Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left This podcast.
My guest today is keyboard is Steve Woor Karl, Steve,
you started off as a drummer.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Right, well, yeah, I'm not in a very serious sense.
We all started off at drums just because that was
always Drums were laying around, sticks were laying around, pads
were laying around. So yeah, I spent some times at
the drum at some time at the drums, but I
would never there was never a time where I called
(00:41):
myself a drummer.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Okay, let's go back. Your father was a professional drummer.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Absolutely. Yeah. My old man was a was a bebop drummer.
Was where his heart was for us, you know, especially
for me. Before the Beatles, it was all Miles Davis quintets,
you know, and you know, a few big bands, some Coltrane.
(01:10):
It was mostly jazz in our household. And my dad
played at the with Hartford Symphony every weekend, so I
was exposed to some classical music, you know, but it
was mostly he was he was a jazzer.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
You know, and he was earning a living as a
player when you lived in Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know, he where he went to work every day
was this drum shop where he taught every day. That
was kind of his day. Gig was teaching at this
drum shop where his teacher, that his teacher owned, and
they you know, and his teacher helped him get gigs
right away, you know, society stuff what they called casuals,
(01:51):
you know, weddings whatever. But yeah, he always he only
did music for a living his entire life.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And did your mother work outside the home.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
No, not at all. She was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Well, you know, usually the life of a drummer, the
income is challenging. What was it like growing up?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
You know, it was one of those things in those days. Yes,
it was very challenging. I was brought up in the
I was born in the projects in Hartford, and but
it wasn't you know, we were never hungry or anything
like that. There's no you know, sob story there. I
seem to have everything I needed and wanted. We had
(02:34):
Christmases and you know, life was good.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
You know, how old were you when the family moved
to California.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I was just turning nine. We moved, we landed in
Burbank in nineteen sixty six, and I in August of
sixty six, and I turned nine in September, the beginning
of the year.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
So did you want to come to California or do
you not want to leave your friends behind?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You know? It was we were very excited about it. Actually,
my dad had come like a few months earlier. My
dad had come to kind of check it out. He
was wanting something different. He was kind of doing everything
he could do in Hartford, and he was doing okay,
you know, as far as a professional musician goes, he
(03:28):
was doing all right. But he came out to California
to see one of his childhood friends, Amo Richards, who
was doing very well here in the studios, especially in
the film studios. Some record stuff. But what did amol do?
Amo was a percussionist in the studios, okay, doing records
and mostly movies, mostly film stuff. And Amo was doing
(03:53):
very well. He was working every day in the film
studios and like I said, some records. And my dad
followed him for a week. He just went to every
gig he that Amo had, and Amo worked every day.
My dad followed him around and saw what was expected
that you you know, like say, you know, in the
(04:14):
symphony he could play mallet parts, but he got to
You could take those home and practice them. But in
the studios you had maybe one pass through and then
you had to nail those Tom and Jerry's xylophone parts.
Sometimes they could be very difficult in the film studio
and you had to nail it. You were there with
(04:35):
an eightpiece orchestra. It was very different than like my
studio career. You know, there are a lot of other
people playing at the same time and you had to
nail that stuff. It was very high pressure. But he
felt he could do it, and he moved the family,
the wife and four kids. We moved across the country
(04:57):
to become you know, for him to become a a
freelance studio musician. And he did really well, really right
away he did well. So yeah, things took off for
him pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Okay, let's talk about his upbringing. Where was he born.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Hertford, Connecticut?
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And were his parents born in America or born in
the so called Old Country?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
No, they were definitely Old Country. His father was Calabrese
and his mother was from Napoli, Neapolitan, you know, they
were both southern Italians. And his mother never learned English.
I never heard her speak English, but his father was
mostly a carpenter and also a drummer and a trumpet player.
(05:45):
Would play a lot in these Italian marching bands, which
were a big deal back in the day. And that's
what my dad first did, was play play snare drum
in these Italian marching bands in Hertford.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
And when you moved to California, were they still alive?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yes, very much so. They were alive for quite a while. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And did they follow you out here or did they
stay in.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Not at all. Not. They're all as a matter of fact,
all my cousins, everyone is still there in Connecticut. I'm
going to see them in a couple months. I'm going
to go visit. You know, they're all there. My mom's
family was from Maine, and my dad's they're all in
the general Hartford area and still are. Do you know
how your parents met, Yes, I do know how my
(06:33):
parents met. My dad. My mom was even though she
was born in Maine, she was taking she was a floutist.
She was taking flute at this music college in Hartford.
And my dad, even though he didn't have a college
education himself, he did some teaching at this Heart School,
(06:54):
Heart School of Music in Hartford and he saw her
in a practice room. He saw through the window, he
saw in a practice room, and he called his best
friend over and said, that's the woman I'm gonna marry
before they even met.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And okay, so you're nine years old. You moved to
California to where in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Burbank, Burbank, California.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And what was Burbank like then compared to now?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
You know, it's was pretty much the same. I got
to tell you. You know, Burbank maybe you know it
gets a bad rap and it's the valley and all
that stuff, But for us, it was the Promised Land.
It was this bedroom community for people who worked on film.
And you know, this is nineteen sixty six. The Monkeys
(07:50):
were filming their TV show down the street and they
would go tooling around town and the Monkey Mobile. You know,
I was nine, So there was this nine year you know,
what we come to know now is this nine year
awakening that kids go through where you your eyes are
finally really wide open to life. And it was hitting me,
(08:14):
hitting us all like a ton of bricks. We loved it.
We loved it. It was very exciting. And like I said,
my dad, right away was working, so he right away
was you know, doing things like doing you know, Jerry Fielding.
This composer was someone he worked for, and he was
doing the main title to a sitcom like Hogan's Hero
(08:37):
something we watched, so we would we'd hear, you know,
we would hear my dad on TV. He worked with
Lila Schiffrin, with someone he hooked up with very early,
who loved the way my dad played. So my dad
was on all these shows like Mission Impossible and Manics
and stuff. When these these guys were still doing TV work.
(08:58):
It was very very exciting, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Okay, so there if we love kids in your family,
two well known brothers. Who's the fourth.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Kid, m my young my kid's sister, Jolene, And what's
she up to. She's a designer. She decorates, Uh, she
does interior design in houses. She she was very musical too.
She just kind of us three boys kind of got
(09:27):
all the got all the stole, all the stole, all
the thunder you know what I mean, got all the attention.
She was I was three years younger than Jeff. She
was three years younger than me, and uh, you know,
we got a lot of the attention but Joline has
always done She's always worked in uh, in the studios,
(09:48):
in the film, film, film, and TV world, and now
she mostly does design work in homes.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Okay, when you moved to California, you're nine, your brothers
are older. Is everybody already playing instruments?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yes, Jeff was already quite the drummer immediately, Mike was still.
Mike was also a drummer. They had both as soon
as the Beatles came out, they both they both took
guitar lessons for a little while and Jeff let it
go after a month and Mike stuck with it a
little bit longer with guitar. And then right then Mike
(10:28):
took up the bass in school. And that's when Mike
started playing bass. Was right when we got there. Uh,
he took up the bass, but he took it up.
He was very quick with it. Mike was a Mike
was a great drummer too. Mike had an incredible time,
He had an incredible groove. But you know, Jeff was
(10:50):
just Jeff stood out from a very young age just
being something very special on drums. Everyone everyone knew that
Jeff was least something special. Uh. Yeah, and I was
already playing piano. By that point, I'd been playing piano.
I'd been taking lessons since since I was four. But
(11:11):
I was always a horrible student, you know. I was
always just a terrible student. But luckily my dad would
always my dad be it was a very good teacher
of drums. You know. You always taught friends, and especially
in the studio, Guys knew that my dad taught and
was really good at teaching, and they would often ask
(11:32):
him to teach their sons that were interested in taking drums,
and if it was a keyboard player, he'd barter with them.
He'd say, sure, I'll teach your kid if you'll teach
my kid piano, and you know, and I just would
always say yes. I never gave up. I got to
work with an incredible some incredible piano teachers over the years.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You know, Okay, your two older brothers, did they take lessons.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Absolutely, Jeff took some lessons, but I would say from
what I saw that I would say that ninety percent
of Jeff's lessons were him playing along with records. There
was always a drum set set up, and there was
always a turntable and headphones right next to the drum.
(12:23):
Set and Jeff would spend hours upon hours playing along
to records.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And did your brothers take piano at a young age two?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
No, not at all. I was the only one. I
was the only one who took And.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Do you know what the motivation was.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
For me?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Well, you're four years old?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, you know. I went with my dad. My dad
took me. He again, he was teaching at this college.
He was teaching drums at some college, and he would
One time he took me and it was he was
teaching a drum lesson as some guy, and it was
this organ room at this college he was teaching at.
(13:04):
It was this room that had, like, you know, they
had to have at least ten different organs in there.
And towards the end of the lesson, I saw my
dad jump on an organ. I don't even know what
it was, but it was a Hammond. It was something
like the size of a B three or something, and
he played. He wanted his student to play along with him,
(13:25):
and he played this very simple see blues. He played
this blues on the Hammond for his student to play
along with him, to play, to play a jazz swing
beat along with him. And I had never seen my
father play a keyboard before then, but I heard him
(13:47):
play this, and I was like, we had just gotten
a piano. I had just started taking lessons with a
friend of his. But I said to him, show me
that blues. Show me I want to learn that. And
he taught to me and I played it to death.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
You know, Okay, you continue to take lessons, but you
said you didn't practice.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You know, I would practice. I would start off practicing,
but as soon as it got really difficult, as soon
as the teacher would say things like Okay, that's great,
now learn it in all twelve keys, see you later,
you know, or something like that, it just would be
drudgery to me. You know, certain music that I unless
(14:32):
it was something I really wanted to play, it was
drudgery to me and my as bad as I wanted
to be a good keyboard player, my you know, I
think I had some undiagnosed attention deficit stuff going on.
It was very hard for me to focus as a kid.
And it wasn't until I started fifth grade and I
(14:54):
am in Studio City and there was another kid. I
thought I was pretty good at fifth grade, you know,
in fifth grade, but there was this other kid in
fifth grade who was a true child prodigy, was amazing
on piano, and we became fast friends. And he was
(15:15):
playing classical pieces and that was the first time I,
like was driven. I wanted to play those those pieces,
so you know, I would get to the music. And
it was the first time I felt driven. Even though
it was hard, I wanted to. I had that in
my head watching this other kid do it, and I
wanted to know what it felt like to be able
(15:35):
to rip off, you know, to whip off some of
these pieces and stuff like that. And I was really
driven to practice. Things went up and.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Notch and you learned how to do that stuff absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Now there was this other kid in school, but if
I was going to school with you, I'd say, oh, Steve,
he's the guy who plays a piano. Or was really
just something you're doing at home?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh? Yeah, No, I was very involved. You know, most
of the public schools I know in California anyway, they're
all through even elementary, junior high. In high school, there
was never a piano chair in the orchestra. It was
always we played percussion. I would play percussion in the orchestras,
timpany xylophone, you know i'd be able to learn the parts,
(16:24):
and I would that's what you played. There was no
piano chair per se, you know, but I was always
taking lessons and always plowing away and trying.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You know, Okay, you have two older brothers. I don't
have older brothers or any brothers at all. To what
degree was your career following in the steps of your
brothers or was it independent and then you merged down
(17:00):
the road?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You know, it was a lot of both. Jeff, especially
because at such an early age. I mean, of course
he was playing in his bands in high school and
I went to every gig, but he got a professional
gig at seventeen. He didn't finish high school like myself,
I didn't finish high school either. Because he got a
(17:24):
job touring with Sonny and Chare. You know, he'd been
doing a couple little sessions, local stuff, small time stuff
around the valley. And David Hungate, who was playing with
Sonny and Share at the time, and this is kind
of right before they were really peaking in the mid
(17:48):
seventies early seventies there, David Hungate was did a session
with Jeff and heard him play and recommended him to
Sonny and Share, and Jeff left high school a semester
earlier to tour with them, and then right from that
it was just his His career trajectory was was astonishing
(18:12):
how fast he started doing sessions, really good sessions all
of a sudden. You know, our favorite band Steely Dan,
Jeff's doing like a whole album with him. So Jeff
was always this shining, shining example to us that it
could happen. We could. It was possible, you know, it
(18:34):
was right there, It was possible if we worked hard enough.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
You know, Okay, that was Jeff. Jeff is older than you,
He's basically okay, so when you were now in high school,
are you playing in bands?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Absolutely? Absolutely? And then Rape Mike was just two years
younger than Jeff, and Mike was also playing in bands
and in Jeff's bands in high school, and he right away,
as soon as he graduated, he started touring with bands
Michael Franks, and then Mike was with Seals and Crofts
for a lot of years right out of high school
(19:12):
and doing sessions and playing the Baked Potato. His career
took off immediately.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Also, you know, okay, you're younger than Jeff by three years,
what kind of band are you playing in in high school?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well, you know, the very first stuff that Jeff did,
like in junior high was absolutely like soul, these kind
of funk bands, playing Sam and Dave covers, playing covers
like that in high school him and when he met
David Page, his partner in Toto, they right away there.
