Susanna Hoffs

Susanna Hoffs has a new novel, "This Bird Has Flown," and a new covers album produced by Peter Asher, "The Deep End." We talk about these two projects, growing up, the Bangles, meeting her husband and so much more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Susannah Fus, who has a new book,
This Bird Has Flown and a new album, The Deep End. Susannah,
why a book? Why? Now? Oh? I love this question. Um.

(00:28):
I've been a lifelong reader. My favorite thing is to
escape from my own thoughts and being in someone else's story.
And I love I love disappearing into a into a fiction.
And you know this is true for you know, I
think why I'm addicted to listening to songs, why I
obsessively watch movies, um, and and why I love novels.

(00:54):
And I've been reading since I was a little girl,
and it had always been kind of, um a dream
to one day write a novel. I started one in
nineteen eighty nine as the Bengals were winding down, but
then then I didn't really pursue it, you know. So

(01:15):
suddenly and I'd written, and I've co written several screenplays,
some of which have been optioned, but then they just
sort of found themselves on a shelf in some studio
in development. Hell. So, um, it was around I sort
of embarrassed to say how long the process of me
of me writing this novel has been but I'll be

(01:39):
honest with you, it's the idea really came to fruition
in twenty fifteen. I was still doing Bengals shows and
working on solo music, but it became an absolute passion.
In fact, it was almost like a psychotic addiction to
the process of writing the novel. I became completely cessed

(02:00):
and immersed in it. Let's go back a chapter. You
say you're a big reader. I hate to put people
on the spot because their mind goes blank. But what
have you read recently that you'd enjoyed? Well? I read, um, um, Well,
I read Daisy in the Six Okay, I thought so,
and I've um, oh, gosh, you put me on the spot. Here.

(02:20):
What there's all these books in my I should look
at my phone. What's in my my phone? Here? Bear
with me, because there's um I'm reading the love Songs
of W. E. B. Du Bois. Um. I just recently
read Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany. It's extraordinary and

(02:43):
I want to revisit in cold Blood. Um I just
read I revisited Brideshead, revisited um oh, this is it.
I went on a deep dive of books that were
turned into motion pictures that I loved so and I

(03:05):
went in any even further in a kind of rabbit
hole of books about teachers inspiring students, if that makes sense.
So I recently reread or recently read for the first time,
To Serve with Love by e Our Braithwait, and it's
really great the novel because a movie only can show

(03:26):
so much, you only have an hour and a half
to tell the story. I revisited Muriel Sparks, Amazing, The
Prime of Miss Jane Brody. Oh, George Saunders, Lincoln in
the Bardo. I'm glad I have my books in my phone,
So there's those. Yeah. Oh, and I recently reread About
a Boy by Nick hornby Nick hornby the great novelist

(03:50):
and also lover of music, and had the great fortune
to meet Nick a few about a month ago, and
um and get a lot of play lists from him.
He's he, like me, has an addiction to music. And
I always say music is the beginning, middle, and end
of every day, and I think that's true for Nick

(04:10):
Hornby anyway, I have like ten great playlists from him. Okay,
one step at a time. You looked at your phone
for the books you read or reading. Do you read
digitally or do you read on paper? Well, I have
to say, at age sixty four, my eyesight isn't what
it was in my teens, nor my two empties. So um, yes,

(04:33):
I have taken to reading on you know, e reader
and I have a kindle, and then I'm obsessive about audiobooks.
I love to be read too. What can I say?
Who doesn't? Okay? And a lot of people are readers

(04:54):
who are sort of you know, inner focused and don't interact,
have some social anxiety, etc. What's your personality? Well, I
love connecting. That's why my novel is is kind of
That's one of the themes of the novel. You know
where we find ourselves in this planet we call Earth,

(05:14):
and you know what, somehow, as humans, I just think
we're meant to commune with each other. I love alone
time again, disappearing into fictions of all forms, but I
also crave human connection. And I'm fortunate to have a
great husband who just did all this tech support for me,

(05:37):
and two great sons, Jackson and sam Roach, and my
parents are still with me with us and um my
brothers and my sisters in arms, the other Bengals, and
so I feel very fortunate. But yeah, I think I think.
Though it's solitary to read a novel by yourself in

(05:59):
your room, I find connection there too. Okay, let's go
back to the book. So all of a sudden you
decided to start the book about seven eight years ago,
and you were furious. Furious is the right where be
really very active? So tell us what went down there?
I think that's correct. Use, I think that's a good

(06:19):
way of saying it. I was furiously engaged, furiously writing.
So what was that like? So I it took me
a while before I sat down and started the first sentence.
That is quite different from what the actual first sentence
now that you read if you buy the book. But

(06:39):
I was intrigued with a couple of books that I
had listened to the audio book, and in both cases
I had read and reread these two novels. One was
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The other was Rebecca by
Daphne de Mourier, and I was intrigued with the themes.

(07:00):
They both have this sort of gothic setting. It's both
In both cases, the protagonist is a person who feels
somewhat out of their element in a kind of Gothic setting.
I set my book in Oxford. The male love interest
is an Oxford professor. He's nothing like mister Rochester in

(07:22):
Jane Eyre because he's not twice my Jane's my character
Jane's age, nor is he rich or arrogant. But I
felt Rochester, if I was going to use that as inspiration,
was due for a little bit of an overhaul as
a character that a character like my Jane start whatever
fancy being involved with. And in Rebecca, interestingly, the protagonist

(07:49):
is unnamed. Rebecca is the name of Max de Winter,
the man that she marries and then moves to to
what was it Thornfield Hall? I think it was called Yeah, no, Yes,
I might have mixed up the names of the mansions

(08:10):
that these women find themselves in, But I just like
the themes that there are ghosts that haunt these two
women and sort of threaten whatever it is, their sense
of trust in their relationships. And you know, in some
ways love is as much about trust as anything else.

(08:30):
You know, you take a leap of faith when you
decide to be with someone in an intimate way, and
I just think, yeah, I think that those themes resonated
for me. I'm happy to say that I've been with
Jay for thirty years, so obviously we trust each other.
But when when I'm writing fiction, I you know, you're

(08:51):
a story. Isn't that interesting if there's not some conflict
or peril or predicament, you know? So I wanted to
that sort of theme to be one of the things
that the character is grappling with. Can she trust him?
Can she trust herself? Tell us more about trusting yourself? Well,

(09:14):
I think for my character, we find her descending an elevator,
kind of tarted up in what she thinks is the
expected costume. Ten years after she wore that costume to
perform her her song, which was she really only had
one hit song at a bachelor party. She's at a
very low point in her life. She's been dumped and

(09:37):
cheated on. She's years out from when she had this
hit song. She put out an album following the hit
song that nobody really cared about. And yeah, she's she's
trying to figure out her life really and whether her

(09:59):
making music matters to anyone beside herself besides herself. So
I mean, I know, I know that I had a
lot of really great luck and in the eighties, but
you know, I do relate to that feeling of growing older.
And I mean there used to be this idea that

(10:21):
pop stars there are no you can't be a pop
star in your thirties. Even I don't know if that's
still true. What do you think, Bob. That's a much
longer discussion because anything's possible. But by the same token,
in the Bengals heyday at MTV, everybody knew you if
you were a star. Everybody knows the Bengals hits. Today,

(10:43):
a record can be number one and nobody knows it,
irrelevant of the age of the person. So people can
be a little older. But it's not like it used
to be. No, I mean, think how young the Beatles
were when they started out, Like I think I remember.
It's something that I haven't really reflected on till recently,

(11:04):
even even for anyone in show biz. You know, there
is a sort of period where I noticed that a
lot of the winners of Best Supporting Actress or Best
Actress are often like around twenty seven, twenty eight years old.
I have not done the map. I have not I
don't have hard facts on this, but yeah, it's just

(11:28):
interesting and I think maybe I don't know, it's probably
true for any gender, but I think my character for
sure feels like at thirty three and with being down
on her luck in the music business, I feel like
she's ready to pack it in, like who's going to

(11:48):
want some thirty thirty something, you know, one hit? Wonder
like who's going to care? So I kind of I
was able to write that because even though, as I said,
I'm so grateful for the success that I've had, it
doesn't mean I haven't been disappointed in making music that
doesn't necessarily find its audience. Wow. Just going back to

(12:12):
something you said earlier about the Beatles. One of the
things it's dune me about the Beatles and Jackson Brown
being another example, they were so wise at a young age.
Now you listen to those records today and you go,
how did they know all that? I know that's so true.
I mean, the Beatles were so young and Jackson Brown
was so there's so much wisdom and sort of philosophical

(12:37):
you know, badass road for lack of a better word,
going on in that young man's mind to be able
to do those early records, it's extraordinary. So you're having
these thoughts now of your peak and pop dam being
in the past. Is it something a feeling that's just

(12:57):
started now or did it start some time in the past. Well,
I look at myself when I was I can find
videos and whatnot of myself at age I guess thirty
one or two, when I was embarking on a solo

(13:19):
career and my first solo record came out on Columbia,
and I guess I wasn't too concerned at that age.
But as the years ticked by, and I was so
fortunate to make three covers records with Matthew Sweet and
I and I have a little yeah sometimes I lately
I've been questioning the idea of like a covers record

(13:44):
versus a not a record of original songs, because I
was thinking, like I'm digressing here, sorry, POSI is a
spice of life, Go forward, Okay, there we go. I
was realizing that I and you you probably could correct
me if I'm wrong, because you know so much about
music history. But I don't think Elvis ever wrote a

(14:04):
single song. And he's Elvis. We know him and love him,
But do we say, oh, when you pick up an
Elvis record, do you go, this is such a great
covers record that Elvis did do I don't think I've
ever heard anybody characterize those records as cover records, Nor
do I think that Frank Sinatra, not that he's in
the pop side of things, those were all covers too,

(14:27):
am I right? Yeah, so there is suddenly, and I
do feel very proud of the songs that I've written,
co written almost always, if not always. Yeah, I mean
that's the thing about this novel, As they said, maybe
earlier or not, it's one of the first things I've

(14:48):
ever done alone, completely alone. But yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. Back to your question, I might have drifted. No, Okay,
let's say you're out and about outside your own neighborhood
where you're known. Do people recognize you? No, Once in

(15:10):
a blue moon. Once in a blue moon. What popped
into my mind was that, I think, because of Instagram
or something, a woman was at the supermarket and with
her two little kids, and I think that one of
the kids recognized me from somehow seeing something. But yeah, no,

(15:32):
I'm not recognized. I don't think. No. But in the
heyday of the Bengal success. You were recognized, right, you know,
I don't. I don't have a lot of memories of that.
I think that we kind of when not on stage,
we were kind of we mostly disappeared under the radar somehow.

