Norman Nardini: Pittsburgh's Uncrowned King of Rock n Roll

Norman Nardini, Pittsburgh’s rock’n’roll powerhouse, has been shredding stages for decades. From playing with legends like Big Mama Thornton to rocking with Diamond Reo and leading The Tigers, his raw energy and songwriting endure. With a career spanning national tours, major label releases, and relentless passion, he remains the "Uncrowned King."

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yah knows it.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This isn't a video.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
And you are Oh, bless your heart. This is the
Coda podcast, chronicle in Pittsburgh's music scene, and welcome in.
I'm Johnny heart Well your host, along with Andy Pugar.
Today we talked to Pittsburgh's rock and roll rebel Norman Nardini.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Work this guitar. I don't usually play this guitar. We'll
make a pump.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, let's put it this one so many in my life?

Speaker 5 (00:42):
Yeah, why talk about yeah right?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Uh, I'm recording now. You keep tuning, you know, because uh,
you know. The the crazy thing is you're obviously a
Pittsburgh legend. But I grew up about an hour north
here Newcastle, Pennsylvania. I would see you in Youngstown. Oh
you played a lot in Youngstown.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
Did I have a lot of friends there?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Still do do you? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah? Do you remember the Agora and the Arcade and
uh yeah, like some of the Cooks.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
I'm not from that now.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
So the clubs that you mentioned in Pittsburgh, I'm like,
I don't know the Tomorrow Club. Do you remember playing
those those places?

Speaker 6 (01:20):
Well?

Speaker 7 (01:20):
And I remember going to the Tomorrow Club and seeing shows.
One of the coolest shows I ever saw in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, was a C d C.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
I was there open up for Mink Deville.

Speaker 8 (01:31):
Yes, oh my god, you were there.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
I was the way I look like.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
I got goosebumps. I could have been hanging out with
or one.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Of the coolest shows I ever saw, because how do
you go on after a d But.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
I didn't know who they were. I didn't know who
they were.

Speaker 9 (01:52):
How far back was this They weren't even known yet.

Speaker 7 (01:56):
No, it might have been in the seventies, seventies. It
wasn't definitely that you're seventy nine. Yeah, I started being
Norman in nineteen seventy nine. Okay, the summer of nineteen
seventy nine, and I was in the Diamonds or Diamond Rios.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
But not the Diamond Rio that you know, the country the.

Speaker 7 (02:11):
Country diamond ree We were. We were kind of like
a pop band out of Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, oh you pop band, but you had some you
had some grip to that band.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well it was it was kind of like the beginning
of Pittsburgh rock and roll.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Diamond Rio was.

Speaker 7 (02:27):
I always say this, the real music scene in Pittsburgh
started on the East Side and kind of started in
Penhills with some Italian guys and I think one Irish guy,
but they let him in.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Uh. I love saying stuff like that.

Speaker 7 (02:43):
If you guys are listening out there, Hey, it's me
the man for a handfu of the wop with the
buff Beguinea with the skinny, the Guido and the Speedo,
the last tru Manheart and Sould, the young, disputed, undefeated,
uncrowned king of Pittsburgh rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
You don't bring out all the rest, let me.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
Put him to the test.

Speaker 7 (02:57):
So anyway, Uh, Diamond Rio was kind of like I
was kind of like the jannit at the studio and uh,
and it was where there was action the first time
I saw organized action in popping rock music in the
nineteen seventies.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
And the guy that on the studio let me.

Speaker 7 (03:14):
I was kind of like a janitor and all the
really talented guys were doing things and I was janitoring
and they'd let me play on Polka sessions. You know,
I played so full of shit, I'm telling you square. Yeah,
But I'm not a really talented guy. I'm a hard
working guy. I'm a follow through guy, and I'm a

(03:36):
maniac workhorse, you know. But you know the talent Guy's
Pete Eulett, Frank Zori Bubbs mckag you know. But my
first project at the studio, the guy at the studio
I had. I played based on the original.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
We're from the Time where with that great football team?

Speaker 7 (03:54):
No, yeah, I played based on the last skylinershit, which
was where have They Gone on Capital?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Do you remember that record? No, it was the last
chart records.

Speaker 7 (04:03):
The Skyliners had. I played bass on it and Larry
Sefers played piano. I played on some Terry Bradshaw's album.
I played on Lou Christie country demos.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Nobody else find that work, but I was doing it.
But anyway, the guy on the studio said, you can.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
I said.

Speaker 7 (04:21):
I didn't write, I didn't sing, I didn't really play
any instrument very well. But I consider myself an arranger.
And I was just this young kid. I didn't even
know what an arranger it was. But I was putting
stuff together and I started this project. It was an
arrangement I did of Dancing in the street, the Martan
de vellet, yeah, the Pandula song. And I got sick
in the middle of the production and went in the

(04:43):
hospital for you know, like a couple of weeks and
while I was in the hospital, the guy that owned
the studio gave the project to Pete Eyulett and they
put out a record on RCA. I believe, Dancing in
the Street. Sweet Pete was name of the act.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Okay, we talked to Pete. Yeah, yeah, Pete's great.

Speaker 4 (04:59):
He's a great guy and really and really talented.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Do you think yeah, he.

Speaker 7 (05:04):
Said he always lear But after that they gave that
to Pete. And then I said to the guy, hey, man,
I started that project. You know, I'm good luck here.
Let me start something else. So I put arrangement together
it Ain't That Peculiar the Marvin Gay song written by
Smokey Robinson, and I hadn't and I had this drummer
that was with me. We were from the time we

(05:26):
were like, you know, teenage boys. He quit high school
to you know, play in a band with me.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Helped them so.

Speaker 7 (05:30):
Much, and I put this Ain't That Peculiar together and
Boss McKay became the singer of it, and he also
played guitar on him.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
And at the time I was good friends with Frank Zori.

Speaker 7 (05:42):
He was also from Penhills with mckaig and and I
said to Frank, you're gonna quit the Jaggers. He was
in the Jaggers at the time and they were making money.
And I said, Tom, you're gonna quit the Jaggers. We're
gonna do real music. We're gonna be a rock band,
We're gonna do all this stuff. I was playing bass
and putting it all together, and uh, Frank said, you
get a record. All caught the Jaggers. So the guy

(06:02):
at the studio and Tom Causey, who was a Pittsburgh
music business legend.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
I need you to talk Tom Cosey.

Speaker 7 (06:13):
They got us a deal with Big Tree Records, which
was the subdivision of Atlantic, and Casey got some juice
going and we got some some chart action National. I
think we're like number two National charts, and we ended
up going to.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
Dick Clark Show. We played on that.

Speaker 7 (06:29):
Uh, but that to me was the beginning of the
Pittsburgh original scene. All the other bands were still doing
cover songs and we stood up and once we did
that project, we started playing out, going out and playing
with Kiss and playing with Ted News and playing with
Kansas and Diamond.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
This is Diamond Rio, right, yeah, yeah. And I was
the bass player okay, And are you familiar with any
of their music? He says, a pop group. But man, mom,
tell me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 5 (06:56):
The name is all I remember.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
It was if if Blois are called the Ramones and
let me let me let me think. Uh, Jay Giles
band had a baby and they left it at the
doorstep of the decade.

Speaker 7 (07:10):
Just like you're talking about having a baby. We allowed
to talk about that.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
But am I am I wrong?

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, you're not wrong?

Speaker 7 (07:20):
Because all we went through eras as Diamond Rio. We
were so green and I was so and we were
all so uh unexperienced. We became this we had a
chart record. We weren't even a real band, you know.
We were guys that were playing in lounge groups and
stuff and we had to but we had Mccaige's singing voice,
Frank Zory singing voice. We brought in Warren King to

(07:42):
play slide and as soon as we had our chart record,
we got on on.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
The road and what was the what was the song
that got charted? And that peculiar? Okay, so that was
that was but that was kind of poppy. Yeah, that
was kind of poppy.

Speaker 6 (07:54):
All right.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
What happened is as soon as we got on the road.

Speaker 7 (07:57):
We started getting him, and we started getting smart and
and and the things started changing. You know, we were
doing dates with Daro Smith and we were studying what
they were doing. So we changed from this pop band
into this kind of like dangerous, insane bunch of maniacs.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
We were young and insane and.

Speaker 7 (08:14):
So yeah, when you mentioned those other acts and those eras,
we passed through all those errors in front of our
fans and in front.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
Of Pittsburgh and it was great. You know.

Speaker 7 (08:26):
It lasted four or five years, and we really did
some amazing stuff. You know, we opened up We Kiss,
a live album. We opened the show for that at
Cobo Hall in Detroit, Yes, into Cobo Hole in Detroit.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
We opened that show.

Speaker 7 (08:39):
We cut our second album at the John Lennon's studio
in New York The Hit Factor in New York City,
but that's where we cut ours. And he wasn't in
town at the time, but his girlfriend was there and
she was hanging out at our studio, and all kinds
of people were there. In fact, the engineer who was
from Troy Hill, they asked them to stay and he
could have had a job in New York City work

(09:00):
at the hit Factory, Okay, the studio where Lennon hung out,
So I mean we cut at Bearsville. We just did
one exciting thing after another, Like I say that Dick
Clark show.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Now, were you writing for any of that? For the
Diamond Rio stuff at all?

