Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Joel Selvin

Transcript

Joel Selvin · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is legendary music writer Joel Selder. Great
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: to be here, Bob, Good to see you. Okay, let's
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: start with you did the Sammy Hagar book. It was
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: a huge bestseller, number one. Did you have any anticipation
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: was going to be that successful. I knew that I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: could get a very generous book deal with Sammy just
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: based on his name. Uh, I think sam this interesting.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Sammy had to do with the Van Halen thing. But
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I knew that that he would be likely candidate for
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: a good sized book deal. And I just quit the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: paper after thirty six years. So on San Francisco, chronic right,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I was there as there pop music critic, and and uh,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Sammy had mentioned something years before, but I didn't think
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it was a really good idea yet. And then you know,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: like suddenly I thought it was a good idea. No,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that it was a number one bestseller.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: And I got a credit the one and only, the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: late great John Carter. Did you know Carter? Of course,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Carter the writer of the lyrics of Incense and Pepper,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: amongst so many I mean private Dancer. He brought Tina
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Turner back, just an unbelievable list of things, and he
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: was managing Sammy and yes, I do that. And he
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: marshalled Sammy's fan club and cut him a deal for
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: pre orders. And the day that book came out, we
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: were already in the forties on Amazon, and by the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: end of that day we were in the top five. Wow.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that. To what degree was Sammy's appearance
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: on Howard Stern a factor. So we sat that day
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and he did Howard Stern and he did Good Morning America,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and we watched the things squirret up the charts, and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: every time it hit the new time section, you know,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: at time zone, and it was hilarious. And and and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: then like I'm walking home back to my cousin's apartment
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side, and my agent calls and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: they've already gone into the third printing, and he calls
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: up to tell me that Walmart just ordered twenty books.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm at the Columbus Circle and standing in front
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of some shoe store I can't afford. So I went
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: in and bought a pair of shoes and expensive. With
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: those shoes, they tell I mean more I'd spend on shoes,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and these are my best seller shoes. Okay, Now the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: book is fascinating because you wrote it in Sammy's voice.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: How did you decide? How did you perfect that experience? Oh?
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: That was the whole mission, right, because that's what the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: readers want. They want to sit down and feel like
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Sammy's telling them the story. Right. So I had Sammy
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: tell me the story. I tape recorded it, and then
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I sat there and fussed around with it until like
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: red like sentences and stuff like that. A lot of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: it is straight out of Sammy's mouth, and all I
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: had to do was put a period and a capital
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: letter in the middle. Uh, there's very little of me
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in there, and what it is is transparent. Right. You
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: can't see me because you can't see you at all. Certainly,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: having read your brother books, I didn't realize that much
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: was actually straight from Sammy. So wonderful. Uh, it really
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: feels like him, and he's he was. He did such
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: an incredible job at telling his story. He he's in
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: charge of his own narrative and a great degree. That's
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: not always true of people. So how did you meet Sammy?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Oh Man? So I I had a brief swing through
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: college at Riverside. You see Riverside, and I hung and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: swung in the musicians down there. Uh, Sammy is from Fontana,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and I didn't know Sammy wasas from Riverside, but he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: joined a band with a bunch of guys that I
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: did know, and they started coming up to San Francisco.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: They were the Justice Brothers. Okay, but what brothers? Justice Brothers? Okay?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And you bet? And you knew the band from having
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: been briefly in Riverside. Yeah, I knew the bass player
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and the guitar player, and the drummer was Sammy's friend.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: He's still playing with Sammy, David Louser, but really yeah yeah,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and uh Bobby Anglin was an unbelievable guitar player, and
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and Jeff Nicholson was off selling uh Turner Burne Christian
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: T shirts. But the Justice Brothers used to play this
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: real sort of top forty dump in San Francisco, and
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I saw them there several times before Ronnie Montrose did.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: But I was there the night Ronnie Montrose came tell
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: us that story Montrose had been in. Uh, Sammy had
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: been in touch with Ronnie Montrose, who had just forming
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: his own band after leaving Van Morrison's band. So, you know,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I know all that history. So Ronnie's
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: originally from where to the degree you remember, you know,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: he showed up in San Francisco with a band called
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Sawbuck that made a lot of noise at a Tuesday
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: night audition in the last weeks of the film war
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and got signed to Bill Graham Management. But I believe
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: they ever really recorded. And he's and he was bumping
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: around as a freelance guitarist when Van picked him up.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And I think he'd also done at Edgar Winterstant Okay,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: how how long was he with Van? Oh? Just the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: blink of an eye? So then one album and then
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: did he already have his deal with Warner Brothers. I
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: believe the deal was in place and he was looking
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to put together this band and Sammy went over to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: his house and they wrote space Station number six or whatever,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: number nine. Yeah, well Sammy is a big number guy. Okay,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I gotta stop you. That means what, Oh he's all
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: about numerology? Oh really? Yeah? Okay, so that's when you
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: met Sammy? Yeah, Justice Brother's days. Oh you know the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: famous Sammy's story about the van Halen review keep going.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: So he joins van Halen and does this tour in
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: his final date is at the Cow Palace in San Francisco,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and I go out to review it. And essentially this
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: is before he's a van Halen or what he's Well,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: he's in van Halen, first tour of van Halen and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: there he is at the end of the tour at
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: his hometown and he's got four shows. It's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: big deal and I'm there. Uh, and I write the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: review and essentially the review says, too bad, they ruined
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: two perfectly decent bands, great line and uh the uh.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Sammy gets on stage Monday night and it's just raging
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: at the audience and he and and using his typical
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: sort of profanity, he hands out what he thinks is
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: my home phone number, tells him to call me. So
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I come home one morning, Uh and uh there's a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: bunch of messages on the machine, remember message machine? And uh.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The first one is some very halting voicing. H Mr Sylvan,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I have your former home phone number in Oakland. Would
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: you please have your friends and business associates on you?
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, what you know. And on the next
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: one is, uh, Joel Roger from Bill Graham Presents and
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Sammy Haygar gave every number out of the cow Palace
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: night chaste. You might get a few calls. The next
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: one is hey, fuck you. And that went on for
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: weeks and and Herb Kane, the gossip columnist in San Francisco,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: picked up on it. He asked me about it. I said, oh, no, no,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: for Sammy, that's what passes for wit. So how did
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: you make it up with Sammy? I don't know. Oh
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: so next time I see Sammy, use it's this Barry
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: and Music Awards, which is just a complete, you know,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: cluster bang. And when there used to be the BAM
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: newspaper used to read that religious Oh yeah, Well they
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: had this big awards where all the leaguers showed up
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and they had this big suite of people that got
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: into you know, the semi v I p uh and uh.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: There it's real crowded, real gril crowded, and they're Sammy
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: sees me, goes Joel Joel, and man, I'm out of here.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, Joel. And just as
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I hit the door, he goes Joel, I need your
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: new home now. That is funny. No, Sammy's funny. There's
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: no you know, he's obnoxious, but he's funny. Okay, at
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: this late date, do you still think that it was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a great life? Did they ruin ruin two good bands? Well,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Sammy grew into van Halen, no question, and and I've
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: come to really appreciate a lot of it that I
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: didn't quite get at the same time. But I love
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the David Lee Roth van Halen, and I agree with
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: you give Sammy's a better singer. But they completely lost
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: their sense of view where I was a big band
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: talking about Carter because Carter signed Sammy to Capitol and
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: they did that album Rid. That's how I first got
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: into it. But uh, before I can't drive fifty five,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: he was almost becoming a caricature of himself. Thank god
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: van Halen picked him up. So you're in Los Angeles,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: we are today? What brought you down here from the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Bay Area? So I'm doing some research for a book
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that's forthcoming in like two years. I'm just starting out.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Uh it Um revolves around a number of people who
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: graduated from um University High School over in West l
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: A in ninety just one specific year. It's this class
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: was pretty rich with with interesting people, and it's where
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Jan and Dean started. And in fact, before they were
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: out of high school. In the last semester, Jan and
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Arnie were on the charts. They had a hit record
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and they were walking around the school hallways. You can
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: only imagine, right and uh. But then I was also
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: this girl going around the hallway named Kathy Cohoner, who
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Sandra d was portraying in a movie called Gidget. Uh.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And the last Jan it was Dean kim Fowley. Kim Fowley.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I knew Kim a little bit towards the end.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: One time I'm talking to him and he told me
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: he had twin sons with some woman that he had
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: no care and he gave me all the description. Then
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: he died. I heard from PRESI wests. He totally made
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: that up. So since he's gone, I don't know what
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the truth is. Do you remember his uh going to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: hospitals and and getting in a hospital gown and and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: and putting Facebook posts up about how he's dying. No, yeah,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: he was. I was totally bogus too. Bally was not
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: a good guy though everybody said that, and by this
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: point he was running on fumes. I think I met
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: him at Tony Wilson's conference in Manchester, England. So he
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: was more about telling the old stories as opposed to
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: ruining people's lives and careers. Shall we say, Well, people
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: who remember him from high school, uh loathe him from
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: day one. So I mean this guy is uh is
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: kind of a fagan in this book, right. So it's
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the book concentrating It's like, you know, whatever happened to
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the class of written forty years ago. So there's other
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: characters involved. Nancy Sinatras in there, and I'm gonna like
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: put an ensemble together and it's gonna come to an
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: extraordinary climax. Um but um eight years later in June
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six. Okay, without ruining. That is the
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: book about the class, or is the book about Jan
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and Dean. It's about a group of people in that
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: class and they how they interact over that as years
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and yes, Jan and Dean and central to that, the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Beach Boys will turn up real early. Lou Adler and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Herb Alpert turn up real early. Uh. The foulis in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: it all throughout. Uh, there's other people involved. Bruce Johnston.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Bruce Johnston was a neighbor of Jan Berry's. Really, I
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: had a conversation with the mid length. Actually I asked
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: him to do a podcast and he said, I said,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: he says, how much does it pay? Oh that's my man,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: But he thought I said, doesn't pay anything. Then I said,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: you don't have to do it. We were backstage at
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the Beach Boys show and then I said, you know,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just get your story down. He was my stories out there.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I said, okay again, I want to press you. He.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I saw him backstage to Tahoe back in the mid
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: eighties and you know, he said, say, what are you driving?