(15:55):
That was not something that happened that much. I don't
have memories. It was certainly not like what you see
in the movies with in Beatles movies, with being chased
or anything like that. It was nothing like that now.
I mean, we had wonderful fans, and we had a
fusive fans, but um, yeah, no, I don't. I don't

(16:18):
remember us being unless we were together. I don't that
that would happen. If we were in a hotel and something,
some people would recognize us, but often not more often
than not. Well, is there a sense of loss from
what you had and the way it was and the
way it is now? No, I mean I can really

(16:39):
safely say that was a really intense decade of having
met the Peterson's in eighty one and decided that very night,
um that we would be a band. I've always described
it as we may as well run off that that
that next day or that evening to Vegas and gotten

(17:00):
married in an Elvis chapel because it was that fast
and that kind of impulsive. That's the best word I
have for it. You know. Obviously, Vicky and Debbie had
grown up together and they already had been playing in bands.
My only band experience was in a duo with David Roeback,
who went on to form Mazzy Star, and that was

(17:22):
our sound. Our sound was what you know, what he
ended up doing with Hope sandoval In, but that was
sort of the vibe of it. And Vicky and Debbie
were seasoned, you know, high school band kind of thing,
so they taught me a thing or two. And I
can still remember. I was living in the garage, the
converted garage of my parents' house, and they had brought

(17:45):
microphones and I went up to this foreign thing and
I went like, I blew on the microphone. They just
started laughing, like she's so green, she knows nothing, because
I mean, I really didn't know anything about performing live
because everything David Rebeck and I did was just make
recordings in the apartment where we were living in. So

(18:06):
I was very unseasoned when it came to performing. So
I soon found out what it was like to Carter
gear around and hope that anybody showed up at these
kind of out of the way gigs that we had
initially in La Okay, if we go back to that heyday,
you didn't write every song, hit song and the Bengals

(18:31):
and the but the Bengals only had most of the
albums relatively successful. So my question is, how's your royalty situation?
That's so interesting? Um, I don't really think about it
that much. I assume somebody will tell me. I mean,

(18:53):
we get a lot of licensing requests, which always makes
me happy, not because of the money part, um, really
mostly because they're they're those songs are staying alive, so
to speak, in when they're placed in movies, and I
love I love when someone wants to use um one

(19:13):
of our songs in a movie. So um, that's it's
more like the idea that the music is still relevant.
I mean, it is to me, but it always makes
me smile that, you know, people still want to listen
to the songs um and or have them as part

(19:34):
of another work of art, you know, within a movie
or a television show. So I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Could you live on the income from the Bengals. Well,
oh yeah, no, I mean, I don't know, because I've
had this new career as a novelist, and also Universal
Pictures bought the books the book rights to my novel

(19:58):
and employed me to write the screenplay. And I'm happy
to say that I delivered the screenplay just very recently.
So I'm actually making in my sixties, actually more money
than I think I made as a musician. But maybe
that makes sense. The music business has always been hard

(20:20):
to figure out. It's a complicate. The way everything works
in the music business is complicated. I feel slightly ghost
talking that way though, about how surprising it was that
I had this other career. But anyway, so let's go

(20:42):
back to the book. You attempted a novel in the
last century. What literally inspired you to write this time?
Just a passion for books, for fiction, and just a
genuine passion as a reader myself and I had always
wanted to. And I was sitting there with my kids

(21:03):
and Jay one day on the heels of a screenplay
that I had just co written for Warner Brothers, of
all things, and it looked like it was just going
to be shelved. And I'd had this wonderful collaboration with
a guy named Larry Stuckey writing this kind of musical.

(21:24):
It was a musical movie. And I thought, what now?
And my kid, my older kid, Jackson, said, Mom, you've
always wanted to write in a novel. What are you
waiting for? And I said, what am I waiting for?
And then he kind of prodded me again. I started
to craft the story, as I told you, sort of
the themes and the story and the character might be it.

(21:45):
Should she be in showbiz? Should she be? It took
me a while to comerade. I originally thought maybe she'd
be an actress, and I thought, well, I know music,
I know what that feels like. I think I could
imbue the story and the character with with really rich
conflict and predicament because I've I've been there, done that.

(22:07):
So and then I just I just He said, about
a week later, stop talking about your story and just start,
and he like gave me this edict and I sort
of said and he said He even went on to
detail it. He said, Mom, I want you to wake
up tomorrow morning, open your computer, stare at that bank

(22:28):
blank page, and just start writing. And I was like done,
I'm going to do it. And I did, and I
sat down. I had no idea. My fingers just automatically typed.
And the first line was not the first line that
you see in the in the final novel, but it
was a first. It was a start. I wrote about
two pages and I went, Okay, I'm going to force

(22:49):
myself to read it to my family. I invited my
even my parents over. I wanted to know that I
had done it. It was like I planted my flag
in the sand and they were all and I wasn't
going to chicken out and I wasn't gonna you know,
I was going to make good on my promise. And
that was it. That was the beginning, and I never
looked back. How old was your son when he implored

(23:10):
you to do this? Okay, so it was I'm admitting
how long ago was It was twenty fifteen, so he
was twenty okay, so an adult. So you're talking about
having the story before you wrote. To what degree was
the story fleshed out before you put your fingers to keyboard.
It wasn't fleshed out much at all. Really, I knew

(23:34):
I basically because I wrote a first person, narrated story.
What would happen would be I would almost disappear, I
would disappear out of myself, even though I was sort
of the god of her, you know, I was, I
was puppeting her, but I would just let her go
in my imagination and Jane start would just start talking.

(23:59):
And I found that she had a voice, and she
was sassy, and she was emotional, and she was occasionally unhinged,
but also a smart young lady, a smart thirty something girl.
She has tremendous compassion and empathy for other people. She's

(24:20):
a good person. And that mattered to me that the
characters that I wanted to fall in love, that they
though they have many flaws as all of us have,
that they actually were goodhearted human beings. And I wanted
her to go through her paces and her struggles, but

(24:41):
at the end of the day, I wanted I hoped
that she would find love and connection in her life.
So that was kind of those were important things. And
all of the characters started to just talk to me.
I know it was kind of a form of psychosis.
Maybe I don't know. I've never asked other is about it,
but um, you kind of you kind of just hear

(25:06):
voices in your head tell that they would, they would
narrate their thoughts. And also, actually, I'm looking over here
at my phone. This is my new phone. I had
an old, older phone when I was writing the book.
I would just try to bottle what they were saying immediately,
so I had I would wake up in the middle
of the night. I always kept a pen and pad

(25:27):
by the bed during the day. If my characters start
talking to me, I would I would. I learned the
hard way. Don't assume this great thing that they said
you're going to remember. I would just capture it on
my phone. I would text myself or email myself at
thousands of texts and emails to myself. Okay, they're different

(25:49):
styles of writing. Some people plot it all out and
then lay it all down. One of the things I
love about writing is you never know where you're really
going in your surprise, did you learn things without even
realizing and you look at the paper, what was your
experience it was? It was kind of similar to that. Um,

(26:09):
I didn't have it all plotted out, and I wonder
if I probably should have. But even in the eleventh hour,
I remember I was sitting there about to do send
my editor and this is cut to years later, Little
Brown and we you know, wants the book. I take

(26:30):
their offer. I have finally an actual editor. I commune
with her. Revisions happen. But at the eleventh hour I
was I had a sudden thought, well, actually, Jay, Jay
took a look at at a little thing that I did.
I asked for him to clap eyes on something in

(26:53):
the in the eleventh hour, and he said, it's repetitive.
He gave me the golden nugget and I didn't really
want to hear it. I mean, I was due to
hit send on this draft. It was really right, like
the final thing. And apart from catching typos or something
like that that they sometimes they have people that because

(27:15):
you read these sentences over and over again, you stop,
you stop seeing a typo. But I sat there and
I did this revision and my hands were kind of shaking,
and it was like an emotional part of the book,
and I knew that it was working because I was
crying a little bit for Jane. I was crying tears
of anxiety and tears of joy all mixed together. And

(27:37):
I thought, okay, yeah, if I whenever I'm triggered like that,
it means something, and then I just hit send and
then that's what That's what ended up being in that spot.
It was really eleventh hour. Okay, So the first draft
took I mean yeah, first run a completion to Cowlong

(27:59):
several years, several years. I didn't. I had one friend.
It was very solitary. But I had my best childhood
friend who was going through some hard times and I
had this behemoth draft. It's like this thick. It had
a whole section that's not in the book anymore. But
she is a lover of fiction and it was something

(28:21):
we had shared as kids. But we were always talking
about what books were reading. And she she's an aspiring
writer herself. She would schlep over to my house and
she just wanted me to read to her. So I said,
well you, I'll read you my book. She's I said,
it's not finished, it's this is the current draft. Said go,

(28:43):
and she would come over and I would read it
aloud and act out the parts as best that I could,
and she was It was like a It was like
a healing thing for her to just to be read to.
And I needed to say the words out loud. I
don't know if novelists all do this, but it's important
to say the words out loud to see if the

(29:03):
dialogue feels right and to see if it makes sense.
So I don't know if everybody does it, but the
fact that my friend wanted me to read her my
early draft, I think I learned a lot from that, actually,
And what do you think you learned? Well? I learned
that the story was affecting her, which was very important.

(29:27):
I learned that this giant section of the book needed
not to be in the book, that it was just
something that I had written as an exploration. And I
love it and I want to I want to rescue
it and resurrect it for my next book because it
was really fun. One of the characters, which is the

(29:50):
character of Alfie, figured prominently in it. But yeah, I
learned a heck of a lot. The act of reading
aloud was useful, and I ended up reading my audio
book myself. I knew that I had to. I knew
that no one else would understand the inflection, and quite

(30:15):
as I told you, I hear the voices in my head,
so I did my best to read them as I
heard them. Except then I found this, I found myself
at this moment where it's like, I'm not good at
British accents and there's like five different kind of British
accents in my book. And the Jane Eyre that had
blown my mind was read by a wonderful British actress

(30:36):
named Juliette Stevenson. So so many of my dreams came true,
like in this process because I started to I had
listened to Juliet read to me some of my favorite books,
not just Jane Eyre, but there's a book by Sarah Waters,
a wonderful Irish novelist called The Paying Guests. And I

(30:56):
had studied certain books, certain books while while I was reading.
I want to say, whilst I was reading, I would
reread certain books over and over and over again, and
they just were like it was like a tutorial for me.
And so I reached out to every single person I

(31:18):
knew who might know Juliet Stevenson to see if she
would do the British voices in my audiobook. And guess what,
I just checked audible dot com wait wait for it,
and she's listed. She did it. I found out that
she did it, but also to see it, I can't
find it on here, but to see it on listed

(31:38):
on my Audible for my book narrated by Susannah Hoffs
and Juliet Stevenson. Wow, dream come true. M. We live
in a society where most people can't even complete things.
How did you keep yourself going over a two year process?
Well it was actually more than two years, but yes,

(32:00):
how did I keep myself going? Just the passion to
do it? It was escapist for me, the writing you
mean in particular, yes, yeah, um, wanting to hang out
with my characters. M. Music really really really triggered all
these It was like the juice. It was like knocking

(32:23):
back a whiskey if that's your thing. Like I would
just get like excited music. And that's why I posted
the playlist of the book on my Spotify Spotify people
go check it out, but also, um, and check out
my new music on Spotify. Sorry, it's so hard to

(32:45):
connect with the music side of things right now, but UM,
I hope that that will happen. But yeah, I'm just
looking at my my Spotify posted the playlist on there
and most of the chapter headings, not all, but when
whenever I could use a song title as a chop
as a chapter heading I did for music Lovers. Okay,

(33:08):
so you finished the book? To what degree did you rewrite?
Some people the original is just you know, code hangers
where they hang everything. I'm the opposite. It's pretty close
to done when I finished the first draft. What was
your experience, Well, there were there were so many drafts
that leading up to the to the draft that my

(33:30):
my best friend who's a novelist, Margaret, stole Pride from
my reticent grasp I guess, I would say. And she
read it very quickly and said, I don't know, said
a lot of really nice things and that she was
extremely moved by it, and she's she insisted I get

(33:51):
it to a literary agent asap. And I said, oh, well,
do you have someone in mind? And she said, well,
I think my agent, Sarah Burn would love it. And
so on my sixtieth birthday, when it was pissing down
rain in La, I was due to have lunch with
Belinda Carlyle, who I love from the Go Gos, a

(34:13):
Bengal and a Go Go had planned lunch and a
kind of a birthday lunch for me, and I asked
my son, Jackson, the same kid of mine that insisted
I write the novel and all that. He said, Mom,
I'll drive it to FedEx. I was like, that's the
best birthday present a gal ever got. Thank you. And
so Sarah got the manuscript the next day. We did

(34:36):
an overnight. She read it very quickly. I was at
a friend's house. This is pre pandemic, and he had
a little movie night thing on Sundays. I tried to
put it out of my mind that Sarah was reading
my manuscript. And I just sat down with everybody and
they just put on the movie that we were watching.

