Spencer Proffer

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps Podcast.
My guest today is movie producer, record producer, all around
creative wonder Kin Spencer Prophet Spencer. Good to have you
on the podcast, Bob. It's good. I've been following you
for a year. It's good to see you're good to
talk to you man. Okay, So you have this new

(00:29):
movie about American Pie, Don McLean's legendary song. How did
this come to be? Well, it started when I was
a student U c l A. I pulled over when
I heard the song. Three minutes and I still kept listening.
Six minutes and I still kept listening. I was in
a band. I've failed, but I said to myself, if

(00:51):
I ever grow up and get to be a macher
in the music business, I'd like to do something with it.
Four years ago, I heard from Don's manager after I
finished my John Coltrane documentary with Denzel Washington narrating, and
Kurt Webster said, are you interested in doing it doc
on Don? I said, I'm really interested because I knew

(01:13):
that Don wrote American Pie to me a great piece
of poetry, not that I put it with you know,
Keats and Shakespeare, and Dennison, but I consider it great,
great literary work. I said it would be my honor
if I could do a dock on the journey of
the song, taking down up to when he wrote it
and then following the trajectory of the song for the

(01:34):
life of the song, past president of future. That's what
we did. But I got involved with it spiritually way
back fifty plus years ago. Okay, what was the inspiration
for the manager to call you to connect? I believe
we had a mutual friend, Ray Dela Garza, and he's
seen my John coltrane Um documentary which was on Netflix

(01:56):
at the time, directed by John Sheinfeld and Denzel Washington
had narrated Bill Clinton, Common Santana Or in it. It's
real good. And my approach to making dots is very
different than the normal bear. And possibly that that plus
Forbes article that said that I was from the inside
coming out as opposed to guys like brilliant guys Scorsese,

(02:20):
e Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, genius directors. But they're from
the outside end, as you know, because we met during
your sanctuary days. I come from the music. I care,
I get goose bumps, and uh, I want to make
film that reflects the goose bumps. Okay, so he calls you,

(02:40):
at what point do you decide you're gonna do it?
And what's the first step? First step is I immediately
and viscerally and spiritually said I have to be involved.
Then the question is who pays for it, who distributes it,
who markets it. There's some wonderful guys running the new
Paramount Global company from Bob back issues the chairman to

(03:03):
Bruce Kilmer, president of music. Now Bruce for thirty five
years used to be a VH one. So I called Bruce.
I sent him the Coltrane film. I said I'd like
to talk to you about gave him a little bit
of the vision. He set up a zoom call Bob,
Bruce and I talked, and within seventy two hours I
started the process. We papered it with his business affairs

(03:26):
guys who were terrific, and literally within three weeks I
was on a director search. So how did you know
what the budget would be? Because I asked for and
so you just pull the pull the number out of
your rear red and said this this sounds to be
like what it would take to make a Doomic Lane film. No,
I said, how much is Bob lefts it's his house

(03:47):
worth now triple it now, now, seriously, I can't spend
less than a couple of million bucks to do something
the way I want to do it. Um, we brainstormed
what it could be. I didn't know who I would get,
I didn't know how deeply Garth Brooks would get into it.
I didn't know how many songs we would use to

(04:08):
decorate the spirit of the time, the trajectory. I wanted
to do new, young versions of it to show the
public that the song is not only a classic then,
but it could be for the future. And we did,
and I just estimated in my head. I pulled the
number a little bit out of my butt, but I
kind of knew what it takes to do it at

(04:28):
the level that I want to do it. And it's
not like a generica. Okay, if you make a deal
with Paramount and the Paramount plus it ultimately released on
and how many how many rights do you cough up?
Do they own it a percent? Do you have a
back end interest? What are the deals in today's documentary world? Well,
the deals with me are different than they are with others,

(04:51):
and I can't you know, it's almost like Woodward and Bernstein.
I can't reveal my sources. I can tell you that's
the copyright is in the name of uh my company
named Morland, named after my children. I can tell you
that they have the perpetual right to stream it. I
have some territories. I have some extension rights. We've done
an illustrated children's book on it, which is a prequel,

(05:15):
and it kind of talks about Donna as a young
newspaper boy learning about friendship and hope and how music.
For me it's people soul. I'm able to carve out
certain extension rights to it, but I can't go into
the details of what the deals truly are, other than
saying I continue making an Elvis comeback doc right now
with the same people, plan to do anymore. I really

(05:39):
like working with this team over a paramount plus, so
I had to find a director. I looked at different
people's work over a period of six months. Don was
tremendous in doing zoom calls. When I found someone I
was interested in, we did four and I remember when
Godless I'm Argan, when he was alive, he had told

(06:00):
me of a director that had done that Tom dow
Dock that actually dealt with them, great documentary, right, And
this guy is not famous, he's not a household name.
He's not sitting with m Emmy. He's an Academy nominations
like some of the people that I talked to. But
I'm all about the work. I'm not just about somebody's
resume or somebody you know that somebody's going to pay

(06:22):
me to do something. So I looked him up, and
I looked at a couple of other things Mark Mormon
that he did, and I said, oh my god, this
guy is really good. He really understands the psychist of
music and the evolution of music through periods, which is
what that doctor Tom down Dock was. And I was
also working with Eddie Kramer, who is kind of one

(06:43):
of the quintessential engineers. I am making Eddie stock through
his Hendrix, Rolling Stone Zeppelin period. And I said to myself, Man,
this guy Mormon really knows the stuff. I reached out
to him cold and we talked and we bonded. He
flew out to l A. I did a zoom call
it Don. Don trusted me Don like Mark, and we started. Okay,

(07:07):
now the film goes extensively into the plane crash with
Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper. Richie Valens has uh the
actual corn field that they crashed in. How did you
decide on the construction of the movie in terms of
what was going to be the varying, varying elements. Well,

(07:29):
the elements were product of brainstorming between myself and the director.
But Mark has vision, he's a cinematographer. We definitely wanted
to anchor this to the field of Dreams and Iowa,
where the plane did crash. Don doesn't pilgrimage. He did
one fifty years later to the Surf Ballroom, which was
the place, the last place that Buddy Holly and you

(07:51):
know they did that concert. So all of this was
the vision of his start there. But it's not a
Buddy Holly doc. It's not Iowa a doc. It's just
the anchor. But the song traveled way beyond Iowa. Okay.
So I'm very interested having watched the film. Was the
Surf Ballroom just preserved as it was because they realize

(08:14):
the monumental effect of those artists that they have gigs there?
Is it a museum? I know that ultimately Don plays
there in the in the film. But what's the status
of the Surf Ballroom today? It's living and breathing. It
is considered a national monument. They've kind of upgraded it.
You can see by watching the film the pictures of

(08:35):
some of the icons who have played there, and of
course you see a tribute to Richie Ballance and Buddy
Holly and the Big Bopper. But now it's a living, breathing,
functioning place. But at the same time it became the
anchor of the stock at least get going with it. Okay,
you have a long history of dealing with artists, and
one thing we know about artists, it's their one and

(08:55):
only career. If they make a mistake, it might kill
their career and a manager, dus or whatever label can
move on. Right, How difficult was it working with Don
who does not have a reputation for being easy going.
I think Don is a brilliant, wonderful, warm guy if
you catch him properly, he's intelligent, he's got a number

(09:18):
of degrees. He doesn't suffer fools. Well, I had to
be on my game and I was, and he's got
a very smart manager who also paid attention. But I
found on to be very gracious, and he said, if
it ain't broke down, fixed it. Every time Mark and
I would come up with stuff and we'd have rough
cuts of this stat or the other. I'd share it
with them. I'm very collaborative with the artists, and because

(09:40):
I come from the music as opposed to a suit
trying to impose my view on it, Don became very collaborative.
He was great. Who is Don's manager? Guy named Kurt
Webster based on a national Okay, so what did you
learn making the movie about American Pie and Don mc lane? Well?

(10:00):
I learned the reveals that he decided to reveal. Who
was the jester? Was it Bob Dylan? What was thorny crown? Well,
Elvis was the king, but he didn't wear a thorny
crown because Jesus Christ bore the thorny crown. What I
learned was what was inside Donald's head and a heart
and spirit. When he wrote a big song for the country,

(10:23):
the Marching, I used to run the sts at u
c l A very much protesting the war in my
younger days, and when the marching element came up in
the song, little did I know that there was a
march that was really happening. People were marching in seventy
seventy one. I got it's very deep. It's much deeper

(10:45):
than just a campfire song, but it's got a good hook.
How did you segue from making records to making documentaries?
By having directed a number of videos on the records
that I produced, getting next to the creative as I've
always been, And actually in nine seven I had the

(11:07):
good fortune to work with Robbie Robertson, whose best friend
at the time was Martin Scorsese. We made it doc
on how Robbie kind of wanted to be in film
Scorsese wanted to be in music. How they teamed up
after the Last Waltz and I was able to work
with Ida grow Wits and some people that I knew
In putting that doc together. We had two Emmy nominations.

(11:29):
That was before it was fashionable to do music docs.
How did I segue? Because I come from the music
and I care about with the songs and the music
represents It became a logical outgrowth for me as I
started evolving my career and morphing into the next step.
As you get older, you don't want a babysit rock
artists anymore. I had the good fortune to spend three

(11:54):
songs with Stevie Wonder that I got to produce and
arrange music with him with the Symphony Orchardstrap. Very the
quiet riot very different than when I met you, Bob,
when you were working in Sanctuary, I was producing The
wasp Ountain, which wind up selling a couple of million
records back in But I do remember you coming into
my studio, and boy, little did I know that you

(12:16):
would become probably the most articulate purveyor of pop cultures
through your writing. So I'm really thrilled to talk to you. Man. Wow,
I don't know how to respond to that, so I'll
just keep flowing. Okay, many many producers from your era
you have have no more work, and if they're they're

(12:38):
living on their glory. Then there are people like Tom
Mormon who did a complete one eighty and ended up
running a B and B. In your particular case, did
you ultimately see way, there's no future for me in
this The game changes. I'm getting older and I'm going
to pivot to this. How conscious was the whole decision? It?

(13:01):
It was a natural outgrowth. I never worried that I
would be lacking work. I've been working since I worked
for Clive Davis, one of his twenty three um. I decided,
after having two children, I didn't want a babysit rock
artists anymore, and I didn't want to be in the studio,
so I started supervising music for film before it became fashionable.

