QLS Classic: Steve Miller

Hall of Fame guitarist, singer and songwriter Steve Miller joins Questlove Supreme to talk about the early lessons he learned from Les Paul and T Bone Walker, sitting in on an impromptu recording session with The Beatles and performing with greats like Chuck Berry, Sly Stone, and more. This episode first ran in January of 2018.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora. What's Up?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is on paid bill from Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
For the next COLS classic, We'll get back to Steve
Miller's January tenth about eighteen appearance rock and Roll Hall
of Famer talks about the early lessons he learned from
Les Ball and Tibo and Walker, singing on a Promptu
recording session with the Beatles and performing with greats like
Chuck Berry, slyestonemor Fly Like an Eagle.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Back to episode sixty.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Six, Suprema Sun Sun Supreme, Roll Suprema Sun Sun Suprema
Roll Suprema So Sun Supreme, Roll Suprema Supreme.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Quest Love in the Place. Yeah, I want to talk
about what space? So Yeah, I'm starting a question inside
the theme song. Steve Miller, I just have to ask you,
that was what was on your mind when you were
making Blue Odyssey in Space and just in less than

(01:15):
thirty seconds, please.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I had just got a really really cheap synthesizer, my
first one, and I immediately hooked it up to my
echo plex, and I had an eight track tape recorder,
and I just was building electronic soundscapes, like broadening the
horizon so I could put something in it.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:38):
Oh, Suprema Supremo, Role Suprema Suprema.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Roll call.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
My name is Fante, Yeah, your favorite rapper. Yeah, I
work my magic. Yeah, abracadabra, Oh Supremo, Roll.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Up, Supremo.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Roll call.

Speaker 6 (02:03):
My name is Sugar Yeah, Sugar sugar Baby, Sugar Baby,
Sugar sugar Bet.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Supremo. Roll call Supreme.

Speaker 7 (02:16):
So Supremo rolls bills in the place. We're gonna have
some fun, yeah and learn how the biz. Yeah, take
some money in runs.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Supreme Supreme Supremo.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Roll call. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:36):
Steve Miller, I'm stoked.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 8 (02:39):
You want to say smokering joker. Yeah, That's how I feel.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Sure, m Supremo.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Roll call. Some people call me Maurice, some people call
me the space Cowboy. Some people call me Stevie. But
I'm gonna tell you that cowboy Supreme.

Speaker 5 (03:02):
Roll Suprema Supreme, Roll Suprema Suprema, Roll Suprema son Supreme.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Wow. Well, good morning, good morning. I feel much better.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Cool ladies and gentlemen, we are honored here today to
have the legendary the artist artist. I'm very glad that
you're on the show because I've always wanted to talk
to someone that to whom it took more than seven
albums to finally break on through to the other side.

(03:44):
So I'm not alone this world. No, no, you're not.
I yeah. I would like to think, if I can
insert myself inside my own radio show, that if yeah
the first time, that if we were out in the sixties,
if the roots were out in the sixties, we probably
traveled the same path that Steve Miller took. A guy

(04:05):
who had relentless, uncompromising artistic goals in life that he
set and he didn't cow town or bowed down to
the man. And you know, true a true story of
artist development and innovation. And we thank you for coming.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Steve Miller ourselves supreme.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, that's that's pretty humbling. You know, we would have
had had we been rolling at the same time, we
probably would have been touring together because trying to do artistics,
make pop music intellectual, and do artistic things and be

(04:51):
political and make a change and in our society that
was those were all things that I see the roots
is being very interested in it. When I listened to
your records, I kind of go, oh, yeah, I know who. Yeah,
they're in this studio now, you know. And it's it's

(05:11):
really really sweet of you to say all those nice things,
you know, because nobody really says that stuff, and you
feel like that when you're working on it. In seven
albums was a long time, you know, but well you
did it well. You know, I was never not going
to you know, so that's the way that goes.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, So I mean being as though, I mean, you
definitely came from an era in which songs had to
speak for themselves, where there's actual grassroots, uh kind of
work put into spreading the word and word of mouth
and those sort of things. It wasn't like you know today,

(05:52):
where your celebrity determines how far you're going to go.
And you know, even sadly as of twenty seventeen, I mean,
talent really isn't even a fact. As a matter of fact,
it could be a hindrance, see, you know, to say
the least, So come on now, buck up, cheer up.

(06:12):
What I'm saying, a lot of talent out here, you know,
But I understand what you're what you're getting. I know
a lot of your music, but I just don't know
a lot of your your journey and your life that
that got you to the point.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
So my journey's crazy. I can give it to you
an im areagraph. I'm so. I was born in Milwaukee
to a family. My mother's side of the family were
all musicians, and my father's side of the family they
were kind of inventors and doctors. So my dad was

(06:47):
a pathologist. He had a tape recorder. And when I
was four years old, I met Les Paul And this
was nineteen forty nine. Are you ready for that? Really? Yeah?
It was just a few years after World War Two
and Les Paul showed up with an electric guitar.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
And how does your family know Les Paul?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Well, he came to Milwaukee to put his act together
with Mary Ford before he went to New York to
do a TV show. It was one of the first
TV shows. It was a real weird little TV show.
It was like fifteen minutes long. It had kind of
come on at three point thirty in the afternoon from
his house. Wow, and they were putting They were rehearsing
at a supper club just down the block from where

(07:30):
we lived. My dad went down and said, I have
a tape recorder, which was this brand new technology that
came over from Germany after World War Two. It was
one of the first tape recorders. So he said, can
I record your shows? And Les said, yeah, of course.
So I went down with my father with Pops and

(07:53):
we watched Les Paul play every night. And I was
like four years old sitting on the bench next to him,
watching this guitar player. And then they would come over
the house to listen to the tapes and party. So
there were lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots of smoking,
lots of musicians, lots of people hanging out. And that's

(08:13):
the beginning. And I knew that you could speed tape up,
you could slow it down. You know, if you sped
the tape up and recorded and then slowed it down,
you know, the guitar would sound like a bass. Or
if you recorded at three and a half and you know,
played a lead bart and then put back up to seven,
it'd be twice as fast. And I understood that Mary

(08:35):
Ford was singing multiple tracks. And this is like nineteen
forty nine. Overdubbing wasn't even a thing yet. They had
just invented it seeing Patty Page and Less with the
multi tracking, and so I just there. I was. I
was like five years old, kind of going yeah, multi tracking.
And then of postcards came to our house after they

(08:59):
went New York and they had their TV show and
there was one hundred postcards and they were all stamped
and they were all addressed to the same radio station
in Milwaukee, but they were all written in kind of phony,
different handwriting, and that was to promote their next single.
So it's nineteen fifty and I'm walking around going, guy, man,

(09:22):
I love show business, and you know, I wanted to
be a musician, and Meade lugs Lewis was my guy.
He Honky Tonk Trained was the greatest shuffle in the
world and he's just listened to that over and over
and over as a baby, and that's what I wanted
to do. And you know, my godfather Les Baul was

(09:43):
doing it, so I was watching him from a distance.
So I had all that. And then we moved to Texas,
and Texas was like really amazing because it was segregated
and I had never been in a segregated community before.
And I was a Yankee. I didn't know what anybody
was talking about. I was in the second grade and

(10:05):
I was going, what what are you talking about? You know?
And I was going to Stonewall Jackson Elementary School. It
was like that. And my dad was running this lab,
this pathology lab, and a friend of his was taking

(10:25):
care of this guy named T bone Walker, And so
my dad goes he introduces himself to T Bone and
they become friends, and T Bone comes over to the house.
So my parents rented a piano. I'd never seen a
piano before, and I got sick and stayed home from

(10:46):
school and played with a piano all day. And this
is true. At five o'clock in the afternoon, Tea bone
Walker drove into our We lived in this suburb where
there were like five thousand houses that looked the same,
and everybody had this little yard and that was the deal.
And T Bone pulled into the driveway and a flesh
colored Cadillac convertible with leopard skin seats and a suit

(11:13):
and tie on and a great, big, old Gibson guitar case.
And he came in and he opened up his case
and I was just all over him. You know, it's
just like, are you t Bone Marker? How do you
do this? How do you do that? And they he
would come over and play parties, and my dad recorded

(11:36):
all of this. So I have the recordings of like
the first night I met t Bone Walker, Yeah, man,
And they're really great recordings. And t Bone is whoever
it was on piano is just unbelievably cool. And t
Bone played from about six o'clock at night till about

(11:59):
five o'clock in the morning. And so I have these
tapes from nineteen fifty one and fifty two, and so
he taught me how to play the guitar behind my
head and do the splits. I was nine when I
met him, and so I was the main thing was

(12:22):
I was sitting there watching Ta boat and play lead
guitar this far away from them, and there's I was
listening to one of these tapes just the other night.
We listened to them all the time, and t Bone
turns and me. He says, what you want to sing, Steve,
And I said nothing, I don't want to do. It's
just like watching. But so from there, I'm in Texas

(12:46):
and there's like country music. There's a big Djamboree. There's
like black radio stations, there's white radio stations. Jimmy Reid
is like pop music. It's just full of great music.
And I ran into a kid who had been taking

(13:08):
drum lessons since he was five years old, and he
was like twelve, and he was like a professional drummer.
He was just absolutely together and his dad was really cool.
He had a music room, and we used to go
over and listen to screaming Jay Hawkins records and stuff,
and we started playing together and we started a band.

(13:29):
It was nineteen fifty six, and mimeographed a letter sent
it out to all the high schools and colleges and
fraternities and sororities and churches and boys and girls clubs
and synagogues, any place that had live music, saying we
had a rock and roll band, and there weren't any
rock and roll bands there was nineteen fifty six.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Can I ask one thing? Yeah, what city in Texas
was this?

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Dallas, Okay? And Freddy King was on television in the afternoon.
Saturday afternoon, there was an R and B show on TV,
and Lightning Hopkins was coming through town. There was a
lot of jazz all over h. Charles's band lived in
Fort Worth that had Newman. Those guys were in and
out of town and and so there was this really

(14:17):
cool music scene going on. And I was listening to
Jimmy Reid and Bill Doggett. Those were when I was
eleven and twelve. That was the stuff I really liked,
and that's what our band played. And so we sent
these letters out and I had the band booked for
like a whole school year, like in three weeks, and

(14:43):
nobody knew how old we were because we're twelve. But
it was a really good band. Boss Eggs was in
the joined the band the next year, and you know,
we had a really good repertoire. We did a lot
of blues out of R and B tunes and that

(15:04):
band stayed together all through high school and then followed
me into college. And so I grew up in the
in the middle of this sort of jazz scene. My
parents loved jazz, and jazz musicians were always coming.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Over and how accessible were because I mean, the story
that you're telling is just not the average story where
like TV and WATS. So first of all, I mean
as as a five year older or even okay, I'll

(15:37):
put you up further as a ten year older. I mean,
are you truly absolutely knowing that you're witnessing history right
here and this should be preserved and and huh.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
So No, I just thought what I was witnessing was
great music, and being a musician was a lousy job,
you know, like in growing up in a middle class family,
you know, and I had I had, like my my
uncle my mother's side, had been in the Paul Whiteman orchestra.

(16:12):
He was a hot jazz violinist and he played in
that orchestra. And then when the depression came, he and
his brothers all went to medical school and became doctors.
So in my family, it was kind of like my
father and my grandfather had really raised themselves up. You know.
My grandfather was an orphan and he became a doctor.

(16:36):
He went to medical school and he was forty four
years old. Oh wow. And so it was all like,
you're gonna get an education, you're gonna work. You know,
you're gonna take care of yourself, you're gonna provide, You're
gonna be a provider. And boy, do you just love
this musician music. But you're not gonna be a musician
there's never any to then encourage you to. It's really amazing,

(16:59):
you know. It's like my father, like I was playing
rock and roll, he would every now and then he
would show up at some gig and he just embarrass
the hell out of me. I'd stand there and go
like turn it down, you know. And this was when

(17:20):
we were like playing through one Fender amp and I
was set on volume three, you know, right way too well.
So I didn't know, and I didn't get I didn't
make my leap into the great unknown until I was
about twenty one years old because the whole time I
was playing, I was just having the greatest time in

(17:42):
the world. I had always had the best band in
town wherever I was, and was working more than anybody,
you know, just we had We just had the best
time and it was just fun. And I went to
University Wisconsin, went back to Madison, and I spent about

(18:03):
eight months. I took a year and went to Europe
and I went to the University of Copenhagen, and I
was going to be a writer and a journalist in
comparative literature, creative writing, that kind of stuff. And it
was the first time since I was twelve years old.
I hadn't had a band, you know, I didn't actually

(18:24):
play any gigs for about seven months, and I just
couldn't stand it. And I got back to the States,
got my band right back together at the University of Wisconsin,
and then I just had a meeting one day with
my student advisor or counselor, you know, and I was
looking at these guys arguing over the size of their

(18:45):
desks and stuff, and I just went, I'm done. I'm
a musician. And I was lucky because Muddy Waters and
Helen Woolf and Paul Butterfield were all playing in night
clubs in a small area in Chicago all the time,
So just ninety miles away, that's as far as I

(19:06):
had to go to jump into this very mature, beautiful
music scene that I was.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Going to ask you how I knew that Milwaukee and
Chicago in proximity to each other, But how did those records,
How did those how did that blue scene even get
to you at the time?

Speaker 2 (19:28):
And was it was like everybody's all records?

Speaker 1 (19:32):
So were they on the radio at the time or
was it still like race.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Music in in Texas?

Speaker 9 (19:39):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Was? I mean? In Milwaukee? Was all records, and you know,
when I got to Texas, Texas was like a really
different place. And and radio Top forty radio was invented
in Dallas at KLIF by guy named Gordon McClendon. Yeah.
I used to play sitar on those radio ads that

(20:02):
k Yeah, those were all made of Pam's recording studio
in Dallas and sold all over the United States, and
guys who owned radio stations went, Okay, we liked this program,
let's do this top forty thing, this top ten thing,
and they built all that there. Before that happened, you

(20:23):
heard all kinds of music on pop radio, on AM radio,
and we had we had like there was a station
called WRR in Dallas that played nothing but blues at
night and it was like a blues pedagogy. This guy

(20:44):
Jim Low was just the greatest DJ in the world
and he just played all blues records. So that was
like something that everybody growing up listened to. Blues like blues.
We were we were into like, you know, Little Walter had
hit records in Dallas when I was like thirteen and

(21:05):
fourteen years old. You know, Bo Diddley, all those guys
were just right there and they came through town a
lot and played a lot. So there was this music
scene that people went to and it.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Was can you receive these shows?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (21:20):
So back then, like how much would a show cost
to to see these acts? Like what was the typical building?

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Oh, Frankie Avalon, I mean Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers
and Al Hibbler and Chuck Berry and the Cadillacs or
somebody like that would come through and it'd be like
two dollars at the sport of Toory, you know, and
as a package tour and just yeah, they were all
package tours.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Then how long would those shows be? Because I'd see
the marquis of some of these shows and I would
think that, okay, even at three to four songs each,
this could be a three to four hour fair. But
I know that they're doing matinee shows, afternoon shows, evening shows,
night shows.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
And yeah, they were, you know, I kind of remember
him as being like three hours long. You know. We
used to go to the Sportatorum. The Sportatorium had the
big Djamboree and it had all the R and B
shows and they had the There really weren't a lot
of rock shows there, you know, there wasn't a lot.

