In the Nick of Time, Phil & David are sharing take two of their jazzy, improvised, epic conversation with the legendary music producer, artist and timelessly cool cat Don Was. Don shares wonderful stories about working with the great Bonnie Raitt on albums that changed both of their lives, building "Love Shack" with The B-52's, how Don helped bring together John Mayer and Bob Weir. Then, Don tells the story of starting The Pan-Detroit Ensemble and offers a quick, fun track-by-track trip through the group's excellent new album, "Groove In The Face Of Adversity." For more on Don, go to https://donwas.com. To learn more about building community through food and "Somebody Feed the People," visit the Philanthropy page at philrosenthalworld.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, David, Hey Phil, we have someone very special, someone
who was special and it.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Still was was not was special, he was. He just
was and is special. By the way, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Was not was?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Don was is one of the greatest record producers, musicians,
coolest cats I've ever met. I've known him for I
think exactly as long as I've known you, or maybe
a little longer.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
It was better.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He was better you not was better. But so we're
gonna hear about his was not was about Bonnie Ray,
Bonnie Rait B fifty two and his amazing new record
with his group. Don was in the Pan Detroit Unsomba.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Beautiful Ladies and Gentlemen. Don was.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
Let's build the beans to the fan, food for thought,
jokes on tap, talking with our mouthsful, having fun, the
peace cake and humble pies, serving.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Up slass, lovely.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
The dressing all the side. It's naked, lush clothing option.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Someone who you did not only get, but you took
one of the greatest artists of our times and gave her.
She together, you made her everything she should be. And
I think her whole career and life change. And I
talked to her at the Grammy Museum a year and
a half ago about that to tell us, Bonnie Rate,
how the best, how important was that in your life?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
In music? It was a game changer. Yeah, I mean
it changed every single part of my.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Life and you for her.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, But she was poised to do something great. She'd
gone through some stuff, she'd been dropped by her label,
she got sober, mainly, and she was at this point
in time where she had to come to terms with
all Right, if I can't drown these feelings, I'm gonna
have to find a new way to get them out. Yeah,
(02:17):
And that's my that's that's by digging deeper and singing
about it. So you know, probably someone's pet cat could
have produced Naked Time and it would have been great.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
But that's.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yea. I love Bonnie Ray, always did, But the records
before it's it's sort of like I've always said, I
don't hear male vocalist in history until Frank Sinatra. Bonnie
Ray as great as she was, and all the ROOTSI records,
some of them were like her tribute to the Roots
hero she had and all that. And then there were
the years where Warner Brothers or an R were trying
(02:58):
to push her a certain way that is the most perfect,
and not only the series of records you made with her.
I thought you found the most perfect way to showcase
and support her and surround her with.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's like you gave her the light to step into.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We made sure that there was no extra fluff eaten up. Air.
Real estate in a song is important. You know, you've
got to have air, right, you can't. That's why you
think of an album like Redheaded Stranger. That was Willie
Nelson's breakthrough record. It defied every single thing about fashion
(03:39):
and music at that time. It's the most bare bone
sing conceptual. But the one thing it did do was
it allowed you to hear every nuance in his singing.
And with Willie Nelson, that's so important. His breath, where
he breathes, how he breathes is as important as the
biggest note, like yeah, exactly, like Sinatra, yeah, and and
(04:01):
like Bonnie. So the idea was, do we really need
to sit here a lot of what I was taking
stuff out, you know, things that we put over dubbs on.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Do we really need this right that sculpting part of.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, so we you know, like like the song at
a time, just let.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I thought I had.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
In all my life.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
It's so sparse, man, it's that that piano that she's playing,
this electric piano. It was not a great sound. But
because it wasn't a great sound great, it held. It
didn't cut through as much and it allowed more room
for her vocal to come through. If it had been
if we had used Offender Rhodes, it would have moved
(05:00):
forward and you'd have lost some of the nuance of
what she was doing. That wasn't intentional, that was just
it was just a guide piano that she played for
cutting the track. We tried replacing it. We also tried
putting guitar on it too. We had every guitarist in
town came through and played on that, all different kinds.
Arthur Adams R and B blues guy Michael Landau played.
(05:22):
There were probably four or five guitar players. Like trying
on clothes, right, yeah, and it just was better with less.
So it's a really stripped down records. Almost feels hollow
in some ways, but that's that's It's not about how
it's dressed up. It's about what she's singing about. It's
such a brave song to write. She's approaching forty years old,
(05:46):
and at that time, if you're a female doing rock
and roll, you better be pretending that you're eighteen.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Right, she was. She might have been dropped because she
was She.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Probably wasn't Warner Brothers. Yeah, just older. So now she's
singing about getting old, you know, such a poignant song.
You know, she wrote that one. And by the.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Way, she wrote that one and she was barely writing
on her own ever, and I sort of that showed
she was a great songwriter when.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
She wanted to be. Oh man, she she's she's just
she's an incredible human being.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I know.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
You spend time with her, and she's another one like Keith.
You know, what you see is what you get. She
is that person that you want her to be.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And you know this and you helped enable her to
do this. But like I talked to her, when I
talked to her recently, was just talking about like, although
she writes, you know, she also no one finds songs
and changes songwriters lives like you guys made a lot
of people have to make a living.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, I know, but she's the musicologist. She found all
those songs and U and one time there was a
song that she was sent it was Paul Brady song
who we ended up? You know? He did, I think
only not the only one? Yeah, and cut another one
has too and uh, anyway, Paul sent the song and
(07:12):
it was just a killer song. But it was about
a breakup of a marriage and she just got married.
She said, I can't sing a song now. Uh, this
is this is like a killer you know. And she
wouldn't do it. She wouldn't sing anything that didn't pertain
to her life. So she'd given honest reading. That's called
(07:33):
the method, and and like, I can't make you love me.
That wasn't happening at that moment, but she stands slavski
herself into that moment.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You love me, you don't.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
You get?
Speaker 4 (08:12):
That? Was one thing that we did when we were
making those records was she come over to my house
and we'd cut a demo with her either playing guitar
or playing piano and singing. And the feeling was that
if it wasn't great, then then no matter what we
did later, no matter what kind of band we put
on it, or what kind of overdubs we did, if
(08:33):
it wasn't working with just her her voice and one
and her playing an instrument, that it wasn't going to work.
So that's how we screened the songs. But she didn't
want to do it and I can't make you love
me because she she knew she had to tap into
an incident and she didn't want to wear it out.
She wanted to get it in one take, and so
we didn't do a demo of it, and the first
(08:54):
time she sang it was on the debut record.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
It's phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's pretty good, amazing song and performance.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I have one thing I want to.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Ask about because I heard them talk about this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yes, you work with the B fifty two's.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, I heard this story about love Shack. Can you
tell the making of love Shack?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I think it's Did you hear this, David?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
That wasn't even supposed to be love Shack. We were
it was not supposed to be one of the songs
that we cut, but we finished the songs we were
going to cut a day early. So we had this
great studio in Woodstock, Yeah Dreamland, which I still record there.
So they said, well, we got this one thing, but
it's it's not really finished. And what the way they
(09:44):
would write was they play a groove. In the case
of love Shack, it sounded reminded me of cool Jerk
by the Capitols, a great Detroit R and B hit
from the sixties was that kind of groove. And then
they would play it for half an hour and the
three singers would improve yes and stream of consciousness make yeah,
and then they play it back, and each of them,
(10:05):
if they came up with a good line that they'd like,
they'd write down their own line.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Are they starting with even the words love shock?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
No, it wasn't even. It was just something that happened
once in the song. So they would write on a yellow,
yellow legal pad and they'd start a list at the ceiling,
and they taped the oh yeah, I like this lyric?
Here got they tape it on the wall. Yeah, they
tape it on the wall, and when it got down
to the bottom, they figured, well, we must have a
song in here.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So they started the ceiling tape a thing tapes up
under it, and when it hits the floor, they think
they have a song.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah, it's probably it's probably not quite as cutting right
and everything, but yes, basically they're not. Yeah. So they
gave me this this this streamer of yellow legal pads,
and they said, see if you can.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
Figure out, yes, you're a producer, produce, give.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Me a guess and give me ten minutes, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
So which in the modern world you would have taken
half the publishing.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, it crossed my mind, you know.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
I mean, you're a co writer on that song. If
you took that, well, here's what I did. And I've
done this with the Stones too. I said, I don't
want you thinking that I'm coming up with ideas so
that I can schnore your publisher. So just consider me
an editor. That's that's cost me a lot of bread.
But yeah, but yeah, it worked.
Speaker 7 (11:27):
Out, yes, yes, five minutes.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Yeah, and I saw the middle thing that seemed like
a bit about the love Shack, and it had different
chords under it, so that could be like a chorus
and maybe that's it, but I don't know what it's about.
