has to do. Maaris was that he

(49:55):
goes one, get the money. Norrisaid, what's number two? He said,
get the money? He said, so I can think I
got number three. He said, you gotta your smart Mario,
get the money. And that was the's philosophy. D was
from the Bronx. Uh, I'm from the Bronx. D was,

(50:15):
you know, an Italian grew up right near the neighborhood
I grew up. We uh knew similar places. Uh uh
similar restaurants. Uh. And when I met D, uh we
just talked Bronx to Bronx and I negotiated a handshake

(50:39):
deal with D. And we never had a contract. We
had a handshake deal. And I said to D and
somehow I bought. I said, look, let's get started, and
I'm representing the band. I don't know. You know, you
can come and have meetings and you know, we're kind

(50:59):
of like democratic band. And but look, if it's not
going to work out for you, and if we become problematic,
why would you want us? And if it's not going
to work out for us, why would we want you?
So let's just you know, have a handshake and get rolling.
And when for some reason he accepted that and for

(51:22):
our tire relationship there was never any you know contract.
And d did do some very positive things for the band.
First of all, he had this ability of gathering everybody.
He loved live acts. He saw the Gules Band, he

(51:44):
loved the Gules Band, the energy, he loved Humble Pie,
he loved Steve Marriott. Uh. You know, he tutored Peter
Frampton when Peter was going solo, and Peter would stay
at his house and he uh, and so Dee was
quite a character. You know, he would gather everybody in
a huddle and have a whistle. Why don't you guys
to go out there? And you know, just and so

(52:05):
his first big decision was, I want you guys to
make a live album and just record the songs. You've
already said, d we can't go out there. We're just
playing the songs that are on our first and second
Atlantic record. You know, if we do a live album
of just those songs, people are gonna think we run

(52:27):
out of creativity. And back in those years, a live
album was kind of a way of buying time. It
wasn't accepted as authentic. It wasn't considered an authentic piece
of work. I gues. Of course there's James brown Line,
but for a rock and roll band, you know, the
Allman Brothers live at the film or you know, was

(52:49):
an anomaly. Uh uh. But so we recorded a live
album and because d felt that our stage show was
far more exciting and energetic than the recordings, and so
we recorded our third album, Full House live in Detroit.

(53:10):
That's I guess being re released by Rhino as a real,
definitive aspect of the Guiles band, and it happens to
be one of my favorite albums. And Dee was responsible
for the making of that record because there was no
way that we would have ever for our third album

(53:32):
ever think of recording a live record. We were in
the midst of making another studio record.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Well that is what you know. There were the first
couple of records and that did gain you notice previous
to that, you worked with Bill Simsick before he was
a household name, worked with Joe Walsh, eventually works with
the Eagles. How'd you get hooked up with Bill Simsick?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Our first ja Jay Gill's band, our first album I
think was done in about eighteen days, mixed and everything,
you know. And we were working with these two R
and B producers that Brad Shapiro that ended up doing
a lot of work with James Brown and Dave Crawford

(54:19):
who did who was a writer and did a lot
of great R and B stuff for Atlantic. And I
think that they were Jerry Wexler's idea of being a
new Gamble and Huff as a team. And so Brad
was white, Dave Crawford was black. They both had R

(54:40):
and B roots, and they thought, well, because of our
blues and R and B, they might be good producers
for us. And I remember we rolled in to the
studio and we started playing and Dave and Brad said, well,
start playing some stuff. We set up like we were
on stage, and we started playing, and little did I

(55:02):
know that they were actually recording us. That's how we
basically recorded. The first record was basically those takes. And
at one point Dave Crawford called me in the studios
a Pete, can you come in the control room? I
said sure. He said, what the hell is this thing
with the harp? I said, what do you mean? He said,

(55:23):
I mean who plays harmonica? I mean my grandmother listens
to harmonica. And they had no idea of Paul Butterfield.
They had no idea of the resurgence of Chicago, you know,
bands like the Guyles Band, you know, bands like Bloomfield
and Butterfield and Al Cooper and Barry Goldberg and the

(55:45):
whole resurgence of you know, you know, Blues Project with
Al Cooper. They had no idea of that world. And
so we were, you know, coming to make our second record,
and I'm not sure the James Gang. I was a
big fan of the James Gang, Joe Walsh, and we're

(56:06):
still friends to this day. An amazing character, amazing musician,
amazing guy. And Bill's name came up in the mix
and we were out in Detroit at the gold Key
Restaurant where this was in maybe seventy three or something,

(56:28):
and I remember the Dells, the R and B group,
the Dells that sang the great hit Oh what a night,
Oh what a night?

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Do that you do?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
It's early morning, so pardon me, So, I mean it
was amazing. There's the Dell's. I mean, I love the
Dells and Bill Sims, a guy. We all had to
talk and Bill said, you know, listen. You know, I
see you guys live. I said, you know, I wouldn't
do much. I wouldn't change this sound. I would just
you know, try to enhance it in the studio and
we're all talking and we the TV on. We're all

(57:01):
in this hotel room and Bill came in and we
were just kind of amazed because he had on a
T shirt and just you know, playing and it was
just like one of us. And we for this meeting.
We had bought a bunch of popcorn and we had
some hamburgers we bought, and we had this big, you
know watermelon. It we sliced up, and we were all
sitting around and just big kegs you know, beer and

(57:23):
drinking beer. And I'm trying to think it was the
singer that Elvis Presley. Every time Elvis Presley saw him
on the TV, he would take out a magnum and
shoot it Guley. Robert Ulay and Elvis is good for
some reason, you know. So the Elvis Maffi would always

(57:45):
if they knew Robert Ulay was going to be on
a television show, to make sure Elvis wouldn't want it,
because if he was at the Hilton Hotel he'd take
out the gun and bam, you know, shoot a TV. Well,
Robert Ulay was on the Mic Douglas Show. We're in
the middle of this meeting and Bill looks up, takes
out half a watermelon and goes wam right into the

(58:09):
TV set and man, we all just got up and
cheered and said, yeah, we found our producer because he
just you know, first of all, he produced bb King's
big hit, The Thrill Is Gone. He knew all these
great jazz artists, but he wasn't. He was one of us.
And we just had an instantaneous connection with him spiritually, artistically,

(58:35):
and he was an amazing guy. And Bill, I remember
we'd come we were doing our first session with Bill
at the Record Plant West, and then we moved to
do some overdubs at the Record Plant East, and this
young guy would come, friend of Bill's, with a little

(58:57):
at Taysha case and he'd say to me, listen, you
guys are great. I should manage it. And I said, well,
we got a manager, and he goes, no, no, no,
that's not a manager. I'm a manager. You should let
me manage it. And he opened up is that test
shake case? And you had me all this stuff and

(59:20):
he would, you know, appear quite frequently, and I took
to him. He was a really you know, very smart
and you know guy. But the idea of you know,
breaking away from you know, the choice of Frank Barcelona
on our handshake deal, you know, and just you know,
we were rolling along. But that young guy with that

(59:44):
test shake case was this young fella starting in management
and his name was Irving asof and that began a
very long friendship to this day that I have with Irving.
He's kind of like one of my guardians. One of
my rabbi is somebody I will call and you know,
if I email Irving. You know, there are certain people

(01:00:07):
in the music industry. Irving was one. Geffen was another
John Winner when he was at Rolling Stone that you
could connect with and within ten minutes they would either
answer you or the secretary would you know, tell you
why you weren't getting an answer? But they always you know,
responded Irving still to this day, Happy Thanksgiving, Irving. Two

(01:00:27):
seconds later, gobble gobble, you know. And so I'm in
touch with Irving. And it's quite interesting because the other night,
just last night, no, the night before last, I was
backstage going to Vince Gill show, and Vince is now
an Eagle and he's great talent. And I loved Vince

