Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Record Producer Tom Werman (Cheap Trick, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Twisted Sister, Molly Hatchett, Ted Nugent) [Episode 169]

Transcript

Record Producer Tom Werman (Cheap Trick, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Twisted Sister, Molly Hatchett, Ted Nugent) [Episode 169] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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They played a set and it was brilliant right there. Bang that was it.
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So I said, I'd love to sign you guys, And I remember
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Dave Lubeck said, mister Worman, all I want is my front tooth beant.
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I love that story. He had no front tooths. We're totally booked
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rock and Roll. I mean gott to leave you. You're reading Little Hans
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says it's time to rock and roll. Roll up, I totally booked.
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Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read and
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rock online at Booked on rock dot com, where you can find every episode,
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along with links to listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs, and the
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latest rock book releases. Legendary record producer Tom Worman is this episode's guest.
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The book is called Turn It Up. My Time making Hit Records in the
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glory Days of rock music featuring Motley Crue, Poison Twisted, Sister, Jeff
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Beck, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and more. As An A and
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R Man at Epic Records were and helped introduce the world to Rio Speedwagon,
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Boston, Ted NuGen and Cheap Trick. He also discovered Kiss Rush and Leonard
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Skinner. His record label passed on all of them. As an independent producer,
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he oversaw landmark albums by Motley Crue, Twist and sister lead of four
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Jeff Beck, Poison, and many more. All in all, his record
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making resume includes twenty three gold or platinum selling albums and sales of more than
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fifty two million copies. He's here to talk about the bands he discovered and
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the classic albums he produced, including some inside stories behind the recording process.
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To hear a playlist of the music Tom Worman produced, head over to the
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show notes page. Hey Tom, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very
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nice to be here. Thanks for having me. You are right nearby.
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I'm in Connecticut, you're in I'm in the Berk Shares in Lennox, famous
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home of Tanglewood just down the road. And you know, basically have it
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on Earth as far as I'm concerned. Newton, Massachusetts is actually where you
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grew up. That was happening on Earth too. Newton, mass in the
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fifties, all of America in the fifties was so simple. We weren't the
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most enlightened culture, and there were things wrong, but people were generally pretty
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cooled out. And as I said, in the book. You know,
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Eisenhower was in the White House, but Democrats didn't care very much. You
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know. He was still reasonable, you know, and intelligent, and everything
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was a nickel on postage stamps for three since. It was a great time.
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It was a wonderful time, fabulous schools. They actually taught people how
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to read and write, and at this point in life, I've learned why
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they called them the good old days. You know. Well, actually just
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recently was the sixtieth anniversary of the jfk assassination. I mean, how much
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did that change everything to me? You know people have said it too the
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fifties, they extended into the early sixties, but once that event came,
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everything changed. Everything did change. It was kind of a perfect storm thing,
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I think because the baby boomers were now leaving home and had graduated high
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school, were all, you know, bursting the college seams, and there
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was Vietnam War, and there was weed, and there was this avalanche of
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creative musical entertainment, mostly from England, and the Beatles just turned everything around.
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They just literally affected everything. You know, after you first witnessed the
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Beatles, was it on Ed Sullivan? Yeah? I think was in maybe
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in February, I saw them on ed Sullivan and then I returned to New
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York because I was a school at Columbia, and I pretty easily got tickets
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to see them at Carnegie Hall for seven dollars and fifty cents. Wow on
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the aisle row m in the orchestra late show and heard them perfectly. I
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mean, no streams. There were two shows that night, and I know
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that there were plenty of screams at the early show, but by the time
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the late show happened, they were all home a bit. My bandmate and
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I had gone down to Penn Station to see their train come in. We
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never did, but we were there with about, you know, ten thousand
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girls. It was pretty It was pretty amazing. Unreally. Yeah, that's
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when you Elvis, you were a fan of. But it was the Beatles
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that really did it. F well, yeah, yeah, Elvis introduced me
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to rock and roll and the emotion of rock and roll, how it could
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empower you or do a number of things to you emotionally. But the Beatles,
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you know, it just went so far beyond and I I just ached
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to be a Beatle. I was I thought that, you know, being
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a Beatle is clearly the best thing anybody could possibly be in the world,
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and at that time we were just completely consumed. Now, what's surprising those
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Your career wasn't in the music industry from the get go. You started in
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advertising and your first job is that Gray Advertising not fun for you? But
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a career change wasn't far off. How do you go from working at a
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drab advertising firm one day to meeting Clive Davis the next? I wrote a
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letter. The letter is actually reprinted in the book. It was a pretty
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arrogant letter, I think cheeky because I ended it with I'll call your office
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to set up an appointment, you know, instead of if you could spare
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some time. I really appreciate being able to come and speak with you,
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or something like that. But it was like, you know, I'll call
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you and we'll make an appointment. I'll come over and talk. But he
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gave the letter to another guy, and the other guy turned out to be
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a person who had interviewed me at the business school. And I turned it
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CBS Records down because I thought they were small and because they weren't paying anywhere
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near what Gray Advertising was paying, and I thought advertising cool. But I
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did not wind up. In the creative department, I was miserable. I
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was writing marketing plans for Gain Detergent and Jeff Peanut Butter, and I was
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neither proud nor happy about what I was doing. So I interviewed a few
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people, and finally the head of business affairs said, I'd like you to
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talk with Clive and I said, oh boy, you know I've scored an
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audience with the Pope, that is it. So he hired me on the
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spot, and it was the most fortunate thing that you know, ever happened
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to me. Really, I went from hell to heaven in a few minutes.
