Success Legends Uncovers the origin of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with drummer Martin Fitzgibbon

How could Andrew Lloyd Webber firing an Elvis impersonater trying to play Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar, ever be the start for one of the greatest cult films of all time- The Rocky Horror Picture Show?   Hear the answer in this exclusive interview with Martin Fitzgibbon, drummer for the original musical that debuted in 1973. 

Legendary drummer Martin Fitzgibbon become one of the first people to witness the splendor of Tim Curry strutting impressively in women's high heels during the rehearsals for The Rocky Horror Picture Show original stage production in London around 1973. 

In his new book, "Behind the Curtain, My Life and Rocky Horror," he reveals untold secrets and offers his unique insights into the show and the music. 

About the story: in this cult classic, sweethearts Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), a transvestite scientist. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters including rocking biker (Meat Loaf), and a creepy butler (Richard O'Brien). 

Hear the inside story on why London play critics fell in love with Rocky Horror. It has much to do with right time, right place, great story, catchy tunes, fantastic band and a unique story. 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/legends-extraordinary-lives--5351541/support.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
It's just a jump through the lastHey, welcome back to success made last
time Rick to Keeney. You knowtoday's show could be success authors, But

(00:30):
because I'm talking with the legendary drummer, at least he's legendary to me,
this is going to be success legends, because I have on the one and
only Martin Fitzgibbon, and he becameone of the first people to ever witness
the splendor of Tim Curry struttying impressivelyin women's high heels during rehearsals at The

(00:51):
Rocky Horror Show's original stage production inLondon in nineteen seventy three. He's written
this great book, Behind the Carin My Life and Rocky Horror. Martin
Fitzgibbett, I can't believe you're onthis show. Welcome Hi, Thank you
very much. Thanks. It's alwaysgood to see a fellow drummer as well.

(01:12):
I love that. Okay, youknow I could read your bio.
I'm not going to. I wantyou to tell us your backstory and you
can go back as far as youwant. Where you were born, how
did you become a drummer, andthen how did you get into the Rocky
Horror show well. I was bornon the outskirts of London and into what

(01:38):
we call over here, a prettyworking class family. We lived in social
housing and my dad worked in afactory. My dad had come back from
World War Two, and I knowI never got to see him play.
He played in a semi pro adance band of the era, and he

(02:02):
was a drummer in that band.So in the cupboard at home, in
one of the little cupboards under thestairs, there was a little old people
from the one side would just hadthe head, didn't I didn't have the
fun an old snare drum and standinga pair of sticks and a pair of
brushes, and occasionally I'd get thesnare drum out and kind of bash about

(02:27):
on it and just make a bitof noise and annoy the neighbors probably with
that. And then it wasn't untilI got to about the age of eight
I wanted to get a bit moreserious about playing drums, and my dad
said to me, look, youknow, I can't really teach you.
You didn't feel that he had thetechnical ability to do that. But I

(02:52):
had an uncle who was also adrummer, so you know you can say
that drumming kind of run in ourfamily rate and he was a semi profession
of dance band drama as well.And he was a lovely man. He
was a fantastic guy. He hewas very patient, and he was very
kind. He was such a gentleguy. So I had lessons with him.

(03:17):
I think for the first couple oflessons he could see that I was
serious that, you know, Iwent away and I did the work that
you know all about. You know. He give me rudiments to learn,
and I'd go the next week,and I could see that I put a
lot of work into those rudiments.And he taught me to read as well,

(03:38):
which I didn't realize at the time, but was going to be really
useful further down the line. Hewas quite progressive, and he was thinking,
in some ways, I'm a bitdisappointed. If there are any drummers
out there, they'll and Rick,you'll know this. But instead of teaching

(03:58):
me the conventional grip, he tookme match grip with each hand because he
said, look, he said,look, the way forward is match grip
each hand said it's only because marchingdrummers used to have the snare drummer an
angle that you needed to have thatkind of match sorry, that kind of