(13:23):
A good friend of mine, Jerry Off say it became
the head of production at showtime, and if you look
at my IMDb you'll see fifty five films that I quarterback.
I mixed the scores, I wrote some title songs, and
that was my gradual evolution. I didn't do it to
make a living because I did a lot of back
end deals, because I'm the kind of guy that eats
what I killed. I don't try and frontload anything. By

(13:45):
the way, I was up in Massachusetts at Rman's place.
Tom is an old friend of mine. It's wonderful. I
love the whole, that whole Brookshire's area lot, which is
pretty cool. But now my conscious thing was logical. In
two thousand two, I teamed up with the buddy of mine.
We made the first DH one on biographical movie, which

(14:05):
I put together, and I decided, you know, this is
kind of cool building uh, media out of music, and
I started doing that way before it became super fashionable.
I started that as I told you did any cost
for VH one in two thousand two, and it just
naturally evolved to do that making a difference in pop

(14:28):
culture using music and media. Now, the music business and
movie business are different in many ways. Certainly, the budgets
are lower in music and it's easier to get started.
There are producers who have multiple projects and they're waiting
for funding for decades. What has been your experience and

(14:52):
how do you deal with this frustration? I kind of
feel that I don't pitch. I share, and because I'm
next to the talent and I get the proprietary rights, uh,
I p is king and distribution is great and for me,
I don't have a problem making anything that I do

(15:12):
get out to the World's the question of who's the
appropriate distributor marketing. I have a great team that worked
for me, that I believe in, I trust, and we've
all known each other for one guy does all my
underscore stuff. I've known for forty years. But if you
look at my sight, the average longevity of my relationships
to my team is probably a decade plus. And my

(15:36):
model also is I pay out of budgets so they
can go and build their life and do their work
their own way. But I've got fierce loyalty because maybe
I'm a decent guy at the end of the day,
but I really care about the art. Well, Eddie Kramer
certainly deserves a documentary. Anything else in the pipe yeah part,

(15:58):
you would know all these people who, as you are
a student of the business of pop culture. My friend
Del Bryant, who used to be the president of b
m I, his parents, Police and Buddle O'Brian actually wrote
all the big Everley Brothers hits. So the doc we're
going to make his call. That's done. It signed papered.
All I Have to Do Is Dream, which was one
of the big Everley hits. But when you think of

(16:20):
the people who covered some of the Bryant songs from
Paul Simon too, you look at the influence that the
Everley Harmonies have had on McCarty, Lennon McCartney, etcetera. We're
going to make a doc called All I Have to
Do Is Dream, the pioneers of Nashville, and I can
link a little bit about that because in the sixties,
as you know, New York was a hotbed of new

(16:41):
acoustic music and there were a lot of renegades there. Well,
the Bryants were the pioneers of bohemians of Nashville before
it was fashionable, you know, to be cool in Nashville,
which it is today. So they would Devil would be
sitting on his dad's knee when Orbison and the Release
and Carl Perkins and all these people would come over,

(17:04):
and we're going to have demos that Della has. This
is a doc about his parents journey, but we're also
going to deal with the music. But we're not going
to do a generic music doc. It's really going to
be about pioneering music out of a Nashville Anchor will
bring it forward with some modern covers like I did
with McLean, But really that's the project of Excited about

(17:24):
Steven Schwartz wrote Godspell, Pippen, and the current Wicked movie
which he has written. Stephen is elected for me to
be his producer and produced the doc on his journey,
not a Wicked documentary, documentary on the kid who was
at Carnegie Mellon when he wrote god Steal. Then he
went and wrote Pippen. Then he had a problem with

(17:45):
Bob Fosse. Then he started writing music for films. He
tamed up with Alamanka. That's going to be an interesting story.
We will do that working with God bless his memory.
Lamont Dozer was one of my dearest friends. We've written
some songs together when our kids had play dates. My
younger son Morgan used to date. Is not date could

(18:05):
go to school with his daughter. So he had written
the songs that he wrote in the sixties, whether it
be you know heat wave or standing in the Shadows
or this same old song. We live that through the
administration prior to Biden and so are we in a
heat wave? Is it the same old song? Were we

(18:26):
hearing the same things? So I've teamed up with a
director who's a South African, brilliant guy, and we are
sculpting the story from a South African point of view culturally,
but from a world point of view because Laumont, after
he left Motown, he toured South Africa, he toured Nigeria.
We're just going to approach it a little differently than

(18:48):
the normal person. That which is do a soup to nuts. Hey,
it's a dock on all this hits. Guys had fifty
one number one songs. But I'm interested in what those
songs mean to people then and today, as we did
with Lamont, as we did with Don McLean. Okay, going

(19:11):
back to Dell, who owns his parents songs now? Del
how Sobriant he and his brother own a So I
have no licensing issues, I have no sink issues. Everything
is built in into my partnership with Dell. Great. So
you're a student of the game yourself. What do you
think about all these artists selling their catalogs. I'm talking

(19:34):
about publishing catalog primarily those Springsteen were sold the records too, well, yeah,
we understand, and an opal of years who were in
the Sanctuary it was kind of next to that. Mark
I think, Yeah, I think, And funny I've gone back
and forth with them. I'm proud of how he's built
what is hip knows his company. I see what the
big boys are doing, and I think that's really smart

(19:55):
because if you're Paul Simon, if you're Bob Dylan, and
you're after seventy years all you can get three four
five million dollars for your work and still consult on
it and still have a voice on how the things
are used and licensed. I think that's actually really smart,
because songs are the bedrock of the business. Who owns
all your rights? Me? So you haven't sold anything? No,

(20:20):
Well I did in the past, um because well, these
days I'm owning the i P to my films. I
used to own the I P to the copyrights on
the songs that I wrote and the records I produced.
Some of them were owned by the distributors. When I
got smart, I wound up having j vs after my
Billy Thorpe experience. If you remember Children of the Sun,

(20:43):
of course I wrote that I produced that with Billy.
It was on Capricorn when they went belly up. I
didn't get a dime and we sold a million records. Bob.
In y eight I developed laser computer animated laser light shows,
started Planet Arry shows, and I didn't get paid a time.
I realized I need to control my i P a

(21:04):
little more, so it evolved. I did go to law school.
The only thing I learned out of that was that
I didn't want to be a lawyer. A and B.
When Clive offered me a job, he could either pick
up my option as an artist, or take the job.
I took the job, kidding forget. That was the end
of my recording career. So I've been that guy behind
the curtain, the frustrated artist, that frustrated guitar player. My

(21:28):
last who odd guitar? As I played with Ray Parker Jr.
On the Tina Turner asked the Queen album, if you
look and you google if there were only two guitarists
me and right. But you know what, when I got
the chance to work with Jeff Beck with Brian May,
I said, wait a minute, these are real good guitarists.
If you see that guitar behind there, I use it

(21:48):
to strom you know, my hope, my future grandchildren to sleep.
But I'll tell you man, I'm not as good as
the people have worked with. That's why I defer. Don
McLean is one of the best guitarist show ever meet. Okay,
the Quiet Riot stuff. Yeah, I assumed that Sony owns
the recordings. Are you still getting revenue from that or

(22:09):
if you sold the rights to that? Now? I still
get revenue every quarter and the masters because at the
time I didn't have the Cloud, I had the opportunity.
Walter Yetnikoff gave me the opportunity, and that's the story
into itself. Because they all hated that record. I made it.
I directed the videos with a guy named Mark Rezko,

(22:30):
who was an out of work commercial Sky and MTV.
Actually Bob Pittman and his team Les Garland helped me
get it on the air. When I put a second
on my house made the video at cal Arts bypassed
the label, sent it to EMPTV. They put on the air,
went through the roof the first bang your Head video.

(22:50):
But I didn't own the masters. I owned the publishing
that I did sell back. Okay, you sold the publishing
just on that. Yeah, what was your motivation? M getting divorced?
That's a good motivation. Absolutely. How many times you've been married?

(23:14):
While I have the best marriage a human being could have.
I my first marriage was was someone you probably know of,
Trudy Green who and Trudy is still my dear friend.
After fifty years of friendship, we realized we'd be better
business partners than husband and wife. So that thing lasted
a year in my twenties, then the mother of my

(23:36):
children fifteen years when that didn't work, I met Judy
by accident. She's been with me now. Twenty two years
she was the publisher of the l A Weekly. She's brilliant.
She's got a heart of gold, and rather than me
talk about it on this podcast, people can read about
her and google her. But she runs my book division

(23:56):
and she is about the smartest person I've ever met
in my life, next to my kids. My kids are
pretty smart too. Okay, if you stop working today, do
you have enough money to get to the end? Yes? Okay,
that's good. What's what's up with your book division? Well?
I like the idea of making books, whether it's the

(24:18):
book first and then the doc. I'll show you this
Elvis book that Babs Lerman wrote the forward too, just so,
just so you know, we're audio only. Oh okay. Bass
Lerman is a brilliant director. He's now crossed the three
million mark with the Elvis Stone. My dear friend Steve
Steve Binder actually directed and produced the original Comeback special.

(24:42):
I'm in production on that now, telling the Elvis and
Steve Buddy story Elman, Louise, Butch and Sundance, Elvis and Steve.
As you can see when you watch the bass Lerman movie,
Elvis and Steve, will Steve Divide Colonel Parker. He didn't
want to do a some special. And if you remember
the scene in the Bass Movie when Elvis says, so, Steve,

(25:06):
what do you think of my career? And Steve says,
it's in the toilet, it's true. So partnering with Viacom
and Paramount Plus and Paramount Corporate and CBS UM on
this who are my partners? We are making the story
from through Steve's lens. And it happened that Steve wrote
a book on it. We published if we put it out.

(25:28):
He got Bads to write the forward to the book.
He consulted on Bads this movie, and we're using the
Bads movie, not using but it's propelling sales of the
book when our doc comes out. It's also going to
help that book came first. Judy helped me put the
book together with Steve. Steve wrote it. He's brilliant, he lived.