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You could evaluate a pretty quickly. I thought this was fascinating. In
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fact, you didn't need to go past the third song, half of the
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first song, minute second. I wasn't absolutely positive that I could identify a
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hit right away, but I could definitely tell the promising from the dreadful,
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and most of them were not promising. And so you'd get a cassette or
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a real to real tape, and they'd come from a manager or an agent
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or an attorney. I would hear something and if it was reasonably good,
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I'd listen to it again. If it wasn't really good, you would know
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it without question, you know, within a minute or two. Then I'd
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write a personal letter. Everybody else wrote form letters. I got tapes from
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jail. I got all kinds of tapes, and occasionally one would stand right
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out. Like Lennard Skinner's manager came to see me. I didn't know him.
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He played the demo and bang, there it was. Freebird was on
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the demo, and the same thing with Boston. Their manager came in,
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went to Lenny Peace, who was a colleague. Lenny played the tape and
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came down to my office with the manager and said, would you listen to
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something with me? And there it was. I mean, it was undeniable.
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So over the years you get to sharpen your ear a little bit.
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Unfortunately I never passed on anything that became huge. Yeah, you said half
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of the first song, a minute of the second, and just the first
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few seconds of the third song, and then you knew by that. The
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Skinnered story is fascinating to me because I had Alan Walden on the podcast when
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he had his book out, and he delivered a great story to you were
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ready. But somebody else said, I don't hear a song, which is
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my boss. Yeah, my boss said, great band, no songs.
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And that was as we as we walked out of the exit inn in Nashville
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across a parking lot. And that was the second band he had passed on,
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well, the third actually after Kiss and Rush. Yeah, those are
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the other two. And well, now, what's interesting though, Kiss was
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they were actually known as Wicked Lester when you saw that when I signed them,
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they were Wicked Lester. But really that group had nothing to do with
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what became Kiss. It was just Paul and Jean and they were in the
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group, but they really got fed up with the direction in which the group
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was going, so they formed a three piece and that was the beginning of
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Kiss. I've heard the Wicked Lester songs. I don't know how he described
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it. It's more like it's like folk. I don't know how would you
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discribe, but it's nothing like what Kiss would become. Well, I always
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described it as very sugary pop music. A lot of harmonies, a lot
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of background chorus, there's a lot of it was catchy stuff, but it
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wasn't It wasn't Kiss. What did you think when you saw a Kiss start
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to take off? Well, under those guys the same thing. I said,
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damn it, you know. But but the thing is that in those
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days before Kiss, Russian Skinnered were huge, I was just, you know,
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I didn't have very much authority or cloud or power or influence. You
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know. I was just a guy who was evaluating tapes. I had signed
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a Reo Speedwagon, but that was the only thing that I had signed.
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And then I was turned down on those three bands until my boss who turned
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them down left and was replaced by a new guy who allowed me to sign
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Ted Nugent because he said, well, maybe Wrman knows something that we don't,
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you know, after those three bands became huge. So yeah, I
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went into the studio with Ted. I want to stress that we did not
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discuss politics at time. And I became a producer by sitting in on on
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the sessions with Ted and the guy who was his official producer who owned his
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contract. Yeah, and I want to ask you a little bit more about
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your production skills. Geene and Paul, what were they like? They were
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still very young, I think maybe twenty twenty one years old. Yeah,
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Yeah, they were nice kids, very you know, very nice. Gene
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always arrogant, you know, always always a little sleazy and telling you,
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you know, what he thinks and what Jean's world is like and why you
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should be in it. And Paul was quiet, you know, he seemed
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a little bit, a little bit shy. And it's funny because he does
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all the talking on stage now and Jane doesn't say a word. He was
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smart, but two of them didn't want to continue in that in the in
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the wicked lester direction. And you know, I thought, these guys are
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good and the whole face paint thing was brand new, and I just liked
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everything about them. It was really the first time I put myself in the
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role of businessman music businessman, because I thought, Wow, you know,
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these songs they're not the greatest songs I ever heard, but very singable in
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the shower, you know, they're you know, they've got good hooks that
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the band drills into your drills into your head. So I thought, yeah,
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we should sign this band. Oh. I think they benefited from Casablanca
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because I just the book Kiss at fifty. The author Martin Popoff was talking
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about how Casablanca was important because they didn't have anybody else on the roster,
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so they were able to really put Kiss right at the top on the Priority.
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Yeah, and Neil bought the Wicked Lester album and shelved it. Nobody
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ever heard it. So, now, what do you think of this?