(19:53):
They loved Joe Cocker had a band, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
There was a record, there was a movie. They had
double drums, Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, and these guys
happened to be Jeff's hero. Well, their high school band
pretty much did that whole Joe Cockers set. They had horns,
(20:14):
they had all these background singers. You know, Leon Russell
was a big hero of ours as far as being
a studio musician, And they kind of copied that band
through through high school. And then when I got into
high school, I took those same charts and I did
that same set. At first, I was kind of copying that,
(20:36):
but then I later in high school, I got rid
of the horns and I wanted to do more of
a rock and roll thing, and that's when I hooked
up with my So when I met Steve Lucather and
Mike Landau and Carlos Vega and John Pierce and these
guys that all went on to have great careers. We
had a band in high school and did lots of
(20:57):
proms and all started taking our new very seriously. All
of a sudden, you.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Know, Okay, so you are the connection to Lucerther, not
your brothers. Yes, okay, so you meet Lucather, you meet Landau,
you're playing this is all great. Your brother both brothers
are Ultimately they've made this a career. Is that in
(21:25):
the back of your mind to say this is what
I want to do or you say this is what
I'm doing now.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's absolutely what we wanted to do, and it's what
we saw was so possible because it was right there
and it kind of inspired all of us. It inspired
all of us in our band that it was you know,
it wasn't just some pipe dream. Jeff and Mike were
doing it, you know, you know, and it certainly helped me.
I went through a very difficult period where I you know,
(21:54):
as I'm in eleventh grade and twelfth grade in school,
I'm looking I see that my brother's careers took off
freight away. But as far as being the piano player
on a session, being a keyboard player on a session.
I saw the competition. It was Michael o'mardian and David
Page and David Foster and these guys that were I
(22:16):
was nowhere near their ability as far as just basic keyboards,
which is part of the reason. I mean, I was
always interested in any way, but I early on I
dove way into synthesizers. I saw especially this is before MIDI,
and I just saw this chasm where the guys who
(22:38):
knew a lot about synthesizers were these nerds, you know,
with pocket protectors on, and the real the great players
didn't want to have anything to do with interfacing, you know,
a synthesizer, what it took to play a mogue from
an art and vice versa, and the little black boxes
(22:58):
and that took and I dove way into that stuff,
and at a very early age start getting hired to
be a synthesizer programmer.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Wait a little bit slower. There's the full mug, then
there's the mini mug. There's the R twenty five hundred
than the twenty six hundred, which is more for a
consumer everyday thing. Where do you get in on this.
It really sort of happened to the change of the
decades sixties to the seventies. And also this stuff was
not cheap. So nope, how did you literally get vaulved Sure?
(23:36):
I had this friend in high school. His name was
Jay Chernick, and he owned We were all way into
Prague Rock. We were all into Emerson, Lincoln Palmer and Yes,
and these these these.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Guys were our heroes. Not so much my brothers, but
I mean they hit me to that stuff. Jeff hit
me to King Crimson and emersoniank and paulm Or. But
he didn't stay in that camp very long. But I
had this friend who owned a Mini Mogue. He owned
an Oberheim Sequencer and an Oberheim Expander module. And I
(24:12):
would hang out with this guy every day, and he
was teaching me. He was showing me stuff on this
Mini Mogue, and he had this stuff interfaced. He had
these little black boxes. He had hired someone so that
this Mogue could talk to this Oberheim, which wasn't easy
(24:33):
to do in those days. Anyway, I'm still in high school.
All I wanted to do was be on the road
and following my brother's footsteps. And I auditioned it started
becoming At that point, it was like a new thing
where groups on the road were hiring a second keyboard
(24:54):
player to cover the string arrangements, to play in art
a string ensemble, to cover you know what I mean,
to cover overdubs live, and all of a sudden kind
of became this new chair with touring bands. And I
remember I auditioned for Mac Davis and didn't get it.
He just said, you're too young. I'm still in high school.
(25:19):
I auditioned for Tim Buckley and he was looking for
a guy who was more of a jazz pianist. He
was looking for a jazzer. I didn't get that. And
then David Foster, whoy had just started programming for, had
just finished working with Gary Wright and recording the dream
Weaver album, and Gary had asked him. Gary was putting
(25:43):
together an all keyboard band, and did David noah of
any young keyboard players who would tour for cheap who
knew how to play synthesizer. And he gave Gary my
number and I played mo base for Gary Wright for
I got the gig, and I left high school a
(26:05):
semester early because I got the gig playing with Gary Wright.
You know and I rate then I didn't even own
a synthesizer then. As a matter of fact, on my audition,
I had borrowed my friend's mini Mogue and he had
marked for me with grease pencil, like cool base settings.
You know, that's how little I knew about it. He
marked some cool base settings. I got the gig and
(26:29):
my brother Mike loaned me the money. I Jay Tchernick,
my friend had decided he wanted to sell all his
synthesizer equipment and buy a grand piano. He wanted to
start taking his his piano lessons seriously, and I bought
that very rig My brother Mike loaned me the money,
(26:50):
and that was the mog base I had that I
took on tour with me with Gary Wright.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
How much money did you need?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
It was two thousand dollars for the whole thing, which
was a good minimugs listed They listed for fifteen hundred
dollars then, and then the other stuff was well over
another thousand dollars. And it was a It was a
beautiful minimug which I have to this day. I still
have it. It it it crashed into a million pieces.
(27:19):
One time we were opening for Jethro Tull, and when
they took our equipment off the stage, it came crashing
down to the floor in a million pieces. But I
had the guts put in another, put in another enclosure,
and so funny because I just had some work on
(27:40):
it and I just got it back, so I had
to show it to you. This was the very first
minimo guy ever owned. You know that, My brother Mike
helped me, helped me pay for for Gary Wright.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Okay, if you were on the road with jeth Rode
Tall and the Mini moge broke, what'd you do with
the next show?
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Gary had this? We were opening for Jethro Toll. Gary
was opening for Jethro Toll. We did a full month
with him, and I loved it. I didn't miss one
Jethro Tol show. I was, I was. I didn't miss
one show. Gary had this amazing tech, this kid named
Alan who is amazing, and Gary already had a mini
(28:24):
Mogue had a keyboard. This this tech had put his
keyboard in a separate enclosure, so it wasn't a key tar.
There was no quitar neck on it, but it just
he had this this minimog around his neck and he
would come out in front and Gary would play you know,
minimog solos and Mini Mogue parts. So Alan did the
same thing for me. He just built this. Uh he
(28:48):
put it in a in a you know, right away,
put it in a box and had these connectors where
my keyboard was separate, and I started wearing the keyboard
around my neck with Gary also, you know, playing the
bass parts.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Okay, let's go back before you own the Mini Mode.
You're working with Foster, You're programming. What exactly are you doing?
You know, programming today is a whole thing programming drugs.
But in drum excuse me, in the seventies, programming SyncE
like for what were you actually doing?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You know, it was it was simply often like say
with a Mini Mogue, it was like they typically would
want a cool bass sound, a cool Mogue bass sound,
and some of these guys like Foster or David Page
in particular David Page was able to get up great
sounds sometimes on a Mini Mog, but especially when you
(29:43):
were working Foster was his career was taking off, and
he's working with Alice Cooper and he's every day it
was someone else, and one day it was Michael Jackson
and Quincy Jones. And when you were in the studio
with those guys, you didn't I want to be guessing.
You know. Sometimes these guys would get lucky with since UH,
(30:05):
but they didn't want to be guessing, so they would
bring me along to make sure that when it was
time to get a mog bass sound, I could really
dial it in and UH. And I also had a
twenty six hundred by that point. Yeah, and I got
a CSAD very early on UH and mastered it. You
know what I mean. I really had it down, and
(30:29):
you know, and I was very Uh. I was very musical.
I wasn't just a synth NERD. I was very musical,
and and I wasn't trying to I worked really well
in the studio with these guys. I wasn't trying to
show them up in front of the producer or the artist.
I loved when these guys would do the playing and
(30:52):
I just would tweet the sound while they were playing.
They loved that I would dial it in. And you know,
I was a great team player and I made I
just made myself real handy to be around in the studio.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
You're seventeen years old, You're on the road with Gary Wright.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
What is that like? You know, it was incredible, especially
being with Gary Wright where I mean, I had no idea.
He had this big time manager, de Anthony. He had
these incredible agents. So right away, not only was I
on the road, but we're doing these great gigs. We're
(31:40):
opening for Peter Frampton all the time, We're opening for
Jethro Tull, where we're doing stadium gigs. You know, We're
on these amazing gigs. I mean, I was getting two
hundred bucks a week, you know. But what they didn't
know is that I would have paid them two hundred
bucks a week for I was living my Beatles wet dream.
(32:04):
To be honest with you, you know what I'm saying. I
was playing in front of big crowds, which was all
I wanted to do at that point in my life.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
You know, how about drinking, drugging and women.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
You know, I didn't as far as women goes, I
didn't have. I was seventeen. I didn't have much game.
To be quite honest with you, I'm sixty seven. I
still don't have much game. But you know, the drugs
part was just then. We were just celebrating life. We
were smoking a bunch of weed. And you know, these
(32:41):
were the days in nineteen seventy five. You know, you
know cocaine was not addictive. That was the good news
about it was it wasn't you know, you didn't get
addicted to it, you know what I mean, no one,
No one had that much money then to you know,
you were just doing these little, tiny amounts and it
was a party. Now, you know, part of my story
(33:02):
in my life is that. Believe me. I I I
definitely much later on than we're talking about. My fun
button got stuck and I stayed at the party way
too long. I think, looking back now, I think that,
(33:22):
you know, because I was never much into alcohol. If
I drank, I couldn't do I couldn't you know, I
couldn't work. And for me, the drugs were very connected
with work, with learning synthesizers. I think it was kind
of acting as my riddling, to be honest with you,
More than I was never a big partier, if you
(33:45):
know what I mean. I uh, you know, I used
it because I was having so much fun. I once
I got a bunch of synthesizers and I was always
thinking putting two and two together. I had taken you know,
I had taken arranging lessons, so I had knew how
to block harmonize for saxophones, like for a big band.
(34:08):
And then I get this sequencer that's an eight channel sequencer.
And the only guys were using that we're doing you know,
we're doing you know what? They wound up calling krout
rock and stuff. It was this very electronic YadA YadA
YadA stuff. And I was thinking, you know, I could
(34:30):
take you know what I mean, I could have five
flutes playing in block harmony, doing sixteenth notes through chord changes.
I know how to do that. I don't see anyone
else doing stuff like that. I was so excited about
marrying the technology with with what I knew musically, it
was hard for me to go to sleep at night.
(34:52):
I was so excited about it.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You know, some people go out on the road to
supporting musicians. They don't even talk to the liner person
they're working for once they're off stage. What was your
relationship like with Gary Wright?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Gary was a total sweetheart. Gary was the best Gary
was you know, look, he was just an opening act then,
but even when he when things took off, Gary was great.
