The Bongos - "Numbers With Wings" with Richard Barone

Graham is joined by Richard Barone of The Bongos to discuss the band's 1983 album, Numbers With Wings.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
It's major label debut, the podcast about major label debuts.
I'm Graham Wright. Doing this show has taught me a lot.
I grew up in the nineties, and so I experienced
all the music I learned through that lens, and that
was the contemporary nineties bands, But it was also the
eighties bands that were still on the radio and on television.
It was the seventies bands, the sixties bands that were

(00:29):
starting to get called oldies. It's been long enough now
that I am starting to realize that like a band
that I learned about in nineteen ninety five who put
out a record in nineteen eighty seven, were not an
old band, but they seemed to me like they were
from the past, and the music of then was the
music of now. The reason I bring this up is
because my guest today is the mighty Richard Barone, singer

(00:50):
and guitar player of the power pop brilliant group The Bongos.
The Bongos were an eighties band in terms of like

(01:12):
their career. They came out of Hoboken, New Jersey, the
great rock and roll city Hoboken. In the early eighties.
They released their major label debut Numbers with Wings on
RCA Records in nineteen eighty three. Their career sort of
was defined and flourished in the decade of the nineteen eighties,
a decade that gets associated with all kinds of musical trends,

(01:33):
both sonic, esthetic and otherwise. And that's the kind of
band that for a long time I was inclined to
view through a very narrow aperture because I thought that
I knew what an eighties band was in any way
that it might vary for my expectations was just probably
a petty little detail. I'm glad to say that I
have since become a little bit wiser as I've gotten

(01:55):
a little bit older, and talking to Richard Barone was
the one million example this year I've received of how
much more complicated it is than that. You know, an
eighties band is just a timeframe. It has nothing to
do really with the attitude behind the music. Take, for instance,
Richard Barone's origin story as a professional music guy. Basically,

(02:17):
I don't want to spoil it because we talk about
it in the interview, which I will get too shortly,
but it just sounds like something that would happen in
a movie that stars Elvis Presley. It takes place on
a beach, there's a radio station broadcasting from the beach.
It doesn't sound like a nineteen eighties thing to me.
It sounds like a nineteen fifties thing to me. And
you know, when Richard Barone and everyone else that was

(02:38):
making music as a twenty year old in the eighties
was growing up, well, it was the sixties, and music
from the fifties was new, and god, music from the
forties was pretty new. And Richard Barone is a guy
with a huge breadth of knowledge and appreciation, not just
for rock and roll music, but for many forms of
popular music. We talk about all of it, and of
course a lot more in the interview. It was yet

(02:59):
another opportunity for me to open my eyes and broaden
my mind. And as I'm always saying, I'm so lucky,
I'm so grateful to get to have these conversations. And so,
rather than subject you to any more of my rambling pontificating,
here is my interview with Richard Barone of the Bongos. Richard,

(03:29):
thank you so much for being here. I wanted to
start by reading a quote that I think will be
familiar to you. It of course comes from the front
of your book Frontman, Surviving the rock Star Myth. It's
a quote from the great Joseph Campbell. It reads as follows,
mythology begins where madness starts. A person who is truly
gripped by a calling, a dedication, by a belief, by

(03:49):
a zeal, will sacrifice his security, will sacrifice even his life,
will sacrifice personal relationships, will sacrifice prestige, and will think
nothing of personal development. He will give himself entire to
his myth. Could you describe your experience of the rock
star myth, the coming online of even the awareness that

(04:10):
there is such thing as a rock star, and what
the mythology around that was back to even even before
you were the littlest DJ, which we'll we'll get to,
of course.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Okay. I grew up in a household in which my
mother was very star obsessed as a young woman, and
then carried that onto me. She was very interested in
movie stars and what made a movie star, why they
were stars, and she would show me scrapbooks she had
kept as a teenager of autograph photos of movie stars,

(04:40):
and as I got to be about seven years old
and I had an interest in music, I think she
in a way She definitely nurtured that and bought me
an electric guitar when I was seven years old. And
then again, as you mentioned, the littlest DJ got me
to connect with the radio station locally in Tampa, a
top forty radio station. Walt and I met the DJs

(05:02):
and eventually got put on the not eventually quickly got
put on the air, and then had a Sunday spot
on the radio at seven.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
The story goes that you went to the beach Party
live thing and sort of went up and said, you know,
I want to be a DJ, and he said, okay,
here's the mic.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yes, And the DJs came to my house would bring
me records every Monday and I got to hear stuff,
and then on Sunday the following Sunday, I'd go on
the air and I could sort of put a show
together in my head. So this was an early thing
for me.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
I did get more.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Obsessed with the idea of what we called rock stars.
I mean, I was so intrigued by the artist who
made the records. I was really intrigued by the records themselves,
like the sound of them. If you read Frontman, you
saw I think I mentioned how obsessed I was with
the different types of reverbs and echoes that were used
on singles, and I just loved records. At an early age,
I was obsessed. I had an uncle that had a

(05:53):
restaurant with a jukebox, and when they would cycle the
records out and put the new ones in, they would
give me the previous singles, and so I had a
lot of records and would listen to them constantly and
get into the sound. And also who made them was
a big deal for me, like how do they get there?
How did they get to that level? So I was
abserted pretty early on into the rockstar myth, the idea

(06:14):
that there's certain people that can do these things. And
then by the time I was a teenager and I
started working with different bands, meeting them and sometimes producing them.
You know, I got to be exposed to stars like
the Monkeys, for instance, Tiny Tim was to me a
big star. It was a big celebrity type star and
important figure still to me. So I don't know, it

(06:35):
was it was a long process of becoming acquainted with
what I call in the book the rock star myth.
The book is a you know, it's about a mythology
that I have it's been a part of my life. Really,
it's still there. I mean, I still I still am
amazed at certain levels of startup. Certain like David Bowie.

(06:57):
When I got to sing with him through Tony Visks,
I got to do singing with Bowie. That was, you know,
that was I was in the presence of a star
and I could feel it, you know. And I'm not
sure if I've answered your question, but those are some
of my random thoughts on stardom and the rock star myth.
You know, well, I think that is.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
They're answering the question, and I think everything we talk
about will be because the reason I'm so interested in
it is because it's been, you know, it's been the
driving factor of my life as well. And I suspect
most of both the guests we've had on this podcast
so far, and probably a lot of the people listening
or are, to some degree or another seduced by that
very seductive myth. And you're able to articulate it a

(07:35):
little more directly than a lot of people. And I'm
so fascinated by this image of you as a seven
year old. You know, I'm old enough now to know
some seven year olds in my life and none of
them are are particularly studious when it comes to the
things they like, you know, and that notion of you
getting the records delivered every week and listening to them

(07:56):
and preparing putting the show together in your head, that's
very professionally minded for for a young.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
First Sonny, well, let me backtracked. There's one second about
the mythology, and said that this is kind of our
modern These are our myths, these are our mythological figures. Now,
so that's that's part of we still we sat with there.
We still there's still being made. Every day. There's a
new a new mythology of a new star. Every time
you watch the news and there's a celebrity doing something,

(08:24):
you know that's continuing the myths. Yea. As far as
being seven years old, part of it was my asthma.
I have asthma now I it's something that I've controlled
since then. I still have it, but you know, learn
to control it. But at the time when I was seven,
I was I was a kid that couldn't always go
to school because he was uh sick with respiratory problems.

(08:44):
So I was home a lot. And that's when I
got to listen to the radio so obsessively, and I
could work on these things and work on the show.
I did go to school, but when I was downtime status,
I guess you could say where I could further obsess
about the music. And you know that gave me a
chance to plans shows and stuff because I wasn't in
school every single day. I think that was just part

(09:04):
of it, you know, I think that, and I really
believe this. This is an aspect, if you don't mind
me adding, is there sometimes things like illnesses or problems
that people have is really what leads us to what
we do and what we can do. I think that
I'm thinking about a book idea in which I would
discuss like how certain musicians especially, but I'm sure in

(09:27):
any field, you know that what makes you different is
what makes you successful as you focus on certain other
things that maybe other people don't, et cetera, and you
can excel in different ways. So maybe my asthma gave
me some time to work on my music at a
young age.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
It sounds like it certainly did. And it also it's
pretty amazing to me, how you know, I talked to
a lot of bands about the Beatles, not not surprisingly
they're sort of I think for a lot of us,
they're like the er text of the rock star myth
in a lot of ways, they defined what the modern
version of that is.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
A beautiful story. Their story is just like the perfect
met that with the beginning, middle, and end, you know.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, exactly and so quickly and yeah, yet you also,
you know used more than a lot of people, seem
to have a real awareness, much like Paul McCarney himself,
of the farther back origins. It didn't all start with
the Beatles, and it can feel like they embodied the
myth so thoroughly that for a lot of us, and
for most of my life, honestly, for me, it kind

(10:23):
of looked like, I don't know anything that happened before
the Beatles. You can basically write off as being summed
up by the first few Beatles records, like that's you know,
you don't need to listen to Elvis, you can just
listen to with the Beatles. But you you mentioned Tiny
Tim already, and I was reading a lot about Tiny Tim,
who I didn't know that much about in preparation for this,
and I was just it's so fascinating to me the
way that he was sort of, you know, an archivist