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I was watching the clip on YouTube where Paul makes the announcement this is the
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end of one road at the beginning of another, you will see us again,
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And then they have this preview of an Avatar kiss show. What do
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you think about? Is this something that you'd be interested in seeing? No
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can succeed, I guess, is my question. Oh yeah, man,
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you'll have them in your living room. Yeah, yeah, you'll be able
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to you know, in twenty years, you'll be able to have you know,
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any band you want, play anything you want right in your living room.
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Not only that, I mean you'll you'll be able to have NFL games
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in your backyard. It's just it's something I definitely don't want to see,
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but I can you know, it's it's progress. Yeah, I mean,
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you don't think they could do something like this and fill an arena. I
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mean I can't imagine that that. I don't. I don't, I don't
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think so. Yeah, I don't think so. But you know, it's
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it's kind of like the progression from from theater to television. You all had
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to come together in a large crowd to see a presentation of some kind,
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and you had to physically go there. And then in time, the same
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presentation could be presented to you in your living room, you know, and
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you wouldn't have to go anywhere. Well, I think the same thing's going
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to happen here. Maybe people will go to a stadium just to have the
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experience and see the band on stage, but there's no reason why you have
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to sit one hundred yards away from the stage. They'll bring it right to
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you and they'll be doing things that they never did, and they'll be playing
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perfectly, and it just won't be the same. It's just very much like
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the music of today, which is perfect and sampled. You know. I
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was reading something about this Kiss tour or the last night I think was Rolling
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Stone, and they said that you know whom I know, well, Doc
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McGee had manager admitted that they did mix in pre recorded vocals with the real
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vocals. And I'm not sure what mixed in means, but everybody seems to
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be okay with that now, you don't, you know, remember Millie Vanilli?
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Oh yeah, I mean that whole thing. That was a scandal,
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you know, that broke right down the road for me at in Bristol,
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Connecticut. That was that night at Lake compounds that the track skipped, yeah,
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right down the road for me. Yeah. Occasionally in my day,
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bands would if they were going to play a song where there was a keyboard
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and they didn't have a keyboard in the band, but I brought one in
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to the studio to put on the record, like you know, any number
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of songs, but they'd put the keyboard player off stage and nobody would really
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notice. And that was because it was still live music. They just didn't
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have the guy on stage. But with all this you know, recorded stuff,
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the band might as well just come out and go through the motions.
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Never never play or sing. I think what Paul is doing. If you
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look a lot of these people, they just analyze Paul to just the extremes
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where they they've shown video of consecutive shows and they'll they'll note how it sounds
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exactly the same each night, so it's from a track, but it also
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seems like he's kind of weaving in and out if he's singing live at times,
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but then he's not, and it looks that way. But then there
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was a clip I just saw of Eric Singer playing Beth and he stops his
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finger. His hands aren't moving and the piano is still going. So yeah,
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that's the danger of being in this era. If you want to try
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to get away with that, it's not easy because everybody's filming. Everybody's recording
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on their phone, right right. I think it's nowhere near this scandal that
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it used to be. Yeah, because people see more than one band or
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act doing it, and they're used to technology. You know, people making
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records these days look at the music just as much as they listen to it.
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You know. They take it from the screen and they'll move this chorus
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over here, they'll move this the year, and they'll go into auto tune
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and they'll sample one snare drum. It'll be all the snare drum hits.
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And no, no, no, it ain't. It's not the same.
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No, tell me more about Rush. What was it that you had a
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chance to hear that this was more of a money issue than anybody saying they
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didn't like the music. What happened with Rush? How much of it?
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Did you listen to? A demo of theirs you've got a chance to see
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him live. I heard a demo. It was sent to me. I
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said, I want to see this. So I flew to Toronto and their
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manager, Ray Daniels, picked me up, took me to dinner, and
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we drove out to missus Saga, a little suburb of Toronto and southern I
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think was in a high school gym or a high school theater. And I
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thought they were wonderful. I thought it was a really great signing because it
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was art, you know. It wasn't come on, baby, let's rock
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all night. It was high brow rock music, and they were excellent,
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and I felt really good about about the signing. And then they asked for
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seventy five thousand dollars advanced for two album a two album deal, which is
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chunk change now. Anyway, the guidelines of the business affairs department at CBS,
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which was a corporation and had stockholders and was responsible to them, the
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guidelines did not allow for that much money for two albums. So they said
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no, and Cliff Bernstein signed them down at Mercury you know a few months
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later that was that, Yeah, this is interesting too because it wasn't Neil
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Peart behind the kit, it was John Rutzy on drums, right, Ted
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Nugent. Let's talk about that, because you did feel that same excitement with
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Ted Nugent. This time you hit a home run. And this is also
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the moment you go behind the boards and you're credited as co producer. First,
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why the decision to produce Ted's seventy five self titled debut and what were
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some of the tricks that you did as you right to get Ted's aggressive attitude
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on vinyl? Some of the things you did well. I didn't become a
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producer. I didn't try to be a producer. I just I just went
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into the studio to protect my investment. I needed to make sure that this
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was a good one for the label because I hadn't been able to sign anything
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successful for five years, and you know, an an R guy needs to
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get something going in order to keep his job. So I went in the
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studio a lot, and the guy who was producing him wasn't really he didn't
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have a rock and roll had. Ted and I got it along very well
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musically, and I think one of the things that really cemented our relationship and
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told him that he was safe with me in the studio was Stranglehold. It
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was the first song I ever mixed, and I did some stuff with it.