(34:58):
When I had the stink or they were just about
to turn on the movie, the instinct, Well, maybe I
should check my email, And there was the email from
Sarah saying, I'm actually near you in La. I flew
in from New York. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow?
And I was actually I couldn't because I was recording

(35:18):
my Bright Lights record. At that point I had started
piecing together recording session. Sorry, this is a rambling story,
Keep going, keep going. But I couldn't meet with her.
So she said, I said, but I'm due to come
to New York in a couple of weeks, and she said, great,
let's meet at my office. So Jay and I had

(35:39):
planned this trip to New York. I get there. I
actually wore a suit and I walked from where we
were staying in Midtown to Sarah Burne's office and I
kind of cried a little bit on the way. There
was very cold, because I thought, I'm really, this is
really happening. I'm meeting a literary agent in New York

(36:01):
City at her office. And then she took me out
to lunch. I met the other her cohort at the office.
They were amazing. One of them, David Gerner, it's the
Gern Company, said I love Hero Takes a Fall. I
was like, check, you had me at Hello. It was like,
what you know that song? Nobody mentions that song? And

(36:22):
then um, Sarah at Burns and I went to the
restaurant where the literary where the book people did the
book community gather their watering hole. I was dying. I
was just dying. It was so awesome. And we talked
about the book and she told me which things she
loved the most and which things that you know, just

(36:45):
we just started the conversation and it just went from there. Yeah,
and then eventually we you know, we we got a
Little Brown picked up the book anyway, So did she
say at that first meeting she wanted to do it? Oh? Yeah,
I mean she wanted to meet me. Even before that,
she wanted to she was going to stay in La

(37:07):
maybe another day because she's based in New York to
meet me. So she was very enthusiastic right from the
get go. And who knew my friend Margaret. I mean
she just I was so afraid to share the book
with anybody. It was such a it was such a
blissful journey solo. But I just wasn't. I just kept

(37:30):
wanting to make it better and better, and you know,
I don't know, I was a little resistant. And how
did it end up at Little Brown? Well, so Sarah
then finally came the day where I worked on some revisions.
And Sarah, because she had edited The Lovely Bones and
many other books and came from editing, had just beautiful

(37:51):
ideas and suggestions. At one point, my book was all
in present tense, for example, and there was a moment
where she suggested trying past tense and I'm like, okay,
you know, and I did. So there was a lot
of learning on it because my friend Margaret's and novelists.
She read the book a lot of times for me, Sarah,

(38:13):
I just had a few good compadres early on after
years of you know, hammering away at it. So then
it came time, She's like, we're ready. I sent in
a draft. I worked really hard on it. It was
like I would send these drafts at like eleven fifty
nine PM when they were due for her to wake

(38:35):
up to the draft, you know that she needed from me.
And so she said, we're ready, and she's like, I'm
I'm going to go out to publishing houses and she said,
don't be alarmed if we don't hear anything for it.
They take they need to read it and they sometimes
take a little bit of time people traveling. I was like, okay,
I'm I'm gonna be so calm. I'm taking this advice

(38:58):
from you. And like about Thursday or Wednesday of that
day of that week, while I was waiting, I couldn't
help it, and I called Sarah and I said, I'm
just calling, just calling. I hope everything's okay. I know
I'm supposed to be tuning all of this out, but
I am admitting to you that I'm just kind of

(39:19):
pacing around aimlessly in my house, wringing my hands and UM, yeah,
just let me know if you hear anything. And then
sure enough, the beginning of the following week, she was
starting to get the reads were in and she was
starting to get a lot of interest. And then there

(39:39):
was a Right around that time, I got a text
from her saying that the incredible editor Judy Klain, who
had edited I mean so many books Julie and Julia, well,
we could look it up. I'm you know, where'd you
go Bernadette for examp couple incredible books. She was reading

(40:04):
it and my friend Margaret and I were having coffee,
and Margaret started crying. She goes, do you know about
Judy Claine? I said, I know nothing. I know the
music business, I don't know the book business. I don't
know who the people at the book business are. And
she said she was so happy for me that Judy
was reading them and really enjoying the book. So it

(40:27):
turned out that a wonderful young editor, Helen O'Hare at
Judy shared the book with Helen and said, I think
this might be up your alley, and then Helen read it,
and then things were likely went really really fast. In fact,
they made me a preemptive offer, and it actually had
a ticking clock on it, and I just Sarah Burns

(40:52):
happened to fly in from New York that day and
we just I had to come to a decision before
it was like five pm LA time, eight pm New
York time. I had to say yes or no. And
I said yes, okay? And how long from that verbalization

(41:18):
of yes until the book came out? So that would
have been May of twenty twenty one, So we were
right in the midst of the pandemic. And so now
the book is coming out, and I was told that
it would take way longer than one expects. Yeah. So yeah,

(41:40):
So they got the book around that time. So May
of twenty twenty one. I did revisions, but they already
knew bye bye bye. A year later it had been
any revisions that had done had apart from odd type
post that snuck their way through. Um, it was pretty

(42:04):
much done. But then there's that build up to pub date,
you know, and they and they said pub date would
be uh, it's just coming up April fourth, twenty twenty three.
There's a long journey for books. There's and there's kind
of the way that they set it up. Yeah, so
it's good because it gave me a chance to um

(42:25):
read the audio book and a lot of other things.
There was a lot of steps in the pre promotion.
There was quite a bit of pre promotion, some of
it in house with Little Brown. Okay, can you tell
us more about external pre promotion and how the whole
process of promotion uh looks visa v. The music business? Well,

(42:48):
I mean, then then I met the wonderful Nicole Dewey
and Carla who you know that because it was Carla
I had met on the Bright Lights record through my
managers Russell Carter and Kathy Lyons and Adrian Carter that
the team there at ar camp, and so I already

(43:11):
was just so happy to be to be united with
Carla because she has such a great love of music.
And actually I insisted she read She's I don't know
if Carlo's listening her. If she's not, she'll hear this
on the podcast if it stays in. But I insisted
that Carla read John Updike's Couples, which is one of

(43:32):
my favorite books. So even even when I first Yeah,
so I'm digressing, I'm all over the place here, but yeah,
so what was your question again, sorry, any more coffee.
It was precisely what you wanted to know. The timeline.
Two things. The process of pre promotion, I know, like
if you go on Amazon and these other places, books

(43:55):
are sent to people pre publishing day, trying to build
a buzz. Oh yeah. And I was also interested in
the process your experience relatives your experience of promoting music. Okay, yeah,
So the process with books is that they send out galleys,
so they're not the final, final, final, final version. But
um and and there's different aspects to it, like there's

(44:18):
a there's a tradition with books to get blurbs from blurbs,
quotes from other novelists. So um, that started to happen,
and there was some element of having to write letters
to people. Um and and then I was so happy
when um Tom Perata, who I worship his novels, and

(44:43):
had the great fortune to meet him years back when
I was on the road with Matthew Sweet doing our
covers records, and um he came to He and his
wife Mary came to a few of the shows and
and so Tom read my manus script. At that point,
it was still the printed out pages nothing fancy or

(45:04):
bound early reading copy or anything like that. Not before
the galleys. He read a version on a coast to
coast flight from LA to New York, which is really
fitting for the story. If you've read the book, there's
a plane scene that factors really heavily in it, and
he really loved it, and he stepped right up and

(45:25):
wrote the most incredible blurb. I also shared it with
other novelist friends like Helen Fielding, who's written the wonderful
Bridget Jones books and is really a wonderful friend and writer.
And then then I would reach out to other people,
and Little Brown had some people that they thought would

(45:46):
would be interested in the book as well who's stepped
up and took the time to read it and to
you know, put a little stamp of endorsement with a
blurb of what they liked about it. So there was that.
It was a busy time in the beginning of doing
interviews and starting to think about coming out of my

(46:08):
my hell my not my hell my, my whole, my
cloistered life, pandemic life, being just sitting in a little
room writing all the time, to come out and be
more part of engaging with the outside world with getting
feedback and so on. Okay, mentioned Tom Parada. Did you
ever read his book to Wishbones? Oh? Yeah. In fact,

(46:30):
I just did a piece for the I just did
a by the book for the New York Times, which
is a running piece where they talked to novelists and
about you know, they post a set of questions, and um,
there was one of the questions I'm paraphrasing here about
what books or what authors who write about music? Um,

(46:53):
do you love and and and the Wishbones was? I mean,
I think I've read every every Tom Parata book, but
I really loved reading The Wishbones because anyone who's ever
started a band, you know, understands that story. Okay, how
did the book end up at Universal? Okay? So um.

(47:17):
Early on in the process, Sarah Burns connected me with
someone who happened to be a friend. And she didn't
realize that Sylvie rabina who's who reps Tom Parata. As
it happens, she's their agent. And I went to high
school with Sylvie Rabineau's husband, Steve Rabinou. In fact, I

(47:38):
think my first boy crush was on Steve, and the
first time I ever went on a date with anybody.
I was very late. Bloomer was with Steve and we
went to I think it was Alice's restaurant in Westwood.
It was, it was, it was. So it's so funny
that I've known him all these years and I have
this sort of awkward first date story. But so Sylvie

(48:01):
read read a draft of the book and said, oh,
I want to rep this for a movie adaptation, a
film adaptation. So early on there was this idea of
a film adaptation, which made sense to me because it
was really like writing the book was like watching the
movie of the book. It was just an inside my

(48:21):
brain is like a screen would come down and I'd
see the characters and then I'd just like write what
they were saying and where they were and what their
expressions were, etc. So it did make sense to me,
and it was like deep a deep down dream beyond
writing the novel that there would be a film adaptation
of it, because I mean, especially after all the years

(48:44):
writing writing screenplays, co writing screenplays with people, but wondering
if anything would ever happen. So yeah, So now then
Liza Chasin and Bruno Pop and Drea teamed up their
incredible movie producers, women that I've known through Jay. And
then um, I started to do a bunch of zooms.

(49:06):
It was still all zooms, as it still is to
some extent, and not not in person meetings, and I
met with all kinds of streaming you know, Netflix, different,
I don't want to name all the names, but and
then then, um, one day I got my list of
who I was zooming with and it was Eric Buyers

(49:26):
at Universal. Jay walked in the door and he said,
I said, Jay, guess who I'm zooming with today Universal Pictures,
and it's Eric Buyers. And he just stopped in his
tracks and he said, Eric Buyers and Universal, those those
are my favorite that that is, those are my favorites.
You know that Eric is my favorite executive in all

(49:49):
of Hollywood. I probably shouldn't say these things because I'm
sure he loves other ones too, but he just and
then he said something like, wait, Eric Buyers read your book,
said apparently, And then I zoomed with him and Liza
and Bruna and it was just again it was like
little Brown. They just were like, boom, We're in. So,

(50:10):
you know, sometimes it's like I met Janna blind date.
Maybe it was that kind of thing. I'd just been
lucky that way. When the chemistry's there, it's just as there. Okay,
tell me about being a late bloomer. A late bloomer,
Oh you mean in love? Yes, Okay, Well I was

(50:31):
because I don't know, I was one of those kids
who just was a late bloomer. I just, you know,
right when everybody else was turning into like sex goddesses
in high school, I still was like sneaking in on
the kids tickets at the movie theaters. Remember the kids
tickets of course, So you know, I mean it's I

(50:57):
was surprised when the Bengals thing happened that I somehow
cast off my like the girl on the schoolyard who
looked like she was in a couple grades back, you know,
like not because of her intelligence, but because she just
looked really tiny. Um, I'm a small Jewish woman. What

(51:18):
could I say? Not that being Judaish has anything to
do with it, But my identity was not. I was
not like if you go to school, high school at
Pali High, it's like fast Times at Ridgemont High. Like
there's the cool kids and then there's like the bookish kids,
or like the music drama kids that are in this
little subset. I was in the music drama kids, but

(51:40):
I wasn't. I wasn't a cool kid. I wasn't a
surfer girl. That's that's what it was back then. So
what was your experience in college? Well, that just broke
open all the doors, didn't it. I mean, I go
up to UC Berkeley, and I flew up there by myself.
There it's the seventies. Nobody's parents came and unpacked their

(52:04):
betting for them. It was like, here's your plane ticket.
I flew up, I land in Oakland, I get off
the thing. I have this giant Duffel bag. I get
off the plane and I get to take the bus
to Berkeley, and I'm literally on Telegraph Avenue. Have there's
no iPhones, there's no map Quest, there's no you know.

