Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Snuffy Walden

Transcript

Snuffy Walden · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Snuffy Wall snuffing. Good dat, nice
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to be here, Bob. Thanks. So how does it died
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in the world rocker become a TV composer. Wow, that's
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a that's an interesting story. Purely providence. Um, you know
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I had I've spent a long time playing rock and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: roll and then I got sober and was, you know,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: just working with people. And somebody asked me, would you
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: be interested in scoring film and television? Ry Cooter priced
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: himself out of the business, so I said, sure, why not?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And Uh, I went up for a couple of films
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and couldn't get him because I had never written a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: queue for music for film. And then I got this
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: opportunity to go audition for this little show. And you know,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: it's a long story, but we'll tell the story. That's
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: why this is your great day. Well, I got this upper.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This agent approached me. I was playing with Michael Ruff
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and friends down at uh a place called at my
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Place in the leventhon Wilshire and on New Year's Eve
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: six and the agent walked up to me and said,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: would you be interested in scoring film? And television and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: told me about Ray Couter that he priced himself out
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of the business, and I said, you know sure. I mean,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: at that point, I was envisioning holiday in at age
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: sixty five, playing for a proud Mary, and it didn't
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: look very promising for me. I was I was thirty six,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: almost thirty seven years old. So I just said yes
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to everything, and I went up for a few films
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and it didn't really go well because all I had
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: really recordings were guitar solos. I differ other people's records
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: because I hadn't done anything since the seventies my own.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So I got a call and they said there's this
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: TV show and it's a pilot. It probably won't get
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: picked up, but they want something different, and they talked
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: to everybody in town. Would you go talk to him
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the way I just saw a little bit slower. Is
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: this the same agent that came up to you at
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: my place? Absolutely? Same agent that came up to me
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: at my place. And they sent me over to this
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: producer and I met with him and I asked him
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: what he wanted and he told me, and I took
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: him at his word. I guess everybody else was telling him, No,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: here's what you want. But we listened to a record
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: called Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which was acoustic guitar and cello
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and hear and accordion. So I went, okay, I got
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to play acoustic guitar. And I didn't own an acoustic guitar,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: but I borrowed one and spent two weeks trying to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: write some cues. I talked to him out of some film.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Spent about two weeks trying to write some cues, and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: then I would go back and work from my garage
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: studio to my bedroom with the sheets over in my
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: head because I knew what I was doing was awful,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and I knew nobody had ever listened to it. And
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: finally I wrote, I wrote these three or four ques,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have a studio to record video. So
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I called all of my friends who had little recording studios.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: They could lay it back into tape, and I said,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: if you can help me, i'll split the show with you.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Everyone said no, except for a guy names except for
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: a guy named Stuart Levin, and he said, yeah, come
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: over on Thursday and we'll do it. So I took
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: this film, which was a little show called thirty something,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and I took the film over and we recorded these
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: cues I had written, and we put them into film
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and sent it and I didn't hear a pete for
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know a month, and I thought they must
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: have just hated it. Turns out they only met with
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: me because they wanted to see what again named Snuffy
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: looked like. And when they got the video, ah, they
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: didn't even bother listen to it. So right the day
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: they were going to sign somebody else up to the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: up to for a deal, they popped the audio cassette
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in that I had sent along with it, and they went, oh,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. Then they put in the video cassette
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and they really liked what it did with the show.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And they called me and said, would you and and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Stuart because Stewart's name was on it too, at that point,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: would you all come down for a meeting. And we
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: came down from a meeting, Bob, and we spent the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: whole time they kept asking can you do this? Do
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: you know how to do this? And and we kept going, well,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I didn't know if I
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: could do it. I had no clue and Finally ed's
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Wick and Marshall Herskovius, who were their creators, left the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: room and the producer I met with, Scott Wyreant, said
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: just tell him you can do it. So we told
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: him we could do it, and we got the pilot
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and the next thing you know, the party got picked
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: up and it turned into thirty something, and that year
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: it won the Emmy for Best Drama on Television and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the first time I was doing it, so it was
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: really I look at it as this, I really think
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: because in sobriety when I when I quit drinking and using,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I was willing to give up my music to live
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and I believe that was just the cosmos giving me
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: back times a hundred what I was willing to give up.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of a metaphysical way to look at it,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: but that's really the way I see it. Okay, let's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: go back to your deal with Stewart. Okay, thirty something
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: was on the on TV on ABC for a number
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of years, So what do you do about your deal
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: with Stewart? Well, it's funny Stewart and I got thirty
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: something out there. People were really responding to it. Then
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I got a call from a guy named Neil Marlins
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and his wife Carol Black. They said, we're doing this
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: little show for ABC. It's going to premiere after the
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: super Bowl. Would you do the music? So I think, gosh.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Stewart and I were doing great. A second show that
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: was a show called The Wonder Years. We did six
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: episodes of The Wonder Years that year, and that year
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: The Wonder Years won the Emmy for Best Comedy. So
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the first year I was in television I had. I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: was doing the Emmy winning drama and the Emmy winning comedy,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and Stewart and I also took on another one, the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Dick Van Dyke Show, which was a half hour sitcom,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and we did a library for that. And what happened
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: was over the summer, Stewart didn't like the way I worked.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I worked fourteen hours a day. Stewart liked to work
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and I did. To me, we had to it. I
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: figured I had to work twice this hard to be
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: half as good. So Stewart and I didn't mesh well
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: from a work ethic point of view, not that his
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was bad or worse, it was just different. And that
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: summer he went to the producers and said, listen, you
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: know I'm the only one who really knows how to score,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: because he had scored a television before and he said,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I'm the only one who really knows how to score,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think I should do the show. I'm
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: going to break up the partnership. I was actually in
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: England courting my wife to be, so I didn't know
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: about it this until I got back from London. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: then when I found that out that he had gone
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to the shows, you know, of course I called him
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and we had discussions and we decided to each take
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: a show besides thirty something. He took the Dick Van
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Dyke Show. I took The Wonder Years because The Wonder
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Years was all acoustic guitar and he was a piano
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: player and thirtysomethings that producers decided they were going to
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: alternate episodes with us. For the next four years, we
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: alternated episodes, and he had a great guitar player who
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: learned to play just like me. Because Stewart had all
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the masters, you know, we were doing on sixteen track,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I think then maybe if but he had all the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: masters of me playing, so his guy just played the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: way I did and that worked in the beginning for him.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: What happened was they didn't grow because they were he
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: was kind of doing what I did the first year,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and I was forced to grow because I didn't have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a clue what I was doing. Didn't I didn't know
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: what I was doing. And I ended up getting the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: relationship with the executive producers and the creators and have
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: done every show they've done on television since. So that
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: worked out well for me. Stewart did me a huge
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: favor by kicking me out of the nest, so to speak,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: because you know, that's what it took for me to
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: grow and to figure out what this job is. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I'm still trying to figure out what it is actually
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: about thirty some five years later. But he really did
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: me a huge favor, and I didn't feel that way
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in the beginning, trust me. Okay, but let's go back
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to the beginning. We know what you provided. What did
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Stewart provide? Other than the studio to sync to tape?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Student Stewart had done a cop show, so he had acted,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and he worked in the studios as a studio musician
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: for my Post and other people, so he understood the process.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: He also had a recording studio and he was, he
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: could record live to to film. We had all the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: links and everything we needed in those days to lock
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: it up. So Stewart came in with an understanding of
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: what the job is. I had no understanding of what
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the job was. I was just as guitar player who
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: wrote a few songs and produced a record and you know,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: got got a break. So Stewart and I in the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: very beginning, Stewart played piano and I played guitar, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: we did it kind of as a duet. It was
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: predominantly acoustic guitar because I had written the original cues
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: to set the style. But you know, keyboards and sometimes
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: sampled Chelly and different things. You know, we were doing
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it that way and using accordion and um percussion, hand
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: percussion shakers and stuff. It was just really kind of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: a real small ensemble thing. And he brought all the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: knowledge of what works in film, what doesn't, how to
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: put it together, how to lock it up, how to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: uh not really how to follow a scene. I learned
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: that from Ed Marshall, but he knew the mechanics of
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: how to do it. I had no idea. All I
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: could do sit and turn the film on and play
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: until something happened emotionally, and then I developed that We
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: came from two totally different schools. Okay, so now you're separate,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: but you're working on thirty something where there's a you know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: a sound that has been employed. Do you then hire
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: a piano player? How do you get up to speed
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: doing it alone? Well? That was interesting. I hired a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: guy named Jay Gruska. I brought him in to work
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: with me on my half. Jay was a wonderful piano player.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: We knew each other John Williams, son in law, great musician,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and I brought him in and h and we had
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a great relationship, you know, for the three or four
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: years we did it. He did it all the way
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: through with me for the next four years. It was
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a little different because I was predominant in it because
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: it was my gig. But so Stewart had his guitar
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: player who had learned how to do me and I
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: had Jay Gruska, who was very talented in his own right.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So Jay had a record background. He had a background
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: that was when he came in. He was doing what
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Stewart and I did. But because we were both learning
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: and growing in this film genre, Jay had done it
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: before too. We were changing and we were growing during
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that process, and I believe that's the reason that I
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: ended up with a relationship with ed Swick and Marshall,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Herskowitz and Stewart didn't uh because I adapted, I learned,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I grew, and those guys really gave me a master
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: class in scoring. They made me do cues two or
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: three times every week. You know, I'd have to rewrite
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: CUsing and they really, although they beat me up, they
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: taught me so much about the arc of a scene
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and the arc of a story, in the arc of
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: an episode from a writer's point of view, from us,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: you know, an actual scriptwriter's point of view. And you know,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I'll always be indebted to them because they broke me
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: in and taught me what I've really used for the
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: last thirty years. Okay, obviously they taught you these things.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Tell me how you grew. Are you talking about just
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: with thirty something or just for just for thirty something?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: You were saying you got the gig continually because you
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: grew doing thirty something. They were constantly morphing and getting
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: into deeper and deeper story. You know, originally we started
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: thirty something, it was all about a stroller that was
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: two seventy, you know, But once we got deeper into it,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: we were dealing with cancer, we were dealing with divorce,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: we were dealing with all these heavier approaches. And you
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: just can't play a shaker and accordion an acoustic guitar
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: bopping along too that. So I was I was faced
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with much heavier, dramatic h I guess you'd call it
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: really uh the canvas really a very much heavier canvas
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: as we went through the show, growing over the four years,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and I had to learn how to adapt what I
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: was doing to that. I had to learn much more
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: about melody and and playing around the moment and not
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: just underlining it but commenting on something. And I had
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to learn how to almost become a like an extra