(04:19):
traditional grip, and it made alot of sense somewhere down the line.
I kind of regretted that because Idon't know, how do you play match
grip or are you conventional grip?I play both, but mostly when I
teach. When I teach, it'sconventional because I want the students to be

(04:43):
able to play a cadence and toplay a you know, just to learn
the rudiments. But when it comesto brushes, I'm going to match.
Yeah, okay, Well, Ikind of regretted it because I think convensional
looks slightly sexier, I think inmany respects unless you're a heavy metal drummer,

(05:05):
which I'm certainly not and would neveraspire to be. Not that I
I'm putting down the technique of thoseguys, because some of those things that
they do are absolutely phenomenal. Butas a kid, my first drumming hero
was Buddy Rich. Buddy Rich's lefthand videos of him just absolutely unbelievable.

(05:33):
Although I could never hope to haveI played in that style, I could
never have hoped to get anywhere closeto it. But anyway, for better
or worse. We played match gripand and I kind of did some stuff
at school, as you do witha couple of guys there who had guitars,

(05:54):
and and then it sort of progressed. I was fifteen when I joined
my first serious band, who werea group of local guys. We had
a fantastic singer, a guy calledBobby Ward. Sadly, like most of
my bandmates, actually I'm the onlysurviving living band person from that band.

(06:16):
The rest of the guys have sadlypassed on. But Bobby was great and
it was through him that we wereable to get quite a lot of work,
a lot of work in London,because he was pretty good and we
were pretty average, but we persevered, and I persevered, and then at
the age of sixteen I was playingprofessionally. It doesn't mean to say I

(06:41):
was earning a lot of money,because I certainly wasn't. I was earning
a little bit of money. Andthen, as you do musically, you
meet other people, and if youdo a half decent job, if you're
reliable, they introduce you to otherpeople and you progress on and on,

(07:03):
and somewhere along the line I startedworking with a guy called Richard Hartley,
and we did quite a lot ofwork together in the studio, mostly Richard
did a little bit of live stuff, but it was most in the studio.
And then Richard rang me one dayand he said, I've got this

(07:27):
musical coming up and I need adrummer who can play quietly. And some
people listening to that might consider aquiet drummer to be and impossible. It's
it's kind of an oxymoron. Youcan't be both. But he said to
me, you're the only drummer Iknow who can play quietly. So I've

(07:47):
got this musical coming up at theRoyal Court Theater in Sloan Square in London,
which sounded quite exciting, but thenhe kind of tempered my enthusiasm a
little bit by saying it's just ina really small room upstairs. And it
turned out that there were sixty threeseats in that room. And so I

(08:09):
said to him, yeah, okay, I'd never done a musical, so
I was going to do it regardless, just for the experience. And I
said to him, it's not aboutGod, is it, by any chance?
And it's not that I'm meant toreligious in any sense at all,
but at the time in London,we'd had something called Joseph and his Amazing

(08:35):
Technicolor dream Coat. Oh yes,yeah, that had been followed by Jesus
Christ Superstar, and then we hadGodspell. Did you guys get Godspel in
America? Did Godspel? We did? Okay, so it didn't have the
same traction as Joseph or a Superstar, but nonetheless, yeah, so there

(09:01):
were three things going on and Ithought, well, three is enough,
you know, that's kind of that'spushing the subject as far as it can
go. So he then described alittle bit to me about what the Rocky
Horror Show was about, and itdidn't seem to be on that particular subject
either. So again, as Isaid, it wouldn't have made any difference.

