#391 - Sam Hollander on Writing and Producing No. 1’s for One Direction, Weezer, Ringo Starr and More! + How Andy Warhol Became His Babysitter + His Side Gig Making Beats on Kids Bop Records

Multi-platinum selling songwriter and producer Sam Hollander (@SamHollander) stopped by Bobby's house to talk about his new book '21 Hit Wonder,' how his career started in the music industry, the odd side gigs he did and more! Sam Hollander has over 21 hit singles and has written and produced for artists like Panic! At The Disco, One Direction, Katy Perry, Ringo Starr and many more! But the road to making it in the music industry wasn't easy. He talks about getting a record deal as a rap artist to only be dropped two weeks later, and all the side gigs he had to take like making beats on Kids Bop Records before he made it. Sam also shares how Andy Warhol became his babysitter and the artist who gave him confidence to chase his dreams. He also explains why he wants to give back to others who want a career in the music industry by sharing his knowledge, failures and success stories! 

Get Sam's Book by clicking HERE!

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I think it was probably a trying time for Andy
sitting across from me, but he set up a little
black and white TV in the kitchen for me, and
the Yankees were on and I was the Yankees guy,
and he put it on. He kept just he would
walk over a couple hours and just walk up and
just say, do you like Famous Amous cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You drop off a crook, can't walk away. Welcome to

(00:25):
episode three ninety one. Sam Hollander. I was at there's
a little driving Ranger in my house. I went too
for like thirty minutes yesterday that my golf clubs and
back at the car, had a little time to kill,
and so I stopped it hit some balls, and I
was listening to the Weezer song records, the new song
I got records in my head and it's in my
head every it I've got, And so Sam Hollander wrote

(00:48):
that song and we talked about it coming up in
a minute. But that's new Weezer. But I could list you,
and I think I probably will, but I want to
say he's got a book called twenty one Hit Wonder
and you get it at Sam Hollander Songs dot Com,
or you can search twenty one hit Wonder on Amazon.
That being said, I felt like I could have done
two to three hours with Sam. He just had a
story about everything, from whose babysitter was, his parents, all

(01:13):
the songs that he wrote, and I can list some
of them here, Panic at the Disco, High Hopes, Fits
in the Tantrums, Handclapp, Boys Like Girls, The Great Escape,
Jim Class Heroes, he produces when a Cupid show called

(01:33):
metro Stations Shake It. He's just got so much. He's
got over twenty two US top forty hits, ten number ones,
ten top fives, eighty seven top tens. Globally, his songs
have streamed over five billion times. In twenty nineteen, held
the number one position on the Billboard Rock Songwriters Chart
for nine weeks, which was a year end record. I

(01:54):
don't know. I liked the guy. You know, I always
will kind of feel their energy and fully give that
back to them so they feel comfortable. And what I
liked about Sam was he's like, hey, man, what's up Sam?
Hanging out with chilling. He's so dry sometimes I didn't
know if he was joking or not. And then I
just sit there and be like, I'm gonna let you
say the next thing because I don't know if you're
kidding or not. Like talking about the baham In when

(02:16):
he worked with them, there's just a lot where I
was I don't know if he's kidding, And then sometimes
he wasn't kidding, especially the kids Bop stuff. Yeah, kids Bop.
I was like, is this a joke? It turns out
it wasn't a joke. So just a really cool story.
I mean, Sam spent thirty years just kind of fighting
through this songwriting and the rapping and the producing, and
he put all this in a book and he's speaking
in a lot of places, and he's donating all the

(02:37):
money to musicians on call. It's a very inspiring story.
It's a very entertaining story. And again Sam Hollandersongs dot
Com or twenty one Hit Wonder that's the name of
the book. You can buy it on Amazon. What was
your main takeaway here, Mike with Sam that you can
get it start later in life. Yeah, he didn't write
his first number one till after he had failed doing

(02:57):
other things hard. Then you know, there's a story. I
never want to say too much in this part of
it because it's so good. But there's one story about
a tragedy happening like right when he's about to launch something.
So if it wasn't him failing, it was like things
happening around it that cause things not to go right.
But then he hit it, and I hope you like it.

(03:18):
I enjoyed it a whole bunch. Here he is, and
follow him on Instagram if you don't even want to
see what his face looks like. I like to do
that at Sam Hollander And here he is, Sam. How
is your day today? Hey? Pretty good? Pretty glorious. Man.
You know, here's my problem. The shirt. I'm more in
the T shirt. I think a woman's shirt. This one.

(03:39):
I didn't realize it and then I was looking in
the mirror and I was like, that's a woman shirt.
So I put this on over the top, so you
think I was at least kind of cool. It was
up from your Zomba class. You know, that's the one
class I haven't done. Zoba. Have you ever been to Zoomba?
You know? Honestly, I don't want to make this awkward
for you, but actually trademark the name Zimba. I actually
created Zimba. You didn't know I am the forbidden dance.

(04:01):
You didn't I trademark zoom bass. I mean you've done
everything else right, man? Have you ever been to a
zoomba class? Though? Um, I've actually witnessed a zumba class,
but you haven't done it. Oh look at me? Have
you done tybo back in the day? Can Tybo can
say something true? Yeah? I actually had a song on
a Tybo vhs Banks Billy Blanks. What song was that though? Um?

(04:24):
It was called Supersonic Love, and the royalties from that
would definitely paid for the bottle of water. You guys
were nice enough to push them on directions. So it
wasn't like a massive song they wanted to put in it. No, No,
it was. It was a filler song. It was a
song of like many of my other early releases, that
was dropped by a record label, and I found a

(04:45):
way to make five dollars off of it. So you know,
when I was going through your entire catalog of songs
you wrote and produced, and it's it's it's so many
massive hits, and you know the song that I really
liked of yours, that I felt like was gonna like
and it's still this sometimes because they played a clip
of it in at the Naum stadiums all the time.

(05:06):
Is handclap. That's a fun little dud. Yeah, because they
do a lot of the in the stadiums. I was
a pioneer in jack Jams. You know what I mean.
That's a jock jam. Remember the Tommy Boy Jack Jams compilation. Absolutely,
I had jock Jam one in Foyee goal. Yes, I
had jock Jam two. Are you ready for this? Do do? Do?
Dot dot? And then it was just one to one

(05:27):
to the other. I went. I actually sat in on
the uh the commercial for jack Jams two. My friend
Kennedy directed it, and uh I got to watch Michael
Buffer do his thing in real time on a commercial,
which was pretty cool because he does in the middle
of the jock jams, even the single version when I
was because I did pop radio for a long time,
he would do the let's get ready to rumble? Oh man,

(05:50):
that's like so handclap was my version of a jack jam.
I guess I don't think it was necessarily constructed that way,
but um, it's funny. I mean it really, it's still
play it every supporting thing around the world and it's neat,
especially in New York because I hear it, you know,
at the Yankee Games, at the Nick Games, at the
Neck Games. It's kind of fun. Do you ever stand
up in a wave? That's what I would do when
you that's played to stand up, be like, that's that's me.

(06:13):
If I do that, then that's the moment they stopped
playing it when they realize what I looked like. That
would be at the end of it, when you when
when I look at again your massive body of work,
there are so many even micro hooks or catchy things
that I think, Nana, Nana, that was a fun yeah

(06:35):
that I'm not responsible for that. I just took a
free ride on. But it's a nice little ditty. No. Yeah,
there's the thing. One thing I would say is I
am I love immediacy in music, you know what I mean.
And I think it's born out of the fact that
I think most kids today have, you know, severely warped
attention spans. So when I'm digging in, I'm really just
trying to get it in the intro immediately. And you

(06:57):
know you TikTok before it was TikTok. It's what it
sounds like. I'm i gonna say two seconds. I'll put
it like this. If I had been born in a
previous decade, I would not have been able to make
Emerson Lake on Palmer Records, you know what I mean.
It would have been a very different wiring. So there's
no twelve minute intro in my vocab. So I was
listening yesterday to Derek and the Domino's Leila, and you know,

(07:19):
the song plays and hello, it's not the Clapton unplugged,
it's the you know, the original, you know. And at
the end it's a five minute piano So yeah, culture
every time. Look, man, I wish, I wish I could
have been that guy. But true, I would have been
the guy who would have said to them in their
main man, let's dedit this thing now, letten, Let's make
it to like two minutes and forty seconds. Joy. Yeah

(07:41):
it was and then. And I can enjoy older songs
from before even you know, we were making anything creatively
it's jokes or music. I can enjoy the process and
how culture was different then. And but even that outro
in that song, I was like, were they high drugs? Yeah?
It was just it just continued on and and I've

(08:01):
heard it a hundred times, but as in my car
and I we have an old Bronco that just has
to Russial radio only awesome, and I was like, I
don't know what the channels are, so I'm not gonna
change it. So I'm gonna listen to this four minute
outro of the entire Leila you gotta stick it out,
which is the exact opposite of Nana No No, because
immediately you got us with cupid chokehold you know what.