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I could get you a good price on a new Chevy.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Honest to god, what what was that about? He had
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a friend, you know, I was kicking back some money.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I I don't know what the deal was, but you know,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: rock stars. I love him right well, though I reminded me,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: didn't remember they used you know all these like gas stations,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: car washings have disappeared. And the seventies there was a
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: car washing Brentwood and I recognized him and I talked
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: about his new solo out and he gave me one
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: just like they're out of the back of his volvo.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And when I told him, they started reminiscing about cars.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Now you're also doing a book about Dave Mustain, right,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I'm working with Dave on on a book about um
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: his album Rust in Peace and the making of it.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's pretty dramatic stuff and and and uh,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you know, loaded with sex, drugs and rock and roll.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And is there any of the being kicked out of
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: metallic or that's just released covered that in his previous
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: best selling memoir. So he had a big hit memoir
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: almost twenty years ago. So he wants to come back
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: into the book world and he's like focused on this
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: particular album, which is some kind of landmark heavy metal album,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and uh, his story around it is just, you know,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: it's chaos and uh, hectic in insanity. And that was
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: that his idea, and he found you or vice person,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: it was his ideas. Sammy Hagar, you have a string
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of successes as a book writer. To what degree people
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: come looking to you to write books with Well, it's
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: always the wrong person, you know. And uh, but I
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: had some really great experiences like that the book I
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: did with the tattoo artist at Hardy. That's just a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: wonderful book and an important social document. It didn't really
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: sell a lot of copies because the ed Hardy brand
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: was so poisoned that nobody really realized that this was
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the guy who started American because it had been sold,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: would have been sold, they'd been no, you know what
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: killed the you'll love this. What killed the brand and
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: it went out like a light switch. Was John Gosselin.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: You remember him, of course, so uh, he splits from
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: his wife, ok, plus eight, right, goes to the south
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: of France with his new girlfriend, hooks up with Christian Audagier,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: who's the running the ed Hardy brand, and he puts
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: this guy head to toe in ed Hardy gear. So
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: all the pictures of the world's most famous deadbeat dad
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: is him in ed Hardy gear. And that it was
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: over instantly, like Macy's pulled the line. It was just
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: like that. And yeah, they sold it for a couple
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of bucks. But those people, they couldn't even come awake
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: for the autobiography. They had eleven million dollars worth the inventory,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: saying a warehouse, Yeah, I mean know, this is what
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: rag business is. Crazier than the record business. Okay, so
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: uh okay, so it's always the wrong people. But how
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: many people are looking for you? Is it something happens
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: once a year, once a month, yeah, once twice three
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: times a year somebody comes up and you know, uh,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: there's some inquiries at either the agency level or get
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: an email from somebody. And you know, I'm always interested
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: in taking meetings, right, you know, I can't tell I
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: ended up doing a book with l A. Read and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: that's an unlikely thing. Um, I'm trying to think of
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: who are Buddy and the trades? Is that Roy Tracan?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Of course Roy interviewed l A for when the book
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: came out. In the first question is what are you
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: doing with Selvin? That sounds like Roy, you know, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: and and l I said, all we bonded over sly Stone,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: you know. So that was But that L. A. Read
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: book was fantastic experience. I loved working with l A.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: And it was fantastic because well, first of all, uh,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: just the experience of working with l A. Read and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: spending all that time in the Sony executive suites and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: being in New York and out in the Hampton's and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: and just l A. L a was just a magnanimous, warm,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: great guy. Uh. And the book is one of the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: great stories of of of nineties R and B. I mean,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: he created so much of the of the new pop
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: black pop music of that era in baby Face, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: their story is not really well known. It's pretty great.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, he brought himself up out of Cincinnati's pop
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: funk scene. Did you know there was a Cincinnati func scene?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Actually I did, But don't quiz me any deeper. Midnight
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Star they were the kings of it. Okay, So which
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of your books are you proudest of relevant of what
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it's sold? So no question about that, no question. Uh.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Here comes the Night, the burn, dark soul of Burns
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues. Okay, what
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: inspired you to write that book? I first read about
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Burt Burns in Charlie Gillett's book called The Sound of
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the City back about nine Yes, yes, I owned that book.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made it all the way through.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: But okay, what was really the first history we had?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And I devoured it. But he cites Burns and and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: there's a little collection of records that he mentioned. Those
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: records were all sort of an intense little cluster of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: of of hysterical soul records, you know, Garnett, Mims, Solomon, Burke,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Isley Brothers and went being So from that point on,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I just sort of like kept my eye out and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and the more I learned about Burns, more I've found fascinating.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I found early about the Damaged Heart, I found out
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: early about the gangster associations. I talked to Wexler about it,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and he was forthcoming to a degree. At that point,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Tony Orlando told me about him. Tony knew him really well.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And did you know Tony before I went to do
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: a Tony Orlando store when he came back from being nuts,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and uh, he was there in Brooks. Arthur was there
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: with him that day. And Brooks was an engineer on
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Brown Eyed Grow and and so Brooks was telling me
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: all about him too. So over the years that and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and there came a point when I met his kids, uh,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and they really filled in the cracks and encouraged me
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: to do this. And that's like I bailed on the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: chronicle and went to New York. And if I hadn't
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: done it, then so many of the key figures wouldn't
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: have been alive to tell the story, and they told it,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: and I collected it, and I had to put the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: book down for many years, and when I picked it
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: back up to finish it, it was like an intense
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: uh and an unexpected gift to be able to finish
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: this book that I had started and spent so many
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: hours thinking about, so much time working on. And it worked.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: We brought Burns back to life as absolutely. You know,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: his articles in the New York Times about him an
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: NPR and and then the next year, boom, He's inducted
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So yeah,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty proud of that. Absolutely. So they had a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: play that I went to see, a musical that you know,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: they say it's going to be revived, but that seems
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Then they did the documentary, which was really quite good
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: from a viewer standpoint. Have we seen the end of
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the promotion or is there anything I think that musical
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: is gonna have new life next year in London? Really? Yeah?
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I think I think it's going to open on West
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: End and with a new first act. That was my question. Yeah, No,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that first act didn't make it. I saw that show
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: like ten fifteen times. And of course I loved it.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: But the second act was flawless, and and to have
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: them end uh with twist and shout. The audience went
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: nuts every night, every night. But the first act was convoluted,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: slow and bumpy, and it didn't really set anything up.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And there are a couple of great songs missing. And
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the opening number in the first act, what was that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that Gene Pittney thing about put a diamond the juke
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: bo pe? You? Okay, so let's go back to the beginning.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: You grow up where that's a strange word us about
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: my youth growing up? So I was raised, my parents
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: had the best intentions for me in Berkeley. I was
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: supposed to have graduated from Berkeley High in June of
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and it fell short, like a few weeks,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: never made the finish line. Okay, what was going on there?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Why did you saying L S D. Rock and No, no, no, no,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: no no. Why did you not as a nice Jewish boy,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: why did you not finish high school? L? S D?
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll? Everything? And how many kids were in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the family. I'm the youngest of three and were the others?
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Did they fly straight? Or yeah, yeah, they're geniuses and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and and corporate heroes. Uh. My oldest brother uh is
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: one of the major heroes of the cancer curing. He's
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: in public health. And my other brother was a big
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: deal at Bechdel uh for years and years and years,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: huge construction, biggest in the world. And my parents always
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: looked upon me as the failure in the family. So
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: you're the only one will be remembered. What did your
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: father do for a living? My father was you'll love this.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: It was a publicist for labor unions press agent. Okay,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I have to ask any influence upon you? Oh? Hell yeah. Uh.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: First of all, I'm a great believer in the union movement.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I certainly have myself. It's just you know, out of
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: bounds in this day and age. It's ridiculous. It makes
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: me nuts and things like uber just like fill me
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: with fury. But just you know, all of a sudden,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you as a result of Reagan and said a union
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: is a bad name. And certainly there were some excesses,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: but now we have these oligarchs and these giant corporations
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that their excesses ever matched the excesses of the other side.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: That's my point. But it's been spun up of watch. Okay,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: so he got your love of the union, son. My
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: father was a pain in the ass. Who who who?