(01:00:50):
for you know, decades, and I knew him when he
first got involved with Amy Grant. And how I also
met Irving was the Eagles opened up for the j
Giles Band a good many times, and that's how I
became very friendly with Don and Glenn and the band,

(01:01:12):
but especially Glenn and Down. And when I travel out
to Los Angeles to do any kind of business and
stuff for the band, I would always connect with Irving
and I'd always either go to his house or Don's house,
and Don and I remain very close throughout the years,

(01:01:32):
and every time the Gules Band was doing an important date,
Don always sent a telegram to me, you know, break
a leg, you know, good luck at Madison Square Garden.
And so it's funny how relationships like that remain. For instance,
you two opened up for the Jay Giles band and
we to this day. I always go to see him,

(01:01:55):
pay respects, and the friendship remains. Tom Petty opened up
for the Giles Band, and when Tom's last tour came,
you know, as a soloist, he said Pete I'd love
I'd be honor, you know, I'd love you to do
some dates. So I did about eight and nine dates
with my solo band for Tom and so they opened
up for us, and I opened up for Tom, and
unfortunately it became his last tour. But you know, the

(01:02:18):
circle goes around, and uh uh, I guess I live on,
you know, just enthusiasm, energy and the will to keep going.
But uh, you know, unlike d I don't think of money,
money money. I think of the artistic challenge, the artistic

(01:02:41):
challenge and the artistic challenge. Though a lot of people
just know me as Peter Wolf lead singer, or the
Jay Giles band or the Jay Giles. Oh yeah, that's
Jay Giles. And it's so funny because you know, once
you establish a brand name in rock and roll, it's

(01:03:02):
very hard to break away from it, and very few
have succeeded in it. You know, Phil Collins was one,
Peter Gabriel is another. I mean, of course there're you know,
you could make a list, but the amount that tried
that couldn't is far far bigger than those that were

(01:03:23):
able to. And I'll give you for instance, if Sting
was to play Boston he would be able to play
the Wang Theater. I would think definitely one night. I
don't know about two. I'm just I don't know, but
I'm just making a thing. Now, here's Sting, who came

(01:03:47):
out of a three piece band. He's the player of
the bass player in his band, the Police. He's the
sole songwriter of the band, the Police, and he's the
singer of all the songs of the Police. And the
Police is a three piece band. If Sting was to

(01:04:09):
go out, he'd play the Wang Theater. If the Police
went out, he'd play Fen White Park. And here it is.
It's the same singer, same player, and just by the
name the Police, Sting could put together a far more

(01:04:30):
interesting musical group than the Police, you know, by adding
some of the greatest players and you know, but it's
the brand name, and people don't care that it's still Sting.
They hear Police, and Police is far more valuable to

(01:04:52):
a promoter than the name Sting. And go figure that
one out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Okay, you end up having a relationship in being married
to Fade done Away. At the time, rock was much
bigger than movies, but movies had a glamor that was different.
So you're in this situation where you're in her world.
At times when you're in her world, did you feel

(01:05:27):
like you would also ran like you were out of place?

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Well, Bob, it's interesting, you know, I don't know if
rock was a bigger world. I mean, movies were making
far more money than a rock and roll did, but
they both were making quite a lot of money. But
the thing was in the era when I first the
time that I met Fae, all actors wanted to be
rock and rollers, and all rock and rollers ended actors,

(01:05:54):
but there were very few. I don't know if there
were any major rockers that were married to actors or
actresses at that time. You know, a lot in the story,
as I was saying with Hitchcock and different people that
I mentioned, and how I ran into Bob Dylan, it
was all by chance, serpentdipity, and I did not want
this book to be oh I met this famous person

(01:06:15):
or I met that famous person. What I found in
a lot of the musical books that I were reading
was they would mention a character, but they didn't really
tell you what the character was like. So I tried
to be There was a quote that I used in
the book from Christopher Issuwood. I am a camera with

(01:06:37):
the lens always open. So I tried to be the
camera taking pictures of like Muddy and Dylan and Van
Morrison and people that I got to know, but tried to,
you know, without being kiss and tell, but just tried
to show what their personalities were like, what it was
like spending time with them, What was it like hanging

(01:06:59):
out with Van, what was it like, you know, meeting
Alfred Hitchcock in his house. And so the book is
those kind of adventures, I would say. And so one
day we were playing the Fillmore West in California, and
you know, there was that great Tony Bennett's song I

(01:07:20):
Left my Heart in San Francisco, and I was saying
to this woman that worked for Rolling Stone magazine, you know, Bryn,
San Francisco is one of my favorite towns. It's such
a known to be a romantic town. I don't know anybody,
And so she said, I'll bring a girlfriend to come
to the show tomorrow. We were playing in Winterland, and

(01:07:42):
she did, and I could see her a side of
the stage. She showed up and she had this gal
with a hat pulled down, and long story short, that's
how I first met Faye Dunaway, and I didn't really
even know she was at first, and we became friends.

(01:08:02):
I joined there during Christmas. We spent time together in
New York and slowly, you know, she became so involved
and loved music so much and enjoyed being on the
road and visiting the band. And I was such a
film buff. I enjoyed being in her world. And we

(01:08:24):
both were so dedicated to our work and we both
helped each other in our work that that became the
bond of which turned into a marriage, and it remained
for the years that it was good. It remained that way.
You know. We never had a problem about, you know,

(01:08:44):
who was a bigger star, who was more important, tough,
who money or anything. We were just really committed to
helping each other in all of our projects. And at
that time, I think the only other after we got married,
I think Sharon Greg Alman got married for about I

(01:09:06):
don't know, five minutes or whatever it was. I remember
being at a function and you know, I knew Greg
because the Allman Brothers and the Guiles Band played must
have played forty fifty shows together, you know, in the
early days and when Dwayne was still with us and
Dwayne and Jay Goals, you know, just you know, get
to the venue three four hours earlier, and they would

(01:09:27):
just do riffs, you know, on and on. I remember
doing one, you know, you know, Greg just kind of
you know, passed right out at this function and h So, yeah,
it was it was interesting for me to meet some
of the key players, Robert Evans, some of the big

(01:09:49):
agents in Hollywood, and some of the great directors, you know,
people like George Kueker and King Vidar and of course
Alfred Hitchcock and my time spent with Roman Polanski. And
so this to me was an adventure of meeting other
really talented artists and being a film buff when I

(01:10:13):
was a kid, I would you know, by the time
I got to Boston, I almost had seen every important
foreign film ever released, all the Bergman movies, all the
Fellini movies, all the you know, true fol movies, you know,
and everything that came out in that era, you know,
which was a golden era for French films and the

(01:10:33):
Swedish films. You know. I saw Alexander Nievsky, I mean,
I just seen them all. So being on a movie
set was very intriguing and also Fay and I had
such an amazing relationship where, you know, I would take
her out to have a sushi dinner with Wilson Pickett

(01:10:54):
and Don Kove. Remember Pickett said, you know, so like
what the hell is this fish? I mean, nobody couldn't
It was just I mean, it was it was hilarious.
And then you know, going to have dinner with Alan
mcgraar and Steve McQueen or Barbaris Dreyisan's house. You know,
so we were both able to share each other's worlds.