(25:49):
He is the only living guy who can truly speak
to the Elvis Comeback Special because he's the guy who
directed it, produced it, and conceived it. Um on the
lean thing. When I got to know Don and learned
his story of being a young paper boy and being
inspired and being affected by Buddy Holly's death, Judy and

(26:09):
I talked about it. She came up with a brilliant
idea on how to look at the prequel to him
writing the song that's the Journey. I have a distribution
deal with kind of the A and M Records Island
speaking at Chris Blackwell of books called IPG based out
of Chicago, and they're doing that book and a dozen

(26:30):
other books for us. I'm making a book on every
dock that I produced because I can. Okay, going back
to the American Pie, you have recreations. They're done very subtly.
At first you think that, uh, it's actually the film
from that era. That's an interesting choice. How did you

(26:51):
and the director make that choice? First of all, I'm
going to correct you. It's not recreations, Chloral, It's only
a slight piece that exists. And that was Mark Mormon's
genius because it couldn't we couldn't get footage from seventy one,
but it could look like seventy one who could feel

(27:11):
like it and Don guided him through it because Don
was there. So if you do it, and you do
it with some vision, you pull it off. And I
give a lot of props to Mark Mormon for doing that. Okay,
let's pull the lens back. If someone who's been in
the game from many decades, and what do you think

(27:33):
about the recorded music business today? I think songs of
the bedrock of music and harmony. I'm working on a
dock with the guys Manhattan Transfer Pentatonics that takes you
back to the Andrew sisters and the Mills brothers, and
that Jordanaire's harmony. Songs will always exist. How you sell it.

(27:57):
Used to be a tracks, used to be in you
used to spin it around on seventy eight eight tracks too,
you know, digital to now downloads. It's always going to
have content. So what do I think of it? If
the songs are great, I'm a big believer you use
media to propel the songs. That's why I'm doing what

(28:17):
I'm doing at this age. I'm doing it because I
get off on it. I love it, I understand it,
I relate to it. And yeah, money is a byproduct
of the work. You do the work, the money comes.
I don't do it for the money. I do it
for the goose bumps. Once you have those, the money comes.
I make a lot of money, but I make the
money doing good work. Okay, let's go a little deeper

(28:42):
into the music itself. Okay, you made your bones in
the rock era. What do you think of rock today
and what do you think of hip hop and pop?
I think if there's a story, whether it's rock, whether
it's bang your head, which became a social cultural thing.
And by the way, I had produced Tina Turner and

(29:02):
Paul Anka, which wasn't rock. Before I had mixed records
for Bobby Womack and Bobby Goldsboro. So I you know,
I had this great success as a rock producer, but
I'm a music producer. Working with Stevie Wonder with a
symphony orchestra, working with BB King. That's not rock. It's music,

(29:22):
and I'm all about the music and I care about it.
Stephen Schwartz, his songs that he wrote for Pippen and
Godspell and Wicked, that's not rock, it's good music. I'm
a big fan of songs. Laura Nero, James Taylor, Elton,
John Kat Stevens. Those are my favorite. Paul Simon is
my favorite writer the history of my life, because when

(29:43):
we all came to look for America, that was my story.
I was born in Germany. I came to America when
I was six. My kids are the firstborn propers in America,
so I'm all about it. And he epitomized the spirit
of coming to America in a song. I love Paul
Simon and I love songs. So what I think of

(30:04):
the music business. I think Taylor Swift is a fine
artist that she writes songs. I think there's some artists
that still harkened back to songs. I think riffs and rap.
If rap has a story to it, I did it.
I like anything that's storytelling. Okay, let's go back to
Quiet Riot. Warrener and his partner with the managers was

(30:28):
that David Jacob was his name or something like that.
Warren was the sole manager. Warren used to be in
the grassroots and he he nderstood music, but now he
didn't partner. Maybe subsequently he partnered with others. But during
the Quiet Riot era, Warren was the manager. Okay, So
Quiet Riot was a local band Los Angeles had two

(30:52):
Japanese albums. How did you get involved? When I made
my label deal with CBS and Night One, I had
to have a day job because I was real poor
coming up, so I was producing any money for the company.
And I remember working for Clive that I went to

(31:15):
a concert that actually when we signed Pink Floyd. I
was drafting papers during the day and at night i'd
go out with Gilmore Waters. We went to Hammersmith and
I heard Slave, and I heard them invite the audience
to participate with songs like Mama, We're all crazy now
and you know, uh, come on Field a Noise, and
I thought, well, that just I remembered that. So on

(31:40):
this poor guy producing any money, not that poor anymore,
but I was producing it had this label deal. I
lost the window with Billy Thorpe because when those masters
got hung up in bankruptcy. I continued on Billy because
I built my relationship with the artists. We put on
a Thorpe record. It didn't do much, and I said,
holy Ship. Yet mcough gave me this deal because he

(32:02):
thought I had vision. What am I gonna do? I'm
driving around. I hear Police Rock Sand, I hear soft
Sell on the radio, very passive. Then I hear KHJ
radio playing come on Field the Noise, the oldie by Slave.
I said, holy Ship. That jumps right out of the radio.
A friend of mine who was managing an epic band

(32:22):
called Molly Hatchett called Pat Armstrong. He said, are you
hip to this band that's doing? I said, friendly with
Patty wanted me to produce and stuff for him. I said,
I need to find a band who can sing anthem
participatory rock songs. He goes, there's this band playing the
country club and resida. I'm an l a guy, and

(32:43):
they sing those kind of songs. The lead singers Demonich.
He looks like a Marcel Mars character. So I said, okay,
you know what, Pat, you got credit with me. I
got in the car. I drove up one night to
the country club and there were six people in the audience,
and there was this group called Why. They were called
do Bro, named after Kevin du Bro. Rudy Sarzo was

(33:05):
still working with Ozzie Osborne, playing bass for Ozzie. So
I listened to them and I hear party all night,
I hear bang your head. I'm going, okay, if I
can convince these guys to do a cover, which I
understood was really hard, and that's why the disconnect with
Kevin I started day one. But I had a studio passion,

(33:28):
the one you were in and I saw after the show.
I went up to them and I said, I'm an
ex Spenser proper. Kevin was a student of music. He said,
didn't you produce that Tina Turner album? I said yeah.
He said, didn't you get involved with Billy Thorpe. I
said yeah, I produced his records and I wrote Children
of the Sun with Billy. I'm that guy. He said, wow,

(33:49):
well that's cool. I said, hey, i'll produce you, but
you need to do something for me. I'll do three
of your songs. I'll give you a studio time. You
got to do a cover. He said, I hate slave
their posers. I said, yeah, you might hate them, but
guess what. They had a number one record in England,
and if you do a cover, it's congruent with all
your other songs. So he talked to Frankie Bennelli, the drummer,

(34:11):
Carlos the guitar player. They couldn't get arrested. They've been
shot everywhere. They've all been turned down, poisoned, wrap. All
these bands were totally rejected by the l A record
community because music was passive, you know, Duran Durant was happening.
Cindy Labera girls just want to have fun. What's happening?
Heavy metal was not anywhere close. Black Sabboth couldn't get

(34:33):
arrested them Pop radio okay. I took them into the studio. Uh.
I did it all on spec On on a weekend
at my time. We recorded the first four songs, which
became the Metal Health Album. I dug it. I sink
to twenty four track machines together. I made it sound
like we were in a stadium because I wanted to
replicate what I experienced was Slade. And I mixed, and

(34:55):
I called Tony Martell and Don Dempsey epic and I said, guys,
we made a deal. My Thorpe record failed. I got something.
They said, oh, what do you got? I said, I
really believe in that. I believe it will connect with
the street, it'll connect with the kids. I flew into
New York. My hair was longer than yours currently, Bob,
and certainly longer than mine. Was down to my shoulders.

(35:17):
And I flew in to New York. I sat off
in a conference room and I played the first four
songs on the Mental Health Album. By the second song,
Tony Martell wrote me a note, We'll pay you the
full cost of the album. We hate this, we we
don't get it. Would you please not play the rest?

(35:38):
I wrote them back a note, I'm playing the four
songs because I took the time to fly out of here.
Listen to it. They listened to it. Then Tony said
to me, we'll give you. At the time, I had
seven My deal was seventy all in the in the
world for an album. It increased after that, but it
was that so they gave. They made it commitment to me.
Zach Rolis was the lawyer who became the coachair of Universal,

(36:01):
and they paid me the seventy grand I then spent
six months shopping those four songs. Everybody I played it
to hated it, turned it down, am it? Clive, mo Joe,
all the guys that you know. So I called the
Ethnic I'm revealing stuff that I didn't put in a book.
That I've written a book, and I'm not going to

(36:21):
for a few years anyway. So I called Walter and
I said, you made a label deal with me because
you thought I had vision. I need you to put
out this, this quiet right thing. I need to finish
the album. You paid me. You don't have to give
me any more. Money, but I need to make the record,
he said, finished. I finished. Took me three weeks because

(36:42):
those days. Paul Simon spent three years making Bridge over
Troubled Water. I spent three weeks making the Acquired Right album.
I flew back to New York, I played it. They
hated it even more. So, you know, it's the album
that's sold eight almost eight million copies at the time.
It would have million albums today. But anyway, so Walter

(37:04):
did me a solid God rest his soul, and he
put out four thousand records under miscellaneous Q. Well, Bob,
you know when Cindy Lauber, when Michael Jackson's selling you
and it's on thrill or four thousand under miscellaneous. Q
meets dick. Right. So what I did is I got
on the plane and I went to the stations that

(37:25):
took the Billy Thorpe record number one, and I went
to kat x Q and Dallas, to k M O
D and Tulsa, and I did interviews and they played
Bang your Head and the phones went perserved. To MTV's credit.
Why I loved the Viacom MTV machine so much. They
were doing call out research and I got a call

(37:45):
from my friend of mine at the time, Les Garland,
or for Pittman. He said, you know, you got a
record that's really tracking. And Tulsa case App and Sacramento
and kat x Q and d Alice km odeon tell Us,
I said, and kiss Sam Antonia. Those are the stations
I went to interview times. So give me a video.