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You know? Forged my character in uh you know, like
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a matrix, you know what I mean? Yeah, And I'm
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: grateful to him for it. Uh. And and I cared
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: for him way beyond the point where he evaporated as
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: reservoir of good will with me. But do you care
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: for him financially? No? No, you know I'd go take
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: make sure he had company and take him. Okay. And
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: your mother went when she had passed, she had gone,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: she and she had an endless reservoir good will with me.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So you know how old was she when she passed?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I was she about eighty four. But she lost her
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: she'd lost it to dementia, a long slope thing. And
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: he'd been great about it, he really had it was okay.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So usually I don't think of a union publicist as
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: being a job that reams down a lot of cash
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: or am I miss? No? No, No, he was definitely
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you know, a middle class uh, living and back when
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: there still was a middle and they had and they
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: had a house in the Berkeley Hills that they bought
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: for five thousand dollars, which was an extraordinary sum to them.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Um and uh he was constantly being given awards by
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the International Labor Press Association, which I don't know if
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: that even still exists, probably not. Um and he got
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: he caught a big time moment, uh, sort of in
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the late sixties when one of the guys that he
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: had been working with became the head of the national
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: on the SEIU. So he was banging back and forth
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: between here in Washington for a while. And there is
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a picture of him in the White House shaking hands
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: with President Johnson. That's hilarious. Okay, So you grow up there,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and of course this is a different eraw it's a
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: free reign kid. What kind of kid were? You have
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of friends? Do So? I was a weird kid.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Uh had lots of friends, but I wasn't popular. Uh.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time in the library. I
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: would cut school and go there. Uh and um my
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: whole um high school. A lot of park cards were
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: all these NEPs. I just did not attend school. And Uh.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: If I wasn't in the pool hall, I was in
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the library. And my favorite thing doing the library, by
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the way, was to pull old newspapers off the rack
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and like followed, say the Polar explanations of nineteen o
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: nine or the UH presidential election of nineteen thirty two. So,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: like I said, weird kid, Okay, So to what degree?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Because certainly rock and roll started in the fifty but
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: when the Beatles came along really blew it up. And
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: then of course there was a San Francisco scene, arguably
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the first scene after the English scene. You're growing up,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: you're a teenager, that impacts you. You're a music fan.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: What's going on? A huge So you know, my lifespan
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: is pretty perfectly timed. All this because of vivid, vivid
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: memories of coming in on Sunday night to see Elvis
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Presley on Ed Sullivan. Wow. Right, so this whole thing
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: was like very exciting. My older brother were fully you know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: fifties rock and rollers. My brother used to rub the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Dixie peach into his levies every night because you wanted
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: them to like hang straight. This is something I never heard.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Dixie peach me, like a regular peach was for your hair.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It was like broke cream, vitalist, and it was a
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: cream and you rubbed it into your levies so they'd
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: be like stiff hang in these circles. Never heard that. Yeah, no,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that was a very cool thing. Uh and uh so
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: they were all into that. And I was like, you
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: know on the am radio and radio was a teenager
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and and a and a pre teen's uh gate to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a different world. And if you ever remember the movie
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Putney Swoke? Did you ever see that's Robert Downey seen
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: here And it's a crazy movie. I'm not sure it
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: really holds up because I talked about for years. Then
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I saw it again. But there's always they have big question, okay,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and they said they it out what they now called
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Native American, but it was an Indian and he would
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: give him the answer. And he said, how do you know?
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: He says the drum? And I always said radio was
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the tribal drum. You listen to you totally what was
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: going on? Had the news that applied to had the records?
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Definitely a club. It spelled out our culture. And you
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: know when when the newsboys get together on the corner,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: all the ten year olds was sitting there talking about
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: what have you heard? Running bear? Who is that cool?
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Or what you know? And and a new record was
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: an event and that got only heightened. We got into
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that post Beatles sing where a news single by the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Beatles or the Rolling Stones was. You know, the entire
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: world stopped for that moment. So when you talk about
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the newsboys, did you uh distribute or sell newspapers? Ye? Yeah?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I was a newspaper boy okay, yea on my little
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: swin bike. And you know the what what was the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: maximum number of the whole houses you have? I think
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I had ninety papers at one point and it was
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: just deep Berkeley Hill route. Now, my father at some
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: point got p oed my the guy that was running
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the I don't know if people use that turned out
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: that's pistol off. Yeah I didn't. I know it was stock,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: but I'm the old school as hell. Um. And uh
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: he called up this guy, Mr Westfall. Why do you
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: remember these people's names from? You know? And and he
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: went all labor negotiator on him. Right. You know you
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: didn't give my my son the route you promised him,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and now you've stuck him with his horrible route. You
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: need to double his hill bonus from three dollars to
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: six dollars, and you need to split his bundle and
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: deliver the second half down the hill. Wow. And I
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: didn't even know there was a hill bundle. Okay, if
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: we go back to that era, you're delivering newspapers, you're
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: making money. What are you doing with that money? Well?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I had my bicycle, that was a big deal. There
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: was like car h a a few forty five, you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: a jar candy went to the movies. You know, it
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was it was pocket money. Uh So you were always
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: into periodicals, the newspapers. Yeah, yeah, when we all mad
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: magazine you know, I like the song hits things with
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: uh lyrics and yeah, I forgot completely about that. Yeah,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I love those was that was the name of the
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: magazine song. Wow. There are two or three versions of
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: it too. Okay, now you you hit puberty, you're out there.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: To what degree and at what age can you palpably
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: feel something is going on in San Francisco? Oh man?
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Uh so? Uh. I entered Berkeley High School in the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: fall in nineteen sixty four, and uh the Birds played
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: a concert on the steps of our high school auditorium
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: after school one day. Wow, we didn't get that where
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I went to high school. Okay. There was a band
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that was rehearsing across the street with the next year,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: so high ten. Uh. That became Country Joe in the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Fish and that park across the street became like a
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: place where bands would show up and and just rehearse.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: And that's the first time I saw Steve Miller was
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: in that in that park. So it was just blowing
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: up right around the corner. And if you didn't, I mean,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: it was impossible to avoid, but if you wanted to
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: seek it out, it was just flowing through the streets.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: There are clubs everywhere. There were new bands everywhere. There
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: was a grapevine. Hey, have you seen this new band
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Credence clear Water? No where are they? There are Gino
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and Carlos. Okay man, I'm gonna check that out Monday night,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And and every week there seemed like
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a new band and Fillmore and the Avalon. Uh the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: three bands a week and the three nights a week.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And they're booking an acts besides the local bands. So
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: you could catch up on Howling Wolf or Chuck Berry
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: or Bow Didley. Bow Didley was huge with the hippies.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: He could really, you know, make it work with it
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: at the Avalon. And he was dirty. It was funny.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: He could play guitar forever and uh, yeah, the hippies
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: loved Bo Didley. Okay, from your house to the film war?
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: How far? And how did you get there? Oh jove?
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: You know, so it's Berkeley to San Francisco. It was
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: a half hour. There was no traffic, but you had
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a car. You use your somebody had a car. Okay,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: So you talked about being in high school doing LSD, etcetera.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: How does that start into what degree? Or you remember
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: that community. I first took LSD when it was still legal.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I had a course cap of Owsley Purple, which costs
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: five bucks. And you don't, well, I'm we're talking about
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the stuff made by Alsley. Uh and uh. The first
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: time I've ever seen stereo headphones, Bob and somebody put
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: on the New Rolling Stones album. Okay, are you kidding?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: It's embedded in my DNA now and the common nation
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of the New Rolling Stones album and the stereo headphones.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: It blew me out? How much did that experience change
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: my life? The next day I went out and bought
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: a record player. Okay, what do you mean a stereo
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: or you literally didn't have a record player, didn't have
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a record player. I was always a radio guy. Until then,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: why would I want records? Everything was on the radio,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: so you didn't have any singles. You didn't that it
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: was over singles by the time I was twelve. Okay,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: so you went out, got a record player. Let's go sideways.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Because you mentioned it, you know, San Francisco was known
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: as the land of the hippies. If you were actually
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: there was that palpable oh oh yeah, and and uh
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: it was huge. It was big. It was it was
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: in our consciousness in a very strong and powerful way
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that it was a subject of discussion amongst the peers.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: And it created a division. Right, there was what I
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: called the archie divide. Right, these kids belong archie. Comic
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: books were the hip, the hip new thing. Uh and
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and I typically I was so berkeley about this that
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I chewed the identity as a hippie, although there is
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: no way I didn't look like one. You know, I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: had the hair, I had the clothes. But I was like,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: you know, that's that's for conformists. I'm a non right
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: al right, right, god, you're bringing it back. I remember
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: cutting my hair when everybody had it long said your
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: parents make you doing No, I just don't want to
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: be like everybody else. Right now, I'm not gonna identify
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: with that. Those guys don't get it right exactly off
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the bus, off the bus. But very exciting times in
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Berkeley and San Francisco. Okay, so of course you know
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I'm three thousand miles away. They talk about hate Ashbury.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Was that an actual scene you were aware of? Man,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't have believed hate Ashbury. N tell me. The
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: streets were just throbbing with energy and not bad energy.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: You know. That came the next year when all the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: so called street people showed up. But these were the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: original hippies and and they were out there to create
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a new community and they meant well, they meant to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: h They were given out free food in the park
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: every afternoon. Now supposedly Emmett Grogan of the Diggers said
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: that he stole all that food. I was stolen, It
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: was donated. It was you know, they they didn't have
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the same kind of like ritual boundaries that the conventional
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: people did. That was out um there was. They had
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: a free store where everything was free and was there
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: something worth taking? It was like a thrift store, you know,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: it was cast off stuff. But I'm in there and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you gotta go to the free store, of course. And
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I'm in there and there's a couple of older black
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: ladies in there, you know, like maybe like church type
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of ladies and the and they're walking around with this
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: look on their face like, well, what the heck is this,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: you know, And then one of them see something that
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: she wants I think was pair of shoes, maybe a handbag,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, and she picks it up and she
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: looks at her friend like well, and friends nag yeah,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and she still puts it away under arm and sneaks
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: out with it. So the whole thing was like a
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: social laboratory, right and and and and everybody was in
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it for a giggle and uh no harm. Yeah. So
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: sixty six and the bands were everywhere, Okay, not that
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: you would know. But the hippies in the street before
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: the street people came, did they have jobs? I don't
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: remember much jobs r That's why I ask some of
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: them would like The job that I remember people having
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: was throwing mail at the post office because they had
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: no Um, you could have long hair and work at
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the post Most places in the nineteen sixty six made
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: you cut your hair, Okay, let's talk about the some
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: of these legendary people. Emmic Rogan, did you ever meet him?