(01:11:15):
And that's what I tried to write in the book,
you know, sort of a Valentine to the Arow and
our you know, marriage was really very fruitful.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
But you weren't a lot of situations that were not
your world as were significant other and at times husband
and a lot of times you you know, people didn't
respect you. Did you ever feel like me? And you know,
I'm just here. Don't why you're down on me. It's like,
you know, I'm involved in a relationship with you know,

(01:11:47):
treat me as an equal. You're treating other people's significant
others as equals.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
I'm not sure what you mean, but.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
Okay, See movie business traditionally looks down on the music business.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Well not then.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Okay, so you felt totally comfortable whenever you were with
Faye in movie situations.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Well, no, I hear what you're saying. No, because you know,
there was so much money. Every five minutes, you know,
would be a recording budget, you know, because if the
light went this, the pressure was intense. Uh. And you know, people,
you know, back then, nobody knew the Jay Giles Band

(01:12:29):
were you know, basically it wasn't uh, and many people
weren't into rock that were involved in the music industry
at that point. Younger actors and actresses certainly were, but
you know, uh, you know, we weren't the Rolling Stones,
and we weren't led Zeppelin, and so we weren't you know,
so uh, many people just thought of me as this

(01:12:53):
you know, rock guy, you know with Fay. But those
who you know, I remember going out to dinner with
the fellow that you know was producing The Poseidon Adventure
and Towering Inferno, and uh, you know, once we got together,
or having a dinner with Siddeley La met uh, whose
wife was oh h the great singer buck A bug

(01:13:17):
A bug a book great, Oh, it'll come to me
you know, we would have you know, a great interaction
because people I would realize I wasn't just this you know,
drugged out crazy rocker because I didn't do drugs. I wasn't,
you know, in my opinion, that crazy. So I was

(01:13:39):
accepted by those people who got to Monomi, which is
one of the reasons I wrote this book, because you know,
to let people know some of the adventures that I
was able and privileged and the people I was privileged
to meet. Uh, that was beyond just rock and roll.
Uh not. You know, I love rock and roll, but

(01:14:01):
there are more. There was more to my life than
just you know, getting on a bus, getting on stage,
doing a sound check, you know, going in the studio,
making an album, promoting the album, getting back on the
you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, that's what
the meaning of the Waiting on the Moon was about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
Okay, ahmit amit is portrayed as this dapper guy. They
did a story about him and the New Yorker, but
Amic could talk shit and had sharp elbows. The people
who knew him were aware of what was your experience
with ahmit.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
I was quite intrigued with Ahmat as a character. I mean,
Ahmitt was, you know, a character out of a novel.
Uh he he, he would be like I. I didn't
see all of the ray movie, but I did see
the clip with Ahmen and there was nothing like amen.
You know, they they didn't even come close. You know.
Ahmitt was a very very bright him and his brother,

(01:14:58):
and that's why we were bright. They went to incredible schools.
They were the sons of the Turkish ambassador uh the
United States. They lived in Washington, d C. They had
parties in there at the embassy with people like Duke
Allington and Cab Callaway and you know, they were just

(01:15:19):
jazz and finadoes. They were very cultured. And Ahmed spoke
many languages, and he was a charismatic character and an
amazing businessman. And his passion for music was and his
uh knowledge of music was so enormous, uh and his

(01:15:41):
ability of I have a chapter of a night on
the Town with Ahmit, and you would go from you know,
being at this very plush dinner party where you would
have people like the Mayor of New York, Henry Kishinger, uh,
you know, and then we'd end up at the Carlisle
Hotel to see short then go to Buddy's Place to

(01:16:02):
see Joe Williams, then go to fifty second Street to
see Little Jazz, you know, Roy Eldridge, and then go
downtown to see Reno Sweeney's to see Manhattan Transfer, then
go to this other club to see a new rock
band he was recorded, and then go downtown to you know,
see Larry Rivers, the painter, and hang out, you know,

(01:16:24):
in his loft, and then go back out and the
sun's coming up. And you know, that was one night
with Amet, and the next day he'd be in the office,
you know, taking care of business at Atlantic. And so
Amet was this incredibly charismanic figure and incredibly brilliant figure
obviously in business. And when Ross bought and form w EA,

(01:16:54):
he had the Kinney parking lots. The ingenious thing he
did was when he put uh Warner Brothers, Atlantic, Lecture
and Uh, you know together to form WEA Uh. He
kept the people that founded these labels in place. So

(01:17:17):
you had Mo Austin still running his label, you had
Amit running his label, and Geffen and all of the above,
and so uh it was a very lucrative time for
the record industry. And so being a friend of omit. Socially,
I got to meet all the players. I remember with

(01:17:37):
Jerry Wexler, we'd go to a dinner party at Mo
Austin's and everybody had their wine cellars and we're trying
to out to each other who had the greatest wine cellars.
And it was just a very heady time in the
music industry. So one night being with all the great players,
Jerry Moss and from A and M, and you know,

(01:17:59):
being at a dinner party with those people one night,
and then being at a dinner party at Chasin's with
the entire Hollywood brass. You know, it was you know,
when I think back at it. At the time, I
just accepted it as my life. But when I think
back at it, it was pretty remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Okay. In the book you talk about the breakup of
the you being excised from the Jay Gills band. Let's
cut to the chase. Were they jealous that you were
the front person? Was it a personality thing or was
it the money? And are all three? Because as a
writer you get more money and then you say you

(01:18:42):
regretted reunion shows. So tell me what was going on there?

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
Well, first thing, it had nothing to do with money.
That was not the problem. And as I explained in
the book, it's a chapter all practice size. You know,
it's funny, Bob. When I first started the book, the
two things I made it a point of there were
two things I was not going to write about. I

(01:19:10):
was not going to write about my marriage, and I
was not going to write about the Jay Giles Band.
I just thought I would make a book of short
stories of Ahmet and Don Covey or Muddy John Lee Hooker,
Alfred Hitchcock. And it was just going to be a
collection of these short vignettes and like New Yorker profiles.

(01:19:30):
But as I got on, people at the publishing company thought,
you know, Peter, we're all interested in your marriage, or we're
interested in Jay Giles. So you got to say something,
You got to do something. So I decided to write
a chapter about the Giles Band. And the Giles Band,

(01:19:50):
as I explained, like many bands at that era, be
it the Rolling Stones, you had what they called I
call key players. The Eagles, Glenn Fry and Don Henley
were the key players. And Zeppelin you had Jimmy Page,
Robert Plant and you know the Stones you had Jagger

(01:20:12):
Richard's and the Beatles, McCartney Lennon, and when that when
those two key players, which are very close, it's like
a marriage and the rest of the band is like
a family. When there's a fracture between those two key players,
that's usually unless a really talented manager or somebody intervenes

(01:20:36):
and is able to, you know, act as a marriage
counselor to get over whatever is causing the problems. Usually
it's the sign the beginning of the end for the group.
And that's what happened with the Gules. The reasoning being,
you know what, I didn't write in the book, and

(01:20:57):
I don't know why I didn't. I thought about later
back in nineteen seventy, No, back in nineteen sixty eight.
Once we got signed to Atlantic, Atlantic forgot about us
for about a year and we were just touring around.
The band had a meeting and decided they were going

(01:21:21):
to have a meeting after a show. I remember Jay
came up to me and said, Pete, there's going to
be a band meeting, but we really rather you not
come to it. I said really, and he said yeah,
And this is nineteen sixty eight. And they came out
and they said, we feel that, you know, you're holding

(01:21:44):
back the band. You're not a real singer. You know,
you don't have the chops needed, and we just you know,
not wanting you to stay in the band anymore. We voted,
we voted you out, and I was devastated. I mean

(01:22:06):
I was, you know, totally devastated. And I remember about
two three weeks later, I get a phone call from
Jay and saying could they come over to my apartment?
And they did, and they said, listen, we apologize. You know,

(01:22:26):
we made a really big mistake, and we really wonder
if you appreciate coming back, and let's just continue as
if nothing happened. And I loved the band so much.
I did, and maybe at that point, if I was
wise enough, I might have said, you know, Jay Giles

(01:22:46):
band featuring Peter Woolf or something, because throughout the good
part of the band, most people saw it I was
Jay Giles because I was the front guy. And I
remember when we first played the More East Bill, Graham
put us on without seeing us and came running into
the dressing room after the show. We got about four