He took me under his wing. He took us out
to dinner all the time. He was fantastic, He was funny,
he was he was an absolute sweetheart. We just lost
(35:30):
him somewhat recently, you know, a year or two ago,
and I've I've always, I've always been so grateful that
I had that Gary gave me the opportunities he gave me.
He didn't he just like I said, after those first
two auditions, I I went into audition and the drummer
(35:51):
Art would was setting up and we were just jamming,
you know, we were jamming on an E on E
doing just kind of doing a funk groove. And after
ten minutes, he goes, you got the gig, and you
know what I mean? And I had a ball, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Okay, going back, if some young musician came to you
today and said I have an opportunity to go on
the road and I have to drop out of high
school to do it, what would you say.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Oh boy, you know, it's a really it's a really
good question. You know, you know the only way I
can answer it is by telling you believe me with
my situation. Let's just say, and I would tell them
(36:43):
this at the time when we're talking about nineteen seventy five. Now,
my father did film scores every day. And the composers,
the Lilo Schiffrin's, the John Williams, the you know, the
everyone you can mention, the Bernard Herrmann's, the film scorers.
(37:04):
These guys were these maestros. They were these guys that
were on such a pedestal. I never thought I could
ever be considered to do that kind of gig. Okay,
flash to many years later, and guys like Danny Elfman,
Hans Zimmer, these guys, All of a sudden, it's like,
(37:24):
it's completely possible. I had no idea of some of
the opportunities I would have later in life. You know, Yeah,
I wanted to be a rock star and I wanted
to experience that being in front of people right then.
But I might, I might say, you might want to
think about the future and what you want to what
tools you want to be able to have, and do
(37:47):
you want to work in film, and do you want
to go to a four year college and have learn
about orchestration and composition and counterpoint and theory and all
this stuff. Now, at the same time, what I did
was was I realized early on that I wasn't going
(38:11):
to compete with these usual keyboard players. That I had
to make this. I had to find this niche, niche,
this unique. I had to separate myself from everyone else
in some way. And that's been my motto my whole
life is to be different, is to find my own thing,
(38:32):
my own style, which now happens. Part of it was
the fact that I went on the road early, that
I got into synthesizers, when I got into them, that
I've had all these different piano teachers. I didn't just
have one. I had ten different piano teachers. And if
I told you who some of them were, You'd think
(38:53):
I'd play like Lenny Tristano or something. You think I'd
be some great keyboard player. It's like I never with
my short attention span, I never stuck with it. But
you know what that has contributed to making me who
I am, which is unique and different, you know from
all the other guys that do what I do. So
(39:17):
what would I tell them to answer your question? I
just would would want them to think about that. Maybe
there's some things down the line, you know. You know,
because I saw sure at seventeen, I right away I
was in front of these crowds. I'm getting adulation, I'm
getting gold records, I'm getting this success. But I saw
(39:38):
how some of my friends who you know what, they
just kind of kept their nose to the grindstone. And
then maybe they went to school. But later they when
they started their careers, they had a lot more depth
than I did. They were able to do film scores
and stuff on a level that I was never able to.
You know, yes, I did some films scoring, but you
(40:00):
know what, to be real honest with you, I wasn't
that good at it. I was okay, I was able
to get through it, but I wasn't I didn't have
the musical chops, to be honest with you, that my
friends like James Howard and other people you know, or
just the innate talent. You know, a guy like Danny Elfman,
(40:23):
he writes, when he writes music, he's writing it all
in trouble cleft and using octave signs. But you know what,
how can you argue with his results? You know, Hans
Zimmer when he walks into an orchestral session, he doesn't know.
You know, James Howard could sit there and look at
a tenor cleft part and he could whistle the part
(40:45):
to the bassoon player. Okay, James has that kind of
talent and perfect pitch, and he can look at a
score and do that. Hans wouldn't know an alto kleff
from a tenor cleft, and he doesn't care. He's got
his orchestras that do that. Hans is being Hans, and
he knows what he wants and he knows what he
(41:05):
wants to hear. And I think his work is amazing.
You know, I think his work is amazing. You know,
people can judge it all they want. People made fun
of Danny Elfman at one point when he was starting off,
you know, people look down their nose at him. But
you know what, Danny has written some incredibly beautiful stuff.
(41:26):
I think.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
You know, let's go to your film TV career. Sure
you said you weren't that good at it, but like
you were a composer for Justified.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yes, that was my last TV show I did. And
and you know when I did a show like that,
it owned me. It owned me. I it would take
me working day and night and weekends when I did
film stuff. Some of my friends, you know, would get
these TV shows where they they'd have two minutes of
(41:59):
music a week, and it would be a little piano
tinkling with some string pads behind him, and that was
it every week. And they did shows like that for
fourteen years. They'd get this great paycheck and they could
work on their songs in the evening and they could
work on another project over here. Every gig I ever
got was like there would be multiple chase scenes that
(42:22):
would last three to five minutes, and it was like
it was hard work, you know, And the way I
did it, it was hard, hard work. And to be
honest with you, I really wasn't. I really didn't have
those chops. It would take me. Those kind of shows
(42:43):
would own me my. You know. What I appreciated about
it was that it taught me to grow up. It
taught me about finishing. It taught me about, you know,
having a deadline. You know. I was in a band
where if I showed up, if it was time for
us for Toto to start making a record, and I
(43:04):
didn't have any songs, no, but I didn't get in trouble.
There was four other, five other writers with lots of
songs to play. You know, nobody was like saying, hey,
come on man, where's your stuff? You know. And by
the way, they were great in that they would anything
I did, play, anything I did come up with. They
(43:25):
were very happy to cut it for me, you know,
and we would cut it. We'd be at Sunset Sound
and we went to London to do our strings, and
you know, I had these great opportunities, but I was
so my gig. My job in the band was being
the synth guy. David was the keyboard player, so to speak,
(43:47):
and my job was doing the synth stuff. And I
wanted the synth stuff to be the best synth stuff.
There was a planet Earth, you know, if that was
going to be my job. So I was. My nose
was in a man annual, a whole lot I was.
You know, I wasn't an electronics guy. I didn't take
(44:07):
electronics and high school for an elective. I took print
shop for some reason. I wanted to make rubber stamps,
you know, that sounded fun to me. I knew nothing
about electronics. I just would make friends with Roger Lynz
and Ralph Dyke's and the guys who really knew their stuff.
(44:28):
These guys became my friends because we were It was
mutually beneficial. We would help each other out. You know,
I was always never had a shortage of ideas.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Was there any issue of imposter syndrome?
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Absolutely sure, absolutely, But you know what I don't have
you know what I mean that slowly started going away.
I would, you know, quite honestly, even when my career
was pea, when Toto was doing their best work with
Toto four, and I had a song on the Thriller album,
(45:07):
and I had all the work I would ever want,
I would still every single weekend I would go to
the Baked Potato. I'd hear either one of my brothers
or Luke or one of my friends or Landauers. I'd
hear one of these guys play with a band there,
and I'd walk out of there feeling like a piece
of shit because of what I didn't have together. Because
(45:29):
I wanted to be able to play jazz. I wanted
to be able to blow through changes, and I couldn't,
and I was totally afraid of being found out. You know.
You know, here I had this great career, I'm making money,
I have all the success, and yet even at like
such a basic level for me, I you know, I
(45:53):
couldn't I couldn't improvise on a blues without playing the
same three licks over and over again or something. You know.
So there was definitely imposter syndrome.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
When Dream Weaver becomes very successful in the summer seventy five,
it's the heyday of music on television in Concert Midnight Special,
there's some video of Gary Wright and his band on YouTube.
Are you in those videos?
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Absolutely? Absolutely? And I'm kicking ass in those videos. You know,
when it comes to playing a bass part, I'm Dreamwaiver.
I'm your guy. You know I could even play. There's
video of me playing a clavinet part with my left
hand while I'm playing the bass part with my right hand.
You know that kind of stuff. No problem.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Okay. So Gary has this great run dream Weaver Love
is Alive. That is actually the peak of his solo career.
How long are you on the road with him? And
what happens? Does he say we're going to go back
out or we did a tour and that's it, or
you say I did a tour, I want to do
something else. What goes on there?
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Just Gary? Did you know when he started off? This
was before this is just as the album was being released.
Like I said, we're playing all these great gigs. I'm
living the dream. Dream Weaver becomes a big hit record,
and just as we kind of finished, like a year
of touring, dream Weaver comes out, it hits big, and
(47:32):
they want us right back on the road again, you know,
before Gary makes another record. They wanted us on the
road to keep promoting it, to keep plugging it away,
plugging away at it, at promoting it Warner he was
on Warner Brothers, and so we were right back on
the road. At a certain point, I was asking for
a raise. Gary didn't, you know, as great as things were,
(47:55):
you know, he didn't want to give me the rays
I wanted. And I was okay with it. It's not
like I was angry or going to quit. But you know,
the day I asked for a raise and was told no,
I went back out. We're in Florida somewhere at a
hotel and I went back out on the beach and
I wasn't even mad. I just was it was like whatever.
(48:18):
It wasn't like I was going to quit the gig.
And I get paged to the front desk at the
hotel and I had no you know, I was worried
maybe something happened to a family member or something, and
it happens to be Boss Skags. You know. While I
was on the road with Gary, David Page, my brother, Jeff,
(48:39):
David Hungy, these guys happened to be working in the
studio with Boss making this album called Silk Degrees, you know,
and they were gearing up for the road and we're
looking for a synth guy to cover the string parts
and cover the some of the synth parts, and would
(48:59):
I be interesting sitting going on the road. And their
first offer was much more than I was making with Gary.
So I did the Silk Degrease tour with Boss.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Well, a little bit slower. You get paiged, how do
you tell Gary and what do you and how much
time do you give him?
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Oh, I got off the phone with Boss. He offers
me much more money than I'm making with Gary. I
had just asked Gary to give me a raise and
he said no, you know, And there really wasn't hard feelings.
I remember at the time. I really there really weren't
hard feelings. But I got offered. I got a much
(49:40):
better offer. I hung up. I asked the guy at
the front desk, I'd like to leave a message for
Gary Wright and room whatever, and I said, this is
my two weeks.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Notice, you know, then how did Gary handle that?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
You know, he handled it fine. And you know what
he went on. He had hired a he woud to
hiring another couple of guys. And just so that you know,
the way you know there was no hard feelings is
that I did this whole big tour with Boz and
then you know what, Gary had a big tour coming
up of just stadiums. He had a ten city stadium tour.
(50:17):
General Giant was the opening act, and then Gary Wright
and then Peter Frampton and then yes, you know, and
we were doing these stadium He had ten stadium gigs
lined up and he called me and asked me to
come back and do them with them, and I said, absolutely,
you know, and they were some of the funnest gigs
(50:39):
I ever did in my life. Some of those are
on there are available on YouTube too. You know, some
of these stadium gigs we did. I mean, you could
see we were playing during the day, but you could see, yes,
as they still had like the Roger Dean stage from
Tales of Topographic Oceans in those days and stuff, you know,
the the yes, the stage set was all, you know,
(51:01):
you could see it in the background. But we had
a ball and I loved it and I loved it.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Okay, So what was the experience being on the road
with bos gags?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Fantastic BOZ was I really lucked out? I really lucked out? Again.
These gigs were so easy for me because I wasn't
in the piano player chair that's the hot seat, you know,
the guy who had to play those meat and potatoes parts.
I was playing synth parts. I was programming mini mogues
(51:34):
and playing string ensemble stuff. It was a cinch and
it was fun and and Boss took amazing care of
his musicians. He paid everybody really well. We stayed in
great hotels. It was just my brother Jeff was in
the band David Page, that's when we started working. At
(51:54):
first it was David Page. Nine later another great keyboard player,
Jay Winding, wound up doing the piano chair. Lucather came
in later on. Lucather did one of the later tours
with Boss. So yeah, I mean that's kind of this
was kind of the beginning of Toto, you know. You know,
(52:17):
my brother Mike wound up playing I think Hungy did
some gigs at first, but you know, Columbia Toto's record
company pretty much saw it. Was like David Page co
wrote all the songs on Silk Degrees. You know, we're
playing live. Boss's that Silk Degrees album was a huge success.