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: character and and and I learned that from trial and error.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I also learned it from getting beat up a lot.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: And I was just stretching, you know. I was an
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: electric guitar player who also picked up an acoustic guitar.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And I was doing hammer ons and guitar electric guitar
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: technique on an acoustic and it hadn't been done on
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: television before, so I had to adapt and you know,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: so I learned a lot more about melody. I learned
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: about pacing. I learned about timing. I learned about color,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: how important it is when you know you don't need
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to say. I learned about silence, about silence is so important.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You can be playing a queue and stop and and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: make that moment the most dramatic moment of the scene
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: because you're not playing music. And so all these techniques
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I had to develop on my own, and Jay helped
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to Jay had a good film since, but I was
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: developing mine from zero, and so I just kept expanding.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I really thought when I did this that this is
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: gonna last a couple of years, and they'd find me
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: out and I'd be out of a job and I
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: go back to you know, tour and with Shaka or
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: whatever I was doing. And what happened was I learned
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: enough in that first five years and doing one to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: years on the other side where I was doing it
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: completely by myself. I just learned enough to start getting
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: calls for other things. And the next show I got
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: was a show call I'll Fly Away, And I knew
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: if I did one more acoustic guitar show, I would
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: always be the guy who does acoustic guitar scores. So
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I bought a piano and I scored off fly Away
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: from a piano basis. Did you have any history playing
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the piano? No, not past it five or six years old.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: You know. I could bang out a triad and active
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in the base, but no, I wasn't a piano player.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: But I had to learn. I had to grow. So
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I kept getting in these positions where and and challenging
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: myself where I had to grow, where I had to learn,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: where I had to be a list, where I had
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: to become something that I wasn't. If you'd have told
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: me the first year when I was doing thirty something
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: score West Wing, you know, you could have put a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: gun to my head. I couldn't have done it. I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: just couldn't have done it. It would have been impossible.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Yet twelve years later I did. So you know it
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: was a huge uh growth right for me, and a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: steep incline really, But I just I dropped everything. I
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: dropped all the rock and roll. Uh. I got married
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and had two kids, and my wife said to sheer time,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: just go do it. And I worked fourteen hour days
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: every day, seven days a week, let's go back to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: something you said color. Can you define that? Wow? Color
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: is hard to define. Or it it can be anything from
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: using a volume pedal on the guitar, through delays, or
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: using a some strange synthpad. It's just a way to
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: create or support an emotion. And for me, color can
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: be you know, it can be anything from the palette
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you're of instruments that you're using, to the way you
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: approach them, whether you you know, you can use a
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: string quartet or you can have a piano playing one
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: note with delays and it will create a feeling. Now,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: it may not create the feeling you're looking for, but
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: that's what you've got to kind of work on. Uh.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: You know, color was expanding my palette, expanding myself from
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: just an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, getting into
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: other instruments, understanding other instruments. I started working more apt
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: in the first seven or eight years with Woodwinds. Fellow
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: named John Clark, who don't know if you know, but
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: played with Loggins and Messina and the most brilliant double
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: read player I've ever come across, as far as emotional.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Randy Cerber as a piano player, you know, I used
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Randy for years and years and years because he just
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: approached the instrument with such grace and emotion, and those
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: are the things that mattered to me. It wasn't the technicality.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And I'm still that way. I can go here somebody
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and if they got chops for days, I can listen.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: But a couple of minutes in, I'm no longer moved.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I'm impressed, but I'm not moved. And John Clark, Randy Cerber,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Mike Fisher on percussion. These were the guys that I
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: called into my my little army, my little small ensemble
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: army that that I was scoring with and really utilized
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the or really unique talents. And and for me now
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I do it with George Daring. George jarring Is plays
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: on every episode of every television show I do, even
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: if there's no guitar in it, because he just brings
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: such beautiful music and such a musicality to it always
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: makes it better. Okay, you're talking about the producers of
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: thirty something teaching you about television, about art, etcetera. Can
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: tell us some of those lessons. You know, I didn't
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: understand story. I wasn't a big story guy. I had
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: never gone to movies and said I want to do that.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I kind of didn't even know it was a job
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: when I got this offer. So what they taught me
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: was that you've got to find the arc of a scene.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: What is the emotional arc of the scene, So what
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: is the pinnacle the turning point in the scene, and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you lead You've got to either not do anything and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: comment after it, or you've got to lead up to
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: it and open up for it, or you've got to
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: do something. Whether you're dealing with action, primarily, I do
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: small character driven dramas. That's what I really gravitate towards.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: That's what I was trained in, That's what feels natural
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to me. It's the same with action. I mean, you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: have to you have to have a shape, you have
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: to have a build, you have to have an arc.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: But what once I got that, I thought, Okay, well
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I've got this thing down. Then they said, no, you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: you don't understand. You're peaking the episode. Two fit quickly,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: there's an arc to this, not only this scene, but
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: this whole episode. So I had to put on my
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: thinking cap and go, Okay, how whom I build the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: story to a peak? And how do I find the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: peak of the story, the pinnacle of the story, and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: build to that. And I started figuring out how to
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: do that, and I would judge everything. I would go
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: back and look at the whole episode once I'd written
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: queues to see how it built in the episode. About
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the time I got that kind of under under my fingers,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: they said, oh, but you're not building an arc of
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the series. You know, we're building an arc of the series.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden had to put it on again,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and then I had to stretch it over five years.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, they they were so patient. They never
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: threatened to fire me. Even though I made every mistake
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: in the book, they would have me ride it again.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: And as much as in the young composer haste to
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: hear this, it served me greatly. Getting couched and getting
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: schooled by guys who knew how to tell story is
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: absolutely the one piece that has been instrumental in all
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: my work. Okay, let's talk a little bit about process.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: So just in general, on a series, what is the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: schedule for you? The scheduling of television used to be
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks from the time they would lock
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the film to the time they would dub the film.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: In other words, from the time they quit editing, you
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: got the picture that was going to stay that way
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: until it got to the dub stage to be added
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: with effects and dialogue picture. What slowly has happened as
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the advent of technology came across Within twelve fifteen years,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I was getting twenty four hours to make that same
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: turnaround a show like West Wing h By or three.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I was sometimes getting one day from the time I
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: saw the film to send them the music. So originally
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: you would take time. You would you would meet with
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the producers and you would watch the episode and decide
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: where they wanted music and talking about the nature of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the music, and then you go off for a week
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and write it, and then you'd hand it to orchestrators
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: and copyists and you'd go into the studio. That's the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: way it was before I came on the scene. When
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: right when I came on the scene, everything was getting
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: smaller since we're happening, computers were happening. So I dialed
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: it down to I write it as I go, I
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: perform it as I'm as I'm playing it. It never
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: went to paper, so I missed that whole other step
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of getting booking a session and getting twenty five players
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and having it copied and orchestrated. So I skipped that
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a whole step so I can do it fast stir,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: which in some ways was great, but it also gave
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: them license to give me less and less time. And
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: over the years with the AD Uh, you know, we
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: ended up with avid instead of cutting film, and we
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: ended up with all these technological things. It now is
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to the point where you may never not you may
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: never get locked film. It may never They may still
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: be adding it on the dub stage and changing it
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: because you can do it with the push of a button.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So it makes scheduling. Yeah, you've got to be quick
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: on your feet. And because I was always doing small ensemble,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: that was easier for me. When I moved into West
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Wing or something like that, where I had a fifty
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: sixty players, it got a little trickier. But that didn't
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: last long because they couldn't get me the own fast
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: enough for me to do those kind of sessions. So
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: what's that it's compressed over time. I would think now
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: they'll probably give you five days unless they have a
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: real big problem. Uh five maybe six days normal, But
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: they still might ask you to turn half that music
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: around and in a day and a half. So it
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: depends upon the production, it really does. It depends upon
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the people and how organized they are and how clear
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: their vision of the story they're telling it. Okay, you
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: get let's just assume it's locked. You get locked. You
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: have a brief period of time. Tell me the process
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of coming up with the score itself. My process is
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: pretty much stayed the same, Bob. It's what I did
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: in the beginning when I was first writing those first
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: few fews for thirty something, was sitting in front of
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the film, running the scene and just playing until something
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: started happening emotionally, and then I would go back and
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: play with the idea, develop it a little bit, and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: put them film up and then try that against it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: And it was really hit or miss once I started.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Once I got off the acoustic guitar and got on
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the piano, even though I was playing acoustic guitar samples,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I was able to lock everything up with MIDDI and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: which allowed me to sit down and just play freely
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: to picture, and then the stunting started to develop it.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I still had the same process. I'd stop and developed
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the piece a little bit more and then see how
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it fit with the scene. But once we had the computers,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you could move a piece of music two seconds or
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: make it faster here or there, so you could make
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it breathe with the scene, which is I think one
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: of the things that I did well. I didn't get
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: in the way a lot because I was so I
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: was taught so much to let the story unfold rather
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: than tell people the story before it happens. So that
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: process still is the same for me. I now I'll
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: choose a separate palette for each show. In other words,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I'll choose a set of instruments that hopefully I haven't
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: used before. Because I've done seventies maybe the eight series.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I've used up a lot of my palette,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and I have to find something new that's fresh, that
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: gives me a fresh take and also doesn't sound like
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: ten other things I've done. So whatever I start with,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: whatever that decided palette is, then I move forward starting
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: to write with that. And you know, once again, it's
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: still sitting down and playing to picture and finding something
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: that touches me. If it's if it'll touch me, it
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: will probably touch you, and and directors, Bob, they just
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: want to like their film better. You know, they just
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: want to love their film more. They want to feel
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the places where they felt they missed, and they want
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to heighten the places where they tear up. And you know,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg always says, uh, Stevens that, uh, he said,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I can I can bring a tear to someone's eye.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: John makes the tear fall talking about John Williams, And
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that's a beautiful cinema. Okay, So
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: do you decide where the music goes? Or when you
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: get the locked picture, do they say we want music
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: here there? Boy, we are getting technical. Generally, we do
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: what's called a spotting session, which is we sit down
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: with the producers and view the whole film, watch it
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: as an episode, stopping and starting and saying I think
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: music should start here, and then we'll go back and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: look and scene and we'll go, well, maybe we should
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: go in a little sooner, maybe a little later. We
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: decide in that spotting session basically where the music goes
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and what is trying to accomplish. Are we trying to
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: create tension? Are we trying to create drama or are