(09:22):
I would have done it regardless,And I mean it sounded like huge
fun, and ultimately it was hugefun, you know, it was.
It was fantastic. So I pitchedup one day. We the band had
a rehearsal on were days. Soday one was quite interesting because you know

(09:46):
how this works as well. You'regiven a sheet of music and but you
have no idea what the lyrics aregoing to be. You have no idea
what the melody line is going tobe all you get is a sheet of
music, and there's a TI titleat the top, so I'd get something.
I said, sweet Transvestite across thetop of the page, or over

(10:09):
at the Frankenstein place or time warpor whatever. And we worked our way
through these things, which was great, and occasionally Richard, because he had
to, he had to give ussome kind of cues as to what was
going to happen. And one Iremember vividly was he said, at this
point, Eddie comes out of thecoke machine and Columbia screams Eddie, and

(10:35):
then I'll count you in. Soyou think, well, yeah, it
sounds kind of an interesting fun thingto do. And then the following day
we had a bound rehearsal again.At the end of that Richard said,
look, I'm off to do somevocal rehearsal with the cast. Do you
guys want to come along? Andthere was a piece band I should explain

(11:01):
it was Richard playing keyboards as myselfon drums. There was a great character,
great rock and roll character, veryreminiscent of Keith Richards. If you
can have Keith in your in yourmind, you called Ian Blair, but
he called himself Count. I thinkhe'd anointed himself and decided he would be
count Ian Blair, so he wasknown to everybody as Count. And then

(11:26):
we had a saxophonist, Dave Channing, who doubled the bass guitar a bit
unusual. I mean, he'd answeredthe lad in the local newspaper, sorry,
musical newspaper for that gig. CountI'd worked with before, and Richard
I'd worked with before. So anyway, Dave had a gig somewhere else,

(11:46):
Chazz gig, I think, andwe went off to meet the cast for
the first time. And then ofcourse that was illuminating because suddenly you had
lyrics and you had melody lyne tothe stuff like time warpen and so on
and so on. So I wasvery human person. Yeah, yeah,

(12:13):
I met everybody in the cast,and and Tim was very distinctive because he
put ladies shoes on to get himto get himself into the the role.
His rationale was that if I mean, he said, I played the soldier
once and it made sense to mewhen I put the boots on. So

(12:35):
he was kind of working from thefeet upwards, and he was strutting around
this rehearsal room wearing these shoes andstuff. Yeah, so so that was
that was my kind of first encounterterrific. Who else was in the original
cast besides Tim the people who madethe film as well. A lady called

(13:01):
Nel Campbell who played Columbia, andI said in the book that she had
a voice that could strip the varnishoff the panels in that rehearsal room.
She was really kind of strident kindof speaking and singing voice. So there
was Nell. There was a guycalled Jonathan Adams who played the narrator on

(13:24):
stage and who plays doctor Everett Scottin the film. The narrator becomes a
criminologist for those people who know Rock. Of course, there was Richard O'Brien
who his legs were so incredibly thin. I wasn't sure how he was being
supported because he was running around thisroom with fantastic energy. It's a really

(13:46):
skinny guy, long straggling hair,very skinny, very skinny, but yeah,
I mean it was it was hispiece, so he was. He
was very enthusiastic. Well he's enthusiasticas a human anyway, but he was
very enthusiastic about it, and obviouslywanting to make it work as we all

(14:09):
did. I mean, everybody inthe cast was absolutely fantastic. There was
a low The other lady who madethe film was Pat Quinn, who had
her birthday recently. I didn't realizeshe was quite as old as she was
blessed. So there was Pat,and there were other people who didn't make

(14:30):
the film, but who were equallyas good and could equally have been in
the Rocky Horror Picture Show in myopinion and in the opinion of some of
the others as well. But whenthey made it, I think it was
Fox who were the makers of theRocky Horror Pictures. Two people on their
books they wanted to use. Sothere was s Twig maybe yeah, and

(15:03):
Susan was on their books as well, so they kind of said, look,
you know, as I guess youknow his works as well. It
happens a lot with records. Hesaid, pol likely we would like you
to use these people, which isthe same as saying you will use these
people if you want to make thisfilm. That's right me. But you

(15:24):
know, no disrespect to either.They did fantastically in the film, and
yeah, so so there we go. How why did it take you almost
fifty years to write Behind the Curtain, given that this is one of the

(15:46):
great cult movies of all time,especially in the United States. Yeah,
it's a fair question. I thinkmaybe the fifty year anniversary kind of did
trigger a little bit of something insideme that said, you know, I
have some unique, a unique perspectiveon it, as do everybody else because