(10:44):
and almost an Alan Lomack's character, but with this affect
that maybe you know, for a lot of people it
made them take him less seriously, but obviously not for you.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, that affect was him emulating artists that he loved,
and he never he always told me, mister Barone, I'm
not imitating these these spirits inhabit me. That's paraphrasing him,
the spirits live within me or something like that. You know,
he's the one that taught me that life began before
the Beatles, because as a kid at that age that
we were describing a minute ago, I was obsessed. I

(11:17):
still am. I still love the Beatles, you know, and
and it's not it's not love, it's not even love.
It's like it's still They're part of my life and
reason for being what I what I do, you know,
doing what I do. But he's the one who opened
my eyes to pop music as being a much bigger
picture and a lot longer story, a story with all

(11:37):
kinds of like you could follow the development of the
music industry through going back in pop music and even
the formats and all that.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
You know, it's a fascinating thought experiment for me sometimes
to try and put myself in the headspace where Tiptoe
through the Tulips was the new music on the radio.
You know, it's so hard for our minds to not
hear that as old fashioned or even kind of you know,
something to smirk at for a lot of people. And

(12:20):
yet there was a time when that was as cutting edge,
as new, as just real music that people took at
face value, took in earnest well.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
The subject was very trendy because there was a there
happened to be a lot of tulips, and you know
the story about that. There was actually a tulip explosion,
There was a tul of us were for the first
time had been imported from Holland or something to the US,
and there was tulip mania. So that song was actually
like a novelty song of nineteen twenty nine or so
that was inspired by an actual events of the time.
It's fascinating, and of course he brought it back in

(12:50):
nineteen sixty eight, and that was funny because of course,
if it works so well with the flower power hippie generation,
it sort of made sense again, you know, and clicked
and That's another example of the artists I'm talking about
where what makes them maybe have a difficult time is

(13:14):
also what makes them special and unique. And he was
sort of a misfit. He could spend a lot of
time alone. He did spend a lot of time alone
to think about these things and what songs to do
and what would make sense now. He was always thinking
about what songs to cover. I remember he was when
I was working with him. He was working on a
cover version of do You Think I'm Sexy? Because you know,

(13:35):
just because of his uniqueness, it was just a funny
presentation on his live show to do that.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Well and to take do you Think I'm Sexy and
put it next to the Tillips and to say these
are both versions of the same thing. This is all
popular music is I mean, that's that's like an academic
thesis almost, just in those two songs next to each other.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
And if your listeners know janis Ian and her song
at seventeen, Tiny had worked up an all falsetto version
of at seventeen. It was very funny. We were going
to record it. We never got through the entire demo.
I have part of a demo that we did like,
he got through half the song and then I started
laughing so much that we stopped. But you know, anyway, Yeah,

(14:14):
Tiny Tim was very important to me, and he's a
very cool cat. He was very interesting. And when I
talked to artists that knew him back in the sixties.
When I was writing my most recent book, Music and Revolution,
I interviewed dea On for instance, and he'said, oh, Tiny Tim.
He talked about knowing him in the neighborhood, uptown or whatever,
and it was just so many great stories, the very
musical guy and taught me a lot.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
One of your first recording sessions, am I right?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Certainly recording sessions that wasn't about me? Yes, it was
Tiny Tim. Yeah, absolutely, maybe the first without like where
it wasn't me being the artist, where I was in
the role of producing for instance.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
You know, it's amazing to me. I mean, you started
a lot of this stuff at a young age, as
you've outlined, but especially the recording piece. You know, it's
easy for me to imagine be I was seven and
I was listening to Beatles songs and songs in the
radio and thinking, oh my god, someone wrote that I
could I write that could I make a record, but
the notion of the capturing of it, of the recording

(15:13):
of it didn't occur to me as even a factor
really until I was a lot older. And it seems
like that piqued your interest almost as much as the
music did.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, because my father bought me a tape recorder around
that same time, around age seven eight is when I
started get into recording as well. So I had a
real to real tape recorder. I could play with it
and kind of make sounds, and I was intrigued by
how this sounds were made, and I tried to duplicate
it or tried to do something interesting with the tape,
you know, as the Beatles got more psychedelic, especially you know.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Well, yeah, I just found I was cleaning out a
storage space and I found like the old digital eight
track that my high school band had, and it was
just making me remember those those feelings of using the
machine as a creative tool, of as not just pressing
record and going but to mess with the reverbs of
flangers and you know, these are digital onboard stock effects,

(16:03):
but when they're new to you and you're twisting a
knob and they're coming more and more in there and
it's surprising you and self oscillating. It's so great.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
I love That's why I write. That's why I write
for Tape Off Magazine. Don't know if you know that
that that publication, yea Tapeop. I love writing for them
because we know we get to get into that all
that stuff.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Tape Op for the lay listeners is a magazine about recording,
recording technology, music production technology. It's often encountered, at least
in my experience, as like stacks of back issues will
be sitting next to the couch at any recording studio.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
I have them here like that. It's like, in a way,
it's like it's overwhelming because it's such a library. But
they're great, and there's.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
An incredibly rich resource.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, really good.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, if people are interested in nerding out about how
records are made, how music is produced, how the things
that produce music are themselves produced, it's a there's no
better resource than there's just stacks and stacks and stacks
of back issues that you can come back and anything
you care to talk about. But getting back to Rich
Baron's journey, which is what we're ostensibly here to talk about.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
It's all part of it.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
It's all part of it.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Are really part of it. So it's not it's not
always it's me, but it's it's me and all the
things that I am involved with.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
And so with you know, this knowledge of recording, songwriting,
song performance, being in a band. You had a band
in Tampa called the Snails.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yes, I did. I loved it. It was really fun.
It was out of place. It was out of place
there how so well, because we were doing I had
really gotten early on into the Mormons and the bands
that were coming out of New York, but also I
love Sparks, a lot of the British groups, and we
were doing songs that in Florida. I don't think other
people only knew what we were doing. We're covering these songs. Yeah,

(17:43):
but I think that they were the audiences weren't always
really sure what we were doing, you know. I remember
doing a song called filler Up by Sparks and people
they just didn't know how to how to respond. It

(18:11):
was fun. We played the University of Tampa and those
were my first stage experiences really, and it was nice
to know that I wasn't afraid to be on stage.
I think that was the most important part of it
for me, it was just learning that I could do it.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, well that, I mean a lot of your story
could lead to the opposite, right, you're interested in the recording,
you're at home, you know, you're making the stone.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Introverted also very introverted. Yeah, but I thought, okay, I
can do this, all right, you know, so I didn't
feel very nervous once I was doing it, and you know,
doing like velvet underground songs uh at in Tampa, it
was they were not ready for that, I think. But
it also just like I said, letting me know that
I could do it.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
And was that the Maybe not the impetus, but did
that give you the wind beneath your wings enough to
make your way to New York City and then Tahoba again?

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yes, but it was truly and then the monkeys who
got me here because Tiny Tim insisted that I come
to Granwis Village where I live now, and you know,
I love it here and Tiny Tim knew I would,
and he told me I should live here, and he said,
you know, as you know from the book, it's uh
it was. He really did sort of insist that I
moved to New York. And then when I was able

(19:19):
to hitch a ride with the Laughing Dogs. That was
the group that the Monkeys had as their backing band.
It was just Davy and Mickey with the Laughing Dogs
as the dogment. The Leafting Dogs were one of the
early CBGB bands here in New York. I knew of
them because it was a live at CBGB's album on
the Atlantic Records, I think it was Atlantic, and I
knew them. I saw their photo inside as a compilation,
and then I met them and they were super friendly

(19:40):
and invited me to stay in their loft while they
were on tour. Amazing, and that's how I got to
New York. So I owe it to Tiny Tim and
the Monkeys in some ways.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
I mean, if you have to owe anything to anyone,
I would say that's a good thing to owe to
the good group of people.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, it was. It was a very fortunate turn of events,
you know, during the during that time.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
And this is a time when New York, say, I
think is pretty iconic in that moment, the CBGB's thing
and stuff. But I'm really curious about what your impressions
then of Hoboken, New Jersey work. So it's just across
the River, and yet you know, it's a whole different world,
and you don't see nearly as many movies, TV shows, photographs, paintings,

(20:18):
et cetera set in Hoboken at the same time. And
I'm really curious to hear your impressions.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
It's only later when I lived there. I lived there
for five years, and it's during that time that I
kind of got the history of Hoboken, understood it much better.
I vaguely and hardly I would say hardly knew or
had hardly heard of Hoboken. I only made a vague
connection in that Sprank Sinatra was born there, and I
think I knew that from my mother's education of movie stars.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Makes sense.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
It was a time warp. I did not expect to
be there. The loft I was staying in I mentioned
the Laughing Dogs was a really nice loft in Brooklyn,
and they decided to sell it. I had been there
for living with them for about six months, and they
had an offer for some someone wanted to buy their
loft because it had a soundproof recording studio in it,
and someone wanted to give them big bucks to buy it.

(21:09):
So they said, you know, we're going to sell Yah
and I had to find a new place to live,
and I was just had just met Glenn Morrow. Glenn
Morrow started the label called bar Non Records later, but
at the time he was starting the band and he
was looking for a guitar player. And they put an
ad in the Village Voice, which was the paper to
put an ad in to find band members, and I
entered it and met them and it was it was

(21:30):
Glenn and one of the other members of the Bongos,
Rob Norris, and we started playing music and started performing
as the group A letter A lowercase.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
How did you come up?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
That?