Speaker 4 (09:15):
I was writing, but I wasn't a writer. I was
for the big track. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (09:19):
I didn't sing, and I didn't play guitar well, and
I had been a terrible keyboard player. But when I
started the Diamonds, I started playing bass, and I was
an adequate bass player, and I had an arranger's mind,
so I knew what to do, and I knew how
to get everybody else to play what I wanted to play.
So I kind of ran things, but I wasn't the
face of it. Frank was real handsome, and he sang

(09:42):
like as good as beating. Some people would say better
some people say people.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
But I mean in that league.

Speaker 7 (09:47):
And mckaig also sang at a high level, so I
didn't even bother singing much. And then the Diamonds started
getting real crazy and kind of getting out of hand.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
No, I want to know when things get crazy, I
want to know what was it like? What happened. Tell
me some stories.

Speaker 7 (10:04):
I don't like talking about the crazy that we were
in because it was crazy, and you know, it was
the drug era and all that, and I'll just leave
it at that, okay. And I just ran away from
it and I started Norman. It was June of nineteen
seventy nine. I didn't think of my I didn't think
I could sing, I didn't think I could play guitar.
I knew I could write a song, and I had

(10:25):
been writing, and I had been doing all these gigs
and learning stuff, you know, and being a part of things.
And then when I started a Norman thing. The first
gig I did it, I did like a date at
Swissfield High School, and I knew it two minutes on stage.
I was like, you know, this is where I belonged.
And I knew I didn't sing well, and I knew
I didn't play that well. But I was writing great,

(10:47):
and people just started really feeling me out front, and
I instantly.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
Became this thing. Norman north Ay and the Tigers.

Speaker 7 (10:57):
I had these young guys that had a strong but
they were like I was kind of like a skiddy
little noodle, and they were like young guys We were
the first guys to cut our t shirts up and
showed their shoulders and cut it down.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Here showed our chair.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
I remember, this is this is the era. I remember
this was the sex thing. But you had but you
always had this repertoire. You had this, You had the
like you love telling stories on stage. You still do.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
You still do it all the time.

Speaker 7 (11:26):
And I have to tell you, Johnny, no one ever
told me it was a good idea.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
You know.

Speaker 7 (11:32):
The competition and the business types and the music people
always would try to tell you can't do that.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
And people would.

Speaker 7 (11:40):
Sing a song, play your guitar. Once I started, you know,
and the Tigers. I'll tell you this. The first time
I went to New Jersey, I think it was March
of nineteen eighty, there was a kid named Johnny Bonjiovi
that had a group called the Rest.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Hold On hald I think, hold on, hold On. Let
me think if I remember him. Did anything ever happen
to him?

Speaker 7 (12:03):
Yeah, you might have heard him along the way once
he changed his name. But anyway, they called us to
open a show for him. I had my Tigers and
so uh and we knew, wait a.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Minute, but you opened up for bon Jovi like like.

Speaker 5 (12:17):
Before he was bon Joe Like, well no, well not
only that, but like like.

Speaker 7 (12:23):
I think it was twenty twelve, orth two thousand, Yeah,
I think I might have done the arena with him
a cop.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
So you've maintained your friendship. I'm sorry I interrupted yourself.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
Are still buddies?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Good?

Speaker 7 (12:32):
And uh in fact, next time I have like a
standing date the next time I get myself to New Jersey,
have to play his club again.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
It's not really a club.

Speaker 7 (12:41):
It's a restaurant. So when I go out there, I
play at his restaurant.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
It's called something sol Cat Kitchen, Something's Kitchen.

Speaker 5 (12:48):
Yeah, and it raised its money for his charity.

Speaker 7 (12:51):
It's homeless people. Yeah, that eat and it's it's a
great little thing. I do that by myself usually. But
uh so we go out to for this guy and
his band. The rest we did the soundcheck, we were
dogging it and they were stars out there. Johnny I
think it was eighteen or nineteen, but he was pretty
as can be and they were loving him out there,

(13:12):
and they knew about something we still don't know. They
knew that one of them could become an icon. They
knew back to Frank Sinatra, they knew Bruce, they knew
Southside Johnny.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
They were a music area. We're still not a music area.

Speaker 7 (13:32):
But anyway, we opened the show, like I say, we
dogged it at the soundcheck because we knew what was
going to happen, because we had been playing for a year,
and I had been on the road for like, you know,
four or five years with the Diamonds before that, so
I knew what I was doing. And we opened the
show and we just crushed this room. It was called
the Fast Thing. It was a great club. And Johnny's
guitar player, Grabb Johnny, who was in the dress room,

(13:56):
and he said, you better get out here and watch it.
And Johnny come out and stood on the sid out
of the stage and watched, and I could see him
turning white because he knew we were street smart and
we were dangerous and I was insane and so still are.

Speaker 6 (14:10):
And he.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
Kind of fell in love with us.

Speaker 7 (14:14):
And at the end of the gig, Johnny, You're gonna
love this istory.

Speaker 9 (14:18):
Okay, all right, I'll close my ears.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
We have Anny here.

Speaker 7 (14:23):
Finally I'm gonna tell a boy's story in her presence.
So at the end of the gig. We're all getting
our gear off the stage. And the keyboard player, this
guy named Mick Silly Seay, had two.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
Girls with him. You know, they were hanging backstage, and
you know they were they were rock and roll chicks.

Speaker 7 (14:41):
And uh my guitar player Paul Shook, who was the
prettiest Polwalk ever born blue witht eyes. Johnny Lears later took,
not years later, but like a year and a half later,
took the first time he went to England, took Paul
Shook with him just to meet chicks because Shook was
so handsome and he and he Shook knew Shook was
an operator. He was a game he was he was

(15:02):
a closer. I got you, you know, he closed deals.
So anyway, we're all these girls are standing back there
and Paul shokes drunk and he goes like this, we're
all standing on the stage.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
All the people are going.

Speaker 7 (15:12):
He goes, hey, he is, I can't believe you girls
are going home with them when you could come to
the hotel with us right now. And these two girls
they were draped on this guy, Mick, and they walked
off of Mick and they came over and they both
once stood on each side of Paul Shooke Armen.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
He walked him over to the hotel, which was right
next door.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
The Closer, he's a.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Closer, and Johnny watched off. Johnny's watching all this and
he's a kid, you know.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
And he's like, I want to be you guys, you
know what I mean, Because he hadn't been on the
road yet. He hadn't he hadn't lived that kind of
life yet.

Speaker 7 (15:45):
Yeah, and so he started following us, and you know,
he wanted to be. Like that night he says, hey, man,
I want you guys to come home and meet My parents.
Were like, what he wasn't Johnny Bonjob yet. He was
just a kid in a band.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
But we said, yeah, okay.

Speaker 7 (16:02):
So he took us to his mother and dad's house
and his mom made a spaghetti dinner.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
That's awesome. That's awesome, and we just had fun. His
mother just died like a month ago, that's what I heard. Yeah,
she was from Erie. Oh I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
Yeah, she was a polist, she was she was a
playboy bunny.

Speaker 5 (16:19):
Oh she was beautiful.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
Yeah. His dad was a hairdresser.

Speaker 6 (16:24):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (16:25):
But anyway, that's how we got to know Johnny and
like Johnny's uncle owned the power station.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
His uncle was Tony bon Giovi.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, he was NY's real name.

Speaker 7 (16:36):
And uh so he would he was janitor at that studio,
like I janitor at Fox right. Yeah, but uh he
would call me up and say, hey, man, uh I
got to the studio tonight, come up, like seven eight
hour drive. I'd be like, dang, I'm there, and I'd
go to the studio and we'd cut some stuff and
just stay up all night. And it was just that

(16:59):
I was young, and you know, and it was fun
and it was being a part of a real music
place where talent and game mattered.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
I got to watch that and see that it exists.
You know.

Speaker 7 (17:14):
I never saw that here. You know, it was never
there here for me. But when I saw it there,
and it just made me more excited and made me
want to work harder. And so you know, we did
a five year run with the Tigers.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
And let me before we get we continue that narrative.
Take me back. What's your earliest memory of music did
you have? Did you come from a musical family.

Speaker 7 (17:39):
My mother, I don't know if you do, and this
is true in an Italian family. My mother as a precious,
wonderful child.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
My mother.

Speaker 7 (17:49):
When the Frank Sinacher's name was mentioned, my mother made
the sound of the cross every time his name was mentioned.
So in that respect, yeah, Louis Prima, uh Martin, even
Perry Como, you know, well, even Lawrence Woke. I thought
my mother knew Lawrence well because she called him Larry,

(18:09):
just as Larry walking out like some must know them.
But my earliest memories were like, you know, like little
kids stuff. You know, the Battle in New Orleans by
Johnny Horton, like records like that. But the first records
I bought was like shop Around by Smokey Robinson, things
like that Twisting shot by the Izd Brothers fifty and

(18:29):
this great you know. I remember I went to a
party in sixth grade. Were the first time there were
girls at the party, and I brought the record Twisting
Shot by the Ossley Brothers and I was a hit.
I remember one time I was at CBS Records up
in New York City and in the black Rock they
called this building, and they had these square like floors

(18:51):
and I was the one under this thing and there's
this hallway and I see this like force of humanity
walking towards me, and I couldn't see what it was.
And this was in the eighties, and there's this thing
that just keeps getting closer and I can't focus in on.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
I can't see it real good.