(38:05):
So I called Martel and MC give me give me
a budget for video or whatever they cost. They said,
when you get to a hundred thousand units, call us okay.
So I said, you're wrong. This is the beginning of
me bucking the man. And I don't care. It's funny.
I didn't. I thought interview years ago I called me

(38:26):
a renaissance disruptor. Why because I care about the music.
I don't care about what you Mr Sup think. What
I care about is what the artists in the street
and the kids and the public things. So I put
a second on my house. I had a business card
that said Pasha CBS because I called my company Pasha
because I liked what the word meant. That started to

(38:47):
saying letter as my last name, and I went out.
I called every ad agency I knew because I thought
a video would be like an a commercial and there
was a director named Mark Ressica who was directing commercials,
but he was out of work and he was working
with a lady named Beth brod A who is subsequently

(39:09):
became a terrific film producer and doc producer. And I
got marked together. I put up the second of my house.
I went. I talked to the d N at cal
Arts and I said, your kids can work on the video.
Let me have your venue. It's a CBS because I
had a poscious CBS card, so I bullshitted him that
this is a CBS thing, and he gave me access

(39:29):
to their gym. We made the doc. We used some
techniques to make fifty kids look like five kids, and
I didn't bypassed effect. I sent it directly to the
guys that MTV. To their credit, they put her on
the air four Am, then two am, then twelve am,
then ten pm. Then when it became a number one
video after UM has video. All of a sudden, director

(39:54):
and I told Warren, we need to image this band
as a metal band. They're a pop band, but let's
put a out. And I had a relationship with Don
Arden because Don used to manage l O and I
had brought el O from England when I was running
A and R at United Artists. So I got the
band out with Black Sabbath. Then when it was time

(40:15):
for the next record to put out, and we put
uct Bang Your Head. Didn't do much pop radio, but
come On, Feel the Noise. I thought that's the single,
so I serialized the video the Kid who Caught the Mask,
because we merchandise masks. I brought the album cover to
life because there was a mask on the album cover.
Because every kid, it could be every kid and a

(40:36):
red leather strait jacket. He had to bust out of
the room to rock right Bang your Head, that's the video.
So the kid who Caught the Mask in the first video,
the mask was a crucifix over his bed. Come on
Feel the Noise. The band appears there and they had
to rock. The record went to number one. The record
sold millions. Epic was my best friends. I renegotiated my

(40:58):
deal for a ten album put I retroactively got my
royalties up to where they should have been. Because I
know you're going to ask me about the business, but
I gave the increase to the band. Why because I could,
because my half of it as partnered. I do partnership deals,
whether it be McClean dale, anybody I worked with, Schwartz.
Why because they're invested. I'm invested. But we make money

(41:21):
if the work is good. I didn't make money on
quite right up front and made set. I actually lost money.
But when it's sold, they made a lot of money.
You know why, because the work speaks. Okay, let's go
a little bit slower, mental health Garland puts it on.

(41:45):
At what point does Epic wake up or they don't
wake up until come on feel the noise? Now they
woke up when we started selling records because when the
video hit, MTV would be a driver of attention and
the band was not on the road. Black Sabbath, who's
doing some good stuff. They they have a wonderful machine,
the Columbia record of the CBS distribution machine, Second and None.

(42:10):
They woke up and we didn't put up common Field
a noise until the album sold five units. Then we
started kicking and selling, having five days of five thousand them.
But now they woke up when the band did their
job on the road, when MTV did their job and
the kids responded, and then they woke up and said,

(42:30):
wait a minute, maybe this guy's right. Let's go back
a chapter. Don Arden forget his daughter. He's got an
interesting reputation. To what degree is it true? And what
were your experiences with him. He's passed away and he
at Alzheimer's before, so it's not like you have to
worry about retribution. I don't worry about retribution unless you're

(42:53):
a Republican. I didn't say that. Okay, um, here's a punchline.
Don was a gentleman to me because nobody United Artists
in America would release Jeff Lynn or Roy Wood's Wizard
because it was too cool. I flew over to England
when I became head of an art and I heard
Jeff Lynn, I heard I can't get it out of
my head. I heard El Dorado. I said, holy sh it,

(43:14):
this is cool. So I was able to because I
was in charge of twenty four years old at Ballston Steele.
We put the record out. Don Arden became my new
friend because you know, and so when it was time
for Quiet Riot ten years later to find an act
to open for it was very logical because Don Arden

(43:37):
at the time when he was alive, he's he's a
real good manager, He knew his stuff. Did he threaten people?
Was he a tough guy? Did Bob Hoskins play the
Don Arden role as the quasi mob guy? I don't know.
He treated me with respect and therefore I can only
say good things about him. May rest in peace. Okay,

(43:58):
just because we worked with him, how did you end
up finding Dwayne Baron to work with you on the
first Quiet Ride album? Because Dwayne worked for me. He
actually picked up my laudry at the time, and he
was kind of a junior guy at my studio. When
my very dear friend he's still next to me, Larry Brown,
had a health scare. He couldn't do the spec work

(44:20):
that I told you about on the weekend. So I
asked Dwayne to join because I Dayne learned the engineering process.
This is his first time at bat. He did a
great job, so I gave him the whole album to engineer.
He built a career from that. Okay, let's stay with
Quiet Riot. They have this monster album. You know, they

(44:42):
paved the way for a lot of other acts. It's
the heyday of MTV. How did the band react and
what happened on the second record when Kevin du Bro
May he rest in peace. And I don't know I'm
saying this shot off this big mouth that he was
better AUSSI is a phony. He is best rock artists
in history. Seven and a half eight million records went

(45:04):
to two million on the second run, and radio started
getting wise to not liking Kevin. How did the band react?
They were pissed at Kevin. Ultimately they threw him out
of the band. How did I react? It hurt my
bottom line, but thank god it wasn't the only act
that I was working with. But how did the band react?
Kevin was not the best thing for He's a great singer,

(45:28):
he was a good showman, and he was an hassle Okay,
I mean Kevin who used to be around. It wasn't
like he was hiding out ends up moving to Vegas, uh,
drugging himself to death. I mean, there are some people
you can see that coming. But I said, this guy
is like a suburban night What was the what was

(45:49):
going on there? I lost touch with them after the band,
after Frankie and Carlos threw him out of the band,
we got a new singer named Paul Shortino made a
quiet riot for album. Because I kept the brand alive.
It didn't do what people expected. That was the end
of my connectivity until they sued me for conspiring with

(46:10):
CBS to steal the royalties because they were broken I wasn't,
and they lost. He got thrown out some rejudgment, the
only time I've actually been sued in my career. But
I lost touch with them. I don't know how Kevin
imploded in Vegas. He was doing too many drugs earlier
on all of them. Frankie actually not, but yeah, I mean,
Kevin is Kevin. I don't want to speak ill of anyone.

(46:33):
I just wanted to look at the future. I'm more
excited about working with the people i'm working with than
the people I had. Although I had a good fortune
Stevie Wonder, total gentleman, Little Riverband, Johnny Farnham, brilliant people,
terrific eyes. I've had the good fortune to work with
some gentlemen, and I've had the good fortune or the
bad fortune to work with some assholes. You brought up

(46:54):
the asshole Okay. As you mentioned earlier, you were born
in Europe. What were the circumstances there? My parents were
in Auschwitz and broken out. I was born everyway. Let's
let's stop there. They were literally in And how did
my father survive Auschwitz? You're probably are going to ask

(47:15):
me exactly. He was a brilliant chess player, and he
and his fellow inmates would carve little pieces of chess
guys and they play the German guards. I learned this
as a kid from my parents. Of course, the Germans
loved how Saul prophets Sorsky. That was my real name.
If you look me up on Wikipedia, it isn't profit.

(47:38):
I'm a I'm a Polish Jew that was brought up
by Eastern European people who didn't speak English. Pretty cool,
and the Germans wanted to learn how to play chess
as good as Saul. So he was that guy that
taught some of the guards how to play. One of
them even I'll never forget my dad told me in Yiddish,
because I grew up speaking German and Jewish to my parents,

(48:00):
he said, I'm going to play the fuel now that
I know how to checkmate. You know whatever. The point
assault survived, he my mother made it through. They ultimately
moved to Germany. They were a little bit, a little
bit slower. How long were each of them in the
camps five years wow. And they Okay, where did they?

(48:23):
Where were they in Poland? And what were their circumstances
before the war? My father they were in Slomnicki Pole,
in the small village where I actually had my younger
son have his bar mitzvah. I found that temple that
my dad had his bar mitsvan in this little village
thirty kilometers outside of Krako. That's where my parents are from.

(48:45):
And so your parents knew each other before they went
into the camps. My father's best friend was my mother's
first husband. His name was Michael Novotny. Michael went into
the camps too. He was killed, he was gassed. They
had a son named ben Oh Barry in English my stepbrother.

(49:07):
In ninety eight he left, Uh Well, he got out
of the camps when they were liberated. He went to
Israel to fight for Israeli independence. He wounded up being
at the top of Israeli intelligence. Had passed away nineteen
seventy two. So next year, seventy fifth anniversary of Israel's independence,
I'm also working with a few friends of mine to

(49:29):
produce a special on the seventy fifth anniversary of Israel's independence.
It parallels mine. I'm gonna spend my seventy fifth birthday
in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa next year. Okay, what
economic circumstances did your parents come from before the war? Poor?
Poor and poor. My father made twenty bucks a week

(49:51):
when he came to America after he exhausted the few
dollars that he had made. He and my mother were
really smart, so they opened a shop in Munich selling
feather beds and quilts, and with a partner, my dad
cashed out of that. He brought everything to America because
he didn't want his only kid, I was born after

(50:12):
the war to grow up and post war Germany. We
went to a movie once when I was five years old,
and the graffiti on the wall box was Juden and
Hunt Hunt. It's like Hunton Uton for voting, juice and
dogs forbidden. My dad broke down and started to cry,
and he said he didn't want his only son to

(50:33):
grow up in Germany. So we packed it up. We
took the vote over, We did the Elis Island thing.
Lived in New York. But wait a little bit, wait, wait, love,
It's flow down for a second. The war is over.
How do your parents find each other? They knew each
other in Slomniki, Poland because my mother's husband was my
dad's best right. But there was a whole issue after

(50:54):
the war of literally reconstructing and finding people, taking ads
in Jewish newspapers, etcetera. The have any idea how they reconnected? No,
wasn't there. I do know that I'm a product of
their love, and nothing I love more in my life
than my parents who came to America. Like Paul Simon said,
they how came to look for America. That's my story.

