Stevie Salas

Native American Stevie Salas played guitar for Rod Stewart, was the guitarist and music director for Mick Jagger, and has worked with a cornucopia of artists, from Terence Trent D'Arby to T.I. and Justin Timberlake. Stevie is a personable raconteur, you'll love him.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
My guest today is guitarist Stevie Salas, who's worked with
Rob Stewart, Mick Jagger, and so many more. Stevie, when
did you realize you were Native American?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well? I knew I was a Native American from birth,
but it was just, you know, nothing new. Wasn't like
we walked around go hey, I'm a Native American. We're
just like I knew who I was and we never
really thought about it.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Okay, but did you experience any discrimination growing up?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Not? See that? I'm lucky because I was. My father
joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen and left
the countryside of Cheyenne outside China, Wyoming. My parents, excuse me,
my mother, my mother's family had migrated to Vista, California.
My father was in Camp Pendleton and my mother's family

(01:05):
was from New Mexico. And so I was born on
the beach in Oceanside, California. And there was no racism
where I grew up because there was the Marine Corps base,
and I had kids of every color and we all
served and skateboarded and listened to music, and it was
so I really didn't experience any of those things. A
lot of my friends from the reservations have dealt with
all their lives.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, you ultimately made a movie about Native Americans in
rock called Rumble. So did you always embrace your Native
American culture or was it more that when you left
home and you saw what was going on that you said, hey,
I have to make a statement.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
It's a little bit of a double answer, because if
you ever really looked back, like say, when I was
a kid, you know, my first band was Rod Stewart.
I went from a high school band, and I met
George Clinton and when I was homeless in LA and
then you know, I went from George and you know
and Bootsy. Around that whole time, I was Dolby Seen
and blah blah blah, right up to three years later
on Rod Stewart's lead guitar player. And I was always

(02:07):
I'm a Native American. I was never. I was always
I'm a guitar player. I want to be a rock star.
I happened to be a Native American. I was never
I'm a Native American rock star. So if you ever
look back at the old photos and things, you'll always
see a little maybe I'd have on a little earring
or a little bit of my necklace or something that
was indigenous in my whole thing. But that was for me.
That wasn't part of my like stage wardrobe, you know.

(02:29):
But later on, around two thousand, around ninety nine, I
was really sick of the music business. I kind of
felt like I'd done everything I could possibly do, and
you know, working from everybody from justin timer Lake and
in Public Enemy to mc jagger, and you know, I
worked with a lot of Sasash Jordan, and all these
different people were all divers diversified, kind of different artists,

(02:51):
and I just felt burned out after you know, a
bunch of solo albums too, and a bunch of world tours.
So around two thousand, maybe it was two ian and
two or three, I went to open up for the
Rolling Stones in Canada and I met this guy called
Brian Right McLeod who was a Native American writer, and
he was writing a book, an encyclopedia that covered every

(03:13):
bit of Indigenous recorded music going all the way back
to nineteen oh eight and wax cylinders, and you know,
there was there was there wasn't too many Native guys
with my my resume at all. He wanted me in
his book. So we sat down at his house and
he started talking to me about Jesse Ed Davis and
started talking to me about Link Ray and I knew,

(03:34):
you know, I knew Link Ray was, of course, and
Jesse had Davis. I mean, in sixth grade, I would
read Rod Stewart's album you know, Atlantic Crossing, years before
I was ever going to be his lead guitar player,
and they would say Jesse ed Davis all over these
amazing records that I used to read Lner notes. I
had no idea he was a Native American. I had
no idea that Link Ray was a Native American. I
had no idea that Robbie Robertson was a Native American.

(03:57):
In fact, in nineteen eighty eight, when I first we
played a three night run at Madison Square Gardens, I
walked on the stage at sound check and I got
on my hands, knees and I kissed the stage at
Madison Square Gardens saying I'm the first Native American ever
played Madison Square Gardens. I mean no idea that I
was not even close to the first American. So in
two thousand and one I learned this about these guys.

(04:18):
I realized that if I don't know this, and I'm
in the business, I go, there's Native American people all
over out there that don't know they have these role models.
And that's when I felt the urge that I should
give something back, and I felt like I needed to
help bring these people to the forefront so Native people
would know they had role models that were from now,

(04:38):
that had accomplished things that would seem impossible, and not
have to go only back to one hundred and fifty
years ago, to Geronimo or somebody you know, or sitting
bul That's why I did it. I had no idea though, Bob,
it was going to change written history.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So let's go sideways for a second. You talked about
being burned out in the year two thousand. Tell me
about that.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, you know you were around. It was like I
came up. I moved to LA I left my parents'
house in San Diego in nineteen eighty five and quit
my high school band. By eight months later, I was
living in l I was living in a walking closet.
Then I was homeless, and there was a studio called
Baby O Recording Studios. In LA and I was friends
with a guy called David Oh. He was in a
band called the plim Souls that I really loved when

(05:23):
I was in high school, right, and David Oh really
liked the way I played guitar, so him and a
guy called Rick Parata who ran Baby O Studios that
ended up inventing matchless amplifiers, he thought I was cool.
He so he said, why don't you help us clean
up and you can help run the rehearsal studio and
at night just sleep on the couch. And I had
all my clothes in plack, black plastic bags. And it

(05:44):
was a horrible, horrible summer for me, summer of eighty five.
But I'd go up to musicians and I'd go up
to like Gene Simmons and anybody that was recording at BABYO,
and I said, hey, my name is Steve Saliz. I
played guitar. If you ever did they tell me to
go f myself, you know, get out of here or
whatever it was like, and I care. I had no prede.
One night I went up to David S. Bradley and
George Clinton who had did Atomic Dog, and I said

(06:07):
I played guitar and George Clinton just kind of said okay, cool,
like he was cool, like no big deal. But at
two o'clock in the morning, David S. Bradley came and
woke me up and asked me if I wanted to
try some guitar on some track. And I went down
there and he had a guy called Jack Sherman playing guitar,
who was then the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili
Peppers in nineteen eighty five. And I thought, God, Jack's

(06:29):
playing some amazing stuff. He was playing like this amazing stuff.
But George what he was I figured out later what
he was doing was he he was playing exactly what
he learned and worshiped about Parliament Funkadelic. So I thought
George was kind of like he'd already done that. So
I went bananas on this guitar funk Wang Bar Steve

(06:53):
Stevens madness, and George went crazy. And so that's what
set me on this path. Then the next fifteen years,
I got signed in nineteen eighty eight, put my first album,
Mountain in UH ninety, and then I just did world tour,
world tour, you know, then music direct, Turnstrant Derby and
Duran Durant or go back out in another world tour
and then go back out and write and produce in

(07:14):
sas Jordan Rat's album, and then to a tour with
her and Arrowsmith. You know, it just never stopped. And
the more the business kept going into the nineties, it
stopped being about development, it stopped being about music, and
it started being about how many times I could get
played on K rock or you know all these and
then all these rock and roll metal guys that I
thought had no credibility were shaving their heads and pretending

(07:36):
to be punk rockers and they'd get a record deal.
I just thought the whole thing was becoming bullshit, and
I just I had money, and I just thought, I'm
sick of this and I'm sick of the business, and
I want to go surf. And I bought a bunch
of land in Costa Rica and I was just going
to go retire and surf, and and that's what I mean.
I was just burned out on all the the insincerity
that was going on by the end of the end

(07:58):
of the nineties, with all the fake, fake everything, fake
punk rock, fake this, fake rid and it's just nothing
that credibility to me. Anymore.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
So you know, you reconnected with your Native American roots
and other Native American players in music. But what happened
with you and music after that.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Time, Well, actually what happened It was a bummer. Around
two thousand, excuse me, about two thousand my girlfriend passed away,
and wow, and I went into a deep, deep hole.
And at the same time, you know, my nest egg
I went. I lost a million dollars in the stock market,

(08:41):
pretty much on a two thousand crash. And now you know,
you know, you know what it was like back then.
It was hard to say a million dollars playing guitar, right,
you know. And all of a sudden I realized I
had to go back to work. But I was so down,
and it was like I've always felt like I had
like a horseshoe up my ass. I feel like I've
always been so lucky. Out of the blue, I show

(09:03):
up at Virgin. I had a deal then with Virgin
by the time with Tony Berg where I could develop
and sign my own acts. If he liked the acts,
they'd sign him and I could take him in development,
because I mean, you came from the days of development
when they'd rather give you ten grand and lose it,
then sign a band and lose two million bucks or whatever.
So I was one of those guys they'd let go
develop acts, and I was developing Peter Cornell, who is

(09:24):
Chris Cornell's brother, who's this amazing singer. But I was
also in this deep depression. And I walked by Jima
Corfield's office because I knew gem would because I produce
was and I was in nineteen eighty seven with Down,
so you know, I knew her really well. And she goes, hey,
I got a I saw a list today that you know,
it was from Nancy Berry's desk, that Mick Jagger's going

(09:45):
to call you to be a guitar you know, he's
a guitar player. I'm like, what so? And I'd known
Mick because I used to hang out with Keith a Latin,
Bernard Fowler and all the guys. So I got this
call and it was like a gift from God. It
was like, who else could get me out of that
hell hole I was in then the biggest rock star
in the world. It was like the gods were telling
me to get my ass together and get my shit together.

(10:07):
And so I got a call and there was five
people that got that audition. That was me, Dave Navarro,
Rusty Anderson, Doyle Bramhall, and I'm blanked on the fourth guy.
But the Corey I forget his name, but he used
to play with More's Day in the Time and Michelle

(10:27):
and Decachello is really really cool guitar player. And I
got the gig and then then Mick made me as
music director and it's the only thing that could have
got me back out. And I got back out and
I got and Jagger. Jagger was like Jagger was like
every detail mattered. And remember what I told you before
in the nineties, when I felt like there was no

(10:47):
more credibility, he instantly like made me believe in him
because he would call and talk about this ship that
I was hearing. That really made a difference to me,
and I could tell he could hear it, and it
was just the most It's the only thing that could
have got me out of the hell I was in.
And Jagger was just like young still even though he
was old, and it was funny and it just it
brought me back to life. And that's when I started

(11:10):
kept playing. So then I started doing more European tours again.
I started accepting more offers, you know, I you know,
if Wayne Cramer called and I worked with the MC
five or whatever. You know, whenever it was something that
was good, it got me back into playing and got
me into actually trying to enjoy myself again playing me.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Okay, you were inducted in the Hall of Fame where
you grew up recently, and in the quotes you say, well,
I'm not the best guitar player. I'm not the best singer,
So how'd you get the gigs?

Speaker 2 (11:41):
You know, I tell kids this all the time. You know,
I've been in all those readers poles, and I was
number one in the Japan Guitar World Readers Bowl when
I was in you know, nineteen ninety when my first album,
Color Code came out, I was number three in the
Guitar World in America. You know, I was in the
fifty Greatest Guitar Players of All Time in like nineteen
ninety six and Guitar Player magazine. You know, But it's
all bullshit. It's like if you got a great publicist

(12:01):
and you hit at the right time and you ride
this wave right. But the other thing I tell kids
is this Boba I go, you don't have to be
the greatest. You just got to be the greatest when
it counts. And that's something I was great at. I
could walk in the room and destroy and just destroy
the room with an audition like Rod Stewart had no idea.
I couldn't play slad guitar acoustic guitar when I got

(12:22):
that gig, and it was too late for him to
fire me, although he almost fired me every week. It
was like I wrote a book about it.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Okay, yes, why don't you tell people why he almost
fired you?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Because I was an idiot. I was a stupid kid.
You know, I was a little kid in a band
full of genius grown ups. I mean it was Carma
and Rojas on bass that you know, he brought the
bassline to Let's Dance. It was like it was like
Bowie's Guys, and it was the power station. Tony Thompson
originally that Tony Brock from The Babies came back in
my high school band used to play baby songs, you
know what I mean. It's like Carma and Rojas's poster

(12:56):
was on the wall at my mom and dad's house
in my bedroom. Still. You know, it was like I
was in. They used to call me young Eddie Martinez
because in eighty seven when I was a staff producer
for David Cushabam, when I scored Billing Ted Sex and
The Adventure, I was also the only guy doing rap
songs for those soundtracks because nobody in LA in rock
and roll knew a lot about rap. But I was
really into Eddie Martinez and run DMC, so they used

(13:20):
to call me a little Eddie Martinez. And now Eddie
Martinez was in Rod's band, so the whole thing was
just like nuts. So I think I was super immature.
You know. One time at Miami Stadium, I was playing.
It was only the third gig of the tour, of
my first tour since my high schol band, keep in
mind where I sold out Miami Dolphin Stadium, Joe Robbie Stadium.