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Is the most pure essentialized band name I've ever heard
of who came up with that?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
It was a group effort. I think it was like
we were looking for something very stylized and as simple
as we can get it, and just like you said,
absolutely just the most essential elements of a name that
we get away with, and we liked it. Later, we were
very disturbed and unhappy to hear that there was a
group called the the I thought that was too close.
It was another article, you know, But A was fun

(22:08):
and it looked good. It was also I didn't realize
that at the time, of course, that was Andy Warhol's
first novel was called a A. So that made sense
for us because we loved Warhol. I still love Warhol's work,
and it was a very good learning experience.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Is it true that A was the first band to
play Maxwell's.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, it was. Maxwells had just been purchased by the
Fallon family, Steve Fallon, and when we first moved it,
that was a very dark bar, no live music. It
was a drinking bar. The name Maxwells was because it
was by the Maxwell House coffee factory. We lived less
than a block away, half a block away, and Glenn
Marrow and I went over to the club one day

(22:47):
and just asked if we could play there. They were
just opening, they were just getting their furniture and everything.
I think it was quite early in the process. Steve
Fallon was a music fan, and you know it said
yes when we started playing in the front. It was
a restaurant. We set up in the middle of the restaurant.
You know that there was no stage and the back
room was just a storeroom, right.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
See.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
That was more of the bond. So A played in
the front room of Maxwell's. Okay, then Steve finally would
let the bong goes rehearse at Maxwell's and we rehearsed
in the back room, and then we kind of liked
the sound. I mean, he would come back and we
were sounding good back there, and somehow I'm not sure
if we suggested it or he suggested it, but we started,
you know, making the back room the music space. It

(23:27):
just made sense too, because when we played in the
restaurant and we're allowed, glasses would break. I mean it
was a restaurant with a lot of glassware, you know,
and stuff. Things would break and fall over, and so
it was a mess to play in the front room.
It was fun, but it was a mess.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
And the back room has that magic like it doesn't
look I don't know how much it changed between when
you played there and when I played there. It didn't
look like it changed much. Didn't change and it didn't
look like it should sound like it did, but it
just it was one of those rooms where it just worked.
The sound whizzed around in just the right ways.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
It was the size of the room and the shape
of the room. They gave it this acoustics, but of
course I had a tin ceiling, so that was a
little iffy on the high end of the sound. I
like it though. I just found a cassette of the
Bongos live on Halloween nineteen eighty one performing at Maxwell's,
and I'm thinking about putting it up on YouTube because
it just has a great You really get the sound
of that room that we're talking about. It had uniqueness,

(24:19):
It had tightness because of the size of it and
the shape of the rectangular shape of the room, I think.
But it was great. We loved it.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
And so through all this you're also honing your instrument
as a songwriter, as a recording engineer, producer. Where were
your energies flowing to at that time, if that makes sense.
Were did you find yourself writing more often, recording more often?
Were you getting carried away with playing live versus making
records or where did the creative energy tend to pool

(24:48):
as the Bongoes kicked off.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Well, it was a combination. For one thing, knowing that
I was just approaching age twenty or so, I also
had a social life, so there was a lot of that,
and the Bongos were very involved and hanging out, you know,
hanging out with other bands, hanging out with the people
at Maxwell's upstairs. There was a lot of social stuff
going on. A lot of the music came out of that.
A lot of my songwriting came out of my social experiences.

(25:12):
I didn't separate these things so much like when we
talk about it now, we think of, yes, I was
producing other bands in fact from Hoboken, and you know,
writing songs and performing and going out at night, and
I don't think of it as separate things. I think
it was all one thing. It was just when I
had a chance to then write down a thought, I
would have a song, you know. But it was really
part of just living at that age at that time.

(25:35):
It's not something that I thought about, Okay, I'm going
to spend twenty five percent of my time writing or
twenty five. It was just like I was just living
a very happy time in Hoboken and meeting people and
then coming home and maybe sitting with my guitar, and
really the songs would just come out of the experiences.
I didn't have to labor over them. Sometimes I would
see our phrase on a sign, or I have a

(25:57):
thought of like Zebra Club or some of these early
songs I had really came from an idea or a title,
and then I would just sit and the song would
write itself. Why Because I was actually living and experiencing
a lot of new things, and those experiences ended up
in the songs in different ways.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
After the stances on.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
She's made some a buzebra, she's being this day and
she's wise dribes sometimes eels me, she's on.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Viside, let them.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Let us zeb lea. You see what on me? Say
what on me? And I tend to like symbolism, you know,
and so I wrote some of them seemed mysterious to people,
but all the songs really came out of my experiences

(26:56):
and feelings. And sometimes feelings can be abstract. So a
song like Numbers with Wings can seem abstract to people,
but really it's not to me. It's just an emotion
and or feeling. So a lot of the songs are that,
and they came out of just living. You know. I
was not planning anything, and the Bongos prided themselves, I think,

(27:17):
and not really planning too much. We just did what
we did, and we performed, and we we got gigs
and we played everywhere. We got to the point where
we were doing three hundred shows a year, and then
you know, writing on the tour bus and stuff like that.
It was just was all part of everything was one thing.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
And so during this time, I mean you went, you
were making records in the UK, you toured with the
B fifty two's, yes, all of this before you signed
with RCA, which we'll get to.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
That's right, we did, that's right.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
How was the myth percolating in this moment? To come
back to that? As you started to do it for real?
You went from getting these forty fives delivered and listening
to them and hearing them to making your own and
being in the band that was playing the show. Were
you thinking about how your expectations were colliding with reality
or is this another case where you were just on
a beautiful ride that was cruising along.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
I think the beautiful ride thing was still in effect.
We were appreciative that we had these opportunities. The Bee
fifty twos were a band we loved. In fact, that's
how we got our name was because Cindy. We saw
the Bee fifty twos and Cindy Wilson was sitting on
the floor playing bongo drums. I think it was CBGB
where they played. We went to go see them, and

(28:27):
on the drive home we were always the Bungos were
always together. The original three guys were always we'd go
out to see bands. Again, it's just a very tight
bunch of people. On the ride home, we're trying to
think of a band name, and then Frank the drummer,
of course, said well what about the bongos and that
we laughed and thought it was so funny, but it
stuck for us. And so when it came from Cindy
Wilson playing bongo drums, yeah, we we didn't think of

(28:50):
it as being like I didn't step back too much.
Let me put it that way and view the myth
playing out.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
I just was in it.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I wanted to just enjoy being in it.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
That's so admiral. You know. I was just talking to
my band's drummer last week, or my ex bands x drummer,
I suppose, and we were just talking about how we
both we wanted to be in a band so badly
because we loved the myth and we loved what it
looked like. But looking back, thinking reflecting on our career,
we sort of realized that, oh my god, with that
came almost this fear that it could be taken away

(29:20):
from us if we didn't like play ball and do
a good job. And that really colored all of the
decisions we made and all of our experience through it.
And I don't think that that's necessarily optimal from an
artistic perspective, from a life perspective. And it sounds like
in these early days you were not getting too caught
up in that bullshit at all.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
No, you know, we were so lucky to have a
record a label signed us when we were just like
three months old, Fetish Records in the UK.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
See, we were quite happy just doing that, just doing singles.
We wanted to just do seven inch singles.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
It's a great way to make music.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Some of the songs were literally two minutes long. I
think our first single Telephoto Lines and Glow in the Dark,
each of them is exactly two minutes. Alone in the.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
City, I am making different.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
My phone ring won't get a Snake by to Night.
That was a thrill for me because of my especially
my early DJ days as the little DJ. Those kind
of short songs you know that people had and just
like the single is what I was, what I grew
up on. We're singles, you know, so I love just
doing that. We would have been happy just doing singles.

(30:36):
It's just that in the US we knew that it
had to be an LP at some point, so we
just all our first album, Drums All on the Hudson
was just a compilation of all of our singles and
EPs from the.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
UK Drums along the Thames.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yes, but we recorded a few songs here. I think
four or five songs were done in the US, in
either New Jersey or New York, and the rest were
done in England. You know. But then to make an album,
chance things a bit. It was kind of like, Okay,
it was almost like the end of a chapter that
we made that album, because I was like, okay, well
we did that now. Yeah, so if you're leading into

(31:09):
signing to a major label, we're at that spot when
we talk about after Drums Alone the Hudson came out,
because soon after that we were immediately on tour with
the B fifty two's and did a lot of shows
with them.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Cool. That's so cool, Richard. I mean, come on, I
know it did really well.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
I love them. I got to work with Fred a
lot after and Kate sings on one of the Bongos
albums backing vocals. We became very friendly with them. And
it was a good package. It was a good show.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
You know what was touring like? Were you guys in
a van? Were you in a bus? What was what
was the was the day to day?