(51:17):
I came here when I was six years old. Okay,
so you came here when you're sick. Do you have
any memories of living in Munich? Just the graffiti on
the wall and my dad cried just playing with my
German Shepherd dog because my parents wanted me to have
a dog. My son, Sterling, has a new shepherd. My

(51:38):
two kids grew up with German shepherd's. I'm a I'm
a dog guy. Judy, my my wife, my best friend
loves dogs too, but we had pugs. They just passed away.
But anyway, do I have any recollection? Answer your question? Okay,
you get the Alice island. Is that where the name
is changed or when is the name changed? My parents

(52:00):
didn't speak English. I did okay in school. We lived
in Albuquerque. We moved to l A when I was ten.
They became naturalized citizens when I turned sixteen. My dad said,
do we do you want to Sammy? Because they called
me Sammy if you look my My Polish name was

(52:20):
German name was Solid and Samuel is the name I
was going to school with. And I had my bar
missi a ring that said sp So my dad said,
this is an opportunity if we get our citizenship. At
the age of sixteen, Well, my favorite actor at the
time I started becoming pretty tuned into things with Spencer
Tracy and they hurt. The win started with an s.

(52:43):
My favorite band was Steve Uh Spencer Davis Group with
Stevie one would say keep on Running, one of my
favorite songs of all time. So I decided Sam could
become Spencer Proffitt need Profits Sorsky needed to be shortened
because I didn't want to go through my life with
the name Sam Profsky, which is what I started high

(53:04):
school with. So Spencer my bar mr Ring sp Sam
Profit Sursky became Spencer Proffer. When I turned sixteen, which
is when the name champion. Okay, you go through Ellis Island.
Did you have any relatives? Where did your parents start
a hundred percent fresh? You were in New York for?

(53:25):
How long and how did you end up in Albuquerque?
Six weeks in New York. The only Jews my parents
knew from Poland lived in Albuquerque. So we took a train.
We are in New York for six weeks just to
get our bearings. Stayed in a hotel. I have a
few memories of that, and we took a train to Albuquerque.
I got the ship beat out of me as a

(53:45):
kid going to school. In my first day at school,
my mom wanted a little girl. I were later hosen.
I didn't speak English and there were many wonderful Hispanic
and Indian people there who thought that I was somebody
who could get beat up on. So they beat up
on me. And that's that was my first experience in America.

(54:07):
How long did you live in Albuquerque? Four years? And
were although you have these Jewish friends, how many Jews
were in Albuquerque? Very few? And did you feel the
anti semitism totally? And usually children of immigrants certainly Jewish

(54:28):
parents want their children to do very well in school?
Did you feel that pressure all day? That's why I
got my PA at twenty That's why I passed the
bar twenty three. But at the same time, I love music.
I started playing guitar when I was fifteen sixteen. I
used to with my buddy, who went to med school,
right songs, to beat the lyrics, right um lyrics, to

(54:52):
beatle melodies, and I wanted to do that. I started
a band with my buddy and we got signed. We
had four different record deals, ultimately signed by Clive Davis
to Columbia Records. That's how I met Clive. That's how
I got that job. While I was last Okay, what
are your parents doing for a living in Albuquerque and
what is their motivation to move to Los Angeles. My

(55:16):
mother was not super well physically. She was a house like.
My father fixed sewing machines and made twenty dollars a week.
He worked for Brother International, and he was he saw
one of the kindest, nicest, most wonderful guys. He was
so good at his craft. He was so meticulous, like

(55:38):
he approached Chessie approach fixing sewing machines. When brother International
set up their offices in Los Angeles, saw that transferred
to be a mechanic in Los Angeles. We moved to
l A to Broil Heights, to the heart of the
Jewish gatop. Okay, at what point, into what degree did
your parents end up speaking English? And since you know,

(56:01):
the other thing is they probably didn't understand what your
life was about. And to what degree did you uh
exercise freedoms that if they knew what was going on,
they probably wouldn't have approved. I'll tell you a funny story.
The first time I got whipped by my dad with
the belt. Okay, first of all, they started speaking broken English.

(56:23):
I enrolled them in night school because I started supporting
my folks when I was thirteen years old. That's a
long story. I started selling newspaper subscriptions. I started making
out hunter bucks a week. I would help my dad
buy the food. We go to Canador's Delly every Sunday week,
buy holi weet, buy egg bread, We buy all kinds
of stuff to eat for the week. But I'll never

(56:44):
forget my dad playing chess at a park and with
these other refugees from Poland, and they had a daughter
who was twelve, and I was twelve, and I wound
up in the bushes with the daughter, and and all
I can say is when I got home that night,
I got beat up by my dad, Sammy, how dare

(57:07):
you go into the whatever? So but my parents were
wonderful parents. They were the biggest influence on me spiritually
and ethically than any human could ever be. And that's
why I have such a strong immigrant dreamer mentality. That's
why I'm such a fan of the current administration. I
love Michelle Obama, Barack Obama. They were two of my

(57:29):
favorite presidents. And anybody who's about immigrants against immigrants and
dreamers is not the sight of the coin that I
grew up. Okay, and you end up going to high
school where fair facts? I Well, you've got a fair
faxx I. You know, a fountain right there on Melrose,
a fountain of music legends. What kind of student were you?

(57:50):
I mean, not only academically? Were you were good? Were
you popular? Did you have a lot of friends or
did you go home and study? What were we like?
I was popular, I was smart, I was class president.
I was playing sports. I was at an all city
football quarterback and I had a couple of girlfriends and

(58:10):
I got right into u c l A right after
at the age of seventeen. And what was your experience
like at u c l A. Fabulous. I love the campus,
but I had to work. My dad had a heart attack.
He didn't speak good English. I bought him a liquor
store on Washington Boulevard and Culver City. What I would
do at u c l AS, I'd go to I'd

(58:32):
opened the store, drive down with my dad, then go
because that was Culver City, U c l AS and westward.
I'd go do my classes. Then I would go teach
young kids guitar, make a few bucks doing that. Then
at the end of the day come back. My dad
would be sitting across the counter, just selling liquor and stuff.
I bring him home. That was my life for about

(58:53):
three years until my god, my dad got too sick
to do that. Then we sold the liquor store. Ok A,
you were in the sixties, you know there's an explosion
of music, certainly Los Angeles, never mind in UK and
the rest of the world. You are in the heart

(59:13):
of the action. Do you feel it? Into what degree
are you embracing it? I felt that I loved it.
I had a girlfriend whose boyfriend Lucien Clark, who was
the lead singer of the Birds, so I would I
met Jean, I met Roger mcgwen, I met all those guys,

(59:34):
so I was able to get into Ceros the night
June one nine when they played Tambourine Man, which was
their big cover that blew it up, blew up. I
was kind of there when Elliott l I seen. I
was a big, tall kid. I was smart enough to
talk my way into the Troubadour and I loved that
early music. That's where Elton first. I saw Elton John

(59:57):
when he was brought over Rostrigan brought him over on UNI.
That's when I saw Crosby Stillson, Nash Jackson, Brown, Carol King.
I embraced it all. I loved Steven Stills. For what
It's Worth was one of my favorite songs of all time.
So for me as a kid growing up with this,
it really rang my belt. My parents didn't know shift
from Shinola about what any of that was. But I

(01:00:21):
was a good boy because I did good in school
and I supported them, But more importantly, I loved them
and they loved me. That to me permeated my soul
for the rest of my life. Okay, now simultaneous who
you were playing the guitar and trying to make it
as an artist. Yes, I had a record deal on MGM.
I had a record deal on ABC Dundehill. I actually

(01:00:43):
had a single out that I used for a TV
show I wrote music for called the Hardy Boys, called
Namby Pamby and the Days of the United Food com
Company and me I got love on my comming. I
had a single that I sang and played guitar and
called Namby Pamby, You're Sweeter and Candy. Anyway, I had
these record deals until I started getting influenced by Edison

(01:01:05):
Lighthouse member My Baby Loves Love and some of those songs.
So I put a band together where I was the
lead guitar guy and I wrote the songs with my buddy.
But I found a good singer named Joe Reid. So
I had a band of signed the Clive Sign called
Proper Marmal's at Read and we had a record that
went I think with an anchor and and But that

(01:01:27):
was like my first real not real record deal, because
I had three record deals before that. But that was
the first time that it was really kind of cool.
And when I met Clive, to his credit, I auditioned
for him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And the lawyers
that I got to work for me, that's a long
story on how I got them. Actually, he said to Clive,
this guy is doing well in law school. I was

(01:01:49):
executive editor of Law Review. You know what that means.
I was published. I was one of these kind of
overachiever guys, which I still am to my detriment. So
why I had talked too much? I worked too hard.
I care too much. But you know what, when I
leave this planet, at least I will have had a
great run. Let's go back to the initial three record deals.