(13:42):
I saw myself on this giant diamond vision screen and
I was starting the song first cut as the Deepest,
and I just stopped. I started prank, and I just froze,
and I pointed at this thing of myself and I
was like, oh my God. And then I realized Rod
and I was staring at me. Sixty five thousand people
there and I started the song again and go afterwards,

(14:03):
I was like, what are you doing, you know, stopping
to wave at the girls. And I told him, I go,
wasn't waving at the girls. I frozen. He goes, that's
even worse. I mean, I was almost fired so many times.
But but I was also this had this young energy
that he loved that was unifying our band. And we
became like a that band in eighty eight, if you
recall that an order tour. It brought him back and

(14:25):
we sold three or four million records and it was
part of our band was like an army. It was
what you dream of and you know, but but yeah,
in the beginning it I almost got blown out, Like
every every week was I was in trouble. And then
I became the scapegoat for everything, you know what I mean.
It was like if somebody else made a clam they
point at me, and Roderd think it was me, and

(14:45):
yeah it was. It was. You know, I got hazed
a lot. I got hazed a ton until on Rod's airplane,
I started a fight with the whole band. And then
after that everybody got cool. And because I was born
a fighter, you know, and I like to. You know,
I used to punch people out open I was a kid,
but because everyone did where I lived, surfing, and those
guys I think were in shop because they're still musician musicians.

(15:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
What ways were you haved?

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, you know, like I'd get my bag. We had
the zone. We had our own airplane, and so we
used to fly from one city in the afternoon and
go play a concert and fly back to when we'd
home base out of one city like Atlanta, and we'd
go do like ten shows and all that, and you know,
you know about that stuff. And and the one time
I get my clothes on the airplane, my bag and
I go to open it up to get my clean
clothes out because I'm all sweaty, it's stinky from the concert,

(15:36):
and there's a bunch of squished fruit in my bag.
You know, my clothes are you know, stupid shit like that,
or you know, Rod Stewart used to paint penises like
I like Kelly Emberg. We were all going into into
uh Montreal and Rod you had to hide your passport.
That was one of the things you had to do
in the Rod Street Band, And you had to hide
stuff like that. Like so like Kelly Emberg left her

(15:57):
passport out and next thing you know, she opens it
up at the custom and there's a penis drawn next
to her face. Or you know, I'd go to go
on stage with a brand new white jacket and on
the back there was a giant black penis drawn on it,
you know. Or one of Rod's friends would come on
from a soccer team and he'd fall asleep and they'd
fill his hair with shaving cream and cigarette butts and

(16:17):
you know, put rigs and it chose. I mean, it
was just like that kind of shit all day long,
because Rod and them were still like, this is nineteen
eighty eight, and you know, Rod was still a kid.
He's still kind of a kid.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Actually, So when it ends the World tour, what's your
relationship with Rod and the band?

Speaker 2 (16:37):
They were like my big brothers, and I loved them
so much. They were everything to me, and I didn't
want to quit the band, but I had signed, I
secretly signed the biggest recording contract Island Records had ever
given to somebody right before, right during the New Rod
Stewart tour, and I was so afraid that they were
going to find out and fire me. So I didn't

(16:59):
tell anybody. And then one day in Wisconsin, I'm sitting
down having a dinner before a show backstage with Randy
Phillips and Rod, and Randy Phillips goes, hey, I heard
you signed a big contract with the Island. And I'm like, oh,
you know, it's like I I yeah. And Rod started
laughing at me, and I go, what's so funny? And

(17:22):
he goes All my career, everyone in my band, they're
always they're going to leave, They're going to get their
own record deal, They're going to do this. And because
you're just like this kid and you get this huge
record deal, and because none of them ever did, I
guess you know what I mean. They all used to
threaten to quit. I'm gonna get my own deal, and
I never threatened to quit to get my own deal.
I didn't even want to know I had a deal.

(17:44):
But when I got done, you know, with part of
the out of order tour, Island Records had said to
be you. And by then Bill Grahm was my manager,
and there Mordy Wiggins, and then we're like, look, do
you want to do you want to be his guitar player?
Do you want to be your own artist. And I
had to quit the band. But it was almost like
getting a divorce. It was like leaving my family. It was.
It really crushed me. I did not want to leave

(18:04):
those guys.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
So what's your relationship with Rod today and what's happened
over the ensuing thirty five years?

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Thirty five years is nuts. I love Rod Man. Rod
loved my book and he teased me one time. I
popped into a show at Buffalo and He's like, I'm
getting your book and I can't wait. I'm gonna sue
the shit out of you, you know. And I saw
Rod this this the it was this this last February
or the February before I came. I think it was
this last February. I was down at the hard Rock

(18:34):
Seminal hard Rock where I have a business. I have
a sports music bar, and so I had the new
Seminal Guitar Guitar Tower and Hollywood, Florida, and I was
down there with my Seminal friends because they own all
the hard rocks, and Rod was playing. So I goes,
let's go see Rod. So Jimmy, Jimmy the sax player,
was still in the band. He was in the band.

(18:55):
When I was in the band, Jimmy Roberts, and Jimmy
came and met me before the show, said hi, and
I had a couple of tickets and I didn't really
ask for anything, but Rod found out I was there,
and before I could leave, some guy came out and
grabbed me because he wants to see you and took
me and my friends all backstage, and it was like
it was like he was I got the photos. He

(19:15):
was hugging me and he kissed my kissed my head
and it was just like it was. It was the
best because in a way psychologically he was like my
big brother, almost like a father figure to me, you know,
because it was twenty something years older than me when
I was in his band, and for me it was
it was beautiful. I love Rod story. I would take
a bullet for him still to this day, even if
he makes a shit record.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
How did you actually get that gig?

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I was hot? You know in La? You know how
it is, You remember how it was if you got
a buzz in La you know, some music connection magazine.
Butd Scope I used to just think I was the
coolest so but Scopa Scoop would write about me and
everybody would write about me, and and I was around Hollywood,
and I had this band, Color Code, and I was
mixing this funk and rock thing and it sounded cool
and people liked it. And I was also became a

(20:08):
staff producer for David Kirshenbaum, and then I scored Bill
and Ted's Excellent Adventure. You know, I was there when
Tracy Chapman walked in with her birkenstocks and an afro.
You know, it was like I was around when this
shit was happening. And Jamie Cohen loved me, you know,
so a lot of a and our guys loved me
and would take me out with them to see bands.
And I had this already done. George Clinton R and

(20:28):
B Skills Senens in the closet. I told everyone. Everyone
thought I was George Clinton's guitar player, so they thought
I was famous already. But little did they know I
was not from Detroit and I was not his guitar player.
I just played on that record and so but they
would hire me, and I would tell him I was
double scale, so I did like that was a girl
from Climax. I'm blanking on her name right now. She
was the drummer that sing ladies, you know, they did

(20:49):
Ladies Room and all that, and I did that. And
then Dick Griffy asked me if I wanted to join
a band with Babyface and La Reid, you know, because
they were artists before they became record executives. And I
didn't want to do that. And then Thomas Dolby Andy
Taylor called me, And it turns out that Andy Taylor
was managed by Randy Phillips and Arnold's Arnold Arnold Stifeler,

(21:14):
Steph Yeah, Arnold Steve for Sorry. So Arnold and Randy
managed him and and Andy Taylor had just left Randa Rand.
He had a big buzz in nineteen eighty seven. He
had a big hit going. It's called Don't Let called
Take It Easy with the Florid EDDI singing backups, and
he auditioned me and he thought I was cool, and
I became his guitar player. But right before a week

(21:36):
before the tour, we're opening the Psychedelic First Tour, and
the first gig was the La Form and the second
gig was going to be San Diego Opener Amphitheater, and
I was my big homecoming and Andy fired me. It's
like I've never been you know. I was devastated.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
Okay, a little bit slower. Why did he fire you?

Speaker 2 (21:55):
I think he fired me because he's a dick. But
I also think he fired me because he was insecure
and I was hot. I was hot. I worshiped Andy,
but I was up. I was up in his you know,
I was in his game with him. I was. I
wasn't there to be in the back and be all
like passive. I was like aggressive when I played, and
I thought he would like that. And that's what Rod

(22:17):
Stewart liked about me. I was. I was up. And
if you watched the Rod Stewart tour from eighty eight,
I was up in it. Man. I was like it was.
It was Rockstar Central. But Andy like this is silly, Okay,
I search the world. Randy Phillips said, you gotta go
buy some amplifiers. Here's some money. You know, the good
old days when you could go buy six Marshal stacks.
So I ordered six Marshall stacks and I got Dave

(22:38):
Wider made a guitar center to get him and find
me Red ones. Okay, in nineteen eighty seven, it was
hard to find red Marshall Stacks. Andy saw him. He
goes and he spray painted all of them black. So
right away I was in a rub. I was in
a rub. You know. It was like everything I was
doing was wrong. And I made a joke about swinging

(22:58):
from a rope from the top of my aps Ted nugent,
you know, I was joking, but he freaked out, and
I think that's why he fired me. But he fired me.
I then got a call from Jamie Cohen to go
to San Francisco and produce the tubes for Columbia. They
were doing demos. I was cutting demos on him because
I wanted to see if they were going to sign him.
While doing that, I got a call from Randy Phillips saying, Hey,

(23:20):
would you want to come audition for Rod? And that
was the dream, right, that was the dream Rod. People
forget now, but Rod Stewart was a superstar and he rocked.
I don't care what anybody says, you know. And I
auditioned for Rod and he said I got the gig,
and then they called me back and said I don't
have the gigs. They realized that I just didn't have

(23:40):
any skills whatsoever. And I never toured. I only had
good rock skills, so I just kept calling, and I
kept calling Arnold, I mean Arnold's office, and Malcolm callingmore
Rod's personal assistant. And Tony Thompson was the drummer who
was idolized, and I called him and I said, hey,
around anything going on, you know? And by then I

(24:02):
was living with the Frank Shackler. I don't know if
you remember him. He was an A and R guy
at Electra. I mean I'm at Aristas sorry, And we
lived in this house of Nika Costa, nik A Costa's
mom's house. I lived in the guest house while a
Nica and I used to have to pick her up
from high school. But I call and call and just
I had no shame and I had no pride. Hey
you They ever did me, and no one ever called

(24:22):
me back. But all of a sudden, out of the blue,
I get a called Stevie. It's Malcolm Rod would like
to see you. Could you come down to Audible And
I'm like, I went to Audible and he asked me
the audition again turned out Eddie Martinez decided to go
back to Robert Palmer because he was Robert Palmer's guitar player,
and I played a lot like Eddie, and I rehearsed

(24:43):
and I worked my ass off and I got the gig.
And Rod looked at me and he said, Okay, you
got the gig, and this time I mean it. And
eight days later we were playing higher on Bissom Stadium in
Puerto Rico.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Wow, let's go back. How did you get your deal
with Ireland?

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Well in eighty seven, and well, you know it's weird, Carter.
There was a guy called Dino I Raley and I
used to date his daughter Julie, and Dino used to
run Restless Records and used to run the label with
George Harrison's dark Horse for A and M. And he
was he was an old promo guy from the early days.
And he had found this girl in nineteen eighty six,

(25:20):
I think it was named Melissa Ethridge, and he asked
me to help him develop Melissa Ethridge. So we went,
we got he got some money from EMI, and we
went to the old EMI America studios right there on
Sunset they used to have there, and I cut a
bunch of demos of Melissa Ethridge and I was horrible.

(25:43):
I produced him, but I was way off. I made
a rock because everything in that part of the eighties
was heavy bon joviature. So I made a rock and
it was I was way off and it was awful,
but she was great. And there was one song, ironically
that I didn't play on and I produced that Chris
Blackwell hurt and he freaked out on her, and Chris

(26:04):
Blackwell signed her. And so that Dino guy made me
learn about making demos. So he introduced me to a
guy called Carter who was his friend. And you remember Carter,
I'm sure. So of course Carter.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Wrote the lyrics for instance, and Peppermint's longtime A and
R guy at Capitol brought Tina Turner back from the
dead career.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Wise to answer, well, Carter, Carter, these are the best
things that ever happened to me. And I'm gonna tell
you why, because nobody was kissing your ass back then.
Carter said, I think this sucks, but there's something here
that's a little interesting. So I mean he just tells

(26:48):
you flat out you suck.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Well, that was Carter very much.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, I think this really sucks. He goes, but then
he's a remember in his office at a m he
had this elephant leg for a chair. I'm sitting on
this eleph He's like super eclectic, right, and he goes,
take this ten grand, and I want you to go
work on some things that sound like this and come
back and see me in two months or a month
or whatever it was. So I did that and I

(27:13):
cut some cut some shit, and I came back and
he listened to it and he go, aw, this sucks,
and this sucks, and he goes, this one's pretty good.
So he goes, why don't you go, you know, over
to New York. Here's a guy's number. I wanted to
work with you and work on something, work in this direction.