(16:10):
of her collectively, and it wasa very much a collective piece. Everybody
got on really well. Everybody wasworking towards the same aim, but we
all had individual experiences, and youknow, mine were mine, and it
was a case of either not puttingthem down and having them disappear into the
ether as I went on my way, or I felt it was right that

(16:37):
in a way they should be thereand that they may be of sufficient interest
to people who do love the RockyHorror Show. So I decided to do
that. I was also conscious ofthe fact that we're all getting very much
older. Those that are not stillhere some have passed sadly, I mean

(17:03):
loss. Yeah, so it wasan opportunity to do it. I kind
of tried to persuade some other friendsof mine in the media to see whether
they would do it on my behalf. But they all said, yeah,
it's a great idea, this isfantastic. The fiftieth anniversary is coming up,

(17:26):
and you know, let's do it. And of course this often happens
nothing, so in the end Ithought, oh, you know, damn
it, Janet, I better sitdown and try and do this myself.
But you know, ironically, well, two things. A. I enjoyed
it. It was quite cathartic,sure, because doing that was great and

(17:48):
it brought back some happy memories,and that was fine. It was cathartic
in the sense that, like mostpeople in life, you have a few
bumps in the road, and afew things happened to me. Again,
I go about them. I tellthem in the book, and writing about

(18:10):
them and getting out of your systemin a way was probably quite a good
thing to do. But I shouldsay that in my life I have been
incredibly lucky in all kinds of ways. So the book, I hope anyway,
is a positive thing. It's notthat there aren't many negative things in

(18:30):
there, and I didn't want todwell on any of those. So yeah,
I sat down and I wrote prettymuch about a year. It took
so I was writing quite often extensively. I was sitting in hotel lobbies writing
and in airport lounges and every kindof opportunity that I could take to get

(18:56):
something down. And then I tookI took about a quarter of the look
out, I think editing, justtrying to take out the boring stuff.
Hopefully what's left in is less boringand things that you kind of think at
the time when you're writing that's relevantand interesting, but in retrospect maybe it's
less interesting than you think. Soof course somebody's got on it, don't

(19:22):
they. I mean, someone hasto say, hey, this is this
is going to interest my audience ornot. It's it to me Martin.
The fact that you did it numberone, I'm glad. Number two,
it takes some courage. I wouldthink it was a very cathartic, therapeutic
thing to do. And also,I you know, here I am in

(19:45):
Austin, Texas getting to honor someonewho I think you had one of the
best back beats and consistent beats.So you were you were just you were.
You were there to be the driverbehind and shall we you know,
to do the time warp again?And I listened to it again. This

(20:06):
morning, I'm going, God,they could have done a better job of
capturing the tap dancer, because youwere you know, you were, you
were behind it, and then allof a sudden it went gosh, somebody
put a mic on those on thetap dancer because it went as part of
the song that went flat. Well, listen, that's very kind of you

(20:27):
to say that. I think,if nothing else, and I think some
technically, maybe some of the drummingwasn't It wasn't brilliant, but it kind
of felt right in a way.And yeah, I mean I was given
a drum part to play and Iwould play that. But if nothing else,

(20:53):
I think we had the right energyand energy that suited the show as
well. Oh yes, oh yes. So I think what we do,
though, is when we look backon films that are important in our life,
and this one is important to us, and I've got some other really

(21:15):
weird, quirky movies like Young Frankensteinthat our marks and time and you go.
You know, when I got wordof you being available, I thought
nineteen seventy five Eastgate College Station,Texas. The show was going at Texas

(21:36):
A and M. We had abouteighteen thousand students at the time, and
that place was mobbed. It's duso it's like that's that was the plant
at sea with a bunch of veryconservative people that had never even seen a
transvest at which let's sing it,or didn't know about meatloak because all we
knew was country western music and itwas like you the beat, the the

(22:00):
story, you know, it wasjust so to me. It's today,
it's about celebrating the collaboration, andyou're the backbeat behind the collaboration. Than
did anybody out of interest, AndI'm guessing what the answer might be here,
but did anybody dress up as thecharacters then in the way that they
do now? Or not not then? Because remember where you may not notice,