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I fiddled around a lot, and I did the backward cymbals and the
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guitar duets and things like that were manufactured, they weren't just recorded on the
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spot. And I did that and he said I remember, he said,
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I love what you did with Stranglehold, but don't ever do anything like that
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again without asking me first, you know. So I was delighted. He
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was really happy with the record. In the book is the postcard saying thanks,
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this is great. And you don't get that from Ted that much.
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It's very difficult for me to explain to my friends, who are all pretty
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much registered Democrats, that I can still speak to this guy because he's you
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know, he said some terribly outrageous things and I don't agree with him at
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all, but we don't we don't go there. A couple times a year.
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He'll send me some music, or he'll call me and maybe ask a
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question, or you know, he used to send me and my wife bear
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steaks for Christmas. I never had a formed taste for them, but it
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was a really nice gesture. There's some great stuff in the book. You
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talked about the thank you card from Ted. There's a typewritten memo on Lynard
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skinnerd a memo to your boss at Epic Records leading to your first business trip
21:45
to see Ario Speedwagon Live. All this kind of stuff you get in the
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book along with the great stories, pictures of you with all these bands and
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artists you work with, great stuff at Epic. Yeah, where did you
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find? Were these pictures just somewhere in the attic somewhere or what these?
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Did you keep care of them in a photo album? No? I never
22:03
considered having a photographer around to document my career. Jimmy Iveen managed to have
22:11
a video crew in his control room right from the very beginning when he was
22:18
just an engineer. I don't know how. I don't know. I mean,
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he must have had a lot of self confidence by saying, someday they're
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going to make a documentary on my life, you know, and I'm going
22:30
to have all this footage for them. I had to go to the CBS
22:33
archives, CBS Records archives and go through years of in house photographer shots to
22:45
find ones from the convention, from you know, backstage at certain shows.
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And then you'll You'll notice that there are few or if any pictures of what
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I did after I left CBS, because I didn't say, let's bring in
23:03
a photographer. I want a picture with twist AND's sister. I want a
23:06
picture with Brett Michaels. I want didn't happen. So you know I put
23:11
some entertaining pictures in there. Well, you got the stories on those bands,
23:15
and I'll have to see about those. Meat Loaf. A few people
23:18
know Meatloaf sang on Ted Nugen's second album, Free for All. He sings
23:22
four tracks. Yeah, it's right there to see, but they don't see
23:26
it right. How did he get involved with that project? And was he
23:29
even called me? Because I know if you look now at the credits that
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says Meatloaf, But was he even called that at the time? Yeah,
23:34
he was, Okay, how did he get involved with this? He's on
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four tracks which are street Rats together, Hammered Down and I Love You So,
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I told you a lie. I Love You So, I told you
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what That one is kind of meat lo v that title, But I knew
23:48
meat because he and Steinmann had come in to audition, and he auditioned for
23:53
me live in my office with Jim Steinman playing the piano, and you know,
23:59
he blew the wall down. But I didn't think that we would know
24:03
how to market him because he was like a metallic opera. Yeah, very
24:07
different. Yeah, And so I I said, look, I'm not going
24:11
to sign you, but I introduced him to my boss, not that boss,
24:17
but the new boss. And he left. When he left CBS,
24:21
he signed he started Cleveland International Records and signed Meatloaf and so he was the
24:29
only one I passed on who became huge. But I passed on him knowing
24:33
he would become huge, but not on Epic Records. And then Derek,
24:40
you know, was arrested. I can't it was either for shoplifting or something.
24:45
But he got in trouble, as he would from time to time,
24:48
Derek Saint Holmes, and so Lou the guy who owned the contract Ted's contract
24:55
and was the guy in charge, he lost it and he said, I'm
25:00
going to teach him a lesson. I don't want him in the studio.
25:03
Do you know any other singers? I mean it was it was, you
25:07
know, kind of a desperate move. And I said, well, you
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know, I know one really good guy. I don't know if he's right
25:12
for the column. So so I called me, and he came down from
25:18
New York to Atlanta. The next day, he did the four songs and
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he went home. It's only because now, after all these years, we
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know Meatloaf's voice that you can listen to it and say, oh, okay,
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But it's not like it's instantly identifiable. Was he was he trying to
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sing in the style of Derek Was he? I don't think so. No,
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he just saying it was pretty good that he you know, he he
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could actually learn those songs that he had never heard and the lyrics and make
25:45
it sound convincing. Nobody ever asked me about that, really, until I
25:52
started doing interviews. The people said, you know, meat Loaf, the
25:57
book down Rock Podcast, We'll be back after this. Tom Mormon's our guest.