(52:27):
I just dragged this Duffel bag towards the dorm and
I'm like immediately in love with Berkeley. I'm like the
seventies hippie chicken me was going crazy. All these bookstores,
all these cool coffee houses. But I am am dragging
this thing that was too heavy. And suddenly these two

(52:50):
guys come over and say, can we help you with that,
and I'm like looking over my shoulder, like you mean me,
and they're like, yeah, yeah, you're struggling with that duffel bag.
And I thought, they don't know me. They don't know that.
They don't know the me I think of myself from
high school. They don't know that. So I went, oh, why, yes,

(53:13):
you can help me, and they dried. They took my
bag into the dorm and helped me, and I thought,
I had I can start, I can start fresh. Yeah
it was weird, and did you continue down that path
of being a different person, Well, it wasn't. It was
an invitation to be this other person and to realize

(53:36):
that the slate was blank and I could, yeah, I
could start this chapter, like really turned the page and
start this new chapter. And you know, Berkeley was so bohemian,
and you know, it wasn't like my high school was

(53:57):
one of those sort of giant kind of I don't know,
high school was hard. Yeah I did. Let's just say
that it was the beginning of a brand new chapter.
And I don't want to say a new me, but
a new confidence in being me. That's one way to
put it. And tell me the circumstances of the blind

(54:21):
date with Jay oh Okay cut through later later, later, later.
It was November twenty second, nineteen ninety one. I had
been yet again working on a creative writing project with
my boyfriend at the time, Donovan Leech, who was the

(54:41):
son of or my ex boyfriend. Sorry, of course I
wouldn't be going on. We had already broken up, but
we were still friends and still are. So Donovan leached
the son of the singer Donovan, and a guy named
Mark Stern, and I don't remember how I was connected
to Mark, but we were writing sort of a twenty something,

(55:04):
like a melrose Place thing before Melrose Place. It was
a kind of a take on the series thirty something
that I loved. Edswick and Marshall Herskovitz, who I got
to know over the years too, had written it. And anyway,

(55:25):
Mark Stern, I said, who, who can you invite me
to a party? I'm single, I don't know how to date.
This is before apps anyway, not that I would have
used apps maybe, I don't know. That wasn't something that
was available to people then. It was more like word
of mouth. And he said, well, I know this film

(55:47):
professor at USC who has written some stuff at our company.
He's a screenwriter, but his sort of day job is
he teaches at USC and I went, film person, film professor,
not rock star or not I mean, not person from
the music business, not person exactly. Not an actor or

(56:10):
not a sorry i'm babbling. Not an actor, not a musician.
This sounds good because I like academics, and I like academias.
So I get. I'm told where the appointed restaurant is
and what time to be there, and I show up.
I go up to the host as she said, oh,

(56:34):
because it was meant to be a dinner party, let
me just put it that way. I'm sorry, a more coffee.
It wasn't a one on one date. I didn't want
to go on a one on one date. I wanted
to just be invited to it, like a dinner party
of some sort, because I didn't want the pressure of
it a single date. So I she said, oh, the
first guest is here, and she points just as Jay

(56:57):
is sitting at the bar and the chairs wheels around,
and I like, look at him for one second, and
I don't know why I thought this, but I thought
he looks kind and he looks trustworthy. Ding ding to
both those boxes. It was like, those are two qualities
that I just really want in a person. So then

(57:19):
he walks me with the hostess, walks us to the table.
Were the first ones there, and suddenly I feel this
strange feeling of someone helping me with my jacket, and
even though this is nineteen ninety one, I'm thinking, wait,
what's happening. He's such a gentleman. I not that I
cared about those kind of old school manners, but like

(57:43):
it was, it was just kind of notable in that
moment that he was helping me take off my jacket
and he pulled out my chair. I was like, who
the hell is this a person? And then we proceeded.
The other people showed up, except none of the three
other women who were supposed to be there for this
so called dinner party showed up. Mark Stern's wife was

(58:06):
not you know, she was under the weather, had a
cold or something. And the two other women who were
supposed to come to the party didn't show, so it
was just me, Mark Stern, the host, and bachelor number one,
two and three, And so I was like, okay, but
I really only had eyes for Jay. I liked him immediately,

(58:30):
not because of the especially the polite things. Those just
struck me and stayed with me all these years. But
because we had such a good conversation, and I loved
that he was, you know, a screenwriter, and that he
loved movies as much as I did and was obsessed
with movies and stories. And at one point we shared

(58:53):
where we went to college and when he went to Stanford.
And I don't know why. My parents went to Ivy
League schools, and so it was always a big thing
going to college in my family. My brother went to
Yale Um. And so when he said that he went
to Stanford, it was like the guy at the at
the fair who goes tries to hit the thing went.

(59:15):
There was a little ding. I thought, Oh, I love this.
He's kind of you know, he's into academics, and you know,
I don't know. I just I kind of for him.
You fell for him? Was he instantly into you? I
don't think so. No, I don't think he was a
good question, Bob. I don't think he. I think he thought,

(59:37):
well that was interesting, she's nice. We had a great,
great conversation. But all I know is that, um, how
did I get his number? Let's see, I might have
given him my number. I was. I was the rockman
roll Chick at that time. I guess I think I
gave him my number. And then I got in my car,

(01:00:00):
which at the time had the hard wired phone in it,
you know, not there were no cell phones, I don't
think back in ninety one, and I called my mom.
This is very telling, and I said, Mom, I don't
know why I feel this way that I just think, yeah,

(01:00:21):
I think I've met somebody that I don't know. I
think this is might work here. And so I was right.
Jay called initially it was right around Thanksgiving, and he said, oh,
I'm going to visit my parents in Albuquerque, but you know,
let's talk again. And then then he dropped off the
face of the earth. He just finally. I paced around

(01:00:42):
for a while and I called Mark Stern and said,
what's the deal, because he hasn't called you yet. He said,
I'm going to give him a nudge. So he gave
him a nudge and then and then we finally went
to see a movie together, and then we went to
see another movie together. And weirdly, the two movies that
we saw were both very um One was at the

(01:01:09):
Black Robe, so it was about a missionary going to
somewhere that I can't remember. We'd have to look this up,
and it was all this sort of like I didn't
know the content. It was. There was a lot of
like sexy content in these two movies about missionaries going
to places. The other one I think was called at

(01:01:32):
Play at the Field of the You know, I'll send
you the names of these movies. I can't. I don't
want to get it wrong. Okay. Had there been any
long term romances before Jay Um? Yeah, there was. There

(01:01:54):
was a long term romance in the Paisley Underground with
Louis Gutierrez who was in the band. Um. Yeah, there
was that, and and um, let me think back, there
was quite a long mace with Lewis, like starting in

(01:02:14):
like nineteen eighty two or three when we when we
when that scene was really happening. And then after that
there was a long along romance with Donovan Leech, the
son of Donovan, And prior to that, I'd had a
relationship with David Roebeck. They were all they're all musicians.

(01:02:35):
That's right now that they're doing the math on that. Okay,
that maybe that and no no offense to any of
the musicians, but maybe that's why maybe that collective amount
of relationships there um added up to me thinking maybe
maybe not a musician. I don't know. But also, um,
there were a few actors and I and yeah, there

(01:02:58):
are actors and musicians up until Jay. What was it
like being famous and on the road as a woman,
both in terms of romance and me too? Stuff? Ah,
interesting and say it again on the road? Okay? You
know in that era, certainly pre cell phone, one of

(01:03:20):
the reason musicians wanted to become musicians, to be famous
is to experience the Shenanigans of the road. What was
it like being a woman and in your case it
was a band of women as opposed to some other
acts there was a female front person. And then right, well, um,

(01:03:42):
I had mostly good experiences unless I blocked things out.
I seem to always be or most of the time
I was involved in a relationship. I'm going way back here.
I feel like I've always kind of had my wits

(01:04:07):
about me, you know, in a sense, if that expression
is the right one, because I felt quite vulnerable just
due to my stature, physical stature. I've always had my
eye out for anything that felt like ding ding ding, danger,

(01:04:28):
approaching so I think that I got through that period
pretty well. I skated through. But I do feel like
as a female in an all girl band, I did
feel a sense that, say, as an example, walking into

(01:04:53):
a record company and having a lineup of male executives
and suits looking at you. Um I, you know, of course,
I felt like, oh god, you know, is this am
I being judged? Am I? Am? I? Is there some

(01:05:17):
imperative for me to be to look to dress the
part of a sexy rock star? Or you know I
I you know, I still grapple with that, you know,
even as we age too. It's like it's it's there's
an aspect of being in the in the limelight, I

(01:05:40):
guess you could say, or um, a performer where there's
a natural aspect where the sexuality is part of it.
Let's just face it. It's part of rock and roll
for both for all sexes, you know, for all genders
and all there's just rock and roll is most often

(01:06:00):
imbued with sex and sexuality. So it's it makes it
very It's very complex, Bob, That's what I think. It's
a complex thing. But I do think that there's a parallel.
In my book, I was able to kind of recall
that feeling of like I've got to put on I've
got to become her. I've got to I've got to

(01:06:23):
be someone who's confident and who can tap into the
natural sexuality that's sort of vibrating under the surface. That
that's part of what this music is about. You know. Um,
it's definitely a part of making music and performing music.
I can be honest with you. It's it definitely, and

(01:06:45):
that's why I love it. I mean, who doesn't love
being lost in that feeling. Let's just go back a
second to Jay. You reference being a nice Jewish girl earlier,
and Jay was Jewish according to the information online. Whatever
that's worth it. He converted? Can you tell us all
about that? Yes, he did, He did ultimately convert. I

(01:07:09):
am the granddaughter of a rabbi who's no longer with us,
But my dream was to be married by my grandpa
and my uncle, who are both rabbis on the Simon's
side of my family, and in order for that to
really happen, Jay was totally fine and was happy to

(01:07:34):
It was a very easy conversion. It was made easy
by the fact that my mother could teach him a
few things. He didn't have to go through months of lessons,
and he learned just what he needed to learn. And
my grandpa, Ralph Simon also gave Jason tutorials and it
was a very quick and easy. Becoming Jewish was not

(01:07:57):
a big thing. It was the family made it very
easy for him, and it meant it meant a lot
to me. I get a little chair choked up to
thinking back on my grandpa marrying me and my uncle.
It was a beautiful thing. And to what degree were
you observed? Did your kids have bar mitzvahs, etcetera, etcetera. Um,

(01:08:22):
not particularly observant. Mostly just for me, it's always been
part of my identity, my jewishness. The boys didn't really have.
I had a bat mitzvah in Israel. My older brother
John is only a year older. So we went in

(01:08:45):
nineteen seventy two, in nineteen seventy four, but I think
my brother would have been, Yeah, he would have been.
I think it was seventy two. We just went to
the whaling wall. He read out a little phonetically spelled
out a prayer and then at the whaling wall and
we all watched that, and nobody was sitting there with

(01:09:07):
iPhones filming it. By the way, it was like the
dark ages before pre cell phones. And then we went
to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and we had
a big luncheon with my grandparents and then I did
the Hamotzi prayer over the bread, which I never forgot,
and that was my bot mitzvah, and our kids have not.