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: What was he like? You wrote that great book, Rina
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Leave You ring Leavia was a classic parts of it
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: or true? Well, definitely even reading that you could you
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: can see. How about Ken Kesey. I met Kiss once
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and and uh, well I actually I was around him
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: a bunch at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Uh in his louder years. He was a drunk. Wow.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah it was a little bit of a drag. But
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Cantoner introduced me at one point, so I had, like,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you know, a good ten minute chat with once at
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: the film wore But then the rock and Roll Hall
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: of Fame thing, they'd hired him to pay him a
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: lot of money and that just earned his complete contempt.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: So he didn't show up sober for anything. Okay, who
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: from that theme either didn't make it or didn't make
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: it as big as you thought they should. You know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know where to to to end uh
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: with that? Um so uh the first thing comes to
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: mind is Bruce Stevenson Fillmore Shuffle. I don't know why
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: that wasn't a hit. Uh, he was in some version
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of Blue Cheek her. But I mean nobody, nobody ever
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: heard either of those. Uh and uh golly, what about
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the Flame and Groovies? I mean, shouldn't have been like
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: a big band at some point. Well, I bought the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: one record what was the famous record where they really
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: tried to push it over teenage head? Yeah, that was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a counter you know the times, right, that was exactly
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: he was trying to be, you know, retro to a degree, etcetera.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: They two of the code, though, you gotta give them
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: that they're still doing it and there's still true to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the code. Okay, how about some people who made it
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and then then could never replicate it, like Salve Valentino. Man,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Sal Valentino, I think about fifteen years ago, maybe a
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: little more. He was homeless, he was couch surfing and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and you mentioned Sal Valentino. That's the lead singer of
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the bou Bramos. It really San Francisco's first hit rock group.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Sly Stone produced their records and sal Valentino, to me,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. Me
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: but what lost career? Right? So, uh, Sal, what's the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: most money you ever made in the record business? He
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: goes Oh, I got five thousand dollars once from Warner Brothers.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Is a finder's fee for bringing Ricky Lee Jones to him.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the guy who did the guide
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: vocals on Randy Newman's first album because Randy had to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: play piano and conduct. Oh I didn't know that. Oh man,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: do I like to hear it that? Wow? Okay, so
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: you kind of don't finish high school. Then where do
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: you go from there? Well, I went to work at
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the Chronicle as a copy boy. Okay, let's a lot
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: of these jobs don't exist anymore. I want to tell
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: my audience what a copy boy was. Fifty five dollars
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: a week, whatever they want me to do. And while
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting there, I fold carbon paper between sheets of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: newsprints so the reporters don't get their fingers dirty. Is
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: that a hard job to get? Yeah? Very hard job.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: You have to have be nepotically connected, right, because you know,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: like you could even get a job on its sunset
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of tower records in the seventies. You know things that
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: people don't think. Hey, there are low wage jobs, So
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: how did you actually get the job. So my parents
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and my older brothers were family friends of the UH
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: editor Scott new All And and uh so I was
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: paved in from the top, and uh Scott's wife, Ruth
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: was you know, all concerned about me for being a
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: high school dropout and thought that this would like be
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a corrective and in fact it was. I mean, I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: met my tribe. You know. I walked in there the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: first day and I had on a necktie. I was
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: super uptight. And uh, I looked around this room and
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, after having been told my
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: whole life that I don't fit in and I always
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: wandered fit into what uh, I was in a room
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: full of people who have been told the same thing. Really, Yeah,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: that's one thing. I know it instinctively and instantly. You know.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: When I went to I was college, I was the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: one person going to Vermont. You felt like an outcast
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: came to l a. There are a million people to
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: like me. So uh and so was this a dream
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: or was it just that this was the connection you had?
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I like newspapers. I printed the newspaper in high school
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: because I'd been counseled into vocational studies and uh, I'd
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: run a newspaper in junior high. You know, a little.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: You know, so I sort of had a thing for newspapers.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I used to read them in the library.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: It seemed like it would be a cool place to work,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: but I tell you it turned it just suited me
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: right away, just like my character was built to stand outside,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: observe and and scrawled down the observations. Okay, now, how
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: long after you started there did you go for your
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: short tenure Riverside. I was at the Chronicle as a
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: copyboy for a year, and then I cycled into Riverside.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I spent one year in Riverside trying really hard to
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: do college, which I found to be high school with
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: ash trays and there was good lives. The second year
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I just did the student newspaper and I was an
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: hour outside of Los Angeles. It was nine. You would
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: be surprised at how much access I could get. I
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: spent five days doing a story with Little Richard while
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: he was at the Whiskey A Go Go. I'll go
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: back to his hotel room with him afterwards and listened
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to him talk story for hours. I've had interviews with
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: sly Stone, with with Alvin Lee, big pieces in the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: college newspaper. Look a little bit slower. How did you
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: actually make that happen? Are publicists okay? Were you reaching
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: out to them or did you have a name? And
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: some people started to call him up and tell him
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I was a college newspapers. They loved college newspapers because
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: there wasn't any coverage in mainstream media and the underground
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: press was a kind of bizarre, sort of marginal thing.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: But college newspapers they knew that that was something they
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: could get into. So, I mean there are guys like
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: grayland Landon at r C, a victor who was just
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: so glad to hear from somebody at a college newspaper.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: And I was right on the service list immediately. I
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: mean I started getting free records in the mail in
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: a moment. And you know that was like getting a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: shot of morphine in your stomach. Okay, for we all
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: feel that felt that way. That was currency. Now, needless
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to say, you ended up with more records than you
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: wanted because they would send you everything. What did you
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: do with the excess? Oh? You know, over the years,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: I developed very strategies. You know, I didn't keep them all.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I kept all the books though, Bob, you know I'm
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: going through that right now literally all the books are
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: just all the music books, all the music books. I mean,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't you know, they didn't send me review copies.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to say in general, because I'm moving
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: right now. My god, I'm dealing with the uh you know,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta downsize a little bit. So I
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: was looking at the books because of course and everything
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: is eventually digital. And then I said, well, I get
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: it like you to this day. I get a lot
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: of books. Not a week goes by that I don't
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: get at least one. And uh, you say, well should
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I throw out the self published one? Because that's one
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: thing about rock and roll. When person is done, they
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: write a book and they wanted me to read it.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: So then I said, well, where's where's the cut off point?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: They said? And then I was watching the Rick Rubin
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: documentary on Showtime and he's got an archivist and he
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: has all the books. I said, Fuck, if I ever
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: get rich, I want to do that. So I'm saving
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: all the music books. I have an enormous library of
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: music books, enormous and they're never going back in print.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I mean you haven't. It's an artifact. And the ones
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that are hard to find, are already super expensive, right,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: So uh, let's go back to being a copy boy.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: So you're a copy boy, and how far do you
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: move up in that year? Ah, there's no moving up
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: from copy boy. But I'll tell you what UH did
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: get out of that is free tickets to the film War,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: So a little bit slower. You're the copy boy. How
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: did you get the free tickets? I'd go back to
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: uh John Wasserman, who was the junior drama critic, and say,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: can you get me on the guest list this week?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: And he'd called Vicky Cunningham, who's Bill Graham's secretary, and say,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: but you Selvin on the list? So I went to
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I Want nine seven and sixty first half sixty eight.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I went out to music six nights a week. Wow.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: And you were living where I lived, in the ghetto
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: in Oakland, right near where uh Eldridge Cleaver got shot
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: and arrested. I heard the gunfire that night. Wow. So
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: once you dropped out of high school, you were left
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: your parents house, you were out on your own. Oh yeah, okay,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: So if you're going out six nights a week, I
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: mean that was when it was really happening. Totally and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: late shows. Okay, now you're having established your identity. You
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: were going for the show, not to hang. No, I
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: was just in the audience, right, and and I hadn't
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: really started writing articles, so I'll just get in. I
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: got slid in and just sit there and go oh wow,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and just soaking this stuff. Well, I mean, but you
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: were not part of a group. You didn't go there
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to talk to people or whatever. You would just taking
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: it all out. I was on a mission. I wanted
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to absorb with most of this as I could. Okay,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: you have a memory, and obviously things start to blur,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: But from that era, do you remember any specific performances
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that blew your minds? Many? How about Albert Collins, Elvin
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Bishop and Johnny Winter playing in the Matrix, a club
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: with about fifty people sitting in the room. Okay, I
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: did see Albert Collins and the Iceman you know album era,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: and he had that really long guitar corner dark. He
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: was badass, and you know, he was fantastic. And that
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: was Johnny Winter before the first album. Uh. This guy
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: named Henry Carr brought him out from Texas and Henry
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: had been part of the Mother Earth thing which had
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: a big Texas connection, and Alvin was always around. I
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: mean Alvin was out six nights a week too. I