Speaker 2 (31:41):
It evolved. So first we were touring in a nineteen
sixty six Plymouth Valiant. That was when it was just
three of us and we would get we would get
like a few shows in the South. There's something we
would drive. Rob Norris, bass player would it was his car.
We would just drive to the show. Everything was stuffed
in the back seat or on the roof. Sometimes. Then
we inherited, well not inherited, but we borrowed Rob's father's

(32:03):
mobile home woo and that was pretty luxurious until we
completely trashed it.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
I had a feeling that was coming.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yeah, we with the B fifty twos. We had that
and they were so funny because it was it was
called the tioga. I think it's how you say the
t I O G A tioga tioga And they would
laugh at our tioga, you know, because they had a
they had whatever they were. I don't know how far
I forgot how they were getting around. I'm sure they
had tour buses and flights probably which we soon did,
but at that point we really liked our mobile home.

(32:33):
There was just at that point there were four of us,
and uh, it was fun. It was fun to have
a mobile home because I had a kitchen in it
and all that kind of stuff, you know, But we
wrecked it. And uh, by the time we did sign
to r CA, we switched over to having a tour bus.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
So let's talk about signing to RCA. As someone who
came up on hit records, specifically on forty fives, on singles,
on music distributed through, you know, largely the major label system.
Was that something you always had your site set on
or you just mentioned that you were perfectly happy working
with indie labels, But was there a part of you
that ever wanted to you know, it's like, I gotta

(33:10):
see that I got to see that imprint, I got
to see that dog listening to the turntable for it
to be real.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, I think so, But really yes, but maybe it's
my nature as a person. But yeah, but if that's
not what was in the cards for me, it would
have been okay. Sure, because we liked the indie The
indie thing was really happening. It was it was new
like with all these indie labels, and it was like cool.

(33:35):
So it was like we were We loved it, and
also fetish gave us so much freedom to just do
whatever we wanted. Maybe it's too much freedom if we
just did whatever we wanted. And then in the US,
because they had no representation here, we actually ran the
label for the US.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
So cool.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
We got really involved with the packaging and we would
we'd have to go to the mastering place, and you know,
everything was done by us. So we liked that. We
did like a lot of that, putting the packaging and
everything together ourselves and being one hundred percent in control.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
I mean, it's like farm to table. You're writing the songs,
you're recording the songs, you're releasing the music, doing the
artwork and everything.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
We really like that. So if a major label never
would have come along, it would have been okay. But
I did like RCA for a few reasons. One was
David Bowie was on that label and Lou Reid. Another
is Lou Reed was on that label. These are good reasons,
and there were other reasons. One is that we lived
in Hoboken on the top floor of our building across
the Hudson River and what we could see, what I

(34:33):
could see from my bedroom every night was RCA's logo
on their top of their building on forty six forty
eight third Street or whatever it was, forty fourth Street.
It was beeping at me every time I looked out
my window. It was across the river and it was
RCA and those sort of computer letters that they had
in red, and it was a beacon. It was like RCA.

(34:54):
Now we had offered some other labels too, but RCA
was New York based and the other labels two were
usually LA, and we wanted to have a label that
we could walk We had this vision because we had
been so hands on that we could just walk in
and have control, you know. We just we had this
vision of it being like right there, So let's let's
sign with the New York label. I think that was

(35:16):
part of our thinking. Also, other labels came in at
the last minute when there was a signing eminent, but OURCA.
There was a woman, Nancy Jeffries. She's great, I like
her very much, and she signed us to our CA.
But it took about a year to go go through
the you know, formalities, and she came to rehearsals and shows,
and she was it was a it was a relationship

(35:37):
that was building.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
She liked the band, she cared, she really cares.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
She came to rehearsals at Maxwell's and all that. So
we signed with them, you know, and I'm I never
I still we're still signed. We're still signed to now Sony.
You know. We re signed in twenty twenty. Uh and
we did a Christmas song last year for RCA. Yeah,
and we did. We have We've been enhancing our state

(36:01):
releases with a lot of bonus tracks. Now if people
go to the streaming services, they'll see the albums that
maybe we'll be talking about in a second, with many
more tracks because we had demos and unreleased versions and
live versions, et cetera. So we've been able to kind
of work with them now more than ever really.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
And before we talk about making numbers with Wings, I
just I got to ask. I'm so curious in every
different scene, in every different town and genre, et cetera,
et cetera, there are different attitudes towards the corporate music business,
so to speak. You know, when my band was talking
about signing with a major, there word there was a

(36:40):
stigma and there were conversations and the notion of selling out,
which I think is completely gone by now and maybe
didn't exist yet when you guys did it, but was
still sort of vestigitally present. So was there a stigma?
Were there people around you saying like, don't do it,
don't sign.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Of course we had to. There's a reason we were
at that point. We were very interested in going on
the road and performing. We no longer had the time
to devote to running a record label, which we were
doing for Fetish Records. We no longer wanted to go
to the printers and that all that stuff that you

(37:17):
have to do when you make records. We didn't have
the time because we were on the road every day.
So signing was an essential step for us to continue
to have records coming out if we wanted to do
that many shows that we were doing and do all
the tours that we wanted to do. We had a
great agent, you know, and we were able to play everywhere,
so we kind of had to sign. There wasn't the infrastructure,

(37:38):
by the way yet. There was soon an infrastructure for
college radio indie bands, but there really wasn't yet, So
signing gave us at least a network that we could
work with, and we had a team to people we
could talk to, and they could put us on radios
like we could do, like say, visit radio stations as
we travel, things like that. There's certain things we can

(38:00):
do that we could not we would not have been
able to do without RCA. They were great. I think,
you know, artists can complain about their labels all they want,
but I really have zero complaints about signing with RCA.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
I gotta say I hear way more complaints about indie
labels than I do about me.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do too, I do too. Yeah.
I mean they were they wanted us, They quartered us
for a year, like I said, and then when they
signed us, they did their best to promote us and
they helped us promote ourselves.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Did you get a nice advance?

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Did you buy anything in particular? Do you have like
a guitar that you associate with the RCA deal?

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Oh? I spent so much money on guitars. I had
too many guitars. I kind of narrowed down my I
think I had sixteen rickenbackers at one point, something like that.
Something outrageous. I had so many different colors, and you know,
I had like I see photos like, oh wow, I
had a white one because I get you know, then
I would trade later I traded or sold them all that.
I think Matthew Sweet got my white one, and I

(38:54):
had a really nice red one that matched my nineteen
sixty two corvet. It was like the same red. It
was great. Anyway, I had great guitars, yeah, but now
now I just have a few less. I usually played
les Paul mostly on stage. I Les Paul Special.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I think we have really similar let me see similar ones.
This is a This is like a two thousand and
three or something.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, but that's a Is that a junior or a special?

Speaker 1 (39:15):
I have heard conflicting reports. When I bought it, they
said it was a junior, But then I was played
some show with the Barnicod ladies and their attech was like,
that's not a junior and let me explain why.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
So all I know is I like playing. I love it.
I said TV yellow also, right, yeah, not to be shallow,
but that was really the main thing that attracted me
to it. Then I had to break the headstock twice
before it got really good to play.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh yeah, mine's mine's broken once, yeah, gives. But my
main one, my main special is that it's yellow. It's
TV yellow, and I love it. You know why it's
called TV yellow? Of course, let's pretend I don't, okay,
Because the TV yellow guitar was designed to look white
on black and white television because when they did like
Alpine white, when they did it, it used to strobe

(39:57):
in black and white, like it flickered and they didn't
look right. So they wanted a white that would stay
stable and look white, so they made TV Yella.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
I will confess I didn't know that at all. That's
so cool, that's really interesting. It's like you can find
pictures online of like color pictures of the Adams Family
set or whatever they used for black and white TV,
and there's these these lurid, bizarre color schemes because they
were all theoretically designed to translate into black and white.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah. So that's an example of that.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Okay. So by the time you signed to RCA, have
you already been working on some of the tunes that
would wind up on numbers with wings?

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Some of them, not all of them, numbers with wings
I had we had because that I wrote that one
I was mixing drums alone the Hudson. So I went
to Okay, so we went to England. We recorded, and
then the band came back home and I went back
to the UK to mix the album with the producer.
And during that time I was alone. If you're alone
in London at age twenty or whatever, I was, it's

(40:54):
a good time to have ideas to write songs. Numbers
with wings, all right, if you want to hear her
work came from, because I absolutely do. It came from
Yoko Ono's song Walking on Thin Eyes that had just
come out, and I just loved the bassline. I love
this track, the way the instruments work together, and I
was thinking, Wow, I wonder if I could do that now.

(41:22):
I had a Cassio keyboard. I still have it, actually
VL one. It was like a calculator. There was a musical.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Instrument, yes classic.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
I used a lot of my records to sound anyway.
I could program stuff on it, and I programmed a
bassline that was the numbers of wings, bassline.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Spot see everything, and I just.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Started singing in the hotel room. I started singing over
that and the song just flowed out of that. So
it was inspired by walking on Thin Eyes. It doesn't
really sound like walking on Thin Eyes, but it was
inspired by the way the bass and instruments work together
on that song.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
So again, you're thinking of the record, You're thinking of
the whole arrangement and stuff when you're writing it. You're
not just necessarily sitting there with the guitars, story, verses
and chords.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
The music and the lyrics of that song are one thing.
It's like the music is the numbers with wings. It's
almost like the numbers the song. I mean, it's about
the song itself in a way. It was definitely came
to me as an arrangement. Well, it's this really interesting
thing about you know, we started at different times, but
we're both guys who fell in love with pop music,

(42:41):
you know, singles, records, and I find it so fascinating.
I realized in my own life that I feel less
like a songwriter and more of like a recording artist.
And when I'm coming up with songs, I'm thinking of
them up as records, and all of the sonics and
all of the stuff kind of come as part of
the initial inspiration. And that's I bet the Beatles did
that too, would I mean, God you'd think. So if

(43:02):
they didn't, it's even more impressive. Yeah, I think they
would think of them as I mean, at first they
were thinking about how do we get this just how
do we learn that chord? How do we do that?
But then later I think it was like, oh, how
do we get this to sound really cool? You know?