It wasn't really it didn't necessarily make sense. But we
got it down to like four minutes. So we went
out and cut the first take. We talked through how
(11:52):
you know what the form would be, and the first
time we played it, oh man, it was killer. But
then we got to the tinbrew thrusted line, and I
don't know what that means, but Cindy infused it with
so much feeling. She actually went to was live, we're
(12:14):
all in the same room, and she went to like
a little manic thing in the course of the two
seconds it took to say the line. Because she started
out really your tin roof, really exuberant. By the time
she got to rusted, there were tears in her eyes
and it threw everybody out. It was like, what the
fuck was that? Right?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
There's a slight pause before rusted.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
Yeah, just yes, right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Her mood changes that It infused that line with all
sorts of meaning that that you really that shouldn't be
their problem, and it through the band, so the roof
(13:10):
rusted love shock yes, which it fell apart when we
came back in right. So we tried it another thirty
times and we got the transition right, but it lacked
the spirit of that first tape and were really discouraged
and we went out to dinner and it was like,
all right, it seemed like it was good on the
first one until we messed it up. And this is
(13:32):
before pro tools or any computer stuff, right, And we
came back and we said yeah, this is obviously the one.
So it dominans. We'll just punch everybody in after your
tin roof ruster.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So there's a pause before the word and then there's
a pause after the word. You don't hear that every day?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
No, Yeah, it's created your tin roof rusted punched. Yes,
so it's the first take. Oh and uh, no one
even saw it's the single record Company. It's like the
fourth single they put out, and they were kind of
done with the record. They put out some other songs
and they weren't clicking with people. And then some radio
(14:12):
station in Chicago started playing it and the phone started
lighting up and it was getting a response, and the
other radio stations followed the station in Chicago and it
took off. And then whatever record, the big Thanksgiving Christmas
record that Warner Brothers had that you was not performing
the way it should and they switched to that to
(14:33):
love Shack, and once they put the muscle behind it,
it's still the biggest single live. We sold like seven
eight million singles.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Come on, and when you see it in concert, the
audience knows your timing right. They see that line.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In perfect timing exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
They take the exact break. They know it by heart.
I was there and then the van kicks in and
the place goes insane.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
And they're just they're lovely people, all of my.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Head, happy, the happiest of vaccents.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, it was. It was beautiful. And that's you. There's
a correlation between not thinking too much about stuff and
achieving something that goes beyond.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
We're gonna switch to the new album after I've been thinking.
One of the more emotional times I saw you that
you might remember during the pandemic, when we finally started
doing anything. I remember I interviewed you and Henry Robbins.
I went to the you know an m or whatever, Henson, Yeah,
(15:48):
and we were all in masks, and I remember you
were working with John Mayer and.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Who just bought the studio? Right?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Who?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Now that? Which is the chaplain Phil? And you have
to go. It's amazing. But I do remember. I think
around that time you were making the track it shouldn't
matter the album, It shouldn't matter, but it does, which
I don't know if that you like that song, That's
one of my favorite songs.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Now the world keeps rolling down forever and this keep
pulling asip we lost something. I still wanna know where
it was. Should n't mad? Should him mad?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
But it does?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And John Mayer to me your relationship. I think another
time I ran into you at Capitol when you were
working with John, and I don't know if it was
around that time, but I think it was that you
introduced John to some people that sort of changed your
life and his life.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Yeah, he was working first of all, what I started
working with him in twenty eleven. We did it I'm
called Bored and Raised. And every time we get in
the car, he was listening to the Grateful Dead Channel.
I'm serious, which I didn't. I wasn't necessarily hearing that
in his music. It was a surprise. But he was
one of those guys that could identify a live performance
(17:15):
by not just the year, but the month based on
the Jerry's tone. He's using that pedal, so it must
be March seventy eight. So he's a real aficionado. It
so jump ahead a bunch of years. I got the
job at Blue Note because I was working with John
and happened to be in New York. Series of happened
(17:36):
stance occurrences that were just crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So a hard reporter gig exactly right.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yeah, because John took a night off, I went to
see Gregor Reporter and then I was having breakfast the
next morning with an old buddy of mine who was
the president of Capitol Records, and I said, you should
sign this guy in a Blue Note, which is part
of Capitol, and he said, no, you should, and he
offered me the gig wouldn't have been in New York.
None of that would have happened.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Your first job, your first fifty year.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
My goal in life was to never have a job. Yeah,
and sorry, I had to think it worked got pretty
well from everyone. Yeah, it worked out, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And Greg Reporter, by the way, I just got back
from England not long ago and I was at Wimbledon
and it's like people in America still if you don't
know Greg Reporter, you have to go it to yourself there.
He was like the future to artists that you did
like a tribute to Arthur ashe and saying he's amazing.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
He's incredible. Yeah. But anyway, so uh all right, so yeah,
so we're in uh he's downstairs in Capitol Studio and
Bob we're and Mickey Hart came to see me at
my office which is in the Capitol Tower. It was
(18:48):
twelve floors above the studio, and they I'd known Bobby
since the nineties, and they want they wanted to talk
about putting out the solo stuff through Blue Note, and
I knew John was downstairs.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
I called him.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I said, man, you got to come up here. And
John came up in the office and just whacked so
eloquently about why he loved the Grateful Debt, that they
were like stunned, and he said, well, you know, we
should play together. So he said, great, man, I'll come up.
So the plan was made to go up there like
(19:24):
three months later, and John stopped the record he was
writing songs. He tore down all his gear, which is
a lot of gear taken overs, and moved it all
out of the studio, went home and shedded the Grateful
Debt for three months and really tried to get to that.
Not to copy Jerry, I see, you can't do not
(19:44):
to do karaoke Jerry, but to understand what was happening
underneath just scales. He used a lot of major thirds,
that's why people feel happy, that kind of things. And
he practiced the songs and when we went up there,
he Evans. The mines were blown because they didn't They
(20:04):
weren't expecting that necessarily from John, and it sounded like
it sounded like the Grateful, but it felt like it
was linked. So Kreutzman was playing and Mickey was playing,
and Bobby was there. On the first day, Mike Gordon
from Fish was playing base and it was clear from
(20:26):
the first song like, oh man, this is something, and
even the crew guys, who were pretty jaded, everybody perked up.
So there was clearly a spark there Dead and Company.
So that became Dead And if I had done what
John had done and gone home and practiced these songs
with my day to play came instead of making them
(20:47):
sound like a shitty tribute band, I probably could have
had that gig.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You have a good consolation prize and that you and
Bob have you know, been touring now. I went to
see it downtown LA.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
It's amazing for seven years of Wolf Brothers, well, two
years after Dead and Company got going, and Bobby called
me up. He said he had a dream. He said,
I dreamt that Rob Wasserman, who had played bass with him,
passed away. He's the guy who introduced us in the nineties.
He said. Rob came to me in the stream and
he said the reason that he introduced us was because
you were supposed to take his place when he left.
(21:23):
And he said, so you want to start a trio
with me and Jay Lay. I said yeah, So I said,
but this time, just don't don't make me learn one
hundred and fifty songs and not really know. I said, pick,
tell me six songs to learne. Yeah, And he gave
me a list of six, and I went to New York.
(21:43):
I got a great string bass from David Gage, and
I locked myself in the Bowery Hotel for ten days,
and I had learned from John. John showed up prepared
and I was never going to make that mistake again
to it, so I practiced even. I like the way
that bass sounded. I flew with that about a seat
(22:04):
for it. Flew to San Francisco, show up at Bobby's place,
and we never played any of the six songs, but
we just started at right away. Yeah, we just started
jamming on a name.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Bob has the best line I've ever heard about fame
and success. Somebody asked him how it's changed him, and
he said, you know, those pistachios that don't have the
little crack in them to get them started. I don't
bother with this anymore. You never heard that this.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
Is very good.
Speaker 10 (22:50):
Don.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Thank you for talking about your new album, Groove in
the Face of Adversity and your band Don Was and
the Pan Detroit Ensemble.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now you've been in a group before, You've been in
a number of groups before. What's the origin story of
this group?
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Well, pretty simply. Terrence Blanchard, great jazz trumpet player. Yeah,
we score composer, brilliant guy. Old friend thirty some years
he was curating a series in Detroit, a jazz series
with the Detroit Symphony over multiple nights, and he knew
us from Detroit, so he said, you want to do
one of the nights? He said, yeah, sure. It was
like two years ahead of about six months before the gig.