Speaker 7 (19:06):
And then finally when I saw it, it was the
Osley Brothers who with all with giant pit pats and
fur coats on, and they were walking down the hall
together and I just like this little grease.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Ball going shack this hoti.

Speaker 7 (19:20):
Because I'm crazy Osley Brothers, you know, who's that lady?
One of the greatest records of all time to me?

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But yeah, I mean, what were you listening to the radio?
And what radio station? Did you listen to?

Speaker 7 (19:34):
WIMAM yeah, Perky Chadwick Yeah, And we also listened to
kqv okay and we were listening to Pirate Games. I
don't know if you know this, and this isn't about me,
but this is cool for us.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
It's Pittsburgh's to know.

Speaker 7 (19:47):
In nineteen seventy two seventy three, when Billy Price and
the Rhythm Games came to Pittsburgh, it was a revelation
because they were the first guys, white guys that played
black music, and so they were the first band that
started bringing soul music to the suburbs and black people

(20:09):
coming to see them, and.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Black people and white people partying together.

Speaker 7 (20:13):
My generation didn't see that in this time, and they
were the first guys to do that. And when I
got to know Billy, I was talking to him and.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I says, I says, how'd you guys end up here?

Speaker 7 (20:25):
Because you know, Billy's from Jersey and most of the
guys are Philadelphia in that area. And he said, he says,
I'll tell you what, man, He's a big baseball fan.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
He says.

Speaker 7 (20:34):
When I was a little kid, we watched listen to
Katie Ka because we got it out here. I'm waiting
to hear Pirate games and I would hear Bob Prince
talk and it just was so fascinating and so exciting
to me. When we all graduated college at the same time,
we wanted to move somewhere and be a band. I

(20:54):
kind of pushed and forced Pittsburgh in because of my
love for Bob Prince.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
How about that, Where did you go to school?

Speaker 4 (21:01):
I went to Churchill High School?

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Okay, but do you go to college at all?

Speaker 7 (21:05):
I went to Berkeley, but I didn't stay long which Berkeley,
Berkeley School Music in Boston, and I startied arranging and
that was right before I started working at SO.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
You had so take me back, when did you pick
up your first instrument? What were you playing my first instrument?
I was six years old. It was nineteen. I'm seventy
four years old. I was six years old and my
parents bought me an accordion.

Speaker 5 (21:31):
Oh my gosh, I started with the accordian.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
I had any brothers I did want.

Speaker 5 (21:36):
At the time.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
At the time, there's so many guys that have started
with the accordion. It was crazy.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (21:43):
I always say this, what do you do when a precious,
wonderful child is born and this poor child is only
half Italian?

Speaker 4 (21:55):
You know what you do?

Speaker 7 (21:57):
Let me tell you, Johnny. You act like nothing's wrong anyway.
But I started on accordion and I played that for
a while. But I learned how to read music and
I learned how to play a little bit. But then
when I got to be ten or eleven years old, I
got a guitar, an acoustic guitar. My mother took me,
my dad and mother took me to guitar lessons down

(22:20):
in East Liberty, like group lessons, you know, they'd be
like ten people in one guy teaching. This old Greek
guy was showing us how to play chords and stuff.
And then by the time I was fourteen, I was
in my first band. I got paid for my first
gig nineteen. It's actually sixty years ago. This year was
my first gig.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
What was the first gig? Where was it?

Speaker 7 (22:38):
It was right around the corner from the house I
live in now, because I bought my parents' house and
in a garage in their backyard. I pass it every
day and they put us in the scarage. They paid
us twenty five bucks.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Which is a lot of money for a fourteen year old.
Five bucks a man, that's right. Do you remember the
songs that you played that day?

Speaker 7 (22:58):
A little bit like Round Ron by Chuck Berry maybe
be caused by the Dave Flark five, which I just
recently dug up and relearned stuff like that. It's rolling
stones Chuck Berry maybe Venturers whiteout stuff like that. And
I played guitar, and I had a far Visa organ,

(23:20):
like one of them red cheesy organ sounds like ninety
six tiers they like, that's what they used on that record,
Like and I played both of those instruments. I didn't
sing at all, and I really didn't think I could
ever play guitar well. I never thought I could sing well.
I never even imagined that I could be a singer.

(23:41):
I never imagined that I could be a good guitar player.
I really didn't have any self belief other than the
fact that I knew. I was already studying how music
worked as fourteen, because I had played according to learn
how to read music. And then when I was a senior,
and I played bands through all through high school, and
when I was a senior in high school, they offered
this course called the Music Theory and Harmony. And I

(24:03):
didn't have good grades in school because I was gigged
all the time, and I wanted to get in the course,
and they wouldn't let me in because my grades weren't
good enough. So my mother went up to the high school.
She said to the principal, she says, how many of
the children in Norman's class do you think you're going
to end up becoming professional musicians? The principal said, I

(24:23):
don't think any of them. She says, well, you know what,
he already is a professional musician. He makes money, he
brings money home every week. He wants this class, and
you got to put him in it. There's no sense
in denying the one kid who's already a professional. So
the principal said, you know what, if he we'll let
him in. But if he don't get good grades, we're throwing.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Them out to do great. Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
I was like, I'm not throw it out.

Speaker 6 (24:48):
Oh No.

Speaker 7 (24:49):
I studied because even when I went to Berkeley, it
was during the time I.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Would say, you had to have good grades to get
into Berkeley.

Speaker 7 (24:56):
Yeah, they didn't care about my school my school grades,
do you know what I mean? Berkeley didn't care about it.

Speaker 5 (25:04):
They had your audition and all that.

Speaker 7 (25:06):
They When I went to Berkeley, it was weird because
it was the time of Vietnam and all the kids
that were going to college were kids that were trying
to get out of Vietnam.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
Yes, there was a deferment, and I was.

Speaker 7 (25:17):
Trying to go to learn. I wanted to study big
like arranged for franksin auntr and stuff like that. That's
what was in my head. And since I had studied
theory and harmony in high school, an extremely difficult course
and I learned, and those things I learned in that
class in high school were still the principles I used
today to produce music.

Speaker 6 (25:38):
You know.

Speaker 7 (25:38):
So I learned, but I didn't know that how much
I learned. I didn't realize there was I mean, there
was a million more things to learn, but the things
that I learned were the foundation and the rock of
how it all works.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
All right, So when you're fourteen fifteen, you're playing in
the band, do you remember the band's name.

Speaker 7 (25:56):
Yeah, the first band I was in was called This
is Us. The second band I was called this is Them.
The second man was called the Omens. Okay, oh, it's
any name. See how love with the names that these rock?

Speaker 3 (26:11):
You know? You know when they first started?

Speaker 4 (26:13):
Well, check this out.

Speaker 7 (26:14):
When I was sixteen, I was watching Channel thirteen and
there was a show on I think it was called
The Place, and they were playing videos of local bands. Okay,
this is nineteen sixty six, and I saw this band play.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
They were called the yard Lease. And I was watching it.

Speaker 7 (26:33):
With my mom and I said, and I said to
my mother, I says, hey, I says, I'm going to
be in that band.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
I'm going to join that band.

Speaker 7 (26:41):
My mother says okay, And that weekend I went to
the Varsity House, which was a teenage nightclub in Oakmont,
which is where everybody hung. It really was a great
little musical place. It was all cover bands, none of
us really wrote songs, but it's where the best musicians
hung on the best.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
It was real competitive, good looking girls, you know, young girls.

Speaker 7 (27:02):
And that band that I saw on TV like Saturday afternoon,
Sunday evening or Saturday night was playing there. The yard
leads yeah, and the guy in the band said hey.
Or keyboard player or organ player they called it. Then
is leaving the band if there's anybody that knows an
organ player looking for work.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Oh, this is the best part of the story.

Speaker 7 (27:25):
At the time, I was being harassed by the straight
kids in my high school because I had long hair.
So I went home and shaved my head and shaved
off one eyebrow.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
And came back to school the next day. I was like,
how you like me now? We old buddies. We fit
in here, cool with you guys, and never screwed with
me again. They were afraid of me because I was
such a nutcase.

Speaker 7 (27:47):
But when I saw this, when I saw this musician,
I said when he said, you know, we're looking for
an organ player. That's how I looked, Oh okay. And
everybody had long hair then, and I had to shave
that in one eyebrow. It was like a punk rock weirdo,
you know, and I didn't even know what punk rock was.
I got another story about that, but anyway, so I

(28:10):
went an audition and I became you know, I became
the organ player in the Arlies.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
And it was really.

Speaker 7 (28:18):
The drummer was a guy named Robbie Johns, who became
my best friend. You know, the first guy you smoked
a joint with, you know, the first guy that you
you know, helped cover it up when he was threw
up because he drank too much, the first guy that
told you about being with women, you know, all those
things that and me and him, he quit school, you know,
two years after I got with him, and then we

(28:39):
just became musicians and he was with me. He was
the basis for me starting the Diamonds because I had
a soldier and you know, I wasn't a singer.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
I wasn't a guitar player. I wasn't a songwriter.