(22:26):
Texas A and M is a veryconservative school. It's a military based
school. And A and M standsfor agriculture and mechanic, so it's like
with farmers and engineers. So no, no high heels, no transvest as,
nothing like that in public anyway.Maybe maybe in private that answer doesn't

(22:52):
surprise me. But I thought i'dask you anyway, just out of interest,
because I get stuff now from Iget emails and from all over the
world, people saying, oh,you know, in Sydney, Australia.
I was in the Sydney shadow castin nineteen eighty three, and you know,
we all went along dressed as thecharacters and time and I get people

(23:15):
say when it's on in London.Oh yeah. We had a group of
friends and we went on the undergroundto see the show. We got on
the London bus or whatever it is, you know, and we all felt
we were pretty out ralivous for thatevening. And I guess they were.
I mean, in nineteen seventy three, it was. It's a very different

(23:37):
time even in the in the UK, you know, aside from what you've
told me about being in Texas,etc. One of the interesting things at
the show, the original show inthe little theater upstairs, sixty three seats,
was that the band were hidden.We were sad at the back of

(24:00):
the stage behind what was supposed tobe a cinema screen. So that and
I don't think this has been replicatedanywhere ever since. We could see the
audience. We could see everybody inthe audience, and we could see all
the action that was going on infront of us as well. So so
you know, when Tim Curry camedown the ramp running down the center of

(24:25):
this little room and he throws thiscloak off, you know, and does
his arm. There was just sweettransvera stake and he's got all this kind
of gear on. So we wereable to see all the audience's reaction as
well as seeing Tim and it's sweet. It was just amazing and he got

(24:51):
you know, some I mean everybodykind of smiled and laughed. I think
a couple of people kind of went, oh, this is this is a
bit different. This isn't Godspell orJesus Christ Superstar. So so that was
great. And our first night thatwe had, all the critics came along,

(25:15):
all the theater critics in London,because we're talking nineteen seventy three.
There's no social media back then.Obviously, you know, the kind of
stuff that we're doing now is sciencefiction really, but so the critics,
the London newspaper critics were absolutely vitalto the success of the show and they

(25:38):
came along on opening night. Theonly reason they did that because the open
night was a Tuesday night in London. It was wet, chucking it down
with rain, it was really terrible, but they all turned up. They
were there because there was. Thedirector was a guy called Jim Sharman,
and Jim was the kind of hipdirector he directed, He's an Australian guy,

(26:02):
come over and directory Jesus Christ Superstar. And there were so many coincidences
that put this show on the roadon Maybe just tell you a couple,
the first of which was that RichardO'Brien was he was fired. He was

(26:23):
sacked, he was given the boot, as we say here from a musical.
He was playing HEROD in Jesus ChristSuperstar, and Richard, in typical
Richard O'Brien fashion, he decided thathe would play HEROD in the style of
Elvis, which to me saunds fantastic. But somebody disagreed with that. I

(26:48):
don't know whether it was Andrew andLloyd what somebody didn't like the fact.
So anyway, Richard got fired andso he was unemployed, and he thought,
well, you know what can Ido? I know, I'll sit
down and I'll write that musical thatI've been sort of going around in my
brain. And so had he notbeen fired, he wouldn't have done that.

(27:10):
And he knew Tim Curry, andhe bumped into Tim in the street
and said, Tim said, whatare you doing? And he said,
I'm doing this. I'm writing thisthing. And had Tim Curry not been
cast as Frank Conferter, it maynot have been the success that it was
because he was absolutely perfect. Imean, he was one hundred percent perfect.