(08:23):
That was the genius of traving McCoy and he was
driving it and he once again he let me hitch
onto his wagon on that one. But um no, it's
just a really really I do like going for the
jugular early on, you know, And maybe it's I have
no sense of dynamic anymore and I'm just warped, But
I really just like things just sort of from the
from the initial onset. I just wanted to hit where

(08:44):
did that come from? Or what music did you like?
Or what was it that you didn't like so much
that made you go we gotta grab him quick? Well?
I don't know, I mean, I grew up. I was
the definitive ktel kid, you know, what I mean, I
was like this, you know, late seventies early He's had
all those k tail collections. And that's what I loved
because it was it was so um. It wasn't genre

(09:05):
specific for the most part, you know, so you could
have Seals and Crofts next to David Gates next to um,
you know, next to the Bellamy Brothers next to the
Bags or some disco stuff or kiss. So that was
my introduction of music. And the one thing I would
say is, you know, it was usually the three minute
edit on all those songs. They weren't going to let

(09:26):
anything go extended. So I began to hear songs truly
as like a three minute single. And I remember, I
remember when I was twenty or so and Drama Rama hit,
and I remember hearing, uh, you know, not Dramarama, what's
the what's the Delamitri would roll to me right when
hit Yeah, but that thing's like two minutes in two seconds, Rod,

(09:47):
It's the fastest song in history. And what I realized
about that song was one reason why I crushed it
radio is because you could fit it into any slot
going to a commercial. You know. It was like it
was so short that it could work as a bumper
to things. So then I just sort of got in
that notion. So I guess I am TikTok pioneer Bobby
what And that's what I thought, because everything goes quick,
short attention span. You hit us quick. You give us

(10:07):
what we're gonna need to know when that song's over,
and if we don't listen to all of it, that's fine.
If we do, we got it. I could do that
with many of your songs and we can shake it
Metro station shake. It's a zumba classic. Now see when
you talk about zoom, but you lose me a little bit.
And I think you're kidding because you only witnessed one.
If you said tibout, I believe you because you probably
saw a few more of those since you made five
bucks off of it, and say a few more, Bobby.

(10:31):
Growing up in New York, how much of your childhood
to early adulthood were you there? Mostly? I was there
every day. I mean the city was like until what age,
you know? I was in the New York till I
was the age of forty Okay, so I never left.
So does that mean you're a billy Joel guy? I'm
a Springsteen m Billy Joel Guy, which is kind of
a rarity, you know what I mean, they're in the

(10:53):
in the Tristate area. I do sometimes feel there's like
a defined Mason Dixon between the two. Almost Mets Yankees,
ye undred percent. I'm definitely Yankees, um, but for Billy.
You know, it's funny because Billie's thing. I love on
the theatricality, and I love um the nods to um,
you know, Sinatra and all the you know, sort of
rappack kind of crooners, some the way he fused like

(11:16):
theatrical crooner doom, you know. And then Springsteen. I love
the word play. So Springsteen was a huge influence for
me because I really really dug especially on Greetings from
Asbury Park, that first record. Um, there's it's you know,
he's pulling all this Dylan stuff, but there's just something
about what he was doing melodically on that first record
that blew my head. That's one of my first favorite records.

(11:36):
So there had to be so much music around you,
even if you didn't get to go to it. To
just be living in New York City, I mean, I
grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. There was no music
around me, so anything I got had to be only
from the radio or driving to get a tape which
later turned into a CD. So it was like the
nearest big venue hour and a half and it was
little rock. Well, and it's another end every three months, right,

(11:59):
you know? So was it important to whomever was raising
you to make sure that you were cultured at all
while living in New York? One thousand percent? Like you know,
I was exposed to the arts early on my UM,
I know the whole appeal to you, but my dad
was a modern dancer and I know you're you're very
well dashed in the modern and Dan, well, you're a

(12:20):
champion dance. Um, so it's very very important to um.
You know, my dad was a dancer and then he
became an architect, but he was a modern He was
a professional dancer kind of dancer. What he specialized in.
He was with the Jose Lemone group doing modern dance
in the nineteen fifties. And how did he get started
in that? He started dancing like eleven, was professional at
seventeen toward the entire world. Broke every toe on both

(12:43):
feet by the time he was twenty three, went back
to Yale and became an architect. Do you remember him
dancing at all? No, I wasn't okay, so you were
not two hundred Yeah, jeez, man, But I didn't know
if he's still like dance recreationally. He didn't dance recreationally,
but you know, it's funny. He would sway around the room.
He was an incredible guy. Man. He was just so
rhythmic and cool. So when I listen to music and

(13:05):
I sort of was less versed in my steps, I
would watch him in the background listening to music, and
the way he flowed was magical. Its beautiful. And my
mom was an artist too, so I mom was what
kind of artists? My mom was a heavy cat man.
My mom was like really like that. She was an
interior designer, but she came from the bottom of this thing.

(13:26):
She just started at the very pit of this thing.
And she became an expert on Victorian era furniture and
which is a very strange sort of lane. And she
really became like one of them foremost experts on it
overnight and started doing apartments. But when I was a
little kid, she was sort of carrying our thing and
she did Mick Jagger's apartment, Eve Saan Laurent's apartment, all

(13:48):
these sort of studio fifty four era things. And you know,
when I was a little guy. This is probably how
I got a book deal. But when I was a
little guy, you know, and I was always pleading for
her to take me to record shops. One day she
just said, I'm gonna rop you off at a babysitter's house.
I gotta get rid of you. And she dropped me
off at Andy Warhol's and Andy Warhole used to babysit
me as a little kid, which is wild. I know
that you wrote about that in your book. It's true.

(14:11):
And the next question was is your book true or lies?
And so you answered that it's true too. Yeah that's good.
I like that because I we can keep going here act. Yeah,
that's good. Andy Warhole is a babysitter. Do you have
memories of that or was it before you were No?
I do, I do. Um, it happened through I would
say three three, maybe a fourth time and then needs
to come into our house too. Um. I have very
distinct memories because this was somebody who probably wasn't that

(14:34):
stoke to hang out with like a greasy little kid.
With nose burgers running down his face, you know. So
it was, Um, I think it was probably a trying
time for Andy sitting across from me, but you know,
he set up a little black and white TV in
the kitchen for me, and it was a little little
black and white TV and the Yankees were on and
I was the Yankees guy and he put it on.
He kept just he would walk over a couple hours

(14:56):
and just walk up and just say, do you like
Famous Miss Cookies? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you
drop off a cookie and walk away. It was about
the extent of our frader in hissation. But it was
pretty cool. Like, you know, your mom and dad are
very interesting to me because so they pushed the arts.
So yeah, when I played culture childhood, Yeah, when I
played high school football, they thought literally like I had failed.

(15:18):
How did they meet? Do you know? Um? I do know.
My mom was widowed at um twenty three, and she
was widowed and she was a single mom, and she
met my dad through a friend in the city, just
like casually, and so I assumed their their bond was
something artistic, creative. It sounds like they both have that

(15:38):
spirit inside of that they were incredible. Man. They were
like both like they're both of their esthetics where at
like a level I've never seen. They were both everything
about them. You know. They lived in this little studio
apartment in the city and they tricked this thing out
to such an extent in like nineteen sixty nine or
before I was born, but it was in magazines. It
was featured because the design level of design was so
sophisticated and cool, Like they were just like they were

(16:00):
brilliant minds. So what do you remember as far as
their parenting? What was a priority from them to you
as for just being a good human? Like what were
they trying to teach you? Well, I gotta be honestly,
they were very They were very decent people. And you know,
I think the number one thing they wanted to teach
me one was aspirational things that everything was obtainable. You know.

(16:24):
I was blessed to have like a support network that
other kids didn't have, you know what I mean, Like,
and that's never been lost on me. Like when you
have when you're entering this business and you have two
parents who are cheering for you, hoping that you enter
something or do something different or color outside the lines.
That's pretty cool, you know, so I would say I
was blessed with that, and then you know, they were
just they were they were so kind and they're so gracious.