(23:32):
I realized I don't have a band on, don't how
many songs? I better put something together, and I really
didn't know what to do. So I thought back to
when I was first starting out and first starting to
get nice gigs as a producer. I worked with my heroes,
Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Willie Chris Christofferson, Macon Keith Oh
(23:55):
in a very short period of time, best songwriters I know, right,
And it gave me a writer's block that lasted well
into five years, because every time I'd sit down at
the piano, I'd get started, and I think, well, what's
the point of this man? These guys do it so
much better. Just send this lyric to Brian Wilson Man. Finally,
(24:17):
I was in a session with Willie and I'm looking
at him. He's so brilliant man and just such an incredible,
otherworldly character, and I thought, all right, I can never
be him. I'll never be as good as him, never
be him, but he can't be me. He didn't go
(24:37):
see the MC five tripping on acid when he was
sixteen years old at the Grandy Bow Room. Funk Adelic
didn't play. They were called the Parliaments, but they played
a sockhop at my junior high school when they were promoting.
And I just want to testify, you know, So he
didn't grow up in Detroit. There's a thing to Detroit.
So be the thing that he can't be, and you'd
(24:58):
be all right, be yourself, be the best version of
yourself that you could be. And there's a feeling in
the music business that if you're not like something else
that's successful at that moment, then that's a problem. You're
a marketing problem. But that's not the way I look
at it. The thing that makes you different from everybody
(25:18):
else is actually your superpower. To look at the people
who have enduring careers, all of them were unlike anybody
who'd come before.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, that's what you always say about TV.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yes, and I say it about America. Diversity is our superpower.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
We're not supposed to be all the same. No, the
fact that we're all different means something and makes us greater.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Agree, one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And your groups, because you obviously was not was was
a marketing nightmare. Yes, they were a variety show of
a band. I was listening. There's a record. Everyone has
different their own favorites. I'm born to laugh at Tornadoes
guy with certain tracks on there, including a another Detroit
friend of yours, Doug Figer from the Nact, does a
(26:03):
song called Betrayal.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Oh my God, I can't believe you know that it's.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
One of my favorites. But with this group, this was
like having had that group that marketing nightmare. You then
have done something really I think, just really fresh and
thrilling with this album.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Well I'm seventy three, man, there's a not enough time
left and be no desire to try to second guest
fashion anymore. Man, I just got time to do it.
Lay down what I do, right, Yeah, So I thought,
all right, for this gig for Terrence, go back to Detroit.
(26:42):
Get people who grew up listening to the same radio
stations as you, and there was a difference that grew
up in that milliere of the one industry town where
everyone's fate was tied to the auto business.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
And it reads.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
This kind of honest, no bullshit population people who there's
no point in putting on any errors because everyone knows
we're on the same boat. We all. You know, our
fate is dependent upon the success of the auto business.
It creates honest people, and it breeds honest music. John
Lee Hooker a great example, raw and honest, but swings
(27:19):
like crazy, Mitch Ryder, the MC five Stooges, Jack White, Funkadelic.
You just go through them all. There's a Detroit thing
which is raw, honest music. So just get people from
Detroit who play like you do and see what happens.
(27:39):
We got in the room. This was about six months
before the gig for Terrence with the Symphony, and I
didn't even have songs, but I host a radio show
on the NPR station in Detroit every week. So I
picked four songs that I played that I liked on
the show, used a flatif song and we just started
playing and it was like we've been playing together for
(28:02):
forty years. A couple of them have been playing with
for forty five years. David Murray, the sax player, Luis Resto,
who's Eminem's collaborator.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Co wrote Lose Yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah, So those guys we do know each other very
very well as musicians, but everyone else I knew them all.
It just sat nine people sounded like a band from
the first thing. So we said this is better than
just one show. We booked a tour around the dated
Symphony and just we just love playing together, and the
(28:34):
thing kept getting better and better. So we've done three
tours now and we just made this album.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And let's go through just the tracks quickly, and uh,
you know, let's start with the opening. One thing the
record is there's a lot of live performance on this record.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah, but you know something, even the studio things are
live performances.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
They're just in the studio, right, And what I what
I got out of that was because there's jazz in here.
There's lose, R and B, everything's in there. But I
will say that like I was, I never like with jazz.
I remember when at one point when I got into
Duke Ellington, my mother came back from a record she
saw and it was like live at a dance sort
(29:15):
of concert, and you could hear people couples talking and
getting together, and I thought, oh, this is the way
a lot of great jazz groups were. You were they
were entertaining people, they were doing a social event. And
this record has a little that just the energy of
like people get it. You know, there's energy. So let's
start with Midnight Marauders.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Min minna.
Speaker 6 (29:45):
See them come to the midnight show scene of the
Midnight Loved.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It. It's the guy a us Tomorrow, this singer from
bet Freddy's Drop New Zealand Funky band. And it was
around the time. It was a couple of months before
I put this rehearsal together, and my wife Jim and
I were in We were just driving around France and
(30:19):
we stopped and we were in a bar and it
came on and says, I am said, those horns, that's
what I'm hearing in my head for this band. I
just loved the record. So we we tried playing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
That, uh second track, Nubian Lady.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Yeah, well it's actually a Jimmy Heat song, but uh
uh is it Jimmy Heath, No, Jimmy Heath got a bit.
I forgot who wrote it. It's uh.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I thought it was Latif, but he did it. Yeah, Oh,
Kenny Baron.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Kenny Baron, Yeah, yeah, I played it on the radio
show that Friday. Is a good flute thing. Dave McMurray's
a great flute player. So we tried it and perfect man. Now,
Latif is a Detroit guy, great Detroit jazz hero, and
that same kind of no nonsense musical aesthetic applies to
(31:33):
the incredible jazz musicians who came out of Detroit.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
On the Blue Note.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
If you go through our catalog, there's a ridiculously inordinate
number of musicians from Detroit who are on He's Donald Bird,
Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, d. Jones,
all the Jones, all the Joneses. So uh yeah, So
(32:01):
it was a Detroit jazz thing, fit right in with
that feel.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Now the next track is I Ain't Got Nothing but Time,
which is amazing and can you talk about the because
that's Hank Williams right, and yet it's sung by this
soulful woman who I've never heard of. You talk tell
me about your your one of your real vocal.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Storty Christian is the lead singer give.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Me over.
Speaker 9 (32:27):
Handy John.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Wilbury and I've known her for a number of years
(32:55):
and we played together before. She also tours with Kevin
Saunderson and in her city, and she's just a great
Detroit voice, great soul singer, but she's absorbed all kinds
of music. She can sing a Hendrick songs, she can't
sing anything. So that song I did that on an
album for Verve in nineteen ninety six where we did
(33:18):
a bunch of Hank Williams songs turned inside out. We
called the group Orchestra was and the Sweetpea sang it
originally and Herbie Hancock was playing on it a whole.
It was kind of the same thing. Pedal steel guitar, player,
but Herbie Hancock and McMurray and Louise for playing on
her So I never had a band together beyond the
(33:39):
session day, so we never got to perform any of
those songs live. So that's one of them. We took
a Hank Williams song and turned it inside out.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
It's amazing. She's amazing, and it reminded me of you've
worked with We've both felt with Van Morrison. Yeah, in
one of the friendlier moments I had with him, he
said something about music. He goes, you know, he said,
all soul music, all good music is soul music. Yeah,
which is what I always think, like when you Hank Williams,
you know, being sung as a soul song.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Of course, It's what.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
I was just who was I talking to the other day,
I was talking to Sam Smith. I said this very
little difference between Hank Williams singing I'm so long Since
I Could Cry and Otis Redding singing Dreams to remember.
It's just a little bit and phrasing that, but that
that's the same thing. You're soul music as you're dealing
with the basic human emotions and there's global commonality on that.
(34:35):
We all feel the same things. We're all basically the same.
And that's any time you can point that out with music,
it's a it's a good thing to do.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Right you pointed out with comedy, It's like that's it's
the main point. I just love it.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
All the arts are connected. Yeah, yeah, exactly right, like
all people a people exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
The next This is My Country might be my favorite
thing on the record because I was a student in
England when Curtis Mayfield was playing a lot over there
called ding Walls. I fell in love. He sort of
was one of the ways I got deep into the
history of soul music. The impressions his group that he
recorded This is My Country with Impressions, and it made me.
(35:21):
I love this version so much. I went back to
the album and noticed Donnie Hathaway, another one of my heroes,
co wrote songs with Curtis on this record. Tell me
about that track seems very up.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
To the moment. Well, that's the thing, man, If you
tried to write something for the times, I don't think
you could be any more eloquent than Curtis was on
that song.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
It says it all some people that we don't have
the right to say. It's my country, the baby, give
me the ad a fussing bag and see it's my country.