(22:24):
Like I remember when Carl Perkins showed up at one
of these shows and did blue suede shoes and that
was like a oh wow, this is really different. And
they came up out of the crowd. They had a
big double bass and a cocktail drum and he just
like jumped up out of the stage. It was during
Al Hibbler's act and came and did a few things

(22:46):
and everybody went nuts and then he left. So that's
kind of what it was. You'd do three tunes and
then move on. It wasn't anything like it is now.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
And so you're saying that these shows that you saw,
it was mostly black acts and the idea of like
Elvis culture and more white oriented rock acts or the
people that would established.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
It, you know, like like like that was that they
were R and B shows that came came through that
everybody went to. And then when the white acts came through,
like I remember seeing Ricky Nelson, you know, with James Burden.
Wanted to go see James Burden play guitar, and and

(23:29):
he was big enough to come and do a show
in a theater. He played at the Majestic Theater, but
mainly it was like, you know, these arena kind of
big all star review kind of shows what the.

Speaker 8 (23:43):
Term rock and roll even popular?

Speaker 1 (23:44):
But at point kind of not still race music.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
No, it was you know, we didn't call it race music,
but uh, it was totally segregated on the airwaves, but
it wasn't. I mean people, you know, everybody listened, like
everybody I went to school with listened to K and okay,

(24:09):
which was the black radio station, because that was always
going to be a lot better than k l i F,
which had like, you know, Frankie Avalon. You know, like
if you go back and sort of look at the
pop list and stuff and don't make fun of the
Mills brothers, they're great, you know, that's ever. But yeah,

(24:35):
I mean it was like there was this really square
white music, and like guys like Pat Boone. Pat Boone
had a TV show in Fort Worth where he dressed
like a soda jerk. He had that you know, the
little white paper had on and saying all those groovy
versions of it and he was going to be like
big Crosby, that's that's where that was going. We were

(25:00):
it interested.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
So even then there was counter you're saying that there
was counterculture, totally mainstream squares, totally, that's that's sort of play.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
So I was walking around in the seventh grade with
my Jimmy Reid records going listen to this baby, okay,
you know, and.

Speaker 8 (25:17):
What were people saying back to you?

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh yeah, everybody loved it. Everybody loved it, and we
uh hell, I used to back up Jimmy Reid when
I was fourteen years old. We played and backed up
Jimmy Reid, and Jimmy Reid was like one of the
most popular acts in Dallas. In Dallas for white kids,
black kids, it didn't matter, you know, he was those

(25:41):
were hit records.

Speaker 9 (25:42):
So you must have been the ship at fourteen to
like your peers, right because you're playing behind him.

Speaker 8 (25:47):
So what was that like?

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Well, you know, nobody even cared about that. There wasn't anybody, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no. We were a bar band. There weren't you know,
these careers that exist now people like us sitting here right,
you know, pontificating about how important it was and how

(26:12):
deep we thought didn't even exist. If you were a musician,
you know, you were working in bars and nightclubs, or
you were on the Dick Clark Bus, you know, with
forty people, you know, to going to town to town
to town, and there wasn't nothing was you know. The
people that had the big careers were like Bob Hope
and Annette Funachello. Yeah it was they were on TV

(26:39):
and you know, careers lasted eighteen months and you weren't.
Nobody thought they could make a living doing this. And
I never thought I would ever make a record until
I saw Paul Butterfield when I was twenty one, and
he was like, he had signed a record and they
were writing about him, and I went, he got a record, man,

(27:00):
I can do that. I could get a record deal. Now.
I'd been fooling around with tape all my life, playing
with it, never thinking anything like we think now or
did in the sixties or the seventies to days, none
of that even existed as an idea in the fifties.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
You mentioned about these shows in sports arenas, Okay, because
I know that you're a stickler for sound and engineering,
just because I'm from an era in which you know,
big speakers and backline and those things. How were those
shows able to translate sonically in a large sports arena

(27:51):
with what I would assume was inferior sound.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Well, an audience was generally they weren't big, big, huge
sports are anything like the Sportatorium, is what I said.
The Sportatorium was like this funky kind of I think
it held like twenty five hundred people or something, and
it was a place where they had boxing matches and
they had music, and so it was small enough that

(28:18):
you know, you could sing through your amplifier. And the
volume levels were totally different. There were nothing like rock
and roll volume levels. The first big rock show I
saw was, I mean where I went, Holy Cow, look
at that. Was Paul Revere and the Raiders at Chicago.

(28:39):
They were playing to nineteen thousand people and they had
two voices of the theater five foot by five foot
speaker boxes, one on each side of the stage, and
we were just going, oh, look at that. And of
course you couldn't hear a word. And the shows were like,
you know, it was like those Frank Sinatra shows where
everybody was just screaming and passing out stuff like that,

(29:01):
and so you didn't hear anything.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
He's wondering about that, because I know that's why the
Beatles stopped doing shows, because they're like you can't hear
us anyway.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Well, the Beatles stopped doing shows because they thought they
were going to be assassinated.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, and I was about to say, you were there
for that mighty argument. I'll get to that.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, they thought they were going to be killed. But
like if you look at the Shea Stadium show, you know,
like the way I see this, that Shay Stadiums show,
I go, well, look at that. They're on second base.
There are put one hundred and twenty feet away from
the audience, and look, there's three bookshelf speakers. There's one

(29:38):
on the ground named here, there's one there, and there's
a little under the front, you know, and you just go,
what were these people thinking?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
I can't hear them?

Speaker 2 (29:45):
You couldn't hear anything. So that was like one of
the things I'm proud of that I actually worked hard on,
was we went from that era to building the pas
to getting the stuff that everybody enjoys right now in
your monitor. Yeah, the flight for you know, in your monitors. Man,
I spent three hundred thousand dollars developing those you know,

(30:08):
oh wait you literally yeah, you know, speak well, very interesting.
So there was this guy in California was kind of nuts.
Who Stevie Wonder had hired, and uh, he had. Stevie
was playing. He had one little earpiece, and it was

(30:29):
the way they figured out how to do it was
you had a little transformer and a little FM transmitter
and you made this custom aarpiece and one earpiece. And
then he stopped doing it, and it just sat there
for five years. And I'd taken a lot of time
off in the eighties. I thought my career was over
there from eighty three to like eighty eight or something

(30:51):
like that, and was convinced, Hey, no, man, come back.
You know you can do shows and everything. So I
was doing shows and when I got back, the size
of the monitors on the stage or the size of
an ice box laying on the floor. And I had
a twenty two year old kid running my monitors and
it was so loud. I fired him. I got hired

(31:13):
another kid, fired him, and then I got an audiologist
out and I put a body cavity, one of those
plastic things, but started measuring and I said, you see, man,
it's one hundred and twenty one dB out here. You're fired.
And I tested everybody's hearing, and I tested we had
a crew and everything. It was like fifty five people

(31:35):
and we were doing these big, big outdoor shows. And
I tested everybody's hearing, from the truck and bus drivers
to the musicians, and the guy that had the best
hearing was my house mixer. The guy had the second
best hearing was my monitor mixer. I had the third
best hearing, and everybody else was deaf. They had just

(31:57):
dropped at four thousand, kid, just nobody could hear any siblings,
nobody could hear anything from all this damage. So we
went and found this guy. We built five FM transmitters.
We had separate power units because if the Feds caught us,

(32:18):
they would take the power cool so we had Japanese
Japanese FM radios for our transmitter receivers because they had
a lower FM frequency than we had here. And we
broadcast the shows. I mean it was a three block area,

(32:38):
and so what was cool about it was if you
were one of the bus drivers, you could turn on
the radio and listen to the show. What was dangerous
about it was all the sound checks were being broadcast.
Every time we turned the thing on. We were broadcasting
about three block area.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
You couldn't talk about last night's.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Meal or hey, what the you know? What are you?
You know you had I mean it was like, we're
on the air and we could really be fine. Seriously,
so we snuck around and did that.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Oh wait, so you had to even though it was
for monitor purposes use FCC.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Well, no, we were illegally broadcasting FM.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Radio radio.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
We had five pirate radio stations stacked up so each
guy could hear. And and I this is this is
how gets invented. It's always simple and really dumb. And
and so here we are, and we're setting this up

(33:42):
every night and we're broadcasting. And we're the first band
that ever went out wearing ear monitors. And the ear
monitors were made out of clay and they really hurt.
And we went out there and I remember the first
night I went out on a stage in front of
like eighteenth people in ear monitors, the whole bands, and

(34:03):
it were the first band, and it was like kind
of dangerous. But then you know, then we went, okay,
now we gotta like process the sound. You know, everything's
got to sound good. Oh, now we got the sound processed.
Now we gotta figure out how this transmission stuff is

(34:25):
gonna work. And then some A guy named Marty Garcia
came in and said, FM transmitters, are you guys nuts?
Let me show you how to do this, and here's
the money, man build it and went from there in
the ears yeah in ears.

Speaker 9 (34:41):
Wow, did you get any thank yous from the neighborhood,
Like anybody ever come up to you? Like, Man, that
show was awesome last night, I said on my.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Couching, you know, and we never got busted. Oh, you know,
we got away with it. I still have these things, man,
they're in my warehouse suits. Like it's like, you know,
it's like the first space capsule or something that say
you look at it, just go. But you know, it's
like tape echo and the stuff less Paul worked on.

(35:07):
All of these ideas start from you know, you kind
of go like, I gotta get this done. Honey had
me that vacuum cleaner. I'm gonna hook this thing up
and blow that thing out there and turn this on
and make this organ work.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, you just you do what you gotta do. And
and it's, uh, you know, I just did it because
I needed it. I didn't do it do it to
you know, to start to start a company or do
anything like that. I just knew that I wanted to
protect my hearing for life.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Well that's the show, Leason, gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
I brought an out audiologist and we're gonna test everybody, now, Larry,
come on, we need that.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Did you develop it to the point where it was like,
did you patent it? Did you sell it to Shore?

Speaker 2 (36:07):
No? No, I gave it to Marty and look there
are you know, it's like all this kind of stuff.
A lot of people were thinking about it, but I
was the guy who went like, I can't work in
this situation. You guys got to stop this. This is nuts,
you know. I mean, if you're on a stage and

(36:28):
it's one hundred and twenty GB, you can't sing, you
can't think, you can't rest, you can't sleep after the show,
you can't hear the next day. You know, you know
all that. So that's that had to be fixed. So
that was all. And I remember kind of thinking, like,
you know, it took off really quickly people, you know,

(36:50):
right away people wanted to know about it, and the
Marty started a company and started you know, doing your
inn your monitors, and the last in your monitor story
was like so now it's like nineteen ninety two or
ninety three or something, and the Dead want to have

(37:11):
an inner monitor system and they know that we had
used we'd been using it now for four years, you know.
They said, well, we want to work with you guys.
Let's go do ten shows together or something. And I said, okay.
So in my Innure monitor system with the band, I
have a little foot switch where I can like step

(37:31):
on the switch and it takes my voice out of
the PA, but I can talk to the sound guy
or the light guy, or I can say, hey, you know,
there's some guy down here. There's two guys in a
fight in the front row. You need to come fix that,
or you know, if something's wrong or go to the
bridge or forget the next song or whatever. Yeah, And
it's it's so weird because you know, it's like I'm

(37:52):
talking to you and that's gonna yeah, well all right,
then we're gonna go. You see when you're doing it,
and you like you came to realize people they don't
they don't even notice. It's like weird. You can do
all this year. So that's that's the band leader control.
So the first show doing with the Dead at some
football stadium there's eighty thousand people. We go out, they

(38:15):
immediately invite me to come out and jam. I go
out and put on my ear in ear monitors and
they're all arguing with each other while somebody's playing a
solo stuff. Listen, man, you just this giant conversation. Everybody.
Everybody's got their own pedal, everybody's got their own thing,
nobody's listening to anybody. They're just like, it was just

(38:39):
all my blog. You know, I just went, man, how
can you guys do that? Sir?

Speaker 1 (38:43):
You've literally described that is crazy?

Speaker 10 (38:50):
Steve, was that in Buffalo by any chance?

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (38:53):
That was the last gig of that tour?

Speaker 10 (38:56):
Okay a show?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Actually, yeah, yeah, that was. That was a really amazing run.

Speaker 10 (39:01):
It was like ninety one, ninety ninety two maybe.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
I think there's ninety two, you know, because.

Speaker 10 (39:07):
Yeah, I was in the parking lot during the opening.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
And what were you doing?

Speaker 1 (39:14):
A grateful show?

Speaker 2 (39:16):
You know, those shows were really funny, and bands that
played with a grateful dead usually got shunned, you know,
like I sting had done it before I had done it,
and they said, yeah, you know, like there'd be eleven
thousand people in the stadium while Sting was doing his set. Well,
that wasn't gonna happen with me, and so, uh, we
went out and we just started and we just started

(39:38):
with like four or five hits, and by the third hit,
people just running into the stadium and by the time
our set was over, the whole stadium would be singing
along and then we'd turn it over to Jerry.

Speaker 8 (39:49):
So did they figure?

Speaker 9 (39:50):
It's interesting because you said when you got with them,
it was kind of like a two for one deal,
like on top of getting the band, they get the
any our monitors. Is that what most bands were thinking
at that time about guy.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
No No, they had they had got a system. They
wanted they wanted to see how we used it. They
wanted to learn how, They wanted the best. They wanted
to learn how to do it, you know, and see
see how it worked. And that was you know, uh
real comment. I remember Guns N' Roses came by. Oh okay,

(40:21):
you wanted to see how because we were the guys
at the monitors, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
And that's weird because I've I've thought that it was
invented because by the time we started using it in
like two thousand, I felt like, well, okay, this is
probably like three years old already. I felt like just
came around like yeah, nineteen ninety seven or something.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
No, I was like ten eleven years old by then.
But you know, you have to develop that stuff. But
for me, I think because the less you know, and
being around him when I was little, and like you
were saying, well, did you know, I didn't know he
was a genius. I didn't know anything about him except
that he he was like this great, great guitarist and

(41:04):
he was really funny. Every show he did was always
sold out, and uh, you know, he always had somebody
come and sit in with him. So one night I'm
in the club and tal Farlow comes into the club
and it's like a gunfighter cutting session, you know. I

(41:24):
remember tal Farlow's here and Les Paul's right in the
middle of some great solo and he just puts the
handkerchief over his hand and he's just playing in so
cow can't steal his licks. That Yeah, man, man, I
just you know, pulled the handkerchief without you know, it just.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Nonchalantly.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
He must have practiced it a thousand times, you know.
But but that's what it was like, hanging out with
him and so I got so lucky to be around
the technology, the idea of recording, the idea of promoting
a single, the idea having fun at a show and
it's a jam session. The cats are all coming by

(42:09):
and they're all going to play, and so, you know,
Charles Mingus was at the House of Milwaukee Red and
they were just adults. They were just people, you know,
hanging out and listening to the tape recorder and drinking
and laughing and having a good time, you know. And
so that was the way I saw life, you know,

(42:31):
when I started. And then we took that and moved
it to Texas, and we were considered communists, you know. Uh,
you know, my dad was arrested for having a race
party at his laboratory, you know, because he had black
technicians and white technicians working together in a laboratory. Two

(42:53):
of the technicians went on to become pathologists, and they
were arrested, photographed, handcuffed picture on the front page of
the Dallas Morning News and he was described as like
a swanky, you know, kind of sleazy, swanky doctor having
a race party and they were working, they were it

(43:16):
was like three o'clock in the afternoon on December, probably
December December twenty third, the lab Christmas Party. Well you know,
raist racist, you know, and and.