(16:46):
In our town specifically, we lived an hour north in
northern Westchester. And the way they approached everybody, they were
so they were known. They'd just be like very generous,
decent people, like they would talk to everybody. That's one
thing that was stom me early on. It's just, you know,
have no fear of talking to people, look people in
the eye, and like honestly just like be a human.

(17:07):
You know, I ask all the childhood stuff because I
grew into associopath. I was going to get there later
about that specifically, but it's you know, when I'm reading
about you and reading different parts of the book to Michael,
was like, you gotta read this, you gotta read this
that you didn't have it hit in two or thirty five,
Is that accurate? That's completely well memory completely you had
these parents is that you can do anything. They didn't

(17:29):
really set boundaries for you. Accept the boundary of you
can push the boundary as much as you'd like, hustle. Yeah,
just just just go. Just hustle, and so you're eighteen
nineteen even up twenty four twenty five, like, where did
you see your life going? What was the goal? What
was the plan? Then? Well, the plan from day one
it was I really, um, you know, I was a student.

(17:50):
I was a student of records, right, I mean, you know,
I collected records the way other kids collected baseball cards.
Probably had a couple of thousand records about tom I
was about twenty three twenty four because or flea markets
in the city in the mid twenties and twenty twenty
four twenty fifth where you could buy Nickel records. So
I used to stockpile Nickel records, and I just I
was like a voracious collector. I was looking at the

(18:12):
back and just trying to figure out who the songwriters were,
who the producers were. I grew up up watching a
lot of films, so I got really into screenwriting, right,
So I nerded out over screenwriters like I wanted to
be Albert Brooks or John Hughes are one of these cats,
you know. And so with the songwriting, it was the
same thing. And as far as my parents went, you know,
I you know, they unleashed me into the city. You know.
I went to school, I dropped out. I went to

(18:33):
three colleges and two semesters, which I think is pretty
unheard of, and I ended up ended up claw in
the city. But I really did have one, one singular goal,
and that was I wanted to write with artists and
really just be that voice in the room who sort
of directed the movie a little bit, you know what
I mean, who wrote the script and sort of. Um
it was a trick I learned from Nol Rodgers down

(18:54):
the road, but I really was I was early in
my head, that was in my wiring, which was to
constantly you try to write the sequel to whatever any artist,
doesn't matter if they're unknown or they've just put up
their first song or whatever. I'm creating the next movie,
like where would it go, what's the pivot? What's weekend?
Bernie's too, you know, And that's what I started doing.
And the problem was this guy named Kurt Cobain came along,

(19:16):
this jerk, and he wrote his own songs, and so
it became super I was twenty and suddenly was super
inherently uncool to collaborate with an out guy outside of
the room, you know, previously. You go back to Appetite
for Destruction for G and R or any of those
Eagles records, you know, and there's co writers all over
these things. Carol King wrote it's too late with Tony Stern,

(19:37):
you know. So there was a place for that person
to be in the room who sort of is that
other sort of appendant creatively but isn't part of the group.
And suddenly it wasn't in vogue anymore. It wasn't cool,
And so I had to claw my way through the
city at that time, and I had to eat. So
I Bobby. I was a rapper and I got a

(20:01):
record Deals rapper. I don't know if you're kidding, because
I also had a record Deals rapper. I did. My
name is Captain Caucasian. What was your name? Um, we're
gonna find out. Um, this is the This could be
a Bobby cast trivia question for anyone who writes in
but nobody writes it. Okay, that's a problem. But I did.
I did get a record deal with Select Records, which
is Atlantics hip hop records. So they had at the

(20:22):
time they had um Kid and play Cha brock utfo
Kidden player on top of the World, year was this.
By the way, this is nineteen ninety one. Okay, so
Beastie Boys have been around for a little bit. Beast
He's been around. Third Base had come out and they
were big Goes a Weasel, right, Yeah, that was big
in the city. And then and then Filling It was
where I was shopping when Vanilla Vanilla Ice came out
And it was funny because Vanilla ICE's label tried to

(20:43):
sign me. They flew me down a Plano, Texas Old
Tracks Records, and I remember um pivotal moment in my youth.
I'm probably twenty years old maybe yeah, I just probably
turned twenty. And it took me into a closet and
it was all the Vanilla Ice merch, you know what
I mean, Vanilla's tooth braces, hunchboxes, you know whatever. It
was like. It was so it was so um dystopian,

(21:05):
and I remember thinking, I really like I've entered into
like a universe I could never understand. But I made
this record, I got signed, I had a video out,
and then I got dropped within two weeks. You know
what I mean, what's the record. It's called Notorious Big, Yeah,
I've heard of it. Then I have heard of it. Yeah,
you know, but after my failed hip, what was wrong

(21:26):
with the record? Um? I made it myself. So the
biggest mistake was I got a record deal and immediately
Select tried to hook me up with producer so Bob
Power wand to work with me, and he had done
he had engineered and um he had engineered and mixed
all those trip called Quest records. And then they hooked
me with these guys track masters who would go on
to do all of the Diddy and Mace stuff and
getting Jiggy with it and all that nineties big sample

(21:48):
heavy hip out. These guys all wanted to work with me,
and I of course turned it all down to make
my own record because I was very headstrong. I didn't
want to collaborate with anybody, and I made the worst
album ever recorded. So I made this terrible recording and
I lost my record deal. By the time I would
it came out, it was it was shell for a year.
They finally like threw it against the wall and then

(22:11):
Bobby decided to start rapping with a German accent because
I think that was my next pivot. So I felt
like I was doing cultural appropriation of I was an
early cultural appropriator. So I started and cultural appropriation I
did so. I started rapping with a German accent and
I did that, Um, why was a good idea? Euro
dance was beginning explode. Remember the Burman Brothers are different person.

(22:34):
Yeah so you did so? You did? You had been
gentleman Parterson, you'd that's a terrible German accent, but it
d'd be like, oh I am German. Yes, yeah. Yeah.
So if you ever watch uh, Whoopie Goldberg and Eddie,
she's coaching the Knicks. She's angry Whoopie yelling at the knicks.
Um my song plays, She's yelling at a knick and
it's in the background. You can hear my weird German
flow in the background, a little pronounced. But um, that

(22:57):
didn't work. Hang tight the Bobby Cast. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. Then, um, I started
making beats, and so that's when I started doing lots
of programming and making beats. And well, your beats good
on your record though you talk about you made your
own records. I did. My beats were terrible. My records.
So then I you know, back then, I actually worked
with a programmer on it. But then when I started

(23:19):
making beats, actually got an sp twelve of them. My
beats were all right. I could actually I could do it,
and I sort of had the tricks of the era
of all that sort of tune hip hop stuff. But
do you think, though, that that bad record bad? You
said it, not me though. The failure there, And I
guess the point that I'm hope being that I'm leading
us to is that there was a lot of learning

(23:39):
that happened from that failure. The best thing that ever
happened to me, right, failure. See, the reason I wrote
this book is because the failure defined me. You know.
I read every entertainment bow for the most part. You
know of my peers, certainly songwriter books, etcetera. And a
lot of them are humble brags, you know, and I
understand it. It's part of the game for me. What

(24:01):
was interesting about my story was the first fifteen years
of the career, not the second half. The second half's
been magical, but it's not why I wrote a book.
I wrote a book because the stuff at the front
end was so fascinating. Because I made every possible tactical
and creative error you could ever make, and I always
learned from the lessons. So I make my first record

(24:23):
and it's a colossalness. You know, I learned I need
to be a collaborator. I might not be good enough
on my own to pull off what I think when
I'm hearing in my head, I'm not able to execute.
So then it was like speed dating. Years of speed
dating collaborators to try to find like the magic fit,
and so everything was just like this weird learning curve.
I started doing music for commercials and music for industrials, Garnier,

(24:47):
Mabel and all the stuff. And basically then I started
creating my own groups because I figured if I created
the group, they'd have no choice but to sing my songs.
Quality theory, let me fuck it on paper. Yeah. So, um,
the first five albums I made were major I got.
You know, my manager M Brett was at the time,

(25:08):
was able to get five major label deals for artists
over a two year period, which was unheard of. We
had nothing, We had never done anything. I'd never done anything,
and um, I had the distinction of the first five
albums I ever made weren't released, And you go, how
does it work? Well? Because there's no Internet, no Spotify, nothing.
This is not you know, so no iTunes. So back