Speaker 7 (28:49):
But I was a bandleader and I heard things and
I would put music together. When you play with me,
I want even as a teenage boy, I wanted you
to play things the way I wanted them. And I
was crazy about it. And so a lot of people
thought I was a weird kid.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, he still is.

Speaker 7 (29:06):
I mean, you know what I mean. Oh, I wanted
to tell you this, but I forgot it. This is
so great. What in these times? In the sixties, there
was this this guy that put on dancers.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
His name was Bob Mack. It's kind of you know.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
About Bob Man.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
No, I don't love and Lodge.

Speaker 5 (29:22):
He was in Lodge.

Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yeah, the Blue goose Er and yeah, we had you know, mckeesports.

Speaker 7 (29:30):
There was a club and he had five or six clubs,
like a circuit of clubs, and he would bring accent.
And he hired me two different times to pretend I
was somebody I wasn't. He hired me to pretend I
was in a man called the Cherry People. They were
from DC. They had a hit hot And then he
hired me to be in a band called the Sonics,
which a lot of people say is the first punk

(29:51):
rock band in existence. And they're from Seattle and they
were out in the nineteen sixty he had a song
called the Witch Psycho were their songs and they're really
cool band, kind of like.

Speaker 4 (30:02):
Like Louie Louie that record.

Speaker 7 (30:04):
Okay, Yeah, they were kind of like that, only a
little bit wilder louder and they and looking back, people say, well,
that was the first punk band in America, the Sonic.
So he hired me to do those two things. Also,
you pull it off both times, Yeah, nice, both times.
Nobody because nobody knew the difference because they didn't because because.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
You didn't have videos.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
You know, you have YouTube.

Speaker 7 (30:28):
Yeah, when I first put out my first records, cause
he said to me, I says, well, what do you
think we should put on the on the cover.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
He says, put the band on the cover.

Speaker 7 (30:36):
I says, well, maybe we could do some mart He says,
oh no, he says, you put the band on that way,
no one can pretend they're you. And I'm like, I
had never even thought of it, even though I had
done it. But a couple of years later, when I
was seventeen or eighteen, I had this organ I had
by that time, I had bought a Ham and B

(30:56):
three organ, and I got hired to rent my organ
to Billy Preston.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
Oh Wow.

Speaker 7 (31:06):
So I went out and ranted my organ to Billy
Preston and hung out with him.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
And we're hanging out together.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Nothing from nothing least one of.

Speaker 7 (31:15):
The greatest musicians all the time, Beatles everything and Stones Yeah.
And there was a poster on the wall at the
gig and it said coming in two weeks Sli in
the family Stone Wow.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
And I said to Billy Preston.

Speaker 7 (31:27):
I said, I said, I said, Sly Stone, I says,
you know, we just learned all the songs from his
new album, danced the music that album that had just
come out. Here's let me tell you some kid, I says,
what's up? He says, I taught Sly everything he knows.
And then he goes he he had a big gap
in his teeth, and then he smiled. He goes, he said,
I taught Sly everything you know, he says, but I
didn't teach him everything I know.

Speaker 6 (31:49):
And I like wow.

Speaker 7 (31:52):
And then Sly came and I rented my organ to
him as well. So I hung out with him. With
Billy Preston ansline like nineteen sixty eight, I see Bob
Seeger in nineteen sixty seven, playing three piece on that
same club.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Circuit box system.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
YEP backed up.

Speaker 7 (32:07):
Little in any anything, Imperials, the Detroit Emeralds, the Manhattans,
Messa Acts. I would back up play in Oregon or
playing bass and even a little bit of guitar if
they couldn't find anybody real good, you know.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
So when you get to Berkeley, you're not writing, You're not. No.

Speaker 7 (32:24):
I had no idea that I could I had no
idea that I could sing.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
I had no idea that I could really be a
real guitar player.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
When you were in Boston, did you play play Game
all the time?

Speaker 4 (32:34):
I played?

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Did you have a band?

Speaker 7 (32:36):
Yeah, okay, city Lights? And I was hired by these
other guys you know that. And that was the first
time they made me sing. And the lead singer go, man,
you've had a good singing voice. I'm like, no, man, no, no, no, no,
I ain't never going to do that. I never thought
that I could sing. And until I was in the
Diamonds and I got too loaded, I think I might

(32:58):
have done appeal a feel that I shouldn't have done.
And I sat in I had this punk rock club
called the Face three, you know, the second gig the
Police played in America, was at my club.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
I booked them there.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Oh really in Swissfeld.

Speaker 7 (33:13):
And and I was hanging at it's called the Face,
there was a punk rock club and one night, like
I say, I gotloaded and I got up and sang
like see you later, alligator or something like that, and
I just went, man, that's fun.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
You know what.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Diamond Rio had a bit of an edge. It was
almost because.

Speaker 7 (33:31):
That, Yeah, we didn't start with it because we didn't
know you could, like the first record come up the
record at.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
The time we saw you, it was probably well, it was,
it was.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
It was.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
It was edgy.

Speaker 6 (33:42):
It was.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
It was when we look back and see what punk
rock is. It's not like the you know, the the
English version that you weren't the sex Pistols, but you
were more like the MC five and the Ramones.

Speaker 7 (33:56):
And had I got offered to join the MC five.
I was when the Sex Pistols were coming to Pittsburgh
to play the only theater, the Oner Theater in Homestead.
The opening act was Diamond Rio. So I was in
that circuit like crazy, and I was hanging out in
New York City. We know, we cheated from uh you
know all them guys. Uh, the Ramones, you know, the

(34:18):
with the Ramones.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
The CBGB crowd, you know that's yeah.

Speaker 5 (34:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (34:21):
I played CBGB's in the summer in nineteen seventy nine.
Wow crushed. Yeah, Oh yeah, I played but You're Norman now,
Norman Nordiny and the Tigers okay, all right? And I
played that gig with the three as a three piece.
I had this kid, Derek Edwards, black kid who passed
away a couple of years ago. I took him to
New York with me.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
And what was the club like, because you know, it
was very cool because it's small, yeah, but not too small.

Speaker 7 (34:50):
It was like, uh, you know, it was funny. I'm
trying to think of it. Do you remember the decade? Yeah,
of course, it was kind of like that, maybe a
little bit bigger and but a little bit more official.

Speaker 5 (35:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
The stage was high. It was a long, thin room
and you could see the bands there and so it
was kind.

Speaker 7 (35:12):
Of like like a lot of New York City, everything
is just a structure and then when you rent it,
you go in and you do what you do.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
So they set it up to be a.

Speaker 7 (35:21):
Showroom, you know, and that's what it was when I
played it and it was. That was the summer in
nineteen seventy nine, and I had just started being Norman
like a month before.

Speaker 4 (35:31):
That, maybe two months.

Speaker 7 (35:34):
But as soon as I started being Norman, I got
over it, like instantly. And when I started gig booking gigs,
I'd call and say, hey, I want to play a club.
I said, well, what about let's talk about money. I said,
we don't have to. I said, I'm going to charge
your cover charge. You do what you do.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
I'm gonna do what I do. And I started making money.

Speaker 7 (35:51):
People started coming out because for some reason, it was timing,
you know, it was the culture. And so I just
started making money and started becoming famous. And throughout that
whole era of the eighties, you know, I started being Norman.
And like I say, in the summer in nineteen seventy
nine through like nineteen eighty five, I played with the Tigers.

(36:13):
When you take all the other bands in Pittsburgh, you
add up all the gigs they did, all of them
put together, didn't do as many gigs as me and
the Tigers did. They didn't play as many cities. Well
to Tigers. We broke Cincinnati, we broke Columbus, we broke Cleveland,
we broke Jersey, we broke New York City, we broke Erie.
We never broke Philadelphia. We tried, you know, we tried Boston.

(36:34):
Never broke that.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
I mean, but we were the band that did the work.

Speaker 7 (36:39):
By far and away more than any of the other
bands all put together.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
I mean, that's just real. And that was like and
it made me crazy.

Speaker 7 (36:51):
You know, I'm a compulsive maniac as a person and
still am. It's like, I'm a nutbag. I have a
studio and I just worked constantly.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Have you done any other job other than you ever?

Speaker 7 (37:04):
Well, when I went to college, the first couple of
months I was there, I needed to get an amplifier,
So I got a job at Phileen's department store.

Speaker 10 (37:13):
Oh Filein's I know that name. Filean's basement was like yeah, yeah, yeah,
sales role, which nadies did come in. But I worked
in the kitchen there for a couple of two three months,
I got enough money to buy an AMP and I
and then you're out.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
Then I started playing with that fan of.

Speaker 7 (37:26):
City Lights, and then when I come home from college,
I started playing in lounge groups. And then I got
a chance to play with this band that was really cool.
There were like a lot of guys, a couple of
guys from Philadelphia and a couple of guys from pan
Heel's Italians, and they were called Borrowed Time and they
lived in Cincinnati on this farm and they hired me

(37:48):
mckag don, Siplicky and my buddy Robbie Johns. That guy
told you about it. He was called the Beadman. That
was his name, his street name, Beadman. And so we
moved to Cincinnati and played with them for seven eight
months and played all these gigs, and then I came
home and joined the lounge group for a couple of years.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
And when I was in a lost lounge group, like
what kind of songs are you? Are you talking like
Sinatra's Dance?