Speaker 10 (43:30):
Uh, I want to be a sleazy swanky doctor.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
You are you are? You are? Yeah? Well you know
Swanky's good.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
So has have has Less left you any of his
like artifacts? Like did he give you your first guitar?
Or do you have like an amp that he oh
this tape recorder?

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Kids, Yeah, I don't have it, don't have it. I
have a guitar. I have a one, a Gibson one
seventy five that he gave me in what I used
to steal from him as guitar picks. And it was
a big joke because the well, the first time I
went to see Less play at Fat Tuesdays. You know,
he worked at Fat Tuesdays for he stayed in New

(44:17):
York for thirty years. He had his heart attack at
sixty three and when he was sixty three years old,
and then he played until he was ninety three. So
I hadn't seen him in a while. I mean I
hadn't seen him in like seven or eight years. And
I've been on the road and I was in New
York and he was playing and I went, I'm gonna
go see Less. So I go to see him and
I go say hi, and come on up here, kid,

(44:39):
come on, you know, come on play, come on and
play something, you know, And I said, well, gosh, I
didn't bring my guitar, which he thought was just awful
that I was so dumb not to bring my guitar.
But on top of the piano it was this white
Less Paul Deluxe model with three gold pickups and just
beautifully just here take this. And he gives me that

(45:01):
guitar and I didn't have a pick, hands me a pick.
I get the guitar, plug it in and we start
to play. And I noticed that the volume control doesn't work.
It's totally out of tune. The tuning pegs don't work,
nothing works on it, you know. So I got the
stooge guitar, right, you bring your own acts next time.

(45:24):
And then yeah, so there I am, you know. And
then I looked down at the pick that I borrowed
from him, and it was made out of plexiglass and
it had some sandpaper turned at a certain angle that
had been glued on. It was a handmade pick. So
every time I would see him try and get some

(45:46):
of his picks, and he didn't like it, you know.
And I finally I was doing a show like this
that was being filmed, and he was sitting right here,
and I said, you know, Less is eighty six years old,
and you know he's such an interesting man. He's always
working any thing. So I bet you he's got a
pocket full of custom made picks right now, come on,
let's let's see. And he pulled him out and put
him on the table bit and I just scoomed up.

(46:09):
So I have this beautiful collection and his handmade picks
and one of his guitars. And but the best thing
was I used to talk to him at least once
a month, and he'd call me up and start talking
to me, and I wouldn't even know what he was
talking about. He'd be talking about digital this and digital that,
and I'd be going, well, gee, I don't know. Less.

(46:30):
He was so far ahead of of everything and everybody
and that. But it was all simple. His ideas were
all real simple.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
So I know that the city of San Francisco. I
was about to say, we do have to start discussing
your actual music there, I actually stay off topic, out
of your your discography forever, but you eventually, uh migrate
to San Francisco, which is we're considering that even though

(47:04):
there's psychedelic leanings and a lot of your music, I
wouldn't necessarily peg you as part of that dead kind
of jam. Yeah, kind of lucky, even though there are
elements of that and and a lot of your music.
I'm just like the witty writing and all that stuff.
But you were straight blues. So how did you get

(47:28):
into the Bill Graham circle? And more specifically I know that, well,
your first record with Chuck Berry? How did that even happen?
Because I know that Chuck is notory. Yeah, I was
about to say, I know you have five hours of
Chuck Berry's for those who don't know. And this is
even from my experience of seeing Chuck and person as

(47:51):
a kid. He never sometimes he would meet his band
maybe five minutes before going on stage. And similar to
that the Booty Collins James Brown story. Hey, you already
know my material, so just hit it, like Chuck is
notorious for just flying into town and just all right,

(48:11):
hit it and you're supposed to follow it. What tell
us a Chuck Berry story? Please?

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Well, Chuck Berry, Yes, my best Chuck Berry story is
the one I should have told Keith Richards before he
made the movie. We walk off the stage and I say,
if you ever fucking do that to me again, you motherfucker,
get your own fucking band, get your own fucking amplifier,

(48:39):
and get your own people. Man, fuck you. I'm never
gonna back you up again. Guarantino. And then from that
time on he was great.

Speaker 8 (48:55):
What did he do?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
What he was Chuck Berry?

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Broll No, no, no, there are two guys that used
to do this trick. So now this is a Chuck
Berry and the Lightning Hopkins story and a San Francisco story. Yes,
So I dropped acid in Madison in nineteen sixty three.
It was lysurgic acid. It was pure.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
I was at that show too.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
And that was before anybody knew what it was or
what was really going on, and.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
So you were wing your time and everything.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
So my first trip was poetry, Marvin Gay, Robbie Shankar, literature,
mind expanding consciousness, do anything you know before there were hippies. Okay,
Then I go to So I'm in Chicago and we're
hearing about San Francisco, these gigs and San Francis light show.

(49:52):
Butterfield's out there, man, and he's like making money, and
they're playing to like eleven hundred people a night, not
one hundred and twenty five US. And I'm working in
a nightclub in Chicago from nine o'clock at night till
four o'clock in the morning, six days a week, making
one hundred and twenty five dollars a week. And I'm
thinking to myself, I got to go to California. Man,

(50:14):
there's you know, eleven hundred people, five hundred dollars a night.
Glad I'm going, you know, so, so I'm you know,
the beat coming from there was just huge. And then
all the bands were coming through Chicago. Chess Records was there,
and the Rolling Stones had been through town, and we
were doing this blue We were in this great blues

(50:35):
scene that was just magical for a few years. When
I say magical, it's like, hey, as soon as we
finished doing this radio show, Holling Wolf's playing across the street, man,
let's go, Hubert's with him, Let's go, you know, and
Muddy's going to be here, and Butter's over here, and
we're over here, and they're over here and this and that.
It was just like that for like about three years,

(50:56):
and then it disappeared San Francisco. So I go to
San Francisco and I get out there and I'm living
in my Volkswagen bus. Now things have gone down. I
tried to go to music school at the University of Texas.
They wouldn't accept me. They wouldn't teach me how to
read or write music. So I left. I got to

(51:19):
California and I had five bucks in my pocket, and
I went to see Butterfield play at the at the Fillmore,
and I saw what the Fillmore was and I went, Okay,
I gotta do it here. This is great, man, that
should be me up there. You know, I want to
go do that. And I got a gig at the
Matrix playing bass for Lightning Hopkins for ten dollars a night.

(51:42):
And this ten dollars was like a million dollars to me. Man,
that was that three dollars for a tank of gas
in the Volkswagen bus and food for a week. You know,
I needed this money. And it's Lightning Hopkins. So I'm
playing bass with Lightning, and as you know, Lightning plays
like thirteen and a half bar blues and then fourteen
barb b losing the ten barb bl loues and he

(52:02):
kind of kind of watching them. I'm playing with him,
and I'm kind of doing real good, you know. Now
I'm kind of beginning to play. He goes, wait a minute,
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Everybody stop, Nobody do
nothing but me, and there's just him and me on
the stage. I mean, you know, it's the most embarrassing,

(52:28):
emulating moment in my life. And I needed that ten dollars.
Yeah I did. I kept the gig, you know, and
and Chuck Berry started doing that to the band and
I just couldn't tolerate that. And later, like five or
six years later, I was at home by myself and

(52:48):
I was watching Austin City Limits and Lightning Hopkins is
playing a stratocaster with a wah wah pedal, just doing
this show hell in it with this great blues band
behind him and they're just ripping it up. And all
of a sudden, he goes, hold, hold, hold, wait minute,
everybody stop. Nobody do nothing but me, and I went, oh,

(53:11):
it's a riff. It's like, let's have a hand for
what's your name, Welcome to the blues club, you know,
And so when Chuck did that. You know, I had
done so many gigs with him, but first gig I
did with Chuck Berry was like, went like this, Bill
Graham came to me, he says, and you're right. We

(53:34):
got First of all, we got to San Francisco and
I just went, what the hell is this? You know,
the Grateful Dead were like standing around for fifteen minutes
and they do like a bad version of in the
Midnight Hour for twenty minutes and wasn't good, but you know,
twenty minutes of like come on man.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
You were sober watching them?

Speaker 11 (53:55):
Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah gee look at the time, you know,
so it was all the bands were like, uh, they
weren't really good.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Bands, and they were like guys who'd been playing acoustic
guitar who decided they were going to get some beatle
boots and a groovy coat and a scarf and grow
their hair long and have a rock band and they're
going to be rock stars. So I got out there.
I'd been working in Chicago, where Junior Wells would steal
your gig if he sat in, if he could, you know,

(54:27):
I mean, everybody had to be really good, and I
was like on time, great sets, everything was really good.
So I was like the first real professional band in
the scene.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
So right now you're destroying the myth of what we
thought that the San Francisco Musician was about. Like you're
just saying that they were mediocre at best or just.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
The band, right, The bands were a social phenomena. No, no,
And you know, the Jeffer Airplane was kind of interesting.
They did some things good and then other things are
just like insufferably boring, you know. And and so it

(55:08):
was what I finally realized was I'm standing there, going,
what is this? You know, what's going on here? And
I finally went, it's a social phenomena. This is like,
this is about acid, This is about an awakening, this
is about a renaissance. This is about a moment in

(55:29):
time that's like happens maybe every three or four hundred years.
It's a music and music is the the the hook
they're hanging it on. And so I like that once
I understood it, because I went, I get it. It's
a social phenomena.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
But I like that.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
I like that, But I want to change things. I
want to see the world change too. I'm I don't
want to have a crew cut anymore. I don't want
to go to you know, some company and get trained
for six weeks and then work there for the rest
of my life, you know, and do that that fifties
early sixties thing. I want a life, a much different life.
And so, you know, the expansion, the mind expansion that

(56:13):
took place, and then it filtered into the music, and
then all of a sudden things started getting good. And
what was hip was so we go to Bill Graham
and go, hey, man, you gotta get James Cotton out here.
You got to get Junior Wells out here. You got
to get Howland Wolf out here. You got to get
Rolling Kirk out here. You should get Miles Davis to
come here. You know, Johnny Cash should come here and play.

(56:36):
You should have you know, and we just started giving
him names.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
You were the influence that brought them out, because a
lot of us were like, no, a lot.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Of us were, you know, But I was like, yeah,
I was the guy who went and picked up Holland
Wolf and my bus. You know when he arrived at
the airport. You know, James and his band stayed at
my house, you know, when they came to town. But
and you know, I was there the first night BB
King played, I was there. I backed up John Lee

(57:03):
Hooker on his first night. I did Chuck Berry Show
and the BB King show at the Fillmore. You know,
they talk about it and bb cried that night and
all that stuff. It was pretty amazing here. It was
like everybody was just BB King's going to be here,
you know, And I'm opening for BB King and uh I,

(57:24):
you know, I do my sound checking stuff and then
we're getting ready to play and I noticed, you know,
BB King's guitar tech has put BB King's loose seal
on his guitar stand on the stage during my set,
and they get a little spotlight on it. You know,
what's this? You know. I don't like that, you know.

(57:45):
So I'm playing doing as good as I can because
Bbe's in the house and I break a string and
I go and I go, fuck it. He's going to
put his guitar on the picked it up, plugged it in.
Hey this listen, I'm in competition with BB King. I

(58:09):
want slot. You know, that's the way music is. You know,
there's no Once you play in Chicago, you learn very
quickly this is serious business, you know, And if somebody's
fucking around with you in your stage, you know, Yeah,
But I wasn't looking to until I broke the string. However,

(58:29):
when I picked up Lucile and plunged it in and
looked at the controls, I went, what the boom? You know,
it was just totally basy and everything, and and you
know it was one of those stereo Gibson things, you know,

(58:49):
it's never used. And then I got the tone and
I had a note, and the guitar was so delicately
set up the bridge collapsed. It just went pop and
the strings went flat and and uh and I pulled

(59:13):
it back up and strings back on it and kind
of like ended the set and got left the building.

Speaker 8 (59:22):
As that's going on.

Speaker 9 (59:23):
How long is this process that that the audience is watching?
You like grabbed the guitar.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Well, I'm sure you didn't let the audience know.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
No, no, no, no no no, that just was like
it broke a string, put the guitar down, here's another one,
picked it up.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
But good night.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Bb I saw Biby come out and do a show
one time and break a string and uh, reach into
his well. First of all, he broke a string while
he was singing, and he just kept singing, never looked
at it. He went down here and he like took
the string off, and I'm not making any of this up.
Reached into his pocket and pulled out a string in

(01:00:01):
a package and took the string out, and he's singing
the whole time. He put it in here, and he
just kept doing this and then he went bang and
off he went, you know, and it was.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Like without looking once, he just put the string on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
I'm telling you, man, I to him. It was in
a little club and Sun Valley, Idaho, was sitting right
there like that, and I just went, how many times?
You know, it's like the handkerchief trip? How many times
do you have to do that before you can or
have that happen?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
You know? Have you ever tried to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Uh? No?

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
So I know that I know that you had your
eyes on Paul Butterfield's slot. You know that I want that.
But one thing you didn't mention was the desire to
get a record deal, which I'm wondering, why did you
choose San fran over Los Angeles and how did record
label start calling?

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
So I had a record deal with Barry Goldberg. We
had the Goldberg Miller blues band in Chicago, and and
we got. He had a swanky, sleazy manager, Steve Yeah, yeah,
and uh swanky and and uh. We were given a

(01:01:20):
day and a half to make a record. And while
we're making the record, some guy came in and was going, yeah,
you guys, you know, you guys should be doing some
Jerry Lee Lewiston's. You know, he's trying to tell us
what to record and what to do and everything. The
engineers hated us. The earphone was one of his little black,
hard rubber things, you know, with one side and a
big pole coming out of it. We made this record

(01:01:43):
and went to New York and we were on the
Hulla Blue Show with the Supremes and the Four Tops. Ok,
and we got We did the show, and then we
stayed in New York and went into the A night
club here right after the Young Rascals left, and we
saw the whole New York scene went back to Chicago.

(01:02:06):
The whole Chicago scene was gone, just in two months.
It just disappeared. Because what had happened was Woof and
Muddy had gotten gigs in colleges and now they could
make a whole lot more money than playing in nightclubs.
Their careers were over. When we were all working in Chicago,

(01:02:26):
they had had their hits. It was done. They were
back in Chicago and they were just working, you know,
in nightclubs. That's the only work they got. And now
they were the whole scene just dispersed. So and I
had a gig playing rhythm guitar and Buddy Guy's band
and for three weeks, and you had to have a

(01:02:48):
shot of bourbon before each set, and there were like
seven sets a night when I lasted like three weeks
and just a buddy a kid, and I went and
I got to San Francisco. So what happened in San
Francisco was okay, it had a record deal. I realized

(01:03:08):
a whole bunch of things really quickly, and I had
gotten out of that deal forcefully. I made them fire
me in Chicago and publicly because I figured I was
going to have a contractual problem with Berry's manager later,
which I did, but I kicked his butt. So it
was so I went to to uh San Francisco and

(01:03:34):
was there for about six or seven months. Did the
Chuck Berry thing, which just came up out of nowhere,
like hey, Chuck Berry's coming to town, made him rehearse
for two days.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
I'm surprised he did that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Yeah, what he did that was upsetting was he rehearsed
for two days, and we hung for two days, had
a great time, and then five minutes before the show started,
a friend has showed up. They went out and got
high on some smack or something, and he came in
and did the whole show. Like at halftime. It was
just that very slow set, and that was disappointing, you know.