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: used to see Alvin three nights a week. Okay, the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: guy always looks like he's done too many drugs. Is
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: he on the planet or not? Alvin? Yeah, Elvin Um
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: sobered up a long time ago. And Uh, I think
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: that he is probably one of the greatest bluesmen of
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: our time. Uh. And he has taken to doing performances occasionally,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: just the two of them with Charlie Mussell White, and
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Charlie is another person who just keeps getting better on
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: his instrument. I mean, it's amazing. He's like the Horowitz
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: of the harmonica. Uh. And these guys are in their
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: seventies now, they're they're really getting soulful. I haven't seen
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: the Elvin Charlie show. I'm dying to see it. Those
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: two guys blow me away. And how about some of
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the bands from that scene, What was your experience, Like Quicksilver,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Cooksilver could be great and they could be horrible. Uh.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: And the thing that I love about Cooksilver because they
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: were a five piece band in sixty six and then
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: sixties seven, like everything got a little bit more serious
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: and professional and stuff like that. And and they moved
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: back from their their dairy farm and Randa the hate
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: and they were gonna like start rehearsing. And the lead
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: singer is guy named Jimmy Murray said rehearsing, Oh man,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I'm out of here. So he quit the band over rehearsals.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I mean that is that a fantastically that's the sixties.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: That's about hippie moment. Rehearse So any given night, you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: on the Bill of the Dead, Quicksilver could hand him
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: their butts. Uh And uh, it's Duncan. You know, because
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Trippolina played the same solo every night, it got a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: little bit better, I suppose. But you know, he was
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: not improvisationalist. And Duncan if he if he was on,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: it was gonna tear ass um. And he just died
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Man. And I gotta tell you,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Gary Duncan was the real deal, Bob. I mean, I
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: don't think the guy wore shoes the last forty years
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of his life. Yeah yeah, And uh he was like, uh,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: absolutely incorrupted by success. Well he didn't have any. He
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: was broken. He lived like quite trash, but it was
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: a lovely guy. Worked on cars, played guitar and somehow
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: managed make that work. I don't know what he lived
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: on because Quicksilver, Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they didn't
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: even pay him. I don't know, but you know, the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: manager of Quicksilver was also such a story. Ron Poulty.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Paulty was another total hippie UM who came out to
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: San Francisco after accidentally killing his best friend. And that's
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: incredible story. But he never got caught. Oh they everybody
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: knew he was acquitted by the coroner's jury, but it
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: was his friends friends he was worried about. So he
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: got out of town. He was a full scale criminal
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: into Chicago. You know, he had a twenty four hour
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: locksmith shop. Imagine that, right? Uh? And Poulty turned into
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: this fantastic hippie who was totally believed in the whole
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: thing and and screwed up every career he handled. Uh.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: The recently, um one of his groups has gotten back
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: together and recorded their first album is of Copps. Right,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: have you have you heard the record? I have her,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: but I run into which one is the yoga? Exactly?
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: I went to a couple of vents you there. They
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: were telling me the whole story. So, uh, Denise Kaufman,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Madonna's yoga teacher. I mean she's amazing, clear uh, creative personality,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: just amazing. And these girls all got back together. They
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: spent two years, they had some angel paying for it,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: recording the album they always wanted to record. And it
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: is gorgeous. It is just a fantastic album. It's like
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: being in nine seven all over again. Right, And so
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: we're talking about this, you know, and uh, I told him,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, I talked to a lawyer that
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: had a big money record deal for you, but Palty
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: wouldn't take it. And and and they go, oh no,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that's not true. And I go, my god, and and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and so I said, let me check because I know
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the guy he was talking to. So I called the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: guy from Columbia that made the offer. He goes, oh yeah, man,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: I I wanted that band really bad, but Palty wouldn't
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: let us. And then that was what happened to Quicksover too.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: It's Booksover didn't put out an album until light six years, right,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and and they're pretty fizzled by then. Uh, if that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: album come out in sixty seven good GOLLI right, well, paulty.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Uh was backstage at Monterey Pop Festival and Krik Silver
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: played and Albert Goldman told him you hauled out for
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: a million dollars and he did, gush, darn't it? And
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: you know, nobody wanted to pay a million dollars, so
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: like you're a half later he goes, okay, we'll take
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the hundred thousand. Okay, what about Bloomfield? I love Michael Bloomfield.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: He was a reader. Hey Michael, what are you reading?
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reading the letters of Evelyn Waugh is
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: so fascinating. Wow. Okay, then the other Okay, Dan Hicks,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Oh god, I love Dan to god miss him. Uh.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: He was dry sardonic for real. He used to send
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: out postcard Did you get him with the jumbles on him? Man?
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I mean you know who does that? And nobody? Uh?
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so I mean his memorial And and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Ria Maldaur speaking and she's talking about how she went
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: by his garage sale one weekend and the gold record
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: that she gave him was out for sale. That was
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: a mistake, I'm okay. And what was the viewpoint of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the dead from you know, were they the house band
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: or were they seen as something special in San Francisco.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: So the Dead were just a part of the firmament.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: And and very early on there was a contingency known
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: as deadheads, and they were the sort of stinky hippies
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: over on the side doing the kelp dancing with their
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: hands over their head, right. Uh. And they're a part
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: of every show the Dead were on. Um. So you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: they weren't really Uh, they were a factor from the
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: very beginning. But the Dead didn't have an audience outside
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: of San Francisco and in New York for years. For
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: years they were just didn't have me took took him
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: to like nineteen seventy to make it in New York. Yeah. Um.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: One of the whole things about around Altamont was they
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: were all so pro Uh. Mountain Girl told me that
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: they were still she was stealing baskets of strawberries for
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: her kids from the supermarket. Wow. Okay, so let's go
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: back to you. How does it end at Riverside for you? Yeah,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: I'm taking this three hour um art appreciation class where
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: they draw the shades and uh, well I'm out called
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: sleeping and uh I wake up and my friend Michael
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: is in the seat in front of me. He's turned around.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: He looks at me with this incredible look of frustration,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: and he says, uh, what are we doing here? And
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I said, I just woke up. And he goes just
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: discussed turns away from me and then like sort of
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: tick tick tick tick tick ding. Oh I get it,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and I tap him on the shoulder. I said, let's split.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: So we walked out of that class. That's the last
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: class I went to. But you know it's pretty s
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: much short of the semester. So I paid Mike a
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: few bucks to go take my final for me, so
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: you know he could pass it because I knew I
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to And uh, he split in the middle
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: because the teacher collected the paper road by row and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: she he saw her like look down the road after
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: she looked at the names on the paper and double checked.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So he figured we've been had, and indeed we had.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: They called me in and they were very very upset
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: with me, and they said, well, why did you hire
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: someone who flunked? And I said, well, he had a chance.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: So they suggested that I withdraw from the university for
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: a while and they would let it go, and I
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: said that was a very generous offer. So they didn't
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: actually kick me out, but you know, I went out
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: through misadventure, that's for sure. And you when you were out,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: any intention idea that you would ever return. No, Okay,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: so it ends that way. How do you get back
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: working at the Chronicle? So I went back up to
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: San Francisco and I started like knocking on doors writing
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: this article right in that article, and the Chronicle was
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: one of those places, and I've been there. I knew
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: who to talk to. So I was in the pink
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: section the Sunday date book, uh, the calendar of the Chronicle. UH,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and I was UH in and out of Rolling Stone
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a little. There was a thing called Earth Magazine that
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: was very good to me. UH. Jim Good from Playboys
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: started that it was supposed to be a big slick
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: counter culture think didn't last that long, and UH I
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: got involved in a lot of interesting stories like UH,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I was following Creden's Clear Waters recording a pen Jelan.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: I watched them rehearse it. I watched them record it.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: UH interviewed them extensionally for a while. UH. That year
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: seventy and seventy one uhcod was like a cottage industry
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: for me. They were like the biggest band in the
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: world and here they were right in the East Bay. Okay, Alex,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: since you mentioned it, what was the perspective on Rolling
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Stone which started in sixty seven? Was it God had
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: ry or another rag or did people hate Winner or
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: what was going on? Oh? No, they eve't. Nobody hated
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Winner right away that he had to work up to that.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: I remember reading the first issue. I remember where I was.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Uh it was November sixty seven. I bought it at
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: this bookstore called UC Corner, which catered to the college crowd,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: and I walked up to a diner called Size Child Broider,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and I remember being spellbound by I believe that John
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Landau wrote an article about Sam and Dave in that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: first issue. That just stunned me that there would be
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: uh literate journalism about soul music, which was a current
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: obsession with me. And uh the rest of it was
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: right up my alley. I mean, I just the it
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: was not a national magazine that first issue. The front
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: page story was Tom Rowns quits his k f r
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: C program director, and that was the local top forty station,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: so he sort of like stumbled into that whole national
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: international thing, but it stumbled into itself rolling stone. I
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: mean they stepped into a vortex and they managed to
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: hold on and ride that to the bell. Okay, a
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: couple of people. Ralph Gleeson. Ralph Gleason was a hero.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I went to high school with his kids. Uh he.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: When I got the job at the Chronicle, I was
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: hired by his complete nemesis, so I was like immediately