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: we trying to have a release, we are we gonna
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: cry here or and so we would decide the basics
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of it. But once I got it in my lap,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it was up to me to decide. Well,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: they wanted music to come in here, But I think
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: what they really mean is melody should start there, and
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I should glide into it invisibly so that when I
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: hit that first note of melody, it creates something. And
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and a lot of time that's what happens. They want
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: an emotion at a certain point, so they say music
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: should start year And unless they're really astute at doing
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: it and and really good at it, then a lot
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of times that's not the moment you're looking for. You're
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: looking for a moment to glide in before you're looking
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: for maybe something after it to start creating. It's and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's totally subjective. A hundred guys can write a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: hundred good cues for a scene and they'll all be good. Uh. Also,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: a hundred guys can write a bad queue and they'll
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: still be bad. So okay, let's talk a little bit
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: about foreshadowing. I mean, people were just watching films think
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: that it's all hard cuts, But a lot of times
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: dialogue music starts before the next scene. Can you tell
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: me about them? You know, sometimes you want to have
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: music in a scene, but to hit it musically on
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: the cut isn't always right. Sometimes you want to get
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: gracefully up in into the music, so it's called a relapse.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Uh A lot of times with small ensemble. I do
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that with a pad or electric guitar, volume, pedal, swell
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: or something to take me into the cut. If I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to go from a bedroom to a busy city,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: then I could swell into it and get busy right
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: on the cut. On the other hand, if you're going
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: from a bedroom to the baby's room, you want to
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: ease across that cut and and be invisible. You know,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: our job is to suspend disbelief, you know, we want
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: people to feel the story. If you're listening to the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: mute to the music, I probably haven't done my job. Well.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Listen to the music the second time. But my job
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is to really propel that story and move it in
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the best way possible. And and and Stravinsky wrote amazing music,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: but it's not going to fit in a going from
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: two lovers in the bedroom to a baby's baby monitor
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: in the baby Room. It's just not gonna work. You know,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: it's brilliant music, but it's not right for the moment.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: So you know, you you have different everybody's got a
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: bag of tricks that they use a lot. I have
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: my style. I like the pre lap a cut and
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: maybe start some some movement on a cut, depending on
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: what I'm going into, or start a theme on a cut,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: or sometimes you don't want to touch the cut at all.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you want to stay as far away from the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: actual edit point as possible so it doesn't feel like
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: we're it's two pointed, than trying to drag you into
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the next scene. I I learned from Ed Marshall that
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I was way better off commenting on a scene, commenting
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: on something that was just said, rather than saying it
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: at the same time. You know that they used to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: call that underscoring. AH for me, Ed Marshall taught me
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: how to comment on a storyline or a scene, and
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: it made me more of a player, like like an actor.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It made music more I don't know, but you know,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: one of the characters that's kind of okay. So let's
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: go to the process, and you know, I know there's
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: a learning curve but let's talk today when everything is
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: relatively compressed, so you essentially write the music in twenty
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: four hours, what's the process from composing to laying it
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: down to delivering it. I'll give you an example of
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the frightening one when you when you have to turn
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it around in twelve hours, you have no choice but
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to perform it as you're writing it because you don't
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: have time to go back. So you've just got to
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: work your way through the show performing it at the
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: same time that you're writing it. So although I might
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: have somebody come in and clean up the MIDI when
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I was doing West Wing, that's pretty much what I
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: was doing. I was writing it except for the first
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: six episodes that were went to orchestra and the main
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: title theme. I played every instrument on there. I had
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: one guitar session on one queue in the whole seven
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: years we ran. And it was all about performing strings
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and brass and percussion and all that stuff on on
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the spot in the moment, so that it that's the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: way it was going to go to the dub stage.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: So I really I learned to do that. I learned
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: that there's never a demo, you know, the demo is
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the master recording. It's just like in doing records, you know,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you try to chase that demo once you've created the idea.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: And I found for me writing the performance as the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: cue and doing them at the same time was the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: most fruitful for me. So that's the way I learned
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: to do it. Of course, if I'm doing an accoust
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the guitar thing, and I'm writing at home, I can
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: do one or two things. I can play an acoustic
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: guitar and a mike here in my writing room, which
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: is matched at my studio. I mean, whatever I play
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: here into into my sequencer comes up exactly the same
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: down there. They're totally matched. We have three match studios.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Patrick Rose has one too, and we can move things
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: around like that. But once I perform it here, if
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I have George darn coming, then we'll do it. Have
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: somebody do a takedown as I'm writing queues and give
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: me a three line sketch, or if there's actual guitar,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: they'll write out the guitar part. So that by the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: time I'm done writing and I go to sleep and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I get up and go to the next session, all
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the paperwork is prepared and George We've got a three
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: or four hour date, maybe a five hour date with
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: George where he stite reading everything and sometimes you stite
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: reading no guitar, just looking at it a three line sketch,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: you know, strings, pads and percussion. But he gets the
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: idea of it. And and that's a little bastardization of
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the process of doing it yourself. But I love having
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: George on everything, so I always go to you. You know.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes now on Seal team we have cellist, but cellist
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: come in. Sometimes we go to a dub stage, we
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: go to an actual film stage. Although Patrick does that,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I don't do that. Uh So the process can be
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: varying degrees of of right as you go and perform
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: as you go. But for me, that's been my process
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and that's what I stay with. Okay, So there's one
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a civic studio that is not in your house where
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: you essentially do most of the work. Yes, I have
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: a writing studio in my home where I write. Now.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: A funny story, when when I built the studio, we
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: lived in the front house in front of the studio
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: down in Woodland Hills. When I moved up to this house,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I was still working and writing down there. One day,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: my son came home with a picture and I said, well,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: what's this. He said, well, this is our family picture.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: He said, that's mommy, that's me, and that's Connor. I said,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: where's daddy. He said, oh, Daddy's at the studio. So
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: I built a riding room at my house because I
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be that daddy. And uh. And I've
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: worked doing the core writing at home ever since. I
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: go down to the studio if I'm recording live instruments
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: that I'm doing string ensembles or woodwinds or George or whatever.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But the whole studio is set up for producing television scores.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: We're everything's plugged in all the time. You know, if
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: we need to add drums. George is a great drummer.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: By the way, George plays everything. He plays piano, he
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: plays everything. So if we need some color, George will
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: play whatever's sitting next to him and he's happy to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: play it. So I keep that studio so this all
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: the music for these shows is made essentially in a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: home studio at your old home. Yes, who does the engineering.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: George Landrus has been working with me for ten twelve
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: years now. Before that, it was a fellow named Abby
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Kipper who worked for me for fifteen years before that.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I be came on really early on h I guess
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I was maybe been scoring four or five years and
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Obve came in and started working for me, and we
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: set the studio episode fit his style. Then when George
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: started working with us, we set the studio episode. It
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: works in his style. The actual console, maybe there's still
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: a writing station down there. If I wanted to, I
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: could go down there and write just easily. It's home,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: but there's so much easier to walk out in your
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: road and turn the computer on that it is to
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: get you go all the way down the hill. So okay,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: so if you're doing a show now, you tend to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: be writing it at home and then recording it at
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the other studio Woodland Hills. That's right. What we do
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: is we as we do the core work in our
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: home studios. It's either Patrick or I on Seal Team.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: It's Patrick and me me less and less. And what
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: we do is we write our core music and that
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is the performance of the core music. Then we we
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: uploaded at the studio and add Sweeten Nerd to that.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: We had you know, cello or George or percussion or
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: whatever we add to that in it. The technology is
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: so good now that you can actually sit at home
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and record George Deering at his studio in real time
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and give notes in real time and then handed off
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to the mixer and you can listen to him mixing
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: it in real time at home. I mean, it's the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: technology has moved that far now so that you can
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: actually record people anywhere in real time. You don't know
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: if you deal with the lag. We used to go
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to Bratislava and stuff to do string sessions anywhere. Was
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: there always two in the morning and there was a
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: five second lag? And huh? But it's it's the technology
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: is just zoomed forward. So now are you personally also
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: a good engineer and can you read and write music? Know,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not a good engineer. I trust people to do
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: that for me. You know, from playing years of rock
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and roll, my hearing is not the greatest. So me
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: on a mixing console you're liable to get an awful
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: lot of triangle and I strengths. But as far as
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: being an engineer, I don't do that at all. And
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: your other question was writing and reading music. I never
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: learned to read music. I still don't know how to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: read music. I went to u c l A after
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the first year of thirty something, and I said, and
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I took an orchestration class, and I said, can I
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: get somebody else to write my parts? And and he
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: looked at me like I was crazy. And the next
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: couple of classes I brought somebody else's transcription of what
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I wrote in and he pulled me aside, he said, listen.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: But then he knew what I was doing. He said,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: you you have what we all want. You have a job.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: When you run out of jobs, come back to school.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: And I ended up hiring that teacher to orchestrate from
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: me three years later. So I've never run out of job,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: so I've I've never had to go, and I never learned.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And I can't. I can't follow a score that I've written.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I can see basically where the movement is and keep
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: up with it if I count bars. But I'm way
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: better at just closing my eyes and watching the film
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and hearing what's coming at me and judging it or
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: changing it based on that. I'm not a paper guy.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I always looked at a piece of paper and said,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I can play paper like a chord chart,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: or I can play music. Which one do you want? Okay,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: let's go back. You're talking about with Marshall and Ed
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: making you redo the cues. Is that still a thing
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: that you've experienced, and what is it like when you
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: do experience? Absolutely? I think younger guys go through it
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: more than I do, because number one, I've listened to
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: them enough to kind of know what they really mean.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: They may say one cloud with two doves, but what
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they're really talking about is a sweet PIANOICU. I've heard
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: it enough and chased enough of those clouds and doves
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: to know what they're talking about emotionally anyway. But yes,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: all the time they will. They do what's called a
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: preview now, where they're so used to you being able
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to ride at home, mock it up and before you
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: adding the instruments to it, send it to them and
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: they look at it locked to film and they decide, well,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: you know it's good up to here, but I need
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: this here and that there, and you've got to go
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: in and take it apart and restructure it. Or they'll say,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you know, this is perfect, which is good to hear,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: or they'll say what were you thinking? And then you
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: start from scratch and have to write it again. I've
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: written queues for some shows six seven times and and
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of times go back to the original cue
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: that I wrote. Okay, when the show is done, When
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: your work is done, do you end up watching the
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: finished product and be do you since so much as
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: it's done its speed? Do you watch and wins say
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: I should have done this or I could have done
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: this better? Boy? Do I watch it when it's done?