(25:31):
then it's still physical CDs and as you know, like
a bunch of records they'd signed thirty x a year
or whatever, but a couple were tax write offs. Mine
were always the write off. So the first five albums
didn't come out. The sixth, finally is the one that
breaks through. Um. It was a group called Bad Ronald
that took out an ad in the Village Voice in
New York cast this thing we went to UM we
recorded at Henson Um in LA and I had a

(25:54):
panic attack in the middle of it because I knew
this was my last shout in this business. And why
did you think that was all? I shot that well,
because when you have five albums, it's such a weird
number to go, well, my six short certainly isn't gonna
because you know what, the phone just wasn't ringing, got
you know what I mean, like, no one's taking my calls.
And I think I was somebody who generally people rooted for.
But you know, man, it's like at some point you're

(26:15):
like a you know you're a draft pick. At some
point you know you're gonna get cut. Your stock isn't there,
and that's where I was at, and so I m
I was just at the very bottom of this thing.
And we make this album and the floodgates open, and
I have a song on MTV right and it's the
first song ever, bad Ronald, Let's begin song on MTV,
most magical feeling in the world, crying, first song, first

(26:37):
song ever literally in a video, because up to that
the only TV usage I had was background music in
a real world Seattle, That's true. And so if you
have this thing and on the night of the record releases,
you remember, you know, record store releases were Tuesdays, so
the Monday night before it, most record stores stay open

(26:59):
to midnight, and you'd have record release Monday nights, you
know what I mean. And so all throughout the city,
like whatever. You were a fan of a New York city,
those people will congregate for the record release of that record.
You need to go to the record stourace. So our
record was this It was the easy Rider helmet from
the movie American Flag, and it was displayed at fourteenth
and Broadway in the Virgin Mega store and we had
the flat on the corner of Broadway sky High. It

(27:22):
was the coolest thing I've ever seen, right, So we
went to take pictures there directly before. It was the
most magical feeling. I was so excited, and we were
there at midnight and I went to bed next morning.
We woke up of September eleventh, two thousand and one,
and as I ran down the street, I watched the
towers fall from Washington Square Park around the corner. And
then when I ran uptown and all these people are

(27:42):
running towards me covered in soot, and all these people
are screaming looking for family members that are all congregating
in Union Square. So the press trucks are there and
the press start photographing, and the city, you know, all
the news trucks are photographing our album cover with people
covered in white dust past the American flag. So um,

(28:03):
it was the most harrowing, just awful day obviously my life.
And you know, I never went back to that store
for two and a half years, and I didn't fly
for two years. And Bad Ronald were dropped within three
weeks because their record was just like loud, abrasive, sort
of raunchy hip hop and with rock hip hop, you know,
and that wasn't what people wanted on September twelfth, they

(28:24):
wanted Norah Jones, you know, so that was the end
for me. So I had the phone stop ringing, and
I had to take a side hustle. So I started
making beats on kids pop records. That's not I'm serious,
and that's why I'm pausing here. Serious. So when you

(28:44):
say making beats, so you're how about this, I wasn't
even producing. I was the drum programmer. So you're making
as close to as possible, like the real version, but
a little softer version of the songs that family friendly. Yeah,
how do you get that job? Gary Phillips was a

(29:04):
guitar player I'd used. He had done session work. He
actually did the entire Bad Ronald record. He was amazing.
He had produced a singer Songwriana Michael Tolture, a record
that had done that didn't really happen, and he'd become
my session guy, and he got the gig as the
main producer for kids while he still is. And he
knew that I was having a hard time, and he

(29:26):
knew that my phone had stopped ringing and I wasn't
gonna quit. So he gave me, like he started throwing
me a little big. He's like, hey, do the Beyonce
crazy and love kids, Bob, And as I always say,
that's my hot beat on that man. So in casey
tonight want to do the forbidden Mamba to that thing,
I got you, it's my beat. So when did you
start to re establish, even within yourself, who you were. Well,

(29:50):
I met a guy who changed my life. I met
a guy named Jonathan Daniel. You know a couple of
pivotal things. One and one Danny to say is even
in the midst of all the failure and futility I had.
The first thing that really changed my life was I
met Carol King, and Carol King took an interest in me,
and Karl did just meet. I brought her in on
one of these records to sing a record that was

(30:10):
never released, a female ours named Tarsha Viga and Urca,
and she was like an MC and it was once
again acoustics like sort of like a vibe acoustic hip
hop record. And I brought her in and I, you know,
they wanted arca. I wanted to feature on the record,
and they were suggesting in there and people of that era,
you know, sort of neo soul, and I suggested Carol

(30:32):
King and Brian Maloof was at NR and he had
a relationship with her camp And two days later she
came down the studio to hang out with us, and
she sat across from us and she's looking at Tarsha
and she said, Tarsha, I love what you do lyrically.
I think it's great. I love the nuances blah blah,
and Tarsha God bless her looked at me and said, well,
he writes it. I don't write the stuff he writes it.

(30:53):
So next thing, you know, me and Carol and my
boy Duke, we locked the door for like you know,
over a year. We probably wrote ten or twelve songs
I wanted to say, and we just kept it was
a masterclass. It was like the first person and specifically
for me, it was the first person who really identified
something in me beyond the fact that I was mildly amusing,
you know, and she uh, we did this thing and

(31:16):
we ended up writing and producing the title track of
the last album she ever made. It was the single
the title track. It was a big gap commercial with
her and her daughter as a song called Love Makes
the World. And I had a Carol King song, so
it was weird as I had five unreleased albums had
a Carol King song and then you know, obviously you
know my Baha men work right, so you do and
I'm gonna get to that too. Yeah that was big. Yeah,

(31:38):
we got we got bahamen to come in a minute
with the Carol King and you know when that's one
of the big headlines that you read about you. Yeah, yeah, first,
you know, Carol King the first big breakthrough. But I
wonder if the breakthrough was that, as you're writing these songs,
did she and maybe didn't need it, but did she
give you a kind of a reintroduction to your confidence? Yeah?
It's just you know what was like I entered the

(32:01):
building as the fan first um ilays want to work
with all the real building cats, you know what I mean.
So the notion that somebody so esteemed could find something
in my writing that was a that offset all the
failure to me because at least I felt like I
was getting grandmothered into something. So then she told Paul
Williams about me, and Paul Williams was one of my
favorite writers ever. I was a massive Paul Bliams fan

(32:23):
because he was like me. He was a lyricist and
he was sort of kookie. And so suddenly me and
Paul and Carol and Duca writing songs together, right, and
she just she was she was. She was an advocate
for me, and I desperately needed it, and so that
gave me some currency in my head. And then but this,
you know, a guy named Jonathan Daniel m. Change is

(32:45):
the guy who really changed my career. He was as
a manager and you know, he's about, you know, eight
years older than me something like that. He'd been hair
bands in the eighties at the same the same kind
of trajectory though, like just dancing around all these scenes
and then you know, like in the way I was
dancing around scenes in New York City but never really
having his own moment, that breakout moment. He was you know,

(33:07):
his band was called Candy, it was and it was
Jonathan and Gilby Clark, and then Gilbey Clark joins GNR then,
you know, and he then became a publisher. He started
he was running the Cures publishing company in the US,
that sort of rance course, and he starts a management
company called Crush Management, and he started reaching out to
me and he would get advanced copies of all these
albums I was making that weren't getting released, and he

(33:29):
would take me out to launch and commit these pep talks,
and he understood what I was pulling from, right, So
he'd sit across from me and say, oh, that's really cool.
You're going for like a bones how Turtles thing on this,
or you're going for a love and spoonful thing on this.
So you're going for a Dennis Lambert thing, or you
know these idols, all these songwriters that idoled like a
you know, like an idolized like a nerd, you know.