(01:04:10):
But so now I'm seeing this and now there's a
feeding frenzy in San Francisco to sign anything that's walking,
you know. I mean they were given thirty thousand dollars
to anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Set and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Ten times what it was in Seattle. It really so.
I mean I had fourteen record companies giving me offers,
fourteen of them. So now I'm in a feeding frenzy,
and I got everything's going the way I wanted to
go because I'd had a little taste of the record business,
and I learned very quickly that I wanted to complete

(01:04:50):
artistic control over everything, every picture, every cover, every album,
everything they said, anything they put out, any music I did.
I had to own all the publishing all of it.
I had to own my songwriting. No, you can't have
any of that. Wow. And not only that, I need
enough money in a no cut contract to make five

(01:05:11):
albums because I got to learn how to do this.
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
And how did you learn to?

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Yes? I was like, Wow, when you run a band
from the time you're twelve years old, life is really simple,
you know, like the things I just told you, You know,
when you talked to brilliant musicians and they go, come, man,
how did you How are you so smart to know
you should keep your publishing because I kept track of

(01:05:39):
the money, clown. You know what, you think somebody's gonna
take care of that for you know, nobody ever takes
care of that, you know. And so like if somebody said, hey, man,
we want you to come to Streetport, Louisiana and play
a gig. We're gonna pay you one hundred and twenty
five dollars, I'd say, well, that'll cover the gas. You know,
it's gonna be two thousand dollars or whatever. I mean.

Speaker 12 (01:05:59):
I just and I always said, like I always said,
I'm not going to like gouge anybody, but I'm not
going to be taking advantage if I just want to
be on kind of a little win win situation for
everybody except with the record company.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
And I had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney
and San Francisco, and he didn't care about being a
music industry lawyer because all music industry lawyers work for
record companies. Rather than I don't worry about that. I'll
go take care of Jimmy Hendricks. I'll get him signed
up here and everything will be great, you know. Whatever

(01:06:35):
that happened all the time. My guy was didn't care.
And I went to him and I said, this is
like slavery. They want to you know, but you know,
if I sell a million records, they're going to want
to give me a car, you know, you know, four
thousand dollars in cash and stuff. This is the way
it's treated, you know. And I want to own everything

(01:06:56):
and these are the things I want. And oh we
just started and they said, well nobody gets that. And
he said, well I don't want it. I'm not signing.
And I wouldn't. What I did was said no for
nine months. And it's like the term of pregnancy, you know,
it took nine months. It just nothing, no, no, he's

(01:07:17):
not not interested. And I had guys come in to
see me and asking me to do all kinds of
stupid things. And every time a record company would say like, well,
hey man, why don't you come on over to the
studio tomorrow morning. We'd like to cut some tracks. See
how you guys do in the studio and go. You
expect me to carry my gear from this? You just
saw what I do, and you want me to come

(01:07:38):
over and you want to test me. You go back
to Hollywood and till the president of the record company
if he wants to talk to me, here's my number,
you know, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Have Everyone was a suit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Everybody was a switter, and anyone that was like hip
because you hear people are like, I'm so passionate about music.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
But were they all just suits?

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
No, they were all suits, and they were all husted.
And we really began to look at everybody from las
kind of like a weasel and a rat. And somebody
was trying to steal everything. And I did my contract.
I got my contract done, and I brought my contract
down to a community band meeting at the Carousel Ballroom

(01:08:18):
and gave it to everybody and said, this is what
you need to get. So there was this kind of
community going on. We had our newspapers and our poster
art and our shows, and we were we were inventing
it all. It was all coming from San Francisco. La
wasn't turning out anything except pop crap. You know, come

(01:08:39):
to San Francisco. Here's some flowers in your hair, you know,
that kind of stuff. And we were like beginning to
go out. And so when we would come to your town,
it was like we were carrying the culture on a platter.
Here we are, here's the culture. Here's what it is.
Here's the light show. Excuse us while we jam on,

(01:09:00):
fly like an eagle for an hour, you know. And
it just that's what it turned into. And it grew
and grew and grew and grew, and people came from
all over the world. So there was a huge awakening
and it happened in San Francisco, and it happened around
psychedelic drugs, really, and it happened in an area where

(01:09:23):
there was a lot of leeway for artists and bohemians
and poets, and you know, San Francisco is a really
great place. And then it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Were you the loan Cynic in that whole atmosphere. Yeah,
for a while I was down h Street and people
just put a flower in your.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
Lapion, Yeah out like I mean I was, I was.
I was a cynic about the bands. I sort of
regret a lot of what I said about a lot
of these people I have now known for fifty years
and they're still playing, you know, But I used to go,
this is just such nonsense.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Well, I know you're saying it now in hindsight, but
were you that honest back when you were doing press
sixty eight, sixty nine to seventy, like, yeah, yeah, Stone whatever, you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Know, like, oh no, no, it was there was no
Sly Stone whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Well, okay, that was my.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
I was in the studio. Sly was cutting his tracks
and I never heard rhythm tracks like that in my life.
Just the whole building was just doing it. I opened
for Sly one time, another hard gig. This was This
was when Sly was healthy and he was okay, oh

(01:10:34):
damn was and he was unbelievable, is what it was like.
It was one of the greatest nights you ever saw
in your life. And I'm down to like playing as
a power trio, you know. You know, it's like we're
a power trio now because that's all we could afford.
We're opening for Sly. You know. It's like nineteen whatever

(01:10:57):
it was, and people are going get off the fucking
stage where Sly and I'm like playing space Cowboys. It's
really are its I gotta get up the stage. We're
gonna leave now, so, you know. And I'm watching slide
play and it's the only time in my life I've

(01:11:20):
ever left the building. I said, we have to leave
the building because the balcony is gonna collapse. Come on,
we gotta go right now, right now. The balcony was
doing this, it was going up, you know, and then
it was kind of going like that, you know. And yeah, seriously,
I've never seen, never seen that in my line. I'm

(01:11:45):
telling you, man, I had. I left the building because
I just thought, you know, I took my guys with me.
I said, we have to leave, we have to get outside.
This is not this isn't gonna last, you know. But
Sly was until the drug so I was like one
of the greatest things that ever happened. And I didn't
like the San Francisco bands, and I didn't like that

(01:12:06):
much of the San Francisco music, and I'm you know,
I like Moby Grape. You know, I kept seeing all
the bands, like, you know, when Steven Stills in Buffalo
Springfield came in, you know, like didn't like them. I
didn't like that kind of cowboy buckskin gretch guitar thing.
They were all ego maniacs. No, they didn't really get

(01:12:30):
down and play, you know. And the band I did
like was The Doors. Oh wow, okay, you know, Doors
came up and I comeing, Man, that's that's smart man.
That guys get that little bass thing there, and it's
real clear and it sounds good, you know, because most
of the time it sounded pretty bad, you know. And
these bands really they didn't have enough experience. I had
already played you know, a thousand gigs from the you know,

(01:12:54):
the seventh grade through college. I mean I had really
played a lot and was you know, wanted things to
sound good. You know, sound was a big important part.
And then you know, when the Dead started like their approach,
this would be the San Francisco approach to sound. Two
hundred Macintosh stereo amplifiers hooked up to a bunch of

(01:13:16):
speakers stacked right behind the band the temperature behind the
stage was four hundred and seventy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Degree, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
I mean, you know, the approach was like crazy and
drugged out and too much money and too much stuff.
And like I looked at all those bands, like they
all had kind of drug dealers for managers. So they
had all this money. They were the local guys. I

(01:13:45):
was from out of town. I had to make my way.
I had to you know, do my way. I felt
like I personally kept the film Ore Auditorium open for
Bill Graham. I played their one hundred and twenty times,
you know. I mean when they needed help, I was
the guy that had to be you know. But the
scene just grew and it kept growing and it it

(01:14:07):
got better, and it gave me a place where I
could do a stake and get a recording contract. My
concept of a recording contract was like the Beatles or something. Man.
I was going, Man, I can't wait too get in
there and make some records. And I'd worked as a
you know, janitor at a recording studio in Dallas, and

(01:14:29):
I had been ping ponging back and forth and quarter
inch track tapes, you know, stereo machines for years and
working on all of this stuff trying to you know,
get stuff together, but very rarely was able to get
into a studio. And the studios were crappy, you know.
They were like four track, and then it was eight track,

(01:14:50):
and then it was twelve track, and then it was
sixteen track, and then it was so getting a record deal.
Being able to do that, I thought, it's going to
be really great. And I went down to LA to
do the first sessions at Capitol Records, and I'm thinking, man,
I'm finally sending the deal. I got everything I want.

(01:15:10):
These guys are gonna help me produce my record. This
is going to be really great. Got there and they said, well,
your studio time starts at midnight, and so, well why
is that? And they said, well, you know, the studios
are booked, but we've got you a session at midnight, okay,
And we man, we'd driven down in the bus, you know,
with the we had the B three in there, the
band in there, everything, you know, the Leslie, all our stuff.

(01:15:33):
We get in there and set it all up and
it's about three o'clock in the morning, about time we're
ready to really start read. You know, I'm too tired,
but you know, we're set, but we got you know,
we got a good drum sound. Let's let's come back
tomorrow and we'll start, okay, I said, well, it's going
to be midnight again. I said, well all right. So

(01:15:56):
we get there at you know, eleven o'clock or and
they say you have to move all your equipment from
studio beat A studio A because somebody else needs studio.
So we move it, We set it up, and we
get ready to record, and the engineering department walks out.

Speaker 8 (01:16:13):
What now, you walk out walked.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Out of the building. They just left, and we were
just standing, what do you mean? They what? So I
go call my executive producer, John Palladin, you know, and
I say, you know, I'm here at the studio. This
is what's happened in the last two days. You can
have your money back, you can have your contract back.
You know. I'm done here, you know. Oh no, no, no, no, no,

(01:16:35):
no no no no no no, no, no no no.
And that's when yeah, I went, okay, I've been so
naive and stupid about record companies. You know this. There's
nobody's going to help me do anything. I'm in a cesspool.
Everybody's fighting for the same resources, and guess what, all
the engineers are sort of right wing crew cut, kind
of Vietnam Vett kind of guys who don't like me

(01:16:58):
at all. In fact, they don't really want me here
because I'm this dirty hippie, you know. And that's what
it was. So because that had been so smart and
made that great deal the fact there's stuff up but
the USS United States and went to London and recorded

(01:17:19):
at Olympic Studios.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
I was gonna say, because the legendary Glenn Johns was
involved with the first four records.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Correct, Yeah, and he was our engineer and he was
always legendary.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
But I was gonna say, did you purposely for the No,
like Glenn John's like shaped rolling stone stuff, but I
mean more importantly, like that's just the way he engineered,
especially with led Zeppelin's like records.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
No, No, that's his brother Andy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Wait so there are two of them, Yeah, there's two.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
So here's the thing. Glenn Johns was this very rigid
British pop guy who had a pop haircut and an
alligator skin jacket and a briefcase and drove an xke
and come on, let's here we go. He was like
and he had done, and he was He had come
up as an engineer in the British, the London pop scene,

(01:18:13):
pop music, so they made good records. We got to
Olympic Studios and as soon as we got there, there's
a guy named Jick Sweatingham who invented a whole lot
of great stuff, who was like working on the board
and we just went, oh, this is gonna be great.
They really really want to make the guitar sound good.
We'd record in the States and you'd cut something and

(01:18:33):
sound great, and you go and listen to it and
you know it sound this big, and you'd go, God,
what happened. So start working with Glenn. He's our engineer,
and I'm just totally at war with him because I
like the stack sound. I like the otis writing sound.
I like that dry, real sound, and he's got everything
going through a plate and it's all kind of in

(01:18:54):
a reverb chamber. And we're just arguing about presence every day, argue, argue, argue, argue, argue.
But you know, at the same time, he knew how
to like get guys together and organize big. He was
up for fast multi tracking and stuff. So we started
learning quickly. You know how to make records, how to

(01:19:16):
cut tracks, how to really do it?

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Was this on for eight track by the Time Children
Futures for Yeah? Okay, okay, Now I have a question.
A lot of your one of your signature trademarks are well,
obviously you're you're an albums based artist instead of just.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
For electronic music, aren't.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
Well you don't understand.

Speaker 10 (01:19:44):
I can't wait for this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
Wait. But what I'm saying is that a majority of
your albums sort of have this cinematic intro to it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
You don't.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
I'm just scouting space, even with the the fatality of records.
I mean all most of your records. You start this
album with a damn near a two minute drone, so
in your mind, I mean, I know that in the
late sixties the whole don't bores, get to the chorus,
you know, just throw your hit sing out front and whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Well that's singles.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Albums are different, right, But I'm just saying that no
one's truly thinking in terms of crafting albums.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
So well, there were you know, like the Beatles were
doing it, and this stuff comes from like symphonic music
and like Bozo goes to the circus, turn page to
put the next disc on, and you know, Sparky and

(01:20:48):
the radio mystery shows and all of that stuff that
I listened to all the time as a kid. Made
making an album cinematic. So it's more like, we're gonna
go someplace. We're going into this special place, We're gonna
listen to this thing. It's gonna be real wide and

(01:21:11):
broad and deep, and there's a you know, if you're
willing to do this, you know, And and that was
always my goal. And I was into stockhaus And I
don't know if you've listened to Stockhausen, but I went
to Germany and met him in and went to a
studio and saw how he did things. And I always

(01:21:32):
loved the idea of creating a big horizon or a
space and having it be like a story, like it's
a musical journey, it's not just one tune. And at
the same time, then you have to pull the one
tune out, and then that's a whole other game. Making
single records and that's a whole other art. So it's

(01:21:55):
two different approaches.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
As far as engineering is concerned. You would re engineered
and mix a song that was going to be a
single for specific reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
Or yeah, yeah, as soon as we could. Yes, And
you know it was always hard. I mean, like back then,
you know, like if you wanted to change the running order,
you had to cut all the tunes up and put
them on separate reels. You know, if you had fourteen
songs or twelve songs, you had twelve different reels, and
you go, okay, give me song number six. I'm gonna
make it song number two. Okay, splice it together. Okay,

(01:22:26):
now splice all fourteen of them to give us this
to that. No, that's not right, take it apart and
tis do it again. You know, it could take weeks
just just doing the sequencing. So I always I just
always like that sort of sense of like you're going
on a journey. And when I when I tell you
it's Boso Goes to the Circus, there is an actual

(01:22:47):
album called Boso Goes to the Circus, and it's kind
of like that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
As far as your approach, I mean a lot of
that earlier stuff was just blues heavy. How did you well,
the thing is the one thing I didn't do even
though I had Okay, So I went through two phases
of discovering your music naturally having it of course, you know,
my dad had like a couple of records, and then

(01:23:17):
later my sister had a few records, and then once
hip hop came to play, then I had to buy
everything that any any artists ever made, just so I
can study their discography. So the thing is, though I
never looked at or even knew of rock critics disdain
for for white blues, of which you know, I mean

(01:23:42):
like Rolling Stone, not tourist Lye would tear up well,
I mean because they were, well, you know, you didn't
live this authentic blues life, so why are you approximating it?