26:03
The book is called Turn It Up. My Time Making Hit Records in
26:07
the Glory Days of Rock Music, featuring mot Leykrue, Poison, Twisted's sister,
26:11
Jeff Back, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and more. You say
26:14
you loved the sessions for the three albums you did with Cheap Trick and three
26:18
legendary albums you produce seventy sevens in Color, seventy Eights, Heaven Tonight,
26:22
and seventy nine's Dream Police. Now you have nothing but great things to say
26:26
about these guys in the band. And you think you may have been the
26:30
one who came up with the term for Robin Xander, which is the man
26:33
of a thousand Voices. Yeah, I think so, Yeah, I love
26:38
I mean, you know that, as I said, this band and all
26:44
the members in it were a producer's dream. Made it so easy to make
26:48
really good records. And those are the ones I listened to today. If
26:55
I listened to anything I did, it will be one of those. I
27:00
have only one song on a four hour playlist on my phone that I use
27:06
at the gym, and that's how Peters am. I just think it rocks
27:10
hard. It was a gift. It was so easy to work with them,
27:14
he said. Robin just owned it. Whenever he took it on the
27:17
vocals, he just and he still sounds great, still sounds phenomenal. Apparently
27:22
I haven't seen them in a long time because Rick and I had, you
27:26
know, a major disagreement about I want you to want Me. I mean,
27:30
his story is that after they left the studio and when on tour or
27:36
something. I put the tack piano on the studio version of I Want You
27:41
To Want Me, and I said, my recollection was, you were sitting
27:47
on the couch when we did that piano part, and you know, you
27:51
being Rick. And I remember when I turned to them and said, what
27:56
about this? What do you like this? And Rick said you're the producer,
28:00
so I figured, well, hey, I can do stuff here.
28:03
So he was complaining about the song, which they completely changed. Obviously they
28:10
you know, but I treated it as a dancehall song, which it was.
28:14
I've put on I snapped fingers on that song. You don't snap fingers
28:18
if you don't put finger snaps on a Zeppelin song. So then they changed
28:23
it completely, which was good. It was good, it worked, you
28:27
know. But I don't have any contact with them. I have contact with
28:32
Bunny, but I have no contact with Robin or Tom or Rick. And
28:37
I was not close with Rick, but I knew his family and as I
28:41
said, our kids trick or treated together one time in LA and he was
28:47
over at the house and my wife was at there, and my wife knew
28:49
his wife and so on. Anyway, I'll never see him again. And
28:55
I seen him for like forty years. It says it's a shame. Shame,
29:00
yeah, because it sounds like you're so proud of those three records,
29:02
which you should be. I am. And then you know, I mean
29:06
you've got things like Roger Waters and David Gilmour or Ray Davies and Dave Davies.
29:12
You know, they won't speak to each other. Think of the Kinks,
29:15
how a Kinks reunion tour would do. And then you've got Mick Mars
29:21
and the rest of the band. And it's a tough business for personalities.
29:25
A lot of times it's creative differences, but also it can be as a
29:29
band gets bigger and bigger, there's there's the egos. There's also people on
29:33
the outside saying you don't need them. You can be a solo artist.
29:36
A lot of that happens. That almost happened with Peterson, with Tom Peterson
29:41
and his and Dagmar. She wanted him to be to sing, she wanted
29:48
him to be bigger in the band, you know, and he did sing
29:51
one song and he left the band for one album, right, I believe?
29:56
Yeah, I think so. There's a fascinating pro process that you had
30:00
on most of the projects. You were involved with as a producer, and
30:03
you get into detail in the book selecting the songs, followed by pre production,
30:08
then load in and set up the all important recording engineer, laying it
30:12
down, mixing, and last mastering and delivery. Just pick out a small
30:17
portion of that entry. You say that once you had a good drum performance
30:19
and the song's foundation was solid, you'd start building the songs like a pyramid.
30:23
Can you explain on that a little bit? And how I would avoid
30:26
you having to quote fix it in the mix, Well, you wouldn't.
30:30
If you could do one instrument at a time, you could make it flawless,
30:34
pretty perfect and mistake free because you could go in and correct that track
30:40
and punch in and go in into record and then out of record to fix
30:45
whatever mistakes the player had made. So you've got a great drum track,
30:49
then you've got a grape based track. Then you've got everything is solid all
30:53
the way up to the top. If you did the whole band live,
30:57
everybody would have clams. There would be mistakes in every instrument all throughout the
31:03
song. Really it's not live. But I don't know if you if you
31:10
saw the part about all the bands who never were in the studio before,
31:15
wanted to record live and assumed they would. So we just set them up
31:18
in the you know, in the studio and get all their sounds together,
31:22
and they thought, all right, let's go. We didn't play these songs,
31:25
which you know, one of the things that really surprised me was in
31:30
the Peter Jackson Beatles documentary they did play live and that was wow. Yeah,
31:37
that was amazing. I mean they were so tight, but yeah,
31:42
that's the way I would do it. And it became pretty neat, pretty
31:48
tight recording, which is something that the grunge bands completely rejected. I understand
31:55
why you know that. I mean, what we did was corporate rock,
31:59
forts elite. A lot of people liked it and still do. That's the
32:04
thing that's interesting with Motley Crue, the albums that you produce for them.
32:07
Eighty three Shout Out the Devil, eighty five's Theater Pain, eighty seven's Girls,
32:09
Girls Girls. To me, I love that sound and to your credit,
32:14
I mean you're talking about they were hard on the drugs during this period.