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: It sounds the best when it leaves my studio because
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: music is loud and proud, and I'm not fighting effects
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and I'm not fighting the helicopter and I'm not doing
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: all that. I don't watch my work for two reasons. Ah.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: The main reason is it makes me uncomfortable if it's
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: too soft or if it's too loud, unless it's right
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: in that middle space and it's really working well. The
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: other thing is why did I do that? Right? You
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: know once you watch it, and what I had to
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: do in the beginning, probably the first ten years, was
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: watched them on television as they aired. Because they're compressed,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: they don't sound the same as when they leave the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: dub stage, and I always felt like going down to
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that to the mix put one of two things into play.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Either they were nervous because you were there, so they
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: turned music up too loud, or they were piste off
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: because you're there and they turned the music down. So
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I found it was best for me not to go
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: and put myself in that situation unless it's just a playback,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and if it's something important regular episodic. We were doing
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: twenty two episodes at that time. You didn't have time
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: to go down for a playback. You were busy right
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: in the next episode. And from the time I started
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: up until a year ago, I've been doing multiple series
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: every year. So I've had at least two series on
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: every year since. So I don't have that kind of time,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh, But the other you know, I don't like.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I learned from watching it on the air. I learned
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: what works and what doesn't work. I don't like watching it.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've never watched The West Wing and people
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: say they just love it, and uh, I'll watch it
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: someday when I don't. Probably when I stopped doing it.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I just I've never been comfortable listening to my work.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I never wasn't the guy who carried a cassette around
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: in my pocket. Go listen to my new song either.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: So I was just not that guy. Okay, So how
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: did you meet Aaron Sorkin? And you started with him
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of television and you grew together. So
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: can you tell us that Aaron. It's interesting story. Aaron
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: watch thirty something and really loved thirty something. So when
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Aaron put his first television show on, uh, he called
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: my agents and said it would Snuffy be interested in
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: doing this show? And I was up in Mammoth skiing
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: with my kids, so I wasn't you know, Dad's at
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the studio. And I got a call from my agents
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: and they said, listen, this guy, Aaron Sorkin done some movies,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: really good writer. Wants you to look at this script
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: and would you be interested in I said sure, send
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: it up. So they messengered it up or fed exit
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: up or something, and I got the script and and
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: I was used to looking at scripts and just flip
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: into the back page to see how long it was,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: because I will tell you it's an hour and a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: half hour. And I flipped to the back of the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: page and it was sixty pages. So I got a
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: less an hour drama. So I read it. It was wonderful.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: It was so beautifully written and such a great piece.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I said, absolutely, I'd love to do this. Only two
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: weeks later to find out Aaron writes sixty pages for
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: a half hour show most people. And so I learned
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: it was a half hour television show and it's called
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Sports Night. And we did one year of Sports Night
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: and it was kind of a funny show because it
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: was half hour, but Aaron really nixed the laugh track
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: and so, you know, some people got into it, but
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: it wasn't really big. Aaron had in his back pocket
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: at that time West Wing. He had the idea of
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: show about the West Wing that was really about the people,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: not the president, and he had shopped it and it
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: hadn't been picked up. And so once he was on
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: the air, Tommy Slammi was doing the directing to which
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: was phenomenal. Tommy, you know, created this whole thing of
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: walking through the giant sets with moving cameras and did
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that on Sports Night, and so there was a lot
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: of credibility for the quality with Sports Night. When Aaron
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: came back to John Wells with with the West Wing,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and at that time. You know, I've been doing this
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: electric guitar show all you know, all of my roots,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: you know, playing bluesy stuff and slide and all electric
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: guitar and and Aaron came to me said, listen, I
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: have the script. You know, it's about the West Wing.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Would you be interested in doing it? And he sent
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: me the script and I read it and there was
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: just incredible. Aaron had a way of making the first
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: five minutes riveting of any show you got of his.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Every pilot I did with Aaron was that way that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: you couldn't walk away from it. It's like Social Network
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: is a great example of of that kind of writing,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: where it's just it just goes. And so I read
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: this and I said, yeah, I'd love to do it.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: What are you thinking? He said, well, I'm thinking American
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: acoustic guitar. I said, great, I don't how to do that.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: About two months later, after they shot the pilot, they're
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: starting to edit it and they started putting John Williams
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: up against it and it worked really well. So Aaron
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: came to me and said, listen, I know we talked
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: about acoustic guitar, but we've been putting this big orchestral
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: stuff up against it. Would you be able to do that?
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And the only answer you can give if you're about
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to be out of work is yes. And I went
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: to a friend of mine, James Horner, and talked to
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: him about what I wanted to accomplish, and he pointed
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: me to some areas and we discussed how I would
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: do it and what the process was, because I had
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: never worked with a big orchestra at that point. I've
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: worked with some string sections, just doing strings on some
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: guitar music, but the first time I've ever worked with
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: big full horns and everything, and so James helped me
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: a lot. And then I studied Aaron Copeland and I
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: boiled it down to well, really, he's just playing a
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: simple melody. It's just but the orchestration's lovely. So I
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: got a great orchestrator, Brad Dector and who was doing
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: all James Newton Howard stuff and and I I brought
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: him in and he brought in a couple of other
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: guys because you had to put out so much music,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: so it took two or three orchestrators just to get
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: it orchestrated and prep for the orchestra. And the funny
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: thing about it is. I was. I was writing the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: whole first full first episode, part of the second episode,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: and a couple of is for the third episode because
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: they didn't have the money to do fifty six pieces
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: every week, so I was writing two or three episodes
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and doing a session. Ah. But they were going to
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Randy Newman and all the Carthy, Stills and Nash to
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: do the main title. Everybody was you know, everybody wanted
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: to do Aaron Sorkin's new main titles. Uh. And they
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: were telling me about it. I was going, yeah, Randy Newman, now,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: how would you complain about that? And I was. I
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: was working on the third episode and Tommy Slimy came
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: over to my writing room, which is not this one
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: but the one downstairs, and I played in the queues
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and I played in the end queue and he said,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: that's it. I said, that's what he said, that's the
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: main title. It took me fifteen minutes to write that queue.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: But that que turned into uh to some music that
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: I want an Emmy for the theme the third theme
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: to West Wing, and Tommy recognized it more than I did.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I was just writing as fast as I could and
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: trying to get something together. But Tommy recognized the emotional
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: content and with his visual content of what he was
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: going to do because he was already shooting the credits.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: There are the opening credits, and I give Tommy a
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: lot of credit for that. Certainly did me a good
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: one there. So you're a rock and roller at hard
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: So where did you grow up? I have Bonouisiana, raised
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: in Texas, went to school in Texas. You know. I
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: had my parents split up a lot, so I would
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: follow one to the little rock and then found the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: other one back to Texas and then they get together
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: and then we'd all be together in Houston. So I
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: grew up kind of. I went to twelve different schools
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: getting through high school. So I was always trying to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: fit which which helped me as a composer, by the way,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: because I also knew how to you know, kind of
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: fit into a piece. And I started my rock and
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: roll career plan at a strip joint I had. I
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: was going to football before that. How it was there
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: music in the home? How did you end up even playing?