Speaker 8 (01:23:54):
You know what white blues is? I mean, it sounds
weird when you say it like that. What's give me?
Like the three?

Speaker 9 (01:23:59):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
I mean, yeah, I mean his whole career. I mean,
the basis of his career is taken. But the thing
is is that I'm now realizing the life that you
lived from Les Paul, entering your life into all the
people that you backed them when you couldn't help but
take the torch.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
And when I got to Chicago and everybody I met
in Chicago, these are just a bunch of white kids
have been listening to records. I just went he's got
a record contract, give me the mic, youll because where
I grew up.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
So they were they amazed that, like you listened to
him I play, he was in my living room, like
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Trying to steal Muddy Water's gig.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Oh So even then, Muddy Waters wasn't like a god.
He was still competition.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
And it's like I told you, Muddy's career was over.
They had had their hit singles, they were done. There
weren't any gigs for Muddy w except in these night
clubs in Chicago on the South Side and the near
North Side. That was it. They might go to Detroit.
Maybe they were living at home. Muddy was. I think

(01:25:14):
Muddy was working as a janitor a Chess Records when
the Rolling Stones came in. And I mean, it's just
where it was there, and that was considered normal. You know,
you made three records, you were a star for eighteen months,
and you know, now it's the hula hoop. Somebody else's

(01:25:35):
got sounds like hip hop today. You know, Yeah, in
a minute, everything would change. And so when I got
to Chicago, they were talking about this blues scene and
they were talking about Paul Butterfield. Now Butter had a
great band, and it was it was like the Little

(01:25:57):
Walter Records sound before Mike Bloomfield joined the band and
screwed it up in my opinion, And I know, people
go crazy when they it was. It was so sweet.
It was such a great blues band, you know. But
I always felt like these were kids who like sat
around and you know, did this with records. And I
never felt that way because I was listening to blues

(01:26:21):
all of my life, when I was around blues musicians
all of my life, and then growing up in Texas,
I was around them all my life and T Bone
was the guy I learned to play lead from. So
I didn't have I didn't have that issue of like
I want to be a blues artist and I'm gonna
dress like one and I'm gonna talk like one, and
i'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get a

(01:26:41):
guitar just like that. I mean, it wasn't like that.
It was just like, I want to play music, and
this is the music that I'm I can see in
front of me. So that was my difference.

Speaker 9 (01:26:51):
But wasn't it technically always going to be a disconnect,
Cause now I'm getting what y'all was saying about white blues,
black blues, But wasn't it always going to be a
disconnect sense? Muddy Water and all the black musicians were
speaking from a place of pain, and regardless to if
you were in their room, the room with them at
the time, you would never really feel right what they are.

Speaker 13 (01:27:13):
White people have pain, y'all.

Speaker 8 (01:27:17):
Not in America.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Different.

Speaker 8 (01:27:18):
It's a different kind of pain in America.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
So you know, I think, like, first of all, first
of all, like I used to hear Muddy Waters and
Otis Span and that great band playing in a room
the size of the room we're in right now, And
what I was thinking was how great this sounds, How

(01:27:44):
what a phenomenal you know, adults playing adult music. This
is this is jazz, this is this is incredible. And
you know, I think, you know, the music just gave
you empathy. You know, I never, I mean, I didn't

(01:28:05):
have this. Are you qualifying to play black blues? Yeah?
I am. You know, let me show you. Let's play
some blues. Let's play forty four blues, baby, you know
that kind of stuff. So I just it was my music.
I didn't look at it as I'm learning Muddy Waters music.
And so when I was around Muddy and Hollingwoof, I

(01:28:29):
started growing up as a musician and I started seeing
somebody who like played really great harmonica. I could learn
some things from that, or I saw somebody who was
doing something, but I didn't see anybody playing guitar like
t bon Walker and me I didn't think Buddy Guy

(01:28:51):
was you know. I thought Buddy Guy and Junior Wells
were like pretenders. You know, they were like the Junior.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Set, whoa they were?

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
They were they were clowns, they were clowning around. They
were just fucking around. In the minute they got their
record contract, they stopped playing blues, and Junior did a
solo album and wanted to be James Brown. So everybody's
human here, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
And so your thoughts on the what was the electric
album that Muddy Waters did? Were electric clud or even
that where he said Muddy Waters hates this, Yeah, what
were your feelings on I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
Really like that that that approach. And I was asked
to do a record with John Lee Hooker and I said, well, yes,
I'd love to. So I go over to the studio
and there's like, here's what it was like, this is
the white Blues syndrome. Is a white guy producing the record,
going okay, John, all right, that's fine, just sit over there.

(01:29:51):
And John Lee Hooker's like in a in the corner,
you know, like he is, you know, kind of stuttering
and sitting there and very shy man, you know. And
outside there's like five white guys with long hair and
guitar cases like next, and inside there's like a good
rhythm section and they're just coming next and they're just

(01:30:13):
going to make this album. So I walked in and
just said this is all wrong. And I started talking
to John, and I said, man, let's do this, Let's
do that, let's work on this, let's get going, you know,
let's do this stuff. And I did one tune and
I was gone. You know, when you saw those kind
of albums, those were terrible. So what you really want

(01:30:36):
is the real deal. Now, Butterfield is the real deal.
You know, there are white musicians who are the real deal.
There are black musicians who are the real deal. And
and it shouldn't. You know. It's like I get all
the social you know, differences and the fight about it,

(01:30:57):
but really and truly, when you get into the room
and you just start really playing music. Some people play
the real stuff, and when that happens, then all that
other stuff just falls aside and it becomes great. And
in the record companies promoted all that bad stuff that
was just some jive A and R guy doing trying
to make money.

Speaker 1 (01:31:18):
Okay, so there's a question. Now, I believe you when
you're you know, even though I wasn't there to see
these bands in San Franciso or any bands that you've seen,
you're like, Okay, he's good, he's not good. Their quality
they're all right, but sort of the way that the
three of us would know, and I'm pointing up Fonte
and Bill, the three of us would know equality producer

(01:31:43):
all right, Dyla right like, and we respect his his
drum patches, all of his you know, his whole arrangement.
And then we'll hear an unnamed imitator that might be
more popular, and you're like, a man, his batches are horrible.
The sounds. So what The one thing I could never
because the thing is is that because I'm from another generation,

(01:32:06):
I saw, or at least feel, the beauty and the
stuff that you might not necessarily see as the real deal.
But what what are the qualifications for Yeah, what like
do you look for technique? Do you look for a
specific robrato or tone in their guitar playing? You know,

(01:32:29):
none of that space in their phrasing, you know, I mean,
it's presence, it's peeling.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
It's right now, right right here, what you know you're
doing right while you're here. And some people can be
just technically totally incompetent and can be great, and other
people can be just unbelievably technically competent and just. And

(01:32:58):
so it's all the idea, you know, it's it's the material,
in the in the presence.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
Well, can I ask, as a blues guitarist, what is
what was your opinion of Hendricks as a blues guitarist?

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
Great, absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
Now as an amateur, well at okay, it's not me
being an amateur. But if I'm coming from an amateur standpoint,
and I have this problem with musicians today, they think, okay,
I gotta overplay everything to make up for a technique.
And I knows that with with with blues guitar players,
that the guys that are often praised are the guys

(01:33:38):
that have the least amount of the least amount of
of of notes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
So my favorite blues guitar player is Jimmy Vaughan. Okay,
Jimmy Vaughan. And Eric clapped it just at his seventieth
birthday party at the Garden and John Mayer was there
and was there and Booted boot blas there and how
do you how I was, you know, and he's got
all the guitar players and Jimmy's there and everybody's coming

(01:34:07):
out and they get to do their cello and they're
all playing like Eric with that sort of soprano woman
tone that.

Speaker 10 (01:34:16):
What's it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
All over the place right, you know, just fast and
fantastic and like you think that was good? Dig this
thing that And Jimmy came out and hit one note
and kind of went splank and they kind of hit
the floor and went flap and the whole building kind
of went oh, oh, oh, okay, you know. And that's

(01:34:39):
the difference. And some people have got it. And look,
there are people who make millions of dollars selling bullshit.
We know that, you know, and and the public's easily fooled,
you know. And they go along and their packages are
sold and things are managed and weights push put behind
certain things, but when it gets down to the real,

(01:35:02):
just unvarnished truth, then somebody who's present, who's really saying
something or really playing from the heart. That's the first
thing from that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Era never got. Their props are their respect that you
felt deserved. God, status, My God, We're never going to
get to fighting. We're not gonna get to fight.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
But I'm not mad is Curtis CeAl Gato and the Stilettos.

Speaker 1 (01:35:31):
I hate to say this, I've never heard.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
Curtis cell Gato and the Stilettos. Check them out.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
They're phenomenal blues songwriter and singer and great harmonica player
and badass band leader. And he said like four or
five bands. He's really funny with his bands. Every every
time he has a new band, I just go, God, Curtis,
where did you find that guitar player? I don't like
that guy. I'm firing him. My rhythm guitar player came

(01:36:05):
from Curtis's band. I was just going, when are you
going to fire him? Great? Thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
All right, I'm gonna try and skip ahead a little
bit because I gotta talk about you, all right. So
I want to go to Brave New World now, I've
heard a lot of stories throughout the year is about
especially with my Dark Hour. Can you confirm or deny

(01:36:33):
that you were witnessed? Well, you guys are smiling already
because you know I'm gonna come with now. The rumor
was that you were privy or in the presence of
the actual breakup of the Beatles, that both from what
I heard, it was that both of you were an
olymp Olympia's studios.

Speaker 2 (01:36:53):
Or yeah, I'll tell you what, tell me what happened.
So I went to London to mix Brave New World, okay,
and Glenn was gonna mix it, and he was working
with the Beatles at Olympic Studios, and he said, they're
running a couple of days over, so just come and
stay at my house and you know, uh, we'll we'll go.

(01:37:15):
We'll start in a couple of days. And then he said,
let's go over to George's house. To George's house. He says, yeah,
George's house. So we go and go to George's house
and George opens the door and he's just sweet as
he can be, and he says, oh, man, children of
the Future, you know, Sailor. I love those two albums.

(01:37:36):
I was you do twirl of you know, the prayer
wheel and look at the synths, and I'm going okay,
And I was just like that, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
And so you did like the Beatles.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
I loved the Beatles. I thought the Beatles were just
one of the greatest things that ever happened.

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
In the talk Somebody's Lose that, I just didn't think
that ye was even on your.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
Oh I love pop, We're just talking about one. So uh,
he says, all right, we're gonna go over there doing
a session tonight, so come on with me. So I
go into the control room and John comes in, and
Paul comes in, and Linda comes in, and Oko Yoko

(01:38:26):
comes in, Tom Stop Lo and they're doing Jojo, Get Back,
Get Back, Yeah. And they just walked in, sat down,

(01:38:47):
sang it in twenty minutes and we're done. And then
John had to leave and go do a TV show
that was like the Johnny Carson Show of England, and
he went and he said something that just turned the
whole country over and shook the change out of it.
Everybody's pockets or something, you know, And then he came
back and they didn't do anymore that night, and it

(01:39:08):
was like if the Beatles were in this room, it'd
be like there were like four hundred tubes with cameras.
These would all be cameras. I mean, that's the way
it felt, and it'd be like, Okay, John's talking to Paul. Now, okay,
Paul got up, he walked over toward the country. They
felt like I didn't know how they did what they did,
and they were very relaxed, and the whole situation real nice.

(01:39:31):
So the next day they're gonna do a session and
John and Ringo didn't show up. George showed up, and
Paul showed up, and so we're sitting around and they
had set up the gear. They had the drums and
the amps and stuff and glenses. Why don't you do
you and Paul go out and jam a little bit?

Speaker 10 (01:39:53):
They said.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
Okay, So I borrowed got Lennon's epiphone and then plugged
into some cool little lamp, and I'm playing this this
riff and Paul's playing drums. You know, I don't think
about all these things the way a fan would think
about them.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
I was pretty you know, shy meeting the Beatles. But
the next thing I know, I'm doing this recording with Paul,
and Paul's a great drummer. You just heard it, and
I was just going, oh, this guy can and I'm going, yeah,
well dig this lick. Well yeah, and we're we're in
here doing this now, you know, and I'm not thinking
about it. And so we start building a song. And

(01:40:37):
we're building a song and Paul comes back out and
plays the bass. I did the second guitar, and he says,
I got a pedal steel in the other room. You
want to play? I said, I've always wanted to play it.
Can you just plus listener to me? So put that on.
And then we're doing the background vocals, doing the my
Dark Hour parts.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
And while we're doing this, the session gets stopped and
a newspaper article is brought in that Brian Epstein's mother,
Brian had died. Their manager had just sold the Beatles
publishing to Northern Songs for I think it was four

(01:41:19):
point nine pounds, and that's when they found out that
they're publishing had been sold.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
The ANTV Northern Song. So happened that moment?

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
Yeah, I mean it came in. It was announced in
an Emmy New Music Express and hey, look at this
and so we're kind of reading it and I'm sitting
there going, fuck, you don't own your own published, guest.
And then we start talking about Alan Klein and John

(01:41:53):
wants to sign with Alan Klein and Paul doesn't. And
I'm going, you don't want to sign with Alan Klein,
Alan Klein, all your publishers, you know, those guys are gangsters.
You don't want your right, don't do that. And I'm
sitting here going, I can't believe that I'm sitting here
talking to like somebody that one of the few people

(01:42:14):
in my life that I really really am just in
awe as a talent. And I'm I'm good, I'm better
off than Paul. I own my own stuff. I can't
believe this, you know. And so there was poison between
Linda and Yoko, and I remember the one thing that
Yoko did that that really blew my mind was they

(01:42:35):
were mixing get Back and she was on the phone
and she said, hey, could you turn that down? I'm
on the phone and I say, every time music, I
was like a fly in the room, like I didn't
want to move anything, you know. I was just like, well,
they were doing it, and they go, what do you
think about that. See, it's really great. I mean that's

(01:42:55):
why I felt while they were doing it. I really
wasn't relaxed yet. I hadn't played any music with them
or done anything. You know. The next day was a
whole different deal. And that wasn't the day they broke up.
But I saw the stuff that was going on, and
you know, it was just like Boz and I had
this kind of thing like Boz wanted to go sign
a quick deal with some guy. You know. Boz was going, oh,

(01:43:20):
we need this guy, you know, Lenny's going to be
your manager or whatever it was. And I was going, Boz,
you're nuts. We can't let you know, we have to
keep control of our business. No, no, no, no, no no.
And there was a lot of that. You know. It's like,
hey kid, I'm going to take care of you. I'm
gonna you know, the whole deal, you know. And and uh,
Lennon just it seemed to me like he just wanted

(01:43:41):
somebody to take care of this stuff and have it
stopped driving him nuts. And Paul was kind of going
like I want to own my own publishing. I want
to own my own stuff. We need a good manager.
We got to be smart, This isn't going to work.
And that was, you know, when it was going on.
But they hadn't broken up yet, so I wasn't there
then they broke up, but I saw what the key

(01:44:03):
elements were.