32:16
I guess my question is did you have to work hard to keep them
32:20
focused or are the stories that we read and here exaggerated. There aren't really
32:24
any wild stories from the studio. It all happened outside the studio. They
32:31
were pretty focused. I mean, they weren't like some of the bands that
32:37
I did work with, who were much more focused. But they weren't.
32:42
While they weren't irresponsible, they worked, you know, because we turned them
32:47
out. Theater of Pain suffered as many second albums do after the first big
32:54
hit, so Shout Out the Devil was really big. They hustle back into
33:00
the studio. The songs that they did on shout had been around for a
33:07
long time. They've been playing them for a long time. They go out
33:10
on the road, the album goes nuts. They book another tour for them
33:15
that's big, and they're opening for Arismith, they're opening for Kiss, you
33:20
know whatever. And they have to come up with twelve songs within three months
33:24
and record an album and get ready for the next tour. And there's a
33:30
lot of stress involved in that whole process, and stress brings about self medication
33:37
and there you go. So thank God for Home Sweet Home. I was
33:40
just about to ask, yeah, tell me about that. So Tommy Lee
33:44
brought that song. He just came in and started to play that riff on
33:49
the piano, and the song came together quite easily. It was kind of
33:54
like John Lennon playing the piano, want to imagine you know. Of course
34:00
it was not like that, but it was a very natural song to record.
34:06
I think everybody will agree that the material on Theater wasn't necessarily as good
34:12
as the material on Girls, Girls, Girls and Shout Girls. Girls.
34:15
Girls had had that song Girls Girls Girls, and it had Wildside, one
34:22
of the best from the crew. I think Wildside is probably the best thing
34:28
I did with that band. It's just a slam bang, oh killed man
34:31
and that tail end when you hear the actuality sounds or however you want to
34:35
call it, but gunshots, sirens, those actual recordings, I mean,
34:39
did you go out on the street record them? Yeah, we had.
34:43
Well, one of the girls who worked at the studio did the scream.
34:47
One of the guys who worked at the studio was the barker at the door
34:52
who said, come check it out for free. We didn't go to Times
34:57
Square. Some of the sounds were live, some of the sounds were from
35:01
maybe sound effects tapes or something, But I don't recall exactly how we pieced
35:08
it together. But it was fun. Tommy Lee is just a phenomenal drummer.
35:13
I know, his image is that of the wild Man. A lot
35:15
of times people don't really think about him as a musician enough. In my
35:20
opinion. Well, he and Bunny those were the two best. And yeah,
35:24
I mean Tommy was a wonderful timekeeper and he had his own style before
35:30
on the floor thing. Bunny, on the other hand, was really good
35:35
for what he didn't play, and he was kind of a Charlie Watts guy,
35:39
very simple, very small kid, but nailed it down, really nailed
35:45
it down. And Tommy was just a dynamo. He was the most enthusiastic
35:51
musician I've ever worked with. I mean, rare to go all the time,
35:55
really agreeable, excited about technology, wanted to do stuff always. Yeah,
36:00
yeah, let's he was great. You liked sampling he did? You
36:04
know there was some sampling on Wild Sign. Tommy and Mick were both extremely
36:09
cooperative, very responsible, and highly underrated. Kind of bummed to see Mick
36:15
not and Motley Crue. John Five's great guitars, but it's just it's hard
36:20
to see Motley Crue without McK mars up there. Yeah, he's the man
36:24
Poisons, Every Rose has Its Thorn only number one single that you've produced.
36:29
According to the book, it is Crewe four top ten singles from Open Up
36:32
and Say Ah. This is from nineteen eighty eight. You produce this album,
36:37
you're among the first, if not the first, to hear Every Rose
36:39
has Its Thorn? Yeah, the first? He Okay, so he wrote
36:43
this way at a laundromat. I remember he told the story and the girl
36:46
girl cheated on him and he came up with this song. To me,
36:50
Brett Michaels is a solid songwriter. I think the song I mean, and
36:52
you've talked about in the book. Hey, not not the most skilled musicians
36:55
you've ever worked with, but they work hard. But I think the songs
37:00
are solid. Absolutely. Yeah. No Poison is a legitimate They're a legitimate
37:07
band, a little legitimate act and good guys. And they were the ones
37:10
who were really you know, they were able to party hard and work hard.
37:17
You know, they were never irresponsible. CC sometimes took it a little
37:22
too far, you know in those days, but they did the work.
37:28
They did the work that was necessary. What was the Ricky Rocket story you
37:30
talked about with a drum fill? He worked them hard, and he just
37:34
said, whatever you need. He had a lot of trouble doing this.
37:38
I can't remember why it was so important, but it was. It was
37:43
a drum fill or a turnaround between the chorus and next verse or going into
37:49
the chorus, and he just couldn't hack it. And it was so it
37:53
was important enough for me to call Bunny Carlos and ask if he would come
37:59
down to the studio because he was in town in LA and helped Ricky to
38:06
get it. And he did. And Ricky he worked probably two or three
38:12
hours on this one. Phil Anyway, it's on there and I don't ask
38:17
me which one. It was the controversial album cover with a girl with a
38:23
tongue and they had with the Mothers against Oh yeah, PMRCA, the Parental
38:32
Music Resource Committee. Man, we had fun with them. Yeah, you
38:39
were just quickly going back to the crew. So they hired Bob Rock.