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Oh Wow, You're gonna go way back? You know? When
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: I was about five, they gave my parents gave me
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: a Hawaiian steel guitar. Gave me lessons on that. But
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I lived in tech in East Texas, so you know,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: all was there was country. So I was basically playing
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: learning how to play country music on a Hawaiian lap still.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: And then I learned a little piano and play. We
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: had a Hammond cord organ at home. I kind of
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: learned how to play that. In fifth grade, I went
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: out for band. This was exciting because the guitar didn't stick.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I was doing tap dancing too, so you know, they
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: had me involved in everything. Were you the only kid? No.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: I had one brother two years older, same birthday. We
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: were born two years exactly apart, and I'll get to
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: him because he was the gifted one of the family.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: He's gone now, but he was the really gifted musician
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: in the family as far as I look at it.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: So I got a traumbone. So I started playing traumbone
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: in the fifth grade. In the sixth grade, and then
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I wasn't good enough on trum bone, so they moved
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: me to baritone. And by the time I got through
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: eighth grade, I was I was just done with band.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: I just I couldn't do it anymore. So in the
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: ninth grade, we moved down to Texas and for Christmas
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: that year, my grandfather got me and my brother both
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: electric guitars little Fender music Men or whatever. They were
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a single pick up little Fender, and we started playing
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: electric guitar in The first song played was Misty and
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the second song I played was long, Tall Texan. And
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: that's about those wider ranges I was ever going to get.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Pretty soon, my brother took off two strings off his
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: and started playing based on his, so he ended up
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: getting a base. We put a band together, of course,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: in the night. It was summer of between nine and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: grade for me. We put a band together called the Showman.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: And you know, we had one guy in the band
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: because he had a band, so he played tambourine. We
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: had another guy in the band because he had a
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: twelve string and we wanted to play I wanted to
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: play the twelve strings, so we got him in the
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: band too, So you know, there was about three of
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: us core musicians. We also had a guy named Turkey
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: who would bring a little Hammond cord organ around to
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: every gig. I don't know why his father did that,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: but they did it. And we played, you know, school
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: dances in the local tiki club Quantza Time. Okay, you're
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: you're in Texas in the northeast, Northeast. You know, it's
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: tough forty radio first Folk, then Four Seasons, Beach Boys,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: then the Beatles in British invasion. Texas is its own country.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: So how important were the Beatles to you and where
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you grew up and what kind of music were you playing?
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Were you influenced by local music and country music? You know,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I loved the Beatles. I bought all the Beatles records.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I loved what they did. But we didn't play an
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. I never worked up a Beatles song. We
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: were kind of we weren't that good, you know. We
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: we could play uh animal songs, we could play some
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Stone stuff, we could play some basic twelve bar stuff
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, Kinks. Maybe it's about as daring as
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: we got. So we didn't. We weren't recover band because
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: we weren't that good. We weren't good enough to reproduce
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: those records. So we just kind of play, but we
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: could play. I was listening to a lot of chet
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Atkins in and we were listening to that songs like
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Tellstar instrumental records and so we just kind of did
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: a hybrid. We just got together and played really and
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that's kind of all I've ever done, as it, and
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: it turns out I've never done. I did one casual
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: gig in my life where I played at a wedding
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: and they fired me the next day and never called
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: me back because I didn't know all those songs. I
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: never learned anyway. We had a cover band then then
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: we decided to release the record. My grandfather was pretty
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: impressed and he built he opened a record label, and
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: we cut a single and it was on one side,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: baby let Me Take You Home by the Animals that
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: my brother sang, and the flip side was Bald Headed
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Woman by the Kinks, and Doug and I traded off
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: vocals on that. Doug, my brother, and I still have
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: that record. And we changed the name of the band
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: because the Showman didn't sound cool enough. We called it
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: ps Y one to three for Psychedelic because the elevators
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: and all of that was just starting to happen in Texas.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Wow funding to go back to that, and and we
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: kept that band together for about a year and a
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: half and then it disbanded because my brother got sent
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: to military school and he got my my he got
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: my girlfriend pregnant, so you know that was that was fun. Uh,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: and he married her, so we the band kind of
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: broke up and I didn't. I kept playing in the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: in my bedroom, but I didn't really play in any bands.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: In my senior year, I went to four different schools
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: because I got kicked out of one. I went a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: wall from a military school. I got barely through the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: asked one, but I didn't have all the credits I needed,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: so I had to go to summer school. So that
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: was my final year. And that year was spent for
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: me going out to the black clubs and seeing Sam
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and Dave and the Impressions and uh, you know those
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: acts of that time in nineteen sixties sixty seven and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: drinking beer and hanging out with the guys. It was
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: like junior frat guys. So I didn't play it all
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: that year. And then when I graduated and I started
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: going to college, I was friends with this guy who
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: had FM underground radio show on this little tiny FM
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: show FM station called k r b E, which is
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: huge now in Houston, and I got a job. I
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: got my second I can't remember what degree it was
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: but basically an apprentice license to be a DJ. So
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to college, going to on a double
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: major premat premit Math. I was working at this little
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: underground radio show, doing all different sometimes the morning shows,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes the late night shows, whatever they could give me.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: And I was playing in a strip club called the Seller,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: where they sold fake boost to the clients, trying to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: tell like was uh bourbon flavoring in coke? And the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: girls all wore broad panties and they would dance and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: they would strip for tips, and when they had stripped,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: they locked the front door, and you know, it was
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: just really sorted. It was dark and sorted. What made
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: you pick up the guitar down? You know? I always
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: gravitated toward it. I remember that senior year, Sergeant Pepper
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: came out, and I remember being so impressed with Sergeant Pepper,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: but didn't have any Connation played, but Fresh Cream and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Hendrix came out. Those two records came out, and that
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: brought me back to the guitar because hearing Clapton and
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Hendrix were like, whoa guitar can be like this? And
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: I don't remember a moment that where I picked it
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: back up and said I'm gonna do this. I never
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: really intended to be a musician. It just kind of
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: happened that way. Now, but in your documentary it says
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: you slept with your guitar, and I think the images
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: of a less Paul. What's the reality there. It really happened.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: I that was where I did. That was the time
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: when I was living in Memphis. I had already had
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: three or four bands in my Well, then let's stay
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: with here. You're playing the Strip Club, Give me to Memphis.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: I've got a I got a band that I joined
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: called the Deep Elm Blues Band and Little Screaming Kenny
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: still lives in Houston and plays gigs all the time.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: He was the bass player and the singer and Rick
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: I can't remember rex Rick's last name. We were a
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: trio and we played this place called the Seller, and
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: if somebody got up and started stripping, you weren't allowed
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: to stop playing. If you did, you were fired and barred.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: So you had to learn how to improvise. Always had
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to learn how to improvise, which worked for me. It
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: was it was our music school, really, and when it
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: whenever we'd switched bands, the other guys had come on
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: stage while you're playing and switch into your amps and
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: so the music never stopped. You just kept going and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: going and going. And you know, they paid like eight
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: bucks a night. I mean we were when we went
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: to the fore Worst Seller, we had to get to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: hotel rooms for the band, and every other night we
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: had to move everything into one hotel room because we
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: could only afford three hotel rooms. Every two days we
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford for So that's just how low paying it was.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: But I was living the dream. I was playing guitar.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: I was having a great time. That's where I first
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: did L s D. I mean, you know, I was
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: just living the dream and didn't care. I didn't care that,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I was having to hang mayonnaise in the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: back of the toilet to keep it cool, you know,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: so we'd have turkey sandwiches. I mean, it was just
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: it was really funky. But you know I learned a
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: lot there too. That's one of those places that I
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: really consider my schooling came from. So anyway, when that
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: band broke up, I I had a little time that
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: I came out with my brother. My brother had come
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: out here and gotten record deal with Metro Media. I
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: think it was at the time, and I came out
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: and joined his band for about three months, and then
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: their manager got arrested for drug dealing. So I went
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: back home and I was living in the park, but
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I had a roady in the park and a guy
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: named George Maxi. The only thing that that I'm missing
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: is there was a band called the Grits that we
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: kept together for about a year. That personnel changed a
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: bunch of times, but we played a lot at the
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Balkan Gas Company which turned into Armadilla headquarters later, but
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: the Elevators played there, and you know all these different bands, uh,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: and we played that circuit. After I dropped out of that,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: I went to Dougs band, and then I came back
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: to l A. And I was living in and came
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: back to Houston living in the park, and some guys
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: asked me to come over an audition. Now they were
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: way older old guys. They must have been twenty six
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: or twenty seven. I was nineteen or twenty. They felt
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: like they were playing like the old big band clubs
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: to me, and I joined that band. It was called
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the Silver Spoon, and we moved to Memphis, and that's
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: where I first started my real recording and studios. That
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: band ended up disbanding, but uh, Jerry William H Jerry Thomas,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: who was b J Thomas's brother, was there. And I
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: had actually had backed b J Thomas up on two
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: gigs in Louisiana when I was about fifteen um and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: he didn't even hurt for the band. He just came
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: on the stage and said Barefoot and two three four,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and we all just sat there. You know, we knew
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Animal songs, we knew Stone song, but we don't know
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Barefoot and from Adam. And it was a pretty unsuccessful
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: little stint we did through Louisiana, but I got to
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: know his brother and and I got to work in
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: the recording studio. I remember one night we were at
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: American Recording Studios and there was this big commotion. We
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: used to get downtime around midnight, and there was this
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: big commotion and and everybody starts whispering and Elvis walks
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: in with his crowd talk about floored. You know, this
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: is nineteen sixty nine, I guess something like that, and
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: that was a big deal. That was a real big deal,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: and you know, but that kind of stuff was going
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: on in Memphis and places like that. Nashville I spent
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: virtually no time, but Memphis I spent a lot of time.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: And that's where Rodny Millsap came broke out of And