I pay three hundred years more. You're drawn and sweat
(36:12):
and live in back.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
We just we started. You know, these times are so miserable,
so chaotic, so confusing, so disturbing, And you don't want
to bump people out at a show. You want to
come and lose themselves for two hours and walk out
of their feeling rejuvenated. They're you know, they're going to
(36:38):
walk past a news standardin minutes anyway and get brought
back to reality. But it just seemed like you can't
ignore it. I grew up, you know, I was in
college in nineteen seventy when they were teaching us that
there was no separation between art and politics. That if
(37:01):
you were going to be an artist at that time,
you had to make art about about the war and
and about it, you know, about how you feel about
this that.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
And look at.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Music is revolution that that's that's just a button. That's
John Sinclair, yes, right. John came up with the idea
of the guitar Army, that you could win hearts and
minds through music.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
You can investigate five and this machine kills fascist that's there,
you go.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
So I felt like you couldn't just ignore it and
and be happy. So it seemed like a nice way
to punctuate the show, and we started closing the show
with it, and ah, every one of them. We get
on the bus and everyone's going no, no, no. It's got
(37:51):
kind of an earworm to it too, you know. So yeah,
I'm glad we have it on the record.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Great you asked, I came. It's song you sort of
took from a whole other life ago almost, and it's
amazing just as a musical a bit of musical expression.
I don't know if it's the same arrangement, it's kind.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Of the same. It was. It was a Bo Diddley
feel set against uh, you know, with a jazz because.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You would have for a movie about the Beatles early days,
which couldn't use any Beatles.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
Because they hadn't.
Speaker 7 (38:22):
Richeny's part of that movie.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
It was called back Meat and it was about the
Beatles in Hamburg before they got famous. Really the Stuart
Suckcliffe part of the story, and so there were two.
He was he was torn between the rock and roll
thing and this kind of art, you know, modern painting
jazz scene that was going on in Hamburg, so they
wanted to score that had both. So we did the
(39:22):
music for the band that the actors lip synced too,
with a really great band too. It was a girl Yes,
Dave Grohl playing drums, Thirst and Moore playing guitar, Mike
and Mills played bass, Mariam Yeah for Mariann. Yeah, that
was for you. That was for the people forgetting Greg
(39:47):
Dooley from Afghan Whigs. It was the John Lennon park
and Dave Perner sang the John Lennon stuff and Henry
Rowlins did the one Stuart Suckcliffe vocal cool. So that
was for the movie. And then I wrote this jazz
score and that's that's how I'm at Terrence in fact,
who's on this record. He's on this recording because this
is this actually comes from the show that he booked
us for in Detroit and he played with us at night,
(40:09):
but he played the original on the record too for
the movie score.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
It is such a great composition and it does make
me think, do you when you're not running a record
label or doing a playing with Bob where do you
want to do more scores? Or no, when you can't tour,
when you get too old tour in thirty years.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
What I've been enjoying the most is playing Yeah, you know,
this is what I really picked up from where that
when you go out there and you don't really have
a game plan. You're not you don't know what the
set's going to be. You can you may know what
the songs are, but you don't know how you're going
to play him. And you go there and you start
taking chances in front of the audience and listening to
(40:53):
each other and egging each other. On a nine piece band,
there's a lot of conversation going on there. You can
do some really interesting things. The audience picks up on it.
Grateful Dead audience is such a great audience, man. They
hear everything you're doing and they appreciate the fact that
they're getting something new and original and that you're making
the effort for them. And they meet you halfway and
(41:13):
when you get that connection going and then you feel
their energy comes back and it makes you go up
another notch. You can you can blow the rough off
the place, which yeah we have. We have some train
wrecks every night, and then a couple of moments where
it goes to another planet.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
But when you do the Sphere Show.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I haven't done the Spear Show, but if you go
to the Sphere Show, yeah, which I haven't done, but
I know people, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
They do have to keep it the same to match
the visuals, don't they.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
They've actually worked things in to the video. Yeah, there
are sections that it can extend indefinitely, I see, and
that they have.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
Company.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I'm sure have to have a little you got to.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Even in a Grateful Dead song, there are traditional places
where the solo goes. But there's also a thing like
after the you know, say, after the first chorus, there's
maybe four virus before the second the second verse starts.
If that's feeling good, Bobby may stretch that out for
fifteen minutes. And so you have to keep listening and
(42:16):
pay attention and and stay at you know, stay on
your feet. Great.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
We have one more song from this record and then
I have one last question. So we have almost done it.
The last track is I got to say word up
to people. It's a cameo song, and I have to
admit I love cameo. I love some of the best.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Of cat.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Help me.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Tell me.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Women, how did it insane? What insane idea?
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Was it?
Speaker 4 (43:02):
That's another song? I played it on the radio show. Yeah,
like two nights before.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Because you don't have enough to do. You do a
public radio show for Detroit.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Two hours live radio every Friday night. Great, it's fun.
It's like playing a show.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
How often do you get back to Detroit.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
I've got a place there there a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
I'm going to be there in a couple of weeks myself. Really, yeah,
you know, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Yeah. And my co host was supposed to introduce you,
distracting named and de Lacy, but I don't think I
don't think it worked out. But she wanted to. Yeah, yeah,
I know you're going there.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
I wish I Oh.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Uh, They're sorry to take away from but this is important,
very important. There was a great pizza place I went
last time, Grandma Bob's.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Oh, I don't know, you know that place.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I'm turning you on. It's really good.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
I know the place you should go, and I'm spacing
on the name Detroit Pizza. I'm gonna send you. Listen.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, I'm just going We're gonna have read the restaurant's
situations from the last song not on this record to
go back to what was not was for a second
just because of the timing of everything. Can you I've
never understood the story of how there was a track
in different versions with Ozzy Osbourne, uh, Kim Basinger, and
(44:26):
originally I did. Finally hear on YouTube like Somena the
Madonna he told the story of how it was not.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Ever heard those names close together.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
By the way, I'm a huge fan of like I
could listen to Melo tour May Sing, Zaz Turns Blue Forever,
a lot of these guest appearances, but that track, how
did you get those people together?
Speaker 4 (44:45):
We're We wrote this song and it's a great lyric
that David was wrote and I wrote this kind of
lightweight dance melody to it, and our singers didn't they
didn't sound good singing it. So we thought, all who
else can sing it? And Michael Silka, who's was that
our record company chief records, Michael said, does this girl
(45:08):
from Detroit who's going to she's going to be huge?
You should put her on. So it was Madonna, and
so we went and Madonna recorded the vocal. She did
a really good job. She was great.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
It was before Shake your Head let's go to bed.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
Yeah, shake your head, let's go to bed. And then
we took it out of the studio and listened to
it and it just didn't sound like it was and
I was so I said, we got to have someone
else sing it. So I was talking to my attorney,
Fred Ansis, who we're just having coffee in New York
because we're mixing the record, and we didn't have the
song with a finished vocal, and he represented Ozzie. He said,
(45:41):
what about Ozzie? You want to sound a little tougher.
He said, I'm going over to see him now. He said,
come on with me, so over them. We went over
to uh one of the hotels in Central Park, south right,
and I was a little scared. I don't know what
to expect. I'd met him here your head off, yeah,
(46:02):
he answered, like in a in a navy blue run
Adidas running suit with a ton of jewelry on. And
he was just as nice and as sweet as could be.
And then we put this little disco song on and
I was just I didn't know what. I thought he
was going to throw stuff. He said, I love it, man,
something different. You know. He was just at that point
where he wanted to do something different, so he did.
(46:23):
We went to studio next day, he put a vocal on. Great.
Eight years later we're talking about it. We realized that
we had Madonna and Ozzie Osbourne on parallel tracks, and
then we could mix it as a duet. Oh, so
we did. Went to a DJ named Steve silk Curly
out of Chicago and.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I need to hear this, and so it's a duet.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
And then we sent it to them for approval and
Nasie was sure great and Madonna was the way and
rightfully so, because we had rejected her. I don't I
don't blame her, and she'd become the biggest star in
the world, and why should we ride those goat tails?
So Kim Basinger is a good friend. She was very sweet.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
She said, you know that's good too.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
So it turned out it was our biggest single ever.
It just to come out in the United States, but
in the rest of the world, in the rest of.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
The world record And as he was, I have to
tell you, like I was not the biggest Black Sabbath fanatic,
but I wrote wrote for him on a number of
like a wardships. God, he was like funny, he did good.
He was great at comedy. I gave him the oldest
joke in the world, which was he'd almost been killed
in some gardening accident or something, and I had him
(47:35):
walk out of the Grammys with Sharon and say it's
good to be here, it's good to be anywhere, and
he killed He.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Was so great.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Well, thank you, don Yes, I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Was here the man.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I love having you.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 10 (48:15):
Naked Lunch is a podcast by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde.
Theme song and music by Brad Paisley, produced by Will
Sterling and Ryan Tillotson, with video editing by Daniel Ferrara
and motion graphics by Ali Ahmed. Executive produced by Phil Rosenthal,
David Wilde, and our consulting journalist is Pamela Chellan. If
you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend. But
if you can't take my word for it, take Phil's.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
And don't forget to leave a good rating and review.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
We like five stars.