(52:38):
So all the record company people are all hanging out
backstage and at the big gigs and stuff, and here's
this band. Here's Jeff Pacaro on drums. Here's you know,
David Page on piano, the guy who wrote co wrote
all those songs on Silk Degrees. Here I am on synse.
There's Lucather on guitar. It pretty much was they a
(53:00):
saw Toto. You know, they saw this backing band. And
I think it's part of the reason why Toto never
had to do like a showcase or or anything like that.
Our record deal was pretty much handed to us on
a platter, you know, Columbia Records.
Speaker 3 (53:18):
Okay, you're on the road with bass. That tour finishes,
then what then?
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Much to my surprise, I was I was afraid that
David and Jeff. I had always wished for them to
start a band, but at that point I David was
so busy, was getting hired to produce and write and
sessions and Jeff's. Jeff's career was in full you know,
full bloom. Lucather and I were just starting out then.
(53:50):
This is seventy six, seventy seven. Our careers are just
kind of starting out. We're doing pretty good. I'm doing
all kinds of stuff with Foster by then, and he's
hiring me whenever he's doing synthesizers. He's got me there
with him. But I'm thinking, you know what, it's these
guys are never gonna want to do a band. Why
(54:11):
would they turn down all this work to stop and
rehearse and and build up a band thing? But sure enough,
that's exactly what they did. They decided. You know, I
think Silk Degrees was a huge encouragement to them that
they could maybe do it themselves, be the artist. There
(54:31):
just was this lead singer thing was the one thing
that wasn't part of our inner circle, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
Luca thir tells me that some of the old cats said, hey,
you're really happening now, but it ends for everybody. You
got to find your own thing. Did that ever play
to you or did you just basically get a call
one day, Hey, we're going to form a band.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, it was basically that. I mean, we all were
thrilled to get that call. I was in there very
early on. David knew he wanted you know, they saw
me with how I was with Gary Wright, how I
handled since with Gary Wright. They saw me. David and
I worked together with Boz. David saw that I was
very handy to be around, not only in the studio,
(55:20):
but that live I could you know what I mean,
synthesizers were becoming very popular, and that I could cover
a lot of overdubs. So I was kind of in
there real early on. Luke, they kind of yanked his chain.
There was a lot of guitar players. David had grown
up with some. There were a lot of friends that
were great guitar players. You know. Luka Thurb didn't know
(55:44):
for a while, but because David was doing these demo,
He was doing these demos just with just with my
brother Jeff, the two of them in the studio and
Patriot played mog bass and he would sing, was singing everything,
and the two of them kind of were building up
this batch of songs that were amazing, you know, that
(56:04):
were amazing. But when it got time to put it
all together, you know, he made the choice to use
hung Gate because they were really such this. You know,
my brother Mike was in the bands in high school
and Mike had played with bass, and Mike was was
would have been an obvious choice. But hung Gate, my
brother Jeff and Page were this core rhythm section thing
(56:29):
that had been doing a lot of sessions together, a
lot of stuff, stills and Crofts, all the boss Gag,
silk degree stuff. Hung Gate was an incredibly musical bass
player and I was in there right away and it
was like yes, and you know, to your question, we
all still were doing sessions. We all still when there
(56:51):
was time, we would do sessions. You know, we'd get
home from the road. And we were very lucky that way,
because a lot of guys once they commit to a band,
and a lot of times when you leave town and
the producer has to hire someone else, a lot of
times those guys get your gig. You know, they'll hire
a replacement for you, and that guy will will get
(57:13):
your job. But we all were pretty lucky that way
and would still get called back, you know, when we
were home and when we were available.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Before it's a band, do you have enough studio work
to make it work? For you or you thinking I
want another road gig or I need more studio work.
What's going on for you?
Speaker 2 (57:37):
No, my career was just kind of doing this with
studio work. I was getting quite a lot of things.
I was getting better and better. It was just growing,
you know. Yeah, I mean I'm living. I was a
single guy living in a small apartment. I got married
soon after that, very young, at twenty years old. But
(58:00):
but yeah, no, my session career was just kind of
getting better and better. More guys were discovering me. Quincy
Jones would start hiring me without David with or without
David Foster. You know, David would hire me for everything
he was doing that used keyboards, that used since he
wanted me there all the time. And his career was
(58:23):
taking off big time with Chicago, and you know, it
was one thing after another with him. It just kept
getting better and better. In the tubes and Alice Cooper
and Hall and Oates we did two albums, and you know,
and Bill Shnae started hiring me, and you know, guys
started seeing that I was real handy to be around
(58:43):
in the studio, you know, either by myself or with
other keyboard players. I was very much a team player.
I played well with others and we got a lot done.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
Tell me about getting married at twenty.
Speaker 2 (58:58):
What would you like to know?
Speaker 3 (59:01):
Okay, you meet a woman, how long after you meet
her do you get married? And what's the incentive to
get married? You know, you're in this unique world where
you're working, you know, morning, noon, and night in the studio,
we're off on the road. Is it security or is
it just this? Is you think you're in love? That's
(59:22):
very young by most people's standards.
Speaker 2 (59:25):
Yeah, and I had a child then too. I didn't
think I was in love. I was in love.
Speaker 3 (59:33):
So you got married because a child was on the way,
I was in love. How long did that marriage last?
Speaker 2 (59:45):
That marriage lasted three years or so, three and a
half years.
Speaker 3 (59:50):
So why did it end?
Speaker 2 (59:53):
You know? I why did it end? Because my career
became all consuming to me. It became all consuming to me,
and I saw these opportunities that I had to take
advantage of, you know, and it was tough. It was
(01:00:17):
tough to be working twenty four to seven like that
and be it still be a human being and be
a partner in a marriage.
Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
You know, So how many times you've been married twice,
And are you married now? No? So, how old were
you when you got married the second time?
Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Much older I was. I would say I was something
like thirty eight or something the next time I got married.
Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
So once bitten twice, shy. How hard is it to
convince yourself to do it a second time again?
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I was in love? You know? What can I say?
Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
And why did that relationship end?
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
It's kind of complicated. You know. I don't want to
pull anyone else's covers.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Okay, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
It wasn't a word note, No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Okay. Let's go back to Tote so Page and your
brother working up this material and they pull you in.
How do you ultimately decide that you need a singer
and get a singer?
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Well, they knew right away. I mean David, David wanted
to be you know, David, I think wanted to I
think in some ways he wanted to be Elton John
and you know, and writing all the songs to have
a thing, and he did great, and he sang all
the demos and these were amazing songs. And David did
a great job. But he knew he wanted a real
(01:01:55):
tenor in the band. He wanted someone with a high
voice in the band, you know, especially in a rock
and roll band, you wanted somebody that could cut, somebody
that was a real singer, singer, and they had done some.
They were good friends with a guy named Joe Shermy
who was the bass player in Three Dog Knight, and
(01:02:15):
he had a band called ss Fools after Three Dog Night,
and there was a singer in SS Fools named Bobby Kimball.
And that's how David and Jeff met Bobby, who wound
up being Toto's lead singer.
Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Okay, Bobby is in the band, then he isn't in
the band. Ultimately what went on that he was no
longer in the band?
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
You know, it was the usual stuff in the early eighties,
to be honest with you, you know, quite honestly. I mean,
we were all we were all at the party, so
to speak. But when you're the lead singer of the band,
there's a time when you can pull that off those
(01:03:02):
late nights and heavy drinking and whatever and still do
your gig. But after a while it takes its toll.
And you know what I mean, I can say that
Bobby wasn't wasn't doing anything the rest of us weren't doing,
but he was the lead singer, and it just would
become a parent when he couldn't perform, when he couldn't
(01:03:26):
you know what I mean? We were all very good
at doing what we did. Regardless of how much partying
was going on or not. We could still deliver in
a very big way. We still were highly functioning. You know,
we were all highly functioning. But you know, when you've
(01:03:49):
got a stage and everyone on stage has strep throat,
it's going to be You're going to notice the singer
has strep throat. You're not going to notice the second
keyboard player also strep throat, or the drummer has strep throat,
or the bass player has stripped you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Okay, at this late day, looking back, there are a
number of bands that changed lead singers and survived Van
Halen Genesis. Okay, but usually then and still now, it's
a kiss of death. So how much did you wring
your hands and how much warning did you give Bobby
to say, hey, this is going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
You know, look at look what you just mentioned. I
can't think of I almost can't think of one band.
Who do you want to talk about Journey Foreigner. Who
else is there? I mean, we could go van Halet,
we could go on and on, and every one of
(01:04:48):
them had lead singer nightmares, every one of them. Now
to empathize with the lead singers, by the way, you
know when you're doing a rock and roll band. When
you're doing rock and roll, there was always this thing, right,
it's a producer's job to find where is the where
do they sound the best? What's the best key to
(01:05:10):
do this song in? This is what you learn from
a David Foster and a Quincy Jones. You want that
lead singer when it hits the chorus. You want that
vocal and a range where your singer sounds the best,
where there's the best wood, where there's the right amount
of straining as opposed to how comfortable they're able to
sing it. Right, you're making a record. You're not worried
(01:05:33):
about anything else but making the best record you can make,
and you want that in the perfect key for your singer.
Now ten years later, okay, is that still the and
a singer's got to go out on the road and
sing those songs one after another. Sometimes it's like like
(01:05:54):
I said, it's easy for the drummer to play in
that same key, It's easy for the keyboard player to
play in that same key. Who's it the hardest on
the lead singer? Okay? And sometimes those guys can't hit
those notes anymore. You know, they weren't hitting them comfortably.
This wasn't Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra. These are This
(01:06:17):
was rock and roll. You know, I really empathized with
these singers, you know, Steve Perry, Lou Graham. Look at
all these guys struggled with being able to deliver at
the level that you know their bandmates insisted on them delivering.
Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Okay, how much warning do you give Kimball and what
does he say when the acts comes down?
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
You know, it was very simple. You know, Toto had
this huge success with Total four. It was heartbreaking. We
had found our chemistry, We had found we had found
what clicks, what works for us. The mixer had nothing
to do with the rest of the album. He was
hearing everything fresh with fresh ears. He had none of
(01:07:10):
the band politics in his head when he was mixing
the album. They had let me do my synthesizers by
myself in a studio. I'd learned to record. During the
course of the third album, I had learned to record,
to learn just basic gain structure and how to record
my stuff so that the band didn't need to be
(01:07:31):
sitting there for hours while I was experimenting, and I
could record after experimenting for a couple of days, when
I got some magical thing up, which again in those days,
a lot of these things didn't have presets. I was
using modular synthesizers. You talk about the difference between a
twenty five hundred and a mog modular as opposed to
(01:07:53):
a mini mogue. To recreate these things was very difficult.
Once it all got up and working, I learned how
to record and it got to be used on the record.
We had figured it out. But then we had been
working so hard up to that point. You have to understand,
(01:08:14):
we'd been just constantly in the studio or on the
road up to that point. By the time we did
Total four and it was hugely successful and we toured
behind it, everybody was exhausted and kind of needed a break,
and you know what, it was the wrong time to
take a break, you know, the old strike while the
(01:08:36):
iron is hot. You know, couldn't have been more apropos,
and we wound up doing a film score so that
we could stay home. My brother Jeff got married and
started a family. He wanted to be home. And then
when we finally got around to making a follow up
(01:08:57):
to Total four, you know, a lot of the bad habits,
let's say, that had been developing, had gotten to a
point where people just couldn't perform at the level they
wanted to that we needed them to, and we wound
up having to switch lead singers, which was we hated doing.
(01:09:20):
We hated doing that, you know, it was really it
was really traumatic for the band. And in that time
period when I say, strike while the iron is hot,
all of a sudden, soon after the nineteen eighty two,
eighty three Grammys whenever, it was all of a sudden,
that style of music that polished kind of what our
(01:09:45):
detractors called corporate rock, you know, suddenly became very unpopular.