(01:09:28):
Although I had this funny idea, I don't want anybody
to steal it because I think it's pretty funny, but
I'll share it with you that we you know, how
you can throw a surprise party for someone's birthday. I
wanted to do. I had this fantasy of throwing a
surprise bar mitzvah for my two kids and do it
similarly simply, where they just have to read the odd

(01:09:51):
prayer phonetically spelled out and they just walk in the
door one day and everyone would be there, it's your
bar mitzvah, and the boys would read it and we'd
have someone officiating and that would be it. They were
both par misfit. Speaking of your two kids, what are
they up to? So? Jackson Roach is a podcast in

(01:10:13):
the podcast world. It's he has been in love with
radio storytelling. Radio play since he was a kid and
also has been like a tremendous reader. He just loves
fiction too, like his mom. And so he has done.
He produced and wrote a show that was got on radio,

(01:10:34):
that got on Radio Lab and ninety nine percent Invisible.
Now he's working for a podcast company called the Dig,
so he's immersed in creating podcast and in that world.
And then my younger son, Sam Roach, he is a
screenwriter and actor. And where did they go to college?

(01:10:55):
They both went to Stanford. That okay, so they have
that pedigree. Let's go back to the Bengals era. To
what degree were you and the other women in the
act involved in drugs and alcohol back in that period? Well,
I liked a little bit of the white wine back then.
I don't drink at all now I don't think. I

(01:11:18):
actually don't know if i'd have written the book if
I still did. I didn't have what I would consider
a problem. But I liked it and it just was
a nice relaxing thing to do. But I one day
I just thought, what would life be like if I
didn't have that wine, you know, at six o'clock every
night or however whenever, Um gosh, I'm being so confessional

(01:11:40):
with you, Bob, I hope it's okay. Is everything? This
is exactly what I'm looking for. Stuff Okay, good, I
figured as much. But so um, No, the Bengals were
quite We liked the odd drink. We would have, you know,
a glass the wine before going on stage or not.

(01:12:02):
You know, it depended. I'm speaking mostly for myself, but
afterwards for sure, And yeah, I think it was. But
I don't think we were out of control. We were not.
It was it was not. Let me put it this way.
It wasn't an issue. Nobody had to go. There were

(01:12:25):
no trips to rehab in our band. We're very lucky
that way. We just we just enjoyed a little bit
of wine from on the road. But it wasn't beyond that.
Speaking of the Bengals, although the Go Gos were maybe
the progenitors, the Bengals actually had more hits than the

(01:12:46):
Go Gos. The Go Gos are in the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. I'm not a big believer in
the rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I bring
it up. If the Go Goes are in the rock
and Roll Hall of Fame, shouldn't the Bengals be in
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Well, I I
think that would be very nice. I don't, I don't

(01:13:08):
What's what am I trying to say? It would be
very fun, I think to get inducted in the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. I say this partly because
I inducted the Zombies and I had no idea what
it would be like to be there among peers in
the music business. But that experience, because I love the

(01:13:32):
Zombies so much and I was so honored to be
asked to even you know, to be asked to induct them,
that I had one of the best nights of my
life at that show because I just ran into all
these musicians that I hadn't seen. Brian May from Queen

(01:13:53):
the Bengals opened for Queen and at Slane Castle in
nineteen eighty six. I think it was one of Freddie's
Mercury's last show with them, or last show, and it
might have been we'd have to do some fact checking.
But to just reconnect with Brian May and then um,

(01:14:14):
to be with the Zombies and to meet all the
other to read John Taylor was there who hadn't seen
There was a really fun party that Stevie Nicks threw
and I got to hang out with Simon Lebon and
John who hadn't seen in years because they I think
they inducted. Okay, now I'm forgetting, but we can look

(01:14:34):
it up. It was just a magical night and mostly
just to celebrate music. So yeah, I mean, I yeah,
I don't know how to. I don't have a last check.
Let me let me change the question a little bit.
Do you feel a little ripped off that they're in

(01:14:54):
and you're not in? Oh? No, no, no, I'm not
like that. No No. I went also, um to see
their induction because I was again invited to because because
I'm so close with the Go Goes. So um No,
it was incredible, Like not at all. No, I'm just yeah,

(01:15:18):
that's not that's not how my I'm not that Yeah,
that's not that's not where I go with those things. Yeah,
you mentioned how much you love the Zombies. You talked
about exchanging uh playlists with Nick Hornby. So how did
your interest in music begin into what degree? Was an infatuation? Well,

(01:15:41):
let's start with that second part. It's always been an
infatuation and per my mother, who loves music as much
as I did and played the AM radio and had
bought records all the time, played it constantly, and claims
that that when I was born, I was in this
little crib, and for that period of time in the crib,

(01:16:05):
she had the music playing and that I would cool
along to it, and it was in a room with
a floor that it had wheels on it or something
that she'd find that I sort of bopped around to
it as a baby, and I was so like turned
on by the music. I was so activated by it.
And then as soon as and then growing up in

(01:16:27):
La you're in the car, you're in the backseat of
the station Reagan, and my mom was always blasting AM radio.
So I was teaching myself to sing first well, from
the crib, if she's right about that might be an exaggeration,
the backseat of the car and when the radio was on.
And then the minute I started buying records, or my

(01:16:48):
mom would buy records for me, I would play them continuously,
and then I would teach myself the exact moves and
nuances that the singers were giving their performance. I just
studied them without knowing that I was studying them. I mean,
this is true of a lot of singers I've met
and had this conversation with Joni Mitchell Records, Linda Ronstadt Records.

(01:17:14):
Now having worked with Peter Asher, those childhood memories resonate
even more. But just learning the like mimicking that them,
actually trying to mimic every one of their little swoops
and growls and moves vocally. How did you decide you

(01:17:35):
wanted to be a musician, Well, it was just a passion.
I mean, I don't know that I ever thought of
any other career path besides being in the arts, for sure,
because I was always painting and drawing. I was around
my mother painting and drawing and sculpting all the time too,
and my dad being a psychoanalyst. He was just a
cool presence in the house who was so open minded

(01:17:57):
about everything and so so cool. Let me just say
that cool parents. But it Singing was just a part
of my life from childhood. So it was as soon
as my uncle, my mother's younger brother, put a guitar
in my hands. You know. Again, everything that I've done

(01:18:19):
in the arts has pretty much been self taught. I'm
embarrassed to say I don't read music. I really should.
What's wrong with me. I don't know, but I just
never got round to it. I think I was always
so impulsive about it, like teach me the chords of
that song, and I would just I just know the chords.
It's not like I can read a musical chart, and
I would just try to figure out how to play

(01:18:41):
a song that way. And like compared to hanging out
with Peter Asher, who's so are youdite when it comes
to music and has all the charts there, and I
see them reading the charts and I'm like, yeah, what
are the chords? I can do it that way? Folk
folk folk style and sharing. For me, it was people

(01:19:02):
sharing their recipes like that's what That's what it was
to learn a song. Um. Yeah, am I answering your question? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Uh.
Did you play in bands or play live alone in
high school? Um? I did more dance and theater and
dancing and acting in high school. I was always in

(01:19:24):
the musicals. I would play with friends on the schoolyard occasionally.
I definitely had other friends like me who could play,
you know, maybe various songs on the guitar. I was singing,
for sure, but I don't know if I and I
was in the musicals, but I don't think I ever

(01:19:45):
sang like in a school concert like my own stuff.
I was in the choir. But yeah, the stuff that
I really cared most about was the stuff I would
just do with my friends. Nobody really heard it besides us.
What about in college? In college, let's see, I was
a dance major, A drama dance major. I must have

(01:20:08):
had a guitar up there. I was obsessed with music
in college. I remember we had eight tracks. Was that
when eight tracks where? Absolutely? Yeah, I definitely. I'm trying
to remember if I had I debt what? Oh? Part
way through college, absolutely I was with David Roeback. I
was still back on that story of the first year

(01:20:31):
when I was in the dorm. Oh yeah, no. Starting
after the year in the dorm, I was playing music,
but not publicly, just for myself. And you graduate then
would then? I? Okay? So I went to see the
Sex Pistols, and at winter Lamba Room I went to
see Patti Smith. So during college and during the David

(01:20:55):
Roeback period of college, which was the second half my
junior and senior year, I was totally immersed in making art, painting, sculpture, singing,
recording music with David on little cassettes, going to see shows,
going to San Francisco, going to the punk clubs. Yeah,

(01:21:16):
that's that. Music became the big headline. And my dream
was to come back to LA and either be in
the band with David Roeback whatever that we were just
a duo at that point, to create a band with him,
and then when that didn't work out because the relationship
was kind of rocky, I realized that I needed to

(01:21:40):
do it some other way. So I just started to
adversisise myself in the recycler and I drew because I
was still kind of post art school I was. I
would draw all these flyers and xerox them at a
xerox place and pat put them at reck stores. And

(01:22:00):
I took a stack of my flyers to the Gogs
show at the Whiskey of Go Go and they got
thrown in the trash. I had to dig them out
a few times. Then I gave up. Yeah, I was
like an old school Okay, these were flyers saying I
want to start a band, yeah, and I can send
there's some of them are online. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
hand drawn flyers that I made let's go back to

(01:22:23):
David Roebeck. What came first? The music of the romance? Oh?
That well, we were he was. He was my brother's
best friend growing up, so we went to high school together.
He was a grade older than me. Um. Wow, that's
a good question. At one point my brother wasn't too
happy about it. A romance bloomed. But I think I

(01:22:47):
was in college already. Yeah, no, it would have been
in college. It would have been in college because yeah,
you also do you also go to Berkeley. He transferred
to Berkeley. He started out at a college called Carlton
College in Minnesota, and he started there in seventy five.
I started Berkeley in seventy six, and then he transferred.

(01:23:12):
It had probably been seventy seven seventy eight that around
the time he transferred, and then we eventually lived together
at Berkeley. Did he transfer to be with you? I
may partly? I think maybe? So. How hard was it

(01:23:33):
when you broke up? Not only romance wise but musically. Okay,
we're taking a long time ago. I'm sure tears were
shed and emotions were felt deeply. It was hard, I
think because I loved the vibe of what David and

(01:23:54):
I were doing. I mean, we would play like Little
Honda by the Beach Boys, but Mazzie Star style, if
you can try to picture that like sort of droney
and slowed down and kind of etherial, you know, and
you know, of course we love The Velvet Underground. I think, um,

(01:24:16):
my recordings that I made with David of I'll be
your mirror and I'll keep it with mine, which was
the Nico song from her record that was produced by um.
Oh my god, I'm having a a senior momentum guy
from Guy from the Velvet Underground. Now I can't remember

(01:24:36):
there it is there, it is, thank you. Um. Those
were like seminal records for me and still are, I think.
So I'm really glad that finally on my Spotify you
can find those recordings. I'll keep it with mine and
I'll be your mirror. U. So yeah, I mean, David,

(01:24:59):
until he passed away, has been a close family friend,
close with my parents, close with my brother John, who
they were in the same grade. They were best friends
and such a special person. So you talk about exchanging

(01:25:22):
playlists with Nick Hornby. Is this new music or is
this music throughout rock history? Just throughout rock history, just
stuff that he's his listening practice. His discovery practice of
finding stuff is like well honed. Mine is haphazard. I

(01:25:45):
have a tradition of sending links to my family, we
share links all the time, and friends and sharing playlists
that I've made. But Nick's blow all those out of
the water. I mean he is a master curator of playlists,
and some are thematic and some are more of a jumble.