(27:34):
So I went and did that, and I you know,
he gave me twenty grand, you know. And back then
it was the guy I can't even remember Glenn fight,
Glenn Fight maybe or something like that. I don't know,
but it was like So I went over there and
I did this, and then I came back and he goes, ah,
it's all cool, but it's not for me. So then,
you know, in those days, you take I owned the demos,
they give him back. So I took the demos and

(27:54):
at this time I started going to London. They started
flying me over to London early nineteen eighty seven, so
I started in the new was not was what Ap
Dog album, but it was before Dawn asked me to
co produce the song Outcome to the Freaks. So I
was playing guitar on it and we we were doing that,
and then I was getting a call from the guy
who one of the guys that worked with paul Oakenfeldt
and invented acid house music in London, and they were

(28:16):
They were saying, nobody plays guitar like me in London
and will you come over? So they kept flying me
over and while I was there, I was working with
a company called Park Music that managed these guys, but
they also managed a young kid called Terrence trad Darby
and his album hadn't come out yet, and they offered
me that gig, but there was no rock guitar on it.
You know, later I would become late Terrence's music director,
but this is way early. This is eighty seven. Terrence's

(28:38):
album comes out Hardline. According to terrorits Had Explodes, goes
number one, sells twenty million copies. I go back. I
just get to put a band together. If it was
and I was with Winston and Carla Zar who you know,
all of us AMT Fiddler. We were all up up
and comers, and nobody kN who were Amp Fiddler from
p funk Me Carla Zar who became the drummer for
Wendy and Lisa and the water Boys, Amp Phil you

(29:00):
know who took Bourney where else place in Funkadelic. And
we put this band together around Don David and Harry
and Sweetpeat from What's Not Was, And next thing you know,
we have a number one record called Walk the Dinosaur,
just number one, and we're just we're so we're doing
top of the Pops. When in London, I mean a
guy called Mitchell krass now Bob Krasnow's kid, who's a
head A and R in London, and he thought I
was cool. He heard my demos, he thought they were cool.

(29:25):
But he wanted me to go to Holland and play
guitar on this record for this artist he was developing
and wanted to sign. And I by this time I
had just gotten fired by Eddie Taylor, and I said, no,
I'm not doing it. I go I'm only going to
work on my own stuff and I'm never going to
get myself in a position again where somebody can humiliate
me like Andy did, because my high school friends and
parents have bought tickets to see us in San Diego

(29:46):
with the first and I was I've never been so
embarrassed in my life because everyone thought it was a
liar and full of shit, and you know, I wasn't there.
So instead of him saying taking no for an answer,
he said, I'll give you five thousand dollars that you
can work down downstairs on your own demos while you're
working on this other girl's record. And I said, yeah, okay,
I'll do that. So I went to Holland and def

(30:07):
Leppard was working on a Hysteria album in one room
with mut Lang, and I was working with the Zeo
and these other guys in the room next door. It
was super awesome. I mean, I hate to keep sounding
like this, but the late eighties and the early nineties
was just the most amazing time to be an artist.
It was just insane, that kind of shited it went on,
you know. And so I'm in Holland and I'm doing that,
and Mitchell hooked me up with a guy called Steve

(30:30):
Pross in La at Electra Records, and Steve Pross had
just signed the Pandoras. The Pandoras then got dropped. He
was really convinced that Pandoras were real. So I took
five grand from Restless and I went and recut their
record called rock Hard, and produced it. And by doing
it and Steve really felt loyal to me. So Steve

(30:52):
left Electra got fired actually, and got hired at Island
and signed me to Island. And that's how I got
my record.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Doue, Okay, finish up with Rod Stewart. What's the experience
for you making the record? When the record comes out?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
The problem was is I got super good during that
year with Rod Stewart, playing with the Carlin Rojas and
Jeff Gollub and Tony Brock and I mean they were
the best musicians in the world, and I got really
really I'm not trying to brag. I mean I just
got really, really good a year of that's like every
night at arenas and stadiums, you know, you either get

(31:27):
good or you get fired. And I got really good.
So when I came back to my band that I
had before I left on tour with Rod, I almost couldn't.
I almost couldn't even I was I just couldn't were like,
like I was a different person and we had to
work really hard to I had to rediscover myself. I

(31:50):
was become way too commercial. I remember Island's like, what
are these crappy songs?

Speaker 1 (31:55):
You know?

Speaker 2 (31:55):
You know you make it a you know you're not
what happened to your alternative edge? And I'm like, you're right.
I was really into otis reading now because of Rod,
and I was really in the East Memphis soul, and
I had to sort of learn how to get back
to being who I was before Rod. But my skill
level was way higher, and I'd spent Rod had told
me go go meet your album, hurry and finishing it and

(32:17):
come on, we're going to do the South American tour.
I couldn't do that. I just couldn't do it. I
didn't I didn't have enough of the great songs I needed.
I remember Tony Berg came over to talk to me
at my Hollywood Hills house and and talked to me
about producing my album. And I loved Tony, you know really,

(32:37):
Tony was always nice to me when I was nobody,
and he said to me, he goes he listened to
the demos, like have you ever read a book. And
you know what, he was right. I hadn't. I hadn't
been shit, you know. I you know, I was a surfer, skateboarder.
It was full of my own bullshit. And and I
had just been in a bidding war, okay, on my deal,

(32:59):
and I thought about saying, off, Tony Berg, we can talk.
Shut up, you know. I thought about my ego. Then
I this might have been a turning point in my life.
I stopped myself and I thought about it, and I said,
maybe I need to shut up and listen to what
he's saying, you know what. And he was dead right.

(33:19):
He was dead right. And that's that's that was a
life changing move for me, because I could have just
did my own thing and been my own bullshit and
you know, followed me. Everybody's telling me how great I am.
I'm the guy and Bill and Ted's you know, huge
movie now and I did that and wasn't wasn't number one,
and you know what I mean. It's like, but I
listened to him, and so I found a guy called
parthon On Huxley. I loved him. Jamie Cohen and David

(33:43):
David at Columbia, you know, David. Why am I blanking
on his name? David the produce McCartney. You know, you
know what I'm talking about, you know, David David, David David.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well, there was the guy who the guy that was
four one five records keep going.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, he still produced mccartey now and all that stuff.
But David David had signed Parthenon Huxley, and I loved
the Parthenon Huxley's record. It sounded like Bowie mixed with
you know, I don't know, And so I loved his lyrics,
and so I sat down and started writing lyrics for
Parthenon Huxley and and it taught me so much, and

(34:26):
it saved my record. But that took me. That took
me that whole year of nineteen eighty nine to go
through that metamorphosis. Well, David Kahn, David Kahn. So, David
Kahn had signed Parthenon Huxley, and and I used to
hang out with Jamie Cohen and David Conn their officers
were next to each other. And you know, I watched Fistbone,
you know, record got me bone. And because David invited

(34:48):
me to the studio in nineteen eighty seven, I sat
in a room and watch watching or would play those
bass parts, you know, So I sit there. I got
parthon On Huxley involved, and then I wanted to work
with always dreamed of working in Australia with the guy
who had produced In Excess and he had produced Midnight Oil,

(35:09):
British guy. I'm blanking on his name right now, and
it's super cool. I just actually ran into him a
slim Jim Phantom's wedding party not too long ago. And
I was going to go to Australia and do it
with him because I loved those In Excess and Midnight
Oil records. But Island Records is like, We're not sending
you to Australia for three months, no way. So Bill
Laswell called he had mad credibility. He was considered untouchable.

(35:32):
Like no, you know, you don't call Bill Laswell. He
calls you. You know, record companies bag him to do
records and he says no to everything. And he said,
you know, Randy Phillips told me that he turned down
four hundred grand to produce Simple Minds for Randy to
do my record for forty grand, you know what I mean.
It was like, so Laswell called and that's why I
went to New York and I recorded with Laswell in
New York with that whole scene that you know he

(35:52):
had did Public Enemy and I mean, I mean a
Public Image and Johnny Lyden, all these different records that
became my whole start as a solo artist or recording artist.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
And were you happy with that record? Were you happy
with the commercial performance of that record?

Speaker 2 (36:12):
No? I hated that record, but I think I was wrong.
Everyone still to this day that it's like a cult,
cult classic record. The problem was the record was hugely
successful in Europe and in Japan, but I was on
Island Records, and in nineteen ninety they got bought by PolyGram.
So I was on tour opening for Joe Satrianni, which

(36:34):
was which was both a blessing and a curse because
I was gone from doing twenty thousand seaters with rod
full of supermodels and movie stars and people like screaming
and going crazy to opening for Joe Satrianni in front
of about three thousand, five hundred to five thousand people
a night, sold out everywhere, and it was pretty much
three thousand, It was pretty much four thy nine hundred

(36:57):
ninety nine guys and maybe one girlfriend, and it was
dudes and they would just stare at your neck and
they would stare at my fingers, you know, and then
they'd yell, oh, he plays panatonics, and I was like,
I don't even know what a panatonic is. I never
took a lesson. So it's like it was no fun,
but it made me a real It established me as

(37:17):
a guitar player that was a serious guitar player in
the world. And that's sort of like it was. It
was not fun for me. So the record didn't sell
well because Warner's was losing it, so they couldn't the
distribute distributor was losing it so they couldn't just shit
with it, and PolyGram couldn't touch it for six months.

(37:39):
So I really fell through the cracks in America and
I and I never recovered, but I almost I almost
recovered when Charlie Miner called me on my second album.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Okay, well, Charlie Minor, legendary promo guy at A and
M Records, Charlie calls you, and.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
What, Charlie, here's a song I that's blowing up in
Japan called Start Again. And he says, this is a
huge record I can make this, you know how he was,
I can make this a charide record in America. And
I got to hang out with Charlie Minor. And then
his assistant was Charlie Little Charlie who ended up running
Sony Records in the late nineties. Charlie Walker, Charlie Walkee

(38:21):
as Charlie WALKI used to be our day to day
for Omaguy and the Derandauran tour and Charlie Miner. You know,
he'd come up and it was like he was like
the Godfather or some shit man mine was. So he
was like, you know, the man, and so in dubious
dubious of course. So I get a call. Charlie's wants
to meet you. He's got some kind of production deal.

(38:41):
He's going to sign you, and he's going to make
this a number one record. And I'm finally nineteen ninety four,
I'm going to break through. I'm going to get my
due in America. And I'm supposed to go see him
on a Monday. And this is a true story about
I call up on the Friday. I call up on
the Monday and I'm saying okay, guys to his assistant

(39:03):
and she answers the phone that she sounds really strange,
and she tells me the story how that weekend, Charlie's
girlfriend caught him with another girl literally and walked in
the room and shot him dead. And do you remember
when that happened.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
I saw him Friday night, you know, a couple of
days before of a Sunday.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
That happened.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
It was very weird.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
And I was supposed to see him on the Monday
or the Tuesday. So there you go. It was really weird.
And I just thought of my curt. I think I'm
cursed in America. I am cursed. I mean, I can
play with the biggest people in the world that I
can't seem to get my You know, I sold a
few million solo albums, just hardly any in America. It
was like so and there was no Internet, so nobody
knew how successful I was around the world. They just

(39:44):
assumed I bombed or you know, I don't know. Steve
Luca there used to ask people because he lived up
my street, or Stevie getting all that money for that
Mercedes Benz or whatever, he thought I was a drug dealer.
I think.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
So, what did you learn making solo records? And how
do you feel about the status of your solo career today.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
I think my solo career was it was two things.
I you know, during those days, you could keep making
records if you had credibility, so if I sold just
enough records to always have a record deal. But I
never delivered what everyone thought I I just never did,

(40:32):
except for in Japan. I was Japan for some reason.
I would just because there's this huge I wish, I mean,
like people ripping my hair out, and and I did
well in Germany, and I did well in France and
and you know, but it's just I would have liked
to have I would like to have had that, you know,
a couple albums that sold a few million copies in

(40:53):
the States, because in right now I could probably go
make you know, one hundred grand a night playing all
the festivals still to this day, you know, and now
I can only do that in a couple of countries.
But I wish that I could every summer go out
and do my lallapaloozas and do all that shit, you know.
And that's what not having success in America gets you.
You don't get that ride where. But you know, I'll

(41:15):
tell you something else. In the two thousandth fix, I
started working at American Idol, and that's when things were
really different because we would have an artist I remember
doing Jordan Sparks. We sold two million albums and they
drop her the next year, So things really changed later on.
So you know, you could sell two million albums and
still nobody give a shit.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
So at this late date, do you still have a
dream of breaking through as a solo artist in America
or if you put that dream.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
To bid I kind of never really have that dream
of being a superstar. I just wanted to be able
to I like playing big places. I wanted to be
able to keep playing the big, big rooms. That's my dream.
But I do. Here's my dream now, Okay. I've written
a lot of songs for a lot of people, all

(42:03):
those Sash Jordan songs and Jeff Healy songs and all
this stuff that I wrote back in the nineties. My
dream is some country person's gonna cut one of them
and it's gonna go number one, and I'm gonna get
make up fortunes and leave my kid with a ton
of money. That's what I's That's my dream.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Okay, how old is your kid sixteen.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Now, okay, you have.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
The girlfriend who passed who is the mother of your child.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
It's a woman named Karen, Karen Silva, and she was
one of my best friends and I and she came
in my life when I was at the I just
I was just lost soul. I was a lost soul.
I was hanging around in La every day with a
bunch of my buddies that were all Seinfeld writer producers,
and they were all super rich. And there's a lot
of drugs and a lot of a lot of booze
and a lot of drugs, a lot of women, a

(42:51):
lot of booze and a lot of drugs. And I
had my friend and I used to go to Africa
on Safari and she'd come and we do all these
things together. And she got to the point where she
was going to be too old to have a child,
and she was going to have to maybe go to
a clinic. And I thought to myself, when am I
ever going to be able to get it together? So

(43:12):
I said, let me help you, because I knew she'd
be a fantastic mother, and and it changed my life.
It saved my life. You know. I I work my
ass off now. And I love working, and I got
a kid, you know, and to take care of it,
I have to set an example. And and she's an
incredible mother. And and we we know we live on

(43:36):
you know, I got a house here in Austin. It's
you know, five thousand square feet. And she was one
side and I live on the other. And we're mom
and dad. We do things together as a family, but
we're not a couple. But you know, and my kid's
always known what's going on, and we have we have
a good time, and my kid's doing amazing.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Were you ever a couple?