Speaker 8 (01:44:04):
You, Steve, did you ever have a manager?

Speaker 9 (01:44:10):
Never?

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
Yeah, I've had a couple people manage me. And my
first manager got me busted when I was in London.
I fired in and yeah, he had a heart shaped
Valentine with a pound of weeds to him, didn't tell anybody,
it didn't arrive and he left town. Yeah, it's just

(01:44:35):
stuff like that, man, you know, I have never had.
I got a lot of help from a guy in
Chicago named Frank Freed, who was a good man who
helped manage me for a while, did get part of
my publishing but sold it back to me for nine
thousand bucks, which was the last nine thousand bucks I
ever had. Yeah, I mean I had at the moment,

(01:44:56):
but after that I never could find anybody was smart
enough to be my manager. And by that I meant
they didn't know which lawyers to use, they didn't know
what kind of insurance to get. They were full of shit.
They were hanging out in some office. They thought it
was a party.

Speaker 1 (01:45:12):
They weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
They didn't have the kind of connections I wanted. And
I was always scared of guys like Irving A's off.
You know, I was the Irving would skin me. You know,
it's turned out to be one of the best guys
there is for artists.

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
But you know, during that time period, so mafia infused that,
you know, you could make.

Speaker 2 (01:45:29):
Well, everything was mafia or record company. And the managers,
I mean a manager was a guy who was like
in Los Angeles going, hey, what what do you mean?
The hotel's bad, the PA doesn't work. Listen. I got
to talk to Madonna right right, you know, you know,
I mean they were just playing everybody and there wasn't
very much respect for artists, and I just didn't in

(01:45:51):
my run, I didn't run into the right people. I
never ran into somebody who was like going to be
doing as much as I was doing and earning their
equal share.

Speaker 10 (01:46:02):
Of what it was around at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
It was fun and I love Shep, you know, and
and he's you know, you was the dealer, and you know,
I didn't want a drug dealer or a kid to
be my manager. I wanted I realized that I needed
more than that, you know, and it's taken me a

(01:46:31):
lifetime to figure out what a what it really takes,
you know. I mean I've been doing this now for
a long, long, long time about you know, sixty sixty
five years and us it's a it's been a long
life and I've I've learned a lot about business, and
there are very few managers people can really actually manage

(01:46:52):
you through the stages of a career, and they always
want to own you forever, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:46:59):
So what do you want to give advice to anybody
that's listening on what to look for as a manager,
like I mean yeah, like or maybe like things for
them to to you know, sign for them to.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
Go for honestly an organization really well yeah, yeah, an
organization that's honest. Honesty is the is really important. And
of course knowledge too, but uh, it's really really, really
a difficult thing, and you have to u decide. You know,
when people make these decisions, they don't even know what

(01:47:33):
they're getting into. They don't even know what their lives
are going to be.

Speaker 11 (01:47:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):
It's the only place in the world where you know,
somebody comes up to you and go when you're eighteen
or twenty years old, and goes, I'm going to manage you,
and I'm going to own part of this for the
rest of your life, and I'll probably sell it and
make more money off of it than you will later.
You know, that's kind of what management is really looking
to do, you.

Speaker 1 (01:47:55):
Know, honest though. Yeah, yeah, so, okay, I guess we
show also been at least Space Cowboy on the record.
Did you plan on that being a main single? Because
I always wanted to know why I was at the
end of side too, because I would normally think that, Okay,

(01:48:16):
your first single, your big single, should at least be
in the first three songs.

Speaker 2 (01:48:20):
I hated Space Cowboy. I would want to put it
on the record.

Speaker 1 (01:48:23):
So was it an accidental hit?

Speaker 2 (01:48:25):
Yeah? It was one of those kind of things like
I have had. I've written myself out of what I
call the rock ghetto, right, you know, several times by luck.
And Space Cowboy was a poorly executed, executed tune, poorly written,

(01:48:51):
done in fifteen seconds or was it? But the idea
was really really great and we knocked it out without
any respect and we didn't take Like when I was
talking to Paul about writing to McCartney, was going, man,
how did you do? What? What about all that? And
he said, oh, he said, God, we did those things

(01:49:11):
so fast. I wish I had taken more time with
some of these songs. And that was kind of like
which one the long Winding Road was that too short?
Or which one was it that wasn't didn't meet your standards?
You know, But when you look back and you see
stuff like that, like you know, space Cot was just

(01:49:32):
a terrible track and that's why it's stuck on the
end and everybody's going, are you crazy? You kind of
put it up.

Speaker 1 (01:49:37):
You're still maintainment to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:49:39):
No, it's a great song now. I completely redone it.
We're killing it now.

Speaker 1 (01:49:46):
When you hear the original, you're just like, man, so
I get a sweat and blood.

Speaker 2 (01:49:52):
Dude.

Speaker 1 (01:49:52):
I mean, but you see there's a Simpsons episode about it,
so you're at least like, Okay, maybe I was wrong
about it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
You know, here's the thing, like, I've never met any
artist who has any concept to who they are. It
was so obvious Chuck Berry didn't have a clue who
he was. You know, didn't know who Chuck Berry was.
You know, I don't know who Steve Miller is. I'm
inside of Steve Miller trying to think this stuff up
and do it. So when somebody comes up and goes,

(01:50:24):
oh man, Steve Space Cowboy, you know the Stephen Mere
goes God, that was the lamest track we ever cut.
I can't believe it sounds terrible as an awful mix.
Guitar solo is like, what did I have that effect
on that? Get?

Speaker 9 (01:50:37):
Ugh?

Speaker 2 (01:50:38):
Ah, you know that's me. That's the way I'm looking
at it. And somebody else has gone, god, Man, Space
Cowboys saved my life, and you have to you know,
it's really hard to just shut up and go thanks
and thank you. You know, so it's really hard to
know who you are to other people. I have a
hard time with that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
You said, only take fifteen minutes in one take. Well,
in contrast, you said in an interview once that I
think The Joker took three weeks to make.

Speaker 2 (01:51:05):
Oh no, that's a whole album, okay, not just no
the Joker album.

Speaker 1 (01:51:10):
I thought you meant okay, I thought the song The Joker.

Speaker 2 (01:51:13):
Was really quick. That was like seventeen days for the
whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:51:17):
Oh man, Okay, So even thanks for putting that song
in guitar heroll.

Speaker 2 (01:51:21):
My kids love that song, you know, God bless it.

Speaker 9 (01:51:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:51:26):
I love the fact that little kids love my music
and they all sing it, and they all like it,
and they can sing the parts.

Speaker 9 (01:51:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:51:32):
That's that's as good as it good.

Speaker 1 (01:51:34):
Not that I think, well, I don't know, if you see.
I like to think that everything that you've done on
your records had some sort of scientific, purposeful.

Speaker 2 (01:51:42):
Meaning to it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:42):
Oh yeah, and I know you're going to be like, sure,
I don't know what I was thinking. Okay. On the
Joker album, right at the beginning of Come to My Kitchen,
I mean, you have this monster group. It's only for
like eighteen seconds, but it feels like you're going to
do live concert, and this monster group starts and then

(01:52:03):
it just fades away, and then you go into come
to my Kitchen. Why and where is that group? Because
that group was.

Speaker 2 (01:52:11):
Kind of a sound check. Yeah, but and and uh
and and still have all of it. And it was
a great groove and and I wanted I want I
wanted to you know, I wanted to create this environment,
and I wanted that it was I knew it was
such a great piece of music. I wanted to put
it on the record, but I didn't know more what

(01:52:33):
to do with it, and and so we mixed it
with the Kitchen Blues, which was this live performance.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
And it's just like, was it us like walking into
the concert hall as the It's kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:52:45):
Like to me, it's always like the spaceship lens, you know,
it's like there's a lot of that. Like I was
always playing the echo plexo.

Speaker 10 (01:52:54):
Woo wool wall wah wah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:57):
You know, into another thing, you know, and I don't know,
you know why I didn't take that and write write
a great piece of music. You know. I was always
very serious about making my albums and trying to say,
say entertain people, say good things, kind of educate people,

(01:53:17):
have it be a little bit more than maybe what
they were thinking they were going to get. And so
it's always, you know, serious about it. It wasn't just like, oh,
I don't know what I was doing, But sometimes I
didn't know what I was doing. Like on Space Cowboy,
I thought it was a great idea. I just you know,
we made five albums I think in eighteen months, and

(01:53:40):
that was the third one or something. You know. It
was like we were really moving fast.

Speaker 1 (01:53:46):
When you're making these records, do you, I mean, they
also have a and it's gonna be weird maybe for
you to say this. I don't know if anyone's ever
described it to you before, but I mean, I consider
these hip hop seeds hip hop records because there's some
of them are so groove based, and the way that

(01:54:09):
you mix them, it's it's like R and B records,
even with with like I mean, I'm not even talking
about like take the Money and Run or whatever that
had breakbeats at the top of them, but just in general, like,
were you mindful of soul grooves and maybe that somewhere
out there there's a black audience that would embrace you

(01:54:29):
as well or that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:54:31):
Stop we had a black audience. We had a big audience,
and everywhere we played it was really a mixed audience,
and we were a mixed band. And uh so, you know,
Gerald Johnson is one of the greatest bass players from
the whole fucking planet. You know, he's great, and uh

(01:54:57):
we had you know, before the sheds, it was all integrated.
And as soon as the sheds were built and they
moved out to the suburbs, like all of a sudden,
I was just playing to an all white kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
Like man music. Well, see, our shed is actually in
the inner city. Actually our sids in the hoods Center
and Philly Man Music Center is right in the hood. Yeah,
and the Plateau.

Speaker 2 (01:55:27):
Played one of the you know, I played there many
times and had one of the most corrupt gigs of
my life was done there.

Speaker 1 (01:55:36):
Music Center was the name Larry Maggott brought into play.

Speaker 2 (01:55:39):
Yes, it was okay, Larry Megan stories.

Speaker 1 (01:55:47):
He's the man my dad, so go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
So so oh that explains everything. I was reading your book.
So I was like, yeah, so all right. So Larry Maggott,
like a friend of mine who had started off as
an equipment manager for Santana Herbie Herbert, put together created
and thought up the band Journey. He thought up the
poster art, he thought up the t shirt business. He's

(01:56:09):
the guy who created the t shirt business now. And
he picked the people in Journey and he said we're
gonna have a rock pan and we're gonna do this,
and he was unbelievably successful. And he told me the
story about Larry. So they played at Philly at the
Football Stadium stadium and got paid on a sold out

(01:56:32):
show fifty six thousand people or something like that. A
couple of weeks later, to get a satellite photo from
a friend of theirs in the Air Force. He goes, congratulations,
you guys had seventy eight, two hundred and forty two
people at your show. And he said, can you do
that from a satellite? He said, oh yeah, right to
the you know there it is. So there's a huge

(01:56:54):
lawsuit body against Larry Maggott who was like skimming, like
by twenty five thousand people. Everything was a skim, right,
So stealing skimming, stealing, skimming off everybody. So Paul McCartney's
seeing them, grateful dead, sewing them, journey seeing them. Somebody
else is seeing them. Somebody Yeah, they see him. A
vice president from the company has to go to jail

(01:57:16):
for eighteen months. And then poll started as an article
saying so Larry house business ben He says, well, ticket
sales A is great. Has affect your ticket sales at all?
So that's a So I'm playing there and I go
do this. I get there and the building manager is
not there. The fire commissioner guy is like on vacation,

(01:57:39):
and those three hundred pounds Union guys and Philly who
are all like, hey, yeah, you know, I mean I
got into it with those guys, Yeah I did. I
went in. They were all eating chicken, and I said,
look at you guys. While I was talking, I was going,
what am I doing? They were like the you know,

(01:58:00):
eating half chickens, and nothing was set up, and they
were trying to charge us an extra ten thousand dollars
to set up our second laser screen, and you know,
they were just jerking us around everything. And I go
out and I look at outside and I go, holy shit,
this place is so over sold. This is the most
dangerous house I've ever been in my life. There was

(01:58:21):
not space for one more person there was there were
no aisles, there were nothing, and I just had to like,
you know, the show was like very delicate. I didn't
want to get anybody too excited or anything. And then
the rear fence was broken down and three thousand people
more came in. And then later we found out that

(01:58:44):
the Union had a van that they were selling cocaine
in the the union. The Union guys at work, they
were selling coke in the audience, and they were reselling
the tickets just when you're thinking there, I had a seizure,
you know. And then and then you know, we get

(01:59:06):
in the cars and that's the end of the East
Coast and we're going to Denver, and you know, three
days later we're playing it. We fly, the stuff's all
into it. We get to Denver and we get out
the Red Rocks and the guys go, what did you
guys do in Philly? Man? You know, because the union
had called them. You know, I thought our tires were
going to be slashed, our equipment stolen, but that that

(01:59:28):
was always Philly. You know, it was a very So
you know, when when people asked me about business and
you asked me about management, I've been dealing all my
life with mafia, UH, illegal police, UH, corrupt business people,

(01:59:49):
dishonest record companies. The union designed to protect me, never
protected any of my interests and abused me. And uh,
you know, the ask caps of the world have you know,
I'm always in the wrong program. When I when I
got my hit boy too bad, you know, you would
have made more shell game, you know, all of that

(02:00:11):
kind of stuff. So my whole business experience has been
dealing with people who are dishonest or trying to steal
from me and trying to do me harm.

Speaker 7 (02:00:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:00:21):
So that's that's what That's the kind of manager you
need is you need the space cowboy man, you need
the champion of justice.

Speaker 8 (02:00:28):
Sounds like we need to Stephen Miller book though publisher,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
I think I think you know, the book's been written.
You know what the problem I found was what people
would say, you know, like, well, that's an acceptable contract
that they would have, you know, fifty percent of your publishing.
That's that's the industry standard. And I just from my
twelve year old days of getting paid for what I
did and what I thought was mine, I would just say,

(02:00:56):
well no.

Speaker 9 (02:00:57):
And that's still you think that's realistic in twenty seve
seen you think that, you know, some courage field artists
can go into office and be like I want it all.

Speaker 2 (02:01:06):
Yeah, But it's so different now because you have to
here's here's the thing, you know, like here, here's the thing.
You can only do that when the situation's right. So
when I told you I had a feeding frenzy, I
thought you understood what a feeding frenzy is. Feeding frenzies,
you know, when I when I told you that in
nineteen sixty six there was this giant awakening in San Francisco.

(02:01:29):
I'm not talking about some little scene in the club.
I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (02:01:33):
The world movement.

Speaker 2 (02:01:35):
A thing popped out. You know, it was like whoa, whoa,
there's a whole different way this can all work. So
these things are like you know, situations timing all that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 8 (02:01:46):
Or unicorn in a way with the kids call like
to call it these days.