Speaker 7 (38:14):
No, but I can talk about that in a minute,
because I just had an experience. I had about out
of body experience with Sinatra. But anyway, it was we
were doing like three dog night songs, okay, stuff like that,
and some soul music because we were always more into
soul music than people from the other from the north

(38:35):
or the South.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
In Pittsburgh, theast.

Speaker 7 (38:37):
The Pittsburgh the East Side musicians were more about soul
music than any of the other musicians in time. You know,
we were crazy about the rascals, you know, the soul
survivors and the black acts. You know, we were studying
that stuff. You know, the Dell's, you know, the Tempts
and the poppier stuff. We were just crazy about black music.

(38:59):
And then when Billy Prece came in the seventies, it
was a natural for me because.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
It was you had you heard it?

Speaker 6 (39:08):
Yeah, it was me.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
You know.

Speaker 7 (39:10):
I met my old lady in nineteen seventy five down
in West Virginia. She come up here and I said,
I want to take you out to see a man
that I like. This is what I'm into, you know,
we're just getting to know each other kids, and I
take her to see Billy Price. Well, the band was
called the Rhythm Kings, yeah, downtown at the grog shop,
and she had never seen them. They didn't have like

(39:31):
white people listening to black music in West Virginia, you know,
and she's like, looking around, they still don't maybe so,
but I mean it was like it was a unique situation.
And then Chris Patterini was in the band right beside
me and my old lady she was.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
Like the sweetest little hillbilly girl. This club owner that
they had played the night before.

Speaker 7 (39:51):
He looks at the guy and the guy was real
big and Christmas like my size, and he goes, hey, man,
they start swearing at each other.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Christmas Maxim right punches them right in the face. The
guy falls on the worse christ is kicking them, And
I'm sitting here with her, like two feet away from this,
and this is the show I take her to say, Like, dude,
she's from West Virginia.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
That happens on a Wednesday.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
She's old billy, she's We're still together forty nine years.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Amen. That's amazing.

Speaker 7 (40:19):
Yeah, beautiful, But hey, I've had this crazy, insane life.
I mean I couldn't and men think that. You mentioned
Frank Sinatra Johnny the other day. Who Angelina is. She's
like a local girl. She's just turned out.

Speaker 9 (40:35):
Yeah, she's a young she's yeah, blind girl.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
Yeah, yes, yeah, I've been hanging out with her.

Speaker 6 (40:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (40:42):
I just cut too strong. I just I cut us.
A couple of years ago. Moonnok's had an autism Autism Act.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah, because she sings with the Uh the uh.

Speaker 5 (40:52):
The Christmas Band Band Together, Band.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Together yeah, and thank you for participating with that every year.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Thanks certainly. I love it.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
Well.

Speaker 7 (41:00):
The moondog came to me and he said, hey, I
want the autistic kids to play at the blues festival,
and it's your job to make it happen, and it's
your job to make it work musically.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (41:12):
So I went and got with the kids and I
said to them, I listened to what they were doing.
I says, look, here's what's up. I says, we're going
to do this. I says, but we ain't gonna do
none of the songs that you guys are doing. I says,
this is a blues blues event. I says, so I'm
going to write. You're going to sing songs I write,
and that's what we're going to do. So that's what
we did. So I taught them like five or six

(41:33):
of my songs, maybe one cover song or something, and
we did. I got this song called you Go your
Way and I'll Go Mine, and I had her sing it,
and right when I taught.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
It to her, she I said, that's she can't see.

Speaker 7 (41:46):
So you don't write the words done, you just you
talk them, you know, And and she remembers them like
like I wasn't prepared for.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
And I says, I says, you want to charge singing that?

Speaker 7 (41:58):
And we're sitting in the back room and moondogs where
the autistic kids hang out and that they have their
own shore.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
So she sings my song back to me and I'm like,
I said.

Speaker 7 (42:09):
This kid can sing. So we played the Blues Festival.
This was not last year, but the year before. I
think it was last year, and she got a standing ovation,
well deserve yeah, and I was like, so recently I
just had I had took her in the studio and
cut that and I'm still working on that. But while
I was in there, I started feeling her. So I

(42:30):
wrote a song for her and she hasn't been in
to sing it yet, but it's called the Love in
My Heart and August. Sometime in August, I'm gonna sneak
her in there and have her sing it. And it's
like I got love in my heart. I know, I
do it shunds like a beacon. After all, I've been
through cold wind's blowing days that have been dark, but

(42:50):
I got love in my heart. I got love in
my heart. It makes me strong feeling the school just
can't be wrong. You know, my heart's pumping right off
the chart. I got love in my heart and it's
like a gospel thing. So I can't wait to do
that with her. But anyway, the other day she had
a birthday, so I went and my bass player, Harry Bottoms,
came with me to do to play the party, just

(43:11):
for fun.

Speaker 4 (43:13):
And there was this piano player there. I'm sure you
know his name's Dave Chrissy.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
Sure I do know him very well.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
Yes, So he's watching me.

Speaker 7 (43:24):
You know, I did like an hour by myself, just
talking my crap and playing my songs. And I take
a little break and I start jacking with him and
he says, I says you. I says, you got your gear.
I says, come out and play a little bit. And
I says, I'm want to watch you work. So I'm
watching him work. And then he says, come up and
sing something with me. So I said, hey, you know

(43:44):
what he Frank Sinatra.

Speaker 5 (43:45):
Oh, Dave, he would know all that, yeah.

Speaker 7 (43:49):
And he says, yeah I do. I says, you know
all the way when somebody loves.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
You, Look, I got goosebumps. People like I think there's
a resurgence in the appreciation what Frank was able to do,
his phrasing, his mannerism. He was he yeah, he was,
he was. He was music's first superstar. He his his brightness,

(44:17):
eclipped everything that you know Michael Jackson, Elvis, I mean,
he was just he was. People just didn't realize. But
then his story. Then he plummeted, then he came back,
and then he plummeted and came back his story. I
know that Scorsese is supposed to do a movie really
and you.

Speaker 7 (44:35):
Know, wow, I know I wish my mother was. I'm
gonna start crying.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
But anyway, go ahead.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
So so anyway, I says, do you know that song?

Speaker 1 (44:43):
He goes, yeah. So I said, you want to blow
it out? He says, he says, that's okay.

Speaker 4 (44:48):
I never I do it, and I play. I played
piano a little, but I'm not very good.

Speaker 5 (44:53):
That's a fantastic player.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, and he swings yes.

Speaker 7 (44:58):
So so we start doing it and I'm starting to
feel them and it's quiet, and it's just the bigness
of my voice in a range that I don't normally singing,
in a tone that I don't normally sing, and I
just do when I play piano. Sometimes I go to
nursing homes and just play for people.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Because my mother died in a nursing home.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
But I started doing it and I just felt this
swag shwag.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
I was shwagging.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
And as sooner as ever goes, do you soun great?

Speaker 1 (45:34):
I don't say that.

Speaker 4 (45:35):
I don't talk nice to me. I said, okay.

Speaker 7 (45:37):
Then I says, hey, do you know smart when you're smiling?
By Louis Prima, he starts banging it. We do that,
and then I said, he, do you know another Frank
Sinancier saw? And so we did like three or four
songs like that, and at the end of it, I
said over the microphone, I says, I got to tell
you Hunter's out there. I've been doing this sixty years,

(45:59):
and I says I've never done what we just did
right here today, says I never felt.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
The power of Frank, and I never did that before.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
And I'm high as a loon. I says, I'm most
leave a couple two, three days. But anyway, I want
to mention something. When you were talking about Frank, and
I could see it in your eyes and in your heart,
the way you described his essence and what I want
to say, is this. I think Frank was one of

(46:29):
the first guys that transcended the music, you know, whereas
you know Johnny Cash did it years later, Willie Nelson
has done it. These guys that are bigger than their
music because of Stevie Rayvaughan. These people become iconic, their

(46:53):
music becomes iconic, but them as people also rises above.
And I try to talk to young musicians about it,
and I'll say to them, hey, if you really get
into this, and you really dedicate your life to this,
the goal is to transcend the music.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
You aren't just recording a song, you aren't just writing
a song. You're becoming bigger than that.

Speaker 7 (47:16):
And Frank Sinuntra, I think it was one of the
first guys in America that transcended a song and transcended
his career, transcended his movies, his essence. And I saw
it on your face, you felt it, and like that's
still available.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
Well, you couldn't separate the singer from the song.

Speaker 7 (47:34):
Because the singer was was so human and so alive
and so iconic. And it's the same with Willie, you know,
it's like they even a Waylon Jennings, you know, some
of these guys, you know, bb King. They transcend everything
they do, just the humanity of who they are.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
And isn't that amazing that we're lucky we've you know,
there's only a handful of individuals like that.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Yeah, That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
And it's like and when you call, when you when
you think of a hierarchy of Frank is among If
he's not number one, he's you know, you can make
an argument at Elvis. But to me, Frank was his voice,
I mean, the story.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
To certain people, he's better than all of us, you know.
And and.