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: blacklisted by him while he was in Fantasy. At one
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: point I ran into him over at Fantasy and we
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: had a complete, uh you know, um conciliation. In fact,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: he called my boss that night and they had a
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: conciliation and he sat on a filing cabinet that night
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: that afternoon and Fantasy and gave me a two hour
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: lecture and how to do my job. That stayed with
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: me for the next thirty four years. And he was
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: an amazing guy. And when I had a point in
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one where the management decided that I
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: was holding in the way, and uh, I took him
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: down on an aged discrimination beef and I came back
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: to the newsroom and I was like radioactive. You know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: nobody wanted to tell me to do anything, uh, And
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I had a bad attitude about my job as a
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: matter of fact. So I went downstairs to where they
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: keep the micro fiche, and I went and I read
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: every single Ralph Gleason article that he ever wrote for
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the Chronicle in order, starting in nineteen fifty. Wow. And
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I did this, A little bit
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: like the guy in Close Encounters, right, But by the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: end of it, I had uh decided to write a
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: major article, and I had kind of reconnected with my bliss,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: and I'd also become credibly uh familiar with Ralph's work.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, covering Hank Williams out in San Pablo in
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, and covering Fats Domino at the Oakland
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Auditorium in fifty four, and calling out Pat Boone as
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: a phony in nineteen fifty six. I mean, he was
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: known as a jazz guy, and indeed, like Louis Armstrong
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and Duke Ellington couldn't believe that they were getting written
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: about in a white newspaper in California, and they thought
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: he was their close friend for the rest of their lives.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: But he was also on the rock and roll stuff
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: all the way and then Dylan blew him out and
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: he became like the first guy to really endorse Dylan
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and major way, uh even ahead of handoff. And then
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: he caught the San Francisco thing right away from the
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: very first concert at the Family Dog concert at the
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Long Sharman's Hall. He was there. He was on the scene.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: And you know, if people made fun of him, they
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: said that he was either uh uh to uh sixteen
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: year olds. He was forty eight, and he's either two
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: twenty four year olds, three sixteen year olds, or four
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: twelve year olds. But uh, you know, Garcia loved him,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the Airplane loved him. The Santana guys all admired him.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was the dude nobody will ever have
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: that career again. He was the first guy to write
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: about pop music on a regular basis for um daily newspaper,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: you know, like the Gilbert Seldis of pop music. Covering
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: a couple other legends. How about Tom Donahue, huge, huge guy,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: God Bob. I'm not surprised, but these are the right
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: people to be asking about. Donahue was a father of
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: FM rating. He was a mental giant. It wasn't just radio.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: He knew what life was about. He got it in
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: that really supreme way, and he had these enormous appetites.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: He was six five and four fifty pounds, his wife
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: was pounds, and he just was this incredibly penetrating intellect.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: When I called Carl Scott, you know, call from Warner Others, right,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and he worked for Tom way way way back, and
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: all the other people are gone, and I'm writing this
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: book about sly Stone and I need somebody like sort
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: of like qualify Tom and Carlson. I think of a
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: young Orson Welles and that's right, and and uh yeah,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: he took over kmp X when it was midnight to
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: six am operation and turned it into a twenty four
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: hour and no time, and he figured out the whole
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: underground rock radio thing. He was doing Los Angeles and
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: San Francisco radio every night, and uh, you know, he
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: just had vision and intellect way beyond a Bill Graham,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: who was really kind of a narrow minded sort of
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: capitalist who didn't get it. I mean Bill didn't take LSD.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Tom gobbled it. Okay, So how do you get back
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: into the chronicle? How did I get back in while
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I was doing all this pink section work then uh
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: uh Gleason took the job with Fantasy, and Wasserman became
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: the Oh yeah, okay, this is good. Uh. Wasserman became
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the guy. And John had this goofy idea that to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: hire a jazz musician to be a jazz critic. So
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: I hired John Hendrix, the jazz singer two halftime job,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: to be a jazz critic. And Hendricks thought this was
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: cool as hell, and he would go sit in with
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: the acts and write about it. And it just wasn't
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: quite clear to him what the distant journalistic distance was, right,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: and he and so John tried to explain to him, no,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: you can't do that. So he would do it and
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: not tell about it, right, so the last and and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: then he had a gig in London for six weeks.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: So I had his gig for six weeks, and I
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: knew where the paper clips were, That's what Wasserman said,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: you know, And I answered the mail and I answered
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: the phone. So I did all this stuff that jazz
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: criticks can't do. And then Hendricks came back and they
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: started like, well, you know, you have six hours this week,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: he'll have ten. And then he there's this famous Giants
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of Jazz Concert Big Deal Concert at the Masonic Auditory
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and Felonious Monks, Sonny Rowland's Art Blakey blah blah blah,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: and Hendrix appeared the entire second half on stage and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: then wrote the review Monday for getting to mention that part.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: So that was it. I got the job, and uh
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: many many many years later he was ninety one years old.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: They had a sort of tribute to John Hendricks over
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Marin County and I got to go out in front
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: of an audience that, like y'all, you know, that is
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the Chronicles guying. I have to go to no man,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like Bill Cosby. I'm just another guy that John
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: Hendrix put in the business. Okay, So Hendrix was covering
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: jazz when you got the job. Was a jazz, roll,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: pop music whatever, you know. John Wasserman, he was like
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: a kind of a Playboy magazine, hi fi kind of guy,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. He wasn't hippie. He liked
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: al Jaro and uh Diadado and and that was his
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: idea of music. And so he was really anxious to
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: have the rock scene covered us. He knew that it
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: was on. Okay, I mean, you were one of a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: pretty small fraternity. What was it like being on your end?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: It was weird for a long time because, uh, the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: until like the late seventies, there was no infrastructure for
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: for publicity and and and you know, photo passes and
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. I mean, I remember like taking photographers.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: It was hard to get the newspaper to give me
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: a photographer, you know, like they didn't think it was important.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: The first two years, all my reviews ran between the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: adult theater ads in the edge of the paper. And
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: and I remember the first article that had a one
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: column mugshot was the review of the Bob Marley and
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: the Whalers first show in in uh the United States. Uh,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: they that they had gotten uh Blackwell thought they were
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: going to get over with American blacks. So he booked
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: him on a tour with slying the family Stone. Lasted
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: one date and they threw him out, Uh in Las Vegas,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and some nightclub owner named Scot Peering ended up at
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Rough Trade Records in London calls me up and says,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: you know, if I booked this group called the Whalers,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: would anybody come? And I remember saying, Scott, if it's
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: just you and me do it. And not only did
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: anybody come, the place was packed both nights, and it
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: was packed with the scene. You know. Grateful Dead was there,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the airplane was there, That Steve Miller band was there.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: It was on you know, and uh, Donnihue was there,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and Donnie came backstage and told him if they stayed
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: over and played next week at this club, he put
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: them on the radio live in between and helped drive
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: up business. And this was the real whalers. This is
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Neville Livingston, Bunny versus Peter McIntosh, Tosh and Bob and uh,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: you know, no I threees no rita. They hired some
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: girl to wear a watch because they were so incapable
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: of telling time. Her whole job was to stand by
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: the side of the stage and tell them it's an
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: hour now, you know. They were amazing and the uh
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the show which is that that that live show is
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: on an album called Talking Blues. That that case on broadcast. Whoa,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: that was amazing and okay. So then in the set
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: late seventies, you're saying, the record companies get their publicity
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: infrastructure down, So how is it for you? Uh? You know, uh,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: it just meant everything was getting amped up, and the
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: service was better, and you got a lot more interviews.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: I mean that was sort of new. You know, Hey,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: do you want to interview Bonnie Rate? She just put
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: out her first album. You might like her, you know
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: you like blues. Oh yeah, I told Bonnie that, you know,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: uh did uh interview with her twenty five years ago
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: when I was like at the paper for a couple
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: of months and she just put out her first album
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: And she said yeah, and we both still got our
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: same jobs. So did you end up burning up because
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: the music went through a lot of changes from when
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: you started until you left the chronicles? You ever burned
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: out on the music have burn outs and reefrethings. I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: mean like I got really sick of the Rio Speedwagon
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: sticks here, but then a new wave of revitalized me.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I think that happened to a lot of people. I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: got really sick of the uh turn of the century
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: stuff because there was so much interest upstairs and me
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: covering things like the Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears. I
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: went to three Britney Spears concerts, and each time I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: sat there and my life flash before my eyes. I
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: could not think bom I couldn't think what I could
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: contribute to the conversation about this. Right, making fun of
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense, right, and and there's no
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: serious criticism associated here, and the cultural movement is like
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: almost non existent. So you know, what do I have
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: to say about this? I wanted to like die uh
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: and and so somewhere around like two thousand and two,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: when I got back after the uh IS discrimination, I
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: really steered myself into an entirely different type of coverage.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I stopped doing concerts. I stopped you know,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I had a younger guy working for me, uh, work
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: for the paper, not for me. What am I thinking? Like?