You know, bands like Nirvana were kind of all of
a sudden, you know, real popular. The whole Seattle thing
was starting to happen, that whole style of music, you know,
with these synthesizer extravaganzas, you know what I mean, We're
(01:10:11):
becoming very unpopular, you know, and the record company kind
of let us know. They weren't. They weren't as thrilled
as they were. I mean, if we had delivered another
enough other hits, they'd be okay. But you know what,
it just the music world was changing and we were changing.
And that's the best way I can think of of
(01:10:34):
putting it.
Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Let's go back to the first album. Sure, first album.
You know, you guys had a lot of experience. But
did you go in there and knock it right out?
Or was the type of thing where you had so
much experience and you had enough money to meticulously get
it how you want? What was the experience recording the
first album?
Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
We knocked it right out. You know, we had all
these great demos, We had all these songs ready to go.
The record company loved the demos that we had, and
we went in there like the pros we were and
knocked it out and had a ball doing it. And
the record company would come and listen and they were
loving it. And the first single out of the gate
(01:11:24):
pulled the line hit record, you know, boom.
Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
So once should think it's one thing to play on
somebody else's hit records. It's quite another to have your
own hit record.
Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
It sure is, and we've seen plenty. There had been
plenty of studio musician bands and I'm not gonna name
any names, but there were several bands where a lot
of very very successful studio musicians put bands together, and
like you said, you know, it was very different to
just to do that and to actually have it be
(01:11:58):
successful and have it clicked, and have the stars align,
and have the record company back you up and have
great management at the time that knew how to work
the record company and have the right representation, and you know,
the stars aligned, you know for us.
Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Okay, now it comes times to make a second record.
A lot of acts, you know, have the second record
blues a million reasons because of success on the first one,
or they took years to write all the material that's
on the first album. What was the experience with Toto
on the second album?
Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
You know, there was a little bit of that there.
Believe me, I've always been well aware of that. Everyone
has to read. You know. Again, you kind of hinted
at it. But the truth is, every band's first album
is the best stuff they've done their entire life. Okay,
(01:12:52):
maybe something was written two weeks ago. But I guarantee
you there's some song on there that was written when
they were in high school or something. You know, this
is the culmination of the best stuff this band has
done their entire life. This is for every single band
out there. Okay. Then you go on the road, maybe
(01:13:13):
you get divorced, you know whatever. You know, you go
on the road and within a year you got a
record company going. You got two months, you got you know,
maybe three months do it again. You know, it really
separates the men from the boys. You know, it really
separates the men from the boys. Every single band you
(01:13:36):
can name, their first album was the best shit they
did their entire life. Okay. And then in those days,
it was every year we had to do a new album.
It was every year. Okay. And this is after you've toured.
Have you spent any time with your family at all.
They don't care. Give us another We need another one,
(01:13:57):
you know, we want another one. Now. We did real good.
That first album was you did great, Give us another one,
So sophomore jinks. It's like, to me, it's so obvious. Uh.
And and that was we still had we had a
lot of power. You know. It's not like we were
running out of songs. David Page was still, you know,
reaching his peak as a songwriter. We all were. There
(01:14:20):
were a lot of writers in the band. You know,
did we get a little cocky after that first album
did did so good out of the gate? You know
what I mean? Sure? Sure, Hydro was we were kinda
there was some aspect about it that, believe me, we
were going for it. We were. We did get a
little cocky for sure and kind of thought, wow, we
(01:14:45):
can do this. They're they're they're buying it. We looked
at each other and was like, you know, uh uh,
there was some definitely self indulgent there. I can speak
for my song that was on Hydra, the song called
Secret Love was the weirdest two and a half minutes
you know what I mean, you'll hear on a major
(01:15:05):
label release. I had called in this at Sunset Sound.
I woke up one morning. I called this place called
Kasimov Blutener in Larchmont in California, and I rented a harpsichord,
a clavichord, a Mozart piano. I rented all these these
vintage keyboards, acoustic keyboards, and had this idea for this
(01:15:31):
very strange song and the guys let me do it.
They let me do it. It's on the album. It's called
Secret Love. You know, Bobby Kimball did a vocal on it.
I couldn't believe what he came up with. It's a
very weird song. We were going for it. We were
going for it, and we were a little cocky for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
Okay, Hold the line was ubiquitous on the radio, to
the point where there was even some backlash. The first
Toto album I bought was the second one, because I
heard ninety nine on an airplane radio when that used
to be a thing. I thought that Hydra was really
(01:16:16):
pretty good. Yeah, it was nowhere near as successful commercially
as the first. So when it's all played out, what
do you guys think? Do you think, Well, maybe we
didn't do the best work, or the audience didn't get it,
or what was the review from the inside?
Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
We love, we loved, we loved Hydra. We loved it.
Did we get did we get a little cocky? Sure? Now,
I don't think being cocky is necessarily a bad thing
unless you get way, way, way too cocky. And you know,
were there any hole of the lines on it? No?
(01:16:53):
But there sure was a song called ninety nine and stuff.
There's still was stuff that people could relate to and
was still great songwriting and great production, and you know,
it's still there was still a lot of very strong
stuff on there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:17:10):
Okay, on that album, the first album credit for producer
is the band second one you get Tom Knox, Reggie Fisher.
Is that just slicing up the credit for money or
why were other people involved in What did they do well?
Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
I I you know, Tom Knox was our longtime engineer.
Tom Knox did the did the demos when the guys
did the demos. He engineered and mixed all of the
first album. Reggie Fisher, the only thing Reggie Fisher did
was he did my synthesizer stuff. You know. That's the
only thing Reggie Fisher did on Hydro was my synthesizer stuff,
(01:17:45):
which by then I had gotten this modular synthesizer and
I it lived at Reggie's house. Reggie had a home
studio and that's where I was living at the time,
and you know what I mean, just tweaking it and
working on this song secret Love. Yeah, I kind of
saw where they got. I don't know if they got
(01:18:06):
production credit. I don't think they ever officially got production credit,
regardless of what it might say on the record. We
were the producers. Again, Toto was always the producer, except
on the third album it was I believe it was
co produced by Jeff Workman, who was our engineer and
mixer on the third album.
Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Okay, so why did you bring in Workmen?
Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
You know, lou especially Luke, wanted us. We were kind
of whereas Toto did a lot of If you listen
to everything on the first album and on Hydra, there
was plenty of rock and roll. We thought we were
very kind of all over the map, doing all kinds
of different stuff. The things that were getting attention were
(01:18:49):
the things like ninety nine, like the R and B
stuff like Georgie Porgy. Some of the softer stuff was
getting a little bit too much attention, especially for Luke,
who was a raal rock and roller, and we wanted
to bring in a more rock and roll guy, a
guy who would turn the guitars up louder, a guy
(01:19:10):
with some rock and roll experience. You know.
Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
Okay, that album is a stiff, So what do you
think about that?
Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
It was a stiff? There's still some stuff on there
that that I'm proud of. Jeff Workman and I did
not get along at all during the making of the record.
You know, we didn't get along at all. He was
used to working with, you know, rock and roll bands,
Like who did he work with was guns and not
(01:19:44):
Guns n' Roses, but worked with Queen.
Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
He worked with a million bands.
Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Yeah, he worked with a million bands. And you know what,
I think he was used to being the if there
was a second keyboard player, if there was a guy
who did a little bit of sense stuff, he he
did that. He was the guy who did that on
a lot of the stuff he did. I, you know,
that was my job, and him and I bumped head's
(01:20:10):
big time during the making of that record. Now, the
only reason I even mentioned that is because after that record,
I while we were making that record, while the guys
were in the studio with Workmen, I was working away
at David Page's house with all my synthesizers, with all
this modular gear, and I had an eight track. I
(01:20:33):
had an eight track tape machine, and I transferred the
rough rhythm tracks to two of the tracks of the
eight track, and I was going to experiment I was
going to figure out what I would do when it
was time to record the synthesizers for that album. You know,
because when I would record, you know, i'd have the
(01:20:55):
whole band would be there. You know, those guys were
so good, they were so fat, they were so good
at what they did. And whereas I could do things fast,
I got hired because I could. You know, Quincy Jones,
David Foster would hire me because I could do the
synth over dubs on three songs and in three hours.
I could be that guy. But I wanted what I
(01:21:18):
did in Toto to be special. This was my band.
Whereas what when Luke played a guitar solo, whether regardless
of whether it was for his own album, a Toto album,
a Quincy Jones album, a Michael Jackson, he played the same, great,
amazing guitar solo. You know, My brother Jeff played the
you know, I mean Jeff, I have to say stretched
(01:21:40):
with Africa and with some other things because it was Toto,
he would indulge a little bit. But anyway, the point
being that these guys were real fast, and I was
always thinking like an arranger, and I wanted the respect
that an arranger got I wanted to take home. I
wanted to write out my parts. I wanted to try
different voices. I didn't want to just improvise a string
(01:22:03):
arrangement like I was called upon to do a whole bunch. Yeah.
I could do that, but you know what, arrangers got
to try different voicings. They try it, they check it out,
they try a different voicing. Ooh, this is better. They
got to work on things by themselves. I wanted to
look at my synthesizers like that. Anyway, back to the story.
(01:22:26):
On this eight track, I was going to experiment, and
then once I knew what I was going to do,
that's what I would do when I got time to overdub.
But the reality was on this eight track, I was,
you know, I was capturing magic. I was doing stuff
with a modular synthesizer that I'd never be able to recreate,
(01:22:47):
you know, and I was bouncing things down. I was. Anyway,
I wound up when I got time to do the synthesizers.
Nobody even heard that stuff, and it was so some
of the best work I'd ever done, and no one
to this day has even heard that stuff. I wound
(01:23:07):
up just doing synth stuff very I was very frustrated,
but just wound up doing what I always did in
the studio with all the guys there with their arms
folded behind me, going hurry up, and doing what I
typically did on a Toto album. Now, the good part
of the story is that for the next album, the
(01:23:29):
guys told me they were gonna make me a tape.
You know. The only reason that stuff, by the way,
couldn't be used was because it was on eight track.
It wasn't on the right format. By then, we had
Sympty and you could sync up another piece of tape.
You could add tracks, you know. But the only reason
why that couldn't be used was because I'd recorded it
(01:23:50):
myself and it was on this eight track. It was
on this half inch tape. So for the next album,
Total four, the guy said they would make me, I know,
this is an acceptable language anymore, but they'd make me
a slave tape. They'd make me a tape where I
could work out my ideas. But they said, but we
(01:24:12):
can't keep anything you do. You're not an engineer, you know.
We always hired the best engineers, and engineers are definitely
put on a pedestal with us. So the thing about
Jeff Workman, the guy who I bumped heads with so
much on that third album, he started hanging out. He
started hanging out at David's house a lot. Him and
(01:24:33):
David became close friends, and he lived very close by.
And I started asking him all these real stupid questions.
I said, Jeff, if I was to record myself, why
couldn't they use what I recorded? And he went on
(01:24:54):
to teach me all about gain structure. How do I
know I'm getting the right level into a harmonizer? Where
do I turn up? Do I turn it up there?
When do I turn things up? He taught me all
this basic gain structure, basic, all about zero vu. He
was the most generous, sweetest guy all of a sudden,
(01:25:19):
who taught me how to record, and they wound up
using I did ninety five percent of the synthesizers on
Total four I recorded, and they used every bit of it.
You know, they used all of it because of what
Jeff Workman taught me.
Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
Okay, just to be clear, from statistically and from the outside,
the third album was going in the wrong direction. Did
you feel that in the band? Did you feel pressure
or did you not?
Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
We definitely felt pressure. We definitely felt pressure from the
record company. They were not happy. There was no obvious singles.