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Rinda early on? Yeah, okay, why do you live in Austin? Well,
I was, you know, I work in Canada. I was
a film company in Canada, and I was in Canada.
We were living on I run the lake. I sold
my house and got rid of my house in Carlsbad, California.
Got rid of my house in the Hollywood Hills. I
haven't had a house in Venice Beach. Got rid of that.

(44:12):
I got rid of everything in California, moved to Canada.
And when it was time for my son to start school,
his mother was adamant. He had to go to a
Waldorf School, And so we went and toured Waldorf schools
in Toronto and Burlington and East Aurora, New York and
places where. Because I lived in a place called Niagar
around the lake, this little town where the War of

(44:33):
eighteen twelve was spot and I was also then working
at the Smithsonian. I took a job at the Smithsonian
National Museum of the American Indian where I created the
exhibit that later would become the film Rumbled the Indians
of Rock the World. So I was flying in and
out of DC, and I was shooting a lot of
stuff that was ended up in the movie Rumble, and

(44:53):
I went to Austin to shoot one of these Jimmy
Hendricks experienced things and talked to Janie Hendrix about Jimmy,
and you know, I talked to a lot of guys.
Brad Whitford and they're all my different friends that I've
had forever in the music business were there. And while
in Austin, I ran into a lot of my old
music business friends that were that, you know, chewed a

(45:15):
lot of the same dirt as me. And when you
have somebody that really knows what you went through, it's
a lot easier to communicate because a lot of people
didn't get that life. So my neighbor's Charlie Sexton, you
know who. Charlie and I were pal since I was
in rod Stewart, you know. And Charlie was playing with
Bob Dylan at the time. And I bought a house
around the corner, and his kid was going to the
same school. And Marty, Marty McGuire from the Dixie Chicks,

(45:36):
her daughter was in my son's class, and that Waldorf
was happening and it was a great price in Walt
and Austin had still had music then before it got
the tech takeover. And I bought a house here right
next to the school. We just said we're moving to Austin.
So that's what we did.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Okay, So you do do not live in that same house?

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Oh yeah, I live in that same house.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Okay. So you talk about the tech take you and
I've talked to other musicians who've moved further and further
out from the center of town. What's going on with
music in Austin now?

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I don't think there's such a thing. I think it's
all bullshit. First of all, you know, it used to
be cool because you could go see Junior Brown on
a Sunday afternoon and a beer was two bucks and
you could park your car and leave it all night.
And this was only eleven years ago, ten eleven, twelve
years ago. You know, a house here on an acre
for what the down payment of my San Diego house
was right for the whole house on an acre, you know.

(46:30):
And I remember calling Great Cabin, one of my Seinfeld buddies,
and I say, hey, I just bout a house. It
was two hundred and fifty three thousand dollars. He's like what,
I goes, Yeah, he goes what He's like, he just
you know, now that house is probably two million bucks.
But it's like, you know, it was this little town
that was so cool and every and there's all these

(46:52):
people around and it was like they had great restaurants
and there's music everywhere. But all of a sudden, Allehandra
Escaveto had to move out and Junior Brown's gone, and
nobody could afford. The rents went bonkers. The rents were nuts,
and then the housing prizes went nuts because the tech
people kept coming in. And you know, tech people, they

(47:13):
don't have a realistic idea of money. Someone gives them
a ton of stock, and then they're like, okay, that
seems cheap, and they have no A lot of them
have no artistic sense. There's no style, so they all
look the same. I'm pretty soon every place you'd look
downtown had every guy had a beard, and they sit
there with an ipa and I couldn't even find a
corona anymore. But my kid was doing so good in school.

(47:34):
I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to get
out of here because my kid is all about my kid.
So I'm still here because he's now at sophomore in
high school.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
And is he what school does he go to now?

Speaker 2 (47:46):
We used to go to the Waldorf and now he
goes to Saint Michael's Academy.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Okay, I got to get into this. What's it like
with both of you living in the same house. Does
your the mother of your son? Does she bring people home?
Do you bring people home? Do you get jealous? What's
it like you have dinner together?

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Oh? Yeah, we have dinner, and we go on vacations
together and everything, or you know, I get a sweet
and I sleep on a couch and no, but no,
we we have one goal and it's to raise that son.
Of ours. We don't. I have no ego. I've I've
done it. You know, if you knew me, Bobby probably
saw me around back when I was a kid. I
had had no no, no. I had everything you could

(48:29):
ask for as a guy, constantly everywhere. And you know,
when you get to hang out with Keith Richards and people,
then you can multiply it by twenty. And I have
no fascination with anything. I've never had a hard time
with any stuff. So for me, when we're at home,
we're all about being mom and dad, and I don't
ask her what she does, and she doesn't ask me
what I do, And my priority is him and her

(48:52):
to make sure they're taking care of it. Everything's great.
I work, she stays home and she takes care of
our son and he gets a full time mom and
I work my ass off, and when he turns eighteen,
I'll probably buy two houses and put him in a
trust and she can live where in it as she wants.
And everything's about him. Everything's about him. So we don't

(49:13):
have any of those issues, and I don't at least.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Let's go back. How did you get the gig?

Speaker 2 (49:18):
On? Bill?

Speaker 1 (49:18):
And Ted?

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Well? So in San Diego there was a guy called
Mark Levy. Mark Levy was an agent and he man.
He was an agent for some of the really big
local bands in San Diego, where I'm from, and he
moved to LA and somehow he had hooked up with
Randy Phillips. And you know Randy Phillips, and I know
you don't. Of course, Mark Levy, when he was looking
for the guitar player for Andy Taylor helping Randy Phillips,

(49:43):
he knew me and he called me, and of course
I got the gig because I just nailed every audition
when I was young. And later on he said, do
you know David Kershenbaum And I said, I hadn't know
the name from reading it on liner notes? You know
me and liner notes? Did I read liner notes and
liner notes life? I feel bad for kids today. They
don't have liner notes to understand who's doing what. But

(50:05):
David Kussebaum's you know Joe Jackson. The first two Joe
Jackson albums are like bibles to me. I love him,
so of course I know. You know David kushimbamb Is.
He wants to meet me because he's looking. He got
a studio called Power Tracks on Kouwanga there next to
next to the old Shandhara, and he was need some
help and so he met me and that's when he said.

(50:29):
What happened was they had known I'd played with Parliament Funkadelic.
They there's a guy called Gene Page who used to
do all the arrangements from the big Motown stuff. There's
Geen Page was this Motown arranger. You know, he did
Love Unlimited Orchestra, you know, for Berry White and all this,
do all the string stuff and everything. You know, he's
a genius. And he had these sixteen year old rapper

(50:52):
kids and they were called uh I forget what they're
called right now, but there were these two kids. It's
sixteen years old and they rapped. And in nineteen eighty seven,
I don't care what anyone says, no, not that many
people in LA were knowing what was going on with
rap music was much bigger in New York and nobody
was dealing with Doctor Dray then, because he had a
band called the La Dream Team and you'd listen to

(51:14):
the Stevie Wonders station called kjla's Kind of Joy, Love
and Happiness KJLH, and you'd hear the dream Team, The
Dree dream Team is in the house, you know, and
they sampled. Everybody used the sampler. All of a sudden
was new, the new sampler and blah blah blah. And
I kind of got into that stuff because I liked
one DMC. Like I said before, So David Kushier mom says,

(51:36):
I need someone who knows about rap music. They to
just call it rap music. And I go, I do.
I got it, And I know these two kids Gene
Page introduced me to, so David didn't know. So David
had me come in the studio and it was a
movie called Big Shots and he was the music supervisor
for it for Lori Mar I think it was or something.
So I cut this song called put on the Brakes

(51:56):
with the two rappers. They used it in the movie
and in the Atlantic signed I put out a twelve
inch and so now now it's and it says produced
by David Kirshienbaum and Stevie No Wonder Solace because my
nickname was No Wonder back thanks Bootsy Collins used to
call me Stevie No Wonder And and all of a sudden,
David's like, come on, let's keep going. So then I
start working. He's got in the studio at that time,

(52:18):
he was doing what's his name, the guy with the glasses.
It's saying somedays some way, Oh, Marshall, Marshall Crenshaw. So
he's producing Marshall Crenshaw. And he has me working in
the studio from seven pm until you know, whenever. I
drop all night every night on soundtrack stuff. So the

(52:39):
next movie we get is this one called it was
called Action Jackson with Carl Withers and Vanity and they
need more rap songs, so I bring in bring in
the boys again, you know, And I do another one
and it becomes another twelve inch for Atlantic. It says
produced by David Kirshiabamb and Stevie Solace, you know. And

(52:59):
so I this time, now it's eighty seven, I'm producing
them there and I'm cutting my demos at night in
the studio when it's empty. I can work there whenever
I want. And uh, he comes to me one day,
David Kushimbaum, and he says to me, we got to
go see this band that we have to produce because
they want him in the bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

(53:20):
soundtrack album. And I really didn't know much about Bill
and Ted's excellent Adventure. Nobody did. Really. It wasn't like
some blockbuster budget or anything, you know, and uh, it
was a Delentis picture and it got dropped. They dropped it,
and I think Lormar somebody again picked it up or
vice versus something like that was Lormar and the delarent
just picked up with it. But we never even thought
it was going to come out. But he made me
go see this band, and I had to produce them.

(53:42):
And I had no say in it. David said produce him.
I had to produce them. And it was a band
called Warrant. You remember Warrant this they had worn Cherry Pie. Yeah,
it was way before Cherry Pie. So the Warrants this
big buzz band in Hollywood and they're you know, they're
playing everywhere, and I kind of like poison or whatever.
And I hated that kind of music because again I

(54:03):
thought the eighties hair metal, you know, unless it was
you know, I liked the bon Jovi, you know, because
the songwriting was so good on you know, you give
love a bad names. But I hated the whole thing.
There was a million of those eighties bands that are
just horrible, you know, and they're horrible, and I didn't
like Warrant, but I tell David, David, I do I
got to do it, because yeah, you got to do it.

(54:24):
So I go to the rehearsal with David and those
kidchers my age, you know, I'm the same age as then,
and I met him and I fell in love with him.
They were the most amazing, amazing guys. They were just wonderful,
enthusiastic and sincere, and they worked really hard and they
wanted to be great. They had no egos. And ironically,
you saw the last week or whatever, I got to

(54:45):
San Diego Lifetime Achievement Award and you're talking about at
the music thing there in San Diego, like, and Jerry
from Warrant showed up. I saw him backstage. He came
to see me. Yeah, one hundred years later, right. So
I produced Warrant for the soundtrack for Kushimbaum. Aaron Jakovis
was trying to sign him at A and M and

(55:07):
Columbius came in and swooped up and signed him, and
so we pulled them off the Bill and Ted's soundtrack.
So now I'm not thinking about Bill and Ted for
a while I'm working on another shit for David and
my own stuff, and it was not was and I
get it. David comes up to me in the office.
I go in the office of power tracks and he goes, okay,

(55:29):
this movie Bill and Ted. They're realizing that the soundtrack
the score, not the soundtrack. I'm sorry, the score. It's
a story about these two kids that would want to
be in a rock band and they play rock guitar,
and it's all about this guitar and this rock and
roll and there's not one ounce of rock and roll
in the score. In the score, and Amos Newman's Amos

(55:50):
Newman's brother I think did the score. It was either
Amos Newman's brother or Amos Newman's cousin. I forget Amos
told me which one it was. I just can't remember.
So they hired me. Stephen Herrick was the director and
he'd only done one other movie, okay, Stephen Herrick that
went on to do you know mister Holland's Opus, and
I think he did one hundred and one Dalmations and

(56:11):
he didn you know, Three Musketeers and rock Star. You know,
he did a ton of shit, but this was he
was still young. So he had this soundtrack and this
music in there, and it was like it was like
a traditional score, and between me and you was kind
of a crappy score. It sounded like something I could
have done on a fair light, even though they used
an orchestra. You know, it just wasn't great. No disrespect

(56:32):
to Ames's cousin, but it just wasn't great. So I
rescored the whole film and played guitar over the score.
I rescored over the score, which is really weird, right,
And then I also had to do the score where
they were jumping around and didn't know how to play
you know, Bill AND's head, and I was really took.