(01:02:17):
How does a little you know, a little picture. You
know what. I end up getting a record deal because
I'm a smart little pisher and I was a decent
looking pisher who had girlfriends whose bosses worked at some companies.
And that's how I wound up getting her Albert deal

(01:02:39):
on her breast to cover one of my songs. Because
I was dating Don Costa's assistant, and Don Costa was
a major major guy was producing Sinatra, and I went
to a Sinatra session just as a fan way back
at our c a on sunset, way back and the
session finished early, and my buddy and I, who had

(01:03:01):
written songs for pro from almost Ad and Reid, had
written this instrumental thing, so don let me have this
three hour sessions, you know, union sessions, so don let
me have I made up the court chart. I gave
it to the guys. We did it. That was my demo,
pretty good. And I read that Chuck k was the
guy running Irving Almo Publishing, and I kind of bullshitted

(01:03:25):
my way into saying, hey, I have a song for
her Bralbert blah blah blah. I got in. I brought
the demo, which was used the Sinatra musicians, and he said,
you got anything else? Because Chuck is a really smart guy.
He ran a really great publishing company. Subsequently, I think
he became president of Warner Chapel. Really good guy. And
I said yeah. So I went to the car, I

(01:03:48):
got my guitar and I sang the song called Picture
Postcard that I had just written. He said, Gary Lewis
and the Playboys are doing a new album. They just
had a hit with Rhythm of the Rain. I need
to call snuff Garrett let him hear the song, so
he calls, he holds up the phone. I get my guitar,
I sing, I play it. Within two days, I was

(01:04:09):
in my first recording studio, producing my first demo. This
was when I was eighteen years old. When do you
give up the dream of being an artist? Ship? When
Clive offered me a choice of picking up my option
or taking a job, and I knew I couldn't sing
for Ship. I was twenty three years old. Okay, So

(01:04:34):
at what point do you decide you're going to go
to law school? Was that something your parents instilled in
you from a young age. Yes, and the fact that
I would kind of logically do a lot of my
deals or look at the paper, and I kind of
thought that could be good. Of course, my mother wanted, Sammy,

(01:04:57):
you got to go to law school. You've got to
be a lawyer. You know that good Jewish ethic. And
I applied and I got in, so I decided I
would go. But I still kick my band. You'll think
this stop. My third year in law school, I have
a scholarship and I already knew I had my job
with Clive because Clive offered me the job. I was
in my second year, so my third year, I just

(01:05:17):
needed to get through and I was doing real good
as the top five percent of my class. I hired
people to take my class, the classes to do notes.
I go on the road with my band. Then i'd
come back and I take the test. Believe me, I
dropped my standing. But I kind of knew that I
was just crazy. Gain how I passed the bar the
first time. I have no idea, but I did. And

(01:05:40):
I moved to New York because I knew I had
my job at CBS. Okay, so how long do you
work at CBS and what exactly you doing? Your drafting
contracts anything else? Yeah, I was a shadow. I was
listening to mixes, I was drafting contracts. I had a
title as an assistant director of business Affairs, so budget wise,
they could pay me through particular pipe. Clive got blown out,

(01:06:02):
you know, the whole scandal. My office was down in
the hall. My dad had another heart attack, addressed his soul,
and I wanted to move back to California's living in
New York in an apartment and actually a brownstone that
was owned by a photographer who was Jean Shrtmann's photographer
and I had dated her for a minute. That was crazy.
But anyway, long story short, I wanted to come back

(01:06:25):
to California, so Erwin Siegelstein became the president of CBS,
and they didn't want to lose me because they thought
I knew what I was doing, so they offered me
a big gig in San Francisco. While I was there,
I wanted to come back to oh I because that's
where my parents lived. We sold the liquor store, so
I started putting the word out. A guy named Mike

(01:06:47):
Stewart was chairman of the United Artists Records at the time,
and he saw that I was looking for a job,
so I had an interview. He gave me the job
on the spot to be his number two guys twenty
four years old. So guess what. I didn't take the
CBS San Francisco job. I took the job to be
head of at our national executive director of the company.

(01:07:09):
Stewart thought he was getting a clone, Clive clone. I'm
not a Clive clone. Clive is his own guy in
his own right, but he was a big mentor to
me and I respect the shift out of him. Sorry
to use such good words. But I'm a rock guy
through and through anyway. So the answer to your question
is I took the gig at U A and that

(01:07:29):
lasted until Transamerica sold the company. That I okay, wait
wait wait, wait a little bit slower. So what's your
take on Clive? I think Clive is brilliant. I think
Clive said to me after the debicot that happened at
CBS that since the guys that he had meantor be
at Dick ash Er Walker at the coff they had

(01:07:49):
their best quarter ever when Clive left. But I give
it as a tribute to Clive and his spirit and
his way with artists when he had started ariston. So
I'm a at Clive Davids stand. I have a different style.
I'm different. I come from the music. But the point is,
what's my take on Clive. I have a lot of
respect to Clive David's. Okay, you go to U A

(01:08:11):
U A at the time is this is before it
ends up being merged in the Capital with R you know,
with Artie Mogul already Mogul, etcetera, etcetera. So it's a
relatively moribund company. So that's a big change from CBS Records. Secondly,

(01:08:32):
Mike hires you as an A and R guy. You're
not gonna do any business affairs now. I'm gonna be
almost like a GM. So Harold Cider ahead of business
affairs would interface with me, the marketing people would, the
promote people would. Ultimately the guy who's had a promote,
Ray Anderson, went to work for me when I started Passion, Okay,
I pulled him out of that. So what I did

(01:08:55):
and how I dealt with this moribound company. As I
went and listened to re record and every artist that
was on the roster, most of which were sleeping, That's
when I heard that the English company had Hawkwind, they
had Roy Woods Wizard, they had electric light orchestra. I
said to Mike Store, I gotta get on a plane,

(01:09:15):
I gotta go here. What else This guy Andrew Africans
last night had an are in English Company. But during
the day I would do the Anar gig. I would
deal with the guys that war Cherry Old, Steven, Steve Gold.
I had all that good fortune to get to do
that gig. But at night I put my hands on
every record I could as a producer, because I come

(01:09:37):
from the music so I had a dual job. I
had eleven records in the top fifty and eighteen months
bot as a producer that I hit Royalty No why
work for an insurance company. Lenny Warnerker got a Royalty
Russ titled and the Guys that Warners did. I didn't.
But you know what, I'm years old. Good opportunity, That's
what I did. I helped build that asset up that

(01:10:00):
when Jerry rubenstand Artie Mogul came to buy the company,
I helped build it up so that they could make
more money. So what year do you leave you? Ay?
And what do you do I leave you? I moved
in with Trudy Green, who you probably know was a manager.
Trudy was my girlfriend at the time, and we moved

(01:10:21):
into a one room apartment with a four poster bed
in My guitar and I I was friendly with. I
met Graham Nash through the Hollies because the Hollies were
assigned to CBS. They were the first people to actually
cover Springsteen with a song called Sandy, and Alan Clark
was the lead singer. He had to have these my

(01:10:41):
brother here that I breathed and Alan wanted to make
a solo record and he asked me if I would produce.
That was the first time I took a superstar like that,
although I had worked with Tea and I've worked with Paul.
Remember I'm a punk and I make a solo record
with Alan. David Geffen had ship. It's just in the
process of leaving Asylum. But I actually played him a

(01:11:06):
couple of songs that I decided I wanted to do
with Alan because Alan had a voice of gold. I
loved Alan. I thought Alan his real name is Harold Clark,
and he and Graham Nash, who is still my friend today,
close friend love Graham Um started the Hollies. So I
made the deal with Geffen. We made the deal on Asylum,

(01:11:27):
and I made the album with Alan. What I did
is I made a few dollars on that because I
was partnered with that, and I made a decent deal,
so we got to keep what we didn't spend. So
I had friends because remember I was at u A,
so I'd make deals with studios and stuff. I made
the album for less money than I got from Lecture Asylum,

(01:11:48):
so that helped me a little bit. That's the beginning
of Pasha, Let's slow down now here, you make the
deal for the Alan Clark record, which is not a
hit record. Geffen leaves as he thinks he's gonna die,
which turns out to be untrue. Where does that leave you?
Knowing that cut one side one of Alan's album Blinded

(01:12:09):
by the Light was a hit because Alan lived near
Manford Mann, who in England, and Joe Smith came over
to take over. He and Mel Posner were running elect
and I did Alan's album that was cut one side one.
We did a rock version of Blinded by the Light.

(01:12:32):
When I'm told that whoever wrote that the lyrics are
to us so terror it's too off the wall. We
don't understand it. And Nikki Chan of My Chapman had
had some hits and I knew Nikki pretty well, and
so they picked that song to release his single didn't happen.
I was pushing Blinded by the Light. People told me

(01:12:54):
I was nuts. Manford Man covered it had the record
of the year. Where did it leave me? Frustrated? But
I had some frustration with Billy Thorpe when that company
Capricorn a little bit slower? Okay, Yallen Clark album comes out.
Are you then done with Asylum? And how do you

(01:13:15):
get hooked up with Billy Thorpe? Okay, these are great questions.
You did your homework, man, Thank you. I remember all
this keep going okay, and I remember it too. And
the only reason I'm a little more long winded about
it is because nobody has asked me these questions. No, no, no, no,
go into this is what this is the juice, this

(01:13:36):
is what I'm interested in. Okay, all right. I made
four albums with Alan, not one even though it failed.
The next album I did, I made the deal with
Ahmed Atlantic. We had actually we had a hit, but
I'll tell you about that in a minute, because he
didn't ask me what to talk about Billy Thorpe. So

(01:13:59):
I went to a party in nineteen. So I'm now
working for myself and I have a few dollars because
I made the Silent Clark deal and it was a stiff,
but I still I made my follow up to the
Billy Thorpe album with Electric Silent. They gave me a
lot of money to do that because Thorpe Children of
the Son was a big deal, but Capricorn had gone

(01:14:22):
belly up and Billy. Whooooooa, whoa, whoa. You're doing the
Alan Clark record. How do you find Billy Thorpe and
end up on Capricorn? Okay, So while I'm making the
Alan Clark album, I'm invited to a party at a
lawyer's house and mc fleetwood was there, and Alan Parsons

(01:14:45):
was there, and all these people were there, and Billy
Thorpe was there. Who's Billy Thorpe. Billy Thorpe was the
spring stand up Australia. Billy Thorpe could sell out stadiums
and he wanted to come to America to make a mark.
He was going to work with Alan Parsons, who was
a brilliant talent before he started the Alan Parsons project.

(01:15:07):
But Alan had just produced a record by a group
on Capitol called Pilot, and they thought that they should
do the follow up with their uncle's brother's cousin or whoever.
So Alan didn't get the nod to produce the follow
up after having its Magic being a huge hit, so
I think Alan wanted to start his own thing. That's

(01:15:28):
when he started the Allen Parson's project. He was going
to work with Billy admit Billy at the party, so
we just started talking. And I had just bought some
paintings by a surrealist named Ario Campanelli, and I knew
that Billy was kind of like thinking about things that
are very extra tresteal and very you know, very tripped out,

(01:15:51):
and I like, uh, I like impressionistic guard, I love mone,
I love and Go. But I also like mcgreet and Dali,
and Billy did too, So we started having an art conversation.
Then we started having a music conversation. And Close Encounters
had just come out as a movie, and you see

(01:16:12):
the last scene aliens to make contact with you don't
know what happened after them. So Billy and are hanging out.
There were too many cute girls at the party. And
he's a guitar player. He's a great guitar player. Was
a great guitar player. I played a little bit. So
we said, why don't we go out and see this movie?
Then let's go to my house and jam. So we did,
and we saw Close Encounters. Then we went to my house.