It was tougher, it had more of a rock and
roll thing to it. I you know, there's personal I
have some personal feelings about the way the priorities, the
(01:26:18):
band's priorities, which were typical in those days where you know,
where bands would spend three days on a bass drum sound,
but then they'd have to mix it. They'd have to
mix this song like you know what I mean, and
in less than a day with a mixer that had
been up for three days or something like that. Just
the priorities always seemed off to me, But it was
(01:26:41):
just the way it was. Bottom line is, if the
songs were right, it wouldn't have mattered, right, you know
what I mean, If the songs were where the shit,
you know what I mean, it would have cut through
all those details. Yeah, it just again you got to
remember we're doing this. This is every year, We're going
(01:27:02):
to Europe and Japan and the United States and trying
to keep our home lives together, and and you know,
having to do this being pointed at, going do it again,
you know what I mean, get in there again. It
was a hard life. You know, it's not easy where
we weren't a band that was just kind of a
(01:27:22):
roots thing where someone wrote a song and had their
journal and had great lyrics and we would bang it
out on our instruments, and you know, that was it
we were. We loved we loved being in the studio.
We loved production. I loved tweaking synthesizers and they're being
arrangement and string arrangements and you know what I mean.
(01:27:44):
We loved we loved that stuff. You know.
Speaker 3 (01:27:48):
Okay, so you're making the fourth record. To what degree
do you feel you're on the right track when you're
making it.
Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
Right out of the gate. We knew we were under pressure.
We knew the record company was kind of going, come on, guys.
You know, we were so good out of the gate,
you know, and then the hydra comes and yeah, there's
ninety nine, but it's now we're near the level that
the first album is on. And then the third album
is even worse, where all of a sudden feeling big
(01:28:19):
pressure from the record company and David Page, god bless him,
the first thing he writes for the new album is
this song Rosanna. The first thing he writes is him
trying his best to write the best possible song that
exploits the talents of the band while still being commercial,
(01:28:41):
while still being a hit record. And that's the first
thing he writes. That's the first thing we record, you know,
and we all believed in it and thought it was hip.
And you know what I mean, there's this amazing drum
beat that starts it off. It was totally Toto. The
horn arrangement, two lead vocals, it changes keys, but yet
(01:29:04):
it's got a payoff, It's got a really strong chorus.
It was it was, you know what I mean. I
got to spend you know what I mean, you would
have You wouldn't believe how long I spent on that
synthesizer solo on Rosanna, you know. So to me, that's
something I'm so proud of because I got I was
very indulgent. That was a perfect case of something I
(01:29:26):
could have never done in the studio with the clock
ticking and five producers waiting for me to blow a solo.
I wasn't that guy. But I arranged this thing. I
did these experiments, I did all kinds of stuff and
delivered this solo on two tracks as all the mixer
had since solo left and since solo right, you know.
(01:29:49):
And he didn't ask who recorded it or how it
was recorded. All z he knew was that he loved
it and cranked it up, you know. And and it
ends with paid doing this New Orleans third line stuff.
It was very, very Toto and it was our first
(01:30:09):
single and it did great right out of the gate.
Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Okay, just to be clear, Rosanna was the first song written,
first song recorded. But when you went in the studio,
did you have all the songs.
Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
They were? You know, there was a batch, definitely. Page
always had a batch of songs ready to go. You know,
a lot of it came together. A lot of the
writing would come together right there in the studio. David
wasn't afraid to have a verse and a chorus and
an idea for a bridge, and he would sit there
with my brother Jeff. You know, he would sit there
(01:30:44):
across from Jeff and they would kind of arrange it
together what they were going to cut that day. And
believe me, a lot of the finishing touches of the
song would come together right then, of the track would
come together right then, and then it'd be like, all right,
are we ready, let's cut this, you.
Speaker 3 (01:31:01):
Know, Okay, revisiting an overhashed subject. How did you know Roseanne?
Our kid?
Speaker 2 (01:31:10):
I knew Rosanna. I met her at you know, a
very close friend of the band, James Newton Howard. It
was at the reception to he had gotten married and
we're at the reception that was at his house, and
I met Rosanna that night. I met Rosanna at the
reception and we had become an item. And she started
(01:31:33):
coming to the studio and everybody was. You know, Rosanna
has been amused for a lot of people. You know,
she's always been a lover of music. She's always been
incredibly supportive. And you know, David didn't have a title
for a song yet, and I brought her over to
(01:31:54):
David's house while he was working, while he was putting
together Rosanna, and I think he and I think he
might have been a little bit smitten with her himself,
which I wouldn't blame him. She was, she was, she was,
she wasn't is really something And you know, what can I.
Speaker 3 (01:32:16):
Say, Okay, when the record comes out, are you still
an item? Whether you are or not, how does it
affect your relationship with her? And how does she handle it?
Because the news right away. Whatever, the real story is
news right away, and all the media is that it's
based on Roseanna Arcat.
Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
Sure. No. And she was on the road. She went
on the road with us. She did a world tour
with us. And this is when her career was you know,
she was getting we lived together at this point, and
she was getting scripts from huge movies every day. I
can't believe. And I'm not the only one she did
(01:32:56):
this with. And she just she wanted to come on
the road with us. She loved music. She did a
whole world tour with us. You know, we were still
very much an item. Yeah, it was, and people were
assuming that it was written by me. It was not.
It was all that was all David Page. I believe me.
(01:33:17):
I worked my ass off on that song, you know,
on that SyncE solo and all those keyboard parts and
stuff like that. We were all very proud of that
song and thought it was a great representation of who
we were as a band and what we were about.
And and I think she loved it for she even
she even they did some some of the promotion for
(01:33:40):
the single she was involved with. Now after that, you know,
years after that, right, it becomes this thing where like
every talk show she does, right, you know, with the
the questions they ask, right, of course, they bring that up.
And I think she I wouldn't blame and I didn't
(01:34:01):
blame her a bit for getting very very tired of
getting that question, you know what I mean. I mean,
from Letterman, from you know, you name it. They would
bring that up while she was out promoting a movie
or promoting this or that. Right, these these people, you know,
would would I think it was kind of lazy on
a lot of their parts. You know, I understand some
(01:34:24):
of it, right, they want to have something else to
talk about, but they would bring that up for like
the next ten years, this poor girl. Every time she
did a talk show, they'd bring up Rosanna, you know
what I mean. And at some point, you know, Rosanna
was always into Prague stuff, and she wound up being
with Peter Gabriel, and you know, she started disparaging the song.
(01:34:49):
You know, even I think just to I thought it
was to discourage people from bringing it up. You know,
I didn't take it as I didn't take it very personal.
You know, I kind of understood she just got kind
of tired of being asked that that lame question.
Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
You know, Okay, Total four is a monster with varying
hit tracks. What's the experience on the inside it.
Speaker 2 (01:35:29):
We were feeling very good. We delivered. We delivered. You know,
we were under pressure. We were under pressure, and we delivered.
We went to some known things. Al Schmidt, a guy
who worked with our fathers, you know, a great engineer,
cut the basic tracks. There was nothing fancy. We weren't
(01:35:53):
using the flavor of the month in any way. Even
though Greg Ladani was this hot young man mixer, his
career was really on the uprise. And and Greg mixed
the whole album, and like I said, I loved it
because before the mixer, whoever recorded our album would be
there the whole time. And of course there's there's pecking
(01:36:17):
orders in bands, understandably, you know, David Page and Jeff,
my brother Jeff, had a lot more clout than I
did as far as you know what I mean, band's
pecking orders. I'm sure John Lennon and Paul McCartney had
a more clout than what Ringo's opinion was in certain
situations as far as the producers and engineers went that
(01:36:41):
were around him. It's understandable, but and so certain band.
You know, prejudices and habits and people's opinions get in
these guys' heads. And what I loved was, like I
said before, Greg Ladani was just this fresh, you know,
(01:37:02):
he had fresh ears. He didn't he didn't know any
of the banded politics. You know. I actually remember David
after we heard we heard a mix of Rosanna, and
we're all we were all kind of blown away with
how it had come out. You know, no one had
heard the whole since solo put together in the song
itself next to Luke's guitar solo, and it all came
(01:37:24):
together and I'll never forget. After we heard it mixed,
we walked out of the room and David Pate said
to me, He goes, I'll never forget this. He says,
you know, Ladanie didn't know that you're not supposed to
turn up the sense that loud was. This was the
first thing he said to me, and we were just
(01:37:45):
where we were cracking up. You know, Like I said,
he didn't have those banded politics in his ears. He
just did it the way he heard it, mixed it
the way he heard it. That's the way he did
the whole album and it was very successful. So you asked,
what was it like in the band. We were feeling
pretty good about ourselves. We delivered. We delivered in a
(01:38:06):
big way. We were up against the wall, and you
know what, we rose to the occasion.
Speaker 3 (01:38:12):
Okay, Toto is a band that has gotten a lot
of shit, a lot of backlash from day one, day
one at studio musicians, I certainly know Lukethur has a
thin skin on this topic. Or whoever, everybody's got a
different identity. To what degree were you bothered or bothered
(01:38:32):
by that?
Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
I understood it from day one, and I never could
understand why the other guys couldn't understand it. Okay, the
people that are writing about us are journalists, which means
they're probably they were English majors in school. Okay, words
are very very important to them. Okay, all right, they
(01:39:00):
care about words. We were all musos. Okay. We were
all about the pocket and the drum and the feel
and this and look at that, those great chord changes
and that melody, What a great melody, and all these
things that these writers that's way down on the list.
(01:39:21):
What's the first thing they're looking at? The words? It's
rolling stone magazine. Bob Dylan is at the peak. He's
the best. Okay, listen to his words. He's the poet
of the generation. All right, words are all important. And
(01:39:44):
you know what, where Toto, I can't completely throw us
under the bus. There were times where guys would make
an effort. There was no one in the band. We
didn't grow up with that guy who was the lead singer,
who kept a journal, who kept who was the poet
of the band. That wasn't part of the equation with Toto.
(01:40:05):
We were all musicians. It was all about the playing
all those things I told you, and quite frankly, often lyrics,
not on every song, but a lot of times. Yeah,
we'd spend three days on the drum sound, but you
know what, the lyrics would get written the night before
(01:40:26):
the vocal. The lead vocal had to get done. Okay.
I wish I could tell you, you know, we spent
two weeks on those lyrics. Hell no, okay. And when
you're talking about this is when that distinction between records
and songs comes in. Okay, Because on records, which is
(01:40:48):
kind of more what we were about. I think if
you had to make that distinction, we were guys who
made records. Okay, lyrics sometimes, okay, Louie Louis whatever. There's
all these records you can name that. You know what.
The words weren't that important. It was about the production,
It was about the feeling, it was about the dance ability,
(01:41:09):
it was about this cool sound, it was about the
horn arrangement. Words weren't number one, you know, the way
they were when you're talking about Bob Dylan, you know
when you're talking about Van Morrison. You know, now, we
loved great lyrics. We loved Joni Mitchell, we loved Steely
Dan or the Eagles. We loved great lyrics.
Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
It just.
Speaker 2 (01:41:33):
It wasn't our priority, quite frankly. And how can you
be surprised when these writers, these English majors, they would
know a deep pocket if it hit him in the
back of the head. Maybe, but you know what, they're
going to read your lyrics and if you're rhyming Moon
with June, they're going to say this sucks. This is
(01:41:55):
I would get a D on this if I handed
this poem in in English class at my college. You know,
it was bad poetry to them, and the guys would
be It would be funny because I would see they'd
be so shocked and hurt, and believe me bad when
you work so hard on something and you spend all
(01:42:15):
this time away from your family and you put your
heart and soul in something, to hear somebody just completely
say it's shit. It hurts, absolutely, absolutely it hurts. But
you know Elton John got to start off with those
incredible Bernie top and lyrics. He'd start off with that.
(01:42:38):
The song wouldn't even start being written without those that
amazing poetry in front of them. You know, leave on,
burn down the mission name any Elton tune and the
lyrics are amazing, you know what I mean? You know
the Eagles, it would be maybe be after the fact,
(01:42:59):
but believe me, they held such high importance, more so
than than their priorities were very different than a band Toto.
You know, they would never let moon in June or
saying uh right there from the start, you know, rhyme
it with the word heart like we did I think
three times in our lyrics or something. They would there'd
(01:43:20):
be someone in that band going no way. They would
work harder. They'd bring in a J. D. Souther to
help them elevate the lyrics. You know, we were being
the best version of ourselves that we could be. And
I think all of us wish the lyrics were better sometimes.