38:43
They didn't tell you. You just found out, like, oh, they're
38:45
working with Bob Rock now, okay, yeah, Well Doc said we're going
38:49
to use another producer, but that was okay. A producer is not going
38:52
to take a completely different route or have a completely different production approach. It's
39:00
the same guy. You know, I used certain things on every record because
39:05
they worked, and it didn't mean that somebody said, oh yeah, Tom
39:08
Werman produced that. It sounds just like that. That's not how it worked.
39:14
But you know, I mean Jimmy I Bean said after three albums,
39:19
you should shoot your producer, which is funny but kind of true. You
39:27
know, I did five with Ted, I did five with Molly Hatchett.
39:30
I did three with Cheap Trick, three with Motley Crue, and it's time.
39:36
It was time for me to leave with Ted and and Molly Hatchett.
39:39
Molly Hatchett, I should ask you about them too, five albums. That
39:44
was an underrated band. I guess you could say in the sense that there's
39:47
like one song Flirting with Disaster, but there's much more to them than that
39:51
song. Flint with Disasters a classic. Yeah, Dreams is yes. I
39:57
thought that was cool because the Allman Brothers version is just called dreams, and
40:00
then Molly hatch To calls the dreams I'll never see. That was a great
40:04
cover. It really was wound up and the last minute with the alternating solos
40:12
was really it's really good. You know, the guys, they're all dead.
40:15
It's a shame, I know, and they were considerably younger than I
40:21
was. He had fun that they were good too. I mean, I'm
40:24
really I got along so well with them, and we were from different worlds.
40:30
Really, when did you first see them play? Well? I was
40:35
remixing a cheap trick song in a studio in Atlanta, which we used a
40:43
lot, and their manager called me and said, we'll come up. We'll
40:46
set up in the studio and play for you. I said, well,
40:50
that's pretty convenient. I'd love to do that. Don't even have to leave
40:53
the building to audition this band. So they did, and we got a
40:59
great sound. I mean, here we are in a recording studio control room
41:04
and they played a set and it was brilliant right there. Bang that was
41:07
it. So I said, I'd love to sign you guys. And I
41:10
remember Dave Lubeck, who was basically the leader of the band. They said,
41:15
mister Werman, all I want is my front tooth band. Love that
41:20
story. He was missing. I mean he looked like you know, Joey
41:24
heehaw. He had no front tooth. Anyway, they were good guys in
41:32
terms of underrated Dwayne Rowland, who was the best guitar player in that band.
41:39
He was silly. He was so good. I mean you can hear
41:44
him. I can hear him every time he plays. There are three of
41:47
them playing, you know, and they take turns, and I had to
41:52
give them equal time. But I would have been very happy if Dwayne had
41:54
done all the guitars on all the songs. The guy was amazing. Never
42:00
looked at his neck, never looked at his neck, doubled everything, he
42:05
played perfectly, and he was a one take guy. I mean, he
42:10
was beyond session guys in terms of his capability. There's one song that we
42:17
covered that the Stones did, It's All Over Now, and he does a
42:22
solo in there that Keith played or tried to play. I mean Keith.
42:29
You know, look, Keith is magnificent, but the solo that he plays
42:34
was not what you hear when Dwayne plays it. Dwayne nailed it totally.
42:39
And if you hear Keith play it and then you listen to Dwayne play it,
42:44
you can see the difference between, you know, a fine technician and
42:49
a guy who goes on feel and that you know that that would be Keith.
42:53
I'm not saying anything bad about Keith Richard's here. You know, he
42:58
came up with the greatest in rock and roll, but you know he's not
43:02
a technician like Joe Walsh, Rick Darrenger or John Mayer or you know,
43:10
yeah, It's all over Now was a single too that was off of a
43:14
Flirtwood Disaster that wasn't I didn't remember well according to what I'm looking at here,
43:19
it was released in seventy nine as a single, but Flirtwood Disaster,
43:22
Like, did you once that's done and you're like, yeah, this is
43:25
going to be huge? Or I mean I always asked that of producers and
43:28
musicians, like these hit songs, do they know when it's done, like,
43:30
oh yeah, this is going to be it? Yes with some of
43:34
them. Yes, I knew it with Every Rose, I knew it with
43:37
Cat Scratch, Fever and Surrender, but not too many others. You know.
43:45
I wasn't a believer in We're not going to take it real. Yeah,
43:50
I wasn't wild about the song, Dee says. I wouldn't let them
43:52
do it complete fiction. They did it. I didn't love it. We
43:58
made it as good as we could good. Same thing with I Want to
44:00
Rock. I thought they sounded a little bit like nursery rhymes. And maybe
44:07
that's what you know made them so singable. That might I think that's the
44:10
first album I ever owned, because I think I got it for Christmas as
44:14
a kid. My older brother got d with a big the big bone in
44:16
his hand. Yeah, and now who was the I talked to the photographer
44:22
Mark Wise, Yes, you're right, Mark White, and he said it
44:24
was funny because he went to their place there in New York and yeah,
44:29
they were just they were crazy. You know, there's blasting the music,
44:31
you know, and the neighbors were complaining about the music being too loud and
44:36
so on so far, and then he went in there and they did the
44:37
shots and anyway. But yeah, but what a career? Now? Tell
44:40
me how and when you you end up becoming an award winning innkeeper, Tell
44:45
about this. I need to get this book. Who Moved My Cheese?