(56:52):
I took it very serious. Everything that I did when
they were jumping around and the guitar and trying, and
I saw, I'm so horrible. Well, everything I did it
sounded horrible to me, sounded fake. It sounded like a cocky,
egotistical guy trying to play like a dummy. And I
felt like I was making fun of Bill and Ted

(57:13):
and I didn't like that, And I know that sounds nuts,
but I felt like I was disrespecting them, those characters
by just trying to be I look at how shitty
I am. And so I ended up. What I ended
up doing was I turned my guitar upside down and
I played it left handed. So when you see those
parts in the movie and it sounds I'm actually trying

(57:36):
to play chords and I'm trying, but it sounds like shit.
And that's how I did the wild stallions. Okay, so
then that's over, and i'd score over. I score over
this Robbie rob song and do because they really wanted
you too, and they couldn't get YouTube, so they got
Robbie rob song called in Time, but they wanted me
to put so I put all this guitar over the

(57:56):
top that was like like the edge. So it's only
in the soundtrack that way, and there's no version of
that that exists other than the soundtrack version, which became
this cult internet cult classic of Robbie Robin Time featuring
Stevie Solace. That version, I don't know why, so you
can find it online. It's still like it's got a
whole massive fan base just for that weird version. But

(58:17):
he says the movie's done, it not testing well, the
ending's not testing well, you know, and I'm like, okay,
I don't even know what that means really, because I'm
stupid kid. And he goes, Steven wants us to go
into the Palisades and on Monday night or so whatever
it was, and we're going to shoot this new ending

(58:39):
and I need you in it. And I go, what
do you mean? He goes, they want you to play
some kind of guitar solo. I go, okay, So we
go to the Palisades. They got somebody's house, and they
got the phone booth in the garage, and they got
all this. You know, the set decorator made this person's
garage look like the set of Bill and Ted. It
was in a garage, and and Keanu, who was completely unknown then,

(59:02):
and the other guy I'm blanking on his name right now.
They were all there, and George Carlin was there, and
so they dressed me in George Carlin in a matching outfit.
And I got to share the share of a dressing
room Winnebago with George Carlin. So me and George Colin
would sit there all night, and he told me the

(59:23):
most insane stories I asked him about. I go went
out a little kid. I saw you walk out on
like like the Grammys or Academy Awards or something, and
they go, ladies and gentlemen, George Carlin, and he walked
out and he stood at the microphone and he didn't
say one word, not one word, and it was dead silent.
I mean dead silent for like at least it felt
like an eternity, and all of a sudden, one person

(59:45):
kind of goes, and then another person, and then by
the end of it, everyone was laughing, and he just says,
thank you very much, and he walked off the stage.
I don't know if you ever saw that, but it
was like an keep going. You got to find it.
And he said to me, he goes, Oh my god,
he goes. He goes, I had a plan, he goes,
He told me the whole thing. He says, I was

(01:00:06):
going to try this experiment. He goes, but I had
a bail at it one minute and he says, I
was dying. I was standing there, just dying, because he
was standing there at the mic just kind of looking
at people, just kind of looking around, looking at people
and not saying anything. And he said he was dying,
and right before he broke he heard that first laugh.
So he goes, hold on, just hold on. Then he
heard the second he goes, okay, to hold on, and

(01:00:26):
then he said he felt the confidence and just not
say anything. And so I was one of the most
fascinating nights of my life. So then after that, Stephen
Harrett calls they they stand me on a soap box
and Keanu and Alex Winter and the two girls they
stand around me and they're staring at me and they're

(01:00:48):
shooting me from the neck down. Okay, now it's like September.
So and I surf and I'm at the beach olch
so my hands and I'm a Native American and my
hands are dark brown. Keep that in mind. My hands
are dark brown. They shoot me from the neck down,
and I go, what do you want me to play?
And Steven goes, I don't know, just something crazy, and

(01:01:11):
so I think. The first thing I think of is
the opening chord to Eruption No I, A big a chord.
And then I just go and I think this is
a comedy. I don't take it seriously as a musician.
I think it's a comedy. And I just start moving
my fingers in the most crazy way and I'm playing
air guitar. Okay, it's just air guitar and I'm moving him.
If you're look at like new stuff that you would

(01:01:33):
never do. And it was like I was trying to
be ridiculous. And then I finished that, and then they
have George stand on the box and he holds the guitar,
and then they picture his face. He's doing all his
facial expressions that you see in the movie. And now
if you look, now, George Carlin's neck is as white
as a ghost, and so is his face. And then

(01:01:54):
look at the hands, they're almost black. Okay, now you'll
notice it, and you'll be like, I never noticed that,
And so that it's always been my big joke I
laugh about. So we do this thing, and the next
day I go back to Kirshienbaum's studio to power tracks,
and I got a score ahead. I got a score
to what I did. And so all I did was
I watched my fingers and I played in this. I
just tried to emulate exactly what I was doing and

(01:02:15):
just followed my fingers. It was no no mathematics involved.
I never took a lesson, so it certainly wasn't I'm
going to go from this to that to this kind
of movement and nothing. It was just nonsense cut till
the movie comes out. The solo at the end becomes
the iconic thing. And now every Bill and Ted movie
has like the next one with Steve Vai, and then

(01:02:36):
the third one was just somebody else. And it all
started as a joke. Now I'm in London hanging out
with Jimmy Dunlap, you know, I don't know, sometime ten
years ago or twelve years ig, I don't know what
it was been, and I'm having a drink in the
afternoon and they had a barn and soho, and these
kids came up and wanted my autograph from London and
they go, we're studying at the Conservative yor some music

(01:02:58):
thing there, and they said, our fine, our whole thesis
is based on what you did in Bill and Ted.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, what did I do? And
they go, well, you know, you go from a pan
of time to a you know, mix, a loading to
a blah blah blah and then back up to a
ball and I'm like look, and I'm going wow. I
didn't have the heart to tell them I just played
air guitar, but they analyzed what I did, so again,

(01:03:21):
was I smarter than anybody else? Or am I the
dumb ass and the jokes on me? Maybe I was
channeling shit that was this cool and I had no idea,
and I should just shut my mouth because they seem
them they seem to think it's fascinating, and I was like,
I don't even know what the hell it is. The
segrets just purely so kind of like you become kind
of legendary in a funny way when I die. I
was hanging out with Kunta Reeves just a few months

(01:03:43):
ago in Austin, and I took Charlie Sexton, and I
took the actor Graham Green to meet Keanu and went
to a show and Kan and I were talking because
they had just done Bill and Ted three or it
just came out the year before them, and I said,
you know what, I'm gonna do all these things like
Jagger and blah blah blah and rumble and whatever they
and they're on my tombstone. It's gonna say I'm the
guy that did Bill and Ted.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Okay, we even say Bill and Ted blows up? How
does that affect your career?

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
I just I'm like the guy I do was not
was it's number one. I played with Rod Stewart. He's
three and a half million records, eighteen months sold out.
It's like what you might call it. Everybody wants me
and I'm in La and it's like I got a
huge contract on the island and I'm it was like
I could, you could, I could do It was like
I was could do anything. So then in ninety three,

(01:04:37):
when I needed a break from everything and I was
changing record labels, you know, I had been working with
Terrence Trent Darby. His name is Sonona Maitreya now he
changed his name and I actually just had lunch of
them in Italy about three four weeks ago. But he
he calls me and he's in La now, and so
I go work on his album and then Michael Lipman says,
you got to be Terrence's music director. We're going on
tour Grand Rand and I'm like okay, So you know,

(01:05:01):
so I go do that for a year and I'm
and now I'm an MD. So I'm producing records and
I'm a music director and I'm the guy in charge
of hiring people. So every musician's like up my ass
because they all want gigs and it seems like I
just had my pick of all the gigs, and I
had had it this way for a long time. You know.
It's just really lucky, really really lucky. And I have
music directs still to this day, tons of stuff. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
So how did Bill Graham end up being your manager?

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
That buzz going we talked about and around eighty six
eighty seven in LA and somebody introduced me to Morty Wiggins,
and Morty had signed Morty had signed Ivan Neville. So
Morty was thinking, I'd like you to work with Ivan Neville.
And I didn't know who Ivan Neville was because I was,
you know, an educated guy from San Diego, surfed and skateboard.
I didn't know the Neville brothers. I didn't know any
of that shit. And so he arranged. Morty arranged for

(01:05:51):
me and Ivan Neville to meet because he hadn't recorded
his first record. If my ancestors could see me now,
and then they saying that Dan Reid network. So they
had all these diverse multicultural bands. Dan Reid had a
couple African Americans in the band, and Ivan was an
African American, a part native played Creole. You know, they
had all these people of color, and so Mordy started

(01:06:12):
hearing my demos, and Morty signed me, and he signed
me before I joined Rod Stewart and he started developing me.
And so I was with Bill Graham, and I got
to tell you, Bill Graham, there was only two people
that I was ever starstruck around. Maybe a little bit
when Bowie would come talk to me. I was a
little bit because I was just love Bowie so much,

(01:06:34):
but really uncomfortably starstruck. I was always really uncomfortably starstruck
when Bill Graham would come sit with me and talk.
Because Bill was just like he had this in charisma.
A lot of people hated him, like Rod stories to
that guy's are very blaslah blah. But I thought he
was the most fascinating guy and I thought he was
hilarious and he would I felt just I was all
geeked up around him all the time. He was like

(01:06:55):
he had so much star power, you know. And the
other guy was really geeked up around was George Harrison.
George Harrison sitting at my table and buy me drinks,
and I'd be like, I just I just lose my
cool completely. But Bill Graham had that effect on me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Okay, when you were getting called to play in England,
et cetera. Did you have a manager? Were you fielding
all that yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Oh? That myself? Man? Yeah, But you know I had friends,
you know, I had friends that were smart and and
you know, like Ken Kushnik was Don was his manager,
and David Passik and they would help me. They go,
you need to buy a suit because we're doing the
top of the pop. So I don't know how to
buy a suit. So they, you know, they well, you
don't spend more than one hundred and fifty dollars. You know.
They were like babysitters almost, like you know, we're all

(01:07:36):
like a bunch of dummies. And you know, now if
you go see the Walk to Dinosaur video or spying
a house eleven and all that, you'll see me back
there going, oh fuck, that's Stevie.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Okay. How'd you know how much to charge?

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
I don't know how I knew that, but I didn't
and I'm sure I didn't charge enough, you know, because money.
I needed money. I remember Kurshian mom. You know, if
they were to say, hey, to produce this track and
we're just gonna give you a payout, just take two grand,
and I'm like, I'll take that two grand right now.
And in nineteen eighty seven, two thousand dollars there was
a lot more money than it is right now, you know,

(01:08:10):
especially for me. You know, rent back then in Hollywood
was probably three hundred dollars for a cool house, you know.
So it was I didn't know how much I wasn't
getting rich. I'll tell you that I didn't start. I
didn't have real money till I joined Rod Stewart, and
then all of a sudden it was like, oh my god.
You know, if you could make three thousand dollars a week.
When I was a kid, it was like unheard of money,

(01:08:34):
unheard of money. Then I found out all my friends
were making ten thousand a week. I didn't know though.
For me, three thousand. I was out of my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
So how did you get the gig? With American Idol?

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
In the nineties there was a group of Paul Ponteis,
you know, Amos Newman, Sterling, Macelewain, a whole bunch of
guys that had a surfing club, John Marks, you know,
and it was all agents, lawyers, managers, record executives, no musicians,

(01:09:10):
And I surfed and I surfed a lot, and I
was a good surfer, and they asked me if I
wanted to go on one of their trips. I was
the only musician invited. And I became a part of
this private little group of clubs and we were all
inside it, and we hired each other and we only
we John Mark's, you know, And I'm going to play
Fuji Rock Fest? Can you can you help me with

(01:09:30):
the contract? Yeah, I come over with you know. It
was like that. It was like we were like goodfellas
and we'd help each other. And I got a phone
call from Stirling mclewain, who was managing He was already
done managing Hanson, I think at that particular time. He says,
you know, I'm getting a call from from nineteen Entertainment

(01:09:51):
and they want me to come over there and work
with this kid called Daughtry maybe and manage them, and
said And at this particular time in the early two thousands,
I worked with a girl called Lamya who was in
Duran Duran and she was in soulda Soul and Peter
Edge att signed her and it was a Clive Davis thing.
And I had to go to New York and I

(01:10:12):
music directed it, and I really got into this whole
thing because I loved that Clive Davis would come into
a room and he would talk to me about what
we were doing, and everyone make tuckshit after he left.
Oh what do you mean? Clive says, you know, take
it up, take it up, and I go, you guys
don't get it. I know what he means. You know,
you know Clive. I loved it. I loved having that

(01:10:33):
kind of power around me and I listened to I
never thought Clive was a goof. I thought clyd was amazing.
And so all of a sudden, Sterling goes to Idol.
He says, I need you to help me with Daughtry.
So I came and I started working at nineteen and
my first guy, I was a music director and a
consultant for nineteen and a music director for Chris Daughtry.