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, and the space you can leave in the quote
unquote song in the music and the words that space
you can fill with, you know, an interesting thing that
happens in the record. There's so many possibilities, and with
this RCA increased recording budget, you had an opportunity to
explore a whole bunch more possibilities. Probably you must have

(43:34):
been champion at the bit to get into the studio
we were.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
It was. It was a very exciting tign to be
able to go into a studio for a long time.
And when we did the second RCA album especially, we
were I think we took like five months in the studio.
It was really good learning experience. I learned like that
was my university for recording, was making those records for
RCA because we could spend the time and do it,

(43:58):
and we got to choose the studio with the producer
you know and work in great places. Richard Godderer. I
still work with Richard Godderer. I'm personally as a solo
artist signed to Richard Godder now as a few months
ago I resigned. He was the producer of Numbers with Wings.
We've been friends ever since.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
And this is Richard Goderer, who is a co writer
on I Want Candy, Hang on Sloopy, my boyfriend's back,
co founded Sire Records, founded The Orchard more recently. I mean,
this is a major name in the history of rock
and roll. How did you guys come to work with
him on Numbers with Wings?

Speaker 2 (44:31):
It was suggested by RCA. I wanted at the time,
wanted to work with Tony Visconti, and I convinced the
guys that he would be great. But he was in
the UK and wanted to record in his own studio,
which at the time he had Good Earth Studios in London,
and RCA wanted to keep us. They had just signed us,
and they wanted to keep us near home so they could,
you know, keep an eye on us, which I understand.

(44:53):
And they recommended Richard Gotter and at first I was like,
you know, I looked him I knew him his name
from a Marshall and Shaw's albums and album and I
think the Go Gos and he yeah, he worked with
a lot of groups that we planned the Blondie, Yeah,
a lot. He had a lot of current and even
Richard Hell. He produced Richard Hell in Navoidoid's album for Sire.

(45:14):
He was he was the I an R for Sire.
I don't know if you knew that Seymour Stein and
Richard Goderer were partners. So the letters of Sire Records,
actually it's Seymour's sn E at the ends and then
our I in the middle is Richard. Richard's name Richard Gotderer.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
I did not know that.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yes, So he did a lot of stuff for Sire
and he later sold out his share and then became
Seymour's label. But Gottter is a good friend of mine
and I recently signed with him in October of this
previous October, I signed with him for my next album,
for my ex solo album. And it's nice to have
a long term relationship like that with my label guy
or a first producer.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, you have all these great long term relationships with
the industry, which I will talk about more in a second,
but to stay situated in making numbers with wings for
them moment. Sure, when your friendship or relationship with Richard
was new, do you remember your initial impressions or what
he brought to the sessions.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah. History, He brought a lot of history. You know,
we needed that too because we were just randomly doing things.
And he really had Mike, you said, my boyfriend's back.
He had this, all this stuff that he had done.
And I loved the Strange Loves. He was a member
of the Strange Loves. That's where I when Candy came
from and Nighttime and hang On Sloopy and all that
was from that era. I loved all that stuff, garage rock,

(46:31):
I loved it, and he brought that history when he
would work with us. I mean just in the way
he overdubt with with the overdubs we did, and the
way he would conduct my singing was very important to
me when I did drums and on the Hudson. To
be honest, I did all my vocals for that album,
most of that except for the songs that were already recorded,
which were a few singles. I did them all in

(46:53):
one night, one after another. Boom, I just sang and
no one was directing me. No one gave me any suggestions.
I just sang. Yeah. When I worked with GODDR he
was like, well, you know you could do this here.
You know, he gave me all kinds of suggestions, like
you know, I need I'm an actor in a way
when I'm singing, I need a director once in a while,
and he gave me that direction. So I bonded with
him much more than the other guys in the band

(47:15):
because he was giving me personal directions. When I played
a guitar solo, he would conduct me as if it's
a symphony orchestra.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Wow, his arms were.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Waving, and that was so helpful to me. You know,
it's very easy to underestimate how good a good producer
can be.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
There's no limit almost. I mean you can you can.
They can pull a band so so high up and
you can learn so much.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yeah, listen to the solo on Numbers with Wings and
just know that I'm playing that sitting in a chair
or whatever, standing playing it, and Richard Gotter has conducted
me as if it's an orchestra. It's melodic, has movements
in a you know, when I hit a high note
and he's holding suddenly to hold it like you know,
he's doing that, and it's great.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
He was right, he knew, and you're right. It's that tradition.
And I mean it gets back to what we were
talking about with tiny Tim as well. This is you know,
number with wings does not sound like my boyfriend's back.
You know, this is not sonically that similar. And yet
all of making those records, writing those songs, participating those
sessions obviously taught him all this like musicality and all
this ways of communicating that he of course could bring

(48:15):
to different genres. And so that DNA is right there
in the music, not evolutionarily there, but present in the room.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's very present. The idea of where the harmonies come in,
things like that, that's from the classic pop structures that
he first dealt with in that brill building era. You know.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, his toolbox has got like this is the first
Robertson screwdriver. Yeah, and we can use it on your
record exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
It was a very good experience and that's why I'm
still working with him now and he believes in me still.
So it's like, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Were you must have been, you know, there's some musicians
who in the studio are content to sit back on
the couch, sit in the chair, crack a beer, the
let the technicians do the technicianing, and other musicians who
like to be sitting at the console looking at the
Why are you turning that knob? Why are you plugging
that in? How's that happening? I'm guessing that you were
more of the ladder.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
I'm more of the ladder, but I also and I do,
and I was usually right with them, but I also
like to give people space. And there were some times
when I'd go to the couch yep, but I would
find myself back at the console pretty fast.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Well how could you resist? I mean, here you are?
And what was the studio you used?

Speaker 2 (49:17):
So the first studio for numbers of wings we used
a place called Skyline. I don't think it's there anymore,
but at the time it was very popular because Nile
Rogers was using it in other people making great sounding records,
and they chose it. Richard Gotter said, well, let's try
Skyline and it was very good. Had a really nice
live room for us, just the right size, not too

(49:38):
big and not too small, and they had a lot
of good techniques in recording the drums. The drum sound
on that is quite massive, and it was done in
an interesting way by placing the drums in the middle
of the doorway and under the precipice of a door
and micing it from both sides.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Which you know, I feel like the textbook might say
that's exactly what you should not be doing.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
But they got a big drum sound by doing that.
So the face the bass drum the kid is facing
the center of the live room, but it was also
in an open doorway, as I recall, and they were
micing it from the back too, so you got a
lot of ambience. That was part of the eighties sound
was a drum, big drum sound, but you could do
it artificially or you could do it by micing, and

(50:20):
this team, Gotterer's team, wanted to do it by micing. Well.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
It's especially interesting to me because the eighties drum sound
for much of my life was not popularly admired. I
think it's kind of back now. Things have come back around,
but I wonder it was there. I'm curious in general
about the RCA's presence in the studio, and then I'm
especially curious if there was, because in my mind, it's

(50:44):
so easy to imagine this like big suit, cigar chomping,
Central casting eighties record exact being like gate, the snare gate,
the snare gate, the snare No. But that wasn't happening.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
No, we would invite them for certain days. So when
we invited Nancy and maybe someone maybe one other person
from R side to visit was when we did the
song Sweet Blue Cage, which is the very acoustic track
that ends that EP, and I love that sound of
that right with that's that was the track in which
RCA was in attendance, And if you notice, it's the

(51:15):
least commercial track on the record, Live'll Rive into six
open arms and ran open on the oceans.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Want to see and last week okay, oh baby.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Maybe that's why we chose to invite them Ben but
they had a great time and they I think they
contributed some hand collaps to Barbarrella. We added that said, hey,
we're do some hand claps on this, and you know,
we did a few overdubs with them there, but mostly
they were there when we did we were recording or
tracking a Sweet Blue Cage. They were very friendly and

(51:57):
RCA never bothered us in the studio. I've had labels
where they do pound me. RCA did not do that.
We gave them tracks as we finished them, and luckily
they liked everything we did. You know, they were very
excited about that first EP and did a lot of
promotion for that.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Was the intention always for it to be an EP.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yes, we wanted to see We were really into singles
and EPs, so they said, oh, would you like to
do like a mini out They called it a mini
album yeah, and we said yes. We just jumped at that. Yeah,
that's good.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
It's like a novella. It was good. But also we
were very.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Interested in dance records that were pressed on twelve inch vinyl,
and those sound great because the grooves are bigger. You
know about this, So the twelve inch records dance or
if you just have like one song on a side,
then you can have gigantic grooves and it sounds really
deep and has a lot of bass. So we knew
that by doing an EP we could have that sound.