(01:23:08):
encores and he threw his arms around me and said, Jay,
you were amazing. He lifted me up to the ground.
I said, Bill, I'm not Jay. He said what He goes,
I'm Pete Wilop. He goes, who the hell is J
I said, the guitar player. And Bill always wanted to
manage the band, also wanted to manage me. And I said, well, Bill,
if you were going to manage the band, what would

(01:23:29):
you do? He is. The first thing I'd do is
change the name that Jay Giles is confusing everything. Confused me.
He's confusing everything. You know, think of another name or
you know whatever. I said, Bill, that's not going to fly.
And so going back to after we're signed now with
EMI Records, and Freeze Frame comes out and centerfold, which

(01:23:58):
nobody in the band thought was should be the single.
My other key member thought it should be a ballad
called Angel and Blue, and I thought it should be
Freeze Frame, you know, because I had a rock and
thing for the first single, and I knew that the
album was going to sell lots of records because disco

(01:24:22):
was dying and you had bands like, you know, Bob
Seger back on the charts, Joan Jet was back on
the charts, all these bands that have been touring for years.
You know, we're coming back and rock and roll was
really having it stay in the sun again, and I
knew the Giles band with the impact of Our Lives Show,
it was our time. And EMI Jim Maza was the

(01:24:43):
president at the time. He really believed this was the
time for Giles. And so we're in the making of
the video. My key number went out and of this
ballad called Angel and Blue, a good song. And this
fellow who was very close to me and really helped

(01:25:04):
the band a lot. His name was Dick Williams. He
was a promotion man for EMI America, and he went
to Detroit, which was our one big market, and you
would know this woman. You remember Rosalie, Uh yeah, yeah,
the DJ. Yes, she was well, she was no a DJ,

(01:25:24):
she was program director and she was considered to have
the Golden ears. And so everybody took their records to
Rosalie and if Rosalie certified it a hit, be it
you know, uh you know, Muskrat Love or Captain and
to Neil, whatever it was, it became a hit. She
was so powerful, her taste was so powerful. She listened

(01:25:48):
to the record and she said centerfold and so they
Dick called up Jim Maza, president of em I called
us we were making the video. Right in the middle
of making the video for the song, he said, we're
changing the single go what Go, Centophold, centophol Come on.
That's kind of a fun song. But you know, and

(01:26:10):
the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Just staying on songs on the previous album. My favorite
song is Comeback. Can you tell me the story of
writing and recording Comeback?

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Well, come Back? Both we were big fans of the
Ohio playoffs and the Ohio Players had songs like Fire
and roller Coaster Ecstasy and things like that, and it
Comeback was our attempt to try to capture the energy
that the Ohio players had. And we would go see

(01:26:52):
the Ohio Players all the time I did, and they
were just you know, the show was amazing, There were
coins amazing, They had this energy. So Comeback was an
attempt to try to you know, without it going disco,
you know, quote unquote where you know people might say, uh,
mishoot by the Stones or you know Rod Stewart's you

(01:27:14):
know attempt you know, people try to keep that that
beat going. But uh, that's what really Comeback was all about,
was trying to emulate the Ohio players.

Speaker 1 (01:27:29):
What's the best live show you ever did.

Speaker 2 (01:27:32):
Oh, that's really tough, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
I'm not saying this to downgrade the Guiles band. Uh,
but there are some solo shows that means so much
to me. But I would think, you know, closing night
at the film or when we played with Albert King
and uh, the Allman Brothers Fillmore East was a really

(01:27:57):
really special evening. Uh. And I remember all my brothers
went till five six in the morning, Uh, playing I
think five or six nights straight. The Pine Knob in
Detroit was just you know, incredible. Selling out the Boston
Garden for the first time, uh for the band, uh
was incredible. And uh, of course Boston Garden, the old

(01:28:23):
Boston Garden had no air conditioning, the small seats, you know.
Being number one in your hometown was like the Celtics,
you know, or you know the Bruins or the Red Sox,
you know, winning the series, you know, the crowd, just
the energy from the crowd was just so unbelievable an

(01:28:45):
undeniable and the power of the bond between us and
the band. So I can't pick one, but those those
situations which is so important to my life. And you
know to this day people come up and you said, oh, Peter,
you know I saw you back in you know, the garden,
blah blah blah blah. And there was one time I

(01:29:06):
thought about would be great on Christmas Day to visit
Belle Ricca and play a concert at the Bill Ricker Youth. Uh.
It was like a you know, a jail or for
young men who kind of lost their way and were
trouble or robberies or you know, got caught up in

(01:29:28):
drugs and stuff. And we did several Christmas concerts and
those were really really very pertinent, very important. I remember
after the show, we walked down the cells, all the
guys and the cells now, oh, put out the hands.
Yeah it's Gyles, Gyles, you know, thank you for coming.
And those were, you know, very spiritually meaningful dates. But Hometown,

(01:29:50):
Boston Garden, Cobo Hall, Detroit, Cobo Hall, Pineknob, those were
the shows that were just incredible. And we did a
show in Germany Rock Pals and we came over and
we used our marching bands. We stayed up all night,

(01:30:10):
we played I think that's available on YouTube and just
the crowd being in Germany to this uh, you know,
large you know, in this large arena and just having
being in front of these people that obviously didn't know
all the lyrics, you know, but the interaction was just

(01:30:33):
you know, overwhelming. So for me it was, you know,
that thing that brought me back to the Apollo. You're
seeing artists being able to rave up an audience and
being ten years old witnessing the first generation of rockers
and remembering as a kid, you know, jumping up and
down on my seat like a bouncing Mexican jumping bean,

(01:30:56):
you know, and having a you know, a Matron come over,
sit down, you know, putting flash lights, jumping in the
aisles and dancing. I mean, those Guyle shows just to me,
you know, where something that will never replace it could
never you know, for me, they will always be memorable

(01:31:19):
parts of my life.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
How about a couple of shows or a few shows
of other racks that you just can't get out of
your head, blew your mind?

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
Oh well, you know, sitting about four or five feet
away from Bob Dylan when I one of the first
times a few times that maybe he performed the song
that nobody heard called hard Ring on a Fall, was
pretty incredible. Seeing the rolling thunder review, you know with

(01:31:51):
Bob many times. Seeing about five or six of those
was incredible. Seeing Jimmy Hendrix jump on stage with the
Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart at Steve Paul seen
was pretty incredible. There was there's so many Bob I
would you know be you know, they're just I go

(01:32:16):
to shows all the time, and you know, seeing Van
Morrison at the Music Hall in Boston or when we
played with him in Symphony Hall where he'd bring it
down a ballot so low where you could hear a
pin drop and just you could feel goosebumps going that
he could transcend. You know, here's this little guy, you

(01:32:39):
know and just all of a sudden, you know, have
the entire audience in the palm of his hand doing
with every great artist you know did, which was you know,
kind of have a transcending moment. And that's what I call,
you know, the concerts that give me goose bumps that

(01:33:00):
you know, I remember seeing Art Blakey the Jazz Messages
with Lee Morgan on trumpet and Art Blakey calling up
you know, let's call up the Queen and this woman,
you know, a fur coat and this big blonde wig
would get up on stage, she sang the dirtiest words
I ever heard, and uh turned out to be you know,

(01:33:23):
Dinah Washington. And you know, I didn't really know the
importance of the people I was seeing, but the impact
on me was just I would never forget it. And then,
you know, seeing Jackie Wilson at the Apollo and then
having the honor to induct him into the Hall of
Fame was a really great honor for me. And to

(01:33:46):
also you know, induct Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and to
induct Jesse Stone, the great songwriter, you know. Uh uh.
So there are a lot of great times, a lot
of great shows. You know, if you asked me to
two hours from now, I'll think of thirty others. But

(01:34:08):
I would say with the Guiles Band, you know, being hometown, Boston,
finally Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden, but of course Detroit,
Cobo Hall and Pineknob. They were very, very very special events.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
So what did you leave out of the book? What
are some of the great stories left out?