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: UH named Iden Wazirian. And you know, if we needed
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: to cover one of these uh Aaron Carter shows, a
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Den was the man for that. I think I'll do
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: the interview with Taj Mahal about his Caribbean seed business
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: and how he's helping farmers all over the Caribbean. UM
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: or do some public health stuff about UH earbuds and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: the dangers of audio. Yeah. I just moved into trying
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: to find other ways to reach the audience. For a
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: bit there, I was doing MP three's because you could
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: post MP three, right of course. And I was like,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: oh man, you know, and I'd clear the publishing with people.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: It was like as a dream come true for a
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: music cricket. Through the music three, through the pages go here,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the fact you can write about something that they can
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: listen right then now they don't even have the time
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: to listen to anything, never mind read. There's this Japanese
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: guy around San Francisco doing all the hipster clubs as
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: an opening act. His name was Toshio Harano and he
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: was a huge Jimmy Rogers fan. He would go and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: do Jimmy Rogers songs and nothing. But it was just
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: hilarious because he hadn't lost his accent, right, so he'd
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: as peach picking time in Georgia at pick a girl
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: for me all all. And I mean I took him
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: down to my basement and I recorded him, and I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: recorded him over three or four times, and I said,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: you want to do it again, and goes no, that's
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: as good as I can do it. And then I
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: sent it to the publisher, Ralph Piers, the publisher, right,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: and he lives up in Nevada and I know him,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: and I sent him an MP three and said, you know,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: can I get a clearance for this? And and he
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: wrote back, he said, you know, I can feel this
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: guy's sincerity. Yes, Okay, So how does it end with
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: a Chronicle? Oh? That was uh to UH nineteen, uh
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: two thousand and and and UM nine and the new
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: union contract. And we come in to look at the
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: eight and a half by eleven bullet points to the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: new contract. And I'm going down one draconian thing after another.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Now in truth that Hurst people are losing a million
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: dollars a week. So I'm in there in trouble and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: they've got to take some actions. And I get about
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: halfway down and it says, uh, no more early retirement,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: and I want I'm fifty nine. I wonder is this
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: paper even gonna be here six years from now? I'm
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: out of here? And did you get a check from
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the Chronicle since before the next day, Okay, I was
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: gone and uh I was one of editorial players to
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: leave their jobs that year. I mean, it was just
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: like it was sinking shift. Okay. So let's go through
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: a few things. What do you think about today's music?
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Very little. I don't think about it much at all.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Since I left the paper. I don't have to watch
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: the rookies play baseball. You have a lot of good lives. Okay,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: what the future of newspapers? Wow, my crystal ball is
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: pretty foggy. I've been reading The Times this week while
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I've been down. Boy, it's gone to hell again someone
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: who reads it every day. There was a period before
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: they were talking about the l A Times, when they
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: had Michael kins leaves headed irrelevant? What you think about
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Michael Kinsley? How do the opinion page? They were covering
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Washington whatever. Then they sold it out to Tribune and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: it's been downhill ever since. I mean, it's had a
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: slight return that well, but I don't know what they
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: have a right turn. But I will tell you this,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: since uh it was sold to the new owner, I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: can feel, even though pearl Stein is the editor, you
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: expected some big change. They just redid the app which
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: I gotta give him some credit for. There's a little
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: more coverage because I used to call it a toy newspaper.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Everybody I know canceled it, but I said, I'm not,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I gotta know what's going on. But the
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: business actually would be two pages now it can be
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: three or four. So if you're coming from a real paper,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: it still looks like a toy paper. But if you're looking,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: you know, as someone who's here every day, I would
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: say that it's got a chance. But the bleeding has
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: been stanched. Yes, I think that's true of the chronicle too.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: And I don't know that they're reaching new people. They're
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: definitely not reaching new people. What are They're just serving
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: their old audience. You know, what are the amazing things?
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: You know, having lived through this digital disruption, If you
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: go back twenty years ago, if it was in the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: newspaper l A Times, New York Times, you assumes everybody
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: who cared had seen it, knew the story today. No, No,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like it could be anywhere. Most people
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: have not heard the story. They're hearing it from you first,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: which is really strange. Well, so this is one of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the themes of your of your your newsletter, which I
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: still think of, by the way, as a newsletter when
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: it came to mail. Uh is the sources of information
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: are so fragment of this day that you can't really
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: reach a consensus of media at all. Well, it's very
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: strange for someone like me, you know, the original dream
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: is to reach a point where you can reach everybody. Now,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: like you, I'm an outside guy. They're never gonna hire
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: me from the New York Times whatever, blah blah blah.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: But it used to be, well, if you're in the
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: New York Times, or if you're a comedian, if you
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: had a network television show, you were at the pinnacle.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Everybody knew your name yesterday. I mean, why would you
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: want to sitcom today? I mean, what is Mark Marin?
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Who does podcast? He had his own show on I
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: s C. Did anybody see it? So now, I mean,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: things are written in the New York Times, so the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: goal is a little obscured. And now because there's so
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: many messages, it's the virality has become harder. But without
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: making a personal going back to music again, a couple
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: more questions, What did you feel about writing negative reviews?
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was an advocate for the arts
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: and that uh, I could say whatever I wanted as
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: long as I stayed true to my core beliefs and
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: represented those openly. Uh uh. And I was uh, you know,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say I was fearless as a
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: shifty word to say about yourself, but but I was
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: unafraid to write terrible reviews of people I knew. You know,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: you saw Grace the other day, right, absolutely, God, Grace
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: is the greatest. You know what else I got her
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: out of that band I did? I went to see
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a starship show at a ship, a little disco called Dreamland,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: and there were twenty thirty people there and they were
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: doing a fortnight run, and and I just said that
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: this thing was a complete embarrassment, just a complete embarrassing
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: this is what you wrote in the band the paper
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and it ran on Saturday, and Grace picked up the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: phone and called Bill Thompson, the manager, and she said,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Selvan is right, I'm not coming tonight. And that was
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: the end. That was the end. Okay, Well, that just
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: goes to one of my final questions. Maybe the final
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: question is you look back at this era, hey, will
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: anything survive? And certainly in your location, will any of
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: that survive? And does it deserve to survive? This era? No,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: the era when the king, the era from sixty five
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: to let's call it seventy five whatever, it's like, uh,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: the uh English novels of the Victorian era, of course
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: they're gonna stay. Really, it's a class it's a classic
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: art form. It uh, it's the peak of the classic
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: art form. I mean you can see it rise, you
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: can see it fall and just disappears in the nineties.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: And but all that stuff is going to be an
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: important part of American culture for as long as as.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, the Grateful Dead are just gonna be here.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen is gonna be here, Michael Jackson despite all
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: the Woody Allen, No, this is going to be around.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: This is what America was. This was like blue jeans
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: and Coca Cola. It's embedded in our fabric. But I
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: got one for you on because I played this game
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: quite a lot. I want to want to play this
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: with you and you could be a podcaster or whatever.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: But so here's my question. You know, listening around late
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: at night with music business people and that man, you know,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. What are the classic
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: songs of the twenty one century? What are the songs
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: the people are gonna be singing fifty years from now,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: like the motown stuff, of the Beatles, stuff of the
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: back rock stuff that we're saying still using. I mean,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: is it gonna be single ladies? Put a ring on it?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Is it gonna be crazy? Is it gonna be? Since
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: you've been gone? Are there any what do you think?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: What songs? Okay, let's be really honest. Although I'm not
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: that much younger than you, my listening starts, you know,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: early sixties, so anything before early sixties, I'm just gonna say,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not an We get Michael Einstein in here, he'll
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: talk about the American Songbook. So let's go after my
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: I listened intently to what you just had to say.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: But I believe unless you're a student of the game,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: hundred years from now, the only thing that survives is
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. Oh uh, you know um Thackeray and Trollip survived,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: so the Stones will be there, Queen will be there.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Well well, well let's put it this way. I will
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: write about records, and some of these bands are somewhat pejoratives,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: but they did some good material, like Loggins and Messina. Okay,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: when Loggins went solo, became totally Sacharin. But with Jimmy,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: I could play you stuff. Anybody would say it was great,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: but almost completely forgotten. I'll give you another one. See trains.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Remember the man c train. Uh Andy Cahlberg was a
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: good friend, Yeah, I mean forgotten. Okay, you even remembered them?
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: They were never hit to begin with. They did they
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: did Song at Joe, but they did the first version
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: of exactly first version they got introduced one of their
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: albums too right, that was already but then no nobody
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: remembered them then, okay, but let's go on, let's go
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: one step deeper. Do they remember Mike Bloomfield and Supersession?