(27:34):
And I know there was some discussionat the time of the film that
David Bowie wanted to play the roleand Mick Jagger wanted to play the role,
both of whom came to see theshow. Both saw Tim playing it,
and I've I don't believe that eitherof those guys would have done a
job that was half as good asTim did. So first, the critics

(28:00):
are all there, They're all sittingthere. I can see all the critics.
Tim comes down, throws the cloakoff, and you think, yeah,
from the audience, from the criticsreaction, you think his job done.
We're okay, we're home and hosedhere. So we had a first
night party. We went away andwe celebrated and we had a drink or
two, and early next morning thenewspaper reviews came out and they were all

(28:26):
fantastic, and then we knew wewere way You couldn't get a ticket to
see this thing. It was thatit was the hottest show in town.
To use a cliche, everybody wantedto see it, and yeah it was.
It was great from the Yeah,it broke so many rules and created

(28:53):
this new genre of swords. AndI think it's it's weird that our I
want you to describe the weirdness fromyour perspective of when something becomes beyond just
a concept and a play and movesover to a being a cult. What
does that mean to you today thatit's become so embedded in our culture that

(29:18):
it's actually honored as a cult movieand cult play. Yeah, I think
it's extraordinary. And I don't thinkanybody would have predicted back in nineteen seventy
three that it would become the cultthing that it is. We knew it
was going to be successful. Weknew during rehearsals it was going to be

(29:41):
successful. That doesn't happen very often, and we didn't go around congratulating one
another and saying, you know,hey, this is going to be highly
successful, and we're all, youknow, we're going to make some money
out of this or whatever. Ofcourse, but we all kind of knew.

(30:02):
And the verification of that was waswas the critics and when that came
out, that sold it. Ithink to try and answer a question.
Somewhere along the line, things changedand audience participation became the thing yow that

(30:22):
happens. You guys in the Statesare responsible for that, because that is
where it happened first of all.And there's a film on part of film
called Fame. I don't know whetheryou've ever seen the movie Fame or not,
but I have. There's a scenein there of Rocky and the audience

(30:44):
participation thing is going on, right, and that I think was the catalyst
for the UK to kind of getin on this act. People thought this
sounds like a bit of fun,so people started to dress up and then
they started to throw bits of toastand squirt water pistols and all the other
shenanigans that go on. And II really think that's the reason that it

(31:11):
has become the continued success and thatit is. But you know, it's
just people having fun, and whodoesn't want to go out and have a
bit of fun. You know,for an hour and a half two hours
of your life, you can goout with your friends, have some fun

(31:33):
and go back, get out ofyour stocking, suspenders and everything else and
go back to whatever it is thatyou have to do to get on with
your live Yeah. Well yeah,I think what the what the Rocky Horror
Show did was it cracked through thatceiling and it allowed us to be interactive

(31:55):
because there's been so many other shows. I mean even Barbie this past Are
people dressed up to go to Barbie? Yeah? And then I just read
recently Oppenheimer. You know kids wouldgo in their fedora with the pipe in
their mouth. It's like, whatnot me? Uh? But so it

(32:16):
started. It started this interactive thing. And when people go to sing alongs
for the sound of music, theytake rice you know, and all the
the of the different scenes. SoI think that's what it. Its super
charts interactive entertainment over here. Butagain I want to compliment you and Richard

(32:40):
Hartley and the others in the onthe music side, because absence of the
music, it would be missing aheartbeat. Yeah yeah, well it is
a musical and you know those thingsare important. Obviously. I think the
other thing is part of it.Maybe the planets were aligned or whatever kind

(33:05):
of belief system you want to comeinto. There is a thing about timing.
I think that can make something successful. I mean, had it been
a bit earlier or maybe a bitlater, it may have worked differently.
I don't know. But London inthe seventies it was kind of the conditions

(33:29):
were right, I think for somethingelse to come along and it just hit
at the right kind of time.It's akin to a athlete timing their run
in the last sort of fifty metersto get across the line. Timing is
an important thing, I think,and we were kind of lucky in that

(33:50):
regard. Martin, let's sell somebooks. Tell our listeners where they can
purchase the book and possibly even geta sign autograph copy from the one and
only Martin Fitzgibbon. Well aside theautograph copy would be smashing. I'm in
the UK at the moment, soI did a little bit of a thing

(34:14):
last week. Signing thing going onlast week. But it's available through the
usual outlets. I guess I'm reluctantto say certain words over the airwaves,
but all the usual outlets. Inthe States, it's available for purchase there.