And I know, guys, you know, Lucather brought in Randy
(01:43:42):
Goodrum to do one of his second big ballad on
the first album. Luke wrote the lyrics himself to his
big ballad that you know, but on the on uh
or I mean on the fourth album. But then later
on Luke had another big song and brought in Randy Goodrum,
who wrote incredible lyrics. We would you know, we we
(01:44:04):
cared David on the song Africa. That was David really
trying to really put some effort into his lyric writing.
You know, we gave him a rational shit at the time.
We were like, what is this about the Serengetti the
but what are you writing about? You know, we gave
(01:44:24):
him tons of crap about it, you know, while we
were working on the tape loops and this and you know,
all this me tweaking the Columbus sounds. You know, that's
what we spent time doing, you know what I mean.
But to me, it was obvious why the critics didn't
like us, and I could never understand why why Luke
in particular, would get so upset. You know, yeah, it hurts,
(01:44:48):
But he's an English major. His priorities are very different.
They don't care about the tone on your guitar that
you spent hours and hours on, you know what I mean,
that you spent all this time. They don't care about that.
They would have rather you spent a few more hours
on the lyrics and making better you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:45:08):
Okay, So the band has this incredible success both on
records and live. Certainly at this late date people know
the money is mostly in publishing and at least long
term money. You had some songs on some records. First
question is, ay, were you ripped off? Sometimes the band
(01:45:30):
is so busy working they have no idea where the
money is going. Second, did you get the money and
how did you use it? In third, are you still
getting money from Toto?
Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
Yes? Look at that's what happens with a lot of bands.
With every band, guys aren't thinking about that at the time, right,
They're just going in. They're in a band. They're thrilled
to be in a band. But the human nature aspect
kicks in when all of a sudden it hits you
that the guy who's written all the songs. He's shown
(01:46:05):
up in a rolls Royce and he's three hours late
to the session that you're all paying for. And you know,
has this happened with every band? Sure? I've seen bands
that you know what, to fight that the guys who
write all the songs. They'll say, you know what, let's
make them all band written songs. This band is so
(01:46:26):
important to us, and the chemistry we have is so special,
Let's make them all band written songs. I've seen guys
do that, and then later on resenting it kicks in
and it comes out in some weird, ugly way. You know.
I won't mention any names, but it's did we get
(01:46:47):
ripped off? Absolutely? Walter Yetnikoff, the guy who was the
record company president at the time. He says in his
book Howling at the Moon. He says, at the end
he was a record company president that Bruce Springsteen would
fly in to play him his new single, and he
couldn't tell you one Bruce Springsteen song from the other.
He came up through the lawyer ranks, and all he
(01:47:10):
knows is that he screwed every band he signed. He
got the better. He outlawyered every band that he signed
of which we were one of. So did we get screwed? Absolutely?
And then when you try to just look at the
record business, the whole history of the record business is
so is so ugly. And then you you try to
(01:47:33):
audit these companies, you know they'll have your money sitting
in some especially in foreign territories. You know you've made
all this money, it's sitting in some bank accounts somewhere.
And then you have to audit your record company, and
then another lawyer gets a third of what you get
from the audit. It's it's it's horrible, but but you
(01:47:56):
know what, we made a living. We made a good living.
Do I still get money? Yes? Yes. Just being a
member of Toto has been very very good to me
has been very very good to me.
Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
Assuming you didn't have any savings, Could you live off
the income from Toto?
Speaker 2 (01:48:18):
Not that alone? Now it depends when you say live.
I'm used to I'm used to living here in California,
you know what I mean. I'm used to going out
to dinner, to nice restaurants. I'm not a car guy,
but some people are. I don't know. Some people have
lived on a lot less. I'll tell you that you
(01:48:40):
know what I mean, They sure wouldn't live here, they
wouldn't have these gas prices. They'd go somewhere else where
they could, you know what I mean, where they could
get better bang for their buck than southern California. Certainly,
how do you.
Speaker 3 (01:48:54):
End up leaving Toto?
Speaker 2 (01:48:56):
How did I end up? You know? It was after
you know, I love this question because even though, especially
with my brother Jeff and the band, you know, totod
believe me, there was some headbutting. You know, for the
most part, we all got along great, you know what
I mean, We really for the most part, it was
like a hell of a lot better than a lot
(01:49:18):
of stuff you hear about. You know, we really got
along great. For the most part. We were mostly always
on the same page. I I after the sixth album again,
ever since Total four, like I told you, the whole
thing of music had been changing, you know, this corporate
rock things, these very heavily overarranged pop things with the
(01:49:44):
band and synthesizers were becoming less and less popular and
less and less common. The whole consensus with people were
getting a lot more stripped down. It became a lot
more about the lyrics and about rock and roll. I
saw that in England. I loved bands like Yes and
Emersonich and Palmer. But I totally got it in seventy
(01:50:06):
five seventy six, where the you know, people were going
to a rock concert and all of a sudden you're
made to feel like you had to go to a
music conservatory to play rock and roll, and how they said,
fuck that, pick up a guitar, learn three records and
if you have something to say, you know what I mean,
screw that. You know, the whole backlash to all of that.
(01:50:29):
After we did our sixth album, we toured I remember
this very well, and the guys were talking about our
next album. Joseph Williams was the lead singer in the
band now and they were just talking about how we
needed to do even less. We needed to really thin
out the arrangements. We really needed to do less as
(01:50:51):
far as arrangement went, as far as since went. They
were kind of describing what it was I did in
the band, you know, for me, what my purpose in
the band was, you know, I mean, they'd always love
having me around to recreate the songs live, to do
the Rosanna solo, and to do Africa, and to do
(01:51:12):
you know whatever else, but you know, I was just
kind of feeling you know what, And so I on
the way home were we had finished our last gig
of the last tour in Japan, and we were on
the way home, and I told the guys there was
no big, ugly fight. I'm so happy to say this.
(01:51:33):
There was no ugly scene and fuck you fest or
something like that. I you know what I mean. I
just we'd been talking about the next album that we
were going to go into the studio soon, and they
were talking about conceptually how they wanted to simplify and
get much more basic. And I told the guys, I said,
(01:51:53):
you know what, I'm not gonna I think I'm going
to back out of the band at this point. I'm
not going to bail on you guys. I will still
because David was When I said that, David Page was like,
you know what I mean, he was so used to
me being around and assisting him in the studio and
being that guy with the synthesizers and putting those sounds under.
(01:52:15):
I says, I'll still come into the studio when you
guys go, but I'll be like it used to be.
I'll program for David whatever he needs me to do,
I'll do. But I won't feel like I have to
leave my mark, you know, you know, I won't feel
like I have to leave my mark. I'll just help David.
And I wound up doing another two world tours after
(01:52:36):
that because I didn't want to leave them in the lurch.
I wanted to help them still be able to do
Rosanna and these other songs and pull them off live.
So I did another two world tours with them. After
I had quit, I just was no longer a band member.
I didn't have to do the interviews, you know, after soundcheck,
(01:52:58):
I could go relax in my hotel room. And you know,
I thought, you know, I thought, I saw I had
such success just writing this song on my own, called
Human Nature, you know what I mean, just doing wasn't
writing it for anybody, but it got the atmosphere of it,
caught Quincy's attention and stuff, and I thought, you know,
(01:53:18):
I'm gonna start focusing more on on doing that stuff,
you know, maybe maybe paying a little bit more attention
to my writing.
Speaker 3 (01:53:27):
Okay, how did Q ultimately get Human Nature?
Speaker 2 (01:53:32):
You know, I'd already been in the studio working on
doing synthesizer overdubs on the Thriller album. On various songs,
Q had asked David Page, you know, they were looking
for an up tempo rock and roll song for the album.
I remember very clearly he wanted something very simple. He
wanted a simple rock and roll song like My Sharona,
(01:53:56):
like the next My Sharona. He wanted something very very
simple for Michael. That's what he was putting out to
all his professional writers, of which I was not one of.
I wasn't considered, you know. I was a synth guy
in Toto, and I programmed for David Foster and David Page,
but you didn't look at me as a writer at all.
(01:54:18):
And so David Page was furiously working away writing these
trying to trying to write stuff for Quincy for Michael's album.
And I lived with David at the time, and I
was kind of the I was the default studio engineer,
you know. I was always helping David out, you know,
(01:54:39):
for him letting me have the run of the place.
I would do whatever he needed me to do in
the studio. And I had been working on this song
while on the road with Toto. I'd been finishing I'd
had a rough version of the song i'd been working
on called Human Nature, where just I was singing it.
The lyrics weren't done. It was very rough, but the
(01:55:01):
whole song was basically there, and I had recorded it.
I threw it on cassette, and David called down to me.
And the night before he had been trying I had
helped him record a couple of grooves that were stuff
he was gonna was to target Michael and to give
Quincy what he was asking for. And he called down
(01:55:23):
to me and said that Quincy's assistant was on the way.
Would I throw those two things on cassette for him?
Lo and Behold, we were fresh out of cassettes. I
had just used the last cassette. We had these custom
cassettes made that could maybe hold three songs. They were
kind of short, they just were like fifteen minutes long,
(01:55:46):
and we were fresh out of cassettes. So what I
did was I just I flipped the tape over, I
rewound it, I relabeled it, and I recorded David songs
on the on the A side of the cassette. And
then Quincy's story is that he was in his office
he listened to what David had done he listened to
(01:56:08):
the cassette and what happened was auto reverse kicked in.
Now you remember auto reverse, don't you, Bob? Of course, okay,
auto reverse kicked in. He calls David Page to the
next day and David said it took him twenty minutes.
David didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
(01:56:29):
He's describing this song. He's all excited about this song
David had sent him. And David finally said, you know,
I think you're talking about one of Steve's songs, you know,
which is what it was. Yeah, the lyrics weren't done.
I had the chorus, The chorus lyrics were intact. He
loved my title. He loved the atmosphere is what he loved.
(01:56:54):
And it was a complete total fluke.
Speaker 3 (01:57:00):
I know people who've written hit songs and they live
off that one song their whole life. Needless to say,
you wrote a song that was a hit. It was
on one of the most successful albums of all time
by a legendary artist. A did you own it all?
(01:57:20):
And B is it still a cash register? Cash machine?
Speaker 2 (01:57:26):
I owned? A? Quincy asked. At one point we were
on the road. He esked. He told me that I
needed to finish the lyrics. They were definitely doing the song,
we had cut it. I sent him my verse lyrics,
which he was underwhelmed with. Loved my chorus and everything,
but was very underwhelmed with my verse lyrics completely understandably
(01:57:46):
asked me would I mind if he brought in a lyricist,
and I, to my credit, I was like absolutely. You know,
I had zero ego as far as as far as
being a lyricist went. You know, sometimes I got lucky,
but you know, I said absolutely. He brought in John Bettis,
who just nailed it, wrote this, wrote these three amazing
(01:58:11):
verses that gave the song a narrative and made this
song really solid. But I hung on to two thirds
of it and I had my own publishing and it's
done very well to me over the years.
Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
Okay, tell me about working on Henley's Boys of Summer.
Speaker 2 (01:58:34):
Sure that one was easy. The real interesting one is
is is dirty Laundry? Wait?
Speaker 3 (01:58:39):
Wait? Start with? Dirty Laundry was on the first album.
Speaker 2 (01:58:42):
Sure, you know, I got to make sure I mentioned
Danny Cooch, who was a co producer and wrote the
song with Don Hanley. I forgot to mention Cooch once
and much to my chagrin, I got a call at
one o'clock in the morning. Once I'm at David Page's
house working like I I typically was at that hour,
I got to call at one o'clock in the morning
(01:59:03):
for my brother Jeff. He had been at the studio
all day, Record One, which was right down the street,
which was five minutes away from David Page's house. They'd
been working all day on this trying to get this track,
and they were having trouble. Would I come down and
see if I could help out? And I really had
no idea what they were doing. I said, if they're
(01:59:23):
willing to experiment. I didn't know who's this for. He goes,
it's the drummer from the Eagles, and I remember thinking,
you know, I mean, I love the Eagle, knew the Eagles,
loved the Eagles. I didn't know who was who. I
didn't know who's saying what? You know what I mean?