Speaker 7 (48:30):
But his essence, just like Elvis's essence, rose above him.
Was like, there's this thing above them that.

Speaker 9 (48:37):
Did you ever hear the story that he learned to
breathe from watching who was a Tommy Dorsey? He was
with Tommy Dorsey's band when he started, Yeah, and when
Dorsey played trumpet or I'm sorry I don't remember that much, okay,
but he had to learn but you take a breath
on one side of your mouth while you're playing the
other side of your mouth.

Speaker 5 (48:57):
And he used to watch that.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yeah, getting back to Norton, where did you learn your essence?
You're you're You're very unique on stage. We were kind
of kidding how you love to tell stories on stage? Well,
where do you? Where did you develop that?

Speaker 7 (49:18):
I'll say it like this, just from constantly being the job.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Like I said, I started off as an arranger, and.

Speaker 7 (49:32):
So I was when I was playing an instrument, I
was always worried more about what everybody else was playing,
even while we were playing. I was always concerned about
the whole product. I was always extremely every if the
bass drum, if the drummer hit an extra bass drum,
I heard it and felt it, and I'd pointed out,
not in the mean way, but in a leadership way,

(49:54):
and like, hey, we don't do that. We don't get
happy feet. We need this banging, you know. And I'm
like a little kid, think see these things. And then
as I grew older, then I like, after I got
thrown off of CBS, I was like, you know, forty
years old, and I started studying guitar, like crazy studying guitar.

(50:15):
So I screwed my hands up and I uh, but
I found the voice on guitar. I never became a
great guitar player, but I found a voice and that
was so I had this arrangement mentality. I had this
guitar playing mentality, uh like around the year two thousand
and I I still never thought I could play guitar well,

(50:38):
but I could feel myself being competitive. And then around
two thousand and I started thinking about singing well because
I never considered it because I never thought I could.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
So I'm fifty years old at that time, maybe fifty
five when I started working on my singing, and I
started working more deeply on my writing and trying to
say things that were significant.

Speaker 4 (51:02):
And so through the course of all those phases.

Speaker 7 (51:06):
And then as and the whole time I'm gigging from
nineteen seventy nine, I started being at the front of
the stage and so I'm playing for the same people
in the same rooms in different but in different cities.
And so I started and it's crazy to say, but
the radio never played my music and so I and

(51:27):
I didn't do cover songs. So what I needed to
do was trick people into staying in the room long
enough for me to trick them into like the music.
So I would talk to them and break their balls,
you know what I mean, and make them laugh and
like woolf on the Chicks, not seriously wolf on them, but.

Speaker 4 (51:50):
You know, play with them and have fun. I'd be
a boy.

Speaker 7 (51:53):
You're a girl, you know, and uh from the stage
and with guys, you know, and so that, And like
I say, the whole time, people saying, don't do that.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
That's terrible, that's stupid. You can't do that. Nobody else
does that.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
But I knew it was right because I've known it
coming back.

Speaker 7 (52:10):
But since I was not included in the club of
the guys in town here that were acknowledged as people,
I always say it like this.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
I was.

Speaker 7 (52:20):
I became a rock and roll catfish, and I lived
off the bottom of the tank because I wasn't allowed
to celebrate any of the events that were significant.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
What do you mean.

Speaker 7 (52:31):
I wasn't invited to shows where the people that were
who I consider my contemporaries were being celebrated and presented.
I wasn't allowed on those shows, so I could never
got into I never got corporate approval, so I could
never make that kind of money and never develop that
big of an audience. Because I was I was a catfish.
I was put to the bottom of the tank. And

(52:53):
I still say it to this day. I've been on
the bottom of the tank so long, I learned to
like the taste of and that makes me dangerous. And
so when you say how did I develop any type
of character? I developed out of circumstance and out of need.
And I think it was always there, you know, the
personality that I use when I'm working, because I have

(53:15):
an uncle with my dad.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
You know, they were like.

Speaker 7 (53:18):
Very unique men, and they knew how to finess, you
know what I mean. They knew how to walk in
the room and have better looking people, more intelligent people,
richer people sit down and listen to their bull crap.
And so I look at myself as someone kind of
like that. You know, I've learned how to finesse an audience,

(53:42):
how to trick people into listening to me. How I
learned how to write songs better than everybody else by
doing it and taking it to the people they never
heard the song before. Hey, it's easy to get keep
it a clapped to a song they like. You go
in a room, play for four hours of songs you
wrote they never heard. We'll see what you got in
your pants, you know what I mean. And That's how

(54:04):
I've lived my whole life. So I'm a I'm like
a club fighter. I'm like, you don't want to get
in a ring with man.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
But you had some You've been signed by labels?

Speaker 7 (54:13):
Is I was on CBS, I did so, tell me,
but the radio never played my music.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
Okay, well take me back. What was the process? What
was it like for you to be to be signed
by CBS?

Speaker 4 (54:26):
Now?

Speaker 3 (54:27):
That was that was that was the Tigers, right with
the Tiger. Okay, so what was that process? The best
part is this?

Speaker 7 (54:34):
The first album I made was I was playing the
Agora for WMMS YEP. I would have coffee break concerts,
like at nine o'clock in the morning and they would
record them, and so I did, and I was crushing
in Cleveland. I played every room. I mean, they've just
you know, the chick from the Pretend. We just were

(54:55):
opened for the Pretender. It's her first date in Akron
was at the Blossom. I opened that show and.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Really she just played it.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
The first time she played it. I opened the show
and my reviews were much better than hers. And that's
her home time.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
That's real. You look that up.

Speaker 7 (55:11):
But anyway, I'm playing the coffee break concert and I
recorded it and I wanted to release it. So I
had some buddies in New York City and they hooked
me up with Buddha Records. And the guy that owned
Buddha Records was the biggest gangster of the music business.

(55:36):
Like the Cadillac Records movie where they talk about these
record executives that would never pay their artists, that's who
I was. I was on his label and he had
hurt people and probably knock some people off. His name
was Morris Levy, And so I'm up at promoting that
album and Morris isn't around, and I'm in this room
like this, and we're making phone calls promoting this album

(55:57):
Eating Alive, Eating a Live. It's my first record, is Morman.
And I says to the guy from the glabel, I says, hey, man,
I says, there any place we can go to smoke
a joint.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
He's like, you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
I says, we'll get I says, let let's just run
down the street.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
He says, we're in mid Tin.

Speaker 6 (56:11):
He says you.

Speaker 7 (56:11):
He says they had frown on that right now. I says, says,
there a staircase we'd go to take a couple of hits.
He says, they can't do that in the building. We
don't want you doing it.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
And he says, that's out out of the question.

Speaker 7 (56:21):
So we worked for another half hour so and he
leaves the room and I went my buddy ray Gun.
I says, dude, I says, I need to take a hit.
He says, I'm with you, and I says, come on.
So we go out out of that little cubby and
we're looking around and we see this nice, beautiful office
and there was no one in there, and it was
quite dead quiet in there, and I said, come on,
were siting there? We take a couple of hits. I

(56:43):
found out later it was Morris Leavey's off. He was
in Florida running.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
From the law.

Speaker 7 (56:48):
And everybody said to me when they found out about
what I did, they says, dude, if Morris would have
known you did that, he'd have hung you at the.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
Fifty fourth fleeing by your ankles. That made you appalling eyes?
Is that great?

Speaker 6 (57:02):
Well?

Speaker 3 (57:02):
Well, speaking of that, that's a great segue to one
of the most popular songs that from is two Tokes
from the Old I Know that the God Who? What
was the band? What was the Jamaican band? Two? Yeah,
you had a smoke two joints. Yeah, two joints.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
I know that I had a hit in Germany with that.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Really okay, but I tried.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
I toured Germany with the Blues Brothers.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Oh but who was the who was the original band
that did it? The toys Toys that's it? Yeah, okay,
See I love reggae.

Speaker 7 (57:35):
I was at Marley's second gig in America and as
last gig in America, which is here. I remember smoking
joints at his gig. It was there was at the.

Speaker 5 (57:46):
He was very ill for the gig, the last gig.

Speaker 7 (57:50):
Yeah, just like five or six years before. We were
at the second gig in America, me and Warren kingber there.
But anyway, so anyway, when it came to yeah, I
got signed by CBS and I did two albums.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
And neither album was very good.

Speaker 7 (58:07):
I wasn't, like I said, Like I've said before, I
didn't think of myself as a singer, so I didn't
work on my singing. I didn't think I could be
a guitar player, so the records I made weren't real
representative of what I was capable of. And I'm not
real proud of either record. So the fact that they
didn't get played by the radio. I accept that. But anyway,

(58:29):
after those two records, I got to be friends with
this guy Tony who ran the label Tony Martell's music
business legend. I mean guy guess because we're both Italian.
And he says, hey, I gotta let you go, man,
And I says, hey, I want to come in and
talk to you. Anyway, says come on in, let's hang
So I go into his office and I says, Tony, look,
I says, I says, I'm still on the road constantly.
I says, I'm still crazy about working. Is there anything

(58:50):
I can do to do one more record with CBS?
He says, I have an idea. He says, if you
can pull this off, we'll do an other record. I says,
what do I got to pull off? He says, there's
this woman that if you can get her to be
your manager, we'll do it.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
You know who it was?