(01:26:06):
But like it's a gift. Yeah, I mean, because I'm
finding all sorts of new artists that way, he's he's
more tapped into new music. And to what degree are
you listening to new music as opposed to the old music? Well,
I tend to default to the oldies. But because I

(01:26:27):
have playlists that friends have been sending me with newer artists,
it's been a great way to crack open that, you know,
that side of things, and to have exposure. The other
person who, like Nick Hornby, is great at discovering new
stuff is Peter Asher, and he's the one who turned

(01:26:47):
me onto Holly Humberstone. Did we already talk about this
or recycling back? So Holly Hush, Joe Joy odellacum adela
cum I always pronounced it ode locum, but I think
I have it the emphasis and is meant to be
on the other syllables. If you've got her song, if

(01:27:08):
you've got a problem, it is just extraordinary. And it
was a pleasure to sing. Yeah. And then you know,
I don't know. I think it was Peter who had
the cool idea of covering a Billie Eilish song that
was great. Of course I knew about Billie Eilish, but
I didn't know that song. So I really owe a

(01:27:28):
lot to Peter for opening my eyes too and my ears.
I should say to these some of these young artists
that I hadn't crossed paths with on my Spotify or
on my streaming searches. So how did you end up
making a record with Peter Rasher? Well, it was kind

(01:27:49):
of the dark days of the pandemic. It was ninth
sorry nineteen. It was two thousand twenty one when I
got an I heard a voicemail that I had missed
from the day before from my longtime road manager, John Kollachi.
That word was that Peter Asher wanted to make a

(01:28:12):
record with me. And it was such a dark period
right then, and I it was like sunshine burst through
the clouds. In that moment, I was practically trembling, and
I kept listening over and over again to that, to
that voicemail Peter Asher wants to make a record with me.
I could hardly believe my ears. So then then the

(01:28:35):
communication started, and um, you know, we we connected. I
drove out to Peter's home in Malibu and was welcomed
in by his family. I at that point I gave him,
like I think, I mentioned a manuscript printed out and
from my computer printer, m from I should say, my printer,

(01:28:57):
and for him to read of the book. He read
it really quickly. There was an instant bond. I was,
you know, in awe of him as a producer and
and but then got to know him as a dear friend.
And I just cherished that relationship so much. Well, if
you've got to make a record, it costs money. Where
did the money come from? Well, I'm I'm I don't

(01:29:21):
know what what happened in my life, but I just
hit a point where I realized that the indie spirit
that fueled everything that had come in, starting with the Bengals,
or even the attempt set a band with David Roebak
that didn't necessarily come to fruition. I remember going I'm

(01:29:43):
digressing for one second here. I remember going to a
night of the women of Berkeley, an event at a
dear friend's house to get everybody together, and everybody was
reminiscing about graduating and how they came upon their careers,
and many of them had gone to the jobs office

(01:30:04):
at Berkeley to talk about ways to start a career.
And I remember thinking when they came around the circle
of everyone telling those stories to about how they got
their jobs, I was like, they're what. I couldn't exactly
work walk into the Job's office at Berkeley and say,
I want to start a band? What what what do
you got for me? You know? So so yeah, I've

(01:30:28):
always I've always done all these things on sheer will
and maybe a little bit of insanity, but um, I
was possessed with the idea of starting a band. I'll
just say it. I was. I was impassioned at the
thought of it, and I just had to go out
there and keep knocking on doors, you know, so to

(01:30:49):
speak to find people. So that's why I made the Flyers.
I I looked at ads in the newspaper pre internet,
so there was recycler I was looking for. And then
I called one of the ads and lo and behold
Vicki Peterson answered it was an ad, not from her,
it was their roommate. And that's how that started. Okay,

(01:31:15):
And in this interim graduating from college, did you have
a day job? Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.
So my uncle Carmy Simon, my mother's youngest brother. He
was an incredible musician who was the first person who
gave me that guitar that I'm holding in the picture

(01:31:35):
of myself. When I was eight or seven. I was
either finishing up year seven or just eight, because it
says January nineteen sixty seven on the picture. He offered
me a job out of college. It was kind of
it was like a factory girl job, if you can imagine.
It was in a warehouse in Santa Monica where he

(01:31:57):
had a little ceramics company, and it was all the
rage at that time to make these like little hand
painted ceramic buttons and jewelry and stuff and not exactly
like pottery. So I sat in the basement room alone
with a transistor radio which I had tuned to k

(01:32:19):
Earth one oh one, which in the eighties was playing
nineteen sixties music, and that's what how I spent my
time for the most part during my day job. Every
once in a while i'd go upstairs where there was sunshine,
but most of the time I was in the dark
with the radio. And I heard that song. I had
already met Vicking Debbi through the recycler. They'd come over.

(01:32:43):
We'd had that fateful testing out of the waters where
we determined we should be a band that night, and
I heard I heard Hazy Shaded Winter. I know that
when I was still at the I was that that
day job for a while. It wasn't until things started

(01:33:03):
kicking off for the Bengals, because I remember hearing Hazy
Shaded Winter and not knowing that Simon and garfuncle Fan
and I thought I knew all their music, and I
pitched it at rehearsal, and then we didn't record it
for years. And Robert Hilburn, the local journalist, gave it
a really crap review. Specifically, he said it was plotting

(01:33:24):
and listless or something like that. That's okay, he's entitled
to his opinion. How did you ultimately give up the
day job? Oh well, that was m let's see what
got me past the day job? Oh? You know what,
I think we finally got some action on the record

(01:33:46):
company front. We finally had it all. It takes as one,
as I like to say, there was crickets and then
there was one, and that was Peter Fulben bringing Bruce
Springsteen to see the Bengals play The Scrappy, the Scrappy
early iteration of the Bengals play at Magic Mountain? Am
I repeating? Or have I have I not? No? No

(01:34:08):
no no, keep no yeah. Yeah. So we had a
gig at Magic Mountain. It was a very spinal tap
sort of atmosphere. It was just sort of a band
shell and a kind of a cement stage as I recall,
and sort of rising up seats, and we met Bruce Springsteen.
Peter had dragged him all the way from wherever he lived.
And I've always thought Bruce vetted the band, because you know, somehow,

(01:34:33):
some way, I'm going to give him credit for that
and Peter Philbinum, but it's kind of amazing to think
that he dragged Bruce out to a theme park to
see this all girl band. I don't know, how did
you get him? How did you get a manager? Um? Okay,
so how did we meet Miles Copeland and Mike Gormley.

(01:34:57):
We had a lawyer, Candice Hanson, who was really advocating
for us. Oh I remember now, Sorry, it took me
a second. We were part of the Paisley underground scene
and we were playing at like the Cathay de Grand
or are one of the ones that kind of downtown

(01:35:18):
LA or Hollywood. It was one of the ones in Hollywood,
and I remember post show, I was sitting at the
bar or someone said there's a there's this god. No,
I must have sat. I somehow managed to sit next
to him. I had no idea who he was. I
didn't really know that much about the police because of

(01:35:39):
my obsession with sixties music. I wasn't really like up
on the bands of the eighties at that time period.
This would have been eighty two, nineteen eighty two or yeah,
I'm guessing eighty two. I'd go up to him, he
starts to make conversation with me. I have no idea

(01:35:59):
who he is. No one told me that I had
no clue that he was this iconic manager. And I
was kind of, you know, kind of sassy and scrappy.
I don't know I don't remember really like treating him
like he was some important person. And so that's my
memory of first meeting Miles. Okay, now let's switch back.

(01:36:23):
You said you were talked about what it would cost
to make this record, and then you talked about doing
things in an indie way. Yeah, what it would cost
to make the one I made with Peter? Right? Where
the money would come from? Well, the money I took
the money from that I'd made over the years in
my life, and I invested in myself. Yeah, I have

(01:36:47):
to ask, under today's circumstances, how much did it cost
to make the record? Oh, I don't like talking about
that kind of stuff. Well, let me put it a
different way. Maybe Peter can give it to you. It
was it cost enough to let's put it this way.
He hired the best people, a great studio. Yeah, I

(01:37:09):
don't know if i'll I don't know if a person
can make money unless they get song placements anymore. I
don't know. I don't know about the music business. Well,
that's why I'm asking. You're investing X somewhere between thirty
and one hundred K, and are you thinking about return
on investment? Not at the moment, I'm just helping people

(01:37:32):
connect with the music. I don't. I mean, I guess
that that I'm in a lucky position that all these
many decades of being a hard working gal doing her thing,
and the great fortune of having songs like Eternal Flame

(01:37:54):
click with audiences and remain something that people dream or
want a license for movie and television placements, that I've
continued to receive enough royalties to fund my own indie record. Okay,

(01:38:16):
so just going on, Peter tracks you down, but you're
paying well? Sure, and Peter did not. The fee to
produce the record was extraordinarily reasonable. If not, I mean,
I think both Peter and I are in a place

(01:38:38):
in our journeys on this planet we call Earth that um,
we were doing it for love. I mean, really, he
was very reasonable. And I wanted to pay these hard
working musicians what what felt right to them, so, you know,

(01:38:59):
and I wanted to the young man who runs the
studio as a dear friend, and I wanted to make
sure that I was paying everybody what felt comfortable. They
all knew that I was self financing this record, so people,
you know, were cognizant of that. But I also wanted
people to be happy. I didn't. I never want to

(01:39:19):
take advantage of everyone's doing the best job that they can.
And I'm so fortunate to be in the company of
these extraordinary human beings who work so hard to help
me create something, hopefully that's beautiful and connects. But one
never knows. Every time you throw yourself out there to
make something, you just hope for the best that some

(01:39:42):
connection will be made and somebody will somewhere somewhere around
the world will click on a song and go, ah,
this is exactly what I needed to hear. Okay, you know,
he brought in his usual suspects, like walk tell all
great players. Were you intimidated it all? Yes, at first,

(01:40:07):
until I met them, and then they were like family.
I mean I was so intimidated at first, and but
they're not intimidating human beings. They're warm, and they're a
family and they've played together forever and Peter knows them
so well. I was like in the best club, and

(01:40:29):
they invited me to be a member of their club,
you know, like I was rather like pinching myself, like wait,
is this happening? Yes? And then they made me step up,
and I just wanted to be my best in front
of them. I just wanted to give my all and

(01:40:51):
be my best because they're masters. They're all masters, every
single one of those guys you just mentioned. Okay, So
from the moment you got to mast Alibu and you
meet Peter, how long after that till you go into
the studio? Okay? That was I want to say. In
the in the spring, so maybe April ish, beginning of May.