Speaker 10 (48:40):
You know, thanks for listening to Naked Lunch. A Lucky
Bastard's production.
Hello, David, Hey Phil, we have someone very special, someone
who was special and it.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Still was was not was special, he was. He just
was and is special. By the way, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Was not was?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Don was is one of the greatest record producers, musicians,
coolest cats I've ever met. I've known him for I
think exactly as long as I've known you, or maybe
a little longer.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
It was better.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
He was better you not was better. But so we're
gonna hear about his was not was about Bonnie Ray,
Bonnie Rait B fifty two and his amazing new record
with his group. Don was in the Pan Detroit Unsomba.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Beautiful Ladies and Gentlemen. Don was.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
Let's build the beans to the fan, food for thought,
jokes on tap, talking with our mouthsful, having fun, the
peace cake and humble pies, serving.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Up slass, lovely.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
The dressing all the side. It's naked, lush clothing option.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Someone who you did not only get, but you took
one of the greatest artists of our times and gave her.
She together, you made her everything she should be. And
I think her whole career and life change. And I
talked to her at the Grammy Museum a year and
a half ago about that to tell us, Bonnie Rate,
how the best, how important was that in your life?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
In music? It was a game changer. Yeah, I mean
it changed every single part of my.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Life and you for her.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, But she was poised to do something great. She'd
gone through some stuff, she'd been dropped by her label,
she got sober, mainly, and she was at this point
in time where she had to come to terms with
all Right, if I can't drown these feelings, I'm gonna
have to find a new way to get them out. Yeah,
(02:17):
And that's my that's that's by digging deeper and singing
about it. So you know, probably someone's pet cat could
have produced Naked Time and it would have been great.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
But that's.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yea. I love Bonnie Ray, always did, But the records
before it's it's sort of like I've always said, I
don't hear male vocalist in history until Frank Sinatra. Bonnie
Ray as great as she was, and all the ROOTSI records,
some of them were like her tribute to the Roots
hero she had and all that. And then there were
the years where Warner Brothers or an R were trying
(02:58):
to push her a certain way that is the most perfect,
and not only the series of records you made with her.
I thought you found the most perfect way to showcase
and support her and surround her with.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's like you gave her the light to step into.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We made sure that there was no extra fluff eaten up. Air.
Real estate in a song is important. You know, you've
got to have air, right, you can't. That's why you
think of an album like Redheaded Stranger. That was Willie
Nelson's breakthrough record. It defied every single thing about fashion
(03:39):
and music at that time. It's the most bare bone
sing conceptual. But the one thing it did do was
it allowed you to hear every nuance in his singing.
And with Willie Nelson, that's so important. His breath, where
he breathes, how he breathes is as important as the
biggest note, like yeah, exactly, like Sinatra, yeah, and and
(04:01):
like Bonnie. So the idea was, do we really need
to sit here a lot of what I was taking
stuff out, you know, things that we put over dubbs on.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Do we really need this right that sculpting part of.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, so we you know, like like the song at
a time, just let.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I thought I had.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
In all my life.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
It's so sparse, man, it's that that piano that she's playing,
this electric piano. It was not a great sound. But
because it wasn't a great sound great, it held. It
didn't cut through as much and it allowed more room
for her vocal to come through. If it had been
if we had used Offender Rhodes, it would have moved
(05:00):
forward and you'd have lost some of the nuance of
what she was doing. That wasn't intentional, that was just
it was just a guide piano that she played for
cutting the track. We tried replacing it. We also tried
putting guitar on it too. We had every guitarist in
town came through and played on that, all different kinds.
Arthur Adams R and B blues guy Michael Landau played.
(05:22):
There were probably four or five guitar players. Like trying
on clothes, right, yeah, and it just was better with less.
So it's a really stripped down records. Almost feels hollow
in some ways, but that's that's It's not about how
it's dressed up. It's about what she's singing about. It's
such a brave song to write. She's approaching forty years old,
(05:46):
and at that time, if you're a female doing rock
and roll, you better be pretending that you're eighteen.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Right, she was. She might have been dropped because she
was She.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Probably wasn't Warner Brothers. Yeah, just older. So now she's
singing about getting old, you know, such a poignant song.
You know, she wrote that one. And by the.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Way, she wrote that one and she was barely writing
on her own ever, and I sort of that showed
she was a great songwriter when.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
She wanted to be. Oh man, she she's she's just
she's an incredible human being.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I know.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
You spend time with her, and she's another one like Keith.
You know, what you see is what you get. She
is that person that you want her to be.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And you know this and you helped enable her to
do this. But like I talked to her, when I
talked to her recently, was just talking about like, although
she writes, you know, she also no one finds songs
and changes songwriters lives like you guys made a lot
of people have to make a living.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, I know, but she's the musicologist. She found all
those songs and U and one time there was a
song that she was sent it was Paul Brady song
who we ended up? You know? He did, I think
only not the only one? Yeah, and cut another one
has too and uh, anyway, Paul sent the song and
(07:12):
it was just a killer song. But it was about
a breakup of a marriage and she just got married.
She said, I can't sing a song now. Uh, this
is this is like a killer you know. And she
wouldn't do it. She wouldn't sing anything that didn't pertain
to her life. So she'd given honest reading. That's called
(07:33):
the method, and and like, I can't make you love me.
That wasn't happening at that moment, but she stands slavski
herself into that moment.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You love me, you don't.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
You get?
Speaker 4 (08:12):
That? Was one thing that we did when we were
making those records was she come over to my house
and we'd cut a demo with her either playing guitar
or playing piano and singing. And the feeling was that
if it wasn't great, then then no matter what we
did later, no matter what kind of band we put
on it, or what kind of overdubs we did, if
(08:33):
it wasn't working with just her her voice and one
and her playing an instrument, that it wasn't going to work.
So that's how we screened the songs. But she didn't
want to do it and I can't make you love
me because she she knew she had to tap into
an incident and she didn't want to wear it out.
She wanted to get it in one take, and so
we didn't do a demo of it, and the first
(08:54):
time she sang it was on the debut record.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
It's phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's pretty good, amazing song and performance.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I have one thing I want to.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Ask about because I heard them talk about this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yes, you work with the B fifty two's.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, I heard this story about love Shack. Can you
tell the making of love Shack?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I think it's Did you hear this, David?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
That wasn't even supposed to be love Shack. We were
it was not supposed to be one of the songs
that we cut, but we finished the songs we were
going to cut a day early. So we had this
great studio in Woodstock, Yeah Dreamland, which I still record there.
So they said, well, we got this one thing, but
it's it's not really finished. And what the way they
(09:44):
would write was they play a groove. In the case
of love Shack, it sounded reminded me of cool Jerk
by the Capitols, a great Detroit R and B hit
from the sixties was that kind of groove. And then
they would play it for half an hour and the
three singers would improve yes and stream of consciousness make yeah,
and then they play it back, and each of them,
(10:05):
if they came up with a good line that they'd like,
they'd write down their own line.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Are they starting with even the words love shock?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
No, it wasn't even. It was just something that happened
once in the song. So they would write on a yellow,
yellow legal pad and they'd start a list at the ceiling,
and they taped the oh yeah, I like this lyric?
Here got they tape it on the wall. Yeah, they
tape it on the wall, and when it got down
to the bottom, they figured, well, we must have a
song in here.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So they started the ceiling tape a thing tapes up
under it, and when it hits the floor, they think
they have a song.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Yeah, it's probably it's probably not quite as cutting right
and everything, but yes, basically they're not. Yeah. So they
gave me this this this streamer of yellow legal pads,
and they said, see if you can.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
Figure out, yes, you're a producer, produce, give.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Me a guess and give me ten minutes, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
So which in the modern world you would have taken
half the publishing.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, it crossed my mind, you know.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
I mean, you're a co writer on that song. If
you took that, well, here's what I did. And I've
done this with the Stones too. I said, I don't
want you thinking that I'm coming up with ideas so
that I can schnore your publisher. So just consider me
an editor. That's that's cost me a lot of bread.
But yeah, but yeah, it worked.
Speaker 7 (11:27):
Out, yes, yes, five minutes.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Yeah, and I saw the middle thing that seemed like
a bit about the love Shack, and it had different
chords under it, so that could be like a chorus
and maybe that's it, but I don't know what it's about.