(52:51):
We could have a really great analog sound on the
vinyl record because it wasn't crammed with music. It was
just a few songs per Sad three songs per sad,
so we would like the idea of the mini album.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
And there you are again, you know, making creative decisions
with Sonic, you know, outcomes in minds that's so interesting
and consistent.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
And also we knew that the price would be lower
and that would be good because you know, a lot
of our indie fans that you know, it's like they
have the money to buy record, so you know, having
a mini album, we knew that it would be a
reduced price. So all these things, we were quite fine
with making a mini album. I like it just the
way it is on streaming. Of course that's much longer,
but that's because there's added tracks, live tracks.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
The first time I was spinning it on Spotify, I
was sort of taken aback. The live tracks started so
soon because it's incredibly it's a mini album, and the songs,
like you were saying, or not epics either it's you
blink and then all of a sudden, you're into the
bonus stuff. I know, I have to ask you about
music videos because once again, I mean, you're sort of

(53:54):
your career is running in parallel with a lot of
like technological advances in the music industry and one of
the biggest ones is you know, MTV launching and I
think it's nineteen eighty one, you know, so Numbers with
Wings comes out into the dawn of the music video era.
It's nominated at the very first MTV Video Music Awards.

(54:15):
What was your relationship like with that end of things.
You know, you've been pretty hands on with the artwork,
with the sonic sound of everything, with the every element
of the release of your music, and now here's a
whole new art form that's part of it. Were you
excited about this?

Speaker 2 (54:31):
We were already doing it because we were very interested
in video from the very beginning. So when the bongos started,
we were making videos. We were working with a director
named Ed Steinberg who had a great company called rock America.
They pre day MTV. Rock America provided videos to rock
discos around the country, and that's where our records are

(54:52):
being played most heavily, where the rock discos, like it
was in the punk rock discos. Yeah, dance, dance to it,
and that's why we love twelve inch records so much.
We're already making videos for many of our songs and
they came out through Rock America and Ed Steinberg was
the owner of the company and also directed some videos
for certain bands, including the Bongos. So we had already

(55:13):
made like three or four videos with him, and we
had made one with our photographer who worked with us
very closely named film Marino. There's a beautiful black and
white video. So I just posted it on YouTube recently
on my YouTube channel, Richard Baron channel of the Bull Rushes.
That was done in the basement Maxwell's and on the stage.
It's pretty cool videos. Eight millimeter film that was transferred
to video. It's as rough as you can get it.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
I loved it.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
So we had already made a bunch of videos. So
then with RCA, you know, at this point MTV is
like really going strong, and we knew we were going
to do a video. I wanted Felini to direct it.
I wanted Frederico Fellini to direct our video Always Reach
for the Stars. Well, they laughed at me, they said
he would never make a video, but he then he
did later that year. He did, I think, for the

(55:56):
Culture Club, but they didn't ask. They just said there's
no way he's going to do it. But we did
get a cinematographer who had worked with Fellini on some
of the films. His name was Juliana Waldman. So he
contacted us and we were on tour, of course, as
we always were, but we met in New York and
talked about some themes for the video, and I think

(56:18):
he was intrigued by the label that we were previously
signed to, Fetish Records, because this video is really all
kinds of sexual fetishes, and he came up with this idea.
I had never would never have thought of any of
these ideas that he had for this. It was like
a litany, like like a vignettes of sexual like scenes

(56:40):
and different types and different at different ages and different proclivities.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Yes, we loved it, so we had We.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Were on tour, we were playing like at the a
La I think at the Palace, and we had the
We flew into New York. We did the whole thing
in one day, and we invited some friends from Maxwell's
from the scene. Like I think there's a couple of
bartenders in that video and at least the one member
of the thelies in there. And there.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
It's a fun video and it's really interesting because it's clear,
I mean, the language of music videos was still kind
of coming together and It's interesting to me because my
first reaction watching it. I grew up with music videos,
so part of the myth for me was in Canada
we had much music.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Oh yeah, I know, much music. Yeah, you know, yeah, great, great,
great back and when we toured in Canada always that
would be playing on the hotel room constantly. Yeah, yes,
and that was it was playing in my parents' basement.
I love it too for my entire childhood.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
And so I started watching the video and at first
it just hit my brain as like a slick eighties
MTV music video. And then I started actually, you know,
I sort of you know, you you look at it
from a different angle, and I realized that this is
like an art film. It's not surprising to me that
you say Fellini, because it really is. If you took
the song off this, it would just be completely you know,

(57:52):
baffling and symbolic and dream like. Is it's really cool
that something like that was presented down this like mainstream
MTV pipeline.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah. It was very exciting to get nominated that year
because we thought it was pretty out there. I mean,
we knew that it was slick in the way the
quality of the film because it's done on like thirty
five millimeter film. It was in a high quality video
or film, you know, so we knew it looks like
but we also knew it was pretty out there. So
we were very surprised when we got a letter from
MTV saying we're nominated for our best direction for that.

(58:21):
And I think he did a great job. I think
that was zz top one in that category. But sharp
dressed man, But they cheated because they had two videos
in that category as well, a little bit weighted in
their favor already. But anyway, we got to go to
the awards show and Madonna performed her very iconic performance
like a virgin.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Yes, and you were there and we were all there.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
It was really cool.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Oh my god, was it fun?

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Was it? Yeah? But for one thing, it's my favorite
venue on New York Radio City Music Hall and it
was a great night.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
Yeah, that's a great night. The video got played, got recognized.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Got played quite a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
And how did you feel about the reception of the
numbers with Wings EP mini album major label debut, Most pertinently,
were your Wings spreading ever further? You know, did the
tours get bigger, did the offers for tours.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Got even more frequent, and it opened up a lot
of doors for us, said, I was quite pleased. I
can't really speak for all the Bondos because everyone has
their own perception of what was happening, but I was
very pleased with the way we were able to work
with the label and make a record that we could
be really proud of. I think it was fun having
access to like Jiuliano to make a video, and that

(59:30):
was a good experience for me. I'm me to put
it that way, And they did open a lot of
doors for us to go further and do more because
it's what we wanted to We just wanted to do everything.
We wanted to play everywhere, and we wanted to do
all the things that we possibly could.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
It sounds like the label was happy with it as well,
because sometimes you hear these stories, the album comes out,
and you know, six months later, the phone calls start
getting a little less frequent or a little less friendly
in tone. I guess my whole thing with the major
label debut notion is that one way or another, self
awareness always creeps in creativity, and it sounds like you
did an amazing job and still do an amazing job

(01:00:05):
going with the flow. For lack of a less cliched term,
but were there any moments in these major label days
when you found your compass getting maybe slightly skewed or
harder to read?

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
What was it for you? What? What are your This
is a very personal question, Richard, but what are your
pitfalls creatively?

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Ok? I'll tell you. But it was after numbers of it.
It wasn't during numbers. Numbers of the wings. Was a
continuation of what we had already been doing. Like Richard,
Godterer came into the picture and helped us get a
sound that was a little more. I think we had
a bigger sound, and it's what I wanted a little more.
We all wanted that a little more, you know. But
we love drums along the Hudson, don't get me wrong,
But I thought, well, Kel, we can't just keep doing

(01:00:45):
that same sound. It was a very garage sound, and
we wanted to get like more I don't know, polish
sounding like. We wanted the bass to be bigger, and
because that was our live sound. Yeah, we had a
bigger a big drum and bass sound live and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
You would have changed sound if you had stayed on
fetish racker and kept on putting it out yourself. You
also would have evolved right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
So it was a continuation. But what happened at the
label is what happens at corporations, is that the same
people that signed us are not there a year later.
So Nancy Jefferies was off to I think she went
over to A and M Records, so we didn't We
no longer had our in a way mother figure, even

(01:01:26):
though she wasn't like an older she wasn't that much older,
but she she was a little bit older, but you know,
she was she knew the rope. She was, she was
our She was our real contact at our CIA and
she was the one that directed all of the activities
to the company, you know, so she was she left.
The whole team changed and that caused they did not
some of them who came in did not understand the bongos.