(01:10:56):
And we started to plan early. He started to planning, well,
how are we going to market this kid? Where are
the songs coming from, what's his band going to look like?
You know, who's just you know, all of that kind
of stuff. How are we going to deal with this?
And I was so I'd sit in and I was
in all those meetings with the Imperia and everybody, and
we come out with Daughtry and we sell five million records.
And I put this whole thing together and taught them

(01:11:18):
all how to play the songs because Phil X, and
my dear friend Phil X had played did the album,
and he's an insane guitar player. So I'd have to
teach these guys how to play the parts, you know,
because they couldn't figure it out, because a lot of
that shit was tricky, and Clyd Davis would call again
all of a sudden, you know, I wouldn't want to
do IDL And when it started, I thought it was lame.
I hated and Mick Jagger wouldn't have called me if

(01:11:39):
I was the guy who worked at American Idol in
two thousand and three or whatever it was. But in
two thousand and six, the writing was on the wall.
The music business was in a free fall, and IDOL
was the biggest thing in town in two thousand and six, biggest.
It was just big. And so I took that gig
and instantly clid d you know, talking to Clive Davis again,
and I'm talking to big guys again, and I'm back
in that game that you know, well, you know, you

(01:12:01):
got to do something every four years to keep in
that game where people take your phone calls or they
call you. And I was back in that game and
we sold a ton of records with Daughtry. So then
I came back next year and I did Jordan's Sparks
and we sold a couple million with her, and with
her she was seventeen, so I actually played guitar in
the band until I until she turned eighteen. Then I
hired a kid to take my place and we went
out with Alicia Keys. And then into the next year,

(01:12:23):
I did David Cook, which was really fun because David
was just a sweet kid. It was like tried to
make it his whole life, and all of a sudden
he was the most famous guy on the planet, and
you know, he was just like, oh what do I do?
He didn't know what to do. And I enjoyed mentoring
those guys, you know. And then the last year, I
took three idols. I had Alis and Irita, and I
had Chris Allen who won, and I had Adam Lambert

(01:12:46):
who was just a wild card, and I pretty much
took over all of SR and I had all the
idols in there, and I was running the whole thing,
and that was a crazy year. But those four years
and I was there, there was the highest rated show
in the world, I think, And and the next year
I left. The next year because all the winners were country,

(01:13:07):
and I don't know anything about country music, but it
looked like and the ratings started going down then. So
in the bullshit word of World of Hollywood, it kind
of looked like Stevie Laft and are not doing so
good now, right, you know people actually think stupid shit
like that, And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know
it is I'll ride that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
Okay. Just to be clear, you would work with the
act once they had won, or you would be there
while the television show was being shot.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Let's start early in the season and we would start
to identify who they wanted to keep, because nineteen could
keep twelve of ten of them. I don't forget what
the number was. They had contracts with all of them.
They could not decided, so it wasn't like they just
got the winner. As a matter of fact, Doctry didn't
even win. They farmed out the other ones and they

(01:13:52):
kept Doctry as an in House, and that's why they
brought in Stirling mackawin. So I would come in about
a first quarter of the series and I could go
down on set if I wanted, and I could do it.
But I hated that stuff, if you really want to
know the truth, I just thought it was like it
was like babysitting or something. It was like the TV show.

(01:14:12):
But what was good about it was I could take
people on set or I could do you know, being
seen reminds people that you got power in that town.
And so on the final the Big Idol finales, when
I could roll in backstage and you'd see anybody who's anybody,
or I'd have my idol playing at the Jingle Ball
and you know, all the heads of Disney and everybody

(01:14:34):
and their kids are backstage. You know, I had power
and everything in that town. You know, I don't know
about now, but everything back then was about perceived power,
and I had power. You know, I wouldn't have to
sell millions and millions of albums and I still have power.
You know. MC Jagger would call me on the phone.
I gave me power, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Okay, so it ends with American Idol. Would you turn
next with this power.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
I never really turned next back for the power that
I can remember, I went for and I started touring, touring.
My old catalog was doing really well in Germany and
these countries, and I kept getting tour offers. So I
just started touring a lot. I became a dad during
the year that Jordan Spark's won. You know, my son
didn't realize that Jordan Sparks used to pick him up
and sing to him. He was a baby. We used

(01:15:21):
to stop rehearsal with Adam Lambert so Adam could so
my son could play on his drum set for ten minutes.
You know. You know, it's like my son's like whatever.
You know, he didn't give a shit. Steven Tyler texts
my son and they talked about this his Skibbles commercial,
and he's just like, yeah, whatever. You know, my son
grew up in it. You know, he's got no fascination
with it or cares about it at all. But so

(01:15:43):
I started touring Europe. I'd go off and do gigs
like with Steven Tyler, with Billy Gibbons. They'd call me
and I'd come play guitar with with those guys. When
and then I was always pretty famous in Japan. So
I got a call in twenty sixteen from a guy
called Koshi Inaba and he's in a band called the Bees,

(01:16:04):
and he's the biggest selling artist in the history of Japan.
He sold over one hundred million records just in Japan.
And he was a friend and he loved my records
and I used to play on his solo albums and
we were just friends. And he calls me in twenty
sixteen and he says, I'm really burned out. I'm uninspired.
I can't write a song. I'm kind of depressed. He goes,

(01:16:25):
you think you'd want to come over, you know, and
maybe try writing some songs with me, And I'm like yeah.
So I jump on a plane, I go to Tokyo
and we start writing. And I said, let's not write
Stevie solo songs with the Koshi Nava singing. Let's not
write Koshi Nava songs with STEVEE. Sauas playing guitar, because
we kind of did that throughout our the you know,

(01:16:46):
in the nineties and stuff, you know, we did that.
I go, let's think about this, let's think about a concept.
I go, and when I was in England, in eighty
seven eighty eight, everything had this funk feel. Durand Tears
for Fears. They all had slap bass, boom boom, you know,
like it was not was the funk bass that slapped,

(01:17:08):
but it wasn't black music. It was like this pop
swore of music that kind of rocked like Duran Durant,
but it all had this synthetic synthesizer bass. It was
kind of like fun, but it wasn't funk. And I
had slapping bass, and and I go, let's let's write
songs with that groove so the girls can dance. And
I go, and let's make all the guitars sound like

(01:17:30):
the Clash. It's just just go back, and let's make
him sound raty, like we're in the Clash, because he
loved the Clash, and let's do what happened. So we
started writing songs and it was really fun, and he
started having fun. So we'd go to Nackville and we'd
worked on some songs and we'd fly to LA and
I'd have Taylor Hawkins play drums. I don't know if
you know that, but I discovered Taylor Hawkins. I'm the
guy that discovered him.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
And well, I know that, but tell my audience the story.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Okay, well well let me tell you finish Koshy. So
we finished, We do the album. I get all my
friends to play on a Taylor and I I mean,
tons of people are jamming on it and it's really
really fun and the albums it's not just songs. But
then his manager in Japan's like going, this, this is amazing.
He goes, I'm putting it out. I'm like what he goes, Yeah,

(01:18:12):
And I booked a tour in January. We're gonna go do.
It's a small tour. We're gonna do three months of
five thousand seaters. And they put the tickets on sale.
We called it a Naba Solace and it sold out
and I'm not lying every it was sold out within
three minutes. And I went over there and so I
got to put my own band together. So I hired
Stuart Zender from Jamikoy to play bass, am fiddler again

(01:18:33):
from Parliament Funkadelic, who was was not Wes and we
ever had to play synth. And Matt Sharad who I
worked with a ton who was a remixer and a
producer and he was the drummer for Beck and the
drummers for Crowded House, and I put this super band
together with me and I Naba and we went and
played and people went crazy. So we came back, took
a year off when he went back to his bad
bees because they could do, you know, ten nights at

(01:18:54):
the Tokyo Dome. And we came back and did another
album in twenty twenty, and we booked it. This time,
we booked another tour, and this time it was multiple
nights at Castle Hall, multiple nights. You know, it was
twenty thousand seaters now doing multiple nights. We sold eighty
five thousand tickets in four minutes and I go over
I shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. So I'm under

(01:19:15):
cover of Rolling Stone for the first time of my
life with me and in Aba and Covid hits. Whole
tour cancels. We rebook it for twenty twenty one. We
still can't do it. We ended up sending all the
money back for the eighty five thousand tickets. It was
a lot of money, Bob, a lot. I was like
buy a new house money. And and we haven't remade
it up yet and we're hoping maybe in twenty twenty

(01:19:37):
five I'm gonna go back, so I'll have to lose
some weight and to try to, you know, make it happen.
So yeah, that's what I've been doing. And that's big, big,
big stuff because it's multiple arenas again, and you know,
it feels good when you can sell twenty thousand tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
Now, it would appear from the outside you work with
somebody and then you don't work with them again. What
would you say to that?

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
Yeah, I mean I started doing. Wayne Kramer asked me
to come help them with a new MC five album
with Bob Ezrin, and I did it. And then d
Wayne said, let's put a band together and let's go
do do some some dates. And I'm like, I love
you wayn Kramer. I'll do whatever you want, you know.
But I was really adamant. I had thought Wayne had

(01:20:20):
put a band together with some really great musicians, guys
you know from Soundgarden and a bunch other you know
guys that you know from the eighties and nineties that
were famous guys. But they all thought the MC five
was it was just brutality and punk rock force. They

(01:20:41):
just think that because it's one of the these one
of the inventors of punk rock. They give him that credit,
but if you really listen to the MC five, they
were they were trying to be a soul band. They
were trying to be an R and B band with
distorted guitars, and they were failing miserably and creating something
completely new and original by accident. So so Wayne and

(01:21:01):
I realized that nobody was playing the music right, and
it bothered him. So him and I started going back
to the actual original masters. And I had listened to
to fred Sonicsmith's parts, and I'd listened to what Wayne
was doing. And Wayne and I would sit there with
just two guitars like kids, not even plugged in. It
was like going back to being a kid again. And
Wayne and I would go through these parts and figure

(01:21:22):
out why they worked and what made them work. And
so when we went out on that tour, we really slam.
It was amazing. I mean, people were saying, Mike Caller
and guys like there was, you know, Stevie dan Zance
was the best, one of the best shows they'd ever seen.
Definitely the best MC vibe show they had ever seen,
you know. And so I was going to go back
with Wayne. The album was getting ready to come out,

(01:21:43):
and then, as you know, Wayne passed away out of
the blue, just unannounced, fast, just like he was gone.
And but we were going out this year and we're
going to do tons of festivals and big shows. And
it was a real shame because now he's going in
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he's not here,
and you know, it's it's a bit of a crush.
But I do stick with them sometimes, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
But it's more that you decide to move on, or
is it more that they decide to move on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
I think it's me. I if I want to stick
to one thing for a long time, I do my
own thing. But I do like playing like I love
playing with you now because that is my thing. I'm
writing all the songs, you know, and I'm producing the
records with Koshi, so it is my thing. So I
could play with him, and let's face it, I'm not
gonna lie when you can go on to it and

(01:22:33):
you know your shows are automatically sold out and you
don't have that anxiety. Is there anybody here tonight? I'm
playing in Paris. Oh my god, don't tell me it's empty.
You know, those anxieties are real and when you know
your shows are all sold out and you've got a
captive audience that just worships you. I mean, it's a
lot more fun. I mean, you know, the MC five

(01:22:54):
we're playing small places, and there was MC five worshippers there,
but it wasn't like We're playing like Lollapalooza or something.
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Okay, to what degree does your mood depend on whether
people are looking for you?