Speaker 8 (59:10):
Who was it?

Speaker 4 (59:13):
Sharon Osbourne?

Speaker 7 (59:15):
No, because they were doing they were bringing Ossie back.
That was the plan, and he was really impressed with her.
And he said, look, this woman's sharp. She's going to
bring him back big. We're all about it. It's going
to be a thing, and if you can get her

(59:35):
interested in you, we'd be glad to do another record
with you.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Because he liked me and he liked my work ethic.

Speaker 7 (59:42):
You know, he knew I was constantly working, and he
knew that everywhere I was working. Other bands didn't want
to play with me, which is what you want. You
don't want other bands to go, oh yeah, put him
on the show. They're like, no't bring him around here.
And that's kind of still that way from me. But
I couldn't get her interested in me. But you know,

(01:00:05):
we submitted to her and try to get her to
love me.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
I'm going, hey, can I play a song?

Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
Absolutely? You got a guitar here, I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
Got a guitar.

Speaker 7 (01:00:18):
You know, this guitar i'm gonna play was given to
me by my bass player, Harry Bottoms.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
And some of you girls like Harry Bottoms, don't you
all right?

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
Pause? Well, Norm gets his guitar.

Speaker 7 (01:00:31):
Was I don't know what I'm gonna play, and I'm
excited to strap it on. You know when a guy
straps it on, it's you know, kind of iconic.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
In my world.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Oh my eyes, oh my eyes burning.

Speaker 7 (01:00:48):
I don't want to freak you or do I. Well,
I've got a guitar here, was thinking about a song,
a song. Maybe we'll do something I just wrote in
the past couple of months. It's a song I wrote
for my hillbilly woman. I brought her back from West
Virginia in a wheelbarrow in nineteen seventy five. The prettiest

(01:01:17):
little hillbilly girl you ever saw, a big beautiful should
looked like twigie, like ninety five pounds of hillbilly delight. Okay,
And I wrote a song for I've got a couple
of songs I wrote for, but this was just a
new one, and I haven't prepared myself, so I might
make a mistake in the middle.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
But if I do, hey, what are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
She on't ever.

Speaker 11 (01:02:01):
Raise a fuss, never ever, even her the cuss in
in a way be telling.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
I says, I'm on one hand only God. She made
me won't do right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
All night, maybe won't.

Speaker 8 (01:02:22):
Do right and be a do right me.

Speaker 11 (01:02:30):
She got something that's playing to see something shit had
got short satify me. You look at it, then shit on, man,
I come a running when she called she made me
won't do right? Oh nay, many won't do hey and

(01:02:54):
be a do right me, be the kind of man
a woman can depend on.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
Because that's what nigs o.

Speaker 10 (01:03:10):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
She let me up.

Speaker 11 (01:03:16):
When I'm low, but you won't catch her putting on
a show. Amaze meat, hushy plaizy cool man. I'm always
going on beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
She maybe won't do right all night, maybe won't do
right and be it.

Speaker 12 (01:03:38):
Do right man.

Speaker 8 (01:03:44):
Right, run direct, do right, do right.

Speaker 6 (01:04:05):
Right and being you right mede and me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Do right man baby.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Okay, So how when did you write that?

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Probably about six months ago?

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
Okay? So how often do you write?

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
Every day?

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Every day? When do you remember the first song you
ever wrote? Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
Well, one of the first songs I wrote.

Speaker 7 (01:04:42):
I wrote the track, so in other words, I put
the put the chord progression together and put the licks together.

Speaker 4 (01:04:49):
This was back in the seventies.

Speaker 7 (01:04:51):
And then the singer of my band, a really talented
guy named Frank Zori, would come in and shine it.
He had a gift for he was a great singer
still is, and he would write the words. So that's
how I got started. One of the first songs I
kind of wrote the words to it is a song
I kind of still do and it was like, because.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
I'm burning up, Ma's donna fight man.

Speaker 7 (01:05:32):
You know, I'm Burning Up was one of the first
songs I ever wrote, and I sang it on stage
one time. Was when I was in the Diamonds, and
I knew and that's one of the things that gave
me the strength to leave the band, because like I.

Speaker 4 (01:05:46):
Said, I never thought I could sing well.

Speaker 7 (01:05:48):
But I could tell people likes watching me do it,
and I never thought I could get good at it.
But at the time, you know, it was like new
wave and punk rock and all these quirky singers were
getting and play and I thought, well, I could be
a quirky singer, you know. But I never ever even
worked at singing until I got into my fifties because
I never believed that I could do it well. One

(01:06:11):
of the things that what happened to me was I
always wanted to teach and take and groom other people,
like even when I was a kid, like when I
was seting in my teenage years, I was always thought
of myself as the keeper of the music or the
guy that would put it all together, that would and
so that's what I wanted to do always, and when

(01:06:31):
I started being Norman at the age of twenty nine.
I still wanted The reason I became Norman was because
I wanted people to know my name so I could
produce other people. I didn't become Norman to be an artist.
I became Norman so that I could people would come
to me to produce their music. But as soon as

(01:06:51):
I started doing, everybody started liking me. And time went
by like in the snap of a finger, you know.
But to this day, I see myself as the keeper
of the music, you know, you know, for other people.
But what happened was I started I worked with a
mess of artists and I don't want to say their
names because they all disappointed me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
And uh and so one day I just.

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
Said to myself, you know what I'm gonna do for
me what I do for them. I'm gonna teach myself
to sing better. I'm gonna write better songs than everybody else.
I'm gonna that's it. I'm doing it, and that's and
it started happening. At this time, I'm like in my.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Forties and I'm like I said, I've started with me
studying guitar constantly.

Speaker 7 (01:07:36):
I have a two of my guitar don Low. So
I could just play five and six hours a day.
I beat the hell out of my hands, you know.
And then the years later I started working on my singing,
which I what I'm doing now at the age of
seventy four, and working on my writing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
I write constantly.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
I just so, how many hours of the day do
you devote to music?

Speaker 7 (01:07:55):
I work four hours in the studio every day, and
two to two and a half hours sometimes three at
home preparing for the studio the next day, writing or
working on my plane or working on my singing. So
I work seven days a week. I don't take a
day off ever, and I never did, so, like, if

(01:08:15):
I have a day off, maybe I'll just play three hours.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Is this music all on tape or recorded?

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Is it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
You have a studio, there's got to be a huge
vault of music.

Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
Yeah, there is. It's weird. I've never met anyone like me.
I'm a maniac. I'm a maniac. I just cut three
songs last week.

Speaker 7 (01:08:37):
One was in this instrumental called Cyclone, which I wrote
to preserve the memory of Glenn Pavone.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
Do you know boiler Maker? Do you know that song?

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
It's an instrumental. I wrote that Glenn used to play.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
That's really a piece of powerful piece of music.

Speaker 4 (01:08:54):
I'll just play the first lick of it. And I
just wrote a new song. I called it It's Bastard's Sister.
I shouldn't have said that word.

Speaker 7 (01:09:03):
But here here's what Bordermaker starts off like. It goes
like I said, Saint Martin, to give me a shot.
Then the drummer hits a snare, gentleman, and go and
be a a shot and a beer for my dad.

Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
And then it goes do you know that piece of music?
That's me?

Speaker 7 (01:09:27):
But I wrote it and Glen made it a hit.
And I have this other song that I'm working I
just caught last week and it's called Cyclone and it
goes like this. And have another one called Nightclub that's

(01:09:49):
a track. And I have another one called Chihuahua, which
I wrote for my Chihuahua or Chihuaha. I don't know
if you guys know this, but I've been going the meetings, Hannie, Yeah,
I go to meet I have to go to meetings
every Tuesday night for men who loved chiuaas to deal
with the shame.

Speaker 4 (01:10:07):
Uh hey, hey, if you're listening out to it. Let
me tell you something.

Speaker 7 (01:10:13):
It takes a big man to walk a small dog,
all right, So you think about it before you start
laughing at me.

Speaker 4 (01:10:18):
Take a look at that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Those damn dogs, the small dogs, though they pee a
thousand times. It's like there's more liquid on the ground
than in your body.

Speaker 7 (01:10:25):
What that must be a small dog man. I get
this Southern new song. I just show it, and I
just cut it last week. I think I've only played
it one time in the gigs and my band didn't
even but it goes.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
He ain't want your shirt.

Speaker 12 (01:10:45):
It's how you see it, eat achy game, It's how
you play's answer race, it's how you run it.

Speaker 11 (01:10:59):
And angel warm it's how you want it. I'm telling you,
squib Is, that's how it is.

Speaker 7 (01:11:12):
Just got that last week, and I got this other
on when I cut last week because.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
My mom, being the.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
Lagger man Poe the duke, keep it to myself.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Then out of the blue, a can eat comea creeping
in shaking matrigue. I don't look for trouble. Trouble looks
for me. I can smell it, and I smell it
at g O you bally trouble looks for me, that's
a brand new one.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
What inspires you to do?