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Oh, there's a whole lot left out because I did
not want this to be a kiss and tell book.
And you know, I left it out because I just
wanted this to be my Valentine to the people I
got to meet into a music industry that I think
what you were trying to bring up earlier, that has

(01:34:50):
been battered and shattered and lost so much of what
made it, you know, intriguing and interesting. And you know
when you mentioned about the digital world, I mean there
was the aspect of garage band and being able to

(01:35:12):
you know, have a single and maybe get that single
played on your AM radio station and you know, it
become a hit overnight. You know, those kinds of things,
you know, just aren't there anymore. But then somebody might say, well,
there's a playing field that everybody has an opportunity to

(01:35:33):
post the music. But the ocean is so big, it's
like almost the universal galaxy, and so how to find
that little teeny planet makes it harder, But there are opportunities.
So it's totally changed. But I come, I've always and
I still do to this day. What's meaningful to me

(01:36:00):
is the face to face into relationships with other musicians,
with business and the record companies, sitting down in an
office and talking about, you know, what you want to achieve.
And in book world, unfortunately, there was a change when
I signed with the Little Brown there was a change
and a lot of the people that I want to

(01:36:20):
work with so that, you know, changed the dynamics there.
You know, it's still you know, an important publishing company.
But I tend to really like the one on ones
and the characters, like I mentioned the Big m and
Ahmed and Wexler and Irving Azof and Bill Graham and

(01:36:44):
you know uh and the artists themselves, you know, Reather
and you know just you know, Sparky and all these
crazy you know managers and Peter Grant and just it.
It was so rich for me and as someone who

(01:37:04):
was trying to catch these in literary form, there was
so much to choose from because these characters were really
great characters.

Speaker 1 (01:37:13):
So where does this leave you now? No one's gonna
live forever. We ever gonna see you on the road again.
You're gonna record more music? What's your state of mind?
And what's the play on? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:37:25):
I was hoping the book would bring attention that a
CD wouldn't in areas where a CD wouldn't go, or
recording that I say CD, you know, streaming as you
say and stuff. But I do have a great solo band.
But just before I released the book, I did a tour.

(01:37:47):
It was called an Acoustic Evening of Story and Song,
and I had two great guitarists with me and we
did a you know, a sort of an evening where
I would play saying and then tell some of the
stories that are in the book and not unlike what
Ray Davies did with the first Storytellers and then what

(01:38:07):
Bruce later did with his book. And I recently saw
Roger mcgwinn here in Boston and he did one man
show playing and telling stories. I thought it quite interesting,
so I might do that plus go out and tour.
So music's still with me. But I was hoping that
the book, you know, reaches and I really appreciate you for,

(01:38:32):
you know, giving me an opportunity to talk about the book.
But I'm curious. I first heard about you many years
ago with your letter and your forum and this controversial
guy that was, you know, talking about ticket pricing and
ticketmaster and his managers and you know, all that kind

(01:38:54):
of stuff. How did you get started.

Speaker 1 (01:38:59):
Trying to make it very brief like you, although I'm
a little younger than you are, music was everything. If
you wanted to know what was going on, you wanted
to listen to the radio. People have no idea that
working at a record car. You couldn't even get a
job in a record shop because everybody wanted that job.

(01:39:20):
And so I ended up going to law school because
it's in a bad spot. I'd been sick. My father
would pay for it. My father was a real estate appraiser.
I had nobody in the business, so I said, at
the time, the business was run by attorneys in the seventies.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
Growing up whereabout.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
I grew up in Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City, Infield, Connecticut, Fairfield, Okay,
Fearfield between Bridgeport and Westport. So it's all New York media.
You know, all the FM stations wr WNW. I mean
that's sixty seven sixty eight. It was unbelievably fertile, and
of course the shows you would go to the Pillmore East,

(01:39:57):
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it was always
a dream to move to California, which I ultimately did.
And you know, I could complain about LA all day long,
but it's really pretty great. And I was the only
person working in the movie business who wanted to be
in the music business. You say it's reverse, but I
worked for these big English managers who still manage Iron Maiden.

(01:40:20):
I lost my job. I started this newsletter and what
happened was that I had a free subscription to AOL
through Warner Brothers Records, and I was an attorney such
when the Napster hit, I was an expert. And there's
a lot of stories there. But you know your point

(01:40:41):
about d Anthony is well take and I could tell
you a million stories like that where the money is primary.
It's like for me. I remember when Tom Petty was
playing the film More and he was not at the
peak of his career, and I said, well, what does
this mean going forward? And an agent said, I'll take
that Billy any day of the week. You know, I'm

(01:41:02):
like you, it's how does the record hit you? What
is the emotion? Trying to articulate that the only thing
better than a great record is sex, and we're all
in search of those great records. And the great thing
about records You put a five year old in front
of a TV and they could say, oh, plot wasn't believable.

(01:41:22):
About the most you can say about a great record
has had a good beat. And I could dance to it.
And the people who we analyze it beyond that are
analyzing a level beyond the people who made it. So
there's a passion for the music, and you know it's
grown since then, and you know, you talk about all
these came the listen. I was with Frank Riley on

(01:41:43):
Saturday talking about you irving. You know, yeah, does my
deals too. These are all it's a different business and
music is forever. People don't understand that we're not at
a peak. Yeah, people are consuming MUSI, but what it
was and what it represented in the sixties and at

(01:42:05):
other times they have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
But but you know, you're writing this newsletter. But how
did it get started?

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
Well, to be very literal about it, I was working
for a management company, and you if you had a
successful act, the big thing was to hire an independent publicist.
And they used to write these bios that were just terrible.
I had to rewrite them. I'm leaving out a chapter.
I was in college. First semester in college. This is

(01:42:39):
Middlebury College.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
In pan and we played it. I know it will is.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
The only time I ever did this. First semester, I
called up the teacher day before paper Ducic, Can I
do something creative? Said sure. I got an a. All
the prep school kids said, oh, you're gonna flunk. And
I called my mother on the payphone. I'm going to
be a writer, okay. I took the writing class. When
I would read, it was like springtime for Hitler. You know,

(01:43:07):
it's like, you know the people who listen this I wrote?
You know. Then I finally wrote about going to an
Alice Cooper concert at the musical on the Killer Tour
in seventy two, and the teacher said it was good,
but it needed a twist. I said, you were It's
nineteen seventy two. Did you ever hear of the new
journalism twists? Forget that? I never wrote another thing. So

(01:43:28):
then I was down and out. I went to see
this job counselor. She gave me this work book that
was attached to a legendary book called What Color Is
Your Parachute? You had to write six essays and she's
brag about yourself. This is just for yourself. This is
now nineteen, you know, eighty four, So this is, you know,

(01:43:48):
an excess of a decade since I wrote in college.
And I wrote those things and I got back in
touch with the fact that I like to write. I said, oh,
I'll write stuff and send it to magazines. I did that,
and I said, this is just like the music business.
You got to know these people. And I was eating
a hamburger one night reading billboard. Billboard's been up and down,

(01:44:11):
but it was in a bad space. Then I said,
this is terrible. I could do a better job than this.
And all of a sudden something clicked in my brain said, wait,
aren't there computers and all this other stuff. So I
bought all that gear on credit. And there was a
direct we call the Yellow Pages of Rock, and I
sent out the newsletter in eighty six, primarily with the

(01:44:34):
intention of getting another job. But the most interesting thing
was only the most successful people subscribed the heads of
all the labels they could hear a contrary opinion. So,
you know, there's fifteen years there and then the Internet
hits and I'm in the right place at the right time.