(01:01:48):
Some of them were not labels that had given us offers,
and they bring in their own team, so that then
we had new people. So when we did the next
record for our CA, there was a different tone and
they were looking for singles. The entire company had been
purchased and was part of General Foods did you know that. No,
During a short time, General Foods was in control. So

(01:02:09):
I would try to go to meetings, like I would
actually attend meetings and they're like talking about shelf life
of records, like like if it's a cereal.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
This is the major label nightmare.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And I was like, you know, it's not a perishable item.
You know, we don't have to worry about the shelf
life you know of something. It's like, but they that's
how they spoke. My point is that there's all these
corporations again involve General Electric was involved with our SaaS
and where then they sold it. It goes, you know,
companies change hands. This affects the music and the bands
a lot because you have different people giving you suggestions

(01:02:39):
or taking you out to lunch.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
And now instead of having your champion there, you have
someone whose file you've been assigned to, and their job
is to move the units and to keep the shelf
life yeah extended and it. Yeah, they're going to engage
differently for those reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
And I'll tell you that when we did Numbers with Wings,
Nancy Jefferies never really told us to be more commercial.
She never really said, oh, I need you to write
a single like this, like you know, or you play
me or show me the billboard charts and say I
need something. Also, she was affiliated with. Her husband was
Kurt Mountcasey, who was Philip Glass's engineer and producer. So
she was already from an alevant garde world, so she

(01:03:15):
liked if we were going to be a bit avant garde,
she was down with that, you know. And then the
people that came in, surprisingly in some cases, were way
more commercially minded. And that I say surprisingly because one
of them was had been a journalist that I used
to read his interviews for rock Press and he was
pretty like you know, would frown upon over commerciality. He's

(01:03:39):
no longer with us, and I don't want to speak
badly of anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Well, it becomes your job, I mean, this is part
of what people have to I know, you know this,
but what people have to learn about working. The bigger
the company, the more the people you're working with on
creative work are terrified of getting fired and in their
kids' healthcare benefits, you know, and they have to buy
in exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
But this guy, especially because he had been writing for
like different papers that I would read when I was
a kid, and it was like he loved my bands
like t Rex and never was like about commerciality, and
now he was taking me to lunch telling me he
needed a song that was more commercial. And it was
like I was more than a little taken aback by that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
And that pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
We never signed to a major label with my band,
but we signed to a big enough label that the
conversation of we need a song. Everyone's heard this, this
cliche of like with a label, didn't hear a single,
they didn't hear a hit. Yeah, and there is this
this tyranny of it's true, going back to the beginning,
when you're on the beach, you're getting these forty fives
delivered to your house. Yeah, it's true that a hit single,

(01:04:42):
a really good song, a hang On Sloopy, that's what
does it. That's what carries everyone along. It's just it's
really hard to do that on purpose. Yeah, And then
guys like you find themselves thrust into a role where
someone takes them out for lunch and says, I need
you to write a song as good as hang On Sloopy,
And that is difficult to not just execute, but also
to live with.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
It was annoying in many ways, but we still did
what we wanted to do. I mean, I on Beat Hotel,
so that's the album that that would be the follow up.
I think maybe because of that was sort of like
embedded in my brain over a lunch or maybe a
phone call or too. I think that some of my
writing did get a little more in that direction on

(01:05:26):
Beat Hotel, but not really all of it, and not
most of it. Maybe one or two songs, but still
I just knew instinctively that that was not going to
be a path to success for me or for the
Bongos to be overtly commercial, right. You know. There may
be a hint of that at a song like come
Back to Me, which is on that album. I really

(01:05:46):
liked that song. Now. I think that was like a
very clear, simple phrase that maybe was going into the
direction they're asking for, where it's something they could understand,
you know. I mean they did have questions on like
the first album. I remember even Nancy Jeffries calling me
into the office one day and she asked me what
I meant by when that last bulldozer drives up, Barbarella,

(01:06:09):
I'll be here with you. You're like, what I meant
by bulldozer, I got, well, the last drives up. I
don't know, because it was the phrase and it was

(01:06:30):
a thought, and it was like I was thinking, even
in the end of the world, when things are or
even when things are bombed out and they have bulldozers
clearing the ground. You know, at that point, that was
a thought, right. She as the only time she ever
questioned one of my lyrics. I think that's interesting, Well,
I do. I mean that's a way of writing lyrics
that I think it is often very successful. That like

(01:06:51):
it's almost dream like, not to get too cliche about it,
but pulling these images and just trusting that you've pulled
them out of your brain and they came from somewhere
and they mean something, and you can let the like
the audience can pull their own meaning out of it
and have their own dream with your song. I love
records like that. Like that's why I like Brian ENO's records,
like on Needles in the Camel's Eye and some many
these like his rock albums. You know, they had songs

(01:07:13):
I didn't really understand, but I liked the wordplay. Talking
heads did that too, Yeah, so you know, I didn't
think it was that odd. And it wasn't and they
you know, she certainly didn't. I didn't change that lyric.
I loved it just the way it was, and she
just wanted to know what I meant, I think. But
then it got to the point where they wanted something
more clear, and that's maybe a song like if there's
any song that I wrote for RCA that's clear, was

(01:07:35):
come back to me, and I like it, and I
to me, it's not really about a person. It's about
my muse. It's about my creative it's about come back
to me, my songwriting muse. You know, it could be
that it's not necessarily about a person, but that's the
most clear like statement, title and chorus that I think

(01:07:56):
I delivered to them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
That's really interesting too, because stop me if I'm interpreting
too much out of that brief answer. But you made
beat Hotel, You did that tune looking for your muse
to come back perhaps and wear another and then well,
the band was recording the follow up, which would eventually,
many years later be released as Phantom Train. I know
you said the Bongos never broke up, but you did

(01:08:45):
stop making the record and go your separate ways. Was
it were you feeling like you needed to make a
change to get back to your muse.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
In a way, you know. I also, like I said,
there's also the social aspect and the abuse aspect. And
I the reason that Phantom Train wasn't really I think
a lot of it is my fault. You know. It's
like because I was in it, It was in it
in my head, was in a different universe by the

(01:09:15):
time we're doing the Phantom Train, and it was hard
to focus sometimes and it was hard to complete the album.
Even though I really like Phantom Train, I think it
would have been a good follow up. It was meant
to come out maybe on Island Records. I think you
might know that, or you might not know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
No, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Well, Chris Blackwell really liked The Bond Goes and he
wanted to take us away from RCA. At that point,
Oh my god, we're doing so many shows and we're
just NonStop. We had gone through a year of NonStop
performing and I mean really NonStop, because we didn't take
any days off. And then he came and said, you know,
you should really actually be on Island Records, and we're like,
we loved I loved Island records. I grew up on

(01:09:53):
all those acts I mentioned Eno Roxy Music. All these
are island acts and they were so good. We're very
seduced by him. And he brought us to the Bahamas.
We'd had no contract or anything. He brought us a
compass Point after so this is after Beat Hotel, after
our long tour. It was a winter in New York
and we were in the Bahamas and it was great,
you know, and it was a beautiful studio compass Point.

(01:10:15):
But the thing was, it kept breaking down. The SSL
console was a computer computer run console. The computer kept
crashing and breaking so we had to wait for the
repair crews to come from the mainland US, and we
had many days off.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
I mean, it sounds like a lot of opportunity to
have fun.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
We had a lot of fun, yeah, But also I
was mentally in outer space during much of that, and
it was hard to finish that album. So when we
came back, we did some we had some commitments of
live shows that we had to do. But after that
we started going like a little bit our own separate ways.
A lot of it was survival, I think, like self preservation,
and I started performing in a way different kind of

(01:10:57):
setting low key acoustic cello, no drums. It was almost
like a call mean, I think I needed calm down
a bit, and I think Frank got into like a
band that was doing children's music. Was really cool. But
if you notice, they're all a little more like low
key gym started doing like country kind of. He had
like an expanded band that was not quite as intense

(01:11:18):
when we put it that way. As the bond goes,
Rob was working with some of the members of the
Feelies in some very ambient kind of sounding bands, and
so each of us had our own thing is different,
So it wasn't like a breakup. It was just kind
of like a recovery.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
So I'll bring you back to the myth one more
time because I'm in this space now. You know, I
was in my band for twenty years basically, and we
just we played our farewell show at the end of November,
and now I'm stepping into the uncertain future. And you know,
I think the reason I'm so keen to talk to
you about the Myth is because I'm negotiating my own

(01:11:53):
relationship with it and what it looks like now. Because
for me, the Myth was always like the band was
it that that was the vessel that would take you
to the Promised Land, and you know, it took me
to a lot of wonderful places. And now I've disembarked,
and whether I still believe in the myth or what
that even means or etc. Etc. And I guess I
say all of this other than just to hear myself

(01:12:14):
talk to move rapidly. Now over the years between you know,
the bong goes ending, you starting your solo career, eventually
years later writing your book front Man Surviving the rock
Star Myth, And I guess I just really wanted to
know how writing that book made you look back at
the shape of your career and how as you thought

(01:12:37):
about the notion of the rock Star myth, your experience
of that started to appear to you in like under
the microscope.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Yeah. Well, writing that book was like a meditation, which
I did every night for about a year. That's when
I sort of putting things into what kind of any
kind of perspective because I had not thought about any
of it before. Really, like I said, I just kept going.
I was afraid to look back or look down. I
just wanted to keep going forward and onward. And what

(01:13:06):
I found was that, you know, the way the myth
played out for me was the doors that were open
because of my work with the Bongos, and how I
could use that in positive ways. How my real love
is collaboration, like when I spoke about even collaborating with
Richard Gottter as producer, all my producers and all my
songwriting partners and the Bongos, and it's all about collaboration

(01:13:28):
for me, and I believe that music comes out of that.
I believe the great music comes out of collaboration. You
put it that way. So that was a revelation that
came out of writing the book. You know that rock
star myth can be different for each person. For me,
I feel really fortunate that I can be a professor
at the New School because I love that school, a
super progressive school here in New York. It's called the

(01:13:49):
New School. It's been there for over one hundred years.
I think it's one one hundred and five years now
or something more. It's a great place for me to be.
I can I have students that I love and I
get to teach you boy Greenwich Village the nineteen sixties,
which I wasn't here, but I love it. You know,
I get to do a lot of different things and
I love it, and it's all collaborative. That's the myth
for me. I mean, that's what I wanted really. You know,