(33:52):
And he was the only person who understood my references.
And he said to me, look, he said, you know,
I'm on the precipice of something, but I have a
whole way of bands. They're pop punk, and this is
growing into a scene, and we're gonna need somebody who,
you know, maybe an adult in the room who understands
song about a step more with a few of the
act and they were these little indie records, no budget,

(34:16):
fueled by Ramen. Records were run out of Jacksonville, you know,
a dorm at Gainesville, originally with John Janet and I
signed up and the first record ever made you know,
so understand now I'm coming out of It ended up
being seven albums. I made major label albums Real Budgets, right,
Real Budgets, and first five aren't released. The sixth comes

(34:36):
out in September eleventh, and the seventh was a group
called the Cooler Kids that DreamWorks folded in the as
the record came out, so they were folded in in
our scope and they were dropped. So I made all
these major label records for Budgets, and then suddenly here
I am, and I'm pitched these records for you know,
twenty five thousand, all in for everything, mixing, mastering, production,

(34:56):
you know, sample clearances if they use you know, so
I'm losing money in these things. That first record was
called The Gym Class Heroes, and I make this record,
like you said, you know, and I have my first
number one hit. So I went from having absolutely nothing
in that thirty five have a number one hit? Does
it happen like on the movie show where you get
no calls? And didn't you have a number one hit?
And then all of a sudden, the phones like I

(35:17):
don't anybody bringing, anybody wants to work with you? One
thousand percent? What was interesting about it was one thing
Jonathan Jonathan Daniel is based on my guru. He's one
of my best friends, but he's also been my guru
and I'm with Crush Management now too. But one thing
he told me early on is he said, you don't
necessarily need to take all the calls. You need an
infrastructure about three or four people in this business who
believe in you, who've always been very loyal to you,

(35:38):
and as long as they're in the position to make
some sort of moves that you can just work with
those people. And that's what I chose to do. So
there was Steve Greenberg at es Curve. There was James
Deaner when he was at Doctone, you know, be Interscope.
There was you know, the Crush guys and Pete Gambarg
and people like. There were people who just like constantly
gave me work. So I didn't have to take all

(35:59):
that incoming. And it's great for my psyche because I
think it's a massive mistake that writers or producers make
when they finally enter the zeitgeist, you know, because you
just get so seduced by it, you're like, oh my god,
I can't believe I'm getting all these calls blah blah blah,
but you don't realize that you're fly by night to
these other people. You know, that's a transient sort of
relationship with the people who sort of rode with you
from the beginning will stick with you through the lows.

(36:19):
Because truthfully, for every sort of solid couple of you know,
pockets where I'm really killing it, then of course there's
going to be a fall. It happens. We all just
roller coaster up and down. We were talking about before
you got here doing the intro for this which, by
the way, the book twenty one hit Wonder, which we've
been talking about, and you write it, and you're you're

(36:40):
donating the proceeds to every reason I call right, Yeah,
So every penny from my end from this book, from
inception goes to musicians on call and all my speaking
gigs too. So I've been torn around the country on
my own time. I went to been a thirty university
so far, five high schools. I'm gonna get up to fifty.
And I've done you know, everything from a General Modus
convent in Last Tuesday to you know, Music Business College's convention,

(37:05):
the Media Convention in Las Vegas on Friday. Every penny
that I raised goes to musicians on Call and why
And I said that as someone who was on the
board for a while, and I know he was very
you've been involved in it. Well, the long and short
of it is, I knew the gentleman who started it
when we were all in our twenties, and I didn't
really get involved. And then when my dad was in

(37:26):
his last days, he was at a Mount Sina he
was in a cancer word of Mount SINAI and I
just lost my mom and now my dad's really sick,
and I'm in a pretty dark space. And I walk
up there and I hear, like I hear a man
singing in the hallway. He's kind of warming up. And
I walk out. It's like an eighty year old cat
with a big, bushy beard and acoustic guitar and he's

(37:48):
walking into a room to play for an elderly woman
in the next room. And so I waited till he's completed,
and I took him aside. I said, like, where do
you know? Who are you? He said, I'm with musicians
on call. And literally my face froze because I had,
you know, I'd always wanted to get involved, and I
felt like this was this weird, divine sort of religious experience.
So I immediately signed on joining joined the advisory board.

(38:10):
And then we have this Christmas group. It's me and
Kevin Griffin, Mark McGrath. It's a bunch of us, Lisa
Loebe and we just thing called Band of Merrymakers. And
so we gave proceeds to it, and we started playing
in the hospitals and like doing the workshops, and I
was doing writing clinics like with kids who were in
really tough shape, and it um is the most valuable
work I've ever done. I figured, you know, there's a
lot of charities that get a ton of shine and

(38:33):
have more financial resources, and I felt, well, if I
could do anything to help, it was probably it was
worth it. The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This
is the Bobby Cast. When you speak at any other things,
you said, a college, a convention, bunch executives, what's your

(38:53):
one story that you know is going to light the
room of people are gonna love it. They're going to
be entertained. You may twist and turn on him a
little bit, but you know that's your money story. Oh man,
I'll be The truth is I'm walking money, So I
know that's why I'm asking you, like, what's your what's
your antidote that you're like, this is the one I
want to be known, not not what song did you

(39:14):
write or produce? But what's your one antidote that you
want to be known for? All right? You're ready? Yeah,
all right? So, um, I really think the one direction
one lands a lot because kids like Harry styles so um,
very quickly, I'm sitting at coffee shop in La. It's raining,
and um, you know, everybody in La is scared of rain,

(39:34):
so they're all on top of each other, and there's
there's a meeting going on behind me, and it's a
publisher pitching a writer and I recognize that's beca tishker
is a huge manager and publisher. And she's she's pitching
the Swedish guy and he's got very thick cent, very
thick coccent, you know, and she's like, you know, so
you're not doing your band anymore, blah blah blah. You
know you're starting to write now, you're doing you're writing
now blah blaha. Yes, I'm beginning to write them blah

(39:56):
blah blah. For some reason, I turn around and I
look at the sexy fella and I realized that it's
Peter Spence and the guitarist and the Cardigans. And the
Cardigans for me were mine er van, you know, really,
Cardigans were my favorite band of the night. Love me,
love me, say that should love me. For those that
want to hear it perfectly, sing back, well the way,
it's perfect, thank you yeah um, and so that I'm

(40:18):
literally fanboy and this guy. I interrupt their conversation because
I have no filter, and we kick it and she's like,
oh my god, you guys should write together. It be
such a great fit. And you know, I'm gonna bring
I'll add my writer ko Jack, who's a track guy.
Cool ko Jack, and the three you guys should write,
I said, great. So we show up and secretly I'm
thinking we're gonna write a Cardigans song. And this is
like my my, my wish fulfilment, you know. And I

(40:40):
show up at the studio and these guys are these
guys are real pop guys. I'm not a real pop guy.
I'm quirky. I'm more of a rock guy who sort
of just has pop leanings, you know, And I show up.
These guys are like, I'm like, so, let's dig in.
Let's do something really vibeing cardigans and Feter's like, no,
I don't. I'm not doing cardigans anymore. So wow, So

(41:01):
we we we said what should we do? We said,
let's write a song for one direction. Let's try that.
And I didn't know what that meant, you know, I mean,
I knew what makes you beautiful? That that was the
extent of my knowledge. I thought it was an incredible single,
but this wasn't my forte. So I went outside and Bobby,
I got high, like I do in these situations, smoked
the reefer, and uh. I went outside and I just

(41:22):
started writing these words. I write these words, and I
write an entire lyric and I'm bring it inside. These
guys have no idea what it's gonna land, you know.
And fifteen minutes I'm quick, you know, and I'm bringing
in and the guy started singing, and he's got the
Swedish accent, you know, very thick. He's like, duh, you
remember somewhere all nine. I want to go back there
every night. And when he's singing, I'm thinking, man, this

(41:43):
is this is like, this is like a Fellini movie. Man,
this is not gonna this is not gonna stick, you know.
And uh, we finished this thing, finished the song, and
I thought a zero percent chance of landing. But I
was high and we you know, eat Thai food and
they were nice guys, had a beer, and then I
went home. The next day, they like, we're getting texts
from Simon Cowell and getting texts from Max Martin and

(42:05):
Doctor Luke and everyone's like rock me Equal Smash. So
secretly I'm like, oh my god, what have I been
doing my life? Man? Because I've spent my life now
at this point, I've worked with, you know, everyone from
you know, I would say, like Train and dawtry to
you know, Carol, you know, Tom Jones, to a million
fun bands with funny t shirts and funny haircuts, and

(42:25):
thinking myself, why do I have to work with these
like soul sucking artists when I could just literally get
high and write like these little gibberish words and it lands,
you know, So immediately the three of us become like
a reading writing configuration. Right, It's me Co, Jack and Peter,
and we're gonna We're gonna be the next writing team,
you know, in La, and I've just moved La. Dudes,
I'm new to all of this. You know. I'm from

(42:46):
a very different thing in New York. And suddenly it's
like teams in middle but you know, and I'll start
digging in and we write for thirty days straight. We
write the thirty worst songs ever written. And the crazy
thing is, I'm the problem, not those guys. Those guys
are really good, but they're dialed in. They're like, let's
do Selena Gomez today. I don't know what that is,
you know what I mean. So I'm sitting there and going, oh,

(43:07):
cool man, I'm gonna write like a Smith song, you know.
So I'm writing some Morrissey stuff. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, no,
this isn't landing. It makes no sense. It's not logical.
I'm like, but it is. It's deep, you know. So
you can see the novelties wearing off. I'm flying back
to Boston, right and I'm on a plane to Boston
from LA and you know, Peter sends me a voice
note and now he's cutting my verbal lungs because it's

(43:28):
now he's giving me a lyric and it says, you
must sing I got the got the goal I got
the gotta gotta and he's like, all these gottas right,
And I'm on the plane and I'm literally sitting in
this seat and I'm gonna sweat. I'm so angry. I'm like,
why is he making me sing gottas? I don't want
to sing gattas. I want my own words on this melody.