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
What's your what's your muse?

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
Well, I mean, I don't get writer's block. When I
was young.

Speaker 7 (01:11:54):
It was when I was young, I just wrote tracks
because I'm started off as a music guy.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
So I would just write.

Speaker 7 (01:12:04):
The chords and the bass part and the drum part,
and I would record that and the boss, the star
would come in and turn it into something that he
could represent. Now, I don't ever write the music first.
Now it's always the lyrics.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
I don't even.

Speaker 7 (01:12:20):
Ever write anything with I write the lyrics first. I
don't even want to hear music when I'm writing words
because I learned over the years, I grew into this
person that acknowledges the great significance of words. When I
was young, like most kids, you know, and most musicians,

(01:12:40):
I didn't even know what they were saying. But as
I got older and I started standing in front of
the audiences and I'm trying to trick them into liking
me and listen to me, I had to write words
and write songs that were better than what they were
hearing on the radio.

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):
And that's how I thought of it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
And I had, so I had to make sure that
they heard every word I said and that they followed
those words. And if I saw them drifting from the
words I was singing, the story I was telling, I
caan't went home and changed them words.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 7 (01:13:09):
So it's like I've chased this thing my whole life,
never stopped chasing it, insane, and I'm still chasing it
at seventy four years old.

Speaker 3 (01:13:17):
I've never heard anybody say that before. But it's almost
like a comedian. You you know, you write a joke,
you perform it. That's exactly I won't take I'll take
this part.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
But Johnny, it's exactly like being a comedian.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
And well, you are you know Richdipoulis? You kind of
do you know Richter Poulis.

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
I'm an agent.

Speaker 5 (01:13:37):
I don't know them personally, but you know the name.

Speaker 7 (01:13:39):
Yes, twenty five thirty years ago I called him up
because he would, you know, for me days and I says, hey,
rich I says man, I says I'm broke. I said,
I ain't got a dime to my name right now.
I says I need to make some money. I says,
you got any ideas he says, I got an idea.
He says, you're not going to like it. I said,
what's your idea? He said, do what you do, but

(01:14:02):
don't call yourself a musician, call yourself a comedian. And
just he said, get rid of your band and just
go out and play guitar and write and talk. He says,
he says, you make money instantly, and I says.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
I can't do that. But that's what he told me.
And I think, now, you know, now I have.

Speaker 7 (01:14:21):
Like I said, I didn't see myself as a singer,
and I didn't see myself as a guitar player. I
didn't see myself as a comedian. And maybe I am that,
you know, but I didn't plan on any of those
things happening. If I did, I just stumbled into it because,
like I save, I had a really cool uncle that
could talk high level crap. And I think I got

(01:14:44):
some of that gift.

Speaker 6 (01:14:45):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
I can just start, you know, jamming.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
All right, let me let me ask you something and
then I'm so appreciati of your time, and I'm not
going to keep you much longer, but I've got to
We're does Norman Nardini fit in the Pittsburgh Pantheon of music,
Where do you fit well?

Speaker 7 (01:15:09):
I called myself the un crime King, the last two Man,
the heart and soul of the undisputed and undefeated, un
crowned King of Pittsburgh rock and Roll, the hot preach
from the Church of rock and Roll on the east
side of Pittsburgh, Pittsville Pencil Tuchy, the beat on duty
to wop with the pop, the guinea, with the skinny
the guido, and the speed.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Of the Greza. Who's a lady, Pleasa, I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
Johnny. I don't fit with any of it. They had
through the years. You know, there was a clique.

Speaker 7 (01:15:42):
That was established, firmly established, and was given that sucked
up all the year.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
I was not allowed to be a part of that.
I was locked out of that. I still am.

Speaker 7 (01:15:54):
And so the answer to your question is I don't
fit im. I'm my own force of nature.

Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
And well, can you see Pittsburgh music history without Norman Nardini.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Well put, I'll say it like this.

Speaker 7 (01:16:16):
The band that was called brick Alley that turned into
the house Rockers, the first one to take them in
the studio and try and teach them how music works.

Speaker 6 (01:16:23):
Is me.

Speaker 7 (01:16:26):
The band is named after the Clark the Candy Bar.
When they first came on the scene, the radio station
was putting out a compilation album of local people and
they had a song or they had just had their
first album, and the radio station didn't want nothing to
do with them.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
And the one that.

Speaker 7 (01:16:48):
Stood up for them and fought for them to be
included is me. So two of the biggest players.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
Kind of.

Speaker 7 (01:17:02):
I boosted them, like with my spirit and any strength
that I had within the community.

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):
That much.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
I do know, you know, And I know if you
go to if you go to another city and you
talk about Pittsford music, they're not going to talk about
anybody but me.

Speaker 4 (01:17:21):
I mean, that's just real.

Speaker 7 (01:17:22):
Even in New Jersey, you know, they know that guy
that hangs out with Bruce and all that. But the
guy that left his mark for original music out there
is me on my own two feet, you know. So
I'm I'm an independent, you know. And I didn't want
it to be. I wanted to be the leader of
it because I could teach them all. And even before

(01:17:45):
I had developed all the skills that I've developed over
these years, I knew how it worked and I was
had a great feeling for other musicians and for music,
so I could always bring the best out of other people.
And so, you know, I wanted to be the leader
of it. I didn't want to be a part of it.
I wanted to run it, you know what I mean.

(01:18:06):
It sounds crazy to talk that way, but that's who
I really am. And and I was like kind of
pushed to the side. And then thirty years passed and
that's where we sit today. And that's kind of that
sums up the whole story in a way, you know,

(01:18:27):
just that little statement there. And but the thing is,
I'm still studying, I'm still cutting every day, I'm still growing,
and I'm very lucky to be healthy enough at my
age to continue to fight this fight and to work
insanely towards goals of making music that we're sports time.

(01:18:53):
We've never established ourselves nationally or god forbid, internationally musically.
That's what I wanted to do, even as a little kid,
you know, And I just wanted to be a part
of it. I didn't want to be the singer. I
didn't want to be the guitar player. I don't want
to be the songwriter. I just want to be a
part of it. And through the years, I learned about playing,

(01:19:14):
I learned about singing, learned about performing, and so all
those things that I've developed through these years. Most of
the competition is doing what they were doing in the eighties.
So to me, the life I've lived tells me that
was I capable of leading the charge.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Absolutely, because look what I did to me, what I
wanted to do to them, and they weren't receptive to
the kind of growth and the kind of looking at
yourself and evaluating yourself and making the changes to grow.

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
I look at me like a sports team. I loved
being in Pittsburgh, and.

Speaker 7 (01:19:59):
I love that we're a sport it's ton and I
look at if you're not going forward today, you're going backwards.
You have to work every day at this to become iconic,
to be Willie Nelson, to be you know what I mean.
It's it's not you just don't make a friend, or
you just don't you know, get a relationship, and then
they support you.

Speaker 4 (01:20:17):
And then then you stop, and there it is.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
That ain't me.

Speaker 7 (01:20:23):
I didn't get in on any of that, and yet
I worked every day and I'm still not in on it,
and still I work every day.

Speaker 3 (01:20:33):
That's who I am.

Speaker 4 (01:20:34):
I'm a weirdo. I'm a freak and and like I say,
if my health continues, I will continue to freak in
this regard.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Can I get a hallo out there?

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
What last question?

Speaker 9 (01:20:47):
What?

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
What's your legacy?

Speaker 4 (01:20:51):
Boy?

Speaker 6 (01:20:51):
I don't know?

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):
You know, I'm I would say this the hardest working
guy that you could ever meet, you know? Can I
play once on before I go?

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
Absolutely?

Speaker 7 (01:21:02):
Hey, guys, I want to play a song for the
people that we've all lost along the way. You know,
some of our greatest musicians, Glenn Pavon, Warren King, There's
two right there. There were iconic musicians, world class musicians

(01:21:27):
that our city should have acknowledged along the way and
should still be propping up because these guys were world class,
iconic players. And and you know, my folks, your folks,
people that we lost.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Mother, father, pure of hearts, stood by me from the stars,
missing both still being gone. Lift me here, keeping on,
see you when I get there. Think I can pay

(01:22:19):
the fair heard a snatch up there?

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
See you when I get there. Friends of mine, good
as golds.

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
Head, angel Wings, Truth, Betols, bound for Gloriam, touched by
the hands. Now they're living promise land see you when
I get there.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
I won't know what to wear.

Speaker 8 (01:22:58):
I'll just pull up at your chair.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
When I get them, I get where I'm.

Speaker 8 (01:23:12):
Going, I'll be home no long we row.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Life I lived. Want to buy the book I got
ghosts back there? Triggy Shook Dungeon, Norm Pearlygates.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Call my name.

Speaker 4 (01:23:37):
Clear the slaves.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
I see you when I get them. We'll have a
grand affair. Get on a chair when I get there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
I'll see when I get them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
Throw our hands in the air like we just don't
care when I get them. See you when I get there. Hey, Hey,
see you where Arget? They see you when I get there. Wow,

(01:24:15):
see you where Arget? I'll see you when I kids there.
Wor wait, give me a kiss.