(01:14:13):
you may think you want to be on the cover
of every magazine, but then there's all there's a price
to pay for that. Also, there's all kinds of madness,
the anxieties, the illnesses that come out of like people
that are too stressed because of their fame. Yes, there's
a very serious downside. It's more like Elvis.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
It doesn't seem like yet a great time being alive,
you know, and that's what like a tragedy, what a
sad thing that this brilliant kissed by God talent got
it by us.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
So you know, we work out things in different ways.
We all have different paths, and I think that's that's
really okay. So that's good. You know, Like I think
the Bongos never really got like a number one record,
but we really are very happy with the workords that
we made. And they still sound pretty cool to me,
and they they both evoke their arrow, but they also
sound okay now and they you know this strums along

(01:15:01):
the Hudson I think is a was our musical statement
really going to the major label, Like I know, that's
the theme of the podcast. That was really exciting and
a really good fulfillment of what our dream was. But
you know, it's just part of it. It's a part
of our overall picture.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
You've been very generous with your time, and I won't
take up too much more of it, but I have
to ask just what you make of the music business,
the music industry, the landscape of it as it exists
in twenty twenty five. I mean, it's a moment of
transition itself, and I'm really curious what your outlook is
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Okay, it's the music industry has always been in flux,
and it's always changing the format from wire to cylinder,
wax discs, CD, streaming. It's always in flux. That was
a given. I knew that early on because Tiny Tim
taught me about that. When things were going digital, I
signed with a company called Music Boulevard. This is the

(01:15:58):
precursor to iTunes, Apple's Items, and it was a download
service and I was one of the only five artists
that were signed to this company. It was Phil Ramone
and the members the owners of JR. I think was
JRP Records. But these gentlemen started a distribution service that
was going to be digital and you could download an
MP three type format whatever it was. I think it

(01:16:19):
was MP three, but it might have been an other file.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
MP one something.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
It was MP three. It's always MPT three because that's
based on Susanne Vega's song Tom's Diner. Did you know that? Oh? Really, Yeah,
She's considered the mother of the MP three because Suzanne's
a song Tom's Diner was used to create the algorithm
of an MP three, which is so wrong because I
love her, by the way, but it's so wrong because
it's just an a cappella track. There's no music except

(01:16:44):
for her voice. That explains a lot about MP three
exactly exactly. But you weren't scared of them. I'm imagining
this pitch that this distribution company getting laughed out of
major label boardrooms across New York. I'm sure, And yet
you saw something. There's more to the story. So then
they sent me to speak about on many panels and
television shows such as the Wall Street Journal Report, to

(01:17:06):
talk about the validity and the possibilities of music distribution online.
Everyone was shooting me down, saying it'll never happen and
people will always want to go to their record stores,
and I disagreed. I thought, when it becomes so easy
to download music that you don't have to go to
a record store, that's going to take over. But no

(01:17:28):
one believed me, and none of my friends believed me,
and also the interviewers didn't really get it either. So
I kind of knew that it would be going fully
digital end that we'd be downloading music in a short time.
That's why I knew how smart Richard Gotterer was. They'd
start the Orchard and his distribution system and all that.
I mean, I'm not surprised by any of it, but

(01:17:49):
the major labels become secondary when there's no physical product
Number one, number two. Because of the explosion of expenditures
that they had in the eighties and nineties, it was
obviously going to have to cut back on spending because
the companies were spending too much money. Everything was getting
too expensive and they couldn't really make the money back,
especially with not selling physical units. So there's no surprise

(01:18:14):
to me. I still like it, though, because I like
working with Sony on recreating the repackaging of our records.
And also, you know, major labels do have special clout
at streaming services so that you get attention more So,
I believe in both. I believe in everything. I believe in.

(01:18:35):
I believe in independent releases, and I believe in major
labels too. It depends on the artists and the situation
and where you are in your career at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
As it always has.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
The change is constant. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
Maybe that's why it's such an appealing myth because it
can't be pinned down. It never becomes any one thing,
whether that's genre or medium or whatever else.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
It's always in motion. It's like Iota says in Star Wars,
because it always motion the future is, you know, and
that that's how the music industry is. It's always in motion.
It's always changing. But that's what makes it cool.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
Yeah, and that's good to remember when you know, when
you're feeling frustrated by it or stymied by it. You know,
if you don't like the weather, just wait, as.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
They say, yeah, it comes around, it comes around.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Well, Richard, thank you so much. I mean, I feel
like I got a free class here today as well
as other things. And then I can't. I really just
can't thank you enough for your time. We always save
on major label debut the most important, incisive, illuminating question
for last, and we have arrived at the point where
I will ask it. Of course, that question is while
you were in the studio recording your major label debut,

(01:19:37):
what were you eating?

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
That's a good question. Richard Godderer had a special quirk
and that is when we would arrive at the studio,
the very first thing was he would ask for the menu,
so we would already plan the dinner when we arrived
in the morning in the studio, so there was usually
a really good dinner. You know, we're in New York,
so there's so many fantastic restaurants. So the there was

(01:19:59):
all al was a menu book in every studio. I'm
not sure if they you don't really need them anymore
because there's an app for now, you know, but there
was a menu book and it was a big fat
binder of restaurants. So the whole first part of the
session we would be getting ready, getting our guitars tune,
but Richard gotter Er would be going through the menus
and we would have a fantastic dinner and it was

(01:20:20):
because it was planned that way by the producer. That
was part of the tone, like that's gonna be our
reward later. So I think that was like the psychology
was like we're gonna have a great dinner later, so
like just let's get some work done and then we're
gonna have a break. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
It's a nice thing to do, and to remember to
step away and put the instruments down and remember that
your human beings as well as music making robots.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Yeah. I later learned a lot about dinner time in
a session with one producer I later made a solo
album with. His name was Hugh Jones British, and he
would like save certain songs to work on for after dinner,
and certain ones were before dinner because the mood would change.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
I just talked to someone who was saying they had
like a huge pass to dinner before they recorded a song.
They wanted to be heavy so they would be like
slugish and slow. I didn't sound like it worked, but
I thought it was a good that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
Yeah, I mean it really does affect everything.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
So good question, good answer.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Richard barone of the bong goes, see what I mean?
What an eye opening, mind broadening conversation that was certainly
for me and I hope for you as well. I
particularly liked all the talking about Tiny Tim. I gotta
admit I was not familiar with Tiny Tim's game, and
it's just so amazing everything that Tiny Tim did, how

(01:21:33):
Richard Barone's orbit intersected with Tiny Tim's orbit, how Richard
talks about that music, and how Richard talks about music
in general, and certainly the Bongos great career. It was
wonderful to talk to him, and it was wonderful to
recontextualize not just the music of the Bongoes, not just
the music of the nineteen eighties, but music in general.

(01:21:53):
I feel like every week my perspective changes again and
changes again and changes again with each conversation. And the
number one thing I'm learning, which is a trend for
my life, is how much I just don't know. So
thank you Richard Barone for the education, and thanks to
you the listener for listening. I am happy to inform
you the Bongos have reunited. They've had some time apart,

(01:22:16):
but they're back together to celebrate the release of their
first live album, The Shroud of touring, which is out now,
And although this podcast does not always align with current events,
I'm very glad that this episode is dropping just in
time for me to inform you that on May thirty first,
twenty twenty five, The Bongos will be playing at Wonderbar
in Asbury Park, New Jersey. So if you liked my

(01:22:38):
talk with Richard, if you like the Bongos, maybe you
should check out the show. Major Label Debut is produced
as always by John Paul Bullok the Third and by
Josh Hook. Our wonderful theme music is by Greg Allsop.
Please tell a friend about the podcast. We were just
all hanging out and we were talking with Greg Alsop,
our recent guest and great news writer, producer, performer, etc.

(01:23:02):
About how one of the things that's kind of emerging
for us with the podcast is how it seems like
an education for musicians and aspiring musicians. I know that
when I was seventeen and dreaming of rock and roll glory,
I would have loved to have been able to hear
conversations like this with such a wide range of successful
and practicing and practiced musicians. There's so much wisdom on

(01:23:23):
an offer. I'm soaking it up. Myself even now. And
so if you know anyone who's into like pulling back
the curtain, seeing how the sausage gets made, hearing tricks
of the trade, dare I say it from a wide
variety of interesting people, Send them a link to the podcast,
Send them a link to this episode. They might just
like it, and then they can tell ten friends, and
sooner or later, I will be at the tip of

(01:23:45):
a mighty pyramid. And isn't that every rock and roller's
real dream. Thank you so much for listening. It's always
a pleasure to be with you. And of course Major
Label Debut will return with more tales from the intersection
of art and commerce.

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
So long, Hello, I'm back again to tell you that
I aired slightly. I was recording my outro in a
hurry and I made a slight mistake, which is that
I said the Bongos have one show in Asbury Park,

(01:24:19):
New Jersey, on May thirty first, when in fact they
have three shows total. They're in Woodstock, New York, May thirtieth,
Asbury Park on May thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
First, and New York, New York itself on June first.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
So if you want to see the Bongos, you have
not one, not two, but three chances to see them.
Don't repeat my mistake and forget about that. Do go
see the bongos. Thank you for listening to this correction.
That's the end for real this time by