(01:16:34):
We smoke a couple of joints, we drank some Corvosier.
We were hanging out and Billy I was reading Carl
Sagan's Cosmos, and Billy was a fan of extraterrestrials, so
we made up a thing the Earth was going to
self destruct in the year this is down nineteen seventy
seven seventy eight, and Eastern Afghana standing in crisis was

(01:16:57):
happening politically, so we said we were talked, is really smart?
I like smart people. So Billy said, Americans and the
Afghanistans are Afghanistanians are going to team up to fight
the Russians and the world will blow up. So why
don't we write a song about that? Because we're off
the wall kind of guys. And we made up a

(01:17:19):
friendly race from another galaxy called the Children of the Sun.
We're going to watch the self destruction and come down
from a crystal planet, made up planet to offer the
Earth links and choice of staying or leaving. By the
end of the song, they're gonna leave by the end
of the album. That who started new civilization? That became
my laser lightshop. So we wrote this song five in

(01:17:40):
the morning. We finished it. It was like seven minutes.
That's why I fell in love with the Don McLean song,
because I wasn't afraid of long songs. As long as
they told the story. And Children of the Sun told
the story, told the story of the self destruction, of
the destruction of the earth, and the optionality for the
people who were left. That was the song. Okay, Capricorn,

(01:18:02):
I went shopping that we had the song. So I
knew a couple of people because I just come out
of you a. Everybody hated it, hated it, just like
they hated quiet. Right, So I'm not used. I'm not
against being told no because I know how to say no.
He turned it in DS through the side door. Okay.
So there's a promotion guy who's working at ABC Records

(01:18:26):
at the time named John Scott. I don't know if
you know John. Of course I know John Scott. It
takes a lot of credit for the success of Tom
Petty's career. Okay, Well, he can take credit for this.
He heard Children of the Son, he got it, and
he was working at ABC. What did ABC Records mean
to me? Well, Trudy and I started the management company

(01:18:48):
and our first client with Stephen Bishop and save it
for Ray. Need to add on and on for number
one records on ABC. John Scott was a promotion man
at ABC together with Charlie Minor to ABC, so I
knew John and I called John and I said, hey,
I'm getting all these people that passed on the Children
of the Sun song. What do you think? He said,

(01:19:11):
fucking great. And I'm trying to remember the chronology of
when I made the record, which I made on my
dime on spec because I just built a studio. That's
another story. And how I built Pasha, how I used
my money and all that. But anyway, John was friends
of Frank Fentor and Phil Walden. He used to party

(01:19:32):
with those guys. So when he told them about it,
they came to Pasha, which I had just built. I
lit some candles, I burned some incense. I played them
Children of the Sun. They got it, so they said,
won't put it out? Okay? I had everybody else passed

(01:19:53):
on it. John Scott promoted it for me because he
left ABC became an independent promotion man. The rest that
that was a struggle to that record only happened regionally.
It happened in phases. Ultimately it caught on. It became
the biggest rock record after My Sharona. I think My
Sharona beat it, but it was a number two it's
still on Syrious Sex Sem on Deep Tracks is one

(01:20:16):
of the biggest recurrens of all time. But that was
seventy eight, was on Capricorn, the Almond Brothers suit Felt Walden.
There was a lot of money changing hands sideways, and
I got stuck in it because I had a number
one record and you couldn't buy the record because they
couldn't press them because the company went back. Okay, how

(01:20:43):
did you decide and where did you get the money
to build Pasha? Right there on Melrose. Okay, when I
made my Alan Clark record, I made the deal. And
I'm a big believer in the world outside of because
I came from there. So I made a deal X,

(01:21:04):
the Asylum deal, the Electric deal with US in Canada.
I had built a relationship with a guy named Freddie
Hind who had also passed to all these guys bomb
are leaving us or and I produced a band called
Randy Pie. It was a platinum record in Europe. The
only guy who spoke English was the lead singer of
the rest of the guy spoke German and French, and

(01:21:26):
I speak fluent German. So I made the record there
when they had the gold record party. PolyGram flew me
to Hamburg as the guest of being the producer. I
met Don dr Verner Vogel Sang, who was a Nazi,
I think, but I spoke fluent German, which is pretty cool,

(01:21:47):
and I produced the record. He offered me the presidency
of Polydor Records. I had already left you a because
I had done Alec clark solo record, worked with Clark,
and I didn't want the job. I said, why don't
I do it? Produce action deal with you, and we
did a five album deal. I negotiated. My lawyer at
the time was Don Passman, who's turned out to be

(01:22:07):
a fantastic lawyer and he graduated to be one of them.
He's still a dear friend of mine now fifty years later.
And I called on. I said, these guys wanted to
do a five album deal with me. Can you get
on a plane? He said, well, he just started his
gang tyrant round thing and he couldn't. But I sat
there and I made notes, and he gave me all
the notes that I should do. I go into a

(01:22:29):
meeting the next day. I make this five album deal
in the form of a loan. The guys were speaking
German to each other. They didn't think I knew. They
didn't know I had a lot of degree. I'm listening
to it all. I actually had to take a leak.
I started cracking up because they didn't know that. I
closed the deal and I took the recording budgets of

(01:22:50):
that some cash. I then went to City National Bank,
a local bank. I got matching funds. I had Larry Brown,
who was the engineer that Duane Barron took over for.
His dad was a builder, and we built Pasha. How
did you get the space? It was garbage space on

(01:23:11):
Melrose next to Astro Burger, and I wanted to be
in Hollywood because I thought it would be cool and
it was available space, and we just gutted it and
Larry Brown's dad and Larry designed it to my aspects.
I listened to it. We really made it. Stated the
art to speaker systems, I sink up machines, and Larry

(01:23:33):
is brilliant to this day. If you go into my website.
He's now an Emmy winning composer, but he was an
engineering engineered a lot of stuff for Zeppelin earlier. I'm
a big believer that you keep your friends that are
your friends. I just met most of mine through the business.
My wife has a lot of friends that she met
not as a publisher the Early Weekly, but as a

(01:23:53):
pure soul, as as a good person. My friends I've
met through the business, but some of them are great
people that my friends. Okay, did you leased the building
or own the at least it I had an option
to buy it. I was a schmuck. I should have.
I didn't because there was a leak once and my
current lawyer, my litigator, who's the smartest lawyer litigator I know.

(01:24:17):
We took on the landlord and then he got set
with me because we beat him. He had to pay
for the damage to somebody inside of Pasha, and therefore
he wouldn't sell me the building. So the answer is,
at least okay, Now you have the studio. What are
you making making fourteen years of a couple of hundred albums?

(01:24:42):
But because I could build back studio time under my
label deal, I would make a few extra dollars. What
am I making? Archie Trick Little I mixed my little
river band record there. I've worked with a lot of
famous things and not so famous things. John Butcher, black
artist who channeled I did four albums with John, including

(01:25:03):
one with Glenn Ballard, who wound up becoming his own guy.
So I made good records there. It was great sounding
stuff because I come from there. But when my kids
came onto the planet Sterling in more eight, I decided
to sell out. I didn't want to make records anymore,
although I could, and subsequently I still ten years later,

(01:25:27):
did three records with Stevie Wonder. I did stuff, but
I didn't want to do that as a career. I
kind of wanted to graduate and I was all of
my visual correlations and stuff anyway when I started with
Thorpe when I was shipped twenty seven years old, so
I decided I kind of wanted to go into that
realm and put music and visual together. So that happened.

(01:25:50):
My dad died finally, unfortunately, I moved up to santy
Andez before Bernie Toppon did. I bought a ranch and
I lived there for a year. That I came back
and a friend of mine became the head of Showtime,
Jerry off site, So Jerry said, I'm going to change
the what we got together. We had lung Time down.
Jerry used to be a lawyer, low below, and he said,

(01:26:10):
I'm gonna change the look of this network Showtime. Would
you help me change the sound of it? I said,
I don't want a job. I don't need a job.
He said, but if you put the compoke you, you
hired composers, you decide what music goes where. We'll do
the kind of deal you want. So I did a
back end deal. I didn't take big fees, but I
took a piece of I took half the publishing every

(01:26:34):
film I've worked on. You don't like that. I got
a book a it was VHS at the time. Every
Showtime movie turned into a VHS, and Jerry had great taste.
We made some great movies, so I got a lot
of back in that was good. So I did that
for seven years. Okay, just we'll go back before we

(01:26:56):
go forward. You have this deal with Polly do her
for X number of albums? How do you end up
going to CBS? Because okay, I have the polydordeal. The
Thorpe deal happens that they put out Children the Sun
internationally does good, put out some other records or noble failures.

(01:27:18):
They're really good, but they didn't make it. And I
knew Yetnikov when he was running international, when Clive Davis
was president, and yet Nikov became the chairman of CBS.
And when I got stiffed on the Thorpe record and
the Polydor deal was ex North America, I wanted and

(01:27:40):
Jimmy Garcio started Cariboo and he was a producer. He
started Cariboo a seventy two. But and and Clarence Avon
had Taboo. These are really great guys, terrific guys who
had their own labels. I thought, you know what, I
should have a label, not because my ego. I should
have a label because I'm going to do stuff different
than the guy don't block. So I'd like to find

(01:28:02):
talent and do something with it. So I called Walter,
and Walter said, boy, chick, you can understand one worse.
You should meet Tony Martell. Because Tony Martell got rest
Hissal Martel Foundation ran the division feeding into Don dem
c an epic and subsequent is funny enough. When Don

(01:28:24):
Dempsey left, the guy who took this place with Ray Anderson,
who used to work for me, crazy. Okay, it's six degrees.
It's not six degrees for me. It's two degrees. Anyway,
the punchline is Walter introduced me to Tony. He said,
a guy like you should have a label. Tony was
a match. He said, okay, So we did a really

(01:28:46):
horrible deal. A guy named Zach Horol was represented CBS
the way before he went to Universal. This is Zach
as a lawyer on staff, and Zach did the deal
with me. It was a great deal for CBS and
a horrible deal for me. But that's why I went
to do an any money project because I could get

(01:29:08):
paid as a producer. Because my label deal was seventy
five grand all in for the world. Well, guess what
how much money can I make? Recording costs? Even if
I own the studio, I still have hard costs. Still
got to give it. I did a fifty deal with
the band I do with all my people, have done
this my whole life until today. So I made nothing,

(01:29:29):
but I got a label there. But then the first
record I put out was the subsequent Thought record, which stiffed.
So that's when I said that Pat Armstrong, who had
Molly Hatchett an epic, what the funk? I heard um
come on field the noise on the radio. That was
the second record I put out through my deal. There

(01:29:50):
you go. You say you had a fifty fifty deal
with the acts, go a little bit deeper. Fifty fifty
of net, No, fifty fifty of anything I make. If
if something comes off the top, it comes off the top.
That's the same deal I do with investors and people.
Now you give me a dollar, you recoup your dollar.