(43:48):
And so I text him in the plane. He's like, no,
it has to be gotta you, gotta gotta you kept
saying that back and forth. The weirdest exchange, one of
the things where like, how are we adults? And this
is what we get paid for, you know? And I
finally at the last text backfarth A, Yeah, I just
don't feel this man. Those guys never worked with me
ever again. Okay, now here's the only problem. Driving my
kid to school a year later, and I'm listening to

(44:10):
kiss in La and Ariana grounds love me Harder, comes
on you gotta gotta love me harder, and I heard
the gottas and I hadn't heard gotta in a chorus
like this repeated, and I just turned to my daughter.
She's like six or seven. It makes by seven or eight,
And I was like, can you just type something into
my phone, just type writer Ariana gron love me Harder,

(44:31):
Peter's funds And so you know, I've played that one wrong,
but that was my only fay in the one direction
and straight a hip hop stuff, and obviously it's probably
not what I do best. You know a song I
love as playing it on my radio show just a
couple weeks ago. It's a new Weezer song Records. That's
a fun duty And again it's so now that I've

(44:53):
spoken with you and kind of hear the macro version
of what you're about. Even that song starts with what
that song is us. And when you talk about how
you perceive music and you want to get to what
to get too fast? I think old songs like Sweet Emotion.
It starts right Aaron Smith. Sweet Emotion starts with a chorus.
That's it. It comes back to that. But that's that's

(45:15):
the heat of the song. When record starts, it's so
hood you go for the jogular right at it. You know.
The thing about records is um I started writing that
with Rivers during the pandemic on the front end in
like late twenty or something like that. I was I
was in cape cod and I pulled out an acoustic
and I was singing this idea and I kept singing.
I got records in my head of I felt like

(45:36):
it could land, you know, and I got on zoom
with them and we kept kicking it back and forth.
We kicked it back and forth about a year, a
year and a half, and it was amazing because I
really we kept debating. There was an internal debate. I
think about front loading the hook to that extent, but
that's why it works to me, like it's and the
second hook just sonicla, a littlefficults, a little you know,

(46:00):
I got work, and then the second comes around because
he pops the octave. Yeah, that's my trip, you know,
like man in my writing, it doesn't matter if it
was you know, when we were doing the Boys like
Girls are We the Kings or Metros any of those things.
Like the one thing I love is when a chorus
just explodes. I like melodies they're kind of static down
sitting in a little box because that comes from the
hip hop stuff, right, So I love melodies that are

(46:21):
somewhat linear, and then that gives you room to just
have like this big caboo sort of octave jumping records.
Does it right? Like that first chorus, you know if
you like, oh, it's sort of restrained rivers, and then
when he hits the top note, you're like, Wow, I
love Weezer. I wear I was visually impaired. My rideye
doesn't work, and I was like, man, there's nobody cool
that wears glasses. Right. Rivers hugellibration to me because I

(46:43):
was like, Oh, he's nerdy but awesome. He's so awesome,
He's not nerdy, and I want to be that guy,
the coolest. And so here's my quick Weezer story. Yeah,
I worked on American Idol for four years as the
head head mentor. I'd work with the kids, some young
adults on everything from song selection to how to sing
it tempo, being interviewed. They just had me there as

(47:05):
the Swiss army knife. And at the end of every season,
everybody would come in, all the big stars for it
for duets, right, and this partist would be with this person,
and Weezer was coming in. Now I had never met
anyone from Weezer, and I was freaking pumped. I'm jaded,
not in a way of I don't care, but I've

(47:26):
seen everybody. I know that most people that I think
are awesome in music, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are,
but they're just normal folk. Sometimes abnormal, but not in
the way you prefer. Absolutely, But as Weezer, right, there's
like three or four my whole life that I'm like,
I would totally fan boy out. And Weezer's playing the
finale of American Idol. So I'll let my producer know.

(47:46):
I say, Hey, I'm just letting you know I'm a
massive Weezer fan. In the whole season. People have been
in and out, but I'm not gonna go in, like, hey,
would you sign this like a picture? I said, Weezer's coming,
and if it's cool, I'd like to walk out and
just say hello. And they're like, yeah, of course. I thought,
like at your show too, there's five. There's five of
you on this show is Luke, Lionel, Katie Ryan, and myself,

(48:07):
and so we kind of had free rein over everything,
and I said, I'm gonna walk out to the bus
if that's cool. They're like yeah, sure. So they come
in and I go to the record store down by
where the lot was and I get the blue vinyl Yes,
because that blue album for me was it was near
ami but right, it was right, Yeah, I mean it
was what I was. I'm a blue guy more than
picker and guy myself. It took me later in life

(48:28):
understand and appreciated so but Blue loved it immediately. I
go get it big, Vinyl, I walk up. I'm nervous.
I'm an adult man, I'm nervous. Like yeah, I say, hey, guys,
mine's Bobby. I'll be working with you guys later tonight.
I'm the head mentor here and reckon, I don't I'm
not even gonna fake it. I'm just a massive fan.

(48:49):
Do you care if would you guys sign this? And like, yeah,
come on in, And so I don't. I don't see
Rivers at all. And so all the other guys are around,
and there's super cool and they're signing the man yet
well where you from? From? Markets? Over? You guys? That
all the small talk, But to me it means a
little more than that. To them, just another dude knocking
on the bus door. And so the into the star bunk,

(49:12):
the door opens and it's Rivers. He just kind of
opens it and kind of looks in and he sees
me and the little bit. He's been like, you know,
fixing his face there's like a mirror, like fixing his hair,
doing a little teeth thing, and I'm just going there.
He is of all the things that I can say.
It's like an elevator pitch and I'm not pitching anything.
I just want to let the guy know. But I
don't want to let him know so hard that he's

(49:33):
creeped out. It's behind line, sure, but I never met him, right,
And so he looks at me, and I don't want
to go, hey, will you sign this? But I wanted
him to sign this, And so he goes back to
just thing, looks at me again, and he starts to
take a step toward me, and I'm like you My
heart starts to beat a little bit. I'm like, this

(49:53):
is my moment right here, It's time. He takes about
a half step forward and then shuts the door and
goes back. And it wasn't toward me. It wasn't toward me.
It wasn't toward anything I did that, you know, I wasn't.
I was in his person. I ask you a question,
Can I ask you a question? Yeah? Is that album
still unsigned? In that space? They sent it back with
him okay, and he was cool enough to sign it
all right, because I was going to take care of

(50:13):
that for you, you you know, And I wasn't upset. Actually
I appreciated that because that was a dude being who
exactly who he was. He's awesome. I gotta say something
about Rivers, which is, you know, one thing I would
tell is Rivers Pat Monahan, you know, fits like a
few of these cats who I really love and I
pretty close with. The one thing I'll tell you about

(50:34):
all of them is the work ethic is like nothing
you've ever seen. Rivers writes like three songs a day,
like just absolutely just to permeate a Weezer record. For
me is like Holy Grail, because honestly, I'm competing with
the ten songs Rivers wrote last night. He's so prolific
and really good. And Monahan is the same way and
fits the same way. These guys work so hard and

(50:55):
we're all the same age. So the notion that, like,
you know, you can be this grown ass guy and
just hit like aggressively wanted that bad and chase the
art that to that extent. Rivers I learned that from
more than any other artist I've never seen somebody work
as hard as Rivers does. Next time we talk to him,
tell him I love him. It's awkward. I didn't get
a chance to tell him that it's a little awkward.
It'd be very awkward and say Bobby loves you. No,

(51:18):
I'm actually gonna say it. I'm like, dude, honestly, like
you shut the bus door on him, you kind of
put the kind of bust him. You know. I met
Pat probably January of this year for the first time. Wow.
We were at a Pebble beach playing the play Pebble
Beach Front and so I guess this year they finally
thought I was famous enough to be invited. Yeah, I'm
pitch on him and so, well, I appreciate that. Yeah,

(51:40):
and so I go out. I heard he's not bad,
he's pretty good. Yeah, and so, but he was also
super kind. He's a great guy, like overly kind to
where I was like, man, you do not have to
be this night. But he wasn't being anything that he wasn't.
He's the best. And I went and ask a couple
of other friends that have played it. He was like,
oh yeah, Pat Money and he's like the greatest dude.
Oh no, he's my guy. Like iow Iowa pat so much.