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: there was a band called Flash and the Cadillac Kids
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: and a lot of local bands. Same state to two
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: totally different mindsets. Really, well, there was so much. There
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: was a lot of blues and Memphis and that kind
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: of stuff. You know, at that point, Nashville was just
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: pure country, at least from my point of view. So
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: you're telling me about sleeping your guitar and how you
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: ultimately get a record deal. Okay, Well that has to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: do with Silver Spoon. When I was living with them,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I was that was when I really started my drug intake.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And they had these pills that were one half speed
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: and one half Downer, and you were supposed to take
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: them together, but I would split them and take the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Speed all day longer than the Downers all night. And
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I would lay in bed with my guitar and drink
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: coffee and play until I fell asleep. And I sleep
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: on my guitar. Didn't have a girlfriend, didn't matter, And
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I get up in the morning and first thing I
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: do is just play and that's all I did all
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the time, was just play guitar. So I really did
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: sleep on my guitar. That's a true story that it
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: was a blacklist Paul, and uh, you know, I had
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: it in battled with me all the time. Huh. We
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: that this band. Slowly we went back to Houston. Uh,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: we're woke up. And then one of the songs that
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: we were that we wrote was recorded on Johnny Winner's
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: second Winter album called The Good Love, but the bass
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: player took all the credits, so we you know, we
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: were all outset of him. He's long passed away. I
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: don't have any issue with him. Uh, But so that
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: was you know, I was starting to go, Wow, if
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: I do something, somebody can like it. And I joined this.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: I had a bout of hepatitis and living in fort
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Worth and I would you probably know who Jerry Williams,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: don't you. Well? Jerry Williams was living in fort Worth
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: then and I joined him Linda Wearing and Randy Cakes
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: and we formed the Jerry Williams Group and we played
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: local clubs and everything, and we were getting ready to
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: come out to the West Coast for a record deal.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: You know, it was all going to happen, And three
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: days before we were supposed to leave, I came down
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: with appatitis. So I got stuck in the hospital. They
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: told me I couldn't play music anymore. Uh I didn't.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't go with Jerry, and then they came out.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: They got a record deal. Jerry did a bunch of
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: acid and took a left turn and that record never
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: even came out. But I got sick, and when I
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: got out, they told me, if you get back into
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: music business, you're gonna be dead. And this is from
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: taking all those drugs and all that stuff. It just so.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I got a gig in a music store and lasted
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: about three weeks and I just couldn't do it. So
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: I moved to Colorado with this other band that I
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: knew from the Fort Worth area, and I do one
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: gig a week and then rest the rest of the time.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Then I built it up to two and built it
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: up to three. That was a little band called Aphrodite,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: and we worked out of Denver. That's the band that
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: when Emerson Lake and Palmer came through town. The old
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: crew came down to a little club we were playing
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: at and we're just knocked out, and they said, we're
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: going to get you a record deal. And they went
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and finished the Immerson, Lake and Palmer tour, came back
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: to Denver and put us on this circuit where we
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: were saying, last gig before we go to Europe and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: before our European tour, and got us, you know, endorsements
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: for ants and all this stuff, and all of a
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: sudden everything grew big p s and uh so we
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: raised a bunch of money to supplies to England and
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: we went over to England. It didn't go well in England.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: We were there about six months and at that point
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: my girlfriend was having helping support the band. We lived
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: in just this awful flat that you needed shillings to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: get hot water or propane or gas whatever. And then
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: we cut an ascetate. We were still aphrodite. We couldn't
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: ascetate at the play is called que Bridge. It was
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: a little live room, but they also could cut an
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: asset take there, and somehow we got it to Greg
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Lake and Greg listened to it and he liked it,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: and he called us up and we went into the
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: studio with Greg for a day and cut three songs
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: and After that, Greg called me over to his house
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and he said, listen, I love what you do. That
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: he was the problem with the band. The drummer would
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: get better every take. I was good first take, get
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: a little worse, second take, third take. The fire was
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: gone by the sixth take when he got good. So
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: what Greg said to me was, listen, I'd love to
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: work with you, but I can't work with you with
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: this band. If you want to stay with that band,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: then you should go on, and I wish you good luck.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: But if you want to work with me, I'll help
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: you put a band together and we'll make a bad
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: and around you. So that's what I did. I went
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: to my drummer and I totally said you gotta do it,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: you gotta, you gotta do it. So the bass player
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: state Al Roberts and and we went on a quest
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: to find the drummer. We had Cozy Powell and you know,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: all these different people. We went all around England, couldn't
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: find anybody, just auditioning people who came to America. I
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: went to New York, went to Houston, we went to
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Denver to try somebody out. We ended up in l
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: A for our last a bout of tryouts and Nold
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: Redding was in town rehearsing with his band, and we
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: got his drummer to come over, fellow named Less Sampson,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: and it was magic. And that's when we put the
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: three piece bands Straight Dog together. That recorded on Mantical Records,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: was my first record deal. I was twenty three, maybe
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: twenty four, you know, seventy three when we recorded the
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: record came out and seventy four, so yeah, I was
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: twenty three and and I had a record deal with
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: a big label and it was Manticore Records released by
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Atlantic over here, and they were going to take us
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: on a world tour as their opening act. And you know,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is I just couldn't handle it.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: We were great musically, we weren't songwriters, so we got
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: no airplay. We only got underground FM airplay. We had
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: a real cult following, but we didn't weren't songwriters, so
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: we didn't get airplay. And we My alcoholism continued through
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: that point and was getting worse and worse. And then
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: we started a tour. We toured all of Europe with
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: Lake and Palmer are doing you know, everything from fifty
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: tho sedar stadiums to the Olympic, Holland and Munich, and
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: then we came to America. We did the whole East
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: coast of America and we ended up that tour and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of sordid stories that go on through
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: all that with my drinking and stuff. But we ended
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: up playing two nights in Madison Square Garden before Christmas four,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: I guess, and they rolled me back to the hotel.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I was so drunk and in my white leather ballero suit,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: and two days later I got the word that, you know,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: we no longer need your services on this tour. So
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: we moved the band to l A. Ended up doing
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: one more record in l A. And then basically something
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: happened where I had to come home and I called everybody.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna come back tomorrow, and they said, well,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: if you come back, the whole band, Squitty So Stray
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: Dog broke up. As far as I was concerned, I
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: was no longer in the band, and they broke up.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: Six weeks later. We were on tour Dave Mason at
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: that time, and there was a fight between the bass
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: player and myself and I ended up in the hospital.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: So but you know all that comes under the heading
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: of my alcoholism. Dude, you got that story. That's how
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I got my record deal. Okay, so how did you
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: How did you get from being drunk, kicked out of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: your own band, two, getting sober, and then being a
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: road guy and studio guy. Well, you know, I was
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: doing a lot of studio work. I did a record
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: was free, you know, when coss Off was was too
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: in his disease to do it. I played with the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: guy to keep Sinfield. I did a concert over there
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: as Bill Withers guitar player one time over in London,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: you know, because I was a Texas guitar player in London.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: That's the way I looked at it. If Hendricks could
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: go from from New York to London and be a hit,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: then maybe a XS guitar player could come to London
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: and make some noise. So you know, I got a
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: lot of opportunities, but I just I didn't have the
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: wherewithal and the solid background, you know, the upbringing and
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff to be secure enough to go
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: from nothing to playing at fort SA gigs. I mean,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: you know what happens is your egos on one side
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: and your insecurities on the other side, and they slowly
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: diverge and get farther and farther apart, and you're left
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: with the hole in the middle. And that's what happened
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: to me, and so I tried to fill that whole
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: with alcohol. And you know, when the band moved to
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: l A and then it broke up. I had a
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: band called the Walton Olsen Band with Mark Olson, Rare Earth.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: UH toured with different people, Alsta Haley, who's got We've
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: got a record coming out from the Evan Deeson And
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: then I started playing with Eric Burdon and that turned
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: out great. I toured with Eric Burden off and on
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: for the next three or four years. And you know,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I could drink successfully with Eric because everybody else was
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: crazy too. So you know, we had got Ronnie what
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: was his name, amazing Louisiana piano player, Ronnie Baron. I
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard of him, you know, dr
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: John kind of guy. And that was the band, and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: then Rabbit joined the band. Rabbit who played in The
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: Who for twenty years and played in Free. Rabbit and
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: I were friends since Houston, so we've known each other
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: and Uh, Rabbit came into the band, and then Tony
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: Brownegle and Terry Wilson came into the band, and they
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: were also from Houston. So we were a core four
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: piece behind Eric with a couple of extras, with a
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: sax player and another keyboard player, and we became his
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: core and and we toured with him whenever he toured.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: We were all nuts, you know. I ended up doing
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: a record with Terry and Tony when they had a
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: band called Backstreet Crawler, when cost Off was too sick
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: to do that record. So I did that record for
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I was always kind of behind Costs, you know, filling
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: in for him when he when he wasn't well. And
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: so I did all these things, and you know, I
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: was toured with Eric Burden and in I guess it
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: was January. Yeah, I went and saw my dad Christmas
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: of nineteen nineteen, and ah, he looked different, and I
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: asked him what he did. He said, well, you know,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: I read this book and I stopped drinking. And I said,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: let me see that. I talked to him out of
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the book he had read, and ended up coming home
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: deciding that I didn't have a problem with alcohol. The
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: problem was my wife wouldn't let me drink the way
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I wanted. So I came home and drank like a
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: man for two weeks, kind of came out of a
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: blackout and knew I needed trouble, and I made a
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: call to get help. And so for that first year
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: where I was trying to stop drinking, I was still touring.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I was going out and doing gigs and we did
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: a film over in Berlin with Eric, and then I
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: had Lost Week in the Lost Week in London, Ah,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: and then I came home and you know, bouncing around.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: I got asked to go back out with Eric, and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: I did. And at that point I was telling everybody