It wasn't really it didn't necessarily make sense. But we
got it down to like four minutes. So we went
out and cut the first take. We talked through how
(11:52):
you know what the form would be, and the first
time we played it, oh man, it was killer. But
then we got to the tinbrew thrusted line, and I
don't know what that means, but Cindy infused it with
so much feeling. She actually went to was live, we're
(12:14):
all in the same room, and she went to like
a little manic thing in the course of the two
seconds it took to say the line. Because she started
out really your tin roof, really exuberant. By the time
she got to rusted, there were tears in her eyes
and it threw everybody out. It was like, what the
fuck was that? Right?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
There's a slight pause before rusted.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
Yeah, just yes, right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Her mood changes that It infused that line with all
sorts of meaning that that you really that shouldn't be
their problem, and it through the band, so the roof
(13:10):
rusted love shock yes, which it fell apart when we
came back in right. So we tried it another thirty
times and we got the transition right, but it lacked
the spirit of that first tape and were really discouraged
and we went out to dinner and it was like,
all right, it seemed like it was good on the
first one until we messed it up. And this is
(13:32):
before pro tools or any computer stuff, right, And we
came back and we said yeah, this is obviously the one.
So it dominans. We'll just punch everybody in after your
tin roof ruster.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So there's a pause before the word and then there's
a pause after the word. You don't hear that every day?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
No, Yeah, it's created your tin roof rusted punched. Yes,
so it's the first take. Oh and uh, no one
even saw it's the single record Company. It's like the
fourth single they put out, and they were kind of
done with the record. They put out some other songs
and they weren't clicking with people. And then some radio
(14:12):
station in Chicago started playing it and the phone started
lighting up and it was getting a response, and the
other radio stations followed the station in Chicago and it
took off. And then whatever record, the big Thanksgiving Christmas
record that Warner Brothers had that you was not performing
the way it should and they switched to that to
(14:33):
love Shack, and once they put the muscle behind it,
it's still the biggest single live. We sold like seven
eight million singles.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Come on, and when you see it in concert, the
audience knows your timing right. They see that line.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In perfect timing exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
They take the exact break. They know it by heart.
I was there and then the van kicks in and
the place goes insane.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
And they're just they're lovely people, all of my.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Head, happy, the happiest of vaccents.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, it was. It was beautiful. And that's you. There's
a correlation between not thinking too much about stuff and
achieving something that goes beyond.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
We're gonna switch to the new album after I've been thinking.
One of the more emotional times I saw you that
you might remember during the pandemic, when we finally started
doing anything. I remember I interviewed you and Henry Robbins.
I went to the you know an m or whatever, Henson, Yeah,
(15:48):
and we were all in masks, and I remember you
were working with John Mayer and.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Who just bought the studio? Right?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Who?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Now that? Which is the chaplain Phil? And you have
to go. It's amazing. But I do remember. I think
around that time you were making the track it shouldn't
matter the album, It shouldn't matter, but it does, which
I don't know if that you like that song, That's
one of my favorite songs.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Now the world keeps rolling down forever and this keep
pulling asip we lost something. I still wanna know where
it was. Should n't mad? Should him mad?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
But it does?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And John Mayer to me your relationship. I think another
time I ran into you at Capitol when you were
working with John, and I don't know if it was
around that time, but I think it was that you
introduced John to some people that sort of changed your
life and his life.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Yeah, he was working first of all, what I started
working with him in twenty eleven. We did it I'm
called Bored and Raised. And every time we get in
the car, he was listening to the Grateful Dead Channel.
I'm serious, which I didn't. I wasn't necessarily hearing that
in his music. It was a surprise. But he was
one of those guys that could identify a live performance
(17:15):
by not just the year, but the month based on
the Jerry's tone. He's using that pedal, so it must
be March seventy eight. So he's a real aficionado. It
so jump ahead a bunch of years. I got the
job at Blue Note because I was working with John
and happened to be in New York. Series of happened
(17:36):
stance occurrences that were just crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So a hard reporter gig exactly right.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yeah, because John took a night off, I went to
see Gregor Reporter and then I was having breakfast the
next morning with an old buddy of mine who was
the president of Capitol Records, and I said, you should
sign this guy in a Blue Note, which is part
of Capitol, and he said, no, you should, and he
offered me the gig wouldn't have been in New York.
None of that would have happened.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Your first job, your first fifty year.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
My goal in life was to never have a job. Yeah,
and sorry, I had to think it worked got pretty
well from everyone. Yeah, it worked out, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
And Greg Reporter, by the way, I just got back
from England not long ago and I was at Wimbledon
and it's like people in America still if you don't
know Greg Reporter, you have to go it to yourself there.
He was like the future to artists that you did
like a tribute to Arthur ashe and saying he's amazing.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
He's incredible. Yeah. But anyway, so uh all right, so yeah,
so we're in uh he's downstairs in Capitol Studio and
Bob we're and Mickey Hart came to see me at
my office which is in the Capitol Tower. It was
(18:48):
twelve floors above the studio, and they I'd known Bobby
since the nineties, and they want they wanted to talk
about putting out the solo stuff through Blue Note, and
I knew John was downstairs.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
I called him.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I said, man, you got to come up here. And
John came up in the office and just whacked so
eloquently about why he loved the Grateful Debt, that they
were like stunned, and he said, well, you know, we
should play together. So he said, great, man, I'll come up.
So the plan was made to go up there like
(19:24):
three months later, and John stopped the record he was
writing songs. He tore down all his gear, which is
a lot of gear taken overs, and moved it all
out of the studio, went home and shedded the Grateful
Debt for three months and really tried to get to that.
Not to copy Jerry, I see, you can't do not
(19:44):
to do karaoke Jerry, but to understand what was happening
underneath just scales. He used a lot of major thirds,
that's why people feel happy, that kind of things. And
he practiced the songs and when we went up there,
he Evans. The mines were blown because they didn't They
(20:04):
weren't expecting that necessarily from John, and it sounded like
it sounded like the Grateful, but it felt like it
was linked. So Kreutzman was playing and Mickey was playing,
and Bobby was there. On the first day, Mike Gordon
from Fish was playing base and it was clear from
(20:26):
the first song like, oh man, this is something, and
even the crew guys, who were pretty jaded, everybody perked up.
So there was clearly a spark there Dead and Company.
So that became Dead And if I had done what
John had done and gone home and practiced these songs
with my day to play came instead of making them
(20:47):
sound like a shitty tribute band, I probably could have
had that gig.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You have a good consolation prize and that you and
Bob have you know, been touring now. I went to
see it downtown LA.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
It's amazing for seven years of Wolf Brothers, well, two
years after Dead and Company got going, and Bobby called
me up. He said he had a dream. He said,
I dreamt that Rob Wasserman, who had played bass with him,
passed away. He's the guy who introduced us in the nineties.
He said. Rob came to me in the stream and
he said the reason that he introduced us was because
you were supposed to take his place when he left.
(21:23):
And he said, so you want to start a trio
with me and Jay Lay. I said yeah, So I said,
but this time, just don't don't make me learn one
hundred and fifty songs and not really know. I said, pick,
tell me six songs to learne. Yeah, And he gave
me a list of six, and I went to New York.
(21:43):
I got a great string bass from David Gage, and
I locked myself in the Bowery Hotel for ten days,
and I had learned from John. John showed up prepared
and I was never going to make that mistake again
to it, so I practiced even. I like the way
that bass sounded. I flew with that about a seat
(22:04):
for it. Flew to San Francisco, show up at Bobby's place,
and we never played any of the six songs, but
we just started at right away. Yeah, we just started
jamming on a name.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Bob has the best line I've ever heard about fame
and success. Somebody asked him how it's changed him, and
he said, you know, those pistachios that don't have the
little crack in them to get them started. I don't
bother with this anymore. You never heard that this.
Speaker 8 (22:37):
Is very good.
Speaker 10 (22:50):
Don.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Thank you for talking about your new album, Groove in
the Face of Adversity and your band Don Was and
the Pan Detroit Ensemble.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now you've been in a group before, You've been in
a number of groups before. What's the origin story of
this group?
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Well, pretty simply. Terrence Blanchard, great jazz trumpet player. Yeah,
we score composer, brilliant guy. Old friend thirty some years
he was curating a series in Detroit, a jazz series
with the Detroit Symphony over multiple nights, and he knew
us from Detroit, so he said, you want to do
one of the nights? He said, yeah, sure. It was
like two years ahead of about six months before the gig.
(23:32):
I realized I don't have a band on, don't how
many songs? I better put something together, and I really
didn't know what to do. So I thought back to
when I was first starting out and first starting to
get nice gigs as a producer. I worked with my heroes,
Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Willie Chris Christofferson, Macon Keith Oh
(23:55):
in a very short period of time, best songwriters I know, right,
And it gave me a writer's block that lasted well
into five years, because every time I'd sit down at
the piano, I'd get started, and I think, well, what's
the point of this man? These guys do it so
much better. Just send this lyric to Brian Wilson Man. Finally,
(24:17):
I was in a session with Willie and I'm looking
at him. He's so brilliant man and just such an incredible,
otherworldly character, and I thought, all right, I can never
be him. I'll never be as good as him, never
be him, but he can't be me. He didn't go
(24:37):
see the MC five tripping on acid when he was
sixteen years old at the Grandy Bow Room. Funk Adelic
didn't play. They were called the Parliaments, but they played
a sockhop at my junior high school when they were promoting.