(34:35):
It's also available as an ebook ifanybody would like an ebook, and
it's called Behind the Curtain. Mylife in Rocky Horror. So the behind
the Curtain bit hopefully reflects the factthat the band were sat behind the curtain,
but it also reveals a couple ofsecrets that happened during the making of

(34:58):
the show, and my life inRocky Horror is kind of that because to
put it into context, I havecentered at most of the book around Rocky
Horror, but I've tried to weaveit in and out of my story as
well because I felt that that wassomething that was important. Hopefully it's some

(35:20):
interest to some people, but youknow, I was very conscious of the
fact that had I written something thatsays Martins, given my autobiography, you
know, we wouldn't be having thisconversation probably. But so hanging my hat
on the Rocky Horror peg was acalculated piece of good commercialism on my part,

(35:43):
which has been lacking throughout the restof my life. Really, so
I thought, this is this isyour opportunity, mister Fitzgibbon, to step
it up here. So yeah,hey, I'm going to want to challenge
you to give out your email addressbecause I would love for the drummers that
listen to this show to be ableto write you and to say, hey,

(36:05):
thank you Martin for what you did. Would you be so? I
would be very happy to do that. So it's Martin Martin with an I
M A R T. I amMartin Fitzgibbon at hotmail dot com. And
anybody who wishes to use that andwrite to me, I would be more

(36:28):
than happy. I promise you ifI get it that I will reply to
it. Way to go, you'rethe man. I want you to just
wrap up today's show with talking aboutwhat are you doing now? And why
is it? Why is it importantthat as we age as musicians, professionals,
or whatever we choose to do,we keep practicing. We can keep

(36:52):
Yeah, it's difficult because I'm Ivery foolishly, especially from of my age.
I went running, and even morefoolishly, I fell over and I
smashed from the shoulder in two places. M So that's a procurb on me

(37:14):
playing anything. So I can't playguitar at moment, drums at the moment.
I'm on the way back from that, hopefully in the next few weeks.
I've had to cancel quite a fewgigs, but hopefully I on the
way back from that. In themeantime, I've been producing an album for

(37:37):
a band that I've been involved infor a while. I don't want to
say it's my band because that soundsway too pretentious, but it is my
musical project, if you like.And that's a band called the Gigantics.
So while I've had some downtime fromnot playing, I have been doing that

(37:57):
and I've been writing have a soloalbum which is coming out hopefully hopefully by
the end of this year. Maybeit will group into the twenty twenty five
early twenty twenty five. And I'mactually quite excited about that. I shouldn't

(38:19):
get excited at my age, butI am quite excited about it, and
I do believe in it, andI do think it's going to be okay.
Your commercial success, you know thesedays, you know, commercial success
is and certainly for somebody of myage, commercial success is almost impossible to

(38:40):
achieve. But I'll be very happyif the people in the music world that
I know, and my friends,musical friends, if they if they enjoy
it, and they tell me theyenjoy it in an honest way, then
I'll be very very happy with that. That is great and inside that word

(39:02):
and joy is the word joy andso you can tell from Martin fitzgiven that
he found joy in writing the book, you're gonna find it joyful too.
Lots of fun surprises in there.It's Behind the Curtain, My Life and
Rocky Horror, Martin fitzgiven. Whata treat. Thank you man for coming

(39:22):
on. And we sure appreciate you. Rick. It's been my absolute pleasure
to talk to you. Thank youso much for the opportunity you take care
you too, you too, folks, thanks for joining us today. And
you can buy Behind the Curtain MyLife and Rocky Horror at ask any of
your independent bookstores for it. Andof course you can go to the normal

(39:43):
big places over in the States andworldwide to purchase the book. And as
we always say, we wish yousuccess, but on your way to significance,
I agree with it's just a jumpto the left with your hands on

(40:09):
your hip.