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: that I wasn't even drinking because everybody knew that I
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: had tried was trying to stop. So I'd rush into
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the dressing room after the gig and knocked back a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: couple of Tikito Sunrises and uh, and then just drink
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: my orange juice like everybody else. So one night I
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: had a bad night in a love with drugs and alcohol,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: and I hit and run five cards and go through
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: security gates in my hotel and ended up in trashing
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: my room. And the next morning it was a dear
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: friend of mine. Michael Ruff. I don't know if you
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: know him. He wrote for Bonny and different people. But
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Michael was in the band with Eric at that time.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: And I was down in the dining room trying to
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: force some food down, and Michael came and sat down
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: next to me and talked to me a little bit,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and then he said, Stuffy, I love you too much
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: to watch you kill yourself. When we get back to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: l A, don't ever call me again. And that really
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: rang from me. And I stayed there another six weeks,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: touring and producing a record. But I ended up in
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: the Sydney Australian Airport Christmas Eve and I looked in
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: the mirror behind the bar after I ordered a few
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: drinks and I realized that I really was an alcoholic.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: And that's when I first did made it to my
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: animal self, and I believe I entered the Stacey Grace there.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect to stop drinking, but that's the last
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: drink I ever had was in that bar in Sydney.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: So that's close to forty years ago. So how did
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: you stop and stay off? Well, you know, I stopped
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: h I worked with the Fellowship, I read the books,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: I learned how to be of service rather than to
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: serve myself. What happened was after that Christmas, then I
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: had a New Year's Eve gig where I started playing good,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't play, and I finally walked out of
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: the session and said, don't pay me. And then on
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: January eleven two, I got a phone call to go
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: back on the road with Eric, and I got off
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the phone. I said, I'll call you back, and I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: got off the phone, and I panicked because I knew
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: I had to choose life or music, because I had
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: been trying for a year to do music sober and
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. And so I just threw myself
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: into everything I could having to do with recovery. I
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: never went to rehab or anything, but just bare knuckled
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: it and had you know, still had friends who were sober,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: and I just hung out with them and quit playing
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: music for a year. I didn't expect to ever play again.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Got a job doing phone sales and this set and
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: the other, and then I got asked to come sit
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: in for somebody, and I went and sat in with them,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: and I was afraid nothing was going to happen. No
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: music was going to come out, and yet when I
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: started playing, it did. So that kind of got me
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: into doing those night gigs around l A, which kind
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: of brought me to doing some bigger gigs and playing
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: with Michael Ruff and at my place, and then touring
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: with Shaka and then musical director for Laura Brannigan and
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: you know, it was just going up, but it was
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: all Sideman stuff. And that trajects me into where we
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: started this conversation where I was playing with Michael Ruff
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: New Year's nine and got approached by an agent. So
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's short, but you get a synopsis. Okay,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the wife you came back. Is
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: that the same wife you're married to now? No? I had? Uh?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: That was wife number two? So Hi, wives, have you
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: had three? Uh? And I'm not probably not going to
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: have more? Uh? Now? The first wife was my agent
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: who who took care of us over in London when
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: when Aphrodite was trying to get together, and then I
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: came to l A with her. We moved to l
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: A when she came out here to work with Jerry
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Goldstein she goal, and that's how I ended up knowing
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Eric and getting in that band, but I followed her
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: out here and then I tripped off for a while
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: with this other girl, and then I came back with
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: her and married her. And then two weeks later the
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: girl I had tripped off with started throwing rocks at
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: my door. And so I mean, I was a mess.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you, I was a mess. I ended
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: up only staying married nine months. I had like an
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: emotional breakdown. Then I got a divorce. Then I married
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the mistress. That lasted nine months. When I came home
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: from my dad's I was living with my second wife,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: who promptly left me two weeks after I got back,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: and we lived together just for a little while, and
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: then she just bailed because I was a mess. I
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: was just a mess, And so that marriage lasted as
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: a marriage nine months. So you know, I didn't have
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: a very good rick coming into this deal. The year
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: I started scoring television was also the year I met
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: my wife. It's the year everything changed for me. I
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: was five years sober and seven everything flipped and all
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, I was scoring a hit television show.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I had met my wife to be, who was going
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: to bear two kids, and and I've had the last
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: twenty nine and thirty one years with them. I mean,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: my life totally changed. And you know, I really believe
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been possible. She'd have had nothing to
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: do with me if I'm still drinking, and I'd probably
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: be dead by the end of anyway. But so for me,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: getting sober was really the mechanism that brought me a
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: whole second life, an entire second life, separate from the
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: rock and roll thing that I blew because I had
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: an opportunity. You know, if I'd had my head on straight,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: I could have turned that into a successful career. But
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: so five years sober, I got this whole new life. Uh,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: and it's all because of sobriety. How did you meet
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: your second wife? And you also said just before we
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: started that year, her health is not good. You know.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: It's my third wife and she was diagnosed with all
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: simmer five years ago. So we've been married thirty two years,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: been together thirty four years. So I beat the nine
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: month thing I did. My second wife actually was the
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: mistress from my first wife, So you know, I just
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: kind of went a ping pong back and forth. I
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: didn't know what I wanted. I don't know what I
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: was doing. But you know, to me, everything pre getting
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: sober was a different guy. I almost feel like God
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: kind of reached down and took out the damaged soul
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: and put a cleanman back in. I really do. I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: I feel that strongly about it, and my handwriting changed
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: after I got sober, so I don't know take it
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: as you want people listening. I really believe it was
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: an actor grace, and I'm gonna go with that story.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: So how did you meet your third wife? I met her.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: She would come down into at my place and when
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: we play. We started out playing with Michael Rough, my
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: friend down there, playing just Sunday nights and I was
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: two years two years sober. We built that up over
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: a couple of years to where we were playing weekends,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: four sold out shows every time we played, and she
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: would always come second show, second set, second day, second set,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Saturday night, last set. Because the band was so musical.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, Ralph Humphrees drums and Jimmy Johnson
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: on bass, and we had Cheryl Crow, Vona Shepherd, Leslie
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Smith on background vocals and that it was a four
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: piece corep and we were selling out every show we
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: booked there and she used to come down because the
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: music was great, and it wasn't a meet joint, you know,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: it wasn't where you hit on girls, so she could
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: go and and and do that. At that point, she
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: was working for Steven Spielberg as his assistant, and somebody
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: introduced me to her, and I just remember looking into
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: her eyes and going and when she walked away, I
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: couldn't have told you if she was five two pounds,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: I couldn't have tell you anything. I just connected and
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: then I chased her. That was in June probably of
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: that summer, and I chased her until I finally got
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: her to go out with me in November, and she
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have anything. She kept saying, I'm too busy, you know,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Stephen takes all my time. And I finally got her
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: to go out with me, and but I called her
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: and she said, also, I don't I don't date musicians.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: And I finally called up. I said, I'm a composer,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: because thirty something had just gotten on the air, and
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: so she said, okay, I got an opening in three weeks.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: So I waited three weeks and we went to sushi
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: and she sat me down and she said listen. You
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: know what, if you're just interested in a little flank,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not interested. We might as well have our tea
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: and get up and go our own ways. If you're
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: interested in a serious relationship that's going somewhere, then then
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: I'll talk. And we closed the sushi choine and we
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: were together from that moment on. So what's the state
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: of her Alzheimer's and what's it like for you? You know,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: it's been the roughest thing I've ever gone through in
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: my sobriety. We just she had early on set. We
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: just moved her to be a resident in the memory
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: care facility two weeks ago. So it's very us, very
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: raw um. But she seems pretty happy. I went out
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: and had an early Thanksgiving dinner with her yesterday and
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: we spent a couple of hours just laughing and talking.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: You know, she doesn't we don't have the sadness besides
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that it happened to her. It was not
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: in her family that we knew of it all, but
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: she had it was gene. She got a gene on
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: both sides, so that's why she got the early all
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: summers in the sixties. The thing that's really sad. Besides
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: the fact that she's slowly disappearing, is that all those
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: shared members, we had, all the little things where you
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: had drive by a hotdog judge, remember when we were
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: over there with so and so. Those are all gone.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: Now that's there only with me. And you know, when
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: I went and saw her yesterday, you know, we we
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: don't talk much about the past. She was talking about
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: dogs that are like it died thirteen years ago or something.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: That's kind of where her memory is right now. So
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: she's she's in a safe place. We had too many
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: instances in a row where it was unsafe for her
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: to stay here. And my agreement was that I keep
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: her safe, comfortable, and as happy as I could. And
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: when I could no longer keep her safe, I had
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: I had to make a change. Does she know who
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: you are? So? Oh? Yeah, she she Most of the
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: time she knows we're married. Sometimes she thinks we're having
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: a fling. It's kind of cute. Okay, how does the
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: money working? Composing and you talk about your hiring these
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: different people amplify that. When I started television, the primary
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: model was you got a fee for writing the music,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: you got paid for orchestration, separately, and the musicians were
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: all paid for separately. All of that was paid your fee,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: the orchestration and the musicians, and all the things going
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: into the recording, we're all paid by the production. When
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: I came in, the concept of a package had just started.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: They give you one fee, and you spend whatever you
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: want and keep whatever you want, but you've got to
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: produce something we love. So I came in making way
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: lower on the wave scale then Mike Post because my
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: post was had been doing it for ten years already,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and Mike was doing that that model of a session.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: The fee, the orgustration, and the and the session fee
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: all get paid separately from the production. So when I
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: came in, they offered me a package which is X
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: amount of dollars, and out of that I covered my musicians,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: I covered my engineer, I cover uh any extra costs