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: So Airplanes gone, Quicksilver's gone, uh, stop with Camel? I
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: mean no, those bands have lost tremendous amount of their
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: cache and their and their presence and their catalog is dimmed.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: But you know, how do you explain to Steve Miller band? Okay, Steve,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: let's go back if you trapped or Steve Miller's sort
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: of unique. But what does survive, I believe are songs,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: not records. And that's one of the reasons why today's
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: music is not going to survive. They don't. Is it
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: that they don't have songs that they're no melody, there's
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: nothing for future generations to hook on. Okay, and but
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: when you go back so ironically, it's the sauce stuff
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: like Michelle and other Beatles songs as opposed to just
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: a bad example helter skelter. If you look at these Stones,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm a Stones fan, okay, it will be seen
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: as a great degree a rip off of Mississippi Mississippi
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Delta Blues. Now those are those recordings are poor, but
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and they certainly survived. But I'm not a big believer,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: and let me be I'm not cynical about this. I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: would like it to survive, but I see how much
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: has been forgotten. And also certain few points of the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: people who were there, Like if you mentioned Culture Club,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: they're negative. Culture Club did a couple of Stones, Church
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: of the Poison Mind. It was like Culture Club was there, right,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: But the point is right, and he could still deliver it.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: But the point is that people who are there, you
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: need a consensus to move it forward. So the people
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: who are there who feel negative are helping keep this music.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: Someone underground. I I asked a different question. Okay, this
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: guy is pretty successful at the label, This guy Mike Karen,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and he was talking at his kid, like five years ago,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: two year old kids playing with his iPad and says,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: this will be the instrument of the future. Now, what
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: do we know. You've had a lot of close up experience.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Most of these guys all they could do was play.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: They couldn't really have a good conversation, and they would
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: shed it and they did it to get laid. I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: have a theory beyond that, once they realized it didn't
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: solve other problems, than they couldn't write any hits anymore.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: But today, to interact with society, there's so many easier
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: ways to do it that you don't get these people
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: off the grid rehearse it. But you know, there's just
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: being greta van fleet that gets a lot of negative blowback.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: The first EP, there were a couple of very good
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: tracks rip off of led Zeppelin, but not like Kingdom Come,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: not literally, it's just reminiscent sound. All the old people
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: say it's just led Zeppa. I said led Zeppin was
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: fifty years ago. The led Zeppelin were inspired by that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't even fifty years ago. So just to finish and sense,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: you'll hope that at some point people will wake up
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: and we'll go back to this music and being inspired.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is, all these years later, there really
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: hasn't been another led Zeppelin. There hasn't been another who
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: there hasn't been another Bob Marley and and my kids
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: twenty nine and and she went through the whole teenage
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: years bringing all these guys over, you know, and all
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: of them we're listening to. Who led Zeppelin had Marley
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: T shirts on. I'm like, that would be like you
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: and me having Glenn Miller T shirt. That's what I'd
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: try to tell people. Let's say, when I was listening
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: to the Beatles, I was not listening to Frank Sinatra,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: whom I still don't like. It's not listening to Perry Como.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: It's not like they that was wiped off the map,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: but it was also I have another theory, which it's funny.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: I've seen other people pick up on it. There was
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: one renaissance. Okay, they painted and sculpted since then, but
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: there was one renaissance. We lived through the renisend. They'll
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: make music, but what do we know. You had to
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: get a deal, you had to get on the radio.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: We lived for the music. Music was everything. It's amazing
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: you talk to everybody, So I don't think we can
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: recreate that. So to me, and looking at music history,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: which is what I do now. The corporate control of
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: the record business. Uh starts in the late seventies, the
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: independent labels like Motown and A and M, who were
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: run by people that made music, that ran experiments in
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the studio personally. Uh, the corporations began absorbing those. And
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: I think that there was the Fleetwood Mac album and
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: the enormous profits of fourteen million copies of rumors to
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Warner Brothers that really convinced the corporations to well, you
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: know what, people don't realize that was the entertainment division
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: that was making the most profits the rest of their surprise, right, yeah,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: that made more money than television. And the whole Warner
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: cable system was built on the back of the record
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: what all happened to? To surprise right back side? What
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: where's that money coming from? So at the late seventies
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: and in early ages, start seeing this corporatestation, and then
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: they started playing corporate marketing methods, right, And so I mean,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: I don't really want to get to be such an old,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: uh you know, growning guy, but I think the last
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: original American rock band was the Talking Heads, and the
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: rest have been all I might give you YouTube, but
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: they're an American that After that, all the bands are
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: like you say, we got to get a deal. So
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: in order to get a deal, they had to fit
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: the matrix that the corporate marketing people wanted. And so
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: there that was the end of imagination. That was the
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: end of originality, That was the end of of of
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: any kind of like freethinking or connection. And people like
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: they have this idea that like, well you know, if
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: if Fleetwood Mac successful, what they wanted something just like
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac. No, because people abought Fleetwood Math. The next
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: thing they bought was the clash and people had Catholic
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: taste first. Well there, you know, you're hitting a lot
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: of points. First of all, for some reason, with the
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: crazy world we live in, I've been singing life during
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: wartime in my head, the talking Head song show this
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: Ain't no Party, This Ain't no Disco before, and you
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: realize how far ahead even though the times they were,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: even though you know he's a difficult guy, David Burn,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and he has now changed, single handedly changing the market.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I remember going in Rock Acoustic Christmas. This was like
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the second or third one when it started to become big,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: when you couldn't get a ticket, instant sellout, and the
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: headliner was Duran Duran on their comeback and David Byrne
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: performed and literally the two girls in front of me.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not making this upset. Who's this? Okay? But he
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: did such a killer show at Coachella, at a live show.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: There is an underpinning. Okay, he's gonna open it on Broadway.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: It's like a new way to sell what he's doing.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: I did not you the show, but I sure heard
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: about it. That'd be my boy in New Orleans Jazz
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Fest out right. Okay. So going back to your point,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: because this is a lot of questions we have about
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: the future. I was under the belief, what do we
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: know now? Theoretically you can reach everybody theoretically, so I
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: thought there would be a very thin layer of acts
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: that would reach everybody. That turns out not to be true.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: You ask anybody to sing to Drake songs, it's a
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: very small market of people. Not that there aren't even sought.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: They are not even same even with Taylor Swift. Okay,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: so we have all these other genres. What people thought
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: that the record major labels were going to be killed
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: by napster in the Internet, that was not true. Without
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: even talking about why that was not true. They are
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: now killing themselves because they're only interested in the cream
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: of the crop, not talent wise, but what is more
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: instantly marketable and unlike an our era Warner, this electra
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: they only sign one kind of music. If you go
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: in to say this is phenomenal on its own terms,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: forget it. I remember Warner has signed this electronic Beaver
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: and Krause. I mean it's like, who would get traction
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: like that again? So so it is left in the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: touch with Bernie Krause, by the really and it's like,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: so it is now left in the hands of the people.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Just taking it one step further. We've been talking about
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Gary Duncan, etcetera. When I moved to l A in
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: the seventies, you could work retail and survive. I did
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: the Sporting Good story. You work retail, you do any job.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: You can't get a roof over your head. So what
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: we have as a result of income inequality is the
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: best in the brightest. This is what people don't realize.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: These people going to college, etcetera. They know the game.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: They know if they don't find their place where they're
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: making a certain mo money, they're immediately going to be
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: left behind. I mean I graduate college. I was a scheme, bummers.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: You know I was not looking for that. So only
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: the lower classes go in. Grace is a perfect point.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Grace actually the upper middle class, No, no, upper well whatever,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I know where she grew up. Okay, she's got money.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Father was an investment baker, but not like an investment
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: baker today. No, but he was the original, you know,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley thing investment banker in Palo Alto. Well, she
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: didn't tell me that. I didn't. But in any of them,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: if you were middle class in the sixties, never mind
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: in the seventies, you could say no. No one says
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: no anymore based on your upbringing. I'm not gonna do that.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make that endorsement. I'm not gonna sing
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: that song, whereas today the lower classes of the musicians
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: tell me, I'll do whatever it is, whatever you want,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: so there's no credibility. Well, it's not heroic endeavor anymore. Absolutely,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: you know it was a heroic deva. To be in
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: a rock band was like to be Ulysses and to
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: go off on a ground journey and the music. Bob,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: you know, you stand up for this stuff all the time.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: About like, you know, it's got to be the music.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: It's got to be about the music, dude. Uh. That
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: was when it had something in it. Now music is
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: just an entertainment. That's why people don't realize. I mean,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: I'm stunned because I come from that era where you
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: couldn't even get a job at the record store, never
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: mind get a job at the label. You were all
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: high again how much you were being paid. You were
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: a kingpin, you were on the inside. Now I know
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: what it's like before the Beatles. Oh, somebody works at
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: a record company. They're just turning it out. It's another profession,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, we're selling vacuum cleaners. It
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: doesn't have this aura. That's why rock and roll was different,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: is that, you know, Perry Como was entertainment and he
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: meant nothing. Uh. Rock and roll was a coded message
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: to an entire generation. And it was an education. It
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: was called arms. It was an indoctrination. It was it
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: was the culture. Filled those sales with air and that
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: was what brought us all into it. And that's why
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: it had such power as an art movement. And it
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: was corrupted by commercial interests. Uh, corporate interests. Hello, welcome
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: to America. Well, I you articulated really well, and I
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: don't have anything specifically that to that, but I remember
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: and you may or may not remember, after Kirk Coban
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: off himself, uh sixty minutes, who was in the guy's name,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: who did the commentary at the end. You know I'm
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: talking about he beat a can't he? Uh? He beat
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Kurt coban up. So the next day I was on
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: the phone with Eddie Rosenbladd, who was the head of
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: Geffen Records, and he said something I'd quote all the
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: time now. He said, movies, when done right, are larger
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: than life. Rock music, when done right, is life itself.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: And on that note, it's been wonderful to have you.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: We could continue just discussing. That's all the pay Bob
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: you're he wrote to me. Okay, well, we'll talk about
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: this after bike. That makes me feel good until next time.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: It's Bob website