Speaker 2 (02:01:49):
Well, you know, if you want to get, if you
want it so bad, you'll do anything that's man listen,
then then then you know, I can get all your
publishing and your shoes and your watch and your ring
and your wallet. You know, in thirty minutes. That's now
with three sixties, yeah, and all of that because they

(02:02:10):
know it and the kids don't know it. And you know,
kids always want to you know, you wost want to
do it, but you have to say no.

Speaker 1 (02:02:16):
You have to learn the leverage is in your favor
if you if you have even.

Speaker 2 (02:02:21):
If it isn't, you have to say no for a while.
Do you know, Like I never did anything I didn't
want to do, and I had people trying to get
me to do stuff. You know, hey, man, go do
this thing for this DJ for free, and he'll do
that and go, fuck you man. You know there's going
to be four thousand people there. Sure you want me
to come? I always had that attitude. You know that

(02:02:43):
you got to pay me if you want me to
put the amp in the car and drive there and
set it up and plug it in. Man, It's it's work.
It's work, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:02:51):
So I have a question in in retrospect, was there
one historical event or one color collaboration or even some
of his minuscule as a soundtrack song, one slight misstep
that you made that you regret not doing, Like did
you get an offer for Woodstock but you're like they

(02:03:12):
ain't paying for me gas?

Speaker 2 (02:03:13):
Nope or wood Stock. I was calling, uh Frank Freed
in Chicago. The guy was helping me out there. Frank,
we got to play Woodsuck. We're gonna Yeah, you don't
want to play there. It's gonna be many, it's gonna
be in the say and it's already booked, you know what, Frank,
we gotta come on, Ah, you don't want to you
know that was one uh Monterey Pop Festival was you know,

(02:03:36):
we were talking about how the San Francisco guys really
considered the La guys gangsters and criminals, which they were,
and we were right to have that. But the other
day I was reading about the Monterey Pop Festival and
somebody was talking about how my manager, in typical San
Francisco fashion talked my talked us out of being in
the film. You know, it's like, we're not gonna let

(02:03:57):
you guys film us. We're not gonna do that.

Speaker 1 (02:03:59):
You did it and you're not own film.

Speaker 9 (02:04:00):
Yeah right, no, wait, but Jannis is saying, your wife
is saying, some Jess, there we go.

Speaker 2 (02:04:06):
Jennis just found twelve minutes of us that that Penny
Baker himself shot anyway, in spite of which shows you right, absolutely,
yeah yeah. And you know Bill Graham was the same way.
I mean, he illegally videotaped and recorded every show I
ever did. There.

Speaker 8 (02:04:27):
Oh, they're putting it out. Oh you said she said that.
Janna said they're putting it out.

Speaker 2 (02:04:30):
Oh yeah, well we've called them up and said, hey,
you remember what we said. We didn't mean that sixty
seven or whatever was.

Speaker 1 (02:04:40):
Come on, you know, I can't believe this, but we're
finally getting to nineteen seventy six. I know you got
you get to Fly like an Eagle already. I promise
you I'll end it right now. All right, I just
had a get to Fly like wait, I'm here now

(02:05:02):
now I'm so overwhelmed, I don't know what to ask
about it.

Speaker 2 (02:05:04):
Fly Like an Eagle was a song that was developed
over two three years. And our gigs used to be
we'd like, you know, go come to Detroit and play
the Grandy ball Room, or be in Boston at the
Tea Party year be you know, whoever it was. And
a lot of what we did was like we'd play

(02:05:26):
a couple hours, two three hours, and we'd have a
mirror ball and you know, mirror ball is a great thing,
and you know, it's like a dark room. It wasn't
like a big show spotlights and all that, and there'd
be some you know, kind of oily kind of stuff
going on behind you. The mirror ball would be on,
everything would be kind of cool and we'd just start jamming.
And so Fly Like an Eagle was a jam and

(02:05:47):
it was a long piece. Back in those days, a
show wasn't something where you had to come out and
do like, you know, nine songs and forty five minutes
like bang bang bang bang bang bang, thank you very much.
You know, it was like a whole evening and it
was kind of like we're just tipping the gang and
everybody's going to relax. You know, it's like music tonight.

(02:06:09):
And so that song was developed started like that and
that riff. You know, my dark hour didn't feel like
you know, I gave him the song before it was
really finished and we did it in seven hours and
it was done, and I wasn't done with that that
idea at all.

Speaker 1 (02:06:28):
So yeah, come back to it because there was a
slow I believe on Midnight Special in seventy three you
did a version of Flat like Eagle. That's half the halftime,
the slower version of it. So it's always been your repertoire. Yeah,
like for me personally, like and this is this is

(02:06:49):
the whole reason why you're here? Is the next question?
I wait, you gotta understand, all right.

Speaker 9 (02:06:55):
So my.

Speaker 1 (02:06:59):
My my first day of school back in seventy six,
which is weird because because my dad had both silt
degrees and fly like an Eagle eight track in the car,
it was far far drive from school. So like my
memory of hearing fly like an Eagles on my dad's

(02:07:20):
a track player in the car, and also with Bosqua
as record, which you know, it's kind of weird that
you two are paired together and we didn't know that
back then. But you know here in the space intro,
which Steve will probably want to kill me, because any
space intro is just my go to reference point for

(02:07:44):
anything that in my head that's like slow motion or
needs atmosphere and whatever like, that's my my go to
reference for any keyboard play we ever had, Steve.

Speaker 2 (02:07:55):
So I was listening to one of your records today
before I came over. I think I understood that, Well,
it's kind of like we could do. This is the
same stuff we're.

Speaker 1 (02:08:07):
Just yeah, just me, when I was a kid, it
made me feel like I could fly.

Speaker 2 (02:08:12):
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to. That's that's great because that's
exactly what the way it made me feel when I
was playing it and discovering it and doing it, and
it was so magical to do that, you know, And

(02:08:33):
I I I had this this thought, you know when
before I came over today, because I was listening to
some things and I kind of went, yeah, this is
this is like the same kind of work like this
is these are these people, and I mean this is

(02:08:53):
like what I'm doing, This is where where I am
when I'm in the studio, when I'm laying back, and
I kept thinking like of Macho City, Dude.

Speaker 1 (02:09:02):
Well, I want to talk about Manso City because freaking
hip hop. Like when when you're creating Mancho City and
the political rap that comes with it, it's like a
year before the message. What what were you thinking?

Speaker 2 (02:09:18):
Like were you.

Speaker 1 (02:09:20):
As far as like, okay, well, hip hop is is?
I was just going to be a thing because hip
hip hop really wasn't a thing.

Speaker 2 (02:09:27):
Here's what you can't understand. I was thinking about hip
hop at all. I was just doing something.

Speaker 1 (02:09:34):
So you didn't hear any Grandmaster Flash records like oh
we could know. I was believe you too, because you know,
I was just doing what I do and that's it
wasn't new wave. It has it's sort of a new
like when new wave came. Like were you aborted? Because

(02:09:55):
I felt like if you didn't do Macho City, probably
talking heads cause have attempted to do it. Who are
your peers in that moment that.

Speaker 2 (02:10:04):
I didn't have any peers because what what? What had
happened was I had uh been sort of, I had.
I had done Abercadabra, I'd played these shows, I'd been
playing football stadiums. American Record Company said, Abricadabra sucks, We're

(02:10:27):
not going to do anything with it, and sorry, and
I said, okay, well, I'm canceling my United States tour.
I'm going to Europe then, because I had a different
deal with Phonogram from Capital. I went to Europe, and
it was number one all over Europe. In the United States,
it was in Europe, but not it was phone so

(02:10:49):
so it was number one everywhere. And and I came back.
I did a whole big tour of Europe and came
back to the States, and now it was like coming
up the charts, and then it finally went to number one.
And I got back and the sheds had just opened.
It's nineteen eighty three, I think, and I had booked

(02:11:11):
eleven of them, and I'd been playing football stadiums. I
got back at nineteen eighty three and there were like
three thousand people in each at each gig, and it
was a whole new place and a whole new thing,
and I was just kind of going, like God, my
business is it? Okay, Now I'm at the end, man,
all right. I sold them, you know, twenty million albums,

(02:11:31):
and I played football stadiums and I did all this stuff.
But I ain't going to come back and playing places
that are like a quarter full and so and at
the same time, all the press stuff like I think
at the same time, I think Macho City in the
La Times called it unmitigated slop and said that the

(02:11:52):
Capitol Records should be embarrassed for releasing my work as
an artist. And then they ran it again at New
Year's you know, like that. It was. It really hurt.
So so I just kind of went like, okay, that's it.
I'm I'm out of here. So I didn't tour for
six years.

Speaker 1 (02:12:11):
Wait a minute, you let that.

Speaker 2 (02:12:14):
Hamper you No, no, yeah, that was the final straw.
But I had I had just been on the road
from nineteen sixty five nineteen eighty three, and I just
just I mean, I was really tired of the whole thing.
And I didn't have any a manager, and I didn't
have any plan. I just you know, whatever happened happened,

(02:12:37):
and I worked when I worked it to my advantage
as much as I could, and I was tired. I
needed a break.

Speaker 1 (02:12:43):
So were you wear that like amazing mojo not mojojo?

Speaker 2 (02:12:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
It let you like they were playing that on black
radio up at Detroit, like in heavy rotation, like that
song had legs on it.

Speaker 2 (02:12:58):
No see, you know, like come no, I was living
in a farm in Oregon.

Speaker 1 (02:13:07):
That's a good answer.

Speaker 2 (02:13:08):
It was good. And you know, that's that's the world
I want to live in, where everybody where all cultures
are intertwined, and people are all listening to each other,
and the audience is diverse, and the music is diverse,
and you know, in an odd sense, that's kind of
what was cool about San Francisco is that it was diverse.
You know, on Monday night, it might be Johnny Cash,

(02:13:30):
and on Tuesday night it might be the Modern Jazz Quartet,
And on Wednesday night it'd be you know, Quicksilver Messenger Service,
and on Thursday night it'd be Muddy Waters, you know,
and it was very diverse. Or Roland Kirk or you know,
Charles Lloyd or a lot of people were just coming
through all the time. That's the world I want to

(02:13:51):
live in and play in and breed in. And you know,
be in. That's that's the way I feel.

Speaker 1 (02:13:58):
Okay. You know, like when someone tells you joke and
then you get the punchline like five years later. Yeah, okay,
that just happened to me. So I hate going back
to the filmore. But you said, Rashaan Rolling Kirk.

Speaker 2 (02:14:10):
Yeah, yeah, okay, Now we used to jam all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:14:14):
This is what I gotta know. With these jazz pairings
come into the film, Moore, were they truly open or
did it just look good on the poster? Like looking
on the poster, it's like, you know, air clapped in
cream and I'm using hypothetical John Coltran in essence, did

(02:14:36):
it really work that night? Or were there people that
were just like, all right, let me know when the
sunshine of your love guy comes home outside from smoke?

Speaker 10 (02:14:42):
No?

Speaker 1 (02:14:43):
No, no, it was like, were they truly open to.

Speaker 2 (02:14:46):
You don't understand, man. It was an The whole building
was different. It wasn't like when you go to work
and tickets are sold and managers are there and pop
stars are there and big video screens are on and
people are in control and people are being wound up
to be hysterical and ship like that. That's Rolling Stones

(02:15:07):
English Ship. This was like warm and real and great.
I used to go see Rolan Kirk on Sunday afternoon.
He'd play a set Sunday afternoon and play another set
Sunday night, or he was whatever he and you know
who you remind me of. I don't say it the drummer, No, no, no, Buddy, Buddy.

(02:15:34):
I know Buddy really, really, really well. I was there
the day Buddy came to town. He came to my house.
I definitely wanted to steal him from Mike Bloomfield right
away and put a band together with him, because he
was really cool. He went on a long pad trip
and had you know, a lot of bad things happened
to him. But I don't know if you know much
about Clift Engineer. It's Cajun blues, accordion blues. And the

(02:16:01):
drummer sits in the middle of the stage with his
drums like at this level, and it's like he's got
a bat and he's just going and things are happening
in the little bass player and the guitar player doing
a little steps and bomping up to the side and
off to the side, and Clifton sineers in the middle
and there's a guy on his knees playing his chest,
you know, playing the thing, and some of the greatest

(02:16:24):
music man funky funky funky stuff. That stuff was going
on all the time, and everybody was high the lights
the whole thing. It was like not like show business.
It was a different It was like church, man, a
musical church is what it ended up being. That was
being manipulated by certain groups and certain people. But in

(02:16:48):
spite of the Bill Graham's of the world, you know,
because while all this was going on, Bill Graham was
stealing from everybody, you know, stealing from the group, stealing
from the people, over selling the stuff, doing lying about
the books, bullshitting everybody, you know. But in spite of
all of that, there was this really great heart and

(02:17:11):
soul changing musical scene going on.

Speaker 13 (02:17:14):
So with the song, with the song the Joker, you
had this global hit basically right, and that was humongo humongous.

Speaker 1 (02:17:22):
So and then.

Speaker 13 (02:17:24):
Did you feel did something click at that point where
you said, Okay, now I understand what's going to truly
help me translate to the pop charts and have mega
hits and then sort of start pumping out like once
you had just said okay, wow, I found a unique
sound here.

Speaker 2 (02:17:41):
It was. It was different than that. When I left down.
The Joker was my last album at Capitol Records. Nobody
was talking to me about renewing my contract. It was
the first album where I kicked all the producers and everybody.
I was the first record I produced myself with just
by my So The Joker was yeah. And I brought

(02:18:02):
my band in for two days and cut all the
tracks and sent them home and then spent fifteen days
doing the vocal overdubs and all this stuff and mixing
it and putting it together. And I had this little
playback for the record company, and some kid in the
playback meeting said that Joker, I like that. I think
I think that could be a hit single. And I
turned to him and I said, I don't care about

(02:18:23):
hit singles anymore, you know, because I couldn't get played
on AM radio every single I put. I mean, just
could not do it. So I said, here's an album,
here's a list. I'm going to go play sixty cities
in the next ninety days. Just have some records in
the towns where I'm playing this time. Okay, thank you

(02:18:43):
very much, goodbye, and I got back from that tour
of ninety days later and there was a check in
my mailbox for three hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars
in the junk mail. Kind of went holy yo. And
I called up my agent and said, I'm taking the

(02:19:05):
next year off.

Speaker 1 (02:19:08):
You didn't want to strike while the iron was hot?

Speaker 2 (02:19:09):
No, Well, I went. Two things happened. I went to
the studio to Capitol to try and do something. I
was exhausted. I was so burned out, man. They said,
I can't. I haven't written anything, I can't think of anything.
I'm wasting money here. Let's stop. So we stopped for
a couple of weeks. Then I went up to Seattle
and I booked a studio up there, flew the band up.