I remember thinking, Wow, the Eagles are that big that
even the drummer has a solo album. You know. I
(01:59:46):
hadn't heard. I didn't know that Don Henley was that
voice that I just loved from the Eagles. I had
no idea so I went down there and I just
brought a small piece of modular Again. I've actually got
the thing I brought down right over here. Anyway, it
was why I one of the reasons I loved it
(02:00:08):
so much is because my brother was there, My brother Jeff,
who had my brother Jeff was there, and Jeff had
seen me. Jeff would get very frustrated with me with
how much I had gotten into the technology and was,
you know, had my nose in these manuals all the time,
and how deep into synthesizers I was getting because in
(02:00:30):
Toto he pretty much they pretty much hated that stuff.
They never played to click tracks. They didn't like you
know what I mean. They were all such great players,
they didn't want to know about sequences and all this
kind of stuff. Anyway, I walk in there, I assessed
the situation that they wanted to use this real far
Fista organ that Danny Cooch had there, and they but
(02:00:51):
they wanted it perfect, and luckily they had recorded it
with a drum machine. Luckily, Greg Ladani the engineer, had
recorded a sink tone, and I was able to in
this very in a very fast way, sync up the
drum machine again and have it trigger a gate that
(02:01:12):
just triggered this this far Fisa organ part so that
it was perfect, that it played along with the track
and was perfect, and everything just clicked. So I loved it.
I love the fact that my brother Jeff saw how
handy this knowledge that was very hard earned, how it
came into you know what I mean, how useful it
(02:01:33):
could be in the studio. You know. Anyway, it went great.
They loved me. They thought I was brilliant that I
this thing just came together like that, and they started
using me all the time. This is now jump to
the second the next album they had recorded, already recorded
(02:01:53):
this song boys this summer, and it was done, and
Don had decided, to the point I had before about singers,
about singing, Don Henley decided that you know what, he
wanted it up one half step. Song was completely done,
(02:02:18):
completely recorded, but Don decided that the chorus of the song,
if he sang it up one half step, it made
a difference to what his voice sounded like, and that
his voice sounded better when it was up a half step.
Now they called me with the intention of thinking that
(02:02:39):
I had some magic box that could transpose the whole track. Okay,
I didn't you know there was You know, later on,
we now have things that can do miracles like that
pretty darn good these days, but back then there was no.
(02:02:59):
So what I did while most of the guys were
out of the room is The co writer on the
song was Mike Campbell, the guitar player from Tom Petty's band.
They had done it with a drum machine. They still
had the drum machine there and up, and we just
re recorded the basic track. I re recorded it, I
played it on synth, I played the figure on synth.
(02:03:22):
Mike Campbell was there, replayed his guitar part in the
new key. It was with the drum machine, and they
did all the rest of the track in the new key,
and it wound up being a very big record.
Speaker 3 (02:03:36):
Wow, uh, switching gears. Tell me about the passing of
your brothers.
Speaker 2 (02:03:44):
The passing of my brothers was always an absolute heartbreak.
Jeff was this sudden shocking thing. I was sure when
I got the phone call and I was on my
way to the hospital that it was just going to
be his warning, his red flag to stop smoking cigarettes.
(02:04:05):
And he was only thirty eight years old. Jeff was
in relatively good shape. He'd always had trouble with his
arms after shows. There was a circulation thing with his arms.
You know, Jeff was the one who Jeff took better
care of himself than anyone in the band as far
(02:04:26):
as far as habits went and staying at the party.
Jeff was married and had just had his third kid,
and his kids and his wife were very, very important
to him. Jeff always went. You know, Jeff at this
point was always going home at a decent hour and
(02:04:47):
taking care of himself. And it was completely shocking, you know,
it was completely shocking and heartbreaking. And I still think
about every day. I still all his friends people. It's
been thirty two years. It's been thirty two years, and
I still think about it all the time, and you know,
(02:05:11):
I can't help but think about all the stuff we
could have done by this point too. Like I said,
you know, when Jeff and I lived together at home,
we were at each other's throats. My brother Mike was
the typical middle brother that kept peace with both of us,
but Jeff and I were at each other's throats. The
second he moved out of the house at seventeen, he
became suddenly he was the coolest older brother ever, and
(02:05:34):
I was always invited to his apartment. I could always
bring friends over when he was on the road, I
could use his apartment. He was the coolest, most supportive
older brother anyone could wish for. Then we're in a
band together and we're back in those tight quarters and
(02:05:54):
especially me being this synth guy and him being Jeff Piccaro,
mister gru mister pocket, which I totally appreciated it. But
the technology, you know what I mean, I was way
into it, and it was never it was never ever
to replace anybody, you know, drum machines to us. I
(02:06:16):
was there when Roger was developing it. Roger had worked
for Leon Russell. It was all about just aiding in songwriting.
It was never no one ever discussed replacing drummers. You know,
Leon used Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and it was
all about you know, that was it was just like
an improvement on a Roland rhythm ace, you know what
(02:06:39):
I mean, which uh you know, ironically enough, a t
R eight to OHO eight basedrum wound up replacing a
hell of a lot more drummers than any Lynn drum
machine or Oberheim drum machine or any other drum machine
that had samples in it, right, you know what I mean?
All of a sudden, this thing, you know, uh was
(02:07:00):
much more popular than any of those drum machines. But
you know, there was always all this discussion and debate,
and of course people started using it on records, you
know what I mean, and it was very upsetting to
some drummers and stuff, and they felt like they were
getting replaced. I always I never saw it that way.
I saw it as who better to know what to
(02:07:25):
do with a drum machine than a drummer? Who better
to know what to do if they had a third
arm than a drummer. You know, that was always my
thing with it. It was never I had. Jeff Pacaro
was my brother, and so whereas in Toto we bumped heads.
As soon as I left Toto, and so that was
(02:07:46):
like a good five years or so before he died.
Jeff would come over any time I asked him to
to play on my demos, and no matter what, whether
it was to play drums or to play on some pads,
or to play to program a drum machine, Jeff was
willing to do anything for me. And I love that.
Those last five years we were back to being he
(02:08:10):
was back to being the coolest older brother anyone could
ever wish for. My brother Mike was a whole nother
situation that was really heartbreaking, being that it was the
polar opposite of Jeff. Jeff was this single shocking event.
Mike was this seven year long nightmare that his family
(02:08:35):
had had to witness and deal with all of us.
And you know, als could happen anywhere. First it happened
to one of the It's such a cruel disease, and
especially for Mike. One of the cruelest things was that
it started in his hands. It could have started anywhere.
Some people it starts in their feet. He could have
(02:08:57):
done several tours if it had started in his legs
or whatever, if his hands and arms were okay. But
it started in his hands, in his arms, and he
right away wasn't able to play. He had to stop working,
and it was completely heartbreaking. I was lucky in that
(02:09:18):
I lived very close to Mike. I lived lived literally
two minutes away, and I was able to spend a
lot of time with him, But completely heartbreaking, especially for
his three children and his wife and of course my parents.
Speaker 3 (02:09:37):
What was ultimately what killed Jeff.
Speaker 2 (02:09:41):
You know, it was probably a combination of things. He
had been you know, he had been using some pesticides outside,
but he had been a life long smoker. You know,
he'd been a life long smoker Marlborough Reds. You know,
he had never stopped, you know, And yes, there was
history of drug use, like all of us, but it
(02:10:03):
still was this completely freak thing for a guy at
thirty eight years old. Jeff used less drugs than any
of us did than any of us did.
Speaker 3 (02:10:14):
Did he have a hard d fact or something or not?
Speaker 2 (02:10:17):
There was some Yeah, there was some damage there. There
was some muscular damage. There was you know, the autopsy
reports were very was very complicated.
Speaker 3 (02:10:27):
And you know, okay, so what's keep you busy?
Speaker 2 (02:10:33):
Now? What keeps being busy? Now? I am the most
blessed old dude, you know, as far as you know,
I've been very, very lucky my whole life. I haven't
had to do anything but make music for a living,
and I've been blessed with many different gigs in the
(02:10:55):
music world. And after I left Toto, you know, songwriter,
I wanted to be a professional songwriter. But you know what,
without a deadline, I found I was useless. You know
what I mean. I mean, without deadline's Total was useless.
We would have never We'd still be working on the
fourth album if there wasn't a deadline there. If someone
(02:11:17):
didn't come and say, you know what, they're showing up
in an hour to take the tapes. You know what
I mean, you better put this down, we would have
kept going. You know. We loved being in the studio.
I loved my job so much so I uh, after
I left the band for a while, my old friend
(02:11:39):
James Howard, who I mentioned before, James Newton Howard, he
had gotten into film scoring and he had a very
successful career. His career took off. That was James's thing.
He had arranged for us. He did a lot of
arrangements for us on Total four in the following album.
(02:11:59):
But got into film scoring and was doing very very well.
And we lived very close to each other, and I
would help him. I would do some synthesizer stuff for
him on occasion, and at one point he asked me,
he said, do you want to try doing this? He'd
been helping some of his other friends who were into
film scoring. He had helped them by getting them jobs
(02:12:20):
where he would write the theme to a TV show
like Er, and then in one of his high school
friend Marty Davitsch would scored all the episodes for fourteen years.
You know, James was helping his friends out like that.
He was doing very very well, and he helped me
out that way. He did that a few times. He
helped get me some gigs. He got me in there,
(02:12:40):
I mean right away right away. But the reality was
again I whereas I could do it, and there were
certain aspects of it that I did well at. I
wasn't great at it. I didn't It wasn't really my lane.
At the end of the day, I was making a living.
I would occasionally get a show, but a lot of times,
(02:13:02):
you know, you'd run that gauntlet of getting a TV
show and auditioning and submitting, and sometimes you'd get the
TV show and then it would last for two episodes
and it'd be gone and you'd have to start over.
James helped me start scoring, and it was very up
and down for me, and then total came back into
(02:13:23):
my life. Luke asked me if I wanted to, if
I wanted to go on the road with them and
do one summer to benefit my brother Mike and That
turned into nine years of touring with the band again,
which I had a blast with. But when I got home,
I knew I was done touring. I knew I wanted
to stay home, and I, you know, I figured I
(02:13:45):
was going to have to try to get another film
gig or something, and it turns out I didn't. I'm
able to. I've been able to live off of my royalties.
And then I just made a deal with Primary Wave
and the Jack Sexton State and now all I do
every day, all day is work on my songs, and
(02:14:07):
I'm in heaven and I'm film scoring. Taught me I
developed this finishing muscle. I kind of grew up. And
I'm sitting on like two solo albums worth of stuff
now and all I do all day is write songs
and finish them. And I'm in my lane, you know.
(02:14:28):
And when I go to the Baked Potato Now and
hear my friends play, I don't feel like a piece
of crap when I leave, I'm very proud of them.
And I know that now from here on out, I
get to do what I do best, which is to
write the kind of songs I write, and I get
to finish them and I'm going to be able to
(02:14:50):
do this for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (02:14:52):
Just to be clear before we go, you sold all
your songwriting royalties to Primaryry Wave in the Jacksons eight percent,
And what was the decision involved in that.
Speaker 2 (02:15:07):
It was a huge decision. It was to just kind
of to be able to just do what I love
to do, to not have to tour ever again, to
not do TV shows which own me, to just be
able to do what I love doing. And this affords
me that.
Speaker 3 (02:15:29):
Okay, Steve's been great talking to you. Tell quite a story.
You're quite alive. You know, usually we hear from the
lead singer, the lead guitars. We don't know the person
I've seen you on stage, but I've never known what
you were like. You're a great guy. I want to
thank you for taking this time to talk to my audience.
Speaker 2 (02:15:46):
Great great, great meeting you, great talking to you.
Speaker 3 (02:15:50):
Okay, you bet till next time. This is Bob left
six
Speaker 2 (02:16:16):
Sh