(52:00):
He's an incredible friend and honestly, he's always he's he's
so funny, he's so quick, and he doesn't suffer fools.
He's really he's brilliant. Let's take a quick pause for
a message from our sponsor, Wow, and we're back on
the Bobby Cast. Bobby, one thing I did want to
say to us in the six degrees between us, do

(52:21):
you know where we cross in the greatest way. You
gotta take this dancing with the stars. John Schneider, Oh yeah,
I went to my high school, really, Dukes of Hazzard.
He is from upstate New York. Why nobody knows that fact,
I didn't know that. I'm going to throw that out
for all the Foxes out there, But John Schneider attended

(52:44):
Fox Lane High School. The reason I know that, which
is a little interesting aside, is I did always want
to get out and I wanted to get down the
world and do something, you know, something loud in this business.
When I was in ninth grade, he took the bus
every Friday after school and I'll go to the Bedford
Hills Library and upstairs on the third floor, this a
little like beat up building. They kept old yearbooks like

(53:05):
the stacks from historically from our high school. So I
found both. There are our Illuminati where John Schneider and
Susan Day from the Partridge family in La Law and
I would find their yearbooks and then I would start
to create these composites in my brain of how we
could have been friends and who they hung out with,
them trying to figure out who they ung out with
and stuffing. I just I was obsessed with it. So, yeah,

(53:26):
the John Schneider reveals that shouldn't be from upstate New York.
They should have made sure medium money in mountains. Quite
good looking as it as a young guy. Yeah, I
looking older guy, but like really good looking younger. No
one's ever accused me of that. I didn't know you're
younger guy. I might fall in love with you then too. No,
you know, I have big Doughey features and I've always have,

(53:46):
so they're kind of exaggerated. I wouldn't say cartoonium Ringo star,
He's a bully um Ringo star. Honestly show up at
Ringo's house, you know, buddy, my Winston Simone with the
great managers, my favorite managers ever in this business. Winston
Simone connects me with a word had gotten out that

(54:06):
Ringo was open to new collaborators because he's got a
really tight circle. Right, It's Luca, Third's Joe Walsh. It's um,
do you get nervous about the Ringo though you've been
with a lot of people, but it's a beatle okay, Ringo.
I don't get nervous with anybody. And still, yeah, it's
probably you know, And that's honestly goes back to the
war whole thing. I think, you know what I mean, Like,
when you're exposed to stuff so young, you just get
kind of numb to it. Maybe nervous isn't the word.

(54:27):
And I don't get nervous really either. Same again, but
still I was excited. But to meet Rivers, I was
definitely stoked, you know, like I mean's Ringo, you know
what I mean? Like, but I was able to at
least I was composed, which helps, you know. And I
would say, I showed up to the house and we
dug in, you know, and we sat down the couch

(54:48):
and right off the battles like piece of love, Piece
of love. And then with like six seconds, it was
like he was grilling me, like the toughest job interview
in history for what reason. Well, I just think, like,
you know, he probably, you know, he's got his guard up.
I think he's probably trying to figure out my motives
of why I'm so psyched to work with him, et cetera.
You know. And it was very interesting because I really

(55:10):
I tried to punch back whenever you'd say something, I
try to say something weighty back, and it wasn't landing.
And I thought, okay, I've literally screwed up this one opportunity.
I'm in my car driving home and I said to him,
I said, look, I said, you know, I'm gonna go
home and I'm going to write a song and if
you'll have me back tomorrow, i'll play for you said,
come at two o'clock. So I came back. I wrote

(55:31):
this tune, and my boy grand Michael's my engineer programmer
as a writer, really talented kid. He reharmed what I
was going for because I was trying to do some
really randy newmany kind of chordal stuff, and I'm you know,
I'm somewhat limited. And I went and sang ringo the tune,
and he's sitting there at Ringo and his engineer, Bruce Sugars,
a engineer, producer, a great guy, and these guys are

(55:52):
just they dead pan me and I sing it, and
you know, my voice is, you know, isn't the sexiest tone.
It's sort of like, you know, it's like the Budweiser
commercial that you turned down, you know, And so I
sing this thing for him and Ringo goes, that's absolute shit,
and I was like, whoa, and he's so dry and

(56:14):
I'm trying to read him and he goes, no, I'm joking, joking.
I love it. I love it, he said, but you
know what, you sang me a song. I'm just gonna
cut you a song. And I said, well, I didn't
sing you a second verse or a bridge. H And
next thing, you know, he just ripped into it and
wrote a second verse. And this guy like comes alive

(56:36):
at a level I've never seen, and his energy is freakish.
He's jumping up and down, and I said, it's like
one of these kids at a rave. You know, he's
like po going and he's eighty at the time. Well
he's probably seventy eight at the time. He's po going
up and down. The best physicality in the world. He's
running behind the kid. I'm watching Ringo play and his

(56:57):
pocket is so nasty. He's doing all the sort of
tricks they all did them, nasty, no embellishment, incredible feel,
his pockets crazy and he's doing all the hambercushion. They's singing,
he's doing everything's running around the room and I looked
at it. It It was the first moment I really like
felt like, man if this is how people age now,

(57:19):
Like I'm alright with it, you know what I mean.
And it's funny because I over appeared. You know, I've
worked with some some incredible greats of the era, right
Carol King, Ringo on the OJS, Eddie Lavert my god
Eddie and Walter h Tom Jones, Joe Cocker. One thing
I say about all these people, Mike love they all.

(57:41):
They're the most incredible physical shape. It's humbling like every
single time, Like you know, I had a night with
the OJ's and we went out they played the Apollo
Theater and then we all went out for drinks at
some hotel bar and it's two in the morning and
Eddie Laverte is gone. He's like, we're not done we're
not done. He's dancing around more bloc goal. You know,

(58:01):
these guys like they live it, and the fact that
they have that energy makes me just feel so good.
As you know, as I hit thirty now, I felt that,
you know what I mean? I got four final questions.
Number one is I was watching my TikTok. Lets me
watch a lot of late sixties, early seventies, especially singer
songwriter kind of acoustic. I want your TikTok that's where,

(58:25):
that's where I live, and nineties wrestling. You know what
mine is? What mine's usually like. It's usually like a
young artist, usually from Nashville or something along the lines,
and it's like, hey, they're in their car and the
cameras are gonna go, Hey, I just broke up with
my girlfriend today and I wrote a song about it.
You want to hear it. And then they do the
fake turn of the dial and then they lipsick a

(58:46):
log to it for a second. They do a lot
of hand movements, and that's when I just keep scrolling past. Sorry,
I digress. That's I don't live there. I see those
sometimes said to maybe I don't live there. I want
to live where you live, all right, so go ahead.
So I lives cool. Now loves cool because I see
a lot of Tom Jones singing, either live or like
on a television studio syste. I had no idea because

(59:07):
the Tom Jones version that I know from my life
is older Tom Jones caricature. Yeah, he's a beast. He's
a real soul singer, one of the best I've ever heard,
superstar good. I watched him and Ray Charles sing together,
he back and forth. Yeah, Tom Jones had all the
respect I mean, like he's literally look, he's one of
those British like sort of just like soul like it's

(59:31):
so good. Yeah. No, it's funny because like his pop
cultural presence I think is so different from actually the
core of his voice. He's a singer. And then I
heard him sing later, maybe like two years ago on
the voice in another country as an older guy and
still sings something. I just had no idea. You know,
I'm like a fetishist for raspy vocals, you know what
I mean. So coming out of the UK, there's all

(59:53):
those those cats like Tom Jones or Chris Riya, who's
like very forgotten, but Chris Riha, you know, certainly in
the States over the he's big, but like it's a
gravel and when singers come along and have that British
gravelly thing, Man, I'm the first guy at the record store,
you know what I mean? Every single time it's my
favorite voice. Cocker. I mean, come on, it's like literally
like like like literally like like if you're gonna sweat