(01:41:17):
I'm going to Malibu regularly and playing around and trying
songs on for size, like you know, does it do
they fit? Can I sing it? What are the keys?
And then I believe we started recording, and Peter can
give you this if I'm wrong, but I believe we
started recording. The first batch was in September, and like

(01:41:37):
I said, we tracked I don't know a whole all
the songs with with that crew in four days, maybe three,
three to four days. That's how good they are. And
how much longer did it take for you to lay

(01:41:59):
your vocals down and finished recording process? M Well, so
I had they had all the live vocals, and then
it took another series of recording sessions to do all
the harmonies and to sing, taking another crack at the vocals.
In some times you can use the live vocal. I

(01:42:21):
think in certain cases sometimes you can mix and match
between days and takes. And I mean, this is how
it's done these days, as opposed to like Elvis Presley days,
probably everything was recorded on a few tracks in one take,
but some vocals are virtually one take vocals. I think

(01:42:43):
it was so enjoyable to sing these great songs. It's
like the pleasure of a of a of for a
singer is to sing a great song. Okay, these are
covers but mostly modern songs. Was the concept originally covers?
And how did you end up up with these particular songs?
And was always thought, yes, we want to do contemporary songs. Yeah,

(01:43:06):
I loved the idea that early on in my conversations
with Peter, the idea of doing contemporary songs was like
lit us both both up. We were very in tune
with each other on that and in agreement. And because
when I did the Matthew Sweet records, it kind of

(01:43:27):
set this record apart from that because in those cases
we drilled down on a decade. So it's the sixties, seventies,
and eighties we've done and maybe some day in nineties.
But with Peter, I liked the idea. I loved. I
so worshiped his work with Linda you know and so

(01:43:47):
and the other wonderful female artists that he produced, but
that those particular as I said, Heart Like a Wheel
and Prisoner and Disguise were so impactful in my life.
So I loved the idea that even on those records
there were the curation of the songs was something I'm
sure they did together, as Peter and I did. But

(01:44:10):
Peter has such a gift for having ideas and inspirations
and what might work. So the album was done. When
so the album was done, the tracking was done quickly.
Throughout the rest of that fall. We would grab like
three days here a week there would we would we

(01:44:33):
cobbled together a really nice schedule with you know, you
could probably get that from him. I probably have it.
If I went through my we usually would book like
a streak of days like it would be, you know,
we're going to work Thursday through Sunday this week. You know,
we wasn't every day. I guess what I'm asking is,

(01:44:54):
if it is now essentially April twenty three, when was
the album done completed. Oh, it was done in the fall.
It was done in the fall of twenty It was completed,
i'd say with all the mastering, I mean the mixing
part of it, because then there's that, there's the recording part,
and then there's the mixing part. And there were dates

(01:45:16):
book to have the string quartet because suddenly we wanted
string quartet on everything. It started with one song and
then it just spiraled out of control. Not out of
control in a bad way, kids, in a candy storeway,
is what I mean with that. We just couldn't resist. Yeah,

(01:45:36):
So we had to be careful because everybody had certain commitments.
I had to juggle with between book and music, you know,
so and Peter had things. Yeah, but it worked out.
So you're saying the album was done in the fall
of completed in the fall of twenty twenty two. Yes, okay.

(01:45:57):
So was it a conscious decision to release the book
in the album simultaneously. I hadn't thought of it, but
all of a sudden, the conversations as we were nearing
my book release, I mean inching towards it, and I
was already starting to promote the book and work on

(01:46:18):
the game plan for that Russell Carter and let's see
it would have been. I ended up having two publicists,
Carla and Nicole, Nicole More coming from book World and
Carla from Music World. Everybody put their heads together and

(01:46:39):
we had I think we had a zoom or something
to discuss what the how the rollout would go with
these two big projects that I've been working on for
so long, and it was deemed that maybe we put
them out on the same day. Here we are, what
the hell? Going back to the album, how'd you pick

(01:47:01):
Black Coffee in Bed? Well, I love that song. You know,
as a person who loves music, you know, I can't
help us sing along to certain songs, and that was
one of them. And also Squeeze were really important to
me in the eighties because I discovered them. It was

(01:47:22):
right when the Bengals were happening, and so there were
certain bands that you would be very aware of because
you were all putting out records at the same time.
And I just have always had a passion for the
music of Squeeze. Well, it's just funny because that was
the subsequent album to the one with Tempted and Paul
Carrick had already gone and I love that song, but

(01:47:44):
nobody ever talks about it. Tempted. I love it. You
talking about black No, no, I'm talking about black coffee
and bids. Oh no, I love it. I'm glad you
love it too. I just love it. And how about
only you? How did only you the well? I so
I always whenever I love that song so much, and

(01:48:05):
again it brings me back to the decade when the
Bengals were here, there and everywhere. But I whenever that
song comes on, I always sang the high harmony to it.
I just made up a harmony, and I always wanted to.
When I used to do shows at Largo in La
I always wanted to cover that song and sing a

(01:48:26):
high harmony on it. And then it's just I think
I just mentioned it to Peter that I loved it.
I think it was that was one that was my idea,
and I told him about my idea of just having
it be like sort of a duet with myself, and
that's how that happened. Have you met Alison Moye? No,
I want to. She's cool. She's a very regular person.

(01:48:48):
And how about you don't own me? Well? Well, you
know that is one of the early examples of a
kind of feminist and I met Leslie Gorett some something
once there was like a convention or something, or some

(01:49:09):
music business thing. But I've always liked the music again,
of all of that whole period, and I just always
thought that was kind of a badass little number that song.
I mean, I don't mean to say really little number.
It's a big number. It's a it's a defiant song,
and I just really it really spoke to me, and
I think this may be the case for a lot

(01:49:31):
of people. Perhaps a lot of women in particular, would
would find that song meaningful. So it was fun to
take it on. Okay, dee Le's just say, twenty twenty
three is very different from nineteen eighty three. And back
in those days, the hardest thing was to get a
major label deal. If you did, they promoted you a

(01:49:52):
certain amount. You hit or you didn't hit, whereas today
it's a vast cornucopia of all kinds of music. How
do you get people to listen to this music become
aware of it? I don't know. I'm doing everything that
I can. I worry about it. It keeps me up
at night. I'm doing my best. There's this thing called

(01:50:15):
social media, and I've discovered that it is very useful,
but it's it's it's work, you know, it's work in
a sense because you have to create a lot of content.
So it's this it's a new fun job. But it's
again because everything is fueled by kind of an indie

(01:50:37):
spirit and zeitgeist and how I approach all these things.
No record company, you know, just doing everything as a
just waking up in the morning and going, okay, let's
make some art. What we're going to do here, and
how do we promote these things? So it's really just
making little videos. I mean the days that I can

(01:50:57):
remember of the big video shoots that being on Columbia
Records and all of what that was. I mean, at
least especially during a pandemic, I've been able to just
go around it with this little thing and make a
little movie and send it to someone who can help
me edit it. I have a partner that helps me

(01:51:19):
with that because I'm no good with the editing with tech.
But yeah, that's what we're doing. TikTok kind of changed things.
Instagram changed things. There's loads of indie creators just putting
their stuff on there and spreading it. That way well
before we booked this on TikTok, I came across you
singing some of my ear quotes here greatest hits a cappella.

(01:51:46):
Did that just start or you said, oh man, I
have to do promote my book in my album, let
me do something. Well. The first ones that I did
was just really in the deep dark pandemic days when
people were not even and leaving their house. And I
thought I'd already had a little social media on Twitter,

(01:52:06):
maybe I just started Instagram. I was pretty late to
the TikTok party, but I'm there now and I just
put put the old version of this thing. I set
it on my piano over there, and I just I thought,
what should I do? How can I express myself? And
I just did this one clip of me singing man Monday,

(01:52:28):
and I had no idea it would connect so much
with people, just me alone in my house, not with
the band, not with anybody, but just solo. And I
realized that I had this opportunity not only to explore
the concept of being the folk seatinger that I started
out as when I was that little girl and my

(01:52:50):
uncle Carmy gave me that first giant guitar when I
was eight. Like, I'm actually been asked on the book
tour will I bring a guitar or will I sing
a little bit? I'm honestly terrified because it's one thing
to do it in your living room, and it's another
thing to do it in front of people. But I'm
bringing the guitar tomorrow when I get on the plane,

(01:53:13):
and I have all these notes here. I just I'm
making these little little notes because I've gotten myself so
nervous about it. Here's my under my thumb. It says, oh,
different drum in case I do that Capo four. This
is me scribbling, scribbling it out, like I'm really just

(01:53:34):
after this call. That's what I gotta do is figure
out you know, I know I can do it in
my living room, but can I do it in front
of people at a at a bookstore? I think, So,
what do you think, Bob? Well, you know, different people,
without mentioning some famous names, they really need to warm
up to produce the sound that they're famous for, Whereas

(01:53:59):
it seemed very very natural with you. So I have
to ask, can you just okay if I ask you
sing a couple of bars a different drum right now.
Could you do it? Absolutely? Yeah, I could do it.
So the anxiety is just that other people will be there. No,
the anxiety is just this natural anxiety that I feel

(01:54:19):
before I opened my mouth and let the sound come out.
But then when I do it, I go, oh yeah,
Like it's kind of like a two personalities. It's like
a split personality. It's like than me that might overthink
or freak out and being it's just like my character
in the book. Actually, I was able to write that

(01:54:41):
because I know what that's like. I do have to
kind of flip a switch and just go, Okay, I'm
not chattering and schmoozing and talking with someone. I have
to like produce this sound out of my throat and
also stop my brain from subtitling, subtitling some other inner monologue.

(01:55:03):
I just have to be in a singular focus with it.
And so that'll be a little bit tricky because well,
we'll see what happens when I get to the strand
in New York City, you know, because the ideas like
we're Q and ang and then there's like an idea
will trigger well, here's a little bit of something that
goes with that so I told Jay's the thing I'm

(01:55:24):
most nervous about because I haven't really ever sung like
this this way, like completely alone with my guitar, though
he hears me do it in the house and you've
heard me do it in the house when I think, oh,
put the camera on myself. This is something for social
media to share. Do you normally have stage fright when

(01:55:46):
you're on with a band or this is unique? I
do have stage right. I have to overcome my stage right.
I do, I do, okay, And obviously the goal of
social media is to have a viral moment. Obviously, you
go on these platforms, although your usual audience is going

(01:56:08):
to be an older demo, you reach those people. Have
you found yourself reaching new people? Well, that's the goal,
And just as of recently, I'm starting to see the
scales change in a way, in a positive way. I'm

(01:56:28):
so grateful for anyone who wants to find me there
and for long time fans. But I've been hoping, really
hoping to connect with a new audience and also with women,
young women too because for whatever reason, and I think
and I don't know, I don't have statistics here, Bob,
but the go Gos had a very big, big, big

(01:56:51):
female fan base, as did I think Madonna. I'm thinking
of our eighties selves, and weirdly, the Bengals had the
scales were tipped more heavily towards a male audience, and
I never really understood it, but I've always wanted to
connect with, you know, have the balance be a little
bit more equal. So I'm feeling that now. Interestingly, I

(01:57:15):
think the book because the character is a female, that
the protagonist is a female woman, a female woman. Obviously
this is me. I need more coffee. Do you edit
this thing or do you just use it? Oh, we
don't add. Everything you're saying is great, But let me
switch to a couple of gears here. Yeah. Yeah, you

(01:57:36):
made these couple of albums with Matthew Sweet. Yeah. Are
you the networker or is it more like Peter Rasher
you're just fielding phone calls? Oh, networker in terms of
making it happen to reaching out to do it. Yes, Um,
I'm pretty staunch in my you know, sort of work

(01:58:02):
ethic to kind of like not hesitate to reach out
to people. I can be the one to instigate in
the process of working with Matthew Sweet, it was quite interesting.
He was the magical wizard doing all the wizardry with
the with the technology that that I when you said
that I missed heard or understood what you're saying. I

(01:58:25):
immediately thought about my dynamic with Matthew and that brought
me to that thought. But no, I'm gonna go get
them kind of person. I don't wait. I I once
I have an idea, I throw myself into the deep
end to plug the album title there. But and I
just start dog paddling or whatever it takes to sort

(01:58:46):
of rally the project, rally the troops, make it happen
because I just I'm fueled by being in process with
a creative project. That's what I wake up in the morning, going, okay, what,
let's let's get in Let's let's get some paint on
the canvas, let's, you know, tune the guitar, let's you know.