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
I don't really think about that too much because I
got a lot going on. You know, I really endo
making movies and television and writing and developing television, and
I keep myself really busy. I have a really cool
company with a partner of Mohawk and native guy named
Bran Porter. Up on the Six Nations Reservation in Canada,
I became a Canadian permanent resident and after Rumble, and

(01:23:42):
I really love developing television. I love developing films because
I don't know what I'm doing and it's scary and
it's therefore it's exciting. Where in music, I kind of
feel like, you know, Bowie could call me and I
know what to do, and I know what to do,
and I really know what to do, you know, I
know what the sound should sound like. And I know

(01:24:04):
where the energy comes from. You know, I said in
my speech last week in San Diego for that big
award I got, I said, I never thought my job
as a guitar player was to play notes. I thought
my job was to move energy. And I've always felt
that way. And that's what I do when I play
with these guys. I try to create energy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:26):
You know, what's the status of these developing projects.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
I got a really badass series right now that I'm
working on with a guy called Cliff Roberts, a producet Emancipation.
He used to be a big agent, William Morris. He
manages a lot of the biggest writers and showrunners in
the business. And so John Fusco, who's one of my
favorite writers. He's Spielberg's favorite writer. You know. He did
Young Guns one and Young Guns two, and in the

(01:24:53):
Thunderheart and he did Crossroads, you know, with the Crossroads film.
That was his first movie he ever wrote. But he's
done gigantic. He's a gigantic showrunner. He did the series
Marco Polo on Netflix, and so he's the showrunner with
me and my partner writing partner's guy called Kevin Monroe,
who wrote and directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Miramax,
and he had done my son's favorite movie, Ratchet Klank.

(01:25:17):
So I got this insane team of people, and as usual,
I'm the shittiest guy in the room. I'm the stupidest
guy in the room, and that's where I want to be.
These guys are beasts, and so I'm working on that
right now or shopping that around. It's a series. It's
like a Native American Godfather or the Sopranos kind of
a thing about a family that you know, you know,

(01:25:37):
can face down another season of being on welfare on
the reservation and they discover what sovereign law means and
they learn how to create their own tobacco supplies instead
of smuggling for the big tobacco into Canada. They'd learned
how to do it themselves. And you know, it's like
the Brofmans who were who were literally bootleggers and then
became a legitimate business and became very powerful. And it's
a story about a Native group that does this. It's

(01:26:00):
called Smoke River and I hope I get to make
that series, and I hope soon because it's kind of,
you know, John Fusco said, as he said, it's a
game changer. And I got a couple more things like that.
I work with Robert Stromberg, who directed in The Lificent
But I actually grew up with Robert and Carlsbad, California.
We had rival rock bands. And then you know, Robert
did Avatar and all these other He got five Academy
Award nominations. And so I worked with Robert and and

(01:26:23):
when we work with a group, a lot of group
of Native Americans. I had a new two films that
premiered at tiff and you know, Rumble one Sun Dance,
and I got nominated for an Emmy for Rumble as well.
So I'm an Emmy loser, official Emmy loser. Well you
know what it is. And they saying that he's an
Emmy nominated producer. That just means you lost. If you
really think about it, people always say, come on, man,

(01:26:46):
it's you nominate to lose. You know, They're like feel like,
I'm like, I'm serious, and I'm like, na, Emmy loser
sounds so punk rock. I just think it's so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
Absolutely, So how do you pick up the guitar in
the first place.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
I started playing when I was and it just became easy.
Don't ask me.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
It was like, well, there must have been some inspiration.
Was there music in the house or what.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
When I was a little kid, my stepfather was in
a rock band who I recently lost contact with him
fourth grade and I recently found him in the Florida Keys.
It's crazy and we talk all the time now, but
he had a rock band, so he was introducing me
to Clapton. I was listening to Clapton as five years old.
You know, some sign Your Love was like my favorite song.
I was listening to Hendrix. I was listening to led Zeppelin,

(01:27:29):
so ironically weird when I hang out with Jimmy Page,
but I can still remember the day, being in the third,
you know, first grade or something, whenever it was listening
in good times, bad times, you know, hanging out with
playing with Steven Tyler, and I can remember being in
the back of the van and and my brother in
law and his friends are all, you know, in their
twenties playing me get your Wings into It's just it's

(01:27:51):
just all a complete mind blowing thing for me. That
you know. When I got this award last week, you
talked about Billy Gibbons, ro Robin xandervitt, Rick Nielsen and
Sammy Hagar all made their own homemade iPhone videos and
set it in and they put it into the the
the video that they played before they introduced me, and
it's like all of a sudden san Diego, like, damn you,

(01:28:12):
there's some good star power. And then Matt's arm came
down to introduce me. And so having these kind of
guys in my life that I worshiped as a kid
that actually talk to me like a peer, now, that's
to me the greatest reward of everything, better than money,
better than than anything. To me, that's just like, that's
to me is the dream. That's the real dream.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Okay, But there must have been a specific spark that said, hey,
I want to play the guitar.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
Here's what it was. I started playing guitar. It seemed
like it was coming easy to me, and I was.
I was possessed by it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
I would play three hours a day and I never
took a lesson, but a couple of friends would help
me out, teach me how to play a chord or whatever,
you know, which was really super helpful. And I just
played and I and I and I surfed and I skateboarded,
and so the way I played guitar was kind of
the way and I raced motocross, and the way I
raced motocross it was aggressive. And the way I served
was somewhat aggressive. And the way I skateboard it was aggressive.

(01:29:07):
You know. I lived in San Diego, an Oceanside done,
you know where Tony Hawk and the Flying Tomato, you know,
Sean shown White and the greatest surfer Joey Brand who
you know won the pipeline. I said, I was around
all these kind of energy, that kind of energy, and
my guitar playing felt like that same, like it all
made sense with all of that, and so I kept playing.
So then I got a band. I was in the
band and I just played vis the guitar. But I

(01:29:29):
was good. Wasn't great? It was good then that band
more when I was still in high school. All the
guys were older than me, a year two older than me,
and we became the hottest band in San Diego. I
mean we would play everywhere and it was like high
school dances and colleges and girls were screaming like We're
the Beatles. And so I told my dad I didn't

(01:29:50):
know what I was going to do with my life,
but I said, Dad, I'm pretty good at this thing,
and I go, let me give it till I'm twenty
four years old. In twenty four I haven't made it.
I'm going to join the Coast Guard because I love
the ocean, right. I'm from the beach, and I'm from
the and I worked on fishing boats and I all

(01:30:11):
want to join the coast Guard. So that's my out.
And so my dad's like, okay, Luckily, I'm luckily I
made it before the ad.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
So okay, okay. You talk about your father being in
the Marines, moving give me the narrative here. You have
a biological father, you have a stepfather. Was your biological
father still in the picture? You talk about your ex stepfather,
meaning you're broke up with your mother? What was going

(01:30:39):
on here?

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
So my parents were splitting up before I was born.
I didn't know this, of course I was born, but
my mom got pregnant with me and they stayed together.
But that only lasted I think a year or two,
maybe two, I don't know exactly, because I was, you know,
the baby my mother fell in love with the musician.

(01:30:59):
My dad. I'd moved out. My mother fell in love
with a musician, so I had she married him, and
I had him as a stepdad. But my real father
was in my life always, you know. He worked on
the marine base and he was in my life. And
it was great because my stepdad was a hippie and
my mom became a hippie and so, you know, we
learned about you know, we'd go to the Paula Indian

(01:31:19):
Reservation and they'd all everybody, all the families. We'd run
around naked, and she was like hippie shit, you know,
And I grew up in that. But my father was
a disciplined man, and he was super cool, super cool.
Not an asshole, but he he provided me with a
foundation of discipline. So when my mother and my stepfather
split up when I was four years old, I was

(01:31:40):
in fourth grade, I'm sorry. My mother went off the
deep end. She had lost a child, and you know,
and I and she went off the deep end and
she was on prescription drugs and she disappeared. And I
was a period of about four days, three days when
I was by myself at the house because my older
sister had left already too and and I was literally
by myself. I have to dressed myself and get to school.

(01:32:01):
Was awful. And my dad showed up one day to
check what are you doing? What checked on me? And
I told him, whe's your mom's I haven't seen her,
and he's get in the car. I moved. This is
in fifth grade now. I moved to Oceanside and I'm
moving with my dad. And we were like two bachelors,
and he worked three jobs. And I never went back
to live with my mom and she got it together.

(01:32:23):
She figured herself out, and I bought her a house
years later whenever he came and looaded, you know. But
I lived with my dad. My dad was really great
for me. And then my dad ended up remarrying years later.
And that's my stepmother who is still in my life.
And my mom passed away at eighty seven, and my
father passed away at eighty unfortunately he got cancer. But yeah,

(01:32:44):
so I had him both in my life. And actually
the combination of the hippie step dad and the discipline
real dad was really fantastic. It was a really fantastic
combination for me.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
Okay, who in this picture was Native American.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
My mother and my father, but not the stepfather. No, No,
he's a white guy.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
And your father's got remarried.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
He got remarried in my mom's cousin actually, and yeah,
not his cousin. Let's not get that. Let's make a
sense my mom's cousin and that caused a big ruckus
in the family. Oh my god. You know. But you know,
he identifies as Chicano because a lot of people in

(01:33:28):
the New Mexico days, especially back in the thirties and stuff,
would never want to admit to being Native American because
if you're a Native American, you were probably you know,
you were looked at as the scum of the earth,
which sounds crazy now, but it's the fact. So nobody,
nobody wanted to be a Native. You could be a
Native in those days, and if somebody raped you, or
somebody kidnapped you, or somebody killed you, it was not

(01:33:50):
priority number one to figure out where you were. And
essentially nuts to me. And I didn't know about any
of this stuff until I got older and started learning
about it. You know. So a lot of people, there's
a lot of Native people like Robert Trhillo from Metallica,
Randy Castillo, who was in Rumble from Ozzie. A lot
of US pat vegas from from uh, you know, saying

(01:34:11):
come and get your love from from Redbone. A lot
of US guys in America grew up Taboo from Black
Eyed Peas. We grew up not really knowing who we
were or a lot about our culture because we were
in this mix everybody from the New Mexico Southwest area.
We're either trying to identify as Spaniards or Mexican or Chicano,

(01:34:31):
and you know, you start to have to dig to
make sure you know what Indian you were because because
a lot of the older aunts and stuff. But deny it,
I'm not a Savage. I remember my two aunts were
arguing with my cousin Gilbert, and you know, she was
one was saying we're Apache and the end she said, no,
I'm not. I'm not a Savage. I mean and they

(01:34:51):
were like losing their minds over this stuff. So it's
weird to think that this is still an issue. Right,
So a lot of people don't know who they are.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
And then you talk about your mother going to the reservation.
Was that part of you growing up going to the reservation.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
It might have been, but to me it was just
some hippie shit. There's a bunch of hippies with long hair,
and they'd go out and play music and we all,
all the kids would swim in the river there and
Paula at the Indian restaurant, but she was not a
part of the Paula tribe. But we would go to
the Paula Indi Indian reservation all the time. Wait before
there was a casino there, and there was nothing out
there but wild dogs and a few skins and uh.

(01:35:31):
But you know, I always felt at home in Indian Country.
I didn't know a lot about it. And like I
said in Rumble, when I was losing my mind after
Rod Stewart, when I was just so full of my
own bs and I was so yeah, I was out
of my mind. Everything was tequila and parties and chicks
and rockstar shit. And Randy Castillo, who was the drummer

(01:35:53):
of Ozzie, it was like me, and it was from
New Mexico. My family's from New Mexico. And he said,
he says, I got to take you to Indian Country.
You're out of control. And I didn't know what that meant,
you know, Indian Country. And so I went with him
and we went to Santa Fe and then he took
me up to Taos, and that started me on this
path in the early nineties of balance where I would
lose my mind in La and I could go to

(01:36:15):
Indian Country and kind of just not be, not trying
to be some kind of badass rock star. I was
just I was trying to be trying to be a
human being, right, And Randy was the same way. And
then we'd go back to LA or New York or
London or whatever we need rock stars and go play
sports arenas and and that that's kind of how it was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
Okay, we hear about the plight of the Native American
on the reservation, we hear about economic issues, obesity, alcoholism,
to what degree is that something you're invested in because
your upbringing certainly was very different.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
My upbringion was super different. Like my part in my
film company, Bran Porter grew up on the Six Nations
reservation where Robbie Robertson's from, actually, but Robbie would only
spend summers there because he had a Jewish dad and
they lived in Toronto and lived a good life. But
I've got to be honest, I don't think I would
be where I am right now talking to you if
I was brought up on a reservation. There's a definite

(01:37:21):
energy that has been passed down from generation to generation
where the people are made to feel like they're worthless,
made to feel like, hey, this isn't for me. This
is maybe for them, but we don't get to do
these kind of things. So I'd be like, hey, look
at me, I did it. I remember these kids would
tell me I was doing a TV series that I

(01:37:43):
was producing and hosting in Winnipeg in two thousand and seven,
eight nine, ten or something like that. I did three
seasons of it, and the Native kids would come to
me and go, we want to do what you're doing,
but they won't let us. And I'd say, like, who
are they? Because whoever they are, they let me, you know,
and they think of about that what I said. But
I was brought up to believe that anything was possible.