(01:30:11):
I don't get anything once it's recouped. If its success,
will whack it up. Okay, So whiir Riot was signed
to you? Correct? So you weren't worried about a producer
royalty because you were the label. Correct. But you'll like
this as a lawyer. The label was signed you know,

(01:30:35):
corporations in California or people. But Spencer is an individual.
So Baskar Mannett and I had a relationship. I did
a bunch of records at Capital as a producer. Little
River Band put Butcher Dempsey didn't think black people could rock,
and John Butcher wanted to make a record with me.
So I went to Capital. I made it three Alton
deal as a partner with John. But Pasha was here.

(01:30:59):
I had records of Pasha after quite right, I had
a lot more and I was producing Records on Capital
to Carmine. Hit Piece has banned King Cobra. I did
a bunch of stuff there. I'm one of those crazy
guys that loves to work. Okay, but if you're getting
seventy k an album YEP for Quiet Riot YEP, and

(01:31:19):
the record recoups, how's the money whacked up? Well, to
answer your question, before it recoups, you do the second record.
Then the band wants to do videos. My cheap videos
became they wanted the biggest directors. All of a sudden,
videos are now a hundred thousand dollars. I meet my

(01:31:41):
video for nineteen, But that's recoupable. Zach Horowitz did a
good deal. Everything is recoupable. So my deal is fifty
fifty after recoupment. But we weren't recouped until years and
years later because we did a second record that advanced
was bigger. The band got a big vance. Then there
was a third record. They were never recouped. But so

(01:32:05):
at the end of the day, did I get paid
as a producer a pittance? Because I own the label?
So I did I get a label share? Yeah? But
do I get paid retroactive to record one as a producer? Yes?
When it recoups didn't recoup. Did I get my label
share when you cross collateral lives that it gives the
other eight albums? Did I see any money there? No?

(01:32:27):
So the point is did I see money at Capital
because I wasn't getting at CBS. Sure, I'm a survivor
and I'm a survivor's kid. Okay, So you work with Showtime?
What comes after Showtime? Your present? Uh? Now? Endeavor? No,
so Jerry leaf Showtime. After building that network up, I

(01:32:48):
then make a movie for VH one. I'd make an
MTV deal to build media using their platform. I then
team up with an old friend of mine who you
know who managed Monthly Crew at the time, named Doc McGee.
And Doc and I set up a company called McGee Proffer.
We set up joint venture together, partners, and we get

(01:33:13):
offices together. That's how I met Darius Rucker because Doc
was you know, Doc ultimately managed Arius. Doc is a
real good guy. But he managed. He didn't manage Kiss,
now I think he did. Yeah, he did. He managed Kiss.
He didn't manage Von Jovi or Monthly Crew anymore. But
I met Doc at Pasha when Monthly Crew made their

(01:33:33):
first record there so Doc and I got together. Socially,
I don't like Doc a lot. He's a very smart guy,
he's very honorable, he's very ethical, and so my next
chapter was Mgee Proffer and I would do stuff. I
made a deal at the h one. We made a
deal with um Brian Becker, whose chairman of Clear Channel,

(01:33:54):
Mike would consult them on building assets out of Clear
Channel properties. It was an interesting period where I decided,
ultimately I want to do stuff with music and visual
and you know, Doc moved to Nashville with Arius. Then
I started this next chapter, Medior seventeen. Okay, how do

(01:34:15):
you get hooked up with space Camp? Morgan, my son
who is now flying for United Airlines for aur RA.
He's thirty four years old, always wanted to be a
pilot from the age of five. When my I love
my children. My children mean everything by holding companies called
Morlan Morgan sterling. Okay, Morgan, when he went to the bathroom,

(01:34:39):
when he sat down on the john, there was a
seven forty seven cockpit there, so he took off every
time he took off. Okay, So Morgan decided he found
his credit space Camp. There was a space Camp in
northern California. Then there's the headquarters in Huntsville. So Morgan
went to Space Camp first sleep away camp. I went there,

(01:35:03):
I checked him in, I came back home. When he graduated,
he goes to school, he gets to be a at
American You. He's living in Paris, and he says to me, Dad,
I want to go and do some gift back back
to Space Camp because I learned fraternal skills. He went
there eight consecutive summers as a camper. I'm very proud

(01:35:26):
of my kids. And he learned to be a match
at the highest order. And he said, Dad, I'm going
to go back to be a counselor for the summer
profile dollar. I don't even know what he made because
my kids have their things. That's there's I think mine,
But my thing is there's still anyways. Bottom line is
he said, Dad, there's a movie here. I said, what,

(01:35:47):
what are you talking about? He said, there's a movie here.
Because there's so many kids who aspirationally want to be
astronauts and they want to be what I wanted to be.
Let me introduce you to the CEO Space Camp. So
I got hooked up initially because Morgan went there but
then to make a movie there. Morgan introduced me to

(01:36:08):
Deborah Barnhardt, who was the CEO of Space Camp. I
got on the plane, I flew there. I said, blah
blah blah. I can do this, I can do that.
I'd like to. I had an idea to make a
film about the campers and make it some joy long
story short on how the story came together, but Morgan
helped me sculpt it because he lived it. I made

(01:36:29):
the deal, and I also fell so in love with
the ethos of the place. I gave twenty five scholarships
out of my pocket for kids who wanted to be
Space Campers. We made the movie Walden Media, where my partners,
Walden Media still Entrances company. My Clarity was the lead guy.
We made the movie Danny Glover of Mirrors or you

(01:36:50):
know There's some good people. It's called Space Warriors, and
they had a put deal. We thought it should be
Disney Sunday Night movie, but the Walden had a with Hallmark,
so the movie had to go on the Hallmark channel.
I don't think it was the right channel for that movie,
but what it was, it was wonderful. We won the
Set Award for the best movie of the year. Teaching

(01:37:12):
kids about science, space and education. I give all the
credit to my son Morgan. So a couple of times
you mentioned politics and being on the left side of
the divide. There's someone who's very worldly and has had
the perspective of growing up and immigrating from Europe to America.

(01:37:33):
How do you see today's world divided the way that
Don McLean did when he wrote American Pie. We were
a divided country back in seventy two when there was
Nixon until things changed. How do I see it? I
kind of I'm that immigrant dreamer guy who just wants

(01:37:55):
to do right. I want people to have the lives.
I want people to earn what they make. I want
them to keep what they earn. I'm a big believer
in treating people right, never lying, ever cheating, keeping to
who you are, Like I was brought up by my
parents that I told you about. So, how do I
see the world messed up? Um? How do I feel

(01:38:17):
about it? I want to make a difference in media,
in pop culture, using media because I can't. That's why
I did the Rock and the Core thing for the U.
S Marine cars. I don't know if you know about that.
Quincy Jones and I teamed up in two thousand five
and we did an event at Camp Pendleton for forty
five thousand marines. Beyonce and Kiss headlined it. Doc let

(01:38:37):
me have his production crew. We produced the event and
we formed a five or one C three so the
proceeds could go to the people coming back from Iraq,
Education Fund for returning troops, Reparation fund for the families
that got killed. I produced it. Doc McGhee was my
partner on it. Quincy Jones was the executive producer. But
I didn't do that for politics. I did it because

(01:38:59):
guys needed If you're a if you're a soldier man,
you're fighting for what you believe in, whether you're on
the left or the right. The bullets don't have a
donkey or an elephant on it. So where do I
come out. I come out right in the middle. I
want everyone to get married and to be a unit.
Is that the way of the world today? Now? Whose

(01:39:20):
fault is? It? Not my place to say on your podcast.
But what I want to do is I want to
tell stories of brilliant music people don McLean being at
the top of that list. Lamont Stephen Schwartz Del Bryant,
who's a kid who grew up with his parents being bohemians.
And there's more Lee Abrams. You know the Abrams very well. Well.

(01:39:41):
Lee and I are doing a project called Sonic Messengers.
It's about radio's impact on pop culture in the world.
We just got John Clice to be our executive producer
because I want to see I want there to be
an English perspective on American radio to the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties.
Lee had the oumption. I met Lee when brook Hard

(01:40:02):
Abrams took My Billy Thorpe Blazer Light Show and he
ad Means the guest speaker, and I premiered as the
Rubeny Fleet Space Theater in San Diego. Became friends with
Lee in nine seventy nine. So Lee and I got
back in touch. We're doing a project together two as partners,
Lee and I fifty fifty. So those are the kind
of people I like to work with. People who are smart,

(01:40:23):
who are ethical, who have vision, and who want to
make a difference. And Lee wants to talk about how
radio form pop culture all the way to when he
founded XM Radio. And you know, we wanted to we'll
do some podcasts with you. We'll figure out what we
need to do. But leaves. My friend Del Bryant is
my friend Stephen Schwartz, and my friend Don McLean has

(01:40:44):
become my friend. Why because I'm that kind of guy.
I don't know. Well, you're a great talker, great salesman.
You're still active. I'm sure you'll be reaching your hand
out of the coffin trying to make one more deal. Uh, Spencer, Spencer,
I want to thank you for taking the time to
talk to my audience. Bob, I want to thank you

(01:41:06):
even more for inviting me because your podcasts, your blog
is as about as good as it gets from the
monorn music business, at least to me. And I agree
with when you have your people right, and when you
people say you shouldn't have said this, I say hell
with them. I agree with Bob. Judy loves your podcast.
She doesn't subscribe like I do. I read it religiously,

(01:41:28):
but my wife reads up and she does go. This
guy's a good guy. You should talk to him one
day and guess what we're talking here? We are? Okay,
great talk Ada Spencer. Until next time. This is Bob
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