(01:59:09):
I just what, I'm so fortunate that I can do this.
And how did you actually hook up with Matthew Sweet
to make those records? Um, we had done a show
at McCabe's together the Bengals and Matthew and I had
brought Mike Myers to see Matthew that we may have
talked about that already, and that's ming te Um. We

(01:59:32):
had done the band for Austin Powers. We were in
the band. We created the band with Mike, and Matthew
was there part of it. Um. I guess at some
point it came up after the McCabe show that the
Bengals and Matthew had been at that we should do something.

(01:59:52):
And then he brought me up to his house and
I've met his wonderful wife, who I'd known because she worked.
She was part of the Austin Powers team. If it's
very complicated, but it's all good. It's just that I'm
trying to go back in time and sort of pull
threads from different eras of my life. But Matthew had

(02:00:15):
this incredible space up on up in the hills of
Hollywood where he had an amazing studio and all this
crazy art everywhere and all the art that he was making.
He was just one of the most dedicated artistic souls
I've ever met. It didn't just stop at music. He

(02:00:35):
was making sculpture, he was painting, collecting art. So we
just started to go up there and I basically, sort
of like with Peter We basically pitched around song ideas,
what could we record? And we got very giddy kids
in a candy store, as how I described it with
Matthew for sure, I remember the day on the second

(02:00:57):
record when we were broaching the idea of doing a
seventies one in a second record. He we we're on
a call together and the concept of doing Prague adding
in Prague rock to what we were intending to do.
Um and I've seen all good people. Your move was

(02:01:20):
the one that we chose. Um and that was one
of my favorite ones to sing. I remember that moment
that was that was the life changing moment. Do you
you have a unique voice? When did you realize that?
And are you self conscious about the way it sounds?
You mean like my singing voice? Yes? Um? I and

(02:01:45):
my self conscious? Did you ask? Sorry? And yes yeah? Um.
I think I just have that built in stage fright thing. So,
but early as a child, it was sort of how
I lulled myself. It was almost like I've been told
that I rocked back and forth a lot too. I
don't know. There's always a rhythm going on and in

(02:02:08):
my head a little bit, and I think that it
was kind of delighting even to myself, when I realized
I could sing along and mimic records, I could try
to be like a minor bird. My mom always said,
you're like a minor bird. I guess minor birds are
the ones that can learn speech and can mimic speech.

(02:02:32):
And I started to get like it was almost like
a hypnotic meditation to drop the needle on a Jonie
Mitchell record, for example, and sing a song, for example,
like you turn me on I'm a Radio, and just
try to like fit in with what she was singing

(02:02:55):
and sing along as perfectly as I could, with that
fair sort of spontaneous melodizing that she does in her
songwriting and her performing. And then the same was true
with all these artists that I would sing to along too,
And I even sang along to those early Beatles records

(02:03:16):
my mom brought home. Yeah, so singing along was kind
of a meditation, and I guess I realized that my
voice was complying you if I think about it in
a certain way, it was doing it. It was able
to do it. And the more I did it, to

(02:03:38):
the chagrin of my family, hearing me over and over
again singing to certain records, the more I became confident. Oh,
it is an instrument that I have and I can
use it, and I just have to learn how to
keep teaching myself how to use it by mimicking other
people who do it. Well, that's how the process this was.

(02:04:01):
And do you still paint and draw today? Yeah? I
don't share much of that, but I do not so
much painting, but but drawing. Yeah. And then how many
siblings do you have? I have an older brother named John,
and Jesse is my younger brother. And what are they
up to every day? Um? John is a very excellent writer,

(02:04:27):
as is Jesse, although Jesse they both didn't really do that,
you know, as a career. Um, Jesse practices law and
he works. Both of my brothers. My brother was uh,
worked for the Tennessee prison system as a as a

(02:04:48):
therapist and had group therapy, you know, into that's what
he did. And Jesse interestingly does a lot of stuff
in the in the LA prisons systems. To league, you know,
represents people a thing as driven as you are. I

(02:05:09):
don't think so not. I mean I think I don't know,
I can't really say, but I think that that that
is something that this sort of burning drive that I
have to do these things. I don't know what accounts
for it, except I do think my childhood set me
up for it, or set me up with the idea

(02:05:30):
that I've found this kind of bliss of disappearing into
this kind of process oriented work, and and that it
allows for my imagination to be triggered and a sense
of play. And I just I'm very grateful that that

(02:05:53):
I've had the opportunity to spend so much time making
art in all these different forms. And what was it
like growing up? Is the middle child, the only girl? Well,
I think the fact that I was the only girl
gave me a little bit of a special place that

(02:06:13):
my brothers may not be resented that I had. That said,
I think that some of the sassiness in the book,
and I think having all this boy energy from my
brothers and being all adolescents together was informative and it

(02:06:37):
gave me a hint into, you know, just how to
write about the human experience. And I just found my
family to be kind of endlessly entertaining in all their
function and dysfunction. Dysfunction is very interesting to write about.
I like to write characters who have dysfunction and because

(02:07:00):
otherwise it's boring if everybody's perfect and like a robot,
you know. So I like idiosyncratic in idiosyncrasies in characters.
I like characters who behave badly. I like characters that
we love to dislike. I mean, I just I just like.

(02:07:20):
I don't know. It adds interest to things, and I
think it's it's been fun to write about. Okay, And
going back to the scene in the eighties, and there
was a scene Bangals were very successful. There were other
acts that got some notoriety at the time. What happened

(02:07:41):
to all those people and do you have any contact
with them? Well, some of the Paisley Underground, so called
scenesters are still around. I still very recently I called
Lewis Gutierres. We stayed in touch. We dated back then
he was in UM. It was originally hit the band

(02:08:02):
was called Salvation Army, then they were called the Three
o'clock UM. I've stayed in touch with other members of
the in quotes basically underground UM. There are there are
things that have brought us together, sort of concerts, often
for charitable organizations that you know that raising money for

(02:08:29):
really really important causes we've done, We've all reunited for
those those concerts. Um, what went back to your question
against specifics. Okay, so you stayed in contact with those people.
Those people were relatively successful, they brought records. But what
are they doing all day? You have the luxury of

(02:08:49):
having the hits that are licensed, etc. How are all
these people staying alive? And are these good stories or
bad stories? Mostly good, I would say, I mean some
of them have gone onto non music or entertainment related
jobs like um, some of them have you know, our

(02:09:11):
work in businesses and for companies or stockbrokers or educators,
you know. I but the yeah, so I I everyone
seems to be doing okay. So so no sad stories,
no burnouts, no ods, etc. No, I mean I've been

(02:09:32):
lucky that way, you know. And I think my partners
in the Bengals are all ensconced in m and No,
Vicki's always staying creative. She just went to Europe in fact,
to do a run of shows that were Paisley Underground.
People involved with those and performing in Europe. So I

(02:09:54):
know that I spoke with her recently and she was
very thrilled about that. Okay, Susanna. Okay, let me ask you.
Your name on the records that Susanna. How does your
family refer to you as well? My parents are quite
elderly now that I visit them as much as they can,
and whenever I walk in the house, my dad says,
Susannah bananas here. So he's been lately calling me Susanna

(02:10:19):
Banana and um. He used to call me Zannie. That
was my nickname. Some people call me Susie Quzi. I
don't know. They can call me whatever the hell they want.
I love them, I don't care. But um, yeah, I answered,
I answer mostly to Sue and Susanna. I've never been

(02:10:41):
a Susan. My ballet teacher who's I love and we're
still in touch after all these years. He used to
call me Susanne, and I was I was fine with that.
The only the only one I don't really connect with
is Susan. I don't feel like a Susan. I'm good,
I'm okay with a Susanne. Susanna Banana is just fine.

(02:11:02):
You're welcome to call me that. Bob. Yeah, that's that's
sort of the answer to that. And your father was
a psychoanalyst. What was your experience with therapy. Oh, I
was heavily into it. I did on the couch psychoanalysis,
you know, Freudian analysis in the eighties, and boy did

(02:11:23):
I need it. It was very stressful. The music business.
I mean, music is one thing, the music business is
another beast Entirely. I think I just needed, you know,
to have therapy then. And I'm glad that I was
kind of early on the tip. I don't think had
my father not been a psychiatrist psychoanalyst, I don't know

(02:11:47):
that I would have even known to do it. But
it was such a part of my childhood knowing that
my father was helping all these people, and you know,
it was really good at his job. You know. People
always used to say, what's it like having a shrink
for a dad, And I said, usually, he just reminds

(02:12:09):
me that everyone's crazy. Everyone's crazy. It's not like you're
the only one. So I suppose we all sort of
need something to get us through this thing week called life.
And so for me, I got, I got that psycho
analytic treatment. They used to call it treatment in the
uh just talk therapy, really, um, I got I got

(02:12:33):
in early with that. And what about later days, you
go back for a tune out. I did. I did
need a tune up once I became a mom and
just I definitely went back to the same person. I'm
very fortunate. Yeah. And when it was psychoanalysis on the couch,
it was multiple days a week, I presume always like

(02:12:54):
four days a week, I mean a barring when I
was on tour, you know, of course. Yeah, it was
like traditional like when you watch watch Annie Hall or something,
and you know, uh, you cut back and forth between
the the analysis sessions. They're saying the exact opposite thing.

(02:13:16):
They never want to have sex. They want to have
sex all the time. And any word of wisdom you
can leave us with from therapy. From therapy, um, oh,
what would I say about it? Thank you to the
therapists and to all you know, no, no, no, what

(02:13:39):
did you learn about yourself? About life? Well, I'll tell
you what. I wish I can say this to everybody
in their twenties. Enjoy your twenties. Enjoy them. You only
get to be in your twenties then, and you waste
so much time thinking you're not good enough, you're not

(02:14:02):
this enough, you're not bad enough. I wish I could
give my twenty something self a pep talk and say,
let it go. You this, You're in your freaking twenties,
you idiot. That's what I wish I could say, don't
fritter this time. It's that's oh my gosh, you know,
and having kids in their twenties. I saw, you know,

(02:14:25):
it's it's it's a weirdly complex and fraught time. But
if I had a way to go back and tell
my my twenties something self, any something, it'd be stop
beating yourself up, Stop criticizing everything about yourself, Stop worrying
about all these things. Do everything you can to cope
with anxiety and healthy ways, in the best ways. But

(02:14:49):
you know you're blowing it because you don't get to
be twenty again. Okay, one final thing, because I've been
watching you here on the zoom, even though the audience
doesn't see the zoom. You don't wear a wedding ring
protect at a moment. You just didn't put it on today,
or you normally don't wear it. You know, Jay wears

(02:15:10):
his every day. I because I played guitar it, I've
always found it a little bit uncomfortable. I'm so married.
You're right, but I do. I just I'm lax about
wearing the ring. But he doesn't hold me. He doesn't
hold it against me. He knows i'm He can count

(02:15:30):
on me, ring or no ring on my left ring finger. Okay,
Susannah Banana, I think I think we've come to the
end of the feeling we've known. I want to thank
you for taking this time. It's been very insightful. The
digressions were the best part. I wish you luck with
your new projects. You already got a great review of

(02:15:52):
the book in the Times, so you're on your way. Bob,
thanks so much. I've been so looking forward to this
and I really appreciate you wanting to do this chat
today with me. It was great. In any event, till
next time. This is Bob left Sex