(01:44:55):
And the Internet boosted my career, you know, because now
I started to give it away for free instead of charge,
and you can reach all these people. Listen, this is
exactly what you do. You know, you're doing it all
day long. You're never gonna write something or make something terrible.
But you can only create an eleven every once in

(01:45:18):
a while, and it's usually because a thought came to
you in the shower or you're inspired and you lay
it down. You're always in search of that, as opposed
to the hacks. People say I don't know what a
hit is. Believe me. It's like Al Cooper telling me
they recorded Sweet Home Alabama a year before it came out, said, now,

(01:45:39):
did you know it was a hit? He goes, it
was sweet Home Alabama. So the key is to try
to get that, and when you get that, the people resonate.
The only difference is there used to be a pyramid.
Pyramid's been blown to bits. Everybody is in their own business.

(01:46:00):
If you walk down the street, ask people name to
Taylor Swiss songs, they can even name them. Whereas you
know in nineteen sixty five, I can sing every lick
of Hello Dolly because I was waiting for the Beatles
songs on the radio, so and somedd you know it all,
the same thing remains. There's a lot of great streaming television,

(01:46:20):
especially for me. You're waiting for something that touches you
in a certain way. And if you can articulate that,
that's what people resonate with, and people are hungry for
that resonance. They want something they can connect with. And
that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
And where are you based now?

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
I'm in Los Angeles, okay?

Speaker 2 (01:46:45):
And how did you connect with Irving? How is that?

Speaker 1 (01:46:48):
I mean, I'll tell the real story I connected Irving.
This is nineteen eighty seven. I wrote about Dan Folberg's
same Old Lang Syne you know song. Met my old
lover in the grocery store and I immediately heard from
Irving and he says, you gotta come in. I gotta

(01:47:09):
tell you the real story of that record. He was
running MCA at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
Yeah, I was. I was signed to MCA at that time, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:47:17):
And I went in and there's a lot of hilarious stuff.
Tom Petty was recording a solo album and sales were low.
He said, the deal is so rich, I'm not sure
he wanted the record to come out at all. There's
a lot to pay him. And he remember the fine
young Cannibals. She drives me crazy. He knew that was
going to be hit, but he says, I'm going to
hire you to help Jimmy Buffett have a hit record.

(01:47:37):
I'm gonna fly you down to the Key West. Fly
down to Key West. Make a long story very short.
Jimmy had already cut the record. Jimmy, you know, you're
a rocket roller. Jimmy had so much money he didn't
need the advance from the label to cut a record.
And then I felt really embarrassed about the whole thing.

(01:47:58):
You know, this is typical Irving before cell phones. So
I call his office in LA. He calls me from
the airport in New York and I'm stowing it on. Oh,
you know, Jimmy's a big guy. Cut all the recorded. Now,
Irving goes, how big a guy can he be if
he only sells three hundred thousand records? And you know
that was nineteen eighty nine. But you know, there's been

(01:48:21):
a lot of chapters up and down with the Irving.
You know, you know, Irving Irving's you know, changed to
Irving's much mellower than he used to be.

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
I know, I mean I wrote him as a Irving.
You know, I want to send you a copy of
a book, and he said, don't, I'll buy it. I
don't know if he did. You know. I hope he did,
because I think Irving would find you know, some of
the chapters, you know, interesting because you know, it's an
homage to the period that you know, he was so

(01:48:51):
involved in. So if you speak to him, please, you.

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):
Know, well I definitely so I'll text him after we're here.
And but you know, the this is a crazy business.
People hate people they have never met. Okay, what they
don't know about Irving is how charming he can be
and how funny he can be, and that he is

(01:49:17):
really supportive. People just hate him because he's the big guy.
The other thing about Irving is they do not come
any smarter. I remember being at his house after it
ended with Live Nation, listening to him what he was
going to do next, he was creating. He is always
one step ahead, you know. You know some of these

(01:49:40):
other players. Listen, the guy's gotten into it with me.
But Geffrin, you know, it's a completely different agenda. Geff
then needs you to kiss the ring and it's a
power thing. It's not that way with the Irving.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
No, you know, as I told you, you know, I
knew Irving, you know, when he was you know, starting
out and had the vision and did you ever read
Fred Goodman's book Mansion on the Hill, of course, yeah,
that was a good one, absolutely, yeah at the time,
you know, because in the premise of it was that
the cart the horse was the artist and the cart

(01:50:19):
was following the horse. And then by the end of
the book, the artists become the cart and the business
people become the horse where the artists are chasing after
you know, the business people.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
You lived through the change somewhere in the late sixties.
First you didn't have to record in CBS's studios anymore.
The deals were such that you just delivered the record
and they had to put it out. They couldn't say, oh,
what the single was, etcetera, etcetera. Warner Brothers, you delivered
the record that came out. The change was the early

(01:51:01):
nineties when Tommy Mattola's they started wearing suits. This is
not a business, you know the cliche that I love
is and I worked in this business movie business. You
have a percentage deal and your own money. You walk
in everybody's wearing a three piece suit. They have the
accountant and he explains very slowly, while you're not entitled

(01:51:24):
to money in the record business, you walk in the
guy's got a gold chain around his neck, no collar shirt.
You ask about the money, opens his drawer, pulls out
a gun and says what money, and result is the same.
The down and dirty style of the music business, you know,

(01:51:47):
was eclipsed by these people who thought they were bigger
than the acts.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
I know one person I didn't write about, Mars Levy,
you know, who I had some interaction with, who is
quite a character, you know. And I don't know, did
you ever see that film that Richard Perry made, was
called Slice Steak? It was Richard made the film. He
was married to Goldener's daughter, I believe, And it was

(01:52:12):
when Mars was being inducted but for the United Jewish
Appeal as the Man in the Year, and it was
a dinner and Mars had pres parado I believe. It
was maybe not play and a lot of the Latin
ax and stuff and it it but it's the movie,
you know, see. And Joe Smith acted as MC, who

(01:52:35):
you know could be Yeah, he was, he was. He
was just so a kind, ethical and a brilliantly funny man,
you know. Yeah. And I always enjoyed seeing Joe and
his wife. We'd go out many times and That's the thing,
uh Bob is as like you you know, you know,

(01:52:59):
the streaming and the availability and all that. I think
it's great because on one hand, but then there's that
build and that search and that going from town to town.
And I'll end, I'll end with this. You know. I
was talking to a guitarist who's in my band, and

(01:53:21):
he's a brilliant guitarist, and he also teaches sometimes at Berkeley,
and he was saying to me, Oh my god, these
kids today, all they want to learn is these power chords.
You know, they just want to play, you know, either
just Stairway to Heaven or you know, Black Sabbath songs.
You know, it's just they don't understand anything about music.
I said, listen, I said, do you imagine you're seventeen

(01:53:44):
years old, you're growing up in someplace like Indiana, and
you're learning saxophone and you're taking lessons and then you
learn about theory and composition and sight reading, and you
play and a band comes through town maybe already sure,
and he hears you playing and he says, come on,

(01:54:06):
and you're on this band tour and for years you're
on this bus with other guys, great players, and you're
playing with people on the bills, with Duke Ellington or
the Count Basie Band or Tommy Darcy band, and everyone
is this incredible musician with this vast knowledge and singers
that know, you know, how to harmonize and breath control

(01:54:27):
and the whole thing. And all of a sudden, one
day here don and boom the world like a hydrogen
bomb explodes. And all those years seemed, you know, like
when they were carrying out all the great big band
records at BCN, I couldn't believe it because I didn't

(01:54:50):
think they realized culturally, you know, what they were dismantling
in this quote, what they would call the American Revolution.
I understood it, and I think you would understand it
because where they were at at that time. But you know,
the greatness that was, you know, the mastering, the Doug Sacks,
you know, the recording studios, Capital studios, the microphone, everything that,