And I just want to testify, you know, So he
didn't grow up in Detroit. There's a thing to Detroit.
So be the thing that he can't be, and you'd
(24:58):
be all right, be yourself, be the best version of
yourself that you could be. And there's a feeling in
the music business that if you're not like something else
that's successful at that moment, then that's a problem. You're
a marketing problem. But that's not the way I look
at it. The thing that makes you different from everybody
(25:18):
else is actually your superpower. To look at the people
who have enduring careers, all of them were unlike anybody
who'd come before.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, that's what you always say about TV.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yes, and I say it about America. Diversity is our superpower.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Exactly right.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
We're not supposed to be all the same. No, the
fact that we're all different means something and makes us greater.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Agree, one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And your groups, because you obviously was not was was
a marketing nightmare. Yes, they were a variety show of
a band. I was listening. There's a record. Everyone has
different their own favorites. I'm born to laugh at Tornadoes
guy with certain tracks on there, including a another Detroit
friend of yours, Doug Figer from the Nact, does a
(26:03):
song called Betrayal.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
Oh my God, I can't believe you know that it's.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
One of my favorites. But with this group, this was
like having had that group that marketing nightmare. You then
have done something really I think, just really fresh and
thrilling with this album.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Well I'm seventy three, man, there's a not enough time
left and be no desire to try to second guest
fashion anymore. Man, I just got time to do it.
Lay down what I do, right, Yeah, So I thought,
all right, for this gig for Terrence, go back to Detroit.
(26:42):
Get people who grew up listening to the same radio
stations as you, and there was a difference that grew
up in that milliere of the one industry town where
everyone's fate was tied to the auto business.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
And it reads.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
This kind of honest, no bullshit population people who there's
no point in putting on any errors because everyone knows
we're on the same boat. We all. You know, our
fate is dependent upon the success of the auto business.
It creates honest people, and it breeds honest music. John
Lee Hooker a great example, raw and honest, but swings
(27:19):
like crazy, Mitch Ryder, the MC five Stooges, Jack White, Funkadelic.
You just go through them all. There's a Detroit thing
which is raw, honest music. So just get people from
Detroit who play like you do and see what happens.
(27:39):
We got in the room. This was about six months
before the gig for Terrence with the Symphony, and I
didn't even have songs, but I host a radio show
on the NPR station in Detroit every week. So I
picked four songs that I played that I liked on
the show, used a flatif song and we just started
playing and it was like we've been playing together for
(28:02):
forty years. A couple of them have been playing with
for forty five years. David Murray, the sax player, Luis Resto,
who's Eminem's collaborator.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Co wrote Lose Yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Yeah, So those guys we do know each other very
very well as musicians, but everyone else I knew them all.
It just sat nine people sounded like a band from
the first thing. So we said this is better than
just one show. We booked a tour around the dated
Symphony and just we just love playing together, and the
(28:34):
thing kept getting better and better. So we've done three
tours now and we just made this album.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And let's go through just the tracks quickly, and uh,
you know, let's start with the opening. One thing the
record is there's a lot of live performance on this record.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah, but you know something, even the studio things are
live performances.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
They're just in the studio, right, And what I what
I got out of that was because there's jazz in here.
There's lose, R and B, everything's in there. But I
will say that like I was, I never like with jazz.
I remember when at one point when I got into
Duke Ellington, my mother came back from a record she
saw and it was like live at a dance sort
(29:15):
of concert, and you could hear people couples talking and
getting together, and I thought, oh, this is the way
a lot of great jazz groups were. You were they
were entertaining people, they were doing a social event. And
this record has a little that just the energy of
like people get it. You know, there's energy. So let's
start with Midnight Marauders.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Min minna.
Speaker 6 (29:45):
See them come to the midnight show scene of the
Midnight Loved.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It. It's the guy a us Tomorrow, this singer from
bet Freddy's Drop New Zealand Funky band. And it was
around the time. It was a couple of months before
I put this rehearsal together, and my wife Jim and
I were in We were just driving around France and
(30:19):
we stopped and we were in a bar and it
came on and says, I am said, those horns, that's
what I'm hearing in my head for this band. I
just loved the record. So we we tried playing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
That, uh second track, Nubian Lady.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Yeah, well it's actually a Jimmy Heat song, but uh
uh is it Jimmy Heath, No, Jimmy Heath got a bit.
I forgot who wrote it. It's uh.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I thought it was Latif, but he did it. Yeah, Oh,
Kenny Baron.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Kenny Baron, Yeah, yeah, I played it on the radio
show that Friday. Is a good flute thing. Dave McMurray's
a great flute player. So we tried it and perfect man. Now,
Latif is a Detroit guy, great Detroit jazz hero, and
that same kind of no nonsense musical aesthetic applies to
(31:33):
the incredible jazz musicians who came out of Detroit.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
On the Blue Note.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
If you go through our catalog, there's a ridiculously inordinate
number of musicians from Detroit who are on He's Donald Bird,
Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, d. Jones,
all the Jones, all the Joneses. So uh yeah, So
(32:01):
it was a Detroit jazz thing, fit right in with
that feel.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Now the next track is I Ain't Got Nothing but Time,
which is amazing and can you talk about the because
that's Hank Williams right, and yet it's sung by this
soulful woman who I've never heard of. You talk tell
me about your your one of your real vocal.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Storty Christian is the lead singer give.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Me over.
Speaker 9 (32:27):
Handy John.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Wilbury and I've known her for a number of years
(32:55):
and we played together before. She also tours with Kevin
Saunderson and in her city, and she's just a great
Detroit voice, great soul singer, but she's absorbed all kinds
of music. She can sing a Hendrick songs, she can't
sing anything. So that song I did that on an
album for Verve in nineteen ninety six where we did
(33:18):
a bunch of Hank Williams songs turned inside out. We
called the group Orchestra was and the Sweetpea sang it
originally and Herbie Hancock was playing on it a whole.
It was kind of the same thing. Pedal steel guitar, player,
but Herbie Hancock and McMurray and Louise for playing on
her So I never had a band together beyond the
(33:39):
session day, so we never got to perform any of
those songs live. So that's one of them. We took
a Hank Williams song and turned it inside out.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
It's amazing. She's amazing, and it reminded me of you've
worked with We've both felt with Van Morrison. Yeah, in
one of the friendlier moments I had with him, he
said something about music. He goes, you know, he said,
all soul music, all good music is soul music. Yeah,
which is what I always think, like when you Hank Williams,
you know, being sung as a soul song.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
Of course, It's what.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
I was just who was I talking to the other day,
I was talking to Sam Smith. I said this very
little difference between Hank Williams singing I'm so long Since
I Could Cry and Otis Redding singing Dreams to remember.
It's just a little bit and phrasing that, but that
that's the same thing. You're soul music as you're dealing
with the basic human emotions and there's global commonality on that.
(34:35):
We all feel the same things. We're all basically the same.
And that's any time you can point that out with music,
it's a it's a good thing to do.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Right you pointed out with comedy, It's like that's it's
the main point. I just love it.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
All the arts are connected. Yeah, yeah, exactly right, like
all people a people exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
The next This is My Country might be my favorite
thing on the record because I was a student in
England when Curtis Mayfield was playing a lot over there
called ding Walls. I fell in love. He sort of
was one of the ways I got deep into the
history of soul music. The impressions his group that he
recorded This is My Country with Impressions, and it made me.
(35:21):
I love this version so much. I went back to
the album and noticed Donnie Hathaway, another one of my heroes,
co wrote songs with Curtis on this record. Tell me
about that track seems very up.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
To the moment. Well, that's the thing, man, If you
tried to write something for the times, I don't think
you could be any more eloquent than Curtis was on
that song.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
It says it all some people that we don't have
the right to say. It's my country, the baby, give
me the ad a fussing bag and see it's my country.
I pay three hundred years more. You're drawn and sweat
(36:12):
and live in back.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
We just we started. You know, these times are so miserable,
so chaotic, so confusing, so disturbing, And you don't want
to bump people out at a show. You want to
come and lose themselves for two hours and walk out
of their feeling rejuvenated. They're you know, they're going to
(36:38):
walk past a news standardin minutes anyway and get brought
back to reality. But it just seemed like you can't
ignore it. I grew up, you know, I was in
college in nineteen seventy when they were teaching us that
there was no separation between art and politics. That if
(37:01):
you were going to be an artist at that time,
you had to make art about about the war and
and about it, you know, about how you feel about
this that.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
And look at.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
Music is revolution that that's that's just a button. That's
John Sinclair, yes, right. John came up with the idea
of the guitar Army, that you could win hearts and
minds through music.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
You can investigate five and this machine kills fascist that's there,
you go.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
So I felt like you couldn't just ignore it and
and be happy. So it seemed like a nice way
to punctuate the show, and we started closing the show
with it, and ah, every one of them. We get
on the bus and everyone's going no, no, no. It's got
(37:51):
kind of an earworm to it too, you know. So yeah,
I'm glad we have it on the record.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Great you asked, I came. It's song you sort of
took from a whole other life ago almost, and it's
amazing just as a musical a bit of musical expression.