(01:00:14):
that much when you sing, I need to appreciate that exactly.
But Joe Cocker, like you know, you're one third of
the way into a Cocker show. Or I would watch
him live. Didn't get to go watch him in person,
but I would watch Cocker live. You guys pouring sweat,
like wiping himself down singing ballads. Well, the problem is
like the bar was so high, you know, these guys,
the performance level and the and the and the way

(01:00:34):
they just left it all out on the stage. And
there are very few singers I would say the same
thing about now. It's not the same level of commitment,
you know, like Cocker's thing was unbelievable. It's just and
to cover a Beatles song, you're right right, and there
are a lot of and listen, I love a lot
of Joe Cocker, but I think how ballsy to cover

(01:00:55):
a Beatles song period, but then you do have big
balls when you do it, and you nail it. I
mean it's it's one of the greatest covers ever. And
the intro it's so was it the Wonder Years it
was it was ahead of Yeah, so you know it
was you know, once against that intro. I mean you
are so like, that's an intro that'll suck you in.
You instantly know that record wrap the bat and I

(01:01:17):
mean his commitment level on the vocal and I'm with you, man,
like I feel like, um, I feel like when people
bludge in um classics, it's um. You know, that's just
it's it's a it's a no can do for me,
you know what I mean, it kind of sucks you
in it at the beginning of all of his songs,
I mean, even going You are So Beautiful to Me
right comes on and it's and it's so you It's

(01:01:40):
just it's that first vocal note and you're like, well
this is different, but you can leave your hat on
or any of the eighties stuff. I mean, it was
just consistent, you know it um really really and one
of the greatest singers. I didn't get to know him
or anything. He just cut one of the songs, but
he uh, he's incredible. You know. So my book that
I wrote was called fail until You Don't, and it

(01:02:03):
was basically me just screwing it right and some of
the complations we've had, I knew the answer for. I
would just want to walk down it with you. But
I knew. Listen, you your rap care didn't go well
at DJ. You know you weren't near as good as I.
Let's be honest. You know I've made a big career
out of this and you've done fair at what you're doing.
I do have a face for radio, so you have
all But why why was it important to you in
this book to showcase the difficult times as the main theme?

(01:02:29):
I'll tell you because, um, you know, my daughter's seventeen,
so what is that gen z or whatever? You know.
I'm scared for these kids because when you have, when
you have so much technology at your hands and so
much everything is just pulling at your attention twenty four
hours a day. I'm scared that these kids might not
have the same work ethic because I think they might
get just constantly pulled and like, hey, I don't want

(01:02:51):
to do this very long, and maybe I'll do this
job for six weeks, and maybe I'll do this and
quit this and quit this and quit this. And I
stuck something out against improbable odds, and it was the
greatest decision in my life, and I think I believe there.
I want to speak to two people with this book,
one to the youth, just to say there is a pathway,
but I want you to be aware of what you're entering. Right.

(01:03:14):
You have to understand you're going to get failed two
thousand times two thousand Knows Matt Tell, Negrom and Buddy's book.
It's like two thousand knows. It's just the truth. You're
gonna You're the rejections. You have to use them as scars,
you know. You have to take those scars and take
those calluses and have them fuel you to go forward.
But if you don't have that wiring, and if you're
going into this delusion, they thinking okay, Like once again,

(01:03:36):
like I got TikTok famous last night, I had a
song and went viral, blah blah blah. You don't understand
what you're in for. If you want to do this
as long as I've been doing it. The rejections will
mount at a freakish level, and I just want people
to be aware of it. But there is a way out.
And the other thing is I really want to reach
anybody who has creative wiring who just might have packed
it in early, you know, because I was blessed, Like

(01:03:56):
I came up in the city and you know, we're
in these village in New York, and I would say,
if I came up with like a hundred cats in
that time, you know, five six of us left doing it,
you know what I mean. Like most people went on
to different things, some because they lost interest and others
because they just couldn't feasibly make it work anymore. I
kind of want to speak to those people and say,
you know, give it another shot. Give it another shot.

(01:04:18):
It's not you're not done by any stretch. Because honestly,
if you are as tenacious about it as I was,
you can probably you know, I don't know what goal.
You know, you have to ascertain your own goals, but
like you could, you know, you could do something special.
It's just here's case in point of somebody who was
like moderately gifted at best when he started and just

(01:04:38):
got better, you know, third question of four why now, though,
because I felt like I was still like mildly culturally relevant,
and my fear was, you know, in a decade from now,
some of these songs might not have the same residence,
and I want to do it when people actually might
still take my phone calls, you know, including a publisher.
It's like, you know, I don't know if a book

(01:04:59):
do it, you know, ten years from now, if a
publisher would have been interested. But also, look, we're in
such a crazy time right, We're entering into the AI
phase and all these other you know, technological advances, they're
gonna just absolutely affect the music. It's just obvious where
all the stuff is headed. And it felt like a
nice moment to pivot creatively for a second and to

(01:05:19):
just get out of the fray, clear my head. Right,
everything this is all me. There's no co writers or
ghost writers. It's literally three hundred zillion pages of my psyche.
But I felt like this was like a rinse out
and then I'm going to come back like just stronger
than ever because I feel so creatively sort of motivated,
because I needed the break. My final question it's just
two words with the question mark at the end of it,

(01:05:40):
Harry's close Baha Man. Question one. All right, so you
guys are all very familiar with who let the dogs out,
so let's not make it weird between us. Couldn't be
more Yeah, So I didn't do that one, Okay, I
did the follow up. It was called move It like This.
It was recorded the Bahamas with the Baham and a

(01:06:01):
couple little fun facts for you. Won the Bahaman stole
my headphones and didn't return them, which was kind of dark.
So if you ever like our ent cruise ship and
you see one of the Bahaman guys wearing a nice,
nice pair of Panasonic phones from back in the day,
I think you could make a case for me. Second
of all, we did get yelled at we're in the Bam.
There was a McDonald's in the Bahamas and me and

(01:06:25):
Mike Mangini, my buddy, and Dave Shomer we were working
with these guys and we had a twelve Newton session
and Mike walked through the door at twelve o two
carrying a couple of bags of McDonald's for us, and
the leader of the Bahaman screamed at him about being
late and that McDonald's should never be a priority. And
by the way, I remember I didn't learn from mistakes, right,

(01:06:47):
I've learned from mistakes. I have never let McDonald's be
a priority, and you know my bookings. Ever again, you
never know where you will learn something from a Bahaman.
It could be in the Bahamas with the Bahama men.
You know. I gambled down there. We went to the
we went to the paradise. What's called the what's accompassment?
What's what's the big casino? And uh robin down there

(01:07:07):
about the casino? I trust it. There's a casino, so
you know. And I won like nine hundred dollars, which
was so huge for me. And I'm so cheap. You know,
everyone's goating me. They're like double down, double down. I'm
like nine hundred dollars. This is a new stereo. And
I took it back to New York and I bought
this shitty stereo. It's amazing, prodest moment of life. Listen,
this has been I could do this for two hours. Hey,

(01:07:28):
we've done over an hour here. I'm just a massive
fan of your word. Brother, I'm a bigger fan. And honestly,
this that you have no idea much means to me man,
you're a you're a you're an icon, You're a beacon
of light for the community. And also you did great
work with music music. It's on call, which I know of,
so it's awesome. Well thanks, I appreciate the time. Everybody
twenty one hit Wonder if they want to order it, yeah,
I mean just go to Amazon and you know and

(01:07:50):
order it. And um, if they have any questions that
can always hit me on the Graham. I'm on the Graham.
Just give out your number of text you Yeah, they can.
You know, it's great. They're good. All right, you guys
follow Sam Sam Hollander on Instagram. Twenty one hit Wonder
is the book? And you still making money off all
these songs? It still come in. I progress and sold
my catalogs. Did is that in the news? And how

(01:08:11):
much it was? I would never let that out, but
you know it was great. So I did it twenty
nineteen to Hypnosis and um sold at all? I did
over ten million, Um, it doesn't matter, Okay, all right,
it's always said to my daughter, over ten million dollar hairs.

(01:08:31):
So no, I did great and um and everything I
have going forward since two thousand nineteen is mine and
hopefully I'll sell another one. But what it did was
it really freed me up to do things like this
and you know, just be a better human. When did
you write records? Um, that's twenty twenty one, so I
owe on records. We're on the way, We're on our way.
That's records in my hit jam, Sam, thank you, Thank

(01:08:53):
you for having me. Guys, thanks for listening to a
Bobby Cast production