(01:55:12):
you know, the arrangers, everything that took place in the
making of these great works of art, which is totally
dismissed for Country Joe, you know. And so you know,
there's a great movie, very hard movie to watch because
technically it's so bad, but it's an Arson Wells movie

(01:55:32):
called The Chimes at Midnight, and it's based on the
Henry the Fourth, Part one and part four, where the
main character is Falstaff, who is one of Shakespeare's you know,
sort of buffoons, clowns, very wise, and he's teaching the
young Prince, you know, how to drink, and he's introducing
him to prostitutes. And but the movie starts off with

(01:55:56):
these two old men walking through the rugged terrain and
one says to the other, Uh, it's cold, it's so cold,
and the other one says, yes, but we both heard
the Chimes of midnight ring. And I think you and

(01:56:17):
I have both witnessed the Chimes of Midnight, and I
think what they meant was these great glory days when
things seemed far more innocent, seem far more promising. And
you know, not to get into it, but you know,
we know that there are dark clouds gathering. You know,

(01:56:39):
if you study history, like in nineteen thirty seven, thirty eight,
you know, I had relatives that fought in the you know,
Spanish Civil War, which was a you know, precursor to
what you know, the horrible you know things that came later. So, Bob,
you know, it's great talking to you. Please connect with Irving.

(01:57:01):
Tell him I send my best, because you know, he's
you know, been in and out of my life throughout
the years, and I'm not sure if he ever forgive
forgave me for not, you know, dismissing the anthony and
going with him. You know, time proved he was quite right,

(01:57:22):
he was the manager. But then again, you know that
life teaches us in strange ways.

Speaker 1 (01:57:28):
Well, you know, it's funny, you're not the only act
who said no with another one who's come back to
me all these years later and said, you know, God,
if I only knew. But just to stay on this
one point when people don't understand. This guy a friend
of mine who's the chairman of Guitar Center, and he
was walking me through the musical instrument in history, and

(01:57:48):
he says, it's a mature business. In the early sixties
it was all independent labels. Then there were majors. It
was all branch distribution except for CBS. The business became
more and more consolidated. There will always be music, but
we live through this one time. However, it is always

(01:58:11):
an entrepreneurial business. It is always somebody at home with
an idea. So no matter how much direct there might be,
whether it be Bobby Rydell and Fabian in the late
fifties early sixties, today it's not easy to make it
from A to Z and no one is helping you.

(01:58:31):
But if you do something unique, people are looking for that,
and it's always some new irving as off. It's not
like going to work for Procter and Gamble. So we
know sixty years later we never got a new Beatles,
never gonna happen. Are we ever going to reach that
peak again? Maybe not in our lifetimes, But the Doldrums

(01:58:54):
were in artistically. Listen, you're a middle class guy as
I am. Jeff an Airplane build Graham Management, and they
say whenever they made money, they just want to stay
home and smoke dope. They spoke truth to power. Life
is so difficult today financially that the middle class people,
no one ever wanted their kid to be an artist.

(01:59:16):
But today the people say, man, life is so hard.
I got to get a job. I got to work
in finance. So only the lower classes who are on
a lark, who will do whatever people tell them to do,
are the ones involved. Listen a record speaking truth to

(01:59:36):
power has more power than any politician, any individual. You
need a culture to grow that. But the paradigm always exists.
Somebody captures lightning in a bottle. There's a truth in
a record that is nowhere else. On that note, you're
driving in the north Shore. Where are you going?

Speaker 2 (01:59:57):
Oh, I'm going to know as you're well, I might
up to newbury Port or Gloucester somewhere up there.

Speaker 1 (02:00:03):
Well, you said you're going today.

Speaker 2 (02:00:05):
Oh, I'm going up to north Reading to record. There's
a barn that I use. I made my last records there.
I have an album that's about We would have been
finished by now, but I stopped it for the book.
But it's about I need to do harmonies, a couple
of overdubs, and the mix is they're it's almost all
mixed the way it's recorded, so it's almost ready to go.

(02:00:27):
But a lot of my solo records, Bob, have become
you know, well kept secrets. And you know I've done
duets with you know, Shelby Lynn, Merle, Haggard, Steve Earle
on these records. I've done with a great duet with
Mick Jagger. You know, we nothing but the wheel. You know,

(02:00:47):
there's some really if you don't have them. I some
of them are not on Spotify or streaming because they've
got returned to me and not being the brightest bowl
by haven't placed them. But I'm going to in the
next couple of weeks get that all settled up. And
because the book was so consuming, I didn't realize how
much energy it really would take. And then the audiobook

(02:01:10):
you know, took about you know, about twenty hours of
actual reading, and you know, they've become very very popular
for people. That's a whole new business, that's very lucrative
for book companies.

Speaker 1 (02:01:27):
Now, I just want to say, before I let you go,
you're in the eye of the hurricane and you can't
see what's going on. Writing is a lonely pursuit. And
I'll write something, I'll think one of then I'll go somewhere.
And they said, oh, yeah, everybody's talking about what you wrote.
But BOS said, I didn't know. Okay, not that I

(02:01:48):
don't get feedback. Your point about there not being books
in the store, the book business so antiquated is just terrible. However,
having said that, you obviously have no idea of the
impact of your book. Let me be very clear I'm
not talking about the people who read it. I'm talking

(02:02:10):
about the press and the word of mouth. You have
a higher profile than you've had since the eighties. You
may not feel it because you're at the center of
the high hurricane. But I'm reading all day long. I
get email from people, Hey, you got to do a
podcast with Peter Wolf. Okay, I get more about your book.

(02:02:32):
I'm not blowing smoke up your eyes than anybody else
this year. Something is going on.

Speaker 2 (02:02:39):
Okay, well, Bubby, I'm going to interrupt you say I
do I really be taking your point. I don't feel
it because it was, you know, this this thing that
you know, the New York Times didn't even review it,
you know, like it or bad, and so you know
that moves a lot of books. I did this little
thing with the New Yorker where I wanted to take
you know, the reporter up to the you know, beause

(02:03:01):
everybody talks about Brooklyn and show them where I live,
where Dion live, the changes of the Bronx, you know,
where the gangs were, all this stuff. And you know,
we ended up at mcsorley's and drinking. And that would
have been fine for the Guiles Band. You know, during
a give it to Me times. But I was trying to,
you know, represent Look, I'm a literary guy too, as

(02:03:23):
much as I love rock and roll, and I can
sit down and listen to you know, Carl Perkins or
A Stone's or you two. I mean there, I can
also read, and so I was trying to reinvent a
different dimension. And so I don't feel it because, you know,
when the book company tells me it's kind of weighing
because new books are coming out. Like in the record industry,

(02:03:46):
you have that moment where there's the release and you
go out and you do the tour and you get
on you know, blah blah blah blah bomb, and then
all of a sudden you find less and less requests.
And because there's a new bunch of albums coming out,
the company is releasing some more albums than all of
a sudden, if that album didn't gain a certain stature,

(02:04:09):
you're yesterday's newspaper.

Speaker 1 (02:04:20):
Okay, the press always gets it wrong. I read that
mcsor at Lea's piece. Okay, I understand your play. The
great thing about the modern career is you are in
control of your career. It's much harder to catch fire,
so your profile is higher than it's been for years.

(02:04:41):
In addition, there's only one Peter Wolf. There's only one
Peter Wolf who had muddy waters come to his house,
et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, the stories are eclipsing new music.
Your point about you put out a record, you'll get
some reviews. It's over in a day. That's for every
but even the Stones their new record doesn't really get

(02:05:03):
that much exposure. But you have this unique thing, like
you're telling me, oh yeah, you did these shows. You know,
these acoustic shows. We told the stories. Now in the
wake of the book, you can build a business. That's
what the New York Times will review. Okay, let's be
very clear, this is not easy. You have to work.