(01:38:04):
I was brought up to believe that there's the King
of England has his blood is not better than my blood,
And I'm not buying any of that kind of bullshit.
And I was brought up to believe that. You know,
I don't think that he has royal blood and I
have bullshit blood, you know. I challenge all that, and
I think that Native people now are finding more strength
and there's becoming more success. But there's still a lot

(01:38:26):
of this feeling, especially on the poor reservations where you're
living on welfare, then pretty much all you're getting in
is all the food whatever they'll give you, and most
of its gmode crap and a bunch of terrible stuff
that's not good for you, you know. So there is
a lot of problems with the diabetes and obesity, bad water.
I go into Indian reservations, Bradworter and I spend our

(01:38:49):
own money and we hooked up with swear Water and
we go into Indian country, these places where they don't
have he can't drink the water, and we put in
water filtration systems in there ourselves because we can't wait
for the government any more to figure out the problems.
So we do it ourselves, and then the government guys
call us, hey, hey, what are you guys doing. It's
like what can we do to help? And it's like
we're just doing it. Either don't come and do it

(01:39:09):
with us, or we're going to do it Anyways, luckily
my partner and that and where he works on Six
Nations there were very well financed. So we're able to
if we have to spend forty thousand dollars on water
filtration systems and donate them through our Dream Catcher charity
that we do in Six Nations, you know we can.
We can get these things as we're very fortunate that way.

Speaker 1 (01:39:30):
Now in Canada they talk about the natives there. There's
been a lot of controversy Native Canadian schools and tragedies tragically.
Ip even has a song about that. What is the
difference between being a Native in Canada as opposed to
a Native in America?

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
If any Well, there's a couple of things. In Canada,
people identified with being Native and brought We're brought up
as Native. They even have these cards called status cards,
or everyone kind of has one. And then there's guys
like us whose families denied it. They didn't want you know,
they're great. My great grandpaent mom didn't want to be

(01:40:11):
sent onto the trailer tears. So if you were in
Mexican you could stay in farm in New Mexico. But
if you're an Indian, you're gonna get shipped off, you know,
so then we're not Indians. So there's a huge denial
of My one friend Brian right McLoud who wrote that encyclopedia,
told me, you guys are part of the lost Indians,
that's what they call them. They don't know who we are,
We don't know where we were. You know, we have
the search fried you know where our family came from

(01:40:33):
and how they identified and what they had to do
to survive. In Canada, their fronts, tons of programs where
you're an artist, you want to make a film, you
want to make a record, there's all these funds for
not just Native people but for their citizens. You know,
you can get funding to do all kinds of stuff

(01:40:55):
through your tax dollars. So everyone goes your taxes are high,
but you actually get a lot for tax dollars, you
know what I mean. And so that's why you see
a lot more development in the arts from the Canadian
Indigenous community. The Americans one just like here, you know
it is it's it's if you can't sell something and
make the money, then you can't you don't get money
for it. You know, there's it's a lot harder to

(01:41:19):
be successful in America. Than it is in Canada.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
What do you think about some of these Native American
shows like Smoke Signals and Reservation. Never mind the recent
Scorsese picture.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
That's funny my my friend Lily, Lily got the Academy
Award nomination for that new Scorsese picture. Marty was, actually, well,
that makes it sound like every Native American knows every
other Native American. Kind of do you kind of do
you figure out there's not a lot of us, Bob,
we kind of do you figure out who's who, especially
the people that are doing things. You know, then you

(01:41:56):
have a little bit of this thing that goes on
with gatekeepers, which I don't participate in that because I
just think that's just ridiculous, but you know I had Marty. Yeah,
wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
What gatekeepers in the Native American world?

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
You put some it happens, it's a common nature. People
have been held down for a long time. So you
empower some person and can they really allow you Remember
on the movie Out of Africa where they were trying
to put a school on for the for the African kids,
and the chief shut it down because he found out

(01:42:33):
that the kids were actually becoming smarter than the chief,
so he shut it down. Well, there's a lot of
that gatekeeper thing where oh, this girl's so popular with
her music, and so warners or give her a record label,
and she's supposed to help develop native stuff. Well she
never had a hit record herself, or he never had
to hit record themselves, So how are they supposed to
know if this guy's any good. So what they end
up doing is they work with people who worship them

(01:42:55):
and are their friends, and anybody that might be a threat,
that might be more popular better than them, maybe they
push away where I again, not that I'm not trying
to brag. I want to be the dumbest guy in
the room. I want to surround myself with the baddest
ass dudes there are. But if I surround it with you,
I'm gonna try to eat you alive. I'm gonna try
my best to eat you alive to prove that you

(01:43:16):
are the best. And otherwise I'm gonna eat you alive,
and I'm gonna get bored with you. You know, And
me and my friends do this, Phil X and I
and Richie Kotts and all those guitar player guys. We
love each other and we respect each other. But when
we get on that stage, man Philo embarrass me or
I'll try my best to like, I'm not gonna be crappy.
I'm gonna kill them, you know what I mean. It's like,
I think there's competition, but up there, instead of finding competition,

(01:43:38):
what they do sometimes is they surround themselves with people
who worship them. And that's no good for anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:43:45):
But you were talking, I cut you off about these
Indian As people say, but Native American productions Killers of
the Flower Moon smoke signals reservation. You're gonna give me
your take.

Speaker 2 (01:43:59):
On those, Yeah, I like. Okay, So Killers of the
Flower Moon, let's say. You know, obviously it's like a
powerful movie. You see the Injustice. Okay, there's another series
that's really amazing you should watch and it's called Little Bird,
and it's about how the nuns used to come in

(01:44:20):
and take the kids away because they were let's find
a better home so these kids have a better chance.
You know. They was horrible. They were doing it into
the eighties. I think, you know, they're you know, and
these things are like a victim films, you know, and
people need to know the history. So you have to
make these victim films, but non native people who are

(01:44:41):
gatekeepers that get to decide what shows get made. Oh,
you know, it's like in spinal Tap when Artie Fluffkin says, Oh,
kick my ass, it's my fault. Well, they're kind of
like that. Oh, all white people are bad. We need
to tell this story how we screwed you over, you know.
And if you really watch Rumble, Rumble the co director

(01:45:01):
Catherine Bainbridge, and they kept reaching for the negative because
they were angry, and there was negative, There was racism,
there was all this stuff. And I kept pushing for
a film about heroes. I don't want to film about victims,
and a lot of the films that get made, unfortunately,
and Rumble was the story of heroes. We really kept
the victim thing out of it. You feel the victimness

(01:45:23):
if you do it right, but you don't have to
harp on it. And we don't want to be victims,
you know, we want to be heroes. And a lot
of these films that get made now are still victims.
Oh you got your ass kicked, and it doesn't leave
you feeling like anything's better, If anything that makes you
feel like I'm trying to releaeve some guilt or some
shit if I'm non native and I don't like that.

(01:45:45):
Reservation Dogs was at least it had a lightness to
it that was fun. And the kid, the Pharaoh, the
young kid, he's got so much star power. I love him.
He's doing a film right now in England. He texted
me yesterday because, like you said, all the guys and
all us native guys to know each Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:46:03):
Prior to this moment, I only knew you in email.
I'm talking to you now. You're incredibly endearing.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Oh thank you. I mean, you talk to me.

Speaker 1 (01:46:13):
I feel like you're You're the best. You're our best friend.
We want to hang with you. You have any enemies,
anybody dislike you.

Speaker 2 (01:46:21):
A lot of people hate me because you know, some
people don't like I'm not you know. Maybe it sounds cocky,
but I try just to be confident. I try to
know who I am. I'm not usually the best diplomat,
like if somebody's you know, I had the hardest time
when we're when I was a kid, and I don't
know how you did this being in a music business.
But I go see your friend's Ben and I suck,

(01:46:42):
and I'd have to lie to them and I and
I feel like when I was lying to them, like hey, man,
you guys are great, I feel like they were looking
in my eyes and telling me you could see I'm lying.
So one day my friend Melvin Brandon Junior is from
den Rey Network, says to me, Oh, you don't lie
to them, you say, And when they say, hey, what'd
you think of the show? You say, and you guys
were up there doing it. And it got me off

(01:47:04):
the hook because it was positive. It didn't mean that
I liked them, and I didn't have to lie, you know.
So I got to tell you. You know, you print
a lot of my letters. When I write write on
some of the things you write about, which which some
some of the guys around here are like, oh, your
Bob's little little a little pal. You always post your letters,
and I'm like, yeah, I think it's cool. And then
you post my letters, man, because you know, it means

(01:47:25):
maybe I'm saying something that makes sense to some people
with some brains. You know, you don't know, you know, so,
but yeah, I get shipped sometimes because you post my letters,
and some of the people in the business, you know,
we are more. So we call doll your bob's a
little pet. I get some shit for that, just so
you know, you make it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:43):
Sound like it was all an accident, but nothing's a
fucking accident. There's a lot of desire, a lot of networking,
and somehow you do it and don't look like you
have sharp elbows. A lot of people they do it
and you go, I can see him in that, and
you get a negative feeling about him, but not from you.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
Maybe because I can actually put on the instrument deliver,
or I can write the song. And I had publishing
deals with Virgin with Polygrin. You know, you gotta do it.
You don't just get those deals. You got to deliver.
So maybe people can respect the fact that, you know
that I produced a track with Don Woz who became
the biggest producer you know, and I actually was a kid,
you know, but not like I'm the greatest. But also

(01:48:24):
I think all those a lot of people have those
desires and that drive and the push and they just
don't get lucky. I just think I got lucky. And
you know how it is if you connect, if you
fall into one thing once I did George Clinton, like,
let's just say it wasn't George Clinton. Let's say it
was David Cassidy or something, which still would have been
a job and he would have paid me, and I

(01:48:44):
could have played in Vegas. Well, that wouldn't have worked.
George Clinton had so much credibility that it was George Clinton.
You must be cool, okay. Keith Richards used to say,
you know, this is a big thing that happened. One time.
I got invited to Keith richards fiftieth birthday party before
I knew him in New York. I was in New
York City and walk in the door and it's very private,

(01:49:08):
and the first guy I see is Bernard Fowler, who's
like my brother. And Fowler looks me. He it was
blah blah blah. And then there's there's Clapton sitting there
in Naomi Campbell and you know the whole thing, you
know it is. And then I see Ivan Neville. Iven
comes up gives me a big hug. Everything's cool. Keith
Richards walks up, he shakes my hand, kind of gives

(01:49:32):
me a hug and talks to me a bit and
then he leads, and so I think I'm in. Keith
likes me I'm in because you know, if Keith don't
like you, there's nothing you can do. Man, it's gnarley,
you know. And when I was playing with Jagger, I
used to yell, Mick, tell me what Stone songs were
playing because I don't want I don't want to not
know it and play it wrong and have Keith want
to pull his knife out and stab me, you know, so,

(01:49:54):
but Keith so, Keith walks away. Later on I find
out Keith goes back to Bernard Fowler and he says,
who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool? The Fowler?
You know, he's not a hype guy. He's like, yeah,
he's cool. Later on I find out he goes to
Ivan Neville, Who the fuck is Salas? Is he cool?

(01:50:16):
Ivan never goes, yeah, he's my brother, He's cool. Then
I got invited to sit at his table and you know,
drink vodka. But you know, there's a thing about it
that when you got to get in and you got it,
you don't just get in and you can't be all bullshit,
you know what I mean. And maybe you got to
know how to fight, you know what I mean. Maybe
you got to know how to tell someone to fuck off.
You know, and not be an ass kisser, but you

(01:50:38):
got to be. You know, if you associate with the
right kind of people, you you may not get rich
or rise to the top, but you will get respect
and and and when you lose that respect, like if
I were have picked the wrong bands to play with. Okay,
I'll tell you. Richie Cootson one of my best friends,
insanely great guitar player. Early on, he joined Poison when

(01:50:59):
c c de Bill quick. Okay, that didn't turn out
so good. They wrote a few hits and then he
went on his own again. Years later, he gets a
call to audition for Trent Resnor. You're Twiggy because Tweggy
knows Richie's an incredible guitar player and incredible singer. Richie
comes in auditions for him, blows Trent Resnor doesn't want
him to come, but he comes, and he doesn't He

(01:51:20):
does it as a favorite of Twiggy. He blows Trent
Resnor's mind like he should because he's amazing. Trent Resner goes,
Oh my god, he goes, I had no idea you
were going to be this good. He goes, I want
to hire you, he goes, but I can't think of
what I'm gonna say the first time a magazine or
somebody interviews me and asks, what made you hire the

(01:51:42):
guy from poison so Richie couldn't get that gig. So
sometimes you gave, You make a wrong move and you
pay for it for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:51:52):
Wow, you're really drop in wisdom here, Stevie. We could
go on forever. Listen. You're a great guy, all incredible stories.
I could literally talk to you all afternoon. I want
to thank you for taking this time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:52:09):
Awesome, Thank you, Bob's it was a pleasure and I'm
glad I'm on your radar. Thank you until next time.

Speaker 1 (01:52:16):
This is Bob Left, Sat