(02:19:34):
The band got there and quit. They flew to Seattle,
had quit in mass And I said, and Gerald was there,
and Gerald was giving me all this stuff, and I
said Gerald, Gerald trilled, listen, never really tired, don't burn
any bridges. We may want to work together again. Don't
say it now, man. So they all quit, and I

(02:19:58):
was just sitting there kind of going like, yeah, we're done.
We had been struggling for so long. For so hard
trying to get this done, and so I took I
was going to take a year off, and I took
eighteen months off. And what it did was it allowed
me to sit down and think, and I basically lived

(02:20:23):
alone by myself for eighteen months. And about eight months
into it, I called up Lonnie and Gary Gary Malbora drummer,
Lonnie Turner bass player, took him into the studio in
San Francisco, cut twenty two tracks in eleven days, sent
them home, and then I just went back to my
house and engineered everything and just did all the vocals

(02:20:46):
and the guitar parts over and over and over and
over and over, and just worked on this thing that
felt like a masterpiece. And I just kept working on it,
and I had to race it all, and I'd do
it again. I'd race it all, and I'd do it again.
I had an eight track tape recorder and there were
two tracks with the stereo mix. One track had a
sink tone. So they gave me five open tracks, and

(02:21:09):
so I did everything that way. I had five open tracks,
and when I got it all finished, I basically had
done everything that I had set out to do. McCartney
had the thing with the Beatles in sixty nine was
I went there and when I saw what they had
in the can, I just went, oh my god, they've

(02:21:30):
got forty six songs in the can. God, there are
four albums ahead. They're ahead. That's how they do this timing,
you know, that's how it is. It's not like the
boys are trying to write something. They'll be back in
eighteen months.

Speaker 1 (02:21:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:21:45):
They were way ahead. And Paul, you know, told me
about that, and so I went, I got to get
two albums ahead. So I had all these singles and
I was looking at them and I knew what FM
rate is needed. I wasn't thinking about AM radio. I
had to help build FM radio.

Speaker 1 (02:22:05):
So you purposely did that, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (02:22:09):
Yeah, I mean I was making an album for you know,
AM radio wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole.
You know. They did with The Joker, but you know,
and they really did. I mean, when I came back
from that tour the Joker was, I remember driving to
do a gig in Oakland and putting the radio and
just going through to see where it was on. And
it was on four of the five top forty stations

(02:22:31):
et CE. So what I was pissed off because it
was none there's no joy in any of this. You know,
you never stop and go. Isn't this great?

Speaker 10 (02:22:40):
It was like.

Speaker 2 (02:22:42):
But so I knew that I was writing something really
great for FM radio, that I was writing something great
for radio itself, that this was how radio needed to sound,
that this was where it needed to go. It was
the material they needed. And my you know, songwriting of

(02:23:03):
my music was going on at the same time, and
my understanding of how to make records had grown quite
a bit. And I worked on it and worked on
it and worked on it and worked on it. When
I was finished, I took it myself, took the tape
and I had two slides, the cover and the back
of flylike an Eagle, and I took it to the president.

(02:23:24):
I said, this is going to sell four million copies anyway.
He said, well, let's go down and see the art department.
So we went down and talked to John Vandervelt and
he did the cover just like that and put it
out and.

Speaker 1 (02:23:40):
We ended up like.

Speaker 2 (02:23:44):
Dominating AM radio and FM radio at its height when
it sold when I said, when both of them were
at its most powerful. And so it was a great
time to you know, my timing was right. Everything just
my creative work came together at the right time, and
the whole thing just went way, way up. I think

(02:24:06):
we sold god thirteen million records and I don't know
two and a half three years something like that, and
had a lot of singles and dominated Airplane. It was
really the thing for me that was cool was that
when the FM radio put the record on, they played

(02:24:27):
the whole side. Yes, for the first three months. Man,
they never took it off. And that was always part
of the thing was I wanted those segues to just
bring people in. And you know, when I listened to music,
that's what I want. I want to go on Bozo
Goes to the Circus with John Coltrane, you know, or
Miles or whoever it is I'm listening to when I

(02:24:49):
got my eyes closed and I'm in space and I'm
listening and I'm feeling and I'm enjoying myself. You know,
that's the way I want to be.

Speaker 13 (02:24:57):
It's like nice, long good so essentially fly like an
Eagle and I guess Book of Dreams. That's that group
of songs that you're talking about. They were all sort
of made it the same same Yeah, same same equipment,
same techniques, maybe recording because I was really asking sonically,
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:25:16):
You know it's funny. It took seventeen hours to mix
Fly Like an Eagle, and we did a quad mix
to just went in the studios supper quad mix. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:25:25):
You were really big on that, weren't you.

Speaker 2 (02:25:27):
Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (02:25:27):
Didn't have QUI I mean I had the quad versions
of some of these records, but I don't have the
quad needles. Yeah, equipment to.

Speaker 2 (02:25:34):
It never sounded any good, you know. But if you're
in a Westwood room, like these are Westwood speakers here,
and uh, you know this is prob. Maybe this is
a Western room. It looks like one, and uh, you know,
we could get the tape here and play it and
it'd be going. But you know, like stockhausm Man Stockhausen
built a circle. Two Jesus, don't put them together for

(02:25:56):
a circle. But the floor in the middle brought the stairs.
This is that the Japanese World's Fair. Yeah, stairs up
and you go up in the middle and you walk
to it, and the speakers, the sounds going underneath you
and going like this all around you in circles, you know,
like three sixty for real. Underneath you and above you,

(02:26:16):
all of that kind of stuff just makes the horizon
better and bigger and more delicious.

Speaker 10 (02:26:24):
I don't know if I want my music sneaking up
from me from behind.

Speaker 7 (02:26:27):
You know.

Speaker 13 (02:26:33):
We're currently here at Electric Lady Studios in New York,
home of Jimi Hendrix.

Speaker 10 (02:26:37):
I never recorded here, ever been here at all.

Speaker 2 (02:26:42):
No, I think this is my first time here. Wow,
we brought him here, you did, Thank you very much
for inviting me, And.

Speaker 10 (02:26:51):
Well, I just guitars and stuff. You know you clearly like.

Speaker 9 (02:26:54):
Them, so you know, I mean, Steve wanted to make
sure you were somewhere special. Seriously, he was like, we
can't we have to have Steve Miller in Electric Lader.

Speaker 1 (02:27:03):
Yeah, it's only right, Okay, I would be remiss. And
I know you're tired of telling him about your account
of it. I want to ask about the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. Oh yeah, the year later, do
you feel better about it?

Speaker 8 (02:27:17):
Or what's the controversy? I'm sorry?

Speaker 2 (02:27:19):
Brief me.

Speaker 10 (02:27:19):
Well, I mean, are you are you not in it?

Speaker 2 (02:27:25):
He's in it.

Speaker 1 (02:27:25):
Yes, he's been inducted. I watched him getting dun Okay, yes,
you were there with ut I was sitting next to
David Burton dudekay, amazing. I totally forgot.

Speaker 2 (02:27:34):
You red sticky fingers, right, yes, yeah, that's that's the
problem with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Speaker 1 (02:27:41):
So I don't get that right. So half the staff
is on, well what what.

Speaker 2 (02:27:48):
What bothered me about the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame was and and I said all of this in
the Billboard article the next day was Uh. There was
no gathering, there was no party, there was no dinner,
there was no anything from the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame at all. I wasn't introduced to any of
the inductees, not introduced to one I was met at.

(02:28:13):
I was told that no, I couldn't make any suggestions
about who I wanted to induct. I was told that
if I wanted extra tickets for my band, Remember there
were ten thousand dollars apiece at my table, ten thousand
dollars a ticket. I was set a contract that was
worse than any record contract I'd ever seen in my life,

(02:28:35):
that was so purposely written in a way that was
impossible to understand that I would I just laughed at it.
And I was asked to start, you know, giving over things,
delivering guitars, giving special stuff and the contractually. There was

(02:28:57):
like a three month argument before I ever got there.
So when I got there, some women came up to
me and goes, hi, my name's Shirley, and I'm your minder.
I'm from like you know, entertainment services or something, you know,
with a clipboard, and took me to a little cement
room with two metal chairs. Took Janie and I there

(02:29:17):
and said we need you to wait here for an
hour and then we're gonna call you and we're gonna
come down and do this thing. Right. So you know
I was going to do that. So I went out
of the hall, ran into a few people and stuff
like that, and then there was some little sort of
cocktail party that was open to anybody and everybody, kind

(02:29:39):
of a hustler party, and got out of that. Next day,
we go to do the soundcheck. We're giving like about
twelve minutes. My house mixer can't mix my monitor. Man's
not allowed to use the monitor mixer. We got a
guy who's doing the monitor mix and an iPad two
hundred feet away. Hurry up, you got twelve minutes. Let's

(02:30:02):
go let's go, let's go get out of here. So
we do that, and uh, time goes by, and then
all of a sudden, it's time for the show to start,
and somebody just takes me out. And I'm sat at
a table where I don't know anyone at the table,
so very satisfying. My band, My band is three hundred

(02:30:24):
feet over that way somewhere I hadn't seen them, and
I'm sitting there and and I'm I'm sitting here thinking like,
let's see, I would have had a party. I would
have introduced everybody, and then I would have had, like,
you know, some little kids from the let's you know,

(02:30:45):
the rock and Roll Hall of Fame Music School come
up and play, you know, one of Steve's songs and
want to you know, they're whoever, you know, NWA songics whatever,
do this, and and then I'd explained about our music
education program and how we're really glad I had to
have these new inductees together, and we really wanted your
help on these programs and wanted to, you know, rope

(02:31:06):
you into the Hall of Fame beacon of light for
music education. This was like the coldest grab for a
profit to get money for a TV show. And I'm
telling you men, when I walked off the stage in
the back and these little smarmy kids were going like, hey,
so you were up for twenty three years and they
didn't put you in. How does that make you feel?
You know, it's kind of want to fuck you. You know,

(02:31:28):
I'll you know this that. And I walked out the
door man and the door closed, and I had a
little statue up in my hand, and my lovely wife
with me, and Jimmy Vaughan and Rob and his wife,
and we said, well, let's uber a car and go home. Hey,
uber a car? Wow?

Speaker 8 (02:31:45):
No car to take you. I feel bad for Janice
because I know there was a lot of motherfuckers that night, right?
Was it a lot in that wrong?

Speaker 2 (02:31:52):
You know? That's what. So the way I looked at
it was like I could really helped this place. I
could have really done a lot of good for the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And they didn't even ask,
They didn't even they weren't even interested. And I know
that I'm in here because they want to make a

(02:32:14):
television show. There are two good things that happened. One was, uh,
the night ended Ice Cuban doctor Dre in the middle
of them, right, this picture going, this is a cool picture.

(02:32:35):
And I don't really care about pictures and stuff, but
I've got this is gonna be a great picture. And
I'm really proud to be here. And Soga, So Dre,
that was a flylike an eagle you sampled on and
Killer Killer right, yeah, I said, that's okay, Okay, it

(02:33:00):
was like classic man, you.

Speaker 1 (02:33:04):
Know you don't play that. Okay. My last question, and
that's it. I promise your three, just your three, because
I know you're passionate about music. Your three all time
favorite albums, could you And I don't mean like Desert

(02:33:24):
disc or whatever. Just kind of blue, okay, Miles Davis
is kind of blue.

Speaker 2 (02:33:38):
I'm not sure the name of the album. It's it's
I think it's Bob Crossby and the Bobcats with a
big noise from Monetta and honky Tonk trained and probably
you know, a Jimmy Reid album. Those are you know,

(02:33:59):
my those are those that's the music that just really
rocked my soul.

Speaker 1 (02:34:05):
Well, I gotta say I got more than what I'm
barking for it because I thought it was just going
to be the history of the Steve Miller band. But
we got way more music.

Speaker 2 (02:34:16):
I got more than I bargained for it too, I'm
saying that.

Speaker 1 (02:34:22):
Yeah, Like for me, my favorite type of interviews are
either engineers or like artists that were there for historical
like these historical beatings or you know, historical moments that
you never even think about. But yeah, this is such
a major major education. Before I signed off, is any

(02:34:43):
other historical things happened to you that I don't know about?

Speaker 10 (02:34:46):
That dude has jammed with literally every person.

Speaker 8 (02:34:50):
Then I was just like, you.

Speaker 2 (02:34:53):
Know, next time we'll talk about Otis writing a moderat.

Speaker 1 (02:35:00):
Wait, wait we can, we can. We can go for
two more minutes. We can go for two minutes.

Speaker 9 (02:35:06):
If you're having any pains in your dairy, you should
know to Jimmy jam was forced to do this for
six hours and didn't even know it.

Speaker 2 (02:35:14):
His butt was numb.

Speaker 1 (02:35:16):
Yeah, okay, I will sign off now, but as an encore, yes,
thank you for tuning the question, and now for our encore,
the Otis Writing story by Steve Miller.

Speaker 2 (02:35:26):
So, uh, Monterey Pop Festivals, right, and there's a lot
of kind of like Johnny Rivers and Laura Nero and uh,
it's kind of you know what, what's going on? Right?
And all of a sudden, I'm backstage and I just

(02:35:50):
hear this curve and I just jumped snapped just like
that and said, I gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,
running to the stage and got up on the stage
and Spooker t and the MG's and they're just warming
it up. And then I think it was the barcase
or the horn section, and the bar case had this

(02:36:13):
trumpet player had this little pocket trumpet and he's like,
they're beginning to do these steps and they're just playing
these instrumentals and they're walking back in this little This
little trumpet player is just this mean little guy up
and I'm sitting there watching this, just going this is
gonna be the greatest thing in the world. And Otis

(02:36:39):
came out on the stage and he grabbed the mic
and he just hit the first note and it was
like this giant punch to the solar place. The whole
audience just went oh, and this mood just came over
the whole place and he just killed it. Just didn't

(02:36:59):
stop for a second. Man, the whole show was just
the most beautiful show I ever saw in my life.
And the last thing I remember about it was like
I was standing outside away from it, and I was
watching people in the parking lot leave and everybody was happy.
Everybody man. As far as you could see, there was

(02:37:19):
just this warmth and I thought he was like the
greatest that. I thought that was one of the greatest
live performances I had ever seen it. I've seen Ray
Charles and I've seen James Brown with the Flames, and
I've seen a lot of great shows, and that was
like probably the most powerful performance I think I ever

(02:37:43):
saw an artist do.

Speaker 1 (02:37:45):
I was just one more night when we have a
boss Bill, I'm baby Bill Sugar Steve. It's like yea
and fantigolo. Thank you, Steve Miller. Appreciate it is another
extravaganza episode of Quest Love Supreme Love You.

Speaker 2 (02:38:04):
It's a it's a great honor to be here. And
I really appreciate who you are and what you do
and and uh your intellectual curiosity and I want to
play some music with you. I think we should go
to the studio and we should like start with something
and just take it somewhere.

Speaker 1 (02:38:24):
You just don't let them, don't let them use space
and troll. Don't let him use space.

Speaker 2 (02:38:30):
From bringing my echoplex and mike from your mouth to Steve,
because if we've grown up together, we would be doing
this together. I know we would have. Yeah, thank you
you have that's awesome, all right, So Steve, we got
our Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:38:47):
Next album sounds good, Timothy and is that you and.

Speaker 1 (02:38:51):
The state of course that's you. Of course even the
Smithsonian comes to visit. All right, Thank you very much, Steve, Bill,
I appreciate it. The next go around, this was Quest.

Speaker 2 (02:39:01):
Thank you, Kay, Peace, Love and Happiness.

Speaker 1 (02:39:13):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Mandora. For more
podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.