44:51
Right? Absolutely? Yes? Absolutely? You know I was stuck. I
44:55
read the book in one sitting and it it really got me just off my
45:01
ass. Two weeks later, I was out here in the Berkshires looking for
45:07
a place. I figured I needed to reinvent myself. I was not happy
45:14
with my career at the time, and I knew none of these bands from
45:17
Seattle were going to work with the guy who produced Motley Crue. That would
45:22
be an embarrassment. You know, Motley Crue was really cool and then they
45:28
were embarrassment, and now they're really cool. You know, that's what why
45:34
classic rock is so great. You know, we have an appreciation now for
45:38
what was then. I knew that I wasn't useful to any of the bands
45:44
from Seattle or any of the grunge bands, and I didn't particularly think it
45:51
was appropriate for a fifty five year old to be making records for teenagers at
45:54
that point. And I knew my music was gone. It was gone,
46:00
and that was kind of this end of the classic rock era for me for
46:06
me. And so I found our place in February and we were living there
46:10
in July. It was that quick. We moved back from la and it
46:16
took us a year to renovate and to open up, and Linda Ronstadt was
46:21
our first guest because she was playing at Tanglewood, which was three quarters of
46:24
a mile down the road. But yeah, I had to reinvent myself.
46:28
I wasn't ready to retire, and I wanted to live in the country,
46:35
and we had been here once before, my wife and I, and this
46:38
was a most stunning place. So I got this idea for the luxury bed
46:44
and breakfast concept, which is an oxymoron because ben and breakfasts were typically charming
46:51
and spartan. You didn't have anything. You were lucky if you had a
46:55
radio in your room, and you had a room, not a So I
47:00
had suites, three suites and two outbuildings, so five units, and they
47:06
were all as well equipped as they could possibly be, big screen TVs,
47:12
internet, bowse wave radios which were really hot, then landlines and all sorts
47:17
of luxuries. And I made a killer breakfast. So eventually, you know,
47:22
the travel people started coming, and we had celebrities come there and very
47:30
quiet, they knew that they could trust us. We didn't talk about them,
47:35
and we got awards. When did you open it up? Two thousand
47:39
and one? We started in July with Linda, and then we sold No,
47:45
Yeah, two thousand and one, and we sold it in twenty twenty
47:50
one, so that we moved up the street because we loved the street so
47:54
much. It's a mile from here. Life is good, man, that's
47:59
great. That's what they called the second act. Oh. Yeah, I've
48:04
been so lucky. I've had two fabulous careers. And the retirement thing is
48:09
really good too, is it. Yes, yes, very nice. Yeah.
48:15
And then this book all came about because of something you read online,
48:17
and then you started writing a blog, and then the blog leads to the
48:21
book. Yeah, you remember a lot from the book. It's very nice,
48:25
yes, very nice. Yeah, So the book is I'm sure the
48:29
book is doing very well. It's been out. I think it came out
48:30
last month now, it's only been out like three weeks, two and a
48:37
half. Yeah, it seems to be be well received. And people all
48:43
say two things about it. One I just couldn't put it down. I
48:47
finished it in two days, and they all call it an easy read.
48:52
So I'm lucky because I only have one writing style and that was it.
49:00
Fortunately it works for readers. I don't think too many people out there who
49:05
are serious readers or writers thought that, you know, the guy who produced
49:09
Matley Crew could actually write a sentence. So I'm glad that it's doing well.
49:15
And sure enough you can, and it's out now. It is out
49:20
now through job and Press. That's the publisher, right, So yeah,
49:23
people can get turned up my time making hit records in the glory days of
49:28
rock music, featuring Motley Crue, Poison, Twist's sister Jeff Back, Ted
49:31
NUSI, and Cheap Trick and more manymore. And it's out now. And
49:36
where can people find you online? Well, I have Tom Wrman dot com.
49:40
But I'm not an online guy. Really. If you Google me,
49:45
there's all sorts of stuff, and there's all sorts of stuff, pages and
49:49
pages of them, and all the interviews and new interviews and anyway articles.
49:54
But I'm not a tech savvy guy. I've been doing some book promotion on
50:00
Instagram, and I occasionally I will go on Facebook, you know, and
50:06
talk to people. And I have about three thousand Facebook friends. But I
50:12
like paper and pencil. I still have a landline. I'm out of the
50:15
traffic. You don't need all this craziness with the social media and all that
50:19
stuff. Tom, thanks so much. This was so fun. I couldn't
50:22
wait to talk to you. And there's so much more I could ask you,
50:24
but we'll leave that for the book. People can read the book to
50:27
get more start. Yeah, thank you very much. I really enjoyed this.
50:38
That's it. It's in the books.