(02:05:27):
You want to put some stories up on social media,
but you have headway. I can't tell you how many
people I know from your era who are dead in
the water. Some can't even play clubs because they can't
get advances. Okay, it's just yeah, oh yeah, I remember
that guy. Something is going on with you at this
particular point in time. You have a beachhead. I am

(02:05:51):
a pessimistic lass half empty guy. Me too, but you
should be more optimistic at this point in time. The
other thing you have to realize is nothing reaches everybody.
It's sad to New York Times and review your book
the New York Times. If I write about something in
the music because I reach more people than the New

(02:06:12):
York Times. I'm not saying that to boast, but that
audience is reading me, not the New York Times. So
the book audience, yeah, retailers, etc. They're reading the New
York Times. That's not where your audience is. And it
is not easy to reach your audience, but you are
in control of that. Okay. You know, I don't understand

(02:06:35):
why you're not on social media with little bits telling
these three. You have an endless supply. You could do
twenty on muddy waters coming to your house once. Okay,
this gets people somewhat excited, and then you capitalize it.
Most people are not willing to work that hard. But
most people, as I say, are dead in the water.

(02:06:56):
And you're not well.

Speaker 2 (02:06:58):
Thank you, Bob. And this truly was a treat for me.
And I have to tell you I was very nervous,
uh doing this, really really nervous. There's a gentleman Steve
Leeds and you gotta do Bob you got. And there's
a fellow David Bieber, who used to do the art,

(02:07:20):
the creative stuff for the Phoenix magazine and the alternative
rock station up in the Salem forget the call letters.
And David from day one read your music, you know,
your your letters, and he just was would send you know,
he would bring to me, he would send me. He
just thought that they were the bee's knees. And David

(02:07:42):
is one of my closest friends and one of my
brightest friends. And he just took to you, still takes
to you, you know. And he said, if you don't
do Bob Show, you're just like insane. I said, well,
it's it's industry. I don't really want to talk, Peter.
Just do Bob Show, you know. And I was really nervous. Bob,
and I really thank you because you know, you talked

(02:08:05):
about the things or you asked me about the things
I wanted to do, and plus just the ease that
you have made it. Maybe I you know, don't stop
me talking. I'll tell you everything. I know. Maybe I
yact too much, but your last words to me, I
got to tell you I am in a very bad funk,

(02:08:28):
because you know, I work so hard to try to
get this thing, and people like Frank Riley. I don't
know what your relationship is with him. You know, he's
one of the last of the you know, greatue believers. Yeah,
true believers, and you know, like Don Law who you know,
live Nation. Frank Riley's my favorite agent because he fucking

(02:08:50):
cares about his acts, you know, and you know I
drive him crazy, but he puts up with it only
because you know in particular about what I want to do.
And I think you appreciate that. And I thank you
for giving me this forum. And please let's stay in
touch or I'd value that. And if you can see

(02:09:13):
if Irving got the book. If not, I will go.

Speaker 1 (02:09:15):
About a text him when we're off. But I'm gonna
tell you one more thing and then I'm gonna go. Okay,
like on that record, I'm talking to you trying to
figure out who you are. Okay, you're a guy from
the Bronx. You wonder sell it, but you went to
the High School of Music and Art. You're obviously a
sharp guy. Okay, you had this left field for a

(02:09:37):
rocker relationship with Faye Dunaway. You have these hit records,
You're living in Boston, and then you tell all these
stories about these people come into your house. Listen, I've
been around rock stars enough to know everybody has a
different style, and now I realize what it is. No

(02:10:01):
one ever asked me about me sit there and ask her.
I talked really fast. You were curious and interested. That
is obviously the magic. It's not because you know you
can do the the WBCM late night rap, but if
to hang with somebody. Obviously these people wanted to hang

(02:10:22):
with you, especially as musicians.

Speaker 2 (02:10:24):
You know, I didn't go on usually I researched, you know,
uh and but I but I knew your name for
so long and the people that are respected, But I
wanted to hear from you. But I guess it's like
the book. You would be a character in the book.
Had we if I was out in la you know,
doing the La Time Book Festival, I mean we would

(02:10:45):
have you know, hooked up and had a dinner. You know,
maybe would have dragged, you know, irving to Dan Tannis,
where I used to out, you know, you know, with
Henley and No. But I'm curious, you know, just as
an artist, you know, you've created this you know platform
in a time where so many people have tried, and

(02:11:05):
you went from just like a recording artist, from vinyl
into digital, you know, from vinyl into CD and now
you're on the computer and everybody's talking about it. And I,
I am telling you, I was very nervous, I mean,
and then oh god, one thirty am I going to
be in shape? I'm gonna be because you know, so

(02:11:26):
many people I respect have great respect for you and
I it was a mystery to me of how I
knew the newsletter, but how did it start? I didn't know.
I mean, so I'm just curious. And that's I guess
the motivation of the book. How did Muddy you know,
become a musician or you know talking toreth about you

(02:11:47):
know stuff. When you ask what I left out? You know,
I left out more of what you told me about
Sam Cook and other things and you know, stones behind
closed doors because I didn't want it to be kiss
and tell my and I admire you because somehow I
am probably in one of the most depressed states I've

(02:12:08):
been in because feeling that this book is not achieving
it And you may have picked it up, but just
your words were so encouraging it. As you say with Irving,
there's a kind of bond that happens. It's a mystical thing.
It's like it's like I remember hearing Elvis Presley coming

(02:12:30):
from a window in the Bronx and I ran to
the record store to buy that song about being in
a hotel, and you know, and it was heartbreak Hotel.

Speaker 1 (02:12:40):
I had to have it.

Speaker 2 (02:12:41):
You know, I'm first hearing Bob Dylan behind the curtain.
I had to have more of that voice. It was mystical.
And so, you know, I appreciate this afternoon, and I
appreciate your words. I hope you're right.

Speaker 1 (02:12:56):
Well, you know, as I say, there's hard working for it.
I'm gonna leave it with one or review story and
then we can go. So before COVID, they had these
big concerts at Dodger Stadium and they had three acts
on one day and three acts on the other day.
The headline on the first day was the Eagles. Headliner
on the second day was Fleet with mac This was

(02:13:17):
the first show with Vince Gill And I'm talking to
Irving the next day and I said, what did Henley think?
And he started talking about the monitors William during this song,
the monitor mix was little off whatever, and I said,
I heard it, but I guarantee you the average person
didn't hear it, and Irving looks at me goes, it's

(02:13:40):
the little things like that make the difference between great
and everything else. You're talking about being particular, that is
what makes you unique an individual. Someone says, I don't
want to be an asshole, but it's got to.

Speaker 2 (02:13:55):
Be like this because I know, well, I want you
to be my promotion man and go in or my manager,
to go into the book company and tell him that's
why he's driving you all crazy, because you know, we
want it done that way. And I think that's the
thing about Irving where Don and Glenn they were, you know,

(02:14:16):
they were so obsessive, I mean, punching in vowels, you know,
with the simsic And I remember being with Don when
Axel Rose was doing a duet, you know, and how
you know particular Don was and you know, yeah, it's
it's that wonderful world that we're we're in and there
ain't nothing that's going to drag us out, Bob. So

(02:14:38):
may this be to quote a movie that I'm sure
is a favorite of both of ours. May this be
the beginning of a long, long friendship.

Speaker 1 (02:14:48):
And I'll leave you with Norman Lee or what he
used to say whenever you were with him at a
party you always said when he left, to be continued.

Speaker 2 (02:14:56):
Ah, I'm with you, Thank you, Bob.

Speaker 1 (02:14:59):
It Okay, that's been the great Peter Wolf. Till next time.
This is Bob left, said

Speaker 2 (02:15:26):
Sh