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: of workers. I never put anything on paper, so we
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: didn't have them any costs. So our costs early on
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: were very small, and the packages were healthy compared to
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: what I was making as a sideman. You know, all
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, I was making like whoa thousands of
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: dollars a week for just writing music and having my
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: name on the screen too. And then I found out
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: about B M I and royalties, and that was like whoa,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: Now they're gonna pay me royalties for this too. It
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: was like I died and went to heaven. But the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: package came more and more and more into play over
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: the first five to seven years I was, I was
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: doing it. I've never worked under the old structure of
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: composer's fee, orchestration and and musicians. I've always worked under
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: a package. Now sometimes I augment the package. I say, listen,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: I'll only pay for three musicians out of my package.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: You need to pay for the other ten twelve if
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: you want big strings, if you want orange. West Wing
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: was the one thing that paid me a package and
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: paid the extra musicians with a large group. But we
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: did that because we wanted that sound. So I've worked
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: on packages from and a package can be anywhere from
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: you know, for a half hour three thousand dollars to
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: five thousand dollars for an hour our drama, go anywhere
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: in there, depending on your credits, your president, your hotness
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: at the moment. You know, if you're the hot young guy,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: then you can ask for an extra five bucks, you know.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: But so I've always done from the package, so I
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: pay all the costs, but I've always believed never to
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: scrimp to make an extra thousand or two thousand dollars.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: Put your best foot forward all the time, because what
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: you only have at the end of the day is
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: your body of work. So I never well, I don't
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: want to spend that for an Obo player. I didn't
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: have that mindset. You also got to realize I came
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: into this so green. I believed I had to work
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: twice as hard to be half as good. I said
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: that earlier, and so I believed I had to put
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: twice as much in to get you know, a half
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: decent uh product. So that's the way it worked for me,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: and I've done that so long. I can look at
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: a project and once we set the palette, I can
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: I know it within five percent of what I'm gonna
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: earn for the year because I can just ballpark and
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: I'm just so used to doing it right. I have
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: a separate set of books for every episode of every
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: television show I've done. That's the only way I can
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: build it, you know, because you can't admortize it and
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: average it out. So that's the way I do it.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: And what about now that we've moved to streaming and
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: total buyouts, etcetera. Has that affected your work? You have
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: an opinion on that. Well, you know, one of the
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: things that I didn't realize when I first got into
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: it was that there's no union for composers, which means
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: there's no medical insurance, which means there's no retirement plan.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: There's nothing. As a composer, you're on your own, so
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: you only the only thing you ever got was what
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: you got as a musician, and of course I was
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: a musician. On all I said, they'd go in the contracts,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: but what happened is the b M I royalties of
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: the ASCA for royalties became that money's that I could
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: spend for my retirement and for my insurance. And and
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: those moneys are pretty lucrative. If you've got three or
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: four shows running in prime time. You know it's not
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: pocket change. So you know, I was able to put
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: myself in a position where I'll probably outlive my money.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: I mean where my where my money will outlive me.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: And I don't have to look at the bill for
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: a price when I want sushi, you know, I can
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: just buy whatever sushi I want and not worry about it.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: So it's been great to me that way. I've generally
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: lived on the money I made on packages and put
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: the be and my money away. So that's just what
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: I tried to do because to me, that was my
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: retirement account. But now the changing with Netflix, ETCeteras, that's
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: something you're thinking about or the shows you're working on,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: that model is different, so you're not that concerned. Well,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: the model is different, still a royalty stream, but it's
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: it's minimal, and were talking to you know, you talked
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: to record people all the time. There's no there's no
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: living to be made in songwriting unless you're writing big rapids.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think. I know the songwriter friends of mine
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: are are really struggling. And that's not the case for
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: television because primetime television still pays and reruns and there's
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: reruns all around the world and they all pay royalties.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: So my income stream from network, from from the network
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: shows I did, it is just out there in the
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: pipeline working the Netflix stuff. They're actually changing it. A
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: good friend of my works there and they're changing it
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: to up the royalty structure for composers. They've done mostly
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: buyouts and the royalty stream is virtually nothing. But now
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: Netflix is stepping up and going, you know what, composers
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: are important. They do make our product better, and so
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: they're upping their game and upping that what they're paying composers,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: which I think is great, not only in packages, because
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: they always pay good at Netflix of the packages. But
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I say that without having ever done a netflixing, but
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: I'm aware of all the deals. But now that the
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: royalty structure is going to start to come up, other
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: other streaming services are going to have to look to
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: Netflix and they'll come up to I mean Netflix is
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: they hunt in town guerrilla right now, and you know
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: they have more product than anybody, and they're doing quality products.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: I have to ask. Your name is Garrett, and then
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: you ultimately got the nickname which stuck Snuffy, and it's
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: all everywhere where you can get that. It's not like
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: a hidden reason why someone's interests. They can look it up.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: But there's a famous record producer named Snuff Garrett, you know,
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: which it's hard to keep you straight. What do you
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: think about that? That? Well, that's Tommy Garrett and I
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: wish I got all of his royalty checks and I
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: used to say that at being my Uh, Tommy Garrett
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: was h I had one of his albums years and
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: years ago, the fifty thousand Flamenco Guitars of Tommy Garrett.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: You know, he produced all different kinds of stuff and
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: produced I think, every which way but loose. I mean,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: he just was so in the circuit, so but in
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: a different genre than I was in in rock and roll.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: I got the name the same way he got. The
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: biggest manufacturer of snuff in the South is a company
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: called Levi Garrett and Son. My mom's maiden name was Garrett,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: so my grandfather was Garrett. Uh. They were both Garretts,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: and they were nicknamed Levi or Snuffy when they were
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: growing up. I got it when I was five at
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: a co educational camp pair send me to every year
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: and during the summer as I was Snuffy, and you know,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: during the school year, I was Garrett. And then music
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: took over the summers in my life, so I just
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: stuck with Snuffy. Somebody calls me Garrett, I know they're
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: from high school or before, so that's kind of the
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: way I gage it. So do you ever meet Snuff Garrett?
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: I never did. I never did. He's past now, but
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: uh did you know? But you know, first I used
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: to confuse you. You see the credits back at thirty something.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't think there would be two Snuffies.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: So how much longer are you going to do this
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: and anything in the horizon you would like to achieve
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: or do before you leave this planet. Yeah, we've been
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: kicking around during COVID this idea of myself, a friend
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: of mine, one big actor, and one huge rock star,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: and I really I can't talk about it, but it's
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: really interesting thing with four of us up front. Uh,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: everybody is a singer, a songwriter, and you know, and
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: every some people play drums and some people play guitar,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: and we would switch around, and we've been kicking this
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: idea around and throwing some songs around. I'm also going
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: to do another Snuffy Walden album. I did one in
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand one for Windham Hill, but I
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: based it on my television work and I want to
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: do an electric guitar album. So what we're looking at
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: Chris Kimsey, the guy who produced my original record, who
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: produced the Stones and all these other people. Uh, Chris,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: and I want to do it. I'm just gonna go
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: to London and cut half the record there with some
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: guys he knows, and go to Nashville and go to
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: Frampton Studio because Peter is a friend, and and and
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: record the other half there and get an English flavor
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: and get an American flavor, and you do it. A
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: vanity project you have records for not gonna sell. Now,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: I'll fund it. I just want to book end what
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: I've done. I don't want to just kind of fade
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: away like all that sold guitar players do. I really
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: want to have this is my ending thing that that
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean I'm not going to compose. I mean, honestly,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: with what's going on in my family, in the last
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: few years, I have not pursued work. If anything, I've
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: stepped away from it. The last thing I did, uh
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: that was fresh, was a West Wing special we did
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: when when Biden, you know, we were getting out the
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: boat from Biden. That was fun, but that was in
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: Now it's been almost a year since then, and now
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: that things are changing around here and the dynamic is changing.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: H I want to play, but I want to do
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: projects I love to do. I just want to do
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: things that I have passionate about, or I gotta love
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: the project, I gotta love the people, or I've got
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: to love the money. And it's got to be two
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: of those. So if I love the people and love
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: the project, I'll do it for no money. I don't care.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: But uh, it's got to fit in, you know, if
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: that whole thing. The road in front of me is
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: a lot shorter than the road behind me. And what
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: do I want to spend the next ten years of
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: my playing on till I'm eight one? What do I
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: want to do? So? I want to do what fun?
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: I want to perform live more. Uh. You know, we
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: talked a little about the documentary it's coming out. I
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: hope that gets to people in recovery. That's my goal
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: for that. That's why I did it. When they asked me,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: I said I wouldn't do it, And when they finally said,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: you might really be able to help somebody understand that
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: there is a life after you stop drinking. You can
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: have a whole another life. And from that point of view,
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: that's the point of view that I believed him when
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: I told the story, and you know, that's just my story,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: It's what I got it's the only one I got.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: So what am I gonna do go forward? I don't know.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Bring me something, tell me something you think's exciting. Uh.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: If I'd love to do an electric guitar score like
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: I did with Stephen King's with Stand, I mean that
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: was so much fun for me, and yet electric guitar
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: scores don't fit very well in television drama. You can
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: use it as a color, but not as a main voice.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: So I'd love to do that, but it would take
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: the right the right piece of material for that to work. Well. Snuffy,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: you tell a good story. You tell a story that
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: tell a story that's not been told by many, both
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: the recovery in the second life and going from a hardcore,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: hard party and rocker to a guy very successfully scoring
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: television in his own unique, identifiable So I want to
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time, Bob. It's
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: such a pleasure. I was just tickled when who we
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: decided to put this year. Thank you so much. Until
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left six h