I don't know if it's the same arrangement, it's kind.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Of the same. It was. It was a Bo Diddley
feel set against uh, you know, with a jazz because.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You would have for a movie about the Beatles early days,
which couldn't use any Beatles.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
Because they hadn't.
Speaker 7 (38:22):
Richeny's part of that movie.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
It was called back Meat and it was about the
Beatles in Hamburg before they got famous. Really the Stuart
Suckcliffe part of the story, and so there were two.
He was he was torn between the rock and roll
thing and this kind of art, you know, modern painting
jazz scene that was going on in Hamburg, so they
wanted to score that had both. So we did the
(39:22):
music for the band that the actors lip synced too,
with a really great band too. It was a girl Yes,
Dave Grohl playing drums, Thirst and Moore playing guitar, Mike
and Mills played bass, Mariam Yeah for Mariann. Yeah, that
was for you. That was for the people forgetting Greg
(39:47):
Dooley from Afghan Whigs. It was the John Lennon park
and Dave Perner sang the John Lennon stuff and Henry
Rowlins did the one Stuart Suckcliffe vocal cool. So that
was for the movie. And then I wrote this jazz
score and that's that's how I'm at Terrence in fact,
who's on this record. He's on this recording because this
is this actually comes from the show that he booked
us for in Detroit and he played with us at night,
(40:09):
but he played the original on the record too for
the movie score.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
It is such a great composition and it does make
me think, do you when you're not running a record
label or doing a playing with Bob where do you
want to do more scores? Or no, when you can't tour,
when you get too old tour in thirty years.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
What I've been enjoying the most is playing Yeah, you know,
this is what I really picked up from where that
when you go out there and you don't really have
a game plan. You're not you don't know what the
set's going to be. You can you may know what
the songs are, but you don't know how you're going
to play him. And you go there and you start
taking chances in front of the audience and listening to
(40:53):
each other and egging each other. On a nine piece band,
there's a lot of conversation going on there. You can
do some really interesting things. The audience picks up on it.
Grateful Dead audience is such a great audience, man. They
hear everything you're doing and they appreciate the fact that
they're getting something new and original and that you're making
the effort for them. And they meet you halfway and
(41:13):
when you get that connection going and then you feel
their energy comes back and it makes you go up
another notch. You can you can blow the rough off
the place, which yeah we have. We have some train
wrecks every night, and then a couple of moments where
it goes to another planet.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
But when you do the Sphere Show.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I haven't done the Spear Show, but if you go
to the Sphere Show, yeah, which I haven't done, but
I know people, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
They do have to keep it the same to match
the visuals, don't they.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
They've actually worked things in to the video. Yeah, there
are sections that it can extend indefinitely, I see, and
that they have.
Speaker 6 (41:53):
Company.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I'm sure have to have a little you got to.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Even in a Grateful Dead song, there are traditional places
where the solo goes. But there's also a thing like
after the you know, say, after the first chorus, there's
maybe four virus before the second the second verse starts.
If that's feeling good, Bobby may stretch that out for
fifteen minutes. And so you have to keep listening and
(42:16):
pay attention and and stay at you know, stay on
your feet. Great.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
We have one more song from this record and then
I have one last question. So we have almost done it.
The last track is I got to say word up
to people. It's a cameo song, and I have to
admit I love cameo. I love some of the best.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Of cat.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Help me.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Tell me.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Women, how did it insane? What insane idea?
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Was it?
Speaker 4 (43:02):
That's another song? I played it on the radio show. Yeah,
like two nights before.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Because you don't have enough to do. You do a
public radio show for Detroit.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Two hours live radio every Friday night. Great, it's fun.
It's like playing a show.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
How often do you get back to Detroit.
Speaker 4 (43:17):
I've got a place there there a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
I'm going to be there in a couple of weeks myself. Really, yeah,
you know, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Yeah. And my co host was supposed to introduce you,
distracting named and de Lacy, but I don't think I
don't think it worked out. But she wanted to. Yeah, yeah,
I know you're going there.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
I wish I Oh.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Uh, They're sorry to take away from but this is important,
very important. There was a great pizza place I went
last time, Grandma Bob's.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Oh, I don't know, you know that place.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I'm turning you on. It's really good.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
I know the place you should go, and I'm spacing
on the name Detroit Pizza. I'm gonna send you. Listen.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Yeah, I'm just going We're gonna have read the restaurant's
situations from the last song not on this record to
go back to what was not was for a second
just because of the timing of everything. Can you I've
never understood the story of how there was a track
in different versions with Ozzy Osbourne, uh, Kim Basinger, and
(44:26):
originally I did. Finally hear on YouTube like Somena the
Madonna he told the story of how it was not.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Ever heard those names close together.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
By the way, I'm a huge fan of like I
could listen to Melo tour May Sing, Zaz Turns Blue Forever,
a lot of these guest appearances, but that track, how
did you get those people together?
Speaker 4 (44:45):
We're We wrote this song and it's a great lyric
that David was wrote and I wrote this kind of
lightweight dance melody to it, and our singers didn't they
didn't sound good singing it. So we thought, all who
else can sing it? And Michael Silka, who's was that
our record company chief records, Michael said, does this girl
(45:08):
from Detroit who's going to she's going to be huge?
You should put her on. So it was Madonna, and
so we went and Madonna recorded the vocal. She did
a really good job. She was great.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
It was before Shake your Head let's go to bed.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
Yeah, shake your head, let's go to bed. And then
we took it out of the studio and listened to
it and it just didn't sound like it was and
I was so I said, we got to have someone
else sing it. So I was talking to my attorney,
Fred Ansis, who we're just having coffee in New York
because we're mixing the record, and we didn't have the
song with a finished vocal, and he represented Ozzie. He said,
(45:41):
what about Ozzie? You want to sound a little tougher.
He said, I'm going over to see him now. He said,
come on with me, so over them. We went over
to uh one of the hotels in Central Park, south right,
and I was a little scared. I don't know what
to expect. I'd met him here your head off, yeah,
(46:02):
he answered, like in a in a navy blue run
Adidas running suit with a ton of jewelry on. And
he was just as nice and as sweet as could be.
And then we put this little disco song on and
I was just I didn't know what. I thought he
was going to throw stuff. He said, I love it, man,
something different. You know. He was just at that point
where he wanted to do something different, so he did.
(46:23):
We went to studio next day, he put a vocal on. Great.
Eight years later we're talking about it. We realized that
we had Madonna and Ozzie Osbourne on parallel tracks, and
then we could mix it as a duet. Oh, so
we did. Went to a DJ named Steve silk Curly
out of Chicago and.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
I need to hear this, and so it's a duet.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
And then we sent it to them for approval and
Nasie was sure great and Madonna was the way and
rightfully so, because we had rejected her. I don't I
don't blame her, and she'd become the biggest star in
the world, and why should we ride those goat tails?
So Kim Basinger is a good friend. She was very sweet.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
She said, you know that's good too.
Speaker 4 (47:07):
So it turned out it was our biggest single ever.
It just to come out in the United States, but
in the rest of the world, in the rest of.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
The world record And as he was, I have to
tell you, like I was not the biggest Black Sabbath fanatic,
but I wrote wrote for him on a number of
like a wardships. God, he was like funny, he did good.
He was great at comedy. I gave him the oldest
joke in the world, which was he'd almost been killed
in some gardening accident or something, and I had him
(47:35):
walk out of the Grammys with Sharon and say it's
good to be here, it's good to be anywhere, and
he killed He.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Was so great.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Well, thank you, don Yes, I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Was here the man.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
I love having you.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 10 (48:15):
Naked Lunch is a podcast by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde.
Theme song and music by Brad Paisley, produced by Will
Sterling and Ryan Tillotson, with video editing by Daniel Ferrara
and motion graphics by Ali Ahmed. Executive produced by Phil Rosenthal,
David Wilde, and our consulting journalist is Pamela Chellan. If
you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend. But
if you can't take my word for it, take Phil's.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
And don't forget to leave a good rating and review.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
We like five stars.
Speaker 10 (48:40):
You know, thanks for listening to Naked Lunch. A Lucky
Bastard's production.
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